#another good game quote | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

saints-who-never-existed · 9 months ago

Note

Least favorite change from book to show?

A few things spring to mind for this one!

Full answer under the cut as I suspect it's going to get spoiler-y.

So, I understand completely why, with budget and time constraints, changes had to be made, and I think the show is visually stunning just the way it is.

But with that said, there are several scenes from the book that would have been absolutely fucking spectacular to have seen realised on screen and it does make me a little sad that they were omitted or changed.

There's the scene where Irving follows Silna down to the hold where she's created a living space for herself, only for him to find that someone or something has torn clean through the ship's hull - nearly a dozen layers of the hardest woods on the planet - to create a private tunnel out into the ice and up to the surface. Seeing that amount of physical power before we really see the thing that has exerted it is properly spine-tingling.

And speaking of tingling spines, I would love to have witnessed the scene where Tuunbaq makes it onto the ship and down into the hold and lower decks where it wreaks bloody havoc. It's a scene of utter chaos that plays out in almost complete darkness - the men have so little idea of what's even going on or what might be lurking in the darkness beyond the light of their own woefully inadequate lanterns. Chilling stuff! There's also fire, unspeakably gruesome physical injuries, and some lovely, lovely character beats between Fitzjames and Goodsir.

And perhaps the pi��ce de résistance, the crown jewel of absolutely wild scenes I'd love to have seen brought to the screen, is the grisly death-by-Tuunbaq of several major characters including Little and Peglar. They are tricked into following a lead in the ice and ambushed, and when the rest of the men follow after them, they find that the lead opens out into a huge lake that has been turned entirely red by the sheer amount of blood in it. Just imagine that! Imagine the shot panning up and over, the men and their boats tiny specks in an expanse of white and made even more insignificant by the staggering scale of the massacre before them!

I have some more in-depth thoughts about Crozier and Hickey's relationship and the way the book in many ways treats morality and cannibalism differently than the show does. But this post is already long enough! :)

#Behold yet again my inability to give a succinct answer to any given question!#I regret nothing!#For real though I find the book to treat the morality of cannibalism in a much more ambiguous way than the show does #Crozier is thinking about eating the dead long before we ever really see the idea raised or discussed on Hickey's part #It's an ever-present thing for both the quote-unquote 'good' and 'bad' sides #Anyway that's a post for another time methinks #The Terror #Asks #Ask Game #Friendos

7 notes · View notes

couthbbg · 10 months ago

Text

“I think everyone likes and appreciates recognition, but I don’t necessarily like all the spotlight. I just see myself as a good soldier. It’s weird. In hockey, it’s always about the team. You win together and you lose together… Fantastic night. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

— Lars Eller on his 1000th game. Quote from the Penguins instagram.

#what a normal thing to say #it’s like you think to yourself ah the girlies on tumblr dot com love narratives and hockey poetry #but we project a lot of that onto guys who probably are just normal about their jobs #and then a player will have his 1000th game and call himself a good soldier #and you realize. the narratives are there because the narratives Are there #I love it here #also I did see this quote on another post but I’m blocked RIP so here it is in another format.

8 notes · View notes

shentm · 3 months ago

Text

outsider still doesn't feel complete to me but i'm leaving it here for now. blade pov, no beta we die like baiheng, check tags for trigger warnings

dreamwidth mirror, which by the way is the more updated and also likely more permanent version of this piece, as this tumblr post always runs the risk of deletion anytime i'm awake past 11pm

The dream catches itself on those at the center of the tragedy, locking on to the minds already half-emptied by mara. It watches, as the nights repeat, as the hunt grows farther from its purpose.

He's covered in it, clothes slick with blood, the moonlight sliding off of it and watching him through the reflection. Every time he shows up, Jing Yuan has to stay awake for hours afterward, scrubbing at the floors to rid his home of the stains and the stench of mara-stricken beasts. It doesn't help that he likes to trail his sword behind, leaving gouges that the blood flows through, pooling in divots and seeping into the cracks between. But it's not like Jing Yuan expected him to be different.

An Outsider, who participated in a horrific ritual, and became tethered to the merging of paths, a creation of a collector who found the occurrence too interesting to resist. Who was given the abundance emanator's blessing, transforming him into something thought of as prey by most of the Xianzhou Alliance. It's strange that he's still sane sometimes, occasionally managing to break the contradictory resonance of intertwined paths where the hunt and the abundance intersect.

In the shared dream he sees the echoes of those he once knew, dead beings recreated in a perfect recollection of the waking world. It's just how he remembers, an everlasting reminder of what they did. He's drawn in when asleep and awake, unable to escape the repetition of memory.

In that intersection of paths he sometimes finds the shadow of the Imbibitor Lunae running away and away, too afraid to face his crimes. He finds the corpse of a dragon protected by its unborn kin, and tears it apart instead of looking back. He fights through the same landscapes again and again, always waking up in front of the same dim lamp. The only reason he can think of for this endless repetition is that someone out there likes these memories, wants to see the moment of the sin done right.

Skin melts against skin, fire burning through hair. The wet noise of a blade squelching as it rips through meat is the only sound that interrupts the guttural screaming of those beasts, displacing the cries with blood down their throats. Their pathetic existences mirror his own. Eyes press against his brain where they grow inside his skull, amplifying the beats of his heart. A constant high pitched whine carries through the sky, staying with him wherever he goes. Physical discomfort keeps him in the dream, afraid of what deeper pain awaits with the dawn of wakefulness.

He sees her too, sometimes, guarding the path before the corpse. She sees him in return, and they always meet in a clash of swords, the moon almost close enough to touch. It watches next to them, the blue light of her own weapon brilliant against the clouded orange sky. There was never any other choice; a recreation can only travel down the path of the original, like wheels in a rut on a dried dirt road. They tell each other that the dream will end. He continues the hunt again.

The dream is an awful thing to endure. He wonders about its purpose when cleaning his blade that Jingliu so kindly returned.

Dan Feng never acknowledges him, never admits to what he did, never even calls him by name. But it's clear that despite the physical differences, he's still the same arrogant coward that lives in the dream. How else would Dan Feng manage to kill him every time with the weapon he forged with his own once-deft hands, buying useless time before his inevitable judgement?

When he wakes up it is only a brief moment of respite from the dream as clear-cutting pain reminds him of his immortality. Sleep comes with the soothing promise of comfort, but also with the knowledge that it will not be restless.

Later he joins the Stellaron Hunters, gets taken in despite being on the brink of insanity. Feels the frenzy slipping away with Kafka's words, feels the understanding leave his mind. Turns him into a docile puppet, waiting for the next command. He names himself Blade. She gives him the first genuine rest he's had in seven hundred years.

His senses are diluted with her influence, not enough to render him completely useless, but enough to clear his mind. It's mostly just his sight that's a problem, and it's easy enough to counter with his other senses. The other one is touch, but he doesn't expect that to really be important. He does most of his hunting with a sword anyways, distanced enough from his prey.

He's never gone back to the Luofu personally. Once or twice through the years he hears news of its whereabouts, and soon has those reminders taken from his mind, rendering his sleep dreamless yet again.

He doesn't go back because he's not done hunting.

But at some point it was bound to happen, the meeting of three tragic sinners and that other guy who was also there.

A mission brings him back to the Luofu, and he doesn't complain because his mind is too empty to think. He tries to think of himself as just a simple vessel to help Elio carry out his plot. A stagehand for the endless show that they try to put on. It's quite nice, being like this, the desperately needed reprieve from the eyes that always try to crawl their way back into his brain. It's not easy to forget once your body has learned.

Kafka says the mission went well. Elio says he can break the tether now. He doesn't remember any of it, except from the brief moment of clarity when Jing Yuan asked him if he was done, and then the consciousness when he wakes up later.

Jing Yuan looks the same now as he did all those years ago, except for the young shadow he keeps at his side. He's still just as radiant as the sun, the center of everything he joins. Of course a comet like himself was never meant to stay long in Jing Yuan's orbit. The sun does not need to change when a dirty snowball cuts through its orbit after centuries of desolation in the universe; the sun burns bright on its own, without a need for a secondary light.

None of them are, were, like that, just a product that reflected their surroundings instead of the magnetic core that shaped their era. Maybe that's why they're all criminals wandering the stellar seas now, shot out from the gravity well and driven by their own definitions of the hunt.

But eventually he feels the searing pain start to fade when he chokes awake on drying blood, glances over at the dissolving bodies next to him. The eyes can no longer see. Kafka helps with her lightning, and soon the only physical links left are those burning wounds inside his brain.

Between puddles of blood and dripping black stone he wakes up, and the night grows deeper but the streetlights start burning. He collaborates, strangely, with Dan Heng (a new trailblazer) to force Jing Yuan back into his bed. He sees the artificial sunrise a few times, occasionally with Kafka, and sometimes just on his own. The sight of a celestial object rising behind the clouds has been one he's not seen for a while, even if it is still a false sun.

It's done, the dream has an end. The hunt is over, its conclusion long since found.

He meets the one who couldn't let go in the waking world, both of them more alive than they should be. Neither of them deserve to be here, yet they sully the Luofu with their presence anyways, carving and gouging out a place where they no longer belong.

She meets him with the same intensity she always carries, unable to be diminished by time or a dream's veil, and he feels alive as they dance the familiar battle once again, for what may be the last time. Unlike the cycles before them, this time it feels like a breaking of bonds, like something being set free.

On the last night of his stay on the Luofu he ends up at Jing Yuan's family home after he manages to separate from the dream, and he's lucky that Jing Yuan still stays here even after seven hundred years. Conveniently, Dan Heng mentions that Yanqing would be dragging the Luofu's heroic trailblazer on some sort of sword-hunting adventure on that day.

"Yingxing," Jing Yuan says when he enters civilly through the window, "please stop dripping blood on the floor."

It's that name that breaks him into the clearest state of mind he's had for centuries. That and the newfound control over his own mind, now that the moon no longer watches him. Jing Yuan still sounds the same, calls him with the same tone of voice. When's the last time anyone's referred to him as Yingxing? When's the last time he's been able to hear that name without his consciousness slipping through the cracks?

"Jing Yuan," he responds, and he's suddenly aware of the winds outside, carrying with them a fine mist of pollen that coats everything in a layer of grit, sticking to the drying blood on his clothes. He's aware of the artificial moonlight that gazes into the room, blue in tone and so much softer than the harsh orange red in his sleep. He can feel the silence of the home, where four others once gathered and where only one stays now.

"That's not my name."

The dream tries to call to him, but its voice is quiet here.

Jing Yuan reclines on the mass of pillows he calls a bed, and when he shifts he can hear the sound of feathers scratching at their confinements. He hears his pulse in his head, reviving nerves once thought to be dead, and he can feel the tingling sensation where it creeps through his limbs.

The air is cold where it hits his skin. It's been so long since he's been able to feel the temperature. He looks at Jing Yuan, and he can see the shine in his eyes, the strands of his hair where it was only a blurred image before. The world is clearer than it's ever been. It's like getting glasses. Do they still have those?

Jing Yuan grounds him in the present, the physicality distracting him from the broken link between his mind and that all-seeing eye disguised as the moon. The moon here on the Luofu is fake, as is the rest of the sky over most of the ship. The mara-stricken here do not scream as they claw at their faces, nor do they tear apart their prey with overwhelming strength.

He can touch and be touched now, acutely aware of the blood on his face, his body, his hands, the stains across the sheets and the fabric where he dares to rip them apart, but it doesn't matter in the moment. Cauterized wounds of foreign eyes that once grew inside his head start to make their presence known again, but they don't try to regrow. Flesh, not his own, knits itself together when he lets go, and the scent of iron permeates the air.

He's never been a particularly selfless lover. He bites down again.

"Ren," Jing Yuan says, quiet with an edge of something else. The false moon silently hangs behind the clouds, diffused into a hazy shower of light. The metallic taste of blood fills his mouth.

Jing Yuan is just as pliant for him now as he was centuries ago, body remembering and opening its vulnerabilities for him so readily. The heat in his head is easily ignored in favor of the heat beneath his hands. It's easy to get lost in the chase to consume and feed, but he reins himself in with the control he thought he'd lost a long time ago.

An Outsider, on equal ground with the Luofu's general, if only for one night. An Outsider, carving his own mark into the Xianzhou's history.

He finds Jing Yuan again after all these centuries, and he's still just as passionate as he's always been, fervent energy and primal fear driving him deeper into the desperate desire to stake a claim of his own.

#hsr #text post #tw blood #tw body horror #tw mental health #as in blade has really bad mental health #tell me if any others should be added #watch me delete it in 2 weeks and post it several months later after another round of editing #also i feel like this definitely veers off into mature territory by the last few paragraphs #i should also make it clear that this was written before we had much information on the foxian and borisin lore #like you can tell i wrote this in spring because the pollen dust was getting everywhere at that time #anyway this is just a background piece to my jingrenheng attempt to “vacation” in penacony wip #i don't think this will ever make it to ao3 officially so i'll just leave it on the sideblog for the rest of time #trying so hard to hit the sad old man yaoi vibes with the ending but like idk if that's good enough for what i want #but whatever! it's a background piece! the important part is that it establishes the context for the rest of my ramblings!#very bloodborne inspired. very. like i am this close 🤏 to directly quoting the game.#the vacation fic

2 notes · View notes

cccotard · 2 years ago

Note

as the ranger expert what do you think/what would you like to see with ranger in 3-2? maybe a surprise return?

abbsolutelly not

Listen..cmere...I love Ranger. I love him a lot. I love him so much. I could kill for more Ranger content. Not in the yttd main story though. His story is such an excellent tragedy with Such an amazingly satisfying ending that I hope all my remaining meow meows will give me an ending with the same amount of gratification.

And now being given Sei, and context to all those lines like "[Rio Ranger] ..is not your real name" and that tear-threatening "hu...man?" from his death scene MANNNN

Ranger's in a tough spot because no one cares enough about the little shit to ever see past the Ranger doll and see a broken Sei. Rio Ranger is irredeemable, and his very.. morally dubious end is just what he needed.

Although....I said this in my last post, but I think Ranger is a reflection of Asunaro and Gashu, but also, very importantly, Safalin.. who happens to be the only one still up that could possibly know about Sei, and care at all ! Safalin is by far the most 'human' of the floormasters and its either her or meister seeing over the last main game. And sorry all meister fans (all 2 of you laughing emoji) but I am a Safalin truther !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She's dropped too many bomb lines not to possibly have a role in any 'escape endings'.

What I mean by this is that past chapter two, Ranger doesn't have anything to give us really, except Safalin motivation to rebel rise up safalin fans it will be our time

this turned into a Safalin rant very quickly hahaha my bad

tldr Ranger's completed arc is simply too perfectly tragic to be continued in any way. Would I screenshot a mention and stare at it for a very long time because it would probably mean something deeper because Ranger is a reflection of Asunaro's corruption ? Yes. Yes I would. But that's the most I'll take: a mention. I don't wanna see his face again in the main story because I don't need to.. his guest star appearance in 3b was amazing though didn't expect it 10/10

#tis a game theory #i am team safalin plot relevance ty and goodnight #im gonna give a safalin plot revelance a 50% chance #it probably wont happen but i love that hoe so much #anyways back to ranger #out of all the arcs that are 100% completed #(ranger yabusames qtaro dummies one of the greenblings etc)#ranger's ending is Def up there on the tier list in my brain with shin #his ending was so perfect.. i cant imagine another way...#anywho ty for the ask !#i giggled when i read the “ranger expert”#i am flattered truly #i dont think im an expert but like . a researcher #could i ever characterize him in like a fanfic ? no #but can i find all this good quotes in record time ? yes #yttd #rio ranger #yttd mini episode spoilers

45 notes · View notes

purgemarchlockdown · 1 year ago

Text

Thinking about cycles again...

#sorry was looking at Cool Games and now in Cycle Mode #anyway are y'all normal about being trapped in cycles?#I think about Muu a lot actually around this #it's like- Muu's trapped in her own self-destructive behaviors and toxic environment #she cant really Leave the School and yet she cant really change it either #she does the queen bee stuff as a way to 'escape' the bullying and be given love but it really its just another web she's trapped in #Muu causes her own destruction but the only reason Why she's in a situation that causes her to react like that is because #of a toxic and unhealthy environment that no one can really get out of #there's this one really good quote from one of my favorite shows about how no one can really foster healthy relationships in the school #everyone is in because the environment is simply so hostile to any sort of possible healthy connection between people #its not just that bad behavior its encouraged its that good behavior is Discouraged #if that makes sense #idk im just in a cycle mood again

11 notes · View notes

daisyachain · 6 months ago

Text

Pentiment is one unusual example of a game/story/thing that is structurally good writing without actually having well-written sentences.

The game operates in cycles as the art would imply, setting up a good number of arcs for its tight time frame and paying them off with interest. For example. The occult subplot lures you in as a modern free-thinking player only to slap you in the face with real consequences—imposed by you—and hit you again when you fail to learn the lesson the first time. Ferenc being the one to save Vacslav and Ursula? Icing on the cake, make you re-rethink your thoughts and deeds. There are greater institutions outside your one little life that have a bigger impact than any one person could. You can’t forget them, you see their fingers everywhere, and if you start to feel too comfortable getting the town to dance to your tune, they step in. Good writing. Events follow each other logically, but the links between them are hidden enough that you have to puzzle it out.

That doesn’t mean that you have to be a wordsmith to make a beautiful many-circled plot. An architect doesn’t have to be a good interior designer. Pentiment’s sentences do the work of getting you from one idea to the next. That’s not to say that every Bavarian peasant should speak in pastiche or should be able to discourse at you. There’s more to a good sentence than fancy words. Unconventional structures, rhythms, or counterintuitive word choices can make it pop, which Pentiment’s dialogue doesn’t. It’s workmanlike and would be unremarkable except for the fact that I was remarking every time it said something that was verbatim like ‘oh no Ursula I don’t think it’s a good idea to learn about old myths that are heresy and will get you killed’. There’s a lot of clunk. Does it take away from the good writing? Not much, because it’s a game where the visuals take up more of your attention. This kind of word lack-of-play would be harder to deal with in a book, so at least the medium works in its favour.

What does make it stand out still is the common points of reference as European-set walking simulators about owning up to history. DE and Patho’s dialogues are unique partly because of the translation convention, partly because the structure of each sentence in those games gets a boatload of attention. Pentiment hits its more modest target far more cleanly than either of those, but it does so without quite the amount of style.

#maybe that’s why the single best moment in the game isn’t dialogue at all. the danse macabre #you don’t have the stilted intermediary of text when Magdalene walks into the chapter house or later breaks down crying #or when the camera pans over the family tree (the other best moment)#there aren’t too many quotes of it either yet you see getting circulated. yet the way it deals with everything is just great #I’m no longer accepting murder mysteries that don’t frame the hunt as ‘pick your fav victim’#so that brings us to: what do you call it when the writing (overall) is good and the writing (written) is fine.#something that crops up a lot in translated works.#the quality of the original author’s sentences is totally up to the translator. plus if you read enough bad TLs you just get translation #brain. the tv show Lupin has abominably bad dialogue in the original French (so I hear) but as someone who watched that show barely parsing #the subtitles. I didn’t even notice. that’s not even starting on the manga #kelsey liveblogs pentiment #another thing: people can’t stop posting DE/Patho quotes but you rarely see a pentiment quote #it’s all about the images #very medieval if I do say so myself

2 notes · View notes