#i will also probably repost a couple things from twitter

[flags-planes-and-fire]

I posted about to the LSDLN watch party on my personal instagram, so I'll probably try and salvage whatever is comprehensible out of my ramblings in the morning.

[silentcryracha]

❍ ‗ Watching a movie with Han ‗ ❍

Pairing : Han Jisung x f reader

Summary : chapter five of a cute standalone miniseries. It's what it says in the title

Genre/ Warnings : scenario/imagine/headcanon, drabble, fluff, suggestive but no actual smut, everyone yaps and is a nerd, homebody! Jisung is real, some swear words

Word count : 600 words

A/n : none

ps: There could be grammar errors. Do NOT repost on other socials. Leave feedback if you feel like it, otherwise enjoy! ♡︎

masterlist

series masterpost

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Watching anything, not just a movie, but a tv show, an anime, a short, a music video, literally anything, is an experience.

Each one unique and requiring at least a whole five minutes of commentary.

He's the kind of guy who feels like his life changed completely after viewing a certain product. He will gen into it so much, from the possible lore or original material, the music, the character takes and analysis from twitter users. He's probably one of them

It's so funny actually because you can pretty much guess what mood he's in by the type of thing he recommends watching. A sad movie? He's in his feels and probably lowkey needs a good cry. A fun anime? He wants to have fun and not pay too much attention, probably just relax.

A horror movie? He either wants to try and scare you and then act like the knight in shining armor (he's actually shitting himself too, trust)

"Shit! They just did a jumpscare, I didn't expect one two seconds later!" a couple of popcorns jumping out of the bowl.

"Oh no did that ugly nun scare my princess?" he wraps your shoulders with his arm, voice comically condescending, "Does she want a kiss to make it better?"

"Don't even try it, Sung. I saw you jump too, loser"

A thriller or dramatic movie? Probably feels the need to overthink something other than his life, and most likely have a nice, interesting conversation.

He's also quite strict with seeing new episodes from a series he hasn't seen before. He doesn't like to watch stuff in your presence unless you are also watching them. He much prefers your company anyway, feels also a bit disrespectful and in general he probably wants to focus on the plot.

He's usually pretty silent and concentrated but if it's a rewatch or he's purposefully showing you something he just yaps. So much. He NEEDS you to feel things as he felt them, you know?

"Baby, there! Did you see that shot? It's so fucking genius actually, will be so important for the plot later on"

"Don't spoil!" you exclaim, annoyed.

"Yah, I didn't spoil, I just commented on how good the shot was!" he defended, as you rolled your eyes.

"Yeah, yeah. Shush."

But it's actually stronger than him, I fear.

"The composer using that bit of music during that scene..I know what they're doing"

"How can you hate someone so much but also enjoy their presence at the same time? Such good acting"

But don't get me wrong! He loves to hear you yap just as much. He's actually so in awe, looking at you with those big round eyes and an amused smile.

"Am I talking too much? Ah, sorry baby" you chuckle embarrassed as you catch yourself basically covering the audio of the movie.

He shakes his head with a smile, still with those adoring eyes. Like you could do no wrong, ever.

"No, my baby. You could be literally reading a cooking book, I don't care. You look too pretty."

But when you've both seen the movie/series in question and it's NOT a sad one...it's over. You both know damn well it's just part of the game foreplay at that point.

"Honey, how about we just chill and rewatch this? It was fun last time"

And just like last time, this time was indeed fun, since the movie was left on his own to the end credits as you were blowing each other's backs out.

It's a given at that point, I don't make the rules

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

[ingravinoveritas]

You've probably got a thousand things to say about the latest "The Kiss" info, but I have been thinking about it all morning, especially about the way there seems to be no need to acknowledge it between the two of them. They just went for it, and then they didn't feel the need to talk about it. Idk about everyone else but to me that just feels like to them, this was just a kiss among perhaps many. They knew the song and dance around it already, so there was no need to mark it as different other than it being in characters rather than out of.

But those are just my thoughts. So excited to hear about yours if you have any :3

Hi there! Oh, yes…yes, I do have so many thoughts about Michael talking about the kiss, and The Assembly in general.

Something I'm not sure I've mentioned on here (at least not in a long time) is that five years ago (in June of 2019), I wrote a thread on Twitter about fanfic and why it was so important to me as an autistic woman, as well as the role it played when I began to discover my sexuality. I received a lovely comment from Neil, and on top of that, Michael reposted it from me, which was entirely unexpected but delightful.

So when I first heard about The Assembly, I was anxious, apprehensive, and uncomfortable--mainly because of how the autistic/ND interviewers would potentially be depicted on screen. By the end of the show, however, I was in tears--and for once, in a good way. Michael did not let me down for one single second (which I did not think he would), and I loved how he and everyone else just held space for each other during the group singalong to "Here Comes the Sun."

(The only thing I haven't liked is seeing some of the response on social media that suggests Michael did an extraordinary thing just by talking to autistic/disabled people like we are human beings. It shouldn't be special when he or anyone else does that, but it's depicted that way because it is unfortunately still so rare...)

In terms of Michael talking about the kiss with David, it was of course so lovely to see his expressions and listen to him talk about what it was like. For me it was the fact that he actually didn't say that much that was so revealing. It was perfectly in line with what was reported about what Michael said a month ago, about it being "everything you dream of." With the Assembly, we could now see and hear him talking about it and that same carefulness with which he gave the previous answer--a carefulness borne not out of wanting to hide something, but wanting to keep something about the kiss private. Just for him and David.

I also feel like some folks might have misunderstood what he meant when he said, "We never talk about it," though. I think the unspoken part after that is, "We never talk about it, not because we don't want to, but because we don't need to"...

And I agree with you that it was exactly that--one kiss out of many, something so tried and true that neither David nor Michael had to give it much thought. It also makes me think of previous discussions about comments from David about how, between the sunglasses and the contact lenses for Crowley, he couldn't see shit, yet he only needed one take to find Michael's lips. It's like needing a GPS when you drive someplace new, but then it quickly becomes familiar, and after a while you don't need anyone to tell you how to get there. Because you already know the way home.

Talking about the kiss like this almost gives a feeling of domesticity, of something deeply intimate, beyond the physical. I'm thinking of it as well in tandem with David's comments from prior to the BAFTAs, about it being "another day at work" and saying that Michael had "brushed his teeth." There are so many examples from movies or TV shows where a couple wakes up in bed together in the morning and when one person goes in for a kiss, the other stops them and says "Not until you've brushed your teeth" (or something to that effect). And it just makes me picture them getting up to film that day and sharing a good morning kiss, after which David gently reminds Michael to brush his teeth before he gets to the set. (And he does, because Michael never forgets anything David tells him.)

The last thing that I wanted to mention that stood out to me was Michael talking about how moved everyone was--both the people who watched the kiss be filmed on set, and the fans who watched it in the show. You could actually hear the way his voice caught in his throat, hear him become emotional just from remembering that. And it made me think back to when GO 2 came out last summer, in the midst of the Writers Strike (and then SAG-AFTRA) and how Michael was probably reading all of the fan reactions online and feeling very much the same way, even though he couldn't say anything about it.

So it becomes even more poignant and compelling that now, when he finally can say anything he wants at all about the kiss, he gives us so little. Or maybe just enough, with a small, knowing smile on his face. Because he's found a boy he likes, and he has his photo.

Those are my thoughts on Michael talking about the kiss on The Assembly. I know it's been a week now, but hopefully everyone has had time to process it too, so I'd love to hear what you all think. Thank you for writing in! x

[allgoldenelite]

NOAH New Year show translations

Rather than reposting the screenshots from Twitter here, I'm gonna make my tls an original post here on Tumblr.

bummers ahead, please proceed with care

Ibushi: (tl link)

"I got scammed by a place called C5 Clinic* that I tweeted about before, which has branches in the whole country. Please be careful, everyone.

I think NOAH will release information about my surgery and bone fractures and dislocation and such. I'm sorry to everyone for the inexcusable match. Everything is my fault."

*this clinic specializes in adipose tissue stem cell treatment

Ibushi: (tl link)

"Sorry for the late message. I think there will be a detailed report from NOAH, but I'm letting you know that my left ankle is a mangled mess, and I'll have surgery for the right [ankle] ligament. I think there will be a release [by NOAH] soon.

I'm really, really sorry."

Ibushi: (tl link)

"I've come [this far] with the goal of getting 20 years [in ring career], so I think it might be time soon [to quit] being an active [wrestler]. I still have a lot of contracts and such left so I'll see those through!

I try not to think too much about the negative things or the future and stuff like that, but I have a lot of things [to do] like taking care of my mother, so when it's time I'll talk about it! Don't miss a single match😊 ‼️ "

Jake Lee: (tl link)

"It's not about whose fault it is or anything like that

Everyone awaits you standing in the ring again

That's what I believe."

more under the cut

Marufuji: (tl link)

"Good morning. [The] Ariake Arena [show] was a couple days ago.

I'm going to assume that you understand that as professionals, we have to share perfection with everyone.

I feel sorry to the fans who, spending good money and valuable time, came to watch what could not meet the expectations, if you listen to a lot of the opinions.

I write "a lot of opinions" because there are people who hold a different opinion than that.

I can't write in detail here about the two different sides, but...

I think among the staff there are probably people from either side.

So there are among the wrestlers.

"As professionals, we have to share perfection with everyone": In the end, I've certainly learned a lot from being unable to share that.

[When you're] going for sharing perfection, it's also important to take big risks.

I myself ascribe to both.

But when you gamble, sometimes you fail.

I think as people, we often want to walk the path that's safe for ourselves. I think there is an incredible amount of pressure on those who challenge themselves to taking big risks with shows that they have a responsibility for because many other people aside from themselves are involved.

I want to convey my thanks to those people. And at the same time, I want to urge [everyone] to work hard so that we, based on what happened, change the things we can change and head for a brighter future.

There have been a lot of developments on the part of the wrestlers as well, so I think it'll be exciting as long as everyone can keep their professionalism.

I wasn't able to watch New Japan's Tokyo Dome show yesterday, but the news were everywhere.

In the end it is frustrating.

And also I, you know [...]

I wasn't able to show what I'm made of at all.

I think personally, I have to try and search for something new. That goes for moves and for where I stand as well.

I feel like if I don't, then [my career] is just going to end like with me as a boring wrestler.

Because I'm a guy who does what he decides to do (I [shouldn't] say this myself]...

Look forward to it."

underneath that post was a reply by someone going:

"I agree with the risk taking thing. But what bothers me is, I think Ibushi is under contract with AEW for the time being, however through this failed gamble he got injured and I worry about how the other side [AEW] is going to react to that. Looking at it that way, I think I can't agree with a gamble that involves a wrestler from another promotion."

and then someone else replied to that:

"Ibushi came into this already injured so you don't have to write that Marufuji injured him or something, do your research before you post"

and to that Ibushi replied: (tl link)

"I was in the best condition I could've been in to walk 500 meters, not exactly [have a] match. But I gave in to [NOAH?] negotiating with me 3 or 4 times like 'can't you please make it work?' It's my fault."

NOAH: (tl link)

"An announcement about Ibushi Kôta's medical diagnosis

As a result of a thorough examination, Ibushi Kôta, who suffered injuries during the NOAH Ariake Arena show on January 2nd, has been diagnosed with a complex injury of the lateral ankle ligament of the right foot, along with a rupture of the tibiofibular ligament of his right leg.

Regarding the left foot, there will be a separate thorough examination and dedicated treatment.

As soon as we learn more we will let you know further.

We deeply apologize for any inconvenience and concerns we caused the fans and every single person involved, and ask for your understanding and cooperation."

[lemotmo]

Oh my god I didn't even think of that regarding lfj 🤣🤣

Q. Umm maybe I'm crazy but I believe instead of his fans being mad that he 'liked' a photo they should

maybe be upset at something else that proves?

A. Yeah I'm with you, anon. They can no longer pretend he's just not been on social media and that's why he's not interacting with them. He's clearly been around, and now we have proof that he's intentionally ignoring them. I mean they don't have any other excuses left. He's obviously seeing them and deliberately not responding to or engaging with them. That should tell them something. The interesting thing here for me though is the BTS stuff we've received. We now know the pic that looked somewhat like wedding decorations is Madney's backyard. Which would indicate that it's Chim and Maddie's wedding reception. And he hasn't been filming. He hasn't, let it go. His presence on set would not be a secret. So him not being Buck's date for that is odd if they're still together. Sure they could have him be at work but that's stupid at this point, especially if the goal was having the audience invest. Which has not at all been the goal so far. So I wonder if we are going to get some kind of flash forward episode where Buddie are together or clearly growing closer by the time of the reception, and then when the inevitable emergency occurs the screen fades to black and we just see the words '3 months earlier' and the next several episodes are the story of how we got to where the show opened at the wedding reception. That would explain Tommy not being there and would also explain Lou not filming. That would mean Tommy's part maybe wraps up during episode 4 or 5. Obviously we're all just speculating now but him not being at the reception is suspect. That coupled with his, now confirmed, ice out of his fans, means something. He either really did get the off screen break up treatment or he found out he was only in one, maybe two episodes, and decided to give himself some distance now before their inevitable meltdown. Who knows, anon. Who knows.

Thanks Nonny!

Yep, he is out there happily liking stories and pictures on Instagram, but he's ignoring his hardcore fanbase. Someone sat him down and had a stern word with him for sure. Whether it was someone from the show or someone from his management. We'll never know.

As for Lou not being at that backyard Madney party? If you've read the previous ask I just posted, you know my stance on that. While all the signs are there that he most probably wasn't, I'm still very hesitant to say it. I'm not claiming they're hiding him, but he could have just stepped outside during the break in between filming. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we didn't see JLH either in that bts, while she is more than probably there. So yeah, I'm not so sure he wasn't there at all. (I do sincerely wish and hope he wasn't though.)

Not that it mattered. If he was there it's for plot device reasons only. It would only mean that we are one scene closer to him leaving. :) And let's not forget they asked Ryan and Oliver to do that promo video that day, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do still like the idea of a flash forward. There's so many ways they could make that interesting.

But it's like Ali says: who knows? We'll have to wait and see.

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[fullmetalgirl98]

30 days Hypnosis Mic challenge

DAY 10: a thing that's not canon but you think it is

🎤 Doppo smokes.

For the avoidance of any misunderstanding. The image above is not an original idea of mine but is a repurposing of a wonderful fanart I found on pinterest and whose artist I unfortunately could not identify with certainty. After a quick research, I may have been able to figure out that the artist is this person (twitter) but since the profile is protected, I could not get confirmation and consequently ask permission to use the art. For that reason, being me myself deeply opposed to reposting and editing other people's art, I entirely redrew it by my own hand and colored my own lineart. So please don't alert the state police, don't alarm the original artist (in case you know them...in fact, please do tell me who they actually are, if you know and have figured out which art I'm referring to), don't scream plagiarism, and do not repost (mainly because this art should not exist at all). Thanks for your cooperation.

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

I've been thinking a lot about what to talk about today, because I was planning to talk about what I believe (and I think we all believe) to be the trauma suffered by Hifumi thanks to Honobono…but I would have risked this post being blacked out on tumblr and I would also have to be particularly careful about how to talk about such sensitive topics without hurting anyone's sensibilities, so I preferred to avoid...but I won't detach myself that much, because of course all the knots then come to a head anyway.

C'mon. You can't tell me that you don't also think that Doppo is the type to have a cigarette once in a while. I can see him smoking so well! It's something that fits him perfectly! Also, let's be honest guys. Doppo is cool in his own right (even if he doesn't realize it), but with a cigarette in his hand??? the level of sexyness increases tenfold. Let's talk about it seriously for a second. Doppo, in fact, has never been shown smoking a cigarette, but I firmly believe that he feels the need to do so from time to time. And by that I absolutely don't mean that he does it in a Samatoki-mode way (who feels the need to smoke even when in fact he doesn't feel the need at all (???) just because his body is completely ADDICTED) or in the way that a nervous person smokes a tactical cigarette during a break from work because it has a calming effect on the nerves. No, not in that sense.

Doppo is not a smoker who walks around with a pack of cigarettes in his pants pocket. Let's say that he doesn't have the habit, that's it. But I truly believe that there's a pack in the desk's drawer of his office and one in the drawer of his bedroom. A pack that sits there almost completely intact, because a cigarette is pulled out just once in a while, a pack that will probably last a couple of years lol. That's a pack of cigarettes which however can provide some relief in some particularly stressful moments. And I don't mean the usual moments when Doppo freaks out, no. I'm talking about the serious moments, the emotionally important ones. The ones in which Doppo deeply reflects on his life and wonders how to behave to make Hifumi feel safe, what to do to actually make him feel protected.

Doppo is a lone smoker. I've always pictured him that way. He doesn't smoke in company, because, as I said, he doesn't have a smoking habit. But he smokes when the sun sets or at night, when the moonlight enters between the curtains of the window, when he can't sleep because his head is full of thoughts that torment him (am I covertly-not-covertly promoting again the hifudo fic that @justanotherniky is writing? Nooooo, absolutely not).

And then yes, why not…. who said he can't have a cigarette every now and then during a moment of stress caused by work? Lol But only when he works from home. Because being seen like this by Hifumi is fine.

[pipermca]

Writing Update - June 2024

June is in the history books! I had a huge thing at work this past month, which has taken a lot of my brain power. Now that project is out of the way, I fully intend to do a bit of coasting at work for a little while. (I'm not sure how much coasting I can do, but we'll try. lol)

That said, I did get a lot of writing done! I finished up my Reverse Big Bang fic (look for that in a few weeks!) and worked on a couple of other projects that interested me. I ran a poll a few weeks ago to see what people were interested in seeing from me, and the two big long fics I've been working on... tied. (One was ahead on Tumblr, while the other was ahead on Twitter, and if I combined the votes they literally tied.) At this point I'm just letting my brain work on whatever it wants to work on, although I would like to start posting that one fic later this summer. (And new today, I think I'm coming down with a summer cold. Hopefully it doesn't stick around for very long.)

Anyway, I wrote a total of 8960 words in June, blowing past the 3000 word goal. And I'm approaching another milestone: I have one more fic left in one of the compilation series I took down. (Two of the stories in that compilation were completely reworked and became the start for The Renegade and the Hound, so I won't be reposting those. That means there will be a total of 28 fics/chapters in the series.) After that I think I only have a few more to repost from the other compilation, and then I'll be all caught up. Huzzah!

And a follow up from last month's wrap up, I decided not to participate in the other Big Bang. I'm kind of regretting not signing up, but I know it was probably a good decision. I didn't need anymore obligations on my plate at the moment.

Posted

A Different Me. 830 words. This is a comic script of a scene from A Bonding, a Coronation, and a Funeral. It's one of the scripts I've been wanting to get done, so this feels good to have it posted!

Goat Crossing. 1000 words. This fic was reposted/rewritten. It was backdated to its original posting date (November 24, 2017) so it didn’t appear on AO3’s “front page.”

Family Ties. 2400 words. This fic was reposted/rewritten. It was backdated to its original posting date (November 26, 2017) so it didn’t appear on AO3’s “front page.”

WIPs

These are the works that I actually put words down for this month.

Reverse Big Bang fic. 9200 words. This one is done and just waiting for the posting period to start! Look out for a preview of this piece coming soonish. :)

The Prime and His Protector. 47,600 words. I will eventually start posting this, I swear. But also...

Resonant (working title). 2700 words. This is a prequel to The Prime and His Protector. Yes, a prequel to a fic that I haven't started posting yet. No, I don't know what I'm doing. Lol. this will probably get posted to Tumblr and Pillowfort in full first, and will only go up on AO3 once I start posting Prime and Protector. (It gives some back story to some background characters and adds tragedy to something that gets mentioned in chapter 1 of Prime and Protector. Sorry/not sorry.)

[herzspalter]

hello! just wanted to let you know that i've been a fan of your art for many years. you're one of my favorite artists and i keep your username on a little .txt (along with a couple other artists) so i can always remember who i look up to and who i hope to become as good as someday.

i love your art. all of it. even the transformers fanart, and i don't even like transformers. i especially like your choice in colors (and i never see anyone comment on it!! it's such a key component to your style and nobody talks about it!!) but i also take inspiration from your lineart and poses. the way you draw teeth is unsettling but it grabs the viewer's attention, it might as well be your style's trademark.

i'm an artist, too, and i'm not nearly as popular as you are. (... probably because i'm only on twitter, i post infrequently, and when i post i only post ocs lol.) i just want to say that you've been one of my biggest inspirations and your art drives me forward. it reminds me that if someone can continue as long as you've been going, then i can continue, too.

i haven't always had a tumblr account. i made a couple just recently, and today i remembered that you exist, so i came to your blog. and read through it. all the way back to 2019. and liked several of your posts. so if you see a rando that liked a bunch of your old posts and left you a follow, that would be me. ^^;

since i didn't have a tumblr account, how did i know about your art? well, a lot of it (mostly your JJBA fanart) is on pinterest. some of it is even credited 😭 (pinterest users are notorious for reposting fanart without linking back to the creator). so yeah, your art is on pinterest, sometimes it's credited, sometimes it isn't. but yeah, you've got a ton of fans on pinterest that can't make their presence known to you. we all support you from afar until the day we make tumblr accounts.

this got long. sorry for being weird. i promise i'll buy from your shop and support you more directly someday, but for now i remain a broke nerd. don't feel like it's necessary to respond to this, i just wanted to let you know that you inspire a lot of people, even though you probably already know that.

your art is wonderful and i encourage you to continue with it! please stay safe and take care of yourself. and... thanks for reading my little essay ^^

Ohhh Lovely Anon;;

This is genuinely so, so sweet, and I've been thinking for two hours now how I should even reply to this because I'm very touched by it ;_;

Thank you so, so much, seriously. I'm happy you like my colours, that's honestly a great thing to hear because I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with them;

It means tons to me when people enjoy what I do, whether I can see it or not, so this all means so fucking much to me; I don't know what to say really other than Thank You a million times over, seriously. You people have been keeping me going for years now by just enjoying stuff I doodle <3 I've found my drawings on pinterest before too when looking for refs of characters and it means a lot to me that there are people like you who go out of their way to find me still ;__; Thank you!

And you don't need to buy anything from me at all <3 I appreciate anyone looking at stuff I've made! Thank you so much for taking the time to write me such a lovely message!

I wish you the absolute Best for yourself and your path as an artist, always keep on doing what you love no matter what, and keep up your OCs!! <3 That's so powerful of you!! <3<3<3 Take good care!!

[drawnaghht]

re-listening to "Samurai Rabbit with Stan Sakai & The Usagi Chronicles Creative Team"

This week I have been re-listening to one of the longer interviews with Stan Sakai, Khang Le and Candie and Doug Langdale and I found a youtube version of it with official subtitles!! I can finally understand what some of the parts actually were about compared to before x3

Should I post a link to this? or links to others? reblog or comment! you can probably find it yourself if you're curious.

Or would anyone be interested in like, a summary of those interviews?

I've posted links to that and other interviews before, but this is one of the most extensive ones imo, so I thought it would be nice to post the link that here separately.

One thing I see the collective fandom voice out is how they don't like that it's about a young rabbit and not a direct adaptation (it wasn't up to the crew, they were brought on after the decision) and this interview actually gives answer to that and many other questions I've seen fans talk about publicly both on here and on twitter. (Like why there aren't phones or screens for example.) There's a nice intro about this aspect as well, how two fans of the og comic feel about this show when about to interview the author himself and how the main creative leads are also big nerds about the Usagi Yojimbo comicbook series. Stan Sakai and Khang Le mainly talk about the art and adaptation, as well as story of the show, while Candie and Doug talk about the creative writing parts of the show. They even talk about the music a bit! Reccomended listening if you like the show! This was also recorded before the final 10 episodes aired so it's fun hearing them tease the 2nd season again.

What's nice is that the interviewers themselves (the Comicbook Couples Counseling podcast), are fans of Usagi Yojimbo as well so they are very well-versed in the comic series, so the questions they ask are also very relevant... but also respectful to both the creators and the comic and cartoon! So it's a nice interview to listen to, from a very creative and mature perspective imo.

Seeing fans from different sides of both the TMNT and Usagi fandoms voice different opinions based on assumptions of the show has been a bit frustrating to see (maybe much less so if I only look at fanart, but it's been both "older" and younger fans), so this has been refreshing to re-listen to because it really only looks at the show from creative and collaborative viewpoints vs what people seem to assume that Netflix shows are all about - money and profit and keeping up only some sort of live-wire.

I personally really think the show probably could have had a bigger "impact" with the story if it took some bigger risks, but at the same time, they did their best with what they were given in terms of budget, which I'm remembering again after listening to the creative ways they had to avoid some shots or how some storylines got cut. It's a very creative and easy-going show to me, even if it's not "the best" in terms of what people have come to expect from cartoon shows for kids now.

It's also really interesting to listen to the interview again with subtitles and getting some of the context better (like how the makkine and spaceships, there was a certain inspiration they we're looking at outside of comics - "Robot Carnival" - an animated film I was only vaguely aware of before).

I also found the artist who did the layouts and special poses for the 2D sequences, which was so cool to find! I'm so glad that the Samurai Rabbit crew and artists have been proud to post their work on the series so far as I found a few artists' portfolios/galleries and blogs last month as well. Not gonna repost those (that's obviously just rude without permission and no one wants to get in trouble for that) but it would be cool to share links to those too if people were interested x3

anyway, it's amazing this show exists at all, whatever anyone else thinks.

[bizarrequazar]

GJ and ZZH Updates — October 2-8

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

10-02 → A couple Instagram believers climbed the same mountain that “Zhang Zhehan” supposedly did in August and took a photo beside the sign used in the Instagram pfp. The sign is visibly smaller in their photo than in the Instagram one (and it again brings up the logical fallacy of taking off your clothes at the top of a mountain).

→ The Instagram changed its pfp to one of the white-haired photos. Interesting timing.

10-03 → QuelleVous posted that the CEO of the MCN that Susu works for is a manager of an executive unit for CAPA. This CEO follows Susu’s Bilibili account, as well an account that spread smears against Zhang Zhehan during 813.

→ QuelleVous posted that many of the “righteous passersby” were recruited by Sophie and her husband Umbrella, including Lawyer Ma’s lawfirm, 上海成雨, and Master Wu.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Hogan posted three photo ads featuring Gong Jun from 08-24 to Twitter.

10-04 → Gong Jun posted a collection of travel photos from the filming of Guardian of the Alpine Plants back in early June. (11:33, 511 kadian with the date) Caption: “Sleepwalk a little......” His studio reposted it with the added caption, “The postcard sent from the plateau has been delivered~” It was also reposted by 361°. Fan Observations:  -  One photo has him pointing to an illustration on a chip bag of two boys who look a bit like him and Zhang Zhehan.  -  One photo has him wearing a blue mask.  -  One photo of him from behind holding an umbrella is very evocative of Zhou Zishu. 

→ The Instagram posted a video made with footage from the bike/hiking trip, only about two seconds of which shows “Zhang Zhehan’s” face. (11:56, 511 kadian 😑) His name is credited as director. Xie Yihua only posted screenshots to Weibo that didn’t include his image or name, likely to avoid being sued; a new Weibo account that posted the full video was deactivated shortly after doing so. Fan Observation: There’s a point in the video where “Zhang Zhehan” wipes out on a bike—the cyclist in question has a ponytail and appears to be a woman.

→ LockNLock posted a photo ad about cooking crab legs.

→ Kangshifu posted an illustrated ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun posted nine of the earlier photos to his Xiao Hong Shu, caption: “On vacation  Strange 😛”, and ten to his Instagram, caption: “Taking everyone on a tour of Kangding & Shangri-La 😜”  Fan Observation: 13:36 and 13:48 timestamps, the minutes for both have the ones place as doubles of the tens. Probably nothing.

→ Hogan posted a commercial featuring Gong Jun from 08-24 to Twitter.

10-05 → Xie Yihua deleted her post that had screenshots of the Instagram video.

→ VogueFilm posted a teaser trailer for Gong Jun and Zhao Liying’s upcoming short film “Hello, Hello”, giving the release date of 10-09. They posted a second teaser an hour later. A hashtag about this got on Weibo hotsearch. [interview from the magazine]

→ The #echoes in your mind# tag used for Zhang Sanjian content on Weibo was wiped.

→ Hogan posted another photo ad from 08-24 to Twitter.

→ Twenty-three accounts associated with Zhang Sanjian and the brand, including their main Weibo accounts, were muted.

10-06 → QuelleVous posted that there is reason to believe that, as a result of the speed at which things were escalating, Zhang Zhehan’s team were the ones who drafted the apology letter on 813, not him. Unsubstantiated at this time. [followup]

10-07 (Last day of Golden Week) → Nothing of note.

10-08 → Flora posted a thread discussing a man named Peter Deng (Chinese name Deng Linyun) who on 09-17 appeared on a livestream hosted by Lexus, in which the two of them claimed that Peter is a close friend of Zhang Zhehan’s who repeatedly flew from the US to Beijing to help him after 813. He appears to be associated with the Shenzhen group generally.

It has been found that Peter lied about having degrees from Harvard and Berkeley, and lied about working as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in New York—none of these have any record of him; there is also evidence that his degree from Peking University is a lie too. Additionally, it appears that he is continuing to run a de-registered company. tl;dr He’s a career con man.

It was also found that the Baidu page for a now-defunct charity Peter ran was edited last month by a member of the same group who edited the pages for Nogi Shrine, Dewi Sukarno, and Xie Yihua.

Followups: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5.1] [5.2] [6] [7]

→ Hsu Fu Chi posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Kangshifu posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun attended the Vogue World Exhibition wearing the green Louis Vuitton suit he was so fond of at the Aranya fashion show. 💚 Fan Observation: His left shoe had lace charms of the number 23. It was noted that this is Michael Jordan’s number, which Zhang Zhehan has worn several times. (It also, more simply, adds to five.)

→ The Instagram posted six photos of “Zhang Zhehan”.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Vogue posted a red carpet photo of Gong Jun from the event.  They later posted an additional two photos of him and two douyins [here] and [here].

→ Gong Jun posted six photos of himself in the green suit. Caption: “Thank you for inviting me @ VOGUEclothingandbeauty, wearing my dream clothes, I am in a good mood!” Fan Observation: The photos were taken at the Park Hyatt Shanghai hotel.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted an additional seven photos from the same photoshoot. Caption: “Breaking the established imagination, boss @ Gong Jun Simon's color choice today: colorful green~” They later also posted a photo of four polaroids taken during the photoshoot. Caption: “It’s here it’s here”

→ #GongJun trended on Twitter.

→ The photographer for the Vogue photoshoot posted twelve photos from it, including one not included by Gong Jun.

Additional Reading: → Flora’s daily fan news thread

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

[twohundredpower]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITIN!G TOGETHER A LOT EASIER. REPOST DO NOT REBLOG !!

NAME: bee! PRONOUNS:  she/her PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION: for more in-depth plotting, probably discord? but i also talk nonstop about rp related things on my twitter! NAME OF MUSE(S): lloyd irving, richter abend (tales of symphonia), kimihiro watanuki (xxxholic), and bee (bee and puppycat)! RP EXPERIENCE/HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?): GOD i’ve been rping since i was.. probably 12. i don’t want to say how many years it’s been, i am OLD PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: started on neopets, moved to gaiaonline where i stayed for a LONG time until i moved to tumblr! BEST EXPERIENCE: BEING ABLE TO MEET MY RP PALS IRL,,, i’ve been able to a couple of times with different people and it makes me SO happy ;;v;; i hope i can continue to do that for many years to come! RP PET PEEVES/DEALBREAKERS: i don’t have a lot, i just ask if you’re interested in doing something specific with me, please talk to me!! i am always happy to chat!  FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT: GIVE ME THAT HURT AND COMFORT BABEEYYYYY (fluff on its own is also extremely good) PLOTS OR MEMES:  both!! i love plotting out things and seeing ideas being brought to life, but memes are also good bc sometimes you get some really memorable and funny stuff out of them!  LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: oh god i try so hard to shorten my posts but i write a lot. i cannot help this i’m sorry BEST TIME TO WRITE: on one of my days off! i work at very stupid hours so once i’m home my brain just goes to mush  ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): I THINK SO?? i relate very strongly to watanuki and bee (i didn’t get my nickname from her tho i swear) and i think i have some of lloyd’s goofball tendencies... richter was like my edgy emo phase that i look back on and cringe at /JOKE

tagged by: nobody i took it from amber tagging: the cool person reading this

[sterredem]

TTPD: The Anthology

Ex!Charles leclerc x reader | Oscar piastri x reade

[SMAU]

Face claim Taylor Swift

Summary when things go down with Charles and reader Oscar is there to save the day

Word count -

Warning cheating (not reader), not proofread

A/N quite short but I like it. Made over the corse of a few weeks so there can be a few plot wholes. Hope you enjoy it!

The 1st album that is mentioned (that she tours is the first few posts) is a mix of lover and reputation

Don’t forget to comment, repost and give feedback! It helps a lot and only takes a few seconds!

Instagram

Liked by Charles_Leclerc and 5.837.915 others

Yourusername lil photo dump from me had a AA blast on tour and the award season was amazing! You also get a bit of mine and Charlie's never seen pictures! see you soon Las Vegas!

View all 5.738 comments

Charles_Leclerc ❤️🫶 liked by author

Lilymhe I’m in love /w you

Yourusername let’s run away and get married my love ❤️🫶

Lilymhe YES

Alex_Albon @Charles_Leclerc you seeing this?

Charles_Leclerc sadly yes… but I’ve gotten used to it with her and like

Francisca.cgomes Good Charles, stay away from my wives

Pierre_Gasly ??????!!!!!!!

Lilymhe 😘

Yourusername 😘🫶❤️

User1 So exited!

User2 She looks so good!

User3 THEY ARE THE POWER COUPLE!!

User4 OMG they are so hot!!!!

User5 I'm in love with lover!!!!

User6 Is there going to be a nee album soon?!?!

User7 Yes!! I want more!

User8 you’re so right to write gorgeous about Charles

User9 IM GOING TO THE LAS VEGAS SHOW!! I AM SO EXITED!!

User10 their both so hot even when they don’t even try

User11 we want more boyfriend Charles!!

User12 i love how her your go with the f1 races (for example the next show being in Las Vegas and the rac being their too at that time)

User13 love that the picture of them that were at the same event are beside each other (y/n and Charles at the Grammies and them hanging out at the Monaco Grand Prix)

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Twitter

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Instagram

Liked by Oscarpiastri and 6.836.073 others

Yourusername Thank you all so much for all the support these past weeks. I love you all so much! We also got to play 3 incredible nights in Vegas and it was a childhood dream of mine! See you next week Texas!

View all 10.635 comments

Lilymhe love you beautiful!

Francisca.sgomes Lived seeing you!

Oscarpiastri thank you for the invitation! I loved seeing it all! Liked by author

User1 Lives the show!

User2 so happy to see you okay!

User3 you’re so hot

User4 I aspire to be you

User5 love the 7th pic

User6 I LOVE YOU!

User7 I love the relationship she has with her fans

User8 so great to see she is doing fine after all the rumours!

User9 where is Charles?

User10 they probably broke up cause he cheated

User11 is it just me or did she look a bit off after the break up?

User12 so happy for you! You deserve it!

User13 needs aesthetic?!

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Messages

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Instagram

Yourusername posted a new story

Seen by 5.836.936 users

Bffuser reacted to your story

WTF?!

TELL ME!!

WHO?!

-

Oscarpiastri reacted to your story

Already posting me on your story?

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Instagram

Liked by Oscarpiastri and 9.926.637 others

Yourusername Surprise! The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, is out now! This is an album that is very close to my heard, it is my experience through rough times in my life. Almost every time I bring out it is to close a chapter of my life and start a new one, it is the same with TTPD. Writing this album has felt like therapy for me, it has helped me cope and process a lot of different emotions. I also want to thank all the people that helped me write this and helped me through this part of my life; thank you jackantonoff for producing this album, thank you PostMalone and Florance for colabarating with me and thank you Bffuser for being with me through this all.

All is fair in love and poetry

TTPD: THE ANTHOLOGY is out now!

Comments are limited

Jackantonoff so happy for the world to finally see this masterpiece!

Florance Thank you for giving me this chance!

PostMalone Liced working with you!

Bffuser So happy for you!

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Instagram

Liked by Oscarpiastri and 7.836.837 others

Yourusername Another suprise! While writing TTPD I met this amazing guy, who I now get to call my boyfriend. And while writing all the sad song I needed to get some love, and happy song, out of my system too. So here it is. My new single timeless. This song is about how in every time we will still always find each other. Oscar, thank you so much for being with me through our all of this, and I hope to be happy with you for forever and always.

Comments are limited

Oscarpiastri So proud of you my love Liked by author

[madxwonderland]

SHIPPING INFO // Answer the following for your muse(s) so people know how shipping works on your blog.

REPOST. Don’t reblog.

What’s your OTP for your Muse(s)?

I really don't know if I have an OTP with Alice. I've shipped her with a few characters back in the day when I mostly RPed her on twitter. One of my favorites was her with Hatter from syfy's Alice.

What are you willing to RP when it comes to shipping?

The biggest is probably angst and fluff. Alice is very reserved when it comes to romance but if someone can crack her then she is very devoted and loving. She is also very protective over those she cares about. Her ptsd and demisexuality make it hard for her to find any romantic prospects.

However she is always looking for friendships and other platonic relationships

How large does the age gap have to be to make it uncomfortable?

Probably no bigger than 5-10 years. 10 years would be pushing it. I personally don't get super uncomfortable with age gaps as long as both parties are over 21 and it's completely consensual. When the older party knew the younger when they were under 18 that's when I get uncomfortable.

Alice's personal preference probably won't go past 10 years older than her and she definitely wouldn't involve herself with anyone 18 or younger. She is 21 in all of my verses now.

Are you selective when shipping?

With Alice, I am probably more selective than any of my other muses. I ship chemistry but I am always open to exploring romance with her if she and the other person get along really well.

How far do steamy moments have to go before they’re considered NSFW?

With Alice I prefer to do a fade to black but will sometimes put it under a read more. It really just depends. But really once it goes past making out and the fourplay starts then I try to stick it under a read more or fade to black.

I don't do a whole lot of smut with Alice just because she rarely gets herself involves in such relationships.

Who are other muses you ship your muse with?

There has been a few that I would have threads with and think 'oh this would be cute if things went this direction' without anything going in a romantic direction. I don't want anyone to think that I'm throwing Alice at their muse intending to ship. But sometimes if I know the character then I have moments where I think them and Alice would be a cute couple.

But really no specific muse comes to mind at the moment

Does one have to ask to ship with you?,

You can ask if you like! Or we can just rp it out in a thread and build that chemistry. Either works for me!

How often do you like to ship?

I would love to have more ships with Alice! But like I said, it can be hard for her. It takes a lot of trust for her to open up in such a way. But I do really want my girl to fall in love.

Like I said earlier, I am also always wanting more platonic and familial ships with her as well!

Are you multiship?

Yep!

Are you ship obsessed or ship more-or-less?

Probably ship more or less with her? I like to focus on many different dynamics with Alice and shipping isn't my priority.

What is your favorite ship in your current fandom?

Sadly there really aren't a lot of ships in my fandom. To be fair most of the characters opposite of Alice are in her head. I've seen a lot of fan ships with Alice and Carpenter or Alice and the Cheshire cat in human form. But for me personally, all of the Wonderland occupants are like Alice's children more or less. They are just her companions. She doesn't see any of them in a romantic light.

The only other ship I ever see is Alice and Bumby and that one is disgusting and has no place on my blog.

Finally, how does one ship with you?

Build up that chemistry in some threads, send in memes with a more shippy tone or if anything you can just ask if I can see anything going anywhere with our muses!

Tagged by: stole it from my other account

Tagging: i'm too lazy to tag. steal it.

[keira-incognita]

Musings on Mastodon Apps

I’ve had to move Mastodon instances again.I’ve set up shot on my own private instance on a managed hosting service. So now I’m paying to use Mastodon, but it's worth it to no longer have to worry about the instance I’m on either defederating with other instances I follow or being defederated by others. Technically, that last one is still possible, but unlikely since it's just me and I try to avoid being a jerk online as best I can. And it’s still cheaper than your average streaming service, and I pay for several of those that I don’t always use every month.

But instead of reposting a lot of my old posts to my instance, I’m going to collect some of them here, just as I have been since the last time I switched instances.

So here are my observations and thoughts on Mastodon apps. They span a couple months of toots, so they read almost like a stream of conscience, but I’ve tried to organize them better by app. 

I feel like I’m going to need to finish learning how to code in Swift just so I can make a Mastodon app that has the features and design elements I want. 

It seems to me as if, in general, most mobile apps are designed by people who don’t actually ever use the app.

Mastodon Official App I like a lot the design elements in the official Mastodon app UI, but it’s missing some key features like lists and direct messages. If they’re there, I can’t find them.

Mastoot I like Mastoot a lot. It has most of the features. Still no Lists though. And some design elements could be better.

More app observations on Mastoot: Pros: Customizable color accents Cons: Does not appear to animate those server emojis. Can’t add them to posts on that app either.

Metatext I know a lot of people like Metatext. It has more features but not quite all of them. I don’t like the design though, especially on the profile pages. If I could take its features and the UI of the official app, I think I would be satisfied.

Point to Metatext for image attachments. Mastodon official refused to upload. And this gives lots of nice options for thumbnail cropping and alt text.

Metatext also seems to be the only one of the three that allows you to do like Twitter and add posts to the thread as you compose it. Just a few design tweaks and that one could be a winner.

Of the three iOS apps for Mastodon I’ve been trying out, Metatext is definitely the best for posting. I really like how it handles image attachments. I can enter the alt text and set how the thumbnail is cropped. It has the custom emojis. And it allows you to add a toot to a thread and then post the whole thing.

I think I still like the UI better on the official Mastodon app, but Metatext is also the easiest to switch between feeds on. So I think Metatext is probably the one I’ll use most.

It’s a shame Metatext isn’t being developed further. It’s still the best Mastodon app for iOS.

MacOS I haven’t found a MacOS app yet, but I can always just use the browser there. And my Macs are Apple Silicon, so I can also just run the iOS apps on there as well.

Ivory I’ve tried Ivory. It’s okay. Still too early to tell if it’s one I’d like using longterm. Plus, I really don’t want to pay for an app subscription, especially on top of paying for my private instance hosting.

Ice Cubes I still think MetaText is the best iOS client for Mastodon, but with development on that indefinitely on hold, I’m going to give Ice Cubes a try for a while. Odd name, and there’s a few things I don’t like about it, but they’re actively updating it, so we’ll see where it goes.

Seriously though, why doesn’t any app but MetaText support threaded posts? And some need to improve the profile page layout. At least Ice Cubes supports the animated headers.

Okay, I take that back. I will not be using Ice Cubes, at least not yet. It does not remember your place in the feed. Instead of loading my Home timeline starting from the last post I made / read, it opens to now. That’s a deal breaker for me.

I’ll keep an eye on updates for it, but back to MetaText for now.

Over time, Ice Cubes has made a lot of improvements. Since I first tried it, it has finally become a viable app candidate. Few more things I’d like to see implemented there, but it’s in constant development, so new features are always being added.

Mona I am really liking Mona App as a Mastodon client. There’s still a few things missing — using the mute filters set on my account is the big one — but it has so many customization options. I’d also like to see character count in the compose message. And so far MetaText is the only client that lets you thread posts. That would be nice to see too.

It also doesn’t seem to display ALT text, but there is a place to enter it. Maybe I’m missing a setting.

Aha! Found it.

Oh, good. I finally found where you approve follower requests in Mona so I don’t have to switch to a different app for that anymore.

Mona is currently my Mastodon app of choice. It just has so many customization options. It could still use a few more features, but it is still in beta, so I expect it to just keep getting better. I will almost certainly be purchasing it when the finished app is released.

[sg2tiger]

I'm a weird person who likes archiving things. Making lists. Etc. My friends bully me for it all the time but it's simply who I am 😔 I always liked doing these little end-of-year gaming wrap ups but they never really felt right on twitter (and I had to post my rambling thoughts at an external link anyway). I thought about just coming back with 2022 and ignoring the two years I didn't post them here but the gap would bother me too much, so here's a repost of my 2020 gaming recap.

Unless otherwise noted, all text was written in December 2020. For a couple games that I’ve played more in the time since I might add some additional thoughts, but I’ll make a note of it being 2022-me talking if so.

The Sims 4

I feel like I have to preface this with the fact that I was never into the Sims franchise, and never played any of the previous games in the series. Yes, yes. I know that they were better than the Sims 4 in every way. But since this is my only Sims game and thus the only metric by which I can judge a Sims game for myself, I can still say that I’ve gotten a lot of fun and enjoyment out of it since obtaining it earlier this year.

It started because some friends of mine were playing, and I became intrigued by the building system (and the death traps one friend was constructing with said building system). I don’t think life simulator games as a whole really appeal to me, which is why I never got into the Sims before now, but I do love me a good building system. And I do think the Sims 4 has a good building system. I just love zoning out and making and decorating houses, even if I’m not exactly GOOD at it. 

Still, despite all the things I hear about how inferior Sims 4 is to its predecessors, I’ve enjoyed the gameplay too. Since I play on PC I of course have access to mods to improve some of the areas where it’s lacking, but even so, ON ITS OWN without having anything to compare it to I think it can be a lot of fun if you know how you want to play it. Like, the only real ‘playthrough’ I have done so far that wasn’t just me testing mods and CC and stuff involved me trapping a full household of 8 sims inside a house and forcing them to live together reality show style. Except the house was also cursed AND haunted, and I had a mod that made fires spread faster and kill quicker. The goal was, any sim that could survive until they reached Elder on the fastest aging game speed would be set free from the house and be granted eternal youth and immortality. I had a lot of mini goals pop up as I played this save, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel — “reach elder without dying” — and that helped guide my gameplay enough that I didn’t feel completely aimless, which can be a problem for me if a game is too open-ended sometimes.

I can’t say I’d recommend spending more than $800 for the game and all its packs, but if you were to acquire it through some other means (that I absolutely definitely wouldn’t and am NOT advocating, of course) I think you could theoretically get plenty of enjoyment out of it, especially with the plethora of mods and CC out there. While there are certainly a lot of areas that have room for improvement and I have hopes for with the eventual Sims 5, I don’t think the Sims 4 is a BAD game. At least for a newcomer to the franchise like me who can’t really be disappointed because I have nothing to compare it with. To me, it’s a fun sandbox where I can zone out and enjoy building, or just throw some hapless sims into a horrible situation and play god. And sometimes it’s nice to have a game like that where you can just turn your brain off and do whatever.

Undertale

Yeah, I know. Undertale in 2020, extremely late to the party, etc. Thing is, when I first heard about Undertale, it sounded like a cute and fun game that I would probably enjoy. And then the overzealous fandom blew up and no one would shut the fuck up about it, casual spoilers were literally all over the place, and people looked at you like you had two heads if you said you hadn’t played it or didn’t want to play it. I got SO SICK of seeing people not SHUT THE FUCK UP about FUCKING UNDERTALE that I developed hype aversion and came to actively hate a game I’d never played, a game I probably WOULD LIKE if I played it, because everyone was so goddamn obsessed with it. I was actively avoiding it for years for this reason.

Anyway, after many years of consciously avoiding anything to do with Undertale as a result of the hype aversion, I ended up deciding to play it after all at the behest of good friends whose opinions I trust and who knew about my hype aversion going in. We sat down and talked it through and decided that I’d stream it to them on Discord while playing. They wouldn’t influence my gameplay or talk out of turn and spoil things for me, or give me hints I didn’t ask for, or tell me how to play the game. We’d meet once a week for a few hours for ‘Undertuesday’ and they’d just watch me play and experience things for myself (even if I sometimes very definitely annoyed them with my gameplay). And I appreciated that, so thank you guys again for being patient with me.

Now…I think I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about this game when I finally finished it, but it was back in April, and I don’t seem to have put them in writing because we were talking in voice chat. Unfortunately I can no longer remember any of the specific commentary I must have had for the game when it was fresh. But I think my general take was…I wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as I think I could have, had I TRULY been able to go in blind. But I simply had too much meta awareness of what the game was expecting of me due to how much it blew up. My awareness of things like the mere EXISTENCE of ‘pacifist’ and ‘genocide’ routes ensured that I tried to do the right thing throughout and never kill any monsters, because I knew the game didn’t ‘want’ me to. I had foreknowledge that actively changed the way I may have played had I not known. I also knew that the player character and the original lost human were not one in the same. Perhaps my feelings about the story may have changed had I been properly fooled into believing they were. And in general I had a hard time letting myself like Papyrus and Sans because of how popular they had become, and how sick I was of seeing their faces plastered all over the internet at the height of Undertale’s popularity.

Lots of things like that, mostly little things, but those little things added up to an experience that felt inherently tainted compared to being able to go in without that foreknowledge. I felt like I was just acting the way the game ‘wanted’ me to, but didn’t always expect me to, because a part of me knew that I was supposed to act that way if I wanted the best ending. Because I knew I’d be guilted and punished if I acted differently. Because I went into a game that acts as a deconstruction of the genre knowing that it was a deconstruction. I don’t know how else to put it, but I feel like I wasn’t really able to play it genuinely, and it affected my perception of the game and its themes. Perhaps also being aware that my friends, to whom this game means a great deal, were watching me with expectations and hopes of their own that I would come away loving it as much as they did, and wanted me to. And I feel like I probably let them down because that just didn’t happen for me.

Undertale is a good game. It’s cute, it’s got some cheeky little amusing moments, and you can tell a great deal of love was put into it. I understand why it’s as beloved as it is. But I think it’s also a good lesson about fandom hype and how NOT to try and get your friends to play a game you like (or watch a show, or whatever). I know that when you’re very interested in something you want more than anything to get your friends to become interested in it too — believe me, I’ve been there, and I was definitely the annoying type about it (especially about Umineko). But I think it’s also very important not to let your excitement for a thing override the experience of others, especially if you want them to love it as much as you do. Undertale feels like the kind of game that really works best when you can go in blind and not have your experienced guided — directly or indirectly — by spoilers and meta knowledge. I feel like I definitely would have been able to appreciate it more had I been able to have a natural experience with it, anyway.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

A lot of my thoughts on Odyssey are basically repeats of my thoughts on Origins from last year, so I won't rehash those here. The TL;DR of it is, I can enjoy both games on their own merits as vaguely historical open world action games, but not as what I consider to be Assassin’s Creed games. What I consider to be Assassin’s Creed has essentially ended with Syndicate, and it appears that we won’t be going back, now that Valhalla continues to follow in Odyssey’s footsteps in turning the franchise into (the very loose definition of) an RPG.

What’s NEW here from Origins is the addition of dialogue options and “choices” in how quests can complete. Except your choices aren’t real choices at all, and the player never truly has any agency in the parts of the story that actually matter in the end. (spoilers for this next part so skip to the end if you don’t want ‘em)

Phoebe always dies, for example. No matter what you do. No matter how fast you are. No matter what choices you made before this point in the story. Her character, regardless of what you do or don’t do, is destined to die. To me this would have been an IDEAL point in the story to have some actual cause and effect…like, maybe my actions earlier with her friend and the plague business could influence this, and if I choose poorly, I would have to live with the fact that I’d doomed her. Or something DURING the quest itself, as you pursue her. Maybe you could have acted in a way to get to her in time. I know they really wanted Aspasia’s reveal as the big bad to be a surprising end game affair, but it was pretty heavily foreshadowed at this point in the story (I didn’t think she was The Ghost yet but I certainly was suspicious of her being a cultist). Maybe if my character could have had the opportunity to not trust her, I could have advised Phoebe to not work for her at all, and not end up endangered as a result. There are any number of ways they could have given me the agency to either save or or TRULY end up responsible for her death by my actions. They did not. She is scripted to die no matter what you do. And this is just one example of many points in the game just like it where places that I feel like I SHOULD be able to influence the outcome with my decisions don’t do jack shit because it’s scripted. By contrast, most times that my decision CAN influence the outcome of a quest, the change is so minor (slightly different dialogue or the opportunity to pursue a bland out of the blue fade-to-black sex scene I don’t want) that it doesn’t feel worthwhile at all.

At the end of the day I’m left wondering why this even needed to be a feature at all. Just to give the illusion that this is an RPG now, and broaden the customer base? Because that’s what it feels like. The game could have played out almost exactly the same had they gone with a FULLY scripted story like all the previous games, especially since Alexios/Kassandra clearly already have a pre-written personality that comes across through the things they say and the way they say them regardless of which dialogue options you actually choose. The choices are basically tacked on for appearance’s sake, choices in name only. I felt nothing meaningful from a single one of my choices in all of my 207 hours so far (I’m still trying for 100% completion but I have finished the main questline with both Deimos and unveiling all the cult members). And that’s my biggest complaint about this game — the “choices” didn’t even need to exist because their absence wouldn’t have actually changed the game at all.

And that’s not even getting into the whole forced DLC marriage and child debacle (I don’t own it and plenty of other people have already gone on at length elsewhere on the internet about it, but I think it speaks to the exact same issue of the game promising and giving the illusion of player choice but ultimately still having a scripted story to tell and a protagonist whose personality is already set in stone regardless of your ingame decisions).

At this point I had a whole txt file with more specific examples of Quests That Did Not Actually Give Me A Choice but you get the picture, so I’m not gonna go on endlessly about each one…

Anyway. I feel like Ubisoft would be better off just making a new IP if they want to explore the RPG market so badly. Assassin’s Creed never fit this format and I don’t feel it ever will. RPGs with significant choices work best with silent protagonists (though I feel like KC:D did a serviceable job without one), not fully fleshed out characters who already have literally existed in a historical context by way of the game’s entire premise. By actively taking place in the past you are inherently limiting the things my character can do to influence the story, because that story has already concluded, and the results of it can be seen in the present day story. But they keep being so wishy-washy with the present day story that it’s like a relic at this point anyway that they’re just afraid to drop entirely to piss off the minority who still cares (me, I’m the minority). But when it clearly doesn’t MATTER anymore, why not just bite the bullet and do it already? You could always resolve the loose ends in a comic tie-in lololol

Honestly though, while I’m probably the .0001% who actually enjoys reading all of the stuff on Layla’s PC that gives more context on the lore of the modern day assassins vs. templars conflict and the overarching story that’s been running through this franchise since day 1, I think we’re at a point where they may as well just let it go. They’ve been doing it so dirty since Black Flag as it is, I’d rather just see it go than get further tarnished by being forcefully tacked on because it’s an artifact of the series. After the complete disregard for modern day that we saw in Unity and Syndicate I was genuinely excited when we got Layla, because I thought she’d step into the role of The New Desmond and have adventures that actually made the modern day story relevant again…but she’s actually LESS relevant than the nameless faceless Black Flag modern day protagonist, and that’s just sad. Just pull the plug already, Ubisoft. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you want this series to become a loosely historical sandbox RPG and the intricate and complex lore of the modern day storyline is only dragging you down. You don’t care about it anymore, so what’s it matter to people like me who DO care if you’re not giving it proper attention either way? Just let it die before it can be disgraced any more.

I’m getting off track though…honestly, it’s a fun game. Like I said, 207 hours and I’m still not done shooting for 100% completion by exploring every island and doing every sidequest that I missed my first go around. If I wasn’t having fun at all I wouldn’t still be here. I AM having fun. I think less fun than I had with Origins, if I’m being honest, but it’s definitely not a bad game. I’ll just never be happy with the idea of the series going in this direction in the first place, so I’m always gonna be here nitpicking about little things the majority of people won’t care at all about. Like the fact that haystacks and hidespots no longer exist despite being a literal staple of the franchise. Or the fact that you can’t die from fall damage anymore. Lack of true poison/berserk darts mechanic or any real ability to sow chaos in an enemy camp without breaking stealth because the game really really REALLY wants to force you into open dynamic combat because it looks cooler in the promo trailers. Feel like I had to fight the game to give my gear all the mechanics that boost Predator Shot and passive adrenaline regeneration so I can pull off multiple headshot kills without being spotted, y’know, like I want to actively do in a game where I expect to play like a proper assassin. Oil barrels also seem way weaker than they were in Origins where setting fire to camps was a risky (because it’s not exactly stealthy and quiet in the traditional sense) but very fun way of making quick work of enemies in the dead of night and then slipping away in the chaos before they could see you. The game just really wants me to be a Spartan Warrior Demigod and I’ve gotta work so hard to NOT be that and it annoys me. Can’t even blow up a grain silo from absolute and complete cover with no one around to witness SHIT and not get a mysterious bounty on my head. Are the horses and goats reporting my crimes again, like in Skyrim?

I could keep going with nitpick after nitpick but I won’t. I’m just cranky because I actually really liked both Unity (gameplay-wise, the story was a trainwreck) and Syndicate (slightly less of a trainwreck which is funny considering the presence of actual trains) and thought they did a lot to really refine that tried and true core Assassin’s Creed gameplay…and I know it’s never coming back. But Odyssey is fun I guess. If you aren’t an experienced AC fan you’ll probably enjoy it. And I guess that’s exactly how Ubisoft likes it.

Sonic Adventure 2

One day I was babysitting my 3-year old nephew and he told me he wanted to play a ‘blue game’. I didn’t know what that meant (I have since learned that this is how he refers to his parents’ Switch, which is light blue) so I looked in my Steam library for something blue. I landed on this, which I forgot I even had on PC. And that’s how I got my nephew obsessed with Sonic and also how I spent the next 2 months reliving one of my favorite games of the GameCube era.

I don’t really have a lot to say here. It’s Sonic Adventure 2. I got big into the Chao Garden, as one does, and trying to A-rank all those stages that used to give me the hardest time. I’m actually really proud to have A-ranked Crazy Gadget on all stage types, and Eternal Engine on all types except Hard (couldn’t manage more than a B). Also got all A ranks on Route 101, but I did that in the olden days too (after a great deal of frustration and one broken GameCube controller). Can’t manage to pull it off for Hard Mode Pyramid Cave though…and I know I DID finally get that one last time I replayed this game, like, 8 years ago, so I know I’m capable, but I just can't manage to pull it off.

Mostly I focus on the Hero stages though. Growing up, me and my brother used to share our save files on most games instead of having separate ones, and when he played I’d watch and vice-versa. For SA2 I always played the Hero story and he played Dark, so I’m always less familiar and more rusty when I try to do the Dark stages. I did get all A ranks on Radical Highway after many many hours of trying (fuck you, time attack)…but that’s about my sole Dark stage claim to fame. Rouge's stages in particular are exceptionally difficult for me.

I was still working on raising some Chao before I inevitably got distracted away by other games…but the good thing about having it on Steam is that my save data will be there next time I get the urge to play, whether it’s a year from now or 5+. No more hunting for old memory cards that probably got lost or thrown out when we moved houses, taking all those hard-earned A ranks and carefully-raised Chao with them. And I think it'll be satisfying to boot it back up after a long time and remind myself that I got all A ranks in Crazy Gadget (the finest achievement I'll ever attain in this lifetime and what should be engraved on my tombstone).

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town

The original Friends of Mineral Town (back when it was still Harvest Moon) for GBA was probably my favorite Harvest Moon game, so I was excited to play the updated remake. It’s not PERFECT, and I did kinda end my playthrough on a sour note which I will explain in a moment, but looking back on it now several months later I’d say it’s a very comfy and largely casual farming sim that’s hard not to like. Fans of Stardew Valley or more modern farming sims might find it too shallow, but for people who played either the original FoMT, HM64 or Back to Nature, it’s a fun and nostalgic little game.

Of course, as with all remakes, there’s always those things you wish they didn’t change. Some of the character redesigns don’t sit as well with me as the originals, but most of them grew on me as I played (except Karen…). The removal of rival marriages is also a heavy blow, simply because a certain Japanese market didn’t like the idea that their waifus might get “stolen” if they didn’t act fast enough (and iirc you had like, 2 whole years before they WOULD in the original so like…)…I’d like to say the inclusion of same-sex marriage makes up for it, but I wish we could have had both. I always end up wooing everyone in town before I actually get married in these games, just so I can see all the events, and then I feel bad for leading everyone else on, so I like the idea that they’ll find happiness together too! I think that if the game were ever able to be hacked for mod support this would be the first thing modders would put back in.

But while these things are the main offenders you’ll hear people talk about, they’re not the worst. A lot of this is probably on the nitpick level that most players won’t care about so feel free to stop reading here. Granted that a lot of the game’s issues stem from being a little TOO faithful to the original and some of its more frustrating gimmicks (who honestly thought a 50 year wedding anniversary gift was a good idea in a game where no one will ever age?!), but there are a lot of things that were CHANGED from the original and made needlessly more difficult for some baffling reason…and then tied to achievements, to boot.

So, most of the achievements are pretty easy to get as long as you play normally and get past 3 years. Others require you to go a bit out of your way to achievement hunt for them specifically, but are absolutely doable if you set your mind to doing them. But then there are the ones that basically require you to plan your entire save file around getting them, and making no mistakes in the process unless you just really really REALLY love waiting around for entire ingame seasons before you get another chance. The main offenders here are all related to breeding farm animals, and how they needlessly changed the breeding mechanics in this game for seemingly no reason than to make things more tedious and difficult.

See, the remake introduced a convoluted friendship/happiness system to all your animals. I think the original had some hidden friendship requirements too, but the main thing in the remake is that animals you purchase have a friendship CAP, after which they cannot continue to gain more friendship, even if you’ve had them and cared for them every day lovingly for years. The only way to raise that cap is to breed your animals, and each time you breed a successive generation that heart cap goes up by one. Purchased animals cap out at 5 out of a maximum of 8 hearts. If you breed your 5 heart cow you bought, it’ll have 6 hearts. Breed that one and it’ll raise to 7. And so on down the line until you have a cow with 8 hearts…which is basically a requirement if you want to get several achievements, and if you aren’t aware of this and start doing it IN YOUR FIRST YEAR you’re going to have a very bad time.

See, you need your animals to have max hearts if you want them to produce the highest-quality animal products (milk, eggs, wool). And you need those animal products in order to cook some dishes, which you need for the achievement to cook all dishes in the game. And you need them at max hearts to win the seasonal animal festivals, which also have achievements. And the thing about those festivals is that they come once a year, and if you don’t have your maxed out adult animal by the time they roll around you have to wait a whole year to do it again. This is much worse than it sounds when you consider the aforementioned fact that the heart cap only raises by one with each successive time you breed…and it takes a full season (30 days) for a pregnant animal to give birth, and about another 20 for that baby animal to become fully grown. And then you have to actually GET that animal’s friendship maxed out up to its cap before you can breed them and pass that cap on to its baby (I think? I was playing in August so I’m a bit fuzzy but I’m pretty sure this was part of what made it so obnoxious because you couldn’t just breed the baby as soon as it hit adult stage if you wanted to do it right).

Now remember, the animal festivals come only once a year. You can’t submit a pregnant or baby animal, but you need an animal with 8 hearts or more (10 is actually the maximum but you only need 8 for everything that matters) to win the festivals. So if you time your breeding poorly, you might not have an animal that’s ready for the festival in time…there’s also holidays and the occasional typhoon/blizzard (which you can sort of cheat your way around in most cases if you’re vigilant about watching the weather channel) that can interfere in your ability to feed and brush the animals, which loses you precious days of raising that friendship.

Now let’s say you didn’t even find out about this cap system, or the 8 heart requirement for winning festivals, until well into your third year, after you’ve gotten most of the other achievements and basically done almost all you wanted to do in this game. Well too bad, because you’re basically going to need another 2 years minimum before you’ll actually have a prize-winning animal ready for the next festival! And if you’ve already befriended all the townsfolk, gotten all the romances, married, fully upgraded your farm, learned all the cooking recipes, fully explored both mines, and basically everything ELSE in the game besides these achievements…you’re going to have a lot of extremely BORING grind ahead of you where you basically just wake up, care for the animals, go back to bed and repeat. For season. After season. After season.

I was basically working like crazy to try and pull this off and I DID actually just barely not make it in time for the sheep festival one year which kinda threw me over the edge in my anger about this mechanic. And if you want to get all the products for your shipping log (thank GOD not required for an achievement, but something I was actively trying to complete before the breeding madness made me just say fuck it, achievements and then I’m done with this game) you have to do this for each type of cow as well…or at least have the sense not to buy any other type of cow besides normal until you’ve already gotten an 8-heart cow through breeding. Because whenever you buy a new animal of the same type after raising the cap, those animals will have the increased heart cap too…so if you had bred yourself a cow with 6 hearts, and bought a new cow, it’d have a 6 maximum instead of 5, and the different cow flavors all run on the same cap system as the normal cow (but only the normal cow’s milk is needed for the cooking achievement so the flavored cows are…well, frankly useless outside of the shipping log).

If this were the only frustrating system in the game I could probably suck it up and deal. It’s very obnoxious since, despite all the tutorial books in the library, I don’t think any of them mention this mechanic at all and basically require you to read about it in an online guide to know (and sucks to be you if you don’t do so early into your save so you can get started on it ASAP), and because it takes so much time to do it that it’ll take you a couple years for certain…but I’d probably sigh, complain a bit, and move past it. But the game decided that this was simply not ENOUGH of a punishingly specific seasonally timed game mechanic to tie to an achievement. No…instead they had to throw in that achievement for owning all 4 of the possible animal pets.

In the original FoMT you just started the game with a dog and you could take it to the fetch festival on the beach in summer. That was about it. The remake introduced different breeds of dog as well as cats, penguins and capybara you can get during different seasons from a special pet merchant. That merchant only shows up on the 15th of the month, and only if it’s sunny, and only if you’ve done some other stuff I forget exactly in order for him to start coming to town. And THEN, the pet he sells changes per season — cats in spring, penguins in summer, dogs in fall and capybara in winter. He won’t sell you a second pet until you’ve raised — you guessed it — your friendship hearts with your first pet, and it also has to be an adult…and you also guessed it, this takes a lot of time and daily dedication to level. And you have to do this until you’ve obtained all 4 pets from him, which you have to do EXACTLY on a sunny 15th day of each season, and only when all of your other pets are adults with maxed friendship.

Getting the idea yet? Another achievement basically tailor made to make you waste your time living through more ingame years than the game has engaging content to complete, and another element that you basically have to read about online to know exactly how it works. I wanted to get a cat. Cats are sold in spring, but it’s impossible for the merchant to come to town before the SUMMER of first year, so the earliest you can get a cat is year 2. It’s also not possible to get two pets in a row — your pet does not grow from baby to adult in time. I tried. So you CAN’T get a cat in spring of year 2, and then a penguin in summer of year 2…you have to skip over summer that year and you’ll be able to get a dog in autumn year 2. But then your dog won’t be an adult by winter of year 2, so you can’t get a capybara. But you can get a cat in year 3 spring! Oh wait, you have a cat already? Bummer. You effectively shot yourself in the foot and wasted time by not buying your pets with the maximum efficiency required to get this achievement.

I was in year 6 by the time I finally got all of the achievements. I had actually reached a point where I basically abandoned my actual save and made a second save file just to do this, neglecting my friends, family, livestock and farm for the sole purpose of waking up, playing fetch with my pet, going to bed and repeating until the time came that I could buy my next pet. The amount of time I wasted, both in real life and in the game, was just unbelievable. The unbelievably restricted mechanics in this game that can’t even be blamed on it being a remake of something so old, because they were actively INTRODUCED in the remake…by the time that last achievement finally popped I was just 1000% fucking done. I came away from a fun and jaunty little remake of a beloved game from my yesteryear feeling angry and soured on the whole experience. And I know that’s stupid, and I know you don’t have to get all achievements and I know achievements should be for things that you really SHOULD work to ACHIEVE and not be handed out like candy. But there’s a difference between achievements that make me feel like I worked hard to achieve them, and achievements that are gated behind ridiculously convoluted time-gated events that require you to actively stop playing the game normally and dedicate yourself solely to…waiting. To grinding your real actual time WAITING day after ingame day until the right time appears, and praying to God you didn’t fuck up and miss even one day in your routine. It’s bullshit, plain and simple.

And it’s not enough for me to not recommend this game, because I still had a lot of nostalgia and fun with it and this isn’t something that’s going to affect the vast, vast majority of players. I just…it’s remarkable how this game is both cutesy and casual and also so sadistic in its torments that it would make Satan himself blush. And it just kinda left a bad taste in my mouth by the time I’d finished and made me want to rant about it. And I put it in my notes, ‘rant about this thing when you write up the end of year post because I’m too angry to do it now’, and I didn’t wanna let my past self down. They put a lot of wasted time into getting those achievements, dammit, they deserve a little 10-paragraph rant as a treat.

But hey — at least I’m in the less-than-1% of (Steam) players who made it.

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

Been playing this on and off at a very slow pace for a while now…I’m not finished yet so I don’t really have a whole lot to say. It’s…alright. It’s like Awakening: More Differenter Edition, except it lacks a lot of the charm that game had and copypastes some of its mechanics over seemingly just for the sake of it despite it not REALLY making sense to do so (I’m looking at you, dimension babies). The characters are less charming and memorable IMO, and while I kinda like the story plot itself more than Awakening’s, I’m not a big fan of the Pokemon-style version split between the two stories. I’m basically never going to buy or play Conquest, so I’m effectively missing out entirely on the characters and perspective of that side…a perfect scheme to engineer people into buying two copies of the same game, of course (at least with Pokemon the idea is that you’re socializing with other people to get what you don’t have…that logic doesn’t really work when it’s an entire story that you’re splitting between two games that effectively must be played by the same one person to get the full experience).

I was enjoying it well enough though, even if not loving it, until the other day when I finally got to that mission. Suffice to say I didn’t have the requisite A-rank with a certain someone, who was then Doomed To Die By Cutscene In The Stupidest Most Convoluted Way Possible, despite that person being one of my best and most-used units gameplay-wise…so I was basically punished for not having them stand next to my PC character, specifically. But I’m not going to go on another 10-paragraph rant about why I hate game mechanics that come out of the blue and give you no way of knowing about them without seeking knowledge from outside the game. Suffice to say I just sucked it up and reloaded my save, grinded out the last level of support on one of the bonus maps (we were at a B support already…just not A 🙄), and then replayed what had been one of the hardest maps to get through in the game so far the first time (it was easier the second time since I knew about the reinforcements spawning nigh endlessly from the towers if you don’t block em off). The character’s life was spared and life goes on.

Still one of the stupidest things I’ve encountered in a game though, since no other Fire Emblem has had something like that locked to a support, to my knowledge (unless the old pre-GBA ones that I never played did), and there’s really NOTHING in the game’s story to that point that suggests this character’s relationship with the protagonist is important enough to doom them to Death By Cutscene if you don’t support them to A before that point. I was angry. But I managed to overcome it so I’ve moved on.

2022 Addendum: I finished this game the following year, before moving on to play Three Houses. My final verdict was ultimately one of disappointment, hence the updated ‘Meh’ review on the page image. The writing was just plain bad (and I’ve heard that it’s arguably worse on the other two routes), and the characters were just not that memorable or likeable to me with maybe two exceptions. What I did like about it was the gameplay - and at this point I can’t even remember the specifics, but I do remember that there were a few times playing Three Houses where I kept thinking ‘man I really miss being able to do [x] like in Fates’, so I guess there’s that. I know Birthright is also the Baby Easy Mode of the Fates trilogy, but I think Conquest would probably be hard enough to piss me off (I put up with that shit in the GBA era but I don’t know if 2022 Tiger is patient enough for that anymore). 

But mostly, the reason I don’t ever particularly care to play Conquest or Revelation is simply because Birthright wasn’t satisfying enough in the writing department for me to WANT to. Ideally you’d want one of your 3-part game series to hook the player into wanting to see how things go down on the other routes, right? Like, no one plays a visual novel, gets one ending, and says ‘okay that’s enough’ (r-right?). If the writing were GOOD it should make me want to see things from the other side. If the characters were compelling enough I should want to see them through another viewpoint. And if the overarching plot (which I spoiled myself on once I decided I didn’t want to ever play the other two games) actually had more hints to its presence IN Birthright’s story, enough to nag at my mind and say ‘there’s something unfinished here and I want to know what it is’...but well, it didn’t. Birthright didn’t manage to make me care about any of those things, certainly not enough to spend more money to buy both a second entire full-priced game and THEN a paid DLC on top of that. 

Some people play these games entirely for the strategy gameplay, and that’s the crowd I hear praising Conquest. But other than that I get the strong sense that I’m not alone in finding Fates a pretty weak entry in the series overall. Thankfully I feel that Three Houses more than made up for all of Fates’ shortcomings, at least in the writing and character department, but I’ll talk about that more in my 2021 Three Houses review. UNthankfully...well, I’m not too excited for what I’ve seen about Engage so far, so I guess time will tell as to whether Fates redeems itself in my eyes in the future.

Skyrim Modlist: Elder Souls

I think it’s becoming a meme at this point that Skyrim, in some form, will be on these lists at the end of every year. But I can’t help it…something about it calls to me every year around the same time (late August to September) and it always manages to pull me back in 😔

Anyway, last year I gave Ultimate Skyrim a try because the last time I modded my own game I broke things in hilarious ways by trying to make my own mod compatibility patches (turns out I’m not that good at it). I thought having someone else curate the modlist experience for me would alleviate my problems. And I loved that part of it, and how integrated Ultimate Skyrim’s systems felt compared to me just slapping together whatever I liked with no thought to how those systems would interact. Unfortunately I wasn’t as big a fan of Requiem, the entire system Ultimate Skyrim is based upon…

But in the intervening year between playthroughs, Automaton (the tool used to install Ultimate Skyrim) gave way to a new tool called Wabbajack, and an entire new world of curated modlist installers opened up before me. I decided to peruse the various Wabbajack lists and see if I could find one that’d suit me a little better than Requiem…and I actually really liked the sound of Elder Souls.

As the name implies, Elder Souls is basically The Dark Souls Of Skyrim. The world is harsher, bleaker, and filled with a huge variety of new enemies and dungeons chemically balanced specifically to kick your ass. The skill and leveling system is completely overhauled — aside from the crafting skills (smithing, alchemy and enchanting), you don’t gain exp and level up by doing anymore. You gain gold with each kill, and when you sleep you spend an increasing amount of gold to raise your level in the skill of your choice. Eventually you’ll earn enough exp to level up and gain perk points to invest. As you level, the amount of gold it takes to progress increases higher and higher, from the hundreds to the several thousands…but as you grow in power, you’ll be able to kill more enemies to earn more gold to put towards leveling up further. It’s actually a really cohesive and fun gameplay loop that works surprisingly well in Skyrim, and I came to enjoy it a lot.

Of course you can also earn gold in the usual ways…loot, selling loot, crafting things and selling those…everything you do in the game basically makes you think about how much gold you have and how you want to invest it. In the early game especially, when it’s so hard to kill and loot enemies, that expensive weapon at the blacksmith can be really tempting…but that means you’ll be spending the gold you need to level up, so it’s a judgment call. It also makes you really focus your character build because your skillups are restricted to when you can sleep and afford them, and your perk points become harder and harder to earn as each level up starts to feel so far away (though you can find perk points by exploring and finding waystones in the world as well, for a little extra help). Do you want to invest that perk in alchemy or enchanting? Or is it more practical to boost your damage or defense by taking a combat perk instead? It really makes you think about how you level.

In the early game, you’re a fragile little baby. When you die, you leave behind a gravestone and all your gold with it (you don’t lose your gear) and respawn in the last inn you slept in. If you can get back to your body before dying again, you can recover your gold…but if you die on the way, it’s gone forever. It may be practical to bring a follower along for better survival, but they’re expensive to hire and share in a portion of the gold you earn…is it worth the tradeoff for the survivability? I managed to get lucky and beat Uthgerd the Unbroken in a fistfight by using the architecture of the Bannered Mare to my advantage, ducking and weaving, so I earned a ‘free’ follower to carry my burdens and tank for me in my early hours. She also came at level 11 when I was like, level 3. I had to make her essential, though, because she kept jumping in front of my arrows when I tried to shoot the enemy and I killed her/reloaded about 5 times before I’d had enough of that 😔

By the middle to the end of the game, though, if you’ve been diligent in exploring, killing and building your perks well, you come to feel like an invincible god. You can take anything alone, and followers just get in the way. I was playing an Orc warrior, with two-handed/heavy armor/archery/smithing. Orcs in Elder Souls have passive health regeneration. With the Wintersun religion mod I followed Malacath, of course, and his boon allowed me to regain health for the amount of overkill damage I dealt with each enemy kill based on my favor with him. My favor with him was constantly high because I pleased him by constantly slaying great and powerful foes. With the addition of crafting equippable Runes I furthered my health regeneration per kill and buffs to my armor rating. For completing Meridia’s daedric quest I got a spell that…well I forget what it did exactly but it buffed me even more. Using Ocato’s Recital I had it autocast whenever I entered combat. As a werewolf, I also had further buffs to my health and stamina, even outside of my beast form. By the endgame I was further buffed by Black Books and the reforged Gauldur Amulet (which in Elder Souls has the extremely OP power of letting you revive once on death with a 15 minute cooldown — but considering the Gauldur brothers are extremely formidable, it’s a reward worthy of defeating them). And with the Cleave ability in the two-handed perk tree allowing me to deal AoE damage with each attack, I became a literally unkillable, unstoppable machine of death.

I’m not even a min-maxer. Optimizing builds and gear isn’t something I find fun, so I don’t really do it. This just was mostly a case of multiple factors all aligning in just the right ways to make me feel like a literal actual god. To further illustrated exactly how broken my character became by the endgame, there’s an enemy in the Vigilant mod designed to be unkillable — as in, you’re supposed to just RUN from her if she sees you. I’m kind of a weenie about horror in games in general so I was very scared and I did run and panic when I got to that part of the dungeon but then I got cornered in a room and in my panic flailed about attacking and…killed her. And then her equally scary friend who showed up shortly thereafter. Just killed them both. They’re either meant to have stupidly high health or defense or maybe both, I read about them online and they are definitely not meant to be killable because this section of the mod is more or less supposed to be a survival horror. You can’t kill the monsters chasing you, you can only run. Unless you’re me, the most broken Skyrim character who ever lived.

Anyway. To further drive home how much I ENJOYED Elder Souls, this is the first time I actually, legitimately finished Skyrim. In all my 2,193 hours of OG Skyrim on Steam, in only 228 hours of Elder Souls (this was my first time playing Special Edition so I did have the exact hours on hand) I did what I thought I could never do because I was always so distracted adding and removing mods and generally being too busy breaking my load orders to actually play the game. I beat Alduin. Then I did the Dawnguard DLC for the first time. Then I did Dragonborn for the first time. And then I did vicn’s trilogy of GLENMORIL (I was actually doing this concurrent with Dawnguard), VIGILANT and UNSLAAD. And there were even more quest mods I’d never played included in Elder Souls…but after being able to solo VIGILANT basically effortlessly it felt like nothing in this game could be a proper challenge anymore and I officially decided to call it quits. At level 49, Ushnak the Orc retired, too powerful for Tamriel to contain.

I was still in the mood for Skyrim after that, though, so I grabbed a new modlist and started a new file. But it just…didn’t click. It was a fun enough modlist in its own right (Equanimity) but it just…didn’t feel the same, after getting used to Elder Souls. The world felt so much more empty without all the enemy variety…sure, they had QUANTITY with bandit camps absolutely overflowing with difficult foes, but it wasn’t the same feeling as wandering through the desolate mountains and stumbling upon a minotaur, armed to the teeth and blocking your path. My gold no longer felt like it had value when I couldn’t spend it on skill ups, which had kept loot meaningful throughout the entire game. I feel like Elder Souls just kinda ruined a more traditional Skyrim experience for me…it was so DIFFERENT, and definitely took some getting used to at first, but when I stopped playing I finally realized just how much I’d warmed up to it.

I do wonder how much more punishing it’d be on a different build, though. I was focusing on archery more in the early game but then focused mostly on two-handed by the end, but how would the traditional Skyrim Sneak Archer survive in Elder Souls? What about a mage? I never play mages, but still. A squishier class, a race and religion without inherent health regen abilities…it might be fun to try next year when the Skyrim urge strikes me again. Or maybe I’ll venture out and try another new modlist again. I think I just couldn’t jump RIGHT from the Elder Souls experience into something that was a little closer to normal Skyrim, but a year off might ‘reset’ that a bit. Still though, I’d like to play Elder Souls again sometime. And I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to play Skyrim for the 100th time, but also like, doesn’t want to play Skyrim for the 100th time.

2022 Addendum: Sadly Elder Souls has been discontinued, so my ‘Recommended’ rating feels a little weird now, but there’s other Soulsy inspired lists out there that can hopefully scratch a similar itch (last one I was playing before I got distracted was Ruvaak which was pretty fun). In general I still cannot recommend Wabbajack modlists enough, and since the time of this review I have not played Skyrim without it being a Wabbajack modlist (with the semi exception of me taking someone else’s Skyrim Together modlist and then kind of hacking it to pieces to fit me and my friends’ needs, but that’s a story for the 2022 game reviews).

Genshin Impact

Some friends were playing Genshin so I decided to give it a try. Especially since it was constantly being called a BoTW clone, and I figured I’d never get a switch or be able to play BoTW, so hey, why not?

I feel like I don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s cute and fun and while the gacha elements are, well, gacha elements, I think the game is still very playable and enjoyable without suffering under the greedy fist of Big Gacha. The elemental interactions are really fun — I love games that take elemental play in more exciting directions than simple “water beats fire” style (one of the reasons I like Divinity a lot). Exploration is also a lot of fun, and it’s always really rewarding to solve a puzzle and see a chest pop up. I was also pleasantly surprised by how much worldbuilding and story there actually is, since I kinda figured it was gonna go more sandbox-style and just throw me out with a vague premise and have me explore the world in hopes of finding my sister.

I’ve enjoyed it a lot so far, I just haven’t played it a ton yet because I’ve also had my hands full with other things. But what’s there so far is pretty fun and I think it’s worth checking out at the very least.

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth/Shadowlands

A friend of mine usually buys me a couple months of WoW sub for every new expansion (I started playing when Pandaria was current). For reasons I no longer remember but are probably ARK-related, I didn’t end up getting a sub during the BFA period (my last sub came around the end of Legion). So about a month before Shadowlands dropped she got me a new sub, and I had to play catch-up on all the BFA stuff I’d missed out on…and THEN jump into Shadowlands.

Since I didn’t play BFA when it was current content, I think my opinions of it are pretty skewed. From what I hear, Azerite gear was wildly unpopular, but I kinda thought it was fun (granted I’m not into the endgame high tier raiding stuff where it’d really be an issue). I also liked how the Alliance and Horde stories were COMPLETELY different, and not just slightly different takes on doing the same content in the same zones. Both islands have a lot of personality and I thought the stories for both were interesting, and neither really required me to have a PHD in World Of Warcraft Lore Studies to understand them (which Legion sometimes felt like it did). I’m not SUPER thrilled with some of the changes they made to Outlaw Rogue since I was away, but I’ve gotten used to it…mostly.

Then Shadowlands came out JUST after I finished up my rep grind to get flying in BFA, where I now no longer had any reason to be and to fly (okay that’s not true, because it came in very handy when I leveled my horde main through BFA later, but it’s how I felt at the time). I kinda liked the more railroaded leveling experience for a change because of the way the story elements were able to be tied together and flow into each other, and I appreciate the fact that once you’ve gone through it that way once you don’t have to do it again on your future characters. Usually when I’m leveling I end up wandering off and picking up !s wherever I see them, getting vastly off-track from where the game actually wants me to go (I basically wandered away from like, the third story quest you get in Kul Tiras and ended up doing Every Sidequest in Tiragarde Sound before wandering back to continue the ‘main’ story there and realizing some of the places it would have taken me were places I had already gone to). For Shadowlands, since it wanted to guide me into focusing on the storyline, I decided not to do that — Bastion still had a bunch of the map unexplored by the time I finished the story there, but instead of wandering off to see it all I just headed right to Maldraxxus so I could do the story while it was all fresh in my mind. Then after finishing that, I went back to the other zones to wrap up the extra sidequests and stuff I had missed the first time around. It was a different kind of experience from how I usually play but I liked it for a change. Not sure if I’d like to see it as the new style for every expansion going forward, but I thought it worked well for Shadowlands in particular and the story it wanted to tell.

I’ve now got both my mains set up in covenants and am working on developing those. Another friend who hadn’t played WoW since WoTLK also recently came back and we have been working on leveling new characters together. As someone who’s mostly only ever played one Main Character, with a Secondary Character to occasionally experience stuff on the opposite faction, it feels weird to suddenly have all these ideas for new alts I wanna make, and having to find time to do all the things I wanna do. Thankfully my friend extended my sub as a Christmas gift, so I feel less pressured to have to do EVERYTHING I want to do by the end of the month now that I’ve got more time.

Overall I’ve been having fun though, after having been away from the game for a while. I’m kind of a casual WoW player in general, preferring the questing experience to doing stuff like Dungeons and Raids with groups of strangers that are gonna be putting pressure on me and my gear and my performance, so MY enjoyable WoW experience is not going to be EVERYONE’S enjoyable WoW experience. I get the sense that BFA was not terribly popular, but I thought it was better than Legion (and I liked Legion when it was current content). I’m also not as concerned with choosing the optimal covenant for Maximum Performance, but more based on aesthetics and style and how they fit my characters, and I’d like to see how all their little stories play out on alt characters at some point (right now my rogue is Venthyr and my hunter is Kyrian). Plus there’s still leveling my lowbie druid with my friends, and other alts I wanna make at some point…and working on stuff like pet battling and archaeology on the side. Lots of stuff to do, but hopefully now I’ve got enough time to do it in, and can relax a bit.

2022 Addendum: This was all before the whole big Blizzard scandals came about. At the time me and my friends were having a blast playing Shadowlands content together almost every night. Then basically all at once we all kind of stopped playing. For one friend, it was entirely due to the controversy. For the other I think it was a combination of conflicted feelings and general burnout. I kept going for another month or two until my sub ran out, but I was hitting the burnout around that time as well, and not having them to play with made me lose my zeal to work on my alts and other things to hold my interest, so I just let it lapse. I’m not really sure what the future holds as far as playing WoW together again, now...maybe someday. I don’t think there’s even been a new expansion since Shadowlands yet, anyway (I don’t really keep up with WoW news at all when I’m not actively playing). It’s kind of crazy how much can change in such a short amount of time. I’ll still look back at that time we were playing together and having fun, though, even if our WoW playing days might potentially be over.

Grounded

My friends came to me and basically said, “we’re obsessed with a new survival crafting game, do you wanna play”, and I said “why yes, I do love a good survival crafting game”, and the next thing I knew I had become a little ant…

Grounded hits on all the usual trappings of the genre. You have a vague premise (in this case you’ve been shrunken down to insect size and forced to brave the dangers of the backyard, Honey I Shrunk The Kids style) but otherwise are on your own to fend for yourself against things that want to kill you, while managing your own hunger, thirst, and other needs, building increasingly more advanced shelters and braving deeper into the world to get higher-level crafting materials and march ever toward advancement.

What makes it fresh is the way the ‘theme’ of being shrunk in the backyard feels really well integrated into the world. Things like finding a discarded juice box or soda can with a little (large, to you) droplet of liquid you can drink or fill your canteen with to replenish your thirst, which you can absolutely imagine finding in a backyard where children play. The giant bird who sometimes flies by and perches on a nearby bit of distant scenery, massive enough to blot out the sun from your tiny view below. The koi pond essentially acting as the ‘ocean’ biome, filled with hostile aquatic creatures and the ever-present threat of drowning. The vaguely 1980’s aesthetic of it all. It just all feels really cohesive and helps you immerse yourself in the world.

The mechanics are also a bit more…dare I say, casual? More forgiving? Than some of these games tend to be. Your only needs are really hunger and thirst, and while you CAN sleep, you don’t have to…you can just keep working through the night every night if you want to, without rest. Buildings can clip into the terrain by default, so where you build is a bit more forgiving (some games could stand to learn a thing or two from this…looking at you, ARK). When you die, your corpse basically stays there forever, so there’s not a ton of pressure to race back to where you died to recover your stuff. For that matter, anything you drop seems to stay on the ground forever. These things might change if the game gets persistent servers down the line for performance reasons, but it can be kinda nice in a multiplayer game with friends.

I think my favorite thing is how the building system is LEGITIMATELY cooperative. In games like ARK or Conan Exiles, it’s like, you basically designate one person in your tribe to be The Builder, with everyone else just being your resource gathering monkeys. One person has the plans, the ideas, the visions for how to build the base…and it can be hard to communicate that without wires getting crossed, and that can be costly when these games usually don’t return all your resources spent when you demolish a structure. But the way Grounded does it, you’re basically not placing down structures in the world right away, but blueprints for them. Everyone can see them, even as you’re trying to position them. Then anyone can get the resources and actually turn that blueprint into a structure. And if you decide you don’t like it, or change your plan, you can just destroy the blueprint without sacrificing the resources on it. It feels a lot more like I’m working with a team when I see blueprints that my tribemate made, and I can just go get the resources to build it when I’m able. Really working together, just like real ants…for queen and colony…

Another thing I love and think needs to be default in ALL these games, ASAP, is the ability to color code and add a floating icon to all your chests and containers as an easy way of saying ‘this is what we store in this box’, without requiring signs or mods or just you having to memorize/check every chest every time. Seriously, survival games? Please take note.

All that said, it’s still early access, and there’s some bugs (heh) sometimes. We’ve had some semi-frequent random disconnections kicking us back to the main menu and forcing the host to re-invite us back. There are also not yet actual servers, so the multiplayer game saves just live on the host’s computer. Latency can be an issue if their internet is better or worse than yours, and lagspikes and rubber banding is a bit more frequent than I tend to feel it in games with dedicated servers. Some hitboxes are a little wonky sometimes, for both enemies and resources. And lots of other little stuff I’ve already forgotten, but nothing I’d consider really gamebreaking.

Overall pretty fun if you don’t mind some bugs, both literal and technical (though there IS an arachnophobia slider that can make the spiders into basically cartoony blobs, which I think is a pretty cool consideration in a game like this). It seems like the devs have a lot of big plans on the roadmap as well, and a friend who was playing around in God Mode stumbled upon a few areas labeled as UNDER CONSTRUCTION, so the map might be getting some extensions at some point too. If you ever felt like you just wanna zone out and go about some farming tasks like a diligent little ant…Grounded is your game.

2022 Addendum: Grounded’s officially out of Early Access at this point and there have been a lot of changes to the game in the time since I wrote this review, and updates have continued coming out pretty regularly even post-release, which is always good to see. I think the funniest thing about my review in hindsight is that I don’t know if I’d consider it ‘casual’ as much anymore because combat has become a bit more deep and challenging...we even had to bump our difficulty down in an ongoing save at one point because we were having a rough time. I think more or less all the changes have improved the game, though, which isn’t something you see every day in a game like this (at least in the two I’m most familiar with, ARK and Conan Exiles, where every update tends to be met with a choir of angry players (usually PVP people, I don’t go there) about how the devs broke everything and suck and should issue refunds and also die). But yeah idk, go check it out, it’s pretty fun to be a little ant sometimes.

[jechristine]

i’m on both twitter and tumblr (more active on twitter even before i became a tomdaya fan) so i’ve seen the insinuation in tweets about how tumblr blogs are invasive etc etc while y’all on her speak on them being problematic, toxic, vile etc etc

to me there tends to be a bit of hypocrisy on both sides. twitter stans use the info from tumblr blogs or enjoy it and tweet about it without reposting the pics of them taken by fans without them knowing or whatever for eg while still preaching about their privacy

the crowd on twitter, stans as well but mostly weirdos, make the malewife jokes, and go even farther to say weird shit like z wears the pants, pegs him, yada yada,which y’all dislike. rightfully so because why are you commenting on another couples sex life like?

but in the same breath, constantly on here it’s “horny hours” and y’all also talk about their sex life. recently i saw discourse about tom’s capabilities. “he’s a dancer so..” “z wouldn’t go back to him if the dick was wack”

while that may seem more “positive”, it’s all the same. to me anyways but idk

This is maybe the wrong blog for this ask?

I’ll say that I’m not really one to police fans around topics or anything like that. When I engage in trivialty I have gut feelings around what’s appropriate, and other bloggers that I follow may have slightly different feelings or sensitivities, and that’s fine (we’re all pretty close). For my own time and energy, I think questions like “Why do fans xyz?” and “What cultural function or need does fans doing xyz serve?” are usually more interesting and relevant to my own existence than “Should we fans say or do xyz?”

I’ll also say that Tom Holland and Zendaya are selling us, among other things, fantasies about themselves and their bodies. If you don’t think so, I’ll direct you to nearly any photoshoot, most red carpets, and some Uncharted promo. They have also sold fantasies of personal connection through their past social media activity, although they’ve stepped back here as they probably realized the problems around that are worse than the benefits. It’s all part of their lucrative business models. I have questions about what that means for fan ethics, and what happens when fans consume and repurpose those fantasies, but I haven’t worked out all my answers. Would love to hear your thoughts.

When I’ve said Twitter is toxic, it’s been because people come to my inbox telling me how upset they are or how mean people are. I’m against most meanness in celebrity fandoms because why? Trust me it’s so easy to just not have that in your lives. Just turn it off.