#i kind of like reviewing these things because i think i made the right choice in all cases

[quaranmine]

Things that Could've Happened in Firewatch AU but Didn't

Hi, and welcome to scrapped plot points. This fic had a general direction from the beginning but a lot of details came together as I went.

🔥First of all, I've posted the discord message before, but I actually originally envisioned it as "ambigious" whether Mumbo was dead or alive. This was scrapped the moment I tried to determine HOW one makes that ambiguous. think about it for a moment.

🔥I've also stated this before but I initially wanted this to just be a string of vignettes throughout the summer with no real plot or resolution to it. This is where I got a lot of early ideas for Grian and Scar hangout/character relationship development back in Dec 2022 (Scar and Top Gun, Scar's job as a door to door salesman, etc) (the salesman idea was actually from one of my tumblr asks, thanks!)

🔥Originally I....had more of a human conflict present? I actually struggle to remember some of what I planned because it got scrapped so quickly once I thought it through more. But you can still see references to it in my notes:

(last one is from first draft of chapter 11, one year prior to the final draft.) There's??? so much conflict implied here. Grian gets CHASED! people BROKE into his tower! someone STOLE THE BIKE! drama!!

I scrapped it because it was too unbelievable. Specifically, it was unbelievable for this plot line. I still had the same "truth" to the plot present—that there was no conspiracy and Mumbo had just died after being injured in a place outside the initial search zone. All this other behavior would have just been red herrings from people who had nothing to do with Mumbo's disappearance.

A lot of this also very reminiscent of the actual Firewatch game type of intrigue. I was always heading to a similarly anti-climatic ending (aka no overarching conspiracy) as the original game. But this did not fit. Because...why would someone else do this? They wouldn't have the same motivations as Ned Goodwin in Firewatch. It'd just be some pissed off teens/the firework couple who decided to mess with Grian to throw him off. Except they wouldn't know they were throwing him off anything, because they wouldn't know him, so it'd just be purely some third party messing with him. But I felt like real life is rarely this....malicious. I've had people go out of their way to harass me with road rage, sure. But all of this drama was scrapped because I felt it was SOOOOO unlikely for a random person to just be harassing Grian like this Just Because. It did not fit! It was so coincidental and requried people to make questionable decisions that I couldn't fit into any good framework of motive.

It was a bad idea and I'm glad I abandoned it. It might have been a good idea in a different context...but it did not fit at all here.

🔥I briefly toyed with something like what happened with Cian McLaughlin happening in this fic. Cian McLaughlin is an Irish man who went missing in Grand Teton National Park (nearly adjacent to this story's setting) in 2021. He was never found, unfortuantely. His case is notable because a woman provided a false eye witness report of seeing in a completely false location. On purpose, to be clear. She purposefully lied to the National Park Service about seeing him somewhere she didn't, while providing enough personal detail they thought it was a real report. She claimed to have done this to ensure that multiple locations were searched for him, to expand the search area, but she really just derailed over 500 hours of search time to the wrong place. It's so sad.

I was like, this is an intriguing case. What if this happened with Mumbo? What if this is why he was in a different location than the search was? Because someone falsely reported him being where he wasn't? But I faltered on it for many reasons. First of all, I felt it was kind of disrespectiful to Cian Mclaughlin and his family to blatantly draw off details of his real life disappearance in such an obvious way. It's a recent one too. This is not a cool mystery detail, this is real life and a real person and a real grieving family. Secondly, it goes back to the problem with the other issue about people interfering the case: why? You could ask why this woman interfered with Cian's case too, and that's real life. But in a fictionalized setting—why? What would it add, when I know that the truth of what happened to Mumbo was going to be mundane anyway? Why introduce this bizarre secondary plot element just to distract Grian and the reader? It could have just been a mistaken report, not a purposeful one, but it's just derail the story in a very unsatisfying way.

In the end the only remaining trace of this idea is Grian in chapter 5 (?) saying that someone had seen Mumbo at the Cloud Lake Trail and provided an eyewitness report. Which, for the record, is supposed to be an accurate account—he did go there, his car was there, and he did get spotted there at the beginning of his trip. He just diverged from the trail at a later point.

🔥I meant to do a fun little formatting thing and have Mumbo's past through processes and actions be intercut with Grian's present-day processes in Chapter 11. Or to put that more clearly, when Grian was running down the mountain away from the fire (but before he saw Mumbo) I wanted his choices to be contrasted with the ones Mumbo made. It would've been a stylistic choice. Mumbo's paragraphs might have been in italics, and I toyed with doing a right alignment instead of left alignment so it'd really stand out. The idea was to show how their two independent thought processes converged and led them to the same point on the mountain at different times. It would've been the only time in the story we ever got something from Mumbo's POV.

I scrapped this because I hated what I'd written in Mumbo's sections and never got around to rewriting it or adding it in retroactively. I think it was a cool idea but I did not pull it off. I don't the the fic is worse for it, though. I think it does a good enough job leading the reader into that parallel without spelling it out Quite that much. I also kind of....like that Mumbo never has his own voice in this story to explain his own decisions. It's sad, but it's part of the story.

🔥I seriously did not always have the main wildfire at the end of the story in the plot. I actually initially had Scar just coaxing Grian to tell him where he was, or allowing the search and rescue to come find him. And that would've been it, the search and rescue coming.

🔥Or.....when I toyed with whether or not Grian and Scar should meet at the ending of the story, I also considered an alternate ending where Scar came to Grian to rescue him. That he reported Grian's location to SAR, and then came himself. I scrapped this because it made no sense logistically. It's all well and good for there to be a dramatic scene of Scar coming to Grian's aid and them meeting for the first time in person. But Scar is miles away. And more importantly, Scar has an established disability and chronic pain that limits the trails he walks on. He specifically says he hasn't explored trails too far from his lookout because it'll pretty much wipe all his spoons for ages. (well, he doesn't say spoons because this is the 80s, but that was the meaning.) I was like okay. He's not only far from the trail but he's literally physically unable to make it there in time and one thing I'm NOT doing in this fic is undermining his disability (especially since I already had to make him a ~certain~ degree abled in order to do the job.) So I kept him in his spot. I think it added more tension anyway, because it's such a special kind of horror he experienced having to witness everything go down but be unable to help Grian other than over the radio.

🔥Speaking of the wildfire, I had a version where Grian escaped it for an embarassingly long time. Like until January or even February still (of this year!) The idea was the Grian outran it and then got found. A lot of this was just that I didn't want to figure out how to write him surviving a wildfire. I knew it'd be difficult and straddle the line of unbelievable. I wanted to take the easier way out of writing the scene.

But honestly...there was no way else the scene could've gone. I spelled it out in chapter 8 with my rather blatant foreshadowing—you CAN'T outrun a wildfire. I mean, I guess in good circumstances with good wind and experience you probably could. Afterall, hotshot crews and wildland firefighters are able to get in and around the fires without (normally) casualties all the time. But fires move faster than people. WAY faster. It'd just be a disappointing conclusion for Grian to somehow be the Super Lucky One who somehow skipped being in the danger. No, I had to follow through with what I'd set up and just go for it.

🔥I also entertained an idea of him sheltering in the overhang with Mumbo. It would've played out nearly like the fire played out in the main fic, the only difference was with him. It was the most "meaningful" option for shelter (since the other options were no shelter, and random shelter.) He would've been surviving death right next to Mumbo, who didn't survive. I could have made that very poignant if I wanted.

But I disliked this because I'd already written the part about Grian deciding to move on. I felt that bit of the scene was really key for the message of the story as a whole.

I wanted Grian to make the CHOICE to live instead of just refuse to move and survive anyway. You know? Grian, in-universe, would have no idea what decision would lead to his survival. But as the author with the power to do what I want, I knew he was surviving all my options. So my options were: 1) easy scene to write where he survives but doesn't experience much danger, 2) hard scene where he survives and makes the conscious decision to live and move forward, and 3) medium difficulty scene where he survives but was still emotionally stuck-in-place.

(Above: some random notes I typed about the finale scene options on my phone, in a situation where I should NOT have been writing fic notes on my phone lol)

In case it's not obvious, the final scene is the second one—Grian makes that key decision to live, but still experiences the danger I've set up so that I can follow through on the tension I created.

🔥I restructured the final chapter so that there was a bigger gap in time between Scar and Grian talking about Everything and Grian arriving. I initially had it when Grian essentally just came...and then like 5 mins later they were laying all that out while Grian sat on the bed. It just made the vibes of the scene Off. It was too quick, not satisfying. So I kept most of the same dialogue and stuff and structured it into a chapter where Grian meets Scar, and they kind of spend a mostly chill afternoon talking and hanging out until they delve into the Deep Stuff later that night while stargazing (let's be real you can never go wrong with stargazing for a deep scene.) I felt it was likely they'd kind of pretend everything was "normal" at first until they were more comfortable in each other's prescence. Also, we ALL know the middle of the night is when the real stuff comes out lmao. You can see my cut up and reused pieces of the original chapter version in the indented italic parts of chapter 12. I liked some of those interactions so I wanted to preserve them somehow even though the final chapter was structured in a way that cut it out.

So far, that's all of the major plot differences that I can think of at the moment. Some of the other elements (like the mistaken permit situation) came into play after I already had chapters uploaded, but I don't have a concrete idea of what might have happened in their place. Chapter 9 really evolved and got out of hand as I wrote it, but I knew from a few chapters earlier that he was going to do Something that got him fired. So I was able to refine the specific actions when I got there, since I just knew it had to be major and outlandish in the name of getting more information.

I had most of this story worked out ahead of time. But there were absolutely major changes that happened during the course of writing it. I was just fortunate that my intense outlining and focus on it ensured that I never encountered a situation where I had to make changes that majorly affected an already uploaded chapter. Yay for sticking close to the general outline even when the details were in question!

If I think of anything else, I'll reblog this post. :)

[catboybiologist]

So.

Re: tumblr bans of transfemmes.

Let's ignore PhotoMatt for a moment. Manbaby tech CEO doubling down on a stupid decision and making himself look like more of an ass doing so is not a new phenomena.

Tumblr has consistently said, in both public statements and leaked internal communication, that they're essentially running a skeleton crew.

They keep saying that they don't have the resources to moderate, manually review posts, have any kind of appeal process, or anything. So, as people have widely received communications about, they seemed to have automated a significant portion of the moderation to operate solely on the quantity of reports (probably with a basic filter, eg quantity of reports regarding a certain post, within a certain timeframe) to automatically ban or shadowban accounts.

And so, they wipe their hands, both to the users, the public, and their own consciousness, and go about their automated operations.

All of this is likely true. Tumblr, at this point, is essentially abandonware internally, a kind of weird vanity project/dumpster ground for server infrastructure for Automattic. Likely, they don't want the bad press of "shutting down" fully. Or maybe the trickle of revenue they get here just barely exceeds operating costs, so why not keep it around?

Whatever is the case, the bans are a result of an automated process working in the background. I'm giving them some benefit of the doubt here, of course, we can't know anything for certain- but it seems like the individual bans are not based on any specific, manual action.

And that doesn't fucking excuse anything.

Because at some point, multiple people sat down at tumblr, and decided how to cut costs.

And they decided that the bare minimum of report abuse prevention was one of the first things on the chopping block.

Before the boops. Before GUI reconfigures.

They decided to cut something that is necessary to manage online communities.

They decided to cut something that ensures any targeted group will have any kind of community online.

And then, after all of that, the only manual intervention is doubling down on the shitty decisions that the automated systems make, and plucking reasons out of their ass for why they were the right decisions all along.

It's pure silicon valley brain. Blame the computer often and always. Use it to shield the active decisions you made when designing the computer that way. Treat it as a fact of life as opposed to something they actively made decisions for.

Is tumblr staff hitting the banhammer on each transfemme one by one? No.

Is tumblr staff deliberately crafting a system that allows TERFs and other conservative bigots to get rid of the "undesirables" for them? Yup. But they sure as hell are trying to not say the quiet part out loud. If they can always point the finger somewhere else, to the advertisers, to the automated systems, to the TERFs, then they can always have juuusssttt enough plausible deniability.

But being the "queerest place on the internet" requires concious acknowledgement that queer people will be targets of harassment, and you will have to protect against that.

Side note, this is why I do try to keep my blog at least somewhat SFW. Its one of the main reasons why I choose not to reblog all of the posts I'm tagged in- if the post is overtly NSFW, I've probably seen it, appreciated it, and consciously decided my level of interaction with it mostly based on how "tumblr friendly" it is. Is that bowing down to them? A little. It's also my choice. I value the community I have here. The pushes that y'all have given me gave me the strength to transition, and honestly gives me a lot of motivation to research HRT biology as much as I can, among many other things.

Yeah, I post pictures that are clearly meant to be found attractive in ways that are generally not socially acceptable , but never actual NSFW. I would like to think that I'm pretty safe from bans, but hey. Who knows. I don't want to lose my follower base, and the community around it.

And yeah, I'm gonna annoyingly remind you of the other places to find me, make sure to check my pin. If you don't know where to go, just find me on reddit and go from there, I'll post about it if anything happens.

[sirfrogsworth]

These folks watched a whole ass movie not realizing the main character was transgender and it was a 2 second kiss between men that made them lose their ever-loving minds.

It's amazing to me that if it weren't for those 2 seconds, many of these folks would have given this movie a 4 or 5 star review. But two seconds of the most vanilla, non-sexy, yet genuine and loving kiss somehow ruined every moment of enjoyment the previous 90 minutes brought them.

Imagine if they realized the trans allegory. I wish I had a way to tell them. I wish I had a way to make them realize they related to a trans character. That they rooted for them. That they accidentally empathized with a trans story.

This was a beautiful movie. In every sense. I really hope between this and Spider-Verse, we can have a moratorium on every 3D animated movie using this style of character design.

It's time to let go of the rubber toy look.

I love Toy Story, but its success kind of doomed 3D animation to never take any risks. I thought maybe it was just a limitation of the medium, and perhaps it was for a time... but after seeing Love Death + Robots and Arcane...

I realized they can make 3D animation look however the hell they want now.

The rubber people were just risk avoidance.

"That's what people are used to and so we're sticking with it."

But the real beauty of Nimona was the story. I won't spoil it but the plot is pretty much, "If you get to know a trans person, you probably won't hate them anymore."

Not knowing any trans people is one of the biggest factors in anti-trans bigotry. And so this movie uses allegory to let an audience get to know a trans person. And you get to experience someone slowly start to understand what it is to be trans from an outside perspective.

It's sad that will probably be lost on those folks above because all they will remember is the kiss. Seriously, it was such a harmless, mundane, blink-and-you-miss-it kiss. But I'm hoping that others will take the lesson of this movie to heart. That you should get to know people before you judge them.

Part of me does wish we could tell trans stories without allegory. That we could just have overt trans characters. But I think this is the best representation possible right now.

It's crazy that Supergirl was one of the bravest shows as far as modern trans representation. It wasn't an edgy HBO drama trying to push boundaries. It was a family-friendly superhero show and they were just like, "Here is a transgender woman with superpowers and it's fine." And I loved that it was part of the character but it wasn't all the character was. Though I think they just missed the manufactured "moral panic" window where that choice would have been extremely controversial causing boycotts of Warner Bros. and whatnot.

My only complaint about Nimona was a small penis joke. It went by very quickly and many may even miss it. But I was surprised to see it in this movie in particular. Especially since those jokes can have collateral damage toward trans folks. With all of the positive messages, wasting a joke on body shaming was a tad disappointing. I mean, it was a fairly lighthearted "Is it cold in here?" joke. I don't want to make it sound worse than it was. But it still registered on my Richter scale of things that bother me.

Anyway, I wholeheartedly give Nimona a 5 out of 5. It helped me understand my friends on a deeper level and it was warm and funny and entertaining. There was a scene at the end that was so beautiful and heart-wrenching and I was crying my eyes out. The animation and the symbolism and the acting were just so perfect.

It's a shame Disney tried to kill this movie. But I am so glad it was allowed to exist despite that.

[sluttycinderella]

Razorgate: an empirical, peer reviewed study*

*there is nothing genuinely scientific about this, it is merely a result of mental illness and unemployment.

So we all saw this right?

But after this bomb was dropped I began to get curious about the other slittenings. Did they use the same razor for all of them and no one had noticed? Do they actually own more than one razor? And if they don't, if this is truly the only phrazor, then I don't think I have to tell you that raises a lot of questions.

Firstly, I went back to where this all began, Phil's Birthday stream, to identify the razor that carved the very first slit and forever cemented itself as a part of herstory:

Now that is very clearly the Manscaped logo, no question about it. Here’s a high quality photo of the logo for comparison:

(You can also clearly see in the Twitter post that it says "Manscaped" across it but I like to double check my work and I also wanted to prove that they were both Manscaped)

And it's a good thing I did double check because OP made a CRITICAL ERROR in their post! They claim that the razor in question is the Lawn Mower 4.0 when in fact it's the Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra! Unlike the PUNY, PATHETIC, UNMANLY 4.0, the Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra comes with an interchangeable foil blade, a USB port, and a more advanced spotlight!

How could OP be so careless? Dan and Phil would never own an outdated razor! They require only the finest in ball shaving technology!

Also fun fact: The first appearance of the Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra on the Manscaped YouTube channel falls right in between the dapg return announcement and their first video back so make of that what you will...I for one shall be sculpting my own hill out of the very earth itself, "Manscaped Sponsorship Hill", I encourage you all to join me.

So after spending far too long researching the intricacies of razors that shave an organ I don't even have, I now needed to check if it was the same razor being used in every slittening:

Here they are side by side for comparison, left is Phil’s birthday, middle is the We're All Doomed post-premiere, right is Dan’s birthday. Now it appears the WAD one is missing the logo but I'm going to go ahead and chalk that up to the poor quality of the clip I found (if anyone has a better version PLEASE hit me up so I can confirm my hypothesis). And considering the photo taken in the aftermath seems to show Phil holding the 5.0 Ultra:

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's the same thing.

“But,” I hear you shouting, “so what if Dan and Phil used the same razor for all the streams? They already said they only owned one razor so who cares?” Well this isn’t so much about proving that they’re the same razor as it is establishing a baseline. It’s hard to trust basically anything Dan and Phil say lately, what with piggate and the “pillow” bar and the fake view from the Phouse, knowing that they aren’t lying about only having one razor (to the best of our knowledge) is crucial in figuring out what exactly is going on. Remember, we’re doing science here.

And with that in mind: In my professional opinion, I can say that for all three slittenings, the Manscaped Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra was the weapon of choice.

Sidenote: I went down a bit of a rabbit hole of Manscaped reviews during all of this and apparently Manscaped razors are kind of just a scam. This razor is $109 and they try to trick their customers into subscribing to their "Peak Hygiene Plan" which you don't actually need by offering a deceptive discount and hiding the terms where people aren't likely to see them. So yeah, fuck Manscaped and I for one think we should cancel Dan and Phil for not ethically consuming under capitalism.

But that's beside the point, we know that they indeed only have one razor and that that razor...is for balls. What does that tell us?

Conclusions

There are a multitude of conclusions one could jump to in the light of such a revelation, I shall display them in a convenient numbered list for your viewing pleasure:

One of them prefers to use straight (lol) razors to shave their...you know...I don't actually know if this is a thing people do or if it's even possible, people with balls please sound off in the comments, thank you

Only one of them actually shaves in which case I support them as an infamous pussy hair enthusiast (iykyk)

They share a razor (Please, God, no, that's actually disgusting)

Either way, this thing was on someone's balls and then it touched both their faces so I really hope they cleaned it properly!

Alright, so that whole exploration may have been a bit useless, it indeed only confirmed what we had already been told, but I spent literal hours comparing photos of ball hair trimmers and I'm not one to admit defeat. Consider yourselves peer reviewed, Dan and Phil, and maybe check out Beardscape instead! Apparently they have better, more comprehensive razors for the same price.

If anyone even more demon than me has any corroborating evidence (maybe of them using straight razors at any point or anything else razor related that they've said in the past) please let me know so I can take it into consideration! Thank you all for your time.

[skrrts]

strawberry cakes (oneshot)

✧ gn!reader x park seonghwa ✧ genre: non idol, slice of life, fluff, engaged ✧ word count: 1,8k ✧ warnings: food/eating

After the most adorable proposal & your graduation, Seonghwa and you are ready to start the journey to plan the wedding of your dreams: maybe you do not have the greatest budget but isn't it normal for all couples to make use of the free wedding cake-tasting?

a/n: this came to mind when i saw hwa's new Instagram post yesterday. it's kind of inspired by one of my drabbles but you can totally read it without having read that one and maybe one day i will write the wedding to go with it T_T

After graduation and moving together, starting your first job, Seonghwa and you both spent a few weeks going through budgeting. With your small savings and the little your families added (insisting it was what they should do), it was obvious that you really would get the small wedding you two dreamt of but it also meant, cutting a little on corners that you likely would have enjoyed to invest more in. Not that it was tragic, but your aunts all were amazing bakers and you had no doubts, you had to worry less about them volunteering to help with a buffet, baking a few things so you could put that money in the most important cake of all.

After going through the options, Seonghwa and you settled down with one specific bakery that really seemed lovely, based on photos and reviews from other couples online. They even were in your budget if you decided to go with one of their less decorated cakes but your fiance had the idea that you really should make the most out of the cake testing which would mean plenty of free sweets.

"You really dressed the part," you chuckled as Seonghwa was cutely posing in front of you, grinning. "Well, we two are stunning, they will easily take we are some rich picky couple. The story of us being torn between an aesthetical or minimalistic wedding will be the perfect excuse why we end up with a smaller kind of order if we go for them."

His arms curled around your figure as he placed a kiss on top of your forehead. "You really have no bad feelings for stealing cake from them, don't you?"

Your man looked just a little innocent: "I'd not say we steal. After all, we go there with the actual intention of hiring them. I would more say, we take the same right as all of those other couples, the full experience."

Oh, how could you not think he was the sweetest?

"Of course, of course. Well, if my outfit is approved of by my very wealthy husband-to-be, I'd say we are good to go?"

Seonghwa stepped back as you playfully posed for him but he gave you the kindest of smiles, the spark in his eyes ever so present. He never stopped looking at you like this, if anything, his admiration seemed to grow, sometimes making you feel just a little shy.

"You are the most beautiful person in the entire universe for me," he whispered, pulling you close and kissing you lovingly. "My star," Seonghwa cupped your chin and your cheeks were likely as red as a strawberry at this point.

"If you keep going like that, I am not sure we will make it there because I might melt into a puddle," you joked and he laughed. "Fine, let's make sure we get to eat all of the free cake first."

Seonghwa gently took your hand, squeezing it as you made it to the car.

The café wasn't too far away, barely a twenty-minute drive and a very friendly-looking lady already expected you. The place was closed on Sundays but more so to invite in couples to try their cakes.

"You two are beautiful, I already can see it, an outdoor spring wedding with your loved ones," she clapped her hands together, quite excited. "Strawberries will be in season then, such a good choice. I have prepared six different cakes I believe would fit beautifully."

She rambled on while leading you to a small table with a lovely decoration. Seonghwa pulled the chair back for you to sit down at, you gave him a soft smile before he took the one next to you.

"So you said you are aiming for a more minimalistic but elegant cake?" she opened a file with the information you had to fill out online ahead of the appointment.

"Indeed," Seonghwa used what you liked to call 'his business voice' when he was not cute but looked like the hot guy everyone wanted at their office and he was more discussing business than wedding cakes.

"As you said, we have planned a Spring wedding, my family has this lovely traditional property," he continued and you were glad the woman served some coffee because it was hard to stay all serious. Seonghwa and you worked with a budget and his uncle's small Summer house had a lovely garden close to the river. It was far from modern but it seemed perfect for your own wishes and other locations were quite expensive.

"We have been together for quite some time and we care more for traditions and values rather than to leave a great impression on the media. This is why we have chosen your cafe. The cakes are lovely with such a unique design," he concluded and the woman was more than thrilled to hear this.

"Mister Park, count on us. If you decide on one of our cakes, you will receive the one of your dreams."

With that she pulled out photos, showing you different concepts from more detailed ones that had price tags you two automatically knew were out of the question to two that seemed promising.

"I really like this one. The details are lovely but not too ... sappy. Would it be possible to maybe have a few smaller bites like cupcakes to go with it or something similar? We could place the cake in the middle surrounded by them;" you asked although you regretted how you did not bother to look up names of those things, only focused on cake.

"We are quite keen on the strawberries," Seonghwa chuckled, squeezing your hand which he had been holding the entire time.

"Oh yes, absolutely! I will give our baker a small call, maybe she can send an example. Would you like to try the different variants meanwhile?"

Your fiancé's eyes sparkle: "Oh yes, of course. Please do take your time."

He kept it together until a platr was served with four different combinations of fillings for the cake as she excused herself. Seonghwa was eager to pick up a fork and carefully picked some of the first slice, offering it to you, a hand placed underneath to ensure it wouldn't slip off.

"You look an awful lot excited, Mister Park," you teased but leaned in, accepting it. He was pleased to see you obviously enjoying the taste, covering your mouth with a hand.

"Of course I do, I have the most lovely person next to me while picking the cake for our wedding," he hummed before also trying some of it, making a face. "This reminds me of the overpriced cake I had during my trip to Paris when I learned only later how I spent my entire budget of a day on a cake."

You chuckled, taking a spook to offer the second option to him: "Ah yes, that infamous trip with Hongjoong for your graduation. I am relieved you two made it back home, based on all that happened."

Seonghwa blushed a little but he leaned in, accepting the spoon. The moment you were about to lean back, he pulled you in and sealed your lips into a kiss.

You didn't even have time to gasp when you were kissing softly, tasting the remains of the strawberry cream on Seonghwa's lips. Your heart was beating loudly when your arm curled around his neck. Sometimes, it was still hard to believe you were about to marry this man. Now the times when you were reading college books while he was lying in bed next to you, snuggled onto your side while playing Animal Crossing felt like a lifetime ago.

You couldn't wait to see how it would change over the years, all the new memories. As his spouse.

"I love you, so much", he whispered and his big eyes looked at you full of love. You bit your lip: "I love you too, Hwa."

There was no more time when the woman returned with an iPad in her hand: "How about those? Very popular in France right now and they would go lovely with any cake."

Seonghwa quickly had another bite from the slice as you looked at it: "I love them, what do you think love?"

He was quick to nod: "Ah yes, I enjoy them as well. I believe, around thirty should do." It was the moment where the two of you hoped this wouldn't be too costly: "Of course. As we are unable to provide an example here, we would ensure to send you a photo together with the calculated costs and you can make your final decision then."

At this point, Seonghwa was casually eating the testing slices while you listened. You admired how he pulled it off without the woman even realizing he likely ate the entire thing, unlike most other couples who only cared to try them out.

You had picked up one of the fresh strawberries.

"With fresh ones from the season, it will be amazing." Seonghwa finally finished and licked his lips, leaning back, his long legs crossed: "Absolutely. We are quite content we would love to work with you. Would you be able to provide everything by the time of October?"

You sipped on your coffee, ignoring how Hwa had eaten three of the slices.

"Absolutely! Do you have a favorite for the filling?"

You two glanced at each other, somehow you forgot the most important part: Choosing one. Yet, it proved once more just how perfectly you matched: "The Second."

The woman seemed confused, blinking at the almost empty plate in front of her but she did not comment on it. A few more details were discussed before the two of you left half an hour later without paying a single thing.

"Your family's traditional property huh?" you laughed as held each other's hands, swinging your arms a little.

Seonghwa grinned: "Well, you always liked our short breaks there and my uncle now seems adamant to put effort into it after I told him we would love to use the large gardens for the wedding."

You were excited about it, no matter how modern the building would be. All you could think about was to make this man yours, officially and all for once. You never thought of yourself as somebody caring a whole lot about weddings but now, you looked forward to it.

Seonghwa stopped, embracing you as your foreheads leaned against each other.

"This is where I ask the question you will glare at me for," he begins.

"Oh?"

Seonghwa's little pout warned you that his question was about to be silly.

"So we did not talk about the wedding toppers..." Of course, oh you should have thought of it. You couldn't hold back the laugh: "Are you really asking me if we can put those little animal crossing figures on top of our cake?"

Your boyfriend grinned: "Well, they played a crucial part in our engagement."

"How could I forget about that?" you hummed. The two figures received a special place in your new living room. Ah, he was still so silly and you loved him for it.

"Well, guess we are going to save some money there but you will have to explain this excited lady how exactly they fit into our traditional family wedding."

The one you couldn't wait for.

[hollowtones]

first yiik impressions?

Hi. Thanks for your message. I've been thinking about this for days. I wrote paragraphs. Here you go!

Everyone talks up how the game is bad, but I've never looked into it much myself, so I went in with an expectation along the lines of "people whose opinions I often agree with think it was an awful mess, I'll likely think something similar". Expectations were low. Even then I wasn't really ready.

"YIIK" is a game of tedium. I don't think it's a game about tedium, that's something different (though it could be, if it was a different video game altogether; "what if the world was made of pudding" etc). To some degree I think the tedium is by design but I'm not really sure what it's in service of.

I don't think tedium in a video game is a bad thing. "Morrowind" and "Breath of the Wild" are two video games I like very much, and some of my favourite memories of those games are of slowly wandering through empty expanses, or having to suddenly deal with equipment degrading or supplies dwindling because I forgot to prepare. Moments like that feel thoughtful! They're interesting moments of reprieve or of tension that feel thoughtfully and intentionally designed! "YIIK" feels like trudging through chest-deep molasses so it can shout "hey did you know you're stuck in my molasses right now? that's weird, why are you stuck in my molasses right now? did you notice?" directly into your ear.

You'll notice this is a pattern.

Combat is turn-based and involves completing little minigames, timing button prompts or hitting targets or some such. It's a cute idea that wears out its welcome when you start realizing how long every single one takes to resolve, especially when you have multiple party members, and sometimes multiple enemies (I'm told this part specifically gets more egregious as the game goes on). I don't think it's awful or unsalvageable but I'm not super into it as of the point we're at.

This is a pattern.

Leveling up is a manual process that you have to unlock, and it involves going to a save point (any save point? we didn't check), to enter the Mind Dungeon, to enter the actual Mind Dungeon, to walk down a set of stairs and enter individual doors one-by-one, so that you can choose how you want to allocate stat increases, so that you can walk down a different set of stairs to commit your choices and spend your banked experience to level up. I think "you can only power up at specific points / times / locations" and the granularity of stat growth are interesting ideas, and the environment they made for it are a charming idea, and I don't think it needed to be a "Hotel Mario" level that you had to slowly walk through. It could have been a menu. They could have used the resources for a nice background or backdrop for a menu that accomplishes the same thing.

This is a pattern.

I haven't really mentioned anything about the story or writing yet. The protagonist's name is Alex and he's a very self-important nerdy misanthropic dickhead white man (a very specific kind of guy that I've definitely met at least once or twice) who is obsessed with a paranormal message board populated by people like him and desperate to find out more about the disappearance of a woman he witnessed. (The woman & her disappearance are based on the real life death of Elisa Lam & aren't handled with a whole lot of tact, IMO, but other people have put this into better words than I can right now. It sucks. It keeps coming up and it makes me bristle every time.) Alex is a bad person. I know he is. You know he is. The game knows he is. I've seen some reviews say a negative point of the game is "the main characters aren't likeable", which I don't really get, because that's the point of the characters, as far as I can tell. The issue, then, is how much time the game takes to exposit at you how bad the characters are. It's exhausting. Every time Alex has a monologue, it feels like it sums up to 10 minutes of "I am a bad person. I am a bad person. Alex is a bad person. This character is a bad person. Do you get it? He's a bad person. Alex is a bad person. Do you understand yet, player? Alex is a bad person. You should know that he's a bad person. Do you get it?"

This is a pattern.

(I don't know how interested I am in bringing up the game's lead writer right now, if at all, but there's a well-known anecdote where he talks about wanting to write a story about a bad person who is forced to grapple with himself and do better, and how the reason why his game wasn't well-received was because people who play video games didn't get it & weren't ready for a story like that. I dunno. I can understand being upset about negative reception to something you poured time and sweat into, and saying something hasty because of it. "Final Fantasy 4" is a beloved RPG classic, though, and "Disco Elysium" came out the same year to overwhelming praise. I haven't played either of these yet, though, so I'll admit maybe I'm off the mark here.)

The characters we've met so far (i.e. the ones that aren't unnamed NPCs) are… well. There's a smarmy younger kid who idolizes(?) Alex & also made the aforementioned paranormal website. So far it seems like he mostly exists to go "hey fuck you Alex, you dickhead" and immediately say something even more insensitive. There's the insensitive based-on-a-real=ass-dead-woman elevator woman, who immediately disappeared from the narrative while still being an essential part of the narrative. There was a dead(?) robot in a bedroom, who had a choir of ominous hooded people monologue about how weird and sad and strange and uncanny the scene is. What the!? There's a woman who works at the arcade and has Powers. Her design's cute. (I feel like, generally, the game's visuals are Fine. The audio, too. That all ranges from Just Fine to Surprisingly Neat. I don't really have much issue with those aspects of the game, but I don't have much to say about them either.) Alex and Kid Whose Name I Didn't Care To Remember are constantly very uncomfortable to her, because she's a woman and because she isn't white, in the 15 or so minutes we've seen her on-screen, and she gets to tell them off, but then immediately kind of goes "well whatever I can smile and put up with this and hang out with you". It feels misogynistic. I know to some degree Alex is misogynistic on purpose, because the game is bludgeoning your skull in and yelling "ALEX IS SHITTY TO WOMEN! AND PEOPLE OF COLOUR! DO YOU GET IT? HE'S SELF ABSORBED IN A SHITTY WAY! DO YOU GET IT, PLAYER? YOU UNDERSTAND THAT ALEX SUCKS ASS YET? MAYBE 10 MORE MINUTES OF THIS WILL MAKE IT CLICK?" But for a woman of colour (the only one we've seen so far who isn't Probably Just Dead) to finally tell him off for being a shithead, only to turn around and go "well it's ok, you're cool now, let's hang out now because it's narratively convenient and you're the protagonist" is pretty damn egregious!

This is a pattern.

Writing in general feels stilted and long-winded. Most of the main characters feel like they don't talk like people do. Alex gets to feel like a person but that's mostly because he gets to talk to himself so damn much. Most of his monologues feel like overly flowery prose, like someone padded it out with identical adjectives to meet a school essay word count. There's an interesting idea or premise or setpiece every now and then. There's a spark. A glint of something compelling. Every single time this has happened so far I find it immediately snuffed out by an over-blown "oh my god!!!!!!! how weird!!!!!!', or a very long plot dump, or a Joss Whedon-ass quip. There can be no small moment of joy. No story element or visual element can stand on its own legs. There can be no room for ideas to breathe. No space for the player to wonder, to dream, to play in the space. The narrative is compelled to suffocate iself on itself, to take up all space, to swallow itself whole in its making. One very minor (so far?) side character has some interesting dialogue in this one dream world, and I think "oh that's neat", and then I learn they're lines taken wholesale from a book (and I think that's fine, reference is fine, but I have a bit of a chuckle over the fact that this character is the reason why the game has a giant REFERENCES option in the main menu). The literal first minute of the game is a bird telling you "oh my god, the title of this game, right? why'd they spell it like that? so fucking dumb, am I right!" It feels insecure. It reads like the writing has no confidence in itself. It has to make a comment about how silly and video-gamey it is, roll its eyes at itself, mock itself for the thing it's doing while continuing to do it without addressing it or discussing it or doing anything with it.

This is a pattern.

There's a specific part of "YIIK", at this early point in the game (we're only around the start[?] of chapter 2), that feels emblematic of the thing as a whole up to this point. Alex is getting phone calls from a stranger. They're confusing and weird and sound a little like something you might hear in a dream. They make references to some shared past, some childhood, some understanding of Alex, or maybe of you, the player. They've come up a few times. Every single time, I'm left thinking about what it could mean, how it fits in with everything we've seen so far & what the game seems to be talking about, with regards to connecting to other people and to yourself. It's a neat little thing. It's a neat idea. I'm charmed by it. As much as my thoughts on this game are largely negative, I still try to look at it fairly, to understand it, to talk about it, to let myself be surprised by it. As soon as I find myself thinking about this, my thoughts are immediately drowned out by Alex telling me how weird the phone call is, how random and uncanny and dumb this is, and how he's rolling his proverbial eyes about it, in spite of all the other paranormal happenings around him, for another period of Just Too Long. And I am sapped of all strength and I crumble to dust.

I'm genuinely transfixed. I'm transfixed! Maybe the fact that I wrote Paragraphs about the 4-or-5 hours I've seen of the game can tell you as much, even if you skip everything I wrote in them.

I can't wait to see more.

This, too, is a pattern.

[intrinsicepiphany]

Okay tumblr lets talk theories again.

(my brain rot + knowledge of religion has me all up in Hazbin Hotel right now.)

Today I want to talk Biology! Mostly because I made the poor choice of going to Twitter's chaggie tag and looking at the comments...

So can we discuss Why do so many people keep trying to apply HUMAN biology to the Half-Demon Nephillim daughter of an Arch-Angel?!

Okay I'll start at the begining and work my way to the reasons why if Charlie really wants a kid with Vaggie both of them being assigned female at creation probably isn't going to matter.

Let's start with Lucifer!

So as far as has been shown in the show Lucifer is an original Archangel even down to his lovely 6 red wings. This makes him one of the most powerful beings in heaven.

(If we go by bible text he was actually a favorite until his dreams of free will led him astray and depending on the text he merely has to admit he was wrong and ask for forgiveness to return)

Now looking at everything after this fall he has never lost his Angelic Abilities. His default powers are still angelic gold.

We do see he also has a Full Demon form when he is pissed. Interestingly enough his crown also doubles as a halo in this form. Also note for later just how much Charlie resembles him in both forms.

This suggest that at root biology Lucifer is still an archangel with demon traits. This combination is most likely what makes him the strongest being in hell by a long shot. The only reason others even have power is purely because he doesnt care enough to flex his power and has no desire to actually rule.

Now on to Lilith!

What do we know about Lilith?

Well we know she was a created human not born.

She was Adam's equal

And she left and got with Lucifer before the fall.

So here is the deal... I dont think Lilith can be classified as a sinner. She didnt die to end up in hell and in fact she fell before hell was really a thing. she helped create it after all. (Plus you know Charlie exsists)

So what IS Lilith? I think Lilith as one of a few Actual Demons. And if we have to classify her she'd be closer to a Sin. I actually think of Lilith as the Sin of Pride in Hazbin Hotel not Lucifer. We are even told that She created pentagram city and developed hell while lucifer kept to his workshop in depression.

Now let's talk about this scene for a second. Lilith fell from heaven/earth Alive and possibly even immortal since human kind was immortal before Eve took the apple.

Lilith gains power from her fall into hell. She develops demon like attributes and seems to have musical based magic. She also seems to retain or get immortality. So what does this fall mean? It means that Lilith was NOT HUMAN by the time Charlie was born.

So what does this mean for Charlie?

Well for one Charlie is NOT just some Hellborn. She is by Definition a Nephilim but she is not half-human. She would most likely be considered a Half-Demon, Half-Angel Nephilim.

This would explain her expansive (if never used) power base. The official power ranking has her tied with Lilith with only Lucifer being more powerful. Which makes complete sense. She is the Heir to the entire thing after all. (I actually think this is why Alastor couldnt make a deal for her soul and settled for a favor instead)

She also inheirited Angelic powers from her father. As seen by the fact that her default magic is gold. Which means she has angel blood in her veins. Lets be honest i wouldnt be surprised if she ended up bleeding gold in the future.

In fact she seems to have inherited most of her abilities from dear old dad.

Im pretty sure that just by shear ability and magic if Charlie wanted a kid she could probably create/magic one into exsistance no matter who her partner was.

But lets review Vaggie just for fun! Because I have thoughts

What do we actually know about Vaggie?

Well we know she is an angel. I say is because I dont think Lute or Adam actually have the power to cast an angel out of heaven AND she gets her wings back. This would mean she is not actually a sinner she would be closer to a fallen angel like lucifer.

We know she speaks Spanish and seems to be of Hispanic nature. BUT! Do we know if she was ever really human?!

We know Adam claims to have named her Vaggie. This could suggest three things

1) exorcist take on a new name when they join. But if this was true why wouldnt she leave this name behind and return to her human name once in hell? It would have kept her secret better and you'd figure she would want to leave behind the negative feelings that would come with her exorcist name.

2) Adam in his self-centered ways misheard her real name (maybe something like Aggie from Agatha or Maggie) and thought she said Vaggie or actively chose to misinterpret her name and she never cared to correct him. BUT Once more why would she not just return to her real name once with Charlie in hell?

Or 3) And this one is the real kicker. Vaggie is a Heaven-born Angel.

If the answer is 3 than it would imply that she was never human which brings her closer to lucifers biology.

Some other interesting things to consider about this last theory. Lute and Vaggie resemble each other a great deal. In fact, all the exorcist seem to have a similar body type. (I mean you could argue its the uniform but even without the uniform the resembalance between lute and vaggie is uncanny) and if I remember correctly at one point the exterminators are refered to as sister? I mean this could mean sisters-in-arms BUT What if ALL exorcist were heaven-born?

If they were never human this could explain both their ability and their desire to slay sinners. Much like Sera they wouldn't have any sympathy for the dammed because they wouldn't have any possible family that could end up down there. They would also have Very little connection to or concern for former humans. After all like Adam said they had their chance and they screwed up.

So in the end what does this all mean?

Well I actually already kind of said it

1) Fandom really needs to stop applying human biology to Charlie. She is a half demon half archangel Nephilim with incredible magic.

If charlie wants a kid she can probably magic one up no matter the obsticles please stop asking artist and writers how it is possible for her and vaggie to have a kid/get pregnant if they are both women - the answer is Charlie Magic.

2) all 4 of the above have the potential to be way stronger than they have been shown in the show.

And

3) Charlie is a potential BadAss and is just too nice to go full tactical nuke - this will be covered in my next ted talk.

[thekatebridgerton]

Rewatching s3 I realized that I never actually gave my opinion on the full season to you guys.

Mostly because it was good, every single Penelope and Colin scene was well written, well paced and crafted to bring their relationship full circle. In fact if I could edit s3 into a movie I'd cut everything off and leave the 1 or 2 hours of accumlated screentime that Penelope and Colin had together. Nicola and Luke really brought their A game.

Lord Debling wasa solid character, I really liked him, at first I thought he was going to be like Theo and have no purpose other than make Colin jealous, but he stood his ground as a well developed character ( for the few episodes he was in), I'm sad that he seemingly disappeared after Penelope and Colin got together and I genuinely wish he'd have found a good bride who would write to him and take care of his estate in his absence.

Francesca's storyline with John was also very complimentary, I once said I wanted to see how Eloise related to Francesca who didn't mind being a debutante just like Daphne and I am glad they gave Francesca her own unique charm as well as her own brand of awkwardness, not as obsessed with being perfect as Daphne but also not as antagonizing as Eloise. John was just the right ammount of kind and special that you can see how much Francesca really loves him. ( I'm choosing to ignore what I know of the books and look at Francesca's meeting with Michaela as just another awkward moment Francesca suffers in front of an extrovert .. mostly because I think its weird that neither John or his staff told Michaela he was married and to a Bridgerton sparkler at that, the whole ' and you are' felt really out of place and made me scratch my head)

The featheringtons actually felt more organically integrated into the plotline because this season they are in the position of being the female lead relatives so their shenanigans actually feel more plot relevant. And add levity to what would otherwise be a very dramatic series of episodes

Now on to the things I made fun of: every scene Benedict had with Lady Tilly, is very skippable, and honestly not plot relevant, after 2 seasons of watching him hoe around, a third one is just overkill. Also lady Tilly catching feelings and Benedict activating ' I want my freedom' mode is so hilarious. Gosh I wish him a very sexually frustrated and abstinent season 4.

Eloise friendship with Cressida also felt like filler. I know I've been saying Eloise needs friends since forever but I meant Kate, or Edwina or Sophie. Cressida Cowper was..a choice. And one that ultimately added very little to Eloise character development. But hey at least Eloise tried to make friends this season, I call that a step in the right direction.

Overall it was a good season, I'm sorry if I complain a lot about the parts I didn't like, but for the most part, it was good watchable content with a few snags that can be ironed out in fanfiction. The dresses were amazing and I hope their wardrobe department gets a raise for the hard work they put in these 2 years of sewing and pattern making. Hopefully one day I'll get a documentary about the Bridgerton wardrobe department process of selecting fabrics and making dresses. It would be lovely to see.

So far that's been my very belated season 3 review. And that's the tea

[overthinkthis]

Final thoughts on MMDIY

This is not going to be a review because I don't really do that kind of thing, but I do want to write about the point that I loved most about this show. I know it's not perfect but I will forgive a lot of wobbles in plot or editing when a show emotionally resonates with me or makes me feel seen in a way other shows don't. And the way queer struggles were portrayed in mmdiy definitely did that.

Neither Wan nor Kim are out as queer but it's like they're living in an open closet. It should be obvious to everyone (even themselves) that they love each other and yet, for the longest time they seem unable to make that last step and confess their love, even though they both desperately want to on some level.

We do get some explicit homophobia with regard to Wan's career but it very quickly becomes obvious that that isn't the actual problem. Wan is very well able to stand her ground when she is attacked directly, we see that with Jessie and with Marwin's family. She is ready to confess to Kim, plans to do so multiple times. Why is it so hard to make that last step?

I do not know what the creators of the show were trying to say, but what I feel when watching the show, is the impact of the invisible homophobia and misogyny woven into all of society. The kind that isn't openly hostile but consistenly equates happiness for women with straight marriage and queerness with being miserable. We can write essays about comphet, but to me, this show gives a good take on what it actually feels like to be pressed into this expectation (although, I should probably say that I come at this from the perspective of a trans guy, not a lesbian - I still think a lot of the feelings are similar).

I love the conversation between Wan and Kim and the end of ep 9, where Kim tells her that she is going to marry Marwin. She basically admits that she doesn't love him, but she is still going to marry him because her mother wants her to.

And we know her mum isn't really trying to control Kim or make her miserable - quite the opposite. All she wants is for Kim to be happy. She should probably know better - given how her own marriage ended - but the idea that marrying the 'perfect' guy is the pinnacle of female happiness is so ingrained in society that it's understandable why she still falls into this trap. I really like that they show how suffocating a parent only wanting what's 'best' for their child can be.

I love that this show made Marwin someone who looks like such a good catch. I mean, there were some red flags from the start, but at a time where Wan was more controlling and aggressive, he genuinely looked like the better option. Gentle, patient, rich (some people even commented that the show made them ship the straight couple). The kind of guy that would be endgame in every second cheesy het romcom.

The people around Kim can kind of feel that he isn't right for her (even Marwin on some level does) but they still all enable her terrible decision to marry him. Which is another aspect I like about the show: The conflict is only resolved when Wan and Kim choose each other.

Women are constantly discouraged from going for what they want, especially when it causes other people distress, but the show clearly says: They make this choice for themselves, even though it hurts people, and that is how they get their happy ending. Not by being perfect all the time, not by caring about everyone else's feelings, but by choosing what they want for themselves.

And yes, obvisouly the whole thing could have been resolved earlier with less people getting hurt. But in another sense it couldn't, because they weren't ready. It's easy to blame Kim and Wan for not being more honest earlier on, but we can't do so without acknowledging the silent (and sometimes very loud) pressure to conform to heteronormativity.

I know some people didn't like this show very much and I do hope you all get all the kinds of GLs you're longing for soon. But imo it shows important aspects of queer experiences that we don't see a lot. And I'm really glad it exists in the way it does.

[mitochondriaandbunnies]

Miami Vice S1E22: Evan

An estranged friend forces Sonny to confront a long buried secret.

Perhaps out of a fear of repeating myself-- I've said a lot about Evan, both in analysis and in fic-- I got a little stuck on this one, this time around. I guess I don't want to seem like a broken record, or like I'm overstating the importance of a single episode, but Evan is as much a distillation of everything that Miami Vice "is" as anything-- it's bleak, it's heartfelt, it's beautiful, it cuts to the heart of Sonny's inability to love himself, and it 's deeply, heartbreakingly queer.

It absolutely should have been the Season One finale. Lombard is a good episode, but it's not Evan good. On top of that, the last few episodes have all had a running undercurrent asking-- "hey-- what is *normal*, here, especially for Sonny? What does it mean to be vulnerable, to share your life and your secrets with someone? What do we mean when we say 'partner?'" that feels like it reaches its climax with Evan. And even further, Evan's whispered portent at the end of the episode-- that he made his choice, that Mike Orgel made his choice, and that now it's Sonny's turn to make his choice-- sets up much of the rest of the series thematically. The series finale is Sonny's answer: in the end, he chooses to step away instead of letting himself be destroyed like his friends.

BUT. I don't really think Network Television in the 80's really wanted the season for their very expensive and incredibly popular show to end on Sonny's Repressed Gay Trauma, because then audiences would've had to sit with that all summer, and frankly I suspect more people might have had an Aha Moment about Sonny's sexuality if that had been the case. So instead they ended S1 on Charming Mobster Dennis Farina, which is fine, but not quite as thematically powerful.

So what to say about Evan that I haven't said already? The episode opens with Evan selling guns; to demonstrate the power of the weapons, he shoots the hell out of a bunch of mannequins. I hadn't recalled that before he did this, he kissed the mannequins around their middles. It's super performative masculinity-- Evan is terrified of not being seen as a "real man," so his only options are, essentially, violence and (straight) sexuality, both of which he enacts on the mannequins. It's unsettling to the the point that one of Guzman's goons keeps making a face like "do we. Do we have to buy guns from him," and it signals to the audience that something is Not Right with this man.

Because this is an episode about gay men and what it means to be a man and how man treat one another, we get an interesting little moment where Larry is leaning over Stan's shoulder and reviewing case files with him. Stan seems irritated at the lack of personal space, and tells him to go look over files on his own desk. It's a bit of a throwaway gag, but it's also the kind of gentle, thoughtless repudiation of closeness that makes intimacy of any kind difficult between men of any sexual orientation. When Sonny talks about the way he and Evan and Mike Orgel used to talk to and tease one another before Mike revealed he was gay, this is the kind of behavior he's referencing.

The scene where Sonny has to go undercover as a far right gun nut to get information from a neonazi is both disturbingly still relevant and disturbing from an in-universe perspective. Sonny, still too pretty even in fatigue pants and a government-issue cap, looks like an underwear model doing military cosplay; he almost seems younger, like putting on the trappings of his Vietnam days transported him back there. In order to convince the gun seller he's serious, he says he's done with the military because the military is full of "women, half-breeds, and homosexuals" (which he says like it's four words-- HO-MO-SECK-SHUALS), but he turns away while he's saying it, and his face radiates pain and fear. He is wildly uncomfortable in this persona; we know he doesn't believe these things, but more than that, you get the sense that he's genuinely concerned his disguise as a Grade-A American Heterosexual Tough Guy is not going to hold up under any serious scrutiny.

I have a lot of questions about this painting, presumably belonging to Mr. Unfriendly Drug Lord Guzman, of an emaciated man with a railing between his ass-cheeks. Like. Is that so on the nose that it circles back to mysterious again, or is it literally a painting of an ass railing in the Let's Talk About Gay Stuff episode?

Castillo is extra recalcitrant in this one-- he argues with the ATF agent and insists he'll bust whoever needs busting, and then shortly after is just like NO when Sonny says he cannot be involved in this case

The ATF agent refers to Evan as Sonny's "old playmate," which feels uh, pointed

Rico asks Gina a favor and she sighs and says he "always needs a favor;" she still seems a bit irritated from No One Lives Forever

Guzman's manservant lifts him out of the pool and dries him off and dresses him, so perhaps the painting isn't all that odd for him

When Evan tries to convince Guzman to back off of the deal with Sonny, Guzman is eating a plate of fruit in a bathrobe, the sea over his shoulder, bathed in pinks and blues. Evan, on the other hand, eats the true breakfast of champions-- a cigarette and whiskey-- and everything around him is grey and white.

Evan smiles completely genuinely when he sees Elvis, and Elvis makes no move to attack him, which makes me cry

Like. He and Sonny were such good friends that Sonny's alligator missed him

Just throw me in the bay and forget about me as the fish chew me to death, I guess

When Sonny refuses Evan, Evan says he'll happily take Rico instead, and that's when Sonny really starts getting angry-- it's one thing for Evan, who Sonny blames for the death of an old partner and friend, to put Sonny's life in danger, it's another thing altogether for him to casually suggest Rico could be another bit of collateral in their shared history

Thank you script writers for lines like "I wouldn't have had to pull Freed's jacket if you'd been straight with me" (that really is the issue here, isn't it, Rico? Sonny can't quite do that, can he!) and "we are involved... *pause* in an operation." The gay subtext in the gay text episode is logged and noted

Evan encourages Guzman to shoot them all, himself included, and casually tells Sonny and Rico that Guzman used to "shoot people just for being left-handed," which feels like a metaphor for.... something, some kind of... human difference that has been, historically, punished and marginalized... couldn't tell you what, though

Tubbs speaks French to Michelle-- do we ever hear him doing this again? Does Tubbs speak French for real, or is he just like, repeating something he heard on a perfume ad or something?

When Sonny comes in, looking all hangdog, and tells Tubbs they need to talk, Tubbs tells Michelle he wants a rain check-- Michelle's response is "I bet you would," which is very ambiguous-- it seems equally likely that she's telling him he's got no chance or that she straight up doesn't believe he wants the rain check because she's pretty sure Crockett's his ex

I've talked at length about the gas station scene, but the fact that Rico's response to Sonny's confession about Mike is "how did you handle it" rather than anything else-- the man knoooows half of Sonny's issues here are coming from his internalized homophobia and self-loathing

I don't think Evan has changed his clothes for three days?

Logistically, it makes no fucking sense for Sonny, Evan, and Mike Orgel to all be queer men, but the episode really doesn't do any work to make Sonny or Evan obviously heterosexual, either. It's very easy to read either Sonny or Evan's guilt and trauma as coming partially from their own identities, and the way they both talk about their bad reactions to Mike's coming out reinforces this. Evan's line, "I've found more ways to hang that rap on myself than you or the devil will ever know about" mirrors Sonny's earlier insistence that Rico is not his "priest" and that he doesn't have to "bare his soul" to him; Vice is not a show that frequently has its main characters suffering from religious guilt or trauma, so it seems very meaningful that both of them are bringing their despair back to the idea not just of guilt, but sin. And perhaps even more specifically than that, sin that they refuse to let anyone-- friend, priest, or devil-- see.

Gina and Trudy show up in regular police uniforms at Guzman's arrest, which I think is the only time we see them dressed like that in the entire series

Peter Gabriel's Biko initially seemed to me like a really weird choice for the end of the episode, given the specific milieu it was written in and for (South African apartheid and the police murder of an anti-apartheid activist), but upon this rewatch it dawned on me that what they were trying to do was, a bit clumsily, tie the two ideas together. Mike Orgel died because he was part of an oppressed minority group, and if you read Evan as a closeted queer man, he has followed after him (and warns Sonny-- potentially a third closeted queer man-- that he will also need to make a choice about how to lead his own life soon enough.) I don't necessarily love slotting in one marginalized group for another there, but it's a very 80's sentiment, I think, so I'll let it stand. I think it's meaningful that the lyric "you can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire" precedes Evan's warning to Sonny. Was Mike, then, the candle?

The episode ends with Sonny tenderly cradling Evan's head while Rico stands with his hand on his shoulder; he's allowed touch and intimacy with Rico (as he was at the gas station) that he could not have ever really had with Evan except under extremely extenuating circumstances and now death. Mike, Evan, and Sonny couldn't find a way to "deal with it," as Rico put it, but the implication is that maybe Sonny and Rico can.

[neerons]

Some of Sariel Noir's best quotes

"Know that this devil will stake his life on your pure heart, your wise gaze, and your fierce resolve."

"There is something I wish to protect, even if it means selling my soul to the true devil himself, and burning for all eternity in the fires of hell."

"Do you realize who you resemble, when you act in that manner?" (—Sariel to Emma acting like him)

"Rio, what in the world makes you think she could be in a flower vase? Calm yourself." (—Sariel talking about Emma to Rio while they're looking for her)

"There is no harm in sucking up to me."

"You have always been courageous, determined to put your emotions aside and process things logically whenever possible. And I certainly consider it a desirable trait to possess. But too much has happened this evening, and I imagine you're well past the limit of what you can tolerate. I do not mind if you need to prioritize how you are feeling right now."

"If you ever refer to me like that again, I must warn you that you may not see the next sunrise." (—Sariel to Gilbert calling him 'Daddy')

"At last I've found you. (...) I imagine a little discipline will go a long way with you... hehe..."

"It would seem you have a lot of confidence in your ability to remember things. (...) ...I am simply wondering whether you ought not be taking notes. While it's true books can be reread, much of the information I am sharing with you is not written down anywhere. As such, you may find it useful to write things down so that you may review them later."

"So long as the kingdom and its people exist, our noble beasts will give everything they have to protect it. As you know, they have very different ideologies, and they are a problematic lot, but... on this one matter alone, almost all of them can be trusted." (—Sariel talking about the Rhodolitian princes to Emma)

"It's a basic right. Everyone needs time to rest and relax, no matter who they are."

"I'm fond of those who are wise—regardless of gender."

"I'm talking about the creature that says 'squeak squeak' and begins with the letter R. I cannot even put that filthy word in my mouth." (—Sariel talking about rats)

"(...) Prince Gilbert, rude though it may be of me to ask, perhaps you would be kind enough to vanish for the time being?"

"There probably aren't many ladies that would be able to approach Prince Gilbert." (—Sariel talking in front of Emma, Keith, Silvio, Rio and Gilbert)

"...Now, now. I am a man, you are a woman, and we're all alone in your bedroom at night. How might you want this scenario to end?"

"To say that I'm relieved to have you beside me is an understatement." (—Sariel's lobby dialogue)

"(...) I did feel some murderous intent in the cane, however." (—Sariel to Gilbert pointing his cane at him)

"Dear Prince Clavis, (...) Apparently you made a child bawl in the middle of town? Please act your age. (...) There have been complaints that people who got wet because of you were close to catching colds because of it. It's winter. Please do not be using water or ice. This is not an invitation to make traps using fire. *NO MICE. The next time I see any, I will put them in a bag along with you and send it down the river. I have warned you." (—Sariel's letter to Clavis)

"...Prostate himself? (...) ...Ahh, I see. Wonderful, I shall have to make the hellcat do it the next time I get the chance." (—Sariel talking about Clavis to Rio)

"You damned hellcat—" (—Sariel to Clavis)

"I do not know what choice you will make going forward, but... For as long as you are able, do not let each other go. Especially because you love each other. It makes no difference whether you are a prince or a commoner. A person needs someone to love in order to remain human. I learned this after witnessing what happened to His Majesty." (—Sariel to Rio)

"What on earth are you doing curled up so disgracefully on the floor like that, Dog?" (—Sariel to Rio)

"(...) At that time, Clavis was the most innocent and childlike of the princes. I had to admit that I was easily swayed by his sweet grin. He took a keen interest in anything and everything, and he had a strong drive. Clavis was the student—well, disciple—I shared most of my knowledge with." (—Sariel's thoughts about young Clavis)

"Which do you like better, spending time with me like this, or spending time reading a book?"

"You are right, it would be tactless of me to speak ill of you when you are present. I shall wait until you are absent, and then I will be free to speak as much ill of you as I wish." (—Sariel to Clavis)

"(...) I'm the one who taught Prince Nokto and Prince Licht how to use their swords."

"I wonder how many times he and I have shared a drink now. I remembered the times where instead of amber-colored wine, there was water or milk in the cups in front of us. We had been partaking in these laidback meetings ever since we were both young. They were an absolute necessity for us." (—Sariel's thoughts about Jin)

"(...) You misunderstand me. I don't hate the man, I despise him." (—Sariel talking about Clavis to Emma)

"Now, now. Don't be so sullen. Another fundamental aspect of training someone is to make them want something but never completely satisfy them."

"I also despise hellcats, miscreants, oh, and the Third Prince." (—Sariel talking about Clavis)

"If you do, I'm not nursing you back to health." (—Sariel to Rio telling him he might faint because of how beautiful Emma is)

"(...) Since Emma isn't available to praise you, shall I do the honors instead?" (—Sariel to Rio)

"Hehe, I'm never going to let you run away from this palace of beasts. Will you continue to allow them, and myself, to enjoy your company to the fullest?"

"My hobby is teasing those who are worth teasing, such as yourself. Think of it as an honor that you met my expectations." (—Sariel's lobby dialogue)

"In that instance, I was considering binding Emma's arms behind her back and dumping her in the river. Hehe, naturally, I am joking. I have absolute confidence in my judge of character." (—Sariel talking about Emma potentially failing his test to Rio and Emma)

"I have one more order for you, if that's all right. (...) I'd like you to have a drink with me like this every now and then."

"(...) if it is to be a competition, perhaps I shall take part as well." (—Sariel reacting to Luke saying he would steal Emma away)

"The princes were all very excited when they discovered that today is your birthday. Happy birthday." (—Sariel's lobby dialogue)

"You allowed yourself to get so close to her that rumors began circulating that she was your mistress. Did you keep Belle at your side even knowing it would have no benefit for you?" (—Sariel to Chevalier)

"Prince Chevalier's faction are perhaps a little too free-willed, and at times the ache in my—"

"Consider it one of the perks of being Belle. You are permitted to keep a pet at the palace. (...) This is your pet, is it not? When I entered the bookstore, it started barking non-stop, so I had no choice but to bring it with me." (—Sariel talking about Rio to Emma)

"Hmm? Is something the matter? I can't imagine why you're blushing. Careful now, or you really will get eaten."

"Don't worry. It doesn't matter what kind of noise you make. If anyone overhears and finds fault with you, this devil of a man will take care of it. So please, won't you allow me to hear every last sweet sound?"

[snowandglasslabyrinth]

Damn, the Velma show really sucks. All the characters seem wrong and one-dimensional. There’s nothing funny, I genuinely laughed once and it’s because sarcasm gets me always. Also, specifically it was Velma’s line after climbing the wall to perform a break and enter into Fred’s family’s mansion.

Velma is painfully mediocre as a character, she is contradictory and evidently treats people poorly, laughs in Norville’s face when he says he has a crush on her, and just seemed really mean and poorly written. I also really hate the fat phobic jokes. That’s not right, it’s not funny, it’s just in poor taste and mean. Having it so that she eats french fries out of the garbage is insulting and just pointless. She’s got some massive crush on Fred cause he’s ‘hot’, she’s fairly shallow as a character but loves to point out (see ep. 2) that all the other characters are shallow. People in her school think she’s ugly until she wears revealing clothing, then everyone pays attention to her - in my humble but angry opinion that is a bad message to spread to young adults and teens.

Norville is a whole case, the drug references and jokes are neither funny nor entertaining and after his ridiculous and clunky line about being anti-drugs early in the first episode he pauses as if the audience needs a moment to laugh. It was awful. I get that it’s meant to be a play on the idea that Shaggy was a stoned character but that doesn’t mean it’s funny.

Daphne is vapid, and she’s always been a little bit vain (the stereotypical girl character to an extent because in the original series she was a round character full of depth) but in the show she has become a high schooler obsessed with sex who treats everyone horrifically. The obsession with sex is a thing for all of the highschool girls in the show, I don’t know who had that kind of experience in highschool but I certainly didn’t so it feels uncomfortable and inappropriate (also feels like that because they anime bubble censor a bunch of naked teenage highschool girls as they talk about sex in tv, that shouldn’t have been allowed.)

Fred is just a douche. I mean I know that’s a choice that the writers made but I strongly hate who he’s become (and yes I know I’m supposed to hate him but I think it’s supposed to be because he’s a jerk not just because he’s poorly written uninteresting and a man child that acts like a stereotypical ‘macho’ man). And the amount of times he calls himself a ‘puss’ is annoying and, unfortunately for the show, still not funny, so only sarcasm points for comedy right now.

Some side character notes: Velma’s dad’s girlfriend is an awful and boring stereotype. The show leans on cliches and stereotypes heavily I.e. any character in that show practically. The other students are boring and not memorable. There’s a moment where Fred stands up for Velma and accidentally cuts a student’s foot off, reminiscent of the comedy in those bad adult cartoons that are overpopulating Netflix right now (Paradise PD, Hoops (is that what it’s called?) and others). If I didn’t mention other characters it’s because I don’t remember they exist.

Okay tl;dr the show sucks, it’s not funny, I loved Scooby Doo as a kid so this hurts me, I hate what they’ve done with the characters.

So, I know I usually don’t make my own posts or write reviews but I literally got 10 minutes into the second episode and had to stop because it was bad, very bad. The first episode was bad enough but I thought I would torture myself and then I gave up because I just couldn’t anymore. Thanks for reading all of this if you have, and don’t watch Velma.

:)

[crescencestudio]

๋࣭⭑ Devlog 36 | 11.26.23 ๋࣭⭑

:rises from the dead: I'm.... BAAAAACK!!!!!!

Long time, no talk (kinda) everyone! I hope you've been happy, healthy, and well since we last saw each other and that the wind-down for the year is being kind to you all <3

We have a lot to catch up on, so let's do just that ^^ This is.... so long. I'm really sorry in advance tbh---I thought I hadn't done much because break, but there's quite a bit to show.

It's been a while since a formal update on the routes, so I'll start by telling you all where they officially stand. Before I do, it might be helpful to tell you all how I define percentage completion in my head. Basically, when I finish the draft of a route, I consider it 70% complete. This means I could ship it as is. I wouldn't be happy with the product, but it's playable and makes enough sense---just not the best quality.

When Wudgey finishes their edits, a route is 80%-85% complete, meaning I could ship it as is. I think it'd be pretty good actually and players would be happy. Beyond this point, I am just making fine tuning edits to incorporate more player interaction, polishing the flow of things, etc.

After that, there's basically only Elm and Vi's edits left. When Elm finishes, a route is 95% complete. Again, I think at this point, it's good. Like edits from this point onwards are purely for polishing purpose. After Vi, it's 98% complete. Then the last review comes back to Elm and I for it to be 100% complete. Right now, this is where the routes stand:

Kayn: 98% Complete

Fenir: 95% Complete

Druk: 80% Complete

Etza: 60% Complete (Still working on their draft!)

Do Not ask me about Kuna'a or Aisa LFMASOEIDJ

So most of the routes are actually looking pretty good! They're just getting bounced around to different editors at this point, but the changes made for most of them are basically small. Fenir and Kayn especially could be shipped as is in my eyes if I really wanted to.

Art recently has mostly been focused on commissions. Vui actually is almost done with ALL of the BGs for Alaris!! Isn't that crazy?? In about a year, he was able to create almost 25 BGs with daytime variations!!! He's a phenomenal artist, and I couldn't be happier to be working with him. It's also a bit bittersweet (and alarming??) to know that part of development is already close to ending! q.q

The most exciting art update I have is that we got the GUI assets finished and I've started coding them into the game!! AAAA!! These were the final updated assets I needed, and seeing the fully revamped demo come to life has been so.... Emotional HAHA! It's crazy to see how far Alaris has come from when I was first making it with my little fingies and throwing things together like paper mache. I'm incredibly in love with how all the assets look together, and I couldn't be more grateful for the artists who helped me update the assets!

Updated History Log. Please say you like the dividers between entries---I'm most proud of those

I'm still making my way through coding everything, but here's a couple screen previews so you all can see how things now look in the game!!

First off, is the Dialogue/Choice Screen. You can see that we have a brand new dialogue box (She's Stunning) and Choice Screen! I'm hoping to add some sfx for the choices when you hover over them, and sfx for the new UI in general so there's more user feedback when you click and hover on things. But for now, enjoy this preview of the new dialogue box, choice screen, and the new personality indicators!

Updated Dialogue/Choice Screen: You can't see it as well in GIF format, but the BG also has particles floating around, so there's a tiny bit of animation going on in some of the BGs as well!!

Next, we have the Free Time Screen. I actually posted this on Twitter recently but I don't think I posted it on Tumblr! ISN'T SHE STUNNING... ESPECIALLY WITH THE NEW BGS.... I'm especially happy with the text animations that show up at the bottom when you hover over the different choices! I was inspired by a couple other devs (specifically GUI god, @siyo-koy, and renpy animation master @just-a-carrot) to start incorporating animation style elements into my GUI. And I really like how it adds a little ~something~ to the feel of everything ^^

Updated Free Time Screen: begging someone to say they like the text animation so I feel validated for finangling with it

Finally, for our last preview, we have the Save Screen! While it looks new obviously with the new assets, I also did a lot of backend coding revamping for how it actually functions since my coding experience is a bit better now compared to when I was first fighting for my life figuring out save/load screens. The biggest change for you all is that there are now chapter markers so save slots will tell you what chapter that save file is from! And instead of screenshots, it's now a custom icon inside that shows the chapter card. I think it'll make the save screen look more cohesive now and hopefully more intuitive as well!!

Updated Save Screen: With a sprinkle of updated Chapter Card screen preview

That was long. Are any of us surprised, considering I had two months' worth of devlogs piled inside of me, begging to burst from the seams?

Anyways. Only two miscellaneous updates. One is that all soundtracks have been completed for Alaris! Peter finished the last of them recently, and they're all beautiful!!! For ppl who love piano soundtracks... :holds hand in piano lover solidarity:

Other update is that I finally fixed that godforsaken sprite bug that was associated with the energy vision feature from the demo!!! FINALLY!!! AFTER.... SO LONG. Extremely huge thanks to @robobarbie for taking time out of their day to do that; everyone please say thank you!!!!! OGs know how long that bug was bothering me!!!! Robo also gave me a pretty new rain code, so I'm showing you how both look in the new demo so you can appreciate them with me!!

Last miscellaneous update is more on a.... logistical development level?? Basically, now that I have new GUI assets to code, that means I can get a beta build of the routes currently written out. I was feeling really overwhelmed by that idea because most of this year has been focused on writing and making assets, not really coding. Knowing that I can Code and get Playable Builds out to people was stressful because I have to divvy up my time a bit more.

After an extremely insightful talk with beloved and admired Esh of @steamberrystudio I decided I'm probably going to be shifting how development goes from here on out. Instead of focusing head low on getting as many words written for the remaining routes everyday, I'm going to be making smaller but consistent progress and spend the rest of my time coding so that I can have more of a continuous cycle of production going on (e.g., writing a bit, making playable builds, gathering playtester feedback, etc. instead of doing each stage in blocked, sequential order).

I'm mainly telling you all this because it means writing updates will probably seem slower from this point on, but I think production overall will be more efficient because of it! This is also exciting news for playtesters and/or early access backers/patrons because it means you'll have playable content in the near future for content outside of just the demo :')

have u all heard of wudgeous of herotome. of course u have. they r all i talk about at this point

No market research because I've actually been addicted to BG3 LFMAOLSDJF. Actually, I'm taking some inspiration from it for the personality mechanic but eh.

On a more important note, @herotome demo is coming out December 2nd!!!! PLAY IT WITH ME. Wudgey is my editor, so you might think I'm biased but I'M NOT!!! I WAS A FAN OF HEROTOME BEFORE WUDGEY EVEN WORKED W ME!!! They have an exception eye for detail and player experience, and they are actually one of the devs that inspired me to even get into game development.

I just know the demo is going to blow everyone's socks off. OG Herotome prologue build fans know exactly what I'm talking about. Please mark December 2nd on your calendar---you will not regret it.

This was so unbelievably long, but I hope it's appreciated since there was no real devlog update for a hot minute. As always, Thank you all for your patience and continued support. With the year ending soon, I'm getting wrapped up in my feels in usual Crescence fashion. I am a Cancer so no one is surprised.

Next month will probably be more of an end-of-year devlog rather than the usual format. I know the devlogs of late have been all over the place, but once we get into the new year, it will be back to business as usual! Hope you all have a wonderful end to your year; I'll talk to you soon! <3

[gillyweedgrl]

You should be watching Pit Babe! - A Brief Review

Saddens me to think how many people are missing out on a great show because they think it’s not worth more than a trash watch, if that.

I mean, realistically, is it the most amazing cinematic work of all time? No, not unless pretty-boy power bottoms with daddy issues are your thing, which in my case they are, so let's talk about Pit Babe!

Note: I've tried to keep the spoilers to a minimum, they're mainly in the tags and links so follow them at your own risk, you've been warned.

Honestly, Pit Babe is a pretty damn good show, especially if you A) pretend the Omegaverse factor doesn’t exist and take the show for what it is and B) you don't mind not knowing what's going on half the time, just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Overall, Pit Babe has got a good production value, a slightly absurd yet entertaining plot, a great choice of cast with amazing chemistry and pretty decent acting skills amongst the mix of seasoned actors and newbies.

For a totally biased fair and balanced review: There are some details that are left vague instead of being explained in depth or at all (yet), but that’s to be expected when you adapt a novel into a movie or series. It would get boring for the audience if the pace was interrupted to explain all those little details that we’re likely to find out along the way anyways (shout out to those who've watched the latest episode; finally!).

There are also some scenes that feel like they’re not as necessary and some background/plot devices that made a little more sense in the novel but I personally don’t feel like they detract too much from my viewing experience.

Babe (played by Pavel) and Charlie (played by Pooh) as the main leads do a really good job at shouldering a large percentage of screen time. Charlie comes across as happy-go-lucky, a bit clumsy/goofy, entirely fearless and a little naive, which is mostly true, but there's clearly more to him than that. Right from the start Babe is clearly someone guarded, detirmined and skilled at what he does (racing cars and having sex) and he has a very tight cirlce of people he trusts. There's a winning combo right there, quite tsundere/sunshine from the outside but definitely more breath the surface that gets exploded as they go.

Way (played by Nut) is Babe's best friend and racing companion, they've been racing together at Team X-Hunter for years but there's clearly more than friendship on the mind for Way, though the feelings appear to be one sided.

Alan (played by Sailub) is the owner of Team X-Hunter and an all-round cool Uncle (which the whole team call's him (despite barely being in his mid 30's). He's kind but firm, he cares for his team like they’re his family and it does seem as though they’re his only family.

And the rest of the cast consists primarily of:

Team X-Hunter:

Dean (played by Lee); a junior racer with slight douche vibes

North and Sonic (played by Michael and TopTen); everyone’s babies, they’re junior racers and content creators

Jeff (played by Pon); the newest member of the team, he’s a part time mechanic and full time conspicuous

Pete (played by Ping); the money guy Alan brings on board to sponsor the team

Team Red Racing (the rival team):

Winner (played by Pop); the guy who never seems to win against Babe

Kim (played by Benz); the new racer they hired to beat Babe

Tony (played by S Vorarit); Red Racing's newest benefactor and *shock horror* Babe's former foster father (try saying that ten times fast)

Kenta (played by Garfield); Tony's right hand man

Then, there’s the 🌶🔥🤯

I, personally, enjoy a little spice/heat in my shows. It’s not necessary for every show, of course, but I do think that when it serves a purpose to the story and it’s done well then it can be quite enjoyable and this cast/production team is doing it really well.

As I said, the chemistry between the cast really is amazing (both on and off the screen, if you're interested in that kind of thing) and although the spicy scenes aren’t nearly as abundant as they are in the novel, there are some really good ones. I decided to bite the bullet and binge read the novel over the past couple of weeks, I blame @pharawee’s breakdown posts for those sleepless nights, and it was worth it for me but not necessary for watching the series.

Lastly (as if this post isn't long winded enough as it is) there are a handful of things in this series that we don't see too often in BL's and make it worth watching even more:

It's got race cars, murder attempts, mafia influence and supernatural powers (at least half the characters have one).

There's no evil ex-lover out to get revenge or get back together with one of the mains (thank the BL gods).

It's got a Soft Top/Dominant Bottom dynamic where the title character is both super masc and a pretty princess.

And we can't forget, it is technically an Omegaverse series (or rather, it's Omegaverse-lite) which none of us saw coming!

Anywho, to conclude; yes, you should be watching Pit Babe. No, you don't have to read the novel to understand what's going on because none of us understand what the hell is going on at any given time. Charlie and Babe are fucking around and finding out, the rest of us are just long for the ride, Alan and Jeff are having a whole ass rom-com-drama in the corner, the babies are making their content and having a blast and the others aren't quite on the map yet (or are they? *wink, wink*), but I sure hope they will be soon!

If you made it this far, thank you and are you okay? Do you need to have your brain checked?

[centrally-unplanned]

Oh I had a book review that I never did - Apostles of Mercy. Third in a series that I like, but while still "good" its the worst one so far! The Noumena series is a First Contact story set in Bush-era USA, telling the tale of Cora, a down-on-her-luck "everygirl" who gets dragged into being an interpreter/uncomfortably-intimate pairbond for an alien refugee named Ampersand whose home species is probably gonna wipe out humanity as a threat prevention/"why not" measure. Lets complain about things on the complaining-blog:

(The cover art continues to slap, no downgrade there)

Book 1 of the Noumena series is, fundamentally, the story of Cora and Ampersand, and how they connect. It is done really well, their differences stack on their shared contexts and a bit of alien magic to make it really believable that they become a found family unit. So in book 2... Ampersand kind of PTSD's into becoming a reclusive asshole, and Core spends most of the book away from him connecting with other people? It is an odd choice but, you know, this can work. You create space in a relationship, they grow and change from the space, then reunite and that distance in fact builds the foundation for new stuff. Its bold for book 2 but fair enough. But then she does it again in Book 3!! Cora goes off to deal with other issues and hang out with someone else, and is primarily annoyed by or made deeply uncomfortable by Ampersand's presence and decision-making for most the book. Its not as severe this time, but still; you can't play that card again, like come on! Are you telling your Transformers meets Beauty & the Beast fanfic or aren't you? Make up your mind! It comes off as too-clever-by-half, someone uncomfortable with doing the "typical" and having to constantly ~subvert, to ill effect.

Speaking of, the distraction du jour for Book 3 is Paris, Cora's new girlfriend. And she is very, very boring. She is just A Person, spends most of the book a prisoner trying to survive alien captors who don't understand her, and pretty much just has to be rescued at the end. There is no connective tissue - skills that she has that are crucial, themes she is the lodestone for, etc. In Book 2 Cora's partner Kaveh was far, far more interesting - he pushed the narrative forward, he was audacious and witty, and he had a deep internal narrative as to his motivations and goals. Paris seems like a checkbox in comparison. And I think there is something to that - in an interview Ellis remarked that she has gotten far less "critique" on her male characters than her female characters from the lens of making them interesting to read. She implies a degree of audience sexism there, but I think its probably the reverse - besides Cora (who is great) her male characters are just way more fun because, surprise surprise, they are allowed to be assholes sometimes in ways that make them complex and interesting. Even Kaveh, who is a very positively coded character, is a thirty-something rich guy sleeping with a college-aged broke trauma ball and is shamefully kind of loving being the fixer to her broken bird. That is good shit to read about - Paris could never because she is simply A Good Person. Because of Woke.

And speaking of politics! So this part of the series was always a little cringe - Ellis as a writer wears her politics on her sleeve and they are definitely a form of unsophisticated leftism with some really heavy-handed moments. But I don't mind reading the works of people I disagree with, I quite love it in fact; in the first book it is generally fine, because she sets up competent and realistic opponents. In Book 1 its the CIA embodied in Sol Kaplan, who believes in the War on Terror and all that jazz and is one of the best side characters, and Cora has to face brutal consequences for her own ideals. In Book 2 the cringe ratchets up a bit but still, here the debate is over civil rights & strategic approaches to the now-public alien refugees, and the "right-wing" factions are portrayed with intelligent arguments around security & deterrence, and also score their own wins. In Book 3, the main plot revolves around a sister alien faction's camp who specialize in biotech. And they have this whole thing where they move from place to place for secrecy, and to be away from people they find themselves in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and then an uncleansed mine field in Cambodia. At which point they start saying things like "we should eliminate the humans, we would steward the earth better" and you in the audience are totally supposed to be sympathetic to that. Its incredibly eyeroll, the large majority of the planet is rural countryside they could escape to with nothing close to that scale of damage, they literally chose the worst possible locations on two coin flips in a row. How are they not in Montana. Or Siberia. Its cringe, guys. She does the same thing with the CIA in this book, who eventually get commandeered by a US general who literally thinks of ethnic minorities as subhuman and says so explicitly. Incredible cringe.

Finally, Mary Sue problems. Cora interacts extensively with three humans in this book, and two of them want to fuck her and the third is her evil dad. Said dad spent the first two books being a distant figure pulling off big moves; in this book he literally does nothing but putz around, with no clear agenda but "butter up Cora", who sees through it immediately and fucks him over at the end. Like you spent two books setting this guy up? That is it? So Cora can look smart? We already knew she was smart. Someone says he loves her an "angelic" platonic way. Its not a good look and tbh a little baffling coming from Ellis, who is not at all someone who typically does that kind of stuff. I have to chalk that up to "ah fuck how do I wrap this arc up" syndrome.

Okay, done! Tbc the core of the book was still solid plotting and there was progress on interesting fronts. Its just sad to read Book 3 in a series where it commits mistakes the first two books explicitly avoided, like she ran out of endurance. Hopefully this is a book where she just got it out of her system.

[richea]

Arise review

After buying the game at launch, I finally, finally finished my playthrough of Tales of Arise. Normally I would just write a few thoughts on Twitter and leave it at that, but I found I had a lot of things I wanted to touch upon with this game. With the prior two entries in the series, I kind of just rushed to finish them and then let them collect dust in my brain afterwards. However, back then I had other Tales games I wanted to try for the first time, so part of it was I was itching to get to ones I knew I would enjoy more. I got all caught up with the series before Arise was even announced, so there's no excuse this time!

With Arise, I took my time (well, maybe too much time), and let myself really process the game before I let myself finish it, in order to give myself a more solid basis for how I will feel about this game going forward. To that end, I wanted to really write down my feelings on the game in depth, touching upon all the various aspects of it and how everything made me feel.

Quick warning: if you don't accept criticism of Arise well, this isn't the review for you. I am approaching the game from the perspective of somebody who has played every other entry in the series and ruminated on all of them for years on end. I will be critical of the game in this piece. I'm not trying to tell people how to feel on the game, this is all purely my own thoughts and feelings, from the perspective of a long time Tales fan who deeply cares about the direction the series is going, and more importantly, its rich history.

I am also not looking for people to change my mind on the game, so please do not try to tell me my feelings are "wrong" or that I'm not appreciating certain things properly. I'm not looking for discourse.

That said, if you are someone who is interested in my perspective, then by all means enjoy the essay that is to come.

―――

In this post I want to dive into all the different aspects of the game and talk about each in depth, namely the story, characters and gameplay. I think it's more interesting to judge a game by balancing all these traits rather than just pinpointing one specific thing and basing my entire view of the game on that one thing (for instance, I tend to value interesting characters first and foremost when I indulge in media).

That said, for a quick TL;DR of my feelings on various things, when compared to other entries in the series:

Story: 2/10 Characters: 1/10 Character designs: 3/10 Other UI designs (such as monsters/menus/etc): 0/10 Battle gameplay: 4/10 Other gameplay: 4/10 Music: Undecided, which in its own right may not be a good indicator of how I feel about it Graphics: As a video game it's a 10, for Tales specifically it's a 9/10 for the graphics themselves and a 1/10 for the lack of anime portraits and the portraits we got just look awful (how does Ufotable only get worse with its Tales designs?)

Visual presentation

I want to start by acknowledging the graphics, as it's something that has zero relevance to how I feel on video games. Arise is a very pretty game! There is no denying this. I found myself stopping and just moving the camera around to admire all the pretty landscapes and views in the game. The character models are also very nice.

That said, like all modern Tales games, the battles are a bit overly stimulating on my eyes, because there's so much going on and lots of flashing lights. The actual effects were very pretty though.

The skits are absolutely horrible to watch. Even setting aside how I feel about the lack of skit portraits, the thin white text on top of the off-white backdrop was a horrible design choice. I think this is probably my least favorite aspect of the game. I get headaches very quickly from playing video games even just normally, and watching a ton of skits with intense eye strain did not help! There's also way too much movement with the skit... boxes? as well. Were they thinking about accessibility at all when coming up with them?

On the same topic, the subtitles for general cutscenes were also awful. The outline around the text needed to be much thicker. I could probably read 30% of the dialogue in the game. Thankfully I know a decent amount of Japanese, but still, I was interested in reading the actual translation of the text and I was having a really hard time. I feel bad for people who wanted to play with Japanese voices and don't know as much as me.

The menu UI was also very disappointing. It felt really barebones and had next to no personality to it. The big portraits drawn by Iwamoto were a nice touch (though if you're going to make such massive paintings, at least make the art itself more interesting to look at?), but it wasn't enough. They just felt like something to fill in the empty space which there was a lot of; the menu layout really did not utilize the space on the screen well, and it's double annoying when you consider how microscopic the font in the game is and how they could've used that space to make things more readable. Everything was hard to read, and again the lack of portraits was just utterly disappointing. Every time I opened the menu I just felt sad at how lifeless it felt.

Gameplay

My feelings on the gameplay are mixed. I'll start with the elephant in the room: the gald system in this game is not good. Only getting gald from chests and sub events is just a massively poor game design. Fishing helps but it's more time consuming than doing battles would be and there's really no other incentive to even doing it (at least battles would work towards EXP and getting battle proficiency things!).

The owl system was fun and was definitely a highlight of the game for me. It took me back to looking for attachments in Xillia, which is something I really enjoyed in that game as well and made the long traversing in the game more bearable. I just went from point A to point B in both Zestiria and Berseria, so this was the first game since Xillia 2 that I actually touched every corner of the map.

The battles are also a mixed bag for me. I will be completely transparent and state here that I mostly only played Shionne and Rinwell, so my feelings on the melee gameplay is very limited. My committed team was Shionne, Rinwell, Dohalim and Kisara. Between them you could hit every element weakness, on top of Kisara's high defense (and the fact that I just liked her more than Law and Alphen). From the perspective of a caster main, the battle gameplay was fine. Like other entries, you could do fun manipulation strategies to speed casting time. By the end game I was just spam casting Rinwell's highest tier spells instantly which was fun.

The healing is definitely... not great. There were a few times where I would run out of Orange Gels and then have to do a story progressing map action and it would eat the rest of my already gone CG bar. It was really infuriating. I only used First Aid the entire game, never anything else, because why would I use a better healing arte when it would just drain my gauge faster? It was a mess.

The monsters I did not enjoy. It felt really hard to stun them so it never felt satisfying fighting anything. Their movements felt WAY too grand. If every single boss is huge and epic and has moves that hit the whole map, the whole game starts to lose its impact. I also feel like they did way too much damage in a single hit, which made the healing issue even worse, and it felt more like I was trying to perfectly dodge every attack than it did managing my health in a natural way.

The skill system was just fine, no real commentary to make there. I wish there were more titles in the game however, and that they would display on the status screen (even Graces did this despite them both having the titles and skill systems merged).

Some quick other things

The campsite system was fine

I liked that the sub event indicators were really obvious, as someone who's really bad about doing sub events especially on my first playthrough (the actual sub events themselves are a different issue)

Like with fishing, I never really understood the point of the ranch

Did this game even have minigames?

I actually really liked the weapon skins system, that was super fun

Story

This is where I will start to nitpick things because I play Tales games for the story and characters first and foremost. And, having played every other game in full, my feelings on the story and writing in this game are... not very high.

To start, I do at the very least think Arise had some interesting starting concepts going on. Namely, a protagonist trying to figure out his amnesia and a girl who zaps everything she touches are pretty cool concepts! However, even from the first promotion trailer I was concerned about Shionne's story hinging too much on Alphen. The "he can't feel anything, she hurts everything she touches" plotpoints felt really, really convenient to me from the first trailer, and was a setup for having all the impact on the game being reliant on Alphen being a decent character (as well as, well, almost forcing him to be Shionne's hero, rather than him gaining that honor through actual hard work and emotion), but I was more than willing to give the game the chance to prove me wrong on that aspect.

I have too many feelings on the character writing so I will be giving them their own section below.

Anyway, sadly, I think those are the only two interesting and unique things in Arise's narrative. Everything else the game has done has been done in a prior Tales game but better. Let me go down the list (non-comprehensive as I can't remember every single theme from every single game, but I will name games that at least have these as the major theme that I can recall):

Two worlds vying for power (I could name games that don't have two worlds faster than I could name ones that do), and one world is trying to suck power out of the other one (Symphonia, Hearts)

The plotpoint about "when humans lose all their power they turn to dust" is literally exactly what happens in Hearts, while the "making people feel strong bad emotion to provoke them into our gains" is what Zestiria and Berseria's entire lore was about as well as Rebirth

Racism, oppression, slavery and colonialism (Phantasia, Destiny, Symphonia, Rebirth, Legendia, Tempest, Hearts (R removed this but there's literally an NPC who flaunts about enslaving the "lesser beings"), Berseria)

First half of the game is fighting a series of specific enemies, second half is focused on lore, especially figuring out stuff with the second planet (Destiny, Eternia, Symphonia, Vesperia, Hearts)

Do I think Tales rehashing tropes is a bad thing? No, not at all. It's something they have been doing for a long, long time. But what made it work in other games is that each game had at least something completely unique to it to balance that feeling of repetitiveness out. For instance, Hearts shows up a lot on this bullet list, but it is the only Tales game to have lore based around entering people's hearts, and the whole story is based around a fairy tale. Even the fact that it has a robot as a playable character was a first for Tales. Legendia rehashed a lot of plotpoints from Rebirth, but it had its own unique spin on things and the worldbuilding in it is completely unique with the focus on marine themes and the story structure being unique from any other game. Symphonia even keeps the same worldbuilding from Phantasia but the feels of the games are completely unique from one another due to how different the themes the stories tackle are. The issue with Arise is that I cannot think of anything unique in the game, aside from Shionne's thorns, that wasn't done in another game. And even then, all of the writing regarding her thorns is a big rehash of heroine tropes and situations in the series' past. I will go over that when I discuss her though.

Another glaring issue with the game is the skits. Normally, Tales skits have roughly 4 purposes. In order of prevalence: fun skits to show off the character's personality that the story can't showcase, the characters discussing story events to showcase the full depth of their feelings on the events as they happen, skits going over worldbuilding to explain in better detail if you didn't catch it from the story scenes (or just giving more information!), and navigational skits. Skits were always meant to be lively and engaging, even if things felt dull in the story, skits existed as a pick-me-up, and as a way to show how the characters were having fun. Skits are one of the most famous parts of Tales storytelling, specifically for this reason.

What's wrong with Arise's skits? In a franchise where the fun:dull skit ratio was 6:4 give or take, Arise changed those numbers to 2:8. Most skits were dedicated to rehashing events. Even in those rehashes, the characters were near constantly bringing up plotpoints that happened 30+ hours ago in the story. Over and over! Alphen was still talking about the first 5 hours of the game when you're on Lenegis!

Watching the skits, it genuinely felt like I was having constant deja-vu. I think I actually was worried I was going crazy at some point, because of the sheer extent of times they would have the same conversations over and over and over again. It got to a point where I would joke about Alphen and Law being on the screen together and I would say "countdown to them bringing up Zephyr" and every single time I would say that, the convo would turn to him. This was 55 hours into the game!

It's not bad for characters to reflect on the past events, but when that makes up the vast majority of their conversations, and one singular event makes up the entire personality of the character, the game feels dull very, very quickly. Skits transformed from a thing that I would usually open to find fun shenanigans between the characters and silly banter into me sighing about having to hear about Zephyr's death for the 200th time in the past 5 hours. It was very exhausting. Can we talk about something else now? My rant about this could be endless, but I genuinely want somebody to do a study on just how many times Alphen and Law bring up Zephyr throughout the game, and how many lines in the skits were dedicated to things that weren't just recapping events.

(Even then, there were cooking skits! However, I can only hear so many conversations about preparing food before I start getting bored. I know that eating and food is a BIG cultural point in Japan, but did every single "fun" skit need to be about eating? No.)

Speaking of, let me go over my feelings on the actual story and its events.

While the game did have a slow start, it wasn't that bad. The game eases you into what's going on, with the slavery and meeting Shionne. Nothing really of note to mention here. Rinwell and Law's character introductions were nothing special, but that was fine, it was still early in the game. My first major issue with the game is Zephyr's death. As it may be obvious from my above rant, the game places way too much importance on him as a character. A game mourning a character is nothing new. For instance, fractured Milla's death was a big turning point in Xillia 2. However, the entire game, as well as two entire characters, did not revolve around her death. Arise's issue is that Zephyr is barely a character, and yet the game constantly reminds you of how great and wonderful he was. We barely saw the guy, and no number of skits dedicated to Alphen and Law talking about him changes the fact that he is no more memorable than any other random NPC in the game. His death is unceremonious and was one of the most predictable deaths in the series to date.

(As an unrelated note, I am someone who loves a lot of NPCs in Tales. I love a lot of characters who have very little screentime. Two of my favorite Tales characters are Stella and Marian, who actually have a lot of similarities with Zephyr in narrative importance! The difference, however, is that you are not constantly having it drilled in that they are the epitome of nuance and the stories are not dictated by either character's morals, of which we never got to even see. Arise has Alphen claim Zephyr has the best moral views in the world and his entire life is dictated by those morals he was taught, and he pushes them on everyone else. Including the player.)

Zephyr's death aside, the other non-party characters are barely characters. I don't even remember any of their names. Especially the lords. To sum up my feelings on this instead of subjecting you to a long tangent on the lords, let me just drop these posts I made while playing:

One of Arise's lowest points however is how it handles its themes of racism and colonialism. I have a distinct memory of Alphen telling Rinwell to shut up when she brings up Renan oppression to him, Law tells Rinwell she's not allowed to want revenge due to her oppression, and there's this not-so-great scene on Lenegis where the party reflects on how... one of the lords was "only human" for wanting to enslave the Dahnans and how they can "see" his point of view? NOT GOOD! One of the comments I made while playing the game was "Alphen would stop Cless on his quest of revenge and he would also tell Velvet she's over-exaggerating is kind of my feelings on him at this point" and I still stand by it.

In general, the story is just very predictable. At no point in the game was I surprised by what was going on. Well, no matter, there's other predictable things in Tales games! ...But the difference is that other games, I at least was compelled by the characters and their reactions to those predictable events. Or, their personalities alone would carry me through plotpoints I otherwise found boring. Arise never endeared me to its cast, yet it expected me to find shock value and importance in its very predictable storytelling. I remember when the party takes on the lord who kills Rinwell's family, they said "we'll spare her life" (which is its own long rant but I digress) and I went "oh well someone DEFINITELY won't kill her one second later" and then Vholran showed up as I was saying it! Then, Alphen JUST so happens to get his feeling back in his body after Shionne walks right into Vholran's arms! This was truly the point in the game where I completely gave up on enjoying it and I started to only push myself to beat it just so I could get it over with.

The story sadly saw no improvements after that point either to remedy my soured feelings. The only two things I enjoyed after that point were the little bit with Dohalim's past and him making the speech on Lenegis, and Rinwell touching Shionne's hand in the final scene in the game.

I could go on forever about the story, but I will leave it at that.

As for the sub events, you couldn't really call them "events" when they were just one or two lines about defeating monsters. I did every sub event in the game up until before the final dungeon. I was very unimpressed by them.

Characters

This is absolutely my least favorite part about the game. As I stressed at the beginning, what I go through media for is for the characters. Good characters can salvage just about anything for me. When I watch story scenes, I'm always thinking about how it makes the characters feel. I went into Arise thinking "even if the story doesn't cater to me, at least I can fall back on enjoying the characters and their banter".

As you can already tell, I was utterly disappointed with the cast in Arise.

Alphen

He is easily the contender for my least favorite Tales protagonist, hands down. The issue with Alphen is he never has any original ideas at any point in the game. He always attributes any of his morals to Zephyr. He would go on tangents, explaining how other characters should feel about things, but when asked he got all of his ideas from Zephyr. It seriously felt as if he never thought for himself.

Making this worse is the fact that he would explain how everyone should feel. He would tell Rinwell to stop being mad about her oppression, he would tell Law to listen to his feelings on Zephyr and change his view on him based on his view of who Zephyr was, he would tell Kisara how to feel regarding her place as a woman.

Worst of all, however, was how he would talk to Shionne. Any time she would have an issue, he would make it about himself. In her most important scene in the game, where she's talking about how her thorns make her want to die, he made it about himself. She said what she wanted for herself and he said "whether you like it or not, I'm taking matters into my own hands". Yes, Tales has done this before, with the heroine wishing to die and the hero telling her he won't allow that, but it's infuriating in this case when he never lets her think or act or move or do anything without his input. There's countless scenes in the game where she would be upset and want time alone and he would force her to talk to him about her feelings. Shionne was not permitted to ever exist without Alphen forcing her to talk to him about it and expecting her to go along with what he wanted, and his feelings about her situation. Again, past Tales game have had this, but when it's so constant and so prevalent, and is the only thing the character has to them, it becomes exhausting and annoying.

Also, his only "unique, fun" trait was that he likes armor, but this dialogue only ever showed up... when you made armor?

I was really disappointed with Alphen. Which is really not good when he is the protagonist, and Shionne's entire character also hinges on him. Especially given the grand finale to the game was their wedding, when I saw no romantic tension between them, because all he ever did was explain how she should feel. He was such a mess. I have more I could rant about with him but I need to leave it at that.

Shionne

Shionne is a big bundle of wasted potential to me. That said, she is probably one of the only characters in this game who felt like a character.

Like I said above, her thorns are an interesting concept. However, the handling of it really was standard Tales heroine tied to a cursed fate. The damsel scene, the way she wants to die but the protag talks her out of it, etc. That said, I did think her trauma with never being touched in her life was interesting, and it did make me emotional at points, even if the execution was poor.

I just really, really wish she could've been a character separate from Alphen. Her writing truly was doomed from the start with him being the only person who could touch her. Again, it felt like she bonded with Alphen because he's the only person who can touch her, rather than them actually making a proper bond as people.

Rinwell

Rinwell is... fine? I honestly don't have a lot to say here. I think it was nice that she got importance as the spiritual person in the party, and her banter with Dohalim was nice. I really disliked her relationship with Law however, and again, I hated that Law and Alphen tried to talk her out of her revenge. She was in the position as a "spiteful" person who "needed to grow out of it" but... her family was massacred? Why is Law allowed to be furious about his dad dying, but she's not allowed to be mad about her family being killed? The hypocrisy in regards to Rinwell seriously infuriated me and I felt really bad for her.

Law

Hoo boy. I really do not like Law either, for many of the reasons I don't like Alphen. He does with Rinwell what Alphen does to Shionne. What is with Arise men and mansplaining everything to the girls and refusing to let them have any agency or thoughts without their input?

He was also supposed to be the "mood maker," except his only mood making scenes were Hootle pecking him in the face or him saying something dumb and Rinwell calling him an idiot. It really wasn't that funny and felt like borderline bullying.

Law falls under a Tales archtype I normally really really like (Tytree, Spada, Hisui, etc), so I was expecting to like him quite a bit, but sadly I just... do not. See my Zephyr rants above as well.

Kisara

Kisara is probably the most unfortunate character in the cast. In theory, I really like Kisara. I'm a big fan of knight ladies, and I always enjoy the older woman character in the party (even if only in her 20s). In practice however she just... completely misses the mark. All of her scenes are dedicated to one of three things: working (or not working) under Dohalim, her brother, or how she can be a proper woman. Yikes! It's not good when a female character's entire character revolves around what she can do for men! There's many skits where she asks "what can I even do if everyone cooks for themselves" and her conclusion is... to follow her brother's dream? Kisara, can't you find your OWN dream? And no, bringing up how she can help Dohalim also doesn't count here.

I don't hate Kisara for being who she is, but I really just want to have a stern talking to with whoever wrote her. A female character should not revolve around men and being in the kitchen. Seriously. This game came out in 2021, you should've known better.

Dohalim

While I didn't like his introduction scenes much, he grew on me a lot throughout the game, and he definitely felt the most like a Tales character to me. There was a lot of humanity and nuance to him, and he had the honor of actually having his backstory shown on screen. He had a lot of facets to him: the part of him that was a Renan leader, the part of him that supports the party, his own goals, his own motivations, interesting relationships with other characters, as well as (and maybe most importantly) fun things about his personality via his breaks from seriousness as well as his fondness for music and artifacts.

Overall he felt very fleshed out, and I really wish he had been put in another game. I came out of Arise quite content with the character that was Dohalim, which I cannot say for anyone else.

Closing thoughts

Overall, this is probably the most disappointed I have been with a Tales title. Of course, I don't think every game is perfect, and there are games that I will admit just don't click with me personally that others adore, and likewise there are games that I think fall flat in some regards but resonate with me for the characters.

For instance, I think Tempest is a perfectly fine and even charming game, despite it being more on the barebones side of things. I do not hold Tales games to unrealistic expectations when it's not necessary, and I always think of a lot of things when I base how I feel about the game: crunch time, what the creators had in mind when making it, what heart was put into the story, what fun I am able to find even in the game's flaws. Things to that effect.

Where Arise differs for me is that many of the decisions I dislike about the game were intentional. The lackluster, yet overbearing monsters were intentional, the lack of skit and status portraits were intentional, the story not being that compelling, but taking itself way too seriously and acting as if it's the pinnacle of Tales writing, is also what the producer of the game flaunts when he discusses it. All of these things negative attribute to the quality of the game. Arise scratches away the charm that Tales games have, yet it is flaunted as being something groundbreaking when the story never attempts a single new trope.

It's not one deviation from series staples, it's a whole cluster of them. Why was there any reason to remove post battle dialogue, when that is something everyone absolutely LOVED about the series? Why are skits, which are part of what brought Tales to fame, boiled down to recaps of story scenes and not fun moments, which is what everyone is excited for when they go to open a skit? Why are the cute and iconic monsters completely gone, when every single game used the same designs? Why does the producer for the series actively hate the things that the fans love about Tales?

Arise is essentially a long laundry list of bizarre decisions made by the producer with awful execution, and then sadly the writing does the game absolutely zero favors. I came out of playing it feeling hollow. I've been revisiting some older games after playing it, and I've been getting legitimately emotional at how the characters in these other games actually talk to each other like people, and don't just bounce recaps of events back and forth to each other. Other games know how to have fun, and they have compelling characters, which is really what has always been the thing bringing people back to this franchise.

Would I like Arise more if it wasn't labeled a Tales game? Honestly, no, given I only ever played it because it's under the Tales branding. And I shouldn't have to even ask myself that, given I play Tales to enjoy Tales, and its tropes, and all the fun little things these games provide that no other series can give me.

If and when the next Tales game comes out, I will still probably play it. But so long as it is under our current producer, I will go in incredibly cautious, given he seems adamant about hating all of the things I love most about Tales. At the very least, I hope the next game is more innovative with its writing and characters, and brings back some of the charm that even Zestiria and Berseria had.