#otherwise the gameplay wouldn't be different from my other ones

[honeysulani]

ok I've just slaugthered Isobel and the whole Last Light Inn, only Jaheira was left. Then I've looked her dead in the face and said "It was me, I've killed them all and enjoyed it" AND THEN I'VE KILLED HER TOO😭

[inbarfink]

I think a lot about the Concept of ‘choices that matter’ in video games. Like, in terms of what it is that makes a choice ‘really matter’, what do we perceive as a choice that matters or has a consequence, how do different games with different amounts of branching or non-branching storylines play with those ideas…  Especially because Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has often been hyped as ‘a game where your choices REALLY matter’ and… honestly, I dunno if all of this hype was fully conducive to Undertale.  Because the way it handles the concept of Video Game Choices is actually a lot more interesting and complex than that simplistic descriptor makes it seem.

Because Undertale actually has a lot of choices that ‘don’t really matter’! Lots of dialogue choices and silly little decisions that on a first playthrough seem like they’re some sort of moral choice or a branching plotline but end up always leading to basically the same result regardless of what you do!

And the game doesn’t really try to hide the fact that these choices are kinda 'Fake'. I mean, on a first playthrough a player might assume there’s gonna be some Massive Consequences for picking the ‘wrong’ drink on Undyne’s date, but the game’s narrative expects for there to be multiple playthroughs and pretty much every Choice that Doesn’t Matter is peppered with that Undertale brand of wacky character-focused humor that inherently makes the moment memorable. Papyrus leading Undyne straight to you no matter what you do is basically a cross-timeline running gag.

On some level I see this as a sort of gag that serves as meta-commentary about the expectations around Choices That Matter in Video Games. As in, a lot of games have their Moral Choices happen in clearly easily marked ‘this is a Moral Choice!’ moments within the story, while the actual gameplay (and any violence the player might cause as part of said gameplay) is basically entirely divorced from any element of narrative-branching and doesn't effect the story at all. Undertale basically entirely inverts this dynamic; the most important factor for which Route you’re own is how you handle your FIGHTs, and what seems like clearly-marked and obvious Moral Choices are just goofy insubstantial minor changes in dialogue. 

But also… there is also a level where you must ask yourself ‘what does it mean when we say that these choices Don’t Matter’. I mean, it’s not like they didn't change anything about the game, the Player still made the character say that other thing, the choice probably led to an alternate piece of dialogue, probably a joke with a call-back at the end of the game… The line between a one-off joke and an actual story-changing moment can be a little blurry if you look at it too deeply.

For example, near the end of the Waterfall part of the game, the Player is given the choice to save Monster Kid even at the risk of having to face down Undyne.

Pretty much anyone who isn’t deliberately trying to be an asshole is going to rush to save them and obviously that includes the Pacifist Route Players. But you can actually leave Monster Kid to die without it 'mattering' in the sense that it wouldn't divert you from the Pacifist Route. Undyne saves them instead of you, and ends up with slightly less HP for her battle (which might Matter for Runs when you try and FIGHT her but obviously not in Pacifist Runs) and… by the end of the game, during the extremely happy True Pacifist Ending, they still clearly remember that you abandoned them and are upset by it.

So… does saving Monster Kid ‘matter’ or not? On one hand, choosing not to save them mostly just changes a few lines of dialogue but… these lines of dialogue kinda recontextualize this happy ending and the Player’s actions in general. Despite the True Pacifist Ending otherwise portraying the Player/Frisk as a kind-hearted and brave hero... they still did this undeniably cowardly (and perhaps even cruel) act to one of their friends .

Was running away and leaving Monster Kid to die a brief but significant moment of weakness that the Player regrets and has cost them what could’ve been the start of a lovely friendship? Or is that simply that being a True Pacifist was always more of a matter of pragmatism rather than ideals? Were they only acting as a Pacifist to get that promised 'Best Ending', and only Monster Kid has an inkling they are not as heroic or kind as everyone thinks they are?

And then there’s the Snowman ‘quest’.

A free healing item given early in the game, with your mission being to carry it along in your inventory for as long as you can without ever consuming it. The only reward you will ever see from it is a few lines of dialogue…

But for many, it is more than enough of an incentive to preserve the Snowman’s Piece. You can do whatever you want with the Snowman without it ‘mattering’ in terms of Ending or consequences. You could carry it through all of your adventures with care and kindness... or you could eat it while he can’t see you and then go back to him and tell him that you ‘lost’ it and then get another piece and eat that as well, you could eat it right in front of his face, horrifying him. 

And much like with Monster Kid, you can STILL get the True Pacifist Ending after doing that, all that would change is a few optional pieces of dialogue from the Snowman… 

And a total recontextualization of the Player’s behavior and the ending. The Snowman sees the Player as a cruel and heartless person who is just pretending to be good so they can be liked - the way they acted with this immobile, powerless Snowman who could do nothing for them and their reputation reveals their true self. And he says their friends will realize that too one day...

Doing a True Reset on the Pacifist Ending is, by definition, a (almost) consequence-free action and yet it changes future Pacifist Routes immeasurably. Turning the Player into a Hypocrite doing the exact same thing they were trying to stop Flowey/Asriel from doing - trapping all of their friends into a time-loop so they can play with them forever while never actually letting them to enjoy freedom on the surface, simply because they are not willing to move on or put their friends' wishes and agency above their own. Nothing in the game actually changes, not one character can even suspect that you did something like that, and yet for the Player - this choice makes the entire Meaning of the game flip on its head. 

Even the most famous and heavily-toted Big Consequence in the whole game - selling your soul to Chara after completing a Murder Route… mostly what it does is just… recontextualize the ending of the Game.

As a game, ‘Undertale’ is very much about the ways in which a Player engages with a game can radically recontextualize it. The huge chasm of difference between the Pacifist and Muder Routes is just the most literal example of it. But, in a way, even the tiny little Dialogue Options - where the lack of real choice and consequences is Obviously a Joke - matter. Because of the way they can recontextualize the Player Character’s behavior.

(Okay, maybe not this one, but hear me out…)

Do you trust Papyrus to not betray you, even after you spied on him with Undyne?

Do you have the integrity to admit you forgot something or got it wrong even when there’s no consequences for just lying about it?

Are you a hypocrite for trying to get Alphys to be truthful with Undyne only to then immediately turn around and lie to Undyne yourself?  

None of these choices matter for the ending, some of them don’t even get, like, a call-back joke or anything, but… if you are engaged in this story as a narrative, if you are invested in these characters as if they were people, if you are honestly trying to be the best person you can be, if you are trying to self-reflect at the way you approach this game… even the silliest little dialogue option can suddenly be imbued with deep implications and you can make them matter. 

Undertale is one of the best demonstrations of this concept, but this is absolutely not exclusive to it. For example….

‘Ace Attorney’ is pretty much as far away as you can get from a ‘branching narrative’ within the video game sphere. It is a heavily-linear Visual Novel where 70% of the time it won’t even let you talk to random characters at anything but the exact order it expects you to and any ‘Bad Endings’ are basically just glorified Game Over Screens. (... because this is the Internet and something something piss on the poor, I should probably specify that I am talking about ‘Ace Attorney’ because I love Ace Attorney and these are neutral descriptions of the game and not complaints. There’s nothing wrong with a game being linear.) 

If there’s any Dialogue Choice in AA, it’s generally a very basic ‘right answer-wrong answer’ choice between Progress and a Penalty, or a total non-choice that just gets you to the same final result regardless. Except… Well… as we just talked about, getting to the same final result doesn’t necessarily mean a choice is ‘meaningless’, does it?

There’s actually a lot of great storytelling moments where Ace Attorney, despite its otherwise strict linearity, uses this exact sort of recontextualizing mindset I’ve talked about with Undertale to make choices with some really powerful emotional impact…. Even if technically, the ending is the same ending. It can be something as basic as ‘even if picking this Wrong Answer doesn’t get me a penalty, it still embarrassed my character and disappointed my friends/rivals and thus I feel bad for picking it’. Consequences as recontextualizing your character as more incompetent than they should’ve come across at that moment.

And then there’s moments like the iconic ending of ‘Justice for All’. That moment before Franziska bursts into the Courtroom with the case-making evidence and saves the day. The moment where it seems like Phoenix really is gonna have to pick between protecting his best friend and carrying out a rightful sentence.

The player gets to pick between the two options, but Phoenix never gets to say his choice out loud before Franziska comes running in... and yet… he, and the player, still made that choice. Even if no one ever has to experience the consequences of your choice, even if the rest of the world has no idea what Phoenix Wright would’ve chosen if the Miracle hadn’t happened, we know what we picked and that knowledge of the choice matters. Because of how we feel about this choice and what it says about our interpretation of Phoenix… and about us.

There’s also a bit of this ludonarrative device in ‘The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures’. During “The Adventures of the Runaway Room”, when you investigate the Omnibus for the second time and start finding things that… don’t quite fit together. When you’re finally starting to make progress with proving McGilded’s innocence, while also maybe starting to notice that something is… wrong with these pieces of evidence. 

The unchanging linear narrative of the game is that Ryunosuke does eventually realizes McGilded's trickery, puts truth ahead of victory in court and yet, despite his effort and good intentions - the case still ends with a false Not Guilty verdict. And yet, the Player has the choice to... tweak the details.

There are several points where Ryunosuke can object, where he can call out the inconsistencies even though they help his case, where he can support Van Zieks in his accusations of tempered evidence... or he can not. Not necessarily intentionally misleading the Court as much as subconsciously trying to ignore the inconsistencies in the name of trusting his client.

And yet… in the end it doesn’t matter. Maybe Susato calls out the inconsistency instead of him, maybe Van Zieks does, maybe it remains uncontested but... no matter what you do, the case will end with a Not Guilty verdict (I mean, I guess you can deliberately fail the game but that will not progress the plot), McGilded doesn’t seem like he held a grudge (in the few minutes he had left to live), and a few cases later - Ryunosuke would always be punished for his part at this false verdict.

So it doesn’t really matter what Ryunosuke did back then? Does it matter if he did his best and called out every single inconsistencies or if he kinda half-assed it until he (and the Player) had to? He’s still going to suffer the same consequences down the line. And yet….

And yet, I think there’s something so powerful about giving us that option. About knowing that Ryunosuke, and we, did try and do something about McGilded's dirty tricks- even if it didn’t work. Or alternative, knowing that there was more that Ryunosuke and us could’ve done even if it was not nearly enough. Even if in the eyes of the game and the British Justice system there is no difference, the fact that we know what did and what we could’ve done can radically change the way the player feels about all of the later scenes concerning the truth about McGilded’s trial. It can radically change the way the player interpret Ryunosuke’s feelings about it as well.

Because even though the game itself keeps playing along with the same script regardless, that trial had irrevocable consequences for the Player.

[tianasimstreehouse]

Occult Recipebook

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.

INTRO

Occult gameplay is up there with one of my favourite ways to play. Food is a part of our Sims lives, and should also be for occults so that they can cook up their preferred foods.

This Occult Recipebook is a collection of custom recipes (food and drink) for Occult Sims in the Sims 4.

I have started off this occult culinary journey with: ✨SPELLCASTERS✨

I have plans to later create foods for each occult life state, so I will keep adding to the recipe book.

“Spellcasters” as a life state can be played in so many different ways: they can range from gnarly evil witches who practice black magic and eat bird entrails, to happy little fairies who live in cottages surrounded by woods and flowers! I have tried to include a little bit of everything in the recipes I have created. These foods are a mix of fairy, fantasy, green garden witch, apothecary, or black-magic sorcerer etc. 

They effect Spellcasters and/or human Sims in many weird and wonderful ways.

E.g. Nettle Tea which helps teenagers suffering with acne, Milk Thistle Biscuits which leave the consumer with prickly thistles in their tongue, and Eye of Newt Soup which most Sims will find disgusting but which Spellcasters will happily slurp up.

RECIPES

39 new recipes for your Spellcasters!

~ Realm of Magic is required for these recipes ~

**there's a fair amount of pack-integration, and be sure to read the pack recommendations on the Patreon post for each recipe** to make sure nothing is missing or glitching.

Meals Dandelion Salad - increases SCs gardening skill, fills PlantSims' hunger Nettle Soup Soft-Boiled Golden Eggs - makes Sims glow and glitter Pumpkin Pasties Pomegranate Halves Eye of Newt Soup - makes other Sims feel sick Valerian Root Pie - other Sims won't like this dish Elderberry Jam Toast Toadstool Soup - inspires SCs, normal Sims won't like this dish Salamander Stew - other Sims won't like this dish Spiced Honey Bread - SCs will gain all skills faster Raised Newt Pie - makes other Sims feel sick Dragon Livers - Werewolves will love these and normal Sims won't Raised Phoenix Pie - Sims will randomly breathe fire for a while and feel confident

Desserts Milk Thistle Biscuits - chance to get uncomfortable thistles in tongue Huckleberry Jam Cream Puffs - makes SCs playful Fairy Bread Soul Cakes Huckleberry Pie Juniper Berry Jam Biscuits Honeycomb Cakes - SCs will gain all skills faster Valerian Custard Tart Toadstool Cookies Cursed Cookies - wouldn't recommend eating these... serve them to enemies! Eating one may leave the SC eater cursed. Good Sims will sense the evil inside and get sad Canning *Requires Cottage Living Canning Skill Gooseberry Jam Elderberry Jam Rosehip Jelly Drinks *Bar/alcoholic drinks require Mixology skill, and a Bar. Acorn Coffee (*coffee machine) Pumpkin Juice Willow Bark Tea - A home remedy to cure most illnesses, food poisoning etc Sage Tea - soothes stress and anger, SCs are focused and improve logic skills faster Nettle Tea - helps teens suffering from acne Lavender Tea - makes Sims flirty Mugwort Tea - reduces fear or panic Butterbeer - gives SCs confidence Mandrake Ale Nettle Wine Dandelion Wine Elderberry Wine

INFO & DOWNLOAD (early access): https://www.patreon.com/posts/79514896?pr=true Milk & Cookies: Now! Sugar Cookies: May 24th Public: May 31st

Pro tip for Windows PC users: Please make sure to delete the MACOSX folders/files that can appear after you extract the mod's files, otherwise the game may throw an error and not load at all.

TRANSLATIONS Polish - ❤️ Daisy1728, find their translation over here French - ❤️ Heidi / LuniverSims, find their translation here

[morgansman]

Part 1 : HAIR DEBATE.

I noticed a debate about Arthur being dark blonde or light brown. I would say both.

As seen in this photo, Arthur has some darkish brown and light brown to burnt blonde looking color to it.

Same with his hair. And before you argue that I'm using mods in these that change his hair I'm not, I only have an online content unlocker and I do not have a rampage trainer so mods that mess with his hair are very unlikely.

Also, the darkest color Arthur's hair can be ingame is dark brown, which is due to darker lighting. But my proof is inaccurate at best as photobleaching is a thing. And if you don't know what it is the photochemical alteration of a dye or a fluorophore molecule such that it is permanently unable to fluoresce. Or fading for short.

PART 2: EYES

I saw a debate on Reddit. Yes, Reddit. But it was about Arthur's eye color, I always thought it was blue until I checked this, now the thing about blue-eyed people is that their eye color can appear different per se. I can prove this I am blue-eyed. For example, my eye color looks purple sometimes, some dude said it was rainbow once kinda weird. But it can also look green at times just like Arthur's in this photo.

But this is caused by the light brown pigment of whatever the fuck interacting with the blue light in your eyes or whatever. Which causes it to look green or speckled. Also, I have proven before that Arthur has blueish-greenish eyes. Yes, that's real.

PART 3 : ARTHUR MORGAN vs. ELLIE.

no debate about Arthur solos. has around 6'0, 180lbs but if you want me to go deep into this. According to a video I have found and some other evidence Arthur's quickdraw is around .23-.27 seconds and the blink of an eye is .25 seconds, so before Ellie could get close she'd already be shot. Anyone who says otherwise might just be a dumbass.

PART 4 : Ending some bickering between John and Arthur fans.

It is persistently debated about who is the better gunslinger between Arthur and John, or fighter in general. It's not a fair comparison, it's like comparing apples to oranges, both have their specialties, and both have their advantages over the other. In terms of gameplay, they are indistinguishable. But in terms of lore, most will say that Arthur would win in a brawl and John would win in a regular duel. There isn't much debate about whether or not Arthur would win in a brawl, most would agree on this, though the second one is a bit more controversial. But it is reasonable to suggest that in John's prime and after all of his experience and training with Landon, that he would be a quicker draw. But the comparison still isn't fair nonetheless. Arthur isn't a gunslinger, though he may be extremely quick, he prioritizes accuracy over speed, and that is his specialty. Arthur is a sniper, he is a rifleman, he would pick off enemies from an extreme distance and John would clear them out with extreme speed. Arthur is better in terms of accuracy, but yes, John would likely win in a duel. But so what? Duels aren't all that common and it likely wouldn't be the circumstance in which they would fight. However, if it came down to it and they were both in a battle close to mid-range with guns, John would still likely win because even if Arthur can hit a vital headshot with great accuracy, John can still hit his shots almost as well, and do so quicker. This is assuming that they are both in their prime, of course, because if we are referencing Arthur while he has TB or while John is still an oaf and doesn't have the same versatility with guns then it wouldn't really be fair. Additionally, most John fans will mention that John had a better arsenal, but what relevance does that have? Did he find a time portal in 1911 and teleport back in time to 1899 just to shoot Arthur or something? If they were to fight, it would be in the same period, so arsenal doesn't matter.

PART 5 : Naming my son. ( made my Vern's brother Mike. )

Hey, I'm Michael, and I also manage the RDR2 FANCLUB Blog. I had a debate with my wife the other day about whether we should name our child Arthur ( comical I know. ) or Iroy both are good but I need your opinions. also, @arthursdoll you're a pretty good friend of my brother so I'll let you decide :)

PART 6 : John Marston who?

rip van winkle.

PART 7 : Ending another stupid Reddit thing.

" When do you think Dutch went sour. "

Dutch wasn't necessarily always a good figure in the game, he didn't really start out as one and this is speaking from someone who's played it 16+ times. Oh and by the way if you couldn't tell Vernidia isn't explaining this one. But you have to take something into account so let us start with the.

Death of Davey Callander. The death of Davey surely played an impact on the choices that Dutch throughout the story. So did the death of Jenny I suppose, both weren't really introduced.

Chapter 2. Chapter 2 played a big part in the game, it was one of the LARGEST chapters. And if you watch the hidden dialogues in chapters 2 and 3 between Dutch and Lenny and Hosea and Lenny, it looks to me like they were grooming him to become Dutch’s next “consigliere”.

Trolley incident, and ETC. The trolley incident happens during the trolley mission where Dutch hits his head, an injury possibly played a part during this, I don't quite know. But there is an obvious change in Dutch after he hits his head during that mission.

FORGOT SOMETHING. Arthur mentions in Chapter 1 Colter that he never saw a side of Dutch that he's seen before, this is when he killed that girl on the ferry job in Blackwater.

The Bank heist went wrong. The bank heist surely played a huge part in the game it contained the death of Hosea and Lenny. And after these deaths you can see a sure change in Chapter 5.

My conclusion is he went “Sour” during the ferry heist but didn't quite reveal his true colors until Chapter 4-5.

PART 8: When Dutch shot at John in rdr1 did he mean to kill him?

Yeah probably.

Made by Vernidia, Mike, and Scooter

[culttonotfollow]

Why I love “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” so much

So as I stated, I'm writing a post about my experience with this game and why I think it's as good as it is, including my favourite aspects of it. To this day it's my favourite game and one of the few I've managed to 100% complete.

This post is going to include spoilers. Do not read if you do not want spoilers.

Disclaimer out of the way, I actually want to start by saying that before this game was recommended to me by a friend (thank you, Markus- shout out to you), I had no idea what it was about other than the fact that it dealt in some way with mental health. I mostly forgot about it until I saw it on sale sometime in October (it might have been the Halloween sale), at which point I made the decision to purchase it.

To begin with, the visuals are stunning—beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And just to get mechanics out of the way so I can ramble about the story and the way it made me feel—some of the puzzles are challenging at first, but they are so rewarding after you figure them out that I almost didn't mind the difficulty. The fighting feels almost perfect, particularly with the autobalancing option.

The premise of the game is that Senua, a Celtic warrior with severe mental illness, sets out on a journey to the homeland of the Northmen after discovering what had happened to her lover, planning to enter Helheilm, the mythological land of the dead, or what would be considered hell, and retrieving his soul through bargaining with Hela (or Hel, as she's more commonly known). Throughout the entire game- with the exception of a segment in the story- she wears his skull on her belt, wrapped in a cloth.

The Game uses sound to mess with you??

The game throws you right in with whispers bouncing all around your head (even during the menu when you first open the game)- I will never not applaud Ninja Theory for their choice of using binaural sound (here is an article by Splice on what it is), otherwise it wouldn't be what it is. This is one of the few experiences where the classic "Best experienced with headphones" recommendation should be taken seriously.

As you paddle past, well, burnt, staked and hung corpses that don't make it less tense either, the voices get progressively louder and more erratic until you don't know how many there are anymore or where they're coming from, urging Senua to turn back or calling her a coward in many different ways- with the exception of a few, who actually argue with the others and encourage Senua to push on.

There have been moments when the voices stopped for a little while, but by the time I realized there was nothing in the background anymore except for my own racing thoughts, I was already somewhat uneasy.

To add on to that, one of the trials Senua goes through relies solely on intuition an hearing to get throught the darkness safely, with an extremely limited field of view. I can safely say that was when I was most terrified and hyperfocused in my 12 hours of gameplay. I have to admit after my first run I went to bed and the whispers were still there because of how much I was hearing them the past several hours.

Mindfuckery taken to the next level

I spent the majority of the game in awe, watching the story unfold in front of my eyes. A lot of games or franchises, in my opinion, struggle to make their characters feel human, but Hellblade managed to do it. Even equipped with a sword, I felt vurnelable at all times, the game does a great job at causing anxiety even during the most mundane moments.

There isn't a combat tutorial of any kind; you have to either figure out the "guide" is in the menu, or keep failing the first battle until you figure it out. The game actually only gives you a single prompt in regards to combat: Each time you fail (die), the rot on Senua's arm spreads, and when it reaches her head all progress is lost. This alone made me so much more conscious of every move I was making for over half the game, until I learned the truth.

It's not an actual mechanic, it's only put in place as a warning to add another thick layer of tension to every other already existing, anxiety inducing element of the game, and further enforce the game's primary goal of distorting your perception: what's real and what's not, what/who can you actually trust, what is the truth? It brought me anxiety to the point where it was borderline uncomfortable, and that's exactly why I loved it so much.

I spent the majority of this game in awe, just watching the story unfold. Every twist or reveal felt like a gut punch (in the best way I could mean this), and it made Senua (the girl you play as) feel human, something not a lot of games can do properly in my opinion. This game uses everything in its arsenal to create a truly dreadful experience: visuals, audio, light, combat, etc. without abusing jumpscares or scary monsters (although fighting Fenrir scared the ever loving hell out of me, but so did dealing with him in general). Rather, it capitalizes on its strongest suit: the childlike fear of what lies in the dark- what might occur if the dark really does take control.

The ending made me question my entire purpose (sort of)

It's going to sound weird, or insane, but the ending changed me as a person I think. It made me seriously reconsider some major things in my life, and take a moment to appreciate some others. It's both some sort of psychological torture or terror and an enlightening experience. It brought me to tears and left me completely speechless for what felt- and actually was- hours.

In its own very special and well done way, it's not strictly a game about a girl that's gone mad, or a quest about retrieving a soul, but it sucessfully and sensibly touches upon themes of grief, loss, and folklore. I can safely say I've never been more immersed or touched by a game on every single level. There are tens of memorable moments that I think back on, and I can't believe I got through every single one of these.

The ending took a twist for me. It was far from what I expected, but I think that's what made me as satisfied as it did- and yet it left me wanting even more. Which is why I'm so incredibly pumped for when the sequel comes out. Despite warning about spoilers, I won't actually say how it ended. I'll let whoever reads this discover for themselves one way or another.

Conclusion?

I recommend this game with my whole heart to whoever can handle these kinds of topics. It's beautiful, the story is heartbreaking, the gameplay is fun, and the visuals are beyond gorgerous.

[mizukagami-takamagahara]

Like a lot of longtime characters, Kazuma was first made playable as a 3⭐ in BBDW- though rumors and datamines suggest there were plans for him to appear in Chronophantasma at some point, as Terumi has an unused line addressing him in that game.

See also;

[ Expressions ] || [ Gameplay ]

From the start, Kazuma was a very interesting character to me. At the start, I assumed the Kazuma in BBDW had never made contact with Terumi- and as the story went on, dropping hints of a Terumi-possessed Trinity, I started to think BBDW Kazuma would never become a host.

But the mechanics of the game would suggest otherwise. At the start of BBDW's run, there was this really interesting mechanic where character's special attacks, such as their Astral Heats, were locked a sort of leveling system. (I thought this was a fun touch, though they removed it later into the game's lifespan.) This meant that you wouldn't be able to see a character's Astral until you'd raised them for a while.

Well, unless you watched their character trailers, which always showcased the Astral Heat at the end!

With the sole exception of Kazuma's. We never got to see Kazuma's Astral in promotional materials, while other starting characters like Trinity and Ciel had theirs shown off during early streams.

Which was incredibly suspicious.

Once you did finally unlock Kazuma's Astral Heat ingame, you'd find it very similar to Hazama's traditional Astrals- he's possessed by Terumi, and begins using his powers. Outside of that Astral, Kazuma was never shown using Ouroboros or any of Terumi's snakey magic.

We also see that familiar green haze in Kazuma's third card art- I wonder if that was also a hint. Speaking of Kazuma's character art!

Kazuma is shown in Ishana- in his final art he's in the library he loved so much. I'm not sure what the building in his initial art is. Could it be the cathedral? A normal school building? The library again? Maybe I need to read Phase Shift again and refresh my memory.

His first outfit is the same outfit he debuted in in Phase Shift 1. It's also the same outfit Rei, the player character, wears- minus the tie, which is different between the two. This may suggest the two are in different grades, but I can theorize about that another time.

Kazuma is famous for another outfit- the hooded version worn by him and Terumi during the Dark War, which you can see Terumi wearing in the background of this image. However, Kazuma never had this costume in BBDW. I wonder if it would have appeared as one of Terumi's three outfits when his Chronophantasma version was added to the game.

Kazuma's later two outfits are very similar to his Ishanan school uniform, though they become more elaborate and fancy. The outfits are completely original to BBDW. They could be reflective of Kazuma's personal taste- he's only familiar with the uniform, it's the only clothing he's ever had, and he's a pretty complacent guy, so he'd likely be drawn to clothing he's already familiar with if he had to shop.

Or, could these outfits be reflective of more Ishanan formal wear? Could they also have a role in Mage Guild culture?

I guess we'll never know!

[neoaya]

Hot take!!! (Nuclear tbh)

People are way too shitty to the LW devs, especially Yumeno Rote.

This guy is responsible for every single piece of non-story card character art in the game, that includes units, costumes, alts, expressions, Music Video CGs, etc. Seeing as a new unit is released per week, along with 2/4 event costumes and 2/3 rebirth costumes at the end of the month, this guy is at MINIMUM drawing 8 fully detailed illustrations and backgrounds per month, for three and a half years straight.

The only other gacha to my knowledge that has one artist doing all the character art like this is Limbus Company, which even then has a significantly longer period between new art being added to the game. (I'm aware there are likely a lot more, but most to my knowledge have multiple artists)

So when I see a post criticising Lost Word, what do you think is being criticised 90% of the time?

Is it:

The fact it's a gacha game

Genuine criticism of the game itself and its mechanics or story

Hell, even criticism of the questionable work practice of having one guy do all the game's art

If you guessed 4, "near insignificant nitpick of Rote's art, AUs shown, or a VA (in a game where you can pick from 3 for every character) because it doesn't fit within their headcanon in a game about multiple different universes" you'd be correct!

Don't get me wrong, I have seen the first two plenty of times, but they're always either fair critiques or people who just don't want anything to do with gacha games and don't care which is understandable.

But for 4? The sheer amount of hatred and seething vitriol people express for details most people wouldn't think twice about is insane to me. It never seems to come from a sincere place of disappointment but rather fear to fit in, like "Oh this relates to me, I better lay in to it as much as possible since everyone else shits on it, wouldn't want to give people the impression I'm weird for liking it after all". It just seems depressing to me that people feel the need to act miserable out of peer pressure and not wanting to stray from the popular opinion.

As someone's who played the game since launch at this point I feel more than qualified to tell you it's FAR from perfect, hell I wouldn't even call it all that good. Gameplay fluctuates from playing the game for you to forcing you to have a full understanding of the meta, grinding is a chore, drop rates are far too low, the nature of the game forcing normally evil aligned characters to act more reasonably, and I unironically think the lack of representation and downright bad writing for Aya until now is singlehandedly responsible for making her drop by one place 3 years in a row in the THVote popularity poll.

So why do I still play it after all this time? Because I genuinely just want to see what they do next. I like seeing what new takes on characters they come up with, I like seeing where the story goes, what the next event will be and I love Rote's art and all the other art contributed by the JP community, I even think the Hifuu and RoM section of the story is genuinely good. It's nice to have a constant and reliable stream of Touhou media to read through in-between the wait for actual new games.

Somehow I don't feel that guy in the middle would want to come on livestreams 3 and a half years after launch if he didn't find it fun, same goes for all the artists and doujin circles that have contributed their art and music, especially those with more than one card or song.

If you want anyone to blame, blame GoodSmile for publishing this game and making this the complete extent they're willing to promote it and Touhou as a whole. (Last new character from them was a Reisen nendo from six years ago btw!)

In conclusion, I think LW has objectively done more good for the series than harm. You can not understate the fact that this game is responsible for introducing Touhou to so many new people and giving the spotlight to characters that are otherwise overlooked. Inaccurate character portrayals are rarely an issue when the series embraces differentiating itself from the source material, that's the nature of doujin culture. That and it seems silly to try and gatekeep people who got into the series through Lost Word, telling them they're experincing it wrong only serves to turn them away and I don't blame newcomers when official touhou media is still hard to come across in the west and the three most popular games in the series still don't have a digital release.

As a tangent, I used to have a problem with how Aya was depicted in a lot of fan media, even from people here, but a friend taught me I shouldn't let those alternate interpretations ruin my enjoyment of her and that I shouldn't fault them for seeing her that way. I feel others should be able to learn from that.

(I definitely forgot some stuff but this is ranty enough as is, I just wanted to get it out of my system)

[moiwym]

Geometry Dash wouldn't have changed my music tastes if it weren't for it introducing me to Newgrounds

I liked the regular songs a lot (and still listen to a few of them), but they just weren't too notable when it came to the level composition or their presentation. To this day, "Stereo Madness" by Forever Bound has me thinking less about the song and more about the first level of the game, which is almost as bare bones as it gets. Blue background, one block style, only cube and ship gamemodes, and overall lack of interesting or fun gameplay. I get that it acts as the tutorial of the game (if you don't count the 5 screen pop-up when you first play), but it should at least be good-looking.

But then there's the level editor. Every block design in the game, all objects, all harmful things, even coins. You can change some settings of the level in the top right, and with those settings is music choice. You can choose between all the songs from the mainline levels, or you can choose a custom song with a Newgrounds ID (by now, there's a built-in song library with other songs not in the game normally, but that's besides the point). This is where most of the magic happens when it comes to custom levels you'll find on Geometry Dash.

You can find a lot of different songs on Newgrounds, from some of the artists of the songs already in Geometry Dash, including Waterflame, DJVI, and Ocular Nebula. Aside from them, you can find artists people use a lot of music from in the game, including Creo, Bossfight, and Xtrullor. Creo, specifically, is the one that really pushed me in the direction I have been sent.

"Epilogue" by Creo is probably one of my favorite songs of all time. Being built to sound like the bittersweet ending to an otherwise action-packed and epic adventure, it manages to jerk tears from me every now and then. It is so expertly crafted that you would expect it to actually be from a movie or a video game, but no, it was just a piece of music made for fun (I guess??).

If it weren't for Geometry Dash, I wouldn't have listened to more of Creo, or Xtrullor, or DJVI, and my music obsession would have probably never started. Yet here I am now, talking about musicians and artists and bands no one cares about and hoping that someone will give them a shot. I hope you like them just as much as I do.

Obligatory end-of-rant silly sentence hoo hoo

[crusherthedoctor]

More topics I need to think about for Paper Mario: Featuring Eggman From The Devil May Cry Series™ (title pending). There's not much practical reason to wonder all of this out loud in a post, but eh, I like to share my thought process on these things. :)

- Complimentary roles for the mainline characters. Bowser will be the hardest one, as Eggman will cause trouble for him as well (there's only room for one motherfucker in this world, and it's the one that doesn't even come from here, so says Eggy), but I don't want to cheaply shit on Bowser too much in order to artificially elevate my preferred villain, and as I said before, I also want to avoid the predictable route of having him team up with Mario in favor of a more original solution. Peach is another one that'll take some thinking: not that being kidnapped automatically makes her bad or useless, as PM64 and TTYD themselves prove otherwise, but I can't think of a sufficiently juicy reason for why Eggman would bother to kidnap her aside from maybe to piss off Mario and/or Bowser, and even then, I think I could come up with something more unique that achieves that reaction. Plus, Eggman kidnapping a princess would probably invite '06 comparisons, so y'know...

- Paper continuity. It's no secret that all the post-TTYD installments veered off into wildly different directions - and I don't just mean the gameplay - that regardless of whether you like them or not, you could say they're somewhat incompatible with the first two in terms of overall feel. Obviously, the intended feel for this fic is for it to be similar in spirit to PM64 and TTYD, so I'm wondering how to handle potential nods to games that have very little in common outside of the paper aesthetic, and making them coherent and in-line with the 64/TTYD world so to speak. (As a random side-note, not liking Super Paper Mario and its story - to the point where I actually prefer Origami King over it despite its Sticker Star/Colour Splash elements - might be my most controversial Mario opinion.)

- Characters that have inconsistent presence or no presence at all. Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings may be considered mainstays in the main franchise, but they never made an appearance in the Paper games until much later, so in order to preserve the PM64/TTYD feel, I might have to exclude them. It helps that I've never been too crazy over them anyway. The same applies to Kamek, as I'm likely to use Kammy instead for the same reasons. The real question is what to do with characters like Wario and Donkey Kong, who have had no presence in the Paper games whatsoever beyond some indirect nods, but are fun and distinct enough that it might be worth incorporating them in some way, assuming I can think of anything for them to do that can tie into the overarching Mario VS Eggman conflict.

- Partners. Since Vivian will be returning ("Oh look, a purple girl with pyrokinesis, never heard THAT one before"), do I make the rest of the partners brand new? Or do I take some from PM64 and some from TTYD to make it look slightly less biased? :^)

- References to other Mario works. This isn't much of a problem regarding the mainline titles and certain spinoffs like Mario Kart, since they're famously fast and loose with the idea of a consistent and ongoing narrative ("MARIO, HOW DARE YOU CALL IAN FLYNN A BAD WRITER ON MY FAMILY VACATION"), but since this is Paper Mario we're talking about, what I'm wondering is whether it would come off as jarring if there were some small references on occasion to, say, the Mario & Luigi games for example.

- Not going overboard with Sonic references. Eggman could occasionally make brief allusions to characters and other stuff that's happened in the Sonic-verse, but since this is 90% a Mario fic, Mario fans will be the most likely readers should there be any. Not all of them are guaranteed to be as knowledgeable about Sonic, and while I certainly wouldn't want to treat the readers as morons, at the same time, they shouldn't be forced to read up on all the lore of a different franchise that they might not even be into in order to understand what's going on. Plus, keeping the Sonic side of things intentionally mysterious in this fic compliments the Mario-verse's perspective, and lack of familiarity with Eggman.

- And of course, just like with my Sonic works, I want to maintain as much of the official flavor as possible, despite the inherent premise sounding like it came straight out of 2005. Eggman suddenly dropping into the Mario world, and Mario and Co being forced to take care of him without Sonic and Co being there to assist them, would obviously never happen, but if it did, how would it play out in a way that stays reasonably true to the spirit of the source material? How can this premise potentially say something about not just Eggman, but also the Mario cast? And so on.

...You know what else would never happen officially, but I'm still curious at trying my hand with it anyway for this fic? MarioXViv-*BANG*

[brucenorris007]

"Sonic 06: gameplay is shit, story is shit."

Okay, I somewhat disagree but don't see the need to expend energy toward-

*comparison between 06 and Forces is drawn*

My brain: heyguesswhatyou'rehyperfocusednow

I was going to do things today. . . but here we are.

Okay, up top and up front: 06 and Forces are both flawed, yes.

But they are flawed in fundamentally different ways, and Forces flaws are, quite frankly, far more glaring and demeritorious for a franchise like Sonic than 06. Anyone who, years from now, goes on to claim that "Uh, actually, Forces was peak." the way that some people are saying about 06 now will be just as, if not more, wrong. And I'll attribute such claims to declining media literacy.

BEFORE the youngsters in the fandom start throwing things at me, note that I said just as wrong. 06 wasn't ever as good as some of the mainline games prior or even spinoff titles after.

The difference is, most of 06's issues stem from the fact that it reads as pitiably unfinished.

The problems with Forces begin and end with the fact that it reads like self-insert fan fiction that had either zero beta readers or too many beta readers that were all given editing privileges. There's definitely a place in the world for that sort of creativity, but said place is not within a licensed game that people have to pay for; one that drastically affects the canon of the franchise and how the fans old and new perceive it and the characters within.

All right? Okay, let's get into details.

Let's address gameplay first, since I have less to say about that.

On this count, if nothing else, Forces barely edges out by being functional; granted, that's the end of it. I wouldn't go back to play it again, and the 'highlights' I can recall mostly felt like reskins of stages in the style of Colors but shortened, with boss fights reminiscent of daytime Unleashed. I imagine the primary draw for people is watching their customized 'sona jump and fly around whilst listening to dialogue from the main cast.

And this isn't really a substantive point, but the fact that receiving stuff like outfits like loot crates at the end of virtually every stage feels kind of manipulative and annoys me. If there's unlockable features, put some actual challenge between the player and the prize, like how you perform within the stage. Otherwise it's just another example of "shiny, novelty, tickle brain often, get player to play longer."

Setting that brief tangent aside since that's just a trend in games in general and not Sonic specific, moving on to 06's gameplay. And uh, yeah. The USP was, like the adventure games, supposed to be that you got three interconnected stories and three main characters each with unique play styles.

I suppose 06 showed us before anything else that Shadow really isn't as fast as Sonic, and as an idea, Silver's psychokinesis was cool. If the tracking in the Speed Up stages and the hit boxes in a handful of other areas had been ironed out, there's foundation for a fairly solid experience. Project 06 is basically proof that the base of the game had potential that wasn't realized, whether due to time constraints or other reasons.

As far as environs, the concept for Kingdom Valley showed off the most soul, I'd say, with Silver's future coming in close second. Character design for the Iblis fragments (not sure if that's the official name but I'm doing stream-of-consciousness here) and Mephiles I actually like a lot. I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with them and however you rate them will come down to preference.

Also, the model for Sonic is like. . . ridiculously good. He just looks like an older teenager; it fits with the widely accepted idea that he was 15 as of Adventure 2. Polish it a bit and that's just how he appears in my head when I write about him.

That said, there are only about six different environs that serve as stages, discounting the hub areas, and compared to Heroes' twelve stages, it just adds to that incomplete/rushed feeling.

That's about all I can say on the gameplay aspect. Functional yet non-stimulating technically wins out over some creativity yet patchy. They are games, after all.

Now then, the "story is shit" business.

Look, if you're going to criticize Sonic's story—which, yeah, his should be subjected to more scrutiny, being the titular character—then much of what you can say against it also applies to the first Adventure. Eggman wants to collect a thing (emeralds/Princess), Sonic wants him to not collect the thing (emeralds/Princess) because he's obviously planning to do evil stuff with the thing, Sonic manages to get the thing only for Eggman to snatch it out of his hands.

Multiple times.

Meaning Sonic spends most of the games on fetch quests that Eggman keeps one-upping him on until the penultimate fight.

And those are the beats. Of both stories. (For Sonic.)

And then at the end of both games, a monster you've fought in various forms (Chaos/Iblis) reappears to threaten the world on a scale that requires the seven chaos emeralds to combat.

Super Sonic. Rad soundtrack. Credits.

Granted, much like how Gamma's story was the strongest in Adventure, the quality of the three main story lines in 06 also vary in strength, with Shadow's taking first place.

My point is, in a franchise that is about characters, you don't grade every aspect of the story on the same scale. You weigh the grade of various aspects differently; and the point that gets graded most heavily is:

Character moments; which can encapsulate literal moments, arcs, development etc.

And for all its flaws, 06 has character moments, almost immediately, even. Sonic's first spoken line is "My, that's a pretty snazzy performance there!"

Which, after the tension of Eggman interrupting the festival and threatening Elise, cuts through the moment right away and, paired with the next several seconds, shows who Sonic is. He sees Eggman's robots aiming and waits until the last second to jump before going to town bashing up bots. Even as he carts Elise off amidst homing missiles and explosions, he's grinning the whole time.

Sonic does what he does because it's fun.

And his third spoken line, answering Elise's question of why he's helping, is: "No special reason."

Again, that's Sonic. Doesn't matter who it is, he helps people because he Does what's Cool. And as well as being fun, fighting off Eggman and his bots is Cool.

06, as Silver's introduction to the series, also does a decent job establishing his character of Temporal Bulldozer. He can be aimed, but his solution to problems first and foremost is usually smashing, and it's really tricky to change his mind once he's focused. He suffers from myopia arguably as bad or worse than Metal Sonic. Amy's the only one who momentarily gets him to pause and wonder if really does want to kill Sonic.

Which is a character moment for her. As in Adventure 2, Amy will happily break laws and go against who and whatever to help her friends; and as she did with Shadow, she's rather skilled at getting very hurt people to listen.

She's not unlike Silver in her willingness to do whatever it takes, really; since Temporal Bulldozer can and does traverse time on several occasions to make things right. And up until the last moment, it never occurs to him that anyone but he should bear the burden of saving the world. Blaze has to physically shove him aside so she can absorb Iblis herself.

Silver sees himself as a Hero with a responsibility toward the future just as much Sonic sees himself as just Some Guy.

Finally, Shadow. And man, there's a reason a lot of people say 06 was the last time a game featured Shadow written correctly.

It's me. I'm one of a lot of people.

Team Dark in general gets a fair bit of spotlight in 06. Rouge, an anti-heroine with perhaps the greatest self-interest after Eggman, promises Shadow that she'd stand with him even if the very world turned against him. Omega, who loathes taking orders and prioritizes his own freedom nearly as much as Sonic, takes on Rouge's assignment for him without question or complaint to wait out 200 years to help rescue Shadow.

And Shadow, in an in-game line during his first fight with Mephiles, reaffirms all the progress he made in his titular game that was wholly about discovering his identity: "Don't bother trying to deceive me. I know who I am!"

And, in contrast to the Shadow the franchise first introduced us to, the Shadow of Adventure 2 who was thoroughly convinced that his only remaining worth was his ability to keep his promise to Maria, the Shadow who was so resigned that he chose to plummet through the planet's atmosphere to his presumed death. . .

That Shadow is faced squarely with his fate of persecution, asked why he would bother fighting to protect. That Shadow declares that it the world turns on him, "I will fight as I always have."

He's grown such that he's now willing to fight against fate.

And that's pretty fucking cool.

On the other side, applying the same grading method to Forces, we find what I call (as of just now) character fauxments.

Remember how I talked about 06's introduction for Sonic? How he cuts through tensions, finds joy and fun in fighting bullies and bad guys?

The thing about that, which Forces doesn't seem to understand, is that if you lean too hard on the wisecracks and nonchalance, you end up with a character who reads as either obnoxious or totally tone-deaf. Sonic knows when to take things seriously, yet in Forces he's purportedly been tortured as well as locked up for half a year, Infinite's destroyed countless homes and killed who knows how many people, and yet when Sonic interrupts his fight with Silver. . .

I mean, if Sonic was written correct, you'd cut out a bunch of faff and change his line delivery. Show that he's frustrated by his time confined and absolutely raring to throw hands and get to business; because Sonic does understand when things have gotten real, and while rare, he does get angry. Something like:

"Since you like talking so much, mind sharing the source of your power? I can ask the easy way or the hard way. I've been cooped up a long time, so I'm hoping you pick the hard way."

It doesn't need to be the most original lines in the world, but Sonic's banter in the middle of a war shouldn't be long-winded, no matter how pretentious his opponent is (and damn, is Infinite pretentious. Like to the point that it's the most memorable part of the game.) If there's banter, it should be punchy and succinct; quick, like he is.

Instead, Forces Sonic's attitude is just kind of. . . incongruous with the stakes the game claims to have established. But then, since we don't get a truly convincing scene showing the rest of the cast being sad that he reportedly died, that's not too surprising.

Speaking of setting up stakes, here's an idea. Rather than cutting from Sonic laying battered in the middle of the city for a lazy six-month time skip established by text on the screen, make it clear that "Oh shit, things are different" via gameplay.

After Sonic falls, immediately transition into a level. Where you run from right to left to escape Eggman's fleet. Turns everything on its head, you can witness and navigate the destruction as it's happening and if you string together enough environs, you can even have the city burning in the distance or the skyline as you near the end of the stage and escape to relative safety.

Anyway.

And of course, the notorious character fauxment: Tails cowering in front of an offline Omega.

There's nothing I can say about this fauxment that hasn't been said already. It's not the first time in the series that Tails was portrayed as having regressed to a scared child, but it is the most egregious.

And. . . actually, that's about it, at least off the top of my head. Which might speak to how short the game is and how little screen time and action the main cast get aside from Sonic and the player character.

But it's enough to determine that Forces' story, or what stands in for it, is weaker than what 06 offered.

Again, I'm not here to rally a feral defense of 06 as a masterpiece, but its flaws are not on the level of Forces. The reason they're lumped together is the amount of disdain both games got on their release; though in the case of 06, the 2000's were just a weird time when hating things was somehow cooler than liking them, and since 06 wasn't up to par with Adventure 2 or Heroes, people picked an aspect of the game-most often how much the almost final fantasy style model for Elise didn't match up with the Mobian models (and yes, the final cutscene, but there's nothing new I can say about that either, and talking about it here is just an open invitation for someone to blow it out of proportion again) and dogpiled the hate on the game.

Sonic 06 feels unfinished owing to a lot of little and larger details. Knuckles' portrayal and having little to do in the story, poor optimization leading to nearly twenty second loading times, BLAZE BEING A GLOWING NEON MISSED OPPORTUNITY! (SEGA, I know I was literally twelve when the game was released, but my Phoenix headcanon works so well and makes her appearance in both Rush and 06 work! A retroactive fix would be so easy and we could get more adventures in her dimension!)

Even acknowledging all that, though, there were still attempts at creativity that just, for one reason or another, didn't pan out. There's significant potential here.

Forces is just. . . a mess. In every sense. And I understand how a mess can be attractive to a fandom, because a mess means you can take whatever you want from it and organize things however you choose.

But a mess that's sold as a finished game is not the same as a rushed title with visible untapped potential.

[alexissara]

The Best of Me 2023

I did a ton of writing on tumblr this year, with at least one post a week but multiple weeks with 2 or 3 posts in a week. I've worked hard to make writing that is relevant to my fellow sapphics and artists. I want to talk about the stuff I wrote this year I am most proud of.

Note: This list does not include my articles for Anime Feminist because they are professionally edited therefore a cut above anything I am posting on tumblr but please do read them here and tell them you want more articles by me [I actually have more to write for them ooops].

Why Hunt Monsters?

I am so proud of this little article, for me this is one of the things I feel very strongly about. As a TTRPG player I have found myself retreating from a lot more games because I just can't get behind, we murder monsters plots and I was really happy to share my perspective on this fairly taken from granted feature of games.

How To Find Sapphic Media 

This little guide to finding Sapphic Art was really important to me because well, I was really tired of seeing people say there was not compelling art about and by sapphic women and so I wanted to make a base level resource for finding amazing sapphic shit.

Sapphic Games Goddess List

In my efforts to make Sapphic Art more known I have worked really fucking hard to research what sapphic games are coming up so people wouldn't even have to put in the effort to go hunting them down. I want people to be able to live out there sapphic dreams and so it's important to me to share what I am researching for my own play time since I at this point really only play games I can be a lesbian in or otherwise are standout in gameplay with probably no romance instead. I even did an updated version of this list since most of the games on the first list have come out and I am working on the next one as we speak with more new additions gearing up.

Why Obsession Hits Different When Gay

I love diving into queer theorizing. I am not going big brain citing a ton of people or doing a lot of academic research but I like to share my own thoughts, experiences and the stuff I have learned over years especially as a writer and general creator of sapphic art. I think it's a perfect little rebuttal for folks who may claim there is a "double standard" that lesbians have or something.

Polyamory Is Queer

This is a deeply personal little blog post I did where I talked about why polyamory is so important to me and why it is in fact queer. I have seen so many people demonize polyamory over the years and I was just tired of seeing people in my own community bullying other polyamorous folks.

Fantasy Vs Sexuality Labels

As a writer this is maybe one of the things I feel most passionate about a creative choice for my fellow queer creators. I really wanted to make my case on why we should use labels in fantasy worlds and why these labels matter for stories.

My entries for Edelgard Rarepair week and Monica Week

I from time to time to time write fan fiction and I had a blast doing it this year for two different week events going with both the Edelgard Rarepair week and the Monica fics week. I love Three Houses/Hopes so it was a blast to throw my passion into something even if in general I don't like to be a free marketing arm for companies by making creative works like those.

TTRPG Characters Need Trauma In Their Backstory

I had one person who utterly hated this post and started attacking me in basically every post I made on some social media site I abandoned because of it. That alone makes me love this post even more because it made me sit down and think about this post and feel even more assured that what I wrote is correct and that trauma is in fact needed for TTRPG characters. I think I wrote something that really dived into the idea of what is trauma, how trauma relates to us as humans and why it's basically propaganda to remove us from trauma.

Trans People Deserve More 

I feel super strongly about this article, I sat on it for a long time but I've met so many other trans people with awful relationships and mild relationships with their family. I wanted to make a shout out to all my fellow trans folks to tell them that it's okay to demand more, that we don't need to settle.

A Dive Into Heather 

I adored diving into one of my all time favorite Fire Emblem characters and it's something I've wanted to do more of. I'd love to do more dives into characters in video games I like and I did well before this post have a series of drafts that I still have up as a series that particularly is just a bit by bit break down of Edelgard's political beliefs.

[shmowder]

Guess who finished the Haruspex route yesterday!! It was fun and I'm excited to jump into the Bachelor route next.

Where the game really shined was in Artemy's interactions with Daniil. I get it now! He had some nice interactions with Aglaya and Capella as well. I actually had enough panaceas and shmowders to unlock both secrets and omg I LOVED being able to tell the other healers and Aglaya that we're dolls. That was pretty interesting. And telling Aglaya you're the player and her wanting nothing to do with you!!

With the caveat that I've only played 1/3 of the whole game - I agree with you when you said P1 is more of a gamey game. There's a greater focus on you as the player. Thankfully once I got used to the gameplay and to savescumming I found it quite enjoyable. And you're right, it felt easier than P2 even on the easiest settings. Even though it wasn't necessary by the end, I loved breaking into houses and stealing the food, and trying to beat the plague clouds while looting infected houses. I didn't even mind powerwalking from one side of the map and back (except when I had to go to Oyun).

I really liked being able to talk to people after I've exhausted their dialogue just to hear more of their spoken lines :)

I know I shouldn't, but it's so hard not to compare P1 with P2. Most of what I feel are the game's shortcomings can be attributed to the fact that I played P2 first and imprinted on it.

I missed the fleshed-out world the most - the wider variety of townspeople with unique dialogue and the expanded trading system, the Apple Basket Gang, the hospital theater and the daily tasks to take care of patients and take care of the others' Bound, side quests that felt like they made more of a difference. Even the variety of items in P2 and their descriptions contributed to the worldbuilding.

I was left feeling like I wouldn't really care about these people if I didn't already know and love them from P2. Of course that may change when I play as the Bachelor and Changeling! But even the interactions with the Haruspex's own Bound felt lacking. Murky and Sticky :'( And maybe I missed something but I met Khan ONCE in the entire game and it was him asking if Capella would submit to him when they were married :|

I hope this doesn't sound dumb or overly negative. As far as playing the game goes, I had a good time and I'm really glad you convinced me to buy it! It was worth it <3

🐿️ anon

congrats on finishing it!

Yeah, I do get your frustration, but the devs explained it in ingame. They did the best they could with the limited time and funds they had + the limited technology at the time.

There is still a fleshed out world if you pay attention. It's only done differently. Some Npcs do give you different dialogues if you speak to them at the right time and place, but you didn't notice because they all looked the same and dissmised them as background decorations. They really tried to make up for the lack of variation by leaving hidden secrets and easter eggs to those who search around.

I disagree on the "I was feeling like I wouldn't care for those people if I didn't know them from P2" I didn't feel that at all, if anything the writing and dialogue in P1 were so much more detailed and expanded on that it made me like characters even more. I would've loved them even more if P1 was my introduction, I didn't care about most of them in P2 tbh.

P1 exposes a lot of new sides to them, Capella cares about her father deeply and worries about him constantly, Aglaya being more vulnerable and genuinely afraid of death, The Kains several attempts at gaining your good graces to use you.

Especially characters who didn't get stage time in P2. It's unfair to compare P1 to your expectations based on P2 rather than just judge it alone as a game by itself. The devs weren't trying to make a P2, they do that later in the future, and they were only executing their vision at the time.

Don't let nostalgia cloud your views, is what I'm saying. Otherwise, you won't be able to see the beautiful story and unique dynamics between characters in P1 because you're too focused on comparing it to P2 and mourning things and characters which weren't even invented yet.

Don't condem the past for not being like the future. Learn to appreciate the beauty of the first stones set in a paved road, how without them, we wouldn't have had P2 at all. Older games will never meet our modern standards; we shouldn't expect them to.

[monowires]

Big profile textpost about my personal canon Shepard! There is a Lot of stuff under the readmore (I added the readmore so that y'all don't have to scroll 3,000ft to get past my post), just warning you.

COMMANDER JOHN SHEPARD

PRONOUNS: he/him | SEXUALITY: Gay | BIRTHDAY: April 11, 2154

AGE: 29 (ME1), 31 (ME2), 32 (ME3)

ORIGIN: Earthborn | BACKGROUND: Sole Survivor | CLASS: Adept

COMBAT ROLE: Long-Range Offensive Support

WEAPON SPECIALIZATIONS: Sniper Rifles (Primary), Assault Rifles & Handguns (Secondary)

DOES NOT USE: SMGs, Shotguns

BIOTIC SKILLS (ITALICIZED = MOST USED; BOLD = MOST PROFICIENT): Backlash, Barrier, Cluster Grenade, Flare, Lash, Pull, Reave, Shockwave, Singularity, Slam, Throw, Warp

NOTE 1: Backlash is a ME:A exclusive skill, but I like it so much (and am somewhat salty about it not being in the trilogy), so in my canon, Shepard knows this skill. I also felt it was unrealistic to confine him to 8 skills; while this is a gameplay mechanic, canonically there technically wouldn't be a limit on skills he can learn.

NOTE 2: He is also capable of deploying a spherical biotic shield (much like the ones deployed by asari, or by Cora in the beginning of ME:A). Because his specialization is long-range offense rather than defense, this exhausts him relatively quickly; it is something he only discovers via protecting his squad in a situation that would've otherwise killed them.

Shepard's combat style differs from that of a Vanguard or even most Adepts in that he prefers to maintain distance. He occupies a support-esque offensive role, backing his squad with sniper fire while deploying his biotics from range. Having trained for many years (both in- and outside of the N7 program), he has a refined control over his biotics and thus is capable of devastating the enemy with biotics regardless of the space between them. His most often used combat method is to deploy a Singularity field from range before picking them off with his sniper rifle.

Originally, Shepard was outfitted with L3 implants. During the Lazarus project, he was equipped with L5x implants. This upgrade allowed him to expand his arsenal of biotic skills. Though he lacked access to Alliance training facilities, he trained himself in these new skills with help from the many biotics aboard the SR-2. It was after his revival that he learned the skills Flare, Reave, and Slam.

MASS EFFECT 1 SPECIFICS:

MORALITY (BEGINNING OF GAME): Paragon (roughly 90% paragon, 10% renegade).

MORALITY (END OF GAME): Paragon (roughly 80% paragon, 20% renegade).

COMBAT DISPOSITION: Pacifist; violently capable, but often disinclined to engage in combat unless given no other choice.

GENERAL DISPOSITION: Though not optimistic to the point of ignorance, Shepard has a relatively bright outlook on his future. He has finally crawled out of the shadow of Akuze and reestablished his footing serving as Lieutenant-Commander on the Normandy SR-1. Though the images given to him by the Prothean beacon leave him troubled, it is more of a motivator than anything; Akuze left him without a sense of purpose, and stopping Saren/the Reapers allows him to have a central focus again.

He does, however, have a ruthless side, holding the mentality that sometimes the only way to get rid of a problem is to get rid of it.

RELATIONSHIPS: Shepard establishes a casual friendship with all of his crew; he does not consider himself a social person, though, and often avoids close relationships. Early on, he does develop a small crush on Kaidan, though it's more of a "wow, he's good looking" than anything else. He becomes close friends with him, growing to trust him outside of their Alliance-related relationship. Though his feelings deepen, both regulations and fear of rejection prevent him from ever acting upon them, and he is content to just be friends.

MAJOR CHOICES:

Recruited all potential companions/allies.

Saved the entire colony on Feros.

Released the Rachni Queen on Noveria.

Spared Balak on X-57.

Talked Wrex down on Virmire.

Saved Kaidan on Virmire.

Kept Kirrahe alive on Virmire.

Told Saren that Sovereign would betray him, avoiding the first half of his boss fight.

Saved the Council.

Chose Anderson as humanity's representative.

LESSER CHOICES:

Killed Fist himself.

Saved Rita's sister.

Intimidated Helena Blake into disbanding her gang.

Disabled the Rogue VI on Earth's Moon.

Hung up on the Council only once, after being challenged/taunted for saving the Feros colony.

Chose Renegade options in Garrus's dialogues.

Gave Tali the Geth data.

Recovered Wrex's family armor.

Completed all smaller assignments (i.e. the collection assignments or smaller tasks pertaining to NPCs).

MASS EFFECT 2 SPECIFICS:

MORALITY (BEGINNING OF GAME): Paragade (roughly 65% paragon, 35% renegade).

MORALITY (END OF GAME): Paragade (roughly 75% paragon, 25% renegade).

COMBAT DISPOSITION: Abrasive; prefers to shoot first, but does not stand for needless violence.

GENERAL DISPOSITION: Working with Cerberus leaves him distrustful, especially after having learned of their involvement with the Akuze disaster. He adopts a pessimistic/realistic viewpoint which contributes to the worsening of his scars. He is a bit more ruthless, often intimidating and/or harming people if they don't give him what he needs (though he doesn't behave violently towards civilians). He is still tethered to his own moral code, but has experienced a drastic upheaval in that he has been stripped of the Alliance identity he's maintained for the past 11 years.

He also somewhat blames himself for the destruction of the SR-1, a fact that is only worsened as the game progresses, since it's shown that Harbinger has a direct interest in him. This causes him to adopt a mindset wherein he feels that the only way to keep his crew safe is by eliminating threats at their source. Because of this, he will often seek revenge and/or refuse to show mercy to his enemies (unless taking revenge would endanger civilians/innocent people, in which case he relents, though it does stress him out to do so).

He has a more positive outlook towards the end of the game, though, when he manages to free himself of the Illusive Man's influence and reminds himself of who he is.

RELATIONSHIPS: Though wounded by Kaidan's distrust on Horizon, he does understand it. However, due to working with Cerberus, he is generally distrustful towards people and thus does not establish a solid support system as he did before. His friendship deepens with both Garrus and Joker, and he finds new friends in Kasumi, Samara, and Thane.

MAJOR CHOICES:

Recruited all potential companions/allies.

Completed all loyalty missions successfully.

Maintained cooperation between all companions.

Installed all Normandy upgrades (aside from the Med-Bay upgrade).

Saved Maelon's data.

Destroyed the Geth heretics.

Saved the entire SR-2 crew from the Collectors.

Destroyed the Collector Base.

Everyone survived the suicide mission.

LESSER CHOICES:

Completed all DLC/lesser assignments.

Sent David to Grissom Academy.

Let Veetor go with Tali.

Got Kal'Reegar to stand down.

Set the memorial at the SR-1 crash site.

MASS EFFECT 3 SPECIFICS:

MORALITY (BEGINNING OF GAME): Paragade (roughly 75% paragon, 25% renegade).

MORALITY (END OF GAME): Renegon (roughly 20% paragon, 80% renegade).

COMBAT DISPOSITION: Violent; shows no weakness or mercy, especially with Cerberus. Does his best to avoid civilian casualties but acknowledges them as often being unavoidable.

GENERAL DISPOSITION: The invasion of the Reapers despite his warnings causes Shepard a great deal of stress. Dealing with his stresses alone while also having his worst fears realized causes him to become more abrasive. As the war progresses, his patience grows thinner and thinner, especially as the expectations placed upon him seem to only grow in magnitude. Hardened by the obvious fact that his word only matters when it conveniences others, he adopts a colder personality. He detaches himself from the war, unable to psychologically handle the stress otherwise, and views things in black and white.

However, he is not evil, and is in fact often overburdened with his own sense of empathy and responsibility. The major shift in his psyche occurs on Thessia, as he holds himself completely responsible for the deaths after his defeat—both on and off the planet. After this defeat, his taste for revenge which began in ME2 grows stronger, as he knows that the only way to truly put things to rest between himself and Kai Leng would be to kill him.

He struggles with his morality, too, as combat inevitably becomes his only outlet; this subsequently causes a subconscious inclination towards violence, as it is one of his only methods of release. He is prone to violent reactions in the face of adversaries, though he does not act without thought (with the exception of the Omega DLC, where he restarted the reactor without hesitation despite the consequences; this was because he refused to allow Cerberus to try and get the upper hand on him again by manipulating his qualities).

NOTE: It's important that I emphasize his shift towards Renegade is a direct result of his traumas/their aftermath. He is not by any means intended to be a "cruel for the sake of it" kind of charcter.

RELATIONSHIPS: Despite his inner turmoil, Shepard actually develops closer relationships over the course of the war, partially because he recognizes that he may never otherwise get the chance. His closest friends are Garrus, Joker, and EDI. He initiates a romantic relationship with Kaidan, which is maintained even after the game's ending.

MAJOR CHOICES:

Chose Paragon options in the conversations with Kaidan on Mars; automatically had his trust by the end of Priority: Citadel (II).

Revealed the Shroud sabotage to Eve and Wrex.

Disabled the Geth fighter squadrons.

Saved Admiral Koris.

Brokered peace between the Geth and the Quarians.

Saved the Rachni Queen a second time.

Achieved the Destroy Ending with necessary TMS to get the bonus scene, thus confirming his survival.

LESSER CHOICES:

Rescued Grissom Academy's students.

Saved Samara on Lesuss.

Killed both his clone and Brooks in the Citadel DLC.

Held a revenge-driven/hostile attitude during the Omega DLC.

Restarted the reactor (Renegade interrupt) during the Omega DLC.

[arrenkae]

So I finished bg3 and thought the ending was Fine, Actually

Maybe I expected the worst after seeing so many people voicing their disappointments

Maybe I was lucky to avoid most bugs that made the experience worse for others

Or maybe I'm just too happy with my boy Withers/Jergal being a total badass MVP both in my good dark urge ending (I'll write more about this in another post) and in the after credits scene so that everything else pales in comparison

Hell yeah bro you tell them

...but yeah, I quite liked this ending. It hit all the right notes for me: big epic final fight, big stakes, dramatic cinematics, all of all allies gathering to help, final words from our companions before we go and celebrate our victory

Sure, there is room for improvement and the ways it could be made more impactful and reflect our choices better; and with so many people being unhappy with the ending, I wouldn't be surprised if Larian make those improvements in a future enhanced edition or something

But so many people who are unhappy with the ending are asking for detailed epilogue sliders and look

I'm probably going to give a very controversial opinion here

But I don't really care for epilogue sliders. I don't hate them, of course, many great RPGs have ending sliders. They are fine. Especially in the heavily text-based games. But personally, if the game's story worked well on its own, tied all the loose ends and answered the big questions, I'm fine with just having a big satisfying ending scene and riding off into the sunset. We won, there is a bright future ahead of us, who knows what it will bring. Maybe there will be a sequel, maybe you can just imagine things. It's fine to end it at that.

Meanwhile, epilogue sliders bring a certain sense of... finality that I don't always vibe with. It's one thing to see your choices pay off in the game itself, but spelling out the characters' futures for years to come is sometimes a bit too much. Also, in most cases it just boils down to "this village you saved? yup, it's saved, everyone is living happily now" and "this character you helped and who already told you their plans for the future? yeah, they are going to do just that, they are going to be fine". Which is sometimes nice to hear, I get that.

Or, alternatively, when the epilogue gives you an unexpected outcome, and it's not really something you wanted for this character, it kind of sucks, you know? You are not going to replay a game for one different slider. But then you are like, "okay, those are just sliders, I can pretend this didn't happen like that" and then this whole things kinda falls apart. Sliders never quite feel like the "real" part of an ending for me, more like some musings about the most likely future. I can take them or leave them.

But like I said, it's much more important for me to have the game itself end on a strong note. Tbh, endings tend to be the weakest part of SO MANY great RPG games that are amazing otherwise; and Baldur's Gate 3 is far, FAR from the worst examples. With so many hours of gameplay, and so many choices you can make, it's super hard to end it in a way that truly does justice to this entire experience.

...but for some people, like me, it's enough to see Jergal shit talking the Dead Three. That's all I ever wanted from this game. Absolutely iconic.

[aquilamage]

Rain world is really good but the difficulty is defo one of my biggest gripes. Like, it sets out to be a hard game, and it is, but there are straight up some areas you may fall into that are so hard to get out of people suggest just restarting! Which feels weird and bad, to me at least. The wall jumping also drives me crazy, I feel like I can only sometimes get the rhythm right for it. I’ve found tho that if possible, putting a stick in the wall as a kind of ‘check point’ helps (you may already be doing that tho haha)

I am all for a game being designed to challenge the player in whatever ways because you can genuinely get some cool things out of it, and it's fine if that's considered the 'default' mode. But there's two caveats to that.

There's a difference between well-balanced and reasonable difficult and stuff that's hard either just for its own sake without thinking about whether it's enjoyable to play/overcome or hard because it's not designed as well as it could be. I'm by no means an expert on game design but having parts of the game where the common advice is just "yeah if you end up here just restart the game" that's not like. a glitch. Doesn't seem the greatest to me.

People have said this way more eloquently than me but even if the intended experience is for the game to be difficult, even extremely so, putting in features you can select that make the game literally as easy as possible should just be the default because that just means there are now more people who can or will play the game and it doesn't actually take anything away from people who want to play it with the highest difficulty.

Literally I think my game experience would be so much improved if there was just an option for more forgiving wall-jumps or even just a plain wall-climbing option. (I don't have that much platformer game experience overall but like. I've done all of Hollow Knight's platforming challenges except the White Palace and I'm almost done with chapter 7 of Celeste and iirc those are at least considered somewhat challenging as platformers. So I think I'm allowed a little bit of saying this is related to how this game's mechanic works). And if there were other options to make things easier I might take those too and that's fine! Because otherwise you have me sitting here contemplating whether I can keep playing a game I genuinely like because of it just being too much stress on me to be healthy probably! And y'know, maybe not fun enough to be worth it, I don't know yet.

It's like how about halfway through playing Subnautica I got too frustrated with being attacked and just put in the cheat code that let me not be attacked by the monsters. Even turned off oxygen a couple times when watching that made me too claustrophobic and it was great because then I just got to concentrate on playing the game and enjoying it; and it didn't feel like a lesser experience.

And yeah depending on how popular the game is overall and how many people might feel the same there may be a mod for this kind of stuff out there. But! As I said I have the switch version and I shouldn't have to buy the game again and play on a platform that doesn't work as well for me (or at all depending on how much it demands of a computer) just to get a version that's more accessible!

All that aside I do still think it's a neat game with some great design aspects to its gameplay. Wouldn't be talking about this so much if not or contemplating other options to experience it; I would've probably just dropped it.

(Oh yeah I definitely have been doing the spears-in-the-wall to facilitate climbing. All the time, including some spots where I made a ladder of several because searching for more spears was easier than doing the climbing. Super appreciate the tip though because if I hadn't that would've been SO useful to know)

[manonamora-if]

It's Sunday again! DST is kicking my butt...

Good thing that the SeedComp! is over, because the scope of this game ended up being much larger than I thought (when doesn't it...). I thought it wouldn't take me that much time to finish and add the missing content to the game, but I was once more fooled...

As of now, [Act2]'s word count has passed [Act1]'s, and it is still missing half of the NPCs' interviews (passed 10k yall...). And both accounts for the variation in choice (you can fail to interview NPC...). Expect a lot of reading lol...

Since the SeedComp! is still a ranked comp, some reviewers on the IntFic Forum have been taking the time to review the entries. And I was also lucky to get a lovely one too!

So yeah, progress is coming a long. Expect an update soon!

In the meantime, check out the other SeedComp! games and consider voting for them :) (the deadline is the end of the month...)

There is not much to say for this week. MelS is working worked on the missing variation (there is another little investigating bit in this chapter...). I just got the full file back, putting on my editor glasses and commenting on everything! TIME FOR EDITS!!

As it looks now, Chapter 4 will be the middle point of the story. It's all downhill from there... /jk

I have updated and fixed all notifications this week! There were so many... holy hell...

Also getting close to the end with the fixes. I've started working on the Codex, giving it a new design (pls vote the poll!) and still make it viable with the keybinding (that's been a headache...).

SpringThing title reveal: The Roads Not Taken

I am not quite ready to talk about the plot or the game play just yet, but know that it will be quite different to what I've done in the past. Not much in terms of genre, but more of gameplay. I am going back to a 2nd POV with this game too...

I have the base UI and code ready and tested (yay it works :D) and the intro is almost completely written. I am trying my best to keep the variation to a minimum, otherwise it will become unmanageable again...

I have about 3 more weeks to finish it all. Wish me luck!

~~~~

That's it for this week... Toodles~