#much to say about this fucking game

[lotus-pear]

the dialogue choices in this game should be more diabolical

[mohntilyet]

illario as the grandchild that is most like caterina is something i'm loving to chew on. the grandson that took her lessons to heart the most. kill anyone who sees your face and knows your name, "we are not revolutionaries", the first out of the two to prioritise the contract. power at any cost, and the only one to lean into the unnecessary abuse that their grandmother told them was tradition. why is anyone surprised he allied with the venatori? and then there's illario's considerable skill in infiltration and manipulating any mark, he has always had the charisma that lucanis lacked. illario isn't attached, he has/can/will use someone and immediately drop them; "that does free me from promises i don't intend to keep". he can lie about how much he cares so well that he fools a magister into believing he loves her. he kills zara without hesitation to cover his own tracks, meanwhile lucanis blindly promises a young girl in the middle of a siege that he will help her find her father. even the lessons about family stick with him, and in this entire messy power struggle, he never actually orders anyone to directly kill caterina or lucanis, not until he's backed into a corner.

and even after all that. despite even lucanis believing illario should be first talon, lucanis is still the better killer. illario is not strong enough to be the brutal assassin caterina needs him to be. so when lucanis seems to fill the role his mother left, grief and love for her dead heir apparent remains, and any of the other qualities caterina needs in her next talon doesn't matter. whatever his mother was, lucanis has to be. what illario does doesn't matter, because he will always be second best to caterina's memory of her favored daughter.

[thigiocamap]

co-signing everything you said, and plus this isn’t even getting into just like. how shit the level curve is?

the majority of people who consider johto their favorite region usually site the “non-linearity” as a big reason for their love but i’ve always felt like this exact non-linearity absolutely killed the level curve.

on paper, the fact that chuck, jasmine, and pryce’s teams are of a very similar level to one another doesn’t seem like too big of a deal. in fact, the concept seems kind of cool. after all, they’re like this because this part of johto is a choose-your-own-adventure type of thing. the region opens up to you, and you’re able to go wherever you want and tackle these gyms in whatever order you desire.

but that’s ignoring the fact that these gym leader teams do not scale in level with your progress. for some reason too, the goldenrod radio tower takeover (which is supposed to be conquered right before you gain access to the final gym) still has you battling weak pokemon like rattata and zubat, still in the level 20s. it’s insane.

and then right afterwards, you’re supposed to battle clair, whose ace is a level 41 dual water/dragon-type, which only has the dragon-type as its sole weakness. i don’t doubt a lot of casual players got their asses kicked by this thing simply because it’s a menace that’s hard to counter at this point in the game, considering how most johto pokemon suck and how most people’s first opportunity to own a dragon-type pokemon at all is with the free dratini that’s given to you after the gym battle (you can get a dratini from the game corner as well, but most people are not like me and thus do not give a fuck about voltorb flip).

and then right after, you have the gauntlet of the elite four, with lance and his three dragonite (one of which being level 50) waiting for you. i don’t really consider pokemon games to be particularly difficult for me, but the fact that the battles have gone from gym leaders in the early level 30’s, to masses of weak rattata, zubat, and grimer just barely reaching level 25 to train off of, to suddenly jumping up to the final gym leader’s ace at level 41 and the champion’s own very powerful ace at level 50… it just comes across like artificial difficulty born from poorly-planned level setting.

the fact that every wild pokemon you catch is at a relatively low level even in the later areas of johto truly do not help in team building, as well, to add onto the “johto pokemon suck” point. the aforementioned skarmory can be found at level 27 (at a 5% spawn rate lol, so barely anyone would even know it’s on this optional route in the first place), while pokemon from the required ice path never reach a higher level than 23. why would you feel motivated to catch these pokemon when training them up on the low-leveled trainers is such a chore? this is why most people end up just using the old faithful team of starter, ampharos, and whatever else they found at the beginning of the game. it’s just a pain in the ass to level up new pokemon in this game, even if you can find a good one in the first place.

i do love hgss; i consider it to be my personal favorite of the remakes. but god, playing through it is a pain. i enjoy playing with a fresh and new team full of pokemon i’ve never used before for all of my replays of pokemon games, which is really fun but can end up being a little annoying when i’m replaying something like this. i ended up using multiple trade evolution pokemon and messed around with the safari zone just to have a decent team that wasn’t just your typical literally-everyone-has-used-this team. trading with myself was no problem because i have more than one ds, but what about kids that don’t have that luxury, and don’t have friends (like i was when i was little)? they’re stuck with weak pokemon!

it sucks !!!

i love hgss so much !!!

I've always looked back on the johto remakes fondly, as I know most people have. they're very beloved games, and for good reason! they brought johto to life on the ds and added lots of wonderful new features. pokemon fans have long since considered them to be the best remakes in the series, and I think they deserve that reputation. however, I've been replaying pokemon soulsilver the past few days and I've been coming to realize that they still suffer specifically because they're johto remakes.

my main issue with the johto games, a problem that continues to haunt their remakes, is that the variety of pokemon available is very limited. if you want to build a full team of 6, then most of your options are likely going to be pokemon from kanto. in the specific context of gold and silver, this makes sense. they were designed as sequels to the original red and green, with the primary hook being that 100 new species of pokemon have been discovered. the original 151 were extremely beloved, so it makes sense that they would continue to be featured prominently in gold and silver. that way, whenever you did find a new pokemon, it would be exciting for the player! I understand the approach that gamefreak took with the original johto games given this context.

the problem is that most johto pokemon just... aren't very good. most of the new pokemon have very poor stats - made worse by the fact that a significant portion of them are baby pokemon. on top of that, many of the ones that are good are often inaccessible until late in the game; skarmory isn't available until after you get the 8th badge (in an optional route that many players are likely to skip, no less), and tyranitar isn't available until mt. silver, the very last location you get access to. even some of the new pokemon which are mediocre at best aren't available until the post-game; houndour and slugma can only be found in kanto despite being johto pokemon, and misdreavus - the only other ghost type besides the gengar line - also can't be caught until mt. silver.

because many johto pokemon are unusable on a team, whether due to poor stats or inaccessibility, your team is most likely going to consist of kanto pokemon. again, I understand why this is the case given the context that the games were released in, but I find it frustrating! I want to build my team around the pokemon native to the region I'm playing in, and I feel my ability to do so is being limited!

so, did heartgold and soulsilver fix this? not really. the same problems mostly persist. one of the only saving graces is that some of the formerly weak johto pokemon received evolutions in gen 4. and you can obtain some of them! however, most of them are locked behind the post-game once again, and some of them are unobtainable entirely without trading. for example, there's no good reason that you shouldn't be able to evolve eevee into leafeon or glaceon in these games, but you need to trade it to diamond, pearl, or platinum to do so because there is no moss rock or icy rock in johto. they could have added them, but they didn't.

it frustrates me because the context these games were released in was different from that of the games they were remaking. technically, they didn't need to remake them; all johto pokemon were made available in gen 3, albeit many of them were locked behind the paywall of having to buy far too many games and accessories. the primary reason for these games to exist was to make them easier to obtain. it wasn't like firered and leafgreen, which were made specifically because the majority of kanto pokemon were completely unobtainable in gen 3 due to the gba not being able to connect with gb and gbc games.

speaking of which, it feels like they didn't learn their lesson from firered and leafgreen. one of the primary causes of frustration in those games is that you are completely unable to obtain any non-kanto pokemon until the post-game, for the sake of being "faithful" to the originals. this was a problem because they already weren't faithful to the originals, as frlg featured new mechanics from gen 3 such as abilities, but I digress. with hgss, the fact that gamefreak intentionally limited which pokemon you can access until the post-game feels like another attempt at being "faithful" to the originals, but they didn't even commit to it as hard as they did before. in frlg, if you maxed out a golbat's friendship, it would attempt to evolve into crobat every time it leveled up, before stopping prematurely. in hgss, you can evolve yanma into yanmega by teaching it ancient power and then leveling it up. if you want a togekiss though, too bad, because a shiny stone isn't available until after you beat the champion.

by this point in the pokemon franchise, I don't think gamefreak needed to remake gold and silver with faithfulness to their original context. hoenn and sinnoh were both designed to be new and refreshing, so it was reasonable for fans to expect each region to have its own identity, with its own pokemon being featured prominently. they could have adapted johto to suit this new convention for the series, but they chose not to, and I can't help but feel that heartgold and soulsilver suffer as a result.

[crazy-fangirl2524]

My biggest flex will always be how I knew Neil was the more feral and dangerous one than Andrew this whole time even before tsc and seeing the entire fandom freaked out makes me want to kiss and hug Nora and just thank her for finally finally showing everyone and I’m not just crazy

[dragggd]

Okay so Wrong Organ posted the first part of their Q&A and I want to highlight some of my favorite parts from it.

Daisuke was truly just a kid who wanted to make his parents proud, the guy didn't even wanna be on that ship. He didn't get a chance to find meaning in his life. I want to ******************

We already kinda knew Anya wasn't the best nurse (even with Jimmy's twisted perspective) because her office is littered with beginner books for first aid, but the fact that she tried getting into medical school EIGHT TIMES is heartbreaking. She basically kept Curly alive for like 5 months after the crash completely burned his skin off and left him limbless, she tried her damn best and even that wasn't enough.

Also Curly is British </3 but y'know we lose some I guess.

how much do you wanna bet curly is the type of guy who thinks every pokémon is pikachu

[mossy-paws]

Sword PHIGHTING! period cramps moodboard

Gods mightiest warrior…….

Og image:

ANYWAYS EXTRA BITS!!!! So. Yeah. I wasted exactly 27 hours and 29 minutes of my life making this over a period of like. ~a week and a half LMAO????? I THINK IT WAS LONGER?? Yeah all of these are completely redrawn from the Og “panels”, replicating the dungeon meshi style is. MISERABLE I don’t know why I did this to myself holy fucking shit, all of you blame @squiffer-salad for this monstrosity she’s the reason why this exists in the first place /silly

anyways, I highly recommend looking at the panels individually because I put a lot of fun extra bits in them and just. A LOT of effort in general, any likes, reblog’s, or comments are insanely appreciated since this did take such a long time :’DDD, everything in these minus the backgrounds are completely redrawn/shaded/and colored by hand, this includes mid/screen tones as I used specific layers for those! anyways thank you for coming to my period cramp projection ted-talk I’m going back into my Everglade hole.

[thefloatingstone]

"Do you need another hug?"

"I don't think that will help this time."

[cangrellesteponme]

i don't think wonderland is ready for those alices

[kittymizuki]

i think mizu5 foreshadows that ena is going to understand bc of the entire thing with the mystery escape room and how ena is the one who figures out that mizuki would have the final answer hidden among one of the stuffed animals bc that's "so like her" and /she was right/. yeah it ended up being in the stuffed animal hanging up from the ceiling, but mizuki herself says that this was touya's idea bc he wanted a twist, so ena technically figured it out?

the escape room and the key that should have been in reach which was moved out of reach due to the ideas of another person! it's not that toya is transphobic but i feel like the way he sort of co-opts mizuki's idea for the final answer of the escape room by inserting his own idea of a twist is meant to be analogous to how ena was almost about to grasp mizuki's own secret through mizuki herself and her language before mizuki got co-opted by her transmisogynistic classmates from a narrative standpoint.

it's the key ripped out of reach - oh, it's more "fun" if you make it more complicated unnecessarily even though that takes away the personal satisfaction. they remove mizuki's voice.

the escape room is genuinely so vital to understanding the intent? it's literally mizuki's heart. her shirt even has 3 symbols on it: maze, lock and key. it couldn't be more obvious. mizuki and locked rooms... if you read umineko, you'd understand...

[solitaireships]

I feel like I should say since there's been a recent uptick in a lot of communities I'm in/see stuff from a lot of white people pretending to be Asian, but you are not welcome here if you are in anyway stealing from Asian cultures for clout or the aesthetics of it

This includes if you're white and you give your self inserts Asian names, I truly do not care if your f/o is from an anime, you should not be using an Asian name under any circumstances. I hate that whenever I see someone using an Asian name online, I feel like I have to start searching their account to see if they're actually Asian or just a white person who likes the aesthetic of it bcs far too many white people will use Asian names here just bcs it sounds cool, with no regard for the actual cultural meaning behind it. Meanwhile actual Asian people will be mocked for their names, or treated like their names are too hard to learn to pronounce, or discriminated against based on their names

Asian cultures are not a fun little costume for people to dress up with. They aren't just a nice aesthetic, they aren't just a thing you can borrow from bcs you think it sounds cool

[arthursfuckinghat]

There needs to be a scientific study done on how Rockstar Games' Arthur Morgan is able to provoke the most earth shattering emotions I didn't even know I had in me

[gingermintpepper]

Why did Apollo favor the trojans in the Illiad?

So, dear Anon, I've been thinking about how to answer this question since I got it a couple days ago and I think I kind of want to make something clear before I get into it.

The Iliad by itself as a poem only covers some of the events that occur in the final year of a long protracted conflict that had been brewing for at least two decades and was an active war for ten. Within the space of the Iliad itself, the motivations and affairs of the major players are often referenced but there are many, many parts of the story that are not there because they belong to a different story cycle that has been since lost or was never recorded with words. In the space of the Iliad Apollo's motivations are questioned a lot - his pride is questioned by Poseidon who thinks Apollo should be just as angry at the Trojans as he considering Apollo was treated equally as poorly by Laomedon while they worked together. His honour is questioned by Hera who chastises him for taking the Trojans' side when he'd proclaimed that Achilles would live a long life and prosper at Thetis and Peleus' wedding. His own sister calls him a coward for refusing to fight when Zeus gives permission for the gods to go wild on the battlefield. For all that there's this image of Apollo in the Iliad as some staunch and unwavering protector of the Trojans, believe it or not, I largely think of Apollo as neutral in the war.

Which, I suppose, comes back to the question - why did Apollo favour the Trojans? The truthful answer is that I don't know. The Iliad and all its connected stories isn't something I've done enough research on to have an answer or a reference to an answer off the top of my head. The reasoning I'm aware of is that Apollo was a Patron God of Troy and really a god doesn't need any reason besides that to protect his people but it's not like Apollo abandoned the Greeks either. Calchas is the biggest example of that I can point to - descended directly from a priest of Apollo and one who attributed his mantic power to the god, Calchas was pivotal in ensuring the Greeks even got to Troy in the first place.

From a personal perspective however, I think Apollo was more dedicated to the house of Priam than he was the city of Troy itself. Apollo's affection for that house and all its members ran deep - from his admiration of Hecuba and Hector to his love and attempted courtship of Cassandra to his blessings given to Helenus, Deiphobos, Cassandra, Troilus and even his partnership with Paris - Apollo loved the house of Priam. When you think about the times Apollo lashes out against the Greeks, it's generally because they've done some nonsense to earn his ire. The plague was caused by Agamemnon disrespecting his priest, his aid in the slaughter of Patroclus was because he didn't respect him, his minor grudge against Diomedes too was because he tried to test Apollo's mettle and well, the less said about Achilles the better. Apart from his obvious favouring of Hector in the skirmishes, Apollo doesn't really oppose the Greeks. He has a ton of reasons to by the time the Iliad rolls around, including avenging the death of two of his sons, but he remains mostly satisfied with conducting his father's business and overseeing the war from a somewhat professional perspective. To me, it's always been less about Apollo caring about the fate of Troy as a city itself and more about him just really wanting to protect the people in the city that he's come to love and respect.

Of course, I encourage you to take my words with a big tablespoon of salt - like I said, I don't really know enough about the facts in particular to give a solid, confident answer but I can give you my interpretation of it. Maybe consult someone like @littlesparklight for a more comprehensive and grounded response 🤔

[joogios]

Anyways, Zeke Jaeger had to sit down and realise that because of his decision at seven to turn in his parents as Eldian spies his dad essentially replaced him and Dina, went back to Paradis and had another wife and another son and on top of that he had to realise that after raising Zeke to be nothing but a pawn for Eldia, Grisha had gone and named his new son after Eren Kruger, the leader of the Eldian Restorationists, AND IF THAT WASNT BAD ENOUGH Zeke was probably aware enough to know that Grisha did that whilst being married to a woman who probably had no clue whatsoever as to who/what Grisha was and what the name symbolised.

[crimeronan]

there's something well-meaning but also kind of insidious about the idea that you have to be Careful and Gentle with how you hurt female characters, lest you accidentally recreate misogynist violence in your work. particularly when this gets paired with "female characters shouldn't cry or break down too often because that's stereotypical feminine weakness" (this particular advice DOES seem to be going out of fashion these days, though. Thank God).

i'm thinking about how people have pointed out that women in popular fiction & fanwork are often comforting their tortured boyfriends about their sad abusive pasts, without receiving any of that same emotional support in turn -- effectively just becoming tools for said sad boyfriend's character growth. and how much rarer it is for that gender dynamic to be flipped, with the boy comforting the girl. and also how this trope is even More prevalent when it's a woman of color + her white boyfriend.

some of it is Men Ignoring Writing Women nonsense, some of it is fanwork of media that's built on Men Ignoring Writing Women nonsense, some of it is an unconscious recreation of a gender dynamic that often exists in real life relationships, etc.

but i Also think there's something to the fandom side with, like. people having hesitations around fictional women that they don't around men. like i HAVE to take some of these things in good faith, and the good faith reading is: writing about men recovering from abuse is a safe, easy exploration of hard topics. meanwhile writing about women the same way feels Strange and Wrong and Uncomfortable because of the Femaleness of it all.

i truly don't know what can be done to combat this beyond writing more suffering women myself.... because it's not all that helpful to yell "EVERYONE IS A MISOGYNIST" (especially because tbh more often i find it's, like. woman writers who just. Don't Want To Think About That Shit) & i also can't Force people to want to write about women suffering horribly.

so i suppose i will end this on a joke instead:

Pleaseeeee Start Beating The Everloving Shit Out Of Female Characters. For Meeee.... 🥺🤲👉👈🙏🙏🙏

[snackugaki]

one orrrr

two?

[sorrelpaws]

no offense but i genuinely fear that their potential dynamic will go severely underutilized