#not by much but a nice amount

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[starry-bi-sky]

on a completely separate note; shizun luo binghe with a disciple shen yuan who fell into the abyss??? *thinks about LBH canonically stealing SQQ's corpse for 5 years* he'd hallucinate i think. like, like visual and audial hallucinations.

Keeps thinking he's seeing SQQ in the corner of his eyes, or wandering between the trees, amongst a group of disciples. Thinks he hears him calling for him, but its just the wind or another disciple.

Gets Xiu Ya reforged but patently fucking refuses to make a sword mound. Because his disciple Is Not Dead :))) There was No Body. He's Not Dead. And If You keep Insisting That He Is, He's Gonna Skewer You :). He's holding onto Xiu Ya so he can return his most favored disciple's sword when he returns. It's on his hip right next to Zheng Yang where it's supposed to be.

Also this motherfucker?? does not sleep btw. He has the image of SQQ, wide eyed and hysterical and standing at the mouth of the abyss burned into his fucking eyelids. Can't use the dreamscape to escape it either because he keeps trying to save him and either he does and it's an incredibly cruel trick to wake up to, or he doesn't and he gets his heart broken in several different pieces again.

There is no convincing this man that Shen Qingqiu is dead. Absolutely nothing at all. He is buried so deep in denial that moles would be jealous of how deep he is. He keeps making tea for two in the bamboo house only to remember that it's just him. SQQ's fans are hiding everywhere, little reminders of his presence. He goes to wake up SQQ on the mornings he sleeps in-- only to find the room empty.

[the-meme-monarch]

edit: woe finished version upon ye here⬅️

YAY im either. 1/3 or 1/2 way though now i think

delilah and shrimpo are my favorite characters. the animatic is Not about Either of them but I kinda didn’t want to just post the video on its own since it’s Not Done Yet

[zorionbbq]

party chat #56: nanba's transformation

(transcript both in alt text and below)

[image description: five-page comic of a "party chat" conversation from yakuza 7.

beneath the scaffolding of a construction site, nanba holds a bottle of tea and asks "hey, you think i've changed at all since we met?"

the rest of the party, standing or crouching on the side of the path, turn to look at him.

"hm? have you?" ichiban tilts his head, hand on chin, and lets saeko pick from his chip bag. "i dunno, lemme think..."

adachi leaps to his feet, splashing his can of beer and surprising saeko. "got it!"

adachi snaps his fingers with a triumphant smile. "you changed how you part your hair!"

"huh?" nanba reaches toward the back of his own head. "nope, it's still the same..." adachi sheds a single tear.

hand raised high, saeko announces "right! your prescription changed!" ichiban taps a canned coffee on his palm in an "i get it!" motion. "what, are you trying to be funny now!? and that's wrong, too!" nanba retorts.

"okay!" han looks serious. "you changed the frames on your glasses!"

"you started wearing contacts instead of glasses!" zhao finger-guns with a grin.

"will you quit it with the glasses thing!?" nanba snaps at an unfazed, juicebox-sipping han. "and does it look like i'm wearing contacts!?" he gestures at himself. zhao smugly bites an onigiri, still squatting on the ground.

adachi frowns around a pocky. "huh? then what's changed?"

"never mind... sheesh." nanba turns his back on the group.

a view of the vending machine and soccer field across the way. "i just thought maybe i'd grown a bit cheerier since i met you guys."

"that's all." nanba doesn't see the party staring in shocked silence.

saeko, han, and zhao exchange fond looks.

nanba chugs his tea as ichiban approaches.

ichiban bumps his drink hand against nanba's.

"well, we already knew that, man." ichiban grins so wide his eyes shut.

"yeah, you smile a lot more than you did before, nan-chan." saeko concurs, offering him her chip bag.

nanba looks up, eyes wide. "ichiban... you guys..."

a hand lands on nanba's shoulder.

arm slung over his friend's back, ichiban cheerfully assures "and i noticed that you got some new lenses on your glasses, too." nanba's face falls.

the party loses it. saeko collapses on adachi, both doubled over in laughter, zhao cackles as his glasses fall off, and han clutches his head in despair.

"i didn't change anything about my glasses!" nanba roars. on the ground, a plastic bag of leftover snacks reads "#56 nanba's transformation".

end image description]

[abd-illustrates]

Are you gonna make the playlists for the heartless characters public? Or has that already happened and I just missed it

AH I haven't shared my character-specific Heartless playlists as some of the songs on them were SUCH specific picks that they risk being highly spoilery lol 😅

(For funsies tho I'm gonna put some of my non-spoilery-est top tracks for each character under the cut! 🎶)

HEARTLESS: Heartbeat – The Midnight

ALCHEMY: Transform – Julianne Hough (this was the very first track on Alchemy's playlist it is SO them)

FLINT: Change Your Heart Or Die – The Midnight

EIRA: In The Cold – Vincent Lima

DOPPEL+GLASS: Call Them Brothers – Regina Spektor (And "Still Here" from Treasure Planet, but especially the Alex Ubego version)

RIVER: Machine Learning – Janani K. Jha

CREED: Hunting Witches – Kyle Stibbs

LORELEI: Siren Song – Lambia (Also: Ado’s version of Unravel 😩👌)

DIANA: Hell’s Comin’ With Me – (the Chloe Breez cover in particular)

LANCE: Blood Upon The Snow – Hozier (Most of his playlist is the kind of metal and high energy tunes you might expect for him, so this one's a fun outlier :3c )

BANDY: HARLEQUIN! – Vana

DOCK: Eye For An Eye – 8 Graves

[seoksoonwoo]

DANDELION by Seungkwan for @hongtonie 🤍

[inkskinned]

as we enter the start of a semester and the dreaded Hour of Making Friends us upon us... if ur ever at a loss for what to say in one of those weird social situations where you only vaguely-know people, one of my favorite questions to ask is "what is your favorite food crime." a food crime is like the food combination that you love that other people find revolting. press them to take it further than pineapple on pizza, that's rote. food crimes is a good topic that has many benefits as it turns out all people are degenerates and also it will give you some cool ideas to try out later in the privacy of your own degenerate kitchen

the other good thing to ask is "okay but has anyone here ever been someplace haunted" bc it turns out if you ask most people directly they don't believe in ghosts, but many people are like "oh yeah i lived in a haunted house. ghosts aren't real tho"

[starflungwaddledee]

⭐🎀🏆🎉 a wa wa winner! 🎉🏆🎀⭐

i'm running late on getting this out, but i'm still reeling over the results of the @kirbyoctournament! i can't quite believe that starstruck- my pint sized waddle dee- made it all the way to the tippy-top against such intense competition. the roster was full of such an incredible selection of wonderful, loveable, and creative characters!

it's heart-warming to know that people out there really love my little wanya and her story, and i'll carry that with me always! 🥰💖

i am so grateful to everybody who voted for and supported starstruck (and i!) throughout the tournament, and i'd also like to give my thanks to everybody- moderators, participants, spectators- who made this community event as cool and fun as it was!! i met many new people and learned about so many wonderful new characters!

this piece in particular is dedicated to and features all of starstruck's competitors in the tourney, starting with jakkle doo from round one, right up to valfrey in the final round. it was a fantastic honour to compete against all of your OCs, and i look forward to hopefully seeing them around plenty more in the future!!

thank you again!!

characters are listed from bottom to top; round 1 vs jakkle doo by @ninjakirkki, round 2 vs galacchio by @tatonslice, round 3 vs atlas by @unleashedsonic, round 4 vs mama d by @chibifox2002, round 5 vs parhelion knight by @aseuki, round 6 vs techie by @ivynajspyder, and the round 7 final vs valfrey by @gethoce

[frankiebirds]

[hongluboobs]

Me when I have to take my Hong Lu’s meaning away because I’m bored

[ellsieee]

They're so in love it's disgusting (affectionate).

Oh the romance of it all. I've melted into a puddle of goo.

[that-butch-archivist]

Making a birthday cake for a friend tonight (something I haven't done for a while), and I forgot how much I love baking & cake decorating. I'll post pics when I'm done, I'm very excited. 🥰

[ash-thestampede]

Me and who?

[fadetouchedsilk]

I think when it comes to Veilguard critique there’s a bit of a disconnect between what I see most people complaining about vs. What a lot of the rebuttals to these opinions seem to be.

I can’t speak for everyone else but at this point when I come at this game it’s almost purely Doylist. I think it’s kind of ridiculous for my experience as a player to seem lacking when compared to the narrative experience of the NPCs. The setting isn’t real; it’s a product that was marketed as being ‘the most romantic Dragon Age yet,’ which implies a level of wish-fulfilment that we were supposed to expect. Which is fine! But it’s not what was delivered.

If I’m criticizing a romance & comparing the Rook version of it to the NPC/NPC version of it, it’s not because I’m violently jealous of the version that doesn’t include my character. It’s because I can make a direct comparison to things the writers come across as caring more about. Never mind the fact that we get statements in the AMA like ‘Yeah, we really wanted to include the Lords even if we knew they weren’t going to get the content the other factions had.’ You’re allowed to like that faction, you’re not stupid for doing so. It’s not a deliberate shot at you if someone points out how ridiculous the decision to keep the Lords in was when the devs were aware that they weren’t going to be able to develop them properly, especially when compared to other factions.

It doesn’t do anyone any favours to take criticism of the game personally. “This is good on a technical level” and “I personally liked this thing” are separate statements that need to coexist.

I don’t want to say it’s a waste of time to examine things from a Watsonian perspective, but I’m having a harder time doing that here because the shortcomings of the writers are so apparent, particularly when you hold it against the other Dragon Age games.

Maybe some people are being malicious in their criticism, idk. If that’s the case, then it’s definitely not worth engaging with on any level. But don’t automatically assume that someone who says ‘I didn’t care for the way this aspect was written’ is an automatic dog whistle for ‘I think you’re dumb if you disagree with me’ either.

The game has been out for a few months now. Take opinions with a grain of salt & form your own. If we shouldn’t be expected to place several disclaimers at the start of every opinion we post on this website, then we also shouldn’t be automatically assigning bad faith interpretations to every opinion that isn’t worded with perfect thoughtfulness either.

[blueskittlesart]

pleeease give a review for infinity nikki ive been thinking about downloading it but i dont know if i have the space and if its worth it to clear some up for it !!!

as someone who spent HOURS on flash-based dollmakers as a kid, i absolutely love it. the gameplay hits somewhere between dressup game and open-world RPG, in that there's a large botw-like open map to explore, but the express purpose of exploring it is to unlock new clothes for your character. The exploration itself feels very calm and cozy most of the time, with the emphasis being on small collection tasks like fishing, bug-catching, and foraging. again, all of this is specifically to craft new outfits for nikki which you can both coordinate with no limitations to wear in the open world and use in scored styling contests with npcs, some of which reward you with game currency and some of which help you progress the story quests. the only place where i feel the gameplay truly suffers is in combat. you have one attack, and it's a ranged shooter, but there's no aim-assist whatsoever, and the mobile joystick isn't NEARLY sensitive enough to justify this. aiming in combat is one of the most difficult parts of the game, and nikki can only take 5 hits before she dies and has to respawn, making combat decently frustrating. However, there are very few places where combat is strictly necessary in-game, and both of the boss battles i've done so far had hitboxes large enough that it wasn't an issue; it's really in the open world against hordes of smaller enemies that the lack of targeting becomes really frustrating. other than that, though, the controls are fairly well-designed and intuitive, especially if you've played similar games before.

The clothes themselves are the star of the show, of course. I've yet to see a single clothing item in the game that I don't want. there's a good mix of fancy intricate outfit pieces and basics to obtain early-on, and without even touching the gacha you can coordinate some really cute outfits via in-universe boutiques and quests that reward you with clothes. Even the very obviously themed ability outfit sets that you craft early on almost always have a few pieces that are easy to mix and match with, so there's a TON of styling potential even for free players! As for the gacha, it's actually one of the more generous games i've played in terms of rewards and pity systems. My one complaint so far is that the 5-star gacha outfits especially seem to be very accessory-heavy, meaning it's possible to pull shoes, multiple necklaces, gloves, socks, and hairpieces before ever pulling the dress they're very obviously designed around. there is a pity mechanic to prevent this, but it requires you to pull a few too many times before your guarantee imo.

The story is ridiculous in a good way. It kind of reads like a 2000s-era barbie movie to me right now, in the best way possible. there's an amazingly predictable sexy villain, cute little flying creatures that follow you around, and every conflict is, of course, solved via clothes in one way or another. My absolute favorite thing about the writing, though, is how blatantly earnest it all is. at no point does the game poke fun at its own wacky concept or even attempt to make some self-aware joke about it to the player--it plays everything completely straight, and in this aspect it almost feels MORE self-aware. it knows that the kind of person who wants to play a dressup rpg is also the kind of person who does not, under any circumstances whatsoever, want to be questioned or made fun of for their love of fashion or their engagement with that game. It very much feels like the devs know that they're working with primarily girls and young women and a subject matter that those girls and young women are often looked down upon or made fun of for seriously engaging with, and so it promises to engage EXTRA-seriously to make up for that. (side note: there's one point in a story quest where, when asked to make a wish, nikki wishes that all girls never get cramps again. that was when i knew this was a game that knew its audience.) If I wanted to nitpick, i might say that every quest so far has sort of felt like an increasingly ridiculous trading sequence--you learn what you need to do very early on, but you'll always spend several hours of gameplay encountering obstacles and doing other smaller tasks to circumvent those obstacles so you can reach your original goal. this might annoy me more if the game was trying to market itself as a serious RPG, but it seems very self-aware to me, and despite how i'm describing it none of the quests ive played have actually FELT tedious. I think the fact that it's such a wild concept to begin with gives the writers a bit of leeway in how they handle the story quests, and because I as the player am aware i'm playing a dressup game I don't really expect quests to immediately get to the point and let me fight something. I will say that there are certain things that aren't super intuitive especially if you aren't a seasoned gacha rpg player, particularly the features relating to advancing your skills and the styling points of your clothing. though the game does technically explain what you need to do, it doesn't explain the RELEVANCE of the feature, just that it exists, so I had to lose multiple styling contests before I realized i could upgrade my clothing to get higher scores.

The final thing I'll talk about is performance. I'm playing the game on my iphone 13, and the performance is.... not great, i'm ngl. Off the bat, if you play the game on a mobile device, you're going to be getting a HEAVILY scaled-down version of the terrain graphics. all of those screenshots you see online of beautiful terrain full of flowers and particle effects are from ps5s or custom pcs. truthfully, the mobile app looks like a game from 2012 and it will still turn your phone into an incinerator. I've also encountered multiple graphics bugs, some during pivotal scenes, and I get consistent lags when playing for longer than a few hours, likely due to the strain on my phone's hardware. it's also an INSANE battery drain, so i only play when my phone is plugged in. All that being said, the game has been out for less than a week, so visual bugs are inevitable, and the developers have stated that mobile optimization is a priority, so hopefully we'll at the very least no longer have to overheat our devices to play it soon. Also worth noting, from what I've seen the rendering of the CLOTHING doesn't suffer AT ALL on mobile devices. presumably they sacrificed terrain rendering to allow for such beautiful texturing on the clothing itself, which, given that the clothing is the main focus of the game, I can't fault them for. Basically, if you're going to try to run an unreal engine game on your iphone, be aware that it will run like an unreal engine game on an iphone. and prepare yourself to have to let your device cool down every few hours.

tldr: i love the game so far. i'm really excited to keep playing and see where the story goes, and I think they should make more games for girls <3

[estrangedandwayward]

Alicent and Helaena in the sept, moments before chaos