#and i got into it because it was ff + character customization ... that was my simplest reason for wanting to play it ..... and look where i

[phoenix-flamed]

Me, fondly remembering my playthroughs of FFVII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XII: I don't need more blogs I don't need more blogs I don't need more blogs I do --

Though if I did RP as anyone, it'd hands-down be Beatrix from IX.

[astrxealis]

the way i currently want bg3 more than ffxvi despite being such an ff fan that i've been utterly obsessed w xvi ever since it was first announced but bg3 wins out for a very simple reason: character customization

[aotopmha]

I have Endwalked!

The scenes that got me were the scene with Alisae, G'raha and Krile before Ultima Thule and the final scene with Meteion.

The scene with G'raha, Alisae and Krile felt so sincere in its concern for you. I just thought it was super sweet.

With emotionally evocative stories that are created under the wing of huge companies and/or related to massive franchises like FF, I always have this sense in the back of my mind going off saying that it's all product and it's really there to butter up the customer, but 14 really does feel sincere to me.

(While still sometimes buttering up the customer.)

If the writers don't believe in what they are writing, then I think they are at least thinking about what the characters believe in from an emotionally sincere standpoint.

I think stories that delve into these nuanced and difficult topics have to have some form of empathic human behind them.

And well, even if there isn't, they sure make me believe they stand by what they write.

(Which, I think, in itself is a characteristic of good writing: people believing in it.)

And my favorite part about the final scene with Meteion is that the answer she arrives at, the answer Hermes was looking for, is a substantial, clearly spelled out belief, which is also backed by ten years of story context.

It is one of my favorite thematic focuses for a story to begin with, but even without the ten years behind it, I think just how the prose expressed this idea is what made it so powerful to me.

The phrasing/expression of a sentiment itself can go such a long way to make age-old concepts powerful. (Which technically is just the fundamental truth of good writing, isn't it?)

I think that's another reason why the scene with Moenbryda's parents hits so many despite Moenbryda being a character from one patch back from years ago.

The issue with [insert trope here] never was the idea itself. It's always whether you can believe in the trope via the writing. Stories are made up of so many different aspects: context, story length, plotting etc. I think all of that kind of melts away in the face of powerful dialog itself, and in turn even if everything else is good, bad dialog can also take away a lot from a story.

I'm so happy whenever a long-running story ends on substance and I don't have to deal with awkward prose in its most final moments.

(Attack on Titan fan screaming in frustration here.)

Speaking of substance, though, I'd also like to bring up the few Alisae lines I've been really eager to talk about in relation to the story's exploration of emotional suffering.

I love this because it is just as much relevant to Alisae as a character and her relationship with her brother and their support for each other than it is thematically for Endwalker as a whole.

Again, it might lean into the age-old "power of friendship" trope, but I think It's such an important nuance to include in stories like this.

The sentiment of "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" is not actually true and with so many different beliefs in the story having this element, I think getting this detail as one of the final sentiments regarding this thematic idea is very good.

What is true is that everyone handles emotionally painful moments differently and as long as there are other people in the world, nobody is destined to suffer alone. Others are here to carry our burdens with us, so they aren't so heavy.

We just really need to work on understanding and patience towards those who are suffering.

I have so much more to say about the final stretch of the story, which I'll probably go into in much more detail in upcoming posts, but for a little bit more basic analysis of the game content itself, I loved the Dead Ends dungeon and the Endsinger trial.

Dead Ends had some great mechanics in there for bosses as well as fantastic narrative aspects. Might be my favorite "big moment" story dungeon.

And I love the planet positioning mechanic of the Endsinger trial. It's super satisfying to resolve right for me.

Actually finishing Endwalker has cemented FF14 as a whole as one of my favorite games ever.

In terms of Endwalker itself, I love the jobs at their full depth, but starting from Stormblood I've really liked the dungeon content and starting from ShB, even the solo duties have been ranging for solid to great! Only the expansion trials can be a little hit and miss for me (I think the trial series themselves have all rocked starting HW).

So it is onward to patch content, Alliance Raid and Raid series for me. Also Role Quests, Variant/Criterion dungeons and many other bits of content I haven't done yet. (Finally planning to try and go for a house since I have saved up a bunch of gil!)

[soliloquy-unforgotten]

Final Fantasy XVI - Martyrs, Individualism, and other Review-like Stuff (Spoilers!)

As one might suppose by the title, I've recently finished Final Fantasy XVI. Playing the game I had a lot of Thoughts, which isn't uncommon, and happened to encourage me to create this little blog for me to store these thoughts for posterity. Therefore, while I'm not yet sure who this introduction is even for, at least it's over. Onwards!

I will start this by getting the easy part out, which I have prior dubbed "the Review-like Stuff" - how "good" are the game's, y'know, things. I'll be pretty direct on this paragraph: visually and musically, the game is a whole meal. The scenarios look amazing, the big magical effects look, well, big and magical (in the best way! also very colorful). I just don't dig the character design all that much, personally, but it does deliver on the sort of realistic medieval fantasy air they set out to deliver - and hey, Jill's clothes actually look like functional female fighting clothes! Progress, I suppose. And the music, of course, delivers just as well - Masayoshi Soken, not content with putting out banger after banger for Final Fantasy XIV (the critically-acclaimed MMORPG, etc) decided to grace XVI with a series of adequately epic-sounding tracks, going as far as to reference musical motifs from prior entries in the series and toss us franchise fans some delicious treats. Yum.

Alright, onto the meat of what I actually wanted to write here - the story and gameplay. I'm gonna bundle both of these up because I think they're intertwined to an extent - or at least, some of the criticism I have about the gameplay is a direct product of how they wrote the story. But I suppose I might be putting the cart before the horses here so let's take a step back.

When playing FF XVI, you control a single character - Clive Rosfield, Ifrit's Dominant and certified Chosen One. You get other companions fighting alongside you here and there, and for most of it you're also accompanied by bestest of boys Torgal, but you never get to control any of them, they have no customization in terms of equipment, and actually the effect they have on gameplay is very minor - mostly making it less annoying to fight large hordes of enemies. So much so that you also never choose who's tagging along, they just join or leave the party automatically according to the story beat.

I recall being a bit disappointed when the previous entry in the franchise, XV, came out - because I had three buddies with me for the journey but I never got to play with them, only edit their equips and perform some dual techs with them during fights. XVI seemed to double down on this departure from party member control, straying even further from the molds of a party-oriented game and coming closer to the likes of Devil May Cry, the Witcher, both of the Nier games, and so on. I should note the influence of the first I cited is quite noticeable.

"Alas, Daka, it could not be helped!", I hear you say. "For Clive is one of only eight people in the world who can freely use magic, AND even if he parties up other Dominants, he'll drain their power eventually! So it can't be helped!". Well, voice in my head who is trying to predict an argument, that's still just a narrative choice they made. Had they decided to make it a party-oriented game, they could easily have written the story in a way that doesn't have Clive strip other Dominants of their power (and even that's kind of finnicky, because Jill is still added to the party for the DLC, far after Clive absorbed her Eikon), or just strip them of the power to Prime but leave their magical ability intact. Or have his fellow party members all be non-Dominants like Gav. Or have them share Clive's power through some sort of covenant, like if he could donate them the power of any Eikons he's not currently using (you do end up with five more Eikons than you can wield in combat, after all).

All this to say that they made a very conscious choice in making Clive's journey be so solitary - he wields the power and bears the burden for it, since being magical in this setting comes with a side effect of slowly turning into stone. Even when he has his (long overdue and very awkwardly paced) romantic development with Jill, she doesn't even try to dissuade him from bearing all of the burden himself - just reassured him that she believed in him and would be by his side to the end. Kind of bold words when you're speeding your new boyfriend along the route of becoming an Ifrit-shaped piece of rock, but it sort of cements the narrative that Clive is the very special Chosen One, and it's useless to try to relieve him of his burden - best to simply give him emotional support when necessary and help in whatever ways a mere mortal can.

Eventually, the narrative reveals that what's been killing the land all along (through a drying out of all life called the Blight) is the usage of magic itself. It's been happening ever since a different race discovered magic, ages ago, in what one may call an Original Sin (!) of sorts. Clive's battle is to, ironically, amass as much of the capacity to use magic without crystals into himself as possible, to then destroy humanity's creator, who both discovered magic and gave humans the means to wield it, and finally use all this accumulated power to destroy the ("sinful") practice of magic and die in the process, overwhelmed by the weight of this feat.

So our dear protagonist is, to recap, a Chosen One, born to be the physical vessel of a godlike being, and he sacrifices himself to cleanse humanity of the sins that are plaguing them. You know who else reportedly did that? That's right, baby: it's Jesus Christ.

Did I write several paragraphs just to arrive at this allegory? Perhaps. But pointing out the symbolic connections between Clive and ol' J.C. is important to eventually arrive at my main argument regarding FFXVI and its place in the franchise: it is very Western. It is prominently influenced by an occidental zeitgeist and ideology (which are indissociable from Christianity as a cultural system of rules and values). This manifests in the narrative itself, yes, which also has a big focus on defending "free will" and rejecting what sort of amounts to what one might describe as, uh, spiritual communism; but it also manifests in the gameplay itself, which is both emblematic of this narrative (via having you control a solitary martyr upon whose shoulders solely relies success or failure), but also more literally influenced by the West - with the gameplay mechanics and quest dialogue structure more closely resembling western action RPGs than any other game in the franchise.

My intent here was not to say FFXVI doesn't have any community-oriented themes (many sidequest chains are explicitly about that), but to point out the ways in which the tone and feel of the game reflect certain staple Western values - individuality most of all - beyond the simple fact of the game's European fantasy setting. I'm also not saying that's a bad thing, just that it is a thing, and these are some of the elaborations I arrived at when I tried to ask myself questions like "why does this feel the way it does?". I'm also very particular about not saying things like "this feels or doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy game" because this is a franchise that loves nothing more than reinventing itself, and XVI was but the latest one to do just that. And for what it's worth, the game was great! I had a blast. I have my nitpicks about it but, hey, none of them was a dealbreaker.

...I do wanna have a party again for the next one though.

[gear-project]

Annon-Guy: How do you feel about enhanced versions of games being exclusive to certain consoles?

You see, Gungrave G.O.R.E. got an Ultimate Enhanced Edition on the Switch with 100 Gameplay Balances and changes, new playable characters and lowered the gory content to get it's classic Teen rating back... AND IT'S SWITCH EXCLUSIVE! Which bites sense I Plantinumed the original game on PS4.

Depends on the circumstances.

Back in the Day Soul Calibur II was especially popular as a Nintendo Gamecube title because of Link being a playable character, but because it was Nintendo exclusive, Bamco couldn't use Link for anything outside of Nintendo platforms.

And Nintendo is also pretty stubborn about not porting things to PC, Steam, Epic Games, Arcades, and so on...

Even to this very day you'll find fans who make Link as a Custom character in Soul Calibur 6 (to say nothing of the DLC "mods" that let you turn items in to a Hylian Shield and the Master Sword).

Other games have had "exclusive" DLC practices on various consoles and that doesn't always translate well to later ports of games years upon years after they were released for now-outdated hardware.

Funny thing, however... especially with PC versions of games, modders and fan communities will often muster up content to "enhance" a game long after the Developers are *officially* finished with it.

So, for example, if you didn't buy the "exclusive deluxe edition" of Code Vein for example... some modders put together a mod that still lets you enjoy the DLC content that was featured in the Deluxe edition.

This also happened with the PSP version of Dissidia Duodecim: Final Fantasy... a lot of exclusive "limited time offer" DLC skins were downloadable at various "rare events" but almost nobody had access to that content because of how rare it was... goes to show that such practices would eventually lose favor with consumers. It was much later that some kind souls in the FF community donated the skins for FREE as a save file add-on you could play via PSP emulation or via a modded PlayStation Portable.

And, given that years upon years after a game is released... if it's not ported to a modern platform, it is instead thrown by the wayside... or ends up a mod project or emulation project by community fans.

Even some official "ports" of older games don't always make the translation well, which leaves it up to FANS to fix the mistakes from time to time.

And of course, this includes things like adding Rollback Netcode to fighting games, or even porting sound files from the original Arcade version of a game in to the PC version to "enhance it" (which is basically what happened to Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R, and even BlazBlue Central Fiction).

In other words, if you want the "best" of something, usually the PC version is the smartest choice, due to fan-made options like I listed, or simply the prospect that a game can later be emulated on PC through various means.

Of course, not everyone likes using PC as a platform, because of technical things, getting outdated hardware, or they just don't want to mess around with the difficulty of learning how to run a PC as a game platform (even though much of what was hard about it has been mostly streamlined thanks to platforms like Steam).

Sometimes it's just an issue of compatibility, where you want your joystick or controller to work on a game console that suits you for playing.

In terms of DLC practice, unless it's something you absolutely can't live without or drastically alters the state of the game in ways that make the standalone game inferior... honestly such exclusivity is bad practice in general and best ignored until something better comes along, or a bundle edition exists.

Either that, or simply determine for yourself if such content is worth buying a whole console over.

Truth be told, I had "extreme reasons" for buying many of my games over the years.

Reason for buying a Sega Genesis: Sonic Spinball / Sonic 3 and Knuckles Reason for buying a PlayStation: (None, was secretly gifted, but I never regretted owning one after I bought the first Guilty Gear)

Reason for buying a Gameboy: Tetris. No doubt in my mind.

Reason for buying a Gamecube: Legend of Zelda Collection with Zelda 64 Master Quest. I also ended up getting Soul Calibur II as said earlier.

Reason for buying a PS2: Guilty Gear X Plus (I had to mod my PS2 in order to play the import of this by the way.)

Reason for buying a PS3: BlazBlue Calamity Trigger. I'm proud to say that after all these years.

Reason for buying a PS4: Gundam Breaker 3... the trailer alone convinced me. Owning Soul Calibur 6 on this platform is also nice.

Reasons for buying a PC: Technical reasons, and the fact I want to become a game developer myself one day... also the modding communities are more than convincing! I've done my OWN modding projects myself (which you can find on my blog).

[daja-the-hypnokitten]

Jukebox reviews part 37! For context, see my post “A Project” under this same tag. If you want to see a full list of his EMCSA stories, they can be found here, sorted alphabetically.And if you want to see some of his drabbles, check out his blog at @jukeboxemcsa

Free Coffee

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9/23/2017                                     mc ff

Alas, too bad Skye isn't a little more ethical, she and Sonia could have had a lovely relationship beyond that of a (brainwashed) customer and the person giving her a coffee fix. That said, I do wonder what the heck might have been in the coffee to cause this reaction, but I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm just glad I've never developed a taste for coffee. (Other than off of the lips of my girlfriend - that's lovely for entirely different reasons though). The effect is lovely, though, and the control is well done. 8/10 spirals 

 Vacant Moan

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9/23/2017                                     mc ff ma

Oh, I want the backstory for this so much. I feel like I personally would find the story of how they got here much more engaging than this version, where things are a bit more removed because we're only getting an outside perspective. That outside, voyeuristic, point of view just makes it not a great fit for me, though if you enjoy that sort of thing give it a read? 5/10 spirals. 

 Quill Pen Feather

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9/30/2017                                     mc

This is another one of those induction scripts JB has so many of. And I have just one question: why red ink? Like, of all colors, why the one that evokes *blood*? But then, I dearly love my fountain pen's blue ink, or the iridescent purple ink I have that I sometimes use with my dip calligraphy pen. That said, as someone who's done my fair share of writing sending me into trance, of inscribing a partner's words on paper and in my mind, well. This is a heck of a good induction, and I'm sure it's more effective when read aloud, as it was clearly meant to be. I I think if it were me doing it, though, I'd have picked a color like gold, sparkling against the darkness of a blank mind. 9/10 spirals 

 Five Finger Discount

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10/7/2017                                     mc ff

I. huh. This is pure magic, and not up my alley at all. Like, sure, the sex happens under control, but it isn't about strengthening or creating that control at all. It's just "mind control someone to want to please me, then have sex with them" and ... nope, I'm just too ace for that. 4/10 spirals

 Xenophilia (Jukebox)

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10/14/2017                                   mc mf md sf hu

*laughs* sure. Sure, that set-up makes perfect sense. I don't *understand* it - tentacles do nothing for me - but sure, we'll go with it. I find this story more entertaining than hot - especially the tail end - but it's plenty good all the same. If you like aliens and/or tentacles, you'll probably get a kick out of it. 7/10 spirals 

 Zero Dumb Game

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10/21/2017                                   mc mf md fd

This is an interesting - if magical - premise. Not super to my taste - and while I can see that it is, technically, mind control, it doesn't *feel* like mind control to me, not exactly. That's purely a subjective take, and I can see why other folk would have a different opinion, but still. It just doesn't work for me, though I enjoy the ending pretty well all the same. And I find the premise clever, and like the character well enough, it's just not hot for me. 5/10 spirals 

 Can’t Say No

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10/28/2017                                   mc mf md

Oh, this is a lovely scene between hypnotic partners. The glee of having a suggestion type work for the first time is so well captured here, even if I wish we knew exactly what suggestions had been given. Obviously she's lost the concept of "no," to a point, at least she can't say or think it herself, but she understands it when he uses it. And it feels like there's another suggestion in play - we see hints of it, of her feeling like she should say something, but she isn't sure what. It's just well put together, the amnesia is done well, and there's just so much good here. 9/10 spirals. 

 I Just Want to See His Face

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11/4/2017                                     mc md

Uuuuuugh, I hate that sort of dude, and to have it end the way it does ... *grumbles* he's just an archetype I've had to deal with waaaay too much myself in life. This story gets under my skin because of that, and makes it hard to rate fairly. I suppose folk less irritated by that sort of condescending man would probably enjoy the payoff? But given we see none of the actual process itself, there's nothing here for me to sink my teeth into. 2/10 spirals. 

 Any Time Now

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11/18/2017                                   mc ff

The way Andrea's words slip in and finish Lucinda's thoughts are fascinating, and such well-written dialog. It's a clever use of social contracts to keep Lucinda in the conversation, in a way that keeps her from realizing just how much control she's already given until she's given too much to be able to take control back. And she never sees it coming. It's horribly non-consensual of course, but in a way that doesn't bother me the way many non-consensual scenes do. 8/10 spirals 

 Bent 4 U

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11/18/2017                                   mc mf fd

This story shows us a bit more depth in 4U's programming, in the world she inhabits, in the way she responds, rationalizes, obeys. It follows up on the bit of conflict that we saw in the previous 4U story, I'll be interested to see if there are more stories with 4U, with the world she exists in, because this conflict between her Masters is *intriguing.* It's interesting that while she's brainwashing someone, the focus here is less on that conditioning and process, and much more on her own programming and how she exists within it. 9/10 spirals. 

[ciitrinitas]

final fantasy vii rebirth.

this will probably be long and will definitely be full of spoilers. 🫠

i'm gonna take at least a partial victory on my delusional Aerith Lives Trutherism. there's...a lot that is ambiguous about the ending lmao, but i think aerith was at least technically alive until sephiroth started his dimensional merge hours and dead aerith realities came into play. so far i'm leaning towards the idea that aerith is in a state that is neither alive nor dead really. she seems more...between like how sephiroth sort of is? but it is hard to tell if the aerith cloud is seeing and talking to is aerith who is between or in another world versus a dead aerith maybe being projected from the lifestream? but whatever, i'll take even a partial or ambiguous victory as a victory until the third game torpedoes it.

i also won the big bucks as a tifa fan and as a barret fan. goddamn did rebirth do them both right! consistently great for tifa across the entire game with her coping still with her own lingering trauma and guilt and her attempts at supporting cloud while sephiroth tries to melt his brain via gaslighting. that scene in kalm where cloud first doubted she was the real tifa and how upset she was...ahhh, my poor girl... really liked her getting to meet the doctor in corel who saved her life and mentions that it was a shinra helicopter that got her to him in time and her just...not knowing what to do with that. and the scene in her room in nibelheim where she talks about understanding why her father went after sephiroth because there was so little left but his all-consuming rage and how she related to that but anger can't be sustained for years and years. she's just so tired. :( barret is so tired, too. the guilt weighing him down is so much... he's more assertive and confident than tifa, but how they both tend to take on responsibility for others... their friendship is everything...

i kept babbling on discord about how baffled i am that this game exists? i think now that i've finshed it, i am a little disappointed that it didn't deviate more from the original, and i was really confident for a while that it would be the third game to deviate like crazy because then there is no anxiety over keeping customers buying after doing something really daring and potentially divisive, but reading just a little bit makes me worried... reporting makes it sound like the devs tried to dial it back after criticism of the ending of remake, but idk, that was all secondhand stuff i was reading, so i'm gonna just try to put it out of my mind. because i think the choice to not make remake and rebirth straightforward retreads like would have been easiest was already really daring. influential names within the devs for both games had to feel strongly to push for it. it feels to me like there was a vision, and idk speculation like that where it involves reading into pr from a company so massive that selling a million copies of a game is falling below expectations...it just makes me kind of miserable. because rebirth feels really sincere to me.

this is maybe the most nostalgic i've ever properly felt for ps1 ff while playing a modern ff, and it's not because i know these characters and the story being told. it's how rebirth tells its story and the weird little quirks and details in it. going down the stairs in junon to stumble across a bald-only bar where the devs put in the effort for it to have a unique little anthem and a silly salute involving the bald folks squeaking their hands across their scalps was hysterical. red doesn't just put on a shinra goon uniform and stumble around; he moonwalks into a card game tournament because he was mad when told pets can't participate and speaking to the manager didn't work. on the deck of the shinra-8, there's a group doing yoga and if cloud walks through, he stops and does a little wave before giving you back control. rebirth is silly and serious and sincere and unafraid of anything that made the original what it is or going hard into anything new. how a super high budget AAA game like this got made in 2024 from the company that also put out ffxvi (which seemed ashamed of itself) is fucking insane to me.

and that's kind of why i still feel pretty damn confident about the third game going off the rails in a weird way. wutai is ruled by an interim government headed by a sephiroth clone who put on the appearance of someone specifically to unsettle and push rufus shinra into stirring up war. the reunion isn't just all of jenova coming back together; it's worlds uniting. zack!! aerith!! cloud can see the dimensional rift now and is still kind of off his shits and slapped the black materia on his weapon. remake established that this wasn't a retread and that shit would deviate. rebirth laid the groundwork for deviation. third game is gonna go bananas. i'm gonna be a fool and put my hopes and trust into this big giant costly project.

graphically the game was pretty, but also was it just me or was shit often really hard to like...discern? i did a lot of the open world segments, but could really struggle with seeing shit well... the lighting could also be really unfriendly... orz my love undying for whoever decided to have red ride a chocobo like he is people.

speaking of red, LOOOOOOOVE the choice made with his voice!! it is an amazing bit of characterization even if it took me a few hours to adjust and i kept looking at him like he was a cryptid for a while lmao. also the single beautiful tear his petrified dad shed.....ahhh, that is the good, unabashed shit.

YUFFIE IS SO FUCKING FUN TO PLAY STILL. she's so mobile and versatile. every time she was forced out of my party, i wept. i love her.

the choice to pronounce cait sith wrong is going to be my eternal......i don't even know what the word is, but i'm going to hold a grudge, localizers!! even the kana for his name is close enough to the gaelic pronounciation! with is this Kate Sith nonsense...

i like a lot of cloud ships, so i didn't play with any relationship outcome in mind and just did my best to make everyone like the resident mental illness boy. somehow...tifa won the cloudbowl. i looooove platonic cloti, but i've definitely warmed up to romantic cloti now even if platonic is still my preference. lots of wonderful clerith and clarret moments too!! (and damn sefikura shippers were fucking eating, weren't you?) CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE SQUEENIX PERMITTED TIFA'S GOLD SAUCER DATE, THOUGH. THEY LET CLOUD KISS HER. WILD.

i know i have so many more thoughts from the 70 hours i played, but ahhhhhhhh. it was great. i loved it. i had a fucking blast. it was completely worth the wait and sequestering myself to avoid spoilers. truly, the only "remake" i respect in this house. genuinely cannot believe what execs were huffing to insist that you could just....start with rebirth. you should, at minimum, have played the original, crisis core, and remake! you are missing an insane amount otherwise.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SINCERITY AND CREATIVITY, NOMURA AND NOJIMA!!!

[littlestarxmilkyway]

And there it is. I didn't expect Square Enix to release information like this so soon, but that timing is interesting. Between the cancelled titles, and Nintendo saying when they're going to announce the Switch's successor. (And the timeline that they'll be implementing these plans...)

Multi-platform being highlighted in this would be a given. Fresher hardware on the next Nintendo console means the games will keep up a little better and have more ~fidelity~. I know how important that is to SQEX. But I also can't help but think they realized how well their own multi-plat and exclusive Switch titles were doing. It would be silly and remiss to neglect the successor. And while I don't think X-box sales are going to have any kind of impact on software in any region, it really doesn't hurt to include them more often. (Presumably? Maybe it is that expensive.)

"focusing its development efforts and investments on titles with substantial potential to be loved by customers for years" This may be fluff and amount to nothing, but I dearly hope they mean it. I hope they deliver. One thing that saddens me the most about the changes in SQEX and Bandai Namco lately, is simply how boring they've become. Bandai treating the Namco titles how they do is one thing, but Square Enix is so baffling. FF has been drained of identity, SaGa struggles for scraps, Mana and Star Ocean are in a wayward space. Anything else pre-PS2 and not those titles really doesn't get any acknowledgement. But each of those properties is so beloved now because of a robust legacy of beloved titles. Even the least beloved games along them still has a sizable and devout fanbase. But newer FF entires don't do anything to build on the franchise in a meaningful way. I don't think XV and XVI are worthless, but they also just fall short of really delivering what keeps FF going strong in my mind. I have to wonder if they've really sat down and thought about the longevity of their older titles and characters. The only exception lately is Asano's works. He's somehow managed to use nostalgia to create something fresh with the Bravely and Octopath series, and has created two new brands and franchises with it that already show enduring love of customers for years.

"First, mindful of the need to launch HD titles that help attract additional fans to the Group, the Group will regularly release AAA titles in its major franchises to maintain and build upon its fan base. In addition, the Group will strive to increase its success rate in SD games by launching a carefully curated selection of titles. It will additionally explore ways to leverage its rich library of IP." Yeah, I bet! The HD stuff will be there. But their mobile/social games sector is hitting the big decline. I think it's a combination of trying to force some games out and probable mismanaging, but it's also just a shame that they have all this potential to be doing more when they're realizing all these new titles. (And celebrating old stuff in some ways.) I sincerely hope we see them also use their backlog of other titles and IPs. I'm super elated Chrono Cross got a remaster, but where in the world is Chrono Trigger? That should have had some sort of port at the height of Another Eden's popularity and a tie-in. I'd love for Dewprism to come back! Some things won't move much now probably, but they really are sitting on a potential treasure trove.

"The Group will retire its business unit-based organizational design and strive to establish an operationally integrated organization with the goal of revamping its internal title development footprint and bringing more capabilities in-house. In addition, while keeping balance between the creativity of its individual employees and the management centered on the organization, the Group will transition to a project management structure. To that end, the Group will redefine the mission for producers and other related employees and organize its internal supporting structure. Also, the Group will improve its development investment efficiency, by reviewing the overall management process of title development." If it's true that they've kept most of their team from Remake and Rebirth to cut costs on "Reunion," then they probably realized how smart that is financially, but also for how well that works for dev cycles. And if that's what they're alluding to a little more here, that's only wise. Hard to say completely, but I am curious what internal shifts will happen and what consumers will be able to see of it.

" The Group will build its flat organization by increasing opportunities of promotion by selection in order to pursue a new talent at our company and streamlining the process of decision-making. Specifically, it will roll out a new human resources system in line with integrated management of development functions, building a new system for hiring, promotion, and appointment of management. Moreover, the Group will rebuild training system for new graduates and introduce internal education programs to enhance capabilities of junior and mid-level employees." That sounds amazing on paper, and I hope it's carried out well. It's not as though everything sounded perfect all the time under Sakaguchi's management, but I do think their philosophy at the time (and in a way, the whimsy) helped them cultivate their incredible library to what it is now. Back in the day, people were given a lot of freedom to create, even while being forced on a project. But they also had so much room to grow and were being allowed to do things while also being taught things. It just doesn't sound like Square Enix does that anymore. Even Nomura said they have a hard time keeping (new) talent. I think part of that is probably the Rock Star Syndrome that always plagued the company, but was amplified after people like Sakaguchi kept leaving and leaving. Not enough people were reigned in. But Square back in the day was on a roll, and I think if they bother to nurture and cultivate some good in-house talent now, and especially do so on the creative front as much as the technical (and let them bleed over into each other!), they'd be able to repliate their previous success.

[terminalnonsense3]

So, in the words of the song that's been bouncing around my head all morning: Last night i had the strangest dream.

It was (initially) from the perspective of this guy, who we'll call Bonk, who it was very clear was not me, though it was very "first person".

Bonk suddenly exists in the Medium Blue Dimension with no memory of how he got here alongside a collection of office cubicles and people doing office-y things, and I'm pretty sure there was like a door to heaven kind of door with the marble pillars and fancy gate, though the door was entirely ignored.

Bonk is now talked to by the "receptionist" i suppose, informing him of something that i cannot remember but seemed to confuse him more, and he was then talked to by another person, I'll call her Eel, who is carrying a large stack of both normal papers and poorly cut up sections of receipts, and says something else to Bonk that probably wasn't important.

Bonk then asked Eel some questions such as "where am i" and "am i dead", and Eel's answers were, in short, that Bonk was (kinda) dead, this was "Limbo", and he had the job of keeping order or something now.

Anyway Bonk - after some filler my brain doesn't care about - now has beef with this other guy "Cadge" which i know wasn't his name but i can't remember it (i had a vibe that i can only describe with a similarity to Snorri Sturluson), and was seemingly crime partners with but Bonk had a 5-minutes later change of heart or something, and now the limbo office is in Generic Suburbs where Bonk is chasing Cadge to a shack and then back to the limbo office where i think he manages to catch Cadge for a moment and bash him with a plank or something, and some neighborhood children (or maybe short people) tell Bonk shouldn't do that, to which he says something along the lines of "neither should he" before running after Cadge.

It's at this point that Bonk somehow goes into a very very small 1-room shop with two weird looking bar stools with customers and the waiter or bartender or something who manages to lock him in the uppermost of four large (though barely tall enough to crawl around in) cabinets, this one mostly empty and labeled "ff 5001" i think (as opposed to the other ones which are just "1", "2", "3") where I'm pretty sure there is now a (pretty good) H-scene with some character that never appears anywhere else, which apparently gives him the "blue key" to this cabinet (there's also a red key that accesses the same cabinet but gives a different H-scene, and i think there was also a green key that i never saw) so he can get out.

Now my brain decides this is now a 2d top-down game vaguely reminiscent of the first Pokemon games, where you go around the rooms of the store (there are several different ones now) while bugs (that seemingly do nothing) enter the room and Bonk collects miscellaneous junk (that also does nothing) from chests all over the room while waiting for a meter to charge, that when activated, clears out the bugs and "cleans" the room, preventing more from spawning.

There is still the initial entrance room, which allows accessing the H-scenes again i guess, and it's at around this point that the dream ends.

I do think it's it worth saying that the cabinet section of the dream did not seem to center around the H-scene, i just can't figure out how to describe the general feeling of puzzle-ness??? that it gave me (and also i now remember that Bonk duplicates the blue and red keys, because apparently they're single-use, and stores the spares in a pocket dimension???).

So, anyway, that was me having the strangest dream, though i did not sail away in a little rowboat to find ya.

[smikdrawsjunk]

Blue Footed Booby posted:

I'm imagining a fairy that distributes weird fetishes to people who spend too much time on the internet at a formative age.

Fetish Fairy

"Goddam what they want me to move THIS time?"

Contrary to popular belief, weird fetishes are not a symptom of the environment but rather specifically cultured for distribution before a media launch. In collaboration with the SIN (Succubi Information Network), Fetish Fairy Solutions (FFS) delivers only the finest, custom-crafted fetish cultures on to an unsuspecting public.

Fetish-seeding used to take time and planning as you'd need to give the fetish culture time to mature in order for the awakening to occur during the launch of whatever media production you had in mind, and not every person is compatible with a specific strain. For example, at least some of Zootopia's success has to do with an investment in furry-seeding which took 10 years prior. FFS carefully observed its growth and collected data on the most successful cultures. The key animal characters and story were then derived from this fetish data, creating a fantastic success that will generate returns for years to come.

These days the Internet allows for rapid-fire development of fetish-awakening media, and not just new but archived content as well. As you can expect, FFS's demand has skyrocketed so they ramped up their fetish culture deployment systems to the point where they're just dumping it all over the place and seeing what sticks because someone's gonna want to cater to it sooner or later.

Back in my day we didn't get our fetishes from the Internet. We had deranged animation, TV shows featuring Lynda Carter and woods porn (delivered by the woods porn fairy). I don't think I have any fetishes but I know for sure the deranged animation left an impression during my formative years. There was a dude who turned into a car. A fairy in legwarmers who got super-strong when she sneezed. Also like, my Dad let me watch the last half of the first Heavy Metal movie. Oh yeah, and "Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure". Oh and the "Phantom Tollbooth". And "Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang", the camp 70's version. I think at this point I'm just rambling because I'm a little lit.

[abbysreverie]

Midsommar

This film is so fucked up

(no pun intended)

Look, I don’t really like it. It’s such an overrated film tbh. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I just didn’t pay attention. But the fact that everyone’s claiming it to be that horror film that would make you so disturbed after watching, I admit I expected a little too much from it.

Of course before even seeing it, I already briefed myself about the gory pagan cult practices of Midsommar (only in that film ofc, swedish peeps don’t do that irl because if they do then wtf), to be honest, they didn’t feel scary or disturbing to me—to the point that I won’t be able to sleep normally after watching it or that it will keep haunting me in my dreams. No fam, I actually just felt really weirded and disgusted by it. All throughout the time the characters came to Hårga, I just keep mouthing “the fuck?” when I’m expecting to say “WHAT THE FUCK!!!”. You get my point. Besides, Ari Ester’s (the director) customization of the actual festival is so, I dunno, sort of a try-hard cult film? It’s just so unrealistically gory and awful to watch. I didn’t even flinch to that part (WARNING: Spoiler ahead) where the 2 oldies jumped off of a cliff, and even hammering the head of one of them multiple times when they saw him literally still gasping for air after jumping. I immediately thought that it was so unnecessary and stupid.

Ok, so that’s one of the popular scenes of that film, the next and last one I’m gonna share is the weird ritual sex scene. Again SPOILER WARNING, stop right here if you don’t want to ruin your experience. So yeah, that scene specifically made me want to throw up, funny because that’s what also Dani did when she saw them doing it. I also saw this from a lot of people saying they didn’t find it disturbing (which is I think what the director/writer’s actually trying to portray, like it’s not really meant to be disturbing), it’s just weird and really really disgusting. It only got even more uncomfortable when the old woman started helping/pushing Christian lmao fr it was so uncomfy watching that but it was also kinda funny. I’m so unserious sorry.

If I’m going to be honest, the only really traumatizing scene is when they showed Dani’s family, especially the sister who killed herself (and apparently their parents too) from gas poisoning. Her sister’s exploded lungs and internal organs looked really horrendous and disturbing, not only the way it looks, but the fact that this is what suicide can make us look like. It’s painful and awful. Another passable scary scene is when Dani chose Christian over the Hårga native—who openly volunteered to be one of the 9 lives to be sacrificed. It could be the hippie drug, or the awful sex ritual, but the fact that you’ve known that person the most out of everyone around you and still choosing him to literally get killed is so sickening. Honestly, I kinda felt bad for Christian, I mean he really isn’t that a good partner to Dani at all, ffs he was also drugged and helpless most of the time they were there, but he still ended up in the worst position and it’s because of his girlfriend. But don’t be fooled, I kinda lost it again when they started putting Christian in the bear carcass lmao.

Uh, I think that’ll be all for my Midsommar review. I guess I can say the only thing I liked about it is the color grading. I liked that they didn’t try hard enough to make the setting look gloomy or dark. Doing the opposite ambiance which is that bright, colorful cinematography actually helped in giving it off somewhat another vibe of a creepy feeling. But if I’m gonna compare it to Hereditary which is also based off some pagan cult, Hereditary obviously wins. That shit really set the standard for American horror films. That’s truly what scary and disturbing mean in a film.

Final Verdict: 6.7/10

[doberbutts]

Tag to make sure I don’t forget: @alliered asked for my review of Harvestella [so far] and I didn’t want to write a whole huge long scroll monster for those who want to skip it. So for those who don’t care about videogames, here’s a readmore

I’m about halfway through the first season (I think? This will be a point later) and mid chapter 3 of ??? so keep in mind I am pretty early on in the game still.

As said in my original post about the game, it’s not really a Stardew clone, so anyone expecting that going in is inherently going to be disappointed. I did not see any advertising for this game (intentionally- as stated I prefer going in 100% blind if possible) so I don’t know if it was advertised specifically as a Stardew clone or if it was just supposed to be a farming sim with Final Fantasy elements. Which personally I would say it’s a Final Fantasy game- and a FF offshoot game at that- with farming elements. Think Crystal Chronicles and Tatics when thinking of the tone and “feel” of the game, with gameplay more akin to CC or even some of the Mana games.

It has a fairly robust job system which, so far, is mostly a stance dance. Mage is good against some enemies and bad against others. Lancer is better for these enemies but Fighter’s better for those. And so on. I haven’t really seen any indicators to tell me which job is best for which enemy but you can switch on the fly (you’re supposed to switch on the fly) and your appearance and weapon change accordingly. Kind of like how in X-2, the different costumes gave you different abilities. I’ve been defaulting Fighter/Mage because those are the first two classes and they give you pretty beefy hits for many of the beginning enemies, but I’m sure as the game rolls on I’ll probably find something I like better.

Farming is fairly simple, and this is where I think a lot of people were disappointed. You’ve got a house and a field you can upgrade and put stuff on, yes. But those used to the level of customization found in later Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Rune Factory games, and even Stardew Valley, are going to resent the fact that there’s nothing really to mark it as “yours”. There’s a set number of places you can put things and a set number of things you can put. You can upgrade the house but so far I’ve not found any fun decorative options and it doesn’t really seem like that’ll be a thing here. It’s much more early Harvest Moon in that way, actually as I’ve been playing I’ve been thinking about how similar it is to Innocent Life, which I thought was fun enough but a lot of people really didn’t like it. That game’s sitting at a 5-6/10 even nowadays, and it came out in 2007 [in the US].

Anyway, the farming aspect is mostly just so you can make money. On one hand they do flat-out tell you that (”but you must make money somehow, so why not grow and sell vegetables”) and plot-wise it makes sense in the grand scheme, but I do think at the current moment you could take out the farming elements and it would play mostly the same with little detraction of quality, and that kinda sucks for a game marketed as a “farming sim”, you know? It’s just a chore to do so you don’t run out of money while you’re off adventuring every day. In fairness, that’s also what crops turn into towards the end of Stardew, where if you’re doing it right your farm is mostly automated and you’re fucking off 99% of the time to one of the dungeons or running around after villagers or chasing elusive difficult-to-catch fish.

Speaking of- villager NPCs. I understand why they made them this way but I do think that it will put a lot of people off. The vast majority of NPCs are nameless, with no portrait or unique quality whatsoever, and there is no relationship/friendship system with them. Important NPCs are named, have a portrait, and also have a serious case of Main Character Syndrome where they stand out from everyone else. These are the people you can build social connections with, not the others (outside of cute little sidequests that are 100% optional). This is in part because there are multiple towns and giving each of these 20-ish person towns unique, fleshed out characters is, well... super fucking annoying and a waste of time especially knowing that many of these characters are gunna have maybe 3 lines. Also, gone are the days of memorizing your future spouse’s daily routine just so you can chase them around and throw a turnip at them every day and making sure you enter a map by the south exit at exactly 3pm on a sunny day (yes I’m looking at you, Kai romance in FoMT)- you level up your social connections via doing quests and completing the story.

Fishing is: buy book about fishing, select “fish” when at a designated fishing area, wait, press “A” when you hear a big splash, ta-da you have a fish. So there is no fishing minigame which I know some folks were sad about but also that is more or less how fishing has worked in the various Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games for decades so... Also I distinctly remember when Stardew first came out everyone hated the fishing minigame because it was poorly explained and also super hard, and there’s still mods to make fishing easier in Stardew to this day, so maybe the lack of a minigame is not such a bad thing.

Plot is pretty standard fare Final Fantasy shenanigans. The crystals are Being Weird and You Have Amnesia But Seem To Be Connected To It All and The Religion Is Heavily Foreshadowed To Be Bad. I do like that your friend Aria has a backstory so far that’s pretty much I’m The Main Character, but she’s not the main character. I thought that was an interesting subversion of the isekai trope where someone else was brought from our world into this one and our job is getting her back [heavily implied that we, also, don’t belong in this particular world, of course].

Combat... well. This is actually a pretty legitimate problem- we’ve established that it’s not really a farming game, it’s a Final Fantasy game with farming elements. Okay, so we’re fighting monsters and going home to water the turnips got it. Except... the combat system is... incredibly simple. Press button, hit monster. Press button a whole bunch of times to hit monster until it dies. But without a dash, dodge, or combat roll (there is, technically, a dash if you tap the “run” button but I found that by accident, no tutorial told me that I had a dash) that means that you’re mostly standing there getting wailed on by a monster and trying to out-HP the damned thing while shoving food in your face to keep yourself from dying in the mean time.

Your NPC buddies are often not incredibly helpful- they don’t aggro enemies on their own but that also means that if you aggro an enemy by accident, they’re not helping until after you hit it for the first time. Enemies usually target the player character, so the option of running up to something, hitting it, and retreating so your buddies can absorb the damage while you whittle down their HP is not readily available either. I’ve only died once and it was because I aggro’d a level 9 enemy while I was level 3 (oops) so it’s not unworkable, but it is annoying. The folks on Steam complained about the lack of haptic feedback, meaning that the feel of the hits don’t really feel like you’re hitting anything, and while I do agree that on Switch at least it’s not as good of a feel as other games (AC Valhalla and that bow tho...) it’s also not the worst I’ve experienced either. I will say that it’s much better now that I’m in chapter 3 and have a third party member, rather than just having a singular partner, but still.

Time... so remember the “I think I’m halfway through the first season”? There is no calendar I can find so how long do the seasons last? Well I don’t have any idea but I’m on day 16 so clearly longer than 15 or 7, both of which have been season limits in other farming games I’ve played. I’m assuming either 28 or 30 now but, genuinely, I just don’t know. This is kind of a problem in the first season because without knowing how long the season lasts, I can’t determine if it’s a good idea to grow those crops that are high valued but take 6 days to grow, over crops that are low value but are ready in just 1. Again, this is an important factor in the farming aspect, so while I’m sure I’ll be just fine once I hit summer because I’ll have an idea of what the change of seasons looks like, right now I have absolutely no clue what’s ahead of me. What happens when I run out of time? Are we talking Rune Factory 5 where all crops grow in all seasons but some crops grow extra good in certain seasons? Or is this a Stardew hard limit? What about crops that say they can grow in both spring and summer, will they die or will they continue to grow if I plant them in spring but they’re not done til summer?

A lot of people complained about the clock being way too fast and, maybe it’s just the seasoned farming sim player in me, but I think it’s fine? You don’t have a lot of time to fuck around but I cleared the first dungeon in a single day and that was even with me taking the time to do the time-penalty repairs on shortcuts etc. At first I thought maybe it was a holdover from people who’d played the demo, because apparently there was a day-one patch that lengthened the day timer, but there’s folks with 20 hours on record on Steam saying it’s too fast and I just don’t agree.

Similarly, initially the game starts pestering you to go back home at 6pm, and the first day it forced me to go home and sleep at 9pm, and that was very jarring. I understand that it’s trying to teach players to watch the clock and not get caught out past the day-end timer, but I can see why someone would dislike that. But that was just the first day, and it didn’t force me home after that, and after I cleared chapter 1 it stopped pestering me about sundown at 6. It does still poke you at 9pm and 10pm by chapter 3 but, again, other farming sims do warn you albeit less blatantly as you get close to the day-end timer. It’s also an earlier time- midnight- than a lot of the competition which lets you stay up til 2-4am depending on which one, but I never understood that since I literally come from a farming community and there is absolutely no way someone can continuously go to bed at 2-4am and wake up at the penalty 10am (instead of regular 6am) and feel rested enough to do it again the next day when it comes to farms.

The stamina system also pisses people off which I don’t understand because a lot of them are Stardew players and Stardew has a stamina system. And, again, I’m coming from the oldschool Harvest Moon games where you took a stamina penalty for fucking running in the rain. Long story short, everything except walking and talking costs stamina. You do have a lot, and the game also tells you first thing that you need to eat in the morning so you can recover stamina as you work throughout the day. I eat a single sandwich in the morning and I have yet to have a stamina crisis. I’ve been down to the wire a few times if I was doing a lot of farming, then went into a dungeon and fought a bunch of enemies, then stopped and harvested a bunch of stuff, without eating. But I can do all of those things on one sandwich and still have more than half my stamina by the end of the day. Just make sure you eat.

A big complaint a lot of people had is that the towns and the dungeons feel large but empty, with nothing really to do. I both agree and disagree- again my other farming sim this year was Rune Factory 5 which I would absolutely agree felt large but empty and like nothing I was doing really made a huge difference. Compared to that, this was an improvement, with more stuff to do around the towns and more people to talk to and more variety than three seasons of giving people their favorite gifts and getting the same weirdly aggressive and distrusting dialogue as when I first booted the game. But I do also agree that many of these maps feel very big but with very little to do in them. I find myself wanting to interact with people’s shelfs and wardrobes and assorted pots and pans, even just a little popup saying “[NPC]’s bookshelf, lined with medical texts”, and there’s nothing like that. It’s a little detail but I think it goes a long way to make a world feel lived-in instead of sterile. Animations when interacting with things in the dungeons, rather than a black screen and flavor text, would help as well. And, yes, giving some of these characters some variety- on x day [NPC] will be here between 6am and 10am, on y day [NPC] will be in their bedroom, etc would make me want to really pay attention to the layout of the town and interact with the town more. It doesn’t do any of these things, so it just feels... empty. The NPCs I want to talk to are always standing in a specific spot, unless I’m about to start a quest in which case they’re standing at the <!!!> on the map.

Weirdly there’s no voice acting for cutscenes, but there is voice acting for both just wandering around and also combat. Seems like a strange choice but ok. I’m not someone who needs voice acting in order to enjoy a game, again I am from the era of the Gameboy where we didn’t even have fucking color on our non-backlit screens, but it’s odd to hire voice actors and then not... use them...

And on that note, this is a personal pet peeve, but TEXT DIALOGUE TAKES TOO LONG and there is no way to make it go faster or skip it. So while I’m reflex-mashing “A” to try and hurry this along because the text boxes stick around long after I’m done reading them, invariably I will accidentally select a dialogue option I didn’t want, because there’s also a delay between what’s displayed on the screen during cutscenes vs what the buttons are doing. Probably a minor annoyance for most people but this is a big one for me. If you’re going to make me read a bunch of text I don’t mind, but you have to give me the option to rapidly click through it because I read faster than developers think people read. It’s like they made it so the text boxes stay up for long enough to be subtitles for voice work, and then... decided not to do voice work, and so now we just have text boxes that stay up forever.

Graphics are pretty usually. The first couple days for whatever reason sometimes the textures wouldn’t load and so I just had low res avatars walking around and I was like “whoa this looks like garbage suddenly” and then that? Stopped? So idk what that was about but I’ll bet if people are in chapter 1 or 2 and are saying the graphics are shit, that’s probably happening to them too. It went back to normal but it was very strange and I can more than understand being really put off by that. Do really like the art style, I’ve always liked the art style of the older FF stuff and this feels very similar with a bit of a modern twist. I especially like the way they’ve done the character portraits and I think that’s just my love of linework and pretty shading but who’s to say. I do really like that the choices for protag are so identical- too many games have radically different male vs female models and this model is more or less “has boobs” and “doesn’t have boobs” and that’s it. The outfits are slightly, slightly different as is the hair but it’s mostly boob or boobn’t.

So, yeah. I’d say a 7/10. Certainly some optimization issues. I think either the combat or the farming should be beefier- either give me a Final Fantasy game with actually good combat and some really simplistic farming, or a farming game with actually good mechanics and some really simplistic combat, but don’t give me a combo of both with simplistic combat and farming. Could be a little more fleshed out and it shows that it wasn’t. Dunno if this specific game had crunch but if it did (willing to bet it did, Squeenix is really churning them out this year), that’s probably why the lack of little details and also voice acting. Overall it’s fun, I don’t regret the purchase so that’s the important part, and out of the various new farming sims I’ve played recently this was the most fun. Not interested in the nostalgia-bait of A Wonderful Life (which I logged far too many hours on my gamecube) and RF3′s re-release doesn’t have gay marriage so I’m not into that either. Maybe into Fae Farm next year, it’s apparently really similar to Fantasy Life (another game I logged far too many hours). 

[ringmyheart]

Hey was wondering if I could get something for lookism characters with an older s/o, like they're 3-4 older. Please do goo, Jake kim and Scott kwon.

Good luck with the blog🤩🤩🤩

Goo Kim

When you get into the relationship, of course he knows ur age and that you’re a few years older than him, and at first he doesn’t mention it but once ur like just a little bit closer he’s probably gonna poke fun at the fact

Because there’s nothing wrong w u being older it’s just that in all the stereotypical or general movies or shows or books it’s like the older person in the relationship is usually the like stronger or more providing person ends up being the oldest in the relationship and ur not useless in the relationship at all but he’s out there like killing ppl and raking in thousands a day at like 19 😭

If ur walking around in public and someone stares at u for a little longer or one of the ten geniuses is looking at u just casually he’ll get up in their face and b like “whaaat?! Do you know who you’re staring at? That’s your elder over there!! Show some respect!!”

He definitely sends u cringy texts like “how’s my favorite 21 year old 😍😍😍😍” and it’s clearly somewhat condescending but he means it endearingly simultaneously

If u don’t know something that he asks u he’ll raise a brow and go “really? A four year head start and u can’t tell me that 🤨” and it’s all good fun but he’s always gonna say stuff like that

And this is all unprompted, if he knows ur actually kinda like insecure for whatever reason that ur older than him, maybe bc he’s already getting cash like crazy at his age, he’ll either start making fun of u relentlessly OR if ur serious about it he’ll cut it out of course and never mention it again. He might try to make u feel better by being like “don’t worry!! Physically and mentally im probably years older than you 😘” and it doesn’t really make u feel better probably but he kind of tries

It’s honestly no big deal to him what ur age is, but if he knows u don’t like him mentioning it so much he will bc he likes to be annoying LMAO and whenever u accomplish something he’ll be like “did u see what my s/o did?! My 21/22yr old s/o?! At their old age they’re still kicking it!!” And ur in NO means old but he just wants to strike a nerve in u and fight in public for fun

But when u put him joking about it aside, it really doesn’t mean anything in the relationship honestly. He doesn’t feel like there’s a certain way for things to go nd just goes about things normally, and he doesn’t really see people older than him as wiser or anytning so he’s not gonna like go to you for advice or ask you to figure things out for him just bc ur older

And honestly u don’t even need a job anymore bc ur gonna b together for a long time and he makes SOOO much money so if u hate ur job or college u have the opportunity to do what u want in life without worrying ab the pay bc he makes it all for u

And yeah he’s pretty stingy w money besides being filthy rich but when or if u need it he’ll give it to u ofc and he wants u to pursue what u like too so he’ll even go to ur job or college and just inform them “btw (y/n) isn’t gonna work here anymore” for u and gets u a job as whatever u want. He beats up ur boss so u can get promoted or something but if u ask about it he’ll deny it anyways and it’s like who else would beat tf out of my boss and he shrugs

Or if u like ur current job or college he’ll threaten the school or ur boss LMAO and have them give u more money or make u pay less or promote u

Even tho ur older than him he sees himself as the like leader of u two ?? Like he’s a really joke-y guy on the exterior but behind the scenes he is doing all the like hard stuff so u don’t have to. Like he sees it as he helps u and if u never offer much help or advice he doesn’t gaf, it’s like he helps u and in return he gets u LMAO

If u like ur job or college, don’t wanna quit and don’t want him threatening ur superiors he is like the number one customer of u guys

Like if u r working retail or as a cashier he is always going to that store nd buying stuff nd funding ur business and he gets chairman choi to do so too

Or he’ll just buy ur company or college LMFAO and suddenly sales r booming and u don’t know why r ur classes r so much easier

Yeah ur older than him and the twelve geniuses but he doesn’t let u near them 😐 he doesn’t want u to be a part of that type of business and honestly keeps u away from it besides maybe gun bc he’s always around him but that’s it

Like he doesn’t want u anywhere near his business or that type of stuff and if ur curios about it he says “u will understand when ur my age” or something LMAO so u will stop asking. It’s like the 1 time he’s suddenly rlly serious

If anyone else mentions how ur older than him in a demeaning way he’ll def be mad it’s like HE can make fun of u but no one else can, like ever. He will fight them nd win even if it’s just on the street or something

He’s threatened like two of ur friends behind ur back bc they made fun of u once and u mentioned it LMAO

He makes u do taxes (does he even do taxes ????? LMFAO) but if he does he makes u do them bc suddenly he thinks ur so much smarter and wiser

If he’s in a rut and needs ur help and it’s something dumb like he lost something he’ll b like “cmooon ur so much smarter than me 😣😩 ur like 21 u would know this for sure” to make u do it and he uses flattery

None of the ten geniuses know ur name bc he’s tryna keep u safe lol

If ur ever in a situation somehow vaguely similar to one he’s in and he needs help on it he’ll ask u what u did, and if u say something surprisingly smart or wise he’ll be kinda surprised bc I feel like he’s cocky and doesn’t think others can help him that much but u do

But overall, it means nothing to him and it doesn’t matter how much older u r he’s still gonna feel like the protector

Jake Kim

It REALLY means nothing to him. Like he honestly never mentions it and ur like does he even know??? Bc a guy like him who’s like a leader of a whole enterprise type thing gang usually seems like he’d wanna be the elder in a relationship so ur like “... u know I’m like 4yrs older than u right?”

And he’s like “...yeah? Was that important or something?” And just blinks at u so ur like ... never mind

Honestly he probably makes u a bank account and puts money in it to surprise u on ur birthday or something like a little fund thing and he has a bank account on the side for u that has like thousands of dollars

If u ever feel bad or weird that ur older than him bc he is so successful and younger than u, he wonders why it even matters??? Who gaf??? And he’ll just hug u or something and is like pls don’t even worry about that... wth

If u ever feel petty bc he’s so much more successful than u bc it’s like when u have a hobby that u love and then a kid ends up being so much better at it than u but SO much worse bc he has like millions at like 19 💀 then he’s like okay but it’s OUR little enterprise now since we r together to assure u. He’s not cocky about it at all

But he won’t offer for u to join or try and help him out in making money even if he’s got to or it’s vital bc he also doesn’t want u involved w Big Deal at ALLLLLLL either, u could literally b like the smartest person in the world but once ur his s/o he probably doesn’t want u involved in his business at all

He does assume ur kind of wiser than him bc of ur age, so he’ll ask u for help or advice more often

Tbh regardless in a relationship he probably doesn’t leave any work for u to do like he does everything the financial stuff the living stuff everything so it doesn’t matter if ur older than him or if u see it as ur responsibility bc of that he’s still gonna bring in the money for y’all

Like he’s gonna take care of everything even if ur older so there’s no pressure for u to “act ur age”

Never brings up the fact that ur older than him, but maybe once in a fight it got bad and he yelled “ffs ur 21 u should know better than this!!” And that hurt ur feelings or something so from then on he just never ever mentioned it

And when others mention it he makes a cut throat motion like “stfu😡” bc he took it as u not liking ur age being brought up rather than u not liking it being held against u but it’s still kinda sweet how he tries to preserve ur feelings sm

If ur in college or something, he tries to help u w hw and stuff and he’s rlly educationally smart I think like he might’ve gotten bad grades but he understands quickly

And eventually he’s just doing ur hw for u LMAO

One time he probably accidentally wrote “Jake Kim” on the top of ur hw and u had to explain to ur professor why that happened

If u work, he probably also bribes ur boss or something to give u a raise and promotion or if u wanna move jobs but r scared of the low pay he feels like it’s a dumb fear bc he is clearly rich af, like u probably don’t even need a job 😭😭

Ur allowed to since ur in ur 20s legally but he doesn’t like or doesn’t let u go around casinos bc he’s seen firsthand how bad gambling is and he has the money to compensate if u ever get into gambling and lose a lot but he just doesn’t want u to feel guilty or get addicted

Like if u pass a casino and wanna go in and r like hey wanna check it out he just grabs ur hand and keeps walking and is like “let’s not” and probably asks u at one point to pls not get into gambling

If ur kinda petty bc he’s so much better at fighting than u despite being younger he’s like u don’t even need to fight I can literally do that for u???? Bc he feels like the only reason U would ever need to fight is to protect urself so if u wanna do it for fun he’ll teach u but doesn’t take it that srsly

He maybe made like one joke ab ur age or sent u a meme he saw ab relationships but u left him on read and it was just a bad joke or something but yeah overall he really refrains from bringing up ur age like ever 😭😭

He thinks ur insecure bc ur getting older or something and that’s y so he might start going like “looking youthful today 😀👍” every morning to u and ur like oh hehe thanks ????????

If someone else ever voices that they think it’s weird ur older than him he’ll fight them too like first he’ll go “(y/n), is this ur friend ?” Like he did w jiho and if ur like no he’s like oh :)) and then punches them or something

Doesn’t tell u stuff ab his business and ur like I’m 20-23 I can handle it and he just refuses anyways and will leave u in the dark bc yk won’t even risk it

Someone in Big Deal might be like “use ur s/o to help us work nd get money since they’re old they seem professional” he kicked them out immediately ur not touching that shit

But generally, he doesn’t care about it at all, and honestly just cares ab u and not ur age

Scott Kwon

He definitely uses u to get into places only ppl 20+ can enter LMAOO

He’ll have u walk in first and then slip in past u and if he gets caught he grabs u and goes “THIS is my s/o!!! They’re clearly of age, and I’m their s/o so clearly I am of age too 😤😤”

Ur banned from like 50 bars because of this like there’s a little “if these two come and ask u to enter their bar DO NOT LET THEM ENTER!!” Wall for y’all

He might try and hide in ur coat or something to get in but it never works

He definitely makes fun of ur age in a cocky way like haha... an older person wanted to get with ME. Little old me. And he feels like hot stuff bc of it for sure

Brags about it a lot like will take out ur photo and goes “u see this?? My s/o?? Yeah they’re in love w me and THREE YRS OLDER... hold ur applause guys” and it boosts his ego sm

He sends u scarily recent memes or jokes on the internet ab older s/o’s if there r any, and eventually when u go on his Instagram at least 1/3rd of his feed is just ageist jokes

If it really hurts ur feelings, he won’t tell any jokes ab it and won’t mention it ever again but will continue to utilize ur age to do things he can’t at age 18-19

He feels proud that he’s making sm money and is such a good fighter despite being younger than u bc he feels like it makes u look up to him so he’ll boast about it like he’ll punch something and go see that babe????? I can do that and I’m only 19!!! And ur like omg that’s so cooollll!!!!! <3 and his heart just swells

Pays for anything u want like buys u everything u ask for or just look at tbh, and also feels like u have no responsibility just bc ur older and seees himself as like the “leader” if the relationship and has a sense of duty to helping u and everything

Steers u away from trouble ASAP too it doesn’t matter if u can hold off on ur own, if he sees guys that just look mean he and u r walking the other way and ur like bro what?? And he just lies and is like I liked the sunset this direction or smmn and he doesn’t confide in u ab scary things

Bc yeah u can probably handle scary or threatening news but he’s not gna risk it regardless

If he’s rlly stressed ab something that can’t endanger u he won’t tell u that much ab it but might vaguely describe his predicament and looks to u for help and comfort and u just listen and he feels so much better afterwards and he’s telling u all this and ur just like mhm uh-huh :) and so he starts confiding in u more

But ruins it by going like “damn old ppl r good listeners 😆” and ur like STOPPPPPPP

Everyone in God Dog knows ur name age face and occupation bc he’s always talking ab u LMAO

When he was younger and didn’t have that much leniency with the law he made u his legal guardian so he can do what he wants and he tries to use u to get him to do stuf by pointing to u and going “they’re my legal guardian and they say I can drink all this!!” And ur like “no I absolutely do not???!!!!!” And he thought by doing that he’d get anytning but u prioritize his health 🙄 and he’s annoyed but secretly loves it and loves u doting on him nd worrying ab him and his well-being lol

In general, he rlly doesn’t care that ur older than him. His only big concern I. A relationship ever is how he can keep u safe bc he’s in pretty like tough stuff, and he’ll make fun of u but in all good fun and loves u sm

Thank you for the request, and thanks for the wish of luck <3 I’ll the my best w this blog!! I’m not that good at writing for Jake Kim, btw, because his character can kinda confuse me sometimes but he seems to be popular so I hope I get more requests of him so I can get his character down and write him properly. 💘I hope this was what u wanted 😭

[oftenderweapons]

White Wine + Spinach & Artichoke Dip + Chef’s Choice!!

Pairing: Seokjin x reader (nicknamed Angel)

Wordcount: 2.2k

Genre: drabble for Bangtan Bistro (details here); smut; established relationship

Rating: 18+

Tonight we’re serving

- White wine: Kim Seokjin

- Spinach and Artichoke Dip: smut

- Chef’s choice (Italian Wedding Soup — “Your waiter accidentally spilled a drink on you and keeps apologising profusely, even though you accepted his apology the first time he said it”)

TRIGGER WARNINGS: roleplay (waiter!Seokjin customer!yn), swearing, alcohol consumption, slightly dommy reader, sort of body shots (?) kinda (?), breast worship, oral sex (female receiving), unprotected oral sex (use dental dams ffs!!!). Serious talk here. Angel does a potentially stupid thing: alcohol, sugars and bacteria (all naturally contained in wine) can seriously upset your vagina (more precisely your pH and the bacteria that keep it healthy). Two important things to do if you happen to be dumb enough to imitate her: 1. Pee afterwards (after masturbating, after oral sex or penetrative sex, that’s good anytime you have some action down there) 2. Wash your vulva (the outside of your intimate parts and NOT the inside) with fresh water and specific soap. Sorry for the sex ed note, but I’m a strong advocate for educational smut. 

On a side note, since the word count is tight and I’m not ready to start some characters with a couple lines, I’ll casually put this into a Seokjin x Angel fic (check out Seokjin’s idol!AU masterlist — sksksk sorry for the self promo 😉)

Crediting my (unfaithful) fiancée @joheunsaram for beta reading (SHE LOCKED HERSELF OUT OF HER OLD BLOG, AND SHE’S BUILDING HER NEW ONE, PLEASE GO TAKE A LOOK SHE OWNS THE MOST ADORABLE JOONIE FIC)

Enjoy 💜✨

Sitting at your dinner table felt especially difficult tonight. Maybe because you were hyper aware of the white silk slip you were wearing, and that you had casually found it on top of your bed inside a refined cardboard box with a sophisticated golden swirl on the lid.

“Wear me to get undressed,” the small note inside read, your guts instantly fluttering at the thought. Seokjin’s handwriting spelled nothing but care and attention to detail. You knew his rushed writing and his careful calligraphy. From this detail alone you could tell he had plans. Elaborated ones.

Sitting at the table, you saw him suddenly emerge from the kitchen, in formal slacks and a white shirt, hair swept back, leaving his gorgeous forehead all there for you to see. “Good evening, miss. I’m pleased to see you have returned to our restaurant. I will be your personal waitperson for your stay. Here to serve all your cravings.” He smiled kindly, trying not to stare at your cleavage, gloriously exposed by the low neckline of the slip. The cream colour looked amazing on you. He was almost sorry for what he was about to do.

“Oh, that’s so kind of you. This restaurant does indeed have the best service.” You looked up at him with a polite smile. “And the cuisine is unrivalled.”

Of course it was. He was the chef. Although he liked playing a role, he didn’t like faking the food. He always looked it up very carefully. He had his cookbooks. And he had received a new one for his birthday. You had a vague idea of who might have gifted it.

“Would you like to try the chef’s special for the night? I am sure you will be absolutely surprised by it. And I mean in a positive way, of course.” He said, standing with his hands behind his back, which made his whole chest look broader. The two loose buttons at the top of his shirt were forming a small, inviting triangle of smooth skin, glistening under the kitchen lights.

“I’d love to try that. I am sure the chef knows what I like. He’ll sweep me off my feet.”

He looked at the floor with a small bow. “You will be entirely pleased, from appetizers to dessert.” He looked at you from under his lashes. “I will make it my personal goal.”

“Then, we shall begin.” Seokjin exited the room before coming back with a small basket of mixed bread, breadsticks and small bites of toasted bread. “I recommend a fresh, bubbly white wine. A lovely Pinot Gris from Neuchâtel. Fresh, well structured, flowery and on the dryer side. It will mix well with the vegetable-based menu of the night.”

You nodded, very interested — actually interested. Seokjin could play any part he wanted with proper research and dedication. He could probably impersonate a surgeon or an astronaut if he put his mind on it.

“Thank you for the detailed recommendation.” You smiled politely, watching as he opened the bottle and poured just one finger of wine in your glass.

You took a sip and nodded in approval. It was really something different. Seokjin had truly opened a new world to you, made up of International cuisines and niche wines, and finding pleasure in something as basic and necessary as eating and drinking. You doubted you could ever go back to your frugal meals after discovering all the tastes and textures he had introduced you to.

Like the Artichoke dip with scrumptious bacon crumbles on top you had eaten for appetizer. And the mushroom ravioli you had for your main course. Now you were staring at your empty glass, feeling slightly sorry at Seokjin, standing beside you and watching you eat. “May I have more wine, please?” You asked, looking at him sweetly.

With a courteous nod, he moved closer, taking hold of the bottle standing in the cooling bucket right beside you.

You didn’t pay much attention as he accidentally lost balance of the bottle and let his arm twist clumsily, the wine spilling on the front of your silk slip.

It was cold. Very. Especially since it had been cooling in iced water for a solid half hour. And it had been chilling in the fridge before that.

Your nipples hardened immediately, almost as quickly as apologies began to bloom from Seokjin’s lips. “I am so sorry, miss. This is unforgivable. I apologise with my whole being, this is unacceptable—”

You hid your smile quickly as you saw him grab a handkerchief and try to fix the damage, getting on his knees and trying to dab the liquid away. “It’s okay, it can happen. You must have been very tired and hungry.” You tried to sound calm, kind and compassionate, while all you wanted to do was grin and undo his belt.

“I am wholeheartedly sorry, miss, your poor dress, this is unforgivable.”

You tried to stay within your role as he pressed the kerchief to your arm, drying up the liquid.

“Stop apologising, dear, you’re already forgiven.” You said, looking down at him and noticing how his eyes stayed glued to your nipples. “Or maybe you would prefer earning my forgiveness?”

He nodded, averting his gaze and blushing.

You bit your lip at his rosy cheeks, asking yourself how he could reach such a level of impersonation.

“Maybe you could clean me up.” You suggested, pressing two fingers under his chin and making him look at you. “But it would be such a shame to dry it up when you could get a taste of how fine this wine is— and what a delicacy you have been serving all night.”

He looked at you, wide eyed, almost innocent as you took his hand and made him cup the cold, soaked silk covering your left breast. “Come on, you can take a lick, darling. Don’t hesitate.” You encouraged him, leaning forward, the naked skin just above the neckline meeting his gaze with cool, flowery-scented pearls of wine running down the curve of your breast and slowly soaking your dress.

Not entirely convinced, he shyly let the tip of his tongue peek from his parted lips, giving the tiniest lick to the fabric, acting oblivious to the way your skin sizzled at the thought of being met by his sensual touch.

He gave one more lick, collecting the liquid on the fabric that stuck to your skin and left no room for modesty, exposing even the usually hidden dark spots of your moles.

“You need to suck or you won’t get the real taste.” You said, his lips disappearing into his mouth as he tried to hide a smile. You were glad you still managed to get him out of character every now and then. Though that was rare. He is a professional, after all.

He moved closer to your skin, the wet kerchief plopping to the floor as his hand landed on your knee. You turned toward him, giving him more access as he stood on his knees and licked at the skin over your breastbone, looking into your eyes as the other hand lowered the top of your dress so that he could dip his tongue on the crevasse of your breasts. He slurped up the liquid lewdly, clicking his tongue. “Very fresh. Flowery, as the seller promised it to be. Absolutely delicious.” He grinned. “Perfect to pair off with more delicate meats.” He replied expertly, brow creased in acknowledgement as he explained. “Maybe we could try more delicate cuts.” He hinted before diving for your nipple, sucking it in his mouth from over the fabric, the stark contrast between the cold feel of the fabric and the hot saliva mixing up with the wine. The hand on your knee slid toward your thigh, gripping the soft flesh and spreading your legs open as the other hand came to help.

There was no more hiding at this point.

“Miss?” He called once his hand reached your outer hip, searching for the thong supposed to match the slip.

“Yes, dear?”

“Something’s missing.” He said, giving you a dirty look.

“I guess I’ll be the one who needs to apologise, after all.” You said coquettishly while he licked your other breast, sucking and biting to get as much wine as possible.

You knew there was a low chance of you being bruised or marked the day after — silk is a sturdy fabric after all — but the idea of finding such signs of passion on your skin got you impatient. “Maybe you could have a taste of the finest cut. It must be so frustrating watching people eat the delicacies and leave you there, standing.”

He nodded with a sorry look in his eyes before nuzzling his face against your breasts. “May I, miss?” He requested, so handsome and kind.

“Of course, darling.”

With a breathy chuckle, he parted your legs even farther apart, tugging the skirt up and finding your naked, wet cunt right before his hungry eyes. “A fine cut indeed, miss.”

“All yours to eat,” you purred, the low, sultry tone turning into a light moan as you felt his finger enter you.

“Creamy.” He murmured, drawing circles against your g-spot before lowering his face and taking a quick sniff. “The aromatic complex is overall round and well built.” He destroyed you by simply adding a slow, wide lick, parting from you and clicking his tongue a few times. “Salty… with just the right amount of sour. Deeply inviting. Aphrodisiac to say the least.” He growled between your labia. “I will gladly feast on it, miss.”

You smiled. “All you need to do is get started already.”

He did. He treacherously added one more finger, acting completely casual as he slipped two digits inside you and started teasing your g spot, rubbing it in a way that let you know he intended to make you explode in a matter of five minutes at worst, two at best.

To top it all off, his tongue swirled against your folds, giving neat, flat strokes from your hole to your clit.

You stared at the wine, knowing precisely that you shouldn’t do that, and that you were risking it. Nevertheless, he might call you Angel all he wants but he knew your true nature and you had hidden it for way too long.

With a devilish smirk, you stretched out your arm to the table, grabbing the bottle before holding his head in place, squealing once you felt his fingers go deeper as you scooted your ass forward, leaning back and transforming your torso in an awfully slippery slope.

Seokjin stared as you bunched the slip up, exposing your breasts to the chilly air, rubbing the freezing glass of the bottle against your nipples — one at a time — moaning once Jin started moving his fingers faster inside you.

As he hummed and you felt your edge crumble, you pressed the rim of the bottle to your navel and tipped the bottle downwards, a small rivulet running down all the way to your pelvis, while also getting caught on the crease of your belly and dribbling along your sides. The cold sensation gave you a chill that mixed with the fiery hot flame in your guts and made you lose your mind completely.

Seokjin was completely drowning in the sight and feel and sounds of you. You were giving small breaths that almost turned in whines when you exhaled too hard and too quick, your hips were undulating right against his tongue and his nose was perfectly slotted between your folds and his hand. He felt your high peak, your muscles pulsating as the cold liquid met his tongue, his mouth confidently switching to a sucking motion now that he knew you were turning more sensitive and he had to let your clit go. What he didn’t let go of was your g spot, devotedly worshipped by his soft fingertips while he focused on sipping all the wine away. There was maybe the equivalent of two glasses left inside the bottle, so he let you execute your foolish plan without worry.

Your eyes opened slowly as the wine stopped flowing, his fingers slowing down as your hand met his wrist.

You were ecstatic and aroused at the same time, especially once Jin cleaned his face with the back of his hand, eyes focused on yours.

“My favourite meal.” He murmured, licking his lips, placing his hands around your waist as he got back on his feet, kissing your left nipple, and then your right one on his way up.

“Let me clean up here. Get in the shower.” He murmured gently. “You owe me some apologies, am I right?” He provoked, dangerous warning lining his voice.

You weren’t in control anymore. “Yes, sir.”

[juniperleafdelivery]

* Introducing… my coffee shop AU!! It’s centered around my sona, Kas, Papyrus, and Sans. It takes place a couple years after the monsters were freed. And in this AU Kas was never Underground, but he moved to Ebbot City to get an education and start his own business.

* Under the cut because oh my gosh this got much longer than I intended

* About the characters :D

Kas ~

* He owns and runs a cafe/bakery called Sugar Fluffs! (Name suggested by @breezy-squiggles!!) The business serves coffee and pastries and it’s all cat themed! Cups, decoration, cookies and cakes… it’s all cats!! He’s also very close friends with Sans and Papyrus, and may or may not have a crush on both one of them.

Papyrus ~

* He actually works at Sugar Fluffs with Kas! Papyrus handles the customers and makes coffee, while Kas bakes and decorates the pastries. He sometimes thinks his friendship with Kas could become more, but he’s afraid of ruining what they already have ;w;

Sans ~

* Ahhh yes, a skeleton of many talents. He plays trombone at charity events, occasionally does stand up comedy, spends most of his time caring for Gaster, and hides his growing feelings of affection for Kas. One of these things are not like the others… Either way, he treats Kas like another sibling and isn’t ready to face his true feelings.

* Bonus characters!! I just had to include them lol

Oakie (belongs to @breezy-squiggles) ~

* The most coolio regular! She always orders lemon pastries, especially the super sugary ones. Also, she supplies all of Sugar Fluffs’s ingredients (mostly lemons, but also coffee and stuff for baking)

Holy ~

* Co-owner of Sugar Fluffs, he also works as a cashier. While Papyrus does the day shifts, Holy works night shifts and closes up the shop. (Someone has only broken in once, but quickly learned their lesson. Seriously, you do not want to be hit by that spray bottle.) Holy is one of Kas’s longest friends, they moved to Ebbot City together and now live together too

Toriel ~

* She comes in a few times a week to help Kas with baking. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get a butterscotch cinnamon pie (with a little cat face cut into the top of course). Occasionally, she’ll bring Frisk and Flowey along too

Gaster ~

* Egg… cracker? Uh… he sort of slid under the door one day and Kas didn’t have the heart to kick him out. Gaster mostly helps crack eggs for baking and judges everything Papyrus makes lol

* An example from when Breeze and I talked about the AU ehe

Gaster, speaking in Wing Dings: That coffee doesn’t look hot enough.

Papyrus: YOU HAVEN’T EVEN TRIED IT!

Gaster: I CAN SENSE THE WAVES ROLLING OFF OF IT. LISTEN TO ME WITHOUT QUESTIONING MY KNOWLEDGE.

Papyrus, gives coffee to customer and starts on another order: LEAVE ME ALONE, I DON’T HAVE A SIXTH SENSE!!

Gaster: HEAT THE CO FF EE

Kas, losing his paitence: Alright, both of you get out before I bring Holy in here.

Gaster: I WILL RETURN… melts into floor

* …well! That’s all the info about my characters and Sugar Fluffs, hope y’all liked it!

[goat-yells-at-everything]

Fnaf Anon: I stopped really interacting with Fnaf lore after fnaf pizza simulator.

Ok! Thats good!

SO.

(note: 90% of the following is, technically, a theory. A GOAT THEORY)

(Also note: you asked for a run down of the lore theories. You asked for this giant wall o text Nony. ;D )

So, first point. Despite the popular idea that the books have no baring on the games, the books have a SHIT TON to do with the game lore. Maybe not directly, but as MattPatt has said, there are holes in the various series but the holes are different in each series. By reading into each one you can start to fill in a few of the holes in the sister series.

So I’ll reference the books when I need too. My opinions on some things differ from Matt when it comes to what the books are saying about the games.

So lets get started here!

After Pizza Sim we had Ultimate Custom Night. Just a big Smash Bro's style Brawler, right?

WRONG

Its basically been confirmed that UCN is Afton in Hell being tormented by one of the souls inside Golden Freddy.

"One of?" you ask? Why yes. Golden Freddy had 2 souls inside him! But we’ll have to look at a few things before we get there.

The soul in UCN is NOT the crying child. This soul is one of the children of the OG missing childrens incident. We’ve got a few things that points to this. First, the og game had 5 missing kids and 5 animatronics. Yes, the roster has been filled out since then but Scott very clearly intended for one kid to equal one bot. Second, in the Silver Eyes series there are 5 children killed by Afton with the last, Michel, inhabiting Golden Fredbear. THEN, in the Fazbear Frights novels we learn about a man in a hospital who the staff keep trying to kill cause they beleive he’s literal Evil. It turns out the ghost of one of his victims is keeping him from dying because he wants to see the man in as much pain as possible, see him suffer like he made the boy suffer. Later, this soul ends up in an animatronic body WITH ANOTHER SOUL who is much less angry.

In UCN, there is an Easter egg when you play against Old Man Consequences (a character from FNaF World) where he tells Golden Freddy to “rest his soul” and “leave the demon to his demons”. If you get a perfect score in UCN you get a cut scene of Golden Freddy just sitting there, twitching. Taking all of that plus the stories in Fazbear Frights we can assert that UCN is the story of the soul in Golden Freddy tormenting Afton. Not in literal Hell, but possibly while he’s in a hospital being treated for the severe burns he got when the Freddy’s in Pizza Sim burned down with him and everyone else inside.

We even know the name of the soul in GFred, its Cassidy. That comes from another book, the FNaF Security Log Book activity book. Just… go with me here lol. The Security Log Book is haunted. At one point the ghost in the book asks “do you remember your name” which lead people on reddit to figure out a convoluted secret code that they put into the word search that got us the name “Cassidy”. In the Silver Eyes novels, one of the 5 MCE kids is also named Cassidy (though she isn’t GFred in the books, more likely she’s regular Freddy but the names are being reused throughout the different series’s).

What about the second soul? That IS the Crying Child. Going back to Fazbear Frights, the second soul in that endoskeleton is an innocent kid who died young in a hospital. In FF he died from an illness but it directly parallels the Crying Child who dies in a hospital after the bite of ’83. Both of them died young, yes, but they weren’t killed in an intentionally violent way. CC was hurt in a violent bullying incident but his brother never intended to kill him and was likely with his little brother in the hospital, sitting with him until CC died.

So, after UCN the original games are “over” according to Scott. Considering he’s said that before, after FNaF 4, we can kind of bet that isn’t true.

So this brings us to FNaF 7, FNaF Help Wanted.

Help Wanted starts with a coaster ride down a hallway where an announcer explains how Fazbear Entertainment has been the victim of a “lunatic” who put out games that were filled with mostly lies. It says that, yes, some of the stories are based on some truth but the majority were made up by this guy to smear the good name of Freddy. We go on to learn, however, that the company actually hired the indy developer to make the games so they could make light of the actual horror show that is Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

The company decides to make its own game that pokes fun of those older games and stories so they can try to rebuild themselves. Except there is a problem. Fazbear Entertainment gave a small game company circuit boards and hard drives from the old animatronics and “other things” so the data could be used to make the new VR Experience. One of these boards or drives has a virus on it thats infecting the game companies systems. This leads to “tape girl”, one of the developers/testers, to create audio tapes as she tries to figure out what they thought was just a glitch. In the end, she ends up putting together the bits of code that ends up making Glitchtrap and, ultimately, releasing him into her own body.

Its my belief that “tape girl” is Vanessa from Security Breach. This kind of screws with where SB fits in the timelines people have been developing, though. I think I have a theory on how it fits but I need to re-rereview all of the books I’ve got (finish reading the last 3, too), and do some more reading about Help Wanted and Security Breach (and, maybe playing the last two myself) before I can make anything definitive.

So anyway.

One of the big questions since Help Wanted dropped was “so the games Scott made were fake?” and it seemed like that was true at the time, but now many people aren’t so sure. Back in FNaF 2, Scott started putting in the 8 bit mini games after you died and later between nights, too. Well, in Help Wanted the mobile port we got a new 8/16 bit mini game, Princess Quest, that takes the place of the audio tapes and the games main enemy are glitching purple bunny people you have to run away from. At the end the Princess walks down a long hallway to find a giant purple glitchy bunny with some screwy text that, when decoded, says “I always come back.” Thats when people started to make a connection back to FNaF 3’s 8-bit mini games where the final play through you are a purple glitching bunny that hops between the various games.

This is the first time we see Glitchtrap. This is the virus that went on to infect the new VR game. And, looking back at the old games; excluding FNaF 4’s “mini games” which weren’t really games but just flashes of memory; there are 16 mini games, the same number of tapes/lanterns in PQ/pieces of Glitchtrap.

I had to check my copy of the Fredy Files to be sure but its true.

FNaF 2:

-Save Them

-Take Cake

-Foxy Go Go Go

-Give Gifts Give Life

FNaF 3:

-BB’s Air Adventure

-Mangles Quest

-BB’s Air Adventure a second time (because you had to get the cake from Mangles Quest)

-Chica’s Party

-Stage 01

-Shadow Bonnie

-Happiest Day

FNaF SL:

-Baby’s Ice Cream Game

FNaF PS:

-Midnight Motorist

-Fruity Maze

-Security Puppet

FNaF UCN:

-Old Man Consequences Pond

THESE are the games that the “rouge indy developer” created to “smear” the Fazbear name. Except they were really games FE paid for so they could make light of the horrific past they have. These are the drives that they gave the new game studio that caused the Afton Virus to be released.

The main gameplay of the games? That was the real story that FE wanted to cover up.

So that leads us to Security Breach and, other than knowing the killer is Vanny and she’s being partially controlled by Afton, there isn’t much theory that I’ve read just yet. I think people are still trying to get all the little bits before they make any concrete theories.

I’m thinking of going back and making some notes of my own theories starting from the first game and going through all of the lore I can get my hands on. Yes, including re-reading ALL the books. ;^;

Hope this was kinda sorta helpful to you anon!