#global friends

[stariel-and-stuff]

Streams and School #7

Sunday and Monday Edition cuz I've watched basically the same stuff over these days. I've watched a lot of 'little' things today. I started with reading lots of high-class homos (cuz I found out its back!!) and Unfamiliar. I watched more my Yters than Hermitcrafters today with lots of Acheeto, Think Before You Sleep, Willymacshow, Jacksfilms, Scribblejuice and Ginny Di. I also watched most of Pearl, Gem and Impulse's streams (maining [have audio for and can see always] Pearl until raid the Gem). After that I played a bunch of DND (not a stream but I'm writing it anywhere) in my main campaign 'Dungeon of Duffla' We took a break from playing it bc the DM was burnt out but I'm SO HAPPY to be back. I also watched a lot of Ana Saia and some Global Friends, Loic Suberville and Awesome World (I'm hyper-fixating on Hispanic culture and learning Spanish).

[frombehindthepen]

So Many Friends! How Awesome is That? 🙏🏽

Image Credit: Geralt You have no idea how much you touched my spirit. 🤗 I had to postpone today’s originally scheduled post to respond to my heartfelt gratitude for the beautiful responses to my post yesterday, “My Global Shoutout of Gratitude Day.” As I began to read where so many of you are from in my expanse of international friendship, the biggest of tears welled in my eyes and I really got…

[machineheaded]

Procrastination a deadly sin...

Who agrees?????

[sad-leon]

did ya boi enter week 3 of @tmntfashioncompetition just to dress up my blorbo in a villain outfit? yes, yes i did ^_^

anyways~

yes, tis me, going up against @thegunnsara and @cokoweee

outfit is just Talulah (Arknights) cosplay :D

also special thanks to @v-albion for hyping me up everytime i shared progress shots <3

[otlwoozi]

MAMA 2024 ALBUM DAESANG - FML

[clubpenguinkiller]

she’s so awesome

[spokenfromtheheartandsoul]

funniest part of ray trying to tally up of sand's 20 side hustles and make sense of it is that while part of it is just him being genuinely intrigued by sand, it also seemed like there was the rich boy part of of him that's genuinely baffled by the concept. ray's like, "so you're a singer AND a drug dealer AND a moonshiner and you're STILL poor? jeez, how bad is the economy right now? i wouldn't know"

[millenniallust4death]

This July, my mom and I are stepping up for a great cause! We're participating in the Multiple Myeloma March, organized by Myeloma Canada. We are committing to walking 200,000 steps around our charming (and often sweltering!) town of Wheatley, Ontario. We'd be thrilled if you would consider supporting our modest goal of raising $392. As a token of our appreciation, every donor will receive a special Martin and GSD postcard (if you feel comfortable sharing your address with me). Check out the donation link below —thank you for your generosity! ❤️

Donate: https://shorturl.at/u84HL

[crazycatsiren]

Keep yourself safe from the heat, be sure to drink water and stay indoors from 10am to October 30th.

[sasaranurude]

Okay. I've been playing Tokyo Debunker today, since the release happened to catch me on a day when all I'd planned to do was write fanfiction. I just finished reading the game story prologue (it was longer than expected!), so here's a review type post. If you're reading this post not having seen a single thing about this game: it's a story-based joseimuke gacha mobile game that just released globally today. It's about a girl who suddenly finds herself attending a magic school and mingling with elite, superhuman students known as ghouls. If you look in the tumblr tag for the game you'll see what appears to be a completely different game from 2019 or so: they retooled it completely midway through development, changing just about everything about it due to "escalating competition within the gaming industry."

I'll talk about how this looks like a blatant twst clone at the end.

Starting with the positive: The story is charming. I enjoyed it thoroughly the entire time and am excited to read more. The mix between visual novel segments and motion comics was really nice--it broke things up and added a lot of oomph to the action or atmospheric scenes that visual novels generally lack. I like the art in the comic parts a lot. the live2d in the visual novel parts is... passable. Tone-wise, I think the story was a little bit all over the place and would like to see more of the horror that it opened on, but I didn't mind the comedic direction it went in either. The translation is completely seamless. The characters so far all have unique voices and are just super fun and cute. Of the ones who've had larger roles in the story so far, there's not a single one I dislike. It's all fully voiced in Japanese and the acting is solid. (I don't recognize any voices, and can't seem to find any seiyuu credits, so it seems they're not big names, but they deliver nonetheless.) Kaito in particular I found I was laughing at his lines a ton, both the voicing and the writing.

He's looking for a girlfriend btw. Spreading the word.

The problem is like. The gameplay is the worst dark-pattern microtransaction-riddled bullshit I've ever seen. Hundred passive timers going at all times. Fifty different item-currencies. Trying to get you to spend absurd amounts of real world money at every turn. There's like five different indicators that take you to various real-money shop items that I don't know how to dismiss the indicator, I guess you just have to spend money, wtaf. Bajillion different interlocking systems mean you have zero sense of relative value of all the different item-currencies. I did over the course of the day get enough diamonds for one ten-pull, which I haven't used yet. Buying enough diamonds for a ten-pull costs a bit under $60 (presumably USD, but there's a chance the interface is automatically making that CAD for me--not gonna spend the money to check lmfao), with an SSR rate of 1%. BULLSHIIIIIT.

There's like a goddamn thousand-word essay explaining the dozen different types of character upgrades and equippables and equippables for the equippables!! Bad! Bad game design! That's just overcomplicating bullshit to trick people into thinking they're doing something other than clicking button to make number go up! That is not gameplay!

In terms of the actual gameplay, there is none. The battle system is full auto. There might be teambuilding, but from what I've seen so far, most of that consists of hoping you pull good cards from gacha and then clicking button to make number go up. There's occasional rhythm segments but there's no original music, it's just remixes of public domain classical music lmao. I'd describe the rhythm gameplay as "at least more engaging than twisted wonderland's," which is not a high bar

At least there's a cat in the rhythm bit.

And like, ok, I gotta remark on how derivative it is. Like I mentioned in my post earlier, this game is unabashedly aping twisted wonderland's setting and aesthetic. (That said, most of the stuff it steals from twst is magic school stuff that twst also basically stole from Harry Potter, so...?) However, it isn't exactly like twst: in this one, the characters say fuck a lot and bleed all over the place and do violence. Basically, the tone is a fair bit more adult than twst's kid-friendly vibe. (Not, like, adult adult, and I probably wouldn't even call it dark--it's still rated Teen lol. Just more adult than twst.)

Rather than just being students at magic school, the ghouls also go out into the mundane world to go on missions where they fight and investigate monsters and cryptids. Honestly, the magic school setting feels pretty tacked-on. The things that are enjoyable about this would've been just as enjoyable in about any other setting--you can tell this whole aspect was a late trend-chasing addition, lmao. So, yeah, it's blatantly copying twst to try to steal some players, but... Eh, I found myself not caring that much. Someone more (or less) into twst than me may find it grating.

Character-wise, eh, sure, yeah, they're a bit derivative in that aspect too, but it's a joseimuke game, the characters are always derivative. Thus far the writing & execution has been solid enough that I didn't care if they were tropey. If I were to compare it to something else, I'd say the relationship between the protagonist and the ghouls feels more like that of the sage and wizards in mahoyaku than anything from twst. There's some mystery in exactly what "ghouls" are and their place in this world that has me intrigued and wanting to know more about this setting and how each of the characters feels about it. I have a bad habit of getting my hopes up for stories that put big ideas on the table and then being disappointed when they don't follow through in a way that lives up to my expectations, though.

So, my final verdict: I kind of just hope someone uploads all the story segments right onto youtube so nobody has to deal with the dogshit predatory game to get the genuinely decent story lol. Give it a play just for the story if you have faith in your ability to resist dark patterns. Avoid at all costs if you know you're vulnerable to gacha, microtransactions, or timesinks.

[zzypher]

what if instead they were called the 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 friends and they- *gunshots*

happy sunday everyone !! :)

[frombehindthepen]

My Global Shoutout of Gratitude Day 📣🌎📣

My Global Shoutout of Gratitude Day 📣🌎📣 #GlobalGreetings #InternationalAppreciation #Poetry #PoetryCommunity

Image Credit: Sam Kal Hear ye friends all around the world like flags of our countries beautifully unfurled on land, sea, in the air, and everywhere  you are gems to me with international flair. With love, Kym Today, I’m sending a shoutout of gratitude to all of my friends around the world. Although World Gratitude Day was last month, that doesn’t stop me from sending this simple thank you for…

[machineheaded]

I feel irritated 90% of the times...

My head is filled with guilt and insecurity followed by anger and frustration of inability...

[fishareglorious]

do you think semmelweis and greta hofmann explored each other’s bodies

[justfriendsbestthings]

Simon’s Month Day 13: Hoodie

@youngroyals-events

[alchemicaladarna]

I find it so endearing and just really sweet that Bad wanted to say Yangdding's name perfectly before they talked, so he practiced for like 30 minutes with chat just trying to get the sounds right. Like, he's really trying, and it really is just so nice to see.

Also, Yangdding immediately noticing that he practiced when he first said her name. And her in turn practicing saying "Badboyhalo" the whole time as well!!