#there’s a heap ton of that after story content though :-) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 3 years

Text

I will forever squint suspiciously at a fandom that overall makes a bigger deal out of Dick Grayson expressing he didn’t want to replace his father when he was still young and actively grieving than they do Tim Drake literally hiring an actor to be his fake uncle and saying no to Bruce’s first actual offer of adoption.

Like, if you can get on board with Timothy Drake-Wayne after that, because Tim changed his mind after he was further along in his grieving process, you can get on board with the idea that at some point after the age of ten or twelve Dick similarly changed his mind about thinking a second father would be an insult to his first father’s memory.

*Shrugs* I just don’t get how hard some people go to bat for the idea that Dick never wanted or needed someone he viewed as an actual parent at any point after he was eight. Because you can’t deny that whatever Dick has said about that in the comics, he’s NEVER made it nearly AS big a deal as most fans who cite it at all do. Like, when you run with the most extreme extrapolation of that but gloss right over Tim’s far more extensive efforts to keep Jack Drake the sole father figure in his memory at first, I feel like something else is going on there.

(And I’m not trying to turn this into a Tim vs Dick thing, btw, I’m honestly just using Tim’s story there as a benchmark for how a clearly parallel sentiment is overwhelmingly referenced in regards to just one character but not another. My issues with the way people engage with this particular idea in regards to Dick like, exists without Tim being in the equation at all. That was simply an example of the fact that there IS a discrepancy.)

But point being, as all roads in this particular direction of thought almost always seem to lead to Dick being slotted into some nebulous category separating him from the rest of his siblings, where he’s only partially Bruce’s kid but not FULLY, not like the others....I am the Wary.

Because whatever the surface intentions behind that, it almost inevitably voids some of Bruce’s responsibility to him as a parent, while at the same time making it easier to heap parental or caregiver style responsibilities for the others on Dick. If Dick’s more like Bruce than he is like his siblings in the overall family dynamic, this not only lessens the need to show him on the receiving end of Bruce being a parental figure, it simultaneously heightens the urge to make him a parental figure to the others to pick up Bruce’s slack there, because they’re more partners than they are father and son, see. So why wouldn’t Dick pick up Bruce’s slack and help him out there, and why would he need Bruce to actually be fulfilling that very role with him instead?

All the things people are critical of Bruce for in his parenting with Dick aren’t quite as bad, right, when Dick’s not fully his son or doesn’t quite view Bruce as his father....its easier to reframe it as fights between colleagues. Or recast Dick’s estrangement from Bruce as not actually a failure on Bruce’s part to reach out and cement exactly what Dick meant to him every time Dick flat out says “I want to know what I mean to you, give a name to it, give me an explanation for why you made these choices that isn’t that you don’t want me because all I see when I look at those choices is you expressing you don’t want me.”

Because if Dick doesn’t actually want that explanation ever, if Dick doesn’t actually want that rock-solid expression of Bruce putting a name to what he feels for Dick and what he views him as, then the arguments between Bruce and Dick in his late teenage years DO become two-sided. Its just them butting heads back then. Rather than what they actually WERE in the comics, which was Dick clearly expressing insecurities about his place in Bruce’s life and Bruce repeatedly letting him leave or outright telling him to leave without actually giving it to him.

(I’m not even talking about NTT #55 for once, I’m actually talking about when Dick went to Gotham after he found out about Jason being Robin now. And as the events of that issue get referenced a TON in fandom, its HIGHLY suspect that one specific part of that issue gets rewritten in particular: where its acted like it was Dick that stormed off in a huff there or Dick who didn’t want anything more than to confront Bruce about Robin. It really doesn’t get addressed enough IMO that yes, Bruce said outright that he did it because he missed Dick....and then two panels later, Bruce literally asks Dick to go now. Says I would like you to leave now. Bruce is the one who blew up and lost his temper, literally smashing something while Dick was just heated because he was understandably upset, while Bruce somehow made it like he was the one being hurt by Dick and asking for space from him. Yeah, he said I miss you, but he never DID anything with that and in fact just turned around two seconds later and drove Dick away again, like Holy Mixed Signals, Batman! Y’know? Like what exactly was Dick supposed to do with that? “Oh, so Bruce misses me, but also he didn’t want me there, like I was literally RIGHT THERE for the first time in seventeen months and he missed me so much that....he didn’t even ask me to stay for dinner? Or call or reach out to me afterwards? So....my conclusion is.....what, exactly?”)

Ultimately though, my big beef with the stuff about adoption or Dick not wanting to replace his father, its not even about those specifically. Its about that period when Bruce very visibly was NOT in Dick’s life....and that was BY BRUCE’S CHOICE. That is the thing that needs addressing in my book, and far too often goes unresolved. No matter what the particulars of Dick’s views or wants re: adoption, there is literally no confusion about the existence of comics where Dick is repeatedly the one to reach out to Bruce, at a point in his life where he no longer had any legal ties to Bruce whatsoever.....and clearly express in one way or another that he is there and willing to talk, that in fact he WANTS to talk about why Bruce doesn’t seem to want HIM, specifically.

It was Dick who brought up the issue of Bruce adopting Jason but not him and asked WHY at that one issue with them at a party. It was Dick who returned to Gotham and asked Bruce WHY he made Jason Robin when he hadn’t wanted Dick to be Robin - (and for the record, NO version of events where Bruce is the one to make Jason Robin aligns with Dick voluntarily giving up Robin.....the one and only continuity in which Dick did that, HE made the choice to pass Robin on to Jason. Mixing and matching continuities specifically to make Dick unable to claim hurt or resentment for the identity he crafted for himself being given away to someone else without his approval because ‘he was the one who said he didn’t want it anymore’ is yet again, suspect, as it serves absolutely no purpose other than to lessen the hurt done to him and abdicate Bruce’s culpability in hurting him when he did that).

It was Dick who returned to Gotham after Jason died with no intention but to express his condolences and share their grief, and it was Dick who returned to Gotham to check on Bruce after Tim said he was worried he was going to get himself killed, as well as again more longterm in order to help with Tim’s training.

And in each and EVERY one of those situations.....it was Bruce that ended those encounters, and ALWAYS without ever offering Dick any actual resolution or change in their dynamic. Despite Dick’s very presence in each of these being a very clear sign that Dick was unhappy with their estrangement and wanted a change to it or else he wouldn’t even be there, he would be off being comfortably estranged somewhere else and totally content with that.

THAT’S the bigger issue and always has been, I think. That no matter how else you parse it, Dick repeatedly looked for and asked for reassurances, some kind of actual TIES to Bruce, and that Bruce for whatever personal reasons of his own, repeatedly did not give....even when Dick walked him right up to the perfect opportunity to just fucking say “I would like you to come home more, I want you here, I want you as part of my family even though you’ve already aged out of our existing legal bond.”

Bruce still just WOULD NOT SAY IT. Dick was very clear about needing and wanting something from Bruce that Bruce DID NOT GIVE HIM. Bruce gave him basically nothing to work with in these encounters more often than not.

(In the interest of not being disingenuous here, I do admit that at the party when Dick asked Bruce why he’d adopted Jason and not him, Bruce did give a fairly touching response about how by the time he thought Dick would be open to it, he thought that Dick was too old to actually want or need it anymore. BUT, problem is, even with that it does absolutely nothing to change or address how the very fact that Dick was expressing insecurity about this now meant that Dick WASN’T actually too old to want or need it. It was literally a smack in the face that Bruce’s conclusion was wrong and not actually about Dick’s wants. And Bruce knew this, even referenced it at later points when he threw it back in Dick’s face to accuse Dick of resenting Bruce adopting Jason and not him.....which is a clear indication that Bruce knew it was something Dick still wanted or else there would be no reason for resentment, and THAT is the issue there. That no matter what Bruce said at that party about his reasons for not adopting Dick sooner, that very conversation itself should have been reason enough for Bruce to rethink his stance then there....but he didn’t. Also he ended up adopting Dick like five years later soooooo.....if he could do it then when Dick was even older, that doesn’t work as a barrier for him not doing it then.)

And that’s the troubling part.....how many people try and make that period of their lives unclear with no other visible purpose than to make the fact that Bruce WOULD NOT OUTRIGHT CEMENT DICK AS FAMILY OR ASK HIM TO STAY, like.....less problematic.

And as I’ve said before and will no doubt say again.......that logic process bugs the hell out of me, because it ultimately tries to claim the responsibility for Dick’s unhappiness in this regard back then is at least as much his fault as Bruce’s. That it was some kind of fight between equals, or that it was something Dick initiated or that Bruce had no power to resolve on his own via just his own choices or gestures.

Because it wasn’t! That’s not remotely what all of that was! And like I’m also always saying, you don’t HAVE to stick with the canon by any means. You can literally rewrite things so Bruce adopts Dick before he’s eighteen and they never HAVE that period, you can rewrite things so that Bruce reaches out and ends that period early on by DOING THE WORK of being the parent in that situation, you can ‘fix that’ by any number of means......yet over and over we see that period of estrangement repeatedly upheld as a thing that exists in the history that fics and headcanons reference having happened......but with the only ACTUAL change from the comics being that its framed as though it was just growing pains or Dick being stubborn or a dozen other things that somehow keep coming back to Dick doing something wrong there instead of repeatedly standing in front of Bruce asking for him to clarify their relationship and Bruce changing the subject or asking him to leave.

Again. THAT’S the problem.

You want Good Parent Bruce Wayne? Then WRITE Good Parent Bruce Wayne. Don’t just write Stubborn Teenaged Asshole Dick Grayson who btw doesn’t even really want Bruce to be his parent so there’s absolutely nothing Bruce could have done to bridge that gap back then anyway.

(As that’s an equally critical part of the equation here as well. See, since Dick DID clearly express a want for a clear connection to Bruce back then, acting like Dick never really wanted a second father is a super convenient way to write over the part where Dick spelled out for Bruce how to bridge the divide between them and make things good again.....by demonstrating an actual WANT to have Dick in his family!)

But writing Stubborn Teenage Asshole Dick Grayson Who Did This To Himself.....that is something entirely different from writing Good Parent Bruce Wayne. You haven’t actually done or said anything with BRUCE’S character by just making Dick the fall guy for every conflict between them as though they were just equals all along and there was never any kind of actual parent child relationship or even a DESIRE for there to be a parent child relationship. Where the responsibility for being the PARENT like, lands on the....y’know. Parent.

And for the record, I don’t think this issue is confined just to this period of the comics, I think rather that its kinda the point of origin of a very large recurring problem in Dick’s conflicts with other people.

Because like I said, it was abundantly clear that Dick was expressing a want to be acknowledged as family, or just flat out acknowledged by Bruce at all, during this time. And if people can somehow make THAT period into just his fault.....then of course it should be no surprise that they can make any conflict he’s part of into his fault. Its a freaking blueprint for doing just that!

And that’s exactly why this pattern recurs so damn often with EXACTLY the same fanon beats......whatever role the other character plays even in initiating a conflict is shifted onto Dick and somehow made into his own proactive choice and not something he’s actually reacting to. Thus Dick does double duty as both the CAUSE of the conflict and the resulting EFFECT - aka how he reacted to that thing that originally, he did not actually cause or initiate. While meanwhile, the other character not only gets off scot free bearing no actual culpability....no, now since DICK is the one making all the actual choices in the conflict from start to finish, now the other character is actually his VICTIM in it as well.

And that’s just.....so....blegh.

187 notes · View notes

hungry-tum-stuff · 3 years

Text

Lanayru Region - Zora’s Domain

Breath of the Wild Regional Food Series - Part Four

Description: After helping them conquer Vah Ruta, the Zora are more than grateful and decide to throw a feast in Link’s honor. Link over-indulges quite a bit, but Sidon is quite impressed by how much the hero can eat.

Includes: Hunger, Stuffing, Stomach rubbing, Touch-Starved Link, Ambiguously Platonic Link and Sidon interactions

//TW: Descriptions of hunger, descriptions of stuffing-induced stomachaches, Themes of Touch Starvation

Link had conquered Vah Ruta.

It hadn’t been easy, it had taken long enough to disable the beast, and even longer to navigate the inside and slay the Blight Ganon that had taken Mipha’s life. Such an ordeal had left him eager to return to Zora’s Domain, for more than one reason.

The biggest reason currently being food.

Food was practically the only thing he could think about after freeing Mipha’s spirit. With the adrenaline and rush of memories of his friend now passed, he quickly became acutely aware of the empty hole in his gut. Spending nearly a day disabling a Divine Beast and fighting a Blight Ganon had left him starving. He wasn’t doing a great job at hiding it, either.

“Link! My dearest friend, you did it! You are truly a hero among Hylians, a true- oh, goodness, you’re not injured, are you? You don’t look well” Sidon fussed, worriedly standing over Link as he got his footing after being teleported to safety by Vah Ruta.

Link just shook his head in reassurance as he took a shaky step towards Sidon. However, he wasn’t as alright as he’d thought, because his knees buckled as soon as he tried to walk. Sidon immediately caught him and stood him upright again, before kneeling down to Link’s level to inspect him.

‘Wounds were healed by Mipha, I’m fine’ He signed slowly, and Sidon looked at him, baffled for a moment.

“My sister healed you? But, how-“ He was cut off by a low growling sound, and as Link clapped two hands on his tummy, Sidon instantly knew what the problem was. His previous confusion was replaced by laughter, and Link’s face turned a bright red. “So that’s why you’re so light on your feet. You must be starving! Not to worry though, I knew you’d be hungry after your victory. So I had the domain prepare something special for you” He insisted, taking Link’s hand gently and leading him into Zora’s Domain. Link followed along, Sidon hadn’t exactly given him a choice, but he found it a little hard to keep up with the prince’s long strides now that his exhaustion was finally catching up to him.

Sidon led Link into the throne room where that ‘something special’ had been set up, and as soon as Link saw what it was he stopped in his tracks, absolutely stunned.

It was a feast. A huge table was laid out before him, covered end-to-end in tons of different fish prepared tons of different ways. Not to mention all the bread, pasta, and rice dishes. Link’s stomach could only groan longingly, aching a bit as he gawked at the feast. He winced and clutched his belly before looking up to Sidon and quickly signing: ‘For me?’

Sidon laughed again. “Of course it’s for you! We very well can’t let our champion leave the domain without a proper reward for his victory. I’d also feel rather awful if I wasn’t able to remedy that empty stomach of yours” Link’s face flushed once again, but he simply kept a hand on his tummy as he was ushered towards a seat. Prince Sidon sat beside him, and King Dorephan regarded them both with a nod.

“Welcome back, champion”

~~~

After King Dorephan gave a rather lengthy speech of thanks to both Link and Sidon, which was almost torture for Link to sit through politely while his stomach was practically begging him to dig into the food right in front of him, the King finally declared that the feast commence.

And Link wasted no time in filling his plate to the brim and scarfing down every last crumb. The other Zora, which Link could only assume was every single Zora in the domain judging by the size of the feast, watched in awe as the Hylian champion chowed down on a hearty bass, and then immediately reached for another helping. In fact, Link was in such a rush to eat that he hadn’t even bothered to use the cutlery laid out for him.

However, Sidon couldn’t help but find Link’s lack of table manners somewhat endearing. Link had been an expectation breaker from the very beginning: Ever since he was a child he’d been told stories of the silent, stoic knight that had fought alongside his sister, but never in a thousand years had he expected that knight to be a Hylian barely taller than most Zora children, or that his silent exterior masked someone incredibly silly and unrefined.

Link wasn’t what Sidon had expected, and that’s what made Sidon endlessly interested in him.

“You ought to slow down, my friend” Sidon interrupted as Link reached to fill his plate with a third heaping serving. But as Link bent over the table, Sidon couldn’t help but notice a new roundness pressing against the stretchy material of Link’s Zora Armor. Link just paused mid-way through filling his plate and looked up confusedly at Sidon, who was still eyeing his companion’s tummy. “Zora portions are traditionally far larger than Hylian portions, and I’d hate for you to give yourself an upset stomach…” He warned.

Link just frowned and continued to pile food onto his plate before setting it down and signing: ‘Still hungry.’

Sidon chuckled and nodded, leaning over to get a second serving of his own. “Very well then, eat to your heart’s content. You’ve certainly earned it”

At that, Link beamed and continued to eat his fill. It wasn’t until he was halfway through his third serving that he began slowing down a bit, and he was clearly struggling through the last couple bites until his plate was clean. As soon as it was, Link could only sit back in his seat with a sigh, one hand slowly creeping up to rest on his overfull tummy. Sidon finished his own meal before stealing a glance at Link and noticing just how distended his belly had become, and he gave a quiet laugh as Link met the prince’s eyes for a moment before looking away abashedly.

“You finished three plates of food? That’s incredible! I don’t even think I would be able to finish three servings of hearty bass without blowing up like a pufferfish” He marveled. Link’s face reddened when the prince pointed out just how much he’d eaten, and when he hiccuped as his stomach settled around the massive amount of food, Sidon just raised an eyebrow. “Although, it seems like you’ve gained a rather, hm, prominent middle after eating so much… Will your stomach be alright?”

Link just nodded and patted his belly assuredly, but as he did, his stomach roiled into a sharp cramp before grumbling unhappily. Link grunted and pressed both hands into his stomach, and Sidon worriedly set a hand on the Hylian’s shoulder.

“I’m not so sure you’re right dear friend, it seems like you’ve overdone it… Is your stomach upset?” He asked. Link tensed up as another gurgle tore through his stomach, and he nodded slowly before holding a finger to his lips and motioning to the other Zora at the table. He’d like to at least try to maintain a positive image with the people of the domain, and eating himself into a stomachache after they had been kind enough to throw him a feast didn’t seem like the best way to uphold his reputation. Sidon, somewhat misunderstanding the message, gave a bright smile and a thumbs-up in reply.

“Excuse us everyone, but our champion is quite exhausted after the events of today. I’ll be taking my leave to see him off to his chambers” Link’s face reddened even more as Sidon’s announcement drew the attention of the entire table, but thankfully nobody dared to comment on his noticeable gut as he stood from the table with Sidon. He was just bombarded with profuse good-byes and thank-you’s as he left with the prince.

‘Not very subtle.’ Link commented on their exit with a huff, and Sidon just tilted his head.

“Well, neither is that belly of yours.” Sidon quipped, causing Link to lay both of his hands back on his tummy, as if he were trying to hide it. “I apologize though, I wasn’t aware you wanted me to be subtle. I however, do want you to get some rest. And hopefully we can find a way to settle your stomach before you turn in for the night” Sidon insisted as he led Link into his bedchamber. Link would have just collapsed onto the bed, if he wasn’t cradling his swollen stomach like a mother would a baby. He opted to climb carefully onto the mattress, and when Sidon didn’t leave but instead sat at the foot of the bed, he raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, I can leave if you wish, but I believe I can help soothe your stomach a bit. It does sound rather unhappy…” Link flinched and let a small whine slip out as his stomach rumbled and contracted painfully around his huge meal, and he slowly nodded in agreement before removing his hands from his tummy. Sidon nodded back, and soon enough his large, scaled hand had taken the place of Link’s.

“Oh my, everything is really packed in there!” Sidon exclaimed as he began to rub in slow, small circles around Link’s firm belly. Link blushed, looking away before raising his hands up to sign to Sidon.

‘You don’t need to remind me.’

Sidon chuckled and shook his head. “I suppose I don’t. I think it’s a bit amusing though, you just completed a feat that not even I could imagine accomplishing on my own, but the celebratory feast is what has you bedridden”

Link didn’t sign anything in response to that, but he did sigh with relief as Sidon was able to loosen a rather painful knot in his belly, followed by a few busy grumbles. As Sidon continued, Link found himself slowly easing into the touch and the slow, soothing motion of the other’s hand on his belly, and the comfortable silence lulled him into a state of relaxation he hadn’t felt since he woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection.

‘This feels really nice, thank you.’ Link signed before letting his eyes fall shut. Sidon smiled as his hand smoothed over a particularly tight area, releasing a chorus of rumbles. Both of the boys paused upon hearing the sudden noises, but Sidon gave Link’s stomach a gentle, reassuring pat before continuing to rub his overfull belly in slow, soothing circles.

“You don’t need to thank me, my champion”

#the moment you've all been waiting for #tummy noises #hungry tummy #tummy #sfw hunger kink #whump #botw #breath of the wild #link botw #sidon botw #stomach growling #stuffing #tummy rubs #fanfic #botw fanfiction #long text post #sidlink #fluff

82 notes · View notes

royallyprincesslilly · 3 years

Text

Title: Pleasing The Duke {1}

Duke of Hastings/Rege Jean Page x OFC Jemilla “Jemi” Remmington

Warning: Plot, Regency Period Piece, Slow Burn, LOTS OF WORDS

Words: 5.7k

Summary: After your four weeks on the marriage mart and the tumultuous way yours and the Duke’s budding friendship that turned into a faux courtship, then a real crisis that could have tarnished your name forever, you are now married to the Duke. Only this is no traditional marriage. The Duke has professed to never fall in love, never get married, and never sire an heir, a matter you know nothing of. Furious that his wanton, lustful desires have gotten him to forego one of those vows, he is determined not to break the other two. That would usually be an easy feat. Only with you, it might be more challenging to keep those vows, seeing as no matter what, you are the only thing on his mind.

Note: Inspired by Rege Jean Page’s portrayal of Simon Bassett. This fic will not have any other characters from the series, except Lady Danbury, mainly the portrayal version of her by the incredible Adjoa Andoh and maybe Queen Charlotte portrayed by Golda Rosheuvel. This series will focus on The Duke and an OFC female character and will be a sultry and erotic historical romance. Anyone under 18 is advised not to read.

***Let me know if you guys want me to add like glossary terms at the end of the chapters for period specific words/items.

***Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Julia Quinn’s characters, nor the Characters established by Bridgerton. I own the rights to the original characters created in this story.

If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG!! 😘

As always, thank you so much for reading. ❤️❤️

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

***Slightly Interactive***

Chapter One: The Duke & Duchess Of Hastings

“I pronounce you husband and wife.”

You kept your back straight and your limbs stiff though you felt at any moment either or both would give way, sending you tumbling to the ground in a heap of white lace, silk, and tulle. Perhaps you’d even be sucked into the ground for good measure, you thought. No one spoke once those words had been uttered. Almost a full minute passed before the clergyman spoke again.

“Eh-em, I declare you husband and wife.”

You gulped and slowly found your head swiveling toward the man beside you. a man who was practically a stranger, a man you’d now found yourself joined to until you were parted by death. Your husband—The Duke of Hastings. When your eyes met his, you noted a look of strangled fear and disgust. His jaw was clenched, and he looked as if he were seconds away from revealing the contents of his stomach right on the front of your gown.

Long moments seemed to pass with the two of you just gazing into each other’s eyes. This was not the gazing of enamored lovers or even lustful suitors. It was the gaze of a man who’d been forced into a marriage he did not want and a woman riddled with guilt for her part in it.

“Your grace.”

Simon’s head snapped back in front of him to find the clerk holding out the book he was to sign his name into. You watched as he took the quill from the clerk and slowly signed his name. He paused after every word as if he were seriously contemplating scratching his name from the book entirely. An act that was to be seconds took a full minute, and the entire time you wondered if he would turn to you and call the whole thing off, leaving you a ruined and jilted woman.

Simon held the quill to you for your turn. As you took the object, your gloved fingers grazed his. Even though your skin did not touch his, you shivered all the same—that was before Simon snatched his hand away to drop them to his sides. You glanced down at his hand that you’d ever so softly grazed a week or two ago and watched his fist clench tightly.

“Your grace,” the clerk repeated, this time to you.

Bringing your attention back to the book in front of you, you proceeded to sign your name beside Simon’s. Instead of writing the name you’d been accustomed to your entire life—Lady Jamilla Remmington, you signed your new one for the first time—Duchess Jamilla Bassett, The Duchess of Hastings. It looked strange to your eyes, but it did not look terrible.

“Congratulations, your graces.”

The voices began to overlap as each of those in attendance for the small ceremony extended their felicitations to both of you. Neither of you could find your voices or the words to reply to even thank them. There was nothing to be thankful for, you thought. You’d traded one unhappy future for an equally unhappy one, quite possibly more unhappy as you’d just entered the very thing you’d refused to—a loveless marriage.

Thankfully leaving the church, there weren’t people outside ready to shower the newlywed couple with rose petals and cheers. Unfortunately, you had to ride in the same carriage as your new husband. Simon sat across and diagonal from you, peering out the window at the scenery. Holding your bouquet of fresh flowers while fiddling with the blush-colored silk ribbon it was tied with, you watched Simon take a flask out of his coat pocket and knock back something strong from the whiff of it that caught your nostrils. He grimaced, then groaned before he looked at you.

The way he looked at you nearly made you stop breathing, not from him taking your breath away, but from the hostility you saw in his eyes. Simon grumbled before looking from you back out the window. Your stomach fell, realizing just how severe and hopeless your fate was. For the remainder of the carriage ride, you worked to keep your eyes off of Simon. It was a task that seemed more manageable for him than you.

Every so often, your eyes found their way back to him to take in other parts of him. Either it was the way his cravat looked around his neck, and the sly way peeks of his throat could be seen through the tiny slots, or it was the way he tightly gripped the flask he held. A flask he didn’t bother to hide. He was already so unhappy with you that he didn’t care to continue the ruse of propriety for you. It was disheartening.

Simon kept his jaw firmly clenched as he watched the scenery pass, but he didn’t look as if he were looking at the rolling hills or passing farms. He appeared to be looking directly through anything that passed. This was just day one of your “new” life, and if the two of you couldn’t muster any conversation, you didn’t know what hope there was for the future.

The carriage ride from the church to your reception took all of fifteen minutes, give or take a few. You’d tried to plead with your mother to forgo the reception, stating that it was outdated and unnecessary, but your mother wouldn’t hear a word of it.

“The wedding reception is one of the joys of the beginning of a married woman’s life. It is the time she greets the ton as a Mrs. She is no longer a miss. You will get to revel in your new role in front of all the other unmarried women. The reception lets everyone wish you well while being the source of envy in their eyes.”

You sighed, hearing her words in your memory from the night before. You did not fault her. she did not know the true way your nuptials had come about. She thought you and Simon had genuinely fallen head over heels while pretending to have fallen head over heels. She did not know about what had transpired to bring the two of you to this outcome. You didn’t dare tell her.

While a loving and kind one, your mother preferred her children, mainly her daughters, to be the supreme example of propriety. She had groomed you to be nothing but a proper lady. That meant you always had a chaperone when you were going most places. You were never alone with anyone that wasn’t a woman. Your hemline was the exact number of inches deemed appropriate, as was your neckline. It also meant that your education was top of the line—well, most of your education.

You learned to read, write, do arithmetic, play the piano, do needlework, draw, paint, sing, dance, how to catch the eye of a suitor, the propriety of courting, and how to run a household for marriage. Your accomplishments could have been seen as superior, but your mother said you had to be better than average. You had to be perfect. She pushed you further, saying because your skin color was different, expectations for you to be perfect were high. So, you expanded your education to learn two languages, French and Latin. Excelled in piano and learned to play the harp. You were quite accomplished, usually more than those around you.

The part of your education that was lacking was knowledge that went past things others could see. Your mother made sure to keep any discussions of inappropriate topics away from you and your sisters, only giving you the smallest of details. She sure stressed what was inappropriate but skimmed past any other things. It was while learning about science and animals that you grasped procreation at the most basic level.

You had plenty of unmarried friends. There was Tessa Carmichael, your best friend who lived across the road, Abigail Prowler down the road on the left, Edith Bunfeld down the road on the right, and Letecia Grother, whose aunt was on the neighboring street. All of you often spent your afternoons walking around the park and gossiping about many things, including the joys and privileges of married life. None of you really knew what to expect. Of course, many unmarried ladies tried to grill the ones who were married, but they all remained tightlipped. All they did was giggle into their fans, saying, “you will find out on your own.”

Here it was, the evening of your wedding day, and you still had no idea. Your mother had assured you earlier in the day before you left home for the final time as a Miss that “The Duke will take the lead, all you must do is follow it.”

“Your grace?”

You came out of your memories to see the footman holding out his hand to assist you out of the carriage. Once you stepped out, you rearranged your dress until Simon stepped out beside you. You watched him tuck his flask in his jacket before he held his arm out for yours without even sparing you a glance. Sighing, you looped yours with his and let him lead you into the building.

Once you walked in, the first people you saw were your mother and Landy Danbury. They both had bright smiles on their faces.

“Your graces,” Lady Danbury said, dipping her head.

“Oh, you know you never have to bow your head to me—never to me,” Simon said with a fond smile on his face as he looked at Lady Danbury.

You knew his affection for the woman went deep. You weren’t entirely sure about most of it, but you knew that she’d taken care of him helped him become who he was. You’d only known him about five weeks, and that wasn’t nearly enough time to peel back the many layers of The Duke Of Hastings. You suspected you’d need a lifetime for that. A lifetime which you now had.

“Are you all right, dear?”

You plastered a smile on your face and nodded.

“Of course she is mother, she is now a duchess,” your sister Jerrikka piped up as she came over to pull you into an embrace.

“You know very well I am not the type to hold so much weight on a title,” you replied.

“Is that so? Not too long ago, I remember you bragging you were to be a Princess,” Simon dryly shot out.

You glanced at him trying to keep the glare away. You remembered the conversation you’d had where you’d uttered those words and remembered why you’d said them. You’d wanted to pointedly show him that you were desirable though he behaved as if you weren’t. Perhaps part of you wanted to enrage him or garner any reaction from him at all. He’d been so damned stoic. It was next to impossible to know what toiled in his head.

To not draw suspicion of trouble so soon after wedlock, Simon smiled at you. It almost looked like a real smile, a warm one, but his eyes remained cold—detached. He then led you into the ballroom, and as he did, all eyes floated to you. Everyone in the room held broad smiles on their faces as they dipped down into a respectful half curtsey or head bow. You and Simon both returned the gesture before the members of the ton flooded around you, each offering their happiest felicitations for your marital bliss.

You kept your back straight, face neutral, smile stretched, and hoped it shone all the way to your eyes. Your eyes always gave away whatever you were thinking or feeling. It was what you considered your fatal flaw. Your mother could hide everything behind her relaxed expression and only allow others to see what she wanted. Even, your sisters, Jerrikka and Jacinda, could remain relatively stoic, you were the one who was cursed. Your father always called you his little lightning bolt because of how quickly your emotions flashed.

By the time the congratulations finally subsided, it gave you time to take your first ever taste of Ratafia. Your mother had never allowed it. She said it was for married women. You and Jacinda had only been allowed one glass of cordial at any event. Once you’d had your one glass, it was lemonade after that.

You were standing close to the fireplace in the corner of the room. It gave you a good view of all that was happening. Simon was beside you, slightly turned away with one elbow resting on the stone of the fireplace. His stance allowed you to take in his side profile. Even standing leisurely with his other hand on his hop and one leg crossed over the other, he still looked regal. Before you thought it was conceit you sensed in him, but you’d come to see it as pride.

It wasn’t a detrimental pride or one that said he thought himself high over others. It was a different kind of pride entirely. It was one that made him more attractive in your eyes. His slim but masculine frame you’d gazed over tens of times over the last month always set your curiosities running wild. Right now, you found yourself wondering if all of him had the muscles he’d displayed two weeks ago when he rolled up his sleeves.

You hadn’t even seen your brothers in that state before. he was the first. As your eyes traveled the length of his body, you raised your glass to your lips and took a sip of the coveted Ratafia that many ladies seemed to love. Your eyes stopped at his backside, and that was where they remained. The liquid passed your lips and washed over your tongue.

The most unexpected flavor filled your mouth. It was one that was stronger than anything you’d ever tasted. As soon as you swallowed it, you began coughing. Simon’s head spun to you with a worried expression.

“Are you all right?”

Your response was another fit of coughs, which made Simon take a step toward you.

“Jemilla?”

You held up your hand as you cleared your throat once more.

“Good heavens, this is absolutely terrible.”

Simon’s eyes flittered between the glass in your hands, your face, and back to the glass. Slowly a smile spread across his lips before he pressed them together.

“Is this your first time having Ratafia?”

You nodded.

“How? Every lady in London has a Ratafia habit they think no one knows of,” he said with a smirk.

“Is that so?”

“Why yes. Look.”

He stepped to the side then nodded his head to the ladies of the ton. You looked at a few of them, and each of them brought glasses of the horrid tasting drink to their lips, including your mother, older sister, and Lady Danbury. He was right. It would seem the ladies did have a liking for the thing.

“How is it that your mother and sister drink it regularly, but you have not?”

He was facing you again with plenty of curiosity in his eyes. Needing something to do, you nearly raised the glass back to your lips—nearly.

“My mother doesn’t let any of us have this. She says it is for mature married ladies. So I did not qualify.”

Simon nodded and raised his glass of Brandy to his lips.

“I see. So, now that you are in the company of those married but not quite mature ladies, you decided to partake.”

Curiosity nipped at you now. Tilting your head to the side, you took him in.

“Married but not quite mature ladies? Pray tell what you mean by that, your grace?”

Simon didn’t attempt to speak. He just took another mouthful of Brandy and studied you with the utmost scrutiny. A hint of mischief flickered across his face before he scoffed and turned away from you, taking up his same stance from before. You could have tossed the remaining Ratafia in your glass at his back. He’d always had this uncanny ability to wind you up since the day you’d met. It still hadn’t changed. Your mother said that it was a blessing, and it would mean your marriage would not be a bore.

“It figures you would regress into a state of cowardice at the mere spark of a conversation,” you speared, knowing it would rile him up.

As expected, Simon spun around to face you but also took the three steps needed to be only inches from your face.

“Did you call me a coward?”

You fought a smile. “I wouldn’t dare, your grace.”

You knew he heard the sarcasm in your voice.

“All right, your grace, I shall educate you, but only a little. You are married, as sure as that bauble decorates your dainty finger, but just because you are married, it does not make you mature,” Simon reiterated.

You waited for him to continue, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing you anxiously wanted to hear the end of his thought. Your eyes dipped lower than his to his mouth and watched him smile. That smile was something that was growing on you every time you saw it. You realized the dryness of your throat then, and you snaked your tongue out to wet your lips. His eyes dropped to your lips and stayed there for several long moments.

Simon leaned an inch closer. He could almost touch your nose with his. “You are not mature until you have woken the next morning in nothing by the bed sheets, with aches in muscles and places you never knew you could ache, and a road map of marks along your body all made with nothing but lips all from your first night with a man,” he said in the most alluring voice.

A strange feeling washed over you, and you feared you might actually swoon. Clouds seemed to fill your head as your entire body became so heated as if the fire you were standing near had caught on your body. You tried to control your expression, all the while Simon watched you. After a few seconds, Simon’s jaw clenched, making the muscles in his neck jump.

“Maturity, your grace, requires a toll be paid, and it must be paid over and over and over,” he finished. A scowl replaced his clenched jaw, and the thought that he felt disappointment made your stomach sink.

“And how many tolls have you collected, your grace?

Simon looked caught off guard by the question. It wasn’t a dignified question. One does not ask a man, even if he is her husband, such things.

“Plenty, but remember one needn’t make it an all-night occasion. Five minutes or so in a parlor could suffice.”

Jealousy hit you, and you couldn’t hide it. Simon smirked, then scoffed, but the smile slipped and was replaced with a frown.

“Well, my husband, the rake. I am surprised you wed at all.”

Simon looked pained, but you did not focus on it.

“As am I, but I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?” He muttered it, but you heard it through. Instead of letting another emotion slip, you raised the glass to your lips and drank it all down in one agonizing and sicking move. Once finished, you walked off, leaving him there.

Mere hours into your marriage and things were already falling apart; you thought as you walked out of the ballroom and outside into the chilly night air. You took a deep breath, held it, and did it again and again. The man made you angry and flustered in under five minutes. You couldn’t help but reminisce about your time casually talking at balls and events around London while you were on the marriage mart. He’d been terse to begin with, but slowly he’d warmed to you.

You’d developed the beginning buds of a friendship that took you by surprise but was welcoming. While every man in London was trying to put their best foot forward to entice you into marriage, Simon was not. He showed plenty of his bad habits, his cynicism and preference to see the worst in people, his inability to see the true heart of those in his company, his stubbornness, his temper, and on some occasions, his rakish ways. It didn’t matter, you never judged him for it, and you could tell he appreciated it.

“My, how things have changed,” you said to yourself once you were under a wide-spanned tree sitting on the stone bench.

You closed your eyes and listened to the night, finding comfort in the chirping crickets, the sound of the wind rustling the leaves, the faint rolling of the wheels from passing carriages, all backed by the orchestral music from the ballroom. Slowly your anger subsided. You didn’t even know why you were angry. You’d known he had no plans to marry. It was one of the very first things he’d told you, and he repeated it on so many occasions it was seared to your brain. The Duke of Hastings was not in want of a wife. Yet, here you were married to him, all because of one night similar to this one.

It was your fault. You felt as if you’d left him with no other choice. You thought back to the night that had changed everything. You didn’t know what you were doing when you allowed him to cross the lines of proper distance between two unwed people. The only thing you could think about when he slowly came closer and closer was how badly you wanted to know what he smelled like underneath his cravat. For weeks the casual way he had it done with the different materials that were so much more vibrant than others always drew your attention.

In your few moments of stupor, Simon had managed to come so close you could see the small flecks of auburn within his eyes. His unexpected closeness made you swoon slightly, and his arms were there to catch you and hold you against him. It was your first time being close to a man that was not either of your brothers. Even then, there was some distance.

Simon’s hand then grazed your cheek and trailed down to your jaw before curving back to where your earlobe hung. You’d lost whatever strength your knees had and slumped against him just as his finger dipped down your neck and coming across your collar, and it was there he stopped. It took several moments for his finger to plunge lower until it dangled right above the rise of your breast. When he dipped his head down while maintaining eye contact, you began to shake in his arms. He took a deep inhale at the swell of your breast.

“You’re trembling like a leaf, are you cold?”

You shook your head slightly.

“Then what are you, Ms. Remmington?”

You could smell the brandy on his breath, but there was something else too, something you couldn’t make out.

“Quite fevered,” you whispered.

Simon took another deep inhale of your skin then moaned.

“Goodness, you smell of roses, night jasmine and--,” he inhaled again. “Orange blossom. You smell like my best dreams, Ms. Remmington.”

Your breath hitched. Simon came closer and closer until his lips hovered over yours. You should have moved and chastised him about impropriety, but you stood there while the hand that was at the middle of your back slid lower and lower until you felt his fingertips pressing into the flesh just above the swell of your bottom. The action brought your lower half firmly against his. You didn’t know what you felt, but it was something. His lips only slightly grazed yours before you’d heard voices approaching you. He’d been the one to pull away from you first and apologize profusely before he’d walked off, leaving you pressed against the wall of roses that was right behind you.

“Already hiding from your husband?”

You opened your eyes and saw your best friend, Tessa, standing there with a teasing smirk.

“Tessa.”

You began to stand, but she stopped you, sitting beside you instead.

“Your grace,” she said.

Scoffing, you bumped her with your shoulder. “Oh, stop it. Do not tease me. I am still Jemilla. I will hear no nonsense of your grace from you.”

“I know you are Jemi, but you are also a Duchess now. It would be faulty to not acknowledge it, especially in public, at least once.”

You sighed and fiddled with the new ring on your finger underneath your white gloves.

“We are not in public now. It is just you, and I so do away with it.”

“Very well.” Tessa remained quiet for a few seconds before she turned to you with an excited smile. “All right, show it to me.”

You pulled off the glove and showed her the wedding ring Simon had placed on your finger earlier in the day. Tessa gasped, grabbed your hand, and brought it closer to her face.

“Oh my. I dare say the Duke has excellent taste. It is quite beautiful. While most husbands give their wives one jewel, yours had bestowed you a bevy.”

You snorted and looked out into the night while she continued to gawk at the bauble.

“So why are you out here and your new husband nowhere in sight?”

You bit your bottom lip then looked at her. You’d told her everything that had happened between you and Simon. You’d told her the reason your engagement was so quick and that there was no love between you and him.

“Oh come, come, Jemi. I know you wanted to marry for love and desire and passion, but just because your marriage did not start that way does not mean it cannot end up there,” Tessa suggested.

“Tessa, be realistic. I have told you the things he has said about marriage. He came to town with no intent on marriage.”

“And look, he is married now, in mere weeks no less. Jemi, a man will say all sorts of things to prevent something, but from this day on, he is yours.”

It was then you thought back to his words by the fireplace.

“And how many tolls have you collected, your grace?

“Plenty, but remember one needn’t make it an all-night occasion. Five minutes or so in a parlor could suffice.”

You could have laughed out loud, but you didn’t. He hadn’t been yours before, and you doubted he was now.

“Tonight is your wedding night. Perhaps you shall feel differently in the morning,” Tessa said, a broad smile spread across her face.

You knew what she was insinuating. You had heard the chatter of a woman’s wedding night but had heard nothing of consequence. All you and Tessa were left with were speculation and plenty of possible theories and fantasies. Tessa stood and held out her arm for yours. After slipping your glove back on, you looped your arm with hers and allowed her to lead you back into the ballroom.

Once you were seen, your mother approached you and swiftly brought you towards your new husband, then enticed him to dance with you for all the ton to see. Simon, of course, complied, and the two of you drew every pair of eyes. Rather than looking directly at him, you kept your eyes somewhere neutral, somewhere that it would appear to others you were staring into his eyes.

“Remember what I said to you the first time we danced like this?”

“We’ve never danced like this, your grace.”

“You are right; our titles, or rather your title, has changed but are we not the same people?”

You fell into the trap and met his eyes.

“Are we, your grace?”

Simon peered deeply into your eyes as if he were looking for that very answer.

“I am told we have our entire lives to figure it out.”

Feeling your face beginning to shift to give away your inner feelings, you looked away, back to his ear.

“Stare into my eyes.”

They were words he’d said before, in the exact manner. You ignored his instruction, though the urge to obey pulled at your willfulness.

“Jemilla,” Simon said in a low, deep voice.

“Stare into my eyes.”

You caved and darted your eyes to his. Simon held it for a few moments.

“If this is to work, we must appear madly in love,” he said.

The words garnered almost the same reaction as it had the first time he’d uttered them. The only difference was you were well aware that appearances were not nearly all that they seemed. It had worked a little too well, and now you were married and so far from madly in love.

By the end of the evening, your feet hurt from all the walking around and dancing, and your head throbbed slightly, probably from the music and being unable to eat even one bite due to the anxiousness that had plagued you all day. After you’d said your goodbyes to your siblings, mother, and friends, you climbed into the carriage with Simon, unsure just where you were heading. You didn’t pay too much attention to the darkness outside the window because your head was too caught up in thoughts of what was to come.

You fiddled with your gloved hands, your bouquet that you’d nearly stroked all buds from all in an effort to take your mind off of things. After thirty minutes in the bumpy carriage, you saw a large tree pass by. You looked around you, trying to figure out where you were.

“Where—where are we?”

“One of my estates, Briarvale, Simon answered.

“Briarvale. I thought we were going to Clyvedon?”

“No, Clyvedon is quite far, much too far to travel tonight. Briarvale is the in-between point. We will stop, rest for the night, then continue on and should reach Clyvedon by late afternoon next.”

You nodded and lowered your eyes. “I should have made you aware of the plans before. I am afraid I am so used to consulting no one I did not stop to realize I now might have to. I apologize.”

He didn’t sound angry about it, just remorseful. Maybe he was being sincere. When the carriage stopped, the jarvey opened the door and helped you out. Some torches lit the entire walk path to the front door, where two servants were standing at either side of the door. Simon stepped out beside you and cleared his throat.

“After you, your grace.”

You walked ahead while taking in the large home before you. It was two times bigger than the one you’d spent half of your life in, and you imagined Cleyvdon would be four times larger than this one. You never imagined marrying this wealthy. Wealth was never one of your concerns at all.

“Welcome, your graces.”

You and Simon walked inside into the foyer.

“I will let you get settled,” Simon said before walking off, leaving you standing there and wondering where he was going.

One of the maids led you through the house to the stairs. As you climbed them, you took in the paintings on the wall and the wood’s shine. It was a well-kept residence. A few minutes later, the maid stopped in front of a door.

“Your room, your grace.”

“Thank you. what is your name?”

She looked surprised by your question, but she still answered. “Ingrid, your grace.”

“Thank you, Ingrid.”

She smiled and bowed her head, and waited for you to walk inside. When you did, the fire was crackling, making the large room very inviting.

“Is everything to your liking, your grace?”

You nodded. “Thank you, yes.”

Ingrid nodded, then walked out of the room, leaving you with your thoughts. You knew he would come, so you waited. You took the time to look around the room at the different paintings and objects and even examining the material of the sheets on the bed. Still, Simon hadn’t appeared. That was when your pacing began and did not stop. After pacing for quite a while, you finally stopped, then took off your shoes and waited some more. When another ten minutes passed with no Simon, you peeled off your stockings but hesitated to remove any more articles of clothing.

When you were sure you’d waited an hour more, you got annoyed and walked to the door. As soon as you opened it you saw one of the maids passing.

“Hello there.”

The young woman turned, startled, then dipped down to a bow.

“Your grace, is something the matter?”

You were embarrassed even to ask her this. “No, nothing is wrong. Have you—do you know where—has his grace retired for the evening?”

The maid gave you a curious look. No doubt she was thinking that you should know better than her. He was your husband, after all.

“Uh—no, ma’am. His grace is still in the study. Would you like me to deliver a message?”

“No! No. Thank you.”

You went back into the room, closed the door, and sighed out. She undoubtedly found it strange, and you worried you’d be the gossip of the house in the morning. You began undressing as you’d done plenty of times before then climbed into bed, leaving your petticoat on. Instead of going to sleep right away, you sat up and waited.

You didn’t know what was going on or what to expect, and that was the part that gave you the most anxiety and distress. After another hour, it was clear to see that Simon was not coming. You didn’t know what to think or feel. The very little you’d been told to expect still made no sense, especially since it hadn’t happened. Or had it? Your mother told you that your husband would take the lead. Had Simon taken the lead by staying away?

After going over it tens of times in your head, you snuffed out the candle that was on its last inch of life and lay down to stare at the upper canopy of the bed.

You were married, but his actions had proven the line was drawn, and you were on opposite sides with chasms between you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

***If you want to be tagged/untagged please SEND AN ASK SO IT WILL BE EASIER FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF. Thank you for reading!!!***

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TagList:

@shar74nettt @soapjay @ashanti-notthesinger @caramara3 @caplover22@blackpinup22 @areubeingserved @your-chaotic-neutral @zejess93 @reignandrain @ovohanna24 @ramp-it-up @littlepreciousangel @msblkfire84 @id-do-it-for-free-babe @my-rosegold-soul @sadthotsonlylove @arination99 @wondersofdreaming @veganvampre @ohsoverykeri @mery-be

#pleasing the duke fic #rege jean page fanfiction #the duke of hastings fanfiction #regency fanfic #the duke of hastings x ofc #bridgerton fanfiction #slow burn fanfic

249 notes · View notes

handlewithkara · 3 years

Text

@madeunmexico

Interesting that you mention the Danvers vs Dansen because it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I finished S4 that I saw that Alex was actually going to adopt and then the adoption fell through and Kelly was with her through all that and Kara didn't mention it once (I now realize)! That was a big traumatic moment and a big part of Alex's story and she shared it entirely with Kelly, who for some reason (plot) after having just met her decided that she was going with her to Coastal City to meet the baby and then the birth mother decided to keep them. Now I understand why they needed to build Dansen and delay the adoption plot, but damn was that a lot of emotional lifting being done by a potential (at this point) partner. So I guess what I'm saying is that there is some very poignant storyline already uniquely Dansen, since the adoption seems like a plot that will be theirs alone, not Danvers sister related

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting to think that adoption has kind of like always felt like a very Alex storyline rather than an Alex and Kara storyline. Of course it first was a big issue between Sanvers, then imo the next big moment came between Alex and J’onn on the topic? I think Alex was on Argo at that time? And then we see Alex fill out adoption papers on her own?

Like obviously Kara is informed and thinks Alex would make a great mom, but it doesn’t really feel like something she is directly involved in. Which to me points against an “autie Kara” ending (similarly how Kara didn’t really take part as much in the Alex/Ruby bonding stuff and didn’t really do a ton of boding with Ruby directly (even though that would have been a potentially interesting story, if Ruby has alien DNA too)).

I find that really interesting. Especially if one thinks about the popularity of Swanqueen and how at least some part of seemed to be built around the concept of “a boy with two mommies”. By comparison, imo it has never felt like “Alex AND Kara are adopting a kid”, it always felt like Alex’s thing and Kara is sort of at a friendly supportive distance to it.

I guess that’s why to me it has always felt like Alex + baby felt a bit like Alex replacing Kara. Like she spent her life caring for Kara, but Kara is outgrowing her, is her own person now and now Alex is heaping her motherly energy on a child.

I have felt from the start that the writers were very serious about Dansen. And I fully think they are serious this season about giving Alex her “have it all” ending, what is have it all by their definition. She will finally get her kid and she has the loving partner who is willing to support her in this in Kelly.

It’s one of the many reasons why a Kara leaving ending feels to emotional fitting for me. Alex is forming her own family and is releasing Kara from her direct control.

Particularly in seasons 2 and 3, Alex and Kara’s romantic storylines paralleled each other heavily. Alex having her first real because lesbian relationship versus Kara having her first real proper relationship, both relationships ending in tragedy and season 3 dedicating a lot of airtime to the both of them grieving those relationships. If season 6 dedicates a lot of stuff to Dansen wedding and Dansen adoption, it would make sense that Kara is mulling over her own life and choosing something new for herself, whatever that might be.

I know a lot of people don’t want it, but imo there is a lot of love there too in the concept of “I’m releasing you into your new life, with love/our hearts will always be connected”. Kara just isn’t the needy lonely girl anymore and arguably she hasn’t been for a while. See the beginning of season 2 where Kara tried to leave for a second with Clark and Alex is the one who goes needy and can’t let her go.

I’m very excited about the potential Kara/Kelly centric episode and i’m hoping for a lot of bonding and Kara praising her. Dansen was kind of there building up in the background in season 5, but I have great hopes for them and particularly Kelly this season and that they really want to do right by her. IMO she already did some great heavy lifting in being the normal person point of view character in 6x07. I can easily picture Kelly/Kara being about Kara being thankful for Kelly’s place in Alex’s life and communicating to us why Dansen is so great.

Also really hoping for Kara getting involved in the wedding preparations (even though I would want the wedding to be heavily about Dansen and Dansen choosing it for themselves, not something that comes out of pressure).

Based on spoilers, I also expect quality just Dansen stuff about Kelly’s ascent to vigilante and if the adoption comes around, I also hope for that to be heavily centered around the two of them, because as you said, that’s how they started out.

Basically I’m hoping for in addition to a Danversisters love letter, for a major Dansen love letter too because in the end, I think she is supposed to represent Alex’s happy ending, so I think the show need to make a stab at showing to us why we should be happy about it (and Kelly in Fear Knot imo was a great start in regards to getting really meaty scenes rather than stuff that is very plot driven or a bit rushed against other plot points).

But yes, Dansen, the way they write Dansen and the adoption storyline is a major reason why a Kara leaving, graduating ending feels so plausible to me.

Sure, I could be wrong, but either way, I’ve decided to be happy about Dansen, because to me that feels like the most surefire bet in regard to them getting quality material. IMO Sanvers had a ton of explosive chemistry. While Dansen imo only got the occasional moment to shine (you have moments of hotness like Kelly checking out Alex’s new vigilante outfit, you have a not of nice and supportive stuff, they are finally get not only blinks of big romance, but actually meatier versions of it) I look forward to getting that explanded.

1.) Flo isn’t coming back and even if she were to come back imo the show has made enough cases for how Maggie would be a great match for what Alex wants. So it’s a moot point.

2.) I love Alex and I want her to be happy.

3.) I really like Kelly as a character and Azie just seems like the sweatest person ever.

And like I said, I’m hoping for a lot more broad quality content in the build up to the happy ending. They had good moments before, but I’m hoping for some real feasts rather than just the occasional nice bits. (even though Covid makes me pessimistic in regards to getting a sex scene in the same vein of Sanvers, even though I think it would be really cool).

#dansen #supergirl spoilers #danvers sisters

5 notes · View notes

solesurvivorpaigeargot · 4 years

Note

Instinctssss

WIP Sampler Basket

[Summary on this one is a re-write of Hancock’s first affinity dialog, within the context of his and Paige’s relationship. I shall post a snippet. EDIT: I attempted to put a read-more in this, but something fucky is going on with Tumblr’s dash rn. Apologies for the long post]

The cork came loose with a satisfying pop, and Paige found the now-opened bottle being offered back to her.

“Everything... okay?” Paige quested gently, hand wrapping around the glass neck. She didn't take a drink though, watching him curiously. Next to him, she saw him both in profile and more head-on in the reflection of the dirty mirror as he turned his attention back to the bag to rifle through its contents. His affect had changed-- he'd been on a grinning high when he handed the whiskey over, but now? His brow furrowed down over dark eyes, and the smile had turned into a pensive, flat line across his face.

“Yeah, yeah, it ain't the bad kind of talk. Just... what went down. I know it was a bit ago, now, but... I guess I just wanna say my piece and get it off my mind. When I sent Fahrenheit down there, I figured someone was gonna end up with a bullet in their head. I didn't like it-- that sorta dictatorial shit, ain't usually my style-- and you got caught up in the middle of it.” He scoffed, shaking his head as his hand emerged from the bag with a tin of mentats between his forefinger and thumb, the other three fingers curled around the long end of an inhaler for jet. “Hell, you managed to talk Bobbi down.” “Wasn't easy-- it could have gone either way; she tried to trick both of us.” Paige noted, finally knocking back a swig from the newly opened bottle-- damn if that wasn't a blast from the past. The taste was different, of course- two centuries of aging tended to have an effect, but she could still recognize the base flavor, and the nostalgia went well with the burn when she swallowed.

“And most folks woulda blasted her brains out for that-- Fahrenheit was ready to, on my say-so.”

Hancock departed from the bureau, snagging the armrest of the nearby chair and noisily dragging it across the patched floor until he could pitch it back, turn it on one of its wooden feet, and plonk it down near the bed before letting himself down into the seat with all the grace of a ton of bricks getting dropped off a roof. He splayed out, elbows out past the armrests and his legs kicked all the way out; heels on the floor and the toes of his boots pointed up and out.

“Guys like me use their sway to do that kinda harm, to folk who don't deserve it... makes me sick.”

Paige had followed after him, bottle in hand, to eventually pass him and put herself down on the edge of the bed. She didn't speak-- she didn't need to. He wanted to talk; all she had to do was listen.

“... hell, that sorta bull's the whole reason I became mayor in the first place.” He continued. “Some ass named Vic ran the town for I don't know how long before that. Guy was scum. Used us drifters like his own personal piggy bank. He had this... goon squad he'd use to keep people in line. Every so often, he'd left them off the leash; go blow off some steam on the populace at large.”

The memory made him angry; he couldn't stay slouched in the chair. The chems he'd picked up got stashed in some pocket inside his red coat as his body came up and pitched forward, and he gathered in his legs to brace his elbows on his knees, hands gesturing along as he recounted the leadership he'd replaced.

“Folks with homes could lock their doors, but us drifters, we got it bad. There was one night, some drifter said something to them. I don't even remember what, but they cracked him open like a can of Cram on the pavement, and we all just stood there. Did nothin'.”

Paige had heard stories like his before-- not exactly the same, of course. No, her stories came from before the bombs fell, when she'd been working public defense-- a lawyer for those who couldn't afford defense in a court of law. Working for those at the bottom of the ladder? Fear was the driving motivation of most things. Fear for life. Fear for family. Fear for oneself. It drove a lot of good people to do terrible things-- all because they were trapped at the bottom of the heap.

She recognized the edge in his voice. It was angry... and ashamed.

“Outnumbered and outgunned, sometimes nothing is the only thing you can do that doesn't get you killed.” Paige noted, softly. “You can't blame yourself for that.”

He scoffed. “You're right... but it was still spineless.” He rebutted, shaking his head. “I felt like I was less than nothing. Afterwards, I got so high, I blacked out completely.”

His eyes closed for a second, as if reflecting back to that exact moment. Maybe he was.

“When I came to, I was on the floor of the old statehouse. Right in front of the clothes of John Hancock. John Hancock, first American hoodlum and defender of the people.” He paused a moment, possibly second-guessing telling the story but going on anyway. “I... might've still been high, but those clothes spoke to me, told me what I needed to do. I smashed the case, put 'em on, started a new life; as Hancock.” The name was practically growled out-- there was weight to it for him, even now. “After that, I went clean for a bit. Got organized, convinced Kleo to loan me some hardware... Got a crew of drifters together and headed out into the ruins, started training. Next time Vic's boys went on their tear, we'd be ready for 'em.”

“Guessing that was one hell of a negotiation with Kleo.” Paige posited with a faint smirk. “You try to charm the bolts off of her?”

He blinked, and actually let out a faint laugh that interrupted the gravity of the story he'd been telling. “You'd be surprised how quick she warms up to someone who knows how to work munitions into sweet talk... plus she didn't have any love for Vic's crew-- not that it's my story to tell.”

“Still, it's smart; gather up support, make allies, get armed, fight back... Vic may not have been the British Empire, but sounds like you got the right kind of inspiration going.”

“Right?” There was a note of relief, at being understood. “Same wavelength-- justice for the oppressed.”

“So you got a militia together.” Paige encouraged. “What came next?”

“We waited for the next time they were gonna go through and raise hell-- night of, we all got loaded, let Vic's boys get good and hammered, and burst from the windows and rooftops where we'd been hiding. They never even saw it coming; we didn't have to fire a shot. We didn't have to, but we sure fucking did. It was a massacre. Once we'd mopped up, we strolled right into Vic's quarters in the statehouse, wrapped a rope around his neck, and threw him off the balcony.” He straightened up, recovering from the slouch he'd been holding for the majority of the story so far and letting his hands hang between his thighs. “And there I am, gun in hand, draped in Hancock's duds, looking at all the people of Goodneighbor assembled below. I had to say something-- the first time I said 'em? They didn't even feel like my words: Of the people, for the people... it was my inaugural address. Became Mayor Hancock of Goodneighbor that day. And from then on, I vowed I'd never stand by and watch. Ever. Again.”

Paige was quiet for a moment, considering the story, sensing it as he looked to her for some kind of assessment or reaction-- or maybe just an opening to ask questions.

“Vic woulda shot me for not killing Bobbi.”

He blinked. Another beat of quiet, as he considered that.

“... yeah, he woulda. Or worse-- you're too pretty to just shoot...” He made a face, not elaborating on that particularly disgusting thought. “You got a point, though. I ain't Vic... just didn't like that what I did made me feel a little closer to him; sitting up in the statehouse and deciding someone's gonna die who might not have fully earned it. Getting innocents caught up in the crossfire who definitely didn't.”

“You were worried you'd become him... is that part of why you decided to go with me? Climb back down and remember what it was like to look up at the balcony, rather than stand on it?”

“I ain't really the ponderous type.” He reminded her, picking up that smirk of his again. “When an instinct takes hold, I listen. This time around, instinct said I should join up with you... seems it was a good one.”

“Maybe your instincts are just a sucker for a pretty face.” Paige suggested with a sly smile of her own before kicking back another swig of her whiskey. “Or is it just girls with hardware?”

“That would explain why I bet on Kleo.”

#wip #meme #writing sampler #Paige #Hancock #kaybrandchaos #Ask The Author #long post

5 notes · View notes

canid-slashclaw · 4 years

Text

The Outliers - A Guild Wars Love Story

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapters 10 and 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16 , Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29 Chapter 30

Several months later...

"A little more to the right, darling. Oh wait. That just won't do. Nevermind!" Ariyana shouted as she directed several of her workers to re-hang some garlands.

Moments later, her mate Jestin arrived. "Cakes have arrived, dear. Where would you like them?"

She smiled at her husband then pointed towards two large banquet tables. "Put them right there."

"Wait. Isn't that where Ludrick's smorgasbord is supposed to be?"

Ariyana shook her head in frustration. "Gah! So many things to do and so little time to do them in. Use your imagination, my love. I'm sure you can work out something beautiful in that pretty little head of yours."

***

Daniel Grimwald and Ludrick Crushblow rode atop a wagon as the two of them headed towards the grassy meadow that was adjacent to the base of Thunder Falls. Brad, Cynthia, Navina and Krenesh were there to greet them as the wagon pulled into the pavilion area.

"The meat wagon has arrived," Daniel said as he reached over and pulled off the covers. "Thanks to Ludrick here, everything has been put on ice so it doesn't spoil."

"Crap! That thing must weigh a ton," Krenesh commented as he helped unload the contents.

"One and a half ton, to be exact," Ludrick stated while Navina and Cynthia helped him off the wagon.

Brad chuckled. "You gals got the easy part - helping two hansom males, while, Kren and I are stuck carrying a heap of slaughtered carcasses."

"Good and tasty carcasses at that!" Krenesh reminded him.

"Don't let your friend eat everything before you get to the banquet hall," Cynthia commented.

"Bah! With all the work we've been doing, I just might be tempted."

"She wasn't referring to you, numbskull!" Navina quipped.

"If I find Ama's blowtorch anywhere, I might just make an instameal outta this yummy good stuff."

"Do it and die, Brad!" Cynthia chided as she handed Ludrick his cane.

***

"Mom. This dress makes me look like a bloated quaggan," Rachel grumbled as her mother examined the outfit.

"It looks fine on you, sweetie. Now be a good girl and take those audiophones out of your ears."

"But my favorite band just released this single. I'm one of the first in Claypool to even hear these songs."

Her mother looked around for a styling comb. "Have you seen Katie anywhere?"

"Um. I think she's with your soon-to-be daughter-in-law."

***

"This blue flower looks so pretty in your hair," Katie said as she placed a blue violet in Amalthia's golden mane.

"Can you find me a mirror? I would love to see what it looks like."

The little Grimwald clamored off her lap then was off to find a shiny reflective object.

"Oooo. Shiney! I'm a skritt!"

Amalthia smiled at the precocious child as she coaxed her into holding up the mirror to her face. "Why that's lovely. You know that my people love to eat skritt and I'm going to do the same!"

She laughed then playfully nibbled on Katie's head with her large canine teeth. Kaleb's little sister adored the attention that his mate had showered upon her.

Moments later, Ariyana stepped in. "Darling! You look splendid!"

"Ari! So nice to see you!" Amalthia picked Katie up, carefully planted her on the floor then walked over and gave her friend a big hug.

"I see you have a little helper," the sylvari said, eyeing the little girl.

"Oh yes. I could not have done it without her."

Katie found the wedding veil and ran over to place it on Amalthia's head. Kneeling down, the bride-to-be accepted the gift.

"How's that!"

"Oh my. She is going to put me out of business if she keeps that up," Ariyana said with a laugh.

Shortly thereafter, Cynthia and Navina walked into the room each bearing gifts. After a round of group hugs, the presents were set aside and everyone began to get ready for the upcoming event.

"You really outdid yourself, Ariyana. If my man ever gets around to popping the question, you better believe I'll be paying you a visit," Cynthia smiled as she examined Amalthia's bridal gown.

"I still don't get these human rituals. but hey, if it makes the two of you happy then I'm all in," Navina said with a chuckle.

"Kal is gonna die from a serious boner after seeing you in this. Dang girl! Maybe I should find a wizard who can make me grow horns, fur and a tail. Cause you look drop-dead sexy in this getup." Cynthia jested.

"Oh. I'll be giving him plenty of those both on and after our wedding night," Amalthia said with a wink and a wicked grin.

"What's a boner?" Katie asked innocently.

Everyone was at a loss for words.

***

Kaleb wandered around carrying a half-empty stein of lager while eyeing the tent that his soon-to-be wife was residing in. He took another draught just seconds before Brad approached from behind then clapped him on the shoulder. "The man of the hour! How ya doin' bro?"

The slightly inebriated Kaleb shook his head. "Couldn't be better. It's too bad I can't steal a peak at the misses."

"Don't you know it's bad luck seeing the bride before the wedding?"

Moments later, Daniel, Ludrick and Krenesh made their way to greet the groom-to-be. The elder Grimwald looked at his son, shook his hand then took a carnation from his lapel and placed it though one of Kaleb's buttons.

"That suit fits you well, son. Think you'll be sober enough to say your vows?"

Kaleb nodded and smiled. "I'm just nervously tipsy, that's all. I'll be fine once the ceremony starts."

"You are looking well, Kaleb. I'm sure my cub will agree once she sees you," Ludrick said as he handed the young man a flask of herbal coffee. "This is a quick cure for any hangover. Trust me, I've used it plenty of times."

Krenesh stepped in and shook his head. "You and Ama have got to be the oddest couple on the face of Tyria. But even that is secondary to this even odder ceremony. Bah! This thing is so tight around me I can't even move properly."

Brad and Kaleb laughed.

"I can hunt down Ariyana. I'm sure she'll be able to modify the outfit a bit for ya," Kaleb said.

"Nah. I'll be fine. Besides, the sooner I get out of this thing the better."

Suddenly, Brad burst out laughing as he pointed towards a lone male charr who was dressed in what appeared to be a bridesmaid outfit.

Kaleb looked up and said. "Isn't that..."

"...Tovu." Krenesh buried his head in the palm of his hand and closed his eyes.

"A male charr in a woman's outfit. Now I've seen everything," came Daniel's response.

Ludrick clapped the elder Grimwald on the shoulder and said with a half-chuckle. "I think you and I are going to have to follow your son's lead and have a nice strong drink together."

Daniel nodded in agreement.

"Oh man! I'm never going to forget this day!" Brad said in between his uncontrollable bouts of laughter.

"I wish I could," grumbled Krenesh.

"I seriously wish I could."

***

"Tovu! Over here," Bogo shouted as he beckoned for his partner to come join him.

Being careful not to soil the gown, Tovu gingerly stepped over the tufts of grass trying not to trip in the process.

"You look ravishing in that outfit, Tovu."

His partner frowned. "You think so? Everyone looks at me funny. It's not like our females even wear these kinds of outfits anyway."

"Oh, pay them no mind, you silly furball. My suit is rather plain compared to yours," Bogo said somberly.

"Nonsense! That tie brings out the color of your eyes so well."

"You think so? I think it makes me look kinda drab."

Off in the distance, someone was shouting something about where the other bridesmaid was. Tovu's ears pricked out upon hearing the message.

"Sorry big boy. They're calling me. See you at the altar, you big snuggly beast!"

Bogo waved back and winked at his partner. "Give Ama my love!"

***

Amalthia busied herself putting on the finishing touches to her wedding gown. Everyone else had gone to their respective dressing rooms in order to prepare for the upcoming ceremony. As she was braiding the last lock of her long golden mane, she heard someone scratching at the other end of the tent door.

"Come in."

When she looked up, she saw the Grimwald middle child standing before her. She had a pair of audiophones plugged into her ears and appeared to be jamming out to some type of music.

"Oh. Hello, Rachel."

There was an awkward silence for a moment before the teenager responded.

"Hi."

Amalthia smiled then handed her a comb. "Mind helping me with this last strand? It's always a bitch to tame."

The teen was taken aback by the charr's crassness. "Uh, okay."

"I won't bite. I promise," Amalthia said with a noticeable display of her large teeth.

Rachel summoned her courage to speak.

"You don't have rabies, do you?"

"I got my shot yesterday. Doctor said the medicine should take effect within the next week."

"So you do have it."

"You assume much about me, don't you? I never said I did or did not have what you thought I had. Now are you going to help me with that braid or are you going to just stand there wishing you really could just tell your mother to screw off," Amalthia said with a smirk.

The girl was completely speechless.

"Oops. Did I let that slip? Oh well, it must be lagers in me," she pointed to an empty stein by her vanity.

"You really are a lush," Rachel said laconically as she slowly reached her hand towards the charr's golden mane.

"Eh. You can blame my mother for that. I sure do."

"So is your mom mean?"

Amalthia closed her eyes and grinned. "She is as sweet as cyanide in a wine glass and as pleasant as an acidic enema."

Rachel couldn't help but laugh.

"So your face is capable of cracking a smile," Amalthia said.

"Well, even though I don't like you, at least we have one thing in common. My mom pisses me off a lot," Rachel said angrily.

"So what is it about her that pisses you off?"

Rachel shrugged.

"She makes me attend church and tells me the music I'm listening to is made by a bunch of blasphemers."

Amalthia looked closer at the audio box that Rachel was listening to. She noticed the name of the band that was stamped on one of the removable cartridges.

"SynR J-TX. I know their music."

"You do? I'll bet you haven't heard their latest album. My friend knows a friend who knows a friend who works with the band. I was able to get a fresh cut of their latest release."

Rachel switched to another track and began jamming out on that. Amalthia reached over then clicked on the audio box, switching it to another track.

"Hey!"

"Just listen. You've heard the extended release, right?" Amalthia asked.

The teen shook her head.

"They did a remix just recently. So recent, in fact, it hasn't even been cut yet."

"And how do you possibly know this?"

Amalthia gave the girl a wide grin. "I do live in a tavern. It's amazing what I hear sometimes."

"I like their fifth track. It's got a really cool beat."

"It does. Can you dance?"

Rachel nodded. "Well, yeah. Can you??"

The bride-to-be stood up then offered her hand to Rachel, inviting her to dance.

"Watch me!"

Both girls were dancing in sync. Rachel showed one of her moves while Amalthia mimicked her at every step. Soon, they were dancing like a pair of professionals in harmony with the rhythm of the beat.

"How much do you hate your mother?" Rachel asked as they were choreographing their moves.

Amalthia stopped dancing then beckoned for Kaleb's sister to come over to the vanity. She, then' pulled out an old parchment that featured an array of images that she drew when she was still a cub.

"When I was in my fahrar, we were asked to draw what we would do to our enemies once we were old enough to go into battle. Everyone else drew either, Flame Legion, humans, ogres or some other hideous creature," Amalthia smiled deviously. "I, on the other hand, was a bit more creative."

She handed Rachel the parchment that depicted a child-like drawing of one charr cutting off another charr's head.

"That was me beheading my mother with a broadsword. I colored the blade brown in order to depict the blade as being rusty and dull."

Rachel looked at the images, stunned. Amalthia pointed to another one that appeared to show a charr getting blown to pieces by an explosion.

"Oh. I drew that one hoping my mother would, someday, step on a land mine and blow herself up. See the bones and entrails?"

"Um. Dare I ask what this one is?"

Amalthia looked at the image of a darkened charr and laughed. "That one was Mother getting charbroiled by a flamethrower. Get it? Charrbroiled?"

"You are one sick kitten!" Rachel said in her characteristic monotone voice.

"If I am then why haven't you run away?"

Rachel shrugged. "I dunno. I guess you are like a shipwreck. Horrible to watch but I can't take my eyes off it."

"I have the suspicion it's something else. My guess is you resent your mother but are too afraid to tell her so openly," Amalthia stated.

"How would you know? You no nothing about me!" Rachel retorted angrily.

"Oh. I know a mother-hater when I see one. Trust me on this."

"I don't hate my mom."

"But you do resent her for what she's done to you. Always being obligated to live up to those expectations, while your brother doesn't seem to give a damn?"

"Well, maybe. Mom always did get on Kals case about doing things his way. I hate him for being able to resist our mom's authority," Rachel said as tears began to well up in her eyes.

"It's okay, Rachel. Let it out. That's what I did when I was a cub. I let out all my rage and anger through my drawings. Looking back, it was very therapeutic for me," Amalthia said as she rolled up the illustrations then put them back into the drawer.

"Okay, okay. I really think you aren't so bad now. I thought your people were always evil. But in talking to you like this, you seem almost human."

Amalthia smiled and gently reached for Rachel's face in an attempt to wipe her tears away. "I've learned that all intelligent races share the same basic emotions. Even though we each express them in different ways, all of us still feel love, sadness, apprehension and loneliness."

Rachel broke down then cried as she buried her head in Amalthia's chest. The charr gave her a gentle hug as she switched tracks to a more melodious song and began a slow dance with her future sister-in-law.

***

Ulfgar thumbed through the sermon, doing some last-minute revisions as needed. Daniel walked up to the massive norn as his son helped Ludrick navigate across the uneven ground.

"Ah. Three of the finest gentlemen I know. Are you ready for the big one, boy?" The old norn said with a hearty tone.

"When is anyone ever ready? I can't wait to see what Ama's dress looks like. Any idea where my sister's at?" Kaleb asked as he anxiously looked around for the ring bearer.

"Amalthia is giving Rachel the rings now. I think you'll like her attire, Kaleb," Ludrick said with a satisfactory nod.

"Father. Where's mom?"

"She's paying your future wife a visit. It's one of those mother-daughter sort of things." Daniel looked at his son with an air of pride and smiled.

"Take a deep breath, lad. This is supposed to be a legendary occasion, not a funeral."

"Sorry about that, Ulf. It's not the wedding itself that has me uptight so much as seeing so many folks here all in one place. I know that things started off very rocky for everyone, and this whole thing still feels so unreal. Never in a million years did I think we would ever come this far."

Ulfgar patted Kaleb on the shoulder. "And come far, you did. You and Amalthia are the first marital union in Tyira between human and charr. That is no small feat in and of itself."

His father gave him a reassuring hug as well. "Ulfgar's right, son. Through everything, you've never wavered in your conviction. This is as proud a day for me as it is for you and your bride."

Ludrick gave his future-son-in-law a pat on the shoulder as well then saluted with his fist to his chest. "Kaleb. Two years ago, you walked through that door in my butcher shop and everything I had ever known changed forever. You brought light into my cub's heart and hope to this old warrior once more. Even though you may not have fur, large teeth or horns, I feel that deep down you are as much of a charr as I am. If there is anyone on the face of Tyria who is worthy of my cub, it is you Kaleb Grimwald."

Everyone heard a noticeable sniffle coming from the mighty norn. "Baw! You've done and gotten me all sentimental ya old warbeast."

Kaleb gave the charr a tight bear hug as tears dribbled from his eyes and onto his future father-in-law's dark orange fur.

***

The usher called into Amalthia's tent letting her know that the ceremony would begin within the hour. As she was finishing up some last minute details, the usher also stated that Shirley Grimwald wanted to see her privately.

"She may come in."

The tent door opened and in walked Kaleb's mother, who was dressed in a conservative plain long dress. She approached her soon-to-be daughter-in-law then quietly pulled up a chair as she sat directly in front of her.

"That sylvari did an impeccable job making that dress," Shirley said as she began straightening out the pleats along the front.

Amalthia helped her with the hem. "That she did. I really like what she did to the backside. It doesn't bunch up around my tail at all. Not that such a thing is an issue with your people."

Shirley paused for a moment before responding. "About that topic Miss Steelblade..."

"Grimwald-Steelblade, if you don't mind. And Mrs please. It's a title we will all have to get used to," Amalthia said without looking at Kaleb's mother.

Shirley struggled to make conversation. "Please understand, Amalthia. I know you and I do not see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. But I also know that my son thinks the world of you, even though I have yet to understand what he sees that I don't."

"And your point, Mrs. Grimwald?"

Shirley could no longer contain her emotions. "Dammit! I still don't understand why my son picked a woman who is as rude and crass as you. If I were a man, I would object to this whole affair before either of you could take your first vows. That's what I would do, Miss Steelblade."

Amalthia shook her head then said in an unemotional tone. "But you are not a man, thank Pyreshot. I would like to like you, Mrs. Grimwald, but what you've presented me so far hasn't given me reason for changing my perception of you."

"So just what is your perception of me, Amalthia?"

"I think you are a woman who is deathly fearful of change. Look. I did not choose to intentionally seek out a human lover. My love for Kaleb just happened. Not everything that we are taught is necessarily the right path. There are some among us, of all races in fact, who travel to the beat of a different drum. Kaleb and I are such people. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you will feel a greater sense of happiness."

"I am trying to accept this, I really am. It's just so hard knowing that he is giving up his chance of having children who are his own. You are giving up your chance as well. Who's to say if this whole thing wears off you won't go..."

"Stop right there, Mrs. Grimwald. In case you were never informed, I cannot even bear children of my own. A war wound saw to that. Here, I'll show you. I developed an infection in my uterus that all but ruined my reproductive ability." Amalthia promptly lifted up her dress then showed Shirley the small scar that crossed her lower abdomen.

Stunned, Mother Grimwald said nothing as she reached out to touch the scar tissue.

"I... I'm soo sorry. I didn't know... Please forgive me for making such a cruel statement," she began to cry once more.

"Ignorant, yes. Cruel? No." Amalthia lowered her gown then reached out and held her soon-to-be mother-in-law by the shoulders, as she looked her in the face. "I don't hate you Mrs. Grimwald. You raised a fine son and I'm very honored to be his wife. Once you get to know me, I think you may actually grow to like me just a little."

The usher stopped by once more indicating that the ceremony was close at hand. Both Shirley and Amalthia waved him off as the two ladies smiled at each other for the first time.

"Be a good wife to my son, Amalthia."

She looked at her future mother-in-law in the eyes and said in a resolute voice.

"I will."

***

Ulfgar stood at the podium all dressed in his finest regalia. Below him, stood Kaleb who was anxiously waiting for his bride to come down the aisle. To his right stood his best men - Brad, Krenesh, Jestin and Bogo. Their outfits were designed to match in spite of the physical size and proportion difference between human and charr. To Ulfgar's right stood the bridesmaids - Cynthia, Ariyana, Navina and the most unusual of all Tovu.

The aisle was lined with soldiers from both the legions and the Seraph. Each one instructed to hold their swords aloft in criss-cross fashion when the bride walked down the aisle.

Moments later, the final wedding theme began to play. Katie began dropping petals of jasmine and lilac flowers as she walked by followed closely by her older sister, Rachel (who was the ring bearer).

Once the two girls found their places. The ode to the wedding march began. Soldiers from both Seraph and legions drew their blades and meshed them together in staggered formation. Kaleb could see the swords withdrawing as his bride drew closer.

Amalthia strode lightly across the pedal-laden carpeted aisle as the last blade drew back from either side of her. She glanced up at Kaleb then gave him a wink. For his part, Kaleb was awestruck by her beauty. The gown she wore accentuated her best features, and reflected the amalgamation of two vastly different peoples. In spite of his old injuries, Ludrick summoned strength to walk his daughter down the aisle.

She helped hold him steady his gait the entire time until he found his seat at the front row. Once she had helped her father to his seat she stood next to Kaleb as the both of them turned to face Ulfgar.

The old norn smiled upon the bride and groom just as he was about to deliver his sermon.

"Today a legend is born. For today, for the first time in recorded Tyria's history, we are gathered here today to unite two souls from two very different peoples. On this special occasion, a human and a charr will be joined, not in bloody combat with each other, but in sacred matrimony."

Ulfgar turned to Kaleb. "The young man standing before me is one whom I have known since he was a pup. Never have I met a soul who is more good-natured, witty and willing to go the extra mile than this young man. I have seen his courage, his generous heart and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Kaleb Grimwald was a boy who did not know what his future would be. He was brash, independent and in many cases, foolish. But all that changed when he met the one soul who gave him a purpose."

The old norn then turned to Amalthia. "This young lady is like no charr I've ever met. In spite of her rather small size, she has the heart of a norn. She is bold and completely unafraid to say whatever's on her mind. Only she could tame the heart of the wayward boy whom I've known since he was pup."

Ulfgar gestured for Kaleb and Amalthia to face each other while holding hands. He took the rings from Rachel then handed the first one to Kaleb.

"There are no words, no ceremonies, no rituals that can adequately express what is about to transpire this day."

"Kaleb Grimwald - will you swear to give Amalthia your heart, your soul and keep her well in sickness and in health? Will you be there to comfort her when she is sad or downtrodden? Will you be there to bring joy and happiness into each other's lives? And will you promise to do these things for the rest of your days? What say you, lad?"

"I do," Kaleb said as he looked lovingly into Amalthia's eyes then slid the ring onto her finger.

"Amalthia Steelblade - will you swear to give Kaleb your heart, your soul and keep him well in sickness and in health? Will you be there to comfort him when he is sad or downtrodden? Will you be there to bring joy and happiness into each other's lives? And will you promise to do these things for the rest of your days? What say you, lass?"

"Of course!" She smiled as her ears twitched and she slid the band onto his finger.

"Then by the power vested in me and the Great Raven Spirit, I now pronounce you man and wife."

Ulfgar, then, smiled and said with a wink. "You two know the rest."

Kaleb and Amalthia embraced in a passionate kiss as cheers erupted from the crowd. The old norn waved for the newly married couple to face the audience then announced in his resonating voice.

"Behold, Kaleb and Amalthia Grimwald-Steelblade. May they both share many happy years together!"

Shortly thereafter, both were given plenty of hugs and well wishes by various friends and family. Kaleb, then, grabbed his wife by the hand and said. "You know what comes next, right?"

Amalthia and her new husband said in unison.

"Get toasted!"

(All chapters have been posted to AO3. Chapter 30 is posted here.)

#gw2 fanfiction #tyrias-library #the outliers #guild wars fan fiction #kaleb and amalthia #charr and human #inter-species love

4 notes · View notes

miloscat · 4 years

Text

[Review] Chrono Cross (PSX)

My experience with this was a long time coming; in fact, it was a long time going, as I took more than one long hiatus during my 50-hour playthrough. But it’s done now, and has a special place in my heart. This review is spoiler-light FYI!

Chrono Cross might not be what players expected out of a follow-up to seminal SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, but the overworked development team wanted to do something different, and their dreams were fulfilled with quite a unique product. It’s quite frankly a mess, but a beautiful one overflowing, pooling, congealing, with ideas and style.

CC has all the excesses of PS1-era JRPGs: grainy CG FMV, esoteric pre-rendered backgrounds, a cinematic battle camera over long animations, an incredibly convoluted story. But it’s got high ambitions too; its own innovative battle system which seems daunting at first but refreshing when you get a handle on it (although I still had a fundamental misunderstanding of it almost to the very end of my time with the game, not knowing you could select lower-level Elements than your current tier). A game world that spans two parallel dimensions, which rewards close attention to the differences. And of course, the whopping 45-character roster of available party members.

These ambitions end up becoming handicaps as they’re not realised to the full extent of their intention. There’s no traditional leveling, so fights can be pointless, and unbalanced; most fights can be won by mashing through them, facilitated by an end-of-battle auto-heal system. It’s easy to lose track of which world is which, which feeds into the confusing plot. Having such a gigantic range of characters means that almost all of them have very little development.

Part of the intent with CC was to play the game through multiple times, to experience different branches and find things you missed. In my estimation, these branches don’t seem to change much beyond locking you out of a few characters for that run, and I wasn’t interested in playing through the game again just because there’s a ton of easily missable optional content. It’s long enough as it is, even despite seemingly being truncated somewhat in development as evidenced by the incredible pile-up of plot revelations, twists, and last-second villain rug-pulls in the closing hours (not to mention sacrificed concepts like Guile’s connection to Magus). Also, the appeal of bringing new characters into scenes to see their reactions is undercut by the script, which essentially has different characters saying the same thing with a different accent, necessary for localisation text file size reasons at least but leaving the interactions feeling shallow if you do catch on to this.

A New Game + also unlocks features that absolutely should have been available by default: letting you swap out main character Serge to let another of the huge roster fill the precious third slot in battles, and an in-game fast forward button. Personally, I played this through emulation, as Square/Square-Enix has never been interested in my territory purchasing the game either at the time or through re-release. This let me abuse savestates and my own blessed fast-forward function to get through those long fights. I also closely followed a guide (the excellent RPG Classics shrine) so as not to miss anything or get caught out by a moment of choice. That’s just how I play RPGs these days, shrug.

Now I sound down on CC from all this, but I actually found the game an enchanting experience. As a fan of CT, and with my Radical Dreamers experience in mind, I got a lot out of the connections and retakes respectively. CC has a light touch with calling back to CT, until late in the game with a few of the exposition dumps hammering that legacy down. But to be honest it really didn’t need this, as what it had built for itself up to that point was very compelling.

The El Nido archipelago is a lovely place to visit, with a variety of locations that look fantastic for a PSX game, getting around the limitations of early 3D with neat trickery, pre-rendering, nice textures, and excellent use of colour. The characters that do get enough focus are fun, and uncovering their web of connections and their occasional side-plots can add depth to this microcosm. Of course, the soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda is atmospheric and studded with absolute bangers; long before I played this game I knew some of the more transcendent tracks through the local Eminence Orchestra’s covers in their Passion concert series, to which Mitsuda himself contributed. And the parts of Masato Kato’s plot that I understood were fascinating!

Seriously though, of all the parts of the game that seem to have got away from them, the story may be the biggest barrier to entry. It basically boils down to cliches of a lad from a small village setting out with his female childhood friend, discovering he’s the chosen one, and eventually killing God. But there’s a lot of twists and turns along the way. So many characters have hidden agendas, and there are plot devices and machinations that are never adequately explained, or worse exposited at you later in a text dump. After beating CC I had to consult reams of wiki articles and theory debates to try and understand concepts that remained vague or outright unresolved. But somehow for me this baffling heap of enigmas was attractive, and even though realistically it’s a sloppily told story on one level, by spurring me to research and ponder, and wonder what they were thinking or what might have been if the team had had more time, it had created an exciting level of meta-game engagement.

Chrono Cross is a product of its time, but its ambitions make it (ironically) timeless. There’s imagery here and gameplay concepts too that will stick with me for a long time, and I was left with a powerful sense of longing by the end. I haven’t even talked about the excellent mid-game twist, the self-contained scope of the game world, or the odd touches of humour, all of which I appreciated as well. But more importantly, when I think back on the game I see Lynx turning, or Kid smiling, or the ominous moons, and I know Chrono Cross has touched me deeply.

#chrono cross #Chrono Trigger #square #psx #review

1 note · View note

get-some-jelp · 4 years

Text

I started thinking about possible happy endings for SPN, and I made a happy one that for some reason gives me a TON of feels

Just imagine Sam and Dean living a normal life.

Dean has a mechanic's shop that doubles as a place where people come to report monster cases (Cas works in the back on all the Hunter stuff while Dean fixes cars). Dean and Cas live together and Jack stays with them most of the time. Sam lives close by with Eileen (in this made up future I imagined they were married and had a daughter because COME ON WHY NOT, LET MY FANFICTION HEART RUN WILD)

And they all go over to Jodi's for dinner. Donna and all the girls are there too, and Jodi makes a nice meal but Dean brings Winchester Surprise too because it's tradition even though Jodi says it's disgusting and she can't believe anyone eats it, but Sam and Dean always heap large portions of it on their plates and Sam's daughter and Jack beg for seconds.

And they all just sit around the table and talk and everyone is happy. Everyone is smiling. Jack, ever a child at heart, swaps jokes with Sam's daughter and they spend the whole time giggling while Claire rolls her eyes and talks to Cas about the latest hunts. Eileen and Sam sneakily sign back and forth to each other until Jodi yells at them because dammit she's been taking sign language classes, but they just go too fast with it for her to keep up! And everyone is laughing and swapping stories and suddenly Dean just pauses as it hits him.

That he finally got it. He finally got that apple pie life with a happy family. Everyone he cares about is safe and content. Sammy is happy. Dean himself, is happy. And it almost overwhelms him, that after so many years they finally got it, and while he knows there should be a lot more people sitting around their dinner table, he's accepted that they're gone and happy where they are, he hopes.

And that's all it is. Just Dean pausing for a second at a dinner table, it fully hitting him that he and Sam have finally gotten the happy life they deserve.

#spn s15 #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel

8 notes · View notes

doktorpeace · 5 years

Text

Top 5 Games Of The Year #4

Yakuza 0 is a pretty special game both individually and as a part of its franchise. It’s the first time Yakuza has taken a step backwards chronologically, in order to better explore already established characters and what led them to the events of the first game. It gets a lot of praise already and I’m just here to heap a little more onto the pile because it well deserves it. Although the series at this point is no stranger to having multiple protagonists and Majima has technically been playable before the special feeling Yakuza 0 elicits by having two protagonists wasn’t really lost for it. Compared to the four in Yakuza 4, or the frankly over padded five protagonists in Yakuza 5, taking a step down to just two and placing an almost equal emphasis on each really does the game’s narrative and pacing wonders. Yakuza 0′s story is really good it is an excellent crime drama and among the best main plots the series has to offer. While some might argue other entries, usually 2 or 4, can stand up alongside it I feel 0′s has an edge in some areas. Largely in terms of pace, ambition, and intrigue. For instance, 2 doesn’t really mess around with plot twists, the entire game basically waves a giant flag over Ryuji saying he’s the final boss and the whole plot exists basically just to get to his and Kiryu’s legendary fight. And that’s fine, it doesn’t try to be more than it needs to be and that’s okay. 4 meanwhile has more intrigue and some good twists in there but its pace is much poorer in my opinion. Your mileage may vary on the bullets plot twist, too. 0 has some legitimate plot twists and it does a great job getting players engaged and interested in what’s going to happen next. To get back to 0 though, it doesn’t sacrifice characterization to achieve the quality of its plot either, far from it. It’s the first time we’ve seen a young, hot blooded, and frankly really stupid Kiryu. Kiryu’s never a smart guy but getting to see how he handles situations and behaves before 10 years in prison and subsequent stories smooth his edges and temper his personality is really a treat for fans of the character and newcomers alike. He’s fun, relatable, serious when he needs to be, and most importantly he’s still perfectly recognizable as Kiryu. He is still absolutely that amazing protagonist that you know and love, he’s just young, dumb, and full of.....well you know. On the other hand Majima is almost unrecognizable in this game, being calm, well dressed, a charismatic and professional showman, dissuading others from fighting, all while being openly depressed to boot. This take on Majima still feels fitting because the way he phrases himself is familiar, his gut reactions feel right for the characters, and ultimately this game contextualizes not just his transformation into the Mad Dog of Shimano fans know him as later but many of his actions through the rest of the series. Just ignore how his story here and how he’s written in Yakuza 5 violently contradict one another. We can all just pretend Y5′s Majima writing isn’t canon. The strength of characterization extends to the game’s side characters too, including ones who alongside Majima and Kiryu return from the main series. Nishiki, Kashiwagi, the Lieutenants, Tachibana, Lee, and more are all memorable and great characters. Just, uhh, don’t expect many women in the main plot is all. I don’t want to talk too in depth about the game’s story so as to avoid spoiling anything but it really is a treat. The script takes advantage of player’s expectations in a meta sense, that ultimately this will be Kiryu’s game because, well, Yakuza 4 and 5 were Kiryu’s games in spite of the other protagonists. Those guys all got good, moving stories too and they are all well worth experiencing and having around but ultimately Kiryu is still the most important guy on the block. Not so, here, as by the halfway point of the game players might notice that Majima’s ‘half’ of the game, his half of the game’s chapters, are quite a bit longer than Kiryu’s. Majima has a lot more legwork to do in the story because it is his story, and while Kiryu gets the true final boss fight and is very important to the events at hand as well it’s really Majima who’s the star here. This game is an excuse to explore his character and it does not beat around the bush on that intention. If you are a fan of this franchise you really do have to experience this story. All too often prequel games just end up softening or weakening the existing narratives they’re trying to pay homage to or trying to strengthen but Yakuza 0 expertly dodges that bullet by never missing a beat in terms of quality relative to standard Yakuza entires. My only real issue with the story, honestly, is that Makoto is about as much of a McGuffin as she is a person. The game does take time to develop her both directly and indirectly but ultimately she spends about as much time just being a plot device to be ferried around by one man or another as she does getting to talk and do things. The gameplay is very refined compared to other games in the seires, I would argue it’s tighter and more fun than Yakuza 6′s, even, if only due to the sheer variety of Heat Actions (effectively super moves; ranging from the silly to the bombastic to the brutal to a handful that made me shout ‘HOLY SHIT HE DIDN’T DESERVE THAT!!!’ at my TV) present in 0. If you like beat ‘em ups you’ll like Yakuza’s playstyle; each character gets 4 fighting styles earning three through the story and a fourth through side content. The fourth fighting style for each one is essentially a bonus, letting them fight in their ‘iconic’ styles, Dragon and Mad Dog respectively. To be honest they’re both underwhelming, Mad Dog is maybe Majima’s weakest fighting style and Dragon, while strong, requires a lot more heat than what it naturally builds to stay competent. The fighting styles are still fun though, they add plenty of new and unique options to each character to justify getting them, they’re just not going to win you the game for free or anything. Of the character’s main fighting styles the only real issue I have is the disparity in strength between them, both internally and between each other. No mincing words here, Majima is obscenely overpowered compared to Kiryu. Breaker Style annihilates every challenge in the game with next to no effort besides Mr. Shakedown fights, which aren’t really fun anyway. That said Slugger easily bashes in Mr. Shakedown and even Jo Amon. Majima will breeze through all of his content even on higher difficulties. Comparatively Kiryu can have a pretty rough time in some fights. This is due in part by his fighting styles being really well balanced internally, they’re all useful and thus the player may actually feel like swapping between them mid battle or between encounters. Kiryu not really having an overwhelming option generally means he can be very expressive, my fiancé and I played him very differently for instance on our runs. Whether you most enjoy his fast, invulnerability frame heavy, dash cancelling Rush style which takes a very high amount of investment to become good but I would argue is maybe his best style once you get it there, his brutish item swinging, semi-grappler Beast style which absolutely decimates indoors fights, or the more well rounded, heat action heavy Brawler Kiryu’s got something for everyone. Each of his styles also get a great variety of unique heat actions, all three to environmental cues, and Beast and Brawler to equip-able and overworld items. While Majima’s fighting style are also expressive and a ton of fun to use they just feel too safe and too easy compared to Kiryu. He gets absolutely stellar results and gets them quickly for extremely little effort in the ridiculously fast, low profile attacks of Breaker. Not to say Breaker isn’t fun, because it is, breakdancing to beat people up is hilarious and fun and its heat actions are flavorful to boot, it’s just really overpowered is all. After some investment his Ballerina With A Baseball Bat fighting style, Slugger, also becomes nigh impossible to challenge for the AI thanks to it losing its primary weakness of the bat bouncing off of walls it hits after you put only moderate investment into it. While the least varied of Majima’s styles in terms of heat actions, Slugger is great fun if you ever wanted a proper weapon based fighting style in Yakuza. It feels like what Shinada should have played like. Majima’s starting style, Thug, is a fun grappling and street brawling style that requires a lot of precision to use well and is very well suited to one on one fights should the player be so inclined to not opt for his better options. It makes use of baroque kicks, eye pokes, strangles, and back turns. It’s also Majima’s only style that can make use of non-baseball bat items for heat actions as well as most of his environmental heat actions, and Majima has some GREAT heat actions under these conditions, helping Thug keep a niche compared to the other styles. Honestly, if you like Tekken you’ll probably like Thug. These great fighting styles would be pointless if the game didn’t have fun enemies and situations to pit you against and thankfully it does. Its ‘dungeons’ are a lot of fun and some of the boss fights really stand out. Thanks to the sheer myriad of context based Heat Actions even just fighting the random mooks in the street stays fun for dozens of hours as you experiment to see how you can fuck up some chumps today. It’s deeply gratifying and a lot of fun. While the optional Mr. Shakedown fights are a chore, they are all optional besides the first one so there’s no real reason to bother with them unless you’re doing a 100% substory completion run or REALLY need to grind money in a game where money is already free. Some of the boss fights are a bit mediocre, too, but overall they’re good fun. I do think Yakuza 0 is at its strongest though when it’s making the player fight room after room of enemies, dozens at a time, and just letting them feel like an absolute champion while doing so, really letting them revel in just how strong and cool Majima and Kiryu are. Yakuza 0′s side content is both one of its greatest strengths and in my opinion an area where it shows the most weakness. While Pocket Circuit, Karaoke, Cabaret Club, and the Sub-Stories are absolutely excellent and I truly cannot stress enough how fun they are the game also has a myriad of seemingly half baked minigames based off of real life activities for you to do, a lot of which have unnecessary RNG. Even Bowling has RNG...BOWLING, come on! The Pool, Darts, Bowling, Catfight Club, and other such minigames feel very rushed in execution and for all but the last of those feel like poor simulations compared to other games I have played. Catfight Club is just a really, really, shameless and sexist ‘Watch almost naked women ‘’’’wrestle’’’’’. Also, opposite Majima’s deeply flavorful, engaging, well written, and fun club management minigame Club Sunshine, the aforementioned cabaret club, Kiryu gets Real Estate Royale. Which is about as fun as you think. It’s literally standing around waiting for money to grind for you and then going out and investing it into properties. While the storyline attached to it is decent enough and has some good moments for Kiryu the minigame itself is just dreadful and grossly slow paced. Which is funny to say, because I think it takes less time to complete than Cabaret Club, but it feels like A Lot Longer because it just isn’t fun. There’s the Telephone Club, which uhhh, you can have Kiryu do to get laid. It’s funny in a tongue in cheek way but it’s also not my cup of tea besides laughing at Kiryu’s great dialogue and body language during the interactions. Basically, play Karaoke to hear Kiryu’s beautiful singing voice and also THE ONLY GAME IN THE SERIES WHERE MAJIMA’S SINGING ISN’T JUST AWFUL SCREECHING! 24 Hour Cinderella is a gift to the world and you need to play it. Cabaret Club is also where the vast majority of this game’s female characters exist, as hostesses. While the game could take this opportunity to be sexist (and one could argue it is, for sure) the writing present in Cabaret Club for the platinum hostesses and their story lines is just as good as anything else from the game. They’re worth talking to, learning about, and seeing their development. In all honesty they can almost fittingly serve as a nice break from the game’s intense story, giving the player a breather with some whole and comedic interactions. The Sub-Stories which make up this game’s version of side quests (because yes, this is a Beat ‘Em Up Japanese Crime Drama RPG) are also basically all amazing. The writing is heartfelt, funny, and just really good. They all have strong opening hooks without forcing the player to immediately get involved and despite being 100 of them they’re basically all really memorable. This is also where the game pays Kiryu back a bit for his lost story content relative to Majima, giving him 60 of the 100 sub stories. They’re all great ways to get to see more aspects of these characters and the citizens of Kamurocho, please give a bunch of them a try if you play this game. I also briefly want to talk about the settings of the game, Kamurocho and Sotenbori. They’re literally just the real life Japanese districts, Kabukicho and Dotenbori by SLIGHLY different names. If you play this game enough you’ll know some real life actual locations in actual real life Japan like you’ve been there. You’ll be able to navigate at least a few square blocks of Japan without a map, it’s amazing, and it’s really something special compared to other games. Also, I’m not exaggerating, the overworld(s) of this game are only a few square blocks large but the game plays that to its advantage. Navigating from one side to another of either one takes a minute or two at most and the streets are always PACKED with content. It’s impossible to wander around playing naturally without falling ass backwards into a dozen or more of the game’s sidestories and inevitably getting sucked into playing a few of them and seeing how good they are. I love this game’s map, it’s so brilliant in its design by simply being true to a real life location. Yakuza 0 also sports stellar sound design. The sound effects are BEEFY, hitting things feels amazing and nothing sounds out of place or off beat. The bombastic, over the top hit sounds really sell Majima and Kiryu’s overwhelming power and it just makes every fight satisfying. The soundtrack similarly is good, and while much of the soundtrack isn’t what I would call listening music, the Karaoke selections, specifically Bake Mitai, sure are. I’m not really the kind of guy who can tell you why the sound design is good, it just is, trust me.

All in all, Yakuza 0 is a stellar game and is exemplary of both what a modern beat ‘em up AND a modern RPG should strive to be like. It is a masterpiece in its own right and I’m glad that its success in the western market has secured this unique, beautiful series a future. Please play Yakuza 0, it’s regularly on sale on both PS4 and Steam and it deserves your attention. If you’re ever alone on a Friday night, just remember these Yakuza, and you’ll have a great time.

#Dok's GotY 2018 #Yakuza 0

4 notes · View notes

c7thetumbler · 5 years

Text

Quick Game Reviews: What I played 2018

I’m gonna go ahead and do this for the whole year, which includes games that WEREN’T released this year, but I played this year. I also made this throughout the year, so most the opinions were right after I played it and if it’s been updated further might not include that in my blurb.

I needed to type and felt like I needed to make something. This might motivate me I suppose. Let’s get started

DOOM 2016 [PC]

I grew up on Pokemon, Mario, and Doom II. I couldn’t play it until I got my new computer this year so yeah way too late. This is a pretty solid game, though thanks to all of the bonuses and honestly nearly intrusive leveling up system kinda stepped in the way of the raw combat. It’s obviously my choice, but I felt encouraged to spend a lot of time exploring areas I’d already cleared rather than run and gun.

That being said, I still loved it. The secrets were, for the most part, really clever and fun anyway and the combat is delicious. I would strongly recommend this

A Hat in Time + Seal the Deal DLC [PC]

I love this game. A lot. It’s really cute and looks really good, it’s got a ton of charm, and it’s honestly a very good time overall. I 100% the base game last year when it first came out, and I would highly recommend to fans of 3D platformers, and still worth a try if you’re on the fence on them. The mod support is also great that it’s in there and I want to try that a lot. however the DLC...

So the new level is pretty short and while it’s fun, it’s not as good as the other levels. The characters (I think) are really cute and the charm is all there and that great, but it has all of 3 levels, and 2 of them are exploring the exact same places (the boat) and the 3rd is a nice twist on that, but other than that it’s pretty barren. The time rifts were fun as well, but alone... eh. The Death Wish portion, that is the super hard challenge mode...

... is not good. Obviously my opinion, and I might be missing the point, but after having been frustrated over and over and over again, the game itself is just not tight or clean enough to warrant it. My backing for this is that a large portion of the challenges rely on originally unintended level geometry or quirky mechanics in order to complete, and having challenges that require you to be in the know about these honestly inconsistent “quirks” is just not good. Specific examples: the ice hat giving you a small boost to avoid jumping in challenges is alright but fluctuates in how much height it gives you a lot, the challenges around the train chase still have the wonky hitboxes that do not line up with what’s still on screen, and the parade challenge has an invisible hitbox on the main platform that can kill runs. In short If you have found you love the main game and are a bit of a masochist, go for the DLC.

Pokémon Ultra Sun [3DS]

This is more or less just a revisit of the same generation with some very minor changes. The story changes take the focus away from Lillie and Lusamine (and as a result how interesting the former and evil the latter are) and places it on Necrozma and Ultra Beasts. I really like what they did with Necrozma, but overall it feels like a lot less. And while the Rainbow Rocket post game was nice and fun nostalgia, it’s still missing a solid post game like B2W2 or Gen II had.

Ultra Wormholes are cool though, and all the good mechanics from SM are still there, so honestly I would recommend this if you haven’t played gen 7 and like Pokémon.

Hey! Pikmin [3DS]

It’s awful. I can’t think of a reason to pick this up.

I can rant about this for years, but it basically got the Zip Lash/ Sticker Star treatment: it took a franchise known for something and made it something else that was bad. It’s an incredibly slow puzzle “platformer” where you have to collect a bunch of treasure using pikmin you find in the level, it’s laggy even on a n3DS, and even though the point of the game is to collect enough treasure to leave, if you do that they’re all like “by the way, you still have to beat the final boss” so the entire auto-collecting side game you put your pikmin into is entirely pointless. This is honestly the worst 3DS game I played this year.

Hollow Knight [PC]

So I’m normally not that great with the games-that-are-pretty-dang-hard, and this was no exception. That said however, I did get pretty far (probably) before I got to a boss fight I just couldn’t beat (It was an onslaught of rolling knights in the raining city or something, it’s been a while). And after that I tried finding more power-ups and stuff to help, but I had to set it down after getting bottlenecked there. That being said, I can very easily see why people like this hardcore metroid-vania platformer, and would still recommend it if you’re into the Dark Souls style of high difficulty and mechanical mastery in other genres.

Axiom Verge [PC]

This is another Metroid-style game. I really liked this one as well, especially how its power-ups weren’t the traditional “You jump higher now” traversal power-ups. It really has a nice atmosphere and theme that still feels alien and metroidy while also feeling like the glitchy world by giving you weapons and movement abilities that let you glitch and change the environment around you. I really liked it! My only real complaint is the bosses get really challenging through a result of eventually figuring out what weapon and strategy is was designed for, and there are some areas that I was completely lost trying to find where I was going next, but all in all it’s pretty solid.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch [PC]

I normally really hate games where the focus is “lol, you can barely control your character! hahaha.” I actually really liked this one; it isn’t hard to get the hang of it and it’s really funny and still enjoyable at the same time. I rarely actually felt annoyed at the controls. I had a ton of fun with it, even if it was a little short.

Kirby Star Allies [Switch]

My complaints are very much the same as everyone else’s here; it’s a pretty okay Kirby game, but it lacks real challenge and is pretty quick. the real “star” of the show is playing the game with different characters, but since you can’t do that until after you play through as Kirby, by that point it’s either grown on you or hasn’t. The best part is the unique levels they made for the DLC characters, Gooey, Marx, Dreamland buddies, etc. Those are a ton of fun. If you like Kirby games, this one’s no Super Star but you’ll likely love all the attention to the free DLC characters and it’s not bad by any stretch.

HOB [PC]

It’s a 3D, top-down Zelda style game with an emphasis on some platforming elements. The world is wonderful, definitely the Aesthetic with clockwork worlds that Spiral Knights wishes it could’ve had. I actually had a ton of fun with it. The secrets and exploration were great, combat is ehhhhhh but that’s not really the focus. It’s a good time, If you like Zelda but with some puzzle platforming and great atmosphere, check this one out!

Poi [PC]

This is a Unity 3D platformer that attempted to brush off the Unity, and does an alright job with being mechanically tighter than most, but still has the Unity feel. Controls are a bit loose, could’ve used a lot of polish, but honestly this scratched the 3D platformer collect-a-thon itch for a bit and I actually 100% it. You have to love 3D platformers like Sunshine or Banjo Tooie to be able to like this, but if you do it’s a pretty fun romp.

Princess Remedy In a Heap of Trouble [PC]

This is a fun, short bullet-hellish game with an old-school Atari aesthetic. It’s pretty fun, but honestly I like the mechanics in the free game better (though this has more content). It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s quirky (and kinda short), try out the free game and if you like that one give this a try! The main difference is the “date” mechanic, where people you heal can join you to give you a different special power from healing, to various kinda of bombs, time freezing, homing bullets, etc. Once you find one though, it’s hard to convince yourself to try something else.

Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion [Switch]

This is Splatoon 2′s expanded hard/challenge mode. I’m a big fan; a few of the challenges are eh, but overall the aesthetic and branching map structure are super fun. The expanding on the lore and bonuses are also great; even though earlier I don’t normally go for the extremely hard, I found myself 100%’ing this. There’s a really tough challenge at the very end of all that, and I would say If you liked Splatoon 2, pick this up. It’s the expansion of Single Player that it deserves, though prepare for a few frustrating challenges.

... But now you have to pay for a terrible service to play it online so keep that in mind...

Celeste [Switch]

This is a fucking great game and you should buy it. It’s a challenging (very hard) platformer in the line of super meat boy and maybe even I Wanna Be The Guy, but this does it extremely right. restarting is very quick, the controls are incredibly tight, and the levels are genuinely clever and fun.

The story is also really solid, and I can’t recommend the whole package as a solid game.

Grow Up [PC]

This is the sequel to Grow Home, a game I’ve quick-reviewed a long time back. I liked the whole explore a whole planet and find some neat stuff, however the challenges are reliant on some weird procedural animations which don’t necessarily cooperate. It kinda overstays it’s welcome as a result, though the open nature of it is really fun. I have a hard time recommending this one, but it’s still a pretty solid romp even if it fights you a bit.

Sonic Mania Plus [Switch]

Having 100% the base game which I highly recommend, I was expecting a lot more things to do with this. Encore mode is fun; I really like how you can change up your characters and have to adjust on the fly. The new special stages are tough but fun, but the pinball minigame is.. not good. Gets old pretty quick. additionally it doesn’t add much after encore mode. Might and Ray have abilities that meaningfully add some neat gameplay stuff, but after how great the base game was, I was expecting a little bit more. That being said, the DLC is a nice bonus for the base game and you can’t really go wrong with it.

Lovely Planet [PC]

So I made a point to only play this game when I was drunk. The first few times I happened to be when I played it, so I stuck with it. This is a quick-restarting FPS with a focus on perfect shots and maneuvering to destroy all the target and get to the end as soon as possible.It’s hard as balls but really silly, so if you’re into perfectionist gameplay it’s worth a go. Probably not drunk tho.

Ever Oasis [3DS]

IIRC, this came out at a time where there was a lull in Nintendo games, or at least 3DS games so this one was very much skimmed over. It’s a mix between a town management sim and Zelda-style dungeon crawling and resource gathering. On paper, and even somewhat in game, this is a cool idea; you get townsfolk who can go with you on missions, each with their own abilities, and what you get outside of the town is used to help expand you town, which will buff you/your townspeople's abilities to go further in dungeons.

In practice however... they don’t really mesh. The limitation of 1 item per party member and items being locked to specific people you need to find, going to dungeons is a chore as you need to find out which characters you need to actually play (often not your best). Meanwhile, time passes so quickly and your town’s shopkeepers run out of resources so quickly, it’s a full time job to keep up the town and then you run out. They mitigate this near the end game by have the ability to make parties out of townspeople who can’t own shops, which are very rare. The ending is good up until the last moment where they do a thing that doesn’t make sense to get some points for emotion but... It just doesn’t work to me.

All in all, it has a demo to show how a dungeon works, and if you like management AND what that dungeon has to offer, go for it. Otherwise, the setting and character design are great but not enough to really hold interest

Q.U.B.E. 2 [PC]

The First game was Portal-esque in that you navigated the first-person Cube puzzle maze without any dialogue while manipulating the chambers with a variety of cube-spawning and extending abilities. You had to piece out and interpret the story yourself. This is the opposite; there’s a lot of dialogue, story set-pieces, and it’s bizarrely paced. You’ll get through most the game in like an hour, but then the last 2-3 chapters are the bulk of the game. Those are pretty fun, but the game is still incredibly short and I liked the tone of the first better. It’s short, it’s not bad, but it doesn’t really stand out.

NES Classic

So I dunno if I love or hate this thing. It’s great because it’s an official NES with controller and emulator and gives me the opportunity to play a buncha games I hadn’t before, but the controller cable is too small, the damn thing has trouble getting enough power (EDIT: This was actually my aparement’s faulty wiring, though if you aren’t supplying it with enough power the sound won’t work either), and this things existence is probably part of the reason we’ve not seen a proper virtual console support on Switch. You can hack it to be able to upload other ROMs to it, which is neat (I haven’t done that), but ultimately it’s worth looking at the games and asking yourself: Do I really want to play most of these? Do I really want to buy this when I’ve already bought most of them?

SNES Classic

This is the same as above but more expensive with less games... But to me is a better value. It has a better selection of games (in my opinion), though they could’ve included some better ones. It still has the power issues (which are overcomable easily) but comes with 2 controllers with longer cables. Also StarFox 2 is a very nice game. I’d recommend this more than the NES Classic, but again, weigh what’s in it vs what you actually want to play if you can’t already

WarioWare Gold [3DS]

This is a compilation game done right. It has the WarioWare charm and the voice acting adds even more to it. The microgame selection and adaptations are wonderful, and honestly I don’t have any complaints. It has changed everything to fit in one of 3 (+2 smaller ones) categories: Mash, Twist, and Touch (+ blow and short). These are normally separate by category, but near the end they mix and match and even do some fun mix-up with it in the very last rounds and bonus game modes. Whether your first WarioWare or a veteran, this is in my opinion the best in the series, and I would suggest you give it a go.

Monster Hunter World [PC]

So this one is hard. I really wanted to like it, and after playing Dauntless I thought I would. I even promised friends I would play it with them frequently and keep up but... between friends being able to play when I couldn’t and the game’s wonky controls and online issues, I was falling behind and getting frustrated. That’s kinda side stuff; if I really liked it I could’ve caught up. The truth is, I liked Dauntless better because while it was also very buggy, the combat was just a lot more straightforward and responsive. Monster Hunter seemed like Dauntless with a bunch of annoyances added onto it. There are tons of collectibles and recipes, weapon sharpness is entirely pointless when the monsters run anyway to give you breaks, the weapons I played seemed sluggish to attack with, and monster attacks were unclear a lot of the time. Everything just felt like a pain in the ass or waste of time to deal with and put a lot of focus on inventory management or grinding, and to me the core game you would do that for just wasn’t there.

Like I enjoyed the free roaming and exploration, but the fighting is just not for me and that’s the whole point of the free roaming and all that. I feel bad about not liking this after enjoying Dauntless, but I just am not into Monster Hunter and will be skipping the series from now on.

Katamari Forever [PS3]

I got this one thinking it was a compilation game of all the Katamari games!

It was not. It’s actually the hardest Katamari game... Which kinda surprised me about how much of a dick they are when you start out since their controls are incredibly weird and unintuitive (you get used to them) and anything short of perfection will get the Kings to any where from passive aggressively imply you did poorly or just straight out call you awful and not to bother.

Here’s the part where randomly in the giant text post I just completely break whatever I was talking about because I’m 95% no one actually reads this so for shits and giggles the first person to reply to my tweet where I posted a link to the blogpost stating that they found this paragraph will get a free me replying back to that tweet saying “nice” back. An enticing gift amirite? Anyway continuing on.

That being said, it’s pretty fun after all that; there are one or two levels designed to be super annoying but the ones where you play the core game of quickly building your Katamari are for the most part very solid. This is for existing fans of the series, but i had a pretty good time with it after I got past the barrier to entry.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: Ultimate Edition [PC]

I’ve talked about liking Shantae before on this blog; I mentioned that I liked Pirate’s Curse but the fact that side missions and collectibles were actually required for game completion. This Shantae looks great and all, but they completely tossed out the open-like nature and makes it a series of linear levels that you have to revisit at least 2-3 times to find the stuff that should’ve been off somewhere in a different series of areas and optional that’s really just slightly out of reach due to a power up you arbitrarily find after the level you needed to use it in ends. Dungeons are completely gone; the game literally is just “go right” and remember all the little things you couldn’t get to for when you have to backtrack over and over again.

That’s just the base game, and even with all that said it’s not a bad game, it just doesn’t really feel like a Shantae game anything other than aesthetically. I spent a few hours trying to 100% the base game, but after getting 99% and discovering I had to backtrack yet again to a snake merchant to trade for dances just to use them once and trade back, I just had 0 interest in getting the final percent. There are also a variety of different takes on the same campaign where you play as Shantae in different costumes with different abilities, Risky, or even Bolo + Skye + Rotty, and again those look fun but... I don’t really want to play the same game another 10 times.

Dragalia Lost [Android]

This is Nintendo’s first jump into mobile with a new IP, and while it’s definitely banking hard on more traditional gacha mechanics (you can get 5 star items instead of Hero characters only), it’s definitely not bad. It’s pretty generous with stamina and resources, at least when you start, and my only major complaint is how you seem to hit a wall in terms of how long it takes to really progress about a week or so of playing every day in. And it’s quite a wall; there’s quite a lot of grinding needed once you get to chapter 6 (the current final chapter that really feels like just the end of a prologue (Edit, they recently added chapter 7)), so you really need to like it. The levels are kinda simple as well, though there’s a maze-like area in the story that’s a bit more clever so it’s a start at least. All and all, it’s worth a try, but if you don’t like the top-down brawler after the first world, it’s not worth forcing through gacha mechanics for; especially since after you complete normal story mode, all you’re going to be doing is grinding to get through hard and the summoning currency gets scarce fast. For reference, getting enough to be able to challenge the High Dragon quests and not immediately die in them takes 2 months of grinding specifically for that purpose if you use your stamina optimally, which you won’t because events are more fun anyway

Overcooked 2 [Switch Download]

So this is actually really fun with a friend or 3; and that’s where it really shines. Sure, you can do it single player but it just doesn’t feel as fun. This is a sort of quick time-management game where you have to frantically run around cooking various recipes before they run out of time, to get a star rating at the end. There’s some bad levels, but the majority are really fun and it feels very fair even in single layer; I always think at the end regardless of the rank that I could’ve managed my dudes to do even better. The only real complaint is the loading times seem... unnecessarily long. Especially for restarting a level. It’s nothing too bad though.

Luckily this has online multiplayer, so I highly recommend picking this up on a platform that your friends have it on, ie Steam. I got it on Switch and in hindsight since I strongly dislike Nintendo’s online service I really wish I had gotten like a 2-pack on Steam. That’s not a complaint with the game though; I really liked it!

Super Mario Party [Switch]

Probably the best Mario Party in a very, VERY long time. This is going to be a longer review. I played this first with Keewy and his roommates and we had a great time in every single game mode (except online).

The Mario Party mode is really good; they’ve shrunk the map and reduced how much stars cost to 10 coins, but 10-15 turn games can still take an hour to an hour and a half. This makes it a much simpler, easier to get mode, but the real star here is them bringing back the Ally & character dice mechanic from Mario Party Star Rush (had it’s good moments, but was on 3DS so that’s it for that). Each character can roll a normal 1-6 dice, but they also each have a unique die that has different numbers on it. These are for the most part balanced; character with higher numbers on their dice also have downsides instead of a 1. 0′s, losing coins, and in some cases gaining coins (because you still don’t move), and it adds a level of strategy to it where otherwise it would be just “roll and hop for the best. That’s what it is still, but sometimes you can choose. You can also pick up other characters who will help you in minigames, give you the option to roll their die, and add 1-2 spaces to your roll. It’s super fun.

The River Rafting mode is 4-player co-op, and it’s pretty fun as well your first run through. Not single player though; this very much shines with 4 people. However, because there are only like 8? 4-player co-op minigames, you see every game on your first run so it doesn’t really hold up after your first couple runs.

The dance mode is great; it’s like Rhythm heaven but Mario Party themed. Again, these minigames are really fun, but once you play through all 3 difficulties, which takes about 10 minutes, there aren’t any you haven’t played.

2v2 is ripped straight out of Star Rush, which is a great thing. Again, don’t play this with a cpu on your team at least. As far as I can tell, even in Mario Party mode, CPU’s make the same brain-dead decisions on the boards regardless of their difficulty level. Anyway, this has the same 4 boards but opened up vastly; You now roll, combine it with your partner, then add any allies you may have picked up along the way’s 1-2 rolls and other bonuses. The point is to land on the starspace and buy it, and it’s just a good time to see the strategy involved with either going for the stars, allies, or secondary goals. By far the best alternative Mario Party gameplay style in a while (way better than Island Tour’s linear maps and 9-10′s Car mode), but again there’s only the 4 maps.

So I guess my only true complaint is that while there are a lot of minigames, they’re split so much over the different modes they don’t feel like a lot and you see repeats frequently. Additionally it would be nice to turn on/off the bonus stars at the end and other options involving maybe skipping some of the cutscenes (star moving, places changed, etc.). All in all, the best and most interesting Mario Party in a long, long time. I highly recommend it if you have a friend to pick it up with.

Just Shapes & Beats

Got this game for a bit of random multiplayer. It’s a pretty fun, music based bullet hell game all about staying alive through the song while crazy stuff happens on screen. The story mode doesn’t overstay its welcome, but there’s also plenty of content and challenges for those who are so inclined, and only one of the levels felt utterly, bullshitingly unfair (which is really good with bullet hells) so It’s a fun time if you’re into top down bullet hells, and better with a friend in challenge mode

Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee [Switch]

I could write a dissertation on this game and how it’s neither good or bad; it’s just kinda... there. Some aspects are incredibly disappointing; the capture mechanics are absolute garbage, forced motion controls are atrocious, player/npc animations and interactions are completely stilted and lazy, the world is very bland vs Sun and Moon, the performance in handheld mode drops frames sometimes which is unacceptable, there’s almost zero post game, and even more. It’s by all means an HD reskin of a Gameboy game running on their crappy 3DS engine.

But there’s a lot of good here as well; seeing pokemon in the overworld is amazing and should be the case in the series moving forward, partner pokemon (eevee) are fun and fucking adorable, riding pokemon is great, having fast captures makes chaining a really fun mechanic, Having some of the E4 and Gym leaders interact with you during your quest makes the world interesting, connectivity with go is very limited but still good, having only one pokemon be obtainable only once in the game is a welcome and frankly overdue change in the game, removing breeding/abilities/held items really streamlines the mechanics and makes the game more enjoyable in a lot of cases, and I could go on.

I’m not going to recommend it, but I mean if you liked any pokemon game you’re definitely not going to not have fun with this one, even if the randomness in the capture mechanics frustrates you to no end

Super Smash Bros Ultimate [Switch]

So I mean it’s smash bros. Not much really to say about that, it’s pretty good. I kinda like Smash Bros not just for the multiplayer but the single-player as well, which is why Brawl is still my Favorite so take that as my approach here. The normal gameplay is fine, though the input buffer feels wonky at times and some characters are much harder to play against than others, which in combination with the sheer amount of characters makes it very difficult to get the hang of and counter accordingly, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just the barrier between playing casually and playing a bit more seriously feels sudden when randomly coming across characters that have inherent advantages from being wonky. Cloud for example seems to have a move for evertyhing, can spit out attacks very quickly, and if you try anything silly they’ll just charge a better move, and then randomly fighting a Ganondorf is like “I hope they don’t know how to read you because you can die at like 35 from a single fuck up”

The Single Player content though was... Disappointing. Not nearly as bad as Sm4sh, but it seems like they spent so much time putting as many characters and stages in the game as possible that they realized they wouldn’t have time to do old game modes the same way, so they made a system which allowed them to make custom smash battles with weird attributes and built the entirety of the bonus content on that. There’s really only adventure mode which is just a progression of Event Matches which gets somewhat stale and repetitive quickly, Mob Smash is just not really that fun past your first run or two, All-Star Smash is actually near impossible and not even rewarding, Classic does one or two cool ideas with routes but they clearly got lazy with a lot of characters there too, and the only platforming challenge in the game is the bonus level which takes 30 seconds and never changes.

Their Online mode is unacceptably bad and lacks options for random fights as well, and given that they’re charging for it this is just flat-out unacceptable. Buy it if you like playing Smash for the Multiplayer (which is almost everyone), but this is a hard pass if you were expecting a large amount of interesting content like Brawl’s Adventure mode had. Or are incapable of learning past a certain point, like me.

Katamari Damacy Reroll [Switch]

So after having played Forever earlier in the year and hearing how much praise this got, I had very High expectations! Unfortunately the controls are still ehhhhh and the game is surprisingly short; I beat it over the course of a 4ish hour flight. It’s definitely a lot nicer to you than Forever is, but in terms of amount of content it’s not aged well. If you’ve not played it before, pick it up on sale, but as far as I can tell this outing doesn’t add anything new to the original and it’s just a straight up re-release

Mario Tennis Aces [Switch]

So does anyone actually look forward to Mario Tennis Games? The past two have been husks of content and this one’s not really much better. The charging mechanic is interesting, but doesn’t feel that consistent or fair in some scenarios, but like was anyone waiting for this to get announced? Or is this just a “safe” series that sells okay and pads out the library for quick cash?”

It’s weird that they knew the Adventure mode was something fans really, REALLY wanted and touted it as some huge deal, even advertising it with a cool pre-rendered cutscene, and the whole mode with all challenges turns out to be at most a couple hours long, repetitive, and only actually has the two cutscenes (the 2nd being like 10 seconds). They made some silly RPG level up mechanic which didn’t feel like it made any difference, you can’t change your character so you’re really only learning how Mario plays, and it does a really poor job of explaining the different kinds of shots to you so it’s not even good for learning the game. I wasn’t expecting an experience worth telling for generations with the plot either, but even that gives up on itself; Luigi is possessed but he doesn’t do anything the whole game until you fight him, not even with the 3/5 power stones you have, and these power stones you spent the game collecting don’t do anything or matter because Bowser comes out of no where and “takes” the racket and power stones and challenges you to an admittedly fun boss fight. Not in a cutscene mind you, you’re just told this happens. It’s just lazy.

The game has some visual issues too; it’s missing any sort of stylistic flair and honestly just looks like an up-res’d Wii game, though with smoother models. Shadows flicker and cut through textures, and something weird’s going on with anti-aliasing that makes everything look blurry as hell too. I will say props for going to the effort of making tennis costumes for every character though; so that’s more effort than what went into Ultra Smash.

If you’re a huge, HUGE fan of Mario Tennis, go nuts. But uh, yeah this isn’t really worth your time for the price otherwise

Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Starter Pack) [Switch]

Yeah so it’s rich coming from me, but honestly this game is only hindered by the physical toys. As far as I can tell you can only play as generic Mr. No Personality or Fox, and then you only have the two options for weapons. The game could get interesting combat-wsie with the combinations of ships and like I think 14ish different weapons? But with just the starter pack you run through what the game has to offer pretty quick.

It is interesting though how I very rarely play Ubisoft games and hadn’t played one since their open-world formula milking, but right away I could tell that it was a Ubisoft open world game. There’s a lot to do, a lot of planets to explore, movement is fun and surprisingly easy, combat is pretty straightforward and has potential, but the key thing is that there’s like 30-50 facilities on each planets with like 4 different types of objectives (3 of which are “kill the same bad guys immediately here”), and you can spend hours on one planets doing some minor variance on that same thing over and over and over.

It’s a pretty good start in terms of base mechanics for what would be a cool system for an open StarFox game (and I know it wasn’t trying for that) but the repetitiveness of exploring, frankly pathetic writing in terms of characters, and locking a lot of the interesting content behind toys detracts from the experience. It’s definitely not un-fun, but after clearing 4 planets and seeing that’s just what the game is doing I don’t have any interest in continuing.

At least other than to see StarFox, because Ubisoft did them better justice than Nintendo has in years.

Best Game I Played in 2018: Celeste

Easy choice here, Celeste has a wonderful story, looks gorgeous, plays like a dream and managed to be an incredibly challenging platformer that didn’t make me lose my patience ever, which is AMAZING considering how little patience I have whenever I fail at a game.

I was going to pick the best game that actually came out in 2018 but honestly it’d be between like 4 games that I had gripes with in some way or another, so i’m going to say Overcooked 2 is pretty fucking solid and leave this whole run on sentence in the heading font because why not it’s my dead blog I can do whatever the fuck I wan-

Anyway that’s it. Hope everyone had a good year

#Game Impressions

1 note · View note

bigskydreaming · 4 years

Note

Im asking this genuinely so pls dont yell at me; when you say that those using trigger warnings dont care about their readers’ mental health and wellbeing, what else are trigger warnings supposed to be for? To make sure people don’t enter fics that have material that would harm them. Just like tv shows that warn about nudity or violence or what have you. Its a rating system, theyre warnings. Tagging for rape or underage ARE the looking-out-for-readers thing. Past that, it is on readers to decide

I try not to yell at anyone engaging in good faith, I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but I would rather be engaged with than ignored...the latter is when my volume goes up, lol.

But in answer to your question, it comes down to the fact that trigger warnings are well established enough in fandom by now, that they exist as a kind of social contract.

In short, its EXPECTED that you provide trigger warnings, and that if you don’t have them, someone will bring that up at some point.

Problem is, this counter-productively works against what trigger warnings are actually FOR.....once we reach a point (which we’ve long since reached)....where a lot of people are only including the trigger warnings because of the social contract that expects them to have them, and not ACTUALLY because they’re prioritizing their readers’ well-being.

Something I see a LOT after trigger warnings is the phrase or sentiment “enter at your own risk”....and the phrasings are so, so key to what I’m talking about.

Take a small sampling and just look for what I’m describing and I’m fairly certain you won’t have to go far to find an example of a fic where the tone of the author is not one of concern for readers, but preemptive concern for potential backlash from readers.

And these are two very different things.

Like, we all know how to read and interpret tone and nuance. Its genuinely not that hard to tell the difference between a sincere expression of wanting readers to be aware of potentially triggering content, and a faux-expression of that when really, the only thing you’re worried about triggering is a negative reception from people, and you want to get ahead of that by making it clear from the get go that hey, you did your job, you warned readers, and thus nobody has any grounds to say anything about your content itself.

Because also too there’s the fact that trigger warnings are inherently fallible. They rely on the author’s own AWARENESS of their content and everything it might include......but a racist author isn’t going to place a trigger warning for using their characters as mouthpieces for even blatant white supremacist ideology.

A genuinely predatory author (and yes, they absolutely do exist, and its willful stubbornness that people rely on to pretend that like, for some bizarre reason, only genuinely predatory people don’t partake in this otherwise global hobby of reading and writing fiction, like what even is that, how do you arrive at that conclusion, that like, actual pedophiles are so busy preying on ‘real life’ teenagers in their zip code 24/7 that they just don’t have TIME to go online and cultivate predatory relationships with real life teenagers via social media? That doesn’t make any sense!)

But anyway, a genuinely predatory author, is absolutely NOT going to tag or place trigger warnings for pedophilia, etc....because they don’t WANT the things they write perceived that way.

People trying to normalize incest are not always going to tag for incest because they want to DISTANCE the cute, sweet dynamic between two ‘only sorta brothers’ as other than the kind of incest that destroys families...regardless of the reality that most cases of incest are the LATTER and its the FORMER that’s so rare it barely exists.

And that sort of thing is how we get terms like dub-con and pseudo-incest and ‘consensual underage sex’ when its describing a relationship between a minor and adult....because this is mitigating, distancing language. Its entire reason for existing is to make unpalatable content seem more palatable.

And especially in Batfandom, we KNOW this.

Because we all, practically universally, give Devin Grayson crap for describing the rape in Nightwing #93 as ‘nonconsensual sex’ and go.....THATS NOT A THING!

And then half of fandom turns around and....acts like that and similar stuff...IS A THING.

That doesn’t work! LOL. It just...doesn’t.

Or another example, because abuse can be just as triggering as rape.....like, for me, personally, I’m a survivor of both, and yes, both CAN be triggering. But not as much as people might think....like, just reading a depiction of these things doesn’t trigger me.

Its, like you were saying at the get go, yes, a matter of surprise.....the kind of thing that CAN be warned for, and prepared for, and its the sheer unexpectedness that’s usually the trigger.

Like.....I went off a few weeks ago about reading a story that was supposed to be about Dick’s brothers learning the truth about what led him to take the Spyral mission and what happened in Forever Evil. That’s what the summary said, that was it, that was the only thing it led me to expect about the story. So understandably, I go into the story expecting it to be sympathetic to Dick. I’m looking for catharsis from it honestly, a salve for the many fics and canon events that blamed and punished him for something I don’t consider his fault, right?

And then towards the end....I get Jason punching Dick again, before hugging him, because that’s just how he reluctantly shows love or whatever.

This genuinely triggered me, yeah. Its why I got so upset about it. Because I was blindsided, I had no way to prepare for it, because I went in expecting catharsis for a story that bothered me due to its victim blaming, and instead I got the author heaping on more of the same abuse we already saw in canon.....with zero awareness that’s what she was doing.

So....that’s absolutely something I wrestled with should I message the author and ask them to add a trigger warning or not? Because I genuinely could have used one. It would have helped. I would have avoided that story if I had any notion that might crop up in it, because frankly, that’s not something I had any interest in reading.

But problem is, there’s only really two realistic outcomes there. If she was open to hearing a genuine request for her to be aware that her content contained triggering material for a reader....chances are, she probably would have just edited it and taken that out entirely. It was just one line. Easy enough to do. It certainly didn’t add anything.

Problem is....there’s an equal and opposite likely outcome....that she’d get defensive, call this unsolicited criticism, and double down on the idea that what she had written wasn’t abuse, because obviously she doesn’t condone abuse, so she wouldn’t have written that plain and simple. It has to be acknowledged that a lot of authors ARE innately defensive about social content in their work, and not open to hearing they’ve done something offensive or triggering....because that’s like...literally the basis of the ‘no unsolicited criticism’ movement in fandom, even though being critical of toxic ideology expressed in content is NOT the same as offering criticism of someone’s writing in general.

So you see what I mean? A trigger warning COULD genuinely help in that situation....but our fandom environment simply flat out is not conducive for readers to be at all confident that they even CAN come forward and alert an author that they delved into an offensive, even harmful take with their content and be well received no matter HOW they phrase it....

For much the same reasons I mentioned in that other post. People are more likely to instinctively jump to the defense of the person WRITING the content that offended or did actual emotional harm....than the person simply trying to say, backed by their own lived experience of....being offended or experiencing emotional harm....hey, this is a problem for me and I would appreciate it being regarded as such....

Otherwise, what is even the POINT of this entire system of trigger warnings in the first place? If a problem for a reader isn’t regarded as worthy of attention in and of itself.....at least, not in comparison to whatever problem that READER’S problem creates for the WRITER.

You see what I’m saying? For this, and a lot of other reasons, trigger warnings are innately fallible. They rely on an honor code system, and the uncomfortable truth is none of us are actually naive enough to believe everyone in fandom is innately honorable enough to honor that....if they were, would we have as much cases of anon hate, spite fics, etc?

But fandom as a whole looked at the trigger warning system and decided well....its good enough. Because its not like I’m proposing a viable alternative, its not like I have a BETTER system in mind, offhand. All I do have is the point that well...no...its NOT good enough as is....because for a ton of reasons, there’s a ton of cases in which there’s a ton of people for which it flat out doesn’t work for or benefit at all.

But when this comes up to any degree, in any capacity whatsoever....and the only thing people fall back on is well, I tagged it, or I used trigger warnings what more do you want, or its good enough for me so that’s what matters, or just....

“I did what I was supposed to per the social contract about trigger warnings, so if anything goes wrong in your reading experience at this point, that’s entirely on you.”

Like, does that make sense?

Basically, there’s a world of difference between:

This is a problem that still needs solving because the solution provided now is not all-encompassing or inclusive....

And....

This is a problem that’s already been solved as far as I’m concerned, and I’m utilizing that solution so any further problems are just in the mind of the reader and have nothing to do with reality, let alone me and my work.

Again, as I said above....its the difference between genuinely engaging with other members of your fandom community with actual concern for THEIR fandom experience.....or faking engagement with other members of your fandom community when your only real concern is YOUR fandom experience, and at most, the experiences of anyone who already is of like minds to you on a subject.

Hopefully that answers your question or clarifies my stance there, anon. And thank you for actually engaging on this. It feels a bit like shouting into the void a lot of the time, lol.

9 notes · View notes

coolgreatwebsite · 6 years

Text

Cool Games I Finished In 2017 (In No Real Order)

Civilization The year is nearing its end, so that means it’s once again time for one of these. 2017 has been rough for pretty much everyone, but even divorced from the state of the world this was unquestionably the worst year of my life. 2017 was a goddamn nightmare where nearly everything went wrong for me in the most major way possible. Consequently I didn’t get to do as much writing as I would have liked, and I ended up playing fewer games with almost all of them being 2017 releases. But! The video games were very fun!! So it all cancels out!!! Everything’s okay!!!! Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2017.

Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada (iOS, 2017)

Dandy Dungeon is weird as hell, which makes sense given that it was made by a lot of people who originally worked on games like Chulip and Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. It’s a free-to-play phone game that’s sort of a cross between a puzzle game and a dungeon crawler. Guide your semi-nude hero Yamada to the exit of the 5x5 dungeon grid in a single line, trying to touch every tile along the way, gathering treasure and beating up enemies to level up. Solving the floors and making the perfect line is satisfying, the story and enemies are all very strange, and there's a ton of content. The free-to-play monetization isn’t too obtrusive either, you can either buy straight up convenience features like unlimited energy and a mid-dungeon item storage system or buy rice balls that can be used as gacha entries or continues if you die in a dungeon and don’t want to give up your treasure. I felt 100% okay with giving the weirdos who made this game money. The same people put out another game this year, Million Onion Hotel, and I barely put any time into it because I just kept playing Dandy Dungeon. I’m very much looking forward to really playing that whenever the hell I finally burn out on this.

Yakuza 0 (PlayStation 4, 2017)

Yakuza 0 is a hell of a game, and a hell of an introduction to the Yakuza series for anyone who hasn’t played it. Set in 1988, the game follows series mainstays Kiryu and Majima as they deal with the events that made them who they are in the games to follow. While I ended up still liking Yakuza 5 more if only for the sheer scope and variety of it, Yakuza 0 is very easily the second best game in the series. It has one of the most straightforward, coherent and engaging narratives out of all of them, it pulls off its setting so well that it made me sort of nostalgic for an era I wasn’t even alive for, and the localization/writing is unquestionably the best the series has had. Almost every single sidequest is funny or memorable in some way and I just can’t say that about the rest of the games. It’s not flawless. The combat unsurprisingly pulls very heavily from Yakuza 5 but with multiple fighting styles for Kiryu and Majima taking the place of multiple characters, and I mostly found myself just sticking with one style for each of them. Beast and Breaker were just too good. The story, while mostly good as previously stated, does have its stumbling points. Some characters and events definitely aren’t given enough breathing room, mostly on the Majima side of things, and weirdly enough the game holds back on having Kiryu and Majima interact for the most part. Overall though, Yakuza 0 is a fantastic encapsulation of why I love this series so damn much and the absolute best jumping on point a newcomer could ask for. Plus Space Harrier is in it! Every game is better when you can also play Space Harrier.

NieR: Automata (PlayStation 4, 2017)

I feel like every year I do one of these lists there’s a game where I start off by saying “This game is good, but”. NieR: Automata is this year’s game. NieR: Automata is a good game, but I did not have the fervent, visceral reaction to it that most other people seem to have had, and my feelings are muddied even further by the lingering feeling that I SHOULD have. I love the first NieR. It’s one of my favorite games of all time. I love PlatinumGames. They’re one of my favorite developers of all time. Yet I came away from Automata somewhat... I don’t know if it’s disappointed. I guess “left wanting” might be a more accurate description? Again, don’t get me wrong here, this is a good game. There’s a lot to like in NieR: Automata. It’s a wild ride, but for me that’s... kind of it? The game shuttles you from crazy setpiece to crazy setpiece, but the second I stopped to think about anything that happened in any sort of detail it all just got real murky. I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters, outside two exceptions, and one of those is a character from the first game that I already loved. NieR: Automata’s storytelling is much more reliant and focused on its themes and imagery than anything that really actually happens during the course of the story, and I’ve never been a huge fan of narratives like that. I need a strong connection to characters and events and places, and whereas the first NieR had that by the truckload, Automata super doesn’t. There’s also the part where a lot of what Automata does, I feel the original game did better. Automata’s music is good, but NieR’s is better. The multiple playthrough system feels like it’s just tacked on because the first game did it, where in the original it was absolutely vital to that game’s story. Same goes for the choice you make in the final ending. The most I can say as far as improvements go is that the combat, while about as mindless, certainly looks better and overall the sidequests are less tedious and grindy. It’s been a very weird experience seeing the huge, widespread positive reaction to this game essentially mirror my feelings on the first game while I’m just sort of left to grumble about how the first game did all that better under my breath. Not that I’m not glad it got a positive reception! It’s great that this game has been such a success and that so many people have finally had their Yoko Taro Moment™. Like I’ve gone out of my way to state multiple times: the game is still good. There’s some wild shit to see in NieR: Automata, and while it didn’t leave a positive lasting impression on me, I very much had a good time with it in the moment.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo Switch, 2017)

I thought I was done with open world games. I had pretty much decided I was two years ago. I was so tired of the checklists, the boring traversal, the endless swaths of fucking nothing between mission A and mission B, the heaps of useless collectible garbage littering the ground trying to trick you into thinking you’re doing something. I was perfectly content with never playing an open world game again, and when Nintendo started promoting the new Zelda with that familiar Bethesda-esque “go any direction, climb any mountain” rhetoric and showed you climbing towers to reveal the map, I for all intents and purposes checked the fuck out. I didn’t care that it was Zelda, I didn’t care that it was Nintendo, I was just fucking done with all of that... I thought. The more time went on, the more impressions got out, and the more impressions got out, the more of my individual sticking points seemed to have been addressed. Yeah, you climb towers, but all that does is fill in the topography of the map. You don’t get flooded with a million activity and collectible icons, it’s up to you to scope out what looks interesting. And most importantly, while the landmass is large, there’s always something around the corner. I decided to get Breath of the Wild along with my Switch and I’m so glad I did. If I hadn’t been whittled down by pre-release chatter I would have missed out on one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s like Nintendo explicitly set out to fix every problem I had with open world games. The way the systems in the world interact with each other, how much of a joy it is to explore and traverse the terrain, and the fact that there really IS always something to find make for a breathtaking game. If you go in any direction, you’ll trip over dozens of neat things to do and see. If you climb any mountain, there’s a good chance there will be something waiting for you at the top (and along the way), from a simple Korok seed puzzle to a full-blown shrine dungeon. The game gives you no truly firm direction once you leave the tutorial area, so it really is up to you to explore and find what you want. You can even run straight for the final boss if you want! The traditional Zelda-style puzzles are all super smart and satisfying to solve. I even liked the Divine Beast dungeons and boss fights, which I feel like I’m in the minority about. I finally took on Ganon after about 100 hours of playing the game and I hadn’t been so sad that a game was over since I beat Persona 3. Breath of the Wild is just an incredible, once in a lifetime game. I can’t wait to do it all again next year when I do another playthrough with all the DLC.

Persona 5 (PlayStation 4, 2017)

Persona 3 will likely always be nearest and dearest to my heart, but Persona 5 is objectively the best Persona game. They’ve polished the Persona formula to such a perfect mirror sheen in this one and I’ve never seen a game so consistently and effortlessly ooze such a concentrated amount of liquid capital-“S” Style before. The plot doesn’t intimately revolve around the cast to the degree Persona 4′s does, but they’ve made another charming band of anime teens nonetheless. They’ve either restored or re-worked nearly every mechanical aspect that was dropped between Persona 3 and 4. The soundtrack is incredible, there’s actually a decent amount of non-party S-Links again, the end of the game sticks the landing in a way Persona 4 very much does not... I could keep going. Persona 5 just plain rules. It’s the only game in the series where (even though I haven’t yet) I’ve actually wanted to jump in and do a New Game+ run.

Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap (Nintendo Switch, 2017)

As I may have mentioned in a certain other article from this year, I have had very little love for Wonder Boy over the years. That changed a bit when I decided to try out Monster World IV a few years ago, and I think I’m officially a Wonder Boy Liker after playing The Dragon’s Trap. A remake of Wonder Boy 3 for the Master System, Dragon’s Trap is essentially just an extremely pretty coat of paint on a very early Metroidvania sort of game, but it’s remarkable how well the core gameplay holds up. You start as a human and very early on you’re transformed into a dragon, and you explore the world until you reach a boss which, upon being defeated, transforms you into a mouse. Your mouse form has the ability to enter narrow spaces and stick to certain walls, which allows you to reach new areas, bosses and transformations. Defeated enemies drop coins that you can use to purchase new weapons and armor from shops hidden across the world. It’s fairly simple, but I think that’s the reason it’s still so enjoyable today. The controls are tight and responsive and it doesn’t really date itself in too many ways. They went to great lengths to recreate the original game, down to being able to swap between the remade and classic graphics and music with a button press. Old passwords from the original game even work in the remake. The new art and music are beautiful and the game is the perfect length to not overstay its welcome. You can tell the people who made this really love the original game, and they absolutely did right by it.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PlayStation 4, 2017)

I never in a million years expected to like Resident Evil 7 as much as I did. I played the demo back when it came out and thought it was okay, and I mainly got the full game so I could play something on my PSVR. It’s kind of crazy how, after so many years of Resident Evil stumbling, Capcom managed to just get everything back on track just like that. They made Resident Evil tense and scary again. The VR is insanely effective but even playing through on a regular ol’ TV, which I did multiple times after my initial VR playthrough, they manage to capture a really good, persistent sense of dread. For most of the game, anyway. The last third definitely slips a bit too far back into action game territory, and while it’s still enjoyable it’s definitely weaker than what came before. I beat this for the first time right before the next game on the list came out, and even while super deep into that I couldn’t stop thinking about Resident Evil 7. I really need to go back and play all the DLC.

Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo Switch, 2017)

2017 was Nintendo’s year. They released my favorite console in a good long while with the Switch, launched it with one of the greatest games of all time, and closed out the year with another incredible game in Super Mario Odyssey. Mario Odyssey has finally dethroned Mario 64 as my favorite 3D exploration Mario game. It’s like Breath of the Wild in that there’s something to find in every nook and cranny, but condensed down into multiple, more tightly designed areas. It’s an absolute joy to play. I 100%ed the game and not once in the 50-ish hours that took did I get tired of controlling Mario. The movement options all flow together so naturally and complement the spaces you explore so well. Landing a long jump > hat throw > dive > hat bounce > dive combo across a huge gap was the most satisfying thing in the world to pull off even as I grabbed the very last power moon. The variety of the worlds and challenges and things to capture kept me in a constant state of excitement about what was coming up next, and the game is consistently charming in both weird new ways and a couple of very effective nostalgic ones. My only real complaints are that I think it’s maybe the easiest Mario game ever made, and I wish more of the platforming challenges were baked into the worlds proper instead of cordoned off into their own little challenge rooms, but basically everything else about the game manages to make those minor somehow. Mario Odyssey is distilled happiness in video game form, and the world needs more of that.

Sonic Mania (PlayStation 4, 2017)

Ohhhh myyyyy Goddddddddddddd Sonic Mania. I cannot fucking believe how awesome Sonic Mania is. I love the Genesis Sonic games so fucking much and while I like Sonic Adventure 1 despite itself, there hasn’t been a good Sonic game since Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The Genesis games always were and will always be great fucking video games, despite what internet fuckboys say because Sonic’s an easy target to dunk on. I’ll take Sonic 3 & Knuckles over Super Mario World any day of the fucking week. Fight me. I’ll cut you. With Sonic Mania, there is FINALLY, fucking TWENTY-THREE GODDAMN YEARS LATER, a legitimately great Sonic The Hedgehog game again, and I’m stunned. I was INSANELY skeptical about this game from the minute it was announced until basically the moment I played it. Yeah, they brought in people from the hacking and fan-game community to work on this one instead of letting Sonic Team touch it, but I’m close enough to those communities to know that that on its own is NOT enough to guarantee the game would be good. Yeah, Taxman and Stealth made an extremely good replica of the Sonic 1-3&K engine, but they absolutely did not have the design chops to tackle anything but ports successfully. That new version of Hidden Palace they added into the iOS port of Sonic 2 was a complete trash fire. Thankfully they linked up with PagodaWest Games, a company made up of a lot of the non-insane elements behind the old Sonic 2 HD project, who as it turns out very much did have the design chops. Together they made something incredible. It obviously controls perfectly given the engine, but the levels are so fun and well-crafted. The classic levels manage to mix in so many different elements from other levels that didn’t quite make it in the game on top of there being weird twists on those on TOP of all the completely new elements, and the brand new levels are lavish with all sorts of super fun new gimmicks and details. The game looks fucking gorgeous, going for a sort of “what if they had made a 2D Sonic for the Saturn” look that it pulls off great, even going so far as to render the special stages in low-poly 3D. The music is P-H-E-N-O-M-E-N-A-L, sounding like a lost ‘90s Japanese arrange CD but without all the bad aspects that usually come with those. There’s so many dumb, great little details for hardcore classic Sonic and Sega fans littered throughout the game. They managed to fucking combine Oil Ocean and Sandopolis, my least favorite zone from Sonic 2 and one of the worst zones in the entire SERIES, and have me come away from it not hating it. It’s masterful. It’s beautiful. It’s right up there with Sonic 3 & Knuckles for best in the series. Nothing this year made me so genuinely, personally delighted. Sonic Mania was made just for me and I love it and I want another one with all original levels as soon as possible. Please let these people make video games for me forever.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2017)

The original Xenoblade is one of my favorite RPGs of the last generation. Then they released Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U and broke my goddamn heart. They tossed out nearly everything I loved about the first game in favor of haphazardly dumping as many disjointed game mechanics as they could on top of bland open world exploration and needlessly grindy progression. It was such a hard swerve that by the time they had gotten around to announcing a proper Xenoblade 2 for the Switch I had basically abandoned all hope of it being a game I’d like. But for some reason, I still decided to give Monolithsoft one last shot. And I’m glad I did! While not quite as cohesive and instantly-endearing as the original, they definitely righted the ship. There’s a bunch of weird mechanics, but in the good Xenoblade 1 way where they mete them all out at an appropriate pace and explain them and they all fit together. The cast of characters is likable, the music is great, the gameplay is engaging all the way through. They managed to pull it off, and I’m back on board for a potential Xenoblade 3.

These games were also cool, I just had less words to say about them: Splatoon 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2017): Splatoon is great. Splatoon 2 is more of that. The new weapons are fun, the new maps are cool, Salmon Run is the most fun I’ve ever had with a horde mode. I played it for like 100 hours already. Not too much else to say! Play Splatoon 2! Hitman (PlayStation 4, 2016): Hitman is an amazing sandbox. Whether I was following along with the authored ways to kill my targets, doing things my own way or trying to get out of a situation that went completely south, Hitman constantly surprised me with the variety of things I could do and options I could take advantage of. And there’s so damn much content to do it all in. DDRMAX, DDRMAX2 & Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (PlayStation 2, 2002, 2003 & 2004): This doesn’t really teeeechnically fit on this list but I would be remiss not to bring up my rekindled love affair with DDR this year. My very good friend who I am very appreciative towards at all times Geoff generously gifted me an old Cobalt Flux dance pad back in like June and I have been playing DDR again ever since and it’s still great. I can clear some songs on heavy now. Thanks Geoff. Glittermitten Grove (Steam, 2016): A very normal game about fairies, and not about shaving. Tekken 7 (PlayStation 4, 2017): Tekken 7 is the first Tekken game I’ve cared about in like a decade. I couldn’t really tell you exactly why, to be honest, but the fact of the matter is that Tekken 7 is very fun to play and I highly recommend it. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PlayStation 4, 2017): I think the gameplay of this is worse than the first game, but everything else is stronger. Hopefully they fix it up and make a game that’s great all around next time. Gundam Versus (PlayStation 4, 2017): Gundam Versus is basically a team based Virtual On. I had a lot of fun with an old version of the game at various events I went to throughout the year and I had a lot of fun with this one even though I didn’t play it nearly as much as I wanted to. Clowning on people with Guntank in 1v1 is probably the hardest I laughed all year.

And that’s it! That’s 2017! It’s done! Good riddance! Thank you all again for bothering to read my video game words. If you need me, I’ll be training to deliver many extremely savage elbow drops to 2018 until it gives me what I want.

#article #year wrapup

15 notes · View notes

safestsephiroth · 7 years

Text

An Explanation for My Departure from The Riskbreakers, or: A Tale of Failure

This is my story with FFXIV to this point, an explanation of the current situation, and my plans for the future. The only person “indicted” or “called out” here is me. Should you feel the need or desire to contact me about this subject, and what I’ve written below does not feel comprehensive enough to you, please feel free to.

CW: extreme depression, suicidal thoughts

I joined Final Fantasy XIV against my better judgment. I hated MMOs as a genre. Paying for the subscription would, at the time, be a dicey prospect. I had plenty of other games to play, plenty of other things to do.

But I was lonely. Terribly lonely.

What I saw in FFXIV was a chance to play a game and make new friends. When I first got the game, the only person I knew in-game was @onwesterlywinds. But there was more than just that. I didn’t know anything about the community whatsoever. I didn’t even follow many Final Fantasy blogs in general at the time. I got the game at Livvy’s behest and specifically to play it with her.

I had never roleplayed in a game before. My prior experiences with text-based RP (except those linked to a tabletop game system, such as Vampire: The Masquerade) were universally terrible. Embarrassing. I had horrible associations with those memories. I was terribly nervous when I first RPed, and the first character I made in FFXIV, Blaetlona Isilmynawyn, was intentionally made in response to this and my general lack of knowledge of the game or its world. Blae was overwhelmingly cheery and optimistic to the point of obliviousness, which gave me a free out of any nervous situation, as well as being completely naiive about the world so I would be able to slide on not knowing important things.

I made more characters over a long, long period of time. It was a crawl, really. I gave each character tons of effort, plenty of introduction, and loved them dearly. But in all honesty, I was terrible at RP for the first year or two. Just abysmal. A bad RP partner who overstepped boundaries constantly because I was used to GMing games, making decisions about the game world to make for interesting plots.

I am embarrassed and ashamed of how long it took me to learn that lesson.

Over time, my connection with The Riskbreakers grew into a wonderful friendship. I did everything I could to be pleasant to be around - farmed gil I spent on in-game birthday presents for other company members, was a positive presence in /fc, and helped out with PVE content when I could - I was terrible and hated the endgame gear grind, hated the very idea of dropping either weeks of time or shitloads of gil so I could experience something I didn’t give a damn about. Because it was never about the gameplay, it was about the story - of the game, and of the RP.

It was glamour that got me out of that shell and into the Crystal Tower. That led to me doing MSQ through the abject misery of 2.1, well into 2.3 or 2.4′s time.

The problems, all along, were my fault. I didn’t want to play the endgame when I could instead level alts or RP. I didn’t want to waste time on parts of the game I was sure to just find frustrating. I hated the weekly cap, hated the tome grind, hated the very idea of doing coil.

In Heavensward, I started to care so much more about the gameplay, in large part because it was made better pretty much across the board. I remember I didn’t even do the MSQ for like two months - I was too busy leveling DPS jobs in the magical dungeon queues that happened right at Heavensward launch, where DPS was always adventurer in need.

What I always loved about The Riskbreakers (RISK) was the atmosphere. Everyone was friendly towards everyone, the RP was fairly loose and there was a lot of room for creativity. I made so many characters with such variety - nowhere else would my cast include a privateer, a melodramatic bard, an ages-old assassin hiding in plain sight, and a fangirl! Every step of the way, it felt fantastic to be supported. To be respected.

About a year and a half ago, towards the tail end of May 2016, as I recall, I feel I lost that respect irrevocably. I was struggling with severe depression at the time and I had so many difficulties suppressing my agitation in the company Skype chat that I followed an implicit suggestion and voluntarily left said Skype chat with the promise I’d be allowed back in whenever I wanted. To be frank, this was the worst decision I could have made. RISK was practically all of my daily socialization. Without access to the Skype chat I missed planned events, I missed out on the lives of people I cared deeply about. And I really, truly cared, with all my heart. In the darkest times, when FFXIV was all I had in my life that I could still count on enjoying, I tried to cling even harder to the community of friends I had. But I’ve always been a shy person, and that meant the only people I really knew at the time were in The Riskbreakers.

By sequestering myself, I killed my social life. You may be able to imagine that this did not help my depression. It was a terrible decision I had made, but the damage stayed done. I ended up installing Discord, a program which at the time I had zero interest in, because there was a RISK Discord server and I’d hoped to be able to reconnect through that. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t. I found myself afraid to talk to people I’d known for years because I thought, deep down, they all knew I deserved the isolation.

It was irrational of me, sure. But I was far beyond the point of rationality for a long, long time. Maybe I still am. Probably. I still remember there was a resistance to the movement to Discord because of past experiences by some of the membership, people who’d seen that cliques tend to form in situations where not everyone can/wants to be on mic. I tried. I really did try to be of use, to be a positive presence.

But after days of getting up my courage, the first call I joined ended quickly thereafter. As did the second. Thusly convinced it was my fault, and that I was secretly hated, I elected not to join calls uninvited. It felt rude, like intruding into a conversation at a restaurant. It wasn’t talking with friends anymore. There was only so much I could take.

My depression grew worse, and worse, and worse, as my life fell further into a downward spiral. I took increasingly long sabbaticals from RP or even all of FFXIV. I found other games to dive into. I found more distractions to keep back the voices telling me they all hated me and suicide was the only option I had left.

Even as Fanfest approached, I didn’t feel much better. I think everyone remembers that in general 2016 was a shitty year for most people, and it was especially bad for me. Much of my good cheer and will to carry on came from The Crucible. Much of my will to live came from the handful of people I was deeply entrenched in RP with, who I decided to trust.

There were a lot of sins I committed, then - abandoned plots, failure to show up for company plans, missed events - and I regret them all. I don’t feel I can or should be forgiven for what a sorry excuse for a company member I was at the time and since. After the first Heavensward MSQ RP arc which I didn’t much enjoy, something I never once voiced properly because I was hoping the problem would just go away, I skipped a major RP arc in Palace of the Dead for a reason so petty and selfish I won’t mention it here. I jumped into the next one because I felt that my connection to the company was slipping. Sometimes I wanted to leave so I could have less reasons to live.

For all I wanted to blame other people, it was me. It was always me. Every step of the way. If I had just reached out and asked for help, maybe it would’ve been different. If I’d been bluntly honest, maybe it would’ve been better. But I didn’t want to be a problem anymore. I already bothered people so much they’d leave calls if I showed up, right? So reaching out at all, particularly publicly? Not an option. I didn’t want to hurt others. I didn’t want to be selfish. But maybe I should have been, just a little.

For a long time, I lived thinking I would never reconnect with FFXIV RP outside the three (and, over time, two, then one) people I had frequent RP with. Instead of enjoying RP with RISK I found it stressful and unfulfilling, both out of a fear of fucking things up and a general dislike of where things were going. My favorite part of the company was the generally loose standards it played by, after all.

I used Rydia Misuto as a way to cope. By making a character with so much effort put in, so much potential for growth, and a story of so much more grand a scale than I usually did, I expected people to be impressed with me. Rydia came in December 2015, at the cusp of the depressive phase that never really went away completely since it started, but I was proud of her. I loved writing her. I was so inspired by her. Brohamut and I planned great things for her and Cecilia Harvey, and we elected to keep our plans largely a secret so others could be surprised by this story we were collaboratively telling. Suddenly the magic had returned before it had faded.

But I shot myself in the foot. I fucked myself over before I’d begun, because I was so casual about her character that she was quickly just the “lettuce brat”. I tried my best to depict a character who had gone through hell and lived, and came out severely traumatized and unable to adequately cope with it. Someone in need of help they were reluctant to seek. I had hoped that something this different would be of interest to people.

It was a mistake.

A depressing story like hers? Nobody wanted that. Not really. There were lots of expectations heaped upon her because of the association with the character from FFIV. Though I did my best to clarify she was inspired by the character and never meant to be anything close to a 1-to-1 transition, I clearly screwed that up, too.

Rydia, a character written extremely seriously, became ‘the lettuce brat’. She ended up little more than comic relief in the eyes of most people, I feel, and the more I struggled to RP her more and get her taken more seriously the more I lost the fight. I misread the situation. Nobody would have wanted to RP with her no matter how I’d played her. Some things are just uncomfortable, and it’s not really other peoples’ obligation to explain that things make them uncomfortable.

The final nail in the coffin of my membership with RISK was the reformation leading into Stormblood RP. The free and open company of eclectic, bombastic personalities became a paramilitary and overnight practically none of my characters fit anymore. Jaraku doesn’t belong in a uniform taking orders. Grey didn’t want to fight. The only IC RISK member I had that was cool with it was Resh Viqqoh.

And even writing for The Crucible, carrying on other RP plots, playing Stormblood, I still tried to make Resh interesting. It was a new lease on the character who’d for so long been a nothing presence. Making her a full-on engineer wasn’t just logical, it was beautiful. It was a great evolution from her involvement in prior RP. It was a great thing.

I was so, so happy to be able to contribute, but once again I sank myself. I didn’t hunt people down to ask for RP, and the weapon dossiers I made just weren’t interesting enough to hold attention. Not one person wanted anything to do with the ‘engineering department’, which consisted of who I now see was mostly considered a kooky side character and an actual, literal child. I was doomed from the start.

Thanks entirely to Brohamut and The Crucible, I was able to find RPers outside the FC who were interested in RPing with me. I got over a lot of my shyness and came out of my shell a lot more because it felt less like one mistake would get me kicked. In my depressed state, I was convinced I was always a hair from being politely asked to leave RISK.

I never wanted to worry anyone, so I kept it to myself, almost entirely.

When my last-ditch effort with Resh failed and I found myself (on my second account) in other free companies who I felt more kinship with than RISK, the end was inevitable. If I wasn’t going to be allowed to RP with RISK as Rydia, if my characters were doomed to languish (because of my mistakes, because of my writing, because of my crippling sleep disorder I still don’t have a handle on) in a company with which I had precious little business RPing, then why not leave?

When I first broached the topic to Livvy, I told her I wanted to leave in small numbers, a bit at a time, so nobody would panic. And because I wanted to have the option open to come back. But that was me being a coward again.

So instead, I’m leaving in total now. And I want this explanation visible to the company I loved more than I had ever loved myself so that there’s no doubt or rumor about why I did it.

Now, as far as what I’m planning for RP purposes:

Any character who ends up retired/replaced will have a public post of their epilogue. I hate retcons, hate them, so I would rather write the end of their story than do what it would take for them to continue on outside the company, i.e. deny it existed IC. I’m not going to do that.

-Blaetlona Isilmynawyn is up in the air. I’ve had no real reason to RP her in any meaningful way in about a year. She’s tentatively considered an ‘open’ slot for new character creation

-Grey Riot will be retired. This has been a long time coming and was discussed in advance with relevant parties.

-Jaraku Drake is moving on from RISK, and IC has more plans now than ever. Apparently leaving the company was the best thing to happen to him from my perspective because now he has much more freedom to go different places and do more things.

-Zwynmaga Doesmagasyn, as the ‘biker gang’ RP series is completely abandoned/concluded, is up for replacement for new character creation should this be necessary.

-Bernard Undertaker, an integral part of the Undertakings arc, will remain involved in that arc so long as he lives IC. However, as I am neither able to afford nor justify spending $50 on him at this time for a story + job jump just so he can do one in-character action, I will not be taking him to Stormblood.

-Natalya Nibiru is up for replacement or radical shift in attention/direction. Potentially, I’ll keep her on to RP with Gaelle.

-Resh Viqqoh is going to require either EXTREME shift in character, or, more likely, replacement.

-Rydia Misuto will be one of my highest-priority RP characters because I owe it to her to give her a serious story that will be worth reading about, especially now that I am free of any burden of worry about how her story will conflict with others’.

-A’sato Clueless, made specifically for an RP arc I completely ruined immediately out of panic (which is not an excuse), will be replaced with a much better character for an arc I intend to go well which will be wholly unrelated to RISK.

-Gaelle Troyes will either continue to RP alongside Natalya/doing her own thing or be returned to retirement. Likely the former. I do enjoy those two and their dynamic.

-Gerrith Gaffgarion will be taken in other directions, as it was made clear to me (tragically late) that plans changed and he will not be needed or wanted in any RP involving RISK. He has already continued his successful career via a job which was part of a story arc conceived, planned, and carried on by @sasha-rochester and their closest RP partner, who are both phenomenal writers I have nothing but good to say about.

-Tange Shishido remains a willing teacher to anyone in the Far East who desires to learn how to use a katana to kill Garleans.

As the rest of my characters are not directly affiliated with RISK in any meaningful capacity, I feel no need to address my plans for them.

I hope those of you who took the time to read this can understand my decision. I hope I can be forgiven. At this time, I don’t know if I’ll attend any future company events. I will be leaving the skype chat and discord server, however, as it seems appropriate to do so given the circumstances. I never used the RISK server to play Overwatch, anyway, and it’s not as if I ever felt welcome in calls there.

14 notes · View notes

flore089gaming-blog · 5 years

Text

How one can (Do) SIMS four Cell In 24 Hours Or Less Without spending a dime

Electronic Arts Posts Powerful Q2 Results On Apex Legends, sims mobile 4, FIFA Ultimate Group

The sims mobile Wiki's Featured Write-up for September 2014. The sims mobile 4 features a revitalized, room-primarily based develop mode Rooms are placed down and then stretched in all directions till they attain the preferred size and shape. Rooms and entire homes can be picked up and moved about the lot, including all objects, floor and wall coverings, doors and windows. The sims mobile four improves upon the blueprint mode of The sims mobile three , permitting players to place down fully-furnished rooms in a variety of styles these rooms can then be resized, moved and adjusted as nicely. Players can also upload their rooms to the Gallery or download rooms from the Gallery to add to homes.

The sims mobile four had a couple of challenges at launch, but subsequent updates have tremendously improved the game, and it's effectively worth playing as it stands nowadays. Luckily, if you are nevertheless on the fence about trying it - and you have a decent Pc - you can get the base game for no cost via EA's Origin storefront as component of a new restricted-time freebie.

The sims mobile 4 is the highly anticipated life simulation game that lets you play with life like never just before. Manage smarter sims mobile with special appearances, personalities, behaviors, and feelings. Expertise new levels of creativity when you sculpt sims mobile with the potent Make A Sim and design and style stunning residences with tactile, space-based Build Mode. Use The Gallery to browse, share, and download new content material with out ever leaving your game. Control the thoughts, body, and heart of your sims mobile and discover your new gameplay possibilities in vibrant neighborhoods that bring your stories to life.

youtube

Nonetheless, if you don't make an effort to choose up after yourself, the piles of trash will multiply and pretty soon Sulani will resemble more of a garbage heap. The island of Mua Pel'am is unfortunately the most susceptible to sims mobile with negative intentions. Even if you are creating headway on enhancing the island, it can nevertheless attract fish poachers, litterbugs, anti-environmentalists who spread misinformation about your conservation effortsâ€”even seagulls that feed on all the new wildlife.

To be able to clean the home precisely as it is accomplished in the genuine world, to wash the vehicle, motorcycle, bicycle, and so on. Swimming pools and beaches entirely realistic, with effect and reflection, refraction and ripple of water with occurs in actual life and even in other games such as the game Singles Flirt Up Your Lifeâ€, a typical competitor of The sims mobile, who even at that time Of The sims mobile 2, and even obtaining a a great deal poorer mechanics, it already had awesome graphics and textures and a significantly extra detailed physics in numerous elements and I know you can do substantially improved for the reason that they have professionals of the highest regular, Due to the fact they have the cash and technologies to do so.

Get ten Minutes to Get going With SIMS four Cell

In order to comply with the story, you have to pick the Strangerville Mystery aspiration. The narrative introduces components we have not noticed before in The sims mobile that are bonkers and a ton of enjoyable thanks to light RPG mechanics and constructing a resistance to fight off an evil threat. With whispers of a government conspiracy and all your neighbors in Strangerville going nuts, the mystery of the town becomes more and far more alluring. Though it really is brief, you accrue a lot of rewards such as cupcakes and fan mail when you total the narrative. The furnishings (such as weeds increasing in a bathtub or mysterious machinery) also gives a lot of bizarre make concepts, giving you the perfect choices for developing a secret laboratory for your sim. The new laptops are a solid addition as effectively.

Most of the cheats in The sims mobile four are activated by typing codes into the cheat console, but there are also a lot of interaction cheats that become accessible as quickly as you turn cheats on. To use these cheats, you need to hold shift when you click on a sim or object to access the specific cheat menu. Clicking any of the selections in the cheat menu will execute the cheat.

The sims mobile franchise is fueled by the passion and creativity of its millions of fans around the world. Their continued devotion to the franchise ignites the fire of creativity of the team at The sims mobile Studio, driving them to continually enhance and innovate on 1 of the world's most effective simulation game that has sold far more than 150 million copies worldwide.

Child sims mobile can now practical experience a 'Monster-Under-The-Bed', appearing as tentacles which young children can either befriend or ask Adults to Spray. Adults cannot see this Monster, nevertheless. A light for warding away the Monster has also been added, which functions an image of the new character 'Coolala'. This character seems in the new Kids Room Stuff as effectively, released June 28, 2016.

The sims mobile four has been quietly toiling away considering that the release of Get Popular and Strangerville , adding no cost content material packs that include new profession alternatives and terrain tools Whilst the expansions are nevertheless locked behind a paywall, fans can claim the base game of The sims mobile four from Electronic Arts, by way of Origin , via May perhaps 28.

But dig a little deeper and you'll obtain some far more subtle, however equally terrifying things that are there just to make your sims mobile miserable on a deep emotional level. Issues like property insurance coverage, environmental duty, and dealing with the each day stresses of neighbors and kids are all points that most of us have all dealt with in our actual lives in a single type or yet another. The sims mobile 4 just tends to make these things a little much more charming in its own sick and twisted way.

0 notes

plxyboi-blog · 5 years

Text

What Is the Optavia Diet?

New Post has been published on https://healthy4lives.com/what-is-the-optavia-diet/

What Is the Optavia Diet?

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "books009a-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_design = "in_content"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "eb6b8d82602b7891da759d9bf5221f00"; amzn_assoc_asins = "162315944X,B00UJIXKL4,B07CZ837VB";

Though it hasn’t nevertheless realized the ubiquity of fashionable meal plans like Keto, Paleo, and Whole30, the Optavia diet plan approach is finding a large amount of buzz on social media. It was also a person of the top rated-ten most Googled meal plans last year—though so much the biggest celebrity to admit to jumping on the Optavia bandwagon is Cake Boss’s Buddy Valastro. So what is this “lifestyle” approach that your friend’s cousin claims she misplaced so a lot pounds on? Can you definitely fall important pounds and maintain them off? Let us get down to it.

1st, the track record: What is Optavia?

Optavia is basically a new model of an more mature diet plan, Medifast, which was established by a physician in 1980 and involved packaged shakes, bars, and treats. The approach was up-to-date a handful of situations, and in 2017 a new iteration for the electronic age, Optavia (rhymes with Mamma Mia), was introduced. When you sign up for Optavia, you purchase food items on the internet and get connected to a individual mentor, who is in most scenarios a former customer keen to share the gospel of Optavia (and who also receives paid a fee on all the food stuff you purchase, plus bonuses and extra commissions for recruiting and supporting other coaches). The mentor aids you work by way of a “Habits of Health” program—commonsense overall health ambitions like making use of the stairs rather of the elevator and ingesting tons of water—but the principal sell of the method is however all those packaged shakes and bars.

How does the Optavia diet plan work?

In the initial “Optimal Excess weight five & 1” phase—which can last twelve weeks, 6 months, or for a longer period, based on how a lot pounds you want to lose—you eat 6 modest meals a working day, distribute out each and every two to three hours so you do not get hungry and your blood sugar concentrations stay continual. So much, excellent plan! But there is a catch: 5 out of the 6 “meals” consist of processed, packaged meal replacements referred to as Fuelings.

There are about 60 distinctive forms of Fuelings obtainable for sale on the site (a starter pack that consists of 119 servings expenditures $392). Possibilities include things like savory dishes like pasta, oatmeal, mashed potatoes, and soups (all of which come in dehydrated packs you add h2o and pop in the microwave), but the the greater part of the merchandise are shakes, bars, cookies, and crunchy treats (Chili Nacho Cheese Puffs, anyone?). Just about every of these Fuelings has all over a hundred calories and has what Optavia calls “a significant quality protein” and a probiotic for digestive overall health.

A range of Optavia’s Fuelings, founds on its website.

Optavia

“As soon as we start out referring to meals and treats as Fuelings, we’re presently in difficulties,” claims Jaclyn London, MS, RD, CDN, director of the Diet Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute, who is also the creator of Dressing on the Side (and Other Diet regime Myths Debunked). “Food is intended to be liked in purchase to present nourishment in any and each and every kind, and labeling it as gasoline ignores that fact.”

In this section, you’re permitted to eat contemporary food stuff just after a working day, for your “Lean & Green” meal, which you put together by yourself (or, with some effort, purchase in a cafe): It need to include things like five to seven ounces of a lean protein, these types of as fish, chicken, eggs, or steak up to two servings of a healthy body fat these types of as avocado or canola oil and a heap of non-starchy veggies. No fruit, potatoes, dairy, bread, or grains are permitted, and alcoholic beverages is a definite no-no.

This all adds up to 800 to one,000 calories for every working day. To set that in standpoint, a woman in her forties demands a minimum amount of one,800 calories a working day, according to USDA dietary rules one,000 calories is the suggested amount for an normal two-yr-aged.

So, when do you go back to actual food stuff?

After you have achieved your purpose pounds, you change to a transition section, in which you can eat three Lean & Eco-friendly meals a working day, gradually incorporating in fruit, dairy, and entire grains, but continuing to nutritional supplement with three Fuelings for every working day. “We give purchasers direction to enable them prevent currently being in the body fat-burning section and transition to a balanced, healthy condition,” claims Optavia Coach Jan Paxman. She points out that purchasers can ultimately transition to a wholly entire-food stuff diet plan, although, she claims, “Most of them find that it’s practical to proceed to use the Fuelings, for the reason that it keeps it quite easy and expense-efficient. If they’re grabbing rapid food stuff or treats at vending devices, they stop up spending at the very least the similar amount or even extra.”

Perfectly, you are going to absolutely drop pounds. There is no problem that if you stick to the incredibly-minimal-calorie approach, you will get rid of pounds reasonably promptly. (Even though the site has a lot of stories of people who misplaced a hundred pounds or extra on Optavia, the business is careful to issue out that the normal pounds loss is twelve pounds in excess of twelve weeks.) Pamela,* a modest-small business owner in New York, claims she’s misplaced fifty pounds in 6 months, and it’s been a very good practical experience, although she hasn’t transitioned nevertheless to the routine maintenance section. “My partner and I consistently misplaced week following week, even when we ate out for meal,” she claims.

It is quick. You do not have to consider about your food stuff a lot at all on this approach. As soon as a working day, you throw some protein on a pile of veggies for a meal the rest of your meals involve practically nothing extra than tearing open up a deal and placing it in the microwave.

There is neighborhood support. In addition to the coaches, who verify in by telephone, textual content, or e mail after a working day for the initially 4 days, then after or twice a week for up coming twelve weeks, there are also Facebook webpages and webinars. “Accountability and neighborhood are critical factors to any behavior-change method, so if there is a person gold star to give here, it’s for the support,” claims London, who points out that you need to verify in with your physician before setting up any extraordinary diet plan approach, especially if you’ve got experienced a heritage of ingesting conditions or you’re on any drugs.

You are ingesting a large amount of packaged, processed food stuff. Optavia is adamant that these dehydrated mashed potatoes, shakes, and bars are healthy, nutritionally balanced, “all natural” meals. A person appear at the elements, even so, reveals that “natural” is in the eye of the beholder. The initially 5 elements on the primary chocolate shake, for instance, include things like: Soy protein isolate, fructose, dextrin, cocoa powder (processed with alkali), and whey protein concentrate. “‘No synthetic elements/preservatives’ does not mean it’s a actual food stuff,” claims London. “Especially when the initially component is a soy protein isolate, which suggests a nutrient identified in food stuff is isolated to produce a new, male-made food stuff solution.”

“There are so a lot of treats you can make with entire food items that are healthy, minimal in calories, and filling,” adds Bonnie Taub-Dix, RDN, creator of BetterThanDieting.com and creator of Go through It In advance of You Try to eat It—Taking You from Label to Desk. “Just consider nonfat milk and mix with a banana and ice for a smoothie, and you are going to have a more healthy shake. Instead of ingesting a pack of dehydrated pasta, why not have a bowl of zucchini noodles or a modest portion of entire-wheat pasta topped with contemporary veggies and a protein?”

And the tastes are not for everyone. “I couldn’t stick with Optavia for the reason that the food stuff was not quite tasty and I received bored with it promptly,” claims Justin, a periodontist in Maryland who misplaced ten pound in two months on Optavia, and then obtained it all back. “I experienced a shake each and every morning and ate a couple of the pastas, but you there is only so a lot powdered food stuff you can eat in your lifestyle.” Even Pamela, who is however on the approach, claims she only likes a handful of the Fuelings—the bars, shakes, and sticks—though her partner is a greater admirer of the savory meals. “Innumerable surveys have revealed that the top rated reason we pick our food stuff is initially for taste, and then for usefulness,” claims Taub-Dix. “This may perhaps ring all the bells on usefulness, but it falls brief on taste.”

It is really really hard to sustain in excess of the prolonged operate. Optavia points to a recent examine that reveals Optavia (and its sister diet plan, Medifast) enable dieters drop extra pounds in excess of sixteen weeks than a normal minimal-calorie diet plan, but—surprise!—the examine was paid for by Medifast, Inc. There do not look to be any unbiased reports that have assessed the prolonged-time period achievements of this diet plan. “The diet plan may perhaps enable brief-time period, since you’re limiting complete calories by restricting carbs, but restriction prolonged-time period can be unsustainable,” claims London. Taub-Dix adds that this sort of restrictive diet plan can make it difficult to eat with the rest of the family or go out to social functions without having emotion like an outcast.

“Having actual, nutrient-dense, delicious and overall health-endorsing food stuff for prolonged-lasting behavior change that sticks is the only way to drop pounds and basically maintain it off,” claims London. “Why consume vitamins and minerals in a powdered shake or bar when you could eat actual food stuff from which you are going to advantage mentally, bodily, and psychologically—through shared activities all over meals and treats that present flavor and diet.”

*Identify has been changed to secure privateness.

Continue to be up-to-date on the latest science-backed overall health, health, and diet information by signing up for the Avoidance.com e-newsletter here. For additional pleasurable, stick to us on Instagram.

#Nutrition to Lose Fat

0 notes