#it doesn't feel like a huge jump for them to be on good terms

[dennisboobs]

talking to macdennis shippers makes me realize how much more i enjoy charden lmfao

[hearts4golbach]

can you do some hansumfella x black fem reader head cannons?

ABC Fluff Headcanons.

pairing:

Tyler (Hansumfella) x Fem!Reader.

a/n:

based off of a tumblr request, black!fem!reader in mind but not specified.

inspo from @the-coldest-goodbye tumblr.

A- affection. (How affectionate are they? how do they show affection?)

He loves staying inside and ordering food and watching a movie for dates. he doesn't mind going out if you want to, but he prefers staying in on dates. whenever he has the chance, he brings you flowers. he shows his affection through quality time, so he spends as much time with you as he can. whether it be sleeping on the phone or just sitting in silence with you, he loves it.

B- Best friend. (What would they be like as best friend? How would the friendship start?)

you'd bond over movies and similar interests in that realm. he'd invite you to join his stream to either chat or play games with him. you met him at the gym or his old job.

C- Cuddles. (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

if you aren't sleeping and just watching a movie, he would like to spoon. he'd be the big spoon, of course. if you're about to sleep, he likes it whenever you lay on his chest while he has his arms wrapped around you.

D- domestic. (Do they want to settle down? are they good at cooling and cleaning?)

tyler isn't the type to want to jump around to a different girl every month. he wants one long-term relationship. he's not necessarily good at cooking, but he can make good food if he really tries. he keeps his living space very clean. He doesn't like it whenever it's not.

E- ending. (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

he'd sit you down and explain why he thinks you two shouldn't be together. he wouldn't do it over the phone or text unless you fucked up bad.

F- fiance. (how do they feel about commitment? how quick would they want to get married?)

it'd definitely take fella a few years. he isn't scared of commitment, just wants to know that you're for sure the one from him.

G- gentle. (how gentle are they, both emotionally and phsyically?)

Tyler would put on the tough guy act for the first few months of the relationship. he wouldn't come to you about his personal issues right off the bat. although, he's very easy with you physically. his touch isn't rough or mean, he feels nothing but love whenever he looks at you. he's definitely all bark no bite physically.

H- hugs. (Do they like hugs? how often do they do it? what are their hugs like?)

he doesn't like long hugs unless you're side or vise versa. he's a quick hug kind of guy. but, he loves it whenever you wrap your arms around his neck whenever you hug.

I- I love you. (how fast do they say the L-word?)

he'd wait at least two months minimum. he'll show you how much he cares for you in other ways. he would blurt it out randomly, and that would be the very first time he would say it.

J- jealousy. (how jealous do they get? what do they do when they're jealous?)

it would take a lot to make tyler jealous. he doesn't mind when other guys talk to you or flirt, unless you flirt back. if other guys touch up on you, he pulls you out of the conversation. he doesn't get angry, just worried. he checks on you and sees if you're okay before moving on with your day.

K- kisses. (What are their kisses like? where do they like to kiss you?)

he'd kiss you every chance he got. he wouldn't give you a small peck, he'd let his lips longer on yours for a few seconds longer before pulling you away. his favorite places to kiss you would be your lips, cheek, thighs, and shoulder. he'd put his hands on your hips or your neck and cheek when he kisses you.

L- little ones. (How are they around children?)

he's not a huge fan of children, but whenever he spends time with them, he's very kind and funny. he'd treat them like how he treats squash. if they're annoying, he'd honestly try to get out of the situation he's in. but it would be different if they were his own.

M- morning. (How are mornings spent with them?)

fella has a decently structured morning routine. whenever he first wakes up, he's quieter than usual before his energy builds up. if you had stayed the night, he'd lay in bed holding you until you woke up. he'd continue his usual routine, but add you into it as well.

N- Night. (how are nights spent with them?)

he either wouldn't stream that night or do a steam with you included. after the stream is over, you two would lay in bed and talk or watch something. neither of you were fans of staying up to late. if you did, it was spent doing the dirty or drinking together.

O- open. (when would they start revealing things about themselves? would they say everything all at once or slowly reveal things?)

fella would slowly reveal things about himself as your relationship progressed. it'd take a while to work his biggest darkest secrets out of him.

P- patience. (how easily annoyed are they?)

it's nearly impossible to annoy tyler. there's not much you can do to annoy him.

Q- quizzes. (how much would they remember about you? do they remember every little detail or easily forget aspects of you?)

he doesn't forget everything, but he also doesn't remember everything either. he'd remember your favorite song or your favorite make up brand, but he wouldn't remember something that annoyed you that specific day.

R- remember. (what's their favorite moment of your relationship?)

he had gone with you to get your hair done once and has thought about it every day since. he begs to tag along to every appointment because he lives watching the process of you changing your hair.

S- security. (how protective are they? how would they protect you? how would they like to be protected?)

tyler is very protective in his own way. he'd stick up for you whenever you ask him to and when you don't. there aren't many circumstances where you need to protect him. you protect him on stream jokingly whenever people make fun of him.

T- try. (how much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

he puts in effort where it's needed. he makes dates special for you, even if it's staying inside. he will never forget an anniversary and makes sure to plan something extra special. he puts a lot of thought into the gifts he gives you. with everyday tasks, he puts effort in subconsciously.

U- ugly. (What would some bad habits of theirs be?)

he would for sure make your mom jokes towards you, then take it back immediately and apologize. it never phased you, so you laughed about it together.

he also sucks at cleaning up after his streams until you force him to, because you know he hates it being a mess for future steams.

V- vanity. (how concerned are they with their looks?)

he's not overly concerned with his looks. he puts effort in though, which is unneeded in your opinion. although, he takes care of his hair like nothing else.

W- whole. (would they feel incomplete without you?)

absolutely. whenever you're not with him, you plague his mind.

X- Xtra. (a random head canon for them.)

whenever you're cuddling, his voice is very soft and how he speaks to you is the complete opposite of how he is on stream.

Y- yuck. (What are some things they wouldn't like?)

he wouldn't like being submissive during sex or in the relationship all together.

Z- ZZZ. (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

he's a quiet sleeper and drools a bit in his sleep. he also twitches in weird ways that always scare you because you never see it coming.

[wyldblunt]

Hi, it is 6 AM here and I have to sleep but I'm writing to you to let you know that I'm very concerned about what I've been reading in the past day.

I heard of the gwg/Logan incident on the day of it happening, but that's not really what I'm worried about. What concerns me is what seems like a consistent & long term systematic marginalization of POC in GW2 fan spaces. To be honest I'm not that surprised, I've had my suspicions since 2020.

I'm not active on GW2 tumblr or any social media at all, other than posting the Tyria Pride announcements once a year, so I don't have much impact outside of the Tyria Pride discord, but I still want to do something. I have some ideas, and am also always open to suggestions.

I would love to chat at some point (it doesn't have to be now, and I totally get it if you're not interested). The Tyria Pride discord isn't huge but it isn't small either, and maybe I have some influence that I can use for good.

Lelling

Tyria Pride Lead

P.S.: I know this can be a source of exhaustion so please do not worry about tone policing yourself or rewording your reply for ages to be "just right", if you do reply to me. (I just spent an hour doing that so I get it, it is now 7 AM). I'm on your side. I'll meet you where you're at.

hey — i hope you don't mind that i'm posting this publicly, but i want to because waking up to this message was a huge relief to me. and as i've tried to explain in other conversations about this, i KNOW there are LOTS of people who have been really uncomfortable through this entire convo but have not felt willing or able to speak up publicly (bc of open threats of ostracization for "being mean" AND observed behavior towards those of us who have said anything) and i hope that reading this will be a relief to them too.

thank you not only for reaching out but also for GETTING what our actual concerns are, bc one of my biggest frustrations through all of this has been people repeatedly twisting the issue so they can dismiss it as squabbling about fiction and then they don't actually have to address the broader patterns we're talking about here; thank you for the assurance that i won't be tone policed, because that's been repeatedly used against us as well ("okay i guess you guys are making some good points but you're being so ANGRY"); and thank you for acknowledging how tiring this is, because i've been made to feel like if i don't keep showing up and being vocal about this, leaving behind mostly the white allies who have been sticking up for us and using their privilege to make corrections and take some of the brunt of the ridicule and backlash, the whole thing will be dismissed as a non-issue anyway. and frankly i don't fucking want to anymore! i'm tired lol!

but i also wanted to springboard off this really kind and reassuring message from you to say it isn't the only one i've received, and that as angry and exhausted as i am, i want to highlight and acknowledge that i have NOT been alone in this. people have been checking in on me, listening to what i and others have to say about it and boosting our statements, changing their minds if they jumped to conclusions earlier, and offering private support and conversation among those of us who still don't feel comfortable braving the environment out here on tumblr — obviously the bad experiences i've had through this are sticking in my head and are really demoralizing, but honestly in terms of quantity and quality i have had MORE experiences of people supporting me and making sure i'm okay. this fandom has massive problems but it also has more of a solid, positive core than i was willing to hope for in the beginning.

i spoke up initially because it was horrible how isolated i felt when this all kicked off; the wider problem is absolutely not fixed, but i can confidently say i don't feel alone or abandoned anymore, and that gives me a ton of hope for figuring this out.

[cosmic--dandelion]

Something I think a lot of people forget about Stolas and Blitzø is how much "Ozzies" changes their dynamic.

Before that, they're a patron and a client. Stolas might indulge in some not strictly sexual damsel-in-distress fantasies, and Blitzø might occasionally match Stolas's absurdly horny energy, and there's s few hints at affection here and there, but at the end of the day, Blitzø wants the book and Stolas wants to be the sub in a bdsm relationship, and that's that.

Their "date" at Ozzies turned their entire affair on its head. Stolas is alone and miserable at his huge empty mansion; Octavia is his only emotional outlet, and Stella's whisked her off somewhere.

He has no friends, no family who actually care about him aside from his daughter, and he's not even close to his servants like he was as a child. Stolas is desperate for any positive social interaction. Then Blitzø calls out of nowhere, asking him on a date. Stolas literally chokes on his Lucky Charms he'd so desperate to get to the phone.

Stolas is in full infatuation mode. This is probably his first real date in his entire life. He was forced into an arranged marriage with a cold, hateful woman and became a father against his will when he was around 19 at most. So he shows up dressed like he's about to be crowned Emperor of the Universe and even bows to Blitzø. Again, just like in "Loo Loo Land," he'd completely oblivious to how obviously unenthusiastic, distracted, and borderline uncomfortable Blitzø is.

Blitzø is legitimately taken aback when Stolas starts trying to make conversation and shows interest in his personal life beyond the carnal. This isn't some sort of machiavellian scheme on Stolas's part. He's being completely sincere. But he's ultimately still projecting his fantasies onto Blitzø instead of actually engaging with him, only this time they're romantic instead of sensual.

Shit goes down, and goes down HARD. Not only does Stolas hide his face in shame when Asmodeus publicly exposes their affair, Blitzø gets it rubbed in *his* face that their "arrangement" destroyed Stolas's reputation and family and is even starting to turn his own daughter against him.

Stolas tries to salvage the evening, but it's way too late.

"Stolas, don't act like what we have is anything but you wanting me to fuck you. You make that very clear all the time. Buf I just can't tonight. I'm sorry."

This is single-handedly one of the best call outs in the entire series, and HOLY SHIT does it hit home. It throws Stolas into a complete tailspin, and he probably came close to drinking himself to death that night. It's what he always does, burying himself headlong into whatever he thinks will bring him temporary happiness until whoever he's dragged along with him practically has to scream in his face.

It's telling that the very first thing he does is scroll through his phone to reassure himself that he and Blitzø have something more, only to see that Blitzø doesn't look happy in any of his photos, and he was deluding himself the whole time. Ouch. A well-deserved ouch, but an ouch nevertheless.

I think this is where Stolas actually starts to develop feelings for Blitzø, or at least realizes he has them.

Before this, their affair was more of a distraction and an outlet for his pent-up sexual frustration. Stolas went from being so emotionally and physically repulsed by his own wife he had to dissociate when Octavia was conceived to jumping right into a hardcore bdsm contract with a near complete stranger. It's incredibly cathartic for him, but not necessarily good for his mental health. It leaves him deeply psychologically dependent on Blitzø but unable to put aside the kinky bedroom stuff for the basic emotional labor and personal growth a serious, long-term relationship needs to function. For now.

Stolas changes after this. Not all at once, but the lesson sank in. It sinks in even further in "Western Energy". We see that Blitzø has been responding to his walls of text with one or two word replies and blows off his rather tepid apologies and attempts to be considerate. He doesn't visit him in the hospital, doesn't text him more than a half-hearted "git bevver swoon :(".

If Stella hadn't called off the hit, his last words would have been: "Blitzø will...[save me]", followed by a knife through the heart.

Stolas treats Blitzø VERY differently in season 2. While he'll still call him "Blitzy" on occasion, it's hard to imagine the Stolas in "Seeing Stars" or "Oops" calling him his "impish little plaything" or pinching his cheek or embarassing him in public. Stolas is trying so hard not to step on Blitzø's boundaries ar this point that it actually seems to annoy Blitzø, who's so convinced that Stolas could never love him that he seems like he'd almost rather things stay as they were. For all his good intentions, Stolas hasn't given Blitzø any reason to trust or forgive him, at least not yet. Bur he's trying, and I think that's important.

In my opinion, whether you have faith in this relationship ultimately depends on if you think people can truly change.

[rey-jake-therapist]

You know, Sauron gets called a narcissist a lot and we should talk about it a bit. The thing is, from someone who's read books, watched films, and done tons of info gathering all because I lived with a narcissistic parent, it's surprisingly to me how so many ppl only look at his tendencies from an angle of victimhood (but understandable), and not the angle that if you're cunning enough, you can play the reverse uno card on their dumb asses. I lived in emotional pain for years until I realized I decided to accept the role of victim, and that I didn't have to. So I decided to research everything about narcissists, and found psychological ways to play them at their own game by taking advantage of their blind spots.

For one, since they have this inflated sense of grandiosity, they find it very hard to believe a lie that flatters their ego. Idk if ppl realize this. Because denying a compliment with /some/ truth in it would mean they are being humble, and thus downplay this false image they desperately want others to believe about them (unless they're faking humility for reason, like to get a promotion or to flatter themselves to someone above them on the ladder, or in Gals case, because he thinks it would look good on him in her eyes to appear 'humble'), as well as admitting to that egoistic part of themselves that they aren't as great as they believe they are (and they do). Like I said how I lived with a narcissistic parent? I figured out that if I pretend to hype them up when they're in a good mood, they would genuinely think I cared about them and thought they were this amazing dad, and they would be like 'hey let's go get some mcdonalds!' It was nothing like the genuine love from a nonnarcisstic dad, but I learned how to manipulate him to get things that I wanted, simply by playing to his need for admiration and validation.

I'm not saying this tactic works for every narc you come across, but if you can get yourself into their head, be the master to their puppet strings, instead of opposing them or correcting them (they hate criticism and anything that hurts their ego, as we see with Annatar), you can use them just as they see you as a tool.

Idk if any of this makes sense. I do think that I may have absorbed some of my dad's traits for seeing things this way, but I know in my heart I would never ever treat my own kid like this. I see it as a form of adaptation to living with someone with such a vile personality disorder. But in terms of Sauron, he's got to be one of the dumbest narcissists I've seen. He is praised for his masterful deceit and manipulation but he's genuinely stupid in that he doesn't have the self awareness (like the audience, particularly haladriels) to realize that Galadriel is a huge blindspot for him in everything.

I'm not JRRT and I can never hope to write anything near the world he built, but if the forces of good have any brain they would take advantage of this blindspot in some way instead of furiously kicking against the current and thus causing a lot of bloodshed and losses for their own side.

I hope you don't mind if I copy/paste your second message here since it's the continuation of this one... It avoids that I make two different posts :)

And also, just to add to my last ask: And this is why I think Gal jumped off the cliff. She still has some sort of emotional entanglement with this whole mess, which is a HUGE RISK if she were to try to play him at his own game (at this point). It's one thing to completely divorce any kind if feeling between me and my narc dad, who I've lived with for years, and slowly realized that he would never be the dad I am owed. It took a lot of pain and tears when I finally realized it (Dont feel sorry for me, I'm not even emotional about this anymore, I just see our past in this clinical detached way. I find narcs fascinating in same way a scientist studies a lab rat). But for Galadriel, her situation is different. She didn't have years by his side to slowly realize this. To slowly pick apart and coldly analyze Sauron's pattern of action, thoughts, and habits like I did with my own dad. Her feelings at that meeting were raw and unorganized, she was angry, more emotionally betrayed, unable to stop galloping until the very end, when she stumbled upon a last ditch idea (really it was a gamble) to get away as far as she can from him. Idk if its because of the crown wound or her own resolve that she fears is weakening her, but she needed distance asap. But I really think my idea is interesting and I hope to see more fics in the future that take on Galadriel using herself as his blindspot to weaken him. It doesn't have to he canon compliant, but it would also play well into how canon ends. Just some interesting food for thought. A lot of fics I see are pwp and redemption focused, which I already love, but I also kind of want to see them become like chess masters as manipulation. Gal in particular has so much potential and we know she has a very vindictive dark side. ;)

I know you said you said there was no need to feel sorry for you, and I actually admire your strength of character, but I still want to say this : no kid should have to suffer from having narcissist parents. I myself lived with a narcissist for years, so I know where you come from, even if it was of course a different dynamic. And you're right about not accepting to be a victim ! It's very hard, because it involves accepting that you deserve better, something that a narcissist will constantly make sure you don't. Needless to say that the Annatar/Celebrimbor relationship was very hard for me to stomach, because of the way Annatar behaved towards Celebrimbor. It felt very familiar, and I really didn't like it. I'm worried about my kid now, especially after reading your post... I'm worried about how my ex's behavior will affect him. Hopefully, I am able to balance things out. I'm a lot of things, but I'm damn sure I'm not a narcissist.

I won't comment the rest of your post, not because I'm not interested, but for the exact opposite reason : I couldn't add anything smart or relevant to what you suggested for the Haladriel dynamic :) Thank you for sharing these ideas with me !

[blue-rose-soul]

How would the Sins take learning about Alastor being Lucifer's son? Alastor may not have met them in the main AU, but I imagine in the Raised Together AU, Alastor met them fairly young. Poor little Deer, those guys are huge even when they try to shrink down some!

God I wish we could see Helluva Boss characters in Hazbin Hotel.

Asmodeus and Bee being as friendly as they are and Charlie having Belphegor's number in her phone makes me think those three at least are on good terms with Lucifer and his family. Not entirely sure about Mammon, he's probably the weird uncle who you nod along politely too as he describes his latest MLM scam and then make some excuse not to sign up without hurting his feelings. And there's not much to speculate on with the other Sins, but I'll go out on a limb and say Lucifer probably wouldn't bring Satan around his kids when they're on the younger side.

Not that he was rushing to introduce Alastor to the Sins in the beginning anyway. Alastor was pretty freaked out by the fact he became a demon when he was brought to hell, but at the very least Lucifer, Lilith, and Charlie are fairly human-ish looking. Strange, for sure, but not terribly frightening on their own. That is, if you don't know what they're capable of. Even so, it took Alastor a good while to adjust to suddenly being in a new world with magic and demons and the Sins, well... From a human kid's point of view, they look like monsters. So Lucifer and Lilith weren't rushing to introduce Alastor to them.

I like to imagine Lucifer telling them he had a new kid wasn't entirely intentional too. Like he was in a meeting that went sideways, nursing a migraine, and at some point had to jump up on the table in full angel mode and yell at everyone to shut up and sit down, this meeting has gone on long enough and he wants to get home to his kids dammit! And then he realizes what he said after a good ten seconds of blank staring.

Cue a bunch of chaotic demons bombarding Lucifer with questions that have absolutely nothing to do with why they were holding the meeting in the first place while our dear fallen angel wants to cry.

It would be a few years before Lucifer would let any of the Sins come meet Alastor, and the first ones he would invite would be Asmodeus and Beelzebub for aforementioned reasons. (I mean, maybe the other Sins are just as friendly, but as I said, I have nothing to work with as far as the rest of them go.) They come bearing gifts for both kids, but Alastor's pretty much squeezing Charlie's hand the whole time despite being forewarned that they were coming and having seen pictures of them in advance. Asmodeus brought kid-friendly toys covered in hearts and other cute shapes while Bee loaded them with enough sugary treats to put down two school buses full of grade school kids.

I think that normally, Alastor would have been a very outgoing and friendly kid, but in the wake of everything that's happened he's become more withdrawn and timid. While Asmodeus and Bee might be a bit much for him at first, both are surprisingly adept at reading and responding to other people's emotions. Hell, Bee can literally taste them. So although they come on strong, it doesn't take long for them to read the mood and take a more gentle approach when it comes to Alastor, though Charlie responds better to their boisterous energy.

[king-crawler]

Recently when I tried to figure out why Turbo went, well Turbo I realized something. At first I came to the conclusion that it was because of his code, but then I remembered the plot of the movie and completely scrapped it (though there might still be some merit with it). Then i thought that “hey, this fucker has been surrounded by picters of himself since he was plugged in, hes the star of the show, so of course he would get a huge ego out of it, said ego also being his subsequent down fall, but why diden't Felix also fall in the same trap? he was the hero of his game too”. And I think it's because he wasn't alone. Now I'm not gonna overshadow the twins. They're there too but considering how Turbo treated them in the little screen time we got to see them together I doubt that they were on good terms, they might have been in the games early days but I digress.

Felix, unlike Turbo, had friends within his game, a small community to look out for him just as he does for them. They made him pies, dedicated parties to him, cherished him, but Turbo?. Who was gonna bake him pies? Who was gonna throw parties for him? Who was gonna cherish him? The Twins? FUCK no. And i think that's what tipped him over the edge, his ego made him push oway his friends and coworkers just to get a sliver of stardom. And when he had all the attention ripped oway from him by another racing game had to have been his last straw (you saw the face he pulled in the flashback. God, just imagine seeing one of your neighbors destroy their own career live, in broad daylight too, must have been horrifying). I love a good character that just dooms themselves to the narrative with their own actions (Turbo was a whore for the limelight).

Going a bit of topic here but “going Turbo” wouldn't work if it was any other main character in the movie, “going Ralph” just doesn't work. Could be because “Turbo” isn't really a name, it's a word, the name of his game, “Turbo Time”. So my proposal is that whenever there is an au where say, Calhoun game jumps (for whatever reason) they call it solo mission. “You're not going on a solo mission are you?” sounds more riveting, to me, and in character for Calhoun. Perhaps that was the last thing she said to her men before she left. For Vanellope id imagen something like “going on a sugar rush” and something about crashing. Because when the sugar rush ends you typically crash.

And that gave me another thought, how many “Turbos” are there out there? How many characters went outside their game or against their script on working hours. How many of these incidents were considered bugs or glitches (how many were turned into creepypastas). It feels like a huge liability risk and the only instances of us hearing about it is with Turbo, which I find strange. Is it like a silent rule? That no one is allowed to leave their game and that's it? That's a super thin line, like yeah you can argue that its there to keep them alive but who told them that? And the second movie doesn't help that, it's just, eurghhh, i don't like the second movieeeee… But it does give the homeless game characters a chance to find a potential new home. There's so much out there in the wilde wilde internet to explore and find new potential in, to not be tied to the arcade has to be a bit liberating for some :)

Sorry for the sudden rant, I just got a kick and could not not write this down.

DONT BE SORRY !! GO OFF!!!! THESE ARE REALLY COOL DISCUSSION POINTS

The whole turbo vs Felix thing really stuck out to me. Turbo Living in a game with only 2 other people who hate him ? While Felix gets praise and attention from dozens? No wonder Turbo went haywire 👀 like do you think he envied Felix ………

[rxttenfish]

How do the merfolk sound like? What kinds of noises can they make?

the short answer is: real big and spooky

it's actually kind of relevant to this chapter in caecilian, mostly because i realized there was a lot more focus that'd have to be put onto merfolk language here with aaravi's particular... Interaction. in longer terms, their vocalizations are complex and multi-faceted, utilizing the full breadth of sound available to them and within the medium of water.

merfolk have an incredibly large vocal organ that spans the length down their throat and to the bottom of their ribs. i haven't fully detailed out how it works because i still need to do a lot more research on specifically underwater vocalizations (and my personal pet theory that i think this is extremely under-researched for marine life beyond whales...), but i know it's huge, complex, and extremely important for merfolk interactions. it's capable of producing a wide variety of sounds, both high-frequency and low-frequency, and is capable of achieving some impressive volume.

it also means they're capable of closed-mouth vocalizations, which is why you get those descriptions of merfolk talking with their mouth closed and why holding their mouth closed won't necessarily stop them from speaking. for most merfolk, it's the norm. i'm not sure how much they actually use their mouth itself for vocalizations? their lips aren't very mobile, they don't like to reveal their teeth a whole lot, they don't have cheeks and have a much weaker seal for suction than a mammal. the most they use it for is the noise produced by snapping their jaws or clattering their teeth together.

merfolk also have some impressive auditory capabilities to match. this is another thing that i really need to do more research in... but it's also why their earfins are like that. merfolk very much did end up co-opting their external gills to also perform as external ears. they were already serving a role as a sensory organ, able to pick up vibrations in the water, temperature, differences in depth, etc etc, so it wasn't a huge jump to make, especially when they're already in the same place as the ear (since they're external gills. and earbones are modified gill arches). they almost certainly have some sort of "fat pad" in their internal ears as well to help pick up on vibrations as well — and there seems to be evidence that, because fish live in water and hearing is just a means of detecting vibrations, and as opposed to air which doesn't carry those vibrations as well as water, they can just... use their entire bodies as an ear? again, really need to go into it, but also i can't help but feel this is going to be woefully under-researched to begin with.

i've gone back and forth on it, especially with that research i still need to do... but the structure of the external gills themselves also helps act as an external ear. as in, they're large and sensitive to help them have this wide range of hearing and sound on land as well, potentially also helping in the water?, and help to guide sound back to their inner ear, with their ability to reposition themselves assisting to "refine" that sound. this is also an additional benefit to the cheek fluff and why i put it there in the first place. it serves the same purpose as the facial disk on an owl, further refining and detailing those sounds and providing multi-dimensionality. again, don't know how well this will hold up underwater! still need to work on that! but it's there!

anyhow. all of this is important, because merfolk are most adapted for long-range sound. visibility is poor in even the clearest of ocean water, and they're already playing with long distances between themselves and everything else and long distances even between other merfolk. light doesn't penetrate very far in water, and they can't rely on their sight even in good conditions, made worse if they dive to pursue prey or for safety or for any other reason. they're also highly social, with high social cohesion allowing them to hit far above their own weight and working together with more merfolk had greatly compounding positive effects on their own survival. they need to stay in touch, they need to work together, they need to know what other merfolk are doing and to reinforce those bonds.

most merfolk vocalizations, then, follow in the same trend as other large marine animals. they're noted as sounding very "musical", with similar long, haunting songs as whales and leopard seals, although with distinct features that makes it easy to tell them apart at a distance. they tend on the deeper side - they're large animals, and their vocal organs are large, and those deeper sounds travel further too. i've compared them to sounding like what a whale mixed with a tiger or crocodile would sound like, or to the person version of a cello or bass. it might be described as "growly", but think like how someone with a very low, smooth voice might still be described that way. they do have some infrasonic rumbles as an important component of their typical repertoire, so they can also come off like standing too close to a bass speaker. you can usually feel a merfolk talking as much as hear them.

however, compounding this is the complexity of their vocalizations. most merfolk have a tendency to "play" with sound - stretching it out further than it has to be, or trying to make syllables rhyme when they don't, things very odd for a human to listen to. it's like they're trying to sing but there's no rhythm or beat to it yet, disjointed sound that's almost a tune but not there yet. accents complicate this further, although the full diversity tends to be lost on landfolk, because this usually manifests in them "playing" with their words slightly differently, producing slightly different almost-songs.

they also tend to just play with sound in the typical way. merfolk retain a heightened degree of playfulness throughout their entire lives, with a high neuroplasticity to match, and so they get an urge to "remix" sounds or just to roll them around and try them out, stretching them out like taffy or squashing them together. sometimes this means they'll repeat an interesting word or sound until it stops sounding anything like what it means, sometimes they'll just repeat and shuffle around sounds they know, sometimes they just try to come up with new sounds or stretch their vocal organ in new and interesting ways. this also means they're highly skilled as mimics - though, this is a learned behavior, not an innate one, and one that's mostly treated like a party trick by other merfolk.

they also intersperse their language with other sounds and vocalizations. merfolk are very used to trying to talk to each other without being actually able to see each other, so a part of this includes needing to pass along that emotional information as well. plus, beyond their fins, they just aren't very expressive, with far more limited body language than most.

but, mostly, this manifests in their language getting increasingly more complex. merfolk brains are already primed to quickly process and sort out a lot of different auditory information at once, and they take full advantage of their wide range of sounds in order to communicate, with their language, then, favoring a multi-layered approach that's very hard for other species to understand or decipher.

for instance, they might have a single word that they use when in close contact with the subject they're referring to. this word already has a sandwich of different vocal elements to it, forming one meaning when put all together. but, a merfolk will seldom ever use that word alone, because in order to grammatically make it work and string it together with another word, they have to move those different vocal elements so that the two words weave together and naturally "flow" into each other in accordance to a cultural sense of rhythm. then, this has to be repeated with the entire sentence, making sure that it naturally forms one whole block of sound that composes a series of sounds that all fit together properly with each other. also changing this is when they add in grammatical signifiers of emotion on top of their verbal cues and components, and they might add in locational signifiers to it as well, to create different clauses within the same sentence that weave over each other to make a string of meaning.

worse yet, merfolk can also shorten these sentences too, with rules for how to do so, effectively reducing entire sentences down to singular contractions.

and merfolk do like packing as much meaning as they can into their sentences as possible! i take a LOT of liberties when writing out the translated dialogue, mostly favoring what works best narratively over the transliteration of what's going on, not least of all because to literally translate what's being said would be to create a lot of run-on sentences with repeat information, even information that might be immediately obvious.

this occurs because there's also another mode of their languages: the fact that it's happening over distances to assumed lots of other merfolk.

merfolk are simply... very used to hearing other merfolk, all the time, at all hours of the day. and this is very important information to them! it helps them keep up with the social environment on top of the literal environment, evolved out of a need to be able to quickly coordinate themselves in groups when on hunts or in danger, each needing to immediately react to something that only one other merfolk might have seen.

and the modern extension of this is the fact that merfolk end up forming mental projections and maps of their entire environment and are able to know at any given time what's happening in any given place within it, regardless of how involved they actually are. they have to be able to quickly respond to social changes and alterations in dynamics, so constantly communicating what's going on and what any given merfolk's feelings are is important. their relationship hierarchy determines so much of their life and how they navigate the world and the other merfolk within it, that they need to immediately tell what the entire complex social dynamic is of any potential merfolk upon first meeting. they need to know what's going on over there in case someone's in danger, and they need to protect those close to them and respond to threats swiftly so that those relationships can be preserved.

it's a lot! it's a lot, and it can be even harder for other species to conceptualize, especially because merfolk tend to "think in 3d". as in, they already live their entire lives within a place where moving up/down is just as easy as moving front/back or left/right. they have to navigate three dimensional environments in a way a lot of terrestrial life doesn't have to, and they have to get used to quick changes within that. so, they tend to map their thoughts more like physical objects, with locational markers allowing them to sort through it more easily, or think about how things might connect or layer over each other in complex ways. this gets attached to words and grammatical units, but it also means a merfolk can mentally map out the exact physical location of all this auditory information with greater ease, and this can have a major impact on how they converse with each other.

a merfolk, even when alone, or with a group, or at any given point when they're not engaged in any other conversation, will often feel an impulse to... fundamentally, start narrating what's happening. as in, their languages also have a component that allows them to strip down to solely physical information too, allowing any given merfolk to map out a location without it necessarily needing to be a grammatically correct sentence in other ways. and this is because of that mental mapping through sound and conversation, that it's seen as polite to do so and helps others navigate and respond accurately to what's going on, but it also gives the participating merfolk a sense of community and interconnectedness.

this, all of this, can also be stripped down even further, in the same reason why all these strict rules about making all the different elements "match" is so important to them. as in, to a group of merfolk who are used to each other and used to each other's verbal patterns, they can be stripped down so far as to become shorthand for more complex locations and events. think of it like doctor's handwriting, and how they can write a full chemical name out with a gesture. it's complex information relayed quickly, which is EXACTLY what merfolk want when they go hunting.

merfolk hunts are... kind of terrifying to witness for this reason. all this care and effort becomes immediately clear as they are seemingly able to act as one, seemingly reading each other's minds to become one well-oiled machine. this is the end culmination of all of their thoughts of communal identity, the evolutionary pressure that led to their complex languages and complex relationship hierarchies and everything - that they can move and act so effectively that they're one body in many.

of course, this gets done for multiple other reasons in the modern day, but the whale and leviathan hunts still are a well-loved tradition and way of life, especially celebrated by many great nomadic families.

that said, some other sounds i've described merfolk as making, though usually more in the line of their vocal expressions of emotion than language proper: chirps, chirrups, whistles, clicks, chattering, trills, chittering, squeaks, honks, grunts, growls, rumbles, huffing, braying, purring, hissing, wailing, screeching, screaming, thumping, chuffing, and more! they cannot roar, but they can make infrasonic rumbles like crocodiles or large dinosaurs are theorized, and they do tend to scream like parrots in order to show extreme emotions (distress, yes, but also joy or excitement). i have some example audio here and there as demonstrations of what they sound like, and it swings wildly from cute and precious to horror movie soundtrack. :3

[katrinafaire]

In 30+ years of writing, you do improve; here's some things I've learned.

When I first started actively writing stories -- we're talking single digits here, under the age of ten, as some of you may relate -- my initial goal was spelling things right and having a (mostly) cohesive, if simple, storyline.

Then, in some order I'm not sure of, were things like description, consistent character voices, character development, character driven plots, subplots, worldbuilding -- the list goes on, I'm sure we've all worked on some if not all of these things. (The beauty of writeblr, we're all here together despite different levels of experience.)

I feel like I've always written, but I didn't really sit down to write novella and eventually novel sized works until my late teens-early twenties. I had a lot going for me, because I'd been writing consistently over the years prior. But I had some... quirks. Here's a non-exhaustive list you may find of use:

I struggled with maintaining a clear POV -- who's perspective we were in, how to coherently jump between characters, how to balance that to the best benefit of the narrative... yeah, that was an issue. And I still have a bit of trouble with that now and then, though I'm worlds better.

Also, I hugely overused epithets, those descriptive terms instead of pronouns or names. (The tall man, the blonde woman, the sullen teenager -- you get the idea.) You see, I didn't understand how they worked. I used them mostly because I had a lot of big casts and was not fond of he said-he said-he said with three different he's and I felt like I was over using names.

As I began to hone my craft, it became clearer that these had their place -- but only where they were relevant, not as a replacement. For example, if the POV character doesn't know the name of another character, they will use epithets because that's all they have. Or you can use it to emphasize something:

"There's no way we can deliver the message in time!" Aaron said. The fastest man in the world just smiled; his time had come. "Watch me."

Presumably you already know the speedster's name, but even if you don't, the epithet delivers important information to the narrative; that is the perfect (though not only) time to use one.

There was a huge movement when I was just starting more serious writing and you have likely still seen these posts circulating: said is dead. And I took it as gospel. Now, first let me say I am still a huge fan of dialogue tags. Big fan of things like "whispered" and "sneered" -- things you can't easily convey simply with punctuation.

However.

Using them every line, or every other line, or every third line -- in short, frequently -- isn't good. And it's not because these things are inherently bad. The reason, as far as I'm concerned, is twofold. One, when you deviate from "said" then your audience immediately is drawn to this new dialogue tag, taking it as Important Information. Which is good! We want that when we put those in. But if you have too many in too short of time the brain just quits processing them as important, or worse, it keeps taking them out of the story.

Point two is directly related in that in that overuse of dialogue tags not only clogs up your dialogue, it also makes the dialogue tags less valuable. Imagine this if you will, that every dialogue tag is a colored font and "said" is just black. If you constantly use dialogue tags, do any of them stand out? Even if someone screamed in bright red, does it matter if you just had something in bright orange a line ago? Not really.

But if all you have is black on black on black and suddenly there's a bright red streak on the paper, it jars you! It makes you pay attention! And that's what you really want when you use dialogue tags, isn't it? So that's why I've tried to cut down on mine, and have beta readers specifically work with me on it.

There's also several punctuation and formatting things I've struggled with. Overusing italics, misplacing en dashes — and em dashes (look I even copy pasted the right ones instead of typing two en dashes --) — as well as a severe abuse of... ellipsis. I'm working on them to this day. I'm a dramatic wordsmith. Sometimes it helps for me to write it however I want the first time and then make a new draft, stripping the formatting and seeing with fresh eyes where it's needed.

There's other things, too (I have never done enough description, I'm working on it now) but this post is getting long and I've shared some main points that I feel others can benefit from my mistakes. Feel free to reblog with your own mistakes you've learned from or are working on!

[comfortlesshurt]

alrighty, I locked in for a couple days and now I get to reward myself by yelling into the tumblr void about the series progress

first off, there are TWO FICS over 50% done, v exciting stuff. I know they've been over 50% for a bit now, but like... let me have my motivation, okay? we are in the HARD PART of the project where it all looks overwhelming, so I'll take the wins I can

also tex fic is finished and through round 1 of editing. it still needs another major edit and i need to finish fic 1 to make sure no info conflicts between the two, but the serious work for that is done

there are a few more days left before NotNaNo, but even going in with today's word counts, focusing on fics 1 and 2 should put them pretty close to finished by the end of November unless I was super off with the word count estimate

also had a really good writing day yesterday!

ignore those date projections at the bottom because like... those assume either i write 3k every day or i write 3k twice a week and 1.2k the other 5 days, and I canNOT do that consistently. but that July 23rd date is realistic! that's me continuing to hit my average based on the past 106 days since starting this project, so there's a good chance I finish this project in a total of just over a year (in which case I will never shut up about writing 450k in a year, so watch out)

finally, fic 1 is a huge portion of that daily par number in the first row, so... unless I fall majorly away from the intended timeline, that required daily par will go down a LOT at the end of december, which will be nice. the goal is still to focus a lot on this project and only really jump over to side projects as they call to me, but it's easier to do that when your average isn't struggling to keep up with your daily par number. it simply does not feel good to be constantly working just to barely get over the par.

as far as editing, i'm starting to fear i didn't budget enough time for that in my early projections, so the timeline might be off there. those due dates listed are for the final rough draft, which doesn't get a chance to rest before immediately going into a month of editing. something just tells me now that a month isn't going to be enough to cover a content edit for each fic. it's also relying on the technical edits being done week-to-week as each chapter goes up.

also added one more tracking tool recently:

this is to look at all the projects week-to-week, and really what it's done is made it obvious that I am in fact very focused on fic 1 lmao. in my defense, that's the one that has consistently had the highest required par, so it's easy to treat it as the most important. also, up to 27-aug is rough. I started writing these fics in Word, so I didn't have day-to-day stats to go back and check. I could only find those once I switched to Reedsy, so for the record I did not write 54k between 20-aug and 27-aug. same with the tex fic--that wasn't all written in one week.

this chart still only looks at ILaD progress, so you can see where I take my break in October and it cuts down a lot... but that's excluding the 10k that went into an unrelated fic, so I don't think taking this break has actually cut down on my writing much. it's just made me have a better time with it temporarily. i took a couple days off writing completely during October but like... I didn't really enjoy that? so I don't think that's the solution I'm looking for long-term.

anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk. i will infodump again, and probably soon since all the end of the month posts are coming up in the next week.

[indierpgnewsletter]

Playing Metamorphosis Alpha (1976)

(This was originally published in the Indie RPG Newsletter)

This week, we officially kick off a year's worth of intermittent posting about games from 1975 to 1985. We start off with Metamorphosis Alpha, a game by James Ward, published by TSR in 1976.

The pitch of Metamorphosis Alpha is wild. You play people aboard a giant starship that on its journey through space was irradiated and turned into a wacky wonderland. The ship is huge - 50 miles long and 17 levels. It's a megadungeon with whole biomes in it. The people aboard the ship have essentially had their society break down with mutated folk and non-mutated folk separating and fracturing into a thousand different communities. A lot of knowledge of the ship has been lost and now, life is mostly about survival.

Mutation is at the heart of this game. It's both a worldbuilding principle (anything is possible! just say it's a mutation!) and an invitation to make off-the-wall weirdest bunch of freaky little guys you could hope for. Character creation is easily the most fun part of the game. You can play a normal human (boo!), a mutant person, a mutant animal, or, wait for it, a mutant plant! Yes, my green friends, you can absolutely play a plant. In my game, which we dubbed the Preposterous Adventures of Peacock and Plant, the two players were, you guessed it, a peacock and a plant. Or rather, a peacock-person and a plant-person. Or to be even more precise, a peacock with six hands and a levitating ficus.

While stats are randomly rolled (3d6 down the line), you get to pick your mutations. For physical mutations, you could pick having wings or gills. For mental mutations (usually limited to one), you could pick precognition or telekinesis or telepathy or... death field generation? It's a gonzo buffet.

I don't particularly like the term "lonely fun". I think "lonely" stopped being a synonym for "alone" a while ago and now it's mostly used to mean "sadness about being alone". There's nothing sad about sitting by yourself and playing a game. For both the GM and players, Metamorphosis Alpha's big gift is solo fun. The GM is invited to make this big starship, piece by piece, stocking it with whatever nonsense they can imagine. The players are given this toy box with pretty clear rules so they can spend all the time they want making the choicest weirdo.

How does it play? Good question, disembodied voice! Well, it doesn't really. The actual rules of the game felt like little islands that you could visit but if you didn't, you were wandering adrift. There are six stats. Radiation Resistance, only used when exposed to radiation. Mental Resistance, used for psychic attacks and defending from them. Leadership Potential, which is used to see if someone will follow you and join your party. And then Strength, Dexterity and Constitution which are for combat.

So outside of being irradiated, trying to recruit a follower, or fighting, the game doesn't really have any rules to invoke. There is no core mechanic as you're probably used to. People who have played OD&D will recognize this but for others, I have to explain how weird that feels. You don't just roll the dice when making a jump or when trying to persuade a person or examining a door or literally anything outside the situations mentioned above. There is no ability check or saving throw. It was honestly like playing a PbtA game with four very specific moves and nothing else.

I didn't want to just ignore this in play so I didn't houserule it away. We stuck to the text and anytime the characters wanted to do something dangerous or tricky, we just talked through it. This wasn't great. Not just because we missed rolling dice. For me, this was tough because there was the stark tonal shift from character creation to play. When we made characters, it seemed like a saturday morning cartoon. But when we played, the primary method for progress was getting the GM to agree that your action should succeed. You can't just roll for success, you have to convince the GM. But on what basis is the GM supposed to decide? If I was being an impartial referee, thinking about physics and realism and so on, my job is to say "no" to wacky ideas that would be home in a saturday morning cartoon. In the end, I didn't want to spend my time saying no and chose to embrace my players' wacky ideas. We had a fun game and since the players wanted to avoid all the combat, we basically never touched the dice.

I'm not sure what to make of this. Is this one of those "objective successfully failed" situations? I'm really interested in hearing from folks who played this game or its successor, Gamma World. Which way did you fall? Survival dungeoncrawl or saturday morning cart

PS: This is how stats like Radiation Resistance are used. When the situation arises, you look down at a look-up table! Radiation level on the x-axis and your stat on the y-axis. The result is the amount of dice you take as damage, I think. If you get a D, that's instant death. But every turn when you're exposed, your stat temporarily goes down by one. So you have to keep rechecking the table every turn.

[entomolog-t]

I'm thrilled to pieces and terrified to have my G/t tropes psychoanalyzed 😍 I have several but this is a big dramatic one lol

I'm obsessed with the thought of a sweet giant having to pretend to be cruel to tinies. It's for the tiny's immediate safety in a dangerous setting-- if that sweet giant didn't have a hold on the tiny, an ACTUAL bad giant nearby would. The cruelty is all for appearances until the giant can get the tiny alone and safe.

And of course, the tiny thinks they are in very real danger. I'm such a sucker for the reveal at the end that the giant is actually a good (or perhaps leaning morally gray) person who was secretly being protective. The tiny doesn't believe it right away, leading to some fun lingering fearplay and eventual trust building 🥰

HELP 🌸

Welcome to my office, lets have a seat.

Protectiveness is a trope I haven't had a chance to deeply explore yet in these sessions. The very typical G/t themes of trust and power can merge to form a subtype of the Giant Archetype; The Protector.

Now this fantasy has some key elements,

The Giant is established as sweet

The purpose is noble

There is fear involved

The Giant being previously established as sweet allows for a certain level of safety in the fantasy (as well as angst with the set up of breaking trust). The purpose being noble also establishes that unlike accidental fearplay, the giant is in control of their actions and emotions and understands how they are perceived, which reinforces the idea of safety through competency. They have made a judgement call and are willing to sacrifice their image in order to protect those they care about, demonstrating that they put the tinys safety and well being even above their friendship.

The tiny being scared in the moment and then the reveal being that they are in fact more safe with this Giant than previously assumed is a huge emotional payoff. It may suggest that you have a desire to understand and be understood, not jumping to conclusions and looking for the best in others, hoping that actions that seem poor taste in the moment can be better understood with time and context.

Now if we look for signs of projection, there may be some subconscious implication that the Giants actions may reflect your own, and that you act with others wellbeing in mind and yearn for them to understand the context or reasoning to which you act.

In the role of the tiny, we can assume their is an intense internal desire for safety and security in a relationship, a want for a partner with a strong moral compass, at least when it comes to care towards you.

The after thoughts are interesting to explore as well, seeing the initial lack of belief, lingering fearplay and trust building. This would likely have a lot of projection what you seek in terms of trust. I would recommend analyzing the specifics of this part of the trope;

What does the Giant to do prove themselves?

What type of fearplay is ongoing?

For example, perhaps the Giant is teasing, noticing the tiny is still scared of them, nothing cruel, but pushing the line a little. They might make embarrassing comments about the tiny's reactions, or directly comment on their size difference. Perhaps the loom over the tiny, or touch them despite knowing the tiny is scared. Yet despite these intimidating actions, the Giant is trying to embarrass the tiny, not scare them, using humor (embarrassment as a form of absurdism) to point out how silly their fears of their friend are. Now thats a much more fearplay dominant example than most situations we see in this trope, but hey, who doesn't like a little teasing fearplay now and again.

In this example it could show that you either subconsciously know, or that you hope to discover that your fears/negative feelings are not as serious as you may consciously perceive them.

----

My secretary will be waiting for you outside the office. We accept cash, credit and shiny objects as form of payment. I will see you at your next appointment

[siren-nate]

Metroid Dread review

I've now played through Dread twice, on both Normal and Hard difficulty. I'm probably gonna take a crack at Dread difficulty just for fun but I doubt I'll get far, the furthest I'll probably make it is Escue. So, I think I can pretty confidently gather my thoughts on it and review it unbiased.

From a gameplay standpoint... yeah, this is the best 2D Metroid. No surprises there. It's the most recent, so it has the most quality of life improvements. I think it's a bit unfair to say that too loudly because all prior 2D Metroids offer experiences that Dread doesn't, and the only game anywhere near to it in modernity is Samus Returns.

What I find interesting is that a lot of clever additions are very similar to ideas that the Prime series had, the chief among them being Storm Missile. It's a thing with Metroid games that by the time you have over a hundred missiles, every new pack you pick up feels like just a drop in the bucket, especially in Fusion where super missiles are a straight upgrade to all missiles rather than a separate weapon. Prime fixed this issue with the addition of Charge Combos. What are you gonna use all these hundreds of missiles on? Expensive specialty weapons that deal a LOT of damage in exchange for guzzling down your missiles much faster than normal use, that's what.

Dread has basically the exact same concept in the Storm Missile. It's the boss-melter of the game, you will use it on every single tough enemy or boss fight after you get it, especially since it pierces electrical shields when most of your arsenal doesn't. The trade-off is that one full use of it costs fifteen missiles and the actual damage-per-missile is much lower than Super or Ice missiles, so it's trading efficiency for raw DPS. It's a very good addition to the formula that kind of reimagines the whole Missile/Super Missile dichotomy in the earlier games.

Aside from that, though, most of the new additions are a bit underwhelming. A lot of them are just new midgrades between the start and established upgrades - the Spin Boost is a one-time Space Jump, the Diffusion Beam has been reimagined as a weaker Wave Beam, etc. I don't hate these, since they do mean that Dread has the longest and most involved journey towards getting stronger, and you really start to feel it. It's especially noticeable when you finish the game once and start again.

But in terms of actual fully new stuff, the only things that really come to mind are the Storm Missile, the Flash Shift, and the Cross Bomb, and... nobody gives a shit about the Cross Bomb. You use it to get like three items in the entire game and you get it about a stone's throw from the final boss, which is bizarre when it's really not that special or combat-useful (Unless you're a cracked-out speedrunner since rapidly laying them can do more damage than beam spam against the final boss).

On top of that, even Metroid staples from prior games in the series are hit or miss. Ice Missiles have been relegated to basically just doing slightly more damage than Super Missiles and opening up some enemies for an easy one-hit-kill follow-up by parrying them to shatter them. You never use it to ascend frozen enemies; the closest thing to it is when you freeze temporary platforms so they last longer under your feet, which is basically only used in a single room in the game. It's not a huge deal, but it just feels like such a disservice; the Ice Beam in the very first Metroid was one of the most novel and interesting ideas it had by letting you turn obstacles into something useful for vertical traversal. It's been a mainstay in every single 2D game even after being swapped over to missiles rather than a beam weapon, and here it's just flat-out not a factor in the game that ends the overarching Metroid and X-parasites plot started all the way back in the first game.

One thing I am not disappointed in however is the Speed Booster and Shinespark. I don't think I can overstate how much I love them in this game; you can slide, you can walljump to instantly go the other direction while keeping your speed, you can walljump multiple times consecutively to ascend without needing to store your Shinespark and then Space Jump upwards- combine it with Flash Shift, which is a fantastic addition to your movement kit, and Metroid Dread has breathtaking levels of schmovement that make me feel like a fucking ninja.

Going back to what I talked about before, the unique experience that this game offers is the EMMIs, and... yeah, they really are the identity of this game. They're pretty well-utilized, but I have multiple big gripes with them. For starters, the number of them feels... fake. There's seven of them, right? Except, actually, there's six, because the last one gets killed in a cutscene. Of those six EMMIs, three of them are basically tutorials; the first one can't climb, the second one can't go through small spaces, so it takes until the third one before you finally get to a fully-functioning baseline one. But it's alright, because that still means there's three EMMIs with unique abilities... two of whom inexplicably shut off their unique abilities for the final confrontations with them.

On top of that, I absolutely HATE the parry system for EMMIs. For those who don't know, their parry timing is 1) completely randomized, 2) frame-perfect, and 3) impossible to see coming. What I mean by that last one is, you cannot see the tell and then parry, even if you're a supercomputer; you have to anticipate it. Any one of these things would be difficult to deal with. Any two of these things would be extremely difficult - but I still wouldn't mind it because EMMIs are supposed to be the most dangerous thing in the game and parrying is an absolute last resort. But all three means it is literally just pure fucking luck whether you manage to parry an EMMI. You can't anticipate it because it's random, you can't react fast enough to parry after you see the flash, and the ungodly levels of precision required means there's absolutely no wiggle room. It's a complete roll of the dice. I'm not mad that it's too difficult, I'm mad because why even give me the option at all if it's an utter RNG check? Why not just have the EMMI kill me when it catches me and send me back?

But my biggest issue with the EMMIs is that the level design of their zones isn't always great. Dread has a big issue with linearity at times where what seems like multiple paths is really just a long hallway with a lot of locked doors that you're going to open in a very specific order, and it's at it most grating with the EMMI zones. Running from them is at its best when you have multiple routes to take, scrambling and doubling back while the killer robot is steadily chasing you down trying to flank you and find your position. That's exhilarating and fun. But there are a few occasions where the game basically locks you in a hallway with the EMMI between you and the exit, and trying to figure out how the fuck to get around it without touching it so you can progress becomes a lot more frustrating than exhilarating because there's literally no room for error.

This is compounded by how the Phantom Cloak is an utterly worthless upgrade in every way that should never have been added to the game. You never know where an EMMI is unless it's near enough to you to be a major threat, so you have no idea when you should use this thing to avoid detection - if it's close enough that you know for certain, it's already detected you and the cloak isn't useful anymore.

Like, which would you rather do: sprint and Flash Shift and Grapple Beam through the zone as quickly as possible, doing your best to stay out of its line of sight so the doors don't lock, OR use the thing that grinds your movement speed to a halt in exchange for five free seconds of not being detected, and then either turns off or starts draining your health so you can get instakilled by the first enemy you run into after escaping the zone? The Phantom Cloak only becomes more superfluous when you reach the final EMMI, which can detect you no matter where you are on the map - there's absolutely no point in putting the cloak up to build some distance, because no amount of distance will keep it from getting on your tail again.

I think what would have made the EMMIs better is if there were no locked doors or upgrade-checks in their zones. It's just you, a maze, and a killer robot somewhere inside, and you have to go through there if you want to make progress by reaching other areas that the zone connects to. To add to that, don't even tell me when it's hearing me, or nearby on the minimap. I want to have no idea if it's following me or not other than the sound of its movements getting steadily louder. I want that absolutely terrifying uncertainty.

That's about all I have to say on the gameplay front. When reviewing something, I like to try to condense my critique into one highest praise and one lowest criticism. The highest praise for Dread would basically just be "This is the most modern 2D Metroid game, of course it's going to be the most fun to play because it has the least irritations", even if I think the EMMIs needed more work. My lowest criticism would be... God, like, most things about the story?

Nintendo doesn't tend to tell complex stories with their big franchises. Metroid is the big exception. Yes, even if the 2D games never get as complex as the Prime games because the Prime games have the luxury of scanning lore, the last four games have set up as many interesting pieces as they've closed the book on, and Fusion ESPECIALLY left some intrigue with there being corruption in the Federation and the existential threat of the X-parasites. Dread... never talks about the corruption in the Federation. It's literally not even addressed. I don't give a shit if this was a mistranslation of the original Japanese in Fusion saying that it was a specific "splinter", that's just throwing away free intrigue in your plot and it's a massive waste.

Raven Beak is the weakest Metroid villain, full-stop. His entire motivation is "I am a warlord who wants to clone Metroids to conquer the universe", which means he's effectively just Mother Brain with a new coat of paint slapped on top and without even the interesting jealous characterization she gets in the Zero Mission manga. Yes, he slaughtered his own kind, and even fed traitors of his own clan to a monster in a ritualistic execution, but making a villain ruthless does not automatically make them interesting. It doesn't even automatically make them intimidating; Raven Beak spends the entire story talking himself up and sucking his own dick, then gets merc'd in the same game he debuts in after beating Samus twice exclusively by teleporting to grab her in cutscenes.

Introducing the Mawkin as a distinct faction from the Thoha was a mistake because it completely robs the idea of an evil Chozo of any weight. Oh, yeah, these are the bad Chozo who just care about war and conquering and physical prowess. All of those other Chozo are still saints who just made a mistake when they created the Metroids, don't worry.

Everything about Raven Beak is missed potential. An evil Chozo who takes Samus's ideology of "peace will come to the galaxy only when evil is vanquished" to the extreme? Who wants to see the legacy of the Chozo's projects like Metroids preserved, rather than eradicated and forgotten? Who creates the monster that is his undoing by allowing Samus to live and grow her Metroid powers, exactly as Ridley not finishing the job on K2-L eventually resulted in Samus killing him? There are so many interesting things you could do with Raven Beak, and Metroid Dread does none of them. He's just The Remorseless Guy Who Wants To Conquer. It's a crying fucking shame.

Even aside from him, the game introduces a friendly Chozo - a living, breathing member of the people who raised Samus and molded her into the hero she is and have been the linchpin of the entire greater universe of the franchise - so that he can dump exposition for one cutscene and then immediately be killed off. I timed it: Quiet Robe got to be a part of the Metroid canon for four minutes and forty-five seconds before he was killed. It's hilarious how clumsy and forced it is.

And this isn't even getting into the bottomless well of plot holes and unanswered questions in the game's story that piss me off more the more I think of them.

How did Kraid get to ZDR? If you're going to give us fanservice this loud and blatant, fucking explain how it happened. Are you telling me that - for SOME reason - the Mawkin showed up on Zebes during Samus's final mission there, captured Kraid, left without taking any of the Metroids just laying around, and then locked him up in their basement? Why???

Why do the X-infected Chozo soldiers still seem to be following Raven Beak's command? This one's not concretely spelled out, but the final, gold one seems to be specifically acting to guard Raven Beak. Either that or it's just a coincidence that the strongest one is right before the final boss fight with him.

Why doesn't Samus just continue shooting Raven Beak when he lifts her up by the neck? I get that the Metroid powers are talked up as the deadliest and most dangerous ability Samus has ever wielded, and maybe she didn't want to risk using them unless she could get him by the head, so grabbing his arm was out of the question. But if he's out of her reach, she still has a perfectly good arm cannon that she used for both confrontations she had with him. I'm already suspending my disbelief for the sake of him being able to choke her to death through a suit of powered armor, game - can you just have him grab her arm cannon with the same hand to pin it to her side, or something?

Why didn't the X leave ZDR when they had the chance? The entire impetus of the ending of Fusion is Samus realizing that "X-parasite with the knowledge of a pilot" + "Working starship to escape" = the end of galactic civilization as the X spread from planet to planet faster than she can contain them. Quiet Robe outright states that every single Mawkin Chozo was infected - even if they were ALL contained to Elun, are you telling me NONE of them were pilots despite traveling to and from SR388? Is Raven Beak the only pilot in the entire Mawkin civilization? We see ships in the background of Hanubia, like, at least four or five of them. Why didn't the X leave when they had the chance if their only instinct is to spread and grow their numbers?

Follow-up: Where did those ships go during the escape sequence? Were they all destroyed when shit started blowing up? If not, and the X fled the exploding planet when they had the chance, how the hell is the next game going to happen with only one Samus and 4-5 ships full of X beginning their spread to different planets? Exactly how dangerous do you want me to think the X are, Metroid? Is them getting loose a doomsday scenario for the entire galaxy or not? Make up your fucking mind!

In summary - the plot of this game is a bottomless well of missed potential. My friend Lilith has told me all about better ideas where instead of Samus gaining her power-ups from EMMIs, she fights other non-infected Mawkin who are still loyal to Raven Beak and using their own Chozo power suits, which would have been incredibly fucking sick. Samus being forced to grapple with the fact that evil really is everywhere in the galaxy, even in the Chozo who played a part in raising her? Fighting this shadow of herself, this monster she could become if she goes off the deep end in her desire to bring peace to the galaxy by fighting the battles civilians shouldn't have to?

But even putting aside how these base elements could have been used better, what we did get is riddled with plot holes and an incredibly inconsistent overall threat level regarding the X-parasites. There are good elements to the story, don't get me wrong, but it's 90% flash and 10% substance. Yes, it's cool that Samus gets Metroid powers when everyone and their grandmother wanted that to happen since the end of Fusion, and the sheer cinematic scale of the Metroid Suit is unbelievably kickass - but it has no weight without a villain that I can get invested in stopping. And I don't accept "No Metroid villain has been that deep" as an excuse, because A) like I said, Mother Brain and Ridley got some pretty interesting characterization in the manga, and B) that doesn't mean things can't improve. Dread improved a lot, but it didn't improve the story.

[old-school-butch]

whats ur opinion on blackout2024?? if ur not familiar with it i recommend looking into it, but if u are familiar, whats ur thoughts on it?

I wasn't familiar but checked it out. It combines bullying and slacktivism - everyone's favorite hobbies ig. As a general rule, it's dangerous to use social pressure to force people to express uninformed opinions because it creates huge opportunities to spread misinformation. It's really no different than Andrew Tate creating what amounts to a MLM scheme by using followers as bots to amplify his message. As foreign bots get shut down, these campaign use actual humans to take on bot-like behavior for the same ultimate effect: amplify the message. Clever, disruptive, and responsible for the spread of absolute nonsense.

The issue with these information wars is that democracies have no real counter for this attack on society and no way to respond. Russia and China are the best state entities with political interference capacity, but autocracies doesn't have free social media in their own countries so we can't, in turn, foment dissent and fragment their societies into screaming, extremist confusion. Democracy is very vulnerable to this attack and I actually just blame the social media companies for not throttling bot and mass campaign activities on their platforms. But of course, your attention is a commodity that earns their profits, so whatever outrages you gets more attention, so they're unwilling to turn off the taps.

I also see a lot of post-modernism used in the trans activist tactics being re-deployed in these campaigns, where words are redefined in order to spread maximum misunderstanding and confusion. Remember how the word 'woman' became a kind of feeling someone might have about dresses? The word 'occupation' is being used in this conflict in a similar way. 'End the occupation' sounds... well, good. Occupying something, implicitly not yours, seems like a bad thing. And most people assume that this phrase is a call to get Israeli troops out of Gaza. But there's a history in this term, that the state of Israel itself - sometimes called 'the Zionist entity' by hard liners - is occupying Arab land. The goal of Palestinian self-government isn't to have that governance over Gaza or the West Bank, but also Israeli territory itself, that they consider 'occupied' and should be return to them. Thus, Israeli towns are always called 'settlements' not 'towns' and 75 year old cities in Gaza will be called 'refugee camps' because Gaza is just where they are temporarily staying as refugees, their real home is inside Israel. You will see chants to 'end the occupation' in Gaza well before this war began, and despite Israel not actually occupying Gaza for 20 years, or even during the 19 year period while Egypt was occupying Gaza. Because 'the occupation' doesn't mean Gaza, it means Israel and refers to the belief that Israel itself is not a legitimate state.

What all this means is that people can, en masse, take up the call to 'end the occupation' and what Israelis will hear is a call for the destruction of the state of Israel. Same goes for 'river to the sea, Palestine will be free'. One side hears a call for freedom, the other side hears a call for Israel to be overrun and the genocide of its people.

As any radical feminist should know, when words and phrases are jumbled up like this, it makes clear communication difficult and thus understanding and compromise impossible, ESPECIALLY when you pour social pressure on people to jump into a debate with very little background information. And that's the point.

[elvenbeard]

3 hours into update 2.0.0....

I love it xD But also, I'm a little bit overwhelmed, but UUUURGGGHHH there are some real gems in there already 😩

So, I didn't start a new playthrough for time reasons and went right in with my post-ending save. There was some initial fuckery with my wardrobe outfits that seems fixed now though after unequipping everything and remaking the outfits xD Custom tattoo and scar mods work just fine though and I might test these next few days what other mods do :D I'm really happy about the tattoos though at least :3

Some Bugs

Also, someone desperately needs to send the NCPD some funds cause....

That vehicle doesn't look like it should be allowed in traffic (this happened twice, and I was cackling xDD honestly just a really funny little bug that's probably gonna get fixed somewhere down the line xD)

But yes... Man the new skills and perks and cyberware and EVERYTHING is so fucking cool, but also so fucking overwhelming when you're already level 42+ and have everything at your disposal all at once xD But I was so excited to see all the different new Kiroshi options and how cyberware is tied to skills like... damn. And the strongest quickhacks really need a fuckton of RAM... as they should. And I still need a fuckton of practise in terms of using them, but I'm really excited to get the hang of it all somewhere down the line :D

They didn't forget about the LIs!!!

But then this:

When I read this in the patch notes, I was so fucking excited xD Hell yeah, a good reason to go to the apartment apart from sorting through my inventory xD Some more Johnny interactions!

AND. A DREAM COME TRUE WITH ONE OF THE DIALOGUES!!!

I was always a bit sad that Johnny had no comments whatsoever on V's relationship with Kerry, when he did with some of the other LIs, so this already made my evening xDD and one of the big perks of jumping in with my post-ending save to already get to see and hear this now :DDD Not gonna spoil what he says but... yes XDD It fits, I figured. And I hope the other LIs get something similar because it's glorious xD

Vehicles and Radio

In regards to vehicle handling... I can definitely feel a difference with my go-to bike! Like, it still has its weaknesses, but also feels a lot more stable in other regards, less flimsy and "heavier" like they described it in the patch notes. I love it a lot. I didn't try vehicle combat yet, although I did get randomly attacked in the badlands by some NPCs once, which was very fun XD I almost had a heart-attack, but it did feel like something that could happen. Sadly didn't manage to get my revenge in time, but next time!!

I like the new radio stations, but didn't hear every song yet... but also, and I think some others already said that, they don't really add much new in terms of sound and genres. Nothing that isn't already there in some shape or form. But still nice to have something new to add to the rotation.

Leveldesign

And as I was driving around, I randomly stumbled right into Dogtown :DDD well, not quite but, damn, that was an impressive moment:

The faction of the guards was labelled as "Test" though xDD Close but, not quite... Figure that's also a little bug though.

Overall... I fucking love how they integrated it into Pacifica o.o It's insanely impressive, huge and rundown and maaaaaan.... I cannot wait to explore behind the walls!!

Also, random little thing... I feel like the clouds looked nicer? But that could be me not paying much attention/ rain being rare-ish in Night City.

Not Dogtown but North Oak, obviously. But... idk o.o The light shining through like that looked so fucking cool and realistic, but I really dont know if maybe this wasn't already part of the Pathtracing update and I just never noticed it like this before XD

And lastly... I discovered whose nooks they added to the Columbarium. Right in the feels.

Cannot wait to discover more little details as I go but URGH yeah. The tiny little Kerry convo already made it worth it for me XDD And Viktor <3 And the Autofixer shop is so cool! And aaahhh I cannot wait to see what's gonna come with PL :333

[squids-comics]

This set of panels right here is a great case study on what makes a comic action scene truly great. The action of this scene is amazing, but it doesn't feel that way to read. Doctor Doom catching Cap's shield and throwing it back at him is a huge move that, when played right, could have the impact that Cap grabbing Mjolnir in Endgame had on audiences. This set of panels makes that jaw dropping scene feel awkward and clunky. Lets dissect why!!

Before we get started, a quick reminder and introduction for everyone new, I am an aspiring comic writer!! I have read thousands of comics and even written a few of my own! If you like my analysis, you should check out my writing! I've got all my comic scripts up on my Wattpad and I'm slowly posting them on my Tumblr as well! Now, on with the analysis!!

The first thing that jumps out to me is the focus of the panels. Comic panels can only show you a brief snapshot of the action, leaving you to fill in the spaces between, kind of like a real bad flip book animation. Because it can only show a few key frames of the action, it's very important to be critical about the action they showcase. We have three panels for this brief action stunt:

Cap throws the shield, Doom gloats

The shield flies at Doom, Doom gloats

Doom throws it back, Doom gloats, Cap narrates

The main purpose of this stunt is to show how dangerous Doom is. Not only is he a genius with enough sci-fi weaponry to make a Mandalorian jealous, he's a tough fighter with real fast reflexes. This is shown by having him catch the shield, something Cap has never had to deal with before! So isn't it weird that we don't actually get to see the catch itself? We know it happens based on Doom throwing it back and Cap's narration, but we don't even get to see Doom touch the shield. If I could redo the three panels, they'd go a little something like this:

Cap throws the shield

Doom catches the shield, Doom gloats

Doom throws it back, Doom gloats

Now you might have noticed that I also changed the structure of the dialogue. This is to fix a major problem I have with all comics from this era, the over reliance on dialogue. Have you ever heard of show don't tell? Well apparently Stan Lee hasn't. In every fight scene, there is always at least one person spelling out the action for the reader. It gets kind of annoying after a while. I would definitely cut out Cap's narration because with a good panel layout and good pacing, it's completely unnecessary. I'd also tone down Doom's taunting, as five speech bubbles in three panels just to berate someone is a lot. I'd lower it to three bubbles.

Panel one Doom doesn't say a word, not wanting to give his hand away. This silence would make Doom's actions more mysterious. By insulting Cap, the reader can guess that Doom has a plan. By staying silent, Cap (and by proxy, the reader) could be led to assume that they caught Doom off guard. This would lend even more impact to Doom's big catch, as it shows Doom is a menacing foe even when he seems unprepared.

Panel two, Doom would get two bubbles. He's a very arrogant and prideful man, so he would definitely hurl some insults Cap's way. Especially after catching his shield. I would have his first bubble say "Masked fool! You still do not suspect the true extent of my power!", with the second saying "I am any man's master!". These are good lines for sure, but I feel like they'd have a much bigger impact after the catch, rather than before.

And finally for panel three, I'd keep the "Do I make myself clear, you witless peasant?" line because it's a wonderful line in the perfect spot.

One other potential change you could do is in the actual action itself. This stunt is a great way to show off Doom's character, both in terms of physical ability and his personality through his taunting. We are meant to see how arrogant and prideful and overconfident he is through his constant insults. But any character can talk the talk. A real good character can walk the walk. Any character can speak, a real good character doesn't need to. Their actions speak for them. In panel three, Doom throws Cap's shield back at him, turning Cap's offensive into his own. But what if instead, he showcased his arrogance by giving Cap another chance? Instead of attacking Cap with the shield, Doom could slide it along the floor, passing it back to Cap. This would show how Doom is so full of himself that he doesn't even consider Cap a threat. He would essentially be saying "That attack won't work on me. Try something better.". And if that level of arrogance doesn't scream Doom, then I don't know what does!

But anyways, those are just my thoughts! Let me know what you think of them, and what changes you would do! Thank you for reading!!

Panels from: Avengers #25