#new design looks so good though like damn what an upgrade

[autistic-bashir]

finally got him in the clone wars art style but it came at the cost of his cunty eyeliner :(

[anantaru]

so guys 🙋🏻‍♀️🌸 i have finished the entire new quest at last and omg 👼🏼 like this was outstanding!! you see, what i really enjoy about star rail is that it gives me similar vibes to hi3 in terms of the darkness in the plot, since hi3 is my favorite hoyo game i always love seeing stuff from it or just similar instances. SO YOU KNOW FOR A FACT I WAS SO HYPED WHEN ACHERON SHOWED UP 🤺 especially with the hi3 story with kiana as the mc being over and although i still love hi3 the most, kiana, mei and bronya, that trio, they were all the best characters together AAAARGHHH I SWEAR AND JUST THE ENTIRE STORY LINE WAS SOOO GOOD, I miss them all together as a trio and especially kiana, the best hoyo MC FOR LIFE. 🙋🏻‍♀️🩷

also 🤠 ^^ that frame with sunday and dr ratio like 😙😙 WAS SO FUNNY I HAD TO SS IT. 🤺

the amount of cutscenes we got to see again was so fun, it felt like watching a movie slowly unfold while you got to be a part of it 🩷 you can tell that hoyoverse gets better and better with each update on whatever game and that the cutscenes are always so well done (i always liked them but the constant upgrades ??? insane) 🙏🏻

+ the acheron one shotting aventurine lmao 🧎🏻‍♀️ it was my favorite though ngl HAHA 🙋🏻‍♀️🩷 no matter how much i like aventurine as a character, MEI OMG MEEEIIIIII 👹🩷 SHE WILL FOREVER BE MY LOVE LIKE I KNOW ITS ACHERON BUT YOU GET WHAT I MEAN !!!!! 🙇🏻‍♀️ LIKE THE CUTSCENE WITH HER HORNS OH MY GOOOD THE NOSTALGIA LIKE YES GO OFF SHOW THEM

also guys, idk but aventurine's boss fight, 🤠 i personally expected more like it was so easy to beat ?! I THOUGHT I WOULD STRUGGLE BUT HE DIED PRETTY QUICKLY BUT ITS FINE, I STILL LIKE HIS CHARACTER 🌸🙋🏻‍♀️. + i was happy hoyoverse showed us his backstory and took their time to flash it out and not gloss over it in idk one/two scenes, but they really took their time with it which was amazing 🩷

also jade looks so cool as well! the design is very pretty and i can't wait to see diamond too, or the rest of the ten stonehearts but they're hyping diamond up so much like another emanator?? yes please, i'm all in🧎🏻‍♀️🩷

this entire quest gave me movie vibes, you were on edge the entire time and even during side quests you had to take, it was still very intense. it actually took me quite a bit to finish it of course since i'm someone who doesn't skip dialog, but it was so worth it and the best way to relax after a long day of moving my body 🩷 just laying in bed, playing while drinking tea!!

what i wanted to say too, guys honestly sunday is not okay HAHAHAHAHAHAH 🌝 I MEAN LIKE you guys🧎🏻‍♀️, that shiver in his voice at times and you can tell he low-key doesn't even know how to handle all of that either, of course, for one he looks like everything is accounted for while in the other, he sounds like he's losing his mind and can we blame him ???? when he went "why did you kill her" and lowkey cussed gallagher out i was like damn 🤠 okay 😏 HAHA + i'm somebody that doesn't think too much about theories, instead i love eagerly waiting for the next patch!! so i'm excited for what's coming 🩷 + robin's song slaps.

last but not least 🤺 you see, gallagher wasn't really somebody i was very interested in, but damn the second he turned dangerous and spicy i went oh my oh hey what's up ?? 😏 giggles HAHA LIKE WHAT IS IT ABOUT MEN WHO ARE JUST SUDDENLY EVIL AND IDK MAYBE HE ISNT COMPLETELY RIGHT AAAAAA OOOOO UUUU WWWWW AAAAA but anyways, 🌸 the last cutscene low-key hurt me like what do you mean sunday gets off screened while i was saving up for him for what? 👹 ever since fuxuan like how can you do this to me + no way they're dead dead 🤠because the last conversation aventurine had with acheron was very important to the next patch i'm pretty sure! 🩷

all in all guys!! 🩷 this quest was beautifully done, it had a lot of hard, dark stuff and it reminded me a lot of hi3, that's why i give it a 10/10, very well done. 🌸🩷

[alertarchitect]

So! A new Doom game got announced!

Here's the trailer for those interested, it will help with what I'm about to go into:

As a bit of a Retro Throwback Shooter Shitter myself, I have some Thoughts. Read on if you're interested.

So, first of all I like the premise of exploring the time the Doom Slayer spent fighting demons alongside the warriors of Argent D'Nur. It's a time period that was purposefully left pretty damn vague in Doom Eternal, and the Slayer's lore before waking up again wasn't even really talked about much - if at all - in Doom 2016 from what I remember, since they were trying to play it a little safe due to Doom 2016 being a soft reboot of a series that hadn't gotten a new game in 12 years at that point, with the last title (Doom 3 and its various editions that attempted to improve it a bit) being a pretty big departure that had a wealth of issues, such as it being a Doom game with one of the worst shotguns ever put into a shooter. So it's a cool idea to explore this time frame of the Doom Slayer's history, and possibly show the events leading to the Slayer's imprisonment in Hell before he was rediscovered and subsequently awoken by Samuel Hayden in Doom 2016, including the Makyrs' fall from grace.

Second, I'm actually kinda hyped to see id Software still working on making retro throwback shooters. I was worried they'd get shuttered and their IP sold off after Rage was such a flop back in 2011, and they didn't make anything after it for 5 years until Doom 2016 came out, so it's nice to see they've found their groove again - making some of the best examples of the retro throwback shooter subgenre. Doom 2016 started the BoomShoot Renaissance, and Doom Eternal is still one of the best examples of the genre, mechanically. They are masterclasses in using an old formula while keeping the level design and visuals fresh with modern game design principles that have improved a lot since the 90s, along with new game mechanics to keep the moment-to-moment gameplay feeling fresh as well (such as the weapon / stat upgrade systems, the movement abilities you get in Doom Eternal, etc.). Seeing them pushing that even further is a treat to behold, and I'm confident it's going to be a pretty damn fun game, as long as it doesn't get forced into being $70.

Final point, though, is a bit of a downer for me personally. Why in the fuck are they making a game in the Doom series that's going for a more medieval-ish feel, when the Quake franchise is right fucking there and begging for a better modern entry than goddamn Quake Champions?? Seriously, making a Quake game calling back to the first game in the franchise - with the Lovecraftian inspirations, the more medieval-ish setting, the unique monsters like the Shambler you didn't see much of past Quake 1 - would be a fucking money printer. But no, Microsoft wants them to play it safe so they can get a guaranteed blockbuster because Quake Champions hasn't done very well since it came out of early access in 2022, which is definitely a fault of the Quake franchise not having any consumer interest and 100% for sure not because Quake Champions pivoted into being a fucking hero shooter trying to emulate the feel of old arena shooter deathmatching!! It's not like a soft reboot wouldn't be sorely needed after the goddamn disaster of a story that was the Quake 4 campaign! It's not like a modern Quake game that actually relies on having a fun weapon sandbox instead of relying on taking your opponents off guard with fucking superpowers on cooldowns is something the fanbase they're trying to pander to would nut in our fucking pants over or anything!!!!

TL;DR: This game looks really good and fun, and I like to see id is still making banger games, but I'm actually kinda angry that they'd rather make a Doom game with medieval vibes rather than using that other fantastic retro shooter IP they own to make something that kind of vibe would actually fit into better.

[winns-stuff]

LO APPRECIATION:

Lord, I am so upset at myself for forgetting about one of my most favorite character in the series. I’m sorry y’all I’ve been doing so many damn rants that I’ve been lacking with the appreciation side of my page. Anyways, I would like all of you to give a standing ovation to a nymph who’s more than worthy of the spotlight (although I hated the way they decided to present her) and is more beautiful than half of the main cast because she was absolutely gorgeous, I’d like you all to give a warm welcome to Leuce.

Listen, I wanna get out one thing. I love her so much, I was literally one of the people defending her when the fans tried to tear her a new one for even being close to Hades. I’m gonna say it now, if Leuce was really into Hades and genuinely wanted him for herself she could’ve had him in any universe. But he honestly doesn’t deserve someone as beautiful as she is. I love everything about her and she didn’t deserve half of the haters she gained from that fucking chapter, it will forever irk the hell out of me. Now y’all know how Minthe felt when Persephone literally did the SAME THING.

But onto the things I love about her, one thing is her personality. She seemed so kind but she had so much self confidence, like in that moment I felt like she could flip the conversation to her at any given moment. I never had such interest in a character, or no that’s a lie I have but it’s been a while since that interest had been brought out. I’m glad that Leuce knew who she was, even when Hades declined her she still held her head high and walked out of the room, unlike Persephone who can’t take no from anyone and starts begging and crying like a literal baby, Leuce was always mature and so sophisticated. She never spoke out of turn or tried to manipulate the conversation to be in her standard, no meant no with her and I’m glad that the “replacement Persephone” was way better than the actual one.

Also speaking of that nickname, Leuce was never a replacement just an upgrade.

Next thing I wanna talk about is her aesthetic, she has one of the most beautiful designs ever and I absolutely hate the fact that she was really just used as more HxP leverage. She’s so much more than that, she was so pleasing to the eye and whenever I saw her it was like smelling a person who bathed in lovely soaps for like 60 years (weird analogy but think about it cause that’s how it felt for me) and whenever she spoke every word made me want to hear more from her. There’s never been such an alluring and captivating character like that in the whole series! Yes, I know it’s a shame that Rachel didn’t try to make Aphrodite more like that but what can you do I guess.

Another thing I loved about her is her dress, I know we’ve seen similar looking dresses in LO but something about hers is just gorgeous to me. I love everything about it that dress is amazing to me. The silhouette, the little corset in the middle, the armband, the way it just mysteriously travels down her body and everything is amazing. I’ve never loved an outfit more, except maybe Artemis’ god form, but none of the outfits in LO have been as good as hers and there’s a few people I can think of who equate to her but not many.

I adored the way her hair looks as well, I’ve never been so mesmerized about seeing curls in so long but everything about it is so amazing and wonderful. The length is perfect, the way the curls sit on top of her head are perfect, everything about her hairdo just exudes perfection. I feel like if they gave her any other hairstyle, believe me she’d still look absolutely amazing, it wouldn’t have the same effect as the bun does. Especially since the little flowers are just decorated in her hair, it’s amazing and even though I wish she were more accurate and not a flower nymph because let’s be real, flower nymphs are not the only nymphs in Olympus I’m still so obsessed with the way they look on her and her only.

Last thing I loved about her appearing in the episode was how many beautiful redesigns came out of it. I personally love seeing redesigns because they’re all always so good and well thought out but the way that Leuce’s appearance brought out so many talented people is crazy. No matter who it is they’re always so good.

Anyways, that’s the end of the appreciation for this post but it won’t be for me of course. I’ll always love and appreciate Leuce, she could’ve been one of the best characters honestly. But I just hate that she was just supposed to be a sugar baby for Hades, not that the sugar baby part is the bad thing I just hated how Rachel tried to make it seem like that was all she was. I hate how Leuce was only used to make Persephone look like “the better woman”, it’s always with women who are either more confident or comfortable in their own sexualities. Like it genuinely irks me so much that no woman is deserving of a good ending or happy love life in LO if they’re not HxP. There’s more things about the way Leuce is introduced that pisses me off but I can’t think of it now and besides, this is supposed to focus more on the appreciation of Leuce not how terribly the comic treated her.

[a-pale-azure-moon]

I've barely scratched the surface of TotK and I can feel my brain wanting to disappear down the Zelda rabbit hole. I am desperately trying to keep at least half of it in my writing brainspace but damn is it hard. There's so much temptation to just plop down with my Switch for the next eight hours and forget about everything else.

Anyway, I'm still very early in but I'll put my ramblings under the cut just in case.

-I know the popular joke was that TotK is just "$70 DLC." Obviously it is not with all of the new content, but it genuinely feels like I'm playing BotW again, only with new tools and new places to discover. And I don't consider that a bad thing! I spent almost 300 hours playing BotW and still wished there was more I could do (aside from hunting down all the Koroks because screw that), so I'm happy to be revisiting this world and exploring it all over again. Though I won't lie that I miss having all the gear and upgrades I had by the end of BotW. I'd forgotten how easy it is to die in stupid ways early on.

-Holy hell is there so much to explore. Maybe too much. Even with the nudges the game gives you, it's really hard to know where to even begin once you leave the Great Sky Island. I haven't even done any of the main dungeons yet; I've just been wandering around looking for shrines and seeing what's changed. It's even more daunting knowing there's stuff in the sky and in the depths to explore as well.

-The Depths freak me out. I've only been in there once and I'm not eager to go back until I'm stronger. Never been a fan of dark places in video games; you never can know what's lurking there, waiting to ambush you.

-It's nice to see all the familiar NPCs. Bumping into Purah and Robbie right away made me smile.

-It's also nice to see that Hyrule's been rebuilding since the end of BotW, but that evidence of the Calamity still exists (Castle Town especially). It makes the world feel that much more organic and real.

-That opening sequence was choice. Like, the approach to Ganon's lair, with the increasing gloom and the ominous music, literally sent shivers down my spine. Good shit.

-Ultrahand is amazing and I've only just begun to really play with its powers.

-To whomever at Nintendo designed the Gloom Spawn/Grabby hands/Nightmare Fuel, I hate you. May all your bacon burn for the rest of your life.

-I miss the Bomb runes SO MUCH.

-What happened to all the Sheikah technology anyway? I totally get dismantling all the Guardians considering they were the scourge of Hyrule for a long time, but did the towers and the Slate just...stop working?

-I'm fascinated by Rauru (and no, it's not just because he has Dimitri's voice, though I won't lie that it makes him that much more appealing, lol). So, we know that's his right arm that Link is "borrowing," and all of Link's new powers specifically come from that arm. And that same arm was keeping Ganon sealed away for....some length of time I'm not aware of yet, but I'm guessing it was awhile. And the new shrines are implied to contain fragments of Rauru's power as well. Just how powerful is this guy? Also, the reveal that he's the first King of Hyrule too (and married to a Hylian woman!) just makes things more interesting.

Also, also, look how adorable he is! I want to pet his ears and brush his hair! But I also want see him go ham at some point because the game sure as hell implies that he's god-like and I'm here for it.

...But it'll probably also make me sad because he's well, dead now and it's likely because sealing Ganon away cost him his life. =(

(I'm still reeling that Rauru's voiced by Chris Hackney, and it's even more wild with Matt Mercer being the voice of Ganon. How is it that the VAs of both of my FE husbands wound up in this game? Thanks for making sure the brainrot never ends, Nintendo!)

[iasmelaion]

an assortment of my random thoughts about tears of the kingdom

No real story spoilers, because, real talk, I do not play these games for the story or the ~lore~. I am here to yeet my beautiful small son Link across the stunning landscapes of Hyrule, completing shrines, side quests, and murdering monsters at my whim. I will, perhaps, eventually get around to doing more of the main quests. First though, I must upgrade all my armor and get more hearts. So miss me with your 19481203 posts about the Zelda timeline, idgaf.

This game is so good in ways that are almost invisible until you realize how much work must have gone into making the experience so good and seamless. There’s so, so much freedom in the game--in terms of what order you can do things in, how you can solve puzzles, what play style you use at all, the things you can build with ultrahand, and of course the basic freedom of the map(s) themselves and how you can traverse them--and it’s not until you think about it that you realize how difficult it must be to design a game with this much freedom without breaking things left and right. An enormous part of the pleasure of this game, and to a lesser extent Breath of the Wild, is knowing you can just go off and do whatever, and the game will be like “cool, that’s valid!” or “hmm, interesting, I’ll allow it.” Sure, there are certain intended sequences or progressions, and there are ways to play the story parts in more narratively cohesive ways, but as the proliferation of challenge runs attests, you can also just do whatever whenever. It’s great, and I already know I’ve ruined myself for other games in this open world genre by playing BOTW and TOTK.

I like the new abilities in TOTK much more than the abilities in BOTW. (Though pour one out for remote bombs, that shit was useful.) The new abilities in TOTK all work together to help you solve problems in the game in multiple ways, allowing for both a lot more creativity and a lot more clever ways to be lazy. (recall elevator, my beloved) It’s super impressive, and it makes the game a lot more engaging than if there were only one or two intended solutions to any given problem.

Any more fiddly efforts with Ultrahand honestly make me motion sick (something about the way the camera moves plus the rotation, magnesis in BOTW caused me similar issues), so I’m probably never going to be building elaborate contraptions. Luckily for me, functional but hideous atrocities of Hyrule engineering are perfectly cromulent ways to get through the game.

I’ve done two temples so far (Wind and Fire), and looked up walkthroughs for both of them. Not because the puzzles are hard, but because lol my ability to get around in one of these things is tragically limited. I have an awful sense of direction and/or ability to navigate these temples, it was the same for me in BOTW. And like, in BOTW, do NOT ask me how long it took me to get my ass to Kakariko Village, it will only embarrass us both. So yeah, I look up walkthroughs just to spare myself the frustration of spending hours lost in the damn temple.

I also haven’t updated from 1.1.1 because I love me that duplication glitch. Like, listen. I would like to do SOME things other than play Zelda, and that means skipping some grinding for materials. It’s making the game much more fun for me, without breaking it entirely.

Little musical details I love: Link humming while he cooks! ADORABLE. Hestu’s little music and dance number every time he upgrades your inventory slot! Makes me smile every time, and made me lol in delight the first time! That music when you get yeeted out of a tower! Amazing and thrilling! Just in general, this is a very sonically pleasing game.

Also visually pleasing! I frankly don’t like photorealism in video games. Elden Ring looks hideous and unpleasant to me, Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead Redemption and the like edge awfully close to the Uncanny Valley, etc. I want more stylized, cartoonish art styles, and BOTW/TOTK is basically the ideal for me: painterly, gorgeous, and Ghibli-esque in the landscape, and pleasantly cartoony in the characters.

The act of exploring is still so rewarding in this game, even with a reused map.

LINK’S OUTFITS. I love dressing him up, and I super love the gender nonconforming vibes of it all. Unfortunately, I do go for best stats, armor-wise, and end up in the Twilight set most often now because I upgraded that to the max, but in my heart, Link is wearing that Frost armor set with the cute minidress with the back cutout all the time.

I built Link a house! It’s an architectural atrocity but oh well!

Was a bit of a steep learning curve, combat-wise, because I went in full of BOTW-arrogance, because I had, like, so many hearts and such good armor by the end of my playthrough there, and then you start off TOTK with none of that and suddenly red bokoblins are one-shotting you. Humbling. Should have remembered how thoroughly I failed the Master Sword trials. Definitely did remember that every time I died in the Proving Grounds shines.

Regained some combat arrogance though upon finding a way to cheese Lynels. I’m not sorry, even if this is definitely a glitch and not just the consequence of creative problem solving. Listen, I am simply never going to learn to flurry rush properly, so this is just going to have to do.

Anyway, this game is very good. Like, so good. I am going to spend all summer playing it and I’m going to have a blast.

[banshee-king]

"Hand of the Archon" is rubbish

I will forever be salty over this “upgrade”. Increasing the price of the Kabalite Warriors kit just to give them next to nothing in return isn’t much of an upgrade to me. The Cadian upgrade sprue gave them a sniper rifle, meltagun, plasma gun, boltgun, a couple pistols and a sword. Even if those last three are for the sergeant only, they still get 3 special weapons (and the boltgun still does synergise with the rest of the squad).

Even if it isn’t new weapons, they already have 5 special weapon and 5 heavy weapon options. Getting actual plastic bits for those that weren’t physically available in their kit before is nice, even if they already had the rules. Kabalites meanwhile only have 2 each, and yet their upgrade is full of wasted space!

Why not replace the sword and “barbed pain sculptor” with a gun? Why not replace the razorflail with a gun? Why not replace the second “barbed pain sculptor” with a gun? Why not replace the splinter rifle with a gun that the Kabalites already don’t have 10 of? Why not replace the splinter pistol with a weapon that the Kabalites don’t already have, and the Wychs don't already have 10 of?

The best thing this sprue has is a shardcarbine (which Scourges already have!) but hopefully means Kabalites will be able to take it just like the Blaster and Shredder. The “Disciple of Yaelindra” with stinger pistol and torment grandees will sadly probably never be taken outside of Kill Team, unless those grenades are REALLY good. I bet they’re D6 hits S3 though, maybe lowers Ld by 1. The “Elixicant” miiiiiiight be good, but given how glass cannon Dark Eldar are I’m not sure if trying to make them more tanky over doubling down on their offensiveness is worth it. I guess we’ll see.

As for the damn bird, look at how much space it takes! And for what? Ignores light cover? Oh gee I’m so glad GW gave Kabalites the ability to ignore cover, really synergises well with all the MELEE weapons GW gave them. I’m so glad the bloody stinger pistol won’t have to worry about enemies in cover now.

And before anyone says “well this wargear fits the space hulk environment of Kill Team”, they gave both the Arbites and the Kroot a sniper rifle. Was it really too difficult to give the Dark Eldar a sniper rifle? A grenade launcher? Missile launcher? Sonic weapon? Nanomachines? Time distortion? Literally any fun toy that the Dark Eldar are said to have in the lore? NO lets give them a splinter rifle/pistol they already have, a shardcarbine/razorflail another Dark Eldar unit already has, a venom blade that looks identical to a power sword they also already have, and two new fucking sharp metal sticks.

Whoever designed this sprue has never so much as opened a Dark Eldar codex before. I can’t wait for Genestealers to get a Kill Team box that gives them cybernetics and heavy weapons. >=(

[lorz-ix]

Oops! All Contra

Remember first of all, these games can be a bit silly with their difficulty so use that Konami code if you're able!

Contra (arcade, 1987)

Super fun run and gun gameplay, very fast-paced, but the controls are very tight and responsive. Power-ups are adequately strong so it feels great to mow down enemies. I didn't think it was quite that hard, but it is very unforgiving, since you die in a single hit, and even in the arcade, your continues are limited. An insane limitation that I haven't seen in any other game, normally you'd be able to keep going as long as you can keep putting coins in the machine, but not here for whatever reason.

Pretty neat but I think there might be better alternatives.

Contra (NES, 1988)

A straight port of the arcade game, but it is exceedingly rare for a port like this to be, in my opinion, a genuine upgrade. The graphics and sound take a hit, because home consoles weren't that powerful, but everything else is here and then some. The Konami code does help, as it is much easier to finish this one.

Super Contra (1988)

A technically impressive sequel with really good sprites and animation for the time. Plays very similar, still really tough, still giving you limited continues, still very weird for an arcade to do that.

I'm not a fan of the top-down stages as the new stage type, but I gotta say, that final boss is pretty fucking cool.

It's a fine game I guess.

Super C (1990)

Again, a direct port of the arcade sequel, and again, the better version to play. Not only is it less punishing, I felt there was less "cheap arcade game design", with unfair deaths or overly difficult obstacles. I still don't like the top down stages that much.

Unlike the first game, Super C added a whole new level at the end, with a couple of new bosses. I like the final boss from the arcade version the most, it's not as climactic when there's something else afterwards, but if you know the crazy H.R. Giger-esque enemy design of these games, you can imagine how wild those new final bosses are gonna be.

Contra III: The Alien Wars (1992)

Damn, what a good looking threequel in a brand new system with very memorable setpieces and bosses. It would be a shame if it came with a jump in difficulty from previous games AND the removal of the Konami code outside of Japan (why???), so seeing this one all the way through to the end takes quite a bit more effort.

The top-down stages in this one are pretty bad, they shoehorned the SNES mode7 gimmick into it and the result ain't great. There are other kinds of gimmick stages, like riding on bikes or other vehicles, and thankfully those are better.

My beloved final boss from Super Contra (or someone who looks similar, don't ask me about the lore) is back for a great final battle here too.

Operation C (1991)

Leaving this one near the end as it is just a Game Boy spin-off of the originals. It's very competent, it captures the fun of those games very well, I'd be all over a game like this is I still was my 8 year old self with my GBC, but it's clearly not as important for the series.

Why did top down stages have to make it here too, shaking my head.

Contra: Hard Corps (1994)

This entry came out on the Sega Mega Drive rather than a Nintendo platform, and it shows. The setting is much different, being more futuristic, there's a clearer story with dialogue, branching paths and different endings, there's a cyborg furry in there, it's real good.

The positives are many, different characters with different weapons on top of different endings and bosses depending on your choices make this game very replayable, and as it is to be expected from this system, both visuals and sound are high quality and very Mega Drive™. Even if it's a departure from all previous games, it's probably the best one yet.

There is one catch though. One of the changes to the formula was adding a life bar to each playable character, even using this to add more diversity since some characters are smaller and harder to hit but have less health, or bigger but tankier. But for whatever god forsaken reason, they removed health bars in the western version and you still die in one hit, making the game much, much harder than originally intended, ruining an aspect of character variety and making them a lot less balanced, since the small one is flat out better now. To add insult to injury, some versions of the manual still mention health differences between characters, even if they're not present in the game. I have no clue why they made decisions like this to make the game less approachable.

This whole debacle makes it a bit tough to recommend. If you're willing to put up with the challenge, it's a fantastic game. If you can read japanese, you don't have to put up with the unnecesarily tough version, but if you can't and still want to understand the story, you'll have to try your hardest to get to each ending.

[stuff-from-the-void-matron]

Laurel Wreaths & Animal Teeth (2)

(c!Technoblade x fem!Reader)

(a/n: a handful of people seemed to like this story so here’s part two! same as with the first chapter, if this one gets some interest then i’ll do part 3.)

~~~~~~~~~

Like every night of sleep here you woke up after what felt like no time at all. But at least you felt rested instead of tired still. Either way, it was time to get up and have some food before fixing up this village. Which was in dire need of it from what you saw the day before.

After eating some bread you got to work scoping out the village, jotting down in a book (with a damn QUILL) what problems needed to be fixed first and which could come later. Once that was done you started evening out the land so it wasn’t one hill after another with a ton of dark spots. 

Figuring out how to just make blocks and items disappear was weird. And seeing it happen in real life time was even weirder. You just put your hand on a block or anything not alive and with a twitch of your fingers the item just… ceased to be. All you got was a quick breaking sound followed by a particle effect that lasted a half a second, then nothing. 

You got used to it. You’d have to, that’s just what humans do. Adapt.

“Hmm.”

You’d been so focused on terraforming that you’d gotten a little spooked when you suddenly heard a voice behind you. After turning around you saw some villagers watching you. You blinked and after a couple seconds of silence you said,

“Hello.”

They just watched you and gave murmurs that didn’t sound like anything negative, and you didn’t wanna make things awkward so you just went back to doing what you were before. You chalked it up to them being curious about the new person in their village changing stuff. So you gave them a smile before getting back to work. 

They stayed and watched you for a bit longer before one by one leaving to do whatever it was they’d been doing before coming to scope out what you were up to.  You figured they were just checking to see if you were dangerous or not. Which was understandable so you paid them little mind.

You got lost in the zone after that, just working diligently to smooth out the land and fill in parts of the river so it wasn’t bisecting the village and making it hard to get from one side to the other. Hours passed without you realizing, you didn’t have a hunger bar so no growling stomach to snap you back into focus either.

In the back of your mind you noticed the sun had set because you had to pull out some torches to make seeing easier. But aside from that you were oblivious to the world around you. At least you had been until the sound of pained grunts made you look up from what you were doing for the first time in nearly 10 solid hours.

Your eyes widened when you saw a villager cornered between some hay bales and the side of a house, getting attacked by a zombie. Like in the game his whole body sorta flashed a red tint to show he was taking damage. You didn’t even really think before you reacted, you just saw someone getting hurt so you yelled loudly,

“HEY!”

To your surprise the zombie halted and turned to look at you. But then seemed to disregard you and started to turn back to its violent task, intent to ignore your call and you felt just enough outrage to start rushing over, yelling at the undead as you did. This caught both zombie and villager’s attention. 

The villager edged back as you came over and started smacking the zombie back, making him grunt and stumble slowly backwards. After you dealt him a couple hearts damage he turned and shuffled away from you both. With you hurling colorful commentary at him as he slowly feld. Once he was gone you turned to the blinking villager and put your hands on your hips and scolded him,

“What are you doing?? It’s night time! Get inside and go to bed!”

The villager looked alarmed as he rushed to hop up the short steps to the house he’d previously been wedged against, hurrying inside and slamming the door closed behind him. You sighed, a little annoyed with how hard your heart was beating from the adrenaline of having to essentially break up an attack. 

With one last huff you turned and headed back to your previous task. But half way there you stopped and glanced around the village before sighing again and deciding it wouldn’t hurt to check to make sure all the other villagers were safe inside right now. 

This would become a routine for you, making sure the villagers were safe indoors after sunset.

-0-

Days turned into weeks and before you knew it you’d terraformed the land the village was on into a much more manageable and easy to navigate space. You’d even started upgrading the villager’s houses and stuff. You did this mostly because all their houses were like 3x3 inside and looked beyond cramped. 

Also you disliked cobblestone when used in the construction of Minecraft houses. It just looked ugly in your opinion and stone looks way better. So you used that and different colored terracotta and pretty lamps instead of plain torches in some spots. It all gave the village a more cozy vibe you think. But either way your construction drew the villagers’ attention once more.

The villager whose house you started with hadn’t sounded happy when you built up and began to break the roof. He’d grunted and walked around watching you but stepped back when you called down and told him you were fixing the house and making it stronger and bigger for him. He hadn’t seemed fully convinced but he didn’t sound as upset so you continued.

It was when you were putting on the roof that you discovered that you didn’t take fall damage…

You’d stepped back to put the top point of the roof in place and miscalculated how much roof was left to stand on behind you and ended up slipping off. You barely had time to register what was happening, much less scream, before you were just… standing on the ground. You looked up and saw the unfinished underside of the roof’s edge…. a good 15 feet up in the air above you…

You looked down and mentally checked yourself over and you were fine? Not a scratch or ache anywhere in your legs. Which should be the bare minimum someone should have after falling off of a nearly 2 story roof. But you were perfectly okay, and honestly… sorta curious. And at this point you were more curious than cautious so you actually went back to the edge of the roof and just.. jumped off. You were incredibly lucky the first safe fall hadn’t been a fluke..

You landed nice and soft again this time. Only now you were able to watch what happened as you fell since you were looking down and not up (or having your brain lag in fear). You fell normally at first but once you got about 3 feet from the ground you slowed before landing about as hard as if you’d taken one step downward. The wind rushed past you and fluttered your clothes but aside from that you were unaffected by the high fall.

“Well…. I suppose that’s one less thing to worry about?” you sort of stated with a questioning tone because honestly you’re just trying to roll with the punches at this point.

-0-

You noticed there were only TWO profession blocks in the whole village, a farmer compositor and the weaponsmith’s grindstone. Which wasn’t great village wise you were sure. So you started to just… add professions to pre-existing houses. Like one house you converted into a two story with a balcony and added a library and lectern to it before bringing a villager over and showing them. 

Honestly you weren’t totally sure they would be interested but to your delight their clothes changed after they were surrounded by some green sparkles, signaling they’d taken up the role of ‘Librarian’! You clapped happily and said this was great, to which the villager responded with a happy sound. You left them to their studies and went to add more job site blocks!

-0-

You’re not sure how much time passed since you’d found this village. But you can say it definitely looked different these days, in a good way. You’d renovated (or outright remodeled) all the homes and now each villager had a job. Well, except for one who, for whatever reason, didn’t want any of the jobs. You’d tried showing him each option and he just gave unhappy grunts for each one. 

Finally you’d asked if he wanted a job and he gave a negative ‘hrm’. So you’d figured it was his choice at the end of the day so you shrugged and got rid of the career blocks and told him that was okay. You told him his job could be to Not have a job! And he seemed perfectly content with that so you just left his home a regular one and went about your day. So really, a happy ending for everyone.

And once the village was all set looking nice and prosperous you finally stopped and realized… you’d never made yourself a house? Though to be fair you’d sort of hyper focused on building up the village and all the villager’s professional skills so you’d not had much time to think about yourself. And now that you think about it.. you’re not sure when the last time you ate or slept was.. Like, at all! Which would be concerning if you were starving or about to pass out but you mostly felt normal? You could eat or go for a nap but you could also just.. not? And you’d be okay you think.

“This is all super weird.. I need to go to sleep I think…” you sort of mumbled to yourself.

You looked around and noted the time of day, which meant no sleep yet. Then you surveyed the large village and noticed a nice hill one of the four main crossroad paths in the village was leading towards. It was too far away for any more villager houses so you’d left it alone in your building spree. But now that you were walking around it you saw it would be a great spot for a place of your own! All you had to do was remove a couple trees, widen the top layer of dirt and move the path a little to the left and you’d be golden.

But you were pretty much sick of looking at oak logs, grey stone bricks, and terracotta so you decided to forgo using them in whatever design you settled on for your house. Instead you open your ‘expanded’ inventory of all the building blocks and began looking through them idly, searching for something nice looking that wasn’t too bland or contrary too flashy. Like sure a diamond block house SOUNDS cool and also very pretty but actually making a house out of diamond blocks seems like it’s just asking for trouble.

You couldn’t help the chuckle you let out at the thought of someone actually building a house of diamond then going mining or whatever and coming back to their whole house being gone save for their bed. But you pushed those silly thoughts away and finally ended up choosing some quartz stone for now. It was a good looking stone, nice and smooth. As you looked through the other blocks you thought about what your house should look like. You didn’t want to build any more of the standard villager houses at this point, you were sorta burnt out on that. 

Vaguely you recalled a handful of house and building tutorials you’d watched on youtube. But honestly it's been such a long time since you watched them that you really only remembered the final products. Although you reason that that shouldn’t stop you from trying anyways! Because what’s the worst that will happen? It’ll look ugly? Then you can just take it down and try try again! You’d start building slow and see what you liked and what looked cool. 

So with that decided you grabbed one of the quartz blocks and some stairs to match then got to work on your new house.

@salinesoot​ @lady-bee-fechin​ @kacchasu​ @putridjoy​ @lunawritesstories​ @galaxypankitty3030​ @paradigmax​ @zachariethememerie​ @killmewithafanfic​

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Ok enough about hurting the animatronics, what if an upgrade gives them a detailed sense of touch, like they can feel when things are soft/rough/smooth/sharp? I imagine a few would squire some plushies due to how soft they are. Unsure about practical applications other than being better able to handle children

I feel like I mostly covered my thoughts on touch in another ask but...

Yeah they absolutely amass stashes of plushies. Chica has the biggest collection of plushies and pillows and will try her damn hardest to hug all of them at the same time with varying success. She loves the feeling of leather jackets though she's not typically able to wear one unfortunately. Her absolute favourite things to feel with this new upgrade is Roxy's fur and it is a personal challenge she sets for herself every day to find an excuse to touch it without making Roxy uncomfortable or feel like her space is being invaded. This is a difficult task! Yeah like I said in the other ask for Roxy, when Chica gets this upgrade she's running around excitedly picking stuff up to feel it just like the others do. I just had the thought that maybe this causes her to develop a sort of stim where she stomps her feet a lot because it feels better that hitting stuff with her hands. Could stem from the fact chickens don't have arms and stuff. That could be interesting

The one that has gone through the most plushies but only generally has a handful at any given time, is Roxy. Her need to chew things is just too powerful and she's found that plushies are the thing that calms her the most. The only plushie she has never destroyed over time is an old Bonnie plushie that she adores but the ears are looking a little worn from her gentle chomps. Anyway, Roxy loves soft things but also metallic things like her tools and the go-karts. She despises the feeling of her fur being wet and hates the feeling of glue and slime and stuff. She is oddly fascinated with how Monty's mohawk feels as it's kinda like a toothbrush but also not and it intrigues her. She would rather die than admit it though. Oh and the feeling of the racetrack under her feet? Incredible. Nothing like it.

Monty has also chewed through a lot of plushies with his own chewing stim. He has one of everyone on a shelf out of the way and those are completely off limits. He loves the feeling his claws make on things and prefers wood and grass textures to anything soft or leathery. He loves the feeling of water. He cannot get enough of it! It all feels so strange at first but it's a good kind of strange. Honestly, when he gets the upgrade, discovering what water feels like probably halted him in his tracks and he ended up sinking half a day just zoned out at the swamp water in Gator Golf. Like Roxy he also hates the feeling of slimy things and glues and stuff but he does really like squishy things. Vanessa gave him a stress ball and he finds it weirdly comforting with how squishy it is.

Freddy loves anything that feels warm. He loves water and fluff and soft things. He has a rather small collection of plushies but he takes care of each one, with one as the designated chewy plush. He also likes the feeling of claws against things but he's less inclined to act on that than Monty is. This guy loves that he can feel every detail of a hug now. This is why he wanted the temperature upgrade! He wanted to feel the warmth of hugs! The others find out about his reasoning and he gets such a big group hug, it feels great. He's also pretty interested in Monty's mohawk and he likes the feel of running his claws over Monty's unique, scaly casing.

Sunny is obsessed with glitter glue for even more reasons now! He loves the feeling of all the glues and starts making his own slime for funsies. They now understand what Roxy meant when she said the padded floor of the daycare was really squishy and he spends a while jumping around on it cause it feels funny. He has ALL the plushies and has access to none-Fazbear brand ones too so it's even better for him! He loves the feeling of woolly jumpers and the giant Freddy plush by the play structures. They hate metallic textures.

Moon likes flicking through pages. It feels weird on their fingers and after getting sick of the feeling of thick dust sticking to him when he's climbing through the highest possible heights of the Pizzaplex, he gets a feather duster and cleans this place up. He shares their plushie collection with Sunny and they usually sit there hugging all of them at once on their bad days. They like papery textures, and things like jeans and the solid bars of the play structures. They prefer colder feelings like metal bars and bamboo kinda feelings, but understands that kids prefer much softer textures when they're sleeping.

[atopfourthwall]

Ive only recently gotten into classic Star Trek so I don't think I can properly answer but what is it specifically about Discovery and recent Star Trek that classic Trek fans hate?

Putting this behind a cut because... it's a lot.

Well, first of all a big rejection of it is just on an aesthetic level. Up until the 2009 movie (which was considered a reboot, even with time travel elements), Star Trek tried to treat the original series and how it was portrayed as pretty sacrosanct. Sure, they might occasionally make jokes about goofier aspects of it and discard some of the stupider stuff (like how in the final episode, penned by Gene Roddenberry himself, that women weren't allowed to Captain starships), but how TOS looked? That's how the 23rd century looked. Buttons and multi-colored outfits and boxy computers and smooth, undetailed ships WAS what was appropriate for the time. When Scotty came back in TNG, they had him on the holodeck and it was the TOS bridge. When DS9 traveled back in time to that era for an episode? They went onto the Enterprise and visited it. When in an Enterprise 2-parter we had a TOS-era ship? It looked like a TOS ship. They even did a 2-parter on Enterprise to explain why Klingons had smooth foreheads when later (and earlier) they didn't. Star Trek up until then cared about maintaining that continuity of appearance. But Discovery is set in the TOS era... but nothing looks like TOS. Even when we got the Enterprise and those uniforms and we saw inside the ship, it was an upgraded form. The only logic I've seen people try to argue about WHY it doesn't look like it actually did was "Well, audiences won't accept something as cheap as TOS being futuristic." Well, then you've got a few responses there: -Don't set in TOS era, then. -That's horseshit, because audiences from the 90s through the 2000s accepted it just fine. Even a piece of dialogue from DS9 explained it perfectly: "I LOVE 23rd century design." It LOOKS cheap, but it was just the aesthetics of the period. And the Enterprise 2-parter it still looked good in HD. Hell, arguably it looked BETTER in HD because they knew how to light it and create mood and its own unique flavor. -It's even more horseshit because people are STILL going back and watching it even today, as indicated by you saying you've started watching it, so clearly it's not that much of a barrier. But what's even more egregious is the TECHNOLOGY. You might be able to accept updated aesthetics if at least matches what was present during the period... and it doesn't. Holographic displays and communication (holodeck technology AT ALL, frankly - it's possible it was there, but TNG seemed pretty adamant that the holodecks were fairly new, very impressive technology), weapons not looking or acting like they traditionally did, Enterprise and Discovery having R2D2-style repair droids that certainly did not exist in TOS, the wrong sound effects being frequently employed, replicator technology for good-looking food instead of food dispensers that gave out marshmallows and cubes, and honestly the tech level shown in Discovery looks just as advanced - if not MORE advanced than seen on TNG 100 years later. And this is a minor thing, but despite the attempt to make the future LOOK futuristic, from a cultural perspective, the future looks... way too damn similar to now. The excessive swearing (it was said in particular in Star Trek 4 that while they certainly did cuss, it was less common and they sure as hell weren't dropping F-bombs), a party on Discovery that looked like a rave (when previously it seemed like the most popular music and culture of the 23rd/24th century was considered fairly high-brow entertainment [classical music, Shakespeare, great works of literature and plays, etc.] - and while you could certainly argue that that snootiness and love of that stuff is a problem with Star Trek and a sign of how sterile and homogenized it is, THAT is the future they presented and a character in Voyager loving some of the goofier parts of 20th century culture like jukeboxes and old sci-fi serials was considered unusual), and just the general way people talk betrays the idea that the writers aren't thinking about how society changes in the future. It's just the modern day, but with cooler technology. But hey, let's set aside the general aesthetics - some people aren't going to mind that and find

ways to handwave away a lot of stuff (even Discovery season 2 TRIED to handwave away stuff like the holographic communications, but did a piss-poor job of it). This brings us to the problem of the WRITING. And the problem with the writing is a big Michael Burnham-shaped indentation. To be clear, I don't mind Michael as a character or her actress - there are interesting aspects to her, centering a Star Trek show around the science officer is a neat idea (though that means you should probably NAME IT AFTER HER and not around the ship, because it suggests this is a standard ensemble group and not JUST her)... but the actual execution is that it feels like the entire universe bends over backwards for HER. She has a unique relationship with a beloved longtime character that is retconned in. She has unique relationships with several important characters to the point where the fate of billions of people hinges on her and the decisions she makes. She is presented as almost always correct about everything, and those that oppose her are often wrong, naïve, or active enemies. Now, this is less of an issue in the third season - but that has its own unique problems - but in the first season, the resolution of two major storylines (mirror universe and the Klingon war) revolves around her and her relationship to the Terran Emperor and Lorca. In season 2, her mother trying to help or save her is the basis of the ENTIRE friggin' plot with time travel and the like, with special knowledge and history having to do with her and everyone ready to abandon their lives for her so she won't be alone when she has to go to the future when arguably they barely know her (the timeline of the show is debatable). Season 3 has a few different problems with her - the first is that she keeps being involved in things that don't concern her (why is she going down to Trill?) and she keeps violating orders. Now, her violating orders is a problem throughout the entirety of Discovery - in fact, it's kind of the instigating factor OF the series. And arguably, other Star Trek characters are guilty of that and they face no consequences, just as she faces none... and yet it's the brazenness with which it happens, and in those other series it's arguable because the series tries to avoid excessive continuity changes for its episodic nature, so the status quo MUST return to normal... but Discovery is pivoted as one of MAJOR continuity, so her lack of consequences (and indeed eventual PROMOTION) is baffling to the point of frustration. Now again, let me be clear here - she is not a bad character in and of herself. Honestly what it shows is that being the science officer on a starship is not where her talents lie. She should be in a position where she has a lot more freedom to act and not in a major command structure... but being in that command structure, what we see in season 3 is that she lacks the discipline, emotional maturity, responsibility, leadership qualities, and general other traits necessary to be a Captain. Only once during season 3 did she display such a quality - putting the safety of the Federation above a friend and colleague... but other times she will happily disobey orders and put herself and others in harm's way, creating potential new problems. Now, again, Star Trek is rife with characters doing that... but usually not the Captains. And, in fact, when this happened once on DS9 with one officer disobeying orders and putting their own personal feelings above the greater responsibility, it was made VERY clear that the incident would mean that they would never be able to command a starship because of the unofficial reprimand. What's even more frustrating about her is that the character is ALWAYS shoved to the forefront so much to the point where we just get sick of her. SHE is the one giving log entries (usually pretty piss-poor ones, at that - very flowery and nonsensical and kind of dumb) and not the Captain. SHE is the one given so much focus and how the plot of the episode affects her. Barely anyone else gets any focus episodes - I STILL can't

remember the names of some of the secondary characters because they're so rarely said, and a PTSD-related plotline in season 3 for one of the secondary characters basically gets resolved OFF-SCREEN. Michael would be fine if we actually had a chance to miss her... but we never do. Arguably one of the best episodes of the show is in season 2, when it focuses on Saru and his people because Michael DOES take a back seat. It's his story and his development and problems relating to him and his people. And even if, again, we forgave the idea of so much focus on her even in plots that aren't about her... she never seems to really change that much. She'll TALK about how she's changed, but I see no real difference in the way she acts (MAYBE season 1 to 2, where in season 1 she was stiffer and more Vulcan-like, but that's it). But hey, let's assume that's not a problem for you - you really, REALLY like Michael and are fine with so much focus on her. Simply put, the writing of the rest of the show... is just kind of dumb. The ship is powered by magic mushrooms that let it teleport everywhere because the universe has super fungus capillaries throughout it that nobody can see and also it's magic and can resurrect the dead. The time travel plot of season 2 doesn't make any sense when you sit down and diagram it. Well-established Trek lore is just kind of sprinkled in, but now in ways that doesn't match what it was before or at least in ways that completely recolor how it's supposed to work, because it needs to serve THIS plot. Everyone remembering a murdererous monster fondly after she leaves because "Hey, she was coooool." The explanation for the big mystery in season 3 is just fricking stupid and one of the two big reasons why I've finally given up on Discovery, because it's just so absurd, doesn't match how anything works, and just feels like the writers giving the middle finger to the audience because they care more about "YOU MUST FEEEEEEL THINGS!" instead of it making sense. And indeed, there is certainly a balance to be made of plot vs. emotion-driven storytelling - some stories are dumb, but are forgivable because the character writing and emotion are so strong that they override how goofy the plot is... but sometimes a plot is just so dumb it overrides anything I'm SUPPOSED to feel. And it would help if I already liked the show, already gave it some benefit of the doubt... but I don't and it hasn't done enough to impress me. A little thing that's a problem with ALL of current modern Trek shows is that whole sprinkling lore thing - I don't think a single episode goes by in ANY current modern Trek series that doesn't have a random reference to classic Trek lore. A name, a line of dialogue, etc. It comes across like the creators don't trust you to enjoy it on its own merits, but want you to like it because "Hey, remember thing? We know about thing! Like us because we mentioned thing!" But hey, I recognize that these are things that other people may not have any problem with or just disagree in general. But for me and my family, these are the big ones that keep us from enjoying it. Hell, my brother and dad still watch it for hatewatching purposes, but I was done after season 3. I gave it plenty of chances to impress me, and while each season MARGINALLY got better as it went along, I'm tired of waiting to actually like it and to stop feeling like it thinks I'm a fucking idiot. If other people still like it, great - it clearly appeals to them in a way that it doesn't appeal to me and they are free to enjoy it. Other people probably have their own issues, but this long, rambly bit is the major stuff for me.

[crystalkleure]

I have a Concept.

BeyBurst beyblades are supposed to burst. As in, it’s actually a necessity. In spite of the Exploding Beyblade mechanic potentially causing sharp little bits of spintop to go flying everywhere and hit people, what if it’s actually a safety feature?

If I recall correctly, all the way back in s1 territory [specifically in the manga though, can’t remember if we saw it in the anime or not], Valt and Shu just straight-up got their original beys from a store. And there are also all of those Unimportant Characters running around with different-coloured versions of preexisting beys. This indicates that beyblades are, in fact, mass-produced and sold in stores, and those are all built to be able to burst. In fact, I still haven’t seen the newest two seasons of the Burst anime yet, but I’m pretty sure super special fancy custom beys, that some important character explicitly made themself, that have some really creative [and strong] anti-burst features built into them, don’t ever show up as NPC recolour beys? In spite of the trend of “random background characters in new season use recoloured versions of Prominent Character beys from LAST season” to me seeming to indicate that those new recolour beys are either bootleg copycats, or those actual official shelf models have just suddenly started selling really well, due to someone having just recently done something cool with one in a tournament/on TV lol. [Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong on which beys get NPC recolours, I don’t exactly actually, uh, pay attention to all the random background scrubs. That point’s not particularly important anyway because I’m sure unofficial bootlegs are a thing that exists, mmmm delicious plagiarism. The point is the stores seem to sell beys with the normal level of burstability. And so I’m only caring about the everyday random NPCs with no names or anything, if another important character specifically goes and painstakingly recreates a bey similar or identical to another important character’s bey just because they idolize that other character, that doesn’t count. That’s not important here, implication-wise.] So...

What if it’s actually a really bad thing that people keep making their own custom beys now that are increasingly more and more ludicrously difficult -- or even near-impossible -- to burst?

What if the self-destruct mechanic is intended to be an emergency shutdown switch, and actually really needs to not be subverted? We’ve seen what an adept beyblader can do while running at full-throttle -- they’re dangerous, to themselves and their surroundings. Beys have the power to be obscenely destructive...while they’re spinning and battling, primarily. They are by far the most potent while actively in use. But if they hit things too hard like 3-4 times or so...they burst. Their locks disengage, they fall apart, and thus they are forced to abruptly stop. That makes them theoretically incapable of just rampaging indefinitely.

Picture this: One day, in the probably-decently-distant history of the BeyBurst world, a kid has a spintop. Probably made that spintop themself. This kid, it turns out, happens to be one of the Super Special Powerful Kids, who’s not only REALLY GOOD at using that spintop, they also possess that funny little supernatural ability to accidentally create an incredibly powerful incorporeal monster ghost creature thing with their brain. And because they love playing with their little spintop so much, that spintop becomes the vessel for this Terrifying Monster-Shaped Culmination Of Spiritual Elemental Energy or whatever that they’ve manifested. That’s...good, probably, because at least that means the Scary Monster Thing isn’t 1. just stuck in the kid’s brain with nowhere else to go, which would lead to possession that would decidedly be incredibly difficult to deal with without harming the kid, or 2. funneled into something more dangerous to control, like a car or a nuclear warhead or some shit. But then it turns out that the kid is ABSOLUTELY still able to wreak impressive havoc and cause Large Amounts Of Destruction, even accidentally...until the spintop stops spinning. The Power Level drops dramatically as soon as the demon top is still, and it takes a little while for it to build back up once it’s launched again. But what if a feature is implemented into the spintop that allows it to keep spinning for much, much longer? Or just The Supernatural Monster Power itself becomes capable of sustaining it, through wind manipulation or something?

Now, imagine you’re idk, the government or something, someone with Power and Influence over the masses, and you see THAT happen. Shit, that was just a random kid that did that! Looked like any other kid, acted like any other kid! There is no feasible way to tell a kid with Brain Monster potential apart from other kids who are NOT That Powerful, until a brain monster happens. So, if you can’t predict it, and thus can’t do anything to mitigate the potential destruction on a case-by-case basis...well, how about you convince ALL the little kiddies that spintops are just the greatest thing ever, everyone should play with spintops, AND you ensure those spintops are mass-manufactured specifically to not be able to Hold A Charge for too long because...they burst! You’ve designed them so that violence itself causes them to fall apart and stop to cool down! It’s perfect! That way, anytime an odd mutant child with Brain Monster powers comes along, the chance of them funneling their Brain Monster into their spintop is now Very High, meaning that all the Brain Monsters will hopefully end up inhabiting these little plastic toys that actively inhibit them instead of possessing children or nukes. It’s brilliant!

This does raise some questions, though:

1. What happens when someone’s spintop breaks, and they DON’T get it repaired, after they’ve already manifested a Brain Monster to live in it? Where would the Brain Monster go in that case? Uh oh, demon on the loose? Exactly what we were trying to avoid? Shu’s change between Legend Spriggan and Spriggan Requiem in God does seem to indicate that the Brain Monster probably 1. by default, does just camp out in its blader’s brain until a new Spintop Vessel is created for it, and 2. the Brain Monster itself is probably not actually completely strictly sealed into any bey, because it doesn’t disappear as soon as the bey is destroyed, and it doesn’t stay with an old/broken bey that’s been discarded when a new bey has been made for it. Legend Spriggan was discarded and left on the riverbed, and Spriggan Requiem was then made from scratch, seemingly using no recycled physical parts from Legend Spriggan, but Spriggan Requiem’s bitbeast looks only very slightly different from Legend Spriggan’s. All of Shu’s Spriggans are honestly probably still the same creature, just progressively evolved. I don’t think we’ve ever seen somebody make an entirely NEW Brain Monster that does not resemble their original one, it seems the original simply gets developed more and more. One person apparently only possesses the ability to make a single individual Brain Monster. You Get One (1), but you can upgrade it. But what about Hearts? His Dead Hades, which very much had a Brain Ghost in it, was not only destroyed, but assimilated into Phi’s Revive Phoenix, to make Dead Phoenix. What happened to that situation, over time? We haven’t gotten to see. Is Hearts’ Hades truly actually fused with Phi’s Phoenix, ceasing to be its own entity anymore, or does Phoenix simply very slightly resemble Hades now due to its bey being upgraded with physical bits of Hades’ bey? What if it’s not even POSSIBLE to truly fuse Brain Ghosts, especially without consent? In which case...is Hades itself just lingering around back in Hearts’ brain, waiting for a new bey to inhabit, and Hearts isn’t making one because he doesn’t realize Hades isn’t just Part Of Phoenix now? That sounds potentially dangerous, there’s no more outlet for your Brain Ghost, buddy. I want to see Phi and Hearts again, to know what eventually happened there.

2. Why do the tournaments not actually enforce a rule that says “Your bey HAS to be able to be reasonably burstable”? Chouzetsu Wings and the Mugen Lock System did not equal disqualifications. Has it maybe, over time, been forgotten exactly WHY we Need Beys To Burst? Well, that’s a ticking time bomb, then. How difficult a bey is to burst does seem to directly cause its Potential Destructiveness Levels to scale accordingly. [With somewhat of an exception of Pot and his Pegasus, but it should be noted that Pot was not exactly terribly serious about beyblade initially and yet was STILL considered one of the strongest ‘bladers in the world, GT3 iirc, AND he’s very into the whole “Love and light, chillax, be in-tune with yourself and all the energy in and around you, etc.” peaceful thing.] This HAS To Be A Problem. Why is nobody concerned.

3. ...What is causing the general public not to panic about this? Why are people okay with Brain Ghost and Mass Spintop Destruction happening, instead of terrified? This shit is broadcast on TV. The stands during tournaments are packed with spectators. It may be that perhaps not everybody can SEE the Brain Ghosts themselves [and I’m skeptical about that, because there have absolutely been MANY indications that other people know what someone’s bitbeast looks like], but the Big Bada Booms they cause are DAMN sure Highly Visible. Aiga’s father seems to be the only one truly properly concerned about the incredible mass-destructive potential of the spintops. Realistically, The Salem With Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo should be happening due to the Scary Spintop Kids being Fucking Scary, and sometimes quite clearly even out-of-control of themselves.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this is not a direction canon will ever go in, or I think it would have already done it. I don’t think they’re going to explore this route. It’s a shame I don’t have the chops for writing long-haul fanfiction, because if I did I would absolutely be hardcore capitalizing on this idea. This has incredible Worldbuilding Lore Potential.

[aziulpre]

Opening analysis

I'm tired and in 3 days my Ben's comic will be released so I'll not draw for now (?

So I'll do a little analysis of Ben's openings.

I'll only analyze the opening, probably at the end I will add things about the series.

Well, continue reading...

The original Ben 10 Opening has "galactic", "ghostly" and "alien" tones. The voice (english ver) has a modified voice that makes it sound like an "alien".

It's simple, like it visualization (Look the simple animation, recycled scenes, and recycled images) but YES I love it. It look young/kid, like a cartoon for kids.

It simply explains the beginning and what we will watch. A dark show, but simple and for the whole family.

Oh yeah and, Although Ben is relatively lonely, it does seem a bit like he has friendly help.

Here my favorite... The opening of Ben 10 Alien Force is short, but it has very "heroic" and "fast" sounds (really superhero). The visualization is fast and shows you "what happened" and "what will happen", this gives you to understand that it is a continuation and will be long. It look as a teen or young adult series.

Looks dark, not very serious, but there will be emotional moments.

Despite having recycled images and scenes, it has a good editing. Very dynamic and technological.

Ben is not alone at all, this may suggest that we will see more situations about more characters, friends, etc. Friendship, problems and thing.

Ben 10 Ultimate Alien... I didn't remember it that long despite being short. It’s really bad, but iconic final sound. 

It look as "We are back" and "we'll continue this". "New return" I think. It shows you all the aliens used, it is implied that you will see more of space and even the universe (that's because it looks like a ship).

Oh yeah, really looks so dark and serious.

It only has a new animation, everything else is recycled and edited. 

It look as "youthful" but maturing, teen/young adult series to adult.

It shows as if Ben handles things more alone but if there will be people behind him helping him.

Oh damn... Seeing others this breaks my head and sentiments.

Well, this is shown as "we have returned after a long time". It's a bit quick, it's like "you've seen this before but we'll show you things you didn't see”.

In the English version, small sound effects voice... Looks nothing serious, very lively and there will be a lot of jokes and fun.

It wants look like a reboot because for the song almost recycled from the original, but it doesn't seem like it. But maybe the song has "distorted" sounds and this could imply that it is "another universe", "we’ll see the same but different and different continuation"

It looks complicated... It isn’t for teens, youngs, kids or adults audiences. It doesn't really show anything. But with the cleanest and "cute" design and more linear animation it would mean that it is for female audiences or people "who have not matured (young adults, adults)". Oh well, It can also be seen as "Oh did you have children? You have to do this with them”. The song has very "youthful" sounds but it is still difficult to know what audience it is intended for. I would agree that it is for a young female audience for adding an unmodified female voice to the song, but it doesn't look like something like that either. Maybe “this really is for female and male audience!” but it doesn't really show it, it doesn't show anything. 

It's confusing, I recently saw the full linear series and it's just as confusing~ Has direction and writing problems and YES, the opening gives you to understand that: "this is not clear, just look at it".

Yeah, the opening is really bad and the series a little even though I love it.

REBOOT NO ANALYSIS

It's a total reset, we don't need it. Try to imitate the same as the original Ben 10 (song). What is shown is very very simple, looks like it's an animation test.

UPGRADE!

I forgot that the Opening of Ben 10 Omniverse Galactic Monsters was very different.

Added "ghostly"/alien sound (reminds of the original Ben 10) and despite having almost the same as the previous version, it feels more like "we'll see something great!".

The female voice is more notable, which further supports my theory that the series seems aimed at a female audience. And the colors are more careful.

This is less confusing because they had a better idea of what they wanted to show. It looks darkness but not dark enough (not horror, not adult or serious situations) Yeah, it looks more like "aimed at nostalgic people who want to see something new". But I still think it doesn't look like something for kids or teens. 

It doesn't look very "masculine", it's hard to explain. Original Ben 10 clearly is for children of the time (boys and girls) is very neutral, they travel a lot and there are many scenarios! and there are many people (remember how childhood, you see new places and many people). Ben Alien Force was clearly more for youngsters (men and women) due to the fact that it has a college series look. They are kept in established places, sometimes we can see new things, there are fewer people but more limited (like teen, you go back to the same places, you see fewer people and you coexist with the same people or few new ones).

If we talk about the Omniverse series, Galactic Monsters is the best part of all, after this the series does not know where to go and changes the personalities of the characters.

Well, I can't give a good opinion of the times because I was so much younger when each series came out. When the original Ben 10 came out I was 5 years old not 8-10. When Alien Force and Ultimate Alien came out I was 8-10 not 12-15. When Omniverse came out I was 12 not 16-18 or more, I could probably think of Omniverse better but actually lived the likes of Ben 10 Alien Force, at that time we didn’t watch TV much. I took a bigger liking to Omniverse now that I'm 21. Yeah, my high school classmates knew Ben 10 Omniverse but it's because it appeared on public TV (many people watched that channel and I live in Mexico, many TV are on the street).

Thanks Albert head.

[ladyyatexel]

I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

[thebooki3h]

Lukadamianette Au Part 2

First Here Next

We begin where we left off, with Luka and Marinette on one of the dates Luka Planned. Just because it makes sense in this, Luka and Mari arrive a week early

Because Mari is emancipated and excused herself for the first week of school before the trip during which the class is still in France bc they just ended summer and all that jazz. also I have decided that the trip has turned into a half semester exchange program even though this doesn’t make the most sense, but the French school thought the class could use a reward and tbh they just wanted to get the Akuma class out for awhile. Also this way they aren’t in Gotham for a whole semester of senior year. The trip is planned for the first half of the first semester of senior year. I know that this doesn't make a whole lot of sense but just stick with me.

They go sight seeing and basically on a week long date bc the following week begins the Wayne sponsored exchange program and when Luka has to work for Jagged. One day they go to museums, the next the go to famous parks around Gotham (which are thriving thanks to Poison Ivy), the next they see all of the famous villain spots (which are surprisingly popular tourist destinations bc for the most part they don’t get hit twice in short periods of time) which is a good cover for studying past bat battles. They take days in between to rest and use the inspiration they gained to make new songs or clothing designs. 

They share hotel room bc Mari’s parents stopped being her parents a long time ago and lost their say and bc Jagged says they are grown up enough to be responsible for their actions (which brings a blush to their cheeks every time bc “daaaaaddddd” “uncle jaggeeedddd”)

Mari also makes it her mission to visit all of the non chain coffee shops at least once while they are there bc coffee became her best friend when she was active as ladybug. She meets Tim in almost everyone because Tim also drinks coffee obsessively. Luka is more of a tea drinker because coffee interrupts his musical thought process and tea is less harsh. Marinette drinks tea when she wants to relax but coffee is the fuel of the gods. She expresses this to Tim and that's how they become acquainted bc finally someone understands his love for coffee. They exchange numbers after they run into each other for a fourth time. (Luka silently thinks that he might have to talk to Mari about her obsession of coffee again and if there is a rehab center for coffee drinkers) Tim learns that Mari is from the exchange class very quickly based off of Luka’s French accent as well as her light French accent that is mixed with a couple things he can’t quite place.

The class arrives, Lila ofc tried to pull something to leave Mari behind and she thought she was successful so she was gloating. She ofc took credit for the whole trip claiming that she was super close to the Waynes and that she helped Damian acclimate to his new school (she actually knows that Damian didn’t start living with his father until 10 bc why not). Mrs Bustier tries to check in under both her name and Lila’s name, both of which don’t work because they are A) an hour and a half early and B) all of the reservations are under the contest winners name (they have to ok their chaperones to use their name) C)Mrs Bustier told Mari to make all of the reservations under Mari’s name anyway and she totally forgot that. 

So the sit in the lobby for an hour, Lila has the whole class riled up bc Marinette isn't there and it is al her fault that they can’t get in to their rooms. Marinette shows up with Luka 15 mins before the class was supposed to show up (they had just gotten lunch at a cafe that jagged had recommended) and she is laughing and happy, which causes the class to BLOW UP in her face. She ignores them and checks everyone into their rooms. Kagami and Chloe share a suite bc they are rich in their own right and upgraded their shared room bc they are dating and signed up to be roommates. They got this okayed by Buister in writing JIC. Marinette as the contest winner also got a suite (the room she had been staying in with Luka that she just extended the booking for)

Lila and Alya obviously make a big fuss about them getting special treatment but bustier can’t do anything because Mari won’t let her. She secretly thinks Mari is a lost cause now but she tries her best to get her to see that she has to be a role model. Mari actually planned the whole trip and she did a fucking fantastic job bc its Mari and planning something is what she is great at. She has all of the bases covered including iternerary, bookings for food, emergency contact info, health info, info on Gotham, safety procedures and the whole shebang. All of which had to be approved by  Bustier and that Bustier has copies of but totally ignored.

The next day they try to pull the let’s leave an hour early to leave behind Marinette stunt. Not only does that fail because the tour can’t start until the contest winner is there, but they arrived before Wayne tower was even open to the public. Because jagged is extra he shipped Luka and Marinette motorcycles to Gotham bc they were going to be there for a couple months, they also got special permission from Wayne enterprises to park their bikes in the employee parking structures from Tim once he heard that they rode bikes as expensive as Jason’s. So she left early from the hotel with Luka(bc she knew that Bustier would leave her behind somehow) to go meet up with Tim at a new coffee place (one of his favorites). They end up riding on their respective bikes to WE together so they can hang out before the tour. Luka goes to a recording studio to meet up with Jagged, but not before a very passionate kiss goodbye, which makes Tim blush. (Tim may not seem like the biker type but he is a bat and he lives with Jason so he not only knows how to ride a motorcycle well has one, so it may not be his favorite mode of transportation but he’ll live)

So he and Marinette walk to WE about a half an hour before the class is supposed to be there in the middle of a debate on how best to brew coffee (Mari insists its French press) and low and behold they are there yelling at the receptionist. Mari gives Tim a look that says I’m so sorry you have to see this and yes I was not exaggerating walks up to the receptionist and apologizes for what she is about to do (not for the classes actions bc fuck them they can apologize for themselves she has learned to not take responsibility for others actions and she won’t let all that work go to waste). She then proceeds to yell, much louder than someone of her stature presumably should “SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I STG I WILL BREAK JOKER OUT OF ARKHAM AND LOCK HIM IN A ROOM WITH ALL OF YOU WITHOUT FLINCHING” this is shocking to everyone, especially mrs bustier who is  scandalized  that her role model student would do something like this.

Tim had a feeling that something video worthy would happen so as soon as she walked away he started recording, and he was NOT disappointed. The video gos straight to the batfam gc and Luka immediately. He powered off his phone then he proceeds to start laughing and applauding. Upon seeing the CEO’s reaction the rest of the employees start applauding as well bc damn those kids were rude. Tim then walks up to Mari talking at a speed no one but Mari, Chloe and Kagami could understand (bc the class is not fluent in English no matter what they would tell you). Mari proceeds to blush once he informs her that he sent a video to Luka (he does not tell her about the batfam gc)

Chloe and Kagami are immediate intrigued bc this is NOT what they picture when Mari said she met someone who loves coffee as much as she does. they may be hella gay for each other but damn that man is ripped. They join the convo while the class remains befuddled bc who knew Mari even swore. in the back of his mind Nino is reminded of a young blue-eyed girl who lost playground privileges for a week bc someone made fun of his glasses and proceed to punch said someone in the nose. But he shakes it of because Mari hasn’t been like that in years. 

Bustier eventually collects herself and gently, so as not to cause an Akuma (apparently she didn't get the memo), reminds Mari that they are here for a tour and she needs to get the class their passes.  So Mari leaves her friends to get acquainted and goes up to the receptionist, to whom she apologizes for her actions again, and the receptionist replies with a laugh and a “honey, you just made my week, there's no need to apologize I should be thanking you” (she does thank Mari). Mari gets a special pass bc she’s the contest winner to which Lila and Alya (then the rest of the class for the most part) proceed to throw a hissy fit over. The receptionist is so over them though and doesn’t even blink. 

Then their tour guide shows up. (its Dick and his assistant Damian). Damian proceeds to scold the class for a solid ten mins (which coincidentally leads up to their scheduled time to start the tour). Dick slides off to talk to the receptionist and his brother who isn't working and is talking to real people for once. Just for that they are his favorite out of the class. Tim unfortunately has to go to work so they talk to Dick to get acquainted until the tour has to officially start. 

Los tres amigos are the only ones who pay attention to Dick at all (he leads the tour bc he’s been there the longest but Damian throws in a comment here or there mostly related to shenanigans his family has gotten into but overall useful facts. for example these windows are reinforced because our CEO (Tim) leaned up against one, fell asleep and fell through the window to the office below.)

The rest of the class is focused on Lila who is talking a whole bunch of nonsense about the Wayne family and how she has helped them with their business. Some things actually sound kinda legit, but Mari and Co. know that it is BS. Dick tries to bet bustier involved but she makes an excuse for Lila and goes on her phone and doesn’t really pay attention. 

Eventually the class tour turns into Dick talking to Mari, Chloe and Kagami while the class vaguely follows them. Damian doesn’t really say anything because he generally doesn’t do well talking to strangers and these girls seem ok and he is still insecure (not that he would ever admit it to anyone ) about social interaction now that he has figured out how people who weren’t raised as assassins act. That is until Dick starts talking about shenanigans that his brothers get into, and Damian jumps in correcting him because  I did not try to tackle Todd, Grayson I did tackle Todd quite successful and also Alfred won’t let you into the kitchen anymore because you almost burned down the east wing of the manor not  because he is territorial over the kitchen. And Mari hadn’t really paid attention to Damian until now but OH MY KAWAMI he is hot, and how did she talk so long to notice that. 

She ends up taking a pic of Damian without him noticing (he really doesn’t notice which is a feat in itself but Dick does and he will  be teasing Damian about it later bc obviously) and she texts it to Luka bc if she is going to freak out over his hotness she wants Luka to do so too. ( he sees the pic in the middle of recording and he ends up needing a water break bc gay panic and he really is extremely handsome. Recording gets delayed even longer bc jagged cannot pass up the opportunity to tease him son and he does so mercilessly and Mari totally knew what she was doing when she sent that picture) Luka ends up demanding that she gets Damians number or he will because that man is fine.  

Mari now knows that the stuttering idolization that she had with Adrien wasn’t really healthy and Luka likes to remind her all the time that she can be smooth when she wants to be (sometimes unintentionally but she practices on Luka because she loves to see him blush). Mari then makes it her mission to compliment Damian as much as possible so that it is crystal clear and very obvious that she is flirting with him. If he even shows a little discomfort in a negative I don’t like this kind of way she will stop because she will not make someone go through what she went through with Chat Noir and unwanted advances.

Chloe, Kagami and Dick immediately notice that she is flirting with Damian. Chloe takes a video for Luka bc she knows that he would want to see this and Dick takes a video for the Batfam gc. 

Just to be clear Mari and Luka have talked about seeing other people and maybe adding a third person to their relationship as long as they talk about it. that line of communication was opened when Mari sent a pic of Damian to Luka and when Luka asked for his number that was his “go ahead” for her to flirt with Damian. Lila doesn’t understand how that works and neither do the rest of the class so that is a point of contention between the class and Mari. She would NEVER cheat on Luka, she loves him and he is the most important person to her in the world. Something that Juleka understands (she just doesn’t like Mari bc of Lila she knows how polyamory works this is why her and Luka aren't as close as they used to be)

Moving on... the batfam gc blows up for a second time that day and so when the class goes to the cafeteria Tim just has to see this for himself. Mari tries not to be obnoxious in her flirting so she compliments Damians intelligence by asking him questions that weren't included in the tour, and she asks him about his interests and is like that must have taken a lot of time to perfect you must be very dedicated. Damian isn’t used to genuine compliments especially from strangers so he is very flustered by it but he makes no indication for her to stop. 

The day winds down and the class has some free time before they have to go to dinner but the do have to leave the tower. Mari does actually get Damians number (he thinks she must be very well trained to get his number that quick bc he refuses to accept that he gave it to her because he likes her) Mari promises to ft him later bc he promised to let her meet his dog and she doesn’t want to wait until the class has dinner at the manor to see Titus.

First Here Next

Taglist

@dood-space

@toodaloo-kangaroo

Also I’m not very sure about how to go back and edit posts to link new parts so if anyone knows how to do that please comment or message me because I would love to learn!

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom episode 4-7 Thoughts: (under a readmore because, these got kinda long!)

-the outfit danny had to buy for dash's party. CLASSIC 2000S i cannot stop laughing. And also showing up to the party and everyone is dressed like the trio is hilarious. and further proof that everyone looks good dressed goth.

-dash has a closet full of cute lil bear plushies?? LOVE that. adorable. also his response to danny trashing his room fighting a ghost was SO valid if somone BROKE MY BED IN HALF ID BE PISSED TOO.

-technus being like 'oh smart, u should be a tutor!' then later being like 'forget tutor, be a teacher!' :) supportive king <3 I also really like his upgraded suit/design. AND SPOCK CAMEO??? HELLO??

-the music in this show is super. its so funky. I looked it up and the guy who does it, guy moon (awesome name) also did music for other cartoons like fairly odd parents, barnyard, chalkzone, billy & mandy, AND some actual movies like FIGHT CLUB??? the whiplash I got from reading that)

-sam being rich explains a lot about her, actually.

-I know the moral of the episode was supposed to be 'dont ditch your friends for popular people/spend a lot of money on clothes that arent You to Fit In'. but tbh. it wouldve been easy for danny to have been like 'well, okay, ill come but only if my friends can!' but I get. that hes 14. so. not a lot to say there.

-BOX GHOST IS BACK!!!!! also, danny sitting up and wearing the dress/wig/makeup. umm thats how I dress everyday LMFAO. unironically me. (hate the jokes that boil down to 'haha funney man in dress' tho. but this is a look)

-jazz being protective of her brother once again being like NOOO YOU GUYS BETTER NOT STAKE OUT HIS (actually haunted) LOCKER!! shes aware of how people perceive him and she wants to help :( which is also probably why she told dash to invite him to that party even tho she had no interest in going!! she wants to help him out :(

-gotta say im with tucker on the whole 'should danny use his powers to get back at bullies' debate. 100% yes. let him teach kids to fight back. making dash throw his food at paulina out of the blue? no. but when hes actually about to pick on someone? yeah! for self defense? YEAH! if dash and his friends just threw food at him, I think rather than. idk doing sneaky shit with frogs he couldve just threw it back and not pulled punches if they tried to fight. I kNOOWWW its a kids show so they are like 'if u fight back ur just as bad!! violence bad!!' but. theyre HIS POWERS. WHO CARES.

-like my only gripe is that dash really isnt LEARNING ANYTHING WHEN DANNY GETS BACK AT HIM IN THE MOST PETTY INDIRECT WAYS. whatever they had to add a bully psa episode I guess. I hate it and I hate the way cartoons usually handle it because these methods simply Do Not Work. 'aND YouRE USinG YOur poWErs FOR EVill???!' this is Not Evil. even when poindexter takes dannys body, theyre only being 'nice' bc hes stealing soda for them!! bitches deserve what they get (nothing too brutal bc theyre high schoolers but damn, if they pick on danny he doesnt need to be the 'bigger person' he needs to start biting people)

-SAM TRYING TO SMUGGLE FROGS OUT OF THE BIO LAB?? girl in middle school when we had to dissect frogs we could opt out, also, they came to us already dead and preserved...

-sidney's lingo and the fact hes in black and white is sending me. also, danny is a ghost celebrity apparently for being a halfa?? ok. thats interesting to know

-the DENTIST BEING EXCITED ABOUT THE COTTON CANDY FLOOD IS THE FUNNIEST THING SO FAR.

-I LOOOVE the trope of 'wishes gone wrong'. not crazy about the stereotypical genie, or the use of the dreamcatcher looking design. (also, I KNOW theyre scientists but the way theyre handling a cold...are the fentons ANTIVAX)

-the genie. she. whitewished paulina. JKASDFHKJ. (the ghost literally just being hello kitty???? im dying) 'why do i feel that im special and wonderful? because I AM! <3' paulina ilu self worth queen. felt bad for her also getting possessed by (2) boys later who were arguing INSIDE HER. WTF.

-imagine being the guy trapped in his now flying car. he thought danny and tucker were HALUCINATIONS. imagine being trapped in a flying car with two, what you think are imaginary arguing 14 year olds convinced ur gonna die. i WOULD say this dude is gonna need so much therapy, but he seemed totally fine and excited when they landed (I would be happy too if a chicken was on my head. chickens rule) stoner rights

-sam's bat slippers??? iconic. SO cute.

-I think desiree's backstory is so :( do all ghosts have messed up sad backstories?? poindexter's was sad too...cannot imagine box ghost has any kind of fucked up backstory. but what if. his mom got pushed off cliffs by boxes...........a la cruella... anyway her 'no man may lay a hand on me' iconic. ilu

-I know danny has no concept of how much bras cost but my god dont attack tucker with some girls bra. those are so expensive.

-its really. well its not a GOOD THING he went into the portal and got fucked up, but its good danny was the one to do it rather than sam or tucker. because even tho he was being influenced by desiree and kept getting more malicious and it prob wasnt 100% him...he sucked as a ghost like most the people he 'pranked' were innocent ppl just Chillin and he didnt want to help anyone at all. I think danny is the most responsible out of them but also, hes 14 and shouldnt HAVE to feel obligated to fight every ghost. hes a good kid and wants to, but I also feel like he feels like...responsible for the portal turning on?? because his parents did give it up,, but it was an accident and not his fault (if anything, why was the on switch on the inside. why was it that easy. why was there no safety measures. that seems like smth OSHA needs to hear about). like thats my son. hes a good boy. and hes never done anything wrong in his life, ever. if anyone hurts him im killing everyone in this room and then myself. etc.

-danny's curfew is 10PM????? DUDE. when I was 14...shit I couldn't be out that late, I had to be back at like, 8 at the latest, and my parents had to know exactly where and who I was going with, AND i had to call/text them regularly...is this a case of my parents being overbearing, or the fentons sucking??? the only time i could EVER be out that late was if I was at an overnight sleepover or smth...

-the vultures have lil fezes. why do they have fezes...theyre so fuckin funny 'ask him for directions' 'I KNOW WHERE IM GOING' these ghost vultures are my new grandpas. pick them up, put them in the adopt box.

-'I wonder why those guys were trying to waste dad!' THEYRE GHOSTS. YOUR DAD HUNTS GHOSTS. why is that not a conclusion you'd immediately jump to??

-*jazz voice, clearly disgusted* WISCONSIN???

-mrs fenton with the lab coat and leg warmers and PERM. YESSS STYLISH.

-was going to say 'ew billionaire' @vlad but. super valid he used his powers to assumedly steal and cheat to get that money, thats how all billionaires do it! but ew hes a SIMP. and spending your billions on FOOTBALL STUFF?? you are Not Valid overall. I DO respect the fact you have a castle instead of a mansion. in wisconsin. if youre going to be stupidly rich might as well go all out, torches on the wall and all. I DO like his ghost form's little kitty ears. catman. and his cape! every design can benefit from a cape. and how different his forms look, like danny looks the EXACT SAME IN BOTH FORMS ASIDE FROM COLOR CHANGES. vlad's is like,, I could believe they were different people!! also I love the drama. but dude you are fighting a 14 year old. lame. also he was like, telling danny he wanted his mom and him and like, wanted him to renounce his dad?? WHAT ABOUT JAZZ?? bitch. those r MY kids and they are both important and special. I do agree they need better parents but thats not u sir <3

-I thought vlad's 'little badger' nickname for danny came from the football mascot of the packers, but google says they have NO MASCOT?? so now I'm like?? is it because his hair is sometimes black and sometimes white?? I hate to give him props but thats a PERFECT NICKNAME. theyre also tiny and vicious!

-why did I get so excited that Skulker is back!! its been like. 2-3 eps LMAO. AND THE DAIRY KING. ICONIC I LOVE HIM. hes the nicest guy ever :) more nice ghosts please. danny cannot be fighting alone everytime with no ghost buds like every ghost being hostile sucks :(

-mr. fenton knew vlad was controlling him, but a few episodes ago he had no clue danny was doing the same thing...is it something about how malicious the ghost is?? he just seemed to think his memory had gaps the first time, this time he was INSTANTLY LIKE 'GHOST'. then again in this ep when danny did it again he was just slightly confused but not immediately freaking out like he did with vlad possessing him!!

-'my parents will accept ME NO MATTER WHAT' so. so why haven't you come out to them yet, danny?? if you really think that?? if theres no harm, and you're sure??? if vlad is a real problem, wouldnt that make dealing with him easier, to expose him???? SO WHY HAVENT YOU COME OUT YET?? COULD IT BE,, MAYBE YOU HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT WHETHER YOUR PARENTS ACTUALLY WILL ACCEPT YOU??? 🤔 ... 🏳‍🌈 I get why people say He Is Trans. I totally totally get u danny.

-sorta unrelated, but it just occurred to me in one of these eps they go to casper HIGH not casper middle school??? theyre 14?? dont highschools usually do ages 15-18? (I didnt go to hs so I might be wrong, if I am ignore this...) freshmen are usually 14-15, could just be a case of them not turning 15 yet but they will sometime in the school year (I say they because tucker said he was 14 too)? I know the show has 3 seasons, so by the end of it will they be older? thatd be neat but usually cartoon characters stay the same age...I love shows where you can see the characters age and grow up, though...three seasons seems like a long time to spend on like, 1 year...