#but it does end with pretty bad world state overall

[cokou]

What OP Men post about you on Reddit

OP 男性があなたについて Reddit に投稿するもの。

𝑴𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒊 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑭𝒊𝒄

sum. Your boyfriend posted about you on reddit. ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ tw. NSFW ON KIDDS PART! Fluff overall! ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ a/n. Im sorry for so late uploads, i got sick once again😭😭😭 // Do not translate or transfer any of my works, this is my only account (exp. AO3) will not be cross posted anywhere else. // Masterlist

r/NSFW Eustass.Kidd

I (25 M) fucked my girlfriend (24 F) so hard that i had to get her into the hospital to get a medical treatment on her cervix.

The doctors told us that everything was wounded up inside her and it looked like she got abused from her lacked of walking, we had to get police involved in our house to investigate what had happened and found the dildo i used on her and it was examined on their lab for any contaminated illness.

My girlfriend refuses to see me from how bad her state had gotten and the police interogated me to make that everything was okay at home. My best friend had gotten involved from how bad my girlfriend couldn't walk and had to assure that I wasn't abusing anyone to the police, it took 3 days for them to fully give out on the case.

My girlfriend had been discharged from the hospital 2 days ago and she still refuses to talk to me, i got her flowers for apology and her favorite food as an apology. She told me that she could take all of me in bed and now everything just went downhill since i got out of control in her.

Now everyone of my friends teases me about what happened and they laughed me off every time they see me, Reddit what should i do?

Comments;

Her problem dude, she said she could take it!

You're at fault for taking her word at all. ➣ Eustass.Kidd replied: fuck off single mf.

—

r/girlfriends Msxr.Kill

My girlfriend (24 F) and I (26 M) have been dating for almost 5 years now, tomorrow will be our 5th anniversary and I'm planning to propose to her, but the problem is I don't know how. My brain can't take so much ideas so much and my friends aren't helping me at all.

My girlfriend is the most precious person ever, and i believe she deserves the best in the world. My ideas can't convince me enough that they're good for her, and what if she doesn't like it and rejects me? I don't want that. I asked her bestfriend on what places she especially loves, and I was told to take her on an aquarium proposal.

I don't know what to do and my girlfriend is making me all nervous around her as well, i need help ASAP.

Comments;

Eustass.Kidd: Just tell her to marry you wtf ➣Msxr.Kill replied: You're not helping at all Kidd.

Heat_er: You suck at planning lol. ➣Msxr.Kill replied: Heat I don't wanna hear that from you, you don't even have anyone to love.

—

r/AITA Dr._Trafalgar

Am i the asshole for kicking out my girlfriend from my office?

I, (26 M) kicked my girlfriend (24 F) out of my office because she knocked off all the papers off my shelves and dragged me out forcefully. Now she refuses to talk to me and it's been 2 days. My friends told me that i was the asshole and was wrong for kicking her out.

But the thing was those papers were almost 592 pages and i only ended up finding 578 of them, now my girl moved to her friends house and absolutely doesn't answer my calls or text messages.

Her friends texted me that i was the asshole for not spending time with her and paid attention all to myself only not her needs, the papers were worth so much that i could feed her and let us both live together financially, and now i was forced to redo all 592 pages in A WEEK.

so am i the asshole?

Comments;

Your.name: Yes yta🙄 ➣Dr._Trafalgar replied: get your ass home.

—

r/girlfriends Chef_Sanjii

My girl is the best in the whole wide world, she's do beautiful, so pretty, so perfect, and every thing she does hypnotizes me. Her beautiful nature makes me inlove with her more every second, her intelligence for everything makes her so special, she is not like any other women ever.

In fact, she is the best in the whole whole world. Not only does her pretty face shine in the darkness, but the way her body sways when she walks or does something is so majestic. I'm so lucky to have such a girlfriend like this, and i know that she will always love forever.

The way she interacts with even the smallest things are cute, in fact all of her is cute. The way her hands hold something and it shows that her body is perfect in every inch. She's none like others, no one can ever EVER compare to my girl, one day i will marry her and see her on the aisle and i wouldnt be able to hold my tears as she walks in a wedding dress.

Her facial features resembles a goddess, she trurly is flawless. No matter what anyone says, she'll be the most MOST perfect woman in the whole entire world. I love love her so much, she's the best that ever happened to me. Her love melts me warm and her words make me putty on her hands.

It's safe to say that she too, loves me, and that our relationship definitely is mutual. Love her so much.

Post was liked by Msxr.Kill & 7,251 others.

—

r/wifey Kuz._an

My wife's cooking is terrible but I don't wanna tell her that and destroy her feelings.

My wife and I had been married for almost 9 years now, she cooks for me daily ever since we have moved in together. Her cooking used to be good, but for some reason it tastes like burnt ketchup over burnt cheese. It looks appealing to look, but the tastes seems to be missed.

Her seasonings are full of bell pepper and black pepper, it terribly sucks. I love my wife to the fullest, but when it comes to her cooking, It feels like I'm on a prison cell. I'm sorry My Love, it's the truth.

Comments;

Unknown: Being honest is his forte. Unknown: COMMENT DELETED Unknown: Atleast your wife tries. Unknown: COMMENT DELETED

©Cokou 2024, all works belongs to me.

[thekingofwinterblog]

You know what the most annoying thing about the Twists regarding the Elves in Inquisition was?

That all the twists, if taken on their own, would make for a really good story.

The reveals about Solas backstory and how him and his fellow God Kings rose, became decadent, warred with each other and fell, setting the stage for their transformation into the Old Gods is frankly speaking, some of the best lore that Dragon Age ever had, and lines up really well with how the world is structured while explaining how the Old Gods came to be, how the elves fell, and so on.

That the tevinter imperium when it conquered the nation of Arlathan was not the great imperial state lead by mighty mages their descendants liked to think they were, but instead a bunch of weaklings that needed years and years to take on one, measly city-state that had utterly obliterated itself in civil war.

There is so much great stuff here.

So where did it all go wrong?

The answer, is of course execution.

Inquisition overall is a great game... But man did it drop the ball so hard with the Elves that it's pretty much hard to believe that they will be able to tell a nuanced story about them in Dread Wolf.

Everything from the companions, to the world itself as the game presents , to retcons regarding mages that's there, not to tell a story about the elves, but to try and make the Templar vs mage conflict grey.

Starting with the companions, we have a great example of coming so, so close to greatness... and then falling right on it's face.

The game has two Elf companions, solas and Sera... and the contrast between them really illustrates the big picture with how incapable Inquisition is with trying to tell a nuanced picture with the elves.

Solas as a character is perfect. Love him or hate him, he is a fully fleshed out character with very clear, defined, understandable motives that makes sense to him.

And most importantly of all, his way of viewing the world is WRONG. The game acknowledges that he is wrong.

The entire story of where dragon age 4 is heading, is all about how the Dread wolf, for all his knowledge and intelligence and genuine virtues, is at the end of the day, a monster, who is willing to see the world burn to restore the Elves magic and immortality.

He is a racist, he is bigoted, and ultimately misguided. Despite all his development with the inquisitor, he does not manage to grow enough as a person that he manages to abandon his genocidal goals. And the game does not pretend othervise.

That is what makes the story of Solas rise to become the big villain of the sequel great.

There is no disconnect between the story, the characters, or the way the game wants us to view solas.

Solas is far, far more bigoted and close-minded than any of the dalish he so despises, and the game ultimately does not pretend othervise.

Which brings us to the opposite end of the elf spectrum with Sera.

Sera is a very disliked character by a lot of people, but by dalish and elf players/fans more than most.

Just like Solas, she is bigoted, racist, and ultimately misguided in her hatred of her fellow elves, whether they be city elves, or Dalish, or ancient elves.

And that frankly, would not be a problem if the game acknowledged that fact. If her character arc was about it, and either how she could not overcome her own issues, or actually managed to grow beyond them, she could have been a great character.

The problem is the fact that the game is not willing to handle this fact head on. Its not willing to come out and portray Sera as just as bigoted against her own kind as Solas is, and to treat this as a flaw.

Instead the game treats her as if her biggest flaw is that she's annoying, and not the fact that in a game that is in many ways about setting up the rise of the dread wolf, she is just as bad as Solas, just from a different origin point.

Sera should have been a mirror to Solas, both from a story point, as well as a thematic one, but unfortunately she is not.

Hell, she doesn't really overcome her racism either. The closest she comes to doing so, is basically burning out on hating the dalish and other elves in trespasser, not admitting she was actually wrong to hate them so much in the first place.

The game does not treat Sera's disdain for other elves and their culture as a problem, and it does not give a dalish inquisitor the option to tell her to go fuck herself on the topic that you are given with Solas if you really desire to do so.

You are given the option of kicking her out of the inquisition, but not actually stand up for the dalish or even city elves the way the player could against Morrigan's flemeth raised cruelty in origins, anders and Fenris obsessions with, and hatred for templars/mages in da2, or solas ideals in inquisition.

And thats a problem that really illustrates the bigger issue with the way Inquisition took what could have been a great story about the Elves and the reveals about their anceators, and frankly ruined it.

The dalish and city elvea were very thouroughly fleshed in both Origins, Awakening and DA2.

However, city elves largely managed to avoid being utterly destroyed by the narrative the way the Dalish were, for the simple reason that outside briala, we don't get much if any interaction with them at all, making them essentially a non show foe the game for the most part. They don't get a city elf inquisitor, and so we have no point of view to look at them from a pc perspective.

They got off much better than the dalish though.

Starting off with the arguably single worst thing in all of DAI is the retcon that Dalish clans, if there is more than two mages in a clan, sends off the third one alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves. This goes against absolutely everything that has ever been established about the Dalish, and worst of all, wasn't even an addition meant to demonize the dalish, instead being an addition to handwave away the obvious fact that the Dalish had a much better system than the human circles when it came to magic... Which in turn was made irrelevant by the fact the Avvar was later shown to have a much better and more effective solution to the possession question anyway.

It was, in essence, a pointless retcon, that overall only made the dalish look bad, and has now opened the door for the idea that most dalish clans acts like this, and will be portrayed so in future games.

Its bad, but unfortunately it was only the start.

The game goes out of its way to portray absolutely every single person who critices the dalish as having a point, that they brought on their own downfalls, even as they are being the most imperialistic, racist assholes imaginable, while the dalish inquisitor can only offer a token of defence for his people, a far cry from way origins allowed you to handle the same situation wheter your main ethnicity was ferelden, mage, city elf, dalish, casteless or dwarven noble.

But nowhere is it worse than the way the game handles the fall of the dales.

Now the actual lore you learn about it, is not bad. At all. I know some complain that the reveals that ameridan(and presumably other elves) worshipped both the creators and the maker, as well as the fact that the dalish unfortunately did have a bad relationahip with the rest of the world, in particular orlais, is bad storytelling, but i firmly disagree.

No the problem is the execution.

Ameridan is not wrong when he says that The Dales should not have distanced itself from the rest of the world, especially not in the face of a blight... But the Dales of his era were in turn not wrong when they argued that the Orlesians were little better than the imperium, and they would be completely right.

This is not a grey issue, its a grey and black issue.

Orlais was, and still is an evil, expansionist empire with 99% of its population living as serfs, that can be raped and beaten at will, little better than slaves.

The dales were the morally right side of the exalted march on the dales. No amount of new lore we learned in inquisition has changed that fact. We simply get the details fleshed out a bit more to add context.

Orlais was going to invade and enslave the elves anyway, as they proved through their actions against all their other, very much fellow Adrastian neighbors.

The problem is that you are not allowed to express this kind of point of view and stick to it like steel.

The characters you meet having the bigoted opinion that the dales ultimately brought on their own fate is NOT a bad thing in and out of itself... the problem is that you are not allowed to challenge that opinion the way you could challenge Lelliana's view of the dalish in origins, or the way you could tell both Anders and fenris to go fuck themselves on their extremist opinions all through da2, and ending that fuck you by killing them in the endgame.

And thats a real shame, because just looking at characters like cassandra's character development through Inquisition, you could easily have made a really compelling narrative put of a dalish inquisitor who stuck by his or her principles, and actually challenged the people they met's racist views on the dalish the way you could in origins, just with a more fleshed out and(unfortunately something way too many people just cannot emote to a character withouth) an actual voice to raise those arguments with.

I do genuinely like Inquisition, and i think it's overall a much better game than DA2... but man did they drop the ball with the elves so hard.

I feel so sorry for anyone who really got invested in the elves as their favorites factions, and i honestly don't think the elves will be handled particularly well in Dread wolf, especially as the only Dalish we are likely to see fleshed out will be the villains fighting for Solas.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Sorry if you answered this before but do you plan on watching S6 of Miraculous ?

I'm not sure. I'm certainly not planning to watch it as it comes out, but I may watch it once it's streaming. While I'm clearly quite critical of canon, I did genuinely enjoy a lot of things prior to season five. Little moments and character interactions that made it worth watching the individual episodes even though the overall plot kinda sucked. It was a good blend of entertaining in the micro and bad in the macro, making it something enjoyable for my partner and I to watch and then talk about.

Season five wasn't like that. There are a mere handful of good moments and most episodes gave me nothing of value, so I'm very hesitant to give canon more of my time. This is extra true because season five ended the show's first big arc, making it a really good off point as I'll fully admit that seeing Gabriel's ultimate fate was a draw for me. Now? There's really nothing left to look forward to. I no longer care about the canon square, Lila is one of the most obnoxious villains ever written, and both of our "leads" have been character assassinated into characters I don't really want to watch, mostly because they're not allowed to learn and grow, but they have the kind of character flaws that desperately need them to learn and grow for their characters to stay engaging.

Marinette's issues are pretty obvious, but Adrien was done equally dirty, just in the exact opposite way. It's really hard to get excited about for a male lead who isn't strong enough to make it to the final fight after five seasons of promising that it was "us against the world." Especially when every other character was able to overcome the nightmare dust! At least Marinette is doing things and talking to people even if those people aren't necessarily the people she should talk to and her actions aren't the ones she should be taking. Adrien just keeps sitting stuff out and doing nothing to change his situation because one of his big flaws is his passivity and it's aggravating! He's supposed to be an action hero!

And before anyone rants at me about victim blaming, please remember that this is a story and Adrien is a fictional character who - as best I can tell - isn't even intentionally written as a victim. While he is one in terms of what actually happened, the story does not seem to view him as one so I don't think his writing is some active choice to rep victims and, even if it was, I'd still have issues with their choices.

Either way, Miraculous is not the type of show that is here to give us deep character analysis. It's a rom-com superhero show for kids and that is the type of content I tuned in to watch. I was here for Ladybug-the-smart-badass and her faithful, flirty hero partner, but the show is giving me nothing on either front. Ladynoir was barely a thing in season five and I don't think we got a single Ladrien moment. Those relationship dynamics were my two biggest draws. My third tier dynamic was Adrienette and even that failed me because they didn't even give us Marinette growing up enough to be the one to ask Adrien out because, as stated above, the characters are not allowed to grow because that would mean that the episodes have to be watched in a specific order and it leads to terrible writing choices.

I've honestly given the show way more time than I ever planned while running this blog! I didn't expect it to get popular enough where I'd go away for a week and come back to over a dozen asks! I just wanted to vent about season five for a bit because the writing was just so incredibly bad that I needed an outlet to stop stewing over it. I've found that writing a thing down and throwing it into the ether is a great way to get my brain to move on and stop thinking about it, thus the blog.

[maryfailstowrite]

Do you want to know who one of my favorite DRA characters is???? do you??? no, you don’t, but I’m telling you either way: it’s Kinji Uehara. Here’s why.

(obviously, spoilers for DRA ahead, so…. beware :))

So, to me, Uehara is an intriguing character from the start. When you hear the title “Ultimate Priest”, it makes you imagine a loud guy who is going to ramble on and on about God and religion and accepting Jesus Christ into your heart and all that… but you’re met with a quiet man that explicitly tells you that he doesn’t force his faith onto others. Even Yuki is a bit surprised, and this brief conversation leaves you wanting to find out more about him…

And oh man, do we find out more.

I think his first shining moment is in chapter two. When Kinjo is trying to start his dictatorship- I mean cult- Sorry, when Kinjo is trying to establish himself as leader of the group, and says that whoever doesn’t agree with his conditions must get out and will be seen as a preliminary criminal from now on. We see Mekaru get out and tell Kinjo he’s insane, which is a power move, by the way, but expected from her. This is Rei Mekaru we’re talking about, after all. She ain’t taking no one’s bullshit. Then Kizuna gets out (not without yelling and crying a bit before, of course), which was also expected given her mental state at the moment… And then there’s Uehara. He literally just gets up and leaves, and only explains himself because Inori asks him to.

So far, Uehara has been a pretty tame person. He got along with everyone, helped at the trial, and overall, he had never gone against anyone. But now he opposes himself (or, rather, Kinjo opposes the both groups against each other, but that’s another tale) against the main group of students, and decides, for some unknown reason to everyone, that being seen as a potential murderer is better than having to follow Kinjo’s rules.

His response to being asked why he’s leaving? This:

Then he walks out. Just like that.

Obviously, the Ultimate Priest would be a pretty moral-driven person, right? He’s supposed to be a spiritual leader, after all.

The first interpretation of this we make is that associating with Kinjo and following his orders would eventually make Uehara do something that goes against his moral compass. Even if Kinjo tries to make himself seem reasonable and reliable, it’s pretty damn obvious he’s not after the first trial. We know that he has a pretty black and white view on criminality, as far as thinking that all murderers (no matter their motive, circumstances, etc.) should die, a moral view that is a stark contrast to the Christian concepts of mercy and forgiveness. Concepts Uehara, as a priest, would base his world view on.

Kinjo and Uehara are basically opposites, morality wise. Kinjo would do anything (and in his case, it really is anything) to maintain the order he believes the world (in this context, the school and his classmates) should follow, and he’d go to any lengths to make sure justice finds every person he sees as ‘bad’, no matter how drastic or dark anyone else thinks his methods are. Uehara, on his end, doesn’t hold any grudges against any of the students that stopped talking to him after he left Kinjo’s group, and he doesn’t even hold a grudge against Kinjo, who is the whole reason why he’s been ostracized from his classmates. He still collaborates with the investigations and in the trials, and there’s nothing that points to him being mad at anyone for basically leaving him to his own luck in a killing game. He believes in and practices the mercy and forgiveness he’s been taught to have as a priest…

Or does he, though?

(Note: There is another interpretation to his response after being asked why he’s leaving. But we need to know what happens after chapter two to make it, so we’ll get to it later.)

Now, chapter three is his chapter. It’s his last chapter alive, and here’s where we get a more deep dive into him. But we can’t talk about any of this without talking about the murder itself, so… let’s get that out of the way.

The third murder case is incredibly gruesome (or at least it was for me), especially Inori’s death. You can hear her screaming for help inside the lab minutes before you open the door and find her tied up and burnt to death. It looks like an excessively cruel murder, especially considering there was no real reason to kill her in such a painful way. She was one of the weakest, if not the weakest character in the cast (physically speaking, of course), and she wouldn’t have shown much resistance if simply attacked (especially against someone like Uehara, who is double her size).

Plus, aside from Inori and Yamaguchi, two other people were attacked. Kinjo was left unconscious on the library floor, and Mekaru was taken out with chloroform and shoved into a locker. It feels unnecessary, and like attacking more people means the possibility of leaving more clues behind… but we’ll get to that later, so hang on for a moment.

Now, personally, after the victim reveals, I was conflicted. I had gotten spoiled, so I already knew who the killer was… and I was in denial about it. I wondered what could’ve driven Uehara to commit such a cruel and almost sadistic crime, and I was a bit scared they would pull the ‘oh my god, this character that seemed calm and collected up until this point is actually super insane and a cold-blooded murderer’ thing the original Danganronpa always does in chapter 3. In this aspect, I was pleasantly surprised.

Uehara being the traitor is a super surprising reveal. Even after ‘solving’ the murder case and voting correctly, it had never crossed anyone’s mind that Uehara was the traitor. Yet, that was exactly why the murders even happened in the first place. The motive video they had been given only existed to give Uehara instructions: If he killed now, the children Monokuma had kidnapped from Uehara’s cathedral would be freed, and if he didn’t get caught, he’d get to see them after getting out.

Of course, Uehara complied. Those kids were very dear to him. And we discover that originally, Uehara’s plan was far less gruesome: He kidnapped Inori from the infirmary and killed her with the spear while she was passed out (I assume he used the chloroform on her too, since she’s passed out when Yamaguchi finds her). But Yamaguchi’s appearance throws his whole plan away, and, as we see in the trial… Uehara breaks down easily under pressure. In other words, he panicked.

I think this is pretty important to understand why he did what he did. He never intended to kill anyone if it hadn’t been because Monokuma coerced him to, much less in such a horrible way. But after killing Yamaguchi “on accident” (wasn’t an accident, but it wasn’t his original plan), he probably started panicking and tried to bullshit his way out of it. He knew he couldn’t just let Inori go, because she’d immediately know he was the one that killed Yamaguchi. Even if she was passed out as he tried to save her, if a guy tried to kidnap you and someone else appeared dead a few hours later… it would be pretty suspicious. Plus, her coat was drenched in his blood, so… yeah, no way she wouldn’t put 2 and 2 together. So, Uehara started putting together a new plan with the first things he saw on the way. He had the phone on him, so his mind probably went there first, and then he started making up the rest of it from there.

Don’t take this as me trying to excuse his actions, though. Even if we think he didn’t realize just how painful his method was when he planned it, he still fucking electrocuted someone alive, which is horrible. He could’ve let Inori go and let her know he was the culprit, sacrificing himself, because the children would’ve still been released. He still had that selfishness in him to want to survive. But I think that imagining him making up a new plan on the way in a panicked state makes it easier to understand why he did things that seem completely unnecessary. And since we already know he’s not good under pressure because of the trial… I don’t think it’s hard to imagine him like that. He most likely acted on the first ideas he had using things he already had on him (the phone for Inori, the chloroform with Mekaru) or the first things he found, and that’s why his plan is so messy. Why did he drag Yamaguchi to the library when he could’ve just left him in the art room’s locker? To leave him next to Kinjo? He wanted to pin the murder on the guy that believes all murderers should die? While said guy was unconscious? Or was it just to confuse everyone and make them think the murders happened at the same time? And why did he shove Mekaru in the locker with the dried blood? That was basically leading the cast to an important clue. Why did he leave Inori’s coat in the art room’s trash? Knowing that they would investigate there, since that’s where they found Mekaru?

Like I said, the more murders/attacks, the more clues you potentially leave behind. And if we take into consideration that he was acting on the go, and that he didn’t have much time to cover up what he was doing (because he did a ton of shit)… It was impossible for him to get away with it. He probably knew this, but he held onto the hope that perhaps he’d be able to survive, and that’s why he breaks down when he realizes he’s cornered in the trial. But when he realizes that he’s been caught, he calms down because… at least the children are safe, right? Right?

One of the most heartbreaking moments in this chapter is the reveal that the children are, in fact, far from safe. Before killing Uehara, Monokuma shows him (and the whole cast) a video of the children’s dead, decomposing bodies, driving Uehara into a state of shock he dies in. I think this is a great way to make the cast’s fear and hate for the mastermind grow, but I feel like it’s also there to make a point. Uehara tried killing his classmates so that the kids could survive. He tried to choose by himself who lived and who died, and in the end, it only caused more deaths. This situation brings a pretty interesting debate to the table, and a pretty important one for the development of the game too.

And that’s what makes this case different from your usual chapter three double murder. The murders didn’t feel pointless. In the original Danganronpa series, it felt to me like some of the murders were just… there. Especially the third cases. They didn’t help develop anyone’s character, they didn’t help advance the overall plot, they just happened. For example, the third case of Trigger Happy Havoc. Celestia goes from being the “Queen of Liars”, a calm and collected woman that maintained her cool even when faced with the deaths of her classmates… to a horrible liar that was caught in, like, 5 seconds. Not to mention, her motive was money. Sure, I can perhaps sympathize with the fact that she wanted to make her dream come true with that money… but as the Ultimate Gambler, she could’ve won that money after getting out of the killing game. It isn’t a particularly strong motive, and it doesn’t make Celestia’s character better or more interesting. The reveal that Celestia was actually Taeko Yasuhiro is probably the most interesting part of this chapter, but we probably didn’t need two murders to happen to make that reveal, did we? Plus, she dies like, half an hour later, so it’s not like that reveal served for much. The deaths of Hifumi, Taka and Celestia don’t particularly develop anyone’s character, and they don’t push forward the overall plot either. They get rid of characters they didn’t want surviving, and that’s about it.

But DRA chapter three didn’t feel like that. And I think the main reason for this is, surprisingly enough, Kinjo.

The third trial is the start of Kinjo’s downfall. Like I’ve already stated before, Kinjo and Uehara are opposites when it comes to morality, so I believe it could only be him who pointed out Kinjo’s issues. And he does it in the only way Kinjo would listen to him: Using Kinjo’s arguments to support his own actions (and the murder he committed).

When Kinjo is going on and on about Uehara being a serial killer (which isn’t factually correct by the way, but sure, Mr. Cop), Uehara tells him that it’s strange Kinjo is showing such strong opposition to him and his actions when they were both using the same logic. Of course, Kinjo is a bit taken back by this, and asks Uehara to explain…

Uehara then responds with this:

He quotes Kinjo. He’s not only using the cop’s logic against him, no, he’s using the same phrase Kinjo used to defend himself and his actions to defend his crime.

After this, Uehara elaborates further: He explains that he sacrificed the lives of the fifteen students for the lives of 100 children. He just chose to save the most people, even if a few lives were lost in the way… Doesn’t that remind us of someone?

Kinjo deliberately chose to put a few people in danger for a chance at saving a higher number of them. He didn’t directly kill anyone, sure, but he wouldn’t have cared if they were killed. Kinjo protected everyone else and left the ones that didn’t agree with him to die, because he thought that was the way in which the most people would survive.

Uehara knows he wasn’t in the right. He knows murder is still an awful act, no matter what the reason was, and that he’ll have to pay for it in the afterlife. But Kinjo doesn’t. Kinjo thinks picking and choosing who survives and who doesn’t is the right thing to do. That’s what Uehara wants him to realize: That the reasoning that drove him to kill is the reasoning Kinjo was using as a leader, and that it would only drive Kinjo down the same path Uehara was dying in: a path of blood-stained hands, a path of guilt, and a path of death.

No one can play God. Not even the Ultimate Priest.

And Kinjo actually reconsiders his stance after the trial (and after everyone turns against him). Even if it was a dead end, because Kinjo ended up just standing stronger on what he believed in until the fourth trial, it makes him wonder about his actions, and it foreshadows what happens in chapter four. It lets us see that Kinjo doesn’t stand as strong and he seems, and that his views are bound to fall apart sooner or later.

Uehara and his murder case develop Kinjo’s character. He’s quiet after Uehara asks him to reconsider his stance so far (which is a lot, considering how much he bitched every time a murderer was found guilty), and he even asks Yuki if he’s wrong the next day. The trial, and especially the conversation with Yuki that it triggers later, helps us see Kinjo as a man who’s been put under too much pressure for too much time. A man that has been trying to protect everyone around him his whole life, but that had a completely wrong approach to it. Instead of the crazy bitch we see him as the whole time, we get closer to the actual person Kinjo is, not the leader he makes himself to be.

Of course, one could argue that having him just break down in chapter four would’ve led to the same series of events (aka him trying to kill himself, and therefore remembering everything and triggering the plot for the rest of the game), but… it wouldn’t have felt the same. If Kinjo had fainted in the fourth trial, then killed himself the next day, it would’ve just left us with a sense of helplessness. It would’ve felt like something that was bound to happen, because no one could’ve helped Kinjo… and that’s what case three brings to the table. Kinjo could’ve been helped. Uehara helps him question his actions, and if only Yuki had pushed Kinjo in the right direction when he opened up to him, perhaps we could’ve seen a much different Kinjo for the rest of the game. But that doesn’t happen. Case three makes us see Kinjo waver and falter, and it foreshadows what happens later on: it lets us know that Kinjo’s confidence wouldn’t last forever, and that he was going to break sooner or later. And it also adds to Yuki’s sense of despair when he sees Kinjo shoot himself in front of everyone: he knows it didn’t have to happen like that. He knows he could’ve helped, he knows he had the chance to, but he wasn’t capable to step up when Kinjo needed him. It makes the scene feel a lot different, and I really like what chapter three adds to the further development of the game.

But when has this turned to be about Kinjo, huh?! This post is about Uehara, so let me get back to him now. Remember the note I left after talking about chapter two? That there could be another interpretation to what he tells everyone when he leaves the group protected by Kinjo, but that we needed to know what happened in chapter three to talk about it? Yeah, let’s talk about it now.

“I always act in the way I believe is right”. We can still interpret this as him refusing to work under Kinjo’s leadership, since it would be a direct betrayal to his core values as a priest. But knowing now that he’s the traitor, it makes me think that perhaps it wasn’t so much about him not wanting to work with Kinjo as a leader, but rather about him wanting to distance himself from his classmates. I think that “doing what the believes is right” could mean causing the least harm he could to his classmates, and distancing himself from them was the only way he had to do that. Knowing he was the traitor would hurt much less if he didn’t get along with anyone in the first place, right?

We get to know the person Uehara is before the death game, even if briefly, from the flashbacks Yuki has in chapter six. We know he tried to think of the well-being of his classmates. We know he was the one that lead Inori and Yamaguchi to the warehouse while the Monokumas attacked the Kisaragi Laboratory in an attempt to protect them, and we know that even if he had a hard time adapting to a class environment when he first entered Hope’s Peak, he formed a bond with Yamaguchi because “he is a more warm-hearted man than any of them”. When one of the Monokumas enters the warehouse, and Yamaguchi holds him so that Inori and Uehara can escape, Uehara tells him that he’ll come back for him. And even in the killing game, we get to know him as a gentle-natured person, and we see just how deeply he cared about the kids he took care of at the cathedral (to the point of becoming completely numb when he finds out they’re dead). Even when he tried to kill, his original plan was to make the least harm possible… but that went horribly wrong, so not like it counts too much (again, I’m not trying to excuse his actions or take any responsibility from him, that murder was fucking awful). He was going to betray everyone sooner or later, sure, but I can imagine him trying to do it in the least harmful way he could. He was forced into a position where he had to do that to cause minimal damage, after all.

Uehara goes from being a quiet person that doesn’t seem like he’ll do much for the plot, to one of the most interesting (and important, in my opinion) characters in the narrative. DRA excels at creating characters with many layers, characters that feel human. There are few characters that can be considered a hundred percent good or bad, because… that’s not how humans work. It plays with the roles you expect the characters to have, it plays with your expectations, and it still allows room for a lot of interpretations of its characters and events (which is something I love in all pieces of media). And isn’t this the beauty of it? The humanity of media? Being able to see and reflect completely different ideas from the same content? In the end, all this doesn’t matter. I could write a whole book of interpretations and theories for the game, and it wouldn’t matter. What matters is that there is room for different interpretations, and that they all together build an independent and unrepeatable experience for the player. So, if there’s something you have to take from all this… enjoy your games. Write about them. Analyze them. Draw fanarts. Make AU’s. Cosplay. I don’t care how good or bad you’re at it, enjoy your favorite pieces of media to their fullest. Allow them to make you think. That’s the only thing that matters, after all. And that’s why I’m writing all this.

Oh, and also, love Kinji Uehara. That’s, like, super super important too. God bless you all, and see you next time.

[ot3]

ok im on my lunchbreak its time for me to tell you guys how i would fix one piece.

anything pre them getting into the grand line i really was not paying enough attention to have fixes for. whatever its fine. they introduced all the characters thats what it was supposed to do

alabasta arc: does a decent job of introducing the concept of the warlords and the fact that they Fucking Suck and that the world government gives violent criminals insane amounts of leeway to ruin everything else. also includes luffy getting his ass thoroughly whupped for the first time which was critical. so overall it did it's job but i think it could have benefited from doubling down on the politics stuff. vivi being this future head of state who introduces luffy into the messy political elements of life on the grand line that he'll need to learn to navigate in his journey to become the pirate king was. kiiinda there. but that's what the backbone of that arc should be for it to be the most effective imo. we needed more POLITICS in this SHONEN BATTLE ANIME!!!

skypeia: sitting through this arc was torture. but we can fix it. first of all: this ones gotta be robin-centric. ancient ruins, displaced people trying to recover the remnants of their lost civilization, archeologist character from an island that got wiped off the map by the government. all of the pieces are there. the ohara backstory should have started trickling in at this point in bits in pieces. robin should have been working to help the shandorians and her own backstory should have been used to contextualize that decision, but you could have easily held back enough for water 7 and enies lobby to still hit

water 7 and enies lobby: this was all pretty solid

thriller bark: like i said earlier i think we need to double down on the subjugation and unpersoning committed by the bad guys vs the striving for freedom and humanity of the good guys and i think we need to do it with focus on chopper. make hogback and moria the same character. here we have a guy who was like a legendary medical professional who has turned his knowledge of medicine into something evil that he uses to strip people of their humanity with the full backing of the world government. then you have chopper who Isn't a human and whose attempt to navigate the human world as something deemed monstrous lead him towards medicine and helping people and healing them. perfect foil situation happening literally right there. all the pieces are here you just have to commit

honestly i think at the end of the day 'all of the pieces are here you just have to commit" is my main takeaway from one piece

[flower-boi16]

Hazbin Hotel Is A Show That Exists

So...after five years of waiting, Hazbin Hotel is finally out. I had very low expectations going to Hazbin - not only because of the current state of Helluva Boss (Its spin-off show) but also because of all the things I was hearing about it from people who saw the leaks - needless to say, it wasn't very positive. I was expecting this show to be a complete disaster on every single level, though deep down, I did want to be excited for this show - as I did used to briefly be a fan of Viv's work until I realized HB's MANY writing issues, so I went in with low expectations, expecting the show to be awful while deep down hoping that MAYBE It'll MAYBE end up being good. And after watching the first four episodes I can say that...

The show isn't awful nor is it that good. It's just...PAINFULLY average. In this post I'm going to give my current thoughts on HH based on the first four episodes that are currently released. Note that these are only my current thoughts on the show - there's a chance that MAYBE the show will improve in the second half of season 1. But for now, here are my current thoughts on the show:

1. The Animation & Visuals

The animation is...fine. The characters definitely look very rigged at times, but the animation is at least pleasant to look at. An issue I have is the camera work - sometimes the camera work can be VERY off at times. The show would constantly cut to different perspectives in some of the scenes and it becomes a headache to look at. It's especially bad at the beginning of the Happy Day In Hell song - where the camera looks like it's having a stroke during the sequence as it constantly cuts to different perspectives a LOT.

That being said - the camera work is mostly fine throughout the rest of the show so it's not too bad. So overall, the animation looks fine. I don't love it, but I don't hate it.

2. The Comedy

The show's comedy is...actually pretty ok. There were a few jokes that got a good laugh out of me, especially in episode 3, the episode that isn't written by Viv, so it therefore is the funniest episode of the show so far. I am surprised by the lack of sex jokes in the show which is at least a plus. That being said, a lot of the jokes in the show don't really land - mainly the ones that Angel Dust makes. So really, the comedy is OK. I don't hate it, but I also don't love it either.

3. Worldbuilding & Plot

So now let's talk about the main plot of the show as well as its world-building. Ok so the main conflict for the show is that due to someone killing an Angel during the last extermination - the exterminations are going to happen twice as fast now (6 months instead of one year). The mystery of what happened to the angel...lasts for about two episodes before we're given an answer in episode 3, and then it's just resolved like that.

Aside from that the series mostly revolves around its premise so far which is good. Alright, now lets talk about the lore and worldbuilding - basically Lucifer used to be an angel in Hevean but was seen as a trouble maker and Adam demanded that Lilith fuck him (or something Idk Idr) and Lucifer and Lilith fell in love blah blah blah Lucifer gave an apple to his new lover Eve blah blah blah the apple was cursed blah blah blah the apple created hell blah blah blah It sent evil to the world and Hevean was pissed about that so they banished them to hell blah blah blah Lucifer became sad blah blah blah Lilith didn't blah blah blah Hevean started doing exterminations because they were afraid of Hell's power.

(Semi-accurate description of the opening exposition dump). Ok so a few things; 1) I already asked this in another post but why did Hell never choose to fight back against Heaven when Heaven shouldn't have any power over hell because Hell was a realm created by Lucifer? Also, why does Heaven even have any power over Hell to begin with? and 2) So Heaven is eeeevil now and is going to kill all of Hell. Like I already said, it would have been more interesting if Heaven wasn't evil, and it also would've been better than this Hevean v Hell war we're probably going to get in the finale.

They even changed the reasoning to why Heaven started doing the exterminations, instead of it being because of an overpopulation problem now it's because Heaven was afraid of Hell's power...

...which contradicts the pilot which is canon to the series. But then the show just goes back to the overpopulation problem as the reason for the exterminations???? Like??? Which is it, is it because Heaven is evil or because of an overpopulation problem??? PICK ONE!!!

Hell is also kinda boring of a setting, it's just our world except red. That's it. So the lore and worldbuilding is kinda eh, Heaven is just evil cuz ofc it is and the lore has some problems. Its funny to how one of the lyrics of Adam's big villain song is "its all black and white", and since Adam is the bad guy and Charlie's goal is to redeem sinners, the show is trying to go for a "it's NOT black and white" message, but that's kinda ironic considering that this Heaven/Hell conflict is very black and white in it of itself; Hell good Heaven evil. That's it. Not saying black-and-white conflicts with a good guy and a bad guy are bad, most shows can make them work and be interesting, but Heaven would have been more interesting if it wasn't evil, at least IMO.

4. The Voice Actors

A lot of the discourse surrounding Hazbin until its release was the new voice actors. Let me just say I don't dislike the voice actors here; I think they are fine and they fit the characters decently well. Their singing is also decent as well. So I don't dislike any of the voices, they are fine for the most part and fit decently well with the characters.

5. The Songs

The songs so far are...fine. If there was one thing that HB consistently got right, it was the songs. Even if I dislike HB, the songs are actually pretty good (for the most part...). Hazbin's songs are...decent. There aren't any songs that I can say are bad, though I have some issues with the show's music; mainly the fact that the show sometimes shoves in songs...for the sake of having a song.

If you want to make a musical with songs you need to make sure each song has a distinct purpose for the story; take "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. Before this song, it's pretty easy to infer that Ariel has an interest in the surface world - with her collecting human stuff and all. But the song further shows us her desire to see the surface - to see what it's like above water. It shows her desire to see the surface in the form of a song - it has a purpose within the story because it tells you something about the character.

Hazbin Hotel meanwhile sometimes has a problem when it comes to shoving in songs for the sake of meeting the song quota; the two biggest examples are "Hell is Forever" and "Respectless", as well as "Whatever It Takes". These songs are all completely unnecessary and they give us information that could have been communicated through simple dialogue rather than characters bursting out singing.

"Respectless" in particular feels less like a song and more like the characters just...singing a conversation with each other. The song is completely unnecessary and is just there to fill the song quota per episode. None of the songs I've mentioned are necessarily bad, but they suffer from being unneeded (HB also sometimes has this problem in season 2 mainly in episodes 3, 4, and 7).

Aside from that issue - the songs are...fine. None of them are bad but some of them are kinda useless and don't serve much of a purpose. I at least liked Happy Day in Hell and Poison, aside from that most of the songs are...ok. I just don't find most of them that memorable.

6. The Characters

Now, let's talk about the characters. First I'll talk about the main cast then the villains.

Charlie - I think Charlie's...fine. I always like overly positive and happy characters for protagonists so I was going to like Charlie anyway. She's fine; she's easy to root for and she's likable enough.

Vaggie - Vaggie's also fine. I do like her snark in episode 3, but aside from that there isn't much that interesting about her.

Nifty - Nifty's cute. Nifty's funny. I like Nifty.

Angel Dust - sigh Ok so I didn't like Angel Dust in episode 1 because of the fact he was another character whose one character trait is being excessively horny. And I also find all his jokes painfully unfunny. I'm not really in a position to judge how well his abuse from Val was handled so since I held a poll asking SA victim's thoughts on episode 4 and most of them voted no I'll just say that they didn't handle it very well and move on. So ya don't care for Angel Dust.

Alastor - Ah yes the creepy radio demon. He's also fine, I like his whole style and stuff.

Husk - Husk's whole purpose in the first three episodes is pretty much just to be pissed off at stuff, I kinda liked the scene where he talked to Angel Dust in episode 4 but aside from that, Husk is kinda just..fine...like everyone in this main cast.

Now let's talk about the villains so far!

Adam - Don't care for him. Sigh look Adam could be an entertaining villain but so far his dialogue and jokes are just painfully unfunny and I don't care for him as a villain. I could talk about his sidekick whose name I forgot but she's gotten so little screen time I can't form an opinion on her yet.

Also isn't it funny how HH was meant to be a female-focused show yet the males get more focus so far (As I've already talked about)? Ya, I thought so too. Anyways, the characters are...fine. I don't hate any of them, but I also don't really love any of them either. None of them are that interesting so far to me.

That's pretty much what I can say about everything in this show so far; I don't hate the animation but I don't love it either, I don't hate the comedy but I don't love it either, I don't hate the songs but I don't love them either, I don't hate any of the characters but I don't love them either.

7. Conclusion

So, that's my current thoughts on HH based on the first four episodes. Well...it's certainly a show that I watched. It's amazing to me how a show could be so consistently painfully average in pretty much EVERYTHING, from the animation to the songs to the comedy to the characters, to the episodes themselves, Hazbin Hotel is the most painfully average show I've watched so far. It's not bad so far, but it isn't good either. Again, maybe the show will improve when the latter half of season 1 comes out...

...or it will just get worse. I'm expecting the latter unfortunately due to the trailers making it look like there's going to be a Heaven/Hell war which means the show is probably going to abandon its premise like its spin-off (...that came before the main show was released). But ya, Hazbin Hotel is painfully average so far, probably a 6/10 so far, expecting the show to probably get worse, goodbye.

[vegetabletaxi]

headcanons about harry anderson no one cares about but like 5 people and i

i need to stress he is in my brain daily and i need to get some thoughts out please talk to me about harry anderson egbert guys please /silly

⭐🧵headcanons under the cut 🧵⭐

🧵 it's stated in "the insiders" that he has stage fright, but we are not given an explanation as to where it came from.

i like to imagine it's because he grew up with so many successful people in his family circle. not just because they are gods - but because they have talents that they are incredibly successful at. he's not as funny as his father, he's not as smart as his mother, he's not as savvy as rose, etc etc- and yet, he was brought into the spotlight from an early age nonetheless, having mentioned being in magazines and such. but he never talked, or said a word. meaning, he hasn't shown the world his potential at all yet... and he's terrified of doing so and disappointing them. his family, his friends, even strangers. it's a lot of pressure. and the more he lets it fester, the worse it gets.

🧵 he's in the theatre club but he's never properly acted/sang in front of anyone or participated in a play.

he's only been responsible for costumes. he really wants to participate - he rehearses for months on end before auditions - only to chicken out last minute.

🧵 he loves making other people shine more than shining himself.

we know he makes clothes. clothes are an art of self expression - and he loves dressing other people up so they can show their true potential. plus...it distracts him from his own failures.

🧵 he makes clothes for people that really need it, does a lot of charity work. the homeless, orphans, other school's plays, small local movies, etc.

he just loves to help out. he is genuinely a friendly person that cares and likes to keep himself busy.

🧵 ...and he also does make up!

this falls into the same category as the clothes thing, i think. he has a vanity table in his room. it's not hard to imagine him helping out with that too whenever he can.

🧵 he has officially been excused from holding presentations at school, much to his peer's dismay.

roxy knows his glossophobia (stage fright) is pretty damn bad, so she asked the school not to have him participate in things like that. people in turn think that he gets special treatment because of his god mom. overall he's not disliked though. i just think most people don't really know him, and tend to think of him as somewhat of a snob, if a friendly one. however his grades are only painfully average, partly because of this.

🧵 his relationship with his mom isn't perfect

now don't get me wrong, roxy is great, and they love each other very much. but i do think she has trouble talking about problems, and difficult things in general, and tends to keep things on the lighthearted side, which makes it hard to communicate issues with her. harry anderson would rather pretend he's got everything under control than bother his mom with 'frivilous problems'. ...one of such being kind of uncomfortable with aunt jane when he gets older. plus, he really doesn't want to disappoint her. he feels like he already is.

🧵a master of imitation

he can imitate any voice he wants to with perfect precision, including his mom's. makes calls to the house from school a lot easier. though she's pretty sneaky and finds out about this eventually lol

🧵 probably kins rarity from my little pony /lhj

🧵 he has the last name 'egbert', despite lalonde sounding better, to keep john's father's name alive.

🧵 unlabeled

he is very well versed in lgbt topics, as roxy made sure to teach him, but he doesn't really care to think about himself that way

🧵 born intersex but they really stuck with the name harry anderson so they just assigned him male at birth

told him he's free to choose when he's older of course and roxy refused to do any surgery on him. he just kept going with it though. for one he doesn't truly care about gender but also it's the name his dad wanted him to have, and he misses him a lot.

🧵 he gets along well with kanaya

clothes making go brrr :)

🧵 john does visit for some holidays, which he's happy about. but the day after that, he finds himself extremely sad he's gone again. he never calls back.

i love john but he absolutely is stuck in his own little "theyre fake anyway" narrative. also he's depressed as shit L bozo. this leaves harry anderson with the irrational fear that if only he had been better, he would've stayed "this time".

🧵 played a ton of retro games, and watched a lot of retro movies as a kid, because of roxy and john's influence

he tries talking about it with others but they have no idea what the fuck he's talking about ever

🧵 sometimes roxy is too lazy to do her make up so she lets harry anderson do it in the mornings

just thought that was a cute little domestic thing they do

🧵when john finally comes out as june, he helps her pass better

seeing as harry is so good at voice imitation he can help her voice train, and of course would be more than happy to make clothes that flatter her figure. finally someone will indulge him in dress up :)

anyway that's it for now byeeee

[loopy777]

AtLA Book Water Soundtrack Review

You all know how we've wanted this soundtrack for years and suffered through such explanations as 'the original sound files probably don't exist anymore.' Thankfully, Avatar Studios has seen fit to re-record the music of the first season with a full orchestra, as part of what I assume is a media blitz meant to build hype for the live action Netflix remake. But we all know that remakes, even in music, often don't live up to the original. So, how did it turn out?

(Er, the soundtrack, I mean. The Netflix thing hasn't been released yet.)

With a sigh of relief, I can report: It's great!

Thankfully, the sample track didn't turn out to be indicative of the entire album. The composition of everything else is pretty faithful to the original versions, as far as I could tell. In fact, the overall sound is pretty close to my memories of the original music, despite the use of a full orchestra to record this version- with the exception of the drums, which in the HiDef sound files I downloaded sound fantastic and successfully make my floor and walls shake. (I make no guarantees about what you get if you listen to streaming, mp3 files, or the vinyl disks. This is why I pay a premium for FLAC files or CDs.) I loved turning up the volume and getting blasted by the classic Avatar theme in glorious orchestral quality.

Plus, some tracks are vastly improved by these recordings, while also being true to the original. The best example is the Northern Water Tribe entrance music, which I always thought sounded a bit chintzy and repetitive in the original track (but I admit my opinion might be colored by the poor quality of the recordings we have access to). The new version has a much fuller sound and enough variation to justify the length. I suspect this might come down to which of the original tracks used real instruments and which had to rely more on synthesized sound.

I suspect, though, that the vocals on this album are all the originals, and that's why the Koizilla music makes the chorus less prominent; it probably couldn't be mixed together with the new orchestra without sounding bad. In most cases, that's not a problem, but I do mourn that the Kozilla music doesn't sound quite right. But, on the other hand, Mako's singing has never sounded better.

The album has all the music I'd expect of a soundtrack for Book Water. The Fire Nation, Kyoshi Island, and Jet all get good suites that showcase their themes and music, something that just doesn't exist anywhere in the original recordings. The famous stuff -- the opening theme, the Avatar State, the 'into the sunset' peaceful music, the Agni Kai, Aang's antics, the full "Winter, Spring, Summer, & Fall" tune in both full instrumental form and with Mako's singing, and of course the ending credits -- is all here. The season finale is heavily represented, but that's appropriate as those episodes got a lot of new music and all of it is great. And if you've only been able to content yourself with the fan-made soundtracks we've had to piece together over the the years via promotional releases and episode rips, there's some good stuff here that you might never have heard by itself before, like the fun bit of music for June.

And because I'm compelled to nitpick, I'm a bit annoyed by the order of the tracks. I like to listen to soundtracks in chronological order, and while that kind of thing isn't really feasible with something as long and repetitive as a television series season, this album does a serviceable approximation with its order- except for two weird cases. The Blue Spirit introduction comes after the music for his escape with Aang, and the music for the encounter with Koh comes after the music for Aang's arrival in the Spirit World. I assume this is because it makes for a better hi/lo/fast/slow sequence as part of the overall, but I would have preferred the order of their presentation in the cartoon.

So, in conclusion, this is the soundtrack we've wanted all these years, and everyone should stream or buy it or at least pirate it in enough numbers to raise eyebrows. I want the other two books done this way, and I think we as a fandom deserve it, despite some of the fanfic I've seen you people write. ;)

[ciaossu-imagines]

So, I used prompt 7, number 14 from Day 17 of the event for G. from Katekyo Hitman Reborn! I don’t often get to write about the Primo Generation characters, so this was fun!

Does the character take any sleeping aids (ex: pills, melatonin supplements, etc.)?

So, obviously there weren’t many sleep aids available during the Primo generation’s time period so we’re going to modernize this generation a little, just because sleeping aids are more plentiful and available now.

Now, overall, despite being a night owl by nature, I don’t see G. as having a really hard time sleeping. Most of the time, he sleeps pretty well. It takes him a bit to fall asleep but once he is asleep, he’s pretty dead to the world for at least a good four to five hours.

It’s why G. can’t really nap. Once he’s out, he’s solidly out for hours on end. He can’t just sleep for little amounts of time and honestly, the half-hour he meant to spend napping is just enough time for him to fall asleep.

Like I said – getting to sleep is the hardest part for him. He lays down and tries to relax and go to sleep. However, there’s something about this relaxed state that really fires up his brain and he gets preoccupied with whatever’s in his brain and it takes him a while to sort out his head and shut his brain down enough to fall asleep.

The only time this doesn’t ring true is if he’s sick or physically just absolutely exhausted. If he’s sick, G.’s someone who needs a lot of sleep to heal up and feel better and after injury or spending a lot of time fighting or staying up, he’s out like a light when he finally does get the chance to sleep.

The only time G. really has serious sleep issues other than this is when he’s really stressed about something or really excited about something. He’s so impatient when it comes to things he’s looking forward to and he’s so eager to get to them that he finds it hard to unwind enough to sleep. And, of course, stress does the same thing for him, where his brain won’t shut down and his body is tense, and he can’t unwind.

It’s at those points where he really does have an almost impossible time falling to sleep, where it can take him two to three hours to even fall asleep and his body doesn’t actually conk out like he normally does.

At those points, I think G. would try to suffer through it rather than take sleeping aids. If it got really bad, he would rather use melatonin than an actual over the counter sleeping pill or a doctor prescribed one. He doesn’t want the risk of drowsiness or grogginess the next day because it could seriously impact his work.

[aquaquadrant]

Thinking about the fact that in both worlds XB and Keralis find each other. Could you tell us more about Papa AI's and BX's relationship? Like it's implied/kinda stated that AI took BX from the arena saving him/getting a very loyal follower. Does AI really care for BX and vice versa?

OHOHOHO, i’m so glad you asked, my friend. alisker and bx’s backstory is something that doesn’t really have much relevance to the main plot of HTP, and likely won’t even come up except in little hints here and there, but i couldn’t resist developing it anyways so y’all are in for a treat 😂

bx was indeed a gladiator at the arena- an unwilling one, i might add. he was captured when he was fairly young (older kid/younger teen) after an unfortunate death put him at spawn at just the wrong time, and forced to fight for the entertainment of hels’ most wealthy and powerful denizens. bx quickly took to it, however, becoming a skilled and vicious fighter. as the years passed, he ascended the ranks until he was put up against the arena’s reigning champion; helsknight.

bx lost that fight, badly, respawning back in his cage (all gladiators were forced to set their spawns with respawn anchors, so dying in the arena wouldn’t set them free). to his surprise, he had a visitor; the newly self-appointed head of new helington, alisker.

alisker was a young business mogul who’d made his fortune in diamond mining (some say his extra eyes granted him the ability to see through stone- or perhaps he was just lucky) and built a thriving crime syndicate from it, ruling the city with an iron fist. as any player in the upper class, alisker had attended these gladiator fights and taken a shine to bx. he bought bx’s freedom from the arena- on the condition that bx work for him.

bx accepted the deal, but it wasn’t necessarily a happy arrangement. he didn’t mind the type of enforcement work he did for alisker, but his years of gladiator fighting had left him wary, distrustful, and borderline feral. he was also hiding a pretty significant secret; he was a guardian hybrid. out of water, there was nothing about him to give it away, and that’s how he liked to keep it. he knew his fellow hybrid gladiators were seen as less than human by some, and he didn’t want to jeopardize his newly found freedom.

when or how exactly they got together, i’m not sure. i will say that their dynamic initially wasn’t the healthiest, considering the power imbalance between them, but it wasn’t bad in terms of hels standards. alisker was patient and very clear about his intentions, and eventually bx let down his walls. alisker figuring out bx was a guardian hybrid happened by accident (a mishap with a water elevator) but his reaction was what convinced bx that alisker could be trusted; alisker assured bx that it didn’t matter, and promised to keep his secret. and since then, alisker has earned bx’s unending loyalty and dedication.

things did get a little complicated when alisker met atlas and started funding hels tek. at first it was just ordinary redstone contraptions and farms, but then hels tek started looking towards hybrids as an infinite resource. clearly, this posed a threat to bx. but alisker decided to continue funding atlas’s work because it was the best way to keep a close eye on him, and ensure his search for hybrids never came close to bx (as well as communicate that bx was off limits). after all, the best way to control potential threats is to have them under your thumb.

overall, i’d say that alisker and bx care for each other as best as any two players in hels can. it might not always be the most wholesome or healthy relationship, since neither of them really know what that looks like, but they love in their own way and they’d defend each other to the end. because if alisker is going to ever be the ‘king’ of hels, he needs his queen by his side.

(keralis calls xb ‘princess’, alisker calls bx ‘queenie.’)

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Arc 11 - Halfway Reflections

I'm gonna guess, based on what I know, that the Arc 11 Interludes are gonna be pretty different from 11.1 to 11.8, so probably worth doing a Arc reflection here, after having Read 11.8, but before I do the interludes.

Arc 11 is pretty good. Gives us a much closer look at just how shitty the city has gotten - very reminiscent of like... post-Katrina New Orleans... but with superpowered gangs making the recovery efforts harder.

We get to see Taylor actually starting her Warlord career, we get to see Taylor taking requests from her subjects, as it were, and actually going out on a little quest. We see how her power can give her the ability to police her zone in a way that no one else really can - the ability to see what's coming and then deal with it from a distance. Again, bug control - seems lame. Isn't. Isn't at all.

The Merchants get their moment in the sun after having been lurking uselessly at the edge of the narrative for a while... and they get wrecked by Faultline and Co who are just trying to get some Case 53 Intel. We get another hint of Cauldron... well, existing, and a sign of their supposed reach and power. It's definitely a long time for that to get a payoff, but I know we'll get it.

the Merchants as being the sort of... embrace the madness of the times kind of faction makes sense, and the way that Skiddy is deciding to try and manufacture triggers is believable - obviously people would try that - and also clearly only works on the scale that he's doing it because of the state of the Bay. And the Merchants, like the short-sighted idiots they are, have decided that they're gonna try to prolong this process, which is... a choice.

Admittedly, I didn't expect this to be Arc 11's main part - I kind of expected S9 to play a larger role, and I'm sure a blind reader coming in would be like 'where's these serial killers I'm getting teased about?, what about that end of the world shit?!'

Arc 11's first half gives us more 'Taylor fighting villains, being a less bad option' which is a regular fare to make her further descent into supervillainy more palatable to the reader but the thing is... Taylor never really becomes a Supervillain in anything but the surface? Like, yes, she does bad things, but villain is really not a great descriptor of her so far, and probably never will be. She never loses sight of her ultimately heroic goals, and she's not going like... she's not pulling a 'Knight Templar' trope, where she does so many horrible things in the name of a righteous cause, believing in her righteousness.

I am led to believe that there is a common notion in large swaths of the fandom that we aren't supposed to believe that Taylor is making good choices here. Like, good as in 'correct' or 'most effective', and Taylor is definitely a biased POV and all, but honestly, it's hard to see her being effective at what she's doing, or at what's coming, if she doesn't make them? Very few of her choices have actually made things significantly worse for much of anyone who doesn't deserve it at this point (She's hardly solely responsible for Dinah) beyond maybe Amy after the bank thing, and as with Dinah, that probably would have happened without her anyway.

Overall, I like Arc 11. I think 8 still wins as the best so far, but 11 is up there.

[indominusavenger]

I'm gonna come out and say it; No Way Home sucked. Sure, it had some good moments but in my opinion, it does not live up to the first two instalments of the trilogy. I liked the first part of the movie but as soon as I knew where the second part was going, I fell off that train pretty quickly.

Not only did it make MCU Spidey end up with the same tale as his two predecessors but it also undoes Peter's entire establishment in Marvel's overall franchise. What was the point of the last four movies putting him on the roster with Earth's MIGHTIEST Heroes if you were just going to take all that away and make it like he exists in a completely separate world from them? What was the point of the three cameos we had from RDJ, Samuel L. Jackson, and Benedict Cumberbatch in their iconic roles to show that interconnected universe as with every other MCU movie, only for that to be stripped away at the very last second? Might as well have been another one of Sony's solo ventures at making a series after TASM but it's not and that's why I HATE the uncertainty of Peter Parker's future in the MCU. However, given the current failing reality of the MCU with every new movie that comes out, I can already confirm it's nothing good. In fact, it probably would be best if progress stops altogether before Marvel really is stuck in the dust and just a part of a magnificent past with no legacy to carry on. (This is a side note but that is still a big issue for me anyways that I may expand upon later in another post. In the meantime, go watch all the video essays on YouTube, I'm sure you'll find many good ones.)

He had a unique story that fit into the overarching plot of the MCU and the premise he had was different from the previous Spideys which is what was so interesting about his character development. This Peter Parker had friends that weren't introduced before, or at least, they were more developed than in other series; he had a superhero as a mentor, not a scientist turned villain due to unfortunate circumstances; he had a guy in the chair who wasn't after him or turned villain because his father was one, he had two crushes that were friends, he was part of clubs and acted more teenage-like than the last two. He interacts with other heroes, joins the Avengers, fights THE villain, perishes, comes back, loses his mentor, and is still expected to keep on going.

For crying out loud, he was asked if he was going to be the next Iron Man but he knew he wasn't which is what Far From Home set out to show us. And to all those who called him Iron Man Jr. in Homecoming, I hope you know that you make no sense and I think Marvel did a wonderful job making him stand apart. He was a kid admiring one of his role models and now that he actually had a connection to him, of course he was going to want to be like his mentor but even Tony recognized that he wanted him to be more, not like him. This shows Iron Man himself had great respect for the young hero.

Now, moving onto No Way Home, two main things that annoy the heck out of me; Peter being forgotten (obviously) and Aunt May dying. I'll start with Aunt May's death. To be honest, it was a completely unnecessary death and it actually doesn't make sense for the purpose it had in the movie. The punchline "With great power comes great responsibility." loses its premise as soon as you recall Civil War's intro to Peter in the first place. Uncle Ben had already died, Peter was Spider-Man at this point, and remember what Peter told Tony when they met, why the older hero related to him so much? "When you can do the things that I can, but you don't... and then the bad things happen... they happen because of you." So he already learned that lesson on responsibility and by the time we get to No Way Home, this kid had learned lessons also involving the universe at large. Why are we rehashing Uncle Ben's offscreen death with Aunt May if Marvel literally stated that was overdone? Make that make sense. But oh, it was to make something big and dramatic happen in the movie because we needed to mOve aLoNg. Peter lost his parents, his uncle, and mentor; can you come up with something new other than parental figure losses? Why do TASM Peter and OG Peter still have their Aunt Mays and even if it was just a deleted scene, technically TASM Peter's dad? Huh, then what do you say there? Why did MCU Peter Parker have to lose ALL his parental figures?

Finally, the thing that probably broke most of us; Peter being wiped from everyone's memory. As I stated earlier, his entire existence within the MCU just vanishes, like that, in seconds. So......... what was the point of his existence up till now in the MCU? What was the point of his specific development and growth if he was just going to get forgotten? Why was he meticulously introduced at the height of the Avengers' conflict and then constantly involved with some other MCU hero/important character if he was going to be removed from that? If the Avengers were never a big deal, why make him a part of that at all and why were we still bringing them up at the climax of the film? For those who bring up the argument that he's supposed to be a solitary hero, well that was the worst way to have introduced him then, right? But Marvel chose that route, not any other. Which is why that decision still makes no sense to me. You put him in a world where he wasn't the only superhero and he was going to interact with other heroes which none of the other Spider-Men had and that already put him in a unique position. Why give him a background that was going to get swiped?

Imagine that, making five blockbuster films that gave him a firm standing in the MCU at the peak of Phase 3 and then in his sixth film, his last standalone which is supposed to be his most shining moment, he gets the rug pulled out from underneath him to give him a blank slate? You might as well have thrown every script out from 2015 to 2019 including him before they were ever written or considered. It's the equivalent of undoing everything you just worked on in a school project that's worth 40% of your final grade. Think about that for a second. Marvel just undid 6 years of work and investment in a single character for them to go back to the beginning. Why didn't you just do that then from the start? You could have had more classic Spidey a long time ago by that train of thought (which I really didn't want because we already saw that twice and this Spidey was something fresh).

Anyways, thanks for reading. This is 2 years worth of disappointment and frustration put on the page.

[ae-neon]

Reading Throne of Glass (1-3)

TW: mentions of slavery and suicide

Disclaimer;

I'm gonna be nitpicky but it won't reflect my overall enjoyment. Besides the racist Nehemia plotline (which I don't like at all) I don't mind the general vibe or story of ToG. Also because it's so popular I have been spoiled for the overall big points of the story like endgame ships and character death but I don't know anything about the world, the magic, the character personalities, histories etc

Chapter 1

I instantly prefer the 3rd person POV.

SJM loves using slavery - and like, the worst type of slavery - as trauma porn.

Notorious Assassin - are you not then just bad at your job? Why does everyone know it was you?

SJM knows how to write her protagonists being observant, it's maybe her best trait.

WAIT. WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING??

If they're escorting her and trying to confuse her or even just to treat her like a prisoner - why isn't she blindfolded?? Why not put a bag over her head?? Like SHE CAN SEE WHERE SHE'S GOING?????

Okay I know Chaol is gonna be important and a love interest at some point so he has to have a serious position despite probably being 17/18 - but CAPTAIN of the royal guard?? The whole royal guard?? Be fr. Just have him be the Prince's right hand or personal knight or something.

The Captain of the Royal Guard would be an interesting opponent. Maybe even worthy of some effort on her part.

She was scared of him 5 sentences ago:

...Chaol Westfall, Captain of the Royal Guard, and suddenly, the sky loomed, the mountains pushed from behind, and even the earth swelled toward her knees. She hadn’t tasted fear in a while—hadn’t let herself taste fear.

"How lovely it was to hear a voice like her own—cool and articulate—even if he was a nasty brute!" Sorry the slaves weren't well spoken and there aren't any political prisoners to keep intellectual company with

The only thing all the intended disorientation had accomplished was to familiarize her with the building. Idiots.

Yea, I agree, they are idiots - they should have blindfolded you

Why is this big manor?hall?thing? by the slave mines? Like so close it's literally next door to where they sleep

The world building is pretty good so far

"...the opulence felt like a slap to the face." sjm don't lie

Chapter 2

close-cropped chestnut hair >>>> team Chaol already

I might consider Celaena an icon for not bowing to the Prince, if I didn't know she ends the series as queen. What a waste.

I'll probably like Dorian but his words mean nothing. If he had a problem with people being forced to bow, he would have said something earlier.

Duke Perrington came from Rifthold to see the treasurer?? The treasurer doesn't live at court? Or at least in the capital?

(Gold crown+)...black doublet, an emblazoned gold rendering of the royal wyvern occupied the entirety of the chest. His red cloak fell gracefully around him and his throne.

Dorian's first outfit eating up all of Rhysand's 3 black on black outfits.

Black hair blue eyes, he was definitely the first endgame love interest. A YA classic.

Princes are not supposed to be handsome! They’re sniveling, stupid, repulsive creatures! This one . . . this . . . How unfair of him to be royal and beautiful.

This. And some other sentences (that also end with exclamations) come off as weirdly childish in their tone and don't fit with the rest of the writing. Eg

What a miserable state for a girl of former beauty!

Like stop. The vibe is she thinks she's gonna die and she's being humiliated by her enslavers. This is off

I won't rag on SJM's writing too much because she was young and it's her first novel but this:

At a passing glance, one might think her eyes blue or gray, perhaps even green, depending on the color of her clothing. Up close, though, these warring hues were offset by the brilliant ring of gold around her pupils. But it was her golden hair that caught the attention of most, hair that still maintained a glimmer of its glory. In short, Celaena Sardothien was blessed with a handful of attractive features that compensated for the majority of average ones; and, by early adolescence, she’d discovered that with the help of cosmetics, these average features could easily match the extraordinary assets.

"But now, standing before Dorian Havilliard as little more than a gutter rat!" Girl, stfu

Acotar ellipses >>> ToG exclamations

I like Dorian and I like the story of Celaena's escape attempt. BUT. It would have been better if Dorian and Chaol had heard the story and used it as their reason to recruit her - a hectic story that proved Celaena was not only all that her reputation said but also that the mines hadn't broke her.

Then later, when they have more of a connection, have Celaena reveal it was essentially a suicide attempt.

Secret business? The Crown Prince, the Captain of the Guard, a Duke and like a dozen + royal guards isn't exactly low profile. In fact, it's the highest fucking profile, Sarah

Chapter 3

Dorian 🤝 Cassian; ogling starved women's bodies.

"My father has gotten it into his head that he needs a Champion." Even Celaena knows the Champion is supposed to be a knight or a lord or a holy warrior or something, not an assassin and definitely not an enemy of the crown. If you need an assassin just hire her as one

No one gets hired in an sjm book without being offered a "considerable salary" I think she doesn't understand much about money irl

She barely heard his last few words. A competition! Against some nobody men from the-gods-knew-where! And assassins! “What other assassins?” she demanded.

“None that I’ve heard of. None as famous as you...

The exclamations... Also those assassins are better by simple virtue of not being famous

They're acting like she's weakened but honestly shouldn't she be absolutely shredded? Shouldn't her arm strength be crazy from a year in a mine?

...but could only recall a solitary line from the mournful bellowing of the Eyllwe work songs, deep and slow like honey poured from a jar: “And go home at last . . .”

SJM is actually so vile because I know this isn't gonna really matter in a way that centres these enslaved people.

-

Overall not bad. I like these 3 characters and I much prefer 3rd person POV.

Celaena is a little erratic in her moods and thoughts but whatever.

Some nice hints of worldbuilding but also standard "sjm doesn't really understand the concept she's included"

[bedabug]

Thoughts on Dragon Age: The Veilguard now that I've finished it. This will have spoilers in it that I'll put under a cut but the spoiler free short of it is this:

Final act is incredible. From the "point of no return" onward the game is phenomenal. Probably one of the best final sections of any game I've played. Downsides were some lore sanded down. Companions don't talk to you enough, can't really get to know them outside of their quest lines. Romances were remarkably lackluster in more than just amount of content. Rook dialogue choices are limited.

Overall I liked the game, final act really was so good I forgave pretty much all my other issues.

Now for the pretty spoiler filled version with details (warning this is massively long):

We're gonna do this by category, and I'm gonna save stuff I liked for the end so that this post on the whole feels slightly compliment sandwich-y. I am gonna talk with a lot of depth about the stuff I don't like because there's a lot of reasons and information to it BUT I want to stress again I liked the game on the whole.

First up is how the game disappoints on player choice at a lot of points, starting with the obvious of crafting your own Rook. You spend however long in the character creator, you read all the faction notes, you are given exactly one small piece of character background (why you joined or were loaned out to Varric) and there is no other character information given to you which is GREAT! Until Rook suddenly starts dropping background information to Solas (or to Taash in one of their early missions if I remember correctly). An elf Rook with a Lords of Fortune background suddenly drops the information that they were a Tevinter Galley Slave for example which is a huge piece of background to just throw on the player with no warning, potentially undoing a lot of their own character building. This wouldn't be a problem if it was stated anywhere in the character creator instead of sprung on you well after the tutorial section is done.

And that kind of thing doesn't even begin to address the negated player choice from other games. Did you give Isabela over to the Qunari? Too bad she's here anyway with no mention of it. Did you have Hawke romance Isabela? Also not mentioned, nor whether or not Hawke is alive. Who is the Divine for anyone outside of Tevinter? Never comes up. What happened with circle mages? Who can say. You can import the fact that the Inquisitor romanced Iron Bull but not if he turned against you in Tresspasser and sided with the antaam. Did the Inquisitor bathe in Mythal's well or did Morrigan? What about Morrigan's child, does he even exist? Some player choices (who rules Ferelden or Orzammar for example) are fine to not include because why would they come up when you're so far north of those areas. But not including others while including the characters they are directly about, like Isabela or Morrigan is frustrating. I would rather not have those characters then have them waltzing in with no regard for the choices made about them previously. Doesn't have to be a big thing but a throw away line about the choice or just an entry in the codex would go a long way.

Rook's dialogue options are also frustrating. I don't mind the option to be the world's most supportive team therapist, but I'd have loved it to be more of a choice. Aggressive or mean options felt few and far between which made being able to disagree with your team difficult. Rook should be able to disagree with them! The player should be able to argue and convince or be convinced! One of the most fun playthroughs I did of DA:I was one where I made the Inquisitor a hardline religious zealot who strongly believed they were the herald of Andraste. I terrorized my team and it was fun seeing that version of the game after seeing the version where they all trusted and cared for the Inquisitor. That kind of variety is really lacking in Veilguard.

While we're on lacking dialogue and choices, Faction and lineage dialogue seems to be a crap shoot. Wardens have quite a bit, Lords of Fortune might as well have none. It's a really wild disparity but also not there in places where you feel it really should be there. Like if you're an elf and Emmrich asks you about your funeral plans you might not be able to respond with the Dalish tradition of planting a tree over the grave, even if you mention that same tradition to Bellara during the funeral sequence in her quest line. The majority of Elf related dialogue I got was being able to apologize to Harding for what the ancient elven gods did to the Titans which feels not great.

Speaking of factions! This is where I'm gonna talk about the sanding down/dulling the edges of the more unsavory elements in the Dragon Age lore, presumably done so that the game can treat the player with kid gloves. The game feels afraid to embrace the parts of Thedas that don't meet real world standards of morality. Which not only is a remarkably boring story choice, it undercuts a lot of the important things you're fighting against/working towards fixing as a player in the world. Take the Antivan Crows for example. We know from Zevran, among other resources from previous games, that the Crows have no issue with purchasing or stealing orphans to raise them as assassins. Zevran talks about the torturous lessons and treatment he received as one such orphan. Part of this is handwave forgivable because much of your interactions with the Crows in Veilguard is through their leadership. Neither the talons nor the grandsons of the first talon are going to openly share the most unsavory elements of their organization. But there was depth to be mined there from the idea that this organization with dubious morals beyond just killers for hire (which is oddly not portrayed as morally grey as I think it should be) when faced with an occupation and a risk of Antiva pull together to be more than they are, but alas that is left widely not discussed. But again the Crow situation is more forgivable than the Tevinter problem.

Tevinter has long been described as a country that relies heavily on slave labor. You see (and can help or not) elves being kidnapped in DA:O from the alienage, you know and can help escaped tevinter slaves in DA2 (or even turn them back in which is wild), and you can argue the morality of slavery with Dorian in DA:I (something Veilguard directly implies helped change his mind on the issue!!). Despite this you don't see a single slave in Minrathous by my recollection. You see blood magic in some quest lines as you would expect, but you never really see slaves or slavery. The only slave I remember seeing in the entire game is the one that is abandoned by the Venatori in Nevarra. The only slave I remember in the entire game is the one found not in Tevinter and explicitly owned by the bad guy cult. It would have been so much more impactful to see every day regular Minrathous citizens with their slaves. The banality of evil, the evidence of it as a systemic problem. The Shadow Dragon faction is EXPLICITLY working towards changing Tevinter for the better and lists ending slavery as one of their goals but you don't ever see one there. They try to get around it by having the part of Minrathous you spend time in be a poorer area but the player should still see slavery and the ramifications of it. It feels remarkably like the player is being treated with kid gloves and protected from things unpleasant, but that massively undercuts the Shadow Dragons' own goals because they become something you basically never really encounter outside of the Venatori. It takes the Shadow Dragons from being an underground resistance group with revolutionary ideals to a group just fighting against one (admittedly powerful) evil cult, instead of a systemic problem in the country's very foundation. Yes there are codex entries mentioning Dorian trying to disband slavery via law changes and yes if you save Minrathous the discussion of who to put in charge mentions ending slavery as a key priority, but these all feel so empty without anything to ground them. This was the time to show both the power and the dark side of the Tevinter Empire and instead we don't see any of it.

My assumption is that because you can be part of these factions and go to these places and have to care about saving these people (they want the player to agonize over the decision to save Minrathous or Treviso) and maybe you'd care less about one if one was visibly full of slavers (even tho it'd be also full of slaves that ostensibly a player would want to save). But I think the game had also shown the dark elements of the Crows alongside that it makes the choice just as hard. And I think treating the player like they can't handle being part of a group in a fictional world that has some problems or darker elements to it is frustrating. Especially when getting to play a morally grey character is frequently a large appeal of video games. And if you're a Shadow Dragon then it should be more than just lip service to be part of group vying to free the country they call home from systemic oppression.

The way the Qun is talked about in Veilguard also falls under this umbrella. A seer in the Lords of Fortune base says that the Qun doesn't actually hate mages or torture them or sew their mouths shut that was just the Antaam. This is in direct conflict with literal other moments in the game when talking about how Taash's mom feels about mages and magic (she had begrudginly come to accept it thanks to help from a Rivaini seer but the undertone is folks from the Qun do not like mages nor are they used to them). Additionally Taash says the Qun isn't a prison and folks can leave any time, which is ALSO in direct conflict with Taash's own lived experiences as their mom had to flee the Qun to protect them. It's in conflict with the assassins sent after Bull when he left the Qun. It just feels like a needlessly "actually they're not bad its just the enemy faction that is bad" which I feel like takes away a lot of interesting depth to the Qun for the sake of making it more palatable but I also feel like a story could have sold me on why people actually like living under it and even prefer it without being like "oh actually all of the bad things were just the military" even though the military was part of the Qun until the DLC for DAI. Handwaving it away while also directly going against other things listed in the game is frustrating. If this is a legitimate change the writers wanted to make it's implemented poorly especially given the disconnect between what Taash tells us about the Qun vs what they tell us about their mom leaving it.

In keeping with the "kid gloves on" problem, your lineage is never an issue in the game. You can't to my knowledge even ask anyone if it could be a problem the way you can ask if being anything but human is going to be a problem as leader of the Inquisition. An Elf or Qunari Rook can walk around Minrathous with not even a second glance. This is in specific conflict with a conversation we can overhear between Lorelei and Bren in the Shadow Dragons shop where she asks him if he had any trouble at the market and he says wearing a hood helps, with the implication being that he has to hide his Qunari horns. I know it's weird to subject the player to racism but also the prejudices based on lineage is a key part of certain areas in Thedas and to discount them entirely feels weird. It should be a little bit risky to be an Elf of Qunari walking through Minrathous even if that's just the various NPCs on the street are less nice to you. There's a weird feeling of this world's problems are all specific Evil People doing Specific Evil Things instead of the fallibility of people and institutions and system problems which makes it amount to a much more bland version of Thedas then as we've previously seen it.

Tying in to things being more bland, it's time to cover the companions' relationship to Rook both romantic and platonic. I'll start with platonic because I actually feel like it's the bigger offender though I've seen a lot of complaints about the romances that I agree with. I feel like I can't get to know the companions properly and they can't get to know me. Sure Rook goes along and helps them on whatever therapy and quest line they need, but outside of that? I cannot start a conversation with them and ask them what they think about different topics while answering questions back. I covered previously that the dialogue options are limited but this is more that the amount of conversations outside of ones directly relating to quest lines is nearly non existent. I knew so much about my companions and their outlooks and motivators from information outside of their quest lines in previous games because you got to really talk to them through branching dialogue trees and occasionally you got to respond in kind. You don't get that kind of friendship depth with the companions in Veilguard because you don't get to have many conversations with them and the ones you do are usually just Rook asking "are you ok" or offering to help. Not getting to know them.

Sure there's a lot of little lore and backstory you can pick up from party banter or codex entries but those things don't feel like they deepen the bond with Rook. Bellara refers to Neve as the sister she never had at one point while I love that and think it's truly charming, it made me realize that Rook didn't feel particularly close to any companion, not even the one they romanced.

Which brings me to romances. This game took the worst element of Mass Effect romances and brought them to Dragon Age. For years I've complained that I wished Mass Effect romances were more like Dragon Ages and we almost kinda got there in Andromeda, but the finger on the monkey paw did curl and instead of Mass Effect romances getting better, Dragon Age ones got worse.

I have romanced Davrin, Bellara, and Emmrich at this point (and watched videos of the others to compare). Emmrich's is easily the best in terms of content given but even still they are all remarkably chaste. A bunch of almost kisses interrupted and you can barely properly lock in before basically the point of no return? You don't even get more than a kiss in the romance until AFTER the point of no return?? In DAI once locked in you could go up to your romantic partner for almost any of the romances and have a cute little moment together. In Veilguard you're lucky if it ever comes up outside of your specific romance scenes. I had one companion mention my romance with Davrin and with Bellara, and Harding's commentary about age was all I got for Emmrichs. Neve's romance with Lucanis (which I love!!) feels like it has more depth and love than either the Neve or Lucanis romance for Rook. Additionally the overall amount of time the romance content has is significantly less. Video compilation of all Bellara or all Emmrich romance scenes are both around 18min, in DAI for Dorian or for Bull it's over 30min each, same for Cassandra. Several of the romances in previous Dragon Age games have been some of my favorite video game romances in any series and all the ones in Veilguard feel so remarkably lacking. Outside of the specific romance scenes you might as well not be together at all which is such a bummer. Mass Effect 2 also does the limited chaste romance until the point of no return thing but at least it felt like the connection was there outside of those scenes because you also had the platonic bond underneath the romance that Veilguard does not really manage to accomplish.

Also side note: What the fuck was the nudity toggle even for because like I was expecting at least DA:I levels of nudity minimum if you have a toggle like that (with optimistically ME: Andromeda levels or more) and there was none of that. Why does that toggle even exist? To lie to me?

BioWare said this was the most "companion heavy" game and sure if your metric is exclusively what percentage of quests are companion quests then that is true. But if you're counting by any other metric I think it's actually one of the most companion-light games of the series. Which is a huge bummer as the companions and the player character's relationship to them has always been a massive appeal for me and many other DA fans. The characters in Veilguard are great and I do love them but I don't feel like Rook gets to bond with them in any way that matters and I think that's almost exclusively down to the missing big dialogue tree conversations.

Additionally on the companion note I don't love that seemingly no matter how you choose to end their personal quest lines the companions are absolutely 100% okay with Rook's decision. Some of them that makes sense for and some it felt weird. Taash's especially felt off because it definitely seemed like a balance between Qunari and Rivaini culture should have been struck there but instead it was a binary choice and they have no strong opinions either way on what you encourage them to do.

And finally the writing. I don't actually have too many complaints on this on the whole. I think some of the companion quest lines have not the greatest writing at moments. Harding and Taash are the bigger offenders here but Taashs sticks the landing better than Hardings in my opinion. Taash ends up so very minor or barely not minor coded because of their quest line and I just think there must have been a better way to do a coming out/finding yourself quest line without me feeling like I'm taking care of an angry 16 year old. But the ending mission of Taash's quest is pretty decent where as I feel Harding having an evil shade encapsulating all her negative feelings about what happened to the Titans was the most boring way to end what otherwise could have been a really interesting quest line lore wise. I do think some dialogue feels clunky. It reminds me of Jenny Nicholson's comment on how you can spot a Paid Disney Influencer because they always use attractions/parks full Disney names (Star Wars Galaxy's Edge as opposed to Star Wars Land for example) because everything is Proper Names in dialogue. Always calling it "gingerwort truffle" in full in every Davrin scene never shorthanding it to either gingerwort or just truffle and letting us understand from context so that the characters speak as any person would in real life. It ends up feeling awkward and stilted because of it, but thats a minor writing compaint.

Act 1's pacing is also very sluggish, but honestly that's a pretty forgivable problem for me considering the final act is as well done as it is. There are definitely occasionally moments where I wasn't impressed by the writing but they're all almost entirely early game problems so you kinda forget them by the end of the game.

I wish the crossroads market area was utilized better. I was about to finish Act 2 before I realized the vendor there replaced the vendor I lost from the unsaved city choice and many of my friends had not realized it themselves at all. I also feel like it would have been very cool if refugees from the not saved city had been evacuated either there or to the lighthouse in some capacity. Grey Wardens could have come through there after Weisshaupt fell and used it as a base to send people out to effectively fight the blight wherever was needed at the time. The lighthouse being such a cut off and private base was a little underwhelming and empty feeling and I think having faction presence there or in the crossroads market (more than just one occasional NPC) would have been a way to improve that. Also why is there not a Rivaini/Lords Of Fortune furniture set for the Lighthouse? Literally every other faction got one even dwarves which is isn't even a group you have to worry about reputation with!

I don't love the implication of the after credit scene that some secret big bad has been manipulating everyone into doing bad things this whole time because I think that as a plot concept usually undercuts more interesting narratives but I am willing to see where it goes. Mark me down as wary.

Slipping in here out of place because it goes with nothing is a minor complaint about the combat. No longer being able to control your companions sucks. That for me was always a really fun way to try out another class and see if I would want to do a full run as that class. But additionally they did not compensate for enemy targeting properly. Because your companions can't die and can't be controlled the enemy AI basically does not target them at all meaning if you're playing a Rook who is better at range (like say a mage) it becomes very dodge heavy in a way I find more annoying then challenging. It's not harder its more tedious and dull. I always liked that Dragon Age had a distinct combat style from Mass Effect and I do think transferring over to the Mass Effect combat style was not the best choice.

Final for complaints, I do feel like the save Minrathous or save Treviso choice is entirely undercut by the final part of act 3 happening in and basically destroying Minrathous. Hard to justify saving Minrathous earlier when you know it'll go through that, especially with the idea that you can minimize the spread of damage by saving Treviso because then at least it's just one city that is wrecked. But this is mostly a replay related complaint, I don't like when something undercuts a choice on replay but it is hardly a deal breaker or a big problem which is why it is the last thing mentioned in this section.

Finally for the things I liked:

I called the Varric twist from moment one when after the tutorial Harding doesn't address him at all in the infirmary and was only more convinced when Harding had to psyche herself up to go back to the Ritual Site. I was so worried that knowing he was dead was going to make the reveal less impactful or that I would feel like I didn't have time to properly mourn a character that is in my top three favorite Dragon Age characters.

I was very very wrong.

The reveal to Rook that Varric has been dead the whole time is masterfully done. I genuinely sobbed for a moment there. It was such a beautiful wrap up and send off for perhaps the series' most iconic character. It felt like saying goodbye to a best friend and hurt just as much without feeling cheap or manipulative (outside of like actually being manipulated by Solas as a plot point I mean.)

Act 3 in general just goes hard. From the point of no return til the end I was completely engrossed in the game and the story. I held my breath when side characters who weren't even companions looked like they were in trouble and cheered when I saw they lived. Beat for beat Act 3 is great. Doing basically the Mass Effect 2 suicide mission twice in different ways, having a guaranteed loss that is crushing but feels appropriate and not just for shock value. The writing in that section is tight and well done, the pacing is great, and the story beats all feel like they pay off in satisfying ways and the companion interaction in that sequence is the best it is in the entire game. Morrigan's inclusion in talking Solas down is fantastic, being able to talk Solas and convince him to keep the veil willingly also feels really rewarding.

On the topic of Solas, Gareth David-Lloyd puts in an absolutely phenomenal performance. He sells every double cross, every lie, every hint of foreshadowing, and every emotional beat. I can only think of a single line that felt awkwardly stated which is huge given the amount of story carrying dialogue he had.

I really like the games through line of Rook & Co basically becoming the new dreadwolf rebellion. Using his base, fighting the same gods, it's a nice parallel without being overwhelming in your face about it. Balanced and well done.

Hezenkoss was a hysterically fun villain in a delightfully well done mission and having her skull stay after in Emmrich's room as something you and your companions can talk to is excellent. The perfect amount of hammy villainy needed for a bit of levity without feeling so goofy that its off putting. I believe she was voiced by Juliet Landau who does a great job, just fun to listen to.

Manfred is also one of the most entertaining side characters. Goes from haha funny skeleton butler to basically Emmrich's son that is a crucial member of the group that you care for and I love that.

As a small final compliment THE HAIR!! Never did I dream hair in Dragon Age would ever look like anything other than molded clay on top of a characters head (unless you have mods). But the hair in Veilguard looks touchably soft and bouncy and for the most part moves in all the right ways and shines in the light well. As a console player it was nice to finally have good hair.

[pippersmcgee]

Hi I saw your review of mouthwashing and since nobody else is saying anything negative about I sort of also wanted to share my gripes with it and discuss it if that's ok!

I played the game yesterday and honestly I was very disappointed. I was intrigued by the random fanarts I saw on here, but it's telling that those fanarts had just as much depth as the actual game. It feels like the game bit off more than it could chew and can only pretend to have a deep understanding of the themes it tries to talk about.

Like for example, the rape of Anya even if it's central to the plot line is never talked about with any gravity. And I get it's intended, I get it's supposed to represent the workplace misogyny and dismissal of rape, but it just ends up creating a game that doesn't say anything. The only slight exploration you get is how men react to rape and the realistic reaction of them being like "my friend would never do that, he's not a bad guy". But that's all it did.

Then you play as Jimmy the rapist. And that's an interesting set up genuinely, I think playing as a rapist could lead to interesting explorations of why things like this happen and how they think. And it wants to be that but seems too afraid to even talk about its own theme. Like the rape is only ever implied even when you play as the rapist, and the game asks you to empathize with Jimmy. I find it insulting! Again, I understand it's because he doesn't want to face what he did, but then it just makes the actual game feel dismissive of Anyas rape by showing Jimmy struggling without telling you directly the weight of anythings that's happening.

In general, horror really struggles with sexual assault, I think it generally fetishizes it, makes it grotesque and insulting or, like here, (unintentionally) dismisses it to feed you the line that "everybody is human, even rapists, and that's the true horror" when it fails to acknowledge that what happened is horrific.

Anyway.. as a finishing note I find the community gross but that's expected from tumblr. The religious representations of Anya or the aesthetic art about her fetus inside of her gross me out. I also find it crazy that suddenly tumblr is fine with using terms like male socialization or the patriarchy when they accuse anybody using them of being a TERF, but at the same time they only use those concepts as a sort of way to take the blame off of Jimmy instead of trying to critically think about the world around them. It's just overall disappointing, good style tho.

thanks for sending this! "overall disappointing" is a good way to put it. Like you I saw some frankly breathtaking fanart and thought this game would blow me away. I was left wondering if I had somehow gotten a faulty copy of the game? Because I was clearly not feeling any of the things these talented fanartists were feeling. which is a shame, because the graphics, sound design, overall style of the game is fantastic.

cw for discussions of rape; this is also pretty long.

i will say that while i agree with your overall sentiment i'm not sure i'm 100% with you on the particulars. oddly, the game's handling of rape was really my least concern. considering who the protagonist is (a rapist!), it makes sense that the game is dismissive of what he did to anya. he wants to dismiss it. what gravity would a "nice guy" rapist give to the situation he caused? not much, probably. to add to that, his mental state does not improve over the course of the game. at no point should we expect him to acknowledge that what he did is in any way a problem -- in addition to being a shit guy he's also out of his mind. realizing that jimmy is a piece of shit is something that we, the player, are meant to discover on our own. (in that regard the game was successful!) I'd also like to take a moment and say that i'm not someone who cares about rape being portrayed respectfully, tastefully, etc, in media because rape in reality is neither respectful nor tasteful. and experiences with rape are so different from person to person that to say one piece of media fetishizes or makes rape grotesque is to deny the creative expression of people who don't want to communicate their rape in a certain way via their art.

trying to tie this back to the topic at hand: for me the problem was not that the game felt dismissive of anya's rape, or wanted us to excuse jimmy's behavior to a disturbing degree; it was that anya didn't feel like her own person. jimmy didn't feel like his own person. each character felt like the mouthpiece of a singular author and so failed to make an impression on me. personalities did not come through in the way the game wanted them to. the game does tackle some thought-provoking material, but the way it was written felt stale and even at times boring (which should not have been the case, given the subject matter!). it didn't have the wherewithal to tie these themes together in a way that was gripping, horrifying, satisfying, and so on. it had some issues with pacing.

the fetus stuff is weird to me too. the fact that anya is inspired by shelley duvall (i think?) and doesn't end up having a strong sense of character is depressing. "the game bit off more than it could chew" is also a good way to describe it. REALLY DISAPPOINTING! i wanted to like it!

[misailurist]

State of the Fanfiction

Wanted to talk a bit about fanfics I wrote back in the day and plans for the future. tldr: it's (almost) all weird-ass Simeon Saint rarepairs

Eight years ago, I wrote Simon Says, a way-too-long story about Simon Blackquill's time in prison... which quickly became focused on him dating/breaking up with Simon Keyes. There had been some interest in that pairing, and I liked it myself, but keeping them together felt antithetical to the story's overall message of "Blackquill is OK now and has learned to stop martyring himself for others," and also I not-so-secretly think messy breakups are more fun than successful romances. So that's what I did. Despite that, I'd had a lot of notes at the time about what a sequel might look like, where Keyes got out of prison and had his own redemption arc and became the kind of boyfriend who wouldn't destroy Blackquill's life. But when it came to actually write it, I decided that redemption arcs were boring, scrapped it all, and started working on my bonkers Keyes/Phantom fic where literally the only reason behind the pairing choice was, "Phantom is about as emotionally functional as an animal, so I bet Keyes could train him into being his dog." I wrote two chapters and then wandered away from fandom entirely to try being a functional adult for a while. Now, a whole ass time skip later, being a functional adult sucks ass and AAI2 finally got localized, so here I am again. I ended up reading all my own fanfic -- do you know that if enough years pass, you'll forget enough of what you wrote that reading your own fics feels like finding a new favorite author who made a bunch of shit just for you? Do recommend. And in those fics, I found three stories where I were mad that they hadn't been finished. Did you know that if you're your own new favorite author, you are now burdened with the knowledge that unfinished fics won't be updated unless YOU, YOURSELF update them? Awful. Terrible. Do not recommend. The three fics were: 1. Just Fake it. My post-bad-end Blackbright fic. I should go to jail for not finishing that. (On the bright side, it's what made me hyper-vigilant about backing up my writing, which is why I have the remnants of all the stories on this list at all.) I would like to finish it but I am in the middle of replaying the games and don't want to touch it until I've replayed Dual Destinies. (I am currently on...... Turnabout Big Top. Sigh.) 2. Impostor Syndrome. The aforementioned Keyes/Phantom fic, which I have updated with the new localized names so it is now a Saint/Phantom fic. Although it is currently just "the meandering post-prison adventures of Simeon Saint" fic because I am completely, utterly making this shit up as I go and haven't gotten to the shipping part yet. Does anyone want to read this but me? Trick question, I don't care. I'm basically in a fugue state right now and I don't think I could stop if I wanted. Also we are T-minus-two-chapters to where there will, in fact, be some actual for real Saint/Phantom shipping, so idk hang in there. 3. Simon, Horace, and Miles. The "what if there were no IS-7" AU. This one sucks actually. But I still love the idea of it. There's meat there. But the whole thing needs to be scrapped and restarted from the ground up. Something to consider once Impostor Syndrome is out of my system. Also I would rewrite it to be properly soutamitsu. That's a pairing the world needs more of, damn it. Also I lied, there's a secret fourth one that I never posted anywhere publicly: 4. Fabulous! A Simeon Saint/Max Galactica smut fic I started and then remembered I don't like writing smut. But the setup was pretty good so maybe I'll try again to finish it???