#sorry I got way off track

[edwinisms]

it’s kinda funny to me that charles seems like this classic brit punk rocker and looking at him makes you think of like. the clash. sex pistols. etc. but really according to his pins and the time period he died in he was probably most frequently listening to fucking. ska

[420technoblazeit]

in my mind dean was always supposed to get older and become the new bobby. like ok you're a hunter, maybe a little new to the scene and still figuring things out. and you're tracking down a werewolf, easy case. except some things don't line up quite right and now you're thinking it might not actually be a werewolf. so you ask around a hunter's bar and they all say the same thing. go to this one bunker in the middle of nowhere in kansas

and you're like sure what the hell. you're stumped anyway, might as well check it out. maybe it's a weapons storehouse or something. but then you get there and there's a doorbell and a bee-shaped welcome mat out front and you're starting to think you've got the wrong place. the door swings open and there's this middle aged guy with a robe and batman pyjama bottoms. and he laughs at the look on your face and tells you to come in, he doesn't bite. not since he got that vampire cure, anyway. you're not sure what to make of that last part but he winks at you when he says it so you figure he's joking. maybe.

he gives great advice about hunting everything under the sun and if you stick around long enough he'll go on and on about how he saved the world at least five times. ok sure. you don't want to be rude so you just sit there and sip your coffee politely while he talks about some guy called chuck and how much of a bitch he is. and another guy who's aged a little more gracefully comes padding down the hallway in a metallica t-shirt and rolls his eyes. has he told you about tvland yet? ('i was just getting to that part!')

if you go to the basement you'll find shotguns filled with salt, wooden stakes, holy water, and demon-killing bullets for sale. and if you're lucky the witch who sells hex bags might be around. low-grade curses only, of course. you better leave the powerful stuff to the professionals. and she'll get in trouble if she gives you anything stronger, not that she can't be persuaded. a girl's gotta make a living after all and she's always encouraged eager new witches. it's worked out pretty well for her so far. and then a guy you swear is twice your height will raise an eyebrow at her and insist she only sell the weaker hex bags, please. you don't need any more witches in your coven, rowena. you've got plenty

pagan god giving you trouble? there's a man who swings by every once in a while who knows how to deal with those. give him some candy or a fun magic relic and he might help you out. it depends. he's a little picky about dishing out advice and he likes to play favorites. and if you've got a demon problem they can give you the number of a guy who swears up and down that he used to be the king of hell. but you've seen him walking around with a purse-sized terrier tucked under his arm and a dozen more following him so you're not really sure if you believe him

idk i like to think that dean got to grow old and retire. that doesn't mean he stops helping people, it just means he hangs up his coat and becomes an old man who rambles on and on about 'back in my day' and makes a dent in his leather armchair. there's a foosball table where the dungeon used to be and sam complains about beer bottles being everywhere and it becomes a safe haven for anyone still fighting the good fight. it's just that for dean and the rest of team free will the fight is over. they're done hunting now

[kingofanemptyworld]

and last (but certainly not least) of the current batch! Tsubaki!

Tsubaki’s Team:

Lopunny (Partner Pokemon)

Hatterene

Sylveon

Tinkaton

Aromatisse

Applin (gifted)

Fairy-type trainer extraordinaire, Tsubaki, enters the scene! It didn’t take long to decide on a type for Tsubaki to main tbh (like Hiiragi is dragon, hands down, and Ume grass), and I’m only a little disappointed that Lopunny’s the outlier here, because as much as I love Hatterene and think it suits Tsubaki, it wasn’t going to beat out Lopunny. This bunny is out there kicking the crap out of opponents and Tsubaki couldn’t be prouder.

Slightly adjacent topic, but I use he/him for Tsubaki because those are his canon pronouns that he uses himself. However! Trans!Tsubaki, or any non-cis iteration thereof, is also cool, so I absolutely had to give him the Trans Icon Sylveon. Happily, Hatterene’s color scheme is similar, so they’re both excellent additions to his team. As for Tinkaton… I didn’t know this pokemon existed until I pulled up a list of fairy types and saw it towards the bottom. I fell in love, instantly, and I firmly believe Tsubaki did as well. I love tiny characters with huge-ass hammers/axes/various melee weapons (Kikoru from Kn8 my beloved), my fate was sealed the moment I saw this. Aromatisse goes along with Tsubaki’s love of pretty things, in the form of being a walking perfume dispenser (and an excellent way for Tsubaki to run off assholes without having to lift a finger). In my heart Aromatisse is free of its pokeball most of the time and spends an ungodly amount of hours coming up with new scents for Tsubaki’s approval, good and bad. Tsubaki’s favorite is also coincidentally the one Umemiya liked enough to comment on it, so Aromatisse makes sure to spritz Tsubaki whenever it knows its trainer is going to meet up with Ume.

Applin is, of course, a gift from Umemiya, which he gave to Tsubaki the day he decided to take a break from his champion duties. Tsubaki had the same idea, so they’re matchy-matchy (and in love shhhhhh).

Fun fact! Tsubaki was originally a contest participant and holds three Regional Contest Champion Titles. Someone more fashion-conscious than me can imagine all the glorious costumes he wore on his contest runs. He still keeps an eye on the scene despite not having much time to participate these days and he’s particularly keen on up-and-comer Suo!

[inchidentally]

so we all know that Oscar was basically the president of the Lando Norris fanclub back in the day, but my question is, does Lando know? Like I think back to that face mask video when Oscar asked Lando how many sibling's he had and we all suspect that Oscar fully knew the answer. So was he trying to play it cool so Lando didn't catch on that he maybe knew a little too much, or was he trying to play it cool so we the viewers didn't catch on to how much Lando content he has consumed (he has failed, we know Oscar, we know. Especially since he referenced a Quadrant video later in the exact same video).

okay so first we've got to pay homage to the god tier @mecachrome fic Q&A bc it takes every wriggly red-in-the-face possibility of this and wraps an even wrigglier landoscar narrative around it <3

and for my own take on if Lando's twigged about the level of Oscar's fanboying I am so incredibly undecided bc Oscar is so good at putting his defenses way up and passing off a moment like that as just casual...

WAIT WAIIIIIT no okay I'm calling it Oscar knew that Lando had already told the story about being locked out of his house in a video before. I can't remember if it was a stream or a Quadrant video but Lando said he was playing on the sim in their shed and his parents forgot he wasn't in the house and locked up. I'm sorry but Oscar does NOT look like this is the first time he's heard this and even filling in the "and fell through" before Lando says it. CAUGHT.

and let's not forget Lando absolutely knowing Oscar would know the year of his maiden podium in the Splunk video. CAUGHT.

I'm gonna say that Lando knows to a certain degree that Oscar's a fanboy and honestly he's got to just find it funny/cute/endearing imo. Lando's not the type to be mean or an asshole - even when he and Max would sometimes almost have an outright spat on stream Lando would back down first and make a self-deprecating joke. and Max is fully able to stand up to Lando and give as good as he gets! so I can't see Lando ever being anything but amused or fond or both to find out 'kitten pulled from a nap' Oscar has been a fan of his for years.

god this reminded me how unhingedly in sync they were in the Most Likely To video considering they didn't even know how many brothers and sisters they each had yet. it's also unbearable for how much they watch each other and like… one of the best videos for Lando clearly just finding Oscar like, just so cute ??? straight up 'that's my nerdy lil guy' alsfgljasfgljasg and I mean Oscar stares at Lando literally constantly so nothing new there.

also this adorable moment where they're both too stupid to understand the horror movie question but also Lando's little delighted gigglejump when Oscar admits he'd scream and hide his eyes:

more of me just remembering how gd cute this video was

strangely already married teammates moments:

literally the very first question !! they both agreed that Oscar was most likely to sleep in but then Lando had to go and push the issue, resulting in retaliation from Oscar and a you're sleeping on the couch response from Lando. "you just opened a can of worms"

this resulted in a tense stand-off about who takes the longest to get ready which Oscar diplomatically decided was equal between them.

most likely to snore being Lando is hysterical bc they both clearly know that Oscar knows. I love how Oscar drops the issue very wisely and Lando's tone gets VERY clipped at the end. I also feel like this could be a catch-out for Oscar too !! bc Max said on one of his streams about Lando's snoring sounding like Valentino Rossi revving his bike in the next room. so it's highly sus that Oscar said "have you had feedback on that before?" CAUGHT?

"if you dare say me" Lando being absolutely livid that Oscar already knows Lando is most likely to cry during a sad movie. Oscar wisely conceding but his face says otherwise. what has Oscar had to deal with and which movie was it that Oscar had to deal with a sobbing Lando over.

Oscar's earlier retaliation comes back to bite him on the ass over most likely to be late !! when he looks at Lando's face he initially concedes. Lando however pushes his luck and Oscar must stand up for himself. the couch is already made up so might as well.

both immediately agreed the answers to:

Lando gets ready quickest

Oscar first into the car

Oscar most likely to get a pet

Lando most likely to embarrass himself in public

Lando most likely to not reply in group chat

neither would survive in the wild (Oscar ribs Lando about being older)

Lando most likely to laugh in a serious moment

both of them agreed to both for:

burnt dinner

cut their own hair

eat their meals quickest (though they agree Lando's chicken burger with sweet potato fries - that Oscar copied - disappears very quickly)

[eggcats]

I'm still working on chap3 (I have a bunch of unconnected little things, but I'm a bit stuck on how to connect them quite yet - but hopefully soon I'll he able to write and edit)

But instead I decided to write a "current day" slice of life fic, based on my AU, where they meet Charlie and the Happy Hotel

(some ideas came from @shizukasobsessions and my replies in the comments of my fic♥️)

There's so many different pieces here tho, lmao - like, Alastor killed Valentino and took Angel's soul to replace him as the overlord of porn, to prevent Angel from failing he gave him Husk to guide him on being an overlord, (Alastor refers to Angel as solely Anthony, the less he thinks of the pornography offshoot of their media empire, the better)

Vox is still the face of their company, Voxtek is still named after him (Alastor has no issues taking a more behind the scenes role, there's a reason he WAS the radio demon but mostly got that name from torturing souls on the radio, not by trying to force everyone to only listen to his radio show - he has no issues with Vox doing just that with television/hypnosis but he doesn't mind allowing him to truly embrace his cult-leader personality here. Vox is still his housewife behind closed doors, tho, Alastor just doesn't want to hobble him in any way)

So it's really funny to think Charlie is just dealing with overlord after overlord (and one former) as she's trying to run her hotel

I'm thinking in this AU, Angel/Anthony decides to let some of his employees stay and try out the whole "redemption " thing, as long as Charlie gives them a safe place to stay rent free - in my AU, Angel was originally owned by Valentino when Alastor killed him, so Angel not only knows what brings people to his studio, he knows he can't protect them all - hence his agreement with the princess of hell

However, Angel and Vox are friends (Husk's #1 piece of advice to him, while Angel was freaking out that his soul chain changed hands along with a bunch of new responsibilities, was "make Vox like you - if Vox likes you then you're almost entirely safe from Alastor, trust me, I know it looks the other way but it's not")

(Angel now does genuinely like Vox, and they get along pretty well, but he will admit - if only to himself - that he originally became his friend to prevent from being torn to pieces like he watched happen to Valentino)

Alastor still obviously doesn't believe in redemption, but the only reason he's there at the hotel is because Vox asked him to be (and Vox is there because Angel asked him on behalf of Charlie for some advertising for the hotel)

And @proshipper-on-ship mentioned the Chaggie parallels of Charlie finding Vaggie at a dumpster, and Alastor doing the same, and I thought it'd be really funny to have their first meetings come up

Charlie, awkward but trying to come to terms with the truly alarming amount of Overlords in her hotel: "So...how'd you two meet?"

Alastor, smiling as he finally can set up his punchline: "Found him in an alley and brought him home with me."

Charlie, super excited: "OHMIGOSH, that's basically how I met Vaggie!! How'd you find him?! I was looking for anyone to help after the Extermination!"

Alastor: "I sensed someone using my radio waves and immediately went in search of who."

Charlie, actively looking at Alastor like he's as harmless as a kitten: "OhEmGee that's so sweet! And you were just going to take him under your wing but then you fell in love?!"

Alastor, deadpan: "No, I was going to kill him."

Charlie, looking exactly like 😦: "What."

Alastor: "He wasn't a radio, though, so I decided to let him live."

Vox, with his screen in his hands: "Alastor, you gotta stop telling people that."

Alastor, thinks it's secretly very funny: "Why not, it's the truth, darling?"

I just love the idea that Charlie, for a second, thinks Alastor might be as soft and kindhearted as herself as she sees similarities in their relationships, and then Alastor just immediately breaking the illusion.

[phantomrose96]

So I'm one of those people who had to take a break reading ABoT. Part way through reading I thought of that writing advice that goes something like "look at the current scenario and figure out how things can get worse" and decided ABoT was applying that advice with both fervor and finesse. It had me hooked through multiple all nighters and it wasn't until, ironically, the ending of chapter 37 where Reigen is standing in the remains of the Mogami house that I stared at the next chapter button and realized I would absolutely not be able to handle more, mentally or emotionally, if this fic kept following the previous advice. So I set it aside for a month to recover, tentatively poked into the next chapter tense and ready for things to continue spiraling, and gradually started to relax and unravel until...well, you know. I remember having to put my phone down and take a walk with the reveal of everything that Ritsu had incidentally caused (even if the blame can be pinned on basically everyone in some measure, but that's a whole other essay in my notes).

When I reached the current cliffhanger, I waited a scant day before starting all over, this time slower, more careful, and with a more analytical eye. Not for critique, but because I was confused. That writing advice from before, I'd seen it implemented both poorly and skillfully, and ABoT used it with a finesse I've yet to see anywhere else, and I had to figure out how. What made what can be boiled down to a high stakes wild goose chase so compelling? Why couldn't I put this story down until my emotional limit couldn't handle any more? How could I learn from this and make my own writing better? What did this have that I clearly lacked?

I don't think it was until after Teru's and Ritsu's first fight that it clicked for me. I stared at that scene, then my own characters, and realized I'd written two of my own meeting in a similar fight and had neglected any form of consequences. My characters became friends because of a mutual friend. Because that was the end goal I wanted. I had that omniscient knowledge; I knew I wanted them to end up as friends, so I wrote the most objectively logical decision to make.

Except. These characters aren't objectively logical. They make the decisions that look the best to them in the moment, even if those decisions are bad, or horrible. A character who's been soundly beaten into the ground by another won't so easily become their friend, even if their opponent is the nicest person ever. There's distrust and fear. They're going to make bad decisions. Things weren't getting worse for the sake of getting worse. They got worse because of the direct (bad) decisions of the characters.

Once I realized that, I was struck with such violent inspiration I wrote something like 11k words worth of scenes and revitalized my own love of writing in a day. I was so stuck on the end goals I forgot about the struggles in between. I had gotten so focused on grand, overarching conflict, I forgot how compelling it can be to just have two characters punch each other in the face. Too much of my writing had stuff happening around the characters instead of happening TO or BECAUSE of them. I had forgotten character conflict, and when I started writing those flaws, I couldn't stop. I was having too much fun!

Sorry for rambling about my own stuff, I just wanted to convey how much impact you and ABoT have had on my own creative endeavors. I've been inundated with too many stories, fics, movies that occur on such big planet-wide scales with dire, multiverse threatening levels of conflict, that when presented with a long form tale of a kid desperate for his missing brother, told from the perspectives of a small, well developed and spectacularly characterized cast, in a single city, told with stakes that made me care more than any threat to the world, it was like a breath of fresh air. So I guess this is a thank you for ABoT as a whole and a thank you for writing Ritsu the way you do.

Unfortunately for him, he's an inspiration.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YES YOU GET IT YOU GET IT YOU GET IT

ABoT, if nothing else, is a story about its characters. Everything that happens with consequence to the plot can be traced back to a character's own decisions. The characters' wants and needs and actions and faults all come first, and the plot follows accordingly.

(And maybe that sounds obvious.) Aren't stories about characters? But there are so many stories where the characters are just kinda... there. They're blank slates to receive the plot happening around them. Many things they try to do have no consequence. They'll try to take action and the plot will carry on exactly the same as though they'd never even tried, because the writer doesn't want to figure out how that character action might matter. Or a character will do something awful and the plot will just brush past and forget, no consequences or continuity, because the writer had their fun in the moments but now they care about getting the plot back on track, and that would be annoying to work around. They create stories where you can't put your excitement and investment in the characters cuz you just... can't trust they'll matter.

The most important thing about ABoT, to me, is that the characters are making it happen. The good, the bad, can all be traced back to decisions characters had the active choice in making.

I have plenty of fun joking that ABoT is one of those "oh my god it keeps getting worse!!!" stories, but I never ever do that by just dropping random terrible things from the sky. It's always the characters. It's them and it's their consequences of everything they've set in motion, or fought against, or allowed to happen. It's always a thread, thoroughly traceable, spawning from character actions which drives everything both good and terrible (and SUPREMELY terrible) that happens. It will always be the characters.

And I really, truly believe this is what I'm doing to make what is ultimately a wild goose chase featuring less than a dozen people worth reading. When Ritsu fucks up, it's worth caring about because you know this will impact the course of the story. When Reigen succeeds, it matters because he does have a grip on the reigns of the plot and has the chance to better this for everyone. When a character does anything, it matters because is about them, and what they're desperately trying to achieve.

And when a scene isn't about "an action with a consequence", it's still a scene with a point. For any scene I write I always make sure I can answer "what's the point of this scene?" Mob and Reigen reopening Spirits and Such isn't about to barrel the plot forward, but it's hearty and important character development for them. It's the "why should I care about this future being snatched from their grip" when everything goes wrong.

When everything went bad bad around chapter 32, and tumbled worse for many chapters to come, it was me finally tipping over the first domino in a chain of dominoes the characters themselves have been setting up since the start. It went bad not because I arbitrarily decided to fuck with them, but because everyone's actions carried consequences.

Even with ABoT's WORST possible outcome, where Mogami comes out the victor with everything he wants, all others crushed beneath him, this will mean the ruination or death of about... 10 people. A blip on the news. An "oh isn't that sad?" when a second kidnapped son never makes it home, when a conman goes missing (not noticed until a month later when the rent comes due), when a police officer kills his wife and himself, when an orphan kid vanishes off the map from Black Vinegar mid. And life would carry on. And the sun would still rise every day. And no part of this would end the world.

But if I'm doing this right, I want that outcome to feel like the end of the world. I want it to feel worse than that, given what a quiet and unsung tragedy it would be for all these personal efforts and struggles and desperate reaches for betterment are snuffed where they stand. Because they tried and it mattered and they failed anyway.

It IS just a wild goose chase centering around a kid who wants to have his kidnapped brother back, and it's 350k+ words to me.

dfjkdfnkjdf so anyway, I am very clearly super thrilled you were able to see this! It all ties back to character weaknesses and strengths, consequences of actions, irrational responses to situations fueled by character, and not by logic, and the audience knowing that what these characters do will matter. I love stories where humans are messy. I love stories where the tragedy happened because of them, where you can trace the thread back and find exactly how it all went wrong. I love clashing personalities. I love character spirals you can see a mile away and yet you know exactly why the character did that. I love yelling at the pages while knowing that realistically, this character wasn't going to do any better than that. I love knowing exactly how things could have been avoided, and knowing exactly why they happened anyway. I love seeing consequences stick. I love seeing characters matter. And I'm goddamn thrilled you feel that way too and that ABoT could make you find the way to do that in your own characters!!!

[rystiel]

a sketch i’ll never actually finish

[valvesoftware]

breakups are so fucking weird. three years and just like that it's gone. huh

[geddy-leesbian]

cryptic spoiler for what im writing rn

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

"eleanor rigby" is certifed m2 song to me & i don't want to hear anything

[tardis--dreams]

Me panicking because i have 9 missed calls and 5 emails talking about my absence and how "a colleague could take over for me" vs. Me knowing it's really not that important no matter how pushy a client is and that on top of it I'm underpaid and have way to much overtime so i shouldn't even care

[halloweendeity]

.

[waywardsalt]

thoughts on totk now that i’ve beaten it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the new ingredients and recipes and new weapons were cool.

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

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

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

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

[foolishfoolsgold]

Question, how does etosis work? In cawf, the eosinophil explodes

THEY-

.

HMMM.

Anyway, assuming you’re talking abt the creature AU, I want to try and not kill them lmao. So I’ll have it as a weapon they can sling from their tails, kind of like spider silk. Plus a big headache I suppose because the nucleus is like their brain. A lot of cells use their tails as weapons, a few I have are neutrophils and macrophages slinging lysosomes, killer Ts having retractable perforin stingers (I realize that would also make the whole “Perforin Punch!! ©️” scene pretty lame because that’s like a dragon going “Oh, right! I can breathe fire!”), and eosinophils having protein spear heads on their tails and routinely putting them on their weapons when they’re done growing. Basically *most* cellular processes involve the tails somehow

[lifenconcepts]

God* appears to me through the sun rays peeking out through clouds or trees. An energy speaking to me in a cryptic manner that instills me with more than curiousity but also sheer wonder and glee.

*And by ‘god’ I mean the word for the collective spider web/net that enties all living and natural creations with a divine and holy strength that is rightfully shared amongst every individual and plant we share the earth and universe with, a power so strong that if collectively brought together for one goal can lead to incredible success and yet as it is spread out allows for a neutral world based on the secondary magic that is electricity. Now people are too focused on the logical aspect of the world rather than tapping into the infinitely complex world they have access to. ofcourse, given how not all things are inherently equal (give, an ant vs a flowerbud for example) their powers deviate accordingly, and yet, the balance they bring allows them to coexist and merge both energies to become something greater than either of them individually. Both hood a strength and able to manipulate reality as we know it, although due to their size, in a very very small way. So small we wouldn’t notice.

people, on the other hand, hold so much they can’t even grasp all of it. Yet it’s beautiful to see them try to. Know that all you are and can be and will be is undefined and chaos in small doses can lead to more good than you expect. Tap into it and you can talk with the divine, and recognise all the connections (from the grass you walk on, trees you see, people you talk to) and you’ll begin to notice a very hidden pattern that is quite logical if you so wish it to be. Don’t guilt yourself over inescapable things, the universe/the divine web/god litterally does not care if you accidentally squished an ant or picked a leaf from a plant, same with eating natural foods, as long as you didn’t have malicious intention towards anything at all, then it’s all good. Accidentally broke a pot? It’s alright. Accidentally snapped a twig? It’s alright! Eating some lettuce? That’s wonderful! Threw a rock at a window of someone’s home you know still lives there? Bad. Broke a window of a place you know is abandoned and know that prolly nobody even cares for it? That’s fine! Picked a flower for your lovely favourite person? adorable. Picked a plant from the ground because you saw a bug on it? Shame on you. Affect any living creature, inanimate (plant) or moving, no matter if it’s directly or even just in thought, and face the consequence.

even objects at time deserve love and respect!! AHSOKBXKDBKABKXBKX

[faaun]

. anyway after writing the tags 4 this post i told my research partner i will no longer follow his dreams lmao. still helping w it but i need to engage in research that i find satisfying