#he reminds me of sekiro

[ryann-44]

I like giyu

[prosciuttoon]

funny how people say they hate shuro because his family is rich meanwhile their favorite is Laios, the son of village chief the hypocrisy is astonishing lmao. they can just admit that they hate characters of color so much

i think when laios left his hometown/the army he was effectively cut off but cant say for sure. he does have nepo baby status but wouldnt say hes rich bc if he was he wouldnt have considered selling his partys equipment at the start of the manga. but u just made me realize smth anon

laios and shuro are already exact opposites/parallels(?) of each other, like, off the top of my head i cant remember exactly cuz ive been playing sekiro all day i can still see the ui. but like. laios being kinda free spirited, leaving a situation (like home) bc he had enough of it. while shuro being petrified in his position even if he doesnt like it (i.e not setting boundaries even tho he shouldve) (read this twitter thread they put it in better words).

and then heres another layer of that: their relationships w their respective dads. laios is so vocal about not liking his dad, hates being reminded of him and not wanting to look like him, etc. shuro also has contempt for His dad and the way he just does shit on a whim if he feels like it and also being constantly compared to him made him feel like nothing he did would matter. maybe he even resents his dad for having an affair w maizuru which is conflicting bc she was basically his nanny growing up and, 'rather than his parents, shuro felt admiration for maizuru' (adventurers bible). but he can never say this abt his dad ofc. thats just the rule. <- also yet another polar comparison between their cultures

theyre soooooo opposites. lol

anyways back to the ask. i dont think they can be compared on their nepo statuses, cuz laios has (at least tried to) cancelled his, but it does open up for interesting conversation about their personalities, so thanks for bringing it up!

however, for that reason... i dont really agree with ur point about ppl hating characters of colour - IF THIS is the evidence ur using - bc it doesnt work.

[the-damnable-fool]

Replaying Owl's boss fights in Sekiro just reminds me how fucking fantastic and subtle the storytelling in this game is, man. Owl, the man that trained Sekiro, is the *only* fucking boss in the game to also use the same techniques that Sekiro does. Sure, everybody knows that he mikiri counters and uses the firecrackers, but he also uses the chasing slice shinobi martial art and deathblows you when your posture breaks. So, ok, that's Owl characterized through gameplay to reflect his role as Sekiro's mentor. Cool shit, right? Yet it goes DEEPER.

Not only does he pull your same kit on you, he's also packing some more subtle fuckery. To my knowledge, Owl is the only boss in the game whose combos have variable length. A combo that you've blocked twenty times might suddenly have an extra blow or three thrown at the end just to catch you getting greedy. His second phase especially is just filled with little mix ups designed to fuck with your muscle memory and it's great. It goes the extra mile to portray through gameplay that this man is a lowdown, cheating motherfucker with as many tricks up his sleeve as shuriken.

This game has some of the best boss design in gaming, hands down.

[thejokig23]

Favourite and least favourite part of each FromSoftware game I've played

Demon's Souls:

I really like the freedom of choice on where you want to go. Stonefang, Latria, the Shrine of Storms, and the Valley of Defilement are all accessible after beating Phalanx, designed to be completed or visited in whatever order you choose. A lot of mechanics in Demon's Souls also fit this style pretty well, like the grass system.

When playing Demon's Souls, I find it lacking in amazing fights like the other games. The only one that's really a stand out is the False King. The lack of a proper dragon fight is particularly devastating to me. The fights aren't bad for the most part, just usually more puzzle based than I'd like.

Dark Souls:

The interconnected aspect of the first half of the game. It reminds me of Metroid in a way, being able to navigate through a twisting world to get stronger or pick up items you need, finding shortcuts. It would have been great if this carried into the second half as well.

I find out if all the games, Dark Souls has the most enemies that aren't really designed to be fought. A few coming to mind being the blue drakes, the cats in the forest, giant sentinels, Sen's fortress' giants, the Titanite demons, the giant maggots in Izalith, and the boars in the archive's entrance. They're just awkward to fight, usually with janky movement and collision.

Dark Souls II:

The variety of viable playstyles is at its best in DS2. Bows, crossbows, and magic are all just as good as melee. You can infuse pretty much any weapon, even special weapons and catalysts, really anything goes. There are certainly bad options, but they aren't bad in the same way as bad options in the other games.

Unfortunately, the game is just really fucking janky. Moving feels like your controller is covered in molasses, animations are both slow and weightless, and both enemies and the majority of areas look outright unfinished. I can't stand playing it for more than a few minutes.

Dark Souls III:

This is the most consistently great game FromSoftware has made (that I have played). Every area has looping paths, with shortcuts reusing bonfires and secrets to find. A vast majority of enemies are just fun to fight, even grouped together, and there are very few bad bosses, with many times more amazing ones.

Although, playing the game multiple times gets old incredibly fast. The combat is incredibly light attack centric, and most weapons function pretty similar to each other. Viable builds that noticeably devuate from this are few and far between: bows suck, sorcery sucks, miracles suck, and pyromancy is only okay.

Bloodborne:

The trick weapons are exactly what I like to see in a weapon's moveset: toolkits for beating shit up. Fewer weapons with more individual personality is an amazing idea, and while there are a few somewhat disappointing (note: I didn't say ineffective), like the saw spear and Ludwig's holy blade taking their untransformed moveset from the saw cleaver and Kirkhammer respectively, the majority are really cool and fun to use.

While the game looks gorgeous, the visuals do tend to get in the way of gameplay. There are framerate issues quite often, colours blend to mush a lot, and particle effects will just cover whatever you're fighting, which is made worse by how fast and twitchy enemies tend to be. A particularly bad example was fighting Ludwig's first phase. The second phase was fantastic, but god is getting to it miserable, with dust and blood everywhere as he flails around incomprehensibly.

Sekiro:

I did not get far in this one. People lumping it in with the other games is a mistake, it's really not that similar to the other games in most ways. Not to say it's bad, obviously, in fact I think deflecting is an amazing mechanic. I never quite got good at it, but it's engaging and fun to do.

Sekiro just wasn't really for me. I kinda just got lost and gave up, with no clue how to get better or stronger in any way. I wasn't having fun dying to the chained ogre over and over, gettibg no closer to beating it no matter what I did, and not really fibding anywhere else to go.

Elden Ring:

The setting of Elden Ring is fantastic. Lots of vibrant colours, but all within a certain natural pallet. The world is bursting with life in a way the other games weren't, and I find a living world bursting with energy more compelling than one falling into entropy. Character and monster designs are amazing and play into this as well, especially when comparing them to previous games. It's not perfect - I dislike how boring sorcery is as just being, for the most part, Blue Stuff, while incantations get many, MANY more interesting spell types to work with (and its Yellow Stuff being limited to one or two spell groups). But otherwise, it's my favourite FromSoftware setting.

Combat in Elden Ring can be kinda hit or miss. The main culprit, I think, is that fighting most enemies and some bosses feels unnatural, like they're all truing to just trip you up and hit you with bullshit. I like Dancer oft the Boreal Valley, I like Pontiff, I like the Nameless King - but not for every fucking fight in the game. It just feels tedious.

[imustbenuts]

personal thoughts about playing JP games in JP vs EN, a lot of weird thoughts that probably won't make sense to many

not a dig at localization or translation or anything, just a word vomit on how im perceiving things.

theres 2 main categories in my head when i play games made by japanese devs. Western Themed, and Eastern Themed.

for Western Theme, games like final fantasy (all of it), some/few entries of fire emblems, no more heroes, and elden ring all fall into this category.

for Eastern Theme, it's games like persona, shin megami tensei, sekiro, sengoku basara, tales of series and RGG games

in my head, games in the Western Themed box are games i find far more enjoyable in english localization or dub, and actually find some of the japanese script to be kind of off putting. the Eastern Theme would be the opposite, games that are far more enjoyable in full JP than EN.

learning japanese has done quite a bit to my brain and the more i learn the more i think, "@_@ oh god im in a weird place where people won't understand me help"

because see, if i try to explain, it becomes weird and very subjective. and one of the main factor is that language is kind of intrinsically tied to culture in my head, which, :v

trying to type it down to explain anyway:

as an example, calling people by titles such as "Lord", "Sir", "Madame", "Knight", works far better for a Western themed game than an Eastern one. like, yes, that makes sense if i think about it, historically and even right now, those terms instantly spring up the images of a medieval knight and societal system in stone castles. cool beans.

but we don't use the word knight for Samurais. this is a whole other thing referring to the Japanese class of people wandering around with swords serving their feudal lords.

and in JP, it works the same. Kishi is used for Knights rather than the word samurai. for Lords, 卿(kyou) is used for English lords, and 殿(tono) is used for JP lords. but the japanese pronouns are still there, with some of the roots just reminding me of how a stereotype in JP media would speak. the -sama suffix is the same, and other words like -chan or anime/japanese rooted verbal tics can totally get in there, pulling me out of the immersion.

its like running face first into "Tis but a flesh wound" in the script - you know that specific root is in monty python, a fully ENGLISH bit. a good example of JP would be running into a cat who says "wagahai wa neko de aru", refering to nastume soseki's book I Am A Cat.

especially in the case of Final Fantasy. with very few exceptions like 7, a lot of them fit better wtih an EN script bc of how much western themed theatrics and setting is packed in there.

as an example, i think i prefer seifer in ff8 for example going "One of these days, I'm gonna tell ya 'bout my ROMANTIC dream!" like a dumbass jock over "itsuka kikasete yarusa! ore no ro~~~~~mantikku na yume wo na!" like a dumbass JP highscooler (which he kind of is, but still not a dipshit jock)

so its really the little things like that. subs not dubs doesnt work for me anymore, im in a very strange place, kupo.

another thing is really, just... the tropes. the deep disconnect between how people behave irl and how anime thinks people behave irl. kind of like how Hayao Miyazaki puts it in 2014,

so, learning Japanese has actually done a weird bit where it's caused me to actually fully understand the JP, meaning when i pick up on the script getting off putting, it gets off-putting.

when people usually go "subs not dubs", its voiced from a sense that the JP voice is better than EN. but as the years go by this isn't really true anymore, some dubs can have serious quality that's unthinkable back in 2010 ffs. i think this is largely bc anglo-speaking audience do not understand JP, and so builds an imagination between the sub and the tone of the voice acting to carry the work.

but just like old ps1 horror games, that imagination is doing a good bulk of elbow greasing.

to explain:

there are times when JP writers puts in an objectively anime trope or thing. especially in the case of FE, where sometimes that it becomes 'ew' to people who aren't hardcore anime nerds. im talking things like the whole big booba onee-chan Camilla and the kawaii imouto/otouto Sakura and Takumi tropes thats kinda there in FE Fates. and the JP version of Anna's S support in Engage and the weird undertones thats going there.

masking it with subs can cause the audience to kind of brush it off as "aaah those silly japanese" or "ok this is just an anime trope". i mean, hell, check some discourse from people who yell about how this is censorship essentially defending it from what is effectively lolicon tropes and it's just. :v

and thats the thing. once that localization or sub barrier is removed, once im hearing actual JP and past any subconscious filter, i fully see the scene in its original form. i would then have a reaction exactly like hayao miyazaki.

having that ignorance kind of protects an audience from just how deep the writers ouroborous'd themselves into the nerd sphere. i kind of wish i had that sometimes. the creep vibes in some original JP scripts makes me want to crawl out of my skin, and there is no way i can explain this to an audience without first sounding like im disparaging the original work, shitting on the writers, and bringing in my personal bias into the conversation.

which, yeah i guess it kind of is. but man. if elden ring can commit to their bit with anime tropes used in a good/interesting/subtle way, then so can every one else.

when i started learning JP to play JP games never to see the light of localization, this was not the experience i expected, tbh.

so in summary, im totally disillusioned to the idea of Original = Best, Localization = Censorship at this point. that rose colored glasses are hanging on by a thread now. kind of wondering what other stuff i'll run into but it's been a real interesting journey that i totally get if people wont understand.

loneliness and language learning goes hand in hand lol

[roodllle]

I'm sorry but I hate the popular "the bodies Marika was standing between might be the Crucible/Primordial tree" because it's just too bloody

"oh well the crucible is meant to be like a hodgepodge so the bodies make sense"

The Formless Mother exists first of all

But also that imagery reminded me a lot of Rykard's current body. Not the snake part but how the bodies he has eaten are still alive and completely bloodied. Their arms wringle around his sword and through his body.

I am not saying Rykard has anything to do with what Marika did lol but that what Marika is surrounded by looks very gorey.

And I don't think those bodies are of former gods either, they look like regular human sized corpses.

If that is meant to be the Erdtree then I think it's just to show how disgusting the tree actually is.

What Marika did to gain power might be revolting. And it's not like FromSoft has not done this before like in Sekiro with all of the dead children and in Bloodborne with the Fishing Hamlet.

[gerhardtz]

📌 WELCOME!

I'm Josh (He/Him/His). I'm an artist & fanfiction writer from Cornwall. Currently hyperfixated on FX Fargo Season 2 & Doctor Who.

MOST RECENT FIC UPDATE:

Drop It, Doe Eyes - Chapter 2: April 24th, 1975 - 00:10 (6.3k words)

Rye wanted to scream, cuss him out, let him know just how easily he saw through it all – You’re a shit liar, ya know that?! – but he kept his mouth tightly shut. It wasn’t Jethro’s fault. He had to keep reminding himself that none of this was his fault.

I often post about:

My OCs; Operation Amarillo, Efica, and FLY HIGH

FX Fargo (2014—)

Classic cars

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Doctor Who (2005—)

Sonic The Hedgehog

Half Life / HLVRAI

Warrior Cats

BBC Line of Duty (2012-2021)

Lie To Me (2009-2011)

Pikmin

Feel free to send me any asks/messages, or reblog my posts with comments. I love talking to the people in my computer.

DISCLAIMER: I reclaim and identify with the words faggot and queer. If this makes you uncomfortable, my blog is probably not for you!

You can follow me on my art blog @wenmistry for fanart and OCs.

FANFIC MASTERLIST

All of my Fargo fics in one place, with warnings and links to AO3. Characters listed on masterpost truncated for brevity. When I start writing for other fandoms, I'll make my masterlist a separate post.

Multi-Chapter:

One Hour Ahead of the Possee | 4/? | 9,375 words

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Category: Gen Characters: Rye Gerhardt, Mike Milligan, Floyd Gerhardt, Simone Gerhardt, Peggy Blumquist, Gale Kitchen.

Rye is injured and on the run. His conversation with Judge Mundt couldn't have gone any worse... and in his inebriated state, he decided to flee the scene on foot – leaving his car behind. It's not a question of *if* he's found out, but when.

Drop It, Doe Eyes | 1/? | 2,402 words

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Category: M/M Relationships: Rye Gerhardt/Original Male Character(s) Characters: Original Male Character(s), Rye Gerhardt

Jethro Sprang was always drawn to the Gerhardts, ever since he was saved from a bully by their youngest when he was ten. He didn't expect that, fourteen years later, he'd be saved by that boy yet again. This time, from the Gerhardts themselves, as he found himself in a dark alleyway, drenched in someone else's blood.

Lifespring | 1/? | 1,115 words - ON HIATUS

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Category: F/F Relationships: Peggy Blumquist/Constance Heck Characters: Peggy Blumquist, Constance Heck

Waiting in the ER after an accident on ice patch junction, Peggy strikes up conversation with a mysterious drifter, who seems to be dead set on changing her life... for better or for worse.

Oneshots:

Dead Boys | 3,167 words

Rating: Teen Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Characters: Simone Gerhardt, Rye Gerhardt, Dodd Gerhardt, Floyd Gerhardt, Otto Gerhardt, Hanzee Dent

On the anniversary of Elron’s death, the Gerhardts hold a family dinner in his honour. It doesn’t quite go to plan, as conflicting opinions on war, the world, and who should be sat at that table, lead to a heated argument.

A Promise Made In Blood | 1,757 words

Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: Gen Characters: Original Male Character(s), Ollie Stein, Virgil Bauer

In the harsh Winter of 1973, an important deal goes horribly wrong. Someone has to pay the price, but Dodd's way of delivering it rubs Blake the wrong way. It's no real promise at all, if it's made in blood, but he knew the Gerhardts would disagree.

Managing Up | 1,324 words

Rating: Teen Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Relationships: Bear Gerhardt/Ricky G Characters: Ricky G, Bear Gerhardt

Fending off Kansas City comes first, emotions come later – that's Bear's plan. But all Ricky wants is for Bear to talk to him.

Head In A Bag | 1,330 words

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Category: Gen Characters: Mike Milligan, Hanzee Dent, Gale Kitchen

Hanzee pays Mike a visit at the Pearl Hotel and delivers an ominous message.

and all the ships at sea... | 715 words

Rating: General Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Category: F/M Relationships: Betsy Solverson/Lou Solverson Characters: Lou Solverson, Betsy Solverson (Mentioned), Molly Solverson, Karl Weathers, Sonny Greer

After years of fighting, Betsy eventually succumbs to cancer. Now, Lou is left to pick up the pieces and figure out where to go next.

To Places Man Can Never Dream | 1,175 words

Rating: Teen Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Characters: Hanzee Dent, Rye Gerhardt (Mentioned)

Hanzee parked his car at 7:07. He drove off at 9:10. He’d been there twenty minutes at most.

[ornstein]

5, 6, 7, and 9 for Kuro from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, please! :3

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

I just had to search for songs because I don't have any playlist for Kuro. Land of All by Woodkid reminds me of him after the Purification ending. The song is tinged with sad Kurowolf vibes.

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

We both have a sweet tooth and love Wolf very much.

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

Sure! He is polite and quiet and respects others' spaces, not to mention he loves making sweets.

[theloathsometwinkeater]

ranking random soulsborne (mostly elden ring) bosses based on how much i like them but my takes are kinda bad

uhh 30 least liked and number 1 is my favorite

30. godskin duo

nuff said tbh. terribly designed boss. from had no idea how to make it hard so they just chucked two enemies in the dumbass room

29. the monkeys from sekiro

boring copy and paste of guardian ape

28. elden beast

elden beast is probably one of my least favorite fights in elden ring. for some reason torrent isnt available in its arena so you have to go chasing after it every time it runs away 😭😭 average int build fight

you could literally give me melania spamming scarlet aeonia, maliketh with 3x his normal health, and the double crucible knights all in the same tiny cramped room and i would still probably like it more than elden beast

the execution leaves much to be desired; especially for a final boss. give me cool insane bloodborne esque attacks not penis dragon spamming elden stars

27. fire giant

i dont like the fire giant fight. yeah im probably gonna get a lot of 'git guds' for this one but he always gmfu. WHEN HE GETS STUCK ON THE FUCKING TERRAIN I START TWEAKING ITS SO ANNOYING

26. ornstein and smough

smoughs fatass ruins the fight for me i srsly cant take him srsly with that goofy ass giggle

25. death rite bird

design is cool but i really dont like the fight

24. night's calvary

:-( this boss couldve been really cool. its so glitchy in game tho

the altus plateau calvary glitch is really funny tho. if youve never seen it essentially it bugs out if you stray too far from its locked spawn point and gets stuck and stops attacking

23. renalla

ehhhh. i hate int builds. plus i think her fight is kind of boring. maybe im biased

22. magma wyrm makar

hes just annoying. i dont like his design. the lore is cool!!

21. orphan of kos

cool bossfight but i still need to git gud so he ranks low bc i keep dying

20. radagon

ugh. first, hes ginger. second, his attacks are insane. third, hes ginger

19. friede & ariandel (i think thats how you spell it)

fun boss in design but the three phases is insane

18. astel

ehhh. i like astel for the design but the fight reminds me of elden beast. lots of running away for like no reason

at least astel has a somewhat enjoyable fight

17. red wolf

i like the dog bc i think its funny it can do fucking magic and wield a sword but the fight is kind of annoying especially if ur strength build

16. mergos wet nurse

very fun lore wise but the fight is so eh

15. sif :(

such a tragic fight. i think it was well designed tbh but since all ds1 bosses are easy as shit he doesnt place as high on my list of liked bosses

14. godrick

godrick is probably one of my favorite fights due to how fucking dumb he is. he literally crawls toward you and throws wind at you. he has to attach a dragon to his arm to beat you and still fucking loses. all those limbs he grafted to give him power just weigh him down and i think thats really funny

13. margit

margit is a very fun first story boss. his moveset is pretty cool and i have his voice line engrained into my skull

12. moon presence

i love this boss mostly bc of the cutscene since the fight is kind of underwhelming

11. divine dragon

i love the music plus the fight is cool. i like the genre of souls bosses that are very sad and pathetic looking

10. mohg

mohg is one of my favorite fights. i love his voice. i love his music. he gets major points for being a lolicon tho #freemiquella #mohglordofbloodisoverparty

9. artorias

I LOVE THIS FIGHT. whole game you hear about this dude and the fight doesnt disappoint imo. i wish they kept his voicelines

8. maria of the astral clocktower

shes so cool. i love her sm

7. LUDWIG

amazing fight

amazing music

amazing lore

what more could you want points off for being british

6. isshin

isshin is VERY cool. i havent played sekiro in a while but i remember enjoying the fight

5. maliketh

his first phase is eh but his second phase is insane

the attacks are so cool and the fact he bounces off his own fucking attack is insane. what the fuck hes so cool

4. midir

very fun fight. yes its hard but you can really feel how angry and sad he is

3. malenia

honestly one of my favorite fights in ER. yes its hard as shit but her design is so cool and her lore is tragic

points off for nuking radahn

2. fortissax

i love the ost and i love just how... sad and tragic the whole fight feels? hes clearly suffering from the deathblight and the fact hes been fighting it off is so cool. even an immortal dragon cant fight off the deathroot which is insane.

radahn

i love radahn so much

seriously it might be my favorite fight in the series

his attacks are cool. his design is cool. his lore is fucking cool. his fight is so cool-- leading an army into battle and charging radahn is my favorite moment. plus the fact he fucking holds back the STARS is fucking awesome what the fuck hes insane

the tragedy of that accidental patch will never not be funny to me. pre-patch radahn wasnt even that fucking hard 😭😭😭 git gud you fuckign loser. pushed fromsoft so hard they accidentally nerfed him

honorable mentions that include some normal enemies (dislikes):

crucible knight duo

god i fucking hate this fight. crucible knights are annoying on their own but this is a whole new level. dungeon isnt even worth it

rykard

hes... fine... but his pool of lava is annoying plus the magic spam

fia's champions

how the fuck is this an actual boss

valiant gargoyles

FUCKKK THIS BOSS.

agheel

his lore is cool and i like that the dragonburnt ruins hollows like... worship him? its kind of cool. but his fight is either just cheesing or chasing him around. plus his moveset is shared by like every dragon in the game

erdtree avatar

literally just asylum demon

castle sol knight

iykyk. fuck this guy

gideon

FUCK YOUUU

rune bears

what the actual fuck. my first playthrough they absolutely clapped my cheeks

black blade kindred

nuff said

godefroy

literally just a copy and paste of godrick

istvan

weirdly hard? his attacks are insane

pets from dark souls 2

ew

ulcerated tree spirit

the fact that its attack is just flailing around in the tiny ass spaces theyre always put in is so annoying. the one in caelid is insane

honorable mentions that i actually liked

ekzykes, borealis and adula

i think theyre cool. yeah they essentially share the same model as agheel but like... magic dragons

plus i feel bad for ekzykes

placidusax

very cool boss. love him

[maaruin]

I may be totally off-base and confuse similarity for inspiration, but I feel like there are a lot more references to Christianity in the themes and tropes of Sekiro than I had expected.

Even in the premise alone: Divine Heir grants resurrection/immortality to his disciple, to be used in his service. (It is presented as something negative/regrettable instead of something positive like in Christianity, of course.)

This thought came to me today when the design of the Fountainhead Palace reminded me of Revelation 22:1 "And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb[.]" (Again, the water of life analogue in Sekiro is corrupting, while in Christianity it isn't, but that doesn't negate the similarity.)

And before that some of the wording in the quest of the Divine Child of Rejuvination reminded me of Mary (mother of Jesus), but since I haven't seen the ending yet I may be getting the wrong impression.

These are situations in which I wish that my knowledge of Buddhism and Shintoism was more expansive, to know if these religions have similar motives in that regard.

But if they don't, or at least not to the same extend, then this would fit in my theory that throughout his different games you see Hidetaka Miyazaki's growing fascination and dialogue with Christianity.

[daisychainsandbowties]

what are your top fav pieces of star wars media (books, games, movies, shows, all count) and why?

you're my hero for asking this

the prequel movies. i just love obi-wan with his gay little padawan braid. i love the designs of all the drones (especially the separatist drones because they share one brain cell & juggle it like a hot potato). the podracing scene i must have watched 500 times at least, & it was the precursor to my obsession with any and all racing games (there’s actually a podracing ps2 game! but also i loved jak X combat racing, & wipeout fusion. anything that let you race and also fire missiles). & then obi-wan kenobi in the subsequent movies - i was obsessed. also, the prequel movies were my first intro to tragedy as a concept, which you can tell i am still !!! about. i love when the ending is already over at the beginning. also my mom hated the prequel movies so only my friends had the DVDs. i used to treasure any time i got to watch them. 

the Jedi Apprentice and Jedi Quest books. the jedi apprentince books follow the story of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, and the jedi quest books follow Obi & Anakin. as you can imagine it was kryptonite for a trans kid obsessed with obi-wan. they are also in general really good & fun books with serious storylines & also a lot of lightsaber fights. you can listen to all of the jedi apprentice books on youtube (narrated by an AI, i think, but still good.) https://youtu.be/NA4IfH1qG2s 

jedi: fallen order. this game is everything a star wars game can & should be. it’s gorgeous. it has a combat system that feels a bit like dark souls or probably most of all sekiro - only easier, generally lol. the lightsabers and the environments are just bursting with colour, and having a little droid pal or just a little pal in general is my favourite genre of video game (see: jak & daxter, ratchet & clank). i grew to love the player character, Cal, especially once my little droid BD-1 came into the picture, but as you all know Trilla Suduri is more my style. she’s a wonderful antagonist. genuinely scares the shit out of me when she shows up. her VO does a stunning job. & yeah, the central message of the game and the structure of the levels (except Zeffo. fuck you Zeffo) is a really chill balance of combat, parkour, and exploration. out of all the planets i really really really really love Bracca and Dathomir, because they are soooo atmospheric & dark. this is why my au is based off fallen order - because it isn’t afraid of getting dark, & Trilla is one of the most compelling characters in any video game for me. 

the LEGO star wars games. formative for my whole sense of humour. also being a completionist with video games (not so good) i HAD to unlock all the characters. also shoutout to the podracer game. i recently got it again on playstation & raced all my previous records again & it reminded me how solid old racing games are. (and how addictive lmao) 

i was raised on the original trilogy. we watched A New Hope on christmas every year, kind of haphazardly while cooking, so it gives me warm family feelings. my mom was a total nerd about it (her whole family is, actually) & she would sit there & do what i do with the lotr movies, giving me random bits of lore. no surprise she was in love with Mark Hamill as a teenager. i love those movies though & am still struck by how moody & atmospheric it is. nothing tops the emotional moments on tatooine with the infamous binary sunset. C3PO was important autistic rep for me too 😂 i love him to pieces, & obviously i fell instantly in love with princess leia, and han solo. luke took me years to like, actually, but he’s very precious to me now - i always thought that he took his losses too calmly, but now i can see that he’s a really emotional character, & actually a really gorgeous snapshot of a certain kind of masculinity that i feel very close to. the og trilogy is so wonderful & it was one of the formative films of my lifelong obsession with galaxies far far away. 

i absolutely adored the recent Kenobi show (& also Andor, but not so much). they just really knocked it out of the part for me with Inquistor Reva, & also how they discussed Obi’s trauma & his grief, but also the bright spark of young Leia (i will fight ten horses for her etc etc). it was also leaning into the scarier and more serious parts of star wars lore - what with the Inquisiton being what it is. so many of the characters in this stole my heart, which is amazing considering how few episodes there were. 

last but certainly not least, it has to be Knights of the Old Republic. i used to beg my dad to go on his desktop computer when i was a kid. i played it many times for many hours. it was my first RPG and it was STAR WARS and i got to make decisions and change the narrative. my favs being my edgy boi (gender-neutral) Revan, & Bastila because she was peak ‘overachieving girl goes apeshit to nobody’s surprise’, and also HK-47 (will always stan a murder robot). it was the first media i had massive and convoluted personal lore for, so you could say it made me Worse, but it’s really one of the games of all time for me. 

[masonuf]

Post for 3/8

Dororo was so much cooler than I expected. I got invested into the story from the very first episode and ended up watching more episodes than were assigned. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who recommended and voted this one in. I feel like we’ve stumbled upon a gem. It’s a strong contender for my favorite viewing in this class thus far.

Shoutout to wicked, twisted representations of Buddhism in fictional media that grant immortality to villains in exchange for their humanity (Sekiro, my beloved). I like how Daigo Kagemitsu’s introduction as someone who makes this type of exchange was concise, but effective. For people who have played Sekiro, it seems like many aspects of the game have also been inspired by Dororo. Jukai, the prosthetic limb sculptor who atones for his sins through sculpting, resembles Sekijo, for instance. Another example is the depiction of demons that are vessels to immortal centipedes. One contrast is that in Dororo, Hyakkimaru gets closer to humanity by growing body parts when he slays demons (although in the later episodes we watch, he does start to emit an evil aura), while in Sekiro, people succumb to evil and become Shura for accumulating bad karma from killing others.

Hyakkimaru was by far my favorite character besides Jukai. I’m a huge fan of powerful but mysterious characters. Big day for representing the deaf-blind community (who naturally have enhanced capabilities to sense people’s souls, of course). Hyakkimaru is unintentionally adorable in his (lack of) interactions with Dororo. Conveniently, the creators of the show give Hyakkimaru’s voice through the characters around him. Most of the time, Dororo does the narrative storytelling, but other times, characters such as Biwamaru speak about things that Dororo is less knowledgeable about. Imagine how much of a different vibe the show would give if it was mostly silent due to Dororo not talking to Hyakkimaru. It would definitely take away from the show’s moments of lightheartedness.

I also think the concept that people like Hyakkimaru and Biwamaru can sense and determine people’s morality by the color of their soul is really interesting. It reminds me of the trope where a character can detect “killing/murderous intent” that is present in other anime.

Anyway, I can’t express enough how much I enjoyed watching this anime.

Image from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9458304/.

[lankieghost]

Lankie's Bloodborne Boss Ranking Bonanza! (Part 2/3)

This is part 2 of my Bloodborne boss ranking! You can find Part 1 here

Spoilers for Bloodborne ahead!

Here's a fun challenge : try and draw The One Reborn with no references. Because hooo boy is this meat centaur a mess.

The fight starts with a bunch of bell ringing ladies on the balconies. Hilariously, I don't know what the bell ladies do if you leave them alive, since I killed them first thing every time.

You'd think this guy would be a flailing mess but it seems he mostly just summons a bunch of loose limbs over you. The only thing that gave me trouble was his big throw up attack which covers the whole floor of the arena.

I ended up killing him in two attempts, he looks intimidating but he's basically a very gross paper tiger.

Oh Amygdala, have pity on the poor bastard!

Turns out, ol' Amy took Patches advice at heart, because I beat them on my first try.

Which is surprising because Amygdala is pretty intimidating! What with the lasers and the prodigious size and the ripping its own arms off to beat you to death. But yeah I don't know what to tell you, I pressed O when I needed to dodge, I hit r1 a bunch of times and they just kinda died.

I do like that after killing Rom it's revealed that there's tons of Amygdala's (Amygdalae?) just chilling all over Yharnam, very creepy.

Ah Kos, or some say Kosm!

Boy howdy there's a lot of gimmick fights in Bloodborne. The Host of The Nightmare will just constantly run away from you until you corner him in a room, then he shoots a bunch of tentacles at you.

I'm making it sound easy but I ended up dying to this bastard 4 times! The tentacles hits hard and he's got his little puppet buddies backing him up in fights.

The best part of the fight is Micolash's running commentary on Kos and granting eyes. He really sells the whole raving madman vibe he's got going.

What does it say about me that I died multiple times to Micolash but beat Mergo's Wet Nurse on my first attempt? I don't know! But What I do know is that Mergo's Wet Nurse is awesome.

Look at this cool ass design! Six armed black angel with scythes? Rad as hell! Sounds like an OC I'd have when I was 13! I love that its head looks like a big slug thing but it's actually just an empty cloak. I love that this horrible thing is a 'wet nurse'. I love that the music playing in this fight is just a kids music box. Great vibes all around!

The fight is pretty easy unfortunately, the wind ups are really telegraphed and it's too easy to just get behind her when she starts flailing her scythes. You gotta be on the ball when she starts summoning her clones to attack you (reminds of the High Priestess fight in Sekiro) but there was never a time when I felt threatened in this fight.

But despite all that I'm still giving MWN an A just for the great design. Let it be known that I'll bump any character's score up if you attach some angel wings to the mix.

Does anyone care about this boss?

It's another gimmick boss where there's a bunch of these dumb aliens and you gotta find the REAL Celestial Emissary. At which point it triples in size.

I do like when these guys have the weird tendrils coming of their heads, that's pretty creepy. But they honestly didn't have to put this boss in the game. The next boss is only one corridor and a elevator ride away!

Side note: Upper Cathedral Ward, the place you find this and the next boss, fucking suuuuUUUUuuuucks. Brain eater enemies everywhere,the part where it just ganks you with 3 werewolves, if the little slug things nibble you once it fills up a full frenzy bar. Just absolutely awful.

The Daughter of The Cosmos has a very neat design, very creepy and alien. I was expecting this fight to be pretty tough but it was honestly not too bad, think I beat in 3 attempts.

I like that there's a thing that looks like Rom's corpse in the arena, I think the implication is that Ebrietas is an adult form of whatever Rom is. That's neat!

Another thing that I like about all the more alien designs in Bloodborne is that they all have some slightly human qualities to them, like Ebrietas' slug body looking like a humans kneeling legs. It adds to the creepiness of the monsters, like was this thing human? Is it mimicking humanity? Maybe they're not so different to us??? SPOOKY??????

Ebrietas gets a - solely because of Upper Cathedral Ward. Because fuck Upper Cathedral Ward.

Logarius, in my opinion, is the toughest boss in the base game. He's got projectiles, he's aggressive in his 2nd form, he's got his whole gimmick of planting his sword in the ground to summons constant ghost swords that chase you. He's a dozy!

However the main thing that makes him tough, and the thing that pops a minus on his score, is his tendency to jump straight up into the air and goomba stomp you to death! The camera doesn't track him when he does this, so you just have to guess when he's gonna land. Sometimes he'll do it multiple times in a row. I'm really not a fan of this attack because it feels like Logarius is taking advantage of the bad camera to land hits on me.

Also the run back for Logarius is not a good time. Two ladders!? What am I made of time!?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This ends part 2, in the next part, we'll take a brief jaunt into DLC town and rank the final 2 bosses!

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

[8bitsupervillain]

Elden Ring Spoilers

I like that fromsoft is continuing the tradition of one of the final bosses in their game being a badass grandpa. You got Owl, and Isshin in Sekiro, arguably Gwyn in Dark Souls, you could argue yet further the Soul of Cinder or Gael in Dark Souls 3. Godfrey, aka Hoarah Loux in Elden Ring is quite the boss fight. He reminds me a lot of Soriz from Granblue. Particularly when he snaps that lions head off and drenches himself in its blood.

[unproductive-software-blog]

𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬, 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐬

Bloodborne is a perfect video game to some people.

Bloodborne is a critically acclaimed video game.

Bloodborne is beloved by a shockingly active fanbase given its status as a single game released over 5 years ago.

My most popular post on this blog is a “quick tip” reminding people that the player character model has a highly detailed spinal protrusion. This post was popular because I used simple sentences and the word “sexy” while talking about a popular video game on Tumblr.com

My best friend’s Aunt loves playing Bloodborne. Her son, who played in an emo band and grew up with Danganronpa, has also loved Bloodborne since he was 13.

Bloodborne is exactly what people who hate video games hate about video games, right down to the presence of guns.

Bloodborne is also exactly what your run of the mill game reviewers are always saying they want: tonal cohesion and consistency, with story and gameplay harmonizing in a singular and jaw-droppingly detailed setting.

My friend at age 7, Evan, would have loved Bloodborne, because “you can kill in it”.

I lived with someone whose primary hobby was working out, who plays maybe one video game per year, and he and I devoured Bloodborne together. We made fun of it the whole time for being stupid and unfair, but never earnestly considered dropping the game. Our character was named Chad. He used the worst, slowest, dumbest weapon in the game, the Kirkhammer, nearly exclusively, and had an orange face shaped like a crescent moon. We never touched his Arcane or Bloodtinge stats, despite hitting the “soft cap” on strength-related damage increases about 1/3 the way through the game. We hit level 105 within 44 hours of play, and made a joke of the game’s “true” final boss. We then joked about how dumb that ending was, and put it away, before years later playing through Sekiro together and treating it with an earned sense of extreme reverence.

I have an incredibly close friend who once told me they “play video games for the writing”. Not even the story, but the writing. Bloodborne is one of their favorite games. They relate to it on a personal level given their life experiences. They are probably the closest thing to an expert on Bloodborne lore someone can even be without making things up. This person is also a professional games journalist, whose work I read consistently and dutifully.  I consulted with them before writing this article, to see what they thought about some of my more negative opinions on the game. I asked what they thought about the fact that you can fist a pig to death in the game, and how the game design essentially begs the player to do it at times. They called me a crass term for female genitalia. Well, I would rather be someone who gets called a pussy than someone who calls others pussy for their opinions on a video game.

My best friend Aidan, a successful and well-adjusted scientist, athlete, and off-and-on hardcore gamer, took one look at the game, the pig fisting, and the dismal nighttime setting, and determined that Demons’ Souls and Dark Souls were more his thing

My former co-director at our now-defunct video game studio, Studio Casting Key, likes Bloodborne. He and I played it together online. He paid for my PS+ account, because he’s a good friend, and friends don’t let friends pay for Playstation Plus. He and I were doing research for a Lovecraft-inspired RPG we were concepting at the time. He lamented that Bloodborne’s developers clearly wanted players to engage with its story and characters, but needlessly obscured much of that content from them. I disagreed at the time. I make it a habit to disagree with people when I talk to them, in order to coax out a more nuanced and intelligent version of their opinion from their subconscious. Playing “devil’s advocate” (the devil in this case, fittingly, being Bloodborne) I said that I liked how obscure the story and side content was, because it’s “more eldritch that way”. I said I wanted our game to be a card game where the cards are written in a fictional language, and the only way to learn what they did would be through play, but many of them would have disastrous consequences. Then he said he said something or other about his favorite character, whose name I struggle to recall even now, having fully completed her storyline in my third playthrough. I didn’t know who he was talking about, but silently felt cool for not caring one way or the other, because caring about the story in a game like Bloodborne was, to me, nonsensical. I was, like Micholash, Host of the Nightmare, from Bloodborne, navel-gazing hard.

Over the course of our playthrough, my friend’s internet-approved build was causing him frustration. He said that building up beasthood was impossible. I thought he was dumb to try and do something the internet said would work. I had no idea what beasthood even meant. I have currently played Bloodborne for well over 100 hours and have still never actually filled that stupid beasthood meter. That mechanic is stupid. It’s the developers’ fault for putting it in the game, not my friend’s fault for assuming a mechanic in the game would “work” or “be fun” just because it was in the game. We continued to take turns making fun of the game and praising its sound design (which, when listened to alone with headphones, actually includes a lot of glitches, such as the same one second loop of audio sometimes repeating endlessly during the battle against Rom, the Vacuous Spider, or the painful pop which damages my $500 Bowers and Wilkins headphones every hour or so during regular play) until reaching Micholash, Host of the Nightmare, and stopping because that fight was “stupid”. “Why would they even put a puzzle boss in a Souls game”, we wondered aloud as we gave up on the game for what once again, felt like the last time.

Why, then, did I return to Bloodborne, a game I only ever pretended to be interested in as a way of relating to my more casual gaming friends, and spend all of my free time for the last month on a 100% playthrough of the game, reading every bit of text I could find within the game and online? Because, as fans of this blog (if any exist) would know (if they existed), I played Demons’ Souls, and discovered just how rich the “Souls” series of games can be when one devotes 100% of their attention to playing and understanding them. Demons’ souls has puzzle bosses, and they are awesome and meaningful. Bloodborne, I assumed, must share the worldly perspective of the other games in its “series”.

Unfortunately, Bloodborne is not in the Demons’ Souls series of games. Bloodborne is what happened when From Software stopped being the dark horse game developers who made that weird flop Demons’ Souls (you know, that timeless masterpiece that changed gaming forever?), so Sony begged them to come back home (and bring their die-hard audience). From Software, now a ravenous beast reveling madly in the blood (money) of its fandom, could not resist Sony’s Pungent Blood Cocktail (money), and devised to create a game so utterly appealing to gamer bros and modern game critics alike, that they would all have to buy Sony’s bloodbourne (Uyghur slave labor driven) game console, the PS4.

Yeah, Bloodborne does have some themes in it. I personally love the theme of people getting so caught up in fantasy/ideals/religion that they let the real world fall to pieces. It’s just too bad the whole thing feels so totally lacking in self-awareness. It’s practically hypocrisy. As if getting to NG+7 is any more noble than Micholash, a villain of the game, spending all his days lost in a dream, vainly searching for meaning where there is none. Video games are basically the new religion anyway (especially if you correctly think of modern social media websites/apps as giant, horribly managed MMOs). Back in the day, people used to spend their free time in real life, thinking about real life, and having ideas about real life that they called religion. People kept building on those ideas, and they got pretty unwieldy, especially with all the money involved. Nowadays, people spend all their free time in video games, thinking about video games, and having ideas about video games that they call content. People kept making content, content about content, and content about that, until it got pretty unwieldy, especially with all the money involved. Attention has always been monetized, but I guess everyone’s just gonna keep letting it happen in this current form until we start having wars over the stuff. Then they’ll invent something else.

Near the beginning of this game, a little girl asks you to help her find shelter after you kill her father, who had become an insane killing machine. You tell her where to go. Then you go there, and she’s not there, like every other character you’ve led to safety. If you return to the place you met her, she’s gone. For most people who even make it this far into the quest, it ends here, with a big unsatisfying question mark. I looked it up, and she died on the way to the safe house. The only way to tell is to kill an enemy you have no reason to return to and see that he has a bow you never saw the girl wearing in the first place (she isn’t modeled). How were you supposed to find that? Was I supposed to go searching the city, worried sick (I was), until I found this? It’s extremely stupid, because if the game had allowed me to do as I pleased, I never would tell a little kid to run through a gauntlet of madmen and monsters by herself, I would have escorted, or even carried her. From Software didn’t let me do that, however, because that would mean modeling the girl, or worse, letting me kill her. You see, it was part of their design philosophy at the time that just like the “enemies”, any character you can see, you can kill. This philosophy led to a lot of interesting decisions in the Dark Souls games, but those games never featured any child characters, likely for this reason. This makes suddenly seeing a child, and having the option to save them, hit so hard at first; you feel like you’re saving the last sliver of hope and innocence in a world gone mad. This makes it feel all the more pointless and contrived when she dies due to the developers refusing to go all-in on their own design philosophy. Instead of making another game about moral choices, self-sacrifice, and the relative easiness of doing things the wrong way, From Software chose to rob their players of any real meaning this scene would’ve had in the name of keeping the game “consistent” and “cohesive” (my least favorite words in modern games discourse).

Enemies bleed when you attack them. Your character can get blood on them. It’s a great feature that adds a bit more ickiness and realism to your actions, making you feel a bit like a monster yourself at times. However, the blood effects are so stupidly exaggerated, that your entire character can become dyed red in a way that is only ever (unintentionally?) hilarious. If it is intentionally hilarious, then the game should try to say something with that humor, and double down on it. As it stands, Bloodborne is a ridiculously stone-faced game that tries so hard to make you feel bad, while doing what Killer 7 (consuming your enemies copious blood spray), No More Heroes (blood rain, hyper-gore moves), and Space Funeral (overuse of proper nouns containing the word “blood”, Leg Horse) did as satirical jokes making fun of this exact type of excessiveness. Bloodborne also has serious elements in common with those same games (uncertainty over who the real victim is, hallucinations, kidnapping/abduction, trauma, enemies that sound something like a real person in severe pain/anguish), but it dives so head-first into the deep end of edginess for the sake of edginess, that it reduces the impact of its violence when it actually has something to say about pain/trauma/mental health. 

Also, you can fist a pig to death in this game, and the game design practically begs you to do it.

It’s ridiculous failures of game design like these that cause people to not take video game experiences seriously. It’s moments of investment in a story or theme or tone being subverted by nothing but cowardly game design, a refusal to create additional assets, and over-adherence to a tone or theme regardless of how the player is made to feel in real life, that causes gamers to grow desensitized and turn to stupid jokes when discussing the medium, as opposed to real criticism of games as art, not just entertainment.

I refuse to laugh it off and say “it’s just a game, dude”, because I really do love video games. To shrug away these tone-deaf moments would be to dismiss all the genuine emotional experiences I’ve had with games, including the genuinely funny ones.

I refuse to let my $30, 130 hour investment in a video game control my emotional responses!

I refuse to become an insensitive, unthinking, sarcastic person in the name of turning off my brain and enjoying a game for the gameplay!

I can enjoy gameplay WHILE thinking deeply about a game and its place in the world, and I can do it while MOSTLY criticizing the game!

If you can’t do that, you’re probably too young to be playing a game like this! This is why we call it M for Mature, because it takes MATURITY to spend time with a flawed and excessively dark game like this and NOT get weirdly desensitized!

Brains on people!

[altairattorney]

Let’s talk about the most important feature of the upcoming Sekiro update: canon shirtless Wolf!

I mean, jokes aside, I wanted to talk about the way Fromsoft designed their characters in this game. In my past meta posts, I have talked at length about how much I like Sekiro’s potrayal of men. The game treats them as people with ideas and emotions, rather than as empty displays of brute force whose only defining trait is they are fighters. They are complex people with many an angle to be analyzed, which is not at all that common. Wolf, a victim of abuse and servant whose personality is deeply marked by the fate he suffered, is a very important example of this fact -- if nothing else because he is the protagonist. 

This image reminds me that I really appreciate how these men are real not only in personality, but also physically. Of course, we can all see Sekiro has some unrealistic elements and distortions, such as the prosthetic or Owl’s almost otherworldly stature/build. These traits often have a significance, and when they are noticeably altered they serve as a metaphor in the power dynamic between the characters.

However, the builds of all the characters we can observe more closely have very realistic traits. Isshin is strong, yet skinny and consumed by illness. Genichiro is very muscular in a way that fits his being tall. Now, we have the chance to see Wolf is not a stereotypical video game protagonist with rubbery washboard abs, a 16-pack and an inflated chest; instead he has normal strong muscles, an abdomen, visible fat and human tissue. He is a person. This is not a thing to take for granted in video games, and it is as good for women as it is for men. Major props to Fromsoft for that.