#This was more of a “fuck it we ball” gameplay next one I will try to go to the wiki to check different things while I play kkkk

[humanaaa]

Oooo I think I am getting close to finishing isat 🤔 just arrived at act 6 maybe perhaps

[only-by-the-stars]

so. I have. some thoughts about TotK.

they're not happy ones.

(behind a cut for spoilers and negativity)

to be clear, the gameplay is mostly fun. that's what's kept me going this far. but... I'm not sure anymore if it can keep carrying me. because this is, honest to god, one of the biggest stinkers of a story I've ever seen in a video game. and I DO NOT say that lightly!!! I have seen some SHIT, okay??? time travel and alternate dimension shenanigans that left me unsure of what the fuck the situation was after the ending, a reveal that the universe was one big MMO... those have stuck in my mind for well over a decade for being just that fucking bad.

and this story isn't just as stupid, no. it's as stupid as those, AND it's INCREDIBLY poorly told. like I cannot stress that enough!!! as of this writing, I have found every single glyph on the world map + the bonus tear that you get for seeing all those + the little bonus scene from getting the Master Sword. they're all numbered in more or less chronological order in the menu, 1-18.

so.

why in god's name am I still missing 11, 14, and 16????????

LIKE

AM I JUST GONNA GET THEM AFTER DOING PLOT-MANDATED EVENTS?

this is deeply fucking terrible!!! at least in those other bad stories I got to watch all the nonsense unfold in linear order, AND! AND AND AND!!! I WAS INVOLVED IN IT, IT WASN'T SOMEONE ELSE'S MEMORIES

and also the writing for Zelda herself is just atrocious and embarrassing, like I'm genuinely cringing here. in the flashbacks she does little aside from stand around and talk, her love for history/science only comes up in the intro, and functions as long-winded exposition, and she unfortunately was handed the Idiot Ball on top of it (not figuring out that Ganondorf was the the Basement Mummy till after he transformed? girl... Urbosa even SAID that CALAMITY GANON was said to have been born as a Gerudo man... why are Nintendo's writers determined to make her look stupid like this???). and in the present time, she's apparently good at everything and everyone loves her (even the unhinged flower lady), and she gets a super special gold horse, and it's just... she's barely a character. she's more like the overpowered OC everyone loves that kids just starting to write come up with.

which is fine at that stage! necessary, even! we all start somewhere, and I am NOT shaming anyone for doing that when they're just starting out. goodness knows I produced my share of embarrassing crap as a baby writer.

but this is a main installment of a major franchise by one of the biggest video game companies, made by paid adult professionals. that is. embarrassing.

and... as far as I've seen/heard from others who have seen more cutscenes than I have (again, this is bullshit, why are these apparently key scenes being withheld from me?), there's never an explanation for the Calamity/Calamity Ganon and he doesn't seem to be the same entity as Ganondorf. Zelda also never once considers trying to prevent the Calamity, either, and save all those lives, because Reasons, I guess. and the time travel magically doesn't affect anything but the current crisis???? calling BS on this too. plus, it doesn't help that there's so little flow/build-up/connective tissue between the cutscenes. next to nothing, in fact. it feels like I watched the isolated anime cutscenes of an older RPG whose story was told mainly through scenes in the game engine, and tried to understand the plot from there.

except that for this game, that's all I get.

also they managed to make the Silent Princess metaphor even more ham-fisted than in BOTW, which is quite the achievement. good lord. the way my eyes rolled seeing that, the incredulous laughter I burst into... sheesh.

at this point I just. don't know if I should try and power through and rush to the ending, take a break, or just drop it entirely. either way, it would never get a replay the way BOTW did. it's just. bleh.

and don't even get me started on how they fucked up the Poes and Gibdos, way to even disappoint my desire for the return of favorite creepy enemies, I didn't even get my ReDeads. I DIDN'T EVEN GET MY REDEADS

in closing, everyone who complained about the story/time travel in AOC owes me the cost of TotK. that game may have been silly, but at least it respected the Champions and I got to see more characters interacting and everything playing out as it happened and I didn't feel so distant/isolated from it all. ugh. I need to replay THAT game!

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

What are some of your favorite games of all time?

This is a great question, more questions about video games, less questions where people make up things I never said and demand I defend those positions, XD

Anyway, here's a short list:

Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The best isometric RPG ever made, in my opinion.

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. The best version of one of the best games ever made.

Mass Effect Trilogy. Yeah the third one shit the bed in a lot of ways, but I still enjoy the series as a whole. Playing a game series where your choices carried over from one game to the next was groundbreaking in the 2000s, and I always enjoyed my time with these games. Especially rereleased in the legendary edition.

Resident Evil 2, Original and Remake. My favorite Resident Evil game of all time. Great game, great story, great characters.

Resident Evil 4, original and remake. Second favorite Resident Evil game. Also, my husband's favorite game ever. I love seeing him get excited over it, XD

Suikoden 2. Great gameplay, great story, best game in the series.

Tales of Zesteria. Mikleo my beloved!

Jaws (NES). Yes, it's bad. Yes, it's short. No, I don't care. This was one of the first games I ever owned, and me and my dad used to play it together when I was very little. I have a lot of fond memories of trying to figure out how to beat the game with him. I still remember how excited we were when we started to figure out the gameplay loop for the very first time.

Mortal Kombat 2. The game that introduced me to the series, and still one of my old favorites. I still play and love MK to this day because of it.

Kingdom Hearts, whole series. I can't really pick one game, because they're all both really, really good and really, really bad, XD. But I love the story and the characters, and I've enjoyed each of them in different ways. But if I had to pick just one, I'd probably pick 2.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. Still the best Star Wars game ever made. Still one of the best western RPGs ever made. The plot twist is still one of my favorite moments in video game history.

Max Payne 2. Ugh, so good. Great storytelling, fun gameplay. Took everything great about Max Payne 1 and did it better. RIP James McCaffrey.

MegaMan Battle Network, whole series. Probably the best reimagining of a classic IP I've ever seen, from the old days when "reimagined" didn't mean "vandalized". I was several years older than him when the first game came out, but in a lot of ways I grew up with Lan and his friends, and these games will always have a special place in my heart.

Jade Empire. Another great BioWare western RPG. Great setting, good story, unique characters, and really good and unique-for-the-time combat.

Soul Nomad and the World Eaters. I don't even know why I like this game so much, but I do, lol. They should have given the male PC a romance ending with Gig, though >_<

Pokemon Red and Blue. Pure nostalgia entry, but even though there are a lot of boring Gen 1 haters, to be a 10 year old kid when the original US Pokemon craze was at its peak was something special, and the games and the Pokemon will always be cherished in this house. Gen 1 supremacy, noobs!

Batman Arkham Asylum. You have no idea what it was like growing up a Batman fan and a video game fan in the years before Arkham Asylum. Every Batman game was terrible. It was a running joke how no one could do a good Batman game. Hell, half the word of mouth for AA was "did you hear someone's trying to make a good Batman game?" That they got many of the incredible voices from Batman the Animated Series back was even better. RIP Kevin Conroy and Arleen Sorkin. (And fuck Mark Hamill)

Legacy of Kain, whole series. Aside from Metal Gear Solid, this series is the definitive master class on video game storytelling and voice acting. I love the plot, I love the characters, I love everything. I hate how the ball was dropped so hard after Defiance, because that game set up an amazing follow up that just...never happened. It was such a sad fall from grace, because in the early 2000s this was the AAA game series. Everyone loved it. Everyone was desperate for the next game. And then it just kind of fizzled out after a few missteps and developer woes. And it died a quiet death in a proto-live service multiplayer game that no one wanted and even fewer people played. And while the tragedy is appropriate to the Gothic setting, I'm still hoping against hope for a faithful remake of the first games that spurs the original developers to finally finish the series the way it always deserved.

Honorable Mention: Final Fantasy 8. Gonna be honest here, 70% of my love for this game comes from fanfiction, lol. I played the game when I was a kid, and didn't really like it. It was weird and looked bad (I played it long after I'd gotten used to the "modern" graphics of the PS2 generation) and even with a Codebreaker and cheats the final boss was super frustrating. But there's some really great FF8 fanfic out there. Stuff I reread every few years. And it's given me a phantom nostalgia for the game.

[jazlynriddle]

Welcome to your life - Pt 3:

It's My Own Design Ch 10:

Summary:

Ominis fought to control his expression, to keep his hands from trembling. Five years. Five years since he'd seen his parents, and this. This was the reason they'd given him the honour of their time? This was the reason they'd sought him out at Hogwarts?

The bitterness welling up within him was thick enough to gag on.

New year, new allies, new responsibilities, new avenues of revenue, and new aspects of their own Ancient Magic to explore. As the Keeper and their partners enter their last year at Hogwarts, it remains to be seen if the new school year will bring with it new problems or adversaries, but they are confident in the strength of their relationship with Sebastian and Ominis. The three of them would endure, no matter what befell them.

And if they were wrong?

What a joke, they would suffer no alternative.

Warnings: Sebastian x MC x Ominis! Drug Addiction! Spoilers! Slow-burn corruption! Dark content! Fucked up 1800s orphanages! MC has no love for Anne or Solomon! Dubious happy ending (it's happy for MC, Seb and Ominis at least).

You can also read on AO3! (chapter specific warnings below)

Notes:

Warnings: Spoilers for the Haunted Hogsmeade quest! And a lot of lore and some groundwork laying before the ball truly starts rolling next chapter!

I made up a bunch of lore for this chapter/series based on the snippets we got in the game, and some gameplay features. Integrating game mechanics into the narrative in a way that hopefully makes sense xD

And yay, after all this time, the devs finally gave us the PS5 exclusive! And it's amazing, I'm not going to lie, I'm a big horror nut so I trying to keep my hopes low and wasn't expecting this to even make me mildly unsettled, and while it didn't really scare me there was one moment that actually gave me a shiver and that's awesome, it's been ages since anything has given me a shiver, and it was insanely creative and so clever.

If you haven't played it, I highly recommend opening Hogwarts Legacy just to play the Haunted Hogsmeade quest before reading this chapter. It's well written, very witty script, well designed, the puzzles and boss fights were great- I wish they'd forced us to use Ancient Magic in the fight against Ranrok the way they do for this quest's final boss. All around, fantastic experience and I wish we'd gotten more of that calibre of gameplay throughout the game.

I'm actually really happy with how perfectly the quest fits into this time period, I was worried that I'd have to tweak something, but it just slots in like a dream. Fantastic! And the MC dialogue felt so Keeper lol, I'm actually really happy about that haha-

“Ominis?” The Keeper called out, cautiously pushing open the door to the secondary greenhouse, where they kept their more dangerous plants. One could never be too careful, some of the things they’d moved in here were more dangerous than a box of chomping cabbages, and those little green leaf-balls could be more chaotic than even Sebastian.

As they did so, an unexpected chime rang out and the Keeper startled, darting their gaze about for the source of the soft and melodic sound, which turned out to be a cluster of hollow metal pipes hanging from some string that was then attached to the door.

“Yes?” Ominis' voice, far more pleasant than the chime, came from the other side of a large Venomous Tentacula.

Leaving the door to close behind them, the Keeper examined the chime's mechanics for a moment, before striding over to where Ominis was tending to a Fire Seed Bush which, strangely enough, wasn't on fire.

“Did you hang that chime to the door?” The Keeper asked curiously.

“I did, aunt Noctua made me one for my bedroom door when I was five. It...” Ominis paused for a moment, before continuing. “Made it easier to sleep at night, not having to keep an ear out for someone opening my door, and I asked her to teach me how to craft one too.”

The Keeper wondered what their lover might have feared creeping into his room as a child. Monsters? His older siblings? Parents? The possibilities were potentially concerning.

“I see, I think it's rather clever.” The Keeper hummed thoughtfully. “We could probably do something similar in the main house, perhaps a touch more unobtrusive.”

As they spoke, the chime rang out once again, catching their attention. Leaning back to peek at the door, the Keeper spotted Sebastian entering the greenhouse, walking in backwards and holding the door open as he levitated a large crate inside.

“What have you got there, Sebastian?” The Keeper asked curiously as he followed the box inside.

“Dirt.” Sebastian proclaimed with a flourish, setting the crate down on the floor beside Ominis with a thud.

“That... sounds like a lot more than I asked for.” Ominis blinked.

“Well, I wasn't sure exactly how moist ‘a slice of bread left out on a foggy morning’ would be, in dirt terms.” Sebastian explained with a shrug, swishing his wand and opening the box to reveal six large pots. “So I just dug up a few different spots.”

The Keeper snorted in amusement, taking note of the dampness of his thin and summer-appropriate linen shirt as it clung to his frame. “Manually? Or by magic?”

Combing his fingers through his sweat damp bangs, Sebastian lifted his chin and flashed them a proud grin. “Manually, of course. We haven’t been in battle for ages and if I just rely on our practice spars to stay in shape, I won’t be able to keep up with you.”

“See? It’s not so hard to work out when you work it into your everyday routine. You wizardborn rely too much on magic and neglect your bodies to your own detriment.” With an approving nod and a fond chuckle, the Keeper swept an appreciative gaze up and down his body, pleased when he flushed happily under their attention. “Besides, there are other benefits to being fit, aside from dodging killing curses.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re working on your... health.” Ominis sighed and shook his head. “But I do hope you didn't leave a trail of holes all over our courtyard.”

“Of course not, I smoothed them out again after getting your variety pack.” Sebastian let out a huff at the blond's expression, seeming rather indignant that his partner thought him so inconsiderate. “So, what’d you need a ton of dirt for?”

“Oh, this little one here seems to be suffering from low nitrate levels. I think the soil we used from the previous grass lawn wasn't very nutritious.” Ominis explained as he stooped to run his fingers through the soil in each pot, inspecting the moisture levels of their contents no doubt. “I'm hoping the carpet of clover would have made the soil more suitable for growth.”

“I see.” Sebastian nodded, though his expression didn't quite match his words. Well, he wasn’t taking NEWT Herbology for a reason, their partner only cared about plants insofar as they were useful in potions or other practical use, and higher education Herbology was more focused on the detailed care of plants rather than identification or application.

“The plants are lucky to have such an attentive healer looking after them.” The Keeper smiled fondly at the blond, only for him to narrow his eyes and straighten.

“Hm, well, that's very kind of you to say. Though I notice that you have been complimenting me all morning.” Ominis’ dry tones were dripping with suspicion. “Which reminds me, shouldn’t you be going for your weekly lessons with Professor Rackham soon? Exactly what did you need from me?”

“Can I not simply wish to see the beautiful face of my lover?” The Keeper tried, with their best imitation of Sebastian's most charming smile, receiving a bark of laughter from the brunet beside them for their efforts and, unfortunately, an increase in the intensity of Ominis’ suspicion.

Clearing their throat, the Keeper conceded. “I – well – was wondering if we’ve got any Mandrakes in here.”

Folding his arms, Ominis raised an eyebrow. “Third aisle, beside the Mimbulus Mimbletonia.”

“Thanks, love.” The Keeper quipped, giving him a light peck on the cheek as they shuffled past him quickly.

Weaving through the rows of plants, they dodged a bite from a Fanged Geranium as they rounded the corner, easily spotting the aforementioned Mandrakes they were looking for, next to a large and putrid cactus.

“There we go.” The Keeper murmured, plucking the most pristine and unmarred leaf from the small Mandrake bush’s stem.

“And what do you plan on doing with that?” Ominis’ voice made their shoulders sag in resignation. While, granted, it was obvious what they were up to, perhaps it had been too much to hope that the boys would simply leave it be.

Sighing quietly, the Keeper turned to face him, seeing their partners standing between them and the door, both with folded arms, though markedly different expressions.

“Would you believe me if I said I was wondering how it tasted?” The corner of the Keeper’s mouth lifted in a lopsided smile.

The sheer incredulity on Ominis’ face was almost worth the amount of nagging that was sure to follow.

“Didn't you say you didn't want to become an Animagus?” Sebastian cocked an eyebrow, though his bemused grin never faltered.

“I... did, yes.” The Keeper sighed. “Look, if I do it openly, Natty will be on my case about registering for the rest of her life.”

“So you just planned to sit in on Natty's Saturday evening lessons under the guise of wandless coaching, and then follow along on your own a day late.” Ominis’ lips pressed into a disapproving line.

“If I'm lucky, I'll be something small enough to sneak about unnoticed.” The Keeper reasoned. “I'm not normally one for recon, but it could come in useful and I'm not about to make such an advantage publicly accessible information. Surely, you'd approve of my taking a more cautious approach?”

“They've got a point.” Sebastian grinned, bumping shoulders with Ominis and receiving a glare for his trouble.

“There are reasons people have to register with the Ministry.” Ominis shook his head.

“The only reason the Ministry makes Animagi register is so they can charge whichever bird Animagus they want when a pigeon happens to fly by before a big incident.” The Keeper rolled their eyes. “I'm not going to give them such an easy way to implicate me in crimes I didn't commit.”

“Fair, you'd rather it be for crimes you did commit, I'm sure.” Sebastian chuckled. “But that's only a concern if you can be caught.”

“Sebastian!” Ominis glared in his general direction.

The Keeper laughed lightly, how very Sebastian, to be inexplicably confident that he'd escape consequences. Hard to blame Ominis for being so high strung when he'd grown up with this one for a best friend and love interest. “Says the one who needed our help to get out of your last pickle.”

His expression immediately became chagrined. “Yikes, you just had to remind me.”

“Good. Because you need to be.” Ominis pinched the bridge of his nose with a tired shake of his head. “Ugh, can't believe I'll need a second collar and leash.”

A mischievous grin spread across Sebastian's face, as he sidled up against Ominis’ side with a suggestive purr. “Why, Ominis, I didn’t realise your appetites were that deviant.”

Wow, he really was fearless, the Keeper smiled fondly as Ominis bristled in pink cheeked indignation.

“Sebastian!”

Swirls of silver and white, bathed in a soft blue hue, spiralled through the air and danced across the Keeper's wand. The air within the Repository chamber of Dìon's second basement floor vibrated quietly with energy, sharp cracks, and pops echoed across the large hall, and throughout it all, they struggled to focus.

Wood, smooth and firm, planes of porous yet sturdy fibre. Straight sides and a kind of... rounded top? And holes for hinges on the sides and a doorknob. Twisty... patterns? Sort of elegant er-

The swirling stream of Ancient Magic, that had been in the process of transfiguring the large pile of logs at the Keeper's feet, rippled for a moment, before crackling loudly and snapping. The Keeper's eyes opened at the sound and were treated to the sight of half flattened logs collapsing, one of which, tumbled down the pile and rolled to a stop at their feet.

“Argh!” The Keeper released a muffled shout of frustration. It took every scrap of willpower in their bones to stop themselves from kicking or stomping on the warped log right in front of their ancient and conservative teacher.

“How strange, this method seemed to work well when I was instructing Isidora in Ancient Transfiguration.” The portrait of Professor Rackham hummed thoughtfully, and the Keeper fought the itch to throw a Confringo at the artwork.

Seeming to notice their restrained frustration, the portrait quickly followed in a placating tone. “Don't be discouraged, my young student, I can see your efforts. Perhaps, seeing as you have not made any improvement since our lesson last Sunday, we should try a different approach.”

“I'm all ears, Professor.” The Keeper smiled tightly.

Sure, it stung that they weren't getting it even after spending the little free time they had all week drawing bloody doors, touching the damn classroom doors in Hogwarts while getting weird looks from their classmates, and trying desperately to mentally visualise this shit, but hey, they would do whatever it took to learn how to use their powers.

This whole Ancient Transfiguration thing was insanely useful. While it required the materials necessary to craft the object manually and cost a truly exhausting amount of magic, being able to craft and ascribe customisable directives into objects, like the Ancient Guardians that were tasked with guarding the Trials? Worth it.

Especially since they could use Pain to boost their production output well above what Professor Rackham had achieved alone. Once they’d mastered the crafting skill, of course.

Not to mention, if they could even learn to manipulate the weather like Rackham had with Feldcroft, any defence of Dìon could be bolstered even further with nature’s elements. They could already call down lightning to strike a foe in combat, if they could conjure a hurricane or a tornado to annihilate their enemies, Dìon would truly be impervious to aerial attacks.

A dry voice, that sounded remarkably like Ominis, prodded them in the back of their head. Well, of course, such a skill could also be of agricultural use, but, look, priorities.

“How have you tapped into your Ancient Magic up to this point?” Rackham asked after a few minutes of thought.

“What do you mean?” The Keeper frowned in confusion. “It just... happens. When I need it.”

“Purely on instinct then, I was much the same when I first began to experiment with my abilities.” Rackham nodded with a small smile. “Perhaps the way we access and channel our Ancient Magic may differ. Tell me, how did your Ancient Magic first manifest without prompt, and under what circumstances?”

The Keeper hesitated, but ultimately decided to be honest. They'd have to broach the subject eventually. “In combat. My Ancient Magic consistently surfaces to help me... expedite my victory.”

Rackham, to his credit, didn't show much surprise at their answer. “I assume those... results were permanent.”

“Quite, they are extremely effective and I haven't seen anyone successfully counter or dodge my Ancient Magic spells. Though in all fairness, the latter could just be because I hardly ever see anyone actually dodge, far be it from wizards to do anything more strenuous than side-step.” The Keeper rolled their eyes, while Rackham flashed a bemused smile at their apparent pet peeve, adding after a moment’s thought. “Not that those spells had any actual incantations, I simply... did them.”

“Do you recall your thoughts or feelings, or perhaps, more specifically, desires, during those moments?” Rackham asked, clearly struggling to smother his distaste under a professional demeanour.

“...I suppose I was thinking of how to win, I wanted to kill my enemies.” The Keeper murmured, recalling the rage that would grip them whenever a goblin or Ashwinder managed to injure Sebastian or themselves.

Ancient Magic practically leaping from their fingertips to shred the insolent cretin to dust, turning their desire to shatter bones into reality. Their wand, nay, their magic becoming a powerful arm with which to beat their foes into submission.

I see.

“I think I understand.” The Keeper raised their wand and pointed it at the pile of partially transmuted wood, closing their eyes and focusing, not on the visual aspects of the door they wished to create, but the function of said door.

Their mind returned to their conversation with Ominis, and the reason Noctua had made him a wind chime. The desire to protect him, to keep him from ever feeling that fear again, the same fear they knew all too well, the overwhelming terror of being cornered.

A wall to guard against fire and water, against any and all threats. An impenetrable barrier to ward off all but speakers of parseltongue. A portal to safety and solitude for its lord, and its lord alone. A surface smooth and pleasant to the touch, free of splinters or edges- so tuck those pointy slivers of wood away, or so help me, I will shatter you on the fucking spot if you so much as draw a drop of blood from my Omi-

“Well done, well done! A fine piece of work!”

The sound of applause drew the Keeper from their focus and their eyes opened, to the sight of a simple and, honestly, rather plain and flat oak door standing before them. Well, at least the large cracks their previous attempts had borne were nowhere to be found.

They shot Rackham a sceptical glance, did he really think their ego so fragile that he must coddle them with praise?

Setting the thought aside, the Keeper's eyes scanned the door rather critically. It wasn't nearly pretty enough to be worthy of being the door to Ominis’ study, nor could they determine if they'd successfully imbued it with the functions they'd intended. Though, looking at the diminished pile of logs they'd set aside for the door, it seemed like the piece of furniture had consumed a fair bit more than a door this size would use.

Taking a step towards the flat slab hovering upright in the air, about half a meter off the ground, the Keeper placed their hand against the wood, pleased to discover that it was indeed smooth as silk to the touch. Next, they rapped their knuckles against its surface, and were satisfied to hear a solid thunk in response. Perhaps the density of the door was higher than normal, exactly as they'd intended, hopefully.

Raising their wand and moving a safe distance away, the Keeper figured the best way to test it out... was to test it out.

“Bombarda maxima!” Without hesitation, they jabbed their wand towards the door.

There was an explosion of light and smoke. Accompanied by a wave of heat that made the Keeper cough lightly as the dust from the blast dissipated, leaving a darkened patch on the door's surface but, to their delight, upon examination, the exploding charm didn't seem to have done much more. Huh, durable indeed.

“Perhaps a word of warning before you set things on fire, hm?” Rackham's voice was relatively pleasant, despite the uneasy smile on his face.

“Why?” The Keeper flashed him a lazy smirk. “Worried I'll destroy you, the way you did Isidora’s portrait?”

The professor stiffened at their words. “You've been to her home.”

“Yes, Sebastian lives in Feldcroft and we found the remains of her portrait.” The Keeper shrugged nonchalantly. “There is no reason for Ranrok or Victor Rookwood to destroy her portrait so deliberately, which only left you Keepers as the likely culprits.”

“We couldn't risk her sharing her knowledge with the inheritors of Ancient Magic.” Rackham sighed. “Though, our efforts were clearly for naught.”

“Indeed.” The Keeper gave a dark chuckle, leaning leisurely against their door as they rolled their wand between their fingers. “Her diary pages were enough to give me some idea of how extraction worked. Though they also made clear how she'd descended into madness. It's rather telling of her mental state, that she thought her writings wouldn't discourage others from following in her footsteps.”

Rackham's eyes widened in surprise.

“You didn't know?” The Keeper asked with a wry smile. “She was on the front lines of the Black Death. The sorrow she witnessed eroded her sanity until she gave in to the desire to shortcut emotional healing.”

The Keeper huffed in mild amusement. “She accidentally consumed the Pain from her first extraction and passed out. Not understanding what had even happened to her, believing that the smoky energy she’d extracted had ‘dissipated’ when it had more likely entered her body in search of a new host. After all, we now know that Pain energy cannot be destroyed.”

“It probably began there, with the misconception that the addictive Pain induced euphoria was moral righteousness.” The Keeper mused thoughtfully. “Addiction adding desire to her desperation.”

“Accidentally...” Rackham's eyes were now filled with a deep grief. “Then she never stood a chance. If I'd been there, I wonder if it would have made a difference.”

“Probably.” The Keeper shrugged. “Having Sebastian and Ominis by my side certainly helped me snap out of it when my addiction began to consume me. They gave me a reason to stop. To fight to control myself.”

“May I ask how you manage to resist it?” Rackham spoke tentatively as though he thought they might refuse to answer such a reasonable question. “I must confess that I am quite curious.”

“With difficulty.” The Keeper snorted sardonically, placing a hand on the satchel resting against their side and closing their eyes. “And by any means necessary. I won't pretend it is easy, or that I don't struggle with it even in this very moment. Even with a featherlight charm on this bag, the weight I bear has never been heavier.”

A moment passed before they opened their eyes and met Rackham's gaze with a determined countenance. “But my partners trusted me. Chose to trust me, and I refuse to let them down. To meet that trust with disregard.”

The look on Rackham's face was conflicted, seeming to have found some assurance in their declaration, yet tempered by an almost abashed slant to his shoulders as he placed his hands behind his back.

Disregarding his inner conflict, the Keeper returned their gaze to the door. “I desire the future I will share with them more than the momentary bliss that Pain provides, I will neither drown myself, nor my ambitions in its depths, no matter how alluring they may be.”

They shot Rackham a wry smirk. “I'm a greedy Slytherin after all. I will have everything, and I will give up nothing.”

The elderly man snorted lightly in amusement, his expression pensive for a few seconds, before returning his gaze to theirs with a small smile. “I see that you value your loved ones greatly, and that is a good thing. I only hope that doesn't become something that ultimately clouds your judgement.”

The Keeper cocked an eyebrow at him. Was he suggesting that their boyfriends could be a vulnerability? That their love made them weak? That seemed out of character for the kind and cautious man.

Seeing their confusion, Rackham quickly elaborated. “Isidora sought so desperately to cure her father of his pain, to ease his suffering and reclaim happiness, that eventually she lost sight of what happiness even meant. She forgot that happiness was not the absence of pain, but something that exists in defiance of pain.”

Well, that made much more sense, the Keeper nodded absently, thinking back to their experiments with Pain energy. As they did so, a realisation struck them, and they lifted a hand to their chin in contemplation.

“What is it, my young pupil?” Rackham asked curiously.

“My tests have shown that once pain is removed from a subject, it leaves a numbness behind, a lack of sensation.” The Keeper began pacing across the floor, thinking aloud as they did. “However, if the source of the pain is not addressed and healed, it continues to produce pain that will eventually fill the space once more.”

Rackham grimaced, but nodded slowly. “That certainly does make sense.”

“Which makes Isidora’s father less so.” The Keeper continued.

“What do you mean?” Rackham frowned.

“Well, her father's grief over losing his son is supposedly the reason he remained mute for decades.” The Keeper explained. “But that's a one-time injury, certainly a devastating one, but should it not have begun healing over time?”

“I have neither had, nor lost a child, so I wouldn't presume to say.” Rackham's tone was chiding, and the Keeper rolled their eyes at his thinly veiled admonishment.

“Yes yes, I don't have such experience either, but I'm thinking of how Isidora’s inexperience might have affected his recovery.” The Keeper shook their head, thinking of Anne and the way Solomon had ‘cared’ for her by destroying her hope for salvation. “Isidora was his only caregiver, perhaps her impatience for her father to recover may have worsened his condition. After all, what hurts more than someone you love telling you to get over it? It might even explain his reluctance to speak, for expressing his grief would only be met with frustration from her.”

“Or perhaps her presence alone, as his only surviving child, may have exacerbated the emotional wound, reminding him of what he had lost. Regardless of what she did.” Rackham countered, shaking his head in clear disapproval. “Regardless, I do not see it meaningful to lay blame on Isidora for consequences she did not intend.”

The Keeper huffed irritably. “It's not blame I wish to lay, it is understanding. There's a difference. Whether she intended to or otherwise, if we are to learn from it, we must understand it. That reluctance to discuss difficult topics is the reason we're in this mess to begin with.”

Rackham sighed. “I wonder which of us is supposed to be the teacher here.”

“If you actually started teaching instead of dodging, it'd probably be clearer.” The Keeper grumbled.

“If you were more respectful perhaps it'd be easier to teach you.” The elderly man's lips were pressed thin.

“Take it up with my parents.” The Keeper shot back. “I tried the whole respect and politeness thing with you Keepers for an entire year. It got me nowhere and cost me-”

The words caught in their throat and the Keeper turned away to take a breath, surprised to find it shaky.

If they had taken Sebastian's advice and pressed the elder Keepers instead of being afraid of failing to meet their expectations. Of escaping the muggle world only to die at Ranrok's hand if the handful of portraits abandoned them, would Fig have survived? It was a question they would never know the answer to. A question that would forever haunt them, the way his uncle haunted Sebastian even now.

Rackham's furrowed brow smoothened out as his student visibly swallowed around the lump in their throat.

He paused, reminded that despite all their pomp and pretension, they were still just a child struggling to make sense of the world in the only way they knew how. Perhaps it wasn't so strange that Isidora had sought a magical solution to a human problem, when that was all Hogwarts had taught her.

And indeed... all that he himself had taught her too.

“And what have you learnt from speculating about Isidora?” Rackham asked.

“You're the teacher, you tell me.” The Keeper rolled their eyes. “And if you don't know either, I'll keep speculating and gathering information till I have a takeaway that makes sense. That's the point of all this discussion.”

The portrait huffed in amusement, well, they say it's hard to fill a cup that is already full, but at least it looked like his student's cup had both room and desire to grow.

“In that case, I'd say the takeaway, for now, is that magic cannot solve everything. Caring for your loved ones is something you need patience and restraint for.” Rackham raised a finger. “Magic can protect the body, but the heart is another matter altogether.”

“Mm, I can agree with that.” The Keeper nodded absently. “Speaking of protection, I've been hoping you could help me understand chapter fourteen of your Ancient Magic tome.”

Rackham blinked at the sudden change of topic, but decided to allow it and spent a moment thinking before giving his reply. “Hm, Ley Lines, if I recall correctly.”

“Yes, I couldn't make heads or tails of it when going through the tome with Fig. So Sebastian and I studied some books from the library last year to get an understanding of the basics.” The Keeper nodded, folding their arms. “I got the importance of Ley Lines for magical fortresses, anchoring the warding spells into the innate magic of the land to make them stronger and last longer, but the tome gave me the impression that Ancient Magic enhances this somehow?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Rackham nodded. “Regular Ley Line bindings allow spells to draw power from the Earth's ambient magic. Ancient Magic, however, ties the building itself to the Earth’s soul, bringing it to life, and turning it into a part of the planet itself, like a mountain or lake.”

“A good example of a fortress bound to the Earth with Ancient Magic is Hogwarts itself.” Rackham smiled. “I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Room of Requirement?”

The Keeper's eyes widened. “I am, actually. I've been using it to get in extra schoolwork and as a bit of a workshop.”

“Excellent, then you know how it reads the mind of its occupant to fulfil their needs.” Rackham nodded. “Hogwarts is, to a degree, sentient. In some likeness to myself. Due to its size, its duty is most likely simply to protect inhabitants as much as possible. A simple task to be sure, but as you will learn, the simpler the assignment, the better they are followed.”

“Wait, if Hogwarts was bound with Ancient Magic, that means...” The Keeper breathed, their eyes gleaming with eager anticipation.

“Indeed, the founders of Hogwarts were bearers of Ancient Magic as well.” An entirely relatable pride was reflected in Rackham's eyes. “Much like how I drew on the magic of my friends to end the drought in Feldcroft, it is likely that the four founders of Hogwarts pooled their vast stores of Ancient Magic together to bring such a magnificent structure to life.”

“That's incredible. To think, we share the same power as such renowned legends.” The Keeper murmured, raising their wand and gazing into the strong bluish glow at its tip. “That's why Hogwarts, San Bakar's Tower, your home and the Trial grounds contained enchantments powerful enough to last centuries.”

“Correct, and the traces of Ancient Magic that you've been collecting endured as well because they were also tied to the Earth, and part of its stream of life.” Rackham added. “In collecting them, you have already experienced the sensation of tapping into the natural magic of our world.”

The Keeper frowned for a moment before gasping. “The storm of magic that would erupt when I followed and unlocked Ancient Magic traces?”

“Quite right you are.” Rackham smiled, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “Though, what you describe as a ‘storm’, was but the trickling spring of a wizardmade tree tap, one that I sculpted myself. The true torrents of Earth's natural magic are a raging whirlpool far more turbulent and chaotic than what you have glimpsed.”

The Keeper's jaw went slack. “You can't be serious, those ‘trickling springs’ were enough to bring me to my knees on my first attempt to connect with it.”

“Yet, as time passed and the more Traces you collected, the stronger your Ancient Magic and the firmer your stance became.” Rackham reassured. “Though, you will need much training and experience to be capable of resisting being caught in the whirlpool of nature's forces, lest you lose your sense of self in the cacophony of life itself.”

The Keeper frowned. “How long did it take you to become capable of sculpting in the Earth with Ancient Magic?”

“It is necessary to be well versed in many branches of wizarding magic in order to master Ancient Magic.” Rackham hummed thoughtfully. “I was close to a hundred years of age when I was forced to stand against Isidora. The rest of my life was spent making preparations for you and your journey.”

“By the time I was specifically training to craft the Trial Grounds, I was already quite proficient in my mastery of Ancient Magic, and it still took me several years.” Rackham gave the Keeper a sympathetic smile. “I'm afraid it'll take you quite a long time to develop the capability.”

“Even with your guidance?” The Keeper asked, uncertain if they were trying to convince him or themselves. “You had to figure this out alone. With you, surely I will have an easier time.”

Rackham shook his head. “It is not merely knowledge or skill that plays a part in this endeavour. Your Ancient Magic core is naturally larger and more responsive than most wizards, having spent a longer time developing before it emerges when you reach fifteen. But even then, it too takes time and age to grow and further increase in capacity. Without enough magic in your body, you will simply be overwhelmed by the Earth.”

The Keeper's eyes sharpened, along with their grin. “If that's the only concern, then you have nothing to worry about. That was pretty much the only part of the chapter that I grasped and when I consumed Pain energy to re-seal the Repository, I experienced a surge in magic capacity.”

At the Professor's surprised expression, they shrugged. “It's one of the main reasons I'm still using the Repository, even after I realised how addictive it was. I can't afford to wait years, Anne's life is on a clock, and my activities will necessitate that our home be safe.”

Rackham sighed. “That's quite the predicament indeed. I suppose in that respect, your circumstances differ greatly from Isidora's.”

“Took you long enough to trust me when I say that.” The Keeper grumbled, folding their arms. “But yes, I am driven by necessity and restricted by the constraints of reality, not by delusions of grandeur or some souped up Jesus complex.”

The Professor's confused frown made them pause and struggle to find a way to explain their analogy. ���Er, you know, muggle religious deity figure, literally takes all the sin from mankind to save their souls. Isidora was kind of trying to do that, but with pai- nevermind.”

The Keeper cleared their throat. “Point is, I'm hoping to be able to perform the Ley Line Bindings as soon as possible. So, as great as it's been to learn how to make doors, if you think it'll take effort, I'd like to start sooner rather than later.”

“I understand your urgency, however there are some things that simply cannot be rushed. And one of them, is learning.” Rackham raised a finger. “While the Pain energy might allow you to perform the initial binding ritual earlier than otherwise, you will still need to learn how to control your Ancient Magic before you can even do that. For performing the ritual requires that you bind yourself to the Earth as well.”

“Not to mention, you will need to master nearly all other elements of regular and Ancient Magic before you can actually mould and manipulate the Earth's soul, not just connect with it.” The professor added with a wry smile. “Which means, mastering the art of Ancient Magic Transfiguration.”

The Keeper sighed as he gestured back at the door they'd crafted. Following his hints, they raised their wand towards the door once more. Well, slow and steady.

Taking a deep breath, they closed their eyes.

They would master this.

No matter what.

“That sounds like quite the adventure.” Ominis shook his head as he strolled leisurely alongside the Keeper, wand pulsing a soft red as the throuple made their way to the Slytherin common room after dinner. “I swear, you have the most bizarre experiences, you could fill a book or two with tales of a year alone.”

The Keeper shrugged, sure beat their life before. “Well, I won't deny that. Though, I'm just happy to have yet another means of making money and a third house elf, Penny is quite the sweetheart.”

“You should have been there, Ominis.” Sebastian chuckled from the other side of the Keeper. “Damn poltergeist actually taunted us with the dumbest thing, asking if it worried us that he could see us, but we couldn't see him!”

“Hilarious. Though, had I been there, I doubt he would have used that line.” Ominis flashed a sardonic smile. “I'm just glad you were there to go in with them, it sounds like that dungeon would have been quite scary to traverse alone.”

“I will admit, some of his games certainly gave me a start. Almost hit Sebastian with an Incendio when the mannequins appeared around us, after we dispelled our Lumos.” The Keeper patted Sebastian on the shoulder apologetically.

“It's quite alright, I had my share of jumps as well, but at least the puzzles were an enjoyable challenge. I actually wouldn’t mind playing with Fastidio again if he ever gets too whiny.” Sebastian admitted with an unconvincingly lackadaisical tone.

The Keeper shot him an amused glance, well, at least they could rest easy knowing that the two could tortur- entertain each other if they ever got too restless.

“Though I must say that Mason was a fool to outright attack Officer Singer when we confronted her. No surer way of confirming her guilt.” Sebastian gave a disparaging shake of his head. “It's a good thing Singer trusts you too.”

“I'd like to think I've proven myself to the officer over the last two years.” The Keeper smirked dryly. “I'm just glad that Mason is getting punished for swindling dozens of people in this manner. Not to mention, for the emotional abuse a kind soul like Penny suffered under that callous woman's thumb, being forced into the role of accomplice and set as bait alongside the shop.”

“Aspiration.” With a small laugh, the Keeper stepped through the door to the Slytherin common room. “In all honesty, it was the elf that I’d wanted, more so than the shop. A thousand and five hundred galleons for an elf and a small building next to Hogwarts? That was too good to pass up, regardless of how suspicious it’d been.”

“Indeed, Penny will have a better life in our care.” Ominis smiled softly. “I suppose we will introduce her to Tynx and Tibsy over the weekend.”

“Yes, she can familiarise herself with our wares before the official opening next week.” The Keeper nodded.

“Have you decided on a name?” Sebastian asked from behind them as the three made their way down the stairs in a row.

“Well, we'll be selling potions we make from our greenhouse and the clothing I've found or received as payment for errands.” The Keeper shook their head, it had bewildered them at the start, that the surplus of unsightly heirloom garments, given to them by people who couldn’t afford to pay in cash, traded for galleons well and consistently. A luxury of those wealthy enough to have developed unusual tastes or collectors of old and storied cloth, they imagined.

“So, something along those lines.” Sebastian hummed thoughtfully. “Stitches and Draughts?”

“We could go with something like Gladrag's.” Ominis suggested. “Perhaps Cladwell and Brewster?”

“I was thinking of something with a bit of alliteration, something like Vesters and Venum?” The Keeper mused, turning to face the boys as they reached the foot of the stairs and sidestepping to avoid smashing those damn pots again.

“Surely we’re not specialising in selling poisons, especially not when the shop is right outside Hogwarts.” Ominis raised an eyebrow, leading the way towards one of the open couches littered about the common room.

“But we could.” Sebastian grinned.

“Well, we shouldn't.” Ominis’ lips pressed into a familiar thin line and Sebastian heaved a forlorn sigh as he flopped down, draping himself across a long couch.

“Now, Ominis, if we market ourselves as selling standard potions, there won't be any reason for customers to patronise our establishment over the long-standing Pippins. Same goes for clothing and Gladrag’s.” The Keeper reasoned, taking a seat across from Sebastian and patting the spot beside them. “Not to mention, I doubt either of those shops will be too pleased at us encroaching on their businesses.”

“Again, is it not a bit dangerous to sell poisons right on Hogwarts’ doorstep?” Ominis reiterated, stopping beside the couch, but remained standing and folded his arms.

“No less so than Dogweed and Deathcap selling Venomous Tentaculas.” The Keeper shrugged. “If the authorities have no issues with such a store near Hogwarts, I don't see any reason they'd protest ours. And we can claim our poisons as effective defence against pests and dangerous creatures if need be.”

The Keeper flashed a cynical smile. “I assure you, if students wanted to poison someone, Hogwarts itself has more than enough means to procure or craft some. I’m sure you recall the Draught of Living Death incident last year.”

Hearing the Keeper pat the space next to them more insistently, Ominis relented, taking the offered seat with a sigh. “Fair enough, I suppose you do have a point. How then will we distinguish our clothing from Gladrag's?”

Across from them, Sebastian's face lit up at his agreement and the Keeper struggled to stifle their amusement at the brunet's expression, clearing their throat as they gathered their words.

“I've been performing additional enhancements to my clothing using beast materials for some time. We can market our apparel as protective wear, rather than fashion oriented as Gladrag does.” The Keeper answered easily. “While there's likely to be less demand, particularly amongst the student population, if our reputation rises high enough, people will come from elsewhere to make purchases.”

“Sounds like you've got a plan already.” Sebastian chuckled. “I wonder why I'm surprised.”

The Keeper shrugged. “I learnt early on that there's a market for everything. Trading was a matter of success or starvation. I had to discern what others might desire from me to sustain myself, and there is nothing more foolhardy in trade, than selling something commonly acquirable.”

“Were that you weren't considered a commodity yourself.” Ominis murmured bitterly.

Bumping shoulders with him, the Keeper chuckled softly. “Hey, kept me alive long enough to meet you two, I'm content with my lot.”

“High praise indeed, to be worth all that.” Sebastian huffed with a wry smile.

The Keeper was about to reply, when they felt the tell-tale sensation of eyes upon them. Casting their gaze about surreptitiously, they quickly spotted a girl approaching them. She looked a tad familiar, but not enough to recognise, which meant she was likely one of the younger Slytherin students.

“Um, Ominis?” The girl stopped a step away from the couch, twirling a strand of her long auburn hair in her fingers as she spoke.

“Yes, Jolene?” Ominis lifted his head curiously.

“Sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you'd mind taking a look at my Mimbulus Mimble- er... Mimbleto... to-” The girl, apparently named Jolene, stumbled on the name for a moment, before Ominis took pity on her.

“Mimbletonia.” He supplied helpfully with a small smile.

“Yes, that.” Jolene's emerald green eyes slid away with some embarrassment for a moment, before clearing her throat and continuing. “I think it's not doing very well and I'm not sure what to do.”

Ominis hesitated for a moment, and she quickly added. “And Professor Garlick is doing an assessment on Monday. Please, I really need your help!”

With a quiet exhale, Ominis tilted his head towards the Keeper, and they placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. “Go ahead, Ominis, you needn’t worry about us.”

A smile formed on Ominis’ lips as he stood, giving them a nod before turning his attention back to the girl. “Very well, I'll see what I can do.”

“Oh, thank you!” Jolene beamed, clapping her hands together in an exuberant display of gratitude. Giving the Keeper a good look at her long and colourfully polished fingernails, along with the three bejewelled rings adorning said fingers, before leading him in the direction of the staircase.

Well, with hands like that, of course the damn plant is dying. The Keeper rolled their eyes as the two disappeared up the stairs, girl looked like she wouldn't touch dirt without two layers of gloves and a spade.

“Well, that was unexpected.” Sebastian commented, seeming rather thrown by the sudden disappearance of their partner. “I guess we have some time to kill before he gets back.”

“Indeed...” The Keeper hummed thoughtfully, before perking up. “Oh, that reminds me. I was wondering if you would teach me chess?”

“Oh, that's right. I can't believe you don't know how to play.” Sebastian shook his head as he stood, leading the way over to a nearby chess table. “It's a good job I was there in Fastidio’s dungeon, elsewise you might have fallen through the floor to certain doom.”

“Look, we didn't have chess boards or pieces in the orphanage, or on the streets.” The Keeper shrugged as they sat across from him. “The best we had were cups and dice or poker cards.”

“Poker?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow quizzically while the chess pieces arranged themselves.

“A gambling card game where the most powerful card in your deck is an unreadable visage.” The Keeper smirked. “Also known as a ‘poker face’ for that reason.”

“I bet you were good at that game.” Sebastian's voice was so dry, you could probably use it for sandpaper.

The Keeper chuckled. “I'll teach it to you in exchange for chess.”

“Deal.” Sebastian grinned and gestured towards the board. “So, this row here is filled with pawns, and these pieces can move forward, but can only attack diagonally...”

“For Merlin's sake, you're running for your bloody life! Why is the most vital piece in the entire roster so useless? You spend the entire game babysitting that turtle.” The Keeper sighed, glaring at the small pile of rubble that was their King. “And who decided to make Knights move in such a bizarre manner? Horses jump in a straight line ya moron.”

Sebastian laughed as the board pieces magically restored and rearranged themselves for a fresh game. “You'll get used to it, it's not so bad once you’ve memorised what the pieces do. And in all honesty, that was a pretty impressive first round. You lasted long enough for more than half the common room to retire. I'm rather jealous of your learning curve.”

The Keeper lifted their head from where it'd fallen back against the backrest, humming thoughtfully and tracing a finger over the rim of their Castle piece. “I have been thinking about that actually. I know Rackham was renowned in his time for being extraordinarily gifted, as were the Hogwarts Founders and Isidora. And I wonder perhaps, if we Ancient Magic bearers simply have a higher propensity for learning.”

“It's possible, Rackham said something about a more responsive magical core, right? And it would explain the sheer ridiculousness of your existence. You might literally be a different species.” Sebastian smirked, before pausing in thought for a moment. “Huh, would that make Ominis and I creature-lovers?”

“Aw, you'd love me even if I were a magical creature?” The Keeper simpered playfully, relaxing their guard a tad since there wasn't anyone within earshot.

“Course, fuck the Ministry and their bullshit laws.” Sebastian grinned.

“How sweet.” The Keeper chuckled, meaning it quite sincerely. They'd spent most of their life feeling different from everyone around them, and despite their expectations to the contrary, that hadn't changed when they'd entered the wizarding world. So, it was indeed quite wonderful to know that Sebastian would love them even if they weren't human.

“Besides, humans are all different anyway, not even our skin colour is consistent. It'd be weirder to define being human as a specific set of abilities or rate of learning, I think it's enough that we're built similarly.” Sebastian shrugged.

“Fair enough.” The Keeper nodded, perhaps it wasn't too surprising that Sebastian wouldn't think being born with an additional unique magical ability or accelerated learning would make them inhuman. After all, he'd grown up with Ominis, who was both a parselmouth and blind.

“Oh, there he is.” Sebastian perked up and the Keeper turned around to see said blond walking towards them, wand outstretched as always.

“Sorry that took a while.” Ominis smiled sheepishly as he stopped beside their table and Sebastian flicked his wand, calling over an armchair for Ominis to sit in.

“No worries, love.” The Keeper shook their head. “Sebastian just spent the last hour trouncing me at chess.”

“Did he?” Ominis’ eyebrows lifted with some surprise.

“Once.” Sebastian snorted. “So, was Smith's Mimbulus Mimbletonia dead?”

Ominis flashed a wry smile. “Not quite, it was rather close, however. It seems as though the pungent cactus was dehydrated, and then she proceeded to drown it.”

“I'm surprised that you're friends with a younger student.” The Keeper snorted in amusement, before asking. “What year is she in?”

“She’s not that much younger, just in fifth-year, though I'm not sure I'd call her a friend.” Ominis’ expression was thoughtful. “She asks me for help with schoolwork every now and again, but that's the extent of our interactions. She seems rather shy, and I think she's a tad intimidated by my family name.”

“How did that even start?” The Keeper prodded curiously. While Ominis was certainly the type who'd help others if asked, it was rare that someone who didn't repulse him would even approach him to begin with. Not to mention, shy and intimidated weren't quite the impression she'd given them.

“I stumbled across her in third-year, having a cry in front of the entrance to the Undercroft.” Ominis explained. “I couldn't exactly go in with her there, and if Sebastian or Anne came out at the wrong moment, it would have revealed the secret passageway. So, I asked what was bothering her.”

His expression softened with sympathy at the memory. “She'd had a fight with her parents, they wanted her to be more like her six older sisters and were disappointed at her lack of ambition. Her family is rather wealthy, with her father being an official in the ministry and her mother working in Saint Mungo's, and her sisters are all equally successful.”

Ominis flashed a wistful smile. “I felt her something of a kindred spirit. So, I shared a little of my own struggles with my family's disapproval and it seemed to give her some comfort, to not be alone. I thought perhaps we might become friends after that, but I think the difference in our stations made her nervous. After she realised that I was a Gaunt, she remained somewhat distant.”

The Keeper raised an eyebrow. “Even though she's also wealthy?”

“Unfortunately, the pureblood aristocracy requires more than wealth to be a part of or even engage with. First, they must be pureblood, which means there cannot be any muggles, muggleborn or squibs within two generations. Her grandmother was apparently a muggle-born, thus making Jolene and her sisters halfbloods rather than pure. Second, they have to have blood from one of the old noble family lines.” Ominis explained.

A bitter grimace then crossed his face. “I have considered it possible that her parents forbade her from interacting with me overmuch, for fear of her misstepping and drawing the ire of my parents, thus inviting political retribution.”

“Well, that sounds incredibly complicated and stupid.” The Keeper commented bluntly.

Ominis chuckled. “Honestly, you and yours are refreshingly uncommon, to be so forward and cavalier with a member of the pureblood aristocracy. I imagine it’s because Natty only recently moved here, so she is unfamiliar with the nuances of our customs. Where Poppy is already quite the odd one out, and Amit champions Goblin rights, which is already a precarious political position, but he doesn't mind because he's only interested in Astronomy. And the Weasleys may have a long-standing rivalry with the Malfoy house, but are known for disregarding pureblood culture as a whole.”

Ominis’ smile was soft with gratitude. “It's quite impressive that you managed to draw in all the people who wouldn't mind engaging with me, and I'm glad you encouraged me to befriend them.”

The Keeper shrugged. “I did nothing, it's not your fault half the wizarding world seems to be lacking any sense.”

“And what am I? Burnt toast?” Sebastian cocked an eyebrow, his petulant tone drawing a laugh from the other two.

“Yes yes, Sebastian, I am endlessly grateful to you too.” Ominis gave a small, amused huff, and paused for a moment, his cheeks turning a light pink. “For being by my side since first-year.”

“Good.” Sebastian gave a firm nod. “And that isn't going to change, come what may. Unlike a kid who can under-water a cactus, I don't give a rat's arse what your parents might do.”

The Keeper snorted. “That ‘kid’ is only two years our younger, love.”

“Speaking of kids, remember Dumbledore?” Ominis interjected, and the Keeper got the feeling that he was trying not to think of the potential friend he might have had earlier, when he was lonely, if his family hadn't scared her off. He might be happy now, but it probably still hurt.

Sebastian blinked at the sudden change in topic, but went along without resistance, perhaps realising his mistake. “Redhead kid? Yeah, I remember him.”

“Apparently, he's being lauded as the newest prodigy to hit Hogwarts, and one to rival the Salamander themselves, no less.” Ominis’ voice had become light and his expression carefree, and the Keeper was bemused at how much their blond boyfriend liked gossip.

Perhaps it was easier for him to forget about his own problems and live a normal Hogwarts student life vicariously through his schoolmates. Which they were perfectly content to encourage, especially when the gossip he always somehow managed to hear, provided them with information that they wouldn't have otherwise. Not to mention, the extent to which he seemingly enjoyed having someone to spill tea to.

“Really? It's barely been a month since term started.” Sebastian's eyebrows rose, and he shot the Keeper a proud grin. “Took this one less than a week to gain attention for their magical talent.”

“I think there's a tad more excitement around Dumbledore’s genius because the boy is only in his first year.” Ominis suggested with a thoughtful hum.

“Yeah, but fifth-year was their first year too.” Sebastian pointed out almost defensively, and the Keeper wondered if he was experiencing second-hand competitiveness.

“But they were fifteen and Dumbledore's eleven.” Ominis reasoned, clearly equally amused that Sebastian was taking this personally.

“I think it's good.” The Keeper interrupted before Sebastian could further argue the point. It wasn't like Ominis was the one who had this opinion, he was merely the messenger. “Anything that takes attention off of me is-”

The words caught in the Keeper's throat as a chill slithered down their spine. Though foreign and new, the sensation was one whose meaning they understood within seconds, and a brief flash of fear crawled across their skin, before quickly burning into rage.

The quizzical expressions on both boys' faces quickly warped into ones of equal alarm when the Keeper took a breath and explained.

“The territory wards have detected intruders on our land.”

Their eyes hardened.

“And a lot of them.”

Notes:

Sorry for the cliffhanger, but whoo! We're finally done with the groundwork laying and the rollercoaster ride can truly start.

I've always liked the idea that Hogwarts is alive. I mean, in The Chamber Of Secrets, the whole basilisk's gaze being blocked by water reflections on the floor, ghosts and cameras thing. That's way too many coincidences that resulted in no deaths. Moaning Myrtle aside, I mean, even God couldn't save that girl when she was right in the Chamber's doorway.

Page 3/7 of Isidora’s diary reads; “I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish. But then everything started to turn. When I fell, I must have hit my head. I neither feel nor see a mark, but the pain is throbbing. I can only hope it is not the Black Death.”

Hopefully, my interpretation of this page makes sense, the throbbing pain sounds like a hangover lol xP And I've said it before and I'll say it again. Hogwarts should really add a compulsory ethics class to the NEWT years.

Also, yes, the stream of life maaaay be somewhat inspired by Final Fantasy's Lifestream, but you can't blame me for thinking of the Lifestream when that epic animation upon interacting with Ancient Magic spots has a literal splash of water amidst swirling gusts of wind.

It looks so damn cool by the way, God I love the animations in this game. They were great in the Haunted Hogsmeade quest too, and you can tell that the doorways are really moving when they move, rather than a still animation, because you can step through doors before the wall turning animation is complete.

While the game definitely lacks proper optimisation in its coding, it's not difficult to see why the game requires such a powerful system to run. I really liked the screen flip during the fight with Fastidio’s box boss too, that was brilliant. It still amazes me how much love and craft went into the making of this game.

[flecks-of-stardust]

okay year in review eh

this shit's long so i'll put it under a cut, and also all tags are going to be removed

I posted 4,547 times in 2022

That's 1,870 more posts than 2021! (lmao. even though i made my blog sept 2021? i guess i slowed down somewhat)

551 posts created (12%)

3,996 posts reblogged (88%) (honestly not too shabby of a ratio for original stuff)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

liquidlikecats (hi moss)

aroarachnid (hi ash)

flecks-of-stardust (LOL MY FUCKING LIVEBLOGGING)

flame-shadow (huh i guess flame just posts a lot)

I tagged 3,149 of my posts in 2022

Only 31% of my posts had no tags (that is surprisingly high tbh)

#hollow knight - 939 posts (haha yes hollow knight blog)

#ghost - 277 posts

#the knight - 237 posts

#hornet - 177 posts

#bug fables - 163 posts

#rain world - 141 posts

#holly - 134 posts

#the hollow knight - 115 posts

#bookmarked - 113 posts

#pale king - 87 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (of course it's just screaming)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

the sale is over stop giving this notes pls /hj

160 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

#4

yknow, the watcher knights really speak to the influence lurien had. monomon’s protection is uumuu, a sentient jellyfish that presumably has some ties to her, while herrah’s protection is her people, in her Den. but lurien? lurien gets an army of knights. we fight five/six, but there’s more husks in the background. who knows how many knights he had at his disposal, all ready to guard his body? what kind of power must you have to have access to that?

192 notes - Posted November 27, 2022

honestly i still don't know how this has so many notes. where were yall even coming from?

#3

[image description: a crochet doll of a very round Radiance. She is roughly spherical, has a three pronged crown, a pair of wings each with three fronds, and round yellow eyes set into a black heart shaped mask. Everything about her is rounded and soft, though her eyes are ovals. end image description]

Orbiance

i saw someone’s radiorb plush in the main tag and was hit with the realization that i, too, can make the roundest radi to ever moth. she’s the biggest thing i’ve ever made thus far, which is... fitting, i think. her crown was surprisingly easy to wrangle into place, but i won’t complain sfjkghjk her face took more effort, honestly.

it’s interesting trying to simplify a design as layered as radi’s down into what is essentially a fancy ball. i thought about adding more fluff to her wings, but honestly, the triplet wing-crown-wing probably makes it cuter. also, from experience with the wooly aphid, adding more fluff just tends to look weird, so eh. simpler is better sometimes.

also, there is a surprise under her...

See the full post

236 notes - Posted May 7, 2022

bro tumblr gave this post a cliffhanger DKJSJKS all hail radiorb

#2

i ship lurien with a bed and a good nap

340 notes - Posted August 12, 2022

fran i blame you for this /j

My #1 post of 2022

the abyss cutscene after you dream nail the egg is a somber one, but i do have to wonder. how does ghost know what the pale king asked of the vessels? like the pale king is clearly going ‘no mind to think, no will to break’ as ghost is climbing up to the top in the cutscene, but surely he couldnt have told each individual vessel as they hatched ‘hey heres what i want you to do’ since theres probably billions of them

the most likely answer is probably magic, somehow, or. gameplay reasons. because this is a video game. but i want to entertain the idea that ghost knows what the pale king expected of the vessels because he stood at the top and screamed it repeatedly down into the abyss

661 notes - Posted January 4, 2022

thanks flame for helping this post blow up /s

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

anyway this is interesting. if i'm still on the hellsite next year we'll compare again lmfao

[redphienix]

Alright I'm dwellin' let me try shoutin' something to see if that cures my mood.

In Monster Hunter World I bought into DLC because I looked at my overall experience, I looked at what was being offered, I looked at what I could earn in game, and I said "This is fair."

To be honest, it was way more than fair, the balance was way more in the base game's corner- with the base game having all the best stuff and DLC being limited in scope- things like gestures and later on some tassels for your weapon (again, better ones available through gameplay).

The game gave me a gratuitous amount of content, I was having a blast, I felt like the game had earned far above the initial buying price and that's something I generally don't lean into. Nice

The game gave me all the gestures I could want as is, but moreover, the game gave me a FUCKTON more that was more interesting or valuable than mere gestures. Sick event weapons and armor, sick event layered, just in general the game gave away the best stuff for free. I got to dress up as Dante from Dante May Cry Starring Dante, I got fancy suits, pretty dresses, Wyvern Ignition, Ryu from Streets, you get the idea.

In World the best stuff was in the events.

This is the same as the older monhuns, so it was nice it continued even as they brought in the dreadful modern practice of paid DLC.

Gestures are cosmetics, and contrary to popular myth, Cosmetics hold a TON of value and influence your experience in a game, but gestures in mhw at least are on par with like different earrings for your character- small- discrete- but shiny when you show your friends up close.

You aren't showboating a gesture during a hunt 99% of the time, and even then most people are more impressed with your armor or weapon which you got for free from an event.

Knowing that and knowing the game gave me all I could want, and knowing the game was giving away MUCH COOLER THINGS in the events FOR FREE I felt like buying something small from the shop wasn't me being manipulated with a golden carrot, it was me saying "I like this product, I would like to buy a small accessory for it :)"

Flip over to fuckin' Rise and I'm just baffled that they have the balls to request what they are requestin'.

Layered weapon DLC pisses me off just at first sight because it's SO FAR AHEAD of the "earrings" world was selling, but the fact that Rise is granting us fucking NOTHING of note from events and then goes "Oh, well you see, we dedicated our entire art team to make this layered weapon and charge for it, whoopsie!" is disgusting. It fuckin' sucks.

The balance World attempted is ENTIRELY ignored in Rise! It's 100% leaning on the DLC end, it only cares about money and manipulating you into getting the only content they put any creativity into with your wallet.

No Earning a cool character, PAY FOR ONE!!!

Not happy about it. Rise has instilled a dread that will haunt me while the next monhun is releasing in which I wonder if this practice of stripping base game reward for DLC will continue.

In Rise, the best content is paid DLC

Cool.

[ac3id]

bnha: tomura shigaraki x fem! reader

warnings: suggestive themes

word count. 1k+ 

a/n: based n this req:

i was gonna keep it short but then i went over 1k words so here it is 😽

tagging: @bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love​​

navigation

“Hey.” Dabi’s rough voice cuts through the air drawing your attention to him almost immediately. He takes a seat beside you on the bar counter of the league’s dingy hideout. Another voice greets you; this time it’s cheery and girlish. You turn to your right seeing Toga take a seat beside you too. It doesn’t take a genius to know you are trapped. “The mission went well, huh?” Toga asks, eyeing your drink, there was nothing special about it other than the fact it was free. Whenever someone returned after a successful mission, Kurogiri always took it upon himself to make them a free drink in a form of praise. “Yes, it went well.” You replied avoiding eye contact with either of them. You knew what they were doing, they did this often. They liked to corner you and make you do things you didn’t like, they liked teasing you until the point tears were pricking the corner of your eyes. Their reason to torment you was always the same, they were taking a test to see how tough you really. A little different from the rest of the pack of criminals, you were a little timid and soft-hearted. Your meekness often perceived as cowardness of fear made Dabi and Toga think you were not the right fit for the group, maybe your quirk was strong but that was all the pros of having you. They’d repeatedly remind you but you knew better, they bullied you just because. The degenerates were no better than highschool bullies, maybe even worse.

“Good to see you are actually making yourself useful,” Dabi remarks abruptly making you shrink in your seat. You want retort but you have to say, he’s right. The majority of your mission ended badly, you were a new villain with no experience, it was not all your fault. “Oh, forget that!” Toga chirped, pulling you by your shoulder, forcing you to face her. “Do you know Shigaraki Tomura?” she asks. You look at her dumbfounded, not believing her question. “You know, the leader? With hands all over his body? Handsy freak?” Dabi encourages making you scoff. Were they seriously serious? Did they just ask you whether or not you knew your own leader, your employer? Of course, you did!

“Really!? I have never seen you talk to him, you always seemed to avoid him. So, I thought you didn’t know who he was,” she pouts explaining herself, “Are you scared of him or something?” Scared? Of Tomura Shigaraki? Of course, you were. You were terrified of everyone in the league but Tomura stood out the most. With his rude and cold demeanor, he intimidates you. The cold, pale hand which sticks to his face at all times adds to his eerie appearance, his vermillion eyes glowing from underneath it, sending death glares to everyone. A glance towards his direction is enough to tell you he's someone you don't want anything to do with. His quirk, his personality all adds to it. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to anyway, your shyness and fear of rejection would never let you open up to anyone else other than your friends. You don’t answer Dabi’s question, “I will take that as a yes,” he smirks cruelly. You try to retort but before you can say anything, he changes the topic.

“Tell me,” He calls out your name grimly, “are you a pussy?” What? “I don’t understand,” you ask nervously. The perplexed expression which scans your face makes Dabi cringe, he clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth before speaking, “It’s a simple question. Are you a pussy? Or you got balls?” You are still confused but get the basic idea, they were here to bother again. You have a bad feeling about this. You know what you should do; give him a reaction he does not want so he can leave alone and stop bothering you but you also know your pride won’t surrender that easily. There is no way you would ever admit to him that you are a weak, pathetic coward. So naturally, you make the wrong decision. “No I am not a pussy,” the word almost feels wrong when you say it out loud. It's not as degrading as when Dabi had said it, the need to drag it down the dirt and toss it back up is missing when you say it and Toga notices as she snickers. Dabi quickly catching on sends you a devious smirk, “Atta, girl!” he pats your head jokingly, you push his hand away annoyed. They liked sending you praises as one would to a kid, you found it revolting but they enjoyed tormenting you. “We have an important job for you,”  toga begins, flashing her taunting canines at you making you shudder. Oh, this was up to no good.

“So here’s the thing,” Dabi begins, “Boss has been kinda’ very annoying recently, if you talked to him you’d understand,” eyebrow twitching at the comment you wonder whether it was necessary. “And it gets hard to work with him so would you mind helping out, ya’ know what I am saying?” You look at him still confused while he just gives you an oblivious look, what was he on about?

“Helping out?” you quote, curiosity ridden in your eyes. Toga snickers before leaning in towards you, her breath fawns over your ear as she whispers a dirty, little secret. “You know, get him all hot and bothered. Help your leader out here,” you almost choke at her words. There was no way in hell you would ever do that! You never even want to stand closer than three feet from your boss, what Toga is asking for is downright atrocious. You push her away from you, creating a safe distance. You feel your cheeks heat up in embarrassment before you start speaking, “There is NO way I am going anywhere near that man!” you exclaim confidently. Dabi looks disappointed but he’s not given up yet while Toga pouts, “What!? Why not?” she asks and without giving you a chance to speak she continues, “I always catch you staring at him! Do you not like him? I thought you did, so we asked you,” her tone is apologetic but she is not wrong. Often you would find yourself zoning out and staring at your leader. Shigaraki always attracted your eyes. He was like a mystery, there was no wonder you wanted to know more about him. About how he thinks, lives you want to know so much more. Your curiosity about it unfortunately gets pulled out by your fear of him, you can’t imagine staying in the same room as him. Too conscious about his judgemental eyes ghosting your figure and searching for flaws which would make him want to leave you.

“I don’t like him, though.” You finish. At this point, you believe that you have beaten Toga and Dabi at their own game as you watch their faces fall. You feel pride enveloping you for the second time that day knowing that you had the crazy duo speechless. “Okay then,” Dabi still has to say. He throws a  devious smirk, “It’s a dare. I dare you to seduce Tomura Shigaraki.”

You are speechless. “C’mon, you’re not a chicken are you? You do this and I’ll do a dare you give me,” was he really ‘daring’ you to seduce the most dangerous man you have ever met for fun? “I- How would I even do that?” You ask. Your experience in the field of ‘seduction’ was absolutely zero. You couldn’t just walk up to someone and ask them to sleep with you. They have to be mocking you, right? This was a joke- a silly little prank, right? “Aw, c’mon! You don’t even have to go all the way, just kiss him maybe a hand job or something then leave! Shouldn’t be that much of a problem.” Toga spoke sending you puppy dog eyes making you cringe, “You are not going to do it?” Dabi ponders his brow raised, his eyes wait patiently for your answer. You think for a moment if you say no to them; you know for a fact a nasty rumor about you will go around no doubt ruining your reputation and if you say yes..well, you get to kiss your boss and as Dabi promised: you could ‘dare’ him to do anything. Maybe you will make him dance around naked.

“Fine, I will go..” The way their faces light up sends a cold shiver down your spine and your gut kicks in telling you it's a bad idea, but you cannot take your word back now. You reluctantly head into the dark hallway to your leader’s room where he had been locked in since the morning. Probably playing games or making plans for the league, you couldn’t care less. You knock on his door, fidgeting with your fingers while you wait for him to open the door, you didn’t want to barge straight in. It would be very disrespectful to your leader and you’d die before you know it. “He is not going to open the fucking door! Just go in.” You hear Dabi’s faint voice, guess they have been counting your steps. You hesitate a moment before reaching out to the doorknob, you twist it and it unlocks. A nervous sigh leaves your lips as you push the door ajar, stepping into the room and closing it behind you gently, trying your best to not make noise. You find Shigaraki adhered to his devices, his focus is completely planted on the game he plays. The bright screen deceiving shots of violence while he grunts and curses into his earphones. You stand there, next to the door, taking in his entire and it’s a mess. The lights are out, the only source coming from the iridescent screen of Shigaraki’s gameplay. There’s trash everywhere, his bed hasn’t been made. The covers and blanket almost fall off his bed, there are a desk and chair in the room which hasn’t been organized either.

Damn, he really be living like this.

You wait for Shigaraki to notice and you presume he won’t be noticing you until you let him know you are there but you are proved wrong as he glances in your direction, the most astonished expressions falling on his face. Shigaraki sits without father covering his face so you can see his features. Little scars are running everywhere, two significantly larger ones stretching across his left eye and lips. He scans your body head to toe as you shirk back under his heated gaze, “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks and honestly you wonder the same. You don’t answer his question but move forward towards him changing the subject entirely, “Mr. Shigaraki, there’s something I need to tell you…” You stand right in front of him, your knee touching his as he is seated down on his gaming chair holding his control with his pinkies lifted. Your face heats up in embarrassment as you stare down at him with glassy eyes, your heartbeat picks up with him looking back at you with those murderous, red orbs confusion still written all over. You can get that he has picked up the slightest idea about your here as his cheeks pinken the closer you move to him. Your hand slides up his tight slowly, settling close to his crotch making him grunt. You lean down until your face level with his, “Shigaraki…” you utter softly before connecting your lips with his. The action catches him off guard as his pinkies fall on the controller turning it into dust within seconds, but he lets himself get lost in the feeling of your lips squished against him. Honestly, he has no idea what’s gotten into you but he is so glad he’s getting to experience this. Your lips are soft, and warm against his cold and chapped ones. The comfort he feels when your lips mold against him sends him into heaven, it’s a feeling he could use too, a feeling he wants to keep to himself. As you keep him hungrily, he takes the pleasure of running his hands over your body. With his pinkies raised his hands map across your curves, ass, and end upon groping your tits making you gasp into the kiss. Shigaraki takes this as his chance and nips at your lips, drawing a pained moan from you before pushing his tongue into your mouth. You let out choked gasps as his tongue licks away into your mouth greedily, you try to put up a fight but it’s no use. Your leader is much rougher, he kisses you like it's the end of the world. He is almost feral at the way he used your mouth leaving you no place to strength making you submit to him. When he pulls away from the kiss to regain his breath, he wastes no time in throwing you on his dirty bed and climbing over you. You look up at him, his cheeks flushed, eyes dark and clouded with lust, you remind yourself to thank Dabi and Toga later.

[baconpal]

pokemon rant time

this one’s about the 2 new things, and is at least slightly intended for people actually excited/interested in them, click keep reading or perish

Gonna try and keep stuff short cus there's a lot of topics this time and I've already gone off about how pokemon Isn't meant for me or meant to be a good video game anymore, but gamefreak is right back on their bullshit, so I feel I need to at least point it out.

I'd like to preface all this with, if you are a fan of pokemon still, please realize you can ask for more out of this series. Expect perfection, even if you don't think you'll get it anytime soon. Pokemon won't go anywhere, the old games won't go anywhere, and gaming is a hobby, not a necessity; don't accept low quality products from a company just because you feel like you're supposed to.

With this next wave of pokemon games, gamefreak is clearly testing how little they can put in to a $60 game while still keeping the 2 major audiences they've cultivated. By responding to the most obvious and vocal complaints from the community, gamefreak is aiming to make games that seems like what most players want, without having to put in the work on quality products.

GEN 4 REMAKES Pokemon BS (I am not calling this shit BDSP) is intended for the audience that put up with let's go and RS remakes. The most vocal and obvious complaints for these games is their failure as definitive versions of the games they are remakes of, such as missing features/content, or drastically changed story/dialogue/style. In a way, the recent remakes are inferior versions of incredibly old games, which shows a lack of improvement in pokemon as a whole.

To address these issues, BS is very, very, VERY clearly aiming for a more 1-to-1 recreation of the DS games, but with fully 3d graphics. Clearly the map layout has been transferred exactly, and gen 4 already had mostly 3d environments to begin with, and everyone knows about the future-proof pokemon models at this point, so the amount of effort required to create something like this is absolutely minimal. Assuming dialogue, trainer teams, move lists, etc. are also lifted directly from DP, then this game could be developed in basically no time at all, leaving the team time to ensure the product is of decent quality and includes ALL of the content of the originals, if not more, like the earlier pokemon remakes did to ensure they were truly definitive versions of the games. That being said, it is unlikely the team behind BS has been making use of this saved time to improve the game.

One failing already clear is that the quality is not very good, at least graphical quality. The footage we have shows environments lacking in color compared to the original, with messy, unpleasant textures that contrast poorly with the simplistic environments. The characters especially do not work. As cute and fun the fanart of tiny dawn has been, BS dawn and all other characters look awful. They have gorilla arms that reach down to the floor and lifeless faces, as well as incredibly stiff/simplistic animations. As it stands, BS is a visually inferior game to DP, though most consumers will simply see it as 3D>2D without any understanding of what an artstyle is, so this might not be a problem for many, but that doesn't mean you should accept it.

What remains to be seen is what content will be added/missing from pokemon BS. It is very possible that massive parts of the game, such as the underground, variety of online modes, postgame areas, and content from platinum could be missing entirely. We also do not know if pokemon from after gen 4 will be worked into the region, or even supported. Gen 8 still currently does not support a large number of pokemon, and the remakes may continue this limited dex trend.

Even assuming the remake includes everything from the DS games and doesn't add anything that slows down the story or harms the experience, it will still only be an exercise in forced obsolescence. The main reason people can't really play DP still is that the online isn't supported anymore. If BS turns out to be exactly the same as DP, then you're buying the same game for at a higher price, only to play it until the online service goes away again, or the next game comes out, if both don't happen at the same time.

Don't let yourself buy a 13 year old game at twice the original price.

GEN 4 NOT-REMAKE KIND OF NEW THING On to legends now, gamefreak is targeting the people who put up with sun/moon and sword/shield. The obvious problem with those games to most people was simply a lack of change from the standard pokemon formula. Even when changing the gyms to trials or stadiums, most people still understand that the format and story structures are mostly unchanged. Of course, this problem has seemingly been addressed by changing the game structure a fair bit, but almost entirely by removal.

Trainer battles, and by extension, gyms and tournaments/elite 4 have been confirmed to be absent, meaning all battles are only vs single pokemon, in spite of the player likely having a team of 6 pokemon. Even if battle difficulty is increased to compensate (doubtful), this will still drastically increase the simplicity of combat and make it even less likely for the game to include any meaningful challenge. Exploring towns and meeting NPCs is also seemingly missing, as the game is confirmed to have only a single village, which frankly looks incredibly boring and we've yet to see a single NPC inhabiting the village.

Battles now use an ATB format instead of a turn-based format (for those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means nothing, it's still turn based, it just means the speed state determines who gets more turns instead of who goes first, that's it), but beyond that there seems to be no noteworthy changes, pokemon learn 4 moves with limited PP, type advantage will still definitely be the most important aspect to battle, and the player being able to walk around during battle provides no meaningful impact. While the little dash the pokemon do to approach each other is cool, it is already a sign that gamefreak will not be addressing the issue of lacking animations for pokemon battles, as they can't even be assed to animate and program pokemon walking around the environment during combat, and lucario doing 1 kick for a move described as a series of punches isn't a great sign either.

On the topic of lacking animations, the new "pet simulator feature" for legends seems to be an advancement on the ride system from sun/moon, which presumably people missed from sword/shield. Being able to ride on your pokemon to do stuff sounds cool, but in all likelihood, this system will be limited to only a select few pokemon who will each do a select few actions, and is not a reasonable replacement for all the other pet raising features that have been removed in the past. Similar to BS, the total number of pokemon included may also be limited arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that no new pokemon need to be added, as these games are not claiming to be a new generation.

The largest issues I personally have with this new game is the horrible technical quality and gameplay quality shown in the initial trailer. Unfortunately, these types of problems seem to be difficult to explain to the average consumer, even though the issues seem incredibly obvious and inexcusable to people like me.  Most people were able to understand the problem with the berry trees in gen 8, because it was easy to explain, "this tree doesn't look like the other trees, and it sticks out, isn't that weird?", and so gamefreak has eliminated any immediately obvious issues like that, sticking with a very consistent artstyle for legends, making it almost impossible to easily explain its faults to the average pokemon fan.

People have been really quick to compare legends to BoTW; the game that invented grass, trees, and mountains. In spite of these comparisons, nobody seems to point out that legends looks dramatically worse than that almost 5 year old game from the previous generation. Plants are stiff and lacking in energy, draw distances are poor, colors are drab, and textures are messy. Many parts of legends seems to ape BoTW on just the surface, essentially just following market trends. Even the controls seem to follow after modern 3rd person shooters/stealth games, including a seemingly pointless roll and a clunky looking ball lobbing arc that feels unfun before even getting to play it myself.

The largest issue, painfully obvious to some, and impossible to explain to others, is the framerate. The trailer clearly was ran on actual switch hardware, and not prerendered, which would be a good mark for gamefreak if it didn't result in a trailer that never once hit 30fps. Even with empty fields, with only 1 or 2 characters on screen, the game was incapable of meeting the target speed, and had to resort to optimizations like reducing the frame rate of pokemon only inches away from the player to stop-motion levels of choppy. If situations with almost nothing going on result in slow-down, how will the game perform during actual gameplay? Even though slow-down is something everyone can feel, many people aren't capable of identifying it.

The major things to wait and see for legends is if the removed aspects of the series are made up for by some additional systems or content, and definitely wait to see if the performance improves. As with BS, preordering a game like this only shows that gamefreak only has to market the game by saying it's different, not improved, like they've been doing for years now.

TL;DR FUCK GAMEFREAK One major thing of note is that gamefreak is releasing 2 games based on gen 4 at the nearly the same time, meaning they have no obligation to design new pokemon or even include pokemon not from sinnoh, and also that the sales of each game can be used as an indicator for which of their 2 audiences is more loyal to them. Both BS and Legends are in a position to be pushes aside if they fail, but if either succeeds, gamefreak can continue in the direction of the more successful game and reap the benefits, without any need to innovate, improve, or adapt to criticism.

The last thing I feel I have to remind people about is that gamefreak is a company; you don't need to be "grateful" to them. I've seen that word thrown around far too much by people who seem to buy pokemon games like its a tax, and not something they want to do. You don't have to suck up to a company that made games you liked as a kid if the games aren't what you want anymore. Pokemon is so wildly successful that it can't possible die, so don't buy the games out of pity, or out of some feeling of obligation. Buy the video games you want to play and nothing more.

Basically, if you are considering getting any of these new games, please wait until the games are out before purchasing them, and decide for yourself if they are worth your money, and more importantly, your time. Preordering these games only lets gamefreak know their audience will buy and put up with anything. They have no real competition at the moment, so the only thing the audience can do to encourage improvement is show some of restraint.

[inspector-montoya-fox]

let’s talk about the criminal mistreatment of Athena Cykes

Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies isn’t really big on women. They’re either dead, fully motivated by self-interest, or on the wrong side of the law. And in the wacky world of Ace Attorney, the game seriously lacks in original wacky female characters. And then there’s Athena Cykes; Phoenix’s new, cute! protégé with a brand new skill for some fresh gameplay and a seriously messed up backstory to captivate the player. Here’s the problem: that pretty much sums up Apollo’s character and reason for being introduced literally one game prior. So why introduce this new character when she wasn’t even needed?

(major spoilers ahead)

Let’s start by pointing out that, throughout Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, Athena only handles one case on her own. And that case (Turnabout Storyteller) is a mess, imo. We don’t get to investigate as Athena, her skills as a rookie attorney are being constantly diminished by everyone, even her client, and she relies on Blackquill to bail her out when shit hits the fan. In the original trilogy, Maya also helped out Phoenix when in need, but Phoenix was literally the main playable character, having enough cases to redeem himself after stumbling once or twice. Athena is given only one chance throughout the span of two games.

If Athena was the only new character, tackling only one case on her own would be more acceptable because, with the absence of Maya, she’d play the pivotal role of Phoenix’s assistant, aiding him. And that would actually be ideal. Imagine Athena being introduced in Dual Destinies as Phoenix’s assistant, investigating with him and providing advice during the trials. The game would wrap up nicely by having us explore the Space Centre and have her backstory unravel. That’s basically the first game’s premise: Maya is introduced in Turnabout Sisters and by Turnabout Goodbyes we explore part of her backstory (mainly Misty Fey going MIA) via Edgeworth’s trials.

What really screws up Athena’s chances of succeeding as a new character, are the other new characters, Apollo Justice and Trucy Wright. Apollo Justice was literally supposed to be a reset for the franchise. Bridge to Turnabout wrapped up all the story arcs of the trilogy in such a masterful way that there wasn’t anything more for Phoenix and Maya to do. The 7 year time jump and the introduction of Apollo were supposed to kick off a new trilogy and showcase a new era of the law, a time in which the system started failing, despite the fact that it was already messed up. I go into detail about why Apollo Justice failed in this essay no one bothered to read (yea i’m bitter, bitch) but basically, to sum up, Capcom didn’t have the balls to strip the series of its main character and due to backlash, brought him back one game after.

I 100% believe that Dual Destinies tries its hardest to be what fans wanted Apollo Justice to be. As a result, it has too much on its plate. Giving Apollo a new backstory, portraying Phoenix’s return as an attorney, trying desperately to sell the Dark Age of the Law and repeating ‘the end justifies the means’ about a million times, delivering interesting cases with interesting witnesses (at which it fails miserably, imo), all the while introducing Athena and exploring her backstory, which includes the new prosecutor and new detective, whose final twist, although unexpected, doesn’t save the game. That’s a lot, like too, too much.

What was the reason for Athena’s introduction? As I mentioned above, Apollo was literally introduced one game prior to Dual Destinies, providing the writers with countless opportunities for interesting storylines. What we got instead were interesting storylines which were never to be revisited again, e.g. Apollo and Trucy being Thalassa Gramarye’s children, and the jury system. What the fuck. Instead of progressing Apollo’s saga as a rookie attorney taken under Phoenix’s wing, he gets sidetracked for the sake of Athena, but as we soon find out, that isn’t even the case. Actually, Apollo as a new protagonist gets sacrificed for the sake of Athena, and in turn, Athena gets sacrificed for the sake of Apollo being a sidekick. Again, what the fuck.

After Apollo Justice, the games try and fail to course-correct Apollo’s character. Dual Destinies tries to shoehorn Apollo and Athena’s backstories into two cases (The Cosmic Turnabout and Turnabout for Tomorrow), while wasting such an opportunity with its first three cases (no, Turnabout Academy’s rushed exposition on Athena and Juniper’s friendship doesn’t count). And I’m being blatantly honest when I say that I literally couldn’t give less of a shit about Clay Terran and dArK Apollo with a bandage over his eye. I literally don’t care because the game doesn’t do the work in order for me to care. It just dumps a bunch of new info on Apollo and Clay’s friendship at the beginning of a trial for which there isn’t even an investigation. That’s just lazy. Instead, I’m much more interested as to why the robots at the Space Centre recognize Athena.

Athena’s backstory, although redundant and painfully familiar, is pretty interesting. Why is it redundant and painfully familiar? Because Maya Fey also lost her mother due to an incident with an upcoming prosecutor and eventually was misled into thinking she was the culprit, the truth being revealed by Phoenix at the end. Despite the similarity, the details surrounding Metis Cykes’s murder are so captivating. Aura Blackquill is introduced, a mysteriously sexy tech gyal whose dialogue on Metis seems to suggest that they were romantically involved, Blackquill’s imprisonment is explained, there’s hostages involved, and the Phantom is revealed. Turnabout for Tomorrow isn’t my favorite case but in terms of setting up Athena’s backstory, it does everything right.

I honestly love Athena. I love that we have another female attorney alongside Mia and Calisto Yew. I love that she introduces psychology into the trials. I love her yellow suit and her narration, and her moon earrings and relentlessly joyful attitude. She’s such a joy to have around. That’s why I hate how Dual Destinies handles her character, having Apollo ask her questions on who she is and what she does during The Monstrous Turnabout’s investigation and waiting until Turnabout for Tomorrow to continue her exposition. Instead, Apollo gets most of the attention. If Capcom wanted games 4-6 to be Apollo’s trilogy, they should’ve done that. Not dilute Apollo Justice by including hobo Phoenix, not introduce Athena and have Phoenix return in Dual Destinies, not do anything they did with Spirit of Justice. I really wanted Dual Destinies to be Athena’s game.

Spirit of Justice handles Athena even worse than Dual Destinies. She is quite literally reduced to a side character and, even though we get to play her first solo case, her character gets absolutely zero development. Whereas Phoenix is reunited with Maya and resets the law in a foreign country via a revolution in which Apollo is caught in the centre of, Athena babysits Trucy (another female character who is given nothing to do). Also, Athena being sidetracked, getting turned from a new attorney to just a character without a purpose becomes so obvious when she’s literally rendered obsolete once Maya returns in Turnabout Time Traveler, during which she becomes Trucy’s lab rat... ???

I literally feel bad for Athena because she was created unreasonably but created with care nonetheless. Dual Destinies tackles too many story arcs and themes all at once, and if the writers removed some of them to focus more on Athena instead, she could have been the next Franziska: a young lawyer with drive who rises to the ranks of the best but not without her flaws. But, um, we got an Apollo Justice Lite, instead.

[misstvirus]

** RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE SPOILERS **

I decided to put this on tumblr so I could hide spoilers from Twitter and full explain why I gave Resident Evil 8 the score 5/10

These are my opinions and my personal review of Resident Evil Village. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and I am in no way saying that anyone’s experiences or enjoyment of the game are invalid.

Please excuse me - I had a hard time trying to put my thoughts in order. This is a game summary and commentary after the first few paragraphs.

I first discuss the graphics, music, etc but it turns into me basically explaining the plot so I could express my dismay at the end. Skip to the last few paragraphs to read my mental nerdy breakdown.

The gameplay, graphics and mechanics are perfect. Each installment since of series since Resident Evil 7 - has improved. The game mechanics while in combat such as switching weapons, healing and guarding are smooth, it’s damn near perfect. The Duke brought a lot of nostalgia and memories of Resident Evil 4’s Merchant. I enjoyed being able to interact to upgrade weapons, buy supplies and sell treasures. The games over all aesthetic, atmosphere and attention to detail. Each location was beautiful and you can see the love, sweat and dedication put into the game. The music is there, it is eerie at times but it’s not as memorable as other installments of the game. Resident Evil 7 had its featured title song, “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” - Resident Evil Village’s “Yearning for Dark Shadows” was not as heavily featured and did not get the hype like it’s predecessor.

Resident Evil Village had a good story (please note this is my thought strictly AS A REVITALIZED RE GAME BEFORE THE CHRIS REDFIELD SEGMENT). The story starts by continuing with Ethan and Mia Winters after the events of Resident Evil 7. I knew Capcom moved in a different direction and accepted that as long time RE Junkie that although it’s from the same universe - they would not be the same type of games. Chris Redfield’s end game appearance in RE7 and a few Easter eggs were the only MAIN (not DLC content) links to the previous RE installments. The new set of villains and interesting tie-ins to village folklore story was a great way to foreshadow the events to come. The village and story behind Mother Miranda and her reasoning for creating the big baddies because wanting to bring back her dead child were good and had this been a stand alone or continuation WITHOUT TYING THE GAME INTO THE RE UNIVERSE I would have liked it fully.

The game starts with Ethan and Mia Winters, a new baby, Rose and are Having marital issues not dealing with Louisiana/RE7 events and Chris Redfield shows up and kills “Mia”. Chris’s team takes the baby and Ethan and knocks him out. When Ethan wakes up in wreckage of a van, without his baby and dead drivers. As Ethan wanders into the woods and makes his way to the village. He discovers something is killing the people and meets up with a group of people who worship Mother Miranda and quickly die by monsters. These monsters are called “lycans” who are products/monsters of the Cadou mold similar/same thing in RE7. Ethan finds himself apart of weird meeting of all five villains - who stole baby Rose and want do some weird shit.

Tada! Ethan has escaped and ends up in Lady Alcina Dimitrescu or “Tall Lady” “Vampire Mommy” castle. You are confronted by her and her three daughters Bela, Cassandra and Daniela.

Let me step in to rustle the jimmies and ruffle the feathers of the Lady D hype group. What you see in the previews is what you get. No more, no less! There is nothing special and there are no redeeming qualities or mentions past notes in game files of Lady D outside your castle encounter. The story isn’t based around her, she’s just a tiny part in a larger story plot 1 of 5 villains/baddies. The daughters are overly sexual and have the most cringe worthy dialog. I love me some sexy characters and villains but the daughters were just so cringe. They could’ve AMPED up the horror with them and created a stronger scare factor but dropped the fucking ball. They were not creepy or scary and brought nothing to the story with delivering lines about wanting to “consume Ethan’s manflesh” “not stale as mother said - tastes so good.” Also to be noted they were not actually vampires but bioweapons. Lady D being a good result to the mold “Cadou” and the daughters the result of the Cadou and mixing of insects. You kill the daughters, get chased by Lady D who eventually mutates into a flying tentacle bat-dragon and it’s done, she gone. Sorry to fuckboys who thought she was bigger player.

After Ethan beats Lady D, he grabs a yellow flask that’s apparently filled with the juice and parts of baby Rose - and each of villains has one of these baby-juice boxes. Ethan will have to collect them all to be able to put Rose back together.

Next visit is House Beneviento. This was the scariest of all five villains and village locations in my review of the game. It reminded me of a Silent Hill installment less a Resident Evil installment - the use of light, sound and overall paranormal factor did bring in a successful horrifying portion of the game . The mutated baby chase was comical yet creepy. You have to hide to escape it and you ended up playing hide and seek with possessed dolls. The entirety of House Beneviento will definitely give you an uneasy feeling. Donna, the woman controlling a doll named Angie is another baddie who you later learn is mentally unstable and uses her abilities to manipulate plants - to cause hallucinations to create the creepy doll house scenario. (Oof it’s hard for me to stay on track). Part 2 of 4 of Baby Rose - which yes it what your game objective says.

Next Moreau, a mutated fish man - gives Ethan the Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 game play feel - having to complete actions while some oversized bioweapon is looming around and can take you out with a misstep, like falling in the water or moving too slowly. Moreau did not gain any abilities with the Cadou mold, basically his body wasn’t compatible and he just mutates uncontrollably. Mentally slow, weak and kind of a sad story. Ethan runs into Chris Redfield who tells him to stay out of it and than runs away. Ethans fights Moreau and gets another baby juice jar.

Next Ethan faces off and explores a laboratory with Karl Heisenberg - a bioweapon who can manipulate metal (think a less cool and weakly motivated Magneto). He one of the last big baddies - and motivated by being essentially rejected by Mother Miranda. He is the most stable reaction to the Cadou mold. Before Ethan and Heisenberg face off - Chris Redfield comes in - to reveal he was not the bad guy Ethan thought in the beginning of the game. Mia wasn’t Mia but in fact Mother Miranda in disguise- who was attempting to steal the baby Rose which she ended up doing anyway because Chris’s team wrecked with the baby. At this point I’m say FINE WHATEVER, I guess this works

Chris goes into kill Mother Miranda, we the audience discover the BSAA is now not what is used to be. Chris isn’t affiliating with them and his team hides away from them as they attack. BSAA gets struck down attempting to kill Mother Miranda’s mutation - a megacyte squishy organ (that’s keeping her alive and immortal). Chris puts a massive bomb on big Miranda squishy thing and discovers that Lady Dimitrescu, Karl Heisenberg, Moreau and Donna Beneviento are all attempts to create a perfect vessel to bring back her own dead child Eva, who died in 1912 of the Spanish flu. It is revealed Eveline, the RE7 little girl mold baddie wasn’t another failed attempt. Miranda has turned baby Rose into baby juice to use with the Cadou mold in a ceremony to bring her dead child back.

AND drum roll please - we find out Ozwell Spencer, founder of Umbrella and the progenitor virus the big Daddy of it all was in cahoots with Miranda at some point in his youth and supported her crazy ass research but had his own stuff going on. WHY?! WHO KNOWS? NOT ME! WHY WAS THIS PUT IN THE GAME. To piss me off? Yes. Chris has also discovered Mia is still alive in jail cell for what reason? who knows? And Mia reveals that Ethan is special!

Cue black screen, Ethan awakes to see to Eveline - the mold baddie from RE7. Eveline explains - that Ethan has been dead and died back during the events of RE7. Jack Baker had killed him and dragged him into the house. So he was dead the entirety of RE7 - That explains why Ethan is constantly dismembered, beaten and walking the mold keeps him alive. Ethan will not survive much longer because his missing heart but is determined to bring back his baby. Weakly he carries himself to fight Mother Miranda with Chris. Mother Miranda performs her ceremony with the baby juice boxes and out comes not Eva (her baby) but Ethan’s baby Rose.

They fight and Ethan kills Miranda, carrying Rose off to Chris but that missing heart is the end of Ethan so he takes the trigger for the squishy bomb and pushes Chris away and sacrifices himself for his daughter. Chris boards a helicopter with Mia and baby and the body of a BSAA solider. Ethan blows himself and the Miranda squishy up. The BSAA soldier turns out to be a bioweapon and Mia is distraught at Ethan being for reals dead and Chris is annoyed and directs the pilot for BSAA Europe HQ. Credits Roll, now we see Adult Rose (baby juice reborn as mold human) visiting her Dads grave it’s apparent Chris has been training her and her bodyguard (?) pulls up and they argue and she goes all combative on him. It’s implied she’s not normal since she was DUH she was turned into baby juice and put back together with Cadou mold they drive off - apparently you can see a ghostly Ethan in photo mode - I don’t know I don’t give AF enough about The Winters family and this game at this point

The End

5/10 - Story (read below)

9/10 - Everything else

- Katie’s Dismay and Final Review and Rating-

Graphics: 9/10

Setting: 8/10

Music: 6/10

Game Mechanics: 10/10

Story: (pre Chris Redfield tie in): 7/10

Story: (post Chris Redfield) 4/10

As a modern game, it was great, exceptional. It checks all the classic horror boxes but isn’t the scariest entry, Resident Evil 7 was a much more scary game. The story is why my rating is slow and it’s based on my biases and years of following the story.

STOP! Don’t want to hear my angry ranting? SKIP THE REST

THE ANGER OF a grown ass Resident Evil Fan.

They should’ve omitted the entire BSAA story and BSAA bioweapon-man and not included those notes about Spencer and Umbrella. This game was solid as a next installment and sequel to Resident Evil 7 until they decided they wanted to tie the original Resident Evil storylines into the new story.

When Capcom decided to breakdown and rebuild the franchise, it was a blow because so many storylines were unfinished. I understand they needed to keep evolving and I was blown away by the result. RE7 was not and did not feel like an old RE Game but it was new and it brought back the horror and fear the RE Games early installments were known for. A new RE for a new generation!

But TO ME PERSONALLY - The positive thoughts and opinions I had of RE7 are sullied by Resident Evil Village. Why try to tie it in as an after thought after such a successful overhaul? It’s a slap in the face! Capcom has created some of the best characters in video game stories just to say fuck them for this overhaul but WAIT WE REALLY LIKE CHRIS AND THE BSAA STORY LINE LET’S BRING IN THE OLD STORY NOW.

Fucking NO.

I don’t know what’s worse reading that fucking note from Spencer or the BSAA bullshit.

So now one has to say... WHAT happened to all of the characters who worked for BSAA or worked with affiliates of the BSAA? Chris goes on his own way - Now what? What happened??? There’s nothing explaining what happened between RE5 and RE6 to RE7! They failed to create that bridge. If they had established ANYTHING in RE7 it would be easier for me to swallow.

If you want to overhaul and change the series FINE but don’t back peddle now. Don’t try to throw it the last few minutes of the game with some lazy writing and a vague cliff hanger just leaving it like this.

And of course one could think - “maybe they will make a new game, maybe another sequel?”..... BUT HAVE Y’ALL seen what’s happened at the end of every RE game since RE4???? We are finally getting a Netflix series in 2021 to fill the time after RE4!!! That was 16 YEARS ago! So how can crazy ass fans like myself really expect them to fix the plot holes?!

My theory is that - in between RE7 and RE village They were working on the RE2 Remake and the RE3 Remake and it was if someone at Capcom finally asked - “If all these new RE players are going to play RE village - don’t we need a way to connect these stories????”

And someone jumped up in a conference room and replied. “FUCK IT LETS JUST TIE IN SPENCER AND THE BSAA IN THE LAST 10 MINUTES!”

I have cried, laughed and loved these games my entire life. Some of my major life events happened because of this series! I have followed every game, collected merchandise, gotten tattoos and met the most amazing people because our mural obsession over this series. That’s why it hurts me that’s why I’m tear it apart so viciously and also why I keep playing. There’s always hope that someone will fix the plot holes and finish the stories that lured in the older RE fans and I will always hold Capcom to a high standard and expect them to do right by the fans. I’m not speaking for ALL older RE Fans or ALL fans and I’m definitely not gatekeeping the fandom. This is how I feel - I’m grateful there is a new generation breathing life into RE but I’m screaming a warning - BUCKLE UP BUTTERCUPS - there’s a strong chance your favorite characters new or old aren’t going to get an ending or be reduced to a brief snippet in a file you may not not find.

ANYWAYS

Happy to those who loved it, condolences to those who are pissed off like myself

I’m annoyed but I’ll power through!

Happy 25th Anniversary to my longest obsession!

RE Verse coming in the summer, the Netflix series and the remake Live Action Movies.

HERE’S TO RESIDENT EVIL!

[burgerpocalypse]

Yesterday I started a replay of Half-Life: Alyx, and I want to both share some low-energy ppnions and also tell everyone that I have an Index VR headset.

So, HL:A is the most recent entry in the Half-Life series, which had been sitting in the attic since 2007’s Half-Life 2: Episode 2’s unresolved cliffhanger ending. It’s also a substantial single-player release from Valve, whomst have not gleamed the general public with any substantial single-player releases for around a decade. It’s also also Valve’s first full-fledged VR title that isn’t just a tech demo for your mom or tech industry journalist live-in boyfriend. It is rather unfortunate that not only is it incredibly belated, but also unattainable for the casual video game fan as well as the casual Half-Life enjoyer.

Though it certainly is a complete package that provides a highly tuned VR experience that dunks on all other VR games, there’s some smudginess to it that I feel has not been given proper analysis for whatever reason. Maybe the few people who have played the game are just happy to have another Half-Life entry or a really good triple-A VR title, which I certainly understand. I’ll do my best to quickly go over my grievances as to not waste your time.

The gameplay of Alyx is pretty good. I hadn't had much experience with VR before getting the Index, just a few demonstrations here and there. Regardless, I find it quite easy to slide in and out of VR and don’t experience any substantial negative effects like some other unfortunate souls might. Alyx was essentially the first actual VR game I played, but even then it was really simple for me to become acclimated to controlling my character, even going so far as to using more advanced movement and view options right from the get-go. I bring this up because Alyx is very obviously designed around being accessible to someone whomst has never played a VR game, or potentially any game. As such, there are considerable concessions that put a relatively low limit on what can be accomplished by more experienced players and even someone of intermediate skill.

You only have three weapons, which are a pistol, a shotgun, and an SMG, with two inventory slots for usable items like grenades and health packs. Sure, you can physically hold additional items, even going so far as holding a container filled with grenades and junk, but personally I found that to be a real painful experience that wasn’t worth the trouble due to physics jank and accidental droppage. Besides, it’s not like players are encouraged to do clever/compulsive inventory management, since the environment is lousy with weapons and healing and I rarely was found wanting for more ammo or health.

Combat encounters typically involve around five enemies, with considerable space in between encounters. When not solving puzzles and exploring crusty environments, you’ll be crawling through zombie and headcrab ambushes or pushing through squads of Combine soldiers, which is the essential Half-Life formula. Zombies and headcrabs behave the same way as they have for the past twenty years, with a few slight twists like weak points for instant kills or minibosses. While soldiers are highly accurate with their shots and do attempt to flank or force the player out of cover, they are much less mobile and aggressive than they have ever been. This is fine for VR since players have to physically aim and take cover, though soldiers definitely will stand around and wait to be shot sometimes.

Each fight is intense and combat is by no means brain-dead easy, but from the perspective of someone that has played a lot of Half-Life and shooters in general, the combat in Alyx is limited in scope. I didn't feel much challenge, outside of maybe the final bits of combat. The few times I died were usually due to VR control finickiness when trying to reload, me losing focus and not paying attention, or me making a really, REALLY dumb mistake.

Exploration is fine. It’s mildly entertaining scouring an environment for useful things, though I quickly learned the developer’s tricks, and the act of pulling drawers and opening cupboards got old real fast when all you get is some bullets. Really, you’re only looking for ammo or resin for upgrades, and everything outside of puzzle solutions is just junk and noise. I’m not a puzzle-oriented person, and will become bored and lose interest if a puzzle asks me to remember more than one thing or figure out any complex solution, so it’s fine that no puzzle goes beyond at most one step of complexity. Physics jank is rife throughout the world, and VR only makes it worse (or better, if you prefer the jank). There were one or two times I had to load a save due to a physics object bugging out, the culprit being a valve getting stuck in a wall.

I have little to say about the story. It’s a prequel to Half-Life 2, which is whatever. The plot spins its wheels the entire time, since we know that nothing we do will have any effect on the games we’ve already played. It also tries to be coy about the identity of a particular character, when we know that the character will clearly not be who they say it will be. It doesn’t advance the story of Half-Life in any meaningful way since it ends with the same cliffhanger as HL2: EP2 in what is essentially a canonical retcon. It sets up more mysteries while also refusing to answer any lingering questions. It introduces a character and other elements that are obviously not in the game that chronologically comes after, and so on.

My expectations and testicles have been ground into a fine paste as a result of Valve’s silly little 13-year unresolved plot point cocktease, so I suppose it’s just that I’m not in a forgiving mood, but I found Alyx’s story to be an insulting, blue-ball inducing, time-wasting non-entity, and if Valve wants to think that I’m dumb enough to be satisfied with a 30 second teaser for their next project as part of Alyx’s conclusion, then they can go fuck themselves.

While I’m at it, the level with Jeff is dumb. I’m not interested in a level with an enemy that is inexplicably invulnerable to guns and follows me around for no reason other than to act as a gameplay contrivance. I wasn’t scared in the slightest because I’m a total asshole and possibly a sociopath, so the experience was a dull slog through a haunted house with annoying puzzles and no combat. If you found this to be your favorite level, great, but in my opinion it can fuck itself right alongside Valve.

In conclusion, Half-Life: Alyx is a great game, with notable issues and shortcomings in its gameplay and a deeply disappointing story. If you already have VR and a capable system, I certainly recommend it. Don’t get VR just for Alyx, though. You’ll probably be let down by the rather meager library of VR titles afterwards.

Thanks for reading. Sorry there's no interesting art to look at.

[turqrambles]

The Five Worst Things About Digimon World

I did it.

It took 20 years but I did it.

I finally beat Digimon World for the Playstation 1, a game that has haunted me for most of my lifetime, and I did it with a Phoenixmon, the reason why I use “Turquoisephoenix” as a handle!

This is who I used to beat the game, named after an obscure Ratchet and Clank character because that’s just how I roll. The final boss battle involved a lot of Prominence Beam spamming and med recovery floppy spamming but I did it fair and square. 

Before I get into what I thought about this game as a whole - and I do have a lot of good things to say about this game since I obviously enjoyed it enough to get to the end - I gotta talk about my least favorite things about this game. In a concise, Buzzfeed-esque list because I like writing things in easy to digest chunks.

Because, like most charming yet difficult games of the late 90′s, this game is very flawed and the flaws are pretty annoying!

1. Care Mistakes

The three emojis - Smile, Cool, and Poop.

Okay. This one - my least favorite part in the game - is going to take a bit of explanation.

First off, I don’t actually hate care mistakes existing as a mechanic. I think it’s a cute, virtual pet-y way to add a different wrinkle to evolution requirements, even if I think it’s a bit counter-intuitive to have to suddenly abuse my little companion once they reach Champion just because I want them to evolve into a floating metallic ball with a chainsaw.

My problem with care mistakes is that there’s literally no way of telling many care mistakes you have on your given Digimon. 

Literally everything else in this game is concisely recorded and easily displayed on your Digimon’s stats screen. You can see how much your Digimon weighs. You can see their Happiness, their Discipline. How much Life they have left. Their Age. Even how many poops they need to make before they digivolve into a sentient pile of feces.

But Care Mistakes? Naaaaw, you just gotta remember every single thing that you did to your Digimon from the moment it evolves in your fallible human brain. What’s that? A good portion of this game involves grinding in the Green Gym and it’s really easy to make a Care Mistake there without knowing you did so because you mashed A too fast like the stat-grinding numskull that you are? Well, that’s just too fucking bad for you, then! Enjoy not getting some of the best evolutions, you piece of shit. You stooge. You moron!

This game, multiple times: You know who I hate? The player.

Care Mistakes are such an invisible mechanic that, to this day, there are many guides with misleading info about what counts as a Care Mistake and what doesn’t, which...really stinks for a game such as this where you will be using a guide pretty extensively to get the Digimon you deserve. And you know why that is? Because we don’t get any indication as to whether or not some random event counts against you when raising your Digimon.

And honestly, having one of your main mechanics of the game being entirely invisible to the player is a terrible idea. Just put a little number in my profile that says “Care Mistakes: 0″ in there. Let me know this information without guessing.

2. The Glitches

Pictured: Something that will CRASH YOUR GAME if you try it on a physical copy.

Let me start with a disclaimer that most of the glitches I’m going to complain about were added into the game when Digimon World was localized and therefore aren’t the original intent of the developers. There are certain versions of Digimon World that are more stable than others (The English PAL version is the best version to play because of this) and, if you play this game via “certain methods”, there are patches to circumvent some of the bigger problems.

That being said! Boy! Isn’t it ironic that a game where I’m exploring the digital world is plagued with so many annoying, game-ruining glitches? Especially if I’m playing this game on a physical 20-year old copy like a dunce?

“Ohhhh...so Agumon thinks that they can block the Digimon game with their big fat Digimon-blocking head, do they?!”

The NTSC version of this game has a jukebox that will crash the game if you try to use it, keeping you from ever using a bonus feature meant to be a fun little reward for completing a certain dungeon, but that’s not as heinous as the Spanish, French, German, and Italian PAL versions of this game locking a good portion of the game to players because they forgot to make the Agumon in front of Ogremon’s Fortress an object you can interact with.

So that means, if you happened to get this game in one of four lucky countries, you can’t complete the Ogremon mission, you can’t recruit Whamon, you can’t recruit Shellmon, you can’t recruit anything tied to Shellmon’s bulletin board (which means no Vademon or Skullgreymon), and you can’t go to Factorial Town and recruit Giromon, Andromon, or Numemon. Ogremon is a key part of the Digimon World storyline and causes so many different things in the game to change, meaning that it should’ve been imperative to make sure this part of the game works!

But no. Instead this one little bastard Agumon keeps most players from finishing the game, because it starves players of those PAL regions of a bunch of Prosperity points, the main source of progression in this game. That means that Mt. Infinity and the final boss is just that much harder to unlock. It’s doable, but it’s more grueling process.

This really is a problem with the translators and really highlights a lack of general care with testing this game. Why this game was allowed to be shipped with such glaring bugs is anyone’s guess, especially in an era where you couldn’t release any patches over the Internet to fix retail versions.

3. The Monochromon’s Shop Minigame

Ohhhh....this one was so close to getting the top spot. When I first wrote this draft, this was the top spot.

Monochromon was only spared of my true ire on account of the fact that it really only exists for one part of the game (rather than being a constant problem like the Care Mistakes and the Glitches are) and you can easily cheese it by sleeping in front of the store so that you can save scum your way to victory. Like a true Digital Champion!

At one point in the game, you gotta help a entrepreneur dinosaur rhino man make a profit, because he was stupid and put his convenience store in the middle of a giant canyon next to a gaping chasm. So you play a little game of haggling, where you try to ruthlessly oversell a bunch of random items to customers until you make enough of a profit that this talking dinosaur tells you that you passed his secret test of character, abandons his store, and moves into File City.

There’s just one problem with this minigame - everything is decided by RNG.

“Get the hell out of my shop”

This minigame hates you. It wants nothing but to see you fail and to waste your time. The difference in profit margins of the three items (Meat sells for 50g, Portable Potties sell for 300g, and Medicine sells for 1000g) are so stark that, if you get too many customers asking for Meat, you might as well just reset the game and start over because it will be literally impossible to meet the requirement even if you busted the customer’s proverbial balls and squeezed every last bit out of their cutesy penguin faces.

Oh! It’s also RNG as to whether or not your customers will take your asking price or storm out of the store without buying anything!

It’s all the fun of working at retail! In a video game!

4. Three on One Battles

What you see before you is a battle system that is really fun when it’s one vs. one, manageable at two vs. one, and downright unbearable at three vs. one.

The battle system works for the most part. You don’t have full control of your Digimon (and yes, you only have one Digimon with you at one time, so you can never stack the numbers in your favor) so you shout commands at it, commands that the Digimon’s AI are pretty good at following, and hope for the best as you chuck healing items at it.

It’s not the best battle system, but it’s fun. And it definitely reinforces the whole “this is a pet you’re taking care of with its own thoughts and feelings” atmosphere that this game is going for.

However, nothing can protect your Digimon from enemy fire concentrated on them, especially if you did the thing that most players do and equipped your Digimon with the most powerful attacks that also happen to have slower cast times than the faster, weaker attacks.

What then happens is your Digimon’s Health is slowly whittled away as you are powerless to stop it, watching as your digital friend is straight up bullied by enemy Digimon as they keep falling to the ground over and over and over and over again.

The one saving grace is that Friendly Fire exists in this game so that oftentimes the enemy Digimon will damage each other in their mad dash to ruin your day, but that seems more like a band-aid than an actual fix to this system.

5. Fishing Seadramon

“Hi, kid. Let me guess - you also thought you had to talk to the Tankmon in Factorial Town in order to unlock me, huh.”

This one is a lot less of a pain than the other four and it’s only a little annoying but boy...getting Seadramon kinda sucks in this game.

It took me almost a goddamn hour to catch Seadramon. One hour of gameplay devoted to catching one fish. Just like real fishing!

I will say, besides Seadramon, the fishing minigame in this game is pretty competent. It’s just that Seadramon is very elusive, showing up at only two hours in a 24 hour day, and is a very finicky fish that won’t take your bait even if you literally placed it in front of his dumb fish face.

Don’t be fooled by this screenshot. The heart just means you have the right bait. The heart means that you didn’t actually get within range of hooking him.

IT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!!!

Seadramon is also subject to almost as many gaming myths as the Care Mistakes are, due to how elusive he is, but that’s less to do with poor communication (the game does at least explain multiple times in multiple places how to find him) and more to do with the fact that catching him is just such a goddamn chore to do that players of this game always assume they’re doing something wrong.

When in reality, Seadramon is just a picky little bitch.

Next time I discuss Digimon World, I’ll talk about things I liked, don’t worry. I just had to get all of this negativity out before discussing the full game proper.

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy VIII Review

(A serious review this time, without spoilers.)

Year: 1999

Original Platform: PlayStation One

Also available on: PC, PlayStation Store

Version I Played: PlayStation One

Synopsis:

Squall Leonhart is a new recruit of SeeD, a mercenary team protecting the world. Rinoa is a resistance fighter against the Republic of Galbadia, led by the Sorceress Edea who is suddenly hellbent on conquering the neighboring nations. Squall and his team attempt to assassinate Edea, but the mission goes awry.

Gameplay:

Final Fantasy VIII throws nearly every previous battle system out of the window. It’s nearly as radical as Final Fantasy II’s battle system. Enemies around the world map average their levels according to your average level among your characters. You only need 1,000 EXP (experience points) to rise to each level, unlike the other games where the EXP needed rises after each level. But that doesn’t mean your character levels up all their stats – that all depends on the summons, known in this game as Guardian Forces.

 Unlike other games, summons are crucial to the gameplay, despite not being crucial to the story itself. The Junction System has you “junction” each character with a GF, allowing you to assign different battle commands (Item, Draw, Magic, GF, etc). If you don’t assign a character a GF, all they can do in battle is “Attack.”

That gets super annoying when you’re moving around GFs between characters a lot but you forget to assign that one character a summon right before a major boss battle, so then they can’t do shit.

The drawing system is my favorite aspect of Final Fantasy VIII’s gameplay. Instead of harnessing magic by a points system (such as MP), you draw magic from enemies. Magic is only limited by the number of spells. For example, you fight an enemy and draw 5 Curas from them. You now have 5 Cura spells. You can hold up to 99 of any spell. You don’t have to worry about ethers or running out of MP. I guess it’s an incentive to battle enemies, as they are resources for magic.

But the way the GFs work annoy me the most. You to call upon GFs at any time in any battle for an infinite number of times. This doesn’t give you any incentive to even try battling. If something annoyed me, I just said, “Fuck it” and spammed GFs. Not only that, but you have to sit through the short cinematic sequence of your summon every time you call them. I must have viewed Shiva’s summoning sequence ten-thousand fucking times before finishing the game. This makes battling feel repetitive, tedious, and unenjoyable. Battling was a chore.

The Junction System overall is so complicated that you have to go through a tutorial within the first twenty minutes of the game. It’s aggravating enough already to sit through Quistis going, “Blah, blah. blah” but it’s actually super important because if you don’t pay attention then this game will be tedious.

The final battle though? That shit was epic. Hard. But epic. One of the best final battles.

Graphics:

This game took a different route in giving realistic proportions to its characters. While that’s a cool idea on paper, the overall effect is. . .boring? Almost every other Final Fantasy game has a cast of very distinct characters, like various species, age groups, or wildly different clothing. To suddenly play a Final Fantasy game with what looks like real people – like Bob, Joe and Jill – seems drab. Selphie by far has been the least interesting character to me. When your characters look and feel like NPCs, it’s hard to become invested in them.

I wasn’t a fan of many of the backdrops because for whatever reason I had trouble discerning some doors. I couldn’t tell what I was looking at in the background sometimes, like if there was a switch or button that I had to press.

The cinematics are great though – some of the best in the series. It has the most memorable opening sequence of any game – the duel between Squall and his rival Seifer. The cinematics were a MAJOR step up from Final Fantasy VII.

Story:

Oh hey, so here’s a serious, non-spoiler, non-inflammatory review of Final Fantasy VIII.

Put this story side-by-side with Final Fantasy VII and you can see how they carried on the inspirations. Once again, the story is set in a more modern setting with cars, trains, etc. Squall is Cloud. Rinoa is Aerith. Etc., etc.

Squall Leonhart is the epitome of angst. You will spend the entire game rolling your eyes at Squall’s angsty introspective thoughts about the situations he’s in and people around him. Squall is essentially a bad version of Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Take Cloud but only take his cool design and angsty responses. That’s Squall Leonhart. Squall literally has no interesting qualities about him other than his physical design. He can rock that jacket and that scar on his face. Squall’s “romance” with Rinoa Heartilly is also a cardboard copy of Cloud and Aerith’s romance. Squall meets Rinoa by a chance meeting at a military ball. She serves as the optimistic, lively counterweight to Squall’s stoicism. But there’s hardly any depth other than Squall finding her pretty and Rinoa thinking he’s cute and handsome.

The cast of characters is bland, to say the least. They are composed of other students (Quistis being an instructor though) at Balamb Garden (except Irvine, who is a student of another Garden). They look boring. Their introductions are boring. Balamb Garden sounds like a cool idea – a mercenary school – except it plays off more like a poorly written high school anime drama, which is lame. At one point, Squall’s friends – Zell, Selphie, Irvine and Quistis – all try to conspire to get him to talk to Rinoa. You actually have to play through that of the plot and watch it unfold. But Squall tries to understand Rinoa’s upbeat attitude with lots of question marks in his thought bubbles and mumbling, “Whatever”. It’s jarring to sit through four discs of this over and over.

The plot is a butchered mess. After Disc 1 is when the plot gets strange like a fever dream. Plot twists happen left and right after Disc 1 without any rhyme or reason. Very little is explained and many twists are too convenient. Seifer is introduced as Squall’s rival and Rinoa’s original love interest, but then he inexplicably turns evil. In no dialogue or plot points do we ever learn why Seifer switches sides. None at all.

There’s a particular interesting fan theory that actually makes infinitely more sense than the story that Square gave us. Here’s a hot tip – when fan theories start making perfect sense, you probably didn’t write a good story.

The best part of Final Fantasy VIII is actually Laguna Loire. Throughout the story, Squall and his friends pass out for mysterious reasons and you are introduced to Laguna Loire and his two buddies, Ward and Kiros (who are reminiscent of Biggs and Wedge from Final Fantasy VII). They partake in events set in the past. Laguna Loire hearkens back to the pre-Final Fantasy VII heroes – heroes like Bartz and Locke. He’s funny and charming. I wish the game was about him and his friends instead of angsty Squall and his cardboard friends.

 So, for four discs you play through these parallel plots and then they merge by the end. The payoff isn’t so amazing. I expected something better. Time travel is involved, albeit in a way that doesn’t make sense. Time compression! The ability to compress time into a singularity because . . . because why again? I guess you don’t have to wait for the next season of Game of Thrones anymore. Is that what that means?  

Other notes I want to mention – Balamb Garden is an awful, clunky airship and the world map is the least interesting world map in the entire series. The only remotely interesting place is Fisherman’s Horizon.

 Final Fantasy VIII’s story is the second most radical departure from the series, the first being Final Fantasy X, which I will get to later. However, Final Fantasy VII lacks any meaningful depth or existential crisis for its main character to explore. There’s no grand critique on the meaning or life or anything like that. There’s one slight existential question that Rinoa faces near the end but it’s practically nothing. I admire what they tried to do but it fell flat on its face. It’s dull and insipid with its characters and the plot doesn’t steer in a clear direction.

Overall, I admire what they were trying to do by adding time travel to the story. But it became such a warbled mess that it failed to deliver. They took all the cool parts of Final Fantasy VII but didn’t bother to give them depth.

Music:

The music is the biggest highlight of Final Fantasy VIII. Laguna Loire’s battle theme is sexy as hell. It made me so sad to return to Squall’s timeline, because I wouldn’t get to hear that music again for a while. The world map theme irritated me. It has a jingle that didn’t jive well with wandering around. It probably also didn’t help that the world map is dull to run around in.

The game’s theme, Liberi Fatali, is damn epic. Liberi Fatali does have actual lyrics but the famous lines “Fithos lusec wecos vinosec” is actually nonsense. Maybe that nonsense reflects the nonsense that is the actual story. It would have been nice if they had actually incorporated those words into the story somehow, like some magic spell like “abracadabra”.

The love theme is Eyes on Me, performed by Faye Wong. It’s the first time that Uematsu composed a pop song for a Final Fantasy game. Its lyrics are nice and of course fitting for the love story. I like hearing it.

There are no other character themes in this score. The focus was all on Squall and Rinoa having their silly angsty romance.

The final boss theme is actually one of my favorites. It starts out eerie with the chorus singing “Fithos lusec wecos vinosec” but in this drawn out, ghost-like manner. Then the music picks up sounding like a typical Final Fantasy battle theme, then goes crazy from there on out.

Notable Score:

Liberi Fatali.

 Verdict:

My least favorite Final Fantasy game. I would place it right at the bottom tier. The story is absolute gibberish. The gameplay could be fun once you wrap your head around it, which I didn’t and so it was a pain in the ass for me. Finding all the Guardian Forces can be fun. Laguna Loire is the best part of the story, and that’s really it. At the end of the day, probably put this one off until you play the better, more important Final Fantasy games. You are not missing anything if you never play this game.

Direct Sequel?

No.

Keep it that way.

[fallout4reactsblog]

Companions react to in-game glitches and other inconsistencies happening around (/being used by Sole)? Flying on an engine, cars jumping around spinning at crazy speed, corpses/items moving like they're possesed, settlement structures hovering in the air with a single ladder piece attached, people "swimming" on land, instantly getting all items from a smallest piece of meat... (Just not normal gameplay features like saveloading and Pip-boy stopping time, but 100s of items in pockets will do)

 Cait: She wiped the sweat off her brow, letting her ball bat hang loosely at her side. A trail of blood followed her fingers as her eyes surveyed the room, taking in the blood, guts, and general gore that now decorated the floor and walls. Her and Sole sure had made a mess.

They folded their arms, a satisfied smile on their face. “The loot’s gonna be great. You take that half of the room, I’ll take this half?”

“Yeah, alright.”

She moved toward her half as sole crouched down in front of a man whose head had been cracked open like a walnut, brain spilling out of the ruined shards of his skull. Without hesitation, sole picked up a lump of brain flesh, turning it over in their hands before sinking their fingers in.

“Sole, what the fu-”

Her words stopped short as sole pulled a 10 mm pistol from the chunk, looked it over and made a face, then tossed it to the side. They pushed their hand in again, this time emerging with a stimpack, which they tucked into their pocket.

“What the fuck?” Cait whispered as sole pulled out several pieces of armor, a set of road leathers, and a tattered but still-intact box of InstaMash.

Sole looked up, the box still in their hand. “What’s wrong?”

“You just- all that- from one chunk of brain?”

“Uh, yeah? That’s the stuff they had on them. Not much of interest.”

“Normal people don’t do that.”

They just laughed.

“I’m serious, sole. That’s fucked up. You can’t pull a pistol out of somebody’s brains and not expect people to look at you funny!”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Curie: “Madame/Monsieur, do you think that man is… alright?”

“Which one?” Sole looked up from their drink, peering around the bar.

“The man over there, who is having a seat on, ah, nothing.”

Sole squinted toward where Curie was pointing, and sure enough, some strange man was relaxing next to a table, seemingly comfortable in a ninety degree squat. He took a sip of beer as if to prove it.

They hummed, eyebrows furrowed. “Goodneighbor folks sure are strange, huh?”

“I do not think he is well.”

“Maybe he’s just had a bad dose of Jet? Or too much to drink?”

“Best not to stare, I think. It is not polite, oui?”

They laughed a little and turned into their drink. “I suppose so. let him do what he needs to do.”

“At the very least, it will be an excellent workout for his thighs.”

Danse: He’d pinch the bridge of his nose, if not for the power armor, so he settled for folding his arms instead.

“Sole. Carrying all of that junk around is just going to slow you down. Let it go.”

They huffed, shoving another tin can into their pocket. “They have more uses than you think they do.”

“Is the same to be said for the empty beer bottles?”

“Actually,” they said, scooping two up and shoving them into the same pocket, “it is.”

“The alarm clocks?”

“Even more useful.”

“The typewriter?” he asked, watching them shove a whole one into the chest of their vault suit, never to be seen until they found a workbench.

“The most useful of all.”

He eyed how smooth the pockets of their suit were, despite the number of items he knew they were carrying. He was surprised they had room for junk at all, given the number of weapons, ammunition, and armor they were carrying.

“Sole, how strong are you, exactly?”

“Not sure,” they replied, scooping up a screwdriver and a hammer, tucking them into the same pocket the tin cans and beer bottles had gone into.

“Better question, how do you manage to pack all of those items into your pocket?”

They looked down at the pocket, which hadn’t even begun to look full. “I don’t know. I just put stuff into there until I can’t carry any more.”

“That works?”

They shrugged. “Somehow. How do you think I get you to carry all that stuff?”

His eyebrows shot up. “I’m carrying things?”

“Uh-huh. You’re great at it.”

“What am I even carrying it in?”

They just smiled at him. “Does it matter if I take it all out after?”

“Yes. It does.”

They refused to answer, and all Danse could hope was that they didn’t try to store things in his power armor joints.

Deacon: “Hey, sole, come over here a sec.”

Sole wiped the super mutant blood off their arm, flicking it to the side as they picked their way over to him. “What’s up?”

He pointed wordlessly at the body of a super mutant that was slowly sinking into the ground, headless. Sole stood silently at his side, watching the Earth slowly devour the carcass, inch by inch consuming it. They seemed to stand there for hours as it sank. There was no sound, no wet sucking or movement of Earth. Simply a super mutant defying any laws of physics that Deacon had ever known.

When all was said and done, and the last of the body had disappeared, Deacon nodded sharply. “His soul and body are with Todd now.”

Sole stared at him a moment before laughing, an ugly snort-laugh that turned their voice up an octave. “Todd? Who the hell is Todd?”

“I don’t know,” he said, giggling a little himself. “Someone who likes super mutants I guess.”

“He must like them a lot!”

They laughed a moment longer, then sole sighed and reached into their pocket for a tin can. Solemnly, they placed on the spot that the super mutant had disappeared.

“Here lies Howard, consumed by Todd. May he find his peace.”

“Howard is a terrible name for a super mutant.”

They stuck out their tongue at him. “I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

“Super mutants need weird names, like ‘Blood’ and ‘Guts’ and, uh…”

“Hamburger,” sole supplied.

He nodded sternly. “Exactly. Now you’ve got the hang of it. Here lies Hamburger. May he find peace with Todd.”

Sole placed another tin can on top of the other with a flourish, and they walked away, discussing other good super mutant names.

Gage: “Boss, I’ve got a question.”

“Shoot.”

“How, uh, solid would you say the average ghoul is?”

“Depends on the ghoul. Bloated ghouls are about ten percent, because they’re all, y’know, bloated. Your standard run-of-the-mill crazy ghoul is about forty percent. They get pretty squishy because of the rads. Sane ghouls are a solid eighty, which is higher than the human seventy, because they lose a lot of soft tissues.”

“So they should not be able to be halfway through walls?”

They hummed thoughtfully. “Not unless they’re in a hole.”

He eyed the wall the ghoul was stuck in, nudging it with the butt of his gun, and determined it to be quite solid. “No hole. Just a ghoul through a wall.”

“Gage, ghouls can’t go through walls if the wall is solid. Someone chopped a ghoul in two and mounted it on either side of the wall.”

He poked at it a little more. “It’s definitely in one piece, boss.”

“Gage.” Their tone was warning. “I’m going to come over there, but if I find out you’re fucking with me, or pulling my leg, I’m going to kick your ass. Got it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They appeared at his side, almost scarily quiet. He gestured to the body vaguely, half-disgusted.

“Yeah, they shouldn’t do that.” Sole nudged at the thing with their boot, making a face. “Just leave it.”

“Doubt I could get it out of the wall anyway.”

They snorted, then leveled their pistol to put one round in its back. Gage leapt away as the wall suddenly decided the ghoul shouldn’t be in it and launched it across the room. Sole’s hand shot out as if to protect him, and they stared at it a moment.

“Just leave it,” he echoed.

“No kidding.”

Hancock: He stared down the road at the body of a now-dead raider, one hand gently rubbing his forehead. He turned back to sole, who was now shaking out their wrist. He looked back down the road.

“Damn, this batch of Jet is fucked.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I swear you punched that guy all the way down the street.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. That actually happened.”

“Huh?”

He peered back down the street, suddenly trying to put reality together where he thought there was only illusion. “So, how strong did you say you were?”

“Definitely not strong enough to punch a guy down the block, I’ll tell you that.”

He considered that. “So the Jet’s not fucked, but physics is?”

They laughed. “Seems so. Gravity decided to not come in today.”

“Hey, he earned it. Hardest worker around. Let him take a vacation, right?”

“As long as I don’t go floating off, I’d love to keep punching people and watching them fly away.”

“Pretty entertaining if you ask me.”

They turned to him with a mischievous smile. “Bet it’s even better on Day Tripper.”

“I’ve got some of that. Right, ah, here.” He pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket, shaking it enticingly.

“Well, let’s go find some more raiders and see if we can make it happen again.”

MacCready: He stretched out, listening to the bones in his back pop. “I say we call it a night. It’s dark, and I’m getting tired.”

“I could go for a nap,” they replied, though they didn’t look all that tired. “I think that Outpost Zimonja is close to here, we can catch some shuteye there.”

“It’s safe?”

They chuckled. “Should be. I built the place myself.”

“I guess it’ll have to do then,” he said teasingly. “Though how good your judgment is, no one knows.”

“Jury’s still out,” they replied, happily playing along, “but the other settlers aren’t complaining yet.”

They made their way to the settlement, sky darkening around them. Sole pushed through the gate at the front of the settlement, and showed him past the turrets and guard tower to the rest.

It was small but otherwise cozy, and sole beckoned him over to the workbench. “I need the stuff you’re carrying for me.”

“Sure.” 

He rifled around in his pockets, passing every item to sole’s outstretched hands. That it took a few minutes was expected, but after the tenth desk fan and thirtieth ball peen hammer, he was getting suspicious at the amount of stuff he was finding on him. How did he carry that much weight? It seemed, well, impossible.

“That should be it,” they said after nearly twenty minutes, tucking a handful of pencils into one of the workbench drawers. “Thanks.”

He stared down at his thin arms, trying to imagine how he hadn’t even noticed all the items he’d been carrying. “What the heck did you do to me?”

“Oh, with all the stuff you were carrying. I just asked you to pick it up. You don’t seem to notice when I ask you to grab it for me, as opposed to when I hand it to you myself, so I just asked you to grab the junk I couldn’t carry.”

“But- I- I don’t-”

They slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Try not to think about it too hard. Let’s just get some rest, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, but the way his thoughts were spinning told him he wouldn’t be sleeping at all.

Nick: “Sole,” he said, honestly trying his hardest not to laugh, “you can’t do that.”

“And why not?” They grinned at him, hands on their hips, clearly pleased with their work.

“It’s just- It’s not right sole. You can’t put beds in walls and expect everything to be okay.”

“I think I can,” they replied. “The settlers can sleep in it just fine.”

“How the hell do they do that?”

“Simple. They lay in the wall too.”

That was enough to make Nick Valentine, synth detective, lose his composure, and he burst out laughing. Not a small giggle, either, a full laugh, one that left him doubled over and leaning against the wall for support. He hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time, but the thought of some poor settler laying in a wall to sleep had him in absolute fits.

When he finally calmed, only a smile lingering on his face, he gestured to the half-inside, half-outside bed and simply said, “How?”

“Oh, silly Nick,” they teased. “It’s on a rug! Don’t you know that if it’s on a rug, it can do anything? I can put beds through walls, I can put bookshelves though walls, I can put anything through a wall, as long as it’s on a rug.”

“Oh my God.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, still smiling. “I don’t even want to know how you figured that out. So you saw the ways you could break all the rules and immediately decided you’d put beds through walls.”

“Of course! What else does one do with such power?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Are you going to put the bed back inside?”

“Heavens no. Then it wouldn’t be funny at all, just boring. It’d look like every other house out there.”

“It does add a certain, ah, uniqueness I suppose.”

They bumped his shoulder with theirs. “Now you get it.”

Preston: “Sole, when I asked you to build a settlement in Hangman’s Alley, you know this isn’t what I meant.”

They shrugged. “You said to build a settlement, so I did.”

He raised an eyebrow, still staring at the supposed settlement they’d built. A single staircase touched the ground, and the rest of the building expanded from that, hovering above a grid of garden plots that held the crops and water pumps that fed the settlement. As impressive as it was, he couldn’t imagine it was safe.

“I know what you’re thinking.” They spoke before he could even open his mouth. “I promise that it’s safe. I just got tired of building the same old buildings over and over again, so I wanted to do something different. I tested it before I let anyone in and I did the math, and I swear that it’s not coming down anytime soon.”

He glanced over at them, and though they were his general, all he saw in their eyes was a need for approval. Maybe a hint of embarrassment at having been caught, but mostly a need for him to trust them and like it as much as they did.

“Well,” he sighed, turning back, “it’s definitely new. And practical, given the small space.”

“Do you like it?” Their voice was so hopeful, so bright, and yet so fragile.

“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “I like it a lot.”

“Do you want to have a look inside.”

“I’d love to.”

X6: “You cannot fly.”

“Yes I can,” they said cheekily.

“No, you cannot.” He folded his arms. “Not without the assistance of some sort of machine.”

They held their hand out. “Give me your jacket.”

He raised an eyebrow, clearly conveying his displeasure with that idea.

“I promise to give it back,” they huffed. “I’ll even clean it for you after. I just want to show you that I can, in fact, fly.”

He considered the offer a moment, then begrudgingly removed his coat. Their face lit up and, for a brief moment, he almost didn’t regret it.

“Alright, X6. Watch and learn.”

He watched, slightly curious, as they laid the coat on the floor, the crouched down and positioned themselves so they were standing on it. He almost protested their dirty boots on the leather, but they had offered to clean it, so he decided against it.He simply observed them grab to solid handfuls of fabric, getting a good hold on it, and then he watched them jump.

And somehow, they stayed there, floating in the air on top of his coat.

He slid his glasses down his nose, and softly murmured, “Holy shit.”

“See?” They jumped again, rising further into the air. “I told you I could fly.”

“You did. My apologies, ma’am/sir. Though I would recommend you bring this to the attention of our scientists immediately.”

They released their hold on the coat, falling gracefully to the floor. “Why, you think they’d be interested?”

He leveled a stern look at them over his glasses. “You just broke physics, ma’am/sir. I think the term ‘interested’ is an understatement.”

[revisionaryhistory]

Three Days ~ 38

Catch up on AO3

Happy Birthday Bonus Day. Ok, I'm also babysitting my niece until Monday and won't be online.

~*~Sebastian~*~

The phone call from my manager, Emily, was about the shoot for the watch ad. At the end, she tacked on there had been a random tweet saying, "I think I just saw The Winter Soldier kidnap and carry off a woman." I guess someone did see. Naturally, it turned into a thing with fans asking for pictures "or it didn't" happen and location. Poor guy was just posting something random to his friends and got overrun. His next tweet was "Fuck, y'all are crazy. I'm being stupid, drunk by the water, and you lose your damn minds." He has no idea. His comment about water has everyone thinking I'm at the beach. I wish. Although, I am at a sand volleyball tournament.

I went back outside and Emma wasn't at the table. I could see her out on the court. I got closer and was treated with tiny orange shorts. Those were exactly what flashed into my head when she said she played volleyball. Except I pictured the shorts black. I wasn't going to bitch about the orange. I was already making plans around peeling them off. The best I could do right now was a kiss through some black netting.

After meeting the team, I went back to the table and introduced myself. Scott stared for a bit, but after a few minutes of conversation with Samantha he joined in. This was the way it usually happened. There was a period of weird silence before my behavior convinced them I'm no different from anyone else. Once I can get them from seeing a twenty-foot version of me on a movie screen to seeing the guy in front of them things are pretty normal.

As much as I was enjoying the conversation when the game started I went up to the railing. Emma’s team started on the side that wasn't fronted by the deck. I wanted to see. I'd done my research, so I knew after the first set they'd switch sides. I'd sit down then. Maybe. I was rewarded with a smile when they took their places and she saw me.

Things didn't start well. The other teamed scored three quick points. We'd close in, then they'd pull ahead again. I learned from Samantha that Emma was the setter. She was in charge of the offensive and Pete directed defense. Her obsessive planning would probably come in handy here. When we were behind ten to twelve Pete called a time out. They ran over to the bench under where I was standing. Emma told them what she saw the other team doing and gave each of them direction. Pete added in a little, but it was mostly her. She was confident, direct, and at the end brought them together for a quick cheer and told them, "We got this."  All through this, she paid zero attention to me. She was laser-focused like I wasn't even there.

Which made me hard.

From then on there was no more being behind. It was like the first part of the match was them figuring the other side out and now they were playing for real. Emma's yelling out names. Pete's telling people to move. And then there's the physicality of it. She was quick. She would dive to keep the ball from hitting the ground, barely dump it over the net, and set the ball up for one of the guys. The last one looked like she was barely touching the ball, but I knew the strength in those fingers. I'm sure the others were doing all sorts of shit too, but I was only paying attention to her. What she wasn't very good at was serving. She didn't suck. It just wasn't her strong suit.

I kept quiet throughout the set until the final score. I did a fist pump and yelled, "Yes!"

Final score twenty-five to twenty.

They headed to the bench, all smiling but not too big, and started gathering their stuff. Emma gathered her clothes over her arm before looking at me. It wasn't over yet so I gave her a thumbs up and mouthed, "Good job."

Emma stepped up on the bench like she had before the game and reached her fingers through the netting. Reaching for me. I linked my fingers with hers and met her for another kiss in a little square. She smiled and whispered, "For luck."

Nick came close and looked up," You have to do that before every set now. Superstition rules sports."

I looked around Emma to see him, "Not a hardship."

I went back to the table for the second set. Samantha, who told me to call her Sam, provided a steady commentary and answered any questions I had. I should have started back here. I had a much better understanding of roles, strategy, and gameplay by the time they won the second set and therefore the game.

Scott pointed between me and Sam, "One of you bar bitches needs to go get beer."

I jumped off the chair, I'll get it."

I looked at Sam, "What do I get?

"Bucket of Corona and one of Modelo."

"Thank you. Be right back."

The team was already at the table when I got there.

Pete looked at me as I put the buckets down. "You're going to need to be faster if you want to keep your bar bitch job."

It was good that they were giving me shit. Normal. I grabbed two of the Modelos. "I set up a tab. It'll be quicker next time."

He looked aghast, "You left your credit card?"

"I think they trust me." I opened the bottles and walked to where Emma sat, kissing her before handing off the beer. "That was great. You were great. " I quickly looked at the others, "I'm sure you all were too, but I was only paying attention to her. I'II watch everyone next game."

Jeff smiled around his beer bottle, "No, you won't."

"I'll make an effort." No one was believing me. I couldn't blame them. I ran my hand over Emma’s shoulders, "How long till the next game?"

"The team we’ll play, their game isn’t over yet." She pointed to court two. "We'll get twenty or so minutes once they're done. Wanna go watch the end?"

"Sure."

Emma took my hand and we went to the railing. "Which team do you want to win?"

She looked at both teams. "I don't know them. They're from a different league." She watched both for a minute, "Shit."

I turned toward her, leaning my arm on the counters, "What's up?"

"I went out with one of the guys on the green team." She'd moved to put her back to them.

"Hmm." I raised an eyebrow while I took a drink. Kinda thankful it's one of hers and not one of mine. "How long?"

"Just a couple of times. I didn't sleep with him." She shuddered, "He said some mildly creepy things and I ditched."

I was surprised by how relieved I felt when she said they hadn’t slept together. "Thank you for telling me."

"I wouldn't let you walk into a situation where you're the only one who doesn’t know." She ran a hand over my forearm.

Aw, she was worried. Cute. I took her hand off my arm and kissed it, "You know I make out and pretend to have sex in movies, right?"

She cracked a smile, "I hear you kiss boys too."

I can guess where she heard that from. "I have. Only for work though."

Her laughter made me smile, "I don't care if it was not for work."

I closed my eyes and shook my head, "This conversation." I opened my eyes, "I don't care if you dated some guy out there. Unless it's the blonde with long hair." Emma curled in her lips. "Oh come on!"

She shrugged and went for a change of subject. "I also heard you were Pete and Scott's Hall Pass."

"I knew that."

Her look was a cross between surprised and horrified. "I can't believe Scott told you."

"I don't think he meant to."

There was a commotion on the court. The blondes team won.

Time to go! "Ready to go back to the table?"

"Yes, please."

I put my arm around her shoulder as we walked. "Can we talk about your ass in those shorts?"

"Do you like? I bought them with you in mind."

"I do like them." We were back at the table with everyone else. I leaned closer, "I'd like to peel them off you. With my teeth."

Seed one and five were playing on court one. We'd be on court two against the blonde’s team, a two seed. I was nervous. Emma was bouncing like she had at home. I took both her hands, holding them in front of me, "Jump around. I got you."

She jumped up and down a few times, "What's this supposed to do?"

I looked sheepish, "No idea. Distraction. "

She laughed, "Worth a try. Thanks for being supportive of my crazy."

I asked again, “Anything I can get for you?"

Emma nodded emphatically, "Yes. At the switch between sets, I've got thirty seconds. Could you bring me a diet coke and a Reese Cup? Frozen.”

I repeated her order and nodded once. She must feel like she'll need a mid-game boost.

Sam's bar bitch duty was to fill up the water bottles. Emma made a bathroom run and I folded her closes and put them in the bottom of the bag. I dug out her cooling scarf. It was one o’clock in June right out in the sun. I dunked her scarf in the ice water for the beer, rung it out, and hung it over my shoulder. I had the sunscreen out when she got back.

When she saw what I held she smiled, "Thanks, I forgot. Will you get my back?"

"Discount massage all for you."

Everything is not foreplay. Repeat. Everything is not foreplay.

Emma took off her tank top for me to access everywhere. I was very thorough.  I didn’t want her to burn. A bad sunburn can be brutal. After I finished with her, she insisted on covering me. I didn’t have the same degree of exposed skin, but she tried. Sun protection aside, it was more about the touching.

Everything is foreplay.

They were called to the courts and Emma came for her good luck kiss. There was no netting so there was a bit of tongue involved. That would see me through the next set or so.

This game had me sitting on the edge of my seat and pacing closer to the railing. Sam stayed with me with Scott seemed barely interested. Points went on forever and they traded off the lead every serve. They did the same thing with taking a time out when they reached ten points, but the results weren’t quite as dramatic. They pulled ahead a few points and were keeping the lead. When they reached twenty points, I walked backward to the bar to get Emma’s Diet Coke and a frozen Reese Cup. I jogged back to the railing just in time to see my girl reject a spike from the blonde, Becky set the ball, and Nick send it back to win the set.

I was back by Sam, “Fuck, that was dramatic.” She looked at me like she knew something I didn’t. I laughed, “I know they went out.”

Her face read relieved, “Oh good, I suck at secrets.”

Emma came off the court and directed me down to the end where there was an opening in the netting. I had the Reese Cup open and the paper peeled off before I got to her. She shoved the whole thing in her mouth and mumbled a thank you.

“That was a great play.” She nodded and took a very long drink of Diet Coke.

Emma pressed her lips to mine. “Give me the Reese and you keep the Diet Coke.”

“Got it.” I dumped the candy out and handed it to her.

Second set they went up by five early, skipped the time out, and won twenty-five to eighteen. Fuck, yeah! 

I went after beer and stopped by the board. This had them in the semi-finals with the one seed. They were already finished so the countdown was on. Emma came up behind me, laying her hand on my back, “We’re moving tables.”

“Court one, baby!” I kissed her cheek, “Semi-finals. I checked the board. This is cool. I’m taking pictures this game.”

It was more crowded on this side of the deck and I was thankful for her planning now. Nick and Jeff were moving the table up closer to the railing and it looked like Pete and Scott had stolen some more chairs. We were set up along the railing on either side of the net. Looked like a little horseshoe blockade. There were some extra people there too. Emma had said more people would show up for later games closer to dinner.  She introduced me to the new people, Nick taking care of the few she didn’t know. Emma passed on the beer, preferring to hydrate. Smart. I went for beer. I figured them playing the one seed was either going to be incredibly nerve-wracking or quickly depressing. I wasn’t sure which I dreading more. Either way, beer was the answer. Until shots were.

They called the teams to the court and Emma took a deep breath and jumped around a little. I was glad to see that. I was concerned because she hadn’t been as bouncy. “Ready to go, Tigger?”

She snorted a laugh, “If we win I’m going to need food. If we lose . . . I’m still gonna need food.”

All five of her teammates chimed in, “Me too.”

“You guys got this. You’ve been kicking ass. Just do what you do.” My attempt at a pep talk was appreciated by thanks and head nods.

Nick looked over and pointed, “Don’t forget the good luck kiss, man. Don’t break the streak.”

“I like him.” I gave her a quick kiss and sent her on her way.

The time between this game turned into more than thirty. The loser’s bracket was running behind and they wanted to even things out a little. If we won this team would go into the loser’s bracket and play someone so there would be more than an hour between the end of this and the next game.  The team stayed on the court and I listened to friends around me catching up.

Jacob, one of the newcomers, spoke up, “So Sebastian, on set, which of the Marvel guys was the biggest asshole?”

I had ready-made answers for this, but Sam put her hand on my arm and addressed him, “Yeah, we don’t do that. This isn’t a comic con.” She motioned to me with her hand, “This is our friend Seb, here for a volleyball game. If you have questions buy a ticket.”

Jacob held up his hands, “Fair enough.”

I shrugged, but inside I was cringing a little. Sometimes answering questions or taking pictures is the safer bet. I can control things a little better and ask people not to post anything for a little while. If you piss people off they do what they want without your permission.

I pointed my thumb at her, “Interviewing for my bodyguard.” Hopefully, that would break any tension.

Jacob laughed, “She doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit.”

The game started and I turned my back on everyone. Sam was beside me. “Renner.”

She looked at me confused, “What?”

“Renner’s the biggest asshole.”

We lost the first set. Badly. When Emma came over to switch sides she didn’t say a word. She popped up on the bench, gave me a kiss, and was off.  They started down by three in the second set. I leaned my elbows on the counter and looked back at Sam, “How’s she handle losing?”

Sam shook her head, “Haven’t lost yet. You’re a nervous little thing.”

“It’s new.”

“Sweet.” She looked out at the game then back to me. “She’s very competitive. Losing pisses her off, but she’s over it quick. Tequila helps.” She nodded toward the court, “But we haven’t lost yet.”

And we didn’t. One set all.

I wanted to vomit. I was tensing up with every play. Every time they scored, I was doing something. Yelling, “yes”. Making faces. Fist pumps. Banging on the counter. Anything to release the tension. There wasn’t anything dramatic, just solid play. Slowly we increased the lead. A point here, a point there. And they didn’t match it, didn’t catch up.

Twenty-five to nineteen. Sam and I both yelled, “Fuck, yeah!” at the same time.

[raven-wraith]

This is Actually a Completely Subjective List Written in a Completely Objective Voice, so I’m not Wrong, Y’all just had a Bad Year: A Look at the Best Titles of 2020 A.D.

By Orova

I feel like a recap or an intro that encompasses the past year will be redundant to both the reader and the writer, so I just won’t. Instead, I’ll just say that due to circumstances provided by 2020, I had a lot of time to just shut up and play games. And games did I play. I played a lot of good games[1]. I played a lot of bad games[2]. I bought the newest games that came out[3] and I went back down memory lane with some classics[4]. But at the end of every day, I was completely satisfied with how I spent my time and did what I wanted. So this is a list of the games that surpassed satisfaction, pushed the bar higher, and made me reconsider what a truly great game can be in 2020.

The Last Of Us Part II

This game is a beautiful work of art and storytelling. If gripping gameplay is what you came for, then you’ll be staying for the story. Naughty Dog continues to come out with games that push current gen Playstations to astronomical heights, making that hardware and software work overtime to get a game that becomes so overwhelmingly tangible that it cause the player to stop. The Last of Us Part II is no exception to this rule. So often does this game take lefts and rights when you expect it to go straight that it is absolutely insane how much ground it truly covers. Sneaking about before getting into claustrophobic gunfights feels smooth and natural, the new mechanics and enemies are unique, and while the non-linear parts can overstay their welcome at times, the game is long enough for them to not fill in empty space. 

When I first played this, I was with my girlfriend for the whole journey and at the end, I didn’t feel quite as fulfilled as I thought I should’ve from the sequel to one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. It wasn’t until I returned on a higher difficulty did I find just how much this game has to offer, making the story all the more powerful as every fight truly felt like my last and every enemy made me rethink my choices and decision making and every arrow I fired and molotov I threw felt a nice weight to it that I have to emphasize once more. This game is a beautiful work of art and storytelling as the gameplay speaks for itself before anything else.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

To those that actually care, I reviewed this game when it came out[5] and I was shocked to find how many people didn’t appreciate it as much as I did. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most influential titles of my life that being able to see Cloud’s hair rendered so cleanly in this dystopian futuristic gothic fantasy world was a miracle in my eyes. A dream come true. The action comes in spades with enough sword fighting and magic to make Power Rangers to look like a fucking picnic.

The graphical design of the game, the direction of animation, and the cunning take on a lot of depth we never got to see so early on makes me very excited for future titles to come. There are some downsides, lots involving the side quests and voice acting, but that is just some of its downsides to look past to find the content at its core. Shooting moonbeams out of your greatsword at stormtroopers while in chase on a motorcycle. Take down a tyrannical oil monger as an eco-terrorist. Find cats for a little girl. Is this a Bioshock? No. But is it a game I keep trying to remind myself to not replay? Yes.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remake

Superman by Goldfinger played and my sister laughed as she watched me cry. This game brought tears to my eyes, literally. As I got to relive sitting in my grandma’s basement, I was propelled to complete absolutely everything I wanted to do. This game was a complete package and its delivery was spot on with what a remake should be. A collection on a past game with quality of life improvements, enhanced handling and accessibility, and a software overhaul.

The game is simple. Complete challenges, unlock drip, flex on your friends. Usually in that order. But it is finally that simplicity in a new game that makes it such a good title. We wanted the game we knew and loved and they promised that. Nothing more, nothing less, it is exactly what we got. A new soundtrack, updated graphics, and nostalgia not most can achieve is a massive point to play this game.

Huntdown

Contra meets Kung Fury. Why the fuck have you not grabbed a friend and played this masterpiece yet. I mean seriously. If you’ve got a roommate or SO or friend with nothing going on tonight, play this shit. It’s great. Moving on.

Mortal Shell

I would like to address the fact that, yes, this is a souls-like and it isn’t exactly the most friendly game because of it. However, this game came out of fucking nowhere and blew me on my ass. Going back to delivering on a promise, these guys crafted an unforgiving title with little to no hand holding to show that this-THIS[6]-is how you make a souls-like. It is balls to the walls skill based combat where the player has to use what little tools they have to overcome a myriad of enemies. Progress is possible only through rewards and items, meaning there is no grinding or farming, just straight gameplay.

This is a game where I paid half the price for a full game and got, while a shorter title, the enjoyment from a full priced AAA game. It takes no time to complete when the “click” happens and it is a fun, fulfilling title the whole time. There are some incredibly unique mechanics that forced me to break my souls brain and for that, it just makes the experience far more personal. If you aren’t weak hearted, I cannot recommend Mortal Shell enough.

Doom Eternal

When Doom Eternal dropped, my sister was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After we both went into respective video game comas from it, we dubbed March 20th Doom Crossing Day. Doom is Doom. Nothing more to say past that honestly, but I will continue my rambling cause I know it’s what you all want anyway.

These guys keep cranking the intensity knob higher and higher. With Doom 2016 these guys said, “Hey, what if we gave the best first person shooter that requires no thinking whatsoever to completely obliterate enemies and zoom around the map at breakneck speeds?” With Eternal, the guys said, “Hey, what if we did what we did for 2016 except this time, we actually have the everyone (enemies and the player) move faster, hit harder, and actually require them to think?” With that, the gore orgy of Doom Eternal was born. Still very much a fast paced shooter with some extra content to fill the pockets of completionists, it delivers in fucking truckloads exactly what it wants from the player. To let loose and fucking floor every hellish abomination in their path.

And the soundtrack, while a sad story, is still one of the best things to listen to in gaming and probably the world.

Darkwood

The only thing that made me stop to consider buying this game was how reliant on a crafting system it seemed. I hate games that force crafting. I don’t know why, so I won’t elaborate. But, done with The Last of Us Part II and needing a survival horror itch to scratch, I sucked it up and bought it. After all, being an indie title for a genre I admire more than most, it couldn’t have been a terrible waste of time. That was probably the single best decision I made during the last year and Darkwood is not lost on me in that sense.

The fact that Darkwood has not only exposed the horizon of top-down horror, but it has experimented and perfected its use for the camera angle is astounding. The atmosphere rides on that perspective and, between the short days of scavenging and talking to the few NPCs you meet to the long nights crouched in the corner of your (un)safe haven, it is never lost. It’s a game where you constantly hear your heart in your ears. The combat can be sloppy at times but the story is one of a kind and its execution is phenomenal. If you are a fan of horror games or roguelikes, I cannot tell you enough. Get Darkwood.

Deep Rock Galactic

After lots of thoughtful consideration, I have deemed this the number one title of 2020. Not only did it keep me and my friends together and in touch during the hard times, it is a shooter that I support with my whole body. You and your friends play as a team of drunk space dwarves, tasked with a mission that sends you deep into a spider-infested planet, where you will have to use your class sets to fight, plunder, and escape the hostile environment.

With PvE at its core and ridiculousness as its foundation, Deep Rock Galactic is a masterpiece of cooperative shooting and procedurally generated dungeon crawling. Blending class play from Team Fortress 2 with unexpected and differing missions from Darkest Dungeon, one will find this lighthearted shooter is an easy, accessible title. With a hint of Risk of Rain to complete its graphics, the game is above all fun. That’s right. It. Is. Just. Fun. Shoot a spider that launches fireballs from its mouth, drink beer that teleports you into the farthest reaches of space, get rich off of gold veins while your team calls you greedy, dye your beard purple, and Rock and Stone in this amazing fusion of PvE and dungeon crawling. 

Thank you for coming. There will be no score. It is simply a list where I feel those that need some new titles after the biggest disappointment of them all[7] should find some great titles in here for themselves. Have a safe next year and be patient. Patience is what will reward you. Practice is what humbles you. Hesitation is defeat. Toodles.

[1] Ghostrunner

[2] Hellpoint

[3] Mafia: Definitive Edition

[4] Silent Hill 3

[5] 9/10

[6] Not you Hellpoint

[7] Cyberpunk 2077 but I mean, we all saw this coming. I had to put it in here somewhere.