#I had fun building this :3

[windfighter]

A new game has opened in the gaming district!

It's very inspired by Decked Out from the Hermitcraft Server:

[pygmypouter]

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

[mystery-pixels]

last block party of the summer

[trueloveistreacherous]

MARELLA'S 12TH TUMBLR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION special gifset for @raviposting 🎁

B stands for... (in/sp)

[heatherchasesyou]

GUESS WHO MADE A COVER ART FOR A BREAKCORE TRACK DEDICATED TO VINCENT ON SOUNDCLOUD AWOOOOOOOOOOO

THERE IT GOOEEES

[puppyeared]

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

[herosplatling-replica]

another commission for @dragonhealer406, this time of Dedf1sh in their Side Order outfit!! many thanks as usual for your support!! 🧡ヾ(≧▽≦*)o

[tenowls]

tokyo / teshima

photostudies from pics i took in japan last year!!

[moonkhao]

hi.

[class-1b-bull]

1-B has been invited to a big, fancy, terribly stuffy black tie event. How do each of them (accidentally or otherwise) inevitably cause the night to spiral into madness?

Not proofread we die like men

Awase - he got bored so he started welding random things together to see if anyone noticed. Like welding silverware to the table or whatever, anyways it backfired pretty quickly and the event ended with multiple broken cups and glasses

Sen - he was messing with a table cloth and one of his friends scared him behind which made him activate his quirk on reflex and he sent everything that was on that table flying. He yelled at his friend for a good hour and a half after that

Kamakiri - he surprisingly behaved pretty well but there was one point where a string on the inside of his suit was bothering him so he trued to use his quirk to cut it off and he accidentally ended up with a massive cut on his sleeve

Kuroiro - nothing crazy happened with him since he mostly stayed in the corner on his own the whole night but he did accidentally scare one of his classmates pretty badly so I guess hes a partner in crime(?) Aka refer to sens lmao.

Kendo - she was pretty worried about her classmates since she had a bad feeling this would turn sour pretty quickly with all of them present so she was running around to keep tabs on them and at one point she accidentally hit a table leg hard enough to make it fold in on itself causing all the food and decorations on the table to hit the floor right at her feet.

Kodai - what she did dint really effect anyone except herself and her classmates but still... the venue the event was in was massive and kodai got lost in the unfamiliar place. Her classmates and herself were calling eachother for an hour or more trying to find her.

Komori - she stayed up too late the night before making her outfit since she prefers her clothes hand made but because of that she ended up falling asleep

Shiozaki - she did everything she could to keep her hair tied up but each of her vines are really thick so of course her multiple hair ties snapped and her hair started getting tangled into every piece of jewelry that got too close.

Shishida - hes fine for the most part but it gets pretty hot with all his fur and his suit so like most animals (and like others with animal based quirks) he started shedding everywhere. It was horrible and he was a bit embarrassed ngl (its even worse if the event has food.

Shoda - he saw his classmate Tsubaraba doing something incredibly stupid and since no one else was nearby he tried to stop him which somehow made things worse. He still dosent understand why Tsubaraba thought a cheese fountain would be a good idea in the first place...

Pony - the event had a nice silk bit it the doorway that you had to walk through and it got caught on her horns and ripped into pieces she was picking up little pieces of fabric for a good minute after that and multiple people tripped over her.

Tsubaraba - he was simply turning a fancy chocolate fountain into a fancy cheese fountain. He was obviously going to empty the liquid chocolate out first but shoda grabbed his arm to stop him which caused the container of liquid cheese to mix with the chocolate and clogged the fountain causing chocolate and cheese to fling everywhere.

Tetsutetsu - he heard some woman scream 'rat!' Rlly loud (refer to tokages) so he ended up pushing through a big croud and tackling a few people to try and get through to help her out. It was a lot of people running from the 'rat' vs tetsu and he was bot going down without a fight lmao

Tokage - her and one of her classmates decided to see how many parts she could split herself into before the other guests started to notice the random floating pieces. It was fine at first but there was a big panic when a woman with sharp heels stepped on one of her parts quite hard before screaming thinking it was a rat.

Manga - he was talking about his quirk to some other guests that were there and in the blink of an eye it all went to chaos and in his supprise, his little 'fwoom' bubble of steam he had made while showing off practically exploded covering half the room.

Honenuki - the only thing he did was make the mistake of going to the bathroom. He left and not even a minute later there was chocolate and cheese everywhere, everyone was screaming and running (if not glued to the floor), the decor and furniture was destroyed and a glass chandelier was on the verge of falling. Everything quickly resolved when honenuki came back lmao.

Bondo - he was in the middle of fixing a table kendo accidentally broke with his quirk when someone bumped into him causing a decent amount of glue to get all over the floor which made people get stuck to the ground.

Monoma - before the night got too chaotic he was going around starting little bits of drama just for fun. Hes a theater kid at heart after all. It was relatively tame but he was the reason a few fights broke out.

Reiko - once the main wave of chaos started she used her quirk to float her classmates safely above the crowd but she flew a bit too high with her quirk and she slammed a classmate into a massive glass chandelier in her panic while trying to save her friends. Luckily the chandelier didnt break but it definitely hurt whoever she threw into it...

Rin - it was pretty cold in the venue and when he goes into hibernation its pretty hard to wake him up. He was simply trying to warm up in the corner by taking a little nap, sleeping through the chaos. He only woke up when he was slammed into a glass chandelier full force.

Gif anime - dungeon meshi

[miodiodavinci]

the latest in a long line of D&D characters ! ! ! please meet outis, my archaic warforged paladin ! ! ! they were originally built to find patterns in chaos and help guide travelers through hazardous places where rules are few and far between, though a recent expedition gone awry seems to have put an end to its career

even still, they're still on a journey to some place far, far away, though no one seems to know where—least of all outis w

doodle of how we usually end up drawing them in the ms paint session notes below the cut w

[helpmyinterestsareverywhere]

Ah wow, I just finished building the Dragons Rising Destiny Bounty LEGO set - it looks SO GOOD and show accurate, I can't wait to see it more in the sho-

....

[angeart]

I mean, its a lil bit dramatic xD But the one you guys say is loud and may have been insensitive before being the one to step up? I like (which also yes I wanna ask about that too its me I wanna know all the things)

-🎀

it's overdramatic, hehe.

and. gosh, kane. the way kane grows on them and, honestly, the way they grown on kane, is so precious to me. and it was a very rocky start, mind you! [2,8k ramble ahead <3]

as i said before, they actually first met months before the vex arc. back then, the vex party (kane included) were slightly interested in scar, and considered grian as a liability to him. that was the eclipse day, especially dangerous, and they were sure an avian like that was bound to not survive, anyway.

scar is invited to go with them. he refuses.

imagine their surprise when they run into them later, and grian's still there. it's still the two of them against the world.

the vex party is different now—it's not the best warriors coming out into chaos and mayhem to get their claws bloody. they're less on guard, more curious and open. impressed, honestly, that these two are still alive.

they invite them again, this time the avian included, and... they say yes. (mostly lured by a prospect of sleeping in an actual bed.)

there's no real accommodation extended to grian as an avian. (except nadia does put in the effort to make the place safer for the birb guest.) (safe from what, you ask? hehe. dw about that <3)

everything continues feeling a bit precarious and uneasy, because even though the vexes have no interest in grian's wings—they themselves are hunted and actively fight hunters, after all; they have no dealings with them—it's still very uncomfortable, the way they are looking at him. the way their attention inevitably snags at him, his presence sticking out even with his wings tucked underneath his cloak.

honestly, for a while, the vexes really don't consider grian as a part of the group at all. he's just scar's plus-one, almost like a possession. he seems to belong to scar, in some way.

they'd still fight to protect him, if it came to that, but with a convoluted logic behind it, you know? they protect their own, and scar is one of them—a vex. and grian comes attached to that. that's all there is to it, in their eyes.

the vexes are loud and brash and violent. taunting and open. they're not used to someone who isn't like that. someone who might need more space, different boundaries. someone who doesn't have magic and claws and can't heal—someone light and small, with bones that might break far too easily, and with bright but dishevelled feathers so fearfully and insistently tucked out of sight.

they have no idea how to treat this avian, and they're stubborn enough to not even really consider it at first. he is living with them, surely he can be the one to adjust?

---

this all sort of culminates into the bird incident.

consider this: one day the vex hunting party returns with a rare specialty: a bird.

grian hasn't really seen a living bird yet in this world. and now won't be an exception. the vex saw the bird and promptly shot it, looking forward to the meal. they come back to the village all boisterous and grinning, flaunting the feathery carcass.

it's not like they outright present it to the avian—even they know that'd be wrong—but they're overjoyed and loud about it, wanting to show the others, not really being careful.

grian's ears ring. he's overcome with nausea, feeling dizzy, trying not to have a panic attack right then and there,.helplessly trying not to associate their howls and cheers with the elated, cruel cheers of hybrid hunters.

scar, of course, is pissed on grian's behalf.

but the others don't understand. it's not something they'd ever consider, a wholly new concept that refuses to sink fast enough to deescalate. birds are a rare delicacy! they're yummy and this is a triumph! this is meant to be good, c'mon! it has nothing to do with the avian!

kane says something along the lines of, “come on scar it’s food we don’t need to coddle him—“ 

and Scar gets even more pissed off. “are you even thinking?? try to put yourself in our shoes—“ 

this all leads to a fight breaking out between kane and scar. a vex fight, using vex forms! which is how they solve arguments here in the commune.

vex forms use vex magic that is rooted in emotions, and because of that, there's an unspoken understanding that whoever feels stronger about the issue at hand is bound to win. it's a convoluted way to say that the winner is the one with stronger conviction.

but kane has a much better control over his vex form than scar does, instantly putting scar at a disadvantage, no matter how fiercely he wants to have an upper hand here, to show them that they are wrong.

they fight with claws and teeth, feral and angry, and— this is normal! it's normal for vexes! their vex forms run on magic that will patch them up, and neither of them is really trying to genuinely harm the other.

still, it's scary to witness. blood is drawn. it's hard to tell whose it is. it's all a bit of a blur.

grian's mind is reeling. he moves on pure instinct, trying to get into the fray, to help scar.

nico takes place by grian's side and holds him back. "just let them fight it out." he's very calm about it. he knows his mate, he speaks with his claws sometimes, that's just how things are. "they'll be fine."

it would be placating, maybe, if grian's mind wasn't so violently spinning. maybe if he was used to people who aren't scar leaning close into his orbit. maybe if he was used to hands other than scar's touching him.

right now, grian is already haywire on unease, and he's being grabbed and—

he lets out a distressed chirp.

this effectively whips scar's attention away from his fight with kane, instantly searching for threats to his mate, and lunging at nico instead.

which in turn triggers kane's protectiveness of his mate, and he pounces on scar with much more force. the "petty" argument shifts into something worse, more fierce. things get a bit out of hand.

nico releases grian, realising they need to break this up and pull the two idiots (/aff) apart before they really hurt themselves.

grian's strategy is still to put himself between kane and scar, so that he can't hurt scar more. so he leaps in, wings flapping, desperate to shield his mate.

it's what he'd do with hunters, but kane is a clawed, angry vex.

nico is the only levelheaded one to see where this is going. the only one to instantly understand the consequences of this. because grian isn't a vex. he's an avian, made of brittle, hollow bones, and without a lick of magic in his body that'd help him heal.

grian gets so close to getting horribly injured. it's only nico that stops kane short of hurting him. snapping him out of it. scolding grian, too, like what were you thinking??

but this is a breaking point, a line drawn, where the vexes see that this bird is as fiercely protective as scar is. that he isn't a coward. that he is willing to put himself on the line. and, it gets grian some respect! a fearless little bird!

while nico checks grian over, still scolding him but no longer encroaching on his space or trying to touch him, kane walks over to scar, who is on the ground, mildly concussed but otherwise okay. kane extends his hand to pull him up.

because it's over now! they fought it out. (scar lost.) there's a mutual respect in the aftermath of vex fights, no sour feelings—there's nothing shameful in fighting for what you believe in, after all. and even if there's only one winner, it levels the ground they're standing on, inching towards mutual understanding. or something.

so he helps scar up, throwing out a remark as he grins: "your bird is crazy, scar. i like him."

scar is still dizzy when he responds with a dazed "i like him too."

in the aftermath of this, vexes start to pay more attention to grian. more openly letting him in, interacting with him (instead of just addressing scar), trying to include him.

tentatively, grian lets it happen. it still has its bumps, many mishaps. but none out of malice, you know?

like that time kane talked to grian about mating marks. he basically acknowledges that he doesn't get it, knowing nothing about the avian side of things, not realising what scar's earring means. after all, vexes mark their loved ones with teeth! that's the language kane understands!

it's a whole big deal, really stressing grian out, even if it wasn't meant maliciously. but it's just one more thing showing that these vexes don't really understand anything about avians—their instincts, communication, or ways of showing affection. they never really had to think about it!

so misunderstandings are bound to happen. but it's not all bad! it stops being so awfully rocky over time, with less steps on buried landmines. it tides into a collection of nicer moments as the vexes and grian learn to navigate each other and start being more accepting about their differences, learning about that gap between them. even start to try and bridge it!

the vexes celebrate often, using every little excuse to make a party out of their triumphs. they like being rowdy and dancing and just living, and they are eager to drag scar and grian into it.

it's these events that let scar and grian loosen a little bit more. they're silly with each other and unabashedly in love and, honestly, they're beginning to grow on everyone.

having scar there as a sort of middle ground between grian and the others really helps, too. because they get to see how scar interacts with grian, and how grian interacts with him. they start learning, quietly, just from that, about some subtleties. they also get to see a more open side of grian, one that's reserved for scar, allowing them a glimpse to who grian could be, if only he trusted his surroundings enough.

and maybe they find that they do want that trust.

they do want him to know he can rely on them. they'd fight for him, you know? he is now one of them, without question, they've taken him in and he's fought his way into being more than just "scar's bird". he can be fearless, ready to fight when it counts, a quality vexes hold in high regard! and they now know that there's definitely more to him than he's letting them see, and... they want to provide the space for him to unravel that. to show all of his potential. to allow him to live like they do. like the world isn't constantly about to end.

during this time, scar is often taken along on vex patrols, learning about vexes and being encouraged to develop more as a fighter (something he isn't really all that much into). this means he spends a lot of time with nico and kane, as they're two prominent warriors in this village, and they end up chatting a lot.

this then tips into them hanging out or approaching scar even outside of these patrols more often, feeling closer to him now—and that means approaching grian, too, since him and scar come as a package deal. and eventually it stops feeling like grian is the extra here. he has his own value, his own presence, and they recognise it! they want to learn more about him too!

they get a chance to see a side of grian that they don't expect, when he builds a barn for the old goat that lives in the village. they don't even realise how big of a deal that is—they're just stunned by his skills. because building with more than just bland function in mind is not something they can fathom. they wouldn't know where to start!

so here is where kane has to confront that fighting skills aren't everything. that other things can matter and be wonderful, too. and, actually, he'd really like it if grian kept building more. (imagine scar beaming with pride over his mate in the background of this all, yes.)

sometimes when scar and kane spar, grian climbs up a nearby roof (helps him settle, to be high up). sometimes, nico follows, sitting next to him and keeping him company.

throughout this all, scar and grian keep some layers of distance around them still. they don't go to sleepovers. they don't talk about things that hurt deep behind their ribs. they don't talk about where they're from or what they've been through. they keep their heartache to themselves, all the little moments that make their souls splinter and fray; whenever things catch them off guard and things become Too Much Too Fast, they just leave instead of talking it out and explaining. drawing a thick line behind them and that trigger, retreating back to their own space to put themselves back together in privacy.

(and it's great because they do have their own space!)

kane has a lot of that, you know, brashness about him. lots of thoughtless words. he's not great at being subtle or having tact. but he never means things badly. he never wants to upset them. and that's something he now finds himself wrangling with. asking nico what he's doing wrong whenever scar and grian retreat. (because through that rough exterior, he's a big softie deep down when it's about people he cares about.) (oh yeah turns out he profoundly cares about grian and scar. huh. when did that happen.)

more often than not, it's not even his fault. it takes very little to touch scar and grian's haphazard piles of trauma.

and, they know! they know he doesn't mean to set things off. they know they're not giving him enough to understand what to steer clear of (they themselves don't know, half the time, to be fair).

just like how kane is learning about scar and grian, they're also learning about him. about how he hides his emotions behind words, how he gets easily embarrassed and resorts to pride and teasing, how he sometimes says things in a different way than he means them.

and step by step, they're inching closer to common grounds. they start to rely on each other's presence.

and then The Night For Living comes around.

of course they're gonna go spend the celebrations and games together! they're so much closer now than they were at the start, fond of each other in ways that'd make kane's face burn red and stutter if he was forced to admit it.

they're friends.

and maybe they could be more than that.

cue found family trope

a lot of things happen during the Big Special Vex Celebration Night. the night when it's safe to be, unabashedly and fully. it's wilder than normal celebrations, longer, an event everyone looks forward to. including special homebrew alcohol and a huge bonfire! vex howling and laughter and banter everywhere. roughhousing and sparring and competing.

grian and scar fall under it's rough charm, too. with kane and nico by their side, making their way through the event, drinking and talking and laughing. playing games with each other, and in general having a good time.

this was said before, but this is the night when grian gets mr beak, a silly chicken plushie. and it's kane who gives the toy over—kane, who before fought scar on insensitivity where birds were concerned. now, he is treading carefully, looking to scar for approval and guidance. not wanting to mess up.

equipped with mr beak, they move on, seeking out the next thrill. they decide to do the obstacle course, this time just kane and grian, 1v1! no flying allowed, but everything else (including gliding) is ok.

this is where something in grian sparks.

maybe it's the alcohol, the hints of safety and freedom, or them playing games, but— he gets really into it. he gets to utilise his wings as he navigates the obstacles, and he's laughing, running on a high, and... the finish line is a pile of blankets.

a nest-like thing.

i do have 6,7k words long self-indulgent RP tucked away of just this scene, if you'd like. but the gist of it is that kane is once again caught off guard, because— well, he's never seen grian like this. so bright and cheerful, wings in use.

and grian invites him into it. beckons him closer as him and scar giggle giddily about his victory in a pile of blankets.

the prize, this time, is a special cherry flavoured liquor bottle... that has a pink ribbon attached to it.

maybe grian isn't thinking things through. maybe he's tipsy and running on bird instincts. maybe this is impulsive.

but it feels right.

so he grabs kane's hand. and he ties that ribbon around kane's wrist.

and even if kane doesn't understand the severity of it, he knows it means something big. it's a gift. and it's not a bite, but in kane's heart, that suddenly doesn't seem to matter.

(and yet scar knows. he knows what grian is saying here.)

(he's saying: flock.)

there's more that happens on this night. scar and nico also end up getting ribbons, several mental spirals and breakdowns and games later (pff), and now they're a Ribbon Gang!! (family. flock.) ...but i'm going to leave this at that, as this was meant to be about grian and kane and... i just really wanted to tell you about the ribbon thing :3

as a bonus, have this discord screenshot that i find very funny in the most endearing way:

[ohhiplumbob]

Babies first time trying to build and decorate a house in TS3 please don’t cyber bully me.

[sheltershock]

I just unlocked Eight’s palette yesterday and the additional challenge placed on this run specifically is really interesting from a story perspective with what was set up earlier in the DLC. So I ended up typing up this little essay on the intersection of gameplay and themes in Side Order. Slight spoilers under the cut!

Eight so far hasn’t gotten much attention at all in Side Order. Which makes sense for a silent protagonist, but I couldn’t help but see the narrative parallels with the gameplay associated with Eight’s run. Side Order is about confronting the fear of change and the fantasy of living in a bland, but safely controlled world of order. Marina gets a lot of guilt from the Memverse getting all messed up with her constant apologies, but maybe her desires and the ones of engineers aren’t the only key players in the development of Order and its takeover. 

It’s revealed in the Dev Diaries that Eight was always intended to be the first subject in the Memverse project. Which inherently makes her special since the tower’s creation at some point took her specifically in consideration. But then when everything goes wrong, Eight is trapped there. Even when you beat the DLC and can leave the Memverse, it’s always your player character that transitions between spaces, not Eight. And sure, (a piece of) her soul is trapped in the program, but so are Deep Cut’s, and all of them are able to give the pre- and post-run news report about the situation in Inkopolis. So why is Eight unable to leave the space? 

What I was surprised to find was that Eight’s palette wasn’t actually inside locker 36 like the game implied, but it was revealed that her palette was the lockers themselves. Like, all 36 of them. And even Marina calls out that it's “kinda weird.” Afterwards, the extra challenge of the final run reveals itself, a run with minimal hacks. The more hacks you have enabled, the less chip slots you are afforded. In order to have access to all thirty-six chip slots in Eight’s palette, you need to have zero hacks enabled, which resets you back to where you were in the beginning of the DLC after the tutorial run. 

The thing that got me thinking about how interesting this was from a narrative perspective is that this challenge is really hard. It’s very difficult, in fact, at time of writing I have not beaten it and I’ve played for multi-hour sessions. But this difficulty switch actually reflects the themes of the DLC, and possibly how Eight feels and what she’s experiencing. 

At the beginning of the game, the tower is chaotic and scary. You don’t know about the floors or their properties and the chips you can get are random. You don’t know what awaits you on that next floor and that could make you entirely start again from the beginning. And that’s exactly the fear that Octolings have about going to the surface. They are completely starting over at a game that they don’t know the rules of, or if there are any rules at all. 

But then there’s the introduction of the hacks. The hacks are a valuable and life changing modification to the challenges and randomness ahead. You want more lives? Sure! Take less damage? Go for it! More upgrades for the drone? The more the merrier! Are the prices at the vending machine more expensive? Here, have a discount! Oh, you don’t like challenges or the chips available for this floor? Just hand over some coins and we’ll spin the roulette again! You can even reveal the bosses ahead of time and reroll what you get if you don’t want a certain one. Runs get easier, and more forgiving. And as you get further, the tower gets safer, more secure. More controllable. If you know what you’re doing, you can even manipulate the entire program to get solely what you want. 

Except your memories. 

As a player, you have to fully clear the tower eleven times before even unlocking Eight’s palette. Which matters because once you’ve cleared it eleven times with different loadouts, you become pretty familiar with the mechanics and might even have reliable plans for specific floors. And that’s without the hacks. The tower becomes routine at that point, and with all the hacks, it’s likely you plan trips to specific vending machines on certain floors. I remember having specific membux amounts I wanted to reach and trying to save up to spend on floor fifteen. You watch your in-game timer on levels start to decrease and feel a bit of pride when the happy clear music plays and you see the little “updated!” next to your time. You know your way around the tower now. 

And Eight gets that experience too. Eight also experiences the repetition of each successful and unsuccessful run. The tower becomes familiar to her too, and maybe, comfortable. Eight gets to climb the tower, again and again, with her friends in an environment that she understands and can reasonably control. Pearl even has a line sometimes when you start a floor that echoes this sentiment, “let's hurry this up so we can go hang out with Marina and Acht some more!” And isn’t that the perfect fantasy for a freed Octoling? An environment of freedom, with a little spontaneity for spice? To be able to hang out with people you like, and aid each other in battle where the greatest punishment is that you get to enjoy this all again? Nobody controls you or tells you what to do. You call the shots. You pick the floors. You snap your fingers and decide how hard you want this to be. 

And that’s exactly what Order stands for, an unchanging, safe world. Born from the wishes of the Memverse’s engineers, ironically standing in the way of the point of the program. At least, that’s what Smollusk said. But this is a world that Marina designed, with Eight as an intended subject. Not the only, but an intended subject. The person who was supposed to be saved first, ended up to be the last you find to save. Interesting. But maybe Order came to life specifically from Eight’s desire.

Eight is special. When you reach the top of the tower and face Smollusk with Eight’s palette, it recognizes it. “At wast[last]!,” it says, “you finawwy bwought me THAT Palette!” And it even calls Eight out by name. Smollusk doesn’t have dialogue calling out or even recognizing specific palettes you’re using, but it recognizes Eight’s. And the thing separating the palettes from the player is the lockers, a piece of Eight’s soul itself, may represent Eight’s desire to stay. The reason to keep playing is because everyone’s palettes are locked in a piece of Eight’s soul, tucked away. Because if the lockers weren’t there, then it would be significantly easier to reconfigure everyone’s palette. And easier means faster. 

All of this would make the necessity of minimal hacks symbolic. Eight’s palette is resistant to Marina’s hacking, which serves two purposes for the narrative. One, it makes the game harder, which makes it harder to walk away from. If it takes one hundred attempts to clear that tower with minimal hacks, then that’s one hundred more repetitions experienced before it all has to eventually end. It’s another form of the lockers, extending the time of the evitable. 

Its second symbolic purpose is that Eight has to let go of her grasp of control and embrace chaos to reach the top and reconfigure her palette. And it’s hard. Both mechanically like previously mentioned, but it also makes you feel Eight’s frustration with embracing chaos. Disabling my extra shields and damaged swim speed and extra lives, going back to the hardest, least controlled phase of the game feels bad. Embracing that chaos is difficult. Just like how it would be for Eight. 

But it is possible, it’s just a slow climb up. Floor by floor. Facing nearly impossible challenge after nearly impossible challenge. And while you have the option to skip, it’ll cost you. But prices are much higher, the hits you can take are much more expensive, and you move much slower. But you still have your friends. Even if they can’t help you hack your way to the top, or drop five consecutive bombs, they’re still there for you. Keeping the elevator warm, and helping you resist gravity. Maybe they can’t exactly be much of help going up, but Eight’s friends can help her from falling back down. A team of four. How fitting. 

Now, I haven’t cleared Eight’s palette yet, I’ve already mentioned this. And the 2/3 secret Dev Diaries I got doesn’t spark confidence about learning more about Eight, unfortunately. And I’ve accidentally been slightly spoiled that she doesn’t get her memories back which is disappointing. I wish there was more specific emphasis placed on the characters in the DLC, to be honest. But as I was playing I noticed this little ludonarrative happening with Eight’s run that I thought was super interesting and probably the closest I’m going to get for Eight development for the DLC. I haven’t played the first or second game(I didn’t have the hardware at the time), I just watched them and I heard that the memcakes in Octo Expansion actually reveal Eight’s personality so I’m going to have to read those, because I haven’t. But I like Eight, and I liked this neat little unspoken story going on in Side Order, like the agent herself. 

[edmunderson]

womp womp womp

for @gloomiegalaxie 's femboy friday!

poses made by @nsves @acha-sims and @helgatisha (at least i'm fairly certain the ones i used were made by these three. if not/i missed any please let me know!)