#gen 5. 6. and 7 have always been the ones to most catch my interest

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

I should play pokemon black or white one day

[absolutebl]

This Week In BL

Feb 2021 Part 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. 

Ongoing Series Thai 

Manner of Death Ep 11 - a nice beefcake twist, then another twist, plus proud gay dads. We are mighty pleased. 

Cupid Coach Ep 4 - Unbearably boring. I’m out. We are not amused. 

My Bromance Ep 9 - FINALE I watched it unsubbed (I’ve NOT been following since ep 3) and it looks like it has a nice cute happy ending. I’m now interested in binging it once good subs become available. 

1000 Stars Ep 2 - was a lot better than Ep 1, the mains have okay chemistry, the kids are serviceable (child actors, shudder), but I’m really loving all the side characters. We are cautiously optimistic. 

Ongoing Series Not Thai 

You Are Ma Boy Ep 5 (Vietnam) - pacing still good, cuties are still giving it their all, solid little series with bumpy side couples, confession call & response continues apace.

To My Star Ep 7-9 FINALE (Korea) - quirky as all goddamn getup, but so fucking cinnamon roll tasty. Charming end. Recommended so long as you realize we are in Mr Heart style K-BL. (Also @coldties posted a killer MV for this one.) This one will get a movie rerelease like Wish You, hopefully also on Netflix. 

We Best Love: No. 1 For You Ep 6 FINALE (Taiwan) - we got to see boyfriends being domestic af adorable with an ending that was a touch bittersweet but very college appropriate. With season 2 coming March 5 I am disposed to be VERY PLEASED. 

What will we do with ourselves and nothing new out of Korea or Taiwan for two WHOLE weeks? 

Stand Alone 

I rewatched Wish You (2020 Korean series WISH YOU: Your Melody From My Heart now retitled - thank fuck - and available as a movie on Netflix). I have to say Yoon Sang Yi delivers some excellent pining. I’m not a huge insta-love person and there’s some character dev flaws, but it holds up really well and delivers more as a movie then it did as a series.

One of my favorite catches on the rewatch was the way Yoon Sang Yi’s jacket sleeves are always too long. It’s such a perfect little character trait. He is so shy and careful that he shrugs smaller into his coat, and also he hides his hands - when, as a pianist, his hands represent his self actualization and art. He only exposes them when making music... or holding Kang In Soo‘s hand. 

Incidentally, I was moved to look these two up... both out of K-pop. (This is my shocked face.) 

Breaking News 

Lovey Writer dropped its official trailer at last, looking good and trope-filed. It’s set to start Feb 24th. 

Top Secret Together dropped its first promo material (Thai, no eng subs). I’m excited about this one, it’s being lead out by an IRL couple. 

My Engineer 2 

The ME boys dropped an adorable gossip heavy promo vid. ME 2 is finishing up the script and will probably begin filming in April. It’s supposed to still release in 2021 (which makes me worry about post and explains a lot about some of Thai BL’s audio quality issues). With April filming, my guess is for an October (but more likely November) release. 

Close Friend 

Lay talked about his Close Friend project, which is a MV series from BOX Music featuring musically-inclined actors with established BL pairings so:

KimCop (MarkKit from Gen Y)

JimmyTommy (SaifahZon from Why R U)

JaFirst (LeoFiat from TharnType 2)

YoonLay (NottPun from YYY)

Y-Destiny 

Perth talked about Y-Destiny (previous title Destiny) which presumably is already filmed because he said it will be on air at the beginning of this year. As this is a Cheewin project, expect it to be something odd, campy, and frenetic in the YYY style. My guess is they’ll wait until You Only Eat Alone has completed its run before airing Y-Destiny, because who can take more than one Cheewin at a time? No one. Not even Thailand. 

KinnPorsche 

Perth also talked about KinnPorsche. He said it would be on air... but that he wasn’t allowed to say the date, so we can hope this means they finally got distribution. (The excitement over the trailer probably helped - it has over a million views.) He also said they would start filming soon (so Feb/March) which means, if everything goes smoothly, a late summer release at the earliest. However, with an independent studio, high production values, big cast, and fight sequences I would expect KP to have more post than most BLs, so my guess is it will air towards the end of the year. (And I would be scared for quality if they tried for any earlier.) 

KinnPorsche cast also continues to work the BL talk show circuit, they made an appearance on Sosat Seoul Say. Mile & Apo are adorable + good chemistry, in fact the whole cast is adorable with good chemistry, so I’m excited for this series. 

Gossip 

Cutest beans, Sam & Yu of We Best Love, have been dropping the most charming little lives ever. I’m so pleased we are getting a second season out of them. I can’t remember the title because, ya know, Taiwanese titles are beyond bonkers. But season 2 is listed now. 

Hong Kong is reported to be filming its first BL Series (15 eps to air on VIUTV). It will be an adaptation of 2018 Japanese BL drama Ossan’s Love (maybe same title?). Like Cherry Magic this is an office romcom: 30s single man who isn't popular with women lives with his parents. When they kick him out, he moves in with a coworker. Turns out this guy has a crush on him, as does another dude from his office. Foundational tropes: Office romance meets forced proximity meets love triangle. I expect the style out of Hong Kong to be somewhat similar to Taiwan, however they are politically less independent of China Main (although culturally VERY different) so this series could be DOA (for gay) or get killed early in its run (see Addicted web series - or don’t see it, if you’re in China). Also, like the Japanese original (and unlike most Taiwanese stuff), expect VERY low heat. That said, 15 eps is nothing to sneeze at, even if they are only 15-20 min each. So I guess I am... intrigued? 

Next Week Looks Like This: 

February Update: Others that are airing but I’m not following: 

Fools (Vietnamese) - I don’t think it’s going to end happily (it’s from the Stage of Love peeps), so I’m waiting to binge if it does 

Brothers (Thai) - deals with taboo relationships from the Thank God it’s Friday people (this will not end well) 

Happenstance (Pinoy) - I don’t follow Pinoy BL closely

One Day Pag-ibig (Pinoy) - ibid 

Love or Lie (Pinoy) - ibid 

The Alter (Pinoy) - ibid 

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here. 

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something. 

[panharmonium]

more rambling re: that last post (+ the merlin/will fic survey overview)

because i generally refrain from reading fic while i’m actively writing for a fandom, the only real ao3 reading i have done for merlin is my survey of the merlin/will ship tag.  and the only reason i undertook that survey in the first place is because while i was doing an introductory cruise of the various merlin tags during my first exploration of the fandom (after i finally finished S5 and was able to start looking into fandom dynamics without fearing spoilers), i noticed that a LOT of the fic tagged with this ship was also tagged merlin/arthur, and despite the fact that i personally am more interested in gen stuff, i started to get both suspicious and annoyed about what i was seeing.  but i also wanted to have the data to back up my annoyed feelings, so i made a little spreadsheet for myself and then just filled it in whenever i had time to kill and wanted something to do. 

the data, when i eventually finished, backed up my annoyance pretty much as well as i expected, which was disappointing, but not surprising.

to clarify - i’m not annoyed by the fact that will and merlin don’t have a whole lot of material in their ship tag.  will only showed up directly in one episode; i don’t expect him to be a popular subject.  what i AM annoyed by is the fact that there are actually more merlin/arthur fics in the merlin/will tag than there are fics that actually focus on...merlin/will.  by, like - an extreme margin.

(the rest of this is just me griping about fandom trends.  popping it under a cut so folks can just move on with their days if this isn’t relevant to their interests.)

The Numbers

two quick notes before i get into the nitty-gritty:

1) i originally did this survey a few months ago, but i updated it this week with fics that have been added since then, so the numbers are current.  

2) some of the data below would probably vary slightly depending on who was conducting the survey, so there’s a bit of wiggle room in either direction.  the criteria i had to use [aka what counts as just a ship ‘mention’ vs actual content] would be subject to reader interpretation, obviously, but even with that, i do feel that most stories fell into pretty clear categories.)

so, without further ado -

total # of fics in the ship tag: 145

number of fics that are inappropriately tagged (meaning either will himself or merlin/will as a ship does not actually appear [which is kind of bizarre, but which i saw happen surprisingly frequently], OR where there is only a brief reference to will or past!merlin/will and that’s the extent of their inclusion: 50

number of fics that are duplicates of works already in the tag (ie podfic), or (in one case) a meta podcast about the show: 5

so, that brings down our total number of fics with some sort of actual merlin/will content to 90.

of these 90 works, only 17 of them are actually focused on merlin/will.  

everything else in will’s ship tag, including the 54 works from the previously discussed "incorrectly tagged” category, is either a) fic where will is dumped, broken up with, or otherwise passed over in favor of arthur (and very occasionally gwaine, at least once mordred, once percival, once arthur and gwaine in a threesome, and once CENRED, which i’m sure will would be especially thrilled about), or b) fic where will is only included as a previous/ex relationship (again, almost always in lieu of arthur).  

moreover - of the 17 actual merlin/will fics, 7 still end with will dying or the relationship ending for reasons other than him being passed over for arthur.  an additional 4 are <1000 word PWP snippets, generally written for old LJ summer pornathons, one of which still somehow manages to be...you guessed it - all about arthur. 

in terms of actual one-shots/full fics where merlin/will is the endgame/non-dead pairing, there are only 6 stories.  

i repeat: will gets six earnest stories, IN HIS OWN SHIP TAG.  

i repeat once again: will, in a non-dead, endgame form, gets 4% of his own ship tag.

The Content

the in-fic trends are frustrating, if you actually like this character.

the asshole.  will is an abusive boyfriend.  he is a jealous ex. he’s a shitty friend.  he’s a stalker.  he’s manipulative.  he’s emotionally abusive.  he’s physically abusive.  he dumps merlin for someone else.  he cheats.  in one fic he’s so mad at merlin that he outs merlin’s magic to arthur.  in multiple fics, i watched him literally go off the rails and try to murder somebody.

the fuckbuddy. they’re just messing around, guys!  no, of course it’s not serious!  they just do this for fun!  of course there’s nothing to get in the way of arthur’s inevitable arrival!  no sirree!

the unrequited.  will is actually in it deep for merlin, but merlin doesn’t feel the same.  this does not, however, prevent merlin from using will for sex, companionship, comfort, distraction, etc - until arthur shows up, when will either steps aside in deference to merlin’s all-consuming passion for arthur or is dropped like a hot potato.

“not even will.”  that sentence.  over and over again.  merlin had never felt like this before, not even with will.  nobody had ever understood merlin like this, not even will.   even in fic when they were like.  married.  or engaged.  fanon arthur pendragon must be truly mind-blowing, y’all.

dead long-term relationship.  will was merlin’s husband/fiancé/long-term partner.  now he is Dead.  merlin getting together with arthur is what allows merlin to Heal.  (these stories sometimes contain some variation of “not even will,” as discussed above.)

lastly, in a related phenomenon:

who are you and what have you done with arthur pendragon???   i suppose in a way it’s nice to know that will isn’t the only one who gets the OOC treatment, but it is still really...something, to read fic where will is twisted into an unpleasant, abusive, canon non-compliant version of himself, and then to see arthur, on the very same page, transformed into a gentle, solicitous, kind, caring, equally canon non-compliant angel.  fanon!arthur is more worried about merlin’s well-being than literally anyone i have ever seen.  he is so invested in merlin’s emotional health.  he is so concerned about merlin’s boundaries.  he says things to merlin that no version of arthur pendragon has ever - EVER - in any universe, thought about saying to anybody.  he wants to hear all about merlin’s problems, and he’s all about taking it slow and making sure merlin feels comfortable and loved and worthy and safe (from all that horrible stuff done by that horrible other guy; that must’ve been so hard, merlin; ‘it’s okay, i’ve got you now’) - the man is utterly unrecognizable.  and you know what?  it’s okay!  it is fine to make your characters as OOC as you want.  it is fine to make them better/nicer than they were in the canon.  sometimes we all want that, right?  it’s fanfic!  have a ball.  i will never tell anyone to stop writing what they like, and i will NEVER interact negatively with a fic i don’t care for.  EVER.  do not do this, people - click the back button and move on with your life.   but i reserve the right to be annoyed, in my own space, about a persistent trend of will and arthur’s canon functions being flat-out reversed, in service of merlin/arthur.  not in the sense that canon!will is particularly gentle or sweet, because that’s not the case - but in the sense that will, in canon, is the one who actually cares about merlin’s best interests, whereas arthur is, quite frankly, the ass. a lovable ass (sometimes).  but an ass nonetheless, and one whose relationship with merlin is, from start to finish, an unhealthy, oppressive mess.

The Point

the point of me typing this up is not to say that what people choose to write is bad or wrong.  this is fanfic!  you can write whatever you want.  you can make characters as OOC as you want.  you can create as many AUs as you want.  i don’t mind fic authors writing stuff i don’t personally care for; someone else probably loves those stories!  and i am never going to interact negatively with anything i don’t personally enjoy - i am going to let people continue to have fun in their own ways, and i am going to grumble about my frustrations in my own space, and then i’m going to direct my energy into writing stuff i would personally like to read.

the point is just that i needed a brief second to complain, on my own blog, about my most familiar bbc merlin nemesis (otherwise known as ‘single-ship ubiquity’).  and what i mean by this is that it is REALLY FRUSTRATING that other little relationships are not even granted the tiniest concession of owning their own ship tags, in a fandom that is already so SATURATED with merlin/arthur content.  like - even if i’m generous and use the number 17 for the number of actual merlin/will fics in the tag, that still means 88% of will’s ship tag is actually fic about merlin falling in love with people who aren’t will (*cougharthur*).  eighty-eight percent!  of his own ship tag!  

(to put it another way - the ship tag isn’t supposed to be where you go to watch your character get repeatedly dumped or left behind for someone else, okay?  it’s supposed to be literally the opposite of that.)

will’s ship tag is already tiny.  and almost all of it belongs to arthur.  moreover, a significant chunk of it uses will as a convenient villain (completely contradicting every canon aspect of his characterization), when in the actual story will dies to protect arthur (who he doesn’t even like) and then lies to save merlin (at the expense of his own reputation, and despite the fact that he personally thinks merlin returning to camelot is a bad idea).  his behavior in canon is selfless, and wholly committed to merlin’s welfare, and yet in his ship tag he gets treated like trash.  

the kid can’t catch a break.  and it’s such a pervasive thing that even though i personally am primarily interested in merlin and will as friends (i am pretty romance-averse in general when it comes to media, and i have never written anything that isn’t gen, for any fandom, ever, in my life), i am also so indignant on will’s behalf that i’ve basically become invested in the well-being of this ship as a matter of principle.  it’s not my main thing, and it’s not necessarily how i view the canon-verse, but i am SO IRRITATED about how virtually all of will’s shipfic has been taken over by merthur (and about how maligned will is in his own tag) that i have actively committed myself to supporting merlin and will together in as many AUs as possible.  

(this is basically like when i trained myself to love allison argent after teen wolf killed her off.  i did that out of spite, y’all.  it’s the principle of the thing.)

so, y’know.  all i am saying is that i think will deserves his share of happy endings, and i think it would be nice to see fics where he is not just a stepping stone on the road to merthur or an unrecognizable parody of himself.

more importantly - EVERY merlin ship deserves to have a tag that isn’t completely swallowed by the local fandom behemoth.  merlin/arthur already owns three quarters of the archive.  a gargantuan oil tanker like that can afford to let the little rarepair canoes float down their own streams in peace.

[icedbatik]

tagged by @pr-scatterbrain​

1. why did you choose your url?

It is an ice-themed play on my favorite quilting fabric, batik. (And ties in to my other Tumblr blog and AO3 account.)

2. any side-blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

I don’t have a side blog, but this is my second of two Tumblr blogs. I tend to go hard when I get into something, and I wanted a “hockey room” in my fandom house, so to speak. I didn’t want to try to blend hockey decor with the “pretty British man” decor in my other “room”.

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

2011 or 2012. I’ve had this particular blog since 2015.

4. do you have a queue tag?

I don’t. I don’t really queue things.

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

I started my hockey blog because a friend from my other blog posted a 600-word S/G gen fic. As a supportive friend, I read it, not having any idea who these two guys were. I was so charmed at the end of 600 words that the rest is history. 

6. why did you choose your icon?

I was looking for something that those within the fandom would recognize as being at least S/G adjacent without being obviously shippy to outsiders.

7. why did you choose your header?

I *was* surprised to find myself in hockey fandom.

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

I’m not sure. How does one determine that? 

9. how many mutuals do you have?

IDK.

10. how many followers do you have?

Not as many as some but more than I ever expected.

11. how many people do you follow?

66 ... I follow about 500 people on my other blog and I never manage to fully catch up. When I started this blog, I didn’t want that to happen, so I try to keep the number low. (Even 71 and 87 seem a bit much, as tempting as they are.) A lot of those 66 haven’t been active in a while, but the blogs remain and I still love their content.

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

I don’t think so.

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

I tend to be here in the early morning and on evenings when there’s a Pens game happening. Since I’ve been working from home, I’ve been able to stay logged in almost all day, and it’s a nice little break during my workday to click over to this tab and enjoy some hockey fun for a few minutes.

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

Fighting with people is not anything I’m interested in doing, especially not on Tumblr. Fandom is my fun place. On the rare occasion when there’s a misunderstanding, we chat it out until we’re cool. I have, over the course of more than a decade (!), blocked a person or two. Seriously, two. There are no winners in those cases.

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I refuse to participate in such posts. As I said, this is my fun place. I don’t need someone trying to tell me what to do here. I get enough of that in my real life.

16. do you like tag games?

I do! They’re fun! (Though I always have a horrible time trying to figure out who to tag. I can talk to a half-dozen people 10 minutes before being tagged and have my mind go completely blank on thinking of people to tag when it’s my turn!)

17. do you like ask games?

Yes, though it sometimes takes me a bit to to answer them, and I sometimes forget I have one sitting in my drafts to complete.

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

I approach Tumblr with the diametrically opposed ideas that everyone I talk to is more “Tumblr famous” than me and “none of us is ‘famous’,” so to speak.

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

No. I have friends I adore, but not really any “crushes”.

20. tagging:

@rimouskis, @rinkrats, @maljic, @ehghtyseven

[caesarclowningaround]

I was tagged by @flightsofwonder! Thanks dearie!! This was interesting and fun!

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

Felt With the Heart (MCU, 1123 words) Jane fiddled with the skirt of her dress for the thirtieth time. 

The Pure and Simple Truth (MCU/Mr. Robot, 2500 words) Gods and monsters. It’s all real. Who knew? For some reason, Elliot wasn’t at all surprised as he stared across the room at the ‘god’ before him. 

Next Stop (Good Omens, 620 words) It wasn’t that Crowley meant to smack his shoulder into the other man’s as he walked through the subway car… but he meant to. 

voulez-vous coucher avec moi? (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast, 1163 words) Adam could have anyone he wanted. This wasn’t just hubris, it was a fact. 

Shadows (Trouble in the Heights, 561 words) The room is a swirling mass of color and fabrics. 

my happy ending is right next to me (IT movie franchise, 246 words) Richie couldn’t wait to dive into the champagne at the reception. 

Baking Without Flour (Good Omens, 961 words) Aziraphale wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he entered Crowley’s apartment, but he at least expected that he’d be unpacked by now.  

Violet Skies (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast, 42622 words (and counting)) Another day, another suitor. This one was from the far west with flowered silks and bright pastels. Prince Adam from France. 

Horizon (Star Wars, 1397 words) It was so different than anything Armitage could have imagined. And oh, he had imagined.

the booze and the bell chimes (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast/2015!Cinderella, 6272 words) 11:00 AM - 6 HOURS BEFORE THE WEDDING “BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN’ EVERYWHERE” Jafar nearly jumped out of bed, his heart pounding in time with the pounding in his head. 

The Dream (MCU/Loki: Where Mischief Lies, 602 words) There is pain as he feels the grip tighten around his throat. He struggles for air, knowing it to be futile at this point. Then, a sharp crack of agony… and he’s gone.

Submerge (Star Wars, 8750 words) His father had warned him many times as a boy to stay away from the Dark Shoals. When Kylo took to the sea as an adult, still his father warned him that morning.

Good at Waiting (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast, 618 words) Adam wasn’t sure where he was at first. But as the world came into focus around him, he remembered. He remembered dinner the night before, celebrating their six-month anniversary. 

Boom, Clap! (Crash Pad/MCU, 12175 words (and counting)) I need to lay off the weed. It certainly wasn’t the first time Stensland had thought this (or even attempted to put the thought into action soon after), much less the first time he had thought it the moment he had woken up from some batshit crazy trippy dream.

The Ocean Under the Moon (2019!Aladdin/They Call Me Jeeg, 1525 words (and counting)) Fabio had a weird, mostly unknown love for thrift stores. 

a lil something (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast, 728 words) Jafar’s phone vibrates in his pocket for the second time in the past ten minutes. 

Love is a Battlefield (The Old Guard, 1328 words) There was an excitement in the air as they all stood in formation. Syrus pawed at the ground, his hoof kicking up grass and dust that hung around his legs. 

when push comes to shove (2019!Aladdin/Trust, 1371 words) It had started with Jafar grabbing fistfuls of Primo’s ass and a mocking comment about how thin his pants were, which somehow had led to Jafar assuming Primo wasn’t wearing anything under the blue trousers. He assumed correctly.

play us an encore (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast, 2400 words) “Open your robe.” Jafar didn’t move from where he was standing in the bathroom doorway. Dressed in only his silk red robe, he stared back at Adam, who was smiling in a way that Jafar couldn’t read.

break the bubble (2019!Aladdin/2017!Beauty and the Beast/2015!Cinderella, 1092 words) “Love is like a bomb, baby, c’mon get it on…” The lights flashed as three gorgeous men walked onto the stage, lip synching with the loud lyrics of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" playing over the speakers. 

Analysis:

First of all, the fact that 11/20 of these are crossovers is pretty telling of what my favorite thing to write is. Most are either Aladdin crossovers or Marvel crossovers (and involve either Jafar or Loki, respectively) so there’s that.

This list goes back about two years, which is interesting because in the past two years I’ve been working on bigger projects most of the time. Notice how most of these fics are under 2k? Most of these started as small fic prompts or 2am spur-of-the-moment ideas and the longer ones are the more self-indulgent fics.

5 of these fics start with a line that’s mostly used to catch a reader’s attention before a tag, which is then followed by a bit of exposition or action. Twice I use song lyrics as a way of grabbing attention because the POV of the character is also having their attention grabbed.

Several times I just jump right into a character’s POV and begin with them thinking about something or essentially telling the reader “what is happening is normal” or “what is happening is not normal” depending on the situation. It’s also sometimes a quick recap or the statement of a fact about our POV character.

Most of the time, I just jump right into the action to get the story moving. I’ve noticed I prefer to do this over giving a description of where we are. If I do give a description, it almost always comes after the opening line. With the exception of Shadows, none of these opening lines are a setting description.

I really do have a thing for crossovers, especially the weird ones LOL I just love the idea of two different worlds connecting in some way and having the characters themselves connect on another level. D*sney’s been crossing over their stuff since well before I was even born, so while it’s not surprising to see a disney crossover fic, I do think there’s something to writing that odd lil ship I’ve written about 7 fics for (dang!)

I tend to deal with themes of forbidden love in various ways and how the characters make those connections despite the fact they shouldn’t be together. Whether it’s as simple as unrequited romance, or they’re enemies, or they’re not necessarily enemies but they really shouldn’t be together... and yet they always find a way. IDK maybe I’m just a romantic at heart who loves seeing love stories about love conquering all. But that being said, the obstacles these characters face aren’t typical ones?? Like, from this list at least, love triangles aren’t something I’m interested in, but if there is a third party (like in Violet Skies) the third party is never really considered to be a “threat” to the main couple. 

That’s probably another reason why I dig crossover ships, because they inherently shouldn’t be together. they’re from vastly different worlds with maybe one or two things in common (like genre or setting or a character detail or just a vibe).

Or I’m just here to have fun and I’m dragging these characters into the fun zone whether they like it or not :P

But really, all of these are love stories in some way or another. Not that I’ve never written gen fic and I love reading gen fic! But I guess my fave fics to write are the shippy stuff. I just enjoy exploring these types of relationships, despite whether or not they “should” be together. Heck, a couple of these do not have happy endings nor should they. It’s really interesting seeing exactly how drawn to that stuff I am.

FAVE OPENING LINE This is kind of a weird thing to say, but I really don’t care a lot of my opening lines most of the time. I think they are what they need to be, but they don’t hit me the way they should? Some of these I kinda wish I could go back and change, though that’s mostly cuz out of all the lines in each of these fics the first lines I’ve read and reread the most. So it’s mostly me being my own worst critic, but I think my best writing comes more in the middle and ends of my fics, not the beginnings. 

That said, I gotta go with Violet Skies: Another day, another suitor. This one was from the far west with flowered silks and bright pastels. Prince Adam from France.

This is one of those opening lines I’d never change. The fic starts off from Jafar’s POV and he is bored of these princes coming and going and starting this big fic off with him being like “here we go again” with this basic description of Adam is exactly where the fic needed to start, so by the time the reader gets to the end of the first chapter, we know this is definitely not “here we go again” with Prince Adam~

TAGGING: @pigsinablanketfort, @heroofshield, @thenightisfullofangels, @raptorwhisperer, @theresatvjoe, aaaaaaand anybody else who wants to do it!!!!

[pikachu78109]

After Thoughts on Pokémon SwSh ((SPOILER HEAVY! TREAD CAREFULLY))

Okay, wow. So, I played and finished the main story in two days (I had so much free time after college classes) and I managed to power through the game in no time at all. Right now, I am doing post game, but I’ll save that for another time. For now, I want to address my overall thoughts on the main story and some of the pros and cons that this Gen has brought. Spoiler heavy content incoming!

Pros

1) The region is f*cking gorgeous!

When the Pokémon team really puts their mind to it, they create Galar to look really beautiful. From past generations, most of the town weren’t really towns, they looked like villages. And though the cities looked big like in Gen 5, 6, and 7, Gen 8 really pushed itself with its graphics and made the design of the towns and cities looks massive and eye catching. The colors pop and the things that stand out really stood out, such as MotoStoke, Wyndon, Hulbury, and Hammerlocke. These games are just so gorgeous to look at!

2) The Wild Area

Grinding as never been as fun when you’re in the Wild Area. Not only can you Dynamax your Pokémon when approaching as Power Spot, you can encounter rare Pokémon and Camp and do some serious training before the next Gym Match. I used this area a lot when playing through this game, and I have collected so many Berries and items and even battled some Pokémon to level up my team. This area has a functional use and something worth mentioning because I found this area to be extremely helpful whenever I need a bit of grinding. There are a few Trainers, heck there’s even a nursery if you want to drop off a couple of your Pokémon there, and they do sometimes give you items in exchange for Watt power. It depends on how much though, but you could get some rare items from them, if possible. Overall, a really great addition!

3) A Good Cast of Characters

Galar has so many characters and the majority of them are pretty good! While there are a few that I felt could’ve been stronger or competent even, most of the characters have different personalities and each one displays vast characteristics that make them stand out. Marnie, Bede, and Hop were great rivals and each one had a personal goal and under went character growth (Bede especially) as the story continued. Other characters like Sonia were present in the story and offered more to the plot, like telling about the legends in Galar or assisting you on your way. Leon was a character who was present most of the time and was a great Champion. Most of the Gym Leaders were unique in their own way (some more than others) and gave Gym Missions that could either frustrate you or not. It’s definitely not like Gen 7 where the cast gets involved one way or another, but in Gen 8, the cast never felt forgettable and had something to offer.

4) The Soundtrack Is Good

If I can pull a Trugreen 7 here, the music in this generation was pretty good. It brought a lot of life to the region and gave it atmospheric energy. My favorites include the Slumbering Weald, the Gym Leader theme, Chairman Rose’s theme, and Hop’s Battle theme to name a few. The Wild Area gets hit with a blast of bagpipes, giving it a distinct identity apart from the routes, cities, and towns. When the OST for this game comes out on iTunes, I’m definitely going to download some of these tracks!

5) Very Immersive

The attention to detail on the games bring out the immersion was pretty good. There’s definitely some humanity to the main character and there are a few things that accompany that. The Pokémon Camp mechanic was a great way to play with your Pokémon, make curry, and even invite other players to join your Camp. Not only that, but you could visit any nearby Pokémon Camps and interact with the Trainer’s Pokémon if you so wished. There’s a lot of upgrades to the character customization where you have a lot of options to choose from, from clothes to hair, so you could give your player character some identity that’s unique to you or look like you. The Power Up Spots found in the Wild Area invites players to join in a battle against a Dynamaxed Pokémon, so the use of teamwork and connecting with other players helps bring out more usage to the Dynamax mechanic. The region can get pretty easy to get sucked into and it shows.

Cons

So, now that I covered some of my personal favorite pros, I will now discuss some my personal cons that I have with this game. Keep in mind that these cons are of my personal opinion and maybe you might disagree, which is perfectly fine! Anyway, here they are!

1) The Story was Lackluster

As a new game on the Switch, the build to the story was something that I was looking forward to. I mean, there have been leaks about the story that were more like rumors, but they sounded really interesting and it got me hyped for the games. After playing through the story, it wasn’t much. The story, for the most part, was hardly a story. You’re just going around Galar, competing in the Gym Challenge and stopping whatever obstacles that come your way, such as Team Yell. Plot wise, there’s nothing. And when I mean ‘nothing’, I mean that the plot didn’t attribute to anything spectacular. The ending to the story felt very anti-climatic with the whole Eternatus situation and could’ve been handled better with the proper timing or with a better build up. Eternatus does not get mention much throughout the entire story and we are led to assume that Eternatus is the cause of The Darkest Day. That detail felt super unclear to me and I couldn’t tell what the f*ck was going on until the very last half of the game. I will get into more of that later, but for now all I can say is that I liked the leaked rumors more than the actual story we were given.

2) Chairman Rose Is A Weak Antagonist

Why? WHY?! As much as I like his battle theme, Chairman Rose is such a dumb antagonist! Listen, I know that villains in Pokémon can either be weak or great, but it all boils down to their motivation. Their motivations have to at least make some sort of sense, even if it is mediocre or half assed. Chairman Rose’s motive is all based around semi good intentions that can be similar to Lusamine’s from USUM. However, Chairman Rose doesn’t seem entirely aware of what he is doing and jumps into whatever scheme that he thinks might work and help all of Galar. Instead, his plans come off as lazy and last minute. We don’t get any occurrences to his antagonistic intentions because we are devoted to our Gym Challenge while Rose hides behind the shadows. To his credit, he would have to be the most sane antagonist in all of Pokémon and does turn himself in afterwards, so clearly he knew that he f-ed up. That being said, he would have to be the weakest Pokémon villain in my book and I would’ve preferred his secretary Oleana to be the villain instead.

2) Oleana Should Have Been the Main Antagonist

Like I said, Oleana should have been the main antagonist in these games. From the get go, she gave off so many red flags for being a character with less than good intentions but was actually a supposed Admin instead. I mean, she gives off so many bad vibes that I almost believed that she was the antagonist, not Rose. This was just a missed opportunity to me, because in the final stretch of the games, you get a bunch of Macro Officers who supposedly started a fan club surrounding Oleana. Like, wtf?! If you’re lackeys are going to making a fan club dedicated to you, then that has to say something. Oleana has always been a character that just had a cold expression on her face, but she’s left in a position that should’ve been rectified. Once again, this was a missed opportunity.

3) The Champion Battle Could’ve Been Better

As much as I adore Leon, the Champion battle against him didn’t feel as challenging as I hoped it would be. Instead, it almost felt like Gen 6 all over again with me almost knocking out his team completely with little to no effort involved. And he’s supposed to be the ‘undefeated’ Champ in Galar! Shouldn’t he be challenging? Shouldn’t he give me a hard time by providing moves that could put my team in a bind? There’s not much I can say about this other than the fact that this battle could’ve been better. I don’t know about other players, but from this experience, the Champion battle didn’t feel, well, Champion enough.

Final Thoughts

Okay, final thoughts. Obviously, I do have a lot more to say about Pokémon SWSH, but I didn’t want this post to become a lengthy essay. There were definitely some step ups and it’s clear to see where the steps were made to creating this game. Despite the controversy surrounding this Gen, I hope that this generation gets recognized beyond that. There are good things about this game that I pointed out, but there were also some things that felt rushed or didn’t make much sense.

I can’t say that I regret buying these games, because I am glad that I went to Galar and experienced many things from that region. Still, the things that stood out poorly really did show, which is a bummer because these were missed opportunities that could’ve made the games a lot stronger. I don’t think that Gen 8 is a bad game (heck I place that title onto USUM) but it’s definitely in a mixed bag with me.

If I were to rate this game on a scale of 1-10, I would give a 6/10, mainly because of weak story but accompanied with beautiful visuals and a decent cast of characters. The game does have some replay value but I believe that I might restart my game and play through everything all over again. That’s how I usually roll.

Recommending this game to other players would be difficult given the reputation this game has, but as a Switch game, it does an okay job. I just hope that the next games will have more effort and something to look forward to without any unnecessary drama to blacklist it. I can only dream.

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

My SWSH Review

Beware of spoilers under the cut, but I had a lot of mixed feelings about this game. I broke things down into categories so I could better keep track of what I liked and didn’t like in the game. 

Gameplay Time: I finished the game at roughly 32 hours of gameplay, when normally I expect to finish a game at closer to 48 hours. Was more than a little disappointed when I reached the end. 5/10 was nice while it lasted.

In-Game General Content: As I noted above, this game felt emptier than I expected. Not as much to explore or many side plots to follow. Some of the towns were teeny tiny. Does anyone even live in Spikemuth? There was ONLY a gym and shop. They really hung their hats on the wild areas, easily the star of the game. For the few towns where they were relevant and nearby, I felt an almost perfect balance between a traditional pokemon game and more of a BoTW-style open world. Pokemon fans have been clamoring for an open world style game for years, and they did a really good job on that portion of the game. But there was no victory road, no post-game unlocked areas, routes were short, towns were the same few amenities with a different look. No way to farm berries, either. 7/10 Great visual design and stellar job on the wild area, wish there was more to fill it in. 

Gym Battles and Gym Plot: Easily the most excited I’ve ever been about the gym system. The way they built up excitement and hype for the gym leaders as well as the atmosphere of the battles themselves is sublime. When the music first shifted to the chanting crowd carrying the melody, I ascended. They aimed to recreate the sheer adrenaline of battling in a packed stadium and they hit the nail on the head. They did a great job building up Leon as the toughest champion, and then actually delivering one of the toughest battles I’ve had. A+. 10/10 One of the best in the franchise.

Villain Battles and Villain Plot: I was confused the entire game. Are we supposed to trust Rose, the capitalist who basically owns Galar? Everyone loves him, so I guess the weird vibes I get are wrong. Team Yell are the villain henchmen right? But it doesn’t even have a leader, they’re just fans, turns out they weren’t even acting under orders so they didn’t have a goal. What is Bede’s deal? Is he working on villainous plans? Oh turns out he wasn’t acting under orders either and is just a turd. Oh the secretary is the villain? Oh, no she had orders? From who? Oh Rose IS the villain, they did a piss poor job of foreshadowing that. None of the Grunt/Executive/Boss progression you would generally expect in a Pokemon game. 1/10 keep some consistent throughlines next time. 

Postgame Content: There’s an interesting continuation of the two kings legend that was found in game, with two of the most poorly designed characters I’ve ever seen as the villains. It gets rather repetitive in the middle while you face all the dynamax pokemon, but I appreciated more Piers content. Overall it was quite short, tying up Hop’s character arc nicely but making me quite sad that the story was over for real so fast. There are no postgame areas unlocked, the only postgame content is the Battle Tower. No national dex, of course. After hearing Masuda hint at extensive postgame content, definitely a disappointment. 3/10 There’s a theme here of good content but not very much of it. 

Battle Hook: Every game in the last few years has a battle gimmick: Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, etc. Dynamax and Gigantamax hold up well, really changing the way a battle can work. The Dynamax raids are a great addition to the series, making social battles a collaborative effort instead of a competitive one. Dynamax only lasting a few rounds also makes strategy interesting. I found myself enjoying it a ton! I do wish the difference between Dynamax and Gigantamax was explained some more, or whatever a ‘dynamax level’ is.  9/10 Solid!

Pokemon Designs: We’ve come to my absolute favorite part of the game. The new pokemon are STELLAR. I managed to avoid spoilers for the starter evolutions, so the anticipation for how my Grookey and Hop’s Sobble were going to change was intense. Although a few are a little further down my list of favorites (Looking at you, Silicobra) I didn’t really dislike any new design I saw. Galar forms were great as well, as an ecologist Cursola hit me hard. Really liked how old pokemon got new evolutions! 11/10 I want an army of Snom. 

Overall Dex Composition: First off, lots of points are taken away for not having a National Dex. You made your bed Gamefreak, you made over a thousand pokemon, now lie in it. Looking past that though, I did like the mix of generations that came in. Gen one was not the favorite here! It was pretty evenly split up, both from classic pokemon and Galarian forms. Some of my often-missed favorites were here (Croagunk, Morelull, Bronzor) and it felt like what pokemon were chosen, were chosen with care. 6/10 Wouldn’t have this section if there was a national dex.

Shiny Hunting Methods: This is an important factor to me. According to the most up-to-date sources, the native shiny method for this game has 2 facets, and one is untrackable. The first is how many total pokemon of a species you have battled, tracked in the Dex. The second is your catch combo, or how many of that species you have caught or battled in a row. This second one is invisible. What breaks it? What maintains it? How do you track it? Nobody knows! It’s never mentioned to even be a thing in game, so there’s no way to find out. 3/10 clunky. 

Overall Experience: I went into the game not knowing how high to set my expectations. As I started I had a lot of fun, feeling the old pokemon hype set in again. But as I progressed, I started to feel the emptiness in places. It is well known that this game was rushed in development, so not everything intended showed up in the final product. This was really easily felt, especially in post game. I did have fun. A lot of fun, at times. But it always ended too soon. Overall, I’d give the game a 6.5/10. 

[divinebovine12185]

March Catch-up

So I decided to make this blog after seeing someone elses that they were doing for pretty much the same thing (Thanks Baby Bahamut). Seeing as this is march now, I have lots of catching up to do. So, here’s what I’ve beaten so far;

January:

Mutant Mudds (3DS): This was a game that I’d picked up sometime in 2012, and then kind of forgot about. I think its been sitting on my 3DS ever since, and I’ve kept meaning to get back to it. This was its year I guess, and I decided to finally beat it to start the year. I started a new game aaaaaand...instantly remembered why I never beat it.

It just feels like so much nothing. The graphics are pretty meh, story might as well not exist, and the action isn’t really that fun, more frustrating. Especially near the end of the game, the controls really aren’t tight enough to support what it wants to do. Beat it and instantly deleted it. 3/10

West of Loathing (Switch): This was a real surprise. When I read that it was from the same guys who did Kingdom of Loathing, I thought it might be ok, but it could also just be try-hard random. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the humour was actually really clever, and the combat, while super basic, was pretty fun! I also couldn’t stop exploring and clicking on every little thing to see what it did. If I had any problems, it was that the ending was a little too abrupt, and that the combat difficulty tended to be all over the place at times. Great game, and I will definitely be playing the DLC at some point. 8/10

February:

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA): Well, technically I played in on my 3DS, but its a GBA game so I’ll let it be. Anyways, what a fantastic little pocket zelda game! The world was pretty compact, but thanks to the kinstones I was always exploring, and the graphics, while being super cute, also kept things clear and easy to read. It’s pretty hard to know where to go, but with a ton of exploration even I managed to find my way to the next dungeon.

The equipment you find was super fun too; I didn’t realize that they had managed to get things like the deku leaf in a 2D zelda, and had lots of fun with it. Backtracking with them was great too, as re-exploring old areas always felt fresh. Definitely a must play if you haven’t already. 9/10

Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (GBC): I already beat the original way back in the late 90′s, but I figured that the GBC version was different enough to call it a seperate game.

So this one definitely scratched a nostalgia itch, but it was kind of a mistake playing it after a more modern one. The items felt a little more basic, the movement a little more stilted. Still a great game, but definitely aged just a bit. And the colour dungeon was really basic, didn’t feel like much of a challenge. Again, still worth playing, but without the nostalgia glasses, its aged. 7/10

March:

Sonic Forces (PS4): So I know that this is a “bad” sonic game according to the mainstream, and I can totally see why (homing attacks barely work, kind of a dumb story, etc etc) but for some weird reason I actually kind of enjoyed the levels...so much so that I think I’ll go for that crazy grindy platinum! (Tho whoever thought of a trophy for getting 100,000 rings, I will find you and punch you). Theres just something fun about the missions, and again some of the levels I really enjoy. And the avatar dress-up (despite sounding dumb at first) is actually pretty great once you unlock a bunch of the clothing options.

A solid 6/10

Pokemon Shield (Switch):  Okaaay, so this one is controversial. Maybe its just me being a pokemon fanboy, but I still really liked this entry. Sure it was really easy (mostly), but the things I love about the pokemon franchise were still here. Sure most of the monsters aren’t, but they are coming, and since I’m more interested in the competitive meta than the story, its kind of refreshing. 

See, in past gens, the same pokemon have been on top forever (for the most part), and then you have the same pokemon that deal with them well, and before you know it, all the competitive tiers (shoutout to smogon) look the same as the past gen, and I’m already bored. Here, its a chance to remake them fresh, and I’ve been loving it. As well, they’ve made it WAY easier to train up competitive pokemon. I already have a team ready to go, and it didn’t take me a whole month to do it!

All in all, very happy with this entry, and can’t wait to see whats in the expansions. 8/10

APE OUT (PC): Guess this is the arbitrary “Arty” entry eh? So basically you are an ape that is breaking out of various places, and you attack by grabbing and throwing people at walls or each other. When you do, they die in a really satisfying explosion of blood. The really cool part of the whole thing is that its all set to a drum solo that encompasses the sound effects and everything. When you just start a level, its really quiet, but as the carnage starts, the beat picks up organically and you can really get into it! And the art style is so clean and simple, yet very artistic. Just a neat game all around!

After reading this, it sounds great, right? Well, there are a couple things that actually made this one kind of hard to finish. See, the game is super satisfying, until you’ve died a million times from something you had no control over; A couple examples are getting sniped from way off screen, or RNG making 6 super tough enemies appear in a room you just ran into, meaning instadeath. Also, the graphics are really cool, but some effects make it super hard to see what was going on, 5/10

What’s Next?

Right now, I’m just working on the platinum for Sonic, but next month I think I feel like playing the Full Throttle remake. Once I’ve beaten something, Ill be sure to make a post about it! Thanks for reading!

[amethyst-noir]

Tagged: All about me and fanfic

I got tagged by the wonderful @aelaer; thank you so much! This was fun!

1. At what age did you start writing fanfiction?

16. I discovered fanfic in December 1999, which makes this year my 20th anniversary, yay! At the same time I also met my best friend. She was curious what walls of text I was staring at while all the others were in various chat rooms. (We didn't have internet at home back then and this was during trade school which was a boarding school. I got online for the very first time, didn't know what to do and typed my current obsession into AltaVista. Highlander. I discovered fanfic about 5 minutes later and never looked back. That was all in German back then because my English was almost non-existent. I only learned it because I wanted to read more HL fic and I've burned through everything in my native language so I had to expand. Yes, I've learned English through fanfic and later on - after the advent of DVDs - by watching shows and movies in the original version.

2. Who is your favorite author?

Help, I don't want to play favorites but okay: Maygra, who wrote beautiful Duncan/Methos stories and whose Chris/Vin stories brought me from HL over into Magnificent Seven fandom. MacGeorge, who wrote the hottest Duncan/Methos and the best Duncan Gen I have ever laid eyes on. Unfortunately, their website is no longer online so the link goes to the Wayback Machine.

Tons of wonderful people in the Mag7 fandom (Gen and Slash alike) whose work is lost in the mists of time of still lives in worddoc copies on my harddrive. Their pages where on Angelfire (some of them are still there); lots on Tripod or even Geocities. See, I've been around for a long while. 😉

During my Stargate Atlantis days I read tons and tons but special mentions go to Auburn and Synecdochic (who wrote much more SG-1 than SGA but freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose still makes me tear up just thinking about).

Between Mag7 and SGA I spent time lurking in The Professionals, Starsky & Hutch and Supernatural fandom but I consumed such vast quantities in such a short time that I barely remember anything (I was jobless at that time), but Flamingo's Starsky & Hutch stories are exceptional.

Then there was Person of Interest and Da Vinci's Demon's and Hannibal and lots of other casual fandoms. Hannibal was the fandom I joined Tumblr for and I still lurked around. I only started writing, posting and interacting with people after Infinity War, a little bit over a year ago now. (And by "started writing" I mean in English. I wrote in German until about 2008 or 09 when I gradually stopped because there was no feedback and I had no fandom I could really obsess over. I was reading and lurking around until IW and Ironstrange came along and by that time I was not even thinking about writing in German anymore.)

A couple of favorites from this corner of fandom (in alphabetical order!): @atypical-snowman, @aelaer, @babywarg, @descaladumidera, @mistressstrange, @myrxellabaratheon, @phierie, @ssironstrange, @stark-raving-strange. There are many more but those are the ones I first thought of. They give me Tony and Stephen as equals, snarky and complex people and also deliver on the angsty H/C. I love you all. 💞

3. Favorite type of scene to write?

Comfort. Hurt is necessary before that but I much prefer long drawn out comfort with lots of touching and talking, culminating in a (first) kiss. Angst and misunderstandings regarding feelings are also nice but only if it ends in happy contentment.

4. What is your favorite fanfic?

Uff, okay, one for each fandom because otherwise we're here until the next year.

Highlander: Variation in D Minor by killabeez (4th installment of Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark series)

The Magnificent Seven: Egeo Fides (Without Promise)  by Maygra (3rd installment of theTo Make of Heaven, Earth series)

Starsky & Hutch: Crystal Blue Persuasion by Flamingo

Stargate Atlantis: No way, there are too many. But check out the SGA Big Bang on the Wayback Machine if you want tons to read. This was the first Big Bang I witnessed and since than I've been stuck with the definition of "40.000 words or more" for such events. The SGA years where the most fun I had in fandom until I fell into Ironstrange.

Hannibal:

Ahem. *draws a blank* Sorry. But there was such much in the heyday of the fandom. Let's just say that I like it when Will and Hannibal are depicted as equals or Will as the dominant one. Frail-flower-Will who is an unsuspecting ping-pong ball for manipulative!Hannibal is not my thing. They manipulated each other like the pros they are and in the end Will out manipulated Hannibal, in my opinion. Peacefrog wrote beautiful Hannibal.

Marvel/Ironstrange: Let's just name my favorite current WIP and be done with it otherwise this gets exhausting. whatever souls are made of by @atypical-snowman. This has everything I love and adore. And I still have to catch up with it. Also, I'm looking forward to @iwritefanficsometimes's Switched at Birth AU.

5. What tags do you avoid like the plague?

A/B/O, except for very rare exceptions. Mpreg. Always. Everything with Tony and Steve in a past or present relationship because I just don't like it. "Hurt no Comfort" - see me run in the other direction as fast as I can.

6. What AU do you wish to write but feel like you won’t manage?

Fantasy or Historical AU. Rewrite of the MCU where Stephen, Tony and Pepper know each other since before the events of IM1 and fall into a relationship before the first Avengers.

7. Do you outline, or write as you go?

No outline. If I outline the story is finished. I write because I have an idea and don't know how it'll turn out. I discover the plot as I write. If I do an outline I know what happens and see no use in writing it anymore. *looks at outline for massive d/s AU with soulbond for Tony and Stephen* You are nice, but I know exactly what happens in every scene so why bother writing it out completely? Boring.

8. What has been your favorite story to write so far? Why?

Precious. Because it wrote itself and was so much fun. I had absolutely no clue what it would become when I started and a week later I had this massive (for me) story.

9. Do you prefer to write one-shots or multi-chapters? Why?

I only can do one-shots. I would love to write a long multi-chapter epic but my style and my endurance don't fit with it. Watch me cram 10 years into 5k words.

10. What is your favorite kind of comment?

Each and every one! I squee in delight when I get an "<3", I jump from joy when I get "I loved it" and I'm bouncing like a little child when I get one of those long ones that tell me what the reader liked best. I look forward to the Kudos mail each and every day.

11. Why did you start writing fanfiction? Why are you still writing?

I started because I was back home from school and offline. "I can do that too!" I thought and tried it. It was bad, it was really bad. But badly writing in German was a stepping stone to writing halfway decent (or so I like to think) in English. I know that I make tons of mistakes, I know that I basically write the same plot/situations all over again and again but I enjoy it and quite some people enjoy it with me. So why not? I don't want to get traditionally published, I don't want a career writing; I just want the ideas out of my head. And if other people like what I write? Yay, thank you, I love you!

[pokesception]

Whelp, started playing pokemon sword.  Have complained quite a bit here about dexit & related issues, and honestly I would have skipped at least the initial versions of these games entirely, or at least held off on purchasing them until we could see just how egregious pokemon home will be.  But my brother got shield, and my problems with sword and shield are not so severe that I’m going to refuse to play a game with family.

Thoughts so far?  Setting dexit entirely aside it’s... another pokemon game, for better and worse.  Largely for the better.  The new monsters, at least those I’ve encountered so far, are fun and good.  Music is nice.  Tone is bright and cheerful.  I love my team, and my protagonist.  It’s been nice.

As expected going to a more powerful console, it looks better, but it’s not a huge jump from the 3ds games, not least because lot of the visuals of this game are ported over directly from those games, and the stuff that is new has been made so as to not clash aesthetically with the older stuff.  If you’ve seen mods of usum that display the games at higher res and without the black outlines, it’s very much like that.  Closer to that even than to the let’s go games in ways that I find difficult to articulate.  In and of itself that’s not a complaint, really, the game looks plenty good enough for a pokemon tame.  It’s just not a major leap forward in presentation like the leap from gen 5 to gen 6 was.

Gameplay is mostly what you might expect.  Tall grass battles are an interesting mix of pokemon you can see on the field and engage or avoid as you wish and random battles that appear in the grass.  The random fights appear as a rustling in the grass that again can be pursued or avoided, you just can’t tell what they’ll be before you bump into them.  Finding rarer pokemon in a route is often a matter of sneaking or dashing between the new pokemon to get to the random fight, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the pokemon you want.  I’m not sure if there’s deeper levels to it, like chaining or whatever.  At the surface level it’s engaging enough.

The new pokemon are great so far.  There’s a bunch early on that you won’t have seen if you avoided leaks, and that was really excited.  I went into gen 7 knowing every new pokemon and with a particular desired team all worked out in advance.  This time around I’ve avoided spoilers, and gamefreaks official previews have kept a lot more hidden, so it’s been really fun to meet a lot of cool new faces early on.

The game does let you skip some early tutorials, but still frustrates to no end by stopping you every three seconds for another unnecessary explanation or detour, so it’s still pokemon in that unfortunate regard.  Routes are, if anything, more linear than ever before, at least early on, with the exception of an early expedition through the wild area which... I’ll talk about later.

Experience share is always on and cannot be turned off.  It scales shared xp based on the level of the pokemon, with lower level pokemon getting a higher portion, but not by enough so it’s still a pain to keep everything in the same level range, and you’ll still probably be wildly over leveled from very early on with nary a challenge to be seen even if you try to avoid grinding.

You can access the box from anywhere, which can be used to help overcome both the maintaining-a-level-range and over leveling problems of the experience share, but it’s a hassle to do, and wouldn’t be necessary if you could just toggle off shared exp in the options menu.  And on another level it makes the game even easier, since attrition is much less of a problem when you can swap in fresh pokemon whenever you feel like.

The online functionality is... kind of bad.  Maybe it’s just my internet, but being online in the wild area causes all sorts of slowdown.  Worse, there’s no equivalent to the pss functionality from gen 6.  No way to just see which of your switch friends are online and directly offer to trade or battle with them.  No instead you have to contact them *outside of the game* to share a 4 digit password, and then hope that nobody else happens to be using the same password as you when you try to connect with each other.  Raid battles are neat, but infuriatingly use the same password hassle.  You can’t just have easy friend-only raids from within the game itself.

It’s marginally better then gen 7′s festival plaza, but it remains miles and miles behind gen 6′s pss system that was simple and intuitive, and just centuries ahead of anything that came before or after.

Apart from raid battles, the wild area is... interesting?  Not all that different from having just a really big route with subareas of various level ranges.  Not bad, but not as big a departure as I had made it out to be in my head.  An idea with some potential that future games might expand into something great but that, knowing this series, will just be dropped after a single generation instead.  I’m still pretty early in the game, so my opinion on it might change after returning to it later.

The biggest frustration of the wild area, and something that brings it down tremendously, is that while you can encounter, and with some effort defeat, pokemon there, you cannot catch them at all if they’re above an arbitrary level range set by your number of gym badges.  This runs so completely counter to everything almost good about the wild area that I basically swore the whole thing off until I get to the end of the game, and frankly they might as well have just made it a post game area at that rate.

It’s extra frustrating because the problem of a player getting access to a pokemon too strong for the game too early on is one that the pokemon games already solved infinitely more elegantly all the way back in gen 1!  Just make pokemon that you acquire at too high a level uncontrollable, exactly like traded pokemon, so you can catch that over leveled onyx or whatever, but can’t use it until you’ve progressed far enough in the game for it not to be over leveled anymore.  How hard is that?  And who cares if a player gets an over powered pokemon early and steam rolls the game?  If that’s how the player wants to play, why is it a problem?  It’s not like the main game is challenging to begin with, thanks to always on exp share its almost impossible not to have over leveled pokemon anyway, what does it matter if it’s because you caught them that way or because they just outleveled the game curve?  A better exp scaling system would fix all those problems anyway.

Pokemon games not only failing to progress and solve problems that return game after game, but also repeatedly forgetting solutions that the series has already implemented is the longest running and most frustrating and most justified complaint to level at the entire series.  Of course, in the past pokemon as a series always had one core feature that none of the other - often more innovative - monster hunting games that sprang up in its shadow could replicate.  Backwards compatibility, the ability to maintain your collection in full going forward from generation to generation in a chain unbroken since gen 3 on game boy advance.  And that’s where dexit puts a sour note on the whole business.

The last several pokemon generations have failed to significantly improve on the core gameplay of a nearly two decade old franchise, but for many that has been largely forgiven because each new generation could easily be viewed not as stand alone games but rather as major expansions to the same existing game.  Dexit breaks from that, and forces the new games to be viewed as stand alone games and... well they aren’t pad at all.  They’re still cute.  I’m having fun so far.  Sword and Shield is no Anthem, no Fallout 76, no singular disaster to turn an otherwise largely positive track record on its head, and the extreme negativity directed against the game has been way overstated, even probably by myself.  In particular any vitriol directed at the devs is almost certainly unwarranted, the problems that have been growing in the pokemon series generation after generation almost certainly come down to corporate decisionmaking way above the heads of anyone who actually *worked* on the game.

Still, now that gamefreak’s pattern of cutting progressively more and more corners has reached the point of cutting actual pokemon, it’s shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of people who had been giving all those issues a pass suddenly aren’t anymore.

And while pokemon sword and shield isn’t a bad game, it’s hard to compare it to something like oras or usum and say it’s worth 50% more up front cost AND an added monthly subscription to access features like GTS that used to be just part of the game to begin with.

The dex cuts would have been more forgivable if the games had been a major leap forward, whether in graphics or gameplay.  Monster Hunter World, for instance, had /dramatically/ less content in terms of sheer quantity than the games that came right before it, but it also completely overhauled the visuals, heavily revised and updated the core gameplay, and completely changed how the area maps worked.

Alternatively, I think all the people currently complaining about models and trees and balance would have been fine with ‘just another pokemon game’ if it had maintained the backwards compatibility, just as they’ve been alright with ‘just another pokemon game’ for game after game after game until now.  Imagine if gamefreak had announced sword and shield as the last main line games to maintain all previous pokemon instead of the first games not to.  Then at least everybody’s personal faves would have had the chance to see play on a home system, and sword and shield could advertise themselves as the biggest pokemon games ever and actually mean it, and players would have time to adjust to what was coming.

I’m reminded of a scene from the Gravity Falls Halloween episode in season one.  Mabel & Dipper had always trick or treated together, but this year dipper decided to ditch mabel to try and go to a teen party, arguing that they were getting too old for trick or treating.  To which Mabel says something along the lines of “I knew some Halloween would be our last, but I didn’t realize it had already happened.”

And that’s the feeling I have with pokemon right now, the wet blanket draped over all the bright colors and fun new characters and monsters in sword and shield.  I knew eventually pokemon games wouldn’t be able to keep supporting all the pokemon, I knew eventually my collection would be left behind.  But I didn’t think it had already happened.  And to find out that gen 7 of all games was the last ‘complete’ pokemon?  That’s just kind of sad to realize.  And while I am on balance enjoying sword and shield, it’s a realization that keeps coming back uninvited to sour the experience.

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - Gen 7 Retrospective

That's at least a little more sizable than the XY generation was. Granted we have some Alolan Forms to help inflate the numbers a bit. Sure, if you were to count Gen 6′s Mega Evolutions, Gen 7 would be the actual smallest Gen to date. But remember what I said last generation's recap with how Gamefreak seemed to be taking a “quality over quantity” approach for that generation? That mentality seems to be back in full force here. 'Cause we're looking at my second favorite Gen right behind Gen 5.

I did bring up that Gen 6 was my third favorite generation in terms of the new, numerical Pokemon introduced. What has Alola muscle over it is how it's crammed as much inventiveness into the designs as they could think. The starters, the Legendaries/Kinda-Legendary Ultra Beasts, even the common fodder Pokemon have a little more going on than their typical ilk. And even some of the more boring designs like Oranguru and Passimian have interesting battle mechanics by changing the way you can approach double battles entirely on their own.

That also seemed to be a focus this generation. Not all of course, but a lot of the new Pokemon seemed to be based on different gameplay interactions and having unique abilities or signature moves. Between Salandit's Corrosion to Minior's Shields Down to Mimikyu's Disguise to Toucannon's Beak Blast and to Toxipex's Baneful Bunker. They really tried taking a shot at making each Pokemon have something unique to bring to battles. They even essentially made a more tournament-rules friendly alternative to Arceus in Silvally.

But there's a little subject more contentious about Gen 7 than the Pokemon, of course. That being the games themselves, which feel like they got the fandom split. I like Sun and Moon, but even I'll admit Gamefreak's gotta try a little harder for Gen 8. All the inventive things they've tried from a gameplay perspective ultimately don't change much. The game still had an 8-mini-act structure just like the Gym games. HMs getting replaced with Ride Pokemon is nice, but is still the same mechanic with different dressing. The biggest changes in the usual story structure don't even matter that much, the biggest change feeling like you get to know the region's Legendary Pokemon from the very start in the form of Nebby. Otherwise, it's just A Little Bit Better Written Than Usual. Y'know, not that Pokemon games tend to be master classes in writing anyway, its only real competition there being Black and White's story. (And even then, Sun and Moon's in desperate need of a Skip Cutscene button.)

Then there’s the Let’s Go games, which I suppose are technically Gen 7 games. Those got even more divisive. Some love it, others hate it. I personally just find it boring as a rather dumbed down remake of the Kanto games, only really playing because it was an excuse to use Melmetal. There’s some neat things in there that I wouldn’t mind seeing implemented in the main series (namely overworld-wandering Pokemon and AVs replacing EVs.) Just please keep the very poorly implemented Go-imitating catch mechanics as far away from the main series as possible.

Pokemon’s also starting to get more competition recently as well. Other than Digimon of course. Ni No Kuni, eventually Tem Tem, of course, the rise of the mighty Yokai Watch, which to my understanding, has been wrecking Pokemon in terms of sale numbers in their home region. Each of them implementing monster-catching RPG mechanics in their own unique way. I can’t speak for Yokai Watch, but Ni No Kuni is a lot more like a traditional JRPG, with the monsters being familiars that still fight in battle, but the trainers themselves also participate in the battle as well! And Tem Tem, while very much like Pokemon, is giving it more of an MMO angle. While I’m not one to shout about how much Pokemon just NEEDS to make an MMO with ALL THE REGIONS already, I am interested in seeing where TemTem winds up. It IS a Kickstarter game that made way more than it asked for, but as we know from a certain Strong Numerical Value That Is One Less Than Ten, that’s no guarantee it’ll be amazing. But worth keeping an eye on. It still has the potential to be something Gamefreak’s gonna have to watch out for.

Whether I like these other games or not, I appreciate that they exist, because they mean that sooner or later Gamefreak's gonna have to get their ass in gear and do something about it. I'm really getting burnt out on a new Pokemon game coming out literally every year. What I've wanted more than ever is for Gamefreak to at least take a hiatus from the yearly releases to have the game that comes after said break to really kick it out of the park. I get that the Ultra games probably didn't take up much development time and from my understanding Let's Go was made by a whole different team, so those games coming out in the years between Sun and Moon and Sword and Shield might not have much bearing on the latter's quality, but still. Pokemon's not had a major mechanical update since they introduced Abilities in Gen 3. I just hope Gen 8 does something interesting or has some form of major mechanical overhaul. Not asking Pokemon battles to be in real time or anything. Just some new Super Forms and powerful one-off moves aren’t gonna cut it for me. After over 20 years of Pokemoning and on, what, year 8 of a new Pokemon game coming out every year? I'm a little bit fatigued.

...Okay, let's end this on a better note than that.

I AM still exciting to see what Gen 8 has to offer, and I hope they mean it when they say they're trying something different. And of course, I'm ALWAYS gonna be excited to see some more new Pokemon. Gens 5, 6, and 7 are proving they're nowhere close to being out of steam yet, and I can't wait to see more Gen 8 Pokemon come our way in the coming months.

Top 10 Favorites of Gen 7:

Dangit this is hard. So many to love! So many new super-duper-tippity-top favorites!! Shout outs to Palossand, Silvally, Salandit, Xurkitree, and Buzzwole. There's just too many good'ens!!!!

Bottom 10 Least Favorite of Gen 7:

Amazingly, the only Pokemon here I really “dislike” is Zeraora. The rest are just that cherry-picked handful of Alolan Pokemon I don't really care that much about. Hurray!

Bottom 10 Least Favorite Overall:

Almost got through with no new additions. Almost.

The Cutest:

God this Generation was good for Pokemon I just want to pick up and hug. Or in Mimikyu's case, get horrendously murdered by because I got a little too close to taking its rag off. And I'd still say “Thanks.”

The Coolest:

The Prettiest:

The Spookiest:

This gen was really good to scratch a Halloweeny itch. A BUNCH of cool new ghosts, complete with the eerie head leech Pokemon I never would’ve suspected would make it into Pokemon!

Most Creative:

Weirdest/Most Unique:

This section here could've been filled with Ultra Beasts alone if I really wanted to, haha.

Most Forgettable:

Magearna is here not necessarily because I think the design is forgettable, but gee wizz I keep thinking it's not a Gen 7 Pokemon.

Most Personality:

Here's a new section! Gen 7 had a lot of personality-based designs, so there was actually a fair bit of competition for a slot like this. Buzzwole and Bewear are just hilarious, and I'm still thoroughly impressed with Meltan. They managed to cram so much adorable personality into such a simple design. And I’ll eat my hat the day we get a Pokemon more smug than Salandit.

Most Under-Appreciated:

Poor Stakataka keeps getting dismissed because of its bad typing... not that I can blame anyone because Rock/Steel is easily the most boring of all the UB typings, especially when we had room to have a Ghostly duo between it and Blacephalon to have us our first Rock/Ghost type!

Most Long Overdue Concepts:

Seriously, how'd it take 7 generations to get a wolf and a mosquito? Let alone 6 generations to finally get a second MANTIS and traditional horse Pokemon?! As far as spooky Pokemon go, you'd think a shipwreck would be one of the easier and more obvious concepts to go after, even if the one we finally got didn't take the form I expected it to. And Araquanid's just here because a fully evolved BUG/WATER was a long time frickin coming.

Best Regional Variants:

At least I'm naming the category that way because Regional Variants better be a series mainstay from now on!! These are the Alolan Forms with the most fun alternate take on their original forms. And Vulpix and Ninetales are there because fox solidarity.

Best Ultra Beasts:

Again, I really hope Ultra Beasts won't be an Alola-Only thing. I want to avoid talking about Gen 8 spoilers to be considerate of anyone that wants to avoid those, but a certain image carved into the ground in a particular scene has me hoping Ultra Beasts might be returning. And that Xurkitree could have a big brother in the near future. There's hardly much basis because said carving could literally be anything, but. Please.

Anyway, I love the Ultra Beasts as a concept of extra-dimensional alien beings. Some sell the look of freaky aliens better, especially ones like Nihilego, Xurkitree, Kartana, and Celesteela. But nonetheless, these 6 are my favorites out of our roster. HOPEFULLY so far.

Pokemon That Should’ve Gotten Alolan Forms:

I tend to agree that limiting Alolan Forms to Gen 1 Pokemon only was a silly thing to do, but even minding that, I feel like there was crazy amounts of missed potential here. Seel and Dewgong just desperately need some fresh attention to stop being Pokemon’s more forgettable critters. While I suppose Lapras and Tentacruel are excusable given they’re sea dwellers regardless, I totally wouldn’t mind electric jellyfish versions of the Tentas, or even a Kracken-based form for the former. This was also MORE than an opportunity to redeem Dragonite with a more Dragonair-like variant. And some tropical jungle variations of Paras and Venonat would be neat. I’m just saying, a Venomoth turned into more of a Tropical Hawkmoth would’ve been killer.

And Parasect hurts the most. You’re telling you’re gonna have Parasect inhabit this jungle area along with another, brand new mushroom Pokemon. AND you’re gonna introduce the concept of Gen 1 Pokemon taking on new forms based on the new and radically different habitats in Alola. And you’re just NOT gonna place some glowing mushrooms on their backs, turn them pale white, and call them Bug/Fairy types?!?!?! Hello?!?!!??!?

...Oh, am I forgetting something?

Top 50 Favorites Overall:

...Surprise! Yeah, just sorta decided “why not?” This is our last Gen for the rest of the year, so let's end it on a “Look At All My Favorites!” type of a bang. Also because it pained me to see all these not make it to some sort of Top Favorites highlight. And of course, they might not be 100% consistent with scores or previous Top 10 favorites. I'm only a human with a finicky brain that is constantly changing how absolutely precisely I feel about every single one of these. 

And... that's it... that's every single Pokemon reviewed. Every single Gen Recapped. We've had lots of ups and downs and plenty of getting a little too excited about cartoon animals. Gen 8 is still a ways away, and even when it comes out, I'd like to wait a few months to let the new designs settle into my mind before I go writing opinion pieces on all of them. And of course, for official artwork to be out for everybody.

BUT I do have a handful of ways to pass the time until Gen 8 does come out... What's up next exactly? Well, we won't have to wait too long, thankfully...

[Archive]

[rueitae]

2018 Fic Roundup

I did this last year and it was nice to do some self reflection and make some goals for 2019. I encourage all my writer friends to do this! No tagging necessary, just tell each other to do it. <3

It’s long, so putting the rest of the fic and reflection questions under the cut.

Stats:

Fics Posted (Gen): 6

Space Birthday (9,595 words): Hunk can feel it in his bones; it’s his birthday. He wants to have a nice one... and does... after accidentally raiding a Galra outpost with Lance and Pidge.

Pilot (4,340): Shiro finds himself in a different reality post s2. Here, the mechs are called Gundams. (Shiro in the Gundam Wing universe/reality)

Code (7,321): Pidge and the others keep fond memories of Earth through oldies musical trivia. It comes in handy on a mission.

Self Insert (6,357): Lance reads a story to his niece and nephew on the eve he leaves for school at the Galaxy Garrison. The kids have Opinions on how it should go.(i totally still need to change their names to the canon ones)

Too Soon and Not Soon Enough (1,796): Keith is 13 and is supposed to go to the Galaxy Garrison next year at Shiro’s encouragement. Until the Galra invade and plans change.

Welcome to the Neighborhood (2,237): Allura gets used to being not dead and that includes meeting her cosmic neighbors.

Fics Posted (Plance): 17

Wrong Diamond (2,384): Gentlemen thief AU. “At midnight, I will steal the heart of Voltron,” the note says. Pidge has a thief to catch.

Diamond in the Rough (8,045): prequel to Wrong Diamond. How they meet!

Road Trip (4,710): Lance and Pidge are back on Earth. Zarkon has the others and the two are on the run from a bureaucratic Galaxy Garrison that doesn’t want the world to know about aliens yet. Oh, and Lotor is with them.

Exsanguination (16,255): Pidge is a vampire hunter captured by Haggar. She finds some unlikely help in the vampire’s similarly undead servant.

Power Up! (3,500): Pidge is on the cusp of finding out where Zarkon is holding her father using less than legal methods. She’s caught in the act by her lab partner (Lance, a superhero in training).

Plance on Ice (2,300): A figure skating AU! Pidge and Lance are former competitive partners having a date free time on the ice

Being Plance (3,900): Pidge and Lance pull a personality switch prank over on the rest of the team. Canon verse.

Keeping Cool (3,098): Mermaid AU! Pidge is in trouble with pirates and gets some unexpected help from the sea.

The Cake (839): Canon verse, Lance gets a cake for his birthday and assumes it’s from Hunk.

Frostbite (6,109): Pidge is a renowned super villain. Lance is a hero in training with something to prove. Lance over uses his powers one day and Pidge has some soul searching to do.

Crystal Clear (5,516): Another superhero AU. Lance is captured by his arch nemesis. They have a heart-to-heart, taunt, and flirt.

The Secrets of Beasts (2,007): AU canon verse. Years down the road, Green keeps Pidge from going on a mission with the others. It takes Kosmo to find out why.

See You Yesterday (8,132): Lance works nervously as a bartender for a 1920s mafia when all he wanted to do was leave the farming life. One night he gets a strange patron who changes his life - and his perspective of the world. Time travel AU

Shot Through the Heart (1,087): post canon AU. Lance and Pidge keep Nadia and Sylvio entertained.

Seasons of Magic (11,744): Pidge is a mage. Lance is her dragon familiar. Series of domestic-ish one shots. Not in sequential order.

Between Rocks and A Hard Place (8,144): Canon verse. Pidge and Lance are trapped due to a caved-in mine, with pirates waiting for them on the other side. And Pidge is hurt.

Cow-parent Trapped (1,099): s8 canon continuation. Pidge visits Lance at the farm and does not expect Kaltenecker to make them talk to each other.

Lotura 1

Birthday Prompt #5 (5,500): Oh gosh I never named it. Fantasy AU in which Lotor is essentially Rapunzel and Allura is Aurora with a better (depending on who you ask) birth-prophesy. Tiny hint of Shallura in this as well.

Collaborations: 3

First Encounters for the (Altean Plance AU): Pidge is an independent noblewoman and Lance is her bodyguard. Writing done with @hushman and @pidge-suggestions

To Sail, To Break, To Earn (Plance - 10,268): Lance is a pirate and Pidge is a mermaid. There’s also a curse involved. With @sp4c3-0ddity

It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like A Christmas Carol (Plance- 14,384): post s8 canon verse with @hailqiqi and @sp4c3-0ddity. Exactly as the title says. Lance is the subject of a ghostly intervention. Crack treated seriously.

Fey AU (Plance): with @vivalachocolate this was @sp4c3-0ddity ‘s prompt to Viva but I was nosy and added a chapter and I’m so glad she wasn’t mad at me for it. 😅

Ship/Character breakdown:

Ship breakdown:

I guess the 17 Plance fics speak for themselves. I did write one Lotura fic as a special birthday prompt because @ritsykitty is such a good friend.

Character breakdown:

I have a gen fic for each Paladin, but then the Plance fics outnumber those, so Lance and Pidge would be my go to.

Characters that had the main focus:

So for character POV, each Paladin has one, then within Plance, Pidge has 12 and Lance has 7. Interesting, I thought it was more even. Hunk had a POV in a Plance fic too briefly!

Specifics:

Best/worst title?

Best title: Urgh I liked a lot of them. Too Soon and Not Soon Enough probably. I like how it summarizes the story without telling you how, but by the end you know.

Worst title: Seasons of Magic aka I tried to come up with a clever title when I realized I wasn’t done with it. It’s so bland to me. I’m also basically trying to rebrand from mage/familiar AU. I don’t think it’s working 😅 (not that I care I’m trying to make it easier to reference but I’m too late)

Best/worst last line?

Best: “I love you too, Pidge,” he [Lance] says, nestling her head to his chest and not bothering to correct her. “You’re the best nemesis a hero could ask for.” - I love that line so much, from Crystal Clear. Enemies to lovers is such a good trope.

Worst: Pidge groans. At this rate her double life is definitely doomed to unravel. - for how much I love Frostbite, I really hate how lame it ends. Like I totally could have said that better or continued the scene a bit but I am LAZY.

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I wrote waaaaaaay more than expected. I figured I’d write something every few months. Now I can write a 2k fic in a setting if I’m on game.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

I was just doing gen fic last year, never would I have expected to be so taken by Plance that it became my main muse.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Honestly? Probably Pilot. It was one of my earliest VLD fic ideas to do a Gundam Wing crossover and to actually finish a one shot early in the year (when I was still dipping my feet into fandom again) just made me so so happy. I still smile thinking about the continuation possibilities. One of my favorite parts of Shiro’s character is that he is the ace pilot. Because of Keith’s role that sometimes gets overshadowed. I was so pleased to get to highlight that.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

On Ao3, that would be Exsanguination. No surprise there, it was my first posted Plance fic and I continued it.

On Tumblr it’s First Encounters, the first of the Altean Plance AU based on the art and headcanons. I was just struck with a clear opening image one afternoon and wrote it all right then and there. I had no idea it would be so well received.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

Space Birthday. It may have been a bit of a mess since it was my very first VLD fic, but it has everything I love. Hunk bonding with an ‘enemy’ over cooking, Team Punk, Plance in distress, Hunk saves the day thanks to mechanics. Also heartfelt stuff with Keith. And he’s the only Paladin besides Lance to get an actual birthday themed fic from me.

Story that could have been better?

I really hate to say Wrong Diamond, but I totally could have done much better with it. It feels skimpy. Probably why I am still writing in the AU.

Sexiest story?

Ha. That would be a tie between Crystal Clear and Exsanguination. The first I actually tried and the second completely by accident. I’m not sure it worked though.

Saddest story?

All my sad fics have a bit of crack to them. Pilot is pretty melancholy. Crystal Clear has a good Plance argument that gets heated. Road Trip in general though might take the cake. It’s full of angst amid some humor due to the premise.

Most fun?

Shot Through the Heart in terms of tone.

Story with single sweetest moment? Space Birthday

"Uh, Keith, hold up a tic."

Confused, Keith turned back around. "What?"

Hunk rubbed the back of his neck. "So uh, you know we're friends right? Like, I meant what I said we're like brothers. We're tight. I mean, we share a mind inside of a giant robot."

Keith blinked, clearly surprised. "Yeah, I kinda got that from the hug you gave me back then. It was nice," he said with a smile. "And we work well together."

"Yeah so - wait what? No, I'm supposed to be giving you the pep talk here."

"It's fine, Hunk. I'm doing important work and so are you. I already had this talk with Allura."

"Oh. Well, what I'm trying to say is that we're friends. I care a lot about you and your feelings. So if I say something that's weird or you don't like, you gotta tell me. I'm a terrible and nosy person and I'm sorry."

Keith stood silent, processing the words, and then smiling. "I've accepted the side of me that's Galra," he said simply. "It's still a little weird, but I've always had this feeling that something didn't add up." He smiled a bit. "I don't mind a question or two, but I'm still learning myself."

"Deal, no Galra questions for a while then. Just as long as you come visit more often, okay? We all miss you.

"...hug it out?"

Keith snorted and obliged into Hunk's waiting arms. "Always."

Hardest story to write?

I struggled with the ending to Exsanguination. It took forever to come to me.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

I wrote The Secrets of Beasts in one setting and I still can’t believe how easily it came out. I blame the Plance discord folks for putting everyone on a baby craze.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

Not particularly? I write based on my existing understanding of the characters and nothing really surprised to that note.

Most overdue story?

Welcome to the Neighborhood. I wanted to write that Allura gen fic all year (as I wanted one for all the Paladins) and I hoped s8 would give me the motivation. It was not worth the cost.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Collaborations! And participating in a zine! And signing up for events (exchanges and bangs)! I learned that it’s not that scary. People are chill and so easy to get along with. Also the task isn’t as daunting as I think of it’s an idea I love.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

This is hard because I’m already doing above and beyond what I ever expected to be doing writing wise. I suppose it will be to finish my gen fic since I’ve been writing a lot of plance lately.

[sunnybimbo]

New Year’s Wrap Up

i was literally just thinking about this and surprise!! boss has got me covered 

weathered (887 words)

Blueberry and Dandelions (2614 words)

Candlelight (1811 words)

Pas de Deux, adagio (23369 words)

Greasy Kisses (1080 words)

Me First! (1563 words)

Howling Heart (2553 words)

Dearly Beloved (3671 words)

Silence is Golden (2153 words)

Molten Gold (2953 words)

Dreaming (5303 words)

Chrysalis (483 words)

Marks You Leave (1182 words)

The Heart Speaks In Whiskers (2612 words)

Refracted (973 words)

All We Need (15983 words)

Whipped (2823 words)

dusklight (2025 words)

left in the dust (2218 words)

Pull of My Hips (3448 words)

the notion of the idea of waiting for you (3242 words)

Fall In (2000 words)

catching your light in my palms (2891 words)

Total Fics: 23 (excluding spice fics which raise it to 31) Total Words: 93,128

(read more bc s u p e r l o n g p o s t)

Ship/character breakdown: Ship breakdown:

Heith - 8 Fics Shunk - 6 Fics Sheith - 2 Fics and the rest have less than one fic attached, or are gen <3

Character breakdown:

Hunk - 20 Shiro - 15 Keith - 14 (w/ Kosmo at a solid 4 appearances yeet) Lance - 7 Pidge - 5 Allura - 3 Lotor - 2 Coran - 2 and special shoutout to Kolivan @ 2 as well

Characters that had the main focus: u already know it,,,,,,, 💛

Specifics:

Best/worst title? Best title:  i really can’t decide between: ‘the heart speaks in whiskers’ vs ‘blueberry and dandelions’ so take both Worst title: Dearly Beloved,,,,,,, i could’ve gone WAY cheesy

Best/worst first line?

best (Dreaming)

“You don’t have to do this.” Pidge says to him, just as the dawn begins to settle. He’s surrounded by faceless people, or atleast it feels that way with how little they look at him, so he focuses on nothing but her. Heavy makeup is traced across his eyelids, golden lines echoing the whisper of sun beams that paint his skin.

i love,,,,, yellow imagery in my fics,,,,,,, sue me 

also hidge friendship! yeah!!!

worst (Molten Gold): 

Lotor falls for the boy in yellow before he realizes it even happens.

just because i Remember not being able to think of anything more interesting to start with so i just slapped that on

Best/worst last line?

i waver so much but FINAL ANSWER:

i have TWO best ones, though.

(Dreaming): 

And Shiro is a greedy god, a selfish god, a lonely god. But forever and always would he be a kind one.

(Pas de Deux, adagio)

It feels the exact same way about two months later, — sending a current of pleasant electricity thrumming through him, until his fingertips tingle and his heart soars— when Hunk proposes in the very pasture they'd met in. Keith, if it isn't obvious by the way he smooches Hunk silly, says yes.  

And they lived happily ever after.

everytime i think about this fic i always wanna write a million and one words about it

worst (weathered):

They didn’t say anymore words, but the love (not to mention, the unadulterated mitigation of their combined grief) still nestled its way to his heart. There would never be enough time to describe how happy he was to see them again. And he knew that (and maybe he always knew) despite everything, here in his mama’s arms with his brothers and the familiar smell of grass and ocean, would always be his home.

only because it’s s o l o n g and kinda confusing to read

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I wrote a bunch less than last year, but this year was OOF so I didn’t do as much (93k vs last years 200+k ;w;)

although this IS disregarding my spice fics where i wrote almost 38k so,,, i didn’t do TOO terribly :D

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? spice: hunk/sendak......

but other than that, i’ve really stuck to heith/shunk! What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Familiar Faces is by far my favorite of the year.  It was fun, it was kooky, it was funny, it was dramatic.  Structurally it was among the most challenging (Two chapters happen simultaneously and that had to be plotted out well).  Also, it was just super fun to work with Velkyn!

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

By kudos, Coming Through the Noise.  Which is cool!  I’d never seen a Gen truth serum fic before, and it was extra fun for a very reserved character like Shiro. Story most underappreciated by the universe? Unrelenting, probably.  It’s all about the nature of being a Hufflepuff from Hunk’s POV, so I get why it doesn’t get a big audience.  But I love it.  Puffs need more love :( Story that could have been better? I like Shackles on my Wings, but it probably could have done with an extra polish (most things I write could tbh) Sexiest story?

DEFINITELY on my mind over @ my horni write write

Saddest story? god.... Silence is Golden for sure,,,,, (tw for torture/whump/i guess mild gore???)

Most fun? Pas de Deux, adagio,,,,,, i love myself some fairy tale (*cough* barbie* cough) crossovers.

Story with single sweetest moment?

i really gotta go with Pas de Deux again

"I'll be fine." Keith says as he pulls away. "Tonight isn't about this. Let's... let's dance. I've never danced before."

"Really?" Then, realizing that no, Keith probably would have never gotten the opportunity, Hunk stands and offers his elbow to him. "Well, I'm obligated to show you the best time of your life now."

They don't head towards the ballroom. Instead, they skirt around the edges of the castle until they find a window, left ajar just enough so that they can hear the music loud and clear.

Hunk offers his hand, and Keith lets his drop in his large palm. He's gathered up, then, with one arm around his waist, and it takes a bit of ushering from Hunk for him to catch the rhythm. Keith stumbles over his own feet more than once, caught between looking down at the motions and up at Hunk's face.

In the end, Hunk lifts him just a few inches up and lets him rest on the tip of his boots so that he can dance them around without having to worry about stepping on Keith's toes. He isn't wearing shoes, after all.

They dance until the song changes twice, and Keith finds himself pressing an ear against Hunk's heart, basking in the steady beat for as long as he's allowed. Every so often, Hunk will hum to the tune and the vibrations will course straight through Keith's body, like light through a rainbow prism.

Keith was right when he'd assumed that his dress would be fun to twirl in. The fabric is kind against his skin as it flips this way and that, but Hunk’s touch against his back is even kinder.

Hardest story to write?

All We Need, because i was at a r e a l l y bad place when i tried to tame that beast, but i’m so proud of how it turned out, and also i’d probably do anything for peach c’:

Easiest/most fun story to write?

left in the dust flowed out of me like water out of a spout,,,, it was Magical

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

mmmm i don’t think so? All We Need made me more conscientious of canon characterization, but by like maybe 10% asljhadl

Most overdue story?

dude..... All We Need, again. peachie was so patient and kind while it took me like 80 years ;w; 

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

i tried to be more Flowy n Metaphorical in my writing because i love that shit, and i think it’s going pretty well. i lost my touch somewhere around the end of summer for a bit, bc again i was having some Fucky moments, but overall i think i’m doing alright!!!! 

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

i have a couple long fic ideas i want to do!!! which i totally don’t mind talking about if anyone happens to be a little curious. one is an arriety au (bc i’ve never read the borrowers) and the other is that one old west au i literally never shut up about. 

there’s another one i’m iffy about where it’s basically shunk in Therapy together yayyyyyy, but we’ll see if that one stays dead

but overall: my biggest goal is to write more longfics for rarepairs!!! also more things w/ women bc i’ve really been slacking on that end. 

also maybe something for she-ra? i wrote down a couple ideas the other day that i’d love to explore

✍️ wish me luck!!!

tagging: 

@grassepi @drdone @ironinkpen @darlingaces @tootsonnewts @oops-i-accidentally @dansantsouslalune @sakura-daydream @call-me-kaii @maternalcube @turtlelady17 

plus anyone else who sees this that wants to do this!!!! i always forget people for these things

[captainkirkk]

ok so. so so so. this will be a long message, because frick on a stick there is so much i want to tell you and thank you for. so brace yoself: i read history has its eyes on you only yesterday, but i've been desparately rereading it ever since, almost non-stop, because holy macaroni if this fic ain't one of the most perfect stories these tired eyes have ever seen. i love SO MANY THINGS i'm not sure where to even start, gosh. okay. okay. let's start at the beginning. (1/?)

WEEPS. You sent me A DOZEN messages, bless you? And thank you!!!

This ask and my response got long, so I’m putting it under the cut. There’s a bunch of headcanons about the ‘see it all in bloom’ universe in here, so if you’re interested, keep reading. 

your headcanons regarding class 3-a’s rise to fame/the july attacks/deku’s leap in the limelight as future number one, i adore it all. it makes sense, it’s exciting even if we don’t get to see it on the page word-for-word/in real time, and it’s inspiring too! but most of all, it fits them all so well – they deserve to be written as great heroes and i’m beyond happy you gave that to them in your story – to ALL of them, including shinsou. cookies for you. (2/?)

secondly, the rankings you picked for them – deku as no.1 of course, and katsuki ACTUALLY BEING CONTENT WITH SECOND PLACE, EFF YEAH! and shouto at no.4, holding neither all might’s nor his father’s former ranks, i appreciate the heck out of this. just… all the kids becoming awesome heroes and having wonderful, fulfilling careers just like they’ve always wanted, i’m here for this and i’m here to STAY. (3/?)

thirdly, katsuki’s character. i will be the first person in this fandom to admit my intense dislike of him, but you’ve written him in exactly the way i’ve always wanted him to turn out – significantly less jaded, noticeably more humble (and sane…), actively working to correct the mistakes of his past by becoming an advocate for quirkless kids and participating in anti-bullying campaigns (as an ex bully-victim, reading this made me want to kiss you) with deku, that felt sweet on the soul (4/?)

and also being married to kirishima, of course. DUH. speaking of which, the ships! THE SHIPS! ALL. MY. FAVOURITE. SHIPS. they were all there, they all got attention, and i love you all the more for it. tododeku especially. i just love how tenderly yet comfortably they were written. in my mind, they’ve always felt like the couple that will get the happily-ever-after kind of romance, like two souls mated in a fairy tale come to life. and they, above all others, deserve that everlasting joy (5/?)

and the parts with toshinoti, how he’s dealing with his new(-ish?) lifestyle and the world is spinning on without him, but also taking care of him, because he’s more than earned it – how all his former friends and students have become family to him and are so eager to remain an active part of his life, how he helps bakugou with teaching (for dummies ;P) and is so painfully proud of deku, it was all so deeply touching and heartwarming, i loved every single one of his scenes to bits! (6/?)

the writing was wonderful forma purely technical point as well: there were some typos but nothing serious, and it all flowed quickly yet smoothly – you stylde felt simple and dynamic, but also somehow profound, perhaps precisely because of its simplicity. i still can’t put my finger on it. i just know i loved it. your ocs were a great addition too! their personalities felt distinct and they left good impressions without overstaying their welcome in a class 3-a-centred story, top job! (7/?)

the whole domestic feel of the fic was wonderful as well! it felt like a true slice-of-life piece, even though the lives in question are filled with action and danger. you captured the nature of the balance between working your (adventurous and stardom-speckled) dream job and living your private life/spending quality off-time with friends very accurately. the final excerpt (the description of the photo) left a sweetly nostalgic sense buzzing in my chest. just… thank you for this story. (8/?)

and now that i’m done singing your praises, time for the payback! i adore this verse, and therefore i naturally have questions. first and most importantly, the tododeku relationship development. could you tell me when and how they got together in this verse, how that whole tidbit with suing endeavour went, and when and how exactly they got engaged? i assume it’s in the 5 months leading up to the reunion, but details please? future wedding details too? give me ALL THE DETAILS. (9/?)

then, ranking details! we know deku’s no.1, bakugou’s no.2, and shouto’s no.4, but the fic mentions the class currently has 6 members in the top 10. who are the rest, and who’s the number 3 hero? please tell me it’s momo. PLEASE. also, have their ranks changed since the time they graduated, or have they remained the same for the last 7 years (i.e. deku’s always been no.1 ever since he entered the ranklist, shouto’s always been no.4, etc.)? and what’s shinsou’s rank? (10/?)

what about teaching details? where’s nedzu if aizawa’s principle? is shinsou a part-time teacher or a guest lecturer? does bakugou now do teaching full time, or does he only do homeroom for one class and keeps hero-ing in the meantime? will he even remain in the ranklist if he stops fighting villains? will he even care? and on a less-related note, are bakushima the only married couple? and when did they get married? was deku best man? my shameless curiosity demands to know everything (11/?)

finally, in case i haven’t tormented you enough, i wanted to ask, how do you envision our heroes’ futures? we know they’re only 25 in the story, and tododeku are about to soon get married. and bakushima are married already, bakugou’s switching careers, yada yada. but if you had to plot a course for the rest of class 3-a’s lives, what would it look like? all might mentioned grandchildren, but would tododeku want that? and where even was/is kouda in this entire fic? xDDD thank you!!! (12/12)

Again: thanks for the comments! I’m so glad you enjoyed this.

The next ‘in bloom’ instalment will focus on Bakugou becoming involved in anti-bullying campaigns. I’m with you, Bakugou makes me very uncomfortable in canon, but occasionally we get these glimpses of character development (esp in the manga), and I just needed to bring that out and expand on it. 

And there will always be typos in my work, unfortunately. I don’t have a beta, and I’m a dumb-ass who always misses my errors. I do my best, but I am only human.

I won’t give you all the details (partly because I don’t have this universe entirely mapped out yet), but you can have some answers:

TodoDeku have a long engagement. They were engaged before we see them in ‘history…’ actually. They’re in no rush, and are very busy with their work lives, and are enjoying the blissfully engaged lifestyle. They’ve been engaged for about a year, and they have some vague plans, but nothing concrete. At the moment, they’re debating the merits of getting married somewhere private in the city vs. getting married on Toshinori’s estate. I’m not sure which one will win out. 

Their rankings have changed A LOT! When he officially entered the rankings when he was 19, Deku only ended up no. 20, because it had been over a year since the July Attacks, and he hasn’t actually done much since then, being busy with exams/graduating/entering a hero agency. A lot of people were upset by this, but it didn’t bother Deku. He was ecstatic to scrap into the Top 20 as it was.

Sorry, no. 3 belongs to Inasa (from the manga). The top 10 has changed a lot, too. There’s actually seven 1a heroes in the top 10 - Uravity was No. 11 but got a jump in popularity recently. In order: Deku, Detonation, Gale (Inasa), Polarise, unnamed number 5, Creati, Red Riot, Ingenium, an unnamed number 9, and Uravity. 

Shinsou is rankless. He’s an underground hero, and I headcanon that those types of heroes are not typically assigned ranks.

Shinsou has his own role at UA. He does a bunch of stuff: watches the entrance exams, works with some of the Gen. Ed kids, oversees possible transfers between courses, and does guest lectures. Aizawa gives him a lot of independent power.

Bakugou co-teaches Class 1-B. He occasionally guest lecturers other classes (like how Thirteen worked one-off with 1-A during the USJ attack). He has enough time to do hero work too, but he has a less intense work-load now that he’s also teaching.

Kirishima and Bakugou are the only married couple at the moment. They got married when they were 23, before TodoDeku had gotten engaged. They were the first couple to start dating in high school, too. They just … clicked, and never looked back.

Do you mean Kouda or Kouta? Kouda is probably off running a rescue animal shelter while doing minor hero work, too. Kouta is doing amateur film work and arguing with classmates when they don’t believe that he knows pro heroes irl.

I almost wrote Jirou and Momo announcing their engagement at the reunion, but at that point, I had been writing the fic for months, and I needed to upload it before I combusted. So. Yeah. They get engaged around the end of the fic.

I haven’t thought too hard about kids but … I can’t get the image of Kiri/Baku adopting an orphaned girl when they’re in their 30s, and Bakugou ringing up Midoriya to ask him to be the godfather, and Midoriya CRYING FOR HOURS. HOURS. He catches the train over at like 11pm, still in his pjs, still crying, and all over twitter there’s pics of Deku crying into a phone, sparking all kinds of terrible rumours, until he uploads a photo of him cradling his goddaughter in his arms a few hours later. 

I also have more headcanons in my history verse tag, if you’re curious. Thanks again!

[aion-rsa]

Why Grand Theft Auto 3 Deserves a Remake

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Rockstar recently confirmed that the next-generation version of Grand Theft Auto 5 will be released on November 11 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, but the GTA news that’s catching everyone’s attention at the moment is this section of a recent GTA Online update blog post:

“In honor of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto III, we’ll have even more fun surprises to share — including some specifically for GTA Online players.” While recent years have taught us to not get our hopes up in regards to impending GTA announcements (and GTA Online players may end up getting the bulk of any new content), players can’t help but hold out hope for some kind of new GTA release, even if it’s only the rumored remaster of GTA 3 that’s been floating around for the last few years.

However, I think that GTA 3 deserves more than a remaster and a couple of themed GTA Online items. To be more specific, I think that GTA 3 deserves a remake on the level of Resident Evil 2 and 3‘s recent remakes, or even a remake as ambitious as Final Fantasy 7. You may be saying “Oh, of course it does,” but the reason that GTA 3 deserves a full remake is less about how great it would be to play any kind of even vaguely new GTA game and is more about how GTA 3‘s worst qualities deserve to be fixed just as its best qualities deserve to be celebrated.

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GTA 3 is the Most Important and Influential Game of the Last 20 Years

I was lucky enough to get GTA 3 as a Christmas present in 2001, and I’ll never forget describing the game to a friend. I was trying to explain how you could steal nearly any car and then drive around the city in it, but he just couldn’t understand. He kept assuring me that I must be mistaken and that you could only steal some of the cars and that taking one somehow loaded a “driving level.”

At a time before “sandbox” and “open-world” became shorthand for that kind of experience, GTA 3 was just this game that people had always dreamed of but still seemed to be years away from actually being possible. While there were open-world games before GTA 3, nearly all of them made compromises designed to help hide the fact that they couldn’t quite offer the nearly seamless free-roaming experience that they sometimes presented themselves as.

After years of false starts and false promises largely caused by technological limitations, GTA 3 was suddenly just there and waiting to be experienced. It wasn’t just that the game offered a large area to walk around in; it was the fact that the game successfully convinced us that you really could do anything in that world. Of course, it managed to convince us anything was possible because it actually made so much possible.

More importantly, GTA 3 was an action-adventure game whereas so many notable early “open-world” games were RPGs that depended on slower gameplay to compensate for the inherent limitations of their worlds. Even better, GTA 3 was a full-blown crime epic released at a time when you could count the worthwhile crime video games that had ever been released on one hand. It wasn’t just the scope of the chaos; it was the chaotic nature of the entire idea and the way that the game’s open-world design allowed Rockstar to realize that vision in a way that no other format could have.

While you could certainly argue that the modern gaming industry is a little too obsessed with open-world titles and have made them feel more standard by turning them into the standard for Triple-A design, you can trace most of the key elements of Triple-A game design in 2021 to GTA 3. It was a bolt of lightning that made us ask new questions about what was possible, and it made every other developer in the industry spend the next 20 years looking for the answers to those questions.

Honestly, the game deserves a proper remake on the basis of its historical significance alone.

GTA 3 Still Does Some Things Better Than Any Other GTA Game

Most people talk about GTA 3 as a historically significant game above all else for reasons we’ve already discussed and reasons that we’ll soon talk about, but GTA 3 really does do some things better than any GTA game since.

While I’d argue that GTA 3 still has the best talk radio station in any GTA game (Chatterbox’s script lives rent free in my mind) and some of the most memorable side characters in GTA history, the game’s biggest asset is undoubtedly its “pure” sandbox style.

As the 3D evolution of the original GTA titles, GTA 3 retained the more chaotic nature of those original games. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever spent as much time running around and getting into trouble in a GTA game as I did with GTA 3. Granted, that has something to do with the lack of sidequests and other distractions found in later GTA games, but there’s something to be said for how GTA 3 was clearly designed with open-world chaos in mind.

The GTA 3 may have been experimenting with a more cinematic style that would later play a bigger role in the GTA series, but years later, it’s easy to be fond of GTA 3‘s more arcade-like nature if for no other reason that so many of the great open-world games that followed would struggle to replicate the simple pleasures of the game’s often cheat code fuelled chaos.

Speaking of which…

GTA Vice City “Replaced” GTA 3 a Little Too Quickly

Considering that it’s been eight years since GTA 5 was released, it’s incredible to think that GTA Vice City was released just one year after GTA 3 and improved upon the previous game in a lot of notable ways.

While you’ll never hear me bad mouth GTA Vice City for more than a minute, it’s always been a little tragic that Vice City‘s ’80s vibes, world-class soundtrack, and high-profile voice actors made Vice City a viable GTA 3 replacement at a time when we were still processing how revolutionary GTA 3 truly way.

Again, that’s mostly because GTA Vice City was a better overall game than GTA 3, but that’s kind of the point. Rockstar so quickly addressed so many of GTA 3‘s problems with Vice City that it feels like we barely had time to talk about GTA 3‘s characters, settings, most memorable lines, fun quirks, and all the little things that simply didn’t exist in Vice City.

Maybe it’s inevitable that a remaster or remake of GTA 3 will ultimately just make people ask for a remake or remaster of Vice City, but in a way, that’s all the more reason to remake GTA 3. While you could give Vice City a new coat of paint and earn the praise of many GTA fans, GTA 3 needs a little more love to properly stand out in the modern era and feel like the revolutionary game that it very much was.

To put it another way, Vice City was (in a lot of ways) already a kind of remaster or reimagining of GTA 3, which is part of the reason it was so successful. It let Rockstar use the core design principles they established with the previous games and focus on the embellishments and intangible elements that would put Vice City over-the-top. What I really want to see is how Rockstar can enhance the core GTA 3 experience with help from the knowledge of everything they’ve learned and accomplished since it was released.

A GTA 3 Remake is the Best Way to Return to Liberty City

When most people talk about GTA 6‘s map, they tend to focus on its potential size (as well as the game’s location) and their hope that GTA 6 will be significantly bigger than GTA 5. While that’s certainly understandable, it’s a little sad to think that escalation in that area of game design mean that we might never get another GTA game that focuses as heavily on a single major city.

That’s honestly maybe the biggest reason why I’m rooting for a GTA 3 remake. While GTA 4 offered a glimpse at what a more modern version of Liberty City would look like, video game technology has advanced so much since then. I’d absolutely love to see what Rockstar could do if they were tasked with using the best next-gen technology to build a slightly smaller map designed to showcase an incredibly detailed version of Liberty City that may very well become the definitive portrayal of arguably the most important city in the GTA universe.

There is a “Lost” Version of GTA 3 a Remake Could Restore

In case you didn’t know, a fair bit of content was cut from GTA 3 not long before it was released. In fact, some fans have tried to restore that lost content to the PC version of the game over the years.

Granted, it sounds like the cut content wouldn’t have drastically altered the final product, but it’s especially interesting to note that most of the content that was cut from the game was cut due to concerns related to the 9/11 attacks that occurred just weeks before GTA 3‘s intended release date. The rest of the missing content just consists of things that were lost along the way for one reason or another.

While Rockstar has said that GTA 3 would only have been about 1% different from what we eventually got if that content had been implemented, I’d still love to play the “original” version of GTA 3 via a remake that restores whatever originally cut content is appropriate.

The post Why Grand Theft Auto 3 Deserves a Remake appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2RskztK

[kira-the-cat]

So now that I’m feeling better after last night, lets talk about why I and a lot of other people are not happy with Pokemon Lets Go. Full disclosure, if you’re happy and excited that’s fine. Please respect that people aren’t. Don’t go yelling at people who aren’t. Same applies to people that aren’t happy about it. Don’t blast people that are. This got long while I was typing so its going under a cut.

With that out of the way the main reason I’m not personally happy about it is that its once again Kanto. I understand that this is a test game, however there were numerous other ways to test the Switch’s power with Pokemon. Even if they wouldn’t have been Sinnoh remakes we still haven’t gotten a new Mystery Dungeon game since Super (which I find a missed opporotunity since we could have had Ultra Mystery Dungeon to keep with the themes from USuMo and getting to pick some Gen 7 mons would have been neat), there’s the neglected Ranger series, since the game is less battle oriented than usual we could have gotten our first actual Contest themed game, there’s the highly neglected Orre region, etc. What I’m saying is there were a lot of ways to do this that weren’t just Gen 1 again.

That brings me to my next point; the fact that we are once again restricted to just the first 151 Pokemon (I’m not counting whatever the new one is because I’m of the opinion that its probably just Zeraora since it was never legitimately released for Gen 7 despite having code in USuMo) plus a handful of their Alolan forms to even the type chart out. I have absolutely no idea why they were doing this when it was completely hated in FRLG. And while I’m aware that Gen 5 essentially did the same thing the difference is that Gen 5 was all Unova Pokemon. You had to adjust to new Pokemon and moves and abilities instead of relying on the ones you knew how to work with. And then once you finished the main story you had the option to mix your party up besides the Unova mons. Everyone knows how good/bad the Gen 1 mons are. All this does is lead to people with the exact same teams because there’s barely any variety. There’s also the fact that PoGo has up to Gen 3 so there’s zero reason for such an arbitrary restriction except to pander to nostalgia.

This feels suspiciously like what happened with Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania and I already see the issues that those two games caused popping up in the main tag. Let’s Go is basically Mania in that its designed to mostly pander to the nostalgic crowd and “casual” PoGo players who either have no interest or find the newer games overwhelming. The 2019 game is Forces. A game with a lot of hyped up potential and very little information right now. Pretty much rumored to be designed with the more solid fanbase in mind. Now at first glance this doesn’t seem to be an issue, GF/Sega is playing to both sides, trying to keep everyone happy. On the surface that’s a great idea. In reality all it does is create a shit ton of tension between the people who are, justifiably, sick of all the spotlight treatment Gen 1/Classic Sonic gets especially in recent years and the people who think that that much spotlight focus is no big deal.

The removal of wild battles in favor of overworld encounters. While this has been confirmed to not carry over to the 2019 game this still leaves a sour taste in a lot of people mouths especially when trainer battles are kept and Exp gain seems to be linked to catching Pokemon which is another thing bothering people because of catching being exclusively motion control related. Now whether they will or will not be optional is another story entirely but given how skewed the RNG is in PoGo I don’t have high hopes for it in this game. Also I understand that this doesn’t exist in the GameCube games, however there’s a plausible reason for that. This is just copying PoGo.

The weird state its in. Apparently its a main title according to Game Freak, albeit one for casual fans, yet it feels like a side game with the gimmicky feel of it. And that’s not to say gimmicks are bad, just that this feels a lot more like a side game than a main one.

Speaking of casual, the assumption that Pokemon is a hard series to grasp that it needs a game like this baffles me. Pokemon is far from a hard series, and this is from someone that plays games that tend to be unforgiving and has been playing games with limited lives for years. Especially recently Pokemon has gotten much easier, going as far as to railroad the player via cutscenes in Gen 7 and the implimentation of the Exp All which is on by default. Sure there’s been some difficult puzzles, most of which are optional, but the answer can be nowadays found on the internet so most of the challenge is removed there. Even still, the series has remained one of the easiest to play as well access. Every game in the series, from Gen 1 to 7 can be accessed and played. You can work your way up through the games to learn how they work. The claim that Lets Go is designed to make the series even easier makes me feel like people underestimate just how easy the games truly are.

And my ultimate gripe with the game is that they brought back the one mechanic I, and a lot of other people, have been asking for since Gen 4 and its so far restricted to Gen 1. Every single Pokemon thus far has a walk/run animation as revealed by Dataminers last year when USuMo came out. Hell that game was the one that so heavily teased it by having interactable Pokemon in the overworld, showing the Pokemon outside their Pokeballs in cutscenes to the point that Hau’s starter will always follow him outside of it. 

I don’t like the insinuation that they brought back a highly requested feature only to dangle it behind the ever obnoxious presence that is Kanto and Gen 1. Now if its in the 2019 game that’s something different, but considering they’re marketing this at “casual” players I feel like it won’t be in the other game because its apparently not what the so called “hardcore” crowd would want. It really sucks that the one feature about this game I desperately want is tied to a region I have grown to really loathe since Gen 6. It hurts, because I missed following Pokemon so much and when I saw that there were Pokemon I could play with in the overworld for USuMo I had high hopes that it was in the full game only it wasn’t. I’m really bitter over that fact because it hurts that it was teased so damn much only to result in this. 

Honestly when this is all said and done I don’t want to hear another peep about Kanto for at least the next three Gens. You got what you wanted, let the rest of the series be free of this.