#even if the story might end up being actual dogshit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thefirstknife · 1 year ago

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Sorry to dump this rant in your inbox but the community’s attitude this entire season has legit got me tilted to the point I ignore pretty much the entire community outside of tumblr and a few irl friends. A lot of it has been frustrations I’ve had since Lightfall dropped wrt acting like the story was dogshit bc it didn’t give all the answers.

I legit got so fed up with Byf’s whole “oh all this season of the deep lore should have been in Lightfall” stuff bc like. My guy. You were one of the biggest complainers about the seasons having zero lore or story relevance. Fucking pick one or the other. Either seasons are all filled bullshit or you’re gonna get cliffhangered and expected to have some damn patience for storylines to get picked back up over time in the seasons after the main campaign of an expansion is done.

Especially bc like. IMO anyone expecting anything not a cliffhanger from the end of Lightfall when we KNEW The Final Shape was coming after it was just setting themselves up for disappointment, you need big tension and shit like that before the final act and this way getting dripfed answers in the lead up feels less like we’re dicking around doing nothing useful for the entire year as we wait for TFS to drop. It legit felt like being a KH fan back when KH3 dropped who had payed attention and played all the games and knew wasn’t the end of the series, just the conclusion of an arc and anyone mad about the stuff left unfinished was being unreasonable when it was made pretty explicitly clear it would either be answered in the future bc this wasn’t the ending or had been answered ages ago and people just hadn’t bothered to pay attention to it. Lightfall was never going to have all the answers bc it wasn’t the ending, and Bungie has proven they’ll circle back around and answer questions and pick up story beats if you’d just have a little patience! I’ll agree it wasn’t done perfectly and could do with more focus on the Veil and less on Strand but come ON my guy!

Combine that with the general toxicity of non-story focused Destiny YouTubers, especially PvP only typesc about Destiny and the way their fans have behaved and I’m full on not watching Destiny content creators anymore. Genuinely never seen content creators who need to touch grass and maybe just. Take a break. I’m not saying Lightfall was perfect or that Bungie hasn’t fucked up but I’m honestly just. Extremely fucking tired of how the community outside of tumblr has reacted to everything. And I’m especially sick of crybaby crucibros being obnoxious. Much as I don’t actually think it’d be at all good for the game there’s a part of me that thinks the idea of them splitting PvP stuff and PvE stuff into separate Destiny games in the future might have some merit to it purely so those of us who just want to explore and enjoy the story in peace can never bother with them again

Go off, honestly. So true. I've felt the same and I've pretty much not watched any Destiny youtube content in months. I started a few of them, but then stopped because of how utterly annoying and just plain wrong they were. The Lightfall situation is such a shitshow, not because of Bungie or the expansion itself, but because I genuinely believe that Destiny is above the reading level of most gamers.

Obviously, I still have some issues with how some stuff was handled, just as you do. Literally nobody is saying that everything in Lightfall was perfect. And I extend that to all expansions btw. Every expansion had faults. None of them are perfect. I think Lightfall's mysterious storytelling could've been a little bit clearer. And make no mistake, Lightfall WAS clear that nobody knows about the Veil, it just wasn't as clear as it could've been. Nothing would've really changed about the mystery if this was made more obvious earlier on in the campaign.

But dear lord, the bullshit around it is so tiring. I get it. I was confused at first too. I even posted here that I found certain things not as good and that they made me a little annoyed! And like that's fine! Your first impressions are your first impressions. But please move on. Are you seriously deciding everything based on first impressions? Do you never look into things and see if maybe there were things you missed or were wrong about? Like, it's okay to be confused at first and then realise later that you missed things. That's how learning works.

And yeah, the whole "everything should've been in Lightfall's campaign right away" is not only annoying because of the stuff you said, it's also annoying because it ignores that there's too much content to fit inside of a single campaign and also that this content has a theme. The campaign is a self-contained story with a theme and a plot (and the plot is NOT "learn what the Veil is." The plot of Lightfall is "stop Calus and the Witness from destroying Neomuna" which has concluded perfectly well in the campaign). Post-campaign stuff, the Witness cutscene and the Veil Logs are all things that don't fit thematically with the high action 80s movie story about protecting a city from destruction. These things were deliberately spread out through the year to give us multiple stories to follow while we wait for TFS. It's a live service game. You're here for the whole year. And it's fine if that's not the storytelling type you like. It's fine! That doesn't mean the story is objectively bad.

But yeah, agreed with what you said. It helps to vent! There's definitely people out there who are in the same situation and who just want to enjoy the game as usual and not having to deal with crybabies who make the whole experience absolutely miserable and make it impossible to engage with anything. Luckily, there's also always people who are still engaging with the game normally. We like the game and we like engaging with the game. And when I stop liking it, I'll just stop engaging with it. I wish other people could do the same.

#destiny 2 #ask #long post #i could go on about the community's treatment of lightfall but for the sake of everyone's sanity let's stop here #agreed with the ask wholeheartedly #there's so much stuff in the community that is just absolutely horrible on so many levels

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inuhiime · 2 years ago

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:: 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ! ──── ⪩⪨ 𝐎𝐌𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐓

' if you want my bones, i shall give them to you. if you want my heart, then i will gladly hand it over '

' so you want the right over my life and death? '

' even if you manage to save the world, you still won't be saved '

' you will live to the end and be happy '

' i am used to the pain. similarly, i am familiar with death. don't you already know this? '

' every story has a value. it is a story that is interesting to some people and salvation for others '

' what if all this was nothing more than a sweet lie? '

' i only liked the people i liked and saved the people i cared about '

' can't you change your repertoire of greetings already? i almost died for real this time, you know? '

' from the beginning till the end, i was always the one being saved '

' the hurt we inflicted on each other would not be erased '

' so many misfortunes exist in this world, so is there a reason to feel sorrow for every single one of them? '

' even if you do save one world, every other world you have forsaken will drag you down to hell '

' i don't want to be a monster '

' to someone who even lost the traces of loss, no such things as 'loss' existed '

' you know this too, right? the last one to laugh is the winner '

' it's been a while. you are still ugly '

' from the beginning, it was definitely dogshit '

' there is no magic that will heal all wounds just because someone else has a deep wound as well '

' we are life and death companions '

' i have no thoughts of saving you '

' i can kill all of them if i want. therefore, i can save all of them if i want '

' we promised. you forgot? '

' my death isn't a part of your plan '

' if there is no sense of death then the value of life also disappears '

' you want to save this world? it's the same for me, too '

' will i ever get to meet you again? '

' i like you. so don't die '

' i couldn't rage when i wanted to rage. i couldn't be sad when i wanted to grieve '

' you don't know anything so shut up '

' we'll be happy after this, right? '

' maybe, just maybe, i could've endured it '

' i wanted to live longer, even if i was a bit less happy. that's why i was a slave to capitalism '

' it seems to be that you actually enjoy dying or getting kidnapped '

' we can save the world. don't you know? '

' by the way, are you a couple? '

' the one who can save the world... it might be you, not me '

' someone was left and someone was leaving. no matter what was chosen, everyone would always reach their end '

' i'll definitely save you, too '

' do the ones that can't remember anything also forget about their sorrow, too? '

' i don't need a person like you '

' if i forget about everything... i won't feel this pain anymore, right? '

' can you promise not to give up on that goal, no matter what? '

' why, why is it not me, but you? '

' i shall pray that you may continue to exist somewhere, too '

' i remember the first time i was about to finish a book. it was like being deprived of the world '

' none of you will return alive '

' if i couldn't believe in him, who could i believe in the first place? '

' why did you die for us over and over? '

' just because i am a murderer doesn't mean i want to keep killing '

#sentence starter meme #sentence prompts #sentence starters #rp starter #rp meme #⪩⪨ ･･･ lit

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ro-botany · 8 months ago

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ACTUALLY. ACTUALLY. What are your extended thoughts on Henry's Harvest Scramble with Freddie? Mainly that Freddie has story potential to be a dark mage despite his shit Mag growths? What do you think this says about Freddie and dark magic?

(Link to said conversations, for convenience)

GOOD QUESTION THANK YOU

This conversation is interesting to me because it suggests several story things about dark magic, and about stat growths.

If you have DLC in Awakening, Frederick can reclass into precisely one tome-wielding class: Dread Fighter. (I know all male characters in Awakening can reclass to that, hush)

Of course, his magic growths are dogshit - as a dread fighter he jumps from 10% to 20% magic growth but like still - and he's got a -2 magic cap modifier. Getting his magic stat up so he can deal good damage with tomes is fighting a steep uphill battle, hours of work for something that a lot of more magically inclined characters are going to give you much better returns on.

But see. He's not incapable of magic. And it's not impossible to get him to a pretty decent magic stat; it'll be the last of his stats to reach cap, but if you put the work in, you theoretically could get that stat up there.

So we know for a gameplay-supported fact that Henry isn't lying when he says Frederick could make a decent mage. Given enough time and enough reclassing, he could. And what that suggests to me is that while stats are in part a reflection of one's natural and capabilities (cap modifiers), they're at least in part a function of a character's personality, interests, and what they're naturally talented at (growth rates).

If Frederick has low magic growths, story-wise that must at least in part be because magic is not something he's particularly interested in pursuing. He's a knight. A knight is all he really wants to be. So he pours his effort into acquiring the strength and melee combat skills that a knight needs to succeed.

Given sufficient motivation to pursue magic, it's possible he gets quite good at it, though. When you reclass him to Dread Fighter his magic growth doubles! If we gave him story reasons to take all that overachiever energy of his and direct it right at magic then I'm willing to bet that magic growth rate skyrockets.

Henry makes an interesting point about dark magic specifically; he suggests that to be truly good at dark magic, you need to be drawing on some kind of inner darkness when casting. Henry, presumably, fully indulges in his love of bloodshed when he's slinging spells... And he suggests that for Frederick, a desire to help others that spills over into self-destructiveness is a strongly dark trait, strong enough to fuel dark magic, if you can finely control how hard you lean into it.

I don't know if it would necessarily be healthy to encourage Fred to be even more of a self destructive workaholic... But the dark arts expert says Fred's got untapped talent for the dark arts, and leaning on how much he wants to protect people is a great way to motivate him into learning anything, magic included, so everything seems in order to me!

---

Now here's the part where I dive into the headcanon deep end. >:D

I don't know if Frederick would actually want to take Henry up on his offer, because dark magic doesn't seem particularly his style... Nonetheless, it's really fun to consider the precise form that Frederick's usage of the dark arts might end up being if he were to pursue it. How he might incorporate it into his fighting style... You can do some really fun shit with a man who's got a lot of melee combat experience, and who fuels his dark arts fuelled with a self-destructive desire to protect.

This is a weird example but the direction my mind instantly goes is to Kingdom Hearts 3's Rage Form mechanics. Sora is already a guy who sacrifices his well-being for the benefit of others, and Rage Form is one of the more direct ways that manifests; it lets him sacrifice his own HP to raise his attack power.

So. Steeples hands. Frederick but we make him a blood mage. He's sapping chunks of his own HP to enchant his melee weapons to do absolutely monstrous amounts of damage to whatever he hits for a few turns. Or hell, make it a fucked up healing spell. Saps his own health to heal others. Or maybe he learns to do both!

It's edgy as hell. It's reasonably in character. It's COOL. It's perfect. But also get him therapy and a stack of vulneraries while you're at it cause this is by definition terrible for his health.

#fe awakening #frederick #it's too late for me to be answering asks so this isn't particularly structured #but #you asked for frederick dark magic thoughts #and by george you got em #how much edgy bullshit that robot thinks is cool can robot stack onto one grumpy side character? more than you think!

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britcision · 1 year ago

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Family death mentions ahead friends

So one of the things I learned in the arrangements for my grandmother’s funeral is that their local priest remembers me

Pretty sure I only ever met him once; he moved in long after we’d left the country, and when I went back for visits church was not a part of them

He was the one who did my grandfather’s funeral

That was an interesting time, and the first time I noticed I am actually dogshit at handling things emotionally; emotionally, I’m usually fine. Sad, tired, got a key on depression, but never what you’d call the depths

No, all of those things get autorepressed before I know they’re there, so my disabled ass processes everything physically

0/10, do not recommend this. I don’t even know what’s stressing me out half the time, I have a crazy flare and have to reverse engineer what’s wrong around that

So I was, y’know, even less disposed to socialising than you might think around Grandpa’s funeral

Didn’t go to the wake, didn’t really talk to anyone. I wrote something for him and I read it in the service, and then we went to see the hole and pour his ashes in

My grandparents lived around the corner from that church before I was born; their direct garden neighbour is the graveyard, and they used to get to church through a pair of abutting doors that led from their garden to the priest’s garden, and then immediately into the graveyard

So when I told the family to go on without me, I’d head home, well, there was no real hesitation

(I do know the legal way around, the new priest wasn’t keen on strangers coming through the garden but I suspect Granny converted him before the end

But I am the grandchild Most Likely To Just Go Hop The Graveyard Fence)

And I sat there for a while, mostly just existing

And the priest came over to see to things, because everyone else had left and he saw them go, and he didn’t think I’d be there

He offered to come back later, but it was fine. It needed to be done, and I wasn’t doing anything that would be affected by it

He warned me a couple of times that it could be hard for people, and he really could just come back, but it was fine

I helped him step down my grandfather’s ashes for when the next person would be interred

(It’s a very old graveyard and while not 100% full as far as I know, they did have a special paved garden where you could pick which stone to have your ashes under along with anyone else in the parish

Very communal, you get all mixed in. As you may suspect, this is not a church holding stock in bodily resurrections)

And we talked a bit about the garden and how that all worked, and I helped fill in the hole and stole a stone

And that was the first and last time I met him

He asked if I’d be okay to go home on my own, and I did not tell him I could just hop the fence. I went around in the street like a good adult and everything

And that was the only time I ever met him

But when they were arranging my Granny’s funeral last month, apparently he mentioned he remembered me

I couldn’t be there this time, being both devoid of an immune system which makes air travel and the UK specifically dangerous as hell, and also sick with some stupid little cold of my own that has lasted a month and will not leave or let me sleep

(Not COVID, I checked, and a round of antibiotics ALMOST kicked it on its head… and then two days ago nope we’re back to up every couple hours because I can’t breathe)

I wrote something for my mother to read, but it just… never occurred to me that he would remember me

The old priest there knew me since before I could walk (I suspect he has passed), and was party to both good and bad childhood stories

This new guy was younger than my parents, we met once and I don’t think we’ll ever meet again, but I have been repeatedly told that I make an impression, even when I’m not trying to

I guess some people are not up for a peaceful chat about death rights while burying their loved ones, but I just…

I’m not sentimental about what is left behind

The important part is what has left, and the body itself needs to be dealt with

He was my grandfather, and it made sense to me to help put him to rest

To do the last thing I ever could with his earthly remains and make sure he was interred with love

It’s apparently not something I should ask anyone to do for me when I’m done, but I don’t mind that. I won’t be there, and I’m not really worried about what happens to the meat that occasionally consented to do what I wanted it to

It is possible that growing up playing chase in a graveyard and nicking shiny stones off the graves gives you a somewhat skewed view of death, but I’d have to talk to my older siblings more to be sure

(I don’t know if the priest even knows I have an older sister. She might have visited their area on her honeymoon, but all the relatives she stayed with only had horror stories to share with me later

She didn’t come for our grandfather’s funeral when my brothers and I did

She doesn’t care about anything but her husband and now her kid, but in a very… obvious way

She barely spoke to any of them

She flew out to see our Granny before she passed with her baby for a day or so, which personally I agree is a better call than going to the funeral, but I dunno if she would have seen him - she could be flying completely under the radar)

I guess I’ve just been thinking about the imprint we leave behind when we’re gone

As a family we tend towards being loud, obvious, and usually weird (on one side - the other tends towards loud, gregarious, and aggressively organising events)

I met that guy once, for probably no more than twenty minutes after the hour long service

He’ll probably never have cause to think about me again in his life, unless he tells that story

But I’ll always know him as the priest who moved in and asked the nice little old lady behind not to cut through his yard, entirely unknowing that she would in fact be organising every church do for the next two decades and would be a stranger for about another week tops

And apparently he remembers me staying behind, chatting about death and interment while we poured the dirt back into the hole and squashed it down until the stone could fit snugly again

We did discuss how many people it would take for it not to go down properly, but they do have a plan in place - that’s why they rotate the stones, so they have about the same volume of people under them

I don’t know if my grandmother was cremated

If she was, it was three days before Bonfire Night, and they just barely missed the very funniest funeral possible, but I don’t think the family will be ready for that observation for a few more years at least

If she was, I don’t know if they’ll put her under the same stone

I think I asked if you could make requests, but it’s been a long time; I don’t remember the answer

There will be a couple extra tenants in there with them, if they do, which would make her very happy. She was a compulsive host all her life

You also don’t exactly get only your own loved one’s ashes back from the crematorium

I think you can make a special request and pay extra, but it is much less energy efficient to cool and clean the oven between each body

You just sort of get the sweepings at the end of the day, portioned out between everyone

You can also have your ashes specially compressed and turned into a diamond at a different company or all sorts of other things, but you need a lot of ash to make a very small diamond because the key word there is “compression”, along with “heat”, “pressure”, and “extreme”

It may be worth storing more than one person’s worth of ash to make something more notable

There would be something poetic in having your ashes mixed with your partner’s into a single stone for the rest of eternity

I do sort of want mine to be tossed off a tall building in a wind storm though, so that’s for the rest of y’all

Organise the polycule and go for a statement piece

But do put one of those anti moisture bags in with the ashes while you’re waiting for everyone else to go, because the brick would probably be harder to ship by weight

It is entirely possible that I’m just weird about death all on my own, honestly

But if the worst thing some people can imagine is there being just… nothing at all, you just stop existing, that sounds pretty good to me

Like my Granny, I am also a compulsive entertainer - I’m pathologically bad at just sitting and hanging out at peoples’ houses. We have to be going somewhere, doing something, have some form of outside stimuli

Even just “you’re with everyone you love having a wonderful time forever and ever” sounds exhausting

Living is hard, people are hard, and I have ADHD so I guarantee I will find a way to get sick of eternity even with all the wonders of the universe to explore

All I want is peace and the chance to just stop

Failing that, I nominate we all build the tumblr island as whatever lies beyond and develop post-vital memes that will take decades to bring the newly dead up to speed on

#death #family death #funeral rights #funeral #cremation #long post #imma blame sir pterry but death has never frightened me #it may be the passive suicidality but i’m kinda looking forward to it #if i gotta pay taxes afterwards i am going to fucking riot capitalism will NOT follow me beyond the grave #in memoriam

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onbearfeet · 2 years ago

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So I just reblogged a thing about how fat people are treated in sports, and this seems as good a place as any to tell a PE trauma story.

Disclaimer: I'm not what most people think of when they say "fat woman". I've been told all my life that I'm too large to exist, of course, as nearly every woman in the English-speaking world has, but I'm on the upper end of the size range for most clothing companies that market to "standard size" women in my age range. So calling myself fat seems a bit like stolen valor (stolen trauma?), but if I had to describe myself in one of my books, I'd use words like "stout" or maybe "pudgy", mostly because I'm slightly shorter but no narrower than my personality leads people to expect. Someone being creepy might write phrases like "soft curves" or "acres of creamy skin". Me, I think it's more helpful to say I'm about 5'5", I've got what my mother insists on calling "childbearing hips", and I was 12 years old the first time strange men in public screamed at me to show them my boobs.

There's a fair bit of me, but if I'm the largest woman in the room I've usually taken a wrong turn.

Anyway, I've more or less always been a very slightly upsized human for my age, and that was also true in high-school PE class. I refused to dodge PE despite the MANY remarks made about my body because I'm pretty sure I have "fuck you, haters" engraved on my bones, but one person who was extra hard to get around was the actual teacher. Because she was somehow convinced that I "wasn't trying" when I ran the mile, because my times didn't improve.

Now, I am a dogshit runner. Always have been. Even when I was doing it for fun for several years, I was total crap. I have a long waist and therefore less leg than usually goes with my meager height, and while I am descended from people who walked across vast steppes, carrying their children and their lives on their backs to escape the wrath of tsars, none of them fucking ran while they were doing it. You don't usually escape a tsar by running, because running makes you tired before you get to the edge of his territory. You escape a tsar by walking and walking and walking and refusing to fucking stop until you're somewhere where no one recognizes your language or has heard of whatever the fuck a tsar is. I can walk for days, but I cannot run for shit, whether I try or not.

So my teacher telling my straight-A ass that my "low effort" on the mile was why I'd be getting the first B of my overachieving life? That was a PROBLEM.

(Also, my parents would kill me. An A was the only passing grade in my family.)

Luckily for me, that was when we hit the weight-training unit.

Most of the girls in the class didn't even want to HAVE weight training, because something something femininity, but I shut up and hit the bench press because I hated most of PE equally and, again, "fuck you, haters" was inscribed on my bones.

Except this time, unlike every other time I shut up and tried harder in PE, something happened.

I started getting stronger. I started upping my weights. I added plates to my bench while half the other girls were still pressing the bar and complaining about it. By the time we finished the unit, I had one of the highest maximum bench-presses in the class, just behind a really hard-core competitive swimmer who had been weight training for years. They wrote my name and maximum on the gym wall in ballpoint, right under hers.

I was doing all the same exercises as most of the other girls in the class ... but I ended up able to pick any one of them up and walk away with her after a few weeks.

After that, the PE teacher pulled me aside with a shocked expression and asked, "Are you really trying as hard on the mile as you are in the weight room?"

"Yes," I snapped back. "It's just that it only works in here."

The next time we ran the mile, I pushed myself so hard I collapsed and vomited at the finish line. It was the fastest I've ever run a mile in my life, and the time was a wildly unremarkable 10 minutes, 47 seconds. I'd shaved maybe ten seconds off my usual time, which hovered around 11 minutes.

The teacher apparently put together the name on the weight-room wall and the puke on the grass and gave me my goddamn A. It didn't stop her from giving me shit the following year, but at least after that my murderous glare was slightly more effective.

Point is, the lesson I learned that my teacher clearly did not is: different bodies are built for different things, and not nearly enough people understand that. Nothing is going to give me the body type of an Olympic sprinter or a WNBA star. I have about the same body shape my mother and grandmother had at my age, and I routinely surprise grocery clerks with my ability to pile all my groceries into one reinforced bag, sling it onto my shoulder like a beach tote, and stroll out of the store. I will never win a marathon or a 100-meter dash, but if you need someone to walk until I'm beyond the reach of the tsar, and carry my worldly goods with me, I'm your gal.

Unless my knee gives out. Fucking middle age.

#body positivity?#idk body acceptance #my meatsuit is my meatsuit #there are no trade-ins #i take care of my meatsuit but overall fuck the haters #the bears can eat them too #also fuck that one PE teacher in particular #i should not have had to puke to prove i was trying #give me a knee brace and i will walk the ring to mordor #bitching all the way #life post #kat's weird family #kat's weird childhood

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horsyunicorn · 2 years ago

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I've been playing d1 and it's remarkable how much more rewarding gameplay feels. I get to upgrade my weapons based on how much I use them. My armour unlocks upgrades when it absorbs damage and protects me. My blue (rare) auto rifle has like 9 different perks, that can only be unlocked through use (i.e. xp) or motes of light - it's not even legendary and it's amazing.

D1 also feels more rewarding because you can tell most of the green (uncommon) rifles (and, weapons in general) aren’t absolute dogshit but actually have models and responsiveness like Halo battle rifles, auto rifles or pulse rifles. Even if you find a blue (rare) rifle which you like better and which has better stats, responsiveness and model, you would only pick that because it’s better, not because the greens are bad on their own. I’ll admit getting generic world-drop armor isn’t as rewarding because the in-game models aren’t crafted as uniquely as rares and legendaries in D2 (also, rare and legedary gear drops much more often in D1), though the range of armour sets is much greater in D2 and some are much more strongly repulsive or attractive, and I prefer only a few styles of Hunter armour in D1 - 3/4 or full-length capes, flowing smooth fabric instead of weird pointy textures, and just a bit of a hood with no huge high collars - so I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking forward to level 40 / TTK/Rise of Iron armor sets (essentially free-to-play non-strike PVE endgame content) instead of enjoying what I have.

Thankfully, it’s not like D2 where you might as well throw out most rare weapons because you can’t infuse them (light level creep is stupid btw and sunsetting is worse) or they look or feel like shit. (There are exceptions: for example in D2 I like the Cuboid ARU, the suros kinetic auto, and the suros elemental auto rifles, and there’s nothing wrong with the Plemusa-B grenade launcher, with its static auto-loading perk).

Everything in D2 feels more solid and also more...bulky and newer and more generic. Every time I go back to D1 I feel like I’m smarter cos I learn the types of rifles and can recognise my fav ones by name first and icon second. It feels like a more unique game. (In D2 I look at the icon of a blue weapon and I almost immediately scrap it cos it’s just not as good as a legendary. I learn the individual weapons instead of the weapon types, which is good in terms of a memory exercise but less interesting in terms of the process of recall. It also highlights exactly just how many weapons the D2 team has had to import or create which are then almost never used because they can’t be infused or don’t have good perks found on legendary weapons and thus are discarded in favour of lengendary weapons. It’s to the art/asset team’s credit that they made so many weapons that look and feel unique and it’s sad that the gameplay/sandbox team have a system which obfuscates that effort.)

Don’t get me wrong, D2Y1 does have a much better story, because the Red War returns guardians to a place of struggle against a much more powerful force - the Red Legion - and that’s much better than D1, where you get rezzed and make your way to the Last City, and the storyline of Crota/The Black Garden Sol Divisive IS there but it just doesn’t feel impactful AT ALL. The Tower is a big shining example in the Last City on Earth of... I have no idea what. The House of Wolves expansion is ...okay. There is very little characterization to differentiate the different Fallen houses and I just don’t care. The Taken King is good, and Rise of Iron is good, but they all still suffer from everything being imparted through lore and voiced radio communications, instead of being shown on screen. (That’s why Forsaken is so good - it shows you working with Cayde and Petra on screen.)

On an entirely separate note, I only picked up D2 in season of the undying at the end of Shadowkeep, but I did as much of the Shadowkeep campaign as possible (i.e. not including the black garden and pit of heresy) and I'm glad to find I'm not the only person who thought the storyline started and then went absolutely nowhere. (People who are on PC or have paid subscription and who have done the strikes and dungeon agree that the campaign story starts and then goes nowhere.) You enter the garden, see yourself and the pyramid and the pyramid shard, and that's it. It was supposed to be an introduction to the arrival of the pyramids and the contact with the Darkness in Season of Arrivals which itself is a prelude to the second Collapse (the loss of most of the planets) and the beginning of the Year 4 to Year 6 trilogy, Beyond Light/Witch Queen/Lightfall; BUT Shadowkeep actually mostly had a “revenant Hive” theme (for the missions, excluding the raid) and was kinda empty once you finished it, unlike Forsaken, and quite like Beyond Light, which has a “frozen Fallen” theme (for the patrol spaces, excluding the Vex content). Both also stray away from the greater theme. I guess the intent is to drip content slowly and flesh out side-characters and make a more interesting filled world instead of just dropping huge plotlines, but, it kinda sucks.

On another entirely separate note, in D1 you get introduced to darkness zones where you can't respawn (to make it more challenging for gameplay). Since they're always populated by large numbers of enemies or a few very powerful enemies, I always got the impression that the Darkness as defined in the Destiny universe literally exudes from those individuals who operate by Sword logic ie that they'd rather kill races different to their own than greet and extend the hand of friendship. Thus in some physical spaces such as the lair of a particularly powerful Hive boss, you can’t respawn in that space, because they are so powerfully evil. In a similar way, the guardians spread light by exploring and gaining knowledge and pushing back the enemies of humanity (like how the jedi figuratively spread light by doing good deeds with the force) although light can’t be used to suppress minions of the dark from resurrecting (normally - Hive are a special case) because the inverse is untrue; the Darkness doesn’t automatically resurrect dead individuals, whilst Ghosts using the Light do.

But in D2 we meet the pyramids who are literally the embodiment of the Darkness, and with beyond light, we learn they can literally take planets away. This is such a big difference in both storytelling and lore implications.

They don't themselves create races that then spread across the universe and operate by Sword logic (as far as I know which is not every much) but they're just sort of there. It seems terribly inconsistent. I mean yes the whole of Destiny is stupid. Planets disappear and no one gives a hoot actually. Characters die or are killed off and there are few lasting repercussions because our character can’t (can’t die). Characters are used or ununused on the basis of their voice actors’ availability, not story or lore. It’s so inconsistent, like, yes, bad guys exist and can kill you but not permanently. But then gods also exist but you can kill them, sometimes permanently. Hive bosses definitely you can kill, you’ve just got to do it twice before sunset (once in the normal world and once in their throne world). But then also para-causal beings exist but and they can harm you but never permanently really.

#this wasn't going anywhere but it needed to be shared #destiny 2 #destiny

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masterkirby · 25 days ago

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group therapy week 3

we got to sit on the floor (mattress like pillows) today and the talking finally flowed more

the first "segment" was about work life after Al's question to Ja

Ja finished ethnography and did work in that field for state institutions where the money is dogshit even if the work is good and what you're passionate about...

Pi's words annoyed me a bit here cause while they were trying to be helpful, it was like basic annoying coaching stuff -- telling Ja to use their management skills (so the thing Ja didn't seem to enjoy and why they quit their job in the end...) beyond the world of ethnography where it sounded like that's the stuff that Ja wants to do and maybe they can't find a job precisely because some NGO corpo shit doesn't cut it

Pi annoyed me on another occasion today when I had my say on how, ok, it's cool that we can say that sth annoyed us in therapy (if we can, I wasn't able to tell Pi), but we can either escalate and that usually ends badly or we can take the responsibility for our anger because usually sth annoys us cause we're hungry or slept badly and im like... Yeah, ofc. But what about when sb is actually doing sth shitty and hurtful. Oh well.

Anyway, jobs. Ja also voiced how they hoped there would be more people their age to share similar problems or stop hearing about endless possibilities when it seems like they want to settle down or at least have a job contract type of job to start gathering benefits... And they seem the "free" type of person, they didn't want to get into academia cause it's too... hermetic & doesn't actually have much to do with real people hah

Hmm

So M told Ja later that they were angry for a bit that Ja voiced their age concerns that that means some kind of disregard and treating the group like test subjects or tools to find a job but they thought that over and reached the conclusion that that was an overreach -- but M said it out loud and to Ja so that was interesting because they were the most closed in themselves but say some of the most personal things; I caught them looking at me a few times even when I wasn't saying anything? I started worrying I might be hostile to them.

Generally I feel like part of a social experiment but that's ok. At least it's interesting but I don't feel able to open up for now.

Pa annoys me due to their similarity to types of ppl I dislike. The "I'm so empathetic and I just want to keep giving" types, and Pa even said today on one occasion that when they wanted to share a "they" story as a follow-up to what Ja was still in the process of saying, that when R cut them off, they felt that their good will wasn't acknowledged where they just wanted to GIVE. And I guess I want to get to know their psyche better to understand Ki who also seems so egotistic in their narration of "I just want to give my all to others"

Hnmn

K didn't say much. But they said to the work thing that nowadays we change jobs all the time and mostly we have to be good with people which just

Hurt so much

Just like what Pi was saying

Because us autists(?) don't get that in life, not easily at least. And I *need* to do sth I'm at least a bit passionate about. I can't be a lawyer firm marketing person like K.

Ad had a few personal stories to share and seems a bit neuroatypical as well? They were stressed over emails to the professor they have an internship with, cause the prof is chaotic and seems to have frequent mood changes and generally a chaotic and hard to read way of being. Ad also low-key threw in that they're queer which got no reaction which, well, if I felt I could ask, did they feel relieved that it was just accepted like that or if they wanted to talk more about it, get more reassurance.

Rite

Pi talked at the very end of the session about their feelings about their breakup, that they've eased into work so are feeling the breakup more now. And that they feel the asshole. But also that they're looking for the reasons why they look for romantic relationships in the first place. So they felt compelled to tinder but didn't , because they didn't want that way of gratification and perhaps falling into another thing.

This is where Ad talked about their own feelings and anxieties to do with that app. That they try their best masks as a cure for loneliness but, well, it doesn't work.

Also Pi, ever playing the group coach, casually threw in that they did a PhD in chemistry during COVID cause why not, secure money and then they wanted to quit but the institute didn't want to let them, cause money, so for the next two years they were only formally doing that PhD and just had to write their thesis and boom. They have my dream of YEARS just like that. Amazing how life is. Miej wyjebane a będzie Ci dane?

Disclosure: I like Pi tho, they seem authentically kind.

I feel some affection for Ja, Al, Pi and Ad

Pa, M, and K make me feel uneasy

Jo is soft but I worry for them in their softness

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wispmotherr · 1 year ago

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1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting? - I'm a default font bitch. but i'm old and my eyes suck so i write with a dark colored bg and off-white text. 6. What is your darkest fear about writing? - That's the work I produce is bad. Bad grammar, bad spelling, bad plot, bad characterization... not even that it's not someone's cup of tea, but it's Just Bad and that no one is being honest with me about it, that one of the few things I'm incredibly passionate about, that i really truly enjoy doing is something I'm actual dogshit at. keeps me up at night. 7. What is your deepest joy about writing? - Knowing a story I wrote made someone feel something, or is a comfort to them or even that they enjoyed it just a little makes powering through my crippling self-doubt worth it. 10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you? -Some personal, unshared AU's (monsterverse lmao iykyk) have haunted me in the best way possible. They just stick around in my mind and keep finding new life and are such a comfort in their own bizarre way. 11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve? - I wish I were braver when it comes to killing characters, especially ones I give a shit about. I want happy endings, I want soft futures with love and ease and safety for my characters. I might put em through the ringer but 9 times out of 10, everyone lives. (except for that one time I killed Damien)

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy? - I can't think of any topic that's presented itself as being incredibly difficult to write about yet. Most scenarios can be researched or asked about and I'm pretty good at finding sources for things I'm not personally familiar with. Easy subject matter though... I'll get back to you, haha. I don't know!

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text. - We don't have fucking time for that. I invest way too much time and effort into lore and worldbuilding for fics two people will read, lmao.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage. - idek where to go with this one lmao

#long post #ask game

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twilight-resonance · 2 years ago

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And So It Ever Goes

Well, I have once again fallen into the trap of not journaling regularly and sliding into a hole of all the bad things that happen to my general wellbeing when I don’t do that, so we’re here trying to rectify that. I am sitting here on a rainy day in the mostly-dark, bundled up in a cloak to stay warm; and we’re going to see what we can say that might part some of the internal cloud cover.

I’m not doing okay. Haven’t been since October, really. I knew going into this year that I was going to need to be going to therapy regularly in order to stay sane in this job, but I’d had a few not-great experiences with my current one by about that time and didn’t want to keep seeing them. So here we are, several months later, and I’m doing absolute dogshit. The worst part is, it crept up slowly; I didn’t think in October that things were getting bad- just weird - but by early-mid November it became clear that things were in fact getting bad and had started about then. So it snuck up on me. So now I’m trying to find a new therapist because it has become abundantly clear that I would rather do nothing than go see my old one, and we’re... doing our best in the meantime.

It’s just... so isolating, this job. Don’t get me wrong, I love working with the kids and with my assistant, and the staff at the schools have all been very supportive; but at the end of the day, I wish I had an actual colleague to talk to. Someone that I can compare notes with and collaborate with, and say “hey, are you seeing this trend in players?” and “here’s this neat game I came up with, want to workshop it some?” and “how did you handle this kid, and can you tell me anything about what you’re seeing on your end?”. But see, that’s the trouble of doing a job that’s so niche. There are... four people in the world total who can do what I do the way I do it, and only one other who can do it on my same level. And it just so happens that they’re the one person in the world that I can’t talk to, about any of it. And it really fucking sucks.

Brings up a lot of feelings too, of course. Like I said some posts ago, I think - long drives too and from, and lots of time to have all kinds of unresolved thoughts and feelings swelling up and swirling about. I watched Treasure Planet twice in a row the other day, and that sort-of helped work through some of those. But I need to actually have someone help me work through it, better than that. It was something, but it’s better than nothing.

Creative burnout is... only as much a problem as it is because of the feelings. I am doing so much better on the writing and storytelling and creative expression fronts than I was a year ago - in that I can do this at all, even if it is perpetually in my ZPD. Yes, once upon a time being endlessly creative and having the stamina for that was not a problem; but what happened happened, and we’re still working on regrowing into whatever shape we can. It’s definitely taking a toll on me, though. The big one that would help is more creative input - new stories, learning new things, new activities, new games, etc - but because of the aforementioned emotional toll, I don’t have energy to do any of those new things that would be good for me creatively. So I come home, do the easy things because it’s better than doing nothing, and fall further.

Like I said: don’t get me wrong. It’s not wrong that - as one of Hearthsnail’s co-workers said - this is my dream job, and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. It does present me some unique challenges though. The last month or so has been particularly rough. Which has been tiring in its own way, because the emotional stamina it takes to wrangle the feelings... Just one more compounding factor.

So yes, I’m tired. Spiritually, truthfully, more than anything else. But that’s nothing new. We just carry on, as we always do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

We went to Zion National Park for Hearthsnail’s birthday. Long drive out, but well worth it. Absolutely gorgeous, for one; and such a different landscape than we’re used to. Naturally, he and I spent large portions of the time nerding out about geology shit, because thinking about the formation of the canyon and what was happening contemporary to each of the rock layers and how geology in our area and Zion share some common bedrock (so to speak) and so on was a lot of fun. Lots of interesting stuff. Otherwise, too, it just did us some good to be out in nature for a few days and walking around and exercising and getting some intellectual fresh soil.

It was cold. We’d come prepared with a thicker sleeping bag, and it still wasn’t enough. I slept each night in layers, a blanket, and a hat. That’s what you get for camping in the desert in basically winter, of course, but I still wish we had warmer clothes in the first place. Like, at all in our wardrobes. Again, still well-worth it. Speaking of clothes and worth it, what we had done was get Hearthsnail some actual hiking boots instead of his Vans, and that made a huge difference in how willing he is to tackle longer or more strenuous hikes. He was talking about them all trip, and I think were definitely a good thing.

We also went to Bryce canyon for one of the days while we were there. My only memory of it is also in the wintertime, from a road trip my family did to visit my grandparents; we stopped for maybe half an hour to look at all the orange spires covered in snow, and so that’s my memory of the place. Sure enough, there was plenty of snow on the ground the day we went, too. I was so happy driving up through Dixie Forest, and had Hearthsnail stop the car so that we could get out and play in the snow. Once we were there, we actually hiked down into the canyon, too; almost didn’t make it back up before dark, especially with my asthma and his discomfort with heights kicking in, but we made it. Honestly though, if I had to pick a favorite part, it was the drive to and back from Zion. Something about the landscape and the clouds and the snowswept plateau really captured my imagination.

Poetry came back while we were there. I started a couple different poems, in a way I haven’t done since Before. Small things, and unfinished, but there at all; and it was good (”and God said, ‘let there be Light’ - and there was light, and it was good”).

(Again, don’t get me wrong - I’m not Christian, nor religious in that way. I think I feel sometimes that which Christians call god and which my strictly atheist friends don’t seem to see or feel, but I wouldn’t call it god. God is too small a word for what it is. Nevertheless, the sentiment still echoes.)

Speaking of light, fire was the last thing. I didn’t realize til this trip that I’m used to building fires with a particular kind of wood, so when I was faced with a wood that behaved very differently, it was a challenge to wrangle the fire and keep it from going out. I almost killed it once or twice the first night we had a fire, which I never do. I did learn what it needed - to be packed closer together and with more fuel altogether than I’m used to - but I went through four bundles of wood figuring it out. Not great economical conditions for cooking in, which is unfortunate because we’d finally gotten a dutch oven for campfire cooking and I wanted to try it out. We cooked one meal - that night - and didn’t cook much of anything else while we were there. Just snacked, and went into town for big meals because Springdale is very much set up for that.

It was a good trip. Like I said, good for both of us. We missed Thanksgiving because we spent the day driving back, so we cooked Thanksgiving food at the beginning of this week and have been enjoying it immensely. Thanksgiving food is the best.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before we went to Zion, we’d been trying to get a fair amount of practice hiking in. One part to break in Hearthsnail’s new shoes before we were actually on the trip, and one part to get even slightly more in shape before we arrived. Neither of us has been in good shape for a while, and it would have sucked to get there and not been able to do much of anything hikes-wise.

So we got to a point where we were ready to do a trial run of a much longer hike, and thusly took a friend to one of our favorite hiking spots nearby. This friend I will give the usename Squigglefolk for lack of another name. This particular hike is one that we’ve never finished before - only stopped about halfway - but is always interesting because it passes through so many different environments and varied geology and some special added-in human features too. We figured Squigglefolk would enjoy it and we’d been wanting to invite them to come do something with us anyway, so that was the pick.

It was a good trial run. In addition to the shoes, we were also testing out our new hiking pack and how much food and water we could/should carry. It was a lot of fun. A relatively quiet day - windy and cloudy and quiet, and I think it repelled a lot of folks - and it was fun just all climbing around and talking and sharing together.

We did eventually reach the end of the trail. Clearly not many folks do; most of them must turn back where we usually do, because the trail further out was overgrown and littered with logs and rivulets and, towards the end, almost disappeared entirely. The end of the trail was really cool, though - it was this just blasted volcanic landscape, and it looked like Mordor with a better view. I wish we’d had more time to spend up there - gotten there earlier and eaten our lunch there and had more time to explore - but we weren’t up there long when something in the weather turned and I had the sense that we needed to go back now.

Glad we turned back when we did. The wind picked up and it got dark fast - it was just shy of full darkness by the time we reached back from the car, and we had to be wary of falling trees knocked over by the wind on the way back. To say nothing of big animals that tend to come out at twilight, and keeping an eye for those. We were all exhausted on the way back, especially on a particularly punishing uphill section - but we made it. Got some warm drinks once we were out of the mountains and listened to silly music, courtesy of Squigglefolk. It was a good day, and we all had a good time. We might have to go back again all together sometime.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

There have maybe been a few other things here and there. Doctor’s appointments, game days, elections, and the otherwise ceaseless turn of chores and tasks. Running D&D for Hearthsnail’s coworkers has been a lot of fun, and probably the thing that’s been most fun for me to run of all the things I’m doing right now. We don’t play often, but it’s always good when we do. I also took over running D&D on the weekends for Hearthsnail’s sister-and-brother-in-law’s crew - so I’ve been running Multiversal here and there as well. D&D before that was fun too, as is being able to be a player for a bit. More things to run, though, which stretches me ever-thinner.

Our save-the-dates are almost done. Just gotta get them stamped and mailed out. Oughta do that sooner over later, if we can. Sometime in the midst of it all.

Anyway. I’m sleepy. And I have other work to do. I’m going to move along, as one does, and see what else I can get done. And so it ever goes.

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edoro · 2 years ago

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for the ship ask thingy: belos x ford

sorry that it took me 100 years to answer this but

Belord is choice batshit crossover pairing fuel. it's eerily plausible, because both stories contain a built-in isekai mechanic, we know Ford wandered the multiverse for a while, and we also know Ford has the absolute most dogshit taste in men PLUS he needs barely a nudge to just devolve into full-on mad science villainy, and Philip would be more than happy to provide that nudge

it's 1) extremely funny and 2) provides some opportunity for like, some actual genuine emotion here (largely "what the fuck", but hey, that's what you get with Philip)

Philip of course would love to hear Ford's tales of brotherly woes and would reinforce and support every small-minded, petty, self-centered feeling Ford has about it - yes, your brother did unforgivably betray you because he simply couldn't stand how correct and brilliant you were, yes, you're completely right to be holding a grudge about it forty years later, yes, you did give him a chance to redeem himself by helping you and he still refused and honestly that just proves how fundamentally corrupt and bad he is, doesn't it?

of course you shouldn't even consider that Stanley might have a point of view here, that it might differ from yours, or that just maybe he acted according to that and that things have been hard for him too. no, definitely not.

(of course, Philip isn't going to tell Ford the whole truth about what happened with Caleb, but in a deliciously ironic twist, i can imagine that hearing his carefully curated "wild witches/wild magic Killed My Family Including Caleb" stories might actually make Ford start thinking about what if he never does see Stanley again, how sure he's acted like Stan is dead to him for years but if Stan were actually for real dead...? and maybe give him that bit of a nudge towards contemplating reconciliation, oops)

Philip, of course, is just projecting like hell onto Ford about this. Ford meanwhile is really enjoying someone who can keep up with him intellectually and who shares a lot of his own experiences of being an extremely intelligent, queer man who grew up in a small, insular, conservative community that didn't understand, support, or want him.

of course, like Caleb, Ford was desperate to get out. Philip just ended up being desperate to try to earn their approval and show he could be the best of them all. (interesting to consider the parallels that exist between Ford + Stan and Philip + Caleb, like you can draw some really interesting lines between both of the siblings in these respective sets)

it's really a case of like, Ford looking at Philip and going, "i can fix him" and Philip looking at Ford and going, "i can make him worse."

i think he'd see Ford similarly to how he sees Luz, as another wayward human soul who he can try to convince of the righteousness of his plans + the evil of this realm, and if he can get Ford on his side then Ford's approval will kind of metaphorically represent the approval of humanity in general + specifically the approval of his long-dead Puritan neighbors.

of course outside of the mad science stuff and Brother Complexes they don't have a whole lot in common, and while Ford is very much an asshole he's not as rotten or cruel a person as Philip is, so inevitably this is going to end in the most dimension-shatteringly messy breakup ever, and that's also extremely good.

(also, of course, the endless tragicomedy potential of Hunter and Ford interacting. also, the way that from Ford's pov this turns from a fantasy romance into a slowburn horror as he starts to figure out what's actually going on here.)

(also, the weird old man sex would be insane.)

#stanford pines #philip wittebane #emperor belos #belord #asks #the owl house #gravity falls

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ink-on-the-brink · 3 years ago

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Okay yes sorry for like putting in another but my goodness you’re great!! I hope it’s okay if I ask another but like, what would happen if the guys of your choice saw their partner hurt? Platonic or romantic up to you (:

No problem at all! Ideas are always welcome. Especially since I've had a bit of time on my hands! (aka I'm procrastinating on my other stories but shh)

Anyway! Here's Engie, Scout, and Soldier when their S/O is hurt because I put names onto a wheel and they popped up so yeah.

These are gonna be general headcannons that can be taken as either romatic or platonic.

Engie

If Hurt By Your Own Stupidity

Chances are you were messing around with a machine he told you not to touch.

If it's a small injury he'll scold you, telling you to listen to him next time. He won't help you. You have to learn your lesson somehow and if that means you have to drag your way to Medic, embarrassing yourself in the process, then so be it.

If it's a rather big injury he'll be rightfully angry. He's picking you up and carrying you to Medic with a string of mumbled curses at how stupid you had been and that you're lucky he was watching otherwise you might be dead. Even though he's angry you can still see the very clear concern on his face. Once you're all fixed up he's not letting you into his workshop for a while and becomes rather paranoid every time you have to.

He just doesn't want to see you hurt over a machine he built. He would probably never forgive himself if that's the way you ended up dying.

If Hurt By Something Else

Probably while helping him. Grabbing tools, maybe fixing up some wires if you're experienced enough.

Small injuries happen all the time. I mean you're messing around with electric wires and sharp objects here, it isn't exactly the safest thing. He always has an extra medkit in the room and won't hesitate to help you with a small cut or electric burn.

Larger injuries are an entirely different story. He goes blank, immediately carrying you to Medic. He won't leave until he knows you're 100% fine and afterward he'll be deathly quiet. You can see rather clearly that he blamed himself for you getting hurt and that he wasn't about to just forgive himself for it. Afterward he has a hard time letting you help again and finds excuses for you to do something else.

It might just be better if you stick to smaller ways of helping, not just for your own sake, but his.

If Hurt In Battle

If he sees it happen he knows it's better to ignore it. That's what happens in battle and at least during battle you guys have respawn. He'll most likely move his dispenser to where you are to help you out as best he can. He likely won't think twice about what happened...

That is unless whoever hurt you did so in a rather cruel way, enjoying seeing you in pain rather than working to complete an objective.

If that happens the person who harmed you becomes his main target. He won't compromise the battle with the urgency to kill them but it's pretty obvious that given the choice between them and killing anyone else, he'll choose them.

If he were to get close enough, and no one else is around, he'd hurt them and then just kinda sit there, letting them be in pain a moment while he maybe sets up one of his machines. If caught doing this he has about a hundred likely excuses. It was a Spy and he didn't want to deal with his dead ringer, he thought they were dead, another person came along that he had to deal with, pretty much never getting caught for doing it. Basically one of the only things that keeps him calm when he sees you hurt is the thought that he's going to make them suffer later.

Engie's a calm man but that doesn't mean he doesn't know how to dish out revenge or hold grudges.

If Hurt By Someone On The Team

Ooooh boy, this isn't going to end well.

It was most likely not meant to be you who got hurt. Being Engies right hand(or left hand rather)meant you always helped him to de-escalate fights. Which meant you were probably only hurt in the crossfire.

That, however, does not stop the anger flowing through Engies veins.

A small thing is enough to get him angry. He rarely yells but in that case he will, silencing everyone immediately before going on an absolute tirade about how stupid they were all being. At this point people would be shocked enough to stop, meaning the goal was achieved but not without some sacrifice.

If you get really harmed though...

Engie's a calm man but he has limits. That just so happens to be one of them. He won't even stop the fight. He's immediately taking you to get fixed up. It's afterward that the consequences come.

He will talk to whoever was involved alone. No one's sure what happens but no matter who ends up seeing that side of Engie they always come out a bit shaken up and not willing to talk about it, though seemingly unharmed.

It's likely to never happen but if it does everyone will become just a little bit more cautious when around him or you.

Scout

If Hurt By Your Own Stupidity

You were trying to toss a baseball as high as you could into the air and catch it to try and impress him.

If it only managed to hit just a little bit of sense into you, aka your throw is weak, then he'll most definitely laugh, telling you to leave it up to the professionals.

If you managed to knock yourself out because your toss was godly but your catch was dogshit then he'd burst out laughing for a good five minutes. It's only after his laughing fit that he thought to help you. You'd have to give him a matching bump to keep his mouth shut about it.

If Hurt By Something Else

You two were probably setting up a prank and something went wrong along the way.

If only a little hurt he'd hold in a laugh and ask if you were alright, to which you'd glare at his hidden grin and say you were fine.

If you were actually hurt he'd go into a bit of a panic, quickly bringing you to Medic. The two of you most defiantly had to lie to get away with what you two had been doing. Unfortunately you were both really bad liars. Medic wasn't convinced but he also didn't care, thankfully.

You'd often bring up how scared he looked when you got hurt every time he tried to act like he didn't care about you that much. It never failed to get his tongue stumbling.

If Hurt In Battle

He's not one to care about a few bumps and scratches. He'll likely tell you to try to be as tough as him(he saids as he calls for medic over a splinter). He sees his job more as a game then a battle so it's rare he holds a grudge against anyone. He's maybe a bit more competitive from that point foward but not obsessively so.

Larger injuries and he's quick (litteraly) to dive into the heat of battle to help. More than often he ends up dead beside you but when he does manage to save you he's super macho about it. He'll say stuff about how much you needed him and how you'd never survive a day without him Even though most of the times you're the one pulling him out of those situations...

Just let him have his moment.

If Hurt By Someone On The Team

It was most definitely because you had annoyed someone, most likely Soldier or Heavy. This happens quite often.

If it looks like you're winning the fight he'll cheer you on. No need for him to get involved if you've got it handled.

If something really starts to go down though, he's on your side. There isn't a time where only one of you was beaten to shit, it always had to be the both of you.

Soldier

If Hurt By Your Own Stupidity

You were trying to rocket jump.

Literally just...Why did you think you could do that?

A small injury and Soldier won't even acknowledge it. Be that a bloody nose or a sprained ankle he's going to act as if you were perfectly fine, mostly because he seldom felt pain anymore and he had a hard time trying to recognize it in other people.

If severely hurt he's most likely going to explain to you everything you did wrong and you'll have to either scream for Medic or wait until he carries you there after his lecture.

You do dumb shit you deal with the consequences.

If Hurt By Something Else

Likely a sparring match that got out of hand or possibly a malfunction of a rather precariosly built weapon.

A small injury and he isn't going to care. If you make a big deal out of it he'll tell you to 'man up' and deal with it though it's more so in good fun rather than antagonism.

A large injury though and he's quick to help. He's calling for Medic and asking you to count how many fingers he's holding up. You'll say three, he'll begin to panic, saying that you must have broken your eyes.

He was, in fact, holding up three fingers...

Just don't question it

If Hurt In Battle

Small injuries are victories to him. If you're not at least a little banged up then are you really in a war?

If you for some reason can't walk though he's the first person at your side. Doesn't matter how many bullets he takes as long as you're brought to safety. He'll say something to the effect of 'don't die on me soldier! No, I am not talking to myself!'

After you're taken care of it's revenge time. He's gonna rack up a killing streak, your injury giving him the last bit of encouragement to win the round most of the time.

If Hurt By Someone On The Team

Defending honor! Whether it's yours or his, you are there to defend it and if that means getting a bit rough in the process then so be it.

If you're less injured than whoever you're fighting then, like Scout, He's cheering you on with probably a few insults to the other person as well.

If it looks more like you're losing he's still not going to intervene. He believes in you! You've got this!

If you end up knocked out though he's going to beat the shit out of whoever it was that defeated you. For your honor! (And because he just likes a reason to beat people up)

#tf2 #reader x tf2 #tf2 x reader #engie #soldier #scout #tf2 engie #tf2 scout #tf2 soldier

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davidmann95 · 4 years ago

Note

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

* Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion

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pinnochiro · 3 years ago

Text

pinn reviews - final fantasy xv

a long ramble about final fantasy fifteen that sort of looks like a review, as written by someone who finished the game fifteen minutes ago and needs to get these words out of his head. spoilers inbound.

i'm a pretty big fan of video games. i don't know what my first was, but it was probably either banjo and kazooie or mario kart 64, at my cousin's house when i was very small. i think that video games as a medium are so interesting, since the fact that video games are inherently interactive changes the way that they tell any story. it's a shame that despite loving video games so much, i'm absolutely terrible at them.

i'm absolute dogshit at video games. whenever i boot up something new, i always play on easy mode because. i'm that bad. unfortunately, this means that a lot of video games are simply. impossible for me to beat. that's fine, as at the moment i live with my good friend lizz, who is certifiably Good at Video Games, and so we've been playing video games together for a little bit now. typically this means that she will actually play the majority of the game while i sit with her and watch, but occasionally i'll have a go, but she'll end up with the controller as soon as a boss fight or puzzle or a mechanic i just can't seem to grasp shows up. we recently played through the entirety of the kingdom hearts series together, and this was an absolute blast of a time. i'm glad to say that i adore kingdom hearts now, and it's become one of my hyperfixations, which you might be able to tell from my icon. but we'd finished the kingdom hearts series, and we were left to move onto something else. we'd also played final fantasy 7 remake, so in my wisdom, i suggested that we play another final fantasy game.

we looked through the ff games that were already purchased on our consoles thanks to lizz's uncle, and eventually, we decided that we should play. all of them. however to start, we were going to play final fantasy xv, 15, and work our way backwards through the mainline, single-player games.

i'd heard that xv wasn't very good, but honestly, i was still quite curious. one person who i'd been following on twitter for years was pretty obsessed with the main party members, to the point where i knew their names and what-not even though i didn't have much of an idea what the game itself was about. i remember watching a video by supereyepatchwolf a few years ago about how the game sucked, but i couldn't remember much of the details, and i knew, based on my obsession with kingdom hearts, that xv had started as a different game called final fantasy versus xiiv. i don't know all the details about versus thirteen, but i do know that it was originally helmed by the creator of my beloved kingdom hearts, mr tetsuya nomura, and that after many years, the vast majority of the game was thrown out, nomura wasn't in charge any more, and the whole thing was rewritten and reworked, which sounds like a fairly rough development cycle. but so what, i don't care about gameplay. i want to play the video game with those cute guys that i see fanart of on twitter, and lizz seemed happy enough to play through it with me.

and so we started final fantasy xv. i've been told that since the game was practically dead on arrival, they threw in a bunch of new content and reworked a lot of the early game before i got my hands on it. so my gameplay started with a scene of the four guys fighting some demon dude on fire and they're all old and grotty. whatever, that cutscene ends and we're put into a combat tutorial. that's over and we're on the road in what looks to be central america, pushing a car.

our four leading lads are noctis, the prince of the lucis empire, his best friend prompto, his bodyguard, gladio, and his chef and other things, ignis. i do quite like the main four members of the party in xv. prompto is quite easily my favourite, voiced by robbie daymond of goro akechi fame and with a bunch of fun little animations and quips that make him very likeable. he gets extremely excited at the idea of riding chocobos and has what i considered the best scene of the game, where he and noctis meet on a motel rooftop and discuss prompto's imposter syndrome, since he's only part of noctis' official retinue as his best friend. noctis is a fairly typical main protagonist, he's in love with a woman he hasn't seen in eight years and needs to go marry her or something, i don't care. gladio is a tough macho man with a mullet who wears leather jackets and wields a greatsword, and is apparently only 22, which is at least 10 years younger than i assumed. ignis is a strategist and chef, who takes on the most authoritative role and constantly tells noctis to not drive his car at night. i was not a fan of ignis at the start, but he grew on me, especially with how hard the game hit me with his personal arc. the four boys are off, driving to noctis' wedding in a different country across the desert when their car breaks down. we then run into the first issue of the game.

cindy is a mechanic. she also has her ass and tits out constantly, like your sleazy uncle's shirt with a naked woman was instead semi-alive as a video game person. she fixes your car and acts fairly sexual and it's just like. why do we have to do this. aren't we over overtly sexualised women in video games who have no reason for the way they dress other than the character designer was horny? whatever, i like women as much as the next guy, but cindy's design just. makes me feel so uncomfortable.

anyways you get to do a little driving around with the boys, until you stay the night before catching the boat to your fiance. overnight, you find out that noctis' kingdom has been basically destroyed by an invading empire called niflheim, and practically everyone noctis knows, including his father, are dead. you learn that noctis and his bride to be are also assumed dead, with noctis hearing his own death announcement on the radio. the game has a bunch of added cutscenes that are actually footage from the three-hour-long prequel movie that came out after the game, are extremely hard to follow and honestly i had no idea what i was looking at. anyways, noctis' family is dead, so it's time to do some hunting sidequests.

that brings us to the combat, i suppose. rather than the turn-based or even active turn-based combat that the series is known for, xv opts for more modern action rpg-styled combat. i was, naturally, terrible at this, but i managed to get around it with the fact that. it is almost impossible to die in this video game, provided you have enough items. the game allows you so much time to heal yourself that there's practically no way to have your entire party wipe unless you're doing absolutely terrible, and even then, your party members will probably try and heal you themselves before that happens. lizz tells me that the combat is boring, you just push the same button over and over and then you win. i do appreciate that, for someone like me who is terrible at reading enemy movements, there is a giant button that pops up on screen that tells you when to push the block button, but even then i was prone to fucking it up. whether that's the bad game design or my terrible gaming abilities is up to you to decide. anyways, the game is fairly easy but has annoying combat, your teammates limit breaks will only land about 50% of the time (or never, if you are gladio) and i was still bad at it, so i didn't have all that much fun.

instead of an active levelling system, the game will only tally your character's level ups when you either make camp or visit a hotel. camping is, in my opinion, the only saving grace of this game. each time you make camp, you get to see the characters doing fun little camping activities together and just hanging out, ignis will cook up a new meal in a dramatic fashion and everyone will compliment him and eat it off their coleman's branded plates, it's just very fun. you also get to see what pictures prompto has taken, which is one of my favourite gameplay features. prompto's passion is photography, and while i support him in this wholeheartedly, his picture taking skills are, quite frankly, awful. the game will randomly take shots while you're on the move, which leaves you with a delightful selection of awkward poses, characters hidden behind bushes, pictures taken while someone is half-dead in combat, and snaps where the natural lighting absolutely makes it impossible to tell what's going on. it's hilarious and going through prompto's collection of photos each night is honestly the best part of the game. we managed to wind up with a few shots that, even despite being scripted events, turned out absolutely terrible, and i will cherish those forever.

anyways, since noctis' father and fiance are dead, that leaves him the king of lucis. the only important person to make it out of the capital alive tells you to drive to the middle of nowhere, where he randomly springs on you. hey. go into a bunch of these dungeons and absorb a bunch of swords, this is your destiny as king and how you will defeat the empire. noctis goes, uh, alright i guess, and you're set loose again to wander around for a bit collecting the 'royal arms'. this plot point wasn't explained well but hey, whatever, we're collecting the glowy swords and that's fine.

you're introduced at some point to ardyn, the main antagonist. he's old, kind of groady and wears a fedora. he's a dick to you and talks about his automobeeel. apparently my friend miri thinks he's hot, she is wrong.

i can't remember what happens specifically but you're told that your fiance is still alive and in fantasy venice, and she's talking to the gods on your behalf to borrow their powers. there's a mission where you follow some purple trees that are electric, and you do that i guess. i enjoyed riding the chocobos around, but couldn't care much for the plot at this point. ardyn leads you to a volcano, where you fight a giant lava god. he tries to step on you and i, a denizen of the internet and with an active fear of foot fetishists, was extremely uncomfortable. noctis becomes friends with foot man and a lightning god who lived in those trees, and ardyn steals your car.

very upset by this, noctis and his gang risk everything to sneak into a military base and steal it back. because this is a video game, this works out fine.

there's a little mining city which is all about Girl Power, because all the Women run the Mining Industry like Girl Bosses, and you hang around there for a bit. because all the women are so Empowered, they wear bikinis all the time with overalls over the top. gladio decides he needs to fuck off for a bit, i have no idea what he does since i haven't played the dlc, and then he comes back with another scar. you hang out with his sixteen year old sister, who has a crush on the engaged and 20-year old noctis, and then you drive her to a lighthouse. when she's in your party, she can't really fight, but she gets a pink chocobo and i thought that was very cute. we turned out own chocobo white and lizz named him 'jones' after a mount she has in ffxiv.

eventually, you have a long boat ride over to fantasy venice. this is the part where the game stops being 'fun with a few issues in combat and a rushed and poorly told story.' the open world, which was a main feature with a bunch of little areas to find where noctis can fish, little hunting sidequests and random photo spots where prompto takes touristy photos, is now gone, and it will not return for the entire rest of the game. you can 'go back in time', but the open world was the most enjoyable part of the game, and it kind of really sucks that the main story doesn't let you have any more freedom like that.

after arriving in fantasy venice, you have a talk with fantasy hillary clinton and beg her to let your girlfriend summon a god into the middle of her city. hillary agrees, and you don't get to meet up with your fiance, because even if the game is constantly telling you how much noctis loves her, there is. barely any interactions between the two in the entire game. from what i can tell, they met when noctis was a child and they haven't seen each other in ten years but are still fantasy dog pen-pals. noctis marrying her was supposed to make an alliance or something like that, but her brother has betrayed her to the army. noctis' girlfriend is also an oracle, which means she can heal people, i guess? everyone talks about how important she is and she's constantly telling people that she needs to use her powers to help noctis but she's practically a non-entity.

as can be expected of most female love interests in a game primarily focused on men, noctis' fiance is killed while summoning a god for noctis to befriend. noct gets very mad about this, and turns super saiyan and kills the god back, but his girlfriend is dead and that's super sad you guys. there's a beautiful prerendered cutscene where she says goodbye to noctis but since we barely know her, and we've only been told over and over that they're in love without anything to actually well, show this, it didn't have much of an impact. fantasy venice is destroyed, and ignis is blinded while trying to help calm the giant raging god.

iggy's blindness and how the game makes you account for this and grow to care for him was one of the highlights, in my opinion, as well as crushingly depressing. while i'm not disabled and have no right to say if this was 'good disabled representation' or anything like that, i believe that the game handles it decently enough. the group falls apart as noctis is upset about his girlfriend, gladio is extremely mad that noctis won't care for ignis, and prompto just wants everyone to get along. there's a mission where gladio constantly yells at you passive aggressive things to noctis about how he's a cunt for running, which is obnoxious, but the character arc itself is fairly strong. when you make camp, ignis can't cook anymore, so everyone eats cup noodles in a depressing ass cutscene. ignis remains in your party for the rest of the game despite his disability, and he doesn't magically regain his sight like other fantasy media would do, which at the very least i think is good. i'm not sure what the opinion of actual disabled people is of the character, considering how often disabled characters are either turned into misery porn to make the abled audience be glad that isn't them and if ignis' arc falls into this trap, but i hope that it wasn't handled too poorly, as that would just be another terrible mark in this game's list of bad moves.

the characters eventually make it to the evil empire's capital, which is abandoned and filled with daemons. the characters learn that ardyn is super evil and taught the king of the empire how to turn humans into daemons, which has now happened to the entire city. the 'magitek suits', presumed to be enchanted armour that fights as the empire's infantry, actually house the souls of the human-turned daemons. honestly i like this as a plot point but the game handles it pretty terribly. there could have been more lead up to this, the explanation is pretty lacking, and prompto's Big Plot Twist is. terribly handled. turns out that prompto was born in the empire and was going to be one of those empty soldier daemons, but he was rescued by people belonging to noctis' empire. not that the game tells you that. instead, prompto goes 'turns out i'm one of ... them' and Does Not Elaborate. The game doesn't tell you shit, not about prompto's past, not about how he feels about this, not about how anyone else feels about this either because the other party members just go 'oh that sucks, good thing you're not evil' and the scene ends. robbie daymond tries so hard to sell these terrible, terrible lines, and it almost entirely fails, i'm so sorry prompto. fortunately because i'm a nosy ass, i read prompto's wikia page and knew the plot twist ahead of time, because i don't think i would have even registered it if i didn't.

anyways everyone in the evil empire is dead and ardyn starts talking about how he's immortal and an ancient king of noctis' country but the gods thought he sucked because he's too evil. i missed most of this because the cats got the zoomies and were dashing across the couch right in the middle of his speech so i can't tell you anything else. noctis tries to get a big magic crystal to fight him and instead. gets schlorped inside.

TEN YEARS LATER

yes then ten years actually pass while noctis is asleep. the game shows this by switching the head on noctis' character model to have a beard, but that's it, no changes in animations or whatever. the sky is permanently night and only one human civilisation remains, the rest destroyed by daemons. as a plot point, this ends up feeling. extremely worthless. why was noctis asleep for ten whole goddamn years? so we can wake up and go 'damn it sucks out here'. but it's barely even a like, incentive to fix everything, because you have a long talk with a former child you were friends with where he talks about how humanity is still going fine and everyone's okay and the world has moved on without you. it feels. pointless. when you meet up with your party members, they are exactly as you left them, only with slightly different character models. there is no change in the voice performance, the character's movements or how they talk to show that they've been without you for ten years. they barely mention it. i'm just. so confused as to why they decided that a ten year timeskip was the way to go? since nothing really changes, couldn't you have made it like, two years? one year? six months?? have the characters react a little more? something??? at least if it was only a year or so i wouldn't have to deal with the fact that noctis looks like norman reedus with his shitty facial hair now.

anyways after that there's a bunch of long and boring boss fights. you fight some dead kings for some reason, your party members get a little bit to talk about how cool they are and how much they love noctis, and then you meet up with ardyn. there's another boring boss fight and god this was only a few hours ago but it's already gone from my head. you summon the gods and the old kings to beat the shit out of him after you both go super saiyan again? there's incredible music but it feels barely earned and just kind of eh. anyways, noctis dies, which was the price of using the crystal of light or whatever the fuck. his ghost marries his fiance's ghost finally, and they smile as they look at one of prompto's pictures. you can pick any picture you want to go here, and then the credits roll, showing all of the pictures you saved of prompto's shots. showing me all the pictures at the end is honestly lovely, but it really only served to remind me of how much more fun the game was in the first half. and that's the end, of final fantasy xv.

so what did i think of the story? it's terribly cobbled together and struggles to get you to feel anything and play out all the plot beats. you feel awful for the countless employees who spent years working on the beautiful cutscenes only to have them be in this game, which sucks and the story barely gets through. there were parts that i enjoyed, mostly the thing about the daemons being people, but honestly the rest of it is a mess. it's hard to follow at the best of times and just awkward and terribly written at the worst. the ending is cheap, and it doesn't feel like you've actually accomplished anything. i left that game feeling numb and empty, sad that i'd wasted so much time to end up with such a colossal failure of a conclusion.

i had fun with the game when it was my four little guys running around doing sidequests and camping together. after the midway point of the game, there's none of that, and you're bogged down into a plot that just pushes you from point a to point b and boring overlong bossfight to boring overlong bossfight. the character moments between your party are a lot of fun, but the second you hit fantasy venice, everything is pretty much on rails and you can't do anything except what the game tells you explicitly to do.

should you play this game? no lol. if anything i've mentioned about the story interests you, you'll be better off watching a lore video or reading the wiki. if you do want to play it after all that, just don't proceed after the myrthril refining quest, it's pretty much all downhill from there. will i play the dlc? unlikely, i think lizz and i will just watch a cutscene movie of those.

this game left me feeling empty and numb and not in a fun way. i wanted, so, so hard to like this game, and it all crashed around me in a beautifully overproduced and confusingly written cascade. i love you prompto, but even your cute little freckly face and terrible photography can't save this trainwreck of a game.

tl;dr - final fantasy xv sucks. i hope that 13, our next ff game, will be better.

#ramble #review type thing #did you read all of this? im impressed #i did not proofread #so if its a mess #just pretend thats a meta commentary about the game itself #i wrote this for like an hour trying to understand the feelings this game gave me #final fantasy xv

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