#And that's cool and I really like the snippets I've seen especially between him and batman

[bonefall]

Voted for Bumble bc of course but also if you think Alex would not pspsps Bumble you are wrong. If they could communicate they would go to therapy together /s

If then could communicate they would go to therapy together

/GEN

Kyle/Green Lantern resurrects her but then he becomes convinced that she's not the same person she was before the incident, OR SOMETHING SOMETHING Black Lanterns aren't ACTUALLY bad they're just misunderstood Grim Reaper types, in either case Alex ends up breaking it off with Kyle because they've become very different people.

And then Bumble's there

And then they go to therapy or Alex adopts Bumble, and then uhhh Bumble's like one of the superpets. Like Krypto the Superdog. Free premise go forth and play with it if ur a DC fan

[gotstabbedbyapen]

I have very complicated feelings for the Vengeance Saga (after the first listen)

Disclaimer: I will only criticize Epic the Vengeance Saga as a work on its own, not for its inaccuracy or deviation from mythology and The Odyssey. There are more knowledgable people who can point out and analyze the changes in Epic the Musical, but that is not what I'll be tackling here.

To put it bluntly, I'm not being angsty about it as I should. The whole saga just... didn't feel right with me.

Now, first off all, I'm a big fan of Epic and had been following it since the Cyclops saga (first version). I've been in love with many songs and hyperfixed it for months on end. But when the Vengeance saga came along, I didn't feel that same bubbling love rise in me.

Even as a fan, this isn't my first time having peeves with Epic. I didn't jam with the re-release sagas for a while, I'm underwhelmed with the Circe VS Odysseus fight and other issues, very unpopular opinion but "Monster" wasn't too impactful to me, and also the God Games (especially Zeus' attack).

The Vengeance Saga though? Well, they say we gotta do the Bun-Meat-Bun (or whatever the hell its name really is) technique when giving criticism, so I'll start with the good parts.

I love that Odysseus looked so done with Calypso in "Not Sorry For Loving You". They're basically this meme:

Like sorry you're a sad but you're still an abuser 😒

Then Odysseus starts singing the reprise for "Full Speed Ahead" but there's no one to back him up. That one hits me hard. To whoever on Tumblr said that after the Thunder Saga we will never hear the crew's back-up again and Odysseus' singing will be answered with silence, Apollo really blessed you with the red ball.

Hermes and the Winions' part was really cool too! I really like them being mischievous helper! The warning about the wind bag and the changing scene of Odysseus fighting off sea monsters while Hermes just vibing with the beats is 👌👌👌

But after that the hype started to sizzle out for me. You might want to skip this part if you're not comfortable with harsh criticism because I WON'T hold back.

It's really backward but I like the Odysseus VS Charybdis draft more than the final production. Charybdis' roars and music are somehow less intimidating, which is a shame because I thought this would be one of the biggest struggles Odysseus will face. Even with awesome illustrative animatics, the scene wasn't as thrilling as I've expected.

The other songs got massive improvement from its draft version (on top of my mind I can think of "Thunder Bringer", "There Are Other Ways", "Little Wolf"), but I don't get why "Charybdis" didn't get up-graded as much like them. It's like a cake that was throughly baked but half decorated and it just didn't taste as good as I've hoped.

Then we have the Odysseus VS Poseidon part in "Get In The Water" and "Six Hundred Strikes". The first thought I had for GITW is this song sounds like all the draft snippets were mashed together without a smooth transition/connection between them. Jorge and Steven's performance is great, but there's not enough tension for me to dread for Odysseus. When Poseidon first met Odysseus in "Ruthlessness", the whole opening was terrifyingly good! And we didn't even have any illustration animatic back then! (that's not to say the GITW animatics were bad, they just can't salvage much when the song itself was already weak)

I wasn't impressed with Poseidon's Shatter The Ocean move either. It's supposed to be the Strongest AttackTM but it's less scary than when he and the Laestrygonians destroyed Odysseus' eleven ships with probably 1% of their power. It didn't even help when Poseidon looked like he's having a seizure with lights pouring out of his eyes and mouth during the transformation.

Odysseus being literally on the brink of death with the souls of his loved ones pulling him into the abyss is a gem in the rough, but because we've seen Odysseus almost drowning before in the end of the Thunder Saga, it's not as shocking as it should be. Furthermore, Poseidon could have instant-killed Odysseus right then and there but didn't really annoyed me. But I guess he just wanted Odysseus to slowly suffer while dying.

Right when I thought the progress will get better, it... gets down. I can go with Odysseus using wind to escape the water, but him wearing it like a jetpack is so comical it ruined the drastic of the situation. And I'm officially let down when Odysseus FUCKING ATTACKED Poseidon in "Six Hundred Strike".

What? Just... why with that choice?

Look, I'm not gonna fault Epic for making creative liberties from the source material (as said in the disclaimer), but I will criticize if that change contradict itself in the transformative work. And this is one of them.

Poseidon and the gods have been proven time and time again in the musical just how powerful they are. Their ominous and grandiose entrances, them striking fear and inferiority in our hearts just by singing. Even Circe, a low-level goddess, poses a constant threat to the crew and Odysseus had to get help from Hermes just to get a chance to corner her (and Hermes even joked that he can still die!)

Poseidon easily destroyed almost all of Odysseus' fleet. Odysseus was very avoidant of him, opting to go to the literal Underworld to find instruction on how to dodge him and sailing through Scylla's lair + willing to sacrifice six men for safe passage. And when Poseidon said he can drown all of Ithaca, it's not just bluffing, he would and could have done that. Yeah, the King of the Sea is THAT BIG of a treat.

So no, Odysseus isn't cool to attack Poseidon, he's being stupid. I'm not even cheering for him the whole him he fight, just groaning at how ridiculous the whole thing is. If Epic is more believable and sticks to WHAT IT HAD ESTABLISHED BEFORE, having a sudden burst of anger and choosing ruthlessness won't save Odysseus from one swipe of Poseidon's trident. Odysseus stood no chance against a one of the most powerful deity, even if he's the protagonist and love his family.

Not only that, Poseidon didn't even defend himself and was wounded by a mere human! And he just sat there and took all the blows and insults from Odysseus??? And he actually begged Odysseus to stop and agree to quell the storm to let him get home??? I'm not buy that bullshit. I'm more upset that a literal Olympian god was nerfed down than Odysseus having a Gary Stu moment. Give me a break, that try-hard moment to be cool and edgy just show how badly written the scene is.

What's the fucking point of hyping up how dangerous the gods are if a human can take one down? Tell me this isn't some Wattpad-y Greek myth retelling fanfic where the teenage Y/N sass her way to defeat an entire pantheon. Epic really traded its opportunity to be better for some cheap and out-of-the-blue dramas in this saga, dare I say it's even worse than Zeus' OOC attack on Athena. I'm very disappointed with that decision.

On an end note, the saga did have one saving point with the "After everything you've done, how will you sleep at night?" - "Next to my wife" lines. Odysseus knew he could be the most horrendous man ever and Penelope would still choose his side, that just show how powerful their love and faith in each other are.

But not enough to excuse all the terrible cinematic choices.

[goodluckclove]

Okay Clove. I've seen a lot of little snippets from Blind Trust and I rock with your writing style a ton. But what's the book actually about?? Something with magic in a contemporary setting ? Hot dogs are somehow involved ??

Geets, it's me, the person who never learned how to properly pitch their own writing! I'll give it a shot anyway. I have a pinned post on my blog that has the fancy synopsis I'll probably put on the back of the book, but I'm fresh from a nap and on my phone and Feeling Frisky so I'll try and take it a different way.

What is Blind Trust about?

Blind Trust is book one of the Songbird Elegies, and it takes place in a contemporary world where magic exists but isn't great. It's not bad in a cool, The Witcher sort of way. Most people only know about magic through The Academy, where anyone can enlist and learn how to tap into the source of magic itself. Which sounds cool until you consider the physical strain of even a minor spell, the fact that major spells can take massive amounts for studying and practice and still aren't that powerful, and how carrying a wand on your person at all times is not easy to do without looking and feeling like a dipshit. Essentially, the average Academic Witch is like an arrogant MFA student or so someone really into craft beer.

But then there is a certain, little-studied medical anomaly that creates birthrights, which are individuals born already tapped into the source of magic by design. They each have a single ability that they can do without a wand (or wand-shaped proxy), but it's nothing innately combative and is mainly used to help interact with society at large. This is because the Birthright Gene is seen exclusively in individuals who are either born with a severe hereditary, genetic, or developmental disability, or will develop one over the course of their life but I'm not supposed to talk about that yet.

Birthrights are often found in a few scattered witch towns, where they use their abilities to focus on social work and community outreach. People also call them genetic witches, but you'd be hard-pressed to get a birthright to call themselves a witch at all. They don't value magic at all in the same way Academics do, and primarily see their "gift" as a chronic illness to manage and accommodate for.

Birthrights and Academics have varying relationships depending on where you are and who you ask but I can't really get into that because in Blind Trust no one knows anything so you don't get to either.

Well, that's not true. There's a mutual understanding of the concept of soul bonds, which are lifelong connections formed between individuals born in the source of magic - though how much people actually retained about this varies. A soul bond is not unlike a karass in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, in that the people involved are cosmically entangled with each other in a very profound way.

They might be born to be companions, family, enemies, or lovers. The last possibility, called a Lover's Knot, is the rarest and is reserved as a way to contain birthrights who would otherwise be capable of reality-shattering degrees of power. Which nobody wants. Especially not a birthright.

Meet Edgar Gallows and Scott Skylark Kaufner. Scott is a birthright from a witch town and Edgar was born into an Academy in Louisiana, despite also being birthright.

At the start of Blind Trust Edgar has escaped his Academy for the time being and has established a ramshackle and pretty lonely life for himself in New Orleans. He never wants to touch a wand for the rest of his life, and his only hope is to be boring and safe and left alone forever.

Meanwhile, Scott has been having a real rough time. He's been wandering the country nonstop for years with an unfathomable cosmic horror feeding on his sanity and gradually eroding reality around him. Birthrights don't use their abilities often, but for some reason Scott can't turn his off, and they've been warped to the degree where he's been forced to manipulate everyone around him. He can't stop, though. The only thing that can make this stop is if he finds the other half of his Lover's Knot, who he now only remembers as a ghostly vision named Eddie.

Scott and Edgar meet in a dirty walk-in of a mid-tier, overpriced bar and restaurant. Stuff changes and continues to change. Magic is involved but it's not really about the magic.

It's asexual and romantic and soft and confused and frightening and frightened and tender and in book two Edgar eats a hot dog for four pages. It's a great book about love and devotion that's sensual but not at all sexual, because the Clove Gardener Pledge is that there is no sex depicted at any point in the series. It's a great series if you're coping with parental neglect and trauma and want to read a depiction of self-love through an unconventional romantic pairing.

Blind Trust. Buy it in June in paperback or ebook, or just ask me for it and I'll probably give it to you.

[mystery-moose]

WELL I WAS GONNA GO EAT BUT OKAY LETS DO THIS

Here's a snippet of "alternate meeting":

She was hurt. He could tell even before he noticed the tiny drops of blood on the hardwood. Partially because she should have caught him by now, should have rounded on him blade at the ready before smiling that smile that warmed his chest and telling him that she’d clocked him ages ago and saw right through the mask he was wearing. Instead, she was in the bathroom, washing her hands under too-hot water, breathing a little harder than she should. He made sure the first sound she noticed was his voice. “Princess.” She spun, and even injured, she was fast — her knife was pointed at him exactly where he stood in the dark bedroom, harsh white light bleeding in from the bathroom. Briefly, he saw her the way any other might: a desperate animal, claws out, backed into a corner. But she recognized his voice, and the muscles around her eyes softened. The predator, soothed, faded away.

I don't usually go in for pre-canon AUs, especially in ongoing works that aren't complete yet, because I feel like... I don't have all the toys in the toybox to play with yet? And I tend to want to stick to canon as much as I can, for whatever its worth. But I've seen a few other people tackle this idea and some of them inspired me. It's definitely a way to focus in on the relationship between these two without that pesky kid and dog getting in the way!

Beyond that, I think it's a really cool idea to bring focus to things Twilight wants outside of the domestic. In canon, it's obvious he wishes he could be Loid Forger (and to an extent Loid Forger isn't really a mask at all) but I also love the idea that he might not actually want a simple family life with a simple civilian woman, but just... someone who understands him. Understands why he does what he does, has similar thoughts or feelings or experiences or background. The thought that he might still have found that with Yor under very different circumstances tickles the irony part of my brain.

Also it let's them meet on equal footing and display competency to each other, and since that does a lot for me personally I have to imagine it works for them too.

ANYWAY now here's "indulgence"!

"Gods, this is nice," he murmured. Karlach sighed, her hands playing with his, squeezing, tracing his fingers. She felt the softness of his palms as much as the brass scales on the backs of his hands. Her tail encircled and stroked his shin, and her feet tapped against the tops of his, doing a little dance. She always had so much energy when they went to bed together, energy he usually had to thoroughly expel from her in very satisfying ways… but tonight, he could tell this was all she wanted. He was happy to give it to her. “It is, isn’t it?” she said, laughing softly and kissing his palm. “Creature comforts.” “Mmhmm.” He nuzzled the back of her neck, closing his eyes. If he closed his eyes, it felt (and smelled) a bit like embracing a campfire, though a fair bit more pleasant. “Necessities, more like.” “You really are a bit of a ponce, aren’t you,” she said with a chuckle. “I am not,” he replied, feigning offense as he tickled the bottom of her foot with his toe. He felt her jump a little and it warmed him almost as much as her engine did. “I simply prefer the indoors to the outdoors. What’s precisely wrong with that?” “Pretty boring, really.” She elbowed him gently in the stomach. “Life happens outdoors.” “And I’d rather ‘life’ didn’t protrude up into my shoulder blades when I’m trying to sleep. Or seep through my tent when it storms. Or get into my bedroll and lay eggs. Or—” “Alright, alright,” she laughed, turning her head and looking over her shoulder into his eyes. “Baby.”

...so you can tell where the title came from!

I didn't really have a direction or a structure for this when I started it (the real reason for the title) but as I got further, I started to think about a selection of bedtime moments between my Tav (Sevistur the dragonborn paladin) and Karlach. The first time they sleep next to each other, the first time they sleep with each other, the first time they share a roof, the first time they share a bath or a bed. A sort of timeline of expanding boundaries and deepening intimacy.

I think the general thrust of it would be Sev coming to grips with how much he cares for Karlach, and then how much he needs to solve Karlach's condition, with him very quietly deciding what he wants to do about it. The thing is, he knows she doesn't wanna argue about it, so it's gotta go pretty much unsaid for most of it, living mostly in his interiority up until we get to the end, which has to take place in either Avernus or the epilogue. I haven't quite gotten that far!

I definitely want to, though. Karlach is easily my favorite romanceable NPC in years, and in a game that also includes Shadowheart that is saying something. It always makes me feel a bit strange to write an OC romancing a canon character, but that's kind of the whole point of BG3, and I like them too much to let that weird hangup of mine stop me, so here we are!

[a-supersonic-whistle]

dionysus in tsats

contains slight spoilers for tsats!

ok i mentioned in a previous post how i love dionysus and his story had so much potential to be included in tsats, so here's just some stuff i wish happened/were mentioned.

(preface to say that i did love all the interactions with him, i just wish we had... more)

if you're going to add ANY queer characters, the first one mentioned should literally be the god of homosexuality, cross dressing, and effeminacy

like all the minor characters were wonderful, but cmon! ancient greece wasn't exactly as open to equal/consenting gay relationships as people think, and strict gender stereotypes were really degrading to trans people (especially for "feminine men")

so if you consider dionysus's whole life basically, he would have had it really rough!!! like nico!!!

i think that if anyone could have helped nico/other campers come to term with their identities, it should've been mr. d, and it would have been such a different side of his we wouldn't have seen before

like a scene with him talking to nico about his relationship with will or talking about nico's whole catholic guilt sexuality crisis — that's the kind of dionysus content I NEEDED

i feel like the whole amphithemis storyline wasn't as well-explained/in depth as i wanted it to be

i was SO EXCITED to hear about this bc dionysus's childhood is super interesting and i wanted to see which interpretation of the myths rick/mark went with

it would have been so cool to maybe hear snippets about ancient greece, what happened to the other lamian centaurs, how this singular one ended in tartarus

or even maybe someone, i don't know, REASSURING AMPHITHEMIS THAT "THE CHILD" IS A GROWN-ASS GOD

when will and nico were recounting their journey to chiron and mr. d, i would have also loved to see some reaction from dionysus about his former caretaker being a mania in tartarus

also some acknowledgement of dionysus's madness! in a lot of versions of the myths, hera actually drove dionysus mad for a year (don't quote me on that timeline), so i think he could have had an interesting aside, if not full convo, about sympathizing with amphithemis being driven mad

there's a quote that's something like "dionysus stared dreamily at will as he described the underworld" or something like that — i wish we got a comment from mr d on what the underworld used to look like when he went down there (to save his mother semele who he brought to immortality)

according to riordan wiki (but very conflicting in greek mythos), dionysus was a demigod during the (original) gigantomachy, so i wish wish wish we got a comment on maybe what that was like or talking to the most recent batch of demigods about how to recover from it

a therapy session/talk between nico and mr d would have been really cool to read, or even a post-nightmare talk after mr d finished eating his popcorn

more dionysus/chiron interactions? some myths say that after he was raised by the nymphs, dionysus was sent over to train under chiron for a bit to gain wisdom and stuff, so i would die for some more of their relationship

also i've been wanting this for years now, but a dionysus reveal where he actually looks like his true form (aka literally stunning) would've solved my life problems. especially in such a gay book.

this is all i can think of for now but i'm literally planning on writing a bunch of chb and dionysus stuff soon because i'm in my "hyperfixate on a singular greek god's conflicting life story and deciding what i most agree with instead of studying for midterms" era :)

[aquadestinyswriting]

Another writing snippet

I've been looking through my WIP folders to check in on my backlog and came across this hilarious story that I started about two years ago. This section of it is what happens when you give a European magpie even more intelligence and the ability to use and cast magic.

There was nothing quite like the sensation of fresh, cool air between one’s feathers, Chrackle thought to himself as he soared high above Toreguarde’s central plaza. The magpie swooped down and landed on top of the head of the statue of his mistress and cleaned his pinion feathers. Spring was almost here and he had to look his best if he wanted to attract a decent mate. Not that his previous dalliances weren’t decent, but the previous year’s had been a little too air-headed for his tastes. Chrackle chuckled quietly to himself, ideally he would find another wizard’s familiar to settle down with, but apparently the only one to appreciate his clearly superior kind was his own mistress. Something to do with being seen as ‘common thieves’ and ‘bad luck’ or some such tripe and nonsense.

The bird cocked his head and looked down at the various people going about their daily business. A group of three noblemen passed by, chattering about the latest news that had filtered in from the western coast. Apparently Port Blacksand was getting uppity and placing import taxes on pretty much anything coming through their port, which was beginning to irritate the nearby Bleak Academy. Chrackle stored the information away for later, no doubt his mistress was going to be quite interested in that particular turn of events...

A glint on the ground caught his attention almost immediately after, causing the magpie’s head to snap around in the direction the glint had come from. Chrackle’s eyes pinned as he focused on the object more closely, recognising it as some sort of bracelet. The corvid blinked as he lifted his head and looked at the humanoids passing by beneath him. None were paying any attention to the ground, and no one seemed to be frantically looking around for a missing item…

Chrackle croaked as he fluttered to the ground to take a closer look at the bracelet. It was made of finely wrought mythril and studded with diamonds, real ones if the way the sun shone through them was any indication. Chrackle cocked his head and tugged on the faint connection to his mistress. While he was nowhere near close enough to properly cast anything, he could still use it to check if the item he was looking at was magical. He blinked again as his eyes lit up with a faint blue-purple glow, studying the lazy drift of the currents of magic around the bracelet. The item lit up in a blaze of bright blue almost immediately, causing Chrackle to squawk and turn off the ability almost as quickly as he had turned it on. Alright, so the bracelet was definitely enchanted. Chrackle hopped back up onto the dais of the closest statue, and looked intently around at the people passing by. Once more, no one seemed to be frantically looking around for the item and no one else appeared to have noticed it. Surely if the owner really wanted their item back, they would have noticed it was gone, especially since the enchantment upon it seemed to be incredibly powerful, right?

The magpie looked back down at the bracelet. On the one hand, he was constantly being told off for bringing back abandoned items to the tower. On the other, he needed to get a wing up on the uppity young male that had picked out Chrackle’s original choice for a mate the previous year. If this didn’t get the attention of all the females in the city, then nothing would. 

His mind made up, Chrackle fluttered back down to the ground and picked up the bracelet in his beak and immediately flew back up into the air and shot towards the Garden of Galana to the southwest. He never noticed the young elven woman being accompanied by two officers from watchhouse one walking towards the statue whose dais he had been perching on.

[pixystixx]

Snippet of my Bill Kaulitz Fanfic

I've been writing this fanfic for awhile now! I'm working very hard on it to make sure the quality is great! Please go readddd, luv y'all! :) Now for a little sneak peak to see if you like it!~ (p.s this isn't a full chapter.)

on wattpad pixy_stixx "Voice Of An Angel"

~

We all had to share a room, so Bill and I decided to share and throw the other three boys into a hotel room. "This is nice. It's the first time I don't have to share a room with Tom," Bill says as he sets his stuff down. I look around the room and it's a very pleasant hotel room. There are two beds in the room and two desks.

"I can't imagine having to spend so much time with my brother. How do you guys do that?" I question.

"We love each other a lot. I don't think either of us could live without the other. We do fight because we're together so much, but we always make up quickly. It just takes a couple hits to the head and everything's okay," Bill replies. When he talks he says it so softly with love in his voice. He really does care about Tom.

"I never fought with my brother. It's mostly because we were 6 years apart, but he was never even around enough for us to fight. I haven't seen him in a year," I reveal. I feel bad for making the conversation sad.

"That sucks," Bill says, "You have the band as your brothers now."

"It does kind of feel like that," I laugh, "You guys are really special. It's kind of crazy to think about where I am." I finally walk over to my bed and set my stuff next to it. I throw myself onto the bed and sprawl myself out on it. "Ugh, I need to take a shower," I complain. I wanna lay down, but I'm all sweaty and gross.

I take a quick shower and change into a simple, black pajama set. I throw myself back on the bed as Bill goes to take a shower. I flip through all the TV stations until I find one I like. I sit there watching the TV as I wait for Bill to get out of the shower.

Today was incredible. I can't believe I was on a stage that big. I can't believe I was singing with Bill Kaulitz. It wasn't even something I would dream of. I technically didn't even know who he was before I joined the band, but it's incredible looking at it now. I'm surprised I had no idea this band existed. Especially since I live in the same town as they do. I smile as I think about how lucky I am.

Bill walks out of the bathroom, which catches my attention. He has no shirt on and I can see his star tattoo. He makes eye contact with me and both of our faces turn bright red. My eyes roam over his bare torso and he clears his throat awkwardly. I decide to just look back at the TV.

"I'm not ready to sleep yet," Bill says from across the room, breaking the thick silence.

"Mmm, me neither," I agree. He walks over to my bed, and I scootch over to give him space. "I just put a show on TV if you wanna watch it," I say. The energy in the room is different than it normally is. Even though we've hung out alone before, it's kind of nerve-wracking to be alone with him right now.

He sits down carefully and nods. I have my eyes glued on the TV, but I can see Bill looking between me and the TV in the corner of my eye. I finally get the courage to look back at him. When we make eye contact, his breathing hitches slightly.

I think about what Tom said the other day. You'll probably have to make the first move. I inhale and break the silence. "Today was pretty incredible," I say quietly.

He nods and replies, "It was pretty cool to have someone to sing with. I was really nervous about it, but I can't imagine how nervous you were. It was your first time doing anything like that."

I laugh and say, "I was pretty nervous, but it all subsided when I looked out into the crowd. You also helped calm down my nerves a lot." As the words spill from my mouth, a heat rises in my face. Bill and I are now completely laying on our sides, facing each other. Our faces are barely a foot apart.

"I'm glad I could help," Bill gulps. We sit there in the silence for a little while. The only sounds are the low volume of the TV and the sound of us heavily breathing. We stare into each others eyes, nervous to make the next step.

"Thank you Bill," I say, "I like all of the band, but you've really been there for me whenever I need it. I can't thank you enough for everything." He smiles a small, sweet smile. His face is a bright pink.

"I'm glad," he replies, "Thank you too." I raise my eyebrow at his gratitude. "Thank you for being there. You've made me a lot happier lately," he finishes.

"Really?" I ask, "How?" I'm nervous I might be pushing him a little too far because his face somehow manages to get even redder.

"You just do. There's something about you," he answers.

"Bill, I like you," I blurt out.

[eyedelater]

yakuza like a dragon post

i went to a store and bought neo TWEWY, and then instead of playing that, i bought Yakuza: Like a Dragon (yakuza 7) on steam because it was on sale and started playing that. now it seems like i'll be playing this game for the rest of my natural life because the amount of stuff to do is simply limitless. so that's bad news for my copy of neo TWEWY, but good news for me?

naturally, this post is going on my anime blog because the game is originally in japanese. i have the audio set to japanese, and it's very educational. the japanese voice actors are all quite good. kasuga's voice actor is fantastic. and at first i didn't have that many thoughts worth recording about the game, but now, several have built up, and i need somewhere to put them. i should note that i've never played any other yakuza games, but i understand that they are generally well-loved by everyone… maybe? i've only ever seen tiny snippets of gameplay footage from the other yakuza games, so i have no idea what their gameplay is like. if you have to aim a gun with your joystick, i'll never play them.

good first impressions. i LOVE a minimap. i LOVE a minimap that is set to north-up and is always on. if i ever got some stupid shit like google glass to put a GUI on my everyday life, i would put a north-up minimap corresponding with my GPS location. (ok maybe i wouldn't want it tracked constantly. but still.) on my in-game minimap, kasuga is a big arrow, and his party members are little arrows, just like a duck and ducklings. i'm running around leading my little ducklings all around yokohama. because i'm trying to make kasuga the best man he can be, i usually make an effort to have him navigate the sidewalks in a polite way. i want him not to crash into other pedestrians even though he is tall and imposing and his hitbox is very wide. so i skillfully dodge between all the pedestrians to avoid making them shout. but despite my best efforts, i hear all my little ducklings behind me crashing into every pedestrian i managed to avoid. my little ducklings are so clumsy.

i did the side quest where you lead the bubble man to a clothing store. i didn't like that duckling.

the hitboxes on items and vending machines are Absolutely merciless, and because the interact button is also the run button, i keep breaking into a run and crashing around instead of picking up the item. there's just no way for kasuga to look cool when trying to interact with something.

you might not know this about me, but in my view, the best video games allow you to run fast and jump high regardless of the circumstances. so i can't deny that my heart sank when i found out that this game has no jump button whatsoever. i will do my best to see past this obvious deficit.

this game has such a good sense of humor. it's ridiculous and not overly negative despite some terrible things happening. i laughed out loud at the cheerful little tune when someone joins your party. i love the wholesomeness of kasuga just trying to be the best man he can be and become a real-life hero. the way side quests always devolve into violence and then the problem is always solved by a beatdown is too funny. the absurdity and good humor puts it on a level that is not too far from golden kamuy, in my opinion. i'm not especially far along as i write this (saeko just joined my party), but i really think this game might be a treasure. and i have to say that if i hadn't been really into golden kamuy immediately before playing this, i might not have been in the right mindset to appreciate cute ossans like this. i like the audacious decision to make your party primarily out of down-on-their-luck 40- and 50-somethings, and i love the audacious decision to have them do cute things like become best friends and earn vocational school certificates and plant little gardens. (if i apply the COCK test to this game, it passes 3 points with flying colors: completely unhinged, offends the church, kicks ass. it might be deficient on the Creatures point unless you count the catchable bugs, which barely count due to their pure normalness, or sujimon, which barely count due to their humanity.)

i've learned that these vocational school certificates don't fuck around. however, i'm determined not to cheat or look up answers. (eventually i decided to savescum, but only a little.)

i was thinking it's really hard to do anything to improve kasuga's personality, but then i finally unlocked the part-time hero quests and like 50 achievements hit at once and he became 5 times the better man instantaneously.

i love nanba. he's the best. i love his frown and his slouch. his deadpan voice is the best. i love his finishing attack that knocks him flat on his ass. i'm trying to get lots of side quests done in between main story points because i don't know when i might lose access to this map like i lost access to the kamurocho map, but i can't get emotionally closer to nanba without advancing the main story more. i need that, and that's why i'm advancing the main story. (the fact that getting closer to him is tied to story progress might indicate that he's going to be an especially long-lasting member of your party…)

nanba has the highest of whatever stat makes you go first in battle, but he seems to be the slowest of my ducklings when it comes to keeping up with running kasuga, so it happens over and over and over that kasuga aggros the enemies and then nanba is like "all right, it's my turn!!" but he's like 30 feet behind or around the corner and has to run a little while everyone waits for him.

i work with homeless people in my day job, and i think this game portrays them somewhat cruelly… i have really mixed feelings about it… like the narrative puts in effort to be like, "everyone has their own reasons for being on the street and it's not as simple as going and getting a job," which is true! and it includes the obvious fact that not having a home is a gigantic obstacle to getting a job. (hot tip: you will have trouble getting a normal job if you don't have somewhere to take showers and do laundry, because otherwise, you will stink too much for anyone to hire you. and if you have a very small income, are you going to spend it on doing laundry often enough at the laundromat, or are you going to spend it mostly on food? and are you going to spend it on thrifty foods like dry beans and pasta to boil up at your nonexistent stove, or are you going to buy more expensive fast food and gas station food that is immediately available? it all comes together into a big vicious circle that is incredibly difficult to escape without outside help, no matter how badly you want to work. yet many people fail to consider any of this and act like homeless people are some kind of mess to clean up.) but despite that, the game also implicitly and explicitly makes fun of homeless people a lot ("battle bum" and "hungry hungry homeless," "homeless guy" as a job class, nanba's bad breath attack and pigeon attack [even though i love his pigeon attack], weird implication that there's a Leader at the homeless settlement that everyone respects). and it does seem to completely ignore the fact that drugs and mental illness generally factor into homelessness in a major way. (maybe it's different in japan? i don't know a single thing about the drugs situation there. but i can't imagine the mental illness situation is too different.) i don't know. you can't expect every depiction to be perfectly respectful, especially in a very silly game like this. but i think it's not good to ignore the disrespect. this is something i'm still chewing over. all the outfits are exactly right though.

is there a mod where you can give kasuga a giant white cravat so we can acknowledge how much the color of his outfit reminds me of miles edgeworth

i noticed that sometimes kasuga has nothing in his unbuttoned shirt except his cleavage and other times there's a red scarf thing there. what's up with that? oh, is it when he transforms into a Hero and that means his outfit changes slightly, just like how nanba puts his hood up? [note added in later: yes.]

i have unlocked many things such as gardening and part-time hero quests, but i still don't have anything to do with the extremely burgeoning pile of crafting materials i have been amassing this entire time. i could build a hosue with all this shit.

classifying other humans as sujimon is interesting. it's true that if you're out in the real world you may come across someone and it's like, "have i seen this person before? no… i've just seen another of the exact same Type of Guy." i myself am of a certain Type that old people mistake for their niece. of course, it's kind of bizarre and messed up to classify sujimon as if they're something other than human. but it is funny. (and in this case, the "mon" isn't short for monster but rather for mono 者, which can be a word describing humans.)

some of these cutscenes are incredibly long. i like to listen carefully to the japanese lines as if it were a listening exercise. based on my listenings, i would say they did a good job with the translation, though it's clear they decided to lean very much in the direction of "getting the connotations across and making it sound good in english" and away from "translating literally exactly what they are saying." because of my personal taste, i tend to be a stickler for leaning toward the latter (with allowances for making it sound good in english), but that's just a matter of poetic license. there are some lines i would have translated quite differently, but that's only a result of my own oversized ego. overall, they did a better job than i could have. obviously. i also noticed in the cutscenes that there are often unnaturally long pauses between the lines but that you can make them shorter if you press the A button? maybe to give you, the viewer, time to process? seems weird though. [note added in later: i think that was my computer struggling to load the cutscene. so instead of having huge loading times in between cutscenes, they have little tiny loading times in between all the dialogue? seems like something like that. this is the most demanding game i've ever tried to run on this computer.]

adachi is constantly saying, "koshi ga haru ze." i think it's "haru," but i'm not sure. "koshi" means "hips," and he's an old guy, so it's probably something about his hips aching. but i can't quite figure out the verb. is it haru as in "to stretch or strain?" i guess that would make sense. or is it a different verb and i'm mishearing? my auditory processing is somewhat notoriously poor. anyway, whatever he's actually saying, i kinda want adachi to shut the fuck up about his hips.

i basically never play games where the characters are meant to be photorealistically rendered. there is not one such game that i have played through to the end. i just prefer cartoonier stuff for various reasons, not the least of which is the uncanny valley of almost-realistically rendered human faces. this game definitely, absolutely has that uncanny valley factor, but i can overlook it. it's refreshing to see character designs that are just people.

i can't believe there's DLC for this game. how could i possibly ever run out of stuff to do. how could i possibly ever run out of stuff to do (a second time for emphasis)

crashing into people on a real-life sidewalk "sorry ma'am, my hitbox is just-- oOF, excuse me, i'm so sorry, it's my hitbox--"

i'm not pumped for this business management minigame. i saved right after we set things up with nick ogata and then stopped playing for the day. i'm too exhausted today to try it… i hope there's an easy way to do the necessary part and then i can forget about it because it doesn't seem fun… can't i just pawn this off on nick ogata right away? by the way, i had to check if nick ogata's name used the same kanji as That ogata, and it does. so i guess it's a name that exists and has the "tail" kanji in it for real, rather than noda-sensei unusually spelling an existing name with a "tail" kanji for hyakunosuke because he's a cat.

they had a moment of minor fanservice after everyone took a bath and saeko was sitting with her cleavage out. but then in the same scene was kasuga's entire boobs. that's balance.* no one can make complaints on any side there. maybe the complaint is that we didn't see nanba's. though i'm quite sure his torso would be unexceptional. but that's why i want to see. look, this is not for my sexual gratification. i just think it's funny how showing a man's entire boobs is totally allowed, and i want to see. (golden kamuy got me used to being allowed to see.)

(*is it?)

i don't want to see adachi's boobs.

i was like "it's so hard to find bugs :( they only spawn on a tree once every 5 hours of play" but then i went to hamakita park and ran around in a field catching bug after bug!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

do these various chinatown bun vendors know that their prized proprietary recipes are so similar to each other's offerings that their buns stack together in my inventory

playing in fullscreen, having various thoughts, but this .txt is behind the fullscreen so i can't click away to it. finish playing for the night. forget everything i was going to write.

i historically spend most of my computer time in the web browser without minimizing and may go weeks without looking at my desktop. but when i do rarely play a PC game, i open it by going to my desktop where i have plonked the game's icon. so lately, i'm seeing my desktop much more often. my desktop background is that color page of tsukishima and koito from volume 24, and lately i see it every day. my boys are here to ground me with their serious looks.

right before we got access to the romance workshop, it was like, "this is a great way to repurpose our old items instead of shelling out huge amounts of cash on new ones!" but i have to shell out monster amounts of cash to upgrade the workshop.

one of these days i have to give nanba a new job. i think kasuga will remain a hero, and i don't know about the others, but nanba needs a job other than homeless guy because he needs a new outfit. maybe he'll have more good attacks too. his flame breath is a little frustrating because it's really hard to get him and the enemies in the right position so that it hits more than one enemy. when i feel like i have them in a good position for his flame breath, he decides on his own to run 20 feet closer so that he can only hit one enemy after all.

i want to appreciate the game for all it has to offer, but i'm not very interested in learning how to play all these real-life card games and mahjong. i mean, i know how to play blackjack. knew. it's somewhere in there. i've tried the darts, baseball, and golf minigames. they're fun enough. haven't downloaded the slots minigames. but i don't really want to play cards.

ichiban calls saeko "sacchan (さっちゃん)," but they romanized it as sa-chan. that's fair, given that "sac" is an english word that we don't especially like. and romanizing "sacchan" as the also-phonetically-accurate "satchan" would mean the T appears out of nowhere, so it's not a good option in this case.

i'm SO glad this game doesn't run on real time or abbreviated time or any semblance of realistic passage of time (unlike persona 4). i don't have to ration my side quests or relationship growth based on how much time is left in the day (unlike in persona 4). i won't miss out on important things because i ran out of time or accidentally missed a deadline for that particular date (unlike in persona 4).

my dear nanba killed me once. he can save me, and he can kill me, but only the saving matters to the narrative; no matter how many times he kills me, it is erased. that is his conundrum as a character in a video game with a predetermined plot. anyway, i bought him an expensive weapon, and he killed me with it. it was already somewhat late at night in real life when it happened, so after that, i spent the rest of my time before bed upgrading my weapons and grinding a little in preparation to kill my dear nanba. the game didn't want me running all around ijincho in between fighting the wrecking ball and fighting nanba, so it disabled the taxi service, but i can't be stopped. i ran all the way across town and back to get vegetables so the master could make me some bentos. and i came across hiro's missing cat at hamakita park, so i got a million yen to upgrade my weapons and armor. and now, the next day, after thinking about it all day, it is just about time to kill nanba. but he'll be okay, and then he'll rejoin my party where he belongs.

i killed nanba very easily. i didn't need to use any of the master's bentos. nanba was okay, but he still didn't come back to my party yet. but that's okay. he'll keep gaining XP in the background, and in the mean time, we have a new little duckling. i really wish joon-gi had some attacks that affected the whole crowd of enemies, since he has the highest agility or dexterity or whatever makes him attack first, and when you attack first, the enemies haven't had a chance to spread out yet, so that's when you want to do a broad attack… maybe if he levels up a bit…

i've been watching someone play paper mario lately, and i keep thinking, i wish i could put my party members in my pocket so i don't have to worry about my 2 or 3 incredibly clumsy ducklings constantly crashing into everyone and everything and me as i navigate the crowded city.

nanba came back sooner than i thought. he didn't even have time to get a new outfit like i thought he might. but i guess when you're a level x homeless guy as your job, you can't just get a new outfit even if you meet your brother off-camera and solve your emotional difficulties. also, when nanba came back, sacchan got put in my pocket! so they can be put in my pocket while i run around! but then they won't help me fight.

when i first started playing, i thought the danger level indicators were like the wantedness indicators in GTA, like that's how hard the police are going after you and it's based on how many crimes you commit. but it turns out that there are no consequences and in fact many rewards for beating up endless chinpiras in broad daylight.

joon-gi's voice actor is quite good. i enjoy his polite speech. and despite his calm demeanor, when he attacks, he often lets out a very powerful TSERYAAAA!!!! that feels kind of uncharacteristic but very amusing

i got sick of trying to be nice walking on the sidewalks. now everywhere i go is a chorus of UWOs and KYAs and WOTTOs. it's not my fault my hitbox is wide and my ducklings are so bad at pathfinding. when i break into a run, they also break into a run and loop around to run directly in front of me from a 90 degree angle. i keep getting t-boned by my own ducklings. and then they make a complaining noise.

i'm gonna go to isezaki ijincho just to visit the several large SEGA-branded arcades that definitely exist there in the real world. oh wait, this area itself doesn't quite exist in the real world. i guess that makes sense.

i maxed out my relationship with nanba. i was very annoyed that there was the whole thing of "oops now we have to actually give nanba a surprise party because he's expecting it and he's excited about it!" and then we maxed out his hearts without actually having a surprise party. give me a break. when is he gonna get his goddamn surprise party. he told you that he always wanted one since he was a kid. that girl coming in and lying to him was not a surprise party; it was a misguided gesture that half landed, half flopped. WHERE is nanba yu's surprise party!!!!!!!

han joon-gi finally got an attack that hits many enemies and it's sooo useful. it's also an insane move that would definitely wreak havoc and cause chaos in real life. probably not even an american would risk double-handgun sweeping crossfire on a busy street like that. he does it indoors, too.

(sweating) kasuga ichiban is going to be a MUCH better person than i am by the end of this…

it's fun to have zhao in the party. he sure has a lot of martial arts moves. his painted nails are cute. i like him, but his little mustache is the kind i hate. also is it just me or was there just a little more sexual tension between him and kasuga than expected? when they're having heart-to-hearts at the bar, i mean. well, if i got behind any ship in this game, it would be kasuga/nanba, i suppose.

i don't like the shareholder meeting minigame or the business management minigame as a whole. feels like a swing and a miss to me. i mean, i can tell love went into it. it just doesn't feel intuitive, for one thing… it doesn't seem fun. it is kinda funny how the pacified shareholders settle into a state of dreamy nodding and clapping.

none of the ladies ichiban can woo seem especially interesting as characters. i guess sumire is the best one. maybe you have to be into women for that aspect to land with you. maybe i'll try wooing one or two of them a little more to see if we get any interesting cutscenes or anything. also iroha doesn't care to hear any followup about how i found the secret weapons dealer we were talking about. what's up with that? or am i somehow failing to tell her properly?

with the part-time hero quests, i have to fight x number of a certain kind of enemy, but they have to be new kills since that particular quest appeared. it's frustrating to have to go find 10 more of whatever kind of guy i've already killed 80 of. anyway, they're fellow humans so these aren't kills; they're One-Piece-style defeats, where you get the shit knocked out of you so bad that you change your outlook on life and stop being a sujimon.

i got to the sotenbori arena, and some of the rules are like, "no switching party members during battle!" buddy i didn't even know i could do that.

i wonder if new game+ will be significantly harder or something. as it stands, the game isn't hard enough for me to need to use advanced tactics like swapping out party members during a fight. either way, i've never been much of a new game+ person, preferring to have as much fun as possible the first time playing. i mean, i'm not especially good at video games in the first place, and i haven't played that many games all the way to the end. i think the only games i've new game plussed were okami and hollow knight. except i don't remember if hollow knight actually has a new game+ or if i just played it a second time.

i know just from my tumblr dashboard that majima and saejima are important characters from other yakuza games. i could also kinda tell from the loving way they were depicted and how they had their own special fight music. i loved how they had an unavoidable tag-team attack. i beat every floor in the battle arena, most of them twice, before the fight with majima and saejima, and they still almost murdered us. if i hadn't called in the masochist poundmate to make us nigh-invulnerable, i probably would have lost to them. and it cracked me up that they were added to poundmates just like that.

more weapons should be upgradeable. it doesn't make sense that there are just a few. and you can't even tell from the start which ones you will be able to upgrade. and you can't tell in advance how far you will be able to upgrade them or when you'll hit a dead end. [note added in later: i finally looked it up and found out that there's basically 1 upgradeable weapon per class that will be upgraded into that class's most powerful weapon. but i was unable to glean that just by playing the game.]

is the joke with the empty cough drop tins supposed to be about how, in real life, you know rationally that empty tins like that are essentially worthless, but you can't shake the feeling that they could be useful, so you hold on to them? because if that's the joke it's really funny. i have one such tin right in front of me on my desk. they just seem so potentially useful. of course they're useful if you want to store little stuff. but there's a limit to how much little stuff anyone really needs to store in old tins. and i think almost everyone has reached that limit and doesn't need any tins.

i kind of wish there were more interesting jobs for sacchan... instead of only Very Distinctly Feminine jobs. i dunno. strong binary gender roles in this game.

i'm kind of feeling like i need to finish up this game before may 12th-ish because at that time i will inevitably shift my focus to the new zelda game. but i doubt i'll make a post about that game. i've never had enough thoughts about the story in a zelda game to take notes about it, not in my life. yet i've played almost every one of them.

if it's one of the special fights where kasuga takes his shirt off first, then he's also shirtless in the specials and tag team animations. that's love.

we had a fun fight with kiryu, who i know is the protagonist of at least one other yakuza game. (are all the other guys protagonists too? majima doesn't seem like a protagonist, though.) kiryu's tattoo strikes me as significantly cooler than ichiban's. and when they're standing right next to each other, their outfits clearly mirror one another.

i've played for 100 hours and i'm almost out of things to say about this game, as i've gotten used to all the fun and exciting things and now they just seem normal. if i ever play a game less exciting than this, i'll fall asleep. i'm on chapter 14. i wonder if i'll get any side quests ever again. no new ones have shown up in a while. and none of the side quests have been as funny as the one about the public urinator where you come across the 4 guys standing at the edge of the river. that might have been the peak.

for the past several weeks, i've been busy and very tired and distracted reading the works of junji ito, so i haven't played as much of this game as i had intended to, and now my plan to finish playing this before the new zelda game comes out has been thrown out the window because the new zelda game came out today and i preordered it so i have it and it's right here!!!!!!!!! so do i want to not play the game on its opening day and risk spoilers, which i have heretofore avoided? or do i want to set yakuza aside to play the new zelda game? and poor neo TWEWY gets pushed even further aside. considering how long breath of the wild kept me busy, i can't see far enough into the future to know when i'll get around to neo TWEWY.

but after writing that paragraph, without consciously making a choice, i started reading more junji ito stories, even though i'm not in love with his stuff… i just have a compulsion to read all of it… so i can finish the other text post i'm working on…

...

…i finished the other text post i was working on. time to play on.

ICHIBAN SURVIVED AN EXPLOSION AND SHOWED UP WITH ONE (1) BANDAID AND A SMILE ON HIS FACE!!! THAT WAS THE BEST. i'm reinvigorated.

i was like, "ok we're in the final chapter. let's finish this up (with love and care) and be done with it." but we're back in kamurocho, which i have not thoroughly explored. what can i do but comb every street and alley for mcguffins?! it's only fair! to the developers who put so much loving detail in the game! and while i'm at it, i should upgrade all my weapons so much more! it's telling me to prepare for the final battle! i have to prepare by upgrading everyone's weapons a lot! and in order to do that, i need lots of money! so i'll play the last 10 levels of the sotenbori battle arena 5 times! and then i'll taxi back and forth between the materials cart in the park and romance workshop and make everyone's weapons OP! and then i'll forget what i was doing! and then i'll learn that ichiban has to be a foreman in order to unlock various things! and then i'll get ichiban to foreman level 21 so he won't be so weak! and then i'll learn that ichiban doesn't actually need to remain a foreman to have the demolish ability so i'll switch him back to hero! and then i'll learn about the three secret shops and go unlock them with my demolish ability! and then i'll buy a bunch of gold safe keys from the secret shops! and then i'll look up a list of gold safes! and the list unexpectedly tells me what's in the safes, and i don't really need any of it! so then i'll decide i don't need to open gold safes and forget what i was doing! IT'S HARD TO FINISH THE GAME!!!

the tendo fight, which took forever, didn't give me even half as much XP as the invested vagrant.

i didn't expect nick ogata to stick his neck out like an MVP and grill masato at the press conference like that. mostly unrelated note: i really like masato's aoki ryou politician voice. it's very cute. it's a 100% perfect match for his aoki ryou face.

i'm fighting masato. i love how he's got his swaggery chinpira body language animations but he intersperses it with glasses adjustments. genius touch. i was loving this battle with him. i didn't want it to end, but i didn't want to artifically prolong it by using health items. so i just punched him a lot and then it was over.

...

arakawa masato has passed away. now we're in the epilogue. time is running out for them to give nanba a birthday party before the game ends all the way.

…

okay the game ended and i can't complain about it. even if they failed to give nanba a birthday party. it was good.

ah, the story was good… the confrontation between ichiban and masato at the lockers was a strong ending scene… they wrapped it up neatly. ichiban finally got through to him. even though i know that when masato said he never liked ichiban, he wasn't lying, either. but it's like ichiban said: they have a connection, like brothers. i'm just glad masato didn't kill himself. i'm surprised kume souta didn't show up in the epilogue. i guess we can safely assume he's in prison.

i started this post by extolling the fact that this game has endless things to do. but although i did really enjoy doing most of those things, in the end, i feel like it had a significant detrimental effect on the momentum of the story. by stretching out the gameplay between story segments, the earlier story developments came to feel very distant, and by the end, i didn't feel as close to nanba and saeko and the others as i did earlier in the game… i got too used to everything, got too absorbed in grinding, became obsessed with tying up loose ends, started taking things for granted. the magic faded. how much of that is my fault for getting distracted from the story, and how much is the game's fault for distracting me from its own story? i can't tell.

probably the best way to play this game would be to rampage through the main story as enthusiastically as you can, then go back to unearth and subsequently tie up every loose end on a new game+.

despite all that, i will say conclusively that the game is good and i recommend it wholeheartedly. the combat system is very satisfying. i love the omnipresent, excessive, dramatic particle effects. the animations are great. the voices are great. it's so fun to run around the extremely detailed city and go eat realistic foods at restaurants and have fights for no reason. the story is a strong backbone for the game. and i'm glad you aren't penalized for leaving certain loose ends untied… like the business management minigame, which i neglected until the very end. i know i could have unlocked a new party member through that minigame. it just didn't seem worth it. maybe i'll watch a bunch of youtube videos of all the things i missed. and maybe i'll revisit the game for my new game+ someday.

[elizaxspears]

Memories of Mortals and Madmen rework? tell me more

Okay! So! I realised that a lot of the old version progressed way too fast! Relationships weren't built and no one was given time to breathe to have some development and I realised (after playing throuhg TEW2 again) that Seb shouldn't still be working for the KCPD (TEW2 is taken into account but I'm not really following that timeline, just picking certain plot and fact points from it lmao), so I had to reimagine the story with that involved! I also wanted to give William more people to interact with since he'd just be all alone otherwise (which would be accurate but he needs someone to bounce off of that's not Joseph when Joseph isn't there!) Speaking of relationships, I wanted to fix William and Joseph's, actually give them more of a dynamic then have it happen for the sake of happening. The same thing goes for Ronald and William, as in the original story I had that relationships just thrown in last second. I also want to give Seb and Joseph more of a part too because they never felt like they had much of one! Seb was still upset over Myra and Lily (I mean, understandably) and Joseph was just kind of passive to it. I'm hoping with this rework, it's feel more like mutual pining at some point!

So, yeah! Lots of relationships changes! As for the plot itself, it's mostly going the same way except Lily will be an actual character eventually, the Undertaker's presence will be felt a bit more, the murder subplot for Seb and Joseph is more streamlined and makes more sense (Also make Joseph sound more Canadian. A lot more "eh's" because as a Canadian, I've never conciously realised how much I say it in every day conversation until writing Joseph xD) That's all I can really say without going full spoiler mde (not that really is any lol) but I'm REALLY hoping this rework turns out how I want it to!

Here's a small snippet from the first draft of the rework:

Joseph stares down at the business card he continuously flips between his fingers. He’s not exactly sure why he thought having lunch with William would be a good idea but after this morning, he just wanted to have a small break without feeling like he was losing his mind a second time. While things were still tense with Sebastian, it was work that made him feel like he’d gone mad. When he’d asked about the body he’d found last night, Wolfe acted like he’d never heard of such a thing. He’d even looked himself and there was no official report made but it wasn’t like he made it up. He knew what he saw with his own two eyes, which, he supposes, couldn’t be very reliable narrators at times. It was also the time he’d officially met William and this business card proved it. If there was no body, there wouldn’t have been a Grim Reaper but he supposes bringing that up wouldn’t set well with anyone at work.

A grim reaper. William. He still thinks the man is mocking him, especially when he looks at the number on the business card. 444-444-413 just didn’t seem real but of course it was. William may not have answered but he did call him back, so obviously, the call had gone through.

He sighs, looking out the window. Ten minutes into his lunch break and he wonders if William will show up at all. “I apologise but there was a soul that needed collecting before I met you.”

The cool, posh, English accent isn’t hard to distinguish and of course when he turns from the window, he sees William just taking the seat across from him. He looks just as he had the last two times Joseph had seen William, although he does seem to be leaning just slightly more on his right and there’s an even slighter pinch to his expression. “I’m just glad you came.” he looks William over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” William dismisses his worry with a wave of his hand. “I merely had a run in with a demon when you’d called and I’m afraid I may have broken a rib or two. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

“A broken rib? Two?! Shouldn’t you be going to a hospital?”

“Goodness no. One thing you must understand Oda is that wounds like broken bones, bruises, cuts, things that may be fatal to a human are mundane to us. Our bodies will heal on their own so long as it isn’t a slash from a death scythe. Even a demon’s claw, while painful and more dire, will continue to heal on its own with a bit more rest. I’m sure by tonight, I will be fine.”

[maple-writes]

Construct Story Snippet

So I just realized I've ended up making this wip my main one by the default of it's the only one that I've been able to get any writing done on. If I remember I'll introduce it better soon but for now, an excerpt from near the beginning:

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Ace's room for her last days lay in an intricate marble buildings with granite floors and a balcony overlooking the sea of clouds below. She stood and leaned on the railing. Trees and lawns and gardens filled the space not taken by residences and the ceremonial platform at the very top of the largest hill. A breeze drifted through leaves and brought with it the scent of the sea and flowers. Not a bad place to die.

Late afternoon found her wandering the gardens. Shrubs and blooms she’d never seen on the mainland flowered and swayed in the wind. Bright yellows, pinks, and reds shone out from rich green. No doubt some had been created from some sorcerer’s own magic much like she had. The path weaved between trees and rocks and fountains and ponds bubbling with crystal water out to the edge of the island. Marked by an old, broad-leafed tree, a grassy hill overlooked the coastline far, far below. Mountains rising in the center of the country hardly seemed more than hills despite the caps of snow and ice suggesting otherwise. Ace paused in the shade of the old tree. Her unit were still down there. Nearly every living thing besides those slated for their endpoints or deemed clever and prestigious enough to arise as elite sorcerers.

Footsteps sounded soft and muffled in the cool grass behind her. “Are you really a construct?”

She turned, perplexed at what she saw. The Curse-Bringer, the one who had killed her many times before he took her last life, stood before her. Different, smaller, without the dark and light hyphae snaking across his skin or mold whitening the pupils of his eyes. He stood undecayed but he could be no other.

“You’re the one who killed me.” Ace faced him, unsure if it was anger or curiosity that began to seep into her blood. “Why are you here?”

“I...” He searched for words but came up fruitless. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I got here.”

He sounded different from the Curse-Bringer she had encountered with the rasp and shouts of a killer who didn’t care who or what got in his way. Who didn’t care what destruction he left in his wake. He sounded human. She watched as he approached, cautious to stand beside her to gaze out at the land below. A clear day showed everything, the fields, the forests and mountains, and the scars of dead brown where the Curse had been spread.

“I don’t know why I’m here, but I have to go back.” He spoke into the breeze, swallowing softly. “I’ve become a monster. That’s not the man I was. And he... I know he-I'm, we’re suffering.”

She mulled over his words. “You’re a doppelganger?”

“Am I?” He blinked. “No one, the sorcerers, they don’t speak to me. No one will tell me what I’m here for.”

The Curse-Bringer had been at large months now, nearly half a year. If he had been here all this time it would have allowed more than enough time for the conditions to be correct for him to be destroyed time and time again. For whatever reason, they’d kept him alive. Perhaps even the elites did not know what it was he was doing here or how it was that he became.

He crouched on the edge of the hill, overlooking the landscape. Dark hair drifted in front of his face, a light brown unmarked by fungi. “I want to ask you something.” He awaited her approval but she only watched, curious. “Would you be willing to help me return to the surface? I need to stop myself before it’s too late.”

“You’re asking a lot.” Ace narrowed her eyes. “Do you understand that?” It was forbidden, and she would be breaking ancient vows for her to defy her fate by leaving this island now. Especially to bring another down with her, another kept here by the sorcerers for reason unknown. “I would be throwing away all I’ve lived for, worked for, and denied my fate. Denied the rewards for my service and rest.”

He nodded and his jaw shifted just under his cheek. “I know. I know it’s a lot, its unforgivable and I could never repay you if you did.” He swallowed. “But I... I’ve been here for a year now and all I can do is watch as my curse spreads. I’m afraid of what will happen if I can’t do anything in time.”

How far could she trust his word? He seemed genuine enough but perhaps he had just been perfecting his act. “There are units and soldiers attempting to counter him, what makes you any different?”

“Because that’s me.” He glanced up at her, shoulders sloped and face fallen. “I... I’m ashamed of what I’ve become, and I might be able to stop myself before it’s too late. I have to try. Every day I come here, and I wish if only I could grow wings myself.”

A doppelganger’s formation was rare. Perhaps he had a point. There must have been a reason for his likeness, his being, to split this way. But then, why had he been kept here so long when he could have been the key to undoing the curse spreading across the land. The elite sorcerers, they must know something about the processes that would create a doppelganger, wouldn’t they? The magic the Curse-Bringer bore though... It was ancient, older perhaps than even her. Perhaps the last being created from her heart would have been from the era of whatever dark force he had joined with but that knowledge was lost to history now.

She started to turn away. “I am set to be destroyed in three days. On my last night I will have your answer.”

[witchofthesouls]

The Aligned verse handling of Orion Pax is... weird. Really, really weird.

Like to the point, I take canon spaghetti soup and rewrite my own thing. And not going to lie, I only seen snippets of the books, and yikes!

The mech before the Orion Pax was literally from the Wilds. As in, he came from literally nothing and somehow managed to get Alpha Trion's attention to become a data clerk.

That's the equivalent of someone born and raised in a national park, foraging and living off the land and being a vagabond, and suddenly becoming the personal aide to a really powerful political entity/propagand machine.

Orion's really warped perceptions are, in many ways, the sum of his experiences. Perhaps he truly believes that it's that easy to scale up the castes and occupation. He didn't realize just how pull Alpha Trion had, and, most likely, never had. (Unless Alpha Trion being a Prime is public knowledge, but then that opens so much shit that everything needs to be reexamined and questioned.)

Don't get me wrong, I do think Orion Pax can be tone deaf in certain areas, especially when he went on a tangent that his gripe with the systems is his inability to go to an amusement park.

Like, my man, you were literally a homeless illiterate that came under the protection of a recluse in so many political pies and easily got work in the secretive Iacon Archives. Your very existence should have caused friction, if not out-right hostility, among so many parties just for that...

(And perhaps that's why Megatron likes taunting Optimus with "librarian.")

There's just so many things that don't match up with Orion. He's like a dart board of random cool/interesting things and seeing what's left on the wall to work with and ream into the narrative.

They give us a feral bastard wanting to improve his life and a pillar to a revolutionary force, yet he's strangely passive when it comes to action. He's a simple data clerk, yet he has unrestricted access to tampered historical documents. He has the background to see people what they are, yet he's super naive and sheltered in ways that seems way for fitting for a mech that never set a foot outside his world.

I've seen a few takes that Orion came under shadowplay, and that's why he has many conflicting discrepancies. Or, how the writers shot themselves in the foot with Orion trying to later mold him into the inevitable contrast between Optimus and Megatron, their fallout, and the war.

Personally, I think Alpha Trion and the Archives trained him too well, and that's why he's a fucking mess.

You know, we talk a lot about how betrayed Megatron was when Orion stepped up to claim the title of Prime at the council meeting. About how angry he was and justifiably upset. About how Optimus was an idiot and saw it as jealousy, etc.

But we don't talk about how humiliating it must have been for him. He brought Orion with him, called him not only friend, but brother; taught him about functionalism and believed he'd done it so well Orion was a safe person to bring, even though his other friends didn't really agree or like him.

Then the council meeting happens and Orion doesn't stand up for him. He insults the people hosting it when they annoyed him but didn't point out their hypocrisy when it started to benefit him, the newly named Optimus. He ignores when Megatron tells him hes falling into a trap. He betrays Megatron and the people supporting Orion turn their weapons on Megatron to cast him out.

So the person Megatron brings as his best friend, someone he vouched for morally and intellectually, acts like none of those things.

That's embarrassing.

He's mortified because he's actively shown Orion around his home, his friends, and now all of them know Megatron was wrong to trust him, while Orion suffers nothing because he never took Megatron around to meet anyone he knew. Megatron is just some guy to Orion and he's just learned this now in public. So now Megatron has to feel like an idiot, because he's been vouching for Orion behind the scenes for months if not years or decades, and Orion has just been, what, shrugging everything off, not caring at all about his impact on others.

Now if he ever sticks up for someone everyone's going to question his judgement because of Orion Pax. Even if it blows over he's never living it down.

He's so humiliated he doesn't even think of shooting Orion. He's pissed but he wants to just go and hide more. So he just leaves. That's wild.

He later concocted the idea Orion was intentionally a spy and traitor to soothe his ego, but drops it again once he's had enough time to recover. Oh. And Orion insults the name Decepticon while he's at it.

Poor megs.

[sigil-stone]

How would you rewrite TES vore?

considering vore is an important part of malacath's creation, and i do love orc dad, i'm not sure if i would (/j)

(pssst i'm going to be talking mainly about skyrim, because i personally think it's the TES game with the largest amount of things that were almost really cool. i may go through and add points for the other games i've played too, but we'll see)

anyways. let'sa go

the Reach and Markarth. i would have the Reachfolk's kingdom be intact and comparatively strong, especially in relation to the Stormcloaks and Empire in Skyrim.

the Stormcloaks. take away the bit about Ulfric being a Thalmor asset, or bring actual attention to it. let there be consequences for Ulfric's actions, especially in the Reach.

the Dunmer. ESPECIALLY in skyrim. put more emphasis on the remnants of their culture, show clearly how it's changed. dive more into their relationship with the Nords, especially in Windhelm.

Keening. it was fan service. i acknowledge that. that being said, give us more! go more into depth with it! how many folks who haven't played morrowind got keening and was like, "what the fuck is this"? (<- me, at age 9. i thought it was just a pretty dagger). and i get it, it's a fun little thing for returning fans, but it's KEENING! arguably one of the most powerful artifacts ever created by mortal hands!!! in Morrowind you had to meet a god to even get it, but Arniel and the dovahkiin can just, use it?

the whole experiment with Arniel could've been expanded into its own story with different outcomes. it's incredibly jarring to go from generic fetch quests with an arcane slant to watching Arniel be horrifically torn asunder and bound to your soul. and then the story just! moves on! like it never happened! no one comments on the fact that you have a profane tool strapped to your waist! no one mentions arniel disappearing!! give the narrative consequences!!! let player choice effect the world in a meaningful way!!!

also, the Argonians. give them more lore, goddammit. explore the difference between those born drinking the hist sap and those who weren't. let those differences be of consequence to the player if they're Argonian.

the Thalmor as a whole. don't be scared, todd. let them be evil. i don't mean the caricature of evil we see in Skyrim - largely ineffective, too incompetent to really be seen as a threat. if anything, the Thalmor in Skyrim are just kinda... annoying. we see glimpses of their full potential - we hear about Malborn's family, the Night of Green Fire in Sentinel, we see the inside of a Thalmor prison... but these little snippets are overshadowed by how in-the-face the game is about how evil they are.

i'd portray the Thalmor, and the Dominion, as initially sympathetic. let them be right about some things. have the player learn about Talos - really learn about Talos - from a Thalmor source, and let the explanation go beyond "we don't like him because he's a man and we're racist."

it's not so much as changing the lore behind the Thalmor, more just the portrayal of them. maybe have the Thalmor as a joinable faction, let the player run around getting well-paid for doing things like keeping an eye on a certain person on a certain night, or delivering an artifact to another official. let the cracks begin to form in the foundations as you prove yourself to the Thalmor, and without really realizing, move on from fetch-quests to information-gathering.

let the Thalmor KNOW about the player. let the Thalmor use the player. let the Thalmor know that the player is a capital-p Prisoner. give them knowledge that no one else has instead of a bunch of snobby elves who just loiter around and talk about their Eviiiiil Plaaaansss to anyone kind enough to stop by and listen to them.

(i have my issues with his work, but AllinAll on youtube has my personal favorite portrayal of the Thalmor. they're sinister and powerful and terrifying and everything they SHOULD have been).

there's some more i could talk about but this post is already ungodly long, so. ya.