#but definitely a game i am interested in playing its very different

[commanderwindy]

They have a situation…

I barely draw them so I decided to finally give them the attention they deserve, expect they have a little problem. Good luck with that!

[inumakis-boo]

May I have some dating Toge Inumaki headcanons? Both sfw and NSFW... If you're comfortable.

TOGE INUMAKI ♫₊˚.🎧 ✧💬

headcanons 𓍢ִ�� hello and thank you for the requests! i am current rediting all of my posts, so if this looks a little different than when you first saw it, thats the reason why!

anyways, i hope all of you enjoy! and if course, NSFW will be tagged and is written for a female perspective.

safe for work headcanons

- would probably not notice each other the first time you meet, maybe an interested glance but it doesn't really hit until the second or third time that he really sees you

- probably asks for your number just so yall can talk better, and once you do, its an instant connection. he literally wouldnt be able to stop, staying up all night to text you

- texts you out of the blue, and although probably feels embarrassed to double text, he is just that interested in you

- would totally deliever a bag of goodies he bought at the store for you, and additionally maybe offer to make you a lunch to try before he makes it for everyone else

- you comment on one of his t-shirts he wears and he puts it in one of the goodie bags he buys you, doused in his cologne because he wants you to think of him

- would totally send annoying memes and tiktoks and bully you over text, also play 8-ball COMPETITIVELY cause he aint gonna lose to you (he doesnt even pity lose to you)

- shows up unannounced just to kiss you in the door frame of your dorm room as a goodnight and then leaves you there

- that is until you invite him over to your dorm at night and he brings post-it notes and teaches you his semi-bilingual language for easier understanding, and utterly loves you for it

- the talking stage would be him just pining over you cosntantly, writing it all down in journals or in his notes app

- after yall started dating, it is very much a no public affection mostly because he doesnt want anybody to be in your business. especially with his noisy ass friends

- but no matter what, he is going to hold your hand, especially when going on dates and walking around campus at night (would definitely talk u into sneaking out)

- he would be hesistant to kiss you even after yall became offical, probably go a few weeks before you just say it straight that you want him to kiss you and you dont even get it all out before hea pinning you to a door and giving you the best kiss of your life

- would absolutely use his speech on you so you cannot resist it when he tickles you or when you are beating him in a game

- he is not the sappiest guy, but if you start to get sappy over a movie or a sad book, he will rub your back and give you head-kisses to help you feel better

below is not safe for work content. mdni.

not safe for work headcanons

- you find out very quickly into the relationship that he cannot resist a challenge of any kind. therefore, using that to your advantage always works out

- challenging him through text to sneak out of his dorm will work, but ofc he wants a prize at the end (you are on your knees for the next hour)

- the benefit of his speech is that you don't feel any fatigue whatsoever during its use, so that makes it really easy to make your body endure while you deep-throat him over and over.

- it doesn't diminish the pleasure though; being told to stay still while he fondles your chest takes away nothing from the experience, and he knows how much you like having no choice.

- not that even if it was tiring, you wouldn't let him throat-fuck you, the noises he makes are heavenly for someone who can't speak straight, the struggle of watching him grip the bedframe and biting his lips so he doesn't utterly ruin you is SO worth a bruised throat.

- he might be nervous to use his speech on you the first time, but after you make sure that you can handle it, its becomes so much more confident in using it

- he loves making out with you, he loves making your lips red with all the biting, he wants to see them glossy and wet right before he puts his fingers in your mouth (you know where they are going next)

- sexting is so fun, yall thought it might be cringy, but its literally the best when he calls you with a command and he gets to listen to you whimper and moan as he jerks off to it, can be totally unexpected

- "Ride me."

- hand on your thigh when nobody can see, and his pinky is awfully close to your panties that it makes you nervous.

- ofc he can easily make you cum, but will he always let you? not without a cute little 'please' hes not. begging is fun, isnt it?

- lets be honest, the dick game is so good he don't even have to tell you to go to sleep after

- ofc he would definitely lay it down on you exactly how he described through text, and then clean you with special wipes he bought from the store because he aint a dickhead, duh.

I have so many more, especially for different situations, so lmk if you want more! Thank u for all the support as of recently!

bye pookies!

[elodieunderglass]

I'm not as familiar with LOTR as you are, so I wondered if you could tell me if my wild theory is completely off-base.

No one knows where the Hobbits came from, except that at some point they diverged from the line of men. No one knows much about the Entwives' appearance, but we do know that they fucked off a long time ago.

Could the Entwives have been dryad-ish and hooked up with the hobbits' ancestors and so be the foremothers of the hobbits?

Ah I think I saw that post! The concept has a lot of charm, and when the Tolkien estate loses its corpse-grip on the property in 2050 or so, I think you should write it and sell it 😤 I’ve definitely read some good takes on entwives in fanfiction that both leaned into canon and moved away, and I think that sounds like good fun to explore. A common theme in the fandom is playing with Yavanna, the Green Lady, being the mother or patron of hobbits. This isn’t canonical, but she’s a “green goddess” archetype and is married to Mahal/Aulë, the father of dwarves, which shippers often leverage to their advantage. You could do something quite charming there with Yavanna if you wanted to. We also know that Entwives loved gardens and orchards rather than forests.

Some things I would explore with this include:

what is going on with all these consistent ideas of people, races, women disappearing. We know that a lot of it is how Tolkien processed an almost OCD-like Catholic framing of “the fallen world is getting worse and can never be repaired”, war experiences, romanticism and other stuff stewing in his old man head. What are some ways you could show what’s stewing in your head? What does “people disappearing” mean to you? and why is it especially healing that they disappeared in order to make new families?

I think “they disappeared from their old kin and made new kin” is an interesting and weird thing worth wondering about!

- this would possibly make hobbits a more recent race than is implied. What does that mean to you?

- why are hobbits teeny tiny?

A very good starting point, that Terry Pratchett used a lot, is taking some grand statement in fantasy fiction, and making it reflect a different political reality. “Most dwarves are girls actually.” “Wizards parody academia, but, like, FOR REAL.”

I personally have a different take because of my own political feelings and framings! I have a lot of complex feelings about Tolkien chickening out of hobbits. For various political reasons I personally have to take the stance that they are fully human, fully indigenous, and have their own native language. and that their disappearance is less “teehee we lost them” or “O, the Catholic guilt of the Fallen World, how far we have fallen from the light of the two trees God’s sinless light” and a lot more “oh yeah I’ve seen THAT pattern before.”

If you have a political sort of lens on, someone telling you “yeah… hobbits came from nowhere 🤭 and then disappeared 🤷‍♀️ sad!” is a story that can also invite the response of “OHhhhh you wanted their LAND real bad, huh.” Like, we know what that means, right.

It’s a political stance for me. Hobbits have to be close enough to us to touch, and we have to be able to face that, and the fact that 5,000 media properties will chew on tolkienelves and sell them to you before even admitting to the 🤭 just makes it even more of a 🤨. To me.

…But I have literally just been elbow deep in my own demented fanfic thing that involves inventing a language just to swear in, to enable my standing on a box shouting HOBBITS OUGHT TO RESIST GOING EXTINCT ACTUALLY, based entirely on, I think, spite. Why do multiple authors publish orc football games (Terry Pratchett) and orc coffeeshops (Legends and Lattes guy) and do every damned thing with every bit of Tolkien’s corpse but refuse to look directly at hobbits. I am feral over this and wrote 59k words so far to damage and harm my friends

In conclusion I see a great story shape there about kindred and I think you should explore it and it should be about evolutionary biology and women and divorce and nobody being wrong.

And if anyone argues you with some podcast boy “well actually”, just bite them and do more character work and sit on their heads

[cavegirlpoems]

The Two D&Ds

I am going to make two statements:

I despise D&D, and consider it a parasitic drain on ttrpgs as an artform.

I love D&D and my fascination with it continually inspires me to create art using it.

These two statements might seem to be at odds, but in fact there is no conflict when one considers that the term 'D&D' is being used to refer to two completely different things. I hate one of those things and like the other. So let's unpack that. Firstly, there's D&D-as-a-lifestyle-brand. D&D as presented by critical role, by memes about horny bards and wholesome gay tiefling found families, and by the wider hasbro-sanctioned fandom. Where the actual design and mechanics of the game are a vague suggestion that exists homeopathically in the same vicinity as what you're doing. But really, you're inventing blorbos, collecting pretty dice, and speculating on events in an actual-play on twitch; the rules in that very pretty rulebook are an afterthought to the fandom.

Then there's D&D-as-a-family-of-ttrpg-mechanics. This covers the various editions of Dungeons & Dragons - from the white-box OD&D to 5th edition and everything in between - as well as various retroclones, hacks and spin-offs such as the OSR, Pathfinder, etc. This isn't defined as a cultural space; it's a set of game mechanics and design principles shared across the text of various games. And there's a lot of variation with the specifics, but like The Blues, if you know the basic structure it all makes sense.

The two D&Ds have very little to do with each other.

When indie people like myself criticise D&D, we are usually criticising the first one. We're generally outsiders to that fandom-space who are unhappy with the way that fandom encroches on, and ultimately stiffles, everything else in ttrpgs as an artistic medium. We tend also to dislike the very shallow interest in that fandom of the things we care about in ttrpgs - game design, gameplay, theory, criticism, etc.

Here's the thing. I am, personally, immensely critical of D&D-as-lifestyle-brand. I detest it, honestly. It strikes me as a corporate exploitation of the wider medium in pursuit of an easy profit, at the expense of catering to the lowest common denominator. Like invasive kudzu, it chokes out all ecological diversity in the art-form. Its a homogenising influence, and in my experience pretty anti-intillectual.

Because, at risk of sounding like a pseud, I consider ttrpg design to be an art-form that merits serious effort, discussion and appreciation.

However. D&D-as-a-set-of-games I actually quite like. I find myself fascinated by the way so many games take apart the starting framework of a given edition of D&D - like your 12-bar-blues structure - and adapt it and riff on it and fuse it with other genres. I find it interesting to track the way whole movements and genres mutate out from that starting position. Hell, I do that myself, a lot. A lot of my design work takes the very early editions of D&D as a starting point, gets into a groove, and riffs on it until it's seemingly unrecognisable.

To me, a work like Mork Borg is D&D (the second definition). It is, however, totally unrelated and unrecognisable to D&D (the first definition).

So I will talk about "D&D as the containment game for shit players" and I mean it, because I'm talking about type-1. And I'll do that while designing a paleolithic OSR game, because that's type-2. And by and large, all that happens when both those things intersect is people get upset.

[smoozie]

Grian and Scar are both loyal to an extent. They don't let their loyalty consume them nor overstay it's welcome. But they have different ideas of when loyalty ends

Grian is not a traitor. It's odd to see him depicted as one when the only precedent in canon is his rendezvous with Bigb. In 3rd Life, Grian explicitly declares his loyalty as to Scar and Scar alone. His alliances with others are tenous. He goes all in one and lets other arrangements fall to the wayside. He wasn't ever loyal to them though, they were a means to an end.

Scar has a bad case of "friend to all is a friend to none" which we will see again and again. Scar is by no means a friend to all in 3rd Life, but he still puts his brief friendship with Bdubs above his weeks long dedication to Grian. And this choice is so interesting because he clearly betrays Grian because he is on yellow not red. (I mean yes the no kill pass, but that likely would have never come into play had Grian been red). However, he expects Grian's anger when he returns. Or it seems that way because he immediately surrenders himself. So what was the point? He gets Grian down to red, only to kill Bdubs and hand him the victory. Not to mention he waits for Grian to return before he moves against Bdubs. His loyalty to Grian most definitely surpasses his brief alliances in 3rd Life (he literally tells Grian he can kill him for "keeping [him] alive this long"). But Scar is not so loyal as to consider himself above killing an ally. Scar plays a very dangerous game of balance with his alliances, he wants everyone to be allied with him despite the improbability of such an arrangement.

In last life, people seem to have a different interpretation of Grian's actions (particularly pertaining to his loyalty), than I do. I don't think Grian is betraying anyone when he kills Jimmy and Mumbo. Last Life requires all non-red alliances be severed once a party reaches red. Grian takes this very seriously, only "faltering" once when he tries to preserve his allyship with Mumbo. But even then he's trying to kill him, so I'd hardly count it. Grian removes himself from the southlands when he goes red, and on red he remains loyal to Joel. He rejoins the southlands when he returns to yellow and is back again to Joel when they're both reds. He is consistent in his loyalty and as I've said, doesn't let loyalty overstay its welcome. He knows when to let go, and he does so.

Keeping in mind I haven't watched Scar's Last Life in a hot minute, this is from memory and a recent rewatch of Joel's. Scar makes an unfortunate alliance with Joel at the beginning of the season, unfortunate because of the fleeting nature of their alliance. Scar proves again he is more than willing to set loyalty aside to do what needs to be done when he attempts to murder Joel as the boogeyman. Upon finding out Joel is also a boogeyman, he instead later tries to help Joel as he embarrassingly fails to kill anyone over and over. Even avenging Joel by killing Mumbo for his boogey-kill. When Joel is on red continously placing traps around their mountain for Scar, Scar chooses to take little offense to it. He knows he would have done the same. Scar does what needs to be done. He is a survivor first and foremost

Double life is interesting because it shows a break in Grian's loyalty habits. He doesn't stay loyal to a faction he declares at the beginning nor does his loyalty follow the games rules. Grian "cheating" on Scar feels out of character. It almost seems like an act of revenge for Scar's betrayal in 3rd Life. An overdue comeuppance. Which is a fun interpretation I like. You could also see it as an act of defiance against the watchers, to say "no I am not playing by ur rules anymore. You cannot choose my allies for me". Whatever floats ur boat. I get people who downplay the "affair" as not the serious because they just call each other secret soulmates and send presents, but I think that interpretation misses the most important part: how it is presented to us. Grian and Scar both portray the secret soulmate bit as akin to cheating, so it makes the most sense the audience interprets it as such.

Double Life Scar is often misinterpreted to be happier with Grian than he actually is. In the beginning, Scar doesn't care to find his soulmate. He doesn't even realize it's Grian until the end of the episode. First thing Scar does the next episode, is try to introduce Grian to his Jellie-pandas. Which are immediately rejected by Grian. Scar then decides he will torture Grian with pain as payback, which he also teaches to Pearl. (A really great parallel imo because had Scar been tied to Scott I think he would have also been rejected). Interestingly, both Grian and Scar understand loyalty as a necessity to survival, especially in this particular game, as such they stay together despite BOTH being displeased with each other.

Grian stays firm with the bad boys until their early deaths. Despite his button pressing habits and that one fight they had over falling off ladders, he doesn't betray them. But he doesn't let grief consume him. That's the way of the game. His allies die, he needs safety. He moves on. And he once again proves his secondary allies (not nosey neighbors as they are now his primaries) mean little to him when he kills Scar. Again. And calls it the ultimate betrayal Grian when I fucking catch you

The clockers actually seem to be the perfect alliance for Scar. Bdubs who he can betray a million times over and always be forgiven, and Cleo who has still not forgiven Bigb for his choice to kill her two seasons ago. Scar has no reason to betray these two and never does, but he does believe Bdubs will betray them.

Grian in Secret Life is interesting because it is the first time we see him struggle to get an alliance. He kinda just shows up on Cletho's doorstep one day and asks to be let inside. Scott implies he lacks loyalty because of his quick departure from the bad boys last season, but I have emphasized I disagree with this interpretation of Grian. Grian remains loyal all season. When he dies he doesn't know both Cleo and Etho were taken out just moments before him, and celebrates the amount of damage his final stand caused Gem and the Scotts. He will sacrifice himself for loyalty.

Secret Life is by far the most telling for Scar's stance on loyalty. He goes where the wind takes him. He tries to blend in for as long as he can and hopes no one notices he shouldn't be there. He only chooses the mounders over Gem and the Scotts because he is currently standing with them when the question needs answered. Friend to all friend to none. He could have easily picked either side. He refuses to take Pearl's offer for hearts, tho this is most definitely out of respect. He wants a fair fight with Pearl, and he gets it. He very quickly turns his blade on Pearl after Gem is gone. Because he was never too tied to one.

So uh tl;dr: Grian and Scar are quick to kill loyalties when necessary, but Scar will always prioritize his survival over being loyal

[definitelynotshouting]

just read thru ur hunger au loredoc and now am going to read the fic…. LOVE the worldbuilding, aaaahhhh……

a couple of curious questions now though!

do ender dragons serve any specific purpose/have connections within the ecosystem at large, or are they just kinda like… internal organs for servers as Entities?

is there any particular way that game updates manifest, or is it sort of a presumption that they were there “the whole time”? and if the former, where are the updates coming from? 👁️👁️

and last! are there any servers outside of those connected to grian‘s specific arc that you have had any interesting thoughts about? ie empires, new life, vault hunters, dsmp, origins, mianite, etc

This has been sitting in my inbox for MONTHS but i finally have some brainpower to answer it so!!! Firstly i really hope you ended up enjoying the fic if youve gotten around to reading it :]] and im really glad you like all the worldbuilding and lore!! These are such great questions so im gonna try my best to do them justice >:]]

So i only recently puzzled this out with the Ender Dragon's role in the overall universe's ecosystem, but to explain it i need to go on a bit of a tangent. So if youve been through my loredoc, then you probably already know that Players are what drive the creation of server worlds-- ive likened this before to the protective shell of an egg, surrounding a Spawned Player to shield it from the inhospitable environment of the in-between. For the purposes of this analogy, we'll say a server is like the eggshell, while the Player inside it is the chick growing within. Once a Player has developed enough, gone through the majority of their progression advancements, the universe will direct them to one last task-- kill the Ender Dragon. This is the egg-tooth, what will essentially hatch the Player so they can emerge from their shell and enter the universe at large (aka join and discover other servers, mingle with other Players, etc etc).

The way Ender Dragons function in servers is that they essentially lock travel to and from them-- while the dragon is alive, nothing comes in, and nothing comes out. Once killed, the return gateway at the center island is opened up to the overworld-- but thats not the only function it has. Return gateways can actually serve as a portal to other open servers!! Players can adjust the server address via their comm, and spawn in at a completely different location than the server they just left. This is how basic intra-server travel occurs!!

Relatedly, Hypixel is what i consider a "hub" server-- aka a large, traffic-heavy server that acts as a bridge point for Players hopping between distant worlds. The distance between two servers is a very distinct factor in how easy it is to travel between them, and after a certain point, you cant hop directly across that gap without needing to use a hub server as a bridge. Its sorta like a rest stop during long road trips, if you look at it sideways. Because of this Hypixel is very touristy in my mind and hosts a lot of constant entertainment for Players who stop there on their way to another destination!!!

(an additional fun little fact for you: when MCC isnt hosting its monthly tournament, it acts as a hub server as well!! Noxcrew are in charge of upkeeping its maintenance :] )

For servers other than those already mentioned, ive definitely had some thoughts about empires and dsmp. Most of them boil down to the fact that 90% of what Players do is basically LARP ����😂😂 so Empires??? Entirely LARPing. These guys are living their best lives just making shit up and my gods are they having fun with it. My thoughts on DSMP are actually on a similar note, with one key difference: i think it started out as pure LARPing, and then everyone just got a little... too into it, per se. Like huge case of "got too invested and now theres actual emotional stakes here in what was supposed to be a silly play-pretend conflict" and then things just started spiraling out of control. I havent put a WHOLE ton of thought into it beyond that tho

As for updates, my thoughts are a bit complex-- for things that arent mobs (aka structures), im operating more on the basis of "theyve always been there"-- but for mobs themselves, i think the process is sorta akin to randomized and rapid evolution. New mobs arent uniformly pushed out into server worlds-- i think they just sometimes appear, and then gradually more and more Players begin to encounter them; sorta like randomized rollouts, in a way. Newer worlds are more likely to host newer mobs, while older ones may not see them soon or even at all, depending on where theyre at in their own life cycles. Smth ive also been thinking a lot about lately which i promise is vaguely related to this is that Player-kept information isnt centralized!! They dont really have the internet like we do, so any news about new mobs showing up in vanilla worlds has to be spread purely by word-of-mouth

I hope these answered your questions well!! Thank you for being so patient with me while i cooked :]]❤️

[beelanddiavolosimp-blog]

Hi! I love your writing♡ Can i request the brothers with an mc who has Haphephobia (fear of being touched, usually they can only touch people they trust after a long period of therapy) and their reactions to the first time mc tries to hold their hand?

Hello! ^^ thank you so much I'm so glad you enjoy my content :) I have never heard of this phobia but I will try my best to write as close as possible to its definition!

How the obey me brothers would react to a Haphephobia MC holding their hand

Lucifer

He listened attentively when you explained your phobia to him and completely understood. He thought to himself and decided a big way for your relationship to become stronger without touch is quality time. You often found yourselves on small coffee or tea dates or just something small where the two of you could relax. On one of those particular dates you found yourselves gazing at his hand. That sense of fear you once had at the beginning of your relationship wasn't quite there anymore. You decided to test the waters and sneak your hand to hold his. He stalled a bit realizing you broke that barrier you once told him would eventually come. He then turns and smiles at you "Good job Mc I am proud of you" he says softly.

Mammon

Now he at first was confused. Why wouldn't you like being touched by the one you love? He then realized that not everyone is the same as he is. Since he cared deeply about you he asked his brothers of different ways to show his love to you without making you uncomfortable. He eventually settled on the same as Lucifer quality time but it was more fun dates such as festivals or the zoo just an activity you two would enjoy. On one particular date you listen to him talk away about something before glancing down at his hand. You ponder for a bit before deciding it was time to do what you both were building at. You reach your hand out then gently wrap your fingers around his own. He immediately stiffened and his words became jumbled and incoherent. After a bit of time calming him down he gazed lovingly at you and said "thank you".

Levi

He himself was terrified of any romantic interaction with you so he wasn't as taken aback as the others were. You two found yourselves easily able to adapt to each other. You two mostly spent time in his room watching anime or playing games together. It was actually a long bit into your relationship and he never once faltered or made you uncomfortable fitting into your phobia perfectly for you. You look at his fingers and decide for you both something smaller would be suitable. You suddenly interlock your pinkies together and look up at him. He immediately flushed red and was another one who was incoherent. After he calmed down he first asked if you were truly okay with the action and you smile at him. "I feel comfortable with you Levi" you say truthfully and he smiles back.

Satan

He was very smart only ever reading books and gaining knowledge but when it came to you he felt so lost. Once he learned of your phobia he had no issues with it per say just wondering how he could make you comfortable. He decided on showing you things that helped keep him calm which included cats and books. It was a quiet chilly evening when the both of you were looking at cats together that you felt you two hit that peak comfortability to where you aren't afraid anymore. You gently interlock your fingers together and he had a small red hue to his cheeks yet he talked as if everything were normal not wanting to freak you out but on the inside he was as happy as he could ever be.

Asmos

He was so afraid to say the least. All he knew was being touchy and loving all over the person he was attracted to. He focused hard though to make sure you were fully comfortable with him because he loved you like he did no other. He decided gift giving was perfect. It showed he listened to you and your interest ontop of putting severe thoughts into the gifts. You two were gossiping in his room where he kept his distance perfectly comfortable for you. Yet you felt as if you'd be okay with even a slight touch so you reach your hand over to his and set it ontop of his own. He stopped talking and looked down at your hand before looking back up at you. "Are you sure this is okay Hun?" He asked genuinely. Once you nod he gently held your hand and wouldn't admit it but was practically vibrating with happiness that he came so far with you.

Beel

After you told him he was such a sweetheart that even when he came too close to you he immediately apologized or asked if you were okay. It wasn't an annoying amount just showing he genuinely cared for you and your comfortability above all else. He didn't mind not touching you he just enjoyed your presence just as he did belphie. He took you out to dinner at a really nice restaurant and he was speaking of all of the great food here that you should try. Yet your mind wandered to his hands. They were big yet warm and comforting. You perk up realizing you weren't afraid of the thought of holding his hand like you were before. You set your hand into the palm of his own and he immediately looked at the action. He then looked up at you and gave one of his heartwarming smiles. He made no action to move away or go further going with the pace you set.

Belphie

He is barely conscious most of the time so he didn't think he would have an issue with your phobia that is until it came to wanting to sleep together. He then realized he had to keep to himself and not cuddle up to you for your comfort. He protected you a lot from others who tried to become overly touchy since well he becomes a dick when it comes to protecting you. He found himself being fine with just sleeping next to you where no touch was needed. Yet when you two were out stargazing together you knew in your heart and mind that now was the time. You gently hold his hand and he immediately turns his head to you. His eyes asked you if you were truly okay and ready. When you nod he just gives your hand a gentle squeeze and looks back up to the stars wishing today could last forever now.

I hope I did well and that you enjoy it!

[alexanderwales]

My early impression of Factorio: Space Age are extremely positive, though it's much more geared toward veterans than I would have expected. I guess sushi belts aren't entirely mandatory, but I don't know how you would get by without them. They are easier now, but there are other mechanics that take things up a notch.

Mild spoilers follow, but it's not really a spoiler kind of game, and the UI seems very ready to give you all kinds of information about places you haven't been and things you haven't seen.

It's got a ton of content, the game design is overall fantastic on several levels, the music has been great, and in general I'm just a huge fan of it.

I am curious how well it holds up on repeat play, since a lot of doing a blind playthrough is figuring things out, and after you've figured them out, a lot of the gameplay is gone.

One slightly negative note, at least for me, is that the early game felt much too longer when I just wanted to get to space, and I kind of wanted … I don't know, an accelerated start option, not necessarily something like Faster Start, but a few technologies researched and maybe a tiny starter base or something. Setting up a furnace stack by hand is not something that I feel like I really need to do again, but I did it for the first SA playthrough, because I wanted the default expansion experience. I did kind of regret it in the end though.

I made it to deep space science in SE, so that's the point of comparison for me, and this is far far less of a grind, along with far more interesting challenges. The cheap rockets that can't carry a lot really incentivize building up a proper base on each planet, one that can make its own buildings and infrastructure, which is neat, and thankfully on all but Gleba (and Nauvis) you don't really have to set up permanent defenses against enemies, which can be a bit of a pain if you want to get on to the next thing. I set up defenses on Nauvis, and that was a time sink, but with the enemy expansion mechanics it was very very necessary. I think next time, rail world setting might be better, but I don't know how that would change the other worlds.

I think the thing that I admire most about it is that they really worked hard on making sure that each planet was very very distinctly different from the others, that each planet had some kind of new threat that was very different from the others, that each planet had gameplay mechanics that were very different from the others ... and it all works wonderfully, at least so far.

There are a few things that I wish were in the expansion, which aren't (at least as far as I know), and some of those are a matter of creative vision, some are a matter of development time taking forever, and others are just engine limitations. The spaceships are ... I mean, they're fine, but it's very clear that they're using the "surface" class, which is what I would have expected, but still means that there's none of the cool space stuff like docking procedures and ships that split apart and spinning up for artificial gravity. It's another interesting challenge in terms of game mechanics, but it's definitely aesthetically the worst of the new things.

The spaceships do not particularly look like spaceships, an issue which I think could have been partially solved by having new spaceship wall sprites and requiring the spaceship to be enclosed. The rocket engines look incredibly cool when they fire up, but then you look up at the gun turrets just sort of clinging onto this platform, and it seems a bit jank. But it's also the thing you probably spend the least amount of time on overall, since the ships get built a few times and then never looked at again, moving between planets without much intervention once the design works well.

(The space map is also a bit of a disappointment. I wasn't expecting orbital mechanics, but ... actually, I think I would have liked some kind of simulation of it. Launch windows for shortest time between planets would have been cool. Some circuit-readable calculation of how much thrust/time it will take, which rises and falls with the motion of the planets?)

But yes, overall, very positive on the expansion. I think there are a few kinks that aren't quite worked out, but in my opinion they're nothing major, just some features and mechanics that aren't signposted or a few wonky UI elements.

[efangamez]

Hey y'all! Here is Efan's quick rundown and review of almost all the cool games I played this year, as well as my Steam in Review!

1. Darkest Dungeon

I've been playing this game for nearly ten years, and I finally beat it this year. Not a 2023 release, but a huge milestone for myself. After a terrible year before it, I made it a goal to face my fears and beat this game. Lo' and behold, I did, and it's one of my own personal gaming accomplishments. It's solidified as the best turn based game I've ever played, but it does have its late-game issues, specifically with the Crimson Court maps and the final dungeon maps. It's just absurd tbh. However, this is one of my favorite games of all time, if not my favorite, and it's a must have for horror fans, HP Lovecrft fans, and turn based game fans. 9.7/10

2. Sun Haven

A wonderful and cute farming sim that scratched an itch no other could scratch. Its characters are fun, the music is solid, the graphics are very bright and fantastical, and the combat was simple yet kinda fun. I really loved the progression in this game too. It still has its issues, such as the late game (it may have been fixed because this game was in early access) and some of the utility of the workbenches you can use. All in all, a very solid farming sim (and just life sim in general tbh) if you like a little bit of fantasy mixed in. 9/10

3. Halls of Torment

My favorite Survivor game. The music, aesthetics, progression, characters, and maps are all different enough to keep you coming back for more. As I am disabled, these games are actually super fun to play because I only have to play with one hand. It was in early access when I played it heavily, so it had some issues like the handling of inventory, some balance issues, and feature creep issues, but they may have been fixed now. 9.3/10

4. Cassette Beasts

A must-play monster battler with an amazing plot, an incredible soundtrack, interesting monsters, and great characters for the most part. If you've been really wanting a game that is reminiscent of Pokemon colleseum but also want that 2d love of the Black and White games, this is a must have. It does have some balance issues (again, early access game when I played), but other than that and maybe some performance issues that are probably fixed by now, it was an incredible game that made me want a 2d Pokemon game more than ever. 9/10

5. Roboquest

A fantastic FPS roguelike game with great gunplay, movement, art direction, and music too. Each weapon feels pretty unique, it has melee weapons (wish there were more though) and a progression system that's really cool. It plays like if Doom Eternal had a kid with Borderlands, and I think plays a bit better than any other RANGED FPS roguelike/lite that I've played. I will say the difficulty settings are really cool, but I think they are a little too enticing due to game balance as of 1.0 due to progression being a bit of a grind. I think that having different endings for each difficulty might be a cool idea, each as satisfying as the other, but I know that can be a pain to develop. 9/10

6. Mortal Sin

A beautifully dark and trippy mostly melee FPS roguelike that takes the intensity of DOOM and the melee weapons of Elderborn and drenches it in a slow-mo filled, heavy swinging fun time. It's definitely the most FUN game this year as I've been craving an FPS melee roguelike for a while. It accomplishes this and then some with pretty cool progression that adds some variety to each game. The art direction reminds me of a more purple and red MORK BORG (fellow TTRPGers rejoice) and I LOVE it. The only issues to me are that the story and lore are a bit boring and lacking, but again it's in early access, so it has time to cook. 9.5/10

7. And last, my game of the year, LUNACID by @stylishkira

What a gorgeous game all around. The music has probably the most atmosphere out of any indie game I've played outside of Darkest Dungeon. Its levelling system is accessible but fun, you can create your own character with their own name and profile picture which I think is SO cool (Mortal Sin should totally do this if it's not too much of a copy). The combat is really fun and the sound design is probably second, once again, to Darkest Dungeon. It was an absolutely magical experience playing this game, and an experience I don't think I'll ever forget. I do think, however, that the ending feels really really rushed, and that sullied my experience a little bit, and the bosses are pretty unbalanced because you can just spam all of your health potions and tank the bosses, but the experience leading up to the ending is amazing. Also, I know the true ending is purposely a little complex, but tbh, if the goal was to have the "true" endings similar to the Souls games, having the final climactic boss (which I won't spoil, but is really cool) be the core of the normal ending, paired with alternate endings WITH that really cool final boss I think, might make the experience a bit more satisfying. It's already kinda implemented, but I loved this game so much that the standard ending just kinda felt....empty. Don't let these critiques stop you from playing this game, however. It's one of my favorites of all time, and I only give these critiques because I love this game so much. This is a MUST PLAY, and for the price, it's an absolute steal and should be priced up, imo. I cannot wait to see where the direction of possible King's Field style games come, because I am THIRSTY for more! 9.6/10

Annnddddddd that's it! Some great other games I played this year were the Demon Souls remake (9.2/10) Shadow of the Colossus (9.3/10), and Bloodborne (for probably the 30th time, and that's no joke, 9.8/10), and Quake (9.8/10).

[lyss-sketchbox]

(To start, I've been enjoying reading your and folks' various perspectives on Natlan, it's interesting to see different breakdowns/thoughts)

I do have a theory on the flippancy though, and I may very well be horribly wrong, but I suspect it's intentional. The whole nation is being taught, more or less, that this war they're fighting is a game. It's fine if you die, we'll bring you back. It's fine if you fight the Abyss, we do it all the time. And yet. We see that folks' Ancient Names can be lost and not recovered, that you can't fully recover from Abyssal corrosion, and that hey, actually, Kachina is a terrified kid when we see that projection of her. It may even be part of why the nation is struggling so much with creating their Contending Fire. I also think Mavuika plays into this narrative.

Primarily, I think (or maybe just hope) her overconfidence is going to be her hubris. Traveller expresses concern about the time she has to gather the warriors and she's non-plussed, "eh, I trust the Wyob". She's got A Plan and it's going to work, according to her. But I dunno about that ma'am. She also says weirdly definitive statements that I don't think are fully accurate like "humans can't know their fate" and "the only thing that unites the Fatui are collecting the gnoses" that lead me to believe she puts full stock in her conclusions as soon as she feels she has an answer and doesn't exactly question any further.

Honestly? It would be nice if they set up this whole thing of the nation being so casual and Traveler buying into it only to tear it, crashing down, around everyone. How long can the nation avoid taking things seriously before everything comes to a head? (Perhaps why Capitano isn't interested in brute-forcing things overall? Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit, lol)

What an interesting take, genuinely

So Mavuika

It would definitely play the part of being a pyro archon and how pyro vision holders are often extremely confident and high spirited. It would make sense if the pyro archon embodies that kind of value.

This also lines up with what the previous anon said about how she wanted to be reincarnated because its HER plan and she wanted to see it through even if it means offing herself early.

(I dont remember the ending dialogue was i did it all at like 4 am so yeah please fight me on my takes)

She also seems very quick to make MASSIVE decisions like using a good chunk of her power to keep the Contending Flame alive right then and there even with the concerns of some people. Then she was just as quick to burn all the mementos gathered for centuries when the group sent to find Kachina didnt make it.

I feel like maybe she couldve waited before keeping the Contending Flame alive. And while the Contending Flame IS more importang than a single girl, based on the time we spent in the Night Kingdom. It doesnt... feel all that long. She couldve waited. Use her power to save us. Rest for a while then fan the Contending Flame. Saving us from the Night Kingdom didnt feel like a permanent loss of power while keeping the Contending Flame alive does.

To be honest, she IS human, WAS human before archonhood. Shes been human TWICE now due to her reincarnation. I can understand humans wanting to prove to higher powers and beings such as fate that they CAN hold power over themselves. But being human, being NATLANIAN means she has worshipped to Wayob as well at some point. Hence putting her faith more into them and their ancient names.

The Plot of Natlan

I will admit here that i am biased and there is only 2 acts so far. For all i know theyre still setting up the chekovs guns and they may pop oh so beautifully in late acts and i am too harsh on the set up acts.

But i can understand if the people of natlan has been trained their entire life to numb themselves of the true horrors of war. Because they live constantly in it, if they are in constant fear, it is not good for morales or the ancient name holders either.

And if they were written to be so chill so that hoyoverse can pull the rug under us even harder then well good on them because i will be COMPLETELY honest.

I cannot see them pulling this without making it cliche or shallow.

Because we all already know SOMETHING is gonna go wrong. The abyss will reach natlan. The contending flame will die. The 6 heroes will reawaken and help Mavuika fight off the abyss for good. We know it will happen. The only issue is how to get there and how to not make it cliche as fuck.

Because for one they pulled the anime training montage for Kachina where we get told she is actually really good, she has been training so hard with Mualani but we literally dont get to see or feel it. But oop she defeated mualani.

They pulled the power of friendship when Mualani talked back to lector in the night kingdom.

They already spoiled how Ororon was the traitor because HE WAS STANDING NEXT TO CAPITANO IN THE TRAILER.

It feels way too messy for me, way too unserious and uncoordinated both in game and advertisement materials. I almost feel like capitano, 1st of the fatui harbinger, probably shouldnt have been responsible for natlan because dude can out espionage them (or maybe natlan and capitano are both as equally uncoordinated who knows).

Well for NOW i think they have a generic base plot. I would be very willing to declare how wrong i was about natlan if act 3-5 managed to fucking mindblow me. But yeah as you can see i am not hopeful that hyv have half the brain you have about the plot.

[zalia]

Experiencing Destiny 1 as a D2 player

I picked up Destiny 1 in a sale recently despite being told a lot about its problems, and honestly I'm really enjoying playing it! I feel a bit like a time traveller visiting important places and events from the past.

I also have friends who played Destiny nearly from the beginning and it's fun to go back and go 'ooooh that's what they were talking about!'. I am also very aware that if I had started playing it without already being invested, I would be having considerably less fun. (Also, being fair, much of the fun is doubtless novelty after playing *mumbletymumble* hours of D2 over the past couple of years).

But it's genuinely been really interesting from a design and narrative perspective going back to it and seeing where the story began and how things have changed and I wanted to ramble about it. Full disclosure, I have played up through the first couple of missions of The Taken King. There are also things I can't comment on such as Crucible (because getting enough players for a match has not happened yet), events (no longer happening) etc. Also haven't managed to run a raid yet but hopefully will eventually!

I will start with the bad, to get it over with. A lot of stuff here will be well known and honestly it's probably less interesting than the good/thinky stuff.

The Bad

Oh boy I have maligned D2's New Light introduction so badly since it is miles ahead of D1 just by merit of actually having one! D1 gives you the opening run through the Cosmodrome where they tell you what buttons to use and then refuses to explain anything ever again. (This very definitely ties into it being a game I enjoy now but would probably not have enjoyed if I wasn't already invested)

You don't realise how many QoL improvements D2 has until you have to go to orbit and select a new destination every single time. Also no fast travel points. And no you cannot just look at a map of the place you're traversing. Fashion is difficult too.

Up until Taken King, I am not sure why they bothered hiring voice actors for anyone except Ghost, Elsie Bray, and maybe the Speaker. And I have no idea why they hired Bill Nighy for that part (I mean I do, it's because they wanted to use Big Names for marketing but still...). The Vanguard could easily be replaced with cardboard cutouts because they are basically uninvolved in anything until Taken King begins. I know they aren't involved in every seasonal plot now, but they do appear and develop.

The story and writing is... well, it makes an attempt to exist. It does not succeed until The Taken King. I went in knowing what happens in the story and I'm still not actually sure what happens in the story because it is basically someone's pre-first draft bullet points of a narrative. The only reason I knew I was starting different storylines is because the mission popup tells you which storyline it is. 'I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain' is a meme for a reason, but another bit which I think illustrates the point well is from House of Wolves. Petra tells you that Skolas has entered the Vault of Glass and this is bad so you need to stop him. It is never explained before then what the Vault of Glass is, what it does, why it would be bad for Skolas to be in there, or... anything. While D2 can be obtuse, and sometimes leaves important info in easily overlooked lore tabs (or in vaulted content), it at least tries to tell you what the story is. I feel like D1 actively resents that players do not read the bullet points and fill in everything the writers had in their heads. Another example is the Devil's Lair strike. it's the first one you take on in D1, and after doing it in D2, I was expecting backstory and build up. Nope, you just get sent in with nothing to really explain what is going on, who the House of Devils are, what a Servitor is... I know it had troubled development and the story got torn apart and remade very close to launch, and it really shows in the early stuff. It's a series of missions that were made and then had to be strung together with the thinnest of threads. It gets better in Taken King, but at times is still not great. You first encounter the Taken on Phobos, I think Ghost asks about what they are. I was expecting more discussion about them and what they are and how horrifying it is. But nope, they just exist now and we're all fine with that.

So. Much. Grinding. The pinnacle grind was annoying in D2, the grind to just get your light up in D1 is so much worse. You will be doing bounties desperately to try to get your rep up with the various groups just so you can actually get fragments of story and quests. You will be grinding just to level up your subclass and it takes ages.

The places you visit are very expansive - even the Cosmodrome is significantly larger - which is great when they're used well, but a lot of the time they feel very empty, there to make you play for longer to get between areas than because there is anything to do.

The Good

The game is gorgeous! I'm loving getting to see Venus and Mars and the Dreadnaught. They're beautiful environments. Everything feels very expansive which can be very cool (as above, it can also be less good). When used well, it feels like there are so many mysteries and secrets hidden in this abandoned world. There are hidden bunkers and spaces, huge Vex structures and ruined cities, tunnels burrowed beneath the Cosmodrome and the Taken King's dreadnaught. It's genuinely fun to explore (up to a point).

It does an excellent job of making you genuinely feel like it's post-apocalyptic and the existence of humanity is precarious. And you, the Guardian, are brand new and everything is trying to kill you. You don't have multiple gods stored in your vault in the form of guns! Everything feels more dangerous. For example, I think if D2 is your intro, you look back at the Great Disaster and the first Crota fireteam and go 'but how did that happen when I go onto the moon and take out ogres with a single punch? The biggest threat in the Abyss in Crota's End is falling into a pit or getting hit by a pendulum! Yeah no I get it now. In D1 you are much less powerful and it makes swarming thralls and normal enemies much more of a threat. Things feel dangerous in a way that D2 rarely manages. I'll talk about this a bit more in depth later.

By making your supers and abilities less powerful, they have weirdly made them more useful. In D2 I usually save mine for bosses since it feels like a waste to use them on normal enemies. In D1, it makes absolute sense to use your abilities basically as soon as you have them. You should absolutely use your Golden Gun on a normal Hive Knight or Fallen Vandal!

There's some great atmospheric touches. I love hearing the snippets of distorted music when I'm near a Rasputin bunker. Going into some of the ruined buildings on Mars or Venus where it's dark and suddenly seeing so many red Vex eyes staring back at you is chilling.

The opening mission of Taken King is fantastic. Genuinely creepy and the Taken in general in D1 feel much scarier and threatening than in D2.

All the different enemy factions are different colours and designs! I love that!

Weapons still go brrrrr in a very pleasing way. And getting new gear feels genuinely satisfying in a way that it rarely does in D2. I junk 99% of the armour and guns I get in D2, in D1 I end up being much more considering of whether something is useful. Legendary weapons and armour feel precious!

I keep picking up random Warmind weapons to turn into Banshee that I know lead to an exotic quest and I am enjoying the feeling of that being another Secret Thing I am discovering.

Honestly, I really like Banshee's weapon bounties - you get given a prototype weapon to test out and gather data by doing certain things (killing X number of a certain enemy etc.) and that gains you rep. And you can then order a legendary version of the weapon from him to be delivered the next Wednesday.

Thoughts/Observations

Knowing that the 'original' story was seemingly going to focus more on Rasputin, and an exo version of him getting stolen by the Hive makes the appearance of some of the Hive areas on the Moon make more sense. There's some bits that are high tech in a way that feels very at-odds with what we see of the Dreadnaught and, other Hive locations which lean much more towards the organic and magical.

Similarly, Rise of Iron feels a lot more hard sci-fi than much of what Destiny has become, and has such a huge Rasputin focus. I believe it was partially developed by an outside studio, so I do wonder if it was based, at least in part, on the 'original' story of Destiny, and was either too far into development, or the other studio just never got the memo about the change in tone.

Vaguely related to the above, but way more speculative, I wonder if Banshee was originally meant to be a Rasputin exo, then that story got shifted to Felwinter, but the seeds were used for the story of Banshee having been Clovis Bray.

Honestly while it's fun to think about, in general I find the obsession parts of the Destiny community have with 'the original story' (of the 'maybe they're finally going back to the original story!' type where the unspoken idea is that this was the perfect undiluted pure story that was 100% planned and set in stone) to be fundamentally misunderstanding how creating stories work. I can guarantee that even if that first story had been used, after 10 years of multiple writers etc. it would still be in a very different place than where the people who came up with it initially thought it would go. It would have evolved and changed and shifted, even if it was following the same vague plan. That's just what stories do.

Oh wow, suddenly all the Nightmare Hunts in Shadowkeep make way more sense! I get it now!

Actually I get a lot of references now XD

Oh wow Shaxx sounds so depressed. I guess this was before he started therapy.

So many identical caves...

Thoughts on Power Creep

D1 leans much more into the post-apocalyptic setting and it does an excellent job of making the existence of the Last City, humanity, and Guardians feel precarious. Everything seems more dangerous, more of a threat. You really are part of the last bastion of humanity. And there's a few ways this is done.

First, you are much less powerful. Yes, you have supers and grenades, but they do much less damage (and are much less flashy) than in D1. There has been a huge amount of power creep! You won't be one-shotting bosses, even normal Vanguard Strike bosses with golden gun easily.

Legendary weapons feel rare and special, and I am still using Blue weapons at times because sometimes I have to just to get the higher light level. I have reached level 40 and have only just got my first exotic armour pieces which I bought from Xur! They are FR0ST-EE5, an exotic I have never bothered with in D2, but in D1 the recharge for abilities when sprinting is genuinely handy. I don't have any exotic weapons at all yet!

It leads to a very different playstyle - I play much more carefully because I cannot just charge in with something like Osteo Striga and wipe out a room with a few shots. In D2 we have killed multiple gods, taken down an Empire, and forged alliances. In D1, we're just some random Guardian and the gameplay reflects this.

And I hate to say this, but I also kind of get the YouTube/Stream BNFs who complain about things not being hard enough. It's just... they're completely wrong about the reasons and the solutions.

They seem to think that what is needed is more enemies with higher health, and nerf Divinity because it makes it too easy, and everything should be designed to stop normal players being able to do it. And it... it doesn't work? Ghosts of the Deep was fun, but holy fuck the health bars on the enemies make it feel grindy and dragged out. Legend Avalon was a slog because there's Too Much - too many elements at the same time so it's just overwhelming instead of fun. (Starcrossed on legend is tough, but feels more enjoyable and managable. I'm looking forward to doing it again instead of dreading it).

More difficulty isn't what makes D1 feel harder, being weaker is what does this. I have no doubt that if I could put my D2 stuff against D1 enemies I would decimate them. But in D1 I am a lone Guardian with scavenged gear and yes, I have the Light and can be resurrected, and it gives me an edge vs normal humans, but not a crazy amount.

In D2 I have so many exotics and weapons that I can just throw them away. I can have intricately crafted builds to take on any enemies! I am basically one of the most powerful entities in the solar system.

And that's not something you can really scale back. They did it with Red War at the start of D2. Maybe they could do it as a result of Final Shape and do smaller stories focused on Earth and recovery and what you even do after your purpose for fighting for so long is gone (and I think there is value in those stories! I would love it personally). But uh... I don't think most people would actually be happy having everything nerfed on such a scale. Give up your 999,999 Celestial Nighthawk boss damage, for a Golden Gun that with a bit of luck might one-shot a yellowbar?

Give up a lot of creativity in terms of what you use and how you play, in exchange for a tougher game with way less choice for builds, but one that is potentially more atmospheric and in-keeping with the post-apocalypse and the dangers of the solar system?

I don't have an answer for that! And it's not even the most important thing. Gamer BNFs gonna always want to prove that they're better than everyone at pressing buttons, and forget that the majority of players are casuals. But it's been interesting playing a different type of difficulty, rather than the forced difficulty of insanely high HP and Too Many Things.

Power creep is a real issue in a lot of long-running media (just look at superhero movies, or many many monster of the week TV shows). You're in a position of feeling like you need to one-up yourself every time. Every new villain has to be the biggest and baddest, and so you have to become more and more powerful to combat that, which means the next villain has to be even bigger and badder.

With Destiny we've gone from a scrappy underdog, to a god-killer.

I'm reminded of Osiris talking about Saint in The Sundial lore.

'I watched him grow from neophyte to demi-god'.

King of fitting for us to have done the same as Saint's inspiration.

[transmutationisms]

caden caden caden i am SO EXCITED to hear your thoughts for this episode. consider this ask an open prompt to say literally anything at all about it whatsoever <3

ok here goes. this was the payoff of an idea the show has been exploring for nearly four seasons now: that spectacle and showmanship can become reality, or more to the point, there is no essential difference between the two in the first place. politics is a particularly effective, and off-putting, demonstration of this process: the whole episode is driven by the tension between the created narrative and the material events, and through waystar's machinations, the dichotomy between the two can finally be totally collapsed and the country brought into line with atn's story of a mencken victory.

this is genuine, if genuinely repulsive, performative speech: a discursive practice that enacts or produces what it names. very few people are empowered such that they are capable of performative speech: presidents, lawmakers, judges, &c are the classic examples. and, in a world in which politics is not just a show but a profitable one, a company like atn can also join this list. this is not the first time we've seen atn use language to alter reality (for example, logan ultimately evaded the cruises scandal largely by pressuring the president through the manufacture of bad press) but it's a new height of brazenness for the siblings. what the show suggests is that the electoral process—the voting, the polls, the campaigning—is theatre, and what appears at first to be theatre—the television cameras, the graphics, the anchors touching up their makeup—is the speech that actually makes events happen, functioning of course as a mouthpiece for possibly the most powerful family in america.

succession has always been interested in the power of speech and the significance of language—"words are just complicated airflow" is from the second episode. the way characters talk is frequently bullshit, like tom and greg making up corporate-speak jargon in 'argestes' or kendall promising eternal life in 'living+'. they use profanity and metaphor to talk around their feelings, or as games in which the object is to assert dominance and the specific argument at hand barely matters. so much of the dialogue is 'meaningless' on the lowest level. yet, bolstered by a family dynasty and uttered by an anchor on an atn camera, words become not just meaningful but actually constitutive of reality. what kendall didn't understand in episode 2, and what logan understood instinctually but probably never in so many words, is that what constrains the reality-making capacity of speech is not some impotence inherent to language itself, but the social power structures its speakers exist in. speech in the hands of the powerful is itself also a technology of power.

ultimately this sort of tension between speech and event, or spectacle and reality, is why the show has always depended on the roys being a media family specifically. the commentary here is not just on a vague or generalised definition of capitalism, or on the effect of profit motives on politics. succession is specifically interested in how a corporation like waystar becomes successful by capitalising on the total spectacularisation of life, and how waystar can then use its position to create spectacle that is constitutive of a new reality without needing to be reflective of a preexisting one. it's a kind of frankenstein's monster: a beast raised by electricity whose powers far exceed what it was meant to be endowed with. this is why, as much as logan disdained certain cultural products and media (plays, music), he always valued the atn mouthpiece. what the siblings produced in this episode, and what logan valued atn for being able to produce, was not 'news' in the sense of being a reporting on reality, but 'truth' in the sense that the company simply willed it into reality instead.

[ajxrn-archive]

Obviously I know (some) of your thoughts on Childe, but what do you think of the other harbingers?

YIPEE I love the harbingers ‼️ I’ll rant under the cut.. I had a huge obsession with the harbingers a few months back and I still do (in fact my brainrot is coming back so this is a perfect time for you to ask this)

Starting off with Pierro. I find him so interesting as a character because when I was diving into the lore of the harbingers I originally thought that he was number one?? Apparently he’s the director because capitano is no. 1.. I think that’s interesting. So what mainly intrigues me about him is the fact that he’s khaenri’ahn. The Tsaritsa has got to be different from the other Archons because of the fact she literally has a Khaenri’ahn man help run her military. I wonder what their relationship is with each other. Is it anything like dainslumi? I can picture it being that way but more cold, you know? The fact he’s based off the commedia dell’arte stock character Pierro (the fool/jester) is really interesting to me too.. they all have their connections to the characters in one way or another so I wonder what exactly his is.

Now onto Capitano. So far I think he is SO fucking cool he might be one of my favorite harbingers atp. Design wise it’s definitely a favorite but also the fact that he has so many similarities to Kaeya? If hyv were to make him related in some way to kaeya that would be so funny to me.. a lot of people do the pierro is kaeya’s dad thing but honesty I think Capitano would be a cooler connection lowkey? Also generally the ragbros situation would be 10x worse if kaeya was related to the fatui in some way, no matter which one it is. Anyways back on capitano, I’m mostly interested to see how his motives lay out and what his relationship with Mavuika is. The fight seen with him and her was so neat like the way they laid it out was so.. idk. I have a thing for fire/ice character relationships (not in a romantic way.) also what interests me even more about him is that The Captain in the commedia dell’arte is described as a ‘braggart’ type of person, so I’m wondering if he would use his ability to “convince people who knew nothing about him beforehand” to try and manipulate people in Natlan to revolt against Mavuika for the current issues and whatnot.

like I wonder how this'll play into his character in game/story wise. I hope he'll be playable sniff sniff.. Anyways, now onto this fucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dottore is one of my favorite harbingers. I am an avid Dottore enjoyer. He’s cunning and genuinely awful and there’s no redeeming his ass he’s going straight to hell 🙏 and that’s what makes him such a GOOD character. He genuinely has zero redeeming qualities about him. He literally uses people and children for his experiments without second thought. He has clones of himself. He possibly killed his girlfriend in his school days. (If the zandik lore is right.) He was literally expelled from the Akademiya because of how awful he was.

I cannot fathom how amazing of a character he is. I think in games we need to have more characters who are just genuinely fucking evil and we don’t just “hate” them for it. I honestly dislike how people hate him JUST because he did bad shit, like have a better reason than that tbh? "He hurt collei/He's the reason crepus died/he gave scara so much trauma" I LOVE ALL THREE OF THOSE GUYS AND DOTTORE</3 Don't hate one character only to love the next. anyways dottore supremacy..

Anywho, onto Columbina. Honestly she intrigues me so much. She's so powerful that not even childe wants to fight her, what is up with that??? I think its also interesting how in the commedia dell'arte her title is technically Little Dove but it’s Damselette in the game. we like,, do not know much about her at all to be honest?? The harbingers voice lines about her interest me so much, especially arle's. It's very. vague??

Arlecchino: "She is a very special Harbinger. Pose her a question, and the answer you receive will be entirely unpredictable, if she sees fit to give a proper answer at all. Regardless, any answer you do receive is sure to be an interesting one."

Childe: "The Fatui Harbingers are ranked by strength, and I have no idea why that girl is No. 3. I'd test my skills with every Harbinger who ranks above me if I had the chance, but when it comes to her... something just doesn't feel right. Anyway, you should be careful around her."

Scara/Wanderer: "Let me ask: what should you do if you were to encounter a "damsel" who is oblivious and innocent at any given time, and unconcerned and unfeeling in any given situation? If it were me, I could at least challenge her to a fight. But if it were you... with your conscience, I would stay away from her."

Judging by voice lines alone, columbina is very, very powerful. she seems to beat around the bush with questions (arles voiceline) and is very mysterious even with the other harbingers. (childe saying something doesn't feel right) I've seen theories that she belongs to the seele race which is honestly pretty cool, but I think i'd need to see her in game or hear more about her first. I'd assume that Arlecchino has a rather close/interesting relationship with columbina. Not purely because of the fact they do in the commedia dell'arte, but because she was the only one out of the three to not tell the traveler to be careful around/stay away from columbina.

Arlecchino herself is a really well written character to me and I notice that a lot of the fandom don't understand her entirely (myself included.) Something i notice the most is how people tend to dumb her down to the Father of the house of the hearth, either portraying her as a wonderful parent (incorrect) or as an awful one (also incorrect.) She's definitely a highly flawed person who does put her children in danger, although she absolutely cares about the children of the hearth. I wouldn't say she's a child abuser/groomer/any other stupid shit the fandom says about her. Her wiki quite literally says that she's flawed but not as awful as Crucabena:

Her (possibly?) being khaenri'ahn is also so interesting because WHY does the tsaritsa keep having connections with khaenri'ah in her military of all things. I have so many questions.

We do not know much about pulcinella at all but I do find it SO intruiging/interesting (can someone give me another word for this HELP) that he's close to childe. he visits childes family for him, iirc, which is suspicious when you read the commedia dell'arte lore.

I do think he's doing this for self gain to be honest. He's a manipulative person, so he could be manipulating childe into relaxing around him to the point of letting pulcinella get near his family, which could end really badly to be honest.

Next up is scaramouche. I feel like the scara stans themselves don't even understand his character that much, because they're too busy yelling at people about raiden/dottore instead of focusing on his character itself. I think he's a LOT more than mommy issues short boy and actually his character is really deep. His name in the commedia dell'arte is also Little Skirmisher (instead of balladeer, though I'm not too sure what that means) and what's most interesting to me about his commedia dell'arte connection is how (IIRC, this could be wrong but i found this out last time i was talking about the harbingers and the commedia dell'arte) scaramouche's "mask" was later removed, which him being removed from irminsul could be a nod to that.

What's also a neat nod to the commedia is how scara "influences the audience to do his bidding." I think in game they referenced this by him influencing/controlling that one woman in sumeru (i forget her name) to be his first follower and do as he says.

Okay so truthfully i don't have many thoughts on sandrone but something that makes me curious about her backstory is the fact that in the commedia she is known as "Peasant.” what else is neat with this is that she looks like that one girl from Fontaine (Mary-Ann) I don’t really know/remember the the lore of her but hm.

What’s even weirder abt the similarities is that Marionette (her title) means Little Mary IIRC? I don’t think she IS Mary Ann since she’s dead but she could have connections to her. Anyway I don’t have many thoughts on her ngl.. </3 genshin give us sandrone lore PLEASEEEE

Next up is my fucking WIFE ‼️‼️ (la signora)

everyone who hates her sucks lowkey she’s such an overlooked character like her lore is so fucking?? sad?? Everyone reduces her to “haha ashes” and it annoys me tbh. Her boss fight was a pain in the fucking ass though ROSALYNE WHY.. it took me 20+ tries

I genuinely love her backstory it makes me so sad honestly. Through her grief and rage she became feared and hated. Idk I wish people would talk about her a little more?? Because she’s so interesting?? She has ties to ancient mondstadt isn’t that sick.

something that interests me the most about her character is how they made her somewhat different from La Signora in commedia dell’arte? She’s continually described as a woman who often cheats on her husband in the commedia, but when you read genshin Signora’s backstory it’s interesting to see how it’s mostly focused around how her loss of her lover threw her into a grief induced rage (basically, it’s centered around her grief and love)

as for her similarities, these two images explain it well:

Honestly I wish we had got to explore her character more than the information we have now. Genshin is so evil for killing her off tbh.

Pantalone I know like NOTHING about. I think he’s a really neat character. A lot of people dumb him down to “evil baizhu” but I do think he has a lot of potential to be a really good character

Basically he’s a capitalist ‼️ kidding but for him, he seems so far to be REALLY similar to Pantalone in the Commedia. I dont have too many thoughts on him either because we don’t know much about him yet </3 pantalone lore when….

and you already know most of my thoughts on Childe so I will save the rant for another day because that would get me fired up (I am losing words this rant sucked the life out of me HELP)

oh wait another thing that is neat about the harbingers entirely is how the trailer for them was called a Winter Night’s Lazzo (I think) but that’s another reference to the commedia dell’arte :)

[three-realms-archive]

Beel is Anime

Levi is torn. Very, very torn about whether he should intervene with the scene happening before his eyes.

On one hand, what was happening was definitely anime-related. A laptop, a phone and some DVD-playing screen; all playing a different genre of anime. There was a now-empty Akuzon package on the floor with a receipt for ‘anime cosplay waifu makeup eyeshadow palette and brush set with manga kawaii sticker set’ taped to the top. The contents of said-box were laid strewn on the coffee table, being used by the last brother he expected to share his interests. At least, not without some limited edition snacks or a themed-cafe involved. Despite that, Leviathan’s heart soared! His little bro was finally seeing the light and appreciating the wonders of anime! Maybe they could cosplay together; eat at maid cafes together; read manga, have hotpot, and all the other things he knows families do from the stories he’s read or watched before.

On the other hand, his second-youngest brother, Beelzebub, was currently dipping his fingers in what looked to be makeup primer (from the bottle label) and putting it in… his hair? Like gel. Making a mess of the whole… whatever this thing was. Smothering foundation on his lips before outlining them in eyeshadow; fumbling with coloured contact lenses, only to stick them with… lash glue? On his eyelids???

The whole thing looked like it required at least twenty content warnings. Plus a message telling kids to not try this at home.

Suddenly, Beel turned around. Of course he did. He was standing in front of a mirror, and could one-hundred percent see his older brother’s mortified face in its reflection.

“U-Uh… B-Beel. Beel!” Levi couldn’t really decide on what to say. Or even what tone of voice to use. “Beel, uh… What, um, are you up to?”

“Bro.” The sixth-born nodded in acknowledgement. One of the eyelid contacts fell off as he did so. “Have I done it right?”

Levi gulped, his hands getting clammy. What was he meant to say? To any of this?!

“D-Done what, Beel?”

“Cosplay. I thought we could go to the upcoming Ruri-chan pop-up cafe together. So I’m gonna dress up like Ruri.” Beel announced, holding up his arms in a ‘T’ shape. He had painted the sleeves of his shirt. Levi’s eyes fell on the paint bucket by Beel’s feet. Literal paint. Literal, thick, still wet paint. It was so much worse than Levi initially thought. “I saw on a poster that if you cosplay as Ruri-chan, you get free dessert.”

Levi blinked.

“Y-You’re cosplay - this is Ruri-chan?”

“Yup. If I want to cosplay, I just have to be anime, right?” Beel shrugged. “‘I am anime.’ That’s what you always shout when you cosplay in your room.” He explains simply, still in the ‘T’ pose. Levi’s eyes go wide and he immediately flushes a deep red, holding his hands to his face and trying to hide behind his arms.

“WHAT?! How did you - ? Y-You weren’t meant to hear…! GAH!!!” He groans loudly in defeat, sinking to the floor with his head in his hands; any further words muffled.

“It’s okay, Levi. I get it.” Beel reassures fondly, reaching down to pat his brother’s shoulder. Levi’s embarrassed stammers turn to horrified shrieks when he hears a wet squish, realising that Beel had also put foundation on his hands, which now were rubbing it into his favourite hoodie. “The Fangol team does chants to hype up before big games, too. I’ll chant it, too - and you can rate it.”

… Levi sobs helplessly as Beel takes a deep breath, and opens his mouth.

_

Lucifer nods, satisfied as he roams around the House of Lamentation, passing by each door. After all the nonsense last time, he’s banned anyone from using loud speakers without his permission… And he’s also banned Beel from ever touching a paintbrush. His hungry, little brother seemed to be behaving himself since then, so all was good.

Or so he thought. He’s checked all the rooms, so he decides to reward himself with a nice, long shower before he has to head back to his study to finish off more paper work. It’s the only room he hasn’t checked, too; which was convenient.

Lucifer approaches the bathroom. He hears a mix of Beel chanting “Beel is anime!” and Levi’s horrified wailing. The smell of paint fills his nostrils.

… He leaves. That shower can wait.

(i will never get tired of this series. the usual: beel being adorkable and confused, lucifer being absolutely done, and horrible, horrible art. one of these days, i swear i’ll write lucifer being cool and suave and stuff. but today is not that day.)

[reunionatdawn]

My Analysis of the Best Paired Endings in 3H (Part 2: Dimitri/Byleth)

Despite the popularity of some of Dimitri's M/M ships, he seemed to be a typical heterosexual man to me. However, his straightness was actually part of what made his character so interesting, ironically. He spent his youth absorbed in masculine activities like hunting, training, and practicing with the sword.

He was willing to TRY and take Sylvain's advice to pick up girls. But he was very inexperienced with women. Chivalry definitely promotes homoromantic social bonding among men. And perhaps because of that very male-dominated culture he grew up in, he deeply yearned for a relationship with a woman.

The tagline for the game was, "Sweet memories twisted by time's cruel hand". Dimitri's feelings for his stepsister may have been only puppy love, but it was his first time emotionally connecting with a girl. It was one of his sweetest memories. That was why Edelgard's betrayal hurt him so deeply. The emotional core of AM is Byleth taking the spot in Dimitri's heart that Edelgard once held.

The developers did not want to write an entirely different script just to accommodate male Byleth. So, they just took out the Goddess Tower scene, S-Support, and paired ending. The loss of which are a huge detriment to the integrity of the story. Dimileth is just as "canon" as its counterpart Edeleth. I don't even think AM's story or Dimitri's redemption make sense unless there was a romantic connection between those two. Dimitri's Goddess Tower event even foreshadows that specific scene, proving that the moment Byleth reached out her hand was written with romantic undertones.

Byleth being female is an integral part of the story of AM. If Byleth represented the divine masculine in CF, then it follows that she represented the divine feminine in AM. She was a vessel for the soul of the goddess, but more importantly she was a human who could directly intervene in the world and support people with her own flesh and blood.

Dimileth is often criticized for being a simple "fixing the bad boy" straight girl fantasy. But it's less cliche than people give it credit for. Byleth and Dimitri are an interesting blend of masculine and feminine qualities. Byleth is a silent protagonist, but I could tell that Dimitri enjoyed her dry sarcastic sense of humor. She was not a typical healer or pegasus knight like most FE love interests, but a deadly mercenary. She was meant to be similar to Glenn, which is why Felix sees her as his rival.

She serves the role of being Dimitri's sword and shield and stood at his side and protected him during the final battle, filling the knightly role Glenn would have if he had survived (and the role Felix serves in Hopes). She was the Seiros to his Wilhelm. Dimitri is one of the very few male characters that Byleth will give her mother's ring to when she proposes. Yes, it is a woman's ring that Dimitri wears. In fact, Dimitri's whole character arc is about rediscovering and embracing the softer feminine qualities he had as a young boy.

The Professor taught Dimitri how to live. In AG, Dimitri told Shez that from the moment he was born, he never felt like his life belonged to himself. He overworked himself because it was the only way he knew how to live. After Duscur he lost everyone, including his best friend, and his life belonged to their ghosts. The only time he could imagine being happy was upon his death, having devoted his life to forming a peaceful kingdom full of joyful citizens. He yearned for someone to stand by his side and give him a reason to live for himself.

I've seen many people online criticize Dimileth because they say Dimitri already had plenty of people that he was close to in his life and his non-Byleth relationships should have played the biggest role in his redemption. But I disagree. The story made it quite clear that Dimitri's support system was totally inadequate for his emotional needs and could not have pulled him from the abyss.

He was not actually all that close to his childhood friends, even before the Tragedy of Duscur, and he did not confide in them about what he was feeling. He said Rodrigue was the only person outside the castle he was close to. Rodrigue obviously cared for him, but he had not seen Dimitri in two years prior to the academy. Dimitri and Dedue shared a very powerful bond. Losing Dedue was the cause of Dimitri’s initial descent into savagery. But Dedue still insisted on being his vassal instead of his friend and equal.

Felix was obligated to fill the role due to his bloodline, but he did not WANT to be the person Dimitri unburdened his heart to. He was constantly irritable and losing his patience in Azure Gleam. Glenn was one of the ghosts who shadowed Dimitri's every move. And Felix said that since Glenn's death, "his memory has followed me around like a shadow." He hated acting as his brother's replacement. In their AG A-Support, it seemed like he was pretending to like the idea of being the right-hand man because of how dependent Dimitri was on him. We see a direct parallel of that scene in AM where Dimitri is hallucinating in the chapel. While Felix certainly felt compassion for him, he was very eager to foist the role of confidant onto Byleth.

Without anyone to lean on, Dimitri acts pretty monstrous. For five years, he tortured and killed people brutally, as if they were not even human. He threatened to kill Randolph's friends and remove his eyeballs before killing him and we can probably assume that he actually did that sort of thing to his other victims. I related so well with Felix because I felt the exact same mix of disgust and pity towards him.

I didn't ship Dimileth because I self-inserted onto Byleth and I wanted to marry him. I just wanted Byleth to accept him. And I don't find it difficult to believe that she would. Because before she was the stand-in for the goddess, she was the Ashen Demon who cut people down with no emotion. She only began to smile when she started teaching his class. He offered his shoulder to lean on when she lost Jeralt, something the other two house leaders didn't do.

The main ideological conflict between Edelgard and Dimitri was how much they are willing to compromise and accept the unacceptable. Dimitri seemed to understand that Edelgard had legitimate issues with the Church of Seiros as well as the existing world order. But he thought that total destruction of that system would require too much sacrifice. It was an interesting moral quandary.

And honestly, there was no easy answer. In an ideal world, there would be no false religion and no such thing as nobility, period. Even most of the nobles in the cast would have been happier to just be regular people. AM certainly doesn't end in a utopia or anything (although it's less status quo than AG). It was about the characters compromising and making concessions with an inherently unjust system because perhaps taking innocent human life is wrong even if it's for a just cause.

The Crest of Blaiddyd is associated with Strength. The Strength Tarot card is the Major Arcana of inner strength. It represents mastering raw emotions in order to bring calm to yourself or a situation. Dimitri was born on the winter solstice making him a Sagittarius, which is a masculine fire sign symbolized by a centaur. The horse portion of the Sagittarius symbol is unruly, relentless, beastly, and strong. The human portion is wisdom-seeking and rational. Dimitri's character arc was about overcoming his anger and hatred and becoming the wise "Savior King" who could reach out his hand to his mortal enemy.

Byleth & Dimitri The marriage of the newly appointed Archbishop, Byleth, and Dimitri, who officially ascended to the throne of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, further delighted the people amidst the celebrations of the end of the war. Continuously seeking a better future for Fódlan, they pursued their ideals, gradually reforming the traditional political systems and the structure of the Church. They upheld their roles as leaders of the Church and the state, engaging in intense debates at times. However, when they went on long rides or hunting trips alone together, they wore not the faces of the Archbishop and the King, but those of an ordinary, loving couple.

JRPGs are known for "killing god". AM ends not with you destroying the church but becoming its leader. The people of Fódlan paid lip service to the goddess, but they actually revered Nemesis and the 10 Elites. So much so that Rhea had no choice but to refer to them as heroes and Crests as gifts from the goddess. Fódlan is a patriarchal land. Faerghus especially so.

With Fódlan unified under Faerghus, Byleth acts as the divine feminine force who will change that society from the inside out, just as she did her husband. Is rulership by a benevolent monarch and a matriarchal pope a good enough ending? Well, that's for the player to decide. But I found it to be the best ending, both for Fódlan and for Dimitri and Byleth themselves.

[charmwasjess]

Rael’s PoV in Rabbit Heart made me wonder about outsider POV of Syku. In-universe Jedi are probably ‘known’ as loveless celibates (given Padme's question to Anakin) so how would non-Jedi react to Syku in the Rabbit Heart universe (if they’re obvious enough)?

This is such a fun ask. :D So, for those of you not familiar with my fics, the Rabbit Heart universe is me playing with the idea that in the canon gap between Dooku getting knighted/taking Rael and Rael’s knighting, Dooku and Sifo-Dyas try an actual “Jedi” version of a relationship and what does that look like. Anyway, Come closer. No, closer. Let me tell you a secret. 

Sifo-Dyas and Dooku are incredibly obnoxious together. 

Obviously I adore them, I ship them, they’re my blorbos, I think that they have valorous, interesting qualities. But I really am taking two characters who canonically seem to be widely considered “annoying as shit” by OTHER JEDI, you know, those zen people who respect everybody, and I'm banging them together like Barbie dolls. 

They’re conspirators in every sense of the word. Their togetherness is exclusionary by its very definition. They show off to each other at every opportunity. You get them in a room - even after a falling out and long separation at the end of Dooku: Jedi Lost - and they can’t stop making critical, sarcastic jokes at/to each other. Even at their most genuine and loving with each other, they couch it in insult. They amp each other up, compete, drag each other into shit that separately, they probably wouldn’t do. They both think they’re the main character. They’re both completely convinced of their own rightness. 

And the way that Dooku even sees Sifo-Dyas. He talks a lot about him at the beginning of Dooku: Jedi Lost - and this is SITH Dooku, who KILLED Sifo-Dyas, not just the recordings of little boy Dooku describing his best friend in such loving detail that Asajj has to fast forward through his burbling. To Dooku, Sifo-Dyas is SPECIAL. Sifo-Dyas is DIFFERENT.  Dooku has this real “us versus them” manner of thinking about his relationships (that he fully transfers to his Padawans, by the way.) The chosen people Dooku cares about are the people Dooku has decided are worthy: mavericks, rulebreakers, exceptions, extra talented so they don’t have to play by the rules for regular normal losers - just like he thinks of himself. (I think this is actually funny because I truly believe in his heart of hearts, Dooku takes a great deal of stability and satisfaction from knowing the rules and playing the game exactly right. It’s part of why he looks so fucking shattered in that last scene. He was the Perfect Sith Apprentice Good Boy?!) 

So yeah, I think people who encounter Dooku and Sifo-Dyas as a couple in this little spun-up world I’m playing in are going to be rightfully annoyed by them. Not because of the strangeness of a Jedi in an obvious partnership, but because Sifo-Dyas and Dooku are annoying as shit together even when (presumably) they’re NOT sleeping together. 

I can’t imagine how much worse sex makes them.