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random-ln-stuff · 7 months

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Hello! Hi! I am deep diving hard in the little nightmares lore and I think I’ve scrolled though most of your blog now (lol). There are still a few things I’m confused about and can’t seem to find…

The north wind, What is it? What powers does it have? Why is it so strong?

The lords, who are they? Do they govern this wrapped world? Do they ever convene with one another?

The eye, is it one big eye? Or is it a realm beyond the no where? Does it control all the other eyes that we see in the games?

If this is too much feel free to ignore it! Sorry to ask so much stuff (I am genuinely trying to make sense of it all) ps. I absolutely adore everything you have in this blog!!

Reading this made me realize that there’s a couple things i just haven’t explained anywhere.

The following is a mix of headcanons and actual (vague) lore.

1: The North Wind.

The North Wind is a monster found in one of the two official Little Nightmares Comics.

In the story, the North Wind is a formless entity, being the wind itself, although he is shown to be capable of making himself a humanoid shaped body deep within the storm that he is, probably forming the shape of a person using dust and debris he’s picked up.

He’s shown making a wager with the Ferryman (which I now believe is “who can pull this child fully into the Nowhere first” or something similar) and given how he calls the Ferryman a Cheat, he’s probably done a similar thing with him many times before.

He’s also one of 3 entities that acknowledges the Ferryman’s existence, the other two being The Mall from the podcast, who recognizes the Ferryman and begs him not to take Noone, and the Lady, who the Ferryman works for.

Besides his ability to literally strip things to the bone with nothing but wind and his own control over it, the mere fact that the North Wind can both casually wager with the Ferryman and the fact the the Ferryman often needs to cheat to win against him shows that the North Wind is equally as powerful or at least very close in power to the Ferryman (and also the Lady).

As for WHY the North Wind is so powerful, I think it’s because of the same reason that the Ferryman is so powerful, but I’ll get into that in a bit.

2: Lords.

First off: All inhabited areas of Nowhere have some sort of Vice or Obsession related to it. A thing that most, if not all of the inhabitants are obsessed with. The Pale City had Escapism and TVs, wherever Guests come from (and by extension the Maw, which is a restaurant that serves these people, not their original home) has food and hunger, etc.

(The Nest is an exception. It doesn’t have any sort of Vice because it’s only inhabited by three people, not counting the Lady whenever she presumably stays there, and doesn’t have the population or resources or anything to sustain any kind of obsession. Sure the Pretender has her dolls, but that’s more of a “spoil this kid rotten” thing than an addiction)

A Lord is basically just my word for “Any creature that controls a given area or vice of the Nowhere”. Meaning The Lady, The Broadcaster (not the Thin Man, but a separate being. I got a whole theory post on that), and if you take the Podcast into account, The Chained Woman, Living Mall and Ventriloquist. Along with any other rulers of the Nowhere we haven’t seen yet or even will never see.

Also included in this list are The North Wind, Ferryman and Signal Tower Flesh Walls. They don’t truly control any real areas (unless you count the North Wind tearing his way through the wilderness) but their power and influence is too great to really ignore, especially since out of the three of them, two work directly together with other Lords in ways that other minions simply can’t. The Ferryman works for the Lady alongside dragging kids into Nowhere to begin with, bringing them to either the Maw or the Nest depending on what the Lady needs. The Flesh Walls aid the Broadcaster in his control over the Pale City, helping spread the Transmission by literally being the Transmission Tower. I’d even argue that for the Ferryman and Flesh Walls, helping the Lady and Broadcaster respectively is more of a beneficial partnership than working under them, especially for the Flesh Walls.

Lords are also the entities that can pull children into the Nowhere, although some do it far more than others and as such are more experienced. For example: The Ferryman, North Wind, Living Mall and Flesh Walls.

(Also while I’m on the topic, I fully believe that Noone’s dream in Ep 3 of the Podcast is essentially an unplanned, forced detour for Noone’s Nowhere Tour, with the Living Mall being the thing that pulls her in this time instead of the Ferryman, which is why the Ferryman ends up taking her away from the Mall at the end instead of just letting her do whatever until she wakes up again. This would explain not only why the Ferryman actually helped Noone during her escape from the Mall, pointing at her necklace and gesturing for her to take it off before offering Noone his hand to escape (which brings to mind the North Wind comic, where the Ferryman does the exact same gesture to the Refugee Boy to take him away from the North Wind), an action we never him do before or after episode 3 when Noone is in danger, but also why the Mall got incredibly distressed and angry at the Ferryman when he showed up. The Mall pulled Noone in themselves this time, and the Ferryman had to show up to make sure his target didn’t get caught by different Lord before he could take her.)

Lords are the most powerful creatures found in the Nowhere, often possessing incredible power and uniquely, more humanlike intelligence and qualities. Adults in the Nowhere are more often than not mindless child killers who simply do their job or keep up with their obsession or vice (the Teacher teaching, the Hunter hunting, Viewers being addicted to the Transmission, etc) and completely LOSE IT when they see a child, gunning straight for it with the intent to kill unless something even more important (usually Obsession related) happens to stop them. It’s shown that some non-Lords can resist these child-killing urges with some practice like the Thin Man refusing to actually harm Six when he grabs her (although he did still leave Six to be corrupted in the Tower) and the Butler being able to look after the Pretender, who is a child, but this seems to be the exception. Especially since in all cases of this happening, there’s a reason for it. The Thin Man can still recognize Six, The Butler doesn’t harm the Pretender because she’s the Lady’s daughter, who the Butler works for and fears for VERY good reason, the Hunter didn’t kill Six immediately because he wanted to either cook or taxidermy her at a later date, etc

Meanwhile Lords have been seen completely ignoring any sort of child killing urge or compulsion easily. The Lady looked after anywhere from 2 to 6 children and is the one that trained the Butler to not attack her children in the first place, the Living Mall is extremely possessive, but doesn’t appear to have any real intentions of harming Noone, just wanting to keep her happy so she won’t leave them to be alone again and even begs her not to go further into the Nowhere for her own safety and even the Ferryman, despite his constant kidnapping of children in and out of Nowhere, never resorts to outright harming them or chasing them down like a wild animal like some other adults.

The Ferryman especially is a good example of this. Instead of chasing and snatching up any child he sees or mindlessly chasing one no matter the cost or killing them immediately upon capture, the Ferryman usually manipulates kids into giving themselves up nonviolently and is extremely persistent in doing so, stalking targets for YEARS if he has to in order to manipulate them or to wait for them to get into a position to be manipulated. He does tie up Six when bringing her to the Maw, but even prior to that he doesn’t chase Six down or harm her in order to capture her. He simply finds Six and points at her, causing every adult nearby to also point and make noises at her (possibly showing that the Ferryman has some sort of control or commanding power over Adults, just like some other lords we see), which overwhelms Six to the extent that she just curls up and tries to block out the noise, and after that the Ferryman presumably just walked over and took her without resistance, avoiding any sort of chase or fight entirely.

This isn’t to say that Lords won’t attack children or will treat them with any sort of kindness, the Lady will kill any intruders she can find and the North Wind seems to seriously enjoy killing things, making a whole game out of it with the Ferryman, but what I’m saying is that they’re able to resist those natural child-killing instincts if they ever want or need to. If a Lord kills a child, it’s because they want to, not because they need to. And boy do they often want to.

They’re also noticeably more aware and intelligent than typical adults. For the best example of this, compare the Maw and Signal Tower to any other adult in complexity.

Every year at the same time, but never in the same place, the Maw shows up, brings guests aboard and lets them eat endless amounts of delicious food and meat, only to later kill all of the guests aboard to feed the Lady with their souls.

The Signal Tower keeps producing the Signal by using a time loop. The loop is initially set up when the Broadcaster finds Mono, a child with signal powers, and attacks the Pale City Orphanage that he’s living in. The two meet, something we don’t get to see happens and Mono ends up in the forest outside the city, most likely coming out of one of the TVs there. Then Mono meets Six and the two journey through the Pale City. The actual loop begins when Mono releases the Thin Man, who kidnaps Six (and removes her soul by doing so). Mono then kills the Thin Man, and enters the Tower, only for a soulless Six to leave him there. Mono is then used as a living battery to create the transmission until he’s too old to be useful, at which point Mono (now The Thin Man) is released from the tower by his past self and is then eventually killed by his past self, who goes on to become trapped in the tower and so on infinitely.

All of these things are not only complicated (Especially the Loop), but when compared to other adults, even adults with Jobs like the Teacher and Doctor, have something that other adults don’t: A Purpose and Ultimate Goal.

The Teacher endlessly teaches fake students that can’t grow, change, learn or ever leave the school. She will do that forever simply because she is a Teacher and Teachers teach. The Doctor endlessly preforms surgeries on patients that never leave, simply waiting in the hospital to go through it all again, once again, simply because the Doctor is a Doctor and that’s what doctors do. The Hunter hunts and taxidermies because he’s a hunter, end of story. These adults CAN do things other than their jobs if they want to, like the Teacher playing the Piano in her free time and even writing and editing her own piece, but in the end they’re stuck endlessly doing their jobs for no real reason, with no end goal, simply because that is what they do.

But the Lady and Broadcaster are different. For example: The Maw’s whole thing isn’t something the Lady does just because she’s The Owner or The Host of the Maw and that’s what she does, she does it to keep herself alive, maintaining the whole thing as a way to guarantee a steady supply of souls to keep herself going year after year. In fact: The Lady didn’t originally run the Maw. She forcibly took it over from the previous owner (The Granny). In other words: The Lady planned out everything with the Maw. She took over because she wanted to use it as a guest trap and continues to use it as so. There’s also the Lady’s connections to the Nest, showing that the Lady can just straight up stop the Maw stuff in its entirety for a while and do whatever the hell she wants at the Nest, not to mention her own collection of books and spells deeper in her personal quarters, further abandoning any semblance of “I run the Maw because I am it’s owner and therefore it is my purpose”. The Lady runs the Maw and keeps track of all her employees because she wants to (use it to become immortal), not because it’s her only true purpose in life.

Her name actually somewhat reflects this. Instead of a job title or something similar, her name is simply “The Lady”. “The Lady of the Maw” for long. It’s just a description of her. Not a job title. Because the Lady does what she wants and doesn’t have a preset job-related purpose. The Broadcaster can also technically be used here as well, because The Broadcaster isn’t actually his name. We don’t know his name. He’s simply a second Thin Man that you can find if you search through the Lore enough. I just call him the Broadcaster because that was the Thin Man’s original name when LN2 had just recently been announced.

(The Thin Man also has a non-job-related name and isn’t a lord, but that’s because he doesn’t actually have a job to define him with. He’s a living battery for the signal tower, nothing more and nothing less.)

Point is, Lords are way more intelligent than the typical adult, and are able to think in ways that regular adults simply can’t.

Also (and this one is a pure headcanon with little canon evidence): Lords have the unique ability to speak in a language that both Children and Adults understand, when normally Children and Adults simply can’t understand each other. The only other creatures that can do this are The Butler, a Non-Lord Adult who can speak Child thanks to the Lady, The Pretender, a child that can speak Adult also thanks to the Lady, and Children that are still in the process of being dragged into the Nowhere, like Noone being able to hear and understand an adult shopkeeper.

Lords can be aware of each other, interact and even work together, as seen with both the Lady and The Ferryman working together either with the Ferryman working underneath the Lady or both on an equal partnership (it’s hard to say given how powerful the Ferryman is and how we don’t know what he’s getting out of this partnership) and the Broadcaster and Flesh Walls working together to create the Transmission, the Loop and everything else that keeps the Pale City the way it is. It really just depends on how close their respective domains are.

In fact: we know two Lords who are either rivals or outright enemies: The Lady and The Broadcaster (once again, a separate entity from the Thin Man, although they look nearly identical).

In Little Nightmares 2, you can find an apartment that used to belong to the Lady, implying that she used to live in the Pale City.

It even has a picture of her (Masked, implying that she had her powers long before coming to the Maw, throwing a massive wrench into the Cycle Of Ladies theory) and one of her ceramic statues. The Glitching Remain found near it might even be the shadow-lifeforce-soul-stuff that the Lady stores inside those things, having leaked out and gotten ensnared by the Transmission.

Given the state of the Pale City and how the Lady now views the mainland as “Chaos”, it’s pretty clear that the Lady lived in the Pale City before the Broadcaster and Signal Tower showed up, and the Lady left once the Transmission started up.

Then in the Nest, we have the Lady locking up a TV in a heavy duty room while suspending it in the air (presumably so nothing can come through and if something does, the TV will fall and break, preventing them from escaping).

Combine that with the Broadcaster’s failed attempt to enter the Maw through a TV in the Post-Credits of Secrets Of The Maw and one of the Pretender’s drawings depicting the Broadcaster, and it’s very possible that the Lady did this in response to the Broadcaster trying to enter the Nest through that specific TV. To prevent him from taking her daughter. It would certainly explain why that TV was rigged to be one way. If the Broadcaster were to come through, the TV would fall, preventing the Broadcaster from escaping with a kidnapped Pretender.

It’s not the only TV in the Nest, as the Pretender does have one of her own, but there’s also a possibility that this specific TV is special somehow. Maybe it’s the only one in the Nest that can access live TV and signals, with the Pretender’s TV only being able to play pre-recorded stuff.

Final point is, both the Lady and the Broadcaster seem to despise each other, with the Lady leaving the Pale City once he showed up and the Broadcaster making multiple attempts to enter the Maw and Nest, most likely with the intention of harming the Lady and/or the Pretender.

As for how Lords are made, I headcanon that there’s two ways. A Deal with The Eye or being Made By It.

For the second opinion you have The Ferryman, North Wind, Signal Tower and Living Mall. They were just straight up created by the Eye. They aren’t the only ones either, as other Lords like them still have the capability to exist out there in the Nowhere. These are just the Lords we’ve seen.

As for why I believe these guys were created by the Lord, just look at them and what they’re capable of.

The Ferryman is described as a otherworldly figure with a face resembling melting wax (fun fact: that exact description is used in the podcast and is a reference to the Cut Character The Wax Bellman, who was confirmed out of universe to be an older beta version of what would later become the Ferryman.), who can shapeshift, teleport, speaks entirely in riddles and is shown to have direct connections to EXTREMELY powerful creatures, not to mention that Otto identifies him as “The guardian at the threshold. A mythic entity who’s appeared in the stories of innumerable cultures.”

The North Wind is a formless entity that is the Wind, is on par with the Ferryman in power and out of universe, The North Wind is often a character in legends and stories of various cultures, just like how Otto describes the Ferryman.

The Signal Tower and Living Mall are so similar that I first they were the same character. They’re giant masses of flesh covered in eyes that can mimic entire buildings. The eyes alone should give these things off.

Coincidentally (or not), these four specific lords are the ones who are better at invading people’s dreams and accessing Our World, with the Ferryman in particular being so adept at it that Otto initially believes him to be The “guardian at the threshold” of the Nowhere. In reality, all Lords we see can access our world through dreams, and it turns out that Eye-Created Lords are just naturally better at it. The Ferryman isn’t THE guardian at the threshold that Otto is looking for, but A guardian at the threshold. A Lord. One of many.

For the others like The Lady, Broadcaster and most of the Podcast Lords, they started out as regular adults.

Now it’s important to note that Regular Adults, despite being bound to that singular purpose or job, can do things outside of it and have unrelated things on the side, like the Teacher playing and composing on the piano in her free time.

For many, this is where it starts, with an adult using that Free Time and stuff on the side in very specific ways. They start researching the world they inhabit and how it works, the Nowhere, Magic, The Eye, and it all eventually culminates in them somehow getting the attention of the Eye itself, and making a deal with it. Either that or the Adult comes into close contact with another Lord, who ends up bringing the Eye’s attention to the adult for them.

The deal is all the benefits that lords have over regular adults (plus whatever is unique to them, like the Lady’s shadow magic and the Broadcaster’s signal powers) in exchange for… something. We don’t know exactly what, but this something is generally assumed to be souls. Many souls. For example, the Viewers of the Pale City are eventually consumed by the Televisions they watch, leaving behind only their clothes. It’s assumed that their souls are claimed by the Eye through this, the Eye getting any and all souls that the transmission ensnares and drags into itself.

Speaking of which….

The All Seeing Eye:

To my understanding and theorizing, the Little Nightmares Universe looks like this:

You have Reality as we know it, The Threshold between Reality and Nowhere, Nowhere itself, an unknown space that most likely just contains another threshold, this time between the Nowhere and the Nightmare World and the Nightmare World itself, which I also call the Eye’s Domain.

The Eye is a cosmic horror-esque eldritch monstrosity. Simple as that. It is the ruler and sole inhabitant of its domain, the Nightmare World. The Eye’s Domain essentially stands opposite to ours in a cosmic sense, and the Nowhere is created where both of these very different worlds overlap ever so slightly.

Also in a very disturbing twist, the Nowhere is actually essentially the universe’s DEFAULT STATE, or at least is as close as to you can get to it, and at some point in the incomprehensibly distant past (most likely during or even before the literal Big Bang), it separated into the stable, orderly “reality” where we live and exist and the horrifying chaotic eldritch nightmare world where the Eye exists.

We know this thanks to the Ferryman’s words: “Two flows from one, and here, is whole again”. In other words, there used to be one world, but then they separated into two, and in the Nowhere, both worlds meet again.

This also means that the Eye most likely predates the entire universe as we know it. In fact, I’d compare it to this bit of Adventure Time Lore:

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The Eye’s Realm is literally just Eldritch madness the mortal mind can’t comprehend. Pure chaos with the Eye being omnipresent, all seeing and in full control of everything that happens in there. But the Nowhere is different. It’s not created by the Eye, at least not on purpose. The Nowhere is a space between spaces, where our reality meets the Eye’s nightmarish hellscape, and the end result is the Nowhere, where things make JUST enough sense to be comprehensible while also being filled with the Eye’s nightmares and corruption.

The Eye can see into the Nowhere and is almost always watching almost everywhere at once, but can’t truly interact with anything outside its domain like the Nowhere or Our World (thank god), but it can use other methods to influence things, like it’s various Lords. The massive amount of Eyes seen all over the franchise are less a thing the Eye looks through and more just a sign of Its Presence. It can’t show up physically, but the Eye symbols are a sign that it’s here and watching regardless.

However, despite the Eye being unable to physically appear in the Nowhere, we’ve seen it. In Episode 6 of the Podcast.

In episode 6, Noone is brought to the Threshold, the final barrier between the Real World and Nowhere, where crossing it will trap you forever. The Threshold (or at least Our side of it) is described as Extremely Dark, filled with black mist that makes it extremely hard to see, and contains a single wooden door simply described as “Ancient” with a symbol of the Eye on it. But after Noone crosses through the door and sees the Nowhere side of the Threshold, it’s different.

The Mist vanishes, and Noone sees countless stars that fill the sky with a red moon, but quickly realizes that those aren’t stars, they’re Eyes. Even the Red Moon is just a Massive, Red Eye. That is our description of the Eye itself.

The Eye can’t enter the Nowhere or Our World, but seems to be fully capable of existing within that border space between the realms, although it’s power is somewhat limited here compared to in its own domain.

Or maybe you can just see into the other realms from the Threshold. The Nowhere is compared to a one-way mirror at some point. Earth is on the mirrored side, and can’t look into the Nowhere, while the Nowhere can look at us. Presumably, the Nightmare Realm follows the same idea. From inside the Nightmare Realm, you can’t see the Nowhere either. You are on the mirrored side of a one way mirror. But from the Threshold, and more specifically the part of the Threshold that’s closer to the Nowhere? You are on the side of the mirror that lets you look straight through it, and with Noone being in-between Reality, The Nowhere AND the Nightmare World, she might have be able to look straight at the Eye in its domain, looking at it through the one-way mirror that is reality.

Anyways, That description of Countless Glowing Eyes matching the amount of stars in the sky with a single massive Red Eye surrounded by rings in the centre is the closest we can come to understanding what the Eye looks like. It’s the most complicated form it can take that we as human beings can still comprehend without going insane.

But there’s more. In episode 5, Otto attempts to use a machine to see into Noone’s dreams, but is stopped at the dark mist of the Threshold. He watches as a single eye appears from the darkness, and then it opens, staring at Otto with such intensity that he’s physically in pain from it, barely able to choke out words as he rambles that “it’s watching me” until the machine he’s using completely breaks down.

In other words, Otto tried to stare into the abyss that is Nowhere, but the Eye cut him off and stared right back.

Also also: Otto’s reaction to the Eye staring at him plus the sound it makes as it does so reminds me exactly of the Sentry Eyes used in the Maw and Nest that turn people caught in its gaze to stone. There’s also the unused TV Eyes from LN2 that do the same thing and it looks like the Mechanical Monster Baby in LN3 can do the same thing with it’s own eyes. This leads me to believe that many Lords directly draw upon the Eye for magical power, and Sentry Eyes (and the Eye Cameras in the Maw) use raw power taken straight from the Eye to power themselves.

Also as pure headcanon: In my headcanon post about some children being native to the Nowhere and some being from Earth, I mentioned two things:

Children that are visiting Nowhere as they sleep (like Noone) but haven’t been fully pulled in yet will disappear from Nowhere and go back to Earth if they die in the Nowhere, Fall Asleep in the Nowhere, or “go unobserved for too long”.

Children will naturally appear in the Nowhere (basically spawn in like Minecraft Mobs) in any area that is completely unobserved.

For both of these things, I’m not just talking about going unobserved by others, but also by the Eye.

The Eye, despite being present almost everywhere in the Nowhere and having a reputation as being all-seeing, is not perfect. Occasionally, a tiny gap will appear in its all-seeing sight, and when it can’t see a spot, Children, one of the only things immune to its corrupting, nightmarish presence, have a chance to appear in that unobserved spot.

#little nightmares #headcanons #theory #lore #asks #the eye #the North wind

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callsign-bunnie · 1 year

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Hey guys! I’ve played this ask game before, but I’m bringing it back because I’m going to be trying to make a dent in my massive workload today!

So, ask any of the characters from my AUs anything! Or hell, ask me something about my aus! Any questions you have, it doesn’t matter!

A reminder that my current AU list is: -Regency AU (Love and War) -Teeth and Skin (Zombie AU) -You guys can ask for the sci-fi AU (Synthetic Emotions) -An Academic Proposal -I’m also working on a Moth Fae AU that will be very casually updated like Teeth and Skin because I mostly just want to make art for it but you can ask questions for it. All of the characters are in it, including Nik, Horangi, and Koenig. That one doesn’t have a name so just call it the Moth Fae AU (I know some of you got excited for Lunar Chronicles, so I will say, that one is a lot more inspired by it.) -Any of my smaller fics/aus (Slasher Fieldtrip, Mimesis, WCIBM, LIUATTS, etc) -Oh, you can also ask that Tattoo Shop au questions, though it is, admittedly, less developed -Restaurant AU

You can also ask me questions (youknowifyouwantto) because I always love sharing my ideas. Like I said, if I had to share all of the ideas in my brain, we would be here a while

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beatriceeverytuesday · 1 year

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For the ask game: 8. Buffy/Anya Neighbors AU - 👀👀👀!! YES?!?!!! 28. if you're lonely, come be lonely with me - I love this title, very curious who/what it could be about 😄

also can I just say I am impressed at the amount of things you've started and ideas you have, looking forward to checking out more of your fics when I can!

Send me an ask with a title that intrigues you from my list of wip's and I'll tell you something about it or post a snippet from it.

Buffy/Anya Neighbors AU:

“What do you think?” Buffy asks, despite already knowing the answer. “Is it salvageable?” Anya steps closer and looks at the charred mess cooling on the baking sheet on the stovetop. “Maybe I could cut off the burnt pieces and he’d never even know?” Buffy suggests, digging in the drawers for a knife.

“If you’re trying to seduce him with your womanly prowess, you’re definitely going to fail,” Anya says bluntly.

No one is trying to seduce anyone else, but apparently that concept isn’t getting through to Anya anytime soon, so Buffy opts to ignore her. “I’m doomed,” Buffy agrees. She sinks to the ground with her back to the kitchen cabinets, not caring that she’s being pathetic in front of Anya. Anya just witnessed Buffy nearly set her kitchen on fire. After that, sitting on the floor hardly counts as humiliating. “I just wanted…” Buffy doesn’t know where she was going with that, exactly, so she doesn't finish her thought. Buffy wanted not only a boyfriend, but to not be so alone anymore. To find someone to spend her evenings with, and have that turn into nights and mornings as well. To have someone to listen to her hopes and dreams, her fears and insecurities. She wants someone to spend her life with, and she doesn’t understand why finding him is proving to be so hard.

“Well, you’ll just have to seduce him with your looks instead,” Anya says, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. “Which will be easy since you’re very attractive,” she adds simply, like she’s making a casual observation of a fact, making a sad Buffy on the floor feel a lot better about herself.

if you're lonely, come be lonely with me actually already has two chapters up on AO3! The last four on my list of wip's are things I've already posted at least the first chapter of. I kinda included them in case any of my readers wanted a peek at a future chapter and probably should have specified - sorry! Feel free to send in another ask if this fic doesn't interest you, or if you just want to know more!

Summary: On her first day at Sunnydale High, Buffy befriends a student she witnesses being bullied by the most popular girl in school. Cordelia Chase used to be popular as well, until Harmony Kendall threw her out of the group. Cordelia isn’t sharing why she was evicted, but that’s understandable. Buffy has stuff she isn’t sharing either, like her secret identity as a slayer, or the fact that she can’t seem to stop staring at Cordelia’s lips.

And, even though you haven't read the other chapters, no reason you can't get a little snippet of something not-yet-posted! Here you go:

There’s a shuffling sound that Buffy realizes is Cordelia getting on the ground in front of her. There are light touches on Buffy’s shins, her hands, her knees, everywhere Cordelia can reach with Buffy all curled up and crouched like this, almost as if she’s checking Buffy for injuries. Cordelia cups Buffy’s face in her hands next, tilting her chin upwards, probably so she can get a good look. Buffy scrunches her eyes shut tighter. Thumbs sweep gently across Buffy’s cheeks. “You’re crying,” Cordelia announces, more statement than question.

“Yeah,” Buffy rasps, because she can’t come up with anything else to say. She doesn’t know how to explain that while she is still scared, that emotion is taking a backseat to the ones Cordelia is bringing to the forefront, drawing them out of Buffy with the gentleness of her hands on Buffy’s cheeks. She doesn’t know how to explain that now she’s crying more out of relief than anything else. Buffy leans into Cordelia's touch the same way sunflowers lean toward the warmth of the sun, toward what keeps them happy and healthy, toward what gives them the strength to keep going another day.

Thank you for your compliments about my list of wip's! Honestly I think it's representative not only of all my ideas but also of my inability to focus long enough to finish a single fic and my nervousness about posting certain ideas I have haha. I hope you enjoyed!

#buffy x anya #coffy #buffy summers #anya jenkins #cordelia chase #btvs #thank you for the ask!!#ask game

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wither-rose-circus · 2 years

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I wanna get into the mcyt fandom but it seems extremely complex and I've got no clue where to start

While I wouldn’t necessarily call it complex, the Minecraft YouTube community is very massive and very old and can hardly be boiled down to one singular “fandom.” The only thing you really need to do before joining is ask yourself what kind of content you’re looking for. Do you enjoy just watching people make things? Do you like drama and roleplay? Would you prefer casual fun of people just playing the game together? Do you like one-shot challenge videos? Or maybe long term survival series? Perhaps you’d just like a variety of content so long as it involves Minecraft?

Your answer will lead you down several different branches of content, many of which I myself am not familiar with. But I can point you in a few directions based on creators I’ve seen, myself.

Do you want to watch:

A group of friends just having fun and playing on a server together? I suggest Hermitcraft

There are 26 hermits as of the current season (9), but don’t worry, you can watch the seasons in any order from any POV. The only real “plot” on Hermitcraft is a bunch of people doing their own thing until they run into each other. My personal recommendations to start with are Grian, Mumbo Jumbo, Goodtimeswithscar, ImpulseSV, or Geminitay, but you can find a list of them here and see if anyone strikes your fancy!

A dramatic, story-focused roleplay akin to DnD? Try Empires SMP

Empires SMP is a partially narrative-driven server that spans across 12 different “empires,” each with its own theme and ruler. The main drive of the story is how each ruler interacts with each other, but an overarching storyline involving a demon hellbent on ending the world forms about 1/3 of the way through. If you’re interest in that aspect of the server specifically, I’d recommend Smajor1995, ShubbleYT, Geminitay, Joey Graceffa, or Mythicalsausage. However, that’s just season 1, which is a self-contained story. If you’d like to get into something similar on the ground floor, though, Empires season 2 is starting this Saturday (same cast, new story), so it’d be a great place to start with no catching up on the previous season required!

Basic survival multiplayer? How about 3rd Life SMP

3rd Life is a hardcore series in which 14 players are given 3 lives, color coded to green, yellow, and red. Players on their green or yellow lives are simply expected to survive, but players on red lives are encouraged to cause as much death and destruction as possible before they die and are eliminated. It has two sequels as well, Last Life and the currently ongoing Double Life, both of which feature the same cast. I’d recommend starting with Grian, Inthelittlewood, Zombiecleo, or Smajor1995.

Challenge or variety videos? Some of my personal favorites are Wadzee, Tommyinnit, Fundy, Wisp, and Dreamwastaken

They have full playlists of various random challenges, from speedrunning the game before another player kills them, to beating some of the most ridiculous mods, to getting shocked when they take damage, to beating custom difficulties, to coding viewer suggestions into the game.

Of course, these are all very surface level and based only on creators I have personally watched. There are so many more people I could have included, and even more I’ve never heard of. I know that sounds intimidating, but really, this list is just some suggestions to get you going, get you talking to people, and eventually get you more recommendations. In a “fandom” that doesn’t follow one particular show, you’ve got to make your own path.

The only advice for getting into the Minecraft YouTube community I can really give you is to watch Minecraft content on YouTube. That’s all you have to do.

#if you want advice on the fandom /etiquette/ (at least on tumblr) or blog recommendations there are plenty of posts I’d be happy to link #mcyt #mcytblr #asks #anon

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muffinrecord · 2 years

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Anniversary: Who to spend rolls on?

Someone asked what characters would be best to focus on for anniversary on reddit a couple days ago. I decided to include my response here too. I’m only talking about characters that I have some familiarity with-- I know that First Sunrise Shizuka is good but since I haven’t used her very much, I can’t give a detailed opinion.

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Who you roll for depends on what your priorities are. I'll try to cover all the bases here from Casual play to Ranked to Kimochi. These aren't presented in any kind of order besides unlimiteds being at the bottom and limiteds being at the top. Also, this isn't an exhaustive list; I'm leaving off a few like Tsubaki and Final Tart because you'll need to spend money to get them.

Limiteds:

If you want someone for casual gameplay, Ashley Taylor or Yachiyo Nanami (Anime ver.) are incredible. You really only need one or the other-- Ashley is better for more long-term generic farming since she has four blasts disks (less likely to pull an unwanted disc), but Anime Yachiyo is probably the best solo casual mirrors unit in the game right now (note: this doesn't apply for ranked). If you want to get one, you only need two slots because that's enough for them to murder everything with blasts. Personally, I think Anime Yachiyo is stronger than Ashley now but both are very good.

Kanagi Izumi (Vampire ver.) is very good as a solo magia unit and will make some challenges a breeze. She combines constant magia use with evade spam, meaning that she'll deal out lots of damage while taking very little of it. She's been outclassed by other units for things like Ranked and Kimochi, but she's still extremely solid and one of the best magia solo'rs in the game.

Madoka & Iroha are one of the best units in the game and can turn a bad team into a good one. They have Accele draw on their SE active and have incredible sustain. You'll see them used in all sorts of gameplay from casual, to high-level Kimochi and Ranked. They're just... They're just always good. If you had to choose from anyone on this list, I'd pick them.

Kuroe is shaping up to be a very powerful MP battery for Kimochi. It's arguable who is better at mp generation: Kuroe or Madoka & Iroha? We saw more Kuroes than Madoka & Irohas in the last (Aqua) Kimochi for the top players so factor that in. She also can get rid of Status Ailments on her Magia/Doppel which is something MadoIro can’t do.

Kyoko Sakura (Doppel ver.) is another EXTREMELY good unit. She's great for casual gameplay, Kimochi and for Ranked. She can easily get to Magia on turn one (some ranked strats have her there just because she can get there without needing to spend a disc) and she has blast draw. She's probably the best choice for Flame units right now if you don't know what to get.

Ultimate Madoka-Senpai is necessary for high-level charge strategies. There's honestly not more to say than that; in fact I'd go as far to say that she's 100% required if you want to do well in some of the Kimochi fights. Last year I remember Raz saying that she's the best unit to go for during Anniversary and it wouldn't surprise me if that was still the case.

Yachiyo Nanami (Tanabata ver.) is a very powerful charge unit. She has Charge draw and she has the highest +charge bonus right now. She's very popular in Ranking and Kimochi.

Holy Mami (Anime ver.) is a great forest choice. She's one of the best damage units for Kimochi (for forest) and she can generate MP like crazy. Despite her ugly sprite, I find her gameplay to be really fun and she's made a lot of challenges into a breeze. However, I would say she isn't as necessary to have as other units on this list... But you'll be really happy if you do have her.

Nayuta & Mikage (Christmas ver.)-- I'm a little more hesitant to recommend this pairing, but they're a very powerful support. However, if you have regular unlimited Mikage, you can probably skip getting them. Still, they're extremely good and worth mentioning all the same. *Note, I don’t have as much experience using them as some of the others on this list.

Akuma Homura-chan is the best Ranked unit in the game right now-- she's basically designed to be a monster for Ranking. Her SE active fucks up the enemy from using magia (and will destroy any anti-debuffs the team has), she herself gives 2 anti-status ailments to the entire party, she has 3 accele and 2 blast disks meaning you can use Tanabata Yachiyo with her without worrying about drawing charge disks (easier to get a puella combo that way), she can get to Magia easily and her magia is based around making the enemy deal less damage and get less MP, aka fucking up any possible good Ranking score for the enemy. However, she's not as good for casual use imo. Making the enemy deal less damage is important in Ranking but why do that when you can just kill the enemy faster for casual stuff?

Unlimiteds:

Mikage Yakumo is the best unlimited support in the game. She has it all-- Attack Up and Damage Up on her Doppel/Magia, she has accele draw and mp on her connect, and she's adorable. She's a must-have and I always see her in Kimochi due to how damn good she is. Even one-slot is good enough for a lot of content.

Madoka Kaname might be a day one character but she is still a solid choice. I think she's overshadowed by Madoka & Iroha a bit, but she also excels at things they don't too. She's a great mp battery-- but if you intend to use her for Kimochi, make sure you don't unlock her doppel.

Mayu Kozue is insane for Kimochi and another practical must-have. Her Magia gives mp regen and can allow for some players to constantly be using Magia and Doppels EVERY TURN in Kimochi. Outside of Kimochi she is not as critical to have on your team, but she’s still very powerful.

Kushu Irina is an extremely powerful dark magia user. She has three accele disks and is great for Kimochi strats (for her respective element). Her personal and magia/doppel give Magia Damage Up to all allies, which is crucial for dealing more damage in Kimochi.

Sudachi Sawa is practically a necessity for Ranking. She's the best tank in the game (though that doesn't actually mean very much since tanking sucks in this game). The reason she's the best tank in the game is from a number of factors, but basically she gets to Magia really quickly (REALLY QUICKLY) and can provoke on her active SE. You can also arrange her SE so that she can grab aggro without even needing to use provoke, which is kind of crazy for a tank with so much bulk? However, she's not going to be as great for casual gameplay because tanks just aren't good for casual gameplay.

Sae Kirino is extremely good thanks to her charge draw and her charge conservation on connect. She's not as necessary as some units on this list (Kaoru can be used for charge draw instead if you're struggling) but she's still really great and perfect for casual gameplay + some kimochi.

Shizuka Tokime is a good generic flame unit. She isn’t as necessary as some on this list but I’ve found her extremely useful for almost any situation when it comes to needing a flame girl, and she gives some decent buffs to her whole team for five rounds (attack up/defense up), which makes her useful for difficult content like witches’ paradox. Also, imo she doesn’t need a ton of slots to be excellent; I def used her with two and gotten shit done. She gains mp really quickly which is a bonus too.

Other:

Little Kyubey is cool but has been completely powercrept. There are a few things Little Kyubey can do that no one else can, but I haven't touched mine since I got Ashley a year ago and Anime Yachiyo has stolen its job for casual mirrors gameplay.

Ultimate Madoka is nice but not a must-have and she's suffered from power creep. She's not going to be helpful for Kimochi or Ranked, but she might be alright for casual play + lower levels of hundred evils, but she's kind of... eh I guess? I dunno.

I'd stay away from any defense-types/tanks unless you're going for specific mirrors ranking strategies.

Ao Kasane is a really good support unit but Mikage outclasses her in some places-- however she was crucial in the latest aqua kimochi thanks to her ability to remove Granted Effects and Buffs from the enemy, so make of that what you will.

Rena & Kaede (Swimsuit ver.) are probably the best Aqua magia unit in the game, but that REALLY isn’t saying much. Their gameplay feels outdated in comparison to newer units. Still, if you need a magia-focused aqua unit who does aoe damage and not single target, this is the best one to focus on probably.

Kyoko Sakura (Swimsuit ver.) is a very good flame blaster, but she’s fallen more by the wayside thanks to units like Ashley and Anime Yachiyo.

Holy Alina is the only forest blast unit in the game, but she too is powercrept by Ashley and Anime Yachiyo.

Mami Tomoe (Swimsuit ver.) is powercrept by Holy Mami (anime ver.). She’s good but she earns mp so much more slowly in comparison.

Yozuru Sasame basically fills the same niche that Ashley Taylor/Anime Yachiyo fill, but worse. She’s not a bad unit by any means though; she’s just been powercrept. Basically you can say that she’s the unlimited version of Ashley and AniYachiyo. The biggest drawback on her is that she lacks a 100% Anti-Evade like those two have, but that can be fixed with the right memoria. Her best asset is her personal memoria, so make sure you get that max-awakened!

#Magia Record #Muffin Record #MR Help

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indecentpause · 2 years

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Find the Word Tag

tagged by @kaiusvnoir to find faint, frown, flicker, and face! thank!

I don’t have anything new so apologies for any repeats from past games. hopefully you still like them!

cw: mortuary/cadaver, implied past violence, mental illness symptoms mention (including suicidal ideation)

faint:

“How could they miss that?” she mumbles.

You turn to her. “They who?”

“Oh, I don’t do the autopsies,” she explains. “We have a few people here specifically for that. Maybe they did notice and I missed it in the notes. Hang on.”

She grabs a clipboard from her workstation and shuffles through some papers. She frowns.

“They must have been so busy with cleaning everything up, it got lost in the shuffle,” she says. “I know my guys, and I know they wouldn’t leave something like this out on purpose.” She examines the wrists again. “It is pretty faint. I didn’t notice until you pointed it out, they must have missed it, too.”

frown:

Then your phone rings, the tone you use for unknown numbers. You pick it up and mute the ringer.

“Not important?” Frankie asks. It’s casual and a little distracted as she watches the tv, so hopefully that means Josselin didn’t tell her anything about your situation.

“Nah,” you say. It rings again. You frown and mute the whole phone this time.

“You sure?” she asks. “Sounds important. I can step out if--”

“No, it’s fine,” you say. “Just a telemarketer.”

She raises a questioning eyebrow at you, but doesn’t push, and you go back to the movie.

flicker:

“I keep a baseball bat under my bed,” Josselin says.

Your eyes go wide. “What?”

“Oh!” recognition flickers over Josselin’s face and he backtracks. “For protection. In case of break ins. I can get one for you, too. One to keep in your car. Metal ones, nice and hard. Difficult to break.”

face:

“Hey,” he says again. “Remember, I have ADHD, too. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria sucks.”

Your brow furrows. “What’s that?”

“Oh!” Josselin says. “Basically, rejection or perceived failure gets to people like us a lot quicker and harder than most. Sorry. I shouldn’t assume people know this; even a lot of therapists and psychiatrists don’t.”

You sniffle again and slip your glasses back on. “That’s a thing?”

Josselin nods, totally sure of himself again. “Oh, yeah,” he says adamantly. “It’s right up there with executive dysfunction on the list of things neurotypical doctors who just think ADHD is ‘annoying kid disease’ don’t understand.”

You laugh, a real, if gurgly, laugh. “I can’t believe I’ve been an ADHD paramedic all this time and didn’t know.”

Josselin offers a crooked grin. “I mean… I wouldn’t think mental health details would be a big thing for paramedics?”

“Mostly things like hallucinations, delusions, suicidal ideation. Stuff that was urgent to know while patients were in my care.”

Josselin’s face tightens just for a moment, then relaxes again, and he offers you what you think is supposed to be an encouraging smile. But it just looks sad.

Tagging @magic-is-something-we-create @loopyhoopywrites @winterandwords and tagging @kaiusvnoir back because I Need More lol, to find: roll, crack, serious, and soft. :)

#my writing #writeblr tag games #find the word #writeblr #tag games #excerpt #wip #the most beautiful puzzle #josselin clearwater #meara ryanne #frankie moore #sara quill #see post body for warnings

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biggest-g · 2 years

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who am I really friends with

Hopping on my computer cause this post is gonna take way too long to type out on my phone

This is just me projecting my thoughts without needing to confront anyone in particular. A lot of shit is going down and this type is all very new to me, not just because this is the first time I’ve felt this over an online platform, but also I’ve never really had this type of strong connection with a friend group.

My friend group for the longest time has used one major Discord server as our main form of communication. It used to at least appear like one big interconnected group of close friends. However, there's been a fair share of conflict and now it's a bit split after some people wanted to distance themselves from certain other people.

I know some people are bound to be closer than others, but for the longest time I've tried to avoid thinking about anyone on the server as less important than anyone else. My mindset went against anything I'd consider could exclusion because I've hated experiencing it myself, and I never arranged anything with just a smaller group instead of involving everyone. But obviously people who are more connected within the group will want to do things without literally everyone else being a part of it. I understand that, and maybe I feel a bit irrationally left out but obviously they’re close and it’s not right for me to be disappointed.

But I have much stronger thoughts when it comes to other Discord servers that consist of selections of people from the main group. At least in my mind, it makes it blindingly clear who exactly the server owner better friends with. I’m perfectly able to recognize that some people are closer to others, but now through this medium of basically invite group chats, its strange because it becomes immediate tangible in a list all the friends the server owner cares about more, and all they don’t care about as much. And that makes me overthink about why I might not be part of the server, if I’m not good enough, if I didn’t form a good enough connection with them. It sucks to have been friendly with someone for a while and end up double guessing how close you actually are. When I see who’s actually on the server, it becomes a comparison game in my head, “why that person over me?”. And I’m also left to think about what I’m missing out on, what conversations they’d want to be having without me. It’s especially weird when people I’m very close to might be on a server I’m not, and when it gets casually mentioned I just have to pretend like I don’t care that much.

I don’t think I’d care as much if it was like a small group of a few people, but when it’s a good amount of people from the server and it doesn’t include me, it does hurt, whether that hurt irrational or not.

Maybe part of the creation of these separate servers comes from trying to have such a large group of friends and unreasonably expecting them all to be very close. Maybe another part comes from turmoil in the group that encouraged people to create these enclaves in the first place.

Maybe I’m also just not used to this type of conflict and need to grow up.

And I don’t want to be intrusive. I don’t want to ask about it and pressure anyone to let me join. I’m posting this here because again I don’t want to confront anyone directly

But I miss talking to some people. I haven’t had a chat with one person in so long after they left and I really... miss them.

I’ll stop monologuing now

I’m just tired

edit:

so much happened today, and things are falling apart

what is going on

...

I should just go to bed

#vent

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first-impressions-gaming · 4 months

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Greedfall

Developed by Spiders

Published by Focus Home Interactive

Release Date 2019

Tested on Xbox Series X (The game received Series and PS5 upgrade in 2021)

MSRP 34,99 USD

youtube

Surely you have played a game that put you in the role of ‘we put all our faith in you, as the main character, please don’t let us down’ before, you may say ‘doesn’t every game do that in a way?’, well Greedfall does it in a more straightforward way compared to what I am used to in other games. For example, as the main character you could be selected randomly as the saviour/hero in The Outer Worlds, or you can be this great commander with precise leadership skills with diplomacy and combat in Mass Effect series, the list goes on and on. In Greedfall, the story is set very precisely before you, you are a child of a wealthy family who is being sent to this recently-discovered and colonized island, Teer Fradee as a diplomat who is tasked to find a cure for the plague that has spread over your hometown and killed dozens of people so far in this 19th century central America setting. The people you interact with claim that there is rumour of cure in the island and natives might be acknowledged of it. This is the main focus so far, on top of this, you are required to keep the balance between multiple nations as a diplomat and interact them as main or side quests.

I would like to present my review in two sections, the reason behind this is the fact that the opening sequence lasts around 3 hours. Right at the beginning we are in our hometown island where a lethal plague, called malichor by locals, has spread and no cure has been found ever since. Before sailing away to the said island, we go through side missions. These side missions include finding a missing crew member of the ship that takes us to the island, looking for a young man who went missing last night after heavily drinking and partying in a tavern nearby, unveiling a pseudo-scientist’s fake potions. During all these quests I never said ‘ugh, let me play the actual game in this promised island, what are these missions?’, you get to know the world we’re in during these quests via interactions and it helps us understand why we are here, why we are going to this island unknown to us personally. This opening sequence might have bored some players because only one third of total players reached the island, Teer Fradee, meaning that around 70% of players did not even get to the point of playing main missions there (according to Xbox achievements). Not every player is ready to sink in at least 2 hours in an opening to be honest, when you ask a player to complete these set side quests before getting into the this mentioned island, you should make sure quests don’t take that long and they are engaging and setting groundwork for the island. Well, this opening could a hit and miss for some, for example our hometown is not that big and you will be running back and forth during quests and after an hour, it gets a bit repetitive and boring, the silver lining could have been a backstory or memorable NPCs at least. The focus is on plague, and there are corpses casually lying around, therefore I expected NPCs or side characters talk about their experience throughout this time, but the subject they talk about don’t really get into this plague at all. I mean, we just passed a corpse there, shouldn’t we give it a thought and point the elephant in the room? People are getting sick, getting worse, slowly dying, almost decaying and rotting, at least this is what we see when we interact with our mother, who looks almost hopeless and beyond repair. When a game takes a plague, virus or some sort of pandemic into the centre and build the story around it, naturally I anticipate memorable dialogue with the characters I come across. Instead of engaging moments, we chit-chat in a casual way and get on with it. In retrospect, this opening sequence feels like should have been shorter now that I played the game ‘on island’ and think that the opening does not inherently connect itself to our experience on Teer Fradee. When you set foot on the island, your character does not mention the hometown at all, at this point you see what you have done up to that point are not going to carry over, it is as if the developers built the game on Teer Frade, then added this opening as an introduction to the world but didn’t establish them on mutual ground.

Budget of a game greatly impacts its development scope and time-window, I totally agree on that, still Greedfall really lacks variety in terms of interior designs, that I view as unacceptable at this point. Basically there are two interior designs when it comes to apartments and bigger spaces such as governmental buildings. Regardless of being in your hometown, Serene, or in Teer Fradee, interior designs are completely and 100% same layout and size-wise. You enter and apparently the living room welcomes you, you take the stairs to the above room, and here is bedroom. This is the complete house, is this really the final product or some draft version? It is extremely small and feels unnatural, who would design an apartment such as this? Even the stairs located in a weird way as if the rooms were created separately and put together on top of one another in the end. What sticks out the most is that, the first time you step into an apartment is where you investigate whereabouts of the missing crew member, and at the second floor the lady of the house boasts how wealthy they are. From the looks of size of this apartment, I am not convinced you are that rich, or you have a horrible taste in apartment designs. Whose living room is located right in front of the door? And it is so small that it looks like a cube with some tables, paintings and decorations added.

Here is the clip for small building interior design:

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As for bigger places, a huge entrance welcomes you, at the end of the corridor you take stairs to the above floor which also has a massive empty open space, and you find the person to interact at the end of the room. Sadly, this is just a ‘bigger’ version of the apartment design, it is huge for sake of being huge, it does not create any sense of excitement or familiarity with it. Throughout your entire playtime, you will come across these two interior designs over and over again, I really wish the team had put more effort and energy into interior designs, because environmental design look cool and fresh, you can clearly see developers aspired to build an island, yet my appetite for interior designs isn’t satisfied at all. When I entered a location, I just wanted to interact with the required NPC and leave the place as soon as possible, I couldn’t stand with these terrible designs with bad taste, you cannot just simply stretch a location and have a huge corridor and put stairs randomly. This is not…a normal building, the humankind has never built or designed a building even closely resembling to this, ever.

Here is the clip for bigger spaces’ interior design:

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The first cutscene cuts into the character customization screen, and there is a huge mistake here, and I am surprised, even shocked, to see that developers did not ‘fix’ this, am I the first person to report on this? The cutscene starts, a painter is drawing a person (this is us) and the person sitting on the stool is shown, then customization screen comes up, the ideal way would have been letting the player customise the character, then playing the cutscene. In this way the player would have felt like they are the main character here, not the pre-rendered male one. This looks amateurish to me.

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The game presents you three playstyles, one firearms-focused, magic-focused and melee-focused, and accordingly the game recommends you to upgrade associated skills for the class you pick, at first the skill trees might confuse you a bit, because there are three separate skill trees, one for main classes, and the other two are extensions related to main class skills. You earn upgrade point each time you level up for main skill tree, and you earn upgrade points every other three levels for the other two skill trees. The thing is that, the game openly recommends you which skill or ability to unlock and upgrade, but it does not work like that actually, for example I picked magic-based class and I was upgrading the related skills, I learned and saw that I cannot do everything I wanted to do with these recommended skills. For example the game employs firearms, and you cannot use them if you don’t unlock the main skill, then I spend my points there, upgrade and improve it, even though the game presents three classes, you end up unlocking each ability and use them altogether, which eliminates classes in itself, my character is mainly using magic with a melee weapon as a second weapon and I use firearms when I am close to enemies. Of course, even when you unlock the main ability to equip firearms, there are certain weapons which will require to upgrade ability to use them. I am magic-based character, but I cannot equip magical rings unless I upgrade my skills. This skill trees and leveling them up seem a bit…complicated to me honestly, and this can be seen in the clips below, in the first one my character cannot jump because I need to upgrade to “vigor 2”. Am I really required to upgrade my skills to simply…jump? I accept that some skills or abilities locked behind abilities and the player should progress and achieve them over time, but we are talking about ‘jumping’ here, jumping is not something to be locked behind a skill. Same thing happened later in the game, and this one is even worse, where I thought I reached the main quest location to interact with somebody, but I couldn’t get across there, the game said I needed to upgrade my skill. It is frustrating to see the NPC right there but not being able to reach him! I had to take an alternative route to get to him which lasted around 7 minutes. I am asking this: should a developer be heavily invested in skill trees so much that it is creating roadblocks in front of the player? The answer is No. Just no. The player should feel to be encouraged to progress and improve his/her character, not blocked like that, for no rationale behind it.

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I’d like to talk about the world-building a bit. So, the game tells us that this a recently discovered island, and there are natives living, and it is being still colonized by Americans. I came across a collectible, a letter, in the game and the letter mentioned that the island got discovered 5 years ago. At that moment I thought ‘wait a second, 5 years ago?’ the reason why I got shocked is that Americans built entire villages, roads, and cities throughout the island, and there is no way, it is impossible to build them in mere 5 years. This isn’t even believable one bit, I can safely say and claim that the cities and everything inbetween is at least half a century-old. First, nothing in this game looks fresh or new, buildings and towns look established and they are already old, there are numerous ruins in rural areas, there is no way to build these small castles near forests and leave them to rot in such a short time. If I disregard this detail, I would say I like world-building, you will visit different towns and cities though you would not find there much to optionally interact with anything or anybody. It is more like interacting with main quest NPCs and leave the town.

The NPCs might glitch time to time, from the looks of her, this lady is arguing with somebody invisible and still able to interact with us:

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The game offers a fresh take on travelling from city to city, this is not an fully open-world game, meaning that you will fast-travel to areas when you would like to visit a city. You will come the edge of an invisible wall of the area you are in, and you will ‘travel’ and it will show you how long the journey will take, in the next screen you are able to buy or sell gear to the merchant, interact with your companions, and pick and remove from your current team, then continue your journey to the selected location. At first I was excited to see a game making use of time travel, and only one main quest makes use of time in game actually, other than that quest, I don’t see the point of time travel existing in this game. The quest in hand about a merchant who is being bullied by gangs and the merchant had to keep paying money for them otherwise it would have dire results for him, the merchant says ‘the gang will come back in 2 days, visit me then, and you will catch them’, during this game I was busy with other quests, and returned to the merchant in 48 hours, as he said the gang came back to bully him more, and we caught them there. Apart from this, you will not deal with game time at all, rendering it useless, a gimmick at best.

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There is always a clever to keep the player’s attention hooked, and if you don’t succeed at this the quests will feel shallow, dull and void of meaning. Greedfall presents main and side quests in one of the worst ways I have ever seen. As you can see in the clip below, the quests don’t have any detail about the on-going mission, it is just ‘go there, do that, interact with this person’, if you stopped playing Greedfall and picked up a week later, you would totally fail to recollect what these quests were about. An on-going quest with different chapters or task within it should display a brief story of the quest from beginning, or show you the previous completed tasks. Due to this reason, I could not get into the quests that much, it always directs you to go somewhere and do something, the story does not help you that much because you are always this ‘I came here as a diplomat, please don’t bring me into your mess, but okay, whatever, I don’t have a choice’ type of person, what we do on this island is somewhat depends on other people and we are not making a difference here, I kept asking this ‘why are we sent here, on this island, do we have something unique to find the cure, why can’t anybody else do that?’, honestly I don’t have any idea what qualifies us as the person to find the cure to this plague.

In side quests you will see the top two quests, which require you to set up camps in each region and find a professor’s notes. Okay, this is not intuitive at all, as a player I dislike this approach because it is not creating an enjoyable experience for me. Throughout my playtime I casually and spontaneously set up camps in regions I explored, but I never got to find notes for the professor, what’s worse is that the game does not hint you where you can find them. Should I just pray and find them on my own in this gigantic world? Where should I even start to look for them? This is the way how you should not introduce players to side quests.

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As I talked about in previous paragraphs, you will equip magic, melee weapons and firearms. The combat is satisfying and pleasant enough. In addition to real-time combat, you have the option to freeze the game and cast spells, use potions and fire your pistol, with this way you don’t feel the necessity to assign all of your potions and abilities as shortcuts.

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With everything considered, the question has to be asked ‘I put 14 hours into this game, am I closer to finding the cure than I was at the beginning?’, it is appalling to recognise the story did not progress that much at all, for this reason I don’t see any point to continue the game, if the main goal of this journey is the cure and bring it back home, then why am I not seeing any progress on that despite 14-hour playtime?

Greedfall offers an average RPG experience with shortcomings with decent combat, it is not the whole package you might dream of, it is still unique in its own approach and treatment of character customization, world-building and narration.

#games #gaming #greedfall #xbox #playstation #game review #Youtube

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littlexbunni · 8 months

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estellamiraiauthor · 1 year

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The Stars May Rise and Fall: The Annotated Re-read (Chapter 9)

Welcome back to Chapter 9 of my probably-way-over-annotated annotation of The Stars May Rise and Fall--a queer retelling of Phantom of the Opera set in the visual kei subculture in turn-of-the-millennium Tokyo! (Buy it here, or order the paperback from your local indie bookstore.)

As always (and I think there are going to be a lot in this chapter), spoilers are fair game, including spoilers for chapters beyond this one. If you are cool with that, please read on.

I love the way this chapter opens. It takes about 12 minutes to get from Shinjuku (where the last chapter took place) to Meguro (where Rei lives) on the train, and Rei’s apartment is about a 10 minute walk from the station (for Teru), so Teru has given Rei less than half an hour to get ready, and he comes to the door in faded sweats.

I LOVE the idea of these boys being all comfortable and casual together. I would love to have fanart of them just chilling in pajamas or whatever, if anyone is interested in making my wishes come true.

ANYWAY. Aside from this just being a really nice mental image, it’s sort of telling, I guess, that Rei DOES come to the door--he never has before--and that even though he hasn’t had time to change clothes or anything, the mask isn’t a millimeter out of place. “Teru wondered if he’d been wearing it, even alone,” and... I don’t really know. Maybe. Either he was, or that was just his first priority when Teru called him. He REALLY doesn’t want to show his face, either way.

Otherwise, though, he’s relaxed quite a bit, and while he always wears long pants and long sleeves, he does at least take off the cloak in the really really freaking hot and humid Tokyo summer.

Teru’s just drunk enough to ask some of the things he wanted to ask but couldn’t work up the courage to while sober. He asks “Does it hurt?” (referring most obviously to Rei’s flail arm), and Rei says “Immensely” and then changes the subject to business. I’m pretty sure that “Immensely” was there from the first draft, and I love it. Like, Teru, what the hell kind of answer did you THINK you were going to get? (I mean, he was drunk, so he probably wasn’t really thinking that deeply at all, but still. Give a brutally honest answer and then change the subject... it’s a perfect response.)

Rei lists off a bunch of stores where he wants to sell the CD. These are all plays on the names of real music stores, but I sadly don’t remember what all of them were. “Tesla Coil” is Like an Edison... cause Edison and Tesla, right? Tesla the car company did not exist when I wrote this, and Like an Edison (surprisingly?) still exists today. Rock Amour is (quite uncreatively) Rock Love, which used to have two Harajuku locations that got cut down to one, and then disappeared entirely. Rock Love was my favorite. :(

Rei mentions a shop in Niigata, which is where Teru is from. I made Teru from Sanjo, Niigata because I used to date a guy who was from there, and I’ve been to Niigata City and Nagaoka, the second-biggest city in Niigata Prefecture a few times. I didn’t want to pick a place I didn’t know ANYTHING about, but also didn’t want to pick something like the place where I actually live or my husband’s hometown or anything. Also, different areas had different styles of visual kei, and Niigata bands tended to keep the 80s/90s style after it had gone out of fashion in Tokyo. This is one of the bands I used to follow, in 2001: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMRwUf6l7rk

So that kind of opens up the conversation to things that are not about music. Rei has already said that he’s not having a great day... probably mostly in terms of pain, but also in terms of “the guy I like was on a date with a girl,” and Teru admits that his date didn’t go so well, either. Again, I know I shouldn’t regret things about a book I’m mostly proud of, but I cut SO much “filler” in the name of trying to get this thing under the word count that mainstream publishers wanted that there aren’t many “fluff” scenes of the two of them just kind of being happy together... they’re not really HAPPY here, but just kind of hanging out. I wish I’d left in more scenes like this after they were actually in a relationship.

Rei lets Teru hear another song he wrote... more on this in Chapter 11, I think? At the moment it really just leads into Teru realizing that it’s too late for him to get home on the train, and Rei offering to let him spend the night, and steering the conversation away from music.

At the beginning of this encounter, Teru, who knows he’s already drunk, just kind of sips at the whisky Rei gives him, but at this point he downs an entire glass--liquid courage? (Again, NOT MEANT TO BE A ROLE MODEL JUST A FLAWED HUMAN, THANKS.) And then he asks Rei what happened to him.

Rei still doesn’t really give the whole story here. (Can you tell I really like characters having secret pasts and Big Reveals?) But he does tell Teru that it was a car accident, that it happened during the tour that was supposed to lead to his band getting a record deal, and that the rest of his band died. It happened on the Tohoku Expressway near Sendai, because there is this awful, twisty stretch of road up there where everyone goes 120km/hr and it’s TERRIFYING.

He doesn’t go into a great deal of detail, but he tells Teru a little bit about his injuries, about how he was told he would never use his arm again, and then how he asked for a mirror, and Teru asks him to show him his face. In the very, very, VERY first draft, I was trying to write this to be the unmasking scene. But I never actually wrote it that way because it felt so... non-consensual? And it IS non-consensual in so many versions of the Phantom story. The most famous image is probably of Mary Philbin’s Christine sneaking up behind Lon Cheney’s Phantom and tearing off his mask. Christine does the same thing in the Lloyd Webber musical. And originally I was going for something like that, too, but when it came time to write it, I couldn’t have Teru just... VIOLATE Rei like that.

And I think Teru kind of realises the same thing, that what he thinks he’s about to do is really not OK... and so they end up kissing instead.

Now, I don’t think this is a unilateral kiss. I don’t think either of them kisses the other without permission. It just... happens. But as soon as he’s done it, Rei regrets it and pulls away.

I think this is mostly guilt. He’s promised to be loyal to Saki. Teru doesn’t know that, yet, but Rei feels like he’s betrayed Saki here, because they never broke up. It’s not breaking up if one of you DIES. So he feels like he’s betrayed Saki, and like he doesn’t deserve to be happy or to fall in love with anyone else, because he feels like he KILLED Saki, and so he just immediately pulls away, tells Teru he has to work... and poor Teru I think just doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, because it seemed mutual in the moment.

Final random detail for this chapter, Rei tells Teru that the first train is at 4:33. I’m not sure why he has that memorized, but at least when I first drafted this chapter way back in 2005, it was for some reason still possible to look up the train schedule for a Sunday in July 2000 online. I’m not sure if it still is, but I was really particular about looking up things like that when and where I could. So the first train actually was at 4:33.

#the stars may rise and fall #annotated #visual kei #phantom retelling #writing process

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