#i have bad one playthrough that actually lasted for quite a while

[madegeeky]

Me, opening up Sims 4: Hmmm, perhaps 7th times the charm and I'll like it this time.

Me, after four hours of nonconsecutive gameplay: Huh, I'm finding this game boring. For no reason at all, I thought it'd be different this time.

(Will I learn and never try again? No, no I won't.)

[lucrezianoin]

Dark Urge and Astarion romance (spoilers for both quests)

So I have a lot of feelings about the Astarion romance route while playing Dark Urge. A LOT. I feel like the two (and in general Shadowheart's personal quest too actually) feel very complementary.

TW for everything involving Astarion's past, and general violence.

Keep in mind that this is going to be a long post and it is going to have SPOILERS for the whole game, till the very end. In general this is a long happy rant about how happy I am about Dark Urge path and Astarion romance together. Also keep in mind that this is about my feelings of the two, not about "which one is objectively the best romance for Dark Urge". This is more of a "please if you liked astarion romance as tav romance him as dark urge too" than a "if you play as dark urge you need to romance astarion".

Also keep in mind this is ONLY about redeeming Dark Urge and their good path! In the post I will only talk a little bit about the bad ending.

General points

In general, I just wanted to talk about the theme of the urges/hunger, the theme of family and escaping from your family, a little bit about the evil choice and the whole theme of rebirth that both characters have quite explicitly. In this order!

Urges

The first point of connection between the two characters is the fact that they are (sometimes) both driven by a certain hunger for blood or violence. As Durge you will be able to see how your companions react to these black outs, and you will worry about it, and Astarion seems to be among the most accepting. Maybe it is just his need to keep on Durge's good side, or maybe it is just the fact that he has experience on it.

In later scenes, Astarion will draw parallels between Durge's experience and his own. If Durge is cursed to succumb to his own urges, then Astarion will directly connect that to the times Cazador's has driven him feral and mad with hunger.

During the extra Durge specific romance scene, Astarion makes another direct connection to the violence in Durge and what he previously did. He does not have a completely clean conscience (that is clear, and not just because of Cazador), and he is not as "good" at making the good nice choice as other companions.

He understands the hunger and losing control over his body more than others, so he can empathize with Durge and what they are going through. He jokes about it, sure, but he is genuinelly worried.

Another option in the dialogue has him saying "If anyone understands an internal voice forcing your hand, I do. But that's not who we are now. We make our own choices, and you made the right one last night." He is the only companion who uses the "we".

Other points of overlapping are, of course, the fact that both characters have gaps in their memories. Astarion because of trauma and Durge because of physical trauma (torture and well, violence). Their past is one of violence, for both of them, and while Durge operated it a little more voluntarily than Astarion, this NEW Durge, the blank state we get at the start of the game... well, in a good playthrough they try to resist their need for violence just like Astarion is resisting his hunger and his thirst for power.

Reciprocal saving

Astarion is literally introduced as a damsel in distress. He is the only companion whose quest NEEDS to be completed before the tadpole is removed or he will become a slave again (other companions might have other consequences, but nothing that cannot be solved after the tadpole removal, and in case of Karlach there is no limit, she is destined to die or return to Avernus). He does need help, he cannot face Cazador alone, so we all know his plan for protection.

The first scene he appears him is literally him asking for help to try and lure the player and get some answers out of them.

As a player with companions characters, we are all used to helping them in their quests. But as I said, Astarion's help is kinda on a ticking clock based on the end of the game... and well, he is the one who is clearly less involved with abilities and fighting. In story, he is the only one who is out of place. Gale is a great wizard and Mystra ordered him to take care of the brain, Wyll is a legendary hero, Karlach is a legendary warrior, Shadowheart is on a mission for Shar, Lae'zel is also a warrior and she will be on her mission for Orpheus soon, Halsin is a powerful druid who wants to break a curse directly connected to the brain etc. etc.

Astarion is... a guy. Who was a slave. By accident he has been chosen by the mindflayers and freed. His only connection with the group is the tadpole, he could not care less about, well, the "mission". His own mission is remaining free and getting rid of Cazador. And he needs the player character for that (we know he is recaptured if he leaves the group).

I could go on a rant about the angst of it all and the power imbalance this create and the fear that surely drives him through act 1, but for now I wanted to talk about this "be saved by the player character" and how with Durge it finally becomes reciprocal.

This is more than "let's help each other on a quest". This is two characters who are on a path of possible evilness and destruction, promising to save each other.

I think some of the imbalance in a Tav's playthrough, where Tav is good and helps Astarion out of their good heart, disappears in a Durge one.

Durge NEEDS Astarion as much as Astarion needs him. Astarion directly promises Durge to save them from becoming a slave to their urges. One of my favourite options as Durge is replying "I will be the person you want to see in me". Because for ALL the complaining, all the times Astarion says he wants power... the person he wants to see in Durge is still someone sweet and kind, a good heart.

You have two possible bad people who end up being each other moral compass and saviors, equally. And I think it makes the story so much richer. Of course, in the case of Astarion it is a direct persuasion check from the player (as long as you make him face the consequences), in the case of Durge is more metagaming, given it is the idea of wanting to be the person Astarion sees in you (and your friends and companions).

Both Astarion and Durge need to be seen for the good parts they have in them.

After the Durge questline, when they refuse Bhaal, Astarion will say "But somehow by your side I still only ever saw you", which echos what he says to Durge (in his romance scene) that he feels seen by them.

Family

For all the violence and the horror, the quests of Durge and Cazador are presented as family. Durge's family was what led them to violence, their father basically cursing them to a life of hate, then they were betrayed by their "sister" and made into a blank state.

Cazador constantly swings between considering his spawns as children or pets/dogs, putting himself in the role of the almost father. The spawns call each other siblings.

While the two families are quite different, they both end up with Astarion and Durge having to make a choice about choosing or refusing the "father"'s power, one to be stolen and the other offered.

You were also both made by them. Cazador often remarks on Astarion being his and being made/his creation. Bhaal directly considers Durge a puppet he made, and if Durge does not agree with his plan then he will make another.

The evil choice

I found it pretty interesting that there is only one quest among companions that have a full on evil choice, and that is Astarion's. Shadowheart's two choices are both painful and very hard to decide upon, Gale's choice of giving back the crown is seen generally as a good choice but it also involves giving back to Mystra who abused her power on him. Karlach, Minsc and Jaheira don'r really have choices. Lae'zel's choice of queen vs Orpheus is a clear path to Orpheus (as in, I think she decides that on her own if she sees him) but the real choice happens at the end, where she has to choose between Orpheus and living for herself - what is the good choice there? Helping free her people or live her own life? Wyll's choice is also hard and almost equal in pain/gain, one is saving his father and being stuck in the pact, and the other is freeing him but knowing Mizora will come for his father again (even if you save him in game). I think it is telling that the choice is hard because Wyll never says he regrets making the pact in the first place, it was a hard choice he had to make.

Astarion and Durge are the only personal quests that have a clear and defined evil ending, and interestingly enough it is similar...

Both glowing in red light while accepting the cursed power given by their "fathers". Both will come out of it with glowing eyes and evil smiles. The bad choice makes them the worst version of each other, as they both failed to be anchor for their good selves.

I really dislike ascended Astarion, and he clearly has a bigger impact on his personality, given Durge is a player character, but I still found it a good parallel, just the fact that these are the two in the party who can be REALLY evil, who can truly go towards the worst possible path. And not a path of "evil together", but a path of domination and reciprocal destruction.

Astarion becomes everything Cazador's was and wants to take control of Durge, and Durge has to follow Bhaal's plan and take control of the brain... which ends up with Astarion just where he started, as a puppet controlled by that person who (as the Butler once said) he should have feared the most.

Rebirth (the good choice)

NOW TO TALK ABOUT MY FAVORITE POINT. Both stories, both quests, end in an explicit rebirth symbolism.

We have Durge literally dying, and being resurrected by another god of death, coming back to life to find out that he has been given a second chance. The urges have gone, they are free, they are a new person forged by the experience they went through during the path to Baldur's Gate.

In the same way, Astarion is also forged by his experiences with the group and Durge, by what they all went through. So much that if the player does not allow him to confront Sebastian and show him that he is driven by fear, that he, deep down, feels compassion for the spawns... then the player will lose the ability to persuade him to stop the ritual.

Astarion is also reborn, so much that we have a whole scene where he writes a new date on his tomb, it cannot be more explicit than this.

In both cases not only the theme of rebirth but of responsibility is stressed. Astarion talks about freedom as a place where he (and his siblings) are responsible for their choices, good or bad. And the same can be said about Durge.

So yes, I think playing as Durge puts so much more into Astarion's romance, because creates an almost parallel path of these two people who could easily become the worst version of themselves, and if Durge pushes to stop their urges, in a good playthrough, they do become each other's anchor and key to break the cycle.

[humanjeff]

Scarlet Nexus

got gifted this 2021-era game randomly by a friend, and ... it's kinda great actually?

it calls itself "brainpunk", which is exactly like cyberpunk only with the word "brain" stuck in front of everything to denote that it's weird psychic technology. this doesn't quite work, but I freely admit that I would definitely 100% call psychic texts "brain messages".

"I AM SENDING YOU A BRAIN MESSAGE. FROM MY BRAIN." <- all my friends would get this Brain Message every single day, until they Brain Blocked me

anyway, first I should cover the bad: this is an anime-style game; some of the characters have semi-skimpy outfits (however there's zero fanservice). the main character in the male playthrough is of the Romantically Oblivious subtype that - naturally - all the girls incessantly flirt with. some of the jokes are ... dated, or poorly translated. at it's heart it's a JRPG, so there's a fair bit of grinding. etc.

now the parts I like: the game is all kinds of fucked up.

[I'll try to stick to non-plot spoilers (i.e. background info) but I probably won't 100% succeed.]

at the start of the game, you pick one of two different characters, which follow two radically different plotlines - I chose the male, Yuito. both characters are psychokinetic (though their weapons differ), both are new volunteers in the psychic branch of the military. after selecting your character you get to watch as the special brain equipment is attached to you and your fellow volunteers/conscripts and you all collapse screaming in agony. perfectly normal start to a game.

yeah so straight away it's revealed that most of the soldiers - not just the new guys - look like teenagers, and are being given grown blockers to slow their aging (to various degrees). if you pay attention to what one of the characters says about how she was forcibly conscripted a few years earlier, you start to realise that the occasional Actual Children you see walking about are extremely powerful psychics subjected to mandatory enlistment when they were very young; they invariably outrank you.

older-looking soldiers are either new adult conscripts (that everyone expects to die) or child soldiers that the growth blockers are ceasing to work on.

also hey there is government censorware in your eyes that prevents you from seeing certain things. don't worry about it!

so on to the game itself. first of all, you don't have skills as such - you modify your own brain. sometimes the map of your brain gets larger and more irregular. don't worry about it!

you are in a squad of guys with variable powers (different to your own) that you can briefly share. as you hang out in your Secret Teen Hideout and become closer and more compatible, this sharing will start to last longer, and you will begin to have visions of your friends that will help you out. sometimes you become them, just for a second. this is normal and fine. sometimes you forget little things, like who is supposed to be giving you orders, or which side you're on, or how you got here, but on the other hand nobody is stopping you from dressing as bad as you could ever want.

haha you can put a stuffed owl on your head! there's a hole in the sky that nobody talks about any more.

after a while, you unlock the Brain Field power, or as I prefer to think of it, AKIRA MODE, where you become psychically overpowered and get to smash everything. your character staggers around drunkenly, clutching their head and laughing and saying things like "I'll destroy EVERYTHING!", "WITNESS my POWER!" and so on. it's unbelievably fun, and will immediately kill you after a few seconds. none of your friends - who see all this - ever tell you to stop doing it.

none of this, though, prepares you for the moment when the media - having had all their computers trashed - releases a sketch of a suspected criminal (the other playable character). I'm putting it behind a break for reasons that I hope will be self-explanatory.

(the effect this picture has on your squad is devastating, by which I mean it immediately cures them of all some of their ailments.)

[reflectionsofacreator]

I have beaten Blue Lions route on Fire Emblem: Three Houses! I have started the dlc after, then it's onwards to Crimson Flower.

I greatly enjoyed it! It's certainly a very interesting route to do first, as it essentially upholds the status quo that Rhea's been putting forth for the past thousand years. Fascinates me how it's actually a longform tragedy under the surface, precisely because it upholds the status quo.

Blue Lions isn't, precisely, characterized by melancholy or looming tragedy, but it exists all the same. The characters that we immediately care about (Dimitri, the rest of the house, etc) are all in fairly good positions at the end of the war; the entire continent is united under the banner of a King who genuinely wants to do good by his people; there's a new, powerful Archbishop with close ties to the king, etc. But it's the same system that caused the problems for the characters we care about, and nothing fundamentally has changed. They're all relatively happy at the end, but eventually those same problems will crop up for their children, their grandchildren, and so on.

The system of Crests that's destroyed Sylvain and Mercedes' lives just perpetuates and goes unchallenged. Felix's deep seated trauma surrounding his brother's death as "a good knight" remains the norm. Dimitri, while an idealist, likely cannot make any broad sweeping changes to reform these things because that's quite literally what got his father murdered.

There's also the fact that like. Joining the whole continent together under one banner isn't really a good thing and the fact that it happened is! Kind of bad!! There's a reason why Faerghus split off from Andrestia, and also why the Leicester Alliance also split off from the kingdom. Once again, I'm sure the characters that it immediately affects are fine, but one, three hundred years down the line, there's going to be a lot of bloody wars about this.

It's also like. Hm. Mercedes and Dedue ended up together in my playthrough (which surprised me, it wasn't an ending I was particularly aiming for), and their paired ending says that they both created a school for Duscur children which served as a springboard for them to reclaim their homeland. It's very admirable! But also like, by Mercedes' very presence as a holy woman of Seiros, as well as Dedue's status as one of Dimitri's knights (who also enjoys a very high position in court) means that the culture that gets resurrected is not purely Duscari. Yes, cultures change and grow over time, but the genocide of Duscur means that large swaths of their entire culture are just. Gone. And while it's admirable that Dedue and Mercedes want to try and help rebuild it, that culture will never be the same again. Duscur culture has their own gods, their own religion; and while I'm positive that Dedue and Mercedes will try and preserve it, the Church of Seiros will end up influencing it because of Mercedes' occupation and status. And like, that's fascinating, really, I find myself thinking about it and the cultural implications often.

As for paired endings-- I actively put Sylvain and Felix together, Ferdie and Dorothea, as well as Ingrid and Seteth. Poor Caspar ended up alone, but that's because Ashe ended up with Cyril. I found myself greatly enjoying Byleth and Lysithea's A support, so I S supported her at the end. Dimitri and Flayn ended up together, which surprised me, but not unwelcome. Annette reunited her father with her mother, and they got to have a happy family, which honestly good for them. Cathrine and Shamir got to lez their way through Fódlan, which like, good for them, good for them.

In terms of mechanics, Seteth and Ingrid were by far some of my best units. Igrid hard carried that last fucking two battles, she saw her chance for glory and fucking took it. Sylvain I made into a Dark Knight and also nabbed a crescent scythe for him, to make him into a pseudo Death Knight, which was just fantastic for vibes. Felix was my Dancer unit, with also a hefty investment in faith, and I almost had him make out sloppy style with Dorothea, my Mortal Savant. (There is. Something there. In the gender of it all. In the twisting of expectations, and how well they compliment each other. I almost had them paired together.)

Ashe got made into an Assassin and wrecked fucking house. His crit rate is absolutely fucking Bonkers and giving him both a brave sword and brave bow meant that nothing could stand in his way. Add this to how Lysithea's god tier magic stat meant that she could destroy near anything, and I had very fun time watching her and Ashe oneshot divine beasts.

Dimitri I actually ended up using more as a defensive unit? He got some good level ups in defense, resistance, and HP, meaning that I kinda just. Chucked him into a knot of soldiers and watched as he retaliated over and over. I didn't use Dedue as much as I would've liked because of it.

Anyways, Blue Lions fun, I liked it a lot! I've got some more thoughts too that I might type up, but this is getting a bit long

[cadybear420]

Cadybear's Reviews- Murder at Homecoming

Welcome to the thirty-seventh official Cadybear's Reviews! Today I'll be talking about Murder at Homecoming, which I have ranked on the "Platinum Tier" at 9 stars out of a possible 10. My last and only playthrough of this was during September-December 2022.

This is definitely one of the better, if not the best release, of 2022, and it’s easily among my personal faves. 

A MC who is proactive and gets shit done, multiple LIs, highly compelling story. How can I not love that? All three of the LIs are amazing characters– and Tyler especially is just precious. I think he’s the first love interest I have ever adored nearly as much as I’ve adored Aiden. I miss when we had male LIs that are just so babygirl. 

The incorporation of mature topics and queer themes was especially excellent. MTFL, take notes! Because THIS is how you write a teen story that talks about queer sexuality and mature behaviors. Besides maybe BiBound I mean BloodBound, this is probably the first book in Choices where each LI has some degree of confirmed sexuality outside of their LI option status for the MC. 

One thing that’s especially notable is how Tyler will talk about how he used to think he was straight if you romance him as a male or enby MC. I normally don’t mind much when LIs in GOC stories are made with the “playersexual” style of writing, but these sort of little changes are a good show of effort and give Tyler more character.

But of course, it’s not without a handful of problems. 

Like COP (1), the story is incredibly linear and none of the clues or choices really affect your story. Sure, they give you a bit of extra background, but that’s about it. 

The only choices that really have any impact are the stuff related to the queer discussions, Tyler’s romance route, and how the options for how your MC can talk about their queer experience can change based on your MC’s gender and romance choices. Which is still highly praiseworthy, don’t get me wrong, but I’d have loved to see some variation in the other elements of the book too.

And as much as I did enjoy this MC and do consider them one of the more refreshing ones, they were also a bit too rigid and pre-set for me at times. I get that some MCs will need to have pre-set details about them, and to some degree that does apply to this MC, but it was a bit much at times. Like, there was especially no need to give them a default first AND last name. I do like the aspect of MC preferring to go by their middle name, but we still could have been allowed to change their first and last names too, to be honest. 

I found it really hard to feel for the loss of Perdita for this reason; the traumatic event backstory didn’t feel as well established, compared to that of ILITW and ACOR MCs. Though to be fair, I do remember there being a handful of premium scenes to see a memory with Perdita, and I do remember skipping all but two of them. 

But even then, I never felt she had quite as much importance as the writers clearly wanted her to have? Outside of being a motivator for MC to solve Gabbie’s case and allowing MC to connect with Donovan better. Maybe my opinion on this might change after I give it a replay, though. 

That being said, I’m actually fine with the story not telling us what really happened to Perdita, as much as I’d have loved a continuation for this book. MC not knowing what happened to Perdita is what motivated them to solve Gabbie’s case, and in that regard, the two cases kind of juxtapose one another. Whereas MC is able to get closure for Gabbie’s case, they don’t do that for Perdita’s case.

That makes the ending a little more nuanced in my opinion. Sometimes, we don’t always get closure for these kinds of things. While I’m still mixed on how well the story integrated Perdita, this message was handled decently and didn’t feel like it was in bad spirit. 

So if there were a continuation for this story, I wouldn’t mind it being centered around MC finding Perdita, motivated to work on that case more actively after their success with Gabbie’s case. But rather than having them solve the case, it can mostly center around them struggling between whether they should keep up that search, or leave it as a cold case and move on. 

Overall, definitely a higher-tier and very respectable story that definitely deserves a replay. 

[captainderyn]

Gets out of my carbon pocket

Psst psst glitter anon here hihi >:]

> thoughts about Johnny silverhand

Ams hcs of judy/v !! go crazy GO STUPID

Glitter Anon!!! Hi :D

Oooh okay so my thoughts about Johnny. So, first thing is first, he took awhile to grow on me. I actually really didn't like him at first because I thought he was an abrasive asshole lol. Cuz, ya know, he is. And I didn't go into Cyberpunk knowing ANY of the lore from the TTRPG (I still don't really know any of the lore from the ttrpg).

When I first played V she was incredibly hostile towards Johnny throughout the entire game, the only reason she changed that tune is because I wanted to get the secret ending that wasn't-so-secret-to-me because my husband had played the game. So I chose V's dialogue accordingly. And it was during Johnny's quest line that he really grew on me and I love him even though he's a massive jerk. I think the concept of he and V becoming more and more meshed to the point that they don't know what parts were him and what parts were her is fascinating and I have a soft spot for their unlikely friendship and banter :)

This second playthrough, now that I've solidified my take on V more, has been not quite as aggressively hostile as it had been. She still really does not get along with JOhnny at first, but they grow on each other a lot more a lot quicker. And I think, deep down (and as the game shows), Johnny does come around to care for V and whatever complicated mess of feelings that opens up.

I discussed it somewhere in a post I cannot find, but I haven't really settled on one of the canon endings as 'canon' for my V yet because nothing truly fits exactly how she interacts with Night City. HOWEVER, pulling from some Phantom Liberty stuff here for Johnny and V thoughts and headcanons, I'll toss those and the Judy/V headcanons beneath a cut!

Spoilers for PL starting NOW

I found the post I rambled in so I am just going to copy and paste that for everyone's convenience (not PL, but the secret ending):

I cannot shake the horror of V waking up after Mikoshi and her head is just…dead silent for the first time in a long while. It’s deafening. It’s terrifying. It feels wrong.

There’s no Johnny materializing in the corner of her vision with some quick remark. Some ongoing internal monologue. It’s silent. It’s…empty. It feels like part of her has been ripped out of her, like there’s a hole that needs to be filled.

She’s been working towards this for however long. This has been the GOAL it’s what Johnny urged her to do, there in the end.

So why does she feel so empty? Why does she feel panicky and guilty and everything she shouldn’t be feeling?

If this was what she’s been working towards, why does her voice tremble when she calls out “…Johnny?”

And why do her eyes burn when there’s no response? Something in her has been fundamentally broken since the Relic brought her back.

Now multiply all that previous sentiment combined with the PL ending where V goes through the surgery. She broke some kind of trust with Johnny when she did that if I remember correctly, but she did it to preserve the life she'd been trying to make for herself. Only for that to slip through her fingers like smoke. What she gave up to go through with that surgery, leaving things on "bad terms" with Johnny like that, only to wake up to have two years of her life gone. Judy's gone, moved on, like most everyone else V had close to her at the end...leaving her with nothing. No one. Hollowed out and empty with nothing but Night City around her. And I think in those times she probably wishes that she didn't go through with any of this. That she'd let Johnny have her body because she's alone anyway, she might as well have had him up to the very end ;--;

---

Judy/V Headcanons

-First and foremost I guess I should say that my V and Judy were never meant to last forever. I love them together in the time they have, I think they're sweet, but they're flame that fizzles out fast. They were a fire lit in the wake of immense tragedy and I think Judy was searching for someone, even subconsciously, to hold onto in the overwhelming ocean of grief and pain she was going through. It also just comes down to the fact that Judy was always going to leave Night City, V never was. V doesn't want to go out in a blaze of glory or become the queen of the Afterlife; that was Jackie's dream not hers, but NC is her home and she can't imagine herself anywhere else.

-Judy tries really hard to get V to leave NC, gets her perhaps halfway warmed up to the thought of leaving. Then the raid on Arasaka happens and V comes back a shell of herself. Judy thinks that maybe V needs time, but it becomes clear in her mind that V is more a ghost that haunts NC than herself anymore.

-Despite V being tied to NC, she would do anything to grant Judy's wish to get out of the city. Even if it mean that V wouldn't be going with her. She isn't lying when she says she's working towards it--I imagine that either in any ending that has Judy and V apart, Judy still gets a fat sum of eddies into her account from V. Her "get out of town fund".

-They have a great dynamic, they get along like a house on fire. To Judy, V is fiery, has a sense of humor like a whip, is a little dumb like an excitable golden retriever, and makes her feel safe and secure for awhile. She’s so intensely V in a Night City that tries to squash anyone who dares to live that vibrantly.

-V starts to change, as the Relic’s malfunctions get worse. She starts adopting mannerisms, ways of speaking, that aren’t entirely her. They’re Johnny. The cadence of her voice is off sometimes, she starts wearing different clothes–that ratty replica Samurai jacket Rogue found for her. She starts smoking more–the old V never would’ve touched a cigarette with a ten foot pole. And I think those subtle shifts raise alarm bells, raise some walls for Judy. Especially after the incident while diving and seeing exactly what V’s time running out looks like. I think as much as that date starts Judy and V's relationship for real, it also starts ticking down to the end. Because as bright and hot as those passion flames burn, Judy knows what's on the other side.

-Outside of the pits of angst lol, I can see V and Judy, ripping through the streets of NC on V's motorcycle. Judy clinging to V, wind billowing her jacket as V drives way faster than she probably should, to the outskirts of the city where they sit on an outcropping to watch the sun set over the skyline. That's the energy they have. The kind of relationship that sweeps you off your feet, the air out of your lungs.

-I don't really think Judy knows what to do with V lol. She doesn't know what to do with the big muscled merc who sings bad syth-pop at the top of her lungs in Judy's van and throws herself down like a big puppy on Judy's couch with a smile that lights up the entire room. And I think V is the one to get some of the most unfiltered Judy that NC ever sees.

-Looking at things from The Sun ending, despite the shadow that remains as V, I think for a moment Judy considers what it would be like to stay in NC with her. That perhaps NC wouldn't be so bad if she had someone she loved, who wasn't eaten alive by the city, to face it with. But then she realizes that she lost some part of V in Arasaka Tower that she won't get back, and realizes her days with V are still numbered. And that's when those walls come slamming back up, when she makes that choice to cut V off before she can hurt Judy, even unintentionally. In her mind she has to protect herself, there was always that last 5% of trust that she never gave to V.

[forevergazingatstars]

Today I did something I thought I would never do

I beat The Last of Us Part 2 on grounded mode.

I started playing this game in 2022, about 5 months after I had beaten the first game. Both of these games have always been very close to my heart even before I had the chance to play them.

While I know part 2 is not nearly as beloved in the community as part 1 and, in my honest opinion, I definitely prefer the story of part 1 to part 2. However, ever since I beat part 2 for the first time, I've found myself drawn to it time and time again. I've played through this game on at least 5 separate occasions and spent over 100 hours in it. To put it bluntly, this game feels so good to play.

Maybe going agaist the intentions of the game makers, but shooting people has never felt as good as it feels here. People usually say they hate shooting on controller, but Naughty Dog did a phenomenal job at making the gun play actually feel responsive and good. Like as much as the story makes me want to rip my hair out, there's nothing quite as satisfying as getting to blow peoples heads off afterwards.

Now to get to the point, you might be asking "why'd you say you thought you'd never beat grounded?" to put it in simple terms, I am a level A coward :D just the idea of having to go through this 20 hour game without listening mode terrified me. I do not like dying nor getting spooked by an enemy popping out of nowhere. Also I was convinced that if I ever did make it all the way to the rat king that that would be it and I would be stuck there forever.

Well, what ended up happening was that in April of this year I beat the game on permadeath, which meant I had every single other achievement in the game and I thought "FUCK IT I'M GIVING GROUNDED A TRY" and then I failed miserably.... I ended up not even making it to Abby's section, I got stuck in the mall fight on Ellie day 3 and I just got so incredibly frustrated that I quit.

However, then a couple months passed, and I did have one trick up my sleeve. My first attempt of grounded had been on the normal version, not grounded+. I had wanted to not beat the game on grounded+ just to prove to myself that I could do it without the extra help, but sometimes you have to admit that you need help so again I tried with all my great guns and upgrades.

I will say, my thing about being afraid of not having listening mode proved to not be that much of an issue. The main emotion I felt while playing was not fear, but pure frustration and rage. God this game is so ANNOYING. Like you'd think the gap between survivor and grounded wouldn't be that bad, but it felt like night and day. I kept getting stuck and dying and my main strategy just ended up being to run for my life :D I know grounded isnt even near the hardest gaming challenges and maybe it was just a skill issue but man did I spend hours in some fights not making any progress at all.

Now you might be thinking, what about the rat king? I am happy to say that I BEAT THAT FUCKER FIRST TRY. I wish so badly that I had gotten it on video, because I have never been that locked in during my entire life. It felt like I had become Abby in that moment and I was channeling all my rage into killing that thing. Actually, I struggled wayyyyy more with Ellies bloater fight than the rat king, which was very surprising considering it's the other way around usually.

When I had beaten Abby in the final fight and I was watching the last few cutscenes, I got a bit emotional and teary eyed, which honestly surprised me a lot considering how many times I've played this game. Even during my first playthrough I only cried during the beginning when Ellie was going through Joels home. Maybe I was just happy the suffering would finally be over? I mean I do relate to Ellie on the level that I've also lost my father. Maybe my emotions were heightened because of the struggle and the 6 month journey it took me to get here.

To end this extremely long post I'd just like to say that if you ever think you can't do something, just try it anyway. Even if you end up failing, it's important to challenge yourself and besides, you can always try again. I know beating a video game isnt the coolest thing in the world but I am so proud of myself for not giving up.

[yata776]

Fire Emblem Engage - Review

I try to keep game comparisons to a minimum when writing a review because I think it’s only fair to judge art by its own merits, but there was only one thing on my mind while playing Engage. That it was just Fates again.

Gameplay wise this is a fantastic experience. Not only is the map design quite solid but the Emblem Rings provide some of the craziest and fun tools the series has ever offered. The flexibility at play is almost unmatched, and the good news is that they did not sacrifice a challenging experience this time around, because the difficulty modes cover the wide spectrum of player skill very well. What I really admire about Engage is how easy it is to customize your own experience without sacrificing a healthy dose of challenge. The game is (mostly) balanced around you having the crazy Emblems powers, and will frequently match you against those same powers in a way many other developers wouldn’t dare. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to engage with this mechanic if you don’t want to. Emblem Rings are stashed into it’s own little menu and the player is given full freedom to use the mechanic as much or as little as they want to. “If you don’t like, don’t use it” is a tired argument point for any game balance topic but I am always happy to see developers actually giving the player a chance not to use their overpowered mechanics.

The story is complete garbage in a way where sadly I don’t have too much to say on it. This game will test you on your belief that gameplay rules above all, if you are one of those types, and your real opinions on that issue will probably color your entire experience.

Bad story aside, Engage is without a doubt a really fun and well-designed game. It strikes well the balance between giving you crazy and powerful tools while providing interesting challenging obstacles that are consistently fun to overcome. It is up there as one of the best gameplay experiences of the entire series that makes it worth a playthrough. It also looks and sounds really good, that helps too. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I am an avid Conquest defender and Engage is cut from the same exact cloth, but there are sadly some points that clearly put the former above the latter in terms of quality for me.

-Both Fates and Engage have some of the worst stories in the medium, but Fates actually tried telling a story. Engage feels like it's not even trying for the first half, with the barest justifications to actually having a plot, only to fall completely into the worst overdone cliches of the genre during the last few hours. In my opinion, this is the worst of both worlds, the premise and initial setup is fucking boring, if not downright rotten, so there is nothing to chew on in terms of potential. But when the stakes are actually raised it falls into the same writing pitfalls as the rest of the series. Fates had an interesting premise with a lot of potential, only to become a complete trainwreck on execution. Engage's story is a complete bunch of nothing, only to fall into the same exact problems that made Fates that much of a trainwreck. I think it only doesn't hurt as much for most people because NO ONE expected anything out of Engage after the initial trailers. For this reason I consider Engage has an even worse story than Fates, Conquest in particular, but your mileage will vary.

-Engage sadly has one of the blandest casts in the entire series. Every FE has been able to squeeze a reasonable amount of likeable or interesting characters to follow but Engage is such a complete nothing in the characterization front. This is partly fault of the complete lack of world building, characters spawn with almost no backstory or context behind them and the few supports that explore anything behind them are buried under the inmense amount of supports that just add NOTHING to the table. There are still enough decently charming characters to fill out your team, I have a particularly soft spot for the Brodian royals, but the overall quality of this cast is fucking dire. I think this is the worst cast since Binding Blade. Fates, especially Conquest, wasn't this bad either. But the fact every support conversation is now voiced might be the reason why the bad nothingburguer support conversations this team really loves writing stand out so much more now.

-The most damming thing about the game is that not even the amazing gameplay is flawless. Conquest stands high and above with the best map design the series has ever seen, with few maps I would state were outright bad. Engage, while having really solid maps overall, and in my opinion, the best earlygame of the entire series, has full stretches of mediocre ones during the Solm arc and parts of the endgame that water down the entire experience. The game balance is also nowhere near as solid. Are the Emblems astoundingly well balanced for what they are? Absolutely, and I think their contribution to how fun they make Engage cannot be overstated. But we are talking about full map healing (which is rechargeable!) as early as Chapter 6 among the dozens of tools the game gives you. I think it’s impossible to fully account for all the possibilities they created here and that shows in the game balance. I can see the argument this makes Conquest better designed too, but they are pretty even for me.

Hopefully IS hires some fucking writers next time because it is seriously getting embarrassing how bad the storytelling of their recent games is.

3.5/5

[morihaus]

Aranea...

My first impression

I don't think I knew Aranea existed before I played Skyrim in like 2020 or 2021 or something, whenever I started being active on this blog. Given the fact I was kinda using the playthrough to develop Vivynne I'm sure my first response was LOL of course my Dunmeri immigrant bumbles her way into some stupid quest like this almost immediately after arriving in Skyrim, ON THE WAY to the College of Winterhold (my actual goal.) But oh well if a woman tells me to do something what am I to do but go on this stupid sidequest...

My impression now

Once I'd settled on continuing the tried and true tradition of pairing TES protags with random insignificant unromanceable NPCs, I began to put a LOT more thought into Aranea and her life. How kind of fucked it is to consider on a timeline, how she's two centuries old living on a frozen mountain top and virtually abandoned by her goddess as soon as she fulfills her purpose. it's really fucked up and I realized that Viv would think it's fucked up and there'd be interesting ideas to explore there... Aranea is an incredibly steadfast and faithful person to hold out for so long up there, and it's definitely tragic the extent to which she seems disposable in the grander scheme of Azura's prophecy. But then she doesn't really view it as tragic because she repaid Azura for her mercy in leading her followers away from the Red Year, played an important role in the retrieval of her artifact, and when all was said and done she found her Champion to be charming company. She very much has faith that Azura planned everything that was going to happen to her and knew just what she was doing. It might seem fucked up from one lens but she has her own thoughts about it... like i said interesting to write about

Favorite thing about that character

Um the thing I just described, her EXTREME belief in fate and all things coming to their proper conclusion in the end. I wrote a really really good piece for Tesfest22 (i think it was that year) where Aranea lays out her life as she views it and gives her side of the story on why she still venerates Azura even as she's been "abandoned"... she's very sentimental, i think this manifests in her relationship to dunmer communities in Skyrim as well, she and the other priests who used to live up there were like a lifeline for them, especially in Winterhold before the collapse.

Least favorite thing

Is there really enough about her to have a least favorite thing?? i guess it's too bad she can't be like, brought away from the horrid frigid mountaintop shrine after the end of the quest. you can have her as a companion but it's not like you can say "quit your job. move in with me"

Favorite line/scene

The ones at the end of the questline and after it are so :( "While you were in the Star, Azura gave me a vision. Her last, she said. I have never been without Azura's foresight since escaping Morrowind. I don't know what to do" "She said my part was over. That my fate had moved beyond the Twilight, and I was on my own. I will tend Azura's shrine when you do not need me. I still have my duties, but for the first time I feel… alone."

Favorite interaction that character has with another

In my beautiful world Viv takes her to the College of Winterhold and Savos chokes on a loaf of bread when he sees her because she knew him as a child growing up in pre-collapse Winterhold. I just think it would be funny to see your student walking around with like, a childhood mentor of yours

A character that I wish that character would interact with more

I'm just going to take this opportunity to say I once read a fic where she traveled all the way to Windhelm to provide religious services to the gray quarter there and that was so sweet and I definitely believe in this

Favorite picture

The other questions I had nothing for so here is a mod that changes Aranea to give her a more distinct appearance... I love the scarification sooo much this is just how she looks to me now (i prefer the version without all the ENB shader whozits on because they lighten her skin so much)

[danganronpafan777]

danganmon reading update also how thy day going!

Not too bad!! I’ve been busy with a Wattpad story, and a TON of irl stuff, but I just finished Chapter 2!

Here’s some notes/reactions while I was reading it/watching Blaze’s playthrough

SPOILERS

Danganmon Chapter 2 from someone who knows nothing about Pokémon:

I’m curious to see what Faust looks like without the mask as much as everyone, but ngl it kinda rubbed me the wrong way that they were pushing him so hard when it’s clearly a sore subject

HE LOOKS SO FREAKING CUTE THO

Sam: “…I think it looks nice too, maybe in this case “cute” would be the right word”

Ayooo

Last chapter, I wasn’t sure whether I should ship them or see it as a sibling relationship, but I’m leaning towards shipping

Faust keeping the mask on because he wants to be taken seriously is honestly a pretty valid reason (it’s a nice twist instead of a scar or trauma)

Maya is growing on me ngl

She reminds me of a more socially awkward Rei

Flidgey being amazing as always 

Cyrillo and Wimessir give that “We will be adored” energy 

Kami deadass asking Cyrillo why he’s tall- 

This premotive game sounds like a fun concept! I feel like Sam is gonna let Faust win

Fry seems like such a cutie that it makes me scared

So Kami and Fry don’t actually have to face off against each other? I’m assuming all the funhouses are different, so theirs is just not competitive?

BRO LAVA??

They’re literally exchanging their fav flowers while trying to escape from lava 😭 I honestly like this duo and I’m scared Fry might die

Sam really disappeared faster than my will to live 

Okay Zoro definitely giving blackened energy

Zoro and Roxanne got some sibling energy tho

I want to hug Faust so bad 

Maya and Flidgey friendship is unexpected but not unwelcome in the slightest (I actually love this dynamic)

Flidgey: A ghostly guy and a ghostly girl… lemme guess, some guy tried to suck you up with his vacuum? 

I love her sm

Stella and Cyrus being bullied by a robotic Gordon Ramsay for burning bread is def my favorite fun room 

Voodoo doll motive :0

Apollo probably got Maya, I’m calling it now

I’m getting some death flags from Lillie and Juno…

At least one of the melons is probably poisoned

Glad Sam apologized and everything worked out. Genuine apologies and communication is rarer than it should be in dangan/fangans

I’m officially on board with Sam x Faust and Maya x Flidgey 

If any of them die I’m rioting man

(Flidgey raised some death flags and if she goes then I’m quitting this fangame I swear /hj)

…FUCK

*end credits*

(I swear that wasn’t planned)

A trade between dolls?  Apollo is probably involved, but it’d be a cool twist if Flidgey was the one who swapped

I’m never forgiving whoever the hell killed Flidgey tho 

Okay now Apollo starting to piss me off (Still like his character tho)

CALLING HER FRIDGEY BRO THE DISRESPECT

(I hate how it made me laugh)

Wimessir is my top suspect tho, she’s just acting a bit sus

I KNEW IT

WTF APOLLO YOU BITCH

Okay I forgive Wim but Apollo you’re dead to me

Oh god, using Cyrillo against her is a whole new level of screwed up

KICK HIS ASS CYRILLO

Sapphire tucking in Juno’s doll makes me feel a lil better tho

CYRUS MY MAN

Out of all the antags in dangan, Apollo is the first to just be badshit insane, and like a genuine pychopath

(Well, his backstory does sound screwed up from what little we’ve seen of it)

The bags under Cyrillo’s eyes makes me sad :(

I actually loved this chapter tho, the funhouse games and the bonding between the characters is such a good buildup

9/10

The investigations are a bit short and Wimmessir’s guilt came a bit out of nowhere (In terms of evidence. I had suspicions from her behavior, but Apollo’s accusation and the purple hair was a bit abrupt) It felt like everyone turned against her rather quickly, and not much could really prove her involvement, but her execution was well done

This was great, but I kept thinking of the ways a reader would fit into the story which really shows the type of person I am (I write too many x readers lmao)

[ggren-mainz]

Umineko - question arcs playthrough -> ep 1 - 4

last part - All parts and episodes - next part

Things are getting more interesting ooo

I feel so bad for Natsuhi, and, just like i expected, I fucking hate Krauss. Idk i just had a feeling i will not like that dude and lo and behold i was right.

The forbidden "two years ago" has been uttered.

He doesn't know Beatrice will peg him daily. poor soul, still young and innocent. But again knowing that beatrice actually exists (?) makes me so much more confused. And ig this is the start of the infamous "are witches real?" debate of this game, huh?

While i truly dislike Krauss, its quite hard to not be sceptic. I'm not really sold on this 10 tons of gold story. Also

Not that much tbh. I mean it's still a shit ton but hm. At the same time they are in the 80s so lemme see if i can do a little conversion.

so this means that we'd have... 24,988,454.44 euro. which is quite a lot lol, but i assumed it would be more. But ig I'm also thinking of billionaires nowadays because this really is no sum to scoff at at. very interesting anyway.

Krauss alone could turn anyone anti-capitalism. I hope he's the one that dies in whatever murder will happen.

WAIT HUH??? KANON WITH KINZO????? WAAAAA???? Is he Kinzo's spy??

Huh so the gold actually exists?? I'm starting to lean towards the Beatrice is actually a witch party

Oh also i just noticed but Kanon Shannon and Genji wear the family's emblem, and i feel like this is quite important, cause the spouses aren't allowed to wear it, Genji maybe i get but why Shannon and Kanon? interesting.

Bad assumptions time! do the two refer to rika and satok- i mean bernsomething and λδ? idk why i thought of that but they're like a duo. Maybe I'm very off the mark but yk gotta write these assumptions down so i can laugh at them later.

This will either never be brought up again, or will turn out to actually work and these charms will save their lives. Betting on the latter maybe not really life saving but def inportant.

There wasn't any dif bg for the beach with the clouds but ofc we need one for the mansion looking all imposing and scary. No music only the sound of the wind too....

:,(

oi oi oi oi oi..... What is this ceremony??

eeeeiooooo let's stop a bit here, let's take a break.

Wait...i know beatrice has a ring on her finger (someone who had her doll complained that it came without it)...is this it?

next part

[tails-artwork]

Gaming Thoughts - July 2023 - Sonic Frontiers

(I'm looking at doing a sort of long-term project to hopefully slowly get my art back into the groove amidst some of my studying. Basically at the end of each month to do one really small doodle based one a game that I play during the month and also give my thoughts on the game as well. Some games may end up getting covered twice depending on how much I keep playing it or such too. But maybe it might serve as a way for me to get back into doing some fanart and keeping myself from getting too rusty)

Anyways, to kick this off, we're starting with a game that while I did end up starting it in June, I managed to finish it off in the first half of July. Which would happen to be Sonic Frontiers.

Nonetheless, I have been a bit of a Sonic fan ever since my first game being the old PC port of Sonic 3D Blast, but back then I really didn't play super long or seriously with games like I do now, thus in all technicality the first Sonic game that I had ever beaten was Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the GCN. I think ever since then I ended up having a stronger bias towards some of the 3D sonic games as opposed to the 2D ones despite the huge variance in quality a lot of the games have had over time.

Anyways, the moment I started Frontiers, I swear I ended up getting drawn in VERY quickly. I honestly struggled really liking going back to any of the boost era games (Generations and Unleashed included, so go ahead and grab the pitchforks) and the fact that to me Sonic felt as smooth as I remember in Adventure and Heroes already helped me enjoy more of the game. And honestly i found it really easy to control for most of the game as well while exploring in the actual world.

The cyberspace zones were…well…despite the fact that some of the boost era games have just never fully clicked with me, I think those were not tooo bad. There is an obvious dissonance on how Sonic controlled in the open area and in the cyberspace levels though and thus he felt a lot more stiff in those. But…damm some of the level layouts did tickle my fancy so much (Even though I feel like they missed some potential with the music for some of them, but that is a different matter.)

Regardless, I don't think I've ever been THIS sucked into a Sonic game since Heroes though, and I definitely am looking forward to the final update with this game as well with the different playable characters. I've been itching for Tails to have been playable in a 3D sonic game since almost forever and I really hope it comes out well in the end. All in all, still ranks quite up there as being one of my fav Sonic games, though I don't think it has dethroned Heroes or SA2B quite yet. (also yes, in my playthrough of Frontiers, I absolutely HAD to use the SOAP shoes for Sonic as well)

Also, throwing this last part under the cut because final boss spoiler potential.

I played the game on hard mode and was able to get the final last true fight. I heard a lot of people complaining about it before because it was a complete genre shift from a majority of the game, but like..it did feel like the game was preparing you for it with some of the small minigames there were so it wasn't 100% left field. And well…having playing Ikargua as much as I had before, this final boss literately just felt like a stage of that so that might be why I had quite a lot of fun with it and didn't have a hard time with it either. Though speaking of which, for those who DID enjoy the final boss though or those similar minigames. This is 100% a shameless plug to go and give Ikargua a try as well. And Radiant Silvergun while you're at it too.

Also, Sage's development in the game was just dawww. I really loved her a lot and I hope she shows up in future games as well considering the last scene in the ending.

[laurarolla]

Tomb Raider playlist is ready! Well, I still have to upload a few videos for the last stage and one of the Atlantis videos is saying that it's still processing. I'll upload a replacement if I need to.

So my overall experience with Tomb Raider is that it is a frustrating game that mostly satisfies when you succeed at solving a puzzle or completing a jumping gauntlet that was giving you trouble. Playing through the game while limiting my saves for the achievement, however, really puts how demanding some parts of this game can be. Combat, for instance, was never really a fun experience, largely due to my more methodical way of moving and jumping in most situations. More than a few deaths were caused by hopping the wrong direction during combat, taking extreme amounts of damage very quickly with little chance to recover, and ending up out of rhythm with the enemy movement or attacks when I did try to dodge and roll like I'm clearly supposed to. Thankfully there are a LOT of healing items, and tanking damage while unloading everything into an enemy was completely viable for many of the harder fights in the game. Didn't feel good to win so many fights like that, though.

The jumping puzzles were largely satisfying, pushing you to get a feel for how the grid based level design and tank movement work, then asking you to color a bit outside the lines with your platforming skills to skip sections of a stage or find secret stashes of ammo and health. I tried to play the game as unspoiled as possible (it's been out for over 25 years so I did know a few of the more notable moments), and I had to look up where to go maybe a half dozen times, which isn't bad at all. Heck, if I were more thorough in my movement and searching around, I might have avoided at least a few of those situations. The remaster graphics created some problems and helped solve others, but overall the game looks quite nice.

My last point of frustration that I have to comment on has to do with controls. Now, either control style is fine to play with, as there are work arounds for issues players sometimes have with the modern controls, and indeed the instant directional changes of modern controls actually made it possible for me to solve a couple of the game's puzzles that were giving me a lot of trouble. My bigger issue is more personal, namely that I own an Xbox 360 controller for my computer and that thing has a garbage D-pad. I fell to my death multiple times because I would push the direction to turn and Lara would instead dash straight forward off a cliff. My advice is get a better PC controller than an Xbox 360 one, or at least something with a good D-pad, because tank controls with an analog stick are just too touchy IMO.

As an aside, this playthrough was done with 85 saves, getting the achievement for finishing with 86 saves or less. If you aren't interested in that achievement, I highly recommend you save as often as you like, even if you save after nearly every big jumping puzzle or fight. It will save you so much time and energy.

[malklavian]

thinking about my bg3 playthrough (ass-cended ass-tarion and durge thoughts-dump, some spoilers)

ascended ass-tarion got me feeling things, such a perfect match with my durge. que me just sighing dreamily of this evil as FUCK, UNHINGED duo.

so I RPed my Durge to be at first scared shitless of his mysterious urges, acting nice and heroic and doing good deeds as kind of like a way to surpress those feelings and act normal, focus on his empathy and use it to help people, tho secretly enjoying the bloodbath of his own creation, and the two of them in the beginning had these tense interactions and i'm pretty sure they could each sense in one another that they were fake as fuck, hiding behind these pretty, elaborate masks and lying through their teeth, and still kind of dancing around one another in this intriguing game of guessing, push and pull, seduction

and then as time goes on they both gradually let down their guards and both basically find out they're quite similar, and as durge learns of his bhaal stuff and astarion ascends they both ease into being unapologetically power-hungry and unhinged and obviously have huge control and dominance and obsession issues, and they bring out the best and the absolute worst in each other and throughout all their flaws and shortcomings... they accept one another as they are even when all others leave their side, and i think that's beautiful... as far as dark fictional romances go. ofc they're both completely off the rails in actuality, toxic as all FUCK beyond one's wildest imagination, like when they get into fights over the stupidest shit and it lasts for fucking decades or whatever and then they get back together again only to backstab each other again soon enough. they probably break up at least a dozen a times a century but they always come crawling right back to one another. tho the s3x they have down the line must be absolutely fucking insane, my god...

and also idc about canon, I just know that my durge ascended astarion and took the gift but did not become his slave or anything

i just imagine the scene going on where astarion is more or less convinced durge is gonna kneel and take it, then just durge grabs him by the jaw and is like 'know your place baby vampire you forget yourself, i made you and i could still end you in an instant' and then they almost kill each other but they don't, and eventually durge caves (durge loves to be slapped around hard every once in a while, come on) and then later on durge controls the brain but gives his allies and those worthy free will, and astarion realises again that he once again is subservient to someone and that kind of stings heh but oh well- it's never impossible to make changes to the arrangements again, if one plays their cards right...

actually i think my durge would give nearly everyone free will just for entertainment (kind of like playing sims and turning on free will and watching them piss themselves and die in their own kitchen fires) up until people start getting a bit too disobedient for his liking

and then of course he'd get too cocky and too in love with his own existence and power and murder, and some brave adventurers eventually take him down and he goes down gloriously. and then it's astarion to the rescue, because as much as they bring out the worst in one another, they're absolutely fucking obsessed with each other. they very much have serious issues but they have all of eternity to work through that, or get even WORSE

now that would be an interesting idea if i ever decide to develop a mini dnd campaign. the evil twink demi god villain and his vampire lord bf the power couple who rule an entire realm. kind of like the whole thing with strahd

or maybe it's canon for my durge that he gets so cocky that he defies daddy murder god at some point, either by destroying the brain or something else, and then is stuck in that bad bhaal ending and hunts and begs his friends to kill him. that's such a disturbing ending, i love it. idk if astarion would want to keep him in that state, too much trouble, he'd either give the mercy kill he yearns for or obsessively search for the cure and tear the whole world asunder in the process, depending on when and how that exactly happens

such a fucking DISASTER, i love it. people usually say that ass-cended ass-tarion is bad for him but idk, i dig the narrative. and at first i felt bad about my character 'suddenly' turning evil because it seemed ooc due to how 'good-aligned' he was up to the bhaal reveal but i explain it to myself that he even had ME fooled with this act of being a reedemable good guy he had going on. all around a very interesting playthrough, gg

[cadybear420]

Cadybear's Reviews- High School Story: Class Act

First of all, I should mention… this series is actually the reason I wasn’t going to include stories where my last playthrough of them was 2-3 years ago. I’ve been having a lot to say about HSS:CA for a long time, but as more time’s been going by, my memory of the playthrough diminishes more and more. As much as I want to go on and on about how disappointing this series was, I worried it might not be a good look to do so when my statements about its events could very well be uninformed. 

But I would still like to discuss how I currently feel about the story, based off of what I do remember from it, plus what I’m picking up from screenshots posted by others. I’ve been writing braindumps about this trilogy for quite a long time. If and when I do eventually get around to replaying this (as with all the other stories that I haven’t touched in forever), it will certainly get a re-review, and we’ll see how well this one’s claims hold up. Will they all still stand? Will there be things I’ll change my mind on? Will there be new things I have to say? Who the fuck knows. 

Now with that out of the way, let’s do this shit.

Welcome to the thirteenth official Cadybear's Reviews post! Today I'll be talking about High School Story: Class Act, which I have ranked on the "Bronze Tier" at 5 stars out of a possible 10. My last and only playthrough of this series was back in April-June 2021.

To put it briefly… this one is such a mixed bag. A kind of disappointing mixed bag. 

Initially, I did fairly enjoy this series. I found the stories alright and the characters interesting, and I was happy to see more of the beloved OG characters even if it was just on the side. It wasn’t as amazing as OG was (no shit), but I still found it decent enough. 

But at the same time, something was always just a bit off about all of it. It took me a while to realize this. I couldn’t quite place my finger on why (or when I think I fully realized this), but eventually… it hit me. 

It had nothing to do with HSS. 

I know, it seems unfair to judge this trilogy in comparison to OG HSS rather than on its own merits, but like… why even bother making it HSS then? If it wanted to be its own thing so bad, then it should have just been made as its own thing. And that’s kind of the main problem with HSS:CA– looking back on it, it entirely feels like it was written as a new different franchise and then had “HSS” stamped onto it to make it seem more appealing to fans of the original iterations. Seriously, you could replace everything HSS that appears in CA with something completely new, and nothing important about it would change. 

I’m noticing that that’s kind of a phenomenon we see when it comes to sub-par spinoffs and installments of a (highly beloved and respected) franchise, such as PPG 2016 and HBO’s Velma. A fairly common critique I’ve seen about both of those infamously hated iterations is that you could easily make them as original shows and you’d lose nothing important about them, and frankly they’d have been much less hated if they were original franchises rather than installments of an already existing beloved franchise. 

HSS:CA is nowhere near as abhorrent as either of those, don’t get me wrong. But regardless of how much of a desecration of the original franchise you consider it to be, it’s the exact same case here. Most of the stuff in HSS:CA either lacks relevance to and/or is a major downgrade from OG HSS. And while these aspects would still keep the series from being in the higher tiers if it was an original series, they’d be far more forgivable or negligible in that case. 

I’ll be honest. HSS:CA is a cute, chill, vanilla slice-of-life high school series at best. And so if it was its own brand new thing? I’d probably rank it in the Silver Tier– which is why there’s a spot that says “HSS:CA (if you pretend it’s not a HSS spinoff)”. But the fact that it’s meant to be a continuation of the HSS franchise kind of gives it some higher standards to hold it to, and it’s hard not to judge it by that. 

And in my opinion? It doesn’t hold a candle to those standards. It’s merely a shadow of its parent iterations, and even that’s an overstatement because a shadow at least has some basic connection to its source object. 

It’s very difficult to go into this one without bursting into a 9 page long essay. To keep this review organized at least, let’s go by each of my 6 points for why OG HSS was great, and see how CA holds in those points as well. It’s gonna be a long one, but I do want to put my opinions into perspective. 

First, the MC. 

They’re not terrible by any means– in a vacuum, they’re an okay MC to play as. I don’t mind playing as an unpopular kid, and their adorakble moments and the Aunt Wendy storyline are pretty cute. 

But again, this is a HSS spinoff. With that in context, CA MC is just so much more stiff than our old MC, and so it’s hard not to feel like they’re a downgrade. A fair amount of people have said that CA MC is better because they’re “more imperfect and realistic to actual teenagers” or “actually have a personality”, but it doesn’t hold much ground in my opinion. As I’ve said probably ad nauseam by this point, OG MC not having a distinct personality worked in their favor because it made them a lot more wildcard in how you could play their character– and that actually does include making them more “imperfect” to some degree. 

I can make my OG MC genuinely mess up in certain areas if I want to, and it can affect certain outcomes for them. If I wanna have my MC be kind of crappy at their extracurricular and make Berry lose the big sports games, or have them be a jerk to the Hearst kids and lose their tryouts spot even if they’re actually good at tryouts themselves, I can have that! And even when you do get all the more successful outcomes for them, they can still feel pretty down-to-earth– they’re just a student who happens to become popular and good at unifying the school, rather than some OP messiah God who’s the great savior of the school and everyone worships the very ground they walk on. Is that still unrealistic? Sure. But who gives a crap? Realistic ≠ better. 

(Also, if you think the OG MC was unrealistically talented and successful… well, not only is that on you as the player, but keep in mind that the MC of HSS Prime was a teenager who founded an entire brand new high school, and the whole game exists entirely around that. I’m pretty sure most people aren’t coming to HSS for complete high school realism. A lot of us already experienced complete high school realism when we went to high school IRL, and it probably sucked for most of us.)

With HSS:CA MC however, we don’t get nearly as many choices to personalize the character or affect the story with this one like we do with OG’s, and the options/outcomes that do exist are few and far between. If you replayed the story with a new name and appearance for MC and all different choices, chances are they’d probably still feel the exact same as the previous version of your MC with the exception of your LI choice. 

And it’s funny– despite that this MC is pushed as the more awkward and flawed of the two, I don’t really recall any parts where we can have them genuinely screw up and face consequences. The most we get is probably the theatre productions in the first and third books, and some options in Book 2 that allow us to keep Rory/Twin’s election standings lower… but that’s about it. None of them really have the same impact or significance as the outcomes you can get with OG. 

This lack of agency with MC’s character can get especially frustrating at certain times, such as how much they agonize over getting their first kiss with Rory in Book 1, or how they’re so passive with assholes like Clint and Natalie and Trevor and Amber. At least moments where they tried to force OG MC into a certain behavior or trait– like wanting to win prom crown, or wanting to matchmake Scott and Julia– were kept very minimal and didn’t push out or upstage their respective choices systems. 

To add insult to injury, the OG MC is still around– but purely as a NPC background character. Which, in my opinion, fundamentally does not work for a flexible blank-slate MC like the OG MC. All it does is create the exact problem that OG HSS was trying to avoid when they wrote off Prime MC as having graduated. To make such a flexible MC that relies on how the player builds their character, into non-playable where they’re just a singular set version outside of their appearance and LI and the player has zero control over them? Especially when the new MC we get is so much more rigid and choice-less? It was very jarring and overall didn’t work, especially not in something like HSS. In fact, I’d even argue that there wasn’t any real justification for switching the MC and cast this time around… but I’ll save that for a later section. 

Second, the new supporting characters.

When it comes to the new main friend group, I actually find them pretty alright. Ajay and Skye are great characters and their storylines are the strongest aspects about this trilogy, and I found the romance route with Ajay to be pretty cute (yes, I am a bit of an Ajay apologist despite my heavy criticism towards the series). Rory isn’t really much more than being “nice and attractive” and is annoyingly forced in Book 1, but other than that, they’re decent. Twin is enjoyable enough, and I did like their subplot with Amber in Book 1. Erin isn’t much more than a nice kid either, but she’s very pleasant and I would have liked her as a LI option for MC. And one thing about this group that I actually consider better than OG’s friend group is that we got a lot more opportunities to spend time just hanging out with them or the LIs.

And the family members of these characters like Ajay’s family, Skye’s family, and Aunt Wendy are interesting too, by virtue of the storylines they’re in. Another thing I do like a bit better than OG is that we get to actually meet all of the LIs’ families and know a bit more about their personal lives. OG’s LIs had great characterization and growth, but I do wish we got to see more of their family lives too. Heck, we never once even meet Caleb’s and Michael’s parents! 

But when it comes to the rest of the in-school community, however? It’s nowhere near as vibrant and grand and interesting as it was in OG. I get that other characters outside of the new MC’s circle of friends are going to be less important because they’re not unifying the school like OG MC was, but everyone outside of the new main friend group is either boring and forgettable and/or an unpleasant one-note dickhead, even the returning OG characters. It wouldn’t be so bad since, obviously, not all characters are going to be pleasant or fleshed out… except for the fact that they’re constantly wanting us to interact with these characters and see them as our friends. 

Like I said in my OG HSS review, I felt like I had actual reasons to care about characters like Julian, Mia, Myra, Frank, Jade, Payton, Kieran, Cameron, etc. They had range and actual purposes in the story, one way or another. Though they obviously weren’t as fleshed out as our LIs and they did have their worse moments, they did feel like actual characters and their presence didn’t bring down the story. They were all characters I could root for. 

On the other hand, I don’t feel any reason to care about Clint, Natalie, Trevor, not even characters like Aiden and Michael. Well, outside of the fact that they’re from the OG trilogy and I’d rather be seeing what they’re up to– but that’s the extent of their appeal in this trilogy. None of them have really done much, if anything, to earn our new MC’s friendship or our interest as players, and all their interactions with MC really do is take up space in the story. 

Even the antagonists were pretty lacking, aside from Skye’s parents. Despite that we get a few more that are less on-the-nose as antagonists than the OG antags tended to be, most of them were incredibly half-baked and felt more like cheap plot devices rather than like actual characters. 

Third, the lack of any activity system. 

Regardless of your opinion on CA, you can tell there was a lot less effort put into it compared to that of OG. This mainly shows with the lack of different route options and potential outcomes for MC like I mentioned before– and most notably of all, is the complete removal of any extracurricular choice system. Those choices were a key feature that made OG so memorable and immersive, allowing variance in our storyline, experience, and even our potential romance paths. CA throws that away entirely for God knows what reason… and unfortunately, there aren’t really a lot of other impactful choice systems in this trilogy that can really make up for it. 

I get they were probably trying to make CA a bit different from OG, but being able to “choose your clique/group/activity” has always been a huge staple of HSS, ever since Prime. Imagine if PB got rid of the nerve score system when making ILB in order to make it “more different” from ILITW. I don’t think anyone would like that. It guts the series of one of the franchise’s biggest defining features and basically cheapens the story as an interactive VN. 

What ILB actually did, of course, is that they changed up the nerve score system a bit: more consequential events spread throughout the story than just the fate trials in one of the last chapters, accounting for a group nerve score, having the characters’ scores start at zero and have to be increased. But it is still a *nerve score system*. I bring this up because CA could have done something similar. I get defaulting our MC to do theatre; that was expected from the “Class Act” part of the title. But in that case, why not adapt the “choose your activity” system to intra-theatre activities?

For example: a bifurcation of theatre jobs, where we can choose between being an actor, director, or techie/set designer (kind of like the MC options in HWU). You could maybe have different ways to customize the production and affect how it turns out based on your activity. And you’d have opportunities for extra interactions/moments with all of the LIs– Rory if you choose to be an actor, Ajay if you choose to be a director, Skye if you choose to be a techie/set designer (in Book 3, anyways). 

Or if not that, then perhaps we could have a choice in the acting parts in the plays. Seriously, I feel so baited by that one scene where we could choose to say which part in the first play we wanted the most. Like, they make this big deal about how MC wants to be the prince/princess so they can get their first kiss with Rory, but really I imagined my MC as someone who would much rather be the witch (and didn’t crush on Rory either way). 

Fourth, the stories. 

Credit where credit is due, the subplots about some of the characters’ personal lives are pretty damn solid and probably one of the few things about the series that actually feels well-executed and fitting to HSS. I’d say the series is at its best when it’s focusing on stuff that doesn’t have to do with in-school drama. Which checks out, because most of the stuff that does take place in the school is lukewarm at best, and… kind of mean-spirited at worst, actually. 

There’s nothing wrong with stories about more vanilla and mundane situations, but here it just guts the heart of HSS. Berry High in CA is not “the high school you’d want to go to” like it was in OG… which is kind of funny when you remember the HSS:CA teaser at the end of OG Book 3, where CA MC can tell Rory that they’re “so so so excited” to go to high school because “you guys have scandals and rivalries and food fights”. I can only imagine how disappointed they must have actually been when they started high school (I mean, that’s what this trilogy is, frankly), especially considering some of the bullshit they’re put through while they’re there. 

No, seriously. I use the term “mean-spirited” to describe some of CA’s in-school conflicts because a lot of the stuff that happens to our new MC is more needlessly cruel than what happens to OG MC. Book 1’s storyline with MC being instantly accused of sabotage and ostracized by the theatre kids for days(?) on end is by far the worst offender, and Book 2’s storyline with MC being pulled in two directions by Twin and Rory with their election campaigns isn’t much better. Book 3 isn’t nearly as bad, but the useless one-note bully hivemind that is the Statton kids do still bring it down. 

And the worst part is, I don’t feel like the characters “get anything” out of it. The characters in OG would often go through a series of pretty awful events too, such as the football game against Statton or literally everything that happened with Isa. But they’d always be able to pick themselves back up and some characters would even grow from these events, so it never felt in bad spirit. Even if you get some of the “lesser” outcomes such as losing the sports games or failing the spirit stick heist, the character development everyone has gone through still holds up. They didn’t succeed, but they tried their best and still got something good out of it, and they can still enjoy their homecoming dance. 

In CA, it feels less about the characters overcoming their obstacles and a lot more like “drama and conflict for the sake of drama that we’re gonna throw at the MC, okay now it’s over with, moving on”. Like, why did MC need to suffer through being ostracized by 95% of the theatre kids or getting pulled between Rory’s and Twin’s campaigns? MC getting to kiss Rory in the play and getting the Greenhouse Ex Machina built to merge Twin and Rory’s campaigns and overtake Lorenzo’s campaign, aren’t nearly enough to amend the unnecessary crap they had to deal with throughout those respective stories.

And sure, some of those events are technically more “realistic” to the average high school experience, but again, that doesn’t make them better written. Need I bring up Prime’s MC again? Realism means fuck all to me if the conflicts are cheap, especially in HSS.

What’s funny about the “realistic” aspect though, is that despite OG being the seemingly more “corny cheesy Disney Channel high school” of the two trilogies, the teenage characters and their conflicts/drama in that one actually felt more natural and believable. There was actual tension building, and context for why characters acted irrational. I didn’t always like what happened, but it was more understandable why band and cheer would start rooting against basketball, or why Jade/Cameron/Kieran would believe MC was the one to sabotage them, or even why the characters would break out into a food fight. Again, the story gives me actual reason to care about these characters. 

A lot of the events in CA felt a lot more lazy to me in comparison, like the only reason the characters act out is because “Har har, teenagers be irrational and messy!”. Which they often tend to be, sure… but characters like Clint and Natalie have no other traits in Book 1 besides being clingy Rory simps, Trevor has no other traits than just being a dickhead, the Statton kids have no other traits in Book 3 than being pretentious assnads. That's all they really have to go by, and it makes the conflicts feel painfully one-dimensional. 

Sometimes an event will just straight up contradict the themes established in OG. Like how a lot of the same characters that were present during Isa’s reign of manipulative behaviors and even participated in taking her down, are also weirdly quick to reject CA MC’s discovery that Lorenzo’s kitten stunt was a sham. I have a lot of problems with Book 2’s main plot, but this is easily the biggest one. There’s teenagers being irrational and messy, and then there’s this 5-year-old hivemind behavior. And I… just couldn’t with that. 

Finally, and probably the most glaring issue of HSS:CA’s lack of relevance to HSS, it does not bridge well with its past source material at all. 

The returning Prime characters may have had smaller roles and their utilizations in OG weren’t all perfect, but overall, they felt very in-their-element and more like an actual part of the story. Their cameos were much more organic, like they were fellow students along with the new characters, and some of them even felt like more mature versions from how they were in Prime. They only really stand out as “the older characters” by being the soon-to-graduate senior class. All of which makes sense because, like I mentioned in my OG HSS review, it’s sort of meant to be “passing down the torch to unify Berry” to the new MC and cast. And that’s about it, it doesn’t need to shove it in your face that these are the characters from the original 2013 mobile game that you may or may not have played before. 

The returning OG characters, on the other hand, are all non-characters, and their cameos only serve as nostalgia bait. I mean, I think they were kind of doomed from the start when they made the OG MC non-playable, but they could have at least tried with the other characters, no? Even in Book 3 where they join the CA gang in the musical and London trip, which should have been leagues more epic than whatever the fuck we actually got. They were just there for the sake of being there, doing nothing more than just tagging along with the CA gang– hell, Maria even straight up admits that when she says she and the other characters are only joining the musical production so they could join MC and Aiden on the London trip.

I’ll admit, those premium scenes where you could spend time with the OG characters were kind of fun. But notice how OG didn’t need obligatory special premium scenes in order to make the Prime characters relevant? Sure, there were some scenes that involved certain Prime characters, but… they had a lot more personality than just “Spend time with the Prime characters!”. The Prime characters’ cameos were more than just “Hey hey look look it’s the characters from Prime!”. 

This kind of makes CA problematic both for returning OG fans and for new fans who haven’t yet played OG, when you really think about it. OG can integrate the Prime characters well but actually stand on its own two feet at the same time, whereas people who play CA before OG are probably going to be like (Patrick Star voice) “Who are you people!?!?” every time they try to push these diamond scenes. 

(And yes, I know I said continuing the OG HSS after the first three books doesn’t have the problem of needing to appeal to new fans. But by virtue of making the continuation a spinoff with a new MC, they kind of did bring that problem onto themselves. No one’s going to be playing the TRH trilogy before they play the TRR trilogy. No one’s going to be playing the two “The Sophomore” books before they play the first four “The Freshman” books, they’re clearly continuations of the previous books involving the same MC and their storyline, just with different titles. HSS:CA clearly has a different MC from the OG one, so there are going to be (and have been) people who play HSS:CA first. Had they made these books a continuation of OG MC’s storyline, this wouldn’t even be an issue.)

And while I did enjoy the new main cast well enough… let’s face it. There wasn’t really any purpose for switching the MCs and casts this time around. Sure, they contrast in that OG MC is more popular and unifies the school while CA MC is more unpopular and sticks with just their theatre family, but that’s not much to go by. The Prime-to-OG switch worked because the Prime writers knew that a Choices iteration of HSS needed to be welcoming both to older fans from Prime AND to newer fans from Choices, given Choices is a completely separate app from the Prime game. It’d be difficult to continue the focus on the Prime MC and their friends without requiring players to have played Prime first, which would be very problematic considering Prime has no in-game features for replaying certain stories or quests.

HSS:CA on the other hand is a more direct continuation of OG HSS, existing on the same app (which does allow you to replay stories or chapters) and taking place the following school year at Berry after the OG HSS timeline. If the spinoff was maybe a few years after the first trilogy, when the OG characters have graduated; or if it was taking place in a different location like Hearst High, then that’d make more sense. Instead, it’s just the next year at Berry High, but this time the focus is on a theatre freshman at Berry and their friends, whose stories pretty much happen in a complete vacuum from everything else that’s happened in HSS canon. It feels very much like PB switched casts with HSS:CA for the same reason that Rick and Morty did Interdimensional Cable II: “We pretty much nailed it the first time”.  

What really puts the nail in the coffin is that the finale was terribly inconclusive and soulless, and did not work as a sendoff to the franchise. Seriously, it’s ID-1-standalone-ending levels of bad and I don’t think that’s talked about enough. And even ID 1’s standalone ending at least had some emotional stakes to it. There’s no emotion in the scenes where you talk to the OG characters– in fact the writers seemed to care so little about the OG characters in this ending (and the trilogy as a whole) that they initially forgot that OG MC, Emma, Caleb, and Michael are actually a year below Aiden and Maria and not in the same grade. 

And as a whole, it just ends on such a weird note– “Yay I finished my first year of high school, what’s next for me” to “And now your time at Berry must come to an end” is such a whiplash that I’m pretty sure it broke my fucking neck. I think rushed book endings like this and ATV’s ending walked so that the rushed endings of 2022-2023 Choices books could run. 

There’s only one major plus of HSS that carried over well to HSS:CA, and that was the lack of smut scenes. Which is kind of expected, honestly. (Though I will say, the writing for CA was, arguably, noticeably more horny this time around… is that just me?)

Of course, CA isn’t without its other redeeming factors, which I have mentioned across each of these points. But the fact that it has these redeeming factors, these ideas that were good in concept but terrible in execution, just makes it all the more tragic as a series and it’s part of why I’m so hard on it. 

See, had CA just been among the ranks of something like PPG 2016 or HBO’s Velma– a straight-up bad trilogy that butchered all the characters and everything about HSS and had no redeeming qualities and was ultimately a stain on the HSS franchise– I’d just have to go “Jesus H. Christ this sucks” and pretend it doesn’t exist.

But in actuality, it has ideas that I would enjoy to see explored as part of the world of HSS– I do genuinely like exploring Berry’s theatre department, and the idea of the OG and CA gangs going to London together. And there is some really good potential for interactions between the two groups, like Emma helping Ajay deal with his parents’ divorce, or the OG gang taking Skye under their wing as Brian’s younger sister. But it ultimately failed to handle those well and just ended up leaving me feeling empty inside. So it’s this weird tug-of-war between “I like you” and “I don’t like you”. 

So I definitely wouldn’t consider CA to be awful, as it does have its share of redeeming qualities. But the thing is, those redeeming qualities are part of why the series left me feeling empty and disappointed, because we could have had something much greater for the HSS franchise. But this trilogy, as it is, probably would have been much better off as a completely new and separate franchise.

[thornfield13713]

Okay. Let's do this again. Following some early teething issues, a few things not gelling quite right and one ignominious TPK, I am starting again on my first-ever proper Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough.

I chose the Dark Urge backstory, and decided to play as a druid, because...I wanted to talk to animals, and I got spoiled enough about this character option to know I wanted to be high-WIS later in the game. But, more importantly, I knew right off the bat that I wanted to talk to animals as soon as I possibly could. I went with the standard white dragonborn design, because while I haven't played Blood in Baldur's Gate yet, I do care about continuity for when I do play it. And, while I haven't yet played that game, I've decided this character's Guardian is modelled after the MC of that game, for...reasons. Painful, horrible reasons. I diverged, however, by making my MC a woman. My first thought was enby, but last time through I just...sort of kept slipping into thinking 'my girl!' a lot, and...honestly, I mostly chose enby because I had some hangups about using the masc body-type with a female character, but- you know what, I'm just going to lean into it. Call it a wish-fulfilment thing on my part. Didn't choose genitalia options because...big ace here who doesn't actually give a shit, and I was already going for the 'don't show that, not my cup of tea' option anyway.

Anyway, name of character is still Skye, and since the name is the only thing your character can remember at the start of the game, I guess she's had it for a while. I've gone with an assortment of mostly non-combat spells and cantrips, and I'm playing into the idea that Skye is instinctively frightened of and repulsed by her own murderous impulses, and would much, much rather talk than fight - not because she's a bad fighter, but because if she isn't fighting, she doesn't have to worry so much about a loss of control. Or at least, so she believes. Unfortunately, while Skye wants very much to be good, and has some quite clear ideas she's still wrestling with having a set of instincts very much counter to that idea - she's more adept at deception and threats than simple persuasion, even when she isn't giving in to her monstrous urges, and it'll probably take a while to learn a balance between 'not threatening people' and 'doormat', as she tends to overcompensate for her instincts when she has them under control. I suspect she might've become a druid in the first place largely because the life offered the hope of a way to control her urges, but how well that works out is anyone's guess.

No plans about who to romance yet, although...history has proven I cannot resist a cat-loving wizard. We'll have to see if Gale lives up to my pattern in this regard.