#since I can't encounter it randomly as a result

[loregoddess]

aaalmost finished level-grinding, threw Partitio into Conjurer even though it doesn't give him a boost to elemental attack and discovered that, with the right equipment, I can get his elemental attack stat to just above 900 when he's at lv. 70, so I think I can really make him work as a support main & backup damage-dealer (and I can finally have him use Bifelgan's Bounty correctly)

some interesting things I found whilst going to every town to gather items and finish sidequests, Temenos won't coerce kids which makes sense, but he also won't coerce anyone who's disabled. Like, any NPC with "suffered an injury and can't do xyz anymore" or "suffers from xyz illness" in their description, Temenos just does not have the option to coerce them, and that's a really neat little detail to have added in

Agnea and Hikari's second crossed paths chapter does NOT elaborate on the mural in the cave except that it shows "the beginning of Ku." Hikari buddy, what the fuck does that mean, I am looking at something that is artistic abstraction on a level equal to the constructivist movement, these squares mean nothing to me.

anyhow, as soon as I get these last three characters to lv 70 I can go ahead and do the final chapters...can't wait to see how much harder or not changed they are in difficulty, since I haven't fought the optional superboss yet and won't until after I beat the actual final boss.

[orteil42]

some undifferentiated thoughts about my Starfield playthrough as i have them. i am a game developer with a strong interest in procedural generation and i've enjoyed a bunch of other bethesda games so this might get pretty mean sorry

(this is a long one)

starfield dialogue is already exhausting me "oh you must've been living under a moon rock ;)" get it! because they're in space! this would've been too corny for the Jetsons

there's a kind of cheap dusting of space theme over everything. the food isn't salmon but alien salmon. it's not seaweed but alien seaweed. cooking alien stir-fry. come on

cannot get over how clumsily the theming is handled. books, board games, weapon names revolve heavily around space. these people have been living on alien planets for hundreds of years yet have this unending sense of novelty about it. the game takes itself completely seriously but feels like it's attempting to parody itself

people's EYEBALLS are CLIPPING THROUGH THEIR EYELIDS

a woman is speaking to me in french. her accent is about as believable as her haircut

these are some of the worst reflection maps i've ever seen

next to nothing is interactive. you can sit in chairs and sleep in beds and that is about it. can't even drink from people's toilets. disgraceful

game helpfully crashes 5 seconds after i decide i should get some sleep. very handy!

my character has not said a single thing since i started playing. not one peep. this is an unmitigated improvement over Fallout 4 i'm so glad honestly

the more i poke around the big city the more the NPC quips feel like something out of gen-1 pokemon. can't get enough of this coffee :) this city is where it's at :) spacesuits are comfy and easy to wear

very strange sense of altered reality from the quest dialogue too. has anyone at bethesda met a person before? i move on to some mission that has me scanning wildlife on a faraway planet hoping this will, somehow, feel less alien than human conversation

just as with No Man's Sky, every planet is uniformly dotted with equidistantly-placed points of interest that you slowly make your way to (no vehicles besides your jetpack) which always turn out to be some cave or building identical to those you've cleared before

unlike with No Man's Sky, the seamless exploration is faked and the biodiversity is nil. you do get an impressive amount of raw loading screens however

the prefab bases and power stations found everywhere on planets seem to have very sparse, very specific slots for spawning consumables, which results in encountering some giant industrial installation in the middle of nowhere with, i don't know, a loaf of whole-grain sandwich bread just casually sitting next to it all proper. there is no breathable atmosphere here. who is eating this

planetary traversal is a CHORE. i am saying this as someone who loved Death Stranding

heinous "hold to confirm" buttons sprinkled in various flow-breaking places throughout the interface

enemy AI is abominable. nobody is pathing their way to get my ass. "must've been the wind" taken to the next level. an infant playing peekaboo has more object permanence

hoisting yourself up on ledges when jumping is…nice

companions randomly nowhere to be found. persists through multiple fast-travels and loading screens until, just as randomly, they pop back up

storage space is now limited! unlike in Fallout 4 and virtually every other bethesda game, your containers now hold a finite item capacity. god forbid we let the player have fun

baffling inventory UI. i imagine there's a mod out there that completely overhauls it the way SkyUI did for Skyrim. this should not be needed! how are your UIs getting worse a decade later!

scanning the precious few species inhabiting some dusty planet; one of them is this arching red root i've already seen several times before. my job done in this biome, i travel (read: teleport with a loading screen) to the polar region to find some other species. the first one i catalogue is the exact same red root again but this time it's named "boreas root" todd howard is a genius

some alien horror comes at me full fangs out. i hop on a pebble. obscenely, i am safe

procedural terrain generation beyond dull, impossibly unimaginative. these people have not had one critical thought on what makes a procedural world interesting. beginning to feel validated in my belief that only i should be trusted with proc gen. along with perhaps tarn adams

jokes aside this is making me feel genuinely insane. there have been excellent procedural generation techniques that produce compelling explorable maps for decades now. bethesda absolutely has the budget and know-how to do miles better than this yet somehow they just…do not? the same way Pokemon has decided to just no longer bother with their mainline games despite being the highest-grossing media franchise in history? hello? what is for real going on

some of the most cynical breadcrumbing i've seen in years. approaching some random cave and this person in space gear, who in the vast immensity of the infinite cosmos just happens to be snapping pictures right here, tells me more-or-less verbatim "if you like this place, you should see this other place" [other random cave has been added to your map.]

i do not like how good this makes No Man's Sky's gameplay look. it depresses me how much i have to hand it to No Man's Sky for at least not fucking up this bad. please stop making me wish i was playing No Man's Sky instead this is grotesque

i think i've exhausted my interest and patience for this game at the moment. i'll get back to the main story at some point and try some other systems ie. crafting and base-building to see if there's any engagement to be found but so far, my god. my god

[icycoldninja]

Can I request lots of angst.....Dante (between anime and DMC2) falls in love with a sweet and kind reader quickly, his demon side wanting to make her his mate, they are soul mate kind. But memories of Nelo Angelo were too strong, he hasn't forgiven himself, rather tries the route of alcoholism or over indulgence with flings or ONS making the reader so heartbroken, yet she knows Dante's story and still tries to help him through. Once Dante even snapped hard on her to make her snap away, she did cry and ran away from the shop feeling heartbroken. But she still won't give up our flower here is stubborn. I will leave it to you on how Dante will come to realize that this girl ain't budging and he can't live without her, now that he knows his mate (not yet but that's what his demon side says) exists.

Hope I made it angsty enough. Enjoy. 💜

Fated (DMC2!Dante x Fem!Reader angst)

The red thread of fate had intertwined both yours and Dante's fates since the day you were born. Ever since he was a child, he dreamt of you; all he could see were blurry figures and occasional glimpses of your figure, nothing more.

As he grew older, the images of you became more clear. He started to see you as more of a person and less of a mass of blurry shapes. He soon began to see and memorize every feature on your face; longing to know who you were and if you were even real.

After the various traumatic events that transpired, his dreams abruptly stopped. He no longer saw the beauty that normally visited him every night in his dreams, and as a result, soon forgot about you.

That was, until he randomly ran into you on his way home from a job. The minute he laid his eyes on you, he knew who you were. Every detail about your appearance suddenly came rushing back to him, his mind overflowing with thoughts about you. His heart suddenly started racing--and not because of adrenaline. He honestly didn't know what he was feeling, and he didn't like it.

"Hi? My name is...umm...Y/N. What's yours?"

Dante's eyes widened; something inside him clicked. Finally. After all those years of wondering and fantasizing, he finally got to hear your voice--your name. The devil hunter was beside himself with excitement and joy, and at the same time, fear and panic.

You were his soul mate, destined to be with him for all eternity. Why should he be anything but ecstatic?

Because of loss.

Because of grief.

Because Dante hadn't fully let go of everything thata happened.

Because Dante wasn't ready to let go.

Memories of that whole Nelo Angelo incident and everything that came before and after it still lurked in the depths of his mind, manifesting in the form of crushing, terrifying tentacles that wrapped around his heart, squeezing it; constraining it.

The man was trapped in his own emotions, unable to break free from his trauma.

It took all his strength to overpower his fear and introduce himself, though he did so bluntly.

"My name's Dante. Nice to meetcha." And with that, he was off, briskly striding away, presumably never to be seen again.

But he was seen again, many times too. The red thread of fate controlled your destinies; it was not to be deterred by the delusions and desires of the human--or half human--heart. It created more opportunities for you two to meet, be it a chance encounter at the supermarket, or a random rendezvous in the middle of the street.

As time passed, and the two of you got to know each other further, Dante found himself growing more and more attached to you, unable to figure out why. At night, his dreams were filled of you, and during the day, he thought about nothing except you. A small, barely noticeable part of him--his demon part--knew why, but Dante's human half refused to accept it.

"You love her," The quiet voice whispered, in that buzzing, nagging tone it always did. "You love her--you want to make her yours. Make her your mate for life. So why don't you? What's holding you back?"

Dante groaned, fed up with these questions. Why? He didn't know why, dammit! He didn't want to know! He hated pondering these confusing topics to such a degree, he turned to the age-old practice of alcohol in an attempt to forget his troubles.

Every night, he'd squander his hard-earned money on cheap liquor in a seedy pub, gulping down bottle after bottle of the nasty stuff. Very soon, it became apparent that alcohol wasn't enough to make him forget his conflicted feelings. This, and the influence of the substances he was consuming, drove him to start sleeping around; hooking up with one girl after another; the brief moments of ecstasy barely enough to overshadow his arguing inner conscience.

He had no idea how you felt; oblivious to your hidden heartbreak.

Ever since you met Dante, you knew he was familiar. Just like him, you'd been having dreams, and just like him, events in your life had caused you to forget about him until very recently. Once you met him in person, your memories and dreams resurfaced, followed by a sudden and inexplicable crush.

You soon found yourself longing for him--pining, even. You wanted so desperately to tell him how you felt, to make him yours, to love and cherish him truly. It took you weeks, but you worked up the courage to go and talk to him. When you knocked on the door of Devil May Cry, he was nowhere to be found. You inquired around and sought him out, looking in all the places you knew him to frequent. It didn't take you long to find him--you caught a glimpse of him making out in the back of a bar with a girl you'd never seen before, overturned shot glasses on the table beside them.

This was no surprise; during the many times you and Dante crossed paths, you'd gotten to know each other's backstories. You understood Dante's inner turmoil and understood he had problems, so excessive drinking and adultery was to be expected. You were not to be deterred by this, oh no. You were going to help him through whatever he was going through, no matter what he did or what he said.

Dante continued to ruin himself through his various acts of debauchery. Every night, he'd go out to a club or a bar, then get wasted and get lucky. You searched all over the city for him, but most of the time, he was long gone when you reached whatever shady place he'd been goofing around in. One night, you had the fortune of finding him at Devil May Cry, guzzling down a bottle of beer at his desk. You marched in, the sudden sound of the door opening causing him to jolt upright and peer at you wearily.

"What are you doing here?" He demanded, voice hoarse and eyes red. He honestly looked terrible; there were dark circles under his eyes from staying up too late, and his eyes were red rimmed and puffy--possibly from spending a long time crying. "Hi, Dante...I...I heard you were going through some stuff...and...well, I just wanted to know if I could help."

Dante scoffed, languidly lifting the bottle of alcohol to his lips and taking a long sip. "Help? Me? You want to help me?" He suddenly burst out laughing, then immediately stopped. "You can't help me," He grumbled, voice cold. "No one can." He continued drinking; the liquor drowning out his spiraling thoughts, temporarily silencing that little voice in the back of his head that said, "You love her."

Nervously, you edged forwards, afraid to get too close to him. "I can help you," You ventured, wringing your hands. "I know I can, if you just let me in--" Dante suddenly stood up, slamming his hands on the table angrily. That tiny voice in his head suddenly rose from a whisper to a loud yell. "You love her!" It screamed, the words driving Dante over the edge. "Just tell her!"

"You can't help me! I won't let you in! Just get out, Y/N, there's no saving me!"

You clenched your fists in anger, meeting his outburst with a defiant one of your own.

"You don't know that, you're just being stubborn!"

"So what if I am?! It's my problem and I'll deal with it!"

"No, you won't! You'll just waste your money and your life being a womanizer and drinking till you drop! This behavior isn't good for you, you need to stop before it gets out of control!"

"Shut up, my life is none of your business, so stay out of it!"

That shocked you. You and Dante never considered each other close friends, but what he said hurt you. "I see," You mumbled, clearing your throat and turning around. You heart heavy, you stormed away, hurrying to get home before the tears you were holding back broke free.

After you left, Dante sank into his seat, exhausted. Even though his mind was hazy because of the alcohol, he knew that you would be back; you were far too obstinate to be deterred by a simple outburst. His mind may have been filled with confusion and doubt, but one thing was for sure: He loved you, and perhaps someday in the distant future, with enough time and hard work, he would find it in him to tell you.

[biganimal92]

update for the 4 of you reading this that care (this isn't meant to be pessimistic I just mean that very few of my friends follow me on here lol)

I feel like my art has been stagnating for a long time and it's mostly because I limit myself to fandoms and the attention I get for my fanart messes with the way I value my self-worth so a few months back I decided I wanted to start doing a lot more with my art to gain more personal fulfillment and to give myself a direction i actually wanted to take it in so that i felt like i was making progress and going somewhere with it. I was making plans to create a proper portfolio of things that weren't star wars yaoi or the dudes from fall out boy fucking, and I was planning on launching a YouTube channel where I posted speedpaints and stuff and I actually made some decent progress

I drew something I was really proud of and I knew the content in it would be pretty popular despite still technically being fanart, and I had a time-lapse recorded for it and everything, I was even halfway through the script. I also had a number of original drawings I'd done that I never posted anywhere and I felt like by this time I should have been able to properly launch this stuff and start taking appropriate steps to have my art reach a wider audience.

butttttt then my laptop died suddenly and randomly (i was literally using it just fine, i lifted it up from my lap and it shut off and wouldnt turn back on) and it's been in the repair shop for a week and they still don't know what's wrong with it. they think it's a motherboard issue and if it ends up being at least $600 to repair it I'm just getting a new laptop. I think they can transfer the data on the hard drive to an external that I have and if so that'd be wonderful because that laptop contains all the work I've been doing these last few months for this thing I wanna do with my art.

thankfully since then my roommate is letting me have one of his backup gaming pcs (he works in tech so he has plenty) and I've been able to get set up there in case I need to start my progress over, but the issue is that it's a Linux and clip studio literally doesn't work with Linux because the desktop version of the program apparently relies on either edge being installed if it's windows, or safari being installed if it's Mac. so I can't sign in or download the full version, I'm stuck with the super limited trial version, and because of this I've been trying to get comfortable with Krita. which thankfully can record time-lapses.

my mental health has only been improving since moving to Seattle despite some pretty low lows so thankfully, even though this is uh a pretty big deal all things considered, I'm handling it really well. I had one horrible encounter with a psychiatrist when trying to get treatment for my anxiety and adhd, but since my insurance here sucks since I'm poor and nothing has worked for my other issues I've been fortunate to be able to see doctors about, I've officially become a crystal mommy and I've resorted to ~alternative medicines~ and as a result I've had a considerable amount of improvement in a very short amount of time with the things I've struggled with getting help with from a professional psychiatrist. so yeah, I'm only getting better

biggest issue that still impacts me is that my attempts at befriending people irl have not borne much fruit, granted I haven't been trying super hard but with a huge covid spike coming up soon, said weak attempts are going to have to be put on hold for the time being. especially since the main thing I was literally going to do as soon as Christmas was over was join this drawing group that meets up every other Sunday, but now I don't have my laptop so it'll just have to wait regardless of what the state of things are looking like otherwise

uhhh what else. oh yeah I got into Chinese yaoi and Indian cinema and I got out of my head enough to start playing genshin impact again so basically I'm a huge faggot ama

OH SHIT I forgot to mention I got another horrible job and I'm kind of trapped into keeping it for at least a year unless something catastrophic happens because it's giving me really important experience in the field I'm trying to go into, but when I say it sucks I mean it's probably the most disorganized place I've ever worked at that wasn't a locally owned franchise. I work at an open-access low income healthcare organization that's all over Seattle so when I say it's terrible and disorganized I think you get the picture

anyway I don't know how often I'll be on here but I'm bored and lonely and scrolling through tumblr seems like a better use of my time than spending an entire shift looking at r/shittyfoodporn

[chimeraan]

Divinity Original Sin 2 Review

Whilst I think this is a really well-made game (with a lot of cool lore and fun characters), I think this has way too many short comings as an RPG to recommend for three big reasons (bear in mind this is a long game, and I don't even think I'm halfway even with the amount of hours spent playing). I'm judging all this based on how DOS2 plays as a player choice driven RPG, I have gameplay criticisms as well but just know that a big reason I'm not too fussed is because of the lack of player freedom (Spoilers ahead but nothing too spoilery and I'll occasionally miss out words I'm sorry my mind goes too fast for hands).

1. Player Choice

So, I'll just give one significant quest as an example, one of the big missions you're given in the game is to get Source Points (which is a tangible gameplay reward and they're great and rare to get) from a sourcemaster. The way they did this is pretty cool because you need to actually go out and seek information on where to find these source masters are hiding (since they are currently being witch huntered) which is great since they're not just handing you a list straight away and even when you get to the source masters there's usually a horrible and ethically dubious cost to getting a source point which I love and I love how the game is willing to go there and make the player ask difficult ethical questions.

One of these is for a Lizard Source master named Hanag and she asks for her to teach you source that you need to save her apprentice Gwydian from the Blackpits (a coal mining town). Sweet, love saving apprentices. So, I get there, and the Magisters (the witch/source hunting religious faction) has burnt the whole town down looking for this apprentice and is in the middle of summarily executing the Crossleys (a family of miners who have been helping Gwydian hide from the magisters). They've already executed their youngest son, which is great because once again the game isn't afraid to go there.

You beat the magisters (it’s a fun fight) and then you're left with this weeping family who are completely town apart by the fact they just witnessed their youngest being killed in front of them. Now throughout the game you might die yourself from time to time and you're given resurrection scrolls to counter this. Up until this point my thoughts on this mechanic were "Okay this is a gameplay concession to the player and the most likely reason that I can't randomly res any old body I find is because its either been too long since they’ve died or they're an enemy" as a result I didn't use any of the scrolls in my run since it didn't make a tonne of sense to me and I felt it was too immersion breaking to use (or even just too exploitative).

This kid just died moments ago and I cannot resurrect them.

Maybe there is a gameplay reason why you can't do this, but it just felt sour to me that the solution to this grieving families' problem is sold in the shops for like 76 gold and it just doesn't work.

So okay, that's fine but I am the Godwoken, a special character who can commune with the dead with a spell, so I'll just use my spell and tell them little jimmy is in a better place and that he loves them. Giving the closure the family so sorely needs right now. I do this spell and all I'm rewarded with is talking to the magister executioner who just killed the kid and all he has to say is "Ha justice is served fucker" and that's it. In a way I almost respect this cause its like a cruel joke but man come on, at least let me talk to the kid.

So....not great on the dead child front.

Then I go to get Gwydian. Which is actually a very fun encounter since they give you a unique way of interacting with the magister who has tied him up wich allows you to distract him whilst Gwydian unties himself. I save his toasty ass (in a good but also not good fight I’ll get to in a moment) and tell him about the Crossleys situation. After, when I find him reunited with the Crossleys the line read where he's grieving for this kid is just laughably bad, like he sounds really disingenuous when he says he’s sorry like he must have actually hated that kid. Then my character asks him "Hey what are your plans now?" and he says "Well I don't know where Hanag, my master is, so I'll just find refuge somewhere in the world” and then he leaves and no matter how many times you click on him to tell him "Hey your master is actually the one who sent me she's in the Cloisterwood!!!" you will not be able to talk to him again.

At first, I thought this was a glitch since I hadn't talked to him with the character who accepted Hanag's quest, which is stupid but they must have thought that option through right? I do the entire battle encounter again (which is a long encounter btw and your fun little sidekick Sir Lora can easily be killed in the fire if you're not careful so it’s actually quite challenging to keep Sir Lora and Gwydian alive) and go up with my character and low and behold I cannot tell him the obvious solution to both his problem with finding sanctuary (since the Cloisterwood is guarded by two Trolls who demand payment to enter which the magisters will not pay to cross the bridge because they're dicks) and finding his master.

Honestly, I don't have the unreasonable expectation that game designers cover for every solution the player thinks of (its obviously impossible) but this is such a basic part of storytelling (not even game design) that my character would have the option to tell him where Hanag is that I was both pissed and shocked they didn't account for it. What annoys me even more is that I must go tell Hanag that I saved him when I can't provide any evidence that I did or not and then she's just like yeah that's great. So ultimately, my character could have just not done what she asked and just said I did and that would be the end of it.

What annoys me even further is that they didn't even need to get the actor to say new voicelines, say you tell him where Hanag is and then you go to the Cloisterwood and he's been killed by one of the trolls for not paying the troll toll. Which would be in character because during the fight where you rescue him, he actually uses Rogue/Scoundrel abilities.

If they wanted to take that even further, it would be a cool moment where on a repeat play through or if you just decided to anyway you could kill the trolls beforehand and that would save Gwydian. Which would be a cool choice because essentially the trolls are protecting the forest from magisters AND voidwoken (the existential threat of the game). Since the trolls are just that tough, plus there are bodies of voidwoken all over the bridges they guard (i love that its great) and you don't find any voidwoken in the forest as a result (even the crazy witch there knows to pay the troll toll). Even the toll the one asks you to pay is a pittance so overall the trolls are great to have there (and are probably a really tough fight). As a player you'd be able to decide whether "Hey is this even a good idea to save his ass since has serious implications on this part of the world?" or just not tell him where Hanag is.

That's basically fan fiction at that point but it’s kind of depth I want from a game like this and I'm just not getting it. Even though there are some really great moral choices in the game it ultimately feels like the basic form of a D&D quest without any of the nuance the DM could bring to the table to give the player more options to tackle encounters. This is also a pretty big quest honestly so it’s doubly surprised they didn't add on any of these options and it makes each quest or action in the world feel really self-contained sadly. It also makes me anxious to even try and engage with quests since I feel like the game will not give me any of the obvious solutions to certain problems.

2. Gameplay

Overall, I think combat is where this game shines and its quite fun and you have a staggering amount of options in fights which is great. The terrain based mechanics of combat means you'll always be looking for ways you can exploit the natural terrain by having your archer or mage use high ground to get a % boost on attacks. You'll also be looking at ways you can manipulate substances on the terrain to use to your advantage like using the 'wet' status effect where enemies are standing to chain lightning attacks. While it can be a save scum fest if you're like me and you don't feel complete until you have perfectly set up a party for the maximum damage/tactics (like some kind of time travelling Sun Tzu). It is an incredibly and engaging rpg battle system.

Ultimately, the combat feels divorced from the story and the player's role playing actions. Where either ideas are communicated poorly in combat or the player will make role playing decisions in combat that don't mean anything since the combat and role playing are separated.

For example that fight for Gwydian's life is kind of cool since as soon as you release him a fight breaks out and since he's a sourcerer it attracts voidwoken and you're on top of a tall tower and need to defend it (and Gwydian) from the voidwoken. The voidwoken attracted are these oily guys who are clearly very weak to fire attacks. So, you use fire attacks and since they spread oil everywhere this covers everything in fire and also seems to summon the fiery versions of these oily guys. I thought "Oh cool, if I had approached this fight another way, I wouldn't have used fire and wouldn’t have summoned the fiery guys". That is not the case, on my second go round, I killed the oily dudes without using fire (which took forever) and the fiery dudes still spawned exactly where they spawned the last time.

The actual challenge is crowd control since you need to stop the oily guys from spreading oil everywhere before the fire guys get there and light the oil. This is ultimately fine as well but the thing is that the way the fiery guys spawned should have been communicated differently since they spawn on the ground (where the oily guys spawn from the start) and it’s really easy to interpret their arrival as being attracted by the fire you've just created.

I found a lot of times through the game combat and my actions just were not translated properly, like there are 'possessed' people in fights who are clearly being controlled by the other enemies near to them. Now, you'd think, once you had killed the enemies who are controlling them that the possession would stop and they'd just be normal people. Once again, not the case they'll still attack you after you kill those enemies and they cant be cured so they're just mobs with a fun status effect essentially. They also don't account for you doing things before characters expect you to, so for example I wanted to recruit Sebille and she's like cool you've recruited me now I want to kill this guy called Griff. Well I've already killed Griff...so I'll just tell her and you just can't tell her, all you can do is show her Griff's body. Of course I've also mentioned the resurrection scrolls which are just a frustrating item to see in the game since even if you could make an excuse like "Oh only the Godwoken can be ressed!" that doesn't explain why they're being sold in shops everywhere and on random paladins if only a specific four party group of people can use them.

I’m still having a lot of fun in the combat and for that alone I wish steam would give you a "Mixed thoughts" option. It’s genuinely a lot of fun and I appreciate the amount of depth and strategy to encounters.

3. World Traversal and Level Design

So, this game does the most knee-cappping I've seen any game do for its encounters and level design I have seen in a good while. When you leave fort joy you're given these teleportation stone things which your party can use to teleport to each other. You can access them straight from your inventory and teleports your entire party from one pyramid to the other. Seems like a cute mechanic for making your own fast travel location, right? Well that's what I thought until I discovered that all it takes to use them is for a member of the party to carry one and then the rest of your four person party can use the other one to teleport straight to them.

Teleportation is overall a really cool ability and I love that you can just learn a spell or even get a piece of armour from TELEPORTING CROCODILES to use to move around levels pretty freely or even Teleport enemies.

However, these teleportation pyramids just trivialise the sense of traversal and by extension the level design. Come across a locked gate to a cemetery that you can't just lock pick? Ooh this is a cool encounter, how about I teleport (using the spell) the parties' resident rogue through the gates so they can go steal the key to let the rest of the party in?? Oh wait, I can just....teleport the rest of the party in using the pyramids. Which is just how all traversal goes from that point and they want you to use these pyramids since they value them at nothing at shops (which is stupid, these things are revolutionary for travel assuming the waypoint system is just a player concession for fast travel. That fucking pilgrimage to Arx? Dont WARRRY ABOUT IT, its fuckin done lady just take the teleport pyramid and bada boom, youre at fantasy Jerusalem baby) and there are actual areas where you will need to use them to traverse.

Sadly, I discovered this feature on one of the coolest levels of this game. Your party is attacked by spider voidwoken and tangled up in webs during one escapade. This leads to the entire party being broken up and are each placed in separate situations in this huge cave system and you have navigate each member separately so they can find one another. It's even cooler though because whichever main character you chose will be in the hardest, darkest and scariest part of the cave. So it becomes a whole situation where you should get your entire party to your main character to get them out. I love how this setup even punishes the player for giving all their best gear to their main guy. It's great...

...

..

...

OR WOULD BE IF YOU COULDNT JUST TELEPORT THEM TO EACH OTHER!!!

I earnestly regret testing the game devs on this. Everytime I'm put into any tricky situation by game developers whwre im trapped or a central mechanic is stripped from my character my first thought is "Oh I wonder what devious reason the devs have cooked up so they won't let me do the obvious thing I could in this situation. Ooooh I can't wait to see how they tell me I'm fucked!!" I tried in earnest to use the teleporter....and to quote Todd-Senpai.....it just worked. My main character just teleported to my healer who was holding the other pyramid. But it doesn't stop there. For some god forsaken reason, they allow you to transfer items between inventories even though the party are separated by geography. Within five minutes, this entire cool encounter was trivialised as I could give each of my party members the pyramid and just teleport them to each other. The cool set up was over in five minutes. Did whoever made these pyramids hate the level designers???

It's even sadder because the way they managed loot in this part meant that my mage found a really cool and strong bow but obviously couldn't use it. The fun behind finding something like that is the anticipation of her meeting up with my archer and giving it to them. But there was no anticipation.

Now, I think there's a bit of a myth around ideas like 'Path of Least Resistance' because its been used in recent years by dudes who claim easy modes shouldn't be put into games because they will just not be able to help themselves apparently (clearly hard games arent for them then). You can self-enforce challenges upon yourself and I'm sure there are mods where you can delete the pyramids or even difficulty settings. However, I was an innocent babe coming into this game and I had no idea about these pyramids and their strength and because of that a really fantastic encounter was ruined for me. Yes, I could have gone through without using the pyramids but I love role playing in role playing games (insane right??). Why would my character not use this and exploit it in the same situation?? The part of the fun of an encounter like this is that you get play and also imagine your party taking on this challenge as you are taking it on and that is completely ruined once you figure out you have this ability. I wish I played that level with whatever mod or difficulty setting there was to make sure those pyramids don't work there but for now it's ruined for me.

(However, from what I can understand that might not even be possible since they seem to have made a lot of the level design with the knowledge that you'd have thse pyramids)

I can't emphasise enough that that just leads to a situation where you can load a bunch of traversal abilities onto one character and then just have them use this overpowered item to teleport the rest of the party to where they are once they've traversed an area. Even if you wanted to keep the pyramids there's like a clear way to nerf them and that's to only allow the character that has the other pyramid in their inventory to use it so it still becomes a challenge to either use only two characters or finding a way to get the rest of the party to your location via an alternative route. Even if that means just finding a waypoint. You can even find more of these things as a reward for big quests and its like why?? What is this for if I can already teleport the rest of my party to one of these things and there are waypoints all over the map??? I just don't understand why they would do this.

4. Secret Fourth thing

Lastly the game has fun little add-ons called "Gift Bag Features" which either do game breaking things like give you extra merchants with great weapons and armor or just quality of life improvements like sorting your inventory or making your party walk faster and some of these features are even baked into the game at this point. This is great but....it turns your ability to get steam achievements off if you turn them on...even the QOL ones.

I cannot emphasise how stupid this is. Look I've gotten every achievement in Bloodborne and Sekiro and beaten DMC and DMC 5 on the hardest difficulties whilst trying to S rank them ykow whatever who cares? I cannot emphasise enough that if they added an easy mode to any of these games or a way to get every achievement from just playing them through in normal mode I would not care. In fact, I'd think it would be great for kids who want to play or people who are just kind of bad at games.

You're an idiot if you care about that kind of thing and Larian Studios are ridiculous for keeping "Gift Bag Features" locked behind getting no achievements. I imagine a response to that would be "Oh if you don't care then its not an issue" but the reality is that achievements are used these days to mark and communicate to the player when they've done something significant which is invaluable for assisting the player in recognising the effects they've had on the game world and how far they are through the game itself. The fact that something as simple "Fast walking speed in a game that consists of mostly walking" is locked behind this is ridiculous.

Purely just infuriatingly stupid.

Overall, I like a lot of the character writing, voice acting and even the setting of this game. Any game that has the nerve to kill kids, begs the player to answer cruel and even complex questions about ethics, make the lizard race the in-universe sexiest race, has TELEPORTING CROCODILES and a Squirrel knight who rides a dead cat deserves recognition. I think there's a lot of good here, but it just falls apart at the actual role-playing elements and encounter design, seemingly focusing all its attention on the combat. Which is weird from a company that so clearly has D&D in its blood. Like I can just play Final Fantasy Tactics if I wanted a pure RPG tactics game with only light roleplaying elements. Role playing is what this game needs to set it apart from other games in this same genre. I would have rather a worse combat system if it meant the traversal and role playing was fixed. Cool Squirrell though.

[an0theralien]

Wrote this in 30mins. Trans girl essay rant time 😎

•

•

Sometimes, I think about what will happen later. It's the kind of thing I try to avoid thinking about a lot, the idea that someday my parents will know that I'm trans. As I enter my senior year, this fear is consuming me entirely. My graduation will be at the end of this year, but what will they use as my name? I'll be going by Emma with my friends, and either E or Emma with my teachers. But my parents will still only see me as my deadname, because I have yet to tell them anything. I know what the result will be if I do tell them, they will refuse it. They will argue that I'm still a child, that Its a phase or that I'm just not sure who I am. I've been out to friends as trans since the 7th grade, that's 4 years so far. Obviously, I don't deny the possibility that maybe, someday, it could change. As slim of a chance as it is if that were to happen I would change on my own terms. I wouldn't do it because I was told to, or because some god told me to.

  Recently, I've met this girl who's going to be at the school I'm moving to next year. She's genuinely the sweetest person I've ever met. We've texted for a while but we recently did meet in person. It was randomly, she just texted me asking if we could get frozen yogurt at 9pm one night. It's the first time I've been out after dark with friends (I know 17 years old and this is the first time I've been out after dark?? I'm kind of an introvert.) It turns out we live extremely close to one another, like a few streets away close. We plan to hang out a lot more now, and she's been telling me about different people in the friend group that I will be joining once I get to this school.

  When we talk, I stop worrying about things for a while. She's genuinely beautiful, like STUNNING. And I'm crushing so hard, but trying to play it cool. I've told her about my situation at home, and she offered for me to live with her once I turn 18. 18 would be halfway through my senior year, I'd be leaving my parents before they even saw me graduate. But should I really give them that? I won't lie and say everything is horrible in my home, my parents genuinely do love the idea of me that they have. I would love to say that they truly love me, myself, the true me, but I know that it just isn't true. They are extremely transphobic people, and they don't keep it hidden in the slightest. Up until now I've said that my escape would be college, I would go to college and I'd never have to worry about seeing them. But now, there's an opportunity calling for me. Obviously I'd have to meet her mom, and ensure that she genuinely is okay with it. But if she is, and if this type of thing was really available to me, I think I might take it.

  Beforehand I would have to make sure my car was registered in my name and not my dad's, or abandon my car. I'd have to pick what things I want to take with me and what I would keep at home. I obviously wouldn't be able to take much either way, but with a car id be able to take a lot more. Without I'd have to really limit myself. I've imagine the idea before, of what it would be like after I left. I would have to call the non emergency line, and explain to them that I was not kidnapped, but rather chose to leave as a legal adult. My parents would probably spam text and call me, my siblings as well. I might tell my sister, and my brother, but only to calm their nerves.

  I could imagine my mom crying, my dad screaming. I could imagine my little brother crying as well, wishing I would come home one day. He wouldn't realize that there was a reason I left. My phone plan would get cut off as soon as they found out how to do so, but since I paid for the phone (I'm hoping) they won't try to take it from me or contact the police claiming it to be stolen. That's the issue I've encountered with a lot of the things I own, it's the reason I've started buying everything myself. That way when I leave they can't try to claim I stole these things. Someday I imagine, (if I take the car) they would see my car parked outside her house. They might try to show up and talk with me. My mom would cry begging for me to come home. My dad would threaten her mother. He would probably insist on me coming out, and wouldn't leave unless the police were called or I came out to talk with him.��

  Relatives, people I've never even thought about would probably contact me. They would beg me to come home, or I'd just get told that I was a worshipper of the devil and that I have taken the path to hell. I think the only relative I would try to get in contact with would be my half aunt. She and her husband seem to be really accepting people, which is why they are pretty looked down upon by the majority of my family. Theyve offered to me before that I could live with them after I turned 18 if needed. At the time I never saw it as anything beyond them being nice, but as I grew up I realized that they realized how bad the conditions could be at home due to my parents opinions and they were trying to leave a door open for me. I think they might be the ones I go to for support after I move out, wether that be as soon as I turn 18 or when college comes around.

  For now, despite all of this. I'm happy. I'm optimistic for my future for the first time in a while honestly. I know the career I want to pursue, and I know the college I want to attend. I know that it may be a pipe dream to hope that everything works out and I go to the college of my dreams, but right now to keep myself sane all I can be is optimistic. I've got amazing friends, I have a new school, a new job, new opportunities, and more. Someday I'll probably look back on all of this, who knows where I'll be then but to future me, you've still got this. Anytime you fall back into that pit that I always do, just know that this part of you, this optimistic side is always there.

[ideas-on-paper]

Monster Hunter Tri Diary, Part 11: Exploring the Sandy Plains

For previous entries, search for #monster hunter tri diary

Disclaimer: Text is paraphrased from my localization and might slightly deviate from the English version.

Quest: Secret of the Crystal Bones

Since we're going on an expedition to a desert now, I packed 3 Cool Drinks. (3 instead of 5 because the Guild graciously supplies us with 2 Cool Drinks; once again scrounging what I can, since I don't have to buy them if I take the free ones. And if you don't use all of them, you can even stock up your own supplies a little! :-) ) In addition, I donned my leather armor again for some gathering bonuses.

I chose to eat Grainy Wheat + Cudgel Onion this time, and despite both ingredients being fresh, that apparently tasted absolutely disgusting. So now, my max health has been reduced. Eh... But hey, at least I still got Felyne Woodsman and a boost to Thunder resistance! :-)

This time, our client is an archaeologist who claims that hunters are mocking his studies about Crystal Bones, which according to him are important to learn more about "the life of old and the mysteries of today". First off, I can assure you I would never mock you - I'm the kind of person who drinks up any MH lore content I can find. I wonder what exactly he means by "the life of old" and "mysteries of today" - I think I remember from the artbooks that there are some extinct monster species (most of which are based on scrapped designs), so does he intend to study them and how they evolved? (However, bones from prehistoric animals turn into fossils, not crystal; though perhaps, the bones of the MH creatures contain some substance that causes them to turn into crystal instead?)

Still, I wonder where this "hunters are dimwits" bias is coming from, given the biologist said something similar. You certainly need some brains to hunt monsters, as you can't defeat them by randomly flailing at them. (If you tried, you wouldn't survive very long.)

And here we are: The Sandy Plains! One of my favorite desert areas in the whole series, for both the soundtrack and the overall design. I just love how the first areas (1-5) are more savanna-like, and it transitions into a desert further out (8-10).

This is also where we encounter our first Veggie Elder, who kinda aimlessly wanders around in the base camp. (I wonder if he got lost?) He gives me some random stuff, including a tuna bait; I probably shouldn't overload myself before gathering anything though.

Veggie Elder, giving me the tuna bait: "Take good care of it, you hear?" Yeah, yeah, old man, I hear you! (I wonder what's so special about a tuna bait, though...)

Btw, the increased Thunder resistance actually comes with a visual effect: I've got something like a green aura surrounding my character now. Kinda cool!

Moving on to area 1, and... OH GOD, it's Rhenoplos! Yep, I certainly remember you guys. (More specifically, I remember the many times you knocked me down when I was just doing my own business.)

Rhenoplos monster info: "Extremely territorial herbivores with poor vision but accute hearing." So they're basically rhinos, I take it. (Rhinos also can't see very well, but they have excellent hearing and sense of smell.)

Note to self: Do NOT hit Rhenoplos on the head; your weapon will just bounce off. Instead, get around them and attack their rear.

LOL, the Rhenoplos ran into a rock! xD Just randomly happened after I dodged its attack; didn't even plan that. (But that's probably what their description means by "they often collide into boulders".)

Rhenoplos Scalp: "A sturdy part of the skull that yields, shall we say, dashing results?" Heh... I see what you did there! ;-)

I've never seen a Gluehopper before. I think I've seen it listed among the required materials for some equipment though, so I better hold on to it.

Gluehopper description: "This bug's expectorations make for a strong adhesive that can bond any materials." Makes sense why they would use it for crafting, then.

There are some Giggis in area 7 (I killed 3, so I only need one more for the subquest), as well as some Kelbi. (Kinda surprising that Kelbi thrive in savanna environments too.) Also, there's a fishing spot, but I’m not sure if my tuna bait is going to be very useful here. Besides, I've got more important things to do right now.

Btw, thank God you don't have to use Hot Drinks in the caves anymore; I would always forget this in MH1/Freedom Unite since it felt so unusual. xD (The 1st Gen had no snow areas, so the Hot Drinks were exclusively used in caves.)

I got some Nitroshrooms from a gathering spot as well. Definitely gonna hold onto those so I can cultivate them later, which is gonna be really handy to make Barrel Bombs/gunpowder.

Still, despite this, I don't see a single mining spot around here. Well, guess we'll have to go deeper into the cave...

And into the everlasting darkness we go - I'm definitely gonna need a torch to explore area 6 (which, thanks to my wise foresight, I forgot to take from the supply box). Still, I really want to get the extra supplies from the subquest as well, so I'll just see if I run into a Giggi while blindly stumbling through the darkness.

Alright, I did manage to kill one Giggi for the subquest, so I'm gonna get out of here and pick up the torch and some other supplies at the base camp; BRB.

Okay, so this cave is absolutely hardcore: You've got Giggi and Bnahabra near the entrance, and Melynx further inside - no matter where you go, it's absolute hell. The Melynx snatched some items from me, but thankfully, I still had a Felvine I gathered before so I didn't lose anything more valuable. One of them made off with my tuna bait, though. (So much for "taking good care of it". xD)

Finally I managed to find some mining spots where I could get my Crystal Bones - I was beginning to believe I might actually fail the quest. xD And you bet I'm not gonna go anywhere near the Melynx right now - I'm not losing my quest items right after getting my hands on them.

Since I have time left to gather some other stuff now, I went back to where I entered the cave and picked up some Choice Mushrooms. They’re not worth that much money, but a penny saved is a penny earned.

As always when you explore a new area in Monster Hunter, there is so much stuff to gather, and so little inventory space... I'm gonna skip the gathering spots in area 5 since they don't have any interesting items and move on to area 9.

What the--?! Just when I was peacefully gathering some Cactus Flowers, a swarm of nasty Delex attacked me. Why can't you troublemakers just pass by and be on your way? I've done nothing to you!

You know, viewed from afar, the Delex look like dolphins in a sea of sand. They move exactly like dolphins do, leaping out of the sand as if it was water! (I gotta say, I love the design concept Capcom has going on here: On one hand, we have the actual ocean in Moga, and on the other, an ocean of sand in Loc Lac. Awesome!)

I followed the Altaroth in area 8 to the gathering spot, getting some Might Seeds from their shinies (which is nice since Might Seeds are kinda expensive to cultivate). Also got some more Waterblock Seeds and Monster Fluid from them.

The gathering spot where the Altaroth go also yields Fire Herbs. So now, I can cultivate both ingredients needed for gunpowder!

The monster info for the Delex says they retreat if other Delex are killed. Thought I would try this out in area 10, but nope - despite killing one of them, they continue to annoy me the same as before. You know what? I'm just gonna leave these bullies to themselves.

I gathered all of my courage together and jumped down the bottomless chasm leading into area 11 (pretending I didn’t know there was no fall damage in MH). Found some additional mining spots there to get some more Crystal Bones from. I technically don’t need them for the quest, but they are gonna be good for extra cash! :-)

Was the connection to area 7 a one-way route in 3U as well? I can't precisely remember, but I don't think so. (Maybe they changed that to make it less of a hassle to get to area 11.)

Anyway, back to the base camp we go. Just before I left, I grabbed a Cool Drink for the one I used from the box as well as an Old Pickaxe. As I said: Scrounge anything you can. ;-)

Quest: No guts, no glory

I actually threw my whetstones out to have some more inventory space. Also, I exchanged my Cool Drinks for Hot Drinks, since we're going out into the desert at nighttime now.

As a dish, I picked a Plumpkin + Drybutter (both fresh). That apparently tasted boring, but at least I got Felyne Woodsman.

Btw, I love how the English quest name is essentially a proverb taken literally. xD

Our client is a caravan leader explaining to us that Delex attacking in packs are devious (yep, can confirm that one), but their guts make for good field rations. So I guess the guy got stuck somewhere near the Sandy Plains and now wants me to help him out by killing the Delex pestering his caravan as well as restocking his supplies. Fair enough, I suppose.

The quest description also contains a great example of a MH universe-specific idiom: If I remember correctly, the Caravaneer once said "what the Diablos?" instead of "what the devil/hell?" in MH4U (implying that a Diablos is these people's equivalent of the devil, which is… understandable xD); in a similar spirit, the caravan leader says slaying the Delex is like "killing two Vespoids with one stone". It might just be my localization though since he literally uses the phrase "kill two Vespoids with one swatter" (derived from "kill two flies with one swatter", meaning the same thing as killing two birds with one stone), which makes it funnier since, y'know, Vespoids are overgrown insects. xD Still, really cool if the translators are adding this kind of flavor for each individual language!

I left the Cool Drinks and Paintballs in the box for now (I won't need Cool Drinks at night, and there are no big monsters around), but I plan to pick them up once I get back to deliver the items for the quest.

What I did take, however, were the Sonic Bombs from the supply. If only I could stash them away for later... (You can't buy them and need Screamer Sacs to combine them, which you don't have much of this early on, so they're quite valuable.) However, killing Cephalos without Sonic Bombs was already enough of a hassle in MH1, and Delex are way more nimble and harder to catch, so I'm probably going to put those to their intended use.

On my way through area 4, I picked some stuff from the mining spots, including a Golden Bone. Going by the description, it's literally a bone made of gold. I mean, bones made of crystal are already wild enough, but bones made of solid gold? How the hell did those come into existence? (The best explanation I can come up with is that they're from some kind of ore/metal ingesting monster; Lao-Shan Lung, for instance, is said to feed on ore, and depending on the region where it lives, its scales can be colored differently, caused by the concentration of minerals and other substances in the rocks. So maybe for some ore-eating monsters, the ingested metal is deposited in the bones rather than the scales.)

Moving on to area 9, and I definitely wasn't wrong: The Delex are way harder to hit than Cephalos (especially if you're using a Great Sword).

To make matters even more difficult, Monster Guts seem to be a quite rare carve from Delex - at least it feels like that after I got 5 Sharpened Fangs and exactly 1 Monster Guts from 6 Delex.

So the Delex do leave the area after all if you slay their buddies - however, you have to kill a few for them to get frightened. Looks like they're leaving for area 10 right now, so let's go after them.

I threw my second (and last) Sonic Bomb juuust right to get 10 Delex out of the sand at once! xD Wohoo! (However, I only managed to kill one, since they were pretty quick to get back into the sand.)

We've got that subquest in the bag, but I’ll definitely need to kill more than just 8 Delex for 3 Monster Guts. Can you please give me my Monster Guts already?

Just when I finally got the third Monster Guts, the Delex decide to leave once again. Phew... I actually thought I might run out of whetstones, since I solely had to rely on the two mini whetstones from the box; I would've been pretty screwed if this went on for longer. ^^' Still, everything worked out fine in the end; let's gather some extra stuff for cash and then get out of here.

At night, area 11 is unusually deserted - like, there aren't any monsters there, not even a single Jaggi. Okay, then - makes it easier for me to mine some Crystal Bones. I'm gonna go back to the base camp real quick to gather some more in area 6 as well.

I finally found out how you can gather while holding a torch! What you have to do is NOT select the pickaxe/bugnet from the item menu; at spots where the icon pops up, you simply have to press the gather button and hold R (with the Classic Pro Controller at least).

Ugh, of course the Melynx are still there... You know what, I'm gonna leave area 6, go all the way around to area 5, and then enter area 6 from the other side so they don't spot me.

And I got a new item from one of the mining spots: Icethaw Pellets! Yet another one of those elemental berries. (Though I wonder what they're doing inside a rock formation; are those even still edible?)

Got my first Ice Crystals as well! These caves have to be pretty cool for them to not melt, though. (I have a feeling Capcom might have planned that you have to use Hot Drinks in the caves like in the older games, but they decided against it; in that case, thank you, Capcom - thank you from the bottom of my heart!)

Snuck up on that one mining spot near the Melynx reeeally carefully, filched the last few items right under their nose, and then bolted off. Wouldn't want the Melynx to get any ideas about snatching our hard-earned Monster Guts, would we?

Back to the base camp we go, and as I said, I grabbed myself some free Cool Drinks and Paintballs from the box. Take what you can while you can! ;-)

Village Talk

Item seller: "I love Sonic Bombs. Sometimes I throw them just to listen to them." Oookay... The item lady has some weird preferences, I suppose. (Where did she get the Sonic Bombs, though? They're certainly not for sale in her shop. Do you love them so much that you don't wanna sell them to me?!)

"When I throw stones, I also want to throw iron or machalite ore. Weird..." Maybe that's because all share the same icon? xD

"Sometimes, there are monster bones that are too big for S and too small for M. So many objects, so few adjectives…" So whether a bone belongs to the "S" or "M" category is determined by some kind of common measurements, I take it? (Seems like the tolerance limit is a topic of debate, though. xD)

In today's episode of MH food lore, we learn that Salty Milk was created by a careless servant who added salt to milk instead of sugar, which ended up tasting surprisingly well. Lucky for the servant, I suppose. xD

The Wandering Cook is a big fan of Mosswine meat (confirming my suspicion that Moss Pork comes indeed from the Mosswine). He says it's delicious, especially the feet, which taste best with bean puree according to him. He does note, however, that you have to give it a good wash so you don't end up with more moss than meat. Well, I guess it's called "Mosswine" for a reason. xD

The cook describes the Twinshroom as a "strange mushroom" growing in pairs; both are identical in color and shape, impossible to tell apart and inseparable. So, they're not just Twinshrooms, they're conjoined Twinshrooms.

Also, we finally learn what an Escargogo is: It's an "unusual snail" that spins inside its shell for its whole life, so "the world is practically spinning around it!" (I wonder if "You Spin Me Round" is playing on a loop inside there. xD) Given it's classified as seafood, I assume it's a sea snail, and the name seems to be derived from "escargot", the French word for snail. (Also, Escargogo is the title of a French children's book, apparently? xD)

According to the description of the Rhenoplos armor pieces, it's commonly used in mining and resource prospecting (primarily ore and water). So I guess it's just the workwear of miners from the MH universe. (I can't imagine it's very comfortable to wear that all day though. xD)

Also, I get the impression it's primarily used by workers from Loc Lac, since the description of the greaves says it's "often used to mine resources for city development". ("City" being synonymous with Loc Lac in Tri.) Would make sense, since Rhenoplos are a local species and the materials thus easy to come by.

Oh no, the terrible pun disease is spreading further! While arguing that bowguns are both handy and elegant, the Outfitter used an idiom literally meaning that they're not a "shot in the oven" (the English equivalent of which would be "a lead balloon"). I'm not sure what she says in English here, but it did make me chuckle. xD

I've sent the fleet out to hunt for the first time now. If I remember correctly, it's really just a way to farm materials from smaller monsters so you don't have to bother to do it yourself all the time, but let's see what they bring back.

Guild Sweetheart: "Are you enjoying yourself? I was super busy around here. Manicure, napping... I even carried the piglet from the farm into the village. We played the whole day! Then manicure again." Yep, relaxing effectively is a super though job. I can imagine you needed another manicure after playing all day with the Poogie though... xD

Alright, so now that we're done with the Sandy Plains quests, I'm going to do some free hunting in the Moga Woods next. (Conveniently, we've got a Ludroth breeding in the north and a herbivore breeding in the south, so I can get both some extra paddles and the Super-sized Dung I need.) See ya then! :-)

To be continued

[eloise175]

Soulmates Au head canons!

[Be ready because chapter one is almost done lol, I’ll post it very soon- and I’m doing this mostly to give some more insight on this au!]

• For starters- basically everyone has a ‘red string of fate’ that connects you to your soulmate, be it man or woman. Very few rare cases don’t have a string *cough* second queen *cough*

•No, someone can’t have more than one string

•The string is unbreakable, or more like untouchable, even if you see it you can't touch it, your hand will go right through it. Even if you try to cut/brake it, it won't budge. It's because the string is a connection between the souls and not the physical body, so it connects two people's souls through time.

•if your soulmate dies, the string will slowly fade, however it doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever, only you aren’t able to see it anymore because the other person’s soul left the body. (So yes, soulmates transcend time- so there is a possibility that you will meet again in your next life)

[ok enough with all of this serious stuff because I’m getting a head ache, I’ll do more in the future when I get more ideas, because I’m making this up as I go. Now onto the hcs that concern our main protagonists!]

About Callisto:

•Callisto is terrified of the idea of ‘soulmates’ and dreads his string with a burning passion, because it bounds him to something that he doesn’t even know/wants.

-He is like this because, in this au, the emperor and late empress (Callisto’s mom), are soulmates, but since the emperor was a major douchebag, and had absolutely no recognition on how to be a decent person- let’s just say that the relationship between him and the late empress was sad and tragic to say the least.

-Callisto’s mom died when he was 8, and a year later the emperor remarried the second queen.

-The second prince, that I named Theodor, is younger than he is in the manhwa/novel. Theodor is 11 years old, having an age gap of ten years with Callisto who is 21 in the au.

-They have a nice big brother & younger brother relationship, and Theodor is oblivious and smol baby. The second prince also has no intention of becoming the emperor.

-Callisto is so so DUMB at feelings in this au ( I mean…he’s dumb in general lol).

-He’s all stoic and tough but as soon as the fact that Penelope is his soulmate sinks in, he can’t think logically anymore- he STUTTERS in front of her the first time they meet.

-In the past, Callisto tried to cut/break the string multiple times, with fruitless results. Poor Cedric assisted him in all of his reckless attempts to destroy the string. They even called upon the help of Callisto’s troop, even tho Callisto is the only one able to see his string.

-Cedric is the best assistant ever and needs a raise. Literally Callisto’s therapist, together with Marianne.

-Is literally a hot mess and oblivious to love.

-The nobles keep pestering him since he came back from battle, tsk these greedy bastards

-Literally everyone thinks he’s hot but too scared to say anything.

About Penelope:

•Penelope takes NO ONE’S shit in this au. She’s very confident, sassy and a little sarcastic. Cross her and you are to be sent in you next life. Literally has the audacity and courage to end anyone who rubs her the wrong way.

-Penelope is not adopted in this au, and is the fourth child of the Duke and Duchess.

-17 years old

-Very protective of her siblings and even her subordinates.

-She has a wholesome sister & brother relationship with Reynold, the type of ‘I walk randomly into your room and flex into your mirror’ and ‘I have your back even if you commit accidental arson’

-Honestly doesn’t know how to feel about the string, and once she finds out that Callisto is her soulmate, she has an existential crisis and screams in her pillow, while Yvonne laughs her head off in the background.

-Penelope thinks that Callisto is the biggest weirdo/creep at first and wants nothing to do with him. She yells angrily at him on their first encounter. (You get five brownie points if you guess what their first meeting is, before I post the first chapter).

-Penelope despises Gloria Kellen here too, but there is a slight difference. While Penelope dislikes her because she is an awful person (towards everyone in general), Gloria is a closeted raging bisexual, and doesn’t know how to cope with her feelings for Penelope, so she’s a bitch towards her. (Everyone had a crush at some point for Penelope lol).

-She has her own fan-clubs, where everyone simps for her.

-Trend setter, and is a big advocate in Eorka’s fashion tendencies.

-Is not afraid of anything, but cockroaches and bugs disgust her.

-Scares her arachnophobic siblings: ‘Guys look what I found! Isn’t it cute??’ *proceeds to pull out a small sized tarantula*

-Spars with Reynold, Derrick and Ecklies, but mostly with Reynold. Her weapons of choice are the polearm, crossbow or bow, rarely seen with a sword.

-Takes ballet with Yvonne and their mother.

About Yvonne:

•Yvonne loves the concept of soulmates and can’t wait to meet hers. Eats up anything romance-related.

-18 years old

-Like her sister, Yvee is less than thrilled when finding out who exactly her soulmate is. Spoiler- it’s Vinter. Literally goes on a rampage. Both sisters get drunk afterwards and start ranting about ‘how the universe is so unfair and how they hate everything’ (one of the tags in the fic is ‘everyone is probably an alcoholic in secret’)

-Is very good at getting what she wants (learned from Penny).

-Literally baby and cutest cinnamon roll, but won’t hesitate to level anyone to the ground if they are mean to her loved ones. She do bite.

-Best wingwoman to ever exist.

-Everyone’s therapist and emotional support.

-Also has her own fan-clubs.

-Does ballet with Penny and their mom.

-‘EWWWW A SPIDER GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME’ (arachnophobic n*1)

About Reynold:

•In this au, Reynold is a closeted bisexual, and cares little about the strings. He’s that bitch that has ‘you can’t tell me what to do’ as a philosophy, but once he finds out who his soulmate is, he just happily follows instructions.

-Has the biggest crush on Emily but won’t say anything. (Spoiler Emily is his soulmate- how the two never found out is a mystery).

-19 years old, almost 20

-Biggest joke and dumbass ever.

-Being dumb and loud are his super-powers.

-Is willing to commit arson for his sisters, and won’t think twice.

-Has major anger issues and starts random fights because he thinks it’s fun. Got in trouble so many times for his violent tendencies.

-Literal diva

-Really good fashion sense

-Sassy, funny and sarcastic

-Pranks go brrrr

-‘OH MY GOD A SPIDER KILL THAT SHIT’ (arachnophobic n*2)

About Derrick:

-Derrick has already found his soulmate for some time now, (yes it’s Thalia lol, what did you expect), and they are currently planning their wedding.

-23 years old

-Was a little ‘meh’ about soulmates when he was younger

-A little sleep deprived and so done with his younger siblings’ bullshit. Derrick is always the one that comes and saves the day when his siblings commit felonies.

-One breakedown away from getting drunk and wasted.

-Father figure when the duke is not around.

-Very understanding and always finds a way to solve issues.

-Sarcastic but not overly so. Comes off as aloof, cold and distant, but once you get to know him, he’s actually nice.

-Either: ‘PENELOPE ECKART PUT THAT TARANTULA AWAY’ (arachnophobic protector) or ‘if you don’t behave I’m calling Penelope and her tarantula’ (threatens arachnophobics to keep them at bay)

About Duke Eckart:

•The duchess is his soulmate (yes she is alive), and the two have one of the most epic love stories ever. Literally defied their parents to be with each other.

-I named him Heidrich (curtesy of @seirclys )

-Is the biggest softie ever and cares so much about his kids and wife.

-Starts crying from anger when Penelope and Yvonne tell him who their soulmates are. Gets drunk and tries to start a rebellion, (thank the stars for Evelyn and the butler Pennel).

-Cries again, but from happiness when Derrick and Thalia tell him that they want to get married.

-Dad jokes go brrrr

-‘I love playing chess, no you cannot stop me.’

-‘Reynold stop slacking off and come play chess with me!’

-About the Duchess Evelyn:

•Yey mom Eckart is alive in this one!! Like mentioned before, she’s the duke’s soulmate, and has defied her father multiple times to be with Heidrich! (Their fathers were rivals and couldn’t see eye to eye).

-She’s probably the most responsible adult, (together with Thalia), in this fic.

-Best mom™️ and loves her kids and husband so much. Goes angry bear momma mode if anything happens to her kids.

-Gives the kitchen staff heart attacks because she really likes cooking, (is the one who taught Penny and Yvee to cook), and the servants all go ‘But your grace, you shouldn’t be the one cooking’ but she just brushes them off.

-Great listener, and best advices ever.

-Very open minded and cheerful. It takes some work to get her mad.

-Is actually quite athletic. Did and still does ballet.

-‘Honey I love you but- stop forcing Reynold to play chess with you’

[greentrickster]

Hi! Um, sorry to bother you, but in the Fae Taken AU, what is Franziska's response to some random human coming and taking her brother away because 'he suits his fancy' and might be useful on the road? Since she doesn't know this was actually a rescue attempt, might she attempt a counter-rescue?

A bold assumption that she considers him a brother in this AU, but correct!

Also very, very rare, at least for Manfred's court. Miles was very much not an equal there, he was more like a pet cat - enjoyed, perhaps even cherished by some of them, and with certain freedoms and independence, but no actual rights. (Ex: maybe your cat can go inside and outside as it likes, but that's only because you, the human, allows them, and if you decide "We're going to the vet," then, short of running away forever, there's nothing the cat can truly do to protest it.) He wasn't necessarily treated badly, but he was a pet, an amusement, a stolen child, and he knew it. He's used to being randomly touched or having his hair petted, and also just draping himself on or by anyone friendly when he feels like going to sleep.

However, in regards to Franziska! She looks seventeen in this fic, and she's looked seventeen the entire time Miles has known her - fae physically age very slowly - so this is a rare AU where she really is older than him. When Manfred brought Miles back from the forest, she initially decided that it would be fun to play at siblings with him, and 100% didn't count on developing actual familial feelings for him. By the time that Phoenix shows up, they very much see each other as family.

One important thing, however, is that Franziska is never going to be referred to by name in this story, because, as has been indicated, true names have a lot of power. Miles knows her true name, as she knows his, because that is how deep the level of trust she has for him is, but it's something he can't let anyone know he knows, just as they both have to hide how much they really mean to each other, simply because of the nature of Manfred's Court (not a nice place, lots of power jockeying). So Miles and Franziska always call each other Brother and Sister respectively.

Which will come as something of a shock to Phoenix when they're traveling back to their village at night and Franziska just steps out of a shadow, casually holding a whip that looks like it was pieced together from the spaces between the stars, and basically says, "Brother, this is foolish, I am taking you home."

Because no, she does not consider Phoenix a threat - not even a little bit. The end result of this if Miles says, "Yeah, I'm with him against my will, I don't want to go with him" is that Franziska manages the situation so that she can either straight-up kill Phoenix or commit him to a challenge he can't beat her at, and then she kills him when he loses. Phoenix did something amazing when he beat Manfred, but that was also a specific situation that he trained over a decade for and set up very, very carefully to help ensure Manfred would underestimate him. In contrast, Franziska's just spent three days and nights watching exactly what Phoenix can do. The only thing getting Phoenix out of this encounter alive is Miles's good will.

Which, fortunately, he has, as Miles explains to his sister that he's okay, that he's safe, he is his own master now, literally. She takes some reassuring, but is finally reassured, and the encounter ends with her telling Miles that, if ever he's in trouble, he can call on her and she will come. They are still brother and sister, in spite of what has happened.

Phoenix gets told that he'd better not tell anyone else about what he's just seen, because if he does she'll kill him, no questions asked, he dies. She gets many, many reassurances that he has no intention of doing anything of the sort.

After this, Franziska may try and claim the Hill that used to be her father's, assemble her own Dark Court, that sort of thing. If she succeeds, it will still be an extremely dangerous court, but not in the same way Manfred's was, more in a "Hi, we're very old, very powerful, and we haven't decided if we like you or not" sort of way.

Also, just since they were brought up earlier, I feel I should mention that not all mortal children are treated the same by every Court in this universe. In some they're pets, others slaves, still others they're diplomats, and others still just absolutely cherish them, with further variation depending on the specific fae who has claimed said child. Some have no interest in such things, some treat them as a resource, some see them as their own actual children and even go into deep mourning when their mortal child dies.

An added level of complication in this world is that, while some human children are swapped with fae children, traditional changeling style, and some are tempted/stolen away like Miles... child and infant abandonment is still very much a thing in this world. And, unfortunately, it's something that's inadvertently encouraged by the fae themselves because, hey, free baby! Who's going to pass up on a perfectly good, free human baby?! Even if you don't want it yourself those things are valuable, do you have any idea what sorts of trades, alliances, or bargains you can make if you have one of them to offer? And of course they're not going to tell the humans, "Hey, this isn't actually one of ours, it's just a human that's not on factory-standard settings" because why would they? Heck, a good portion of them don't even realize that that's why the humans keep occasionally leaving them babies. And the fact that the fae do keep taking these abandoned children just reinforces the idea that, yup, that was a changeling, I just didn't manage to get my 'real' child back. It's a complicated situation, and it's only going to get more complicated as the humans of this world eventually start to better understand physical disabilities and neurodivergance. Especially since, at this point, the fae probably know how to deal with situations like this and how to help these children thrive better than most humans, just because they're the ones who keep getting and raising these children. Like I said, this situation is complicated.

None of this would probably be addressed in the story, of course, but it's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about, and which would have a definite effect on the story because, in a rarity for a human, Miles actually knows most of the sides of this situation and understands how it works, because this was pertinent information to his situation. He doesn't have a full, unbiased picture, but it's a way better understanding than most people have, and this knowledge does influence his reactions and responses to various situations.

Thanks for the ask!

[cursed-saphire-hart]

*DRUMROLLS*

TITANIA'S FRIEND GROUP IS READY TO GO (+ their siblings)

First up is Megara Harves (Meg for short)

Eldest daughter of Maxx and Ethan

Age: 16

Sexuality: Homosexual

When I made Meg I wanted to make sure she took a lot after her grandma. She's sweet as hell and just as sassy and could easily smack you down in both a verbal and physical fight. She has a high sense of self preservation and prefers not to get too dirty or take physical damage (however if she has no choice she'll be fine with it, tho she'll probably complain for a bit)

Unlike most of the multiverse kids, where the child who looks most like edd is the leader, Megara is the leader of her group, and boy does she know how to boss people around.

She has a tendency to mostly stick around Titania (for totally not homoerotic reasons) and it's cute at first...

Until of course she cancels plans with you solely so she could hang out with Titania (who asked to hang out after you did. God)

Next up is Ezra Harves

Second oldest daughter of Maxx and Ethan

Age: 15

Sexuality: Pansexual

Ezra was originally supposed to be the leader of the group, however she was far to introverted and shy to take proper lead, not to mention how bad her insomnia tends to be. As a result she typically wants to hang back so she can take care of herself (tho she'll go with her friends if whatever they're doing isn't too much to handle)

Ezra has the abilities to float to up at least 8 feet in the air, and she prefers to float over walking in all honesty, everyday she thanks Ethans radioactive genes for passing onto her

Ezra is definitely the most trustworthy person in the group, she'll take all your secrets to the grave and has never broken a single promise she's made with anyone before

And now is the youngest bby, Macario Harves (Mac for short)

Youngest Son of Maxx and Ethan

Age: 8

Sexuality: Queer, that's all

Mac is by far the sweetest boy you'll ever meet, but that doesn't stop him from being a cryptid. He doesn't mean any harm when he randomly pops up from seemingly no where, he just likes being around people, but he also likes to be in dark, tight spaces, so it's kinda jarring when you feel a random pair of small hands grab at your ankle.

Mac takes interest in monsters and paranormal activity and reads about them a lot in his spare time.

He can't put away his bat wings or tail, but he's fine with it, he thinks they make him look pretty. Plus his wings glow around the edges, how cool is that?

He needs to take a higher blood intake than his siblings since he developed Maxx's poor immune system, but he's fine with that, his blood intakes can range from blood packets from hospitals, to just a raw slab of meet you set in front of him

He has the thickest eyelashes between his siblings, and is often mistaken for a girl, both with and without his bangs covering his eyes.

He doesn't talk that much and prefers to communicate through simple gestures

His eyes are much like Ethans, just with blue instead of green

Next on the list is Jewel Goodwell (Jeje for short, but only if she knows you well)

Daughter of Esmeralda and Jane

Age: 16

Sexuality: Bisexual

Jewel is definitely the strongest person in the friend group, so she assigned herself as the main protector as well. Much unlike Meg, Jewel loves to get down and dirty in any way she can, it's all about the thrill for her. If anyone in the group gets hurt, she's the first one to start tending to them.

Most of her strength is from her radioactive blood, but she does a fair share of working out as well, she's training so that she can eventually join the army when she grows up, because she wants to be able to protect everyone around her.

She's fairly easy going and doesn't hold a grudge, but she can be very scary if you manage to push the wrong buttons too many times

She somewhat can see ghost like Jane, but it's only for short periods of time, they never stay for long

The current most important thing to her is her little brother, she would die for him in a heartbeat if it meant he would forever be safe

Speaking of which, last up is Edgar Goodwell

Son of Jane and Esmeralda

Age: 10

Sexuality: Biromantic (Bi and Ace)

Edgar is a fairly outdoorsy kid, he likes to go out with his sister on Jogs and is ready to participate in school sporting events the moment they're announced, tho despite all this he is more on the introvert side. Sure, he has no problems when interacting with people, but he prefers to be by himself or with Jewel or Mac

He loves animals with all his heart and he wishes his mom's wouldn't tell him no when he tries to bring home a stray cat or raccoon as a pet, bo, it doesn't have rabies, you're just mean >:(

He has a higher connection with the spirit world than Jane, to the point that he can physically feel them, and he welcomes them with open arms, sure, they don't talk much, and some can be scary, but they can't hurt him so it's fine. Grandpa Jon is his favorite ghost to be around :)

He writes down a lot of ghost encounters in a medium sized journal he has, and Mac loves reading it whenever he comes over, and Edgar is glad Max doesnt think he's crazy for it

Anyways I've had these kiddos sketched out for MONTHS and only just now am sharing them, phew it twas a bit of a hassle but I'll live

Also no one told me line less art is surprisingly easy wth

I LOAF ALL THESE GURRRRRRRLS