#also featuring the Ark honestly

[killuagirly]

Yandere!Noah's Ark Circus[Separate] x Reader

Summary: Noah's Ark Circus members[Separate] seem to have a thing for you, but it only gets worse as you don't notice their obvious attempts to court you. What might they do in return?

Notes: I LITERALLY WAS SO EXCITED TO WRITE THIS FOR NO REASON AT ALL. The idea for this was taken from this post, but slightly changed up to fit more general circumstances. [Also because this is Yandere yk] I tried to make sure they all had a lil' sum but writing for this many characters in one post obviously means less content per character. Hopefully I'll get around to the main characters too, like Ciel, Sebastian, and so on.

CW: Yandere, Obsessive tendencies, Possessiveness, Slight mentions of violence[nothing really bad], etc. Read at your own risk!!

────────── ʚ♡ɞ ──────────

Joker

The 'ringleader' has special tricks up his sleeve just for you. It really couldn't get more obvious to everyone around you when he's leaving gifts outside your tent that range from flowers to clothing and so much more. He'll make sure you acknowledge his tricks and jests during the announcing and performances by making silly inside jokes between the two of you during the show.

Eventually he may start to notice patterns in your behavior when you take his romantic gestures lightly, as nothing more than two close friends. Experimenting to see if his assumptions were correct, he even went as far as kissing you on the cheek before wishing you goodnight after one of his shows.

As he suspected, you only laughed it off and told him goodnight in return. He starts to wonder if the way you keep looking the other way is because you may already have eyes for someone. If even it may seem so, Joker keeps his cool and focuses on improving your view of him. No action will need to be taken if he can simply draw your attention away from other.

If means necessary, he's not hesitant and will slowly push everyone away from you to worm his way into your heart. If it gets to the point where your unmindful habits could be taken as rejection, he may be the type to just outright tell you about his feelings for you. If you still brush it off as some kind of joke, I pray for you because this man will take it to no means end to make you understand his love for you.

Beast

One of the most gorgeous women you'll ever meet, falling for you. Honestly, I'm jealous. Beast is the one who'll communicate her love for you through silent actions, no doubt about it. She'll be your shoulder to cry on, help you with any questions or concerns you have regarding the circus, and you can always come to her with outside troubles as well.

Beast honestly would most likely get upset rather than offended once it hits her that you aren't receiving any of her hints in a romantic context. Maybe she was going about it the wrong way? No, you're just unaware of her feelings towards you. No worries, she can just lay it on a bit thicker so it's within your grasp. After that, how could her love for you still go unnoticed??

If you still manage to get past her flirting however unbothered, she'll probably start looking for outside causes. Could it be that you've got your mind elsewhere? Beast might actually begin to grow self-conscious because of the situation, wondering if you could be judging her for 'flaunting' or 'showing off' her body feature due to her costume. She might even start thinking about changing her main performance outfit.

She may also outright ask you about what you think of her choice of outfit or general body shape saying something along the lines of, "I'm only curious t' know what y' think." In the context that she believes you're thinking of another in a romantic sense however, Beast might get a little pushy with you making sure that you're out of the path of anyone who could be considered a threat.

Dagger

Dagger is literally a whole other story once he's fallen for you. He's very outgoing and honest, not to mention he'll literally serve you compliments on a silver platter for completing even the simplest of tasks. You wore something new today, did your hair differently, got new pair of shoes? He's dying to tell you how great you look, showering you with love and affection.

Is it even possible to stay oblivious to this boy's feelings? He's all over you all the time, craving your praise, attention, literally anything and everything he can get out of you. So how and why on earth would you not acknowledge his efforts to present his feelings for you? It definitely runs through his mind that you could genuinely not feel the same for him.

Honestly, try getting him off of you once he's realized you aren't giving him the attention he wants anymore. Dagger isn't the type to act desperate, but it can surely come off that way at times. He'll even outright bring up this form of, "neglect," you've been giving him. I hope that he doesn't suspect anything between you and another member of the circus, because he'll do anything in his power to keep them away from you.

Dagger often proposes that you both train together, help him out with his act, or even silly little things like eating at the same table together in order to draw you out of any situation involving someone he sees as undeserving of your attention, insisting that you come with. As persistent as he is, he does know his boundaries and won't take it too far, most of the time anyways.

Doll

Doll is an awfully touchy person, and she isn't afraid of showing it. When she's not all dressed up with the main cast, she'll be out and about following you around left and right. This girl could talk for hours without getting bored and proves it when she's with you by literally talking your ear off. Not that you really mind, especially when she's coming up with some new ways to compliment you. Calling you, "alluring," and "incredibly skillful."

She's also very expressive with you, not caring to hide much from you. You'll probably know about how she's a first-tier member long before the sharing secrets phase in a friendship. She also enjoys helping you in every way she can, teaching you tips, tricks, and everything she can about the circus since she's, "more experienced than y'!"

Eventually she comes around to flirting with you shamelessly so, trying to catch your interest. "Lookin' great t'day love," and trust me, it doesn't stop there. Coming around to your disregardful mindset started annoying her though. She'll probably go to Snake or one of the other members in hopes of figuring out what she's doing wrong. "How can't they not see 'm 'n love with 'em?"

If it ever comes to a point where she believes that you may be in love with someone else, she will literally drive herself crazy about it. "Why don't they love m' like that, 'm I doin' somethin' wrong?" She'll pull you along, adamant that you spend more time with her instead of someone who's unimportant. Doll's jealousy is laid out on display for you, and she isn't shy about it either.

Wendy

Spending time with you has become the highlight of her days, and she could go on and on about whatever is on her mind just relaxing and being with you. Wendy fawns over things like your choice in style, your makeup on that given day, honestly anything and everything that is noticeable about you. She's such a sweetheart, caring for you and making sure you've got everything you could ever need.

Wendy is the yandere who might not even realize that her feelings towards you are considered romantic at first, taking her heart's increased pace as simply enjoying time spent with you as her friend. Once she does come to this realization, she's lovestruck and infatuated with you like no other. Honestly her change in behavior would probably be considered a bit concerning by the other members.

If she actually starts flirting or making moves on you and you manage to overlook her signals, she'll automatically go into overthinking mode. It would go something along the lines of, "What 'f they don't find me attractive? D' they think 'f someone else 'ere 's prettier than me??" Peter would probably be the one to notice and calm her down.

In the ensuing days, she'd probably get after anyone who got a little too close to you for her liking. Her main focus would be regaining your full attention, which much to her appeal, would probably be easy given her outgoing nature as your close friend. You can take my word for it when I say this girl isn't letting you go so easily, practically dragging you along with her just for some attention.

Peter

Peter is a little ignorant when it comes to showing his love for you Trying to court you for him is like trying to survive falling into a volcano, it's seemingly impossible. Don't underestimate him though, he does try his hardest for you. If you ever need help with your act, he's there for you. Couldn't grab a bite to eat from the mess tent in time? He'll share with you, just keep your mouth shut about it or he might get embarrassed.

For a while, Peter might be in denial about this little crush of his. After that stage passes however, he goes right into, 'If anyone at all ever hurt them I would take them out with my own two hands.' Not to mention he just might follow you around like a lost puppy, seeking out your attention. Though he'll never say it aloud, he does enjoy your when your attention is completely focused on him and him alone.

Once he realizes that you aren't understanding his hints, - bypassing his love for you - he just gets straight up pissed. What is he doing wrong? Is it because of his condition that you might find him unattractive compared to other circus members?? Bless your soul, if you thought he was clingy before he's not letting go of you now, and anyone who tries to start up a conversation with you is rudely interrupted by a short blonde who isn't having it.

Peter will go off at anyone who tries to speak with you even if it's simply an everyday conversation, no romantic ideals involved. He won't make it seem like the reasoning behind the way he's treating the lower-tier members is his jealousy and possessiveness over you, but some like Wendy might notice him having more sudden outbursts. He'll go as far as physically hurting someone over a harmless compliment about you. In his eyes, he should be the only one telling you such things.

Jumbo

Jumbo's ways of attempting to court you seem the usual, showing off his strengths and starting small talk with you. He enjoys the simple things, like complimenting your skills whenever you do well during practice, or listening to how your day went. Whether you're feeling down in the dumps, or having a wonderful day, he's always there to listen and chat with you.

The silence or calming atmosphere will put him at ease while he simply basks in your presence, even being near or just seeing you after a long day at the circus is enough to put a smile of his face. He cares a lot for you and your well-being, and simply can't imagine a world without you anymore. He may become aware of his feeling much later than he should, and once he does he begins noticing the other things too.

Like how you simply turn your back when he's performing, of course you watch every now and then but you only pay attention to him as much as a good friend should. Jumbo probably starts realizing that you may not feel the same way for him as he does for you, which he simply takes notice of to try harder. Playing the harmonica for you, complimenting your tastes as often as he can, and so on.

Eventually he understands that his efforts are going completely unnoticed in any kind of romantic sense. Could it be someone else has you wrapped around their finger or are you simply oblivious to his methods of courting you? Jumbo definitely seems like a gentle giant, so he probably won't hurt anyone even if they are testing their limits with you. Just a menacing glare from him and they'll know to back off, and he'll only even go that far if they're getting awfully touchy.

Snake

Snake trying to court you is.. practically bound to go south. Well, from his view anyways. He just wants your love and attention, but he's much more closed off than most of the other members which makes it harder to get his feelings through to you. He may absent mindedly gravitate closer to you in public settings, but he still doesn't say very much to you in his own voice.

He prefers to let his snakes talk for him, not often speaking to anyone himself. However, for you, he'll start slowly trying to start small conversations even if they only last moments. Sometimes he even watches you from afar while you're busy training with your act. When you notice him, maybe even flash him that pretty smile of yours, his cheeks will get all flushed and he'll scurry away.

Snake is rather insecure about himself, so he automatically assumes the way you brush off his subtle attempts of flirting with you is because you couldn't be interested in him with his out of the ordinary looks. In addition to that, he's probably not all that offended or upset if you tend to shrug him off just taking it as if he's not good enough.

Although, the other members[especially Doll] may end up offended on his behalf when noticing he the efforts he's putting in for you. He's trying his hardest, isn't he? Snake may be hesitant to step in if the cause of your disinterest in him is the fault of another who's caught your eye. Given his timid nature, I highly doubt he'd go to the extent of acting upon your disinterest in any way besides simply trying even harder for you.

────────── ʚ♡ɞ ──────────

Masterlist

[marineflamez]

Your interpretation of Spamton is really interesting, do you have any specific thoughts about each section of his life??? ( like addison, big shot, puppet)

warning, this is a huge autism rant LOL

addison era: i havent headcanoned much about his addison self tbh... the most ive got is hes transmasc and is very bird-like with feathers.....also cat-like too. i think the addisons in general act like that. another headcanon i have is that the addisons are naturally social creatures! they stick together and get depressed when alone, which is sad to think about considering the CircumstancesTM

big shot era: i think spamton during this era was at his highest career wise, and his lowest mental health wise (aside from his current mental health state). my headcanon is hed have a super inflated ego and lash out at people, but only to hide the deep rooted insecurity from knowing he only became successful from a phone. i imagine hed also feel paranoid and constantly anxious at the thought of losing it all, which ended up happening. the social nature of being an addison prolly also contributed to his decline since the addisons left him. so hed stick by the phone not only for advice, knowledge, etc... but for some type of social contact, albeit incomprehensible.

if you wanna see my headcanon for his character In ActionTM, i made a video on his big shot era here: https://youtu.be/OWeStag3dJk

puppet era: this is the most confusing one for me. i still to this day do not know how he became a puppet, if the addisons are puppets, when he became a puppet, etc... its such a confusing thing to wrap my head around. im a big fan of the acid theory and that it kinda melted him away ! however, i dont think it made him shorter bc he states he was always small in the qna, i believe... another theory that could be plausible is the force behind the phone slowly turned him into a puppet as like a "you get success, but only if i get to control you" type curse. idk! its a confusing timeline. regardless, i love his current form the most, aside from sneo. i think hes ageless, but still has the energy and features of a late 40-early 50 year old dude. i draw him with a receding hairline and damage to his puppet body. still transmasc also!

a huge thing i adore about his character is how unapologetically evil he is. he doesnt hide it, he admits hes evil and/or uses you for evil (in snowgrave). and the thing that fucks me up the most is, he had that thornring planned REGARDLESS OF THE ROUTE which is so scary. like if you beat his ass, hes like "whoa there dude! at least buy my ring! fuck you!" and runs off. that and the fact he kept trying to get that neo body. he is so desperate that he has multiple plans to get that body for god knows what.

also the trans allegories for him!!!!!!! love it!!!! like him really hating his puppet body and wanting to be bigger.... or like when u put the emptydisk in the mannequin with the dress, only for it to not wanna go in. like yeah it could be a interpreted as him wanting to go into sneo and not the mannequin, but given his connection to mettaton, who has some heavy trans allegories, i think it has more meaning than just "this isnt sneo!!!!" .,,, also the fact he gets such intense euphoria from being sneo. godddd i love trans spamton allegories!!!!!

spamton neo: my second favorite (almost first favorite) form of spamton. incomprehensible armor, but still killin it with those heeled boots!!!!! girlboss honestly

post sneo fight, i always found it interesting how his ark ends in a less hopeful, and more existentially dreadful manner. it almost feels unnecessarily cruel, but i think that the sad ending to his story is essential to get that hopeless "your choices dont matter" theme across. it also just shows how his hubris fucked him over in the end no matter what he did. ALSO HE DID NOT DIE!!!! people keep saying he died. he didnt. he literally has dialogue if u fill your inventory where hes like "bro???" so like. i think he just kinda gave up and turned into an item on his own accord, like jevil.

however, my favorite iteration of sneo is snowgrave. it really shows how genuinely fucking evil spamton is. he literally tries to stop you from being evil so HE can be evil, its so fucking awesome KJDJGSNKJSDNG

but like. fuck man, the dialogue is crazy good??? just peaking into his actual thoughts and insecurities and absolute self hate... muah. and getting that info from him self projecting onto kris? MUAH!!!!! i think its such a perfect battle for sneo because of how he tries to evade responsibility and hatred toward himself, or at least tries to make it sting less, by self projecting it onto kris. he hates kris, yeah, but its mostly just hatred toward himself, what hes become, and how far hes fallen from grace. and him trying to claw his way back to being successful- no BEYOND successful- and into world domination, is fucking harrowing. he is a fucking force of nature in the form of a YTP puppet.

i adore everything about the buildup to snowgrave sneo, the environmental storytelling, everything!!! it was only recently that i realized the scribbly lines around the mansion were his glitched advertisements.

also another thing that fucks me up: he killed his ex friend by proxy. absolute insane behavior its so. ohhmygod. i also love the connections to noelle and her being an angel. an angel sent to help him reach heaven... godddddd i love this shit

another thing i find so fascinating: his glitched speak in his sneo form is not as incomprehensible? its so eerie. hes like... he can better communicate his thoughts better and more coherently, which is genuinely so freaky because youre just so used to his nonsensical bullshit so its like. whoa. he was There Mentally all along, he just couldnt say it because of how fucked up and glitchy he was.

yes, i do believe he is like Completely There Mentally throughout the entire game. hes crazy as fuck, but he hasnt lost grasp on reality like jevil has. spamton has multiple plans concocted to get what he wants. hes smart! he knows what hes doing, and thats fucking Horrifying.

im tired of people saying he isnt evil or that hes just misunderstood. like yeah his circumstances are so unbelievably sad, but hes not some precious little creature who deserves to be protected... he is evil!!!!! he is evil and uses people to kill, or straight up tries to kill you himself! whether it be for freedom or his own demented plans of world domination!!!! and he outright says hes evil!!! he knows hes evil and doesnt give a shit, fuck, or damn!!!!

ok autism rant over :3 sorry if you read all that and were confused the entire time, spamton is my babygirl

[ganymedesclock]

The Sonic Series' kitchen sink elements are really... well, "kitchen sink" is a good way to put them. You got Shadow's backstory over here, characters stuck in particular eras or mediums, humans in some games but not others, etc, etc.

All that to ask this: how do you go about harmonizing the desperate elements of StH's various incarnations without doing what Frontiers did?

The short pithy funny answer is 'will it blend?'

The longer answer is. I think a lot of big long-running legacy franchises like Sonic, that have a zillion different branches and continuities and different this-and-thats that sometimes contradict each other and have about eighteen versions of the same story at any given time- think also most superhero media- are really, really fun to get into. People dread and fret if a particular incarnation is mediocre or too weird for their tastes, but I think the fun part of it is there's something worthwhile and interesting in almost all of these. Like I personally don't care for Sonic Chronicles very much at all, but I like Shade's visual design and I thought the alien designs were pretty neat, even if I don't think their lore fits well into the bigger Sonic universe and for the most part disregard them.

And there are zero consequences to me doing so! Basically, the franchise is your oyster. Take what you love and mix it up. This is why my personal longstanding Sonic AU has been what it is- it's not an exercise in me feeling like I'm "fixing the canon" because that's silly, it's not broken, but rather just making myself a fun smoothie out of the bits I really like.

It is so, so, so fun to me, to be in a world where stuff like Sonic Unleashed exists, that we can go, "yeah there was a whole game where Sonic was just a werewolf. yes he also had stretchy arms". The works both official and fannish that I've enjoyed the most tend to be ones that aren't afraid of being a little silly or digging into "worse" installments of the franchise to play with them.

I think it's very important that the Sonic series isn't afraid to be silly. At the end of the day it is a story about hedgehogs in running shoes fighting evil robot armies. This premise is never going to be stodgy and respectable and it doesn't need to be. It absolutely has it within itself to tell both serious and silly stories, and mix them together.

To also answer your question about reconciling, honestly, being willing to take a bunch of silly stuff from odd franchises and glue them together to make a more complete picture works wonders. Like, in pre-reboot archie comics- I'm talking back in the gag-a-day bizarre early stories- they just threw in a worldbuilding detail that Mobius has a colossal number of moons full of weird stuff; when the games have established Little Planet, Lost Hex, and Space Colony ARK as things floating around Mobius's general vicinity, taking that otherwise forgettable detail would line up a bunch of different things, and it lets me be cheeky about the thing where in the game canon, there's a blatant continuity error with the moon having a hole shot in it back in Adventure 2 and then in Shadow The Hedgehog, a game that heavily references the plot of Adventure 2, the full moon is very prominently featured.... with no missing chunk whatsoever. I can go, well, in my personal fanon, that's just a completely different moon!

[sstabhmontown]

De-advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons carries a lot of weight in the ideal imaginary “Old School”, but over the history of the “OSR” it has steadily receded. OSRIC never try to be the whole package as the B/X clones did, and since their success authors doing interesting work seem more and more drawn to either further simplified versions of Basic, or of course OD&D. As I was, starting out.

But the mystique and nostalgia of AD&D, and some of its specifics that still take up a lot of space still find ways into these games. The first big project I did on abulafia was an AD&D by way of Greenwood spellbook generator, even though another part of me wanted the abstraction that OD&D offered by never quite saying that spells were specifically in the books.

So with the party being near the end of their games, between level 7 and 10, as they started to divine questions like “where is the ark of the covenant” I knew a time was approaching to do something to cap things off. And in time for hallowe'en, I decided to prepare something special: The Tomb of Horrors.

There are a few defining features of AD&D specifically. It's rules for tournament play, with Gygax going to great length to talk about it being a proper, official way to play, even when it's filled with options, forgotten and abandoned rules, and contradictions. It also wears his voice, his language, in its strong opinions and questionable inclusions. His prejudice. And finally, it's a lot: the first time the game emerges as Three Hardcover Books. There are a lot of mechanics in there!

What is it to go back intentionally to OD&D, or folk D&D, or whatever other name you want to give the minimal style, specifically? We can see it when we look at this, one of the Most AD&D titles published: a tournament module, by Gygax, filled with strongly presented material, odd choices of detail, mechanics, and the works. Here's some of what I did.

Uhh, you probably shouldn't read this post if you think you might play in a game for this adventure, you know.

The Tournament

The Tomb of Horrors is the most exaggerated of Tournament modules: unlike many of the other adventures of the era, it never asks you to treat it any different. It's not part of a series, implying a continuous campaign, nor does it give you any tools really beyond a d6 list of possible places in Greyhawk it could be located.

I called the nearby desert the Bright Desert in recognition here. But the advice to include it in a campaign is bad advice. The adventure doesn't work in a campaign unless you do some work.

But first, the relief: they don't need to be level 10–14. Our group of level 6–10 did just fine.

It will require a full turn for searching each 10' of this cliff area. Search must be done from a distance with a long spear or 10' pole. Prodding must be high in order to colapse sufficient material to expose a portion of a tunnel entrance. Once an entrance is exposed, itwill require about 1 hour for 6 characters working in teams of 3 to thoroughly clear a passage, but a crawl space can be opened in 1 turn by 3 characters digging with a sword and hands...

Our magic-user conjured an earth elemental and spent the day clearing the entire hillside. Why would a party of powerful high level characters do any of this? The entire dungeon is shallowly just below the surface, making a complete excavation is trivial unless there's some time constraint (and there specifically isn't in the published module, with no wandering monsters). The dungeon is as unprepared for real characters as real characters are for its unfair traps—honestly a pleasing sort of symmetry.

Oh, there's one thing:

Note: Characters who become astral or ethereal in the Tomb will attract a type I-IV demon 1 in 6, with a check made each round.

This is the beginning of a tendency that I recall from my youth playing 2e, of arbitrary constraints to limit the effectiveness of high-level characters. It's one of the things I hate about AD&D design, and the avoidance of it is a big part of how the OSR is often thought of as a low-level game. So to me this is an opportunity to flesh something out about this adventure, and to try to wrestle with this problem in the game.

Like many other elements in the dungeon, this risk is presented only as rules text, without a fictional reason for this. So our strategy as we work through the dungeon can be this: to backfill a reason for each arbitrary decision, from which we can make future rulings. In some cases these rulings might be an extension, revision, or replacement of the rules text in the book. Where Gygax says a character's class ability doesn't work, let's build a framework of when it might, that we can play with.

Demons love this place but cannot entire it—Akererak has cursed them into the aether. Crossing will welcome them. The demons are imprisoned in the earth and the mortar the stonework in the dungeon, tunneling from without will free them.

Building on that idea, let's bring back in what I see as the central mechanic of old-school play: the encounter check. If you do the dungeon within the timeframe of the Tournament, sure, there will probably not be any wandering monsters. But because I've integrated torches and spells into the encounter die, we can't do without rolling—and some kind of delayed encounters will put some time pressure in when we don't have it. And—is this a tomb or not? Let's get some undead going.

Monsters approach only slowly. When you describe the monster's Spoor, foreshadowing it, add a check mark next to the encounter as it approaches. If you roll an encounter with a monster with no checkmark, do that Spoor procedure instead. Each week between visits, remove one check mark at random.

2d6 Encounters 2 Basilisk 3 Yellow mold spore 4 Gelatinous cube 5 2d6 Mummies 6 8hd Black Pudding 7 2d6 Wraiths 8 d6 Spectres 9 4d6 Gargoyles 10 Stone Golem 11 1d6 Phase Spiders 12 Demons breach from the aetheral

d6 Spoor 1–3 Check approach for an encounter (2d6) 4 Whispers in an ancient tongue echo the halls 5 Rumbling earthquake, a sign of what lies beneath 6 Blood drips from the walls themselves. Tell the party something they missed about the room they are in.

Finally, we can add another principle here: if the party wants to be careful, they can avoid a lot of trouble here. But they won't get far in a week. If it takes them six weeks of one-room adventures to find one of the major treasures that's a fair rate.

The Mechanics

While the dungeon encourages you to skip mechanics and procedures that define the rest of the game, it inserts loads of new ones. This is AD&D—and my aim is to remove these and replace them with principles to adjudicate the situtations from fiction instead. Let's work our way through some of them here.

All pits (except where noted to the contrary) throughout the Tomb are 10' deep and concealed by a counter-weighted trap door which opens as soon as any person steps on it. Thrusting with foce upon these traps with a pole will reveal them 4 in 6 (d6, 1–4). Those who step upon a pit lid will have a base 100% chance of falling, modified downwards by 1% per point of dexterity through 12, and 2% for each point about 12, i.e. dexterity of 13 = 14% chance of not falling into a pit, dexterity of 14 = 16%, 15 = 18%,...

OMG stop. D&D already includes a mechanic of saving throws, what is this for?

Pits: as the party quickly become aware that most every room in this dungeon contains a trap, make them be very specific about where they walk. The opening hallway is a great introduction to this, with a marked path.

When a character might move over a pit, but perhaps only glancingly, roll the standard 2-in-6 chance to trigger a trap—for each character. Do not reveal the trap's position unless it opens! If a character unambiguously moves over the trap, the chance is 4/6.

When a pit opens, everyone on the lid falls in. They may make saving throws against paralysis to avoid being caught on 1d4 poison spikes when they fall.

This is perhaps slightly less lethal, but with a decent sized party the pits are still more or less guaranteed to go off soon enough. In any case, my party found one pit and then avoided triggering any others. When you only cover one room per week, they won't be running out of Find Traps spells anyway.

Similarly, we can take the secret doors with unusually hard chances to find, and fit them roughly back onto the standard—I let Elves roll in the open, and clearly tell them of secrets when they roll 1–2. A door like #14 is infuriating here, with just an arbitrary 1-in-6 chance for no clearly stated reason, unless with gem of seeing. But for what? The dungeon has no dead ends, the players will clearly know there's a passage here, you aren't hiding anything with this nonsense.

Unless—it's a cramped crawlspace. I never let elves use their powers when they are encumbered, let's treat all the crawlspaces in the dungeon as one step of that. Then just make it hard to open, an invisible latch or something like it will do fine, ignore the rest of what Gygax says. I'm well-used to telling an Elf that there's some kind of false wall but not revealing the full workings of it!

The Voice

That this secret door is described only with a mechanic and not any tangible detail is absurd and play-hostile. And its all over this text.

Gygax is triumphant in his description of AD&D as the pinnacle of the form, yet he constantly derides his own work here by reinventing it. I'm sad to say that this particular vision of AD&D is still a vital part of the Product of D&D:

2020 CHANGED THE WORLD, and it changed D&D. Most tables are telling stories now in much the same way as old radio plays: crackling voices, ribald laughter, and under it all, the gentle hiss of line noise. Change—long coming, always unstoppable—accelerated. The process of running a game became centered on ceding control to players and to mechanics, finding ways to engage everyone at once. The lines between art and design have blurred everywhere else. It was inevitable that would happen to this hobby. For the first time in almost forty years, there's been a categorical change in how stories are told and in the tradecraft used to tell them. —Incredibly cringe One Night Strahd copy, navigating the official/unoffical divide as a 5e derivative, as quoted by diregrizzlybear on the OSR discord

I've long been suspicious of the OSR mission statement of “Rulings not Rules” as I love rules—and here you can see that I want to fall back to the rules of my game because I adapted, wrote, or chose them either on my own or in collaboration with my players, and I'm quite certain that we did so for good reasons. But holy hell do I feel it when I read this kind of stuff. Having just got into a needless argument (it was fine) on another discord server about what makes something OSR I am quite confident in this idea: my mission in old-school games is to make sure none of this bullshit makes it to my table.

So here's some rules for you, the kind of rules you might call Rulings or Principles for playing this dungeon. My extended notes are just a couple of pages with a few words adding to each room with how I interpret stuff that doesn't fit my OD&D game, but you can make your own version of this as you read through the dungeon. The italic blocks up above are basically sourced from that.

The dungeon is famous. Like Heracles and Thor, Akererak exists somewhere deep in the history of every fantasy world. If no one in your play group is going to recognize the green face trap and know they are in The Tomb of Horrors, you'd better tell them they are—but if they are nerds, you can let that be the revelation. (I spell it with a K as a long-winded joke about how his legend comes to us via fantasy-ancient-greek sources.)

Use the rules of the game, adapted to the situation of the text, not the other way around. Negotiate places where the text says a character's main thing doesn't work—let it work, at a cost, or only in an inconvenient scope. The spell of Knock can open a lock, but only like turning a key once.

The dungeon key is for the referee. The pictures are for your eyes, and the countdowns are ones you don't need to do out loud—just make inaction matter.

Doors are stone! Destroy exotic materials and let the mythic underworld do its thing. If an item is warded against magic, that is itself a magic rune, someplace on the object, discoverable in its own way.

Wandering monsters always exist, even if they are slow.

This dungeon is here for a reason, and all of the ends of this adventure are real ends.

While you read through, you'll be able to note things that could have been clearer in the original, like a point-form version of how to trigger various outcomes on the arch in room 5, or the order of the vats in #19. You can note that room 9 is a mechanism of perpetual motion, the moving parts striking characters, rather than some silly crossbow that doesn't follow any crossbow rules you've ever seen. And you can think about the cramped crawlspaces in terms of encumbrance.

At hallway 15, you can simply have the players roll as if they are opening a regular dungeon door and fall when they roll the 1–2 they would need to heave them open, obviating an enormous paragraph. And when Gygax instructs you to count out loud, make a clock, and mark it every time the players talk but do not choose to escape the trap.

You can already find my version of The Demi-lich in my rules supplement:

A spell researched to shatter the magic gemstones of the skull might deal two dice of damage to the monster, and a charm of forgetfulness or Dispel Evil counters its rise for a round. A Fighter sworn to a Quest to destroy the monster, a Paladin, or a wielder of a Vorpal blade all deal normal damage to the skull with their magic swords, denying the Wraith-form any energy.

The ending

As we've teased out demons in the aether and the earthquake theme, we discover what the dungeon means to the world.

If the Tomb buries itself in an earthquake, “illusion” is not enough: the demon Behemoth is deeper still in the hill, in a bricked-off chamber, and its binding was a part of Akererak's dealings in death here. The Jade Coffer in the false tomb is indeed one of the true treasures: The Ark of the Covenant, containing as well as healing potions the tablet contract bargaining the Lich's afterlife until that demon wakes to bring the end times to earth. When the canonical AD&D party defeats him, after all, he lives on to be reintroduced every edition, and so this eternal bargain is a part of the end of all things.

It's been one year since his tomb was plundered, and our Monday night party seeks out the dead god Môt from a sealed chamber under ruined Char-el in order to change the arrangements of the gods in the heavens and rewrite the contract. They must do so before Akererak overcomes the Demi-gorgon in the Realm of Pure Thought beyond the firmament and discovers how to return to the world.

Good luck.

[askroahmmythril]

The Durgon and Monster Catching Games

So recently, I had someone ask me about other monster catching / raising type games that I’ve played aside from Pokémon, and my thoughts on them.  I got to thinking about that, so here’s a bit more detail on the subject.

Category 1 - The Baseline

Pokémon - So this is obviously the biggest monster catching series I got into.  When the original games released in the US, I actually didn’t take major notice of them.  What first got me interested was a comic adaptation of the first few episodes of the anime that was featured in Nintendo Power.  I started looking more into it, really liked the various Pokémon designs and names, and decided to try it out, and was instantly hooked.  I’ve thus been a fan since the original days of Red and Blue.  That’s not to say it’s a perfect series, I certainly have my issues with it here and there, and miss the days of being able to import ALL my trained up Pokémon into the new games, but I still tend to enjoy the games for what new species they offer.  I... will say though that Scarlet and Violet definitely showed they need to take a bit more of a development cycle between games...  I sincerely hope they continue to patch and improve the game, here’s hoping.  Still fun, but you can definitely tell there was rushing and crunch involved.  (I do say this while working on breeding my third Paldean team, so obviously I AM enjoying my time with the games)

Category 2 - Other Series I Have Played

Siralim - I’ve only played one game in this series, Siralim Ultimate, however I greatly enjoy it.  I’ve put a lot of time into the game on Steam.  If memory serves, a few of my friends were into the game, I want to say Kit, Ark, and Chompie were all playing it on and off.  I enjoy working with Kit to try experimenting with “gym leader” teams of a single family of creatures to see how their skills can interact.  I don’t know too much about earlier games in the series, I think Kit tried Siralim 3, but said Ultimate was more user friendly.

Monster Sanctuary - I never really got too far into this one.  It’s one I want to give more of a chance at some point, but I’ve been pretty occupied with other games.  It seems like an interesting concept though, a Monster Catching game that works as sort of a Metroidvania platformer?  Honestly a cool concept.

Dragon Warrior Monsters - Or is it Dragon Quest?  I always get confused.  Is that just a regional thing?  Anyway, I did mostly enjoy the first two games (I never had access to the later ones).  Mostly though I tended to just see how many types of Slimes I could raise.  I remember not liking a few things though, the rather limited number of monsters you could keep, the fact that they left if you bred them, and that you were limited to four character names.  Also while I get that it was supposed to be “your view” in battle, as well as just being how the early Dragon Warrior games were, it felt kind of lacking that you never actually got to see your own monsters fight.

Yo-Kai Watch - This is another one that hit some notes from Pokémon that I like.  I liked the various creature designs and names.  This game also hits a major point I want to make here : it’s NOT a Pokémon ripoff, as a lot of people seem to think.  It definitely does its own thing, it has a very unique type of battle flow.  It’s a game that’s not afraid to experiment, as I think I’ve been told the battle system even tends to change between games.  I will say though that I tended to not really feel too in control during fights, and catching new Yo-Kai could be a bit annoying as you only got to even TRY to lure one Yo-Kai per battle to your side, and you only got one attempt to do so.  Still overall, quite enjoyable.  Though the whole Shadowside thing was... quite the tonal shift that I didn’t care for.  Which I think I recall hearing that they toned it down / lessened the focus on it?

Robopon - Oh man, anyone remember this one?  How far did the series even go, I honestly forget?  I played one of them, and... my playthrough did not go well, haha.  I kind of just ended up with this one cell phone based robot and got stuck in an area with stuff way beyond my level, an encounter rate that put any Zubat cave to shame, and no real way to survive, haha.  It was another of those though where I did like the monster designs overall.

Coromon - This is another one I didn’t get too far into, but for a more direct reason : a major power level issue.  Enemy levels went up very fast to a point where you were stuck grinding in each area for what felt like way too long to me.  A friend of mine who was also playing the game, Lucy, stuck with it longer than I did, and it sounded like the problem doesn’t really get better as the game progresses...  Monster designs were kind of hit and miss for me, but overall I did like them.

Touhou Puppet Dance Performance - Pretty much this is solidly just Pokémon with a coat of Touhou paint.  Pretty solidly enjoyable, I liked it.  The fact that you can basically pick whatever puppet you want as your starter was a fun choice as well.  I think my only sticking point was it was kind of a hassle to get the game up and running since it required language support that my computer really did not enjoy having to use, haha.

Category 3 - Other Series I Know But Haven’t Played

Nexomon - Kit played this one, so most of my knowledge of this one comes from him, and just images I’ve seen.  The monster designs themselves look really nice to me.  From what Kit’s told me though, the game does have a bit of an issue with movepool starvation.  Creatures only seem to get moves of their own type and normal moves, and that’s about it, not much in the way of coverage.  Still the monsters themselves at least look nice.

Temtem - I’ve had a few friends that have played this one and... sadly it sounds like an exercise in frustration.  Though again, what I’ve seen of the monster designs look good.  I really want that water platypus to be an actual Pokémon...  I forget what ALL the details are that make the game frustrating, but a big one I remember is breeding mechanics.  Each monster has a randomized and hidden stat that determines how many TIMES it’s allowed to breed.  So it sounds pretty limiting and the way it’s done just sounds like it’s purely there for frustration’s sake.  It seems like one of those things where it takes a common complaint of “Pokémon is too easy” and veers too far in the other direction.

World of Final Fantasy - I at least THINK that’s what it was called?  This one, Neo was largely into.  From his description, I wouldn’t be adverse to trying this one out, but it’s one of those “priorities when it comes to buying things” issues I suppose.

Digimon - I never really got into Digimon.  The monster designs admittedly don’t really do it for me, and the naming convention of everything being “somethingmon” feels kind of boring to me (I’m aware there’s probably some level of irony that I love classic Mega Man and most of the bosses are “Something Man.”).  Naturally, nothing against anyone that DOES enjoy the series, it just never really caught on with me personally.

Category 4 - The Odd One Out

Monster Rancher - I’ve never actually played a main series Monster Rancher game.  I DID however play one of the spinoff games... though I don’t really remember all that much about it.  Just that it was a card-based game on the GBC I think it was?  From what I know of the mainline series, the overall concept is an interesting one that sadly is kinda lost to time because CDs these days.  However, from what I’ve seen of the game itself, I’m not sure how much control you really have in battle?  Also I know one of the mechanics of the game is your monsters actually do age and die, which... kind of a turnoff for me admittedly.

That’s all I can really think of at the moment as far as my experience with various Monster Catching games.  I feel like I MAY have missed one or two that I just don’t remember as clearly, and I’m sure there’s a ton of them out there that I don’t actually know of, haha.  For now, time to go back to working on my third Paldean team because guess who’s having sleep problems~

[robotnik-mun]

Looking back on your Sonic X thoughts on how it didn’t give out a good amount of depth to the “Eggman connection to Earth” thing, which I agree, I had a thought the other night that maybe Gerald Robotnik and the Space Colony ARK originated from Sonic’s universe, yet they transported to Earth where they allied with the United States. They also maintained contact with their native universe for a time as well until things got hectic.

As for the time discrepancies, perhaps Sonic’s world was still recovering from the would’ve been time crash after season two, while Doctor Eggman experienced time naturally growing up before the events of the series? It makes sense somewhat.

Still, depending on Eggman’s age, I think some good role swaps could happen by playing around with the X time scaling even before the events of the series. For one example, if fifty years on Earth meant four years and two months on Sonic’s planet, then perhaps Eggman would be swapped out for Doctor Don’t from Sonic Prime.

I know it’s kind of early to hypothesize about Prime, but I can just imagine so many ways to feature the Chaos Councilors aside from Eggman. Nonetheless, I’d like to see if a lot of these new characters have more to them than what their first impressions handed out.

Bit late on this, apologies, but at the end of it you can honestly do whatever you like. You'd still be putting more thought into things than the actual writers of X did.

[koisuni]

*I’m Koi, I used to go by Fruity but I got tired of homophobic assholes so if some of my art has the watermark “Fruity”, that’s still me don’t worry!

*I play a lot of different games, like Elden Ring, Minecraft, Skyrim, Terraria, Pokemon, and Ark! I’m big into fantasy and horror creatures, tho I’m a bit embarrassed to talk about my interests.

*My favorite animal is probably the Bearded Vulture but honestly? Who knows because so many animals are just amazing. I also like big cats, betta fish, lizards, bats, and various birds! The only animal I'm not super fond of would be chimps

*My favorite pokemon are Noivern, Incineroar, and Obstagoon! Though I also really like Walking Wake, Entei, and Solgaleo

*My persona is based off of koi bettas, which are my favorite fish! She’s a druid fish lady with imp-like features cuz I’m often getting into mischief.

*I have a gargoyle gecko named Monkey and I love her to bits! I’m trying to work up the courage to do commissions so I can upgrade her tank soon!

*I hope I’m a nice enough person to talk to so don’t be afraid to reach out!

Unless you’re a pedo or someone into other bad stuff like incest. Then fuck off.

[junesprojects]

📺 CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT 📺

Introducing Page Artist Limp!

Full interview below:

Q: Please tell us about yourself!

A: Yo!! My name is Limp and I simp for fictional characters – I'm in multiple fandoms but currently enjoy self-insert shipping, Persona 4/5, and Danganronpa:THH. I'm really grateful to be drawing for AOA, thank you very much for having me!! :3c

Q: Who is your favorite Persona 4 character and why?

A: It's a 3-way tie between Mitsuo Kubo, Adachi, and Namatame. I could write paragraphs as to why, so instead I'll just give a quick summary: Namatame had nothing but good intentions, Adachi created his own shitty reality, and Mitsuo Kubo did nothing wrong/deserved better.

Q: Which Persona 4 characters do you find fun to draw and why?

A: I love going down and completing the checklist that is Mitsuo's prominent facial features (pupil-less eyes, the shape of his jaw, long eyelashes, etc.). He's just so visually different from other characters in P4, I don't think I'll ever get tired of drawing him. Adachi is also pretty fun to doodle – I enjoy drawing his horrible haircut and trying to find the perfect handsome-to-goofy ratio.

Q: What are your favorite Persona 4 ships?

A: Probably Yu/Yosuke, Kanji/Ayane/Naoki, Chie/Yukiko, and Teddie/any boy.

Q: Which Arcana do you see yourself as?

A: Either the Moon or Fortune.

Q: Do you have a favorite Persona?

A: Jiraiya!! He's so cool...

Q: How did you get into the Persona series?

A: Mid-2021 my sister received both P4G and P5 as a gift for her birthday - I got to play 5 while she tried out 4. Our PlayStation eventually stopped working (right before I was gonna send the Ark calling card...arrggHHH ;_;) so I gave 4 a shot! I had been avoiding Persona for years because of an ex-friend but came around to it due to better ones. Feels good!! ^u^

Q: What would you like to accomplish with your contribution to AOA zine?

A: Honestly? I just want to have fun, practice drawing full pieces, and subject others to my Mitsuo brainrot. :9 Nobody out here drawing my boy(s) so I thought I'd join and cook my own food.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing Tidbit DRAMA…

… So… Had an idea… And ran w/ it a little. ^^

Short version: the Ark is twisted as all hell and it doe snot have a good effect on any member of MBJR.

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

Even disconnected from the Ark, Horobi knew where to go. The forest around the Daybreak site was extensive and confusing for humans, the perfect place to move about unnoticed. It didn’t take him long to find them, the MagGear marching out of the mist and falling into formation like they had been expecting him—which, naturally, they had.

Sunlight began to cut through the mist, and the MaGear held their positions—Horobi hesitated as well, unsure if they could be waiting for what he hoped they were. Then there was another light along with the sun, a blaze of red that swooped through the sky and wove amongst the trees before coming to land on the ground between him and the Trilobite. The glow faded, revealing a tall, crimson figure, gleaming in the morning light—a form he knew of but had never seen before. It felt like everything that could breathe was holding it in, and even things that couldn’t, too, as the figure just stood there, staring off into the trees for a long moment. Then, slowly, they raised a hand to their belt, pulling out the Key and turning back to look at him as the armour disappeared into red light.

And his entire system shorted out.

He’s alive.

Horobi didn’t feel it when his legs gave out until his knees hit the ground, and he had to catch himself with both hands. His system glitched even more, everything else fading into the background—his vision telescoped, his surroundings going completely silent; he couldn’t even feel the air around him or the dirt beneath him. Nothing mattered except the singular thought overtaking his whole mind:

He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive he’s alive he’s alive he’s alive he’s alive…!

He heard the footsteps on the dry leaves because of who they belonged to—then felt fingertips brush his cheek. The hand slipped down to gently cup his chin, tilting his face up so that he was looking into the dark eyes above him. HumaGear could not cry, but in that moment, he felt like he should have been able to.

The sunlight was behind Jin, illuminating his hair so that it looked almost like a crown. His expression was largely emotionless, nothing like his past childish personality, no pouts or small smiles. Something about that felt wrong, tugged at Horobi’s chest in a way that he couldn’t compute—but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Jin was here, alive and awake, with a crown of light and the MaGear rallying behind him. What mattered was taking in this moment of serenity, that they were reunited, while it lasted.

For a long time, they just stared at each other—until Horobi couldn’t bear the silence anymore, or the waiting. “… Jin…” His voice was weaker than a whisper, and it felt like Jin’s hand on his face was the only thing keeping him up—shakily, he forced one of his arms to move, reaching slowly upwards. “… My king…” His voice trailed off into the grating, mechanical sound that the humans hadn’t bothered to repair, and the trembling had spread down his arm to the rest of him. “… My son…” His fingers brushed Jin’s sleeve…

With a snap of his wrist, Jin threw him roughly head-first to the ground. He struggled to get back up, but heard two steps behind him—a foot came down on his head, pinning it to the ground. “A failure like you…” Hissed a voice above him that was both familiar in its sound and unfamiliar in the cold, ruthless tone, “… Has no right to use those words.”

Horobi didn’t struggle at all, even when the foot pressed harder, grinding his head into the dirt. He had failed. He’d failed to even make a dent in the human population, allowed Zero-One to delay plans again and again, and then even her awakening had been botched—she hadn’t been anywhere near full power. He’d even failed to die properly, been repaired by humans, and who knew what else they had learned while picking him apart. His only saving grace was that he had managed to guide Jin here, to his rightful place—and even that he had only barely accomplished, and only because the Ark herself had stepped in. He was defective. He didn’t bother trying to ask for forgiveness because he deserved none—this was his fitting punishment.

Jin kept stepping on his head for a little longer, but soon became bored of that—it seemed he had retained his shorter attention span and need for amusement, even if the type of entertainment had changed. His foot disappeared from Horobi’s head, only to connect hard with his father’s shoulder, knocking him violently onto his back. He wasn’t there for long, because Jin bent sharply down and grabbed him by the throat, pulling him back up. HumaGear didn’t need to breathe, but the grip was painful in another way—it was putting unbearable pressure on the components connecting his systems, the stress making his vision glitch wildly and a horrible screeching static fill his hearing.

His arms, however, stayed by his sides, and he still didn’t fight; merely awaiting whatever judgement his… His king elected to pass down.

“Though you did at least manage your most important mission…” Jin’s frozen face appeared above him again, and Horobi’s malfunctioning vision somehow zeroed in on him. Then the muzzle of Jin’s handgun was pressing against the side of his head, shoving the edge of his head wrap out of the way to jam against the damaged sections. “… Perhaps that warrants a quick end…?” The gun pushed harder against his head, twisting around to dig deeper into the exposed mechanics. “You’ve served your purpose, after all…”

Horobi faintly heard a finger tapping thoughtfully against the trigger, contemplating what to do. He kept waiting, using what little function his systems still had to focus exclusively on Jin. If Jin and the Ark did conclude to make this his execution site, all he needed was for the last thing he saw to be his… His…

His shame prevented him from finishing that thought.

But the silence stretched on, and Jin just kept… Staring at him.

Then, slowly, the pressure on his throat eased, and the gun disappeared, and he was collapsing back on the ground in a trembling heap. “… Perhaps…” Jin’s voice sounded strange—different than before. Shaky. Uncertain. Horobi dragged his head back up just enough to peer upwards from the corners of his eyes. Jin was still staring at him, but his expression wasn’t as cold as before—there was something… Familiar about it. Softer. “… Perhaps you still have some use.” He fell silent again, the familiar look persisting, and Horobi almost called out to him…

Then the expression vanished, and Jin went cold once more. “… Come.” He ordered, an edge of disgust coming into his voice. Then he turned on his heel and marched off without a backward glance, the MaGear falling into rank behind him.

Horobi didn’t waste a moment, scrambling to his feet as quickly as he could. He took a moment to find him balance, righting his head wrap and giving his systems some time to realign—but no more than they absolutely needed. The moment he was able, he forced his legs to work, and stumbled hurriedly after Jin.

As was the will of the Ark.

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

Oh, my poor boys… I know I did this, but my poor boys.

[ebachan]

SCU - What could be in Sonic Movie 3

Hi,

So, here is another post centering on Sonic Movie 3. In my previous post, I analyzed the post-credit scene, giving a few ideas of how it could tie back to the first movie and what it could mean. Here, I want to present a list of what could be in the next movie, separating the ideas based on characters or places.

Again, I’m tagging this for spoilers, and so, please, you too. 😉😉

For the general idea, I would love to see them combining SA2 and Shadow the Hedgehog games. Both are heavily connected to Shadow, and while both games have their plot holes, they give Shadow depth and a new direction. I enjoyed Shadow’s game, since it’s the only one with multiple endings. It also explores the possibilities of how Shadow can change and decide based on the circumstances.  

Shadow

He is a Black Arms alien, but still a hybrid. Could be as an experiment to see how well a hybrid can do the “job” and infiltrate the planets to prepare them or harvesting.

He is an “ordinary” alien, like Sonic, searching for Master Emerald. Can be for Black Doom or for himself to be more powerful. Or possibly to bring back somebody or something he had lost.

He definitely isn’t created on Earth. The technology isn’t advanced enough to allow it. The Ark also doesn’t exist in space, but it could be a name of the Black Site.

He could come to Earth after crashing or by choice, but still captured by the military while being surprised. Given he should be combat skilled like Knuckles, it seems like the “only option”.

Since Rings seem to be the most common way to travel between planets, we can expect him to use them. Would be cool to get more insight into them as well. Like how they are produced and with some luck, we may get Red Star Rings 😍

Before being put into stasis, he would swore he would take a revenge upon humanity.

I know this would be too much for a kid’s movie, but I can imagine Shadow was “given electric shocks” to keep him in check or high doses or paralyzing gas during his stay in the lab.

He likes to “comb” his quills as seen in his game. It can be possible for him to be “proud” of his features, but not narcistic. He may just dislike being messy.

Maria

She lived on Earth, and I would love to see her having a similar role as in the games.

She can be a child, but her being an adult working in Black Site and meeting Shadow there would be really cool.

She would be cheerful and kind, befriending Shadow, who would be used by others like an object.

May or may not be related to Robotnik.

She would still be terminally ill, but using her remaining time to make a better future.

Amy Rose

I can see her working in this movie.

Her personality could be changed a bit to be tom-boyish, but still liking girls-tuff like clothes or makeup.

She would show “romantic interest” in Sonic like a crush, but not to the point of saying “you will marry me” when she is 14 😅😅🤔

Act like a big sister to the boys, and being the most level-headed and a good leader. I can see her trying to “control” Sonic’s reckless behavior, so he wouldn’t get hurt.

Just like Sonic, she would have a high level of empathy, being able to see good in others.

Would be nice for her to have slight psychic abilities, like a stronger intuition. That could help with “searching” for people she bonded with.

Her Piko Piko Hammer is must 😁 A manifestation of her Chaos abilities.

She could be the one to show Shadow the “wrongs” of his plan for revenge, like in the games. But I’ve seen an idea here that this could be done by Sonic too. If there is no Amy, I’m all for it. Or Maddie could be the one as well. It could have an impact, since she is human and still connects with Shadow, who hates humanity.

G.U.N.

More prominent and competent role. Because honestly, in SA2, they sucked and did little to nothing to help. In Shadow’s game, they were more active and part of the story and made an impact.

The Commander Walter was involved with Project Shadow, but not directly. I can see him losing somebody close to him, and thus hating Shadow. It could be Maria if both were children. Or somebody from his unit, like the commander he respected.

He would learn about Project Shadow after becoming a commander. But I can imagine him still missing the key features and details.

They would still go after Sonic and Co, perhaps sending another secret agent to monitor them. This time a woman who would settle down in Green Hills.

Black Site/Ark/Prison Island

Could be modeled after Ark or Prison Island or both.

A place where Shadow would be kept, experimented on, and imprisoned in the pod.

Definitely in Antarctica since that place is ice-covered. And we already had Siberia, so, a new place?

Underwater doesn’t sound right or possible.

Ark can’t be a space colony since in SA2 it was powered by Chaos Drive (if I remember that right), and ChE or ME are unknown to humanity. Solar energy could be possible, but it seems like a stretch. Also, the post-credit scene talks about coordinates, and I don’t think that would apply to space 😅 

Prison Island is more possible to exist in the movie. It’s a simple location.

BlackDoom

Very similar to his game counterpart - cruel, manipulative, and calculating.

Could be the final boss, but I can see him work more in a theoretical Shadow’s spinoff. The movie can have hints towards him and/or BA race.

Exploring the Black Arms lore would be so cool. We got basically nothing about them. Why is BD determinate to harvest planets? Why are BAs connected by hive-mind? How did the race come to be?

Black Comet can work since that’s 100% alien stuff :-D

I would scream with joy if they would hint BA like Eclipse from Archie Sonic comics. That would put Shadow in front of a new arc of him going against a non-mindless living-weapon, but basically himself.

Rouge the Bat

She needs to be introduced sooner than in this movie. Shadow is too complex to “share the spotlight”. It worked for Knuckles and Tails since they are “quite simple” past-wise. Knuckles’ Spinoff is the perfect place for it.

Her original role was bounded to the fact Sonic and Co weren’t “aliens” among humans. So, that’s a big pass here.

However, she is Jewel Hunter/Thief, and thus, following leads to Master Emerald, she would find her way to Earth and to Knuckles.

There she can get involved, perhaps teaming up with Shadow/Agent Stone, but she would ultimately “betray” them in favor of her goal or greater good.

Later, she could become part of G.U.N., but it seems unlikely as it stands now.

Agent Stone

Takes after Dr. Robotnik, inheriting his mentality and awakening his genius. He is the most capable assistant, after all.

I doubt Dr. Robotnik had the Mean Bean hide out planned beforehand. Agent Stone gained that place in the pre-quill comic and “redecorated” it.

He also showed he had two Control Gloves and could use them with ease.

Based on the post-credit scene, he overheard them. His next step will be to get the data and check and use Project Shadow in his revenge against humanity and especially that blue pincushion 😆

Would be cool to tease Metal Sonic, as Agent Stone sees non-robotic partners as unreliable.

He would introduce Shadow to coffee and coffee beans.

Dr. Robotnik

Hmm, if he returns, he would probably take Agent Stone’s role in waking up Shadow and plotting to destroy the Earth.

But with Stone showing how capable he is, the movie can work without him as well.

Event

Collecting Chaos Emeralds - They were “scattered“ by the end, and if Shadow somehow knows about them, he would collect them.

Or the Emeralds can be collected during Knuckles’ spin-off with the last one or two being in the movie. 

Super Shadow and Super Sonic fight - Like, it’s no brainier XD

G.U.N. hunting Shadow, Sonic and the rest - They are still determinate to contain them somehow. But they can also form a “partnership” by the end of the movie.

I wonder if there would be “Shadow’s death” by the end. 

Commander Walter and Shadow would have a confrontation. Shadow would want to kill him (for obvious reasons), and Sonic would save the human, earning more disdain from Shadow. Something similar was in his game, but Shadow and Commander Tower reconciled and formed partnership.

Maddie having a scene with Shadow - I believe she deserves more action and fulfilling moments. The 2nd movie showed what she is capable, and what she will do to protect her family.

Post-Credit scene - Metal Sonic or Chaos. It’s too soon for Silver and/or Blaze and given how complex their stories are, they are more TV-series material for the length. Sonic Unleashed is also a story needing more time and characters to introduce.

I guess this sums up my thoughts and ideas :-) Nothing really shocking, and I’m sure I’m like 95% off XD 

[armoredisopod]

Just felt like compiling some stuff i remember/thought worth mentioning from the two Arknights anniversary livestreams today

JP Livestream

A lot of merchandise and banter, like 3 hours of merchandise and banter

Max Risk CC Spectrum is apparently possible and 0.004% of players in the JP server did it

Dossoles Holiday confirmed to start on 14th/15th depending on timezone after the usual maintenance

Some decent operator skills display (compared to Under Tides JP livestream at least), Ch'en Alter 3-tapping some Ursus Imperial Guards with her skill 3 is fun to see and Mizuki's S3 showcase looked like a paradox sim stage

They made a new original song featuring Sora and sold it as a vinyl record, then proceeded to talk about the behind the scenes of it for like half an hour

Arknights anime key visual revealed, along with Takeshi Matsuyama as Ace's VA and a microscopic teaser of Dokutah's voice at the end

They didn't show the actual event PV not sure why

KR Livestream

Before the livestream started they had a timetable for the contents of the livestream itself

Started with a brand new collaboration song 'Crack in the Ark' MV performed by Korean rock band Guckkasten

Did a lot of giveaways and quizzes, one segment had a quiz show that ran for 20 minutes

Showed a lot of playerbase stats from the past 6 months, unsurprisingly KR players love R6S so much to the point that Tachanka is #9 most used Guard (and that's honestly pretty impressive considering his competition), Blitz is #6 most used Defender above Nian and Frost is #2 most used Specialist behind Phantom, also reportedly 88% of the KR playerbase pulled Ash from the collab

A segment where someone made a cool replica of Guard Amiya's sword and ended off with a neat Guard Amiya cosplay

They showed the actual Dossoles Holiday event PV and did a recap afterwards with more detail on the operators' skills and high tides event gimmick

Oh there's also Amiya and Mudrock vtuber models narrating the recap segment, both KR voiced, Mudrock stayed in her suit up until they started talking about the new line of Coral Coast skins with hers being the first and they switched the vtuber model to the summer skin

Confirmed that KR voicelines are in the works for KR version, unknown if it's strictly for that version or if all versions will get it, JP livestream didn't mention anything about getting CN voicelines either

Announced that Blaze, Broca, Greythroat, Reed and Ambriel are being added to recruitment

The whole thing ended around 1 and a half hours before JP livestream finally ended

EN livestream should be around 10 hours from now at the time of writing and honestly after sitting through the entirety of JP livestream i just hope it's short and shows playerbase stats, people keep saying it'll be awkward but i'm sure i'll live as long as they can keep audience retention

[deltaengineering]

Fall Anime 2021: Extra Large

It appears that tumblr has put a limit on the number of images per post. Oh well, I'll just use good ones I have then. Speaking of which...

Tawawa on Monday S2

I watched the original Tawawa and didn't like it, because ginourmous gazongas are as lowbrow as cultured interests get and it occasionally panned up to show faces, which I didn't like either. So why watch the sequel? Well... it made a good companion piece to Douki-chan and a show doesn't actually have to be good for a few minutes a week. I'll say that it's slightly better than S1, because it's better made and at least occasionally as absurd as it needs to be. 4/10

Adventure Anime Triple Feature feat. Takt Op.: Destiny / Fena: Pirate Princess / Sacks&Guns!!

I'm just going to group these three together because they have a lot in common: They're all old-fashioned odd-couple action-adventure hyphenated-anime. They're also all not good, and the most fun I can get out of this is pointing out how they're differently bad.

To start with the most obviously bad one, Takt Op.: Destiny is just severely lacking in most regards that matter. If nothing else, it gave me a lot of newfound appreciation for the kind of deep, multifaceted relationship memetic dumbass Shirou and fencepost-with-a-frown-on-it Saber have. I can really only assume the people behind Takt Op saw that and thought "well, if even Fate can do it it can't be that hard" – but the joke's on them, since for all its faults, Fate is at least intricate and fundamentally well thought out while Takt Op is as shallow as a puddle. This goes from top to bottom: Takt is an utterly unlikeable theater kid that gets a pass from everyone (especially the script authors) because he is good at teh musics – and every time the show pretends to be about music (which it most definitely is not even remotely), it reads as laughably pretentious. The villains are moustache twirlers that would have been parody fodder in an SNES JRPG. Battles consists of overdesigned girls shooting lazors while the dudes stand aside and wave a stick around. The setting only makes sense as an alternate timeline where headphones were curiously never invented. And why yes, this can all be handily explained with this being based on a mobile RPG that desperately wants to be F/go, but that gets us right back to the "lacking Fate's underappreciated fundamentals" part again – and by fundamentals I mean stuff as fundamental as "Masters are humans so shoot them first". That said, it's not all bad; Takt Op has some upsides that keep it from being entirely worthless, such as the fights occasionally looking really neat and things like "Destiny eats a pancake and dunks on Takt" indeed being the kind of surefire, no-effort-required crowd pleaser that the makers seem to have thought the whole show would be. Mostly bad is still bad though, and honestly one of the best aspects of it is that "trying too hard" is not an avenue of failure it opens itself up to often. 4/10

Fena: Pirate Princess has the opposite problem; where Takt Op doesn't seem to aspire to anything but being a superficial Fate copy, Fena goes off in so many scatterbrained directions that it's hard to tell what it's even supposed to be. Sure, at first it seems like it's going to be an Akatsuki no Yona type story where the princess learns to get increasingly badass while going on a treasure hunt, but you might be surprised to hear that by the end of it, Fena barely turns out to be a character in her own story. There's so many characters and subplots that barely any of them go anywhere (I won't even start to list them, suffice it to say that if it's there it probably doesn't pay off), and even the conclusion of the "main" storyline eventually comes down to a version of Indiana Jones that's equal parts about the villain and thinking "huh, Joan of Arc and Noah's Ark sound kinda similar, isn't that neat?" This sounds pretty inexplicable but becomes entirely explicable once you realize that The Guys From Bee Anime Are At It Again. Except B: The Beginning was two anime awkwardly smashed together and one of them was good, while Fena is more like 5 anime awkwardly smashed together and none of them are good. Fena is somewhat more ambitious than Takt is (no shit lol) and the benefit of doing everything is that you're probably going to like something in it, but it really is just a mess. 4/10

Sacks&Guns!! (the original name of Sakugan and one so amusing you can't make me use the real one) handily outplays both of these by knowing what it wants to be and providing a workable narrative backbone. That said while it's usually juuuuust about as good as it needs to be, it's never any better. The main story is interesting, yes, but there's also not a lot of it and everything in between feels like filler that vastly overestimates how fun it is to just watch these characters bicker among each other. This could easily work much better if the characters were stronger, but they just... aren't. And when the story does come around, it's not so much "too little too late", but of course "barely enough and barely in time", which is fine but hardly fulfilling. Speaking of not fulfilling, this show gleefully doesn't have an ending, but in characteristic fashion it provides just enough thematic/character closure and explanation to make me feel like I didn't waste my time. It's still a bold move to leave the entire narrative closure to a sequel that it may or may not get, but I'd probably watch it, accompanied with copious sighing. Sacks&Guns!! naturally gets the lowest possible passing grade. 5/10

Rumble Garanndoll

Gimme some Akio Watanabe character designs in a show that doesn't totally stink and I'm satisfied. Here, there's your review of Rumble Garanndoll. Though that statement is incredibly loaded, since the elephant in the room is why I think this self-congratulating heap of of "us otaku huh" doesn't totally stink. Well, for starters it's pretty funny occasionally, which is a big plus in the sea of brutally unfunny otaku comedies. A lot of it comes down to knowing when to not be funny, since the setup is plenty jocular on its own already. I think Garanndoll just gets the balance right; I wouldn't want a show that is all harem jokes, or all Akihabara celebration, or all heartfelt references to old school mecha, but apparently I can stomach the right blend of these just fine. It works both as a comedy and as a straightforward mecha show, and while it doesn't excel at either, I'm still surprised that even it comes out as "acceptable seasonal fodder". 6/10

Heike Monogatari

Oh boy, where to start with this one. I guess I'll start with the good, and the surprising: Aesthetically, Heike Monogatari is close to perfect – I love how this show is made, how it looks and sounds and moves. And I say this as someone who has been an outspoken critic of Naoko Yamada's directing style before, it just works much better for this somewhat abstract period piece than it ever has for stories about teenager problems. But that gets us right to the issue, and why you're reading about this Very Important Piece Of Literary Adaptation right after the dumb comedy about mechas powered by harem: Quite frankly, I give maybe a fifth of a fuck at best about the Story of the Heike, and this anime failed to convince me otherwise. It's not that they didn't try either, their OC (do not steal) Biwa is easily the best character in the show, it's just that she necessarily doesn't have much to do with the story. If I may be real for just a second, I think it's respectable and a good idea to not dick too much with this literary classic you're adapting, because it really wouldn't be the Heike Story then. But that still doesn't mean I have to like the result. This anime is mainly for people who take the importance of the narrative as a given (i.e., the Japanese), but for me this tale about a bunch of kids who really just want to play the flute but are sad because their Granddad had too much fun being a dick really lacks the sort of gravitas and pathos it seems to be shooting for. Yes, it is insufficiently Shakespearean, this tale from a couple of centuries earlier and the other side of the planet, excuse my gaijin. Anyway, Heike Monogatari really is at its best when it just stops trying to recount whose uncle mustered how many horses and becomes almost entirely abstract, which is at least somewhat frequently. So, didn't care much for it, but A+ for effort. 6/10

Lupin III Part 6 Part 1

Yo, yet again with a show that didn't actually end, what gives? Yeah, Lupin III Part 6 is obviously split into two and the first half indeed had a definite ending, so I'm counting it. First thing, I'm going to view Part 6 (Part 1) as an anthology show, because that's really what it is. Part 5 already flirted with a half-episodic approach but the main difference is that while Part 6 (Part 1) has an ostensible main story, it's really not more complex (or any better) than the side stories, just a bit longer. The real unifying factor is the theme, and that is "referencing famous mystery literature" for the most part. As most anthologies go, there's a wild variety of story content and quality. Some episodes are outright shoddy, a lot of them a "meh" (including the alleged main story, which is actually far too long for how meh it is), many are classic Lupin tomfoolery, and a few of them are excellent. Being the pompous ass that I am, I am of course referring to the too-clever-by-half Oshii episodes, the second of which is hands down the best episode of the season and a big contender for best episode of the year. If you want a practical tip, just watch those two (4 and 10), since they're not connected to anything but general Lupin-ness. Anthologies are hard to rate and this is the definition of a mixed bag, but overall I'll say it's just fine – Lupin has done better before though. 6/10

Yakunara Mug Cup Mo S2

Yakunara Mug Cup Mo was a surprisingly solid Kiraralike (read this if you want the actual take, even if there wasn't much to say back then either), and one should not be surprised that a very quick S2 just keeps on rolling. It's still not much of a show, and its shorter length still helps it immensely. There maybe weren't as many gay Mika daydreams as I'd hope for this time around, but Mug Cup remains an inoffensively good time. 6/10

Ganbare Douki-Chan

Ah yes, here's the Chad to Tawawa's Virgin. I've been debating ranking this higher, but this time around I think I'll disregard the meme. Douki-chan is adorable, and that's the long and short of it. It definitely is less of a cultural milestone than Miru Tights is, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In actuality, it's probably hurt the most by me having read all the source material already (there's not much), so there was a lot of saying "yep, that's that page alright". Good time, cute faces, rooting for Douki-chan, 3 net minutes well spent. 6/10

My Senpai Is Annoying

So this one is definitely simpatico with Douki, except more so. By that I mean there's more of it (natch), but also that it's even more barebones, if that is even possible. This anime right here is 100% exactly what you would expect. Good thing I generally expect my anime to be good then, amirite? This is Doga Kobo, and they've really made an artform out of taking these basic ass mangas and making them entertaining and it's pretty scary how much I enjoyed this crap. KyoAni cannot pull this off, just watch Maidragon. Oh wait, Maidragon fans already think the manga is exceptional lmao

Uh, where was I. Okay, everything about this is as lame as it gets once you think about it, probably the most extraordinary thing about it is that it has no baseball episode and does a basketball episode instead. But it doesn't do a single thing wrong (incredibly predictable ending emphatically included), and it doesn't mean it's not fun to watch. It is a ton of fun to watch, in fact, and it does put in the work to make you not think about it, but sometimes you just can't help it, such as when writing this down. tl;dr Sakurai is best, don't @ me. 7/10 (while watching) / 6/10 (while not watching)

Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu

So how much do you care about early 60s Soviet aesthetics and the romance of early space exploration? Because that's what's really going to make or break this show for you. I do on both counts, so this is a show that feels like it was made just for me. It's remarkable that you can still find a light novel with this level of dedication to a setting that isn't... you know. The one. But it's not just the setting and that they care about it a lot, it also gets a lot else right. It has good, rounded characters with an appropriate amount of depth (even if Anya won't let you forget that this used to be a LN in a hurry), it's fairly nuts-and-boltsy but it assumes people who care don't need endless explanations, and it doesn't romanticize its setting too much. So good job there, but there's still a few things that hold it back. First of all, it's not a looker. Not too shabby, but obviously cheap. Second, that ending. I don't disapprove of them not playing hardball to the end, but it really is just far too simple and convenient by any standard. And third, well, it's all good, but besides being a treat for those who care it never goes that extra mile. So go in with limited expectations and you won't be disappointed. 7/10

Isekai Shokudou S2

Can I repeat my Mug Cup bit here? Well no actually, because I apparently never reviewed S1. So first of all, this isn't an "isekai show". No, that doesn't make it one. No, it just doesn't. Secondly, Isekai Shokudou seems like a very simple concept on the surface (one of those food anime where they celebrate uncomplicated dishes), and that's good and all, but it's not what makes it. I'm really here for the sly worldbuilding and how the the restaurant makes an impact on the other world, both globally and personally – it's very amusing to think of this as the wholesome, delicious version of Casablanca. Which is a small but not insignificant part of the show, to be honest, but it being so naturally presented as a side effect of a cute food anime just tickles my fancy. And if you've seen S2, you'll know that I fucking loved the last arc here. Aside from that, it's another slim show that works very well, fundamentally being already good at its thing and then adding another layer of unexpected delight on top of it. Dunno, sort of like a good cake with like, frosting? Soup, salt? Or like, comfort food and stuff? Did I meet the quota of unimaginative food similes every review of Isekai Shokudou is legally obligated to have? 7/10

Taishou Otome Otogibanashi

Taishou + Otome + Fairytale = a winning combination. What we have here is what I'd describe as "the good version of Sangatsu no Lion" and I'm only half trolling. So this is the story of a sad boi who learns to love again with a generous helping of instant cute girlfriend, except it makes much more sense in this setting and Tamahiko actually has very good reasons to have a sad all the time. It's also much more consistently self-aware funny, as opposed to 3lion which just recklessly swings between sitcom antics and drowning in sorrow with no stop at self-awareness ever. But enough about 3lion, Taishou Otome may be a magical girlfriend joint but it's a really good one. It has a really good grasp of switching between broad archetype comedy and serious character work when it matters – and it does get serious, since the "Taishou" is right in the title so things eventually get shaky. The cheesiness can't be denied, but that's what you're here for, I hope. And Yuzu is just cute as a button – which she better be, because that's the show. This is another one that isn't terribly ambitious, but executes very well on the modest ambitions that it does have. 7/10

Shiroi Suna no Aquatope

And finally, here's the last word on Aquatope. I already gave this a preliminary review last season, and I was right about doing that – the second half really is a different show, and in my opinion, a much better one (yes, I know that people seem to disagree with this – let's just say that they were probably here for what it started as, not what it became). It actually turned out to be the second coming of Shirobako that I was hoping for, and in some respects it's actually better – such as not being so in love with its setting that it can't stop talking about it, and also being more evenhanded on the our guys/bad guys spectrum. While the beginning of Aquatope seemed to be mostly about sad Fuuka being healed by Okinawan magical realism, by the end of the first cours it already was mostly about Kukuru – and the second half is almost entirely about her and her struggle in the workplace/growing up in general, with the magic almost completely evaporating (because you see, that is the point – Can I quickly say that "lack of magic is a plot point" is a level of writing I'd ever have expected from the Iroduku team?). It pulls no punches on this because often, Kukuru doesn't actually like what she's doing and also isn't really good at it, which cuts deeper than Aoi just herding a bunch of wacky manchildren for the sake of art. The side character stories (including Fuuka's, but she's now only one of several) are also all very good. So you might be asking, what do I not like? Not much to be honest, the show is now consistently very good and occasionally knocks on greatness. It's still a bit blunt and obvious in places, but that's just anime writing for you. And I'm not sure about the ending. It does absolutely everything it needs to do and then some (including tying up a few story threads from the first half that don't show up at all in the second otherwise), which is an achievement of its own, but it seems a little quick and convenient for everything to fall into place so neatly. So it's by no means bad, it just doesn't go the extra mile that Aquatope otherwise often does and is less good than the "season 1" finale. Still, if you want some well thought out character drama that never forgets the levity, you can't go wrong with Aquatope. 8/10

[adazzlinggirl]

A basic introduction to Kaida Haru (Nijisanji vtuber)

*DISCLAIMER: this is just a silly little post to introduce more people to my recent hyperfixation, so all opinions are my own and are silly jokes based on the few months I have been a fan. Also I don't own any of the videos I have hyperlinked, all credit goes to their publishers. I have tried to find clips with eng subs*

Kaida Haru (甲斐田 晴) - debut: 4th April 2020

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo2N7C-Z91waaR6lF3LL_jw/featured

Kaida Haru debuted with 2 other Nijisanji members, Nagao Kei and Genzuki Tojiro, to make up the unit 'VALZ'.

In general Kaida is a cheerful, mischievous, introverted otaku. He does a wide variety of streams, but mainly plays guitar, sings and chats or plays video games!

Kaida is a very good singer and plays guitar! I really like his voice! My personal favourite cover of his is his new one of 'Vampire' but I would recommend any of his songs. He often plays guitar and sings covers of songs in his streams.

Kaida is known for being very loud and screaming a lot and his voice breaking a lot of the time.

Kaida is constantly (lovingly) bullied by other Nijinsaji members (and he not so secretly enjoys it):

-He is bullied by his debut mates (such as when Nagao and Genzuki spent 9 hours making his Minecraft base into a mountain)

-In Minecraft, his senpais wrote untrue "wishes" on plaques posing as him

-In Minecraft: he was visited by senpais who attacked him on sight

-In Ark: Haru was compared to a little monster by his senpais

-In Ark: he was tricked by Ibrahim and got killed by him and then ran crying to his big brother and started a war

-Just in general in other games.

Speaking of Ark and The 2nd Great War™: I would highly recommend watching the 'Aniki & Kobun vs Sword of Akasha' series, that details Haru and his 'aniki' (meaning 'big brother', mainly used among yakuza) Fuwa Minato and their fight against Ibrahim and Kagami! It is so funny and entertaining. The interactions between Kaida and Fuwa make me laugh so much.

In his earlier days he was often considered the 'mama' of VALZ because he acted 'motherly' - probably because Nagao is like a troublesome child and called him 'mama or 'haru mama'. The meme was continued by his fans who acted like babies. Nowadays, he isn't called 'mama' as much anymore, as it has now been discovered that Kaida too is a mischievous child - but I have still seen fans call him it occassionally.

Some more random clips that I like a lot are:

-Him screaming about having no way of knowing if he is a bottom -Him not realising his mic was open and talking about wetting himself in front of his senpai -Kaida showing Saegusa Akina around the new Nijisanji Minecraft server and proudly introducing all the toilets he built -This VALZ Mario Kart collab - honestly just 3 brothers arguing loudly with each other -An early collab with Mayuzumi Kai where mama Haru tried to stop his children being disrespectful -Kaida being a gentleman in Minecraft and building 'latern trees' for his senpais (his laugh after he sees the disaster it becomes at 25mins is so cute)

Thank you for reading this long post about my son! Kaida is my favourite vtuber and I love him a lot. If I've made any mistakes, or you have any questions or things to add, feel free to let me know!! I'm going to make posts about Nagao and Genzuki too and probably some other Nijisanji vtubers but please be patient!

[ganymedesclock]

a thing about your headcanons that really intrigues me is that, much as Knuckles seems to have originally been done as a contrast or rival to Sonic back in the Genesis days, your take on them has a opposite approach to the responsibility they feel, but done in opposite ways. Sonic runs from responsibility and doesn't want to think about it, while Knuckles feels guilty about NOT being responsible to an extreme, and since people don't often deal with how they're similar, i really like this

Honestly, this is a thread that is not exclusive to Sonic and Knuckles, but actually ties in heavily to a major theme I'm considering and working in Worlds AU.

Basically, "freedom" has always at least nominally been a theme associated with Sonic. It's in his motifs, it's in his attitudes, it's the quality that people tend to envy when they compare themselves to him- whether that's Knuckles who feels bound by fate and obligation, Tails who feels like he might not be enough or can only keep up, Amy who dreads the drudgery of her ordinary life by comparison. Hell, one could say it's even in the many one-off characters who are introduced with Sonic blowing into their life, changing things, inspiring them to grow, and then leaving- Elise, Merlina, Chris Thorndyke, Chip, Shahra.

But it's a theme that's kind of been weakened in the direction that the games took.

In Sonic SatAM, the concept of freedom vs. tyranny was rife in the setting. Robotnik had his boot down on 90% of the world and the remaining pockets are either actively dwindling, or struggling along as best they can through limited resources. All characters are- at any time- in danger of losing specifically their freedom; not their minds, but control of their bodies. And it's a compelling hook.

But the gameverse has very long not been that, and since Sonic Adventure, the world of the games has been very metropolitan. There's a bunch of cities and countries and everybody's going about their daily lives and Eggman's still a wannabe conqueror but he's now become abstracted, a supervillain, who might have this big scheme or that, but- basically until Sonic Forces- we have never had Eggman really decisively in control. And in his absence, there are not really ever any consistent or clear threats to freedom except that, yeah, we guess if we let someone like Solaris or Perfect Chaos or Black Doom run wild long enough that would kill people and then nobody would be free, but... that's an abstract and inelegant way to speak to one of your main center themes.

(and I personally don't like Forces basically trying to reinstate- even if temporarily- the SatAM status quo, even if I think some people like the IDW comics have done interesting things with that, but that's my personal relationship with the character of gameverse Eggman and how I view him distinctly from SatAM Robotnik, as absolutely iconic as the latter is)

I don't think you need an encroaching dystopia per se to make a meaningful discussion out of freedom- I think using the modern gameverse's more colorful, populated world opens up a lot of possibilities for that. So, a major thematic thing I've landed on is that abject tyranny- while the easiest 'threat to freedom' to scan and oppose- and an important one!- is not remotely the only thing that challenges freedom.

A big thing is responsibility.

Responsibility is the thing that most of us sacrifice our freedom to on a daily basis. That may sound dramatic, but it's true; we may have other reasons for it, but we don't just run off somewhere else or go have an adventure or leave our job because we feel responsible to things. And responsibility isn't a bad thing- it's good to feel reliable or trustworthy. If you enjoy your job or your coworkers, you want to do well at it. Having a house is a responsibility, we take care of them. Having a relationship of any kind is a responsibility; so is having kids. If none of us were ever responsible, society would fall apart and we'd all live lonely lives. Moreover, we'd have very little power- ironically a lack of responsibility can lead to a lack of freedom in some regards.

But also, it's very easy to give too much of yourself away and not have any left. I mentioned before that many characters are consistently depicted, across many continuities, idealizing Sonic- because Sonic's free! Sonic doesn't buy groceries or pay taxes or do boring stuff, he certainly isn't stuck in a frustrating or isolating situation, and this can even tie into one of Sonic's major themes- he refuses to be talked into accepting lesser evils.

In Sonic and the Black Knight, Merlina tries to explain to him why she's using Excalibur's scabbard- why she's doing bad things, trying to justify it that she can't just let the kingdom end, even if that means needing to twist it into a horrible place to live- to which she at one point, in frustration, asks if Sonic understands, to which he responds, "No, and I don't want to."

While it's not exactly a perfect moral stance (those don't exist), there is something to be said powerfully for the idea that Sonic as a person has a certain rejection of responsibility as a chain to let bad things happen. He rejects loyalty to a thing that drives you into cruelty.

And this is really interesting, when we consider- specifically in the very first game that featured Shadow and featured him explicitly as a dark antithesis to Sonic- that is exactly what happens to Shadow.

Shadow is not, by default, an amoral person. Pre-trauma, we see that he doesn't want to hurt others, and frankly, as much as "ow the edge" circles (and is somewhat warranted), we can often see that he's standoffish but fairly civil; someone who is dealing with a lot of stresses and problems, but doesn't often relish hurting others unless he's already desperate, frustrated, or looking for an outlet or solution. And in adventure 2, Shadow is led into nearly ending the planet on account of loyalty; to the idea of Maria, to what he believes she asked him to do (and what he believes is owed to the people who killed her)

It's kind of conspicuous that if you think about it, most of Shadow's arcs in various games that focused on him are about questions of what's owed- to him, or to the world. Does he owe a debt to Eggman? Rouge? Black Doom? Gerald? Maria? Does the world owe him a debt of anger and pain to be paid back in vengeance, or, is he the one who owes the world a chance? Does he owe himself a chance? These are questions of Responsibility.

So to bring this back to Sonic and Knuckles, I think that's an interesting context to set them apart, because both of those two definitely have a special relationship with the Chaos Emeralds. Knuckles is the guardian of the shrine that doesn't just have positions for the Master Emerald, but all seven smaller ones as well; and Sonic... well, Sonic consistently and regularly does stuff with the chaos emeralds nobody else does. He transfers super forms to other people, or even awakens them in people who haven't done it before (as implied with Burning Blaze in Sonic Rush). And at least according to Sonic 3&K, his arrival (?) was foretold.

But Sonic... does not feel responsible about the chaos emeralds. If something's happening with them he wants to know but it's about curiosity. When the chaos emeralds are corrupted, tarnished, and lose power, Sonic... juggles them, while he's confused about his own (related) corruption. It's weird, it's concerning, but it's not an obligation. He gets distracted buying ice cream in the same scene.

By contrast, the only time Knuckles feels confident shattering the Master Emerald, it's as an obligation- he has to protect it from Eggman even if it creates more work for himself, and he later freaks out and nearly crashes the shuttle he and others are on when a near-miss scatters the master emerald pieces he's collected across the ARK. I can only imagine half of the plot of Sonic Unleashed would've given Knuckles an ulcer if he'd been around for it. You did what to the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic????

Basically, I think while freedom vs. tyranny is definitely Sonic's brand, you can have a lot more fun and shore up the thematic strength by also factoring in "responsibility" as a secondary theme and this strengthens or illuminates many characters and their arcs.

[rebelsofshield]

So, I think The Rise of Skywalker might be the most universally disliked Star Wars film, and for good reason. It’s not my least favorite of the franchise, but it’s pretty damn close to it. But, anyways, here are some things that I do like about the messy end to the Sequel Trilogy.

Exegol: The idea of there being a super secret Sith world constantly covered in shadow is a very neat idea and I love the design of it. The story swerves involved not so much.

Cast Chemistry: It may be the reportedly looser shooting environment or the familiarity with their roles, but Poe, Finn, Rey, Threepio, and even villains like Hux and Kylo feel are brimming with personality and their interactions have real texture. It’s enough to make some really bad scenes passable and it almost sells the viewer on relationships that were barely present in the previous films.

The Pasaana Chase: I’m a fan of any fast paced, many moving parts chase sequence. And while this speeder chase through the desert is not even close to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Mad Max: Fury Road level good there’s still a kinetic quality to the set piece that makes it the most fun action sequence in the film. I also may be more than a little thirsty for Poe’s desert outfit.

Rey’s Standoff: Yes, it was in the trailer, but this is still a really cool moment. A fun bit of space western amid all the chaos.

3PO’s Sacrifice: One of the most emotional moments in The Rise of Skywalker is sold by a really solid performance by Anthony Daniels, who honestly is the most resonant of the legacy actors that appear in this film. Sure, the entire mcguffin of 3PO for some reason having ancient Sith in his programming is confusing as hell and his sacrifice annoyingly rewritten later in the film, but for a moment the chatty protocol droid tugged on our heartstrings.

Babu Frik: Hey hey!

Force Flash Duel: It’s not as expansive as their duel amid the ruins of the second Death Star, but this creatively designed and executed lightsaber duel that expands out of the Force connection established in The Last Jedi is a contender for the  best single moment in The Rise of Skywalker. There’s drama. There’s lightsabers. The Force is expanded upon and twisted in new exciting ways.

Rescuing Chewy and Hux is the Spy: When The Rise of Skywalker is free of its messy retconning and convoluted storytelling, it can be a pretty fun film. For pure entertainment value, Finn and Poe’s rescue of Chewy and the revelation of Hux being the First Order spy is about as light on its feet as it gets. Sure, it may not be where I would’ve taken Hux’s character but the previously mentioned cast chemistry shines here and Abrams shoots classic Star Wars hallway shootouts with a fun burst of energy.

Jannah: Naomie Ackie’s renegade stormtrooper Jannah steals the show the instant she’s on screen. There’s a certain magnetic quality to her performance and I kind of love her little laser bow and arrow. Sure, the supposed subplot where she is somehow Lando’s daughter is both absent but present at the same time, but Ackie gives The Rise of Skywalker some pathos when it needs it.

Kylo’s Memory: Ben Solo tearfully gasping out, “Dad,” when confronting the memory of his father is the best moment of this film. It’s a beautifully handled moment of introspection and features some really, really great acting on both the parts of Adam Driver and Harrison Ford. The Rise of Skywalker may not fully sell Kylo’s full turn towards swashbuckling hero for its third act, but this quiet moment between a repentant son and the imagined image of his father has a quiet beauty to it.

Space Horses on a Star Destroyer: The Rise of Skywalker’s third act is a mess. There’s no way around it. Poorly executed action scenes. Character decisions that feel out of left field. A scene of galactic unity that is meant to be rousing but ends up being background noise. But! Nothing, absolutely nothing, can take away from the sheer ridiculous joy of seeing Finn, Jannah, and a bevy of resistance troopers riding across the surface of Star Destroyer on warthog-space-horses. It’s a wild, silly, and oddly badass action sequence that stays thrilling even with the general hollowness around it.

Finn is Force Sensitive: It’s frustrating that while Finn undeniably has more to do in The Rise of Skywalker, he doesn’t have much of a character arc. At the very least, we do get some nicely handled revelations that he is in fact Force Sensitive. Just give us our stormtrooper rebellion show already.

And that’s honestly about it. There are other aspects of this movie that I like in theory but not in execution. Plenty that I’m mixed on. And a whole heaping of things I dislike, but there is some good in The Rise of Skywalker after all. A little at least.

[chao-chachaslide]

Sonic the Hedgehog (film): The Complete Saga

I wrote this in the pre-tumblr days (2020) but I think it's about time I returned to it

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (2020)

Your average intro movie. Just Sonic and Eggman. Essentially Sonic 1 (the game) but a lot more fleshed out and San Francisco.

Sonic 2: Sonic Vs Knuckles (2022)

This is looking to be a adaptation of the Sonic 2-Sonic 3&K arc of the games. Maybe we'll get a Death Egg and a joke about Eggman being a Star Wars fan or something (plausible since we've already seen Sonic reference Obi-Wan). This marks the debut of Tails, Knuckles and the M.E. It also seems to have a lot of SA1/2 references. Remember this for later.

Sonic Movie 3 that will inevitably happen (feb 22 edit: it inevitably happened)

So as I literally just mentioned - Sonic Adventure 2 references. Just judging by the fact G.U.N is here (and a *possible* SHtH Commander), it's very likely that Shadow will show up at some point. But we seem to be starting subtle in SvsK so I don't think the 3rd film will actually feature him. Maybe in a post-credits scene, but not in the actual picture. Besides we're still missing one of the Core4: Amy Rose. My theory is that this will be a vague Sonic CD adaptation, introducing Amy and everyone's favourite angsty mecha, Metal Sonic (who could very easily be powered by one of Sonic's quills). We can probably eliminate the time travel aspect of CD but I reckon this could be the place for a Death Egg if we don't get one in SvsK. I mean there is a certain time traveller in the cast but I think it's a little early for him to show up.

Sonic movie 4 that will probably happen

This is where I think a vague SA2 adaptation could happen. It's got enough time for build up with 2 films before it, and we will've gotten the Core4 + Metal out of the way already. Now the main thing is, how are they going to adapt the story? The problem here is killing off kids on-screen, amongst literally everything else that happened on the ark. It will be extremely difficult to adapt Shadow's backstory without getting a 12 rating. It is possible to have heavy hitting plots in media aimed at a younger audience (Into the Spider-Verse is one example, with a few on screen deaths), but what happened to Maria and Gerald is really deep in a anti-military way and it doesn't adapt well into a kids movie. But also consider how the Star Wars prequel trilogy goes U, PG, 12 on their ratings and in Episode III they purge children on screen, as well as the whole trilogy and TV show spinoff having heavy political plot. Obviously this is different but it wouldn't surprise me if we get a 12-rated sonic film. There are 12-rated games. On another note I would expect Rouge to show up at this point.

Sonic movie 5 that could happen? Sonic 4 Episode II? SCU??

I don't know honestly. Blaze? Silver? Cream? All 3? Idk. Blaze can easily be written in, with the Sol Dimension instead being an alternate planet like the ones Sonic had on his map in the first movie. Silver is a little harder. I mean it's Sonic though, anything is possible. Even time travel. Cream is by far the easiest lol; I could definitely see her appearing at some point.

How do I end this post...

Uhh everyone manifest Sonic Cinematic Universe