#So to explain the concept: at the end of the game before the final battle Baldr gives a speech where he uses a chess metaphor throughout

[lightandfellowship]

"I paved a path for him to succeed, if he had only followed it to the end."

[fernsnailz]

Not sure how much meat this question has to it but if back in 2006 you were the one that spearheaded the shadow the hedgehog game, how would you have done it?

i'd want ShTH 2005 to keep the same core energy its final form ended up with, but tbh there's a lot i would have done differently lol. here's my 3 step plan for how i would have directed it previously/would direct any sort of reboot or remaster

1. TIMELOOP!!!!!!

i'm not the first person to come up with this idea and i won't be the last to talk about it, but the gist of this point is that ShTH's story makes WAY more sense when you treat it like a timeloop. you finished a story path and end up back in westopolis? great job, you're at the beginning of the timeloop again. it's a smart way to make this wack story a little more cohesive.

i would LOVE to further utilize the timeloop concept for this game because it could be a very simple addition to add flavor OR it be the core of the game's story and gameplay. small things like shadow going "hey wait, have i seen this before?" when he's going through westopolis for the third time can hint at the narrative, and once shadow realizes he's in a loop he's motivated to find EVERY path in search of the full truth. every new story path could be treated as a new game+ as shadow starts to consistently remember more from previous timeloops, carrying over certain weapons, abilities, and memories from his previous experiences.

one really cool idea i saw a while ago on here (edit: FOUND IT! i'm talking about this post) is someone's ShTH timeloop pitch where after a few resets, silver starts to show up and tells shadow to stop messing with the timeline. this continues, and eventually silver becomes a final boss of some of the paths. this idea has never left my mind since i saw it and i need to find the person that came up with it they mean so much to me

i have more timeloop thoughts but i will move on for now

2. simplify or rework the morality system and levels

this is my big gameplay critique - there is A Lot to do in ShTH and very little of it is consistently fun. i have grievances with the morality system i talked about a while ago, the gist of my opinion boiling down to "the system removes agency from shadow and the story doesn't fit within the morals you choose anyway." i'd either MASSIVELY rework the morality system to make it feel worthwhile or just throw the whole thing away. unfortunately i don't have many pitches for what to replace it with since i haven't played that many games with branching stories - maybe the story paths you go down are based on BIG story decisions shadow makes during boss battles or in cutscenes (?) like choosing which boss to fight, which characters to save, what moves or weapons to use, stuff like that. i just want the stuff that leads to branching stories to be more impactful and a little simpler.

this also applies to the levels, of which there are... a lot. and maybe there should be less? i think it would be smart to cut down or combine some of the levels, then really flesh out the ones that matter. and given the non-linear nature of ShTH, i think a version with levels more focused on exploration and combat would fit the game better than the linear mission-based gameplay of the original.

3. MORE GUN

listen man. they advertised this as the sonic game with guns and in my opinion i think they could've done better. i mostly just want a more fleshed out weapons system with upgrades, a little customization, better controls, etc. just put the merchant from resident evil 4 in there and have him accept rings and i would be happy

-------------------------

those are the big points i would personally stick to, but i do have smaller points i would consider as well, including:

make black doom seem competent

explain who the chaotix are working for and fit it into the story

no more "kill this many enemies to progress" missions. please

super shadow can have a gun now

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: The game of politics

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)  

“Why do you wish to be senate president?”

Representative Isabella up from her notes at the question.

“I had not expected such a direct question from you Representative Mingil.” Isabella replied. She set down her notes and turned her full attention to the alien delegate. She had been asked any number of policy questions for the last two hours by members of the Universal senate. It was standard procedure for anyone running for the office of president of the senate.

Isabella’s nomination was historic in a way as she was the first human to ever be put forward for the position. The office of the president of the senate was an interesting one as one could simply not run for it themselves. A person in the running needed for another member of the senate to put their name forward as a candidate. In concept it was to ensure only those viewed as worthy by the senate body would be put forward, rather than any individual thinking themselves as worthy.

It had been an uphill battle as humanity had only been part of the senate for thirty years making them one of the youngest species in the governing body. Some of the questions that had been asked of her were just of that, but Isabella had been prepared and carefully deflected or alleviated any concerns. Only representative Mingil of the Won was still unconvinced.

“I simply wish to know what you desire from this appointment.” Mingil continued. “Given your species established precedent when it comes to leaders from your people.”

There was a hushed murmur from the representatives. Before Isabella could respond the chairman of the meeting cut in. “Would you care to explain that last remark representative Mingil?”

In response Mingil held up a large folder; rather dramatically for the hearing. “I have with me historical records of humanity reaching back several thousand years.”

She entered in several keys and a holographic display appeared between Isabella and the interviewing committee. Pictures of famous and notorious, human leaders scrolled across the projection.

“Throughout human history humans have risen to positions of power on the promise of bettering society for everyone.” Mingil began, “Yet when they had finally obtained the position they became corrupted, hostile, paranoid, and even tyrannical; as they then began to dismantle the very institutions that helped elect them into power to ensure that they would remain there until they die.”

The murmurs continued, the occasional gasp as a violent image passed the projection. Pictures of war, assembling armies saluting a human on a podium, fighting in the ruins of a city and so on; it was as if Mingil had found a video reel shown in a discount history class and was playing it for dramatic effect.

“Are we really sure that having a human as our leader is a safe decision?”  Mingil finally finished, shooting a devious grin at Isabella thinking she had just destroyed her chances at the presidency. To her surprise Isabella was not shaking in her stylish shoes as she had expected, but rather looking up at the ceiling completely uninterested in the proceedings.

“Do you not find this conversation interesting to you? Mingil remarked snidely.

“Oh no, this was all fascinating.” Isabella replied with a chuckle. “I have some pictures from my vacation to Saturn you can put up next.”

Mingil shot a death glare at the few senators in the back gallery that snickered.

“I’m sorry, but if we are going to start dragging our histories into this discussion I think it is merely an attempt to derail this committee’s time.” Isabella turned back and looked at each of the committee members eyes.

“Senator Parvolg,” she began pointing to the Turoviene at the end, “your people once ate each other for sport, and senator Gingle,” she continued as she pointed to senator sitting next to Parvolg, “you once ate senator Parvolg’s people as you viewed them as a lesser species.”

Parvolg looked embarrassed as Gingle looked over at Parvolg nervously. His hand seemed to tense around the pen he was holding as if he was going to use it to defend himself.

“And you,” Isabella continued, pointing at senator Ideny who was next to Mingle, “your people started a genocidal war against your own people because half of them had a blue pigment in their skin.”

“That was over seven hundred years ago!” Senator Ideny shouted as she slammed her three fists against the committee table. “We have long since acknowledged how shortsighted and foolish we were!”

“Enough!” Mingil shouted. “Your attempts to deflect this conversation only highlight your unwillingness to answer a direct question!”

“Wrong!” Isabella shouted back as she stood to her feet. “I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy you have spouted against the human race when you sit side by side with former war criminals, cannibals, and whatever the hell you would classify what Gingle’s people did.”

Isabella walked around the table and stood directly in front of the committee.

“Each of our respective people has done horrible things in that past, none of us are free from those marks of shame; yet we stand here now not for the atrocities committed in the past, but for the achievements we have accomplished in the present.”

The committee looked amongst themselves unable to meet Isabella’s gaze. Even Mingil seemed to have lost her voice as she was well aware of what her people had done before joining the universal senate.

“Question…..withdrawn.” Mingil finally said as she fell back into her seat.

With that the committee meeting was ended and Isabella was allowed to leave. -----------------------------------------------

“Nice deflections out there.”

Isabella’s aide poured her a glass of wine as she sat down behind her desk. The blinds were drawn casting the office in various shades of orange as the sun set outside. The light reflected off the wine glass adding additional depths of crimson to the wall as if the room had suddenly turned into a horror dungeon.

“When your opponent is a child coming at you with a blunt knife it’s rather easy to step to the side.” Isabella sighed as she took her first sip. “Add her name to the list for elimination after I am announced as president.”

The aide nodded and pulled out a data pad. “Since her opposition was so vocal and recent may I suggest waiting until a year into your rule making a move? Acting early might raise suspicion.”

Isabella frowned but had to agree with her aide’s assessment. If her enemies suddenly started dropping like flies the game would be over within a week.

“Very well, a year in, but any longer and I might do it myself if I have to look at her smug face longer.”

The aide scribbled down the additional note. “By the current count you have 75% of the votes needed.” He added as he stowed the data pad away. “After today’s meeting I would expect it to raise an additional 7 percent.”

“Acceptable.” Isabella remarked. “Senator Vilrun hasn’t made any trouble since he put my name forward I hope.”

The aide looked disgusted for a moment before he regained his composure. “He remarked that he wanted an additional payment to keep quiet about the initial bribe to put your name forward. I had a quiet word with him and he has now retracted that request.”

This made the senator smile. “Keep up the good work like that and you’ll find yourself governing a star system once I’m empress.”

“Don’t you mean president?” the aide asked with a grin.

Isabella turned to look out the window as the sun finally set over the horizon. “For now maybe.”

[katsona-the-katsequel]

Background Events: The Power of Rumors

A compilation of times where rumors have changed reality in the Persona series.

Click here for the time we focused on the evolution of Persona experimentation.

Spoilers for P2, P3 (briefly), P4 and P5!

One of the most basic concepts of Persona is the connection of everything through the Collective Unconscious, and to understand this concept, we're gonna have to rely on the J-Man once more.

According to Carl Jung, the Collective Unconscious refers to a part of the human mind shared by all people, inherited rather than developed individually. This universal aspect contains fundamental symbols and themes (archetypes) that influence our thoughts, emotions and behaviors unconsciously. Despite attempts to suppress these ancient influences, they continue to appear in traditions, superstitions and phenomena.

Rumors relate to the Collective Unconscious by reflecting shared, deep-seated fears, hopes or archetypal themes present in a culture. Since the Collective Unconscious consists of universal experiences and symbols, rumors often tap into these common elements, spreading quickly because they resonate with the unconscious mind's familiar patterns and ideas. This shared connection makes rumors compelling and believable to many people, as they echo fundamental, collective human experiences and anxieties.

And this is how Nyarlathotep took advantage of the Collective Unconscious to create the Rumor Curse. He probably only thinned the barriers between the physical world and the CU in Sumaru City so rumors became a reality (which would also explain why there are demons all over the city). I'm not going to mention every single instance of rumors becoming true in Persona 2 since that's a whole game mechanic, so let's go over the most important one: the Oracle of Maia.

Despite Nyarly admitting he made the whole thing up, the entire city thought this was a prophecy created by the Maian aliens, which made it true. Through Innocent Sin the prophecy was fulfilled, culminating in Maya dying and the world ending. This is the best and most extreme example of rumors becoming true, a high bar that wouldn't be reached again, not even in Eternal Punishment.

Some fans theorize that the Rumor Curse didn't affect just Sumaru, but all of Japan, and that it was never lifted. While this would give an explanation to some of the following cases, there are more canon reasons for them becoming true. Also, if the theory was true, then Strega would have done more damage than it did when they formed their cult and defamed SEES. Not to mention, the minor rumors like Fuuka being a ghost come to take revenge. By P2 rules, they should all become reality, but they didn't. And so, we must rely on the alternate explanations given to us.

Like divine intervention. The next major rumor spread in the series comes from Chie of all people:

Urban legends like the Persona Game or the Joker were the bread and butter of early Persona, and this fits the bill. Depending on how much of The Magician you hold canon, the rumor existed way before Izanami began her game, which would mean she simply took advantage of a popular rumor to create a connection to the TV World. Being a small town, Inaba is more susceptible to rumors and gossip quickly spreading around. Rumors would keep moving the plot forward, whether it was to learn a victim's identity or their profile to find them in the TV World.

The closest thing to the rumors game mechanic from P2 was the fame-to-advance-in-Mementos from P5. Both Akechi and Phantom Thieves fought an invisible battle to stay in the population's mind and gain influence in the CU. However, this is a double-edged sword. Can anyone remember what happened when all of Tokyo thought the Phantom Thieves didn't exist at all?

Yaldabaoth thinned the barriers once more and, for a few moments, the "Rumor Curse" had returned to lay siege on all of Tokyo. The only time anyone took advantage of this would be during the final fight against Yaldy, where the entire city saw the Phantom Thieves as heroes and saviors, boosting their powers to defeat a god. This can be compared to P2's Joker, whom the entire city saw as a wish-granting entity, and ended up becoming one.

Regardless, the same curse that plagued Sumaru ended in Tokyo when everything went back to normal. Default settings for everyone. Even though rumors aren't as powerful as before, no one can deny the way they shape the people's cognition. And in a world where the Collective Unconscious really is a thing? That can go a long way.

[jupiterswasphouse]

BUGSNAX - A REVIEW

A few days ago, I fully finished and 100% completed this game, and I'm very happy to have finally done so! Here are my thoughts, under the cut! (Skip to the end if you just want a quick overview of each point)

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As evidenced by the fact I completed the game, I enjoyed Bugsnax a lot! Which I'm happy to be able to say upon playing it myself after having watched other people (Namely Snapcube, all the way back in 2021) play it in the past. It's a nice change of pace from the other kinds of games I've played in recent times, and a type of game I can't say off the top of my head that I've really experienced before. I've played my share of creature collectors but those were mostly RPGs, like the Pokémon games, whereas Bugsnax takes the concept into a full 3D space where you don't exactly battle the Bugsnax but, rather, you trap them!

Forgive the comparison I'm about to make but it's almost like you're pranking the wildlife of this island, tricking them in various ways to get them into your backpack. It starts off as simple as just waiting for Bugsnax to wander into your trap, and for a handful of species it stays that way, but with the wide variety of them available to you and which you're expected to catch, it becomes more complicated very quickly! The game can become slightly repetitive at points, especially having to refight bosses for 100% completion, but they vary things up enough with tools and specific catching conditions that it never became boring for me. I'd say that Bugsnax is almost a puzzle game in that way, trying to figure out what combination of things catches what Bugsnax. Although some of said 'capturing puzzles' are easy to cheese, or come up with multiple solutions for.

Despite that, though, Bugsnax can be a challenge for the brain! Like any good puzzle, the solution can be difficult to piece together right away at times, making for engaging gameplay that keeps you thinking. That's a great thing, as it's really the only challenge there is in the game. Bugsnax does not have a fail state nor any lives to lose, no matter how much the aggressive Bugsnax try and no matter how many times you light yourself on fire in the middle of Snaxburg. Bugsnax simply isn't a very difficult meal to swallow! Which isn't a bad thing.

As a side note on the gameplay too, the game does keep you busy with a multitude of main quests, side quests, and letter quests, giving you many reasons to want to catch all of these Bugsnax!

Speaking of the titular Bugsnax, though, they're a very interesting bunch! With 112 of them to find (after the release of the free DLC), the variety of designs on display is wonderfully creative and charming. Yes, some of the designs are reused and retextured, but that's perfectly acceptable and to be expected when you're capable of transforming almost every NPC using said Bugsnax!

They're certainly interesting to observe and speculate on how they came to be! They're not anything that could exist in our world, but that's kind of the point! They do, however, interact with each other in some ways you might expect from wild beasts, fighting with each other and accidentally running into each other on occasion. Bunger, Spuddy (Beetle-like Bugsnax), Preying Picantis (A mantis-like Bugsnak), and Scoopy Banoopy (A giant water bug-like Bugsnak) being as aggressive as they are, while played up for gameplay purposes, does mirror how strong and combative these insects are in the real world! Although, you never see these Bugsnax eat each other, nor at all apart from when you specifically toss sauce at them, making it unclear how they survive apart from eating said sauce, even though the ending goes some way into explaining that, to an extent. Even still, not much that truly needs to be explained goes unexplained when it comes to them

Of course, the creativity and good design of the Bugsnax would mean nothing without an equally charming world and set of colorful characters to go along with them! The game does not disappoint there either, making for quite the feast for the eyes. The biomes are lovely, and environmentally tell you quite a bit about the history of the island, from the crashed ship on the beach of Boiling Bay to the cave scrawlings of Garden Grove and the clear existence of a long gone civilization in Scorched Gorge and the isle of Broken Tooth! Meanwhile, the NPCs, the Grumpuses, have wonderfully charming designs, resembling muppets to an extent, all distinct and fun designs but still simple enough to fit in with the impressive mechanic of 'Snakification' without being too disturbing... Most of the time

Heads up! The next section goes into SPOILER TERRITORY, if you want to save the story for when you play it yourself, skip to the next chunk of bold text

When it comes to the story that surrounds all of the Grumpuses, it continues to be quite the charming game, with its comedic flair, colorful personalities, and sweet personal moments. However, it's not a conflictless experience (Nor should it have been!), with many characters fighting and having problems that range from Wiggle being afraid of being a one-hit-wonder and struggling to create her next masterpiece, to Snorpy struggling to communicate his feelings to Chandlo while Chandlo worries about the unhealthy amount of stress that Snorpy is going through, to Beffica being unable to hold a friendship because of her own actions and being afraid that she won't be able to ever have anyone close to her. It doesn't pull its punches, especially once you get around to helping them with some of these issues in the sidequests!

The biggest issue that requires being solved however is the driving force of the game, getting everyone back to Snaxburg, and especially the adventurer who invited you to the island in the first place, Elizabert. The search for Elizabert takes essentially the whole game, searching for clues and interviewing Grumpuses, watching tapes that display the relationship of Elizabert and her girlfriend/wife (unclear whether or not they're married), doctor Eggabell.

This search concludes in quite possibly the most unsettling muppet body horror way it could have, with Bugsnax being revealed to be parasites, composing essentially the entire underground of the island, with Elizabert herself being turned into a giant but somehow still sentient and sapient beast made of multiple different legendary Bugsnax, among other species! and the final sequence of the game is spent essentially killing Bugsnax in a brutal saucy massacre across Snaxburg before making your escape.

Now, does this make Bugsnax one of those "Oops, it's a horror game actually!" games? Not in the slightest. This is not as overtly horrifying and gorey as something like Doki Doki Literature Club, although it is possible to lose Grumpuses to the influence of the island in the final sequence if you play your cards wrong, this is more like an Undertale situation in the sense that the game is mostly perfectly fine but has some disturbing undertones and moments! It is a super unexpected moment but I like it, and the ending provides a very satisfying resolution to everyone's problems while still leaving enough questions about the island for a Bugsnax 2

[END SPOILERS]

The game is also very well scored with a mostly electronic sound track that fits the charming and mostly relaxing atmosphere of the game! Seth Parker's smooth synths filling the space perfectly between Grumpus dialogue and Bugsnax yelling out their names Pokémon style, with an adorable credits theme done by Kero Kero Bonito, which fits in perfectly with the rest of the music.

Now, in terms of game stability, having played after patches, I'd say this game is stable enough for the average player, some things being a bit easy to break for people who are looking to do so, with very few glitches being detrimental to the experience. I did have some Bugsnax get stuck or disappear, but it wasn't enough to really effect things much given there are a couple ways to respawn them (sleeping, leaving the area and coming back).

One funny thing did happen to me though, and it was my fault entirely! I saw the broken bridge in Scorched Gorge and was like "Hmmm, I bet I could get across that when they don't want me too" and I did! Then the game autosaved and I had accidentally set several flags in the game skipping Snorpy and Chandlo's quests. I had to find the save file and manually edit it so that I could fix my hubris and unskip the quests! Which was thankfully not very hard to do, and I got to experience those quests without issue.

Now, finally, what would I add to a Bugsnax 2? Well the obvious answer for me would be some form of wasp Bugsnak, I just want more representation of my favorite guys!! But for a bigger suggestion, I'd say that there are tons of different real world bug features and behaviors that could make for interesting gameplay elements and designs! With mimicry, pollination structure building, symbiotic relationships, resource gathering, pheromone communication, multiple stages of life, etc etc. I'd just really like to see what the Bugsnax team can do with things like these! Even down to more species or family specific things!

-

All in all,

Gameplay: Fairly unique! Can be repetitive at times but stays varied and interesting enough to be engaging for most players.

Difficulty: Catching Bugsnax can be challenging but it's still fairly easy, with very little punishment for failure outside of the very end.

Graphics/Design: Extremely charming with varied Bugsnax and cute NPCs that fit with the biome they're in very well, providing a lovely atmosphere to the game, even if Snakification can make things clash at times.

Story/Lore: Very good, keeping you interested in the world and characters of the game, and at times delving into more serious, personal topics and problems, as well as setting up a world that shows plenty of its history, while leaving some questions to be answered

Soundtrack: Rather smooth, synths filling the space in nicely and not leaving much awkward silence, with a very good guest track

Stability: Rarely detrimental, not giving the player any major issues, while still being breakable if one were to try to do so

Completion Time: 29 hours

Overall: Recommended

[waeirfaahl]

Some thoughts about Quantum Jack and The Lost Worlds comics series

Post-2017 Samurai Jack comics were very weird, bizarre and even chaotic mess, I'd say. Quantum Jack had the references to Mad Max, Pacific Rim (or mecha anime), Total Recall and several other movies, but its story was both simple and hard to follow.

Like, if I got it correctly, the 5 chapter was the beginning of the story, i.e. the whole 5 chapter is the prologue and the flashback, which explains, how Jack had many lifes/personalities or whatever. The scientist created the unstable invention (for unknown reasons), which Jack mistakenly interpreted as the time machine (I have no idea, why previous scientists told to Jack, that this one has time machine — maybe it was Aku's trap again?), but that thing creates false memories, I guess, hence a person lives with different memories, life and personality (although, visuals kinda try to portray it as if Jack was teleported into someone else's bodies or whatever, what is also weird and confusing, because by this logic Jack's body and the sword have to be in the scientist's den, and Aku should destroy both Jack's body and the sword immediately). And during the 1-4 chapters Jack lives with false memories 4+ different lifes (and for some reason some of them have hints to his past and his true identity), unless his memories return, so he is again the samurai warrior with his eternal heroic path. And the questions arise — If I get it right, Jack's first "false life" was a tiger in jungle.

So, how he was able to recall everything, if it is a distant wilderness? He encountered Aku's army of scarab beetle robots? He travelled and again accidentally visited his destroyed kingdom? Poachers captured him and brought to one of Aku cities, so he escaped? Why he had exactly these dreams/fantasies/lifes? What happened with Jack in reality? Was Jack in coma during these trips and skips? How long was Jack in coma? And if he returned his memories, where he will awake? Why Aku didn't kill him? Did Aku capture him in this state and used for some experiments? Why Aku didn't kill Jack, again, before how Jack got back his memories?

Why Aku and all those characters Jack interacted with in his dreams didn't try to prevent Jack from returning his memories and the sword? From another side, it is pretty interesting aspect — Aku allowed to Jack basically five different lifes, full of either adventures and epic battles or calm life with loving family.

Well, if 5 season and Battle Through Time are one of these false memories-lifes-personalities Aku created for Jack in coma, i.e. they are not real, then okay. Aku actually won and destroyed the sword, Jack is in coma and captured, living in the perfect dream (in the matrix, if you're well), while nothing from 5 season and the game ever happened and existed. And then we move to The Lost Worlds. Honestly, I have no idea, why these comics exist and for what they were created. I mean, visually they are okay (a bit better than Quantum Jack for sure, but only the first story had good visual), the first and third stories had potential due to interesting and promising concepts and elements, since it had no villains, the second one had okay theme and message, but was handled bad (I mean, really? Jack wasn't able to defeat those creatures, who used no magic, no martial arts, but simple dishes? and how can't he know about them? how they can't know Jack?),

but their finale... Like, Quantum had open ending, but with some kind of resolution and conclusion (Jack returned his memories, identity and the path to fight Aku again), as well as the first three stories of The Lost Worlds had the ending with logical conclusion, while the fourth story... why it was created? For what? It just ends on nothing, it is just one big cliffhanger without the story and without the ending.

That's literally the final page of these series:

What does it mean? Was Jack imprisoned by Aku? Another matrix for Jack, where hints for his real identity still exist for some reason? Because these moments can give this assumption.

How it connects with the previous three chapters, especially the first story of The Lost Worlds, where Jack decided to travel the world again and return his duty and heroic role he always had? The fourth chapter is illogical and meaningless mess both as a story and a finale of the series. Plus, I can't understand, when the events of The Lost Worlds series happen — like, there's no Aku, it has no connection with Quantum series, and it was released before The Battle Through Time, in the third story there are some hunters for dead souls, escaped from the underworld (they are aware that Jack lives very long, but for some reason Jack has no idea about these hunters).

When these four stories happen? Is Jack still immortal, so he lives literally eons and still wanders on the planet and helps to all in this new future, where magic and technologies coexist, humans, aliens, robots and magical creatures coexist, but some of them still believe in "Earth is flat" crap? The first story and even the fourth story kinda gave the impression of exactly this.

It actually could be interesting theme — like, even after "fulfilling the prophecy" Jack has no inner piece, he has no goal and puspose in his life anymore, he still feels empty, he is again in depression, he has no family anymore, so he is alone, he makes his duty, but wants to relax, but remembering his past and all those who is gone, he isolates himself from the world (just like Aku) for several years or whatever, habitants worship to Jack, making a robot-protector with his face.

And after the fight with the robot with his face, he admits his mistake and prefers to return to his duty and to teach the habitants to find own path without blind worshipping or whatever, i.e. both Jack and habitants try to find new life and happiness. Well, sorta...

Zealots will always be zealots. So, yes, 5 season ruined and destroyed the show, so after this even comics couldn't write interesting and decent story, and after this we got the canon game, which was of the same horrible level and again used the concept of "the place, where everything is not what it seems, and it was made by sudden and imbalance spell of Aku or whatever". At least, in The Lost Worlds we have this beautiful art:

The only good thing, honestly.

[legobiwan]

How would count bleck's minions react to seeing Culex in your crossover?

omg, anon, I didn't know Culex was a thing until you sent me this. I might or might not have immediately picked up my Switch to go find him for the first battle.

But! This ask got me thinking about my crossover idea. What if...the Bleck minions were on a mission to stop Culex, but on the way, they end up running into Mario and the gang?

And now I've created a whooole bunch of lore tying together the two games. Buckle in friends. I'm feeling talkative today.

Culex states he traverses dimensions, is antimatter and matter, both, which is a key characteristic of the Chaos Heart, which is able to both destroy and remake worlds in its wielder's image. Maybe Bleck has hit a roadblock as he's conjuring spells to bring the Chaos Heart to fruition, and the presence of Culex is one of the major impediments to his plans.

So he send his minions after him.

Now, I would argue that the meeting between Mario and friends and the minions occurs before their confrontation with Culex and that Mario and the gang are too busy with Smithy and his associates to take this on. (Although the thought is troubling. Nastasia explains that this Culex claims to eat time, that he is matter and antimatter but cannot inhabit their dimension for very long. Geno shakes his head at this, stating if such a being existed, he would know of it, as his people are the keepers of time itself, which is writ, measured and meted out in the cosmos from which he comes. If this Culex is an abnormality, a kind of...Geno searches for the right word, black hole, or void, he is not threat enough to alter his primary objective of restoring the Star Road, whose failure would have far greater ramifications than a single dark entity).

Of course, what the Bleck gang doesn't tell Geno or anyone else is that the possibility of Culex being a void incarnate is the exact reason they are pursuing him. Because, and this is mostly Dimentio piecing things together, a being that is matter and antimatter, that traverses dimensions for time to eat might well be a fragment of the Chaos Heart Bleck has yet to be able to bring under his will, as Bleck has spent the last two years piecing together the broken shards of the heart that had been scattered across the multiverse the last time all worlds came to end, so many millenia ago (an event Geno would rather forget, and one of the reasons the restoration of the Star Road is so important. Wishes are hope, and hope, in its most basic form, is love - a love which can balance out the incursions of nihilism and the likes of Culex. A love, that we, the reader, might also associate with the Pure Hearts, which was this love in concentrated form).

So, eventually the Mario gang and the Bleck gang part ways (stay tuned for some writing about that, as the concept has burrowed into my brain). They finally find Culex and at first, they don't think it will be a huge ordeal. Sure, he's large, with chiseled abdominal muscles, long hair, the body of a lifeguard...well, at least, that's Mimi's first impression, before Nastasia elbows her in the gut and tells her to get her priorities straight. O'Chunks is less than impressed, stating that he encountered men twice his size on the bloodied battlefields of the Andaal plains. Dimentio, for once, is quiet, hanging back, observing the strange, billowing creature.

Of course, that initial hubris is quickly wiped away when Culex summons the elemental crystals, the first hit sending O'Chunks flying with a pitiful, "I might 've been wrong abou'im."

Mimi is enamored, and envious of, the elemental crystals, which hold far more power than her more pedestrian Rubees. But even she knows this isn't the time to barter and that this is a fight she won't win, same as Nastasia, who quickly comes to the conclusion that brainwashing is not going to work.

But Dimentio just floats forward, chuckling. "Elemental crystals," he sings, "how droll. Take away your little baubles and you are nothing but an echo, a parasite with no host."

"Dimentio, be serious!" Nastasia scolds, dodging around a deluge of small, sharpened petals.

"Oh, but I am, my dear Nassy," Dimentio replies, his voice muted by the translucent box he has conjured around himself. "He is nothing more than a puzzle piece escaped from the box. Destroy the crystals, destroy the spirit," he says with a lazy snap of fingers, a bright fireball exploding over a cerulean ice crystal.

"Certainly we have enough potions in our stores to create a counter-effect to each element? It is, after all, the most basic of magics."

"The most basic of magics," O'Chunks grumbles, limping over to join the others.

"A strong punch along the grain might also do the trick, for those of us more inclined to use brutish force over subtelty."

"I'll punch those crystals inta' next year.''

"That's the spirit, my large friend."

Suffice it to say that the Bleck gang makes short work of Culex at this point, and while his defeat does not end in his disintegration, his shield is now permanently destroyed, meaning that Bleck will be able to assimilate him into the rest of the Chaos Heart as he pushes forward with his plans to end all worlds.

Ironic, though, that Dimentio would see the flaw in Culix's plan in relying on the crystals as a shield. It would be the same mistake Dimentio himself would make in assuming the Pure Hearts could not be conjured more than once.

[superthatguy62]

Jack & Garland 2.0: 2 Garland 2 Furious

A while ago, I made a post about how the Garland from Dissidia and Jack Garland should not be the same characer. Time has passed since then: Opera Omnia has shut down and I finally managed to play through Stranger of Paradise (2/3rds of the way through the DLC now).

While I intended to touch up the post to include fix some things and whatnot, a realization occurred to me: The original post was heavily slanted into explaining why making the Garlands both the same character would make specifically Dissidia Garland a weaker character. In hindsight that is unfair given that the decision also weakens Jack and the theme of his story. So this is an addendum that overall touches on two aspects: The theme of Garland and why Jack and Dissidia Garland being two different takes on Garland isn't as far-fetched as it looks.

As before, this essay assumes that you are aware of the overall plot elements of the Dissidia Final Fantasy series as well as Stranger of Paradise and all of its DLC. It will also touch upon Final Fantasy XIV, although the only major spoiler is maybe something in regards to the Return To Ivalice plotline.

The Man Who Walks The Wheel of Time (The themes of Jack Garland and Dissidia Garland)

One of the major themes that Garland has come to embody over the course of the series is the concept of fate, and by extension, free will. In the original Final Fantasy, this was implicit in the form of the time loop: Garland created a perfect loop in which he abducts Princess Sara, is killed by the Warriors of Light, is revived, is taken to the past, becomes Chaos, creates and sends the Fiends forward, loses his power and memories becomes a knight of Cornelia, rinse and repeat. The loop's existence implies that it is inevitable that the Warriors of Light will die by Garland's hand just as Garland will die by theirs. This is so until the end of the game, where the Warriors of Light somehow manage to defeat Chaos. This breaks the loop and causes it to cease to exist, to the point that it is implied that Garland never lost his sanity and the Warriors' tale only lives on in legend.

Dissidia Final Fantasy expanded on this with its take on Garland. Dissidia focuses on Garland's once noble form as a knight and the nature of the time loop to present us with an awkward mid-stage Garland: One regains his sanity long enough to realize that he himself is a victim of his own plan, yet is powerless to prevent the cycle from playing out. This facet of Garland's character is important to explaining why, after the pact is made and the parties involved realize that no progress is being made, Garland reacts the way he did. Not only is Chaos, whom he mentors and overall cares for, now trapped in a cycle of conflict, but Garland himself is now trapped within yet ''another'' cycle. The museum descriptions imply that Garland's fondness for battle is largely a coping mechanism due to his belief that he will always be destined to fight.

While NT doesn't explore this aspect of Garland's character much due to the nature of that game's plot, Opera Omnia takes an interesting approach. The game's main backstory is Materia and Spiritus were told by the great crystal to create a world of respite for their champions, whom they were pushing to their limits with constant battle. However, Garland was displeased and attacked the Warrior of Light, setting the events of the game into motion. In Opera Omnia, Garland is even more obsessed with battle than before. The reason for his battle lust is explained towards the end of the second act: The Warrior of Light finished the events of FF1, meaning that the Garland back home was restored to the noble knight he once was. But the Garland of the World of Respite is the one who came from the cycles; While everyone else could be sent back home to their own realms, he has no place to return to. Garland therefore decides to allow conflict to define him: It is to the point where he considers combat to be his form of respite. The Warrior of Light indulges him for the majority of Act 3 (leaving Onion Knight as the party leader), but hopes to show Garland another way.

This leads to an odd portrayal of Garland that isn't quite foe, but is far from a friend. He wishes to keep the world intact, partially to have somewhere to fight and partially out of respect towards Chaos. Garland occasionally shows traits of that knight he probably once was even if his obsession for war is rooted in his issues with his existence.

Jack also relates heavily to the themes of fate and free will, but goes in the opposite direction as Dissidia Garland. The main plot element of Stranger of Paradise is that Jack and his friends are strangers: People from other worlds who are sent to Cornelia to act as Warriors of Light. While they appear to be saving the land, their true purpose is to regulate the levels of light and darkness in the land: As they were sent by Lufenia who relies on that imbalance to ensure that the link between their pocket dimension and the rest of Cornelia remains closed. It's not as glamorous a job as one may think. The nature of Chaos means that when people's negative emotions like fear anger or sadness bond with darkness (or the energy from the crystals), they go insane or turn into monsters… which spread further darkness and negative emotions. On top of that, it is heavily implied that the "Strangers" that the side missions describe are past versions of Jack and his allies, who died in various gruesome ways or fell into despair. All because Lufenia was content to experiment and toy with the land and its people, a bitter irony considering the implication that it was once looked down upon by Cornelia but inexcusable nevertheless. Jack grew to hate the Lufenians. So much so that he engineered a plan. A plan to ensure that he would be pulled into the depths of despair. A plan that would allow him to harness the rage and hatred he felt towards his bosses. A plan to break Lufenia's hold over the realm and guide its people to create their own destiny. A plan to push him into becoming the one thing Lufenia could not control. Chaos. When Jack creates the time loop at the end of the game to summon the Warriors of Light, it is not a mistake made in a fit of anger. It is a calculated, meticulous, intentional plan to ensure that Cornelia will be free of Lufenia's grasp once and for all. Jack willingly re-entered the cycle, this time on his own terms. And while he and his allies do manipulate the Warriors of Light, they do so in a way that gives the Warriors more freedom in the matter: They don't pick four specific individuals to become the Warriors of Light. They set up circumstances that will one day result in the Warriors of Light appearing (a plan that backfired in at least one timeline, but shush). The only qualifier is that the theoretical Warriors of Light be Cornelian and even that is thrown into question based on one of the monster conversations. The end credits theme is "My Way" for crystals' sake. This leads to some interesting implications when factoring in Different Future's endings. The default ending has Jack stay true to himself and his friends' goals. Their end justifies their fate and the Moogle's schemes fail because Jack and his allies choose to forge their own future. By contrast, the Different Future sees Jack inadvertently become the God of Discord and is told that he now must site opposite the Warrior of Light, who will become the God of Harmony. The two gods will become the pillars of a new world. While Jack doesn't show much reaction and seemingly goes along with it, one can't help but wonder if Jack Garland, the man who despises gods for essentially doing as they wish, is less than thrilled by this development.

Jack Garland and Dissidia!Garland are two sides to the same coin, that coin being the concept of fate and one's control over it. Dissidia!Garland feels that he has no control over his fate, that he will always embody conflict on some level. Even in a world where he no longer has to fight, the nature of his existence drives him to fight as a means of asserting it. Jack, after many hardships that he, his friends and the people of Cornelia go through, reaches that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, even if Jack and his friends don't live to see it. He does it his way.

Which raises a new question: What does making Garland and Jack Garland the same character ''do'' for either of them? In the case of Dissidia Garland, it weakens that aspect of self-induced tragedy. Garland has moments that remind you that he was once an upstanding knight of Cornelia, particularly in his loyalty to Chaos - He's just browbeaten by his own actions and his constant habit of entering unending cycles of battle. It makes for an interesting contrast to some of Chaos' other warriors, especially his Famicom contemporaries: The Emperor (who is pure evil) and the Cloud of Darkness (who is a cosmic phenomenon, or the herald of it at least, that merely does its job). But his dread over making the 'mistake' mentioned in the report from his point of view, that tragedy that, were it not for his loss of hope, he could be redeemed as WoL promised to do (and as the end of FF1 implies)… all of that is weakened if it turns out that the "mistake" was not a mistake at all and that Garland had very justifiable reasons for doing what he did. As for Jack? Jack's story, despite everything, is not the traditional shakespearian tragedy. Jack's story is one of hope. A flicker of hope in the midst of the largest, darkest dungeon to ever exist, but hope nonetheless. It takes dozens of resets, but Jack forces Lufenia away. It takes unorthodox methods such as the Dragonking's boons, but the Warriors of Light eventually manage to kill Garland. And while there is a future where Jack becomes the god of Discord, there is also a future where Jack and his friends accomplish their plan. Jack being Dissidia!Garland essentially takes that concept of hope and throws it in the dustbin. Jack no longer has any form of hope. He devolves into a shell of a man, a pawn of his own plan that was 'meant' to inspire hope who later becomes a battle-hungry maniac as a coping mechanism (as opposed to a battle-hungry maniac who keeps said hunger under control and shows much more restraint) and 'willingly' serves under a god (out of pity, but still, shows how far he falls). Factor in Opera Omnia and Jack becomes a parody of himself; A man who was willing to sacrifice himself to bring peace to the land is now constantly fighting and threatening the land to assert his own existence.

While tragic in its own right, it doesn't gel well with either Garland's theme regarding fate.

And then, there's the factor of Dissidia!Garland and Jack being seen as different people in-universe. The Moogle born of Cosmos' will tells Jack that there was a man named Garland on the World of Conflict, but it knows for a fact that that man was not Jack. The Emperor also states in his missives that, while similar, Jack is a different Garland from the Garland he knows. Meanwhile, in Opera Omnia, Neon sees Dissidia!Garland, mistakes him for Jack, and then says "No wait, you aren't him." The closest to an exception is Gilgamesh, who is the one to suggest that the Garland from Dissidia may be a future version of Jack... but some of his dialogue makes it clear that even he is unsure of the truth. Some argue that we aren't meant to take these at face value or play with technicalities (the Moogle is correct in saying Dissidia!Garland isn't Jack because he's from a different future/timeline branch/whatever). On top of some of general issues with those arguments, let's point out a few specific ones:

The Moogle came from the future that that alternate Garland hails from, which is the same future it's trying to push Jack towards. From its perspective, That IS Garland.

When the Moogle makes its pitch to Jack to take the crystals, it does not even so much as allude to this other Garland. In fact, that line is the only time it mentions that other Garland. Why even mention him or call him a different Garland to begin with?

On a related note, Sophia gives the Moogle an out by implying that they would run into the Emperor in the future. There is no reason to claim that the Garland from the world of conflict is a different man.

But more importantly than all of those

If Jack fundamentally changes so much that Neon thinks that she was confusing him for someone else, what is the point of making the resulting Garland Jack?

Interdimensional Echoes (Final Fantasy and the multiverse)

In interviews, the writers for Stranger of Paradise's story, Nomura and Nojima, note that the game isn't intended to directly be a prequel to FF1, but rather an 'alternate universe' that 'uses FF1 as a motif'. Were they just being technical, given the game's nature when involving time loops? Maybe. But maybe not. There are some differences after all: Astos goes from a generic dark elf who pretends to be a king and wants a crown to a handsome, darkly humorous and loyal manipulator. Cornelia and Pravoka are the only two towns to get any focus in the game. Bikke is an actual fighter rather than a coward who hands over his ship once his pirate band are defeated. And even if all of those were handwaved away, there is still the matter of Lufenia: While the assumption is that Sophia forced them out of the Flying Fortress as Tiamat did in the original, the situation is far more complicated: The Fortress is seemingly abandoned in Stranger, with the Lufenians instead residing at "Central", their pocket dimension which is sent spiraling into ruin by Nil and had their connection to Jack's dimension severed. While it's not impossible for the Lufenians that were abandoned after Central cut the link to retake the fortress, get thrown back out and build a village on the surface… I dunno, feels a bit complicated. But let's say that none of that bothers you. No stylistic differences in the depictions of everything in SoP. Let's assume that Jack reset the world to be exactly like FF1 (WoL seeming to have a Dragoon as a companon aside). Surely 'now' Jack HAS to be Dissidia's Garland, right? While the Multiverse is a trope that people have been getting sick of, Final Fantasy has utilizied it since at least FFVIII or FFT. Obviously, these were just for the sake of Gilgamesh or Cloud being where they shouldn't but the former's constant appearances gave the concept more weight, especially since it riffed off how the Warp spell was consistently portrayed (warping the target to another dimension/the rift). Another multiverse trope people get sick of is the concept of a replacable character/world: If a character dies, just replace them with a new one, or alternatively use that new one to tie up loose ends. While FF doesn't really indulge in that form of multiverse usually, the concept of characters existing in other continuities tends to hold more weight to it. The obvious answer is FFXIV. Due to its MMO nature, it shout-outs numerous other FF games through raid series or bosses or areas or what have you that are modeled after a particular FF game. There's cases like Xande, reminagined as an Emperor or the Baldesions, with Krile being a lalafell or Golbez, who had some significant changes to his background, but is still the man in the cool armor. Return to Ivalice is the most blatant example as it features the characters and general events of Final Fantasy Tactics, but makes hefty changes to the point it's not a pure adaptation - the biggest of which being the explicit demise of Ramza's party despite Matsuno's comments and certain appearances of Ramza and Agrias suggesting otherwise for the original game.

And, of course, it's time to talk about Final Fantasy III.

The Obligatory FF3 section

This was going to be a whole thing on the remake and the OG/Dissidia's continuity (the short of it is Refia -> WoFF -> Enna Kros -> Opera Omnia, give or take some stuff like FFRK that prioritizes the remake), but it suddenly hit me what this entire situation reminded me of.

It's Onion Knight-Luneth all over again.

Luneth and Onion Knight are both the main protagonists of Final Fantasy III. So they're both the same character, right?

From a personality perspective, Luneth is more brash, more laidback, and while I can't articulate it well, his attempts at bravado feel different from Onion Knight's. Appearancewise, you'd think would be a flat 'no'. Given Luneth looks like this:

And Onion Knight like this:

Which are starkly different, even with the differences that FF tends to have between artwork and in-game appearances. But still people confuse them, mostly because of this:

Which does have Luneth's face... but not his distinctive purple color scheme that he uses while using the Onion Knight job. Instead, it's what you'd get if you put Luneth's facial features on this:

Which has apparently caused some people to mistake the above for a Luneth costume.

Additionally, in some fanfics and whatnot, the author may give Luneth's name to Onion Knight. But that misses the point behind Onion Knight: Onion Knight is based on the original blank slate famicom protagonists. He is unnamed for the same reason that the Warrior of Light's name is never revealed: because, metawise, he never had one. Incidentally, I feel like the whole connection between the Warrior of Light and Onion Knight in OO didn't work as cleanly as the devs probably intended for a number of reasons, but that's a discussion for another day

(Though given this is in reference to Garland and they had the same mothers, it technically makes sense, but come on, we all know the real reason people give Onion Knight Luneth's name. Also, no useful distinguishable aspect like Jack Garland)

Much like the Garlands, Onion Knight and Luneth are technically the same character as both are based on the original Famicom Onion Knight. However, in terms of their actual characters, right down to their identities, they are wildly different. By the same token, Dissidia's Garland and Jack Garland are both takes on the Garland from Final Fantasy 1. However, they both differ heavily in certain ways, that would feel forced to try and make them the same guy.

Conclusion: The Cycle Continues

With Opera Omnia ending service and NT having done so long ago, we probably won't get an answer to DIFFERENT FUTURE's cliffhanger until the next Dissidia-related project chooses to answer that question, whether it be a full-on Dissidia game or

Whether or not Stranger of Paradise or Dissidia is canon, is largely irrelevant to FF1 itself. Square Enix has rarely ever allowed subseries or sequels to impact the original games (FFIV being a rare exception, and even then, largely the script and largely confined to the PSP version, which had the sequel bundled in). This is especially true with the Pixel Remasters, which removed even content that was in prior re-releases. Dissidia has never impacted the Final Fantasy 1 re-releases and it is incredibly unlikely that Stranger of Paradise will do so either. However, there is the question of impact in regards to Garland's appearances going forward: SE now has two potential Garlands to choose from, at least in theory. In practice, I can't imagine Dissidia Garland going away forever.

Regardless of what SE chooses to do, however, I remain convinced that Jack and the Dissidia Garland aren't literally the same guy. In terms of role, Jack seems pegged to be a God of Discord, not a right-hand as Garland tends to be. Thematically, they are opposites in regards to fate and their end results. And I feel that they would be cheapened, on top of needing some retcons, if they were to be the same person.

At the end of the day, both being Garland is enough reason to appreciate them both.

[thwardengates]

Sonic the Hedgehog

Just a lil characterization thing for Sonic in PICAU ^^ same rules apply as my chaos energy drabble post Not an obligatory read but if you feel like reading an essay go ahead I will not stop u!! it wld be very appreciated actually :]

First things first, Sonic is nonverbal in this AU. He did speak, and he might speak again as the story progresses, but for the time being he's gonna be entirely nv. The main reason for this is cause 1. Classic Sonic doesn't speak and I think it's cute, 2. He had to quiet down eventually, & 3. I said so

Second, there will be a LOT of focus on my au's divergence from the canon Forces plotline. Mostly focusing on the whole "6 months of torture" thing but made like, way worse because fuck those little anthro animals with supersonic speed & mountain shattering strength. just screw those little guys. ykwim.

Sonic doesn't give up, not even when he's faced with certain doom. We've seen that. that's how he is in Frontiers, and has been his whole life. So he stays that way. Sonic's capture wasn't pretty. It was fairly gross and bloody, and he looked like a corpse when he finally passed out. His legs were essentially mutilated from the attacks he sustained, and it definitely seemed like he broke a few bones other than his ribs. In an uprising war, it isn't going to be a nice gentle process, and when he's pitted up against phantom copies of Shadow, Metal Sonic, Chaos, Zavok, and then Infinite, he's bound to get beat up. A lot. He does get stronger every passing day (according to him, officially!) but it doesn't make it easier to handle four of your most difficult battles and then a new enemy on top of that. So yeah, he was pretty bruised and battered when he was taken captive on the Death Egg. So much so his legs weren't salvageable after the ordeal, and ended up amputated. (Because who'd think pushing past your limits could have repercussions?)

He's a little more serious than he has been in a few games. Again, more similar to Frontiers. He still makes jokes, but the psychological affects of six months of isolation with only enemies to accompany you & suddenly being unable to do the one thing you do best? It would take a toll. He stopped his snarky comments about halfway through his imprisonment simply because it wasn't worth the little energy he had. Most of it was pushed into conserving his energy, rather than making a snide remark at (fake copies of) your enemies.

He generates his own chaos energy! How? Fake Chaos Emeralds, of course!! Thrilling. Love to see immoral experimentation. Basically, the simple concept is: Eggman wanted to use fake Chaos Emeralds to act as the power/generator for things. It would keep regenerating, was incredibly powerful, and in the event the Phantom Ruby falls short on power, there was still highly destructive amounts of power available to him. But he needed a way to purify/funnel that energy into a more concentrated source, so he ended up using Sonic as a way to filter the energy into a usable form. Some of it is residual, but he also did end up with incredibly tiny, fragmented shards of fake Chaos Emeralds stuck in his body, which end up building up enough and reacting with each other enough to keep building up more energy inside of him, even without the help of an external source of chaos energy. Which essentially leads to constant overexposure. The main reason he doesn't end up vanishing from reality as we know it is because Eggman built up neutralizers that will keep the energy in check when it's not in use, because he can't have Sonic dying on him before the Eggman Empire is completed. His goal is still to kill Sonic in the end if it proves appropriate, or continue using him as a living battery, really.

Unfortunately it still follows a somewhat canon-compliant storyline, Sonic is rescued by the Resistance (+ Shadow and Tails, but that'll be explained in a later post really. All you need to know is I'm giving them a little more spotlight than just "did you know these are fake copies" and "I gave reason for classic Sonic being here so people cld still play as Sonic!") which also means he's away from those neutralizers. So for a good few days/weeks he's left overloading on energy n suffering while Tails tinkers away at his prosthetics. The whole "I'll destroy the world in 3 days" thing isn't going on here simply bc there isn't much that can stop Eggman n Infinite from destroying anything, bc Sonic is supposedly unable to survive for much longer than a day or two without neutralizers. It's more a backup plan if anything. Tails ends up making Sonic's prosthetics, which act as a natural outlet and neutralizer for Sonic's chaos energy. They basically funnel it out of his body and into the prosthetics, which automatically tune themselves to his needs, as well as dealing with his overload issue. Sonic ends up bunkering down with Shadow and Tails, though. He learns a lot about what happened in his absence through them. He also learns about their newfound friendship/bond, and even if he has his grudges about Shadow from the whole phantom-double nearly killing him thing, he's still able to forgive him, especially considering he kept his little brother alive and mostly unscathed the whole time, despite it being a literal warzone outside.

It does take him awhile to get back on 'talking' terms where he's more responsive and socialized again, and he's mostly miffed about the fact he wasn't able to help the Resistance sooner, due to Tails n Shadow forcing him to spend some time to recover and let himself get adjusted to his new set of legs. He's still stand-offish and sorta rockin' that thousand-yard stare when he scrapes his shit together enough that it's acceptable for him to join the fight again. He works alongside Shadow more than the Resistance though, simply because I can't imagine their little rivalry not having some teases about "I spent 6 months locked in a little space cage, and I'm still faster than you!" n also Shadow being mildly peeved at the idea of Sonic going from being weaponized/turned into a living battery to immediately wanting to join the fight again. I figure they'd also be able to connect a little bit cause they've got some similarities that aren't just... Fast hedgehogs. Now they've both been weaponized against their will bc I thought it'd be funny

Once Eggman realizes Sonic is in fact well alive and kickin', and with even more of a grudge and fire to fight than before, that's when the whole 'sun comes careening down to kiss us all a fiery last kiss goodbye' plan comes into action. He's able to get it goin' a little quicker simply because some time does elapse, but not soon enough that the Resistance n Team Dark aren't able to band together to kick ass. also omega gets repaired in this time ig. details details I'm not gettin' into them

Gadget is still very much here btw but this is mostly a focus on the non-resistance team (basically team sonadow dads + their strange fox son) and Sonic's experiences. forces does conclude blah blah I'm not doing all this rn more will get added later I'm tired

[lunar-lair]

oh my god i never told you guys abt my disaster twins competitive pkmn players concept. one sec ill put it under a cut for you bc this might get long lmao

so basically. gen 9 came out, and the boys, in their recent-switch glory, were like omg hell yes. game time. donnie and leo both get violet and mikey and raph both get scarlet (theyve got their own games bc they would tear each other apart if they had to share physical copies trust me) and generally trade around exclusives and chill etc etc. also while im on this leo picks quaxly, mikey is a toss up between fuecoco and quaxly, raph picks fuecoco obvs, and donnie picks sprigatito, as does april when she gets her own copy of violet later (which she honestly only chose for the loyalty points lmao she likes karaidon better)

anyways i was saying. donnie is one of those nerds who like perfectly iv trains his normal ass in-game team and builds perfect compositions around typings and looks up the gyms types n stuff and he was SO excited when he learned abt tera types and how they impacted team comps

leo on the other hand has the messiest type crossover and team comp EVER but still manages to thrash his opponents bc he uses really good movesets and strategies

the twins get into watching competitive videos while they play violet in silence together (hashtag parallel play) until donnie eventually starts commenting on weird stat spreads and leo eventually bursts out about shitty move choices and weird sets, or leo starts showing donnie videos abt odd pkmn getting high in latters, and then they start watching showdown battles...

and they lightbulb.

donnie loves building teams more than anything else, loves making them efficient as humanly possible.

leo loves showing the potential of odd pokemon and would kill for a good strategic challenge after all this time (hes been protecting against nemona and using electroweb against gym leaders, poor guy).

and, well, its not like you need anything special to get on the ladder in violet...

they start out simple, donnie building a basic team and leo reviewing it before going at the basic gen 9 ladders.

they kind of wreck house.

they just start going at the ladders with that team in their free time, then a different one when they get bored, then one with a few oddballs when donnie decides to ask leo what pokemon he wants to use, then they get kind of bored of just paldean pokemon so donnie gets to work understanding showdown...

but while its fun, they dont have anyone to brag to, because their brothers have no fucking clue what theyre talking about.

donnie has experience with youtube, right?

so they set up a little joint thing; a channel called disasterx2, no webcam, just videos about ladder battles. they end up specializing both in unique teams and movesets and in just vids about breaking down walls in ladders with a normal team. what makes both nifty is that donnie explains the whole team comp in a separate video to the battles, and the aesthetic quality is improved by donnies sensibilities and mikeys input (he was absolutely excited when they asked him to help with it. leo was no help. so much offense, actually, i have a feeling his fashion sense is good but the moment you try to make him make something look good visually on its own hes screwed.), and leos strategies are batshit, and ofc the boys are the boys, they go on tangents sometimes when they do real-time audio during battles and sometimes they just. dont cut them out. raph and mikey make guest appearances sometimes, april cheers them on on occasion, her and raph are very relieved bc its finally something non destructive they can spend their time on, its all great.

leo very often picks pokemon and movesets out and then donnie provides the pokemon (through breeding and stat spread tweaking, because god knows hed love that nerd shit). donnie likes it because 1. how leo uses those outlier pokemon is very interesting and 2. it gives him an opportunity to think about how to apply the right stats, natures, etc to apply to the pokemon and moves leo chose.

one of my favorite ever headcanons is that leo gets quiet when he focuses. like, dead quiet, and terrifyingly quiet. hes well known in their fandom for being very chatty over voiceover and then pretty quiet whenever hes playing challenging battles. donnie doesnt understand the strategies all that well so when leo gets too focused he just talks a lot abt the stat spreads and they add extra text to the video lmao. sometimes they utilize their clueless family members to have them ask questions they wouldnt have considered due to their knowledge in videos, sometimes donnie snags mikey while leos too quiet when theyre doing real-time audio, etc the fam knows theyre just glad theyre having fun

looks around flips through my mental notebook. nods twice. thats it i think! basically i think itd be fun if the twins played competitive but donnie built the teams and leo played hehe. i thought of it one day and it just stuck with me. anyways thanks for sticking w me through this long post that i need to end before my phone glitches out oops

[heloflor]

You know, considering how many posts I recently made about Movie Peach and how negative they are, there’s something I feel the need to clarify since I wouldn’t be surprised if people had some assumptions and I don’t want words I didn’t say being put into my mouth (Tl;Dr at the end):

As a completely original character, fully detached from everything other than the movie, I have no issues with Movie Peach. She’s badass in a fun way, spunky, has a few cute faces, and I especially appreciate how despite being a strong female character stereotype she’s very supportive of Mario and builds him up rather than putting him down, it makes her likeable and their relationship very cute.

And yes, this is the way I perceived her from the get-go, but only mentioned it in my movie reaction post made all the way back when said movie came out, hence needing to say it again now. To quote that post: “Least favorite character is DK. It could’ve been Peach but my issues with her stem from how different she is from her games counterpart. If you take her movie character as a brand-new character rather than a game adaptation, she’s actually pretty great as a guide and strong mentor.” And while there are things in this post I now disagree with, this part remains my current opinion.

So yeah, as an original character, she’s pretty great...but that’s also the issue.

Movie Peach is not an original character. She’s supposed to be an adaptation of a pre-existing character who already has her own personality. And as an adaptation, Movie Peach fails at every level. Not only that, but several dialogues keep hyping her up in a way that comes off as Illuminations looking down on Games Peach, you know, the character their own Peach is supposed to be an adaptation of.

That’s why I take such issue with Movie Peach. It’s not the character itself, it’s how bad of an adaptation she is. And if I did my job correctly, every single time I talk negatively of her in my posts, it’s about her as an adaptation specifically. The only instance of me being an ass for no reason is in my table comparison post where I call her a dumbass, which I point out in the tags to be me throwing shade and not something I actually believe.

Now I also want to say that I hate Movie Peach for what she represents and the consequences of her existence on Peach’s character and her perception by the public, so to keep it short I’m going with bullet points:

It annoys me a lot that a multi-million dollars company couldn’t be bothered to adapt her character properly, especially since they apparently closely worked with Nintendo and the concept art very much show them who Peach is as a person (the one where she’s encouraging Mario to fight DK reminds me of the 86 Anime where she keeps having Mario fight her battles while powerless to defend herself; also it’s funny how in the art of Games Peach reacting to Movie Peach it’s obvious the artist had no idea what personality Movie Peach has). The fact she’s a favorite character of mine doesn’t help and makes me feel robbed from seeing a beloved character on the big screen for the first time. And obviously them low-key insulting her by hyping up Movie Peach makes it worse.

Even before getting into the fandom I knew that Peach isn’t the most well-liked character, with many gamers especially finding her bland and boring. This was already sad on its own, but now those same people are praising a character who’s completely different from her for being “so much better” or “finally giving her a personality”. It sucks. Games Peach deserves better than that.

With those things in mind I don’t think I need to explain why the fact this characterization is possibly bleeding out into the games is something I dread. Now I can live with a cover art change, but if they change her actual character I’m going to scream. Especially if they only do it to Peach and no other character. And yes I know some people also pointed out a possible direction change for her voice but 1. for some reason I don’t really care, possibly because she’s been through quite a lot of voice-actors already 2. we only clearly hear her voice in the Showtime trailer during the Kung-Fu part so maybe her voice will differ depending on the costume, it is a stageplay after all, and 3. the Wonder short with Bowser has her let out four noises, one of which has a different tone while the other three keep her usual high octave, so I’m not sure if they truly intend on changing her voice. Haven’t played Wonder yet tho so I can’t speak to all her other voicelines.

Hopefully this will be my last post about this outside of answering asks and reblogs as I’m always open to discussions/debates. I don’t like bringing negativity and especially not drama to my blog but, considering the extensive rant I made about this, it only feels right to make sure people don’t misinterpret where my issues come from, since I can absolutely understand people seeing my posts and concluding that I hate Movie Peach for who she is rather than what she represents.

Now, instead of being negative about Movie Peach I’d rather focus on being positive about Games Peach, mostly through the fics I’m working on.

Tl;Dr: Movie Peach would be genuinely great as an original character but alas she was put inside the skin of someone with a completely different personality from hers. And it's very hard to look past this given the consequences of Movie Peach's existence on how people percieve Peach as a whole now on top of a possible change in her games character.

[catgirl-pawbs]

ROSIE HOBBYING UPDATE

though,,, I've said it a few times in a few places but I'm super enamoured with the concept of having different names for different contexts though I've been bad at actually doing it and the name I'd like to use in online spaces / for people I don't know irl is Ryuuka (I know I had another online alias/name before that i streamed under for 2yrs but due to Events I now hate being called that so all 3 of u that know it that name is dead to me now please forget) so I suppose instead I should write

✨🎀RYUUKA HOBBYING UPDATE🎀✨

LONG POST INCOMING sorry if I take up ur whole dash

so I tried to search my blog for the "hobbying" tag to see what I have and have not posted recently but lo and behold,

tumblr is truly the functional of webbedsites, I KNOW ITS THERE I PUT IT THERE now please show me !

except it won't if course because it sucks.

so anyway I'm gonna start typing about things and hope I get everything I haven't posted and nothing I have.

something like three weeks ago, I finally got to play a match of Warhammer 40k with my older brother! this had been in the making in a way since 2014(-ish I don't remember), when this same brother introduced myself and my other brother to the concept of Warhammer and all three of us bought models. sadly both brothers quickly discovered the "building and painting" portion of the hobby and promptly dropped out, one of them giving his T'au models to me because I LOVED THIS SHIT.

anyway I think I posted about all this before and that Match In Question wherein I took 500pts of Grey Knights (Brother-Captain, Terminator Squad, Strike Squad) against my brother's 500pts Imperial Guard (Commissar, Guardsmen regiment, 3x Mortar Crew models, Sentinel, Leman Russ)or something like that I didn't read his list. Unfortunately this battle ended with my noble Grey Knights getting summarily decimated and right tabled by the mighty power of the autocannon-equipped Leman Russ if that bastard Russ wasn't already dead I'd kill him myself

again I'm fairly sure I've posted about this before so I'll stop there and not add images.

also before I continue (to explain why points counts might seem weird to other 40kplayers) I should note that I have been and will continue to be playing Fifth Edition Warhammer 40k, because those are the books that I have. New books are hellishly expensive and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to reasonably use wahapedia so anyone who is going to tell me to play a more recent edition please kindly do one of the following;

1.) shush.

2.) buy me the books urself since you can afford it

3.) go get intimate with a cactus.

Now! about a week ago, a little less, I got to play ANOTHER match of 40k! a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. this time with a friend who has an adjacent interest in similar sort of games and who helped me build the felt-and-aquariumplant terrain pieces Im certain I posted pictures of before though I can't go check >:|

This match was again 500pts and featured both my lovely new terrain and the following armies;

TYRANIDS. >Tyranid Prime (boneswords, devourer) >3xRaveners (rending claws) >5x Ymgarl Genestealers >10xHormagaunts (adrenaline glands) >10xTermagaunts (devourers)

GREY KNIGHTS. >Brother-Captain (mastercrafted storm bolter, mastercrafted nemesis force sword) >5xTerminator (mastercrafted storm bolter [justicar], mastercrafted nemesis force sword [justicar]) >5xStrike Squad (nemesis force halberds [all], mastercrafted storm bolter [justicar])

it was great! took about 4 hours because I hadn't memorized everything yet and my friend/opponent was new to 5th but we had a good time despite getting real exhausted by the end of it there are too damn many numbers to remember

I'm still super happy with how the new terrain looks!! sure it's very Amateur Hour and doesn't look ~realistic~ but I love it and am very proud of it!

Unfortunately in this match, the Grey Knights not played by me this time again tasted bitter defeat. I begin to think that list I made just sucks. or that the army needs a larger point total to make a functional list. further experimentation needed.

First blood was taken by the Knights shooting down a few(2) Hormagaunts, which was repeated in the next turn gunning down another 5 of them. the remaining gaunts took shelter for their lives behind a small copse of trees, though the Knights' Terminators quickly closed to finish their prey.

the Nids took revenge in the Genestealers flanking and stealing the jeans off the Strike Squad, without a single loss.

Finally came the crushing melee of the Raveners charging the Terminators and Captain from the cover of the ruins, slowly inflicting death (with great difficulty and losing one of their number due to those incredible 2+saves), eventually being joined by the Tyranid Prime and Genestealers in finishing off the stragglers.

the Termagants... yeah. those guys were there. they mostly just hung around. fired off 40?-ish shots and inflicted a total of 1 wound. good job guys. worth every point, truly.

Unfortunately because I failed to teach the game and remember the rules properly, this match was unbalanced, as the Terminators were not making 2 melee attacks per turn as they should've and I'd forgot to roll for the Nids instinctive behaviour rules (though the only difference that would've really made was the already useless gants running for cover if they failed)

It was a good learning experience and we had fun though!! surely we'll have a better and more heated match next time! ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ

that kaomoji looks kinda haunted,,

In other news! yesterday I finally took the time to get my printer in Operational Condition again! this means that, after being more than a month with only one arm, my Knight Armiger Warglaive proxy (model courtesy of u/johnbearross on reddit) is finally fully operational! catgirl very extremely excited about this one

additionally, though I do need to print another warglaive and two helverins still, I've started on printing the bigger boy, a Questoris Knight Paladin proxy (model credits the same), something I've been excited to do for forever and the next step towards the biggest finalest goal; the Imperator Titan

base and left leg printed (6h each), right leg in production (another 6h) (also I know the quality is bad because of the flash but my kitchen's lighting is awful and I promise without it looks worse) (don't mind the bag of rice in the bg, girl's gotta eat)

FINALLY, the most recent development in Ryuuka's Hobbying;

MY BOYS??!??! MY BEAUTIFUL LOVELY SPECTACULAR BOYS????? THEY ARRIVED TODAY!!

bit of a story on this one, but first; I know that I told one of my dear friends like 6months ago that the next time I bought gunpla of get one for u too and we sat down and picked one out for u and everything and I didn't forget I swear but I shouldn't've even bought these boys since I have a lot of debt going on, the only reason I did is that on god man I need a distraction project or the depression is gonna Get To Me (not that it doesn't already but,) so like. When I actually have spare money instead of spending money I don't have I WILL get u that gunpla and we will build them together I didn't and am not gonna forget.

Okay so the deal with these boys is that I was talking to a friend recently about how I really like the appearance of Mass Production Mobile Suits over the special Gundam suits (unpopular opinion but I hate gundam suits' horns/crests, I think they look so so silly), in particular I love the look of the DaggerL and the Rgm-79 GM, but I really don't like the GM's helmet, I feel that it dramatically detracts from my man's vibes since the GM is made of angular and square segments and then the helmet is ROUND and also the visor is really large and open, giving it something of a 'friendly' (anthropromorphizing, I know) look that really doesn't suit the rest of it's design. In the same moment I was lamenting this design contradiction, a guncannon came on screen, which has a helmet with a narrower visor, and a- well I guess it's called a visor too but the shade thing some helmets have like a built-in imitation ballcap thing and anyway the Guncannon's head design gives it a much more 'serious' look that I feel would fit great on the GM, and the GM's more open and round design would fit right in with the Guncannon's rounded limbs and fuckoff huge shoulder-mounted cannon barrels.

So immediately in that conversation I had something of an epiphany of this and decided that I HAVE TO make a headswap of those guys and NOW IM DOING IT except what I need right now is a project so we're taking it a couple steps further

I'm gonna trim these guys all out of the runners, file the nubs, label all the parts with masking tape and little baggies, swap the head parts, then going one colour/runner at a time, prime them black, paint them, panel line them, sticker them, top coat them, and ONLY THEN will I finally start assembling them

I've never painted a gunpla before but the best way to start is a headfirst dive into conkcrete babey let's get it

also I want to try weathering on my GM, nevermind that I've never tried it before and have no idea how, and each kit will be getting a different topcoat; glossy for the Guncannon because I want my boy to look like fun lil candy apple lad, and matte for my GM because I want it to be a semi-realistic Setpiece build.

also been thinking about utilizing the power of masking tape mid-painting process to add stripes of red to GM's arm&leg armour, but currently unsure if I want to follow through with the idea.

kay I think that's everything that's a lotta words I've been typing for forever it's 3am im not checking for typos I'm gonna sleep now goodnight gamers, nyan~

[basilquesadilla]

My Thoughts on Pokemon Sword/Shield

Hi everyone! Thought I'd do something a bit fun out of boredom and just give a very casual review of Sword and Shield(mainly Shield since that's the one I played). I was gifted it by a friend who didn't want her copy. She didn't have the DLC(nor did I feel like dropping extra money for it) so that'll be excluded from this. Thought I'd go ahead and do this in a "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" type format.

The Good:

Quality of Life Improvements/:

When I say quality of life, I mean two things. Firstly...FINALLY WILD POKEMON ARE IN THE OVERWORLD!!! Listen, is there a single person out there that enjoys random enemy encounters in RPGs? If you do like those, pls seek help/j

Ok but seriously, these were so nice. Never felt the need to stock up on repels, and finding a lot of the Pokemon I wanted to catch was easy. I did kinda dislike the mystery mons that would appear too(especially since some mons only spawned from those, like Applin). But that was a minor flaw. Overall I'm happy to see this, and if they ever go back to random encounters I will be fighting them.

The other is in how the tutorial section of this game feels. After Sun and Moon's tutorial feeling like it was never ending, I feel like this one was actually quite nice. Telling Hop "Yes I know what a Pokemon Center is," and having him actually go "Oh ok, then I won't explain anything" was very nice. I overall didn't feel like the game was aggressively destroying the pace with tutorials, and I appreciate that. Considering the fact that Sun and Moon's first island is something that holds me back from wanting to replay it lol.

The New Pokemon Designs + The Soundtrack:

Gonna group these as they both have to do with presentation. This generation definitely has added some designs that I really enjoy. Appletun, CorviKnight, and Obstagoon are just a few of my favorites. That's all I can really say to be honest. It's wild that Pokemon was on it's 8th generation at this point and it's still churning out fun designs. While Dynamax/Gigantimax(as we'll see later) isn't my favorite gimmick, the Gigantimax designs were super fun and epic to see in-battle. Overall, Pokemon once again succeeded at creating a good cast of new mons, that's all there really is to say.

The soundtrack was also great to hear, as expected from Pokemon. I enjoyed most of the tunes that played throughout the game, not much to say about it. Some of my faves were the gym battle music and the pre-Leon fight music(iykyk). The latter was super epic and fun to listen to while doing the penultimate boss of the game.

The Gym Challenges(kinda):

This is an aspect that lean into being both good and bad. Listen, in CONCEPT, gym challenges are great. It's really fun to have some type of mini challenge to do before facing the gym leader. And it's nice to deviate from the typical "go through gym, fight trainers on a linear path" system of past gens. That was one of the best things about Alola's island trials. I think SwSh wanted to find a way to mimic that with...mixed success

Milo and Kabu's gyms(I'm not googling their names sorry lol) are examples of where I think they succeeded. Was the herding Wooloo one particularly challenging or anything? No, but that's ok cause it's only the first gym. They probably could've added some other obstacles/yampers to make it harder, but eh, it was fine, and trainer fights being optional was great. It made me expect to see other unique minigames in the other gyms. The fire gym's challenge did a great job at putting a twist on gym trainers. There goal is to stop you from catching the wild mons to earn points, not to take you out in a 1v1, and that was neat! Overall the gym challenges were a neat concept and had some good executions, but as we'll see later some of the other gyms were horrible at it.

Quick note btw, I really enjoyed the gym battles themselves as well as the final cup. Felt like the gym leaders were actually trying to win, and Leon in particular gave me a bit of challenge. With all of the major positives out of the way, it's time for:

The Bad:

Gym Challenges:

Alright yeah let's get this out of the way. For the most part the gym challenges felt....rather uncreative/like things you'd see in another game. Nessa's gym straight up felt like any ordinary gym from another mainline game. Raihan's was just....double battles. Seriously? That was such a disappointing and boring as a concept, they could've done something more creative than "but what if the battles were all doubles and focused on weather?" I feel like there were gyms in previous games that tried to do a similar concept to what gym challenges were doing, with similar or more success. Examples would be Fantina's dimly lit gym focused on making your way through a maze with the flashlight, or Clay's gym in BW2 also being a bit of a maze. Yeah, there really isn't much to say about the gym challenges other than "They thought they did something unique, but all they did was give Pokemon Gym layouts a new name."

City/Route Design:

Oh boy. These towns/cities have got to be some of the most boring things EVER. Listen, previous games have definitely had some "meh" towns. But jeez....not as bad as this. Spikemuth is literally just a hallway. A HALLWAY. REALLY?!? So many of the towns had me running around to find things to do, but I just couldn't find NPCs saying anything interesting or fun. After a while I just gave up on doing that. Ballonlea is the biggest offender here. Visually the town is GORGEOUS, probably the prettiest location a gym has ever been in in a Pokemon game. But there's like...nothing to do. Nothing to do other than take on the gym, that's how most of Galar's cities can be described. This will play a role later when we disucss the....*shudders* writing of the story in the game. But yeah, they suck

The routes aren't much better off either. Many of them are very linear paths without much to do than battle trainers. Which btw, is it me or did it feel like trainers were sparse in some area. Don't get me wrong, I hate when they crowd areas with trainers, and I like that many of the ones here are avoidable but....I felt like I wasn't doing much battling(though luckily the shared exp, something I didn't mind at all, was good at keeping me up in levels). Routes felt like they had no little secrets to find, and I never felt an urge to backtrack. I probably coulda gone back with the water bike, but route were so short I doubt I would've found much.

The Wild Area:

Based on what I've seen of Scarlet/Violet, this feels like it was basically there way of testing how something more open world in a mainline game would be liked by Pokemon fans. And well, it was....ok I guess. It wasn't horrible to go through, and I liked that the Areas had differing weather that changed spawn rates. But the whole thing just felt like a tech demo than anything fleshed out. I would've rather just had more routes throughout the region to make it feel like we weren't speeding it through the gym challenge at mach speeds. It's not as bad as the plain cities/routes since you're not FORCED to go through it much, but it definitely feels like there was wasted potential here. The amount of options it made for teambuilding early on was probably it's biggest strength.

The Ugly:

Dynamaxing:

Ok listen. It's not as horrible as the other thing I'll discuss below. But it's just SOOO BORING. This has got to be my least favorite generational gimmick. Megas were really badass, and Z-moves might've been plain, but the fun animations made it cool at least. I haven't played SV so I can't speak for the terra stuff there. But you wanna know what was cool about gen 6 and 7's gimmicks? THEY COULD BE DONE ANYWHERE, NOT JUST SELECT BOSS BATTLES. I know that the game does have you doing gym battles pretty often as a big part of its narrative, but jeez. Restricting the gimmick like that just feels bad. And it doesn't really feel like dynamaxing is anything strategic anyways. You know any given opponent Gigantimaxes their last team member, so you may as well just save your Dynamax till then so you can easily last out the 3 turns or KO it with your own superpowered moves. The Gigantimax forms at least had unique designs, which is the only plus I'll give this system. Otherwise I'd say the gimmick insanely boring.

The God Awful Writing:

Putting extra emphasis here cause dear lord....THIS IS THE WORST WRITTEN GAME I'VE EVER PLAYED! I'm gonna break this down into just the narrative itself and then get into characterization.

First off, the plot. Or more so, the lack of one. Throughout the game everyone is telling you "just keep doing the gym challenge, just keep doing the gym challenge, just keep doing the gym challenge." Even when an emergency happens and whatnot, they tell you to not get involved, and thus there's nothing breaking up the gyms. This leads to the gym challenge feeling insanely fast-paced. When Milo, Nessa, and Kabu talk to you and Hop, I feel like it should feel like something, because completing the first 3 gyms is considered canonically impressive. But the game makes you go through these so quickly that I felt nothing. The pace is just too fast. The only mild breaks you get are talking to Sonia about the ancient legends, but all of the info is just things you randomly stumble on or have spoonfed to you. They want it to feel like some kind of mystery you're unraveling, but it doesn't feel like it. Going through some ancient ruins or locations to investigate in between gyms with her would've been a good way to space out the gyms more.

Now, you know what typically handles pacing issues like this? The presence of an evil team. Unfortunately our villain team here is team skull. Except they're not even an evil team. They're just a bunch of losers who are aggressively excited about cheering on Marnie. Marnie, btw, is a big old nothingburger. She has a neat design, but her personality feels like nothing, and she didn't feel like a good rival at all. Her writing puts her on par with the XY rivals cast imo. As such, since all Team Yell does is occasionally battle you for dumb reasons, they don't break up the plot much. The game instead decides it wants to make Chairman Rose. be a "twist" villain, which only happens during the championship matches. Which means the game only gets most of its proper story development AT THE VERY END! And now, let's consider this. An "evil team" that isn't even really trying to do anything that insanely evil, and a twist villain from the region's main corporation....

Yep. That's right folks. They wanted to replicate Team Skull and Lusamine. Except they failed. Cause Team Skull was a group of actual misfits, not just some cringe fans of some trainer they idolized. They had a badass theme, and Po Town solos Spikemuth. And Lusamine was written much better. We're shown immediately that the Aether Foundation is sus, and they did well writing her to just be someone who's truly obsessed with her research and the Ultra Beasts. Overall, the pacing here just sucks. The game is 90% gym challenge, 10% other story. They could've easily fixed this via the suggestion I had for Sonia earlier, as well as by allowing us to help Leon alongside Hop with the dynamax disasters happening. But nope, they didn't want us to. At least I can say that the big raid fight alongside the box art legendaries was cool and had a fun theme.

Lastly, I just want to discuss the writing of Hop and Bede. Now personally, I love these two. I love their personalities and mannerisms, and I enjoyed getting to see them...but their arcs definitely needed work. The fast pace of going through the gym challenges makes it feel like we've barely even seen Bede before he's kicked out of the gym challenge and later taken by Opal as her successor. Hop meanwhile highlights why I think Pokemon should have some forced losses. If they had made Hop an unwinnable fight the first 2-3 times(by simply making his Wooloo/other mons he's used better) it would've showed how he's entering the challenge with more experience than us. Then as we(and Bede) defeat him, that starts him down a spiral. Which btw, they were kinda bad at highlighting his inferiority complex. It's wild to say this, but this is a game that NEEDED padding. It needed that extra story stuff between gyms, cause the aggressive way the game railroads you down the gym challenge just makes the pacing and characterization suffer greatly

Conclusion/Overall Thoughts:

Despite all of my complaints there, I did at least like playing this game. It was some good old Pokemon fun, and the QoL improvements made it so I could at least had good stretches of doing my own thing(though those stretches were probably too long). I think I'd give it a solid 3/5, maybe a 2.75/5. Do I think it's worth the $60 price tag? Fuck no, definitely get it from someone else or try to find it used. But I definitely don't think it's AS bad as people made it out to be. An overall ok game, but definitely one on the lower end when it comes to Pokemon's mainline games.

EDIT: Actually upon reflection this is more of a 2 or 2.5 out of 5 lol. Sorry to SwSh fans, maybe if I get the DLC one day it'll rise up a bit. But for now I'm just not feeling it.

[unreadpoppy]

DAO Final Thoughts/Review (I guess)

So overall, this game was fucking good. Choosing your origin which will determine the small prologue you play that sets you up for the whole thing was a really good concept and it made me immediatly hooked with the plot (and it made me want to replay the game with the other origins to see how things are). Also, I like that the other stories in those origins happen even if you didn't pick them (like the whole wedding situation of the city elf origin still taking place and you seeing bits and pieces of it when you get in Denerim as another origin).

I went with Cousland warrior mainly because I knew nothing of this world so I went with the one thing that felt familiar: human warrior (cause I didn't want to mess with spellcasting without having a grip on how things worked at first). And let me say, I usually don't play with warrior type characters but this game made it very enjoyable to do so.

(under the cut cause it's long)

I loved all of the companions. Each one was so unique from the other and I did get a sense of like cammandery (idk how to spell this word) from them, especially with their banter (which, btw, fucking top tier banter). Wynne, in particular, was probably my favorite companion solely because of her wisdom. Like, almost every interaction I had with her, I got tears in my eyes because of her words of encouragemnt and advice and i just i love this "old" woman so much.

I romance Alistair, and let me say, this dude got me hooked ok. He's just so fucking sweet and his rose speech was so fucking special and I just AAAAAAAA. Since I was playing with a Cousland warden, I did marry him in the end. I just, I love him so much your honor it's hard to explain.

Quests wise, I focused more on the four main ones and did a few side quests. My favorite was probably Nature of the Beast solely because of the ending, with the spirit and the elf dude whose name I can't remember making peace and dying together, it made me emotional. My least favorite was probably A Paragon of Her Kind because I cannot begin to explain how much I H A T E D the Deep Roads. I hated it so much, I ended up enjoying the Fade, and I did the Fade first. It was just...such a slog to get through, and I felt like I was walking around aimlessly. At least in the Fade, I had a sense of progressing and it gave some insight into Zevran's background with the Crows.

Another quest that made me emotional was during the Urn of Sacred Ashes, when Bryce (Cousland's dad) shows up again....aaah the flashbacks to a dnd game of mine were huge.

I also liked the sense that the choices you made were actually affecting the world around you. It gave everything a sense of importance, and I really enjoyed that, especially with the aftermath of the Landsmeet.

Speaking of which, I'm sorry to everyone who likes Loghain, if I see this dude on the streets I'm fighting him. But good on Bioware for creating an interesting antagonist, as I wanted to murder him every step of the way.

I actually enjoyed the path to Fort Drakon before facing the archdemon. I like that halfway through, you cut back to the 4 companions you left at the gate and get to put them to work too. Idk how to explain, but fighting those darkspawn really gave a sense of like damn this is the end, we're getting to the final boss battle. Also, having all your armies there really came in to help, and first enchanter irving, bless you for being there to kill the Archdemon.

Killing the Archdemon also felt realllly satisfying and seeing the big light while the darkspawn retreat was *chef's kiss*. The epilogue was quite nice, thought it did make me a bit sad that it was like 'all your friends are leaving' but I understand why it was that way. Also, Fergus showing up was nice. I liked the ending cards showing what happened after and althought I'm not the biggest fan of DLCs, at least they had the sense of saying like 'that's a sotry ofr another time, this is the end.'

My biggest issues with this game were all on the more technical side - I struggled HEAVILY with crashes and bugs after leaving Lothering, which made me have to spend days without playing so that the issue could fix itself. I hope this game gets remastered one day just so that it runs smoothily on nowadays computers. My other struggle was the map, but that's a more personal issue than anything.

I loved this game, loved the world and its characters and it's definetly one I'll want to go back again in the future.

[repl1c4nt]

ffxvi desperately tries to grapple with its identity as a final fantasy game while also trying to be something the series has never been before (m rated game of thronesesque dark fantasy) and honestly i think that internal conflict really is what kills the game most because it is at its best when it sheds its expectations as a final fantasy title and becomes its own thing with gripping political drama and high stakes in a less world-ending way. ultima kills just about all intrigue the story builds up which is especially disappointing because Annabella worked incredibly well as the games primary antagonist.. her and olivier were fumbled severely imo you cant get any cooler than THE! dion lesage having an actual unspoken war with a 10 yo

there was no reason (in my opinion!!!!!!!!!) to bring ultima into the mix and change the stakes so rapidly and drastically. wow this man is being manipulated by his evil cousin fucking wife into dragging the entire continent into a pointless war all while theres disloyalty stirring among the knights dragoon led by his OWN son but its all just ultima. like ok whatever but annabella would have made a vastly more interesting antagonist liek :P but of course it has a long history of intergalatic threats (usually god adjacent) that Should be the antagonists because its what final fantasy is. stakes larger than life, epic battles and flashy effects, i know i keep comparing ffxvi to heavensward, and i generally dont do that when criticizing games but i feel like its warrented for this: how thordan functions as an antagonist and final boss vs ultima

i think the most obvious difference is thordan is there and apparent since the beginning however ultima serves roughly the same purpose as lahabrea the background scheming ever-present force manipulating the game however lahabrea is merely a conduit by which thordan achieves his goal of being the god-king and not the surprise twist antagonist there to shed every character of their interesting appeal. barnabas suffers the most from this being easily the most interesting man here (i struggle to really say id like to see more of barnabas given what we do see of him is.............Well)but no matter what glimpses of his psyche we do get the allure is non existent because hes not a character in any meaningful way hes Just an extra limb to ultima who ultimately serves no narrative purpose besides saying cryptic things and be a boss fight (admittedly his fight is good. maybe the most ive struggled in the game which i mean as a compliment that dps check was brutal barely made it through by the skin of my neck spamming max potions when i could and relying solely on lb haha) where lahabrea acts as the mysterious force pushing the plot along hes only relegated to a dungeon boss as opposed to a trial because narratively it isnt lahabrea who wants this its thordan. its by his own hands that his god king form is achieved he feels like an actual character... barnabas is there to serve vague exposition that only goes barely explained by the end of 16

olivier and annabellas roles as antagonists feel more complete and thought out than the actual main 'villain' which is really disappointing, because any intrigue built by the conflict in Sanbreque is dashed when dion was simply wrong and olivier was ultima the whole time ooooooh

joshuas entire sideplot is relegated to following ultima similar to cloud but with none of the intrigue because we dont know Anything about ultima. hes only introduced to the plot as some vague concept joshua has an unexplained connection to (btw we still dk how/why joshua 'trapped' ultima in his heart/soul/whatever becos. none of it is elaborated on. i tried too i was hoping for an ff7og type hidden revelation if i did jotes side quests too but no....... i looked yall i tried i did

not to mention how joshua survivng kind of killed clives arc for me.. L3+R3 to accept the truth was kind of badass as fuck... too bad it doesnt matter and theres no truth for clive to accept joshua was never dead. clives arcs are perpetually meaningless. internal conflict about this power hes been given that could change the world for the better.. or worse and he could (and has) hurt/killed the ones he loves.. well doesnt matter joshua is alive and ifrit has caused no real harm to people who matter..

i remember talking to my irl, they were going off about fe3h about how the trailers built up political intrigue and expectation that was dashed when it all turned out to be villains behind the curtain manipulating everything with no foreshadowing and yeah... yeah

ultima was so poorly handled to me, nothing about his buildup felt coherent to me and all it did was serve to distract me from what i was genuinely enjoying (dominant political dramas) i really dislike it all.. god i wish there was more, theres a dlc coming out about leviathan, you might have honestly forgotten about leviathan because it was a single line of dialogue with no explanation build up or payoff. if you want to know why joshua namedropped leviathan and then moved on like it never existed pay square enix extra money and hopefully this wont be utter bullshit too lol.

[baenxietydad]

Swynrpwrimo Task #9: SwynRPVision

Create your own TV show, book, video game, piece of media, etc. that would exist in the SwynRPuniverse which does not exist in ours. Write a description, make a graphic, write a script or do whatever you want. 

[tracker]

THIS TOOK ME FOUR DAYS

It's a K-pop survival competition show! Follow the journey of trainee Bae Na-young (Mu-yeol Bae's niece and Nemo Bae's cousin!) as she competes to join the debut group. Read to the end to find out the girl group's name!

(This show might eventually be canon, but not yet lol)

Name: Shining Girl (Mnet)

Concept: To see who will shine the most, and leave an impact in the industry as South Korea's first all-fairy girl group made up of fairies from around the world.

Number of Contestants: 84 contestants (most are from Korea but some are from abroad - China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Sweden, Mongolia, Argentina -- most not from Asia are overseas Koreans but there's one Chinese-Scottish girl)

Judges/Mentors:

Vocal: Yunjin (Le Sserafim), Bangchan (Stray Kids), Solar (Mamamoo)

Rap: So-yeon (G-IDLE), Jessi, Han (Stray Kids)

Perfomance/Dance: Ten (NCT/WayV), Sung Hanbin (Zerobaseone), Xiaoting (Kep1er)

MC: Chuu (soloist)

Signal Song: Shine (an energetic song that serves as the theme song of the show, think Pick Me from Produce 101 or Here I Am from Boys Planet)

Debut: 12 contestants (permanent group)

Voting: Viewers vote for 12 girls at first, then as they get eliminated it goes down to 10, 6, 4, and then for the final round, 1 girl

01 ENTRY PERFORMANCE

In this performance, we will see each of the girls performing a song off their choice either with a group or they can perform solo. They perform in front of the judges and all of the other girls. Think like the Boys Planet star level test or the Produce series entry tests. Then the Judges rank the girls. They are all given a Grade either A, B, C, or D.

In episode 1, we are first introduced to trainee Bae Na-young as she paces the floor backstage. Another trainee walks up to her and Na-young hugs her. Na-young's voice in a voiceover explains that "Hye-rin unnie* and I used to train at the same company. It's been two years since we got to train together. I hope we debut together through Shining Girl."

*unnie is a word that Korean girls use to address or talk about a female friend older than them

The scene changes to Na-young on stage and the camera flits briefly to Hye-rin nervously watching her. It goes silent. And then, the scene shows mentor Yunjin's head just snap up, followed by multiple reaction shots of the other trainees and the mentors. Why?

Because this is the song that played. Na-young chose the bold move to perform a Le Sserafim song in front of Yunjin, a Le Sserafim member, and perform it alone with nobody to help her sing, rap, and dance.

Na-young executes the performance well, earning praise from Bangchan for her stable vocals. Everyone looks at Yunjin. She is silent a long moment before saying "thank you for letting me watch someone else perform this song" and praising her captivating stage presence.

However, Xiaoting comments that her dancing feels a bit like she's checking off boxes, that she doesn't feel like she really enjoys it. "It's technically perfect, but I don't see Na-young."

Ultimately, Na-young earns an A-grade.

However, many viewers thought Na-young was brazen for performing Yunjin's song in front of her and she got a lot of online hate. She ranked only 44th in the first round of online voting.

02 SONG BATTLE

The girls will first split into 12 teams of 7. 1st-12th Rank will be team captains. 1st place will choose her team first, then it goes on like that. Then they will choose a song to battle with the other group of 7 performing. So there is an A team and a B team for each song. The choices are as follows:

Love Me Like This (NMIXX)

Queencard (G-IDLE)

Unnatural (WJSN)

Dalla Dalla (Itzy)

Spicy (aespa)

Sugar Rush Ride (TXT)

Then a live audience will choose the winning performance for each concept. The judges will choose an all-around individual winner between each battle, and both the winning group and the judges pick for individual trainee will receive a points benefit for the next round of voting. Then, the team that scored overall first place will will an additional benefit and will perform on M-Countdown.

Despite coming in 37th in the first televote, Na-young is chosen first by the 5th-ranked girl, shocking a lot of people. The girl, the Chinese-Scottish trainee named Sophie Chen, said in a talking head that the show's editors put in: "I'm choosing my team based on talent because I'm sure once we show you this stage we will be popular as well as talented."

The twelve team captains then have to compete in a race to see which order they get to pick their songs in. Sophie wins third place and confidently announces that her group will be doing Queencard after the first slots for Dalla Dalla and Love Me Like This are taken first.

Na-young is secretly not thrilled, since she got online hate for performing Yunjin's song, now she'd be doing a rap mentor's song. But fine!

The girls must elect their leaders for each group. Na-young is nominated leader by Sophie who, although she built the team, doesn’t want the position. She says she feels “lacking” and she doesn’t want the girls to struggle because of her. Nobody else volunteers so despite being unpopular in the original rankings, Na-young is leader.

In a talking head, Na-young says "after I was elected leader, I realized-- everyone else in my group was a foreigner. We're like the UN."

Their group consists of Na-young (an animal talent fairy from Korea), Sophie (a Chinese-Scottish storytelling-talent fairy), Solongo (a Mongolian healing-talent fairy), Chenda (a Cambodian water-talent fairy), Lalita (a Thai animal-talent fairy), Aubrey (a Korean-American fast-flying talent fairy), and Noriko (a Japanese water-talent fairy).

In the midterm mentors' evaluation, Na-young is again told that her dancing is technically perfect but she doesn't look like she's having fun. In the final edit of the episode the broadcasted on TV, Na-young is seen relentlessly practicing the choreography so that it become automatic and she can just focus on her facial expressions, energy, and having fun.

She's practicing in the hallway of the dorms late into the night, like many other girls.

While practicing, she stops mid-dance-move. She overhears Chenda and Noriko struggling with their lines. In the midterm evaluation, their pronunciation was critiqued quite harshly. The girls all spoke Korean to some degree, as most of them had been living in Korea and training for at least a year. However, Chenda and Noriko had both just arrived in Korea less than six months ago. She walks over to them to help with their pronunciation and this is included in the final cut of the episode.

On the day of the performance, their team, (UN + I <3) wins over the other team performing Queencard, securing the benefit. Noriko wins first place out of all 14 of the girls who performed Queencard, thus winning an additional benefit. In her thank you message, she thanked Na-young for helping her with her Korean.

This endeared Na-young, previously seen as annoying and over-confident, to some of the viewing audience. At the first elimination, it was announced that only 45 out of 84 girls would move on to the next round.

Na-young's team all looked at her, who had ranked in 44th place after the entry level audition episodes aired, which meant that she was in danger of elimination.

However! Between the benefit for winning the battle round and audiences growing to like her, she jumped from 44th place to 26th. So Na-young moves on to the next round.

03 Concept Battle Round

The contestants will choose a concept and one of two songs in that concept.

The girls split up into 4 groups of 8, 1 group of 7, and 1 group of 6. The songs are put on big signs on the wall of a large room along with the number of girls per song. The girls choose their songs one by one starting from the lowest ranked person to the first ranked person. When songs fill up, higher ranked girls can push the lower ranked girls out and they have to find an open slot-- but they cannot push someone out, so they must choose whatever song is available.

The concepts and songs are as follows:

Cute: Mr. Chu (Apink) or Very Very Very (I.O.I)

Dark: Given-Taken (Enhypen) or Chase Me (Dreamcatcher)

Girl Crush: Hobgoblin (CLC) or Pink Venom (BLACKPINK)

When it's Na-young's turn, she stands in front of the songs a long moment before walking over to Mr. Chu. The camera pans to the shocked faces of some of the other girls, and the editors slide in a talking head of an interview with Na-young.

"Ah, so..." Na-young says. "I wanted to show the cute side of myself in this challenge. I think people might think I only like powerful concepts and that's not true. I have a lot of aegyo!"

However, the girl in position 8 pushes her out of Mr. Chu when it's her turn because Mr. Chu had filled up. Na-young frowned, walking back to see what songs still had slots, and went to stand with the Chase Me group.

There was only one slot left total when the PO1 girl had to choose. It was take a slot in Hobgoblin, or, push a girl out of another song and make them take it. The girl, a healing-talent fairy from Busan named Im Yeo-reum, walked up to Chase Me and looked right at Na-young, before apologizing and tapping another girl (Noriko who worked with Na-young last round) on the shoulder to send her to Hobgoblin.

The girls select a leader, and Na-young is one of three girls nominated but she immediately bows out. She says she wants to give the other girls nominated an opportunity but silently she knows it isn't good to be perceived as bossy and always trying to take charge and she doesn't want to be evil edited in the final cut for TV. KT Kim, a Korean-New Zealander fire-talent fairy, is chosen as leader.

Na-young picks up the choreography for Chase Me quickly and the response is positive in the midterm evaluations. Sung Hanbin and Xiaoting say that they can actually see Na-young having fun while dancing. Ten reminds her though that "now that you're having fun while dancing, remember the emotions you need to convey with this specific concept." Na-young smiles and nods at the minor constructive critique.

Back in the dorms, Na-young and Noriko, who share a room with a few other girls, are talking. Noriko expresses worries over getting her lines down for Hobgoblin, as the lines she has are faster-paced than she's confident with. Na-young takes time to help Noriko, who is not her teammate this time around, with her Korean. This is broadcasted, along with a brief #throwback clip to the last round where they practiced Noriko's Korean together, and a talking head of Noriko spliced in saying;

"Na-young unnie helps me with my Korean a lot. I'm so thankful to her, I was like, why is she helping me? We aren't a team this time...but she's still helping me. I really want to debut with her."

Across the screen in Korean and in English (those of you who watch K-pop survival shows know how accurate this is lmao) as the girls decide to go to bed for the night, appear the words "Na-young unnie...let's debut together. Fighting!"

The scene cuts to all of the girls backstage in their outfits for the show. The live audience will pick the winner of each battle like last round and this time they'll also vote for the girl they think did best in each song. The top-voted girls wins an additional benefit. The judges will also pick a judges' pick girl to award an additional benefit from each battle. Additionally, the top-voted team overall will perform on MCountdown (of the Korean music shows).

Na-young's team wins their battle and Im Yeo-reum is ranked 1st by the audience, as the girls expected since she was PO1 overall. However! The mentors voted Na-young as the 'dark concept' battle winner.

Sung Hanbin said on the microphone that "we were really impressed with how much you've grown in your dancing since the entry evaluation. You took Ten's midterm critique and showed us a great stage." Na-young thanked them and promised to show them even better stages in the future.

In the elimination episode it is announced that of the 45 girls left, 15 would be eliminated. Na-young is worried, as she's currently 26th place so she can only fall 4 slots maximum.

In true survival show fashion, they start with 29th place and go up to 13th place (the last place before the debut group lineup slots), and then 12th-3rd, then 30th place, then 1st and 2nd place. Na-young gets increasingly nervous when it approaches time for Chuu to announce 26th place. When Na-young isn't called, she looks down at her feet for a while.

When girls from her first battle group and her Chase Me group are revealed safe, Na-young claps extra hard for them but smiles and claps for every girl revealed safe regardless. 13th place is called. It's not Na-young. She figures then that she's either 30th place or is eliminated.

Chuu announces 11th place by saying "11th place is an animal-talent fairy from Korea..." Na-young's eyes pop wide open, but so do the eyes of two other girls who were also animal-talents from Korea -- one girl who had been ranked 32nd last round, and one who had been 17th last round.

"...Bae Na-young!"

Na-young is floored that she jumped from 26th place to 11th place. When she's given the mic, she tries to talk but starts crying before she pulls it together to thank everyone for voting for her and asking them to continue letting her show them amazing stages.

04 BOY GROUP BATTLE

The remaining contestants will head on into the boy group battle. 5 teams of 6 girls. The songs are:

Blue Hour (TXT)

LALALALA (Stray Kids)

Pretty U (Seventeen)

Beautiful Liar (Monsta X)

Dynamite (BTS)

The teams must select their songs this way --- first, the girls get into their teams of 6 BEFORE they know what the songs even are. Then, they must go on a scavenger hunt for 3 items. The first group to find all three then go to the room where Chuu is and she shows them the song choices and they pick their song, and so on and so forth.

This presents challenges for some teams because, having selected their teams being blind to the songs, they may end up with a poorly combined team for the song they have to perform.

Na-young was quickly chosen as a teammate by the PO1 girl, Im Yeo-reum, much to Na-young's surprise. Na-young chose Noriko and Solongo from her first group to join them and Yeo-reum calls KT Kim over. A lot of the girls wanted to join as the 6th member as the group had PO1 (Yeo-reum), PO3 (KT), PO12 (Noriko), PO11 (Na-young), and PO16 (Solongo), and between them they already had strong singers, rappers, and dancers. Looking at the girls not yet teamed up, Yeo-reum whispered to Na-young and Na-young nodded.

"Sophie, come join us!" Yeo-reum said. Sophie, who was Na-young's teammate for Queencard, had ranked 30th and just barely made it. However she was incredibly strong as a dancer, singer and rapper, a real all-arounder.

The girls completed their scavenger hunt first and had a free pick of all song choices.

Na-young wanted to do Blue Hour, on her "I wanna be cute" agenda, and the song is easier to perform choreo-wise than Pretty U which was also a cute song. Yeo-reum, the group's leader, argued that they were getting close to the final and should take a risk to show what they're capable of and suggested either Pretty U or Beautiful Liar.

Ultimately, they agreed on Beautiful Liar.

Na-young was tasked with writing her own raps as she was one of the two in charge of the rap parts, and she helped Sophie write the Korean lyrics of her raps too.

By this round, doing the choreo and having fun while doing it came easily to her, yay!

The winning team, girl, and judges' pick would receive benefits once again.

The Beautiful Liar team wins first place overall, and Im Yeo-reum wins first place in the on-site voting out of all 30 girls.

In the elimination episode, it is announced that 10 girls would be eliminated, meaning 20 girls will go into the final round.

Sophie is called out as PO17 having risen from 30th place.

Na-young expects to have dropped, and when it gets to PO3 and her name has yet to be called, she expects she's either 20th place or eliminated. Chuu calls out "Im Yeo-reum and Bae Na-young, step forward."

Na-young is speechless as being either PO1 or PO2 -- she's announced as, for this round at least, second place!

05 ARTIST BATTLE

The girls are divided into 4 groups of 5 and are given original songs! The girls hear 15 second clips and then record PR videos for the Mnet site making their case to assign them to the song they want to be assigned to. And then you, the Shining Girl viewers, vote and choose which song the girls do!

These are the vibes of the 4 songs:

A retro-inspired song called Quiet! about wanting your heart to stop beating so loudly in front of your crush because you're embarrassed. Soundwise, think Oh! My Mistake by April

A song that just sounds sexy called Tap Tap, think Something by Girl's Day

A sunshiney song called My Boy -- it's giving Me Gustas Tu by GFRIEND vibes

A song exuding confidence called Star Girl it's giving Next Level by aespa or Trouble by EVNNE

In her video, Na-young campaigns to be assigned to Quiet! as she thinks it can show her cute side-- once again on her "let Na-young be cute!" agenda.

Ultimately, she's assigned to My Boy and secures the main vocalist position.

The winning team, top-voted girl, and judges' pick girl all receive benefits.

Na-young's team wins first place over all and Na-young is the top-voted girl on-site. Sophie is the judges pick -- she was on team Star Girl.

06 FINAL

For the final, the votes from the artist battle round are included. However, the girls are split into two groups of 10 and learn two other brand new songs! They perform these in the final live broadcasted show, and viewers cast their last minute votes --- however, they can only pick one girl, the dreaded Mnet survival show one-pick. Many dreams will be crushed, girls in the top 12 will suddenly fall to last place, it's a bloodbath y'all.

The songs are:

Azaleas, a sassy song like Tonight by Blackswan

QT, a fun song about a crush, sound like After LIKE by IVE

Na-young ends up in QT after the girls play a series of competitive games to determine groups and positions.

The final member announcement begins with the announcement of the group name: Primrose, and the fans are called Bumblebees.

Ultimately, Na-young is announced as PO4, debuting in Primrose. Her reaction was huge, think Park Gunwook in Boys Planet.

The final lineup is Primrose:

PO1 - Im Yeo-reum (Korea)

PO2 - KT Kim (New Zealand)

PO3 - Noriko (Japan)

PO4 - Bae Na-young (Korea) (leader)

PO5 - Solongo (Mongolia) (oldest)

PO6 - Aubrey Mo (USA)

PO7 - Han Mi-joo (Korea)

PO8 - Lalita (Thailand)

PO9 - Lucia Eun-sae Kim-Costa (Argentina)

PO10 - Lim Na-ri (Korea) (maknae, youngest)

PO11 - Sophie Chen (Scotland)

PO12 - Chenda (Cambodia)