#also i want to post more final fantasy stuff because i usually just keep it to myself la la la

[non4ry]

girl you are not normal

[veebs-hates-video-games]

It's that time again where I make an entirely too long summary of every game I played this year. There were far too many of them this time around (well over 100, but some of them I only played long enough to know they're not my thing, and a bunch are weird short little things), so I'll try to keep it to a sentence or two for most of them. On the off chance anyone's interested in more of my thoughts they should nearly all have at least one other more detailed post on here somewhere, hopefully all properly tagged at this point and everything.

Also hopefully the formatting makes it easy to skim through, broken into categories and with each individual game bolded, because I would be astonished if anyone actually reads the entire thing. It's over 180 games and 7500 words, so, uh...good luck?

I think I'll just stick with the same categories I've used in the past couple years. On average the categories further down the list have things I liked more, but there are things in one category that I might've liked more or less than some things in the categories next to them, and they're mostly not really ordered within each category.

So with that said, let's start with the worst gaming experiences I had in 2024:

Bomb Dolls: Probably more fun with other people, but it was borderline unplayable for me so I didn't want to subject anyone else to it.

Sayonara Wild Hearts: Anything that feels like it was designed in a lab to give me seizures and migraines simultaneously isn't allowed to place higher than this.

Gwenblade: It tries to do something interesting, but it has a pretty profound lack of polish that makes it just not work.

Survivors of the Dawn: It must get better later on, but it felt so sluggish and unsatisfying at the beginning that I couldn't be bothered to find out.

Neverwinter Nights 2: I guess I still really don't get along with RTwP and most CRPGs.

Persona 5 Strikers: This finally convinced me to give up for good on the SMT/Persona games, because I clearly do not click with their pacing or storytelling conventions in general.

Mouthwashing: The most profound sensation of boredom I experienced all year. Extremely not my thing, but I'm pretty picky when it comes to horror.

On to games that weren't the worst but still completely failed to live up to whatever (possibly incorrect) expectations I had of them:

Strawberry Vinegar: Weird miss for ebi-hime, with characters that felt awkwardly written and like they didn't suit their ages.

Scanner Sombre: Incredible tech demo, frustrating game.

CrossCode: I liked most things about it except for the actual gameplay, which was really not my jam.

Nier: Automata: Somehow feels substantially worse to play than any other Platinum game I've ever played, and the story and characters completely failed to grab me in the first half dozen hours.

Death end re;Quest 2: Huge let down after how surprisingly interesting but flawed the first was. They dropped almost everything I liked about the original, and even though they thankfully toned down the visual fanservice, the character writing was enough worse to counter that.

Dead Cells: Seems like probably a pretty good game, but having pretty obvious influences from Dark Souls in your gameplay mechanics is usually a good way to make me not have a good time.

Owlboy: It's pretty? Not much else going for it.

Night in the Woods: I did genuinely like a lot of stuff about it, but it just felt like it wasn't really going anywhere, and some of the night scenes were impossible for me to see with my weird/bad vision without turning the screen brightness to retina-searing levels.

Her Name Was Fire: What if 20 Minutes Till Dawn except everything was slightly worse?

Final Fantasy XIII-2: The first half was great and felt like a weird hybrid of Radiant Historia and Pokemon with a Final Fantasy skin, but the closer I got to the end the worse everything about it got until I quit in the final area. A contributing part of why the entire FF series is now banished.

Muse Dash: It's alright? The UI is a nightmare about a trainwreck though.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: I love the metanarrative of the story commenting on itself and how much more fleshed out the characters are, but as a game I didn't have a very good time playing it, and I continue to not vibe with the way Nomura/Nojima tell stories. The other main reason FF is now banished.

God of War: I was pretty hopeful about Dad of Boy, but I just don't like how it feels to play. A contributor to why I'm increasingly skeptical of giving most AAA games a shot.

It gets so lonely here: Second person is not a valid POV (for me personally).

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor: The mining mechanic is pretty neat, but otherwise it's one of the less interesting/satisfying things I've played in the genre.

Spider-Man: Most stuff about it is...fine? But aside from the great movement nothing else really makes it above fine other than the typical stuff that comes with throwing lots of money at making a game. Another major reason why I'm increasingly wary of buying or playing most AAA games.

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania: The least fun I've ever had playing Vampire Survivors, almost entirely due to it not having its own separate adventure mode to introduce stuff on its own terms in more digestible chunks.

Neva: Not bad, but basically everything about it that's different from Gris is different in a way I don't personally like as much.

Once on a windswept night: see: It gets so lonely here

Stray: I only lasted a couple hours before getting bored. I don't even mind that it's mostly a walking simulator since I've enjoyed plenty of those since they were first a thing, but aside from the novelty of being a cat nothing about it really clicked with me.

Next we have games that I liked what they were doing overall but they're just not really my thing:

Gorogoa: Good art and a clever way to structure the puzzles and how you navigate them/between them, but it's not really my kind of puzzle game.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights: Probably the closest I've come to liking a game with Souls-like influences. Well put together metroidvania that feels good to play, but the combat got exhausting the further I went.

Snakebird: The addition of gravity and puzzles make Snake a lot more interesting, but I wasn't into the flow of it enough to want to finish it.

Please, Touch the Artwork: Good framing device and clever way to turn recognizable art styles into puzzles, but the individual puzzles didn't stay interesting enough to me after a while.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: It does some really clever stuff, but I think I just don't really jive with how movement feels in modern 2D Mario games anymore compared to the ones from the 80s and 90s (but I still love the 3D ones). Also maybe kind of a victim of how sometimes Nintendo polishes their games almost too much, and the removal of any rough edges ends up detracting a bit from things I personally like.

Toodee and Topdee: The dimension/perspective swapping is neat, but it wasn't quite enough on its own to pull me through the entire game.

Tens!: Reasonably satisfying, and a pretty polished presentation, but this one also didn't hold my interest all the way through.

The Shape of Things: Another one with good presentation and decent (but slightly janky) puzzle mechanics that didn't quite hook me.

OscarWildeCard: Excellent name, and card battles to determine who has the gayest dinner party is a fun idea, but it's not really my style of card game in the end.

From Ashes, Bloom: I really like the creature and how it moves and interacts, but in the end it's a tower defense game, and those have never been my thing.

Cypher: I really like Matthew Brown's puzzle games in general, and I liked this too at first, but once I got to the point where I couldn't mostly hold the puzzles entirely in my head anymore I lost interest. I probably would've had a great time with it when I was younger and had more patience for taking my own notes though.

Manifold Garden: It looks good and has some good ideas, but kind of like Antichamber I feel like it'd be more interesting to me if I didn't instantly already wrap my head around the way it messes with space. The burdens of having an intuitive understanding of unusual geometry, I guess.

Burly Men at Sea: Seemed like it had potential, but the UI is awkward enough on the Switch that I didn't feel like finding out.

Railbound: Another puzzle game where I liked learning how it works but didn't feel like sticking around beyond that.

Rabi-Ribi: It seems cute enough, but I didn't click with how movement feels and the pacing was a bit off for me.

Cureocity: Has a good premise, and I liked the idea of the combat system, but I felt like I wasn't getting enough out of it for what I was putting in.

Parallax: The core puzzle concept is solid, but it gets a little tedious having to run around the map to actually put solutions into action. Also the most broken default controller layout I've seen in a long time.

Kero Blaster: Nothing really wrong with it, but it didn't hook me. Definitely not another Cave Story.

Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist: There's almost something there and the art's pretty decent, but the Switch version is Not Great, and it feels like it could use a bit more work in general.

Psychopomp: Seems like there could potentially be something interesting going on there, but it's borderline unplayable with a controller.

Press Any Button: This one also might eventually go somewhere interesting, or at least it definitely hints at it, but the gameplay segments started getting pretty tedious before I found out.

stitch.: Great presentation of the puzzles, crappy mobile game presentation for the menus, and solidly average actual puzzles.

Thumper: Pretty unusual aesthetic and music style for a rhythm game, but I don't have the reaction time to keep up with it when brain no worky like lately.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom: I can appreciate what they're going for, and it definitely addresses some of the issues I had with BotW/TotK, but I'm still having a really hard time getting as into it as older games in the series.

Spitkiss: I'm into the idea, and the presentation is really fun, but I bounced off somewhere in the middle as the levels got more heavily focused on tighter timing of actions. Seems fun for someone more into that sort of thing though.

After those we have the ones that are the most "fine, I guess" of the year that I had mixed feelings about:

Townscaper: More of a toy than a game, but I got it in a game bundle and messed around with it on a Steam Deck. It's fun briefly to see what you can make with it, but that's about it.

Little Noah: Scion of Paradise: Most of my time with it wasn't actually this year, but this is the year I concluded that even though the characters are cute and the way you build combos is kinda neat, the game itself is only ok. Also the Switch version doesn't run great.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R: The first 2/3 or so of it is great. The art style used in the remake is gorgeous, and the characters and running around doing typical JRPG stuff feels like all the things that made 90s JRPGs great. Then I got to what previously would've been disc 2 and it all fell apart into what makes 90s JRPGs so hard to go back to sometimes.

Fallow: I like most stuff about it except for actually playing it, which was kind of frustrating. Her music's still great though.

Ape Out: It's alright. I'm not very good at it.

Downwell: It's fine. I get what they're going for, and it feels like they succeeded, but I didn't stick with it super long.

Looking Up I See Only a Ceiling: This one gets an award for suffering the most from a bad translation or not being written in the creator's native language. It'd probably be pretty decent if that was cleaned up.

Astronomical Club for Queers: Dialogue's a bit awkward, but overall it shows potential for making something decent in the future.

Hardcore Cottagecore: This one has serious student project/game jam vibes. With some polish and balance they could make something alright though.

A Little to the Left: Deserves an award for "game that most makes me want to go replay Unpacking instead". Fine, but I lost interest after a while.

Twilight Survivors: I've definitely played worse bullet heaven games, but at least when I tried it this one didn't have much unique about it good or bad.

Geometry Survivor: It's close to being pretty decent, but it just doesn't quite feel good enough to play to me to stick with it too long.

Ikenfell: The characters are good and the story is ok, but I could've done without the gameplay. The "instant victory" button was one of my favorite buttons I pushed this year and saved the game enough for me to actually finish.

Star Ocean: First Departure R: It probably would've been more fun if I'd played it in the 90s. Significantly less compelling than SO2R but not actually bad or anything.

Cats Organized Neatly: Presentation's alright, but the process of solving the puzzles isn't the most satisfying for me.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Fixes a lot of the issues I had with BotW, and the abilities feel a lot more polished and like they complement each other better, but I still ultimately don't love the way these recent Zelda games play and am probably done with them until the next major franchise overhaul.

The Average Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne: It's fine. There's just only so much it can really do in like ten minutes.

Jewel Match Solitaire Summertime: It's a perfectly competent solitaire game, just like all the other Jewel Match Solitaire games. Good for when brain no worky, but it doesn't stand out in any way.

Xenogears: The first time I tried playing it was before Xenosaga was even out. I tried going back to it to finally finish it, but I forgot how rough the translation was and how janky some stuff like the camera is. At least now I remember why I've never finished it.

One Deck Dungeon: It plays out in an interesting way with the way everything is built around dice rolls, but it just didn't grab me enough to get me to keep playing.

the static speaks my name: It was just strange enough to be a little bit interesting, but not strange enough to stick with me at all for more than a day or two.

Stray Cats in Cozy Town: Might be my least favorite Devcats game I've played because the different angle makes it harder to come up with a good search pattern.

TREE: Another ten minute free one. I liked it more before replaying it to get the last achievement.

Witcheye: Pretty unique movement and fun for a while, but the difficulty increase later in the game didn't feel like it fit as well with what the controls let me do.

RYB: Some pretty good puzzles, but the more mechanics are introduced the less well it reads visually.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia: I've tried more than once to go back and finish it, and while I still like most things about it, the map design and a couple enemy types annoy me enough that I finally had to accept I'm not going to beat this one.

Graceful Explosion Machine: Surprisingly well balanced and an interesting gameplay loop swapping between weapons, but sometimes I lose track of enemies in the visual clutter. Also it's physically painful for me to play some of the later levels.

Frincess&Cnight: Good pixel art and fun interactions between the two characters' abilities, but the increasingly tight timings and need to start levels over for any mistake got a little annoying at some point.

CARS: More interactive art than a game. Fun to poke at for a bit, but probably not leaving a lasting impression.

VOYAGER: Slightly more of a game than the previous one, but mostly it's just tracing out fun patterns with your orbit while pretty good music plays.

Dragon Quest XI S: I played the demo on Steam a while ago and loved it, but having to replay the entire opening dozen hours when I got the full game on the Switch was painful enough to make me lose interest. There's so much stuff it does well, but It sure does start slow.

Project X Zone: I do enjoy a lot of stuff about it, but there are so many levels that each take so long to finish that after a while it got kind of tedious.

A Slug's Dream: Pretty good puzzles and presentation, but at some point I drifted away and never went back.

Puddle Knight: Same as above.

Please Fix the Road: Also same as above.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout: The most atrociously paced intro ever before suddenly becoming very good a few hours in, but the tediousness of needing to replace all my stuff at once toward the end of the game instead of stuff opening up more gradually killed my enthusiasm before finishing it.

Otoko Cross: Pretty Boys Mahjong Solitaire: A friend gifted me Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire years ago as a joke, so I impulsively got this on sale in memory of that. Totally fine but nothing special as a game, and if they toned down the horniness a bit some of the character designs/outfits would actually be pretty cute.

Death Becomes You: Some decent ideas and an interesting world, but some of the writting is kind of off-putting and some of the endings feel kind of abrupt and unearned.

this morning I decided to die: I get what they were going for and can appreciate it, but it didn't entirely land for me.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age: One of my favorite mainline FF games since the 90s, and I did genuinely have a pretty good time with it a lot of the time, but every time I got back into it it would pull some annoying crap to pull me back out again.

Tales of Berseria: I liked a couple of the characters enough to keep me playing for a while and the story is fine, but I got bored of the actual gameplay eventually and gave up.

Tales of Arise: Feels better to play than Berseria, but even though it hints at something interesting going on nothing in the first couple hours hooked me enough to get me to keep going.

KarmaZoo: I love the idea, but it doesn't get to go higher than this because it requires other people to play and I couldn't find any when I tried.

Margo: Definitely a fan of the art style, but the overall experience was only ok. It was probably somewhat negatively influenced by it being a pain to get it to run on the Steam Deck and still running terribly when it did, a very rare experience for me.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk: It continues the pattern of most Musou/Warriors games that aren't affiliated with Nintendo in some way just not really being as good these days. It's ok, but it's noticeably more clunky and less polished than even the original Hyrule Warriors was and just doesn't feel as good to play.

Moving on, next we have games that were pretty good and generally met my expectations:

Luna's Fishing Garden: I didn't love either difficulty option for the fishing minigame, and it dragged a bit toward the end, but overall it's pretty cute and chill. Special mention to the "you got a fish" animation for being great.

Kuukiyomi 2: Consider It More! - New Era: I apparently never mentioned this in a post anywhere, or at least I can't find it. Anyway, it's more of the same from the first one, which is a good thing for the most part. It's basically WarioWare, except the minigames are about being considerate (or being a jerk if you'd prefer) in various situations. Cheap, short, and a decent way to be amused for a little while.

TET: Cute, funny, includes recipes. A good use of ten minutes and $0 if preparing food for Vietnamese Lunar New Year sounds like a good time. Also feels much better with a touchscreen.

Clickolding: Like I said earlier this year, it's the most about sex work anything's ever been without explicitly stating it's about sex work, and it will do its best to make you vaguely uncomfortable about that. Didn't leave quite as much of an impression on me as their other game I played last year, Can Androids Pray, but still pretty good.

An Arcade Full of Cats: Not my favorite Devcats game ever, but still enjoyable. As someone old enough to remember arcades it was fun seeing all the terrible cat puns on old games, and they did a pretty good job of capturing the general feel.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore: Most of my time with this was before this year, but I finally made it through the last third of it. I have some issues with the dungeons dragging on too long and the almost non-existent quest tracking, but the characters and story and combat are mostly fun, and it's the only SMT/Persona-adjacent game I've actually enjoyed other than BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.

Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between: It didn't hit me as hard as the original over a decade ago, and a couple sections just didn't really land for me, but when it does work it does some interesting stuff. The train section was probably my favorite because it actually gets to expand on its ideas a bit more there.

The Fairy's Song: What if La Belle Dame sans Merci but make it yuri? Nothing revolutionary, but it does everything well enough to be enjoyable, enough that I'll probably get through the sequel one of these days too.

Bury me, my Love: Manages to capture both the surreal horror and mind-numbing mundanity of being a refugee seeking asylum and does a fairly effective job of it. The lack of typical VN QoL features kept me from going through again to see stuff I missed though.

Takorita Meets Fries: Fluffy nonsense about merpeople in search of french fries, and I mean that in a good way.

GOODBYE WORLD: The story and art were just enough to keep me going through the annoying platforming sections (which make narrative sense to be there, and even for them to be bad, but still), and the way it all came together in the end is what bumped it up as high as this.

Blackberry Honey: Yuri that's mostly cute and fluffy and fun while it lasts. I have Questions about the way the main character's boobs are drawn though. What's wrong with your boobs?

Voxelgram DLC #1: One one hand it's good because more Voxelgram is good, but on the other the larger puzzles are mostly just more tedious. Still good enough puzzles to get my poor ADHD brain to focus on something while listening to podcasts or whatever.

rat chaos: A replay of something I played many, many years ago. Not my favorite of the Twine boom back in the day, but having an "unleash rat chaos" button makes it memorable.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line DLC: Still not my favorite style of music/rhythm game so it doesn't go higher, but there's some good music in there, and it was still enjoyable enough that I had fun going through everything.

A Hero and a Garden: Cute, fun characters, good music (including the unlockable remixes after you finish the game), and somehow made in Ren'Py, which is not intended for this genre at all.

Hide & Dance!: I like it for similar reasons to the other games I played by hap (which will be further down this list), but it doesn't have quite as many opportunities for the silly humor that makes their games work.

Subsurface Circular: "You are a robot detective solving robot crimes by talking to other robots on the subway" is a great premise, and I was not expecting Thomas Was Alone (still my favorite Mike Bithell game I've played) to be canon.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land: It was genuinely great for a while, and they did an excellent job translating what makes Kirby fun into 3D, but I kept finding more minor annoyances the closer I got to the end, and I gave up entirely on the postgame stuff pretty quickly because it wasn't doing it for me.

Clear Skye Thinking: More cute yuri fluff that won't leave a lasting impression, but it was a good palate cleanser.

Regency Solitaire 2: Basically just Regency Solitaire again, which is fine with me. These always feel a bit more substantial and more polished than the other solitaire games Grey Alien publishes, so it's nice to have another of these after years of mostly just Jewel Match Solitaire.

Zenzizenzic: Good bullet hell game with good music, and everything is so many squares. Sadly not available anywhere anymore, and neither is the soundtrack. Also sadly I'm not very good at it.

Wedding Witch: I got it mostly as a joke after it popped up in a Steam friend's activity, but it's actually pretty competently made. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the stuff from this in a little more substantial game that's somewhat less horny.

A Park Full of Cats: More Devcats hidden cats. If you're into it you're into it, and this is more of it.

Gordy and the Monster Moon; One of the more recent entries in the Frog Fractions Cinematic Universe. A successful attempt to see what would happen if you made a traditional Zelda game without most of the things most people think of as making something a Zelda game.

Art Sqool: I've seen people complain that it's janky and gives you bad tools for drawing, but the whole point feels like that even if you only can make "bad" art you still did something creative and made an art. Fun to mess around with if you can engage with it on its own terms.

Fire Emblem Engage DLC: I played the main game last year, but I didn't get around to doing DLC stuff like the Fell Xenologue until this year. Not quite as good as the main story (which was one of my favorite games last year), but I still overall had a good time with it.

Super PSTW Action RPG: Replay of something I played years ago, so it can't go any higher, but if it didn't break my own self-imposed rules it would be GOTY every year.

A Tower Full of Cats: More Devcats? More Devcats. See every other entry for them.

Shovel Knight: Really well put together platformer inspired by old 8-bit ones on stuff like the NES and clearly made by people with a deep love for and understanding of them.

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk: This and the next one go together. They didn't completely win me over, but I'll give them points for managing to nether glamorize nor stigmatize trauma or psychosis and avoid having an ending that's either tragic or fixes everything. Not perfect, but they at least tried to do something interesting with it.

Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk: See above

Meet Her There: Does what it's trying to do pretty well even if the writing's a bit stiff. Content warnings on this one aren't messing around. Also it's funny how many people totally missed how full of gender it is.

Florence: Effective storytelling with almost zero text or dialogue, and they actually manage to do some clever things to tie the very minimalist gameplay into that to enhance it.

Boyfriend Dungeon post-launch content: I played the game itself right when it came out and had a good time with it, but it took me until pretty recently to go back and do the additional stuff added after it came out. I probably would've liked it more if I'd been able to do it all at once, but it was still enjoyable enough to be worthwhile.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force: Definitely an improvement over SO2R (which was great in the first half but kinda fell apart in what would've originally been disc 2). This one still stumbles a bit toward the end but holds it together a bit better. Enough characters I liked and satisfying enough combat/exploration to keep me going until the end, and the nyoom button might've been my favorite button to push all year.

Be My Horde: Or at least what of it is finished up until now. I like the idea of having your only resource being dead enemies you've killed and most abilities revolving around upgrades/enhancements of your resurrection ability. The voice acting is also surprisingly good/fun. Definitely has potential if future additions to it can build on its strengths, but we'll see how that goes.

Pesticide Not Required: Possibly the most unusual premise for a bullet heaven game I've played, crossing it with a farming sim. Somehow it actually works? Builds feel kinda samey after a while unfortunately, but it's cute enough and interesting enough seeing how farming/fishing/mining manages to work simultaneously with killing hundreds of bugs at once to be enjoyable for a bit.

Golf Club Nostalgia: I'm absolutely terrible at the actual gameplay (thank you story mode), but the story and worldbuilding told through the radio broadcasts were interesting enough and kept me going. Not subtle about its politics or who it's commenting on even though it doesn't name any names.

I commissioned some bees 0: Not really anything special on its own, but I'm a big fan of the idea of commissioning multiple artists to draw whatever they want as long as they can fit a hundred bees in it somewhere.

Point of Mew: Short enough that its cuteness and charm can carry it through to the end.

Locke(d): I appreciate that someone took a hypothetical scenario from an essay, interpreted it completely literally, and then used that setup to talk about the ideas of the essay.

The Great Voyage: Not nearly as good as their second game, Vengeful Heart (which will be further down the list), but you can see how they got from here to there and how some of that stuff was already here to begin with.

CATO: Buttered Cat: Some reasonably clever puzzles, and building your game mechanics off the idea of a cat with buttered toast strapped to its back is silly enough that I can't not like it.

The Knight Witch: It didn't quite win me over enough to finish it, but what I did play of it was pretty well put together and enjoyable enough.

Peglin: It has a pretty fun loop, and turning Peggle into a roguelike is a pretty neat idea that works surprisingly well. I could see myself going back to it for a few more runs now and then.

Words Can Kill: It has a pretty fun loop, and turning Scrabble into a roguelike is a pretty neat idea that works surprisingly well. I could see myself going back to it for a few more runs now and then.

Across-Stitch: The tweaks to the typical picross/nonograms rules are just enough to keep things interesting, and I probably would've spent even more time with it if it didn't have some unfortunate color palatte choices.

memories: Another little yuri VN, this time sad. I liked the way it tied different memories to different outfits, and it's reasonably well told for what it is. It desperately needs a way to adjust the text speed though.

Next but not quite last are the ones that exceeded my expectations in some way without necessarily being better than the ones in the previous category (although some are here because they were good). I could also just have gotten more out of them than I was led to think I would:

Seraphim Slum: A VN that isn't afraid to get weird with it, and by weird I don't mean rawrxdlolrandom, I mean surrealness and strange metaphors and corruption/destruction as a form of love. I can dig it.

9th Sentinel Sisters: Seems unfortunately abandoned at this point, but what they finished of it is a fairly enjoyable bullet heaven game with a bit of a different feel and aesthetic from what I'm used to seeing. Translation's pretty awful though.

20 Minutes Till Dawn: One of the better bullet heaven games I've played, with a great monochrome-plus-one-accent-color aesthetic (the character portraits are particularly good) and different builds that genuinely feel different to play. Play on anything but the Switch if you have the option though, because it has atrocious slowdown with certain builds (although it still remains remarkably stable even then).

DoraKone: More yuri fluff about four queer girls spending the summer playing the my OC do not steal version of Pokemon GO. It's cute, and I liked the way they managed to tie the developing friendships/relationships into playing the game together in a way that actually felt like it worked.

A Time Traveller's Guide to Past Delicacies: More surreal weirdness, but this time with sock puppets too. I'm still undecided on what it's trying to say, but I really enjoyed the way it said it, and it captures both the fun and the janky parts of 90s FMV games well.

Bayonetta 2: The main reason this counts as exceeding my expectations is that the first game was full of great ideas but felt really unpolished in a lot of ways, and I wasn't expecting something that's still an entire decade old to have really fixed all that. But they did for the most part, and all the potential from the original finally came together properly.

Vectronom: Aside from pure rhythm games, this might be the first thing I've played since 140 that integrates the music and gameplay as well as it does. Bonus points to whoever decided to include some stuff with odd time signatures and rhythms later in the game.

Vampire Survivors: Emergency Meeting and Operation Guns: I liked both of these as much as I disliked Ode to Castlevania. They're much more interesting than the previous DLC was and experiment a bit more mechanically, and the adventure mode does a great job of introducing all the new stuff and teaching you the new mechanics and maps.

Lies as a Starting Point: A good example of how this category isn't necessarily better than "worse" categories in my list. It's pretty decent and the three storylines come together in a satisfying way in the end, but the translation is awful. I still got more out of it than I thought I would though.

Before I Forget: Ironically for a story about memory problems I forgot a lot of it because of my own memory problems. This nearly ended up in the best category though, and I appreciated how they made the story about who the character is as a person instead of just what's wrong with her.

Mom Hid My Game!: This and the next two are basically three parts of the same game, which is the offspring of a point and click adventure and WarioWare. Pretty short with lots of little bite-sized puzzles and a silly sense of humor.

Mom Hid My Game! 2: see above

My Brother Ate My Pudding!: see above

Soulstone Survivors: Another of my favorite bullet heaven games I've played. The addition of an active dodge and a lot of layered interactions between abilities makes it a bit more involved to play, but in a good way if you're looking for that sort of thing.

Bio Prototype: Not my favorite to actually play and the UI isn't great, but you can do some absolutely wild things with what basically amounts to a programmable build system to DIY your own weapons with very few restrictions.

20 Small Mazes: A great example of something that takes a simple concept, explores it thoroughly, and then ends without wasting time or energy on anything unnecessary.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: As someone who's been playing the different variations on this since the original mod, this was a more effective story commenting on its own (re)telling and its own audience's expectations than FF7R was, at least for me.

Halls of Torment: What's this? Another of my favorite bullet heaven games? The standout for this one might be how so many of the achievements/unlocks are really well thought out to get you to approach playing the game in ways you might not have tried otherwise and are often little mini-puzzles themselves.

SeaBed: Very slow burn VN that ultimately pays off in the end even if I liked the journey a bit more than the destination.

Everything is going to be OK: On the surface it's very coping with adversity through absurdity, but if you keep digging it has more to say about trauma and depression and misogyny and the value of artists and so on.

Will The Man Get Frog: Cute little PICO-8 game/toy for creating haikus using an extremely limited set of randomly chosen words. Fun to mess around with to try to come up with anything remotely coherent.

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place: Interactive poetry about being a willing participant in the destruction of history and trying to explain or justify it while also being aware of the sense of loss.

Luckily, My Arm Is a Shotgun: Nothing revolutionary, but it's surprisingly polished for something so small and cheap, and the titular shotgun is very satisfying.

a completely normal dating simulation that is definitely completely sweet, innnocent and normal: SOMETHINGETH ANIVERSARY EDITION: It feels like someone in high school in 2011 dumped their Tumblr into Ren'Py while also feeling like a flash animation from the 00s. I'm not sure the humor would hold up for me if I did all the different routes, but what I did play of it was the kind of thing I haven't seen in years.

And finally we have the ones I enjoyed the most or felt I got the most out of, not really in any particular order other than vaguely the order I finished them and added them to my list:

The Witcher 3: Absolutely my least favorite gameplay of anything anywhere near this high on the list, but the world and characters are so interesting and well developed that it more than makes up for it. I know they had an entire series of novels and short stories to draw on, but they've added so much more on their own, and it's only gotten bigger and better with each new game. They do a great job of making it feel like the world is much, much larger with a lot of stuff going on outside the small corner you're seeing at any given time.

Ghost Trick: It has a ridiculous premise and clever puzzles and a good sense of humor, but something else that particularly stands out about it is that despite the relatively simple art style it has some of the most fluid and expressive animations that give a ton of personality to everyone.

Vengeful Heart: Possibly my favorite retro aesthetic in anything I've played recently and definitely the best anyone's nailed the PC-98 look in a while, but even more than that the characters and story are great. They do a great job showing people from totally different backgrounds with totally different approaches working together against an oppressive power structure, and rather than everything working out perfectly there are definitely problems, but it still shows hope for overcoming them and a path toward the future.

Unicorn Overlord: Unlike Vanillaware's previous game the writing is only ok, but the art continues to be excellent, and it's easily their best iteration on their RTS ideas to date. I don't think the story will leave much of a lasting impression on me, but I had such a great time with the gameplay for the entire time I was playing that I don't mind.

OPUS: Echo of Starsong: Definitely kind of a slow burn that took me a bit to warm up to, but I really liked how things came together in the end as I got to know more about the characters and what was going on. It's also good at showing restraint though, not neatly wrapping everything up, and it left me with more to think about than when I started.

We Know the Devil: Another one that's good at hinting at and suggesting things without explicitly coming right out and directly telling you everything, and some scenes hit differently when replaying to see the other endings when you know enough to be able to read it as commenting on itself.

Jack Jeanne: A strong contender for my favorite thing I played this year. Definitely my favorite music/rhythm game, the best music in general, and the most gender. So many things in it can be read on multiple levels at once as being about the nature of art and performance, what gender even is, and how (or even if) to engage with an audience.

Visions of Mana: It's a shame the studio got shut down right when it released, because they definitely understood what made the old games in the series so much fun, and they finally made a new non-remake Mana game that's actually pretty great for the first time in over two decades.

1000xRESIST: I'm undecided on whether it's my favorite thing I played this past year, but it's definitely my favorite piece of media in general that came out in 2024. It's another one where everything works on like 17 levels simultaneously, like generational trauma, the nature of language and communication, the protests in Hong Kong, the experience of being an immigrant or a child of immigrants, both biological and found family, memory and what we choose to forget or to pass on, and like a dozen more things.

A Highland Song: If you're noticing that most stuff in this category is here because it has great writing/storytelling you're not wrong, and this one is no exception. The way what's going on is gradually revealed is satisfying, and the way it's structured across different paths keeps things interesting. It also does a great job of seamlessly blending realism and history with myth and legend, treating them all as equally meaningful and important to the people and world.

Ys X: Nordics: Sometimes you just need to go on a wacky adventure though, and Adol's shenanigans continue to be fun. The gameplay continues to feel tight and polished, and they also keep managing to have a large cast of interesting and likeable characters. It's just a good time.

I guess this time I'll only be tagging that last category because I played entirely too many games in 2024 and don't actually have enough tags for the top two categories like usual. There were some huge disappointments, but there were even more things that I didn't expect to like as much as I did, and there was a bunch of really great stuff in general.

[royallygray]

@periwinklepaint

Here is a scene I wrote for an au (that I really need a name for bc it dominates my thoughts).

Bit (a lot) of background on this AU: It's supposed to be a superhero/urban fantasy/soulmate au. Everyone has some degree of magic, they just have to learn to harness it. All soulmate pairs are the canon ones from Double Life.

Scar (Hotguy) and Gem (Fauna) are heroes. Grian (Chaos Sparrow) is a vigilante. Pearl (Scarlet) is a villain. Jimmy is just a civilian, but he's a victim of the prophecy (basically just the Canary Curse).

It was supposed to be Scarian mild annoyance to lovers and Gempearl enemies to lovers, but it has gotten more focused on the:

Scar & Gem besties relationship,

the Grian & Pearl chaos skyblings relationship,

the Grian & Pearl & Jimmy & Lizzie skybling/seabling relationship,

the Scar & Pearl depression villain arc relationship,

and Gem & Grian's sibling dynamic.

At this point in the story, our four main characters (Gem, Scar, Grian, and Pearl) have made a deal. The higher-ups at the Hero Corp want to interrogate Scarlet (Pearl) for information because she's not only the primary villain of the city, she's also the leader of the underground, who are presumably the people who want to assassinate Jimmy (if he dies, it's basically Ragnarok). Pearl does not have control over individual people or groups in the underground, she just runs the system.

The Hero Corp wants Gem and Scar to retrieve Pearl and bring her to them. So Gem and Scar set up a meeting, since there is mutual trust between the four of them.

The conclusion was that they could take Pearl, but Grian would take one of the heroes as collateral so that he could ultimately get her back. They decided to exchange Gem rather than Scar because they knew that Gem is the Hero Corp's precious baby and they'd be desperate to get her back, which ensures Pearl's release. Additionally, Scar's magic is incredibly strong since he's a fae. He has a natural advantage that bypasses some of Pearl's talent in magic.

So he places a curse on her that can only be broken if Scar chooses to break it. Basically it prevents her from flying (she's got wings, so does Grian), getting out of range of Scar, and the curse includes the ability to control whether the person the curse is placed on can talk or not, but Scar refuses to utilize it.

Also since Scar is a fae, he can't lie. But he does have a silver tongue that easily gets around the lying factor. Also he doesn't know that he and Grian are soulbound. Also Gem doesn't have a soulbound. Also I'm really insecure about posting this like I think it's cool but maybe other people won't think it's cool but an IRL friend really liked it but idk and I did write this all on discord because I needed to explain the scene to said friend and it was going to be easier to just write it and AAAAAA

okay here are some words of scar being a badass byeeeee

-- --

The Hero Corp keeps insinuating that Scar is working with the villains. They keep insisting that he break more and more of his morals to find more stuff.

And finally, he just goes "Do you want a villain? Because I can give you one.”

And it's dead silent.

No one says shit.

Gem's apprentice, Guqqie, is there with their jaw dropped.

Scar's usually green eyes are glowing red.

He's angry.

"It seems to me that you want a villain," Scar says, his voice echoing in the silent room. "I can give you one. Isn't that what you want?”

No one says anything.

Scar's red eyes burn into the side of [boss]'s skull. "I thought you wanted a villain.”

Some people are staring at him. Some are trying to get out of this room. Some are trying to ignore what's happening.

"Did you not want a villain?" Scar asks. "I don't appreciate lying.

"I can't lie," Scar says. "I'm not sure if you know this, but I cannot lie. I feel like maybe you'd extend the same courtesy for me.”

"Do you want a fucking villain?" Scar snaps. "Or are you just unsatisfied with me having boundaries? Not liking how you compare me to Fauna and wish I got taken instead? Realizing that Villains are people too?”

It wouldn't've been terrible to be taken by Sparrow (Grian, Scar thought with mild wonder. A beautiful name. His heart fluttered, despite the situation), but the thought still stood. [boss] didn't know that Sparrow wouldn't hurt him.

"Don't you want a villain?" Scar asks, quietest yet. "Don't you?" More silence. The clock on the wall ticks. Scar can hear his heavy breath in time with his heartbeat. "Well, I'll give you one." He rips his hero badge from around his neck and lays it on the table. "I resign.”

And he stalks away, the explosion of "no!"s and "why?"s and "HOTGUY GET BACK HERE!"s blocked out by his mind.

And he walks up to his apartment, his mild haven here, and sees Pearl and Jimmy. He snaps his fingers, lifting Pearl's curse. She looks up in alarm, and Jimmy follows suit.

"We're leaving." Scar tells them, leaving no room for argument. "And we're not coming back.”

[heavenlyraindrops]

Heyyy 🍭 so I saw your post about Carmillo Carmine. Could you do romantic headcanons for him with a fem!reader who is also an overlord?

Have a great day 🍭🍭🍭

ᴄᴀʀᴍɪʟʟᴏ ᴄᴀʀᴍɪɴᴇ x ꜰᴇᴍ!ᴏᴠᴇʀʟᴏʀᴅ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ——> ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴛɪᴄ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ ——> ꜱꜰᴡ & ɴꜱꜰᴡ| A/N: thanks anon FINALLY someone sent a req hejskskkss

——>Sfw: before dating

You both met at Overlord meetings

he first took notice of you when he realized you were a surprisingly decent person for an overlord

both of you eventually bonding over your distaste for the Vees

He wasn’t one big on affection or flirting

so when he asked you out you didn’t even realize it was for a date

when you found out he killed the angel and simply held his hand and promised to keep his secret, he became even more smitten with you

although he wouldn’t show it apart from a faint blush whenever you did something he found cute

his daughters loved you which was the final push to convince him to ask you to be his girlfriend… officially.

——> Sfw: dating

Once you started dating, he began showing a lot more affection

He’d sometimes bring you flowers

definitely talks to you in Spanish as a way to tease you since you don’t know what he’s saying (If you do understand Spanish, you act like you don’t because you know the stuff he says he’d never say as much as he did if he knew you could understand it)

Not very touchy but sometimes resting his hand on your waist while you’re alone, ex. Watching a movie together

loves to get you to dance with him

especially twirling you

if you can dance he loves it

if you can’t, he still loves it anyways, watching you stumble around or trip over your feet as you twirl before steadying you and laughing

when it comes to dates, he prefers going to places that are more secluded with less people

loves it when you play with his hair

doesn’t mind whether he’s the big spoon or little spoon, does whatever you want from him.

wouldn’t ever work up the courage to ask for physical affection (hugs, kisses) but loves it when you give it to him

hates PDA and prefers to not boast your relationship, although you both don’t make an effort to specifically hide it

gentle but firm when handling you, whether it’s dancing together, hugging, kissing or cuddling.

——> Nsfw

you didn’t get physically intimate for a while even after you started dating

it’s not often you two do

but when you do, he’s amazing at it

definitely a service top

again, firm but gentle

loves leaving bites and hickeys, marking you as his all over

gives wry smirk and bites his lip when trying to restrain himself

he doesn’t usually initiate sex unless you’ve somehow managed to work him up without realizing

but he’d gladly fulfill any need, desire or fantasy you have

“just tell me what you want, corazón, and I’ll give it to you”

whenever you’re having a makeout session he purposefully rubs his legs against you to see you getting worked up

bonus points if you start shamelessly humping him and beg him to move too, he loves seeing just how much you need him

when it comes to positions, he doesn’t care as long as you’re facing him- he wants to see your face

Not incredibly vocal, maybe a few grunts and soft or low moans

*lots* of aftercare, he’d to anything to make sure you feel okay afterwards

[liauditore]

LIAU MY BELOVED

ask game question

Jimmy x Martyn

:D

romeo asking for mirror birds in MY ask box?!!?!??!?!?! (i know u pref mirror birds but solidwood is too funny im so sorry)

ah yeah. these losers.

see, a lot of my thoughts surrounding these two would kind of spoil my own AU that i never make stuff for so im usually somewhat hesitant to talk about them but basically., (toxic!fh mention)

post-evo divorced property police is so real. ive always imagined it as a childhood friends situation, with martyn being a bit older than jimmy.

they probably caught feelings for eachother fairly late and already well into teenhood but neither of them were really sure what it was (this is maybe going a little bit into sexuality hc territory but ive always imagined jimmy as whatever the male equivalent of a useless lesbian is and martyns biphobic towards himself lmao).

i touched on this briefly in that one fic i wrote but i've always headcanoned martyn as being somewhat parentified and thus ties his worthiness to be loved into his ability to perform acts of service for someone rather than just.. existing and letting himself be loved.

so as jimmy became more independent, martyn becomes a bit more insecure about their friendship. this becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy as he distances himself from jimmy, feeling like jimmy wouldn't love him if he didn't Need him, and jimmy in return feels confused and hurt as he helplessly watches someone he knew all his life drift away.

that + jimmy has this not-so-subtle crush on scott that martyn's always suspected. he's a jealous bitch.

The storm formed after a final sip, my fingertips frozen solid, I pretend that again I can see, you past the rails, ready to meet And I wonder is it too much to ask, to once more, hold you warm in my hands? To accept I can’t forget, and embrace what still fails to fade?

Milk Tea (Oktavia's translyrics) (because I wasn't kidding when I said these two were cheesy yuri to me lmao)

we had a clown to clown communication moment i think cus I also love the idea of them splitting up and meeting in Third Life years and years later (altho i like to imagine it as more of a voluntary separation).

some stuff copy+pasted from that cursed shipping doc i mentioned awhile back: ((scott + jimmy became a thing while martyn was gone pre-3L))

Now reuniting in 3L as fully grown adults after years apart, all those suppressed emotions come bubbling back up to the surface. An adult Martyn is much less unsure about what he's feeling and Jimmy still has those fantasies of what could have been playing on loop in his head. Of course, Jimmy is still attached to Scott and can't abandon his Bethrothed. He loves and knows what's best for him, he would sooner die than forsake his loyalty. But it does hurt when he hits him. Martyn still cares for Jimmy deeply, whether he wants to or not. He takes the time to keep an eye out for him, even though they had no real reason to interact anymore. He becomes one of the only people to realise what Scott was like with him, how devoid of love it all was. He throws out a line, offers to help him run away. Jimmy refuses. Betrayal. A second time. For the same man. Who cares about Jimmy anyway? (he always did take me for granted)

(a little note here before anyone sets me on fire - time works a bit differently in my writing and the players don't have exact ages but jimmy and martyn's age gap is probably not as dramatic as their cc counterparts)

(it's still there but neither of them even recognise their feelings as remotely romantic until they reunite as adults, as kids it's all just them being silly and having grade school drama with each other)

So uh yeah lots of mutual pining and suppressed feelings and puppy love turned angst👍 tis all i shall say cus i wanna make art of the rest lol

Just a second to lessen the ache, or minute to kiss it away I’d give all I have for the chance to go back to youth and you

[maxzinn]

Damn why is the HSR fandom becoming way worse than genshin? And whenever there is any controversy aventurine is always somehow involved like leave my boy alone 😭

I'm a cis straight woman okay and no matter which fandom i interact with they always look down on me and assume shit about me even though i try to be nothing but understanding I have had so many tell me that I can't like a certain male character romantically because he is only for the boys/gays. Even like when you tell them you like a certain game/franchise/anime/singer or band they're like 'you have to be queer for liking this' and for some reason they try to convince me that I'm queer even though I'm not and they think that me being cis and straight makes me 'basic' and 'boring' I love jjba, Nana, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Hsr and genshin impact but literally every fandom I've been is filled with a bunch of judgemental pricks which is sad because I was so excited to talk about my interests :( at first i thought they were being like that because I'm asian but then i realised it's because of my 'basic and boring' sexual and gender identity

and for some reason when I tell them that I'm cis straight they immediately assume I'm a white privileged woman (like i said I'm literally Asian) and i haven't struggled a day in my life which isn't true at all it's so ignorant to assume all of this about me just based off my sexual and gender identity and when I try to speak up they tell me that they're just 'giving me the taste of my own medicine' like what??? What does that even mean?? I'm not even homophobic i come from a conservative country and family but I have done proper research and educated myself on this topic and i treat everyone with respect so why can't they also be decent human beings and respect me too? I still try to be understanding but I can't stand the air of superiority among these people and they're usually under the age of 25 too because other queer people I have interacted with who are older than me don't behave pathetically like these people

(sorry this was so long you can ignore it if you want and sorry if my english is bad it's not my first language 😭 anyways I hope you have a good day/afternoon/night)

(This post is also long sorry hehe)

No cuz for real, it’s getting way more annoying in the fandom (no offense) and it’s even worse on twitter and hoyolab.

In my opinion, I think the toxicity mainly starts with people forcing to everybody that every character in hsr is queer coded and all that stuff. I keep seeing all that posts and comments that this certain character is “implied” which is not true??? It makes me wonder if they even know what the word “implied” means, cuz it basically/indirectly means that it’s canon.

I’m so done with those posts that claims “robin is lesbian and girlkisser so gtfo men” like stfu?

If you have seen the replies on tuonto’s twitter post, there’s like a LOT of people saying that. Like, hc her as lesbian if you want but DONT act like it’s canon and stop forcing your hcs on other people pls.

And when others reply to them saying that it isn’t canon and that they shouldn’t force it, they just straight up say that those people are “homophobic and lesphobic”.

I have no problems with gay/lesbian ships cuz I support all ships equally (except the illegal and problematic ones), but these delulu people are ruining it for the fandom tbh.

It’s funny that being straight/cis is seen as basic and boring now. And that part where you’re being forced to be queer is funny af 😭 are they ill?

You can like all the male characters that you like, none of them have canon sexualities and they’re certainly not canonically gay. If some person says that you shouldn’t like a certain male character cuz they’re only for the boys… then they’re ill, don’t listen to those bs.

It’s so weird that people now argue and force a sexuality onto fictional characters and just assume a certain character’s sexuality based on stereotypes (like aventurine for example) then claims that they’re a queer representation when said “representation” is just based on stereotypes.

It’s weird that a character’s sexuality matters so much when it doesn’t even matter that much, just enjoy the game and the plot? Stop projecting yourself onto them, they’re their own person and they have their own personality. They have nothing to do with your sexuality. And most of all… they’re literally PIXELS

And pls, liking a certain franchise doesn’t reflect anything on your sexuality. You can be a straight woman and like drag shows, you can be a straight woman and like BL and GL. Men can be straight and love skincare, men can be straight and like fashion/makeup. ITS NOT THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND?? Just stop stereotyping people 💀

[xmimiteh]

As I’ve been trying to make some background for my FC and my chocobo racing with Mimiteh, I realized this could be some nice things to pick up for anyone here. Also might be some hooks, if anyone wants to engage in rp with Mimi. So, here they are:

Chocobo racing news!

And don’t worry, I won’t claim this is “all” chocobo racing happening. I assume there are a lot more chocobo races than just the ones I will be posting here. These are just the ones Mimiteh participates in. The names are simply fictional NPCs I created out of a whim for it. So if anything does not work for you or collides with any of your stuff? Feel free to ignore it or simply say, this is just another race in the region – there could be several other races happen as well.

So, no territorial claims from me. Just some invitation to pick this up for inspiration. You need a topic to talk about? No need to talk about the weather, talk about the recent chocobo races! Want to bet on the races or make some money with it? Or lose it? Do it! I’ll see how much time I can put in here to give you some background. Some weeks it will just be the basics, sometimes I might throw in some interesting event.

This is basically like Fantasy Football with happy birds! As I never did Fantasy Football and I need to find my groove here, this might evolve over time. Don’t expect something too elaborated, because I usually build these things up step by step. I rarely do a lot of ooc pre-planning. I just improvise a lot.

If you have any question, idea or whatever, just send me a DM. Otherwise, have fun with it:

Chocobo race (name / catch-phrase): “High spirited racing” Location: Shroud / Tranquil Paths / Gridania Weather: Rainy (Day 1) / Rainy (Day 2) / Foggy (Day 3) / Clear (Day 4) / Clear (Day 5) Special: Tournament with 5 days of consecutive races

Racing Results:

1. Heavenly High – Warulo Rulo 2. Running Berserker – A’nura Nahar 3. Ul’dahn Gold – X’mimiteh Lhim 4. Inspired Speed – Tehwa’ran Ora 5. Clear Skyfall – Chester Roefield 6. Falling Meteor – Aaron Fyth 7. Walking Tree – Raging Boulder 8. Little Winner – Lorola Lora 9. Why so kweh? – Annabelle Greene 10. Big Chirper – Glymwynn Fjorlsn

Quick summary: This was an unusual race and not part of an on-going series or the season. The annual “High spirited racing” tournament in the Shroud. Several consecutive races with some weird point system for each race. In the end, points were added and the final results are as seen above. Also, special rules (very strict) to keep the spirits calm. Who could know racing could be this complicated?

How it went for Mimiteh: Surprisingly well! She complained a bit before about the weather. And to be fair, weather in the Shroud indeed is challenging for her and her chocobo. And the first three days were hard for them. But in the end, it cleared up and they finally managed to gain more points. Not enough to win, but still – a remarkable result especially in the Shroud! One of the best for the grumpy chocobo jockey in a long time. Commentators even commented on how she seemed in a way better form than she used to be – even more relentless in her pursuits and more aggressive.

--

Upcoming race: Seasonal Gold Saucer race Location: Thanalan / Sagolii Road

Racing Roster (only participants):

* Ul’dahn Gold – X’mimiteh Lhim * Desert Hopper – U’donna Werun * Cactuar Glory – Elisabeth Harrow * Syndicate Racer – Ulalala Lala * Stormy Cannon – U’hym Tia * Wild Beak – Soh’rae Quor * Why so kweh? – Annabelle Greene * Running Berserker – A’nura Nahar * Big Chirper – Glymwynn Fjorlsn * Falling Meteor – Aaron Fyth

[axl-ul]

Blog Info

Hi! This is a remade intro (sort of) post to my blog. I've already done something similar but after numerous additions and updates and rewrites of my stories, I realised that this needed an update as well.

Ok, so I finally decided the way I want to direct this blog/"page". I may edit this in the future in case I forgot to mention something on the day I post this. This is the basic summary:

The series that used to be called The Legends of No-man's Land no longer applies to all stories. Most of them are set in the same universe. However, I'd like for them not to be recognised as a series of some sorts. Hence this name will be used only for short stories that are basically scribles or provide additional information and trivia of the characters for the readers that like to know more about them. (And this also opens a space for possible debates and speculations or theories for the characters and the background of the setting/world). So TL; DR The Legends of No-man's Land as a series or a story won't ever be written (I changed a lot of ideas and background lore. And I also scrapped the og idea.)

I'll be posting (or at least traing to post) stuff about the world-building, the lore, the story and characters which are either based on mythological gods or are directly inspired by them. NOTHING IS RELIGIOUS AND THE TAKES ON THE CHARACTERS INSPIRED BY THE MYTHOLOGICAL FIGURES AND LEGENDS ARE MY PERSONAL INTERPRETATION. I just like myths and legends and I like to mash them altogether. Because I find it interesting to imagine what these characters would react like if they actually met. In other words, if you like to chat about this topic and you think something doesn't corelate much with the “original material“, please, message me. I'm open to discussion. Or send me an ask. Whatever you find more comfortable.

I might be also posting character analyses and maybe writing prompts (the writing prompts shall be free to use for anyone). I enjoy writing and creating new stuff. So if you'd like to chat about such, ask a question or two or think you could suggest an improvement, please, feel free to contact me.

The stories are going to feature MATURE ideas and themes. This means NSFW content which isn't at all directed at minors and people who are uncomfortable with gore, addiction, abuse etc.

The core is more or less of a psychological aspect. Let's say, it's somewhat of a deep dive to issues (social, psychological etc.). Please keep in mind, the story ONLY poses questions and ONLY ATTEMPTS to find a solution. Never a right answer.

Genre: dark fantasy (feat. Slavic, Chinese and other mythologies) and folk/psychological/cosmic horror. Also comedy, especially dark comedy. And action (quite a lot of action), maybe kind of adventurous one. Only slight romance because I usually can't bring myself to like romance genre as a whole (romance here happens because I got angry at some romance stories and tropes and told myself that even I, a certified hater, can do better. A.k.a. I'm writing the romance (sub)plot out of spite).

If anyone wants to chat or share an opinion, do so in a polite and civil way.

When it comes to my grammatical skills, let me know and I'll try to make myself as clear as possible. English isn't my native language.

The story is heavily (like, HEAVILY) influenced by several already existing novels, sagas, mangas and video games (for exemple Berserk, Bloodborne or Witcher and, of course, folk stories I know). I will not deny if you'll spot certain familiarities. However, the stories and characters aren't copies of them.

I might post a design or two.

[sudsandspectre]

20 questions for 20 writers

tagged by @hopefulnightlady !!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? i have an old account, my main one, and the secret smut side where i also threw my cod fic (moonjon) because i didn't really want them associated with my main. so!! across all of them, 46 but i also orphaned a bunch of homestuck stuff way back in the day

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 265,026 on my main! but plus the sides it's 498,415

3. What fandoms do you write for? star wars, witcher, cod, assassin's creed, narnia, dc (dick grayson), fullmetal alchemist, final fantasy vii, hobbit, legend of zelda, maze runner, merlin bbc, naruto, and then many more one-offs i've never posted. used to write for voltron, teen wolf, and fake ah crew

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? i'm still not comfy yet connecting my sides and my main unfortunately

5. Do you respond to comments? i used to respond to every single one, then got overwhelmed, and now rarely respond unless it's a direct question. i want to respond to all of them tho 😭

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? uhh i'm not big on angsty endings tbh, so if they're not happy endings they're still hopeful. angsty-EST? maybe my second biggest fic, that one is going to leave a lot of loose ends to be picked up in the sequel

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? my big main fic is gonna have like. EVERYTHING go right for them

8. Do you get hate on fics? i've gotten a few more like.... annoyed comments? but no outright hate. one person was pissed i didn't tag a specific character as trans even tho i had the tag trans and nb characters

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes, and they are on the same ao3 where i'm dumping my cod stuff. dfab trans smut! not super kinky, but not wholly vanilla, either. am ace and know what i like lmao

10. Do you write crossovers? yes, but as fusions! don't think i've ever written one where the different main casts interact

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? i think way back in the day, but nothing in the last decade as far as i know

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? not to my knowledge!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? yes but it never got finished and was never published, and it was years ago

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? oh boy ummm not sure i have one, but i keep coming back to jangobi, og pricesoap, gersakier and yennskier, royed and edling, casmund, ezides and altdes, revalink, wangxian and zhancheng. i usually latch onto one character/blorbo and then explore a bunch of different ships with them? merthur has a very special place in my heart but i'm not as into it as i used to be.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? that one teen wolf longfic i started in 2015 lmao. i did SO MUCH world building and i miss it, but boy howdy was it more than i could chew

16. What are your writing strengths? shaping au things to insert into canon, or rather, lying through half truths and omissions, both on a doylian and watsonian level

17. What are your writing weaknesses? pacing and staying interested in a fandom for long enough stretches to finish long-fic

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? there is no excuse not to put the translations at the TOP of the chapter instead of the endnote, though i'm also of the opinion that it is very rare entire sentences need to be in another language ESPECIALLY if the character whose pov you're in understands the language. there are ways of incorporating dialogue in other languages cleanly, i've seen it done and am working towards it myself, it is just so often done so messily

19. First fandom you wrote for? shugo chara, i think. oh wow that was a long time ago. well, actually, one could argue the first i wrote for was canterwood crest lmaooooo but that was before i knew what fanfiction was

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? i am VERY proud of a rexobi au i wrote, and a pre-s2 dinpaz, but my revalink on my old old account will always hold such a special place in my heart

thank you for the tag, lovely! i don't have many friends on this side blog, so i don't have any to tag, except maybe @czigonas ? we're not friends but you follow my main and many of my side blogs and i'm always so happy to see your username in my notes! you've also got some STELLAR takes in the cod sphere, so if you're up for participating, i'd love to see your thoughts! no pressure tho~

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Ok so what if I made a list of things I started at some point in the past like five years or so and haven't finished but am still pretending I'll get back to them eventually? Maybe that would be interesting to literally no one but me, which is good enough.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games ever. I'm like 90 hours into it, have at least twice that left to go, and I haven't touched it in like three years. Like most of the rest of this first section the main problem is that it's on my computer, and being able to sit comfortably in a way that doesn't injure myself while also being able to see the screen isn't going well these days.

Tales of Berseria is also a lot of fun, but it has the computer problem. I need more Magilou because she's such a gremlin.

Final Fantasy 13-2 is definitely my favorite post-12 FF game and might even be the one I've had the most fun with since 6, 7, and 8. Alas, computer.

BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is a very silly crossover that feels like it shouldn't exist. I keep saying I'll go back and finish the rest of the storylines, but computer and also I just haven't had a strong desire to yet. I did figure out that I can win fights using an old Guitar Hero guitar though, so that was fun.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk is something I started after finally getting caught up on the manga after years and years, because I tend to like Warriors/Musou games when I'm in the right mood. It's decent but not amazing, which hasn't motivated me to get past the computer issue.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is technically also a computer thing because I was playing it in Cemu. It gets extra bonus points for being hard to see because the text and UI are so small, but also I managed to break my save file like 70 hours in and haven't gotten around to figuring out what's wrong with it yet. Everything seems fine except my character and the camera get loaded in different locations, and I could probably use the memory editor to reset my location and fix it, but it's not worth the trouble until I can see.

Boyfriend Dungeon is great and I already finished the base game right when it came out, and I've been meaning to go back and do the post-launch stuff they added later and still haven't.

Atelier Ryza finally got good like half a dozen hours in after one of the worst-paced intros I've ever seen, and I haven't worked up the fortitude to try playing more past there so far.

A Slug's Dream has some decent puzzles and I was enjoying it enough, but I totally forgot it even existed. Maybe some day.

Xenogears I also keep forgetting because it's in an emulator on my computer and not somewhere I remember to look to see what game I should play. It sort of bypasses the usual computer problem by being ancient and designed for 480i screens so everything is huge. I'll finish it one of these days.

Ok I think that's all the stuff on the computer. There are a couple others that I'm not including because I only made it like an hour into them before getting sidetracked, so I'll just start them over if I ever go back to them.

3DS next? 3DS next.

Fire Emblem Fates is what's currently in there I think. It's taken multiple years, but I've finished Birthright and most of Conquest. Some day I'll finish that one and then maybe do Revelation. Any year now...

Shadows of Valentia might come back around too. I've had enough of a break to at least partly get over how mediocre a lot of the maps are and how annoying certain enemy types are, and I do want to at least try to finish it for the sake of the story, just not while I'm in the middle of pretending to play Fates too.

Shadow Dragon deserves another chance too when I'm in a better frame of mind for it, I just don't know when that'll be.

Radiant Historia is amazing and I really need to get back to it and finish it, and I don't know why my brain keeps not letting me for the past couple years. One of these days it will though, and it'll be great.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is also pretty great, but it's physically painful for me to play. I keep saying I want to try to figure out some way to work around that, but it's been multiple years and I still haven't.

Shovel Knight is one I completely forgot I even have, but it was way better than I expected and I should give it another chance.

Project X Zone is another ridiculous crossover that feels like it shouldn't exist, and it's pretty fun sometimes too, but wow does it really drag sometimes with how long each level is and how many of them there are. I might be able to manage it in smaller chunks though.

Ok Switch gets to be in a separate post or I'm going to run out of tags.

[pixelwixard]

Potential Lower Decks fanfic and fanfic-adjacent ideas (and it turns out some talk about writing insecurity, which is the first four paragraphs so you can skip if you want)

LONG INTRO

I'm about to type a LOT of stuff. This whole post got longer than I thought it would.

So, I have my AO3 account, finally. I don't have any other creative projects. What's stopping me from writing some fanfic already?

MYSELF. I AM THE PROBLEM.

Okay, I'm exaggerating for comedic effect! I will admit to still being nervous about writing something that's not my own brainchild, though. "What if I get it wrong?" I ask myself. "What if it doesn't sound anything like the show?" I am working on convincing myself that neither question is that important. I may not get it EXACTLY right, and it may sound more like my versions of the characters than the canonical versions, but...who cares? As long as I'm doing my best and being true to the spirit, isn't that good enough? That's what I'm trying to tell myself. And also, self, no, it's not going to sound like the show. That doesn't make it WRONG. You're not a professional comedy writer, are you? No. You're not writing this for a paycheck, are you? No. So stop worrying about it!

I'm trying to tell myself this.

So, anyway, that was a long intro to say that I'm going to now do the other thing that writers do when they are scared to actually write: I'm going to talk about writing. And also plan a research project!

LOWER DECKS RESEARCH PROJECT

Actually, let's talk about the research project first. I thought I might do a second rewatch of Lower Decks, with the goal of writing dossiers for each character. Gather known facts, of course, but also take special note of dialogue and interaction. What the characters say, how they say it, what kinds of jokes are usually targeted at them, how they are with specific characters, you get it. A real resource for my own writing, and something I'd also like to put out there for others who might want to use it. Seems like a lot of work for fanfic, but I do love having a project, and this is a long-term one. Plus, it will train me to make detailed characters of my own. Also plus, it will make me feel like an anthropologist or a spy, gathering intel on my subjects, and I am a creep like that.

Okay, and now to talk about what I might want to write!

ACTUAL FANFIC IDEAS

I've already talked about some ideas I've had. Mostly, the AU stuff. My mind keeps going back to it, so it seems it may become a reality someday. I was thinking of changing the tentative name of "Spell Trek" that I came up with for my fantasy AU, since it's the name of a board game, but I figured it doesn't matter that much because it's not like I'm selling these stories, and I don't think there will be market confusion. Haven't come up with much else beyond some scattered thoughts for the setting, but I'm pretty sure it will be a straightforward conversion. You know, swap sci-fi for fantasy. Probably have them all flying around in airships instead of spaceships. Might be interplanar travel instead of interstellar. Phasers? Well, that's just a stun wand. Shields? That doesn't really change, it's just a magic shield instead of a science one. The biggest question I have right now (just popped into my head) is how to handle "warp." I have to figure out how planar travel works, I guess. I'd also have to think about whether I want to keep all the species intact or kind of play around with them a bit. Wouldn't be that hard to make Vulcans elves, or Klingons orcs. Plenty of worldbuilding to do, is the point.

The second idea I had, which is actually still applicable to the first, is the matter of story format. I've been toying around with different ways to write lately. I COULD just write in the traditional prose way, like you would find in a book. DIalogue, action, description. First or third person. You know.

I was thinking, though, that I might want to write scripts instead. I've toyed around with it when writing original fiction. I don't really follow the proper TV format, though. Very loose style. But I figured, if I wanted to emulate the show as closely as possible, then maybe a script makes sense for me. Not sure how many people want to read scripts, but maybe SOMEONE out there would like them.

Oh, on a related note, I was also thinking of writing stories as transcripts. Similar to the script, but particular style. I had three possible notions to go with this idea:

The Lower Deck Five (T'Lyn for the win), or maybe just a couple of them, decide to make a piece of ancient Earth entertainment known as a "podcast." "The Cerritos Experience," or something like that. Just a place to talk about missions, gossip, whatever. So, my stories would be transcripts of their podcasts. I think this one is my favorite.

Stories told through personal logs. Could just be one character's, or could be multiple characters' talking about the same events.

Perhaps Captain Freeman decides that she needs visual records of all missions from now on, so now away teams wear bodycams or have drones or something. Transcripts of the videos that they produce.

I don't know, there's just something I like about the simplicity of scripts and transcripts. You still have to have a good story to tell, but it feels easier, in a way. For my, anyway. Eh, I'll probably end up writing traditional prose, too, but I do want to experiment with one of these ideas (probably the podcast).

Sorry I wrote so much. Hey, you didn't HAVE to read it. Thanks if you did, though. Let me know if any of this sounds interesting.

[ellena-asg]

What do you think James’ hair looked like under the wig? I don’t think it would have been practical to keep it long, and historically men who wore wigs kept their hair shaved, but I doubt he wore it that short. This is something that I’ve been overthinking for way too long

Oh, I feel you! ♥️

On the one hand, yes, I heard of people having short hair (or being bald) under wigs. Short hair may be more comfortable to have under a wig, especially in a hot days. It's also easier, better to keep all in order. The old wigs were much less comfortable than modern ones and less elastic, I guess.

BUT. It's a fantasy pirate movie where things aren't that historically accurate 😉 So everything is possible in this fictional world, I think. And we can headcanon what we want 😊

Now confession: Love and respect to all hair, love to James (he would look great in/with absolutely everything) but I can't imagine him with short hair. It's always him + medium/long hair to me. Even when I think about child him in Sins of the father, his hair is not that short:

When I first watched CotBP, I immediately thought there was long hair under his wig (and sometimes I think I can see them sticking out from under it but I'm not sure). Will's hair isn't short, Joshamee's hair isn't short, Jack has fantastic long hair. Why not James? I know that papa Swann said wigs aren't comfortable (or his one) but what if James enjoyed having longer hair and could keep it in order? What if at some nights, when he could get rid of the wig, he loved breathing fresh air, feeling the wind in his hair and... it made him feel free? (rare moments in his life, huh?).

And when they showed him in DMC, him so piratey and with THAT hair ohhh ♥️♥️♥️

(it's wet in that scene but still 🥰)

I love his natural hair soooo much and I think him wearing a wig was a crime 😉

My grandmother worked as a hairdresser/barber and sometimes I watched her at work and what she did with longer hair in wigs case. It's usually a pony tail + hair pins or hair clips. Sometimes braids and variations. And sometimes some cosmetics if needed. Plus probably other methods I can't now remember. So that's how I can see him caring about that stuff (and I believe he could do that somehow). Oh, just imagine our sailor making strong braids 😄

In Tortuga tavern he even has a pony tail (and a cute ribbon 😍) under the wig. Though the question is: was that his original pre-Tortuga hairstyle? or did he started it in Tortuga and he just put the wig (or rather: what once was that wig) on his head every day because "old habits and all that"? 😉

P.S. We know from the books that Jack loved cosmetics and in the movies he likes adorning his hair and... what if in some post AWE AU, when they finally can stop being opponents, Jack loves helping James with his hair? And he's like "This I use for (...). And this is good for (...). Oh, and this! This may be perfect for your (...)" and James shares his own knowledge and they have fun 😭

[hulknussen]

umumumumu groshulknussen wip?? I don't usually share wips because they're not that good before I polish them (and this one is particularly messy) but I am also really itching to work on my groshulknussen fics when I have two perfectly good posted wips right there. so I'm really putting this on tumblr hoping to satisfy the craving so I can, in turn, get back to the other stuff. please don't expect anything about these 3 to go up on ao3 soon crying shoutout to @ellearts and @theboyfriendwizard for entertaining me with this <3 there's the mildest of sexual themes present towards the end. nothing explicit, would probably get the m rating on ao3

“What, you didn’t leave space for me?” Nico jokes. He tries putting the bucket of popcorn down on the coffee table, but Romain steals it out of his hands shamelessly.

Kevin scoots over, making room between him and Romain for Nico. “Wait, did you watch the last episode with us?” he asks Nico, remote still in hand.

“Uhh…” Nico grabs himself a handful of popcorn. “Did I?”

Next to him, Romain manages to make “chewing popcorn loudly” look like someone thinking very hard. “No, ‘cause you were busy with the- the Renault meeting, right?” Romain muses.

“Ohh…” Nico makes. “Was I? When was the last time I third-wheeled you guys?”

Kevin snorts, reaching over Nico to try and get himself some of the popcorn. Romain presses the paper bucket closer to his chest like he’s trying to keep it save from evil forces.

With a grin, Nico takes a fist full of it and holds it open for Kevin. Romain seems satisfied with the arrangement, while Kevin huffs. He begins popping some of the sweet pieces into his mouth anyway.

Romain says, “I think it’s fine, though. It was all nonsense.”

“Yeah, it was mostly filler,” Kevin agrees.

“Sure,” Nico shrugs. He’s not very invested in the show, anyway. Something half sci-fi, half fantasy, that’s been going on for what feels like eternity, still airing out new episodes every week.

It’s more the comfortable pressure of Kevin’s thigh against his, Romain shoulder-to-shoulder with him on the other side, which keeps him coming back. The grin Romain offers Nico when one of the characters tells another to suck his dick, the steady supply of popcorn Nico is offering Kevin.

The scene in front of them has turned into one of the main characters and his love interest (Nico’s pretty sure it’s the third one this season alone) finally giving in, stumbling to the bed while making out feverishly. Nico tenses, waiting, and then;

“Come on,” Kevin drawls next to him. “Seriously?”

Romain returns, “I told you they were gonna get together!” with smug satisfaction.

“No, but- that’s horrible!” Kevin throws his arm up.

Nico takes another handful of popcorn, watching them as they go back on the same points as the last time they’d had this discussion. And the time before that.

“I just think he’d be way better with—wait, what’s her name?” Kevin asks Nico.

“Dunno,” he mutters with a shrug. He’d paused the episode earlier, now leaning forward to put the remote back onto the coffee table.

Immediately he feels two hands: Kevin’s on his arm, Romain’s on his thighs. Nico looks between the two.

“I wasn’t going to leave, but I do feel like maybe I should. Let you sort this argument in, uh, other ways,” he jokes.

There’s a brief silence, Kevin and Romain regarding each other. Then both of them move forward, quickly, pressing a kiss to each side of Nico’s face.

A sound that is very much not a squeak (thank you very much) gets pulled out of Nico, morphing into embarrassed laughter as his face heats.

“What was that for?!” he exclaims, still grinning wide.

Romain is mirroring the expression, while Kevin looks a bit softer at the edges, watching Romain and Nico.

“French goodbyes,” Romain says, all cheek.

As Nico gets up, he jokes, “So you are throwing me out, gotcha.”

“Sorry.” Kevin’s apology mixes with the fun he is evidently having over the whole exchange. “If you want you can come back after we-”

“Woah, I don’t need to hear the rest, bro,” Nico says, hands up in the air as best as he can when he’s trying to collect his phone, keys and jacket. “You guys do your thing,” he throws over his shoulder when he’s at the door.

“Promise we’ll think of you!” Romain calls after him.

Nico mutters, “Oh, please don’t,” just as the door shuts.

It’s honest to God hard work trying not to think about the burning of his face when they’d pressed closer, breath ghosting over Nico’s skin, hands still on his arm and thigh. Even harder work not to think on Romain’s words, like there is actually something lingering in the we’ll think of you.

Outrageous images of stuttered breaths and skin-on-skin graze his mind, get muddled with the idea that they look at each other and think of him. Know with every stray touch and every sigh they draw out of each other that the other is thinking of Nico, present even if he’s not there at all.

That’s ridiculous, of course. It’s just really hard not to entertain the fantasy when he knows that fucking out a false argument they got too invested in is exactly what they’re doing right now.

(It’s really damn hard. Nico takes a cold shower over it.

Two, actually.)

Less than an hour later his phone dings, the message we’re done, come back? from Romain in their group chat.

He sends a middle-finger as response.

Those fuckers.

[chrimsone]

hey i remembered to post a chapter here for once!

lets see what do i want to rant about today? How about first, funny titles. I picked Ember kind of on a whim. Based off this song because i just really love SiHanatsuka and i'll take any chance to referenced their music. So good. But like well after actually WRITING the chapter i was just kinda zoning out at work and noticed an unintended pattern. Static and Ember. The beginning sparks of their respective elements. I didn't even MEAN to make that kinda connotation but now that i have im all here for it!

There's also the fun Light emote-y stuff. so the thing is kinda like. Im giving Rin my aphantasia. Im a sucker for fantasy manga and isekai r always fun. often times in those stories they give their magic system a visual aspect. after all its pretty easy to just be like 'yeah just imagine the thing and youll be okay'. the problem is -- what about the folk who have issues creating images in their mind (me)? So this is really just a big middle finger to that system. im giving Light the same system, but pointing out how it's really not that 'easy' for everyone. i know its hard to come up with a proper system and usually the fantasy theme is more or less a vector for something else, but it just makes me ANGY how authors dont try to explore these overlooked options.

so its kinda like. a lil bit of a character break for Phoenix to reference a meme but like. I had to. it's a worm in my brain that would cause me psychic damage if i didn't indulge in it. Into the Void had a few of those because i just HAD to. I like doing it because idk, keeps things a lil bit on the more lighthearted side! i do wanna try balancing out humor n serious stuff with this story so i let these worms thrive yknow

oh yeah and the funny shooting scene was what held back this update even longer than it should've been lol. i had something else in mind but i just dont know enough about shooting guns to properly convey it in at least a semi-realistic state. i nearly scrapped the whole scene but from what i DID research, i wanted to include that so there's still a lil bit! lol it made me feel like a real author for a bit cause ik so much stuff gets cut in the final piece.

i think that'll be all of my funny musings for this chapter! im working on the next one slower than expected x-x my dumb ass pattern of writing only during work (hate my job wanna get paid to write lol) but it's been suuuuuuper hectic the last few weeks so i havent had time to write. I really gotta dedicate a specific time to writing

[darkandstormydolls]

Part four of my fantasy costuming project: Daemon!

Link to the masterpost:

So the daemoni (does that pluralization remotely follow the rules of English grammar? No! Am I a fantasy writer who can do what I want? Yes!) are an interesting sort. They’re creatures of the water, which has a lot of implications for how they work but mostly for this purpose it means that they spend a lot of time in the water

I made this outfit out of linen, which would definitely be the most common fabric used in their clothes (often with a little bit of magic to made it not soak up water and get heavy and clingy). There’s three main pieces: pants (more of a capri-length would be more common, but I don’t like that style and I am a firm advocate in making/choosing costumes that work with your comfort level with clothes, so I went with the still occasionally seen full length pants instead), a shirt (honestly this is long enough to wear as a summer dress but it is over pants and serving a shirt like purpose in this outfit, so that’s what I’m calling it. Also the hem ended up an inch or two longer than I had expected it to), and a vest over top (which is generally an optional item of clothing, but very common).

The shirt has a fairly wide neckline and can be just pulled over my head, although admittedly that might be a bit trickier with the horns that daemoni usually have. There isn’t really a lot of complex stuff to talk about in this outfit: the vest has a very narrow facing along all the edges to finish it off, and there’s a facing at the neckline of the shirt, other than that it’s all hems. Just like how demons can’t overheat, it would take a lot of daemoni to be affected by cold (like, their blood starting to freeze), so additional layers are very rarely added, and this combined with the fact that many of them wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in direct sun, at least not for longer periods of time, means that short sleeves are standard. Just like the elves, the daemoni will often decorate their clothes with embroidery, especially as trim, and since I was working with fairly boring items of clothing here, I absolutely took the chance to decorate them here. There’s a bunch of featherstitching on the vest, two lines of chain stitches in different colors at the neckline, hem, and sleeve hems of the shirt, and a more complicated border on the pant hems. I had a lot of fun with the embroidery on this one, both because my embroidery skills had improved since making my fae clothes and also because I was trying out a lot more different stitches and designs this time.

Close up looks

I wove the sash for this outfit in the same was that I made the sash and trim on my demon clothes, although this one is just striped and lacks a pickup pattern. I opted to wear a bunch of jewelry with this one (conveniently, I have an absurd amount of costume jewelry from flea markets, plus an additional absurd amount that isn’t my style but that I keep for costumes like this one) because the daemoni are known for their gemstones and pearls (plus, it just felt appropriate for the species associated with water). There are also a handful of anachronisms with this outfit: mostly, the fact that I have my hair pinned up with the hair stick from my elven clothes (daemoni don’t usually wear their hair long), and the fact that I’m wearing boots (I have spoken before about my dislike of sandals, and I had even less desire to go barefoot. Perhaps a few daemoni might take to wearing fae-style boots if they were to spend a lot of time on land).

I really like this costume. It’s very comfortable, and all the linen makes it really nice to wear in warm weather (although admittedly I don’t get my worldbuilding costumes out as much as I would like), and despite the issues I ran into trying to find the fabric for the pants (none of the four fabric stores near me sell grey linen apparently, even in the upholstery sections, and I am slightly wary of buying fabric online, especially for something like this where I would want to be able to feel the texture and drape), it was pretty easy but still satisfying to make

[brightblessed]

hello! my name is TOPAZ, i go by he/they pronouns. i’m gonna iron out the really important stuff here first. i always tag triggers. I am currently caught up to the end of 7.0 msq. I will tag all spoilers as 'dawntrail spoilers' and '7.0 spoilers'. If you are on a previous expansion, please let me know so I can tag spoilers for those. By default, I do not. But I will if requested.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT ROI DOES ENGAGE IN SUICIDAL/SELF-HARMING/SELF-DESTRUCTIVE WAYS. I will always tag these things but fair warning!

I have not played Kingdom Hearts or basically ANY Final Fantasy games aside from X, VIII and XVI. I won’t follow you if you are from any of the other games or from KH. I am not familiar with them at all. I am open to crossover if you have a XIV verse. If I KNOW you OOC or you have a XIV verse, I will follow you regardless of what you are from.

I don’t follow blogs that are just companions for in-game roleplay. I don’t really do in game rp. I also won’t really follow aesthetic blogs for characters because I am strictly interested in writing. 

I am open to plotting multi-WoL threads. It just has to be plotted out a little bit. I do have some options for non-WoL verses, but Roi is VERY DIFFERENT in those verses. I can also leave things vague until we decide.

If I am interacting with someone that makes you uncomfortable, please let me know. I know confrontation is hard, but I promise I value your safety especially if we are friends/interact at all.

Roi does not like or trust Garleans. He gradually gets better with this, but he still has a lot of personal issues with them. He can be downright aggressive at times. He also hates A LOT of characters I don’t. I don’t want to water down his very real feelings. I LOVE Fordola, but Roi hates her with a  passion. There are a lot of examples. 

now on to the roleplay stuff. 

PERSONAL BLOGS: do not reblog ic posts, headcanons, or answers to asks. i will tag posts with ‘ok to rb’ if anyone can reblog them. please respect this. 

IN REGARDS TO MAINS/SHIPS: If you go inactive or stop interacting with me, I’ll probably just remove you. I am always open to becoming mains again. But it is kind a sad to go to my mains page and see no one that still interacts with me. 

muse:

Roi is, by default, the WoL. I have added a non-WoL verse. it’s very different from his main verse. I can use this when interacting with WoLs. My default will be WoL, however. I can do non-specific interactions around ARR, and depending on that it could branch off to him joining the scions since he does have the echo, and going down a different path. but it’s only if plotted out with specific partners. Roi was not going down a good path in ARR. His ONLY goal was to get stronger so nothing would hurt him again.

Roi is incredibly traumatized. He’s got a lot of issues. In general, in ARR he can appear reserved and standoffish, whereas in HW he is at his lowest. Dealing with him in heavensward is VERY DIFFICULT. He slowly starts improving from stormblood on. But please keep in mind that Roi has some ugliness inside of him. He usually takes it out on himself. 

Roi does not like the empire. They ruined his life and more or less killed his entire family. he has almost no sympathy for them. He can feel for conscripts who have no choice, but anyone willingly in support of the empire is an enemy to him. He HATES them. Roi LOATHES the empire. There are a few imperials that he is more sympathetic towards. He has very complicated feelings about Yotsuyu for example because of her circumstances and his own personal feelings about society. But yeah, if your muse is imperial he is not going to get along with them. He eases up as time goes on, but he will not go easy on reminding them of the sins of the empire. 

INTERACTIONS:

IF WE ARE MUTUALS, send memes, like my calls, respond to my opens. if we’re mutuals, i want to write with you!

IF WE AREN’T MUTUALS, you can send memes so long as they aren’t interaction-based (drabble prompts, headcanon asks, ect…), but do not like my calls or anything. thank you. this isn’t personal. it usually means i don’t think our styles will work together, i don’t know your fandom, you’re a personal blog, you have broken one of my rules, or i will possibly break one of your rules with the content i post. 

IF YOU ARE A DIFFERENT FANDOM, so long as we’re mutuals i want to write with you. i don’t typically follow fandoms i’m not knowledgeable about a least a little. unless i know you from another blog or the character seems really interesting. 

IF YOU ARE AN OC, if we’re mutuals feel free to interact with me in every way you can think of lol. if not, it may be because i couldn’t read your about page or something, your character won’t fit with mine, or you’re part of a fandom i don’t know. 

ON THE SUBJECT OF ASK MEMES, if i reblog them it means i want them in my inbox. i don’t care if you reblog from me every so often without sending any in. but i greatly appreciate when you do. even if it hardly works and i never answer it, it means a lot to me that you thought to send me something. asks are how i get 90% of my threads. 

FOLLOWING/UNFOLLOWING:

IF YOU ARE INACTIVE FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, i may unfollow you. if i did, just unfollow and refollow me or shoot me a message. 

IF YOU BREAK ONE OF MY RULES, i’ll unfollow you depending on the rule. if you want to talk this over calmly, message me. in case tumblr made me unfollow for no reason, since mobile likes to do that.

IF YOU MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE because of the content you post, like constant suicidal/self harm ooc content, i may unfollow you. 

IF YOU SAY SOMETHING I DISAGREE WITH to the extreme, i will unfollow you.

IF YOU VAGUEBLOG A LOT, i will def unfollow. i don’t need that drama in my life lol. 

IF YOU POST A LOT OF CALLOUTS, i’ll unfollow you. please tag them with cw drama and it should be fine. i understand why callouts have to be posted sometimes. 

I DO NOT ALWAYS FOLLOW BACK RIGHT AWAY. I like to look over someone’s page before I follow them. So if you follow me and a week out, I have not followed you back and you have a rules page and about page AND I have been remotely active. I may not have time to look over your page yet. Sorry.

SOFTBLOCKING

IF YOU SPAM THE SHIT OUT OF MY CONTENT, i will softblock you. this means you going down literal pages and reblogging stuff. i’m happy you like my content, but please use the queue. 

IF YOU REBLOG CONTENT THAT I HAVE WRITTEN, HEADCANONS, ANSWERS, REPLIES, ECT… and you are a personal blog. you will be softblock, if not just outright blocked. 

BLOCKING

IF YOU ARE CLOSE WITH PEOPLE THAT HAVE HURT ME, i might block you so they don’t see me. 

IF YOU SEND ANON HATE and i find out, blocked. 

IF YOU SPREAD LIES about people, blocked. 

IF YOU TRY TO FORCE ME TO SMUT, blocked. 

IF YOU MESSAGING ME OOC EVERY SINGLE TIME I COME ONLINE and get really passive-aggressive when i don’t answer, blocked. 

IF YOU GUILT TRIP ME, blocked. 

IF YOU POST SEXISM, RACISM, TRANSPHOPBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, OR BIPHOBIA… you will be blocked. i don’t care how mild it is or if you don’t see it that way. 

IF YOU REBLOG CONTENT that i have written, headcanons, answers, replies, ect… and you are a personal blog. you will be softblock, if not just outright blocked. 

UNLIKE WITH UNFOLLOWING, AND EVEN SOFTBLOCKING, DO NOT TRY TO ASK ME WHY. BLOCKING YOU MEANS I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOU. IT MEANS YOU MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE. IT MEANS, PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN. THANKS.