#There are exceptions. Which is where I have a character already and recycle them for a story

[tracle0]

Do you prefer to create general settings or craft specific characters?

o/ hi! Thank you for the ask :)! I suppose in my track record, I tend to create the settings and conflict first? Get a vibe for a story and find out who lives there, what they do, what they want!

[multi-level-shipper]

This shit was a fucking acid trip, like most of the game.

Anyway, something that poked my brain was the Infirmary. For all this game's insanity, there were actually some decent roots planted for worldbuilding/ character development.

It seems like the reason the cast ended up in Queen Bouncelia's domain is because they're treating the player as if they have 6 stars in GTA. Seline is no exception to this rule, and that seems to be her motivation for coming down to the lower floor, as she watched us leave in Chapter 3.

Toadster noted in his "Archives" that she was already hiding when brought in, and crying in her shell. She may have been antagonized by a bigger enemy- likely Kittysaurus or Tama/Chamataki (turtle chameleon thing), and she may have gone past the kingdom's walls for sanctuary. (That's just a loose theory, though.)

In any case, at some point she was frightened enough to shut down completely.

This could be some kind of anxiety attack, though there's no way to "diagnose" Seline at this point. Also interesting that Seline felt too afraid to even continue moving around on the lower floors. I think this is meant to speak to just how dangerous the lower floors are- if the giant ass snail is afraid, you should be, too.

Next, Jumbo Josh. Toadster categorizes him as a "Green Gorilla", which in hindsight, weirdly makes a lot of sense.

Firstly, an adult silverback gorilla can bench up to 4,000 lbs (or at least, that's what google told me.) Not that we needed an explanation of why he was able to throw Stinger Flynn, but I can only assume that if we adjusted that number for his size...it probably checks out.

Second, the fact that he walks like a chiropractor's worst nightmare. It took me a second, but I FINALLY realized that his posture is meant to IMITATE A GORILLA. Like, look at this:

DEFINITELY EXPLAINS WHY HE WALKS LIKE A HORSE IN GARRY'S MOD.

And thirdly, Josh's love for vegetables is also a gorilla trait. 85% of a gorilla's diet is leafy greens, with the remaining percentage basically amounting to termites and larvae.

Not too much to say about the Fucked Up Birds, but still! Nice to see them finally displaying a flamingo behavior (AKA their sleeping posture) because they seemed to lean more heavily on ostrich behaviors in previous chapters.

Toadster mentions in his archive for "The Teacher" that she keeps repeating the phrase "I can't be late" over and over to herself after being subdued.

He also notes that the bowling pins "calmed her down," which may not entirely be the case. In Chapter 3, in Banbaleena's "Classroom", each object had an assigned role like Cool Kid and Popular Kid. The bowling pins were meant to be the Bullies.

So Banbaleena is likely stuck in a prison of her own self-doubts right about now, which is doubly sad when considering her insistence in Chapter 3 that she was actually trying to be a good teacher. Either someone placed this idea in her head that she needs to strictly adhere to all these rules, or it's a stress she placed upon herself trying to fulfill her identity as a teacher.

Stinger Flynn gets better as the story progresses. He seems to have an ego to the point where he sees himself as a savior that can't see the faults in his own plans. His initial "safest procedures" plan seemed so obvious to him, but it seems as if he measures success by efficiency rather than the cost of human lives. While he's smart, he's not immune to being wrong, though he has yet to learn this.

He also seems to suffer from some form of depression, or at least intense sadness, and we see this as he talks to Banban in the latest hallucination sequence. Makes sense- his intelligence would make him much more privy to all the horrible things happening around him. It seems as if his high intelligence comes at a high price.

Last note- This might just be a case of recycling animations/rigs, but I think it's cute that Banban shares nearly the same emo pose as Banbaleena.

[feathersandblue]

Veilguard 1/?

So, the first couple of hours in and:

the gameplay mechanics are fucking me up. I'm the kind of player who starts pressing buttons randomly when stressed, I actually loved the good old-fashined turn-based RPGs, so the new DODGE-ATTACK-HEAVY ATTACK-DEFEND-DOGDE-DODGE-ATTACK actions required are really fucking me up, to the point where I'm considering turning down the diffculty to cakewalk - but, yes, I'm aware that this is a me problem

10/10 for egghead reappearance, I always loved him and he's hot as fuck and also wittier than ever. I really, really hope that he keeps being awesome, so far, the encounters my Rook had with him in the Fade were hilarious. Can't wait to see where it's going, I do so hope that his relationship with the Inky (platonic or otherwise) will actually make a difference.

however, what did they do to his eyebrows, they're distracting

people are complaining all over reddit that the dialogue is too flippant, too superficial, and it reminds them of a YA novel but to be fair, when I think of some of Origin's lines, they weren't the best, and Rook's humorous replies often remind me of renegade!Shepard or purple!Hawke, which I love

also, to be fair, Dragon Age was never very deep, so I'm not sure what people are expecting. But I do get the impression that it's simply not aiming to be controversial at all

yes, there is a switch in aesthetics and tone, they went from medieval dark to steampunk high fantasy. It's like playing D&D, and I do miss (and mourn) the drab and depressing atmosphere of Origins, but to be fair, Inquisition was already well on its way to flashy and colorful, whereas DA2 was recycling dungeons and led you through an empty city and everyone rightfully criticized it for that

I'm ambigous about the open world vs. narrow corridors concept, on the one hand, I do like open world exploration, on the other hand, I often get lost. I'm not sure how high the replayability score will be though - then again, it's always a matter of whether decisions and character background actually make a difference that makes if worth your time to try something else

I appreciate the fact that you can pause during cut scenes. How often did I get interrupted and then missed some important tidbits? Also the "skip" option is pretty great

What I really miss is the lore and the worldbuilding, so far, it feels very generic. The DA universe had some pretty unique concepts (the Circles, the Fade, the chantry, the Blight) and it's all gone through a blender and come out bland. Maybe there will be a return to certain elements of it later on, but so far, I'm really missing the concepts that Gaider established (borrowing heavily on WoT)

I get why they found it easier not to include content of the earlier games (except for Inquisition because Solas), but it's also disappointing: for years and years they baited us with "your choices matter", and we're all attached to the Warden and Hawke and just having them disappear from the narrative is a bummer

all in all, I do like it, and I'm excited to see where the story goes, but I have the feeling that it won't be able to replace Origins in my heart.

[ratwavekayla]

Doing work on This is Your Lifepath season 2 has got me thinking about lists of inspirations again. So I rounded up some lists in upcoming projects.

(Ritual Magic for Besties isn't here as its bibliography is fairly short and more explanatory rather than list-y, also like it comes out later this month so you can just wait)

PSYCHODUNGEON

The games listed are primarily about mechanical influence (which is why they're mostly a very large slice of Belonging outside Belonging games). Big exceptions are Subway Runner and DD.TV which are both there for post-dungeon fantasy influence. ACWtM is there for the influence on the asymmetric roles, which are a divergence from how BoB setting elements tend to work, and so my own Fear the Taste of Blood is there because working on that is how I understood that element better.

Probably should clarify Moonstruck is the comic (as like loose setting influence) rather than the film (which bangs but doesn't relate much to PSYCHODUNGEON).

NHSmackdown is a wrestling/performance art show by a friend of mine which was focused on being a nurse. The influence is in how it got me reflecting on being trapped in job which is nominally doing good but isn't protecting you and is honestly actively harming you.

Nemesis Revealed

Nemesis Revealed is a storytelling game of great rivals, where you play someone's nemesis, their dark counterpart and follow their story. It has multiple playsets which frame a different hero to create your nemesis in opposition to.

So the game influences are either in mechanics or in the structure of a book basically. Whereas the other section primarily focuses on specific influences for different playsets (there's a sort of conventional street level superhero, a gender-twisty tokusatsu inspired story, as well as strange space knights and near-distant future mecha crews). It's a scattershot and probably reads very opaque without context (I think that's how all my bibliography lists look which is probably why I place them at the back, where a reader will find them already armed with context, rather than at the start as a taste setter).

Transgender Deathmatch Legend II: Grand Slam

TDL2 actually has two separate lists. There's a traditional bibliography. I referenced my own work I've drawn on because it seems honest. Fox in the Forest is there for influencing the original mechanic. Hieronymus influenced how i wanted the shape of the book to be. Stealing the Throne influenced some non-fighting mechanics.

The other references are more for how they influenced specific scenarios (like one is loosely Raid inspired but turned into smashing up a GIC, while another is a direct Warriors-riff).

I included the Party of One episode i did cause it helped clarify how i felt about the game. British lads hitting each other with chairs is there because it's a mood.

Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum with Expats was a fringe theatre show I did set up for and it ended up influenced the content of a work-in-progress show I did called Crossface (which was a wrestling inspired character comedy performance drama). Some of the content for Crossface has been recycled into some personal essays I have in the book. So paying tribute to that root felt important.

But before that section TDL also has a Recommended Reading list. It's mainly stuff that I think conveys what's enjoyable about wrestling. I wouldn't say everything was a direct inspiration, but if you read the book and played the game and wanted to know more about wrestling; there's a little roadmap in the book.

(Though being serious this appendix is obviously super subject to change before release if anything horrific comes out about anyone featured, obviously the danger in recommending any wrestling tbh)

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: Odd Squad UK -- "A Dish Served Odd" Episode Followup, Part 1

As opposed to cold, which, really, would just freeze your mouth and your brain.

We continue the followup train with one for "A Dish Served Odd". This one will also be split into multiple parts, though I don't think we'll amass a whole five pa- five parts?

Five parts...dear God.

Below the break, get Orli the tourist, a trifler who trifles trifingly, and Odd Squad: The Movie. (Okay, I'm sketchy on that last one, but no one's mentioned it yet besides me and I need my curiosity satisfied.)

And as usual, make sure you've watched the episode first before proceeding. There will be spoilers.

Let's start with the intro, which has, of course, Orli narrating it. Now that her character has been revealed in the flesh, we can have her take over narrating duties from Captain O.

Now, as for this thing...capital sin against Olive. Go to jail. No cards can get you out.

I see they have no qualms about dropping the spoiler of Opie being promoted to the Department of Help.

I also see Orla will have some competition in the violin-playing department.

The difference here, of course, is that we will get no lesbian French brides. Instead we have gay triangle villain, and that is enough for me.

(I do want more, though. But PBS has always been minefield-walking on this stuff.)

Only a few new bits in the intro; otherwise everything else is recycled.

Except for this shot, which the fandom has analyzed to hell and back. I don't really feel like throwing in my two cents just yet; still weighing on doing a Seren's Study where I put in my "once and for all" opinions on the season/series.

And your writer for this episode. I...can't say much about him, because 1) I haven't done the research on him yet and 2) I need to get over the Lightning McQueen brainrot first before I do so.

Also 3) WE GOT COLD OPENS AGAIN PEOPLE. AFTER SEASON 3 KICKED THEM TO THE MOON AND STOLE THEIR KIDNEYS. GOD MOTHERFUCKIN'.

Your producer credit, which is...pretty much the same. Methinks she'll be producing throughout all of this season, so I'm not going to point it out every time.

Bold of this announcer to assume she's not going to eat an egg and a few wings. She can do that. She's an adult.

An adult with...braces, which I'm pretty sure was 100% intentional casting for representing every parent in existence who has braces. How we went from a child with Down syndrome to an adult with braces, and how we'll later go to gay triangle villain, is beyond me.

If you're not going to hire fans to work for you, at least hire some disabled people, huh? (And maybe they do hire them...but I dunno, you'd think we'd actually hear about it in an interview, y'know?)

Wow, that tomato really just up and yoted itself.

Lettuce observe this very important lesson- *bonk*

So with this, we get a first look at Ozzie's and Orli's new desks. Quite a vast difference from the desks in the original series/S1 and S2 -- we have fancy new chairs, Microsoft computers over Apple ones, and desks that actually have a lil' shelf underneath them but, as far as I can see, no drawers. I dig it!

Orli up and snatchin' the paper out of Ozzie's hands is funny, too.

"Done? What done?"

"Everything done."

"...Orli, it's only been a minute and 40 seconds."

"Hey, this episode is about me going out on the town. It's not about us sitting at our desks all day. Get with the program, partner."

SHE TAKES MORNING A N D AFTERNOON NAPS?!?!?!?!?!

I'm sorry, this does make sense considering where she was before, but the fact that the girl requires a morning nap and then an afternoon one already makes my fucking day.

How she's able to even sleep within THE FUCKING NIAGARA FALLS is beyond me, though and I can only assume the answer is "I put small animal tranq in my juice, twice a day."

(Look, in the Oddverse, tranq is Fancy NyQuil. Everyone loves Fancy NyQuil. It's like liquid opioids, for kids, safe to take!)

Ozzie outright commenting on said naps being twice a day was something I was not expecting, and now I'm laughing way too loudly for 2 in the morning.

In Ozzie's absolute lack of defense...partners solving cases without each other is fairly common. If he were familiar with Olive and Otto, and Olympia and Otis, he'd, y'know...probably know that shit.

"Don't you think we should do this on our day off?" the idiot asks, knowing that Orli being there does not solve the oddness crisis despite what "Odd Ones In" wants people to believe and that "a day off" does not exist as a concept.

Assholery and stupidity all within the first two episodes. Sweet Jesus.

A sightseeing tour happening once every decade is not exactly something you wanna put in a "Come to Britain" ad.

Five years, I can look over. Ten years, not a chance in hell.

HA!!! IT'S THE SCENE FROM THE TRAILER I CALLED IT YA HACKS. GOD I'M GOOD AT MY UNPAID JOB.

*silly giggle and another mark on the bingo card*

"And all the world shall know my name!" this idiot says, unaware that the Villain Network was a thing a good four years prior to this episode.

"Terrible..."

"DELICIOUS...and if you say otherwise then I really will call that toe-eating, finger-eating boogeyman."

This fuckass argument about desserts within an 11-minute episode...I'm not even mad it's eating up runtime. I'm living for the absolute sass Captain O is laying on her subordinate right now.

SHE HAS TO BRING IN SOMEONE WHO WORKED ON HER SHIP TO SETTLE A GODDAMN TRIFLE DEBATE. WHERE IS MY SPARE LUNG. WHERE IS MY S P A R E L U-

If you had asked me a few months back what I thought Captain O's ringtone would be, I'd have laughed and said, "You fuckin' nuts? Same ringtone as nearly everybody else."

If you had asked me today what I thought Captain O's ringtone would be, I'd have shivered and said, "Not a horrifying mix of a tuba and a fucking foghorn, that's for sure..."

"Ahoy ahoy."

...Close enough, marking it off on the bingo card.

This is the live-action reenactment of a real-time Facebook post.

And I may not be on Facebook anymore, but I don't think the way people post has changed. Much. Not...in...y'know, with the boomers...y-you should get what I mean, surely.

Gotta say, she's a hell of a lot more enthusiastic than creepy Oceana, ambiguously-gay Octavius...no, wait, he was enthusiastic too, I take that back.

And Mr. Fonts. Definitely more enthusiastic than Mr. Fonts.

"And one person is more than enough, don't you think?"

Someone better get the woman a shushing stick.

No, not for shushing. For bopping over the head with. Get her a box of Gushers and really make her day, huh?

I will say, with all these new editing tricks and transitions and such, it's an incredibly jarring jump from Season 3. I mean, Odd Squad UK is a spinoff, so it being so distinct from Odd Squad and Odd Squad Mobile Unit it barely feels like either at first makes sense...

But in 12 episodes? No fuckin' way am I gonna get used to that.

Y- lady. LADY. This is why America has online library catalogs. FOR THIS EXACT REASON.

Name of the book, author, boom, photo. You don't even have to use the catalog -- Amazon or any bookstore chain will do!

How in the everloving fuck they managed to clean all the trifle off of the photo and brighten it so the toolbox shows up as red instead of dark-chocolate brown is so beyond me it's outta the Milky Way.

(On to Part 2!)

[toastling]

A treatise on Mary Sues, edgy characters, and killing an OC

Sometimes, as you grow as a creator, you'll kill off an OC because they just aren't working for you anymore. And to clarify what I mean, killing an OC is, to me, different from killing a character. Killing a character is a narrative choice, whereas killing an OC is like memoryholing them. You've outgrown them or feel they are completely untenable in some fashion, so you pull the plug on the idea in its entirety. Writers do it all the time, and it's a valid and important part of the creative process and growing up as a young creator.

Except... I've found that I never really do that as a creator, despite that being what I'm purportedly "supposed" to do as I grow. Instead, I'm economical, I'm recycling, constantly. I try to kill off OCs, but they always come back eventually in some updated and retooled form. Sometimes they're only an echo of the original idea, while other times, I realize that what I thought was childish actually hits and has purpose, and I can use my honed talents as a more mature creator to bring them up to snuff.

That's how I ended up with two of my very first proper OCs I ever actually did anything substantive with, made when I was only 12 and 13 years old respectively, remaining characters in the selfsame story I am now intending to publish and launch a career off of. Characters who were every inch all the things people would typically criticize as 'edgy', 'silly', 'immature', or 'derivative', but have become more than the sum of their parts.

One started off as a character named XIII. Three guesses what sort of hooded cloak he may of worn and what series inspired him. Except he also had a demon inside of him called The Beast which was evil and violent and he was constantly at war with but often saved him and gave him great power. Again, three guesses where that came from. It didn't take long for The Beast to branch off, break out, and become his own character, either. And when he did, the cloak came off and XIII became Crimson, the Bloodstained Angel.

Yeah. Crimson. The Bloodstained Angel. And The Beast. That's about as simple and "I'm 12 years old" as it gets, right? And as I got older, I saw that and thought that too. It was what I was supposed to do. But... they never truly died, in spite of all my attempts to kill them. They'd disappear for a few months at a time, sure, and I'd say "Yeah, they were cute experiments, but they don't exist anymore". But there was still a piece of me in them that resonated with the rest of me. They kept coming back, changing, evolving, without me ever realizing until it was too late and I'd already involved them in some new project.

Now, they are two gods in a pantheon. The Beast became Aheperael, a false god of destruction made from the blood of a true god through dark magic and the hubris of not-man to protect themselves. A real "war waged for the sake of peace" situation that blew up in everybody's faces. Meanwhile, Crimson became Esaniel, the unwilling donor for the blood that became Aheperael.

Now, the fallen angel with bloody red wings has transitioned into a god locked into a self-imposed exile in order to atone for a sin that he had no part in committing, keeping watch over his at once bastard child and malformed twin's vacant shell for all eternity so that none might ever try and revive it.

It keeps a lot of the same core beats, but has evolved into something a lot more mature, but not in the sense of "edgy = immature", but in the sense of "my skills as a storyteller have matured", because it is still very much a character and a story you could broadly call "edgy". And that's okay! These characters have an audience, a function, they exist for a reason, and they resonate for a reason.

He is at once a warped reflection of the Jesus Figure and the Self-Blaming Victim, a Literal God and a Depressed and Resentful Teenager. He is all these things and more.

The other character meanwhile started off as a guy simply called "Bishop". His whole thing was that he was a demon... who was also a Catholic priest. Scandalous! Then, over time, he became a half-demon, half-angel who was a priest instead. Shocking! So what is he now? Well. He's still a half-demon half-mortal priest. But he's not called Bishop anymore, because that's silly, though he very much is still one of those. No. Now he has the much more subtle name of Daemon.

And that's okay! Because there's nothing wrong with those broader strokes and there never actually was to begin with. Esaniel mutated and evolved his core idea over time into something more developed and reminiscent, but not quite the same. But Daemon never truly changed, because the issue was never with that background to begin with. The issue was with my inexperience in character writing at the time of his creation, and in not having a cohesive theme or point to what I'd created aside from "I'm 14 and this is cool as shit". And that's just something that comes with age and experience.

Now, he is an examination of the concept of Redemption and what it means to redeem oneself and what role others do or don't play in that redemption, up to and including God Almighty Himself. He's a gentle giant, a great big teddy bear with an emphasis on the bear. What kind of bear? Yes. But, the idea of someone who would by his very nature be considered irredeemable in our world, not just for being what he is but for what, specifically, he's done, is actually one that can tell a helluva good story! It can be challenging and affirming all at once for all sorts of different audiences. He's become one of my most complex and compelling characters to write for despite his entire premise being as stereotypically edgy and dumb as can be.

But an expert at throwing stones will outperform a novice at throwing knives any day of the week. It's never really about what the idea is necessarily, it's about how you present it. It's about the technique. The motivation, the theme, the purpose it all serves. You gotta have a purpose for it going in, even if it's simply to further some other, separate character's arc and nothing more.

All this to say, or rather ask, how many OCs have you killed in your time? None? One? Twenty? Well, let this longwinded post be my suggestion - and your permission - to dig them from their graves and reexamine them without prejudice for what they are.

You felt strongly enough to make them at some point in your life for a reason. So, ask yourself, do they still have meaning to you now? If so, how can you best reflect that now, with your current skill as a creator today?

You might just be surprised with what sort of hidden gems you end up with.

[ambersock]

tagged by @adihildilid <3 to make a supernatural seasons tier list

The primary driver for my rankings is largely Sam arcs and memorable Sam moments. Sorry this is really long-winded, I'll put the tags first and my rant below the cut.

(trying to not repeat those who have already been tagged): @ruinedsam @small-scale-majestic @sounknownvoid @supernaturalconvert @acesammy @adaav @supamerchant @glowingsamulet

S2 is my all-time favorite with Sam's powers, the Special Children, episode after episode with writing and acting that just knocked it out of the park, and one of the very few seasons where Dean is actually likeable. S4 would be up there for When the Levee Breaks alone, plus we get multiple BAMF!Powers!Sam episodes. S6 gives us more awesome Jared acting with Soulless!Sam plus gems like 6x09, 6x15, 6x20, and finally Sam's wall breaking in 6x22. And it's got my favorite Dean-worried-about-Sam moment at the end of 6x13.

The next tier down, most of them have a mix of hits and misses. S1 got me hooked but was still finding its footing, S3 had some clunkers but also a few of my favorites, S7 had Sam's hell trauma and (unpopular opinion) the Leviathan which I actually enjoyed (especially long-suffering George the Leviathan from 7x16), plus 7x17 which was my second all-time favorite episode. S11 I loved for the Sam and Lucifer arc, Baby, the fact that the Big Bad wasn't actually evil, the briliant performance by Curtis Armstrong in 11x20, and finally the end of the insufferable MoC arc. Oh yeah, and there's Red Meat, which is the ultimate combination of my two favorite things: BAMF!Sam and Hurt!Sam. The only thing that drags S11 down is the cringeworthy, forced, and completely purposeless thing between Dean and Amara.

Not much to say about seasons 9, 12, 13, and 15. There are a few decent arcs (Sam + Gadreel and Crowley in s9, Mary coming back, Sam and Lucifer again) but also some snoozers (MoC, BMoL which had potential until they were turned into mustachio twirling villains, Dean once again being a complete asshole and his cringe man-pain in s13). With the exception of the series finale, S15 was just meh. And they somehow managed to screw up Sam's magnificent hair.

Oh, and regarding S13 having the worst wire work ever put to film: I view it as pure karma for them not letting Sam be the one to kill Lucifer.

Most of S10 was almost unwatchable to me for the laughable attempt at forcing Dean into "dark" role but then chickening out and turning him into a slobbering drunk frat boy instead (MoC), the bratty and arrogant Claire, and the one-dimensional writing for Rowena (that goodness they added depth to the character later). The only things that save this season are the two attempted fratricides and the episodes that focused on Sam's attempts to save Dean. S14 only has a few memorable scenes, let alone episodes: Sam declaring that there will be no new King of Hell in 14x1, Sam talking Dean off the ledge in 14x12, and Sam shooting Chuck. The rest of the season is nothing but poorly redone recycled Sam arcs handed out to other characters. And no offense to Jack, I think the character was extremely well-acted, but he just didn't add anything to the story once they took Sam's role of being his Dad away.

Finally for S8: I have a love-hate relationship with that one. The front half of S8 has Dean being a complete asshole and the narrative focuses only his POV, leaving us with several missing months from Sam's POV. They just skip right over showing us Sam's utter devastation at losing everyone he loves in an obvious attempt to force the sympathy all towards Dean, but the more thoughtful viewers didn't buy into it. Fortunately, the Trials!Sam arc counters the hideous PoOr dEan bias from earlier on. Plus I'm an angst junkie, and we get angst galore and an attempted fratricide to boot. The back half of the season does finally show Dean being appropriately appreciative of Sam's capabilities, even if he can't express that to Sam's face, and we get yet another outstanding Jared performance in the finale. Unfortunately, what we don't get is any growth whatsoever from Dean who, even as he's watching his brother die, is still in complete denial of his shitty treatment of Sam being the cause of his breakdown. I desperately needed Dean to understand just how much of an impact his constant criticism and mistrust of Sam had, and for him to go through that epiphany and change for the better. Instead, what we get is yet another flippant denial ("Hell, I know I've said some junk that set you back on your heels. But, Sammy…come on.") as if it's Sam's fault for "misinterpreting" the deliberate emotional abuse Dean heaped on him earlier in the season (and really, for much of Sam's life before that).

[mdhwrites]

How would you write Amity, Hunter and Lilith to be good while still having their edge?

Shoot Hunter in the face, give Lilith the anger she needed, and let Amity be bad at being a girlfriend.

...

If you're expecting me to apologize for being harsh, don't. Even the writers to some extent recognized the case for Amity and Lilith but instead time and focus was diverted to Hunter and Amity was decided to be the ULTIMATE GIRLFRIEND who never makes mistakes except that she cares too much which is something you say during a job interview so you don't claim to have no faults but don't actually seem like trouble. Meanwhile, Stranger Tides admits that Lilith's ambition and inner rage wouldn't go away after losing her magic. At least then she's trying to help the house but you get the idea that unlike Eda, who submitted to her life long ago, she isn't going to sit there and take it.

And then... She sits there and takes it. And Amity, despite only knowing transactional and manipulative love up until now, who overthinks and worries about everything, only doubts herself during Eclipse Lake and then doesn't even decide "Wait, what has Luz upset might be me and her phone might tell me what I've been doing wrong" and open it up. It would be a different angle on the same problem that would be absolutely in line with her character, especially if Willow is going to decide to be OOC in order to let Amity make the decision all by herself when there is NO reason she should make the right one.

But for Lilith to actually strike back at Belos, or at the Isles in general, to prove that even without her magic she deserves respect, going back to those initial motives that led to her cursing her sister but now with supposedly 'noble' goals, would have taken time. To have Lumity have a push and pull in their relationship where they both make mistakes and both learn from it, something Luz explicitly NEVER DOES because she never stops lying, would have taken time. Where do you get that back?

Kill Hunter. Just remove him from the story. He is absolutely redundant as just a second Amity who is filling in the obvious narrative role that Lilith should have had. After all, he is meant to eventually rebel against the EC. Lilith also clearly had that potential in S1 and was primed for it in S2. He is our connection to Belos as someone who was by his side for years. Lilith was the EC COVEN HEAD. He is meant to have a rivalry with Kikimora. Lilith also had a rivalry with Kikimora. He is meant to be disempowered due to a lack of his own magic and must embrace wild magic and the Isles in order to get stronger when he is without the support of the EC. LILITH. LOST. HER. MAGIC. And befriended a demon. And needed to find other ways to deal with problems.

When I say TOH REFUSES to actually start using the elements it has setup and instead introduce new, worse, redundant ones, Hunter is THE example while Lilith breathes. Worse yet, Lilith then takes King's spot as a dedicated comic relief character in a series with already too many comic relief characters, too few jokes, and VERY few good jokes, especially when they're losing one of their only straight men by Lilith's change in attitude.

And what do we gain with Hunter? An allusion to a backstory that doesn't matter? The one straight ship in the show allowed to be alive? A sad emo boy for the Hot Topic crowd? A lot of this stuff doesn't add to the story and while Eda was a compelling way of redeeming Lilith without discrediting the EC, Hunter CONSTANTLY discredits the EC, Kikimora, and pretty much every threat in the show, including Belos to some extent for the sake of his half assed redemption that comes down to the moment he's told Belos lied to him... AND LILITH DID IT ALREADY AND BETTER.

The show reveals all its concepts in S1. Almost everything is shallow recycling and frankly that goes to the edges of characters. Keeping those edges means exploring their redeemed selves. Removing them? Means you can make a joke and then wave them into the cameo cast as you move on to make a new character who is going to do them worse.

And Hunter's greatest sin, above anything else, is being the embodiment of this. I am curious though: Who would have been the replacement for Hunter in S3 if we'd gotten a full one? Food for thought.

Edit: Btw, being a troublesome girlfriend, needing to learn, is a concession to time. If theoretically I only had like two half episodes to explore her edge more and keep it there, stuff with Lumity, and real stuff unlike the B plot in Sport in a Storm, is your main option. Her relationship to her old desires, her parents, the coven system, etc. like that in a way that would have been in keeping with her desire to be the best and what not, the effect her parents had on her and more, would simply take too much time and Lumity was the most important thing to the show when it comes to Amity so making Amity an interesting love interest, one that makes mistakes and could maybe call out Luz during her mistakes, like ALL THE LYING, is the main reasonable way to have kept her edge, just like 3-4 episodes/half episodes dedicated to Lilith's rage at Belos and about her magic beyond just Stranger Tides and KIND OF Affearances. That is also about as many storylines/episodes (though most of Hunter's plots are full episodes or 75%) as Hunter got. I try to keep this stuff in mind with these blogs so as to try to be reasonable to a show's schedule.

==========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[thoughts-of-bear-undercovers]

Idk I personally disliked it a whole lot. For me the general feel of the movie was "we have the rights to this big franchise and the kids these days like anime so now let's merge the two so we can make even more money". Like, at some point I was wondering if anyone in the making of this film even bothered to go deeper into the source material. Obviously there's spoilers in my review:

First thing I noticed was that they had spyglasses. Which didn't make sense and already killed part of the immersion for me. I mean, LOTR is based on a somewhat medieval Europe inspired world and a 17th century invention did not fit in that world. The whole point of "Legolas, what do your elf-eyes see?" is kind of that they did not have spyglasses (otherwise Aragorn would've had one as a pro ranger).

Second, there's some logical errors that just made the whole story crumble in my eyes.

How on earth did the Haradrim get into Rohan? Did they use submarines to swim up the Anduin in order not to be detected by the whole of fucking Gondor? Did they bribe Gondor to let them through? Did the whole ass oliphaunts-and-mercenaries-procession climb the White Mountains? Or did they put the oliphaunts on boats and drove up the Isen? How did they get into Rohan?? How?

I understand that this is how it's described in the appendix but if you're not super familiar with that (which I assume most of the audience isn't, including me even though I've read the books several times, which is more than what the average viewer has regarding lore knowledge) then that seems pretty unreasonable. Not talking about the "you don't want to marry me and your dad killed my dad in a fair fight after my dad provoked him which is totally unforgivable" motivation of the main character, which is kind of ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous: the siege tower of Wulf, a masterpiece in physics-defying engineering and a testament to the superhuman skill the people of Dunland and their mercenaries have. They built this thing in like a day? In the freezing winter? In a valley that does not have trees in it (at least not usually; looking at you Fangorn)?

What even is that???

Oh and another thing:

Girl who has lived her whole life in a grassland where the hill on which her house stands is like the highest mountain is suddenly a climbing expert and can do that without breaking a sweat and guess who she goes to see? the extra special white Eagle who she is friends with because she fed it one (1) time.

I mean I like having a female lead that doesn't concern herself with love and marriage and the likes but Hera was not really much more besides "strong badass woman". At least her body proportions were realistic, I'll give the movie that.

Another thing that bothered me is that they essentially recycled the great epic scenes of the original movies for the audience to go "ah, this, i recognise this" but by doing that removed the unique emotions that accompanied these scenes. Most memorable example for me was the war cry of the people of Rohan, where in the original films you have this 5 minute scene with epic music and Theoden riding along the line of his soldiers and leading them to their (most likely) death and in "War of the Rohirrim" it is reduced to this 10 second clip with less epic music and just general idk irrelevance. Same thing with the Watcher in the Water, that was randomly there too, no reason except for showing the audience something familiar without much effort.

Which reminds me of another weird design choice the movie made. The oliphaunt in that scene had slit-pupils? An elephant and generally animals of that size and build are not predators. The do not have slit pupils because they don't stalk their prey? whyyyy???

And last among the more major things that bothered me about this film (not last in what smaller things bothered me):

I do not understand much regarding Anime as a genre, I've never been very interested in it and won't likely be but even I noticed that sometimes the frame rate was just too low. Like sometimes the animation looked more like some cheap stop motion than a smoothly animated film. I noticed that the first time Hera saddled her horse, I think. My friend (who knows like every anime in the world [at least it feels like that]) said it was probably the detailed backgrounds that caused this, because they put more effort in them instead of drawing more frames for a scene but while i do appreaciate the backgrounds (the style was good imo) I do think for a franchise like Lord of the Rings you can expect both detailed backgrounds and smooth animation.

And my friend in question also disliked the anime even though she doesn't know much about LotR, she said by anime standards it was not very good either. I don't know enough about anime to question her judgement in that regard.

So anyway, that was my rent and I don't recommend wasting money on watching that in the cinema.

Some of the reviews for War of the Rohirrim, mentioning that "it doesn't justify its existence" makes me remember how absolutely soulless professional "critics" can be. It's a good movie, it respects the source material, it stands on its own. What more do you want?

Yeah we can point out the problems with the film, cause they do exist, but saying "This was only made to extend the IP" shows a lack of knowing what you're talking about, because there are so many other softball methods of doing that. Specifically choosing the story of Helm Hammerhand, expanding it in a way that does feel rather Tolkien-esque, and having it be an anime does not feel like a safe move, even if it is attached to one of the most recognizable fantasy franchises. If it was just an IP thing and nothing else, it would have been much safer.

Not to mention how a certain other Middle Earth adaptation has so thoroughly poisoned the well for adaptations. This movie is how interpretation and expansion of Tolkien's works, or any source material really, should be done.

As a fan of Tolkien, fantasy in general, and anime, I definitely recommend going to see War of the Rohirrim in theaters.

[little-elf-wanders]

It's interesting when you recycle characters you have for games because they can change so drastically.

For instance, Marsh is originally a merman character I write in roleplay - a supernatural urban fantasy type deal, he's a barracuda merman who's whole schtick is that he can find people things and has a whole business surrounding it but he's also sort of a conman on the side. He's got ties in both the deep ocean cities and the land cities. And barracuda's are exceptional ambushers, they're the type of fish to steal fish right off human's catches so I tried to find a suitable... build. To me a warrior reaper sounds about on brand. (he'd be a reaver if we had them but I think reaper might be close to reaver? Who knows! but he's a warrior anyway because Lucanis is a rogue and I'm wanting the synergy to match in game since you can combo abilities) The fortune faction also lines up incredibly perfect for that.

The appearance is where I found the most issue. I looked over all the dragon age universe races and had to try to link Marsh to one of them. Elf was out because I already have an idea set in stone for Effie (another completely different recycled character), human would suit him due to his human alter ego but I find humans pretty boring in fantasy games, dwarf just wouldn't fit him, and the only one that made any sense was Qunari. (which I haven't fully committed to ever playing before so this should be a fun step out my comfort zone. I've never been able to be happy with designing one anyway) But he isn't super bulky so it had me scratching my head. The news on the character creation really saved my ass because I thought I'd need to make another elf, but since the sliders are pretty in depth, I'm hoping I can make a twinky Qunari. I doubt I'll get to add his nose bridge piercings, though, but height is also adjustable so I can make him more in line with his merman alter ego. His greyish/silverish skin will also work because he has two forms as a merman; human disguise, where he's definitely more on the tan side, then his medium dark grey and silver scales as a merman, the shades for qunari typically line up with silver and grey so I can match that up. I'm keeping the sharp teef. Even if we can't make teeth like that, canonically, he'll have them in my heart.

Trying to actually design him as a qunari is a nightmare only when I think about the adjustments I need to make, because he has brown hair in human form, and tealish/blue in merman form. So I think settling on the ability to change it a lot will be better, I can also just let him experiment in game with colours to see what might fight better. I have the basic concept in my head but finalising it might need to wait until I see what I can toy with in character creator. The image I do have in my head? I love him, he's a disaster.

So! Basically, what I have so far is;

Qunari

Grey skin - light or dark, as long is it's more grey I'm not picky

Sharp teef

Any piercings the game will allow (facial and ears) Ideally nose bridge spikes or something for the lip or eyebrow

Broken horn

POSSIBLE chipped ear or one being a cauliflower ear - just evidence he's been scrappy

Not a beefcake, he's supposed to be still barracudaish and have a hidden lethality

Short for a Qunari but realistically he'd be about 6'' or 5'10

Tattoo's

Hair can be brown or teal (dyed regularly is also fun) Unsure what his natural hair would have been - white is the typical colour so maybe that. Hairstyle wise I'm picky and stuck. Either something with an undercut or he's got long hair he ties back.

Eyes were supposed to be green but research shows they have more vivid tones, soooo, likely the final concept of him will be yellow or silver eyes, red only if it fits better

Scars - I envision him with an eye scar and a cheek scar in this world

I won't know fully until cc but hey, it's a start!

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #230

Since my last Starfield post I discovered a handful of mods that really "make" a character. I believe I had already spiked Contraband prices. That 13k might look good but once you get it to a vendor that quickly turns into 3k which isn't much more than guns and spacesuits you can sell without having to avoid ship scans.

But there's two mods that allow you to harvest organs. One is called "Recycle Scum", wherein based on your Medicine/Zoology skills you can harvest corpses for the "Harvested Organs" contraband. Pretty dark, but another one came along that made it even darker. Called "chopshop". Every npc you kill comes with a 40 pound "corpse" item which themselves can be converted into contraband. I then made the above character, nicknamed "The Bloody Butcher". I also downgraded my contraband prices from 5x to 3x, because I was just drowning in organs after a certain point.

As dark as it is I'm enjoying playing the game in an entirely different way. Often having to balance my greed with my carry weight. Once you go over encumbrance, the slightest little jog will completely tank your oxygen and you'll be unable to sprint and start losing health. The Personal Atmosphere ability cancels this out... except for the fact that I am sometimes full of corpses before entering an enemy base. So I'm constantly juggling Personal Atmosphere with Reactive Shield to reduce incoming damage. I basically have to time my engagements with one or the other, and it's pretty awesome.

This is very likely the reason I haven't entered a 'cooldown' period with Starfield yet. Every time I consider taking a break a mod comes along that makes me think "Oh I need to hit Unity and start a playthrough to utilize this".

I've also spent a bit more time with ship building and I've become a bit more savvy with it. I've learned I can CTRL+Click things to target multiple items, which even works with the duplication hotkey and coloring. I've figured out cockpits have a different "entry" point so you can't just slap them all on the top of the ship, you need to figure out where its backdoor is. I've also learned why I have so much trouble with docker modules, basically no other item can go past it, even a weapon mount. I guess because it would clip with the ship you're docking with. That was always the problem I ran into with that, and figured out that the extra weapon mounts I was placing was interrupting my ship's ability to dock.

I still have more plans for ship building as well which certainly keeps me playing, because I don't just want to look at it and go "ah, pretty"... I want to put it to use.

I forget if I've mentioned this within my last couple of posts but I really like space combat and traversal... except with how shallow it is. Once you're done with an encounter it's done. Major space battles only happen a couple of times. The end of the Crimson Fleet is one, and there's a side quest helping a cabal of farmers fight off various teams of spacers though even that one is just a 3v1. Most space combat fights only take a few seconds and I'm REALLY holding out for the Creation Kit to let modders beef up enemy health values, or have enemy ships level alongside me. There's already mods like that for on-foot enemies, but not for ships. I think it's because people can't really edit any vanilla ship modules right now, just add onto what's there. I also wouldn't mind some level of damage scaling. I run around with a 4,000 shield module and rarely lose half of it.

Space combat was intense and exciting at first. You got the Frontier, worst ship in the game, and it sort of teaches you like "Okay, what are you lacking, upgrade that, add a new cannon here..." But like me if you've played for a couple hundred hours you can pretty much go to a ship technician right out the gate and just throw a few things on it to make half the game's space combats trivial. (Combination of a better shield and those Vanguard autocannons).

I'm enjoying the game but I am also slowly running out of content. A lot of what I'm doing is prepwork for my eventual "alright let's do all the side quests" run. Not quite there yet.

[tetrakys]

About Uncoven...

I said I would not make posts about Uncoven (other than replying to asks) and I didn’t. But the game is now out and I gave it a chance so that I could make an informed opinion. Because yes, I’m the first to admit to have been biased from the beginning due to the whole Priya/Koori misandry situation, but I tried to be fair and take an actual look before making my final judgement on it. Here are my thoughts:

The MC

The main complain about Nyx the MC so far is that they are of male sex and non-binary gender, so then usual Beemoov fanbase has not been able to relate. Also customisation is non-existent and you can only choose between three avatars which are identical except for their clothes and haircut. I personally don’t care too much about this because I don’t self-insert (although I do prefer having a female MC). I can look past this, the problem is just that I don’t like the design at all. Personal taste. I also dislike the fact that their personality is very meek, all their friends are overpowered, and we keep hearing about how cool and perfect their are, while Nyx is the poor lost soul who doesn’t know what they want from life etc etc same old story.

The Characters

Other than Nyx, there are 6 friends. Again, personal taste but I don’t like the art style, as mentioned before they are all presented as perfect with no faults, I don’t know how many times I read how amazing each of them is in the half chapter I played. 

They are also VERY stereotyped. Like Silas, for example, is the black fat guy who only talks about food, drinks and partying. Will, the ‘crush’, is the most basic white popular rich boy all the girls swoon for but with nothing really interesting going on for him (apparently). Kristen is the always cheerful extrovert gay best friend. Basically, I’m bored. Oh and there’s also Mavka, the pretty, feminine girl, is clearly one of the writer’s self insert (she even gave her her same birthday), and we keep complimenting her. I don’t like self-insertion, but it feels so icky to me that a writer would make the player compliment and swoon for a character that represents her? Feels like a creepy power move. 

Nyx: “Mavka, her musical laugh, her eyes that shine with joy. Her fragile beauty almost makes me want to cry.”

She also seems to be into the only LI, constantly touching and complimenting him, so this looks like a love-rival situation.

The Cost

During the beta, people could get 100 free APs per day meaning reading 50 lines of dialogue for free every day. They must have thought it was too generous because we now get only 70 making up 35 lines (plus you can get 12 additional APs by watching ads). This is worse than Moonlight Lovers where you can read 50 lines per day. I didn’t play the whole episode, but checking with beta testers and other people, it seems that if one were to buy APs, one episode costs between 10-20 euros, the whole game is made up of 7 main chapters + 3 endings, meaning that the monetary equivalent of this game is around 150 euros. (+/- 20 euros I’d say).

Art and Music

I already mentioned I don’t like the characters design, however I absolutely love the backgrounds, I think they are very well made and give charm to a setting that had basically already been recycled from Moonlight Lovers (spooky manor in the woods). Also, the music is beautiful and, together with the animations, really sets the mood. My only issue is that it’s barely at the beginning of the chapter and had no sound other than some effects throughout the game, but maybe it’s a bug that will be fixed, I don’t know.

Gameplay and Writing

This is the part that upsets me the most and ultimately will prevent me from playing this game. Despite Beemoov advertising the game as an otome, this isn’t one, there is only one crush, and the 3 different routes/endings available are: 1 romantic, 1 friendship, 1 solo/personal-power. There are many choices throughout the game, each option leading to one of the endings, it’s exactly the same system as Moonlight Lovers. The problem is... that it’s INCREDIBLY easy, but easy in a really childish way. There is no complexity in this writing, no ambiguity, nothing that makes you pause for a minute wondering oh dang what am I going to pick? I have spent the past two years testing ML and literally LOSING MY MIND trying to figure out the routes. Yes, it was difficult, and frustrating, but entertaining as hell, and at the end of each route you feel like you have accomplished something. Uncoven is basically the child version of that. Example:

There is no need of guides in this game because there is zero doubt on which path each choice is leading to.

Now, second point about the writing: the romance route is written in a way where Nyx has zero thoughts in their mind other than Will and falling in love. They seem to be completely blind about anything else. And I’ve seen this before, albeit with much better writing: this is Raphael’s bad ending. Eloise used to act exactly in the same way there, with Raphael being her only interest and believing him about everything and following like a puppy. The difference is that was a bad ending for a romance that had 3 options, including a good one where Eloise could be more independent and call out his bullshit. Here there’s no such option unless you want to renounce the romance completely. This is a cautionary tale: there’s gonna be no happy ending with Will as this is a toxic relationship. If you are jumping into this game for romance don’t do it, pick the power route instead, Nyx may end up betraying everyone and taking power for themselves. Much more entertaining than being lectured.

And this brings me to the final point. Yes, again, the blatant misandry: romance = bad, white cis men = bad. I have been showed this rhetoric twice in half chapter already. First, when Will buys groceries for everyone and is mocked for it instead:

and the second is when Rose is telling Nyx that she broke up with her boyfriend with this random assertion out of nowhere

So, here we go, these are my thoughts. I have heard people complaining about other things like the description of magic and wicca (of which I know nothing so I am not in a position to comment on it), or bad representation of poc and queer characters (again, I can’t exactly comment on this, so I’ll leave it to people better informed than me).

All in all, I think the game could’ve had potential if it weren’t for these factors, but I can’t even comment on the plot because between complimenting all the friends, the only thing that happened in half a chapter was a broken mirror. I guess spookier things are going to happen in the future but I won’t see them because my journey with this game ends here. If anyone is going to keep playing please let me know your impressions :)

[choicesenthusiast]

Representation at Pixelberry: The Follow-Up

One year ago, on June 15, 2020, Pixelberry released a statement regarding representation at the company. Here is the LINK to the original blog post, and here was MY RESPONSE. Oh, how naïve and optimistic I was. It contained a list of goals and promises they hoped to accomplish within a year. Well, a year has passed, and here is my attempt to hold PB accountable. I'll be going over the five main points of their representation plan and if they achieved what they promised. All criticisms are about content released after June 15th. Long post beware, but I'm not putting it under a read more because I feel like it's important for all to see.

1. Commitment to diversity of Love Interests - FAIL

We’ve already been moving towards having Love Interests have customizable skin tones. We will continue to do this with some stories, while also having some characters with clear ethnic identities. At the same time when we have multiple love interests of different ethnicities, we are aiming for those Love Interests to have equal game time.

"LIs with customizable skin tones" mean they come in three flavours: white, black, and ambiguously Asian/Latinx interchangeably. So far I have rarely seen an LI as connected to their culture/ethnicity as Rafael Aveiro, and he just talked about his Vovo's food if he ever were on screen. They had many chances with the other OH LIs as well. Even Ayna Seth and Tatum Mendoza were confirmed to be Indian and Filipino, respectively, though FA gets a little leeway, as it was set in a fictional west-European continent.

As for equal game time? I'm sure the biggest example we can all think of was the mess that was Open Heart 3, which was written during the hiatus (which only existed because they were going to straight up kill Rafael in Book 2). Game time was not equal among LIs, and the white male LI was heavily favoured. PB also continues to pay female LIs dirt by giving them no screen time. In addition to that, LGBT+ players, who are consistently underrepresented, receive one (1) unprepared pride month survey, prpbably only because someone asked them about it on Twitter.

This is the meat and potatoes of everything because it's what they're outputting to their audience. It's what the people see. Given that things haven't been going so well lately in this department, consider this promise a big fat fail.

2. More authentic and diverse hairstyles for people of color - QUESTIONABLE

Our team will focus on providing more authentic and representative hairstyles. We are prioritizing these hairstyles outside of our normal book processes and will introduce them in new books as they are ready.

While, yes, they have added two new hairstyles in WEH, they also just took Jade Bonet's hair and recycled it for LoA F!MC. PB recycles all their hair more often than not.

3. More diverse book covers - QUESTIONABLE

This is an initiative we started in January of this year. As a result the number of Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, mixed, and other characters on new book covers increased from 35% of characters in 2019 to 60% characters in the first half of 2020. However, the number of black characters is still not high enough this year. More are already scheduled for books later this year. We will make sure that Black characters are well represented on our covers in the future.

"Diverse" does not just mean by race, but also gender, sexual orientation, etc. FA has the only recent MLM cover. And don't tell me that the FA and LoA covers are any different from each other. The only black characters on covers are Zoey Wade (QB), and Black!Gabe Ricci (LoA) and Bastien (WB), which aren't even their canon races unless you choose them to be. This is the case for many single-LI books, such as Cassian Keane (W:ABR, which technically premiered on Mar. 16, but the sentiment is the same), Sam Dalton (TNA), and Dakota Winchester (WEH). Not to mention the customizable/multi LI books like DS, RT, BaBu2, MTFL, etc. Majority of these covers are just cishet couples delicately cradling each other's bodies or whatever. And we're not even gonna get into how PB literally put the Open Heart LIs in order of their favouritism on Book 3's cover.

4. Writers/Staff - QUESTIONABLE

We will be engaging in professional training on historical and current racism for our writers to ensure more of them have a better understanding and more context for views of diverse characters in Choices. We will also create a program that gives more authority to people of color in the studio to advise writers and artists on more authentic portrayals in both writing and art of black, brown, and minority characters.

A story with a Black-led cast is something I have asked for in the past, but failed to follow-up on. We will very likely start this with a Black-led cast story led by Chelsa, one of Pixelberry's Black writers.

We will increase the number of diverse writers we source for new stories, starting with hiring more Black and Latinx writers to lead the charge.

For all teams at Pixelberry we will actively work to bring in more Black and Latinx candidates with the goal to increase the number of Black and Latinx employees at Pixelberry. Although Pixelberry is over 50% female, on teams where females are not at 50% we will actively work to source more female candidates.

This promise seemed like a copout from the start because we have no way of knowing who works on what at PB unless we very meticulously stalk their LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever. We have no solid statistics except for what they feed us. I do know, however, that they recently let the Ms. Match writers go and were hiring for external writers, but there really is no way of knowing what's going on behind-the-scenes with their 112+ employees, and of course there would be NDAs involved. We are yet to see a book with an all-Black cast, and receive rare development updates with new books. Actually, I think a really good way to promote diversity is to do staff showcases on their social media. Just a way to show the public who's responsible for what. Writers, game devs, the art team, etc. Don't think it'll happen, but it's always a good idea.

5. Donations - QUESTIONABLE

Pixelberry will also be making $100,000 in donations to Black Girls Code, the Black Writers Collective, and the Latinx Writers Collective at Techqueria. Rather than as a lump sum, we will be making these donations over the course of a year to remind us that we are not making short term changes, but are committed to long term sustainable actions. We’ll also be donating up to an additional $100k from profits for this week, 6/15-6/21.

There has been no proof, no receipts, no evidence from PB that they have donated anything to anyone, and as far as we're concerned, their word doesn't mean anything. No news or updates news about it. I would love to believe that they did something, but as you can see, I've become quite the pessimist. BWC still uses PB's old logo (like, pre-Choices) on their sponsors page, and the last interaction they've had with BGC was in 2013. They don't even follow each other on Instagram. In fact, BGC received a huge donation from MacKenzie Scott, formerly Bezos last July. Yes, that billionaire Bezos, and that got coverage from them. Obviously donations don't need to be for publicity, but in this case I think it's important there should be proof. Again, it's really hard to tell with these behind-the-scenes things, but given how PB loves to gloat and hates to keep promises, we can assume that none of this happened.

~~~

So, what's the takeaway? That PB's fallen down the drainhole of shitty content and empty promises and has no intention of climbing out as long as they still make that bank? Seems counterproductive, because good representation gets good feedback and income. They pump out bad books with barebones "representation" if you can call it that, then drop their precious merch and pretend all is fine and dandy. But just as I suspected one year ago, none of this matters, because people forget things, and people move on, and shit gets swept under rugs. Yet, here I am, yelling at a company in a post I for sure doubt they'll see. Because if not me, then who?

@playchoices Your move. It's been your move for a year now. When will you actually make it?

[saffronique]

I Read Leopardstar's Honor So You Don't Have To: A Review (Not Spoiler Free)

Oh Leopardstar. A cat who has long divided the fanbase as a leader beloved by some and despised by others. After years of waiting (for some) she was finally given her own super edition. In a word it was... underwhelming.

Introduction:

The book opens during Leopardstar's kithood days. The first scene is adorably heartwarming- readers are treated to Leopardkit and her denmates playing the warriors version of hide and seek, and there are some absolutely adorable moments here, such as Crookedjaw helping Leopardkit escape the seeker by whisking her away on his back, and Mudfur doting on his daughter. The scene takes a sharp turn when Skykit, one of Leopardkit's denmates, lures her away from the group to shove her head underwater and berate her for giving away Skykit's hiding place in the last round of hide and seek. Skykit's actions are startlingly cruel here, as she tells Leopardkit that she's a rotten kit that killed her own mother and that she is doomed to the dark forest like all the other murderers. This understandably disturbs and traumatizes Leopardkit, and when she speaks to her father about it, Mudfur reassures her that she is good, and that Brightsky came to him in a dream to say that Leopardkit will one day save RiverClan. Leopardkit latches on to this dream, and the book follows her through relatively disjointed moments in her life as she tries to live up to her destiny.

Pacing:

The pacing of the book is an absolute nightmare. We don't spend long enough in any one part of Leopardstar's life to see her have any meaningful interactions with other cats, and thus the majority of the relationships she has seem surface level at best, forced at worse, with Whiteclaw being a notable exception. She spends maybe 3 chapters as a kit, 3 as an apprentice, 3 as a warrior, 2 as a mentor, and so on. As a result, we don't actually get the opportunity to see Leopardstar learning or struggling in a meaningful way at any point. We're TOLD she's a hard worker, that she's dedicated and loyal, but the book gives you little chance to actually see it. The book slows down long enough to force an almost love story with Frogtail, which Leopardstar ultimately gives up on to focus on her work, but then a few chapters later Frogtail is dead and it's back to jumping around through her life.

The book really suffers from a lack of side characters and relationships to help things feel connected. The only real through line is this silly dream from Mudfur-not even an official prophecy- that Leopardstar focuses on to the exclusion of all else. Compare this to Crookedstar's Promise and Bluestar's Prophecy- while both books feature a greater destiny that the characters focus on throughout the book, they are given the chance to develop meaningful relationships that last for large chunks of the book. Bluestar has her relationship with her sister and her rivalry with Thistleclaw, and even her friendship with Thrushpelt, all of which allow her story to feel genuine and naturally lend themselves to interesting subplots. Crookedstar has his relationship with Mapleshade, his romance with Willowbreeze, his desire to prove himself to his mother- again, all things that make him feel like a well rounded, multifaceted character. Leopardstar has her dream, and ONLY her dream. None of her friendships last more than a few chapters before the other character is killed off. Her most meaningful relationship, with her apprentice and adopted son Whiteclaw, has the potential to round out Leopardstar's character, but Whiteclaw's fate has been predetermined. We all know he's going to die in the gorge because we see it happen in Fire and Ice. After Whiteclaw's death, Leopardstar briefly has a compelling relationship with Silverstream after she discovers her relationship with Graystripe. Silverstream and Leopardstar have opposing priorities of love and duty, and the interactions between them are an interesting insight into both characters. Silverstream actively rebukes Leopardstar's mindset and challenges her priorities, something that would have been invaluable in making Leopardstar's choice to join Tigerstar seem more consequential. But Silverstream too is doomed to die, and by the time the book reaches its climax, Mudfur is the only cat left to challenge Leopardstar's choices. Instead of letting the rift between father and daughter build, Leopardstar has no problem simply banishing her father and medicine cat for disagreeing with her. No one that she cares about is left to challenge her for her decisions, and thus there are no real stakes to the choices she makes. Sure, Stonefur dies and its awful, but the book doesn't bother to develop any real friendship or camaraderie between the two, so it doesn't feel as impactful as it should. The book concludes with Leopardstar understanding that she's wrong and Mudfur convincing her that she's going to save the Clan from the disaster she helped create. At the very least, Leopardstar seems to understand the problems with this and points out that it's not really her saving the Clans, its Firestar. This is completely true, as she has no role in Tigerstar's downfall and no role in stopping Scourge. The best that can be said for Leopardstar is that she doesn't get in the way of Firestar here.

She faces no real struggles aside from her father's doubt as to her ability to lead, a dynamic already witnessed between Brambleberry and Crookedstar and done much better.

Awful editing:

This book suffers from an almost unbelievable lack of care on the part of the editors, with big chunks of text very obviously cut and pasted to different parts of the story without any effort to edit out nonsequitors. The most painful instance of this revolves around Stormpaw and Featherpaw's apprenticeship. In one scene, Leopardstar comments on the fact that Primrosekit and Pikekit will be made apprentices any day (Reedkit is inexplicably absent here, and Perchkit seems to have died offscreen though it is never mentioned) and notes that Stormkit and Featherkit still have their kit fluff and look tiny next to their older denmates. A couple paragraphs later, we see Featherkit and Stormkit being apprenticed to Mistyfoot and Stonefur, in a paragraph that EXPLICITLY STATES that it's the very next day. The other kits have mysteriously been apprenticed already. Boulder and Jaggedtooth of ShadowClan are inexplicably present at the ceremony, despite there being no mention of their arrival at any point and Leopardstar refusing Tigerstar's offer to join their two Clans together the day before. A few pages later (yes, literally just pages later, that's how atrocious the pacing is) we cut to a battle between RiverClan and ThunderClan at the Sunningrocks, where Stonefur and Mistyfoot's parentage is revealed. Leopardstar doesn't actually hear this, but she does overhear them discussing it in the most painfully forced way possible moments later. Leopardstar finds herself absolutely HORRIFIED that she's apprenticed two half-Clan cats to half-Clan mentors.... and then a few chapters later, after forming TigerClan, Tigerstar asks her if she still intends to make Mistyfoot and Stonefur mentors to Featherkit and Stormkit despite their parentage, to which Leopardstar responds that they are still loyal RiverClan warriors. Yes, I'm serious.

Leopardstar's character:

This super edition is nothing but a showcase of the absolute worst aspects of Leopardstar as a character. Throughout the book she is shown as racist, battle hungry, self-centered, foolish, and utterly lacking in compassion or even pity for any Clan other than her own. She is constantly making racist generalizations about cats from other Clans, actively wishes for WindClan's downfall, sides with Tigerstar simply because Fireheart is a kittypet, and, perhaps most disturbingly, tries to murder Fireheart in cold blood because of his kittypet background. This book literally does nothing to endear the reader to Leopardstar, it makes her out to be the most despicable, honorless cat imaginable. And honestly, if you're not a Leopardstar fan, I think that's one of the most compelling things about this book. The desire to see what atrocities Leopardstar would commit next was what kept me interested in the story, honestly it was the only reason I finished it. There was something morbidly fascinating about watching a character so self absorbed and lacking in compassion interact with the world around her. It was enjoyable in a way to see a character so deeply set in the beliefs that the series has repeatedly established as wrong time and time again. Pacing and editing aside, this difference in philosophy is a breath of fresh air after the same recycled plotlines and moral messages that the series has been using for years. This book isn't going to make you like Leopardstar, but it is going to make you love to hate her.

What the book did right:

While there were very few positives to the book, it wasn't completely lacking in value. The book succeeded in developing a deeply meaningful relationship between Whiteclaw and Leopardstar that, thankfully, wasn't a romance. Their mother/son and mentor/apprentice relationship does a good job at setting up Leopardstar's grudge against ThunderClan over Whiteclaw's death as we see it play out in the first arc. Honestly, Leopardstar as a character would have been served far better if this had just been a novella detailing the relationship between these two. That was probably the only real thing of value in the book, honestly. Aside from that, Frogtail and Leopardstar's relationship, while I personally found it completely unnecessary, addressed a topic I've been hoping to see in warriors for a while now-- two characters who love each other but decide that the things they want out of life are mutually incompatible, and part ways amicably. Leafpool x Crowfeather and Bluestar x Oakheart both almost did this, but fell short because it was only ever really one character who decided to end the relationship. Unfortunately, the value in this message is somewhat diminished by the fact that Leopardstar later laments multiple times that she should've given up on her goals and just had kits with Frogtail instead, an absolutely disgusting conclusion that plays into the recurring problem of misogyny in warriors where women aren't allowed to be both mothers and hold a position of power, they have to choose between the two.

All in all, this Super Edition is easily the worst so far in terms of plot, pacing, and writing, but I still found some enjoyment in reading the perspective of such a selfish, cruel protagonist.

[organic-guacamole]

episode 209 spoilers below

I'm so late today but here it is

I love EJ, he's finally learning to be happy. I'm so proud.

Ms Jenn = every boomer during zoom calls, like jeez yes we can hear you stop shouting at me.

LOVE THE SUBTLE JOKE ABOUT QUARANTINE "these dark times" "you mean spring break?"

ah yes, remember when we thought covid was just gonna give us a longer spring break? good times

SEBLOS

damn the passive aggressiveness from Carlos and the absolutely over it tone from seb✋

CASWELL COUSINS!!!!! THEY'RE THE BEST!!!!

we needed more if this kind of goofiness for the first part of season 2 that only such an iconic duo can provide.

old old movies-

is it even that old, or is Nini being a gen alpha rn-

i choose to imagine EJ being scared of the movie and hiding in Ashlyn's shoulder while she keeps a straight face and then EJ pretending to be tough afterwards

aww redlyn are soulmates.... yknow, if gingers had souls

(please ignore me)

y'all saw how EJ's face *lit up* when Gina logged on? how dare you tell me he doesn't like her

ofc she's no damsel in distress, she's Gina porter, she's amazing.

so do we think she'd be the type to just glare at suspicious people? or bark at them

do they not know that Rini broke up? or is Ms Jenn just wanting Nini to suffer through her heartbreak to make her a better actress....

speaking of, why is Nini in the call? she's not in the show anymore. Unless she is, even after the rose and the song got cut, which would be so unfair to all those that auditioned properly before she even came back but whatever, she's the main character I get it 🙄

big red is a hero honestly, Nini better thank him for changing the subject like that

I can't-

i won't work you over the break-

this woman would 100% work her kids 24/7 if it was legal and idk how to feel about it.

YES GINA USE THAT CHARM

QUEEN

FRENCH QUEEN

SHE LEARNT FROM THE BEST (antoine obvi)

smh the airport lady, eavesdropping on Gina's call.

The way she was so happy to answer EJ's call, "eej"

I love them your honour.

EJ WITH PAINTED NAILS YES PLEASE

great now we need to see Gina, Ashlyn and EJ having a complete spa day and EJ getting really into it and Gina and Ashlyn take pictures of him when he's laying down in a robe with a mask and cucumbers on his eyes.

finally we get to see Gina's side of portwell

the way she considered it as flirting, this is the sign she asked for in episode 6 come onnnnn

no is Asher/jack really doing tiktok dances in an airport-

Ricky is me. I am burrito.

oh Lynne, sweetie, I'm sorry but the blonde hair is not it

is that even the same lady or-

THE BEAN

THE CHICAGO BEAN

THE BIG OLD METAL BEAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY 😭

jetlag is my go to excuse for anything... I haven't travelled in 2 years.

"welcome to the Lynne and Mike gossip show. where we talk about our depressed son that we both neglect in certain ways! And now a word from our sponsor, Nord VPN..."

SO MANY CANDLES

WHAT DEMON IS LYNNE TRYING TO SUMMON IN HIS ROOM-

is Nina becoming social media obsessed EJ from season 1? AND SHE LIED ABOUT HAVING SONGS TOO PLEASE WHY ARW THEY RECYCLING THE SAME PLOT-

Gina smiling at the picture of her family on Instagram makes me so happy, idek why.

EJ's nails are so pretty, we needed to see it more (unless he had it on for the rest of the episode and I just.... didn't notice🧍🏽‍♀️)

oh not the tiktok kid✋

yes ma'am end this strange mans whole tiktok career

sir take a hint and leave

GINA NO DONT SAY YOUR LAST NAME HE COULD BE A HUMAN TRAFFICKER

Ricky, walking in style✨

weird kid, ok then Lynne, can't you see he's this close to the edge?

not all your fault baby Ricky, Nini sucks a bit more

RICKY YOU DIDN'T COME DOWN HARD ON THE SONG-

YOU ASKED WHAT IT WAS ABOUT AND SHE SHUT YOU DOWN-

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF

ok but the deleting comment thing was very bad

still don't know if I like Jack honestly

hmmm so Nini's calling herself Nini instead of Nina in her little egg seat, while trying to write a song without inspiration.... Nini, honey, Ricky was your muse, he inspired you to write all those songs, even if it wasn't good for the relationship.

that doesn't mean you gotta get back with him, or that you can't write a song that not about him butttt it'll take some time

the rainbow sticker in her box and her rainbow shirt-

anyways wbk she's not totally straight

Jack are you a criminal?

quick, Gina, check his ankle for a tracker

THE YES AND PRACTICE STRIKES AGAIN

the way Gina wasn't into it in episode 6 but she's used the technique twice now

stole her grandma's Pomeranian-

Jack where the hell did you pull that out from-

the fake crying killed me, that looks like so much fun though

anyone wanna raid a first class lounge with me?

wait so is jack not gonna go in with her?

wouldn't he go in too? help look for the credit card? SO CONFUSED

the first class lounge guy was so into the drama though, watch his face when they start arguing 😭

sorry to break this to you Kourtney, but you haven't even blocked the second act yet soooo...

take that as you will

I love how all of them are totally dissing the dance off

that's the most realistic part of this show tbh

shouldn't Nini have asked how she knew....since the start? why is the fact that her best friend has knowledge of a North high secret now dawning on her...

Howie is sweet honestly, at least he's trying to help. but I stand with Kourtney, don't take him back just because he sang an amazing song, and is giving you a heads up on what's gonna happen...

KOURTNEY IS ME TRYING TO LEAVE AN ONLINE CLASS

I hate school

ooo Nini's writing a song about bad internet connection 🤩🤩🤩

I never lie, except when I do-

son that is the creepiest thing you could say to a stranger that you've been "helping"

2 truths and a lie👀

he's an Ariana fan 100%

called it.

OLDER BROTHER-

WHAT-

free spirit? damn so brother porter was in that horse movie

so has she been kissed or not?????????

I feel like she's moved more than 15 times though so possibly

but then if she's moved so much, and before east high she never opened up to anyone, she's never been kissed then?? damn

same though Gina so let's be besties please

heartbreak president is a great song title idea, give Nini a call rn

but wait

is the no strings attached feeling thing about her telling Ricky she liked him? she thought she was moving away so she thought it'd be no strings attached???

guys I think I figured it out insert the "I've connected two dots" meme

THE DUKE SWEATSHIRT

IS THAT YOUR BOYFRIEND'S

OMG I LOVE I LOVE

NOT THAT I KNOW OF???

ma'am did you just kill me

yes you did

Lynne and Ricky have such a weird relationship

YES IT DID SUCK

TODD SUCKS

LYNNE SUCKS

yeah I get that you wanted Ricky to like Todd BUT THAT WASN'T THE TIME

right so we already know that Ricky was so desperate to keep Nini cuz he didn't want to be like his parents, and now Lynne's talking about this-

Richard needs a long hug

yes Lynne, it is your fault. thank you for finally admitting it.

YES DYE YOUR HAIR

BLOND HIGHLIGHTS RICKY WILL RISE AGAIN

"sometimes the best, last thing you can do for someone you love, is let them go."

gotta admit I teared up at that point

not me thinking big red was calling ms Jenn cupcake for a hot second-

Carlos please omg, you're at the "beach" and they're leaving for the pool?

also, why not just do the call from the hotel room please omg

"don't ask me"

"Carlos"

OMG WHAT HAPPENED

big red wants the tea

O M G

SEB IS JEALOUS

JEALOUS SEBBY IS MY FAVOURITE THING IDC

I'm surprised ms Jenn knew how to give Nini permission to screenshare tbh

So lily's been stalking the East high kids and spending time editing this video while she's supposedly in an immersion trip.... right

EJ and Ashlyn's picture is so chaotic, what even is happening there

"slacking off" bestie its spring break, obviously they're confident enough that they'll get it done in time so why not focus on your own musical.

jealous seb = sassy seb

please what if those guys Carlos is posing with are his cousins or something and that's why he's so confused about Seb

6 YEAR OLD EJ I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM

Nini saying she's obsessed with her ex, that's not weird at all 👍

I can just tell Matt had a blast harassing Julia with those puppets.

Jack please dont be like that, "yet"

chances are you'll never see eachother again 🥰

(honestly sometimes I really miss those friends I made on trips and stuff when we'd spend the day or week together, only to never see them again....those were the good days though)

Ashlyn and Nini should write more songs..... something better than this one at least

Nini: "im good"

cue the Tia Mowry (please I can't spell) crying gif

oh I forgot Ricky was in the show for a hot second

1. where did Gina get to film this without people being around

2. did she just... randomly change her clothes???

ok but the transition between Carlos and EJ

*chefs kiss*

now everyone shut up, EJ's singing

oh i think I'm pregnant

HIS MUSCLES

YES KOURTNEY

I love how big red and Kourtney went from being "the best friends™" to the couple in season 1, to kinda close themselves and having their own plots

sebby makes me so happy

props to biggies editing skills honestly

PORTWELL BEING SIDE TO SIDE I CANT

AND SEBLOS OMG

big red lives for the drama

"wow" so true Ricky

no he is not cute, stop it

"holding" ok that's kinda cute

yeah EJ's a lucky guy😌

jokes aside, it's not that hard to exchange numbers-

keep in touch if you want

ok I really like Jack now

if he comes back in season 3, maybe have him be LGBTQ+ ?

like the only out characters they have rn are Seb and Carlos and they're like the sterotypes, yk?

I'd love to see jack kinda break the mold

Ricky's breaking my heart

that song just hurts

the only thing

now I don't hate Lynne????????

HOW DARE THEY WRITE IN A PROPER REDEMPTION ARC FOR HER

UGH IM SUPPOSED TO HATE HER FOREVER

I mean I don't live her now but she's good

but honestly

"mom can I show you something"

IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL

THE PICTURE AND EVERYTHING OMG

I'm sobbing please help

Gina saying she's just waiting for the right guy and then EJ coming to the airport to pick her up late at night without her asking, offering to bring her back in the morning so she won't have to Uber, bringing her a granola bar (WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT SHE FORGOT TO PACK) and without expecting anything in return???

ms ma'am you've got a keeper right there

her smile at the end was so heartwarming I really can't.

this episode was great.

it felt really short but I liked it, great character development for Ricky, Lynne and Gina.

Cant wait for next episode to see more of EJ being the ideal boyfriend /hj

[crystalkleure]

I have a Concept.

BeyBurst beyblades are supposed to burst. As in, it’s actually a necessity. In spite of the Exploding Beyblade mechanic potentially causing sharp little bits of spintop to go flying everywhere and hit people, what if it’s actually a safety feature?

If I recall correctly, all the way back in s1 territory [specifically in the manga though, can’t remember if we saw it in the anime or not], Valt and Shu just straight-up got their original beys from a store. And there are also all of those Unimportant Characters running around with different-coloured versions of preexisting beys. This indicates that beyblades are, in fact, mass-produced and sold in stores, and those are all built to be able to burst. In fact, I still haven’t seen the newest two seasons of the Burst anime yet, but I’m pretty sure super special fancy custom beys, that some important character explicitly made themself, that have some really creative [and strong] anti-burst features built into them, don’t ever show up as NPC recolour beys? In spite of the trend of “random background characters in new season use recoloured versions of Prominent Character beys from LAST season” to me seeming to indicate that those new recolour beys are either bootleg copycats, or those actual official shelf models have just suddenly started selling really well, due to someone having just recently done something cool with one in a tournament/on TV lol. [Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong on which beys get NPC recolours, I don’t exactly actually, uh, pay attention to all the random background scrubs. That point’s not particularly important anyway because I’m sure unofficial bootlegs are a thing that exists, mmmm delicious plagiarism. The point is the stores seem to sell beys with the normal level of burstability. And so I’m only caring about the everyday random NPCs with no names or anything, if another important character specifically goes and painstakingly recreates a bey similar or identical to another important character’s bey just because they idolize that other character, that doesn’t count. That’s not important here, implication-wise.] So...

What if it’s actually a really bad thing that people keep making their own custom beys now that are increasingly more and more ludicrously difficult -- or even near-impossible -- to burst?

What if the self-destruct mechanic is intended to be an emergency shutdown switch, and actually really needs to not be subverted? We’ve seen what an adept beyblader can do while running at full-throttle -- they’re dangerous, to themselves and their surroundings. Beys have the power to be obscenely destructive...while they’re spinning and battling, primarily. They are by far the most potent while actively in use. But if they hit things too hard like 3-4 times or so...they burst. Their locks disengage, they fall apart, and thus they are forced to abruptly stop. That makes them theoretically incapable of just rampaging indefinitely.

Picture this: One day, in the probably-decently-distant history of the BeyBurst world, a kid has a spintop. Probably made that spintop themself. This kid, it turns out, happens to be one of the Super Special Powerful Kids, who’s not only REALLY GOOD at using that spintop, they also possess that funny little supernatural ability to accidentally create an incredibly powerful incorporeal monster ghost creature thing with their brain. And because they love playing with their little spintop so much, that spintop becomes the vessel for this Terrifying Monster-Shaped Culmination Of Spiritual Elemental Energy or whatever that they’ve manifested. That’s...good, probably, because at least that means the Scary Monster Thing isn’t 1. just stuck in the kid’s brain with nowhere else to go, which would lead to possession that would decidedly be incredibly difficult to deal with without harming the kid, or 2. funneled into something more dangerous to control, like a car or a nuclear warhead or some shit. But then it turns out that the kid is ABSOLUTELY still able to wreak impressive havoc and cause Large Amounts Of Destruction, even accidentally...until the spintop stops spinning. The Power Level drops dramatically as soon as the demon top is still, and it takes a little while for it to build back up once it’s launched again. But what if a feature is implemented into the spintop that allows it to keep spinning for much, much longer? Or just The Supernatural Monster Power itself becomes capable of sustaining it, through wind manipulation or something?

Now, imagine you’re idk, the government or something, someone with Power and Influence over the masses, and you see THAT happen. Shit, that was just a random kid that did that! Looked like any other kid, acted like any other kid! There is no feasible way to tell a kid with Brain Monster potential apart from other kids who are NOT That Powerful, until a brain monster happens. So, if you can’t predict it, and thus can’t do anything to mitigate the potential destruction on a case-by-case basis...well, how about you convince ALL the little kiddies that spintops are just the greatest thing ever, everyone should play with spintops, AND you ensure those spintops are mass-manufactured specifically to not be able to Hold A Charge for too long because...they burst! You’ve designed them so that violence itself causes them to fall apart and stop to cool down! It’s perfect! That way, anytime an odd mutant child with Brain Monster powers comes along, the chance of them funneling their Brain Monster into their spintop is now Very High, meaning that all the Brain Monsters will hopefully end up inhabiting these little plastic toys that actively inhibit them instead of possessing children or nukes. It’s brilliant!

This does raise some questions, though:

1. What happens when someone’s spintop breaks, and they DON’T get it repaired, after they’ve already manifested a Brain Monster to live in it? Where would the Brain Monster go in that case? Uh oh, demon on the loose? Exactly what we were trying to avoid? Shu’s change between Legend Spriggan and Spriggan Requiem in God does seem to indicate that the Brain Monster probably 1. by default, does just camp out in its blader’s brain until a new Spintop Vessel is created for it, and 2. the Brain Monster itself is probably not actually completely strictly sealed into any bey, because it doesn’t disappear as soon as the bey is destroyed, and it doesn’t stay with an old/broken bey that’s been discarded when a new bey has been made for it. Legend Spriggan was discarded and left on the riverbed, and Spriggan Requiem was then made from scratch, seemingly using no recycled physical parts from Legend Spriggan, but Spriggan Requiem’s bitbeast looks only very slightly different from Legend Spriggan’s. All of Shu’s Spriggans are honestly probably still the same creature, just progressively evolved. I don’t think we’ve ever seen somebody make an entirely NEW Brain Monster that does not resemble their original one, it seems the original simply gets developed more and more. One person apparently only possesses the ability to make a single individual Brain Monster. You Get One (1), but you can upgrade it. But what about Hearts? His Dead Hades, which very much had a Brain Ghost in it, was not only destroyed, but assimilated into Phi’s Revive Phoenix, to make Dead Phoenix. What happened to that situation, over time? We haven’t gotten to see. Is Hearts’ Hades truly actually fused with Phi’s Phoenix, ceasing to be its own entity anymore, or does Phoenix simply very slightly resemble Hades now due to its bey being upgraded with physical bits of Hades’ bey? What if it’s not even POSSIBLE to truly fuse Brain Ghosts, especially without consent? In which case...is Hades itself just lingering around back in Hearts’ brain, waiting for a new bey to inhabit, and Hearts isn’t making one because he doesn’t realize Hades isn’t just Part Of Phoenix now? That sounds potentially dangerous, there’s no more outlet for your Brain Ghost, buddy. I want to see Phi and Hearts again, to know what eventually happened there.

2. Why do the tournaments not actually enforce a rule that says “Your bey HAS to be able to be reasonably burstable”? Chouzetsu Wings and the Mugen Lock System did not equal disqualifications. Has it maybe, over time, been forgotten exactly WHY we Need Beys To Burst? Well, that’s a ticking time bomb, then. How difficult a bey is to burst does seem to directly cause its Potential Destructiveness Levels to scale accordingly. [With somewhat of an exception of Pot and his Pegasus, but it should be noted that Pot was not exactly terribly serious about beyblade initially and yet was STILL considered one of the strongest ‘bladers in the world, GT3 iirc, AND he’s very into the whole “Love and light, chillax, be in-tune with yourself and all the energy in and around you, etc.” peaceful thing.] This HAS To Be A Problem. Why is nobody concerned.

3. ...What is causing the general public not to panic about this? Why are people okay with Brain Ghost and Mass Spintop Destruction happening, instead of terrified? This shit is broadcast on TV. The stands during tournaments are packed with spectators. It may be that perhaps not everybody can SEE the Brain Ghosts themselves [and I’m skeptical about that, because there have absolutely been MANY indications that other people know what someone’s bitbeast looks like], but the Big Bada Booms they cause are DAMN sure Highly Visible. Aiga’s father seems to be the only one truly properly concerned about the incredible mass-destructive potential of the spintops. Realistically, The Salem With Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo should be happening due to the Scary Spintop Kids being Fucking Scary, and sometimes quite clearly even out-of-control of themselves.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this is not a direction canon will ever go in, or I think it would have already done it. I don’t think they’re going to explore this route. It’s a shame I don’t have the chops for writing long-haul fanfiction, because if I did I would absolutely be hardcore capitalizing on this idea. This has incredible Worldbuilding Lore Potential.