#its still pretty barebones buT ITS HERE

[murderyn]

dragon age verse (also on carrd)

a very long time ago there was a creature of bloodlust. How he came to be is unknown. Some could say that he was a spirit who gained a body, some would say a demon. But that does not matter. All that matters was he was deemed too dangerous. too unpredictable, that eventually he was killed - and then FORGOTTEN. (but those who were once spirits are not so easily killed.)

He existed, fragments of himself spread far and wide, seeking hosts to keep his essence alive. One of his hosts was a powerful blood mage who gladly took in this spirit for he wanted the power it gave. This blood mage had a baby and through some kind of ritual; this fragment of a spirit was put into the little baby girl.

But whatever their plans were for the child was disrupted. The blood mage was killed; and the baby left alone as the fragment settled inside its new host. The baby was found by a man named Gorion; a Mage from Tevinter. He rescued her and raised her as if she were his own child.

He was murdered when she was barely 20, he was protecting her from an unknown attacker. He died, she fled. She couldn’t go back to her home; Tevinter was no place for an elf (especialyl without Gorion there to protect her from the system.)

So she went travelling; leaving Tevinter and finding allies and enemies. Eventually she found the one who killed Gorion and had been hunting her. A human named Sarevok. They fought, and she killed him.

And the essence inside of her grew larger for it.

For a short while, Ryn was able to live in peace. As much peace as an elf & apostate could live in, anyway. Until she was captured by a blood mage named IRENICUS for six months. He tortured her; killed her friends, and did something to her - to the spirits essence inside of her. But she escaped, and ran. She needs to kill him but she needs to regain her strength first.

INQUISITION

She's passing through Ferelden when it happens. She was not planning to stick around - it was hard being an apostate anywhere but Ferelden and Orlais were not places she wanted to linger. but the conclave explodes, a hole is torn in the sky and rifts in the veil open up everywhere with demons escaping and attacking innocents. also can't forget the rogue templars and mages that seem to attack anything that breathes.

she can't just leave. she can be found in the hinterlands, fighting back demons that keep coming from a rift and trying to protect some villagers.

she can be recruited into the inquisition, though she might be a bit wary of the organisation in general.

eventually she'll catch wind of irenicus in orlais. she intends to go deal with him herself but depending on her approval level with the inqusitior, she might ask for help. or just leave without a word.

VEILGUARD

you need help killing ancient elven mages? she might actually be able to help with that. if you can find her, that is. she travels a lot. she's done work with the lords of fortune, spent time with the veil jumpers, has helped the shadow dragons free slaves.

but she has knowledge on ancient elven civilisation, people, mages, tools. not whole pieces. fragments of memories she's gained from the fragments of the Forgotten One that lives inside her.

she can use it to help fight the evanuris. it can use her to get more power.

[felikatze]

Do you wish you could easily look up information on ISAT, yet the wiki is lacking in it?

Well let me tell you the good news, my friend... YOU can fix that! all you need to do is sign up to wiki.gg (which doesn't even require an email address!) and you can get editing! Add information that the wiki editors have overlooked!! correct spelling mistakes!! write guides for obscure achievements!!

"But I'm afraid to make a mistake!"

Don't worry! If you have questions, simply head to #the-wiki-channel on the official isat discord server, and there'll be plenty of people to help you out!

"But I don't know how wiki editing works!"

in that case, check out isatwiki's very own style guide! It gives you the run down on formatting, page layouts, syntax, and citing! If you still feel unprepared, check out a completed page and copy its formatting! Completed pages are few and far between at the moment, though. Ahaha.

"I don't want to mess up on a public page!"

In that case, our dear pal the style guide is here to help! Check out the last section on Sandbox pages! A very own page, just for you to mess around with! Additionally, you can cut your teeth on making an user page for yourself! Put anything on there (that complies with TOS, of course) and have fun!!! Check out other people's user pages too, if you want!!

"But I don't know what to do!"

Then check out our To Do list! All the wiki's main projects, all compiled in one place! And if something you want to do isn't on the to do list... do it anyway. If there's info you want on there that isn't, the more the merrier, right?

on my hands and knees. please. pretty please. we're a small wiki we have low standards. i will take literally anything over nothing at all. you can make the most barebones unformatted page ever and i personally will pretty it up for you. i merely ask that you cite. like at all. and if you dont cite you can put this cute little {{source}} banner up top so other people will know the info isn't cited.

you should get into wiki editing it's a very fun hobby. you might even pick up basic coding along the way and learn what it's like to cry over css.

[coldgoldlazarus]

Okay, mostly done screeching in excitement, now it's analysis time.

First point: That purple blast of the turret getting taken out looks great.

Looks like we're opening hot, a lot like Corruption's beginning. Hopefully won't be quite as protracted as the Norion battle, though, lol.

Also, I've seen some jokes already about how this section will end with Samus getting depowered like the openings of Prime and Echoes, but given how barebones her arsenal seems to be here, (missiles and morph ball, which sometimes she just starts with and keeps, maybe bombs too) I don't expect that to happen.

The HUD and helmet edges are a lot more dialed back this time, pushed as far into the corners as they can go. Probably better for visibility this way, but I am gonna miss the more wraparound feel of the previous setup, with the missile count and hazard meter along the sides. But this isn't a bad look by any means, and we still have a fair few items here.

A & B: My bet is this is the replacement for the old hazard meter. In addition to keeping it out of the way, putting it right next to the motion tracker is a good move. I may actually remember to use that more this way.

C: Health bar is obvious, of course, but I really like the move of tucking it away into the notch on the top of the Echoes/Corruption/Beyond(!) helmet visor. The lines around it suggest an empty row above, undoubtedly for the energy tank pips once those are picked up.

D & E: Minimap is present as usual, not really much to say there, but I love the addition of a compass direction scroll beneath it, which should be helpful for putting places in context of the broader map. (Tallon IV's elevator label system, anyone?)

F: Missile count has been shunted down from the side to the bottom corner. I'm interested to see if it will grow upward, or just stay in its present spot and scale accordingly, as you collect more expansions.

G: This is the one everyone's already pointed out, but it seems that we won't have a visor OR beam swap readout.

Scan Visor is still an option as shown in the next bit, but based on the lack of an indicator in the hud, it's probably just going to be a toggle between that and combat, without anything else like X-Ray or Thermal or Echo or what have you. (Or it could be that that would only get added to the HUD after picking up a third visor, but I won't hold my breath for it.) Kinda disappointing to deemphasize one of the cool new mechanics the Prime subseries brought to the table, on one hand, but I'm still grateful to have the Scanner, and the extra ones always did struggle a bit to see much use.

Similarly, a bit disappointed this means we're probably looking at a stacking beam like in Corruption and the 2D games, (unless of course beam swapping is still there and just being left off the HUD until relevant for the sake of cleanliness #copium) but not entirely surprising; I'll live.

But what is interesting is what's there instead. The D-Pad seems to be tied to non-Beam weapons or tools instead, with the missile launcher as the only one available at present. I'm really curious to see what the other items will be; I imagine this is going to be Prime 4's unique spin on things. I saw someone suggest affinity weapons like in Hunters, but given those all function like Beams, it feels weird to me to set them against Missiles instead, ammunition requirements notwithstanding. I'm not going to rule those out, of course, but I could see this being something completely different entirely.

Again, I am very glad to see the Scan Visor is still here at least. Even better is that it uses the full-body highlighting of objects like Echoes and Corruption instead of Prime 1's icons. Pretty minimalistic layout, all told; I like that the scanning bar is a ring now. And it doesn't reflect Samus's face by default like in Corruption, which makes sense since we're not liable to have the same kind of mutation shenaniganry happening here.

I forgot to snag a screencap of this bit on my computer, so forgive the lower quality, but this scene is interesting for a few reasons.

The Pirates' breaching charges letting them into this room just as Samus passes through a gap in the wall overhead is a nice touch, and also remniscent of some sequences from early on in Corruption.

The Federation guys in here seem to be wheeling away someone or something on a stretcher in a hurry. That could be important.

Energy tank up in the rail section, but blocked by a box. Are we just going to bomb through to get it right away, or will we drop down into the room, and have to come back from the other direction to pick it up? (Please be the other direction)

Samus looking spiffy here, even at a distance. And as some have pointed out, looks like she's walking out of a portal instead of a door, pointing to either more dimension-hopping shenanigans like in Echoes, or possibly the time travel elements I recall hearing Tanabe wanted to play with at some point. (This plus the black hole look of the logo makes me think this could be more likely.)

Whatever the nature of the portal, though, the interesting thing to me is the sort of circular structure in the rock around it, suggesting a doorframe almost. A lot of the portals on Aether seemed to actively cut into the environment at random, the rock carved out in perfect spheres with fucked-up edges, and interrupting the pre-existing architecture or geology. In contrast, this looks like it was put here on purpose, implying a more controlled creation. Potentially really fascinating implications in that.

I also kinda wonder if these portals will be replacing elevators as a way to get between regions.

Ignoring the big numbers in the middle, (though they do kinda mess with my prediction that Prime 4 was going to be a 2024 holiday title to avoid getting eaten by Switch 2's inevitable 3D Mario launch title,) a couple things stand out to me here.

Giant tree in the background is giant, and I love it for that. Also looks like it's not the only giant tree here, even if still probably the biggest. I hope we get to go there later.

But in addition, we have a bridge in the middle distance, and a tunnel opening in the foreground. I will eat my hat if we don't get to cross that bridge, and my bet is that they're going to pull a similar trick here as with Skytown, letting low-poly versions of other "rooms" be visible from the current one, but dividing them with interior sections for optimization reasons, allowing for amazing landscapes of all traversible terrain. I loved that there, it looks great here, I can't wait to go explore all this myself next year.

[nintendroid]

Happy belated birthday to the Nintendo 64, released in North America on September 29th making it 28 years old!

No other console I've owned gives me the nostalgia bug like the N64. I have so many stories of the adventures I had with it I could almost write a book. Maybe someday I will, but for right now let's talk about how you can celebrate Nintendo's most unappreciated console. We'll look at some modern software, some underappreciated games you should play and some cool N64 oddities. (NOTE: None of the items mentioned are sponsored. I just really dig the products)

Essential Hardware:

Brawler 64 Controller!

Available wired or wireless, the Brawler is for players who want to play the N64 with a more modern controller. I bought one some years back and have been nothing but satisfied with it. Check out my original review here. Shop here.

The Everdrive 64!

A cartridge capable of storing every N64 game EVER! Not just official games either, but fan-made game mods too! An absolute must if you're hardcore into N64 gaming. It should be noted, there are cheaper alternatives out there, but the rumor is that they can fry your console. KRIKzz-brand Everdrive's are known for their quality and for my money I want something that's not going to ruin my hardware. Check out my original review here. Shop here.

Underrated Games: Even with such a short library, there are good N64 games that don't have the Nintendo or Rare label on them. These aren't all of them, but here's a few that pop up in my mind when I think of the topic of underappreciated N64 games. Yes, some of these are ports but the N64 ports are the way I experienced them and I still prefer the N64 versions.

Duke Nukem: Zero Hour

In my opinion, the best sequel to Duke 3D. Don't let the 3rd-person perspective deter you, this is an authentic Duke Nukem game. Go through time shooting zombies, aliens, Jack the Ripper and send those alien scum packing. Duke's sense of humor is present, even under Nintendo's famous censorship guidelines.

Road Rash 64

A motorcycle racing game where you clobber the other racers with pipes, crowbars and plungers while avoiding the cops. It's so awesome and features one of the greatest songs Sugar Ray ever put out.

40 Winks

It was cancelled at 99% complete in the N64's heyday but publishing company Piko Interactive bought the rights and gave it an official release in 2019. While not what I would call a "classic" It's still a fun game to play over a weekend. As mentioned in my original review, it reminds me of a 3D adaptation of Nightmare on Elmstreet for NES.

007 - The World Is Not Enough

While not quite known as it's big brother, TWINE is a fun FPS Bond game in its own right. Eurocom (who developed Duke Nukem Zero Hour and 40 Winks!) knew they wasn't going to top Rare's iconic Goldeneye, but they did their best and it shows. The one advantage TWINE has over Goldeneye is multiplayer bots so you can play multiplayer because you don't have friends willing to come over because you're a 35-year-old father of two with a mortgage and 9-to-5.

Mods: The modding scene on the N64 is opening up and as a result we're getting some quality titles that extends the life of our favorite system. The one's mentioned here can be played on your actual N64 with the assistance of an Everdrive.

Smash Remix

Everyone collectively loves the original Super Smash Bros, but we can all agree it's pretty barebones in terms of content. Smash Remix fixed that with tons of new N64-era appropriate character additions, new levels, gameplay modes, music, costume changes and MORE. Phenomenal mod if you're a Smash 64 fan.

Shotgun Mario

Its Super Mario 64 but he has a shotgun. Fun for a laugh but adds a fun new mechanic to a classic. No more hoppin-and-boppin, Mario is here to dispense justice!

AKI-engine Wrestling Game Mods

I know most of you reading this aren't wrestling fans but the N64 had some iconic wrestling games thanks to Japanese studio AKI. Fans have been making mods for the AKI-developed titles like WWF No Mercy, Virtual Pro Wrestling 64, WCW vs NWO World Tour ect for years. It's hard to choose just one and each game has a wealth of characters, new arenas, match stipulations, create a wrestler options and much more.

Weirdo N64 Products: Any other time I would have 100 things to list but this is all I could find in the short time I have.

N64 Shirt!

Yes this bad boy is official. What other officially licensed shirt has Fox McCloud and a stormtrooper on it? In modern times, your best luck of finding something like this would be in a midwestern flea market.

Bill Goldberg Memory Card!

WCW legend Bill Goldberg had a memory card for some reason. I'm not complaining because it's awesome. Nothing I would love more than looking down after losing races in Diddy Kong to see big Bill yelling at me, motivating me to be a champion.

In conclusion: The N64 is a flawed but legendary console - it's popular but underrated, widely-known but intimate. My wishlist for the future is more awesome game mods of well known titles AND lesser known titles (let's fix Superman 64 or Carmageddon!). If you read this far, I hope this got you in the mood to play some N64.

[h-worksrambles]

I haven’t really spoken much about Sonic x Shadow Generations here since it came out but I have to say, I absolutely loved it. It’s the most fun I’ve had with 3D Sonic since…well, the original Generations in 2011. It has brilliant levels, fixes most of my problems with Sonic Frontiers and was an all round delight of an experience. In addition, it’s the first time in a long time that a Sonic story has genuinely impressed me. In a series where the narratives tend to either be a hodgepodge of badly executed anime tropes (sometimes in campy charming ways and other times not) or barebones excuse plots, this one (especially factoring in Dark Beginnings) was focused, cohesive and well presented in a way Sonic stories rarely are. I don’t have to add any qualifiers like ‘it’s camp!’ or ‘it’s a good idea’ or ‘it’s got some good moments’. It’s just legitimately well done.

And a big part of that was how well the game captured the character of Shadow. So I thought it would be fun to look back at the turbulent history of this guy, why the concept of him getting his own game this year had me both excited yet worried, and why the result so pleasantly surprised me.

Shadow first debuts in Sonic Adventure 2 and he’s a really entertaining character, here. Aside from having an aesthetic and music presentation designed in a lab to be the coolest thing a 2000s kid will have ever seen. He’s just smug and confident enough to bounce off of Sonic in an amusing way, but he has enough pathos to his character and backstory to remain endearing. There’s a lot of surprisingly thoughtful concepts regarding identity, memory and revenge that his story touches on. Couple that with his backstory that gets into darker territory than anything in the series prior and he’s easily got the most going on of any Sonic character. The only real critique I have is his story feels like it tries to do too much in such a short game (with a wonky translation). It asks a lot of big questions about the nature of memory to an artificial life form but doesn’t have much in the way of answers. Plus, his heel turn to the heroes’ side definitely feels a bit rushed. It effectively comes down to his true memories coming back a narratively convenient moment, and doesn’t give him much agency to make his own decisions. Like, nothing Amy says to him really gets through to him, nothing in his experiences over the game prompts a change of heart. Amy conveniently just happens to say the right thing to jog his memory. Shadow starts the game wanting to honour Maria’s memory and dies the same way. He’s just remembered what she actually wanted now, But his death is still pretty effective in the moment.

Is he basically just Mewtwo from the first Pokémon movie with the serial numbers filed off? Yes, but he’s the perfect encapsulation of SA2’s appeal. It’s a game that is camp and brave enough to own it. Even at its clumsiest and most derivative it’s consistently charming, and plenty of moments of unironic sentimentality shine through.

Unfortunately, he got so damn popular that Sonic Team refused to let him rest, so the next game, Sonic Heroes, saw him immediately revived and given amnesia. Which is a huge shame, as there was a lot of potential in Shadow coming back, reflecting on his actions in SA2 and actually having to put the work in to redeem himself and find a new purpose after clinging to revenge for so long. But we skate over that with a lot of pretty undercooked intrigue about how he survived that goes nowhere til the next game. Partnering him up with Rouge and Omega to create Team Dark is a good idea, even if this game gives them very little to do. But it’s the next two games where Shadow’s prominence would really peak, and where I have the bulk of my criticisms.

Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06 are two of Shadow’s most prominent showings in the series and to their credit, they do in some ways rectify that lack of agency I mentioned in Adventure 2. Shadow’s own game is all about an amnesiac Shadow’s search for answers while everyone around him puts pressure on him to be where they want: be that a hero, a weapon, or the villain of their story. The game then ends with him renouncing the expectations everyone else has placed on him. Not just Black Doom but even Gerald and Maria, renouncing his past entirely and so forging his own path, which carries neatly into Sonic 06. As much as I find reviving him with amnesia to be a trite and frustrating direction for the character, this is probably the best thing you could do with that premise. Making the new Shadow distinct from the old Shadow and so, in a sense, keeping that character dead.

That being said, there’s a big issue Shadow runs into here: He starts to become really boring. Maybe it’s just being in two Sonic games with bad writing and voice direction but Shadow loses so much personality here. There’s none of that cocky charisma that made him such a good rival to Sonic. In his own game, his amnesia reduces him to a blank slate, whose demeanour and motivations change in a dime depending on the last person he talked to because of the game’s botched morality system. Meanwhile, in 06, he suffers the same character writing issues as everyone else, droning out the plot in flat monotone delivery. While he makes out a little better than most of the cast as he gets an actual villain to face off against and more meat to his story, the presentation really hurts it. 06 tries to confront Shadow with a character who wants to tempt him back to his old vengeful ways, in the form of Mephiles, thereby cementing how far Shadow has come. Unfortunately, that temptation was pretty much Black Doom’s deal in the last game, so once Shadow rejects Mephiles outright, there is no conflict. It’s a case of like…two good scenes amidst three hours of nothing. There’s a fine line between stoic and dull. As compeling as the idea of making post amnesia Shadow effectively his own character is, these games struggled to give him a personality distinct from his SA2 persona. Now his personality is just ‘does cool shit’. I think Takashi Iizuka and Shiro Maekawa both got a little too fond of Shadow, and he really started turning into a creator’s pet. Cartoonishly badass and hyper competent in a way that upstages every other character. Shadow basically dominates 06’s plot and upstages every other character, but so much of his charisma has been lost at this point that he still ends up feeling dull. It’s played so straight and framed as ‘sooooo cooool’ but is so overwrought that he already feels like a parody of himself (think Legolas in The Hobbit movies).

After that, Shadow took a huge backseat from the series for over 15 years. With his backstory put to rest and with the series skirting away from the kind of dramatic or complicated plots that would give a character like Shadow a meaningful role, he’s left to hang in the background. And as much as I love Sonic Unleashed, Colors and especially Generations, this didn’t really prove a long term solution. Execution has always been the Achilles heel of Sonic writing and switching from clunky melodrama to clunky jokes ended to just being a short term bandaid, that worked fine for a few games but led to diminishing returns in the long run. A lot of people criticise this period of Shadow being ‘written like Vegeta’ more concerned with his rivalry with Sonic than anything else, with no time given to the pathos and relationships with other characters that kept him relatable. But that’s a mostly a product of how minimal his role is here. In something like Sonic Generations, where Shadow’s role is to be a boss fight and his motivations have to be understandable in two lines tops, that flanderization is the unfortunate result. Aside from a decent showing in Sonic Forces, where he serves a simple but serviceable role, there’s not a lot to say in comparison to when he dominated the franchise. And while I think that overexposure was a problem, I never wanted him to go away. I just wanted something that reminded me why I liked him in Adventure 2 to begin with, where his edge and ‘badassery’ didn’t make him feel like a parody of himself.

Then comes Shadow Generations. Shadow Gens borrows from both aspects of him. It walks back on the idea of post-amnesia Shadow being wholly distinct from SA2 Shadow, which some might not like. But it’s worth it for the story it tells. Shadow’s rejection of his past is reframed as him effectively running away from the trauma of it all because it’s simply too painful, nearly demonstrated in the final scene of Dark Beginnings. Providing him with a chance to meet Maria and Gerald again draws out some vulnerability from him without being overdone or too cloying. There’s a nice arc about Shadow learning not to run away from his past, to accept the good parts while still renouncing his ties to Black Doom. The result is that it simultaneously feels Ike both a tribute to Shadow’s 2005 spin off and a do-over, revisiting those concepts with a clearer head and more time to cook. His overall characterisation is also closer to that stoic confidence mixed with pathos that made his SA2 self so likeable, especially when you factor in Dark Beginnings. Yes he’s framed as so cool that it starts to get a bit ridiculous, but it’d easier to embrace the campy fun of that when he’s also legitimately sympathetic. His arc feels more focused and tighter executed than past attempts to develop him, but it still builds on those older concepts despite their hit or miss execution. And it all builds to an ending that is just the right mix of earnestly sweet and restrained to end the whole game on a genuinely touching note.

It’s also nice to see the Team Dark dynamic be used in a less…cursed game than 06 where it can shine a bit more. Rouge and Omega aren’t in the game a ton, but the optional conversations with them, and especially their role in Dark Beginnings, gets the to heart of what makes this found family of badass messy bitches so appealing. It takes a lot to draw any emotional frankness out of any of these three but it hits hard when they do finally open up to each other.

Shadow as a character is sort of a perfect encapsulation of the good and bad of Sonic storytelling. It’s admirable that the series tries to tell bigger stories, but the writing often isn’t strong enough to carry it. But walking back that scope and energy doesn’t really fix the issue, as it simply leaves the series feeling vanilla and only brings those fundamental issues of poorer execution into sharp focus. And Shadow Generations’ ability to recapture that energy while avoiding the common pitfalls is what makes it so refreshing.

The last few years have seen Sonic as a franchise experiment more with storytelling than they have in years and the results left me decidedly mixed. While Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog was a delightful reminder of just how charming these characters can be with good writing, Sonic Frontiers felt like a return of all the series’ bad writing habits. Overwrought, derivative, tonally dissonant trend chasing that reaches for big ideas that it can’t do justice, with poor presentation, rushed, forced execution and a general sense of thinking it’s way more profound than it actually is. It really felt like 2000s Sonic was back in the worst way, moments of promise amidst a hot mess that felt both over and undercooked.

But that just made Shadow Generations even more of a delight. It didn’t feel like it was intentional downplaying itself to avoid scrutiny like Sonic Forces or Lost World did, but not did it feel like it was constantly chasing after trends like Shadow the Hedgehog or copying frantically off its anime cheat sheet like 06 or Frontiers. It kept a clear consistent focus on exploring and celebrating Shadow’s character, with good pacing, a refreshing attention to continuity, solid emotional beats and well done cutscenes.

This feels like the sort of thing the Sonic series often wanted to be, but regularly fell short of. A campy, exciting action romp focused on its likeable characters. And it was the capstone on an already really fun campaign that made for a brilliant addition to what was already my favourite 3D Sonic game.

I’m delighted that Shadow Generations got me excited about Sonic again, but I’m just as happy that it made me excited about Shadow again.

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e87

We open on the Bells Hells traversing through the storms on foot, with Kraveris in sight through the cleft valley of a mountain. There's one travel roll left, and they roll another, more severe storm.

As the storm abates, there's another flare -- it feels the same, but every Ruidusborn gets 15 temporary hitpoints (does not stack with the flares from before, as with normal temp hp).

FCG casts sending on Ira (twice), and it's like there's a haze between them and the Changebringer so it takes more effort than normal to cast the spell, and the spell itself takes longer to find its destination, but it does work. "Bells Hells here, on the moon with you. We've got information and treasure. And plans. So many plans. Laudna says hi. Where can we find you?" // "Oh, my. You've finally come along! Welcome to the crimson land of the strange and beautiful. I've been busy watching, learning." // "In relation to Kraveris, where might we find you? Please be specific and brief so that we may speak more in person. Laudna still says hi." // "But where's the fun in that? I'm very interested to talk, but I want to see how interested you are in finding me."

They decide to try to connect with the Volition to get access to the city. Imogen tries a sending to Vesh. "You didn't trust us before. Maybe the dispatching of Admuda will convince you. We need to find the Volition. We're here to help. Outside Kraveris." // "Look. If you must talk, find me in the Jagged Edge, within the Clutch. Tell Jodot that you are of the Vanguard, and looking for a contract."

Then, they head to one of the outposts that stands outside the walls of the city itself.

Fearne notes that she could potentially look like a reiloran because she's been practicing her magic, and they work out that because the reiloran's low-level telepathy doesn't give a direction if the creature is unknown, they can do a bit of telepathic ventriloquism to make it seem like she's actually talking.

That brings up a good point though: couldn't they polymorph into reilorans? The ones they've encountered have been of varying class levels, so some of them have had to be lower than level/CR 11, and it's not like PCs haven't polymorphed into other humanoid creatures before.

As they approach the outpost, they see another figure that they haven't seen before: eight feet tall, clad in leather armor, with furred legs almost like a sasquatch. Fearne disguises herself as a reiloran, and Imogen speaks through her: "New recruits for the Vanguard. Our caravan broke down, and yours was the nearest outpost."

This figure has a deep voice, southern accent, and isn't sure why they'd bring recruits here -- it seems like there are fewer reilorans and more armed (possibly drafted) civilians manning the outpost. But they let them through, their ruse works for now.

The tower, though pretty tall, is also empty except for motion-sensitive lanterns and some barebones provisions.

While FCG ritual casts telepathic bond, Ashton and Laudna go up to the top of the tower. There are crenulated parapets here, fit to take cover behind or put a spyglass through; one of the guards, another of the sasquatch-type people, actually has an Exandrian firearm, and the other is a bormodo with a spyglass.

Chetney learns that the name of the outpost is Tyran A.

While Laudna scouts with Pate, Ashton trades questions with the bormodo. They ask what strawberries, apples, and blueberries taste like. Ashton gets the name of a bar, and learns that the Clutch is an outer ward of the city.

With Pate, Laudna sees something carved into the earth, and a protrusion that looks almost like a warhorn (which indicates that telepathy is more of a short-ranged thing, and they need actual sound to project over long distances). In the city, for as refined as she would've expected, it appears that the surface has been eroded away, dilapidated; the fine details and sharp edges have been worn down, there are no bustling throughfares, and it reminds her of Bassuras. (Almost like the majority of the city's infrastructure and populace is below-ground.)

Orym gathers some information about the "Attrition" (I'm assuming he purposefully mispronounced "Volition," but I dunno if I missed something) -- they can come from anywhere, they can be anyone, "it's just kind of a gut feeling... if you hear something loud and dangerous, you run." The sasquatch-guy points out a ruin that was once an outpost.

The two reiloran guards defer to Fearne because Imogen told them she's the Willmaster, and the facade almost cracks because of the latency between Fearne receiving their telepathy and Imogen talking back to them -- but Fearne just makes the deception check. The reilorans refer to "the Will" as if it's some kind of independent council or agency that hires and gives orders to the Willmaster, but this might also be their name for the Weave-mind.

Breaking news: Sam, after a whole-ass campaign playing a bard, learns how ritual spells work.

As they all gather at the base of the tower and prepare to head toward the city, Imogen puts the circlet back on.

They approach the walls of the city, having gone around the main gates, and find that there are homes and businesses clustered together like eggs on the surface-level. Laughter, and they see a group of children petting, grooming some kind of livestock.

Break time!

They descend onto the main street of a semi-subterranean village on the outskirts of Kraveris, and approach the two children: a reiloran and a bormodo -- Asha and Kolito, respectively. The reiloran is speaking with her actual voice, not telepathy.

They tell them that "the Clutch" is this entire section of the city, outside the walls where the buildings are clustered like eggs. They aren't allowed to go underground because they're "clutch-folk" -- their families aren't important enough to be allowed into the lower layers of the city.

All of the above-ground city is the Keluma-Kraveris, and the below-ground part is the Vatera-Kraveris. "The Crumbles" are the parts of the city where the upper layer has crumbled down into the lower layers, and it's a kind of wretched hive, "where the rough folk live."

They also take interest in Chetney -- "you're so small, but so old!" Also, Chetney continues to be fantastic with kids, which is hilarious to me -- they've never had toys before, only dreams of them, and Chetney makes them some.

Hold up-- Chetney says that the more he makes toys, the less special they get. Did he get Condensed Capitalism, The Feat from Nana Morri?

The guardian of these children comes around the corner, and looks afraid of the Bells Hells. There's a nervousness, a reticence, that belays the relationship that the people of the Clutch have with the Emperium. They say that the Emperium wants to put every resource toward "the coming move," implying that they would draft or otherwise steal away or use their small, seven-year-old children to support their war effort. They also point the Bells Hells to the Jagged Edge.

As they move through town, they see a mixture of the native people of Ruidus: bormodos, reilorans, and the gray-furred sasquatch-like people they saw at the outpost. The majority of them are civilians, thin, living rough, afraid. They scatter, and so do the Bells Hells -- but they botched the stealth roll. There's the sound of scratching on stone as two avadons (giant faceless moon wolves), saddled with reilorans on their backs, trudge through the street. Other figures walk behind it as it moves through, accompanying a wheeled container, heading from the entryway to the city toward the outside. One of the avadons sniffs out Fearne: "you're out in strange places, Vanguard... there have been a number of rising attacks against this city, we're on alert. What is your business? Answer my question, Exandrian. Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

Fearne fumbles her way through the conversation with some decent rolls, but Imogen -- without consulting the party, even though they have telepathic bond up -- takes it upon herself to collapse a building onto the reilorans and every surrounding civilian.

Fearne wildshapes into a tiny-ass fly and tries to get away, triggering an attack from the avadon, and we go into initiative!

They have two choices: either grab Fearne and run, which would let the enemies alert the city, or take everyone out so they can't raise the alarm. It sounds like they're going with the latter, but with some foresight to not cast fireball in the middle of a populated city.

Foregoing the collapsing building plan, Imogen just throws some stones at them, and everyone's engaged and seen at this point so there's no escaping this.

Ashton update: When Ashton deals a critical hit, attacks against that creature have advantage until the start of their next turn. Notably, the wording on this feature -- as Talisein read it -- specified "character," not "creature."

Laudna casts blight through Ashton's hammer, which -- after a spellcasting ability check based on the spell's level -- lets her split the spell and target 2 creatures instead of 1.

Orym update: One of the battle maneuvers he took was riposte.

FCG update: FCG's "toll the dead" is re-flavored to "scramble the dead," and he plays the modem dial-up sound when it happens.

The battle is over and everyone's alive, so they toss all the bodies into the portable hole so that no one else can talk to them later. "We're getting way too good at that -- let's run." Meanwhile, Imogen and Laudna use prestidigitation to get rid of the blood on the streets, and they investigate the cart: it has a 1ftx1ft heavy metal container, which also goes into the hole.

They see a witness in a window, and Laudna sends Pate to intimidate them -- they're an older civilian reilora, spooked. "'ey! You! You don't say a thing. No peeping! Shh. Don't worry; we're all friends here! Look, we even cleaned it up for you! It's a service we provide here. So, what did we learn?"

In the aftermath, they immediately head to the edge of the city. They just barely make a deception check to pass themselves off as people who belong; there are folks talking to each other, gathering -- it's a sense of a military occupying its own city, and it's been like this for a while now. In the Treshi scry ball, they see the faintest blip near the entrance to the city.

FCG casts locate creature on Jodot, and gets a ping within 1,000 feet -- they're far into the city, through this decaying Escher painting that is the surface-level, but they all follow the signal until they come to what appears to be some kind of mercantile district, where hovels, tents, and cabins give way to stained glass, magical lanterns, dyed cloths, and signposts. There are home decor shops, dye shops, gifts -- some have chimneys with smoke. But they eventually come to the outside of a massive kiln, with a structure built around the base of it with a sign carved like the memory of a handwriting. Inside is the clanging of metal, like a workshop.

Inside, it's very warm, and carries the smell of a kiln firing clay. There are all kinds of weapons here -- scimitars with obsidian edges, spears with shards of glass. There are also little knickknacks: models of wuccors, the glass rendition of a dancing reiloran. It's a unique mixture of artistry and weaponry, manned by a tall, rotund, male sasquatch-like creature with stark white hair and heavy goggles, chipping away at a tiny piece of something.

They have a nordic-type accent, I think. The Bells Hells use the key-phrase that Vesh gave them, and they roll insight to see if they're walking into a trap: with FCG's nat20 insight check, they see that the shopkeep is legit.

Jodot walks into a back room, and nearly 5 minutes later, a reiloran shrike emerges: she has dark green eyes with a scar like a C that curves from her eye to the edge of her mouth. As she enters, she's taller than any of them but with a natural hunch to her form. "So. You have my attention -- you said you needed a contract, yes? You wear, ah... deceptive attire. It shows promise. What is your business here in Kraveris? Do you need help smuggling things in, out? What do you want?"

Vesh is speaking with her mouth and voice, like the children from before. She lives among many people, and feels it's best that they all live at the same level. Ashton lays it all out: "We're here to figure out how to stop those who want to release the One Who Sleeps." Imogen clarifies that they're not here to stop reilorans from coming to Exandria, but Ludinus from enacting his plans.

They are not on the opposite side of this conflict from Vesh -- she's not part of the Volition, but she's a liaison between them, so she can show them where to find them. The Volition signals their current safehouse by a different color, and she pulls one from behind a curtain: a deep, royal purple, freshly-dyed. The safehouse is hard to find, so they'll need a vantage point: somewhere in the Banners, a district of the city. She gives them the name of an associate, who will let them through in exchange for wealth. He works at dusk, so they have a few hours, and Vesh can guide them there.

The weapons that used to be built here before the Emperium take-over channeled the lightning from Ruidian storms into attack power.

Stepping back to where she came, Vesh disappears, and Jodot emerges: he allows them to stay in his shop for a short time, so they can rest before heading out again. Chetney offers gold for a gold-plated scythe. Jodot takes the gold and slides it into the kiln, where it'll be melted down, because gold doesn't have much value here apart from being a rare material to work with.

Vesh lets them stay in the basement for an hour to recoup and take a short rest, but they have to be gone by the end of it. Meanwhile, Laudna asks how much the sculpture of the dancing reiloran is -- with a persuasion check, Vesh gives it to her, on the condition that if the Bells Hells are captured and the dancer found, Vesh will give them up.

In the basement of this workshop, they take short rest. Imogen re-attunes to the circlet, while Chetney and Orym investigate the box. The construction of it is familiar -- it's the same as the Cerberus Assembly boxes they procured from the Paragon's Call encampment, and there is a trapped magical lock on it.

Now that sending is working again, FCG wants to contact Frida, and they all wonder why it's suddenly working again. They look at the scry ball, and see that Otohan has moved closer to the center of the city.

They talk a bit about the disparity between classes here on Ruidus, and Imogen expresses that people here might be "better off if they could come to Exandria... they've never seen trees, or anything like that." Orym says that it's beautiful on Ruidus, too, but they want to see what the Dreamers see -- and Laudna recognizes that it's easier to sway those who have been stepped on when they're trying to rally a force against the oppressive Vanguard.

Ashton notes that it's too easy to make assumptions, so they're not exactly infiltrating but they aren't integrating either -- and Chetney, in stride, notes that it wouldn't be the worst thing if half of them got captured. (it would. it would indeed be a terrible thing if half of them got captured. all of them is one thing, but splitting up? disastrous.)

Halfway through this discussion about expendability, Imogen gets a message from Vesh: "wait. Don't move." A half-dozen footsteps sound above them, Laudna casts darkness on the basement, and all they have is the sound of footsteps and silence as we pick up next episode.

[queensectonia]

last night i was reminded of one of my extremely few Hater Moments (lighthearted) about this series and i never got around to fully articulating my thoughts on it, so it is once again time for our regularly-scheduled kirby rant:

the spider sectonia reveal was poorly-executed on every level.

to start with, this plot element was introduced when the series was in its worst throes of Not Putting The Fucking Lore In The Fucking Games, but I will happily concede that this reveal was at least in a game; just not the game it should have been in.

I almost wonder if the Sectonia Clone as a whole was a leftover from the fact that Robobot started out development as Triple Deluxe 2, but considering that a) TD2 was dropped pretty early on and b) Robobot is just full to the brim with fanservice and callbacks anyway, I don't feel there's much evidence for such a theory.

at any rate, reducing the otherwise very intriguing reveal of Sectonia's prior form to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it easter egg in an entirely different game is pretty... underwhelming. we've had plenty of "reveals" or cool nods and expansions to other lorebits in similar easter eggs, but none of them were nearly as important as "oh, by the way, here's what the character whose whole arc revolves around personal and physical image used to look like! in a totally unrelated game!"

but that's the tamest complaint. that's just the accessibility of this information, which could have been better but certainly could have been worse.

the biggest problem is Sectonia's design. it's bad. it is just not good, fellas. she is literally just genderbent Taranza. it fails visually, it fails conceptually, and it fails really hard story-wise.

this design was so uninspired that when people in the EN sphere first saw it, tons of people thought it just was Taranza. then when we got screenshots, model rips, etc., it was still so painfully similar to Taranza that it made people assume HAL was saying Taranza and Sectonia were related - which turned into just as much of a shitfight as you might think.

even if this weren't attached to such a crucial character reveal, it's just downright a bad design! instead of taking even the slightest efforts to differentiate Sectonia from Taranza, they did the laziest, most barebones "uhhhhhh what if taranza But Girl" design shift possible. she's wearing the exact same outfit as Taranza, just palette-swapped. so little effort went into both the concepting stage and the modelling stage. she's just Taranza's model with the merest tweaks to make sure you know this is a Girl Spider.

genuinely, I would be a hundred times more amenable to this entire plot point if HAL had just bothered to give her an actual design.

but the problem is, making Sectonia a spider kind of just fucks everything about her story and contradicts itself at multiple points.

the aesthetic and theme language in TD is very clear. this is one of the biggest strengths that both it and Robobot share - the identity and literary through-lines of both games pervade every single visual element of them. Robobot tells its tale of capitalistic tech-fuelled colonialism through every part of the game from level backgrounds, to enemy designs, right down to surgical decisions like mechanising the pinwheel tree that was such a fond image from KRtD. every tiny thing bore the mark of the HWC, whether metaphorically or literally, such that you spent the entire game never forgetting that there was one unified force behind all of this, and Haltmann at the end of the game was the culmination of this aesthetic.

TD did the exact same. every part of TD sells that it's a fantastical fairytale romp through a series of themed locations with a connecting thread of the invading Antr* force.

*(this is a way better romanisation than "antler" this is my hill)

if anything, I'd argue that TD's design language in this respect is tighter than Robobot's, because Robobot had a fairly broad theme of "industrialisation and hi-tech space future sci-fi" to draw its foes from, whereas TD had to condense its antagonists under the stricter banner of "evil insect army".

and they did incredibly. every point of design about the Antrs points straight to Sectonia and draws from her in some way or another. it's absolutely seamless. she's the perfect logical endpoint of Antr design from every angle: she's the literal queen bee of this insect hive and the perfect expression of their anatomy. she's bigger than the biggest Antr. she's more developed. she's more powerful. they were so careful and thorough about this design conceit that Antrs have multiple stages that all march straight up to Sectonia. we go from the tiny bronto burt and waddle dee clones with their little wings and eyes that seem so familiar, to the Antr soldiers, all the way up to the Lord Antrs who are one step away from Sectonia. they have stripes and facial markings to echo hers. it's all wrapped up with the genius bow of combining ants, bees, and wasps: they're all hymenoptera! the metaphor goes even deeper than that because there's a species of wasp that parasitizes spiders! controls them, even!

... except no actually, we've decided she's a spider too and all of that buildup and artful design means nothing.

it's awful. it's taking what is far and away one of the best-executed designs in the series and saying that all of that buildup and blatant connection of ideas meant nothing.

but that's just the visual end of it. Sectonia actually being a spider makes no sense in the lore, either.

first of all, TD's incredible design sense and artistic direction applies to Taranza as well. while he's obviously derivative of Magolor, within the context of TD he's clearly meant to evoke the sky fairies. he's designed to look much more like them than any of the insect characters. he's got the same body type, he moves the same way as them, he's a sky fairy with a spider theme. the game draws visual parallels between him and the sky fairies more than once; this is not unintentional.

this is part of what makes Taranza's role as Sectonia's right hand more impactful: he's only insect adjacent, and the design language would have you believe he's more closely related to the fairies than the insects, so him being with the bad guys is notable and interesting.

so why would a spider character be the ruling monarch of the insect hive? why would the line go ant, bigger ant, fancy ant, armoured ant, spider, wasp?

I mean, shit dude, the miiverse posts directly tell us that Sectonia used to "look like her insect underlings". it really feels like the decision to make her be a spider was a total spur-of-the-moment one, between how badly it interacts with the rest of the story and how lazy the design was. Sectonia's backstory had a couple of holes in it regarding the actual timeline of things, but those were just mysteries regarding what order everything happened in. she was both a bodyjacker and a good queen at one point, which don't exactly jive, so it becomes interesting to think about how those two facts coexist. on the other hand, her being a spider just gets shoehorned in there for no apparent reason other than to... heighten her connection to Taranza?

and that just dovetails into the complete mockery HAL made of Taranza's character development after TD, and THAT is a rant for another time.

there was just no point to it all. Sectonia being a spider adds nothing, removes a bunch of nuance and intrigue, and muddies both her story and the background world of TD.

[cloudy-caspirations]

Hey cas!! I wanted to ask you how to make the most out of notions (cuz its kinda complex app) + how to make notes omg im struggling w this YELPP😭😭

Hi !! I started using notion last year to try and organize my school life and still haven’t completely figured it all out, so I get what you mean with it being a little confusing 😭. I’ve been mostly using it as a planner, but just started writing notes on it over this summer break and am kind of loving it. I’ll include screenshots and stuff under the cut, but if you need more specific details or a tutorial for a database or something feel free to send another ask or dm!

My Notion Setup ⬇️⬇️

(Sorry if the formatting for pictures is weird, I’m still trying to figure out how to use this app 😵‍💫)

For Planning:

Here is my notion dashboard! It’s a little barebones compared to others that I’ve seen on Pinterest, but it works for me because if I include anything else my ADHD brain will get overwhelmed and won’t keep up with actually using and updating it.

I have two databases: one being used as an assignment tracker that sorts my assignments into To-Do, Overdue, and Done sections based on dates and the other has pages for my classes for the semester. (I just realized that I forgot the change the heading from Spring 2024 to Fall 2024, so please don’t mind that 😭) Along with the databases I have a simple to do list for things that I need to get done that aren’t assignment related.

You could also add a calendar view to the assignment database if you prefer seeing it in that format, I just choose not to because I use Google Calendar to see it in relation to my other plans for the day.

I don’t use the class pages for much because I preferred writing my notes in either Goodnotes or a physical notebook last semester, but I’ll probably start using them more because I like using notion to keep track of all of my code snippets and stuff along those lines that are easier to type than write out. It was also pretty helpful last semester for creating drafts and outlines for essays.

For Note-taking:

Here are two examples of pages that could go in the classes database if you prefer to take notes digitally. I like to use databases to create pages to take notes in for each chapter/section of the textbook or material for the class.

My favorite way of viewing it is the board view because I like having my progress visualized (and clicking and dragging chapters to the “Done” section is satisfying), but the table view is also nice if you want to include more details such as quiz scores or dates.

Here are some photos of my notes for a single chapter. I use section headers to separate the actual notes from other stuff like chapter-specific exercises or links, and use toggle headers for sub-section notes to make it less cluttered. Other than the formatting it’s nothing too fancy, my typed notes are similar to how you would take notes in any other software like GoogleDocs or Word.

[lifeina-glasshouse]

Schoolhouse Rankings: Part 1

The Bottom 15

This will be a ranking of all 53 Schoolhouse Rock! segments from 1973-2002. Climate Rock from 2009 will not be included because I don't have access to it, and it's not really considered "the same" series as the run up to 2002. We're taking this very very no foolin' seriously here despite this being a kid's show from the 70's /j. It isn't that deep, but I'll make it that deep. I'm rating based mostly on the music and lyrics themselves; this is weighted towards the sonic aspect rather than visuals. I want strong instrumentation and good vocals, and a premise that keeps me listening. Characters and their interactions/potential to be interesting are also big players, I like the more charater-driven ones. If the premise/concept for how the subject is conveyed is creative, points there too. Lesser aspects they'll be judged on include actual animation quality(This was mostly a series concieved off a shoestring budget in the 70's, so unless the short does something exceptionally good or bad, not a lot of points depend on this) and general wow factor(Doing something standout from most other episodes). I'll also include a few stats if applicable as well as some fun trivia!

Here's a key for some symbols: ⭐"big one" most popular song of the season 🟩highest ranking song of the season 🟥lowest ranking song of the season ⚡seizure warning! prevalent flashing lights 👍i have an interesting fact to share ✖multiplication rock 🇺🇲america 🖥computer💲money 🖋grammar 🧪science

In last place...

53. ✖ The Good Eleven 🟥

I don't have a ton to say on this song; I just find it boring in every way. The delivery doesn't fit Bob Dorough. He just sounds really insincerely chipper and I'm not a fan of the key the song's in. Instrumentation isn't anything to scoff at, but it's also nothing special. And the short really falls flat in its concept. Motifs of angels and general ideas of purity are shown often in the video, but nothing is ever pushed to the point where it becomes interesting. If a good short is a work of art, like a painting, this is a bunch of scattershot ideas that splatter across the wall and do nothing else. It's literally about nothing. "11 is good, multiplying it is easy" is about all there is. No substance. Which I could also say about the animation, because it's really simple and boring. You could make the excuse that this was the first reason, so it wasn't up to snuff with the rest of them, but I wouldn't agree, because the same season has some really great moments like Little Twelvetoes and I Got Six, where you get some really colorful, detailed shots. This as well as the fact that there are some even better, arguably more simplistic animations with songs like Telegraph Line and even Presidential Minute really sours this song for me. If I had to describe this song in a word: Insubstantial. -Lowest placement for Bob Dorough -Lowest placement in Multiplication Rock -Lowest placement of all episodes

52. ✖ Lucky Seven Sampson

I have even less to say on this song. It at least has a concept, following the titular anthro rabbit Lucky Seven Sampson around town, and it's played into by the animation, but it's still not a very interesting one. He sort of just strolls around causing havoc and teaching how to multiply. Something that hinders the songs in multiplication rock is how at times stiff they are lyrically, which isn't really the fault of the writers, as you obviously need to insert the times tables in there somewhere, but it's still a detractor in really barebones cases such as this song, because besides that run of times tables there's not much. I don't even like Sampson's voice or design much. Dorough is pretty pitchy on higher notes, which is unlike him. The color palette with that ugly yellow background is also not stellar. Really boring.

51. 🇺🇲 Three Ring Government 🟥👍

This short used to scare me as a kid. I think it was a mix of the key it was in(I had/have a strange aversion to a few of these songs simply because of the key) and the more exaggerated artstyle that was, at times, a little uncanny. I used to freeze up because the lions on the posters in the backgrounds would scare the shit out of me. My point is that this short did not improve much in my eyes. The artstyle is rough, and in some cases uncanny in a not very charming way. I don’t know what to say because it’s just so… bleh. Luckily I’ve padded this with an early childhood story, so yay! Nobody will ever notice how boring and unimportant this song is! We truly were not missing anything with this one being delayed.

-Fun Fact! This song was held from airing for several months due to the song's entire concept being about comparing the branches of government to a circus. For fears of getting their funding cut because of this, the episode was withheld until 1979, making it the last short to air from America Rock by a long time. -Lowest placement for Lynn Ahrens -Lowest placement in America Rock

50. 🖥 Software/Think Computer! 🟥⭐

Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips is an odd season. It’s the only season to have recurring cast members in the forms of the titular Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips, who benefit this season greatly because I love them both. That being said, this is the worst of their relatively lackluster 4-episode season. Darrel Stern is super pitchy, and Bob Kaliban’s voice has a robot filter that’s grating when he’s trying to sing. The instrumentation is pretty lackluster and it’s my least favorite subject-wise, talking about BASIC and other 80’s computer software features that are severely outdated. I’m not one to bitch about the outdated songs- I will wax poetic about how amazing Telegraph Line is- but this just offers no value to me and probably most others.

-Lowest placement for Darrel Stern and Bob Kaliban -Lowest placement in Computer Rock

49. ✖ Elementary, My Dear

Bleh. Boring. I’ve been trying to shorten my reviews so I don’t yap, because I know I tend to restate my previous opinions a lot sometimes(got this input on a music review once), and this short will be great practice. Besides the fact that the little kid Noah has is cute, it doesn’t do much interesting, and the repetitive melody gets old fast

48. 🇺🇲 Elbow Room

Aged horribly. You'd be totally flamed for making a pro-manifest destiny song today. Besides that, though, Sue Manchester has the same cadence and sound as Lynn Ahrens, one of my least favorite vocalists on the SHR team, which doesn't do her a great service. The rest of it is take-it-or-leave-it.

-Lowest placement for a non-recurring singer(Sue Manchester)

47. 💲Tyrannosaurus Debt🟥👍

The idea of the National Debt being a huge dinosaur that constantly grazes Capitol hill is a pretty fun concept! I really like the creativity there, but besides that there’s not too much to pick apart. Money Rock at times could be very experimental with the SHR artstyle, but this was one that tried emulating the old artstyle, which leaves a lot to be desired as being faithful costed money. Most set pieces and backgrounds were flat white, and the people had a bleak artstyle revisited in Presidential Minute that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The more I think about it, the more I realize it’s just a bad version of what came before. Dorough’s delivery, though he does get a little more intense in the end, is pretty boring, and, in the same vein as Elementary My Dear, the singsong melody gets old quickly. There are a few songs that, rather than stick to a verse-chorus structure or have more fleshed out segments, just sort of go on and on, and it doesn’t interest me. Not a fan.

-Fun fact! At the end of this video, Bill from I'm Just a Bill makes a cameo! -Lowest placement in Money Rock

46. ✖ The Four-Legged Zoo

The kid's choir is actually really good in this song, and it adds some fun, airy energy to it. It sort of just lists animals and numbers, though, and the animation isn't super out there, so this short doesn't get a lot of points.

45. 💲This For That

With this one, I'll admit, the caveman guy is pretty cool. I like his design, he's a silly little dude. This is another short from Money Rock that harkens back to old SHR, and I must say, they did it far better here. I used to confuse this for one of the older ones when I was little, because I knew some of them were made later on, but I didn't know all of Money Rock was. Character designs are really good, and the steel drum is an interesting instrument a friend caught in the background and got me to pay attention to. Besides that the instrumental isn't all that special, and neither is the rest of the short. Dorough has that sort of bored, going-through-the-motions feel to his voice like he did in Tyrannosaurus Debt. The same pet peeve of a grating repeating melody is here and twice as bad. It's not really something I can describe; I just don't like it, there's nothing going on. That repetition at the "chorus" part of "Coins/barter is smarter" is also unbearable. Neither of them is truly "better" than the other, and the song seems to come to that conclusion through a confusing flip-flopping of that opinion every repetition.

44. 🇺🇲 The Preamble

Literally just the preamble to the Constitution. Like, that's it. Slightly related visuals to go with it. 'Salright.

43. 🖥 Intro 👍

This short doesn't really hold up to the excitement I had knowing it was lost media for some time. The instrumental has an aggressively 80's feel to it, which is cheesy, but in an admittedly very charming way. It's sort of an extended version of the theme song, and that’s cool. Premise is awesome, again, I love Mr. Chips, and this is essentially Scooter introducing him to us, and I love their little friendo dynamic! This just isn’t much in the lyrics or music or voice department. As stated before, the music has some fun 80’s cheese, but it gets old and ignorable quick, and is less memorable compared to later episodes like Hardware. Stern has the same loud, pitchy yell as he did in Software that gets on my nerves. I like it when he sing-talks more than when he actually sings. And the topics covered lyrically are expanded upon in the next three episodes, rendering this one a bit useless since it skims over the ideas on such a surface level. Not a bad episode, but there’s better.

-Fun fact! This song was lost for a very long time. After it's initial 80's airings, the short was lost by the network and declared lost media unil 2013, when Scooter's voice actor, Darrel Stern, uploaded the original tape online.

42. 🇺🇲 Presidential Minute👍

This is the shortest song in the whole lot, lasting, as suggested, just a minute. It’s cool, but there isn’t much to it besides that. Artstyle kinda blows as stared with Tyrannosaurus Debt, the designs and animation are very simple, but I sort of get it since the short is a just prize unlock for winning a dvd bonus game. Sheldon’s delivery isn’t outstanding, and the instrumental is standard.

-Lowest placement for Jack Sheldon -Fun fact! This episode as well as I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College are exclusive to the 30th anniversary VHS/DVD releases!

41. 🇺🇲No More Kings

Another blase Ahrens America Rock song. Most of hers are very similar here, just recaps/skimmings of historical events, and that’s understandably restrictive for story ideas. Only real standout feature is the animation, which has a nice watercolor aesthetic I’m a big fan of.

40. 🖥Number Cruncher

Poor Scooter. Bro’s bedroom is half filled with papers. Scooter is relegated to statistitian for his baseball team, which he struggles with severely until he’s offered help by Mr. Chips. A fun premise! It’s kind of just Mr. Chips yapping though, but not in a fun way like(spoiler alert!) Hardware. Kaliban isn’t much better than Stern when he has the voice filter on, so in that aspect this is only slightly boosted. Standard Computer Rock faire.

39. ✖Figure Eight

I seriously love the first minute and fifteen seconds of this song. It contains a very delicate oscilating melody that I’m a big fan of. This was Blossom Dearie’s first song with the team, and her fragile voice sounds whispery and eerie, giving the song a creepy doll tone I enjoy. The figureskating animation and concept is also very alluring to me, I really like the establishing shot of the school blanketed in snow. The animation feels very graceful, a great pairing with the vocals and premise. This all comes back to bookend the song about a minute later, but that minute in the middle is such a big pacebreaker. It “transitions”(really just plops you in the middle of a completely different song) to a far cheerier, less elegant section that Dearie’s delivery does not switch up to match. Visuals are only semi-related, either containing the figure skating theme and not the character(whom I do really like), or the character and not the figure skating theme. Kinda just whatever crap they wanted to put in the song is thrown around here, and it damages what would otherwise be a song begging to be put in the top 20.

-Lowest placement for Blossom Dearie

[spoiler1001]

Fiona Fox meeting edited!

Anti-Sonic should have guessed that stepping on that landmine would fucking hurt. Sure, he and his double were more durable than others but he still felt that. To make matters worse, after doing something that technically helped the little freedom fighters- Do they even like their Sonic?

The civilians seemed to love him, and he’s been able to smile and charm the ladies, and a couple of gentlemen, even if no one has bitten yet. 

Of course, after clearing a landmine from the premises, (and getting yelled out by the resident princess) and stopping a more squishy mobian from getting ripped to shreds, he was sent to the infirmary. Anti-sonic was too sore to argue, deciding to sit back and catch his breath. 

The infirmary was barebones, the war against their Robotnik bleeding their supplies dry. The most they had to offer many was a bed to lie on and recover. Anti-Sonic was even given a blanket—truly the best for the hero of Mobius. The bed that he was given was soft, softer than he was used to, and more comfortable than he was raised with. 

Anti-Sonic smiled at the thought of being a treasure, valued not written off, only most of it this fault. Of course, he’s bound to get caught and thrown out but he still had time to enjoy not being a cosmic punching bag. 

Anti-Sonic felt himself dozing off, relaxing under the lack of concerns and responsibilities. His accelerated healing working its magic. 

The doctor was going from patient to patient, trying to treat everyone that came into the room. He was run ragged. If Anti-Sonic cared, he’d feel bad for him.

“Fox!” The doctor yelled to someone out of Anti-Sonic’s line of sight. “We got another one.”

“On it!” a feminine voice responded, catching the attention of the hedgehog. 

He perked up at the sound of the owner of the voice approaching. 

The two of them locked eyes. Her blue eyes met his green. He gave her a smile, the fox looked at him with a deadpanned expression. Her red hair was striking, and her white and orange outfit was bold and attention-catching. The fox in front of him looked Anti-sonic over; almost looking through him. She said nothing, looking around for others, before kicking up the brakes on the wheels of the bed. Anti-Sonic raised an eyebrow as she dragged the bed across the room, into a side room used for examinations and emergency operations. She locked the door behind her with a sharp click. 

“A Private treatment? A little forward but I can go along with such a pretty lady like you.” Anti-Sonic sat up giving her a flirtatious smile. 

The fox girl huffed a breath through her nose, shaking her head softly. Her fingers reached into her glove, pulling out a silver piece of metal the size of two coins lined up next to each other. 

If he wasn't a speedster he wouldn’t have caught what the fox girl did, but the metal in her hands was two inches long, with a divide down the middle. The fox unfolded the metal, a short blade appearing as she twirled the butterfly knife and placed it under his chin. , right against his skin. 

“Aw, you didn’t have to I don’t even shave yet.” Anti-joked with a sharper point to his smirk. 

“Where is Sonic?” She asked, her voice even. 

“Babe, I am Son- ah” Anti-sonic started to answer but was cut off by the blade digging in. He looked her in the eye. There was no fear in her eyes, he wasn’t some danger to her. Even Sonic could do some serious danger and She still wasn't scared. He could like her. He did- nope putting that thought away. 

“Well, there’s blood so you're mostly organic, and where is our Sonic,”

“Or what, you tell, if you were going to you would have.” Anti grabbed her arm and gently pulled her arm down. “You could bring every single freedom fighter to this room and I couldn’t stop you until it’s too late but here we are,”

“What do you want?” She glared at him. “Why replace him and do something so boneheaded as stepping on a bomb.” 

“Looking out for myself and others and solving a problem. It’s so rare that I can live life and not be antagonized.” Anti-sonic kept an eye on the knife. 

“Is that why you are pretending to be a hero?” the fox girl asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, it’s nice being someone everyone loves.” Anti- Sonic smiled posing to look softer and more pathetic. 

The Fox laughed. “That’s adorable. You just sat through our princess yelling at you and you think he’s universally loved and can do no wrong.” 

“I’ve yet to meet someone who has a true issue with him.”

“Well, now you have. Leave and give us back our Sonic.” The fox girl turned to leave. 

Anti gave her an audacious grin. “Tell me more.” 

“No.” 

“You’re no fun.” 

“And you are? all you’ve been doing is flirting and running around.” 

“Like Big Blue is any better. Try hanging out with him and see.” Anti-Sonic gave her a pout. “We’ll meet each other again and you can tell me how that goes.”

“Ew.” She frowned. “Just get out of here.” the door unlocked and she stepped to the side. 

Anti-Sonic gave her a mock salute before leaving the room. As he strolled away he could see that others were giving the room that the fox girl was still standing in dirty and damning looks. It looked like she was more than familiar with the hostility that he talked about. He made a mental note to find out more about her.

[roxyco-deliverygirl]

The more I think about totk the less I like it. Like I've played almost every zelda game (the only ones I haven't played are Zelda 2, the four swords games & oracle of ages because I played seasons) and totk is like, maybe bottom 3, the only thing saving it from actually being in the bottom is that none of my friends would play triforce heroes with me and that's significantly less fun without multiplayer (and there are some things I like in triforce more than totk, like being able to put Link in a dress, actually it’s just that) also at first I was going to end it there but then I remembered that they said there was no dlc because they'd done everything they wanted to do with this version of Hyrule which might mean no Hyrule warriors (the only redeeming point I would have given to totk) so fuck it here's every problem I have with it.

Story

So the story isn't very good, you go to a place, see Zelda be so incredibly suspicious (more on that later), secret stone demon king, repeat another 3 times. Then you learn about the 5th temple, secret stone demon king, now go kill Ganondorf.

And a barebones story can be fine, but it's frustrating that the some of the biggest complaints about botw were about the story, the only real difference is that instead of getting the divine beasts you're getting secret stones.

Weapon design

More specifically what I have a problem with is the monster horns. The monsters looked pretty good in botw but because of the weapon fuse mechanic every monster has a different horn so you can get different weapons (which also bloats the inventory but that's a minor issue I dont really care about) and they clearly designed them as weapons not as body parts so they looked good in botw but now they look kinda awkward in totk by having a sword or a scythe blade sticking out of their head, it's also kinda annoying that the new monsters like the aerocuda, gibdo and gleeok look really good and have weapon parts that fit into the designs much more naturally.

But I also have a problem with the weapons themselves. There's so much less variation than in botw. Weapons had different shapes like with the Yiga sickle or the spring loaded hammer or even the weak weppons like a broom or a farming tool, but totk doesn't have anything like that. It kinda reminds me of Monster Hunter World, where a lot of the weapons looked very similar to eachother and the only variation was the monster parts attached to them.

More story

The memories are kinda terrible. They have information thats wrong compared to the gameplay, and some spoilers that actually ruined some of the present day stuff that Link is doing. For stuff that's wrong: the great deku tree says that the master sword will get more powerful if its exposed to more sacred power, after you get it back from the light dragon it is identical to how it was at the beginning of the game and a lot weaker than it was if you did any of the botw dlc, I guess this is supposed to be about Ganondorf not being able to break the sword this time but he doesn't even try. And Mineru says that secret stones only amplify their owners' power, but the companions you get don't actually have their abilities amplified and are functionally identical to how they were before, and the secret stone aparantly gives them a new power of duplicating themselves.

The gameplay clashing with the story can be seen as nitpicking or whatever but the story ruining itself is so much worse. So if you finish the dragon tears before doing the temples, it makes Link look stupid or that he's actively withholding information from the team and leading them into traps on purpose. Link sees in the memories that Zelda turned herself into a dragon and that it's impossible to turn back, he knows that Zelda is still a dragon because you've seen her, it's pretty likely that you've touched the light dragon. You've also seen a memory where Ganondorf created an illusion of Zelda to assassinate Sonia. So whenever the new sages say they saw Zelda, Link knows for an absolute fact that they've been tricked, and he doesn't tell them. The worst offender of this is when you go to Hyrule Castle following "Zelda". Purah sees her through a telescope and Link doesn't say that it's an illusion from Ganondorf. He goes to her and gets ambushed by monsters six times in a row, then he goes into another ambush against the strongest version of the phantom Ganon boss. And sure you could do the dragon tears after, but there's nothing stopping you from spoiling yourself and no indication that one of the main quests in your quest log contains spoilers for the rest of the game.

General attitude to fans

This is a kinda minor problem that just rubbed me the wrong way. In botw there was a trick called whistle sprinting, where you could move faster without using your stamina by whistling and mashing the sprint button. In totk if you mash sprint like you would to whistle sprint, it actually drains your stamina faster. Sure it was an exploit or a glitch or whatever getting patched, but they clearly fixed the issue and then deliberately added a mechanic that would punish you for trying. People who know how to whistle sprint are mostly speedrunners or people who replayed the game a lot, as in the people who cared about the game the most, and they're getting punished because they love the game.

Treatment of the Zelda franchise as a whole

After the totk trailer, the next game released was a remake of Skyward Sword (my favourite Zelda game). Clearly making a comparison between the sky islands seen in totk and the sky islands of Skyward Sword. The story of Skyward Sword explained the continuity between Zelda games and turned it from a series of legends into a story across fate about how love and goodness will always be there to stop evil. Tears of the Kingdom pretty much explicitly says that all previous Zelda games aren't canon, not just botw's "they're in the ancient past and won't have any effect on this game" but fully overwriting the events of other games, Skyward sword ended with the sky islands descending and the people deciding to found a kingdom that would become Hyrule but in the dragon tear memories and what Mineru says about history, we know that the Zonai founded Hyrule. It feels like they don't like the previous games.

And there are a few other things that are smaller, like I don't like the Zonai powers compared to the Shieka slate, I think the memories feel disconnected since there's no zonai tech (other than one cooking pot), the weapons look completely different from anything we have access to and Rauru never uses any of the powers that Link gets from his arm (other than opening a door) it feels almost like the game and the story were made separately from eachother.

I don't want the next Zelda game to be like these games have been.

[kidpickarus]

hey acgas fandom !!! i noticed there’s no fandom wiki so i went ahead and made one. its pretty barebones at the moment since its just me adding to it so i came on here to ask for some help bc I’m still making my way through the 1978 series and I havent even touched the 2020 series yet lol

anyway here’s the link if you feel like adding anything :)

[epikonionman]

CARNIVAL OF CARNAGGGEEE!!!!!!

I’ve put this off for a while, I gave it a listen and I personally thought it sounded like booty.

Intro: A standard ICP album intro, describes what part of the dark carnival this dude contributes to along with some other stuff. Gets the intro 10/10 freebie

Carnival of Carnage: Dear god, this really is quite the awful track. The instrumental isn’t terrible but it is the name of the album repeated over and over again with some audio splicing here and there. Not the best start to their jokers card career, but it does get better once riddle box comes around. 3/10, because the instrumental isn’t terrible.

The Juggla: Barebones, its mostly beat, little instrumental. Though I do appreciate the lyrical diversity unlike some certain tracks. It definitely has some head bopping potential, other than that, an okay track at most. 3/10, head bopping potential is always nice.

First Day Out: A definite step up from the previous two songs. It has an actual instrumental!!!! Definitely some good head bopping potential. Overall a very good song that isn’t vocals over a solo fuckin beat.

Red Neck Hoe: Lyrics paired with the (very vague) instrumental go very well together. Never thought I’d actually enjoy a repeated line over and over again, but the “Fuckin Bigot” playing every half second or so definetely adds. Though the Kickjazz verse did feel a bit out of place, it didn’t take away or add much, just wasn’t my particular cup of tea.

Wizard of the Hood: I remember this one J released this as an ep lp album thing. The sond itself has a lot of different sounds, I dig it, it still feels DULL!!! That’s my problem with most of these, there’s no instrumental, they also just sound tired. I do like the fact the blue pimp. Because of that and some other stuff. 6/10, gotta love blue pimps.

Guts On The Ceiling: OH MY GODD ITS THE PART FROM CEMETARY GIRL ITS WHERE IT CAME FROM OH MY GOD!!!!! Anyways, this song is actually pretty good, it has more of an instrumental esque thing. I enjoy it. 7/10 cemetary girl liked it so I have to too. Also it just sounds nice.

Is That You?: I did not expect to like this track as much as I did. I like how it sounds, the lyrics flow well, has a good beat, even without much of an instrumental the beat is fun and not at all dull, this is fun. I enjoy this. 7.5/10, is this really me? Enjoying ANOTHER coc track?

Night of the Axe: The instrumental sounds nice enough, it sounds wobbly and I enjoy it. The lyrics do feel like a rambling. A fun rambling at least. The song is nice, there’s better in this album blah blah blah glass breaking sound effect. 5.5/10

Psychopathic: More head explosions, the little psycho similar theme in the background sounds nice. Again instrumental sounds wobbly, I enjoy it. It sounds fuckin cool. FUCK THIS ALBUM ISNT COMPLETELY TERRIBLE.

Blackin’ Your Eyes: Sounds FINE. There’s a few parts that sound nicer than others. Other parts sounds blegh. It’s no surprise, this song is fine. 4.8/10 because a few things sound fine.

Never Had it Made: NO NO NOOOOOO!!!!! This song sounds good. It has sounds, that sound pleasant, it shows the truly sad life of a clown. Razor hotdogs, bullets and what not. This song gets a 10/10, not because it sounds particularly good, it sounds fine, but because it’s so representative of clowns.

Your Rebel Flag: Beginning sounds like the undertaker is gonna take me away to his secret room first off. Anyways, this song just feels like an older version of Imma Kill U from Bang! Pow! Boom! And I like that song. And I like this song too. 7.5/10

Ghetto Freak Show: Gotta love a ghetto freak show. The only place you can see a half blood half crip hybrid. And also whoever else was in there, I don’t care much for his song. The instrumental sounds like Muzak. Which is boring. 5/10, I’m bored, need more pornographic records being mixed into a song.

Taste: It’s a shame this album ends with a nice sounding song, if only every other track in this album was like that. The beat rocks, the lyrics are okay. The song is good, but low good. Teetering on the edge of good and okay. 6.5/10.

I have come out of the carnival feeling about the same, it’s a fine album, maybe not as BAD as I’ve called it. But it definitely isn’t very good. I hope you coc fans are happy I finally gave your coc a try, and still kept the same opinion about the coc you love so much.

[sapwine-and-starcharts]

I make playlists for like all my ocs using songs that relate to either their story or their personality and one song on Mylo's keeps popping into my mind and if the year ends and i haven't done at least a sketched comic to it put me down /hj

Like I even have an INCREDIBLY barebones script written for it that just needs me to panel out and sync to the music.

But art block has me in a chokehold!!!! Plus i have an even bigger non Outer Wilds project I'm taking a small break from that I'm hoping to return to soon.

Even still, the Nomai parts make me almost cry whenever i think of them!! Specifically the interloper Nomai's part (bless them for i have forgotten their names. I was never good with retaining the info about the Nomai) and Solanum's part.

Below is the script if you're interested. If any of it inspires you, go ahead and play with it!

All I ask is that you tag me in it cause I am desperate to see something done with it.

SAD MACHINE - PORTER ROBINSON

AN OUTERWILDS ANIMATIC IDEA

Is anyone there? (Blinking open eyes)

Oh... (focus on the orbital probe)

Hi

(camera tilts to reveal Slate at the fire)

Who survived? Somebody new? Anyone else but you?

(Touching the statue at the museum, zoom in through its eye)

On a lonely night was a blinding light A hundred leaders would be borne of you

(A drift through space, surprised by the supernova)

And though I know, since you've awakened her again She depends on you, she depends on you

(The statue workshop, sitting with Gabbro, being held by Gabbro)

She'll go alone, and never speak of this again We depend on you, we depend on you

(The Hanging City, Sitting with Riebeck, leaning against Riebeck)

And though I know, since you've awakened her again She depends on you, she depends on you

(The sunless city, sitting with Chert, holding Chert)

She'll go alone, and never speak of this again We depend on you, we depend (I'll depend) on you

(Feldspar’s camp, sitting with Feldspar, Roasting Mallows with Feldspar)

I don't know much about your life beyond these walls The fleeting sense of love within these God-forsaken halls

(The Interloper, the Crystal Nomai, the Floating Nomai)

And I can hear it in his voice, in every call; "This girl who's slept a hundred years has something after all"

(The Quantum moon, Solanum’s corpse, Solanum at the 6th location)

And though I know, since you've awakened her again She depends on you, she depends on you

(The museum, standing in the doorway, hugging Hornfels goodbye)

I'll go alone, and never speak of you again We depend on you, we depend on you

(The Ash Twin, Inside the Ash Twin Project, holding the core)

And though I know since you've awakened her again She depends on you, she depends on you

(The vessel, The mass grave, The coordinates)

She'll go alone, and never speak of this again We depend on you, we depend on you

(The Eye, looking back where they came, jumping in)

And though I know, since you've awakened her again She depends on you, she depends on you

(The Eye!Museum, The empty campfire, All of the ghost Hearthians behind them)

She'll go alone, and never speak of this again We depend on you, we depend (I'll depend) on you

(Each of the instruments, Solanum, The Prisoner)

Play

(A single tear rolls down their cheek, follow the fire up to the credits)

And that's the whole thing so far. Again, very bare bones, there's ALOT of empty instrumental space, and most of the camera angles and such are only in my brain rn but hhhh...

If you're interested in the rest of Mylo's Playlist click HERE. It's pretty much just as sad as this and is highly unfinished but I wanna keep working on it once my brain is better lmao

[fioras-resolve]

hey, let's talk about this blog post from 2014. this is an open letter from the creators of number-merging mobile game Threes, in response to various imitators like 2048. it's a fascinating case study in the midst of recent discussions of plagiarism.

so, look. Threes and 2048 are both mobile games that you can play right now, for free. i highly encourage that you play both of them before reading further. i want you to see how different these games feel to play.

okay, so. this blog post from Asher Vollmer and Greg Wohlwend is interesting to look back on, but it's worth remembering the context it was made in. the mobile gaming scene is absolutely awash with copycats and imitators, and has been for over a decade. mobile games like this are typically pretty simple and thus incredibly easy to copy. if you have a good idea for a mobile game, you are almost immediately going to get people looking to cash in on your idea. this has been cited by former free-to-play dev Caryl Shaw as one of the reasons she left that industry. it's important to keep in mind that cheap imitators and cash-ins are absolutely an issue endemic to the platform.

that said, 2048 is not the same game as Threes. Vollmer complains that people tell him they like 2048 more, but it's not hard to see why they do. it's faster-paced, easier to understand, and more immediately gratifying. Threes takes a bit of practice to really understand what it's doing. its advantages over 2048, e.g. granular control, more predictable rng, more depth long-term, are more relevant to mid- or high-level play. also, this might seem minor, but 2048 actually comes with an objective, it's right there in the title. it means that players have a goal to reach for beyond just a high score. even if you think 2048 is a worse game that Threes, they're clearly different games, and it's not hard to see why 2048 became memetic in a way that Threes didn't.

the letter acknowledges this. it doesn't call 2048 a knock-off, but instead a rip-off, and points out rightly that Threes didn't get the time to grow an audience or the credit for doing it first. i am intensely sympathetic to this, and you should be too. as an indie gamedev even outside of mobile, i worry that my good ideas might be stolen for a profit. even though i'm confident in my abilities as a developer, i'm less confident in my ability to predict the market, and the fear of plagiarism doesn't help.

but i'm not gonna lie, Vollmer and Wohlwend's letter here comes off as salty and antagonistic toward a fellow game developer. it simply wasn't enough to say that it's bad that they didn't get the credit they deserve, they also had to call 2048 a "broken game." to be clear! it has been almost a decade since both games came out! and i still go back to 2048! i decided to go back to Threes recently and give it a proper shot, and while yeah, it's better than i remember it, 2048 is not that much worse of an experience! it's like Minesweeper for me, one of those games i go back to when i need something to do. and like Minesweeper, it's fairly barebones as a game, but that doesn't really stop me from loving it.

but what really sticks out to me about the letter is actually this line that i haven't been able to get out of my head:

We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it.

this has bothered me for a while. not just because it's a wrongheaded way of thinking about quality, (plenty of AAA games that took more than a year suck) but because it's a common one. it's a kind of romanticization of work that treats the process as more important than the result. i understand this mindset, it's one that a lot of creators adopt, including me, because we love the work that we do. but it just doesn't always shake out that way. sometimes the work you do doesn't coalesce, and sometimes a great idea can be developed over a weekend. my current gamedev project which you can help playtest on my discord is a less ambitious project than ones i've taken on in the past, but also one i'm more confident i can pull off. it's often less important how much time you spend, than how you spend it and why.

*sigh*

Asher, Greg. if you are for some reason reading this, i do respect y'all as gamedevs. i think you did great on Threes, and also Puzzlejuice, and a lot of other games you've worked on separately. you called out an important issue in mobile gamedev, and one that's still with us today. you made an good, important game on a platform that is now dominated by predatory monetization and junk food entertainment. Threes represented a better world for mobile, and your post pushed back against what mobile had become.

but 2048 is fine.

[reallyghostlypost]

Camilla might be a dark witch - not evil, just dark...

We don't know much about Camilla yet. She's the strongest known magic user alive (maybe even strongest ever), she basically rules Castle Village, she's part of the Ministry of Magic's ruling Council and she has a very irresponsible personality. Anything else we'll discover in the 2.0 update. But there are already some interesting hints about her in the game and in the sneak peeks FlashShifter shared with the community.

(This post will have spoilers both from the late game content and from the extra info FlashShifter posted on reddit, twitter and his patreon. I'm not subscribed to the patreon, so I don't have access to any extra information that's not already public, but if anyone wants to avoid spoilers then it's better to ignore this post)

I always felt like there's something off about Camilla. The way she teleports around the player feels almost… predatory. Sure, she's playful, but in the same way a cat likes to play with her food. Every time we meet her she doesn't take anything seriously, she says nothing about what she thinks or feels, she comes out as almost cold, impersonal, like her playful personality is just a mask.

But the thing that I found the weirdest about Camilla is the way Morgan describes her: "There's a witch that visits us. She doesn't really talk to me. Her name is Camilla. She gives me the creeps." Again, she comes off as cold and dismissive here, like she doesn't care about Morgan's existence, potentially since they're not useful to her. But the last part is the interesting one. Morgan finds her creepy, not odd, not intimidating, creepy. For a good witch it's a very odd description. A kid could easily be intimidated by Camilla's personality and Morgan already finds lots of things in their new home weird, so this line might just be here to emphasize their childlike innocence. But in media kids are often used to tell important information about other characters with the idea that they're still too simpleminded to be tricked by illusions or someone pretending. So this line might actually be significant.

And Morgan is not be the only one who thinks that. Throughout the few dialogues that mentions her it seems the common sentiment is that the other adventurers find Camilla to be pretty intimidating too, even if they agree that she's impressively powerful. Magnus, her friend, describes her in a very odd fashion: "Galdora has many marvels and horrors within its borders. Camilla is just one of them". Both Lance and Edmund imply that no one even questions her, they all just accept her decisions even if they might disagree with her.

And sure, she has huge responsibilities on her shoulders, so her being slightly impersonal makes sense, and her unusually powerful magic could be intimidating to other mages even if she isn't trying to be. And what's the harm in having some fun in the few moments she has some spare time, even if others find it unsettling? Her cheerful personality could just mask how much stress she has to deal with daily. Camilla seems to be the good creepy witch archetype.

But there are hints that there might be more to it. FlashShifter shared a sneak peek with her tower on his reddit and twitter accounts, and it's a really interesting building. There are skulls on the bricks and one tower looks more like a jail, with bars on the windows and door. And while the taller tower is fully lit with furniture and decorations visible through the windows, the 'prison' one is barebones and shrouded in darkness, with deep gashes in the stone walls. What is that exactly? A prison? A place to store monsters? None of the options have good connotations. From the few info you get from FlashShifter's patreon without subscribing, Camilla also has a goblin servant, a thing witches, specifically evil ones, have. She gives off a very weird vibe at this point.

But I discovered the last bit of evidence for my theory only recently. A while ago Flash posted this on reddit. Basically a fun post where he decided to show Camilla as a pokemon trainer. Aside from her creepy sprite her pokemon team is made almost exclusively out of dark and ghosts pokemon with the single exception of Cloyster, which Flash admitted that he picked due to it's unusually strong battling ability and it's creepy sprite. So Camilla would basically be a Dark trainer, and the closest thing to dark pokemon in SVE would be dark magic.

Her odd personality and her creepy tendencies would make a lot more sense if Camilla would actually use dark magic, instead of just researching it. And it would also explain why her colleagues are vaguely scared of her.

Looking back, Camilla's personality is mainly defined in opposition with Magnus's one, a fellow Council member who is very serious about his responsibilities and studies, unlike the fun-loving Camilla who doesn't take anything seriously. The cutscene she had with him shows how different their personalities are, and even the cutscene where she meets the farmer on Sheerwater Bridge contrasts with the way Magnus behaves when the farmer discovers the Void Shard. She doesn't care what the Ministry thinks and will leave in the middle of a meeting while Magnus does everything in his power to act according to what he thinks the Ministry might want him to do. The way he adopts Morgan just because the Ministry ordered him to is further proof of that.

But Camilla might also be defined in opposition to Mr Qi. She tries to protect the town Qi seems intent to destroy and she tries to clear the corruption Qi spreads (maybe?). It's also implied that they are evenly matched power wise. And as another similarity, Qi's personality is also defined through his opposition to Camilla and Magnus, the latter who specializes in plants and forest magic while Qi prefers to use dark/void magic.

Speaking of the Void, one of Qi's defining moments in SVE is when he kidnaps the farmer and places the Seal of Silence on them. Qi teleports the farmer in a pitch black area that is called 'void' in the files. But when the farmer dies in the Badlands and Camilla rescues them she also teleports the farmer to a borderless dark area eerily similar to the void. Between this and her potential dark magic, she's weirdly similar to Qi.

As a final point, if Qi is contrasted by Magnus through a life-death opposition, then it's possible that Camilla contrasts him through a dark-dark similarity. They might both use dark magic, they might both stand out due to their power and magical abilities, and they both have a guarded and mysterious personality. But while Camilla uses her magic to protect thousands of people Qi seems willing to sacrifice them all to further his goals (or for funsies I guess). While Qi works alone in the shadows, Camilla cooperates with the magical community. Even the way they interact with the farmer in their 'void' events shows that - Camilla teleports him there in order to save him while Qi teleports him there to threaten him.