#[ i thought too much about it and remembered in pq she says some weird stuff ]

[dolgelo]

✘ What's a secret that you've never told anyone else before?

♕ ♕TEN  TIMES  THE  TRUTH||  7  remaining  ||  @peacefuldeath 

the brow furrowed, the arms tangled crossed right under her chest - as mind processed what to do or say as fast as she could. the last thing Mitsuru wanted for some perfect stranger eavesdropping on the conversation to know of a secret she had never revealed before – for often one of those could signify a man’s downfall. often they’d coincide with weak points the heiress did possess, which would remain private kinds of intel. concentrated, she came to remember or think of the first secret that came to mind; yet all that would seem eventually good did resurface from the sea of thoughts she was bathing in… and that would seem very inviting and promising to any listener. and enemy.

         «  Hmm. It is not an easy pick. I have all kinds of secrets I never mention, like any other girl my age, I imagine.  »

well – nothing regarding her past would have worked – those secrets were just too painful to recollect even that Mitsuru would have lost any kind of credibility as well, with those being public information. some were too dark, others too plain. nothing pertaining the Dark Hour would have done, either… she sighed, a hand rose to the temple to slowly massage it in small circles. no, not her love life – while basically nonexistent per se, would have been the idea secret. ah, heavens !  if something had never been revealed, she thought, there must have been a reason why !  something only she knew… only Mitsuru. 

once all was decided, she proceeded. proud, yet exposed. her deadpan tone took over the moment the redhead, looked away with a tint of embarrassment veiling her eyes, and spoke, calmly – as if telling a tale, and not revealing such a thing:

         «  I never wore any of it, I swear on all I possess. Not a single one. But cute pieces of lingerie... I like collecting those.  »

[snowtimeisbesttime]

Thoughts and questions on Volume 9, routes 1 and 2! (a day late orz.)

-The entire volume in a picture: that one crying cat that's white and Screming. Both with and without heart emojis, as there's both happystuck and sadstuck here.

~ROUTE 1~

-Nepeta, canonically: :33c

-MC's just doing friendship stuffs because they don't have anything else to do now... Recovering their Friendsim memories AND discovering they can't get to their old friends anymore's really put a damper on their mood, at least here.

-No matter the universe or game you come from, cat rps are forever.

-just like jade, sgrub would have allowed nepeta to finally meet her friends in person........

-Nep stims with her claw gloves and doesn't really do the whole eye contact thing. She also clearly values not being lied to, as seen in how many times she asks MC if they really know Equius; I'm not sure if that Need to be Completely Sure of what people are telling her is because she has been hurt before*, but if it is I'm going to be very :,((( and also DDD:<

*like how rejection sensitive dysphoria is an adhd thing but Also is kinda because of trauma?? anyways. in this house we stan nepeta leijon and would lay down our lives for her.

-UM those dreams of Nepeta's sure sound like dreambubbles... and the easiest way to access the dreambubbles (besides physically going to the Furthest Ring) is going to sleep without a dreamself... so what's up with Dream Nepeta??? is she alright???? and if not then Why would she specifically get offed???

-Regarding Nep's not seeing the MC in her dreams: until very recently, all of their alternate selves were hovering around alpha MC, and then they were absorbed into them. That might be a thing to consider??

-We get a brand-new Narratively Unimportant Trait: Nepeta used to live in a normal hive until it -and likely also her neighbourhood- was apparently destroyed by drones or something for who knows why, and that's the reason she now lives in a cave in the middle of nowhere. She doesn't clearly remember this event, probably because she was very, very young (and she's 13 here) and because it was extremely traumatic. And she almost certainly hasn't had any face to face interaction with another troll since then... no wonder Pounce's so purrotective of her.

-(how'd she get things like wifi or sopor slime for her cave?)

-Nepeta managed to escape certain death by fleeing to the wastes, but where does Polypa live in Friendsim's present time? I might be wrong but iirc she does not live with Tegiri...? then again, Nep still has her lusus.

-newsflash: alternia is suck

-MEOWRAILS REUNION!!!!!! fimally.... (though wouldn't equius have told nepeta about the mc??)

-In her group end, she gets to befriend Jade and Dave even if she doesn't meet Equius irl, and they bond over their respective fursonas.

-Why does Nepeta have Two Good Ends? Because she deserves it (and because her bad end is very sad).

-MC's powers sure are growing, if they're able to teleport people without touching them and also overpower Bec. Not that they're of use in Nep's bad end, where Dave and Jade just. Dissolve into alternia or something.

-On the topic of Narratively Unimportant Traits again: remember how screwed up Dave's and Jade's respective upbringings were??? Here's a reminder!! He just holds MC's guts in place when they take Pounce's attack (and outright says he's got experience with that kind of wounds); meanwhile she sews them up- it's the first time she sews up something that isn't a corpse. And both of them had to get their medicine from... unusual sources, to say the least.

-nepeta went to get some leaves, to heal mc

~ROUTE 2~

-One'd expect the MC to know about Sollux at least, considering what went down in Karkat's routes... unless they don't have access to their memories of Pesterquest's bad ends?

-They heard about him enough to get incredibly hyped up about befriending him, though! And by “incredibly” I mean Please Chill A Little.

-Where in Nepeta's route they were just sad and really bummed out, here MC is convinced that there's another mastermind using them and their friendship quests for who knows what nefarious purposes; they also ponder what else they might have forgotten. Considering we did many stuffs to Pesterquest's reality in Aradia's route, who is it with the Evil Plans this time???

-how does gamzee even have a driving license / access to a (clown) car?????????

-Of course Sollux picks the bee-themed train. How many other Bug Themes might Alternian trains have? Because there's a lot of fancy and funky bugs... many butterflies, ladybugs, orchid mantises...

-mc's phone confirmed to be 1) still alive and 2) a troll nokia or something

-According to Sollux, MC's been messaging him non-stop for the last few days?? We don't get any confirmation on this happening, but we know that Sollux can actively perceive MC's narration- just as he could perceive CD's commands back in Homestuck. (Dave, who can also hear the narration, had something similar with AR; Terezi and Rose also perceived their exiles' commands, but the only one to also have Weird Meta Shit in Pesterquest was Rose.)

-Remember when we though Karkat was stranded on Earth on his good end? Well it looks like Sollux's the one actually stranded, in his bad end! Hope either MC'd get him back home eventually or he found somewhere safe to camp....... though it's a bad end so we'll have to wait and see if it's referenced later on.

-Sollux is understandably still upset about being used by Vriska to kill Aradia, which we know happened about a sweep ago. No but really, what's up with PQ!Aradia?? Why did she just disappear?

-He's also understandably freaked out about the whole “finding out a random troll whose voice he heard (= is going to die soon) is in the same bee-themed train compartment as him” thing; did MC's mere presence avert that possible bad future, or what?

-We get confirmation that Sollux's psionics are stronger than Azdaja's and Kuprum's, though we pretty much knew this already. More like it's further established that stronger psionics equals smoother movement.

-what's that, gamzee didn't completely break all the laws of physics* when he got out of the cloun car? fear not- sollux's going to take care of that with his powers! (*he did cronch all his bones though)

-Sollux and Kanaya are friends! Though (iirc) they didn't really interact that much in Homestuck, they were close enough to go through what sounds like some sort of aesthetically recognizable phase together... and whatever it was, we're sure as hell not finding out. At least in this timeline, Kanaya introduced Feferi to Sollux.

-solluxander is canon btw

-There is some extra worldbuilding about psionics, which basically amounts to “if you overuse them you'll perish” (which we also knew already) but like, with chemistry stuffs. Considering our Friendsim psionics, age almost surely affects a troll's ability to not keel over after using their powers too much...

[homesception]

May 31, 2013 - part 1: wherein Lobac eats a cookie.

To be fair, it has been like two hundred years since my last update.  That’s a pretty good nap.  Just means I’m all the more rested to work on new stuff, right?  I mean, I need to keep a spritely pace up if I still plan on catching up to Lobac’s liveblog before said liveblog catches up to the comic.  Which for sure is still an actual thing at all, and not a bit of exclusive humor between friends.

Last time Lobac was getting into some theory crafting and analysis of the classpect system.  I didn’t have much to say about that at the time, particularly not much that wouldn’t qualify as spoilers, so iirc I was mostly just responding with random thoughts and video links, half of which are dead now.  There was a bit left over looking at the troll’s perster names, which was also good stuff, but lacking anything coherent to say about it, I’ll just gloss past the rest of that post, apart from:

Lobac said:

Thank you all for sticking around °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

As if you could ever get rid of me.  ~{@PQ}~

Moving on, we rejoin the comic with PM visiting the Black Queen to retrieve the mysterious GREEN PACKAGE, which had been impounded by agents of the Black Court as a result of a traffic violation.  The Black Queen cuts an imposing figure, and Lobac is, of course, duly imposed.

later, Lobac said:

Are those… tentacles ( ´ _ ｀) I thought only the imps were affected by the prototypings?

OH SHIT OH SHIT THAT LOOKS SO COOL HOT DAMN (゜▽゜) Wowow look at her joints! Look at all the carapace-y stuff going on there!

These days, Lobac’s soft spot for this particular sort of shiny, black, possibly betentacled monster-type aesthetic is well documented.  I’m pretty sure she would have loved the black queen’s design even if it wasn’t just objectively cool as hell, but that certainly doesn’t hurt.  I’m kind of sad that we never got a proper fight scene out of this particular version of her.

That’s not a spoiler is it?  I’m pretty sure that’s not a spoiler.

Yeah, the random objects the kids threw in the general directions of their seizuresprites are directly affecting the final boss. NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG HERE EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE

I don’t see the problem here.  Nothing the kids could possibly put in those sprites could be at all unsettling or dangerous.

haa haa.  hee hee.  hoo hoo.

Her face is so weird though It’s Jaspers-shaped, and her eyes are constantly narrowed, I can’t even tell whether it’s in distaste or amusement

Why not both?

Andrew sure is proud of that hand’s close-up She’s not even dramatically pointing she’s literally just saying “yeah I dunno anything about that kinda shit you best go down there and ask my pretty princess, I mean, subordinate”

It is a pretty great hand, honestly.  I think this particular image gets called back to a few more times yet.

Yeah Rose! You go and fulfill your as of yet unclear vaguely Seering-related destiny

Yeah, Rose!  Get on that, maybe!

ROSE NO YOU ARE 13 THAT IS GONNA TASTE AWFUL TO YOU Heh I legitimately don’t know whether her mom would be proud of or disappointed in her if she could see her now Is this an act of defiance or emulation Just silly teenage antics, probably, but I’d like to think she misses her

Rooooooose Rose nooooooooooooooooo （ ´ω｀） Ehehe I love how the artstyle turns super silly to reflect how upset/surprised she is

These two panels constitute one of the most iconic funny moments in the comic.  It works really well.  Shoot, I should have done the post topper-edit based on these, huh?  Oh, well.  The one I already did took like four hours, mostly due to my extreme rustiness, so I’m not going back now.

Otherwise, I also like to think of Rose missing her mom here.  Maybe not admitting it to herself, but still.  I also still ascribe to the “everything Mom ever did was 110% unironic, Rose made up the whole passive aggressive conflict between them in her head, her mom wasn’t passive agressive she was just a bonkers drunk rich lady” headcannon that I think I spoke about ages ago in this very liveblog.

Anyway, yeah, this is both a hilarious joke and a fantastic little character moment for Rose.  Another contributing factor to Rose being my big early favorite with a seemingly insurmountable head start in the ‘best character’ race.

Actually, lately, since the end of the comic, she’s been gaining ground again for me?  I mean, one of the trolls definitely surpassed her for most of my Homestuck fan life, but... eh, whatever.  There’s no way I can getting into how my feelings about those characters developed over the comics life without being way more spoilery than even I’ve already been, so that kind of talk will have to wait for later.  Even if later means ‘years from now’ or ‘never’.

BOO FUCKING YAH, IT’S THE WHITE QUEEN Or Windswept Questant, for now She’s also as of yet uncorrupted by the kids’ silly sprite shenanigans

Lobac had been waiting for this reveal for a while, I think.

PM: Command John to put the carved tablet into a pyxis.

You follow the command telling you to command John to put the carved tablet in the pyxis and type, “John, put the carved tablet into the pyxis.” You successfully do that, and he successfully does that too. Everyone is friendly and cooperative.

Ah yes, you so rarely get this kind of friendly cooperation from narrators these days

It was a rather uncommonly tidy sequence, for this comic.

Shit I just remembered those typing hands we saw when trying to name Jack, the reader is like a physically present entity??? Maybe???

What prompted this thought?  The earlier black queen hand image hanging in your head, then a bit about narrators entering text, and that old bit just pops up?  It’s cool how brains work, making intuitive connections and all that.

What if we eventually zoom out to reveal a human exile commanding everyone. We’ve only been watching that human mess around up until now. The real story begins when they just suddenly go “whelp that was kinda fun. gotta look for food tho” at an incredibly dramatic moment.They turn away from the console.  And then we watch them slump through the desert for thousands of pages and their journey of introspective self-discovery is the actual story. Yes.

Shit, Lobac just predicted the whole narrative!  No point in continuing this liveblog, I guess.  “[#P%]t

Well, obviously this means that WV has an uncanny knack for distances and PM has one for sounds AR can probably track down crimes by their scent He’s like McGruff the Crime Dog, but a little less fluffy

I used to love McGruff the Crime Dog.  Until I grew up and realized he was a tool of THE MAN.

dear gOD SHE REALLY IS PUTTING JACK IN DRESSES (*≧▽≦)ﾉｼ He and Slick are basically the same person, right? Oh man he is gonna stab the shit out of her one of these days

~{%|%}~

Jack Noir, more like JACK NO. NO YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE OUT THERE MURDERING PEOPLE AND FROLICKING THROUGH THE STREETS WITH YOUR ASSHOLE CREW. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS IS PATHETIC o(`д´ ｡)

I’d say this is a “be careful what you wish for” moment, but I think Lobac knew exactly what she was doing here.

Ticket? Oh, this thing. Ha, ha, look at that, you are holding a ticket. How did that get in your hand? It belongs on the desk with the others. No, you are not here to pay a parking ticket. You explain to the frightening man that you are here to pick up that green parcel.

GIVE ME A C! GIVE ME A U! GIVE ME A T AND I AND E! sheeEEEE’S A CUTIE!!!!

Honestly, they’re all cuties.  the cuteness of the entire cast, even the villains mostly, in both visual depiction and personality, really is a big selling point of the whole comic.

There was a time when I wasn’t super into cute things.  I was never viscerally opposed to cuteness, never when through a virulently anti-girly-stuff phase, but these days I’m MUCH more into things being cute.  I just like cute characters!  Sure, I like things that are somber and spooky, but the best is when they’re somber and spooky AND super cute!

Like, Hollow Knight.  That whole game is like exactly my favorite aesthetic these days.  Sad and morose and dark and adorable.

But more often than not homestuck still comes pretty close to that ideal.  You just want to hug the shit out of all of these doofuses, a few stab wounds here or there be damned.  Speaking of stab wounds...

WHOOPS TENSION. THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT. I DO NOT ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO START KILLING PEOPLE OK

Maybe Lobac didn’t know what she was asking for earlier.

Wait, the crowns, what the fuck, he wants her to KILL THE KING AND QUEEN??? SHE’S JUST A MAIL LADY ヾ(´･-･｀)ノ”

How does he even know she’s desperate enough to kill people just to get one package?

The PARCEL MISTRESS departs with her mission of double agency. You wonder if she’ll actually be so foolish as to attempt to uphold her end of the lopsided bargain. You make a policy of handing out a REGISWORD and a HITLIST to just about everyone who enters your office. But you never think anyone’s actually going to GO THROUGH with it. 

What a phenomenal asshole That explains that

pretty much.  As for the box itself...

Yeeeeah you’re not actually gonna show me so, go ahead, taunt me, get it over with

PFFFFPFPFPFPFFF WHAT SOMETHING COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS APPARENTLY? NOT AS RIDICULOUS AS HIS FACE THO. Magnificent asshole cutie

Hahah, \[&P%]/

Anyway, at this point the action cuts back to the kids, and that seems a good a time as any to take a break.  I could just save this as a draft and finish the rest of lobac’s post later?  I mean, then I wouldn’t have to take extra time for another panel edit?  But I kind of want to post something now, so I guess well do this one in parts again.  part 2 scheduled for, let’s be ambitious and say may 2022

How did I ever use to have the time for this blogging shit?  I’ve been working on this for like six hours, and only got like a third of the way through one update?  I guess I was just younger then.

I’m so old now.  Time just gets away from me.

And my back hurts all the time.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

U R entitled to your own opinion. but still what could've been so messed up for you to hate it? I remember you fangirling about Anne back when only the Japanese version was released back in 2016.

Summary (and incomplete list) of my problems. 

Yeah as I played the Japanese ver the first time I was focusing on the positives.....after I finished I...it felt off......tbh it felt off while playing it but I didn’t notice/refused to listen to it cause I was waiting to see things unfold. And while I understood what was going on, there was some crucial information (at least crucial for me to process it correctly) I knew I was missing cause of the language barrier. 

After a 2nd time through I saw it..... I saw how all the antagonists were.....not well written besides Kamoshida and Sae (and even Sae could’ve used some tweaks to her motive, tho not as much tweaks as the rest of the game I think needs). I saw how there was a lot of similarities between P4....and not the good time......it felt pretty copy paste....and tbh if it was going to copy and paste one of the past game’s formula.....it should’ve been P3′s.....But hey...that would’ve mean that Atlus would’ve had to write more overarching arcs in P5 like they did with P3, and we can’t have that kind of effort...... The lack of overarching arcs really hurts Anne, Ryu, and Yusuke (who, even in my first playthrough, I felt he literally dropped off the face of the earth after I finished the dungeon, not his arc where we see Madarame’s confession, I literally forgot Yusuke was there right after I finished the dungeon with like a month to go before the confession). Haru and Goro get screwed in their own way. I felt like the game relied too much on Makoto and Futaba to do stuff (it felt like they were doing everything, barring the MC of course). It didn’t feel much like a Phantom Thief game (tho it takes a bunch of the story cliches without any of the fun). I never felt like I had freedom.....which is a problem when the game’s theme is freedom. Not with the MC’s dialogue, he has like one personality to choose from (which for the most part feels like it’s mostly “jerk, sassy-jerk, funny-jerk” like it’s worse than the PQ options). The endings suck in terms of freedom of choice, it’s like 5 steps backwards from P4 which is wrong since they should’ve at least taken a step forward from P4 considering P5 is next gen and P4 was made on a shoe-string budget. The dungeons...oh my gawd..... Give me P3/4′s any day. Yes I like the randomly generated one’s cause it gave me more choice than P5′s. P5′s were good the first time through, but they are such a slog after that. It’s not that P5′s are big, but it’s that they aren’t bigger! Give me an option on how I want to approach the treasure! Give me a short route, a fast route, an easy route, a hard route, a long route, a medium route, and make it so I can back track and go through all the routes if I want. Give me incentive to take the longer/harder route (better weapons, loot, items but of course it’s harder, higher risk means higher reward), give me the short/fast route so when I’m replaying for the 53rd time I can just skate through that without having to spend an hour going through a dungeon I’m destroying (it says something when the dungeon is so long that it’ll take someone an hour to run through the dungeon on NG+ on safety, while it takes maybe 10-30 min to speed through P3/4 on NG+ regardless of difficulty. Like...god....thinking about playing P5 NG+ on the hardest difficulty must take them like 2 hours a dungeon or more @.@). But yeah I never felt free in the game, the characters never felt free in the dungeon setting (AND THAT’S WHAT ATLUS WOULD SAY IN THEIR INTERVIEWS! The characters are suppose to feel more free in the Metaverse! WHY IS IT THEY DON’T FEEL LIKE THAT WHEN I PLAY?????)

Actually bouncing off that, I hate the characterization inconsistencies. Anne and Ryu get the worst of it, but this also applies to comments on Anne/Mako’s thief outfits too. I love Anne I do, but Atlus screw her and everyone over so bad. She’s suppose to speak out against sexualization but then gets sexualized in her own game. And not even in a “I’m being confident and am being sexy cause I want to” fanservice it’s always “someone is looking at me and I’m uncomfortable and don’t want to be looked at” fanservice...... And the former seems to be what they might’ve wanted to do, the artbook stating her short skirt as a reason.....but then the rest of the game is just her hating her outfit and it’s like “WHAT?!” And it doesn’t help the Devs were like “oh yeah we thought that’d be cute.” NO! NO IT’S NOT ATLUS! I’d give you a pass with her wearing it the first few times and then getting used to it and owning it (cause that’d be growth), but no.....not for 98% of the game......  And then Ryuji, he’s all “protect women’s honor” when it comes to Anne being creeped on by random guys, but as soon as he gets the chance to be a creep he takes it. And it really just messes with his values, or how we see his values in that regard....all cause Atlus wants a cheap laugh. Same goes for the MC, the whole reason he was in that mess was cause he was protecting a woman, and he also creeps on Anne a little (tho not as enthusiastically as Ryu, and you could actually be dating her by those times so you could say that Anne’s actually fine with him doing it). And then Makoto.....her’s is minor but it also deals with her outfit, tho iirc it’s only really during the Mementos convos (and Anne’s does too, but it also happens outside in that and her arc’s theme in dungeon one is also a big factor in why it’s bad), but it’s still there. Anne and Makoto’s views on their own outfits muddles how the game address why they are dressed that way. We get “it’s your will of rebellion” but we have a variety of reactions. Ryuji’s was what I expected everyone to be like aka “mine’s pretty cool, but your’s is strange” kinda thing....cause they seem like it’s tailored for them......And yeah you can say “oh the big bad had some influence in it” but.......that’s just.....weird and it really muddies something that could be easy to grasp.....I mean the outfits kinda do a good job at reflecting their Personas! And, at least with Hashino, everyone seems to like their Personas.....WHICH MAKES SENSE! SO WHY NOT MAKE THE COSTUMES MAKE SENSE EVEN THO THEY ARE ALIGNED TO MAKE SENSE AND lkfelnfsd;aknfal;f AHHHHHHHHHh!!!!

Sorry that’s all I can go into for now. You don’t have to agree with it of course but......it’s just......a lot of things....piled on......and....why....why is it like this..... @.@ ;w;