#Integration Challenges

[alwaysbewoke]

there was NOTHING (ABSOLUTELY NOTHING) kamala could have done to win this election. NOTHING.

[mollysunder]

Warwick's storyline for me is the equivalent of that John Mulaney Horse Hospital joke.

There's so much strife and geopolitical upheval... and there's a werewolf running around in Zaun?!?!?!

Ambessa could be making a funeral speech for the dead Councilors and there's howling in the background. Everyone pauses, but Ambessa has to continue no matter how strange that was.

Instead of just gang graffiti littering the walls, there's claw marks pointedly tearing at chembarons' symbols, especially Silco's.

Everyone's just alert cuz there's a werewolf in Zaun and no one (except Singed) is sure how he got there or what he's doing. There's a million and one things going on at the moment... but there's a werewolf in Zaun???????

[carlyraejepsans]

Do you enjoy underfell? I thought you disliked aus /genq

i don't dislike the concept of AUs itself, I'm just not a fan of like... the subculture that spawned around them in the UT fandom specifically and how it eventually took over almost all canon content (especially when it limits itself to the bros)

i like aus visually! i am an artist at heart after all. it's just that, if I'm going to care about them as stories and not just fun design ideas, my bar is uhh almost impossibly high the further you move from canon lolol.

[nygmamale]

consider…if the training arc was in the 2020s and they just used duolingo to learn like 20 different languages

[thegrandmarsh]

literally im not even close to kidding one of the best things you can do if you encounter a baby bigot in the wild (a child or young adult who had clearly been indoctrinated by hatred and fear (specifically evangelical flavor)), is to be kind to them. there is nothing that cracks that worldview faster. if you listen to people who escaped that life and ask them how they got out, a lot of times it’s because when they were a teenager or young adult, they met people from outside their immediate community and realized they were just regular human beings.

like don’t put yourself in danger or anything but really truly really it does make a long term difference a lot of the time if you’re nice. it’s just that you don’t get to see it because the unlearning takes years.

[blujayonthewing]

gnome culture emphasizes playfulness and a good sense of humor partly because gnomes are physically small and vulnerable and tend to settle in wild places with a lot of hazards and if they had to take every completely real threat to their safety seriously while also Taking Them Seriously they'd just be paralyzed by fear

[angeltannis]

I hope decades from now they teach Overwatch as a master class on how capitalism and the pursuit of limitless growth at all costs will inevitably break down and consume even the most creative and globally-beloved ideas until they’re bled dry of every dollar they could extract from fans

[spotaus]

Coda and Ichor! (Catacombtale Style!)

These two don't have a *ton* of interaction in the Main story, but since Ichor and Balance are the only two characters I've fully designed, Coda gets stuck next to him, haha!

BONUS art jumpscare:

These two actually exist in another project I'm working on too called Codex, which is basically just removing the UT aspects of Catacombtale and doing a lot more worldbuilding and character design!

Coda is older in Codex and is marked by an old God (which should get him jailed or killed, as it means for everyone else) but he hides it for years and years before he finally flees the complex he's living in to go confront the gods and stop their destructive path. Meanwhile Ichor is much the same, only he's much more ready and willing to help Coda without much prompting. Here he's also sort of a Koi Fish! (His brother is a Betta Fish)

[thirdpartied]

TASHI GET BEHIND ME

[ohitslen]

Watching Stampede with my family made me realize how genuinely insane I have turned thanks to it

Like wow the actual physical EFFORT it took me to not randomly start explaining the composition of a scene, the color choice, the framing, the voice directing and the choreographies of certain scenes, as well as some of the lore behind it I should not explain because spoilers.

No, sorry. I lied on my résumé . I can’t like anything a normal amount. I’ve liked this for less than 4 months and I’m very deep into the trenches. And it will unfortunately become everyone else’s problem as well, because this one will stick around for a long time.

[bam-monsterhospital]

y'know, i don't actually have a problem with orym lashing out, shutting down a loved one's trauma, showcasing his own faults all out in the open. it's a really interesting hook for further character exploration/interaction/development...

however, i'm worried we're going to have another percy situation, where the consequences for a character's actions never manifest.

The recent episodes (episodes ever since Dorian's return) have been a constant pattern of "journey from point A to surprise battle B" with scant seconds in between, so there's just been no time for proper thorough character exploration.

Add into the mix this particular character exploration requires time, focus, and attention paid to a character who is easily forgotten/unacknowledged by the party (psst, i'm talking about Dorian here), well... i'm not holding out hope.

Not to mention, Dorian Storm --the one who would have to be heavily involved in this potential development-- is a deeply non-confrontational character with a history of social acquiescence, dodging, hiding his feelings. Not exactly the kind to supply the staunch, unwavering challenge orym's character needs for this to go anywhere/have any sort of consequence. And i don't have any faith in the rest of the bells hells providing that role based on the kinds of characters they currently are: ashton's too flip-floppy unfocused, chetney's inconsistent, imogen agrees with orym, laudna goes where imogen does (but maybe her new power-reorganizing will give her the confidence required for such a role? hard to say), and braius is new/supposedly evil and thus can easily be written off as not knowing what he's talking about if he steps into that challenger role.

(also also, no one tends to challenge orym, period, and stand their ground. AND, again, it'd require the party to pay attention to a character they don't while standing ground against a character they think of as ultimately knowing what they're talking about.)

Honestly, i think the entire exchange will just be dropped and unacknowledged, eventually forgotten about.

[ampleappleamble]

BONUS POINTS: tell us which of these challenges you've successfully completed! i've done ondra, skaen, eothas, wael, and i personally believe that if you're not playing with hylea's challenge on, you're not really playing the full version of the game.

[wakinguponsaturday]

I'm gonna be a hater for a moment and say that I wish they hadn't made it so a "good" PC could recruit Minthara by knocking her out. Having recruited her on my "evil" playthrough, she's one of the best written characters in the game (when her dialogues actually trigger) and her VA's performance is fantastic. I'm not alone in having said the evil route is pretty bare bones relative to the good choices, and Minthara was one of the few things it had going for it. And I do want more people to experience that!

But you can do that by just. Thinking up an evil PC. Dark Urge is already pretty well set up for this if you're not great at conceptualizing original characters. The evil route is again already gutted, and this just makes the gameplay even more unbalanced. Your actions should have consequences - hence why raiding the grove has Karlach and Wyll leave your party. That's great, I love that moral fortitude on their part! And similarly, siding against Minthara locked you out of having her as a companion.

I know fully that this does not matter, and that other people are approaching the game differently. Hell, I'll probably knock Minthara out to recruit her on my next playthrough because I've adored having her around. (Though how I'll manage to gain approval with her as a goody two shoes, I don't know. The worldviews are pretty diametrically opposed.) But I think that it was a reasonable and well thought out decision to keep Minthara locked to that one choice at the onset. It didn't need to change. And playing as a morally grey or evil character, in a game whose moral greyness was already sparse, suffers more for it.

[ask-hfjone-airy]

well the challenges will be over soon anyways, but maybe you could reuse some old assets, like the pencils (if you have any more left), or use the random assortment of things people keep giving you for some reason

Oh, I'll consider those.. Thanks.

[laurelwinchester]

listen i am over the moon that dc has finally decided to bring sin back into black canary's story. i love that. i love sin lance. i love dinah lance. i love their relationship. what i do not love is the fact that they have retconned what sin really is to dinah. sin is not and has never been her sister. she is her daughter. there is a difference and that difference matters. to take that away from both characters is ridiculous, pointless, and honestly deeply offensive. and yes i will die on this hill.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Me: I will never not adore all the creative decisions CloversWorks put into the opening. Not only does the fuse line in the foreground serve as the visual representation of the spark mentioned in the lyrics that foreshadows one of the most climactic moments of the series people still cite fondly as a result of the incredible emotional and narrative payoff it culminates in—the destruction of Grace Field Plant No.3 in a sea of flames—built up by the three earlier background chants of “fire!” in English, but also as a figurative red string of fate between the three children destiny threw together whose personalities, strengths, and weaknesses all play off each other beautifully and are all integral to facilitating the escape that will forever alter the fate of two worlds after a millennia of suffering, adamantly refusing the outcomes the system had determined for them, and I appreciate the series allowing the audience to view this entirely through a platonic lens.

Also me with my REN-addled brain: red string of fate,,,soulmates,,,🖤🧡🤍 |33