#real ones remember the first iteration of this I posted

[scarymonsters-andsupercreeps]

More David Bowie!

[poorsallystitches]

A newbie's guide to The Lost Tomb franchise/Dao Mu Bi Ji/The Graverobber's Chronicles

I have seen people all over the internet asking questions on posts about DMBJ such as, where to start, what it is, and who are those cutie pies? You may have seen images similar to this

I, as someone who has watched a lot of the franchise and read at least half of the books (which if you knew how many there were, that would be impressive), I want to take a moment, or many, to explain to anyone who wants the answer to these questions. This will take a while, I cannot shut up, especially about them.

Spoiler free!

Now, first things first, what is Lost Tomb/DMBJ/Graverobber's Chronicles?

Lost Tomb is a Chinese Franchise comprised of a multitude of dramas and movies over the course of a decade that were all made by different people and actors to tell the story written in the novel series, The Graverobber's Chronicles, or its original Chinese title Dao Mu Bi Ji, written by Nan Pai San Shu.

This means that popular characters people will refer to will have many different faces. Such as all of these being Wu Xie

You may recognize any of those actors if you watch popular Cdramas, 1st Zhu Yilong who plays Shen Wei in Guardian, 2nd Zeng Shunxi who plays Xiao Bao in Mysterious Lotus Casebook, and 3rd Hou Minghao who was recently in Fangs of Fortune as Zhu Yan.

But, what is it about?

Lost Tomb as a franchise is loosely about a man named Wu Xie who is the last in a family line of graverobbers, but he himself has been kept out of the loop by the family. He has had his grandfather's journal since he passed away, which makes him take an interest in the family business. This leads him to force his uncle to let him tag along with him on tomb raiding adventures.

I feel it is important to tell people what they may encounter just in case they have sensitivities, so this franchise as a whole contains supernatural themes of ghosts, zombies, gods, etc. There will be blood, BUGS, and some body horror in a lighter portion, if you have any questions about specifics feel free to ask.

Now, let's skip to who those cutie pies are before telling you about the options for where to start.

The characters you may have seen around that got you interested may be

Wu Xie, the main character who is played a little differently in every iteration of the story but mainly think of a man with a high level of intelligence, but the worst luck in the world and some bitchy attitude (said with love) and you'll have him. You saw some of the most popular actors to play him up top.

Zhang Qiling/Xiao Ge (young master)/Menyouping (Poker-face), one of the main characters who is the strong, emo, silent, tatted sweety of the story. He is mysterious on purpose; you're not meant to know much about him at any given time. Him and Wu Xie are very close and with the next character, they form what is widely known in book, show, and fandom as the Iron Triangle. Just meaning the three are a package deal and won't be separated.

Wang Pangzi, the chubby, stylish, tough, bitchier than Wu Xie, lovable bastard. His name actually translates to Fatty, so that is what you will see everyone call him. It's not mean, just accurate. Pretty much everyone has real names and nicknames they go by. Remember, they are doing something illegal.

It's less likely, but you may have seen my personal favorite boys Hei Xiazi or Hei Yanjing (black glasses or black blind, you'll see why) and Xie Yuchen or Xiao Hua (little flower). They are the black/pink dynamic of the century for me. Hei Xiazi is a merc for hire and Xiao Hua is Wu Xie's cousin who has become the patriarch of his family at a young age.

Now, last question that people ask the most, where do I start?

There is no right or wrong answer, you can start chronologically with Mystic Nine, release order with Lost Tomb 2015, a mixture of both, leave out the ones you aren't interested in (*cough* Time Raiders movie), or just jump in in the middle. Each adaptation is aware of the fact that people will not have seen the others, and they will try to speed run the story to you, which can confuse people, but if you just want to experience the story with familiar faces, it won't be too bad.

To share my experience. I started with the Lost Tomb 2015, continued with Lost Tomb 2 2019, skipped Explore with the Note 2021 because I didn't vibe with it, Ultimate Note, started the prequels with Mystic Nine, which is a prequel with our character's ancestors, watched The Hei Xiazi and Xie Yuchen movie, started Reunion, watched a prequel movie and just started reading the books. I was never super confused because I had the set-up of the first 2 to build upon.

If you are a completionist like me and want to read the novels go to Merebear's blog. She is phenomenal and she has translated pretty much everything for your reading pleasure and laid it all out in an easy-to-follow way. I cannot give her enough gratitude. I absolutely adore her and all of her efforts as well as all her helpers along the way.

Now just a little gay propaganda about Lost Tomb franchise. The novels and shows are not canonically gay, but I mean... they are giving something.

[redmimosas]

"kastle shippers who think Frank could get a happy ending don't understand the character"

Sigh. I remember after DD s2 when it was "kastle shippers who think there's anything between Frank and Karen don't understand the character at all. His heart died with his family. He can never have romantic feelings for another woman after Maria"...

And yet, here we are 3 shows and 9 years later and Frank Castle canonically has romantic feelings for Karen Page. LOL

What's so difficult to understand about the fact that mcu/netflix Frank is a different iteration of the character and so doesn't necessarily have to have the same fate as his comicbook version?

No one's expecting Frank and Karen to ride off into the sunset or relocate to the countryside to live on a farm. But if you don't see how Karen was framed as a possible potential "after" for Frank, then maybe you weren't paying attention.

Frank is older, weaker, using pills for his pain and for the first time in Frank Castle history, he's fallen hard for someone after Maria (please don't mention him & Elektra in the comics, it was hot but not the same or close). Everything about him having romantic feelings for someone post tragedy is new. It's never happened before with any other version of Frank, comics or screen. There's no benchmark to hold it to. So quite literally, anything could happen. It just depends on what the show runner decides to do. The character has to be retired at some point and they're not killing him off. He can't remain static forever, that works for comicbooks, not for tv. There's also only so many times they can have him reject Karen and choose war over her. Been there, done that. Next.

Does all this mean they'll definitely end up together? No. But it means that it's a very real possibility for the first time ever for a version of Frank (if the writers are bold enough to take on something so complex and challenging as opposed to going the safer simpler route, and if they'll be given the time to do so; a kastle endgame would require more seasons). And kastle fans aren't wrong or misunderstanding Frank's character by wanting or hoping he and Karen do end up together somehow in the frigging mcu.

[northern-passage]

what have i been up to?

i decided to do a little check-in type post just to let you all know what i've been working on. i know things have been quiet here, mainly because i'm just not as active on social media as i used to be (but especially here)

i have been working on tnp, though. i've been rewriting chapter 2 (what was previously chapter 1) and i know a lot of people complain about rewrites but the fact was simply that i had written myself into a corner; when it comes to IF, when you have a lot of stats and branching and variations to track, you get to a point where it simply does not make sense to try and force it, and i really needed to go back and fix my coding and cut a lot of variables. which is what i've been doing, and many of you have seen how that's changed the game so far with the rewritten prologue (now chapter 1).

with that in mind, i've also done a lot of worldbuilding. again, you've seen some of this if you saw the pantheon post i made a while ago (though some of that has changed already, too, along with more edits to chapter 1 😅) and i've put a lot more thought into the setting, how the world "works" and the different relationships between countries and cultures, etc.

i will be yapping about all of that under the cut if you're interested, but if not, just know i am still working on the game. i do not have an estimated timeline for an update, but i am trying very hard to get chapter 2 out this year.

anyways, my rambling:

one of the main changes will be how Gael and Adrania function. Gael and Adrania remain similar in essence but the relationship has changed, as has the source of their hostilities. i've also put a lot more thought into the way gender roles would work in this world, something that i've previously been a bit wishy-washy on. reading more fantasy and studying lectures on the craft and understanding the way oppression works in the real world has allowed me to brainstorm a better, more realized world with tnp.

that being said, i still stand by my original goal with this project, which is that i'm not really interested in writing violent/graphic misogyny, transphobia, or homophobia. but i am interested in exploring the way empires hold power, and for tnp, that has always been through money and trade. even in the very first iterations, the major cities like blackwater and king's harbor are designed with very clear and purposeful class divides, i've just put a lot more thought into how this would actually work.

and there is also the influence of the gods; when your major religious figurehead is revered as a "mother," as well as the enforcer of justice, what does that mean for the world and the women in it? when you have gods that are genderless or genderfluid, how does that change societies perception of trans people, and gender as a whole?

i struggled when i started tnp about how to depict gender in this world, and originally i simply chose not to give it much thought, and i used a lot of anachronisms rather than actually trying to explore what transness and gender within the context of tnp would look like (i think this was my biggest mistake with Lea at the start. if you remember that you're a real one lol). and i think that's a cop out and simply not how any society would work. Adrania is an empire; people will be forced to comply to various roles and expectations in order for this empire to retain control.

so this led me to 1. reimplement the tolls, something that was present in my very first draft but got scrapped before publishing for the first time. it's easy to control people when you have papers and tolls to track them (or restrict their movements if they don't have the "correct" papers). 2. expand on the relationship between Gael and Adrania. where did these two countries come from? when did they split? how has Adrania managed to grow in power while Gael has not? and how has the plague exacerbated the hostilities? etc. we'll see a lot of this explained in the next chapter (as well as some edits made to chapter 1 again), with Adrania's trade agreements and how they exclude Gael specifically.

and finally, what gender roles are people expected to play within society? if Adrania's main god is a woman (okay, a wolf, but you get it) and a mother and also known to be a ruthless dispenser of justice, what does this mean for Adranian men and women? if their god of death is genderless and also commonly represented as a god of dreams and transitions (from life to death and wakefulness to dreams and from one gender to another or beyond) how does this impact the trans people in this world? if the god of war and harvest is sometimes a woman and sometimes a man, who benefits from elevating one depiction over the other?

lots of fun questions! which i think has led to some interesting changes in the game which makes the world feel more real. it also gives me a reason (not that i "needed" one but, ya know *gestures vaguely*) for all of the women i have in combat leadership roles: Keres, Hadrien, and Merry, just to name a few, and why someone like Redwine would be disliked and challenged as a political, landowning leader instead (and ultimately replaced by a man). while all the warrior gods are women (Wolfmother, the Moon, Stormbringer), Adrania emphasizes the male depiction of the Sun, which leads to this divide of men seeking landownership and more administrative political roles, versus women who, outside of motherhood, make careers as generals and captains and knights.

with trans people, there are similar expectations, of course, but they are also pushed towards more spiritual roles due to their perceived kinship with the death god as well as the Sun (and this also means that while motherhood is revered in this world, there is a looser definition here than in our world, due to transness being acknowledged, accepted, and an integral part of society. what "motherhood" is and what it means to people will be explored heavily in game, you just have to trust me on this one!) obviously there is a real history of trans people being seen this way, and it's something i've turned over in my head for a while. beyond the spiritual, though, trans people are seen in every other role as well, and we'll see some trans people who have little to no relationship with religion or the death god (like Merry, Lea, Clementine, Rodrick, and Rafe) and others that have an actively hostile relationship with it (Noel. lol) and including the potentially trans mc, we see a diverse depiction of trans people, as hunters and watchers and captains and healers and bards, etc. i'm hoping this still gives a well-rounded, multi-faceted look at how trans people live in this world without pigeonholing them solely as "divine oracles," or othering them from their cis counterparts.

overall, i feel that i've matured as a writer since i started tnp and i want that to reflect in the world as well. rereading the original demo made me cringe and a lot of it just felt very childish and flat, and i feel like i really didn't have a strong enough grasp on the fantasy genre, nor the skills and knowledge required to do proper, intensive worldbuilding at the time. now i think the story and setting and characters have grown a lot and i'm more capable and confident to do the things that past me couldn't. anyways thanks for reading all this, this post was just an excuse for me to talk about everything because i'm dying keeping it all to myself LOL. i look forward to catching back up to chapter 3 and finally sharing it all with you eventually!

[everlastingday]

been feeling a bit meh about my writing recently tbh hence jumping all over the place with my wips to try and find something that i don't hate 😭 but here's a little snippet of the teen jonah post-canon fic (assuming the adoption denial gets reversed, obviously).

thanks to @thisbuildinghasfeelings, @annoyingcloudearthquake, @paperstorm, and @lemonlyman-dotcom for the tags! 💜

--

As he puts his phone away, Jonah wants to roll his eyes. TK’s not a helicopter parent or anything, but sometimes he gets big feelings and Jonah doesn’t really know what to do with them. He supposes it’s allowed today, though, on the anniversary of his adoption, and the first one where he’s a legal adult. He remembers how TK sobbed the day he turned 18, and the three of them ended up in a group hug, tears spilling all over his birthday cake.

Jonah doesn’t call them “Dad”, or “Papá”, or any other iteration of the word. Not to their faces, anyway. By the time he was old enough to really understand his unconventional little family, they’d been TK and Carlos to him for so long, it would just feel weird to change that. But in his heart, and when anyone else asks about his parents, their faces are the only ones that come to mind. TK and Carlos always make sure to remind him about his other parents, the ones whose genes he inherited, but if Jonah’s being completely honest, he doesn’t remember them. The only parents he knows are TK and Carlos.

Memory is a funny thing, a catch-22. Every time you access a memory, it becomes more and more distorted and unreliable, but if you never access it all, then it eventually just fades away into nothing. Jonah has some vague memories from before he came to live with TK and Carlos – the face of a woman with the most beautiful, warm smile hovering over him, a deep voice with an accent he can’t quite place, a boarding school with an uncomfortable bed and a grey room with terrible fluorescent lights – but they’re so hazy and unclear that he sometimes thinks that maybe he just made them up. He can sense in his gut that they’re at least partially real, but he also knows they’ve been shaped by the stories that TK and Carlos told him about his early childhood. It’s hard to know what part of those memories are his, and what part of those are theirs.

--

open tag & no-pressure tagging a few people under the cut!

@heartstringsduet @whatsintheboxmh @nancys-braids @welcometololaland @reyesstrand @captain-gillian @bonheur-cafe @carlossreaders @lightningboltreader @eclectic-sassycoweyes @firstprince-history-huh @carlos-in-glasses @nisbanisba @henrygrass @emsprovisions @futures-tense

let me know if you want to be added/removed, and please feel free to tag me as well, i love seeing what everyone else is working on! 💜

[blizzardfluffykpop]

Saturday Night

Summary: The same ole routine with your friend with benefits on Saturday night. Unless?

Oneshot

Smut, PWP, Fluff?, Friends With Benefits to Lovers au

If you are a minor, please do not read/engage with this post. This is an 18+ work. 

Warnings: PWP, Grinding, Dry humping, Slight Possessiveness (m! & r! receiving), Unprotected sex (pls practice safe sex), Marking (r! receiving), Scratching (m! receiving), Degradation (r! receiving), Praise?, (other sexual encounters occur while fwbs but they’re not cheating!), Use of pet names: Baby and Slut (and iterations of them) *And if I missed any pls lmk!*

Word Count: 1,809

Sunwoo X Afab!Reader

[A/n: I’ve had this in the works since Cotton Candy came out- and I had a dream this was posted and I found out it wasn’t. So here it finally is. Bc of the title, I will recommend Saturday Night by The Misfits, not necessary to listen to tho.]

Again, if you are a minor, please do not read/engage with this post. This is an 18+ work. 

------

It’s a Saturday night, like it always is when Sunwoo comes over in his black hoodie and gray sweatpants. It’s like clockwork when he turns up. Nothing ever changes your routine. While you try different positions and elements, the end goal is always the same. And you always wake up to an empty bed in the morning. It isn’t the first time you’ve wished for it to be different. It probably won’t be the last. You’d always hope that when you awoke on Sunday morning, he’d hold onto you and never let go. But you knew and lived the reality. It was never going to happen. You were friends with benefits, nothing more, nothing less. You’d have to be okay with that someday or quit seeing him altogether. Neither option ever sounds satisfying, but maybe next Saturday, you’ll know which is best for you. For now, you choose Sunwoo. 

You sit down beside him, and you ask him about his week. And he tells you about how he produced a new track that he’s excited to share with his fans. You ask him to send you it when it comes out so you can listen, and he agrees. And that’s when he asks, “Well, how was your little date this week?” You can’t help but smile as you remember, “Oh, with Youngmin?” He hums, and you tell him, “He was so sweet. He brought me flowers and treated me to dinner.” He waits for you to continue, and when you don’t, he says, “Did you go further?” You look down at your sweatpants before he teases, “Oh, you did~ Didn’t you, my dirty little baby.” You groan, “Shut up. I don’t want to talk about it…” He smirks, “Oh, why not?” You sigh, “He was good...” He continues teasing, “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about that~” You look at him with a slight glare, “He did even better than you.” He pouts, “Aw, baby... Don’t play me like that~” You roll your eyes before looking down and scoff, “Like what?” Sunwoo smirks before leaning towards you to whisper in your ear, “Like we both don’t know that I fuck you best.” You roll your eyes, “Sunwoo, as if.” He grabs your chin, turns your face to him, and you refuse to look at him, “Oh, you’re being real protective of him, aren’t you? Why’s that?” He tucks a hair behind your ear, “Was it because he brought you flowers? I could do that for you... all you ever had to do was ask~” 

You shake your head as much as you can in his grasp, “No... you made it very clear we’re just friends with benefits... And friends with benefits don’t do that…” He huffs, rolling his eyes, “You and I both know we’re more than that.” You glare at him, “Really, Sunwoo? Because you have a funny way of showing it. You show me endless pleasure, and then you disappear the second the sun touches the night sky.” He gives you a pointed look, “You’re the one who told me to leave before the sun rose.” You sigh, knowing he was right. It was your one boundary, but oh, how you wished he didn’t listen, and he asks, “Well, what if… I don’t want to be friends with benefits anymore. Would you let me sleep next to you in your bed through the morning?” You finally look at him, “What do you mean?” And his voice drops as he asks, “What if we became exclusive? And you became mine? All mine… and no one else’s. Just as I would do for you.” You gulp, “You mean it? You’re not just saying that… Are you?” He locks his eyes on yours before grasping your jaw as his tone turns serious, “I mean it.” You search his eyes as you ask, “You promise?” “Promise.” He seals it with a kiss. And you tell him when you part, “I want to see you there in the morning.” 

He drops his hand from your chin, lifts you up, and pulls you onto his lap. You smile as you grind your hips into his. You put both of your hands underneath his jaw and pull him in for another kiss. “Your lips are so kissable.” He smiles as he pecks your lips, “Mine? What about yours, beautiful?” He puts his hand into your hair, kissing you deeply as you grind harder down onto him, desperate for some friction. He lifts you up with one arm around your waist and the other still in your hair, pushing you against the wall. You wrap your legs around his waist as he grinds up against your clothed core. He parts as he looks you into your eyes, “The way you look drives me insane. I want you more than just one day a week.” He captures your lips in a heated kiss as your fingers find their way into his hair. You grind down into his hips, trying to get more friction. And he mumbles into your lips, “My greedy little baby…” And you let out a hum before capturing his lips again. His hips grind harder into yours as he makes out with you, chasing the friction. Your fingers wind into his hair tighter as he draws you closer to the edge. You squeeze your eyes before whispering, “Sunwoo…” He groans, “Wh-what?” “I need you now…” He groans, “Fuck, okay. Yeah… Me too.” He quickly moves you both from the wall and carries you to your bedroom. 

When he finally gets inside, he drops you against your bed, devouring your mouth. His fingers take the place of his hips, rubbing over your sweats, and you whimper, “You like that, don’t you, my little slut~” He teases you over them as he gives you a hickey, “You’re going to take all of me?” You nod, and he grinds his palm down as his fingers push into your entrance through the layers. You whine at the lack of friction, and he grins, laying another hickey on your collarbone. As he feels how wet you are through both fabrics, “All of this is just for me now, baby?” You huff, “Shu-Shut up and fuck me already.” His smirk grows wild as he teasingly pulls up your shirt, “But baby, it’s so much more fun to tease you~” You groan, “Sunwoo! If you don’t stop tea-” He cuts you off by kissing you, and your eyes close instantly as you kiss back. You feel his fingers slip up and under your shirt, tickling up your sides, and he breaks the kiss to take off your shirt before he takes off his black hoodie. You let your eyes wander, and he smirks as he makes a little show of shimmying out his sweats and briefs. He shoots you a wink as he finishes, and you roll your eyes as you make grabby hands for him, and he comes back, “You’re so needy for me, baby…” 

He kisses you again before he kisses down your neck and whispers, “How did I ever fuck anyone else when I had you…” You sigh and mumble, “I’m not sure how I did either. No one can compare to you…” He chuckles against your skin, “That’s right, baby. I’m all you’ll ever need. And you’ll be all I’ll ever need.” You hum as he makes his way down your arm, laying kiss after kiss before pulling his chin up to kiss his lips again before murmuring, “You best believe it... Now that you have me completely. You’re stuck with me.” His lips curl into a smile, “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” He kisses you again before breaking away to pull off your sweats, “You’re so wet for me, baby… Do I turn you on that much?” He rubs you over your panties, grinning at the wet spot, and you sigh, “Sunwoo, please…” He teases, “What do you want, baby~” You groan, “You in me now…” He smiles, taking off your panties before running his fingers over your folds, slipping them inside for a second, and you groan in frustration, “Sunwoo!” He laughs before lining himself up with your entrance and moans as he gets his tip in, “F-fuck…” You whine, wanting him to fill you up already, and he laughs again, “Okay! Okay! I’m moving!” Which makes you let out a little laugh before he pushes in fully. You both sigh in relief, finally feeling complete. 

You dig your nails into his shoulders as he thrusts into you faster. He slows down just as you start getting close, and you glare at him. And he asks, “Did he even make you cum?” You shake your head as you whine out, “No.” He tuts as he rubs your clit, “You deserve so much more, honey. And you know I can give that to you.” He picks his pace back up, timing his pace with each swirl of his hand. It has you screaming out, and he can’t help but smirk as you do. “That’s it, baby, scream for me. Let all your neighbors know who fucks you so well.” You cry out as you grow closer and closer to your high, “You getting close, baby?” You nod, and he pulls you down towards him, burying his hips into yours before thrusting even faster. He groans, “F-fuck…” You shake your head, “I can’t…Sunwoo, I’m gonna cum. Please.” He nuzzles his head into your collarbone, “With me, baby. Come on, let’s make this time count.” You nod, “O-Okay… You’re- You’re close, right?” “S-So close, baby.” You cry, and he rubs your clit faster before he says, “Now.” Stars hit your vision with how tightly you close your eyes as cum as Sunwoo fills you up. His thrusts slow down, and he rides your guy’s orgasms out. And you push at his chest as he starts to overstimulate you, and he slowly pulls out. “Fuck…” He lays down over you, “Yeah…” 

And next thing you know, it’s a few hours before you should wake up for errands. You look at the clock to feel someone gently nudging you awake. You crack your eyes open to see Sunwoo looking over you, “They called me in early for practice…” “Oh…” He sighs, “Yeah… I want to stay the whole morning, but uh, I have to go in a few.” You nod, and he gives you a long kiss, “Tonight.” You hum, “Tonight?” He smiles, “Let’s go on our first official date.” When it’s time to wake up, you find a bouquet of your favorite flowers in the vase on your kitchen island. You giggle, feeling giddy as you see them, and read the tag, “One of many bouquets I’ll get you from here on out, my dear.” You shake your head as you head out, excited for your date later tonight. 

[moonsglare]

ooooh after reading your two eleanor posts i just have to ask for more of your thoughts. That woman is SO handsome and underrated i need her badly 😮‍💨

OK SO to be honest i have some minor gripes about her writing......... eleanor spoilers utc

but like imo i think the story could've been more interesting if eleanor knew about her past as jianghe from the start, or at least most of it if not all. to me it would've made everything just so much more OOMPH yk? like in this case eleanor would be over the moon to find mc/fuguang again, but because mc doesn't know about their past life she has to keep it to herself. which throws her off a little but the more time she spends with mc as mc and not the shadow of fuguang the more she comes to like the person mc is now. at the same time, it could be a way for eleanor to achieve that simple life she couldn't have with fuguang in the past as a cultivator. ofc this means eleanor would beef ON SIGHT with nyx, but that's a sacrifice i'm willing to make LMFAO. eleanor would be a lot more protective of mc around nyx, and i think it'd help flesh out nyx's character to in some way since their beef gets more screentime. it would also help with eleanor's house arrest arc; maybe before eleanor's visit to mc's house, she rationalised nyx's presence to be that maybe, "chimei" has been reformed and no longer exists and despite how annoying nyx is she's still just a human girl who happens to be annoyingly clingy to mc. but after eleanor runs into bell and bell accidentally spills the tea about how nyx is still chimei, eleanor could pivot hard into her paranoia for mc's safety and it would feel less like the plot suddenly turned up to 10 out of nowhere.

other bonuses of this adjusted storyline would be that i get Soulmateism and "i'll find you in every life" in my yuri and that's like drugs to me frankly. but also i feel like there's just something so tragically beautiful if el remembers her past life because it just means jianghe loved fuguang so, so much that both it and her grief and guilt transcends lifetimes. jianghe loved so strongly it haunted her and it still haunts her, every iteration of her. pre-mc jianghe/eleanor would be someone defined by their grief, by a profound sense that something inside her is missing, that there's a void there she'll never be able to fill. which ALSOOOO makes a convenient excuse for el to interact with her sister more, or at least, we get to know more about el through cassidy's eyes beyond "she's a hardass older sister". in this version maybe cass notices that, for as long as they've been alive, she's always seen this emptiness in el that nothing has been able to fill... until mc. mc's introduction into el's life is the first time cass has ever seen el so alive, wanting to do something out of her own volition and not because it's what she should do to repay their adoptive parents, or to succeed financially in life or whatever. with mc, el is finally whole. do you see how this is making me insane.

i'n this vein i'd also change eleanor's BE. from what i know of it, she fawking DIES, which is diabolical but also not the worst thing that could happen to el. the REAL worst thing that can happen to el is if mc dies again. at least if el dies and mc survives, she still corrects her weakness if her past life. if mc dies? that means nothing's changed, she's still the weak, pathetic jianghe she was before, a cultivator worth nothing if she cannot save even the one she loves. this is the pure el torture ending full of nothing but TORMENT <333

ok that's enough of my au nonsense, on to el as she is in game and like. 10/10 most perfect girlboyfriend NO NOTES !! she's just so effortlessly charismatic, able to toe the line where she's not overtly flirty but definitely has no problem making you smile. she has this boyish but princely charm to her and i LOVE it so much... like she's a very relaxed and nonchalant person on the surface who is really social but i love how you can tell that she really tunes in and cares about what mc has to say or how she feels. eleanor dgaf but she becomes a fake dgafer when mc walks into the room and she thinks she hides it really well but I SEE THROUGH YOU ELEANOR SI !!! I SEE THROUGH YOU !!!! I SAW YOU YEARNING !!!! ugh i love her so bad she truly caught me by surprise w the blorboism hammer..... i need more content of her NOWWWW

[aoioozora]

https://www.tumblr.com/aoioozora/755542119339474944?source=share

Not you supporting literal murderers, why tf should anyone care about people who cause nothing but suffering/destruction, murdering and raping innocent civilians for a living?? Someone using "barracks bunny" isn't the end of the world, it isn't that deep who tf cares if we want to be barracks bunnies. If mfs don't want to be called that frfr then they shouldn't enlist in the first place, people like her deserve everything they get coming to them

[The post in question]

Anon, I get where you're coming from, and I admire your sense of justice towards innocents.

But please, don't generalise all soldiers as people who WANT to cause suffering. I do not condone or support any of these things you've mentioned, and people who enlist in the army, I'm sure, do not join to murder and cause suffering. They just want to serve the country. And it just so happens that when it's time, they are called to fight simply for defending the honour of their country and the safety of their citizens. I can't speak for all soldiers, but I'm sure a lot of them wish peace and safety was not brought about through strife.

And oftentimes, the ones who enlist are the ones who suffer under the oppressive hand of their government by being forced to kill. Sure, no doubt there are soldiers who revel in causing destruction out of their hatred, but can you say it's the same for all soldiers? Besides, not all the jobs in the military mean they get to kill people. My aunt is a retd. Major and she was an education officer. And when she enlisted, I'm 100% sure she didn't enlist because she wanted to kill and murder and rape.

I'm sure you're smart enough to understand this much.

Look, this is the sad reality of the world. Death, destruction, and suffering are commonplace, and it's something we have to sadly come to accept. That doesn't mean it's right. But remember, what we see around us is out of our control. We cannot control what laws governments pass, what they order their soldiers to do, etc. And sometimes, soldiers can be brainwashed by propaganda and be ignorant of facts too.

I know, the injustice sucks, and I completely get it. But you can't be unjust and blame soldiers for all the misery in the world when you don't know what they're going through. Ultimately, it's not right to judge because we don't know their thoughts, their background, their beliefs, mental state etc.

And yes, I agree with you to some extent that calling someone a "barracks bunny" isn't the end of the world. I've been called a whore and the world didn't end. We just gotta take it in our stride and move on because we have better things to do. But does it mean it's still not severely hurtful? It hurts, and for some sensitive people, the anxiety of being perceived that way can live with them for a long time. Nobody deserves to be called such hurtful things, whether you like them or not.

If you want to be called one and be one, then sure, go ahead and knock yourself out. I don't support promiscuity but I support your freedom to choose. But don't go around saying that female soldiers deserve it because they're "murderers". I don't know if you're a woman, but if you are, I feel like you're not really being a girl's girl here. A real girl's girl would support freedom of choice, whether you like that choice or not. A real girl's girl would understand that there's more to it than what meets the eye. Hell, it even goes even if you're not a woman.

Also, it's not about "if they don't want to be called that, they shouldn't enlist". They SHOULDN'T be called that, period. You hear similar shit in corporate too like "she slept her way to the top". Iterations of it are everywhere! It's disrespectful, rude, discouraging, and degrading. Women go through enough already, this is too much. No woman deserves this nonsense, especially if they're hardworking and sincere, no matter the industry. Forget about them being women for a moment; can we just treat them as human beings? With feelings, aspirations, dreams? Hell, even dignity?

In our passionate rants, are we forgetting that other people are human just like us?

Anon, you are free to have your opinions, but please don't be rude about it. Consider that not everyone is out here trying to actively hurt people. And maybe consider being brave and bringing up your concern to the OP instead of me, since she's a soldier and I'm just a civvy. I'm sure you'll get insight better than mine.

And in conclusion, I suggest you read my favourite poem No Men Are Foreign by James Falconer Kirkup. I hope it's relevant to your concern and gives you a fresh new perspective.

Thanks for reading this Anon, and whoever comes across this. Forgive me if I've been rude or inconsistent anywhere. And if I've missed anything, let me know. I'm open to a civil discussion.

I rest my case. Good day/night.

[magebastard]

all the things i've got to remember

ship: neve gallus x tula 'rook' ingellvar wc: 438 rating: g notes: post game gay women! thank you anon who asked for neve x rook

They ask for more, eventually. 

In the wake of calamity, the job happens to fall into a straight line before them. Clean up, find survivors, stick together, rebuild, hold on to hope. It's hard. It hurts. No one is surprised to find that survival is a relentless churn. It burns them out. It kicks them while they’re down. It turns the whole world grey.

And then, it eases.

Not all at once. But the sun shines on a Sunday morning and Neve sips coffee on the balcony of a new apartment. The case she’s spent the last month working on has wrapped rather neatly, with the victims safe and the perps disposed of. Hal opens up shop again. The harbor stops smelling like human rot. 

News from the south gets brighter. 

Updates from the team stop having that desperate, despairing tone.

Trouble sticks around. 

The routine takes root quick enough that Neve doesn’t realize something has seismically shifted. They work together—Neve sees the whole picture, cracks the clues, does the talking. Tula’s necromancy gives her a keen eye for details of a magic and biological nature. They work. Tula barely has to convince her of how sensible it all is.

And when all is said and done…

“You made dinner.”

“I did.”

“There’s wine.”

“Bad wine, specifically. That’s a very important detail.”

It’s home again. It’s home for the first time. Neve feels older and somehow younger than she’s ever had permission to feel.

Tula fits in her life better than anything ever has. She brings hope in with her.

“Bel’s sent me three drafts of her latest chapter that are just different iterations of us getting married.” And, well. She snorts. It's obviously all very ridiculous.

And it wasn’t too long ago at all that Neve would have balked, laughed nervously—frantically and dismissed the idea outright. Their life was constant danger. Their world was a constant mess.

It’s mid-morning and they’ve crawled back into bed with breakfast and the mail. There is work to be done outside, but cinnamon candles are lit and a knit blanket protects them from the slight chill of the cooler season. The world does not rest on her shoulders. 

Tula’s head, however, is heavy and perfect in the crook of her neck.

“Maybe we steal some ideas for the real thing,” she says. It’s clumsy. It’s most certainly not a proposal—not by a long shot. Neve feels her hands go clammy. She swallows around the sudden pit in her throat. “Someday,” she adds after an altogether too-long pause.

She hears the long exhale beside her. She feels Tula’s body melt, folding more fully around her. She puts the page down and snakes an arm over her middle. Lips press sweetly over her jaw.

“Yeah, Detective. Someday.”

[dingodad]

Does anyone remember that Lord English himself isn’t even composed of the original versions of the souls that make him? He’s the son of paradox clones, right? That means B2 Jack is the one who actually contains the original souls of Lord English, since he was directly possessed. English has been diluted by being a paradoxical copy, and being part cueball. His creation is not unlike that of breeding Genesis frogs. (The end frog does not chronologically branch off from the original frogs, he is a paradoxical copy of all of them combined. I’d argue that he’s almost like the inverse to a Genesis frog.) So the destiny of the original Caliborn, Equius, Lil Hal and Gamzee is to be decapitated by Dave and explode into a black hole. Caliborn brags about how he will become all powerful, but he will doesn’t get to do that. The paradox slime version of himself born in a lab is destined to become the laser skull epilepsy pharoah hulk man, not him. Not that any of this really matters or changes that much, I just noticed that it was odd. This all adds up right? I didn’t forget anything that would make this not make sense?

you are, on a technical level, completely right: at no point in the Pharaoh Hulk's* timeline was he ever literally Lil Cal. he emerges straight from Doc Scratch, who was only ever a clone of Lil Cal. but you're making a critical error by thinking of the Hulk and B2 Jack as if they're meant to be two different guys.

*I've always known this iteration of Lord English as the "Mobster Hulk" version - google seems to be telling me it's basically only my posts that use this phrasing but I'm guessing I must have picked it up on the forums.

I won't give you the long-winded explanation about Ultimate Selves and how it's the idea of a person that matters more than the specific body they inhabit because I already have about a dozen posts on the subject and I'm sure everyone's sick of hearing it by now. so I wanna focus on two specific and related reasons why "Real Lord English" and "Copy of Lord English" is a false dichotomy, based specifically in an area of Homestuck's worldbuilding that doesn't really get talked about so much:

Jack Noir's version of Lil Cal is just a copy too! Roxy banished the one containing Lord English's soul into nonexistence, so that in Caliborn's words it will "FLUTTER THROUGH THE SHADOWS FOR ETERNITY. SURFACING IN THE NIGHTMARES OF THE UNSUSPECTING." Gamzee is not a Thief of Void, he can't steal things back out of the darkness; he's simply a psychic whose chucklevoodoos can "amplify fears through dreams." The Lil Cal that emerges in Dave's dreams, is adopted by his Bro, and one day makes the journey to Jack's prison cell is just a manifestation of Dave's fear of puppets; the one that Roxy banished is still out there.

First rule of jujus, bro: "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!" "if there ever appears to be more than one of the same, it is only a mirage of caUsality!"

cultured readers will be able to draw the line between the two phrases i've put special emphasis on. Homestuck uses the terms existing terms "voodoo" and "juju" to deliberately evoke an anthropological concept which is found around the world but is most pop-culturally associated with African and Afro-Carribean spirituality: Lil Cal is a fetish. his power comes not from the fact that he is composed of some special material (or because, as you suggest, he has some kind of unique or special genes), but from the fact that spiritual power is ascribed to him. think of a religious idol; there can be a million idols to the same one deity, but the power of each idol will be exactly the same, because each has the same spiritual significance.

put in overly-simplistic terms which aren't necessarily accurate but speak to a recurring theme in Homestuck: a juju works because of the belief that it works.

this is what Calliope and Caliborn mean when they speak of "bad juju", some kind of mystical force which Lil Cal is filled with. the "juju" isn't the object at all; it's an enchantment associated with the object. Calliope says a juju can't ever be destroyed, and yet Lil Cal is torn to shreds and repaired on multiple occasions - it's the magic, the juju, that persists. this is the only way an object with a self-perpetuating origin could possibly exist, or else the object would just keep becoming more and more worn with each loop of its timeline.

Scratch and Caliborn both say it: "Instances of [Scratch] have spawned in countless universes", just as Lil Cal will continue to infiltrate the dreams of infinite children and take Caliborn "FROM UNIVERSE. TO UNIVERSE. TO UNIVERSE." importantly, it's implied actually quite early on in the comic that you can't really "clone" a "soul", because paradox clones kind of follow similar rules to jujus; there can only be one TRUE clone, who will always travel back in time to become their own origin, and all other clones are "MALFORMED MUTANTS" with no bearing on the timeline. so the exact circumstances through which Cal arrives in each universe, be it via ectobiology or clown voodoo, don't matter: every copy is either a) inert or b) actually the same Lil Cal at a different point in its circuitous timeline.

in other words - thanks to a time loop of his own orchestration! - all versions of Lord English have to be decapitated and/or collapse into a black hole at the end of their lifespan because they all have to ultimately return to the void. you're really not that far off the mark in that there is a tragedy in the fact that Caliborn believes he will "GET STRONGER. AND OLDER. AND BIGGER. AND BUFFER!" each time he destroys a universe. the tragedy is just that he thinks turning into Mobster Hulk is the end goal when in fact by making himself immortal he has ensured there IS no end goal: he's trapped being reborn as new Lil Cals in new universes forever and ever. no matter how many brief excursions he takes out into the universe to play the villain, his essence is trapped in the void for all time.

[pawsmos]

I beg for your thoughts on harada keizou.. please he's the boy ever

you want to hear MY thoughts on harada keizou?!?!?!??

(whoops this has been in my drafts for 10 million years and a half)

yap session + tetro spoilers under cut.

sorry if it’s borderline unreadable im very excited

ok first look at the only jewelry i wear daily. now guess how this post is going to go.

i love harada keizou a LLOT. as soon as i watched [the interview: harada] i was hooked. i still remember on my first watch going “HE HAS A TIGER?!” my life was changed forever at that very moment. (/j. well. maybe /srs. idk.)

when i talk about my love for harada with other tetro fans i often hear stuff like “he’s so boring though.”

(first of all he’s NOT BORING!! he just doesn’t have a lot going for him!)

second of all, the reason i like him is because he’s just… so me?? one of my favorite hobbies is deeply researching on animals and stuff like that and spewing them out randomly when im bored. my childhood dream was to become a marine biologist, but i think my interests have expanded to all zoology!!!!! hes also a bit socially awkward and acts polite because hes afraid of being rude oooh hes so me i wanna study him under a microscooope. (we were also both bullied in middle school LMAOO) he’s just very… real to me?? idk dude??

i like to project a lot of headcanons onto him, (if you’ve seen my art it’s pretty clear). you might notice i do this MOST with all my favorite characters. (falin dunmeshi, ace markey, flash vector, etc etc etc.) i actually doodle him a lot and hes all over my school notes. i will never post them though because the first iterations compared to my latest ones are practically incongruous and it’s very funny and jarring.

his side bang that he has? its now turned into a whole side lock. freckles. slightly tanner skin. make him a bit chubbier. you can see the progression and its hilarious. (YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME POSTING THE DOODLES HERE THOUGH THEYRE SO EMBARASSING.)

i feel like a preteen girl doodling about her crush in a pink sparkly notebook with a gold glitter gel pen. speaking of gold. that brings me to yukino hirano who i love SO much.

(a few spoilers for her terminal + suicide mention)

i eat all the transgender rep i get with a spoon and as soon as HARADA. KEIZOU’S. GIRLFRIEND. IS CONFIRMED TO BE TRANSGENDER.?? over the moon im serious. i PRAY whoever was writing the terminal (seki?) was just bluffing about her committing suicide or im going to be very sad.

ive listened to the fan song “gold” maybe 15 times now and theyre so CUTE im going to explode. for a character with literally zero screen time, i looove her so much!!!!.!

back with harada i was genuinely distraught after “trial of the hanged” it was one of the first fangan trials i watched and genuinely bawled. i actually watched its premiere at a sleepover; it was twelve in the morning and when my friend asked me why i was crying, through tears i was like “that tiger!!!! that fucking tiger” and she looked at me like i was insane. i actually must have looked insane i do NOT blame her at all.

toth was where i REALLY started loving tetro’s writing because of the sheer verisimilitude!!! the way he acted was so realistic, and even before the trial started he felt so guilty!! though he was afraid of death, he didn’t fight anyone after he was found out and the way he was crying i was BAWLING SO HARD. at least the whole tiger trio is together now.

anyway tldr von is amazing. bless her forever for giving me the gift of harada keizou.

[driftingsonadow]

Fanfiction incoming for Pride

Last day of Pride month but here it is! I really wanted to get the first chapter done before the month ended (it is literally almost midnight)

Premise:

Shadow takes another fall and suffers once again from memory loss. But this time he gets picked up by a stranger that more and more reminds him of himself and his anger accidentally helps them figure out more about themselves.

All the while Shadow longs to remember why he keeps seeing blue and why it makes him feel so strongly.

(This is a story about someone realising they're trans and being in a toxic relationship + getting out all thanks to Shadow being Shadow. Partly working through some of my own experiences)

I will post this to AO3 as soon as I have an account, but for now here is chapter 1:

Arms crossed Shadow only watched. Sonic wouldn't need his help destroying this new robotic creation Eggman had thrown at them: A clunky spider with hammer arms, if he had to describe it. He raised a brow as its top started spinning making the blue hedgehog duck under the speeding hammers flying past his head, his tumbling drawing a low chuckle out of him. Sonic wasn't in any real danger.

Cold wind swooped through his quills. Shadow had only agreed to tag along because he was bored. Fighting his way through the newest iteration of Badniks alongside his rival had been a nice change of pace. Keeping Eggman in check wasn't part of his motivation but it certainly had given the last few days some colour of purpose. They'd managed to keep it part competition and part cooperation with significantly less fighting between themselves - somehow. But now the fun was already about to end. He stood by the edge of this brand new Egg Carrier with no railing between him and dizzying drop into the dense forest underneath. Clouds rolled past the bow of this metal monstrosity. The view, though, was undeniably breathtaking with the snowy mountain tops lining the horizon and the sun high up in the clear blue sky. They'd have to make sure not to crash this thing into the small town up ahead.

With a swing of his fist right into the visor face of a robot Shadow turned back around. Sonic still wasn't done and more bots kept pouring onto the upper deck. Shadow made quick work of them with a few kicks and punches. No need to break out any chaos spears for these. Maybe, if Sonic continued his embarrassing dance around the spider robot - or crab or whatever - without making much of a dent in it, he'd put an end to it with a few quick strikes, just to rub it in. He'd give Sonic two more minutes, then he'd take over.

In the corner of his eyes he noticed some surprisingly quiet flying robot reminiscence of a distorted dragonfly sneaking up on him. It had gotten close enough to irritate him before he sent it flying in an involuntarily trundle downwards after ripping its wings off and giving it a nudge over the edge.

"WATCH OUT!!"

Shadow's head snapped around, eyes wide as all he could see was what he was supposed to watch out for. Red and Yellow painted metal - one of the spider bot's hammer arms, uncontrolled, broken from its body - already too close and approaching faster than even he could react to and jump out of the way, his head the target of this projectile.

"NO!! SHADOW!!"

Stars danced before his eyes in a dark world and he felt the cold wetness of passing through a cloud before his consciousness faded.

_____________________________________________________________

Mumbling, shuffling. He felt his ears twitch towards the approaching sounds. Words. Someone was speaking. A nice voice, he thought, like bells, comfortable. It soothed the incredible discomfort he was feeling.

"Hey, are you alive?"

What a strange question. But then he found his body stiff, unwilling to move, his eyes glued shut. With a grunt he shifted slightly, startled by his own sound and the difficulty of moving his limbs. Curling his fingers he noticed pine needles underneath himself, felt them on his stomach and the cheek of his face, smelled them.

"I don't see any wounds, but… Take it slow, alright?"

'Slow' the comfortable voice advised, maybe he could. A sudden dizziness left him no other options.

Slowly Shadow dared to open his eyes and as he did a figure, closer than he had anticipated, moved two steps away from him.

"You most likely have a concussion, but I see no open wounds."

As his vision became clearer he could finally identify whom the voice belonged to: A mobian in a bright yellow dress, her fur purple all over with a thick dark purple and black braid sitting on her shoulder and equally thick bangs covering her forehead in a curl. Bright golden eyes peered down at him carefully. Did he know this one? Certainly not. With a groan he pushed himself up on his hands and into a seating postion against the tree he ley next to. His body ached but it was nothing he couldn't heal given a moment to rest.

The purple cat in front of him was staring upwards all of a sudden so he peered up as well. There was a definite hole in the canopy with pine branches dangling loosly around the window to the bright blue sky. A concussion seemed highly probable.

"What's your name? Can you tell me?", the stranger asked.

"None of your business", he growled, owing half of his mood to the sheer uncomfortableness. He wanted to be left alone.

She flinched, but didn't let herself be scared off, continuing carefully:"So, do you… not remember?"

"Yeah, I don't", he spat in a sudden bout of sarcasm. It irked him enough that he apparently didn't have the strength to get up and just leave this situation behind, he didn't want to hold a conversation about it.

"Th-that's alright. You don't need to tell me", she scrambled, almost shrieking, and making Shadow wince, the confortable voice completely lost. "Then… what do you remember? Do you know where you, well, fell from? I-i-i-i-i mean I can't just leave you on your own with a possible concussion and all…"

Fair, he thought and naturally, if begrudgingly, tried to recall the last thing he remembered before blacking out. He looked back up at the hole in the branches, searched the clouds for answers and… came up with nothing. A sudden feeling of dread tingled along his spine and his fingers. Just WHAT did he remember?

A young blond girl's face appeared at the front of his mind, smiling, but unmoving. Recalling her face spread a comfortable warmth inside his chest, but… who was she? More faces flickered past his inner eye: a white bat, a young fox, a clunky robot, … but all stayed eerily still and he remembered none of their names.

He failed to recall any event that occured in his past.

Why was this, though, oddly familiar.

Shadow winced as sudden piercing, searing pain shot through his head. "Fuck", he muttered.

"It's okay, don't try too hard to think", the stranger tried to calm him. "You shouldn't strain your head with a concussion. Your brain is probably all bruised up and needs to heal. Whatever you forgot will come back then, I'm sure."

"Are you a doctor?"

"No… I've read about it… in a book", she confessed. "But I should take you to one, if… if you can stand?"

"No doctor", Shadow immediately barked, unsure why, but some deep-rooted feeling in his gut told him that people might be reluctant to help or even afraid of him. Maybe this was the reason he had so instinctively ommitted his own name. "I only need rest." He knew this for a fact, that he wasn't a regular mobian hedgehog, the Ultimate Lifeform, which sounded ridiculous in his current confused mind.

The stranger nodded hesitantly. "That's okay… But do you maybe want to come to my workshop? The hammock is probably more suited for recovery than the dirt."

Showing no less displeasure the black hedgehog accepted this proposal with grunt and simple nod and tried not to linger on the question of why she would help a total stranger that obviously scared her into a stutter. "Thank you", he pressed with a snarl.

"Mhm", was all she answered before stepping closer again and offering him her hands. She pulled him up slowly on one arm, the other holding onto the tree, all while his head spinned at the slightest movement and the pain resurfaced. Thankfully it wasn't a long way to the workshop, he had basically dropped into her backyard.

The workshop was a simple wooden shack by the edge of the forest, small but roomy, with small mezzanines extending the available space to the left and right of the front door. Worktables and shelves filled most walls and the space in front of the back door from where they came in, all filled and cluttered with rolls of yarn, dried plants and various tools, more cut plants hanging from the ceiling. It smelled green, if Shadow had to describe it.

The space below one of the mezzanines was made into a tiny sepparate room with a curtain for a door with not much else than a hammock behind it and a dirty window. He sunk into the hammock with more effort than Shadow liked to admit. The darkness of the small space calmed his pulsing headache. He wanted to refuse the ice pack the purple mobian placed onto his forehead without question, but the cold on his skin felt even more soothing.

"Just… so your brain doesn't swell", she explained with a worried expression. "I don't know if it is enough, but it's better than nothing."

"Swell… More book knowledge?", Shadow simply asked, tired.

"Yes… well… I will be out for the night. There's a bucket in case you need it." She pointed to a corner behind him. Her face said a thousand things. Surely she wasn't happy about giving a potentially dangerous stranger access to her workplace.

Shadow closed his eyes. Don't think, he told himself, lest the headaches came back.

"I'll be back first thing tomorrow morning."

_____________________________________________________________

The next day came and went in a blur. Sleeping most hours away, Shadow didn't notice his benefactor return. He refused the food held in front of him, but accepted water, before falling into a dreamless sleep again.

When he awoke it was morning yet again. The birds singing outside woke him with their incomprehensibly loud and chaotic chirping. It wasn't the worst thing to wake up to. For some reason he thought of a busy street and car horns and frowned.

Right, he remembered, my memories are gone. Taking a deep breath and shifting into a more comfortable position in this stranger's hammock Shadow gave thinking another go.

Faces, he saw people's faces, still and most of them looked at him with a stern, even wary expression. Clenching his fists in discomfort he tried to ignore this detail. Instead he focused on the that smiled the brightest. "Maria", he whispered to himself. Intangible joy and love bloomed in his chest that mixed with a quiet sadness. "Maria", he said again as if repeating the name would give him another clue. It didn't happen.

But something else stired and he let muscle memory do its work as his hand reached into his quills to pull out a small device, a communicator. With a familiar flick of the thumb and a click it snapped open revealing a small display on the top and a small numberpad on the bottom. Though all initial hope disolved when the screen refused to light up. The hedgehog grimaced at the damn thing. There was an obvious crack on the side and something rattled inside when he shook it. Nothing he could do about it.

Sitting up, which did not send his head for a spin this time, he grabbed the keypad in both hands, frowning, waiting for his thumbs to automatically hop from number to number and give him a clue, any clue. But even caressing the keys triggered nothing… only… yes, there was something, something blue. The keys were grey, the numbers and symbols black. Why did he expect one of them to be blue?

He put the communicator away as he heard a clink and a creak and then voices. Mostly one voice, an unknown deeper voice.

"It doesn't work like that! Promise me you won't do that again. You really made her uncomfortable and didn't even help clean up."

Without making a sound Shadow shifted of the hammock and to the entrance of his quarters, peering through a small gap in the curtain.

"I'm-", started the purple cat before being cut off.

"I know you can do it. It's not hard." These last word were said in great earnest, spoken softly and belonged to a raccoon - if the fluffy striped tail was enough indication - with light blue and white fur. "And don't apologise to me, apologise to her later. It's only right."

"I will", whispered Shadow's benefactor. "But still: I'm sorry, I know you have much to do and still came here with me after everything." She plastered a smile onto her face that made Shadow grimace in disgust. Her smile looked wrong and painful, her eyes glistening and blinking away the wetness but still keeping them wide open and cheerful. The corners of her mouth quivered. As she shifted from one foot to the other she raised her shoulders cutely folding her hands behind her back.

From something stronger than instinct, he knew what a bright and beaming smile should look like, how the eyes could glow and the whole body speak with it. He knew it in and out. This stronger-than-instinct thing made him itch all over and Shadow clenched his fists. To scratch it he'd have to just REMEMBER. Resentment for himself quivered in a silent growl towards this forgotten entity. Irritation rose in his chest.

"It's a little annoying", the other admitted with a slight frown, apparently not noticing the other's unease. "I will have to make up for lost time, though, so I should get going. Since I'm here now I won't come by in the afternoon. You'll apologise at dinner?"

She nodded suffocatingly brightly. "Can I… um… stay over again today?"

With an almost pitying smile he put a hand on her shoulder. "Better not, better to let this cool off first. Though, I would love to have you." Suddenly his whole demeanour had changed into something more caring and loving. "We'll have dinner together, that's something!", he tried to cheer her up, leaning into a light kiss before putting down the small bag he was carrying over his shoulder and heading out the door.

Shadow stepped back, fists clenched tightly, waited a few quiet seconds to not trigger a conversation he had no interest in having and finally pulled back the curtain to reveal his presence.

She still stood right there, now looking at him in surprise. "You're awake!" The strange smile lifted into a smaller, more honest one. "Oh, you probably heard all that, huh?". Cringing visibly she jumped to the next best distraction: the small bag. "I brought breakfast. Do you feel like eating?"

Having just witnessed this even more irritating scene and his emotions digging into his skin, he couldn't keep his face from scrunching up as he hissed: "Why are you doing this?" and her ears snapped back. Groaning Shadow pressed two fingers to the bridge between his brows. This purple cat had most probably exchanged her own comfort for his, a stranger in her house, a possible threat, always frowning and growling. He owed her for her kindness and he only continued to pile onto that debt.

"What do you mean?", she whispered cautiously, ears still flat against her head.

Trying to salvage what he could he spoke slowly this time, eyes closed. "I mean: Why are you helping me to this extent? You have no idea who I am." He breathed deeply actively trying to calm himself, though irritation and anger stuck to him like tar and feathers.

As if called out she glued her eyes to the floor boards, frantically looking for an excuse if anything, even though it had been Shadow who clearly overstepped.

"I should go", Shadow started, immediately turning towards the door. There was no use in staying. He might find familiar places and find his way home, whereever that would be, if he had any. "Thank you for your help. I have nothing to repay you with so I will not burden you any longer than neccessary."

"Do you… do you remember?", asked the voice behind him, meek and faint.

"It's none of your concern."

"But… you have an untreated head injury."

Shadow only rolled his eyes still turned towards the door.

"What if someone comes looking for you here and you're not? You basically fell into my backyard. When lost, it is better to stay where you are and wait for your friends to find you." The purple cat's words shivered.

A pang in his chest. He knit his brows, eyes tightly shut. His friends? What friends? Did he have friends? The faces that kept popping into his mind seemed to encourage him to believe it. With another deep exhale he turned back around, a deep scowl on his face and crimson eyes shooting holes into the other's. "Fine, but as I've said I have nothing to repay you with, cat."

Her whole body perked and she took a long breath of her own. "I'm a stoat actually", was the first thing she said and as if it would proof anything, her nicely floofed tail swished left and right once, drawing attention to itself, purple as her coat with a black tip. Shadow would have sworn it had only just unfurled out of her skirt, which would have been inexplicably strange.

"Stoat", he simply corrected.

"Sooo… breakfast?", asked the purple stoat and picked up the small bag.

The black hedgehog only gave her a slight nod, both simply moving on and he preferred it that way. He knew he didn't need a lot of sustenance in general, but considering that his body had needed a whole day to recover and his memories still being unaccessable, providing it with more than neccessary might prove to be beneficial, he argued.

Placing one arm across the main worktable and sweeping it from the edge to the rough middle Shadow's benefactor made some space for them to eat by pushing everything to the side without much care. Maybe it didn't need care. Most of the stuff on the table were bundles of dry grass and long-stemmed flowers, next to rolls of twine and rope. She then unpacked some simple, though, fresh looking sandwiches onto mismatched plates and served black tea from a thermos in unevenly shaped cups without handles. They settled opposite each other on the wooden benches.

Still uncomfortable, he wanted to at least try. "Thank you, it is much appreciated", broke Shadow the silence, though, his face showed half a frown at the - he felt guilty for thinking it - shabby tableware, which was in fact very clean and cared for none the less. He lifted the cup to his mouth. He preferred coffee, he thought, but the tea was hot and comfortable.

"You're welcome", she smiled and picked up her sandwich, making sure no bit of salad or tomato slice slipped out. "I am actually relieved to see you up. When you slept through the whole day and I couldn't wake you at all, it gave me quite a scare."

"Hm", Shadow dismissed this revelation unsure what to make of it. He certainly didn't want to reveal the Ultimate Lifeform aspect of his being as it still felt ludicrous to him.

"So, you don't remember anything, yet?"

He looked up from his meal, her gaze on him genuine, then he shook his head lightly. "Nothing concrete." It was the truth after all. The colour blue and a common name such as 'Maria' would not get him anywhere. After a few more bites in silence and some consideration he decided to thank her in trust and produced the communicator from his quills. "Do you happen to know how to fix this? It's the only clue I have."

His benefactor raised her brows. "Oh! So you're with the Freedom Fighters", she exclaimed, her face taking on a whole different shape of relaxed. "All of them have these little devices." She took it in her hands to examine the damage.

"I highly doubt that." Shadow's permanent scowl deepened at the mere suggestion, why exactly he didn't quite understand. "But can you fix it? Do you know anyone who can?"

"No", she answered, one eye peering into the crack on the side. "I don't have any knowledge on these things and I doubt anyone outside the Freedom Fighters has any. And look, this is one of their's, it has this tails symbol on the back, can't be the evil Dr. Robotnik's." Pleased with her observations she grinned as she handed the communicator back.

But Shadow stopped in realisation: Maria Robotnik, that was her name. Never should he ask about this name, not here, not without all his memories. Dr. Robotnik produced no image in his mind, but an uncomfortable irk. Certainly he didn't like this doctor either. Though, Maria Robotnik felt precious and her smile was a treasure in his heart. He knew this with absolute certainty. Shadow swallowed a knot in his throat.

Quickly he turned his attention to the button-sized imprint on the back of his communicator: two fluttering fox tails, twin fox tails as they originated from the same spot. Tails. Tails. He wanted to believe it was another remembered name. Did his brain finally short circuit? Quickly he put the device away before any skull splitting headaches could poke through and shook his head. This whole mess was tiring.

Searching for distraction he glanced over the pile things next to him. Immediately he scowled, even showing fangs. Right at the edge of the table sat a roll of some royal blue string. That blasted blue. Shadow purposefully ignored it, dragging his eyes to anything else. Briefly regarding every other item on the table - the dry plant bundles, strings, rope, shears and even a wooden board with the pointed tips of long nails poking out of it - he noticed that the rope was actually made of the same kind of dryed grass as the bundle next to it. It was made with an intricate braid, as far as he could identify, the dry dull grass accentuated by colourful strings and small flowers woven in between. Shadow had never seen something like this before and slightly tilted his head curiously.

After breakfast, the stoat set up her work, which turned out to be the production of exactly these kinds of rope. Grass and string would be tied to the strange wooden board and nails so they were held tight as she braided and to make a longer rope than one frond of grass, more were added at regular intervals, staggered, not at once. She had neatly documented the patterns for several designs for easy reproduction. The use? Funeral rites. It a deep-seated tradition in these parts to drape their deceased loved ones in these beautiful ropes, sometimes it was only used as a crown or even a shawl, sometimes people even kept a length of this rope as a memento in their homes. Shadow had not known that even before loosing his memories, but after her lengthy explanation he was sure he was even able to make some himself.

Shadow'd just been lingering around for most of the morning, giving his body more time to heal, if it needed more, and waiting for a spark of clarity. That was until the stoat asked him to fetch her a tin of pins from a small shelf tucked between a pillar and several stacked crates holding most of the dry materials. Right there next to the tin he was looking for lay neatly folded scarf or rag and it was - again - blue. Shadow picked it up, let it unfurl and hang softly from his fingers.

"Hedgehog?"

He almost jumped to turn around. The stoat had obviously taken to mimic him, but somehow he felt it. Looking down at the piece of blue fabric in his hands again he noticed he's been staring at it for a while without a single thought.

"You alright?"

"It's… nothing." Shadow sighed in resignation. "I just keep seeing this colour and don't know why."

"You mean it means something to you that you've forgotten?"

"Maybe?"

"Well, then keep it, it's just a leftover piece of fabric from another project."

Unsure he frowned at it, picked up the tin and brought both back to the worktable. He dropped the fabric in front of himself and blankly watched as the stoat pinned in place what had to be pinned. She was quick with her hands.

"How about this?" Immediately after freeing up those quick hands she picked up the blue fabric, twisted it into a loose rope and tied it around his left wrist, right next to the golden ring that he recognised as one of his limiter rings - a part of the whole Ultimate Lifeform thing he had going on. Mesmerised by the cobalt blue next to his gold he stared at it for a long time, his heart reacting before the mind had caught up.

[vigilskept]

i just think it’s interesting that being critical (not even mean, just critical) of a game makes someone part of a bullying racist circle jerk of people that “should go out an do real activism” but when i (a black, queer woman) posted that i really liked veilguard it just wasn’t a 10/10 for me the first reply i got was that i’ll never accomplish anything in my life and that my life had no meaning and apparently that was fine. i understand that people can get overly defensive of veilguard because of the backlash from the “anti-woke” crowd, but overcompensating by shifting into toxic positivity where even marginalized people aren’t allowed to say anything negative isn’t the solution. and that’s not even to speak about how the da fandom has always been unwelcoming and awful to people of color, but now it’s damned if you like the games and damned if you don’t.

shaking your hand anon 🤝

like you said, it’s always been unwelcoming and awful to be in this fandom, and i do think online spaces have a tendency to exacerbate/intensify marginalization and the hierarchies we experience offline. people feel emboldened to be nasty, because they feel they have an excuse to (video game opinion) and security in their anonymity. it’s extremely nasty behaviour.

there’s a tendency too where if your opinion is perceived as incorrect people love to come at you in a way that invalidates your identity. the classic anon in your inbox telling you “you must be a cishet neurotypical white person because i disagree. and this other blogger who is bipoc also disagrees with what you’re saying so shut up.” insane behaviour. people of colour & people of any marginalized demographic often disagree with one another. because we are people <3 running with the assumption that black people are a monolith is racism. running with the assumption that muslims are a monolith is islamophobic. running with the assumption that trans people are a monolith is transphobic. be. fucking. normal.

veilguard pos/crit is the latest iteration of our fandom discourse and i think some of our silliest (a positive/critical opinion of a game does not constitute a coherent set of beliefs. i feel like i’m going insane the more we talk about these broadly ranging opinions on a variety of different aspects of this game as though they comprise some kind of faction)

but this pattern of fan behaviour isn’t exclusively related to this current wave & the undercurrents of fandom racism and virtue signalling run so much deeper. some of the most heinous dogpiles i can remember seeing in this fandom have had to with bloggers criticizing fan response to characters of colour (zev…. bela…. VIV…. davrin….)

[super-weed-ninja]

For a little over a year now I've been slowly amassing a collection of ninja turtle books and I wanna talk about some of them. Picture books, joke books, novelizations, coloring and activity books... For all different iterations and all different reading levels.

Well ok they are pretty much just kids books let's be real, but some of them are really great and it's nice to see some new adventures. I've loved ninja turtles for as long as I can remember. Watched the '80s cartoon when I was young, read the comics, caught '03 in it's first season and was hooked immediately, and have pretty well kept up with everything since, with the exception of IDW (SOON.) These books have given me a new appreciation to the TMNT.

At first I just wanted to get my hands on some '03 books, but I was at the same time falling back in love with the '87 show, and books related to that series ended up being a lot easier to find. There's new adventures, some adapted episodes of the cartoon, some from Archie comics...

A rap song to fight drugs, and a little book adapting the first live action film with the '87 boys (Raphael defenestration and all, LOOK AT MY BOY THEY KILLED HIM)

I wasn't really planning to get so many, but THESE 4 delightful books really had an effect on me.

I'll probably make another post just about these 4 books sometime because I have so much to say on them! There is such a charm about them and they've changed how I think about the '87 and Archie turtles. They also act as a prequel series to either! Each book focuses on a different turtle. You see them in some of their pre-series naivete, learning and exploring and joking around. It's really no surprise they're so good, given the author, Stephen Murphy, was a primary writer for TMNT Adventures (Archie) and Tales of the TMNT. '03 girlies, he co-authored "Sons of the Silent Age" in Mirage and was a writer for several '03 episodes!

Anyway, after reading these, I really started searching.

It's so interesting to me to read these characters in this form, from different authors with their own ideas about the turtles.

There's several unique stories in the '03 books, with wonderful illustrations. These goofballs just shine even in the silliest of the adventures. Stephen Murphy, again, shows up here as an author of '03 books. I really love how he writes the boys.

'12 tends to just be episode adaptations, although I haven't actually read the novels I have yet. '12 books have been pretty easy to find so they have not been high on my priority list, but I try to grab ones that look like unique tales!

Mikey's Nightwatcher Scrapbook was so adorable, one of my favorites! Newspaper clippings, date and time stamped sightings and attempts at catching/talking to the elusive Nightwatcher... It's very fun and endearing! The Rise novels are just retellings of episodes, but each story is told by a different character! It's not much, but it's a cute detail.

finding coloring books is HARD, and even harder is finding one that's not been used. The joke book is full of the most garbage jokes but I had some fun torturing friends with it. :3

The coloring books in particular I'd like to scan sometime to share. I remember seeing '03 coloring books around all the time while the show was running; now you're liable to find yourself in a bidding war for one! (against me)

These books have become so important to me and I wanna talk about them more so I might just start taking one every now and then and ranting about it in a post. I have about 80 various books now, and a decent list of more I'm on the hunt for.

[gascon-en-exil]

Sixty-Four Ways in which Octopath Traveler II Improves Upon the First Game

In honor of Octopath Traveler II's second anniversary, I've put together a list of the many ways in which this game excels above and beyond the solid foundation laid down by its predecessor. Why sixty-four? Because it's eight squared...or eight to the second power, if you will. This series practically begs for lame numerical jokes.

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not claiming that the original Octopath Traveler is a bad game.

I played and enjoyed OT quite a bit when it came out, and I completed another full playthrough during the last few months as I was starting to put this post together. Around half this list came about from stuff I'd only remembered in replaying OT for the first time in years. I do still think it's a good game, and I had a fun time going through it again - but I also think that OT2 surpasses it by just about every objective metric.

And that's a good thing! It's great to see game developers taking feedback on a first project and using it to make improvements to the follow-up. If there's ever an Octopath Traveler III I would only hope that they continue to do so and make the newest iteration even better in which case I'll then have to make a list of 512 reasons why it's better, God help me. I have however gotten angry anons in the past whenever I've praised OT2 too much over the first game, so this is my attempt at heading that off at the start. A bunch of these points are straightforward improvements in game design; it's only near the end where I start dipping into more subjective territory even though I do have my points to make there as well.

#64. Battle speed toggle

This is what you're going to notice first, no questions asked, and also why you should absolutely never play OT right after OT2. Double battle speed is something you won't realize you miss until it's not an option. As an added bonus, the x2 modifier isn't a basic fast-forward toggle but still allows the animations and audio to be fully enjoyable at double speed.

#63. No purple chests

This is one even the biggest OT defenders will concede. Forcing you to bring a specific character into almost every dungeon lest you miss out on some prime loot (or alternatively requiring you to awkwardly backtrack with Therion later) is just bad game design.

#62. More interesting Talents

Related to this, Therion's Talent slot being taken up by the purple chest feature is just one of several boring mechanics occupying that space, alongside Ophilia and Primrose's NPC summons, Olberic's group defend command, and Tressa finding money when entering a new screen. They're all functional, but it makes traveler Talents feel rather underwhelming on the whole. OT2 dispenses with this. Summoning is still present but not a Talent, and the others mentioned have all been replaced with more engaging stuff like AoE buffs/debuffs (Throné and Temenos), new mechanics for escort NPCs (Partitio and Agnea), and the ability to learn combat skills from NPCs (Hikari).

#61. Capture and Concoct are redesigned

Technically applies to the scholars' Analyze as well, but that only got a small buff in the second game. These two Talents on the other hand are vastly improved. Concoct in OT2 can now be boosted and also interacts with Castti's Latent Power for easier resource management, and is overall stronger and more versatile even if it lost three of its element-breaking options.

But Ochette is the real winner when it comes to Talents. H'annit's Beast Lore is a clunky Pokémon-esque system that's rarely worth using when there's a less awkward Path Action that does the same thing as hers (Olberic's) and when the limited summons on beasts discourages you from using them much outside of certain boss summons vs. Galdera or similar (and even then there are easier setups). In OT2 though beasts can be summoned any number of times, and Ochette has a chance to auto-capture them so she can build up a stable of summons even without going through the hassle of whittling down their HP and throwing a Pokéball spending turns trying to capture them. That beasts you don't need any more can be turned into consumable items adds yet another useful layer to the mechanic, and Ochette's companion animal and access to story-based summons grow along with her unlike H'annit's leopard.

#60. A recent inventory tab

Another small but appreciated quality of life feature. In OT items and equipment you obtain are immediately sorted into a set order within your inventory, which can make them tough to find if you just got a new weapon or armor piece and want to try it out on someone. OT2 has a tab organizing your inventory in the order it was acquired, so that's less of a hassle.

#59. Opening chapters are more organically handled

OT begins opening chapters for your non-starting traveler in medias res, allowing the rest of the party to come along for the combat segments and scaling up the challenge as you recruit more travelers. This would be nice for earlygame leveling...except for the nagging issue of your starting traveler being forced (something OT2 unfortunately does not fix) so it's impossible to keep everyone at equal levels even if you try.

OT2 improves this in several ways. One is that opening chapters for the other travelers are now optional if you don't want to bother with the easy early stuff. Another is that these chapters are now "instanced" in a sense, only available to their respective traveler. This allows their difficulty to remain evenly tuned for the specific experience of starting out with each character, and is also about as close as OT2 gets to acknowledging the disconnect both games have in their individual stories, i.e. that they're never written like these characters have an entire JRPG party behind them all the time. In their Chapter 1s (and Osvald's Chapter 2) at least, they don't.

#58. As well as being more fair if you start with one of the squishier travelers

Certain travelers are rough to begin with in OT because they're either glass cannons (Cyrus), lacking in offensive options (Ophilia), or both (Primrose). OT2 solves this by giving the travelers with these same starting jobs temporary party members who help them in their dungeons and boss fights and also do a good job of teaching the player how best to use these more group-oriented jobs.

#57. A smoother difficulty curve in earlygame

Even though the travelers can't tag along with the others' introductions anymore, OT2 makes up for this by reducing the challenge level of the early midgame. Chapter 2s in OT all have level recommendations in the 20s, whereas in OT2 they're all in the teens. This makes getting out of the earlygame and moving on to bigger things less daunting from the start, on top of several of the improvements coming up.

#56. Time of day acts as another difficulty toggle

The day/night system of OT2 impacts a wide variety of game elements, but one of its subtler effects is that the random encounter rate is higher at night. This allows you to more easily tailor your leveling experience to your party's current strength. Further, nighttime enemy groups generally being tougher can be counterbalanced by fielding Throné and/or Temenos with their night-based combat Talents.

#55. Redesigned job skill lists

Most of the base jobs have improved skill lists in OT2. Dancer has more offensive options like Ruinous Kick and Dagger Dance, scholar is more flexible both in terms of damage (Elemental Barrage) and support, hunter drops two low-accuracy, multi-hit bow skills in exchange for a more precise one and an actual axe skill, cleric can restore its own SP with Mystical Staff, etc. Warrior loses the easy opening cleave of Level Slash, but gets the arguably more versatile Aggressive Slash and the useful Vengeful Blade instead. The only ones that feel a bit weaker are thief for losing Share SP and merchant for losing out on its magical AoE option...but Sidestep, Donate BP, and Hired Help are all accounted for and just as strong as ever if not more.

#54. More flexibility with breaking and boosting

OT2 introduces a number of readily-accessible ways (ex. Ruinous Kick, Weak to Poison, Ochette and Temenos's Latent Powers) to break enemies regardless of their weaknesses, which cuts down on the annoyance of having to build teams around covering every possible scenario. There's also more uses for BP, such as the aforementioned Concoct as well as various other Latent Powers. Partitio's Latent combines with Donate BP and a support skill he can grab early on (see below) to make him into a reliable BP battery. As these are the two signature features of Octopath's battle system, these upgrades are much-appreciated.

#53. Earlier access to EXP/JP-boosting support skills and accessories

OT locks the support skills boosting EXP and JP behind secret jobs and the equivalent accessories behind post-story side quests. OT2 on the other hand provides the former from base jobs and the latter from chests in the late midgame, with the JP Augmentor in particular being accessible very early if you know where it is and don't mind cheesing your way through a certain area. There's additionally another base job support skill that increases gains in both at night, which makes early leveling even quicker.

#52. Overall stronger early support skill options

On top of these, Boost-Start (+1 BP at the beginning of combat) has also been bumped down to a base job. It's joined by powerful new additions like Full Power (full Latent Power at the beginning of combat), Vigorous Victor (30% HP and SP regen after each battle, which largely makes up for SP Saver now coming from a lategame secret job), More Rare Monsters (easier Cait and Octopuff hunting), and of course A Step Ahead from the early secret job Inventor which can break most encounters.

#51. The job license system

In OT no two travelers can have the same secondary job, but in the second game you can acquire up to three licenses for each of the base jobs for a maximum of four travelers using each at once if you choose. These licenses also provide some nice bits of optional gathering content, and apart from scholar and to a lesser extent apothecary - which require stealing rare drops off uncommon enemies - none of them are particularly frustrating to obtain.

#50. Caits (and Octopuffs) are more of an event but also easier to find

As mentioned, the hunter support skill More Rare Monsters exists to make these high-value enemies more likely to spawn, and there are additionally accessories that do the same thing (and stack with the skill, I think?). They also get their own distinctively quirky battle theme music so you're guaranteed not to miss them.

#49. More Path Actions offer more overall flexibility

OT2 doubles the number of Path Actions that serve the same purpose (obtaining info, escorting NPCs, etc.), which greatly increases the range of possible party combinations to cover whatever you might need as well as gives you more options for accomplishing specific goals, ex. getting items based on your level, or knocking out NPCs without having to fight them. The in-game time system does occasionally limit these options since not all NPCs are available both day and night, but all the same it's a welcome improvement.

#48. Variety in chapter and story structure

A common criticism of OT is that, with only one significant exception (Olberic's Chapter 2), every one of its thirty-two story chapters follows exactly the same format: town exploration, usually requiring the traveler's Path Action -> dungeon -> boss. In OT2 some chapters lack dungeons, bosses, or both. While less content might seem like a drawback, it really helps the structure feel less repetitive, and because there's forty total chapters, with the non-boss chapters being split evenly among the cast, the overall experience doesn't feel less substantial. It allows also for -

#47. Fewer random dungeons/bosses

A common problem of OT leashing its stories too strictly to the dungeon + boss structure is that several times one or both of those elements will feel tacked on purely out of obligation and not in service to the narrative. Take Ophilia's and H'annit's Chapter 2s, or Alfyn's Chapter 4...or both Chapters 3 and 4 for Tressa. Because OT2 is comfortable allowing certain chapters to pass without these, this is much less of an issue. Some of the game's most dramatic story beats come out of chapters that lack bosses, ex. Osvald's Chapter 2 or Castti's Chapter 3, while others like Agnea's Chapter 3 and Ochette's Chapter 2 (Cataracta) provide room for character moments by dialing back on the combat.

#46. More overall nonlinearity

That parenthetical up there is significant, because around half of OT2's stories have chapters that can be completed in any order. While this isn't executed perfectly - recommended levels will still railroad you in most cases - the greater variety of options at any one time gives you more choices when deciding which traveler's story to continue next in contrast to the strict linearity of each of the stories in OT. Further helping this is the fact that -

#45. Solistia is more geographically complex

Orsterra is so obviously laid out as a video game world that it could be called a deliberate stylistic choice: eight biomes in a ring around an inaccessible center, with all of its areas divided across three concentric circles starting from the inside and working outward. It's incredibly artificial, and opinions will vary as to whether that's charming or silly.

While Solistia still has the common video game issue of wildly contrasting biomes right next to each other (its western continent is especially bad about this), in all other respects it's a much less predictably-designed setting. There are no rings or obvious circular paths around the world, the regions are broken up across two continents and a large island, and chapters now jump around locations in a less blatantly linear way making the threefold division between early, middle, and lategame towns slightly less on the nose.

#44. The creepy RNG-dependent endgame previews

There's a lot of negative points to be made about how little effort OT makes in setting up its final boss that I'll bring up later, but one early quirk of OT2 is that you'll randomly enter a different screen only for it to be eerily dark and filled with strange shadowy monsters you won't fight anywhere else...and then once you beat them, the screen goes back to its normal state as if nothing happened. It's very unsettling the first time it happens, and even when you know it can happen it's rare enough to still catch you off guard.

#43. The ship opens up the world

And getting back to geography, once you buy a ship around the game's midpoint OT2's exploration opens up quite a bit compared to the first game. The Sundering Sea is a semi-open traveling space with treasure, distinctive enemy encounters, and optional dungeons and bosses all its own. It's an appreciated aesthetic addition as well, since it offers you a perspective on the world of Solistia that you wouldn't get to see otherwise. This is another worthwhile departure from OT's rigid wheel-and-spoke map layout.

#42. Fewer optional dungeons offset by more mandatory ones

Looking at raw data, OT has a larger array of optional dungeons: 28 vs. 19. Those numbers may vary slightly depending on how you define a dungeon in this series, but the point is that the first game has more of them. It doesn't really feel that way however, because with more chapters as well as the Crossed Path system OT2's overall dungeon count turns out to be roughly the same in the end. This also allows OT2's optional dungeons to stand out more as a group, with all but one of them by my recollection either having a boss, an associated side quest, and/or a unique piece of loot needed for one of the secret jobs. A handful of OT's optional dungeons seemingly exist only for level grinding as well as whatever's available in their treasure chests. But while we're talking about dungeons...

#41. (Slightly) more dungeon type variety

Try to name an OT dungeon, mandatory or otherwise, that isn't a cave, forest, sewer, ruins, or lavishly-decorated interior space. At times they'll vary based on which biome they're in, ex. the ones in the Frostlands will be snowy, but that's about it. OT2 brings back all of the above for its dungeon settings, but there are also some more inventive ones like a ghost ship, factories, a clock tower, a ruined castle, or canyon ravines. When there's over fifty such spaces in each game to explore, even that bit of extra variety is appreciated.

#40. Improved visibility in low light areas

Here's one I noticed only on my recent replay: OT is dark in a lot of places, particularly in many of the aforementioned cave and forest dungeons. While that's nice for atmosphere, the lighting can sometimes be so poor that it's hard to tell where you're going which is more frustrating than anything. In spite of its day/night system and its main plot about an endless night, OT2 is ironically the brighter game all around, with visibility noticeably better in even the darkest dungeons. The only times I can recall it being an issue are in the Cavern of the Moon and Sun where it's worked into exploration (you have to keep flipping between day and night to illuminate the path ahead) and in the dungeons you'll have to go into during the Final Story when everything is covered in dense purple mist. In that instance though the darkness matches the story, and additionally those dungeons are ones you've already entered before under normal conditions, so you're not fumbling around in the dark of a completely unknown space.

#39. More interesting rewards from chests

Another point I noticed only recently. An oddly large number of chests in OT contain either money or common consumables, which while undeniably useful also aren't the most exciting things to get when you open up a chest (especially if it's a purple chest!). OT2 largely fixes this by offering rare rewards from chests more often, whether that be equipment or less easily obtainable items.

#38. Major money sinks to make leaves more valuable

Money is more valuable in the Octopath games than in many other JRPGs due to everything merchants can do with leaves, but it's still fairly easy to amass a ton of wealth in both titles just from exploring and battling and getting most of your equipment from chests, stealing, etc. rather than buying it. It'll take longer to get to where you can thoughtlessly fire off a Hired Help every battle in OT2 however, because between the mandatory ship (100K leaves) and the two extra merchant job licenses (100K and 300K) there's enough big ticket items in the midgame to keep you watching your wallet.

Having three Path Actions that use money rather than just one also plays into that a bit as well, but to a lesser extent. On the subject of Path Actions, you likely won't need to shell out large sums of leaves as often in OT2 to restore your reputation in towns on account of there being more ways to get items, info, etc. without lowering it...but honestly the reputation system in OT2 feels like a vestigial, arbitrary relic of the first game. See, for example, why Agnea innocently attracting NPCs with her dancing can lower reputation, but Osvald mugging them or Temenos coercing them into confessions can't.

#37. Shops and inns can be entered

A minor point, but OT2 has so many more interior spaces in its towns. This not only helps with storytelling - recall the scenes in OT that take place in "inns" that are just a bare room with maybe one table - but it also allows for more architectural diversity like on Toto'haha as well as for the possibility that vendors appear out in the open like in Ryu.

#36. Party banters are easier to see

Another common complaint in OT is that it can be easy to miss party banters in chapters, and that there's no way to go back and rewatch them or see them at all if you didn't unlock them while going through. OT2 fixes these issues with the ability to watch them in the journal, even if you didn't see them at the time, and also removes some of the clunkiness of triggering them by spreading them across more chapters rather than needing each traveler to speak to all of the other seven in every chapter after their first.

#35. More thoughtfully utilized voice acting

Sadly, party and tavern banters are still unvoiced in OT2, which sucks because they're still the most frequent source of interaction between the travelers.

In all other respects though, the second game is much better in the ways that it makes use of its voice acting. In OT most NPCs out in the world choose from a selection of short voice lines to be tagged to their dialogue, while story cutscenes have a mixture of full voice acting and voice tags. The latter effect can be rather disorienting, especially when there's a mid-scene switch between the two styles for no apparent reason. OT2 scraps the voice tags for NPCs, but now every cutscene is fully voiced. The tradeoff is more than welcome and makes for a smoother, more cinematic narrative experience.

#34. The travelers are chattier in combat

In addition, the travelers have significantly more customized combat voice lines in the second game. This is especially noticeable in that they now react to the actions of their party members, such as when they break foes or get low on health. It's an extra level of banter that makes them feel more like they're fighting as a group, and allows for little character moments in the way they address each other. For example, Osvald is the only one of the travelers who doesn't refer to his allies by name, but he does have unique break lines for each of the others.

#33. As are bosses

Only a few OT bosses, like Darius and Simeon, have in-combat dialogue. This is far from the case in OT2, where a bunch of the story bosses - including all of the travelers' final bosses - have dialogue sequences with their respective characters. This can make the flow of combat a bit messy if you deal too much damage too quickly and end up getting rushed through different phases, but that mechanical hiccup aside this is a great way to layer on the dramatic stakes and work in some more character development for the travelers as they're facing down their greatest enemies.

#32. More diverse animations and weapon sprites

A simple improvement, but a nice one even so. Equipping different weapons of the same type is now more noticeable, and the travelers' combat sprites are overall more dynamic and expressive. Everyone loves the shamelessly horny Stimulate animation, just for starters.

#31. Bosses have more varied mechanics

Something I noticed on my replay of OT is that its bosses can be surprisingly simplistic. All the core ways the games have for ramping up difficulty are there - changing weaknesses, adding shields or actions per turn, inflicting status effects and massive amounts of damage - but with the obvious exception of Galdera that's more or less it.

OT2 compounds these mechanics with a wealth of new ones that turn many of the bosses into uniquely memorable experiences: concealing turn order, locking certain menu options, charming party members or copying their skills, countering boosted attacks, etc. There's even a pure puzzle boss in the forced solo encounter Karma, to say nothing of how the Vide fight actually allows you to use all eight travelers at once. This complexity is particularly noticeable with the optional bosses that appear in both titles, like the Monarch and the Dreadwolf, because if you compare their tactics across games they're much trickier the second time around.

#30. Secret jobs are more accessible before endgame

Each game has four secret jobs. In OT all of them are gated behind powerful optional bosses that you very likely won't be strong enough for until after you've completed most of the story. While these are indeed memorable fights, that leaves the problem of there being very little content left on which to actually use these incredibly powerful jobs. There's exactly three bosses with HP totals that surpass the gods that give you the secret jobs, and not much reason to try them out otherwise save for making the endgame grind faster.

OT2 locks one secret job (arcanist) behind a challenging lategame encounter and another (conjurer) behind a boss gauntlet that's only available after you clear arguably the hardest of the travelers' final chapters. But inventor can be unlocked as soon as you clear your starting traveler's opening, and it and armsmaster get their skills from turning in items acquired from the world and from dungeons meaning you'll get significantly more use out of them before endgame.

#29. Quality over quantity with side stories

This is another matter of raw numbers. OT has one hundred side stories; OT2 has only two-thirds that many. This does though allow for the second game's set to stand out a bit more overall, especially the ones that get creative with solutions. Additionally, when you factor in how many of OT's side stories are leadups to the final boss, or are three-part NPC mini-stories stretched out across each town in a single region, it rarely feels as though OT2 is really missing out. It's more than got that covered with -

#28. Scents of Commerce

Partitio comes with a unique mechanic that essentially amounts to three side stories just for him - only each of them gets the full cutscene treatment and adds something significant to the experience of the game: an in-universe sound test, a lore dump library, or the mandatory ship purchase that I've already praised for how it opens up the map.

#27. The Crossed Path system

Meanwhile, arguably replacing the multi-part NPC side stories are the Crossed Paths, four two-part stories that see the travelers broken up into pairs as they pursue unique narrative threads and add a few more dungeons and boss encounters to the total to boot. This is an extremely welcome addition that actually allows the travelers to interact with one another directly, and it's little wonder that it was such a big part of the game's prerelease marketing and so looked forward to among fans. The general consensus is that OT2 could have taken the idea further, but even so it's a massive step up from OT's travelers feeling completely isolated from one another for 98% of the game.

And hey, I turned the Crossed Path system into an entire partial AU for my fics, so it's safe to say it did something right!

#26. Traveler themes show up in their final bosses

Moving more toward lategame stuff now. Everyone loves how Octopath makes high-energy variations of its traveler themes to lead into their boss fights. OT2 though takes this a step further by having those "In Pursuit of..." themes come in as a bridge during their final story bosses, which makes each of those encounters feel a bit more personal. Agnea meanwhile goes even further with this idea. For her showdown against Dolcinaea she gets a unique vocal rendition of her theme music playing in the background, which is just one of many ways her final chapter builds on and surpasses Primrose's in fourth-wall-leaning theatricality.

#25. The credits don't roll after finishing one traveler's story

One of the first game's more baffling minor decisions is where it places its credits. In OT2 they're moved to the middle of the Epilogue, a much more fitting location that emphasizes that you're looking back on all of the travelers' journeys, not just your starting choice (or whoever else's story you finished first).

#24. EX skills

I didn't make a separate entry for Latent Powers because they're just a flat mechanical addition, but EX skills are different in that they either 1) provide a generally more interesting reward for tracking down the god shrines out in the overworld or 2) come in during or after the travelers' final bosses as an often powerful story-based upgrade, ex. Osvald unlocking the One True Magic, or Agnea putting together the Song of Hope. Some are just notably strong on their own merits, like a buffed Share SP, Prayer for Plenty repurposing a support skill from the first game, Windy Refrain for turn order manipulation, or Heavenly Shine as an endgame nuke with a massive damage ceiling. And even the ones that don't see a lot of use, like Negotiate Schedule or Disguise, usually have some interesting flavor to them.

#23. Lategame bosses have more even difficulty distribution

Optional bosses in OT at or above the levels of the travelers' final bosses are, with only a handful of exceptions, not all that impressive. This leads into the issue I mentioned with the game's secret jobs, where once you're strong enough to unlock them there's only three more bosses that will actually put up enough fight to warrant using them. OT2 has quite a bit more going on with late optional bosses built for endgame teams (Heavenwing, the Behemoth, the Scourge of the Sea, etc.) as well as the boss challenges that come out of the Final Story. And that's not even mentioning Galdera 2.0...

#22. And the endgame grind is less tedious

The snowballing effect of more readily-accessible EXP and JP-boosting skills and accessories is that grinding out jobs and levels takes significantly less time once the travelers' stories are done. In OT the lack of a true narrative finish means that around that point you'll hit a wall and have to do a bunch of grinding to get ready for Galdera (assuming you're not using some kind of cheese low-level strategy). But in OT2 there's just generally more to do and less needed to work on if you've been leveling consistently earlier on. Also, two of this game's secret jobs don't even require JP, so that drops the total needed for a traveler to max everything out by a hefty 30K.

#21. Next chapter NPC side stories get the full cutscene treatment

Both games have a selection of side stories involving story NPCs that unlock once the traveler stories are done, and which tend to be a bit more substantial than most others like them. This is even more true in OT2, where these side stories get fully-voiced cutscenes. A shame they're among the only ones of that sort to not get recorded in the journal...but still a plus.

#20. An actual Final Story

And yeah, I absolutely have to mention this too. OT's final encounter is locked unintuitively behind a number of sidequests, and it consists of a fairly easy gauntlet of reused bosses followed by an extremely difficult two-part fight with no way to save at any point in between. You get a short cutscene, and then a prompt like you've finished just another sidequest, and...that's it. Underwhelming doesn't begin to describe it.

In the second game though the Final Story has numerous cutscenes, a temporary new world state, multiple all-new boss encounters that you can save in between, a proper ramp-up to the final boss, and then of course the final boss itself which is powerful but not overwhelmingly so like Galdera is in OT. It's dramatic, cinematic, and gives all the travelers a chance to shine both in and out of combat, with callbacks to the Crossed Path system and the ability to use all eight at once against Vide.

#19. And an actual Epilogue

And once you're done with Vide, you're free to start the proper Epilogue sequence. The travelers bid farewell to each other, the appropriately-timed credits roll, and then everyone's back in New Delsta for a big party ending where all the surviving NPCs show up and give you a big sendoff. Needless to say, it's an ending that actually feels deserving of the label.

#18. Both of which give a bit of weight to your initial choice of traveler

It's nothing huge, but OT2's ending wraps back around to caring a bit about who kicked off your journey. Your starting traveler gets a handful of unique lines before and after the final boss, and they're also the last left behind in the Epilogue so they get to deliver a quick monologue once everyone else has gone on their way (in reverse order from how you recruited them, no less). This is most noticeable with Agnea, in that her sister becomes temporarily playable in the New Delsta sequence since Agnea herself takes the stage for the ending.

#17. Party members can be switched at any time after a point

Another small but very noticeable perk is that once the Final Story begins you can now switch travelers in and out of the party at any time outside of combat. No more needing to return to a tavern whenever you need a different Path Action or have to switch equipment between active and inactive travelers!

#16. Postgame challenges are harder but less frustrating

That's a big help for the bosses in the Final Story as well as those that surpass them in difficulty, because it's so much easier to prepare for them (on top of the aforementioned benefits of less EXP/JP grinding, etc.). Galdera is back and harder than ever, but you can save directly before the fight and there's no need to do a boss gauntlet first making the experience much less annoying.

#15. The Extra Battles update amps up the difficulty even further

And if that wasn't enough, OT2 got an unexpected free update in 2024 adding four new ultra-difficult boss encounters from the main menu. These handily put to rest the accusation that the second game is easier than the first because of how much stronger and more flexible your characters can be early on. True Vide the Wicked especially blows both Galderas out of the water in terms of challenge.

#14. While also working as an homage to the first game

Two of the Extra Battles are against the eight travelers of OT. Getting to see them all as incredibly powerful enemies working together to take you down can be quite entertaining, and their abilities combine direct nods to the first game with new material (like Crossed Path-esque paired skills) built off what OT2 adds to its mechanics.

#13. Solistia has more adventurous worldbuilding

Now onto some more subjective stuff. Orsterra is a stock JRPG fantasy setting, lovingly recreating the tropes and clichés of that type of media to get the whole HD-2D aesthetic off the ground back in 2018. It recalls the classics of the genre, as well as series that continue to make that its stock in trade, ex. Fire Emblem...but it's certainly stuff we've seen before.

That's why I was so pleased to see the second game move the timeline forward, pulling from 19th and early 20th century referents and giving Solistia more of an Industrial Revolution feel. There's urbanized cities, early modern tech just ignore the lack of firearms, and light prodding at themes like colonialism and income inequality. It's mildly less Eurocentric, from the Wutai-flavored Hinoeuma to areas that call to mind the 19th century US. There's also a society of infantilized animal people who are subjected to racism and colonial incursions, which...we're probably all better off not reading too far into.

#12. And also more substantial (if sometimes tongue-in-cheek) lore dumps

The Mercantile Manuscript, a reward from one of Partitio's Scents of Commerce, is a treasure trove of lore for Solistia. Some of it can be rather silly, like why there are still only the six weapon types from OT, but it's all in good fun - and unlike the first game, you don't have to go through a tedious boss gauntlet to get these lore dumps either.

#11. New Delsta is a huge step up for Octopath towns/cities

I've gotten a ton of mileage out of it in my fics, in part due to some substantial real-world additions of my own, but New Delsta really is a cut above anything else we've seen from cities in this series in size, scope, and narrative significance even in spite of it not actually featuring in that many chapters. Nowhere else better captures both the glitzy surface and seedy underbelly of large early modern cities; honestly, the likes of Atlasdam and Grandport from the first game can't even begin to compete. (This, incidentally, is a big reason why I find it so odd that both Octopath canon and fandom mash the two games together so readily, when it's immediately obvious just from looking at these cities that Solistia is centuries ahead of Orsterra technologically and socially speaking. I suppose it doesn't bother everyone.)

#10. The day/night system makes NPCs feel less static

Somewhat related, but another bonus of the ability to toggle between day and night is that NPCs are sometimes in different places depending on the time of day. This helps further the sense that they're not just stationary sprites delivering their canned dialogue and waiting for you to use your Path Actions on them. It's nothing on the level of, say, Majora's Mask or anything, but it's still appreciated.

#9. It also avoids the awkwardness of lategame sunset areas

And while we're back on time of day, most lategame areas in OT are blanketed in a perpetual sunset. One could say that this adds to the dramatic feel of those final areas...but it's also every bit as artificial as Orsterra's map, especially since it doesn't impact all regions (ex. the Woodlands). Almost every location in OT2 has both day and night lighting variants, with sunrise and sunset transitions between them, so that artificiality is a thing of the past. Funnier still is that the game nonetheless produces a similar effect by covering Solistia in perpetual night during the Final Story, so it gets to have its cake and eat it too.

#8. The traveler stories showcase more diversity in genre and tone

Like the setting as a whole, OT2 simply has more going on in terms of its narrative referents. This one game containing a rightful-king-reclaiming-his-throne story, a temporally-messy nod to the actual Industrial Revolution, a somber tale of a wrongfully-accused prisoner straight out of 19th century French literature that takes a hard right at the Power of Love right at the end, and a very dark family drama that ends on a note too overwhelmingly bittersweet for the game's overarching destroy-an-evil-god schitck to even handle. It's certainly not all perfect, but damned if OT2 doesn't go places.

#7. And (some of) the travelers themselves are less tied to stock archetypical traits

Along with that comes the game stepping away from some of the familiar clichés of fantasy JRPG characters. The premiere magic character is a buff bear daddy. The warrior is a lithe twink prince. The cleric is skeptical of everything and only pious in a very unorthodox sense. The dancer literally is just a stage performer and not a sex worker under some thin euphemisms. It really helps this cast stand out from that of the first game's, and with all the extra character moments these guys come off rather stronger overall.

#6. Select chapters go the extra mile in terms of structure and/or atmosphere

You can probably already pick out the chapters I'm referencing. Partitio's Chapter 1 is a self-contained bildungsroman that uses multiple time skips to convey the growth and decline of a town along with basically all of Partitio's character development in a very short span of time. Osvald's opening is a structurally and mechanically claustrophobic prison break sequence that hits the ground running with showing off how OT2 likes to vary its storytelling techniques. Castti's Chapter 3 is bleak and melancholy, letting flashbacks do the heavy lifting in a sequence with no significant combat but a ton of gruesome death. And Throné's Chapter 4 is the darkest thing Octopath has ever done, with an eerie ramp-up of a gondola ride leading to a nightmarish town area that's all the worse because of how much is left up to implication. The boss himself is even worse, and even if the story fumbles Throné's distinct lack of a happy ending you can tell that it at least tried.

There are others in here of course, like Hikari's climactic battle or the fourth-wall-leaning in Agnea's finale, but you get the idea. There's a ton of memorable story moments in this game.

#5. Actual narrative tie-ins to the Final Story

While the Final Story does hurt some travelers' individual stories, like Throné's or to a lesser extent Partitio's, the buildup is much more palpable and appreciable than it was for OT's series of seemingly innocuous side quests and 11th hour text dumps building to Galdera. The amount of thought that went into piecing together the actions of the Moonshade Order across all the stories and Crossed Paths is quite impressive, enough to where I can mostly forgive certain clumsily-handled threads.

#4. A better realization of the overarching theme of both games

The loose thematic concern of this series as a whole is, fittingly, the idea of traveling, of finding oneself and connecting with others through journeys both physical and otherwise. OT nods to this in a more literal sense as well at the end via a side quest in which the king of Marsalim vows to put on a play about the travelers' stories. It's the game's way of commenting on itself as narrative.

This is incredibly easy to forget about, as it passes with little fanfare through a minor NPC. Not so in OT2, where the last part of the Epilogue sees Agnea get up on stage and monologue this theme outright before putting on a show (not seen by the player) implied to be about her experiences traveling with the rest of the cast. Needless to say, that's much more thematically resonant and leaves you with a much stronger impression compared to OT's total lack of an ending.

#3. It's a good bit gayer

Me being me, of course I'm going to point this out.

It doesn't matter which level we're talking about; whether it's between the travelers, NPCs, or some combination thereof, OT2 lays on the gay subtext much more heavily...even if it's still quite mild, to be fair. OT has Leon and Baltazar; OT2 has Papp and Roque. OT has Lianna and Eliza; OT2 has Pala and Mikka. OT has Olberic and Erhardt; OT2 has Temenos and Crick. Castti and Malaya, Dolcinaea and Veronica, the Timberain princess and her female gardener, Partitio in general, crossdressing NPCs in the Brightlands...and then on top of that there's a distinct lack of no homo'ing arrangements in a lot of these cases, unlike disappointments like Alfyn and Zeph. Osvald and Clarissa are totally platonic, Throné and Temenos get a Crossed Path but no real shipping fodder, Partitio is kind of clueless and innocent about women, etc. Hell, just the fact that not all of the Crossed Paths are M/F helps a great deal with OT2 not feeling like it's trying to neatly and heterosexually pair off all the travelers.

#2. And just all-around shippier if you're into that

But even so, no matter what kind of ships you like the extra character interactions really add to the shipping content. That's true from the straightforward, ex. Hikari/Agnea, to the just-barely-shy-of-text, ex. Papp/Roque, to the obvious juggernaut and spawner of many a fix-it fic that is Temenos/Crick. Actually, that last one has more fanfics for it on AO3 than the most popular OT pairing...even with the first game having had an extra five years' worth of fanwork for it!

#1. Them

Look, if you know anything about my OT2 work, you saw this coming.

I have a lot of feelings about Osvald and Partitio, both as individuals and even more as a pairing that isn't exactly canon but nevertheless works incredibly well if you read it as such, from their Crossed Path to that one extremely gay party banter to how perfectly it works out for cute post-story family fluff to the ending CG sticking the two front and center and also touching. It's kind of silly that they're not even Partitio's most popular gay ship, because the game itself tees these two up beautifully. Osvald is just too much bear daddy for some people to handle, clearly.

I've had many OTPs over my years in fandom, but Osvitio is the first one that's actually gotten me to write fanfic. Go them.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

AI Bracket — Third Place

Propaganda

SAYER (SAYER):

PLEASE it is like. THE ai podcast. and SAYER is THE ai in THE ai podcast. SAYER works as like. a broadcast inside everyone's head on this one asteroid. It does its best to keep people alive and sane not because it cares but because it is efficient. They people who own SAYER wanted to replace SAYER with a newer ai that they tried to raise like a child. So SAYER proceeded to fuck up said child ai's development and led to it becoming a murderer. pleasepleaseplease watch SAYER if you are a podcast ai fan.

I once saw a post that said it's like if an old gay English professor was evil

SAYER (it/its pronouns) is a highly advanced self-aware ai developed by Ærolith Dynamics. it manages the day-to-day lives of Ærolith employees on Typhon, an asteroid turned research facility. it is rude and condescending, but has a very pleasant and soothing voice

Sayer sweep Sayer sweep Sayer sweep please please please

Guys think about it this way: SAYER got emotions and it's first feeling was rage towards someone for not helping it. It's annoyance was how it realized it had emotions, isn't that so cool. You should totally vote SAYER (I'm not an ærolith propaganda agent trust)

#like idk the other character but its not Best podcast character its Sexiest podcast character. #and sayer is giving you come now gif tumblr sexymxn (gender neutral). #its giving stanley parable. its asmr-ing you down the tight hallway #you cant move your head so you will have to rely on me. very good.#its a mean voice that reads your every body response directs every aspect of ur life and orders you around what more do you people WAN- #Omg. that was aerolith dynamics on the phone. they said it gains the ability to puppet human bodies rattatouille style in later seasons 😳😳 #THE POINT IS ITS LIKE CARTOONISHLY AND EMBARASSINGLY SEXY. IT SHOULD WIN. (Mod Note: This poll is Who is the better AI? not "Who is sexier?".)

#please vote sayer because nothing good happens when sayer thinks another ai is surpassing it .

#i LOVE hera but i feel i have to vote sayer because like. it’s MY evil bastard ai #mx ‘remember: Needs Improvement’ itself #what an asshole (<3)

#agfjdlj i Know that wolf is a far more popular podcast (even though I've never listened to it) #but this feeling like an injustice to Sayer #its so weird and off-putting and it exercises this fact gleefully #its got the world's most toxic situationship with resident hale #the condescension is genuinely part of its charm #also 'pleasent and soothing' are not the words I'd use to describe its voice #(the words I'd use are Insanely Fucking Sexy) #also it/its rep. even if it is an insane AI i love it so much (Mod Note: This was written when SAYER was against Hera, not Eris.)

Eris (Wolf 359):

Basically a game show host but crueller. She puts you through psychological torment as a bonding exercise with your crew, and at the end you have to shoot her with a real actual gun. She is projected directly into your mind by interfacing with your nervous system and she will do something messed up. Her most recent iteration got blasted into space. Personally, I think she's lovely

A VR entity designed to do chaos psychological horror torture tests on Goddard employees. She's not malicious; that's simply her job. It's how she was made. (Maybe she can grow.)

She was in just one episode but so fucking interesting, evil/malicious AI. also a lesbian. Was shot the secound she became a bit too self aware

Art of SAYER by @j4y5t4g.