#i was judging based on the players and not the game my opinion on the stereotypical val player is the same. don't like em. mean

[fluffythevixen]

I’m not disagreeing with you, but I think the answer is because none of that matters to most players. Terraria is a game whose lore is absolutely an afterthought, and it’s more than possible to beat the game as a new player without reading a single line of npc dialogue. Stuff like that just simply isnt the focus of the game, and so most players dont focus on it either. So to those players, the angler is an npc who makes you do a bunch of quest rolls to get what you want (and many players dont even enjoy the quests) and the entire time he’s being an ass to you, and it’s kind of understandable people will feel that way about him. Hell, most newer players don’t even realise he’s a kid!

As a comparison, the tinkerer is one of my favorite npcs, bc hes just a silly little nerd guy. Delightful! That said, he’s the other most hated npc in my experience, and it’s not hard to see why. Again, in a game where substance massively outweighs style, most people just see him as the money sink that never gives you the good modifiers, and judge him 100% based on that

Basically, there are games where people hating on a character for unjust reasons would bother me, but honestly, in a game that is as deeply unserious and light on lore as Terraria is, people having bad opinions on characters is generally just part of the fun

Anyone else feel like the angler is overhated? Don't get me wrong, he is annoying and the fact that you have to do so many quests in order to get the stuff for a shellphone sucks, but there's literally so much vitriol towards him. He's literally an orphan who has been isolated from human contact for who knows how long. He acts out because he is desperate for attention but doesn't know to recognize or voice his needs. He doesn't know what's appropriate and what's not, and he doesn't know why he should care because he's a child and no one was around to explain it to him.

And even when there finally are adults around, none of them are willing to put up with him or give him any attention. He is neglected and actively disliked by most other NPCs because they dismiss him as just a brat but they don't consider why he's like that or that he does genuinely need help. How did he even lose his family? What led to him being alone in the first place and how old was he when it happened? Just how much is there for him to figure out how to process?

His antics are literally a cry for help and he doesn't even understand it because he doesn't even know how messed up his life is or how he's affected by his isolation. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that drives everyone else further away when all he wants is to actually be noticed.

Part of the reason he's so demanding to the player is because the excitement of someone actually listening to them and being nice to them gets to their head. He's not used to feeling important. He's not used to anyone being willing to do anything for him. So yeah, he plays it up because it's one of the few times anyone is willing to engage with them in a positive manner.

Anyways this kid needs a parental figure or five and some therapy. But if you told him that, he'd probably bite you.

[sharkkgurl]

seeing someone say something negative about your hyperfixation/special interest and just  

[no1blacksapphirefan]

Hi 👁👅👁! So other than crk I also play other games like hsr and stuff like that so can I please get self aware hcs where the cookies hear us gushing on and on about characters from other games?

Fellow HSR player? Me too haha, fun fact actually. My main blog/account is actually a HSR based one, themed after my fav character from the game as well. A sundae for anyone who can figure it out/j

Shadow Milk Huh!? His ears perk up and he's quick to try and listen in, it's not that he's jealous, he already knows he's your favourite in this game but you play other games? Who is it, he's curious. Is it someone like him? Or a character with a different personality.

Hmm, Gallagher? After hearing you talk about him more, he's become more interested. Tarot card symbolism, he's a fictional character...within a game? And he's invited other characters to all tie in together to save a place? Now he wants to meet this Gallagher, he doubts they'd really see eye to eye but meeting someone who played a part in a bigger plan? That'll be interesting.

Though with how much you talk about him, he doubts a meeting will matter, he's getting all the information he needs from your voice. A much better way to learn about someone in his opinion (he's bias)

Pure Vanilla He's interested to hear about this other game you play, listening intently as you rant about it, well more specifically a character. He'd love to meet this character that has also peaked your interest.

What's his name? Luocha? Oh he seems like a nice ma-...what do you mean he has a God in his coffin? Well...he isn't gonna judge you at all for characters you like but he did not expect that bit of information to be true. He's a bit more intrigued by the game though, he wants to know of the other characters you seem to favour.

Hearing you talk on and on about your favourite characters makes him want to listen, he already knows most in his "game" and if he doesn't. He can easily meet them. But hearing about other games and their characters? How interesting...

Black Sapphire It takes him a moment before realising you're talking about a different game rather than theirs. He doesn't exactly mind though, now he can take what you say and talk about said character too as if they're a cookie as well. He's not technically lying, the character is real...just...not in their world.

Besides, who wouldn't want to know about a "cookie" trying to recreate a, what was it? Emanator? Ruan Mei is her name right? Her story seems fascinating and perfect to tell all cookie kind, he's sure it'll get some cookies scared and others excited and he's gonna love to see the two of them argue.

He'd listen to you talk about whichever character peaks your interest any day, he won't get jealous that quickly. Besides, he's probably heard you rant about him to your friends before anyways. As long as he still knows he's one of your favourites. It's all good.

Fire Spirit What's that? Gotta speak up, oh a new game? He wants to know all about. If it's peaked his beloved "God" interest to the point of you gushing about it. It must be amazing. And he's interested in hearing about the characters as well.

Oh that Kafka girl seems quite interesting. A woman who can't feel fear? He'd love to test how far that lack of fear goes, you said she wanted to experience it right? He'd love to show of his flames and see how much of it she can handle. Besides, he's sure you'd love to have 2 of your favourites on the same screen. You probably talk about him when you're playing that other game anyways.

He'll love to hear you talk about more characters, especially ones that seem like they'd enjoy the heat! Haha, he may not be able to meet them. Perhaps they're not self-aware like himself but oh does he want too.

Frost Queen she doesn't care at first. Not that she doesn't enjoy hearing your rambles but she doesn't exactly have any feelings towards who you talk about and the game you're now talking about. What matters to her is that you still play "her" game and favour her.

She can't help but listen to you speak of various characters backstory though, especially when it seems like the characters past has put you in distraught. Jingliu being one of them. She'll admit, her backstory is quite interesting, and she's strong. While she hasn't seen how she fights, your description shall be enough for now. She's especially interested in the Mara struck bit of her.

While, unlike most of the others, she wouldn't be actively listening to your rants, certain characters can and will make her ears perk up as she'll quickly come and see what the news is about.

[tsukimefuku]

The broken idealist: Higuruma Hiromi

And how the world of JJK viciously punishes idealists.

Before we start, let’s set some premises:

This is an essay based solely on my opinions and my own knowledge of criminal justice. I’m no professional writer/essayist.

JJK is a critique on unfair systems that reward selfishness and nurture individualistic (oftentimes destructive) behaviors.

One of the main motifs in JJK is (un)fairness.

Even when rewarded by these systems, individuals usually end up alienated (Gojo being the utmost example, but so is Sukuna to some extent).

The world of JJK punishes idealists very harshly. 

I might've read waaaaay too deep into his character (apologies in advance).

I am ABSOLUTELY biased in analyzing this character because I kin Higuruma very hard and identify profoundly with many of his struggles.

[queue “Pigs” by Pink Floyd] Let's do this.

The ideal of truth and Higuruma choosing to be a criminal defense attorney

Higuruma shows up in the manga as one of the top players of the Culling Games. Throughout a few chapters, Gege introduces him to us as a former criminal defense attorney that has lost it after one of his clients gets his innocence verdict overruled and is unfairly convicted for a crime he didn't commit, triggering Higuruma's cursed technique to awake, ending up in the deaths of the Judge and Prosecutor that contributed for the wrongful conviction.

Along those chapters, we get to see two very interesting things: Firstly, the fact that Higuruma actively chose to be a lawyer, instead of pursuing a career as a judge. Second, his stance and lines about truth, especially this one: "Even if no one else does, I want to keep my eyes open."

Higuruma, for me, is a prime example of how someone moved by truth and justice can become a self-righteous, cynical individual (I'll refrain from the word "villain" because he wasn't ever an actual "villain" in the story). From the get go, when we get more information on his past, we can see his mental state slowly declining as he gets progressively more overworked fighting an unwinnable fight. 

We have some very important pieces of information from chapter 158: Japan has a 99% conviction rate. The public opinion about defendants is that they're always guilty. Higuruma earns little, works a lot and his job is usually trying for a miracle, to be that 1%. And, finally, that Higuruma chose to fight an unfair system from within. 

That not only has huge parallels with the world of cursed energy, but is one the most important messages I feel that JJK is building up to — you can't reform a broken system from within, because structurally and systematically unfair systems will always push things back into a state of unfairness / status quo. We see this when Gojo says, at the beginning of the manga, that even if he killed all the higher ups at that point in time, other assholes would just take their places. To a more fundamental level, we see it in Yuki's failed efforts to end curses from the perspective of a jujutsu sorcerer, and the way the story is progressing towards a complete rupture with the current state of cursed energy altogether to give place to something new.

The message is: To fight an unfair system from within and by its own rules is and always will be a losing game.

Now to Higuruma's fallout, we have a perfect storm for what happened to him — an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. 

I'll dive a little into criminal law (and c.l. procedure) and make many oversimplifications to get a point across, so I apologize to any other criminal lawyers out there reading this and cringing at the oversimplifications.

In theory, the Criminal Justice System should be preoccupied with the truth. Criminal Law, in essence, is attributing a penalty (prison, fine, death, etc.) to an act (to kill, to rob) described by law as a crime. In that regard, then, one could only suffer said penalty if they actually committed the act that the law described as being a crime. 

Where does truth come into place here?

To investigate if something happened in the world of facts (the real, concrete world) is essentially a search for truth, which to me is very telling of Higuruma's choice in becoming a criminal defense attorney. 

In an unfair system in which 99% of people are convicted, it'd make no sense for this man to become a prosecutor. The prosecution is already benefiting from the system, considering the way the scales are tipped. That's a given.

But regarding the judgeship, things become more interesting. In a fair criminal justice system, the judge is forbidden to engage in probationary activity (which means, basically, that the judge cannot search for evidence, investigate or look for witnesses, he can solely analyze what the defense and prosecution bring to him in order to give a verdict — the judge does not engage in the most important activity in finding the truth).

Why can't the judge do that?

Because when the presumption of innocence is in place, anyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, ergo, if there is not enough evidence to convict, the person must be acquitted. If the judge engages in that activity, they'd be taking on the prosecution's job — to prove the occurrence of a given criminal act. We have separate places for judging and prosecuting for a reason.

The scales are already in favor of the prosecution (they literally have THE STATE’S aid ikn the form of police forces to investigate and taxpayer money to foot costs during criminal lawsuits), so anything that might end up harming or weakening the presumption of innocence is strictly forbidden, including having the judge engage in probationary activity. If the lack of evidence is enough to acquit someone, then having the judge searching for evidence automatically harms the presumption of innocence, because if there is not enough evidence to convict someone, the judge MUST acquit. 

In that scenario, then, the best place for someone who wants to search and defend the truth against unfairness is the Defense stand, clearly. 

Everything said up until now about how the criminal justice system should work is just the theory, however. The reality of it is far sinister. The criminal justice system is a machine perfectly conceived to chew out those who fight for fairness, because fairness is not one of its main goals. It's main goal is serving as an instrument of power (in the most Foucaultian sense of the word) and control over citizens and, to some degree, appease collective concerns about crime rates and violence by making examples out of people, whether they're guilty or not (I could go on a tangent here for hours about the criminal justice system, capitalism and protection of private property by the state, but let's not do that, lol). 

That's why Keita's trial is the perfect storm to break Higuruma's psyche so deeply. All the systematic unfairnesses that exist in the Japanese Criminal Justice System chomp away his ideals — one might say, what constitutes the very core of who he is — and unceremoniously spits it right back in his face. 

Independent defense lawyers are systematically in a worse position regarding resources to gather evidence in their client's favor; it's easier to convict someone who's already under the gavel than to start a new investigation on somebody else and spend even more taxpayer money; to convict a person whom the people deem as guilty soothes the public opinion regarding how well the criminal justice system actually works to "keep society safe from these foul criminals" (not human beings); the appeal is a limited resource in most criminal justice systems, so after one gets their innocence verdict overturned, to get it back is extremely hard.

Everything worked perfectly to break every inch of Higuruma's ideals. It's no use for you to be the only one willing to stare truth in its eyes if everyone else looks away because it's more convenient to let the unfair gears keep turning the way they do. You'll give yourself to unnecessary suffering meanwhile nothing ever changes. This could even help draw a parallel between Higuruma's and Geto's fallouts: to realize how broken the system is, how you can't break a wall with the toy hammer the wall builders give you, and how lonely/depressing/infuriating of an experience it is to realize all this and still know there is absolutely nothing you can do. 

The game is rigged, and if someone ever so chooses to not play by those rules, they're viciously punished.

Now that we've gotten to the breaking part, let's see how it manifests in Higuruma's own cursed technique and domain expansion.

The broken idealist and the cynicism

Someone had made an amazing post about how Higuruma's domain expansion was a perfect demonstration of his own cynicism at the moment his abilities were awakened, but I couldn't find it! So OP, if you by any chance end up reading this, HMU, because what you said will be featured here. (Edit: found it. Thanks, Eugie! The post can be accessed here, and @wolke17 made a deeper analysis after it, take a look at their profile)

In order to talk about Higuruma's cynicism stemming from his disappointment with the criminal justice system, we need to talk about his domain, so that's what we're gonna do now.

In his domain expansion, we meet his shikigami, Judgeman, who is an all-knowing creature responsible for giving off the verdict at the end of the debates between the two parties. According to Higuruma, Judgeman knows absolutely everything about someone's life the moment they enter his domain.

All is well up until now, isn't it? Hm, not so much. There are some very serious philosophical conundrums to having an all-knowing being bestowing judgment (skeptical catholics went crazy over this for many centuries). 

Think about this: in a Courtroom, we have a judge who needs to get to know the facts, and is presented with two different hypotheses about the facts (prosecution and defense), for which the evidentiary activity (collecting evidence) is needed to support one hypothesis or the other. Given that we abide by the presumption of innocence, you don’t even have to prove the defense’s hypothesis to get an acquittal, as long as the prosecution one isn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

What’s the issue with having a judge that is omniscient? 

First off, why would two hypotheses need to be confronted if the judge already knows the answer — if the person did or did not commit the crime?

On another note, now going into more of a “well he’s just judging based on the allegations”, it gets deeper. We have a judge that knows what happened, but simply decides based on the parties arguments. This is a huge issue because firstly, it obliterates the value of truth in the justice system — if criminal law is attributing to a particularly reprehensible action a penalty, and judgeman knows if that action took place or not, yet doesn’t decide according to what happened, but according to who best defends their point of view, it annihilates the very own reason for collecting evidence, the reason that a judgment needs to take place and the reason for criminal law even existing.

In Higuruma's domain, then, truth becomes the least important thing. In there, who has the better argument wins the debate. The judgment that happens within Deadly Sentencing is not about truth, it’s about the game's rules (or, more specifically, his domain's rules) and who plays them better, which makes it all the more ironic that Higuruma sees so much “potential” in the Culling Games due to its rules and established mechanics.

In a courtroom setting, having an omniscient judge is always, in any scenario, a cynical game of wits, and it fits perfectly with the philosophical fallout Higuruma experienced after Keita's conviction. His perspective got switched from "who deserves to win according to the truth" to "who plays the game better". He lost faith in the criminal justice system, and to a deeper degree, he lost faith in fairness in the world as a whole.

And that's why we can arrive at the conclusion that Higuruma is, in essence, a "broken idealist" character: he's not pandering to the idea that "the winner should be the one who plays the rules better” because he truly believes it; he's doing it out of resentment, because he got time and time again punished and was subjected to a hell of a lot of suffering for upholding his own ideals of truth and fairness. He's not acting, he is reacting to being unraveled and broken the way he was.

It also shows in his discourse regarding the weak, and the way he tries to place himself above what he dubs “the ugliness of people”, as the only one who sees the truth (“darkness is only darkness / people are ugly”). It’s a mirror: he experienced his own helplessness (or weakness) with Keita’s conviction, so in an effort to try and protect whatever is left from his own psyche, he’s actively denying how helpless he really feels by putting himself above the “truly weak”. 

In the end, however, Higuruma kept his idealistic essence alive instead of giving himself over to the story that he told himself as a defense mechanism, unlike Geto, which is why it was possible to bring him back.

Even broken, he remained an idealist at heart.

written by tsukimefuku ㋡ comments and reblogs are appreciated. do not copy, translate or repost. copycatting is for losers.

[rivendell-poet]

May I request what the Fellowship would do if Reader was terrified of thunderstorms? Like, hide under beds/tables level of terrified. If not, that's perfectly fine! If yes, take your time and please don't feel rushed!

Thanks so much for the request - sorry it took so long, but hopefully you enjoy this! Also thank you so much for the last part - it really means a lot <3 (Will confess I'm lucky enough to not be terrified of thunderstorms, so instead based this off my experience of hating the dark. Hopefully it's still enjoyable.)

*･༓˚✧❝𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐨'𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬❞‧͙⁺˚༓˚✧ « headcanons »

○ Aragorn ○ Legolas ○ Gimli ○ Boromir ○ Merry ○ Pippin ○ Sam ○ Frodo ○

GN!Reader | TWs : Stress/fear (over thunderstorms and loud noises) | Wordcount : 1.6k

𝐀𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐧

✧ Is actually very knowledgeable of your struggles. Grew up with the Sons of Elrond (who have the horrible luck of heightened hearing while still being frightened by thunderstorms).

✧ Always gives you time to prepare beforehand; as soon as he can sense a storm coming he will tell you - and is more than happy to make a plan with you.

✧ Doesn’t judge if you hide under something, and will often join you if you’re ok with the company. Lies down next to you and gently talks, trying to drown out the thunder without being too noisy.

✧ If you’re in the wilderness he’ll be by your side in an instant, talking to you and trying to get you to focus on him. (And makes sure to keep you away from trees.)

✧ Instead of trees, he’ll get his cloak out and hug you - pulling it over you so that you can’t see the thunder and have the weight of something above you.

✧ Assuming there’s a big enough height difference, he likes to rest his head on yours when you do this - telling you an unrelated story or whispering comforts.

✧ Very gently covers your ears while in a hug, guides your eyes back to his and tells you that you’re going to be fine, and to keep focusing on him.

𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐬

✧ Also not great with thunderstorms, although that’s more for sensory issues than it is terror.

✧ His tactic is to stare at them so he can see it as it makes a noise - therefore it’s less startling to him. This does actually help cheer you up, seeing him in a starring contest with the weather.

✧ When you dive under the table he sits next to you - cross-legged and much to serene.

✧ Tells people that it’s his sensory issues and you’re there to comfort him if you don’t want people to find out about it.

✧ Gets so used to walking under something that he starts to walk under something even if you aren’t with him - then looks around for you.

✧ Finds white noise comforting so will often hum to you and to himself.

✧ Asks if you have any requests, and you two teach each other songs to hum while you’re waiting out the thunderstorm.

✧ Becomes a little game - try to guess the song in the shortest possible time (both of you insist that you’re the better player).

✧ Always gets sad that he can’t go under trees, although in turn he’s bright when you're in an open space. It’s pretty reassuring to see him grin in the rain, the only things around you being him and the earth.

✧ (Constantly asks Aragorn if there’s a storm coming up. Has sometimes forgotten he’s asked the ranger and immediately does it again.)

𝐆𝐢𝐦𝐥𝐢

✧ To be honest with you, Gimli doesn't entirely get the fear of the loud noise - he's grown up in mining communities, so that's pretty constant.

✧ However, he completely understands the general fear of it - as he dislikes it too. The sky should not be able to send down bolts of death, in his humble opinion.

✧ Will sometimes startle when there's a particularly loud noise, but tries to prevent you from seeing it so he doesn't worry you.

✧ "It just caught me off guard - that's all!"

✧ Naturally takes note of the different alcoves and other things you could hide under. Gives you notes on their pros and cons.

✧ Will compliment whatever you find yourself under. Looks around at it and nods wisely. (Gives weirdly knowledgeable and hyper-specific answers).

✧ Realises that dwarves must have something to combat the loud noises, and promises to get you the finest in all the land (once this quest is over).

✧ Gives you the dwarven equivilant of ear-defenders. One in every colour he can find.

𝐁𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐫

✧ Boromir is also really scared of thunderstorms. Is someone who would also love to hide under beds and tables.

✧ You don't realise until there's a large crash of thunder and you see him flinch for a second before straightening.

✧ When asked if he's ok he does that awkward evaluation between trying to pretend it doesn't bother him while also not wanting to invalidate your feelings.

✧ Joins you the second you ask him too, visibly calms down and thanks you.

✧ Tries to teach you the techniques that Faramir taught him. Keeps his mind off the storm by telling you stories and trying to make you laugh.

✧ Does hugs quite a lot - listening to his heartbeat instead of the thunderstorm. (It still jumps a little bit he's trying.)

✧ Eventually he's the one dragging you under tables, thunder being seen and catching each other's eye.

✧ Always pulls the duvets of beds when your with him, and is surprisingly good at making essentially pillow-forts. Insists that these blankets are all the protection he needs against the storms.

𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲

✧ Is a big believer in blanket fort supremacy as well. Anyone who isn't afraid of the storms?

✧ Well, their bedroll has been commandeered for the greater good. Can generally get six or seven and then invites you in.

✧ Makes it very obvious that he's the one who made it - and you are his distinguished guest.

✧ It's actually very good at muffling the noise from the thunder, especially when combined with the gentle with noise he creates.

✧ Doesn't really talk out of fear of overstimulating you - but certainly talks if that's what you want - and instead creates more subtle noise (the sound of pages turning, a little laugh as he reads a line).

✧ Also always checks with Aragorn to see if there's thunder coming. Keeps a little notebook of dates and predictions.

✧ Is great with tables and beds because it's legitimately comfy for him to fit under - makes sure you don't feel bad for the fact he's in these positions.

𝐏𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧

✧ Has a mix of thinking it looks cool, but also hating the sound of it.

✧ Will join you in the pillow fort and cuddle up next to you, putting his ears on your body so he can be comfortable and not hear anything.

✧ Often scouts ahead to see where you can duck under and makes sure to tell you beforehand. Hides blankets near to furniture he knows you might want to dive under, or puts it directly under it if it won’t be seen.

✧ Braves the outside world to go and get snacks for the two of you.

✧ Sometimes will say ‘you cover my ears and I’ll cover yours’

✧ This ends with the two of you covering each others ears while staring into each other’s souls.

✧ If Pippin is looking out at the thunder he gives them names and personalities, and jokingly tells you what they’re doing. Will assign the same name to different thunder-bolts and pretend it’s the same one.

✧ “Oh, look - Sherry is back again! She’s a lot smaller though, not as feisty anymore.”

𝐒𝐚𝐦

✧ Is the first to notice you get anxious when Aragorn mentions there’ll be a storm coming.

✧ As soon as there’s a quiet moment he’ll go to you and ask if you’ll be ok in it and what he can do to help. Reassures you that Pippin has trouble with it too, so it’s really nothing to be ashamed of.

✧ Will do practically anything to help you. If you need him, he’s there. He’s there so quickly.

✧ Most of what you need he actually already has; if you want something to cover up the loud noise? He’s got a few different textures, and he can probably change the colours for you.

✧ Do you need a snack as a way to distract something? He’s got so many, all of the snacks and will make something for you?

✧ Do you just need a bit of white noise to distract from the thunder? Sam’s not as good at telling stories as Mr. Bilbo is, but he can certainly try as hard as he can to make the story entertaining for you.

✧ Also very receptive to any and all feedback you have. If something isn't working, or there’s something that’s acting up more than usual, he wants you to let him know.

✧ Actively asks for feedback once the ordeal is over, and checks in on you for a longer time afterwards than most of the others.

𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐨

✧ Frodo is the quietly supportive friend, the one who you truly know doesn’t judge you when you do this.

✧ If you express an interest in him staying with you, he’ll be right behind you when the thunder starts - holding a book and a cloak while seeing where you’ll choose.

✧ He opens doors for you, or holds up tablecloths if that’s the closest thing nearby,

✧ Even if you don’t ask him to stay with you he’s still nearby, generally with a book and glancing over to you every chapter break.

✧ The storm never seems to phase Frodo, nor does he spend time dwelling on it or acknowledging it, so he’s actually a very calming presence.

✧ If you ask him to talk to you he happily will, about whatever’s caught his interest or a passage out of whatever book he’s reading.

✧ Once you ask enough he keeps a specific book as his ‘thunder book’ so that you don’t miss anything, and he can enjoy the plot with you instead of having to explain it to you.

✧ There’s one occasion where you simply hide without thinking, and are glad when he doesn’t come to find you - knowing anything more than thunder would have tipped you over the edge.

✧ And then, when the thunder dies down and you get out, you see Frodo in the corner of the room.

✧ He barely says anything as you get out, just looking up and giving you a little nod - checking that you’ll be safe. And confirming he’ll be here for you, always.

A/N : Hope you enjoy! And sorry for not posting on scenarios, first date is quite a big one but should be done pretty soon. I hope. Also, thanks so much for the kind words and support everyone's given me - as well as passing 100 followers! Genuinely so thankful so many people are liking my work, and I'm glad I can make our days a little better <3

thank you for reading *･༓˚✧ Taglist : @celestialhole, @starwars2222, @xiaoseminence, @withasideofmeg, @ferns-fics, @chewgazellechew, @fleurdemiel-145, wish to be tagged?

[nadg-ttrpg]

Controversial opinion (?)

The magnus archive role playing game (TMARPG) is a good TTRPG. But it's not a good Magnus Archive TTRPG, it's a good TTRPG that happens to be set in a Magnus Archive universe. Hear me out. It's published by Monte Cook Games, using their Cypher System. The Cypher is a good system, used in hits like Numenera or The strange, but it's not adapted to play a Magnus Archive game. They tried really hard to make it work, and they made very interesting changes to the base system. From the health tracking making you more fragile to the eponymous Cyphers being more like abilities than magic objects like in other games. And honestly, yeah, it works! It's a great investigation game, cthulhu style, allowing you to play a crew of archival assistants or a similar group, trying to survive unspeakable horrors and maybe stop rituals. But. BUT.

Magnus Archives, the podcast, isn't just about the investigation. It's an office comedy, and a tragedy, and - most important to me - a reflection on morality, mortality and humanity. It's a podcast that, to quote a tumblr post I saw once, "spend the first 100 episodes showing you irredeemable inhuman monsters... and the 100 next asking you to change your mind on them by showing the protagonist is becoming one". It's a story talking of powers beyond human understanding, but mostly of the humans stuck with them. Asking how far you'll go for a taste of power, how far you'll go to survive, how far you'll go to protect the ones you love. Showing times and times again that getting the power you crave will divorce you from humanity, and that this pull is hard to resist. And that to stay somewhat human, you need anchors, friends, connections. And frankly, there is nothing in the TMARPG to encourage this kind of story. I agree, this is mostly a me problem. My standard is that when I play a licensed RPG I want the original story to be possible with the rules as written. Maybe this is too much to ask. I genuinely don't know. But it's the rule by which I judge a game. When I play an Alien TTRPG, I want the monster horror and the PC betrayals to be encouraged by the rules. When I play a Lord of the Ring TTRPG I want mechanics for travel, honor and temptation. When I play a My Little Pony TTRPG, I want the game to help me with the magic and the friendship. And when I play TMARPG, I'd like the rules to encourage the same themes as the podcast. I could do this freestyle with the rules as is, GM my way out of this, request the help of the players with their backstory and character arcs. Or I could turn to an other TTRPG. Enter Unknown Armies (UA), an occult game about broken people conspiring to fix a broken world - sounds familiar? It wasn't made with TMA in mind, it was published before the podcast even existed. It also have it's flaws, I heard it described as "taking itself too seriously" many times. But despite this, UA drinks at the same source than TMA.

They both embrace a Jungian philosophy gosh that sounds so pedantic, the idea that the collective unconscious of the humanity create archetypes, powers, Fears. They both feature relationships as both something that needs to be cared for and link to humanity. They both have heavy use of trauma and mental breakdown, depicted as realistically as possible. Actually, UA link them directly to your stats. Witnessed violence? You can react either by being hardened and unfazed by it, or traumatised and deeply troubled by it. This will make it either easier for you to fight, or to dodge. I love it. They both have a supernatural system where you can only get those powers by acting in ways that make you an outcast, be it by being an arsonist, someone living their life through a camera lens tape recorder anyone?, or even someone fascinated by the flesh and blood. They both have weird artifacts. They both have ways to become avatars. And you can actually have a power imbalance betwen the PCs! You can have an avatar and an "antechrist's plus one" is the same party. They are made for each other. TLDR: Unknown Armies is a better Magnus Archive TTRPG than The Magnus Archives Role Playing Game. TMARPG is a good TTRPG, but not a game that actually uses the themes of the podcast. If you want to play an investigation team cthulhu-style, by all mean, play TMARPG. If you want to play a tragedy about inhumanity and power, play Unknown Armies. The Magnus Archives is a podcast written by Jonathan Sims and distributed under a CC NC-SA-BY 4.0 license. Thanks for listening.

[heliosobjections]

in both your art and fics you portray phoenix in such a lovely, raw, compelling way that i personally think the aa fandom could learn a lot from. there's so much consideration for canon and media analysis and i love the way a lot of these wholly subvert the sometimes frustrating tropes that stem from shoehorning characters into having certain traits due to which archetype they fit into "best." thank you so much, genuinely, for sharing your work!! they're always such a delight to see/read and i hope to have the courage you do to post what i want without fear of being bullied out of what was meant to be a fun creative space

Thank you bunches <3. My best advice is to talk like you're the only one in the fandom.

Writing from the standpoint as someone who's only (fully) seen the Phoenix Wright Trilogy.

I think a lot of people stop judging Phoenix at: “He's the player character and we're meant to project ourselves onto him.” And while that's true, there's a reason why he's so naturally relatable and a character within his own right. Unlike, say… BotW/TotK Link (because I'm currently playing it again), he has a discernable and distinct personality, based on Shu Takumi and how he would interact with the world and people of Ace Attorney. He's written to be the Straight Man in a world of Funny Men. He's the most normal guy in this world, but is still ready to believe in the occult/paranormal and other weird AA shit before he's given any evidence that it actually exists, because he is still a part of this world. He serves as an effective conduit between the player and the game and helps suspend the player’s .

These concepts of Phoenix being the Sun to Miles’s Moon, or the Dog to his Cat, the Sunshine to his Grump, only serve to water down and needlessly separate two characters that are, in my opinion, more compelling when their similarities are considered. Phoenix is a mean, bitter man who has insulted even his own friends. He makes morbid and downright weird jokes, gets insecure about his appearance, and rarely puts his hands on people. He's sly, cunning, and sharp. He's polite enough to people's faces, but is judgemental in his monologue. But in those monologues he also has moments of genuine empathy or sympathy for friends and strangers. Because despite low-key being a jackass, he's a ride or die for anyone who needs him. Most of all, he’s intuitive, and an amazing judge of character.

To compare him to Miles. Both lawyers are strong-willed and intelligent, with their main goal in their profession being to find the absolute truth. They both have the capacity to be assholes but try their best to show people they care, mostly through their actions. They'll put themselves in physical and occupational danger for each other and other people. They’re both reserved and don’t speak about themselves much, but both can carry conversations under the right circumstances. They have a deep respect and trust in one another. They both acknowledge and appreciate romance without explicitly stating that’s what they want for themselves. I would even go as far to say they're both equally married to their jobs.

But what makes them different is class and experience. Unlike Miles, Phoenix is a rookie who doesn’t have a (known, recent) family history in criminal law; Miles had Gregory. And wouldn't have the means to study law; Miles had Gregory, then von Karma. The people they are/were surrounded by are different too, with Phoenix befriending Maya and other poorer clients— people without power. Miles was associated with people like von Karma, Damon Gant, and Lana Skye, all very powerful people.

After all of his connections crumbled (except Franziska), Phoenix and Miles shared connections/friends, especially Maya, Larry and Gumshoe. However his class status never lowers to Phoenix’s, and Phoenix’s never rises to Miles’s. That’s partially because of Phoenix’s narrative role as the underdog, and partially because of the fact that he will always be paid less as a private defense attorney with few cases than the state-appointed prosecutor. 

Some smaller things they differ on: Miles lacks superstition (especially with spirit mediums because of his past). Where Phoenix is intuitive, Miles is logical. Phoenix is a lateral thinker and Miles is vertical. Miles is introverted and Phoenix… an ambivert.

I think the reason why Phoenix is so mischaracterized in fanon is one big thing: Subtlety. As I said at the beginning of this, Phoenix is written to be relatable. Therefore many of his character traits are subdued compared to characters like Maya, Miles, Franziska or Gumshoe. I need you to realize that Phoenix doesn't even laugh in the PWT. It's also why we have no backstory for him besides the class trial and Turnabout Memories. However the team speculates about his past, mostly describing him as an average, lower-middle class bachelor (with a dog??? I heard that once but can't find the interview so that's up in the air.). But for the most part they don't try to dictate what fans want to see in him. And despite Takumi's views that he might have studied sequential art or theater in college… Phoenix is only described in game as an “Art Student”. That is SO vague, he could've studied CHEMISTRY.

Ace Attorney canon is rich with characterization and I’ll always love it so much more than fanon. I hate how fanon makes Phoenix out to be incompetent, stupid, but cute and trying. That’s not him! I hate when people make him out to be just a complete asshole too! He’s just some dude! He’s a normal guy who was written in the 2000s! With disorders! And he’s Going Through It as we speak!

Funnily enough, I think the fact that Phoenix is so misunderstood and comes off as unlikeable to the audience the moment we’re not privy to his perspective is so fitting. What do you mean Beanix is too different from Phoenix? It’s still him!

This response is almost 2 pages long. In another post, I’ll describe my own views about Phoenix based on what I’ve talked about here.

Evidence below.

Common Knowledge evidence I didn't feel the need to/couldn't include:

All of Phoenix and Miles's connections should be clear to everyone. No need to explain. I also don't think there's much need to show that Phoenix and Miles trust and respect each other since it's literally the turning points of their relationship in JFA and T&T.

Narrative roles are difficult to explain without author's input, but easy to infer through analyzing all interactions between characters.

I CAN'T find the transcript for when you show Miles the picture of Dahlia but know that's what I'm referring to when I say Miles isn't superstitious. Phoenix and Miles have a conversation about spirit channeling being a sham.

"He could've studied chemistry" assuming Phoenix was getting a Bachelor of Art, there are plenty of majors that fall under that, including chemistry. Idk if that needed to be expanded on but... I over explain lol

Also I could've sworn I saw something somewhere that Suekane said he wanted to be work on manga too.

[tapiokauwu]

sorry, this is gonna be a bit rant-ish, but I gotta do it because it's getting on my nerves. I may sound a bit harsh or aggressive and I apologize in advance, I don't mean to insult or be rude to anyone, I'm just pissed off and I'm kind of venting here (⁠●⁠´⁠⌓⁠`⁠●⁠) if you're about to read it, PLEASE MAKE SURE TO ACTUALLY READ UNTIL THE END because I will NOT tolerate people attacking me in the comments especially if it's about something I already greatly explained in this post.

ok, so genshin players don't actually read the story/lore. All those people hating on Citlali saying they changed her personality or whatever, ignoring the fact that having different sides you show to different people is completely normal and you can be strong and cool but also have a tsundere-ish side and act cute or awkward in front of some people. If you play her story quest (or whatever it's called since it's a different part of the quests section) and read using you brain you will find out that it's understandable why she acts that way and you will learn more about her past. It's a game mostly based on the story and lore, if you don't like to read or try to understand the plot then just go play some other game. But OF COURSE NOT and you're just going to have all this big prejudice and hate on her without bothering to try to learn more about the character, it's certainly easier to judge based on your first impression of her.

And surely you can have you own opinion, it's your right and I obviously respect that, but at least try to get to know more about her and not just jump to conclusions. Y'all want "complex characters" but can't stand having a character who reacts and behaves in different ways in front of different people, which is, as I already said, completely normal irl too.

And I HATE when I see so many people comment on posts with shit like "I haven't played any of Natlan quests but since everybody is saying this it must be true". Like, EXCUSE ME?? What do you have a brain for? To fill that empty space in your skull?? AT LEAST PLAY THE FREAKING QUESTS BEFORE SHARING "YOUR OPINION", which is not even yours since you said yourself you haven't played any Natlan quests at all. And that's not one singular person, I've seen plenty of those kinds of comments. Why are you just copying what everyone else is saying? What are you, a parrot?? Your brain can and should be used to think about things and analyze the information you got/received, add your personal point of view and create YOUR OWN OPINION that way. What's the point of having a functioning brain if you don't use it? You end up being like those people who follow whatever influencers or their favorite stars say just because they blindly believe it must be true, without stopping to think and act with their own brain. We're all human beings and we can all make mistakes or have some unreliable opinions on different topics (especially when we don't actually know what we're talking about), so you shouldn't 100% believe what someone else says, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S A STRANGER ON THE INTERNET, because they're not a god or a messiah and they can be wrong (of course it's not always voluntarily) just like any other person on this planet.

[linklethehistorian]

So…as a new FNAF player — and by that I mean, a person who has loved this series for four years and counting, but only just got started with actually being able to firsthand play the games — having binged nearly the entire series by now (with just 5-7AM of Security Breach and Help Wanted 2 remaining…until Into the Pit comes out, at least), y’all were actually not cooking with all of the Security Breach hate.

Like seriously, y’all were not cooking.

“Oh, they kiddie-fied it, they took out all of the horror”

…Have you actually fucking played this game? Have you felt the atmosphere? Have you stood in the basement of the Pizzaplex and stared into the old, largely abandoned, rubble and possessed staff bot and trash-ridden, somehow supernaturally still vaguely smoldering tunnels deep underground after taking apart Chica, and for even a single moment in time, looked around and felt the weight of the emotion and the turmoil and the suffering and death that has canonically occurred over the past half a century or more and just…ruminated in it awhile?

Have you felt the experience of weaving between staff bots and murderous animatronics and hiding for dear life while watching the cameras for an opening to escape?

Have you been chased in the claustrophobic vents by something you can hear right behind you, knowing that if you slow down too long or if your sprint meter runs out, it will get you?

No, the horror elements in terms of dialogue aren’t quite as overt as the past titles. No, until you take them apart, most of the animatronics aren’t visually as overtly uncanny in design. But do they need to be for it to be terrifying? Isn’t there more to horror than being overt? Isn’t there something just as unsettling about the subtlety of sugar-coated implications, the liminality of wandering a massive closed mall after dark knowing that you are not meant to be there and no one from the outside world is coming to save you, or would even notice you’re gone?

Hasn’t a lot of that always been a major part of the charm of the FNAF series? Wasn’t the liminality and the suspense of knowing something is coming to get you at any moment — really even more than the actual moment of your death — one of the greatest things the series had to offer in terms of horror?

Is Security Breach as a game — all bugs aside, most of which I should add have been largely fixed by now anyway — really all that bad and “not in the spirit of FNAF”, or are you just judging it based solely upon its color palettes and character design, and putting on your nostalgia-tinted glasses instead of actually looking at things objectively?

Because I think it’s the latter.

Is Security Breach a perfect game? No, far from it — it has flaws and imperfections and yes, glitches, and there are some aspects that I think could have been done better, or that suffered due to wanting to not let the rating go above T. But it is a good FNAF game; I’d even go so far as to say it’s a great FNAF game. It’s probably even somewhere near the very top of the list for me in my binging of the series so far.

Don’t judge a book by its cover — or by the opinions of people who are still stuck back in the earlier days of the fandom and refuse to accept that anything happened after 2017.

There is no “old fandom vs. new fandom”. FNAF is not any less FNAF than it was during the Pizzeria Simulator era. There is no divide except for the one born from a change in the attitudes of a certain portion of older fans, who have developed a sense of entitlement to look down on newer fans/fans who are into the newer games as being “fake” fans or a “different audience”, because they refuse to accept that a “true” older fan could like anything that came out after a certain year.

Your beloved series is still alive and well.

And Security Breach deserves a whole lot more love than it gets.

[inventors-fair]

Counterplay: Increment Commentary

There were a lot of mechanical variants this past week, and a lot of variations on the same mechanical aspects. Amassing, and card draw, and +1/+1 counters on green creatures... Yeah, there are only so many things you can increment in so many ways. I'm kind of surprised by the amount of variance even within those similarities, though, and it's clear that people liked forging their own paths! 

Decades of mechanics and precedent allow us to select what designs work best, how they work best, and what kinds of aspects of MTG will show up when we need them to be bigger and better. I think the one suggestion I would give generally would be to consider the play patterns based not just on your own imaginations but also experiences from limited, from standard interactions, from the world in which everything is a little bit reliant on everything else. There were big swings between ambitions and precedent, mechanically and flavorfully.

There were also arguable differences between what I consider precedent for increments and what's technically incremented, so keep that in mind. Some of this—actually, all of this, because I'm the judge—is my opinion for what I was looking for in terms of direct increments. So keep that in mind: my opinions are totally fine to hand-wave on that front. I'd like to think you're still here because you care about the parts where I say what I think works and doesn't work otherwise, but that's ego speaking.

See a card marked JUDGE PICK? That meant that I liked it enough to either point out something super specific about it or it was in the running for the podium before paring for space. Read on until you're accumulated all that knowledge.

@bread-into-toast — Sprout of the Hate Seed (JUDGE PICK)

Calling combat triggers "incremental" is technically true, but not precisely what I was thinking of for this contest. That goes even more so for the optional trigger there. But maybe I'm being too narrow with my internal definition of "will happen every turn" versus "may perhaps happen every turn," because some of those example cards did kinda get there. I think part of my internal view was considering that you were the one in control of the increment. BTW, all of this is me waxing and musing, so for you and your card specifically, I'll say that this card really got me thinking about what I wanted to mean by increment and what was unspoken. Kinda on me for that.

I do love this card in general, though, although I'd change that trigger to: "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, if it had a +1/+1 counter on it, create a token that's a copy of it. Otherwise, create a 1/1 green Saproling creature token." The reason is because it could be argued that the "it" in the second sentence could refer to the Saproling, or at least someone might be confused by it. Everything else is perfectly awesome for a Gruul design—swingy, big, potentially game-ending, and the kind of rare that would sway you in limited into these colors. Swell job!

~

@cthulhusaurusrex — Elvish Growthcaller / Embodiment of Growth

Big effects into bigger effects are incremental enough, sure. Transforming into Cathars' Crusade on a stick is pretty excellent, and with enough lords or other effects I think that this card could be absolutely powerful when it transforms. The design itself is fine and would be a snap-pick if you're anywhere near green and/or if you wanted to hate because you didn't have the right removal. Mechanics are fairly standard, and that's all good there. I suppose the world around it and the vibes are what I wanted more of, so let's talk about that.

What this card is depicting is the healing/lifegiving power of a young elf that transforms them into a leader amongst their people. This is one of those cases where I feel that "elves connecting to plants" could have used some kind of emotional crutch to separate it from... The word I'm going to use is "expected." This is all flavor talk, so feel free to skip it, because the only actual chance on the card I'd do is making the T in Trample lowercase. For flavor reasons, though, I don't yet feel that kind of surprise that I need to make these fairly straightforward mechanics feel fresh again. Is this an expected mutation among the culture, or a surprise gift of the world's magic? The flavor text isn't giving me anything new here, and its vague poetic styling needs to provide that sense of strangeness, transformation, or change.

~

@dabudder — The Hype

I get this card, for sure. Totally do. It's absolutely not what I was looking for for increments, as it relies on a lot of non-deterministic factors to do...well, anything. But man. The first thing that comes into my head is Throes of Chaos, but much different. I suppose you could search for The Hypes, get them into the graveyard or whatever, but once they're in the graveyard then you need at least one to get it going... And then, to what end? The hype feels kinda let down by having only one extra copy, but having too many would be way too wild. Chain together The Hype until you hit two five-mana-or-less combo pieces, what a deck. Isn't that basically how this deck would work? Geological Appraiser got banned in Pioneer for a reason.

The main point is that this card can only get so big before the hype dies down, unless you're using The Hype to win on the spot. Limited probably wouldn't use this card (although not every card is designed for it, so that's aight) except as a maybe one-off ramp. "Find your combo piece" is effectively all that you'd be doing in constructed effectively. Maybe the randomness being let down by The Hype copying multiple pieces is okay, but even then, this isn't the kind of scaling that's right for an increment contest. What happens at the top? Via the card itself, nothing much. It's hard to evaluate a card that effectively is designed around only itself without assuming the most broken intentions.

~

@feyd-rautha-apologist — Grassy Gnoll (JUDGE PICK)

I imagined this card to be a build-around sleeper hit for constructed. Pinging your opponents' creatures doesn't have to be massive to be effective, right? And if there are two of these things, well, you're in for a treat. It's the return of Temur Staticaster combo! That's all just hype, though. The narrowness of this card at uncommon meant that it wasn't exactly slated for a podium spot given the fact that we had an immense number of awesome cards. Still, despite the name being something that perhaps wouldn't pass the marketing team, I think this card's pretty wonderful.

And aside from that, there's not much of a second paragraph to add here. The "W" in "Ward" should be lowercase, so jot that down. I do want to say: I think that the shortening of a card name to "this creature" was a mistake on WotC's part. Later pronouns can increase text to decrease the following confusion, although this card clears it up enough with the "that" later on. All the same... Look, this card feels great—it eats, shoots, and leaves. Leaves you with an arrow in the back, anyway. I love hyenas and I love the vibes. What more can I say?

~

@frognarch — Avalanche Elemental (JUDGE PICK)

Conversely to the previous card, you could use "this creature" here and I'd be none the wiser. But! This is one of those copying effects that distinctly feels incremental, and by far stronger in limited for it. Evasion and copying and snowballing, well, that's pretty wild. The only question I have for limited power is whether or not the fact that it can get exponential is too much. Blocking the token copy can wear it down for the moment, but if you get a single copy to stay, the board's basically done for. Every turn, swing and swing and swing again. These days, though, a five-mana 3/3 is pretty low. Maybe the environment would redefine it? Hard to say.

I do really love this design, though. I'd replace the "and" with a "then," or just remove the comma from behind the word "combat." Those are the minor potatoes. As for the flavor text, I'm iffy on a couple counts. Firstly, that's not how avalanches happen so jot that down for your nerd notes. Secondly, though, that line of just "the snow fell" doesn't carry much weight with it for me. The card's intent is that these elementals are rising from the alpine and barreling down uncontrollably, but the flavor text makes it seem like the army just got buried in a particularly heavy storm. It speaks to the aftermath rather than the moment, and the card's energy is carried with that moment. Y'know? Gotta match the energy to the action.

~

@grornt — Mangrove Stalker

I'll start off by saying that it's a generally phenomenal design and you should keep this in the files. No notes there. I'll follow that up with the unfortunate part that it doesn't feel quite as incremental to what I was looking for for the contest. As soon as this comes out, you can pop it and get your benefit if you have enough creatures in the graveyard. Inversely, I was looking for a card that started the buildup itself and used itself as a requirement for bigger effects. There's the technical argument, and then the vibe argument.

I guess that this is a design lesson for me for contests. Most of the vibes were totally met, but this is a card that just doesn't hit that specificity for me. All of the values are subtle and I was actually hoping that people would be less subtle this week. I know, shocker! But if this creature got 'stalking counters' whenever you milled a creature or whatever, then drew for each stalking counter, that would be more in-line with the intended increment. And that would, in my opinion, make for a worse card. What happens when a good design clashes with the bespoke niche? I mean, you get me waffling for two paragraphs, that's what. 

~

@helloijustreadyourpost — The Book of Grudges

Multiplying your power as a punishing effect for attacking hurts a lot. Even though your creatures can't block, a single attack from your opponent the turn after you play this will create an additional four power on board, and then six the next turn, and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's a three-mana can't-block token. But we've all heard the adage "math is for blockers," and that really makes this card feel like it's doing more than it should be able to. Landing this early in limited is a game-ender without removal. Landing it late can change the parity immensely—if you have parity. I will say that the can't-block addition is the best choice for ability balance. (Or in this case, cannot-block. You should change that to the contraction.)

Personally, I'd do one of two things: either I'd limit the number of counters that can be placed on the book (which would be okay but not great for the contest, and would add a lot of text), or I'd make the creatures 1/1s. I am also curious about the flavor here, because I want to praise the subtle humor and the cool worldbuilding piece you've made here. Presumably, you have a group of dwarves on whatever world (I'm thinking Eldraine or Kaldheim) with a massive tome of their wrongs that incenses them to combat in a way that's more aggressive than thoughtful. Shortsighted and grumpy! That's a great way to use names and abilities together to create a sense of grounding without even needing art direction.

~

@horsecrash — Bubbling Brew

The design: super cool. The flavor: perfect use of those counters. The math: weird. Too weird. Hold on, I'm actually going to get out a deck and muck around and see how it feels. ... So, I just tried this in a Sultai midrange kind of deck. Played it on turn three. Turn four: basically no hand, played out a card. Turn five: lost a lot of life, but drew cards. Didn't want to play anything because of the life loss. Turn six: draw a lot, lost a lot. I basically didn't want to play any of the cards that I drew because that meant the next turn I'd be incrementally losing all of the other resources.

Quite frankly, I want this effect to be symmetrical. Smokestack-style. Standard can handle it. Or there has to be some other kind of way to mitigate the life loss, because you're discarding so many cards that you're losing basically everything you get at the cost of your life and eventually there's no way to play out all that you have so you just mill yourself or drain yourself. I think this was the first time I've actively played a card in a deck that it was probably intended for, and lemme tell you, it's worth for anyone to do for a card this ambitious. Pros: ambition, flavor, uniqueness. Cons: my life total :(

~

@hypexion — Ignition, Errant Arson / Cataclysm, Vengeant Inferno

The design is decent, but I'm left with a lot more questions than answers. Let's go through those first, because the second paragraph here is for sure going to be talking about the cool stuff you're doing. I feel that the increment-specific design is intended to be like Animar, in that your costs go down with the incremental uptick, so that's understandable. But it feels so localized, and this is a personal thing, but I think the intent of the contest was more universal to the board? Still, out of the technicalities, it makes a lot of sense to me with the buildup. The names are baffling me, though, because I can't place them at all. I assume these are chosen names, but they're... I don't want to say that they're "obvious" for the archetype. "Telling" is the closest adjective I have.

Mechanics are surprisingly in-depth, though, so let's have some fun. Firstly, menace plus potentially killing a small blocker is a great combo, and depending on how much an opponent is forced to block, that may be a perfect way to get those counters, discounting burn/combat tricks. Could even be worth making the front side a 3/3. "Non-player target" is also a great choice on the backside—accounting for Battles, I assume? The only wording choice on the back side I'd change would be to switch first strike and menace (see Kari Zev et. al); I thought "they" should be "that player" but I guess your wording is accurate as well! Both work even if I prefer "that player." The bombiness and dedication to the theme is on point, even if some of the details are evading me.

~

@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Tyvar, Hero in the Dark

Sorry about not saving this one the first time—I definitely saw it, and I went through the inbox a second time, and it just flew under the radar. So let's talk about it now! And part of that is me wanting to hear the thought process for this card, because as a mythic, it's possible that it's really good, but I'm not entirely convinced. Omen Hawker was the first card to come to mind, although this one is distinctly more powerful—but just as narrow. Here's the question I'm left with: in what environment would this be considered a mythic in terms of gameplay versatility? Where are the most activated abilities that one would want to do postcombat or during combat?

Maybe it's just me, but I feel that this would've been a fine rare instead of a mythic. The general design is fantastic, though, and it works quite well with the other Tyvar. And, I can see from the past precedent that Tyvar has a little bit of "activated abilities matter" from the past. Everything shows that you've done your homework here. I feel 'whelmed' by the overall effect, though. Attack, counter, make mana—that's all fine. Where do we go from here? Boasting is potentially valid, I suppose, but again, I would liked to know a little bit more about your vision. I'm imagine there was a lot build up in the process that maybe didn't translate into demonstrating this card's utilitarian strength. (Also: love the name, 10/10)

~

@melancholia-ennui — Creeping Misery (JUDGE PICK)

Yep, that's an alternate wincon for black, very much in the spirit of the contest. Once more we're delving into the world of black enchantments. Was there a particular reason we had six mono-black enchantments this week? I'm not creeping on anyone's misery here, but I find it fascinating. Anyway! Underworld Dreams is one of the first cards that come to mind when people think about BBB punishing enchantments, but this card's more along the lines of... Well, it's got quite a pedigree! Bloodchief Ascension, Fraying Sanity, and more... And yet it's not until you start to pick apart the card that you see how all these influences turn into something original. I think that it's reasonable to call this card more of a constructed build-around but the limited potential is there.

And in limited, you're going to have a lot fewer chances to save yourself and find answers if this hits the board, because things will be trading all the time. You only need one copy to lock someone out of the game, because everyone's going to be getting rid of creatures, especially you. Having that BBB restriction to prevent this from being even remotely splashable ensures that only dedicated decks can make it work. Obviously it's a pain in the butt to deal with for limited, but some cards are just like that. With our limited space this week, I still wanted to showcase this card for being overall just plain good. Pedigree matters sometimes, and this is a well-worded well-executed enchantment. Thumbs up!

~

@nine-effing-hells — Exponential Grower

I completely forgot what expend was for a moment there. For anyone reading this who also happened to forget, expending was the raccoon-themed mechanic of Bloomburrow where you expended X as you spend your Xth mana to cast a spell in a single turn. I think I understand expending as a mechanic that would be reasonable for Strixhaven! You have these students who are putting a lot of mana into casting bigger and better spells, so that's fair, or maybe Quandrix could just be that home, as they're a growth-themed school. I think reminder text might've been appropriate, though, because let's be real, expend was...not a memorable mechanic.

As for how this card works, I think incremental growth is a little bit problematic, because it essentially tops out at eight unless you're playing a massive EDH game, and this card isn't especially playable except in those unworldly dedicated decks, which have other and better options. Having a 16/16 trampler isn't bad by any means, of course, but in terms of incremental cards... Well, maybe I'm being too strict with the definition, because getting that 16/16 is pretty rad. I guess between the top-off and the expend stuff, this card feels decent—but that's about the limit. I'd like to see this card in a Quandrix-expend-Strixhaven world, and it's a fair design. Having the limit be pragmatic instead of mechanical doesn't feel great for this contest, but I wouldn't really change the design.

~

@piccadilly-blue — Press Gang

You said it yourself in your submission, so I'm not gonna go gushing over this card as a paramount of progress. It's good, though so liiiiiike... Anyway. Getting more and more power with your Pirate Army is going to get out of hand pretty fast, but not in a way that's not deal-with-able, considering, like... They're two creatures that can be fought against with the various tricks in black and white via combat and in green via big stuff. But, you have extra help with evasion to get your Treasures in these colors, so you're gonna have that going for you. Is it any surprise that this card's pretty much exactly what's reasonable for a set that would call for it?

The flavor text is good as well. I can see the head of a gang walking down the port with a sword in hand, smirking as they lead a hooting and hollering band of miscreants. It feels a little off that there's no Threaten effect with this card, though, and considering that there were other effects like that in the Ixalan era of piracy, I wonder if there was an opportunity to have that come up here? Maybe the flavor text could've been more in reference to bigger crews having more fun or whatever. I guess that's not the point, though, and again, not bad at all. Take a pat on the shoulder and don't check your pockets until your wallet and I are at least two states away.

~

@real-aspen-hours — Incremental Research (JUDGE PICK)

Remember to get your rarity on if you're doing text submissions, folks. But that's neither here nor there, because I imagined and hoped that this would be a rare card. Plenty of research goes into making this work for sure, and it's one of those things with high risk and high reward. After a certain point, there aren't going to be many spells left unless you're doing X spells. Where I really see this popping off is with extra turn spells. From mana values 5-10, there are a number of excellent ones. I guess that's if you're playing solitaire, though; normal burn/control/value stuff is fine too.

I think this card significantly rewards strong deckbuilding. It's possible for this to be playable in limited if you really work for it, even if it becomes not very useful after a certain point. But isn't that part of the flavor? You have to do your research, you have to really make it work, you have to use your knowledge. It wouldn't fit this contest, but I think this card could've been even stronger if you were forced to either add OR remove a counter from the enchantment. Still, that's messing with other powers, and doesn't help for this card for this specific contest. It's pretty good overall, and I like the choice of skill intensity.

~

@roxbot — Furnace, Fierce Protector

This card could be perfectly fine in the right environment. The major issue is that, for all intents and purposes, it's a french vanilla mythic that doesn't do anything but get bigger. It doesn't necessarily affect the board, but it plays into a couple of specific strategies, perhaps. Looking at what's in Standard right now, there's not a great comparison. The question of what this card does hangs over it. As I was reading it, I actually thought that these were oil counters and not charge counters at the beginning, and that's a whole other thing—what kind of deck do you have to build to make this work, really, and is it worth it just for this kind of body? I'm not entirely convinced, even in a set that would use an immense amount of charge counters.

Couple of wording changes, by the by. Names are usually replaced by "this creature" as of Foundations, and that would work best here. The "on permanents" should be "among permanents" in the first line. Rules things: if you have no charge counters out when you play this card, it'll actually die as a state-based action, because when the spell itself resolves the P/T check will see it as a 0/0 before the trigger goes on the stack. That's why cards like The Mimeoplasm are worded the way they are. Last note, "start" should be "beginning" there. Overall, I think there were a few tweaks, but the base judgement is that I feel the power level is too low and too narrow for the impact it needs.

~

@sparkyyoungupstart — Detesting Beast

I think that this card would be awesome in a multiplayer set or in a Commander precon! I also think that introducing the monarch mechanic in 1v1, for which you are designing, has led to several problems and I'm not gonna wax poetic about an issue that everyone and their cat has been talking about for the last thousand years. Anyway. Let's look at the design choices from THAT perspective. The general take: this card's fun and you're gonna be pretty detested by the end of the game assuming that nobody has removal for it. Nobody wants to be hit by this, and nobody wants to give you the monarch for sure. Everyone suffers. I like that. Puts a good threat out there.

All these synergies makes me really wish that you had actually gone and done a Questing Beast variant with three different mostly unrelated takes like how the original QB had done, though. I think part of QB's strength is the fact that it's just a pain in the butt for different reasons, as opposed to this card with has many reasons but one specific track for it to be awful. The only wording change is to change the 7s to "seven"s. I also like how damage to ANY opponent will yoink the monarch back, BTW, very subtle. I hate this card! I would love to play with this card.

~

@tanknspank — Rats' Nest (JUDGE PICK)

Very curious if you were going for Eldraine or Ravnica here, but either way it's a great use of the name and of the typal agenda. I think Army technology makes a lot of sense for increments overall as well, so I'm glad that folks were using that a lot this week. I'm okay with it being used here not just because having "amass rats" is an awesome thing to see on a card, but also because, yeah, it's just what this contest could want. Get a big enough rat and you're forcing your opponent to make the rat bigger. That's pretty great!

There's just no guarantee that this card's going to get going, and for that reason I wouldn't make a P1P1 out of this in limited. Not that you'll never have rats or that things won't die, but with the right kind of evasion and alternative removal, it makes it difficult for you to 100% guarantee that you'll find a large enough rat to make this card really pop off. It's not a bad rare; it's a slow rare for sure, but eh, what're you going to do. The general vibes are exact, the card's going to do what you want it to in a dedicated rat deck that's not one of the gimmick decks, and so we're all happy with what we see here. I'm really feeling more sewer-y Ravnican rat nonsense with this, but I couldn't tell you why.

~

@wildcardgamez — Benevolent Scalelord

Cumulative upkeep and bolster are two mechanics that I really don't see being that great together, even with the things that you use to make it...well, this. The reality is that cumulative upkeep isn't a great mechanic and wasn't that good even in its heyday; it's a 10 on the storm scale for a reason. Bolster is also one of those mechanics where you're stuck in a strange spot with the kind of creatures that you're able to put counters on, but that's one where I'm more of a personal meh-sayer. As it is, though...why is this a dragon hydra? What kind of weirdness justifies that? A dragon without flying could have hydra-ness in it, but if the two are coming together you bet I'd rather see a flying hydra than a grounded dragon.

The idea of big counters that transfer over to another creature upon death isn't a bad idea at its core. This particular card has a mishmash of strangeness that leads me to wonder why they'd ever be together for a premier set. I feel that the lesson to be learned here is to focus the backwards-looking lens on what should be returning rather than what would be good for a contest. On top of that, the excitement of ideas should reflect the best of both worlds rather than a compromise. Did this need to be a dragon at all? Could you have brought bolster to another creature type?

~

@xenobladexfan — Bloody Knowledge

"If you would draw one or more cards during each of your draw steps, instead put two deal counters on this enchantment. Then you draw X cards and lose X life, where X is the number of deal counters on this enchantment." is how I would word it. There are a few precedent-y cards to go with that, but this is a pretty convoluted card as it is. Drawing two and losing two, then four, then six, then eight... I mean, hey, that late in the game, you better be ready to make some sacrifices. I think that the addition makes some really rough deals out of this spell, but it's a mythic black card draw thing, so for standard sets it's as powerful as you're gonna get. Maybe 2BB would be fine, but that's pushing it just to keep things even.

I guess that the most important thing about this card to critique is the fact that it's pretty much a stripped-down flavor for bargaining, to the point where there's little meat left on the bones. Bare bones are good for chewing, but there ain't much blood in them any longer. Sometimes the basics are important, but there's zero context for what's happening beyond all the "give up blood for knowledge and power" spells that we've seen before. I think that this card needed a little bit more of a personal story touch for me to feel something beyond the good-mechanics. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with the tropes—it's me personally that's wanting more.

~

@yd12k — Sphinx's Grasp

I'm ashamed to say that I'd build around this card. It's a looping wincon, where you can play one, counter a spell, then hold up counterspells in your hand for the rest of the game and then just loop them once or twice a turn until you have literally all the power you could possibly need to strip them of their resources. As a limited card, nobody would play this. Constructed? Absolutely revolting as a wincon and I'd play four of them in a bounce-control deck. The gist is that this just isn't a good play pattern for constructed at all.

Even an uncounterable meta would have a difficult time if this were combined with literally any other aspect. Oddly enough, I'm reminded of Lullmage Mentor, although the ceiling for that card was significantly higher than here. But for that, it's a once-a-turn possible lock. This card is an active wincon that permanently removes further resources. I don't think that there's a world where I can really justify this card, as much as I like it.

~

@yourrightfulking — Invasive Briar

The give-and-take is interesting as a card. It's definitely not what we're looking for for increments. What's increasing, exactly, and by what? The lands that you get to put on the plants can be replayed if you draw into them, but nothing gets bigger the more that something happens. The more lands you play doesn't necessarily correlate to the increase in plants, and the growth of the plants isn't necessarily tied to the fact that you're playing the lands. Give-and-take is a different kind of technology here. I do like this card, though, so take that for whatever you will.

I actually really like this as a limited bomb, to be honest. You can drop this and then do absolutely nothing but play out the rest of the game until you can get a plant army going to annihilate your opponent with your spare lands. Like, that's a fine game plan that requires forethought and survival without being a brainless exercise in abundance. Multiples are a pain and can get overbearing quickly, but there are far more answers in constructed. I think that there are other ways to flavor this to make it a little bit scarier or funnier or more immersive, but that doesn't take away from the mechanical cohesion. Good card...for a different contest.

~

Have fun with myths this week! @abelzumi

[touristbree]

❤️ Pokemon Center Ranking ❤️

The Pokemon center has been a location in every Pokemon game since the beginning, a safe place for the player to stop, heal, and reorganize. The Pokemon center varies between regions, so part of me wonders which is the best one, I created a set of Criteria to judge each Pokemon center:

Design: Overall, how much do I like the design?

Coziness: How comfortable does this place look? Would I feel safe being here?

Environment: How well does the Pokemon Center blend in with the environment? Is it well hidden and feels like a natural part of the town or does it stick out unnaturally?

Theme: How good is the song played? Is it a simple song or does it make you love being at the Pokemon Center?

I did some checking and made a Google form for voting (featured at the end of this post). For now, here’s my opinion on the various Pokemon centers, best to worst.

Blueberry Academy (19)

Design: 3

Coziness: 1

Environment: 10

Theme: 5 (Shares Terarium Theme)

Looking over the history of Pokemon centers, it’s interesting to see how the technology and functions changed over time, Gen 5 saw the Poke-mart put inside it and Gen 8 removed the PC, Blueberry Academy removed the entire building. The “Self-Service Healing Centers” are pokemon centers stripped down to their bare essentials, you heal, buy items at a nearby vending machine, and leave, there’s no calming theme or lady to welcome you, you just heal and leave. The areas they are in don’t take away from the surrounding terarium, but it also doesn’t feel like somewhere I can just sit down and rest

Johto (23)

Design: 4

Coziness: 6

Environment: 6

Theme: 7

I know most of my problems with Johto are its system, but I’m still not a fan; the colors are very extreme, the layout and building are the same as the Red and Bue one, and the music adds this drum-like sound to the original music that really doesn’t help it. Also, the chairs don’t have backs, everyone who sits there will be slouching. Sorry Johto fans, this isn’t my cup of tea… but the Heart Gold-Soul Silver Pokemon Center is.

Johto (HGSS) (26)

Design: 10

Coziness: 3

Environment: 5

Theme: 8

I won’t be including the ORAS or FRLG Pokemon centers since they’re either HD upgrades to their original design or just the Hoenn Pokemon Center. The Johto Pokemon Center in HGSS is a fairly solid design that changes a little to fit some towns, and the interior is two floors, something only one other pokemon center will have and I will always love. The theme is much better, the drums actually work now, but this pokemon center loses in terms of comfort… there’s nowhere to sit and rest.

Kanto (27)

Design: 5

Coziness: 7

Environment: 7

Theme: 8

Ah yes, the original pokemon center and I’d say it’s a pretty nice one, there are seats with backs, a few nice trees, and the theme is a nice base for future themes to build on. This pokemon center is fairly basic, but still a nice place to be, I feel like if pokemon centers were real, they’d look more like the Kanto ones.

Galar (27)

Design: 10

Coziness: 5

Environment: 7

Theme: 5

Similar to the basic Kanto Pokemon center, but has more of a comforting atmosphere that’s able to blend in with a lot of Galarian towns, especially Spikemuth and Ballonlea, even including a variation that’s built into other buildings. The theme is alright and the building is nice, but where the Galar Center fails is coziness, there are no seats, only tables so everyone has to stand.

Alola (28)

Design: 8

Coziness: 7

Environment: 6

Theme: 7

Alola is fairly similar to Galar, the interior is very well-themed to Alola, and even has a cafe to one side to make up for the wooden chairs it has. The exterior, specifically the roof, stands out a lot of the time, and from a lot of towns, and I think the start of the theme leans way too much into it being in Alola. I will admit the one in Po Town is cool, but that’s only one location.

Sinnoh (29)

Design:6

Coziness: 8

Environment: 7

Theme: 8

The Sinnoh Pokemon Center is the same as the Hoenn, Unova, and FRLG Pokemon Center, only missing a glass table, but the tree and bookshelves are nice. Initially the theme had a lower score, but then I heard the night version and I fell in love with it.

Hoenn (29)

Design: 6

Coziness: 8

Environment: 5

Theme: 10

All that’s different some Sinnoh is that there’s a table… it’s fairly similar… but has one big saving grace: THE THEME. It is so calming, it perfectly remakes the original pokemon center theme in a way that makes it more relaxing and maybe even nicer on the ears. I was genuinely caught off guard by how good it is.

Paldea (32)

Design: 9

Coziness: 7

Environment: 10

Theme: 6

I was initially going to do a simple ranking and I was going to put Paldea as second worst… but in a strange way all the things I dislike about Paldea make it a really good pokemon center. The design is fairly simple and doesn’t stand out that much, but that perfectly allows it to blend in with the environments, the massive pokeball sign above it doesn’t take away from the surrounding area but still marks its location. I initially gave it a 5 in coziness, but noticing it has some chairs on the side of it I boosted it to a 7 in coziness, not higher because there aren’t any walls, sure the game doesn’t let pokemon enter the area, but realistically that level 89 garchomp is still getting me.

Kalos (34)

Design: 8

Coziness: 10

Environment: 6

Theme: 10

My first game was XY and I’m happy I got this solid of a pokemon center. This is probably the coziest pokemon center, it has chairs and a long sofa with a corner seat, changing room, the largest pokemon center library out of any region! The theme is so good, the guitar playing the classic theme is so soothing, Kalos and Hoenn have the best music. There is only one thing that holds Kalos back from being perfect, the design, the interior was painted by Caulde Monet himself… but the exterior… Why does such a cozy building have such an industrial roof? You’re telling me if I sit down and look up I’ll see a Costco Roof? This ‘bold’ design heavily contrasts a lot of the towns they’re in.

Unova (35)

Design: 10

Coziness: 9

Environment: 7

Theme: 9

This is the best pokemon center building, it has two floors, the first to combine the pokemon center and the poke-mart, and across from the poke-mart is a cute area to sit and read a book. The entire building reminds me of a mall, a social area for people to gather and get what they need. The theme is probably the most pokemon center, pokemon center theme, comforting and makes me feel like I can relax.Technically this is the best pokemon center but I just love the number one pick even more.

Kitakami (37)

Design: 10

Coziness: 8

Environment: 10

Theme: 9

Many will disagree with me, but the small pokemon center stand in Mossui town is the single greatest pokemon center in all of pokemon. The design is so wonderfully simple and fits perfectly into this small town, a full size pokemon center would be such a distraction and feel so out of place. The theme for it is Mossui town which is also really good, there’s nowhere to sit, but who needs to sit when there’s this Nurse Joy, when she smiles and heals your pokemon, it doesn’t just feel like a friendly woman doing her job, it’s your aunt helping you out and doing a little gossip on the side. Her presence alone clears every other pokemon center in any other region.

Here’s the link to join the discussion and vote on which is best:

Edit: Wrong link! Sorry!

[pizzleyanked]

hi Cat, can you share your thoughts/criticisms of DATV? i think the game is gonna flop.

hey nonners, idk. this is a complicated question. i mean, game's not even out yet so it's unfair to pass judgment on it. i can only judge bioware's approach to pre-release marketing. and i got a lot of thoughts on that.

honestly i think it will be a perfectly serviceable game and technically it will run well (i mean, it has been steam deck verified which tells me that performance was a big concern for devs). i don't think quality has much bearing on the love people can have for a game. and vice-versa. the people who are hyped to oblivion and want to preorder will like it. the people who hate it bc it has poc and queer and disabled characters will still hate it. people who analyze the game's mechanics and writing will dissect the game and be predisposed to finding things they dislike. over time opinions will mellow out and we'll see how the veilguard will be remembered.

i can't trust bioware to make an rpg that i will want to play after their last failures. different people will differ on where the string of failures started. from a quality standpoint my line is dragon age 2. me3 to me failed to deliver on the promise of the first 2 me games save for shining exceptions like the citadel dlc and javik. from a numbers standpoint the last successful game was inquisition which won goty in 2014 due to a serious lack of competition mostly, especially since witcher 3 was pushed back to 2015 (which pains me personally as that put it directly in bloodborne's path to goty in that year). thing is bioware seems to be doing all they can to avoid a flop. veilguard is bioware's hail mary after a string of failures. they are ditching the ea app to capture as many people as possible. the combat has fully careened into action, and although they keep telling us these will be the best companions ever, really, guys, the gameplay is more and more focused on the protagonist alone. the crpg roots of the series are getting cut down to attract a broader audience. perhaps at the cost of ostracizing some like me who enjoy the party-based, party-building mechanics like me.

how well this will go i don't know. on one hand i think bioware has been historically bad at showing the full scope to new and returning players. empress celene has been haunting the edges of the world since origins. the full grasp of her character is locked behind books. afaik some companions have been introduced already in supplemental materials. this sort of move didn't go well for ff15. on the other i think this game missed its window. the gaming landscape of today isn't the same as it was in 2014, and in 2014 the skyrim at home open world design was already outdated. i've been hearing about the crpg renaissance since 2016. i accompanied it. it remained a niche part of gaming until it didn't: baldur's gate 3 released last year to audience and critical acclaim. going forward i expect mainstream rpgs to take cues from bg3. and the mission based almost extraction shooter-esque design that veilguard seems to have might not land as well in 2024 as it would have in 2020.

eta: or it could go well, idk. morrowind and final fantasy were bethesda's and squaresoft's hail maries and saved those studios.

right now the marketing has missed the mark on me. it is patronizing and seemingly needs to punch down the previous da games to prop this one up. it concerns me that the game may be releasing in 2 months (as per jeff grubb) and we quite frankly haven't seen shit. just bioware telling us that trust me, these companions are deep. trust me, the combat is good. trust me, the city built on slave labor is totally the coolest one you've seen. everyone copies fromsoftware but they don't seem to learn to drop a trailer and shut up until they got more things of substance to show. and this isn't just a bioware issue.

[lil-melody-moon]

all of the warm hearted asks!

and for the last question, i'm returning your question back to you but with keith! what would your day look like spent with him?

*cracks my knuckles* Alright, let's do this!

Weather - What do you love most?

Quality time spend with the people close to me. Like my parents, friends - let it be online or in real world, chatting is a form of spending time too.

Dove - How do you express love?

By caring. I can care an insane amount to the point of being annoying. Usually it takes form of listening to someone who wants to rant but is like "That's actually a sensitive topic, I don't know how you'll react" and I say: "Tell me" and I don't judge, I just listen, not interrupting them.

Or there's another form of it, simple gestures of care. Recent example, dad was chilling on the couch, too lazy to cover the window to see the tv better. I was near the window so I asked if I should cover it, he said that it's not necessary since the tv series is ending in a few, but I did it either way, because I know he'll lay on that couch for the rest of the day.

Friendship Bracelet - What does friendship mean to you?

Friendship for me can be put into these few things: being nice to each other, having the same interests, yapping and gossiping time, no judging, having the same opinion, supporting each other, listening, being stupid together, hugs.

If all things don't align, then it's not friendship, it's just knowing someone enough to talk with them, but nothing too personal.

Loveseat- Describe your ideal house

Hmmm... A house on the countryside with everything necessary in there. I don't have imagination for spaces, sorry 😂

Record Player - Love songs or breakup songs?

Love songs! Especially the ones that aren't your typical romantic ones. The ones that tell the tale of harsh reality of loving someone with a lot of flaws, like, THIS HITS MAN

Stargaze - Celebrity crush?

THE ONE AND ONLY

I have a lot more where that came from ^u^

Planter - Do you have a green thumb?

Definitely not, my mum has. She's a good flower mama!

Linen - Do you prefer being friends with someone before starting a romantic relationship with them or starting straight into love?

Being friends with someone before starting a romantic relationship. I wouldn't be able to get into a serious relationship without any kind of bond. Having an infatuation where I want to fuck a guy and having real feelings where I want to form a family with the guy, have kids and just grow old with him are two different matters.

Plus, what if the guy will be nice to me just at the beginning of the relationship and then he'll be completely different after we get together? A quick way to a messy break up, especially when you take into consideration that I'm a short-tempered person and lately I'm learning to let that fury out on people when they piss me off enough 💜

Hot Cocoa - Three things you love about yourself?

1. My imagination - this fucker can come up with ideas out of thin air. Like, the most recent was a few days ago, at freaking Sunday. I've watched a movie with parents, it was the third movie from the "Taken" series and it was good. I went to my room to make the bed and chill there with a book and I suddenly thought of an old idea for a fic to Final Fantasy II.

To give you the base so you'll understand, because I literally have no idea if you know anything about the original Final Fantasy II game. It's basically your save the world from an evil emperor jrpg. I love this entry from Final Fantasy series for two reasons:

when I first played it, it immediately reminded me of "Earthbound" (favourite game) and I loved it

It has Mateus, enough said - let me show you him:

That's the emperor I've mentioned above 💜

ANYWAYS

The plot of the game is simple and a few years ago I started a fic where I was shipping him with princess Hilda, but I didn't finish it. It was once on AO3, but I've deleted it. It was at the point where I wanted to end my ties with writing - you see how well that went!

And I suddenly recalled this idea and thought that maybe I could change it. I was always a oc x canon kind of person and I've created an oc for Mateus, her name's Ursula. The problem was, I couldn't figure out what history I should make for them.

For example, when I was creating oc for Kuja (villain from Final Fantasy IX, literally one of my all time favourite fictional characters), I had no problem with her. Final Fantasy IX is a very long game with a very long story and I could put Cici (oc) into it without any problems - of course when I come back to her and Kuja I'll probably change a lot of things, but I told you about them just for comparison.

ANYWAYS again

To show you how my inspirations works. I was in the middle of making my bed, taking out the bedsheet, duvet, pillow when I thought back to this fic, to Ursula and I had suddenly this thought that I'll describe as:

"Make a kingdom for Ursula, make her a princess of it, make the kingdom be close to Palamecia, let her and Mateus know each other, make HER the actual obstacle for Mateus to gain the power he wants, make him get rid of her - even if they had a relationship or something that could be described as that - and then let the war unleash. When the three heroes will try to find a way to stop Mateus, make Ursula be the solution for the problem because all the rest failed. Make it unclear whether she was killed or put to eternal sleep by a strong magic spell, so that when the heroes find her and "wake her up" they won't know if they are asking a spirit of a dead princess for help with Emperor Mateus or not. Whatever you'll decide on, she'll agree, even if it means killing him. Plus, you could work around the cameo of the angelic looking Mateus if you decide that the heroes will call upon the spirit of dead princess. You know, she can be the helping force in the other realm... You have actual reason to play this game for the third time, but this time, play the version with Dawn of Souls expansion."

Taking out bedsheet, duvet and pillow from my bed takes less than a minute ☺️

2. My body - yeah, I am chubby, I have PCOS, I'm hairy as a guy, but I like this body, no matter how much it sucks sometimes. I know it better than anyone else and it's mine <3

3. My character - I have my dad's character so I'm either very fun to be around or I'm the most cruel person because of my short-temper, but it comes with a big plus actually. I don't let people talk me into any bullshit they want me to do ☺️

Valentine - Do you like pda?

I didn't experience it in a romantic way so I can't really tell. Am I bothered by others showing affection in public? Not so much, I just don't look at them, because why would I?

Succulent - What are you looking forward to?

Finishing university and hopefully never coming back there. I will be so mad if I have to do master's degree, so mad, I'm telling you.

Bath bomb - What is the best form of self care?

Doing what you feel like doing at the moment you want to do when you have free time. Don't deny yourself anything that will make you happy at this moment, it's a literal torture, don't do that.

Roadtrip - Where is the farthest you’ve been from home?

In a town two hours from my home by train. We were there with parents to buy a new car. It somehow functions, let's say, but the trip was nice!

Brown Sugar - What is making your heart warm today?

Writing the fourth chapter of a fic for bestie 👀 I'm always writing past 20:00 o'clock and I'll do it even later today, but I will start it! Then one more chapter to write, one more bonus chapter and I can send it to her, like finally! She's waiting for it for far too long!

Pearls - Do you want to get married?

YES. If I find the right guy I want to marry him and grow old with him.

Seaside - Ideal date?

Nerding, just fucking nerding in front of tv 😆 Not even a game for two players, even if that's fun, just trying to beat a difficult jrpg or just playing through one of Final Fantasy games and screaming at the tv because some bosses are a pain in the arse there!

Luna Moth - City or country?

Country. I'm living in a city and while I'm not that much bothered by it, I much rather would live in a country. I have a garden, it's peaceful there, it's a bliss.

Velvet - What is your style?

Mainly 70s. Even my mum laughs at me when I show her a t-shirt I like or jeans I like - I SAW SUCH BEAUTIFUL FLARES WITH FLOWERS ON THE SIDES LATELY, OMFG - and she laughed because they were so 70s like.

Cupcake - Are you in love?

With someone in real life? No.

In general? Yes, but these can be categorised as a celebrity crush (Keith Moon) and fictional crush (Uncle Ernie). Hence my self-shippings.

Romcom - Is your story a comedy or tragedy?

It was a tragedy so far with a lot of ups. It got better since 2022, falling down in the last year, but it's going good again. I hope it stays that way and I won't let myself so down again.

Actually, I am like that this year. I suddenly have so many doc appointments because my body needs fixing and on top of that my period decided to fuck off because of stress. It's there now, but fuck PCOS, just fuck it.

Sunset - Ask anything you want! aka: and for the last question, i'm returning your question back to you but with keith! what would your day look like spent with him?

Call me unimaginative when I say this, but all this time when I build on the original self-ship au with him (I hadn't talked about it on this blog yet) and the most recent one I could never imagine what my day with him would look like.

I usually joke that if I saw him I would faint on the spot and that would be it 🤣 Keith definitely laughing while telling his friends that he saw a woman faint in front of him 🤣 As if i would be the first one

But to imagine that, as me meeting him as a simple fan that I am and him being his usual self... I would definitely be happy to meet him, I would tell him how much I love his drumming, how much I admire him, I would have so many things to tell him, but these two would be the main two I would tell him.

He was always listening to his fans, so he would probably listen and if that had to be a day spend with him, he would most certainly drag me to the nearest pub to talk and have fun. First time drinking for me - include a scene of Keith not believe I don't drink - getting completely wasted and acting like an idiot, which would be just right up his alley I think.

That would be a crazy day, you'd actually have two people acting like complete drunk idiots, laughing for no reason, getting along pretty well probably.

Yeah, I think I included something like that in one fic, drinking together, getting wasted, having a great time going from pub to pub.

Not healthy at all, but no one would have it any other way with him.

Plus I'm a girl, he liked to fuck, possible day ending in him bedding me, there's no denying that. Would I complain? FUCKING HELL, NO 🤣

I wouldn't remember any of that, question marks above my head the next day, but hey, someone would remind me of what happened and I wouldn't forget that day ever.

[twistedtummies2]

Top 12 Disney Party Members from Kingdom Hearts

For the past two lists, I’ve discussed my thoughts about the Disney Villains in the Kingdom Hearts series. And while it’s true my love for Disney Villains - both in and out of the KH universe - is quite renowned, I can’t ignore the Disney Heroes forever, can I now? After all, if there’s one thing fans of the games look forward to as much as facing off with the classic baddies (or even look forward to more), it’s getting the chance to fight alongside some of their favorite protagonists from across the Disney multiverse. It’s all well and good to fight Captain Hook, but what about fighting alongside Peter Pan? Sure, it’s fun to explore the vibrant metropolis of San Fransokyo, but what about doing so alongside Baymax? So, I decided to give the villains a break and now focus on Disney’s protagonists. Now, there are two things to keep in mind: first, I should point out I’m SPECIFICALLY talking about Disney characters who act as Party Members during the games, not just random Disney characters in general. So you won’t be seeing Summons or Escort characters here. Second, I’m approaching this ranking based on two separate and not wholly cooperative angles: I’m judging these choice and rankings based on a combination of the characters’ values and their strategic capabilities. For the former, we’re talking about how much I love the character in general, as well as their relationship to the main characters and how interesting it is. For the latter, we’re talking more about how useful they actually are in battle when you visit their Worlds, as well as just how cool it is to use some of their special abilities. The rankings will essentially be managed by sort of performing a balancing act between the two. With that said, pick up a keyblade and let’s go! These are My Top 12 Disney Party Members from Kingdom Hearts!

12. Mike & Sulley.

“Kingdom Hearts III” gave us the chance to use more Party Members on our team than any previous title, and as a result, several worlds featured not just one potential helper, but two. While Monstropolis (which really should have been called “Monsters Inc.,” since the whole level takes place in the factory) was not necessarily my favorite world from KHIII, I think as far as Party Members go, these two were my favorites to see in action. While every “duo set” of potential companions was based around two contrasting methods of attack, I think that Mike and Sulley’s Combo was the most interesting, and fit their characters the best. Sulley is the brawler; he’s big, strong, powerful, and goes into battle with brute force, roaring onto the field. Mike is the support player; focused more on buffing up the other members of the Party and healing them when they take damage. When you combine this dynamic duo with the similarly managed Donald and Goofy, it creates a pretty powerful team, at least in my opinion. In terms of characters, while I personally preferred the interactions between Sora and Co. with Buzz and Woody from the “Toy Box” world, I think that the relationships at play here are pretty fun in their own right. However, since KHIII is - to date - the only time these guys appear, and we only get one visit to each world in this game (unlike a couple others), I don’t think I can place them too much higher.

11. Captain Jack Sparrow.

Jack first appeared in KHII, and he seems to be one of a couple Party Members here where people seem split about his actual usefulness in combat. He moves slower than most other Party Members in that game, and because Port Royal is one of the earlier Worlds you visit, he’s not equipped to be as tough as some other characters you meet later. However, his special Limit move, Treasure Isle, is probably one of my favorites in the game, and his undead state definitely comes in handy during the battle against Barbossa, in particular. When Jack returns in KHIII, he seems to have been buffed a bit after his visit to Davy Jones’ Locker. He moves faster and is able to leap an extraordinary distance, in order to tackle larger or more high-flying opponents. His new team attack, “Never Fear,” is still pretty great. However what really gets Jack on the list is his relationship with the main characters: not because it’s so good, but because it’s one of the most bizarre and unsteady of any alliance, which automatically makes it unique. Just like in the films, Jack is a crafty trickster who often seems out for himself above all others. As a result, just as he is tricky to use in combat, he is difficult to trust in terms of the actual story. This makes the friendship he DOES form with the other characters all the more interesting, because it’s one that gets tested in a lot of ways throughout both of his appearances.

10. Mulan.

Mulan is an interesting companion, strategy-wise, because of the way she evolves over the course of the game. When we first get to have Mulan on our Party…to be honest, she flat out sucks. This is because Mulan is in the form of Ping: the clumsy soldier she disguises herself as to join the Chinese army. As Ping, she’s a terrible character to have on our side: she’s slow, does only minor damage to opponents, and literally trips over occasionally on the battlefield. She also doesn’t have access to a Limit power or much magic. You’d be much better off if she wasn’t on the team at that point. HOWEVER, things change once Mulan is able to throw off the shackles of Ping and be her own person: she’s a bit faster, MUCH stronger, and goes from a comical klutz to highly nimble and agile. She also gets the power to control Mushu, using his fiery breath to great effect, most notably during her Limit ability, Dragonblaze. I frankly love the relationship she has with Sora and Co. in this game, and how it, too, evolves as the story goes on. At the start, she’s actually sort of shy around them and not really sure of what to do or how to respond. As the game goes on, and Mulan gains more confidence and shows more and more of her own strength, they all grow closer. She sort of becomes a sister-like figure to Sora, which is pretty sweet. I would say I’d love to see her again in another game…but the last thing I ever want to see is a KH version of “Mulan II,” so maybe it’s for the best that KHII is her only appearance so far.

9. Aladdin.

Of all the Party Members we can use, between both KHI and KHII, Aladdin seems to be most…average. He’s a pretty balanced character across the spectrum: not the strongest warrior to have on our side, but also not the weakest link either. He seems to be the character on the most even level compared to the main three of Sora, Donald, and Goofy, when it comes to his abilities. So, on that front, there’s not a lot to say: he’s decent enough to manage within his own World, and won’t really hold you back at all. As far as character goes, Aladdin is one of the most frequently-featured Disney heroes in the games, and as a result, his relationship with Sora and the gang, in particular, is definitely one of the strongest. Like Sora, Aladdin is adventurous, earnest, and at times has a streak of mischief in his personality. Both are also willing to go the extra mile for the people they care for most, such as Jasmine for Aladdin or Kairi for Sora. They also don’t come from the most auspicious backgrounds, with Sora being an orphan (...kind of, I mean, how long has his Mom been waiting on him, is she even still around?) on Destiny Islands, and Aladdin having lived so much of his life as a “common street rat.” There’s a great deal of camaraderie between the two, as a result, as they both come from such similar places in life and have such similar outlooks on the world. The Agrabah levels in the first three KH games are among my favorites in the series, and I truly think part of what made them fun was Aladdin himself.

8. Tron.

I used to rank Tron a LOT higher on this list, but after revisiting some stuff with the character, I no longer think that’s quite right or accurate. I do, however, still love him a lot. Interestingly, “Kingdom Hearts” was how I was introduced to Tron (both the character and the film), and it got me curious about the movie that inspired the “Space Paranoids” world where he first appeared. In terms of strategy, Tron is sort of a mid-tier option, in my opinion: his Limit is pretty great, but his general skillset isn’t one of the strongest. He seems to be a companion people either love or hate, in terms of combat prowess. What really gets him his place on the countdown is the character himself, and the interesting way he changes over the series. In KHII, Tron appears as a security program created by Ansem the Wise, whose world is a sort of “hidden world” inside of Hollow Bastion. His storyline affects a lot of the game, as a result; it’s rare that we have a Disney Party Member with such a prominent role in the proceedings. He forms a close bond with Sora and the others, as he actually learns what it means to have friends and even learns to have a bit of fun in his life. But the biggest thing that gets him here is the unexpected twist in “Dream Drop Distance.” In that game, we revisit Tron’s World - now called “The Grid” - and find out that he’s been brainwashed by the evil CLU, transformed into the monstrous Rinzler. We’ve never really had a character like this before, at least among the Disney cast, who starts off as a hero and then becomes a villain. It added a new wrinkle to the relationship, and made Tron - both as himself and as Rinzler - all the more unique. The only reason I don’t rank him higher is because he is sort of “okay” as a Party Member, overall, and because - as I said on a past list - the stuff with Rinzler never really gets full closure. If ever a day comes where those aspects DO see a proper conclusion, maybe Tron will step up a few spots again.

7. Beast.

The relationship between Beast and Sora is interesting, because it also mirrors the relationship between the character and the player themselves. When we first meet Beast in KHI, he’s an absolute Godsend: at that point in the story, Sora is at his lowest, not just in terms of emotional standing, but also his abilities. The Keyblade has been taken from us, and we are left to fight with a humble wooden sword. Donald and Goofy even briefly abandon him for a time. And once we DO get the Keyblade back, we still have to face some of the hardest bosses in the game, since this takes place late in the story at Hollow Bastion. As a result of this, we absolutely NEED Beast in order to make our way through the labyrinthine passages of the ruins…and once we do have our power back, he still remains a valuable asset. Beast lives up to his name in the first game, being an absolute…well…BEAST on the battlefield, savagely pummeling and obliterating enemies we encounter, and doing great deals of damage to even the hardiest opponents. Because of all this, there’s a lot of respect between Sora and the Beast as characters, as each recognizes the other’s abilities and sees how determined the other is to fight for the ladies they love most: Beast will practically tear the world apart for Belle, and Sora will not stop fighting, no matter what happens, for Kairi. This compatriotship continues in KHII, but while Beast is still a decent battler there, he’s noticeably a lot weaker as a Party Member, in a few ways, most likely because his time in the game has been moved from happening in one of the last Worlds we venture through, to one of the first. Still, the relationship between the two characters is a strong one, and it’s hard not to be grateful for Beast, just as a player, in the original game: we might never have beaten Maleficent if it hadn’t been for him.

6. Hercules.

Of all the Disney Heroes who have appeared in the franchise, few have been quite as developed as Hercules over the course of the series, or formed quite as close a relationship with Sora and his pals. Because the Olympus Coliseum (and its variants) is such a frequently recurring World in the games, our protagonists end up encountering Hercules quite regularly. In a weird way, his story sort of parallels that of Sora and the series as a whole: in “Birth By Sleep,” we see his humble beginnings, and we also see Sora as a mere scrap of a youth. Then, through KHI, II, and III - with occasional stops along the way - we see him over and over again, and his own story throughout the games has an arc all its own. Just as Sora adventures through the Worlds, trying to balance his duty with his heart, Hercules has to learn what it means to be a true hero, and the two sort of end up teaching each other along the way. Herc is competitive but sweet, powerful yet humble; he often feels like a sort of big brother figure to Sora, while still having that sort of “dorky” side we see in the film. The reason I don’t put Hercules in the Top 5 is because, despite being such a prominently featured character…we actually only to get to use him as a Party Member in ONE game. In other games, he sometimes plays support during specific battles, but it’s not until the end of the road in “Kingdom Hearts III” that Herc finally gets to join our side as a proper companion. Granted, once that happens, he IS a pretty decent companion, but it’s genuinely surprising that it took that long for him to join forces with our heroes. I guess the idea is that him joining sides with us mirrors how far Herc has come as a character; interesting for the character himself, but just slightly damaging when it comes to ranking him as a real Party Member.

5. Simba.

Simba first appeared in KHI, but not as a Party Member. Instead, he was a Summon: a character that Sora could call on for help in a pinch, with special abilities all his own. (Fun fact, Mushu - helper of the aforementioned Mulan - was also a Summon in the first game.) I honestly didn’t think that the Summons would become major characters at any point in the future; I sort of thought they were just fun cameos. And while this was true for some, for others, it turned out to be the start of their story: in KHII, when our heroes actually travel to the Pride Lands, it’s made clear that the battles with Simba have not been forgotten, and there is an established relationship there. It was a unique way of working this kind of development into the game, and it made the back and forth between Sora and Simba all the more interesting: Sora relied on Simba a lot during his first big adventure, so in a way, a lot of what happens with him helping Simba regain the throne can be seen as him returning the favor. He knows that Simba has the power and strength he needs, it’s all a matter of helping the great lion find the confidence he requires…which brings us to Simba’s power as a Party Member. And Ho-Lee COW, is he one HECK of a Party Member! Simba is to KHII what the Beast was to KHI: an absolutely savage beast (literally) on the battlefield, who turns out to be a HUGE help. When we’re in the Pride Lands, the player becomes a lion, which actually does affect the gameplay a little, as it limits our access to some abilities, and shuffles some of the stats around. Having Simba there helps to ensure we don’t really lack for anything major, and while the Pride Lands is no cake walk, having him on our team definitely makes a big chunk of our visits to that World easier to manage. It was hard to choose between him, Hercules, and our number four pick, but at the end of the day, I think the sheer power he has in combat helps him out a lot.

4. Jack Skellington.

In contrast to Simba and Hercules, who are both pretty awesome battlers, Jack is a bit more of a middle-tier warrior. He’s not a BAD Party Member, by any means, and you can get through Halloween Town pretty well in both KHI and KHII with him by your side. All the same, you’ll rarely find people ranking him among the absolute best of the best, when it comes to his strength in combat. So, why does he rank so highly here? Well, that’s where the character values come into play. First of all, out of all the relationships Sora has with other Disney protagonists throughout the series, there’s something about the chemistry he has with Jack Skellington that really feels special. Both of them are complete and total goobers, and yet both of them are also forces to be reckoned with. Jack is the Pumpkin King: he’s not just a hero, he is the RULER of his World. Yet, just like Simba, this doesn’t stop him from being a good friend, and it’s honestly easy to forget at times just how powerful he really is. Despite being the Knight of Nightmares, he’s actually a genuine sweetheart: playful, fun-loving, enthusiastic, and also a big ham. He also notoriously doesn’t always think things through, thinks the best of almost everyone (even when he shouldn’t), and wears his heart on his sleeve. Sora is the exact same way: a Keyblade master with incredible power, but also a huge, silly dorky-doofus. The two approach situations with the same kind of passion and energy: from battle-ready zeal to childish excitement at seeing Santa. Jack is a little more elegant and old-timey than Sora, but generally speaking, they’re on the same wavelength. This also means that Sora and Jack can easily see through each other’s B.S. When Jack is getting out of line, Sora can pull him down to Earth. And how many other heroes are allowed to boop Sora on the nose as freely as can be? I suppose I also can’t ignore the fact that “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is quite possibly my all-time favorite movie, so I naturally have an inherent bias towards the idea of me fighting alongside the Pumpkin King vicariously.

3. Mickey Mouse.

When I started making this list, initially, I was actually going to leave Mickey, Donald, and Goofy out of the running. The reason for this was…well…of COURSE they’d be in the Top 3. It’s kind of obvious. They’re the three main Disney protagonists our heroes deal with, and the ones who act as helpers and companions the most. So putting them on the list seemed a bit redundant. After much deliberation, however, I decided to keep them around, and of the three, King Mickey is the bottom rank. This is mostly just because, like Hercules, Mickey isn’t a Party Member for more than one game. He only joins those ranks in “Kingdom Hearts III;” just like Herc, he does appear as a supporting player in other games, cooperating in battles and offering assistance as needed, but that’s not really the same thing. With that said, Mickey has always been a big part of the story of the games; interestingly though, his closest relationship with a human protagonist isn’t with Sora, but rather with Sora’s best friend, Riku. Ever since “Chain of Memories,” Riku and Mickey have done a lot of their battling and traveling together, which makes Mickey unique among the other Party Members. I’ve always really enjoyed the portrayal of Mickey in the Kingdom Hearts universe; it’s such a bizarre interpretation, yet it’s really fun, as well. And since, from Sora’s point of view at least, Mickey was a rarity to encounter for several games, it makes the times he pops up feel more special and interesting. As the leader of “The Big Trio,” he definitely deserves time in the top three.

2. Donald Duck.

Goofy and Donald Duck are the two most prominent Disney Party Members in the series. Initially, when I was going to do this countdown, I was going to place them in a tie…but it felt wrong to have the number one be a tie. Speaking strictly in terms of strategy, most people seem to rank Donald over Goofy, as a Party Member, and in terms of combat itself, I think I agree. He’s usually the one I go for. The only downside to Donald is you do have to buff him up a bit and work out the frequency levels of his abilities to get him to work at full capacity, but once you get him ready enough, he becomes one of your strongest assets, if not your strongest asset. With only a few exceptions, normally when I venture into a World, I choose Donald as my default Party Member, alongside whatever Disney Guest is available. His magic-based attacks are fun, and his Cure ability is arguably the most helpful. His abilities can get to be some of the most game-breaking in the series, and as one of the main trio of Disney characters - and the main trio of protagonists in general - he’s got plenty of value as a character in his own right. Donald is a fun sort of medium between Goofy and Sora: he’s fiery, temperamental, cranky, sarcastic, but also has a sweet side and is loyal to the end when it comes to his friends. He’s able to correct Goofy and Sora’s mistakes, but he’s also able to make a few of his own in the process. Of all the Party Members, he arguably provides the best support the majority of the time, and for that he is to be commended.

1. Goofy.

Initially, I was going to give Donald Duck the number one ranking…but after much consideration, I realized that Goofy really is the MVP among the Party Members for Disney. While I may not use him AS often as Donald, when I do, he proves to be more than welcome, as Goofy provides ample amounts of both offense and defense power in his own right. I may use Donald the majority of the time, but Goofy is often just as valuable, if not - on some occasions - even more so! What really sold me, however, is the character values: as much as I love Donald in Kingdom Hearts, I think that Goofy is honestly the most interesting of the three main protagonists of the series. I love how the KH universe keeps Goofy…well…goofy, but also kind of makes him the voice of reason within the group. He’s silly and clumsy, but he’s not actually dumb at all; if anything, he’s the most rational of the bunch, keeping Donald’s temper and Sora’s foolery in check. He’s also the main source of some of the more heartwarming and/or emotional moments throughout the story of the games; Donald is a lot of fun, but I can’t recall quite as many heartstring tugs with him as with Goofy. Which isn’t to say there weren’t any (KHIII, anybody?), but there were just more of them. I think Kingdom Hearts just does more with Goofy’s character, AS a character, than it does with Donald’s, and it’s a pretty even split on which trumps the other on strategy when you really look at it. So, after considerable thought, I’m giving Goofy the Golden Trophy as My Favorite Disney Party Member.

Gawrsh. How many of you expected that? A-hyuck!

HONORABLE MENTIONS INCLUDE…

Woody & Buzz Lightyear.

Rapunzel & Flynn Rider.

Stitch.

Ariel.

[pomrania]

Bernie's Gods (working title)

"2. the god of war died in a bizarre trebuchet accident several decades previously; a coalition of other gods have been playing Weekend at Bernie’s with their priesthood ever since, doing their best to answer their prayers with variable plausibility and success." ~ @prokopetz, "Standard fantasy RPG pantheon, except"

This is just me getting my thoughts written down and out there; actual presentation will come later.

The base concept is that you play as the gods who are "filling in" for the dead god, doing the best they can, within their own domains. Think "trying to do a job, with the tools and skills for a completely different job". There's no state of "failure" here, as the opinions of mortals don't matter; rather, it's judged on style by other gods.

By default, the dead god is the god of war, and the setting is somewhere between Mythological Ancient Greece and Fantasy Medieval Europe. If you're doing something different, that needs to be clarified at the beginning of play.

I'm writing this with the concept that there's no GM (which I'm pretty sure is workable as I've had the idea for working it, for a while), and also that nobody has a specific character they're playing (which I'm less sure about, but it's the cornerstone for the rest of the concept which came to me last night, and without it I wouldn't have a full game idea).

As the first or second thing to set up before the game, everyone writes down two things that the dead god is asked for or about. (Proper term is yet to come; something like prayer or petition or request. Also yet to come is stuff an talks about what kind of stuff that could be.) One of those things gets given to the person on their left, and the other gets given to the person on their right. This is what I'm doing instead of "having a GM"; the "problem setup" is distributed; if you'd want to have a set GM, then just disregard this part.

As the second or first thing to set up before the game, work out what gods -- or more specifically, what domains -- will be active here, and write out a numbered list of them, such that one can easily be selected randomly. (Yet to do: write up some examples.) My current thought is that there should be fewer of them, than there are people playing the game, but that's subject to change upon examination.

So, at the start, once things have been set up, there's a list of the involved domains that can be rolled on (or number-generated, but I'm just going to say "roll"), and everyone has two 'prompts' from two different people.

Play begins, and it's the same for each person's turn ('turn order' doesn't really matter so I'm not going to get into it here). You look at the written thingers you were given, and pick one (or pick the remaining one if you've only one left). That's the thing you have to do. Then you roll on the list to see which god you're acting as. ('God-selection' is done randomly and independently, which means there's a chance that not all of them will be acting the same number of times. This is… not quite 'intentional', but once I realized it I was like 'oh yeah this works, and I like it better than making sure it's equal'.) If you have questions about the 'request', you ask the person on the opposite side of you from where it came from; that is, the one who did NOT write it.

So you have the thing you need to respond to, and you have the domain your powers are in. Come up with how you're going to respond to it, given the stuff you have access to.

Here's the stuff I'm not so sure about; I mean I think it's a good idea, but I haven't had much time to turn it over in my head (I just got it last night before falling asleep) so I can't be sure. The other players then judge your idea based on three criteria (as follows), which determines the dice you have access to. By default, that's a d6 on each aspect, and I'm not sure if a tie should go to "default" or "non-default", but that's a problem for future write-ups of this thing.

Aspects to judge it on: a) does it directly respond to the thing you were given; b) does it involve your domain; c) does it feel like something the dead god would do, specifically that domain, plausibility. If your idea 'fits' an aspect, you get to roll a d8 instead of a d6; if it doesn't 'fit', you roll a d4. So like, if nobody had any strong feelings on what you were going to do, you'd roll 3d6; if it was all-around great or horrible you'd roll 3d8 or 3d4 respectively; and if some parts were good and other parts weren't so good, you'd roll three dice in various combinations of d4, d6, and d8. (This needs to be phrased better and also positioned better, because I think "what dice you might roll" should go ahead of "how you determine which dice to roll".)

Example. Let's say you were beseeched for victory in battle, and you're acting under the domain of "storm". You decide to send a lightning bolt to fry the enemy commander while they're in their tent. You are very much acting with the stuff you have as your domain (lightning bolt to the face), so that'd be one d8 from there; and it also very strongly and directly responds to the thing you were given ("lightning bolt to the face" is a pretty obvious message that someone up there doesn't want you to succeed), so that's another d8. However, it doesn't fit with what a god of war would do, there's no implication that it's "war" instead of "storms" that's mad at the enemy commander, so that's a d4. All total, you'd roll 2d8+d4.

Now, the dice themselves and what they mean. (Keep track of stuff from the results, but it's tracked per god, not per player.) Write down each Low; my current thought is that it's "each time you have either 1 or 2 showing as a result", but the numbers are still iffy so I'm putting it as Low instead of encoding a specific value. Note that the fewer sides a dice has, the greater your chance of getting a Low. This is considered the number of mess-ups that the god did. For the second thing to keep track of, I'm not so sure about this one, but I'm tentatively putting it as "the sum total of the dice rolled". So, if you were rolling 3d6 and your results were 1, 4, 6, you'd write down that you had one Low, and a sum total of 11.

Play would end once all the thingers have been used up, which here would be once everyone's gone twice. Look at the list of domains (where the results were tracked), and see which one has accumulated the most Lows; that god gets mocked for messing up so often. Then add up each sum total, and see who's accumulated the highest results throughout the game; that god gets praised for doing a good job. It's very possible for those to be the same god, because that's the one who got rolled to act the most often; this is intentional. And because of the disconnect between 'player' and 'character', I don't feel bad about exposing a character to mockery.

So, stuff to do for future versions, aside from "make everything neat and clear":

come up with a name for the stuff that gets written at start of play, for things to do

write something up about what kinds of things the above would be, drawing from both fantasy gaming and literature, and my "I read an article on it once" knowledge of historical polytheism

list examples of domains

find a better way to phrase the aspects that an idea gets judged on; possibly write up a thing on voting for that

[leavemetoexist]

I finished all 4 Studio Investigraves games and I have opinions. (Spoilers to all the games by the way but you already know that)

I played them all backwards from the most recent to least recent by complete accident hence why I shall be reviewing them from least recent to most recent. I'll be judging them based off gameplay, characters and story. Of course don't take this too seriously it's my general opinion and I wouldn't mind hearing other people's personal tier list about which game was their favourite. My interpretation of the characters can of course vary from others opinions as well so keep that in mind.

4. Eloquent Countenance

Gameplay: the gameplay in this one wasn't actually bad, I quite liked doing the different tasks however with that being said, I also got lost multiple times about what I was supposed to do (I think i'm to blame for this once honestly because it was spelled out for me). Overall I still liked it but again I had issues. I did however adore the mix of 3d modelling and 2d models.

Story: The story isn't bad, if anything it leaves room for so many things. The explanation to the end did confuse me though because I couldn't tell if Forcas was talking to the woman trapped in the body or if he was talking to the angel that had taken over the body. And also why did us the angel decide that we did want to give the body back to her? Again a lot of questions that I think can be expanded on if they ever to second game. (I think this is mostly me wanting a second game so badly lol)

Characters: Our character Lisa is alright, I have no grievances with her, she's funny and sarcastic as hell and honestly my favourite. Forcas on the other hand... I like his shenanigans, but there is only so much fourth wall breaking one can take before it isn't very special, I guess? The way he speaks is like how I would write an overpowered annoying know-it-all character when I was 13. So yea not my favourite. I do love their characters designs though, absolutely gorgeous in my opinion.

3. Cold Front

Gameplay: I had no problem with the gameplay, except maybe when I was running from the monster, that was the only hard part. This was a shorter game so there wasn't too much gameplay and coming down to the end I was honestly a little annoyed that we'd basically ceased gameplay and had started basically just started reading out the rest of the story. I wish there was a boss fight to the end, a little something something to really close it off would've been nice.

Story: It was heartwarming (ironic). I can not express it enough that I really love how well done the story is, both endings really got me. One was a happy ending technically with only Augustine living and it was so dark that he was happy to finally feel seen again once Winnie was dead. Winnie had no idea that he was breaking a lot of Augustine's boundaries but at the same time, these two just needed some communication and they were fine in the end which was perfectly okay with me. They both reflected and became better people together.

Characters: No notes, they were good. I loved the fucked up anxiety version of Augustine and Winnie, it really shows how anxiety is and how overthinking and keeping everything in can really harm a friendship.

2. Dead Plate

Gameplay: There is so much that needs to be talked about with the gameplay. First of all, our character Rody, does not have a side and back angle so that you can tell which way you're facing, which messed me up a lot when I tried to serve tables. When I first booted up the game it took me way too long to figure out the what to do in the tutorial (This one might be on me tbh so I won't be too mean to the game about it). The various customers did not make any facial expressions as to help indicate to the players their level of annoyance going from good-> annoyed-> angry-> leaving. I really wished they had that, even if it weren't a face at least some sounds would've been nice.

Story: I adored the story, it's fucked up, it's nice and it's overall really good. Genuinely no notes, it's cut and dry, nothing overally complicated and I loved it.

Characters: I loved the characters. Rody is so deeply in love with his girlfriend (Marieanna) and loses his sense of self. He literally does not know who he is without her and instead of listening to her and improving himself and becoming his own person, he makes himself think that if he just had enough money, that she would take him back. Vince on the other hand, woah that motherfucker is a little mad in the head isn't he? I was expecting your usual obsessive yandere esc character but no. He becomes not really obsessed but more like testing a theory. He has never tasted food and wants so desperately to make food where you can taste the love in it so when he found out about Rody whiles dating Marieanne, well he just had to put this theory to the taste test right? I also live for the theory of him wanting to express his love to Rody by feeding him the thing that he loved most (I think this theory is actually pretty solid tbh and I'm not sure if it's a theory or confirmed within the game. I played this so long ago that I've kind of forgotten).

1. Elevator Hitch

Gameplay: This one might be obvious to most people who follow me but Elevator Hitch is literally my absolute favourite. The gameplay itself was quite fun, I enjoyed the puzzles and tasks that had to be done and the uniqueness of each floor. I had one problem where I didn't realise you could look around the elevator, I wished there were some arrows to indicate you could do that but overall the gameplay was solid.

Story: The story is simple, simple in a fun complicated way. It certainly didn't answer why the building is the way it is but that was alright with me. I enjoyed especially the small glimpses at protag's life before he got stuck in the elevator. I loved the ending, the fact that he had no real choice but to go back was *chef's kiss* Sad ending for Protag but that's okay, solid story.

Characters: One of my favourite head cannons about this game is that coworker is actually pretending to be stupid about the situation that we the player are experiencing and I can be more than be convinced about that. Our main character definitely has shit going on, as saw in the end he needed that job and well the fourth floor with his parents. I loved the dialogue options and the dynamic going on between the two of them. They're both silly and share one brain cell and I adore them for that.