#i'd be interested to play it again from another character perspective but the thought makes me a bit faint. sometime in the future. maybe

[robo-dino-puppies]

ok I finally finished Inquisition and… well I'll try to be brief(er... just kidding, I'm incapable of being brief) - I was interested in the story buuuuuut it was by far the least ~*fun*~ of all three for me to play, mostly because I was playing an elf and and due to dialogue choices (or lack thereof) it ended up feeling frustrating compared to previous games. knowing what I know now about the story, I really wish I'd gone with a human instead. however I enjoyed Jaws of Hakkon and Trespasser quite a bit more than the base game and I'm interested in seeing what happens next!

attempting (hah) not to spend fifty paragraphs on it I'll just say that it was A Trial to try to play an elf the way I wanted to, which I expected to be able to do because I had a great time with it in Origins? it seemed like most companions reacted to me saying "hey, you know I have my own beliefs, right?" (if the game even gave me the chance to do so) with "that's cute. ANYWAY-" and I ended up spending much of the game full of resentment on behalf of my poor doomed Lavellan.

I remember a convo I had with Leliana in Origins where I was able to challenge her on her preconceptions about elves, and I'm pretty sure there were times when characters challenged me about my biases against humans, and I just thought that was very cool! but I'm struggling to think of any times where that happened in Inquisition… it felt like it was written very shallowly with the ability to play a non-Andrastian/non-human, and that was… uh. frustrating.

my Lavellan basically knew her life as not-the-Herald was over when the camp started singing after Haven, and it never really got much better for her from there. I liked the cast of characters, but they felt more like... work friends? vs the previous two games' dysfunctional families (beloved). and the fact that Lavellan was reluctant about her role/an outsider made romances feel a bit squicky to me, because so few of the characters seemed to recognize that! I thought Josephine was adorable, but then during the balcony cutscene she called me "your worship" after I chose a flirt - despite me taking every opportunity to say I wasn't sure I was divinely chosen etc. - and I was like "welp I guess we're done with that." (I don't fault her for it because she's the ambassador and it makes sense in-character, and I still think she's adorable! but it just... felt bad.)

it's possible the dialogue options I wanted were there, I guess, just hidden behind paraphrasing? but I hhhhhate playing dialogue wheel roulette SO MUCH - I don't find it fun when it makes you sound like a real idiot or an asshole. I didn't actually want to disrespect my companions' personal beliefs (Lavellan was open-minded! she just didn't like the Chantry as an organization), and some of the "aggressive"-sounding options seemed like they would be too rude, so I avoided them unless I was really pissed off. but given how wildly the spoken line can vary from the paraphrase, maybe I should have chosen more?

(let's just say my Opinions on the Chantry - which I've seen no further evidence to revise - were cemented in Origins when the dude in Orzammar asked me, an obviously Dalish elf, to help him build a chantry and convert dwarves. I am a perennial and compulsive quest-completer, but I purposefully abandoned that quest with great prejudice. which is literally the first time I've ever done that in any game. so.)

then there were a bunch of gameplay/technical things that were small when looked at individually but when piled together with that lingering feeling of resentment just made the experience feel like a chore.

OH and as much as I personally love Morrigan, Lavellan was getting reallllll annoyed at having her human-splain Dalish culture in the temple. my face was basically a permanent >:[ for that whole section. (I don't care if the Dalish are "wrong" about their history - my character still would have at least known who Mythal was. and not asked about it. like an idiot.) partially for this reason I did not hesitate to have Lavellan do a cannonball into the well, good idea or not lmao.

also. I didn't even get a puppy this time. Cullen got a puppy. why didn't I get a puppy?! couldn't even let me summon a wolf like in Origins? uncool.

I think Cassandra (and her [disgusted noise]s) and Dorian were my favorites. (Dorian was the other person I flirted with, which obviously didn't work out for me for a different reason than Josephine lmao, but I appreciated that it let me say "no hard feelings/we can keep flirting" and then the game actually carried through with continuing to give me flirt options. perhaps I felt like Lavellan could bond a bit with him being an outsider too, and I loved the end slides in Trespasser that said they communicated all the time through a crystal awwww that's cute.)

all that said I had fun playing Jaws of Hakkon and Trespasser. I was very interested in all the spirit stuff with the Avvar, VINDICATIONNNNN learning that Ameridan was both an elf and a mage, and of course learning more about Solas/what is actually going on with the history of the elves. (The Descent started out interesting and I was excited because dwarves! more dwarves yay! gimme the dwarf lore!!! but I felt like it just sort of fizzled out at the end? and it felt weird to just say "ok cool see ya never probably" to Valta and just... not follow up on anything? also I hated the final boss even on super easy baby mode. T_T)

I angrily disbanded the Inquisition and gave a big middle finger (singular since I only have one left *pffff*) to Orlais/Ferelden/the Chantry, which was somewhat satisfying.

it probably would have been a less depressing experience if I had played as an at-least-marginally-Andrastian human… but. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well. and even though I knew there was Something Up with Solas I didn't know exactly what so it was fun finding that out along with my character. (I made a lot of decisions that he agreed with so we were good friends - or I thought we were - and I felt like the final confrontation was quite impactful, and it was satisfying to say "watch out because I'm coming to stop you.") I do think having my Warden and Inquisitor both be Dalish makes for an interesting perspective on the elf stuff.

[deception-united]

hiiii, i'm sorry if this is a bother but can i ask for advice from a fellow writer? it's not about writing a story, but more so just me burning myself out because of it, and i have no idea why.

for a good while, i've been wanting to find the "perfect" first project; i first planned on writing, animating and uploading a movie series online and it's like my "dream project/story", if that made sense? but, lately, i've been getting more and more desperate to have another project before this, for credentials and for me to get a little bit better at everything before working on the movie series.

no matter what i do, i can't seem to find a good enough "first project". i look at the story concepts / universes i scrapped, revive them, work on them for a little bit, before eventually bring unsatisfied and throwing it back in the trash, or at least just "on hold". i tend to work quicker and have more passion for a story if i get very attached to the characters, which i noticed tends to happen over time. but my patience is wearing thin and the fact that i'm stuck is catching up to me.

you don't have to answer this, but i'd appreciate any advice. thank you ^^,

Hi! This is a struggle I think I can safely say every creator goes through—the phases of feeling stuck or unsatisfied with their work, and losing interest in the story as time goes on. I've gone through it myself, and was in that cycle for the longest time: I'd come up with a vague idea for a novel, or a character I wanted to make the protagonist in a new story, and spontaneously start writing it without much planning or thought. And as you can imagine (or as you're experiencing, it seems like), that led to me abandoning all of them at some point or another. One I nearly finished, but I left it and came back a while later and was so immensely disgusted that I deemed it irreparable and turned my back on that, too.

Of course, what worked for me might not be helpful at all for you, but what I think is most important is just to focus on one thing at a time. Easier said than done, I'm aware. But flitting from one project to the next, trying to find the one that you'll have the most passion for, just doesn't work out very well. If what you're planning for your "dream project" that you mentioned is a movie series, and you have that all figured out, you may want to start with a novel that you can then base the movies off of. This could help you get a better idea of the characters, plot, and overall storyline so that the movies you plan to create in the future will have everything worked out already.

But maybe you feel that doing so will then make your passion for the movie series wane—that, after spending so much time and effort into writing that, you won't have the motivation to start over with a narrative you're already so familiar with. You mentioned you work better when you're attached to the characters, so that may be a good place to start. Don't think about the plot or worldbuilding yet—just focus on the characters. Everything else can come after. You know your creative process better than anyone, and this may not work for you at all. It likely wouldn't for me. But sometimes, it can help to start off with that and build upon it with time. Allowing yourself time to play and experiment without any pressure or specific goal in mind can lead to renewed passion and enthusiasm.

Another option is co-writing. Again, doesn't work for everyone, but working with others can provide new perspectives and generally make the process more enjoyable. Writing with someone else may help to increase your motivation and encourage you to hold yourself accountable, and can lead to brainstorming sessions that spark new ideas and solutions to problems you might be facing alone. It allows for the sharing of skills and strengths, making the project potentially stronger and more well-rounded. Collaborating on a project can also lighten the load, making it less overwhelming. Finding a writing partner who shares your vision or complements your style can lead to work that neither of you might have created on your own.

In any case, allow yourself to create something imperfect. I hate to say it, but even if the process of creating is flawed or the end result is despicable, the lessons you learn from it are valuable, and instrumental once you're ready to take up your dream project. Think of this, your first project, as a stepping stone rather than a definitive work.

So sorry for the late reply, and I hope this helped. Best of luck ❤

Previous | Next

[mihai-florescu]

Putting a message i sent earlier under a read more, it has some thoughts ive expressed before tho. ES, of course

My thoughts as an EichiP... i view ! and !! as different stories in the way they're approached tbh, what i fell in love with enstars for was the character driven storytelling of one event seen through different perspectives, where you see the antagonist in one perspective become a protagonist in another story and can empathize with the entire cast like this. I fell in love with eichi's story of second chances, getting what you want and regretting your actions in the process, redemption, desperation, overcoming fate and asserting one's self into the story, saving a school in a dying industry that saved your life by giving you a dream; i consider it an arc fulfilling to the reader at the end of ! era. But we still had to continue... and it's not like we didnt get inklings of eichi's dreams of idol utopia, the idol soldier idea goes back to main story 1, but !! loses the charm of the original series through expanding the worldbuilding so much and shifting to a plot driven story that opens 10 cans of worms instead of offering resolutions. There's not really room to breathe if the stakes just keep getting higher and higher...

As for the colonisation plotline, it's been here since the beginning of ES2. The SS arc makes it obvious, but i remember even before, the talks about ES taking over from local businesses, trying to be seen as the standard, it was always the direction ensemble square as an institution would take. But the "antagonist in one story, protagonist in another" approach doesnt work anymore with such subjects. The guys responsible for this are your coworkers you share dorms with. I read the stories but cant empathize anymore, so i've been feeling disconnected from eichi for a while. I see enstars with eichi at its core but i didnt care for his center event, i read it, didnt like the ending, and overall felt off. Eichi becoming the villain of ! to attone for the war kind of loses significance if a year later he is a cartoon villain idol colonialist you can't even sympathize with anymore because of the magnitude of events. However i do think !! has done good things for some characters pushing them further or developing them in a way ! didnt. But for others...

I also have my issues with sci fi elements becoming the norm, even taken metaphorically or as hyperboles, when one of the central themes i love about enstars is humanity. Then again, i am a war era fan that relied on manipulating human desires and perceptions, and the fact that there were no monsters or gods, just humans framed as such, playing on people's fears and beliefs, it's a bit jarring to me to have them introduce AIs forming from escaped comatose brains (im minimizing the switch climax rn, i didnt even hate it as a whole, just this resolution im unhappy with)

It also feels like we've lost some of the meta aspects of the writing i liked, a certain awareness of being characters in a story and there being an audience. But im still struggling to word my thoughts on this matter. I felt it present in main story 2, even if it annoyed me at parts in its obviousness ("good thing we're not protagonists, no one would want to read about us" youre right aira you are not interesting to me. And yet i'll read your story to try and empathize nevertheless. I have other thoughts on aira too, perhaps for another time). I wish we explored a bit more what it means to no longer be the central protagonist, from trickstar's perspective...and brought back the successors topic. But i havent read every ts story yet so i'd be foolish to complain before really making sure i've checked everything. To me ! ended satisfyingly with room left for elaborations and imagination, but i dont feel like !!'s ending is really ending anything at all. Not necessarily bad since it's not like the game is shutting down, but overwhelming worldbuilding wise while underwhelming character wise...

Let's see... im not sure how to end this. Just a bit of a stream of consciousness as a ! fan who still loves enstars despite my critiques. Mainly, well, no one's gonna take away the stories that already exist that i do love and impacted my life greatly. And i do think !! had some really good things too it brought, or at least stories i hold dear too. Change is scary and i don't think it's always for the best, but it's also fun to see where it goes next...

[tezzbot]

🎧 I don't actually know your music taste. SO. Either take this as the go-ahead to gush about your music interest, and/or tell us if you're the kind of person who associates music with a character to help write them better. (I used to do that all the time)

Oughg okay umm

I wouldn't necessarily say I have "good" taste in music, I mostly just really enjoy things I can dance or sing to? Upbeat music is usually my go to but I've started appreciating slower songs more and more as I've gotten older (makes me sound ancient I'm only 22 DSFDGF)

I'd say my music taste is pretty eclectic in general, like it's rock and pop and pop punk, crooners and swing, musicals and scottish trad stuff and video game soundtracks I'm really all over the place

I do prefer simple lyrics though, I'm a bit of a "[X song] meaning" googler JKGHJF like just in case I misinterpret or something...

I am constantly having blorbo thoughts when I listen to music, like the hoops I will jump through to connect the two dots (I didn't connect shit /ref) is sometimes silly but it's a lot of fun, it's actually how I came up with my Underground AU that came about playlist first HKGJFG (I've tried making a playlist for Team Sky but it's really not clicking as well :/)

Though, I wouldn't say that associating music with a character helps me write them better? I would say that applying a song To a character is more just another method of expressing my understanding of a character? if that makes sense?

There's like different ways of applying a song to a character/set of characters for me: a song that makes me think of them, a song I can picture them singing/thinking from their perspective, and I guess the middle of that venn diagram would be a song I can imagine an animatic to LOL

I can post some examples holdon (Spotify links sorry lol)

A song that makes me think of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy ^_^

A Sonic song :D

A Tails song :')

Chaotix in general but mostly Charmy GHJGFH

I have so many Sonic and Tails songs idk which one to pick uhh This one's cute :P

This song is suuuuch a my version of Sonia song like down to the voice, I think Kristin Stokes might be my Sonia voice claim HGJH And it's a keys focused song, accompanied by drums and guitar!!(+bass which is what I imagine the second part of Sonic's medallion is like you know how he has one of them double guitars I picture one part of it being bass and he's just fast enough to play both at once GHKFJGH) but like. I actually think it also could work as an Amy song? Like her getting fed up of being left behind all the time? Woagh double meaning song

ANYWAY YEAGH music I like it smile

OH people were asking what song I could imagine Sonic Sonia and Manic singing in that one post it was this song!! I ws embarrassed to share bc it's technically from a musical but again it's got guitar, keys and drums and three people singing it and it's heartfelt and about them working together.. I am a simple man... HGJHF

EDIT: I LINKED THE WRONG SONG FOR THE SONIA ONE OTZ it should be fixed now tho qwq

[xxxdragonfucker69xxx]

Hi! 10kDays has had a vice grip on my psyche for the last week or so, and I'm really excited to play the preview. However, I don't wanna make anyone else in my group GM this game just because I want to play it, so I'd like to try out the GMless mode of play, and so would they, but none of us have any experience with that style of game.

Is there any game you'd recommend we look at for a general picture of how you intend GMless play to work? I do own Ironsworn, which has a GMless mode, so if that jives with what you're intending that would be really convenient lmao.

Thanks for your time!

So there's a couple of thoughts i have here, starting with the shape of the game and the pieces of it that need different kinds and amounts of attention:

The game itself is kind of designed in three strands: courses, combat, and the Face game.

Courses are an adaptation of the Arc/quest mechanic from Jenna Moran's Glitch. I've found that they reduce the GM load hugely, for two reasons: you can roll up half an hour before game, ask "who wants to be in the spotlight, what does your quest say is happening in your life right now, and what needs to happen?", and drop something in. Connections and debts are also designed to give you improv prompts, and to a slightly lesser extent perspectives. The other benefit of Courses is that they move planning burden from "GM, night before game" to "player, whenever they want to think about their blorbo". So on a large-scale, "figure out what the campaign looks like" view, you can get away with improvising every session and just following your own character arcs. Likewise, the District moves and intentions are intended to give GMs an easy "i don't know what to do next" button, and the focuses of mask/gear/bell are intended to share around the responsibilities of worldbuilding. Ironsworn's oracles are another example of how to help outsource some of that decision-making, and it's the reason Appendix Yi is earmarked to be a million random tables. For more information on how oracles work, please google Jay Dragon's Sleepaway on your work computer (or at least read this Twitter thread from NightlingBug).

There are a couple story structures that are well suited to wuxia and this game. There's the Shaolin Soccer/shadowrunner/classic ttrpg setup where you are clearly a team, and there are enemy teams, and you are doing hijinks against them. But there's also a Jin Yong wuxia epic type thing where you have, let's say three or four PCs, and you're maybe nominally on the same side but you're clashing a lot and you're tied together by sworn and blood kinship and you keep running into each other. I think the most pared-down version of 10kdays you could run and still call it a full game is 3 players, characters living sort of far apart so they rarely run into each other, and interactions are 2 of the PCs clashing at a time while the 3rd player picks up any NPCs, throws in some District moves, etc. You could do a 2-player game but the kinds of interactions you could have would be severely limited, I think. The Face game of politicking and building support structures is kind of just... you two, face to face.

Now the problem on everyone's mind is fighting. It's attention-intensive, everyone's interested in it, and depending on your setup there can be loads of combatants that a GM would normally be expected to pilot. Again, there are a couple of scaffolds for trying to do this GMless. The sample Techniques in Appendix Jia come with combat tactics to make use of them, so any player can pick up an NPC combatant and figure out what they're going to do. Fight choreographing like this runs the pitfall of it feeling sort of bad to hurt your friends effectively, at least for some tables, but there is the incentive of hitting your friend's Bite highlight when you grab the corpo thug and bite them in the ass.

It is one of my mid-to-low priorities to create like algorithm type protocols for enemy fighters to run themselves, though that's still in the pipe dream phase. One thing I'm looking at here is Katabasis by Rathayibacter, which has a super cool system for easily lining up combatant actions, enemy or not). Maybe I'll end up with literal combat loop Turing machines or something.

There's one more option here which is to lean the other way -- to foreground the GM themselves being a player. I'm talking Ryuutama dragons, I'm talking Fellowship Overlords. Obviously I one hundred percent have not added this yet, and I'm not even set that I will, but it's definitely a tool I'm thinking of to help manage the wuxia/cyberpunk/other bullshit genre merger. If you went this way, it would look like picking a district -- secret note, each district is built to amplify a genre. Gongshan is made to focus on wuxia/the bell, Jiaotou is made to focus on cyber/the gear, Youzhou is made to focus on punk/the mask, Jingcai Xin is made to focus on court and courtroom politics, and Yuanhai is made to play Nezha Reborn. Pick a district that corresponds to the genre the GM is playing as, turn those Moves into Heroic/Humbling Moves and the landmarks/NPCs into Treasures and Connections, turn the Intentions into Skills. Now you can combine this with what I first talked about, sharing out cognitive load, and focus on playing as a district/genre. Is that meaningfully different from being a GM, who let's recall still counts as a player at the table? I'm a sicko who loves being a GM so I'm unqualified to comment, but try out any combination of these options and see how they take you.

[ifbench]

Pokemon Black Retrospective, from the perspective of someone who became bored with it on their first playthrough

To preface this, this is technically not my first time playing Pokemon Black? I did play it once before, back in mid 2020, before I started PMD Rescue Team DX. I quickly got very bored with it, though, and stopped playing before I made it to Striaton City.

If you'd like to read my other mainline Pokemon retrospectives, you can read Emerald here, X here, and Firered here.

Pokemon Black was a strange one for me.

Like I mentioned in the preface, I didn't like it much on my first playthrough. I grew bored of it before I even reached the first gym.

And yet, in the years from then until now, I kept hearing about how it was apparently the greatest that mainline Pokemon had ever been. How it was the pinnacle of the franchise.

I didn't think much of it, until I started my mainline Pokemon marathon, and realized that I would have to give Pokemon Black another go.

I completed Emerald, then X, then Firered, having differing opinions on each. And for the most part, I was having fun! So, maybe if I tried Black again, I'd have fun with it too?

I decided that it was finally time, and I started a new game of Pokemon Black.

Like with my first playthrough, I chose Oshawott as my starter, having gotten much more attached to the species since then, thanks to my PMD OC Gen.

I named my Oshawott Arbaquo, after a neglected Oshawott-Shaymin hybrid OC of mine.

And so, I began my journey through the Unova region, hoping to see it through to the end this time.

The journey up to Striaton wasn't much to write about, but Accumula Town was cute, especially with the musicians adding instruments to the background music. The first battle with N was also neat, but I'll get to him later.

But once I made it to Striaton, I had surpassed my 2020 self, making it farther than I ever had. And I was immediately curbstomped by Cheren three times in a row.

It wasn't until I was told that I could visit the Dreamyard before fighting the Striaton gym did I manage to level up Arbaquo a bit, acquired my second Pokemon, Minro the Pansear, and was able to defeat Cheren.

Then was the Striaton gym, but with Minro by my side, obtaining the Trio Badge from Cilan was mostly easy.

Then was the encounter with Team Plasma in the Dreamyard. I had heard talk of this moment several times, but it was still a shock to see it.

It makes sense, though. Despite the name of the game, this isn't a black and white story. As my friend Icy said, this moment shows the unscrupulous lengths people go to when they are truly dedicated to a cause.

After that, dream mist secured, I returned to Striaton City, and unlocked a feature that would probably have been really cool if it was still available. Unfortunately, it is no longer available, and so I can only imagine what it would have been like.

I then made my way along Route 3, where I had another encounter with Team Plasma, though not much else happened aside from me catching a Pidove as my third team member. I named him Poliner.

Nacrene City was interesting! I found it neat how the whole town was comprised of refurbished warehouse, and there was a second battle with N!

Before this playthrough, my only knowledge of N was fandom osmosis, RP blogs, and a few fanfics, particularly kintsugi's fics. At one point, I considered having him be the human world's Voice of Life, though I decided to give that role to a different character.

It was a completely different experience meeting him through the game as intended, though. I liked him a lot, with how much he said he liked math and said he wanted to be my friend!

After that battle, I tried to battle Lenora, and failed miserably. I tried again, and failed miserably again. It took several tries, but eventually I was able to defeat her.

I had no idea that Team Plasma would try to steal from the museum, nor that they thought that the Dragonite skull was part of the legendary dragon. It's kinda silly in retrospect, but this was something completely new to me. I was intrigued.

Plus, Burgh was here! I didn't think I'd encounter him until Castelia City, but here he was!

Pinwheel Forest was when I decided to activate the infinite rare candy cheat so that I wouldn't have to grind. It was a nice leisurely stroll, aside from the Plasma grunts, but I didn't want to get stuck having to grind later.

Soon, the stolen Dragonite skull was retrieved, and I could continue on to Castelia City.

Between Pinwheel Forest and Castelia City, though, was Skyarrow Bridge. It was really cool seeing the bridge in its full glory, the camera panning around and all sorts of cool perspective shots!

Castelia City continued with the cool perspective shots, with the city being like a mini-Lumiose, complete with side areas and back alleys. It was a lot to take in, but it was cool!

Not so cool was the fact that the EXP Share was still a held item that only worked on a single Pokemon. That battle house was neat, at least.

Burgh's gym was...something, to say the least, but he was an easier foe than Lenora, and I acquired my third badge.

After another encounter with Team Plasma, I made my way to the desert of Route 4, and was accosted by a sandstorm.

Like with Hoenn's desert, the weather chipped away at my Pokemon's health with every battle, making the route a test in how many battles I could avoid.

Eventually, though, I made it through, emerging into Nimbasa City.

It had just as many things to do as Castelia, despite being a bit smaller.

But before any of that (at least I think, this might have happened after the gym, I can't entirely remember), there was the fabled Ferris Wheel scene with N.

While it didn't quite live up to all the hype, it was still really cool! It was a fun way of explaining a bit more about N.

After that battle, I got to explore Nimbasa proper.

Honestly, I don't get the purpose of the Small Court and Big Stadium? As far as I could tell, they both just had one trainer battle each and that was it.

The Musical Theater was fun, though! I had fun dressing up Arbaquo for a musical, and the music was nice! It felt sorta like the contests from Emerald.

Then was the Nimbasa Gym, a rollercoaster of a time. Literally.

The trainers were actually harder than Elesa herself, but she was still a challenge, since half my team was weak to her. But Minro had recently learned a new fire-type move, and put it to great use here.

Seriously, why do people dislike the elemental monkeys?

Anyways, after the gym, I set out onto Route 5, where I encountered Alder, the champion.

Like in X, the champion here is more than just a final challenge, but a friend you meet along the way. I find that neat, and Alder's theme music is great.

After making it across Driftveil Drawbridge, I made it into Driftveil City, home of Charles the Heartbreaker.

The rotation battle with him was really fun! It was an interesting and intriguing new way of battle!

But before I could get too comfortable in the city, I had a job to do: Investigate the Cold Storage, and find one of the sages of Team Plasma.

It was a neat ice sliding puzzle area! And I caught a Minccino while I was at it! I named her Minrir.

After finding Zinzolin, it was time to take on the Driftveil City gym! It wasn't too challenging, but Clay was still a fun foe!

Next was the quaint Route 6, where I caught another team member, Daria the Deerling.

Chargestone Cave was really cool! I really enjoyed the puzzles with the floating magnetic rocks, and I caught a Drilbur here, who I named Rilia!

The Team Plasma encounter here was cool, too! It was neat being surrounded by the Shadow Triad to be taken to N, and seeing N clash with Professor Juniper.

But soon, I emerged into Mistralton City, and not a moment too soon, for I had a breakthrough:

I had figured out how to usee my Action Replay to activate mystery gifts, and let me do the Victini event.

Upon activating the code, I received the Liberty Pass from the mystery gift deliverer, and promptly flew back to Castelia City, to see what this event was all about.

It wasn't much, probably because I was way over the level for it, but it was still fun battling the Plasma grunts, learning about Victini, and then battling and catching Victini!

After that little side tangent, I flew back to Mistralton. But before I could challenge the gym, I had to trek up Celestial Tower.

Celestial Tower felt a lot like the Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town back in Kanto. It was eerie, spooky, and had possessed trainers too! It was a very fun experience, and I enjoyed the climb.

After meeting with Skyla at the peak of the tower, it was time to go back to Mistralton and challenge her gym.

I thought the stuff I had heard about the cannons in her gym were exaggerated.

They were not exaggerated.

Not only were you shot out of cannons in order to traverse the gym, one of the final cannons shot you face-first into a steel wall. Youch.

But aside from that, Skyla was pretty easy, and I got my sixth badge.

After traveling across the other part of Route 7, and through the Twist Mountain mines, I arrived at the moist Icirrus City.

Gotta say, I was not expecting to be able to encounter wild Pokemon within a city, but I found it neat!

Also neat, if tremendously silly, was the quiz house. I laughed a lot at the question I got, being "What do you call your father's brother", and the hint being "it's not big brother".

But then it was time to face the Icirrus gym.

It was like a souped-up version of Cold Storage, with rotating mechanisms that change your sliding trajectory. It was a really fun puzzle!

But thanks to Minro, Brycen wasn't very tough. And I got my seventh badge.

As we exited the gym, though, who to greet us but Team Plasma? Seeing the Shadow Triad surround us was certainly a surprise, especially with them telling us to go to Dragonspiral Tower.

And so, to Dragonspiral Tower I went.

Dragonspiral Tower reminded me of Sky Pillar from Emerald, with it being more and more crumbled and unstable as you went up. It had a lot of fun navigational challenges as I made my way up to the top!

But I was too late. N had already awakened Zekrom, and now my only hope lay with awakening the legendary dragon of truth, Reshiram.

I really appreciate how, unlike Emerald and Firered, Black tells you where to go. You're not left wandering for hours trying to find the Team Magma base, only for it to be hidden behind a random rock on the other side of the region. Nor are you left to flounder after finding all your available routes blocked by Snorlaxes, only to find out that you had to backtrack to a prior city with no indication.

No, instead, Black directly tells you to head to the Desert Resort.

Speaking of which, the Desert Resort was neat! It was unique among most other decrepit structures I've seen in other mainline Pokemon games, in that you're not going up, but down. Down, down, as far as you can go, to the deepest part of this buried castle. It was really cool!

Alas, this is not where Reshiram was. They were actually right before my eyes all the way back in Nacrene City. Reshiram was the unassuming little stone in the top left part of the museum.

And so, I acquired the stone form of Reshiram, but they were still sealed, with me having no idea how to free them.

I flew back to Icirrus City, and continued onwards, making my way towards Opelucid City. But before I could get there, I had to travel across Tubeline Bridge first.

Let me tell you. It was an experience seeing a figure at the far end of the bridge, thinking, "hey, they look familiar", and as soon as I realize it's Ghetsis, I get surrounded by the Shadow Triad.

And then he tells you his whole secret evil plan. Which, I feel was kinda weird, but alright.

Route 9 was short enough that the shock was still there when I arrived at Opelucid City.

Opelucid City was reallty cool! I loved the look of it all, and the music was great! It even had the first rotation battles I've seen since Heartbreaker Charles!

And after a conversation with Iris and Drayden, it was time to take on my final gym of this game.

The Opelucid Gym was massive, with a really interesting puzzle. It felt almost overwhelming with how big it was, but soon, I made it to the end, to battle Drayden.

It was a fun fight, and his Druddigon gave me quite a bit of trouble. But I won, and got my final badge.

All that was left was to head through Route 10, and take on the Pokemon League...or so the game probably wanted me to think.

Route 10 had some really nice music, and the final rival battles against Cheren and Bianca. I haven't talked about them nearly enough here, so I'll do that now.

Cheren was my first roadblock, the one who curbstomped me three times in a row all the way back in Striaton. It was really neat seeing his character development, seeing him figure out what he wants to do with his life.

Bianca is a similar story. She never curbstomped me, but she had her own character development, that maybe she had a different calling in life than what she once thought. And from what I've heard of B2W2, I think she achieved that calling.

All in all, they're great rivals, and those final battles with them reminded me of the final battles with the Kalos friends, on the last route before its Victory Road.

Fitting, as I was just about to reach Unova's Victory Road.

The badge check gates here were amazing. They were like Kanto's, but with the flavor of Kalos, and dialed up to 11.

Each badge had its own themed area, with the Trio badge having an outdoor dining area, the Legend badge having two dragon statues, and so on. And with each gate i passed through, more instruments were added to the music, until it all came together, forming the music for Unova's Victory Road.

Hoenn's Victory Road was a test of navigation. Kalos' was a test of strength. Kanto's was a test of wit. What, then, would Unova's Victory Road test?

A combination of all three.

I had to use spatial reasoning to figure out what caves went where, and which slopes to slide down. I had to use my sense of direction to make it through the caves, and know when I'm going the wrong way. And I had to use my strength to defeat some of the toughest trainers yet.

It was fantastic, probably my favorite Victory Road yet.

And finally, I had made it to the Pokemon League.

Apparently I was wrong in my X retrospective. Kalos wasn't the first region to let you challenge the Elite Four in any order you wish. Unova lets you do that too.

I unfortunately don't remember much of my matches agaisnt Unova's Elite Four, but they were each very tricky. I had to use a lot of strategy to get past them each. And I remember that the order I fought them in was Shauntal, Grimsley, Marshal, and Caitlin. And some of them had mentioned another challenger, one that came before me.

I defeated them all, though, and was ready to face Champion Alder.

But I never got the chance to, as N had already beaten him first.

It was like a twisted version of the final hour of Firered. Your rival had become champion moments before you.

Only with N, he wasn't planning on a simple battle for the title of champion.

No, as the castle of Team Plasma rose up from the ground, I knew that this would be a battle to decide the fate of the Unova region.

But I had to reach N first, and travel through the castle to get to him.

Black is, as far as I'm aware, the first mainline Pokemon game to do the unthinkable: have the plot take precedence over the journey to become champion. Rather than the game's plot ending at the 7th or 8th gym, like with Emerald, X, and Firered, the ending of the plot is the ending of the game.

It's a lot like Violet in that regard, but I'll talk about that once I write my retrospective on Violet.

Team Plasma's Castle was an experience I won't soon forget. There were no battles until the very end. I was told the story of N and Team Plasma by the Shadow Triad, N's room, and N's siblings.

Anthea and Concordia should have gotten more screentime, yes. But I still like their role here, in how they show you more of what Team Plasma was like, and what drove N to be like this.

But before long, I made it to the throne room, where N waited.

N told me I wasn't ready, that I wasn't worthy, as Reshiram hadn't awakened yet. But before my eyes, the Light Stone began to glow, and Reshiram emerged from it.

I dedideed to use Minro to try to catch Reshiram, since Reshiram would likely be taking their spot on the team for the coming battles. I wanted to let my faithful monkey companion have one more moment in the spotlight.

And they performed wonderfully. Whittling down Reshiram to a tiny sliver of health, enough that I could catch it.

N was my toughest opponent yet, with his team being even higher leveled than the Elite Four.

But I remembered his words from back in Nacrene City, about how, when all of this was over, he wanted to be friends with me.

I think those words are what made this part of the game so emotional to me. I wanted that to come true.

And so, I battled, and I won.

And yet, it wasn't over. Ghetsis came along, and brutally berated N. And then, he challenged me, in a battle that would decide the fate of the Unova region.

He was even tougher than N was. Fitting, as he was my final challenge in the main story of this game. It took everything I had, every single member of my team, to defeat him. By the time I was at his last Pokemon, only Arbaquo was left standing.

But despite the odds, I won. I had defeated Ghetsis.

But before the credits rolled, there was one final cutscene. A conversation from N to me. About how he didn't understand me at first, about how he couldn't understand why a Pokemon had liked me. About how he wanted to battle me, to find out why.

And then, that iconic line came. About making my dreams come true.

I like to think that my character and N became friends.

And so, the credits rolled, ending this game.

I had completed Pokemon Black.

I had so much fun with this game, and I'm so glad I gave it another go. Out of the four I've completed for this marathon so far, it's probably my favorite mainline Pokemon game.

It's not perfect. It had its difficulty spikes, and a few parts of it felt a bit awkward.

But it was fantastic. I love this game, it was fantastic.

I see what the hype is all about now.

[caliburn-the-sword]

winter thoughts chapter 14-25

still not enough scarlet. miss marissa meyer why would you do this to me

"she’d also noticed how Thorne stood a little straighter in Kai’s presence, like he wanted the emperor to be impressed by him" back on spreading my bisexual thorne agenda again LMAO

now why do i suspect that cress will end up back with the shells at some point??? it would be interesting to see her since they're like kin to her, especially since she was spared/worse off than them. i'd LOVE to see her perspective

cress' development from pretending to be brave to BEING brave <3 fake it til you make it queen (she's just like me fr)

damn thorne is like actually self conscious

kai is such a dumb bitch WHY WOULD HE LEAVE ALL HIS ANDROIDS BEHIND??? he should have brought a reprogrammed escort droid as a bodyguard for when levana inevitably does something horrible. in fact ALL of the earthen leaders should have escort droid bodyguards

omg does anyone other than scarlet know wolf's name or do they all straight up think that fresh out the womb his parents just named him wolf LOL (given the names of the girls that might just be a regular name. but then that begs the question: is wolf choosing wolf as a wrestling name or whatever the equivalent of a wrestling champion going in as "kyle" and nothing like going in being called skullcrusher???)

excited for winter to meet kai. these royal kids are interesting

okay after the bleeding walls winter/jacin scene i understand why one would be a fan of the hurt/comfort trope. that was very tender and sweet

DING DING DING DING DING ALARM BELLS GOING OFF IN MY HEAD WHY IS AIMERY CLOSING THE DOOR JAIL JAIL JAIL

EWWWWWW someone play sixteen by ayesha erotica. YIKES. DUDE SHE IS 17. I'M 17 AND CAN'T IMAGINE GETTING MARRIED. ESPECIALLY TO A HOWEVER OLD AIMERY IS. EWWWWW

got it, marissa meyer!! huge age gaps are only bad when it's a character we don't like. seriously i'm trying to figure out the range where meyer goes okay this is creepy af. because 4 years between cresswell is fine by her standard, but 10 years between levana and evret is not. i'm not too sure about the gap between winter and aimery but i'm assuming that aimery's gotta be more than 4 years older than her as according to these arbitrary rules. yikes (this isn't anti marissa meyer because she CLEARLY decides to be better judging by renegades which didn't have any weird age gaps from what i can remember)

it's okay kai we're all captivated by winter

WINTER WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT. SO completely icky that levana is marrying someone her own stepdaughter's age. but now i think it would be hilarious for kai and levana to get married, just so that i can call him a dilf

i hope that it takes them a while to clear up that jacin is actually on the rampion's side. just because i like drama. would like to see someone punch him in the face ~as a treat~ (this makes it sound bad but i SWEAR i don't hate him, it's just like i said for kai i like a man that's battered and bruised)

thank GOODNESS levana is searching the ship. i would not have had respect for her as an antagonist if she would be this easily fooled by a group of teenagers. i can't wait to see how they get out of this pickle

i love to see cinder as confident in her identity as a cyborg <3

damn thorne took all that "be the man cress wants you to be" shit seriously. self sacrificing bastard. hopefully he gets thrown in with scarlet

nevermind thorne is back lol

I KNEW IT. SEPARATED FROM CRESS. CRESS IS GONNA END UP EITHER WITH SCARLET OR WITH THE SHELLS

i LOVE how winter uses the fact that people underestimate her to her advantage. i honestly thought she was gonna have cress turned into another pet. this was nice as well. she must have quickly realised that cress was a shell and that was the only form of protection that she could afford her

because wolf's home has flowers planted outside it, one or both of his parents are gonna die to be all symbolic of how he can't reclaim his past and needs to move on with his future

was gonna make a "marissa meyer stop holding scarlet hostage i need another appearance of her immediately" and realised oh wait scarlet essentially IS being held hostage LMAO. if i don't get a scarlet pov chapter soon i'm gonna make like thorne when the soap got replaced and RIOT

@eddisfargo @francforever @winterrhayle @winterpinetrees @shellyseashell

[amerricanartwork]

9. and 20. please.

Also love the new lil scugsona. Very fitting for you.

@scavworld's Rain World Questionnaire

Thanks for the ask! Just a quick note, that little character was actually meant to be a scug-ified version of my regular avatar, which I should probably make a ref for soon. I've always just liked the idea that it can "transform" into a different creature to match whatever fandom I'm dealing with, so I thought I'd portray it as a slugcat in this case!

Anyway though, onto the actual questions...

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

9. What are your opinions on Five Pebbles (character)?

Ohhh, now that's a very interesting matter! I really like characters like him because they're so fascinating to me! For now I will disregard the fantastical element of him being a massive supercomputer, because even though in-and-of-itself I think that's such a unique concept even in fiction, especially after I realized that Five Pebbles and Looks to the Moon really are the core of not just the "story" of Rain World but even the in-game environment itself, I imagine I'll have another chance to touch up on this so I'll save my longer thoughts on that for later.

That being said, I'll start by saying I love thinking about characters from a psychological perspective, trying to figure out why they are the way they are, why they do what they do, what they really want vs. what they think they want, how they really perceive themselves vs. how they present themselves publicly, etc. Characters like Five Pebbles are always an especially interesting choice for this kind of pondering, because, as flawed as they may be, so much of the situation around them also contributed to their downfall that I refuse to let everyone else off the hook too. And since I also don't believe anyone is inherently a "bad" person, it's really fun to ponder just how these characters go from being alright people to doing such terrible things and meeting such tragic ends.

To put it shortly, Five Pebbles (and other characters like him) is in my interpretation a great example of karma in the more real-life meaning, and the "you attract more of what you think about the most" idea. Five Pebbles always seemed to feel trapped by and at arms with his surroundings, from the great opposition to his very existence from the True Anointed Citadel, to him literally being physically stuck to Looks to the Moon, to the fear of opposition he must have had as a Sliverist, to him being stuck dealing with the rot, and finally with his collapse, left as a tiny fraction of himself buried in the cold, lifeless remains of his superstructure, with truly no way out on his own. Because he was so focused on escaping the perceived confines around him, all he did, albeit unknowingly, was end up finding more nets to get trapped in.

And again, while I think everyone around him did contribute to his awful end in some way, stories like these are still pretty sad to me because, in the end, I think these characters themselves need to learn to change their thinking, yet all the harshness they face can so easily lead them to create a vicious cycle. Five Pebbles isn't the first character I've enjoyed strongly whose story seemed to play out this way, and as sad as it is, it's also very intriguing.

And besides, it opens up plenty of potential for redemption arc AU stories—!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

20. What is something you think the game could improve on?

The short answer: incentive.

The long answer: Let me start off by saying Rain World, to me, is fascinating largely as more of an art project than a normal video game. It's amazing how a relatively simple concept of a small animal in an urban environment they can't understand morphed into something so vast and extensive, combining nature with technology, science with religion, sci-fi with fantasy, and dunking it all in a super unique aesthetic that fuses urban street style with fancy ancient artwork, it's amazing!

BUT so much of this is lost to players because the game does, in my opinion, a pretty bad job of conveying it all. It's very confusing , especially to new players, and the only means of discovering the greater context of the story, besides just hearing it from other players/fans, is if not downright frustrating at least very tedious. And that's just getting the story itself. I think most people who have played this game haven't even made it that far, because the gameplay alone is so difficult the first time playing that if you aren't captivated by the mystery factor of the environment (or like me and also stubbornly dedicated to getting the bragging rights of having beat such a difficult game), you're too busy just trying to not die every other cycle to bother really exploring and ferrying the pearls to Moon, much less making sense of what you uncover.

I think the blank stare of the slugcats looking up at Five Pebbles perfectly encapsulates what I'm getting at here. You've got this absolutely fascinating story about a mechanical god who flew too close to the sun in a desperate attempt to escape the confines of his life, meanwhile the little slugcat is just all "...'kay", because what does this little animal care about the crazy religious hubris of some long-gone existence-hating people and their sad crumbling calculator robots when all it wants its is to just find more food and not get eaten again?

For a bit of devil's advocate, I will say that I think the difficulty of just playing the game and then figuring out its story, first of all is pretty "realistic" from the perspective of simulating a real-life ecosystem and having an animal discover complex lore in a way that they'd be physically capable of, but secondly has led the Rain World fandom to be really tight-knit compared to other fandoms I've seen. It seems like everyone I've come across is at least in the process of playing through all the campaigns, if not having already completed them and established some level of their own interpretation of the story, because they are all genuinely interested in the game, its characters, world, story, and themes enough to persevere through all the struggles of gameplay and lore confusion to enjoy it. However, it's also the same thing that makes this fandom rather small, which is also fine by me; I think there's lots of value in quality niche content!

With all that said though, I can't deny that I think this game isn't very good at getting players geuninely interested in all it has to offer. For evidence, consider how few players have even met Five Pebbles, who is perhaps the most important character in the entire game story-wise (Steam achievements has the "The Journey" Achievement at 12.0% of players as of posting this). Even from my experiences, I didn't even know what "Sliverist" actually meant until a couple weeks ago, and I've been playing this game and involved in the fandom for months at this point!

So yeah. To sumarize, in my opinion, Rain World is a fascinating and very inspiring art project, but most of what it has to offer is lost to most players because it's terrible at giving you a reason to care about it all. Thus, the main thing I think it could improve upon is giving players a reason to care about its worldbuilding and story enough to continue playing.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Well, that was long, but pretty fun! I hope these answers suffice! Keep the questions coming!

[coredrill]

okayyyyyyyy initial bravern finale thoughts. i think i will be thinking abt this show for the next 7-10 business years so more to come ofc but. AH!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ISAMI SINGING THE OP LET THAT BE DIEGETIC TOO!!!!!!!!!! AND ALSO ON SPOTIFY!!!!!!!!!!

isami off his Fucking rocker at that one point like Yeah you deserve it king go OFF LMAO. i found that quite satisfying :] real talk tho for as much as i call him baby rice cracker all the time i really love him as a protagonist? like he just feels so damn human in the way he struggles so much but tries his best and then gets hit AGAIN but keeps trying again and again anyways. it's really good! and his whole arc of like. learning that he Can rely on others and with that reliance brings mutual care..............sobs

i love that piloting these fucking things just makes your hair grow. LMFAO

okay i know i've been complaining abt the translation of "bang brave" or whatever tf smith keeps saying before he dies BUT the reveal that that is just ANOTHER thing he's doing bc he's a Fucking Freak and isami thinks it's weird too KILLED ME. smith: "brave bang :]" isami: If You Say That Shit One More Time You're Sleeping On The Couch Tonight". what is wrong with you lewis smith!!!!!!!!!!

i wouldn't be atall surprised if this show got the ssssg treatment and got four million random manga/light novel spinoffs especially considering it's consistently like the most popular show in japan lmao. the lulu-superbia spinoff sounds like a lot of fun so i'd def be interested to see more in that vein!!! i need to learn japanese tho cause no way they're getting eng translations!!!!

i feel like. there is a specific Vibe of mecha thing that verum vita fits which Also includes dissonanza backarrow and uhhhh idk the name but that one mf who pops up in ep30ish of gaogaigar and is just kinda like. observing? like verum vita is not a court jester like the other two and this analysis does not go any deeper than Vibes but. it had me leo dicaprio pointing like. another one!!!

i'm literally obsessed with the unhinged worldbuilding in this show. like?

population is nine billion???

the suez canal is still blocked????

if you're gay you can just. Do That ???

like i love that they don't explain this shit either it's so funny to me. LMAO

something something smith can only express himself and his love for isami as bravern not just bc it gives him as a character/person separation from his Human Self but also. bc i wouldn't be surprised if that was The Way to get the queer stuff so blatant, bc he was in robot form rather than one human man saying "i love you" to another and then glomping him in an explicitly romantic sense after all the talk of riding and him being inside him. LMAO. this isn't a complaint beyond a vague shake of the fist at Corporations and TV Censors, just smth i think is REALLY interesting and which i had a surprising amount of fun watching play out from a story perspective :]

i feel like my hottest bravern take is and will always be that i really don't mind the 12eps LMAO. like i thought it provided a fun variety of Situations with which to deal with the DDs and it didn't give it enough time for the gimmick or mystery elements to start to feel old. also i am just generally of the opinion that most stories would work better if you wrote them to be told in X amount of time and then had to trim off like. 40% of that. so i know it's a personal thing but i think it worked well for bravern!!

i do wish we'd gotten to see smith and isami hug if only cause i think isami fuckin needs it. LMAO. but overall i'm satisfied w their arc, especially bc i think the whole "beyond bang brave" thing works REALLY well w smith returning to his human body. like as soon as superbia kicked it i had a feeling that would happen, and obv it's textually referring to isami/bravern/lulu's massive super robot powerup, but i also think it can just mean like. what happens After? cause smith keeps saying "bang brave" or whatever tf when he dies but to go Beyond that is to come back to life and experience a life where he can receive love, too (i.e., via cooking and food AND ALSO via Literally being brought back to life from bravern's heart. who had just merged with isami on a particle level or whatever lmao). so i'm rly satisfied with how it played out in the end :]

overall i think my only real complaint w the show on the whole aside from the military propaganda was that the boys looked like such fucking DERPS in half their shots. lmao. like obviously i'm biased cause i'm a sakuga whore and i actually rly do like their more realistic style a surprising amount cause i usually don't go for that sort of thing but uh. there's a reason that lulu is the human i gif most often and it's cause she always looked better than them by a long shot FSKDLJH. her character animation was consistently the best & most expressive and she was always the most on-model which. FUCKING DESERVED BTW. her arc was incredible and i'm so excited to rly think about her some more and dig into her as like. a rei ayanami clone (maybe even specifically rebuild? w the "your hair grows long inside your mecha" thing) but who takes control of HER OWN STORY TOO and is able to grow wildly beyond being that story point. like i love that she's taken care of too. agh she's really such an amazing character maybe i'll have to cosplay her too FKLDJSHF i'm rotating her in my brain So Much

overall that was really good and i really enjoyed it and i can't wait for the blurays <333 i love it when robot shows are made by people who love robot shows!!!!!

[crowroboros]

stares at you stares at you stares at you

opinions on carl from echo vn Echo vn?

stares at YOU

Carl Hendricks. Where do I begin with him?

Simply put, he's great. I think everyone in the main cast is very compelling as characters, and Carl is no exception. I don't even think his route is bad or the weakest. In my opinion, it's on par with the rest. It just suffers from being the first done and thus comes off as disjointed and disconnected from all the others when looking at the VN as a whole (though I do wish his relationship with Flynn was present in his route. Especially how close they are. But again, first written, not everything was figured out I suppose.)

His struggles with anxiety and self-worth are some of the more grounded and relatable aspects of the vn and it's nice to see such things depicted in a way that isn't either complete ass or written off as a joke. Howly approached it in a more realistic way than most I'd say. His anxiety is taken seriously, and I appreciate that as someone with some anxiety issues of my own. The interview scene shortly before the hysteria was rough, and the way Carl describes what happened really highlights how anxiety can affect the way we perceive the people around us.

Do I think Carl was nervous and a bit awkward during the interview? Hell yeah. I know I would be as well. But do I really think that the interviewer was able to immediately tip off to the fact that Carl wouldn't be into it? Do I think that the interviewer was just thinking "man what an absolute fuck up this guy is. jobless"? No. But damn, I completely understand how Carl's mind was able to fill in any blanks to make those assumptions. When you see yourself as a fuck up, as worthless, you begin to read into what every slight tone change or off look can mean. You end up projecting those thoughts onto others and end up believing that they see you the same way. It sucks. And I really like that Chase still had his back and tried to comfort him after the fact without talking down to him.

I also like that who he is isn't defined by his anxiety both by the characters within the vn and from a meta perspective. Carl is an artist, he's goofy, laid-back, and likes to play games. And his friends see all of that, to them he isn't just "the one with intense anxiety" but is instead he's "Carl Hendricks". It's a common pitfall many make when writing characters who struggle from one thing or another where the writers hyper-focus on that one aspect and forget to flesh out the character beyond that.

I also think his relationship with his family name and his parents is interesting. I see a lot of opinions online about him being the typical spoiled rich kid and that his anxiety shouldn't be as bad as it is with the money he has. And while sure, money can make affording help easier it alone doesn't solve his issues. That's something that takes work. A lot of work. Furthermore, even though the Hendricks family is rich due to their ice-cream business and status as the founding family of Echo, we still need to take into consideration that he lives in Echo. The town itself is struggling and that immediately puts a divide between him and the rest of the population. We see it in Route 65 where Karen (the bus driver) refers to him as "pomp and yachty-blooded", to which Carl is described to then get a sort of distant look on his face. He's socially isolated because of his identity, something that isn't helped by the fact that it's pretty obvious that there is a pretty serious disconnect between Carl and his family legacy. That's even part of his route's conflict, dealing with the fallout of James and John's relationship. We also know that his parents tried forcing him into a business degree when he first went to college with Chase, something that quickly fell apart. To me, it's clear that Carl is under a lot of pressure and stress to walk the path that his family has laid out for him, and that he doesn't receive much support in his own interests and goals in life. This most certainly wouldn't have helped with his anxiety and self-esteem, feeling as if you're meant to live up to a legacy you have no interest in reaching.

I could talk about this vn all day, Carl included, so I might expand on this when I get home later cause I REALLY want to talk about his dynamic with the rest of the group (especially Flynn). But in short; Carl is great. Both as a character and as a person. If I was somehow ripped from this reality and plopped within the plot of Echo, I think Carl is probably one of the characters I'd be both the most willing to talk to and one of the characters I'd get along with the best. Proud member of the Carl Defense Squad.

[hihopelessromantics]

Hiya!!! Here's the WIPs I'm interested to hear more about, feel free to not answer if you don't wanna talk about these ones, or feel free to choose which ones you talk about ^^

Demon Essay (I'm very curious about this one)

Half blind meli

Gelda and Zeldris Angst

💜💜💜💜💜

The "Demon Essay" is something I started writing before the Demon Realm Arc in 4kota came out, before I started reading it in fact, and it's inspired by one of zorria's posts and kind of an exploration and 'defense' anaylsis of what we've seen from the demon clan. Big focus on Zeldris and antics from cursed by light. I'd love to send it to you and hear your thoughts, if you want!

2. I am very intrigued by my mutuals' angst aus especially the ones where Meliodas has more siblings. Half-blind Meliodas au is Balin's, and I thought the exteme gore and themes of it all might make for something really fun to work on during the spooky season.

https://www.tumblr.com/gh0stofyesterday/733211682615296000/littol-drawing-of-the-beginning-of-my-half-blind?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/gh0stofyesterday/726865869113835520/hehehe-a-lil-pencil-sketch-of-my?source=share

ohhh LMAO should tag balin when I'm talking about its au: @gh0stofyesterday

Unfortunately a shitton happened since I first thought of my senario for this (ow) but it's is still in the works. My spinoff premise, basically, is about how his older sister's restless soul has - unbeknowst to the current her - kept cycling through a sort of 'unfair cosmic punishment' (as she'd call it) of reincarnations. She's lonely, she's angry, and she just can't seem to escape the repetition of loneliness and unfullfilment- 'cause she has no catalyst to help her get the help she needs to make a change for herself. And no therapist. Until, a couple loops through, she meets Meliodas again. Doesn't recognize him of course. Will she be able to connect with her brother? Will she even try? Can she? Tune in on: balin please help me make sure I didn't kidnap your character and play puppet with her incorrectly to find out!

And here's, uh, an excerpt:

The first time she ever looked at his sullen face, the burning rage in his eyes could level a mountain. Yes. Both of them. The exposed medical disaster that was his right eye barely moved as he tracked her movements, her wide lopsided smile, the tilt of her head, and the way she clasped her hands together as she told him “Welcome!” and motioned for him to sit beside her in the tent. 

“I don’t know how to work with any of this shit,” he told her matter-of-factly, indicating her display of medical equipment. She’d only set it out arranged like this so it looked like someone was living and doing something worthwhile in here, but that was too pathetic to explain, so she just did the usual act of nodding like yes, she meant to do this, and “offering encouragement” instead of “retaliating to every little change in the atmosphere.” That curse rolled off his tongue as if he was mocking a dumb word in another language he was being forced to use and she didn’t appreciate it, not when the only thing they gave her to represent her expertise and profession was a flimsy banner saying ‘me-decal recruitment’ and they sent in this man with a sword slung across his back as a candidate. 

“Not everyone has the skillset right off the bat-” oh, he didn’t seem encouraged by that at all. Toned-down confrontation it was. “Woah. Could you stop . . . radiating, hostile energy? Could we talk about that, by any chance?” “What do you know about me?”

“Excuse me, I asked you a question.”

3. The Geldris is inspired by what I feel is a severe lack of vampire Gelda antics and nicknamed affectionally as the "blood-drinking fic." The first is from Zeldris's perspective and involves one of his 'secret' shenanigans / errand master antics from the Holy War Era and is supposed to include a second "aftermath" part with some demon bros bonding. The second, is, uh . . . idk what to write for that yet! ideas welcome. I'm thinking a domestic scene.

Wrote a little metaphor - poem for when Gelda drinks his blood:

He tasted like wild berries and trampled leaves 

quick snacks between sprints

one old seasoned bird snatched on a flight 

  That kind of quickly devoured game which took weeks of stalking

And a piece of the juiciest fruit handed down with love.

 Like someone who cared for others before he cared for himself. He tasted like her.

[felassan]

Some more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from an older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age: Origins some months ago -

Chat asked Mark's thoughts on the quantum state of Kieran. "I think they're gonna collapse Kieran down. Probably what actually happens is they're just gonna push Kieran into the background."

Chat commented on being sad that the Inquisitor won't be the main character going forwards. "I mean the main character doesn't have an arm, kind've makes some of the classes a bit tricky".

Chat commented that any quantum character basically guarantees that we're only going to see a cameo of them going forward. "Yeah, if they're quantum they're going to be pushed into the background for sure." Chat then mentioned Sera. "I don't think Sera's quantum, or not very quantum." "Yeah, we don't typically bring back romance options in major roles because they, you have to sort've deal with that quantum. That's not the worst thing".

"I wouldn't expect to see Shale again because they are so custom, but they're also quantum aren't they, can't they die in Orzammar? Like if they were building a golem rig for some other reason then I could see it. Everyone is quantum basically. That is why actually so often followers do not reappear, is because everything is pretty quantum".

"I don't think we'll see something like the broodmother again, I don't think it fits with the tone that the game is striving for anymore. The stuff before the broodmother, that I could, that sort've stuff, that kind've creepy tone stuff, I could see that being something that occurs again. But the broodmother itself, or something like that, I'd be surprised."

Chat asked "How canon is Darkspawn Chronicles? Did that team just go nuts and completely leave the map or is 'Wade is a Desire demon' actually a lore nugget?" Mark replied, "Darkspawn Chronicles obviously can't be canon." "That's a valid question. I suspect at this point the team would treat it as non-canon so anything that's revealed there would be considered completely non-canon, but I mean I would've at the time assumed that any lore revealed in it would be considered canonical assuming it was something that happened before the branch from reality. But I think they would probably at this point treat it as totally non-canon".

Chat asked "Why couldn't y'all hire the DA:O Warden voice actors? I heard the voicing is why they didn't include the Warden in DA:I with Hawke". Mark replied, "The Warden is a quantum character in DA:I, the answer as to what to do about the Warden from a voice acting perspective is a very open question. Do you leave them silent? Do you voice them? All of the answers are not great. I think if you're gonna have them in a relatively major position, you better have an answer to that question." "Yeah, I suppose you could hire back the voice actors. It's a lot of different voices, so that can become a problem as well. I don't know that people consider those exactly as the voice of their character. I mean I certainly don't. I mean yeah, they are technically, but. Yeah, it could be done." Chat commented here that "literally any option is going to disappoint someone". Mark said "Yeah, that's my feeling as well. No matter what you do with the Hero of Ferelden in another game, it's going to be problematic. You know, if you brought the Hero back you could just keep them silent and you could actually even give a reason, like 'oh yeah, they've survived but the Blight has taken their vocal chords', or whatever".

Chat then mentioned again about the Hero of Ferelden having many voices in DA:O. Mark paused to explain "the problem of why they're probably not gonna use the voice actors from DA:O. First of all, there are a lot of them which means you have to bring back those actors. The Hero of Ferelden is a very quantum character, might be married, might be alive, might be dead, might be not married. The other reason is that people are basically used to their character being quiet for all of the conversations, so if you bring them back and voice them there's going to be some people that are going to be upset by that. So it could happen, but not as a major perspective, it would be as a cameo at most so that's what I would say is, that it's unlikely but it could happen. But I doubt they would just hire these voice actors back, it's too many and it would require too much wrangling, so there you go."

"The reason why Hawke doesn't do much in DA:I is for the same reasons, we don't know how you built your character, we don't wanna have them do something iconic that isn't appropriate to the way you built your character."

Chat said, "Ideally, BioWare would release something before DA4 where we can create our Hero, Champion, and Inquisitor ahead of time, and then just import them in". Mark said, "Because the character creators have changed so much it has been discussed to add something into the Keep. I'm not sure if they're going to maintain the Keep or not, but add something into the Keep that would be a character creator for previous games to kind've bring them up to standard. I think that's a good idea, even if they don't end up showing up in the game, just to have sort've standardized the look for everybody. Yeah, but I don't know if they're gonna do that to be clear. There was a conversation about it, but I don't know whether that'll actually happen, because that requires getting something that either runs Frostbite in a web browser or a standalone application to make sure it looks like how it's supposed to look."

Chat said "A person who decides to pick up DA4 who hasn't played the other games is unlikely to start up from DA:O and play all the games AND DLC before DA4 to get hype." Mark replied, "No, I wouldn't, certainly the Dragon Age team is not building [DA:D] with the assumption you've played all the games previously. That's always a concern, that people think they have to do that and then it just closes the door to new people entering the franchise." "I would expect DA:D probably won't even expect much DA:I knowledge given the time between games." Chat said "Most people who will pick up DA4 as their first Dragon Age game probably won't even use the Keep". Mark replied, "Yeah, the expectation is that most people would not use the Keep, but that's actually not so bad because there's lots of, we know what the default player looks like for DAII and DA:I, we have canonical choices so that's not too problematic". "Some people definitely will play everything but you don't want that to be a barrier to new people playing the game".

[source]

He also talked more generally about DA:O and the franchise and things in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length -

Dragon Age sets up a lot of consequences to things such as lyrium and the Taint. They "don't always play it off for the player very well"

[on DA:O] "What I would say on why do enemies have stamina/mana is, because the game is built perfectly symmetrically, which is why. Should you do that? No you should not do that but that's why everything is just built in this way, everything is completely interchangeable, which sounds like a good idea, but in practise is basically unbalanceable. It does mean that you can have an enemy or an NPC enter into your party, everything can be done in both directions without a concern, because everything is interchangeable, but I don't think it's worth it. DAII swings the pendulum way too far the other way, it's so asymmetrical it's basically incomprehensible. I think DA:I hits a good balance. It's kind've what's happened I would say with D&D. Third edition D&D, very symmetrical, fourth edition ridiculously asymmetrical, fifth strikes a balance"

Chat asked if the BioWare team ever ran any DA TTRPGs as part of development or just for fun. "I don't know, I've never run a DA tabletop"

"I think Flemeth has always been Mythal, I don't think she was retconned into existence"

"You were asking before about why everyone has stats. It allows to basically do what just happened there, the templars are just marked as people, when the combat starts they can just join in without throwing the combat completely out of whack"

Chat asked "'If you were to give us a 'Citadel DLC' for Dragon Age, what would your dream DLC include?" Mark replied, "I think that the last DLC in DA:I is pretty much in line with being like a Citadel-style. You get to interact with all the followers again, it provides a lot of closure, so it's a pretty good version"

Chat asked "'​I was wondering how did you get the game to run? I tried playing it on my new computer i9 with a 3090, but it keeps crashing?" Mark replied, "So are you wondering how I got DA:O to run? There's a fan-made patch which I think I tried to install. The big reason why it's unstable is that it's limited to [...] or if you can't get that patch just drop your settings down. If you set the settings up to something that your game is capable of running it's going to use too much memory and it'll over-run 4 gigs, there's a memory leak in there, so if you drop it down to something a little bit less and it'll run pretty well. I've had some crashes, not too bad. It's not an official patch so you won't find it on the EA website. Honestly, if they ever remaster, that'll be one thing [...]"

Remastering the first three DA games is a much more difficult prospect than remastering Mass Effect was. "That's not to say it won't happen but it definitely is a whole extra mess"

"I do not miss the BioWare forums. They were out of control. It became pretty hard for a lot of devs to interact with the forums in a positive way even with the positive people for sure"

Chat said "I was always curious, do devs tend to play their games after the release or is it just not the same after all the hardships of the development and testing?" Mark replied, "Honestly, devs, it's a mixture, some devs do, but I think most actually don't, either they've played the game many many times before it released or they just reticuled onto something else. I would say on average probably no, but it does happen"

Warrior abilities are way better in DAII and DA:I than they are in DA:O

Is lyrium technically blood magic? "That's one way of thinking about it"

[on quantum characters] "Oghren is in DA:O - Awakening because he's one of the few characters that's definitely still around after DA:O." "I think he might be the only one or one of the few from DA:O that is definitely alive for Awakening". "Re-establishing new followers for an expansion isn't the best. You know, they wanted somebody."

Originally Mass Effect: Andromeda was going to have procedurally generated planets. "They never really were, that feature was never really given enough resources if that was the goal. I think they had some early stuff that was kinda cool but it was never ready for primetime"

"One of the interesting things about Mass Effect is it was always in its DNA imagined as a kind of Star Control thing. It never really was that, but there was always that underlying thing. So I think in ME:A that's what they were trying to capture, that Star Control stuff, but yeah, it is pretty hard to tell a story in a procedural world. Doable"

"There's a story behind the ending of ME3 but that's not my story to tell"

[pls note this video was from 1 year ago, so the call being referred to here took place 1 year ago] Chat said "During the recent earnings call EA said that there's going to be a major IP release. I mean, I don't want to be all too optimistic, but I literally couldn't think of any IP other than DA". Mark replied, "About the earnings call, it's possible that it's DA, it could also be something like Bad Company, a remaster of Battlefield Bad Company. I can't think, because they said remaster, so I can't think of what else it would be other than DA, Bad Company, everything else is either so old that it would have to be a remake. I don't know what it could be but I could imagine it being bad company. They have a ton of IP, I just don't know what they have that, it would have to be less than say 15 years old to be possible to do a remaster as opposed to a remake. Could just be that they're mis-speaking. I guess it could be Army of Two, that would be weird. They've already announced Dead Space, so I don't think it's that"

[source]

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)

[thehaniverse]

[24.05.19] Haikyuu Movie Review

FINALLY!

I initially thought I'd be able to watch the movie online when it dropped back in February, but none of the usual suspects were uploading the damn movie, so I was dying trying to avoid spoilers online, but I'm glad I managed to until it was finally revealed to be showing in Korea!

Let me tell you, as a multilingual person, there is no bigger brain-fuck than watch a movie in a second language with subtitles in your third, but considering Haikyuu is my favourite anime of all time, I just couldn't wait anymore.

So, after such an arduous wait, was the movie actually worth it?

HELL YEAH!

Heads up, I've written this without any spoilers, as I also went into this without reading the manga (intentionally.)

Intially, I, like many other fans, was disappointed that the movie was ,in fact, a movie rather than a 5th season, but after watching it, I totally understand why they decided to do it this way. If they'd done it as a series of episodes, it ran the risk of being too slow-paced, which was one of the major criticisms of the 4th season.

The pacing of the movie was perfect - the right level of slow emotional flashbacks to add context without being too repetitive of past seasons, while still being fast-paced and action-packed throughout the game.

I also loved the unique perspective they gave in this movie, it's something they've never done to this extent throughout the anime, and honestly, something I haven't seen in other anime I've watched. The chaotic energy really made you feel like you were more than just a spectator and the disorientation made everything so much more tense - I LOVED it. (I honestly wanted to watch the whole movie again there and then just to experience that part again.)

One thing I've always loved about Haikyuu is the ability of the writer to make you appreciate just how hard these kids are working, and the background and character growth throughout the movie honestly left me teary-eyed at the end - the character development continues to be one of my favorite parts of this anime. There's honestly so much I want to say about this but due to spoilers, I'll have to hold back for a while until the screenings have taken place worldwide. Maybe I'll write a part 2 after additional viewings.

Finally, let's talk about the ending. Man. This was an interesting experience for me because Nekoma is actually my favorite team LOL but of course, as viewers, we can't help but root for Karasuno. Every point and every play was bittersweet but nothing hit as much as the ending, rather than any overwhelming sense of joy for the winner, it was more that sinking feeling of 'oh, it's really over? Just like that?" I imagine this is how the losing time would feel in every game, you always want to believe there's another chance, or that the end isn't really the end yet, it was very surreal.

The best parallel I can draw is the sinking feeling I had when Karasuno first lost to Aoba Josei. Yet at the same time, because of the growth of all the characters, it was still a beautiful ending.

Ultimately, it was everything you'd expect from Haikyuu, I laughed, I cried, I fought back screams in the theatre XD I really do want to reassure anyone who thinks the movie replacing a season will be lackluster - it was anything but! I hope you enjoy the viewing and I'd love to hear your thoughts after.

[elcorhamletlive]

It feels like ST is trying to deliver *something* with the queer storylines that they have chosen, but it is rather being very underwhelming. Not surprising, as you have said, ST is one of the most popular shows, it has always been quite heteronormative. Robin's character was great in S3 but was rather underwhelming in S4, and her love interest Vickie is no better, her character had only a couple of minutes in the long-running S4 which was like over 10 hours. And the way their relationship was portrayed leaves little to no hope for S5's outcomes, at best it seems like Vickie and Robin will get together in the last minutes of the season, and that way the writers will eat their cake and call it a day ''look we made a wlw couple on the show'' without having to deliver anything much.

Also, this is just my opinion but I fear or have the feeling that Robin's storyline and relationship with Vickie will be some sort of a coverup or alibi for the writers to do whatever they want to do with Will in the next season, either portraying him as suffering again, or making him end the show as single.

I think you're totally correct in your second paragraph, and tbh I have already seen this happening - people going "well, you can't complain about Will not having a romance, because the show has Vickie and Robin!", when a) the show has a fuckton of straight romances, no reason to not have more than one gay couple around; b) Robin and Will represent different identities, althought there's a lot of identification to be found under the LGBT umbrella in general, it's possible to mess up representation with one group while doing well with another; and c) (most importantly) Robin's storyline has Also not been great. I think some of the fault for the shift in her character lies with M4y4 Hawke, whose personality has definitely bled into Robin, amplifying her "quirkness". The other thing, imo, is the writers deciding that in order to pair her up with Nancy they needed to make her more bumbling and clumsy in order to contrast with Nancy's hyper competent and grounded personality. Which on a vacuum, I understand, but on screen was just annoying and took away from a dynamic that I mostly enjoyed, but thought I was going to enjoy more.

Vickie was also a disappointment, especially because they went through the trouble of casting a known actress which drove up the hype. I'm certain that there were more scenes between Robin and Vickie that ended up on the cutting room floor, and it's unfortunate because, as you said, this season is already ridiculously long, couldn't they have taken time away from something else to at least flesh out Vickie's character a bit? Like... it just feels like a basic disconnect with the gay fanbase, thinking that the bare minimum is going to be enough to get people to root for this couple.

Like you said, I do think they're trying, but it's not a priority to them, and they don't seem to know enough about the subject to give it an interesting, fleshed out perspective. Another thing that annoys me to no end is how big a role Steve plays in Robin and Vickie's storyline - like, yes, sure, Steve and Robin are a much more important dynamic in the context of the show and that is fine (though they did lowkey ruin this friendship to me with that goddamn "I'd date her" line). But there is something uncomfortable about making a significant chunk of the scenes between your only lesbian couple about your straight male character. The fact that Robin and Vickie's final scene ends with Steve looking to them and smiling shifts the focus: it's no longer about them, but about how nice a guy Steve is. And we already know Steve is an important ally to Robin, we saw it last season, we don't need it to be the eternal culmination of her storyline.

[theaceofskulls]

Played like three narrative heavy games which played with genre conventions and it messed me up something fierce.

So I figured i'd sort through some thoughts about them:

PARANORMASIGHT: God do I love horror visual novels with weird timeline shennanigans. The game did a fantastic job with its camera angles, the playable segments, and the thriller aspect regarding a cast of characters in a supernatural death game involving Jhorror curses, but it felt like after the prologue the curse "battles" and the timeline mechanics in general were a lot more reserved until you start getting close to the ending where it ramps it up.

It feels like you hit what would be considered the "Golden Timeline" in most other games way earlier, even if that turns out to be wrong.

The Hex: a Meta narrative game by the creator of Pony Island and Inscryption. It juggles a lot of different gameplay segments and most of them work even if two of them outstay their welcome and one of them I just did not enjoy and it wasn't the one I expected it to be. The story also suffers from having a better allegorical read on it then the actual factual narrative and I walked away disappointed with the ending that it was always building to because the last segment presented a contextualized version of the game where reading it as an allusion to another story was a little more interesting.

More interesting to discuss is the idea of exploring my own nostalgia having watched the development period of the games it explored with my own eyes (though I admit I wasn't present for the earlier booms it explored) and the idea that those times could never come again by having modern fixtures of gaming like steam reviews, online gaming communities centered around patch notes, and twitch streaming present during the rise of platformers, fighting games, and JRPGs respectfully. It imagines the history of videogames as happening during the current era with the gaming community as it now is, and as someone who entered their 30s, it's a startling mirror to hold up and it's something I had to meditate on after finishing the game. Sadly the game's main narrative has absolutely no interest in fully exploring that in exchange for "what if video game characters were real" which is alright but the game touches on more interesting subjects.

Lastly, Tacoma: A game from the developers of Gone Home that explores an abandoned space station after some unknown accident, having you explore the lives of the crew using AR projections that you walk amongst and listen to while being able to freely fast forward and rewind as you walk amongst them and puzzle out what happened.

This is an insanely interesting one that explores a near future beset by late stage capitalism in a someone frighteningly real look at a possible future while putting you in the shoes of an investigator who somewhat invasively peeks at the recorded lives of the crew in their moments aboard the station as it falls apart. The reveals in some moments had me tearing up as some of the reveals made me dread how the game could end using relatively simple and mundane things like an email not sending in the middle of a tense conversation, the fact that cryostasis isn't some magic technology and comes with very real risks, and other mundane reveals that make for very human moments.

It knows how to hit hauntingly close to home while at the same time using mechanics that basically let you see from the perspective of an all seeing AI that lived with the crew the entire time. And while the ending can be divisive I land on the side that thinks it feels correct for the narrative in the end.

[onewomancitadel]

Trying to identify where 'everybody's interpretation of a text is valid' intersects and conflicts with personal fantasy and the existence of modern fandom and what I can only call 'parafandom' - the greater Internet fandoms that exist kind of separately from an original source with their own conventions and expectations of a text (this is everything from slash fandom to even my monster romance/enemies-to-lovers end of things - yes, even 'my people' can obscure texts).

I think there's a really fascinating nugget of study there, from a perspective of folkloric studies (how traditions adjacent to a text develop) and also of course from the Internet (e.g. homogeneity of opinion), with a certain degree of emotional distance.

With the emotional distance removed it's just you having an argument with another person whose idea of 'the text' is the thing they invented in their head, forever.

Now you might say, 'Let people have their fun' but it does have serious repercussions, from the perspective of what sort of stories get made, how creators are treated, how fandom spaces grow and how people in fandom spaces treat each other, and yes, from the perspective of harrassment that people feel entitled to engaging in (because it's 'small fry', but not really) because of diverging interpretations, it can get pretty serious, and it really does vary fandom to fandom! There are some fandoms that are better than others, not because of size (as I traditionally thought) but there are genuinely differences in decorum based on the sorts of opinions and beliefs accepted by the community. I don't mean this as a disguised anti/pro bipartisan issue, I think that whole deal is actually representative of broader power plays about correct/incorrect textual interpretation and (psychoanalysing and repeating myself here) the reality that a lot of sexual politics are out of our control (e.g. sexual violence) but it is also a position you can leverage others.

It's a topic I mull over every now and then because I have experienced a pretty potent version of text vs. fandom with R/WBY and one or two other fandoms (and with Reylo in particular the divide between fandom online and the General Audience was a pretty big gulf). More broadly you really see that problem of people having an issue with you engaging with the text experimentally or diverging from reading things through an exclusive 'this character is universally good/bad' and one might put that down to media criticism problemz striking once again or stanning (puke) culture.

I think it's annoying, but it's interesting, and I don't think I really have all the answers. The thing I'd really like to read more about is parafandom.

I do wonder how much that sense of personal danger comes into it too; I've witnessed my fair share (and engaged with) stages of coping about an unwanted thing happening in narrative and if you see people talking about things you don't want to happen, the easiest way to assert yourself over that is, I suppose, to discredit them in any way (and it's not really about you, but about them). One of the most telling stages of cope is when people have to work backwards from new information/bad portents in order to make their old theories fit. Anyway, that's kind of an aside, but a sense of emotional protection with is worth considering, because that's more emotional and simplistic than just talking about fandom mores, and now the scope of this post is too large.