#he also used to have a mole by his right ear thats just ??? gone now ?? you wearing foundation bitch or--

[todayisafridaynight]

I know Aoki and Masato are the same dude yet they seem like two very distinct entities in my brain-

no you're right you're absolutely right. they are not the same but they are but they aren't but they are but masato where did your freckles go

[angelthebedsheet]

Can we please get a scenario where black reader is having a horrible day and she’s walking pass Karasuno volleyball team and Tsukishima say some half slick shit so black reader just turns around and starts beating his ass?

a/n: CHILE I WAS GONNA WAIT TILL THE WEEKEND TO UPdate BUT I SAW THIS AND BABY I HAD TO JUMP ON YHAT SHIT YALL STARTING TO KNOW THAT I LOVE WRITING Y/N WHOOPING A S S

leTs Get IT YALL

——————————————————————————

GRRT POW OKAY SOOOOO

now your day was absolute SHIT

your hair wasn’t cooperating and the hairstyle you wanted to try wasnt doing right

so you just did the same slickback bun

then you lost your earrings twice so you had to wear those ones that were your least favorite

it took you five minutes to find your socks

you felt like shit

you couldnt even find your lashes so you went lashless on a FRIDAY

you didnt even walk to school with yachi this morning so she KNEW something was up

you were in a bad mood all day and tsukishima of all people kept poking fun at you which usually didnt bother you

“wow for once you dont look like snuffalufocous”

“tsukishima shut the fuck up”

he’s LIVING for that

usually you can clapback

clapback game STRONG

“you had that hairstyle for the past couple of weeks.”

“swear to god tsukishima stop.”

yamaguchi is already betting your gonna pop off today

“tsukki i think you should stop”

yachi’s praying for him

now time skip

ya day got even worse

tsukishima was MILKING it and you were tired of it

you were FINISHED

you were about to leave when you walked past the gym

“look there’s a mole rat crawling back to the sewer drains.”

you turned your ass back tf around and walked into that gym

now yamaguchi and yachi feel the irritation coming off of you

you threw your bookbag on the ground and you took off your blazer

“on my fucking mama you keep talking SHIT tsukishima but thats alright imma beat ya ass for that then. since you wanna talk like a bitch you can get dragged like one, hoe”

tHEN HERE COMES THE INSTAGAITORSSSSSSS

“OOOHHHHHHH” -tanaka

“GET INTO IT Y/N!!!” noya

sugawara been EXCITED for some drama

AND HIS HOMEGIRL ABOUT TO THROUGH HANDSSSSSS

“yeah okay sure go back to the pound”

the team is INVESTED NOW

kiyoko and asahi went 👀 too

now you just run up on ya boy and WITH THE POWER OF

Z E U S H I M S E L F

you SWANG ON THE NIGGA

GOT HIM IN THE CHEEK

THE SOUND OF THE IMPACT WAS SOLID BABY

“DAMNNNNN” - the whole team

now that bitch caught off guard and stumbling

and he LIVID

i hc that if tsukki can talk allat shit his hands can also make up for it

i know his brother was play fighting with him too when they were younger

“put em up bitch”

“alright lets fucking go then”

now yall SCRAPING

nun of the playing shit

yall getting solid hits on each other

aint nobody stepping in

yall hitting like mf BOXERS up in that bitch

you even got him in the bleachers

you KNOW damn WELL someone’s recording aka tanaka

nishinoya is HYPING YOU UP bc i KNOW he been WANTING to swing on him but he cant bc he’s his senpai

“WHOOP HIS ASS Y/N GO IN BITCH!”

both of yall hits are connecting

tsukishima got a GOOD hit in and busted ya lip

now you mad

idk about yall but if i got my lip busted it would be over im going ham let out the beast

havent had a fight where im bleeding yet irl

back to our scheduled program

if you’re worrying about your skirt dont worry you wear biker shorts under that bitch aint nobody getting flashed

yall finally move from the bleachers

you are even more pissed

yall both are leaking by now

the team finally starting to intervene

yamaguchi, asahi and ennoshita holding tsukishima back

suga, daichi and tanaka holding you back

hinata and yachi standing inbetween yall

“AYE YO YAMAGUCHI GET YA BOY AND TELL HIS BUM ASS TO STOP TALKING MAD SHIT FORE I KNOCK HIS ASS THE FUCK OUT”

“KNOCK ME OUT THEN BITCH. KNOCK ME THE FUCK OUT LIKE YOU CLAIM YOU WOULD.”

kageyama just standing there like “bitches started fighting and i was deadass rootin for her but um... ion know now wtf do i do.”

cap’n daichi speak up like GO GET COACH UKAI AND TAKEDA TF???

he like alr bet and call that nigga freeces BECAUSE HE’S GON

more words are being said

tsuki says some REALLY slick shit

yall were RELEASED AND BABY YOU SERVED HIM THAT ONE TWO MUHAMMAD ALI COMBO PUNCH THAT MADE HIS KNEES BUCKLE LMAOAOAOOAOAOAOAO

when tanaka went in nishinoya took a hold of the phone to record

that man is becoming a professional cameraman with the angles he getting

he getting on the floor

his hands are mad fucking steady even tho he’s screaming DUMMY LOUD

tsuki bounces back and yall are back at it

them hits baby...

LOUD

everybody getting loud

nishinoya doing straight LAPS around yall SCREAMING

asahi is like the only once trying to like pull yall away but you accidentally swang on him

“damn aight im out”

he dropped that idea and went to sit down bc this getting too much for him

when he went to school today he definitely didnt think you would almost rock his shit

kageyama bust in that bitch like

“THE FEDS ARE HERE”

que for everyone look innocent

you kicked tsukishima down there and grabbed ya shit then DIPPED

yall both looking rough but tsuki..... you got him

coach ukai and takeda get there just as you book it out there

tsukishima was deadass about to chase you tf down bc that was PLAYING DIRTY

not yo fault this bitch a 6’0 tall bean pole with muskle

takeda got glasses so he was like nishinoya GET HER NEOW

nishinoya’s a fast mf so he was like alr BET

tanaka’s phone was RETRIVED AND IN HIS BAG

he def sending that to the group chat that you, coach and takeda and tsuki arent apart of bc snitches get stitches

nishinoya BOOKING IT after you

you sitting on the sidewalk with some tissues wiping your nose

nishinoya pulled up like “WASSUP MY LIL CHAMPION”

“okay so takeda sent my ass after you but imma just let you go home and imma just pretend you fought me on this then went all flash gordon on us and dipped. aight?”

“okay.”

“lets take a picture bc i’ll be damned if i dont memorialize this shit. how you feel now?”

“tired and my face hurts a lil”

“who knew yall both could pack a punch like a lunchable.”

“mh.”

yall took a pic

you KNOW the type of pic

“my homegirl just whooped some ASS lets GOOOO”

caption filter posted on his private instagram

then he let you go dummy fast

went back to takeda like nah she was gone

tsukishima got ice packs on his face, clothes ruffled, hair crazy, sports glasses crooked

that bitch is PISSED

deadass wants a round two

you on the other hand fixed yourself up and got a snack

you told ya mom that you got into a fight

even asahi cheek sting a lil

i think the whole team fw the fact you beat his ASS

walking home yamaguchi tried to talk about it to him asking if he was okay

tsukishima damn near beheaded him and yamaguchi said fuck that i wanna live past 20

on monday....

whew you were in a good ass mood

i mean lashes on hair popping lip gloss shinin like chicken grease

shit was a good day bc you WANTED to see how he looked after it

you knew you got good hits in

you on the other hand covered up your bruises with foundation (fenty)

popped on some cute ass fake (or real) glasses to hide anything else

tsukishima was PISSED lookin at you

at the end of the month yall became cool again so alls good

[dwkinternational]

DWK Podcast - recap

Joachim Masannek tells the story of a new wild soccer bunch book, which comes out next spring and talks about the story between the 5th and 6th book. A story in which Juli speaks up again, because after his almost-betrayal of the wild soccer bunch to fat Michi, it drags him into the fat-Michi-land again. And there are two other surprises, one for the neck and one for the eyes.

Question: (They listen to a question that fans can send in and answer them)

Is Leons necklace available to purchase anywhere on the internet?

Will the other wild soccer bunch books also be rereleased?

Answer:

Yes, there are still a few necklaces left. Some are made out of silver, some like those from the 5th movie, out of Iron and some that are made out of regular metal. They charge 39€ including shipping for the regular ones. Just send an E-Mail to the guys at www.mein-lieblingsring.de  to order one. Joachim wears one made out of iron, which was a present for the team that they got from him when they started shooting the wild soccer bunch 5.

The other books will be released, too. Book 4 and 5 will come out in September, he already reworked them and is now correcting the galley proofs. They are planning to release Book 6 Raban, the hero and Book 7 Maxi “Tippkick” Maximilian next spring.

So, between Book 5 and 6 they want to release a NEW book, which they are not sure how to name it yet. Something along the lines of 5,5 or 5½ or 5.1

They do it that way, because there may be coming more “inbetween books”

The plot of the new book will basically be as follows:

The 5th book left off with the bunch starting their autumn vacation

During that vacation Willi makes a training camp in the devils Pot to prepare the Team for a testgame he organized against bavaria. Because the bunch lost against them last time, Willi wants to see if the bunch has gotten better before they play against the Turnerkreis

The bunch spends practically 24 hours together during the camp because Willi wants them to get to know each other better and to understand each other blindly

the bunch starts to tell stories and they trust each other completely, Juli is very happy to be back and together with his friends

but every night he lies awake and thinks about Nadeschda

Juli still contemplates whether or not he belongs into the land of fat Michi because his dad lives there

For that reason and because Nadeschda is there, he wants to go back as happy as he is right now

He feels like he can’t explain that to his friends since they just rescued him from there

So Juli wants us, the readers to swear that we won’t tell the bunch

He makes the plan to train properly, to laugh the loudest about jokes and be the best friend he can be, so that his friends think everything is alright

And once the others are asleep he escapes

He is still very much afraid of going towards the graffiti castles and beyond those into the Land of Michis Cousin

But hes also excited and goes anyways because he wants to know why he likes Nadeschda so much

Joachim said Nadeschda isn’t a usual girl, she looks more like a boy

not like a tomboy but she has short hair

He also explained that out of the three cousins of Michi two of them look more like Michi, thinner next to Michis Vetter but to Juli they still look a lot like Michi unlike Nadeschda

Nadeschda is also 9 years old and has never been anywhere else than the land of Michi and their cousin

Nadeschda and Juli carefully get to know each other more, they meet each other and just talk. They notice they do like each other

But not like teenagers, they dont kiss or cuddly or anything like that. They just like each other, like when you have a really close friend, only a little bit more

They start to tell each other stories, Juli talks about where he comes from and Nadeschda talks about where she comes from and how its like there. She says its nice there and not only scary. Michis cousin, the Vetter isn’t just bad or evil and the people there can be nice too

Over time, during the autumn vacation Juli starts to get in trouble because he doesn’t sleep. By day he has to train and still tries his best. He wants to be a good friend and does anyone a favour, so that no one gets suspicous

Once people start to notice that something is wrong, Juli thinks he can’t keep that scheme going and asks Nadeschda to come with him

But she is afraid, because she has never been there and thinks she’s not worth living there as the world of the bunch seems like something very special to her

Eventually Juli can persuade her, and they plan to meet up the next day

What they didn’t notice is that Michi was watching them and hes not happy about Juli taking his cousin away

Michi talks to Nadeschda and forces her to be a spy, like a mole

He wants the bunch to warm up to her and trust her and he wants her to give him acces to Camelot and the devils pot

Once he gets access to either he plans on ambushing the bunch once they feel save. Michi wants to tie them up and burn their jerseys and player contracts, to get revenge for his defeat during the fight for Camelot

Nadeschda goes with Juli to the devils pot and joins the camping bunch

The bunch starts to pick on Juli “Did your freckles explode?” and “Your ears are so red!” but they are also in awe because Nadeschda proves to be pretty cool

She even starts to play soccer and seems to have some talent. So much so that the bunch starts to think that she would be a great addition to the team

The day of the big match against bavaria comes, which is also the day the unbeatable winners want to ambush the bunch. Nadeschda is torn, she wants to warn Juli and his friends but she also fears they will chase her away since she is a traitor

Nadeschda hesitated too long and the bunch does get captured and tied up

Michi wants to burn their stuff but Nadeschda tries to prevent that and they get a stalemate situation

Nadeschda “gets Michi by the balls” (that is word for word what Joachim said) so that Michi can’t follow through with his threats, although he wont be completely defeated

the unbeatable winners retreat and for the moment its a draw

Nadeschda realises that she can't leave her world behind and she tells Juli that they cannot combine their worlds that easily

She asks him to come with her, if he wants to be with her, but Juli sais he can’t do that

Joachim wants to keep telling that story because there is that rumored 14th book which was supposed to be from Michis perspective, but never got released

That book talks about what happened after the bunch came back from Hamm, that Michi got hold of the devils pot, Camelot and the Secret Hall while the bunch was gone

That is where the story is ultimately supposed to lead and also where the two worlds of Juli and Nadeschda will collide at last

It may be where the two of them find a solution to their slow timid lovestory

If Joachims audience would like to read that kind of story he is writing right now, he will release that with the 6th book next spring

The release of more inbetween books depends on how many people will like and read that 5.5 book

Joachim says he’s very excited, because it’s a journey into the past. He wrote Julis Book roughly 20 years ago in the summer of 2002 a little bit before they started shooting the wild soccer bunch

Julis Book was one of the hardest books to write since the editor back then was against Michi beeing so bad or evil. He is already chubby, poor, stupid and then he is also bad. The editor said that wouldn’t be politically correct

But Masannek said that’s how it was in his childhood, there are people like that in this world and it doesn’t have anything to do with him wanting to insult anybody that is fat

There are a lot of kids who weren’t the thinnest and who would have loved to be part of the wild bunch and it never crossed their minds to emphasize or identify with Michi because of their weight

there were also Kids who were thin and who did identify with Michi and acted like him

Anyways, that was 20 years ago and now Joachim needs to find his way back into the language and the humour he had back then. His boys were 11 and 10 or 9 years old, Marlon was 11 during shooting (of the first movie) and Leon was 9, now they are 29 and 27, a lot of time has passed. Joachim is also 20 years older and he wrote different books in the meantime so to get back into it is a challenge

It is especially exciting to him because he is working on a series and would like to know if we are interested in that. They would like to make a wild soccer bunch series, which he is working on with a lot of people and to him its a lot of fun.

The series would not be for children, or not only for children, more in the vein of Stranger Things or Harry Potter, which not only children watch but also adults who actually let the children watch with them

It will be an adult story about a wild soccer bunch team with the protagonists beeing kids on one hand and on the other hand grown-ups

In the original wild soccer bunch movies the adults always were unimportant or antagonists, this time the adults would get their own story

Although it’s still a wild soccer bunch story for those who watched the movies in the cinema back then. Its supposed to be something different but still the wild bunch which those people who were younger would still watch as adults

Then they went on to talk about how Joachim would appreciate feedback about the new series project and how there are fans not only from germany who can feel free to send a message here.

You can also send in Voice messages and if there are enough they would make an episode where they only focus on those messages

And thats it for Episode 28!

[huntsman-ash]

RWBY V8 Livethought Stream: Episode 1

And as I have done for the last couple of seasons, here is my live thoughts as I watch the episode. Spoilers below, of course, for RWBY Volume 8, Episode 1: Divide.

First shot we get is of Cinder cleaning a floor. Dammit, and I was hoping she was secretly a whore in Mistral. Ehh.

Convinent that the Grimm Whale has LANDING PADS on its side. Quite a few of them actually. Do Grimm launch from them like VTOL attack craft?

Neo and Cinder are flying a new as of yet un-named vehicle. Im going to call this one the Remora cause it kinda looks like one.

Im getting massive Leviathan vibes from this whale. Wont lie. Mixed with a bit of Hive influence from Destiny.

Neos look of confusion and fear is at the same time both amusing and adorable. Also, she has no shirt over her bellybutton, which I find slightly amusing.

Salems throne has some kind of link to somethign else in the Whale, there’s no other reason for it to have that glowing power bank on the back. Also it seems to be made of bone, as is most of the rest of the interior. So...presumably, Salem shaped this entire thing like a bonesinger.

Salem still got the titties out uniform AND I STILL HATE THAT HER VOICE IS JEN TAYLOR!

Salems got Grimm bone arm bracers. Interesting..

LAMP

Neo is literally saving this entire episode for me with her silent adorable sass.

And Tyrian with the ABSOLUTE FIRE. Also hey hes back, guess he got up here somehow.

Note on the throne Room; all the doors we see are connected to Salem’s throne via those glowing lines, which seem to curve and go elsewhere. I think this is the Whale’s nerve center. And it looks like its on the back if the huge bone in the reare near the teeth is its spine.

And Neos like “hey wait I didnt sign up for this”

Correction; its not a door, its a MOUTH. Wall mouth.

ANNNNDD new designs for everyone on the evil team. HAVEL BE BEAR BRO. TOTAL GAY ENERGY. It looks like he tore the sleeves of a nice dress shirt and just BELTED it in place. And Merc looks like a fucking GOPNICK, HA! What the fuck does he have hanging from his right leg though. 

Yeah, knew it. She touches the throne and the whale responds. Its her command seat, literally.

And Salem putting that bitch IN HER PLACE. You do it queen.

And now to the bottom of the hole under Atlas. THIS. THIS IS WHAT I ALWAYS IMAGINED MANTLE TO LOOK LIKE. VINDIFUCINGCATION AFTER FUCKING 6 YEARS!

Old dudes and faunus. Interesting. OLD DUDE FAUNUS WITH LIKE GIANT FUCKING MOLE CLAWS, DAMN.

Fuckin scramble the moment RWBY shows up. Man that was fast, I was hoping Oscar would be lost for a bit longer.

I still cannot believe how THIN the wall defending Atlas is. ITS LIKE TWO FEET THICK AT THE MOST! A METAL BARRIER WITH CONCRETE SUPPORTS! WHAT THE FUCK ATLAS

And Mantle proper slowly decends into what I have always seen it as. Good.

And May takes out a drone with her weapon like a chad. Nice. I guess Atlas doesnt keep track of their drones...wouldnt shock me

Ahhh resistance headquarters inside an old bar. The Huntress’s moving personnel...nice.

Oscars like “no dont touch me” and then “oh wait, titties, oh yeah...” Poor confused farmboi

OH MY GOD. VODKA IS CANON IN RWBY! HOLY SHIT YES!

Huh. Who’s the eyepatch chick with the cute faunus on the wall there. Interesting.

May Marigold; no nonsense. Good

“Largets Grimm Horde ever seen”. Okay, sure. Doesnt seem that big to me honestly.

Interesting. Ammunition cases on Remnant are nearly identical to ours, down to the large rectangular lockingn flap on one end.

Hmm. Casualties, judging by the watch and dropped material. No surprise. The weak get eaten in this world.

Also hey, faunus Futaba

Oh wonderful, no free-launch for the stadium. BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK NOT RIGHT?

Also, Stilltskin on the wall there. Some kind of whiskey

Main Atlesian Military Compound. Prepping myself for a MASSIVE dissapointment...

“Operations room”. Well, I guess it fits, but I would ASSUME its more accurately called a command and control center, or possibly command information center, depending. We’ll see soon enough.

Salems out in open war? Good. Time to break out the fuckin heavies people.

NGL this whole scene feels really oddly hamfisted. Its...strange. Doesnt feel like its flowing naturally.

Noras got a point but like, bruh, its Remnant. No ones got fucking militiares. You sat on your fucking hands for 80 Y EARS AND THIS IS HOW IT SHAKES OUT FOR YOU

And there’s a difference between division emotionally and splitting up to handle two objectives. Ruby, please stop being a civilian for 20 seconds and THINK

Cute, Penny’s gone full maiden depressed. First thoughts; self sacrifice.  Good idea. But make it more brutal, Penny. Make it a frontal assault that will make that bitch BEG for the end she cannot have. You have lasers, you have maiden powers, hit that whore with an alpha strike that will make Nicolas Kerensky wince!

Goooood. Pennys going for Atlas. CUT THEM TO RIBBONS POLENDIA!

Two teams, two days. Two seperate stories and things get messy.

IRONWOOD LITERALLY CALLS PENNY ON THE PHONE ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS.

Remnant is doomed. Lol, jumped a head a little bit buddy? Get out for a little bit mate. See some of the other kingdoms, check how they’re doing.

Atlas has defenses? Sure they do. Something tells me we’re not seeing that...

And guilttrip. Wooooooo not impressed.

Awww Marrow sadboi.

Actually the aces all look sand OH BECAUSE ITS CLOVER. WHY IS HE THERE? ARE THEY-OH DONT YOU FUCKING DARE RT. DONT YOU FUCKING DARE BRING HIM BACK.  FUCK YOU IF YOU DO. HE SERVED HIS FUCKING PURPOSE AND NOW HES DEAD, LEAVE HIM FUCKING BE!

ALSO HES FUCKING DUMB AND USELESS AND WE NEED HARE TO LEAD THE ACES NOW OKAY? We need someone willing to draw blood, not a showboat

Hare’s commentary is mine. Angry snort indeed.

Winters there too, looks like shes still beat to shit. Annnd there’s Ironwoods new arm.

Adorable specialist is adorable. Huh. Wonder if I can use her for something.

Medical brace for Winter...odd. Did she suffer burns or something? A stimm sleeve like in Gears?

Blah blah giant Grimm force blah blah okay yeah whatever

Atlas has hardlight shields. Okay, good. But we know how useful those are against proper attacks...You got anything else? Missiles? AA batteries? SOMETHING?

Seriously its a giant flying army, fill the fucking sky you morons!

Oh look its the two useless members of Atlas’s council.

YEAH! FUCK YEAH! THATS WHAT I WANNA SEE! GET HIS ASS IRONWOOD! FUCK YEAH! NOW SHOOT THE OTHER BITCH TOO! MAKE IT CLEAR THEYVE SERVED THEIR PURPOSE!

That POSTURE. THE CASUALNESS! THE PROPER FIRING STANCE! UGH ITS SO GOOD!

Wish we coulda seen the dude get smashed though. Damn ratings. I wanna know what a bullet does to a person in this universe.

Hare’s face here was the perfect ending to the situation. Confusion, wonder...acceptance. Exactly.

Same with Winter actually.

Huh. Wonder who Salems talking to.

And now for the new opening...

Everythings going to shit, shocker. Nic ecallbacks to other stuff. Oh great does Salem have WINGS now?

This last part reminds me of the trailer for Halo Wars 2

Wonder if the shadow under Crescent Rose at the end means anything.

Annnndddd thats it for this episode! See you all next week!

[sleepypeaky]

{getaway} pt. 3

Reader is the Blinder’s chauffeur….naturally that entails getaway driving too

Part 3/4 ———-part 1, part 2

also this was unintentional but the reader is gender neutral

WC: 1,209

Warnings: Shooting, blood mention

A/n: set just after season 5, like from the middle of the last episode.

also yes this is far fetched, but its because i have short-attention-span-and-it-needs-to-fit-in-4-chapters disease.

and no this isnt historically accurate obvs but i had to do it to write the fucking thing

tnis is so fun to write so try and stop me. this is kind of a Finn x reader?? idk?? finn is my wife?? but he also smol gay boi?? im confused.

1929

“FINN!”

You ran through small heath.

The dawn light barely came through the thick grey clouds. The morning was just an extended night.

The darkness had only begun to form.

____

You sat in the dark in your car behind the building. It was understood what would happen tonight. And you understood your place in what was about to happen. At some point you would hear a roar, and a group of blinders would come out the back doors, get into the car, and you would drive away.

It was that simple.

Only it wasn’t. Because thats not what happened.

There was no roar. Instead, Johnny Dogs stumbled out the doors alone, something happened, he said, i dont know what but something happened. 

Aberama was dead. There was a mole. Your orders were changed.

No one had seen Finn.

______

“FINN!”

You had looked all night. Your coat was damp from the fog and dampness of the city combined. You ran down to Charlie’s yard, pushing through the thick white haze of mist and coal smoke that was exacerbated by the Cut. 

You trampled the soggy hay and seed that led up to Curly’s stables. 

“Finn?!” You called one last time.

His figure stood up from the corner. There was no illumination in the building. You made out his features by the tonal gray of the outside light.

You trod over and slapped him in the face.

“Finn jesus fucking christ where have you been!?” Anger seethed from every pore as you stared him down.

But there was no defiance in his eyes. 

“I think it was me.” He whispered.

You furrowed your eyebrows, urging him to explain what he was talking about.

He took a shaky breath,

“Bill is gone, i gave him money and he left it, hes gone and he knew.”

Your eyes widened. Fuck.

Finn suddenly looked very very pale. Ghostly pale and afraid.

“oh god.” He stared wide eyed into space, his eyes seemed glassy.

Shit, you thought, this was bad. Really bad. Granted his brothers were the ones to blame: for trusting Finn with someone that could have possibly become, or had always been, a spy. Nevertheless, this was bad for Finn. 

He sat down heavily. You could only imagine the things he was thinking. Two men were dead. Tommy was in shambles. 

You both sat there for a long time. In the dark. 

“What now?” You whispered.

There was a long pause, followed by a deep inhale of smoky air. 

Finn stood up. 

“This was my fault, now i have to fix it.”

And he walked past you and out the stable doors.

You shot up,

“Finn, what?!”

You chased after him. 

He walked swiftly up the road, up to the car, and got in the drivers seat. He turned on the engine. You cursed yourself for teaching such a stubborn mule to drive. 

“Finn get out of the fucking car and think for once in you life!” You yelled through the window.

He turned to you and in an instant you see all his thoughts and fears in his eyes. You saw all the years of reliance on his brothers. You saw all the regret of not being able to protect his family like they could. You knew that this was bigger than this one mistake.

You clenched your jaw.

“Fine. I’ll help. But i have 2 conditions; one, we need at least a rough plan, and two, you let me drive.”

A smile peaked through all the other emotions on his face for a moment. Then he slid across the seat and you got into the car. 

___

“Do we know he’s here?”

You sat in the dark car on a dim street, across from Mosley’s office building. 

“Tommy says he comes here everyday.” Finn replied. 

This did not ease your question.

You skimmed the building with your eyes. The windows were too high up to jump from, and there were no ledges on which to climb. Either he would have to go inside, or wait for Mosley to come out.

It was raining harder now, which might turn out useful to you as a cover. 

“This is fucking insane.” You muttered. “We have no plan, its just the two of us, and we are about to assassinate a member of parliament!”

Finn didn’t seem fazed by your words.

“Tommy had a fucking plan and look what happened, so why not just go for it. And having it just be the two of us is good, no moles.”

He was right, however much you still wanted to believe otherwise.

The things you did know were that you couldn’t get too close: Mosley knew you were Tommy’s chauffeur, and would probably recognize Finn. And you knew that he was probably armed, or had a personal guard.

“Finn, how good is your aim?”

He shrugged,

“pretty good.”

“Pretty good? Finn this isn’t a carnival this needs to work!”

“I’ll get out of the car then! Trust me, i can do this.”

“I still don’t trust you but i swear to god, satan, and everything in between: if you get me or yourself killed i will kill you.”

___

“Where’s Finn!?!” Ada yelled as she kicked open the door to Tommy’s study.

Tommy was at his desk with his head down. Arthur ventured to answer,

“We haven’t seen him since the speech. Johnny Dogs said (y/n) went to look for him.”

“Arthur that was 12 hours ago! They could be hurt!”

RING

Tommy raised his head and grabbed the phone.

“What?”

He eyes widened.

He slammed the phone back down on the receiver, and scrambled to his feet.

“Mosley’s been shot.”

“Oh my god.” Ada gasped.

They all ran out the door.

_________

Mosley stepped out onto the rain slicked sidewalk. His protection, he hadn’t bothered learning the man’s name, stood beside him. They had left the office to go to one of the many gentleman’s lounges that Mosley frequented. But as they began to walk, a young man stepped out before them.

Mosley recognized him,

“You’re a peaky boy are you not?”

The boy looked up,

“Yes sir, I have an urgent message from Mr. Shelby.”

Mosley perked his ears,

“Yes?”

Finn tore his pistol out of his pocket and shot Mosley directly in the forehead. But the guard had readied his weapon when he first saw Finn step out into the path, and he was ready.

____

A firework of red blood exploded from Mosley’s head and was quickly washed down by the rain. 

His body collapsed to the ground.

But before you could rejoice, 2 more shots pierced the air.

Fuck

You screeched the car up to the path just as Finn stumbled to the car.

He threw open the door and fell into the passenger seat.

“Go!” He croaked.

You did, knowing people would come to investigate the shots.

The street had been clear due to the weather, thank god.

You didn’t take your eyes off the road until you felt you were out of harms way.

“You did it!” You shouted, turning to Finn.

You went pale.

Finn was slumped in the seat, hand clutched over his stomach.

Blood gushed through his fingers.

His eyes were closed.

_______

[fart-gate]

SG1

Season 2 episode 9

🚨trigger warning: mentions of rape in my notes🚨

"SECRETS"

Notes by me

- the chief from abydos! Also daniels father in law :)

- no glasses!Daniel in this scene

- I love how dedicated Daniel is to his space family and their culture😌 like this random Egyptian planet was like I'm gonna keep you! And he said okie dokie

- "I couldnt possibly be safer than in the company of tealc" AKDEOSNDJSJSSKA

- Jack wants to go back too lol

- Daniel back in his robes 💕

- back home for daniel! To abydos!

- Bodyguard!tealc

- apologizing to sha'res dad for not being able to find her yet 😟 its not your fault babe!

- SHA'RE??? YOUVE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME WHAT THE FUCK

- tealc:

- shes pregnant and that is....really bad. If its one of the goaulds that raped her. This got dark real quick

- "husband!" "My daniel" I CANT HANDLE THIS IM ALREADY GOING INSANE

- he doesnt want to bring his hopes up that its actually her 😭

- hes shocked but like.....i would be too

- I was right its apophis kid :\ this so fucked up

- Host Baby??? Big Yikes

- okay I'm gonna say this right fucking now before i watch any more. If Daniel blames her and gets mad at her for being raped and getting pregnant WITHOUT her consent than i will personally come thru this screen and slap the fuck out of him

- meanwhile! Jack and Sam bonding time!

- SAMS DAD

- sha're thinking Daniel wont love her anymore :( she better be wrong or I'm throwing hands

- she said the goauld is Amunet? Is that the dog goddess? Or the crocodile? I'm getting my Egyptian gods mixed up

- Daniel sitting outside to Process™

- "hasnt she gone thru enough?" My brain stopped working I'm so happy hes not not blaming her. Writers for once youre doing something right

- man hes really emotional about this

- tealcs right they need to take her anyway for her own safety.

- do u think he sympathizes with her bc hes been raped too? Its not said but I feel like thats what it is. He knows it wasnt her fault. And that also means they can comfort each other about what happened to them😟bc they understand

- okay why is sams dad being a total dill hole

- "Ive heard nothing about you, sir." Jack youre not off to a great first impression

- Jack making sam smile with sly jokes

- her dad knows she be lyin about her job

- he wants her to go to space HAHA if only he knew. His tiny brain would explode

- Daniel said he loves her no matter what and then gave her a big hug im LOSING MY MIND

- are we keeping the baby??? Am I gonna see Dad!Daniel and mom!sha're ??? 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

- micheal shanks eyes are super blue in this episode for my viewing pleasure only

- protective!Daniel 😍

- I'm just remembering how they met and when she showed him the forbidden drawings in the caves and they spent days together just sharing knowledge. When he found out they were married(in her culture) and just completely accepted it. When he saved her bc he realised he was in love. When he stayed on abydos so that he could live a full life with her and her people because he felt like he belonged. I'm fine

- parents need to ask before they set up things like job interviews. I have personal experience with this and im full of rage

- this reporter literally having a recording of Jack talking about the stargate and Jack flatly denying it. Zero fucks given

- Daniel saying he wont force sha're into anything. Bc up to this point shes been forced into so much!! He knows he needs to let her make her own choices!!! He gets it!!!

- im sorry both Daniel and sha're are so pretty in his episode. My bisexual brain is just having a real good time looking👀

- I REALLY really love it when she calls him "my dan-yel" ❤❤❤

- the SGC has a mole???

- LABOR somebody boil water

- oh its my goauld mans with the sick earrings

- Daniel helping her give birth. Sitting behind her and helping her breathe. I'm love

- "this is where we hid from Ra remember?" Ajdjsisnana thats such a cool detail

- he'll never leave her again there goes my heart

- "It's O'Neill. With two L's. Theres another colonel O'Neil, but he has no sense of humor at all."

- dont you hate when youre about to uncover a huge government secret and then immediately get hit by a car

- shooting the zat gun into the camera was a cool directing choice 🔥

- sam: so I'm getting a medal for my service this week! Cool right?

Jacob Carter: I have cancer

- he could not have been any more blunt

- ok dude cant you just accept the fact that she cant tell you what her job? Dont you know what top secret means? Cant you just be proud of her for what she does already???? Dick

- "I will always love you!!"

- she is scared she will lose Daniel and the baby :(

- its a boy! 💙💙

- the goauld is back in control oh god Daniel run

- shes actually pretty scary as a goauld

- yeah ok shoot the woman who just gave birth tealc YEESH

- that was a good idea to frame Heru'hur tho

- Daniel hesitating to leave her again. My heart is breaking 😢

- they saved the baby at least

- poor sha're didnt even get to see her son 😔

- bringing the baby back to the grandfather was a good idea😊

- this baby is SO SO cute

- is Daniel a stepdad now. Is he gonna come back and play catch with the kid when hes older. Is he gonna fully adopt him. I want him to fully adopt him

- Jack blaming himself for the reporters death. You gotta stop doing this to yourself man

- black shirt Daniel 👀👀👀👀

- HAHA tealc shoving the jaffa into the vortex lmaooo

- "you dare challenge me?"

"I was thinking about it"

- WHEN JACK GRABS HIS KNIFE REAL QUICK AND SPEARS IT INTO APPOPHIS HAND

- she definitely saw them and didnt say anything

- "are you alright?"

"No. No im not.........but I will be."

"She looked directly at us, Daniel jackson. And yet she did not reveal our position." YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS LADS. Theres still hope for my girl. She can fight this I believe in her ✊😤

- I will say it again tho. This storyline for her is very fucked up. No excuses, its just a bit over used in sci fi for the women characters to have surprise pregnancies.

~

Whump under the cut

Tealc whump: fought with jaffa

Daniel jackson whump: shocked, emotional, crying, forced kneeling, back handed

Sam carter whump: emotional , crying

🎶listening to You Are The Reason by Calum Scott and Leona Lewis 🎶 in honor of Daniel and sha're making me lose my collective mind

No glasses!Daniel for most of the episode

[lunarmoonflowyr]

Because I’m bored I’m going to write down a bunch of my passive thoughts on a new game I started playing and because once I start making streaming/youtube content related to viddy game I might make a video on this

Vambrace: Cold Soul Initial Impressions

Vambrace: Cold Soul is a game by Devespresso Games, an independent game developer based out of Seoul, South Korea who’s other notable titles seem to be a series of horror adventure games titled “The Coma”. 

Vambrace however, is a game far more akin to something like Darkest Dungeon in visual style and gameplay design however the Steam store page description has it claiming to be inspired by “the gothic fantasy of Castlevania, the deep lore of a series like The Elder Scrolls, the replayability of roguelites like FTL: Faster Than Light, and the sweeping, character-driven epics of our favorite JRPGs.”

This is going to be a small writeup of my initial impressions after 2 hours of the game. 

THE STORY SO FAR

We are a woman named Evelia Lyric, although she just goes by Lyric most of the time so that’s what I’ll be referring to her as throughout the rest of this writeup. Lyric immediately begins showing tell-tale signs of “JRPG Protagonist Syndrome”, as she:

1. Survives being passed out in a freezing arctic-like environment while wearing what could maybe be called clothing for a slightly harsh winter in New England, and comes out of it with barely any complications to speak of

2. Has an (allegedly) famous father who leaves her a Mysterious Book That No One Can Read, and the titular Vambrace, which is now apparently fused to her arm, that lets her pass through what the game refers to as the “Frostfell”, a massive magical ice barrier surrounding the city of “Icenaire” that apparently kills anyone who touches it. Apparently she can also one-shot evil ghosts with it, but only in the narrative. She did it in a cutscene once, and so far that hasn’t translated to gameplay.

3. Has so-far-unmentioned heterochromia

4. Gets a high-ranking soldier to trust her almost immediately when only one brief conversation ago he had a suspicion that she was a spy for “The Green Flame”, apparently some rival faction that’s very, very Not Good. 

Getting confused by all the random names yet? Trust me, it doesn’t really get much better. This game’s story shows a lot of the very painful signs of an over-written, over-developed fantasy world that someone very obviously put a lot of time and love into, but didn’t really know where to stop.

Names, places, and concepts are thrown at you non-stop with a new one being introduced almost every dialogue sequence if you spend time talking to the locals of Icenaire once you convince the guard captain to let you go wandering the streets. You can also find random lore pages strewn around the place that add even more lore on top of everything else. 

It all gets to be so dense and confusing you almost completely lose track of what the actual, present-day story is. The game has no trouble throwing random scraps of lore at you, full of names that mean nothing, but when it comes to actually explaining what the hell is going on right now, it falls a bit short. Here’s my understanding so far. 

Lyric’s father has either died or mysteriously disappeared, I can’t remember which, and she’s been left a letter, a book, and the titular Vambrace. The book is referred to in the game mechanics as “The Codex” and is referred to by NPCs as a “book that nobody can read”, because apparently foreign languages don’t exist in this world, yet so far I’ve counted 6 or 7 distinct fantasy races that apparently all speak the exact same language all the time. 

The vambrace has fused itself to Lyrics arm, and her fathers letter tells her to go to Icenaire (I have no fucking clue what that name is supposed to mean by the way, and it sounds really fucking awkward to say so it has to mean -something-. The “ice” part is pretty self-explanatory if a little on the nose, the entire game takes place in what appears to be an apocalypse along the lines of if you took the events of “Frozen” and turned it up to 11, but the only insight I could get on the “naire” part is that it’s from the Irish Gaelic word “náire” which means something along the lines of “ashamed” or “to have shame”. So this city is basically named “ice-ashamed”, which I have no clue what that’s supposed to mean, and it’s bothering me enough that I’ve gone on an entire run-on paragraph to rant about it because it sounds stupid to say and exactly like a city name I would’ve come up with for my crappy fantasy stories that I wrote when I was fourteen.)

Where was I again?

Right, okay, so Lyrics father instructs her to go to Icenaire (blech) and find some dude named “Zaquard Ventrue”. That name also means nothing, except as far as I can tell, “Zaquard” is the pseudonym of one of the people at Devespresso, and the first thing that comes to mind for Ventrue is Vampire: The Masquerade, and I’m not sure it really means anything there either. 

The naming system in this game seems really off, it has no consistency and a lot of it is really self-indulgent, because you find out that this Zaquard fellow (in the game) is the big head honcho of what apparently is some kind of resistance movement of the oppressive organization called “The Green Flame”. 

So Lyric goes through the “Frostfell” (the magical ice barrier thing around the city that allegedly is the cause of this whole Frozenpocalypse deal) by using the power of the mysterious Vambrace, and...passes out because of it, only to be found by a scavenging party in a tutorial section where the game teaches you how to play it using said scavenging party. 

More on that later. 

Lyrics unconscious body is dragged back to the city, she somehow hasn’t contracted hypothermia, and the next scene we’re given is an interrogation from some guy who’s last name is Esquire. 

I don’t think the writers of this game knew what the word “Esquire” meant, because despite traditionally appearing after a person’s name, it is not a surname, it is a title. So the strange and unconventional naming choices continue. 

Anyway, Captain Generic Man, Esq., interrogates Lyric for all of five minutes before believing her at face value that she has a magical super-gauntlet that lets her pass through this extremely lethal magical barrier, when he has all the reason in the world to believe that she’s some kind of spy sent by the people his resistance faction is supposedly fighting against. 

And instead of keeping her under close watch until she’s at least somewhat established some trust that she’s not a mole or a spy or an assassin, he just...lets her roam free, around the city. Completely by herself. With no supervision, whatsoever. 

As you can probably tell, I already have several problems with this games pacing and general overall writing quality, and we’re not even past the prologue section yet. 

Oh, yeah, and Captain Generic gives Lyric some free money for her troubles, because the player needs to know how the market system works and how to buy healing items, and we can’t be assed to have them come across money in a non-contrived manner. 

And the currency is really weirdly specific? Its this stuff called “Hellion”, which in real-person-language is a word for a malicious troublemaker or nuisance. But in the same setting where a city is named “Ice Shame”, “Hellion” is apparently some kind of magical incense that the fox people burn to appease their gods. 

Oh yeah there’s a race of fox people in this game. They run the markets. They’re less full on furries and more like regular humanoids, but with fox ears, a tail, and pointy teeth, so like that weird halfway “haha guys look I’m totally not a furry” deal thats basically just “catgirls but with a different animal”. 

Anyway. 

You’re given a fat stack of cash and told to go buy yourself some food from the market, because we need to give you a tutorial on how to buy shit. 

So you go to the market and are taught by a smooth-talking fox-man-person-thing how to buy things at a market, after which you are immediately spotted by the only guard in the city with an ounce of sense who instantly goes “Hey holy shit isn’t that the person that literally nobody recognizes in this city that’s been cut off from the outside world for presumably several years at this point and the only other known faction that has the resources to keep a human alive is one we’re actively at war with?” and throws your ass right back in jail. 

By the way, the things you can choose to buy at the market are all pretty typical JRPG items that heal stat debuffs, or are basically different flavors of health potion that restore different amounts of health, and for any seasoned JRPG veteran it’s pretty easy to guess what items do what and how they function (sort of) but there’s plenty of unique-to-this-game stat conditions and the way the health mechanic works is kinda wonky, and the game asks you to buy your healing items before it even explains to you how the hell that part of the game actually works. 

I’ll go more in-depth to the gameplay once I finish this story synopsis but I just felt like pointing out that at this point you’ve been walked through some of the basic mechanics of the game and some of the combat, but the part of the game that deals with debuffs and HP and how you deal with those things hasn’t been explained yet. 

This game is very weird. 

Anyway, during the attempt to throw your ass back in jail, some shit is going down in the room that has the elevator to the surface (yeah apparently this city is like, underground. They don’t actually explain why, or how, or if it was like that before the Frozenpocalypse or if the Frozenpocalypse buried it, and if it was buried, how the hell did it get excavated so cleanly like this and why are all the buildings intact? Whatever, apparently the game doesn’t consider this important, which is weird considering all the random lore tidbits it does deem important, so we’re moving on now.)

OH hold on let me backtrack a bit. While you’re being let out of your jail cell because Captain Generic just felt like it apparently, you walk up to this other jail cell with a goth chick inside it and you’re told she’s an Extremely Powerful Bad Guy, Do Not Fuck With Her. 

So, as you arrive at the elevator to the surface, guess who just made an escape and caused a spooky ghost person to invade the city and injure two people! That’s right, Spooky Not-So-Jailed-Anymore Goth Chick! Who’s name is Isabel Salazar, and it’s really saying something that that’s the most normal name we’ve encountered so far in this god forsaken game. 

So you’re now face-to-face with a spooky ghost. You think you’re about to get into a combat section, you’ve been taught how to do combat, but nope! Lyric just waltzes up to the fucker and smacks him in the face with her Vambrace hand and it...melts...him? Just, with absolutely zero fanfare? 

Uh. Sure. Alright. Weird, do we get some kind of special attack that hurts ghosts? Guess we’ll find out. 

So the guard who was trying to arrest you, a redhead with pointy ears who’s very obviously an elf but hasn’t directly been called an elf in-game yet so I’m not sure if we’re using that word but fuck it she’s an elf, who’s name is Celest. That’s all, I don’t remember if she’s given a last name. 

Celest is reprimanded by Captain Generic, Esq. for trying to re-arrest the possible spy who was let go with literally no actual forethought put into it, and she’s understandably miffed, and Captain Generic tells you to come meet him in the war room because “someone is very interested in meeting you.” 

This leads nicely into the scene where our protagonist meets the leader of this massive underground (literally) resistance movement, who, upon hearing our surname and being told we’re the daughter of Some Random Guy, immediately trusts us to go after Isabel and lead an expedition all on our lonesome with a party of random soldiers we get to pick from a “help wanted” board instead of, I dunno, maybe sending some actual soldiers with us. 

This leader is the previously mentioned Zaquard Vampire Clan Man, who looks exactly how you’d expect a self-insert resistance leader to look, a young white-haired anime boy looking dude who’s bangs cover his eyes and we can’t see them. And he has earrings. 

Farquaad here apparently knew about our dad, and our dad was apparently the lead researcher about Archons (?) and the Vambrace is an Archonian (???) artifact (also they spell it “artefact” in the game and I hate it, they also say “magick” and it makes me want to find whoever was in charge of writing this and punch them) so that’s why he trusts us now, apparently. 

We are then tasked with a mission to go retrieve Evil Goth Chick, who apparently is going to go tell these Green Flame fellows the location of our massive underground city secret base, which is somehow super duper secret despite being huge. 

Keep in mind that this entire game’s setting is allegedly one massive city, it’s not like Eragon where the big inside-the-mountain Dwarf city was kept secret from Galbatorix, because that at least had the justification of being halfway across the entire fucking continent from the Empire as well as being on the other side of a massive fucking desert. 

This is all apparently one huge city! And the “secret underground base” is kinda big itself! It doesn’t make sense that its some big secret!

Ugh, whatever, if I keep harping on about every bit of the narrative that doesn’t make any fucking sense when you think about it for more than ten seconds I’m going to give myself a stroke so now that I’ve caught you up to where I am in the story, let’s move onto the gameplay. 

THE GAMEPLAY

If you’re at all familiar with Darkest Dungeon (a much better game) the gameplay is most similar in style to that. You have a party of 4 adventurers, you walk through room after room of a connected “dungeon” except in this case its neighborhood streets and buildings, find treasure, manage the balance of treasure in your inventory vs healing and utility items, and you have combat. 

Let’s talk about the combat first, because its the part I like most about this game and the reason I’m probably going to keep playing it. 

Vambrace takes a similar approach to Darkest Dungeon in that each character has a certain number of skills at their disposal, being limited in use by where the character is standing in the party order and what position slots in the opposing party they can target. 

When you get into combat, the party orders will look like this, with your party on the left and the opposing party on the right. 

4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4

The skills are divided into three range categories.

- Short or melee range skills can only be used in position 1 and 2 and can only target positions 1 and 2 on the opposing side unless those two positions are empty, in which case they can target 3 and 4. 

- Medium range skills can be used from any position, but can only target positions 1 and 2. 

- Long range skills can be used from any position and can target any position. 

Some skills also take flourish points to use, and characters build up flourish points throughout encounters by using their basic skill. 

Different characters have different classes, which determine different skills they’re able to use. 

This is a basically solid combat system, as proven by Darkest Dungeon, however Vambrace falls short of DD in two ways:

The first is Darkest Dungeon’s position system, and its supplementary corpse system, work slightly differently. Position order is the same, however, there can be no empty spaces breaking the line. If the line would be broken, units that are furthest back move forward to close the line. 

So say you encounter 4 enemies, so positions 1-2-3-4 are all fully occupied. If you kill the enemy in position 2, the enemies in positions 3 and 4 will move forward to fill in the blank space, so now only positions 1-2-3 are occupied. 

This is mitigated in Darkest Dungeon by the corpse system, when you kill an enemy it leaves a corpse behind, which fills up the space and prevents the backline from moving forward. However there are several skills in DD that remove corpses as part of the effect. 

This opens up different paths to take in terms of strategy. In both Vambrace and Darkest Dungeon, the 3 and 4 positions are usually filled by the more deadly foes, the enemies that take those positions usually cause debuffs to your party or have a higher damage output. 

However, in Darkest Dungeon, you can either run a strong backline of your own and try to eliminate the opposing backline quickly, or you can run a strong frontline and a more supportive backline to try and take out the frontline, and then wipe out the corpses, pushing the backline units to the front and making all their skills basically useless, since most enemies that stick to the back in DD have maybe one attack that they can use in position 1 or 2, and it’s usually not a very good attack. 

There are also attacks in DD that you can use to force the enemy to shuffle positions, bringing the backline to the front and crippling them without even touching the tanky frontline. 

However, in Vambrace, positions are static on the enemy side. When you kill enemies in front, the backline enemies stay in the backline. This leads to a much more limited strategy, where you pretty much only want to focus the backline first, and the frontline afterwards. 

There’s also the matter of turn order. Characters with a higher Awareness stat (more on stats in a second) get a bonus on their initiative and can go higher in the turn order, beyond that I’m not actually sure what factors are involved in determining this. However, the turn order itself is transparently displayed in the bottom center of the screen during combat, telling you very clearly which position on which side gets the next move, which helps out a lot with planning out your encounters.

Once you get the hang of it though, Vambrace’s combat is still enjoyable, and I’d say the aesthetic and environment around it makes it different enough from Darkest Dungeon that I can enjoy playing both for different reasons. Vambrace far more embraces certain JRPG aspects, for instance. 

Speaking of which, lets talk stats. 

Before I do though I want to talk about one of my biggest gripes with the game so far, and that’s the fact that its interface is terrible. This game doesn’t have a menu for keybinds, it doesn’t let you re-bind things, and its control scheme is a little awkward to say the least. 

It also hides a lot of information to be only accessible in the tutorial pages, which you can access at any time in the pause menu, but it makes things tedious because this game has a lot of smaller things to keep track of.

Each character has 5 stats. Combat, Sleight, Merchantry, Awareness, and Overwatch, and each one has a different impact on the game. 

Combat is fairly self explanatory, it determines how good your character is at fighting. 

Sleight determines how good the character is at scavenging, and it affects the quality of loot you find in containers.

Merchantry affects buying and selling, the higher the merchantry, the cheaper stuff is to buy and the more people pay for your junk. 

Awareness determines how well you can avoid traps

And Overwatch determines how good your character is at managing the party during camping.

Your stats can also affect the outcomes of certain random events that can trigger throughout the dungeons, although I’ve only encountered a handful of them so far.

Speaking of camping, one of the most under-explained mechanics in this game is the camping mechanic, and my first and only death so far has been because of a failure to properly explain said mechanic, causing me to fuck it up 3 times before I did it right, and because camping is actually extremely vital to success in this game, it caused me to die and fail the mission. 

Any healing items in your inventory cannot be used on the fly, they are only usable during a camping session. You can initiate a camping session upon finding a suitable spot for one, which you can either randomly find in the generated rooms of a “dungeon”, or in between the “dungeons” on a mission in shelters where you get sort of a mini-camp session. 

A full camping session involves you selecting the character with the highest Overwatch skill to manage said session. You need to do three specific things to maximize your sessions effectiveness, and these things are not properly tutorialized and are easy to misunderstand or miss out altogether. When the camping session starts, the character you’ve chosen to manage the whole thing starts out by standing in front of the campfire, with an “interact” icon hovering above it. 

Do not interact with the campfire. It will end the camping session immediately and you cannot redo it, you will have to find a new campsite. 

Instead, you need to find the interact icon for sleep and the icon for music. The first one will restore the HP of your whole party equal to your session leader’s Overwatch skill provided it goes without incident, and the second one will restore the Vigor of your whole party equal to the session leader’s Overwatch skill. 

Oh. Right, Vigor. 

Vambrace has 2 health bars essentially. There’s your Hit Points (HP), and then there’s Vigor. HP works how you think it does, you take damage in combat or from poison or traps and if you hit 0 you die. 

Vigor is basically a worse version of the Stress mechanic from Darkest Dungeon, but instead of ticking up as your characters get more and more stressed out, their Vigor essentially goes down as you walk through the various dungeon rooms, and certain debuffs and traps can reduce it as well. 

Once you’ve done both a sleep and a music session, you then need to open up your inventory and use the appropriate healing items to cover up whatever those two things didn’t get. If one character was particularly badly hurt and needs extra patching up after a nap, do it with healing items now. You cannot use healing items outside of a camping session, so do it now. 

You can also only use status healing items here too, and status ailments don’t go away with a nap. 

Only once you have done those three things should you interact with the campfire again, ending the camping session and continuing on with the dungeon. 

The Other Stuff

The other reason besides the gameplay being interesting enough that I plan on continuing to play this game is that the art direction and the sound design are actually very, very well done, with a feeeeew small exceptions. 

Let’s start with the art direction. 

Visually, the game looks fantastic. It’s as if you took the visual style of Darkest Dungeon but made it more anime-esque and less horrifying, more pleasant to look at. It’s really pretty and well stylized, and is a style that will hold up visually even when graphical advancements outpace it. 

The character designs are also all fairly unique, if a little over-designed sometimes. You can pick out all the named characters on sight alone, they’re all visually distinct from each other and are easily recognizable. 

The sound design is also, for the most part, really really good. The ambient noise is a good quality, the audio is well balanced and none of it really grates on my ears, and some of it is actually pretty nice to listen to.

The music in the game so far is also good, and while I haven’t come across any tracks that made me want to just sit there and listen to it on loop for a few minutes, I also haven’t found any tracks that made me go “oh god oh god make it stop”

The only part of the audio I have a problem with is...the voice acting. It’s only shown up in a few very small cutscene bits so far, mostly the initial opening scene, but I can’t really put my finger on what’s wrong with it. The only character who’s spoken so far is Lyric, and I really am finding it hard to say exactly why her voice-acted dialogue bothers me, but it really grated on my ears and I was glad when the cutscene ended. 

I think it was a mixture of the quality of the audio, it didn’t sound professionally recorded although I’ll grant it that it wasn’t “Skyrim mod voice acted by the modder” level of terrible, but it still left a lot to be desired. The other part that got to me was just the style with which the actress was talking, however I can’t really pinpoint if it was just the stilted dialogue she was stuck with, if the direction was bad, or if she just didn’t really have much of an idea what she was doing. 

She had a very monotonous voice throughout, and while she wasn’t speaking flatly or like she was bored, it was moreso that kind of voice people give characters like Sasuke in fandubs, where they’re overly mopey and Serious™ which kinda takes the oomph out of lines that should have had the more somber tone. 

Overall Thoughts and Opinions

Keep in mind this is all based on the first 2 hours of gameplay, and that I’ll probably post a more detailed version of this (or make a video) once I’m either a lot further into the game or I beat it. 

I don’t hate the game. I think the writing is completely overdone and obnoxious, and has way, way too much lore and way too many things going on without focusing on the more narrow plotline, and I have a huge problem with the very very inconsistent naming scheme, but aside from those two specific criticisms, I’ve definitely seen worse writing. 

And it’s not like the characters aren’t endearing in that “this character 1000% slots into a very specific JRPG trope but I’m here for it” sort of way. I did enjoy what I got to see of Lyric and the other named characters, even though they were completely stereotypical and Lyric comes off as a bit of a Mary Sue. 

So far the writing is very flawed, but in a tolerable way. I’d much more rather play a game written with love and care and have the flaws come from human error rather than a game that was written by committee to be as bland and appealing to as wide an audience as possible without offending anyone. 

The gameplay definitely isn’t as deep as it could be, but the out-of-combat mechanics actually do require a lot of forethought and planning once you actually understand them. 

That’s probably my biggest criticism of the game outside of the writing, the game has a pretty decent tutorial that tries to explain everything, but the UI design and how the game presents its information outside of the tutorial works against that and forces you to memorize things and constantly refer back to the tutorial pages. 

There’s a lot of quality-of-life things that are missing that shouldn’t be. The ability to rebind keys, the ability to even check a simple menu solely dedicated to the keybinds instead of sifting back through the tutorials trying to figure out what fucking key you need to press for things is. 

There’s no hover-over information, on anything. The mouse does literally nothing, you could control the whole game with the keyboard. This is especially problematic when dealing with stat buffs and debuffs, because while you can open up your character stat menu in combat to check exactly what their debuffs do, you can’t open up an enemy stat page and are completely reliant on having memorized what icon corresponds to what debuff and what that debuff actually does. 

But if you can look past the cripplingly bad UI and inability to rebind keys, along with the weird writing, the game is actually fairly charming and does have a lot to offer, so I’d definitely recommend checking it out! I bought it on sale for about $16 USD, and if the game keeps up the current quality for a decent chunk of playtime, I’d say it’s worth it around that price. Probably not at full price though.