#game theory fr

[fruttymoment]

Do you guys think Niko likes mangos

[chrisrin]

in stars and time is ruining my life what do you mean i'm at 28 hours played and still don't seem to be near done yet when the average person on howlongtobeat finishes the main story in 19 hours, and with side quests in 26 hours.

what do you mean i've stayed up until 4am the past 3 nights playing. what.

[cicadacelebration]

Acid theory spamton is out. Obsessed with the light world's/real world's sun because he sees it as something alien and holy and it's a sign it must be a sign and his eyes are in so much burning pain from staring directly into it in a moment of divine madness spamton is in

[youling-the-ghost]

If I had a nickel for every time I became attached to a British guy who's quite tall and whose name is Tom, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

[chibishortdeath]

Ok, I’m sick of seeing only Netflix posts lately so I’m ranting about Simon lol

Unfortunately I had some nice paragraphs written for this but tumblr crashed while I was writing so this is my second time making this post (TwT)

TL;DR with the rant under a cut for easy scrolling, I am deranged and have studied all of Simon’s outfits, here’s some fun tidbits and I guess kinda a guide about his fashion sense :3

Oh boy, where to start XD. Castlevania has a lot of intricately detailed usually gothic and/or visual kei inspired fashion designs, usually with some amount of historical accuracy, thanks to Ayami Kojima, that the series is known for. But before this, the character design style was very different. From the very 90s shonen anime inspired Richter, to Christopher being deadass shirtless in a skirt at one point, to John Morris being in basically casual clothes, there’s a lot of variety in it.

Well, being the silly Simon super fan I am, I’ve studied all his outfits a ton over the years I’ve been a fan of the series and oh boy they are INTERESTING :3. I’ve noticed a lot of elements are consistently reoccurring, specific to him, and some are very much not specific to him lol. Anyway, just trust me on this one, overanalyzing the closet of an NES barbarian to be able to make new outfits for him is FUN >:3c.

So, I’ve seen him not wearing pants thrown around as a joke before, but it’s actually the truth! Besides the Haunted Castle wedding suit (an outlier that should not be counted lol), I actually have never run into a design where Simon is wearing full length, proper pants. The closest he ever gets is black tights in Simon’s Quest and occasionally shorts, but on that topic, shorts aren’t even his most common choice! Let’s look at some of his oldest designs:

This one is really hard to tell, but based on the angle of the lines, the shadows, and context clues from other art for CV1, I don’t know if that’s actually supposed to be shorts 💀💀💀!

In both his cute little manual doodles and his almost more adorable teeny 8-bit sprite, his outfit is a belted tunic of some sort! So like, the equivalent of a really tiny dress or a long shirt XD. And really, his cover art design is kinda just a more detailed version of these. They both have a distinction between a top and bottom part of the upper half, they both have big belts, they both have the tall boots and arm guards, they both have teeny skirt part, and Fun Fact! They both have red in the hair! I color picked a nice high res scan of the CV1 cover art, and yes, there’s red in his hair!!! It’s like a nice mix of dark reddish blond, it’s a very fun hair color :3.

However, that’s not where CV1 ends in tunic vs shorts debate:

THAT’S A SKORT— DO YOU SEE THAT DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE HALVES, ONE IS DEFINITELY A PANTLEG LMAO. So yeah, skort Simon is also a thing thanks to this particular magazine scan lol, thus leaving us with the possibility that it is both a skirt and shorts on the CV1 cover that he’s wearing X,,,,D. Never change, Simon, never change.

Besides the tunic, there’s some other interesting details to his CV1 era designs! :D In a lot of depictions he has this neat cape, something that returns in some Simon’s Quest art and Smash Bros lol, but he’s never shown wearing it in game. What’s interesting is that Trevor actually gets a cape in his game’s opening as well as Christopher in Belmont’s Revenge if I’m remembering correctly. It’s very neat seeing Simon character design details rubbing off into other characters :3. I like to think lore wise that it’s the same cape that’s been passed down to Simon from those two.

He also has the headband! Iconic! But have you noticed the little ball shapes at the ends of the tails? They’re either knots or, infinitely cooler option, beads :D!!!!!!! And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were because that leads me to another design: X68000–

Now this one is one of my favorites :3. It’s kinda like a forward facing version of his original design but with some new details! And his headband gets this cool lookin, intricate distinctly metallic design on it, something I’ve seen a lot of artists simplify to a general crescent moon shape. But it is kinda similar to the shape on his belt buckle, something that I still have no idea what it’s even supposed to be. Also, his arm guards and the thing at the end of his necklace (which may or may not have vampire teeth on it, they could just be metal spikes though) are similar; it makes me wonder if it was an attempt at a tortoiseshell pattern? Filigree? Whatever it is, they’re all matchy matchy about it.

This design also gives him the staple left shoulder pauldron, of which has these huge stitches holding it on and an added belt that connects to his other belt armor. Get used to belts, he has a lot of those X,,,D. What’s really neat about this one’s belt is that he has both a hilt for the family sword but also one for the whip on the other side, and they’re on the wrong sides for drawing the weapon properly 💀💀💀💀. Which is also funny considering his CV1 cover art has the sword on the other side, which is kinda wrong too? Who knows, maybe he’s ambidextrous and just doesn’t care what sides they’re on lol.

The biggest thing I can say about this design though is that a lot of these accessories and armor pieces look homemade, like as if he just took teeth as a trophy himself and strung them on a cord or made a shoulder piece and put it on an already existing belt he had. Adding onto this, there’s also the possible beads on his headband and the cords around his boots (which could be an attempt at a certain actual historical type of shoe that I cannot remember the name of for the life of me rn, in which case would make these not boots and actually corded shoes with very nice big fluffy socks hehe, I am forcing you to imagine him with big fluffy socks—) and yeah! I can see him making his stuff on his own :3. Which is so cool! I love this idea so much, it makes for a lot of things to imagine him doing hehe. Also gives him a hobby??? Yeah :)

No indication of if he’s got shorts or not in this one, maybe I’ll count how many have skirts or shorts and put that at the end of this lol.

But shorts get another point again cause we’re looking at Chronicles:

Oh Chronicles. Well, the first thing I wanna mention is that, this is Ayami Kojima’s design for him, so here we are seeing a very interesting mix of the visual kei style and 80s barbariancore in a way that honestly slays (figuratively and literally). And, surprisingly, there is something historically accurate about this design, and it’s not what you’d probably expect. Based on the width, material, cross rivets, and the buckle on the front, Simon is wearing an actual dog collar. Like, for dogs. Like it’s dog armor used primarily for hunting dogs I just— Again, never change Simon, never change 💀💀💀.

We also see Simon preferring to put his armor on his left side again with the torn in half coat. It’s also somewhat similar to 1600s coats, not really of any specific country in fashion that I can tell, however the sleeve being that short is not accurate, leading me to believe that he probably tore that off too lol. Very Chrom Fire Emblem of you, Simon, and another example of him D.I.Y.—ing things. The basic elements still stay similar to past designs. Shorts, distinct upper and lower half of shirt, belts, armor on said belt, sword and whip hilts, arm armor and tall boots (shout out to the heels on this one), and armor on the left, unfortunately no headband though. But that distinct bottom half to the shirt part of his outfit in this one is defined with… a corset? Yeah!!! That’s a corset!!! Though the proper name for the time period might be a stay or a girdle, but Simon is straight up wearing a belt over a corset. And said corset over a coat. Half of one. Don’t question him—

But the main entries to his 80s bara-barian half of the wardrobe, let’s get to some knightly aesthetic outfits, of which he does have a good amount, starting with SCV4:

Simon’s knightly outfits are usually a similar silhouette as his original tunic look, just in metal this time and in various colors. SCV4 has his armor as gold on the cover, blue on the Japanese cover and manual art, and green in game! And they’re all pretty much the same with mild variations. On the cover art, his shoes are corded sandals with nothing under them, but in game and in most other artwork they are these metallic boots with the classic X shape of the cords baked into them. Some art gives his middle belt armor section this cross with snakes on it, which is an odd thing to be referencing here. It’s either a staff of Mercury, usually associated now with medicine but was an alchemical symbol before that, or something else I can’t find any info on. There’s also a big ab window because these are all proper half shirts lol. Straight up a metal breastplate with nothing under it, a pretty bad idea tbh 💀.

All in all, these are generally really simple, but there’s one more thing before I stop talking about SCV4:

I LOVE this design. It’s this really nice blend of the older CV1 era style and the metal armor of the later ones, very cool. Shout out to the eye creases and the dead stare shadow over his eyes too, they really conveyed the effects of witnessing the horrors well lmaoooo.

Again, tunic, belt, arm guards, headband, the usual, but, speaking of symbols, there’s something about this one that’s been driving me nuts forever: I cannot find out what that symbol on his paldrons and belt buckle is!!! It’s this upside down triangle with a bent rectangle missing the bottom line over it and it LOOKS distinctly intentional, but I can’t find it or what it means anywhere!!! I tried searching through lists of alchemical symbols, religious symbols, nothing so far has been close (TwT ). Regardless, great design, definitely in my top 5.

And what else is in my top five? Oh yeah babey, it’s Simon’s Quest time:

Ah, Simon’s Quest with his fuck ass bob and the stolen Ravenloft image— but unironically, that armor fucks fr. Again, similar silhouette! If there’s any take aways from this post, it’s definitely that Simon is a little shirt, little pants kind of guy. A severe lack of long sleeves and long pants legs until now, and even then, these are skin tight. Heck even his boots(????) are vacuum sealed, just look at those fabric creases by his ankle!

Now, it’s honestly really hard to tell if his “gloves” and “boots” are supposed to be in some parts metal due to the shading on them and the base armor being very similar. I personally like to depict the forearm and calf parts as metal and the hand and ankle parts as not, but eh. Like most things regarding Simon, I suppose this too is up to interpretation XD. There’s some variation in color in some scans having the underclothes be white, dark blue, or black, and the armor be any range of red to purple to brown too. But towards red and black is probably the most accurate due to his sprite being those colors.

But this is a shockingly rare case of Simon being fully covered in one of his outfits, and I’m inclined to think that there’s probably a reason for that. Not only does he have a rotting curse right now and drawing straight up gore on the cover of an NES game was just not an option lol, but he’s not letting his guard down anymore after being hit. Which would also explain the sudden change to all metal armor as that can’t be cut through as easily as leather.

Speaking of all metal armor, oh I looooove the detailing on his. The gold accents to his byzantine (a nice in between color of red and purple, a color that is also reused in Smash Bros again in the middle corset section of his outfit) are what I would call stylized floral patterns, kinda in the way that fleur de les don’t really look exactly like flowers but still are supposed to represent one. Not sure what kind exactly, but possibly some sort type of angel’s trumpet? Very neat regardless. The gems inlaid in it are all green on top and around the belt, but the center belt buckle is bright red. It’s a very jewel tones color scheme!!!

Well anyway, if tumblr will let me have more images, I’d like to show off a few other random examples of outfit elements he’s had before I close this off with something :3

This was a pretty recently found scan of Simon wearing get this: a pleated miniskirt. Probably Roman armor inspired, as some of his other magazine scans have depicted him as such. One ad for SCV4 and another (live action even) for Simon’s Quest has him even wearing like a Roman helmet and everything, it’s odd. Add helmets to the list of things Simon might wear. Hmm maybe I should make a tier list of things based on how often he’s worn them…

Moving on!

This one goes for the bold choice of giving Simon not only an expected tiny belted tunic, but side slits on the legs! And uh um a little too much detail but uh— It’s also this kinda white, kinda bluish, kinda silverish color? Add this to Simon’s color palette I guess lol.

Which reminds me that I didn’t mention colors very much until now whoops. Throughout all of hie designs he primarily seems to wear neutrals like various browns, greys, and metal tones. But he also has a lot of color. Like as in there’s enough different colored designs to make a whole rainbow of Simon outfits. Common combinations like dark green, gold, and wine reds; blue and silver; brown, gold, orange, and kinda purplish greys; etc etc. And his HAIR. Oh boy, would this guy love modern hair dye X,,,,,D. He’s had it various blonds, reds, browns, even black at one point, blue, green, unnatural red, pink, and in one concept design white! Personally, I like depicting it as a nice in between of red, blond, and brown, it encompasses the most I think.

The final thing I wanna mention is the Smash Bros design, which I unfortunately can’t show because I’m on mobile and have met the 10 images limit whoopsie— (_ _ ;). This design is really a good culmination of a lot of elements. Not really definitive or anything, but very good :3. And it has something I didn’t mention earlier that I’ve noticed in some Simon designs: random belts or metal around his upper arms and thighs lol. The Smash Bros design in particular has the arm band things on both sides, Chronicles has it on the not half coat one, but this is another thing I’ve seen other characters (Christopher in particular, but his are just gold rings) have. The leg thing is less common, but yeah, that exists lol. Thank you Simon for uh bending two pieces of metal around your leg…? It’s cool XD. The corset also makes a return, as well as, once more, the same basic silhouette with the armor only on the left side, the belt armor pieces, etc etc. He’s very particular about that—

Well, anyway, Simon definitely has a vibe going on, but here’s a brief summary of things he seems to like:

Skirts, tunics, long shirts, and shorts (and skorts I guess), but nothing past about half his thigh, generally over the knees.

No long sleeves or pant legs (unless it’s tights when absolutely necessary).

Armor primarily to the left, unless it’s metal, in that case usually a full plate or paldron set.

Belts, hilts, belts on his arms, and neck, and hanging off of things, and legs, yeah belts—

Boots/tall socks, corded or not, and something on his forearms or wrists.

Headband! Seriously out of every Belmont he is the most dedicated to these lol.

Necklaces and beads and other little accessories and adornments are also cool.

Alrighty then, have fun Simon-ing and I encourage you to look through his or other characters’ designs and pick them apart a bit sometimes, even if it’s just through what’s on the wiki :3. If anything, I think it’s a good exercise in character design and consistency! But yeah, I wrote all this late at night and can’t think of anything else rn. If I do I’ll do a sequel I guess hehe. Either that or I might rant about another character hmmmmmmm—

[amayukiiii]

Just a thought but...

Since Leander hates sleep and MC makes comments about how visible his eye bags are... I've been wondering why he hates it? Is it because he feels like he wouldn't woke up if he close his eyes (perhaps because he went through a near death experience... As we saw how abnormal his scars are) or maybe he's preventing "something else" from appearing?

And judging how his silhouette only have him with glowing eyes then... Maybe he could have split personality? Maybe he's just hiding something dark, monstrous under that smiley facade to prevent hurting others?

Only his full route will tell...

[kekeke32]

It’s literally BLOWING my mind how the TOUCHSTARVED fandom is already such a nice little safe place full of wonderful, funny and talented people and the game is not even out yet!!

I am really looking forward to the day when the game is finally out and we can all get dumbfounded by the characters and how much more horrible they are than what we all originally thought (especially Leander).

I love all of you guys!! I’m so proud to be part of this community <3

[brionysea]

art is dead, bo burnham

[misteria247]

Me is watching Game Theory's newest video on Welcome Home: Oooooo I'm so excited I love lore!!!

Me notices how Wally seems to zone out and just vibe in some of the video clips not bothering to say a word till he's addressed and he snaps back into reality while MatPat talks about all the fun horrifying things on the Welcome Home website

Me: I don't know you very well puppet man, but my God you doing that is an honest to God mood where have you been all my life-

[fr-bogbees]

i don't like seeing rate-this-dragon posts bc i keep seeing 1s on objectively cool dragons that their owners must adore and like. as far as I'm concerned every dragon is a 5 for that reason alone

[sortanonymous]

NASCAR all-time win list writers and Darrell Waltrip alike at Bobby Allison's win coming 53 years late:

[cheemken]

👀👀👀👀👀 *sees you reblog fnaf stuff* I KNOW WHAT YOU AREEEEE!!!!! Drayton would boast about being able to beat fnaf without getting jumpscared and then promptly play fnaf 1 and get jumpscared close to 6 AM, let out a very high pitched scream and then fall out of his desk chair~Drayton angst anon💛(who is also a fnaf enjoyer)

FELLOW FNAF FAN OMF CNDMCNDM

Oh definitely, even better I made headcanons abt the og Unova kids and how they'd play fnaf too hahaha

Anyways

Please the fact he'd be all "pfft fnaf? That game's easy."

"bet."

And instantly regrets it he does not like the way Foxy runs no he does not lmfaooo imagine him seeing Foxy run to the office the first time and he legit panics all "WHAT THE FUCK" trying to figure out what to do and ends up getting jumpscared lmfaooo he'd be all "that wasn't fair, I didn't know they could run like that"

"heh, and you said this game was easy"

"course it's easy, there's just a lotta clicking I gotta do, it's tiring"

"yeah, sure, whatever you say lmao"

But like, since I already made hcs abt the Unova kids and how they'd play fnaf might as well make concepts abt the BB E4 hahaha

Anyways, Amarys does not get scared bet, like maybe a sudden jolt if she gets caught off guard but usually when she gets jumpscared she'd just go "oh, I lost." I think she'd be the type to actually try the fangames, looking for a challenge, taking Crispin's words saying the fangames have scarier gameplay and animatronics

She still don't find it scary, she did love the challenge tho hahah

Out of all four of em, she's the closest to ever beat UCN too. And Drayton, being Drayton, was all "well, my sis beat ultimate custom night, so by extension I beat it too"

"hah, yeah right. Taking the credit of others now cause you won't admit it's a hard game?"

"it's not hard, it's just tiring keeping check on all the robots" he'd rather admit he still sleeps w a plushie than to admit to Crispin that he really did find the games a bit hard

Lacey played the VR games and SB, didn't know abt UCN, Crispin made her play UCN, she lost within five seconds lmfao

Bet she'd love fnaf world tho, like Bianca she'd love the cute models of the animatronics more than their actual models hahah I think she'd like the glamrock and toy animatronics bc like,, I think they're the cutest?? Idk, I think she'd like them more than anything else. She had nightmares abt Glitchtrap tho real, refused to go in dark places for an entire month and stopped playing VR bc of it hahaha

Crispin gives off the vibes he really had a fnaf phase and never grew outta it, he always tries to make pizza whenever he plays it or if he watches someone play it, y'know, for the immersion he says hahah but also bet he'd be the type to watch every fnaf theory video out there, especially by pkmn ver of MatPat; the type to think of his own theories, make fanart, bet he listened to the fan songs and still memorized some of them by heart. He's just like me fr—

It would be cute tho if Crispin got Amarys hooked w the lore hahah like him talking abt fnaf and telling her the story so far while she's playing, and ofc she's listening to ever word, even adding her own thoughts. They give off vibes that they'd actually try to decipher a lot of the codes and puzzles in the games, like really going above and beyond to figure out every hidden meaning hahah

I think Amarys would also read the books, Lacey's surprised there are actually books abt it, Drayton didn't bother reading them ofc, Crispin's attention span isn't made for it so he just relies on Amarys for more info abt the lore regarding the stuff within the books and connecting them to the mainline games

And bet when the movie was out Crispin got so fucking excited he invited the E4 and the Kitakami sibs to watch it with him, like he really made a lotta snacks and I know for a fact and it's canon in my heart he screamed when the song at the credits played I just know it hahaha

[lemonynuggets]

yk what posting these here

@butterscotch-goat can't believe matpat made Dawn and Escapism theories  🤯  🤯 

[eigengrauone]

So happy to find someone who also talks about Unfinished Swan; it’s a very hard market to find people in :(

REAL THAT GAME WAS EVERYTHING TO ME WHEN IT CAME OUT!!!!! AND NOBODY KNOWS ABT IT DESPITE WROEF LITERALLY DIRECTLY REFERENCING IT!!!!! It’s always so nice to find the five Unfinished Swan fans still around lol

[wygolvillage]

when i finish this amv im making out of castlevania cutscenes and game footage it will create a new era of amvs made out of sidescrollers. or something

[originemesis]

// extermination - adam/sera thoughts ~

Idea is that the whole 'hell/heaven' is forever thing is a thing in that you earn whichever for whatever reason and can't change afterwards. So that's why Adam is literal dick lord and still in heaven and good people in hell are still in hell. And Adam picks up on this specifically because he basically tries to 'fall' at one point due to in the past wanting to go find/be back with lilith/beat lucifer's short ass/ whatever. He just starts doing whatever he thinks is 'bad' or skirting the line of black and white and realizes nothing happens. But I think that's because I wanna see heaven/hell as a balance where each side has to be fairly equal in terms of inhabitance, sooo...

Once Earth starts going to hell in a handbasket and most of the scale weighs in favor of hell, heaven begins to uhh... 'tilt'. The gravity starts increasing. Adam almost actually falls at some point due to him just not giving a shit anymore since 'it doesn't matter anyway-' and while about to hit the ground Sera unleashes some sort of attack to help heaven's 'first-man pet' that culls a chunk of hell and then everyone notices the air feeling lighter again and then Adam and Sera both just have their 'oh' moment.

That's what's up-