#imposter syndrome hits hard in IT especially considering i'm just starting out

[that-it-gay]

like what i do is wizard bullshit to my coworkers but it's nothing compared to the shit i see on r/homelab

[chuwenjie]

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse comes out later today so I wanted to write a post reflecting on my journey and experience working on this movie. So many people have supported me through this and I am so thankful to each and every one of you!

Text version of this post under the cut:

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse comes out tonight. It feels really weird to be typing that out right now. I worked on the movie as a visdev artist for the last 2.5 years, from 2020 to 2023. Long post incoming.

There are a lot of reasons why I'd consider this film to be one of the most ambitious animated films to ever be made. As artists, we were asked to push ourselves far beyond our comfort zones and do things that had never been done before in animation.

Every time we reached a point where most people would say "this must possibly be as creative and weird as it gets," our entire team of artists and animators would smash right through the ceiling. The driving direction for the visuals of the film was to push the limits of every single frame; to challenge audience expectations and make something truly original.

The best thing about this film was that there wasn't a single boring day working on this movie. The hardest thing about this film was also that there wasn't a single boring day working on this movie.

There were times while working on this where the imposter syndrome hit me hard. This was my first big movie, and what a hell of a first movie to get thrust into.

I came in only a few years out of school with absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing. I constantly feared that someone had made a mistake in bringing me onto this film, and I was going to let everyone down. There was a solid chunk of those 2.5 years where I wasn't sure if animation was the right path for me.

If there's anything I could tell my past self it would be this: there are so many people who love you and believe in you. There will be a time when you get to stand on the other side of it, look back on everything and see how far you came.

I'm still working on self-acceptance every day (it will be a lifelong struggle, I'm sure), but I'm glad I didn't give up on myself. I'm proud of myself and my contributions to this film, and I'm certain that this movie will continue to change and shape the animation landscape just as the first one did. That's truly a special feeling to have been a part of. I am so incredibly grateful to every single person who helped me along this journey.

Here come the thanks:

To the ENTIRE visdev & art crew- it's been an honor getting to work alongside each and every one of you. My jaw is literally still on the floor from seeing your incredible talent day after day.

I want to thank Tiffany and Felicia especially for being there for me through tough times- I admire and respect you both so much as artists, and even better than that, my life is greatly enriched for being able to call you my friends.

Thank you Patrick and Dean for taking chances on me, teaching me so much about art and what I'm capable of, and encouraging me along the way. To Aymeric, your art is one of the reasons I initially became interested in animation and you have been one of the kindest & most empathetic mentors I could ever have asked for.

I want to thank my wonderful parents for believing in me always and raising me into the person I am today: everything I do in life is to make you proud. To my brother Andrew who is perpetually awake at 3 AM when I need someone to talk to- thank you for always picking up the phone and making me laugh.

And finally to my partner Luke for making me grilled cheeses on all of the difficult days, for never getting sick of me even when all I would ever talk about was work, and for patiently and steadfastly loving me throughout this entire thing. I don't think I could've done it without you.

Starting tomorrow I will begin posting and sharing some of the art I made for this movie; I'm looking forward to sharing some of my personal favorites with you. I hope each and every one of you enjoys Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse when it hits theaters later today!

[saerintv]

hello ~ this is queued because i'll probably be asleep by the time the rp opens but didn't want to miss out on the fun! i'm adore ( she/her, 25+, cst ) and this is saerin, the legend skeleton and a spitfire that's just here so she won't get jailed fined. note that as harsh as i make her seem, she knows that she has to play nice in order to survive, especially with 105fm on them so! here is her profile page, but an easy breezy version of everything will be below. please like if you'd like to plot and i'll hit you up, discord is preferred and available upon request ♡

background ⏤ ( if this sounds messy forgive me, it's like 2am 😭 )

hwang saerin, 23, gymnast, the legend skeleton

comes from a wealthy family that has gymnastics in their blood, father is a former gymnastic olympian who was not able to medal and mother is a coach ( those who can't, coach, right? ) so as soon as she showed an inkling of an ability at tumbling their hopes and dreams were immediately pushed upon her

which for the most part was fine, because she didn't know any better

parents threw their wealth to get her the best everything, coaches / gyms, training, on call sports medicine doctors ⏤ you name it, she got it

and tbh it actually paid off! a natural ability plus hard work and money is an unbeatable combo it seems. she wasn't simone biles type of dominant but she had a grace and power that was unmatched, and wasn't afraid to push herself to the limit, and was able to rack up golds and medals wherever she went. quite literally poised to be the next big thing

she was known for her prowess but also for her attitude as well; got used to getting golds that when she didn't

enough so that she made her international senior debut at 17, then was recruited for the national team at 19. the 2020 olympics was supposed to be her debut. key word being supposed.

despite her immense talent, she always had doubts and somewhat of an imposter syndrome that she never talked about and pushed into the crevices; but the closer it got to the olympics the harder it got to push those thoughts away. it affected her enough that she started getting the twisties. and unfortunately, you can't throw money at this type of problem to make it go away.

the worse she performs, the worse her parents relationship gets ⏤ not that it was great to begin with, but anyway. one month before the olympics, she gets two bombs dropped upon her during a three way argument with her parents: her mom was having an affair with her current coach, and she was adopted. so you can imagine that her mental health went from bad to absolute shit at this point

she makes attempts to push through because the team is pretty much at tokyo at this point, but it's affecting her too much. before they could tell her that an alternate was going in her place because her bad performance was getting dangerous, she disappears from the olympic village two weeks before the opening ceremonies. doesn't tell anyone, just catches the next flight out of tokyo to ibiza. no plans, no thoughts, just vibes.

of course the team alerts her parents that she's gone and she does contact them, but saerin says she's done. no more gymnastics, too much shit has gone down for her to even get in the right mindset to compete anymore. eventually comes back to korea, and gets diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder which helps her situation ( it does not )

anyway her parents aren't completely heartless and do feel like shit, they do have a talk with her and let her be considering she's 20 and hasn't had a chance at a normal life.

but uh ... you can imagine how reckless a girl who hasn't had to face any consequences could be when the shackles are off her feet and the world is now her oyster lol. she lays low and spends more time traveling than anything and stays tf away from anything sports related. anyway one time a party with socialites got a little too rowdy and she had a little too much to drink which ended up with her getting into a scuffle and with a battery charge.

she expects her parents to get her out of it ( wouldn't be the first time ), but instead they tell her to go to jail or bring home a gold. she thinks about jail for two seconds but decides to put the shackles on once again when they tell her that all they ask is to bring home a gold and they won't ask her to do gymnastics ever again. a fair deal with that, she thinks.

she's 21 then, so it does take some time for her to get back into competing shape, but not as long as she originally thought it would. she's back on the national team in no time. physically, the time off has done her well. mentally? we'll see.

personality wise ⏤

aries sun, aries moon, capricorn rising. "you think i'm a bitch? well you're not that wrong."

she's not here to make friends, just here to do her damn routines, get a medal and fucking go

i feel like if you knew her prior to olympic debut she was less angry. kept to herself still but more starry eyed and pliant. now? since she's had the taste of freedom, to go back into the rigidity that is gymnastics is hard. not sure if she wants to get used to it.

openly confrontational. her dialogue is straightforward and blunt, one of those people who thinks "being real" is above everything. "i said what i said" vibes.

ambitious, but also impulsive and reckless. spoiled and independent? self absorbed. you get the point.

but like i said before she knows she can't come in guns blazing and fuck the world, so she is playing nice to be a part of the team. if you're not a threat, then she can seem aloof. if you are, then she's passive aggressive.

this is all a shield for her anxiety. when it gets bad she lashes out.

but she's not all bad, i promise! if you're able to befriend her then you've got a bull in your corner. she'll fight your battles for you. tbh show her any ounce of love and she'll grab on the point that she stifles it. in her own way?

phew! almost done i promise! onto some plots off the top of my head ⏤

enemies / rivals ⏤ while yeah there's the legacy, i imagine with her personality she's got a lot of people that's not in her corner, and i think it would be fun to play out!

biological siblings ⏤ i mentioned in the bio that she found out she's adopted, but i forgot to mention that she did find her biological family during her 2 years away from gymnastics. it'd be super interesting if her sibling was on the national team too! obviously more plotting needed as this can go several ways.

ride or die ⏤ she's in need of at least one ( 1 ) good friend. someone she'd fight for, y'know? would be even more interesting ( but not required ) if they were opposite in personality too. opposites attract!

sneaky link or toxic rls ⏤ idk, on and off rls, friends w benefits, or something of the sort. girl is high strung and is need of a release that's legal and won't wreck her body. or it could, wink wink. she's bisexual, by the way!

and that's all i can think of, i do much better brainstorming really!

[altrie]

some utahime iori hcs i been collecting in my head

i have nowhere else to dump my thoughts so here i am. mostly young utahime iori headcanons bc HI arc was so fun

utahime is a straight A student, she's a perfectionist, has good work ethics, organized, helps everyone around her, etc--a good cookie basically. i can see her being the class president or whatever is equivalent to jjk academics

she's not exactly in par with her peers when it comes to CT, like she knows and she's aware of her skills/limitations. she tries her best not to get lost and sad when she sees her classmates and underclassmen (especially a certain tall junior who's been annoying her since the first day >_>) surpass her

she tries very hard to compensate her skills and hopes to be recognized for her talent and skills as one of the best, just like her classmates! she's very proud of them and always supports them. yet, she cant help but feel so inferior and imposter syndrome hitting her when she doesn't get the results she wanted from the higher ups

she doesn't come from a very big clan with CT (unless gege states something), i can see utahime being raised by her grandparents or her grandma before going to tokyo jujutsu high. her grandma passed away and she was basically living on her own for a while

I'm standing by the idea she attended tokyo jujutsu high over kyoto. she came from kyoto but was recruited to attend tokyo once someone heard her singing and curse energy molded through

besides baseball, one of her favorite things to do during her time living as a student was go to karaoke and sing/dance. she loved to sing modern pop songs she heard from radios, old jpop classics, ballads

utahime singing city pop classics PLEASE 🙌

when she was finally on her last year at the tech school, she met her new juniors. she met shoko first, geto, then gojo. she tries her best to be a good responsible role model for them but that broke almost immediately when 2/3 (or 1/3 really) started to tease her on the first hour and she snapped accidentally. (embarrassed she tried to apologize but the guy was just laughing???)

she gets asked out a lot on dates! usually from upperclassmen or non-sorcerers during her outings. she doesn't go on dates though though because of her lifestyle, missions, school, etc but when she does the relationship doesn't last too long :(

she doesn't really have a best friend until shoko came along. with her class peers often gone for missions, she was always alone until shoko came along. (i don't think meimei and utahime are at the same graduating year, acquaintances at best with some respect for each other)

utahime doesn't really have a specific reason for why she wanted so badly to be a grade 1 sorcerer. for a while, she's in that chase and grind to get that promotion but she's unsure why but she'll do anything for it

she doesn't have the greatest memories of her parents. she remembers her mom and some ladies in her life telling her often to marry into a rich, well-off family, have powerful children etc 🫠. as she got older, she realized she doesn't mind marriage but she also wants to do more and be a sorcerer too

she didn't consider being a teacher at first but after some heartfelt conversation with yaga, she decided to at least keep that option alive until she was ready to try it

she wasn't a drinker before. it wasn't until she got deep into heavy missions where the joy of izakaya became sort of a treat. nothing beats a cold beer and some fried foods after a stressful time out🤤

i like to think that utahime worked part time as a night club singer when she wasn't doing missions or at least to make some extra money while living in tokyo. i like to imagine her singing this one song from one of my favorite video games (more on that later)

[frostbounddevotion]

WELL since I can't send this to circusmxnkeys, I'll put it in this ask for both blogs. I adore your Suguru portrayal. You really do a fantastic job with him both as a teenager before he begins his downward spiral, and as Cult Geto. We've done a lot of development with Maeve and him and I'm really excited for all the plots! <33

As for Uraume - WELL. Lemme just say you haven't had them long, but the interaction between my Sukuna, and Uraume has been a blast. I think you write them very well considering you've only recently picked them up. Looking forward to seeing how they develop as your muse!

Wow. I'm so flattered and honored to receive compliments from the likes of the almighty @origami-assassin , @ofrosegold , and @ofxcrimsonxedge

I remember when I first started out, I was a mess. Hot mess. You were my sensei even though you didn't know it yet. I learned a lot from you, and I'm still learning. Your writing is beautiful. I love it.

Complimenting my Suguru also hits very close to home. We all can relate to comparisons, duplicates, and the imposter syndrome that comes with it. I worked hard on him, and well, Gege's character hits very close to home. He's my precious corrupted baby. Your Sukuna and Choso are precious too, and so are your OCs!!! Well developed, omg!!!!!!

I look forward to continuing our friendship and rp partnership for a long time. &lt;3

Anyone reading this, give her blogs a chance!! Especially her OCs. Her writing is wonderful, and it deserves a round of applause. They're a wonderful mun, too!!!! They are patient!!!

[pinnochiro]

pinn reviews - final fantasy xv

a long ramble about final fantasy fifteen that sort of looks like a review, as written by someone who finished the game fifteen minutes ago and needs to get these words out of his head. spoilers inbound.

i'm a pretty big fan of video games. i don't know what my first was, but it was probably either banjo and kazooie or mario kart 64, at my cousin's house when i was very small. i think that video games as a medium are so interesting, since the fact that video games are inherently interactive changes the way that they tell any story. it's a shame that despite loving video games so much, i'm absolutely terrible at them.

i'm absolute dogshit at video games. whenever i boot up something new, i always play on easy mode because. i'm that bad. unfortunately, this means that a lot of video games are simply. impossible for me to beat. that's fine, as at the moment i live with my good friend lizz, who is certifiably Good at Video Games, and so we've been playing video games together for a little bit now. typically this means that she will actually play the majority of the game while i sit with her and watch, but occasionally i'll have a go, but she'll end up with the controller as soon as a boss fight or puzzle or a mechanic i just can't seem to grasp shows up. we recently played through the entirety of the kingdom hearts series together, and this was an absolute blast of a time. i'm glad to say that i adore kingdom hearts now, and it's become one of my hyperfixations, which you might be able to tell from my icon. but we'd finished the kingdom hearts series, and we were left to move onto something else. we'd also played final fantasy 7 remake, so in my wisdom, i suggested that we play another final fantasy game.

we looked through the ff games that were already purchased on our consoles thanks to lizz's uncle, and eventually, we decided that we should play. all of them. however to start, we were going to play final fantasy xv, 15, and work our way backwards through the mainline, single-player games.

i'd heard that xv wasn't very good, but honestly, i was still quite curious. one person who i'd been following on twitter for years was pretty obsessed with the main party members, to the point where i knew their names and what-not even though i didn't have much of an idea what the game itself was about. i remember watching a video by supereyepatchwolf a few years ago about how the game sucked, but i couldn't remember much of the details, and i knew, based on my obsession with kingdom hearts, that xv had started as a different game called final fantasy versus xiiv. i don't know all the details about versus thirteen, but i do know that it was originally helmed by the creator of my beloved kingdom hearts, mr tetsuya nomura, and that after many years, the vast majority of the game was thrown out, nomura wasn't in charge any more, and the whole thing was rewritten and reworked, which sounds like a fairly rough development cycle. but so what, i don't care about gameplay. i want to play the video game with those cute guys that i see fanart of on twitter, and lizz seemed happy enough to play through it with me.

and so we started final fantasy xv. i've been told that since the game was practically dead on arrival, they threw in a bunch of new content and reworked a lot of the early game before i got my hands on it. so my gameplay started with a scene of the four guys fighting some demon dude on fire and they're all old and grotty. whatever, that cutscene ends and we're put into a combat tutorial. that's over and we're on the road in what looks to be central america, pushing a car.

our four leading lads are noctis, the prince of the lucis empire, his best friend prompto, his bodyguard, gladio, and his chef and other things, ignis. i do quite like the main four members of the party in xv. prompto is quite easily my favourite, voiced by robbie daymond of goro akechi fame and with a bunch of fun little animations and quips that make him very likeable. he gets extremely excited at the idea of riding chocobos and has what i considered the best scene of the game, where he and noctis meet on a motel rooftop and discuss prompto's imposter syndrome, since he's only part of noctis' official retinue as his best friend. noctis is a fairly typical main protagonist, he's in love with a woman he hasn't seen in eight years and needs to go marry her or something, i don't care. gladio is a tough macho man with a mullet who wears leather jackets and wields a greatsword, and is apparently only 22, which is at least 10 years younger than i assumed. ignis is a strategist and chef, who takes on the most authoritative role and constantly tells noctis to not drive his car at night. i was not a fan of ignis at the start, but he grew on me, especially with how hard the game hit me with his personal arc. the four boys are off, driving to noctis' wedding in a different country across the desert when their car breaks down. we then run into the first issue of the game.

cindy is a mechanic. she also has her ass and tits out constantly, like your sleazy uncle's shirt with a naked woman was instead semi-alive as a video game person. she fixes your car and acts fairly sexual and it's just like. why do we have to do this. aren't we over overtly sexualised women in video games who have no reason for the way they dress other than the character designer was horny? whatever, i like women as much as the next guy, but cindy's design just. makes me feel so uncomfortable.

anyways you get to do a little driving around with the boys, until you stay the night before catching the boat to your fiance. overnight, you find out that noctis' kingdom has been basically destroyed by an invading empire called niflheim, and practically everyone noctis knows, including his father, are dead. you learn that noctis and his bride to be are also assumed dead, with noctis hearing his own death announcement on the radio. the game has a bunch of added cutscenes that are actually footage from the three-hour-long prequel movie that came out after the game, are extremely hard to follow and honestly i had no idea what i was looking at. anyways, noctis' family is dead, so it's time to do some hunting sidequests.

that brings us to the combat, i suppose. rather than the turn-based or even active turn-based combat that the series is known for, xv opts for more modern action rpg-styled combat. i was, naturally, terrible at this, but i managed to get around it with the fact that. it is almost impossible to die in this video game, provided you have enough items. the game allows you so much time to heal yourself that there's practically no way to have your entire party wipe unless you're doing absolutely terrible, and even then, your party members will probably try and heal you themselves before that happens. lizz tells me that the combat is boring, you just push the same button over and over and then you win. i do appreciate that, for someone like me who is terrible at reading enemy movements, there is a giant button that pops up on screen that tells you when to push the block button, but even then i was prone to fucking it up. whether that's the bad game design or my terrible gaming abilities is up to you to decide. anyways, the game is fairly easy but has annoying combat, your teammates limit breaks will only land about 50% of the time (or never, if you are gladio) and i was still bad at it, so i didn't have all that much fun.

instead of an active levelling system, the game will only tally your character's level ups when you either make camp or visit a hotel. camping is, in my opinion, the only saving grace of this game. each time you make camp, you get to see the characters doing fun little camping activities together and just hanging out, ignis will cook up a new meal in a dramatic fashion and everyone will compliment him and eat it off their coleman's branded plates, it's just very fun. you also get to see what pictures prompto has taken, which is one of my favourite gameplay features. prompto's passion is photography, and while i support him in this wholeheartedly, his picture taking skills are, quite frankly, awful. the game will randomly take shots while you're on the move, which leaves you with a delightful selection of awkward poses, characters hidden behind bushes, pictures taken while someone is half-dead in combat, and snaps where the natural lighting absolutely makes it impossible to tell what's going on. it's hilarious and going through prompto's collection of photos each night is honestly the best part of the game. we managed to wind up with a few shots that, even despite being scripted events, turned out absolutely terrible, and i will cherish those forever.

anyways, since noctis' father and fiance are dead, that leaves him the king of lucis. the only important person to make it out of the capital alive tells you to drive to the middle of nowhere, where he randomly springs on you. hey. go into a bunch of these dungeons and absorb a bunch of swords, this is your destiny as king and how you will defeat the empire. noctis goes, uh, alright i guess, and you're set loose again to wander around for a bit collecting the 'royal arms'. this plot point wasn't explained well but hey, whatever, we're collecting the glowy swords and that's fine.

you're introduced at some point to ardyn, the main antagonist. he's old, kind of groady and wears a fedora. he's a dick to you and talks about his automobeeel. apparently my friend miri thinks he's hot, she is wrong.

i can't remember what happens specifically but you're told that your fiance is still alive and in fantasy venice, and she's talking to the gods on your behalf to borrow their powers. there's a mission where you follow some purple trees that are electric, and you do that i guess. i enjoyed riding the chocobos around, but couldn't care much for the plot at this point. ardyn leads you to a volcano, where you fight a giant lava god. he tries to step on you and i, a denizen of the internet and with an active fear of foot fetishists, was extremely uncomfortable. noctis becomes friends with foot man and a lightning god who lived in those trees, and ardyn steals your car.

very upset by this, noctis and his gang risk everything to sneak into a military base and steal it back. because this is a video game, this works out fine.

there's a little mining city which is all about Girl Power, because all the Women run the Mining Industry like Girl Bosses, and you hang around there for a bit. because all the women are so Empowered, they wear bikinis all the time with overalls over the top. gladio decides he needs to fuck off for a bit, i have no idea what he does since i haven't played the dlc, and then he comes back with another scar. you hang out with his sixteen year old sister, who has a crush on the engaged and 20-year old noctis, and then you drive her to a lighthouse. when she's in your party, she can't really fight, but she gets a pink chocobo and i thought that was very cute. we turned out own chocobo white and lizz named him 'jones' after a mount she has in ffxiv.

eventually, you have a long boat ride over to fantasy venice. this is the part where the game stops being 'fun with a few issues in combat and a rushed and poorly told story.' the open world, which was a main feature with a bunch of little areas to find where noctis can fish, little hunting sidequests and random photo spots where prompto takes touristy photos, is now gone, and it will not return for the entire rest of the game. you can 'go back in time', but the open world was the most enjoyable part of the game, and it kind of really sucks that the main story doesn't let you have any more freedom like that.

after arriving in fantasy venice, you have a talk with fantasy hillary clinton and beg her to let your girlfriend summon a god into the middle of her city. hillary agrees, and you don't get to meet up with your fiance, because even if the game is constantly telling you how much noctis loves her, there is. barely any interactions between the two in the entire game. from what i can tell, they met when noctis was a child and they haven't seen each other in ten years but are still fantasy dog pen-pals. noctis marrying her was supposed to make an alliance or something like that, but her brother has betrayed her to the army. noctis' girlfriend is also an oracle, which means she can heal people, i guess? everyone talks about how important she is and she's constantly telling people that she needs to use her powers to help noctis but she's practically a non-entity.

as can be expected of most female love interests in a game primarily focused on men, noctis' fiance is killed while summoning a god for noctis to befriend. noct gets very mad about this, and turns super saiyan and kills the god back, but his girlfriend is dead and that's super sad you guys. there's a beautiful prerendered cutscene where she says goodbye to noctis but since we barely know her, and we've only been told over and over that they're in love without anything to actually well, show this, it didn't have much of an impact. fantasy venice is destroyed, and ignis is blinded while trying to help calm the giant raging god.

iggy's blindness and how the game makes you account for this and grow to care for him was one of the highlights, in my opinion, as well as crushingly depressing. while i'm not disabled and have no right to say if this was 'good disabled representation' or anything like that, i believe that the game handles it decently enough. the group falls apart as noctis is upset about his girlfriend, gladio is extremely mad that noctis won't care for ignis, and prompto just wants everyone to get along. there's a mission where gladio constantly yells at you passive aggressive things to noctis about how he's a cunt for running, which is obnoxious, but the character arc itself is fairly strong. when you make camp, ignis can't cook anymore, so everyone eats cup noodles in a depressing ass cutscene. ignis remains in your party for the rest of the game despite his disability, and he doesn't magically regain his sight like other fantasy media would do, which at the very least i think is good. i'm not sure what the opinion of actual disabled people is of the character, considering how often disabled characters are either turned into misery porn to make the abled audience be glad that isn't them and if ignis' arc falls into this trap, but i hope that it wasn't handled too poorly, as that would just be another terrible mark in this game's list of bad moves.

the characters eventually make it to the evil empire's capital, which is abandoned and filled with daemons. the characters learn that ardyn is super evil and taught the king of the empire how to turn humans into daemons, which has now happened to the entire city. the 'magitek suits', presumed to be enchanted armour that fights as the empire's infantry, actually house the souls of the human-turned daemons. honestly i like this as a plot point but the game handles it pretty terribly. there could have been more lead up to this, the explanation is pretty lacking, and prompto's Big Plot Twist is. terribly handled. turns out that prompto was born in the empire and was going to be one of those empty soldier daemons, but he was rescued by people belonging to noctis' empire. not that the game tells you that. instead, prompto goes 'turns out i'm one of ... them' and Does Not Elaborate. The game doesn't tell you shit, not about prompto's past, not about how he feels about this, not about how anyone else feels about this either because the other party members just go 'oh that sucks, good thing you're not evil' and the scene ends. robbie daymond tries so hard to sell these terrible, terrible lines, and it almost entirely fails, i'm so sorry prompto. fortunately because i'm a nosy ass, i read prompto's wikia page and knew the plot twist ahead of time, because i don't think i would have even registered it if i didn't.

anyways everyone in the evil empire is dead and ardyn starts talking about how he's immortal and an ancient king of noctis' country but the gods thought he sucked because he's too evil. i missed most of this because the cats got the zoomies and were dashing across the couch right in the middle of his speech so i can't tell you anything else. noctis tries to get a big magic crystal to fight him and instead. gets schlorped inside.

TEN YEARS LATER

yes then ten years actually pass while noctis is asleep. the game shows this by switching the head on noctis' character model to have a beard, but that's it, no changes in animations or whatever. the sky is permanently night and only one human civilisation remains, the rest destroyed by daemons. as a plot point, this ends up feeling. extremely worthless. why was noctis asleep for ten whole goddamn years? so we can wake up and go 'damn it sucks out here'. but it's barely even a like, incentive to fix everything, because you have a long talk with a former child you were friends with where he talks about how humanity is still going fine and everyone's okay and the world has moved on without you. it feels. pointless. when you meet up with your party members, they are exactly as you left them, only with slightly different character models. there is no change in the voice performance, the character's movements or how they talk to show that they've been without you for ten years. they barely mention it. i'm just. so confused as to why they decided that a ten year timeskip was the way to go? since nothing really changes, couldn't you have made it like, two years? one year? six months?? have the characters react a little more? something??? at least if it was only a year or so i wouldn't have to deal with the fact that noctis looks like norman reedus with his shitty facial hair now.

anyways after that there's a bunch of long and boring boss fights. you fight some dead kings for some reason, your party members get a little bit to talk about how cool they are and how much they love noctis, and then you meet up with ardyn. there's another boring boss fight and god this was only a few hours ago but it's already gone from my head. you summon the gods and the old kings to beat the shit out of him after you both go super saiyan again? there's incredible music but it feels barely earned and just kind of eh. anyways, noctis dies, which was the price of using the crystal of light or whatever the fuck. his ghost marries his fiance's ghost finally, and they smile as they look at one of prompto's pictures. you can pick any picture you want to go here, and then the credits roll, showing all of the pictures you saved of prompto's shots. showing me all the pictures at the end is honestly lovely, but it really only served to remind me of how much more fun the game was in the first half. and that's the end, of final fantasy xv.

so what did i think of the story? it's terribly cobbled together and struggles to get you to feel anything and play out all the plot beats. you feel awful for the countless employees who spent years working on the beautiful cutscenes only to have them be in this game, which sucks and the story barely gets through. there were parts that i enjoyed, mostly the thing about the daemons being people, but honestly the rest of it is a mess. it's hard to follow at the best of times and just awkward and terribly written at the worst. the ending is cheap, and it doesn't feel like you've actually accomplished anything. i left that game feeling numb and empty, sad that i'd wasted so much time to end up with such a colossal failure of a conclusion.

i had fun with the game when it was my four little guys running around doing sidequests and camping together. after the midway point of the game, there's none of that, and you're bogged down into a plot that just pushes you from point a to point b and boring overlong bossfight to boring overlong bossfight. the character moments between your party are a lot of fun, but the second you hit fantasy venice, everything is pretty much on rails and you can't do anything except what the game tells you explicitly to do.

should you play this game? no lol. if anything i've mentioned about the story interests you, you'll be better off watching a lore video or reading the wiki. if you do want to play it after all that, just don't proceed after the myrthril refining quest, it's pretty much all downhill from there. will i play the dlc? unlikely, i think lizz and i will just watch a cutscene movie of those.

this game left me feeling empty and numb and not in a fun way. i wanted, so, so hard to like this game, and it all crashed around me in a beautifully overproduced and confusingly written cascade. i love you prompto, but even your cute little freckly face and terrible photography can't save this trainwreck of a game.

tl;dr - final fantasy xv sucks. i hope that 13, our next ff game, will be better.