#its like. i have a fun time Playing them even if objectively the story isn't great

[starbornsoulrider]

not "completely obsessed w/ SSO's main story", not "stopped caring about it cause it's all really badly written", but a secret third thing: taking the stuff we do get that i enjoy and putting it into the weird ass complex sso rewrite im formulating in my brain

[lupunsus]

i want to write fluff. i (you people) need to remember the good sides of this au (non-existent) because yanderes can be nice (questionable)

Anyway, amputated mouse reader with Al-Haitham and Kaveh bc i finished the story quest, and they're literally fucking each other every other day istg

based on genshin hybrid au idea by @cinnamonest

while writing this, it was pure fluff... but my demons whispered in my ear, so there's nsfw in it. im sorry, but my resolve is weak against poly relationship with Kaveh and Al-Haitham.

warning: masturbation, the hybrid is actually the pervert in this one, a bit of angst bc hybrid thinks they aren't good enough to be sandwiched between two hot men despite being loved lots but they want their pp even though they know nothing about having sex with a human

Kaveh is too kind, really.

If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have had such a warm and loving home that cared deeply for you. Having the part of your leg below the knee taken away by bad people with awful traps was sad, but Kaveh and his partner, Al-Haitham, made sure to make you forget about that problem!

Of course, sometimes they argued about things relating to you.

"You claim to be so smart, but what's smart about giving them a pegleg?!" Kaveh glared at Al-Haitham while holding you in his arm. The other held out the object, dropping it in front of the gray-haired man. It was cute to see you hobble around at first. But then you fell over, and tears started to form in your eyes. You were so adorable!! But also, you should never be in pain while under the care of Kaveh and Al-Haitham!! You were fine, just a small bruise, but being the overreacting person he is, Kaveh had to make a big deal out of it.

To others, it would seem like he was making the situation sound worse than it is, but Al-Haitham is just like him. He's just a quiet worrier.

"I suppose I should readjust some things. If I were to buy some parts–"

"Peglegs are unnecessary when we can just carry [Name] around!"

"But then they'd have to crawl around the house if we aren't home."

"We'll put soft rugs down!!"

It's a good thing Dori resides in Sumeru. Her nose can smell potential customers all the way to the desert, but the biggest spenders are always Akademiya students. So when it comes to needing supplies for hybrids, Dori's the one to go to!

But that's a lot of soft rugs. What are you raising? A baby? It's okay. Dori won't ask, just hand over the mora. Thank you~

If anyone were to see Al-Haitham and Kaveh while they lugged a load of rugs to their place, they'd assume Kaveh was getting help with a new project. Nobody knows about the lucky little mouse waiting inside, as the rugs are for them. "Thank you masters! [Name] likes a lot!!" The texture was indeed fluffy and soft. One could wrap themselves up and sleep inside of one. That's how cozy it felt.

It's a shame that the pegleg would sit in storage to collect dust. Maybe one day it'll have its use.

Days when Kaveh is out and Al-Haitham is home are the best days. Why? The two of you do absolutely nothing. You make yourself comfy on top of him and take a nice long nap. Sometimes Al-Haitham will read to you, teaching you some words and whatnot. His voice is nice, however, so most of the time, he looks down to see you drooling all over his chest while deep in slumber. It's the main reason why he stopped wearing shirts during those times. Too much of a hassle to wash them. Kaveh doesn't complain, even doing the same.

Both of their chests make for good pillows, and their skin is always so warm. You definitely start drooling more when you're sleeping on them.

Kaveh is fun to be around, too!

He's made some toys for you to play with, but he doesn't mention how Al-Haitham helped. You didn't ask, so technically, he isn't lying to you. Do you know those cat wheels? Kind of big, enough for a human, maybe if they were to crouch down. Anyway, Kaveh made that for you! A nice little wheel to run to your little heart's content. It's super cute seeing you use it, especially when you get tired.

You just lay there in a puddle of exhaustion, and he takes the opportunity to scratch and nuzzle his face in your tummy. If you're ticklish, you try to push him off, but you're too tired to do so. Kaveh rewards you with treats and stuff to chew on, so it balances itself out. Plus, his belly rubs feel good.

Honestly, living with them makes you forget that you're missing half of your leg.

Almost.

You're a bit clumsy, especially when both of them are busy. During those times, they tend to leave a lot of things laying about. Books, well mainly stacks of books, but there's also occasionally some other stuff. And with how often Kaveh and Al-Haitham redecorate the place, things that are usually in a position you're used to are inevitably moved, and objects put in hard to reach places.

So when you trip or hurt yourself because of it, it's hard not to let a few tears fall. Would it be easier if you had two healthy legs? Of course, it'd be easier to balance yourself with two legs instead of one and a half. These negative thoughts start to spiral until you think about how useless you are to your masters.

All hybrids in shelters know that their purpose is to serve and please their masters. You weren't a stranger to the knowledge, even hearing of how if the hybrid is good, they'll be treated the same and even receive assistance during their... spring season.

But you're damaged goods! Unused, but still damaged! You require more care than the average hybrid, needing special attention and accommodations because of your small size. Neither of the men touched you in that way. Instead, they gave you space and sometimes left the house.

You could smell their scents on each other.

Why were you even here if they had each other to pleasure? You were grateful to even have such a nice home, but what were you to them? A pet? Or worse... an experiment? You've heard stories of fellow rodents being used for tests and experiments. They weren't harmed, but they weren't as loved as other hybrids in homes.

Ah, maybe you were a charity case.

A poor little mouse with half a leg missing. Nobody would want them as caring for them is so expensive, and you'd need to rearrange furniture and make the entire place practically baby proof. Perhaps you were a child to them. But you're definitely past that age! And what will happen to you if they do manage to conceive one? It's unheard-of for a male hybrid to get pregnant, but there are rare cases of it happening. Some can happen with the intervention of researchers, but only psychopaths (Dottore) would experiment with that.

Well, whatever. You're exhausted after overthinking and making yourself insecure and depressed.

The two men you loved with your entire being said they would be out late, but were they just having fun without you? Ah, you already told yourself to stop assuming things and thinking negatively, but it was hard. You wanted to be with them, too! Even during those times... There was only one thing that could help clear away these negative thoughts.

That's right. Stealing.

Borrowing would be a better word. You always put their clothes back! ...With the dirty clothes. Kaveh would be confused, not recalling wearing some of them, but blamed it on the alcohol. Al-Haitham made Kaveh do laundry, so he never spoke about it. He did express his impatience at how Kaveh takes forever to wash clothes, but that was it. They wouldn't think that their precious little mouse was to blame for the misunderstanding and confusion.

You'll never know it, but they think you're incapable of doing anything without them. Of course, you get exercise from your wheel, but they still feed, bathe, and clothe you (you're mainly naked unless they have guests over) with their own hands. The only things you should be doing without them are running on the wheel and chewing on your toys.

Going back to your session of "borrowing," it was usually something you did during the day when they were out, but since they're out late, you figured stealing more clothes of theirs again wouldn't get you caught. If they were doing what you thought they were doing, the two of them would get back home when the sun started rising.

So, you had plenty of time to make a nest in your hidden corner and masturbate while being surrounded by their scent.

It was really well hidden! Plus, you still had some clothes from earlier today, so the nest would just be cozier, and the smell of them would be even stronger. There really was nothing better than burying your face in their clothes while getting yourself off. It only helped to fuel your dirty desires.

Would they take you at the same time? You were confident that you stretched yourself to take both of them (you are definitely not), even using 3 fingers instead of 2! Surely, they'll both fit. But would they take turns instead? Impossible. They bicker so often that you think one of them will get impatient. And then there comes with that thing humans do. Kissing? You've only ever received forehead kisses from Kaveh, but you wanted more than that. Both men thought they were secret in kissing each other, and even if they weren't, they explained it as a way to share energy even if they both were out of breath afterward.

That was what you wanted. You wanted to give all your energy to them. To be drained until there was nothing left to give, even if they were insistent and shared with you their energy just so they could take it back.

"M-Masters...!" It was a relief that you came before your arm became weak. For some reason, you could only bring yourself to cum twice before your wrist felt numb. Maybe you needed to exercise more, you didn't know. You were still sensitive, so you opted to grind against their clothes to reach another high.

On any other day, you'd feel horrible for getting the clothes of your Masters dirty with your essence (or, as you like to call it, your love for them), but you were upset for always being left out! And they'd always tease you too. Going around the house topless. You have to hold back from pouncing on them and rubbing your nipples against theirs. You've done it before when sleeping on Al-Haitham's chest, but that time was an accident. It felt really good, though...

And the material of their clothes rubbing against them now felt incredible, but you really wanted to feel their hands and bodies against them. To have them pinched and squeezed even though no milk would come out. You heard hybrids can lactate if their nipples are squeezed and sucked periodically, so maybe if you play with them every day, you can give them a nice surprise.

Milk is delicious, after all!

Bringing yourself to the edge for the sixth time, you collasped onto the nest, exhausted from grinding against clothes. At most, you could only last three rounds, but this is an improvement! Humans generally go for seven rounds, so you are really close! But you're so tired... do humans really do it so many times? Their stamina sure is amazing.

You had time before your masters came back, so a nap wouldn't hurt. Plus, you were very hidden in this corner! Even if you overslept, they wouldn't be able to find you. You even threw a blanket over pillows on the couch just in case :) You've seen Kaveh do it, so it'll definitely trick them into thinking you're asleep.

It truly is unfortunate that you think you could outsmart two Akademiya graduates.

Al-Haitham is used to Kaveh's tricks, so he immediately knows you're hiding. You haven't figured out how to unlock the door, and there's even another few locks that you can't reach even if you manage to figure it out. Windows are too complicated to unlock for you, too. It's while he's narrowing down possibilities that Kaveh is calling out for you, thinking you were playing hide and seek, but fell asleep while waiting for them.

Kaveh thinks it's adorable and fun to look for the obvious tail sticking out from behind something. It isn't until Al-Haitham notices some of their clothes sticking out from underneath a table in the corner that he knows where you are and what you've been doing. How could he not? You practically begged them and threw a fit just to keep the table in its spot. It wasn't really hidden, but nobody would notice if someone or something were under it.

Calling over his partner, they looked to see you slumbering on top of their clothes, using their shirts as blankets. It would've been a cutely innocent sight if not for the fact you hadn't cleaned yourself up. "They've used more clothes than usual, but their heat is 3 weeks away.." Al-Haitham gently rubbed the inside of your thigh, causing your body to shift. Kaveh moved some of the shirts aside to see your reddened nipples perked up. He wanted to pinch them, but he settled on flicking one, smiling when you mumbled incoherently and squirmed a bit in your sleep. "Maybe they missed us~ We were out longer this time."

"Because someone can't play cards."

"I'd like to see you beat Cyno in less than 7 rounds!"

Realizing his mistake, both men looked towards you as you shifted. "Masters...." Nuzzling your face into their clothes, you let out a content sigh as their comforting smell seemed to be stronger than usual as if they were beside you.

"My skill is not provoking him. You'd have lost in 4 rounds if you had drank alcohol." This time, Kaveh chose to glare at Al-Haitham. The reason he didn't drink tonight was so that he'd be sober enough to remember being welcomed home by someone much cuter and nicer than the Acting Grand Scribe. But seeing you curled up in a nest of their clothes is definitely better.

Al-Haitham only sighed at the sight. "They took the pants I was going to wear tomorrow this time. I'll have to start hiding clothes I need."

"Wait, you knew they were the reason our clothes ended up in the laundry so often?" Al-Haitham only gave Kaveh a look that screamed, "Was it not obvious?" before rearranging the clothes to cover your entire body so you wouldn't get cold. If you weren't peacefully sleeping right in front of them, Kaveh would have yelled some very mean things at Al-Haitham. But that could wait for another day.

After all, they've left their cute little mouse waiting too long.

[wifflum]

Video games that suck and why they suck

Dark Souls spawned a wonderful genre with an excellent, new (besides Demon's Souls), combat system that has been improved to have everything you could think of asking for, by games like Stellar Blade. Dark Souls, even though it was first, however, sucks. Here's why it sucks.

Dark Souls was made by a self-proclaimed masochist who said, about the game, "these are ways I would like to die," and then set the entire game design team to the objective of killing the player at every opportunity. It's like hostile architecture as a video game. The game is trying to kill you at almost every step, but it had this amazing new combat system, so that was tolerated. Now the blind sheep that are the masses worship it.

Elden Ring and Sekiro, on the other hand, did not have this incredibly sadistic touch to them, and are far more fun to actually play. And these trainwrecks who love Dark Souls would say it's a skill issue, to not enjoy crawling your way to the next death spot like it's progression in Final Fantasy XIV raids only through a fu**ing level, let alone the boss fights, and would blame the victim of literal and admitted game design sadism.

Red Dead Redemption, Spiderman, God of War, and also Grand Theft Auto (at least the campaign) and Uncharted-- all of these games also suck. This is because they are not made with gameplay in mind, because the target audience hardly gives a sh** about gameplay and just wants an interactive movie. They are, as a popular and often contrarian video game critic put it, "ghost train rides". They are theme park attractions that are purely there to entertain from a distance, and not really to be interacted with like you would expect from a video game. Gameplay is secondary, and it's often almost tertiary it's so far from being considered important. That is why these games suck.

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Another somewhat extensive area for video games to suck in, is the Fallout and Elder Scrolls type of games. These games, instead of making story so fu**ing primary that gameplay, the whole point of video games existing at all, is ignored, do the exact same thing with their open-worlds and RPG mechanics. Just imagine a turn-based game like Final Fantasy 7, only the gameplay that can actually kind of stand on its own is actually gameplay that sucks co** and could never stand on its own.

----------------------------

I play video games for combat. To have fun and display skill. Everything else is set dressing for that one primary thing, and games that suck either intentionally obstruct fun combat, like Dark Souls does, or might as well not even include it it's so bad.

-----------------------------

Some other games that suck are fighting games, because in order to get your ration of 3 seconds of neutral game per match, which might be pretty good but in my experience isn't anything to write to my girlfriend in jail about, you have to spend 8 million hours mastering filler moves that waste both players time and just drop the health bars to what they might as well be at the start, which is 3 hits until death.

Tactical RPGs are not that bad, I don't think, but dear God are they stressful sometimes. It's also slow and can get tiresome unless you personally are slow and tired and prefer that pace over action games.

First Person Shooters need defense options other than fu**ing sprint or better offense (throwing a flashbang is an offense action, as is laying a mine) for every situation, which Remnant: From the Ashes really put in sharp relief.

MOBAs, like League of Legends, need to be done differently rather than copying a game that had a barely passing grade on its combat system (DOTA 1 on Warcraft 3) because it took it from an strategy game where you're supposed to be spending 3/4 of your time managing your base and resources and only fighting a small portion of the time. Battleborn actually showed what MOBAs are capable of to some degree, although it didn't have dodges or anything, but got overshadowed by Overwatch which everyone either immediately regretted or regrets now since Overwatch is agony to play.

One game that largely sucked but did not entirely suck, contrary to what everyone and their goldfish will tell you, was Anthem. At one point it had a triple jump, triple dodge, comboing melee character that could frontflip into sniping something in the head or spraying it with submachine gun fire. Yes, that was motherfu**ing Anthem that had that, in the Interceptor Javelin, though the people in the other Javelins did not look to be having much fun.

The last games that suck, which I think everyone largely knows they suck, are Ubisoft games. Now Far Cry isn't that bad, because it still has a reasonable focus on gameplay, but Assassin's Creed games have combat that is almost as ass as Rockstar games' gameplay.

Just, all you have to do, lol, is take some reasonable approximation of soulslike combat, with an actual functional deflect if you include one, unlike Rise of the Ronin, and do whatever your little gimmick is on top of that. People will fall over themselves saying how amazing it is. Just make ACCEPTABLE gameplay with whatever your horsesh** is that your audience of nitwits loves, and it will be something as if from an advanced society in the future.

Although, I personally think the window for that is closing and it wouldn't be jaw-dropping anymore, with soulslikes branching out so much. All we really need now is a soulslike MMO and that'll be the kitchen sink, and I think it's rapidly approaching. All I would ask of someone doing that is that you model the PvP after Guild Wars 1 Random Arenas, and you'd have to study that pretty extensively because there's a lot of nuance that made it so good, but it was namely an extreme difficulty to combat, like you'd get from a PvE game set to Insanity difficulty, somehow enveloping the PvP experience.

----------------------

Anyway, that's how video games of today almost all suck. And it's because they're not really video games; they're either like a simulation of something, traveling or getting stronger, or just straight-up a movie, with video gameyness slapped onto the side like a sticker, with about as much effort put into the application. The games that are good, as video games and not interactive media, which is what a lot of these things should be distinguished as, ask the user to display skill and they make that display enjoyable and varied. There's a million ways to screw up the execution of that design or to excel at it, but only a few games even set that objective of good combat as an actual goal.

But, if it makes makes money it's fine how it is, fu** foresight and artistic integrity, and we must all keep churning out pig slop to the pigs.

[nugulover69]

I too am a member of the Taiya-hater club and every episode I question why I'm not dropping this show until they show me scraps of Mira or Agent Shirabe or the Three Idiots, but I think from now on I'll be fastforwarding through new eps just for them. My only sentai are Zenkai and halfway through Donbros so being forced to watch Boonboom Red as the main character is like beibg fed cardboard after a pizza.

Oh man. if your only sentai experience is zenkai and donbros, two very experimental and Not A Typical Sentai sentais, yeah boonboom must hit a real sour note since its a return to basics lol

I personally wouldn't call it bad so far, a solid B+ imo, but Taiya is def the weakest character, and his blandness is only more evident whenever an episode is focused on him

I can suggest some good sentais that are more typical in structure for you to watch in the future:

Gokaiger- the core team is phenomenal here, bursting with personality and incredible chemistry between each of them. this IS an anniversary sentai, meaning past rangers are constantly showing up to be apart of the plot, but you do NOT need to have seen their shows to get the gist and have a fun time. you're following the gokaigers and their character arcs are always the main focus. plus they're aliens (space pirates even) that don't know jackshit abt Earth, so you and them are on the same level of knowledge lol

Idk why folks don't recommend this as a starter sentai more often. it was my first ever sentai and I picked the next sentais I watched based on how entertained I was by a past characters appearance. its how I watched go-onger and carranger (and liveman but I don't wanna talk abt that)

Also Marvelous is best red. this is an objective fact we as a community all agree on, even if he's not our own personal favorite red

Speaking of go-on

Go-onger- the canon, main strength of this team is their stupidity. VERY CARTOONY, heavy on hijinks, light on serious plot (it was written by a veteran kids anime writer and boy can you tell). if you like loud genki kinda assholeish shonen protags than you'll love the red Sosuke. if you don't...perhaps skip this one lol. Sosuke is a biiiig make or break of someone's enjoyment of go-on. the villains are great tho, very team rocket, kinda like the Sanseaters in boonboom

(and its a much better car sentai. Speedor is there all the time. boonboom only has Speedor for one episode. I rest my case)

Zyuohger- if you need an animal sentai under your belt, this is the best one. the red, Yamato, does get more focus than the rest of the team (many more power ups as well) but he's a likeable character played by a guy who can actually act. GREAT VILLAINS, they evolve over time as well and I can't say much w/o spoiling things, but I'll just say Genis caused his own demise

Also I haven't seen donbros but I know the donbros sixth is deranged, so if you need more deranged sixths in your life you should watch zyuoh for Misao

Gekiranger- if you really love serialized story telling and characters growing and changing and all that, I cannot recommend geki enough. in a lot of sentai, the weapons are usually just found or given, which isn't inherently a bad thing but I can see why someone wouldn't care for that. every weapon and power up the gekis get is always earned thru them overcoming some obstacle, literal or figurative, so its that much more rewarding when the new Marketable Touy is used

Also they're kung fu fighting cats. did I mention they're kung fu fighting cats. the red was raised in the woods and literally acts like a feral animal most of the time. he does mellow out over the course of the show, but honestly if someone doesn't like Jan from the jump I don't trust them (he has CRAZY yaois with the main villain Leo btw)

[mikodrawnnarratives]

I wonder what both films would look like if we swapped when Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast were made

I know that how the female protagonist's personality for each of these films was heavily influenced by the standards for women and feminism wave, but thats not really what i mean by "what would it be like if they were swapped"

If they kept their personalities, cinderella isn't "girlboss-ified", belle doesn't have any more minor of a role in her story, what would it look like?

Belle with a Cinderella's sort of accent (the old timey recording sound y'know?) How the backgrounds would look in the painted style they did at the time, in general Belle in Cinderella's art style would be interesting. I bet the animations for the servants as objects would be styalized in a fun way

Cinderella isn't as hard to imagine since Cinderella 3 provides a pretty good depiction of cinderella with a more modern take, but i wonder if the romance would play out differently and with more screentime. This hypothetical im thinking would have as little changes to the plot structure as possible, but i do like imagining how cinderella and the prince could be shown together, if he'd pick up on her home life at all, show through their dialogue them falling in love instead of a montage, etc.

Just a thought

(i haven't watched the live action cinderella movie from 2015 but even if i did this is swapping 2D films dates 1991 and 1950 just in case anyone mentions it)

(i've heard good things about its improvement on the og movie but i don't care about live action)

[insane-weasel]

Me, with the objectively worst opinion: Oh...I liked the idea of a QPR Lila x Five.

I'm only halfway through S4, but I like it over S3. (Victor's son caused me to mentally block out like 90% of S3)

Review so far:

Luther's plot: 3/10. I'd love for him to stop being the butt of the joke.

Diego: 0/10. Horrible. You're going to make him a dad and tell me he is not like a super loving and caring father and show me any of that????? Why???? Is he always treated so bad by the plot. Stop making fun of him ffs. Oh, he's barely even chubby, but make fun of his weight. Oh, he's kind of concerned his wife doesn't love him...when she doesn't....make him seem paranoid and in the wrong when...like??? What? WTF is Diego's character.

Allison: 6/10 Thank you for not sticking with Allison is the bad guy...though why throwing any character progression...uh what's with her and Claire??? Are they gonna expand on the last 6 years??? Why 6 years??? Hello??? Anyway, her plot is passable so far. Not best, but....not S3 which is a win

Victor: Only solid 7/10 because he's really hitting me-core. Only characterization I'm kinda on board with. Actually, yeah, have Victor living a really moderate life at a bar. I think he should take you another instrument that isn't the violim. Though not a fan of how they're depicting his powers. I liked the more ethereal powers. Though no on Victor having failed relationships. He needs an awkward cute romance like Sissy? WTF was with that whole beginning? Like...anyway.

Five: 2/10 I don't hate it. But it is the worst five plot thus far IMO.

Ben: 5/10. Actually, I do think Sparrow Ben would be arrogant enough to be in Crypto. I don't like Sparrow Ben, but his depiction tracks. Still wish we could...have OG Ben........Second thought, hate Sparrow Ben. Though whatever, love interest, okay.

Lila: ...1?/10 I feel like the one person who didn't like Diego x Lila, and didn't think she'd settle down. I like a QPR with her and Five. However--How they're handling this? Awful. Also, her powers????? No more mimic. Boooooooooooo.

Klaus: 2/10 I wanted them to go angst with Klaus' immortality, but...ughh. Compulsive cleanliness and over anxiety about common fears is a legitimate way paranoia can develop...as a person with those kinda issues, but they do not depict them in any. Like I'm going to be honest, when you do have those fears to that level...you aren't sober or if you are...you're not looking well. But forget all that crap, why couldn't we have whatever story was Klaus bonding with Allison and helping raise Claire. Why was that the plot we had to be told about rather than shown????$

Other thoughts:

-Gene and Jean are like...10/10. Solid villains. Love em. Costume, actors, quirks--great.

-OH. My. God. Can Reginald stoooooop being a character.

-Music and set designs are a 10/10, costumes this season and apparel is a 2/10. What are some of these looks????

-Uh...The plot is kinda...feels like a fanfic that the author continues after 6 years, half-assed and wings, and has no love for the source material. Some parts seem so lazy. The stakes feel weak. There's traces of a great story...buried in there.

Overall, my theory for what happened: Umbrella Academy leaned into its comic book elements in the worst way possible. For that to have worked, a cohesive and fully fleshed out plot would need to be in place first then followed by a style of editing, composition and mise-en-scene, and then characters can play into cartoon styles.

The editing and filming have not changed between seasons. There's no style. Actually, they've gotten worse. The camera angles are painfully standard. If you wanted comic book, that camera needs to be at some different angles, but no, 3/4, eye level, always capturing same length. Whoever directed this? For shame. You don't use the foreground. You don't use the background. Everything happens on the same level and has the same amount of presence on screen. It screams "no time for flare, let's just get this done!"

So many of the BTS/production elements feel...rushed. If that wasn't the case, if this didn't have a painfully short filming timeline and they didn't have severe restraints compared to the last seasons...than...no one had any love for the series anymore.

[eldritchamy]

A question for Uneiverse (to give you an excuse to talk about it, only if you wanna. Since I also just really hearing about it). What's a detail about it that you really enjoy but haven't gotten a chance to use anywhere story related or otherwise just don't get to play with much (silly or serious)

This ask has been sitting in my inbox for over 5 months.

It's time.

And so, we begin with a question of my own.

What IS time?

We're off the map now. Come with me. Take my hand as we walk through the valley of the shadow of time. We're going to uncharted waters, and I'm going to put the fear of god into you. I'm going to make you ask yourself (and me) Amy, how the fuck does you brain WORK like that?

Let me tell you about time and fate, and about what it means to "predict" the future.

And you will begin to understand the scale of what lives within me, eternally gnawing at the inside of my skull, begging for release.

If I asked you to conceptualize time, what would you say? Is it the neat and rigid tick-tick-ticking of regular intervals on the clock? Is is the fluid, indivisible space between?

Is is all just an illusion conceived by the animal brain to account for the changing shape of the universe as one dimension passes through another, which our three-dimensional eyes are too flat to see all at once, and our souls have concocted for us a comforting lie, that we may pretend to know the universe in its whole, by knowing it piece by infinitesimal, grinding piece, seeing the pan-dimensional amalgam of existence as an endless, continuous sequence of cross-sections in a number of dimensions our meat-circuitry can pretend to process?

Time is shadows.

Imagine, if you will, a sphere.

You hold it up against the light. Suspend it in the air, perhaps, for simplicity's sake. And the sphere casts a shadow.

Is the shadow still a sphere?

Far more importantly, is it even a circle?

At even the tiniest fraction of an angle, the sphere casts a shadow that no longer perfectly represents a cross section of the sphere. It has ceased to perfectly capture the nature of the object that cast the shadow, even accounting for the wrong number of dimensions. It's skewed. You can never unskew it. The distortion is irreversible.

And the floor isn't flat.

The sphere casts a shadow at an angle at a surface that ranges in distance and direction from the object casting the shadow. Is the shadow still an oval? Has it become a shape you can't name?

But the shadow isn't cast upon a floor, even an uneven one.

What shape is the shadow of a sphere cast at an angle upon a field of grass blowing in the wind? By now there's no pretending you know the answer. And even if you could snapshot a single instant of a single shape, the very next instant that shape would change in the breeze as the grass shifts.

The world is not a field of grass upon the ground. The world is endless variation of leaves upon trees, forests upon mountains, birds in the sky, hunting for the bugs that crawl on the branches of the trees. Massive floating pools of water churning in the low atmosphere as humans decide whether that one looks like a mouse or a sheep. So many humans walking, their clothes flowing behind them as they talk, eat, buy goods, shed tiny particles of skin and hair into the wind, their breath adding chaos to that same wind and a hundred miles away a leaf turns slightly more to the left than if that human had said nothing.

What is the shadow of a sphere cast upon that world? Twisted by its unfathomable complexity of shapes and movement?

And now, to make things worse, imagine if that shadow were a tangible thing that you could pick up. That could cast its own shadow not on the floor but up against the wall.

And all of that is if the shadow is cast by a perfect sphere.

Imagine you are a being that can see the shape of time. Could you look at the echo of a shadow of a shadow of a reflection in a fun house mirror, and recreate what it once was?

Could you look at a crooked set of lines upon the wall and know the meaning of cause and consequence? Could you predict what consequences of which actions would lead to favorable outcomes when realization dawns on you that

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖕𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖘 𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖙𝖍, 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖎𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖘𝖔. 𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞. 𝖍𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖗𝖞.

Time is an ocean of possibility. Each possibility has consequences. Each consequence a sea of new possibilities. How can you hope to understand the shadow of a shadow of a shadow, and not only know what's coming, but how to stop it?

Nothing is fated. But I said something important that bears repeating. Time is an OCEAN. We'll come back to that.

Time MOVES, at least the way we perceive it. I don't like the phrase "everything happens for a reason." I prefer something of my own creation: for every effect, a cause. To achieve a desired effect - a desired outcome - you must change the circumstances of cause that lead to that effect. But there are limits to your influence.

The time to change the course of a river is when the river is still small. The longer that river runs its course, the deeper it shapes and erodes the ground around it. The larger and faster a river the harder it is to redirect it. It will go where it's going, and there's nothing you can do about it. There is an element of momentum that must be accounted for. An element of inevitability.

The path of one person's life, one set of choices available to them in one specific context, may feel perhaps like the current of a river, when you look back on it. But if different changes were made during its formation, it could have taken a completely different path. Ended in a completely different place. And influenced the formation of completely different paths in the future as a result.

But I'll say it again, and you'll know its significance now: time is an OCEAN. It is not a river, but an IMMENSE network of currents with no clearly defined borders, flowing with or against or around each other in an unimaginably complex churning of possibility and consequence and cause and effect. A shift in one current may brush up against another. The second current may shift with it, or crash violently into it, or ignore it entirely.

For every effect, a cause. But for every CAUSE, many POSSIBLE effects.

So time becomes a series of choices beyond number. Each choice leading to fathomless changes in the flow. As the earth turns, some currents flow inevitably in certain directions. If not here, then somewhere else. SOME CHANGES ARE INESCAPABLE.

The universe must be dynamic. If nothing changed, the universe would not need to exist at all. Change is the point. Variance is the point. Choice is the point. The universe exists to know itself, and it knows itself through change.

There is an endless sea of currents flowing in various ways with, beside, against, around each other. Some directions of flow are strongly influenced by the shape of the seafloor and the rotation of the earth. There are changes in the world that are virtually guaranteed to exist, whether because the nature of the universe has made them inevitable, or because changes long past have created the currents that are now too old and too deep to change.

Picture a river again. What happens when you throw a stick into it? The stick is swept up in the current and carried along the river.

Throw in more sticks. Same thing, right? You can make small changes without affecting the overall outcome. Within one large shadow of a sphere, the details of a hundred blades of grass whose shadows are lost within the larger shape.

Anchor a large stick to the riverbed so it can't get swept away. Now, it's just one stick. The water will flow around it. There are small ripples. Tiny changes in the river, micro-currents that will affect a localized area. But on the whole? The river still flows. You changed something. But you didn't change the course of the river.

Add stick after stick after stick until the river is obstructed completely, and the current is forced to change shape.

Which stick built the dam?

Which straw should the camel's back blame?

Back to the ocean. Can you dam the sea? Can you build that dam one stick at a time, by throwing sticks into separate currents, hoping the currents bring them where they need to be in time?

There are patterns borne out from the endless flow of possibility as the ocean of time churns. With all those ancient currents running together, what difference does the wake of a boat make on the shape of the waves? How many breaches from how many whales would it take to turn a current south instead of north?

What if you could make a bigger change? What if an avalanche altered the shape of the seafloor, so the rotation of the earth forces new waters to resist the old currents? So the inevitability of the dynamic universe drags forth a new set of possibilities?

There are a LOT of currents. They've been turning for a long, long time, ebbing and flowing with a billion tides and ten thousand quintillion waves. Choices can make new currents. BIG choices, with a lot of consequences, may even change existing ones.

But the ocean still has a geography to it. There are places where water is forced through the gaps between landmasses, or forced into the shallows, or freed to dive into the black beyond a continental shelf. There are places where, no matter how many changes you make, many currents are still guaranteed to meet.

There are fixed points in time.

What if one of those points is a whirlpool, threatening to swallow everything drawn into the place those currents meet?

What about a whirlpool on the scale of worlds and gods?

How do you keep from drowning?

How do you give yourself the best chance, not of AVOIDING the whirlpool of inevitability, but of entering it at the farthest possible edge, where the right momentum, the right decisions made in the moment you are caught in its gravity, may carry you through to the other side, so you still remain when time marches on?

Is it better to see things coming at all? Or is the ability to see time, to speak a language of the universe that no one else can speak, one of the greatest cosmic horrors you can imagine?

Imagine the burden of time on those who can see it.

Imagine the WEIGHT of being able to see those currents. Of knowing which threads of fate to pull. Of knowing which ripples to make, which waves to break, which currents to shift. Of knowing.

Imagine the complexity of figuring out WHICH changes to make. And the great leviathan of guilt left on your shoulders when the decisions you made - even in pursuit of the best possible outcome - bring harm to the ones you love most, the ones you're most desperate to protect.

Even if you're right.

Even if you played 17-dimensional chess with the wizard-addled corpse of god and knew, with certainty, that if a single problem you had a hand in creating had been resolved more neatly by even minutes, the sticks would not have fallen into place within the dam, and the entirety of creation could have been swallowed piece by piece by the horror you were trying to stop.

Imagine the horror. Imagine the responsibility. Imagine the unending, agonizing pain of the burden of Knowing.

Because what time is, most of all, is a nightmare.

And there's no waking up.

[wolfieworld]

4/6 Diary: Dead Projects

it's hard to acknowledge why something isn't working when you're in the middle of it, sometimes it's hard to even know why. There's a few plots that have been in my brain for years that I've rewritten and rewritten and rewritten with little success. I think a big part of failed projects is actually over-estimating ones own capabilities, for example I plan out mechanics that I don't have the experience to achieve, or characterization too far from my own experience that its not fun to write. I often plan out stories that require a lot of research and I feel like I can't write until I know everything-therefore most writing doesn't get done and what does is full of holes. It's kind of embarrassing to look back at stuff and just think "I didn't know what I was talking about at all."

Sometimes shit just doesn't work out. In the words of Pretty Boy Detective Club giving up on a dream can be more beautiful than achieving the dream itself.

Probably 90% of everything I try doesn't work out and it's been on my mind lately that that's a good thing. Of course in an ideal world we learn from finished works bc there are things from those you can only learn by sharing with others and by wrapping up a story and by saying goodbye to your characters but there isn't such a thing as an ideal world and everything we do we learn from whether other people see it or not. There is something special you learn from unfinished projects, the types you choose to put down forever, which is you are forced to acknowledge precisely why it could not get done.

These are all images from 2 retired vn/comic projects.

These projects are prisons for some of my best and worst writing, full of ideas with no through-line or real objective, and no real thorough understanding of these characters who I loved just collections of feelings and images and facts I thought were cool.

What is improvement? I'm not a person who looks at my old art and feels like I've gotten better at drawing, and when I look back at old writing I only really get the sense that I've become less cringe but not become a better writer. I think improvement is more esoteric than becoming better at the skills you use to express, maybe it's just knowing yourself better and playing to your strengths, and crystalizing what you want to say (or finding it in the first place). Aesthetics form naturally from writing and drawings that plainly express what they need too and they are drawn like blood from stone from work that is trying its hardest to be clever.

Personally I find these digital pages from 2020(21?) to be better drawings than anything I've done in the last two years in a technical way but it doesn't matter, I couldn't finish it, and I didn't know the characters. It's just portfolio work, it took me months to do five of them. They're just "cool shots" even though I didn't know it at the time.

As I get further into working on Youth Who Was Killed I'm noticing that cutting corners produces better results, there's more emotion in sketches so why finish a drawing, why design a logo which I'm not good at when I can use a font, why color grade the images myself when limiting the palette to one or two or three colors provides an unmuddied result? This is the kind of laziness you would think would harm 'improvement' but I've found that too much brute force is a highway to burn out, and then you're not learning anything at all.

Making art is a war against human nature I think, cavemen definitely weren't built too instinctually develop a five year plan every new years. However it becomes like less of a war when you work with your nature rather than against it. Maybe. I don't know. I really hope I don't make a blog post two years from now about why I couldn't finish YWWK. If that happens blame ren'py.

i drew my ocs in funny t shirts for the first time in my life so maybe all that stuff i said about improvement being that you become less cringe is untrue, maybe you get more cringe. thats ok with me i guess.

[stingraywipe]

What’s your top three beloved Pokemon? And if you have them— your top three most hated Pokemon?

omg hi Sofie!! :0 Get ready because I have a whole lot to say about this.

Most Beloved:

Number 1: Squirtle

My absolute favorite is squirtle. What's funny about this is I can't really pinpoint a specific reason why I like him so much. My first pokemon game was alpha sapphire, and I didn't play gen 1 until Let's Go Eevee, so it's not a nostalgia factor. I think my brain just subconsciously selected him back when I was watching the Indigo League anime in middle school. The squirtle squad showed up and my brain was like "Yeah. This guy. He's awesome. This is the one." And he has been my number 1 favorite fella ever since then, and as a consequence he is the pokemon I have the most merch of and it isn't really close.

Please keep in mind this is just what I have in my apartment where I live for college, and that I have even more stuff in my bedroom back at home. Now that I think about it, Koopa Troopa is my favorite mario character, so maybe I have an affinity for characters that are just little turtles. Either way, water is also my favorite type, which means even more bonus points for squirtle.

Number 2: Riolu

Riolu's high ranking has been somewhat of a recent development for me. I've always liked lucario, but I didn't see the light that was riolu until after I watched Pokemon Journeys. Ash's riolu was so silly and adorable, and I always felt so bubbly inside when he was on screen. This shift in my preference is probably due to me developing a major soft spot for cute characters/creatures over the past few years. Most of my favorite pokemon at this point are just little guys because of it. Anyways, the reason I like him so much is because of the aura control him and lucario are capable of. I've always loved aura as a power system; the idea of being able to harness one's own life energy and see it in others is just so cool to me. I especially like how it's established as its own concept outside of moves in pokemon, making it something super unique that only riolu's evolutionary line can take advantage of. I have a lot of lore/worldbuilding ideas for PMD that would utilize aura. For example, Milo, the protagonist of the PMD verse I've been brainstorming, on is a riolu with much stronger aura than normal due to him being a pokemon with a human soul. I have a lot of ideas for how I could use this concept to drive plot points or character arcs, and I might share more in the future if I ever get time to start solidifying a story.

By the way, Milo's partner, Lilly, is a squirtle. No way I don't give both of my two favorites the spotlight.

Number 3: Sprigatito

My love of sprigatito is really quite simple. I love cats. So much. They are easily my number one favorite animal of all time. My Instagram feed is covered in them. So imagine my excitement when I saw that one of the new generation 9 starters was a kitty. My violet team is my favorite team I've ever used in a pokemon game, and the sprigatito line is a massive part of why I love it so much. Sprigatito is adorable, and my meowscarada was so much fun to use after he evolved. On top of that, sprigatito's depiction in Pokemon Horizons makes me love it even more. It's literally just a cat. It loafs. It makes biscuits.. It gets annoyed at the mildest inconvenience. Liko squishes its beans. Plus it releases a super sweet scent when you cuddle it as a bonus. It's so perfect. It's like Game Freak was like "Yeah this is the perfect pokemon for Ray, put it in the game." I have a sprigatito character in my PMD verse named Mayple, but I can't share much about her because it would mean dropping pretty big spoilers for a plot point I have planned.

Honorable Mentions: Greninja and Ceruledge

I love ninjas. I love frogs. Greninja is both. And ceruledge is just objectively one of the coolest pokemon designs ever.

In terms of behated pokemon, I don't have many that I personally despise. It's more so that I feel indifferent about them, and I would simply prefer not to use them on my teams. Usually I don't have any real reason to dislike the ones I do hate; I think it just stems from a gut feeling. The biggest one off the top of my head is the tepig line. I don't know what it is, something just feels off about them. I also dislike incineroar. I like litten and torracat a lot, but they really dropped the ball with the final evolution for me.

That's about all I have. This was really fun to do! Thank you so much for submitting this ask. I look up to you and your work a lot, and it made my night when I got the notification. I'm still pretty new to Tumblr, so I don't know exactly how I'm supposed to do things around here. I want to try to meet more people here, but my social anxiety and tendency to overthink online interactions usually shuts down anything before it can happen. Because of that, being able to answer something simple like this means a lot!! Thank you!! :D

[hapuriainen]

Now that I've played at least one game in every Pokemon region, it is of course time for a ranking. Though note that the criteria is less based on how "good" I think the games are objectively and more on, like, vibes and such and if I have good memories of playing.

10. Sinnoh - This was the only gen I skipped when it came out because I didn't have a ds and didn't know how to emulate one, and when I finally did get one, Black & White were already out and Gen 4 was old news. But a while ago I did play Brilliant Diamond and really didn't have a good time at all. At that point everything felt extremely by-the-numbers and dated and I can't think of anything that this game offered that I didn't already get from the other titles. Some of the Gen 4 Pokemon are nice but it also has so many legendaries, which I really don't like as a concept (I mean I don't like it when the game tells me which Pokemon I'm supposed to find special and interesting). Also not a fan of the art style in the remake and I find Barry incredibly annoying.

Almost all of the BDSP customisation options were S-tier and Cynthia made for a great boss, but that's about it.

9. Kanto - I was there for the first anime episode so I have a lot of nostalgia for the early days for the franchise, even though I didn't get to play the original GB games. And when I did get Yellow on an emulator I already had Gold, which already covered Kanto so why bother? By now I've played Let's Go Eevee though and didn't really enjoy myself. The Kanto story is so nothing, and the motion controls just kill the whole thing for me. Also Trace is the worst rival character.

Most of my apathy towards Kanto is its overuse though, like the franchise has done interesting things beyond the original 151 but always when there's new forms or a major character hails from a different continent or whatever, its always Kanto and I've grown sick of it.

8. Galar - There are some characters I really like, but otherwise the Galar games felt pretty hollow. There's a lot of cool looking locations but there isn't any substance to them and you can't do anything in them, and the open area was a great concept but you can't do anything in it either. The giant forms don't do a lot for me either since I tend to prefer small and cute Pokemon so making them bigger and more ""badass"" usually doesn't work for me.

Out of all the Switch titles I like the Galar art direction best (as in how the characters look) at least.

7. Alola - I remember there being a lot of talk how the Alola games supposedly shook up the formula because they didn't have gyms, but, like, they totally had gyms, they were just outdoors and had a different name. My main memories of playing Moon are about being constantly interrupted by handholding and the unbearable Rotom Dex, and even with the setting being something completely different from usual, I barely remember anything about it. The customisation was surprisingly boring too and I couldn't care less for Z-moves or Ultra Beasts. Lillie is super cute though and Team Skull was a lot of fun and regional forms are an excellent idea, even if it was wasted on Kanto only in this generation.

6. Hoenn - I had Sapphire on an emulator and later a Alpha Sapphire, and I must say I didn't manage to finish either (I think I didn't even make it out of Mauville in that run), which is why I debated if I should put the Alola games higher just because I made it almost to the end there. But in the end I think Gen 3 did a lot more for the franchise, the berries, contests, secret bases, abilities and double battles are great. I don't have a lot of motivation to go back and finish Alpha Sapphire, all the surfing really doesn't sound inspiring, "too much water" isn't just a meme! Though maybe I should try at least.

5. Kalos - Now we get to the games where my feelings are a lot more positive. I remember being super stoked for the 3d graphics, and somehow for the fact that your character could sit down on a bench (???). The customisation is also great and roller skating was a fun way to get around. The story was pretty weak though and I really don't like the bland rival friend group. I dunno man, the more I think about it, the harder it is to think about things that actually matter to the gameplay experience that I really like, but regardless I have pretty good memories of Y.

4. Unova - White was my first game on an actual console (and not an emulator) so that alone makes it special to me. It's hard to come up with anything specific about the gameplay this time around either, but I remember having a good time, the world was fun to explore, N was a great rival and the story was good too. And the Big City of the region was amazing (and so was Kalos' for that matter) and the changing seasons made for beautiful graphics.

3. Paldea - The graphics were ugly and the performance was a mess, but I like nonlinear open world games okay? And honestly even that didn't work properly since the gym levels didn't scale and I unintentionally did the easiest gym fourth so I was stupidly overleveled, and the world wasn't that interesting to explore either. But I still had a decently good time and also the game had been patched by the time I got around to playing it so I didn't encounter that many bugs.

Also points for making the friendly rival and box art legendary into something I actually liked for once, the school stuff was fun (would've liked even more), the Arven story line is one of my favourite Pokemon stories, and the Area Zero part was great. And overall the game managed to make the overused "beat 8 gyms and deal with the evil team and local legendary" plot feel somewhat fresh.

2. Johto - The Kanto nostalgia pandering doesn't work on me, but Johto sure does. Gold was my first Pokemon game and I have so many good memories playing it, especially the nighttime Goldenrod city with the 8-bit music is my jam. I would also say that for its time it has been the best improvement on what came before, and of course it's the only time we get two games (or maybe 1,5) for the price of one instead of the other way around with the inclusion of Kanto. Then there is HGSS which contains still the best implementation of follower Pokemon. The story and characters will improve from here and the old gameplay jank doesn't really motivate me to revisit the games but they will always have a special place in my heart.

1. Hisui - There really isn't any contest here, the gameplay is simply so much better in LGA than in any of the others. Catching and battling Pokemon is so streamlined, the HM equivalents are useful and make exploring more enjoyable rather than being glorified keys, and the story is different for once. And I said I like nonlinear open world games but this is fine as well, when you get a huge area to explore at once, even when they're unlocked in an order. Like what I have an issue with is if you can't take three steps without running into an unskippable NPC scene or some arbitrary roadblock.

I do have issues though, the Pokemon box and Pokedex menu fiddling is atrocious and a way bigger issue here than in any of the other games since there's a lot more incentive to catch and use different Pokemon, I don't really like the art direction, and the customisation options suck and I had to use 90% of the default look for the whole game. But regardless I would really like it if the franchise went into this direction in the future.

[ferinehuntress]

◈　NAME　 ⋯ 　Panda, Panda Bear, Nessie

◈　PRONOUNS　 ⋯ 　she/her

◈　MOST ACTIVE MUSE(S)?　 ⋯ 　Caitlyn, Vi, Karlach, and Aylin. I only keep active muses ^^

◈　RP PET PEEVES?　 ⋯ 　Hmmm, so one would be one way roleplays. When someone doesn't help push the story along. I don't want to sit here, debating on how I can encourage some reactions or what not. So I always try to give something to reply to whether its by an action, a question, a response that can be added to, etc... I also don't like when I reply with several paragraphs and someone only gives me 1-4 sentences. I do not expect mirror reflections of my post, but I do like quality. Quality does not equal quantity, but can still give absolutely plenty with a couple of paragraphs. And lastly, not communicating. I know sometimes it can be hard, some days your mind literally has no ideas or process. or if your distracted (I know a few people have that with me right now cause I'm playing BG3 XDD) but when you just, don't communicate, how can you write with each other? Its why I always try to send out welcome messages and encouarge the first step of communication.

◈　EXPERIENCE / HOW MANY YEARS　 ⋯ 　I started roleplaying when I was 11 on a site called Avidgamers. So its been a good.....24 years ish?

◈　FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT　 ⋯ 　Hands down, Angst is my go to. I will, without a doubt, love angst. Its never too much for me, i could have a bunch of angst going and it doesn't wear me down or anything. That being said, I don't like certain kinds of angst, like person versus person (example, my character and your character getting into an arguing and hating each other, or break ups or things like that). My kind of angst tends to be two people versus a situation, or where one is trying to save the other cause they are cursed, or trapped, being tortured, etc....Angst comfort too is good. I do like smut, but I tend to like to write it with people I talk to often and we have a good dynamic between our characters. Fluff is a bit harder for me, I can't do domestic cutesy things as I tend to get a little bored after awhile.

◈　PLOTS OR MEMES　 ⋯ 　I prefer plotting, plotting helps get a dynamic down (as I do not write first meetings or encounters) so this allows me to get a development of what are muses are like together. Its also a nice little platform of security to know what is going to happen in a thread. It isn't step by step plotting, but just enough of like 'okay, tehy are going to this place, its probably going to have a fight, and this is their objective'. Really simple plotting that allows for the comfort of stability while still allowing the flexibility of a character to control teh flow of the scene. Memes I tend to use after we've done  some plotting because I understand dynamics better and I know what to write or ideas to creat.

◈　LONG OR SHORT REPLIES　 ⋯ 　I'll never give short replies. the shortest you'll get from me is about 2 paragraphs. I don't like gives just a skeleton writing and I tend not to follow people who do one liners or small less then 5 sentences writing. I'm in this for the long haul, I want stories and adventures and fun paragraph form writing.

◈　TIME TO WRITE　 ⋯ 　While I'm online almost all day, its more then likely you see me writing about 10-11pm CST. Writing at night is a lot easier then it is writing during the day. Don't know why, I'm a weird little night owl XD.

◈　ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S)　 ⋯ 　I tend to write characters I associate with in some form or manner. Karlach for example, her absolute love of animals, and Caitlyn's more reclusive nature, or Vi's heart on her sleeve, and Aylin's protectiveness. I like to think I am in some way like them which allows me to bring them to life even more through this connection.

❥ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘　 ⋯ 　@apalestar, @c-leric, and others who said 'steal this' XD ❥ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆　 ⋯　@shimmerbeasts, @jynxd, @necrophcge, @never-surrender, @bubblybabins, @bakrahispul, @clara-eternal, @zaunseye, @lunarrepel, @lunawish, @lordliing, @hellscaress, @goldenfists, @governoir, @gauntlets-shot, @fereldensheroes, @dalishflame, @shldmaidns, @sanguisarcana, @starbvund, @arcanecast, @piltover-sharpshooter, @playgroundmonsters, @undercity-merc, @ruinouss, @runes-menagerie, @warwaited, and anyone else who wants to.

[ifbench]

Gates to Infinity

During my initial PMD playthroughs, I was considering skipping Gates altogether, as I had heard almost nothing but negative things about it up until that point.

However, my friend who I was liveblogging my PMD playthroughs to, she said that Gates to Infinity was good, too.

And so, after completing Rescue Team DX and Explorers, I acquired Gates to Infinity.

Quite possibly the best decision to get a game I've ever made.

As while Gates to Infinity is not my favorite game of all time, it's the game that brought the most to me, that affected me for the better the most.

As while games like Mario and Luigi Dream Team are amazing fun experiences that I treasure dearly…they didn't change my life like Gates to Infinity did.

It was Gates to Infinity that caused me to stick with PMD. It's what inspired me to start writing Eternal Shadows. It's what led me to meet so many amazing people. It's why I'm still talking about PMD today.

No other game has brought me so much happiness in the long term as Gates to Infinity has.

It's a bit silly why I started Eternal Shadows in the first place, really. I was playing through Gates to Infinity's opening, and it was so different from both Rescue Team DX's and Explorers'. It had an air to it that neither of those had.

2020 me thought it felt a lot like Kingdom Hearts, and I decided to write a PMD opening with very heavy Kingdom Hearts inspiration as a proof of concept.

That "proof of concept" is what is now known as Eternal Shadows.

Beyond how it personally shaped me, though…Gates to Infinity is a truly wonderful game.

Some may say it's a downgrade over Explorers. That it took things away from what made Explorers so great.

And…I would agree with that second sentence, in a way.

Gates to Infinity does remove a lot of stuff from Explorers. No personality quiz, severely limited Pokemon roster, no Spinda's Cafe, no IQ, no long second story in the postgame, and no purple Kecleon or Kangaskhan.

But Gates to Infinity doesn't need to be Explorers. It's not Explorers. And much of what it removes, it adds something new in its place.

While there's no personality quiz, for the first time, you can choose your protagonist's species, a feature that would remain in newer games.

IQ is gone, replaced by the much less grindy Team Skills system. No longer do you have to grind for gummis so your partner won't walk over exposed traps.

There's no Spinda's Cafe, but you build something similar through Paradise. You can build your own facilities, talk to your recruits in the town you have built, and it even serves as a hub.

There's no postgame story to the magnitude of Explorers', but what is there, is something unlike anything Explorers or Rescue Team gives you. It might not be as long, but a story doesn't need to be long to be good.

And while the loss of the purple Kecleon, Kangaskhan, and the large Pokemon roster could be considered objective downgrades…they don't ruin the experience at all, at least for me.

There's other flaws, too, like the slow text speed, and inability to choose gender, but I digress, and don't mind them at all.

Gates to Infinity doesn't carry over the letter of Explorers. It isn't a sequel to it in the way that Explorers is one to Rescue Team. But it carries over the spirit of it.

Like Adventure Squad, it still has the heart of PMD.

Yet unlike Adventure Squad, it's not afraid to show it.

Gates to Infinity still tells a heartfelt story about a former human who winds up in a world of Pokemon.

It has well-developed characters, amazing music that uses motifs wonderfully, and a touching farewell scene.

What does being a PMD game mean, really?

Does it mean pixel graphics, macguffins to collect, and guilds?

Or is it the story of a former human, who partners up with a Pokemon, eventually saving the world, before having to say goodbye?

Of course, some might just say "PMD gameplay". And there's nothing wrong with that answer!

The dungeon-delving gameplay is a core part of the experience, too. And sometimes, it makes the majority of the experience, like with Adventure Squad.

And yes, Gates to Infinity has some problems with the mystery dungeons. Repetitive room generation, party members wandering off, and that small Pokemon roster.

But it also has things Explorers doesn't.

It introduces the reunion cape item, my favorite item in all of PMD, and very useful for reuniting with lost party members.

It has outside areas to mystery dungeons, a first for the series, and even sometimes has small puzzles with them.

And without the IQ system, your party members have much better navigation and combat skills by default.

But the gameplay isn't what I love about Gates to Infinity so much. It's its story, characters, and the emotions it instilled in me.

I cried not even 15 minutes into Gates to Infinity, when I heard Ragged Mountain for the first time. I recognized it from Oddity Cave from Rescue Team DX, and…yeah.

I initially thought I wasn't going to be able to name my Snivy partner, but then we get to the future site of Paradise, and he lets me give him a name, in-universe.

Virizion's character arc is wonderful, and I love how she and Keldeo reconcile.

I love Dunsparce's bravery, and how Emolga gives up his spot on the Great Glacier expedition so Dunsparce can go.

One of my favorite moments in the entire game, and even just thinking about it right now is making me start to cry.

I love the first-person perspectives with Umbreon seeking shelter in Post Town, and how Espeon just wanted to do the right thing and feels so guilty for putting Swadloon in danger.

And Emolga!

Emolga my absolute beloved.

I love his friendship with Umbreon, I love his reconciliation and developing relationship with Virizion, I love his goofiness! He's my favorite canon Pokemon character ever!

And not to skip over Hydreigon, either. The Voice of Life is such a cool title and concept, and I love how you think they'll be the villain, only for them to come and save you, and be an absolute dork.

Even the protagonist! Even they have some character to them, and actually talk!

And then the story. Oh, the story of Gates to Infinity.

For a bit of context, I was…not feeling very well mentally when I started playing the PMD games.

It's a bit cliche, but, well…I was feeling pretty hopeless.

And Gates to Infinity took that hopelessness and melted it away.

Its theme of how hope can be found even in the darkest of times, how you can find friends even when you feel like you're all alone…it meant a lot to me. It still means a lot to me.

And the ending…I have never cried harder at a story in my life.

Everyone's final messages to you through the frism, how they remembered you, how even if you may never meet again, how they wanted you to have a good life…it broke me, in a good way.

My second favorite moment in all of PMD, and part of what led me to writing A Way to Reunite.

Gates to Infinity may not be Explorers. It may lack stuff, even important stuff that Explorers has.

But Gates to Infinity has heart. So, so much heart.

It's not soulless, it's the farthest thing from soulless.

Gates to Infinity is a true PMD game, and I'll always love it with all my heart.

I've also compiled my liveblog notes from when I played Gates to Infinity for the very first time, if anyone is interested in reading that, but unfortunately it'll have to be on Discord, as I initially wrote them on Discord, and porting around 5000 words of liveblogging to here does not sound like fun to me.

So, if you want to read it, hit me up on Discord! My username is @ifbench, just like on here.

I hope you've all enjoyed this, and I hope to have my Super retrospective ready soon.

[semper-legens]

67. Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights vol 1

Owned?: No, library Page count: 192 My summary: A boy falls into a ball pit and comes out the other side in 1985. A girl wants to be beautiful and gets help from an unlikely friend. Some kids want the newest toy on the scene, but wind up stealing a defective copy. Three dark tales from the world of Five Nights at Freddy's. My rating: 2/5 My commentary:

Yeah, yeah, I know, laugh away. I found myself with a strange fascination about Five Nights At Freddy's lore not too long ago, culminating in me reading Cawthon's trilogy of FNaF books. But there's another branch of the FNaF lore that I haven't plumbed - Fazbear Frights, a series of short stories loosely connected around Freddy Fazbear's. This is the graphic novel adaptation of the first set of Fazbear Frights, and when it crossed my desk at work, I knew I was going to end up reading it. Hey, it's not like it took all that long. And I wanted to close off the chapter of my life where I inexplicably care about Five Nights at Freddy's by sampling the last of the FNaF lore that I hadn't yet touched. And so, here we are. This comic is split into three stories, and I'm gonna talk about all of them.

The first is the story of Oswald, a kid from a poor family stuck in his hometown over summer. He finds a ballpit in a local diner that transports him back to Freddy's in 1985, but when he does he finds himself face to face with Springtrap, who follows him back to the present. Which is…a very silly premise, but I'm willing to forgive the time-travelling ballpit. Yeah, it's ridiculous, but the 'innocuous object that takes you back in time' trope is a horror staple. I'm less willing to forgive the utter failure of this story to be horror, however. Oswald ends up going back to what I assume is the child murders, but the sequence of events as seen here is that he goes back to a Freddy's that is in chaos, Springtrap leads him into a back room, and we see six kids…just kinda sitting on chairs, a little slumped over, from the back. The implication is that they're the murder victims, but we don't see anything, they're just kind of there. No blood, nothing. And when Springtrap follows Oswald back to reality and takes his dad's place, he just…doesn't do anything. Literally. He's just there. It isn't creepy, it isn't scary, it's just baffling. There's hardly any tension because there's no threat, at least not as presented by this book. Baffling choices.

Then there's Sarah's tale. She's a teen or preteen girl who thinks she's ugly and wants to be beautiful. When she finds Circus Baby, she asks that Baby make her beautiful and, for a time, gets her wish. I…dislike how the one story about a girl is a moral lesson about Vanity Bad, but even aside from that, this just isn't a particularly well-realised story. Like, Sarah is given a necklace by Baby that she is told to never take off ever, so of course late in the story she trips and the necklace breaks. At least, I assume that is what happens. The art never actually shows that happening at any point? Sarah trips over, then starts transforming because surprise surprise she's a robot now. The necklace being off should have been shown explicitly, but it's just mentioned in dialogue, not drawn attention to in the art. Aside from that, Sarah was just so unlikeable that I struggled to care at all about this story. She makes fun of her friend for not being beauty-obsessed, and wants to get with the mean popular girls…just because they're popular, I guess? It was like a high school girl cliché as written by someone who has only ever experienced high school via bad movies. Bleh.

Finally, Oscar and his friends want to get their hands on a new toy - Plushtrap, a mechanical doll that plays a game with its owner. But when they steal one from a mysterious store, they find that Plushtrap is more alive than they thought. This one was possibly the most competent of the three, in that it actually was a horror story, but it was largely clichéd and not very interesting in and of itself. A killer toy, a little shop that wasn't there yesterday, a kid struggling with some emotional problems that are never really explored to any satisfactory level…the art was creepy enough in itself, but I had the same problem with it that I had with all of the art in this book, that it was kind of smudgy and not particularly representational of any one thing. Characters looked too similar to one another and I struggled to discern them. Plushtrap, too, fell into the trap (heh) of looking too overly creepy from the start and not being believable as a toy that a child would genuinely want to own, as opposed to a horror vehicle. Also, what teen boys really want a doll? It was just…bland, overall.

Next, back to April May, and her friends attempting to solve just what happened to her.

[tehamelie]

Garp isn't a funny man (Community 1.3)

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It's taking a lot of energy to restrain myself from just plowing through the show at this point. Writing about it is so much more challenging than watching it. I hope at least somebody appreciates my sacrifice. (Hi @pink-squirrel ) Why didn't I become a reactor Youtuber?

Community S1E3: Introduction to film

See, people get worried about Abed cause he watches so much TV, but here's professor Whitman who's EXCLUSIVELY watching Dead Poets Society on a loop. Yeah I figure it's playing in his brain constantly. But only the happy fun parts with the unconventional teacher encouraging students to act on an impulse for once in their lives, of course not the sad parts when the boys go too far outside of the bonds of conformity and the world punishes them, or even the great but serious parts with poetry reading at night in the woods.

But let's not get too far ahead of the plots. Next we encounter Pierce catastrophically failing to use voice command on his phone and driving the whole study group up the wall with this relentless effort to adapt to new, useless technology. I don't want to be a Luddite (and the Luddites had a good cause that's been twisted around by their critics anyway) but I'm entirely on Britta's side here. Because Big Tech is not on our side, not because it's just really irritating to have to listen to someone loudly producing the same error on their device ten times in a row. Well, not only that.

Jeff enters to spread the good word of Whitman's easy A grades. Annie is against it, and it feels like it's more about how it's making a mockery of academia than a question of how much time she'd have to waste on not learning anything in this class. Except when Troy wants in she immediately sees the educational value. And Shirley joins in cause loves Robin Williams.

But Abed does not, in a shocking twist. Well, it's not that shocking. He values good filmmaking and novel stories and he correctly points out there's an element of cheap drama at the cost of credulity that fuels most of Williams' movies. But come on, suspend your disbelief a little and enjoy the tremendous force of his performance.

Rest well, Robin.

And we find out how Abed's life and education plans are restricted by the struggles of his father. "9/11 was pretty much the 9/11 of the falafel business." Britta, of course, immediately rallies to help him rebel by paying for a $70 filmmaking class. I have no idea if that's unusually cheap or expensive for community college, and it's a different joke depending on which, but both are funny so whatever.

Shirley worries Mr Nadir is going to cut Britta's head off with a "salami sword" for, I don't know, talking to Abed while being a woman? It's such an outrageously racist thing to worry about based on just the vague impression she has that the man might be fanatically Muslim, I think the group is focusing on the entirely wrong thing when they just seem to object to the term "salami sword".

But then, it does set up the great joke of Jeff setting a timer and betting Pierce will top her racism within one minute. Which he does.

"Are we going to study Spanish or keep getting involved in each other's personal lives? Hey, Troy sneezes like a girl!" Kind of an uncharacteristic tone for Jeff - caring about what other people say and do and all that - but maybe it's just to remind us he'll do anything to not have to actually study.

I started organizing a thought that these spots of marginally weak writing that seems focused on delivering jokes above all else, could be how Community has its sophomore slump in the third episode. But then the intro played and I realized I'd spent an hour picking apart just the cold open.

Next in Dead Poets Society class we learn more about Shirley. She says she's at the school "To get a degree in business to sell [her] baked goods and whatnot on the Internet," which, what does any of that mean? A highly unspecific "degree in business"? That you'll need to run an online bakery because? And wait a minute, who the heck is going to order a chocolate cake from the Internet? Are you going to send them in the mail?

As it turns out, she's really here to start her life after 15 wasted years. That story she had to tell herself to get out of the house and go to school evaporates. She really does become fully alive, alive with intention and earnestness, and she deserves her A for that moment of truth.

Only when we stop stopping our lives can we begin to start starting them, indeed. Okay, I'd fail Whitman here for that tremendously uncreative line. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping couldn't do it worse.

Cue the standing on desks and accidents with collapsing desks. Ah, impulsivity is fun.

I like that Whitman sees right through Jeff. For being a word class lawyer, he's consistently terrible at being convincing. But it's nice Whitman wants to give him a chance anyway. He believes in Jeff, he wants him to have a genuine emotional moment in his life.

And the reveal, that the class is actually supposed to be accounting. That's comedy.

Over to Abed shooting a documentary. "It's like a movie but with ugly people." His dad shows up but doesn't talk to him, rather focusing on having a ridiculous argument with Britta, Could it be he has trouble speaking plainly with his son? No no there's never been a dad with that problem.

He seems to jump at the chance to disown him, in fact, and leave the mess of Abed for someone else to take care of. I guess he may just be speaking in anger.

Britta crying "They day I cut myself loose of my father was the day I finally started being *choke* happy" makes me feel such mixed emotions. One, great joke, II, I just want to hold her close, and C, also kind of just want to squeeze her.

The next day, I'm guessing, finds Jeff going into overdrive with his carefully calculated efforts to demonstrate his spontaneity. A Christmas tie with flashing lights, rainbow suspenders and bunny face slippers with bells on? The only thing matching his obnoxious tryhardness here is Whitman, who shows up to complain about Jeff drinking boring normal coffee before ordering a wedding cake. Yeah the act is getting pretty worn out. I'd like it if we saw at least a moment of him like, trying to listen to people, or just being sad, instead of giving the impression he spends every moment of every day relentlessly pursuing the most whimsical impulse.

And we get a whole scene of Pierce teaching Troy about deliberate sneezing. He wants to know more. This can't end well.

Back to Jeff flying a rainbow pattern kite and running through a finely choreographed scene of children playing. I think he'd actually have fun doing these things if he wasn't so desperately, overtly looking for Whitman's approval. And as Whitman continues to see right through him, wouldn't it be time to rethink this approach? Maybe Jeff genuinely doesn't know how to let his guard down and let the world in, even for a moment.

Cut to the study room where Abed gets everyone pizza. There's a whole subplot with Abed acting suspicious and spending too much money that's going to come together in a moment when he finishes the movie so I'm not worrying too much about relating it here, but in a vacuum this is a super weird scene where Abed seems to have fully disconnected from reality, barely interacting with people as they (well, Britta) desperately beg him to explain himself. Love the coffee delivery guy who has to stand there for what seems to him like an impossibly cruel, far too intimate family argument.

At last, everyone's there to see Six Candles just as Abed finishes rendering it. It's like he directed the whole series of events. Get it, because he's a movie director, and he spent the whole time directing his unwitting actors into giving the exact performances he needed to put together this movie to tell his dad he makes him feel neglected, unloved and guilty about his mom leaving them.

That would be a difficult thing to say in words, but it had to be said, and the men are now able to reach each other in a way that maybe neither thought they ever could, and they establish a level of trust, of compromise. That all happens immediately after the end of the film, before the tears dry, while the bright colors and snappy high-energy jingle of the COOL ABED FILMS logo still echoes in the room. Ah, the contrasts.

Cut to Troy sneezing like a big man, making Shirley jump while Pierce looks upon him with approval. Wait a minute, wasn't this episode about learning not to fake spontaneity? Yeah I realized that parallel just now.

But as this corruption of the innocent plot goes, I think the story of Troy's sneezes has the lowest stakes of any piece of dramatic storytelling ever written. I completely forgot how the show does that. Like, I remember the fun of all the extremely low stakes conflicts ("The stakes have never been higher" "Shut up Leonard"), but not how they make it work.

Like Jeff and Britta's kiss here. It's funny because Whitman is completely correct in his assessment that it's a turning point for their relationship (which is why he takes it as an acceptable act of day-seizing and gives Jeff the A), it does feel unexpectedly important for both of them, but where are the stakes? We may be led to believe this will be a Significant Romance, but that never actually happens. Their relationship gets more emotional involvement from Annie than from either of them. It's aggressively medium stakes drama all the way and it's beautiful.

The stinger, with Jeff teaching Troy and Abed about krumping, also beautiful.

[itsohh]

thoughts after completing mw3

I can firmly say its not worth playing unless your a fan of DMZ. as someone who isn't, its horrible.

the game turns 180 on the style of the campaign and you lose a lot of the liner gameplay which made the first two games so enjoyable. in order for what I presume was to cut corners they opt for a more open world more feel. while the other games did have this on some levels it wasn't done in a fun way.

for example 'alone' in mw2 you have the entire stealth aspect with johnny and then in mw1 (I can't remember the mission but its the one where you getting farahs brother) you do open objective as gaz with price and even though its a big area it still feels quite nice and focused.

this weird open world thing was seen in the second to last mission but it was still straight forward. honestly the game felt rushed, empty, spotty and full of fuller content. the story line wasn't very solid and felt ehhhh.

don't even get me started on some of the actual normal missions like 'kill invisible dudes who instantly snipe you before you can see me' fuck me that was horrible. they give the illusion of that you could stealth around them but every time I attempted gaz would get seen. so idk if that was scripted or not but it sucked.

the final mission felt lackluster and dull.

I'll give them that the final cutscene was good and did tug at the heart strings. but also it felt like his death was more for shock value? to reference the previous games. ah idk. it's not bad I suppose but I also feel like it was tacked on, I wish they made it a bigger deal

I can't help but wonder what the level design would have been if they had more time. I miss the way they did things in the previous games and it also so short. they established such a good begining in mw1 and then had maybe not the best game AI but a really good sequeal in mw2. mw3 falls so flat. I miss missions where you spend the entire time stealth, I miss the interactions between soap and ghost, or gaz and price.

for what they delivered it really wasn't worth the price. would I still have bought it? yes because I wanted to experience it.

the lack of optimisation is insane, sure its early access but we all know that they won't fix these bugs. on one mission I was forced to put my graphics on the lowest setting to load it. I have a current gen graphics card. for some random moments my screen would be covered in low pixel smoke that would only clear if I did a 360.

the graphics were of course, amazing and photorealistic but somehow didn't deliver on the immersion that the previous games did. the voice acting and acting alone carried this game unfortuantly let down by the shotty writing, cheap level design and general cash grab vibe to the game.

I thought that this was supposed to be the last game but with the lack of question still to be answered it does feel like they could have another one. without soap though... the team doesn't feel complete. any attempt to bring in roach at this point would feel like hes there to replace him which isn't idk great.

vlad's still out there, so is graves and then the entire plotline with valeria / alejandro has yet to be touched on. I imagined they will bring one of those in for the raid series

the game feels like it has so many holes, mainly why was so little amount of troops sent in. like at times it feels like there only 141 in the world and like ??? speshly with the final mission like your telling me they got only one hotel squad to go with price and soap? against a bomb threat caused by one of the biggest terrorists out there? wtf is everyone doing???

it feels weak and overall I rate the game 4/10

[thebemoon]

Hi!! I love your writing! And I was wondering how you set a scene like the actual setting. I feel like my setting is always lacking and that the readers won’t understand the atmosphere i’m setting or wont know where the setting is taking place. Sorry if this makes no sense.

Hey, this is a great question, and I see a lot of talented writers struggle with setting. It's all about the details, everyone says, but how do you know what details to add?

For me, I usually add details I find interesting and serve one or all of three goals: plot, character or mood. Although sometimes I throw things in because they're just neat, and those details sometimes turn out to be the most important of all.

I usually begin with mood. Do you want a bright and cheerful setting, or a dark and sinister setting, or a plain and sparse and disturbingly perfect setting? Even an ordinary room can look dark and sinister if that's the mood of the scene.

In "The Gloriana Set," I set one of the most dangerous and scary scenes in a very simple setting: an ordinary hunting shack in the woods:

"Theo twirled, Apparating them inside a small, one-room cottage. There was nothing inside the pine structure except a fireplace and two three-level bunks. The warped wood floor was covered in suspiciously dark stains."

Theo and Hermione are attacked in this setting, and so I sprinkle details like the feeling of the rough wood, and the sun shining through dirty windows, and frequently mention the bunk beds. Its very ordinariness is creepy because this shack is used to hunt Muggles, not deer. In "The Darkwood Wand," Draco's bedroom is also sinister, but instead of simple, I piled on the objects and furnishings. The whole room screamed opulence and magic and danger. Here is Hermione seeing it for the first time:

"She was kneeling between the bed and a green velvet armchair, which faced a black leather sofa. A grandfather clock loomed in a corner, its mother-of-pearl face another weak source of light. The furniture was heavily carved—black walnut, if Hermione had to guess, she’d developed a bit of expertise from all those woodworking magazines. A small harp, of all things, glittered in the moonlight from atop a bookshelf.

"Slowly she stood, and turned to face an obsidian fireplace lined with bricks of black glass. Its mantle was crammed with silver objects: picture frames, bottles, boxes. It was outrageous, really, this lap of luxury for Slytherin’s worst. Even the fire tools were topped with silver. Hermione stepped forward and pulled out the poker: It was surprisingly heavy for its size, yet as delicately balanced as a rapier."

Every object mentioned plays a role in the story later on, and it's all seen through Hermione's point of view.

Finally, settings can be fun. Here is Trelawney's Divination classroom in the "Darkwood Wand." I leaned heavily on the Rowling's description and added bits of my own to serve the story:

"Draco stalked across the room and sat uncomfortably close to Granger. The lamp above them, draped with a silk scarf, cast a dim, crimson light. Draco was sweating slightly and it wasn't from the stuffy air."

and here's a setting primed to annoy a grouchy Draco:

"It was Xylomancy Day, with twigs and strips of wood scattered on all the tea tables. Frankincense billowed from a heated plate, and Draco coughed as he took a seat on his pouf. He could feel another headache coming on."

and this is yet another confined setting in this claustrophobic story:

"“FOOL!” Trelawney cried, her hands in the air. Her robe’s sleeves fell back to reveal skinny arms. “Magician, devil, hanged man!”

Startled, Draco fell backward, banging his head against the wall. His knee hit the bottom of the table and scattered the cards. Hermione, thankfully, kept her composure; she slid one hand under Draco’s elbow and steadied the table with the other."

The key is to have your characters constantly interacting with the setting. Setting in a story isn't like a painted backdrop on a stage, especially in a Harry Potter story where anything can be magical.

Hope that helps!

Thebe