#its by far the funniest thing i've dreamed to date

[friendly-neighborhood-furry]

i'm still a ways off from finishing the full artwork, but i wanna but i wanna feed my friends so

@wreckrinho here is your purple dumbass (affectionate) now in full color!

sidenote but these characters have hardcore infected my brain. they're frequently showing up in my dreams now, i'm talkin almost every night. i hardly even know them, but at this point it feels like the universe is trying to get me to start watching both shows so. i'll add it to the list i guess!

[bothzangetsus]

For the ask game:

3, 8 and 16

choose violence ask game

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

I have a lot! Lol. There are some pretty vile genuinely -ist ones, but I mostly want to treat this game as things to laugh at rather than get mad over. So I'll pick two that are on the puzzling side!

I think the funniest bad take which I can also connect to my username I've seen was the person deadly seriously saying zanpakutou are the opposites of the wielder, and citing Zangetsu as proof (white Zangetsu, not old man). It's so puzzling! We got the reveal in a chapter literally called THE BLADE IS ME. I desperately need to know how they arrived to that conclusion.

Plus, like, your power growing the more in tune with yourself you are is one of the coolest core aspects of Bleach, imo. It's one of the themes the manga never betrays, too.

Putting the rest under the read more because it got long, lol.

The other is more recent and I have an actual screenshot of it! Yay!

I'm not saying this is a bad take because of the ships it targets -- I couldn't care less about who ships what, frankly -- but the reasoning! It made me feel like I time travelled to 2011 :DDD *who* the hell throws 'horny yaoi fangirl' as an insult these days?

If I am to be more serious, it's also the misconception that people ship things because of anything that reflects something about them as a person. Genuine emotional connection? Who cares? It's fine to want that for your ships. I would never rec grimmichi/urayoru/yorusoi to anyone looking for healthy ships where both halves genuinely touch each other's hearts, but people don't like unhealthy ships because they're 'starved for genuine emotional connection', be so serious right now. It's such a cheap attempt to feel superior and so dated that it becomes funny.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Hmmm, what IS a common opinion? It feels like the fandom is pretty fractured. I guess the one unifying opinion I disagree with is that the manga became worse after Soul Society arc. I think its structure became significantly weaker and it kept sustaining tension for far longer than it should've with very minor moments of (much needed, necessary for characterisation) reprieve, but I think Hueco Mundo and Lost Agent and, yes, even TYBW, are muuuuuch stronger arcs thematically. They're more depressing and pretty much a downward spiral (and dear god TYBW is such a mess plot-wise that it can be hard to reread) but the themes it revolves around are ever-present and it never betrays itself for the sake of a #cool moment or "closure", and I personally appreciate that.

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Is it cheating to say fluff? That's not Bleach-related. I'm sorry, I love misery!

Bleach-related................ I'm drawing a blank! There are plenty of tropes etc that I dislike, but I can usually understand why someone would like it. I suppose I don't understand takes that seem to be based on 'well EYE like it and it came to me in a dream' (rather than being based on something that happens in canon), but I can understand why someone would enjoy that too, it's just not my personal approach.

I will say though. I am a bit bored of the "this villain just needed Love and their bad personality and actions are mostly a result of Not Knowing Love" take. I think villains are hot because they're villains! Let them enjoy their villainous actions! But I still get why people like that too. So I guess I'm mostly giving a non-answer here.

[yungvenuz]

Game of the Year List 2023

Honorable Mentions: Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia: I love the oddball mashup of shmup and dungeon crawler mechanics, but I ended up losing interest before the end of the game. In Stars and Time: Still playing this game. I like it so far, but I didn't want to rush it through to get it on this list. It'll go on next year's list if I like it enough. Stuffo the Puzzle Bot: Really great soundtrack. Still on regular rotation.

10. Super Snail (IOS and Android)

This is a difficult inclusion. Super Snail is an Evil game. It's the most monetized game I've ever played. Every screen you can visit can trigger a special offer for a pile of goodies you don't need that you can buy with real money. It's a mobile gacha game, through and through, designed to eat up time and attention and offer back a distant illusion of progress that you could surely expedite, if you were just willing to kick in ten bucks for one of its dozens of customized season passes…. So, why is this game on this list?

Developer QCPlay was already on my radar from previous release Gumball and Dungeons, a similarly high effort mobile game (amusingly originally intended as a Dragon Quest game, until they failed to secure the license and were forced to sand all the iconic teardrops off their slimes and call them gumballs instead). Despite their willingness to indulge in all the awful trends of mobile game markets, these are real, proper game designers, who have buried a real, actual game under all of Super Snail's idle timers and base management bullshit.

Super Snail is constantly shifting, adding new layers of complexity and shaking up existing mechanics. It's the only gacha game I'm aware of in which your gacha machine can be stolen from you temporarily if you use it too much, forcing you to wait on spending tickets until the thief decides its rates are too shit to bother with and returns it to you. There's a dating sim mechanic in which various characters met in your travels (male, female, or both) will find out about your secret base and decide to mooch off you, which is some of the funniest writing in the game.

On that note, the writing is weirdly good for a game that's approximately 80% random pop culture references. The eight demon lords you've been tasked with defeating by the mysterious god "Earth's Will" all have detailed and consistent backstories. There are a few honest-to-god effective twists in the plot, and a lingering question about how shady the god you've signed your life to actually is.

A predatory mobile game shouldn't deserve one minute of my attention, let alone one of the coveted slots on my illustrious top ten list, but Super Snail spits in the face of all that, and god. I can't stop thinking about it, about how many interesting game design lessons are nestled within its strange and evil exterior. So, by compromise, it's grudgingly earned my #10. Just, for god's sake, if any of this backhanded review piques your interest, set a budget for yourself and don't exceed it for any reason.

9. BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is Your Heart (Steam)

BOSSGAME is an action rpg about two dirtbag lesbians, Sophie and Anna, trying to earn rent money by taking random mercenary work in the big city. The story is low pressure fun, with a little melodrama mixed in to spice things up. The plot is needs-suiting, even maybe good, but the reason this game is on the list is the gameplay.

BOSSGAME is really, really fun to play. It uses a combat system reminiscent of the Mario and Luigi rpgs in which both party members are controlled simultaneously. Enemies telegraph attacks that need to be blocked using the left or right side of the gamepad based on character, draining stamina. Attacking also drains stamina, so a careful balance of offense and defense needs to be maintained to survive. Most interestingly, there's no turns: enemies repeat attack patterns usually without waiting for a counterattack, so combat becomes a brain-bending routine of multitasking, with one character needing to block attacks while the other sneaks in some damage. A combo system encourages keeping up constant pressure, with the reward being increased progress toward a super attack that can briefly stun bosses and allow some easy hits before returning to defensive play. The end result is fast paced, engaging, and totally unique combat that was fun to learn for each of the dozens of boss fights in the game.

I'm glad this game ended up being good enough to recommend here, not just because I, too, am lesbian, but because I love designers that are willing to take a chance on unique control schemes. Part of the fun of playing BOSSGAME was getting to learn how to play without being able to rely on any of the muscle memory I've accrued over years of playing other action games. I only wish it weren't so short. Of all the games on this list, this is the one I would most want to see expanded into a full 40-60 hour RPG epic.

8. Slay the Princess (Steam)

A Myers-Briggs test for fetishes. Keep that in mind whenever anybody who tries to talk to you about their favorite "route". Great writing though

7. EDF 5 (Steam)

My official Multiplayer Game Experience of the Year. The EDF (EDF! EDF! EDF!) series is an alien invasion resistance simulator that exists somewhere between Dynasty Warriors and Monster Hunter in gameplay. I've known about the series for a long time, and I had assumed it was the kind of loud dumb fun that makes for punchy clips but wears out its welcome quickly. To be clear, it definitely is loud, and dumb, and fun, but it also has significantly more mechanical depth and complexity than I expected, which kept it fresh and engaging for as long as I played it.

Mechanics like building destruction and corpse hitboxes looks like they're just they're there for spectacle at first, but as levels progress and more and more aggressive enemy types are introduced, these seemingly incidental details take on more and more importance as you need to manage cover and enemy sight lines more effectively. This is the game's most potent tool, I think: everything that makes it great as a ridiculous carnage sandbox has been meticulously designed to also work in the higher difficulty levels to deliver a genuinely tense and highly mobile shooter.

6. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayers (Steam)

A boomer shooter in the same canon as Hypnospace Outlaw, partially developed by troubled teen ZANE_ROCKS_14 and polished up for release 22 years later. For an elaborate shitpost, it's very well made, but what most interests me about it is its contradictory nature. Outwardly, it's completely juvenile and silly about everything it does, filled with poop jokes and mouthy rats and evil stepdads. Underneath that, there's the deep melancholy of a 36 year old desperately trying to relive the last time in his life that he felt cool.

all the levels in the game faithfully recreate scenes of Zane's Idaho childhood, from ritzy suburban neighborhoods to car parks to the local fair, but they're all just a little bit too eerily empty for the settings they're trying to evoke. The protagonist's sincere love for his mother completely clashes with the badass attitude he brings to every other scene. Zane put his all into voice acting the protagonist's lines, while every other character sounds like they're reciting lines into their phone in a bathroom. The end result is a masterpiece in immersive game design, meticulously arranged to feel like it came from a very specific time and place in a fictional alternate universe. It's so effective that even the parts that don't work can be argued as a deliberate part of the overall period piece, like the confusingly short penultimate level or unnecessarily annoying final boss.

5. Cobalt Core (Steam)

A card battler built around spaceship combat. It should be immediately apparent to anybody who's played a lot of Slay-The-Spire-likes that Cobalt Core is on the easier side, but that's a deliberate choice here, in an effort to create an engaging narrative experience rather than a perfectly tuned progression treadmill. While Inscryption (another narrative card battler) managed its story by bringing the player away from the cards for cutscenes or escape room sequences, Cobalt Core delivers everything within its roguelike framework, even going as far as coming up with a time loop justification for why the player is repeating runs to progress the story.

In that regard it compares more closely to Hades than other card battlers, and I also think that's a good comparison because I really like the characters and character interactions in Cobalt Core. Each round starts with the selection of three of the (after finishing a short period of unlocks) 7 crewmates available to play with, and every combination of characters has interesting discussions and interactions between them. Characters also have lines to acknowledge specific artifacts, cards, or game states (like big damage or status effects) that offers a level of reactivity to make each run that much more unique. Also like Hades, there's a concrete ending sequence. Backstory for each crewmate is delivered piecemeal throughout the game, and while there aren't any earthshattering twists or revelations, the ending does a good job of tying everything together for a proper sendoff.

Shoutout to Riggs. Best possum in the galaxy.

!Great Soundtrack Alert!

4. Going Down (2014 Doom wad) (Doomworld File Depot)

This year, I played MyHouse.wad. More and more people were talking about it, and I wanted to give it a try myself before someone randomly spoiled it for me. I didn't end up caring for it much! It did some interesting things, and it was definitely well made, but I'm not that interested in the creepypasta style it was going for.

It did pique my interest in the rich ecosystem of Doom modding that's been quietly trucking along for 30 years before myhouse ever released, though. A friend recommended Going Down, which I found to be terrific, and then I spent the rest of the year playing random wads (level packs) whenever I didn't have anything else to do. Doom has become invaluable to me as a podcast game, especially as I've only just been able to extract myself from Tactical Nexus's cunning grasp this year.

So, without further ado: The Official Doom Wads of the Year Minilist:

10 Struggle: Antaresian Legacy - Most of the levels in this wad focus on low-pressure exploration, but my favorites were the wide-open chaotic battles. I especially like the capstone levels of the first two chapters (maps 11 and 20), which both feature massive arenas with hundreds of enemies active at once. 9 Ancient Aliens - A collab megawad with great aesthetic and theming. Level quality is inconsistent, which makes sense given how many authors were involved, but the best levels in the wad are excellent. 8 Dust Devil - A short campaign of two interconnected levels with a bunch of interesting custom content. The use of grenade launchers and shielded enemies was especially cool, and not something I expected the doom engine to be able to do. 7 Lullaby - A stylish single-map wad in a decidedly undoomlike blue dreamland. There's only five or so major setpiece encounters, but they're all very memorable. 6 Doom 2 - I love how experimental the design in Doom 2 is, especially given that the entire genre of fps was brand new at this point in history. there's abstract levels, puzzle levels, diagetic cityscapes, and more. It's easy to see its influence in every fps to ever follow in its wake. 5 Overboard - A newer wad by the same author of Going Down with a great gimmick- the first five levels are followed by a set of hard mode remixes that use the same maps with more aggressive enemy arrangements. I particularly liked the last map of hard mode, which is identical to its normal mode variant except that it spawns all 500 enemies in the moment the level starts instead of deploying in piecemeal waves as it does in the original. 4 The Thing You Can't Defeat - An experimental remix of the first chapter of Doom 1. Very interesting premise and punchline. If you liked MyHouse.wad, I'd highly recommend checking it out. 3 Tarnsman's Projectile Hell - This is the first touhou game I've played, technically. Deviously difficult design with an emphasis on long distance hitscan enemies that would be extremely annoying in the hands of a level designer any less obviously talented than Tarnsman. 2 Unloved - An ambitious continuous campaign that takes place in a Silent Hill-esque house with several portals to distorted nightmare realms. I like that small amounts of progress are made in each level at a time with frequent revisits to the main hub, and I love the dark atmosphere. Very creepy. Also insanely difficult. 1 Going Down - My favorite by a long shot. The amount of variety in level and encounter design is incredible on its own, but I particularly like the care that went into giving each level a unique identity that still makes sense in the context of the wad's premise (taking an elevator floor by floor down into the depths of hell). Every level is meticulously designed to use the entire space, usually multiple times as later encounters in each level usually reuse the same arenas with additional twists on the layout and enemy deployments.

3. Pizza Tower (Steam)

A fluid platformer heavily inspired by the Wario Land games. Its most notable design choice is the lack of fail state when exploring levels. There's no health bar, and falling into pits only resets the room, so there's no significant pressure until the timed escape sequence at the end of each level. That's not to say the game lacks challenge, though. Far from it- the challenge comes not from reaching the end of each room, but in doing so as efficiently as possible. Pizza Tower's principle antagonist is the 5 second combo timer in the top right, forcing a constant stream of action. Every level has just enough stuff in each room to allow a single combo to be carried from start to level finish, which confers the coveted P Rank medal on level completion.

Full P Rank completion is what I spent three months obsessively chasing at the start of this year. Movement in Pizza Tower is so fluid, and so satisfying to learn how to fully utilize, that I couldn't resist going for it. I got so far into it that after finishing the game, I went back in immediately for an optional challenge that requires full P rank completion of the game in less than 4 hours, which required being able to clear each level with perfect consistency.

!Great Soundtrack Alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWoTeTZL-C8

2. Beton Brutal (Steam)

The trailer for Beton Brutal immediately spoke to me. I've been a fan of persistent-state platforming games for ages, and it's a sorely underserved genre (mostly lurking in MMOs and player-made levels for games like Mario Maker). I like the emphasis on meditative upward progress, and I especially like the increasing pressure that builds as each subsequent jump risks losing more progress than the previous. Beton Brutal's developer was able to deliver this perfectly while also maintaining a consistent and interesting visual style (a stark contrast to the dreadful nft tie-in climbing game Only Up, which also released this year).

For weeks, I opened Beton Brutal after work and played for thirty minutes to an hour, usually seeing some small amount of new progress before inevitably taking a long fall and rage quitting for the day. I don't think I can call this the hardest game I've ever played, given that there's an entire community of people that can complete the entire climb in less than ten minutes, but I do think I'm uniquely poorly suited for games like this, given the extreme precision required. Still, that made it all the more satisfying to finally complete the game after almost exactly 20 hours of effort.

Three months later the DLC "Beton Bath", with another 500 meter tower with new obstacles, mechanics, and visual aesthetic (themed after public pool equipment, which honestly looks great decorating the tower), released. This dlc had mixed reviews, but it cemented this game as a whole as a favorite for me. The new tower has a very different design approach, with more focus on interpreting strange geometry, seeking out aggressive shortcuts, and taking giant leaps of faith. The last 100 meters particularly impressed me, with numerous falls onto trampolines 80 meters below to stride the entire tower in one jump and reach new ladders, before climbing just a few meters higher and repeating the process back to the opposite side.

trying to settle on which screenshot to include with the entry was agonizing, so I'm going to post a bunch more here. I love how this game looks.

Don't worry about the vertigo meter in the bottom left. It's probably nothing to worry about.

Void Stranger (Steam)

Void Stranger is a tile-based puzzle game featuring a magic wand that can pick tiles up and place them elsewhere. Help the noble handmaiden Gray delve into the 256th floor of the mysterious Void to fulfill her heart's desire, learning more about her past by peeking into her memories as she rests at checkpoints along the way.

…But that's not sufficient to describe it, really. The best way I can come up with to describe what Void Stranger actually is, is as a seemingly normal block-pushing puzzle game that's had an entire additional Myst-like adventure game layered over it. The puzzle game is real, and it can be engaged with honestly from start to finish, but the true fun of the game (and several of its many, many possible endings) comes from interpreting obscure clues in the lore and interface to dive deeper.

The more that's learned, the easier it is to navigate the underlying puzzle game. Almost every object in the game has hidden mechanics related to it, opening up easier routes through initially difficult puzzles or allowing the use of shortcuts to skip floors entirely. Once these tricks are mastered, only thirty or so of the game's 256 floors even need to be visited to complete a run, and most of them can be cleared in seconds.

That's a good thing, too, because there's a lot of travel to specific floors needed to find all the secrets in the game. This is a game that thrives on friction in its play experience, which means it's definitely not going to be a game for everybody. If clues regarding certain shortcuts or secrets are missed, it can add a lot of unnecessary work to completing the game. But I personally love that kind of obscurity in games, and I really appreciate that the developer System Erasure (who made the similarly excellent ZeroRanger) was willing to take a chance on a niche-of-a-niche genre that could really speak to its core demographic: me specifically.

I'm not going to talk much about the plot, because most of it is deeply tangled with the Void Stranger's deepest secrets. That said, I appreciate that every route through the game, even the ones that don't engage with all the secret hunting, have been given fully fledged stories. Even the bad ending has a fucking awesome finale, to the extent that I would recommend seeking it out before engaging with the rest of the game's content (if you get offered a fruit, go ahead and eat it!)

Void Stranger is good enough to make it onto my top ten list of games of all time. I've put it at #6, just behind Iji and just ahead of Full Bore. Everything about it is fucking awesome. Check it out!

!Great Soundtrack Alert!

[silmarillaure]

The news about riize has made me so angry. These people are absolutely fucking disgusting and something seriously needs to be done about this. Taeil can drug and gang rape a girl and everyone’s silent but a boy smokes and has a girlfriend predebut??? And people act like this! Its ridiculous… but also I can’t believe you like both silm AND Kpop!! What groups do you stan? Who are your biases?

T@e!l is the wrong comparison to make here.

No one supports T@e!l, Korean & International netizens ALL hate him. He was immediately removed (thankfully) and I think everyone just wants to forget about his existence because who wants to keep a r@p!st on their mind. There's nothing to protest for, his career is done.

Obviously Seunghan's treatment by OT6 Briize is evil & unforgivable though. It just has nothing to do with T@e!l and isn't comparable.

It's just purely stupid & idiotic how OT6 Briize wanted to & succeeded in punishing Seunghan for being a normal teenager. It happened PRE-debut, years ago... it's pointless witch hunting him for it now, but apparently not being a celibate virgin is punishable by d@ath threats & having to leave your group.

The thing is, just look at the rest of RIIZE. They're all beautiful gorgeous boys. Do the same people who hate Seunghan for dating think that pretty boy Wonbin & k-drama beauty Sungchan have always been and will always be single? How did they look at Seunghan's stunning face and think he would have no game?

This is ridiculous and it's even more ridiculous SM caved in and sided with the people sending him funeral wreaths for the sin of dating. They've never been good at defending their artists from haters, but some of their most popular artists/former artists have had dating "scandals". Jonghyun, Taeyeon, Baekhyun, Kai, Krystal... they all got a terrible amount of hate but didn't loose their careers.

....

My Stan List & Biases:

BTS: Got me into K-pop and are true artists. Their Korean discography is a masterpiece & I love how BTS's rapline are real rappers and not just "Idol rappers" who mumble/fast talk. Also I appreciate the Rapline's heavy involvement in their music, they do way more than most idols. (OT7 are all my biases but Jin & J-Hope are my bias wreckers.)

ATEEZ: I've been a fan for years now & I'm so proud of how far they've come. I can't say I love every single comeback but their music usually grows on me & when it works it just works. Seonghwa & Hongjoong are my biases & Yeosang is my bias wrecker but I love everyone.

Le Sserafim: Sakura Miyawaki is my queen & she is a stage presence demon who I will defend til my last breath. They're also the funniest group. Eunchae is my bias wrecker, she's so gosh darn cute & charming.

Victon (now inactive): They had some good f*cking music. I still keep up with by bias Han Seungwoo's releases with are usually good.

WOODZ (soloist): I love self produced idols who make good music. Not to mention he's also good at everything & doesn't lack in vocals, dance, or rap. What an icon!

ZB1: I know they're a temporary group but they're genuinely one of the best groups ever. I can't believe such a perfect group was made with no MNET rigging! Each member is so talented & they ALL deserved their spots in the group. Not to mention they're all funny af with great visuals. Haobin are my biases & everyone else is a bias wrecker.

NCT Dream: I stan them but I don't really have a bias or bias wrecker. I like them all about the same & their bond as a group is heartwarming. Their music is also the best in NCT.

I would stan NCT 127... if only I liked their music. Yuta is my bias & Taeyong is my bias wrecker though.

I don't quite stan ILLIT, but I was rooting for Moka all throughout the survival show RUNext. I'm so glad she made it and it's amazing to see her become so popular when she was really underappreciated pre-debut. I'm also just rooting for all the girls in general, they seem very sweet & deserve the best.

Also not quite K-pop but (K)J-pop - JO1: I love them, I love their music, I love their voices, their visuals, their personalities, amazing. Junki is my bias (oshi in Japanese) & Ren is my bias wrecker.

[herrscherofmagic]

the funniest (and saddest) thing about this is that it wouldn't even be the first time that Honkai 3rd lost its "original vision"

Like, HI3rd was literally designed to be "GGZ, but now in 3D!", so much so that they didn't even include a proper introduction to the world-building or characters. You're literally NEVER told what Honkai is or is supposed to be in the game itself.

HI3rd never really had a solid foundation to build its story off of. It's always been "random bullshit, go!"

And yet, even in the newer chapters (at least up to the Moon Arc), the writers were still using some of the same fundamental concepts in the story. It's just that the presentation was changed so much, and the old story stuff was so poorly written & easy to forget, that I'm sure most people probably never noticed it.

(warning: incredibly long ranting ahead)

For example (and no, I will never shut up about this), all the funky stigma/digital-realm/dream stuff that Elysian Realm and the Moon Arc had?

We've seen all of that before... in Sakura Samsara.

At the very start of the game!!

The entire concept of stigma spaces being analogous to a sort of "dream", the ability of a stigma to store memories and act as a source of power, the whole "discarding the physical self to move the spiritual self into a stigma space" thing... ALL OF IT. We've seen it already! It was in the game from the earliest versions!

Sakura Samsara takes place in a stigma space, but it was constantly presented as (and even referred to) as a "dream" (or nightmare, in many cases).

The stigma is also derived from a PE Herrscher Authority and it's theoretically supposed to give Theresa powers, although the writers addressed this with the patented Hoyoverse special skill: Pretend It Doesn't Exist And Hope Nobody Notices You Abandoned This [character/setting/theme/plot point]

We even see Sakura give up her physical body in order to transfer the stigma to Theresa, and then by the end of the story Sakura rejects the opportunity to leave the stigma space and instead stays in the happy dream with Higokumaru and Kallen. Basically, she's one of the folks that would've been perfectly content with Project Stigma.

But Sakura Samsara is so, so, so janky and its story is hard to understand for several different reasons.

The story is split 50/50 between manga and gameplay with a vague and ambiguous connection. The gameplay is super dated, the story had few if any proper cutscenes, and the best part is that the entire ending to Sakura Samsara is just... gone. Because the last part of the story was told via the co-op raids, a system that's now been removed.

I think there's a lot of parts where we can question just what exactly the writers meant to do with the story (see: Elysia being introduced in a very ambiguous and mysterious manner and them almost immediately pivoting to be flawless in the latter half of ER). It's far from perfect, after all.

However, it's even worse when you can see that the writers have tried to keep some of the same core themes from the earliest part of the game. But because of the game's age and the many holes in this game's worldbuilding and story foundation, they struggled to convey those themes properly.

The technobabble and excess philosophizing certainly doesn't help either >.>

This is one of the many reasons I've been putting so much mental effort into planning out and drafting up honkai AUs (so much so to the point that I've effectively connected several different AUs into one large overarching plot).

I want to try and tell a story of Honkai 3rd, but a story that actually explores the fundamental themes that make this game special.

As one example of what I mean: consider Mei & her Herrscher Persona vs. Kiana and her own Hersrcher Persona. This was so underexplored in the main story, so I feel like fanfic would be a perfect way to push those themes further in their own way.

What if Kiana and Mei were separated early in their relationship, and they both ended up developing a different relationship with their "other self"?

What if Kiana became bitter and detached and began to fall into the clutches of Honkai, even allying with HoV?

On the other hand, what if Mei's Herrscher persona received the compassion she needed to live peacefully alongside Raiden Mei, sharing their power together?

What would happen when Kiana and Mei reunite long after their first separation, but are now mortal enemies because they've each embraced the power of Honkai in a different way, leading to an irreconcilable chasm between them?

Of course, the canon story wouldn't go that far, nor do I think it should. This whole Kiana vs. Mei idea is squarely in the realm of fanfic.

But the idea of "using an alternate scenario to introduce and explain the concept of Honkai" has already been done... by Mihoyo themselves, in the Second Key manga.

The Second Key manga is pretty much Honkai 3rd's "Chapter 0". Durandal experiences Su's life via fabricated memories in a dream created by the 2nd Divine Key, and we as the reader follow her along in this journey. Durandal effectively relives the past of Su's life, encountering Honkai radiation & sickness, then seeing Honkai beasts for the first time, then fighting off a Herrscher.

That manga, which is optional side content not found in the in-game main story chapters of Honkai 3rd, does a better job of being an introduction to the game than the actual intro chapters, with the Selene mission and St. Freya exams.

The in-game story never explains those things, while the Second Key manga explains them perfectly.

yeah. you can see why I've been putting so much thought into this, and why it can be so frustrating.

So many of the fundamental pieces are already present in the story; they're just disjoint, or poorly written or hidden behind janky or removed gameplay, etc.

Some of it isn't even officially translated, meaning the CN/JP fanbase and the rest of the world effectively get two different stories; one version with the backstory of Fu Hua & Sushang, of Bianka, and of AE, and another version without all that backstory.

But even though it's frustrating to think about it, I genuinely love so much about this game and its setting and characters.

So I come up with all these ideas for fanfiction because I want to see what I can do with all the building blocks Mihoyo's writers have left strewn about.

I love exploring AUs, but it's especially enjoyable with the added challenge of trying to decipher the mysteries and worldbuilding of Honkai 3rd and then taking that knowledge and using it to reconstruct a sort of simulacrum of the canon story.

It's the challenge of creating an alternate story which touches on so many of the original themes, but pushes them further and embraces the stories of characters who were often neglected (Wendy, Sin Mal) or whose stories were never properly told (Himeko, Theresa).

It also gives me the opportunity to practice some of the basics of storywriting. I've spent countless hours brainstorming and reviewing my own ideas over and over and over, constantly readjusting things to try and make it feel more coherent.

I'm constantly asking myself "is this something that X character would truly say? How would Y character really respond to that? What does this action & reaction mean for the rest of the story moving forward? Is there a solid build-up leading up to this moment?"

Since I already have canon material to reference, I have a sort of guide to help me answer these questions, but I also have the freedom to deviate from that canon.

Although, I do try and make sure any deviation is justified in some way. Like I wouldn't randomly swap a person's entire personality without a serious investment into making that swap happen in a natural way.

For instance, if I wanted to write "evil Kiana teams up with HoV", it'd take a TON of work to throw enough trauma at Kiana while also taking away all the support she has in the canon story. It'd probably take Kiana being separated from Mei, being estranged from Theresa, never meeting or getting along with Bronya, etc. That sort of effort is necessary (in the type of story I want to write) in order to take Kiana, a person with such a strong sense of justice, and justify a scenario in which she tosses all her morals aside.

I've also had so, so many crappy/absurd ideas, but by revising them over and over I've been able to rework them into serviceable story concepts which actually feel justified by the prior build-up and which make good use of Honkai 3rd's worldbuilding.

Though of course not all fanfic has to be that serious. I'm just an absolute tryhard, lmao

well... HI3rd's never gonna get fixed, but at least we have the power of daydreaming and fanfic to reject Mihoyo's reality and substitute it with our own /hj

I wish I had more to show when it comes to all this talk of a drastic AU, but for now it's almost entirely hidden away in the realm of my daydreaming T_T

me with Honkai Impact 3rd

I seriously cannot stress enough just how much frickin time ive spent thinking about the many ways this game could be better

if Mihoyo could just fix the many many flaws with its story and gameplay and optimization and UI and coop and voice acting and translation and character models and animations and—