#and i really thought it was doing pretty well! getting solid reviews and the people who watched it enjoyed it a lot

[kazz-brekker]

legit kind of sad about the my lady jane cancellation. it just really sucks to be living in an era of television where it feels like you can't get invested in anything new and interesting without constantly fearing that it's going to get yanked away from you and unceremoniously cancelled

[willowsnook]

Let me in

Hi! Love your idea for a prompt list. Can I order: A turkey swiss on wheat bread, maybe mike’s way if you feel like it’s fitting for the sandwich?

Joe burrow x bsf!reader

Please don’t leave

—-----------------------------------------

Fall in Cincinnati was something that you loved. The trees changed colors, you could start leaving your windows open, and, of course, Bengals football. Now, you’d never claim that you were a die-hard fan, that was still reserved for your beloved Green Bay Packers, but after 5 years in the city, they were a solid 2nd favorite. Plus, being good friends with the starting quarterback meant you had to root for them. 

You met Joe at a charity event a year after you moved to Ohio. Working for a Cincinnati-specific lifestyle magazine, your recommendations and reviews had made you quite well known in the city. Your strategy was always finding small, hidden gem places, usually family-owned, to review and elevate. This fulfilled your need to make a difference and also get paid to eat food. 

While your job was so public and in the spotlight, you were pretty introverted, which surprised a lot of people. You didn’t necessarily enjoy being the center of attention, focusing more on making those around you shine. This meant that while you were appreciative of being recognized by the community, you hated going to big events; you’d much rather just be writing about them. 

So when the introverted star of Cincinnati joined you in the shadows of an event, the two of you hit it off. Knowing who you were, his PR team had noticed and pitched a content series involving Joe. You spent a whole day with him, going to places he recommended and giving instant reviews. Initially, you were worried about it being awkward because you didn’t know him well, but you both had a blast. Joe was easy to talk to, and he liked that you treated him like anyone else. 

After that, he’d invited you to hang out with his friends several times, and Ja’marr really liked you, insisting that you be added to the friend group. Since then, you’d spent the last couple of years being forced to go to every home Bengals game, but you could also easily force one of them to help you with some kind of content for work. A mutually beneficial friendship you thought. 

Midway through the week, you were back at your apartment, taking pictures of some cookies someone sent you to be considered for an upcoming article you were writing. You snapped the perfect picture just as your phone rang, and you looked over to see it was Joe calling. 

“What’s up?” You said, putting the phone on speaker. 

“I’m bored. Can I come hang?” He asked. 

“Yeah, I’m doing some work, but I’ll be done soon.”

“Okay, I’m on my way.” 

You were used to Joe calling you randomly to hang out, especially when the season was going poorly. One thing you learned in your years of friendship with him was that he didn’t like to be alone, mostly so he didn’t spiral thinking about everything. You were happy to be a friend he could lean on. 

15 minutes later, you heard your front door open and smiled as Joe wandered into the kitchen. He gave you a small squeeze from behind as you leaned over your laptop. 

“Are you doing anything with these?” He asked, and you looked over at the cookies. 

“No, I just got done. Have at it,” you replied, amused as he shoveled one into his mouth. 

“These are pretty good,” he said, swallowing. “But I’ve had better.”

“Hmm,” you thought. “What don’t you like about them?”

“Too grainy,” he said, and you agreed, unable to think of what you were feeling. 

“That’s a good point; I’m using that,” you said, typing it down in your notes. 

“Watch out, I’m going to steal your job,” he joked, and you smirked. 

“Does that mean I get yours?”

“You’d probably do a better job than me right now,” he said, and you frowned, shutting your laptop. 

“You are still a superstar, even when you lose,” you told him earnestly, getting a small smile from him. 

“I think I need you with a headset on to tell me that during the games,” he said, and you laughed. 

“Yeah yeah,” you replied, blushing. “Want to take a walk or something? I need to get out of the house.” 

“Yeah, let’s go.”

The two of you walked down the street and ventured towards the water, chatting about upcoming events and his family coming to visit. You started to get chilly and held your arms briefly before Joe noticed. He pulled his hoodie off with one hand and handed it to you, not even stopping what he was saying. You pulled it on, inhaled the lingering cologne, and sighed. 

“Will you come to dinner with us tomorrow night?” he asked, jolting you back to reality.

“With your parents?” you asked, and he nodded. “Would that not be a little weird?”

“Why would it be weird?” 

“I don't know. I just wouldn’t want them to think we were dating or anything,” you said, confused. Joe frowned at that, but you didn’t have time to analyze it. 

“Ja’marr is coming too,” he said. “You are both my best friends, so I’d like you to meet them.” 

“Okay, if it’s important to you,” you agreed, giving in. Dinner with Joe’s parents. Huh. Sometimes you really didn’t understand why he chose you as a best friend when many people were fighting over it. If only people knew how clingy Mr. Cool was. 

—---------------------------------------------------

Ja’Marr picked you up from your place the next night and the two of you headed to dinner. 

“You look nice,” he commented, and you smiled. You and Ja’Marr had a flirty relationship, but nothing had ever come of it. One time, when you were both very drunk in the offseason, you had made out but it didn’t last long with him backing out, saying that Joe was going to kill him. You had just assumed that Joe didn’t want anyone in the friend group dating in case it got messy, which was understandable. With Ja’marr, you were mostly just attracted to him vs. wanting something more. 

“I still feel weird about this whole thing,” you admitted to him and he gave you a lazy smirk. 

“Please, they’ll love you,” he assured you. 

“That’s not what I’m worried about; I’m amazing,” you said, causing him to laugh. “I just think it’s weird and intimate. Like if my parents were in town, yeah, maybe I wouldn’t mind them meeting you guys at the game or to celebrate in a group after. But I wouldn’t invite you for a small dinner.” 

Ja’Marr gave you a look you couldn’t decipher before laughing to himself. 

“I’ll try not to take offense to that,” he said and you rolled your eyes. 

The restaurant was a nicer one that you had been to before for work. Joe’s parents stood up as you approached the table and warmly greeted you. His mom pulled you into a tight hug, laughing about how excited she was to meet you finally. You shot Ja’Marr a look and found him trying not to laugh. You could tell Joe was embarrassed, which made the situation a little amusing. 

Sitting down beside him, he gave you an easy smile while handing you the drink menu. Joe’s dad jumped into conversation with Ja’Marr about the season while Robin asked you a ton of questions about your job and basically your whole life. You ended up loving his parents; they were the sweetest people. While you might have missed the way that Joe was looking at you the whole dinner, his parents definitely did not. 

“It was so good to meet you y/n,” Robin gushed. “I’m sure we’ll see much more of you in the future.” 

You smiled, confused, while Ja’Marr couldn’t hold back his laugh. Joe’s face turned bright red and his dad chuckled. 

—------------------------------------------------

If you had thought the season was going poorly before it was a million times worse now. It seemed like each week, your two friends were putting up superstar numbers but still losing. After watching them lose by just a point to the Ravens, you clicked the TV off and sighed. Reaching for your phone you texted him a white heart and watched him read it and not reply. He usually would, even after a loss, but this one was tough so you didn’t pay much mind to it. 

As the week went on, you started to feel Joe’s tension about the team bleed into your friendship. He wasn’t answering your calls and had replied to any text you had sent him with just one word. What had really pissed you off though, was that he was supposed to shoot a Thanksgiving promo with you about places that provided free food for those who needed it and he didn’t show. 

“I get that you’re having a tough time right now and while I can live with you being a bad friend I can’t live with you 1. making me look bad professionally and 2. disappointing people making a difference. So give me a call when you figure your shit out,” you ranted to his voicemail. 

You were supposed to fly out for the game this weekend but weren’t sure if you still should. Calling Ja’Marr, you complained about Joe being a dick and that you didn’t know what to do. He assured you that you should still come and that Joe was just hurting because of the season. The best thing you could do was be there for him, even in the shadows. 

The game started out horribly with it being 24-6 leading into halftime. But a different team came out in the third quarter, and you went crazy as the Bengals got ahead. But like the week before, no matter what Joe did, even throwing for over 350 yards, they still lost in the end. You lingered by the locker room after the game and smiled sadly as you saw Ja’Marr first. He wrapped you in a hug, and he was happy to have you there. Joe on the other hand, did not look happy to see you. 

“What are you doing here?” he said coldly, and both you and Ja’Marr flinched. His teammate gave him a weird look, but Joe was just staring at you blankly. 

“I’ve had these tickets since before the season, you know that,” you replied. 

“I didn’t want you to come,” he said and you tried to ignore the hurt you felt. “Did you not get the hint from me ignoring you all week?” 

“Oh, so is that why you stood up the charity?” You bit back. “So that I would ‘get the hint’?”

Joe didn’t say anything, clenching his jaw and Ja’Marr tried to step in. 

“I wanted her to come man,” he said and Joe snapped his head towards his friend. 

“Well just fuck her then and get over it,” he replied and your jaw dropped. Ja”Marr shoved him backward, yelling at him before security intervened. You recovered from your shock and turned around, abruptly leaving the stadium. You called an Uber to take you back to the hotel, and the massive traffic gave you a lot of time to process what had just happened. 

You could understand him being upset over the game, especially since it was so fresh in his mind. But it’s not like you went up to him; he came up to you. This man was supposed to be your best friend, and he basically just called you a whore to your face. This shit was ridiculous. 

30 minutes later, you were walking into the hotel. Ja’Marr had tried calling, but you declined. You called the airline you were flying with to see if there was any chance of flying out early, and you were lucky to snag a seat on the last flight out. You quickly packed up your stuff after changing into a comfier outfit and headed down to the lobby to check out and call a car. 

Turning to head out the door you stopped as you saw Joe walking in, his eyes trained on you. He looked miserable and he made his way towards you slowly. 

“Y/n..” he started, his eyes filling up with tears, but you stopped him from saying anything else. 

“I’m leaving,” you said emotionlessly. He tried to reach out to you, but you flinched back and pain flashed across his face. 

“I need to talk to you y/n,” he begged. “Please don’t leave.” 

“Why would I stay?” You asked softly. “Goodbye, Joe.” 

You left him standing there wondering why it felt like your own heart was breaking into two. 

—-----------------------------------------------

It had been two weeks since then, and you had successfully avoided Joe at all costs. He blew up your phone of course but you have yet to answer. Luckily he hadn’t tried coming to your apartment because he knew you well enough to know that it’d piss you off. 

You were on your way to hang out with Ja’Marr for a group movie night which he promised you that Joe would not be at. You don’t know why you even believed him; Joe’s car was parked in the front driveway and you almost reversed until you saw Ja’Marr waving his arms at you. Stepping out, you crossed your arms, waiting for him. 

“I knew you wouldn’t come if you knew he was here,” he started and you scoffed. 

“You were right.”

“I am miserable because he is y/n,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry but I will be selfish for a minute. He is being a dick at practice to everyone and isn’t throwing me good balls. He’s moody, won’t say a word to me, and won’t leave his house unless necessary. So please let him make it up to you. You two belong together.”

“He called me a whore Ja’Marr!” You exclaimed frustrated and gave you a sympathetic look. 

“I know he did, and that was terrible. I tried to fight him on your behalf,” he said, earning a small smile from you. “God I shouldn’t tell you this but he’s so in love with you it’s insane. He’s hurting and you’re hurting. Please just talk to him.”

“He’s not in love with me,” you said and he just rolled his eyes. 

“Believe what you want but get in there,” he said steering you towards the door. 

The good thing was that there were a few other people here from your friend group, so technically, you didn’t even have to talk to him. He was the first person you saw when you walked in so clearly, this was a coordinated effort between the two friends. 

Joe did look sad, and you wanted to be happy about it, but you couldn’t find it in yourself. He was dressed down in grey sweats and a black T-shirt, his hair looking like he had run his hands through it over and over. His eyes were puffy, and that made your heart clench. 

“Are we ready to start?” One of your other friends called from the living room and you started to walk towards the room but Joe gently grabbed you, pulling you closer to him and letting Ja’Marr pass. 

“Can we talk?” He mumbled quietly to you and you nodded, letting him pull you into the study. You stood with your arms crossed as you looked at him, waiting. 

“I’m sorry y/n. I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “I was hurting so bad and I took it out on you. The one person who has always been there for me.” 

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it Joe,” you said, frustrated. “It’s not like it was just the comment; it was the week leading up to it, missing the event. I can’t be there for you when you don’t let me in.”

You had imagined how this conversation would go multiple times over the past few weeks. You expected an apology and another apology, but you did not expect Joe Burrow to start sobbing in front of you. 

He sunk against the wall and had his head in his hands while he was crying. Your shock wore off, and you knelt down in front of him, moving in between his legs. He looked up and your heart broke at his tear-stained face. 

“What is going on, Joe?” You asked softly, wiping some of his tears with your thumb. 

“I just don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “Everything is going wrong, and I don’t feel like I’m in control. I do everything I can, and it’s still not enough.” 

“Oh Joey,” you murmured, pulling his head into your shoulders. He held on to you tightly as he cried and you ran your hand through his hair gently. 

“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I’m sorry I hurt you; I hated myself the second I said it.” 

“I forgive you Joe,” you told him, looking into his teary eyes. 

“I don’t deserve you; I’m not good enough for you,” he said. “I want to be enough for you.”

You cupped his face gently, making him look at you. Your own eyes started to water at the vulnerability he was showing.

"Joe, you’ve always been enough for me," you whispered. "You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me, not to anyone. I’m here for you, not for what you do or don’t achieve."

His brows furrowed, and he shook his head slightly, his hands moving to hold yours. "You don’t understand, y/n. I don’t just want to be your best friend—I want to be everything to you. And I’ve been so afraid of ruining our relationship that I pushed you away instead."

Your breath caught in your throat. "Joe..."

"I love you," he said, his voice breaking, but his gaze held steady. "I’ve been in love with you for so long, and I didn’t know how to tell you. But pushing you away hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt on the field. I can’t lose you."

For a moment, the weight of his words left you speechless. You searched his face, finding nothing but raw sincerity. Your heart ached, but in the best way, as if it were piecing itself together after being fractured.

"I love you too, Joe," you admitted to him and yourself, a soft smile breaking through the tears on your face. "But you have to let me in. No more shutting me out, no matter how hard things get. We figure it out together, okay?"

His hands tightened around yours, and he nodded, relief washing over his features. "Together. I promise."

You leaned forward, gently kissing his forehead before resting your own against it. The two of you walked out of the study and into the living room, where everyone else was already engrossed in the movie. Ja’Marr looked between the two of you and at your connected hands and gave you a wide smirk. Joe moved to the big armchair and pulled you down with him, and you snuggled into his lap. His arms wrapped around you, and you finally felt content. 

[ploppythespaceship]

Uglies - Movie Thoughts

On a whim, I decided to start re-reading the Uglies series a couple months ago -- so imagine my surprise when I found out it was getting a movie! Said movie is now out, and it was interesting to watch with the book being so fresh in my head.

Overall, it's... eh. It's not a complete train wreck, the way most critics seem to want you to think, but it is fairly bland and uninspired. It's a very watered down version of the book. It also has the misfortune of feeling like yet another a Hunger Games wannabe, despite the original book pre-dating that series by several years.

Spoilers for everything under the cut.

What I Liked

Based on reviews, I seem to be in the minority here, but I thought the cast was pretty good. People seem to hate Joey King as Tally, but I thought she was fine. Brianne Tju is easily the best in the cast, stealing the whole damn movie as Shay. Laverne Cox also gives an excellent performance as Cable, though I do think she should not have been given that role for other reasons (which I'll get into later).

I've also seen complaints that the characters aren't ugly enough. They talk about how ugly they are and point out their specific ugly features, when they don't actually appear that ugly. And I think everyone complaining about that is completely missing the point. The "Uglies" aren't actually ugly -- they're just normal people, who've been conditioned to think their imperfect features are hideous.

I was honestly unsure how the Pretties would be visualized -- in fact, I wondered if the book would just be fundamentally unadaptable because of it -- but they did a fairly good job. I think leaning on CGI and unnatural affectations was the right way to go. All the Pretties have this uncanny quality to them that suits the story perfectly.

The overall production design was solid as well. I like how Uglyville is all gray concrete and muted tones, while New Pretty Town is shimmering golds. Then upon reaching the Smoke, all the colors of nature finally come through. I do think that could have pushed that last one a little bit more, but it still works well.

Apart from that, I don't really have much to shout out. It's competently written, well-performed, well put together. I know it doesn't sound like I have much praise, but it is a competent movie.

What I'm Mixed On

By far the biggest change from the book is Peris becoming a Special. And I'm torn on it. On the one hand, it does make him a bigger part of the story -- he's honestly not much more than an inciting incident in the book. It gives him and Tally a unique arc that's probably the strongest through-line in the story. On the other hand, the Specials as a concept are so under-cooked (more on that later) and the actor is so bland that it still doesn't quite land the way it's supposed to.

What I Didn't Like

The pacing of this movie is by far its worst issue. We are flying through this plot. There is no time for anything to breathe, for characters to develop meaningful connections, for the bigger moments to feel earned. Some things do make sense to condense -- Tally's journey to the Smoke would have been incredibly boring without her internal monologue, so condensing most of that into a montage makes sense. But I do feel we lost too much. That's where a lot of Tally's characterization comes out, where we can see her bravery and ingenuity -- none of that comes across in the movie.

A lot of important beats are rushed. Tally agreeing to help Dr. Cable is over in a flash. It feels like Tally's in the Smoke for all of fifteen minutes. Tally and David barely interact, so their relationship has no real stake. Everyone is kidnapped by Special Circumstances, and then rescued immediately after. I almost think a 5-6 episode mini-series would have worked better -- but that might have introduced the opposite problem, where everything takes too long.

The movie also has frequent montages that don't really work. It seems like they were trying to show the passage of time, but it just makes everything feel even shorter.

The beginning of the movie has an exposition problem, as well. It opens with a montage explaining the entire setting... before leading into several scenes that also explain the setting through dialogue. We get fed the same details about the surgery and the Rusties and the flowers at least three times at the start, and it gets grating.

As already mentioned, Tally is pretty severely underwritten. In the book, she has a distinct personality and a unique presence. In the movie, she's just the main character because she happens to be the main character. Her intelligence and resourcefulness are pretty much gone.

I also think changing her motivation for going to the Smoke did her a disservice. In the book, Tally goes to the Smoke so she can have her surgery, and because she's convinced herself that Shay needs her help. In the movie, Dr. Cable tells her that the Smokies have a weapon, and she will be saving lives by helping to find them. I think giving her a more selfless motivation robs her of her character arc. She always comes across as someone trying to help, who wants to best for other people, rather than someone who had to consciously learn that.

The Specials are barely even a presence. I'm not sure they were even directly called Specials. People who hadn't read the book would never realize that there was an entire separate status of person here. You never see their disturbingly beautiful faces or their terrifying strength. Considering how pivotal the Specials are to the overall story, especially in the later books, it's really odd not to see them properly established here.

Like I said, Laverne Cox gives an excellent performance as Dr. Cable... but I think they should have thought twice before casting a trans woman. It's not necessarily that there's a trans woman in the villainous role, but that there's a trans woman in the villainous role who specifically wants to force people to have surgeries to brainwash them. Like... did the optics of that really not occur to anyone? At all? I think Cox could have played David's mother, instead.

[warping-realities]

Bed and Breakfast (Repost)

"I can't believe you're gonna make me stay in a dump like that," said the gorgeous woman with an arrogant tone towards her boyfriend, not realizing the owner of the cozy little beach inn was eavesdropping.

"Babe, chill out, the place is actually pretty dope and seems super comfy. Plus, it’s got killer reviews on travel sites. We’ll be lucky if there’s even a spot for us here."

"We wouldn’t have to deal with this crap if you had booked a hotel ahead of time."

"Laura, sweetheart, you picked a trendy spot last minute during peak season; there’s no way we’d find a room, and yet you insisted on coming."

"Of course, all the big shots are here. What do you think my followers would say if I didn't show up? An influencer’s gotta stay on top of all the trends, Jeremy, and this is the hot spot right now—God only knows why," Laura shot back, making her boyfriend sigh before being interrupted by a cheerful and upbeat voice.

"Good evening! I’m Cintia, the owner of Cozy Cabin. Welcome! How can I help you?"

"Good evening, ma’am. I’m Jeremy Grant, and this is my fiancée, Laura. We’re looking for a place to crash."

"Oh no! I’m sorry, but we’re all booked up. Reservations have been closed for over two months; we’ve become super popular lately." The woman, who seemed to be of an age that was hard to pin down, responded. Though she showed signs of age, she had a vibe of joy and youth around her, at that moment tainted by genuine sadness at not being able to help. That turned into indignation and anger when the pretty blonde in front of her let out a dismissive giggle followed by a sharp jab at her fiancé. But before Cintia could say anything, Jeremy quickly jumped in.

"Isn’t there even the slightest chance, Cintia? It would just be for one night so Laura can snap some pics and post them; she’s a digital influencer."

"Really? I’ve never heard of you, darling," Cintia said, taking the moment to get back at the rude young woman, who couldn’t help but fire back.

"I work with a younger crowd; it's understandable if someone your age doesn’t know me," Laura replied, making Jeremy cringe and a dangerous glint appear in Cintia’s eyes.

"Ah, trust me, I know how to spot a real influencer with clout. Right now, we’ve got Miguel Ramos, the famous fitness influencer, crashing here; it’s his fifth year visiting us during this time. Which gives me an awesome idea to help you out. If you’ll excuse me for a sec, I’ll be back with some info."

"Stupid hag," Laura muttered bitterly as soon as Cintia left the room.

"Baby, you kinda poked the bear..."

"Don’t you dare take her side, Jeremy. How could she compare me to that fairy Miguel Ramos?"

"Laura, watch your mouth. I’ve heard a lot about Miguel Ramos; he was a respected personal trainer before he blew up as a fitness influencer and has a solid follower base."

That was a huge understatement, and they both knew it. While Laura’s follower count hadn’t even hit the hundreds of thousands mark, Miguel’s had already smashed through the million barrier. And obviously, the vain woman didn’t like being reminded of that and soon found a reason to roast her fiancé.

"Jeremy, that scruff of yours looks awful! How many times have I told you to keep your face smooth? My followers prefer you to match my look!"

Jeremy didn’t know if that was true; Laura’s followers really did hype up how well they matched in appearance. But he couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that Laura dressed him in similar styles to hers, combined with her nagging to keep his face smooth and his blond hair styled in neat curls, made them look so much alike that some people thought they were siblings instead of a couple. It was proof enough of a totally narcissistic nature, as the class bullies loved to shout. But every time those thoughts popped up, Jeremy quickly shoved them aside; he had long accepted that he’d be nobody without his girlfriend, to the point of giving up his career as a gym teacher to follow her, making sure all her wishes were met and canceling himself out in every way. Because he was dead sure he wasn’t worthy of her love and that no one in the world could love him like she did. It was exactly because he thought all this that when he saw Cintia return with a satisfied look on her face, he replied calmly.

"Yeah, babe, that’s the first thing I’ll do once we hit the room."

"My dears, I found a solution; it’s not perfect, but it should help for today," Cintia started with a playful grin and that spark in her eyes. "We have a few rooms with extra beds that aren’t being used, and two of our guests have kindly offered those beds to you for a couple of nights. In two days, Mrs. Goldschmitt will be heading home, and her room will be free if you want to extend your stay."

"You mean you want us to crash in separate rooms?" Laura asked, indignantly.

"It was the best I could do, dear. Of course, if that doesn’t work for you, feel free to scram and find somewhere else," Cintia replied with a frosty smile.

"No, no, that’s cool; we’ll take it!" Jeremy quickly interrupted, wanting to avoid more drama and losing the only place they found.

"Great! Follow me, then; I’ll have one of the staff take your bags to your respective rooms," Cintia said, looking genuinely pleased as she led them down a hallway and a flight of stairs to the first room. She knocked on the door, which was promptly opened by a handsome Latino man in his thirties, with muscles that popped under a fitted white t-shirt and a friendly smile on his rugged, bearded face.

"Goodnight," he said simply, his voice oozing masculinity.

"Miguel, darling! These are Jeremy and Lau..."

"You don’t need to introduce me; I’m sure Miguel knows who I am," Laura interrupted while Miguel stared at her like she was some exotic creature that had just landed in front of him.

"Laura... apparently she’s a digital influencer," Cintia continued as if she hadn’t been rudely interrupted. "Jeremy and Laura, this is Miguel Ramos, the guy we talked about earlier, who kindly agreed to give Jeremy the extra bed in his room."

"Thanks for the lovely intro, Cintia; it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Laura, and you too, Jer..." Miguel started, only to be cut off by Laura.

"I think our followers would love a collab from us."

"Um, sure, we can chat about that tomorrow, Laura. I believe you both are wiped out now, and Cintia still needs to take you to your room."

"Yeah, yeah, you’re right; we’ll sort everything out tomorrow. Shall we bounce then?" Laura wrapped up, talking to Cintia without even saying goodbye to Jeremy, who then stepped up to his girlfriend and kissed her on the cheek.

"Good night, love; sleep tight!" he said before entering the room and watching his fiancée being led away by Cintia.

.....

"Welcome, Jeremy; unfortunately, you’ll have to take the single bed."

"Thanks, Miguel; you didn’t have to do that or pretend to know Laura."

"Ahh, I’m sorry about that, but I thought it was better; I know how sensitive some influencers can be about not being recognized. I’ve never really cared about that, but I’ve seen some awkward situations, to say the least. And about the bed, it’s just a bed; I’m not really using it, and Cintia asked me for a favor; she’s a good friend and helped me out a lot when... anyway, you’re welcome here."

"Still, you didn’t have to do any of that; thanks a ton," Jeremy replied as he prepped to crash, thinking about what Miguel had left unsaid. It was no secret that his breakup with his long-time boyfriend, a big-time film actor, had been a massive bummer, so much so that he had stayed out of the spotlight for months until he was spotted on the beach close to where they were, which is why the interest in the place had exploded. The only news was that he wouldn’t be staying in some fancy hotel but in Cintia’s cozy little inn. Laura should be stoked, Jeremy thought before dozing off; she went looking for copper and apparently struck gold.

Already lying in the single bed, Jeremy found the guts to say something else.

"Miguel, seriously, thanks a bunch; I really appreciate your kindness... but... well... I apologize in advance if Laura throws a fit about the sleeping arrangements... she’s used to getting her way, and... well... there might be some jealousy or something..."

"She doesn’t need to worry, Jeremy; I’m not into guys skinnier, smaller, and younger than me," Miguel joked, but it made Jeremy flinch.

"I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to offend you."

"You didn’t offend me, Jeremy; I was just messing around. You can relax in the room; as far as I’m concerned, it’s as much yours as mine. Have a good night."

…..

The morning sun streamed into the inn's bedroom, causing Jeremy to roll over in bed and wake up, rubbing his eyes, treated to a stunning sight: Miguel in just white underwear, his sculpted body on display, staring intently at the bedroom wall like he was lost in thought. At that moment, Jeremy felt something he never thought he would feel upon seeing another dude: a pang of desire, mixed with a familiar sensation in his dick that he only associated with seeing Laura’s naked beauty. His surprise was so intense that he moved abruptly, waking Miguel from his daydream.

"Good morning; sorry if I woke you; I forgot to close the curtains last night."

"No problem," Jeremy replied, hiding his erection with a pillow.

"Anyway, I’m already heading out for my morning run before breakfast."

"Oh man, I miss doing that!" Jeremy commented.

"Do you do this too?"

"Yeah, I was a physical educator just like you, but since I started following Laura... she’s not a morning person and gets all cranky when I wake her up early... anyway, I’ve been running on the treadmill while she shoots her videos at the gym."

"If you want to train with me..."

"Nah, man, thanks, but no. I’ll catch some more Z’s," Jeremy replied, still trying to hide his erection.

"Then I’ll see you later. Sweet dreams," said a fully dressed Miguel as he left the room, leaving Jeremy alone with his confusing thoughts.

…….

To say the trip had been a letdown for Laura would be a massive understatement. First, Jeremy couldn’t even make a simple reservation and had the nerve to blame her when he should’ve seen this coming. Then there was the beach itself; she had never liked the sun and sea, and just thinking about sand made her skin crawl. But unfortunately, thanks to Miguel Ramos’ star-studded divorce and his apparent bad taste, that little beach was the hot spot for the summer. Ending up in the same inn as him could be a golden opportunity, but for that, she had to deal with the arrogant old bat who owned the place, the fact that her fiancé was sleeping in the same room as that gay dude, and the annoying roommate she was sure had been chosen by the old hag just to irritate her. And it was with a look reflecting her inner bitterness that she waited for her fiancé to show up for breakfast, which only made her angrier, since she wasn’t used to waiting and stubbornly refused to call him. After all, he should know his place and duties!

It was with that sour expression that Miguel found her after taking a shower and getting dressed as quietly as possible to avoid waking the still-snoozing Jeremy. Seeing that expression made him seriously consider making a run for it from the breakfast room without being seen, especially since he hadn’t had a great first impression of Laura, which was confirmed when he checked out the kind of content she produced, with Jeremy looking more like an accessory to her outfit than an actual boyfriend, raising the suspicion that maybe the other guy was stuck in an abusive relationship like he himself had experienced until recently. But before he had time to bolt, their eyes locked, and a practiced smile crept onto her face, not quite reaching her predatory eyes. Knowing that game all too well, Miguel plastered on a smile just as fake as hers and approached her table.

"Good morning, Miguel; I hope Jeremy’s snoring wasn’t too much of a bother," Laura said, kicking off the conversation in the worst way possible and making Miguel’s smile fade.

"On the contrary, it didn’t bother me at all; Noah snored way worse," he replied, a look of irritation briefly crossing Laura’s face due to the comparison with her ex-husband. Wasn’t it enough that her boyfriend was sleeping in the same room as him?

"You’re too kind, but it’s my fiancé you’re talking about; no one knows him like I do."

"Of course, and if you’ll let me say, checking out your posts on social media it’s clear to see all your influence on him," Miguel replied, barely hiding the sarcasm in his voice.

"Thanks. It was hard work," Laura shot back without realizing the dig hidden in his comment. "Speaking of work, when are we gonna do our collab?" she concluded.

"We’ll definitely figure something out," he replied in turn, knowing that as far as he was concerned, that was never gonna happen. "If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment now. Maybe you should check on Jeremy; when I left the room, he was out cold. It seemed to me like he hadn’t slept that well in ages." He finished with a bright, genuine smile before exiting the room, leaving a fuming Laura behind.

Although Miguel’s statement was meant to poke at Laura, it wasn’t too far from the truth. Jeremy had slept like a baby and didn’t even stir when Miguel returned to the room and got ready for breakfast. If he had woken up, he would’ve been mortified, because he ended up ripping off his pajama shirt in his sleep, and without realizing it, he reached for his erection that had returned with Miguel’s presence in the room, while his mind filled with one of the most different and vivid dreams he’d ever had. In the dream, he found himself lying completely naked on a beach not too different from the one the inn was on, and with the sun bathing his body, a beautiful blonde woman approached and began kissing his naked body. He couldn’t tell if it was Laura or not, because each kiss in the dream sent him into an ecstasy so intense that it overshadowed any sense other than pleasure, so much so that he only realized the figure in his dream had shifted to a muscular, bearded man with his dark body glistening with sweat in the morning sun, just seconds before he was jolted awake by the indignant voice of his fiancée.

"Jeremy, so this is what you were doing instead of meeting me for breakfast? Jerkin’ off in that queer’s room? How disgusting!" Laura barked, her face twisted in outrage as she found her boyfriend in that compromising position. Jeremy, caught off guard, shot back without thinking.

"Never use that kind of word in my presence again, Laura; if there’s anything disgusting, it’s those expressions!"

"Jeremy, how dare you correct me! Disgusting, yes, and even more disgusting are the habits of these faggots, but apparently, you’re already pretty used to it, huh? Jerk off in one of their bedrooms? And you didn’t even shave that gross beard. As if you just cut your hair without talking to me, I’m at my limit!" she fired back, causing all the layers of inhibition to come crashing down on a now more awake Jeremy.

"I’m sorry, babe; I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. Give me a few minutes to get ready, and we can have breakfast together," he said, falling back into his servile habits as he struggled to understand what she meant about his beard and hair.

"Well, you can have your breakfast alone. And you don’t even need to come with me to the beach; I’ll take Kayla to help me. Make the most of your day without my presence!" she replied angrily, storming out of the room and leaving a confused and still groggy Jeremy behind.

He, in turn, stood up and stretched, losing his balance a bit as he felt the strange sensation that he seemed to be a good few inches taller, which he knew was nonsense, since no one grows overnight other than the fact that he had been this height since the start of his adult life, which had helped him in many volleyball and basketball games when he was younger. Other activities he missed but couldn’t find time in his day to practice. He had never resented Laura for these things, but deep down, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of irritation for having given up pretty much all his interests for hers. Shaking his head in an attempt to shove those intrusive thoughts aside, he headed to the bathroom and took a long shower, knowing it was pointless to look for his girlfriend while she was in that mood; poor Kayla, whoever she was, would have to put up with Laura that morning, he thought with uncharacteristic sarcasm as he soaped the six-pack abs on his torso, this time without trying to shake that thought away. After stepping out of the shower, he looked at himself in the mirror; for someone who could no longer stick to a strict workout routine, he looked pretty damn good; he was lean but built, and his short beard accentuated the angles of his face, framed by his golden curls.

Maybe it was time for Laura to learn to appreciate the boyfriend she had better, he thought, leaving the bathroom without shaving, before changing and getting ready to enjoy a morning of sun and sea without Laura’s constant complaints and orders, which without a doubt was the best thing that could have happened, said a new invasive thought that once again did not go away.

……..

Jeremy wandered along the seawall for several minutes, feeling the sand beneath his feet, the scent of the sea breeze filling his lungs, and the sun’s rays bathing his fair skin, even though he knew he risked getting burned; it felt too good to let go. After wandering for a long time, he sat down on the beach and simply let himself be engulfed by it all, a wave of peace and completeness washing over him. Without realizing that the longer he stayed there, the less white his skin became, turning to a golden summer tone, while his muscles expanded slightly, giving him the look of someone who worked out regularly and carefully. Lost in his own mind he found himself searching for Miguel Ramos' name on social media, and getting lost in the other man's posts.

And there he would have stayed without noticing the changes if he hadn’t been interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Hey, roomie, watch out for a burn on your skin!"

Looking up he came face to face with the target of his interested scrutiny in all his glory with a beautiful smile plastered on his face.

"I may not have your Latin genes, Miguel, but it’s been a hot minute since I’ve burned!" he replied, smiling, as that strange feeling invaded him again.

"Still, the sun around here is way stronger than what you’re used to. Let me help you," Miguel replied, approaching with a tube of sunscreen in his hands. "That is, if you don’t mind."

Jeremy did care, not because of any prejudice but because of the fear of what that closeness would make him feel, not to mention the erection that threatened to return. But at the same time, he couldn’t resist that offer.

"No problem; I think you’re exaggerating, but Laura will be a total nightmare if I burn; she already hates my skin being so tanned."

"What nonsense; your skin is gorgeous; that tan pops real nice against your blonde hair; it gives you a healthy vibe, especially with those defined muscles."

"Thanks, dude; it’s nice to hear a compliment from... hummm," he groaned when he felt the other guy’s strong hands massaging his back.

"Something wrong?" Miguel asked.

"No... no... it’s just that the sunscreen was cold."

"Ah, I’m done. Just a little more down here," Miguel said, his hands moving toward Jeremy’s buttocks, making him tense up.

"Okay, do you want me to apply it on your front?"

"No, you don’t need to; I’ll handle that myself," Jeremy quickly responded, taking the sunscreen from Miguel’s hand without even thinking about those manly hands being so close to his cock.

"And where’s Laura? I thought you were helping with her content."

Thinking about his girlfriend brought an unexpected wave of irritation to Jeremy, like a cloud blocking out the morning sun.

"We had a blowout earlier... she did what she always does, said what she wanted, and bailed on me; I guess hoping I’d chase after her... but not this time... she can fend for herself with her new BFFO," he replied with a touch of bitterness that didn’t go unnoticed by Miguel.

"Relationships can be a real pain sometimes."

"Ours isn’t, but I’m starting to think it’s just because I’m used to canceling myself out for her."

Miguel, who had already picked up on that, chose not to comment.

"Anyway, we should catch up later and sort this out; I still love her, of course, but some things are gonna have to change in our relationship."

"So how about we hit that run now, a little return to your old self?"

"Are you sure you’ll keep up with me, with all this extra size and already running before..."

"Boy, show some respect; I’m not one of the most well-known personal trainers in the world for nothing."

"Then we’ll see!" Jeremy shot back, getting up and taking off running.

……

Laura trudged through the beach sand with disgust. Her morning, like the rest of the trip, had been a total drag. Kayla was pleasant company, sharing the same interests as her, though she was in a lower tier with only a few tens of thousands of followers. Still, she expected Laura to return the favors she did by asking her to take pictures and film videos of her. Simply unbearable. And it was all Jeremy’s fault, obviously. She still couldn’t believe her useless boyfriend hadn’t come looking for her, and even worse, it was her forced to hunt him down again in that damned sand for the second time that day.

With that feeling, she watched two muscular dudes running from the beach edge towards the sea while laughing loudly and then diving in. A ridiculous and childish behavior in her book. So what was her surprise when she saw that one of those guys, the tanned blonde with a pompadour and a faded side cut, sporting a full beard just as blonde, smile and approach her with his muscular, sun-kissed body still glistening from the seawater.

"Hey babe, how was the morning?"

"Jeremy, how dare you leave me hanging like that! And that beard, you said you were gonna trim it! And your hair??? What the hell is this?"

"No hell, Laura. They look the way I like!"

"But not how my followers and I expected! You’re almost bald! That tan and those bulging muscles just don’t cut it!"

"Don’t blow it out of proportion, Laura; if I decide to shave all my hair, I will. Your followers have nothing to do with how I choose to style my hair or beard."

"Of course, it has everything to do with it; you’re my boyfriend; you affect how people see me!"

"Apparently, that’s the only thing I’m good for, how I make others perceive you."

"And how would it be any different? I make a living off this; I’m an influencer, and my boyfriend needs to be on brand with me."

"I’m not your accessory, Laura."

"Well, babe, in the end, it’s like you are!"

"So I don’t know if I even wanna keep this relationship going," he replied, turning his back on a furious Laura.

"Jeremy! Don’t you dare! Jeremyyyy....!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, but he didn’t look back and walked aimlessly toward the other side of the beach, under the watchful eye of Miguel Ramos.

…..

Jeremy wandered the beach for several minutes, trying to calm the influx of thoughts. He was torn between the despair of losing the woman he thought he loved and the growing contempt for that same woman. How could he have canceled himself out for so long? How could he not see who she was? And at the same time, she had been his life for the past few years; how could he live without her? There’s no way he could do that! Deciding to run back after her and humble himself for her forgiveness, he started sprinting. He only stopped when he heard the voice that made him start to associate with that strange feeling, a mix of desire and discomfort.

"Hey, Big Guy, what’s the rush?" asked a grinning Miguel, sitting on a bench at a beach bar.

"Sorry, Miguel; I need to find Laura!"

"And what’s the point in talking to her with your head all hot? Wait for you two to cool off."

"You don’t get it!"

"Ah, I get it. I get it so much that I’m gonna offer you the two things you need most right now: company and a few shots of tequila!"

"I don’t know, man..."

"Relax, dude, and follow me," Miguel said, grabbing Jeremy by the arms and leading him to a table at the bar.

…..

"I shouldn’t get in the middle of your relationship with your girlfriend. But I recently went through a messy divorce. And honestly, it took me a long time to realize I was in an abusive relationship," Miguel said to a downcast Jeremy.

"I’m not in a relationship like that; I love Laura," Jeremy replied, but with way less conviction than he wanted to show.

"And does she return that love? Does she love you the same way you love her?"

"Of course..."

"Really? Be honest with yourself if you don’t wanna be honest with someone you barely know."

"I want to believe that, but..."

"But you have doubts. Let me propose a game: I’m gonna ask you some questions about relationships, and for every positive answer from you and me, we’ll down a shot of tequila; I bet we’ll polish off a bottle in no time."

"First question: Have you ever felt like you were putting way more into this relationship than your partner?"

Both took a shot, and though neither noticed, Jeremy’s tan deepened, reaching a caramel shade very close to Miguel’s.

"Second question: Have you ever felt belittled by your partner?"

Another shot for both. And now Jeremy had shot up a few inches taller than Miguel.

"Third question: Have you ever felt like you’re nothing more than an accessory to your partner, that they don’t even see you as a person but as an object?"

Another shot. Another change. Jeremy’s muscles swelled, surpassing Miguel’s size and reaching the proportions of an amateur bodybuilder. The bottle was already half empty, but both men, who weren’t small, were already pretty tipsy, as that level of drinking wasn’t part of either of their habits.

"One more... one more..." a drunken Miguel said, looking extremely distorted in Jeremy’s vision. "Have you ever felt like you’re in this relationship out of fear... scared that you’re not good enough... that you can’t be loved by someone else... and that your partner takes advantage of that to keep you stuck with them?"

Another shot, and Jeremy’s already blurry vision began to swirl as a wave of anxiety took hold of him for finally admitting those truths, even while drunk. Miguel was spinning in front of him, and he felt an immense urge to get up and bolt, but when he did, he fell to the ground.

"Jeremy, Jeremy..." he heard the voice in the distance, that voice which stirred so many feelings within him. "Jeremy..." a voice that made him realize he could still desire and be desired... "Jer...." the voice that made him tingle just hearing it. "Jav..." the voice of the man he was in love with but couldn’t admit.

"Javier, get up; is everything cool?"

And Javier stood up amidst laughter.

"It’s all good, Miguel; it takes way more than a shot of tequila to take down a man my size," he replied with a grin, sitting back down at the table. At the same time, he ran his hands through his shiny black beard.

"Let me ask the question now," Javier said, beaming wider. "Do you think you’re ready to ditch this relationship and move on to better things?"

One more shot for both.

…..

Javier lay back on a couch of the exclusive rooftop bar Miguel that Miguel reserved just for the two of them, feeling his head spinning. While his roommate spent some not-so-productive time feeling the same way sitting on the toilet. As he tried hard not to toss his cookies, he felt his phone buzz. When he looked at the screen, he noticed there were tons of messages and calls from an unknown number. Choosing to deal with it when he was in better shape, he closed his eyes and thus didn’t see each of those messages and calls vanish from his records.

With his head still spinning, he slipped into a restless sleep filled with rapidly changing dreams, until again he dreamed of that slim, stunning blonde. In the dream, she lay down on him again and started kissing his naked body, but without provoking any reaction in him, nothing, no excitement, no pleasure, until once again the smooth woman’s skin gave way to the rough sensation of a beard brushing against his body, and it was Miguel who kissed him, reigniting the flame of desire within him. While he slept, he moaned with excitement, a powerful erection between his legs, until he finally woke up feeling Miguel’s real mouth wrapped around his swollen cock. Trapped in that feeling of pleasure, he pulled the other man closer to him, being overtaken by the now familiar sensation of raw desire.

After hours of wild sex, Javier sat on the edge of the couch. with the strange feeling that he had forgotten something, as usual when this happened he found himself mentally going over his posing routine for his next competition.

Every fiber of his body had been honed with the utmost dedication and commitment, and soon he would be on stage to put all that work to the test. He ran his hand through his raven hair and finished the motion with his soft trimmed beard. He knew he’d have to shave it before the performance, but he was reluctant because Miguel liked him that way. Speak of the devil, Miguel at that moment repositioned himself on the couch and smiled.

"A penny for your thoughts," said the smaller and younger man, but who had still earned the position of his coach and Javier’s heart.

"It’s no biggie, Mig; I was just checking myself out and thinking it’s a shame to shave; you like it so much..."

"Javi, I want you with or without a beard; I don’t care how you look; I care about being with you."

"So you mean if I were smaller and skinnier, you’d still be with me?"

"Maybe you wouldn’t have caught my eye right off the bat, but like I said, I care about the person you are; the man I fell for, and if he gains or loses weight, that’s not gonna change."

"Thanks, babe; that’s really nice to hear," Javier replied.

"You know what else is nice? Your posing routine, show it to me babe."

"You've seen it a hundred times, babe."

"What can I do if I can't get enough of watching my hot fiancé flex his muscles for me?" Miguel said with a mischievous smile, making a big smile spread across Javiers face, who even tried to pose seriously, crossing the covered area of ​​the lounge towards the balcony, but failing miserably and loving every second of it as he heard the whistles and flirtations of the passionate man he had chosen to have by his side.

……

The afternoon sun shone brighter than ever, but even that didn’t seem to brighten a sunburned Laura’s mood as she gossiped with Kayla at the beach bar while they discreetly watched Miguel and Javier talking.

"Is this a good time? They seem to be having a spat," Kayla asked her friend.

"Just because they’re serious doesn’t mean they’re fighting. If we consider their social media, they’re living the dream," Laura replied.

"You know as well as I do how misleading social media can be."

"Still, this is our chance to collab with them; it’s not every day we get to work with two of the biggest fitness influencers in the game."

"Smile; they’re looking this way!" said Kayla, making both of them flash identical fake smiles, returned by a nod from the fitness couple of the year, who then got up and headed toward the beach.

"There goes our shot," Laura grumbled.

"Don’t sweat it, girl; people like you always get what’s coming to them," said a smiling Cintia, who was passing by before positioning herself at the bar counter and grinning.

A grin that widened when she saw Miguel and Javier together on the beach sharing a passionate kiss. If there was something she took pride in, it was a job well done, and at her inn, that meant way more than just a bed and breakfast.

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[minijenn]

Jen Tortures Herself With Every Dreamworks Animated Movie Ever: Megamind

So surprisingly, this is one movie I've never actually seen before outside of all of the memes and all of the love people tend to shower upon it, and after finally seeing it for myself... yeah, I totally get why. Megamind is based as fuck, ya'll.

We focus on, of course, Megamind, who is a supervillain who terrorizes Metro City and is opposed by the heroic Metro Man. At least until Megamind seems to successfully defeat Metro Man, leaving Metro City in his hands and quickly leading him into wanting more than just power alone. While in disguse, he ends up striking up a romance with Roxanne, a local reporter, and at the same time, he ends up creating a new opponent for him to fight to curb his growing boredum in the nerdy (incel) Hal, who quickly becomes more of a villain himself than the hero Megamind wanted him to be. So of course, this leads to all sorts of chaos and hijinks, and while you might think that plot sounds too complicated for its own good, I can surprisingly say, it really isn't!

Yeah, all of the moving pieces here work so well together, interwoven into a really compelling story with some pretty solid emotions and some great character moments. It helps that our cast itself is fantastic; Megamind is such a good lead, he's a genuis, but he's also totally socially graceless and is an absolute lovable goober as a result, one who comes to realize that he can be more than the "villain" stereotype he believed he was forced into being from childhood. Roxanne is also a really good leading lady; she's funny and snarky and has really great chemistry with Megamind throughout.

Metro Man doesn't get a ton of screentime, but he's a great parody on the usual superhero tropes, while Minion is the perfect right hand man (fish?) to Megamind in every way. Even our villain, Hal, or as he comes to be called, Titan, works really well here; he's the kind of asshole who just doesn't take no for an answer that we can all justifably hate (but he's also hilarious in his own right).

The animation is also really great here. I find that Dreamworks movies tend to look their best when their characters are highly stylized, and that's what we get a lot of here. We get a lot of really fun action scenes, both in terms of fighting and Megamind's tech. and strangely enough the special effects here (things like fabric and particle effects, etc) really stood out to me, they were all super well done.

The humor is absolutely fantastic here. It's not as adult as some of Dreamworks earlier days, but instead it relies more on who these characters are and how they interact with each other. I think one of my favorite running gags is Megamind obliviously mispronouncing various words (like school and Metro City). There's a bunch of small bits just like that throughout the movie, and they're all so fast paced and well delivered by a really stellar voice cast. The emotions also strike a cord here; there aren't any tearjerker moments, but you really do feel Megamind's growth here as he falls in love and eventually decides to become the hero he never thought he could be.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this one! It's a shame it took me this long to watch it, because it was super enjoyable all the way through. Also amazing that it never really spawned any legit sequels, but I heard its getting a show next year, so idk. I am probs not gonna watch it. Movie good tho, give it a watch if ya haven't.

Overall Rating: 9/10

Verdict: There is no Queen of England

Previous Review (Shrek Forever After)

Next Review (Kung Fu Panda 2)

[invisiblegarters]

(Absolutely not) Micro BL and GL Reviews

I spent the last couple of weeks being ill in bed with very little energy. Not great, but also it meant that my limited ability to get up and move around much gave me endless time to catch up on a bunch of shows that I'd let fall by the wayside (or never even started in the first place), and now I have thoughts to share!

Joy? Joy! Welcome to yet another set of my talks about shows that is supposed to be small but never actually is.

Completed

Wandee Goodday: This wound up being way sweeter than I expected from the promo material, but I'm not complaining. I genuinely love shows where most of the people are just trying to get alone while being decent, and that was certainly the vibe here. I was happy with the sex positivity and the introduction of Kao being ace, although I will admit that I felt like it was a little too "let me educate you" about that bit at certain points. That said, it's a topic that maybe needs that kind of thing in this context? I also really really loved that Dr. Dee and Yak got it together and spent a bunch of episodes just being adorable and dealing with struggles that had nothing to do with their relationship. It's so refreshing to see adults being in an adult relationship and actually acting like it. There were several times when the show could have just manufactured drama for drama's sake and chose not to and I really respect and love that. It was also fun to see Title appear in a role that wasn't to cause problems. And Char and Yei were fucking adorable my god. 8/10

We Are: Way better than I expected, if I'm honest. It got a little draggy for me at the end, but Pond and Phuwin always give solid chemistry and I finally got to see what everyone likes so much about Winny and Satang paired together. I never watched MSP and I never will because it's just a little too young for me, but Toey and Q were fucking cute so I get it now, guys. I especially adored Toey - Satang plays endearing brat very well. I also really liked Tan and Fang - their teasing dynamic worked for me. Also Boom is so pretty my goodness. I do think that it was trying to juggle too many couples but as I already said it dragged a little for me at the end so I think they could have done it with better pacing. It seems to me that New has a thing for dramas driven by internal conflicts, and that was We Are all over. The plot advanced as the characters did, which I can understand might be frustrating but I find that if I'm in the right mood I eat it right up. Especially ones like this, with mostly sweet people just living their lives and trying to do right by themselves and each other. Cute, earnest, a really good friend group. It probably won't be something that I revisit much or that sticks in my mind for a long time, but I had a good time. Giving it a 7/10, mostly for the pacing stuff I already mentioned. It kinda lost me towards the end.

My Marvelous Dream is You: idolfactory's second GL and I think I wanted to like it more than I wound up liking it. The chemistry was good and I love the cast (even if I think my girl Silvy was way underutilized), but the plot was a little...not great. I'm still not entirely sure what it was going for, or why the shared dreams were important. I really liked Ae (Kim's mom). And Wan was my favorite. Girl was messy and brash but my kind of messy and brash if I'm honest, and I cheered aloud when she went off on Mawin's family. They were awful. Awful, too, was Mawin in the end. I get being hurt but I always get a little (a lot) irritated when people mess with someone's livelihood out of pettiness, so him fucking with Kim's business because she broke up with him (and yes, in a really shitty way but also lbr here he knew she wasn't into him in some ways he did that to himself) was never gonna do anything but piss me off. It does amuse me that Heng has now played 2 dudes in idolfactory GLs who very nearly marry one of our heroines when she really really doesn't want him and he's very aware, though. I find myself wondering if he's gonna go for the third in The Loyal Pin (I hope he does). 7/10

Love Sea: I loved this one. I knew I would. The premise had me from moment one, lol. And frankly, Fort and Peat deliver on chemistry so it was kind of a no brainer for me. I knew that Trongrak was gonna wind up being really messy the second love came into the picture, and I was absolutely right. I love how he was perfectly fine with Mahasamut holding him and defending him against his shitty dad and following him around and getting all jealous when he implies he's going out to fuck other people (and whether or not he'd have done it is up for debate - I think he would have forced himself to try and failed miserably because that's my favorite lol) and take care of his niece like family, etc...but the second the word "love" actually makes its way out of the dude's mouth he can't handle it. My only quibbles were Prin - why was she so awful for no reason, MAME? The dad - he was not an effective villain to me. I wish that he'd been a little more menacing but I guess it works that he just let Tongrak think that he'd done a lot of things that he hadn't, and I do like that he was basically squeezing money out of both Tongrak and his mom just by showing up on occasion and assuming that they wouldn't talk to each other (which they weren't, both trying too hard to protect their family from his sliminess). I also like that it was finding that out that made both of them snap out of it. And last but not least - what the FUCK, MAME. How dare you give me that lesbian side couple and make it SO COMPELLING and actually get me invested than then not actually offer a resolution because oops, we're on episode 10 now and it's time for the love issue between Tongrak and Mahasamut to rear its head? How very very DARE you. Genuinely this made me the angriest and dropped my personal enjoyment a lot. I haven't seen the special yet so maybe that gets addressed (it SHOULD I was INVESTED), but while I would probably have given it a 9 (I really liked it a lot okay) I am dropping it to a 8/10 for that. Tempted to drop it to a 7 because I am petty.

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans: Another one I really liked! The chemistry between Sailub and Pon is absolutely scorching and while I have noticed that actors are getting a lot better about it in general, I always take notice when they are so entirely comfortable with not just the steamier scenes but the emotionally intimate ones as well. I love when I am watching a show and I can believe that the characters want each other and like each other, and not like a part of them isn't flinching at the very idea of it (unless that's the character, but just go with me when I say that there's just a very specific vibe you get when one (or both) of the actors isn't comfortable and I think it actually happens more with the sweet, couply stuff than it does the steamy stuff. But I digress). Chemistry like that can help me forgive quite a bit.

I liked how obnoxious Wan was in the beginning - I did not expect that and it was annoying but also kind of delightful. He grew on me despite my initial annoyance. Oab was a little different - he annoyed me right out of the gate by not calling Kao Suay and telling her about her dad. I get the respect thing, I do, but also what if he died and she was abroad, none the wiser? How would everyone have felt then? Keeping it from her was NUTS, and I don't even care that Kluer called her and told her for nefarious reasons. Someone had to. Oab's wishy washiness with her when she came back annoyed me too - a personal failing of mine has always been that I don't have time for that kind of waffling. I just wanted him to make a choice and stick with it (and was doubly annoyed as it became clearer and clearer what his choice was and he still couldn't just say it). Thank goodness he had Nubnueng there to gently prod him into finally doing the thing.

I wish Kluer's turn to villainy had been more evil, but I guess that wouldn't have made sense for this show, since no one really was, not even Enemy No. 1 Methas. Speaking of which, I wanted to like him and JJ more than I did in the end. I did like them, but I guess I just wanted more development there than I got in the end. They were cute though JJ was hands down my favorite character. I understood Methas so much. I also really enjoyed his relationship with Wan.

One thing that I thought was utterly hilarious was Oab's pettiness. As a petty person myself I can't help but find opening a new restaurant to steal all of your ex's customers because he wouldn't just apologize for, you know, deceiving you for most of your relationship and initially planning to sell your restaurant to the one man in the world you emphatically never wanted to own it absolutely hilarious. No notes Oab you keep rocking on. 8/10

Currently Watching

The Loyal Pin: Everything in this show is so damn pretty it's hard for me to think about much else. Especially Freen, and it seems like all the show wants to do is remind us of her beauty at every moment. Which, well. I am not complaining the woman makes my breath catch.

But this week I finally started paying a bit of attention to something more than oooh pretty, and I am genuinely wondering if this show isn't going to be all pretty dresses and gorgeous women falling in love and carving mangoes and if maybe there aren't some extremely serious things swimming in the waters.

Watching Anin wield her power this week hit me way way harder than all the ways that she'd been doing it before, and in a way that made me think a lot harder about how she'd done it before as well. I think it's because usually she sticks to manipulation to get what she wants - she's charming, she smiles, she talks people around - but last ep she dropped all pretense a couple of times, and we watched it cut more than once. Anin is a woman who knows exactly what she wants and she has the means to get it, she is spoiled and she will do whatever it takes. Other people have talked about it better, but I will say I am absolutely fascinated, and am genuinely curious to see if this is going to be addressed or if it's just the way it is. I also want to see if there's something that will butt up against Anin's frankly terrifying amount of power. Something she can't either manipulate or brute force her way through (although in the end I bet she manages to do one or the other anyway).

Also, kisses. Teach Pin more things Anin! She's a good student.

The Trainee: This show was not really on my radar at all, and I'm genuinely not sure why I decided to pick it up. Maybe because I was finishing up another GMMTV show and it was next in the youtube queue?

Whatever the reason, I'm so glad I did because I fucking LOVE this show. it's my favorite thing airing right now and that I never would have expected or believed.

It really is so good though. I think for me it's that it feels realistic - maybe in a way that can be uncomfortable for some but I love it. No one here is perfect, it's not just the mentors constantly schooling the kids because even though they are older, they are still growing too, and still have things to learn. Especially when it comes to Jane, who is my favorite character in the show I think and is hands down the best Off character I have personally seen. I am so iffy with Off normally that my adoration for Jane is confusing me, but he's so good. He's an adult and he handles most of his problems like an adult (which frankly I think is sometimes missing from these shows), but still has moments where he fumbles because he's still human. And I like that when he does fumble, he apologizes. I'm also really in to the whole deal that happens in the workplace where people think he's a certain way and judge him for it, but he's really just...dedicated. Strict, yes, but not entirely uncompromising. I dunno he's just a great character.

I also really like how this feels like an ensemble show with the romance not at the forefront. I don't always want that but this is so well done that I'm happy for it. I like that we have gotten to showcase each intern, their struggles and their achievements and just...growing up and learning to handle that scary point in life where you're really starting to enter the adult sphere, with all it's responsibilities, but still not ones that are entirely on your shoulders. If you do things the more traditional way, that is - I know a lot of us were in that world well before college. Still, it does resonate with me.

I am also enjoying the insight we're getting into the background of production. Such as how much work and effort goes into even the smallest change in filming even something that seems as simple and straightforward as an ad. Imagine how hard it would be to reshoot scenes from something like a TV show, especially considering the stuff like location, OT, cast and crew...I had already guessed a lot of it, but it's always nice to be proven correct. I like being right, what can I say? And the Ryan's awkwardly trying to draw people out without directly asking them how they are After Work Corner is very charming. I like that it gives insight into the business but also Ryan, who I do sometimes feel is the weakest of the interns. Which is insane because he's played by Gun Atthaphan, but there you go. I did like that he was brave enough to ask Jane about his feelings last ep, and I'm looking forward to seeing him more in his element (or at least what he's used to) next ep.

I really hope this show continues to impress.

1000 Stars - This is a rewatch for me as I roped a friend into watching for the first time. I warm up to this one more each time I watch it. The first time I was annoyed with Phupha's everything but I feel like I get him more and more as I go on. I also love a show that has heart (heh, this show has heart ror sure (and this is why we can't take me anywhere)) and this has a ton of it. It also amuses me whenever Phupha and Tian start doing their intense staring thing and there are other people around. I bet they're all just like "welp there they go again we've lost them, best go about our business" and leave them to it.

I also always forget Khaotung is in this one. Every time I watch I'm like "oh yeah" when he shows up. It's so funny to me.

Looking Forward To:

Peaceful Property (28 Aug) - Is it BL? Is it bromance? Who knows. Do I care? I...don't think so. Whatever the romance situation it looks like a ton of fun, and I am excited to see Tay back in glasses and to see this cast, especially doing comedy.

Kidnap (06 Sep) - This one also looks like fun. I love Ohm, Leng looks like he's doing a good job matching him, they seem to have good chemistry from the trailer. And pettily I'd watch this anyway because some of the shenanigans of certain fans have made me that annoyed. Good for me that it looks like something I'll like regardless, I guess.

Pluto (???) - GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME. It has been 84 years I am DYING here. If it doesn't get released this year I might actually cry, but I am hoping that it will.

There are others I am looking forward to (honorable mentions if you will): My Golden Blood, The Heart Killers, ReVamp (still a stupid title), Friendshit Forever, Hide & Sis, Us - but all of these are either not filming yet or so early into their schedule that I'm not letting myself get too excited for them. And for The Heart Killers especially I don't want this to be an Only Friends situation where I got really hyped and then was inevitably kind of disappointed (at first - I shook it off and came back around eventually lol). I just wanna go in there and have a good time - I'm excited to see that entire cast do a romcom, I think it'll be fun, and that's about all I want to expect out of it. I'll get excited when we get an air date.

Also thinking of picking up 4Minutes since it's on Gaga now, apparently. And maybe trying to find My Stand In since it's over and I can inhale those deliciously toxic fumes all in one (or two) sitting(s). And maybe, just maybe, poke around for BL and GLs outside Thailand, lol. I feel like it's been all Thailand all year for me when I used to watch JBLs and KBLs too.

Any recs?

[squishy-lombax]

I don't care what anyone says, I actually really enjoyed the movie and thought it was good. I recommend watching the movie for yourself and making your own opinions before watching any reviews or jumping on bandwagons.

My unhinged rant under the cut:

It was simple, sweet, and magical. Very reminiscent of Disney's classic movies like Snow White or Cinderella (not to be confused with the Renaissance era). This movie features almost everything everyone has been asking for in a Disney film for years, and surprised me with a few things I didn't even know I wanted (like the movie opening on a storybook). Although I will agree the story needed a solid romance, and various other things could have been handled better; it genuinely was not as bad as I thought it'd be. I feel like this movie is a prime example of getting criticism confused with hate, and people's inability to enjoy movies anymore. Disney has been making a lot of horrible decisions lately regarding their movies. Especially when it comes to soulless remakes and lackluster sequels. However, I don't feel like this movie deserves all the hate it's getting. This movie is a MASSIVE step in the right direction for the studio, and I worry people don't understand the consequences of not supporting this film. We can cry all day about wanting originals stories, unique art styles, genuine villains, and classic fairytales. However, money speaks volumes in this industry, and if this movie bombs, we most likely will never get a movie like this again in a very, VERY, long time from Disney. The studio will likely be more willing to embrace themes featured in this film more heavily in the future if this film does well. Was this movie not up to the ungodly standards being held to it? yes. However, was it the worst film ever released in the history of ever? absolutely not. This movie lands in a pretty happy medium when it comes to classic and modern Disney standards. If we want Disney to lean more into the classics, this movie must succeed. Do you want more soulless remakes of your favorite classics? Or do you want more original fairytales? Unfortunately, one is making more money than the other. Disney is a money-hungry company. Always has been and always will be. If soulless remakes make more money, maybe that's what the general public actually wants. At some point, you will have to make up your minds and support films you actually want to see more of. ALSO THIS MOVIE WAS GOOD! It wasn't hyper "woke," lazily made, or uninspiring. Wish spoke to my inner child and reminded me of what made me love Disney movies to begin with. I feel like you have to have fallen pretty far down the cynical rabbit hole to not enjoy this movie even a little bit. I will admit, I've also been in that hole for a very long time, but I at least peek my head out every once and awhile and enjoy the sunshine. Let's agree to learn to enjoy movies again, have guilty pleasures, release our inner child, and like movies only because they comfort us. It's okay to do that, ya know?

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale Reviews: Netflix Avatar: the Last Airbender (Book 1)

(Thanks @knightsweeties for this cute GP)

Now I have AVOIDED looking at spoilers, and opinions of others until After I had made my own conclusions.

A lot of people are mixed on this series. With only one thing being consensus:

The last airbender movie < Netflix Avatar the last Airbender < Avatar the last Airbender

Aside from that, opinions have been all over the places. On how great or how bad the show is.

I will be going over my thoughts on it in the following categories.

The Action (fight scenes)

The Effects (from bending, CGI, and costumes)

The characters

The Plot

The changes

Does it capture the Spirit?

How does it stand on its own?

Conclusions.

(Spoilers below, but let’s get Right into it)

____________________________________________

The Action

So I’m going to say this. The action in this series is great. In my opinion it’s the strongest point in the series.

The battles from invasions, to simple one on one fights are very well done, some aspects even surpassing the original. Like the invasion of the Northern Water Tribe, you really feel the place is under attack.

And the bending battles are pretty gorgeous. It’s impressive to see the fight between Katara and Paku done serviceable well.

Though one flaw is the fact that sometimes showing the fight or attack actually took away from the impact of story beats done in the original. Seeing the attack on the Air Nomads actually took something away from it. Seeing Aang discover that horror is much less impactful.

And seeing Zuko fight in his Agni Kai against his Father also took a lot of bite from the scene. If Zuko never fought back it would have been so much more traumatic.

But they were still good fighting scenes.

Solid 9/10

____________________________________________

The Effects.

The Costumes in this are Gorgeous! Especially Kyoshi warriors. The characters mostly look as if taken straight from the cartoon. The Face stealer himself being ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING to look at in Live action. He is a sleep paralysis demon.

Appa and Momo both look great. The effects of the cities, and the blending are beautiful.

The bending also looks pretty clean. Though I admit the water bending was a bit lacking but the Fire looked ESPECIALLY fierce.

There is so much detail jam packed in this it’s amazing.

Though, I will say that it’s not flawless, some of the things do come off a touch goofy. But that could be more of uncanny valley with some of the bending.

8/10

___________________________________________

The Characters

And it wouldn’t be Avatar without the Characters in it.

And before we do anything, let me say, ALL of the characters look like the character they are playing. It’s like Netflix genetically modified them to Look like the character.

Dallas James Liu’s Portrayal of Zuko is PERFECT. Matching Season 1 Zuko’s personality to a T.

Zuko actually gets more development and his relationship with Iroh and the Crew are expanded upon more. That Funeral scene with him and Iroh broke my heart.

Maria Zhang’s Suki is also an incredible performance.

DANNY PUDI AS The Mechanist. (They cast Abed!) that was a fun surprise.

But now that we talked about what I loved about the characters… now to get to the negatives.

Aang feels so mopey. Yes Aang has his sad moments. But instead of being a hyper optimist with a penchant for fun, he is more like a depressed kid that has occasional bits of being a kid. I don’t blame the Actor, I just feel it’s more the writing

But if Aang got a downgrade in character, Katara was SHREDDED to practically nothing. The strong yet caring Katara was so… Passive. Even her big moment fighting Paku felt so… lack luster. It pained me to see this girl who was so strong come off so… passive.

Sokka did lose a chunk of character and development, but it wasn’t AS detrimental as one would believe. It’s still cruddy. But there was some stuff added that helped cushion the blow.

Appa and Momo were not as present because expenses (but at least they were fine)

King Bumi is dead. I don’t know WHAT was the plan behind Bumi, but this felt so… twisted and off. This isn’t the Bumi that taught Aang the lesson about how not everything is as it seemed. It hurt me to see such an accurate look be so inaccurate.

Azula and her friends felt like a down grade. I know what they were trying to go for. But I just didn’t feel that EDGE she had. It felt so.. pitiful.

On a positive

Jet and his team were still fun and a bit psychotic.

Ozai actually coming off as more competent.

And Admiral Zhao being incompetent yet super Egotistical was a change I welcome.

The bounty hunter Jun, flirting with Iroh was a change I wasn’t expecting but loved.

The Face Stealer may have looked more terrifying… but his actual action was mid… aside from the nightmares.

The rest of the character acting was a mix.

I gotta put this at… 5/10

When most of the main cast feels so bland it really takes away from the story.

____________________________________________

The Plot

So the season still follows the general plot of Book 1 of ATLA.

Katara and Sokka find the Avatar who got frozen for a long time. They go travel to help Aang find a Waterbending master so he can start learning to bend and save the world.

Now interestingly since it only has 8 episodes it sort of Blends together several plots into one episode. And this causes a lot of changes… and the effects of it are… well… a mixed bag at best and almost completely undefinable at worst.

Episode 4 being especially messy.

Now there are additions and changes from the original because of the constraints of Live Action.

Like not specifying that Aang has been gone 100 years, and actually changing certain story beats to references in order to save on time.

In some cases, it’s understandable. In facts being a one to one retelling would be boring.

The problem is that the story feels more like it’s pushing the characters rather than the characters pushing the story. Aang had agency, but now there is even more forced Agency.

I did like the changes that made the fire nation more competent. (I’ll discuss further in the next section)

But overall, I felt that the story was speed blitzed and super monologue heavy at its worse. It’s nothing incoherently awful. But it’s very lacking.

4/10

_________________________________________

The Changes

There were a Lot of changes done to this in comparison to the original series. So for this. I decided to make a new system.

I will list the change. If you see this Symbol (+) it’s a change I am fine with. If you see (-) it’s a change I didn’t like. And if you see (\) it means I’m indifferent to it.

-Fire Lord Sozin wiped out Air benders in person (/)

- Aang got lost in a storm by accident, not actively running away (-)

- Katara and Sokka lose the feminist development (-)

-No penguin sledding (- -)

-No Haru (-)

-Avatar Kyoshi take over (+)

-Zuko has a journal about the Avatars (+)

- Jet in Omashu (/)

-Teo and his father in Omashu (+)

-Bumi is jaded. (-)

-Secret tunnel early (-) (it’s weird that Sokka and Katara go in there, there is more I don’t like but I will just leave that out for now)

-The Funeral for Iroh’s son. (+++)

-The Agni Kai with Ozai was changed (-)

-The crew of Zuko is revealed to be the division that would have been sacrificed. (+)

-Aang never Water bends (-)

-Azula’s whole character alteration, and earning the blue flames (-)

-Less Serious Roku (-)

-Koh’e whole deal (-)

- Zhao’s death is different. (-)

-Yue having a bigger connection to Sokka (+)

-Fire nation demonstrates far more competence (+)

-

There are more but most of them I’m more understanding because of Time Constraints.

I will give credit that a lot of the changes I didn’t like but they did try something.

3/10

______________________________________

Does it capture the Spirit?

This is where I have to say Kind of.

When you see the references, Cameos, and the small details. You can tell there is some love for the original series. The attention to details and the bending choreography is gorgeous and Almost seamless.

It’s where we get to the core of the show that feels different.

For example. The Netflix version of One piece. There are a TON of differences, but the core of the characters felt the same. The spirit of the show was still clear. It was handled with love.

With this series, I can say there is a respect for ATLA, but the core seems to have a different focus.

So I put this at 5/10

As there are some things that you can see have reverence, but other things that don’t.

_________________________________________

Conclusion.

The stark defenders of the show say you shouldn’t compare it to the Original because it will seem worse. While also then comparing how much better it is compare to the live action movie.

Here’s the truth, if you watched ATLA, you are not going to expect this show to be better than the original.

If you didn’t watch the original show, you would probably be entertained, and since this show explains basically everything, you won’t need to know as much as the viewer going in… but there is also a lot going on.

If you were to go in and watch this show with 0 understanding of the show. I’d say 6 maybe 7 out of 10.

But if you are a fan that cares about the show. I have to put it at 5/10

And that’s where I put it.

5/10

It is watchable, but I’m not absolutely smitten with it.

I’m willing to give book 2 a chance… but I’m iffy. On it.

[richea]

Arise review

After buying the game at launch, I finally, finally finished my playthrough of Tales of Arise. Normally I would just write a few thoughts on Twitter and leave it at that, but I found I had a lot of things I wanted to touch upon with this game. With the prior two entries in the series, I kind of just rushed to finish them and then let them collect dust in my brain afterwards. However, back then I had other Tales games I wanted to try for the first time, so part of it was I was itching to get to ones I knew I would enjoy more. I got all caught up with the series before Arise was even announced, so there's no excuse this time!

With Arise, I took my time (well, maybe too much time), and let myself really process the game before I let myself finish it, in order to give myself a more solid basis for how I will feel about this game going forward. To that end, I wanted to really write down my feelings on the game in depth, touching upon all the various aspects of it and how everything made me feel.

Quick warning: if you don't accept criticism of Arise well, this isn't the review for you. I am approaching the game from the perspective of somebody who has played every other entry in the series and ruminated on all of them for years on end. I will be critical of the game in this piece. I'm not trying to tell people how to feel on the game, this is all purely my own thoughts and feelings, from the perspective of a long time Tales fan who deeply cares about the direction the series is going, and more importantly, its rich history.

I am also not looking for people to change my mind on the game, so please do not try to tell me my feelings are "wrong" or that I'm not appreciating certain things properly. I'm not looking for discourse.

That said, if you are someone who is interested in my perspective, then by all means enjoy the essay that is to come.

―――

In this post I want to dive into all the different aspects of the game and talk about each in depth, namely the story, characters and gameplay. I think it's more interesting to judge a game by balancing all these traits rather than just pinpointing one specific thing and basing my entire view of the game on that one thing (for instance, I tend to value interesting characters first and foremost when I indulge in media).

That said, for a quick TL;DR of my feelings on various things, when compared to other entries in the series:

Story: 2/10 Characters: 1/10 Character designs: 3/10 Other UI designs (such as monsters/menus/etc): 0/10 Battle gameplay: 4/10 Other gameplay: 4/10 Music: Undecided, which in its own right may not be a good indicator of how I feel about it Graphics: As a video game it's a 10, for Tales specifically it's a 9/10 for the graphics themselves and a 1/10 for the lack of anime portraits and the portraits we got just look awful (how does Ufotable only get worse with its Tales designs?)

Visual presentation

I want to start by acknowledging the graphics, as it's something that has zero relevance to how I feel on video games. Arise is a very pretty game! There is no denying this. I found myself stopping and just moving the camera around to admire all the pretty landscapes and views in the game. The character models are also very nice.

That said, like all modern Tales games, the battles are a bit overly stimulating on my eyes, because there's so much going on and lots of flashing lights. The actual effects were very pretty though.

The skits are absolutely horrible to watch. Even setting aside how I feel about the lack of skit portraits, the thin white text on top of the off-white backdrop was a horrible design choice. I think this is probably my least favorite aspect of the game. I get headaches very quickly from playing video games even just normally, and watching a ton of skits with intense eye strain did not help! There's also way too much movement with the skit... boxes? as well. Were they thinking about accessibility at all when coming up with them?

On the same topic, the subtitles for general cutscenes were also awful. The outline around the text needed to be much thicker. I could probably read 30% of the dialogue in the game. Thankfully I know a decent amount of Japanese, but still, I was interested in reading the actual translation of the text and I was having a really hard time. I feel bad for people who wanted to play with Japanese voices and don't know as much as me.

The menu UI was also very disappointing. It felt really barebones and had next to no personality to it. The big portraits drawn by Iwamoto were a nice touch (though if you're going to make such massive paintings, at least make the art itself more interesting to look at?), but it wasn't enough. They just felt like something to fill in the empty space which there was a lot of; the menu layout really did not utilize the space on the screen well, and it's double annoying when you consider how microscopic the font in the game is and how they could've used that space to make things more readable. Everything was hard to read, and again the lack of portraits was just utterly disappointing. Every time I opened the menu I just felt sad at how lifeless it felt.

Gameplay

My feelings on the gameplay are mixed. I'll start with the elephant in the room: the gald system in this game is not good. Only getting gald from chests and sub events is just a massively poor game design. Fishing helps but it's more time consuming than doing battles would be and there's really no other incentive to even doing it (at least battles would work towards EXP and getting battle proficiency things!).

The owl system was fun and was definitely a highlight of the game for me. It took me back to looking for attachments in Xillia, which is something I really enjoyed in that game as well and made the long traversing in the game more bearable. I just went from point A to point B in both Zestiria and Berseria, so this was the first game since Xillia 2 that I actually touched every corner of the map.

The battles are also a mixed bag for me. I will be completely transparent and state here that I mostly only played Shionne and Rinwell, so my feelings on the melee gameplay is very limited. My committed team was Shionne, Rinwell, Dohalim and Kisara. Between them you could hit every element weakness, on top of Kisara's high defense (and the fact that I just liked her more than Law and Alphen). From the perspective of a caster main, the battle gameplay was fine. Like other entries, you could do fun manipulation strategies to speed casting time. By the end game I was just spam casting Rinwell's highest tier spells instantly which was fun.

The healing is definitely... not great. There were a few times where I would run out of Orange Gels and then have to do a story progressing map action and it would eat the rest of my already gone CG bar. It was really infuriating. I only used First Aid the entire game, never anything else, because why would I use a better healing arte when it would just drain my gauge faster? It was a mess.

The monsters I did not enjoy. It felt really hard to stun them so it never felt satisfying fighting anything. Their movements felt WAY too grand. If every single boss is huge and epic and has moves that hit the whole map, the whole game starts to lose its impact. I also feel like they did way too much damage in a single hit, which made the healing issue even worse, and it felt more like I was trying to perfectly dodge every attack than it did managing my health in a natural way.

The skill system was just fine, no real commentary to make there. I wish there were more titles in the game however, and that they would display on the status screen (even Graces did this despite them both having the titles and skill systems merged).

Some quick other things

The campsite system was fine

I liked that the sub event indicators were really obvious, as someone who's really bad about doing sub events especially on my first playthrough (the actual sub events themselves are a different issue)

Like with fishing, I never really understood the point of the ranch

Did this game even have minigames?

I actually really liked the weapon skins system, that was super fun

Story

This is where I will start to nitpick things because I play Tales games for the story and characters first and foremost. And, having played every other game in full, my feelings on the story and writing in this game are... not very high.

To start, I do at the very least think Arise had some interesting starting concepts going on. Namely, a protagonist trying to figure out his amnesia and a girl who zaps everything she touches are pretty cool concepts! However, even from the first promotion trailer I was concerned about Shionne's story hinging too much on Alphen. The "he can't feel anything, she hurts everything she touches" plotpoints felt really, really convenient to me from the first trailer, and was a setup for having all the impact on the game being reliant on Alphen being a decent character (as well as, well, almost forcing him to be Shionne's hero, rather than him gaining that honor through actual hard work and emotion), but I was more than willing to give the game the chance to prove me wrong on that aspect.

I have too many feelings on the character writing so I will be giving them their own section below.

Anyway, sadly, I think those are the only two interesting and unique things in Arise's narrative. Everything else the game has done has been done in a prior Tales game but better. Let me go down the list (non-comprehensive as I can't remember every single theme from every single game, but I will name games that at least have these as the major theme that I can recall):

Two worlds vying for power (I could name games that don't have two worlds faster than I could name ones that do), and one world is trying to suck power out of the other one (Symphonia, Hearts)

The plotpoint about "when humans lose all their power they turn to dust" is literally exactly what happens in Hearts, while the "making people feel strong bad emotion to provoke them into our gains" is what Zestiria and Berseria's entire lore was about as well as Rebirth

Racism, oppression, slavery and colonialism (Phantasia, Destiny, Symphonia, Rebirth, Legendia, Tempest, Hearts (R removed this but there's literally an NPC who flaunts about enslaving the "lesser beings"), Berseria)

First half of the game is fighting a series of specific enemies, second half is focused on lore, especially figuring out stuff with the second planet (Destiny, Eternia, Symphonia, Vesperia, Hearts)

Do I think Tales rehashing tropes is a bad thing? No, not at all. It's something they have been doing for a long, long time. But what made it work in other games is that each game had at least something completely unique to it to balance that feeling of repetitiveness out. For instance, Hearts shows up a lot on this bullet list, but it is the only Tales game to have lore based around entering people's hearts, and the whole story is based around a fairy tale. Even the fact that it has a robot as a playable character was a first for Tales. Legendia rehashed a lot of plotpoints from Rebirth, but it had its own unique spin on things and the worldbuilding in it is completely unique with the focus on marine themes and the story structure being unique from any other game. Symphonia even keeps the same worldbuilding from Phantasia but the feels of the games are completely unique from one another due to how different the themes the stories tackle are. The issue with Arise is that I cannot think of anything unique in the game, aside from Shionne's thorns, that wasn't done in another game. And even then, all of the writing regarding her thorns is a big rehash of heroine tropes and situations in the series' past. I will go over that when I discuss her though.

Another glaring issue with the game is the skits. Normally, Tales skits have roughly 4 purposes. In order of prevalence: fun skits to show off the character's personality that the story can't showcase, the characters discussing story events to showcase the full depth of their feelings on the events as they happen, skits going over worldbuilding to explain in better detail if you didn't catch it from the story scenes (or just giving more information!), and navigational skits. Skits were always meant to be lively and engaging, even if things felt dull in the story, skits existed as a pick-me-up, and as a way to show how the characters were having fun. Skits are one of the most famous parts of Tales storytelling, specifically for this reason.

What's wrong with Arise's skits? In a franchise where the fun:dull skit ratio was 6:4 give or take, Arise changed those numbers to 2:8. Most skits were dedicated to rehashing events. Even in those rehashes, the characters were near constantly bringing up plotpoints that happened 30+ hours ago in the story. Over and over! Alphen was still talking about the first 5 hours of the game when you're on Lenegis!

Watching the skits, it genuinely felt like I was having constant deja-vu. I think I actually was worried I was going crazy at some point, because of the sheer extent of times they would have the same conversations over and over and over again. It got to a point where I would joke about Alphen and Law being on the screen together and I would say "countdown to them bringing up Zephyr" and every single time I would say that, the convo would turn to him. This was 55 hours into the game!

It's not bad for characters to reflect on the past events, but when that makes up the vast majority of their conversations, and one singular event makes up the entire personality of the character, the game feels dull very, very quickly. Skits transformed from a thing that I would usually open to find fun shenanigans between the characters and silly banter into me sighing about having to hear about Zephyr's death for the 200th time in the past 5 hours. It was very exhausting. Can we talk about something else now? My rant about this could be endless, but I genuinely want somebody to do a study on just how many times Alphen and Law bring up Zephyr throughout the game, and how many lines in the skits were dedicated to things that weren't just recapping events.

(Even then, there were cooking skits! However, I can only hear so many conversations about preparing food before I start getting bored. I know that eating and food is a BIG cultural point in Japan, but did every single "fun" skit need to be about eating? No.)

Speaking of, let me go over my feelings on the actual story and its events.

While the game did have a slow start, it wasn't that bad. The game eases you into what's going on, with the slavery and meeting Shionne. Nothing really of note to mention here. Rinwell and Law's character introductions were nothing special, but that was fine, it was still early in the game. My first major issue with the game is Zephyr's death. As it may be obvious from my above rant, the game places way too much importance on him as a character. A game mourning a character is nothing new. For instance, fractured Milla's death was a big turning point in Xillia 2. However, the entire game, as well as two entire characters, did not revolve around her death. Arise's issue is that Zephyr is barely a character, and yet the game constantly reminds you of how great and wonderful he was. We barely saw the guy, and no number of skits dedicated to Alphen and Law talking about him changes the fact that he is no more memorable than any other random NPC in the game. His death is unceremonious and was one of the most predictable deaths in the series to date.

(As an unrelated note, I am someone who loves a lot of NPCs in Tales. I love a lot of characters who have very little screentime. Two of my favorite Tales characters are Stella and Marian, who actually have a lot of similarities with Zephyr in narrative importance! The difference, however, is that you are not constantly having it drilled in that they are the epitome of nuance and the stories are not dictated by either character's morals, of which we never got to even see. Arise has Alphen claim Zephyr has the best moral views in the world and his entire life is dictated by those morals he was taught, and he pushes them on everyone else. Including the player.)

Zephyr's death aside, the other non-party characters are barely characters. I don't even remember any of their names. Especially the lords. To sum up my feelings on this instead of subjecting you to a long tangent on the lords, let me just drop these posts I made while playing:

One of Arise's lowest points however is how it handles its themes of racism and colonialism. I have a distinct memory of Alphen telling Rinwell to shut up when she brings up Renan oppression to him, Law tells Rinwell she's not allowed to want revenge due to her oppression, and there's this not-so-great scene on Lenegis where the party reflects on how... one of the lords was "only human" for wanting to enslave the Dahnans and how they can "see" his point of view? NOT GOOD! One of the comments I made while playing the game was "Alphen would stop Cless on his quest of revenge and he would also tell Velvet she's over-exaggerating is kind of my feelings on him at this point" and I still stand by it.

In general, the story is just very predictable. At no point in the game was I surprised by what was going on. Well, no matter, there's other predictable things in Tales games! ...But the difference is that other games, I at least was compelled by the characters and their reactions to those predictable events. Or, their personalities alone would carry me through plotpoints I otherwise found boring. Arise never endeared me to its cast, yet it expected me to find shock value and importance in its very predictable storytelling. I remember when the party takes on the lord who kills Rinwell's family, they said "we'll spare her life" (which is its own long rant but I digress) and I went "oh well someone DEFINITELY won't kill her one second later" and then Vholran showed up as I was saying it! Then, Alphen JUST so happens to get his feeling back in his body after Shionne walks right into Vholran's arms! This was truly the point in the game where I completely gave up on enjoying it and I started to only push myself to beat it just so I could get it over with.

The story sadly saw no improvements after that point either to remedy my soured feelings. The only two things I enjoyed after that point were the little bit with Dohalim's past and him making the speech on Lenegis, and Rinwell touching Shionne's hand in the final scene in the game.

I could go on forever about the story, but I will leave it at that.

As for the sub events, you couldn't really call them "events" when they were just one or two lines about defeating monsters. I did every sub event in the game up until before the final dungeon. I was very unimpressed by them.

Characters

This is absolutely my least favorite part about the game. As I stressed at the beginning, what I go through media for is for the characters. Good characters can salvage just about anything for me. When I watch story scenes, I'm always thinking about how it makes the characters feel. I went into Arise thinking "even if the story doesn't cater to me, at least I can fall back on enjoying the characters and their banter".

As you can already tell, I was utterly disappointed with the cast in Arise.

Alphen

He is easily the contender for my least favorite Tales protagonist, hands down. The issue with Alphen is he never has any original ideas at any point in the game. He always attributes any of his morals to Zephyr. He would go on tangents, explaining how other characters should feel about things, but when asked he got all of his ideas from Zephyr. It seriously felt as if he never thought for himself.

Making this worse is the fact that he would explain how everyone should feel. He would tell Rinwell to stop being mad about her oppression, he would tell Law to listen to his feelings on Zephyr and change his view on him based on his view of who Zephyr was, he would tell Kisara how to feel regarding her place as a woman.

Worst of all, however, was how he would talk to Shionne. Any time she would have an issue, he would make it about himself. In her most important scene in the game, where she's talking about how her thorns make her want to die, he made it about himself. She said what she wanted for herself and he said "whether you like it or not, I'm taking matters into my own hands". Yes, Tales has done this before, with the heroine wishing to die and the hero telling her he won't allow that, but it's infuriating in this case when he never lets her think or act or move or do anything without his input. There's countless scenes in the game where she would be upset and want time alone and he would force her to talk to him about her feelings. Shionne was not permitted to ever exist without Alphen forcing her to talk to him about it and expecting her to go along with what he wanted, and his feelings about her situation. Again, past Tales game have had this, but when it's so constant and so prevalent, and is the only thing the character has to them, it becomes exhausting and annoying.

Also, his only "unique, fun" trait was that he likes armor, but this dialogue only ever showed up... when you made armor?

I was really disappointed with Alphen. Which is really not good when he is the protagonist, and Shionne's entire character also hinges on him. Especially given the grand finale to the game was their wedding, when I saw no romantic tension between them, because all he ever did was explain how she should feel. He was such a mess. I have more I could rant about with him but I need to leave it at that.

Shionne

Shionne is a big bundle of wasted potential to me. That said, she is probably one of the only characters in this game who felt like a character.

Like I said above, her thorns are an interesting concept. However, the handling of it really was standard Tales heroine tied to a cursed fate. The damsel scene, the way she wants to die but the protag talks her out of it, etc. That said, I did think her trauma with never being touched in her life was interesting, and it did make me emotional at points, even if the execution was poor.

I just really, really wish she could've been a character separate from Alphen. Her writing truly was doomed from the start with him being the only person who could touch her. Again, it felt like she bonded with Alphen because he's the only person who can touch her, rather than them actually making a proper bond as people.

Rinwell

Rinwell is... fine? I honestly don't have a lot to say here. I think it was nice that she got importance as the spiritual person in the party, and her banter with Dohalim was nice. I really disliked her relationship with Law however, and again, I hated that Law and Alphen tried to talk her out of her revenge. She was in the position as a "spiteful" person who "needed to grow out of it" but... her family was massacred? Why is Law allowed to be furious about his dad dying, but she's not allowed to be mad about her family being killed? The hypocrisy in regards to Rinwell seriously infuriated me and I felt really bad for her.

Law

Hoo boy. I really do not like Law either, for many of the reasons I don't like Alphen. He does with Rinwell what Alphen does to Shionne. What is with Arise men and mansplaining everything to the girls and refusing to let them have any agency or thoughts without their input?

He was also supposed to be the "mood maker," except his only mood making scenes were Hootle pecking him in the face or him saying something dumb and Rinwell calling him an idiot. It really wasn't that funny and felt like borderline bullying.

Law falls under a Tales archtype I normally really really like (Tytree, Spada, Hisui, etc), so I was expecting to like him quite a bit, but sadly I just... do not. See my Zephyr rants above as well.

Kisara

Kisara is probably the most unfortunate character in the cast. In theory, I really like Kisara. I'm a big fan of knight ladies, and I always enjoy the older woman character in the party (even if only in her 20s). In practice however she just... completely misses the mark. All of her scenes are dedicated to one of three things: working (or not working) under Dohalim, her brother, or how she can be a proper woman. Yikes! It's not good when a female character's entire character revolves around what she can do for men! There's many skits where she asks "what can I even do if everyone cooks for themselves" and her conclusion is... to follow her brother's dream? Kisara, can't you find your OWN dream? And no, bringing up how she can help Dohalim also doesn't count here.

I don't hate Kisara for being who she is, but I really just want to have a stern talking to with whoever wrote her. A female character should not revolve around men and being in the kitchen. Seriously. This game came out in 2021, you should've known better.

Dohalim

While I didn't like his introduction scenes much, he grew on me a lot throughout the game, and he definitely felt the most like a Tales character to me. There was a lot of humanity and nuance to him, and he had the honor of actually having his backstory shown on screen. He had a lot of facets to him: the part of him that was a Renan leader, the part of him that supports the party, his own goals, his own motivations, interesting relationships with other characters, as well as (and maybe most importantly) fun things about his personality via his breaks from seriousness as well as his fondness for music and artifacts.

Overall he felt very fleshed out, and I really wish he had been put in another game. I came out of Arise quite content with the character that was Dohalim, which I cannot say for anyone else.

Closing thoughts

Overall, this is probably the most disappointed I have been with a Tales title. Of course, I don't think every game is perfect, and there are games that I will admit just don't click with me personally that others adore, and likewise there are games that I think fall flat in some regards but resonate with me for the characters.

For instance, I think Tempest is a perfectly fine and even charming game, despite it being more on the barebones side of things. I do not hold Tales games to unrealistic expectations when it's not necessary, and I always think of a lot of things when I base how I feel about the game: crunch time, what the creators had in mind when making it, what heart was put into the story, what fun I am able to find even in the game's flaws. Things to that effect.

Where Arise differs for me is that many of the decisions I dislike about the game were intentional. The lackluster, yet overbearing monsters were intentional, the lack of skit and status portraits were intentional, the story not being that compelling, but taking itself way too seriously and acting as if it's the pinnacle of Tales writing, is also what the producer of the game flaunts when he discusses it. All of these things negative attribute to the quality of the game. Arise scratches away the charm that Tales games have, yet it is flaunted as being something groundbreaking when the story never attempts a single new trope.

It's not one deviation from series staples, it's a whole cluster of them. Why was there any reason to remove post battle dialogue, when that is something everyone absolutely LOVED about the series? Why are skits, which are part of what brought Tales to fame, boiled down to recaps of story scenes and not fun moments, which is what everyone is excited for when they go to open a skit? Why are the cute and iconic monsters completely gone, when every single game used the same designs? Why does the producer for the series actively hate the things that the fans love about Tales?

Arise is essentially a long laundry list of bizarre decisions made by the producer with awful execution, and then sadly the writing does the game absolutely zero favors. I came out of playing it feeling hollow. I've been revisiting some older games after playing it, and I've been getting legitimately emotional at how the characters in these other games actually talk to each other like people, and don't just bounce recaps of events back and forth to each other. Other games know how to have fun, and they have compelling characters, which is really what has always been the thing bringing people back to this franchise.

Would I like Arise more if it wasn't labeled a Tales game? Honestly, no, given I only ever played it because it's under the Tales branding. And I shouldn't have to even ask myself that, given I play Tales to enjoy Tales, and its tropes, and all the fun little things these games provide that no other series can give me.

If and when the next Tales game comes out, I will still probably play it. But so long as it is under our current producer, I will go in incredibly cautious, given he seems adamant about hating all of the things I love most about Tales. At the very least, I hope the next game is more innovative with its writing and characters, and brings back some of the charm that even Zestiria and Berseria had.

[ihopesocomic]

When exactly did this comic start and what led to it? It's just that I've seen people say all over the place that you started this comic just to sneer at My Pride or w/e and I thought the comic started around the same time as My Pride? Not that I really care but I'm just curious about the actual timeline of things.

For starters, this kind of thing about us making this comic just to dunk on My Pride always makes me laugh because of several reasons:

We literally have a video out there that is nearly three hours long that puts everything on the table. We don't need to be pursuing a comic for nearly four years just to deliver a hit piece. We've summed up things quite well years ago.

The idea that we can't reclaim a concept as marginalised creators from a bigot who misappropriated our oppression for entertainment value is a bad faith argument as to why folks just don't like us/the comic at best and reductive gatekeeping at worst. We're not the first or only people who have tried their hand at reclaiming a problematic entity and doing a rewrite/reshaping of it (i.e. Warrior Cats) so why this is a foreign concept to some people, I don't know. I'd rather people just say they don't like us or the comic like adults instead of harping on about how I can't have my own disabled lion story as a disabled creator because I think that's just such a weird hill to die on. lol

But to answer your question: we began the AU story that became I Hope So around the summer of 2020 when we decided to disassociate from My Pride due to controversy surrounding it and its creator.

We quickly changed it into our own thing because it did not take long for it to dawn on us that doing what we wanted to do would be very difficult and limiting without using our own characters and worldbuilding.

We had also pretty much nailed down a solid outline of what we wanted to do because we obviously did not want to be exactly the same as My Pride. Hope gets bad name, Hope drops bad name, Hope eventually leaves abusive family, we try for better disabled/LGBT+ rep, we meet other animals besides lions, Red Stone, Edge's family, among many other differences.

We then began serialisation in October 2020 while My Pride was still ongoing and before we even published our review of the show, which did not come about until the following March... because the show was barely half done and we had to wait for episodes before reviewing it. oof

Hope my rambling clears up this issue for you, anon. - RJ

[pinknpoodley]

OKAY. i've seen 200% wolf again and i wrote up my thoughts. this is like soooo much fucking word vomit if you're gonna expand the post lmao

TL;DR i give the movie a 4/5. overall, it was SOLID, though i do acknowledge it had some flaws. it was a major improvement over 100% wolf, much to my relief. i realize that i'm very biased, but it's far from abysmal like some reviews are saying. for me, it was well worth the wait and the hype!

(major spoilers, obvs)

okay, first of all THAT INTRO THO. IT WAS ACTUALLY SO INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL I'M NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING. IT WAS CAPTIVATING I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. i actually thought 100% wolf's opening scene was VERY solid too, actually one of my favorite parts of the movie, but in a more emotional and heartwarming way

-WHOEVER DESIGNED THE MOON SPIRITS JUST FUCKING KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK. HOLY SHIT. they look perfect in EVERY single way, and i never thought much about how they looked before but man, this beats anything i could've ever imagined. i think about them constantly, just... WOW. and they way they dance around and create a circle when they're gathering moonfire to beam to the earth in order to bless a werewolf with warfing abilities is just...amazing 😭

-as a side note i wonder why they chose to demonstrate some random woman gaining the ability to warf and not a teenager like freddy. i have a hc that werewolves go through their first warfing around the age of puberty which is why freddy warfed on his 14th birthday. but now i'm wondering if there are exceptions to the rule and "late bloomers" so to speak cause that chick was like 30 lmao

-MOOPOO IS ACTUALLY REALLY CUTE. i saw some reviews saying he was annoying but no!! i love his fun little antics (like riding the space rover in the intro) and i'm still adoring the fact that he was modeled after fin edquist's kids. absolutely melts my heart ahh 🥰 i will agree that he is reminiscent of stitch at some points lmao

-LOVED freddy's narration and the character introduction, the way they made it look like a comic book with each character's name, title and class. THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE SO PRETTY. AND I AM GLAD THEY DESCRIBED HOTSPUR AS AN EX-CON bc it implies he actually got a greater punishment than just picking up dog shit but still the fact that it's never referenced again in the movie bothers me. "poodles can do anything werewolves can do, but poodlier" and "hardcore awesomeness in-training" FREDDY'S SUCH A DORK I LOVE IT

-interesting how batty's sense of smell proves to be very useful on the mission and is one of her greatest strengths - how she can detect the wind changing and the blimp changing course. i sorta wonder if that's why the pack allows freddy to take her along when they go on missions, cause literally she's the main reason why she and freddy were able to save those people

-loved freddy and batty's teamwork too, how that was showcased. they were seriously so badass!! like damn these gay dogs are getting a lot more done than those big, buff, powerful wolves LMAO. maybe that just drives the primary message of the movie home even more, now that i think about it

-IDK what flasheart was thinking telling the others to act like pigeons to fool the lady but hey somehow it worked!

-"hey it worked! hit more things" BATTY NOOO i felt bad for freddy he got so abused trying to stop the blimp lmao

-THIS FELICITY HAZZARD AND HER FAKE NEWS REPORTING. i much prefer her in the series smh

-lady hightail was such a bitch wtf "we'll discuss his role in the pack later" ??? girl he is the future high howler tf you mean

-legit felt so bad for freddy during this part, it's definitely hard for him when the pack just sees him as a joke. it's terrible seeing him cry like noo bby. AND THEN THE WAY HE SLAPPED FLASHEART AWAY ?? OMG. like i know he was just frustrated and hurt but damn??? knowing what they've been through it just hurts to see that even more cause they usually have a very healthy and loving relationship ): ): and i could never see freddy seriously resenting flasheart, like not even for a second. he loves and admires him so much 😭

-"hey. i respect you...kinda" batty's dialogue in this movie omg I LOVE HERRR she was so cute trying to cheer freddy up!! not to mention the animation ahhh she's just so cute 🥺

-"cut and color? maybe get some of those curls straightened?" i'm gonna conveniently interpret this to mean that freddy goes to the groomer or maintains his look as a hot pink poodle somehow and i fucking love that lmao

-the lore about the summoning stone is interesting

-the sequence where freddy contorts like something from the exorcist kind of like in the first movie and explodes into a wolf HSDKFvb i'm obsessed

-i don't really get why people have a problem with freddy's wolf form, i think he looks just fine?? i mean, you have the fursona and shreddy jokes and w/e but some people flat out hate it. idc, i think it's very consistent with his poodle and human design. i really believe they put a lot of thought into it. not to mention how well they managed to capture his mannerisms and personality across all three of his forms, i was pretty impressed by that. it had to be pretty challenging. ALSO i figured he would've naturally been a pure white wolf if he'd warfed into one originally, just like he was originally an all white poodle, so it fits right in with my own hcs.

-HIS EXCITEMENT AT BECOMING A REAL WOLF WAS SO FUCKING CUTE OMG. I LOVED THAT PART SO MUCH. WHEN HE WAS FROLICKING LIKE A DEER AND GROWLING AT THE FLOWERS IT WAS ADORABLE HDJDFCVNMB i kept remembering the intro of the first movie where he was little and jumping around all excited to grow up and become a wolf just like flasheart shdfjkc 😭 WHOLESOME AF.

-ALSO. ALSO ALSO ALSO I ABSOLUTELY LOVED HOW HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY GAIN NEW ABILITIES. he didn't become super strong or anything like his dad. he pulls a fucking twig out of the ground and acts like he is but no lmao it's like spongebob holding up the stick with the marshmallows on both ends acting like he lifted a fuckign barbell shdjfkgv he's STILL the same freddy, goofy and clumsy, he literally just took a different form. i can't express enough how much i LOVED that seriously

-moopoo first meeting batty and freddy and the montage with him and freddy being goofy and bonding together was so cute ahh

-MOOPOO TRYING TO EAT A CROW WAS SO OUT OF POCKET LMFAO. also i love his tendency to add "-poo" to the end of everyone's names lol

-it was cute the way freddy scooped batty up and put her on his back ahhh

-i was disappointed that the pack didn't have more of a reaction to freddy becoming an actual wolf like he was hoping, i mean c'mon he was so happy and excited lmao

-"wow!! thanks uncle!!! ^.^" FREDDY. HE TRIED TO KILL YOU AND IMPRISONED YOUR DAD FOR SIX YEARS. THIS IS NOT A SITUATION WHERE WE LET BYGONES BE BYGONES. HOW DO YOU LOOK AT HIM AND NOT FEEL ENRAGED

-MAX'S BACKSTORY IS SO GOOD IDC. also i love her wolf design, it's actually rly cute. tiny wolf hehe

-the elders really suck actually. i feel like they're always looking to blame freddy for something or scold him, at least as they appear in the movies. they're not very fair imo, they clearly still judge him for being a poodle. also, lady hightail suspending him from the night patrol SMH

-well, flasheart...that was an awfully gentle way of telling freddy that moopoo's gonna die if he stays on earth. but it's super in character for him i feel. also it got really fucking dark there for a second

-the sequence where batty and freddy chase moopoo around on the roof of farfang was so cute ahh

-I CAN'T FULLY EXPRESS HOW MUCH I LOVED TWITCHY AND HAMISH IN THIS MOVIE. LIKE HOLY SHIT. they were okay in 100% wolf but they didn't really stand out imo. but like whoa, the writing for them REALLY improved in the sequel. i love them sm now especially hamish lmao

-as a side note i'm sorta confused, do twitchy, hamish and bruno still live on the street while batty lives at farfang w/ the werewolves? based on how the first movie ended i sorta thought they were all living together now??

-twitchy insisting she doesn't like babies and getting freaked out by moopoo was soooo in-character for her lmao.

-hamish and his personality switch with the shades is hilarious hsdjf

-based on some reviews i read i was think there would be more scenes featuring or referencing shit, but it was literally just one and idk why people were freaking out. it wasn't even that bad 🙄

-moopoo is 400 years old apparently, i wonder when moon spirits reach maturity

-the great kennel and adding to the dog pack lore?? kinda neat i guess even if it only appeared very briefly

-THE SCENE WITH HAMISH TALKING TO THE "ORACLE" LMFAO

-also freddy not being used to having a big heavy wolf body shdfv

-"learn how to transform with your clothes on" BUT HE LOSES THEM WHEN HE TRANSFORMS BACK. WHAT IS YOUR POINT TWITCHY. but yeah like you'd think he'd be more careful in the sunlight when he's in his canine forms by now but he's so impulsive

-it was so cute how they put moopoo in a baby stroller with twitchy and disguised bruno as his mom shjfk

-OK BUT I WILL DEFEND THIS FIT WITH MY LIFE. GENUINELY AWESOME AND ADORABLE. like he worked with what he could find and he rocked it. and holy shit the queer coding is absolutely insane IDCCC. also batty being super supportive 🥺🥺

-the montage of hamish failing at being a guide dog and twitchy eventually getting fed up and kicking his ass,, rip

-"shave the baby" shdfvj

-THE DUCK FLYING INTO THE FORCE FIELD AND DISINTEGRATING ???

-moon spirits are incredibly powerful holy fuck. the way moopoo blasted through the force field like ??

-i actually think it's cute and sad how batty is scared of bats and it's implied she got her name from other dogs teasing her hsdjv

-wholesome batty and freddy moments 🥰"i'll take care of them lupin style" and then he falls over himself SDHFGK

-HANK W/ THE TENNIS BALLS. he seems fun i want more lore on him

-the moopoo hungry scene ahhh it was so wholesome to see freddy comforting him. and the animation where he was trying to consume his inner moonlight was really cool, like woah. the whole concept of werewolves having an inner moonlight/moonfire...i just love the lore in this movie so much it's unreal

-AND THE PART WHERE MOOPOO STARTS DREAMING. HOLY SHIT?? THE COLORS AND VISUALS. the animation is SO FUCKING GOOD i'll fight anyone who says otherwise

-THE LULLABY OMGGGGG I'M OBSESSED IT WAS SO SWEET

-freddy punching gar-gar in the eye and running away w/ batty I CAN'T THEY'RE SO GOOFY

-jennifer saunders is amazing as max, i loved her from the first introduction of her character omg. she killed it! also her expressions are sooo good i love it

-love how they made the same joke as they did in 100% wolf with freddy trying to spit on the ground but failing dfgj

-more hamish and twitchy banter, i love how they tease each other and bicker sm

-the part where max mentioned a trust exercise and freddy assumed she meant a trust fall HSDJFV

-"if you'd rather be moopoo's daddy, i'm cool with that. i could be the mummy" BASED hamish

-the entire scene where freddy is pretending to kill the dogs LMAO?? then moopoo waking up and finding them "dead" SDFJGF

-"weird is different, and different is good" i really liked the scene where max and freddy were bonding. it gave max more depth and insight to her character. and freddy does tell batty he doesn't trust her but i think he did end up sympathizing with her in spite of what she'd done because he is very soft-hearted

-hotspur dumbass moments, he deserved to get caught in every one of those traps. also it was kind of really fucking weird how flasheart was laughing at him like it was endearing or something when this is the same monster that locked him away for six years and tried to kill his son. maybe he was happy bc he thought one of the spikes might impale his heart or something but that's probably wishful thinking. WTF this family. and NO I'M NEVER GONNA SHUT UP ABT THAT. IT MAKES NO SENSE HOW HE'S STILL PART OF THE PACK

-interesting how moopoo turns red and turns into a little gremlin when he takes the energy from the whoopsies lmao

-why did max diss freddy's human form tho i genuinely don't get it 😭 poor him

-gar-gar was cute when he wanted to play fetch with batty aww. the way their friendship develops is super sweet

-yeah idk the wolf runes look different to me in this movie compared to the series. it's pretty interesting. also interesting how freddy specifically said wolf runes, implying the existence of other runes, namely dog runes like in the series. i sorta doubt that was intentional but it's fun to think of it that way

-"we're looking up" is SUCH A CUTE SONG. I LOVED THAT ENTIRE MONTAGE. ALSO THE BABY GAR-GARS WERE ADORABLE. and the earth magic stuff is really fucking cool, i wonder if they might incorporate that lore into the series.

-i noticed that the magic only changes the color of freddy's eyes, but that doesn't happen with max? i wonder why that is. maybe i missed something. he looks pretty neat with the glowing red eyes tho lmao

-why did bruno, twitchy and hamish want to eat moopoo's vomit tho

-OK BUT HAMISH SCREAMING AT GAR-GAR LMAO

-also freddy becoming sorta possessed by the earth magic was interesting? i feel like they could've done a lot more with that

-why did freddy cast a rainbow spell around batty... HMMM

-i was surprised by the way max felt genuinely betrayed by freddy, and the way he said she has no friends. like basically, she's alone. and they did appear to have a heart-to-heart there while freddy was trying to talk her into casting the portal spell. she was just fooling them but still, it did seem a little genuine. i think she was just overcome with the urge to get her warfing abilities back and get revenge on the moon spirits. but honestly think max could've been rehabilitated, there was potential there. it sucks that in the end she was turned into a whoopsie and that was it

-i like how max couldn't find a word that rhymes with gravity, so she just made up a word lmao

-wait how tf did twitchy swallow hamish's shades

-yeeeah i was not a fan of the fart joke with bruno, with that being like his main contribution in the film ?? but at least it didn't drag on for too long ??

-gar-gar's return was sweet, again i love the friendship he formed with batty ahh

-the giant mutated moopoo was...completely unanticipated. but it was so sweet the way freddy sang his lullaby to calm him down

-AND THE SCENE WHERE FREDDY GAVE HIM HIS INNER LIGHT. i just...omg that was so beautiful and so in-character. like yeah, he WOULD be that self-sacrificing and it hurts so much

-it was incredibly sweet to see moopoo reunited with his mom and the other moon spirits omg. AND THEN HOW THEY ALL WORKED TOGETHER TO RETURN FREDDY'S INNER LIGHT. THAT WAS GENUINELY SO BEAUTIFUL OH MY FUCKING GOD

-THIS IS HTE MOST WHOLESOME SHIT I'VE EVER SEEN OMG LOOK AT THESE DOGS

-AND THEN HOW THE PACK BOWED TO HIM AT THE END AHHH THAT WAS ACTUALLY PERFECT

closing thoughts:

-there were a lot of reviews complaining that it was unfunny. i can agree the jokes are kinda dumb and corny at times but to me that gives it charm lmao

-it's kind of interesting how the moonstone ring doesn't appear at all, like it isn't even referenced?? i thought it would be, but it wasn't important to the story at all. the story was purely focused on the moon spirits.

-ALSO NO HARRIET, CHARIOT OR MRS. MUTTON which surprised me, but again, they weren't important to the story at all. and i was thinking we'd see hotspur and flasheart (and the other wolves for that matter) in their human forms apart from in the intro?? but again, i guess it wasn't relevant so they didn't include that

-lastly, i've gotta be honest. i think this movie was much better enjoyed by fans of the series and the first movie than by people who know absolute nothing about the franchise. not to say that it can't be enjoyed by people who know nothing about it otherwise. it's just that knowing the characters and events from the first movie makes it a little less confusing imo. we did get some background on freddy, hotspur, flasheart and batty in the intro. however, there was barely anything about twitchy, bruno and hamish and no references to how they met batty and freddy. the segments featuring wolf runes also make more sense if you've watched the series imo, they are well established in the show.

-i may have additional thoughts on the movie that i'll post about later but that's it for now. AGAIN, IT WAS SO WORTH THE WAIT. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.

[homestuckreplay]

sweet john and hella dave

(page 325-338)

I would love to have insightful thoughts on yesterday's bumper update (14 pages!!!! stay winning!) but I've been researching the AKAI MPC-1000 SAMPLER all night. Here is a list of AKAI MPCs by release year:

MPC60 - 1988 MPC60II - 1991 MPC3000 - 1994 MPC2000 - 1997 MPC2000XL - 1999 MPC4000 - 2002 MPC1000 - 2003 MPC2500 - 2005 MPC500 - 2006 MPC5000 - 2008

Which is a good and normal and intuitive order for the numbers to go in. There's been a few new entries since Dave's model, but the 1000 is a solid and well liked general purpose model. Seems like it's user friendly, customizable, and offers a storage/memory upgrade for maximum amount of hauntingly sick beats. With the exception of Alec Zander from NYC who gave the MPC1000 a 1 out of 5 and said that 'construction is very cheap' and it has an 'uneven pad sensitivity', most user reviews are positive. helly hensen from TDOT, for example, says 'This machine is dope. I love the size'

This series of Akai MPCs is also really influential in hip hop, electronic music, and DJing, so they must be doing something right. Some people say the preprogrammed samples on the 1000 aren't great, but we all know the real point of the thing is to add your own. It seems like Dave's made a solid choice here, but also a pretty generic one. If Dave wanted to get into a more niche and hipster MIDI sampler, he could have gone for the 2001 Boss Dr Sample SP-303, with its 33 minutes of 44.1kHz mono sampling (with a SmartMedia card) ability to import AIFF and WAV audio files from the memory card.

The sampler minigame is so cool (I would give it the coveted but elusive 5 out of 5 hats) and weirdly feels like the most control we the audience have directly had over a character. We're influencing the art he makes, which is very personal. There are a few secret samples - if you click the samples in all four corners, the screen will zoom out and four extra buttons will appear with bonus samples (as well as a bunch of question marks). I don't know if these also exist in Dave's room or if he can access them. But it is very funny to imagine him wiring up bonus buttons inside a cinderblock.

Anyway Dave has a bunch of web sites which explains everything really. John's house is leaking engine oil, we have multiple characters(?) hanging out in different underground bunkers, Rose and Dave make each other worse, 52 pickup is always a bad decision. whatever. going to make some more sicknasty beats

[kaija-rayne-author]

Dragon Age Veilguard Review 4th in series

22 game hours 20 actual playtime

Spoilers for Dragon Age Veilguard

Critical review and a rant

Obligatory disclaimer. If you've already read it you can skip to the cut.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I'm on media blackout while I play this, so I'm only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Y'know? Every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you Bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

3.5 in series is here.

If I've ever played a glitchier piece of shit game in my life I honestly can't remember it.

So I went to go watch a movie with the partner and kids. I saved my game and turned it off.

Came back and it played okay for a few hours. I met both Mae and Dorian squeeeee!

Met Davrin and Assan. Everything's going fine. I got creamed (again), I swear the devs have no idea. I'm a consistent gamer who plays on hard/tactician mode in most games I play. (Many the same style of fighting as DAV.) And I'm having trouble with the strength of these monsters. WTF do they think someone just getting into gaming is experiencing?

Anyway. I got creamed, clicked reload last save, and it loaded with the now far too familiar no CC reverted back to the basic elf body error. I went back to the main menu, and now absolutely none of the saves are showing up with video. They load with sound, map in the corner, and tags above heads but no fucking video. They're either corrupted or the game is just a piece of shit.

Yes. I'm rather annoyed. I was looking forward to finishing recruiting Davrin tonight and it doesn't make my brain happy to have to stop in the middle of what I wanted to get done. In game or out.

I'm currently verifying my files from steam. We'll see if that fixes it. I just... and this is what the devs thought was releasable? REALLY?

I know I keep using BG3 as a comparison (which honestly isn't a very good one because one is turn based and one 'live' fighting). But the Venn diagram of people who play DA and who play BG is probably a circle so that's why it comes to mind.

It's also the most recent game I've actually purchased and played a lot.

I played that day of release and on into the week and had nowhere NEAR this many problems. I actually think I've had more trouble with DAV in three ish days than I've had in BG3 for over 700 hours FFS!

Anyway. Vent over (for now. I imagine this game will give me plenty of more opportunities).

Dorian looked really weird. He has what I'm now dubbing the 'Solas effect'. He doesn't look like himself. I wouldn't have recognized him at all if it weren't for him introducing himself.

Oh, and way to retcon the condition of the veil guys. For three games it's been getting more and more tears and holes in it. Now it's solid and the only thing holding off a world of blight that hadn’t ever really existed in the fade like that before? It was just the black city. Do these guys ever get sick of retconning shit? I sure get sick of playing retconned shit.

My partner saw the game and he really can't get over how jarring the art is. He's a pretty consistent gamer too but I doubt he'll play this one.

Y'know how I said I didn't know WTF the devs were thinking in my review of the game play trailer?

I'm even more flabbergasted now. I just... seriously?

The game doesn't work well. it has numerous glitches.

The art style sucks.

The bad dudes are WAY overpowered for even a pretty decent gamer. Not so experienced gamers are likely rage-quitting in droves. Every one of the glitches I look up is pretty common. Even for people with better machines than mine.

The story took bloody forever to get started. It finally seems to have but it shouldn't take me 20 hours of game time to get somewhat invested in the story!

The characters are honestly pretty meh so far. My much beloathed Lucanis is the only mildly interesting one so far.

I honestly just can't get over how they felt this was A. Good. and B. Ready for release.

I'll keep trying. But if it's corrupted my whole 20 hours I'm not sure if I've got the stomach to replay all that boring assed nonsense to get to where I only just got to today.

I HATE writing critical reviews as a matter of course. I especially don't want to write them about a piece of intellectual property like Dragon Age that I love so very much. But What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Part 5.1

[leighlew3]

Hey I'm interested in how the industry works and how it's slowing down atm, could you give some insights?

Welp. Buckle up...

Between tech bros and tech bro appeasers taking over the industry, the streaming model (an initially positive thing that's been twisted into something obviously not always so great), the pandemic, and the strike, plus the ever present political and global upheaval which has investors/banks biting nails -- Hollywood is not in a good place, and it's being run further and further into the ground by people afraid to take any risks or spend any money -- worse than ever.

That means less specs being bought, less movies being made, less shows being greenlit, and so on. Productions in LA have fallen to historic lows (because what IS being made is increasingly being taken elsewhere for tax credits and lower cost). Output and employment is just not great. And of course fans have become more selective and most studios and executives are simply not remotely on the same page with audiences and viewers anymore and relying too much on algorithms and skewed data (and allowing hateful anti-“woke” mobs to review bomb and doom anything fresh) and then wondering why even their big blockbusters are flopping now as well.

This was supposed to be the year the industry started to bounce back after the pandemic and strike, and while it's gotten better than it was when it was completely at a standstill, and yes movies and tv are still being made, it's just not good. It's not remotely where it should be, let alone anywhere near the level it was pre-pandemic. And even pre-pandemic, we were already seeing a lot of these problems starting to rear their heads...

I mean in the 90s and early 2000s a straight white guy could give a one line pitch to a studio and be handed a million bucks to write it. Or write the most basic ass spec and make a cool couple million for the sale. But now, even the straight white guys have to have a project locked and loaded already with attachments (talent, director, producers) already on board. No one want to develop anything. Everyone wants everyone else to do all the work (aka spend all the time and money) first and then maybe they'll buy the package and make the movie, or distribute a finished product. Imagine what that means for mid to lower level projects entirely. And imagine what that especially means for women/POC/LGBTQ creatives.

Anyway, agencies and reps all thought things would start to really get back on track this year, but it hasn't, really. The town-wide motto being said to writers, actors, directors, etc by Spring/Summer was "survive 'til 25". Now, the new motto is "survive through 25". Now everyone is hoping, somehow 2025 will be a solid recovery year and 2026 might be a genuinely good year again. But it just keeps getting pushed back and looking more and more bleak. A lot of writers, showrunners, etc -- successful ones and newbies alike, are just flat out leaving or preparing to leave the industry entirely, if they haven't already.

And people who are considering making writing, acting, or crew work a career are being flat out told "now is not the time, don't come to Hollywood, don't try to make this a career because there's just not enough work right now, and the career might not exist at all soon". And that's... pretty yikes.

Look, Hollywood has ALWAYS endured. It survived the Great Depression, global wars, technological revolutions -- and I actually believe it will survive this era as well.

I'm just not sure what comes out the other side of it...

And that's not even taking into account the role AI will play.

[crescencestudio]

Intertwine Post-Mortem

i lied. i don’t know if this qualifies as a post mortem. i don’t even know what a post mortem is LMFAOkxkak

but this is my post intertwine release “devlog” chock full of dev experiences, behind the scenes looks, and more for those who want to know more about the process of creating intertwine and thoughts i’ve had in reflection of release/experiencing otojam!

it’s long bc in usual crescence fashion, a bitch loves to talk. so buckle in gamers!

my thank u offering for all the downloads and reviews

Committing to OtoJam

for those who didn’t know, i entered otojam on a sort of Whim. because i am deep in the alaris trenches, i didn’t want to distract myself for too long from my main game, especially when there are people who have paid to support development. after talking to some friends, i thought otojam would actually be good for me. i’d been struggling with burnout and was in a creative rut. on top of that, i’d been doing this dev thing for almost 2 years with no full game to show for it (cries). even if otojam would take time away from alaris, perhaps it would give me what i needed—a kick of Motivation, a dash of Creativity, and some GD Fun.

so i decided about two days into otojam to officially enter it! And thus Intertwine made its appearance

the graphic that started it all

Oh, we are Otojamming

the intertwine editing team assembled and we got to work. because i already had a pretty solid idea of the game (it had been an idea i was sitting on for a while), there was less time spent on brainstorming and more time spent on writing and editing the script. for playtesters, i already have a group for alaris, and a couple of them kindly offered to playtest intertwine for otojam. i spontaneously decided to cast a va after some discussions with the editing team, and max joined. then, with One Week left of otojam, faefield productions entered the scene!

regarding development, the first month was largely dedicated to the script. weeks 1-2 were writing and fleshing out. weeks 3-4 were dedicated to editing and fine tuning. when my editors were reviewing the script, i was creating all the art assets. after the first month, i would say we had most of the gui, one cg, and the base sprite done!

at that time i felt pretty good. we were making good progress! i even was productive on alaris and irl work!

then the Second Month happened lmao.

i always forget the Horrors of fine tuning a build. i’m projecting right now, but i’d argue a lot of developers forget or underestimate the fine tuning/ quality testing stage. during the 4th-6th weeks of otojam, i wrapped up all the assets needed for the beta build. i finished the remaining cgs, all sprite expressions, and the rest of the gui. then i coded all the features into a beta version: learning how to create a messaging system for the first time, nailing the multiple iteration mechanic, cutting and editing the voice acting audio, and other Horrors that i’m sure i’ve since blacked out from my memory all happened during the sixth week of otojam. i was truly in the Coding Trenches.

BUT i got the build done and was able to send it out to playtesters for a week of quality testing. spoiler alert: the build wasn’t perfect and there were many bugs that needed fixing. the seventh week—the second to last week of otojam—was dedicated to this as well as my own tinkering so that the build felt completely Perfect (making sure expressions r exactly how i want them, transitions and audio fade perfectly, animations are perfect, that godforsaken clickable string to get to the next iterations that No One was clicking. all of the tiny aspects that make a game feel really polished). I am Not good with grinding. Suffice to say this was probably the most miserable week.

me every hour: DID U CLICK THE STRING

But once again WE MADE IT! Near the end of the seventh week, orpheo of faefield productions reached out to me and after gushing to each other about how big of a fan we are of one another, we spontaneously collaborated for a custom OST. Enter the eighth week, and we were ALL grinding. playtesters trying out a second build within only two days. editing team making fine tuning edits for the best script. coding. voiced lines that needed the slightest bit of tinkering.

Come 3PM on june 30th (otojam ends 6pm june 30th) and i’m coding the new music room, adding and double checking the new ost, and more. Two hours pass and it’s 5PM. We have less than an hour to submit. 5:30something comes by and with shaky hands, i release the game page and submit to otojam.

flashbacks to college 11:59 deadlines fr

On top of last week crunching, i was also dealing with extreme prerelease stress. i’ve never released a full game before. a demo, i can change. i can still tinker. this isn’t the final product. But a Full Game? My god. what if ppl hate it? or worse, what if ppl are so apathetic, they don’t even look at it and it gets sent to the void? after all, this year’s entries are stunning. they are Bold and Creative and Fun and intertwine is so….

Boring?

Some Lessons—Take Them or Leave Them

lesson 1. don’t listen to prerelease anxiety. that is the devil talking to you. if u have friends at least they will play and be nice to u. if u don’t have friends and no one plays, well it’s not the end of the world!!!! there’s always the next game. and u fckn know what? at least u Made that shit. keep ur head high, icon.

lesson 2. have fun and take care of yourself. the reception to intertwine has been amazing. i couldn’t be happier with it. but at the end of the day, the reason i look back on otojam fondly is because of the very dear friends i had to support me and have fun with me thru it all. life is meant to be enjoyed. it’s meant to be about memories, not metrics! never forget what’s truly important in life (cheesy, everyone boos me, but i’m right idgaf)

where would i be without them

lesson 3. plan. there is room for spontaneity and flexibility. after all, u can’t guarantee everything will go to plan. but with otojam being a crunch, plan as much as you can beforehand to not stress urself out during it. with intertwine, i had a somewhat outline and at least a pretty good idea of the concept, game mechanics, narrative design, mood board, etc. i had character concept art of van. if i had to do all of this during otojam we wouldn’t have made it i’m so srs. i also think when u plan as much as u can before, u have more room and time to have fun during! more polished build and more loving memories it’s a win win.

early concept art tbh i never thought it’d see the light of day

Typical Brand of Crescence Cheesiness

if you’ve made it this far ur a real one. all i have left to say is thank you for the support. while i was proud of intertwine (until the last week of otojam lol), i didn’t know what the response would be. to receive so many kind words has been unbelievably heartwarming.

as i said before, i’ve been in this game dev thing for 2 years with nothing to rly show for it. but during otojam, i could really feel the skills and experiences i’ve gained shine thru. i had a better handle on narrative design, coding things, integrating gui, and even more dev friends to talk to (thank u to all my friends who have played and messaged me U DONT KNOW HOW MUCH I LUV U). it was rewarding in a different sense compared to releasing a game, and i really am glad i did otojam to give me that perspective <3

a lot of things seemed to cockblock otojam this year (or so i’ve heard) between the sheer amount of entries (go us tho), the release of a lot of aaa otome games, and then twitter literally breaking less than 24 hours after otojam ended. even with all that, i’ve been so humbled and honored to see ppl enjoy intertwine. the comments i’ve gotten have honestly made me emotional, with many of you comparing it to games that i heavily admire and or expressing emotions i never would’ve dreamed to have been able to instill.

the otojam experience has been incredible, from the memories to the game to the reception. and i’m very grateful for all the people who made it that way! thank you for enjoying our silly little game made with our grubby little fingies. i hope you all continue to enjoy intertwine (and the other otojam entries from this year) and van!

i luv u all!