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lilyblackdrawside · 3 months

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Game balance is a pretty common topic and I think about it too sometimes. In the context of single-player games, specifically.

long post.

When it comes to multi-player versus games, things should remain balanced. They won't be, that's how we always end up with all the possible options a player can pick in different tiers, but there should be some striving towards not creating gross disparities.

However, in games where we don't have 2+ humans facing off against each other, I think it's absolutely fine to pretty much throw it out the window. There's really no harm in it and it opens up pathways for creativity to flow. Some things can be very difficult to bring in line with other options, so if a dev is afraid of having an unbalanced option, they might end up discarding something that could've been really interesting.

To stop with vague words, I'll go to my go-to series: Touhou.

In the Touhou games there is hardly a game where you don't have one or two character or shot options that stand out as being noticeably stronger or weaker than the rest.

Sanae in Ten Desires just sucks. Her shot deals no damage and is awkward to get the most out of in boss fights.

Meanwhile Marisa B in Double Dealing Character might just be the most powerful shottype in the series.

There are many such cases, I could keep listing them. Marisa in UFO is kinda terrible overall: A-type has a bad bomb for that game (Master Spark kills your movement and instantly annihilates UFOs, making it ill-suited for playing into the game's gimmick) while B-type has the worst shot (nice idea, but deals negative damage) but a good bomb. She just can't win in that game.

To stick with UFO for a moment longer, Sanae A's homing snakes have a tendency to miss if you make them travel too far. (They still do that even in later games, but only in very specific situations. In UFO it happens kind of a lot.)

Subterranean Animism is also full of off-beat shots. They're all on Marisa, too. Marisa A(lice) has a focused shot when unfocused and a spread shot when focused. Naturally, this is deliberate and I like it, but it is undeniably awkward to use. She's also the only one who loses more Power on death when full than she drops, because Alice gives her 8 Options instead of 4, but only increases Power gains by half or two thirds, I don't exactly remember, so you're always in the hole so to speak. Marisa B(atchouli) has like two useful formations - Fire and Water. Wood is a super-spreadshot that has a 90° dead zone in the front, Metal shoots to the right and left and Earth shoots behind you.

Marisa C(appa) has good damage but no spread (pretty normal for Marisa), but it has a bomb that deals 1 damage. It can't kill any enemy. C sucks for the main game and is godlike in Extra.

On that note, all of Marisa's bombs just suck ass in some way. Alice's and Patchouli's need you to go into melee range. Alice's does have long-range damage, but it's not much and Patchouli's is just a melee blast. Nitori's is a barrier. Barriers are nice, we know that from PCB, but between that and a narrow forward shot, Marisa C struggles to generate initiative during stage portions. You don't have a button that just handles things.

However, what do all of these wonky, sometimes underpowered shottypes in common? They're fun to use. I love messing around with Marisa B's formations, finding the optimal spots to use them. Can you clear the whole game with just Fire and Water formations, treating them as your Focus and NoFocus shots? Yes. But there is room to master it.

While I don't love to play UFO, I think Marisa B might be my favourite shot-type because it's so bad. It feels good to make it work.

Now on the other end of the spectrum there's DDC's Marisa B who is incredibly plain and breaks the game in two. It's just Missile Marisa and her bomb is some dinky circle that slowly travels upwards, deals mediocre damage and has invincibility time that's less than half of its total duration.

It also converts any bullets it erases into P-items. You can generate more resources with this bomb than it uses. It gets stronger the higher you set the difficulty. Marisa B scales with the difficulty. There is no other shottype in the series that does this. Okay, SA Reimu B also does this, but her bomb just converts enemy bullets into friend bullets so it's not anywhere near game breaking.

So what am I getting at here? The games would be worse if every shottype was "balanced", however nebulous the idea of that may be.

If every shot-type had to not suck, we wouldn't have gotten SA Marisa C, which is pretty annoying to use for 90% of the main game. We probably wouldn't have gotten a third of Mountain of Faith's shot-types or TD Sanae either. (nobody seriously plays MoF Reimu C for some notion of that being the most powerful shot-type in that game. It's a close-range type attack that you have to be insane to get the most out of. Just pick Marisa C like everyone else who's too cool to play normal shots.)

I like the wacky stuff. I want more Touhou games with weird shots like we had in MoF, SA, UFO and DDC. I want another Cold Inferno, I want Marisa's piercing lasers back, I want another SA Marisa A who has a focused unfocused shot for really no reason at all. Give me jank. Give me another shot-type that wasn't thought through to the end and accidentally breaks the game in the best way possible. Or just another MoF Marisa B.

Honestly, Mountain of Faith's Marisa B is a great example of where imbalance can hit a peak, because due to a glitch it deals so much damage that until like Stage 6 it clears all spellcards and nonspells so fast that bullets won't even reach you. There's no sense in it at all, but it is funny. It's funny! You can avoid this glitch from triggering; Its activation is somewhat specific. It's not something I want all the time, because that one just ruins the game, but is there any harm in it? No! Nobody is harmed by it. I get to laugh at the glitchy laser and have a good time.

Similarly nobody is harmed by someone having an easier time clearing DDC because they picked Marisa B and I'm not harmed from struggling through UFO on that Marisa B.

The bottomline here is that people shouldn't worry about whether or not a game is "balanced", so long as there's no element where players can abuse imbalanced elements against other players directly. And even then, fighting games have always and still have joke characters that are way weaker than the rest of the cast and it's fine. People love the challenge these things bring with them. They love to pick some crusty guy in a fighting game who has no movement, no options, bad frames or whatever and get the most out of it. It feels good to prevail from a disadvantaged position.

#long post

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sneakyscarab · 9 months

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another day, another touhou post! i almost missed the deadline on this one (not that it really matters, the pace is gonna slow down a lot in a couple posts anyways once i catch up). today's game is a bit of a weird one!

nina's thoughts on Touhou 9 - Phantasmagoria of Flower View

PoFV is a pretty strange game. instead of being a single-player experience like most mainline touhou games, PoFV is a competitive 2-player danmaku vs game. there is still a 1-player story mode, but instead of 6 stages and boss fights each character has 8 versus matches against other characters tied loosely together into a storyline.

the gameplay is neat, its honestly impressive how well the concept of a competitive danmaku battle actually works and it feels pretty natural. as usual the screen fills up with enemies and bullets, but stages dont have defined patterns or moments, instead both players keep surviving through an increasing onslaught of bullets and spell cards until one slips up and takes too many hits. destroying enemies creates a small explosion around them that deals damage to nearby enemies and sends weak bullets in the range to the other player's screen. if you line it up right you can get some nasty chain reaction explosions that can clear up your screen and really put the pressure on your opponent. in addition you can put more direct pressure on the other guy by building up your spell meter, expending it to summon powerful bullet patterns or even your own character as a boss fight onto your enemys side. while at times it can get a bit ridiculous (the two 'villain' characters have completely broken spell cards and insanely good ai piloting) in general the gameplay is fair and pretty fun!

as a fighting game of sorts, PoFV naturally has a rather large character roster, a total of 14 playable characters! we have the returners in Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, Reisen, Cirno, Lyrica, Mystia, Tewi, and Aya. Then we have 4 characters new to this game: Medicine, Yuuka, and the 'villains' of the story Komachi and Eiki Shiki. each character has different stats, shot types, zone shapes, and spell attacks, which makes for a lot of variety in the roster.

to try and unlock everything i beat the story mode for all 12 choices (Komachi and Eiki Shiki don't have a story mode). i didn't aim for 1cc's since the game doesn't differentiate whether you used a continue or not, but a couple of the runs happened to be done without continues: Marisa, Mystia, Aya, Medicine, and Yuuka. i dont remember enough about all the different characters bullets and stats to say that i really prefer any over the others, tbh if i were to play more i would probably just pick a character based on vibes alone. Marisa is my go-to generally, but im also partial to Cirno, Mystia, and Aya.

for the four new characters, theyre cool. Yuuka is probably my favourite solely because she gets a lot of cute art with Wriggle lol. for some reason the fandom is very split on whether Yuuka is an angry masochist or a lonely but wholesome flower lady. i think shes realistically somewhere in the middle. Medicine is also a neat concept, being an abandoned doll in a field of poisonous flowers who came to life through raw poisonous energy. Komachi is goofy, shes basically the grim reaper of Gensokyo but shes also really lazy and always slacking off, pretty much every singleplayer storyline involves her getting caught snoozing by her boss Eiki Shiki. Eiki Shiki herself is probably the weakest new character imo, its funny watching her judge all the characters supposed sins, but its really all she talks about, and her annoying fight isnt winning her any points for me.

PoFV is certainly a weird outlier in the series, but i think the gameplay does genuinely work pretty well! the idea of making a competitive bullet hell is so out there and they really put in the work to make it happen.

as always, thanks for reading! and if, somehow, someone is reading this who is remotely decent at touhou and wants to try playing the 2-player mode of this game with me, Please get in contact with me through whatever means works for you. i would love to give this a shot against an actual human.

#grimoire of nina #touhou #touhou 9 #touhou PoFV #phantasmagoria of flower view #touhou project

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lanistas · 10 months

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Tagged by @sarcasticsciencefictionwriter , thank you <3

RULES: post the names of the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I always joke that my main WIP is my phd dissertation, which I lovingly call "the most important fic of my life" (I will finish it someday... just not today). But let's talk about fandom stuff.

So, even though I love writing fics, I mostly write down dozens of ideas and, like, summaries for my stories, but then I just... forget to start writing actual fics lol. So these are more like fic titles / concepts with little to none actual text attached to said titles xD

Eyk x Maura collection of ideas / wips

don't trust the captain / kill the captain

a 17th-century AU, witch Maura

Greek Mythology AU, Maura = Moira

modern AU, cheesy sciency pick-up lines

Maura teaches Eyk how to ride a bike

modern AU, Maura caught wearing Eyk's hoodie

Helen x Will collection of ideas / wips

medieval / fantasy au, queen x healer

fake dating for professional purposes

Magnus, it's five in the morning, what the heck?

time-travelling Will

5 times Helen celebrated Will's birthday + 1 time when Will returned the favor

I think… you're my favourite person

Helen x James collection of ideas / wips

fake marriage to hide pregnancy oh no the feelings are real

post Normandy, James comforting Helen when she has a nightmare

James comforting Helen after John comes back and ruins it all once again (I sense a pattern here…)

Romance Club collection of ideas (yep, I've been playing this game for almost three years, and it's fun!)

Noe x Laia, support group for sleep disorders

gc au, cleric x assassin

gc, the main source of my mental breakdown after the update

gc, au pwp

Miscelaneous fics

[msatd] love, alphabetically

marisa x asriel prequel

[original] new fantasy thingy

[original] one more idea

And I have a hard time thinking whom to tag... so, ummm, any of my lovely followers who write fics, consider yourself tagged if you see this <3

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queenofnabooty · 2 years

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Opening lines

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. (If you have less than 20, just list them all!) See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Tag some people to play the next round!

Tagged by @lordeasriel

I’ll start with most recent and go backwards.

1. "I dunnoknow why we’re botherin’. Not enough folks to fill these anyway.”

2. “What the fuck did you say to them?“

3. Dark circles hang under the eyes of Marge, who sits with her elbows resting on her knees as she watches what’s in the bathtub.

4. “You’ve reached the prayer service, how can we help you?“

5. He watched his son inspect the label of the bottle of tokay before putting it down with a clang.

6. He wanted to send his sincerest congratulations.

7. “Have you seen my wife anywhere?”

8. “How do you remember all this?“

9. The boxes were tightly packed and closed.

10. “You wouldn’t look at me all evening.”

11. Her mother had been there when the tragic news broke.

12. An old wretched stone house sits on the borderland of the property.

13. “My brother was an unkind man,” his mother told him, “We have enough unkind people in this world as it is.”

14. Asriel made no attempt to disguise his yawn as the Master was speaking.

15. Having money meant that you never had to ask permission.

16. Faith was never important to Lord Asriel Belacqua.

17. For the first few weeks, Lyra had hardly thought about either of them.

18. Lyra would watch Mrs. Coulter obediently as she painted her face for the day.

19. The plan was to draw a line down the middle and open up her skin like two angelic wings.

20. “I think this is the first time we’ve shared a bed just for sleeping,” Asriel grumbled as he pulled at his shirt to unstick from his chest.

Trends: Oh boy, do I like starting with dialogue. Oh man, do I like in medias res. Oh dear, do I keep it vague.

Fav: “Having money meant that you never had to ask permission.” from my 8-chapter Marisa fic about her creating the foundations for the G.O.B. I remember churning this one out while I was staying at a house on the beach. Seasea content by the sea.

#tag game

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 3 years

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His Dark Materials - Season 2 Episode 7 *FINALE* (Thoughts and Rambles)

We have a LOT to unpack here oh my god oh my god

When I say I was screaming and yelling during the episode, I mean I was LITERALLY screaming and yelling

This post is mostly screeching and capital letters, you’ve been warned

“So cold” “life or death meant nothing” - well shit. Accurate description of a Spectre attack damn

I didn’t know what those creepy noises were at first and I was sat here absolutely TERRIFIED because it was creepy as fuck. Then I realized it was cliff ghasts because they said something that I recognized from the book and I was like “oh shit”

Pan and Will talking is the sweetest omg

The fact that Pan told him that Lyra thinks he’s as brave as King Iorek Byrnison :’)

“She’s the best friend I’ve ever had” “You’re her best friend too” - STOP, MY HEART

Lyra was awake and heard the whole conversation :3

“I’m no longer an aeronaut” :( “I’m an insect” - LMAO

Hester and Lee’s banter remains my favourite thing and now it’s bittersweet tbh...

“You could never be an insect, Lee” “Okay, hare” - bless them

Marisa finding where Lyra was staying and then finding Lyra’s coat?? And crying with it pressed to her face?? :’(

In case I haven’t mentioned it already, I am incredibly gay for the witches/their aesthetic/costume. Absolutely beautiful queens, all of them

Oh hi, it’s Mary and the two kids!

The fact that Mary helped them find their adults :’)

Also, “We like you miss” - BLESS

I’m kind of confused as to whether the blue flower petals are important or if it’s just her smelling them? IDK

“I’m close to my father, it’s time I found him” - OOF OKAY UMM ARE YOU SURE

“I let my best friend down” - Noooo Lyra, no you didn’t! :( Your dad is a terrible parent and killed him, that’s not your fault!

“Maybe this is how I let you down” - Well done, Asriel and Marisa, you’ve fucked up a perfectly fine child is what you’ve done

Will telling Lyra that she hasn’t let him down :3

That witch turning up because she was trying to warn Marisa about the spectres, only for Marisa to torture and kill her... oof

FUCKING MONKEY I CAN’T DECIDE HOW I FEEL ABOUT HIM

“She’s MY daughter” - Okay, damn, lady...

“EVE. She’s the mother of all” - OH FUCK YOU TOLD HER. OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK

THE SPECTRE ATE HER DÆMON OMG NO THIS IS HORRIFYING WTAF

Seriously, the way the witch went so grey and lifeless and just fell to her knees and down... Urgh, my stomach is turning

Just when I thought I hated the monkey again, he starts whimpering because he’s afraid of the Spectres :(

“Stop whimpering” - DAMN MARISA YOU ARE A STONE COLD BITCH HUH

Pan being the damn voice of reason and telling Lyra they should stay with the witches like yes, Lyra, listen to him for once!!!

Okay but why are the Magisterium soldiers lowkey dressed like German soldiers from one of the World Wars???

I’m not really surprised that BBC left out the detail of Ruta and Asriel fucking when she found him to be honest XD

So the witches think that the Æsahættr is a person but it’s actually the KNIFE. AND THEY DON’T REALIZE. RUTA YOU DON’T NEED TO GO ANYWHERE, IT’S LITERALLY RIGHT THERE

“...That’s not my dæmon.” “Run.” - OH SHIT OKAY MY WHOLE BODY JUST TENSED UP

So umm Lee got shot and FUCK NO FUCK NO I’M NOT READY FOR THIS EMOTIONALLY THANKS

I LITERALLY DO NOT WANT THIS TO HAPPEN OKAY

“You’re either with me or against me” Umm he’s your dæmon?!?!

THE WAY SHE SCREAMED AT HIM OH MY GOD SHE’S FUCKING TERRIFYING HOLY CRAP

“What are you frightened of?” - oh, I don’t know, Marisa, maybe because YOU FUCKING SCREECHED AT HIM. MAYBE HE’S FRIGHTENED OF YOU

Also I love the detail of Marisa getting onto her hands and knees, sort of crouching and mirroring the monkey’s body language. I just love the parallel

The way the monkey flinched from her when she went to touch him omg :( No dæmon should be THIS afraid of their person (or at all?!?!)

Honestly, I find this series’ portrayal of Marisa fascinating tbh

“We have to do whatever it takes to keep her safe” - Umm, like maybe drugging her and hiding her in a cave for months? 🤔

Also in case I didn’t say this before, the fact she has complete control of the Spectres is fucking scary and always has been from the very first time I read the books

Okay so Lee is fully aware that he’s going to die if he stays behind but he does it because he knows that it’s the best chance of making sure that Lyra ends up under the knife’s protection (because Jopari will find her). All Lee wants is for Lyra to be safe and that hurts my heart so much, he loves this child so much :’(

“I love that little girl like a daughter” - LEE STOP MY HEART IS ALREADY BREAKING AS IT IS

NO NO NO NO I AM NOT AND NEVER WILL BE READY

Oh hey Red PAN-da (sorry I know I keep repeating that joke but honestly LOOK AT HIM)

“Once I change, you’ll stop changing” - OH SHIT. So we’re having THAT conversation then

“What do you think you’ll be?” “A flea I hope” - LMFAO I LOVE IT

“Is it Will that’s changing you?” “I think” - FORESHADOWING FOR AMBER SPYGLASS ANYONE?!

All the meanwhile, while Lee is dying and shit is going down, Ms Mary Malone is just chilling in a cave on a mountain by a waterfall, just reading

I literally struggled to watch Lee’s final scenes. I literally didn’t want to watch it because I cried reading it in the book, and I knew I’d be the same here

The fact that Lee HATES taking away people’s lives but he says “it’s theirs or Lyra’s”... I love him. He loves her so much.

“Think about anything, think about bacon!” - LMFAO I LOVE YOU HESTER YOU ABSOLUTE GEM

THE BULLET CLIPPED HIS SCALP AND I HAD A HEART ATTACK

“This is my fault, isn’t it?” - NO HESTER NO DON’T YOU DARE BLAME YOURSELF DARLIN’, YOU ARE THE BEST AND WE LOVE YOU AND LEE LOVES YOU

I do this everytime I read the book and I did here even though I know what happens, but I was praying mentally that maybe Serafina would reach Lee in time... just maybe...

I’m really sitting here crying over Hester and Lee on a Sunday night, love that for me

Hester limping :(

“Don’t you go before I do” - FUCK YOU BBC AND PHILIP I’M SOBBING MY EYES OUT

“Oh how far we flew” - STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT FUCKING NOW I SWEAR-

I literally yelled and cried out “NOOO” when Hester faded away and Lee died. I am so upset even though I KNEW it was coming. I am literally not okay.

Oh god no Will, now is not the time to be walking away from Lyra and that witch

Also why is that witch asleep on guard?? Come on, love, do better, it’s not like these are the two most important children in all the universes....

To be fair to Marisa, I’d feel pretty invincible if I were climbing up a mountain while the Spectres were guarding me/on my side

WILL AND JOHN FINALLY MET AHHHH

“I was told I’d find my father here” - YEAH AND THAT’S HIM WILL ASDFGHJKL;

I’m low-key disappointed that there’s no brawl between Will and Jopari here. Like they instantly recognize each other and... hmm. I know there has to be changes but still.

“Your mother, Will, where is she?” - Awww. John really didn’t stop loving her :’)

“My son... is the Knife Bearer” - oooooohhhhhhh

“You have a dæmon” - that’s right, Will. Don’t worry, you’ll get one next season

The way I audible went “oh shIT” when Mrs Coulter found Lyra fast asleep. Like I said, I knew what was going to happen but STILL

I’m not really surprised that those Spectres killed the witch who was supposed to be guarding Lyra and Will tbh like that’s what happens when only ONE witch guards two teenagers and that witch falls asleep

The way that Lyra panicked when she woke up and saw her mother stroking her cheek omg

Off topic but I’ve only just realized that Jopari has a fucking man-bun LMFAO OKAY

The fact that Jopari tried to get back to Will and Elaine but couldn’t will always hurt me

“And you chose these people over your family?” - I MEAN-

“I’ve thought about you every day.” - Awww

So John tells Will that he has to go to Asriel and bring him the knife, and he tells him all about the war that’s coming and I have LITERAL chills because I’m so ready

“And then we go home?” “... And then we go home.” - RIP MY HEART OUT, IT WOULD HURT LESS

“I’m not strong enough” - yes you are, Will! I promise you, you are! And Jopari says, “Both of us were brought here” - exactly! You were brought there for a reason by fate or whatever you want to call it!

“Your duty was to be my father” - WILL REALLY CAME FOR HIS DAD LIKE THAT I GUESS

“Look what you’ve become without me” - Oh my god, just when I thought I wasn’t going to cry again

JOPARI HUGGING WILL, SEEING THE SOLDIER AIMING, AND THEN PUTTING HIMSELF BETWEEN THEM SO HE TOOK THE BULLET INSTEAD OF WILL ASDFGHJKL;

So in the book, Jopari is killed by a scorned witch who had once asked him to be her lover, but he had turned her down (because of Elaine and Will obviously), and she kills Jopari in front of Will and then he kills her (I think?). But here it’s just a soldier leftover from the Lee vs Magisterium fight, so... yeah. Kind of a little peeved about the change personally but whatever I guess.

“The night is full of angels, they will guide you now” - AHHHHH

Also, might just be me, but maybe that line would have been slightly more impactful if the scene had taken place at night

This show really said “fuck healthy parental figures” I guess

Except Will’s mum, she’s the best and if anything were to happen to her we’d all riot

SAYAN KÖTÖR FADING AWAY NOOOO I HATE SEEING DÆMONS DIE

Okay, last little gripe, but I just wanted to say that in the book, Will doesn’t realize it’s his dad until literally the last second before his dad dies - like they both realize and then BAM, Jopari is killed. And while I do love the father-son reunion, I am kind of annoyed by the change because it was such a huge punch in the gut in the book that Will searches for so long for his dad, only to lose him the second he finds him.

Serafina finding Lee’s body and kissing his forehead was yet another punch in the gut, thanks Pullman/BBC/BadWolf

The fact that Will had to bury his dad :(

Also, WILL WEARING JOPARI’S JACKET OH MY GOD MY HEART

Oof that shot of his amputated fingers...

So the narration, when it started I thought it was Jopari at first, like from one of his letters... but then as it continued, I went “hang on”, and then I said outloud “wait, is that ASRIEL?!”

DID MARISA REALLY PUT LYRA IN A FUCKING TRUNK?!? BITCH ARE YOU OKAY?!?

Will putting his hood up like his dad did just hits differently

Okay so um ASRIEL HI I WASN’T EXPECTING TO SEE YOU THIS SEASON OH MY GOD THE SCREAM I LET OUT

HIS MONOLOGUE BY THE WAY IS FUCKING ART AND A MASTERPIECE BUT I WAS TOO BUSY CRYING OVER JAMES MCAVOY TO WRITE THE WHOLE MONOLOGUE DOWN

Oh, hi Stelmaria!

It always makes me scream that this man is not only Lord Asriel now but he’s also fucking Mr Tumnus and MOTHERFUCKING BILL DENBROUGH LIKE HOW IS THIS MAN INVOLVED IN SO MANY OF MY FANDOMS?!?

ANGELS ANGELS OH MY FUCKING GOD-

“We stand with you, Asriel Belacqua” - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

“Let us prepare for war” - FUUUUUUUUCK

(I was deadly serious when I said this was just me screaming and crying by the way)

I’m still reeling over the fact that Marisa put her daughter in a fucking trunk. Like I get you can’t exactly carry a drugged child about in the open but Jesus Christ, love, really?!?

Also Ruth Wilson / Marisa Coulter in a headscarf? *chef kiss*

The way that the screen went to black as she put the lid on the trunk down - SHIT OH SHIT GOOSEBUMPS

THE CREDIT SONG IS SO BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE IT HAS FUCKING ANGELS NOW I’M-

I WASN’T EXPECTING THE POST CREDITS SCENE OH MY GOD

ROGER?! ROGER! IT’S ROGER I’M NOT OKAY-

BBC YOU CANNOT JUST DROP THAT ON US LIKE THAT FUCK-

“What is this place?” - I’M SCREAMING SO LOUD I CAN’T HOLD IT IN

For anyone unaware, the reason I’m screaming so loud over the post-credits scene is because in TAS, while Lyra is drugged and in a groggy sleep, she has these visions of Roger talking to her from the Land of the Dead, which then later leads to her and Will actually GOING to the Land of the Dead and... well, the rest is even HUGER spoilers but YEAH I’M NOT OKAY.

Honestly, I’m just so happy and emotional because I’ve been waiting over a decade for a decent adaptation of not only NL but for TSK and TAS too, and we’re 2/3 there now. Just one more book/series to go... I wish we could have it now. I really hope that filming for the final one starts ASAP because if we have to wait two years just to see the conclusion to this series, I might cry.

This series is so amazing, and this season especially has been so incredible to watch. It’s been the highlight of my week for seven weeks, and I have no idea what I’ll do with my Sundays now that it’s over. I’ve asked for the DVD for S2 for my birthday already (since it comes out 29th December and my birthday is 13th January... just saying), and words can’t describe how much I do love this series. I know it sounds hollow since I say it about so many things I’m into, but this was such a huge part of my childhood and it’s one of my favourite fantasy series of all time. It’s truly one of the most incredible pieces of literature and now it’s making for incredible television... I love it so much.

#hdm #his dark materials #lyra belacqua #lyra silvertongue #marisa coulter #will parry #lee scoresby #hester #pantalaimon #jopari #john parry #lord asriel #serafina pekkala

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akindofmagictoo · 2 years

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manuscript search tag game

my favourite tag game! it’s back! this time I was tagged by @josephinegerardywriter :D

my words are change, sprain, study, recognition

change (Dragonsong)

Robin swayed. SB grabbed his elbow, then seemed to change his mind and put his arm around Robin’s shoulders. Isi wanted to go to them, to comfort Robin, to check on Cole. But when she tried to raise her foot to take a step, she couldn’t do it. Her head was clouded, blackness creeping into the edges of her vision. There was a soft thud by her feet, and she realised her sword wasn’t in her hand anymore. She blinked, trying to clear her head, but the darkness crept in faster and faster.

The ground rushed up to meet her and then there was nothing.

sprain strain (Hurricane)

A soft splash made her turn back; the stranger had disappeared beneath the water with barely a sound. Aella kicked off the hull and jumped, plunging downwards feet-first. Tempest shouted behind her, but the water had already closed over her head.

The cold of the water didn’t bother her. What did bother her was the darkness as the sunlit surface receded. She breathed out, sharply, sending a flurry of bubbles rising to the surface, and hurriedly clamped her lips together. Get a grip. She turned over and kicked, twisting, trying to find the figure of the stranger in the gloom.

There he was, his light brown hair drifting like some kind of seaweed in the water. She kicked downwards, though with every kick it felt more like he was getting further away than closer. Then her grasping fingers closed on his wet shirt and she pulled him towards her until she could get an arm around his torso. Gritting her teeth, she put her feet underneath her and strained upwards.

study studied (Dragonsong)

“I agree with Holly,” said Sierra, pushing herself up on one elbow despite Holly’s disapproving expression. “You don’t want anyone seeing Enya, and Hols can stay with me.” She grinned.

Holly’s frown melted slowly into a smile. “If you insist.” She kissed Sierra’s temple.

Sierra turned her face up towards Holly’s, lips pursed, but the expression turned into a pout when Holly moved away. “Hey, I’m injured. You gotta come to me.”

Holly complied and Sierra pressed a kiss to her cheek.

Isi held up a map she’d borrowed from Baya. “Let’s see where we can meet up.”

Sierra and Holly took two of the edges to spread it out. All three studied it for a moment. Isi pointed silently to where she’d hopefully drop Enya off.

“We could probably just meet you there,” said Holly. “If you beat us, then we’ll meet up with you after. If we get there earlier, we wait. Easy.”

Isi nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” And she was glad to have a plan.

recognition (Hurricane)

It took them about two hours to reach the cape, where Tempest gave orders to dock on the opposite side to the Marquess. It couldn’t hurt to be too cautious, after all. Once the mooring lines were tied off, the crew began to gather. Theo had actually left his cabin, and watched from his regular spot in the bow, wrapped tightly in his coat. The daylight was rapidly fading, and with it the sun’s heat.

“Most of you know what you’re doing,” Tempest said. Recognition dawned on a few faces, though some were still confused. No matter. She’d explain later. “I want most of you here. Aria and Vic, keep a lookout on the cape. Sequoia, you’re coming with me. Marisa, Cai?”

“Yes?” said Marisa, echoed by Cai.

Tempest let a smile spread over her face. “How do you feel about setting the Marquess on fire?”

I will tag @isherwoodj @zmlorenz @ashen-crest and anyone else who wants to play! your words are window, whisper, wilt, while

#tag game #manuscript search tag #wip dragonsong #dragonsong excerpt #wip hurricane #hurricane excerpt

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key-to-my-heart · 3 years

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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! <3

ABOUT ME:

my name is kay (short for kayla), i go by she/her, i’m seventeen, i’m a lesbian, and i’m a major cartoon fanatic and a doll collector! i’m a “recent” collector, starting my collection since late 2019. i got back into monster high earlier that year and decided i wanted a doll of my best girl, operetta. since then, i keep collecting dolls and had branched out to other doll lines!

i collect from rainbow high, monster high, ever after high, disney fairies, fail fix, barbie, and more. i want to collect from lol omg, gloup girls, bratz, my scene, mermaid high, etc.

here are a few of my instagram accounts:

@andershaws for cartoon edits, @rikqwaii for anime edits, @rainbowhigharchive for rainbow high content, @georgiasbloom for cartoon spam content, and @rcsettas for disney fairies stuff!

RAINBOW HIGH

if you haven’t already been able to tell, this is a rainbow high themed blog! it’s my main doll line i collect from at the moment (monster high would be my main line if people didn’t sell all the dolls with super expensive prices lol)

ive been a fan of rainbow high since the very beginning of september 2020. i believe avery style’s fashion studio was coming out around this time! i was introduced through a friend when they were showing me the teaser trailer to season one of the web series. ever since then, i started my old blog @jett-dawson and moved here! (i also own those few instagram accounts if you wanna check me out!)

my absolute favourite rainbow high character is bella parker! she’s everything to me and you just know i absolutely freaked out during the season one finale. the night before, i had been hoping hoping and hoping for her return! some of my other favourite web series characters (at the moment) would be ruby anderson, sunny madison, skyler bradshaw, georgia bloom, and amaya raine!

my current 10 favourite rainbow high dolls:

- Kia Hart

- Georgia Bloom

- Bella Parker

- Carmen Major

- Daria Roselyn

- Brianna Dulce

- Margot DePearla

- Amaya Raine Hair Studio

- Jett Dawson

- Robin Sterling

MY FAV EVER SHIP: andershaw

because i sorta predicated them in my mind! before the web series began and when we only had their bios... i was like wow. these two bios sort of connect. it said skyler is the shy girl who is in need of a confidence and said ruby is a confident girl who loves to boost others. WOW. perfect match! and what do ya know.. WHOLE ARC DEDICATED TO THEM!!

other ships i like are:

jade x bella

avery x ainsley

amaya x sunny

violet x poppy

krystal x kia

karma x stella

daria x sheryl

aiden x river

skyler x amaya

sunny x jade

poppy x skyler

skyler x amaya

ruby x jade

bella x ruby

robin x brianna

robin x marisa

carmen x lyric

emi x gabriella

amaya x gabriella

georgia x daphne

NAVIGATION

here are ways to navigate through my blog!

#rh: leaks - to see leaked content from the rainbow high dolls

#rh: opinions - to see my opinions about all things rainbow high

#rh: episode predictions - to see my predictions for the biweekly episodes & web series content

#rh: diversity - to see content discussing the diversity issues of rainbow high

#rh: theories - to see my theories about dolls, characters, upcoming content, etc

#rh: headcanons - to see my headcanons for rainbow high characters

you can also find my rainbow high au (most known on my instagram @rainbowhigharchive) through the tag #myrainbowhighau

if you would like to see my posts about certain characters, just type their full names into the search on my profile!

#rainbow high #rainbow high dolls #rainbowhigh

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jamlavender · 3 years

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Babies & bathwater: Marisa, Asriel and Lyra’s impending existence

After writing this post about adult Lyra’s relationships with her parents if they’d survived the trilogy – a piece of character analysis paired with my fic Unholy Ghosts – and really enjoying doing so, I’ve decided to write another one, to match with my latest fic Force of Nature, which tells the story of Lyra’s actual birth (this also relates to much of Silver Bullet too). So much care and analysis go into writing fics and it seems a shame not to share that! Here’s my take on Marisa and Asriel’s feelings about Lyra while Marisa was pregnant and in the immediate aftermath of her birth.

Asriel

Aside from the logistics of having a baby with his secret lover, I think Asriel would have been very relaxed about the prospect of fatherhood – perhaps even, dare I say it, excited – because he wouldn’t have seen having a child, even under stressful circumstances like these, as any threat to his aims whatsoever. He’s a lord, richer than the king, with an almost supernatural ability to have his needs met with a simple call into the void. For the few months that Lyra is in ‘his’ care, she lives with a nurse in a different house to him (maybe even a different city most of the time, as Ma Costa and Lyra’s cottage was part of Asriel’s estate in Oxfordshire and he likely spent a lot of time in London). For Asriel – like all men of his social class – the daily drudgery and tangible, explicit love that parenthood requires would have been foreign concepts. He could have a child – as, I presume, he’d considered he might one day, should the circumstance arise – and continue his antitheist crusades. Those two things are not in conflict at all. Nor, do I think, he’d have seen Marisa as having to make a choice between her ambitions and motherhood either (if she’d left Edward and joined him) because there’d have been a seemingly endless pot of money and reams of staff to meet Lyra’s needs if her mother would rather have been doing something else.

I also think that he’d have been pleased to be having a child with a woman that he loved, particularly when there’d no doubt been months or years of push-pull between them, about their relationship, about secrecy, about choosing to be together (or not), about ownership and love and jealousy. He’d have felt that them having a child together was yet another compelling reason she should leave her husband for him, and perhaps even have been hopeful as a result. I also think he’d have been childishly pleased that, after her keeping him and their love in the shadows for so long, there now existed some glaring proof of their relationship. He’s not a man who likes to be overlooked or ignored, after all. And, while I’m probably projecting here, I wonder if the scientist in him might have found something about pregnancy and birth interesting, because while reproduction and childbirth are common, they are also physiological marvels (my reproductive physiology course was my favourite module at university, can you tell?).

I do wonder, though, if the plan for him to take the baby was agreed in advance of her birth, regardless of what the newborn looked like, only because it’s so rare (if it ever happens?) for it to be clear within minutes of birth which of two men might have fathered the new child – unless the two men are of different races, a possibility explored beautifully in the fics The Image of the Father and this be the verse. In fact, the much greater risk would have been that, after being an indistinguishable pink potato at birth, Lyra grew up to be Asriel’s spitting image, when it would have been impossible to spirit her away or fake her death. I could believe that Marisa had decided long before the birth to give the child away regardless, both from her (lack of) personal feelings and the reasonable fear that their secret might instead be discovered years down the line, when the consequences could have been much more severe.

I don’t think Marisa’s suspicion of the child and lack of maternal inclination would have bothered Asriel, particularly relating to her work (I mean, as soon as he loses all the money that enables Lyra’s existence to have no impact on his day-to-day life, he dumps her in favour of his work without a second thought). Rather, he’d have been upset about Marisa’s rejection of Lyra because he’d see it as extension of her rejecting him over and over again. He’d never understood why she wouldn’t leave her husband to be with him – he could provide money, freedom, fascinating work, intellectual partnership, raw love and attraction – and now they’ve had a child together, and still she chooses to walk away. That’s what would have gutted him, I think, especially when it seems obvious to him that they can have their cake and eat it too: they can pursue their ambitions and raise their child, largely because someone else will do the bulk of the latter. Marisa, of course, had always felt differently about the real feasibility of that. His rage at Marisa rejecting him through Lyra would only have been intensified when Marisa surrendered the baby to the Church, which was surely the deepest and worst knife she could twist, leading “all the anger in him to turn against her.” (I forget the exact quote, but I think that’s pretty close).

Marisa

Marisa would have resented the baby’s existence from the start (I choose to assume that she always knew the baby was Asriel’s, though if she didn’t – which is not out of the realm of possibility at all – that would have been stressful in a different way). Here was proof of her infidelity, proof of her inability to resist the cardinal sin of lust, and a person that might well grow up to have Asriel’s face, who was going to emerge from her body and either be a nightmare to spirit away and keep hidden or a burden (and a secret!) she was forced to bear for the rest of her life. Asriel’s generally blasé attitude about the whole thing would no doubt have infuriated her, as would Edward’s attempts to involve himself in a pregnancy in which he’d played no part. I think she’d have been stressed and miserable and resentful.

Pregnancy and birth must also have been a nightmare for her. The loss of control over her body as another grew inside it, the weight gain and hormones, and, surely most of all, the loss of her ability to use her sexuality to control those around her. The Church might revere motherhood, but they don’t desire it, which would have been a disaster for her, someone for whom manipulating the desire of others was her most beloved political strategy. It’s also very base, a reminder of our animal functions, and as someone who has a complicated relationship with her more instinctive feelings and seems keen to obliterate them as much as possible in favour of repression and manufactured poise, that must have been very uncomfortable. I think she’d have hated it.

Given, though, that she develops an expansive love for Lyra in the end, I did want to sow the seeds for that when her daughter was born (though twelve years is a long time, and I don’t think it’s impossible that she’d have discarded her daughter at birth and simply changed her mind all those years later, but I find it more interesting to make it a little more emotionally complex than that). I think she’d have been in shock, particularly from the pain and vulnerability of birth, but also confronted with an actual person she’d made, with a person she loved deeply, no less. She’d then do an excellent job of repressing those feelings, but I could believe that there was a short time where the fact she’d actually had a child, Asriel’s child, was impossible for her to ignore, despite the chaos, emotional or otherwise, that recognition would cause. That’s how I conceive of both Asriel and Marisa’s immediate reactions to Lyra after her birth, actually: that they’d have spent the pregnancy ignoring their impending arrival, either from glibness about its potential significance (Asriel) or repressing her fears about being discovered or saddled with a baby (Marisa), and only when they were confronted with their actual child did they realise they might have created something here that they couldn’t control as easily as they’d expected. That sums up Lyra’s role in both their lives in the trilogy, I think: she pushes them both because they can’t control her, not what she does nor the emotions she evokes in them, and they both find that unbearable.

#marisa coulter #lord asriel #lyra belacqua #chaos family #my analysis #hdm meta

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neokad · 3 years

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Touhou VI: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - or my first journey into a bullet hell game

Touhou is that one pew pew game series with cute anime gals, right?

Source: https://pixiv.kurocore.com/illust/54033795

Just like what I think are many people, that’s pretty much all I knew about the franchise as a whole! And to be honest, for a long long time, I was AFRAID of going any closer to anything Touhou-related! Because of them being bullet hecks, they seemed like the most frustrating and unfun games I could possibly be playing! But then... time passed... Fast forward to somewhere in 2020: I was watching the biyearly Games Done Quick event, and one of the first runs showcased during it was none other than Touhou Luna Nights! But while the speedrun itself was very impressive, the thing that really captivated me was well... everything else! Even though this was only a Metroidvania fangame, IT LOOKED LIKE SO MUCH FUN! The graphics, the special effects, the mechanics... everything just seemed like a dream! In spite of that, I only picked the game up and played it about a year later, thanks to a Steam sale! And to keep things short, I ADORED it. It was a bit too short, but everything else was spot on, and even better than I thought it would be from what I saw at GDQ! But that’s sadly a review for another time :( Because I literally fell in love in this game, well... I thought “screw it, I’ve been morbidly curious for years now, let’s actually try a freakin’ Touhou game!”

And so, after some research I’ve learned that the sixth game - the first one released on Windows PCs! - was the one that served as inspiration for Luna Nights as a whole - its characters, music, stage aesthetics and more! It just seemed natural to settle with this one~

How did it go? What did I think about it? Well, that’s why we’re here: those are my thoughts about Touhou VI: the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

Now for a pointless history lesson: as I said earlier, Touhou 6 was the very first game published for Windows PCs, all the way back in 2002! The five previous games were actually exclusive to a Japan-only machine, the NEC PC-98, a line that prevailed strongly in Japan before Microsoft conquered the world. As such, it’s really the first game that’s still relatively accessible today, as PC-98 emulation is... not really a stable thing yet -_- So even though this wasn’t quite true, it’s as if I started my journey into Touhou with the original! And once I started playing, I was honestly surprised at one thing once I hit the title screen: this game actually has lots of options to make the experience easier or harder!

I know that being able to change your starting lives, starting bombs, choose your overall difficulty and such isn’t groundbreaking at all, but honestly? I didn’t expect things to be so customisable in a bullet heck game series - a genre that’s known for being merciless to players! I did decide to go on Normal to have the “intended” experience, but things aren’t as daunting as you may think!

This game also allows you to play as not only Reimu, the poster character of the franchise, but also Marisa! Both of these girls also boasts two different weapons each, with their own strengths, weaknesses and bomb attacks! Again, I genuinely did not expect so much breathing room even though looking back... I feel like I should have : P

Once I actually started playing the game itself, there’s yet another thing that surprised me: the difficulty curve... it’s... manageable??

Now granted, I’m a person that plays a *lot* of games, and on top of that, I play lots of action games as well, games that require quick reaction times, good pattern reading and so on so forth. So there’s a chance my judgement on the game’s difficulty might be wrong or biased... but to me? Embodiment of Scarlet Devil actually has a good difficulty curve! The first stage of the game has many enemies that can shoot many bullets, but they’re slow, predictable and relatively easy to avoid because you have lots of space to maneuver around! On that same train of thought, Rumia, the first stage’s boss, certainly doubles down on the number of bullets she can throw at you. But, their patterns are once again pretty slow and predictable, making things much more comfortable at the start of your adventure!

But hold on a minute here, how does this game actually plays? Well, this is where I need to let out a horrifying truth:

Touhou is actually really, REALLY fun.

At first it does seem like a pretty standard shooter: you shoot at things, dodge bullets, collect power ups to boost your weapon’s strength, and make sure you don’t die too much in order to reach the final boss in good shape. However, what I ended up loving about Touhou are its many, many mechanics that spice things up beautifully! The first one I wanna focus on is “Grazing” and it’s actually pretty simple: if you do your best to get close to a bullet or a laser without touching it with your (very small!) hitbox, you graze that bullet! Not only will a satisfying sound effect play out each time you graze something, you will also gain points each time you do this maneuver, making it essential for a high score, and especially, to gain extra lives faster! Secondly, there’s bombing! I am totally repeating myself here, but while each character has a different kind of bomb to their disposal, they each function in relatively the same way: you get to launch a strong attack against your opponents, get invincibility frames, and on top of that, get rid of any bullets that are currently on the screen! I love bombs in this game because they create a great balance: you can totally use them for offensive purposes, buuuut they also serve as a great defensive clutch if you just find things too difficult at the moment. Bombs even have two extra layers to them! When you will get hit and lose a life (and believe me, you will) your bombs will get refilled back to three, urging you to not hoard them too much even if you’d prefer to save them for a tougher part. Because if you die, you might just “waste” bombs in a way! However, here’s an advanced kicker: if you manage to hit the bomb button just as you are hit by a projectile (8 frames within death I think!) you not only are able to save yourself from losing a life, you also won’t lose a bomb at all, either! This is a very difficult trick, but a very cool and potentially important one if you plan things out in the heat of battle ^^

Then there’s a mechanic that, to my knowledge, got introduced in EOSD: the POC, as in Point Of Collection! Now, as you destroy the many enemies after Reimu or Marisa, they naturally drop many power ups and point icons, and because there’s many of these you’re bound to miss them. However, this is where the POC comes in: if you are at full weapon power, you will earn the ability to collect every icon on the screen! This makes sense and is actually very smart, because most players - myself included - tend to hug the bottom of the screen as bullets are more scarce and slower here. BUT reaching that POC close to the top of the screen is a great way to incentivise players to risk things in order to get a massive amount of points and gain extra lives way faster! And finally, as soon as you do reach that max power, the game will automatically wipe every single projectile off the screen, so it’s even possible to time when you’ll get your final power boost to make things easier on yourself!

All of those mechanics together make Touhou EOSD a pure joy to play! It’s simple on the surface but has such interesting mechanics and risk-reward elements that can push you out of your comfort zone, but never forces you to! And sure enough, I got addicted~

Even though I did say that the game had a good curve and started off not too difficult, it does not mean that your journey will be easy: even early game bosses such as Cirno and Meiling took me lots of practice to get consistent at, by studying their patterns and testing out which strategies worked the best for survival. And eventually, even Patchouli and Sayaka’s stages will test you out with lots of predictable-yet-deadly bullets to test out your screen reading skills and even reflexes.

Touhou may be more accessible than I thought, but do not be mistaken: on Normal, this game will still challenge you, and I absolutely love it for that <3

Another thing that helps this game out is - please pretend to be surprised - the music. Touhou has always been known for bringing some very good tunes all around, but besides Luna Nights’s incredible soundtrack, I actually never got to listen to any of them besides Bad Apple and one fanime opening my bestie sent me one year ago. And well... it’s true!

The game uses some very artificial, even out-of-tune instruments for its music, but strangely enough, it REALLY works! It gives the music a very nostalgic, warm feeling that’s hard to describe, but it works so well at making those songs catchy as all heck! It also helps that the compositions themselves are pretty strong and surprisingly complex for its genre, too! I would pick a favourite theme to show off, but the soundtrack’s just really consistent and good all around!

Sadly, I mostly cannot say the same for the game’s presentation. This game is a PC app from 2002 and it sadly somewhat shows. I’ll even bring a special mention to the in-game portraits, which are hilariously HORRIBLE! Thankfully dedicated fans have made a patch to improve the game’s visuals so that they’re more in line with later titles, but at base it’s really not the prettiest gem visually...

...except for the spell cards, the bosses’s strongest attacks, which are genuinely gorgeous multicolored motives that will struck you in awe before you are inevitably destroyed by them, it’s great! My favourite is the one you get from Meiling’s mid stage encounter, pictured above!

Before wrapping up this long, long post, I do wanna add this: the game will unfortunately only give you the good ending only by playing on Normal and above, and only if you beat the game without using any continues. This is called a 1CC, or 1 Credit Clear. Even if I don’t think the bad ending’s actually that unsatisfactory, I did want to get better at the game! So I practiced for many hours a day for a couple of weeks, memorized each boss’s patterns, learned where to graze, when to optimally reach the POC to get as many points as possible... this game pushed me to get better with an incentive, a reward waiting at the end, on top of the satisfaction of simply cheesing what used to be so difficult at some point and... well, I think this is the proof of a well-crafted game right there. After many failed attempts, I finally managed to 1CC this game (pictures below!!) and it was, genuinely, one of the most satisfying moments in my gaming life <3

So... yeah. I might be a Touhou fan now. Welp.

Touhou VI: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was such a pleasant surprise for me: I expected a game I’d find somewhat boring at best and frustrating at worst, but I ended up having a very, very good time, and honestly? It’s not as hard as you’d think it is! You can beat a Touhou game, so long as you are interested in practicing and getting better, and I promise it’ll feel rewarding in the best of ways <3

I just wanna say thank you to Luna Nights and Team Ladybug, because without them, I would have never been curious and then surprised by how cool this game is. Thank you <3

And many thanks to you, the reading, for staying until the end! Thank you for reading!

#long post #touhou #touhou eosd #eosd

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neuxue · 3 years

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Tagged by @ivanaskye to name 10 favourite female characters in 10 fandoms, so in no particular order and with the caveat that ‘favourite’ depends on the day and the direction of the wind and, like, the position of saturn relative to jupiter or whatever the fuck...

Marisa Coulter - His Dark Materials (I mean... “Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cesspit of moral filth.” Like. What do you expect from me.)

Baru Cormorant - The Masquerade (the astonishing cleverness and capability that cuts the wielder as easily as the targets, the terrifying force of will and ambition, the fine and frayed line between protection and vengeance, and the whole ‘becoming that which you most hate and fear in order to destroy it’--and so then what is there to do but destroy yourself along with it...)

Raederle - The Riddle-Master Trilogy (she’s not quite my usual Type but I love a character who’s sharper than she initially appears, and her whole character and role is such a fascinating study on self and identity)

Moiraine Damodred - The Wheel of Time (it’s hard to pick just one from WOT but today I’m going with Moiraine for her combination of ruthlessness and dedication to saving the world, and for the way so very, very few truly see past the former to the latter)

Azula - Avatar: the Last Airbender (the way on the surface she’s perfect lethal grace, ruthless and competent, and how beneath that is just a desperate need to survive in a place that permits no weakness and sees weakness in anything that resembles gentleness. The way she’s seen by so many as a monster but beneath that she’s just so very young)

Wan Shailu - The Emperor’s Soul / Cosmere (competent and sharp-edged and with a whole lot of Complicated Discussions of Identity! I’m fine!)

Melisande Shahrizai - Kushiel’s Legacy (no I will not apologise for this one; she’s extremely my type and All Of Those Things Are Good Actually)

Yasha - Critical Role (I’m just so here for the dualities and seeming contradictions she embodies: the flower-in-one-hand-sword-in-the-other, music-and-rage, fallen-and-rising, humour-and-darkness, gentleness-and-violence. Also the aesthetic)

Rin - The Poppy War (I almost love the existence of her character more than the character herself, if that makes any sense. I love the decisions she gets to make, the atrocities she gets to commit, and the ways in which she gets to destroy herself without the narrative trying to soften it or make her more likeable or ‘feminine’ for it. She’s a disaster and I love her)

Kaul Shaelinsan - The Green Bone Saga (c o m p e t e n c e. Plus her whole... leaving her home country and family and rejecting the role that was once expected of her only to come back to it, half a stranger and yet fitting almost seamlessly into that role and those expectations, and the internal conflict of that, falls under the umbrella of a particular thing I enjoy.)

tagging... @redbelles @mamsellefreeman @kaffekrok @veliseraptor @moghedien if you’re so inclined (and anyone else who wants a go!)

#yes i absolutely have a type #but is anyone really surprised #tag memes

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clarionglass · 3 years

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tagged by @dheiress to post the first line of my last 20 fics (thank you! <3)

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 other authors!

aight my lads here we go, there’s going to be a few unpublished wips and other piece of dubious writing in here bc i doubt i have 20 stories but anyway, here we go (this is very long! press j to skip or just get that dash scrollin bc this might take a while :// ) in very rough chronological order going backwards, starting with the published work:

1. so i ran to the river (tma grifters au, unpublished yet but will be soon!): The sunlight feels different on a face fresh out of prison, and it feels even better to Jonathan Sims now that he’s truly home.

2. crowned by an overture bold and beyond (tma pretentious college au, based loosely on the secret history): It was a cool, rainy day in late March when I first approached the Magnus Institute--one of those days that served as a reminder that the London spring, that fragile creature, was still all too vulnerable to the occasional strike from the claws of winter.

3. we should ride this wave to shore (tma chatfic where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts): Friday, 3:14 P.M. “archives research & statement envestigation” Timothy Stoker renamed the group “drinks drinks drinks” Timothy Stoker changed Sasha James’s nickname to saucy sash Timothy Stoker changed Martin Blackwood’s nickname to martini kart Timothy Stoker changed his nickname to stonked stonked: so how bout it lads saucy sash: oh god.

4. i am the maker of rules (dealing with fools) (tma chatfic, an elias-and-peter-focused accompaniment to wsrtwts): Monday, 7:39 P.M. Elias Bouchard to Peter Lukas Elias Bouchard: Peter, I need to talk to you. Elias Bouchard: I’ve had the most infuriating day at work.

5. An Optimistic Tragedy (good omens orchestra au that i swear to god i’ll finish one day): Three years ago Eve shifted in her chair, her mind clearly on things other than Milhaud and the music in front of her.

6. The Spaces Between the Stars (the Beast of a dw fic that i can’t even begin to describe; a mate and i have been working on this since 2015 and it’s a sprawling mass of writing that encompasses Many google docs--what’s on ao3 atm is a very small percentage of it,,,,): The Doctor clutched the TARDIS railing as if somehow, it could take the pain away.

7. Carol of the Bells (a chrismas chatfic companion to aot! i’ve always been a sucker for a chatfic but oof looking back on this one my formatting style sure has changed): [Friday December 13, 1:31am] Anthony Crowley to Angelface: u up? ;)

8. An Exploration into The Nature of Human Beings, sub. Homo Sapiens: A Research Paper by Milton Jones (british comedy rpf. this is my oldest piece on ao3 and it shows, but there’s a special place in my heart for this dorky lil fic about an alien researcher making a place for himself in british comedy. fun fact! i actually added the final three sentences to this a couple of days ago, and will post it when i do my next fic update): <<I knew you’d be down here, as per usual. Do you never stop working?>>

and now for the stuff that i like but hasn’t yet/will never/one day, if i get my act together, might be posted to ao3... please ask me about these bc i love them, even though i’ll probably never post them :)

9. untitled mitchell spy comedy (a show that @monimolimnion and i want to pitch to the bbc in which david mitchell and victoria coren mitchell are married spies who work for MI5 and MI6 respectively, and most of britcom pops up in one place or another. it’s nothing more than a Lot of planning and a few snippets, but i love returning to this doc): [David is sitting at his desk, shaking his head at an open file.] David: They’re taking the piss. That’s what they’re doing, they’re taking the piss.

10. In the Demonic Style (a good omens au of @teashoesandhair’s glorious smooching contest piece, which is the first piece of fiction writing in the reblog chain. i’ve promised a chapter 2 to this, which i’m halfway through, and feel incredibly guilty for not finishing. still, my quarter-year’s resolution is to finish something old whenever i post something new, so maybe it’ll get done soon!): “It’s the end of the world” was not a good statement with which to start one’s morning in any circumstances, but the angel Bryndael was in the middle of cataloguing his newest shipment of tea samples when said statement reached his ears, and he didn’t much appreciate being disturbed.

11. magpie (good omens canon-mostly-compliant fic based around the song magpie by the unthanks/the magpie folk song/nursery rhyme): Wednesday (approximately 11 years before the end of the world) From a bird’s-eye view, St James’s Park was beautiful at this time of year.

12. untitled ficlet for tales of dwrwedd (a present for my writing buddy! the link is to her fic, i just wrote a bit of her two witcherverse ocs being soft as hell): The two women seated by the hearth didn't look old, either of them. But there was something about the pair--in their movements, or their mannerisms--that suggested an age far beyond what their unlined faces would suggest.

13: Tempo d’Attacco (an original bit of Light Crime a la midsomer murders, set in a university music department that is naturally a thinly-veiled copy of my own, hence why it will never ever be posted anywhere. i wrote this for my supervisor at the end of honours (her character is the sleuth) :P ) Dr Marisa Tan didn’t exactly start her morning well, on the day that everything seemed to upend itself.

patterns...... i’m not seeing that many, tbh? idk if i could call this in media res, but there’s certainly a good bit of plot starting without heaps of setup.

my favourite? hmmmmmm i’d say my favourites would be crowned by an overture bold and beyond, and in the demonic style. i gotta say, going back to revisit a lot of my older writing has been nice! time and distance have been v kind :)

i’m hella bad at tagging things so if you see this and want to share your own writing please go ahead! i’m very shy when it comes to Fandom Interaction (tm) so i don’t feel comfortable launching myself into people’s notes (i loved this tho! i just need other people to make the first move lol), however i will give a specific shoutout to @monimolimnion whose writing i adore and who needs to do this!

#clari speaks #clari writes #long post

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aardvark-123 · 3 years

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do Alice Margatroid for the character thingy!

It'd be my pleasure.

Favourite thing about them: She's cool in a "ladylike" way, very talented and has an interesting personality.

Least favourite thing about them: The ways she's sometimes portrayed as a boring square or a violent yandere.

Favourite line: "Dawn to dawn to dawn to dawn to dawn to dawn to dawn to dawn to."

BrOTP: With Marisa. I could see them as lovers or close friends, being sweet and constantly bickering where appropriate.

OTP: There's no "one true pairing," but as I said above, I could see her in love with Marisa.

NOTP: I have no idea.

Random headcanon: She loves having luxurious baths, and for a time set herself up as a bath evangelist for Marisa.

Unpopular opinion:

Song I associate with them: Lyrica Live's cover of "Doll Judgment ~ The Girl who Played with People's Shapes".

Favourite picture of them: She's portrayed well in 赤橙セイ's raunchy comedy series "SexuAlice". He writes a bright, friendly, heroic Alice who finds nothing but joy in resolving Incidents and making love with many, many women. I'm not joking; in addition to being an adult comedy, it's heartwarming and fun.

#Touhou #Alice Margatroid

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person-personified · 3 years

Text

@holyshit tagged me to do this in this questions game. Thank you for the tag💖💖

Rules: Answer 30 questions and tag blogs that you’re contractually obligated to get to know better.

Name: reeba

Gender: female

Zodiac: leo but I will say cancer-leo cusp because I'm just so ~quirky~

Height: 5'5" and mad about it

Time: 7:40 pm. Pretty reasonable for someone like me😬

Favourite bands: my first band was one direction and that too in the UAN era. But in my defense I was a baby and my parents aren't music listeners so I didn't know anything about anything. now I like fall out boy, panic!at the disco, arctic monkeys, kodaline, queen, the neighborhood, imagine dragons, bastille, foster the people, the 1975, noori, junoon. and I still like one direction 💁🏽‍♀️

Favourite solo artists: halsey, taylor swift, louis tomlinson, harry styles (yet to hear the rest of their solo music properly) hailee steinfeld, jaymes young, phoebe bridgers. These are the ones who I've heard like more than three songs of. I usually listen to a couple of songs by various artists. Haven't heard a lot new music for some time though. It's been a weird couple of years

Last movie: the Reputation Stadium Tour film tbh. Or I watched Flipped like 6 months ago.

Last show: Halfway through Julie and the Phantoms rn

When did I create this blog: in 2017 after much procrastination on account of not knowing how to do themes. But I've wanted to have a tumblr since I discovered jily as a ship.

What do I post: it's mostly reblogs with the occasional personal ramble. Fandoms that I cycle through. Harry potter, raven cycle, aftg. Some shitposts and aesthetic posts and motivation/positivity.

Last thing I googled: endocytosis animation. I'm helping my little sister study for a test.

Why I chose my URL: i was trying to be clever 🙃 not sure if it worked. I'm a bit on the fence about changing it.

Following: 4615. Sometimes I follow blogs because the theme is cute but then I see a post that's wayyy out of my interest and wonder why I follow that blog. Because..you guessed it, they changed the theme.

Followers: a few hundred I guess?

Average hours of sleep: 6-8. My sleep schedule is fucked but I compensate with naps.

Lucky number: no clue.

Instruments: like I said, mine isn't a musical family. So I can't play anything. I would like to play the violin. But I don't think I'd stick to it. So I probably just like the aesthetic of it.

What am I wearing: shirt, jeans, hoodie, thick coat, thick blanket and quilt. And let's not forget the socks🥶

Dream job: hm. I'd like something creative but with some structure.

Dream trip: something mountainy and a bit cold. somewhere I can go zip lining! I'd love to do than on an actual mountain.

Favourite food: my mum's aloo gobi with garlic yogurt. #desi (potatoes and cauliflower, literally but it's like spiced with stuff.) and plain red sauce pasta.

Nationality: pakistani

Favourite song: I don't have favorites just songs I have memories attached to. I sang Scarecrow by Alex&Sierra with my ex best friend a lot, cries for hours listening to After The Storm by Mumford and Sons once etc. Perfect Now by Louis Tomlinson is currently a comfort song.

Last book I read: this romcommy type YA book What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter. And I've been trying to read Blood and Honey by Shelby Mahurin.

Top 3 fictional universes I’d live in: idk if I wanna be in any. Harry Potter universe is probably the only one.

I'm tagging @throughthecurtains @absoloutenonsense @loustarlight @jostnns @hazzaandlou if you guys want :)

#tag games #tag meme #my post #mine #about me

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genyathefirebird · 4 years

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So, one of your HDM fics, 'in another time', is still one of my absolute favourites in the fandom. I basically adopted it as my personal "the canon-est of aus", it's so good! And there is this one line at the end - "When he takes her hands in his and speaks, the love suffused in his voice doesn’t frighten her anymore" - ahh, still makes my heart skip a beat, because of course Marisa would be frightened before, but now she's growing and learning... Just aaaaaah! Amazing!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

The canon-est of au’s ????!??!!?!??

I wrote that fic super-quick and it totally came from a soft-masriel place, even though Marisa is so tentative about making changes that allow her to do the things she wants which also ask her to be vulnerable

Doesn’t bear thinking of for her usually, really - but hey what are second chances for ;)

Leaving this ask game open

#do-you-hear-the-sea #thanks for sharing!#<3

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akindofmagictoo · 3 years

Text

manuscript search tag game

@zmlorenz tagged me in our favourite game! thank you!

my words are join, jump, brace, big, jar

join (Dragonsong)

As he scraped his plate clean, SB began to hum, a simple but beautiful melody. Robin joined in easily, like he’d known the tune his whole life, though he frowned in confusion even as he sang. Sierra piled on with a harmony, followed by Holly, the lines rounding out the song.

Isi smiled. The warmth of her contentment seemed to swell in her chest. She picked up the tune SB had started.

A sixth voice joined them from under the table. Enya. Even if she couldn’t see everyone else singing, there was an otherworldly quality to Enya’s sweet melody that blended and stuck out of the mix at the same time. The song rose in a joyful swell, sending gooseflesh creeping up Isi’s arms.

Robin set his spoon abruptly down. “Maybe we should stop.”

The song fell apart as everyone else ground to a confused halt.

jump (Hurricane) (focus, Aella...)

Aella nodded. Tempest glanced at her, then at the others. “No messing around. And be careful.”

“We’ll be fine,” said Aella with a small smile. She started off down the middle track. Theo fell in behind her.

Within minutes, there was no sound of the other four. Any noise they might have made was smothered by the mist. Each shadowy tree seemed to be about to jump out at them, their reaching branches seeming to appear from nowhere.

Aella shook herself. Just because Serpent Run looked a little spooky, there was no point scaring herself more than necessary. She cast her eyes down, to the path in front of her.

“No messing around,” Tempest had said, and she’d been looking at Aella when she said it. Does this mean Marisa told Ma about—

A twig cracked and Aella jumped, startled out of her thoughts. The twig had been under her own foot. She relaxed again, her thoughts slipping back to Marisa. She hadn’t been planning to do anything, because they had a pirate to find… but ‘messing around’ with Theo out here, where Marisa couldn’t interrupt them, did sound kind of pleasant…

brace + big (Dragonsong)

“Huh? I’m mostly fine. A lot at once is tricky, but really the worst bit is the shaking hands.” He braced his back on the doorframe and held up both hands. They still quivered, though less than they had before. “If I have to cast so I don’t surge, I might as well do useful stuff. Like warming up soup.”

Isi smiled.

“Which sounds very trivial but, you know…” He trailed off and changed tack. “You don’t need to worry about me doing too much, though. I’m not doing anything that big… and honestly? It feels good.”

jar I didn’t have anything for :( so instead! a bonus brace

Carefully now. Two steps left. Now just one. This time, the door was closed. She braced herself and kicked it open. It hit the wall and bounced back.

Beyond, the room seemed to be empty. He was probably on the other side of the doorway, opposite the hinges. So she set her back to the open door and lashed out at where she thought he was. He dodged sideways, but her blade skimmed his side and came away dripping red. His eyes widened in shock. He righted his feet and thrust his sword forward. She barely evaded it in time. Her twisted ankle wouldn’t work with her. Black spots danced in her vision with every breath. Burning pain wrapped around her chest, slowly crushing inwards.

He swung. She blocked it, but the force knocked her to one knee. She pushed herself back up—slowly, too slowly—and lurched forward. He batted her sword away easily, almost laughing. Growling, she set her feet and tried again. He grabbed her sword hand and pulled. She staggered forwards, trying to put her feet beneath her before she fell, but they wouldn’t do it, she couldn’t do it—

He twisted viciously and something went snap.

I will tag ... @ashen-crest @etjwrites and @ellatholmes! your words are colour, code, crush, curl

#tag game #manuscript search tag #wip dragonsong #dragonsong excerpt #wip hurricane #hurricane excerpt

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