#i'll have to revisit it later
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ineed-to-sleep · 8 months ago
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Made a whole ass piece of Astarion + my tav but I didn't like how the whole thing turned out 🫠 so I'm cropping and sharing the only part of it I'm happy with
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ivysangel · 7 months ago
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No thoughts, head empty, only this one:
Dick + baby fever + jealous + mating press = well hello bed, I love you, lmao
Thinking about male manipulator!dick who begs you to let him hit it raw. He's in your ear saying, "It feels so much better, baby," and "But, if you loved me," whispering all the reasons why you should toss the condoms this time.
You give in, insisting that he at least pulls out, telling him that you're not on birth control and you don't want any surprises. He gives you a phony promise that he won't pull anything and subtly nods his head at your words before finding his way inside you.
His body is pressed to yours, legs over his shoulders as he keeps you folded in half with the sheer weight of his body. Your fingernails leave bright streaks of red down his back, the type of open wound he can't get enough of, and your orgasm reaches its peak as his hips start stuttering. He's close.
"Lemme fill you up, baby," he groans, "Don't you want it?" his pace falters, deep calculated strokes now much more shallow and sporadic. "Come on, I know you do."
Bleary-eyed and in a state of delirium, you nod your head, and he's quick to take his chance before you change your mind. His final stroke hits you deep. Cock twitching inside of you as warm streams of cum fill you up, the complete opposite of what you'd initially wanted.
He's still inside you when he starts placing soft kisses on your face, calling you his pretty girl, and saying how much he loves you. "You'll pick up a plan b in the morning, right?" you ask, and he gives you another phony promise as he gently fucks his cum in deeper.
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ethosiab · 1 year ago
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bkau etho :3 (design by the amazing @applestruda)
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sforzesco · 10 months ago
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BROTHERS
The river Weser ran between the Roman and Cheruscan forces. Arminius came to the bank and halted with his fellow chieftains:— "Had the Caesar come?" he inquired.​ On receiving the reply that he was in presence, he asked to be allowed to speak with his brother. That brother, Flavus by name, was serving in the army, a conspicuous figure both from his loyalty and from the loss of an eye through a wound received some few years before during Tiberius' term of command. Leave was granted, and Stertinius took him down to the river. Walking forward, he was greeted by Arminius; who, dismissing his own escort, demanded that the archers posted along our side of the stream should be also withdrawn. When these had retired, he asked his brother, whence the disfigurement of his face? On being told the place and battle, he inquired what reward he had received. Flavus mentioned his increased pay, the chain, the crown, and other military decorations; Arminius scoffed at the cheap rewards of servitude.
They now began to argue from their opposite points of view. Flavus insisted on "Roman greatness, the power of the Caesar; the heavy penalties for the vanquished; the mercy always waiting for him who submitted himself. Even Arminius' wife and child were not treated as enemies." His brother urged "the sacred call of their country; their ancestral liberty; the gods of their German hearths; and their mother, who prayed, with himself, that he would not choose the title of renegade and traitor to his kindred, to the kindred of his wife, to the whole of his race in fact, before that of their liberator." From this point they drifted, little by little, into recriminations; and not even the intervening river would have prevented a duel, had not Stertinius run up and laid a restraining hand on Flavus, who in the fullness of his anger was calling for his weapons and his horse. On the other side Arminius was visible, shouting threats and challenging to battle: for he kept interjecting much in Latin, as he had seen service in the Roman camp as a captain of native auxiliaries.
Tacitus Annals 2.10-11
there's a lot going on in there! Arminius switching to Latin is a detail that always makes me feel a deep kind of sadness, especially with how it's preceded by mention of their mother. I wonder what she thought of what became of her sons, on opposite sides of everything but still, inescapably, brothers. even when they want to kill each other. there sure are a lot of fucked up and unhappy brothers around. and Arminius asking about Flavus' injury............I also had a whole thing typed out about the horror of imperialism and colonization and the trauma of assimilation but I think this sets the tone better
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Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, Adrian Murdoch
and also this, just for fun
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(ibid)
this post is already a mile long, so lets add another mile to it: a little scene at the start of their conversation! tfw you go in for a hug and your younger brother who also ended up being taller starts roasting your hair style
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bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app⭐ko-fi
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mewkwota · 4 months ago
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Had a MegaMan on the mind one evening, and it's one I've never drawn before surprisingly, so there he is. I think Juno is such an interesting character, with that aura (and hair) that he has.
(He should be A Lot Bigger in that last shot, oh well.)
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heyitsrink · 1 year ago
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I'm on my first read through of Realm of the Elderlings and as a little personal project for myself, I'm taking a scene or small moment from each book in the series and turning it into a comic spread. I've been working on this project since January so I'm catching up a little bit with posts here.
Here's my spread for Royal Assassin. This bit of dialogue stood out to me the first time I read it - I love when the Fool talks in riddles!
"Who knows what will swirl up from the bottom of a stirred kettle?" He went suddenly to my door, and set his hand to the latch. "That is what I ask of you," he said quietly. "To forgo your twirling, Sir Spoon. To let things settle."
"I cannot."
He pressed his forehead to the door, a most un-Fool-like gesture. "Then you shall be the death of kings."
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caycanteven · 1 year ago
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Some concept art of Mafia!Lex
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boolean-moved · 1 year ago
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cringetober day 5 - mspaint
shadow lugia was my favorite thing to draw on the family computer when i was 10
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emotinalsupportturtle · 1 year ago
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Tom Hiddleston trying to cosplay as Crowley
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piningpercussionist · 7 days ago
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Interest checking somethin' real quick!
*I couldn't think of a better way to word that, but I mean like. If I only opened comissions for stages sketches through flats, but you wanted shading, or something. Or if I end up deciding certain kinds of commissions won't work for me and have to put up restrictions.
The second I'm able I'm probably going to be opening them, so I'm just kinda feeling out where interest lies! I don't know how I'd be pricing things just yet, honestly? My brain seems kinda caught on "$5 for a quick sketch is a good starting point" but we'll see what happens, since I'm uncertain what the reasonable price escalation from there is to me- also, I have a tendency to go overboard on my sketches naturally, so. We'll See.
Another thing that'll probably be coming is a kofi for tips and requests! But do keep in mind that I just specified requests and not commissions- they'd be in no way guaranteed, I'd just feel a little more pressured on account of your kindness lol
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saltpixiefibercraft · 11 months ago
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Hi! I got gifted a small (40cm wide) rigid heddle loom with a 10 DPI reed for Christmas. It's my very first loom and first experience weaving, I'd like to try to learn twills and dishtowels like what you have on your loom. How heavy of cotton do I need to use to get a drapey towel fabric, or do I need to get a reed with higher DPI? Thanks in advance, I'm reading all I can and I am so so lost haha
Oh that's so exciting! I started on a rigid heddle too, if you are just starting out I would say that the 10 DPI is a great place to start. For that reed I tend to go with more DK/Worsted weights to get a solid fabric, but the thinner you go yarn and/or thread wise it will create a lighter, more flowy fabric due to the increased space between threads.
To make a drapey dishtowel I would suggest using a light fingering weight cotton for the back and forth yarn (your weft) and in the warp go a size up with a heavier fingering or sport (?? I think? I've gotten so used to sizing yarn in weaving terms like 8/2, 2/20 and etc lol)
My favorite dishtowel yarn is 8/2 cotton from Maurice Brassard, but it is a yarn that plays much nicer with a higher DPI, like 12, or 15
My best advice is to try out different combos of yarns you have access to and start making a little sample library. My best advice, label EVERYTHING so you can recreate fabrics that you like. Do not be like past me, young and full of hubris, she who wrote down naught what she did and would have to attempt to re decipher later.
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amadeoapologist · 3 months ago
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i think i struggle with feeling a lot of sympathy for louis over losing claudia, because he--TO ME, IN MY OPINION--abandoned her a lot sooner than she abandoned him. he tells her, "you and me, me and you," but he doesn't honor that, which she calls him on later in season 2. he brings claudia in under false pretenses and continues to see her not fully as herself, at least, not very often.
and i'm not necessarily....i'm not necessarily ragging on louis about this. i don't resent him for it. i see louis and claudia as a strained mother and daughter, and having that kind of dynamic in which the mother can never really relate to the daughter and the daughter can never really relate to the mother, and yet both are so strongly identified with the other to outside observers. because they are the same, they can't truly connect, but the love felt is unshakeable despite how much it causes a rift.
so when i see posts that touch on the "you and me, me and you" stuff, they don't hit for me in that sense of...oh, what a loss! because I don't really think louis ever meant "me and you, you and me." and if he did mean it, he forgot about it right quick. which again, i'm not really angry at him for.
i'm sick and my brain is foggy, so i'm not explaining this well because it's my first attempt to get the words out. but almost like. almost like a less hateful india stoker/evie stoker. like, in the sense that louis is not designed to parent. he parents not because he truly wants to, but because he needs to for some less generous reason than simply wanting to have a family. and claudia is the one who suffers for louis' caprice. she's made on a whim so louis can feel better and then dropped repeatedly when he does.
but the same way i think evie is a shit mother to india (and they really aren't the best example for this point, i just literally cannot think of anyone else right now) because she just kinda lacks that maternal vibe and especially doesn't know how to handle the way india is so fully her own person, i think louis is a shit mother to claudia for the same reason, like, there are aspects of louis' personality that are baked into him by previous experience (like his brother killing himself and becoming estranged from his family and his whole fucked up history with lestat) and that make it hard for him to connect. and i don't fault him for that, but claudia is the one who has to deal with it.
like just to get back to what i first said, i don't really feel sympathy about louis losing claudia, but i do feel a shit ton of grief and sympathy for claudia herself. i just think louis was never really going to be the mother/father/brother/friend to claudia he might have thought he was going to be, and though he maybe doesn't see or accept that for most of the show thus far, i do. and i don't think he ever meant "you and me, me and you."
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galaxymooing · 1 year ago
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ms paint scribbling but w/discussion on twitter around brightheart's artwork in the new ultimate guide looking like ass i was thinking about how i'd depict her scars in a balanced way between the way the books describe her and the concept of the fur regrowing in a realistic fashion
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sforzesco · 1 year ago
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CAIUS TREBONIUS AND MARK ANTONY, MARCH 15th
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The Hetairia of Cassius, Luciano Canfora
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Cic. Phil. 2
(taps mic) so as we all know, conspiracy is a kind of seduction, and actions not taken can be just as loud as the ones that are. so. uh. fellas! hey fellas. heyyyyyy.
like, I was looking at the Dolabella-Caesar-Antony mess yesterday, but something really fun and vicious happened here and I will be rotating it around in my head at maximum volume for the foreseeable future
the red panels are the Assassination of Julius Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini (the pen and ink drawing, not the painting)
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mariocki · 20 days ago
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Shadows of Fear: Did You Lock Up? (1.1, Thames, 1970)
"And they didn't make much mess?"
"No, not really. They forced that door. Smashed the cabinet, slashed a sofa. And kicked a hole in the bedroom door."
"Ah. Big mistake."
"What is?"
"Never lock inside doors. Anything you can to keep them out - but when they're in, let 'em get on with it."
"I'll remember."
#shadows of fear#single play#roger marshall#1970#classic tv#thames#kim mills#michael craig#gwen watford#ray smith#mark mcmanus#malcolm kaye#charles leno#having come to something of a premature pause in my New Scotland Yard watch (the first ep of series 3 isn't on the YT playlist I've been#using and is proving quite tricky to get ahold of) i thought I'd revisit this brief lived anthology series for the creepy season. i first#watched this about 10 years ago and my memories of it are scant to say the least‚ so it seemed like good viewing for the season#the production history of SoF is lost in the mists of time (unless someone out there wishes to enlighten me?); this first episode was shown#in June of 1970‚ but the rest didn't follow until January of the following year; probably this acted as a sort of pilot to gauge viewer#reactions to another vaguely horrorish anthology series (the previous decade had been ripe with them‚ tho we rarely see their like today)#and then there's the odd case of the final ep‚ shown almost 2 years after the series ended and running to half the length (and generally#feeling like an entirely different format) but I'll come to that when (and if) i get to the episode itself. this debut ep is... well it's#fine. i was excited to see Marshall's name in the opening credits‚ one of the most dependable of old tv writers and I'd quite forgotten he#contributed to this show. but the issue here is simply one of length. the plot is solid‚ a suitably grotty little tale of a family man's#mounting obsession with the burglars who broke into his home. it would make a good ep of Tales of Unease (shortly to begin on Thames'#sister broadcaster LWT) or a few years later as an episode of Tales of the Unexpected; both being 25 minute shows. but this clocks in at#close to 50 mins and there isn't really enough to it to sustain that longer running time‚ leaving it feeling a little stretched thin and#flimsy. a shame‚ because Craig and Watford are putting in excellent performances as the middle class couple whose reactions to the burglary#slowly shift as time passes (he goes from prosaic acceptance to fixated malice‚ she from shocked indignation to making peace with it all)#no big surprises in where the play is headed or how it plays out‚ but that's often the case with these things; it's often just as much#about the horrible foreknowledge of what must come than some shocking twist‚ and this plays it about right. it's just too long is all.
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skrunksthatwunk · 11 months ago
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yakuza: dead souls - american vibes, bigass guns, and why zombies are super weird to have in ryu ga gotoku thematically/ideologically speaking
so i've been playing dead souls recently (hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah) and although i'm having the time of my life with it, there was something about it that kinda felt off to me, and i think i've figured out what it was, but i'm gonna have to walk you through a bit of my thought process to get there.
my first instinct was that it felt... american? and upon further examination i think that boils down to a couple of things:
everyone suddenly has lots of guns and also way way bigger guns
high emphasis on individual heroism (this itself is quite typical for rgg, but it manifests differently here; more on that in a bit)
military/government incompetence, which must be solved by the right individuals having the biggest and bestest guns
[for the sake of transparency i will note that my experience with zombie media is pretty limited and skews american (and i myself am american), so that may create bias. however, the 'this feels american to me' instinct is a rare one for me even in genres where i have seen little/no non-american media, so i think the fact that it did occur to me is notable. what about dead souls triggered that response when little else has? that's why i examined it and, truthfully, i think there's merit in the idea itself.]
the first point is pretty self-explanatory. america's got more guns than it does people, and its gun worship is infamous. japan's ban on guns (aided by its being an island state) means there's far fewer guns in the country, as well as far fewer people with guns (and likely far fewer guns per gun owner, excepting arms dealers/smugglers) than somewhere without such a ban. obviously, there are guns anyway. due to their illegality they are clustered within the criminal population, which explains their presence within organized crime within the series. very few guns will be sitting around in the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
and yet, when the zombie outbreak hits kamurocho, plenty of civilians suddenly have access to quite an arsenal. everyone has the knowledge they need to aim, fire, and reload smoothly and quickly; ammo is infinite for certain guns. characters we've never seen using firearms before suddenly have shotguns under their couches (looking at you, majima). it's not only very different from reality, it's very different from guns' place within the series up until this point, when they were limited weapons used primarily by the enemy.
and they're making a zombie shooter, so of course they would have to do this. it has to be unrealistic to be simultaneously in this setting and in this genre, in the same way that yakuza solving their problems with bareback fistfights instead of guns is itself both unrealistic and necessary to being the kinds of games rgg are.
my point is that this is a kind of focus on and valorization of gun ownership and competency unusual for the series and setting. further, it serves as an argument for why an armed, competent populace is crucial typical in american media.
which brings us to the third point (we'll get to 2 in a minute). guns are often marketed as self-defense weapons. the implication is that the government's defense of the individual (via law enforcement or the military, but particularly the former), are insufficient. this is objectively true. if someone pulls a gun on you at the gas station, will a cop manifest out of thin air to intercede? no. that's impossible. but if you have a gun, or if some bystander has a gun, you or they may be able to do something with that gun to stop the armed person. thus, there is an undeniable gap in the effective immediacy of such responses.
many gun advocates also point to the incompetence or insufficiency of law enforcement, even when they are present to stop an armed aggressor. the fact that law enforcement do not have a 100% success rate in protecting the citizenry is also objectively true.
so, when you are in danger, arming yourself increases your chances of being able to put down (or at least take armed action against) a present or potential threat. whether it is viewed it as a supplement to or a replacement for law enforcement, it is meant to make up for the shortcomings of the government's ability to completely protect all its citizens. it's a safety net for state failure.
back to dead souls. rgg has always centered political corruption in its stories, including politicians, the police, and sometimes even the military, though usually the former two. sometimes this is treated sympathetically (i.e. tanimura, a dirty cop, whose dirty-cop-ness allows him to work outside/against the law to help disadvantaged people, not unlike how kiryu views being a yakuza), and other times it's simply a matter of greed or lust for power (i.e. jingu).
however, something that's almost never touched on so clearly is government incompetence. when the government fails to help people or hurts them or does corrupt things, it's usually due to a competent, malicious bad apple who is removed from power by the end of the game. this implies holes in the system because it keeps happening all the time, but that's on a series-wide scale, a pattern ignored by the series in favor of the individual game solution of "this guy's gone now :) yay".
but in dead souls, the SDF's barracades fall, their men are killed, they are unable to help protect the people outside or inside the quarantine zone. they are weak in a way the government usually isn't in these games. and who is stronger than them? our individual good guys with guns. so we need to be armed because the government is weak and can't protect us. boom. america.
returning to point 2, i'd like to say that dead souls is not particularly more individualistic than any of the other games in the series (other than, perhaps, y7). rgg is an incredibly individualistic series, actually. its protagonists are usually men who defy, oppose, and skirt around the law as a way of helping others and doing what is truly right (with a few exceptions, like shinada and haruka). the romanticized view of the yakuza as a force for helping the community in the face of government incompetence is a real one, and one that tends to manifest itself most in kiryu and how the series treats him. it shows us yakuza who aren't willing to kill, yakuza who cry about honor and justice and humanity and brotherhood, yakuza who never dip their hands into less palatable crimes, or only do with intense regret (and only ever as part of their backstory). the beat-em-up style emphasizes this as well. i mean, what's more individualistic than a one-man army?
put more clearly, this series is about men defying legal and social laws and expectations to live in a way that feels right to them, and about making themselves strong enough to combat those who would get in their way. the individual is placed before the society in importance, (though generally in a way that benefits the community, because they are good guys who want to use that agency and power for good).
all of this is true in dead souls as well, technically. those who live on the outskirts of society are the ones who actually save the day, and the ones who go in there and save people rather than just walling them off and pretending like they don't exist. they have the guns, which are illegal and mark them as criminals, but this broken law is what gives them the power to save themselves when the government will not, and to save their community if they so choose.
where dead souls differs is in the nature of that strength.
rgg places a lot of emphasis on self-improvement, both of one's body and of one's character. do both of these, and you will be strong enough to back up your ambitions. what allows someone to carve their own path in life is the ability to put down ideological and physical resistance by having resolve and the ability to tiger drop whoever won't be swayed by your impassioned speeches. you make yourself a weapon. you make yourself strong. in dead souls, that strength comes from an external, material possession. strength is something you buy (or that you take from someone else). who is able to survive the apocalypse comes not from the heart, nor from rigorous training, but from who has the most, the biggest, and the most bestest guns. it's an intersection of capitalism, militarization, and individualism. simply, deeply american.
[when i was talking myself through this a few days ago, i spent a lot more time on the capitalism + individualism stuff, but i think i'll keep this moving. consider this aside the intermission]
dead souls also differs for a few other interlocking reasons. it can be described with this equation:
zombification of enemies + lethality of guns = loss of emphasis on redemption
if your best friend turned into a zombie, could you shoot them? or your child? or your lover? it's a common trope, but it's a damn good one. watching your family, your neighbors, your town, everyone turn into a husk of themselves, something that looks like them but cannot be reached, is deeply tragic. it's even more tragic when these husks are trying to kill you. unable to be reasoned with and unable to be cured, you must incapacitate them before someone innocent is hurt--or hurt, then themselves made dangerous; each loss adds to the number of threats surrounding you. your life is seen as more valuable than that of your zombified friend, not only because the zombie is attacking you and it's self defense, but because they are no longer a person to you. to be a zombie is to no longer be human; zombification is dehumanization.
and so in a series so focused on connection with one's community, on saving innocent civilians, often on saving kamurocho specifically, one would expect similar tropes to occur. even if one's friends aren't turned, perhaps the cashier at poppo you chat with sometimes is. it's the destruction of that community and of the members one has tertiary relationships with that i expect would occur most within a kamurocho zombie story, since they are likely unwilling to axe anyone more important than that, even if dead souls isn't canon. i'd especially expect to see that in the beginning, before the need to kill zombies rather than contain or redeem them becomes apparent.
this does not happen.
i cannot speak for the entire game, but i can speak of gameplay choices that affect this, and ones i think will not be subverted throughout, even if they are somewhat contradicted by plot events i am presently unaware of.
kamurocho is not a community to protect, nor is it filled with your fellows. it is a playground filled with infinitely respawning, infinitely mow-downable, infinitely disposable zombies. you are meant and encouraged to kill them by the thousands, and never to hesitate or consider whether they may be cured or who may be mourning them. who may be unable to identify their loved one because you were trying to reach a headshot goal from hasegawa. you are not meant to consider them as human, nor beings that were once human, nor beings that could be human again, in the eyes of the zombie shooter. they are merely bodies, targets, and obstacles.
the zombies are contrasted with the true humans, those barricading themselves within the quarantine zone or those living in ignorance outside it. humans are meant to be saved, zombies are meant to be killed. the player character is the only one who can truly help with either of these goals, because the other humans are cowardly, ignorant, or unarmed/helpless. you must be their savior. to be a savior is to eliminate zombies, who are less than human.
the black and white nature of this is also emphasized by another gameplay characteristic: the lack of street encounters. when you traverse the peaceful parts of kamurocho, you are never attacked. you are also never directly attacked by the humans within the quarantine zone. kamurocho feels very different without its muggers and hooligans, but it's because this is a zombie shooter, not a beat-em-up. in a normal rgg title, you'd subdue threats by punching, kicking, and throwing them. you'd use your body in (supposedly) nonlethal ways. dead souls does not have a combat system meant for civilians. you have your guns. you subdue threats by shooting them, preferably lethally. the game doesn't want you to do that to humans, so you never fight humans. this furthers the black and white divide between the salvation-worthy, noble humans and the death-worthy, worthless zombies. combat is only lethal, and only used against the inherent other.
this leads me to the part of dead souls i find most conflicting with the ethos of rgg broadly, and perhaps its greatest ideological/thematic failing.
because the enemy are incurable, dangerous, and inhuman, you must kill them to protect yourself and others, others who are still human. humanity is something that is lost or preserved, but never regained. once someone's gone, they're gone, and you not only must kill them, it is your duty and your right to kill them. you should kill them.
in dead souls, there is no redeeming the enemy.
and that's a big problem.
rgg is about a lot of things, but a key one is the ability of people to change for the better. its most memorable, beloved villains are those who see the light by the end and change their wicked ways (usually through some form of redemptive suicide, though that's another essay in itself). its pantheon of characters is full of those who come from questionable backgrounds struggling to be the best people they can be, to live as themselves authentically and compassionately. it's about the good and the love you can find in the moral and legal gray zones of life/society, and the potential/capacity for good all of us have, no matter how far we may have fallen. it is a hopeful series. it is a merciful series.
this is something bolstered by its gameplay. countless substories are resolved by punching a lesson into someone until they improve their behavior, either out of fear or genuine remorse/development. the games don't just discourage killing your enemies, they don't allow you to (yes, we've all seen the "kiryu hasn't killed anybody? umm. look at this heat action" stuff before, and while they've got a point, i believe it's the narrative's intent that none of this is actually lethal, based on how laxly it treats certain plot injuries (cough cough. y7 bartender) and the actual concept of taking a life, the gravity it is given by the text, particularly when it comes to characters crossing that threshold into someone who has killed. explicit killing is not an option open to you, even when you're being attacked by dozens and dozens of armed men. conflicts are resolved by simply beating up enough guys in this nonlethal manner.
but dead souls is a shooter. to avoid conflict with the series' moral qualms about letting its characters kill, the enemies cannot be human. furthermore, the zombie shooter genre can only fit within the series if its zombies are completely inhuman. this means their pasts as humans cannot be acknowledged, nor the possibility of a cure, nor the characters' own potential conflicts about killing them; or, at least, not in a way that impedes their or the player's ability to gun them down afterwards.
if you can't kill humans in your series, then it cannot be possible to save (in this case, rehumanize) zombies. this is especially true in a game where you are unable to fight humans, and thus human lives are universally more valuable than zombie lives. because if you kill a zombie that can be cured, you are, in a way, killing a human.
and so, in a series where you should always assume your enemies (and everyone, for that matter) are capable of reason, compassion, change, and redemption, and where they are always worth that effort, even if they reject it in the end, dead souls' enemies are irredeemable and only worth swift, stylish slaughter. there are only good guys and bad guys. good guys must be protected, lest they be turned irreversibly into bad guys. good guys are only protected by killing bad guys, and the only way to save good guys is to kill every last one of the bad guys. do not spare them, and do not ask whether or not it's right. only kill.
i love dead souls. it's a silly game. i like seeing daigo in decoy-drag and majima gleefully cartwheeling his way through zombies and ryuji with his giant gun arm prosthetic. it's fun. but when i was trying to figure out what felt off about it to me, one of the words that came to mind (besides american) was indulgent. that, too, felt odd, because i love indulgent media. i am not one to scorn decadent, hedonistic, beautiful high-calorie slop type media. if dead souls was just fan servicey, that wouldn't really bother me. i am a fan and boy do i feel serviced. it rocks. but i think my problem is in what dead souls is indulging.
i think dead souls indulges in the desire to cut loose, and to see these characters cut loose. thing is, they're cutting loose all over kamurocho, and all over the bodies of people they used to (at least in concept) care for. with lethal weapons. it is catharsis via bloodbath, not by pushing your body and mind to the limit in man to man combat, but by pulling a trigger before the other guy can hurt you, or even think about hurting you, for the crime of existing as the wrong kind of thing.
and i just don't think that's in line with rgg's beliefs.
yes, it's probably fair for dead souls' characters to kill zombies. i'm not against that. i'm also not against games letting you do purposeless violence. i spent a good amount of my elementary school years killing oblivion npcs for shits, like. that's not what bothers me about dead souls.
rgg as a series has always taken a hard stance in both its game design and narrative choices against killing and for the potential for redemption in its enemies. and i think the lengths to which it goes to promote that despite the probably-lethal moves you do and the improbability of a harmless do-gooder yakuza is one of the most endearing things about the games. so for this one entry to disregard that key theme for the sake of a genre shift that flopped super hard, well? i dunno. it feels weird i guess. it's out of place not just because it's a dramatic shift in gameplay and style and also zombies are only a thing here (and the supernatural/fantastical are thus only prominent here), but because of what those shifts imply.
so, uh. yeah. my pre-dead-souls thoughts that dead souls wasn't that out of pocket bc rgg's just kinda weird? turns out it was actually super weird to have a zombie shooter in there, but for way way deeper reasons than anyone gives it credit for.
(footnotes in tags)
#1) i deemphasized the physicality of shooting to emphasize my points about the viscerality and personal nature of rgg#brawls and the colder more detached nature of gun use relative to that but i do NOT mean that shooting has no physical component to it#obviously it takes a lot of skill to shoot quickly and accurately and lugging a bigass gun around kamurocho would tucker me out for sure#2) no i don't think all those things i said were american were usa-exclusive. it's a big world out there. i'm just saying those things#combined feel like a particularly american flavor of thing to me#3) there's probably more to be said about the connection between wanton killing and american styling or anti-immigration theming in zombie#stories or dead souls But i figured that was a bit too disconnected to the funny zombie game. this shit was a lot anyway y'know?#4) also i don't think most of this was intentional on the part of rgg studios. i genuinely think they just wanted to make a fun zombie#shooter and didnt really think about it all that hard. whenever you make smth there's gonna be implications you never considered. it happen#5) is it ballsy to write a giant essay on a game i'm like 1/4 the way through? yes. i've done smarter things. i'll revisit it when im done#if i'm wrong then i'll figure it out probably. but like. i don't think they'd set up the hasegawa objective stuff or have akiyama just#unflinchingly start shooting zombies and then later challenge that. we'll see but my hopes aren't high y'know? i know rgg#6) i should also clarify that violent catharsis is a) a part of all rgg games and b) cool as hell. it's the lethal bit that doesn't fit with#the series y'know?#rgg#ryu ga gotoku#yakuza#like a dragon#yakuza dead souls#dead souls#classic skrunk 4 hr middle of the night impulse essay hooorayy
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