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witchysniffles · 3 days ago

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cause and effect

So this started because I was inspired by @snezus-christ-risen's tags on this fantastic fic about what if W/anda's spell had left A/gatha with a photic reflex, you know, as a little treat. This was meant to be a short little thing as a break from a couple of longer projects, but well, here we are.

A (somewhat) canon compliant rewrite of the end of ep. 1 ft. photic A/gatha (and a little bit of implied snzfucker R/io, but I feel like that goes without saying at this point). 2.3k words.

CW for canon-typical violence/knife-use and brief mentions of blood.

Please don't reblog to non-kink blogs!

The last thing Agatha remembered—or rather, the first thing she was aware of—was Rio’s voice.

There are two Jane Does in this case, and you know her name. Now what’s yours?

It was torturously slow and horribly unpleasant at first, like dipping her toes into a freezing lake. Nearly every part of her was screaming for her to stop, but there was Rio’s voice urging her on, pushing her to keep going, and even though she knew she should hate her—even if she couldn’t quite remember why yet—she couldn’t come up with a reason not to trust her. And so she dove head first into that frigid water until she found herself gasping and clawing her way back to the surface. The world around her was blurring, fading in and out of focus, and then suddenly everything was still.

The second things she noticed simultaneously as she settled back into herself and opened her eyes were that she was standing in her living room—or rather, what her living room would look like if she had suddenly decided to start a true crime podcast—and that she was completely fucking naked.

The third thing that she became aware of as she turned towards the bright sunlight streaming in through the open window behind her was that she quite suddenly really needed to—

“HhEITSHhiu!”

The first sneeze tore out of her faster than she could prepare for it, and it was followed immediately by another rapid, burning build-up that she managed to catch against her open palm. “HehT’TSH! Ugh, fuck!”

She ran through a quick check of her body: no congestion, no fever, no watery eyes or wheezy breath or anything else to indicate that that was anything other than a random sneeze. Annoying, sure, but otherwise inconsequential, and frankly she had much bigger things to worry about.

Like the fact that the Darkhold was gone.

And even more pressingly, for the first time in her whole life, Agatha couldn’t even feel her own magic. For as long as she could remember, it had always been there, humming and swirling beneath her skin with an energy all its own, but a halfhearted attempt at the most basic of light spells proved what she already knew in her bones: the Darkhold was gone, and it had taken every ounce of her power with it.

Rage and terror burned in her chest in equal measure, and she screamed into the stillness of the air. There was no one around to hear, and it didn’t really make her feel any better, but it felt better than doing nothing.

She snatched a robe off a hook by the stairs and slipped it on as she started for the basement door. She knew exactly what she was going to find—or rather, what she was missing—at the bottom of the steps, but it still set a sick feeling rolling in the pit of her stomach when she saw not a trace of magic, not a single spellbook or grimoire, not even a rune. She stared in disbelief at the laundry setup and the hot water heater and the tool shelves covered in a thick layer of dust that almost made her nose tickle again just by looking at it.

She was about to storm back upstairs when a small squeak from behind a bin labeled ‘Holiday Table Settings’—ugh—caught her attention. Señor Scratchy hopped out into the open, and Agatha felt a rush of relief at seeing him safe. She swept him up and knelt on the cold basement floor, nuzzling her face against his soft fur.

“I got mugged, mister,” she murmured. “She took every little bit of power I had and left me with household appliances. We gotta get back on top.” She kept her fingers moving in the rabbit’s thick fluff as she let her gaze wander around the basement. It was all so pedestrian, and so fucking dusty. Would it have killed Agnes to have picked up a rag at any point in the last…however long it had been?

Señor Scratchy, for his part, seemed more than happy to stay in Agatha’s arms as long as she’d have him, and right now, Agatha wanted nothing more than to just hold him until she could convince herself this was all just a horrible dream. The only problem was that even without actively disturbing any of the dust around her, her nose was starting to itch in earnest, so she scooped the rabbit up as she got to her feet and hurried up the basement steps before things could get any worse.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust from the dim light of the basement to the sunlight streaming into hallway. “HE’TSschiu—‘TSCH!” Agatha had barely even felt the sneezes come on this time, and she cursed under her breath as she recovered. Whatever kept making her do that, it was getting really old, really fast.

Startled by the noise, Señor Scratchy started wiggling to get free and Agatha leaned down to set him on the floor.

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Who needs you anyway?”

She scrubbed her wrist under her nose and started to make her way towards the kitchen to see what Agnes had in the way of real food when a flash of movement outside caught her attention. She couldn’t tell at first what—or who—it was, but she stiffened in place and waited, her whole body on high alert, until everything suddenly happened all at once.

One second, it was deadly calm, and then the next, the front door crashed open and flew off its hinges. Sunlight flooded into the dim interior, and Agatha barely had time to get a hand up before her traitorous fucking nose picked that moment to start burning again. She sneezed twice into her cupped palm, and she had no time to recover before she was blasted backwards by a gust of wind that knocked her into the wall and sent her tumbling onto the floor.

Agatha looked up, and there she was, stalking into Agatha’s house like she fucking owned the place, dressed all in black with a murderous look on her face that should not be making Agatha’s insides stir the way that it did. There were a thousand thoughts and feelings boiling inside of Agatha as she got to her feet, but before she could even think about a next move, another strong gust knocked her back into the wall, and then Rio was on her, knife unsheathed and held at her throat, Agatha’s trembling hands on Rio’s wrist the only thing keeping it from slicing her open.

“I’ve missed you,” Rio said playfully.

“I hate you,” Agatha spat back.

“How long has it been, Agatha?”

“Not sure,” Agatha said. Her eyes flitted from the knife to Rio’s face and back again. Every inch of her felt raw and exposed; she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt quite so powerless in her life.

“Since you acquired the Darkhold? You hid behind all that dark magic?” Rio’s voice was shaking, and if Agatha didn’t know better, she’d swear there was a glassy sheen over those brown eyes boring into her. “But then you lost it, and now…” Rio gripped the knife’s hilt with her second hand, and pressed the tip of it into the skin at the base of Agatha’s throat. “Touch.” Agatha winced at the sting of it as it bit in, and bared her teeth as she felt a trickle of blood run down her chest. “You’re vulnerable.”

There were tears burning hot in Agatha’s eyes, and she was hyperaware of the quiver in her voice as she spat out “Only physically.”

In one sharp movement, Agatha grabbed Rio by the hair to wrench her head to the side. They wrestled for control of the knife until Agatha managed to get it stabbed into the wall. Rio grinned hungrily at her, and Agatha let out a mirthless laugh. In another lifetime, this might have had a very different ending, but in this one, Rio’s hand tightened around Agatha’s neck, and the next thing Agatha knew, she was thrown towards the kitchen, crash landing on the floor with a groan.

Rio retrieved her knife out of the drywall and whipped it at Agatha, who managed to deflect it off the back of a displaced sheet tray. It hit the floor, and in the mad scramble for it, Agatha found herself in the path of a long shaft of sunlight that made her eyes burn and—oh fuck not now!

Agatha stopped dead. Her hand was already curled around the blade of the knife, and she gasped, not entirely sure if it was from the pain or just her breath hitching in the split second before she—“Hh’ETSH! hEH’YSHeu—‘EHSHhiew!”

“Huh.” Rio stopped and seemed to study Agatha’s burning face, looking from her to the window behind her and back again. “Well that’s new.”

Before Agatha could collect herself any further, Rio surged forward and grabbed both her knife and Agatha’s face, her hand under Agatha’s jaw, her nails pressing nearly hard enough to draw blood. She pulled Agatha back up and they hit the wall again, except this time there was no knife between them. It was a familiar enough position that Agatha couldn’t tell if the shaky little breath that slipped past her parted lips was from fear, fury, arousal, or a heady combination of all three.

Rio was so close, and she pressed even closer as she placed the tip of her knife against the side of Agatha’s nose, tracing the shape of it with the point of the blade, lightly enough to almost tickle.

Arousal was definitely winning out now, but that realization just made her angrier.

“That Scarlet Bitch really did a number on you, huh?” The point of the knife slid upwards to the top of Agatha’s nose right between her eyes, where Rio used it to draw out a gossamer-thin tendril of red magic that glimmered and twisted in the air for just a moment before it snapped back and disappeared against Agatha’s skin. It left a cold, tickly feeling deep in her sinuses, but she’d be damned if she let Rio see that.

“Hmm,” Rio mused. “Effective, but the work itself is clunky. I’m not surprised it’s got some lasting physical effects.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Agatha snapped.

Rio raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

Without breaking eye contact or her grip on Agatha’s face, Rio sheathed her knife and thrust her free hand out to the side. A sudden burst of wind forced the dining room curtains open. As bright rays of midmorning sunlight streamed into the room, Agatha felt that infuriating itch flare deep in her nose again. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to even try to cover—not that Rio would have let her—and with her back quite literally against the wall and Rio still holding her in place, she was powerless as her breath hitched, her eyes fell shut, and—“EH’TSCHhu—‘TSHEW! Hh-ITSHU!”

“Oh, bless you,” Rio purred. “Did that make it a little more clear?”

Of course just trapping Agatha’s mind and stealing her power wasn’t enough. No, Wanda’s shoddy spellwork just had to leave her with a fucking sneeze reflex, and a damn sensitive one at that.

Agatha kept her eyes closed a little longer than was strictly necessary. She could feel Rio’s gaze on her, burning hot enough to make her flush. Rio finally let go of her jaw and traced a finger lightly down the side of Agatha’s nose. It wrinkled involuntarily and Rio chuckled.

“It’s cute,” she said. “Shame we couldn’t have some more fun with that.”

“Did you come here for a reason,” Agatha snapped, “or are you just trying to be a cunt?”

Rio scoffed and shook her head incredulously. “You should consider yourself lucky I’m the one that found you,” she said. “You’ve lost your shield. And now any witch with a beating heart and a score to settle could track you down. In fact, I’d wager there are probably some on their way here already.”

Agatha’s blood ran cold. “You don’t mean—”

“The Salem Seven,” Rio confirmed with a nod. “I expect you’ll see them at sundown.” She looked down and took Agatha’s bloody hand in her own, her fingers far too soft for the message she was delivering. “After all these centuries, Agatha Harkness will finally meet her end. Ugh, it really warms the heart.”

“You don’t have a heart,” Agatha snapped.

“Yes, I do.” Rio squeezed her hand, and stared intensely into Agatha’s eyes. “It’s black. And it beats for you.”

She raised Agatha’s hand to her mouth and licked it, dragging the flat of her tongue up Agatha’s palm without breaking eye contact. The moment she released it, Agatha snatched it back like she’d been burned. She didn’t have to look to know the cut had disappeared.

Rio shouldered past her with a wry chuckle and paused in the space where Agatha’s front door had been. She glanced down at the debris on the floor and then back at Agatha.

“Te veo,” she said softly before stepping through the doorway.

Agatha took a moment to collect herself—let her eyes fall shut and took a deep breath in and out—in an attempt to calm her racing heart and stormy mind. It didn’t do much good, and before she could think better of it, she scrambled towards the doorway, not even thinking about how bright it was outside until it was too late.

“Heh’ETSCHhiu! God f-fuh-fucking da—AT’TYSHieu!”

Rio was nowhere to be seen, but there was a part of Agatha swore she could almost hear her teasing laughter on the breeze. With a frustrated growl, Agatha turned and stalked back into her house. First order of business before fleeing the vengeance seekers: find some goddamn sunglasses until the last of this cursed fucking spell was out of her system.

#the question now is does it ACTUALLY wear off with the rest of the spell?? who's to say...#(cue r/io taking every opportunity on the road to test it)#also hey writing action scenes is so hard even when i'm literally just transcribing what's on the screen #aside from that tho i actually did have fun working on this one so i hope y'all like it!!#and now it's back to the trenches of my other projects 🫡#(also i realized this is thee most work i've put out for a single fandom in probably almost a decade and i do not plan on stopping)#(so beyond grateful to be this mentally ill about a tv show and have this creative outlet rn lol)#snzfic #a/gathario #a/aa #witchywrites #ME?! posting fic at a normal human time instead of 3am?? i know i'm shocked too. probably don't get used to it tho lol

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littlebigmouse · 21 days ago

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I caught up (I think?) on Spy x Family.

We interrupted your Elementary School Slice of Life to give you four straight chapters of "War is Hell" drama about one of their teachers and a nanny.

Jokes aside, between the "Veteran Charity Event" chapter, the segway into the teachers, Martha teaching Becky about propaganda and Yor advising Melinda to go to therapy (which she does!) Spy x Family is on an impeccable roll lately and I highkey love it?!

#when your story starts out bonkers funny but turns into good drama with thoughtout themes #that aside I loved how one line from Becky's dad immediately explained everything about her personality #and I love that Damian's two henchmen are always so much more into henchmanning than he is into the two of them actually being his henchmen #good stuff all around #I already liked when they did Loid's backstory back then but they're really putting the war into the cold war setting lately #one is left to wonder about the reason for the war in the first place tho #spy x family #sxf #sxf manga #sxf spoilers

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sysig · 7 days ago

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2024 Art Purge (Part 1)

Original Edition again! Another year of too many doodles between original and fanart that didn’t make the full cut over the course of the year - off we go!

I made some concept art for smol early in the year of a mushroom girl she had a dream about a while ago that she wanted to try making as a low-poly model sometime. Pretty sure we've narrowed it down to the original DS-era style of 3D models

And so some angular low-poly style doodles were also called for! She's so tiny haha

Around the same time I was thinking about ZEX's “Kissing Strangers” meme, I started considering what Charm's reaction to that one might be - I'm always trying to think of animation memes for her, I'd love to animate her sometime ♥ In the end, it was all a bit too weird! In a way it’s fitting, as the meme is all about Looking and not finding the one you want to kiss til the very end lol, but who would that even be! Who would Charm Want to kiss, I don't know...

[Purple Text] only got a very little bit of screentime this year, but they're just as weird and possessive as ever - once, forever and always, at least according to how they see things

Smol and I tried out a few different creative games over the course of the year - my favourite probably being the Crossover Wheel where we each put in our list of fandoms, including ones we share, and then imagine what a crossover would be like haha. House Hunted is one of hers, and she tossed the idea my way of looking at Zillow Listings (specifically this group) and imagining them as Realtors! I got the Sunflower House - you'll know it when you see it haha

Bit of a random one, but I thought the sheep from this little scene was hecka cute and needed to study her. Good shapes! Very adorable! I like her covered eyes quite a lot, and her spindly little legs, funny to me hehe

I also wanted to study her "Leg of Lamb" posing - can you tell this is memory vs. references lol. S'why references are so important! The original's delicate posing is very lovely! The soft positioning of her knees and ankles and the way she's fully reaching across herself with those fluffy "sleeves" are probably my favourite parts, it's a good pose!

Haven't done any Halfway Autumn concept art in a while-while, so why not come back with Diana's bathroom lol. Still a bit of work to be done, moving the door is probably the biggest point - having the leftmost wall lined with counter space is clearly the correct play here. I really like the shapes that naturally occur from isometric, like the way the shower curtain rod connects to "nothing" but it still reads as stopping at the wall! :D

All of this floorplanning just for some flavourtext about Diana's preferred style of hand soap haha. Foaming soap dispensers are the best! Makes everything much much clearer, definitely not just because I prefer it, it's totally objective! Haha

More bathroom flavourtext, either at the schoolhouse or the train station, or both! Since so much of the game is centered around Diana's needs, little things like what soap she uses actually impact the game! I wish something so simple wouldn't affect my day, but sensory needs are called needs for a reason :P

Started a Charm comic that unfortunately only got as far as the first panel haha - she's taking a class! Off to improve her skills at something in a group environment! Good for her :)

Or not, the sads are here :'0

Did a bit of Tsumtsum studying while drawing the Helix boys as such haha - I have one of those little Vocaloid not-Tsumtsums (they're only Tsumtsums if they're Disney, right?), and one full-sized Iron Man one that I studied the approximate shapes of the pattern from, they don't Look complex and they're probably not Actually that hard to make but there's still a good bit to them! 3D shapes, I swear

The 4th Wall group! Their poses and expressions changed a bit from start to finish, Cory once again looking at Bar - I don't think he's actually "seen" Bar's new design before this point! :0 They're all generally aware of each other but "actually interacting" is a whole other thing haha

The two stragglers, made Tala way too tiny here haha. And forgot her bow here, no wonder I forgot it for the full version too! Pfbtl, next time :P

A traditional version of the Just Desserts map! :D Made after putting the digital version together, just kind of loosely studied, general shapes good for mapmaking :) I quite enjoy the little mountain texture here over the one from the digital version! S'hard to make nice-looking shapes without my tablet but I really didn't want to use it Just for that haha, so nice shapes here! Gives me DQIX map vibes, just a little bit... All those little islands to sail to haha

Snake, snake, snaaake, it's a snaaaake ♪ Made for smol's Christmas exchange ostensibly, but really more of a spacefiller and to get into the swing of drawing snakes, the cute lads

Ball python in the style of a ball of yarn! I wouldn't mind wrapping up a plush snake, but the way real ball pythons curl up into a ball is too cute haha

Here was the Actual snake I ended up making for smol - as a bookmark! I printed a few different versions, coloured one like this with extra-dark spots for the scales, and glued on a ribbon-tongue, cut down the middle for a forked look! :D She liked it, and I like it! Double victory :)

A little sticker concept while my laptop was out for attempted repairs - can't save 'em all I suppose. I do like that the head mirror is a disc, the stethoscope is a mouse, cute little details even for an unfortunate set of circumstances

#Doodles #Original #Long post #I love when these are polite and don't break <3 #This being the smallest of the three may have been a contributing factor there lol #Expect only more! But for now! Enjoy what is here! Haha #So much for 2024 being the year of little saved back lol I'd argue it just keeps increasing year by year #Stuff I want to show off! Where to put them is the question every time #All these not-quite-finisheds or one-offs or small groupings or concept sketches that would spoil the final version - where to put them all!#Right here and right now haha #As usual there are some I want to return to! The Kissing Strangers meme would be weird but that also part of what makes it interesting #Specifically to do with a sona makes it more complicated feelings tho!#Maybe I can have her kiss the other sonas lol I'm obviously not above self-love♪ lol #Technically there are some fandom-adjacent things here - even a study! That's explicitly not original! But I thought it fit better here #Original Enough™ haha #Fewer eyes in this particular set but just you wait - it's a mainstay it's the only way to be haha #It's also an odd one to have the purge coming out Now - not just the timing lol but because that means after they're done that'll be it!#It'll all be 2025 art once the third set is out! :0 That's so unusual to have the purge and cast the year completely aside!#I'm not sure how I feel about it yet :0 But I'm glad to have had a little extra time to work on stuff while the end of the year was in chaos #Too much going on! Best to take things as they come :) Prepwork is all well and good but sometimes just going with the flow is good too!#So I'm happy with it ��

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dbphantom · 9 months ago

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I just had fun drawing this, that is all

#I haven't had fun drawing since I was like 8 so this was nice #I have considered forcing myself to post 1 panel a day. No matter the effort #That way if I'm on a roll I can just have a bunch stashed as backlog for a big moment panel I can put as much effort into as I want #Without feeling pressured on the other ones that are holding me back bc perfectionism #Like yeah you'd have to click through each one individual #I just fucking made hom/estu/ck again 😭#Jokes aside tho 👀#The idea appeals to me more and more each day #Cruddy rambles #Near posting

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akkivee · 1 year ago

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bonds are necessary for the true hypnosis mic to be used according to rei!!!! so bonds not only negate the effects on the target, but also on the user as well!!!!!

#this is vee speaking #the amount of love rei has can bring humanity to its knees i think #like i feel like that’s basically rei saying as long as you have love nothing can harm you/anything that’s broken can be fixed #i wonder what hypmic would have been like if all six divisions actually got to be in the series from the start lol #like i feel like i was right about rosasa being created for rei to get him into the battles #esp now that we know HIS agenda behind the drbs was to find a user #and in harmonious cooperation we learned you can share a mic so if the bond’s strong enough #they can withstand the effects together #oof i’m straying from my original thought lol but i like this train of thought better lol #chuuoku intentionally brought nagosaka in to utilise their bonds with ichiro and samatoki #so i can’t tell if chuuoku fully understood why the drbs were a thing???#but i assume so and ramuda and jakurai was just their easiest back up plan????#like tho half the teams were put together by choice the other half (posse dh bat) were government crafted #and setting aside posse for being crafted for watchdog reasons lol nagosaka were intentionally made and made using bonds #rei went to rosasa and bat’s connecting thread was hitoya #so i think chuuoku must have also been in on the drbs plan 🤔#and ramuda now that i’m thinking about it????#like he may not know the entire picture but he seemed to know when to step in to combat the true hypnosis mic effects hmm 🤔#lol look at me spontaneously building an observation from ground up thru tags again having food for thought is always fun lol

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waywardsalt · 2 years ago

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thoughts on totk now that i’ve beaten it

under the cut bc of length and bc there is honestly a fair bit of negative stuff

i don’t really think i can say that i liked totk.

it’s fine, it’s genuinely fucking incredible from a technical standpoint with ultrahand, recall, the three map layers and with how smoothly it ran for me. as a game it’s fine.

i’ll start with the things i dislike and end with what i actually liked

i honestly didn’t really like ultrahand? i disliked how much the game leaned on it, since so many puzzles and whatever just boiled down to ‘make something that’ll work’ and it just... it was far too clunky for me to really enjoy using it, outside of using some of the same few designs for traversal. there were a few times when i could see what the game wanted me to do with ultrahand and the given zonai parts and sometimes it just... didn’t work at all. more often than not ultrahand was frustrating for me to use so the game’s reliance on it just made it into a chore sometimes.

in a similar vein the dungeons were serious letdowns. i mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re fine, they had good themes and (mostly) had good aesthetics and general looks and identities to them, but the fact that they were just... basically twenty-ish minute little things was kind of disappointing. i hate that they all had the exact same ‘go hit x number of switches’ gimmick. it really limited what you could do and fucked with the dungeon design, too. the only one where that really worked for me was the fire temple, which was my favorite overall. the water temple was especially dismal, with the least inspired look and just being an astoundingly easy experience. the puzzles in those dungeons were so awfully easy, too, especially since half of the time they just hand you what you need so you barely need to really assess the situation and put a plan together

i hated the water dungeon’s little mini-areas where you do a single piss-easy puzzle to automatically get your prize, i hated the wind temple’s god damn ‘pull a lever and get your prize’ kind of puzzles, i hated how soul-crushingly disappointed i felt when i took a look at the lightning temple’s map and realized that every fucking floor had a singular room just for the switch puzzle. god forbid it’s as fun as the lowest level of that temple. i really miss stuff like mini-bosses or rooms where you have to do a puzzle in order to just... progress, i miss dungeons that i could get lost in or spend a while in or just had... something more interesting or some more substance so that i can’t just breeze through like it’s a glorified shrine. most of the puzzles in those dungeons were simpler than some shrines i did.

i didn’t care to do much exploration since there honestly isn’t much motivation to explore the surface map if you’ve already played botw, and the scarcity of materials this time really got to me, it took me a while to have a half-decent stock of materials, and i still had trouble not running out of stuff even though i was using amiibos to stock up on some things. the money situation was rough, too... a lot of things are cheaper to sell, but some armor is still really expensive plus you have to pay the great fairies to upgrade your equipment in addition to having the correct materials. that especially felt odd- having to grab a handful of (goddamn hard to get) lynel guts is hard enough to upgrade the soldier’s armor, but you want me to cough up 500 rupees, too??

(the scarcity of monster guts also got on my nerves, but i’ll just chalk that up to just some kind of really weird difficulty thing. it was annoying until i tracked down the stronger monsters.)

the story is probably the weakest part of the game to me. it’s really hard to have a baseline investment when you don’t care about these characters, anyway, and what i saw in this game’s story still failed to endear me to hardly any of them. link’s role frustrated me; he just comes off like a tool rather than a character this time through, he barely has any actual relevancy to the story segments beyond being the guy who can use the master sword and being the player’s vehicle to get from point a to b in the story. the blank stare and limited emoting worked in botw because... there’s a given reason for his lack of outward emotion in the past, plus he has no memory in the present. it makes sense. but this time around, he’s gotten memories in the years between this and the last game, but he just feels like a background character in most of the story beats.

he has no role in the memories and in the present just exists to gather some stuff for other people, he gets the master sword from zelda and then helps the other sages get their secret stones, but he’s barely addressed as his own character in the grand scheme of things unless he’s being directly spoken to. he’s just the swordsman capable of wielding the master sword and zelda’s chosen protector as far as the story is concerned. he has no opinions outside of doing what he’s told and looking for zelda. at least not as far as i could really tell. at least in botw, the story directly concerns him, and it’s his story we’re following. this time around zelda and the sages seem like the most important characters, link’s just... there, doing what he’s been told to.

the new sages are fine, none of them really endeared themselves to me, and i will say that making the player watch essentially the exact same cutscene each time you finish a dungeon was BAFFLING. they were long and you learned almost nothing new after the first one, and there was nothing done to make them very distinct to each individual pair of sages or their respective regions; at the very least, it could have been interesting to meet the ancient sages not in the exact same stone garden, but perhaps at the top of a snowy mountain for the rito, near a volcano or something for the goron, maybe in a shallow pool of water for the zora, and in the desert for the gerudo- but no, they’re all effectively the same thing just with the speaking character swapped out with some minor changes.

(the sages themselves are a pain in the ass to use, having to chase them down to activate their power or accidentally activating a power when you don’t want it; yunobo was honestly my favorite, but because i generally defaulted to having them all activated at all times, i had a lot of trouble with tulin blowing shit away from me when i was trying to grab it while midair. they’re half-decent for combat)

i didn’t really care for rauru or sonia, either. rauru in the present as a ghost was fine, he was kind of interesting and seemed to have changed from his time in the past, but he never managed to be a character i particularly liked. i wasn’t really a fan of his... arrogance? or something in the past scenes, and he never really came off as very interesting. sonia was nearly completely uninteresting which is a shame since she has an interesting design, she just felt delegated to the role of supporting rauru and zelda and then dying to motivate them.

ganondorf is a character i was really looking forward to seeing, and it really fucking sucks that he’s so god damn one-dimensional this time! the story can’t be fucked to delve into him beyond just giving us scenes that just tell us that he’s evil and wants to rule hyrule and get the secret stones and nothing else because fuck having complex villains, i guess. especially frustrating because within the game itself you can draw more interesting motivations up for him, but the game really just doubles-down on him being evil for the fuck of it and wanting to end the world because uhhhh... he’s evil don’t fucking worry about it

the ignoring of the triforce in this game sucks in that way, too, because the way the triforce works and how it can grant wishes made it a much more interesting goal for ganondorf to attain, rather than some poorly-named ‘secret stones’ that do nothing more than just amplify power or something. it sucks how black-and-white this damn story is and how it seems like it just wants to do away with any possible nuance or gray area. no one but the bad guys or side characters are flawed in any actually interesting or significant way.

at least ganondorf was still the most interesting character in the flashbacks.

and then zelda, oh god ZELDA. i honestly really liked her in botw. i liked how you saw her as a flawed, insecure, pressured teen, and how you saw her struggles to relate to link and how she eventually warmed up to him. you saw her as a flawed person who develops and as someone who cares deeply about her friends and her duties and gets frustrated by her failings.

and then in totk a lot of her more interesting traits- her interest in sheikah tech, her excitement over field study and research, her more defining traits as this incarnation of zelda- are basically sanded down and she’s just this perfect flawless princess with great power and an insanely passive role in the past beyond finally taking some kind of action after one of her friends dies and she’s pushed to the brink. cool. great.

she has practically no flaw in totk. if anyone in the present talks about her, they have nothing bad to say and just want to please her and follow her orders, she is right in telling the gerudo how to train their troops she is right even when misheard to tell people to put themselves in danger and she is hardly meaningfully questioned when her imposter is doing very clearly suspicious shit. neither the story nor any of the characters wants to let her be flawed. she’s just perfect in damn near every way and barely retains any interesting characterization she got in botw. there are some interesting snippets in her being a teacher and setting up memorials to those who died in the calamity, but there’s hardly any more than that, and it makes it really hard for me to give a damn about her. she’s not interesting this time.

the whole thing with zelda becoming a dragon too, is... it’s fine. it’s ok. but the fact that she turns back at the end with no problem whatsoever is one hell of a fucking misstep. why talk about draconification being forbidden for a good reason anyways if it doesn’t actually matter anyways??? if you never actually see any of those fucking repercussions why even bring them up??? i really feel like it would have been more effective for there to have been actual consequences for zelda beyond just fucking flying around half-conscious for a millennium or whatever- have her lose her memory when she’s brought back! there you go! there’s the reason why draconification is forbidden! there’s the thing about losing yourself! plus, zelda losing her memories as a result would mirror link having lost his memories in botw! that has so much more weight and significance then ‘oh uh ignore the warnings from a while back she’s completely fine dw abt it’ i hate that she’s back just like that without any of the consequences that the game suggests.

the dragon’s tears in general kinda just felt weaker than botw’s memories anyways bc you’re more just. watching stuff happen then actually learning anything. it has less characters and yet i feel like you only get to know like half of the important ones. like three of them are all about the same event. a few times they just replay parts of old memories in new ones. if they ever reference a past memory they just show you what they’re referencing instead of leaving you to piece it together. just play the voices or something don’t break the flow of things to play a clip of something i’ve already seen.

plus the fact that totk... barely acknowledges that it’s a sequel to botw really rubs me the wrong way. i understand that loz is extremely loose with its lore, but totk is a direct sequel set in the same world a few years later, and yet the events and characters of botw have might as well been forgotten and its all either ignored, brushed aside, or straight up replaced by something else for no good reason. the continuity between these games is absolutely dismal and to see the different ways in which the events and concepts or botw are just... disregarded really just left a bad taste in my mouth.

just- i love good stories and worlds in video games, and while some games can coast by for me by feeling good to play, having a good and engaging story and characters is usually essential to my enjoyment of a game, and when i don’t care about to the point of disliking the story and characters, and when none of the important areas are fascinating or distinct enough from each other, and when the game even fails to really reel me in with the gameplay...

i wanted to like totk, but it really just did not work for me. i just ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed and even sometimes bored with all of the major stuff and man. totk is really, REALLY, not for me, and it just left me wanting to play older zelda games instead.

...

HOWEVER! there were actually some things i really loved about totk! it’s not all doom and gloom! (well, not all doom, at least)

so! the music was great! not all of it really fit or made a lot of sense with the context in which they played or failed to evoke the feeling they were meant to, but the new tracks in this game were great! i especially love the first two phases of the fire temple’s theme, the depths music, and most of the new battle and boss themes. zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music.

i did genuinely like the fire temple- yunobo’s ability was used the best in this dungeon, and it had the best five switches gimmick, i loved how you had to hit the gongs (sometimes having to construct a path to account for the weaknesses of yunobo’s ability) and how it then ‘scared’ each of the five statues holding a part of the gate- it was very cute and fit in very well with the general feel of that part of the story. it was the best in terms of difficulty and complexity, but it didn’t have the best boss- the lightning temple had the best boss, and i will admit that even if most of them were easy, i really enjoyed the mirror puzzles, as well as the process to unlocking the dungeon. the wind temple had my favorite visual identity and aesthetic, though, i liked it being a part of this old rito song, and how it was the most distinct in looks from the other dungeons.

the sky islands were honestly fun, even if they weren’t all that interesting. getting to some of the harder-to-reach islands were some of my favorite times i had to use ultrahand, and stuff like the zonai forge island and the one orblike island with the mirror puzzle, and pretty much all of the more complicated parts of the sky islands were a lot of fun to explore and figure out.

being able to ride on the dragons was just really cool, and the fact that they come out of the chasms was fun.

the new horns for the monsters were cool, it helps differentiate the different monster strengths and i just thought they were really neat.

the quest with lurelin village was fun, even if the pirates just being monsters was a real let-down.

the stable trotters were also a fun bunch of characters, that was a good, new way to open up fairy fountains.

all of the new stuff with the yiga was really fun, like getting their outfit and being able to pretend to be one of them and learning the blademaster attack- so much fun it was so cute.

most of the new outfits are really good and useful, and while a bit janky and not that great, the house-building bit near tarrey was endearing.

while none of the main characters interested me, i really, especially liked tauro and yona and penn. for some reason they just appealed to me and i really wish they had bigger parts in the game because they’re interesting and they have good designs and i’d really like to know more about them.

the underground gerudo shelter was pretty cool, to be honest, and the look of the caves was really cool.

i adored the proving grounds shrines- easily my favorite shrines in the entire game, i had no problem spending a decent amount of time in those kinds of shrines, they were fantastic.

the new ingredients and recipes and new weapons were cool.

the way you basically return to the area you started at on your way to ganondorf is pretty cool, that whole path is really neat.

ganondorf in general was a pretty cool boss, even if he ended up being kind of easy for me. the whole final boss sequence was neat.

by FAR, though, my absolute favorite part of this game was 100% the depths. the fact that there was just an entire second layer to the map that was the same size as the surface, just inverted and dark and filled with new bosses and locations... i spent hours down there without going back up to the surface and absolutely had a BLAST screwing around in the dark, lighting up my path with brightblooms and tossing together little vehicles with lights so that i could get to the next lightroot off in the distance. the depths was probably where i ended up using zonai vehicles the most, and it was honestly pretty fun to go around spotting and reaching every lightroot, coming across different mines and weird little landforms and coliseums and yiga camps. the music and plantlife and look of the depths were so good, and it really felt distinct from the rest of the game in a very good way. doing all of the lightroots and getting enough zonaite to max out link’s energy cells was definitely a good move since it made finding shrines and dealing with later zonai machine stuff easier.

overall, tears of the kingdom was a severely mixed bag for me, and while there was stuff i did like, i don’t think it’s enough to really get me to say that i really liked this game overall- after all most of the stuff i disliked was unavoidable parts of the games, and it definitely put a hamper on my interest in the rest of the time. totk is fine, but it’s really not my thing.

#i just- *slams head into brick wall* bro i did not have a good time with this game #going back to my silly little comparison point; totk was $70 and my copy of phantom hourglass was $70 #$70 is a bullshit amount for a game but thats no the point here #totk from a technical baseline standpoint as a GAME is worth $70 #its story and the amount of enjoyment it gave me was not worth $70 tho. the story and enjoyment i got from ph was more worth $70 to me #salty talks #loz #legend of zelda #totk #'zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music' if you talk shit abt ph's soundtrack i'll kill you. i like the dungeon track #i partially have the shinji chair image saved for this but i did also initally save it yesterday when i finished nge #listen this was fine on a surface level but it just wore me the fuck down #link was just some flavor of stonefaced or surprised or determined in any given cutscene and like. idk. wasnt too interested in him either #look i know about the silly little dialogue options. still didnt do it for me #link getting his arm back only makes sense to me bc i got every last light of blessing and heart container and stamina vessel #the gloom in his body is 100% gone hes squeaky clean for me. whyd you take his shirt off tho. at least keep his hat. cant take it seriously #put him in the archaic set or smth his arm is fully visible that way at least and its full circle thats what he wears at the start #couldnt take the whole grabbing zelda sequence seriously bc i missed the (hold) prompt and link flew away lol #totk spoilers #also wasnt really a fan of most of the voice acting yeah sorry. kinda rough all around aside from like ganondorf and dimitri- i mean rauru #mineru and the rito sage were fine too ig. im not going to bother watching any vids or whatever to check again #riju and sidon were fine too #sonia was cool too but everyone else was a lil rough tbh esp with having to say 'secret stone' that name sucks shit #my switch died in the middle of the credits. i had like 25% when i started fighting ganondorf.#it died twice actually cuz i charged it for a few minutes and what like yeah 5% should be good and nope. died again #anyways whatever. im not giving it a rating im tired of this game i dont think i'll be replaying or even just touching it any time soon #music was top notch again tho. made me feel stuff more than the actual story did. cool ig #bitching abt totk

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