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eveningstar1516 · 3 years ago

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Rise of the Demon King ~ Epilogue

Rise of the Demon King

Fic: Multi Chapter Paring: MC x Everyone (Mostly Lucifer) Type: Angst with a Happy Ending Total Word Count: 26,758 TW: Major Character Death, Reader gets stabbed with a sword through their chest so..., Abusive Parents, Past Child Abuse, Demon Hunters, Loss of Control Summary: You’ve done it. You’ve finally done it. You’ve managed to anger the demon king. Now you hold your head high as he hands down your sentence. AO3 Portal: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065362 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A/N: I gotta Discord server guys! It's primarily Obey Me but other fandoms are welcome as well. It's kinda baby and dead so me and the other members are looking to revive it and we'd love for you to come join us. A roleplay area is included :) https://discord.gg/F3YEmDZCPS Please remember to read and accept the rules once you join for access to all the channels. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Previously:

I spent that night cuddled close to Lucifer. After I bathed, he tended to my injuries and wrapped my upper back where my top set of wings once were. We layed in bed together, Lucifer holding me protectively against him as we fell asleep to the sound of our heartbeats, beating in sync. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CHAPTER 13 - Epilogue (3514 words)

“Mmm, Lu?” Gingerly, I opened my eyes. I had woken up to the feeling of someone nuzzling the side of my neck. Opening my eyes, I found that we had shifted into a spooning position in our sleep. His arms were wrapped around my waist and my hands were clasped over his. Lucifer was still asleep, holding on to me tightly. Carefully, I turned over to face him. His expression was relaxed. Sleep melted away any forehead creases making him look infinitely younger. His lips parted ever so slightly as his hair fell over his face, framing it just right. Carefully, as not to wake him, I lifted my hand to tuck some loose strands behind his ear and pecked him on the cheek. Being the notoriously light sleeper he is, Lu stirred at the movement. “Good morning Lu” “Mmm, good morning love” “Did you sleep well?” “Mhm.” Lucifer opened his eyes. The soft morning glow of the Devildom moon cast a soft light over him masking the demonic entity next to me in a celestial glow. His eyes were soft and docile, sleep still apparent. Not wanting to ruin the moment, but also not wanting to miss breakfast and see the rest of the brothers again, I started to shift away.

“Come on Lu, it’s time to get up.” “No. Just a little longer.” Lucifer immediately tightened his hold on me and buried his face into my chest. Letting out a small laugh, I brought my hand to his head and started stroking his hair. He sighed and leaned into my touch. “I’d love to stay in bed longer, but if we do that, Beel would eat everything.” Lucifer muttered something into my chest before pulling away and placing a kiss on my forehead. “We wouldn’t want that now would we? Come, let me change your dressings, then we’ll go.” It was then I remembered that I didn’t exactly have anything to wear. “Um, Lu? What am I supposed to wear?” Lucifer was already across the room getting the first aid supplies and a change of clothes out of the closet. He laid them out in front of me as I sat up. Spying the outfit, I realized it was my own, the one I would always wear when Lucifer and I spent our limited alone time. “Lu? Why do you have my clothes in your closet?” I asked with a raised eyebrow as he started removing my dressings and cleaning the wounds. A small blush appeared at my question. “It’ll be about 2 weeks before these fully heal.” “Lucifer, you’re avoiding my question.” “It will take you a little longer to learn how to fly with 2 pairs of wings instead of your usual 3.” I caught Lucifer’s hand in my own. He averted his gaze away from mine, his blush intensifying. “Lucifer.” “I-I couldn’t let you go. These reminded me of you, so I kept them. We still have most of your stuff in the catacombs. I just wanted these for myself.” When he finished, he was looking anywhere but my face. I held his hand and cupped a cheek with my other hand, gently turning him to face me. I leaned up and placed a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “You missed.” Lucifer looked at me with his signature smirk on his face. I put a finger on my cheek and tilted my head. “I did? Huh, that’s strange I never miss.” Leaning up, I placed a kiss on the opposite corner. “Now you’re just teasing me.” I giggled. “Yup. Now come on, we better get down there before Beel eats everything.” ~Dining Room~ Lucifer entered the room first, announcing that they had a visitor that would be staying with them. “Ooh, really? Yay! Another Spa mate!” Asmo clapped his hands excitedly. “Great, I don’t have time for another normie.” Levi went back to his switch not caring. Belphie was half awake and not really caring, giving the barest hint of acknowledgement. “Who are they?” Satan asked, putting his book down. “Well, we have met before. It would be quite awkward to have to introduce myself a second time.” I stepped around from behind Lucifer and looked to the brothers sitting at the dining table. Pin. Drop. Silence. A full second went by before I found myself under a pile of demons. “Y/N! You’re back!” “Y/N, I can’t believe this!” Asmo clung tightly to me, practically bawling his eyes out. Belphie was clinging to my other side with Beel wrapping his arms around both of us. Levi was hugging me from behind, pressing his cheek into my back. Satan waited by Lucifer for his turn while Mammon was still standing there in shock.

“G-guys! I missed you too but I still need to breathe!” “Alright everyone, Y/N is still sore from their fall. I know you’re all excited to have them back, but give them some room.” After Lucifer got his brothers off me, I went and gave Satan a tight hug. “Welcome home kitten.” “It’s good to be home.” After letting go of Satan, I made my way to Mammon. “It’s really you, ain’t it treasure?” “Come on Mammoney, who else would I be?” Mammon lowered himself to my level and tucked his head into the crook of my neck, holding on to me. “Ya dumb human.” “Not human anymore I’m afraid.” “That’s right! Darling, can we see your demon form please? I’m sure you look absolutely stunning!” “Not really much of a demonic form Asmo, but, well, you’ll see.” I stepped away from Mammon as the rest of the brothers backed up to give me some room. I rolled my shoulders feeling a swirl of magic surround me as I unfurled my wings and let my Nephalem form (A/N: That’s what I’m calling it. Don’t like it, too bad 🙃). I looked up at the shocked look on the brother's face. “You look stunning kitten.” “Your halo. It’s beautiful darling!” “You look just like him.” “I know Beel. I don’t know why my halo stayed. You guys can touch it, but Satan, I don’t know if you can yet.” “Y/N’s halo repels demons but doesn’t have an effect on beings that once held, or have traces of grace within them. Since you are born from me, you might have some trace, but we shouldn’t risk it. For now, just avoid touching it Satan.” “Will do, although I am curious. When the rest of you fell, your halo’s broke off and your uniforms changed completely, so why is it that Y/N’s outfit stayed Celestial, albeit with their colours, and they kept their halo, even if it is now a ring of black fire?” “I wish I knew Satan, although it might have something to do with my decision to willingly fall instead of being cast out by force.” Satan opened his mouth to say something but before he could, Beel’s stomach decided to make a guest appearance. “What, we stopped breakfast for this?” “Alright big boy, let’s eat, we can invite Dia and Barb and talk about this afterwards.” “Dad. What’s going on, and who's this?” I turned to the doorway where the voice came from. I looked as a young demon woman walked into the room. Her long black hair was braided down her shoulder. Serene coloured eyes looked me up and down. She wore a simple outfit consisting of dark blue denim tights with a white v-neck shirt, a black cropped jean jacket, and a pair of knee-high combat boots. “Who are you?” She asked again with her hands on her hip, eyes pinned on me.” I turned around to face the brothers. “Alright spill. Who’s the father?” I looked at the brothers with an equally pinning gaze as all eyes looked to Satan. “That would be me. Mezu, this is Y/N. Y/N, this is my daughter Mezu.” “You had a kid and didn’t tell me?!” “When could I have done that? We literally found out you were alive not 3 minutes ago. Mezu, Y/N here is an old friend of ours. They were the one that brought our family together and sacrificed themselves for us.” “Nice to meet you Mezu.” I stuck my hand out for her to take. She didn’t. “Why do you don and angels garb and halo with demonic features?” Mezu looked at me with her arms crossed, distrust evident across her features. “Mezu, you can trust them.” Lucifer came and put a hand on my shoulder. Mezu looked unconvinced and took one more look at me before reluctantly letting the subject drop. “If you say so. Although I still want to know why.” “I’ll explain that all after breakfast when Diavolo and Barbatos get here. I look forward to learning more about you too Mezu.”

~After Breakfast in the Common Area~

“So, I guess I should start.” “What happened after the execution?” Mezu asked. “Mezu!” “It’s fine Satan. I figured that’s where I should start anyway. After the execution, I woke up in some sort of pocket dimension. Lilith was there, she says hi by the way. She explained this dimension that she called the “Void”. It’s a place where souls that have no destination but don’t return to oblivion go to. She presented me with two options. She didn’t have enough power to resurrect me the way she did before, so she told me that she could either make me into a demon and return to the Devildom, or make me a Seraph and take me to the Celestial realm. I wanted to return badly, and I almost did but I didn’t want to return as a demon serving under Abandon. I chose to go to the Celestial realm. I woke up in the House of Honors wearing, according to Michael, Lucifer’s old uniform. Needless to say, he was not happy about that. After he gave me something to eat, we headed to the palace to see your father. It was there where we struck a deal. Neither of us wanted me to be there, but I also didn’t want to return and serve under Abandon. No offence” “None taken.” “He took an interest toward my knowledge of Lucifer's old habits and position. He struck a deal with me, one I would have also struck if he had not suggested it. I was to serve as Lucifer’s replacement, as head of the council of 7, until such a time that King Abandon steps down and Diavolo rises to the throne. During my time as the Council leader, I was to fulfill my duties as Lucifer would have, not abuse my power, and make decisions based on the best interest of the realm. The period of the agreement ended yesterday when Diavolo was crowned. I-” “Y/N?” I turned to look at Lucifer. “Diavolo wasn’t crowned yesterday. He’s been king for almost half a century now.” My eyes widened. “You mean to tell me. That I could have returned HALF A CENTURY AGO?! I should have done more than sock that bastard while I had the chance.” At the last part, half the room doubled over laughing. “You-you actually punched him, in the face?!” Satan asked, clutching his stomach. “Yup. In Front of the entire council, right before I jumped. You should have seen their faces but I could only do so much within the element of surprise before I made my dramatic exit. I would have done it sooner if I knew Dia had been crowned. I just didn’t want to risk falling while his dad was still in reign.” “Darling, have I ever mentioned how much I love you?” “Only every day since we met Azzy. Anyway, back to the story.” ~A Few Hours Later~ “And that’s when I woke up in Diavolo’s garden yesterday.” “It seems like the past millennia had been eventful for everyone.” Mezu commented once I had finished. “How was everyone's time here? I really want to know the story behind Satan’s love life and what the rest of you were up too.” “Well, the first few decades or so were quite difficult. It was hard to forget that you weren’t with us. Eventually though, we all grew closer through grieving you. Your death opened a familial bond between us. Something we had a hard time admitting existed while you were here.” Lucifer explained. “Don’t worry, we still haven’t changed. Mammon still ends up hanging from the ceiling, Satan spends all day reading and coming up with ways to prank Lucifer with Belphie, Asmo is still as narcissistic as ever, Beel keeps cleaning out the fridge, and I still spend my days in my room.” “Although, I noticed you have been starting to come out of it more often Leviathan.” Diavolo stated “Well, yes. I’ve been visiting the catacombs whenever I get the chance to add something to Y/N’s collection by their casket.” “Uhh, if my dead body is still down there, could we, like, get rid of it? It’s a little creepy to live in a house knowing your dead body is in the basement.” “We’ll clean that out and bring your stuff to your old room.” Satan said. “Alright. Ok then. Your turn.” “Me?” “Yes you. Come on Satan, spill. What is this love story of yours? I want to know more about Mezu and her mother.” Satan scratched the back of

his neck, looking lost in thought, a longing look in his eyes. I looked around the room and noticed that the occupants avoided my eyes, some looking towards Satan with a pitying look. Only Mezu looked at me. “My mother died 50 years ago.” “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” “Of course you didn’t. You angels don’t care for any demon or their relations. You all think your so high and mighty yet-” “Mezu, that’s enough! Y/N is not an angel, not anymore. I assure you, they care more than you think.” Lucifer starred his granddaughter niece down as she sat back down. A scowl still present on her face. “I’m sorry Mezu, I truly am. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. Please forgive me.” I smiled at her. She looked away, almost guiltily before Satan broke the silence. “Mezu was named after her mother. She was killed by an angel when Mezu was 25. She was beautiful and the only one who could cool my wrath after you passed.” “Were you happy with her? Like truly happy?” “Truly.” “That’s all I need to know.” I stood and hugged Satan. He returned it, resting his head above my heart.

~2 Years Later. At RAD~

It’s been 2 years since I returned. My wounds have healed and I found my place among the demons once again. Diavolo appointed me as an official member of the student council. I served as a secretary of sorts to Lucifer to allow for fewer sleepless nights and to make sure he didn’t bury himself in his work. Because of my status as a fallen, I was considered a noble and given the title “Avatar of Loyalty. The 8th of the 8” by Diavolo himself. I returned to RAD as a teacher on angel studies and a student in demonic politics. Lucifer and I became an official couple. During long night grading, I found myself chuckling at my students' interpretations of the Celestial Realm. I reminisced about my time with the council. Michael was probably glad to have finally gotten rid of me. Luke was promoted as Michael’s personal protegé. The rest of the angels were probably too busy to think about me though. Having finished marking, I went to go get Lucifer to turn in for the night.

~The next day~

“Dia, not to sound rude or anything, but why did you want us all to meet so early? RAD isn’t starting for another hour.” Diavolo sat in his head seat at the table as the rest of us sat in our usual spots. All of us displaying varying levels of consciousness. Belphegor having fallen back asleep as soon as he sat down. Diavolo had a beaming smile on his face as he spoke. Never a good sign... “We have some new exchange students joining us today. I want you to meet them all and show them around RAD. This is an opportunity for the rest of you to mend some old ties” “My Lord, what exactly are you getting at?” Lucifer asked tentatively. Diavolo’s smile only grew brighter, but before he could say anything, the doors to the council room burst open. “Y/N!” Looking up, I managed to catch a mop of reddish-orange hair before I was buried under a pile of bodies. After I finally wiggled my way out, I backed up towards Lucifer; his arm finding its way around my waist. Standing in the council room were the 7 Archangels, all donning RAD uniforms, all smiling sheepishly save for Michael who was standing off to the side with his arms crossed. Looking at the rest of the brothers, I found that Bell was now wide awake as the rest of them looked a tad bit uncomfortable. Lucifer had a displeased frown. “What are you guys doing here?” “It was Father's idea to have us participate in this program. He thought it best to-” “Don’t kid yourself Michael. We volunteered to come. We missed you Y/N. Especially Michael. He wouldn’t stop talking about you after you left. Things weren’t the same after you fell. He also really wanted to see Lucifer again.” Raphael cut Michael off mid-sentence. Looking around, the brothers each had a murderous look in their eyes. “Ok, first off, you volunteered, I got dragged into this. Second, I did not miss Y/N and I did not talk about them after they left. If anything, I was glad that they were gone, especially after that little stunt they pulled before they jumped. You didn’t think I’d forget that Y/N, did you?” I loosened myself from Lucifer's grip and made my way over to the angels, giving them each a hug in turn. “Aww, I missed you guys too. Mike. What did I say about your pride? Honestly, for someone who used to adore the Virtue of Humility and claims to hate the Avatar of Pride, you really seem to take after his sin. Besides, you didn’t deny wanting to see Lu again.” The occupants in the room started snickering as Michael’s face started turning a lovely shade of beet red. Lucifer looked taken aback at the revelation but lightly chuckled into his fist as well. “I’d be careful Mike. You wouldn’t want to lose that angelic status of yours for something as childish as misplaced pride.” Lucifer said with a smirk on his face. Michael started stuttering, trying to defend himself. “I-I didn’t! I-I don’t have any Pride I swear! Besides-” “Alright, alright. That’s enough.” Gabriel stepped in to save Michael from any more embarrassment. “It’s true, we did miss you and saw the exchange program as an opportunity to see you again. That’s why we volunteered to come.” Gabriel stopped in front of me and hugged me, much gentler than before. “We really did miss you Y/N. Things up there were too quiet without you.” “Oi! Hands off Y/N!” Mammon jumped up from his chair and pushed Gabriel away from me. Levi had shifted into his demonic form and wrapped his tail around my waist. “Y/N Belongs to us, not you normies.” “NORMIES?! I’m hurt that you think of us like that Leviachan. It is nice to know that you still kept your love for the Japanese animation even after you left.” Azrael said as he turned to look at Levi. A hand on his chest and a look of faux hurt in his eyes. This time, it was Levi’s turn to turn beet red. His self conscious not being able to take the attention. I was pulled away from Levi by Lucifer who placed a quick kiss on the top of my head. A prideful smirk on his face as he addressed the angels.

“Now then, there is no need to fight over this. Y/N belongs to me. Isn’t that right my love?” One cannot describe the look of utter hurt, shock, betrayal, and jealousy that overtook the features of everyone present in the room at Lucifer’s bold statement. My own expression being that of shock before all bloody hell broke loose. Everyone started arguing over who I belonged to and who I loved the most. I stood there trying to calm everyone down but alas, my voice was never heard over the shouting. “It seems the exchange program is becoming quite the success, isn’t it Barbatos?” “Indeed My Lord, although perhaps we should put a stop to this before someone loses control?” “No need Barb. Let them talk among themselves. I know, how about some tea while we wait?” “Of course My Lord.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And there we go. It's done! Thank you to everyone who stuck through reading this until the end. Thank you to everyone who left comments and Likes.

For those who are wondering about the candle and magical energy that surrounded Y/N, the energy is the magic used to take away their angelic status and made them into a Nephalem (Demon, Angel Hybrid). Their candle kept changing itself because it needed to form a new substance to match Y/N's new physiology.

#obey me: one master to rule them all #obey me #obey me x reader #lucifer x reader #obey me lucifer #mammon x reader #obey me mammon #leviathan x reader #obey me leviathan #satan x reader #obey me satan #asmodeus x reader #obey me asmodeus #beelzebub x reader #obey me beelzebub #belphegor x reader #obey me belphegor #obey me micheal #OMFIC

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ryttu3k · 3 years ago

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For the character meme if possible: Jan Pieterzoon and Theo Bell

Haha, I am not surprised at all XD

Jan Pieterzoon

How I feel about this character

He's a good bean in a world where it's hard to be a good bean. The fact that he's still Humanity 6 when he's a) three centuries old and b) Hardestadt's childe is a testament to that... Good Bean-ness. The feeding restriction is not great, but the headcanon for why he has it helps a lot.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Theo, obviously. Riding away on a motorbike together after Theo saves Jan's life? Good shit. I can see his crush on Lucita being one-sided, but important to him. And I'm fascinated by his dynamic with Sascha in the end of the clan novels.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

If not a ship, then yeah, Sascha. Possible connection with the Nephtali aside, they just have a lot in common! I could see Sascha sort of adopting Jan as a protege?

My unpopular opinion about this character

He's not dead. I mean obviously he's dead, he's a vampire, but he's not Final dead XD

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

Two things! First, the reveal that he faked his death with Theo's help to get away from Hardestadt, and has either joined the Anarchs or is taking some time out to just chill as Autarkis. Second, I really want to see a v5 version of the Nephtali, preferably with Sascha. Like the end of the Ventrue novel was so fascinating, but it got decanonised! I'd love to see that get a revival!

Theo Bell

How I feel about this character

Honestly a little bit wary about how he's written? Like there are character sheets and stuff that mention that it's kind of unusual how softly-spoken and polite it is, and they say it's unusual because he's a Brujah, but I feel it's at least in part, "Hey, look at this big black guy with a gun! Scary! But it's okay, this one is a subversion and is actually nice and polite! But he can also kick your ass and so actually is a Scary Black Man!"

I don't know, it just sort of... concerns me, I guess, how he's handled.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Jan, of course XD As above!

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Theo/punching Hardestadt in the face <3 We love to see it. Also, he has a really fun dynamic with Beckett.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Eh, I think my initial feelings might be kind of unpopular XD;; I don't know.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

Balance, I think? I can't see him having gone from Loyal Camarilla to Loyal Anarch, and I'd love to see him start to work out a more nuanced view rather than one sect or the other. I can really see him working with Jan with the Nephtali, whose theme I can see being balance in general, and having multi-sectarian origins.

#vampire the masquerade #jan pieterzoon #childe of the camarilla #theo bell #dbreath at sunburst dot co dot ck #pragueshipping

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lyricwritesprose · 5 years ago

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My New Who Fic Masterpost For Those Stuck At Home

More fic to take peoples minds off things. After all, the only things I can do at this point are (a) wash my hands, and (b) entertain. Please consider reblogging rather than just liking, so that more people will see the post. And please feel free to comment on AO3 no matter how old the fic is. Comments feed my ego let me know how a fic works, and they’re also tremendously encouraging. If you want to know which ones I think are best, I’d pick “Dragons of the Mind,” “Practical Mythology,” and the duology of “They Say” and “Invisible Road.” But I’m not great at judging my own stuff, so.

Doctorless Doctor Who Stories I think these fit into New Who because they feature some New Who species. However, they don’t feature the Doctor, and the companion they include is a classic companion.

“They Say” A slave tells a disobedient prince about a planet that eats armies. Somewhat experimental narration. “Invisible Road” The prince makes his way to the Dark World to save his sibling. Somewhat experimental narration.

Ninth Doctor Stories

“Homefall” After the Doctor burns Gallifrey, the TARDIS looks for someone who can persuade him to stay alive. Jossed by later events. Angsty. “Sense Memory” Rose should try to sleep off the drug. She doesn’t want to. Emotional hurt-comfort, mental violence warning for attempted brainwashing. “And Anon Stands For Memory” Outsider POV fic that I wrote when I was still somewhat finding my feet in fic writing. Basically, the Doctor meets an OC from a world he saved way back in the classic series. “Practical Mythology” Jack’s first night on the TARDIS, and the next morning. Action/adventure fic with some angst and one of the huge reveal moments that I really love. Borders on Outsider POV because Jack is new to the team. Easily one of my most popular Who-fics. “Things of Great Worth” Lighter and fluffier sequel to “Practical Mythology.” Team TARDIS attends a festival. “Of Strangers and Second Chances” After "Boom Town," Team TARDIS needs to find a place that will welcome an egg with no Family. Outsider POV.

Tenth Doctor Stories

“Inspiration” Martha and the Doctor try to help with a plague, and Martha discovers something about the Doctor’s past. Crossover with classic Who. “To Catch Us When We Fall” When traveling with Alonso, Jack gets into an unsurvivable predicament—which is a problem, because Jack will survive it anyway. It’s a virtually impossible rescue, but Alonso isn’t as alone as he thinks.

Eleventh Doctor stories, Twelfth Doctor stories and others under the cut (there are a lot of them).

Eleventh Doctor Stories

“Dragons of the Mind” Crossover between new Who and classic Who. In a dark, menacing landscape, Ace McShane tries to work out how she’s being played, and by whom. Adventure, mental manipulation warning. One of my more popular Eleventh Doctor stories, and also probably the longest. “Little Details” Rory’s first morning on the TARDIS. Fluff. “Boxing Day” Wilfred Mott meets Eleven. He isn’t happy about it. Angst with a happy ending, containing many thoughts about regeneration. “Just Because” Rory doesn’t feel like he measures up. The Doctor decides to do something nice for him. Fluff. “Interleaving” A look at exactly what was up with Amy’s Aunt Sharon, somewhat more sympathetic than most fandom interpretations. Effectively Outsider POV. “Faces” A look at regeneration, set soon after the ending of “The Big Bang.” Jossed by later events. “Night Terrors” After the events of “The Doctor’s Wife,” Rory is having nightmares. He talks to the Doctor about it. Angst with a happy/hopeful ending. “Edge of Human” After the events of “Let’s Kill Hitler,” the Doctor visits River. Doctor/River. “Sweet Sixteenth or Close Enough” Mels has a good time. Rory experiences the joys of time-scrambled fatherhood. Fluff. Short-term Mels/Jeff. “First Time Flying” There’s a first time for everything, including leaping off very tall structures. River-centric. “Goodbye” The Doctor visits a dying friend. (Canonical) major character death, tissue warning. “Definitions of Victory” River has issues with losing. The Doctor has his own doubts about winning. But he also has a lot of experience in changing the game. Doctor/River. “Cheek” River is one of the few people to learn Gallifreyan without being born there. Linguistic musing disguised as a fic, with a joke at the end. Offscreen Doctor/River. “In the Winter Woods” Team TARDIS plays around in the snow. Christmas-y fluff. “Christmas Punch” After the events of “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe,” Rory has something important to say to the Doctor. “Freedom and Lies” The Doctor says incredibly disturbing things when he feels like he has to. An attempt to make an out-of-character idea in character. Warning for lots of sexual violence in the background of an original character. “Torpor” Vastra and Jenny and huddling for warmth, which isn’t quite as sexy when you have to do it to revive a reptile. “Disaster, Pizza (Comma Optional)” A cracky little crossover with the original Teen Titans show, centered around the fact that both feature aliens with weird taste buds. “A Problem of Background” The eleventh Doctor needs Martha Jones’s advice about a new companion. Warning: the OC’s background is messed up. Please mind the warnings. This is one of the more serious pieces I’ve ever done for Doctor Who. “Always a Bit Left Over” The popcorn button on the TARDIS microwave causes all corn within a two mile radius to violently explode. Inspired by a tumblr post.

Twelfth Doctor Stories

“Someone Else’s Promised Land” The Doctor promised he would do something amazing in honor of Gretchen Allison Carlyle. “Strange Creatures” Martha and Mickey are looking for an alien hiding at a university. They find one. Actually, they find more than one. “Flashpoint” History on the planet Enuan has gone wrong, and it's up to Bill and the Doctor to put it right. But they're not the only time travelers here. Crossover with classic Who.

Original Doctor Stories These came about when I was experimenting with the idea of a female Doctor, before Jodie Whittaker was cast. “Polarity Reversal” Unfinished and abandoned vignette that was more a writing experiment than anything else. Features the same introduction story, once for a male Doctor, once for a female one. “The Lies of Garden” Unfinished and abandoned multi-chapter that began as a sixth Doctor fic and then suffered through me changing all the pronouns to see how it played out. I think I taught myself some interesting things, and I like the story, but if I ever finish it it’ll probably be by making it into an original dystopia novel. (Because this thing is about two hundred percent YA dystopia novel.) “Green Menace” Part one of a three-part story arc. A regeneration story featuring an original male Doctor, a far-future companion, and a classic monster. Warning: body horror, cliffhanger (continued in the next story, “Maze of Fears”). “Maze of Fears” Part two of a three-part story arc. Immediately following the events of “Green Menace,” the original companion struggles to fix her mistake and figure out what’s real. Warning: unreality, disorientation. “Two of Hearts” Part three of a three-part story arc. A woman named Stella is working at a radio station in a city that seems a little—off. And then she finds a playing card with a phone number on it, and a note: “The Doctor—call me when it goes odd.” One classic monster, one New Who monster.

Sarah Jane Adventures

“Du Liebes Kind, Komm, Geh Mit Mir” Crossover with classic Who, slight crossover with new Who. After she moves to America, Maria Jackson meets young Sarah Jane and gets caught up in an adventure with the Fourth Doctor. Warning: Mental Manipulation.

#doctor who #doctor who fic #new who

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askfallenroyalty · 5 years ago

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Ok. it’s time to talk about Asgore

in my repost (which, admittedly i wrote when upset from irl personal things going on, but that’s beside the point) i said i wasn’t up for discussing discourse and how i figured nobody would respect my boundaries and i was right. Again, besides the point cause now I want to talk about it to put this to rest.

1) The word use of Pathetic. ok so i called the situation pathetic and i’ve had some askers say i’m using the wrong word but

i’m not. Google is your friend. I meant he was pitied by the 6 revived souls.

Asgore, if you actually read my blog, looks like this:

He’s aged! He’s an old grandpa in both spirit and body! When Asriel got his body and soul back, because they’re boss monsters the parents aged along with their child! He looks like he’s 80.

The kids seeing this sad old man repenting and doing everything he can to fix what he’s done is sad. It’s a pathetic sight.

2)But we don’t know if Asgore killed the kids!/Let Asgore still have kids!

The kids never made it “past asgore” for context. The tweet is vague and I prefer to use canon from the actual games than tweets which toby has said aren’t canon. Like, tweets are nice for fanon speculation but it doesn’t hold as much ground for me. Like. Why is this even argument it doesn’t matter because

Asgore still declared war. He is still a murderer no matter how you spin it. He declared whatever humans fall underground are to be murdered. If he did not say this, it would be illegal and preposterous to attack and kill a human. Asgore is indirectly or directly responsible for the kid’s deaths. Nothing changes this.

The 6 souls are aware they’ve been murdered and brought back, and they are aware it’s Asgore’s fault. Why the hell would they want to live or be friends with their murderer?

3)BUT ALL monsters tried to kill frisk!

SO? Look, a lot of monsters aren’t even aware frisk is human and aren’t trying to kill frisk. And the one’s that do -yes it’s on them for carrying out orders but it’s still ASGORE’S FAULT TOO! He can still be responsible for declaring war. For god’s sake. Stop romanticizing this. It’s not funny or quirky that monsters tried to/ have killed frisk.

4) You’re abliest for condemning Asgore when he’s suicidal.

A literal galaxy brain take right there. I’m literally a suicidal person. I struggle with suicidal thoughts at least once a day. I have sympathy for Asgore, I’ve cried over the neutral endings. I LIKE him even while condemning him for being a bad leader and for fucking up! I like that he’s driven the plot to exist and for UT’s story to hold such a punch to me. I love this game! And! He’s a video game character who I like because he’s complicated! It’s not hard to look into my artwork or the blog itself to figure out my stance on Asgore and mental health.

IN CLOSING:

So I called Asgore Pathetic and people took it to mean this definition.

You know what actually is that definition of Pathetic? Harassing a stranger, coming at to them when they asked not to make discourse on a video game character. Sending in multi-parted asks with hostility and bad faith.

No you do not have to like asgore, no you’re not bad for liking asgore, its fine if you think he should still be able to have kids (he’s still Asriel’s parent in this au!) you’re allowed to feel and think anything you want. I don’t care. Don’t bother me when I ask not to be just so you can get your opinion thrown at me. I’m not your friend and I don’t care what you think.

Never bother me like this again 🤡 I’m fine w/ discussing this further but let’s not be petty or mean, thanks.

#am i still mad? yes. you should of seen the bs asks i got.#not art #ooc #tbd #DO NOT REBLOG #please and thank you.#long post #child murder for black list #i can't believe i need to add this next tag #undertale discourse #suicide mention

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telesthisia · 4 years ago

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; mun & muse - meme.

TAGGED BY: @hyaciiintho thank you so much!!! <3 TAGGING: @rcguna @cadcnce either or whatever works for you bear, @panickypeachboy @paintmaid @emfiliae @windmcge and you as well!! The person reading this

FILL OUT & REPOST ♥ this meme definitely favors canons more, but i hope oc’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. multi-muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. <--- leaving this here because this is super sweet ALSO FAIR WARNING my blog has right click turned off. I’m going to be placing this under readmore but I think you can see it on dashboard view! If not lmk we’ll work something out!!!

MY MUSE IS: CANON / OC / AU (Verse dependent) / CANON-DIVERGENT (Interactions & verse dependent) / FANDOMLESS

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES well kinda at least thanks to ssbu before she wasn’t that well known I MEAN PPL KNEW HER BUT SHE DIDN’T HAVE AS MANY FANART AS OTHER ZELDAS SDJBKHJABSD/ NO

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK because not too many people talk about her and by her I mean ALTTP Zel, people are bonkers over SSBU Zel!

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO if we’re talking about the canon of ALTTP and OoX series rather than ssbu it’s a hard no, she has enough magic to be considered a sacrifice to break barriers and revive the dead but not enough to fend herself off from evil mages who want to talk over the world / IDK

Are they underrated? YES / NO

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO / MAYBE

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO / MAYBE

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON? NOT THAT STRICT HONESTLY, she’s just an OC at this point haha because she has zero substance in her own god damn game ;v; she’s just exposition.txt with dulcina effect playing into view though it is somewhat justified since she is the princess and the only thing that stopped Agahnim from breaking out Ganon.... I MEAN!!! SHE’S NOT AT ALL A DEPRESSED CALM ROMANTIC IN CANON LET’S PUT IT TO YOU THAT WAY SDBKASDJHBDASD.

SELL YOUR MUSE! AKA TRY TO LIST EVERYTHING, WHICH MAKES YOUR MUSE INTERESTING IN YOUR OPINION TO MAKE THEM SPICY FOR YOUR MUTUALS. TAKES A DEEP BREATH

Tiny funky elf princess trying her best to rule elf kingdom. HJKA there’s more, I’m lazy but not that lazy. She’s the descendent of essentially a mortal god, more than likely acting as an avatar of sorts to the goddess Hylia, as such she’s gifted with fantastical abilities that’s been passed down her family for generations and she intends to use these powers to protect her kingdom that’s still on the road of recovery, as the sole survivor from Agahnim’s destruction upon Hyrule and thus sole scion she’s left picking up the small fragments from the tragedy that occurred ages ago where the Hero of Time had fallen. But here’s the downside to these powers: she was born with a very weak body and poor health as such she can’t utilize the abilities she has from her bloodline aside from a few powers without affecting her low stamina issues. Namely telepathy, clairvoyance, healing, sealing things away, creating barriers, and connection with the spirit realm. As such, she tends to rely on the wisdom given to her by her naturally bright mind and enhanced by the mythical object known as the Triforce of Wisdom. Surprisingly, she can be cunning despite her soft-hearted nature and is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her kingdom and people she loves, her silent determination more than makes up for the lack of powers she may have. That in mind, she’s often the target of more nefarious plans that means the downfall of her kingdom. She may not have the amazing light magic spells her ancestors did to prevent darkness from taking over but that doesn’t mean her magic isn’t any less potent, she just can’t tap into it. She’s an easy target for enemies that wish to use her sacred powers to revive the dead Ganon or break pass whatever powerful barrier or seal that’s in place.

Her future is pretty grim as well, considering she has a shorter life span. But it’s fine, things are fine she may have a gloomy outlook on certain things but that doesn’t stop her from living life!! Despite how sour this may all seem Zelda is still that encouraging young woman whose kindness defines her, she’s playfully innocent around friends and enjoys exploring old places of decay that’s rich with history! She tends to bottle up her more negative aspects to not worry others since she’s the pillar of an entire ass nation, she needs to maintain her placid demeanor as a means to calm and soothe others around her. Because the truth of the matter is that the events of ALTTP (before the game where harsh plagues among other things happened before Agahnim arrived to fix everything as well as after the events of the game) and OoX, instances where she’s witnessed death of loved ones, the downfall of her kingdom, and coming across death herself has affected her greatly. She suffers from grief and depression that needs to be addressed but... ;v;

NGL I’M ABOUT TO CRY

NOW THE OPPOSITE, LIST EVERYTHING WHY YOUR MUSE COULD NOT BE SO INTERESTING (EVEN IF YOU MAY NOT AGREE, WHAT DOES THE FANDOM PERHAPS THINK?). HJKA TAKE OUT MY BULLSHIT TAKE ON HER AND YOU’RE LEFT WITH EXPOSITION AND DAMSEL IN DISTRESS!!! She’s not at all interesting if you don’t take into account her roles in the mangas which I somewhat base her personality and thoughts on... she’s just.... nice pretty princess that needs to be rescued. A tale as old as time....

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE? GOOD QUESTION!!! BECAUSE I STARTED OUT WITH HILDA BEFORE DECIDING TO GO WITH SKY ZELDA BECAUSE I WANTED TO DO A MORE OUTGOING MUSE and then I opened up a sideblog for this Zelda out of whim. There’s no reason why I choose the most obscure Zelda, I just did it because I thought it’d be fun. I did not expect this much characterization for someone like her ngl. I guess what keeps me going is the fact that she’s a fun character to write for!

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING? HA!!! NOTHING!!! Mental illness is a bitch, I will have my down... weeks. Not days, literal weeks or months depending on how long my episodes last. It sucks, and I try to work around it but there’s not much I can do. That said, inspiration depends on motivation and want to write. As well as focus because god knows I have so little of that.

SOME MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN.

give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO I TRY BUT UNDERSTAND THERE’S NOT MUCH TO WORK WITH IN CANON YOU EITHER LIKE HER OR DON’T

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO but I honestly should???

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES where’s the kinda opition, because I personally love her and think she’s interesting enough but I’m still working a lot on her NO

Are you confident in your writing? YES / HA HARD NO

Are you a sensitive person? YES fun part of having ADD is that you feel emotions more intenstly, I’m naturally a senstive person too so :’)))) / NO

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL? YES OF COURSE!!!! As someone who wants to grow more in writing any sort of feedback is appreciated!

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER? If you give me the chance to ramble about this stupid elf I will literally love you so much like I love all sorts of questions anyone may have about her!! Though I feel my rambles don’t really make much sense since I just type whatever pops in the mind and put it down as fast as I can without double-checking well enough.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY? Sí! Again, I want to grow more as a writer and rper! So if someone were to come across a headcanon they don’t like I’d like to know why so that I can think more critically about it and fix it so that it better fits Zelda. If someone were to say “I don’t like this” without saying why it really won’t help much aside from letting me know that you don’t like the thing, which is fine and valid but pls let me know why!

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT? Eh, fine with it. I honestly don’t mind if someone doesn’t like my characters, any of my characters I play as! Sometimes, certain portrayals aren’t someone’s cup of tea and that’s perfectly fine. I won’t take offense to it, at the end of the day while I’m still working on Zelda I’m happy with how much she’s grown over the years I’ve played her as... which were just two but it feels longer dude!!!

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT? Again, I wouldn’t care that much lol. It’s just rping, it’s really not that deep. It’s no different from someone not liking a book because they just don’t vibe with the writing style among other reasons. I may be sensitive but I don’t really take a lot of things personally.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS? Ye uvub! I’m a literal dumbass behind a keyboard, don’t be afraid to say “hey this wasn’t spelled right” or “hey this doesn’t make much sense mind checking it over really quick”.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN? I THINK?! I MEAN HONESTLY I’M SUPER ANXIOUS AND A WORRYWART I JUST DON’T SHOW IT MUCH AAAAAAAA I’d like to think of myself as chill ;v; I try to treat others how I want to be treated and just try to be nice. Idk if I come across as that or not, it’s hard to convey feelings through text sometimes to some.

#THIS TOOK ME A BIT BECAUSE MY ATTENTION SPAN IS ALL OVER THE PLACE #ooc postings.#i need to sneep but.... i just need to answer meme too ;v; at least do one writing on here! i feel bad not doing much aaaa #dash games.

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megareviews · 4 years ago

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Octopath Traveler Combat Review

Hello whoever’s reading this, I’m here to talk about Octopath Traveler’s combat system, and how it sucks. Now you might be wondering, why am I writing about this now, isn’t that game kind of old at this point? Yes, it is, but I only “finished” playing recently since I was working off of a borrowed copy and it’s more the level of disappointment I felt while playing it has stuck with me much more than many other games I’ve played. Since I want to go into game design and development, I thought that it would be good practice to do a deep dive on game mechanics, and it’s easier to write about something that I have strong feelings about to start with. While I have many issues with Octopath, the combat system is what the player is dealing with the most (which in itself is an issue), so the fact that it was lackluster dropped the enjoyability of the game more than if it were better balanced with story and exploration. I’ll try to hit everything that I had a gripe with, from minor things I personally would want changed, to what I view as major flaws that lower the enjoyment for everyone. I will be talking about the post-game boss, because a lot of my issues come into focus during it, so spoiler warning.

For reference, I’ll be talking about the game the way I played it, so I’ll give my main character loadouts in relation to the final boss. Team 1: Hunter Therion, Cleric Alfyn, Sorceror Cyrus, and Thief Olberic; Team 2: Warlord H’annit, Scholar Ophelia, Apothecary Primrose, and Runelord Tressa.

Now the big overarching problem with this game is its simplicity. Making a game simple can be a good thing, and definitely makes it more accessible, but there are a plethora of sub issues that I will be going into throughout this caused by how oversimplified many systems are in this game. For starters there is the lack of skill diversity, as in, there just isn’t very much that characters and enemies do over the course of the game. The offensive skills have 12 possible damage types, 6 weapons (Phys) and 6 elemental (Elem) and there’s only really 4 different ways these are implemented: single hit, multi hit, wide (hits all enemies) hit, and wide multi hit. Multi hits are generally just better due to the break system and damage limits, and wide hits are better the more enemies there are. Those of you good with numbers might have already multiplied those to get 48 ways of hitting an enemy, and I’ll add two, since the Merchant has an single hit untyped skill and the Starseer has a wide untyped skill, for a grand total of 50 that I can remember. Looking at that number I actually don’t know if that looks like a lot for somebody who hasn’t played the game, but the damage types only really matter in the break mechanic of the game and which stat is used for calculating damage. No particular type of damage is better for damage or accuracy skill wise, and the elem skills will do the exact same thing no matter which element is used since they’re only based on the user’s Mag stat. Phys attacks are a bit different since each one is affected by the weapon the user has equipped for that type, but they’re generally all +Str and then +Mag / +Acc / +Crit / +Spd / +Eva. Some Phys skills also have side effects that help differentiate between them, but the basic attacks are the same when the weapons are similar.

Since I brought it up, let’s talk about the two main mechanics of combat that this game has, the break and boost systems. Overall, these systems are pretty good on their own, and most of my issues are rather small here. First up is the break system: hit the opponent with their weaknesses a number of times, and they lose any remaining moves they have this turn, any they would take on the next turn, and all attacks against them deal more damage, though on the turn after the next, they are guaranteed to move first. This is where most of the fun of the game is, figuring out the enemy’s weaknesses, as they are hidden when you first encounter an enemy, only revealed when the weakness is hit, or with the Analyze skill, and then timing the breaks to be the most beneficial to your team. Many enemies belonged to groups with similar weaknesses, so it’s interesting to learn like winged creatures are generally weak to wind and / or spear attacks. The main problem I have with the break system is that once an enemy is broken, all damage types have the same effectiveness. Before being broken, an enemy that is weak to fire will take extra damage than if it’s hit with an ice attack, but while broken these attacks will do the same damage. Any accuracy bonuses don’t matter, since you can’t miss an attack on a broken enemy and speed bonuses only really matter if the order in which skills are cast is important, which there are some cases, usually with buffing allies. Then a bit smaller is how the weakness bar is always ordered, so some damage types are more useful to figure out all of the weaknesses. For example, if a weakness to staves is the leftmost weakness to be found, the player knows that there are no other physical weaknesses and to just start trying elemental ones. There were also some interesting extra mechanics that were only used a few times, such as shuffling weaknesses after a break, or, one mechanic used exactly once in phase 1 of the final boss, rotating through weaknesses when being attacked.

Then we get to the boost system, which complements the break system very well, with only minor annoyances. It makes the player decide between spending power against an unbroken opponent to break them faster, save up to deal massive damage to an opponent once they break, or how frequently turns need to be spent to cast buffs or debuffs. One issue that I have here is that magic users get the short end of the stick again, as basic attacks are the only moves (besides Bewildering Dance, the RNG move) that boosting will cause more instances of the move to occur. Boosting three times on somebody that will basic attack an enemy can cause them to lose 4 shields, while doing the same on a fire skill will just cause it to do more damage, which is objectively better to do when the enemy is broken. This usually isn’t an issue, as the BP can be spent on status effects and healing which will always be helpful, so besides Cyrus (laugh at him, he’s a nerd) there’s always something to spend BP on, thought your personal playstyle might dictate otherwise. Something that’s more personally annoying is how the limit is 5 BP max per character, since the most you can use is 3 per turn. What would be really nice and satisfying would be to break an opponent, have everybody spend 3 BP for full boosted whatever on the break turn, and then have everybody spend another 3 BP on fully boosted whatever else on the second break turn.

Next is another facet of the simple problem, is that there is significantly less character variability than the game wants you to think, and that’s not much in the first place. There are only 96 total skills for player characters, as there are 12 jobs with 8 skills each, and each character has their default job and may also equip a secondary job, letting each character go into battle with 16 skills, ignoring the path actions that grant others conditionally. The 8 base jobs can be simplified into 2 categories, DPS and Utility, 3 if you want to split the utilities into physical and elemental which I see as reasonable, or if you want to stretch it and split the 2 DPSs in the same way. I’ll stick with 3 since I can show how to best simplify them this way, watch. DPS: multiple damage type skills; Phys Utility: one weapon type set of skills, one single target elem skill, and a couple (de)buffs; Elem Utility: a single target elem skill, a wide elem skill, and a bunch of buffs. The advanced classes are even simpler, three of them being every attack type in either weapons or elements and then the remaining one being a bunch of buffs with one multi element skill so that every element had 5 related skills. I’m debating going into each individual job, but there are two that I will be getting into later for sure, Thief and Starseer, for opposite reasons.

Related to the lack of damage types and skills, is a lack of feeling of progression throughout the game. You gain access to 66% of the skills you will ever have by the end of the first quarter of the game, and the last 33% you won’t get until about the last quarter of the game. While the beginning of the a game it makes sense to give the players a bunch of tools rapidly, especially given the whole theme of versatility of the 8 different starting characters the game is based around, skills just scale up with the player’s stats, given through levels and equipment, otherwise they stay the same. While the middle half of the game can be used to mix and match secondary jobs on characters, it’s all just variations on the familiar. While this lack of progression just makes the game a bit boring until you start finding the advanced jobs, the actual issue is how SP scales through the game. The game ends up getting significantly easier as you progress further into the game since the SP costs become a smaller percentage of each character’s SP pools, and most forms of SP regeneration are percentage based, so characters get back SP easier too. For example, I had Ophelia with Second Wind (which I will get to in detail later) and a bunch of SP equipment, which by mid-game meant she could cast most spells and heal back more SP than they cost, and late-game everything was free outside of revive, which took two turns to fully heal. This is contrast to the beginning of the game, where a single skill cast could deplete a character’s entire SP pool, especially the physical jobs, as they usually came with smaller SP pools in the first place.

But where the runaway scaling is the worst, is actually on the thief job. Thief is a physical utility class, so it comes with dagger skills, the mandatory single hit fire skill, phys str and def debuffs, and some slightly more interesting abilities that falloff as the game goes on and you don’t need items or SP as much. All three dagger skills have special qualities, the divine skill uses the characters spd in the damage calculation, but HP Thief and Steal SP are the really broken ones. They both function the same way, hit twice with the dagger, then recover some percentage of the damage dealt to the stat in the name, 50% to HP or 5% to SP. The cost is also the same for each, 6 SP. There seemed to be a bit of a decrease in accuracy for each compared to just basic attacking with a dagger, so early on it was a bit of a risk to use it on enemies, especially if they were unbroken and not weak to daggers, as you would be losing SP to gain 30 health, or getting two dagger hits without boosting. But then, once the total damage of both hits reached 120, or even if you wanted to be safer, the damage of either hit, you start having a move that is free to use and hits more times than a basic attack without using BP, while also being able to heal yourself in a pinch. Now, the max damage you can deal in one hit without the Surpassing Power is 9,999, and you can very clearly see that a thief becomes an invincible slaughterer, as one can either heal themself for 9,999 HP, which is the max, or 999 SP, which is also the max, per turn. Now this might take a bit of set up, such as decreasing the enemy’s physical defense, which I remember mentioning is an ability that the thief job has, or increasing the thief’s physical strength, and there are a few ways to do that, but what I’m saying is it’s pretty much just all lined up for you to do way too easily with next to no drawbacks.

I’ve mentioned two support skills by now, so I should probably talk about them and the issues that they have. There’s 4 for every job, so 48 total, and each character has 4 slots that they can have support skills assigned to with no job related restrictions. This theoretically is about 200000 combinations, but since many support skills don’t synergize well with either the other ones or with the character or just are worse than others, there’s actually a lot less. The first way the options are culled are through support skills that are basically required. First on that list of required ones is that everybody needs Saving Grace, full stop. It changes the equipped character’s max HP from what is listed to 9,999, though if their HP is above their listed max, they can’t be healed any further until they have returned to a normal HP level. This gets very important for many late game bosses, and I feel like every paragraph is opening another two or more topics to go to, as most character’s 2k~3k isn’t enough. After that is some form of SP assistance, as the support skills are the ones with all the fancy %SP recovery. There’s 4 options to choose from: % max heal, heal % basic attack damage done, halve all SP costs, and heal % damage taken. Your magic casters will generally get the % max heal, since they have large mana pools to take advantage of that, and your DPSs will have the basic damage one, with much smaller mana pools and higher physical attack damage. Anyone with the Thief class can skip this, since as I’ve said, they will never run out of mana anyways. The % damage taken isn’t particularly useful as it’s such a small percentage and much less reliable than the others given it’s based on the enemy’s actions and targeting rather than yours. The Halve SP costs skill is situational, as some classes have higher SP costs, but losing the ability to actually regenerate SP makes the longer (and usually harder) fights more dangerous as you still run the risk of running out of mana. I used it on Tressa, since I played her as a caster and her mana pool is a bit lower than the other main casters, plus her Rest ability allows her to regain SP on her own. Third is either of the stat buff skills, once again the choice is based on how the character will be dealing damage. There’s Physical Prowess for Phys attack and defense or Elemental Edge for Elem attack and defense, and instead of being a stat boost like other similar skills from base jobs is that they permanently grant the combat buff to those stats, which means you don’t need to spend time casting the skills that do that AND that they can’t be dispelled by the enemy. What you do with the last slot (or two for thieves) is more open and is going to be where you can have ideas about different builds.

For me though, that last slot went to Surpassing Power on most characters, because by late game, most of my characters were hitting the damage limit pretty easily. Now the damage limit is just the fact that no single attack can deal more than 9,999 damage, because the developers said so. The support skill Surpassing Power, similar to Saving Grace, ignores that, and instead makes the max 99,999, though have fun trying to reach that before your character’s stats max out. Octopath unfortunately has a lot of these kind of arbitrary limits which only seem to exist to highlight an ability that can get around it, like purple treasure chests and Therion’s job ability. By the time I got to the post game boss 5 of my characters were consistently hitting the damage limit, and due to the sometimes absurd amounts of health that opponents had, Surpassing Power just made most of those fights so much faster.

Now a bit of time talking about enemies, because the difficulty scaling of the game is pretty boring, once again due to how simple the game is. This is really an issue among a lot of this type of RPG, since the game is just a numbers game and bigger numbers = harder fights. There’s two points specifically that make Octopath particularly bad with this, the lack of weaknesses on player characters, and enemy health. Since the player characters don’t have any weaknesses like enemies do, you really don’t have to pay attention to what specifically the opponent is doing, at most you can pay attention to whether you are taking physical or elemental damage, but the types are completely irrelevant. There’s a slight exception since there are accessories that reduce specific types of elemental damage, but as far as I could tell it was just better to use accessories that gave stat bonuses. Some enemies had abilities that could inflict status ailments, or had secondary abilities similar to player skills, but they were so few and far between that once again it doesn’t really contribute much. The other issue is with enemy’s health, in that they generally have way too much and causes the game to become so much slower. Fighting basic enemies is almost never a danger to your team assuming you are properly equipped, but the fights can still drag on for 5~10 minutes just whittling down their health. This even applies to fighting enemies that are much lower level than your own team, mostly due to the defensive bonuses that an enemy that hasn’t been broken has. This culminates to a final boss with about 700,000 HP, ignoring all the summons that it has and that it can’t take damage while the summons exist. Again remember that the maximum damage per hit is 9,999 in most cases and 99,999 in the other (which I’ve never gotten close to even with max offensive stats). Then also add in that you probably won’t be anywhere near that first max damage unless the boss is broken too, and you can see why the fights just take so long.

Ok, time to talk about the other job that particularly stood out to me, the Starseer. It’s a healing support job mostly focused around manipulating the party’s BP. Or at least the good skills it has are focused around BP. The divine skill is a wide untyped elemental attack dealing damage based around the whole team’s BP stock, and one of its utility skills also increases damage when the user uses BP, which you have to for divine skills. Another skill it has increases the BP gain of an ally to two per turn, rather than one. Unfortunately we’re already starting to get into the ok skill territory, as due to the way BP is gained, it is only useful for about half of the duration. After a character uses BP, they don’t gain any for the next turn, and since the max is 5 BP, there can only ever be two turns in a row where you benefit from this, and depending on support skills, the maximum benefit a character can get from this ability is an additional 4 – 6 BP. Now there is a Merchant skill that can give another character 4 BP instantly for the exact same cost. The rest of the skills range from decent but situational to worse versions of other job skills, and remember, Starseer is a secret job, meaning you don’t start with access to it, all the abilities are relatively expensive, and you have to fight a boss to unlock it. Continuing to a decent but situational skill is one that can target either enemies or allies, and prevents all stat buffs from being able to be applied to an enemy or prevents all stat debuffs from being able to be applied to an ally. If you know the enemy is a type to be able to apply either, this can be helpful if you can time it properly. The other skills of the job are mostly more expensive and / or worse versions of skills that other jobs have. From dealing multiple types of damage (worse than just 1 in 95% of cases) to healing over time (enemy’s damage considerably outpaces the healing it provides) to a counter that doesn’t prevent the damage like its counterpart, pretty much every active skill they have is disappointing.

I ran out of steam on that last paragraph, and stopped writing this for about 3 months, so I’ll just get one last point in. There are actually a lot of mechanics in the game that are kind of complicated, but since this game is about oversimplification, much of the most important nuance that the game actually has is hidden from the player. There are a ton of little bits of information that would make decision making in the game so much easier, but because the game refuses to display them, there’s a lot of guesswork. In some cases, this hidden information is obfuscating mechanics that subvert player expectations, so what they thought was an easy decision should actually be harder. The following is a non-comprehensive list of some of the worst offenders of hiding information in my opinion. The stat nuts, which raise character stats permanently, give different amounts of their stat depending on which character eats it. Moves that hit a random amount of times ignore all bonuses and penalties to accuracy and evasion. Items that reduce damage or recover HP/SP don’t say by how much, or whether it is percentage or a flat number. Healing skills scale with the caster’s elemental defense. What makes these and similar mechanics the most annoying is that there are some skills that do list exact numbers or percentages for their effects, so it is inconsistent too.

I will end this now and hopefully I covered everything I meant to. A lot of this was thought up while mowing the lawn or laying in bed trying to get to sleep so if something was lost in the recesses of my mind that’s unfortunate. I hope whoever made it all the way down here enjoyed reading, or at least thought it was interesting, and feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to hear more.

#Octopath Traveler #game mechanics

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armaina · 6 years ago

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I've been on the internet for about 22 years, and in that time I've used an absurd amount of art galleries. In light of this, I thought it might be of interest to myself and also others, that I list all these services I've used and write up a little blurb about the service and/or my experiences with it. It won't be any kind of structured review just blurbs, a little bit history, a little bit opinion piece. The sites are listed in (mostly) chronological order, ones that are still around will be linked and all sites with a ø symbol are dead. I'll be updating this page over time as I use more sites so that I can have a quick reference to everything I've used at any time.

øElfwood: The first ever art gallery I ever had and very likely the first gallery for others, I'd go as far as to say it is what made the concept of the social online art gallery a thing at all. It was a form of Juried site though, at the time it was the first and only of it's kind. All submissions had to be reviewed by a person, and while that meant it was easier to prevent stealing, it also made keeping a gallery up to date, very frustrating and it also prevented several subjects from appearing on the site at all. I uploaded fantasy art and started my presence as an online illustrator, sharing with other artists. While the site managed to last long past its relevance, the interface hardly changed and its attempts to make a new layout came far too late in its life cycle and the much complained about art screening never really got addressed making it slowly more irrelevant as more options started to appear. I tried to stay with this site for as long as it persisted until it's final days if nothing else because it was the one that started it all.

VCL: It's amazing that this site still persists, to this day. The site is simple, offers no engagement features at all. It looks like a lot of the users that haven't used the site in some time have been purged, but you could still use it if you really wanted. Illustrative works only, no photography, though I think you can upload text files.

øMediaMiner: The first real 'general art site' I encountered in late 1999. I used this pretty extensively at the time, as it was easier to use than both Elfwood and VCL, and also didn't have restrictions on the subject matter I could have.

DeviantArt: Joined in 2002, it's continued to be a mainstay in my work. Like media-miner, it aimed to be a big catch-all art website, not only that it also permitted written works, design, skins, crafts, just about any kind of art and design that had been neglected by anything available (and is often still neglected in many as you'll see). Due to its ability to house all many different types of creative works, easy to use interface, the ability to discover and engage in ways no other place I had used at the time, it grew very quickly. It set the standard for what was expected from art gallery options from then on out and continues to do so. RSS feeds for all galleries and favorites, the ability to watch favorites, drag and drop organization, folders and nested folders for organization, comment management, dedicated critique commenting, groups, easy thumbnail use in comments, this is just a fraction of the type of features DeviantArt has pioneered and influenced other art sites after it. It is the largest gallery archive of mine apart from my personal archive and will remain to be one of my first choices in what I decide to keep up to date and I'll probably keep it going until it no longer exists. About the only type of file it doesn't out-right support is audio, it remains one of the only sites to cover the most bases. (this is due to a sister site dmusic being prevalent at the time of Deviantart's development)

øSheezyArt: DA made some change and people were upset so they made Sheezy Art. It had this reputation for being the more.. drama filled version of deviant art. It permitted mature content in the beginning but then banned it 2 years later (this lead to the creation of FurAffinity) It had all the features DeviantArt did due to it being pretty much a code fork of DA's old code base, and its only real selling point was that you could customize all the colors on your page. But it's lack of management, updates and features just made people go back to DeviantArt and it eventually folded after empty promises of a rebuild.

Newgrounds: Most people had known this place for its flash games, as did I, but I discovered it had a very nice and genuinely helpful artist community on the forums. Only recently has the site expanded to permit more than 4 tags an image, but the upload system, in general, is awkward. It also has a rating system if that's something someone might be interested in. Illustrative works only, no photography, no literary works. Porn allowed.

øStorm-Artists: Also started as a sort of DeviantArt alternative, I honestly don't even know their angle or what made them feel like they could have their own place on the internet and others I think felt the same as it languished with no real updates and eventually died.

FurAffinity: So I've effectively used this site, twice. The first time in its first iteration before it had a huge major security issue that brought it down, making the original owner give it up. And then again years later I tried it one more time only for another security problem to happen. The site is old and archaic, lacking in features and its only benefit is that it's consistently trafficked. I'll never touch the site again until certain key players in FA are replaced. Many forms of Photography are restricted, not really a good place for design work, no video support. Porn allowed.

øFurry Art Pile: Genuinely liked this site, A lot of people did. In 2006 was the first tag heavy oriented art gallery of it's kind and not only did it use tags it was the first one I remember that had tag filtering. It was easy to upload and manage, so between those features, it became incredibly popular and still gets regarded as a site people wish had stuck around, even now. It's sad to say that it took about 10 years for the concept of tag filtering at all to catch on just about anywhere. To this day only Weasyl and a paid Pixiv account have functional, multi-tag filtering.

øJaxPad/ArtSpots: Started out as 2 sites, merged into one. One site was supposed to be one anyone could use, while the other was intended to be Juried like the old Yerf gallery. They had even imported all the old Yerf art with the original creators blessing. But volunteer support faded and it died due to being unable to not having the people to keep up with adding features and changes to the site.

øArt Piles: A revival of the Furry Art Pile code, it had the features people wanted but also ultimately tanked due to just the singular coder.

øPortalGraphics Network: This was a fairly niche gallery, as it was intended for users to post their openCanvas proprietary event files. The cool thing about it was that it would convert the files into a video format that would allow users to see the full progress of the work being done. You could even download those event files yourself to see them within openCanvas for personal study.

øFurocity: Another one of those 'more social media site than art gallery' sites. I used it for a time, gave a lot of direct feedback to the owner, but the site eventually was closed and merged with FurAffinity.

Paper Demon: Most people haven't heard of this site before, and for good reason - it's pretty unremarkable. One of the interesting features is that it has a strong distinction between its adult and clean sections of the site but otherwise there isn't much more going for it. It still exists and I've hardly touched it. Illustration and Literary focused, no photography, no audio or video support. Porn allowed.

Weasyl: It's actual inception came about by a person that was just looking to get rich off of providing 'a better FurAffinity'. Later on, the person who started the site left, and the administration staff that did any of the real work, remained. It had a strong few years where it kept on top of its updates and features but it has since languished, with hardly any real updates at all and no new features and a lead developer that doesn't seem to trust the artist base, it's difficult to say how long the site will last. It's the only other site apart from Nabyn at this time with a Character Profile feature and the only other site apart from Pixiv to have tag filtering. Restrictions on photography, no video support. Porn allowed.

øNabyn: Nabyn's effect and impact felt very similar to Furry Art Pile and it exploded in popularity quite quickly despite requiring a key to make an account. It had a robust character system that seemed to be the inspiration for many others after it. It also boasted a weird separate scrapbook feature that functioned more like blog/forum posts than an individual gallery. The site barely lasted a year before the owner shut it down due to being unable to keep up with the development of the site.

Wysp: An extremely easy-to-use site, doesn't require much for a new submission and has a Kudos feature that is a separate feature from likes, similar to AO3's Kudos feature. Its aim is to try to drive people to be motivated to draw and gives daily challenges and encouragement along with a critique feature. It also has the ability to thank people for comments, a sort of 'hey I read this' recognition which is nice for those short comments you don't know what to do about. However, it's only geared toward illustrative types of art. Illustrative works only, no photography, no audio, no video no literary works.

Pixel Joint: It does one thing and does it very well - host pixel art. It also provides a lot of resources and tools on techniques for making pixel art. However the community itself is not kind, it's elitist and gate-keeping. Which is a shame because it's platform allows you to zoom in on pixel art without requiring the artist to upload pre-upscaled images. It's the best site there is for showcasing pixel art, and that's about it.

Furry Network: I made an account, saw it was owned by Bad-Dragon, then simply filled in a few info bits in my profile and haven't touched it since, don't plan to. Whatever features it has I don't know, because I have no desire to use it.

ArtStation: the answer to the loss of CGHub, except it's better managed than CG hub and has a better interface. It features image stacks - multiple images posted in a single page, and a huge amount of resources and tools for employers to find work and artists to look for work themselves. Though it reads like a site that's only for 'professionals' the truth is, it has no restrictions on the skill level of a person to participate on the site. I think more people should use it, and just get over the fear that it's a 'professional' site. They offer a lot of good resources and the image stacks feature is so dang nice. Visual art and design only, restrictions of photography, no audio, no video, no literary works.

Pixiv: A completely viable gallery, I simply have not used it for myself. It has an English interface but most of its users do not speak English and it is a Japanese run website. Its organization is largely tag focused and it boasts an incredibly robust tag explanation and directory and is a feature I hope some English site adopts one day as this helps keeps tags organized and accurate. It also has an image stack upload feature, and as I'm aware was the first site to implement such a feature, it also now has manga submission support for an e-reader like features on the site. Other fun features are Image Responses, where you can make a submission a direct response to another submission, and reaction images you can use similar to emotes. You can follow people privately and it keeps likes and bookmarks separate from each other, rather than the same thing. Illustrative works only, no photography, no audio, no video no literary works. Porn allowed.

New Sites:

Furrylife Online: This is only just barely starting out, I don't have a lot of feelings on it yet but I'm talking to some of the people involved in its creation. It's a sort of Social Network Art Gallery hybrid much like Furry Network, except run by better people and already has a nicer interface. Also added a new character feature, making it the second only existing art community to have a dedicated character feature section apart from Weasyl. While it does not have tag filtering at this time, there are plans to add it. Only types of formats not supported at this time seem to be possibly photography, unsure about design work. Porn allowed.

ArtRise: The site isn't even completed yet, not even in beta.

Honorable Mentions:

øHumbleVoice: It was kinda like a social networking art site? I used it for a time, it was kinda mellow and nice. Kinda miss the chill introspective feel.

øzeros2heroes: This started as some strange social media promotion to promote the comic and eventual reboot of Reboot. It tried to find talent for the new works on the site and ultimately flopped. It now remains as a front end site for a production team.

I do not include sites like Instagram and Tumblr in my assessment as they are not dedicated art galleries.

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lostbutterflyutau · 6 years ago

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EoA Mirror World AU Synopsis (Part 2)

Other Parts: Part 1 Part 3 Part 4

Unknown to the students of Walter Mickey School, they weren’t the only ones to witness the magic that happened the night of the Spring Fling. That same evening, in a local diner, everyone in the building is arguing. The cooks, the waitresses, the customers…no one is happy. However, it isn’t a random occurrence. It’s the result of a magic incantation by three girls who absorb the negative energy into the jeweled pendants around their necks. One of them complains about it not being enough and the second says that it’s because the magic in the Mirror World isn’t the same as that in the Ever Realm.

Girl 1: I wish we’d never been banished to this awful place

Girl 2 Really? I love it here!

Girl 3: For realsises? Because I think this place is the worst!

Girl 1: I think you’re the worst.

Girl 3: Oh yeah? Well, I think you’re…

Girl 2: I’ll tell you one thing. Being stuck here with you two isn’t making this world any more bearable.

The second girl sighs, goes to put her head down on the table and is jolted out of the motion by a sudden blast of light in the distance. Intrigued, she rushes out of the diner just in time to see a bright, multi-coloured light fill the sky in the distance before first crashing down and then disappearing. The pendant around her neck reacts to it just as her friends file out behind her. She reveals to them that what they just witnessed was Maruvian Magic. One of the girls comments that the Mirror World doesn’t have Maruvian Magic, only to be told that, apparently, it does now. And they’re going to use it to make this world bow to them.

A few weeks later, after the events of Elena’s Mirror World adventure, the school is preparing for a musical festival in mid-April with student-made bands as the headlining acts.

Eager to turn things around, Carla attempts to help her classmates with poster decorating but finds that…no one is buying her attempted change of heart. The other students are wary and want little, if nothing, to do with her.

It should be noted here that Carla has gone through the “Obligatory character development appearance change.” Whereas, her Mirror World dress was previously black and played with the spider pattern from her Malvago robe, she now wears a dark purple dress accentuated with black on the ruffle layer of the sleeves and bottom of the skirt that matches her sash accessorised with a lavender rose on the right side. The outfit is completed with black leggings, flats and a purple ribbon woven into her braid. However, the rest of her hair, including her fringe, now hangs down, the two long pieces resting on either side of her face.

Discouraged by her classmates’ rejection, she thinks to leave, but Anna calls out to her and she stalks across the gym amidst whispered rumours and comments to her new friends. The only people who want her around. Though she used to walk with an air of confidence, much of it has dissipated since the events of the Spring Fling as she tries to find a new place among the students. She’s unusually unsure of herself, comments to her friends how she didn’t know half the school was going to show up for the preparation. In an effort to be positive, Rapunzel shows off their poster, which Anna excitedly claims smells like cake because she thought to use royal frosting instead of paste.

While they discuss their poster, Principal Paloma walks in. She thanks the students for their help in planning and preparing for the event, which will be the first of its kind, saying that the money raised from it will be used to fund the annual summer trip. She concludes by saying that she believes the event will be the most exciting since the Spring Fling, which prompts everyone to glare towards Carla, who, unsure of how to react, awkwardly plays with one of her hair pieces before slinking down against the wall. She then laments about it later before her friends’ band rehearsal.

Carla: I am never going to live that down

Snow White: You were pretty bad at the Spring Fling

Carla: A sorceress. I turned into a raging sorceress and destroyed half the school.

Anna: And tried to turn everyone here into teenage zombies for your own personal army

Rapunzel cuts in, says that at least Carla has them on her side and that they have forgiven her. Belle adds that the experience seems to have brought the students closer together and made for a better school atmosphere before they launch into their song, which Carla sits back to watch. During the number, each one of the band members magically acquires her tiara and princess hairstyle, which, after the song, Rapunzel comments on, saying that she can’t believe that it happens whenever they play music. She contemplates making matching accessories for their tiaras.

Belle: But, why does it happen? Princess Elena took her scepter back to Avalor, right? So, shouldn’t the magic have gone with her?

Moana: Who cares why it happens? It makes my band awesome!

Rapunzel: Your Band?

Moana: Well, it was my idea to start the Crownlets so we could play in the showcase. Plus, I am the lead singer and guitarist.

The other Crownlets exchange the same annoyed look just as the door to the music room opens, revealing the music instructor whom the room belongs to and the two freshman boys who used to follow Carla around and do her bidding. The music instructor comments on the improved sound of the band and Moana says that they are still things they need to work on, like Rapunzel coming in late and Anna sounding flat during the chorus, earning a series of looks behind her back while the teacher picks up a folder from her desk, instructs the boys to follow her for their lesson, not catching the wary looks they give Carla as they walk by. She sighs, wonders if they’ll ever forgive her, considering she used them for her own gain and then just threw them aside despite promising a pay off.

Carla: Ugh. The old me really was awful, wasn’t she?

Though hesitant to stir up trouble, the other girls agree, but Belle points out that it’s more important that Carla is making an effort to turn her life around. Carla thanks her, says that the sentiment is nice, but that the other students don’t feel the same way. Before she can say anything else, she’s called to the main entrance, explains as she heads out that she volunteered to show some new students around. She reveals that she wanted to introduce herself and let them get to know the “new” her before they hear the floating stories about the “old” her. She leaves and Moana turns to the band, suggests playing one more song before lunch. Snow White asks if they can please play one of the songs she wrote, only to be brushed off.

Meanwhile, Carla meets with the students, who are the three girls previously seen in the diner. She tells them that Walter Mickey is a great school and the leader of the pack comments under her breath about how there’s something “magical” about the place as the tour begins. Along the way, they come across posters for the festival and Carla tells them about how the whole school is working on the showcase.

Girl 2: A musical showcase?

Carla: I know you’re new, but I’m sure Principal Paloma would have no problem letting you sign up. If you’re interested, that is.

Girl 1: We have been known to sing from time to time

Girl 3: Helloooo, we sing like all the time. It’s how we get people to do what we want.

Catching Carla’s suspicious expression, the second girl cuts in, saying what her friend meant to say was that being in a musical showcase sounds like the perfect way to integrate into the school. The third one agrees that she would have said that and the first says that yes, she would have if she wasn’t “the worst.” They start bickering and the second says to excuse them because they’re idiots. Carla begins to sense that something is off, and a lingering tension hangs in the air as the new girls fiddle with their pendants, which Carla compliments before trying to get a closer look, only to have her hand smacked away when she goes to touch. The girl tries to play it off, says that the jewellery means a lot to them and they’d hate for them to get damaged. Normally, Carla would understand, as her own jade necklace was a gift from her father, but something about the tone they use is…strange. She recognises the signs of someone trying to hide something as the girls saunter off in the opposite direction and she heads into the cafeteria to meet with her friends.

At the lunch table, Belle inquires about the tour Carla gave and the smaller girl confesses that there was something…off about the new girls. Anna tries to guess what she means, but all of her guesses are nothing more than silly gestures. Moana interrupts, tells her to let Carla finish her story.

Moana: Maybe we should just let her tell us?

Carla: That’s the thing. I can’t quite put my finger on it. They just acted…strange around me. Maybe someone already talked to them? Told them about my past. Ugh. So much for making a good first impression.

Meanwhile, outside the doors, the new girls are scheming, coming up with a plan to use their power of song to pit the students against each other in an attempt to revive their “true, Maruvian Magic.” Their leader says that their voices are just strong enough to make the students “want something so badly they’ll fight for it.” One of the girls scoffs, says that this plan is just a rehash of what they’ve been doing and the leader snaps that no, it’s not. There’s Maruvian Magic at the school and, because of that, the negative energy gathered from this specific group of students will give them the power needed to take over the Mirror World. And so, they burst into the cafeteria, where, in song they encourage the students to turn the musical showcase into a Battle of the Bands instead.

Me and you. You and me. Why don’t we see who is better? We don’t have to be one in the same thing. Oh, what’s so wrong with a little competition? Are you afraid of failing the audition?

It doesn’t matter who you hurt if you’re just proving you’re the best.

Their song stirs up a series of negative emotions in the students, bringing out their worst traits as they all launch into heated, unnecessary arguments with each other. Well, all of them except for Carla and the girls. After observing the scene, Anna declares, “Oooooh. They’re that kind of off,” as the girls quickly and collectively realise that there are dark forces at work, which they talk about on the way out of the cafeteria.

Carla: Those three are clearly in possession of some kind of dark magic. Trust me, I would know. Besides, how else do you explain what happened back there?

They decide to inform Principal Paloma, Belle concluding that, the last thing she needs is another WMS event ruined by “some power-hungry monster.” Realising what she said, Belle backs down, says that she meant no offense and Carla sighs. When they get to speak with Hortencia, she refutes their claims, says that the three new students are perfectly nice girls. She then asks if it’s possible that Carla is only looking to make someone else out to be a “bad element” to cover up her own actions at the Spring Fling. Moana jumps in, claims that they saw with their own eyes what happened in the cafeteria and Hortencia points out that their band is in the showcase and theorises that they are simply worried about the competition. She then reveals that the new students have also signed up for the showcase and even demonstrated their song for her and the music instructor assisting with the showcase. She claims that having a competition is a great idea and sends the girls on their way.

The girls gather outside around the statute portal. Snow White says that she can’t believe the other group made it to Principal Paloma first and Moana says she isn’t surprised. After all, they’ve gotten to everyone at this point. Anna points out that no, they haven’t gotten to everyone and Belle confirms her statement, realises that, even though their group was in the cafeteria, that they’re not affected by the spell.

Moana: It’s not like we haven’t faced darkness before and knocked it on its butt! No offense.

Carla: None taken…Again.

Snow White points out that the last time, they had Elena with them and that, even if there is magic within them, it only comes out when they play music. Rapunzel comments that she wishes they could get in contact with Elena but that, unfortunately, she doesn’t think they have mobiles in her world. Moana then suggests that they go to Avalor and find her. Before they can make a plan, Carla speaks up, says that she has a better idea. She leads them to her locker and pulls out a purple notebook, reveals that, two weeks prior, the princess visited and gave her an enchanted notebook that allows her to write letters through the worlds. She explains that if she writes a letter in her book, it should appear in the pages of one that Elena has.

Moana: What are you waiting for? Try it!

Carla: I never thought I’d ever actually be writing this, but…Dear Princess Elena…

Meanwhile, in Avalor, Elena and Naomi are preparing a set of notes just before a Grand Council Meeting. While they gather up the papers from Elena’s bedroom floor, Naomi notices and points out that the book on her nightstand is glowing. Startled, Elena rushes over, flips open to the letter. She tells Naomi to go to the meeting without her, that her friends in the Mirror World need help and seeks out Mateo, who’s working on new spells in his workshop. After interrupting, Elena has him read over the letter. He concludes that, the way Carla described them, the students sound like Sirenas, which confuses Elena, who says that the Sirenas are their allies now. Mateo levitates a book over, explains once he finds the chapter that these aren’t the Sirenas they know. They’re three rouge Sirenas from years ago who wanted to do more than simply crash ships. They wanted to see all humans eliminated. So, they made a deal with a powerful Malvago. The man agreed, giving them magical jewels to enhance their song, allow them to lure multiple groups at once and even pit humans against one another at the price of them needing to absorb and channel the dark energy from these people to enhance his power, which he promised to use for their cause. Unfortunately, this ultimately corrupted them further. However, the royal wizard of Maru (at the time) caught wind of this and decided that he could not allow them to carry out this plan. He used his magic to take down the Malvago and found a way to banish the Sirenas to a world where their magic would be forever lost. The Mirror World.

Confused, Elena says that, if the Maruvians are involved, then they must have been banished ages ago. Why resurface now? Mateo replies that he doesn’t know, but that if these are indeed the same group of rouge Sirenas, then that world could be in great danger.

Elena decides in that moment that she has to return to the Mirror World and rushes off to pack herself a bag. In the middle of her haste, Skylar appears on her balcony and inquires about her rushing around. Elena explains that she has to go back to the Mirror World, invites him to come along since he was a huge help last time. Skylar says he actually came to discuss something else, but figures it can wait and agrees to go along. By the time she crosses through, the girls are hanging around by the statue after school. Moana laments about the wait, says she doesn’t think Elena is coming just before the princess steps through the portal and is eagerly greeted by her friends before telling them that she has bad news about the new students.

At the book café, Rapunzel says that she’s sorry they called Elena back during a “time of crisis” but, regardless, they still have catching up to do. Elena fills them in on a few of the happenings in Avalor asks what’s going on around the school besides it “becoming the target of dangerous magical beings from the Ever Realm.” Moana admits that the Sirenas appearing isn’t the only magical occurrence and shows the princess a video on her phone of the Crownlets’ band members’ partial transformation. She explains that it happens whenever they play together.

Elena: Hmm…The Scepter of Light was returned to Avalor but some of its magic may have remained here with you girls. Now that we’re all back together, we should be able to use that magic on the Sirenas, just like when we used it on Carla when she turned into that power-crazed sorceress…No offense.

Carla: None taken. I’m getting used to it.

Elena decides that the sooner they act, the better and asks where they can find the Sirenas. Anna reveals that there’s going to be a party that night for all the bands who signed up for the showcase, including the Sirenas. Unfortunately, it turns out to not be much of a party. Due to the spell, the students are divided, only staying with their own bands and refusing to mingle with each other. While Elena is observing this, the Sirenas make their entrance and take in their handiwork, reveling in the tension they’ve created among the students. The leader comments that this is only the beginning and to imagine what kind of energy they’ll get once the Battle of the Bands actually starts. Her comment is overheard by Elena, who declares that there will be no battle and joins hands with the other girls with the intent to use their joint magic against the Sirenas. However, nothing happens and Elena wonders why, whispers to Skylar that she was sure that the girls coming together would bring out the magic needed to defeat the Sirenas.

The leader of the Sirenas uses this moment to her advantage. She mocks them, says that their group is cocky in claiming that there won’t be a battle. That they seem to think they’ve already won. This statement sets off a whole other set of arguments as the students debate about whose band is better, their negative energy flowing into the Sirenas who quickly see that, unlike everyone else, Elena and the girls aren’t arguing. They realise that the spell doesn’t affect them and their leader declares that they’ve found the magic they’re looking for.

Sirena Leader: Don’t you see? Everyone else has fallen under our spell. But not these girls. These girls are special.

The girls bail out of the party and gather on the school steps. In front of the steps, Elena paces, says that their magic not working doesn’t make any sense to her. After all, them coming together is what stopped the dark magic before. Carla points out that, in order to defeat her, they drew magic out of the scepter she was wielding, theorises that, because the Sirenas’ magic comes from their music that they have to use their own music to defeat them.

Elena: I think you’re onto something. It’s when you play music that you transform, right?

Belle: Yes. Tiaras, glitter, new hair styles…Everything.

Elena: So, maybe the way to defeat the Sirenas is by playing a musical counter spell

However, they realise that, they’ll need to find a way for everyone to hear the song. Rapunzel gasps, remembers that the band competition is the next time that all the students will be gathered in one place. She then says that Elena will be their newest band member and Anna asks what instrument she wants to play. While she plays guitar in Avalor, Elena decides to stick to singing in this world. Moana doesn’t want her taking over as the lead, but Belle steps in, says that Elena is the one with the magical knowledge they need to defeat the Sirenas. The princess agrees, reminding them that they don’t actually have to win, they just have to play their spell during the first round of the competition…Once she figures out how to write one.

She then resolves to get working on the counter spell as she heads back into the school. The other girls pause, ask where she’s going and are told that, the last time she visited, Elena and Skylar stayed in the second floor of the library. Deeming it unacceptable, Anna declares that they’re having an impromptu slumber party at her house where Elena struggles through her “musical counter spell.” When Moana asks how it’s coming, Elena lies, says it’s fine and thanks Snow White for allowing her to borrow her notebook, complimenting the songs she’s already written in it.

Snow White: Thanks. Maybe one day we’ll actually get to play one.

Rapunzel: Elena, I think I speak for everyone when I say that, I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t agreed to help us.

Despite their kind words, Elena sighs, disappointed with herself and her poor attempts to put a song together. She wonders why it’s so difficult since she grew up playing and singing, lingering on those thoughts later that night while everyone is asleep. Unable to sleep, Elena heads down to the kitchen, uses the light there to continue working on the spell until being interrupted by Carla, who comments that they really are lucky she’s come to help them.

Carla: Must be nice to have everyone looking to you for answers to their problems instead of waiting for you to cause a problem.

Elena: Just because everyone expects something from you doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to happen.

Carla: But that doesn’t stop them from expecting it

Elena: Which only makes things worse because the last thing you want to do is…

Together: Let everybody down

They exchange smiles and Carla yawns, decides to head back upstairs and says as she leaves that what they’re doing must be nothing compared to Elena’s responsibilities in Avalor. Once she’s out of sight, Elena sighs, tells herself that she just has to pull this off. She’s defeated far worse villains, after all.

The following afternoon, song rehearsals are not going as well as anyone thought. No one is quite sure of what beat to stay on or the flow of things, so everything, including their singing is extremely off-key. Because of their failed attempts, they can’t activate their transformation either. Moana accuses the other girls of not trying hard enough with the song and, sensing the tension, Rapunzel suggests taking a break to look over some of the outfits she brought for them to try on. Belle sighs, says that the object is to save the school and that they have no time for playing dress-up, to which Rapunzel claims there’s always time to be creative.

Anna: She just wants to make things fun. Isn’t that what being in a band is supposed to be?

Carla: You don’t have time for any of this! You need to check in at the Battle of the Bands in twenty minutes!

Elena points out that the spell isn’t even close to ready, and playing it unfinished might tip off the Sirenas, so the girls decide to simply bide time in the competition to allow Elena to finalize the song. Moana suggests that they do all they can to make it to the finals and wait to unleash the spell then with the entire school in attendance. The others agree and they rush off to the school, where, before the competition starts, Principal Paloma welcomes the bands, claiming that it’s the most exciting event they’ve held and thanking the Sirenas, who revel in the competitive energy, for their idea. The leader comments that she can feel their power being restored just as the Crownlets (and Carla) make their entrance. With them in the room, she adds that their group hasn’t even begun to tap into the most powerful magic around. One of the others points out that the girls aren’t under their spell, only to be told that the Crownlets they are just as capable of falling apart and being victims as much as anyone else in the room. They just need to be pushed a little.

Before their first number, the Crownlets notice that Rapunzel is missing. But, before they can wonder for too long, she appears in a new outfit decked out in metal chimes and various jewels, claiming that, because they’re performing in front of an audience, she wanted to try something new. Elena then reminds the girls that they have to play well enough to make it into the next round, but to not get so into it that they show off their magic and tip off the Sirenas.

Unfortunately, the number is a bit of a mess due to some sabotage from other students. One group takes advantage of the metal editions to Rapunzel’s costume and uses a series of powerful magnets to not only catch them, but drag her all around the stage. Anna accidentally causes trouble by activating a hidden confetti canon after overhearing another group say they’re boring, and Elena accidentally inhales one of the pieces. With a pat on the back, Snow White gets her to spit it out and is then thrown for a loop of her own when one of the freshman groups starts pointing the spotlight on her. Not wanting to be the centre of attention, she tries to step out of it, only to have it follow her as she runs for and ends up hiding behind the platform Anna’s drums are setup on just before Rapunzel finally pulls away from the magnets, only to have the sleeves completely ripped off her outfit.

Once the number is done, backstage, Belle scolds Rapunzel for her outfit and making them look like fools. Rapunzel snaps back that it wasn’t her fault they were sabotaged and is told that, yes, it is. If she hadn’t had all that metal in her outfit, she wouldn’t have been sabotaged in the first place. Meanwhile, Moana asks Anna about the confetti, says it’s hard to play with the pieces caught in her frets, to which Snow White agrees that it was distracting. Anna then snaps at her for running away from a light the whole time.

In an attempt to defuse the situation, Carla points out that they still sound much better than the other bands and is sure they’ll make it to the next round, not that it matters unless they work on the counter spell and sends her friends off to practice in private, saying to go somewhere the Sirenas won’t hear. In the hall, they literally run into one of the other bands. Elena apologises for bumping into their lead singer, who only mocks her in response. He claims that his band is the one to beat and that Elena is a useless addition to the Crownlets and has no idea what she’s doing.

As they move on, the Sirenas, who were witness to the interaction, mock them behind their backs before being interrupted by the intercom announcing the next band, whom they are playing after. They decide to go on their own way and are confronted by Carla.

Carla: You’re not going to get away with this

Sirena Leader: Why? Because you didn’t? Oh, we know ALL about you, Carla Delgado. You’ve got quite the reputation at Walter Mickey School

Carla: I’m working on it! I’m in a much better place now!

Sirena 3: Waiting in the wings while your friends have all the fun?

Leader: Oh, yes. You girls are SO tight, and yet….They didn’t ask you to be in their band?

Sirena 3: Probably afraid no one would come see them play if SHE was in the group

Sirena 2: Ooh. Too bad. So sad.

Leader: If it’s any consolation at all, no one will remember you at all by the time we’re done.

The Sirenas saunter off, leaving behind a wave of self-doubt for Carla to deal with as she takes in their words and we begin a song montage to show how each of the bands does in moving up the bracket through the weekend while Elena struggles with the counter spell as her friends argue all around her.

Luckily, they make through to the last round of the finals Sunday morning. Carla reminds them of the importance of making it through last round, unless they’re ready to play the counter spell now. Elena says that they’re not and Belle reassures her that they still have time to practice before the finals that night and the girls agree that they’ll stick together and not let their princess down. Snow White then speaks up, asks if they can play their song, but, because this round is such a big deal, Moana insists that they play her song, much to Snow White’s chagrin. However, before they go on, Mirror!Valentina and her band, Valentina and the Visionaries, take a moment to mock and challenge them,

Valentina: Let’s see you top that performance Crown-lames, not that you should be allowed to considering you have such a big advantage over the rest of us

Moana: My amazing guitar skills and singing voice?

Valentina: Seriously? I meant her

*Val points to Elena*

Valentina: If your band is really all that, Moana, you wouldn’t need to bring in some magical wringer to have half a chance. Everyone’s talking about it

Moana snaps that she could win the competition as a solo act, earning a round of glares and head shakes from her band mates before they’re called and file onto the stage.

Carla: I’ll be here just…watching

During the song, fueled by Valentina’s challenge, Moana puts everything into the performance and gets so into it that she nearly activates her princess transformation. Seeing this, Carla acts quickly, runs out from backstage and shoves her down, throwing off the performance and stopping the magic, but earning the ire of her fellow students who saw the whole thing.

Student 1: Now, that’s the bad girl we love to hate!

Student 2: I knew she was still trouble

Student 3: The real Carla Delgado returns!

Carla: No…It isn’t like that…

Backstage, the girls start arguing again, they scold Carla and tell her that there were other ways to defuse the situation after she says she was only trying to prevent Moana from showing off her magic. Moana snaps that she didn’t help at all, and Belle says that none of this would have happened if she hadn’t been trying to show off to Valentina, who cuts in, sarcastically comments on their “great performance” and adding that her favourite part was watching Carla knock her friend over in a “fit of jealous rage.” Carla snaps that it wasn’t that at all, but not even her friends seem to believe her. She thinks to leave, but stops when, just before the announcement of the final round’s participants, the Sirenas come through the stage store and signing to Principal Paloma and the music instructor as they discuss the results of the round while her friends argue amongst themselves. Rapunzel laments about them not having another chance to play if they lose, says she had the perfect outfit made for the final round, to which Belle snaps that yes, that’s the real tragedy that Rapunzel won’t get to show off her outfit. Moana cuts in and tells them to be quiet because they’re announcing the winner to which Snow White claims doesn’t matter because they know they didn’t win.

Despite everything, the Crownlets are announced as one of the final participants and receive nothing but backlash from their classmates, exiting the gym to a chorus of jeers, boos and some choice words from Valentina, who is then encouraged and pushed by the Sirenas to sabotage the Crownlets’ arrival.

Leader: The Crownlets don’t deserve to be in the finals. Not when your band was so much better.

Sirena 3: And wanted it so much more

Leader: But, I suppose this is how it is going to be. Us versus the Crownlets

Sirena 2: Unless the Crownlets don’t manage to make it to their set or are held up for some reason.

That afternoon during their sound check on the football field’s stage, Valentina interrupts Snow White’s lamenting about how they really shouldn’t have won. She claims that she’s the prettiest and most talented girl at Walter Mickey School and therefore, deserves to be in the finals. She says she refuses to concede and her band mates and pull the lever for the trap door the Crownlets are sitting on, which throws them all below the stage with the Sirenas and Skylar, who had been playing behind one of the amps, being witness to the action.

That night, Valentina’s band is given a slot in the show while the Crownlets remain trapped below the stage. Moana attempts and fails at busting down the door. Belle orders her to stop, saying that she’s been trying for hours and that the door isn’t going to open. Elena sighs, says that, perhaps it’s better that they’re trapped and that the counter spell wouldn’t have worked. Belle contests her, saying that it would have worked if someone hadn’t stolen the spotlight. Moana tells her she doesn’t have to be cryptic about Elena taking over and Rapunzel snaps that Belle was talking about her, which tips off a huge argument between the five main girls while Elena laments about failing. After all, she’s the crown princess. She’s supposed to know what to do.

Belle: It may have been your idea to start a band, but it’s not just your band, Moana!

Moana: I’m the one writing all the songs!

Snow White: I write songs! You just never let us play any of them!

Rapunzel: I’ve been working nonstop on the most amazing outfits for…

Belle: Again with the dresses! No one cares what we’re wearing!

Rapunzel: Well excuse me for attempting to make a creative contribution to the band!

Anna: Does anyone remember fun? I’ll give you a hint! It’s the exact opposite of being in the Crownlets!

As they continue picking at each other, Carla notices that the now visible negative energy rising up from her friends. The same energy that the Sirenas were collecting from the other students! However, there’s a major difference. The energy from the Crownlets has Maruvian Magic interwoven in it. Magic that is being released at the same time the Sirenas are announced take the stage. They’re able to use the magic energy stolen from the girls to enhance their voices and powers during their performance, while, below the stage, Carla snaps at her friends to stop arguing.

Carla: You have to stop! This is what they’ve been after all along. They’re feeding off the magic inside you.

Belle: But, how can they be using our magic? Isn’t it tied to our friendship?

Carla: Ever since you formed this band, you’ve been letting petty things get in the way. I never said anything because I didn’t think it was my place, not when I barely understand this whole friendship thing. I still have a lot to figure out, but I know enough to know that not working out even the smallest problems at the start can turn the magic of friendship into something else.

Elena: And I never noticed. I’m supposed to be the one with all the answers, but all I’ve done since arriving is let you down.

Carla: I don’t think anyone is supposed to have all the answers, but I know now you should be able to count on your friends to help you find them.

Elena: I think you already have!

With a new resolve and diffused argument, Elena declares that they DO have the answer, but it requires them to break free from their trap, so they rush the door in an attempt to break it down, only to have it open on its own to reveal Skylar and the school’s resident DJ student, Esmerelda, who Skylar reveals was never under the Sirenas spell due to never taking off her studio headphones. The girls decide to get the band back together. When Rapunzel asks what version of the spell they’ll be playing, Elena says that it doesn’t matter what song they play. In fact, it doesn’t have to be a spell at all. They just need to stay strong and play together.

Moana suggests playing one of Snow White’s songs and Belle says that they should save the realm “in style” with some of Rapunzel’s handmade outfits that were being stored below the stage. While they get ready, the Sirenas’ performance goes on and their stolen magic begins to activate. They return to their true forms, using both the magic and negative energy to revive the spirit of the Malvago who gave them power. His image appears behind them as a shadow illusion, looking over and reveling in the chaos below.

Up on the hill overlooking the field, the girls meet up with Esmerelda and use her family’s mobile DJ set up to project their music, interrupting the Sirenas’ song and briefly breaking the spell on the students. Just as Elena predicted, all it takes is them uniting together to bring out their magic and activate their princess forms.

Seeing the challenge from the girls, the Sirenas declare that they’re turning it into a real battle and unleash all of their energy into the spirit of the dark wizard, their own spirits rising from their physical forms to join him forming as they fight music with music. The girls’ magic comes through their instruments. Each note they play interweaving with their magic and allowing them to send their own powerful magic blasts to each of the Sirenas as their spirits attempt to approach and overtake the princesses. Elena attempts to use her voice and throw a sonic song towards them, but it stopped by the Sirena’s own song. The notes combine with the magic rising up from their ruling wizard and the overwhelming amount of dark magic brings the princesses to their knees, literally, Elena’s sole microphone being propelled out of her hand and landing next to Carla’s feet. She hesitantly picks it up, gives it an unsure look.

Elena: Carla, please. We need you.

Fueled by the Princess’ words, Carla forces down her self-doubt, her confidence returning as steps up to the challenge, bringing her friends back up and around with her own song. Together, the other girls stand and sing with her, the additional magic from Carla combining with Elena’s to send out a joint magic blast that finally, permanently cracks the spell over the students, who, along with the Sirenas and the girls, watch as everything comes full circle and Carla earns her own princess transformation with a flowing, violet dress adorned with touches of black and a silver tiara on top of her longer hair.

The release of the magic within Carla gives them enough of a boost to put their powers together along with the music and now positive attitudes from their fellow students. Like in the battle for the scepter, it’s the girls’ combined effort that is responsible for bringing down the Sirenas and the Malvago’s spirit. Their magic blast destroys the pendants, which are revealed to not only be the vessel for negative energy, but the source of their power. Without them, they can’t sing properly and are reverted to normal, harmless girls.

With things resolved, Moana suggests that, since Elena has to return to Avalor, that…Maybe Carla could join the band and “help Snow White on backup vocals.” She agrees…Kind of. Says that they should know she won’t be satisfied playing background singer and demonstrates her ability by singing one of Snow White’s lyrics, smugly flipping her hair over her shoulder at the stunned looks she receives in response before being pulled into a group hug.

The following morning at the statue, the girls send Elena off, saying that they wish she could stay but know that she has her own responsibilities back home and Elena says that if they ever need her, all they have to do is write, which Carla starts to do.

Dear Princess Elena,

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually miss you. Things are looking up for me here in the Mirror World. But, I know I still have a lot to learn about friendship and connecting with people. I hope you don’t mind if I write to you from time to time, because I’m going to do it regardless.

-Carla

#elena of avalor #disney princesses #fanfic synopsis #alternate universe #canon divergent au #part 2

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lucifers-trash-stash · 7 years ago

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Fic Author Interview

I was tagged to do this interview by both the lovely @sherrybaby14 and @genevievedarcygrangerwriting, thank you for thinking of me! <3

What inspires your work most? (The show it is based on, the actor who portrays a certain character, maybe the character itself…? It could even be an experience.)

Well, if we’re speaking in just terms of fanfiction (because what inspires my novel writing is much more long and extensive lol), I find that I get more inspired to write from the characters and the actors themselves. The actors are usually what help make or break a character for me, so they typically go hand in hand. Though in Negan’s case, I was interested in his comic version at first and later eventually warmed up to Jeff.

Inspiration usually is pretty sporadic. For instance, I can write Negan but my mojo for him has been low since TWD season 7 finished up. So I’ve been drowning myself in Michael Rooker and his characters. If you can tell from my blog and my sideblog @rooker-renegades I am in very deep. understatement of the year

What is your favorite fandom to write for?

Currently I’ve been enjoying writing in the Rooker fandom. Before GOTG2 came out I thought I was all alone in my thirst, but everyone else came out of the woodwork and I’ve been able to share my fics along with reading everyone else’s fics for Rooker’s characters <3 The Negan fandom was my first big fandom in a long time, and the people there were so welcoming and made me write and share fanfic again in the first place.

Which perspective do you prefer writing in? (First-person, third-person)

Most of my smut is written in second person, so that’s what’s more comfortable for me most of the time. Otherwise I prefer to write in first person, because it’s easier to get into the mind of a character. I still write stuff in third person, but not as much as I used to when I was younger.

Do you prefer writing reader fics or OCs?

I prefer writing OCs, though that might not be apparent from my masterlist of fics. I tend to keep my fic writing short so I can focus on my novel planning/writing. So typically a lot of my one shots are smut, and I write reader fics for those, though a few of them are self insert/OC. I love digging into an OC and creating them though, it’s so much fun.

Do you prefer writing longer works or one shots?

For fan fiction it’s definitely the one shots. I can do longer fics, but I need them somewhat short so I can focus more of my creative energy into my novel writing. I have been tempted to write a longer fic so that I can call it a “rough draft” and retool it for a novel, though I only have one vague idea for one at this point in time.

Do you take requests?

I don’t necessarily take requests, though I have asked for drabble prompt requests in the past to give me a nice list of short fics to work on. That list is about halfway done and I dabble around with it when I want a new idea. I also have asked in the past if someone was interested in a second part of a certain fic that I would be up for ideas. I know for the longest time people wanted a second part of my Grant Grant fic Late Night Lovin’ but I had no ideas for it until an anon suggested something that I will be using for a second part.

TL;DR: No I don’t really take requests because I know I won’t have the time to devote to all of them, plus I’m still working off of the list I got months ago.

Do you enjoy getting random Asks?

Of course! Random asks always make my day and inspire me. I know some people might feel like they’re annoying their favorite authors by doing so, but I can assure you that authors thrive on the sweet asks! It actually makes me more motivated to sit down and write knowing that people really do like my stuff. Often times people will read but not interact, so you never know if people really liked a fic or not. So never be afraid to send me random asks about anything, whether it be about my writing or my interests, or just anything.

What inspires the names for OCs (or extra character names) in your works? Do you pick them from real life or just select them at random? A mix?

I make them specific towards a character’s personality. I tend to not pick real life names because then I associate those names with characters. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to name a character something but then have been like “no that asshole from high school was named that.” Google is definitely my friend when it comes to coming up with names.

If your story(ies) have OCs, are their appearances based on real people or celebrities? If so, who?

Okay, I haven’t written many OC fics, so I’ll use my own novel writing as an example. Yes, more often than not I use face claims. It makes it easier to write a character when I can focus on an actor’s mannerisms and appearance to make them more believable on the page.

For the novel I’m working on right now, I’m still in the process of casting certain characters. Though I can tell you who I’ve cast so far: Jeffrey Dean Morgan (big surprise), Lee Pace, Tilda Swinton, Millie Bobby Brown, and Michael Rooker (wow I bet I surprised y’all with Michael’s name being on here hahahahahahha I’m so transparent)

How long have you been writing fanfiction?

Technically I’ve been writing it since I was in grade school. I’ve always written stories of my favorite characters going on adventures, and a lot of my first fanfictions were actually in the form of comics. A lot of my first stories were for Dragon Ball Z, though none of it was actually put online so I only have boxes full of writing stored away.

I technically first published fic in 2008 (or at least that’s what my old ff.net account says), and after I last updated my Nightmare on Elm Street fic in 2012 I didn’t write fic again for a long time. I had written out like 7 episodes worth of scripts for a huge horror movie shared universe type webcomic/show in my senior year of high school that never got off the ground, and I did write a Dragon Ball Z fic freshman year of college after Revival of F came out but I never put it online (I’ve thought about editing it down and publishing what I have on my AO3). 2016 was when I actually started publishing fic online again, in the Negan fandom. It was also my first time I’d written smut too. Basically I got a lot of encouragement from people and the rest is history.

Tagging in case they’re interested in this too: @multi-villain-imagines @rookerstash @superprincesspea @ladylorelitany @kellyn1604 @rootbeergoddess <3

#tags for fun #writing #charlotte speaks

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erictmason · 7 years ago

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Top Ten: Non-Nintendo Nintendo Games

These days, when one thinks “Nintendo Game”, they’re likely thinking of a game developed by Nintendo. But back in the day, a “Nintendo Game” meant literally anything on a Nintendo system. And there was quite a bit to offer in that respect, too. See, before Nintendo’s near-monopoly-level dominance of the market began to break down thus forming a powerful rift between Nintendo and other third-party developers which has yet to fully heal to this day, there was basically no other place to turn BUT Nintendo if you really wanted to get your game out there. As a result, the legacy of Nintendo’s older systems, and even some of its newer ones, is defined just as much by games developed by other studios as it is by the games Nintendo itself created. I thus decided, thanks to some inspiration from the_moviebob and the recent revival of his “Game OverThinker” series in the form of Top 10 countdowns, to look at those games across all of Nintendo’s history, and pick my personal ten favorites of the bunch for you to see!

For the record, “non-Nintendo Nintendo game” here means two things:

1.) The game cannot be developed by Nintendo, nor use any Nintendo-owned characters.

2.) At the time of the game’s original release, it had to be exclusive to a Nintendo system; games that retroactively received multi-platform releases still qualify.

With that out of the way, here’s my personal picks for the Ten Best Non-Nintendo Nintendo games:

10.) Sonic Colors (SEGA, Nintendo Wii, 2010): Man, remember that brief, magical time from 2008 to 2012 where it looked like SEGA might actually be getting the "Sonic" series back on track? Well, "Sonic Colors", to my mind at least, is one of the very best games to emerge from that all-too-brief cycle, taking the day-time segments from the previous year's "Sonic Unleashed" and expanding on them beautifully. The new ways to traverse and explore the game's impressively-constructed stages added a nice amount of depth, collectible red rings lent the game a decent amount of replay value, and even the multiplayer mode managed to provide some amusing little distractions, as well as being cleverly integrated into the single-player campaign by playing a role in unlocking one of the game's big secrets. Heck, it even featured the debut of a new, significantly less annoying vocal cast for the "Sonic" characters. Sure, like a lot of Sonic games, it can be fairly rough around the edges, but isn't there something nicely poetic about one of the best things Sonic's done in the last decade being exclusive to a Nintendo console?

9.) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Silicon Knights, Nintendo Gamecube, 2002): These days developer Silicon Knights feels a bit like the sad punchline to a bad joke after the one-two punch of the disappointing "Too Human" and the atrocious "X-Men: Destiny". For a while there, though, their reputation was iron-clad, thanks in no small part to "Eternal Darkness", one of the most compelling games, not just for the Nintendo Gamecube, but indeed the entire console generation it was part of. Mixing Lovecraftian horror with wide-spanning time travel, it's one of the few games to evoke a true sense of existential dread, with the very concept of sanity itself being built into the game's mechanics. This forces you to witness the strain these incredible events really put on the player character's mind, and thus do your level best to wrestle against that ever present tide, only to find out how very difficult that fight is. Combined with branching paths to keep you coming back and compelling horror imagery that remains exceptionally potent all these years later (indeed, some of the game's cruder graphics almost enhance the effect), it makes for a truly haunting requiem.

8.) The Wonderful 101 (Platinum Games, Nintendo Wii U, 2013): Even fewer games emerged to try to truly take advantage of the Wii U's unique game pad controller than did those which tried to really engage with the Wii's motion controls, but thankfully one of the ones which did was "The Wonderful 101", Hideki Kamiya's exuberant love letter to the Tokusatsu genre. Basically an Action Game take on the "Pikmin" series, "101" puts you in control of a massive travelling army of superheroes who can unite into various giant constructs to fight evil, with the Game Pad's touch screen providing a quick, easy way to draw up the relevant formations, as well as amusing mini-game segments that use the game pad to show you the inside of a building while needing you to observe the effects it has on the outside up on the TV screen. The design continuously finds clever ways to challenge the player, and like all Platinum game, it also has an airtight combat system that leans heavily on timing and reaction in the most viscerally satisfying way possible. All that, and it wears its visual identity proudly up front at all times, an aesthetic that is simultaneously wonderfully unique, even as it is also steeped in obvious, affectionate homage.

7.) Odama (Vivarium, Nintendo Gamecube, 2006): Here's a game few people have even heard of, let alone played. This is because, like most games which fit that description, it's a truly bizarre cross-pollination of genres. How bizarre? It's a Feudal Japanese War Epic...played through via pinball mechanics. If such a combination sounds impossible, all you need to do is give this truly one-of-a-kind experience a go, because once you do it'll make you wonder why more people haven't tried it. Giving the player a bird's-eye-view of various battlefields, you are charged with using your pinball flippers to try and guide the "Ninten Ball" (a massive, wrecking-ball-like pinball stand-in) to hit specific targets, flatten enemies, and try to clear a path to allow your troops to overtake the enemy's territory. Admittedly, the fact that this is a game of pinball, and thus often subject to as much luck as skill, can make even the early levels tricky to actually get through some times, and it does take a bit of time before the game's full, mythological tone takes hold. But even so, "Odama" makes its eclectic mixture work, and work remarkably well, pulling you in and keeping you going all the way, revealing new and ever-deepening layers to its game play without ever changing its fundamentals. If you can find a copy, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

6.) Goldeneye 007 (Rare, Nintendo 64, 1997): Everyone knows the old conventional wisdom: licensed games suck, and movie games suck even harder. Yet the Nintendo 64 adaptation of the James Bond film "Goldeneye" doesn't just Not Suck, it's a stone-cold classic whose shadow still looms large over the entirety of the FPS genre. These days, of course, that's primarily attributable to its exceptional multiplayer mode, which even by modern standards shows an absolutely dizzying degree of customization to fit just about any group's preferred style of play. Want to keep certain stages off the rotation? Want to play with only a certain kind of gun? Want to change up how to win a particular kind of match? "Goldeneye" lets you. But the single-player shouldn't be taken for granted either, taking some of the movie's best moments and translating them perfectly into playable form. All that, and it's filled to the brim with brilliant deep-dive references for long-time Bond fans. No doubt about it, no one does it better than "Goldeneye 007".

5.) Viewtiful Joe/Resident Evil 4 (Capcom, Nintendo Gamecube, 2003/2005) : The entire premise of this list rests upon Nintendo's relationship with third-party developers, and nothing is more emblematic of how poor said relationship has grown in the last two decades than the notorious "Capcom Five", a highly-promoted batch of five games from developer and long-time Nintendo collaborators Capcom, meant to be exclusive to the then-struggling Nintendo Gamecube...one of which was cancelled outright ("Dead Phoenix"), two of which were Gamecube exclusives that sold poorly ("P.N.03" and "Killer 7"), and then there were "Viewtiful Joe" and "Resident Evil 4", both of which proved popular enough to warrant Playstation 2 ports within a couple years of their respective releases. But even setting that contentious history aside, these two are indeed both fantastic games, one the stirring debut of a great new franchise from future "Wonderful 101" creator Hideki Kamiya (and steeped even further in his love of Tokusatsu, if you can believe it), the other quite handily the best of its notorious franchise, amping up its action elements while still delivering the shock and gore. Neither one could save the Gamecube from its premature demise, but both demonstrate a remarkable level of polish, innovation, and engagement. From "Joe"'s endearing sense of humor and fantastic fighting mechanics capturing the unique charm of the Super Sentai Hero, to "RE7"'s over-the-shoulder camera allowing the game to come at you full-throttle exactly when it counts most, they both prove themselves essentials for any Gamecube library, and a fitting last hurrah for that faded period of time when Nintendo and Capcom basically went hand in hand.

4.) Mischief Makers (Treasure, Nintendo 64, 1997): The release of "Super Mario 64" in 1996 revolutionized the world of video games in general, and the platformer genre in particular. Suddenly, everyone, from long-time favorites like Donkey Kong to lowly also-rans like Bubsy were pumping out 3D platformers in "64"'s image, and the genre's 2D roots seemed destined for extinction. It would take a lot of guts to put out a "traditional" 2D platformer in that environment, but sure enough, "Mischief Makers" had guts to spare, providing not only a refreshing alternative to the 3D glut but doing so with one of the most unique, best-constructed entries in the entire genre. See, rather than the usual hop-and-bop strategy, platforming in "Mischief Makers" instead centers on using special dash boosts to make your way to where you need to be, and shake-shake-shaking every last item you can get your hands on. It's not only a compellingly visceral new layer to things, but one the game explores thoroughly and creatively across its vast, well-varied selection of levels. Shake an object to transform it, or make it drop an important item, or get it to move in the direction you want; the game finds every angle it can, and each one succeeds. The Boss Battles are some of the most satisfying and challenging I've ever played, too. Even its story, loaded with sharp-witted humor and fantastically memorable characters, adds an extra layer of flavor to the whole experience. "Mischief Makers" was sadly underappreciated in its day, and hard to find nowadays, but even so, it's an absolutely great game.

3.) Castlevania (Konami, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1986): Did you see that awesome trailer for the new "Castlevania" series coming to Netflix? Not only does it make the show look like it is going to be seriously great, it also serves as a stark reminder that, while it may have found renewed success and vitality as a Playstation game thanks to the iconic "Symphony of the Night", "Castlevania" began as, and is primarily associated with being, an NES game. And what an NES game it was, too. Throwing basically every last Horror Monster you could think of-Dracula naturally, but also the Frankenstein Monster, Medusa, and no less than the Grim goddammed Reaper-together into one place, mixed well with a unique take on the Gothic Horror aesthetic, and brought to life with some of the best graphics on the system, as well as some of its very best music, the original "Castlevania" offered up a compelling, challenging experience. Some of that challenge can be more than a bit cheap at times, it's true; like "Ninja Gaiden" (a game which just barely missed this list, for the record), the occasional clunkiness of the controls can lead to deaths that feel unfair. But for the most part, difficulty in "Castlevania" is earned by way of enemies equipped with tricky patterns, platforming designed to lead you right into the thick of danger, and managing your resources as best you can to insure they achieve the best effect. There's a lot of depth to the action here, with the wide variety of sub-weapons available to you and the situations you'll encounter. It all adds up into one of the best, most bizarre, most fascinating games to grace a Nintendo system.

2.) Final Fantasy VI (Square, Super Nintendo, 1994): Like "Castlevania", "Final Fantasy" is a series that, once upon a time, was primarily associated with Nintendo. But much like their relationship with Capcom, the Nintendo/Square (at-the-time-enix-less) partnership fell apart after the end of the Super NES, and "Final Fantasy" would go on to be much more a Playstation franchise from that point on. The good news, then, is that the last "Final Fantasy" game to come of that partnership is also one of the very best games in the entire franchise. It features one of "Final Fantasy"'s most memorable villains in the form of the genocidal mad-clown Kefka Palazzo. It features one of the series' most memorable, at-once-humorous-but-also-heartwarming sequences in the form of the notorious Opera performance. And it features one of the franchise's most ambitious narratives, one that takes you to the very literal End of the World and back again. Meanwhile, the aesthetic, the last time series mainstay Yoshitaka Amano would act as the primary character designer for the franchise, is gorgeously realized, pushing the Sci-Fi/Fantasy angle the series had been refining over the last several years to all-new places, and its soundtrack, composed by another FF veteran, Nobuo Uematsu, is justifiably legendary among fans. Most of all, though, it's just a gripping RPG from start to finish, taking all the things that had made prior "Final Fantasy" games work and polishing them to an absolute mirror shine. The combat, the travel, the customization options for your characters..."VI" marked the end of an era. But what an ending it turned out to be.

1.) Mega Man 2 (Capcom, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1988): It would seem nearly impossible to believe today, given the relative disarray into which Capcom has allowed him to fall, but once upon a time, Mega Man was one of the true stars of the video game world. And if you ever need to remind yourself of why, all you need to do is play "Mega Man 2" for the NES. It is here that the "Mega Man" series as we know it today truly begins, taking the rougher look, feel, and build of its predecessor and granting it a greater degree of polish, depth, and outright fun. The new Slide mechanic, for example, changes up the pace of the game's platforming considerably, while the more nuanced take on the previous game's rock-paper-scissors system for the various new weapons Mega Man can acquire provides the game with many of its most memorable moments (you ever try to use Metal Man's own weapon against him? You should!). The stages are all significantly better designed, too, with sharp, challenging traps mixing with pin-point precise run-and-jump segments, as well as some great new enemies to blast along the way. The music and graphics are aces too, finally fully realizing the Anime Sci-Fi Kid's Book aesthetic the series is now so well known for, and creating some of the most memorable music ever heard on the system (Dr. Wily's Castle is still an all-time great track). It even introduced Mega Man's iconic sidekick Rush the robo-dog, giving the character himself that much greater a sense of being a complete character by virtue of having a partner and friend to (literally) bounce off of. "Mega Man II" is one of Capcom's very best games ever, and it's the single best non-Nintendo game to hit a Nintendo console.

#nintendo #video games #top 10 #Countdown #ericthemason #My writing

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marcythewerewolf · 7 years ago

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Some Lord of Shadows Thoughts, In No Particular Order

I think Jace’s name is in this book more than Kieran’s which is obnoxious. Also every appearance of his was prefaced by a multi-sentence description of how gorgeous he was. This did not stop even when he showed up purely to be a dick to Kit. I officially hate book Jace now. He’s drunk the Kool Aid and he’s part of the Shadowhunter establishment and he’s insufferable so thanks for that book. ‘

Shadowhunters are a cult. Full stop. Sometimes it seems like the book has started to recognize this but then it backtracks and goes back to glorifying them. They’re so rich, they’re so pretty! Like, yeah, but they’re also super racist and hugely regressive and directly responsible for the suffering of thousands. Sure, they do some good along the way but so does Salvation Army, they’re still BAD. Look past all the glitter and propaganda and they’re just magical thugs who haven’t gotten past the middle ages and at this rate never will. The Blackthorn kids are better off without them.

Kit is probably the most sympathetic person in the entire book and I do want him to run away and set up a pawn shop in Ohio? Save him from everyone but especially Jace.

At one point his face was described as angular though, which makes me wonder if CC has seen a fifteen year old ever. You do it once, it’s justifiable, but most teenagers have a bad case of the baby face and saying other wise is ridiculous. This cheekbone addiction is getting out of hand.

This book was so ridiculously heterosexual. Like, just such a pervasive case of unfortunate and tragic heterosexuality. So casual. So pointless. Magnus first gets brought up as “glittery”. One character thinks in all seriousness that you only get one dad. Gwyn is painfully straight for no apparent reason when faeries should and previously have been all sorts of flexible. It’s just... bad.

The centurions are all kind of awful and I didn’t bother to learn their names.

That being said, I did like the focus on Diana. She’s beautiful and amazing and brave and I love her.

This is just blatant apologism for what happened to Anselm Nightshade. You set up a situation like that, you deal with the consequences of it, you don’t wimp out.

The kids went to Faerie together and I am glad for that. They did just kill of Iarlath with no fanfare, but now his headcanon bf are chilling together and we got some follow up on Malcolm’s faerie ties so I’m not too mad about that.

“Her old tutor, Katerina.” God, where’s my Katerina spinoff. She has gotten no lines ever and because of that I love her.

I do like anything with faeries very much but it could afford to be a little less fantasy and a little less chaos theory. The rest is just an issue of misplaced expectation. Obviously I like some of my interpretations better (killing girls is so stupid and outdated, an actual curse dooming him to have fifty sons all the time is maybe a twist) but other than that, nice worldbuilding, solid writing.

Faeries! Gosh, I just love them so much. Faeries all the time, that what I want.

The Unseelie King is super interesting. His kids are more trite, but hey, I love them anyways.

On a related note, have I mentioned how much Gwyn just wants his big dumb teenagers to be safe and happy? Kieran and Mark aren’t even twenty and they need to take care of each other and not die. What a quality Faerie Dad.

Some times these kids act dumb but i do not begrudge them it on account of them being children.

The book got good about halfway through, which I appreciated. Kieran my sweet bratty boy, Nene the enigma, the courts, this is some good stuff I appreciate.

What I did not appreciate was the killing off of Arthur. Like, come on. You’ve already done a disservice by magicking up your mental illness, you don’t have to kill him off too. A much more straight forward solution would have used the fact that Malcolm and Annabel were technically married, have his death revive her, then have confused Annabel and her angry zombie husband coming after the Institute, then Annabel realizing what was really going on and turning on Malcolm. Less in between steps. Failing that, ancient aunt they mentioned last book.

Mark, Miach, darling, in fairness, the Seelie Queen’s lover very much did kidnap you. She was kidnap complicit. Don’t be trusting her. She absolutely had Sebastian’s baby.

Memory loss plots are rather boring, but I recognize they do something for some people, so it might just be a cup of tea situation. Enjoy your memory loss then, friends.

The Kieran/Mark/Cristina plot is juicy and I do like that but I want More Diana and Helen and Aline back and Answers first, you know?

One of the downsides of these books being about Shadowhunters is that it always comes down to the Shadowhunter heroes fighting and killing the irrational villainous Downworlder hordes which is Unfortunate. That conflict with Barnabas could have gone so much better.

People need to stop trying to brainwash Kit with this Herondale stuff. People don’t go around calling me by my great-great great grandmother’s name and expect me to sit down and take it. Sure, we’re technically related, but that’s not how convention or basic politeness works. Your name is what you are raised with and more importantly it’s what you choose. His name is Kit and he’s a Rook until he decides, on his own without the constant pressure of adults, to be something else.

As an extension of that? All these callbacks to the other book? They’re getting old and frankly more than a little annoying.

Jessamine died in 1878. Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849. I’m telling you guys, the timeline just doesn’t line up. She wasn’t even born when Malcolm was young and building his house.

Kieran is a very impulsive boy who is already too invested in his Shadowhunter bf and gf. I don’t make the rules.

I tried not to read too much into the Disaster Children literally burning down a church and having a weird intimate moment but they really are a mess. No laws, no holy lands, nothing but family, and nothing comes before family. I’m much more invested in them when they’re tearing down the establishment and making terrible toxic Wicked Powers choices.

AIRMED WAS THE DAUGHTER OF MANNAN. This is basic people. Do your research.

See, the memory loss plots always backfire unless you come clean. Lying never pays, kids.

My Diana theories are more or less confirmed which I appreciate, thank you very much.

I do very much wish they’d at least had the decency to leave bby Morgenstern a bby, that or go all the way and age him a few decades so you had a fifty something year old claiming to be Clary’s nephew. Much better than this cliche storm.

I recognize that Annabel got a short shift in life, but so did Malcolm, frankly. The fact that he gets a life of torment and a horrible death at the hands of one he loved while she gets to wander off and live happily is a little concerning to me. Why do Downworlders not get to be happy? Downworlders, and Arthur Blackthorn, apparently, aren’t allowed to live nice, non-tragic lives, but pretty young Shadowhunters can get away with anything. At this point I would have preferred a disappointing end for Annabel. Get that good tragedy going. The Blackthorn’s clearly have a bad case of the Gothics they need to fulfill.

Oh. OH. There we go. There’s the Blackthorn drama I crave.

My sweet girl, my sweet girl Livvy. She’s coming back as a ghost, isn’t she?

So that’s about five hours. My record holds. The book wasn’t bad, it was just sooooo long. I feel like it could have used a ruthless editor with a really good grasp of the classics to clean things up a bit. Didn’t make me laugh as much, but that might just be a result of my evolving sense of humour. Drama got good nearer the last half of the book. There was some nice stuff in there. Overall, not a waste of five hours, and I’m not mad. Just please, someone de-brainwash these Shadowhunter children. They’re in a cult. Someone needs to tell them that they’re in a cult. Save Kit, he’s getting pulled in as well.

#lord of shadows spoilers #lord of shadows #the dark artifices #long post

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moffbadgerplays-blog · 8 years ago

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My Game of the Year 2016: DOOM

So it’s a little late I know but I only recently got a PC capable of running this game on the last day of 2016. I haven’t even finished it yet and already I can see that is in my opinion the best game of 2016.

But why not Overwatch like Gamespot says? Sure it’s a good game (I really enjoy it) but, it really feels like a reaction to the success of other companies (Valve). The competitive scene appears to be overtaking companies like Blizzard who are gone full pelt into providing professional players with a new e-sport to stream on Twitch for cash.

But heres the problem, a regular player will see these games, play them and then get frustrated that they never get a similar experience because they cannot put as much time (or in some cases money) into the game. It leaves players becoming frustrated and their enjoyment of the game starts to diminish for multiple reasons like their allies griefing or letting them down or the other team just being better than them. The industry as a whole appears to be moving away from singleplayer or “half arsing” it so that people get through it to play the main part of the game, the multiplayer.

But then came along DOOM. A throwback from the 90s, the grandfather of modern day shooters. Usually when a game with so much history comes back, i.e. Duke Nuke’m, it’s really bad but Id Software managed to also make the return of Wolfenstein worthwhile and you know what? DOOM IS FUCKING AWESOME. It’s clear that they really care about their intellectual properties and the amount of love that went into the game is clear.

You don’t regenerate health and you have to pick up armour but, compared to everything else available on the market, even though it is a very old concept it actually feels like a breath of fresh air and it’s really nice to not have to deform my hand into some weird kind of claw to make my character sprint at full speed. DOOM is all about the flow of combat. You don’t want to stay in one place when you fight, if you do that you are a dead man. Every room is built into a multi storey jungle gym when you can just concentrate of having fun.

The fact the game encourages you to get even more aggressive when your health bar is low is just adds to the endorphin rush. The one complaint I would have about the Glory Kills is that sometimes the animation used repeats with each demon. I’d like to see more variation, I believe they are triggered contextually (point at the head and you kick it off) but a little randomness would be nice as well.

Watching the game you would be forgiven to think it is a blur simulator but when you actually sit there and play it you are in complete control and you feel like a god slaying the legions of Hell. The game delivers what it promises at all times.

Rip and Tear. But why is the game so enjoyable? Well it turns out that no matter how complicated and sophisticated our brains are. The lizard part is always present. DOOM really manages to tap into your base urges to just cut loose. It’s a completely guilt and consequence free environment where you are given a collection of weapons, a suit of armour and a hatred for demons, and the game says “Go Nuts”. It’s an incredibly fun game with a very simple premise and that is apparently all you need to have fun. It’s strange that in an era of gaming where you need to innovate and over complicate to get anywhere that the oldest FPS game ever made with a graphical update and a small number of gameplay mechanics (some old, some new) manages to blow it’s competition out of the water.

Quit Projecting on Me. The story is incredibly basic “we opened a portal to Hell and demons are coming out of it go kill them”. Id Software knows its a bullshit story, you know it’s a bullshit story but you accept it because it doesn’t take itself that seriously. It’s self aware but doesn’t become horrifically grating like some attempts.

Lets talk about Doomguy as well. He doesn’t say anything at all during the game yet, as you can see from the gif above, his characterisation is fantastic. He’s an angry guy who hates demons when he needs to be but that isn’t his entire character. He isn’t just an angry slab of muscle like Marcus Fenix or Dom from Gears of War. He’s a dork, how many protagonists in FPS games do you see taking the time to rearrange the hand of a bobblehead to fist bump it. Most characters would break it open or jam it somewhere into their body as quickly as they could. Doomguy is also a really effective blank slate.

This is something that Cracked talked about concerning why Keanu Reeves is so effective in the Matrix. Because he shows little emotion it’s really easy to project yourself onto him. Doomguy on the other hand is literally faceless, you can project easily onto him. I see his characterisation as being that of the player’s. What would you do in that situation. Let’s talk about a couple of examples.

Exhibit A - DEMONIC INVASION IN PROGRESS, you’re getting ready to jump through the door into an army of demons and this guy starts spouting exposition at you. You don’t care, you were probably barely even listening to him and what does Doomguy do? He throws the screen away. “Go away, I just want to kill demons, I don’t care what you have to say”

Exhibit B - “It was worth it...”, you climb into an elevator and the evil Reinhardt is telling you how even though all his staff are dead it was all worth it for the ardent energy. To which Doomguy looks down at his feet to see a mutilated dead body. In your head you’re thinking “sure it is...”

Doomguy is a great blank slate because he already behaves like you would if you were in a videogame and you can then start projecting the other parts of your personality onto him. It’s the same reason that Gorden Freeman was such a good protagonist in the Half Life series.

Conclusions. Usually this would be where I’d be talking about where the game needs improvement. However, I seem to be finding that difficult with DOOM (yes that is the only way I can say it) because the only thing I have issue with is superficial. Id Software has really revived their greatest franchise with a true and worthy replacement. It is a great addition to the series which took everyone by surprise after the negative reaction that DOOM 3 received at the time of it’s release. If you haven’t played this game please do. It is the most fun murder play set I have ever experienced.

#Game of the Year #2016 #DOOM #Id Software #Text #Writing #Gaming

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isoscelesfriction · 8 years ago

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The Los Angeles Conundrum // Mike Davis’s “City of Quartz”

Photo by @gerrymaravilla

After hearing and reading about it for over a decade, I finally decided to pick up City of Quartz -- the fascinating and sprawling examination of Los Angeles by historian and urban theorist Mike Davis.

As a Los Angeles native and current resident, I couldn’t turn away from Davis’s seemingly revelatory discoveries and criticisms of the city I call home.

Below are my favorite passages.

"It became apparent to me that a people would never abandon their means of livelihood, good or bod, capitalistic or otherwise, until other methods were developed which would promise advantages at least as good as those by which they were living” -- Job Harriman, 1911

...it is all too easy to envision Los Angeles reproducing itself endlessly across the desert with assistance of pilfered water, cheap immigrant labor, Asian capital and desperate homebuyers willing to trade lifetimes on the freeway in exchange for $500,000 ‘dream homes’ in the middle of Death Valley.

We talked about the weather for a while, when I asked them what they thought about Los Angeles, a city without boundaries, which ate the desert, cut down the Joshua and the May Pole, and dreamt of becoming infinite. They had watched it in Sal Salvador, in endless dubbed reruns of I Love Lucy and Starsky and Hutch, a city where everyone was young and rich and drove new cards and saw themselves on television. After ten thousand daydreams like this, he had deserted the Salvadorean Army and hitchhiked two thousand and five hundred miles to to Tijuana. A year later he was standing at the corner of Alvarado and Seventh Streets in the MacArthur Park district near Downtown Los Angeles, along with all the rest of yearning, hard working Central America. No one like him was rich or drove a new car - except for the coke dealers - and the police were as mean as back home. More importantly no one like him was on television; they were all invisible.

Los Angeles (and its alter-ego, Hollywood) becomes the literalized Mahagonny: city of seduction and defeat, the antipode of critical intelligence.

...noir has nonetheless remained the popular, and despite its intended elitism, ‘populist’ anti-myth of Los Angeles.

“Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a goose with corn...endeavoring to eat up this rapid avalanche of anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a goat It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming population for the simple reason that it has never had any urban character to impact. On the other hand, the place has retained the manners, culture, and general look of a huge country village.” -- Morrow Mayo

Los Angeles understands its past, instead, through a robust fiction called noir.

“From Mount Hollywood, Los Angeles looks rather nice, enveloped in a haze of changing colors. Actually, in spite of all of the healthful sunshine and ocean breezes, it is a bad place - full of odd, dying people, who were born old of tired pioneer parents, victims of America - full of curious wild and poisonous growths, decadent religious cults and fake science, and wild cat enterprises, which, with their aim for quick profit, are doomed to collapse and drag down multitudes of people . . . a jungle.” -- Louis Adamic

“You can rot here without feelings it.” -- John Rechy

Sociologically, 1940s noir was more typically concerned with gangster underclasses and official corruption than with the pathology of the middle class.

The result feels very much like the actual moral texture of the Reagan-Bush era: a superstition of corruption that fails any longer to outrage or even interest.

Indeed for a while the more famous of the exiles could fancy themselves Hollywood sahibs: happy white people under the palm trees, feeding themselves on an economy run by invisible servants.

‘in which the city is at once an endless text always promising meaning but ultimately only offering hints and signs of a possible and final reality . . . like a “printed circuit” - or a freeway.’ -- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

They have become so integrally involved in the organizations of high culture, not because of old-fashioned philanthropy, but because ‘culture’ has become an important component of the land development process, as well as a crucial moment in the competition between elites and regional centers.

... a ‘sympathetic ecology for architecture’ and excoriated the elitism of critics who failed to consult the actual desires o the masses.

...L.A. artists are in a desperate state, fighting over scraps, without career opportunities, funds or housing’.

As a result Black and Chicano cultural avant gardes have either been decimated or forced to retreat from their community constituencies of the co-optative shelter of the universities and corporate arts establishment.

...while the Mission Revivalism of Lummis’s generation relied upon a fictional past, the World City hoopla of today thrives upon a fictional future.

The city is a place where everything is possible, nothing is safe and durable enough to believe in, where constant synchronicity prevails, and the automatic ingenuity of capital ceaselessly throw up new forms and spectacles

...Régis Debray once put it, ‘revolutions revolutionize counter-revolutions’

...land development is still Souther California’s most lucrative large industry with annual profits as high as 50 percent

...conservative, pro-developer majorities control the boards of supervisors in every Southern California county except Santa Barbara.

The Times’s dilemma, in other words, almost precisely outlines the problem of ruling-class hegemony in a postmodern city of secessionist suburbs and burgeoning barrios.

Like Downtown, Hollywood is becoming a colony of the world economy.

‘Community’ in Los Angeles means homogeneity of race, class and, especially, home values.

The master discourse here - exemplified by the West Hills secessionists - is homestead exclusivism, whether the immediate issues is apartment construction, commercial encroachment, school busing, crime, taxes or simply community designation.

Slow growth, in other words, is about homeowner control of land use and much more.

The starting point is to reconstruct the white-supremacist genealogy of its essential infrastructure: the homeowners’ association.

Some homeowners’ associations are entirely voluntary coalescences of perceived common interest; many others are mandatory enrollments (pre organized by developers) of all residents of a track or planned unit development.

...overriding purpose was to ensure social and racial homogeneity.

‘The reasons for creating of moving to a . . . minimal city was not to signal something unique about one’s demand for public goods, but to insulate one’s property from the burden of supporting public services.

...a hypocritical attempt by the rich to use ecology to detour Vietnam-era growth around their luxury enclaves.

“Those immortal ballads, Home Sweet Home, My Old Kentucky Home, and The Little Gray Home in the West, were not written about apartments . . . they never sang songs about a pile of receipts.” -- Herbert Hoover

...’homeowner opposition to multi-family construction,’ steming from mobilizations of the early 1970s, that has constrained the supply of land for multi-family housing.

Cal Trans engineers have warned that without a quick fix of mass transit, ‘the system isn’t going to break down, it’s going to explode’.

As Silver explained, ‘people don’t organize to fight for something, but they organize to fight against something’.

It is no surprising that poor people, especially renters, will choose jobs over environmental quality when the two are artificially counterposed.

The ‘Second Civil War’ that began in the hot summers of the 1960s been institutionalize into the very structure of urban space. The old liberal paradigm of social control, attempting to balance repression with reform, has long been superseded by a rhetoric of social warfare that calculates the interests of the urban poor and the middle class as a zero-sum game.

Yet white middle class imagination, absent from any first hand knowledge of inner city conditions, magnifies the perceived threat through a demonological lens.

Although architectural critics are usually oblivious to how the built environment contributes to segregation, pariah groups - whether poor Latino families, young Black men, or elderly homeless white females -- read the meaning immediately.

...and the middle-class demand for increased spatial and social insulation.

...public architecture is America is literally being turned inside out, in the service of ‘security’ and profit.

Moreover, with the post-liberal shift of government expenditure from welfare to repression, carceral structures have become the new frontier of public architecture.

‘Can you imagine the mind fuck of being locked up in a Holiday Inn?’ -- Inmate at DTLA prison

But as long as the actual violence was more or less contained to the ghetto, the gang wars were also a voyeuristic titillation to white suburbanites devouring lurid imagery in their newspapers or on television.

In 1982, for example, following a rash of LAPD ‘chokehold’ killings of young Black men in custody, [Chief Gates] advanced the extraordinary theory that the deaths were the fault of the victims’ racial anatomy, not excessive police force: ‘We may be finding that in some Blacks when [the cartoid chokehold] is applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do normal [sic] people.’

He was alleged to be reaching suspiciously into his pants; more importantly, he was a ‘suspected gang member’ - a category that now seemed to justify abuse or even execution.

...it seems probable that the first generation of Black street gangs emerged as a defensive response to white violence in the schools and streets during the 1940s.

...it is not surprising that Parker’s LAPD looked upon the ‘rehabilitation’ of gang youth in much the same was as the arms industry regarded peace-mongering or disarmament treaties.

But too often Crippin’ came to represent an escalation of intra-ghetto violence to Clockwork Orange levels (murder as status symbol, and so on) that was unknown in the days of the Slausons and anathema to everything that the Panthers had stood for.

At a time when economic opportunity was draining away from Southcentral Los Angeles, the Crips were becoming the power resource of last resort for thousands of abandoned youth.

“Gangs are never goin’ to die out. You all goin’ to get us jobs” -- 16-year old Grape Street Crip

Although terrorism is always portrayed precisely as inarticulate male-violence, authorities expend enormous energy to protect us from its ‘ravings’, even at the cost of censorship and restriction of free speech.

‘the fighting mood of the 1960s has been replaced by a sick apathy or angry frustration’.

As the Los Angeles economy in the 1970s was ‘unplugged’ from the American industrial heartland and rewired to East Asia, the non-Anglo workers have borne the brunt of adaptation and sacrifice.

The Latino Eastside gangs, by contrast, are still trying to catch up. Dealing largely in homegrown drugs, like PCP, amphetamines and marijuana, with relatively low turnover values in a market consisting almost entirely of other poor teenagers, they are unable to accumulate the fineries or weaponry of the Crips. They have yet to effectively join the world market.

“Left to themselves and the principles of Adam Smith, the cosortia of Medellin investors would no more see themselves as criminals than did the Dutch or English venturers into the Indies trade (including opium), who organized their speculative cargoes in much the same way . . . the trade rightly resents being called a mafia. . . It is basically an ordinary business that has been criminalized - as Colombians see it - by a U.S. which cannot manage it’s own affairs.” -- Eric Hobsbawm

While their parents may still measure the quality of life by old-country standards, the iron rations of Tijuana or Ciudad Guatemala, their children’s self-image is shaped by the incessant stimuli of L.A. consumer culture.

...the church unavoidably assumed a central role in Latinos’ search for power.

The real issue remained empowerment versus paternalism.

#Mike Davis #City of Quartz #Los Angeles #California #Quote #Quotes #Reading Log

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