#a new game would allow a new character that would be in a different situation for discovering previously unknown lore

[cavegirlpoems]

OK so, here's the thing. I don't believe that, in the example you've described, there's a meaningful difference between these two situations:

The player isn't sure if there's a village nearby, but the GM has it written in their notes. The GM looks it up, and describes what they previously decided to put there to the players.

The player isn't sure if there's a village nearby, and neither is the GM. The GM comes to a decision, and relays what they just invented to the players.

Assuming that in both cases, there hadn't previously been any mention of the village during the shared act of play, then the end result is the same: the player pokes at an element of the setting, and is informed about what the GM decided for it. When that decision was made - right now, or in last night's prep - doesn't matter. What matters is when it's spoken into reality in front of the other players.

So. What actually matters is when the element of 'the village' is added to the shared imagined space. Did this happen earlier in the session, when the GM said "and just outside the dungeon you're going to, there's this village..." or did it happen just now, when the player said "so I want to send the goblin to attack a nearby village"? It's a question of how much information the players have been given during the act of playing the game.

Like, okay, let's take a counter-example. The GM had prepped a map of the surrounding countryside, and it didn't have a village in it. But, when the player wants to have their new goblin go there, and the GM thinks that's actually a fun idea, so they go back and retroactively add a new village to their map. Again, the presence or absence of that village remained undetermined until it got made real in play. And, because 'there is a village' is now real in the game, we can see that the prep saying there wasn't is superceded effortlessly by actual gameplay.

The electron is passing through both slots, until you observe it, and then the wave function collapses and its position is defined. The village both exists and doesn't exist until it's spoken into existance and the wave-function collapses and its position is defined.

Now, there are practical reasons why you might want to prep things ahead of time. It helps you be consistent, it lets you balance fair challenges more easily, it reduces cognitive load in play. Sure. That activity is a tool; it's a supplement to the act of play to make the act of play go better. There are practical reasons to prefer a low-or-no-prep game too.

The work of a really well-prepared GM who's really good at running a pre-planned game will be largely indistinguishable from the work of a really good 0-prep GM who has instead learned to build the game on the fly.

Realistically, there are practical benefits to high prep and low prep games. However, the accepted default is an extremely high-prep approach, and that high-prep approach often leads to negative outcomes (see the infamous 'It's What My Character Would Do' situation where a player's pre-written image of who their PC is means they feel forced to take undesirable in-game actions, because the paratext of prep-work is being allowed to overtake the text of gameplay). That's what I'm pushing back against, right?

I'm taking a deliberately extreme, even hyperbolic, position for the sake of argument here. I'm advocating for 0 prep games not because I think all games must be 0 prep at all times, but because I want to normalise 0 prep games, and know that they can be good, functional games. Perhaps I overstated my case because I prefer to make the most hard-line version of an argument and see how it shakes out. A more measured way of phrasing it would be: You don't need to do any homework, ever. Like you can, if you want to, if you find it rewarding. But it's not something you must do, it's something you can choose to do depending on taste.

Like I've shown up to the game club, gone 'what do we want to play tonight', and then FKR'd my way through an improvised plot, and it *works*. No part of the game existed until Alex said "I wanna play a bank robbery", and off we went. Zero prep, not even reading a rulebook. Not even *having* a rulebook.

I like writing short fiction about what my PCs get up to off-screen. It's a fun writing exercise that helps me get in the character's head. And it's, effectively, homework. But that writing isn't necessary for the game to function. When I run games, I often enjoy drawing maps and organisation charts and timelines, because thinking about the game when I'm not currently playing it is fun. But that's not necessary for me to run the game, even if sometimes it conveniently helps.

Like, the thing is, my point is kind of the opposite of 'it's all just made up, who cares'. It's not all just equally made up; there are different types of made up, with meaningful distinctions between them. That's what I'm interested in dissecting, right? The way different levels of engagement in this fiction intersect, and which takes priority over which. Like any media analysis, you apply different frameworks and get different results, and currently I'm leaning hard into "what happens in game sessions takes priority over everything else" as a way of thinking about them. This isn't a value judgement about how you should run games, its an analitical framework you can use to understand games. Right?

writing intricate backstories is the playerside equivallent of the gm prep burden

[cherriibombfics]

You know something folks don't often talk about with Self Aware AUs that I really think more people should discuss when writing about it? Sequence breaking. Specifically the inherent sequence breaking that comes with Gacha games allowing you to meet characters that you haven't met yet in the story if you haven't played that far ahead.

For example, I actually just started playing CRK nearly 2 weeks ago after watching a bunch of animations and cutscenes about the latest Beast Yeast episode online, right? And as a result, I got enough F2P currency from being a new user to get, in this exact order: Pure Vanilla Cookie, then Black Sapphire Cookie, then the soul jams to awaken PV, then Shadow Milk Cookie. All of this happened before GingerBrave canonically met any of them.

So basically Shmilk woke up one day, was out of the tree he was trapped in for what felt like an eternity, appeared in some random small kingdom, sees PV who was now all glowy and angelic and hanging out with his minion for some reason, who immediately walks up to him and says something like, "Hey man. I experienced enlightenment and I have no idea how. But through context clues from The Baker, I think I just ruined your entire corruption arc you had planned for me? Sorry about that. You wanna beat up some cake monsters as these children learn the dark lore of our existences?"

I don't think PV talks like that, but you get the picture. I like the idea of accidentally ruining the entire plotline by having some lucky gacha pulls~

"ɢᴇᴛ ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴏɴᴇᴅ ɪᴅɪᴏᴛ!"

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 540

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: ɴᴏɴᴇ

ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ

ᴀ/ɴ: ɪ'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏᴏ ꜱᴜʀᴇ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ᴄᴏᴏᴋɪᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ꜰᴏʀ. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴀ ꜰᴏʟʟᴏᴡ-ᴜᴘ ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ ʟᴇᴛ ᴍᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡ.

ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ ᴍɪʟᴋ ᴄᴏᴏᴋɪᴇ x ʙᴀᴋᴇʀ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

✧ SHADOW MILK COOKIE would be ecstatic about finally being released from the Silver Tree, and with a physical form no less? All so far ahead of schedule? Oh, he was over the moon! But where was he? This wasn't that silly faerie kingdom. As a matter of fact, was he even still on Beast-Yeast?

✧ In the context of the story the existence of the Cookie Kingdom is, well, horrifying. New cookies being summoned were a common occurrence within its walls, from different regions, time periods, and even ones that had crumbled long ago. After a certain point the ruler of the kingdom started finding ways to allow cookies to adjust to their new life, but of course that system didn't work for everyone.

"For the last time, I do not want to join your silly kingdom! Where are my minions? And where on Earthbread am I?"

✧ He'd be livid that his powers don't work here for some reason, safe for a couple of things like summoning a plush rabbit of all things. Why was he being reduced to this mockery? Who was turning a former almighty cookie into an equal to the foolish cookies who lived here? Seriously, is that mask-wearing buffoon always lifting something?

✧ He'd eventually comply, albeit reluctantly, because after a while he'd realize there's no point in resisting the inevitable. You held the power here, over everyone, and for the first time in years there he felt completely powerless.

“Do you enjoy seeing me kneel before you? Do you find pleasure in watching me be reduced to this?! I’m the one holding the strings, I AM NO PUPPET!”

“Why are you yelling at the sky?”

✧ At some point you’re forced to talk to him directly since he was causing troubles for the other cookies with his ramblings and general abrasion.

“You, YOU! You’re the one who did this to me! I was happier inside of that stupid tree than I am here! Why me? Why not one of the others? Why did you decide to torture me like this?”

“I dunno, the gacha just picked you I guess.”

“What are you talking about?!”

✧ He’d become even more upset when you explain the gacha to him and, by extension, the fact that their entire world was technically a game. So his current situation was entirely chance. You sent him away after that, promising that you’d build a few structures for him in return for good behavior.

“Wow, this is humiliating. Why am I being stuck cutting wood? I’m a jester not a lumberjack…”

“Shadow Milk Cookie!”

✧ Being reunited with his minions was nice, for a short while, it gave him some sense of normalcy throughout the newfound confusion. Because at least he wasn't alone during this. That Distorted Tower you promised seemed that nice, and you weren't that bad he supposed. It could've been worse…wait. Was that Pure Vanilla Cookie? Why was he glowing?

“Oh, hello again! I believe I experienced enlightenment during your absence. I’m not too sure on the details, outside of that spire, but I’m grateful we’re meeting in better circumstances. It’s nice to see you be given a chance at redemption.”

“You what?”

✧ Nevermind. This sucks.

[dualumina]

After having taken 2 years of game design, it is GUARANTEED that IF a GW3 game would be another MMO, it'll be years and YEARS of time before it reaches public hands. Go check out a dozen YouTube videos about failed games by small studios and you'll see why these things take boatloads of time and so much money to get off the ground.

Game series' like pokemon have given off the impression that game development is a fast process. IT. IS. NOT. It is only fast if you are reusing previous assets (which pokemon has done) and even that isn't so simple as dragging a file into unity and calling it a day.

GW2 has a lot of assets that can be reused. This is true. But a lot of the more up to date assets had to be structured to work with old code. It is not a simple process to update something for modern code. Half the process of coding a video game is figuring out why your code isn't working. It's like following a recipe for cake and you end up with burnt flour, and it turns out there was an extra semicolon that screwed the whole thing up.

Think of all the times mild bugs have happened while using any kind of program. Now consider the fact that GW2 is running 24/7, for thousands or more players. Have you ever had to restart your computer because it was acting weird? Yeah you can't do that so easily if there's like 30 thousand people playing your game, and they're also the ones paying for your salary, and all the equipment used to run a program that's used by hundreds of people at a single time.

Now imagine the shear risk it would take to make something like that completely new. It would take hundreds of hours and so much money just to make it usable, and if people decide that this new game isn't cutting it? All that money is gone. Remember what happened to No Man's Sky? It was a disappointment to so many at first, but with time it got updated and people started actually liking it. Each update cost time and money, and it could have ended with the developers declaring bankruptcy if that gamble to make further updates didn't pay off.

You think most companies are going to risk doing something like that? Toss more money into a sinking ship and hope it floats?

No, not unless they have so much money to burn and know they have a good enough game to fall back on if things go horribly. Or someone in the higher ups is in over their heads.

If anything, GW3 could be a single player campaign, or structured similar to other games like Monster Hunter where you can form a party and take down a big monster in a private instance. This is much, much safer than recreating GW2 but with prettier graphics. And given the fact that GW1 is STILL running to this day, it's very clear Anet values preceding games, and better yet they want your progress in previous games to be carried over to newer games.

GW2 isn't getting abandoned anytime soon.

the gw3 concept hasnt even been greenlit yet calm your horses

[renshengs]

hmm i do think that danmei and dangai (censored danmei cdrama adaptations) being many non-chinese fandom people's first impression of chinese media has given them some misconceptions about mainstream chinese media, and it shows in a way that i find very frustrating when seeing discussions about cdramas on here. dangai dramas aside, even if government censorship didn't exist, the chances of your favorite cdrama gay ship becoming canon is about as high as the chances of any of those iconic homoerotic male friendships in a western TV show becoming canon. which is to say: extremely low.

what i think is that internationally huge danmei fandoms like mdzs and tgcf and drama adaptations like cql and shl have really fucked with people's conceptualization of danmei, in that they're using it as this reference point when analyzing relationships in all other forms of cn media, including cdramas and chinese games, which then manifests into people making very bold, very dubious claims about "queercoding" because 2 characters from a random cdrama reminds them of the one or two danmeis they'd encountered that shaped their entire perception of chinese media. basically it's this meme:

many people here need to understand that cdramas and chinese films are obviously mainstream forms of fictional media in china, just like how the mcu or the doctor who franchise is mainstream in the US and UK, or like shonen is mainstream in japan. not to burst your bubble of happy ignorance, but homoromantic relationships such as qingming/boya from the ying yang master are—for lack of a better term—fujobait. they are fujobait. bromances, because those sell well and everyone knows it. popular ships like bakudeku were not actually made canon in mha because shonen is mainstream, and in most industries geared toward maximizing capital, having full-on gay people front and center is considered a monetarily risky move. which sucks, of course, but china is absolutely no different. i promise you that if the govt removed their censorship laws for TV broadcasts, your favorite gay ship from mysterious lotus casebook or the blood of youth or fangs of fortune still wouldn't be canon. they might be allowed a bit more intimacy due to the lack of restrictive filtering, but they are not going to be sucking face for the same reason that gojo and geto from jjk didn't suck face.

danmei is still widely considered niche and risky in china, and if you haven't seen the recent news, authors are still getting arrested for writing it. assuming that chinese fiction, mainstream chinese fiction in particular, operate like dangais where the two guys with the most gay tension would be made explicitly canon were the censors to be lifted, is frankly pretty ridiculous. dangai dramas are adapted from danmeis, which are stories centered on a gay romance and narratively depend on the two guys falling in love. non-dangai dramas are very much... not that, hence why people shouldn't watch them expecting a censored danmei and then forcing assumptions of "my ship would be canon if only it weren't for censorship" on them.

it's very clear when someone who knows absolutely nothing about the actual situation with danmei and queer existence and mainstream TV censorship in china is trying to push their, if i put it crudely, "boss baby meme" perspective onto cmedia. fandom is all about poking at interactions between your favorite characters and giggling and speculating, but i think lots of fandom people (many of them safe in the pockets of their more progressive areas) view govt censorship as this big abstract dam that, if broken, would result in the canonization of all their favorite ships, which is not only an incredibly naive belief but also one that shows how much they view TV censorship as more of a personal inconvenience that's preventing their favorite ships from kissing on screen instead of the looming, deep-rooted issue depriving mainland chinese people of creative freedom it actually is. with cmedia fandoms there's a specific widely popularized "they're so gay omg how did censorship not notice" gag when there's any perceived homoromantic undertones in a story that's both rather insensitive and also ignorant, and many dangai and cdrama fandoms in particular (donghua fans too, link click shippers i'm looking directly at you) could really use some more education and sensitivity regarding this.

i've been in danmei & cdrama fandom spaces for years and post-pandemic this kind of nonsense has definitely gotten worse, especially when you compare shipping discussions here to shipping discussions in cn fandoms. here every 2 seconds someone makes an off-color censorship joke about tgcf donghua and over on douyin they are straight up commenting under the nezha sequel announcement post if there's going to be an oubing kissing scene. granted i obviously cannot see or know everything going on in cn fandom spaces because they are incomprehensibly enormous, but in all the spaces i've been in i've never seen a single censorship joke from anyone. why do people here absolutely insist on making them?

anyway. fandom be normal about chinese media challenge!

[yugsly]

Hey uhhh. Sorry if this is too spoilery. So that Zine. Mentioning Capochin. THE FULL ON EMO EXCLUSIVE.

Do you think Capochin and [Redacted] improve together? They got a lot of work to do?? Is it okay for them to be together?

I wanna know MORE and I just. People are SCARED for Capochin myself included uhhhh.

PLEASE I NEED ANSWERS

Hey, before I say anything- I know they're mine and Day's characters, but anything I talk about related to "post-game" or context not in-game is still "speculation". Meaning, not necessarily canon unless it was something recorded in dev-text or something I specifically had in mind while creating it, not after. I would never want to snuff out anyone's own ideas for what things "mean". THAT BEING SAID, I have some things to say- DO NOT READ ON UNLESS YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE GAME:

So, It's pretty complicated and I've thought about it a lot during and after making the game. Hector's got to do a LOT of work to even earn Capochin's forgiveness, if he'll even give it to him. (if most anyone will give it to him, really.) It's a silly cartoon game but yes, the situation is pretty grim. I mean, you've seen that cooking video Capo made. You've seen what he said when you faced him at the end of the line. All those implications. Without getting into specifics, yeah, the situation was really, really bad. But it's complex. It's not black and white. Hector and Capo knew eachother for a long long time even before Hector became Inspekta (a nosy person might have noticed the news clippings in Milldread). So they go way back- and I imagine things were pretty great up until, and a good ways into Hector ascending. But you know, there was a certain turning point- leading to where he ended up. Razzma speaks on this a bit, throughout. (Razzma has a lot of interesting background tidbits, explore giving her different phrases!) Him realizing that becoming a god didn't solve his insecurities like he thought they might... and more... I won't elaborate too much, because I want you to imagine it yourself. I only want to spread a few bread crumbs and let you make up your minds, even if I have my own thoughts, you know? Your question: "Is it okay for them to be together?" Well, that's up to you to decide. It's okay to imagine whatever you want. Capo forgives Hector eventually? Great. He never forgives him? Also Great! Do I wish I had more time in-game to elaborate on these things? Sure, I do. There's a handful of things I'd love to have explored. But I also like that it's open ended- you can tell, at the end, even though the day was saved, Hector and Capo feel awful. Sure, Capochin gave him that confidence boost to save the day- nothing he said was a lie- it was just the right thing to do in the moment. But you know, they don't really get a chance to really hash it out. It allows for y'all to really brainstorm, the world is your oyster. Whatever you come up with- be kind to eachother and respect eachother's ideas, okay?

[crescent-usagi]

Devin May Cry Netflix

Look. I've never played Devil May Cry, not a single game. I knew very little going into this show. But man this was a really good and fun show!

All I see is a bunch of negativity coming from the DMC fan base, and look I can accept you wanting an proper adaptation of your video game; but that doesn't mean you have to be an ass hat to this new continuity.

This is a non-canon story, if you want the original DMC then go back and replay the games! Complaining about the story being different in this is like complaining that Sonic 3 isn't the same as Sonic Adventures 2. Its not meant to be exact, its meant to take the characters and ideas and use them in a way to reintroduce them to a newer generation of people.

A Majority of complaints I've see are about Lady being the main character instead of Dante when that's blatantly untrue. God forbid a WOMEN be important to the story. Another complaint I've seen is Dante being weaker then his game counterpart. This Dante wasn't trained to fight by his father like he was in the games; he has no idea how his powers work until the Rabbit explains it to him. He didn't even KNOW he was half demon! Lets allow the character to learn and grow and get stronger thru the series. While Lady has been training and is in a special forces unit for fighting demons. Even though Dante has been fighting demons for a while he has mostly been relying on his extreme healing factor and speed rather than actual technique from what we can really see.

I also see people complaining about backstories. majorly that we don't fully get Dante's full story just the clip notes of it. But you have to realize the creators were only given 8 episodes to tell their story. unfortunately that means cutting things for time and Dante's back story at this point is not the most relevant to the story. We get Rabbit and Lady's back stories because they are relevant to the current plot of the show (Lady's is more so used a mirror to Rabbits). If we are to get another season it would most likely be focused on Dante finding and fighting Vergil where we would most likely get to see the entire back story from both boy's point of views.

People seem to be forgetting that the goal is to get another season to keep exploring these characters. I'm sure that in the first video game Dante isn't the same person he is in the last because he had time to grow. These 8 episodes are introducing us (and Dante) to EVERYTHING. He will (hopefully) grow in future season(s). People are expecting to much from such a short season. Unfortunate as it is this is how streaming services do things, as much as id rather we get 12 episodes or more we are only given 8 and they have to make due with what they have.

And the immigration analogy. So much about this is hated but its because people are only looking at it at face value. Yes, Rabbits plan is WRONG but that doesn't mean everything he stood for was wrong. letting in every demon is a bad idea. Yes. But dose that mean all those innocent Makaian's should be dyeing and suffering to the corrupt and gruesome ruling class of demons? No. I would BET that this idea will be working towards Dante (or maybe Virgil?) becoming the new ruler/king of Makai after defeating King Mundus. Perhaps after kicking out the American invasion and closing the door to hell behind them and sealing it he will be left (maybe with his brothers help) to restructure and try and repair Makai. (pretty sure he and his brother get trapped in hell in the games? could be wrong I've only watched one hour long video about the games so I could be misremembering.) I would expect Dante to grow and change as a character before this were to happen but again that's the point of multiple seasons. The perfectionists solution to immigration isn't to let everyone into another country; its to fix the situation they are coming from.

While no we don't need politics to be part of the show it is not our choice as viewers to make. This is what the Director wanted to go with so it's what we are getting, if you don't like it then don't watch it and just enjoy the games. This isn't the games, and maybe if it was a reimagining of something I cared about and grew up with I'd view it differently but as a new comer to the series I really enjoyed it and will be looking more into the franchise as a whole. This show succeeded in its mission to bring in new people to the fan base, just as the sonic movie did for its franchise.

I really hope we get another season and this isn't just left as a one and done show. Please look at this is in a new lens and not as a connection to the video games. Allow them to tell the story they want to tell. Maybe I'll re-watch the show and have different feelings in the future but after a first watch I really liked it. The animation and soundtrack are spectacular and really nostalgic for me as someone who grew up watching AMV's on YouTube in the 2010's.

I don't normally post my opinions about things online and just keep to myself but this felt important for me to talk about. If anything I've said was wrong or you disagree with any of my statements feel free to let me know, just please don't be a jerk about it, like I said I'm not overly familiar with this franchise and I only watched thru this season once so I could also be misremembering or just have rose tinted glasses from a first viewing. I don't really know how to end this now. byebyyyyyeeeeee <3

[existence-is-a-pain87]

Hiyo! Just trying to write something a bit new so I don't get burnt out on all my requests, hehe.

Basically, this is They Hear You, except the MC is the Trailblazer from HSR.

Why? Why not?

Also this HSR AU differs from the canon HSR (not just because Dandy's World exists in this) because the Trailblazer gets new forms on each Path and gets to tread on more Paths.

It's criminal Dan Heng gets an Imbibitor Lunae form and March 7th gets a new outfit for the Hunt Path while TB gets nothing but a new weapon.

#LETTBGETNEWOUTFITSHOYO

They Listen Across the Cosmos

Yandere!Self-Aware!Dandy's World x Trailblazer!Reader

Warnings: Obsession and other general yandere behaviors

--☆☆☆☆☆--

They knew of life existing all over the cosmos.

It's why hearing you felt all the more special.

You weren't just some random person. You were someone who lost all their memories, awoken on a space station, and joined the Astral Express.

You were a Trailblazer.

And for some reason, you adored playing Dandy's World.

Like, to the point you were usually playing it in your free time.

"Seriously? Are you playing that game again? Haven't you only been around for like... a week?"

That voice, they soon learned, belonged to your friend March.

"Yeah, and? It's fun and I like the characters. Who cares?"

You were often so calm. Even as situations got stressful, you always remained casual.

"...guess there are worse hobbies to have..."

"Mhm. Oh, hey, you wanna play a round with me?"

"Hm... sure! If you like it, it's probably fun!"

...

They were going to make sure you would be the last one standing in that round.

--☆☆☆--

You had many friends.

From your companions on the Astral Express you had adventures with, to the friends you made upon the space station you awoke on.

You were quite popular.

They didn't like this popularity distracted you from playing more often.

And, apparently, you were also quite beautiful.

There were so many things about you, so is it surprising that in this universe, Vee was even quicker to connect to your phone's microphone?

And, with some convincing from Brightney and a fight with Shelly and Dandy, she allowed the others to listen in?

That's when they heard you on your adventures.

They heard you go to Belobog, be betrayed by Cocolia, be impaled by that lance.

Then they heard you rise like a pheonix, blessed by a cosmic being known as an Aeon to tread on the Path of Preservation.

They heard you defeat Cocolia. They heard the Architects ally with you. They heard the celebrations.

They heard you help fix up a museum. Befriend more people.

You were quite the hero, Galatic Baseballer.

They heard you go to the Xianzhou Loufu thanks to that Kafka woman. They heard you meet Tingyun. They heard you travel about, meeting more people.

They heard you fight Kafka. Then, interrogate her. They heard how she seemed to know you, and the future thanks to that Script.

They heard you fight beings of the Abundance. Grow close with Dan Shu, only to ultimately be betrayed as she tried to turn you immortal by tricks.

They heard you get betrayed as Tingyun was revealed to be dead. They heard you kill Dan Shu with you own baseball bat.

They heard the cries you let out that night, the first time they ever heard you break down.

They heard you stay behind. Meet back up with Dan Heng. Fight against Yanqing with Blade.

They heard Blade give you a sword, but not what he whispered in your ear.

They heard you fight against Phantylia and win.

They heard you go to Herta Space Station again. Meet Ruan Mei. Face off against the monster she created and killed it before it itself would die after nearly losing your mind to the Propagation.

They heard you make cat cakes.

Sprout and Cosmo would love to make more with you if you'd like. Why shouldn't there be toon cat cakes?

They heard you leave to Penacony. Heard you when you woke up, shell-shocked from a dream.

They heard you meet Robin and Sunday, and when you entered the Land of Dreams. They heard you meet Firefly, heard you meet Sampo. Heard you meet Acheron and someone they could not hear named Misha. They heard you bring Misha along and grow close with him before he seemed to leave.

They heard you go to Firefly's spot. They heard you fall in love with her.

Why? Why her and not them?

They heard you meet Sparkle. Face off against Something Unto Death. Meet Black Swan. Unite with the Astral Express. Travel with Black Swan, finding Acheron again.

They heard it when you watched Firefly be impaled. They heard your choked sob, the way Black Swan had to mute the memory to protect you.

They heard you fight SAM. They heard you talk with Aventurine, and finding Robin's body.

They heard you continue your journey, facing off against Aventurine when he threatened you and Penacony.

They heard Acheron unsheathe her sword. They heard how you told Aventurine to fight for his future, before being taken away.

They heard you gasp when Firefly revealed herself as SAM.

They heard you go to Dreamflux Reef, meeting up with the rest of the Express. They heard you participate in the gameshow.

They heard you debate with Sunday over your views. They heard him dismiss you.

They heard you meet Misha again, for him to be Mikhail. They heard you share a tearful goodbye as he gifted you his hat and watch.

They heard you take a stand against Sunday. How you lost.

How you were woken up from the Dream. How you stood against him once more.

They heard when you caught the gaze of the Harmony and defeated Sunday.

They heard you do so many things.

They heard of the Stellaron within you.

--☆☆☆--

You went on so many journeys, but all of them were so dangerous.

Yes, some adventures were peaceful, but they heard all the times you nearly lost.

If it wasn't for the Stellaron and your ability to catch the gaze of Aeons, you'd be dead.

So they made their move. Slowly, of course.

Slowly revealing themselves as sentient. Slowly trying to get you to spend more time playing, less time Trailblazing.

They got annoyed quickly when you didn't care. You weren't tempted.

You were too much of a Trailblazer, always kept pushing forward.

But they kept pushing too. And preparing to get to you in any way they could.

Even if it meant breaching the game, they would do it.

They would do it all for you.

--☆☆☆--

The final straw came after you forgave Sunday and refused to leave his side after you met him on his path of redemption.

Sure, in your time since Penacony, you nearly died several times during the Wardance Festival aboard the Xianzhou Loufu and would be dead if not for the remains of the Pemanence blessing you. You nearly lost your sanity during your time at the Paperfold University until the Voracity let you literally eat your way through a memetic virus.

But when you met Sunday again? Instantly saw through his disguise? And when you insisted on joining him since you spent so much time with Tingyun? And then you forgave him and convinced him to join the Astral Express and share a room with you?!

That was too far. You needed them around to help you out.

Your adventures were going to be too much for you at this rate!

Good thing Vee's managed to figure out Aether Editting...

--☆☆☆--

It was surprisingly easy to breach from the game.

And when they saw you? Fully and completely you?

They were thrilled.

You were finally right in front of them!

You were shocked. Especially when they tried reaching for you.

You panicked.

Why are you panicking? Shouldn't you be happy? It's your favorite characters in the real world with you!

...

Stop running.

...

Stop trying to get them to stop loving you.

You're theirs.

THEIRS.

You don't love them?

Oh! Haha! Don't you worry!

Because they'll make you love them!

They love you. Just accept this.

C'mon Trailblazer.

They heard you across the cosmos already, let them have a chance to win your heart.

[nthspecialll]

When it comes to Abigail Marston leaving John in 1907, a lot of people throw mean comments at her, say that she was unfair for doing so and a lot of other things, however I think that people fail to consider the time that this game is set. This is not our modern day woman, this is 1907, and it might sound like I am stating the obvious but by the hatred that she gets it I think it needs to be said again.

1907!

Do you know the rights that women had then? Or the lack of. Women were bound to their husbands, they weren't allowed to own close to anything and were only allowed to vote in about 4 different states, some women that is. Women were seen as a servant to her husband.

It was also hard for women to earn money, the average woman over 16 working in a factory (as the majority was) earned 5-6 or 6-7 dollars a week, a week! Eggs on average costed 29 cents by the doz, a pound of round steak cost 15 cents and half a gallon of milk costed 15 cents as well.

What about rent? New Austin, which Blackwater and the surrounding area is in, is based of Texas which in 1904 had a rent per room pr month of 28 dollars.

So why would Abigail ever go through all of that? Because of John, because of Jack. Abigail stuck around John for eight years, practically begging him to fix himself, to become better because she knew that she was pretty much dependant on him, because she needs his support to be able to live and she wants to give her boy a chance at a better life but she can't with John constantly picking fights and literally putting her and her son's lives at risk.

A lot of people make it seem like she just suddenly took that chocie, but she didn't, it was a choice that most likely took her years not just due to the financial burden but also the social burden that comes with being a single mom in a time where pre-material sex was seen as a death sin. She could very well be killed merely for being seen with Jack and without a husband.

And not just that, but it was probably also a hard choice because despite of everything she loves John, she really does, yes she screams at him for going out with Saide but who wouldn't. "She won't allow him freedom," no she is scared he is going to die, for us it is easy to say "he isn't going to" because he is a main character and we can just redo if we die taking on twenty skinner brothers or whatnot, but it isn't like that for her. I want you to imagine that your partner/friend/parent told you they were going to fight a gang of who knows how many, you are going to be scared no matter how skilled that friend is because you don't want to lose them. John himself admits it is dangerous work by saying "we always find a way to almost get killed, dont we?" Which Sadie agees to.

Abigail took the choice to leave, putting herself in a terrible situation, not for herself, but for her son. She gave up her one true love so that her son could have a chance at life, have a chance to be better than her and John. It was not easy and it is not something we should shame her for, if anything we should praise her for putting her son before herself.

I love John, I really do, but I think it shows just how shitty of a father he really was, and that Abigail leaving was exactly the push he needed to get himself together, it was the wake-up call he needed. He knew how shitty women had it, he would have to realize how terrible he must have been for her to prefer that over him.

Now am I saying Abigail did everything right? No, she did not. Although I understand her fustrations with him doing bounties she has to realize she is not in a place to be picky about jobs. She did ask John to take on a huge debt for the farm and John is right in one thing "it is legal work that I can handle," and while the farm is taking some time to get up and running it is the best form of income that they have access to.

Now to talk about her annoyance with John going after Micah, it is understandable as it could trigger a decline to their former life of crime or just lead to straight up death. It is unnecessary, revenge is unnecessary, meaning that John is risking their entire life for "nothing." He argues back with "I am doing it for Arthur" but again, yes Micah killed Arthur but killing Micah wont change that, killinh Micah will not bring Arthur back nor put him in a better situation, it is revenge, it is not nessesary, it doesn’t do any good.

If John had died she would not only have lost her husband but also the farm, as women could not own property. I am not that knowledgable on debt laws in 1907, but I would imagine that in some way or another the massive debt John got would end up with her or Jack either way, putting her in a terrible situation.

@heavenlymorals made a similar post back in may 11th where they also explore and explain Mary Linton and Abigail in 1899, it is really amazing and also puts some other light on it.

Sources:

Rent, page 369: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/annual-report-commissioner-labor-6306/eighteenth-annual-report-commissioner-labor-608452?start_page=370

Food, page 233: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000014585x&seq=233

Wages, page 15: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu56779232&seq=15

[aranarumei]

kiri analyzes: ch 27 of hirano to kagiura

hi. that’s me. kiri I mean. firstly I realize I’ve arrives about a month late to the party. I’m sure much of what I’m going to say about ch 27 has already been discussed, but I still wanted to go through each chapter and give my thoughts on them before I go out and see what everyone else has been saying! I’m keeping this post under the cut for length, not spoilers lol

okay! starting off from the color page. I adore this caption: “towards an as-yet-unmet spring.” hirano’s gaze, trained not just at kagi’s lips, but his brilliant smile (“…man, that sun is dazzling today…” – ch 12, hirano to kagiura), and the pink flush to his face—altogether it captures the image of love in bloom. that burgeoning newness is right in line with the spring season, and an “as-yet-unmet spring” suggests that while we’re not quite there yet (at the point of a realization of love), it is something that will be happening.

(side note: I will be using the mangadex scanlations as my main reference point here, but I have heard that it might be good to look at some alternate translations regarding ch 28 and 29, so I’ll be doing so when I get there)

now to discuss page one. hanzawa and ichinose are like catnip so me so I have a lot of words about this moment. to start, I think it’s so fascinating that both hanzawa & ichinose ascribe a sense of “home” to the dorm (and thus feel homesickness), even though, as hirano points out, the dorm isn’t actually their home. to me this illuminates a lot about hanzawa and ichinose’s characters, particularly the reasons as to why they were dorm heads.

both hanzawa and ichinose are presumably here for studying reasons—ichinose will get caught up in video games if he goes home (ch 23b, hirano to kagiura), and hanzawa’s household is too busy and chaotic to study at (ch 33.7, sasaki to miyano)—but the dorm is more than just a study space to them. after all, being dorm head requires an extra level of connection to the dorm… a connection that I would argue, for them, stems from a level of disconnection with their actual homes.

at home, hanzawa’s “maa-kun,” and his older brother masaomi will start asking him questions about his love life, and I imagine it’s often enough since he does it in public, and asks if miyano’s his boyfriend without skipping a beat (ch 28, sasaki to miyano). in this same chapter, hanzawa does not… react well, to romance. he’s still grappling with the lasting memory of his mother’s relief when he said he was straight. at home, hanzawa’s not in control. I think he’s internalized the idea that he’s not allowed to display any kind of queerness, and while that may still be true to an extent within the confines of the dorm, the situation is different. here, he’s the dorm head, he’s the captain of the ping pong team, president of the disciplinary club… his hair is dyed black, like a “good student.” he can control, to a larger extent, the way he’s perceived, and has more freedom of action.

as ogasawara suggests in the second anime guidebook, “ah, but… you’ve been here for three years, so it’s not quite home, but… there’s still an attachment?” and he’s right! I don’t think hanzawa dreads his home, but I think that he was able to build a new feeling of stability during his time at school and in the dorm, and having that is really precious to him. there’s reason he then asks ogasawara to attend his university, and then starts complaining about how hirano moved out of the dorm as soon as he was able.

(side note: that’s a really fun look into the future, isn’t it? that the hirano who’s so deeply missing kagiura in this chapter moved out as soon as it was possible to do so. perhaps that’s just another aspect of his ruthless kind of bluntness, but I think the fact that it happened means that he and kagiura are at a stable place. also, this scene ends with him deciding to drop by the dorm, so clearly there’s someone he wants to see…)

we don’t know much about ichinose’s home life, but I’d pin him as a bit introverted. I might be making this conclusion based off the fact that he’s wearing glasses in a flashback we see of him. but also like… he plays video games. he gets bad stomach cramps and some of them are anxiety-induced. he gets really shy around the dorm manager, who he does have a crush on, but also I think he’s just that type of person. speaking of the dorm manager, he and ichinose are chatting even before hirano or hanzawa show up, so I’d suspect a part of his homesickness is missing the dorm manager, too. there’s a fun tension to this situation… he’s graduating, and his crush probably feels pretty useless, but he nonetheless wants to chase that pleasure. it’s not an outward or direct expression of queerness, but I like to imagine that ichinose, too, feels more in control when he’s in the dorm, feels more like he can be a little truer to himself.

that distance from your closest judgements—the ones coming from you family—is something I like to think that ichinose and hanzawa cherish.

speaking of ichinose and hanzawa, I love this chapter cover. the angle reminds me of a security camera? hirano’s stares at it with a blank kind of surprise, but hanzawa and ichinose both look like they’re making deliberate eye contact. I think the difference between them is representative to how those three interact with the idea of public perception and persona… that being, hirano doesn’t do it at all, while hanzawa and ichinose are hyper aware of it, even though their approaches and responses differ.

(side note: I’m aware that a lot of what I say regarding ichinose is speculation. I just have a lot of headcanons about him. as a shameless self plug I will say that that you should read violeta fantasy)

next we have ichinose & hirano discussing kagiura, and not only does hirano look glum when talking about how he and kagiura rarely get to see each other, he wears the fondest smile I’ve ever seen when he calls kagiura “one of a kind.” I love how bright that specific page looks—it’s like when hirano’s around kagiura, he, too, is dazzling. I also really love the choice of words here, those being “one of a kind.” it might be a translation liberty, but I think it just emphasizes the way that kagiura is a unique existence to hirano. even if he’s not special in the romantic sense, he is so obviously special to hirano. I love that hirano calls him “one of a kind” as he’s specifically recalling the way kagiura in ch 26 said that being with him, like this, is his favorite part of the day. here, reflecting on that moment, hirano gets to appreciate and love the way that kagiura loves him, and it just leaves him soft and pleased. it’s nice to see.

the next scene I want to discuss is the section where kagiura catches hirano & hanzawa Being Friends. I am such a fan of this because I love seeing hirano and hanzawa’s friendship. on hanzawa’s character profile for the knight of sub-characters popularity poll, it’s mentioned that he’s often seen with hirano, and then in the snapshot of his daily life that we got for his 2024 birthday, hirano’s again mentioned as his friend… they go to the same university! hirano asked him for advice on how to approach kagi-kun! sure, part of that was because hanzawa was the dorm head, but a lot of it was because they’re just friends. it’s fascinating to see how badly kagiura reacts to this, and the way he bitterly thinks, hirano-san only lets me touch him for 10 seconds a day…

kagi. I love you. but you made that rule up. you are also forgetting that hirano keeps claiming he’s got his own 10 seconds, too. this touch constraint is so fascinating because kagiura and hirano would’ve casually touched all the time, before this. but ever since having a proper realization of his Feelings, kagiura’s essentially… deprived himself of touch, by choice? because as they stand, even if hirano’s Fine with it, because he won’t register it as romantic, kagiura can’t touch him with romantic intention and have him not know. as he thinks right after his bitter thought, it’s not even the same kind of touching. it would cross some kind of line that he’s made up. I love this kid’s issues. he’s really so good… but I think he worries a lot about not being good, especially towards the guy he loves so much.

(side note: in this section we also flash back to the hanzawa homophobia allegations, which. I’d love to write up a post abt this whole deal just bc 1) we’re all aware that hanzawa’s not Actually Homophobic, yes? and 2) I find it so fun to introspect and speculate about his relationship to queerness, and 3) can we talk about how strange yashiro is? like. forget hanzawa shutting down that play-acted kabedon in ch 24. what kind of person just bluntly says, “everyone knows he can’t stand when two guys do that kind of stuff together” to a guy who clearly… does not know that? hanzawa can’t be looking that actively homophobic, if kagiura’s never noticed it before. making that statement says just as much about yashiro, then, as it does about hanzawa.)

now of course I have to talk the moment where kagiura realizes that hirano misses them hanging out. I’ll take this moment to note that hirano missing him, and hirano wanting to study with him, are all great continuing repudiations of the suggestion that ichinose gave early on: that he might focus better, without kagiura as his roommate. that maybe they’d do best, working hard individually. I think this was part of what separated them in the adult au, but time and time again, hirano to kagiura shows that they make each other better, stronger people. we kind of knew all of this, though. why, then, does hirano go 0 to 100 red, the moment that kagiura realizes this fact?

well. this… actually isn’t the first time, isn’t it? back in ch 22, hirano’s missing kagiura, and recalls what miyano was rambling about in his BL: “he thinks about how much he wants to see the person he’s in love with, and with the best timing ever, he finds himself embraced, and his heart starts pounding…”

then, too, his face turns totally red. and, crucially: his heart starts to race.

heart racing, in this context, is a signifier of love. hirano had pointed out that you can just have your heart race when you’re surprised, and being hugged could do that naturally, but now his heart has started jackrabbiting when there’s no one there to touch him. how to make sense of this feeling?

(he’d also conveniently tuned out the part where miyano said that in some cases there wasn’t any heart racing because the couple was already like family. I think family is a really key word in how exactly kagiura loves hirano. it really is a desire not just for love, but cohabitation.)

miyano says some other stuff in his BL spiel, too. I’d like to point to his earlier impassioned cry of, “you should just try getting embraced by a tall puppy-dog seme, have your heart start racing, and realize ‘wow…is this love?!’!!!”

sounds a little similar to… oh, what’s happening right now in ch 27, doesn’t it?

sasaki to miyano plays a lot with BL tropes, particularly in the ways that its fiction interacts with the reality of miyano’s life. hirano to kagiura does this to a lesser extent, but the theme is still clearly present—in ch 13, miyano tells hirano that he “can’t recognize an iota of BL development potential,” and hirano thinks for a moment that he’s talking about him and kagi-kun before he decides it had nothing to do with their situation.

so. what we’re going to see in ch 28, I suspect, is not going to be a sudden ‘wow…is this love?!’ moment. I’d love to say I’ve made this prediction just from sheer analysis alone, and while I think harusono sensei’s general trend of playing with BL tropes and expectations makes this a pretty easy prediction, I also just… have an inkling or two about what ch 28 is about. no clue about ch 29, but I know that neither of them are going to end with hirano being “wow, I’m totally in love with kagi,” because if it did, I think my tumblr dashboard would’ve exploded.

that’s all from me on ch 27! excited to discuss whatever’s coming up…

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I saw what you said about the dreams being nothing and useless to the story, and I was curious about something, do you think the characters that never got closure or development from their book should have stayed like that or do you think a new book should have been made to tie up the initial stories?

Heartslabyul for example had a lot of loose ends on their book that never got resolved, Cater never had focus or allowed development, the others too didnt get true closure, and I thought the heartslabyul dreams was the perfect way to finish their arc in a fulfilling way.

But you hold the opinion the dream arcs shoudnt have focused on them too much right? Do you think It was okay for the characters development to end in their book, or do you think their closure should have been in a different moment or way?

[Referencing this post!]

While I realize that the original post was very critical of the dream hopping segments, I did not mean to call them "nothing" and "useless" as a whole. I'm unhappy with how the dreams were executed, especially the lack of urgency present in them. My main gripe is how the characters know that they're on a time crunch, yet they hardly ever act like it. Instead, they stand around for multiple segments eating fake food or casually sharing stories about their families. This is time-wasting nonsense and it does nothing to help their situation. We quickly started to stray from Diasomnia and the urgency of the conflict at hand in favor of fanservice (like dorm leader Cater, despite Cater expressing he never wanted the position) and trying to explain away that fanservice with contrived dialogue.

Please do not misunderstand me. I never said that I don't want any non-Ignihyde or non-Diasomnia character to get development in book 7. It's true that many characters, especially the non-OB boys, never got the spotlight in previous books or that we never got the satisfaction of seeing their growth this far into the school year. If any of them were going to get attention, it makes sense to do it now as one last hurrah in book 7. It might not have been very obvious due to the critical nature of that original post, but I actually thought some of the later dreams (namely the Savanaclaw and Heartslabyul ones) were good and wrapped things up nicely. I will, however, still lampoon them for having the characters standing around and eating/talking for way too long.

It's not that I wished the game didn't focus on the non-OB boys, it's that I wished the execution of them wasn't so meandering. If the devs wanted to keep the dream segments in, they should have trimmed the fat out. Get rid of all (or most of) the idle parts, or at least trim down on the idle dialogue by a lot. Or maybe just make the OB boys + Adeuce mandatory and the others optional. Like, still part of book 7 but you can read the non-OB boys at your leisure, similar to collecting individual students' wishes in the Wish Upon a Star event, and you only need to clear the OB boys to advance in the story. Have short scenes where dorm members reunite (sort of like at the end of book 6, when everyone regrouped with their respective OB boy) and gear up + strategize with each other. Cut back briefly to Malleus and Lilia's brawl between each dorm, just to keep them relevant and/or remind us of that clock ticking down as Lilia gets more and more worn down. Maybe standardize how many parts are dedicated to every character too… Not have a spread of 4 to 46. That would at least speed us along a little faster or at least give a better sense of rushing to prepare for the fight against Malleus.

That being said, characters don’t just magically stop developing the instant their book ends. They’re changing on their own, outside of the purview of the player or off-screen (like when Riddle talks with his mom over winter break), all the time. A lot of this happens through self-reflection/internal thoughts, so we the players don’t get to see it. It doesn’t mean the characters haven’t changed or wouldn’t change without us viewing it ourselves. Even now, the characters are still growing and changing. Some of them might have more concrete “closure” now (like Kalim finally getting to punch Jamil), but the truth of the matter is that character development never truly “ends” (ie Kalim and Jamil still have their complicated relationship to sort through). It is a continuous thing we consciously work at. There’s truly no end in sight for it. Regardless of whether we got those dream sequences or not or how that development was delivered to us, this still would have been true.

[okchijt]

Hey can you do eddsworld the main 4 with a s/o romantic head cannons

Author's Note: Thank you so much Anon for the request! So sorry it took so long in advance, I just finished my finals so I was really excited about this one and had a lot of fun with it! Hope you'll like it and that I didn't portray anyone OOC😅 And lastly, go ahead and check out my masterlist if you like what you just read and if you want to request anything yourself, thank you, and enjoy!❤

Edd

🟢 Edd would be the type of boyfriend that just wants to chill out and hang out with his partner. He's a very casual guy in every sense of the word, and so would be the relationship with him, with some physical contact and romantic gestures sprinkled in occasionally.

🟢 One of the most defining traits of your relationship is humor! You'd share inside jokes together and create made-up words only you two would understand, making the people Tom around you go insane over the nonsense you tell each other while laughing.

"How did the Coca-Cola can feel after being steamrolled?"

"It was soda pressed!"

"I fucking hate both of you"

Basically, Edd would do anything just to make you smile/laugh, no matter how stupid it might be, if he knows you find it amusing he'll say/do anything just to see your expression!

🟢 Edd likes to draw you a lot, you could be sitting, washing the dishes, playing with Ringo, reading, playing a game, etc, whatever you're doing, he will draw it! He just can't help himself, you look adorable to him no matter what you're doing so he just can't resist himself! Most of the time he'll try to be sneaky about it so you wouldn't notice so he can capture you on paper perfectly, smiling the whole time because you're his favorite thing to draw! Sometimes if he feels happy enough with the finished product, he'd present it to you shyly, hoping you'd like it.

🟢 Be grateful, because you're the only one that Edd allows to go anywhere his cola and even drink it! Being with him gives you the privilege of doing so without asking, normally if anyone else would even lay a hand on his favorite drink they'd have a rabid Edd to fight off, but with you, it's like he doesn't even notice! Which by itself says a lot about how much he loves you!

🟢 Edd might not seem like a great listener, which is true, but when it comes to you, it's a different story. Whether you just want to talk about your day or info dump him about your new hyper fixation, he'll listen to it all with a smile on his face, commenting on the things you said or asking questions. When you vent, he makes sure that you know his full attention is on you and you only. He'll listen to everything you have to say while rubbing your shoulder and once you're done, he'll hug you and try to give you some kind of advice or reassurance, even though he isn't the best at this type of stuff, he'll still try his best though. Because he can't stand to see you hurt.

🟢 Edds love language includes quality time and gift giving! He just loves spending time with you no matter what you're doing! If you're working and can't give him any attention, he'll just sit next to you or position himself where he's touching you in some type of way and just occupy himself with drawing while you do your thing. Whenever you're in a situation where you can't spend time with him, just simply letting him sit nearby and do his thing is enough for him to call it "spending time with you", cause honestly just being in the same room as you is enough for him.

🟢 As we established before, Edd likes to draw you. So logically gift giving for him is giving you drawings he made of you, you two together, or things that you like, like a favorite character or animal. He also takes requests from you whenever he doesn't have any idea of what to draw, and whatever you ask him to draw he will. When Edd has enough money, he'll spend it on some kind of gift for you that he knows you'll like. And he'll give it to you without expecting anything in return, all he needs is that excited expression of yours and a kiss on the cheek/lips and he knows spending the money was worth it.

🟢 PDA isn't one of Edd's main love languages, but he still does it to a casual degree. He's not overly clingy, but he's not distant either, he's more casual with the way he expresses his physical love to you. Like when you sit together on the couch he puts his arm around you or when you're walking on the street he holds your hand. Edd prefers to shower you with more bold PDA behind closed doors though, that's when he's the most romantic as well. He'll give you lots of cuddles and kisses, praising you and telling you how much he loves you as well. It's not that Edd is embarrassed to show this side of himself in front of others, he just feels like sharing those moments between the two of you makes it have more meaning behind it.

🟢 Edd is really opportunistic when it comes to kissing, and by that I mean he'll only do it if he feels like the moment is right or is in the mood to do so. Maybe you do something adorable, and he just can't help but kiss you wherever he can reach you first. Edd's kisses are sweet and gentle, he likes to hold you whenever he does so too. Outside of your lips, Edd likes to kiss you on the cheek the most, he finds it comforting and likes to think of it as teasing that instead of kissing you on the lips, he kisses the place closest to it, he likes feeling like a little shit sometimes, what can I say?

🟢 Will cuddle with you a lot, especially if it's a lazy day for him or he's feeling down. Edd likes to be the big and the little spoon when cuddling, it just depends on how he's feeling. As the big spoon, he'll press you to his chest while laying his head on top of yours. But as a little spoon, it's the opposite, he'll bury his head in your chest, giving you easy access to his hair. When I tell you this guy will immediately melt as soon as you start tangling your hands into his hair, you swear you can hear him purr sometimes as you play with it. Edd is honestly the best cuddling option you can get, he's extremely soft and during winter he will warm you up with no problem, and during summer he somehow is still great to cuddle with because his temperature changes with the climate you can say. Cuddling Edd is like hugging a giant soft teddy bear. Best feeling ever, I tell you!

🟢 Edd isn't clingy, but boy does he get jealous of you when he feels threatened by others sometimes! He doesn't really think much of other people interacting with you, if they're just being friendly and don't try to pull any moves on you he might even join in on the conversation or just let you have your fun while vaguely paying attention. But that all changes once he hears the other person starting to flirt with you and being a little bit too touchy for his liking. He'll pay closer attention to both of you as his expression changes from a neutral one to an irritated one, waiting for the right moment to step in as he forces himself to tolerate what's happening until he gets a clear sign from you that he should step in. As soon as he sees a sign of you getting uncomfortable he's already next to you as he puts his hands on your shoulders, squeezing them with reassurance as he gives the person a threatening smile as he says: "My partner and I need to go, goodbye!" And with that, Edd immediately pulls you away from the person and begins to drag you home. The whole way back, Edd would be uncharacteristically very touchy with you, he'd press you against him hard and hold your waist tightly as he grumbles under his breath over what happened. Jealous Edd is a rare sight for you, but when he is jealous he deals with the situation quickly and swiftly to avoid confrontation, his goal only being to get you out of the situation as fast as possible.

🟢 Dates with Edd range from casual to exciting ones! They both really depend on your/his mood, to be honest. He'd take you to a cat cafe and go crazy over the cats with you while drinking and eating delicious desserts. He loves taking you to arcades! It's an excuse for both of you to have fun while calling it a date simultaneously. Edd would just take you to places he knows you'll like or are located in the town you two live in. Though when an occasional theme park comes along, you bet Edd is dragging you there right away no questions asked! If it's a special day of yours or just an anniversary, Edd will try to be a little bit fancier and take you out somewhere nice, like a restaurant or to a movie that is extremely romantic/dramatic that he thinks you'll like or fit the "fancy" category he made up in his head.

🟢 Edd is the most basic type of boyfriend out there I tell ya! All he wants is to be with or near you all day and every day and that's all he needs! He doesn't need to have an especially romantic life with you, but he isn't neglectful either, he's just somewhere in the middle. He'll change on a whim though if you tell him to show one of his sides more often because he just wants to make you happy! He's the type of guy to shower his love on you in private while in public some people aren't even sure if you two are dating or not because of how casual he is. I think Edd in a way is near-perfect boyfriend material for does that find his specific traits attractive, and as one of those people I say he would make a great boyfriend!

Matt

🟣 Matt would be the type of boyfriend that wants to spend every single moment with you and to love you to no end type of guy. He's probably the most romantic out of the four of them, so he'd make sure all the moments you spend together show that.

🟣 It comes to everyone's surprise that someone like Matt would fall in love with someone who isn't him and even love them on the same level as he does, but here we are! To him, you are the most incredible thing in the world, someone he feels can even compete with his handsome face! He makes sure to remind you of that fact every day, because why wouldn't he? Your looks and personality are everything to him, so much so that he forgets about his narcissistic views sometimes.

🟣 In fact, Matt will do anything when it comes to helping you feel better about your appearance! Say you wanna try out a new haircut or wanna change your style, Matt is right there with you through all of it, even participating in the changes himself. He'd do your makeup, nails, hair, even skincare routine, whatever it is, Matt wants to be there and be a part of it, he calls it bonding time!

🟣 Matt doesn't usually care if other people appreciate his beauty like he does, to him only his opinion matters. But once you come into the picture, your opinion means the world to him! Anytime you compliment him, call him your: "Handsome man", or anything of that sort, this man is dying on the floor because of the amount of love and affection he's feeling because of you. No one else's opinion matters about his face or anything related to him, but yours and he makes sure you and everybody around you know that just by his reactions alone.

🟣 Since you two are dating, you are bound to get dragged by Matt to buy or find something to add to his novelty collection. You'd go on your own set of adventures for the sole purpose of expanding his collection. Matt really appreciates you going with him, it just shows to him how much you are willing to put up with for him. For some, his hobby just seems like something that doesn't matter or an inconvenience, but you don't, and he truly loves that about you. Matt 100% has a will written down somewhere that says: "If anything happens to me, give all of my novelty collection to (Y/N)''.

🟣 Matt's love language includes words of affirmation and quality time! Matt's main go-to to showing how much he loves you is showering you with praise any chance he gets! You could be looking like a hobo or a supermodel, but that man will still call you the most attractive person in the universe! Any accomplishment, whether large or small is immediately met with him congratulating you like you just won an Oscar! Not to mention whenever you feel insecure or just down, Matt will make does feelings go away in a matter of seconds because of how innocent his love for you is, he knows every right word to use to show you how much you mean to him. And he'll remind you of that fact every day no matter who you are or what you do.

🟣 You'd think Matt's second love language would be physical touch, but nope! It's quality time, baby! But I think you know that based on the examples above. The point is, anything you wanna do, Matt has to be there doing that thing with you too! No matter if it's work or something boring, he needs to be there with you! If you're busy he'll sit with you in a way where he's basically touching you and as soon as you show any discomfort or mutter that you need something, Matt is on the way to get it! Even if you didn't technically ask him to do so. He's basically like a lost puppy just following you around everywhere without a care in the world.

🟣 Matt loves PDA, he adores it! Both giving and receiving affection are one of his favorite things about being in a relationship with you! The only reason why it's not his main love language is because he finds the other two more intimate, but this easily takes third place! Unlike Edd, Matt isn't afraid to go all the way out with his affection towards you, private or in public he is all over you to some degree. Kisses, hugs, holding hands, cuddles, he will grab any chance he gets to touch you in some way. If he could Matt would glue himself to you so that he can always be with you, that's how clingy he is with his love for you.

🟣 Kisses with Matt are literally the most purest and innocent thing in the world! He holds you against him as you kiss as if you were glass, that's how gentle he is with you! Expect a lot of muffled giggles and pleased sighs whenever you two kiss, he's just so happy to have you in his life like this that he just can't help himself! Outside of your lips, Matt adores giving you kisses on the nose! He just finds it charming and adorable in a way, especially when you give him a reaction in the process, he finds them precious. It may be childish, but he's a childish man so that adds up, plus nose kisses are the best!

🟣 Cuddles with Matt are a must in a relationship with him! No occasion is needed for him to just wrap you in his arms and lay with you comfortably for hours at an end. Matt is both big and little spoon, mostly leaning towards little spoon though. When he's the one holding you, and not squeezing the living daylights out of you. Matt would be laying on his back while you lay on top of him, with your head on his chest as he kisses the top of your head every now and then as his arms are tightly but comfortably wrapped around your upper back. But as a little spoon, Matt crawls himself into a ball as he buries himself into your chest, wanting to make it easier for you to hold him. He basically feels like a giant teddy bear! Though I won't recommend cuddling with Matt during winter without a blanket, man is always cold! But during summer, it's a different story, he's basically a cooler during the warm seasons, so literally perfect!

🟣 As established, Matt is clingy af so there's no surprise that the man will act super threatened as soon as he sees others laying their dirty hands on you in a flirty way. Until Matt senses a disturbance in the force, he'll tolerate the person interacting with you if it's just in a friendly way and if you clearly don't mind them talking with you as well. But as soon as the person enters the danger zone where they start to get flirty with you, Matt will glare daggers at them as a silent threat to get them to back off. Alongside that, he'll tug at your clothes gently and whine to you that you need to go with him as he stares at you with puppy eyes. If all of that fails and the rando will try to put his hands on you, Matt immediately jumps into action! Clinging to your back like a possessive koala as he smacks the person's hand away and screams: "NO! This gem is mine! Go find yours somewhere else!'' And with that, he picks you up by the waist with his arms wrapped around it and shuffles away like an awkward penguin while holding you with a big pout on his face. He'll only put you down once he calms down a bit or you protest hard enough, and once he does you better give him lots of kisses and reassurances as you let him cling to you in any way he can as you two head back home with a still slightly upset Matt.

🟣 Matt takes his dates seriously, that's why he always puts in the effort to make them super romantic! He'd take you to places any partner would on a typical date, movies, dinner, picnic in the park, star gazing, etc. With Matt, there is no such thing as a normal date, only the best of the best for his beloved! He'll dress up super fancy and always have some kind of gift with him to give you every time. Though Matt would be happy to comply with any date idea you have, elegant/traditional dates are always his go-to because of the romantic meaning behind them by society's and his standards.

🟣 Matt is the most loving and clingiest boyfriend out there, your existence alone makes him swoon so he doesn't need much outside of his novelty collection to be happy! He's utterly devoted to you and makes sure to show you that each and every day of your relationship, so much so that everybody around you two already knows you two are together without being told so. Matt would be the perfect boyfriend for those that want to feel loved to the extreme and feel appreciated by someone, and you'd feel all of that every day with him! Top-tier boyfriend material, I tell you! No complaints here!

Tom

🔵 Tom would be the type of boyfriend that isn't really great when it comes to relationships, but for you, he tries his very best to at least be decent. He'd purposefully try to go out of his comfort zone just to prove his love for you, wanting to show you that he actually cares even when he isn't the best at showing so sometimes, but he tries!

🔵 First of all, this mad lad broke up with his bass: Susan for you so that better show just how much he cares and loves you if he picked you over his most beloved bass! Speaking of Susan, Tom often makes up songs that he plays on his bass about/for you. To which you'd always have to beg him to play you some cause he's super embarrassed about them, but with enough reassurance, he'd play you some! And if you reward him with compliments or a kiss, he may just be inclined to show you more, gaining confidence each time.

🔵 And while on the subject of music! You two would always share/recommend each other's music taste! Tom really likes listening to the same music as you whether it's yours or his, he really enjoys the moment because it's just so intimate to him. You'd share headphones, you having one bud in your ear while Tom has the other, forcing each other to stay close, which Tom secretly enjoys very much as he can't help himself but relax each time you two do that.

🔵 We all know Tom's alcohol problem, especially with his favorite: Smirnoff, which he drinks any time he can. But when you two get into a relationship, Tom tries to step back from his alcoholism for your sake. Sure, he'd gladly drink with you if you'd like, but he'd actually pay attention to the amount he's drinking and stop once enough is enough. To be honest, your existence and the relationship make him want to be better for you, and that means acknowledging his problem and overcoming it step by step.

🔵 Whether you are someone that loves Christmas or hates it, depending on which, Tom will try his best to not ruin it for you and match your energy! If you're a Christmas lover, Tom wouldn't exactly act happy about the holiday with you, but you can tell he's really trying to hold back any negative comments about the holiday for your sake. Tom may hate Christmas, but he loves you enough to try his best to not ruin the holiday for you better reward him with affection afterwards cause boy does he need it! But if you're a Christmas hater, then you already know Tom is ruining the holiday with you while calling it a date!

🔵 Tom's love language includes acts of service and physical touch! Out of everything, Tom finds it easiest to express his love for you by doing things for you whether you asked him or not. It's because he can do it without overthinking whether what you're doing is okay or not because doing something for someone else naturally makes that person happy! You could have cooked something for you two and only stepped away for a second, only to come back and see Tom already doing the dishes and insisting that he's got it covered and that you go rest. Maybe you have a pet that needs to be let out or fed and you can't get out of bed to do so, you don't even need to ask and Tom is already on it and doing it for you with no complaints, not even expecting anything in return while doing so.

🔵 One wouldn't expect that one of the main two love languages Tom has is physical touch, but here we are! Tom is actually extremely touch-starved, but won't allow himself to be touched or touch someone else until he feels 100% safe with them. At the beginning of the relationship it took a while for Tom to open himself up to such affections, but the way you took things slow and steady for him really helped and he allowed himself to feel vulnerable with you. Tom loves to give you hugs from behind, you'll be doing something while standing and all of a sudden two arms wrap around you and you can feel his head burry itself in the crock of your neck. At that point he can't live without touching you, you're his rock and he needs you to feel stable and safe. He's always touching you in some way, no matter what you're doing or what position you are in.

🔵 PDA and physical touch are basically the same things, right? Anyways, while out in public Tom is way more reserved with you because he doesn't appreciate strangers staring at the two of you, he'd still be okay with hand-holding or a kiss on his favored spot every now and then, but in private? Tom goes crazy in private, (not as crazy as Matt or Tord but still!) Basically, any opportunity he gets to show you his love for you in a physical manner he takes it. It doesn't matter what you're doing, he is touching you in one way or another. Like I said, you are his rock, his safe haven, and without you near him he'd go crazy, so holding you, kissing, hugs, hand-holding, and everything else in between is what he'll shower you daily with! Please hold him too every once in a while, Lord knows he needs it and may even have a mental breakdown from the affection alone, but he loves it I promise.

🔵 In the beginning Tom was very awkward when it came to kissing, but he eventually got the hang of it and became more comfortable! They were also very unsure and timid at the beginning, forcing you to take the lead, but with each kiss, Tom became more confident, and now he likes to kiss you with slow passion, savoring the intimate closeness with you. Besides your lips, Tom's other favorite spot to kiss you is your forehead. It's just so sweet, gentle, and innocent to him that he sometimes finds it even more intimate than a kiss on the lips. He usually kisses your forehead when you do something that he just really appreciates whether you meant it or not. Maybe you fixed the broken string in his bass for him and he'll just give you the most loving gaze and that gentle smile as he grabs your face and gives you a gentle kiss on the forehead as a thanks. He just finds forehead kisses soothing, what can I say?

🔵 Cuddles=physical touch, so Tom enjoys if not loves them a lot! Tom has a preference for being the big spoon over the little spoon. As the big spoon, it literally feels as if Tom is trying to fuse with you by how hard, he's pressing you against him. You both would be lying at your sides as Tom has his arms wrapped tightly around your lower back and his head buried in your hair as he lets the scent of your shampoo ease him. Though Tom has a stronger preference for being the big spoon, he won't complain if you're the one who wants to hold him, especially if he's feeling vulnerable that day. You'd be lying at your sides again, but he'd have his back turned to you as you hug him from behind and run your hands up and down his arms/hands to soothe him, as he feels too embarrassed to face you when he's in his low state. Again, I'm sorry but just like Matt, Tom is always cold and you'd need a blanket with you whenever you two cuddle, except for summer though, cuddling with Tom during summer feels like heaven!

🔵 As said before, Tom loves physical affection and he views you as his safe heaven basically, so he isn't much of a fan when other people touch you, but if it's a friend or you allow the action yourself, there isn't much he can do but to tolerate it. But if it's someone that's trying to get with you, that's a different story! Tom makes it plainly obvious that he hates the person just by looking at them with that huge grimace and annoyed expression on his face as soon he can tell that they are flirting with you. Unlike Edd, Tom won't wait for a sign from you or anything like that, as soon as his feelings of feeling threatened are made correct by the actions of the person flirting with you he is right by your side, hugging you from behind possessively as he puts his head on your shoulder and says: "Hey babe, is this guy bothering you?" And just from his words and actions alone, the rando gets the hint you're already taken and leaves immediately with an apology. Apology or not, that does not stop Tom from glaring daggers at the person as you drag him away back home, having to soothe him with words of affection as he grumbles under his breath about wanting to choke the person.

🔵 Tom is very awkward with dates and finds them super complicated to arrange, man doesn't have much experience with dating and wants the best for you, so he tries his best to make the dates the best they can be! Tom would never admit it, but he'd be looking up advice online on where to take his partner on a date and go based on that, which means Tom doesn't really have a specific type of date he goes on with you, it's mainly whatever the best thing he can find online, he goes with. You ain't complaining though, cause those dates range from romantic dinners to the aquarium to a musical, to a picnic! No matter what it is or where you go, your boyfriend always makes sure you're having fun.

🔵 Tom is the most awkward boyfriend that doesn't know what he's doing but tries his best anyway just to make the relationship work. He may not always understand what he's supposed to do as a boyfriend or how to do it because he is always internally freaking out if what's he doing actually works, but he'd never once make you feel like he doesn't love you. He'd remind you of that fact every day in any way he can, whether large or small. Your existence keeps him sane and happy, so he'll do anything he can just to keep you at his side, even if he doesn't always know what he's doing.

Tord

🔴 Tord would be the type of boyfriend that thinks he knows what he's doing while being a huge show off while doing so, but in reality, he has no idea how being in love and dating works. Still, he sure acts like he does cause he feels insanely confident in a relationship because he thinks it's easy and he knows what he's doing (it isn't and he doesn't) But he rarely makes you suspect that over how nice a relationship with him is!

🔴 Tord is very open with his love for guns, especially when he pulls one out of nowhere before shooting something. Even though Tord doesn't mind showing you off his shooting skills, in fact, he loves it, but he will not allow you to touch his weapon at all! No amount of reassurance will make him trust you or himself enough to give you such a weapon. He just fears something might go wrong, if there's anyone else's safety he's more worried about it than his, it's yours and he will never put your life in danger willingly no matter what.

🔴 He'd show you his little inventions like the couch one or something like that and gets giddy when you show interest in them and praise him for them. He'd never show you his dangerous inventions though, like his giant robot out of fear of losing you, but if you have an invention request for him, Tord is more than happy to make it come true! Any nondangerous gadget is at your disposal any time you want and is free to use without asking, which means something because very few people have this sort of privilege from him.

🔴 So we all know Tord likes to smoke his cigars, well, similar to Tom with his alcohol problem, he will try to smoke less if not stop entirely at one point just for your sake. Whether you made a comment about his smoking habit or not, he's sure his smoke breath just after he finished his cigar doesn't feel really good when you two kiss. So he'd try his best to lessen doing it, or at least not smoke before he gets to spend time with you just so that he doesn't smell too bad.

🔴 Tord would be the type of boyfriend to lend you his clothes but on purpose! You won't need to ask for his hoodie or anything before he one day walks up to you with his hoodie and gives it to you without a word before walking away. If you comply and wear his clothes, expect to have his eyes always on you with a flirty smirk to match. He just can't help himself but feel oddly satisfied and honored for you to wear his clothes that are always too big for you, he finds it adorable and a way of marking you by having something of him with you, but he'd never tell you that of course.

🔴 Tord's love language is unsurprisingly physical touch and words of affirmation! Out of the main four, it was given that Tord would love physical touch a ton! Tord normally isn't a touchy person at all, he avoids having physical contact with most people like the plague, but with you? It's the opposite! The second you get together he's all over you in any way and every day he can! He saves the special affection for people that mean the most to him, and you just happened to be his entire world so he makes sure you receive the attention you deserve! Sitting on the couch with his arms wrapped around you? Check. Eating together with your knees touching? Check. Driving and sitting next to each other with his hand on your thigh? Check. Just any scenario with him having his hands on you in some way is always possible with Tord. He just feels safe and comfortable being this close to you, he doesn't show it, but Tord deals with a lot of anxiety and paranoia over the things he hides from you and his friends. It can get a lot sometimes, and the only way for him to let it all out is through physical contact with you.

🔴 Tord lives for giving you physical affection, but words of affirmation are exactly on the same level for him! Tord is a natural flirt that can come up with a pick-up line on the fly without trying, that's how good he is! But flirting isn't the only way he'll verbalize his love for you, a simple thought-out compliment or praise is what you'll hear from him a lot as well. Maybe you're working on something and are getting tired of it but you have to push through when you suddenly get interrupted by Tord appearing out of nowhere as he rubs your back reassuringly and tells you how great you're doing and to remember to take breaks etc. Just like with Matt, whatever you do, and no matter what the outcome of it was, or no matter how insecure you are, you will always be met with praise from him as he kisses you all over your face. Overall, just imagine yourself in any scenario just like the one before and Tord will find an excuse to flirt/compliment/praise you.

🔴 PDA and Tord are like best friends, why would he stop showering you with love in public when you clearly deserve all of the attention you can get? He's the same as Matt honestly, there is just no stopping him from kissing, hugging, hand-holding, etc, no matter where you two are. His love for you both in public and in private is the exact same, he just wants the whole world to know who you belong to and just wants to show your relationship off! Plus Tord doesn't feel any need to tone down the affection out in public, why should he? He barely pays attention to the random people on the street anyway because all of his attention is on you, everything else just doesn't matter when he's with you so he acts like it with his affections.

🔴 Kisses with Tord happen literally almost every minute and yet he always manages to find a way to make the next one more amazing than the last. He wants you to love and remember every moment of it as he slowly but sensually moves his lips against yours with that stupid smirk on his face and half-lid eyes that scan you with satisfaction. Tord is always confident when kissing you, so there's no hesitation coming from him before his lips are on yours while holding you so close you can barely move. And all of that is what I just described how kissing with Tord looks and feels like all the time. Outside of the lips though, Tord's other favorite spot to kiss you is to no one's surprise, your neck! It doesn't even need to be sexual, he just loves to kiss you there! The reactions you give him as you stiff at his sudden touch to the neck before you slowly relax and maybe let your voice out once in a while if Tord feels like teasing you a bit with his cheeky kisses. He is a pervert after all, so you can imagine he enjoys the show you give him sometimes immensely.

🔴 Same as with Tom and Matt, Tord lives for cuddles with you! Sorry, to say but Tord is always the big spoon, under no circumstance would he willingly put himself in a vulnerable position that we call the "little spoon". The only way for that to happen is you'd walk in on him in an uncharacteristically vulnerable moment, you both know he won't reveal what made him so upset so the only thing you can think of is to lay down and hug him from behind, pressing yourself against him tightly as you whisper reassuring words into his ear. Tord would never admit it, but he really appreciated the gesture, but you won't catch him asking to be a little spoon after that, it's just not his thing. What his thing is being the big spoon though! He is literally wrapped around you like a koala the whole cuddle session, you'd be pressed against his chest with his arms wrapped around your waist and his legs entangled with yours as he lays his head on top of yours. Unlike the two before him, Tord is always warm, so cuddling during the summer is always a pain, especially because Tord can't go a single day without multiple cuddles. But during winter you cannot be more glad than to have a literal fireplace as a boyfriend!

🔴 Tord feels like everyone is a threat to your relationship with a few exceptions constantly, even if the person in question is just a friend or someone that truly means no harm Tord will always feel like he's competing over you with them. As soon as he realizes the person's intentions with you he'd glare daggers at them with an almost silent animalistic growl coming from him as crossed arms almost rip the fabric of his hoodie from how tightly he's holding the fabric. As soon as the person's hands start to move towards you in an attempt to touch you, in a blink of an eye Tord is right behind you as he grabs your shoulders and possesivly presses your back against his chest. ''Get lost before I make you" If looks could kill the rando would have been already on the floor dead from the terrifying threat and expression Tord had on his face. Before you realize what's happening the person is already bolting in the opposite direction, you only snap out of it once you feel Tord's grip on you loosen as he looks at you with a satisfied smile before grabbing your hand and walking back home. It's almost as if the situation is already forgotten by him altogether, but it isn't, in fact, he'll have that memory of you getting hit on for a while before he gets over it. He just chooses not to show you how much the situation has impacted him for your sake, though he would really appreciate a kiss or two with some reassurance as you two head home, it'll make him feel better faster.

🔴 Tord legit has no idea what he's doing when it comes to dates. Just like Tom, he'd look up advice online on how to make "the perfect date" for you. The dates he'd typically settle on are the ones he knows you'd love to go to, he'd pay special attention in conversations where you mention a specific place you'd love to go to and immediately write it down as one of the places he should take you to. Literally, anything you want he will make it happen, restaurant, theme park, cinema, arcade, etc, just name it and you're going there! Tord already knows you're enjoying yourself because he purposefully took you somewhere you wanted to go, but he'd always try to make the date even more fun with various shenanigans he does to make you laugh, making dates more memorable than they would've originally been.

🔴 Tord is the embodiment of a boyfriend that wants nothing more but to make you the center of his world if not the universe. If someone like him could get with someone like you then it's only right he makes you feel like the most special person in the world! And just like Matt, he's perfect for those that need/want to be reminded of that fact every day, whether you want it or not Tord is basically worshiping you and he'll make sure you don't forget that fact either! Honestly, you're the only reason why he hasn't taken over the world yet, you'll never know that fact personally, but it's true!

[mortalityplays]

Does it seem like Infinity Nikki is building on the lore in the previous games, or is it doing its own thing? It's been a few years since I played Love Nikki Dress-up queen, and all of the proper nouns seem to be different than I remember.

Okay let's talk about Nikki lore!!!

if you've come straight from Love Nikki, Infinity Nikki probably feels strikingly different and yet eerily familiar. It presents itself as a clean slate for new players and a straight reboot for returning players, with Nikki and Momo encountering a magical outfit and being pulled into Miraland where they learn a whole new set of terms and mechanics for the dress-up game you're about to play. All the proper nouns have changed - 'styling power' is still the same, but now magic and tech are 'whim' and base currency is 'blings' etc. The story, setting and characters are all a little different too. So it's a total reboot for the new format, right? Makes sense.

TL;DR: for everything I'm about to unpack:

Doylian answer: IN is a clean reboot of the basic isekai premise, allowing them to easily onboard new players and update the core nature of the game.

Watsonian answer: the reboot is itself part of the ongoing canonical lore of the Nikki series!!!

The context you're missing is Shining Nikki. SN actually pulled this move first - it was a total overhaul of LN to move the series from 2D paper doll graphics to full 3D models, and like IN it seemed to begin the isekai type story of LN again from the start. Not too many people in english speaking markets played the first two games in the series (Nikki Up2U and Hello Nikki), but what you need to know about them is that they were both set in Nikki's own earth-like world, where fashion was an ordinary element of everyday life (i.e. the player was asked to dress her appropriately for real-world situations, with the context that she was an aspiring fashion student). They were also direct instalments in an ongoing story.

Here's the timeline up to where you stopped:

NU2U: Fashion student Nikki and her talking pet Momo practise her skills as a stylist in everyday situations. Though it's usually played as a joke, both Nikki and Momo acknowledge that he's a 'cat-like thing' - not really an earth cat.

HN: Nikki and Momo travel their world, finding styling inspiration in different locations / through meeting various characters. Some of the costumes she creates in this game continue to appear through each sequel as lower-level outfits, implying continuity.

LN: The first game that really broke through in english-speaking markets, and the first in the Miraland cycle. Nikki is preparing for graduation, when she finds a mysterious outfit in the attic. Touching it gives her a vision where she glimpses a strange realm brimming with fashion-related power of some sort. When she comes to, she and Momo are in a field of flowers. They've been transported to another world called Miraland, where styling has literal magical power that's used to settle disputes in place of violence. She embarks on a quest to attain a set of uniquely powerful dresses at the centre of a burgeoning magical/political crisis, in order to save Miraland.

^ Big sideways jump, right? The Doylian explanation for all this is very mundane. They have to keep rebuilding this game for newer phones, and updating the graphics/mechanical gameplay as the series goes on. There are only so many times you can ask a player to dress Nikki up to go to a café or whatever, and the isekai genre is massively popular among the target playerbase. BUT they retain the canonical continuity of the series with LN - Nikki frequently refers to her sister Yoyo and their travels around the world throughout LN and SN, and Momo hints that Miraland may be the origin of his clan (or at least tied to their origin somehow). It would have been an easy place to wipe the slate clean, but they didn't.

And then comes Shining Nikki. On starting the game, Nikki speaks to you directly from a meta-realm where you set up your username and get introduced to basic concepts. Nikki has an encounter / vision with a mysterious figure related to this styling meta-realm, and then she wakes up. She and Momo find themselves in a field of flowers, in a world called Miraland - sstop me if you've heard this one before.

SN is where things started to get really interesting, and where I suspect the writers started laying down some intentions for the series going forward. As Nikki travels around Miraland, she runs into a variety of people and places that are reminiscent of, yet different from, the cast and setting of Love Nikki. And little by little, she begins to recover memories of that game.

As it build towards its climax, SN does one of the coolest things I've ever seen from a rinkydink fantasy mobile gacha. Nikki comes up against an opponent she can't beat, and you're asked to style-battle them again and again. She starts to dissociate and refuses to back down, and then- well at this point my phone couldn't handle the 3D effects and it booted me back to the game's home screen.

SN was pretty ambitious with its 3D elements, to the point that the home screen itself featured a 3D nikki you could dress up, who would move around and strike poses, and spit out lighthearted quips when you tapped her ('I wont give up on my friends!', 'If Momo eats any more BBQ he's going to turn into a beach ball...' etc.) So anyway, my game was locked up apart from homescreen Nikki's idle animations. And then she started talking to me, by username, commenting on the defeat she was suffering repeatedly in the story chapters.

At this point, SN introduces the idea that the player is (from Nikki's perspective) a powerful being from another parallel world, who has been influencing her styling choices the whole time. It also introduces a meta-meta-realm where outside observers can access people's memories to subtly alter their world's timeline. When I say this game got high concept...they had a limited-time event at one point where Nikki essentially explores the lingering cognitive dissonances left behind by the inhabitants of Omelas. I'm insane about this series. Anyway.

A LOT went on in SN, but what you need to know is this:

Nikki learns that she found herself in the story of SN because she went back in time 600+ years from the events of LN in a last ditch effort to prevent the apocalypse she failed to avert.

By accessing the Ocean of Memories, she also learns that this is not the first time she's done this. She has been stuck in a time loop for thousands upon thousands of cycles, perpetually failing to save Miraland, going back in time, and creating new causal offshoots that she again fails to save.

Nikki realises that by doing this, she is perpetually rebooting the lives of all the friends she keeps meeting and bonding with and then failing to save, and wrestles with whether this is ethical. Ultimately she decides to persist, determined to save Miraland.

Now here's the million-dollar question: Is Infinity Nikki a straight reboot, wiping the slate clean to simplify the lore and onboard new players? Or is it a continuation of Nikki lore to date, setting her on a new cycle in the same sequence? I would answer: yes and yes.

Every game in Miraland seems to follow a certain pattern with minor changes, and IN is no exception:

Nikki arrives in a tutorial zone themed around cosy rural villages and flower fields.

She meets a friendly girl who introduces her to Styling and its role in Miraland, and who puts her on the path to her first set of competitions (rip Bobo greatest anime betrayal of all time)

Nikki gets drawn into a political crisis centred on Miraland's system of styling contests, inevitably involving mercenaries and corporate espionage at some point.

Reference is made to an ancient fallen monarch who had a personal connection to certain outfits of immense power.

Reference is made to an elusive but powerful spiritual being (a god, a prophet, ???) whose divine power is bound up with the mysterious source of Styling Power.

Nikki encounters a reclusive society of magical beings whose life force depends on that same power source.

She travels to a variety of regions including Fairytale Forest, Gothic Lolita Town, Literally China, Uncomfortable Desert Realm, Big City, and Separatist Tech Freak Island. [in progress]

War breaks out somewhere and Nikki ends up on the run [hasn't happened yet, but I believe]

Vampires/demons get involved [hasn't happened yet, but I believe]

There is a goofy yellow mascot that looks like a fat duckling. [I'm a Gifty truther, what does it all mean.]

So far we're only a few chapters into IN, but I can already see a lot of familiar pattens starting to take shape. Factions are an interesting twist on regional styling competitions, and elements like Eureka and the Mira Crown contest (and the repeated motif of mirrors and fragmented crystals) look a lot like the seeds of more meta-realm content to me. Well, and the actual literal meta-realms accessed via waypoints and whimstars.

If you read all this, well done!!! You are definitely insane enough to enjoy the Nikki series.

[fyeahghosttrick]

FULL RULES

Hello and welcome to the twelfth edition of Ghost Swap overall, second edition in fest form! As always, we are here to create fanworks based on each other’s ideas, to eventually post them all on the game’s anniversary to celebrate it with a bang!

Schedule: Prompting begins: April 28th Prompts are posted: May 10th Works are posted: June 19th

It’s a simple schedule for a simple format. First we gather the prompts, our big pile of cool shiny things, then we pick whatever we like and fill it, with no intermediate steps.

At the form, you can submit up to eight separate prompts, anonymously (“Jowd orb”) or listing your name at the start of each one if you would like to be tagged in any potential fills (“laughingmango - Jowd orb”). You can also specify fic or art if you want. If nothing is specified, the prompt is meant for either medium.

In each prompt, please write in a loose description of the character(s) you would like to receive and of the situation(s) you would like to see them in. The prompts don’t have to feature completely different characters and situations - one could be a sad take on Yomiel and Sissel’s friendship, another could be post-game Yomiel and Jowd friendship fluff, a third one could be a fantasy AU where Sissel is Yomiel’s familiar. Or the old GSwap staple Rindge/Sith, of course, what is Gswap if not three rats in a trenchcoat and the uncollapsed possibility of Rindge/Sith. Crossover prompts are allowed. As always, you can look at past prompts for inspiration. If you want to avoid something that might come up in filling your prompt (maybe you are prompting a scenario that might lend itself to a shippy reading but you don’t like that ship), state it simply and politely in the prompt itself - there is no separate field for likes and dislikes (“laughingmango - Jowd orb, art, please no Missile swapping Jowd for a ball”).

On may 10th, the list will be published and everyone will be free to pick whichever they like best and create a fanwork based on that request. Late prompters are welcome but will get less visibility. It’s okay if more than one person is working on the same prompt, we don’t have to coordinate. It’s very welcome if one person decides to fill more than one prompt.

As usual, all works will then be published on Tumblr on June 19th, the anniversary of Ghost Trick’s original release.

These light rules mean that you are free to pick what you like and work with the prompt of your dreams. However, there is no guarantee that one of your own prompts will get picked. All the same, from past experience (and last year’s smashing success!) I sincerely hope that among the works posted on June 19th we will all find something that’ll make us happy, regardless of whether we prompted it ourselves or whether it came from someone else with similar (or surprising!) tastes.

These new rules also mean that there is no mod checking that all participants have a work ready to post on the 19th. Honor system: if you submit some prompts, please try, in good faith, to then pick someone else’s prompt and give it a spin. If RL then gets in the way, it happens and that’s okay.

Happy prompting!

IN SHORT: Between now and May 10th (plus stragglers), we will be creating a shared pool of cool ghost trick prompts. That list will be published on May 10th and everyone who has submitted some things will try to pick at least one prompt to fill - there’s no claiming, no assigning, just work on whatever you fancy. And on June 19th, all our works will be published on tumblr to celebrate the anniversary!

[lemotmo]

It's very clear at this point, people

Q. I guess my question is why the need to bring him back? I mean they broke up, he serves no story purpose.

A. He absolutely serves a story purpose. Look I talk a lot of trash about the guy because the actor who plays him repulses me on every level, but the character serves a genuine story purpose. The problem was Tim didn't stick with the original story plan and it allowed the story to get a bit muddled to the point that it created an opportunity for certain people to try and hijack the intended narrative. Tim mentioned a jealousy aspect in an interview prior to the season. For whatever reason between then and now he decided to go a different way. I have no idea why he decided against that story point because it was always going to be the easiest, most straightforward way to get the audience from point A to point B. It also would have made it much easier to get Buck and Eddie to their individual realizations at similar times within the story. It was a mistake to decide not to go with that particular route, and I would love to know why he changed his mind. I know most of us got to a point where we didn't want Tommy anywhere near any kind of Buddie realization, but the reality is that Tommy was always intended to play some part in Buck's realization one way or another.

The dialogue between Buck and Tommy in episode 8x11 was really, really telling. Tommy is the ultimate Buddie plot device. But because Tim kept dragging the story out all while not giving Tommy or the relationship any actual screen time, focus or development, because their relationship was never the point of anything, people kind of filled in the blanks with their own version of events. Lou did not help the situation because he encouraged people to believe a version of the story he knew wasn't true, but the show wasn't really doing anything to countermand the noise, early on Tim actively encouraged some of the chatter, something he later learned was a mistake. Yes the storyline was pretty straightforward if you were bothering to pay actual attention, but this is the problem with continually kicking the Buddie can down the road for later. Things started and stopped several times. And each time the progress stalled Lou was ready, and more than willing to fill the silence with his version of events. 8x11 was Tim basically resetting the narrative to the way it was originally intended to play out.

Tommy's one job was to make Buck aware of the Eddie of it all, and Tim finally had him do that in this last episode. Having Tommy be the one to verbalize for the audience that the BuckandEddie thing is something that does need to be reexamined and looked at with a new perspective, while at the same time admitting that he viewed Eddie as competition set everything up for the audience. Then having Buck react the way he did and say what he said, 'I don't want to have to sleep with everyone I have feelings for and I don't have feelings for everyone I sleep with' told the audience the entire game. Buck has clearly thought about Eddie like that at some point, and made himself shutdown and lock that train of thought away, and he didn't appreciate Tommy reminding him of that. The show used the second part of Buck's dialogue to explicitly state that Buck has no actual feelings for Tommy. It was physical for Buck. And this is the first time Buck has admitted that out loud. It was something Buck had to admit to himself, and Tommy, but it was also something they wanted the audience to be aware of. As far as Buck is concerned there is no competition. He will pick Eddie every single time, even if he believes it can only be in a platonic way. Tommy was used as the character to tell the audience that it might not have to be platonic. The relationship part of Buck and Tommy officially ended with that episode but I do think we will see Tommy at least one more time. The focus will now switch to Eddie, and there are several things they need to do with Eddie prior to any kind of feelings realization on his part. My guess is they will sort out the Eddie and Chris situation, and the Diaz parents thing and then address the Buck of it all out loud. Ryan and Oliver both saying that we will see phone calls and FaceTime calls between the two makes me really happy. The idea that the show might do another Buck and Abby parallel and kind of show both Buck and Eddie allowing themselves to fall for one another while talking on the phone is a really lovely idea. And I really hope that's what they're doing because not only would that be a really special thing to allow the audience to witness, it allows the realizations to occur within the same episode. I got sidetracked here, lol, but personal feelings for Lou aside Tommy always served a story point the show just pushed his purpose to this past episode. But they made his purpose clear, try as some people might to pretend they didn't.

Thank you Nonny!

Well said Ali! The show is finally ready to address the Buddie elephant in the room and so far I've loved every single second of this storyline.

As for Tommy? Uh-uh, the Buddie plot device is there to do its job and he did it well in 8x11. I'm sure he'll be off plot devicing some more in 8x14/15. I cannot wait to watch it and say goodbye forever to T. 🙂‍↕️

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[vigilskeep]

avoiding most reviews like crazy for fear of spoilers, however I’m scared that some have said that rook can do no wrong even when picking the most aggressive impolite options, there’s never any social consequences for *choosing* to be rude, or even dismissing others worldviews and beliefs.

i will say a lot about inquisition, but at least it let the player have complicated relationships with the party by not having everyone agree to everything they say as the word of god

us getting to have complicated relationships with the party in dragon age inquisition is, frankly, news to me

personally i’ve seen more of people suggesting you can’t be as rude in the first place, than people saying the game doesn’t react when you are? to which i have to say, yes, interactions with the party are going to be different in veilguard than in previous dragon age games. they’re writing a protagonist who the plot requires to be more of a hero type who chose to join this venture, every party member is essential to the main plot, and they’re openly going for a “found family” dynamic, which (i would strongly argue) they’ve never done before. the group is intended to work as a whole, to be people who all care about each other, rather than simply being tied together by your player character. you’re not going to have a situation like in every other game where companions can get thrown out or betrayed or aggressively belittled by the protagonist, because this party simply would not work if you were doing that to certain members. the story they are telling this time would not make sense

however, i’m yet to see that that means we can’t have complicated relationships with the companions? in fact, we know it allows for main plot choices with lasting, drastic consequences on our relationships with certain companions. we know you can disagree with characters and still progress your relationships with them. there are new opportunities that we never had in previous games for all companions to be closely involved in what’s going on, and thus for all companions to have opinions that matter on all of rook’s decisions. i’ve already seen footage of companion commentary absolutely not holding back on challenging even relatively small choices

i think challenges from this style of companion can be very compelling in their own way. if all these companions are considered equally good-aligned by the narrative and care about each other, and they still sharply disagree, it suggests fewer conflicts with simple right answers. i think that could be a breath of fresh air from previous dragon age games which have often and regularly fallen into the trap of “obvious good answer” and “the answer your slightly evil companions will like”. there’s a reason so many worldstate decisions and quest endings are overwhelmingly popular, right? isn’t it possible it will be just as interesting to engage with a story where you are definitively written as good-aligned, but that means you get real choices between options just as justifiable as each other—or as bad as each other?

it’s a change so it’s by nature not going to be for everyone. you’re not going to be able to play certain kinds of character that you could in previous games and if that’s what you were looking for in another da game, that’s a disappointment. but i don’t think dragon age should necessarily be restricted by that forever? like i don’t think it’s necessarily conducive to good storytelling to always have to input evil/mean options and reactivity just for the sake of it. and i completely understand why it would be detrimental to the game they’ve chosen to make this time. their primary selling point and concept is the complex team dynamics. can you imagine the sheer bulk of writing it would take to have these companions as thoroughly invested in each other’s lives as they seem to be, and let you be horrible to particular ones? for how many players’ benefit? for what story coherency, when building these relationships is the plot of the game? i don’t really see the point

that’s how i feel about it idk. i’m optimistic. i also don’t rlly think jumping to conclusions at this point is worthwhile. the reviews are largely positive. it’s coming out in a day and a half. let’s just wait and see?

[cybrasigilism]

The Blood Hive (SquidJackets AU World Swap WILDERNESS POST)

warnings: drug mentions | typical yellowjackets stuff | SQUID GAME X YELLOWJACKETS CROSSOVER | this is my interpretation of these characters, please be respectful even if my opinions on the characters differ from your own

A/N: we’ll be back to scheduled programming shortly, but since we got the soccer team roles out of the way, it’s only appropriate that i discuss their roles in the wilderness now. i’m lowkey considering writing a detailed fic about this because i love love LOVE this AU of mine :P

ENJOY!

𐂂 THE VITAL THREE 𐂂

seon-nyeo: the profit.

her faith allowed her to be the first feel connected to the “wilderness”, and due to her psyche breaking in two from the trauma of the crash— she genuinely believes the wilderness is an entity. (consider her the lottie of this world, minus the schizophrenia) she has good intentions, but when she learns of a teammate who has access to hallucinogenic drugs, she finds a gateway for the others to “connect” with the wilderness too.

cho hyun-ju + kang dae-ho: the hunters.

the team knew that they would need the most reliable people to be the ones entrusted with supplying sustenance while they awaited their rescue, thus the responsibility fell on hyun-ju and dae-ho. the former excelled as the hunter, clear headshots every single time; the latter on the other hand, seemed to struggle with the concept of killing the animals. after the two collectively decided dae-ho wasn’t the right fit for a hunter’s position, he stepped down and hyun-ju went solo.

kim young-mi: the medic.

having learned the tricks of the trade from a first aid course provided by the university pre-crash, young-mi was the only choice for the position of designated medic in the eyes of the team. at first, she panicked at being the only one equipped with the skills to head such a daunting task, but with hyun-ju’s help, she became more confident in her work and aided the group’s injuries to the best of her ability post-crash. there’s just one problem though, jun-hee is pregnant— and the first aide course doesn’t teach you to deliver a baby.

—————————

seong gi-hun (former coach)

when the team first crash lands, they all look to gi-hun for guidance. however, unfortunately for gi-hun, bad things keep coincidentally happening under his advisory: the flight recorder being mysteriously smashed, rationing going haywire, disagreements turned physical etc. the group takes this as a sign that gi-hun is no longer fit to lead them, and he is essentially de-throned and forced to take a backseat to in-ho, who was always there to deescalate the bad situations that arose. gi-hun isn’t so convinced that in-ho is the miracle leader everyone else is making him out to be, but thanks to the circumstances before him, anyone could chalk that feeling up to jealousy.

hwang in-ho (acclaimed group leader)

after continuously swooping in to “clean up” gi-hun’s mistakes during his brief time as the head of the group, in-house is revered as the group’s new leader. situations lined up in his favour and he now has the control over the group that he didn’t pre-crash. unbeknownst to everybody else, in-ho is not the fantastic, fearless leader that he’s cracking himself up to be. appearances can be deceiving, and that holds true with coach hwang in-ho— now that’s he’s gained their trust, there’s nothing he cannot do.

choi “thanos” su-bong + nam-gyu

for the first bit of time post-crash, their biggest purpose was to stir the pot and make it everyone else’s problem that they didn’t want to be there. at worst, they were nuisances who got shut down by se-mi or hyun-ju when their limits had been pushed by the nonsensical tomfoolery these boys start up. things start to amp up when thanos becomes a person of interest to seon-nyeo, who believes that his hallucinogenic substances can act as a gateway for “wilderness connection”.

kim jun-hee

out of anyone on this team, jun-hee may have it the worst— she’s pregnant out in these woods. and as if to be a cherry on top of the big fuck you sundae, the father, myung-gi, is present. normally, that would be a good thing, but jun-hee isn’t exactly myung-gi’s biggest fan as of late. thanks to his loud mouth, she’s had a hard time at the university with people having misconstrued opinions of her, so she’s going to be on the defensive for her time here seeing as from her perspective, she only has herself and no one else to rely on.

lee myung-gi

myung-gi does not have luck on his side, apparently he never did to begin with. the one time he actually was lucky in any regard was in his relationship with jun-hee, and he still managed to screw that up. now, these two were stranded in the wilderness together, and while she isn’t interested in being around him to any degree— myung-gi sees this as an opportunity to patch things up. he wants to take ownership of jun-hee’s pregnancy alongside her, but with his track record you can’t blame jun-hee for being skeptical.

se-mi

she may be the most understanding of all the players in the crash to everyone’s grievances. she rolls her eyes at the beseeching of thanos and nam-gyu, sure, but she is also the first person to extend a helping hand to jun-hee— despite her (jun-hee) beliefs that everyone looked down on her. se-mi also works alongside hyun-ju to help young-mi adjust to the medic position that was swiftly thrust upon her, and she actively sticks her neck out for min-su when thanos and nam-gyu ironically tease him for being scared.

gyeong-su

gyeong-su is not built for the wilderness, to be sure. he knows this, so he stays close to thanos because he views him as being “stronger”, even with all that complaining in the beginning. he knows that he can’t help much with hunting or scavenging, but gyeong-su still tries his best to keep spirits high in hopes of rescue one day coming for them.

park min-su

at first, the team looked upon min-su as being the one least likely to survive should help take longer than expected to come, but he’s managed to make it far in the wilderness living. he proved himself as a talented tracker when the team got lost on their way back to the crash site from the lake, and he also helped the girls scavenge for berries during the warmer seasons. min-su proved to be more useful in a survival situation than on the literal playing field— which surprised everybody involved.

IM SO HAPPY THAT THERES PEOPLE INTERESTED IN THIS AU, if you have any questions at all regarding this story let me know!

as usual, any constructive criticism/advice on how i can improve my writing is appreciated and requested! have a amazing day/night lovelies 💋

tags: @gongyoosgf @kouzih @strangelife122 @agornotsworld @kvstjwonnie @room-722 @marymustdie @pink-apples001 @fiicalapsiholoaga @wonestro @luvlyfandoms @putrescentpoet