#people don't need to see my whining

[loveswickedpitch]

see you in hell you stupid fruits: a rambling reflection on revue starlight relive

revue starlight relive has reached end of service, so i guess i might as well share my thoughts? if you just want the tl;dr, my opinion can be summed up as "good fucking riddance", but you know. might as well talk about it a bit more.

first off, things i liked about relive. i liked most of the new characters it introduced, even if they were pretty flat early on. it was clear that they weren't sure what to do with some of them, but they did expand on them and give them more depth over time. some of the events were cute. the battle system was fun. arcana arcadia had some cool stuff, even if i had already stopped actually playing the game by that point (more on that later). and, uh... that's kind of it, i guess.

none of this stuff was ever really able to overcome the game's flaws. the new characters were fun, but it was pretty clear that they didn't always know how to juggle them, and some characters would go months with no new events or cards (i recall Misora often being neglected). events often had cute moments and occasionally an interesting character tidbit, but a lot of the time they just felt like pointless fluff.

while the basic battle system was compelling, the game never did much with it. PvE stuff was mostly just bland grinding and PvP was a mess full of ridiculous power creep where if you wanted to keep up you had to either get super lucky with your pulls or spend hundreds of dollars. Leveling up and unlocking skills for characters was tedious. in fact, most of the gameplay was an exercise in tedium - eventually, i realized i was going to all this effort to raise characters and do dailies and shit for basically no reason! why bother grinding characters so i can beat event bosses over and over to get the many different types of materials when the only thing to do with them is make your characters better so that you can get more materials??? if you just wanted to experience the cutscenes, you didn't need to engage with the actual gameplay much at all, so why bother? that's not even mentioning the complete lack of variety in basic enemies and bosses that got reused over and over.

arcana arcadia was really cool, but i don't think the story was well-served by the format, and also it took years for them to get to it - the first story arc was pretty much nothing and the second mostly felt like a course correction rather than a compelling narrative arc on its own (especially the first half, imo - the Rinmeikan and Frontier stories were probably the best).

but even if all of this was fine, and the game had compelling gameplay and writing, it would still be bad, because it's just a slot machine with anime girls on it! the entire purpose of the game, the whole reason it exists in the first place, is to grab as much money as possible from vulnerable people. and i kind of debated on whether i would talk about this, but i was one of those people. i spent thousands of dollars on this game because it turns out, surprise, i have a gambling addiction! so it was very frustrating for the bulk of writing for this franchise was locked behind an app i could not safely use.

i think that's basically it. it was a bad game stapled to a slot machine that showed you yuri if you won and i'm glad it's dead.

at least junna and nana kissed.

[sanic-atthedisco]

Request for anonymous. I forgot to post this here lol

I drop the mushroom on him immediately afterwards because I suck at using chopsticks. It's okay, though, because he can just catch it with his tongue.

[valyrfia]

guys if i reblog a post to add an opinion/discussion and say 'don't go into this person's askbox we're just all having a friendly discussion' that's not in fact code to go into that person's askbox telling them how they're wrong

[sals-soup]

you know what i find so funny about shipcourse. particularly about people who complain in the main tags about "proshippers" and their "disgusting ships"?

is that it would be completely unjustified if someone took a popular, accepted fandom ship, complained that it showed up on their timeline/dashboard/fyp/what the fuck ever, and no, it's not their fault, they can't block or filter, it's THOSE artists fault. you know the ones. the ones that tend to be [identity/label]. GOD, those fucking [identity/label]s RUIN my day.

[inamindfarfaraway]

Perhaps the funniest League of Legends character interaction that's also highly plausible in-universe, thematically appropriate and emotionally charged is Rell and Veigar teaming up.

They’re both extremely magically strong and skilled. Rell controls metal, a product of the earth from which she can directly rip ore. Veigar draws his celestial magic from the stars.

They both have dark, tragic backstories: because of their magical talent, they were taken into custody by powerful, corrupt Noxian authorities, isolated, abused and forced to use their magic harmfully for a long time, at least relative to their respective lives. This traumatized and broke them so much that they now see inflicting pain as the only thing they’re good at, even capable of. They have no friends. They've never known or have forgotten what it feels like to be loved, joyful or carefree. All they were left with once free was so much guilt and grief and so much power. From that, they have forged new identities - roles to play - built around singular, combative ambitions that they cannot imagine lives or futures beyond. Rell identifies as a gritty, edgy antihero, having noble intentions but using brutal, destructive and downright gruesome methods. Veigar identifies as a villain, but is good at heart despite not comprehending this himself.

They’re both currently roaming around the Noxian countryside in order to find and defeat as many powerful, corrupt Noxian authorities who mistreat people as they can. Rell does this to make the guilty pay for their crimes and liberate and protect the oppressed. Veigar does it to replace the authority and prove that his evil is greater and cooler than theirs, but in practice doesn’t really bother hurting anyone innocent and just ends up making the guilty pay for their crimes and liberating and protecting the oppressed.

They’re both connected to Mordekaiser, and would be primary enemies of him holding personal grudges if his plot about trying to dominate Runeterra is ever developed. Rell was such an important project for the Black Rose because they hoped that she would be able to defeat Mordekaiser. He embodies everything she stands against. Mordekaiser was Veigar’s captor and abuser, responsible for who he is today. Rell can manipulate metal; Veigar wields incredible cosmic magic; and Mordekaiser is a magical suit of armour, so if anyone can finish him off, it’s these two working together.

Rell is practical, pragmatic, cynical and consumed by bloodthirsty, vengeful rage. Veigar clings to and imitates an immature ideal of Villainy, fashioning his outfit after Mordekaiser’s stereotypical fantasy evil overlord aesthetic, his behaviour after all the most theatrical tropes that archetype can be associated with and having very dramatic and flashy magic, but inwardly lacks the cruelty (not to mention dignity) to back that presentation up.

They both want the Noxian people to respect them as a threat. Rell has wanted posters and become widely feared by the elite army less than a year since her escape. Veigar has been ‘conquering’ for centuries and is still not taken seriously.

Their respective magic colours are yellow and purple, and the rest of both of their colour palettes is grey, silver and black.

Everything about Rell is played completely straight. Almost everything about Veigar is played for comedy.

Rell could come across a village that Veigar has seized and accidentally benefitted, like Boleham in his story on the website, and try to challenge him. Or they could both arrive to kill the same tyrannical warlord at the same time. She realizes that he is a) really bad at being bad, b) just a silly little guy and c) an extremely useful asset to her quest.

So she directs him at the Black Rose and they go and utterly fuck Noxis up while helping the downtrodden. There's so much comedy to get out of their contrasting personalities and perspectives. Rell always acts like the protagonist of a grim, action-packed young adult dystopian series and Veigar is standing right next to her emanating campy children's cartoon villain energy; they both think the story is a different genre and the acting and tone should reflect that. This premise is hysterical with the proper execution.

But it isn't just funny! They can genuinely bond and learn, or in Veigar's case remember, what loving and being loved is, and begin to process their trauma and help each other cope with their C-PTSD and be kinder to themselves and have fun and become fulfilled. And then kill Mordekaiser, whose return is one of the subplots. And then live happy, safe, peaceful lives together, because they were never meant for all this violence.

Other subplots besides Mordekaiser include LeBlanc, Rell's mother and the Black Rose's operations; the wider Noxian politics they tie into; Samirah hunting Rell; Annie also wandering around Noxis causing trouble and eventually getting adopted by Rell as a little sister (they deserve it); maybe the story of a Yordle who knew Veigar before and thus can supply some of his backstory that he's forgotten, a 'normal Yordle' foil to him; and generally lots of Noxian and Yordle worldbuilding and lore.

While I'm talking about Veigar, here are my ideas for a redesign of him, because his design is... not that great:

As yordles are generally animalistic or at least furry, he strongly resembles a black cat, with gold eyes with slit pupils and a dark purple nose. Black cats are associated with the supernatural, magical arts and misfortune, they're bad omens to some, but they're also fluffy little babies. He is covered in fur. You want to scratch his checks. You want to kiss his little forehead. He's so adorable and he hates it. His large pointy ears, visible under the brim of his hat, move to signal his emotions for more expressive animation. They both have notches, which help him look pitiable and allude to his past as a prisoner and victim of abuse. He has big 'weathered street cat hissing and growling at you when you try to pet it because it's reflexively afraid of people and shows that through aggression' energy.

@ohnoitstbskyen's idea in his "What's the deal with Veigar?" video that Veigar's face (his cute kitty face!) is never fully in the shadow of his hat despite him trying to look mysterious and ominous is brilliant. He’s very lively, since he acts like a classic cartoon villain who’s so excited and gleeful about being evil, so he has a habit of jostling his hat or lifting his head to reveal his whole face and then hastily pulling the hat back down.

His robe no longer has the spiked metal hem and is of a soft, loose, flowing fabric. It’s dark indigo with silver sparkles all over it like he’s wearing the night sky, in homage to the stars he draws his power from. Except the beautiful pattern is interrupted and partly obscured by a leather belt - not spiked and black, a bolder and more ‘evil’ colour than brown and a Noxian colour - with a tasteless spiky silver buckle that clashes with the stars. I love what TB Skyen said about the armour and spikes working best as a parody of Mordekaiser’s aesthetic, so I want those aspects to look tacked on and out of place. To feel wrong. Inadvertently on Veigar’s part, but deliberately in a meta sense. Between the robe, his big purple wizard hat matching his nose that also makes his body look smaller and cuter and the black cat associations, you’ve got a perfectly good yordle celestial mage design; but the influence of Mordekaiser is intruding on it, corrupting it, even. That is the clear conflict of this design. While the robe is comfortable, the armour doesn’t appear to be. This impression is helped by it all being at least a little oversized, because Noxian armour doesn’t come in yordle size and therefore Veigar has cobbled his together out of scraps he scavenged (I mean, he STOLE, how wicked) and he isn’t really a great blacksmith. His boots aren’t clown shoes or anything, but they’re big enough that his attempt at an imposing villainous stride is awkwardly clunky. They could have black leather straps on them to hold them tighter than their metal fasteners will allow. His spiked pauldrons were cut out of human ones and still jut out too much, one of them having an irregular shape that gives him a dash of Noxian asymmetry and marks him further as a flawed imitation of a fantasy supervillain. The message that he’s incompetent at something and did it anyway out of passion, perhaps not even realizing his mistakes or at least too proud to acknowledge them, makes him come across as comedic and yet an endearingly earnest, hardworking underdog, and adds to the surprise of his genuine incredible cosmic power - he couldn’t learn to smith properly before forging his own armour, but he can command the energy of the stars to smite you? Yeah. That’s Veigar. There’s one silver ring around the base of his hat that has five spikes on it, thick, long and evenly positioned so that from above, they form a star shape. Specifically, an inverted star with one spike pointing directly forward. Symbolism! His belt buckle could also be an inverted star to establish that as a motif of his; it’s spiky, but more personal and iconic than just spikes themselves.

Moving onto Rell... she has her sigils. I don't know why she doesn't in her model or artwork, they're such a crucial part of her character design! Her biography and short story both bring them up. There are even bare sections of her arms, which would only make sense if her sigils were visible in them because it's impractical and she's so averse to vulnerability, but the sigils are missing? What? Why, Riot? So yeah, in my redesign she has sigils right down both her arms. A few more recent ones are on her back (symbolic of her betrayal by her family, the Black Rose and the government). They're always hidden, even in her lighter armour on horseback, as she's deeply uncomfortable around the concept of being exposed and seeing them herself. We and Veigar only see them in dramatic character exploration scenes when a) she feels safe enough to take her armour off, b) she needs to due to injury or to hide her identity or c) someone else damages or removes her armour. Taking TB Skyen's advice again, her outer armour and therefore horse are spikier and less polished and regular, products of her undiluted heartbroken rage in the moment she destroyed the academy. They're highly distinctive, almost organic-feeling and definitely don't look like the work of a smith.

[taegularities]

...

[plexippusangel]

I either need to accept that I am just a way stronger person than this friend and can handle way more while still being able to engage with the world as a person, or recognize excuses as excuses, accept that I am not valued and be done or. Maybe both. Idk. It might be somewhere between the two. I am just sick of regular life stuff rendering him unable to spend any time with me, and of him being unable to bear any of the details of my life, when I would move mountains to rekindle our friendship. Though I'm starting to wonder if I still would.

[girderednerve]

debates about queer representation are tired even if they do express real pain & frustration but i am entering the chat to say that i have literally never seen my relationship to being gay portrayed in media anywhere. my relationship to being gay is that when i figured out i wasn't straight i was like, immensely relieved & delighted, & then when i spent the next two years wanting to kill myself constantly & thinking i was responsible for every bad thing on earth i was still like, "but at least i'm gay. like, thank god for that. at least i'm gay, that's going for me. everything else about me may be bad but at least i'm gay." life-saving, to be real with you. even now when i am having a bad day i'm like, "well, i'm still gay! so that's good!"

mostly my point here is that there is a vast expanse of feelings that people have about being gay, and it sucks that we have relatively few narratives for what coming out might feel like or how it might work when it is, still, a momentous occasion for most people, but it's also an invitation to reflect on how fuckin great it is to be gay. if people were mean to you about it i will break their knees. being gay is awesome & i love you

[whatimdoing-here]

Kids normally take showers now, but small fry has strep and flu both so when he asked for a bath I was like whatever you want kid. But nothing like a bath to really show you how long and skinny your kid is and you definitely have two KIDS and now babies, toddlers, preschoolers... Those stages are gone never to come back.

[russeliarat]

I'm sorry for not posting good stuff, I just feel so useless at the moment. To keep it not so brief, one teacher is being an utter bitch and as a result, my entire life is crumbling around me. I was sick during an exam last week and only had 20 minutes to even attempt it. The English teacher rung home and told my parents that I'm not trying and I'm doing it on purpose because im arrogant and that I'm going to fail, which basically means that I won't be able to further my desired career and my entire life will be in shambles because later on in life, I won't be able to fund my own courses because im relying on my parents for financial aid at the moment. They're threatening to cut off that aid and not let me do the courses if i fail a single exam because they don't want me to end up like my sister (aka, they don't want me taking Foundation Studies to retake an exam). Keep I mind that these are practice exams and I still have about 2 months to improve.

I've had every thought under the Sun about it and I just don't know what to do. I'm thinking about reporting her to my academic mentor and asking her to tell my teacher to stop calling my parents because this feels like pure humiliation, but beyond that, I have no power. I feel like I'm gonna end up as a disowned failure and have all the opportunities I've built up just crumble away. School is one of the most traumatic experiences of my life but no one takes it seriously and it's genuinely one of the most harmful things thats happened to me. I can't drop out because of laws surrounding schooling and not a single adult around me has offered any support.

[6mayhem]

one time my mom said to me 'if you can't drink tea unless you add a shit ton of stuff to it, maybe tea just isn't for you'... many people in the punk hashtag could benefit from this mindset

[antiadvil]

Diversity win now I'm also blocking the #flashing image warning tag

[basicallyjustmuggleremuslupin]

research as a (future) historian is always so fucking depressing istg

[frostbite-the-bat]

i hgoupe I'm The roller guy to yall

[radioactive-cloud]

i'm tipsy and sad and i just want to matter and not to feel like this

[yuukiiqwq]

Satoru was confident that you liked him back. He was positive. He had no doubt in his mind that you were going to be his pretty little wife. Is he getting ahead of himself? Sure, he is, but he's that confident. That's until he noticed how he hadn't received any chocolate from you.

It was Valentine's Day, and he still hasn't received any chocolate from you. Yeah, he had a mountain worth of chocolate from all those people who gave him it, but where was yours? He couldn't find it anywhere. He was sure that you would have placed your chocolate on his desk since you hadn't given him his. He double no triple checked all the chocolates, yet he could not find the one that has your pretty little name written on it. He continued to search through the chocolate pile for the fourth time today.

He must have missed it, right? Or did someone steal it? He swear he's going to hunt that person to the end of the Earth. Who dared to steal something that was rightfully his?

"Satoru, calm down."

He looked up at his best friend, who was trying to hold down a laugh at his panic.

"She'll probably give it to you later. The day just begun."

Right. Suguru is right. You'll give him his chocolate later. He's a good boy. He can wait.

That's what he told himself, but Suguru and Shoko have already received theirs this morning, and his is still nowhere to be found. Where is his chocolate? You're just sitting there in your seat, looking all pretty as if Satoru is not going through a huge dilemma because of you.

He couldn't help his hands that kept inching itself closer to the chocolate you gave Suguru. He wouldn't know if he snatched it, right? Suguru had received a lot of chocolate! He wouldn't know if he took it... was what he convinced himself before Suguru slapped his hand away.

"Satoru," he sighs.

"But Suguru!!!" Satoru whined as he sunk down into his seat.

"Be patient. You'll get yours soon."

But how soon is soon? Satoru isn't exactly known for his patient.

It was the end of the day, and still no chocolate from you. He asked Suguru and Shoko to leave first because he thought you would finally give it to him when both of you were alone. But you haven't. Where was his chocolate?

The two of you were approaching the exit of school, so Satoru made a quick decision, grabbing your wrist and pulling you into an empty classroom. He quickly shut the door and locked it.

"Satoru?" You asked in confusion. "What's wrong?"

"My chocolate."

"Your chocolate?"

"My chocolate from you! The symbol of your love towards me!"

"I didn't make you any," you replied smoothly. "Forgot to make them yesterday, so I woke up early today to make them, but I guess not early enough. I only had time to finish Shoko's and Suguru's. I didn't have time to make yours. Otherwise, I would have been late."

Satoru swear the world just ended. He looked down at his chest because he swears his heart ripped out of his chest at your words. Nope. Still alive. Why is he still alive in this cruel world? You had no chocolate for him? None? Not even a crumb?

"That's fine with you, right? I mean, you got a bunch of chocolate from other girls! You don't need mine."

He swear he is about to burst into tears. He didn't care about other girls. He didn't care about their chocolate. He wanted yours. How could you be so cruel and deny him of your chocolate? To reject him like this? He was devastated. No. Beyond devastated. Where is the closest cliff so he can jump off?

Pure silence radiated the room as Satoru tried to comprehend this horrible situation. Then he heard a small giggle slip pass your lips. That small giggle soon turns into a full-out laugh.

"You should have seen the look on your face, Satoru," you say as you try to stop laughing.

Was this funny to you? Why were you laughing at his suffering? Do you know how much he looked forward to today? To receive the cute little wrapped up chocolate you made for him? He dreamed of today, and you didn't have chocolate for him?

He then sees you reach into your bag and pull out exactly what he had imagined. A cute little chocolate box wrapped up in a baby blue color with a touch of white ribbon to finish it off. Fuck. He thinks he just got a heart attack seeing your chocolate. His chocolate.

"Princess, please don't joke like that to me ever again. You scared me half to death. I was going to jump off a cliff," he whined as he took the chocolate from your hand.

You couldn't help but roll your eyes at his dramatic behavior. "Stop being dramatic, Satoru. It's just chocolate."

A look of offense dawned his face as you utter those horrendous words to him.

"Chocolate? Just chocolate?" He huffed at you. He can't believe you as you treat this amazing god send gift as just chocolate. "Don't you dare call this just chocolate! This! This right here is proof of your undying love towards me!"

You laughed at his antics– "You're getting ahead of yourself, Satoru."

He delicately placed the chocolate safety away in his bag, treating it as a prized possession. He's looking forward towards white day. He already knows what he wants to get for you. He pulled you into a hug, nuzzling his face against your neck as he mutters– "You won't be saying that after I wife you up."