#he's been in only one game (and in that game a pretty short dlc)

[apocalyptic-dancehall]

SHADOWTRAP

[directdogman]

Do you have a favourite piece of lore you've ever made. From anything you've ever made. Or even just the thing you find most interesting or that your proud of.

Mainly I just want to know what lore you like the most.

I'll answer this for both of my series bc my DT answer is a lil underwhelming.

For DSaF: I liked the phone guy lore in 3 a lot. By the time DSaF dropped, people were so used to the setting of FNaF that a new game coming out with at least 3-5 new dead people in the story was basically a given. I felt like fangames had kinda missed out on conveying how incomprehensibly tragic the setting was. For every single dead person, there is an undeniable wave of tragedy and most of the dead human employees were just reduced to names in the main series. 3 successfully humanized the company so much that people even pity/love Harry/Steven (two people undeniably responsible for much of the player's misery in previous games.)

Also liked Henry's research in 3. People talk about the logs in 3 a lot, but I had many more ideas I wound up not including. I basically asked myself: if an amoral scientist wound up discovering that souls could possess animatronics, what would he try to figure out using the phenomenon? I think the writing connected with people because it felt kinda plausible in that way. It was 'real' in a sense.

Someone in a research lab would be hacking away at the same concept tomorrow if they could prove ghosts existed in some empirical way, using the scientific method to figure out as much information about the universe as possible from this newly discovered phenomenon. His deductions were tangible, even if they were unhinged + frightening.

For Dialtown: It pains me to say this, but every answer I have to this question is all stuff people haven't seen or stuff that's only been implied but never outright stated. That sadly includes a lot of character stuff. For the world, there's a lot of stuff that happened in the past that actually connects in pretty interesting ways to stuff that seems really random/unimportant. For character stuff, I'd love to explore the datables' families more and that's something I do plan to do more in future releases (be it DLCs, short stories or even a sequel one day!) A lot of stuff actually recontextualizes their existing scenes and shows where certain traits come from. Particularly for Oliver, Karen + Randy.

[heleentje]

So there's a take that crops up every so often in the Breath of the Wild fandom, and it goes something like this:

Windblight Ganon is such a piece of cake! If Revali were as talented as he claimed to be, he wouldn't have been defeated by it, so clearly he's just an arrogant blowhard.

I disagree. Because while Windblight might have been relatively easy for the player to defeat, circumstances conspired against Revali in every possible way.

Strike 1: The Blight Ganons were tailor-made to defeat the Champions

While it's not stated outright, the Blights seem to be custom-made to put their respective opponents at the worst possible disadvantage. So while Link can avoid the whirlwinds on the ground, they would be very disruptive to Revali's Gale (something he's only been able to do consistently for a short while). Arrows, too, can easily get blown off course by the wind even when using a heavy bow (so can a Rito, who is presumably lighter than a Hylian).

If, on top of that, it was raining (implied by memories #16 and #17), then Revali's favoured bomb arrows would have been useless. Not a great recipe for a fight.

Strike 2: Rito don't see well in the dark

Botw is a game that doesn't tell you a lot upfront, but you can find a wealth of information in every little corner. Case in point, in Gerudo Town there's a Rito named Frita. And she has a very interesting tidbit to share if you talk to her at night.

[Image ID: A Rito named Frita in Gerudo Town says: "Us Rito... We haven't got the best night vision, to be honest."]

When the Calamity emerged, an unnatural darkness blanketed the land. A darkness that persists from its appearance all the way through Link and Zelda fleeing and their final stand at Fort Hateno, up until Zelda temporarily sealed the Calamity (memories #15, #16 and #17).

That’s without even mentioning the laser show Windblight Ganon puts on. Ever encountered a car with LED lights on a dark road? Now imagine how Revali felt.

Strike 3: Revali had to fly non-stop for hours to get to Medoh

After sinking some hours into playing botw, you probably get used to warping all across the map via the shrines. Going from Lurelin to Rito Village is a matter of seconds. And if the Sheikah had been able to unlock the Sheikah Slate fully in the past, that would have been a massive boon to the war effort.

Unfortunately, they didn't. Which means that, when Calamity Ganon emerged, all the Champions had to take the long road to their Divine Beasts.

Now what does that mean for Revali? We can hazard a pretty good guess, but we don't have to, because the art book tells us: Revali flew straight from Lanayru East Gate to Rito Village. It's hard to tell exactly how long that would have taken him, but I'm estimating that would be about 8-10 hours flying non-stop.

[Image ID: A map of Hyrule showing the presumed routes the Champions took to get to their Divine Beasts. Revali's is a straight line across Hyrule.]

Which means Revali (like the other Champions) was probably already exhausted by the time he got to Medoh.

Aaaaaand that's three strikes, he's out!

But if that's not enough for you yet, here's one more thing. Admittedly, this is less solidly canon than the previous parts, but it's conjecture that, in my opinion, is backed up by the Champions' Ballad DLC.

Strike 4: Revali lacked his best weapon and may have been injured

The artbook shows us another salient tidbit. Revali could have detoured if he wanted to, but he didn't: he flew in the straightest possible line across Hyrule Field.

Hyrule Field, better known as the center of the chaos at the time.

Can we really expect a Champion, especially a Champion who's so eager to prove himself, to not stop and at least try to help? And while trying to help, what might have happened to him?

When you fight the Blights in the illusory realm, you gain a set amount of equipment, implied to be what the Champions carried with them at the time. And with Revali, something's missing.

[Image ID: The bow inventory during the DLC fight against Windblight Ganon. It includes a Falcon Bow, Duplex Bow and Phrenic Bow.]

Where's the Great Eagle Bow?

Would Rito Champion Revali, greatest archer in known Rito history, really not be carrying his signature bow, when every other Champion carried their favoured weapon?

This, combined with his route straight across Hyrule Field, makes me suspect that he did engage the Guardians, lost his bow, and may even have gotten injured in the process.

So there you have it. Just about everything was against Revali in that fight. And while Link, and by extension the player, may have had an easy time of it, they went into it at full health and with all the advantages of the Sheikah Slate.

Meanwhile, Revali arrived at Vah Medoh after a frantic hours-long flight only to be thrown into a fight he didn't expect against an opponent tailor-made to counter his every move, while he was unable to see properly and lacked his best weapon. And he still managed to put up one hell of a fight.

[rallamajoop]

I have too many feelings about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (3/3)

The story so far: we've covered gameplay and worldbuilding, we've covered story. Now I get to talk characters. And while I'm at it, go off on a tangent or two about some of my favourite touches from Human Revolution, and why I'm still in the habit of calling the hero of these games by his last name.

Characters

Much as I do love Jensen, it’s no secret that Francis Pritchard is my favourite character in this series. His snarky banter with Jensen during missions is so much of what made Human Revolution for me. When I later tried out the original 2001 Deus Ex, I even joked to a friend, “There’s this guy in my earpiece who keeps giving me straightforward, good advice. It just seems so unprofessional!”

Faridah Malik, Jensen’s pilot, is his other major human contact in HR – a friendly face to get him to and from different settings, and occasional voice in his earpiece as well. But it’s not just Malik and Pritchard you’ll be hearing from – you’ve got Jensen’s boss, Sarif, mocking him for his surprise that the SWAT penthouse villain has a panic room, plus so many other random contacts calling Jensen up and prompting ‘how did you get this number?’ complaints that I started to wonder if it was tattooed to the back of his neck.

I knew going into MD that Pritchard wasn’t returning (except in DLC). Halfway through the first mission, it began to dawn on me that Jensen’s new, aggressively-British, aug-hating coworker, Duncan MacCready, seemed to be being set up as the new Pritchard – ie, the asshole in his earpiece with whom he’ll gradually develop a grudging semi-friendship over the course of the game. This did not immediately enthuse me. Pritchard’s initial dislike of our hero may have been petty, but at least it was personal, seeing Jensen as an under-qualified nepotism hire. MacCready just hates anyone augmented, which would be pretty weaksauce even if Jensen had, y'know, ever actually chosen to being augmented to begin with.

It's not like it would be hard to come up with better reasons why someone might distrust Jensen: he's secretly working for a hacktavist network, was declared legally dead in circumstances he can't explain, and MacCready would be right to find him suspicious. But I knew MacCready was a popular character, so I resolved to give him a chance.

The reality proved much worse: love him or hate him, MacCready is hardly in the game at all. You can go talk to him in the office a bunch of times about why he hates cyborgs so much, but he’s only deployed with Jensen in the very first mission and the very last one. Jensen seems to have relationships with a number of his other new colleagues, but for most of the game, there’s no radio chatter at all. Infolink calls happen occasionally, but are vanishingly rare. Even when doing missions for the Collective – a group dominated by augmented hackers – Jensen’s left to fly relatively solo.

Jensen’s main contact at the Collective is Alex Vega, arguably the new Malik, at least in that she’s an augmented woman of colour and nominally a pilot (though she doesn’t actually do any flying for us) on friendly terms with Jensen. In fact, DXMD has given Vega a substantial redesign to make her less of the shallow Malik-clone she was in her "original" appearance, in the lesser known mobile game Deus Ex: The Fall. You can see her and Malik in the comparison below.

Yeah, there's really not a lot to set them apart. She's a pilot? Give her short brown hair like our last pilot, stick her in a flight suit, and call it a day.

As of MD, the new!Vega is black, does her hair completely differently, has more obvious augmentations, and doesn't live in a flight suit: okay, fine, no harm in giving the character some individuality (though why you'd insist on giving her the same name as the old Vega at that point I do not know).

But looks aside, it's on the characterisation front they've really let her down. There was never a lot to Malik beyond being straightforward, friendly and professional. But you do get an optional side-mission to help her solve a friend’s murder, and the big set-piece where she’ll die if you leave her and run like she tells you to (also the reason I’ll probably never get a certain achievement, but fuck it, I like Malik, I don’t need that achievement that much). Straightforward as Malik is, what makes her work for me is that it’s so easy to buy her as someone with her own life outside Jensen’s crazy world. It’s to the point where I almost don’t want to see her get dragged any deeper into the whole conspiracy plotline, because she’s so easy-going and normal she shouldn’t have to be. Basic as that is, when you’re having a reaction that strong to a character, they’ve done something right.

Vega, by comparison, clearly should be a much more memorable character – a pilot working full-time undercover for a top-secret hacktivist collective? But Vega too seems nice, and normal, and yet has no role in this story except to be Jensen’s contact. You can ask her a bit about her backstory, but it made so little impression I can’t remember it. She’s nominally so much more important than Malik, but she never gets to do anything as interesting as making up a nickname for him, hijacking a bunch of public TVs to get back at her friend’s killer, or make the tough decision to tell Jensen to leave her and run. She’s just there to deliver plot-relevant information.

Other characters fandom had led me to expect much more of were similar non-events. Koller, Jensen’s go-to guy for aug maintenance, is certainly a character, but not one that grabbed me, and he appears all of twice, neither time for very long. There's got to be a hell of a story as to why Jensen, an Interpol agent with connections to a whole network of augmented hackers, is going to a weirdo like Koller for aug maintenance, but the game doesn't seem to think that's a story worth sharing, so there goes another wasted avenue to do something interesting. Chikane, Jensen's actual pilot, has far more meat on his bones character-wise and more interaction with our hero. But he’s probably a traitor (I say ‘probably’ because the strongest hints are a coded message in a well-hidden safe, and finding it changes nothing), so there's not much point investing in what camaraderie they develop. Similar is Delara, an obvious Illuminati-plant who spends the game acting innocent and helpful enough to make you wonder if maybe she’s alright after all, only for an after-credits scene to reveal that, yup, she’s an Illuminati plant. Is this supposed to be a twist?

The one major character I did get decent value out of is Jim Miller, Jensen’s Interpol boss. Seeing a convincingly Aussie character in a position of authority in non-Aussie-made media is novel enough that I’m always going to get a kick out of it (even if his backstory does involve that whole ‘Australian civil war’ thing, which is hilarious in so many ways that I’m not sure non-Australians appreciate). Doesn’t hurt that Miller’s subtly queer too – hacking his computer will turn up info about his (ex-)husband and kids.

And that’s about it. There’s a local Prague underworld, but no-one involved is as enjoyable as either of the Tongs in HR, and agreeing to put yourself in their debt on Koller’s account means you’ll get to do a couple of extra side-quests, none of which will give your conscience much trouble. Is this really the best they can do?

When it came out, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was rightly criticised for a weak ending and some seriously ham-fisted attempts at worldbuilding and social commentary. I knew all that going in, and was still astounded by how bad it was at introducing its own ideas. But for all its flaws, I fell in love with its characters, and there were some touches that really stuck with me. I've had a whole mini-essay rolling around my brain for months just on the subtext it packs into who's on a first or last name basis with who – Jensen especially.

Our hero is ‘Jensen’ to most of his workmates (past and present), but ‘Adam’ to Megan and Sarif – Megan because they used to date, and Sarif because he’s the kind of friendly, personable boss who calls all his employees by their first names. But that familiarity takes on a whole other sinister dimension when you realise that Megan and Sarif are the same people responsible for basing their research on Jensen's DNA without his knowledge or consent (and in Sarif’s case, cutting off three perfectly good limbs while he was in a medical coma). Eliza – an AI who’s been watching him for god knows how long – calls him ‘Adam’ too. (So does Wayne Haas, the cop you have to talk your way past to get into the station, which is just more proof he’s Jensen’s bitter ex.)

Meanwhile, Pritchard and Malik – the two allies Jensen can trust to have his back – both call him ‘Jensen’. When Malik starts to get more familiar, it’s not by switching to first-name-basis, it’s by giving him a nickname (‘Spyboy’, which he responds to by calling her ‘Flygirl’). And that’s most of why I still default to calling the guy ‘Jensen’ myself: intended or otherwise, the game is pretty consistent in that the only people who call him by his first name have a serious lack of respect for his boundaries. I can’t tell you how intentional all that subtext was, but it shines through like a beacon.

He’s not the only example either. The game never tells us that Pritchard hates being called by his full first name, ‘Francis’, but it doesn’t have to – you can tell based on the way Jensen uses it (and it’s notable that he’s ‘Frank’ to Sarif, the ‘we’re all family here’-boss of the year). It’s a great little characterisation note for the both of them.

So you can imagine my disappointment that in DX:MD, most of Jensen’s new workmates just call him ‘Adam’. Maybe you could argue that now that unearned familiarity is going the other way, since here ‘Adam’ is the double-agent sneaking around under their noses – but then, Alex calls him ‘Adam’ too, and there’s nothing to suggest she’s shady. Miller and Duncan call him ‘Jensen’, which tracks with their characters and relationships, but I’ve long since hit the point where I can’t hear people calling this guy ‘Adam’ without twitching a little. Why are you calling him that? What are you really up to, you creep?

And this is just one thing I loved from that previous game that was lacking in the sequel. Pritchard and Malik may top my list of favourite characters, but it goes on and on. Tong Senior is more charismatic than any guy that shady has any right to be (and Tong Junior is just such a fantastic little shit), and Keitner deserved so much more screentime than she got. David Sarif is a fascinating mess of completely terrible person who still deserves real credit for standing up against the 'real' villains behind the scenes. Megan's level-headed conviction that she's doing the right thing even while working for incredibly shady people fascinates me. Quinn is great in both his personalities, and I even enjoyed Kavanagh and the sleezeball that is van Brugen so much more than I had any right to. There are compellingly grey characters all over this script, and the writers deserve serious credit for all of them.

But there’s no-one in Mankind Divided I enjoyed as much as the best players from HR. Including, I hate to say it, that one DLC which brought Pritchard back at last.

So, yeah. It's time to talk that last little footnote to this game.

The System Rift DLC

DX:HR had only one DLC mission, but it set a high standard, introduced some of my favourite characters (see above!), and contributed to the greater story in a big way. By comparison, MD has three DLC missions, and all have the exact same problems as the main campaign: there’s just nothing to invest in here. Do you actually care whether Jensen is able to save an undercover agent who’s gone native in some prison facility? Not once you’ve met the guy, trust me, he’s painfully bland. And that mission may actually be the strongest of the three.

The story justification for System Rift is as perfunctory as possible. Pritchard calls Jensen up out of the blue to call in a favour. He needs Jensen to recover some data from a bank vault, and along the way, you might find some evidence of shady insider trading between characters you’ve never met. And you have to ‘save Pritchard’s avatar’ from a virtual world, because reasons, which is exactly as trite as most attempts to build cyberspaces into gameplay. Oh, and you get to ride a funicular elevator at one point, because that’s about the level of what we get here as a callback.

As for new characters, you'll meet Shadowchild, a hacker friend of Pritchard, who I found depressingly dull. Attempts to characterise her mostly mean sitting through dialogue like “there are only a few hackers in a world who could do this, but fortunately for you I am one of them,” delivered in a relative monotone. Much as much as I enjoyed the fact that Miller was queer only if the player is paying attention to the details, doing the same thing again with Shadowchild just makes me feel like the writers don’t have the guts to make a character gay enough to risk upsetting the homophobes in their audience. It’s executed that much worse here too (look, I fully assumed whoever Shadowchild needed Jensen to leave that coded warning for must be someone she’d long since lost real contact with, because why the fuck would she need or trust a virtual stranger to do that for her real, current girlfriend when the stakes are this high? Come on!)

But what really kills this DLC for me is that Pritchard and Jensen’s relationship is given so little to work with. They’re not working together to find the people who put Jensen in hospital or tracking down the secrets of Jensen’s past this time. We’re not getting any insights into Pritchard’s past or hunting major Illuminati secrets either, there aren’t even innocent people in danger – there’s nothing personal here, nothing to invest in. The data Pritchard wants is a MacGuffin in the purest and most meaningless sense, and Jensen’s only helping because he owes a favour (and you won’t even know what for if you haven’t read the novel).

The fact Jensen’s now working for Pritchard directly ought to add new tension to their dynamic, but all it seems to do is throw a dampener over what grudging camaraderie they ever achieved. I do like that they've reached the point where Jensen doesn't even sound like he's sneering when he calls Pritchard 'Francis' anymore, but most of their banter was underwhelming – and dull as I found the core conflict of Black Light, even it delivered on that. Jensen is a surly asshole to Pritchard for no good reason from the moment he answers the call, and the idea that he’s pushing friends away to protect them is present but (at least for my money) underplayed. Pritchard, meanwhile, is here largely to deliver mission-related exposition. There were definitely exchanges I enjoyed ‒ I'm a shipper, I can't not like Jensen's last little 'take care of yourself' at the end ‒ but it's not much to hang a DLC on.

(And to be clear, if you did love System Rift for what it was, no judgement here. But goddamn, did you deserve something you could’ve loved so much more than this.)

So with all that said, where does that leave me for a conclusion? If the plan with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was to make the series more like the original Deus Ex, then for my money, they’ve succeeded ‒ at least in that the plot is uninvolving, the characters are bland, and their relationships don’t evolve in any interesting way. But even the original DX managed some memorable reveals and a gloriously weird multiple-choice ending, where the heros could tell themselves they’d taken down the Illuminati and cured the plague. Jensen’s grand success at the end of MD is that a key UN vote on augmented rights hasn’t made the currently shitty status quo any worse. Everything that Human Revolution did well is missing here, and everything it did badly is just as bad.

And yet, at the end of the day, my single biggest disappointment may be that this really is it. There’s probably never going to be another Deus Ex game. I don’t know how you’d save a franchise from a rut like this, and it’s naïve to imagine you can only go up from here – but apparently it’d take more than one lackluster entry to kill my investment. It’s a hell of a bummer to see it end on a game that seems so ashamed of everything its predecessor ever did well.

It's enough of a bummer that rather than leave my own impressions rest there, I'm replaying Deus Ex: Human Revolution now, and you know what? Turns out it's not all nostalgia that's making me remember the last game so much better, because I'm having a great time with it all over again. The side quests you can pick up are just as truly absurd as they ever were (sure, random hooker I just met, I'll plant drugs in this guy's apartment for you!), but the stakes feel meaningful, the character dynamics are fun, and Pritchard is back being his terrible, sassy self. My absurd quest for enough XP to unlock all the cool powers ASAP has me spending way, way too long trying to set up double-takedowns and carrying vending machines around the middle of Detroit police station to try and block the sightlines between the computer I'm hacking and all the cops standing around the same room. Look, this is apparently my idea of fun, don't judge me.

For over a year now, I've had a couple of unposted bits of Jensen/Pritchard fic sitting around, never quite completed, and replaying the game has reignited the motivation to get them into some kind of shape worth showing to people. Lord knows I don't have the power to uncancel this franchise, but at least letting my own unfinished fic see the light of day is something I can do.

[winter-sol]

still with you

word count: 1,5k pairing: GN! reader / Leviathan contents: GN reader, SFW. angst and loneliness.

After MC time travels in Nightbringer, they find themselves longing for their loved one's presence and affection. But in the past, things are different, and their relationship with Leviathan is not the same.

Short angsty one-shot. uwu. also at ao3 here ♥

For some reason, the walls of the corridor seem endless today. Your pace is slow, you’re not in a hurry since his invitation pointed at you to come exactly at 10:20 pm. You were ready to end your day and rest at Cocytus Hall, but apparently this new DLC for a game of his promised to be really good and he wanted to try it with a second player because “It’s not like I’m asking you to play with me, ok? I only need a partner. Though, not that kind of partner!”.

That was slightly nostalgic, but also oddly… disheartening. For him to be so ambiguous and nervous again.

That’s the way things are right now. May as well do something about it and not just keep him at arm length. You could never, not when you miss him so much, even if you see him every day.

…

“Hey! Another victory for me, LOL, you suck at this game, MC.”

“I- Ah! It’s not fair, you’ve played this one much more than I have!”

“Nope. No excuses, hehehe.”

Yes, you lost again, but not that you really care. You barely know this game, and to be honest, it’s not becoming one of your favorites. Leviathan is a pro at basically every game he lays a finger on, statistically speaking, yes, you were going to lose.

But to think you’d be able to play this game one day… In the present, as he told you once, it had been discontinued for a couple hundred years.

It’s hard to believe, but that’s the reality you had to accept.

The screen is passing some cutscenes recapitulating the fight both of your characters went through, the loud music turning into background noise as your attention has gone to the aquarium. It lacks a certain member. But so do many things in this room, in this house.

Most of them look the same, though. Turns out that the House of Lamentation and every room have looked the way you remember them since the beginning, with small adaptations of course. But you can’t decide if it’s better or worse, to see it all look the same but for everything to be that different.

“…in there… that kick… was not…”

…

Even that voice. It’s the same tone, the same color. It’s as soothing and pretty as ever. But it’s not his voice. It’s not… your Levi.

“… even there?... MC…”

Of course he is, and you know you’ll fall in love with him again (if you aren’t already), and with enough luck he may fall in love with you too. But it’s not the same…

Right?

“MC?”

Shit.

What.

“What? Ahh… Sorry, I got distracted. You were saying?”

“Oh. Don’t worry” A short pause, and he adds in a fast speech. “I’m not boring you, right?”

Ah…

Ah.

You haven’t heard that one in a while, since before you two were a thing. In the present, that is.

“No, of course not. Sorry, I’ve been kinda spaced out today.”

“Oh, s-sure! Uhmmm…” Another moment of silence, a bit more tense. “I’ll go grab some drinks! I think we finished the last can of soda. Uhm, I’ll be right back, stay here!”

“Ok.”

Clearly uncomfortable, Leviathan stands and hurriedly leaves his room, leaving you there to wait for him.

Even this awkwardness… It’s been so long since Levi felt that way with you. You two had come a long way, from the demon who tried to kill you for losing a stupid quiz, to your friend, to your best friend, and to your lover.

And now, it’s like everything simply was taken away from you. And you can’t do anything about it, not for now. You can’t even confide in him; share the pain you’re going through like you used to with all your concerns and burdens in the present.

You can’t snuggle with him in his bathtub, closed space making you stay too close to each other while one of you rants about their day, about the council, the exams, the other brothers, about anything and everything.

You can’t hide beneath the covers of your bed when it’s too cold and text him to come with you, to spend the night with you so he can warm you up. To fall asleep in his arms, with the dim lights of the tree and the heat emanating from his body lulling you into your dreams.  Such a simple act, to cherish his company just because you can, just because you want to.

But now, you can only look at the bathtub you forced him to accommodate for you in the present, unable to even think about stepping a foot in it.

You can only look at the similar lights you’ve placed in your new room every night, looking for a sense of familiarity, before you cry yourself to sleep.

…

Suddenly overwhelmed, you close your eyes.

A strange wave of sadness makes its way into your brain and your heart.

Can you even take this? Deal with this for who knows how long?

How is he even doing in the present? Does he somehow know you’re in here? Or is he worried, anxious and depressed at your disappearance?

He always worries a bit too much, let his thoughts go to the darkest places, expecting the worst. If only there was a way to send him a message, to let him know you’re ok, that you’re right here by his side, even if it’s not the same, even if his past self has no idea who you actually are.

It’s such a lonely concept, to be in the same place as your loved ones, but for them to be unable to see you. You love all of them, in different ways, but you do. You long for those days where everything was lively and chaotic, and they were your family, and you were theirs.

You open your eyes before you let your thoughts consume you.

Right now, there’s nothing you can do but stay right there for them, right there where they need you, and hope you can be a positive presence for them again. For now, you can only confide in Solomon, and that gives some peace to your heart.

But still, if only…

As if on cue, Leviathan enters the room carrying a bunch of cans in his arms.

“Hey! I’m back. Oh? That’s still on the screen?” He points out at the same sequence repeating, clearly indicating you hadn’t touched the game since he left.

“Ah, yeah, well, since I don’t know the game at all, I didn’t want to press anything and mess it up.” You tell him that instead of saying something like ‘I’m so sad I forgot it was even there in the first place.’ He doesn’t need to know.

“Right. Don’t worry, I’ll press it. Here. Also, I brought these ones, do you like that flavor? I heard it’s popular in here.”

You honestly have no idea what flavor of soda that is, as it doesn’t exist anymore in the present. But you can’t tell the truth since you’re supposed to be a native demon.

“It’s ok, but I prefer that other one”.

“Sure! Take it!”

He seems fine now, not uncomfortable anymore so you hide your true feelings at the back of your heart and end up playing again with him.

You guess you can’t really complain, you’re right here by your beloved demon’s side, enjoying your time together. Hopefully, Leviathan will remember a that certain someone used to spend time with him in the past, and that he was never truly alone during such hard times.

You look at his face and you can notice how bright he looks. He’s enjoying his game, laughing, making jokes, trying to sound cocky but ending up teaching you a few tricks. This scene where both of you are sitting right here, in this place, it’s so familiar. It’s nice. He’s happy with you.

He’s still the same, so you shouldn’t be sad, right?

…

“That was so cool, you got really good at this, you know?”

“Meh, I guess it’s thanks to you. You gave me all those tips. Also, who wouldn’t get better with such a handsome and cool Player 1, right?”

“MC, shut up! Hahaha.”

He laughs and tries to hide his blushed expression at the flirty comment you just threw at him. After he notices you smiling as well, he circles his arms even tighter around you, pressing his head on your shoulder, and gives you a tender kiss on your cheek.

“MC… Don’t ever leave me, ok?”

That was slightly unexpected, but you notice a sweet warmth enveloping you at his honest words.

“Idiot. I’m not going anywhere. In fact, you’ll end up looking for ways to get rid of me.”

“-! No, don’t say that! I would never!”

You only smiled and kissed his lips, reassuring him you won’t leave, not if you can help it.

That was a conversation you two had one lazy afternoon, in the same place you are right now.

But he was behind you, holding you tight against his chest while you played some stupid game together. You were loved by him, not trying to get his trust and friendship all over again.

Turns out you didn’t keep your word. You weren't powerful enough.

What a joke of a sorcerer.

likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated! ♥ also, if you want to talk and share your ideas feel free to hit the ask button ;)

thanks for reading ♥

[thegrumparoundthecorner]

clothes in grumpus society would be pretty hard to get for two main reasons:

grumpuses have wildly different proportions from eachother which makes it basically impossible to mass produce clothes, that means the only way to get well-fitting clothes is to go to a tailor or seamstress

clothes are completely optional and usually unnecessary when you have fur, which adds to the first point that mass producing clothes would not be profitable

this means that when a character wears clothes thats a big deal and it could say alot about them

now that I've explained my thought process, here are my headcanons about every character that wears clothes (not counting hats or other accessories):

Wambus: the vest helps block direct sunlight when working outside for long periods of time, he got it custom made before the expedition.

Gramble: he wears a sweater because he has patchy fur from stress, and his pets getting eaten probably didn't help, he knit the sweater himself.

Wiggle: in the credits artwork she is wearing what looks like a fur coat, she probably has more clothes like this because she's a celebrity, idk I don't have much to say here.

Triffany: same as Wambus, the jacket protects from the sun and has lots of pockets to hold tools or shiny things, she got it custom made.

Chandlo: the tank top is the only item of clothing he has and the only reason he wears it is because he thought it wold be unprofessional to be undressed, he got it when he used to play for a baskesball team.

Snorpy: in the credits artwork he is wearing a tank top and shorts, this is important because he is the only character that wears a full set of clothes in the whole game. he naturally has thin fur (in the dlc he talks about putting on sunscreen) and he has been losing fur from stress about the Grumpinati, he got the clothes custom made after returning from snaktooth. as for the apron, it is one of the things that can be mass produced because the only thing that needs adjusting is the straps.

Shelda: in the credits artwork she is wearing a long sleeve sweater, she is old, skinny and is probably loosing fur so it's not a surprise that she gets cold easily, she got the sweater as a gift from a family relative, she also had it with her at snaktooth but never wore it because she spent most of her time in the desert.

Floofty: in the credits artwork they are wearing a lab coat, the only thing confusing about that is why they didn't wear lab coat at snaktooth, it is important protection when doing experiments and it totally makes sense to get one custom made. my reasoning is that floofty isn't really the "safety first" kind of person and they never got any serious injuries from an experiment gone wrong so they just didn't bother, but when they became a teacher/professor they started wearing a lab coat to set an example for students who are more likely to mess up and get hurt.

eggabell and lizbert are wearing matching shirts in one of the photos in their hut, they got them for their anniversary. the shirts don't have a purpose egg and liz are just cheesy like that

SPOILERS FOR DLC UNDER CUT

alegander wears a sweater in the image we see of him. we dont know much about him so I don't have many thoughts

maybe the triplicate space is cold, maybe he wanted to look professional, maybe that's an old photo and he doesn't wear that sweater anymore.

same thing for how he got it, maybe he has someone close to him who made it for him, maybe he stole it from gramble, maybe he just cares alot about how he looks so he had lots of clothes unrelated to the snakolytes

SPOILERS END

Filbo, beffica, cromdo and clumby don't wear clothes

an extra headcanon is that when grumpuses get wet they feel naked because their fur sticks to their body. this explains why snorpy got clothes for working out, but this could also be used an excuse for why swimming clothes would exist for grumpuses

[saccharinescorpion]

Sorry OP, feel free to ignore this ask but I need more context. I watched a playthrough of the dlcs, and I'm now checking the wiki, and the reactions to your post really confuse me. Why are people talking about Carmine as if she's this awful person. People are talking about Carmine like she is constantly bullying and belittling her brother??? When she actually goes out of her way to try to not make him feel bad??? Which is really hard because Kieran has a lot of insecurities and it leads him to assume people want the worst for him???

Am I missing something? Is there a secret subtext of "Carmine is actually really mean to her brother behind our back and that's why he's Like That" I missed or are people just making stuff up?

lol, i think you've understood more than most people who've played the game

now, to be fair to those people: Carmine REALLY does have an attitude problem, as well as a terrible temper lol (but that's what makes her so entertaining!... in my opinion) and since Kieran is the character she interacts with the most that's who has to bear the worst of her bad traits, especially when he pushes back at her. in addition, Carmine is the older sibling, so i think we have a natural instinct to side with or at least feel sympathetic towards Kieran since we see him as the "weaker" party in the dynamic. their designs and animation only reinforce this- Carmine is tall and has a lot of aggressive body language and poses. meanwhile, Kieran is introduced peeking out from behind his sister, like he's literally hiding behind her. he's short, hides under his hair, has a lot of more drawn-in body language, he's a scrunky scrimblo wimbo meow meow wet little so on and so on

so, for the record, i think it is by at least some design that we are meant to "root" for Kieran, but i think that also ignores a lot of more subtle writing- "subtle," i say, but in my opinion, it's pretty obvious, lmao. Pokemon is a series for children. but yeah, the big one is that after time it becomes really apparent that a lot of Carmine's attitude is born out of deeper things- she's harsh and kind of controling towards Kieran in a misguided display of her protectiveness towards him, her hostility towards visitors to Kitakami is born of a worry of tourists turning their home into some sort of attraction

this is dipping into headcanon territory, but i think it's also a little subtextual that Carmine's overblown pride is her trying to overcompensate for what she inteprets as being looked down on or mocked. my big thing for this is the fact that Kieran speaks with a "Kitakami dialect" (based on real Japanese dialects associated with rural areas) but Carmine doesn't. (supposedly there's some random dialogue where she talks about this but i haven't seen it myself yet) since Carmine has been at the (ritzy, attended by a lot of students from important families) Academy longer than Kieran, i've always interpreted this as her trying to intentionally not be the kid from the sticks that talks in an "uncool" way

(incidentally i looked up 'Kieran dialect' and found someone else talking about this https://twitter.com/PokeSuutamie/status/1698625784775430234)

and finally- this may just me speaking from experience- but i always thought that a lot of Carmine and Kieran's issues clearly are really heightened by the fact they're teenagers? lol? puberty dials all your emotions up to 110% and smashes all delicacy with a sledgehammer. Carmine is TRYING to help Kieran but all of her feelings are constantly at a boil. and meanwhile, as you said, Kieran's self-esteem issues constantly lead him to project on other people and assume that everyone's mocking him or looking down at him, and i think that makes people forget that he has problems with being overdramatic and lashing out too (THIS IS NOT ME SAYING KIERAN IS A BAD CHARACTER DON'T YELL AT ME)

and for the record, as much as i love Carmine, i think that GF really dropped the ball on her reconcilliation with Kieran and her overall role in Indigo Disk, which may also be a factor in players being less sympathtic to her, but i already spent way too long on this and talking about my mixed feelings on Indigo Disk will probably double this post's length lol

in short, while i have some mixed feelings on Scarlet/Violet's overall story, i definitely can't say the character writing is bad. i think they're really making an effort to think about why each character acts the way they do and what they're actually thinking/trying to do. so i think we players should, in turn, approach them with the nuance they deserve

[supastar-vhs]

I genuinely wanna know why a lot of people seem to like the sun and moon show cause I could not sit through one full episode of that it was the lamest, stupidest shit ever

(I watched different episodes but could not finish one of them I kept trying different ones like "ok maybe this gets better??" cause I like to give things the benefit of the doubt before a genuine critique but spoiler alert, it didn't get better)

-They miss-characterize the fuck out of the canon characters

-The vr models look goofy as hell

-The non-canon characters are so awful and feel like useless fillers (especially earth and bloodmoon, they serve minimal plot purpose)

-Earth is a black character voice acted and played by a white woman (which is pretty weird, they couldn't have casted a black woman to play a black woman?? and before anyone says "earth isn't black" look at her skin tone and hair texture now be honest with yourself)

-Lunar is basically a loli (shota??) since it's been mentioned he's the same age as Eclipse yet he's short and acts like a child

-They mis-characterized monty and moon SO BAD (and sun but it was less noticeable)

-it's vr chat which that alone is a good enough reason to not fw tsams cause vr chat is like a breeding ground for discord mods

-The plot sucks, a 12 year old could have done better than those grown adults

-also so many of the fans are so weird?? In the show sun and moon are like depicted as brothers but then people turn around and ship them, it's weird

idk if it's just me over-analyzing but I cannot be the only person that finds this show unbearable, I feel like the only reason it's popular is because sun and moon fans are really desperate for content since their time in security breach (both the game and dlc) was so limited

this is a genuine opinion I'm not trying to hate on the show (I am) but I really have nothing positive to say about it and I need to know if it's just me cause I notice so many people like this shit show and the lame ass characters for whatever reason, if you have stuff to prove anything I said wrong and I mean like genuinely explain why (not just "you're wrong 😡😡" and giving no reason) then feel free because I'm genuinely curious about the hype for tsams

[pawmesan]

So yesterday I said I had ✨opinions✨ on the DLC and today I have come to the conclusion that as per usual, I will not chill until I dumped them somewhere lmao. It's mainly focused on what I've seen people say about Carmine and Kieran online, be it on tumblr or other websites.

Teal Mask Spoilers under the cut :3

I have no idea if I used the under the cut feature even right lmao I've kinda always just been a douche and ignored it when talking about spoilers as I've realised gfjdjrc

Ok anyway so. I think what personally bothered me the most is a lot of people saying "they just have a perfectly fine siblings relationship, nothing unhealthy to see here" and "Kieran is a coldass douchebag who view others as objects and only cares about strength". Both statements I strrroooongly disagree with.

First about his and Carmine's relationship, since it plays into the other thing. It seems that their parents aren't around, though it's unknown why. The grandparents are apparently pretty lackluster in taking over their job and because of that, it seems that Carmine has taken it on herself to take somewhat of guardian role for Kieran. Which is a role she's visibly overwhelmed by, which makes sense, because that's not a role you should have to take when you yourself are maybe like 17/18 lol. You can see that she absolutely does care for and wants the best for him, but at the same time she can't wrap her head around his actions and how he's feeling. So a lot of the things she does she does out of good intentions (for example telling the player for him that he's interested in them because she says he couldn't ever ask on his own, or the whole lying thing where she believes not telling him you guys met Ogrepon prevents him from feeling left out), without understanding that they have quite literally the opposite effect (Kieran feeling like he's unable to do anything on his own BECAUSE she does everything for him, and of course him feeling left out BECAUSE you and her keep meeting Ogrepon a secret). On top of that she clearly has issues keeping her own emotions down, so instead of reacting calmly she'd yell at him whenever he does or says something she doesn't like. And whether you want to see that certain one-liner as her implying she does also hit him when she's not "being nice" or not, she seems unaware of what effect these reactions have on her brother. I do think the implication might very well be on purpose, but it's just not as obviously stated as it could be because this is still a Pokémon game and we don't gotta be too in your face about child abuse in a game that like 8 year olds play lol.

Anyway, aside from him thinking he can't make decisions on his own and stuff, there's a lot of ways this treatment shows in Kieran. Notice how while Carmine is pretty open about showing her anger, he keeps trying to repress his own until later in the story where he's starting to be unable to do so? You can see that when you battle him the first couple times and he loses, the light in his eyes leaves briefly (yknow, the anime thing they both do where that shows them being angry/frustrated) before he grabs his head and just says aw man or something. And when she outs him on his crush or whatever on you, he also looks angry like that, but she immediately shuts him down like usual. I'm pretty sure that's a learned behaviour on his part, aka "when I get openly angry or sad my sis will yell at and/or hit me so I have to keep it down". That's why he always switches the topic, runs off or just goes quiet when he pisses her off or he thinks he pisses her or someone else off. It's optional dialogue so idk how many people have seen it, but Carmine confirms that at the festival, though she again misunderstands why he does it.

Have a high quality photo of what I mea-

So yeah, in short, in regards to their relationship, I think it's clear that it's pretty dysfunctional. For some reason Carmine's stuck with taking a caretaker role she cannot possibly fill given her own issues and age. As a result, she takes it out on her little brother who in turn has to suffer the double bagage of lack of parents and dealing with his older sister's moods. And with next to no social contacts outside of her, he's stuck in that situation and he's got no one to help him learn how to deal with this in a healthier way (same with Carmine really). All he knows that if he was "stronger", he could deal with this better. Like that cool ogre from the folktale that does not care what people think of it and keeps fighting for its right to be respected regardless. Stronger being a very arbitrary word here, as the only specific goal he mentions (in the beginning) is able to stand up against his sister.

Now onto the whole "Kieran sees Ogrepon, the player, probably everyone but him, as an object" thing which... yeah no, he's not a sociopath kcngjtc

More precisely, the player character comes in as this cool person who has no trouble beating his sister in a battle. They don't seem to have all that much trouble socialising either. Good thing he doesn't know all the kewl stuff we did at Area Zero and all or he'd lose it completely. I think a big bonus is also that we're not from his town, so we don't have any bias against his ogre idol. So like, he's head over heels for us, he actually gets to hang out with us and warms up as we realise we're interested in his stories and all and wow. He's found an actual real friend omg. He might not be 100% aware of that, but that's all he really wanted. He wanted to befriend the ogre because it sounded like it would be someone to understand him. And now there's suddenly this super nice person who's taking that role.

But then suddenly, that person hangs out with his meanie sister and stops interacting with him almost entirely. I have a feeling that Carmine hanging out with people he'd want to befriend and them making fun of him is just a thing that happened before and that's why he jumps to that conclusion right away. Keep in mind, the reason Carmine came to us in the first place is literally to make fun of his lack of skills at the mini game lol.

So yeah, the reason Kieran is so massively pissed off is because he does view the player character as a human being, and one he really really liked and put up the courage to open up to, yet from his POV we shamelessly take advantage of that and leave him alone again to hang out with his sis instead. Would probably come off to him like you just pretended to be his friend because you had to and now you're hanging out with the cooler kids and giggle about how silly he looked when, idk, he asked to have a sandwich with you lol. Of course this is not what the player intended (or is meant to intend) and I too felt physical pain when the game gave me no option but to lie xD but I'm pretty sure you guys making up and giving each other another chance is what's gonna happen in Indigo Disk.

For Ogrepon, instead of as an object, I think he just keeps seeing the ogre from the story in her. You gotta remember that he never gets to properly interact with her, he doesn't even refer to her by her actual name like Carmine does once she learns it. He doesn't understand that, ironically just like him, what she really wants is just acceptance and a friend. He thinks that the reason she's distrusting of him is not because she has trust issues and needs to warm up first just like him, but because he isn't as strong as you are, the one she does trust much easier. He's so convinced that nothing in his life will change for the better until he's "stronger" that... presumably the Dokutaro thing somewhere during the mid point starts influencing him. Not like, straight up possession, but more it taking advantage of his instability and promising to give him the strength he wants if he does what it wants. Just like the dex entries of the loyal three says what happened to them. So Dokutaro moreso takes the role of some guy who's a really bad influence and convinces you to do things that will harm both you and others with some sneaky lil psychological tricks. Because I mean, self-sabotaging is something Kieran literally does around the time he presumably comes in contact with Dokutaro. He completely stops trying to talk to you, he boxes the furret he apparently raised from an egg, he doesn't come along to help beat the loyal three to get the masks. I wonder tbh, if Dokutaro was influencing him, if it didn't lead him away from helping with that on purpose, since it originally made the loyal three steal the masks in the first place. I guess that would also explain why he would have been fine with Ogrepon just going back to the cave so he could get the masks back later. And while there definitely is the whole jealousy aspect, I think it's also Dokutaro leading him into actions he wouldn't normally do to get the masks. Because if he gets the masks it'll give him what he wants or whatever. I think without the Dokutaro influence, honestly, he'd probably just have locked himself up in his room for the rest of the story after you lying and sobbed into his Furret pal's fur lmao.

Soo yeah, I think that's about it. They both have quite some issues and continue the trend of ScaVio characters that really need a therapist lol. I like Kieran especially though, he's really adorable despite having his own set of flaws of course. So I do hope the next part will take his (and Carmine's) story into a satisfying direction. And I better get to give him a hug because he needs one smh. Maybe Arven can make him some top tier candy apples. Oh oh yeah, noticed btw that he adds Dipplin to his team after he gave us a candy apple at the festival and told us there's a mon that looks like one? Pokémon likes to do storytelling via the team, so maybe the Dippling reminds him of our broship 😔😔

[ggswaywardgifrepository]

Man am I in my thoughts on Khaos Reigns. Spoilers, obviously. And fair warning that I disliked far more than I liked about it.

I appreciate how much attention Bi-Han was given in the narrative. However, overall, I think he was terribly written. I’m just not interested in projecting meaning and depth onto his behavior anymore. I did, and still do, see his time and behavior as Sub-Zero during the main game as more subjective than how he behaved at all in Khaos Reigns. Pre and post being Noob’d.

I’m a pretty big base game Bi-Han apologist, and can apply meaning to some of his choices. DLC Bi-Han, though… I apologize and make excuses for main game Bi-Han; I want the writers to apologize TO Khaos Reigns Bi-Han.

I’m still pleased he was so important to the plot but the character was still shafted. And that’s a pretty impressive feat. But he is just a balls to the wall asshole through Khaos Reigns, and I’m just struggling to find the reason for it. Like, his base game beefs had some merit. I guess the best I can come up with is that he’s shed the last of his restraint by the time, especially once he’s transformed.

His one—ONE—truly selfless act ended up being him going through the portal after Havik. He acknowledges that something happening to Geras will be disastrous and does what needs to be done. It’s unfortunate it was so overwhelmed by shitty things happening to him, or him just choosing to do terrible things. Who’da thunk it that that would be the smartest and most sensible thing Bi-Han did in the whole story?

Well written characters don’t drag us by the feet from plot point to plot point. A lot of this came off as shallow, rushed, inorganic.

Bi-Han being the one to defeat Titan Havik was satisfying, but Liu Kang suddenly caring about what killing a Titan would do their timeline? Like we didn’t just wreck Titan Shang Tsung’s shit??? Even if Titan Havik was potentially connected to more timelines, Johnny, Rain, and Tanya proved that even in the most fucked of timelines goodness existed. He surely damned decent people in Titan Shang Tsung’s timeline, too. He couldn’t be any surer there was no one but his minions left, right?

IDFK. One of many inconsistencies in this new timeline’s story.

Noob’s time as Havik’s henchman was pathetically short, too. And the person who drops his henchman self isn’t Kuai Liang? Or even Sektor? He doesn’t even have a real fight against Scorpion? Because Scorpion didn’t get a chapter and it wasn’t worked into Noob’s chapter. (He was shameless and aggressive enough it honestly could’ve been.)

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Empress Tanya, but the single playable character per chapter structure really, really hurt this installment. There were multiple instances where the wrong character got the playable fight against the enemy onscreen/impeding the heroes’ progress.

The tower endings for both Sektor and Noob also seem to shit on Liu Kang’s plan to keep Bi-Han safe while he attempts to restore him fully. And that pisses me off. Because the thing that gave me hope about this whole charade was that we’d finally get a Bi-Han redemption story. He may spend the rest of his days disfigured for what Havik did to him, which is fine, but his spirit would be pure. He’d feel remorse and care to redeem himself. It may still happen; I know tower endings aren’t 100% canon, but there tend to be snippets there.

I can only hope that Sektor becoming involved with Quan Chi leads to Sareena being a part of the story and a key factor in Bi-Han’s redemption.

I honestly thought all of his restoration, or the hints thereof, were going to be part of the ending. I expected him to consciously choose to fight against Havik before Liu Kang “restored his mind”. (If that is what Liu Kang considers Bi-Han with his mind resorted roflmao).

Smoke was robbed, as were several characters who deserved to play a larger role (Kitana, for one). Did Tomas even have a single line? I truly can’t remember, he was there so little.

I’m annoyed that Emperor Rain and Empress Tanya were written better as a couple than Tanya and Mileena, because the series is sorely lacking in queer representation. They’re it at this point and they’re sadly, canonically, a kinda boring and neglected ship.

Cyrax is adorable and I loved her. I know some people don’t like her voice or her look, and I’m still lukewarm about the genderswap, but I really liked her. I think her characterization was closest to its roots of any of the DLC characters.

Boy was I wrong about Sektor. I liked her but the trailer cleverly implied she was more of a team good guy player than she is. She openly cooperated with the good guys but it was entirely motivated by her loyalty and personal affection for Bi-Han.

It was extremely refreshing to see Harumi, period. She not only lived but was portrayed as a competent and sympathetic character. One of very few things the DLC did well with.

Several of the skins are fantastic. I love Khaos Takeda, Kitana, and Mileena. Khaos Shang Tsung is awful though. Absolutely hated his look for all 12 seconds he was there.

Overall, though, the DLC was a massive disappointment. It cost $$$, only lasted a couple of hours, and there was no post credits scene to give me anything to look forward to and make the underwhelming story experience more palatable.

And if you loved it, congrats. If you have all the “this is actually a lot deeper because” metas and headcanons, go you. I’m happy for you. I wanted to like this enough to at least try to rationalize what I didn’t like. I really thought I would.

[mamthew]

This review of Final Fantasy XV: Dawn of the Future by Jun Eishima sort of by design contains spoilers for FFXV and all of its tie-in materials.

Final Fantasy XV is a kind of fascinating game. It's a mainline Final Fantasy game that's been in a weird state of incompletion literally throughout its entire lifetime. It was announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Vs. XIII, then was in development hell for literally a decade after its announcement, when it finally released as Final Fantasy XV in 2016, alongside a movie that filled in a pretty big chunk of its lore, an animated OVA that filled out some of the characters' backstories, and several crappy side-games. It released alongside a season pass that promised three single-player campaigns and one multiplayer campaign that all filled in missing pieces of the story that otherwise felt excised from the game's story as it was at launch.

In FFXV, Gladio leaves the party for a time and returns with a facial scar, refusing to tell the group why. Ignis is separated from the party during a battle and in the aftermath is revealed to have been blinded in the altercation, with no explanation as to how. Prompto is kidnapped and when the group rescues him, he mentions offhand some pretty mind-boggling backstory he has discovered, with no time to explain what that even means. Near the end of the game, there's a ten-year time skip, the interim of which is barely explored. Each of these missing pieces was slowly filled in over the course of 2017, and only for those who had the money to shell out for the extra content and the time to play the kind of tediously long Comrades DLC.

But even after these holes were filled in, many fans were unhappy with the final game. FFXV's entire back half feels incomplete, like it was rushed despite its at least ten-year development cycle. Its final dungeon is pretty short, and its ending is…divisive…which is a nice way to say that it's a downer and most gamers especially circa 2016 couldn't handle a game having a downer of an ending. Throughout 2017 and 2018, the developers kept patching in more story beats, more quality-of-life tweaks, and more side content, in an effort to both make the game feel more complete and cater to fans upset about the less-than-rosy story elements.

This culminated in the release of FFXV: Royal Edition in March of 2018, which packaged in all the previous patches and DLCs and completely reworked the final dungeon to be much larger, more detailed, and to present closure on several plot threads originally left ambiguous. Royal also promised the release of four more story DLCs, based on the results of a fan survey, which would combine to give the game an entire alternate happy ending. But in October of 2018, three of the four DLCs were canceled and director Hajime Tabata left the company. The first of these DLCs, Episode Ardyn, released in March of 2019, a full year after Royal Edition's release. The Episode Ardyn DLC honestly kind of makes the original ending (as in, the only ending we'd gotten) worse by making the villain, Ardyn, aware from the beginning exactly how the game's story would play out and ascribing the entire thing to a fate that no one escapes. It even presents a newer, bigger villain who never gets his comeuppance.

In July of 2020, we got this book, Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future, a novelization of the story the canceled DLCs would have told, had Tabata been allowed to cook. A friend gifted the book to me the month of its release, and I immediately started graduate school and had too much work to get to it. Four years later, I dug through all my still-packed boxes of books to find it and finally get some closure on the game that dominated three years of my life so long ago.

Dawn of the Future isn't great as a book. It's written well enough, but the pacing of a video game story is pretty different from the pacing of a novel, since so much of the pacing and so many story beats are presented through the language of combat, the primary means of interacting with a video game world. Plus, as an alternate ending to a preexisting story that exists across a game, a demo, a movie, two OVAs, four DLCs, two years of updates, and several weird side projects, the novel assumes the reader is familiar with its world and characters. I was, so it worked for me, but I can't imagine how confusing it would be to try to read this book as someone who had never played FFXV before, or even as someone who had played FFXV but hadn't seen Kingsglaive or maybe hadn't played the Royal Edition of the game. FFXV exists across too many parts for any one story to stand alone, and that's especially glaringly obvious when I'm reading a novel - a medium I usually engage with as self-contained.

Dawn of the Future is interesting, though, as an attempt at recreating a clear plan that was shut down early. It seems to take very few creative liberties with the events as they would have unfolded in the DLCs. Part of why the pacing is so weird is that it details every boss fight and tries to make each of those fights take up as much space as the fight would have taken time in the DLC itself. It takes time to describe what clearly would have been the gameplay loop of each DLC. It's trying to convey to the reader what the playing of this story would have felt like. For that reason, this attempt to bring closure to fans is also, at least for me, a reopening of the wound it's trying to heal. I would have loved to drive a motorcycle across the wastes of the Gralean Empire as Luna and Sol, setting up campsites along the darkened road. Aranea's sci-fi dragoon combat style sounds fun as hell, and chasing Diamond Weapon across the burning city of Gralea would have been up there with the fall of Altissia for spectacle. I'd love to play a boss fight against Bahamut using two different characters in two separate planes of existence - that sounds rad. I'm reading a game I don't get to play, and games generally are more satisfying to play than to read.

I'm also of two minds on the story from the perspective of a fan. Much of what it adds are either things the original game definitely needed more of or fun riffs on previously established gameplay loops. Aranea, Sol, and Luna all being important playable characters would have helped to fix the lack of female characters in the original game, for instance. That's sorely needed. Going on a Mad Max-style motorcycle ride through the post-apocalypse was an inspired twist on the low-stakes road trip that made up the first half of the main game. That's creative and much appreciated. But the ending itself is, in my opinion, weaker than the ending we got. It's a much more traditionally Final Fantasy ending, in that the characters all survive and defeat a cosmic enemy that would otherwise destroy the world, so I'm sure there are fans who see it as a much-needed alternate ending, or even maybe "the ending we should have had if the devs had made the game right the first time." But it loses so much of the ambiguity and ambivalence that the original ending holds.

Noct and his friends dying to wipe out the royal family and cleanse the world because the notion of royalty was a trap that existed only to set right a great evil his ancestors perpetrated was darkly ironic. Instead, Noct and his friends and his fiance all survive while the ancestor apologizes to those he hurt, resulting in the continuation of the royal family. That's thematically inconsistent from what the game tried to do up to that point and is also…just…limp. But I say that knowing full well that if this ending had released with the original game, I'd have no issue with it. I wouldn't have finished the game and said "well, it was all ruined at the end when all the characters didn't die." It's through the act of papering over what was messy and thematically interesting about the original that the inadequacies of this ending are made apparent.

This is a strange book that left me feeling two ways about the game it's based on; FFXV is both lesser and greater for the loss of these DLCs. But that's always been true ever since the game's initial release. FFXV has always been in a state of flux, reliant on tie-in media and promised future updates to bring it to the state where it will be what was promised. Now, with those promises broken and its director pushed out, it's a game that's been refinished just about every month for three years and will forever be unfinished despite it all. The Dawn of the Future is a reminder of a future that never will be, a testament to the ugliness of AAA game development, and a fascinating look at the refinements and setbacks that would have come from chasing fan expectations.

I enjoyed reading it. I would have enjoyed playing it more. It is not the ending we should have gotten, either in form or in contents.

[shadow0-1]

After the campaign…are you, are you okay

I'm doing a lot better than my friend kjbdgfjb

Honestly, it was better than I expected but that's just because I came into it with my expectations on rock bottom and was hoping for the worst in everything. I had fun and uh. yeow

Thoughts, gripes, etc about the campaign below, MEGA spoilers, you've been warned (in no particular order)

This could just be me being insane about Graves but honestly I thought that they would touch into the Konni infiltrating Shadow some more since they did an entire event about it but they just got name dropped? Maybe they'll touch on it more in the next game or whatever but that was quite disappointing for me personally.

Graves, my wife, the light of my life. Cried when I first saw heard him and then I cried more when he was still in kahoots with Shepherd. Love him for lying to the court and love Price for finally stepping up to the plate and taking care of a loose end (Shepherd.) BUT that just leaves the question of what would happen to Graves. Would the courts believe him, or would they pin the blame on Graves (← more likely option)

Loved seeing Farah more, no additional notes

Gameplay was Fine, gun sounds were disappointing but movement overall felt a lot better compared to the beta, but tbh. You can still tell that this was originally supposed to be a DLC. Felt pretty short too but I played through it all in (mostly) one sitting. Not at all surprised at them reusing assets and animations but they could have tried a little with making new campaign outfits. The "open mission" played out a lot better than I had expected tbh. I personally only experienced a handful of bugs (other than the servers breaking) but again, to be expected

Julian did a good job as Makarov IMO. As a friend put it, he turned the game into horror any time he appeared on screen. I had wondered how they were going to handle no russian in this day and age and WELP. They made it way more gut-wrenching to play and sit through. Can't forget the casual racism too, "Are you a terrorist?" "No" "You look like one" LIKE OKAY WHAT THE FUCK. YALL CAN SAY THAT SHIT?

Very fun to see Nik again and play as Kate, but I'm mad that Kamarov isn't in it. Xitter has been a minefield and it seemed no one knew how to flag or tag their spoilers so I ended up seeing the Big Death™ and honestly, kudos to them for having the balls to off one of the main characters. Maybe it's just my delusions talking but Ghost was definitely super fucked up about it. Wonder if Soap is gonna be added to the multiplayer still and how they'll explain it if they do. CoD seems to have a habit of making everything canon so who knows

[marashi96art]

Questions for the fanfic writers about Leon S. Kennedy's lack of background story: How do you deal with it?

I've been haunted by this problem for MONTHS and I needed to spit it out. I feel like Tumblr is a better place for long text and reasoned discussion, and most importantly: fanfic writers.

It's long and I sincerely look forward to your opinions. Even though I only draw Cleon, I didn't mention any ship in this post so I won't add ship-related tags here; if you're gonna list examples based on your ship, please respect each other.

So hear me out:

The best part and the worst part about Leon S. Kennedy is that HE DOESN'T HAVE A BACKGROUND STORY and a CONSISTENT characteristic development...and it's driving me insane.

The benefit of it is that I can shape his past into whoever I want to fit my stories. But it brings out a bigger problem: the development is solely depending on my understanding & knowledge of character design. He's pretty much a blank sheet of paper, except he's extremely famous, and I don't want to stray too far away from the canon info that we've got on him(and get "canceled" for OOC).

(I don't actually write stories into fics, but I DO write short scripts for my art when they are intended to be a series. I guess the prep work to start anything is the same: write it down in words, then expand the idea.)

I love AUs and I'm more interested in sci-fi/fantasy than modern/zombie-apocalypse kinda thing. But when I wanted to dig deep into their backgrounds, to start world-building, there's NOTHING for me. It's so frustrating.

For example, I'm currently working on a Monster Hunter AU based on the RE4R DLC Hero Outfit, which basically is the whole RE gang running around in the woods hunting supernatural creatures. (Not just CAPCOM's MH series but with the general mythical creatures, werewolves .etc)

And they have a Hunter's Guild, different tribes and clans, you know the drill. Since the setting was in a fantasy world, their surnames have caused me great pain from the start.

The easiest one is Redfield. It can be interpreted as "fertile land" or "battleground", and from these I immediately have quite a few visual ideas of how they'd look like, and what they'd do for a living. Chambers, Valentine, and Oliveira are "OK", but the surname Kennedy doesn't fit in ANYWHERE.

(Yes, I googled. It's Irish; but let's be honest, our first impression was a certain American political family.)

Then I read this article that shares a similar concern: Is Resident Evil 4’s Leon S. Kennedy Italian? An investigation

It pretty much sums up the most common FANDOM theories of Leon's background info. But all of them are still just, headcanons.

The more I try to dig in, the lack of this crucial element--a character's canon background story--is really blocking me to create things I enjoy. Even though I've been drawing him for almost 50 pieces of fan art, I still don't know what he's actually like. I can only imagine his personality by referencing other fictional characters/actors whom I think share a resemblance. (I have a soft spot for Keanu Reeves, Faramir from TLOR, and Sanji from One Piece. But that's another story for another time.)

Of course, I'm aware of the fact that, instead of spending this huge amount of time to rewrite a fictional character I don't own, I can create my own OCs and build everything from scratch. But that's not the point. I only started playing video games in 2019 when I bought a Nintendo Switch; and my first-ever, modern game experience was Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The whole game-wise fandom and RE series are pretty new to me. But I've been in fandoms of books/movies/TV shows for over a decade. It shocked me that Resident Evil, this world-popular series has almost 30 years of history but non of the main characters have a consistent background that follows through the in-game timeline. There're huge gaps between the games even if we add all of the movies in it. How did that work? How do you get to know them? How do you get attached enough to write your own fan story?

In conclusion, I don't think I like Leon S. Kennedy, cuz he remains a mystery. Instead, I just combine all of the good qualities of other characters I like, create my version of Leon Kennedy, and hopefully pray that when he reappears in a new RE work, I didn't do him wrong.

[rioviaa]

ok so I recently purchased the dlc and with that came loads of new story (which I adore tremendously!!) but it also came with new armor and one set particularly stood out to me: the royal guard uniform. I have pretty much been holding off on doing mipha’s champions’ ballad (because pain) but i decided to finally go for it. Now where am I going with this? Well. I had just obtained the royal guard set and was walking through zora’s domain when a little idea struck me:

Context: What if after the death of the king’s treasured daughter, Princess Mipha - a death that the zora blamed entirely on Link, causes the rest of the zora people to become weary of not only the hylian champion but as well as all hylians. thus creating a division between the zora’s and the rest of hyrule. this sudden change of mindset for the zora affected not only the trading systems, diplomatic relations, and personal relationships between both regions but also the nearby regions began to grow weary on where they should stand. for a 100 years this sort of rivalry grew to the point of both regions either growing to fear each other or actively become hostile towards the other whenever given the chance. tensions continued to grow. king dorephan is saddened by how his people’s mindset has drastically changed to hating the fellow hylians that once roamed and adored his domain. now either party would either flee at the sight of one or the other. leaving the domain to be filled with a looming silence. or they would storm into the grounds of the other with weapons unsheathed, piercing screams filling the once harmonious land. Torn by his grief of his fallen child and the hostility of his people towards any hylian who might dare wander too close to the domain, the king of the zora domain demands a permanent lockdown on their home. No one goes in. No one goes out. for the sake of his people and the hylian’s safety. at least that is what he has tried to convince himself for the past decade.

Then a miracle appears.

Link wakes as he normally does so in game and goes on about through his journey as he was intended to. When suddenly an obstacle halts his path. Quite literally. Zora’s domain is engulfed by a huge almost luminescent dome that prohibits any sort of entry. link is conflicted so he roams about the domain for days on end in hopes of finding any sort of answers but comes short when suddenly on the third day something occurs. He had completed his rounds of circling the domain for any sort of sign of entry when he feels the hairs behind his neck rise and the feeling of being watched becomes apparent. he goes into a defensive stance and begins to quickly glance around his surrounds without moving a muscle. He is about to call it quits, blame it on a fox in a bush nearby when he hears a muffled splash of water to his right. He quickly shifts his feet to face the sudden sound to then be face to face with a zora in glistening armor, piercing yellow eyes resembling the very sun above their heads and scales as red as the blood moon that looms over the vast lands of hyrule that wreaks havoc in its path. A zora trident flashes in his view, it’s deathly piercing spears leading directly to his chest. Instinct overtakes and it’s not long before he unsheathes his weapon and hears metal against metal clash, causing a piercing sound to ricochet. He slightly winces at the powerful clash clearly overpowering his still weakened state. once he catches his bearings on the blockage that possibly just saved his life from being filleted into a fine royal cuisine topped with peppers, salts, spices and hylian rice on the side link takes a moment to further study the figure before him. a zora he takes note. A very. Tall. Zora. Very very intimidating. But also alluring. With a large dorsal fin resembling a hammerhead shark and teeth so large they could probably kill him with a single bite. His (totally respectful) staring of the zora is cut short when a group of more zora, all different in size shape and color approach and surround him on all sides with their own tridents pointed towards him, sharp eyes throwing their own daggers. the tall (gorgeous) zora seems to take advantage of link being distracted and jerks his trident upwards thus releasing its hold from links sword and making him stumble backwards for a few seconds before catching his feet a mere inches from the trident a zora behind him had pointed towards his back. That same trident is then aimed closer towards him followed by the glistening trident of the taller zora that had almost killed him seconds ago. This is a threat. He is being threatened. They have murder in their minds and eyes. And link is the unfortunate prey.

This has gotten.. long.

But basically their first meeting is nothing but hostile and threatening. Far from the kindhearted gestures and replaced by hesitance and guilt. He is probably thrown into a cell for further questioning in his reason for being so near the domain and his identity.

[rallamajoop]

I have too many feelings about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2/3)

So we've covered gameplay and worldbuilding. The stuff on character has been deemed too long and will be split out into yet another post. For now, let's talk plot.

Plot

God, where do I even start with this mess?

Plotwise, I'd call Deus Ex: Human Revolution fine, but unremarkable. It had many problems and a notoriously weak ending, but it still delivered a decently-paced adventure with rising stakes and tension, and major reveals at appropriate intervals. The bar for video game writing at large is so low that I’d honestly rate it well above average [insert obligatory grumbling about The Witcher 3, RE4R etc here].

The scope for sequels to that story were always going to be somewhat hamstrung by that usual prequel-problem where we can’t actually beat the Illuminati, because we know they’re still around in the future. But there’s plenty that could have been done with Jensen’s story. In particular, HR’s DLC chapter has Jensen catching the interest of an anti-Illuminati hacktavist network called the Juggernaut Collective, led by the mysterious Janus (real identity unknown). Jensen’s backstory as a genetic test subject was presumably meant to be expanded upon in future too. And canon tells us that Jensen was declared legally dead after the Panchea incident at the end of the previous game, only to wake up in a facility in Alaska with no memory of how he survived. Surely that’s the perfect start point for the sequel – it even gives you the perfect excuse to reset all his augs again for gameplay reasons!

But MD does not take that perfect sequel idea. Instead, the ‘story’ of Jensen’s survival is relayed to us via Black Light, a tie-in novel that I read months ago and have so many conflicted feelings about. On the one hand the author, James Swallow, is refreshingly interested in so much aug-related worldbuilding that the games utterly ignore, and writes some genuinely great Jensen/Pritchard banter. On the other, the main ‘conflict’ of the book revolves around retrieving a smuggled shipment of leftover Sarif Industries cyborg parts, which is pretty lame even by the usual weak MacGuffin standards. With stakes like these, it's just very hard to care whether the heros succeed or fail.

Meanwhile, having set up the great mystery of the holes in Jensen's memory and how he really survived, the book delivers no answers whatsoever (and nor, I'm sorry to say, does Mankind Divided itself). Tasked also with setting up Jensen’s new double-life working for both the Juggernaut Collective and Interpol, well, the book tells us the collective comes to see Jensen and asks him to work for them, and Jensen thinks about it and then says ‘yes’. The story of how he came to work for Interpol is similarly underwhelming.

But perhaps worst of all is the title, which refers indirectly to the mysterious ‘Project Black Light’ – something which a villain significantly reads a report on in this one scene. We do not see the content of the report. ‘Project Black Light’ presumably has something to do with Jensen ‒ either the genetic experiment that created him or whatever created that hole in his memory ‒ but that’s literally all Deus Ex canon has ever told us about it. It’s embarrassing just how little meat this thing has on its bones.

Unfortunately, Mankind Divided itself would prove to be a lot like Black Light – just without the interesting worldbuilding or the good banter to spice it up.

The usual big complaint levied at this game is that it’s too short, and the story feels unfinished – presumably cut short by time and budget constraints. That first point surprised me, as I’m sure it took me as long to finish as HR did – but I’m a terrible completionist and MD does have roughly a gazillion different side quests to waste your time. As the player, I’ll do almost anything for EXP, but rationalising why a guy as busy as Jensen would waste time on this crap is dissonance city. All these distractions do nothing to keep you invested in the main plot either (which is hard enough to care about to begin with).

I’d also debate that the story feels unfinished. To me, it feels unstarted.

(Yes, that is a loading screen detailing the history of a construction firm. This is absolutely the level of excitement you can look forward to here.)

The story of MD is so uninvolving it’s an effort even to remember much of it. The augmented populace who survived the 'aug incident' are now the new world-wide pariahs, and there’s an upcoming UN vote that will ban them from living anywhere worthwhile, and some terrorists have bombed a train station for some allegedly-related reason. Jensen is sent to apprehend the leader of a pro-augmented rights group leader as a suspect, a staunch pacifist whose name I've forgotten. On the way in, though, he meets a man with a sinister accent called Viktor Marchenko, the mother of all big-ugly-heavies, so it will amaze you all to learn that this guy is secretly the real terrorist mastermind, and will later be the final boss. The Illuminati have stakes in this somehow, and are probably pulling his strings or something. Look, I’m all for stories about twisted political shenanigans, but some of that has to happen on screen to work. This is a story where you’ll hear about all that shit third hand if you’re lucky.

Possibly, the idea was to open MD on a similar note to HR, at least in that Jensen is some months into his new job when a terrorist attack leaves him and his augs back at Factory 0. He then spends most of the rest of the game trying to track down those responsible. The key difference is that in HR, the attack was a targeted assault on Jensen’s workplace, resulting in his robocop upgrades and the abduction of his ex-girlfriend. Yes, it’s cheesy, yes, it’s cliched, but it gives us personal stakes. And as the story chugged along, we’d learn that Jensen’s own DNA was behind the discoveries that led to Sarif Industries being targeted, used without his consent. Love it or hate it, it’s very much Jensen’s story.

MD, by comparison, is just a story which Jensen happens to be in. He’s only at ground 0 for MD’s terrorist attack by unlucky accident, and is barely injured. He investigates because he works for Interpol, so this shit is literally his day job. Stopping bad people from doing bad things shouldn't need justification, but in what way is this Jensen’s story? His contacts with the Juggernaut Collective help with the investigation, but the conflict between his day job and his own secret affiliations never comes to a head, or even really escalates. It's the kind of experience that makes you long for the sort of generic genre cliches you thought you were tired of.

Some token attempt is made to link Megan’s research on Jensen's DNA to a new poison being used by the terrorists – and two almost complete games in, Jensen’s personal superpowers have finally mattered by making him immune to that poison – but why on earth would they need a new poison at all? Any quick-acting poison would’ve done the same job. (A cynical answer is that the plague from the original Deus Ex was supposed to have been accidentally created during human augmentation experiments, and fans want this to be more like the original Deus Ex, right? So let's do that again! Just, you know, even worse.)

None of the other dangling plot points go anywhere either; this is a story devoid of exciting reveals. We never meet the real Janus. We learn nothing new about Jensen’s background, his amnesia, or the Illuminati’s plans for him. Various members of Interpol are either revealed or subtly hinted to be working for the Illuminati, but Jensen himself doesn't get to react to those reveals. We learn that the Illuminati hopes Jensen will uncover Janus' true identity for them, which is to say that they mention it in passing in the very final cutscene. I as the player would really like that to happen too, if only so something would happen, but as an explanation for the Illuminati's interest in Jensen (escaped research test subject with DNA apparently vital to augmentation technology) that's pretty freaking underwhelming. The grand 'villain' of Mankind Divided isn't the Illuminati but ordinary human prejudice, and no actual progress is made in defeating that either.

We do get some intriguing hints in optional side quests that the Jensen we’re playing as may be a clone of the Jensen from HR (heck, maybe the real Jensen really did die when Panchea sank, and the Illuminati decided they still had a use for him), but hints are as far as it goes. The whole universe feels like it’s treading water, desperately trying to squeeze out another installment without having to answer any real questions or advance the real plot one iota forward. The whole game feels like a filler episode.

There are good moments scattered through nonetheless. Having to decide between doing the urgent mission Interpol wants and the equally-urgent mission the Collective wants at one key moment is wonderfully tense (though the actual consequences of that choice are typically minor). Wandering around Interpol HQ talking to people who are busily trying to track down the Juggernaut Collective without a clue that Jensen's an actual Collective agent is effective too. But the pacing suffers badly from the huge number of side-quests it encourages you to waste time on, and the core cast really isn’t holding up their end.

A few side-quests actually deliver some of the game’s other best moments. There’s a cult leader living in the sewers with hypnotic powers somehow strong enough to scramble Jensen’s CASIE aug, producing a terrific sequence when some of our favourite tools suddenly turn against us. Elsewhere, Eliza’s side-quest features by far the single best moment of twisted, trust-no-one paranoia in this whole franchise, where you have the chance to spot the fact that an "ordinary" shopkeeper is actually a plant trying to bait Jensen into a trap. That reveal worked all the better for me because I missed it completely on my first run through that dialogue tree, and stumbled onto it only by accident after reloading a save for unrelated reasons. You’ll get the odd glimpse of what this game could have been with a stronger vision behind it, but such material remains few and far between.

And burying the best stuff in optional content does the game no favours. I’d been spoiled for the fact you can find what seems to be a cloned copy of Jensen’s body (or maybe even the real Jensen?) in the Versalife vault, and had naively assumed that meant it was an actual plot point. I'd never have guessed the body isn’t even visible unless you let off an EMP grenade while standing right on top of it (which you have no reason to do because there are no enemies in this room). There’s no way to get a really good look at it without using freecam mods. And so the biggest single clue to any of the mysteries still surrounding Jensen is a detail so minor I can’t help wonder whether it’s anything more than an asset leftover from cut content, shipped in the finished game by mistake.

Maybe this game really was finished in a hurry with half its intended plot incomplete. But for my money, what it really needed wasn't an extra year in development, it was the direction to tell an actual story from the start. Seriously, Jensen discovering that he died in Panchea, that he's a clone re-created by his worst enemies as a sleeper agent against his new allies? Gold. If that was even the real intent. But no-one wanted an entire game about a UN resolution to make cyborgs more oppressed ‒ and if they did, the game they delivered was not it.

A bad plot alone isn't necessarily a death-knell from my side of fandom, of course. Some of the most beloved franchises out there are pretty objectively a load of hot garbage with a few compelling characters at the fore. Some of my own most beloved series are that exactly. So I wish I could tell you that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was at least saved by its stellar characters and cast. But my thoughts on that front have yet again been deemed too long to squeeze into this post.

[inposterumcumgaudio]

nick lightbearer!

Sorry for the delay. Ever have computer problems? Happened to me.

Anyway, Nick Lightbearer. Nick's pretty well explored in the canon as well, but I got a few things in my pocket for him.

The bobby outside his house who tells you Nick is not seeing any visitors was originally supposed to let you in the front foyer. Inside that room is a viewing window that you could watch Nick be sad and pathetic through. Girls have scratched messages of possessive adoration on the glass. In a normal playthrough, you'd see the other side of this window with metal shutters over it when you meet Nick in the living room.

There's also a custom (possibly jailbroken, judging by the sparks?) Compliment Machine in there.

It has messages particular to visiting Nick.

"En - chan - té!"

"Do come in. Mr. Lightbearer has been expecting you."

"Do you have a warrant?"

"I am sorry, Mr. Lightbearer is indisposed. Please come back tomorrow."

"I assure you she has not been here, nor has she ever been here. Mr. Lightbearer doesn't even know your wife."

"Mr. Lightbearer apologizes for missing tea Sunday night, but he was very sick. He knows you cooked his favorite. Of course he still loves you, you are his mother."

"Mr. Lightbearer is not seeing anyone, except Miss Boyle. Are you Miss Boyle? No? Then go away."

"Mr. Lightbearer will be delighted to see you. This way to the living room, if you please."

"Please be gentle. Mr. Lightbearer has a bad back."

"Please leave it on the console. Mr. Lightbearer said to tell you that you are his favorite fan."

"Please leave the food on the kitchen table, you may keep the change."

"Please leave the wine on the coffee table, you may keep the change."

"You've arrived on a rather special night, it's one of the master's affairs."

Speaking of Miss Boyle, when Sally visits Nick's house in her playthrough, it's after Arthur has already visited and Nick has electrocuted himself in the tub. People make a lot of the fact that Sally hears him snoring in her playthrough, particularly given the context of Nick's DLC. But consider that Sally also thinks Col. Lawrence - man already on death's door and who definitely is dead when we visit the MacLears next in Ollie's act - is only unconscious too after using the pituitary extractor on him. Unlike Col. Lawrence (who Sally needs to think is only unconscious for her own peace of mind), I think Sally only assumes Nick is still alive because fully clothed and asleep in a full bathtub is not an out-of-the-ordinary way to find him to her experience. In fact, she even says beforehand that's how she expects to find him.

"He'd never part with it. On the other hand, he's passed out half the time I come by. I'll just sneak in while he's sleeping. Where did I leave the keycard he gave me?"

I do go out of my way to point out Sally's character flaws because people seem really struggle with the whole "three moderately terrible people" aspect of the game, but to her credit, I highly doubt she ever dated Nick. For one thing, she only dates men who can do something for her and while Nick is rich and famous, he can't really give her anything she couldn't get herself or from someone who'd be less work. For another, the most profitable relationship for her to have with him is as a drug dealer.

I also think that Nick was probably married for a lot of the last fifteen years. Not that that's a problem for Sally, but Nick is also said to consider himself a poet. Which suggests to me that this is a guy who would like to be a romanticized and idealized version of himself (which is part of why he gets married so frequently) but falls short of that because he is painfully human (which dovetails nicely with the whole Dante's Inferno theme of his DLC). And once you've failed to meet that ideal, why should you bother trying at all? So Nick gets married in the hopes that he can be the guy he sings about being in his songs (and maybe it's to girls who are just as deluded about how they can have this the fairytale other girls failed to achieve), acts like an asshole rockstar at the first opportunity with whatever girl offers, and then gets divorced. Rinse, repeat.

Petunia might have been the only one he actually loved because she's the only one of his ex-wives we ever see him thinking about. And maybe that makes a lot of sense. She seems practical and not given to the fantasy of him. Which, we don't know if that's how it started, but I have to think that since she's got 90% of his earnings, past, present, and future in the divorce (meaning none of his other exes collected first), she was level-headed and even-keeled throughout the relationship.

This is probably what also appeals to him about Virgil. Nick needs handlers, people to keep his shit together.

You know what though? A thing I find really compelling about the lore here is that Virgil is said to write all of Nick's songs. Nick was writing the Make Believes' songs himself before Virgil's management (when Nick is said to have "sold out") and those songs are... not so good, if testimony re: "The Unicorn Song" is anything to go by. Perfectly listenable and appeals to the doped-up masses, but perhaps drecky on closer inspection. The lyrics to the songs we have access to are quite clever and are subversive of the culture of Wellington Wells. So maybe Nick sold out, but the songs were better for it, too much sitar aside.

And it bears out too, with "I Have Seen Everything", a song that Nick presumably writes himself. It's a nice song, I like it, but the lyrics are repetitive and simple compared to "Dead of Winter" or "Out of the Blue". Kinda reads like an amateur poem. Rhyming "anything" with "not a thing"? Lyrical genius right there.

A thing I like to think about is that the art book tells us that Wellies value signage because they are so forgetful. Communication is mostly done through notes sent through pneumatic tubes rather than telephone conversations that could be quickly forgotten... When Wellies need or want to remember something, they dedicate that to record so they can refer back to it. And so, in the fact that his music's been so popular and pressed on vinyl, Nick Lightbearer and the Make Believes are going to be some of the few townspeople who will be remembered beyond the fall of Wellington Wells. And maybe that's kinda beautiful or maybe it speaks to the whole bread and circuses of it all.