#for real that game was great but didn't deliver as they could have with its theme of Luigi being the Perfect Dream Host

[istadris]

Just remembered that in addition to all the Weird And Unexplained Powers Luigi possesses, "prophetic dreaming" is apparently one of them, and no one ever mentions how he dreamed of Antasma (which he had never met) and his way of fighting (which he had never seen) BEFORE going to Pi'ilo Island.

[nyuuronfly]

On Rain World lore and it's implementation within the game.

This is kindof a random ramble I went on in a Discord chat and just feel like sharing elsewhere. (also note this is all primarily in reference to the original game, Survivor's story.)

I honestly think too many miss the forest for the trees a bit with RW, in terms of how important the lore is, if that makes sense. I talked with somebody about first-time experiences with the game and they said they'd watched a number of lore explanation videos on YT before starting, because of some reason along the lines of "I didn't trust the game to deliver its own story properly." To me this is almost saddening to hear because I really feel that misses the point of why the game has it's lore to begin with.

To me, while playing, any tidbits i learned about history or other information contributed to a feeling like the world I was navigating had a very real history that saturated it, yet one that I would be unable to grasp fully. It is an illusory feeling of realness, given how it is experienced. The game is mechanically not designed to incentivize collecting many information pearls, especially when in the original game you can literally just drop them off a cliff and lose them forever. You get the feeling often like you are bound to never be able to get everything, nor would you even probably want to put in the effort, so the illusion actually stays stronger because of that. Your mind wanders speculating about every little detail, whether intention truly existed behind it or not, because it feels like it did. You learned that it might have. Maintaining that illusion while playing I think is the primary reason they were included, not actually the experience of "knowing" the history. Rain World in general seems to have a thematic fixation on the simple idea that individuals have limited perspectives. Joar Jakobsson has said that one of the core ideas behind Rain World was to recreate the life of a "rat in Manhattan." That is to say, a creature that understands how to find food, hide, and live in a complex man-made structure, that cannot understand it's structuring purpose or why it was built. The very core issue of the iterators, is that the solution to the "great problem" intrinsically has to lie with knowledge that could only be obtained from "the other side." They are corporeal beings trying to know something that pertains to something outside corporeal reality. Yet pursuit of knowledge is very important to creatures like ourselves. Collecting any individual pearl is mostly an exercise in doing a lot just for little bits of knowledge. There is a lot of understanding of just how significant wanting to know more is, even something unimportant, when you are left in the dark the way you are in the game. Most information pearls you deliver are literally completely useless to know about, but they feel personally important, especially in how finding them relates to your connection to the iterators. My primary motivation to find pearls in my first play was to spend more time with Moon. On a very real emotional level, Moon felt like my only friend in the world while I played. On a mechanical level, she does literally nothing. But Rain World manages to operate on a very emotional, even instinctual level with how it's designed. I wanted to be in her company and have something to give her. Because I am alone, and lost. So something along those lines is why I felt saddened to hear the sentiment like Rain World somehow "fails" to deliver it's "story." The purpose of the game is not to find pearls and hear about some grand narrative. At it's core, Rain World is a game that's design was inspired by nature, and it's use of history within the world relates to us as a player the way history relates to us as people. It is relayed through people reading from records created by parties with their own perspectives, and connects us abstractly to a sensation that there is more out there than our own lives. That is a feeling you have as a player, and ultimately the true story that Rain World tells is the memories you have playing it. What you did, saw, and felt. The same as how our story is that of our own lives. That is the purpose of the game.

[logmore]

hello logmore! silly question but i was curious about your thoughts on like a dragon: infinite wealth so far. you mentioned being bored by the first few chapters (fair) so i’m curious what your impression is now that you’ve played more of it. i wish sega was a bit more transparent about the development of the yakuza games because im kind of fascinated by some of the decisions they made in this one

I finished the game last night so I can reply now. I will talk about Infinite Wealth spoilers here:

Things I like:

Combat: Just Yakuza 7 combat but fleshed out, which is perfect. Being able to position your character is great, the team chain attacks and weapon attacks and stuff are fun to set up. The one flaw with it is that it does not interact with Kiryu very well, and by the end I was actually doing less damage with Kiryu if I got a tag team or weapon attack instead of a basic Brawler attack.

Classes: There were a lot of classes I ignored in 7 because they just weren't doing anything; it was just better to leave Joongi, Zhao, and Eri as their defaults and go to town. I think 8 has an improved skill inheritance system that made it more worthwhile to try out different classes, so by the end I switched every character away from their base class. Desperado and Aquanaut stood out as being very flexible and fun.

Kiryu: Technically this is an Ichiban game, but its more of a send-off to Kiryu than anything. I like how there was a ton of content dedicated to Kiryu revisiting characters from the past games, delivered in a way that I still liked it even though I only played 0 and 1. I thought the way they introduced leveling up his stances + gaining the ability to go beat-em-up mode was pretty clever. I also liked equipping him with gear that gave him buffs every turn so he could tear enemies apart like King's Hawaiian rolls.

Yamai: They knew what they were cooking here. You have to fight this guy like 4 times and I enjoyed it every time. He's cool, he looks cool, even the main characters say he is cool, and if he isn't playable in Yakuza 9 I'm gonna be astounded.

Things I don't:

Slow start: The first chapter got me pretty invested, but after Ichiban goes to Hawaii the story is a fucking slog for like 15 hours. I got so bored I stopped playing, and when I came back it finally picked up again.

Side content that I wasn't ever going to do: This is the reason the start of the story is so slow. I'm sure Dondoko Island and Crazy UberEats and all that is fun, but it isn't the type of thing I'm playing these games for, and when so much time in the story is spent ramping up all these side games to play, I just feel like I'm wasting my time. Next game might as well have a Virtua Fighter 6 tournament in the middle of it, why not?

Villains: Bryce and Ebina are just lame characters. This is a game with essentially 2 final bosses, but neither of them have the emotional core or the weight of the bosses from 7. Bryce is literally just 'a weird guy shows up', and while I understand what they were going for with Ebina, his goals seem so disconnected from what the protagonists are experiencing that him taking his shirt off and fighting Kiryu doesn't feel like a real climax. Getting Danny Trejo on board was a pretty inspired choice, but you fight Dwight so early that it framed him as a weakling that didn't matter. And he keeps coming back, in spite of that! There were a few showdowns in 7 where it felt high stakes/intense, but in 8 they had to bust out Sawashiro again to capture that.

Managing 2 parties at the same time: On one hand its cool because it means I get to use every party member, but I wish they bumped up the XP of whatever party you weren't playing, so that when you switched between them they were both at the same level. There were a couple of points where I had to grind because the difficulty of the content was scaling based on what my previous party had left off at, so I needed to get my current party to that level first. I also had to spend a lot of time doing the dungeons to get the materials for weapon upgrades on 9 characters. Just kind of time consuming, but it isn't the worst thing in the world.

Tatara Channel: Its dumb, but this is the only thing in the game that actually made me mad. The social media aspect of the story already feels dated in a way, and I don't care about Vtubers to begin with, but the thing that actually got me upset about this shit is that all the Tatara Channel scenes are just story recaps with unskippable dialog where something relevant MIGHT happen at the end. At one point I got tired of it and just skipped the cutscene, and then all of the sudden Kiryu is in front of Tojo HQ ready to fight. I hope they never deliver a plot in this way ever again

Even though I wrote more negative things than positive things, I still liked this game a lot. 7 is a way better story, but I think Ichiban and Kiryu are just too strong of protagonists to truly hate on the story, even if a lot of things surrounding it are dumb. I'm looking forward to playing pirates with Majima, and I will wish on a genie's lamp for Yamai to come back as a playable berserker-type character

[raspberryberyl]

ah I love the dsmp and some people (mainly cc's) are killing me.

I had to watch the cctommy video because idk ocd or i just felt like it would kill me if i didn't watch.

Tommy was usual tommy fashion, and the video was good! Don't get me wrong. I love that he didn't say it was cringe, and was nostalgic and positive about it. That he had good things to say.

I believe and want to believe in my heart that cctommy really cares about the dsmp and ctommy. Sometimes it feels like cc!eret , cc!quackity, cc!tommy are the only ones that really care. That care about the audience that they've created, that try to cultivate it. I want to believe that others care too but its these three that i feel are the most vocal about it.

But watching the new Tommy video, i feel slightly hurt. I know Tommy is just being Tommy fashion and being silly and "annoying", and maybe he's not being completely full hearted and serious because he wants to appease fans that do think it was cringe (which seems to be quite a bit, mostly twt).

But i just feel like, is it so hard to believe that people would care about the story you created? Especially one that is so unique and tackles such raw and real emotions and experiences. for my fellow ctommy fans, its family, home, abuse, suicidality, etc.

Maybe it's because it just doesn't feel real to the cc, that they made this popular series. Maybe it's because to a lot of them it really was just a game and goofing off. But to us fans, it was so much more. We poured ourselves into it. And it hurts to be treated like a joke and "cringe".

I feel grateful to cctommy for saying the positive things he did, but should I? Should i be appreciative that he treats us with bare minimum respect... like yes I know he cares, I think he does, but his joking attitude about it all makes me feel like a joke.

I did not like the constant sexual innuendos about c!tommy. was the foreplay one a little funny? yeah maybe. but describing the classic hurt c!tommy sigh/grunt/thing like a moan? no, i did not like that.

Maybe he's coping with humor. as other people pointed out cctommy was constantly sexualized on that server. And as he said he is an adult now that can joke about it anyway he likes because it is HIM.

I also did not like him describing ctommy as "a bad guy." ctommy had flaws, he was not perfect, that's one of the reasons he is so great, but he was not a bad guy. I could see c!tommy thinking he is the bad guy, but cctommy is the writer and should know better. I don't like being told that an abuse victim who is so very human, is "the bad guy". I might only partly forgive him for this because he talked about how c!tubbo (and cc!tubbo), was often an ignored victim and character that deserved to shine.

I did not like the "making fun of " suicide. Which is a major problem the dsmp writing has.

I am forever hurt by how the cc treat us. I devoted so much of my time and energy to this just to feel like a joke, just for them to act like they don't care. Well i choose to continue to care, because i really and truly do.

I've said it before but cc!ranboo was my main main, i watched every stream, even the non dsmp ones. But with how they treated c!ranboo, i just can barely bring myself to watch them. i did not get into generation loss, it hurts too much. I respect Ranboo for going with his passions and not doing things just to appease fans, but i am forever hurt that he had so little care in the end for something that so many of us cared about.

Most cc are just silent about their dsmp days and have no comment. But then others joke about how the fans cared? cc!puffy i was devoted and excited for your lore, and you failed to deliver it and now treat us like a joke.

And other cc where it just feels like they are trying to milk it for content, don't get me started.

And I'll be honest, I am still sick of all this dancing around the subject in the room that is the problematic cc. I get the cc don't owe us their views, and probably don't want to further drama. But Tommy can you just say you don't like or support Dream! Can any cc be open about it! Tommy stop giving me heart attacks by putting dt in your thumbnails 😭

And yeah this was really long and rant/venty, I feel like i forgot some stuff that i wanted to say so i will just add it later if it comes to mind.

But my point is, people cared about the dsmp. Some people moved on, and many of us are here and still thriving. People care, so stop being surprised that we do. Stop treating us like a joke.

If you're going to mention it cc, be respectful, kind, and maybe don't say anything if you don't really care about it.

the dsmp had many issues, no one is denying, but people cared.

[janeyshivers]

i'm sick of modern politics ruining JRR Tolkien's original vision

haha you thought this was gonna be about wokeness or Rings of Power or something didn't you dipshit. actually its about how Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014) has a bizarre hard-on for slavery apologia because it's unacceptable to call out the modern slavery we see in the prison system.

pretty much as soon as you start Shadow of Mordor, it draws a very hard line between the orcs in Mordor (bad, nasty, are using slaves to fuel their war effort) and the Men of Gondor (flawed but heroic, built and maintained the Black Gate with """prison labour"""). the slaves in Mordor must be liberated! most of the missions revolve around this! but the fact that Gondor also uses literal slaves is never brought up, because it's always elided as "prison labour", which is the same thing as slavery, with the crucial difference being that it's just the modern version that's still legal in modern-day prisons. and god forbid we bring any degree of focus to how the protaganist faction of mostly handsome white dudes actually engage in this kind of shit constantly, because that might almost border on social commentary. can't have that!

ok, that's shitty on its face, but i also think it actually misses a great oppurtunity to underscore Tolkien's original stories. don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to argue that the dude was a prison abolitionist or whatever. what i am arguing is that he was writing about Gondor as this kingdom that's slowly slipping into decline, corruption, and ruin because the royal line was broken. do i agree with that? fuck no, obviously not, royalty are parasitic swine and every kingdom on Earth would be better off without them. but if you're writing a modern followup to Tolkien's stuff, the slavery shit actually gives you a real oppurtunity to build on that. with a little tweaking, you could turn the slavery/"""prison labour""" dichotomy into a real illustration of how the slow rot of Gondor going to shit is making space for Sauron's return.

considering a lot of the Outcasts in Mordor who end up enslaved escaped from under Gondor's thumb, you could make a real argument that Gondor's breathtakingly evil policy of using slaves to maintain its defences was not only morally bankrupt by itself, but also delivered a population of defenceless slaves with nowhere to run to right into Sauron's lap. like the underfunding of the Rangers, like the lack of maintenance of alliances with kingdoms like Rohan, Gondor's weak and ineffectual political system under the Stewards is actively accelarating Sauron's return to power. again, i don't agree with making a story about how only the return of the king will fix the kingdom's problems, but if you're making a Tolkien story, that's the wheelhouse you're operating in.

the bones of this reading are in the game, but they're undermined by the game seeming to be utterly reticent to capitalise on it. at no point does a liberated Outcast slave say "hey actually, fuck you Talion, you and the other Rangers were as bad as the Uruk are". they are only ever deferential and grateful. even Dirhael's wife, who thinks Talion is a dick, doesn't go there. the orcs who are like "we're not so different, you and i >:)" only talk about how you like killing orcs, not the fact that you BOTH KEPT THE SAME FUCKING PEOPLE AS SLAVES. like it feels very deliberate that they don't go into this at all, like the devs are hoping you won't notice. this is ACTUAL "modern politics interfering with the story and themes of the game", far, far moreso than any like, black elf or woman with a big sword or whatever the fuck they've ever put in a Tolkien adaptation. the writers were too scared to commit to an idea that would have jived incredibly well with the themes of the story they were spinning off from, because it's a taboo to point out that the way prisons treat people in modern society is absolutely monstrous. genuinely craven shit.

[artdecosupernova-writing]

Find the Word Game XXVII

tagged by: @oh-no-another-idea!! my words: deliver, drive, death, dog tagging: @drippingmoon, @drabbleitout, @space-writes, and open tag your words: basic, ground, bed, after, before, during

deliver (Eternal)—

"I suspect he may still be harboring resentment toward me." Thrive sounded strangely casual, as if he were relaying information pertinent to their route and destination. "Resentment for what?" a familiar voice chimed in. It took Warren a minute to realize it was Varussa. Thrive didn't answer at first. "I've been distant lately. He deserves a level of presence from me that I'm afraid I can't deliver at present." "Is it that you can't deliver it, or you won't?" Guetry asked with an edge. "Because likely unbeknownst to our great and powerful leader, there is a difference." Warren blinked, his blood running cold at the callousness slithering around Guetry's question. He could imagine Thrive's face, the venom in his glare as each second of silence ticked on. Warren shook his head, ignoring the chill that bolted through him.

drive (Warpath)—

Warren looked around wildly for an answer. Scot was utterly lifeless beside him, still as a board and just as expressionless. The only signs of life in him were his flashing face seams, as if he'd begun to overload or compartmentalize his own emotions onto an external hard drive previously unseen. "Please," Warren choked. "No. This…this isn't real." "I didn't want it to go like this," ——— said. "I didn't want you to find out like this. I wanted to tell you sooner but I was told to ease you into it—" "How," Warren demanded, backing up until his shoulders hit the bulkhead. "How is this possible? How…?!" "I'm not me." ———'s eyes shone apologetically, with sorrow. "I'm not…I'm not the ——— you know. I'm not even supposed to be here. And especially not for long." The floor warped beneath Warren's feet. "I watched you die. I…I watched you die." "You did." The corners of ———'s mouth turned downward. "And I watched you die, too." Jasper was as lost as he could be. "...Is this a ghost?" "Yeah," ——— said, strained, looking at Jasper for the first time in a while. "You have no fuckin' idea, pal."

death (Meridian)—

Upon approaching Veneve's star system, Thrive stood at the front window of the Rodedra, a deep scowl of concern on his face. Warren stepped up beside him and got a look at the view—the star appeared to be a lot further along in its death than anticipated. Even from their temporarily safe position near Veneve's orbit, the sun looked different, more compact and bright blue. "Not good, guys," Thoeala said. "That thing could go off at any moment." "If it supernovas while we're evacuating the planet, there's no time to get away," Thrive muttered distractedly. He passed a hand over his chin. "...And I'd say the odds are astronomical in favor of that happening." Warren narrowed his eyes at him. "You sound okay with that, which is giving me more anxiety about the steadily rising possibility of you eventually becoming a supervillain." Thrive lost himself in his head for a few seconds. "Do you think I could stop it myself?" "You becoming a supervillain? Absolutely not. That's gonna be inevitable and not even you could stop that."

dog (Meridian)—

"Do not go after him." Warren's blood turned to ice. "What?" He shook his head. "It sounded like you said...it sounded like you said not to go after him. But that would be ridiculous, because we all need Thrive back, and we need him back in one piece." He regarded the orb with a hard look. "Right?" The messenger ceased its gentle bobbing in mid-air and became concentrated light near the viewscreen. "His capture by beings beyond our realm of knowledge has been—" "I don't know if you realize this," Warren interrupted, "but I've been around a long time. I've seen things I never should've seen and yet I've forgotten more of my trauma than half of my species has ever lived. I've got nothing but time, my guy. If you don't wanna help me, that's your prerogative, but I'll be damned if you think I'm gonna let you tell me not to find Orthrive'poliea because it's 'too dangerous.' I'm not scared of you or them, so fuck your entire selfish, righteous people for the big pile of dog-shit nothing you've done for me and him." The orb exploded outward, its light intensifying along with a window-rattling roar, like the scream of a blazing comet, filling bones with dread and ears with pain. It sent a chill down Warren's spine, injected him with necessary rage. When the onslaught of light and noise finally ceased, he did a visual sweep of the room to assess everyone's status, then turned back to the orb. "...Did you not hear what I just fucking said," he said darkly.

[2a8n]

Shirogane's dream

I wanted to speculate a bit about Shirogane's dream shown to us in the Ice Scream Original (Round 2), since some of the moments shown will either be redone in the Ice Scream Remake or confirmed in it. And according to the old tradition, I write in advance: "Sorry for the quality", because some screenshots might not turn out in the best quality, but I tried to make them at least better than my previous such screenshots. Well, let's get started!

It all starts with showing the ceiling in one of the rooms of the Ice Cavern and our depressive wolf lying on the bench there. Personally, I would be very scared to be there simply because I would be constantly afraid of one of the icicles falling from the ceiling on me. At the same time, Shirogane can easily be in this pleace, and even more so lie and sleep on the bench there. The other one who was there was a bunny, and that's to arrange a GAME OVER player on the screen.

Next, we are shown the dream itself. It starts all this confusion Suno-san jumping into the middle of the white space like a bunny. At the same time, in Round 3 we will be shown that he can teleport, and also when showing his moving game sprite, we can see a movement that looks more like crawling, but not like a jump. I don't know if this snowman is really capable of moving in as many as 3 distinct ways, or if Suno-san's jumping in this dream is just Shiro's own fantasy.

Note that in Shirogane's dream, squid tentacles appear, a flower dancing at night in the Peraco house, bunnies, and Nekoyama. This tells us that Shiro saw/met all of these things/characters, which is confirmed by the following: 1) In the Remake, Shirogane lies on the snow and sees a Squid, whose tentacles stick out of the water surface; 2) A similar flower stands next to the television in Peraco's house, but it differs from the flower shown in the dream in the absence of a leaf and a thinner stem; 3) There is no need to talk much about bunnies - they can often be seen on Iceberg Isle (as well as Rock running from anger, probably…); 4) And finally, Nekoyama - our cameo from Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea. He can be found in Round 2 delivering cigarettes to Orca. As a result, it can be assumed that the rest of what is shown is also familiar to Shirogane. And this makes me wary:

if our wolf could see a simple fish in the same fishing buckets of Rock, then to consider the moon-fish or those white squids, he would have to dive straight into the water, most likely;

Tori-san can be either a simple easter egg (remember Tori-san's toy in Rocma's house), or a frozen Tori-san that Shirogane once saw;

has Shiro met the Mogekoels? I hope they didn't try to hit him with their arrows while doing so…

the head of a huge white "something" with an outstretched tongue raises many questions in me. Is there a possibility that this is the head of a huge turtle, on which a huge glacier has frozen and, thus, having formed Iceberg Isle, it swims in the northern latitudes, preventing the isle from melting and the inhabitants on its back from dying?

It doesn't surprise me that the phrase "Bad doggy" and Suno-san appear here. I'm more surprise why he uses the parachute of Mogekov Hashasky and… bees on a background.

If there are good Japanese translators with good eyesight, please translate the symbols on the background. I will be very grateful for this. ( v _ v )

Here you can see Peraco's name-calling towards Shiro. I don't know what else to add here.

What did I ever even do? It is this question that our wolf asks when once again the hot-tempered penguin, familiar to all of us, takes out his frustration or anger on him.

Fall - it is unclear only, emotional and/or physical.

Shirogane managed to be a wolf, and a dog, and a bunny, and even a caterpillar in his and others' fantasies. It remains only him managed to be happy in real and then his life was a success! =D

It is noteworthy that the snowman appears here only on the red background. Neither he nor Shiro can be seen on the black background. Because of this, I get the impression (or maybe it's an attempt to convey the impression of the wolf himself) that the talking pissed snow is stalking him and/or watching him quite often…

That's it for now. Yeah, there are some monologues to Shirogane that were later moved to Watch 1 of the Remake, but I want to give them time in a separate post. I will also pin here a video with this very dream from the official DSP channel and a walkthrough of one of the youtubers with this very fragment of the dream game (9:36 - 10:33) in case you yourself want to disassemble it. Until then, see you soon! ;)

[sokkastyles]

ATLA LIVE ACTION EP8 THOUGHTS:

I enjoyed seeing the gaang participate in the battle, but where are the NWT forces?

I'm not sure why the decision was made to change the dialogue in the goodbye scene with Zuko and Iroh. I doubt viewers new to the story even remember who Lu Ten was. There's also no particular reason for Zuko to say this here other than that we should have him say something sentimental. It's also just that Zuko at this point in the show, even though we know he loves Iroh, isn't really ready to be that emotionally open, and should not be. That was part of the point in the original scene when Iroh is emotional and Zuko shies away from it. You can still feel the love between the characters but the tragedy is in how Zuko isn't ready to accept it yet, and that mirrors how he's choosing to chase Aang, and by extension his father's love, doing what is basically a suicide mission.

All the waterbending women standing together during the battle is what was missing from the original. Emphasizing that this is not just about Katara but everyone.

And Yue being a waterbender and fighting emphasizes that too. Nice touch.

"Yes, Master Katara!"

What Zhao says implies that only the Northern waterbenders draw power from the moon?

We could have learned about the healing Oasis without the uneccesary violence to Momo.

I was worried that the glimpses in the trailer of the spirit oasis looked less natural, but my fears are put to rest here.

Loved the zutara spirit oasis fight.

Zhao realizing that the koi fish are the spirits feels very "old man yells at cloud." Obnoxious man yells at fish.

"Even Ozai wouldn't want that." Are you really sure? The Phoenix King would disagree.

WHY IS THIS SCENE SO STATIC? Iroh and Zhao are supposed to be in a dire struggle but they just stand there talking to each other. In the original, Iroh takes a fighting stance as he delivers the great line about unleashing tenfold on Zhao if he tries to harm the spirit. Here he just stands and shouts, despite how much easier it is for live action to actually have their characters MOVE.

Is it just me or does the show keep contradicting itself on what Zhao's plan is? Previously he said he didn't want to kill all the waterbenders and now he's saying he does. Which, let's be real, the FN absolutely does want to do. Sozin was willing to kill airbenders just to stop the Avatar. And the logical extension is that they would then have to decimate every other nation until nothing was left.

"Do you understand what that's like?" "Yes, I do."

I have to admit, the battle is pretty impressive. The waterbenders losing their bending is a nice touch.

Missing the Zuko/Aang moments and have mixed feelings about Aang purposefully choosing to meld with the Ocean Spirit but the themes of sacrifice are good and am kind of interested to see where this takes the story.

Zuko/Zhao fight good

"It was all a game." Yeah. And Azula identifying the blue spirit as Zuko, which I kinda predicted! But I still maintain she should have recognized the mask, not the sword. This show has shown its willingness to acknowledge the Search's existence, so it should have been the mask that represents their mother that Azula identified.

Did Iroh just kill Zhao?!?

Love the iceberg imagery with Aang imprisoned in the ocean spirit with Katara calling out to him to come back. And here's the "we are your family" speech. Aang sacrificing himself because he feels like he doesn't belong and Katara wanting him to be part of her world. This is good stuff. I just don't really feel why Katara needs Aang here. Even though I don't like KA, at least I get a sense in the original that they are important to each other. That's missing here. I feel like if I hadn't watched the original I would not get it at all.

"My daughter always made her own choices." Look. OG Yue sacrifices herself because that is what she has done her whole life, a girl who lives for her duty. This Yue sacrifices herself because she chooses to, as a spiritual leader of her tribe who rejected an offer of marriage and made her own choices. It feels much less like fridging this way.

The taking of Omashu is great. Awkward that Ozai is explaining it in exposition to the Fire Sage like he wouldn't already know.

I still don't buy that Ozai would be like "well, let's see if Zuko survives." He would want to keep tabs on what Zuko is doing. Especially now. In the original, Iroh's outright treason was a big plot point. The same thing happens here but Ozai just has nothing to say about it? Iroh fights against the Fire Nation, Zuko is legally made a traitor, they vanish under mysterious circumstances, and Ozai is just like "lol that's chill let's see what happens." Even his reasoning, that if Zuko is strong he'll survive, doesn't make much sense. A Zuko who is left to survive is likely to come back stronger and less loyal. Ozai says the things he does are to make Zuko stronger but Ozai really does not want him to be strong, because that means there's a risk that he might develop independence.

Also this contradicts what Zhao said about how Ozai never wanted Zuko to succeed. So what is Ozai's game? I hear we've been renewed so maybe we'll find out, but honestly I don't think the writing on this show is consistent enough to get my hopes up.

[hornyjockstrapman]

Matthew Part 3

is this part 3 or part 4. I don't remember anymore...and tumblr isn't the easiest thing to search ====================== Not much has happened between Matthew and I. Its mostly all talk which kind of sums up online life. A lot of guys are there to see pictures and talk this huge game but when it comes time to deliver well they're busy or tired. Whatever their excuse is. It doesn't matter to me. These people are out here living their life without thinking a second about how it affects someone else. I should have seen this coming to be honest. It's how the entire world operates. Cat mentality. Me first and everything else is disposable. At the end of the current work week Matthew and I had planned for me to stop by his shop where I'm sure things would have gotten spicy. That didn't happen. Instead something came up on his end and he spent the weekend doing that. Great. Cool. Thanks for...oh I don't know telling me that sooner so I didn't get my hopes up that we would meet. No worries though man I'm glad you had a great week doing whatever you were doing. So happy for you. When asked how my weekend was I gave them an option to know the truth or some grand tell their answer, which is befitting, was for me to give them the truth with a positive spin. That's where this is. I'm sorry your house burned down to the ground and you lost everything but can you put a positive spin on that for me because I don't truly care enough about what you have to say or have going on. I see you only as a disposable thing that I can use when things aren't great in my life. And this isn't just about Matthew. Another guy I'm chatting with named Steve(again not real name) has been making extra excuses as to why he can't meet me. Fine. Great. Don't expect me to put as much effort into a lost cause my guy. Don't expect the conversations to be so great don't expect the back and forth to be where it was or has been. You don't care to meet me or even want to make plans or make the smallest attempt to meet me. Cool. Then I don't care about anything you have to say. And Steve is just one of many guys online who act like you're suppose to be there for them and that's it. Fuck that. I specifically asked Steve before the weekend got here if he had weekend plans. Which usually indicates to that person or at least should set off alarm bells in that person's head that this person wants to make plans with you. This didn't even register with Steve. I, then, later told Steve that I had run a quick errand but after running that errand I would be free and we could meet. Steve during this time decided to do things that would ultimately "make him tired and he would need a nap". Ok great. Well, I sure am glad I left the house with the hopes and intentions of meeting you and I'm glad I didn't waste a considerable amount of time grooming myself to make myself look nice and decent for you. Had I known all I was doing was running an errand I would have just wore the normal house attire and wouldn't give two shits about my look. This is the problem with online hookups, dating, chatting etc. It's all a game. It's all about that guy getting what he wants, when he wants it, how he wants it. And if you aren't able to meet those needs or requirements then you aren't useful to them. I sat alone in my room fingers typing frantically....angrily. The room was dark except for the light coming from the bathroom. Every single time I tell myself I'm going to start living for me and doing things I want to do and every single time I get sucked back into this mentally and physically draining game. I'm hitting my breaking point.

[adamwatchesmovies]

All Fun and Games (2023)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

There are so many people out there whose dream is to make a movie. Though you might lower your expectations when you learn you’re about to watch a directorial debut, you're still excited. “I'm going to pay close attention so I can tell people years from now that I saw the mark of a great director coming.” When, even with lowered expectations, the movie you see isn’t good, it’s doubly disappointing. I don’t want to be mean to All Fun and Games directors Ari Costa and Eren Celeboglu. I also want to be fair to you by admitting this film is not worth seeing.

In Salem, Massachusetts, young Jonah (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) finds a strange knife in an abandonned home. Its hilt is made of human bone and there’s an inscription on the blade. When his brother, Marcus (Asa Butterfield), reads the words out loud, he becomes possessed by an evil force. His sister, Billie (Natalia Dyer), her boyfriend, Pete (Kolton Stewart), best friend Sophie (Laurel Marsden) and uncle Bob (Erik Athavale) have no idea the “games” Marcus wants to play are deadly.

There are two major issues with “All Fun and Games”. The first is that it isn’t frightening. The idea of someone you love suddenly turning against you is ripe for potential but evil Marcus never uses his familial ties to his advantage. There’s little suspense, even in situations that should naturally generate it. The games of Hide-and-Seek and Tag, for example. You hold your breath for a moment, but no more than you would a normal game with friends. Some of that comes from the second major issue: the premise itself. The idea of games with deadly consequences isn’t enough anymore. Ready or Not did something different by supplementing the idea with comedy and social commentary. All Fun and Games doesn't do anything. This problem is amplified by the fact that some games work against the film itself. Playing Hide-and-Seek, for example, means the people who already want to get away from Marcus are allowed to do so. The villain searching for our heroes… continues searching for them. So what?

The premise gets increasingly convoluted as we learn the backstory behind the knife, particularly the way it leads the characters into playing a game of Tag. I think even the filmmakers knew that what they had was rather thin. The final running time is only 76 minutes.

All Fun and Games isn't devoid of merit and what’s good about it shows the people at its helm may have a promising career ahead of them. The Fletchers are dysfunctional, sometimes in a slightly comedic fashion but never to the point where they become over-the-top. The children bicker in a way that feels genuine considering the relationship between their parents and their age. Minus one sentence where Billie reminds Sophie that they’re best friends, everyone sounds real and the actors who’ve received the script by Costa, Celeboglu and their co-writer JJ Braider, deliver it convincingly. I’ll even go so far as to say that before people start getting possessed, you won’t understand why anyone would give the film a bad review.

The unimaginative premise and rushed conclusion (I had to double-check that I didn’t miss anything), combined with the missed potential and the lack of scares or tension means All Fun and Games is a movie you’ll forget right away. Usually, I say that it’s better to be memorable than good but that rule doesn't apply for directorial debuts. There’s potential here and although it isn’t entirely successful, some aspects of All Fun and Games make me think the next film by the people involved could be good. (June 30, 2024)

[kcdodger]

Honestly, I feel like one of the only Starfield fans out there. There's so little talk about how good the game actually is, because everyone seemed to expect it to be like... "Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen but good" without realizing that those games are *bad* because of their fundamental basis in, well. Nothing. See, Elite was always a game with promise, but it has some of the most worthless head developers in the industry. Designed like an F2P MMO with a quarter of the content, around an exceptional flight model based in the most uselessly large 1:1 scale galaxy I have ever seen. Scale is useless if you cannot use it. (Starfield suffers immensely from this too, by the way.) But Star Citizen is also another promiser with no real delivery at all.

The game is driven by ship sales and almost half the game is still in development, and it's been well over ten years now. They promised 100 star systems but have only delivered on what, Stanton and Pyro? Again, Starfield suffers from this too. Can't lie. But you know what Starfield has that neither of them have? A story. Characters. Voice work. Cultures to explore and experience, even if they ARE small. ACTUAL worldbuilding beyond ship based combat. Fully traversable ship interiors and exteriors without exception. If you hate Starfield beause it isn't "Well realized or big enough of a space system" you both don't understand the intent of the game nor do you understand what it *does* have. Yes, there's stock repeatable dungeons everywhere, yes, they do get old. Yes, perhaps there is simply too much open "junk space" - but, like. Ultimately? It does deliver on just about every promise both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen made. "Oh but it's not seamless!" You don't want that. Trust me. In Elite and SC, you only travel to POIs. It's true. The scale is too large in either game to even consider doing anything else. You really do just fly from one identical point to another in those games. I guess maybe not SC, but SC's locations are, frankly, single player RPG sized theme parks. At best. ED: Frontiers didn't add anything meaningful to the game, despite adding space legs. It's not a fulfilling SP or MP experience. Its shooting mechanics suck. Its other mechanics are, frankly, useless - if interesting. It's just not built for that.

Admittedly, in a lot of ways? Starfield feels like a Single Player Star Wars Galaxies, to me. Fully traversable ships, decently large on-foot areas to explore, POIs to travel to, and fully realized stories and characters, with just about as good worldbuilding and realization. Perhaps that's why Starfield appeals to me so much. Because it scratches an itch that SWG did, but E:D and SC completely and utterly failed to. I'll give E:D this. It might be the greatest space sim to play if you work an office 9-5 or are unemployed. I'm saying it's great if you have nothing but free time, basically. If you don't, it's pretty awful and does not respect your time. "Starfield has so many loading screens!" one may say. Yeah, it does. so do ED and SC. But they hide them behind entering and exiting FTL jumps. Does that FEEL like a loading screen? No, not to the uninitiated. But once you're in there, the waits become kind of agonizing and obvious. It's like Mass Effect's elevators. The Loading Screens are still there, but you have the illusion removed. Could Starfield benefit from immersive loading screens? Yeah, honestly it could. I mean, Star Wars: Outlaws coming out next month is doing it. And your average plebeian gamer doesn't realize that's what it is - a loading screen between instances and POIs. If Starfield added that, it'd do them a lot of good. Though, sadly it would also run in the face of their lovely photo-mode-pics-are-loading-screens function, which I adore. But for the health of the game, I am willing to eschew that. Heartbreakingly. If Starfield added that, it'd do them a lot of good. Though, sadly it would also run in the face of their lovely photo-mode-pics-are-loading-screens function, which I adore. But for the health of the game, I am willing to eschew that. Heartbreakingly.

[swampstew]

Thank you @thus-spoke-lo for the tag in this fun self-recommendation game! I always feel a bit awkward posting reminders and announcements when chapters are ready for reading, but I'll take a moment to hype myself and the words of my labor up. Here are my 5 favorite things I've written so far!

What's the Magic Word? - So I love how One Piece is this giant fantastical world where pirates are a real threat and mermaids, dragons, and magic quite literally exist. I thought it was odd that there wasn't a witch character at all, especially with how well it would fit into the universe, and what type of role/responsibility power like that would look like. Rowena my baby was born. It's everything I've ever learned while practicing the craft, enjoyed seeing in pop culture media, and inspired by cultural lores that I participate in or have great respect for. I wanted to create a character that could believably exist in the One Piece world and then have her do a bunch of fun and cathartic things (that may or may not be a reflection of real life). Falling in love with Eustass Kid was not on my radar (is falling in love ever?) - in fact the first draft of the story didn't have the Kid Pirates at all. Nope, just my witchy girl and the Straw Hats having adventures. Then I got to the Sabaody Archipelago and I saw him. I thought it would be fun to put these characters in a situation where they weren't friends or enemies but rather temporary witness protection body guards with a powerful ass witch as their protectee. Plus the smut. Love the smut and romance always. Its my first writng project I've done since college and I'm so happy to be back in the writing sphere. This book will have a sequel :)

Turn Back Time - This was a random dream that turned into a 20+ multichapter fic and I'm not even mad about it. In this one I took a fun approach to the story by centering it not just on the OCs but the Kid Pirates themselves. My first fic didn't really acknowledge many of them until the editing stage but this fic is entirely about the Kid Pirates and what it's like being in their crew. Especially as the love interests of some of the scariest, beefiest dudes that end up just being touch-starved men who are fully capable of vulnerability and love. It's been fun and I am excited for the upcoming themes and trials they'll go through! There will only be the one book but it will follow the journey of the Kid Pirates up until the very recent events in the manga.

At First Sight - this was a one shot that turned into a mini-series and I surprised myself with how much I packed into it. I didn't want to or expect to make it into a series but after giving it maybe a whole day's worth of thought and effort, I feel like I pulled a pretty good fic out of what was originally a stand-alone porn trope collab story!! This one is also on the Kid Pirates cause they're my comfort characters and again its been a fun way to put a spin on these murderous pirates when they're engaging with someone who's neither foe nor friend. Not a frenemy but a familiar with benefits! I lowkey based Y/N's badassery on Beidou from Genshin Impact.

KillerCook - I saw a hot dude make brownies on Instagram and thought 'what if Killer.' That's it. I wasn't sure how I was going to present it so I settled for creating a social media experience and I'm pretty sure I delivered. I'm a Kid Pirates loyalist, if you want something else you can check my Swampstew Bedtime Stories but my bread and butter are these anarchist psychos. Now comes with accessories such as: baker's hat and apron, and also a set of gold body piercings! The response has been supportive and excitable, and it's inspired me to do another modern social media influencer monetization fic, coming soon 😏 on Friday actually!

Oh Yandere! series - I wanted to give myself an opportunity to play around with some dark content and found myself really enjoying it. Especially in the noncon/dubcon vein. I've been too meek to do anything more than head canons but I have recently been inspired to explore some truly deplorable characters if I pick this series up again. If not, I might do a short series on Yandere Eustass Kid that has some...inspiration from another popular fandom that may or may not piss some people off. ANYWAYS! Live Laugh DarkContent

Tagging for funsies but def no pressure - I just think every author should get a chance to fluff themselves up and talk about their works that make them proud!

@abysscronica @cebwrites @goldenandhappy @zoros-sheath @kenruu @creamsickle-writes

[lunar405]

i've been obsessed with re4 remake's post credits scene . . like holy fuck capcom literally just simultanously confirmed & deconfirmed re5 remake [spoilers below]

ok for one thing this is easily the best ada moment in the entire game. one of my fav things abt re2 remake is that it gave ada some actual personality and made her a real character with actual depth

buuut in re4r, she's just as flat as she ever was, and her voice acting really doesn't help

don't get me wrong, i think it's fucking stupid that ppl are harassing lily gao; no matter how good or bad a performer does, they do not deserve to be harassed for their performance

buuut at the same time, i rlly don't care for lily's performance . it's very bland and it lacks the emotion of jolene andersen's performance in re2r, which gave ada a HUGE amount of real depth as a character in that game

most of lily's lines kind of fall flat for me, they're all delivered so awkwardly & almost robotically

BUT. in the post-credits scene, lily's performance was actually pretty damn great - partially because of how uncharacteristically for this game well-written ada is here

for once, ada feels like a real character, not to mention an actual person, whereas in the rest of the game, she really feels more like a walking plot device than anything

but, let's not forget the other character in this scene - albert fucking wesker finally shows his face in the remakes. ohhhhh my god. i was genuinely squirming in my chair when he came on screen and doing my best to hold in squeaks of joy

it's WESKER!! the highlight of resident evil 5!! the best villain in the entire series!! he's HERE!!!!!!!

when i first saw the scene i was like . "holy shit. they're DEFINITELY remaking re5." because how could they give us just a taste of wesker's sweet sweet villainy without planning on giving us more?

well, then it hit me. if ada doesn't bring wesker the plaga sample, doesn't that mean re5 literally can't happen? was this capcom's way of saying they're not remaking re5? and i mean, it would make sense for them not to, since re5 is one of the most universally disliked games across the series... so is resident evil 4 truly the last remake?

on the other hand, re5 could actually benefit from a remake. the original re4 is a great game that has aged exceptionally well, and really, despite how well its remake turned out, it didn't need a remake. but, re5 is a game with pleeeenty of flaws, and honestly, a ground-up reimagining is just the thing re5 needs to be potentially an actually good game. capcom knows that re5 & 6 have issues, which is why they immediately shifted back to survival horror after the (deserved) terrible reception of resident evil 6. so, they might also realise the potential value in a remake of re5, and recognise that they could potentially do the game justice with one.

personally, i think an re5 remake is extremely unlikely. i sure as shit wouldn't hold my breath for it. but, at the same time, i think it could certainly be done, and that it'd be worth both capcom & the fandom's time. re5 has the heart of a good game, but it's dragged down by its tone, writing, lack of horror, and its age. a remake could be worth it, i feel!

[ben-talks-art]

Thought's on the finale of The Owl House

So now that the series is (sadly) over, I felt like talking about the finale a little since I think there are some interesting things in it to discuss.

Taking into consideration that this series was cut short and they had to do the best they could with the best they had, they still managed to deliver a pretty freaking good finale all things considered.

The animation was great, the storylines were all wrapped up, every character had one last moment to shine (although some were brief), and as always, you can feel a lot of the love and effort the creators are putting into the product.

Most of the problems I had are basically just a matter of wishing this could have had more room to breathe because plenty of things get solved a tad too quickly. It kinda makes me wish I could see a director's cut.

Almost all of the issues I can just accept and blame it on Disney for axing the show, but two in particular really make me go "this needed more time."

(spoilers)

The first one is the Collector.

This kid has been built up like crazy. The entire season 2 finale is basically trying to show how much of a big deal they are, how much trouble they can cause, how disconnected from reality they are, and just how immensely important it is that they get dealt with properly.

Even in the final scene of episode 2 of season 3, it ends with them going "I want to play a new game!" Dun! Dun! Duuuum!"

And then we see said game, and it's just a dream sequence to teach Luz a lesson we already new, followed by playing some games that just last for a few minutes.

Then the Collector gets a little sad, Luz talks to them, and they become friends...

That's it. That's the big climactic confrontation with one of the most powerful characters of the show.

Now, I will say, I did enjoy that they address that the kid just suffers from a lack of understanding of how mortal lives work, and I do appreciate they didn't just make them some raging, crazy kid who hates Luz because King likes her more. I'm glad they made them surprisingly reasonable and patient for their mental age.

Still, I can't help but feel their "defeat" and redemption arc were way too fast and easy. If I were to guess, the stuff with The Collector probably was meant to be its own entire episode, and the true final boss was another, but they had to shrink it due to the cancellation, and if that's the case, that's a real shame because I would really like to see a deeper exploration of this kid's way of thinking and seeing Luz trying to help them realize their errors.

As it is, it wasn't done badly, but I wish it had more.

I also don't like how when Luz gets "killed" the Collector is the one getting focused on and crying over her. Their bond is just not that strong to make these tears feel earned. It's like if in Lion King the one crying over Mufasa was Nala or Zazu instead of Simba. It's not the worst character to cry over her, but there were definitely better options to focus on.

However, I can forgive all that because the scene where they try to deal with Belos using the power of love was absolutely perfect and it made me laugh hard. That was definitely my favorite joke on the whole show.

And now, the second thing on the finale I'm kinda iffy about...

Belos comes back as the final boss (again), and kills Luz, resulting into her turning into literal orbs of luz that just start fading over time until they make their way to... King's dad.

Because why not?

Who just happens to be able to give her an "I win" button so she can go into her Super Sayan form (because every Disney show needs to have at least one character with a Super Sayan form now, not that I'm complaining)...

...and alongside Eda and King, they defeat Belos and save the day.

Now, first of all, Luz's titan form? 10/10! I absolutely, freaking love that design. I love that she's a combination of King and Eda being a mix of a witch and a monster, while also having her own side with all the glyphs floating around her. Plus, she has claws, and we all know that anything with claws is instantly cool. Definitely, my favorite super form from any Disney show. (Unless they make a Jake Long reboot and give him a super dragon form)

I also like how the animation just shines as they fight Belos (who now looks like a badass bone dragon creature), and how each of the main trio has a small moment to help in the battle, it isn't just Luz doing everything.

Not to mention they have an amazing remix of the opening theme playing in the background which just makes it even more awesome.

My favorite part is when they start to wonder where Belos' weak spot is and Luz says "You know where" and Eda just gives the widest, proudest, most joyful grim ever right before all voice actors give their all while screaming "THE HEART!"

It reminds me of Puss In Boots 2 where all the characters look like they're having fun while going through the adventure.

I kinda wish Luz could have had some cooler lines, but they tried to make a point that Luz is a dork that isn't very good at it so... Eh, I'll forgive it. I know she has her "Eat this, sucker!" thing, but I honestly completely forgot that that was even meant to be her catchphrase.

Honestly, this entire climax is amazing and just perfect for the series... But I kept thinking to myself "how in the world did Luz went from being a ball of light to meeting King's dad???"

I have no problems with what we got, I'm just not sure HOW we got it. The way Luz just went from nearly dying to just appearing in the place of the one guy that could help her save the day felt very Deus Ex Machina.

These are basically my only two problems with the finale. I wish we had gotten more time with the Collector and their arc, and that we had a bigger exploration of how Luz got there.

The way it is, it feels like the day was saved not because the heroes were smart enough, or strong enough to defeat the bad guy, but... Because the plot said so.

I mean, yeah, King's dad gave Luz the power because she was nice to his son, so you could say her kindness was what saved the day... But I don't know... Is that what Owl House's final theme is about? Being kind?

Owl House's themes for me were always about being creative, being weird, not being afraid of experimenting new things, thinking outside of the box, and learning to observe and listen, and not being afraid of accepting who you really are.

I wish these themes had played a bigger part in the defeat of the final boss, like in Gravity Falls where what allows them to defeat Bill is Stan's willingness to sacrifice himself for his family.

Luz and King have a great relationship and the fact that she is a wonderful older sister to a little monster does tie into the theme of accepting others and not being afraid of trying weird things... But I'm not sure if I like how that's the final message we leave the show on.

I guess I just wish that King's dad would have had a bigger build-up. If maybe while dying Luz would have used her creativity one last time to somehow get her to teleport into the Titan, then I would have been more okay with it.

This show seriously needed more episodes...

Still, even though the build-up was kinda rushed (to me at least), the pay-off was so good that I can't really get too upset about it.

Again, titan Luz was everything I never knew I wanted in my life (there is gonna be so much fan art of that form on the internet). If a slightly confusing solution is the price that needs to be paid to get such an epic form and such an epic climax like that, I'll gladly take it.

[lgbtmi]

Hello my darling! [Spins wheel] uhhh gimme 3, 16, 30, and 32 for Willow!

3. If you were to choose another name for your oc, what do you think it would be? Did you choose it for how it sounds or for its meaning?

ET TU BRUTE?! YOU CAN JUST SAY YOU DON'T LIKE HER NAME D: /j

16. How often does your oc lie? Why is that? What was the biggest lie they’ve ever told?

First of all I appreciate you for rigging the game and complying to my silly request so I can discuss certain things. Secondly, this answer is going to be so incredibly long, I'm sorry about the length of this post @ all of my followers. Deal with it though, Willow is my fave and I love talking about her. Willow is a manipulative bitch. In the best sense of the word. The real question is "When was the last time she told the full truth and nothing but the truth?" (on that note @ someone feel free to send me an ask to tell you the few times Willow was completely honest I guess) Willow is a queen of half truths and lying by omission, in addition to fully twisting situations to fit her narrative. Once again, even if we choose to ignore the masquerade in place to shield humanity from the woes of kindred society, Willow has been lying for years. Her parents don't know she's not straight. Her parents don't know she dropped out of university. Her parents don't know she's gone into sex work. And that's just barely the surface of the web of lies Willow has spun over the years. So um. Here's a list of some big lies Willow told post-embrace and their consequences? - My grandma is dying and I have to go back to the USA. and I don't know who you are. In an attempt to break ties with her best friends after the Prince banned telecommunication between kindred and put the coterie in their own house, Willow needed an excuse to no longer have to live with her kine best friends. She decided to message them over Facebook and tell them her grandma was on the brink of death, which they bought without much issue. Things got more complicated when they showed up at the club Willow had just started, though. They kept trying to get her attention, she kept telling them they must be drunk and she doesn't know who this Willow is, but alas, her co-workers told her to get her friends to be more normal. Didn't go over great, but Willow charmed her way out of it. - Everything will be okay. Said without words to one of her two best friends when the three of them were invited to a dinner at the seneschal's house. The other best friend is blood-bound to the seneschal, and while he was threatening Willow and the other friend, he decided to show the kine friend what the other would do. Willow tried to assure the kine friend it would be okay. It was not okay. She was held captive by the seneschal until yesterday in game, when Willow had to choose between killing her, embracing her, or turning her into a ghoul. - I have to work that night. Written on a note that was delivered to the seneschal's house. This ties in to the previous one, because Willow originally denied the invitation to come to the dinner. She had just started a new job and offered to take someone else's shift after cancelling on the seneschal to get out of having to go to the event. She eventually did attend because the ventrue that owns the club she worked at, told her it was best if she went anyway. - I didn't know my coterie would kill the sheriff. Said to the harpy after Willow helped her coterie kill the sheriff. This is the lie I wanted to talk about when I told you to rig the game. Willow went to the harpy's house before the coterie killed the sheriff at the end of the night before the event, so that she could report a masquerade breach (a human man may have seen the brujah kill a random guy on a bike). She also lied about how the coterie didn't know she was ratting out the brujah, but that's beside the point. The harpy reported the masquerade breach to the sheriff, who showed up the next day and basically ran straight into an ambush. A day later, Willow went right back to the harpy's house, where she told this lie to her. The harpy "want[ed] to believe her," and told Willow she liked her. To fully sell the events, she even decided to tag along with her bodyguard (now promoted to sheriff's right hand man) to Elysium to explain what had happened. And what may very well be the worst series of lies she's ever told: Willow nearly manipulated her way out of a conversation with the new sheriff, his right hand man, and the Prince of Amsterdam when they interrogated her about the death of the sheriff. She was asked to recount the events, she omitted crucial parts, and nearly got away with it too, if it wasn't for that pesky Prince. (6 successes vs. his 7) This landed her in jail, with her best friend hand delivered to her as a midnight snack, should she get peckish. So that wasn't ideal.

30. How much does your oc swear? Or do they keep completely clean? Why is this? Is there any situation where they would be the opposite?

Willow grew up in a religious household where swearing was basically banned. She's still a bit reluctant to actually start cussing, but her vocab has grown and she's less afraid to use cuss words. That doesn't mean she doesn't know what to say to hurt people. Cuss words are cheap digs, and Willow is classy. She'll read a person and hit them where it hurts the most. She will not specifically cuss at people unless they really ask for it, but might slip and cuss to herself quietly while doing things she doesn't wholly agree with. It hasn't happened often, but it nearly happened semi-recently where she was seconds away from cussing at the Prince of Amsterdam. After the events in the question before this one, and he told her he should set her outside to watch the sunrise, Willow was milliseconds away from just telling him to "Just do it, motherfucker." Good thing she had the willpower not to do that.

32. Is your oc a pacifist, or someone who picks fights? Why? In what situations would they be the opposite?

Willow considers herself a pacifist. She's better with words than she'd be in actual combat, and will thus always at least try to talk it out before she resorts to violence. All of this gets thrown out the second her people get put in difficult situations, though. When her people get threatened or mistreated, she will get violent, will pick fights, and will give up her own life to protect the lives of others. The sheriff who killed her sire had to die. The seneschal and the Prince are also high on her hit-list. And if she can't get those taken care of eventually, then maybe she's the one who doesn't deserve to live.

[familyabolisher]

☕️ + pentiment

under the cut for spoilers!

LOVED it, finished it last night and found it incredibly affecting. would definitely recommend. some of my favourite things:

how the game played around with the RPG convention of the player character being wholly under the player's control and there being a gradient of "good" to "bad" endings; no matter what happens, you won't be able to stop anyone from dying, you (probably) won't be able to collect all the evidence in time, you won't know for sure that you've blamed the guilty party, and you won't be able to stop andreas running into the fire. the minutiae of how the story plays out in a particular run will change according to player choice but the skeleton is always the same, which i appreciated. there's a real sense that the story will happen in some iteration or another almost with or without you as a player, which i found disorienting in its contravening the expected, paradigmatic nature of a game of that sort; it was great.

it's easy! i have horrible hand-eye coordination and most video games have a v steep learning curve for me as a result. i appreciated just like, walking around, being nudged in the right direction, the only other gameplay mechanic being the occasional minigame. i had a lot of fun. i appreciate how that could be boring for some but for me it's perfect.

when i got to the end of act 2, i was a little disappointed that you were able to convince caspar to leave even if you 'failed' the skill check by being kind to him, because i thought it would be insanely compelling if you could either stop him from leaving and get him hurt or killed in the riot by being kind or get this child to safety by being a fucking asshole. cue the noise of Sicko's Delight i made when i encountered andreas in act 3 and found out how he survived. really great storytelling and delayed gratification.

it struck such a good balance between barefaced morbidity - you see the mangled corpses of baron rothvogel and otto, you see the execution of the person you blame in act 1, you see animals get killed on-screen - and sentiment. it does such a good job at conveying loss; august, caspar, bertholdt left tangible traces of grief in the narrative (i am very difficult to move and i found the couple of sequences with august upsetting!!) that allowed the piece to carry itself along on a v strong emotional momentum.

it's visually BEAUTIFUL. the use of fonts to convey information about the characters' lives and backgrounds and the way the fonts will change on the reveal of new information; the labyrinth, andreas' dreams; the changing styles depending on the characters' ages + background; the animation; the clocks; everything! i was enamoured.

& for posterity, some things i didn't like or thought could be improved:

the minigames were very sparing! i think there could've been more; there were numerous points where i thought the scene could've been added to with a bit more user input, eg. magdalene climbing down into the salt mine. i appreciated how easy the game was but it could've been a bit more involved at times!

the way sebhat was written was very shallow and irritatingly aware of his position in the narrative; like, i got the sense that the developers were worried about people pointing out that everyone in their game was white so wrote an ethiopian character in for the sake of offsetting that potentiality. which could've been great, if he had had more presence in the narrative than just delivering a 'the world is vast and diverse' message to the kids via storytelling. it's a fun moment and the art style used with him is very cool, but i think it's a shame there wasn't more depth to his character.

maybe it's because we only had her for one act rather than two, but magdalene didn't seem to have as much depth or individuality to her as andreas did! playing as andreas, i really got the sense that i was playing as a character; i was making some decisions, but andreas' life and personality and limitations were predetermined. magdalene of course also had limitations, but she felt a lot more ... like she could be the way the player wanted to imagine her to be, rather than being a distinct character that the player was given control of. & it was in part the way andreas was andreas and not a Guy The Player Could Make Up that made the sense of the story being somewhat out of the player's control compel me. things like andreas' dreams really fleshed out his character and strengthened the tension between his internal agency & the agency of the player, and i wish i'd gotten the same sense of such a tension playing as magdalene.

i DID find the ending a little rushed and flimsy lol but i don't mind that much, tbh, i had fun.

anyway: really good game!