collecting-dustbunnies

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Just found out about this. Grim is the only true feminist in the first-years smh

[collecting-dustbunnies]

火 ૮₍๑⌓̈๑₎ა（╹◡╹）火

[collecting-dustbunnies]

“…Everyone seems to put so much faith in Solomon.”

“That’s because he’s the greatest sorcerer alive.”

“Just because you’re his apprentice, it doesn’t mean you have to be blindly devoted to him. It’s a bad idea, actually, since you run the risk of losing sight of who he really is.”

— Lucifer and MC about Solomon (Nightbringer Chapter 48-3)

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Btw every time I see that you’ve posted a long analysis/ theory obey me post I’m the super happy jumping cat meme because I know you’re going to cook like I genuinely get so exited and I love reading them 👍

Thank you for your kind words! I don't really expect much when I make these posts, so I'm glad that so many people do, in fact, like listening to some crazy old lady yapping.

A lot of my favourite Obey Me deep dive blogs died by the time I joined Tumblr, so I had first started posting to fill that void haha. So while I am stepping away from the game, I will still post if ever feel InspiredTM.

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Had this thought when I was talking to someone else here but...

There are several instances in Obey Me! where a truth bomb is dropped in order to move the plot forward. You would think everyone else in the scene would have more to say about it, or have a much stronger reaction to what's happening, but then they just...don't react.

For example:

Likewise, in Season 2, Diavolo was explaining to everybody at the House of Lamentation the "MC is a ring" theory, citing how they have angelic heritage, which is part of the ring. Solomon and Simeon are present during this conversation, and none of them react to this statement. It makes sense for neither Solomon or Simeon to react since they were sharing notes with Diavolo on the calamities in hard mode. They likely knew about MC's heritage at that point already. What their thoughts are on MC being part angel and how that impacts Diavolo's exchange program are things that we probably won't ever know.

Shortly before MC was sent on a timeline hunt by Barbatos, Lucifer had confessed to his family about Lilith's true fate and the deal with Diavolo. In response, Beel asks Lucifer to give his other brothers a little more credit and trust them more next time. It was a great scene. Then timeline shenanigans happen, and this important moment seems like it got reset. It's unclear whether this revelation happened or not, and what came of it. I guess they didn't want a rehash of the same exact scene again when all the other revelations were going down, which is such a shame because I felt like that scene was so important to finally call out Lucifer on how horribly he managed the situation.

Regardless, there's somebody else who should have had a more visceral reaction to this revelation, who's reaction we never got to see: Belphegor. The narrative tells us that Belphie lost a lot of respect for Lucifer when he saw how Lucifer had gotten reduced to Diavolo's right-hand man and how he had seemingly forgotten about their sister. Having learnt the true motivation behind Lucifer's actions, what would he have felt? Relief, that Lucifer hadn't turned out to be as big a traitor as he had thought? Or anger, since Lucifer had selfishly withheld the fact that Lilith had lived and would continue living happily; that Lucifer was able to sleep soundly at night with the knowledge he had saved his sister while Belphie and Beel continued feeling guilty and grieving her for centuries? Or what if this anger was directed at Diavolo, as he now knows that Diavolo manipulated Lucifer into eternal servitude? Belphie having ANY thought about this aspect of the truth would have given him a good motivation to continue being salty about Lucifer and Diavolo and a good way to give him any development at all, since it's clear the writers had no clue what to do with him after his vendetta arc was done.

But this then begs the question of how much do the Purgatory Hall gang know? The fall, Lilith's fate, Lucifer's deal with Diavolo, Belphie's plan...do they know it all? And around what point did they find out? From NB Lesson 11, Solomon apparently knows about Lucifer and Diavolo's deal. Is that a case of characters talking to each other off-screen, since this story in particular likes to do that a lot, or the writers goofing up and forgetting that certain characters aren't supposed to be in the KnowTM? I know most of y'all are gonna say the latter, but that's so boring zzz

Speaking of conversations off-screen, let's not forget Luke, who wasn't present at that scene because he was watching over Lucifer. Would he have been told at some point (since it's hard to lie about why Lucifer suddenly had amnesia or why the Celestial Realm is dying)? Hiding this information from Luke would be yet another example of how little the others trust Luke with the truth (from his perspective), which would further bolster his justification for being upset and running away from home when Simeon and Solomon continue lying and hiding the truth later on.

And then there's that part in NB where Satan casually drops Solomon and Barbatos' entire backstory like it was nothing. Why was MC's reaction so cold, when they had expressed interest in wanting to know the reason why Solomon wants to collect all these demons literally the previous day? Considering MC didn't even know Solomon was immortal until the end of S2 (which I find totally ridiculous btw. Does MC live under a rock? Like, not even a suspicion that this guy is probably older than he looks? Really?), I doubt they knew all these other details about him. It was kinda weird Satan only read that paragraph to MC to make it an analogy about himself. What are his thoughts about people being ostracised regardless of their species? Especially with MC in the context of the Devildom.

The fact that he got that information from a book already raises so many questions. What kind of book is it? Did it exist in the MC's time period? If it did, why did nobody make mention of it before? And if it didn't, then what other useful information would be in it that the game refused to reveal? For all we know, the book probably has all the details on Barbatos being Nightbringer given what an important figure he was in this time period and the characters are too passive to find out--nevermind, I shouldn't overthink this.

THE POINT IS, anytime this kind of thing happens it gives me the mental image of everyone else in the scene being 🧍 when somebody is trauma dumping on MC. I don't mean that all 10 characters should show variations of the shocked pikachu face when Diavolo is revealing that MC is destroying the world, that would just artificially bloat the story and feel tiring. But if plot points and conflicts weren't immediately forgotten by the characters, we could have had like idk Luke doing his own thing to get Simeon to trust him (remembering how helpless he was when MC was causing destruction as the ring), or a Belphie regression/villain arc where he gets more people to go against Diavolo, or Solomon using "Belphie's murder attempt and Diavolo covering it up" as leverage against Diavolo and his reign if Diavolo does something to piss him off.

A lot of plot points that have taken place can have a lot of ramifications on characters' motivations, which can then impact the actions they take as a response. This would 1) allow the story to feel more cohesive 2) give the team some room to expand their story instead of pulling some new plot point out of their ass and 3) make the characters feel more dynamic as they are more active, not reactive (ironically), in the story.

Of course, the downside is that this route is much harder to implement. Having to coordinate the actions of 15 different characters and thinking of the ramifications they have on the narrative.....ooooooh boy.

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Lesson 9A

live rent free in my mind so i draw solomon in wonderland and white rabbit luke

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Happy birthday, Kakavasha!

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Me: minding my business

Miraculous Ladybug: Ivan is the son of a non-miraculous based supervillain (opening the door for other major characters to be retconned the same way, implying he may or may not have superpowers himself because of his exaggerated strength) abd has been hiding this fact about himself the whole time out of shame; Gabriel wrote a letter (while he was dying from Cataclysm and going insane) asking Adrien to become a supervillain so he could wish him and his mom back to life; Nathalie is an agent of a secret Evil Rich Person Conspiracy that is secretly behind 80% of the shows plot points (Gabriel was also a member of the rich person conspiracy and stole the miraculous on their orders, he may or may not have went rogue at some point while pretending to still be on their side, Tomoe is also a member of the rich person conspiracy and she is lying to them about why Ladybug covered up Hawkmoth's identity), and Nathalie has an evil dad in the rich person conspiracy who is implied to be acting on his own interest to gain the miraculous for his own cause or whatever

Me:

[collecting-dustbunnies]

OP: *Includes plausible dates backed by evidence in game*

OP: "I also added >10,000 cuz why tf not."

...and then majority proceeding to vote for that with no explanation is sending me.

Okay guys I need to be insane about the timeline again

All of these are assuming what Asmo says in NB Lesson 1-15 is true, that as of the start of NB, the brothers have only been in the Devildom for about a year. In OG lesson 5-12, it is said that Luke began baking for Micheal's sake about 300 years ago, but in lesson 6 of NB, Simeon says this:

The historical King Solomon is hypothesized to have been alive about 3000 years ago, and Barbatos and Diavolo are very aware of him already as of the start of NB 5000 years. They just kindof bring it up a lot

Then the 10,000 and >10,000 just bc I want to see if anyone reasoned that out And it can't be less than ~300 years because of that bit at the start of the OG where it's stated that Levi lent money to Mammon almost exactly 260 years prior. Alternatively it's possible that it couldn't have been less than ~900 years ago to account for the Trojan war implied by Helene and Asmodeus but I don't think it maps onto the Trojan war well enough for me to consider that undisputed canon to the timeline.

[collecting-dustbunnies]

solo spin solo spin

[collecting-dustbunnies]

I have seen a few "but I want to support the devs!" about the boycott and I think we need to have some perspective here.

Paper Games is not a small indie company where your money goes directly to the devs. This is a company that not only also runs Love Nikki and Shining Nikki, but also Love and Deepspace.

And in 2024.... (archive link of Forbes article "AI Boyfriends Make Chinese Gaming Entrepreneur Yao Runhao A Billionaire")

Established in 2013, Paper Games clocked sales of around $850 million worldwide, according to data providers.

The privately held studio, of which Yao is chairman and CEO, is valued at over $2 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates, based on discussions with analysts and information from four data providers.

Paper Games is a company with 2000 employees and a billionaire CEO.

The conversation around Infinity Nikki's monetization is not about "punishing devs", it's about pushing back against a company that has cornered the market of female gacha players and are now up to their old tactics of testing those players to see how much money they can milk out of them.

They're not just some devs throwing things at the wall to see what works so they can keep the lights on, they've probably got an entire team dedicated to figuring out exactly how to get Infinity Nikki to make more money off of us.

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Happy Birthday to everyone's favorite demon otaku!

If you haven't yet, here's no better time to check out Level Up! Leviathan Fanzine which is 100% free!

[collecting-dustbunnies]

He Will be real people...

[collecting-dustbunnies]

The only things I enjoyed about S4 was the introduction of the new trio, the chaotic sports festival arc and the wholesome Purgatory Hall scenes trapped in the side chapters/hard mode. Everything before and after this is all a blur to me.

It basically boils down to:

Flanderisation being a lot worse this time (e.g. Mammon, Satan, Levi)

Character screentime or the way they utilise the screentime in a scene being really out-of-whack. What I mean is, some of these characters' personalities do not bounce off each other in a good way, and it makes the scenes too chaotic that I either tune it out or find the scene hard to follow. It's different from when characters argue due to contrasting personalities, as usually their conflicts are a bit more...contained, and they actually have a point because they're addressed in some manner.

Related to the above point, the way the team allocated the screentime made me feel like a camera watching 15 different people fight for screentime, which further creates a very disorienting feeling, and makes the story feel so bloated. Adding new characters who also have to fight for the screentime doesn't help the issue, but S3 showed that adding more characters doesn't necessarily mean everyone is cramped for screentime, and almost everyone got their moment to shine at one point. So what changed now?

Actually, I know what changed, it's the MC-centrism that's a lot worse this season. It extends to the trio as well because the game was pushing them as new (soon) romanceables over establishing their role in the world as well, which was not an issue Diavolo and Co. had. But this is just a minor gripe over me feeling like the new trio was not handled the best here.

Ideas introduced that are never addressed again (e.g. Thirteen's rivalry/jealousy with Solomon, the demon population hating the exchange programme actually). But all OM seasons have this problem so...eh....maybe this shouldn't be here

Plot progression stalling VERY hard (and mind you, the plot in this game already moves at a snail's pace until the team remembers that they have to wrap up the season)

Filler not even being entertaining like S3

I mean, it's one thing to set up stakes and then conclude it in a lukewarm way (refer to: every single OM season prior to S4), but it's another to not even take your OWN stakes seriously. If the MC in the game does not care about the narrative's central problem/crisis/whatever (other than the people actually acting on the problem in hard mode), then why should I, as the player, care? In the end, I'm just subjected to watch other characters care so much more about the Simeon thing getting dragged for 3 seasons, while the character I'm supposed to control cannot do shit because thou must.

The way Simeon's arc was handled was stupid but I'd need 10 more bullet points to explain why so the main gist is: Characters hiding things for no reason (especially those who should KNOW why that is a bad idea), characters handling the idiot ball, MC telling Luke (A CHILD) that's it's his fault for not being trustworthy enough for Simeon, the dumbfuck conclusion. Ah yes, a combination of my least favourite tropes.

MC's dumbfuck decisions/dialogue option/inaction. I was initially neutral to the MC's role in the game, but this season + NB just made me actively angry to the point I wrote a very cynical write-up about MC's progression in the game. I know this doesn't really matter cuz this is supposed to be a self-insert game but A) I don't self-insert, so this is a moot point and B) there's no way anybody can imagine themself as this kind of MC anyway, so it's more fun to imagine them as their own character.

And I think that's my main issues with the season?

TL;DR this season just wasn't very fun to play...at least I'll treasure the Purgatory Hall moments.

Within my specific circle of friends on tumblr there's a unanimous agreement but I want to see what everyone else thinks. Feel free to tell your reasoning :)

[collecting-dustbunnies]

That one witch hat atelier panel redraw trend reminded me of him 🥲

Alt version

[collecting-dustbunnies]

Within my specific circle of friends on tumblr there's a unanimous agreement but I want to see what everyone else thinks. Feel free to tell your reasoning :)

[collecting-dustbunnies]

bro.... bro is so beautiful..... bro...........