#sorta odd kirby ideas

[sortanonymous]

Sorta Odd Kirby Ideas #1-2: "The Miracles Run Out" and "Warped Miracles" AU Ideas

So jdphobe (@giantchasm) recently made a great Kirby one-shot on AO3 called i dug my heels in for the winter and i waited for the snow, which is basically the ending of Heroes in Another Dimension, except that Francisca dies as a result of the Jamba Heart's power on her (or something); and it shows the tragedy of the situation through the grim reactions of everyone there, especially Hyness and the remaining two Mage-Sisters (Flamberge in particular being completely broken). It may very well be the most gut-wrenching Kirby fic I've ever read, and it (alongside the fact that jdphobe also brought up a similar concept where Carol dies in Forgotten Land, although they don't seem to have any plans to write it yet) got me thinking about some more Kirby AU's where the miracles Kirby pulls off to save people are flipped on their head. Before I describe them though, I'd recommend reading that fic first as it's really good, although if it sounds too depressing to you (which it is indeed a very depressing read), then perhaps my brief summary will suffice. I should also mention that a lot of this is from my comment under that fic (which I ended off by joking that I was getting revenge on them for introducing one depressing Kirby AU by giving them two depressing Kirby AU's). (Edit: @giantchasm told me that apparently the way Carol dies is that Leon kills her while under Forgo's control. So... there's that!)

AU #1: The Miracles Run Out

Here Kirby is miraculously able to save Sectonia in Triple Deluxe and Max in Planet Robobot, now back in their right minds. The method Kirby saves them through or their immediate aftermaths aren't relevant. Point is that Kirby has not only saved the day twice more, but was able to help those they had to fight to return to their senses and get their happy endings with their loved ones. Sectonia got return home uncorrupted with her best friend and Max, in his right mind again, was finally able to reunite with his daughter. Kirby's naturally feeling really good about themself and thinking that whoever needs their help to reach the light, they'll just save everyone.

And then HiAD happens, which I'll just pick up from here with jdphobe's AU. Right as Hyness and the Mages are seemingly freed from the Jamba Heart's grasp, it turns out that Francisca, the youngest and most beloved Mage-Sister doesn't survive. As the scene unfolds in the original fic, Taranza and Susie react in ways referring to their own canonical tragedies. In fact Magolor is the one who checks Francisca to confirm her death, and he's shaken by how the way in which she died was very similar to how he nearly died under the Master Crown. One intriguing idea to consider is that in the AU where Secty and Max live, perhaps we see their reactions of how close they were to losing their lives to such similar situations (and for that matter, how close Taranza and Susie were to seeing their loved ones die like that). No doubt that Kirby's confidence in their ability to save others takes a hit due to this tragedy (one particularly brutal bit in that fic has them desperately and tearfully trying to revive Fransisca with Friend Hearts, but they don't work and Dedede and Meta have to drag them away). But it only gets worse come Forgotten Land. Considering what little jdphobe has said about the Carol side of their AU, I'll just cut to the obvious details and say that Leon is under Forgo's control and kills Carol (as she's trying to reassemble her husband's soul) right before his soul is restored. It's easy to imagine that with Carol all but explicitly confirmed to be his wife, her death ends up absolutely devastating Leon, especially with how it was his own hand that killed her, even if it wasn't really him. And also the 3DS characters here would again be shaken by how badly they could have turned out. Also likely devastated though is Kirby, who by now likely has their confidence completely shattered after two straight tragedies that they couldn't prevent. That said, at least it's cherrier than the other AU.

AU #2: Warped Miracles

The Switch games happen the same, but the catch here is that in the 3DS games, Sectonia and Max do survive (again, the method doesn't matter)... but NOT Taranza or Susie. Maybe Taranza is killed when Sectonia blasts him off the balcony. Maybe Susie is fatally wounded when Star Dream zaps her and only has enough in her to summon the Robobot Armor and maybe (depending on when Max gets saved) tell Kirby to tell her father, should they see him again, that she loved her and only wanted to save him from Star Dream's influence. In that instance, not only does Kirby end up with a streak of four tragic deaths that they couldn't prevent (you can only imagine how that would weigh on them), but we see how Sectonia and Max would react to their loved ones' deaths instead of the other way around, and they'd likely be absolutely brutal.

Just to indulge in the "how's" for a bit in how they'd be saved, if Max got somehow had his memories restored and he was OK and everything during the Star Dream battle, but Susie was already gone, at that point I can only imagine Max just running to the computer's core and trying to blow it up both out of anger and out of feeling like there was nothing left to live for. I mean, he sacrificed years of his life, his mind, his morality, his memories, and almost his very soul to bring back his daughter, and not only was he too far gone to know that she had returned, but once he was back in his right mind, his beloved daughter had died saving him and his soul from what he had become. But as for him surviving, becoming friends with Kirby, and trying to move on from his child's death, I could see him empathizing with Hyness in the jdphobe fic, and how both of them got corrupted and had their daughter die in the ensuing mess.

Meanwhile for Sectonia, whenever Kirby does purify her, I imagine that she'd immediately start searching for Taranza in hopes that he survived, as she still knows that she blasted him. (In fact, you could very well have her true self start to regain control the moment she zaps him as she realizes how bad she's gotten.) But then she finds his corpse, and I could imagine that either Kirby would have to hold her back from jumping into the abyss or that she'd be clinging onto his body in hysterics incapable of believing that "she" killed her best friend who had never given up on her, even if it wasn't really her in control. Maybe Kirby, who hadn't yet seen a tragedy like this and also may or may not even know about the corruption, tries to comfort her by telling her that Taranza had likely long wanted her to be free from the Mirror's corruption, but Sectonia would still be devastated by how her beloved Taranza had died by technically her own hand, even if she wasn't in control of herself. Heck, considering both her grief and guilt from both Taranza's death and all the chaos she caused, I doubt Sectonia would want to keep ruling Floralia even if she were allowed to. From there, she likely sympathizes with Max and Hyness and the two Mages over their losses. But I especially see her becoming close grieving buddies with Leon and them bonding over being royals who not only narrowly survived getting corrupted, but killed their lovers while they were out of control.

Just felt like these ideas were too fascinating to leave to rot in those comments.

[dastardlydandelion]

i actually don’t think kirby was included in kevin williamson’s original plans for a 5 & 6. he was on a podcast last year talking about how sidney was going to be a professor at jill’s college or something w amnesia and then 6 was going to be gale focused? 😭 idk but i think kirby actually originally did die and wes was more so the one who took an interest in letting her fate be ambiguous.

she was not in kevin williamson's version, no. you're correctamundo. he did plan on her dying and yes, scream 6 being more gale focused. i listened to that podcast too, it was the horror queers podcast, right??

also yeah, it was wes craven who'd had initially wanted to keep kirby alive and make her survival more evident in scre4m before that got cut leaving us with the ambiguity of her bleeding on the ground. ALBEIT iirc (according to screenrant and i would want to go back further than that if digging deeper bc screenrant is sketch at times) craven had also mentioned kirbs' wouldn't have survived round 2 of jill even if she had survived scre4m, so? yeah the odds of her having been the ghostface in the scrapped killer vs killer scenario even tho the idea crossed my brain and i can sorta track the logic of it, nevertheless i have to admit are very slim.

and i would want to dig back further and see which idea belonged to who anyway!! we already have these lil discrepancies between williamson's and craven's visions, and uh....who else was working on that bc in that same podcast didn't williamson say robbie mercer wasn't his character (therefore not confirming nor denying his sexuality)?? was robbie craven's character? who else had input here??

okay, sorry dude, now i'm kind of rambling and getting off topic. yes tho, i do recall williamson's plan was for her to die. would've really liked to see where he went with the franchise, those ideas did sound interesting.

i liked his peacock original, sick, too. obvi it's not anywhere near scream but at the very least i give it credit for subverting tropes and calling out the ppl who were acting like fucking asshats at the height of the pandemic. also cool ass looking setting, i love those log houses.

crap more rambling. my bad.

scream 6 at present does seem like it will feature a lot of focus on gale, even tho it obvi won't be the version of her story williamson had previously conceptualized. gotta say i'm interested to see where that goes, altho we have a large cast to focus on with the carpenter sisters' centrality to the story and the meeks-martin twins returning as well...

[firaknight]

I’m gonna make Adeleines opinions on all the dream friends and then maybe the helpers idk (and a few others cuz fuck it!)

Kirby: 10/10 best goddamn friend

Huge ball of love and joy!!! The happiest little friend!! He may be small but he is packed with love!!! One of Adeleines best friends and she care him :)

Bandee: 10/10 Friend :)

Friend from way back during the Crystal Shards incident! He’s a little anxious (think Tuter from Bear in the Big Blue House) but he’s very sweet and strong! He’s supportive of her and also squishable. Dees are surprisingly squishy!

King Dedede: 10/10 Mentor figure!

He’s super cool! Helped her find herself during Crystal Shards and was the first to get her to speak to everyone! She used to only speak French and barely spoke English (tragedy had occurred a few years before and she hadn’t recovered from it yet, being so young when it all happened), and he taught her a whole bunch of stuff along the way! She learned how to speak a lot of English, got a bunch of random trivia out of him, and learned how to be strong! He’s almost a dad but she’s too scared to try and call him that (he would ABSOLUTELY let her call him “dad” tho)

Meta Knight: 9/10 Oddly nice!

She was nervous around him early on because “mysterious knight has a sharp sword and doesn’t seem to care about safety” but he proved her wrong! He’s surprisingly chill and she really enjoys his company!

Rick, Kine, and Coo: 9/10 Old friends!

She’s known them since she was 3! Her mom introduced her to them before Dreamland 3 happened and she’s best buds with them! They’re all a lot bigger than you’d think and she can and will snuggle up with them in a big sleeby cuddle pile. All are soft except for Kine who is smooth :)

Marx: 7/10 Kinda scary but SOFT

He’s kinda creepy looking, especially when he’s got his wings out, but he’s not as terrifying as he looks? He’s got some odd little ticks but he’s snuggly and smol! He’s fluffy and it’s really weird? Like, he doesn’t look like he’s fluffy??? But he is??? She cannot wrap her brain around it but tries not to.

Gooey: 7/10 Funky lad

Points taken off because of him being Dark Matter and thats got a lot of trauma behind it for her, but Gooey is a legit funky friend. She was terrified of him at first (see: Star Allies title screen skits) but she’s friends with him now! He’s got a habit of holding everything with his tongue and exploring with said tongue (stuff gets slimy real quick) but aside from that he’s a malleable squishy friend!

Daroach: 8/10 Rat boy!

He’s got a New York accent and he’s a chaotic little bastard but absolutely sweet!! He’s made Adeleine an honorary Squeak Squad member and even gave her a little bell to commemorate the event! He takes her on occasional treasure hunts (safer ones because she’s fragile and speed is not her forte) and she gets to keep whatever she finds and an even portion of the total spoils!

Dark Meta Knight: 10/10 Adopted dad

Dude literally said “Is anyone gonna adopt this poor, fragile child who deserves the world?” and then didn’t wait for an answer. She was originally almost just as scared of him as she was of Gooey, but she warmed up to him super quick! He looks scary (and can be) but is really just a short ball of love and purrs.

Magolor: 7/10 What is he saying.

He’s the cool wizard friend but points off because half the time he’s speaking in Halcandrian and she has no idea what that is or how to translate it, nor does anybody else. He’s wacky and absolutely does magic tricks for people (Adeleine being one of them since she has a very vague grasp on magic and that stuff looks super cool to her) but like... what is he saying????????

Taranza: 9/10 Spider friend!!!!!!

He’s really good friends with her! They both sorta have someone they lost and still grieve over (Adeleines being her mom and Taranzas being Sectonia), so they look out for one another in that aspect, but they get along really well!!! He’s kinda soft and he sticks out his tongue when he’s happy!! They both go to Floralia and drink tea together at least once a month!!!

Susie: 6/10 Tolerable...

Susie is not a personal favorite for Adeleine on account of the fact that she tried to invade (emphasis on tried) Cloudy Park to mechanize it. She only succeeded in getting data from Kracko (who nearly fucking obliterated her and her robot right then and there) and was quickly chased out. The two have just... not liked each other since and Adeleine wasn’t very happy to see her join the group. She’s done some good things!!! She created super eco-friendly tech and gave it out to Dreamlanders and such, but her personality can be bitchy and she tends to not get along too well.

Francisca: 8/10 Cold but a friend!!!

She’s very very pretty and Adeleine kinda envies that (she doesn’t exactly have the means to keep herself looking pristine. The best she can do is wear something that isn’t her smock and fluff up her hair a little) but they’re close friends!! The two make gelato sometimes and it always turns into a fun mess because Adeleine has no fucking idea how to bake literally anything other than cinnamon rolls and gelato is WAY outside her skill level. It always tastes good tho!!!

Flamberge: 9/10 Cooking buddy!

Don’t let these two into the kitchen at once unless you want a banquet of food to come out of it. Berge brings out Adeleines more chaotic side and they get into trouble a lot. They make up for it with cooking! You’d think Berge would burn stuff with her fire magic but nope! Shes a frighteningly good cook! They can often be found cooking together!!!

Zan Partizanne: 8/10 Gives me mom energy but doesn’t seem to like me.

Had a bad habit of insulting everyone because she didn’t like them (see: Kirby Twitter) but she’s warmed up to everyone. She tried to keep up that “tough-guy” facade because she hates being seen as weak, but Adeleine has caught her holding Kirby like a kitten and bouncing/rocking him whilst baby talking him. She’s shown some genuine care for Adeleine, but sometimes it’s reeeeeaalllyy hard to tell if she genuinely cares about her or not.

[wirewitchviolet]

RPG Campaign Setting Thoughts - Alignments, Death, and Outsiders

Continuing on from this post here, tonight we have some VERY sketchy notes about the Outer Planes and associated stuff, which is going to spill over from world-building into mechanics and this is all too loose for me to bother with anything resembling in-book presentation.

The Outer Planes have traditionally always served two purposes in this cosmology of D&D and its derivatives which are honestly somewhat at odds with each other. They are both the actual afterlife of the setting, where the souls of the dead end up, theoretically for eternity, and they’re where all the demons and devils and daemons and angels and maybe gods and a bunch of other really weird things that exist mainly for the sake of symmetry generally hang out when they aren’t being summoned so they tend to prominently feature as a way to go bigger and more epic late in a campaign. It’s also very much a tradition (which is weird because I can’t think of a single religion that actually works like this) where all of these supernatural creatures are what the souls of the dead BECOME in the afterlife. If you’re neutral good, when you die you become an angel. If you’re lawful evil, you become a devil, etc. (and there’s a lot of weird exceptions because there’s way more outsider types than alignment combinations, and that’s before also factoring in undead and reincarnation and so on).

The problem here of course is that sometimes, the PCs are going to end up dying, and having friends who die, and when you’ve established that that turns you into one of these cool types of monsters, and that those monsters can be summoned, dying turns into this weird sort of power-up, and this was fixed with a very... game designer sort of solution. Namely, when you die, you completely lose all your memories, skills, personal connections, and really by any reasonable standard straight up cease to exist, being replaced with some new outsider springing into being on whatever other plane who’s really just a different character doing their own thing. And, yeah, that solves that problem, but it creates the new one that WOW, THIS AFTERLIFE REALLY SUCKS!

Now, I did already establish for this setting the concept of a layered prime material plane, where you can essentially have your high level alternate universes as weird little pocket dimensions you can honestly just walk right into without even using magic... but I mean, visiting the outer planes is still a cool fun thing to do, and fighting demons is a cool fun thing to do, and your soul transforming into some weird thing in the afterlife is just neat. So I don’t want to drop any of that, but I want to make some tweaks.

Also? Death sucks game mechanics wise. Players, as it turns out decades down the road from when this whole RPG thing first began, tend to be really attached to their characters, and don’t want to just rip up their sheets when they die. They want to cheat death. Which is fine. But the way you cheat death is you pay a bunch of money and either have your cleric cast a quick spell (or rush back to town to find one) and tada, you’re back with some temporary experience penalty you either kinda walk off or buy off. Which is all very... weightless. And straight up losing cash sucks if you’re saving up to buy fancy magic stuff. AND you don’t even get to visit the afterlife really.

So... the standard raise dead spells? They’re gone or at least getting alterations (gotta keep reincarnate in some form because I have a soft spot for it). Plane shift? Also gone. Instead we are going to dust off our old pal Astral Projection, have it at a reasonable level, and no, when someone gets killed, you have to cast that sucker, chase them across the astral plane, maybe to one of the outer planes, and have this whole mini adventure of rescuing their soul and shoving it back in their body.

Also? I am sticking to a hard and fast rule that the material plane is the physical plane, and all the outer stuff is all souls and magic. Nobody gets to bring their body with them which also means you don’t get to bring all your fancy equipment. You’re either a ghost getting sucked into hell or you’re a demon that used to be a ghost or you’re still alive but effectively a ghost tethered to home by a silver cord.

By the same token, outsiders can’t just physically come over to the prime material plane. This is kind of a big fundamental shift in things, but at the end of the day, isn’t it just freaking weird that there’s never really been a place in D&D for demonic possession?

So, tada. That’s a thing now. Outsiders on the material plane need to borrow something to use as a body. A willing person to possess, or an unwilling person subjected to a proper ritual first, or a recently sacrificed corpse, maybe some kind of magical focus stone. This is one of the sketchier parts of the idea here, but no matter how it works out it’s a built in adventure hook, and it doesn’t really change a ton because obviously being possessed by a whatever dramatically transforms the host into the standard existing stat block until its defeated. Summon spells kinda need a material component or a focus I guess, or maybe even not because like you’re calling up a whatever but you can’t really anchor it so it just has this unstable body made of dust and debris and temporarily conjured matter.

I’m also tempted to straight up invent a new divine caster class to fit in with this theme that’s all about having some outside pal they let possess them in combat. Get the whole Devilman sorta thing going, Maybe in a little subsection with a really dex-y fighter and a different take on an arcane type and a rogue type for a really non-standard but complementary core 4.

Back on the side of dying and visiting the other planes though, I say this is a good place to wedge in a good ol’ corruption mechanic. If you die,and your friends manage to catch up to you while you’re streaking across the astral plane, cool, no harm, no foul. Once you end up in whatever plane though, you gradually start to turn into whatever sort of outsider. Subtle cosmetic stuff at first, sprouting horns and getting weird colored hair and maybe a tail first, some slight shifts in personality, and over months or years you just kinda naturally lean into that, and your class levels fade away, and you just kinda naturally go all in on being a mephit or an azata or whatever the hell thing.

And then when your friends do get your soul back and shove it into your body again, that weird metaphysical transformative soul corruption deal doesn’t just go away. That’s partially demonified you possessing your old body now, so, you keep the horns and the flaming eyes and stuff as a permanent reminder of that time you died for a bit and you can be all angsty about it and maybe rededicate yourself to something because that’s not an afterlife you want to go back to, and honestly if you’re the sort of person with a real thing for dramatic mid-campaign transformations and you want a character to look all furry or glowing or be a hot demon gal at higher levels without the mechanical baggage of transformation magic, hey, the door’s open a crack for you.

Also speaking of succubi, while I’m playing around with outsiders, this one has always bugged me. Say we’re going all 7 deadly sins. We’ve got our wrath demons- big angry spikey jerks, maybe on fire. We’ve got our sloth demons- big gross sluggy things who can barely move. Our gross-Kirby gluttony demons, etc. But then we get to lust and it’s this super hot seductress. That breaks the pattern and I hate it. I am definitely kicking them out of that niche and replacing them with proper lust demons, evoking super creepy long-fingered horny dudes.

And really there is room from there to expand into a two-tiered system of outsiders for every plane where there’s the things that are there because they’re what happens to the average person who had this alignment as their reward/punishment, and then there’s the things that are their to make sure things run the way they’re supposed to, are generally more powerful, and are formed from the souls of people who really actively served their patron deity in life. I’m mainly looking at this from the angle of “do the members of the cult of this demon lord realize that in the afterlife they’re all going to become lemures and realize how much that sucks?” but even on the good side, you have to figure the average paladin doesn’t want the blissful retirement package after death, they want to do the whole holy avenging archon sort of thing and continue to kick evil’s ass, right?

Which segues me into alignments. A lot of people absolutely hate the traditional law/chaos good/evil alignment system, but I find as long as you’re careful to use it descriptively rather than prescriptively and you don’t use really messed up alignment definitions (AD&D 2nd ed had some DOOZIES), it’s cool. There is one missing element I would like to formally add in though- An extra variable for mundane and divine/committed/radicalized versons of each. Breaking this down with specific examples...

First and foremost, I am a big big fan of neutral as the default alignment nearly everyone falls into, with everything else being a bit of an outlying extreme. On the good/evil axis then, neutral if for people who you would generally describe as basically good people. They know right from wrong, and generally always try to do the right thing, but they have a strong sense of self-preservation. Truly good people go past that and will, as a general rule, really stick their neck out and take major personal risks or do full-on self-sacrificial things to help people. Evil people are all about looking out for themselves first. Or put more simply, seeing someone being attacked/persecuted/in great need, a neutral person will think “someone should do something,” a good person will think “someone should do something and I’m that someone” and an evil person will think “sucks to be that person” and try not to think about them much.

Meanwhile on the law/chaos axis, lawful people have an unflinching commitment to some form of faith in the system/some particular authority/a rigid personal code of some kind.and will always work within that framework. If that’s always obeying the law, any plan that’s explicitly illegal is off the table, and if the law is unjust, working to change it is the way to go. If they’re super religious, doubting their own deity is never on the table. If they’re strict adherents to a code, they don’t make exceptions. “I’ll never allow suffering” never gets a quiet clause of “unless the person suffering is a scumbag who deserves it” they’re really going to intervene over that.

Someone who is chaotic meanwhile actively has a chip on their shoulder about any sort of bureaucracy, full stop will never “have faith in the system,” generally assume any sort of authority figure is a power hungry scumbag, and while it’s hard to translate this into fantasy terms, be the sort of person who always jailbreaks their phone and has a strict no-DRM stance on all their software.

The vast majority of people are, again, neutral, falling between those extremes. Follow the law, trust that calling the cops will usually get things sorted out, but when push comes to shove, most rules are really guidelines and you can make exceptions where you have to.

All of these represent real, realistic attitudes normal real-world people have. Most are true neutral. The corner alignments are the rarest (always going by the book and always sticking your neck out is demanding, looking out for number 1 without bowing down to the powers that be really requires a certain sort of lifestyle, etc.) but there should be people you can point to at all 9 points on the grid, and none of them should really clash so hard that people can’t be friends or live in the same society, and they should all be functional alignments for adventurers since a good adventure should have a mix of personal stakes and rewards and a good party should all like each other enough to stick together through whatever comes up.

Then there’s the more extreme versions of these alignments. Where neutrality becomes about “maintaining the balance” or actively rejecting society as a whole, evil is actively causing harm for harm’s sake, chaos is constant change, law is absolute rigidity and caste structures and such, and good gets really extreme about scope. These are still worldviews actual humans CAN hold, but more typically these are the sort of things supernatural forces get bent out of shape about and have as sources of constant conflict.

Again, lots of loose sloppy notes here, but you can hopefully see where I’m going as far as moral philosophies and cosmology driving games in fun directions, right?

[mendelpalace]

Tag List

So thanks to @radicalhelmet​‘s suggestion, I’ve spent the last few days digging through my Tumblr archive, kinda looking for trends it the things I post/reblog. It’s tied together with me trying to figure out my interests and mentally prepare to do more writing this year. The following are various tags I ended up making representing different themes/ideas/moods I noticed. Use’em to get a sense for the kind of things that I post about. 

What’s an Aesthetic Anyway? - Kinda of go to tag when something spoke to me but I couldn’t figure out a specific “theme.” 

Walk With Me Through the Ruins - My interests in decayed and ruined settings and some related content. 

I Sing the Body Electric - Kind of a cousin to @iaiamothrafhtagn​‘s Robot Rock tag, which I’m also using. 

A Day at the Movies - Something more specific then the general Movies tag. Deals with the history/crit/love of movies. 

Art of the Remix - Remixes, references, mashups, cut-ups, repetition of imagery, the philosophy of making new from old.

Ode to gh0sthack - Tag dedicated to gh0sthack/nodalpoint/0x4e71, one of my favorite posters who kind bailed on this site. Cyberpunk, retro computing, cats. 

Video Games Are Scary - On Horror games. 

Voices in the Walls - Kinda general horror-ish tag. 

The Vulgar Displays of Computers - Glitches, the artificial uncanny, machines being simultaneously mechanical and organic and how that can be unnerving. 

You Eat a Lot of Acid Miller - Started out as a general ‘weird’ tag: UFOs, ESP, odd paperback covers, inspired by a scene from Repo Man. Eventually grew to include various bits of general 70′s-80′s America as well. 

America 20XX - A bit broad, kinda related to the above tag. 70′s-80′s (more or less) aesthetics. I dedicate these tags to @titleknown​‘s titlewave and @highway62​ 20XX: The Future America. 

Science Fictional Condition and The Future is Bright - Two tags dedicated to modern scientific strangeness, the latter a bit more optimistic than the former. 

without the cracks in the sidewalks and walls the city cannot breathe - An overly long winded tag dedicated to architecture, setting, thoughts on spaces fictional and real, and the relations between them. 

The Murder of the Magicians - A sorta western-inspired tag, related to a vague story concept floating around in my head. 

Beat’em Up Aesthetic - Various things I relate to 80′s and 90′s beat’em ups. 

Cold War Hotter Than Hell - Self explanatory. 

Art Games Have Always Existed - A more recent trend. Tag dedicated to strange/artistically minded games, particularly early ones. 

Aboard the Galaxy Express - Not very fleshed out. Generally a 60s-80s sci-fi aesthetic, slightly surreal. 

Call Me Kurtzberg - Dedicated to Jack Kirby and related content. 

Jess Nevins Would Be Proud - Pulp literature, obscure history, etc. 

Analogpunk - originally a word I used to describe chunky, 70′s-80′s era SF aesthetics, but kinda broadened to refer to the kind of retro tech of that era

Arcadecore - For the love of arcades. 

Cozycore - Not related to the music genre (which I didn’t know existed when I started the tag). An aesthetic of comfort. 

Game Criticism and Game History. Self explanatory. 

Movies, Video Games, Music, History, etc. 

Also expect lots of post featuring my animals. 

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: TokyoTreat Nov 19

Just a heads up for anyone who might not have been informed, I never received my December Tokyo Treat box, so there will not be a December review. 

“It’s finally November which means its the time of year when all the delicious new autumn snack flavors are released in Japan! Each region is known for their specialty dish or flavor so we wanted to bring you on an adventure across Japan to try flavors from various regions around the country! So hop on the Japan Express and discover all the incredible fall treats from across Japan in this months box!“

For this months contest, the winner could receive Kirby and Rilakkuma themed goods, while the Lucky Treat consists of items from series like Pokemon, Monster Hunter, and Evangelion.

Apple Coke & DIY

(See top for pic of the drink)

I’ve had this DIY before and I was greatly... unhappy with it, I made a review post on it in the past so I won’t bother with it here. However, I will say that this was inspired by the fishing hot-spot in Japan, Shizuoka.

Our drink item is a brand new Coca Cola inspired by the amazing apples hailing from Aomori. But this kind of confused me, because I was very sure I’ve had this drink before. The packaging reminds me of something, and I could have sworn I tasted the flavor before. . .

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

New or old, it doesn’t matter. This was very tasty and refreshing, especially if you like apples! It had a faint apple pie (apple + cinnamon) scent and taste, but it was overwhelmingly apple without question. The coke portion wasn’t very noticeable in comparison, but I really liked it~

Apple Mochi & Anpanman Apple Gummies

Our last two Aomori representatives are also apple flavored, we got 1 of each apple color with this box :P These are also other flavors of an item I had in the past.

First we have this package of small, hard jelly-like cubes of apple-flavored mochi. These are a fairly easy to find item (I see them on Amazon a lot when I browse Asian snacks/candy), and come in a variety of flavors. Like most Mochi these have a very chewy texture, but unlike most Mochi, these are more on the firm, harder side.

♥ ♥

I usually like these, I’ve had 2-3 different flavors before this one, but unlike them I have to say I could barely taste the apple flavor at all. It’s mostly marshmallowy with a faint hint of a green apple aftertaste. I didn’t dislike them, but I can’t say this would be the brands best representative either.

- - - - -

I’d like to say I was excited to see these but having had prior, poor experience with this brands gummies, I really wasn’t. Basically, these have a very thin papery, dissolving film behind them and it likes to stick to things, and they are very hard to remove. I believe partly this was because of my own doing in keeping them for longer than intended, but I’m not 100% sure. Either way it was a nightmare trying to eat the last pack we got, so I wasn’t sure how this time would go.

Luckily, I was able to peel off most of the paper and pull them out with little struggle using the toothpick from the prior candy. The paper also dissolves, so you can suck on it and just spit that part out if you have trouble removing it.

♥ ♥

They tasted very good, but like the grape ones I noticed a light strange after-taste, which can be a little repelling if you eat them all at once. I mainly rated this one on the whole “ordeal” that comes with it. But as I said, if you open them to eat after getting them it might not be a problem? 

Brown Sugar Bar & Matcha Sandwich Cookies

Next we’ll be taking a temporary rest stop in Okinawa, a tropical island located in the Southern area of Japan. This crispy brown sugar and Honey bar will melt in your mouth (if you can resist chewing on it~) and is 28 calories.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very sweet but avoids being cloying, and while I’m not a big honey girl by any means, I only really tasted a little of it and wasn’t turned off by the flavor. The flavor lingers in the mouth for sometime after eating, but its not unpleasant.

- - - -

I strongly dislike green tea so I wasn’t looking forward to this, even though I love cookies >3< the matcha flavoring is inspired by Kyoto, the green tea capital of Japan. We get a whole box of these little sandwich cookies, making them the perfect partner to any tea party or picnic.

Unless you’re like me and don’t like green tea that is. . . .

♥ ♥ 

If you like green tea then chances are you will love these :D but I found the taste unbearable, too strong, and bitter. I keep trying to overcome it but I just don’t like green tea, in fact I think I came close to gagging if not for the plain cookie itself.

Thankfully, my mom loves green tea so I just gave the box to her.

Hojicha Kit Kats & Chocolate Pie

Before leaving Kyoto, how about we enjoy some kit kats? Don’t be deceived though, these are actually green tea flavored, sorta. Hojicha is “green tea roasted over charcoal for a deep flavor“. 

♥ ♥ 

These are actually okay. Not that great, but they don’t really taste like green tea either so I didn’t find them horrible. If anything I was more bothered by their grey coloring and grainy texture. I feel like these would go nice with some tea or maybe a chocolate drink, or some coffee.

- - - -

Saitama is known for its delicious chocolate, so for this month, we can enjoy this adorable little chocolate pie- which instantly made me think about the ones from McDonalds as of late.

This pie consists of an ultra-flaky and salted crust surrounding a thin layer of chocolate.

♥ ♥ ♥ 

The saltiness of the crust was a little surprising but I didn’t hate it. That and the flakiness brought to mind an actual pastry one would buy at a cafe or shop, it was lovely. But the cream inside had a slight bitterness (I like dark chocolate though so it didn’t bother me), and I really wish the flavor was either stronger, or that there was more of it.

Constellation Cookie & Mochi Choco

Still in Saitama we have this adorable Constellation Cookie, which features a thick chocolate disc on top of a smaller biscuit. The chocolate has a drawing of 1 random constellation, and surrounding it is the date it is active, its name in English, and Japanese writing (its name in Kanji maybe?).

It’s hard to see, but I got Scorpio; which is ironically the sign after mine, the sign before my Moms, and it belongs to my Uncle. My sign is Libra, which is actually depicted on the packaging (its a bear with a pair of scales).

♥ ♥ ♥

This was pretty tasty, I sort of had my hopes up that it would be like this box of cookies I love getting from the store. But it wasn’t really like it at all, the chocolate had a bit of a bitter, chocolate pudding-like taste, and the biscuit was very plain. It was still pretty good though, and I love the cute idea and drawings on it.

- - - -

Meanwhile, over at Yamanashi we have its popular chewy and delicious mochi. This chocolate mochi is 117 calories and consists of a thin chocolate coat to accent the fluffy chocolate cream filling. Mochi is a fluffy, chewy, partially sticky pounded rice sweet that is available in a variety of styles and flavors.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

It’s very yummy! It’s soft and chewy with a light sweetness. The texture might be a little odd to those unfamiliar with it, and it can be a bit of a mess if you try to pull it apart, but I would definitely recommend trying it if you get the chance.

Dorachoco & Kibidango

Besides mochi, Dorayaki is another well-known and popular Asian treat. The hustling and bustling capital of Japan, Tokyo is well known for delicious Dorayaki. For anyone unfamiliar with this item, Dorayaki is basically a pair of pancake-like pieces of dough that is filled with cream or jam of some sort. It’s like the fluffy equivalent of a Taiyaki, the fish-shaped snack.

This specific Dorayaki is chocolate filled :3

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

For such a small treat its very flavorful. It has a bit of an unique taste that I really can’t describe, and you definitely need a drink with this one. It’s very “thick“ and coats the mouth and throat, so it can dry it out if you eat both of them in one sitting, or at once. 

- - - -

Our next item is a peach-flavored bar featuring the legendary Momotaro, who came from the Okayama prefecture. The bar is 52 calories.

♥

Honestly I didn’t like this at all. Not only did it have a more harder version of the plastic from the Anpanman gummies- but it doesn’t taste like peach at all. I really don’t know if it was a mistake or if the writer didn’t try it because to me it was extremely nutty; like peanut butter. I didn’t hate it (and I do hate peanuts btw), but I couldn’t bring myself to finish eating the piece in my mouth.

Brown Sugar Porickey & Takoyaki Umaibo

Porickey are yummy pretzel sticks that we’ve seen before in this box (along with the similar Pretz), and this is a brown sugar flavor, once again bringing us back to Okinawa.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Oddly these don’t taste anything like brown sugar to me. BUT I actually really like these :D they taste exactly like honey wheat pretzels I get from a store sometimes. They have a very faint sweetness to them.

- - - - -

Takoyaki of course can only be from Osaka (Not really, but its THE Takoyaki place in Japan), and I’ve had this Umaibo before so I won’t waste time. This isn’t fishy or oceany tasting at all, it reminds me a lot of a “condiment“ you would have on something, and I really like its taste!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Corn Potage Snack & Potato Snack Corn Potage

(Is it stupid that the names of these two snacks actually made me step back and be like wut.)

Our next two snacks are bringing us to Hokkaido, one of my favorite locations in Japan x3 It has many specialties, including corn; which is one of my favorite too!

I believe I’d had both of these snacks in the past at some point, and they’re pretty similar in terms of flavoring. They both have a sweetened buttery taste, the only difference being that one is a puffy snack, while the other is crispy with a slightly more salty taste.

They both get ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Atsugi Luxury Potato

Hokkaido is also known for its potatoes, as well as sea urchin. So our last snack has combined the best of both worlds to bring us a luxury chip with sea urchin flavoring.

The bag was severally under-stuffed, but that’s probably a good thing because somehow the entire bag is 333 calories!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I’ve never had sea urchin before, but I was expecting a fishy taste so I’m very happy it wasn’t the case when I tried them. The taste is pretty normal potato chip, with a saltiness and scent bringing to mind some sort of jerky. I thought they were pretty good though.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - 4 out of 5. There was a decent amount of repetition in this box, and a few items I wasn’t very fond of, but I liked this box. I wish we got a better DIY though <_< Theme - 5 out of 5. I loved the idea of experiencing the different lands in Japan through their foods. We’ve probably had this going on already, but I like how they were addressing it with this box. I think they did a great job! Total Rank: 8 out of 10. I would recommend this one, especially for those interested in learning a little more about Japan. The only thing I wish is that maybe we had a few more unique or different items to more represent the Asian culture.

♥ Cutie’s Scale of Yummy ♥

1. Potato Snack Corn Potage - extremely flavorful! Perfect for corn lovers, like me :3  2. Apple Coke - It’s very strong in realistic apple flavoring. I really enjoyed it. 3. Corn Potage Snack - It was really good, and its crispy texture was nice but I think I liked the other corn snack a lot more. 4. Mochi Choco - this one would be another good choice to have with some milk, after you eat it. It wasn’t as sweet as one might think, but it was yummy.  

5. Takoyako Umaibo - It’s a sort-of unique flavoring for them, but I really like it!  6. Chips - I didn’t hate these, even if they weren’t as unique as I was thinking they would be. 7. Chocolate Dorayaki - You definitely need some milk with this one! 8. Porickey - Eating made me feel nostalgic, I really want to go to the store for some honey wheat pretzels~ 9. Constellation Cookie - I wish we could have gotten 2 per-pack. Tasted good, but it could have been a teensy-bit better too.   10. Brown Sugar Bar - it was sweet and the melt in your mouth texture was very pleasant.    11. Chocolate Pie - plenty tasty but it had room for improvement.    12. Anpanman Gummies - this time was better than previously, otherwise I would have completely given up on these.   13. Green Apple Mochi - they weren’t as flavorful as I had hoped.

14. Hojicha Kit Kats - I didn’t find it unbearable like the items following this, but I didn’t like them very much either.

15. Kibidango - too complicated to unwrap, not very tasty in my opinion.

16. Green Tea Cookies - nuff said. 

[weirdunclegamer]

First playthrough of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor (co-op)... Complete!

Oh man it’s been a long time again since I wrote about a game.  Or… anything actually.  Let’s see if I still remember how to do this.

So for me Nintendo’s Wii console was like… the console of Returns.  That is, returning game series’.  There’s some obvious stuff there that literally has the word in the title like Donkey Kong Country Returns, or Kirby’s Return to Dreamland.  But there were others as well, including this game, a sequel to Treasure’s N64 title Sin & Punishment; Sin & Punishment: Star Successor.

Ah man now here’s a game genre I wish there was more of and I honestly don’t even know if it has its own name?  You control a person in the foreground, who can be moved around (usually on the ground only but there’s exceptions) and you aim via reticle into the background to shoot down your enemies/obstacles.  Wild Guns (SNES/PS4), Kid Icarus Uprising (3DS), um… the boss segments from Turok Evolution for GBA?  If you know any of that you know what genre I’m talking about.  It’s almost like an into-the-screen shmup, like Star Fox, or that one 3D Gradius title, but you’re not traveling forward and you (generally) are stuck on the ground?  People know what I’m talking about right?  I actually really love this genre, this is the sort of shooter hybrid I can get behind.

S&P2, which I am going to shorten the long name down to, is, amazingly for Treasure, a sequel to S&P1.  Now that’s not amazing in the sense that they made a sequel, something they once claimed they didn’t like doing (I’ve talked about it before so… whatevs) but more so in that it’s actually a story carry on from the previous title.  Treasure games tend to be… light on story, to put it mildly.  So seeing them actually write a proper sequel is kinda nutty.  We follow the son of the first games’ protagonist, and a female companion.  They’re escaping from evil people.  Going to be totally honest with you, it’s actually an oddly “deep” story about race, and the evil people actually working for some cosmic tyranny with whom they’ve struck a bargain to gain independence for the world they hail from and… I dunno, the game itself didn’t explain any of that, that was in the manual.  The game explains little, really, and is more interested in character stuff… sometimes?  They try to have some sort of statement about humanity in there using the protag’s dad as a basis for how he see’s humanity, but honestly for me it sorta ended up creepy and when his mom, in a flashback, says the line “don’t call him a monster, daddy’s not a monster, daddy’s just daddy” it really felt like they didn’t realize how much that sounds like she just called him an abusive partner…  It’s not what she meant, it’s setup for the main protecting the girl’s humanity (while not being human) with a reuse of the line at the end of the game.  But man… that line really put me off pretty hard.

Treasure is not known for their stories however, they are known for gameplay, and gameplay this game has to spare!  As I said I love this style of game, and the love actually started with the original S&P on N64, which I only discovered due to testing the game when I worked QA at Nintendo of America for a couple years.  I was the first (possibly only) person on the team who managed to perfect the last boss on the hardest difficulty.  I was so jacked up on adrenaline that I literally kicked my chair across the room, threw my control down on the table, stomped over to my team lead and loudly declared “THERE!  I DID IT!  IT’S ALL GOOD!”.  The lead looked me flat in the eye, calm, and said “and you recorded it?” and the point is I know what a balloon deflating feels like. Anyway, fast forward to this game and I was not disappointed.  Okay I’ll admit the aesthetic of the game feels… odd, compared to the original, but I got used to it and honestly it has its own unique flavor that stands it apart from its predecessor.  The gameplay is solid, with two main additions that help allow the action to be kept up; you can now hover around the screen off the ground (see? exceptions, just like I said) allowing for more movement options when dealing with evading attacks, and a charge shot, which is a simple addition, but a nice one.  More tools and options in any situation is never a bad thing.  All the actions of moving, evading, standard shooting, and your melee strike, are all preserved from the first game as well, no omissions. My favorite stage in the game easily is this long desert hover bike stage where the cutscene leading into the highway ride has the girl wordlessly walk off screen, then return all of three seconds later riding some indigenous animal and her jacket tied around her waist.  The best part is, like I said, the boy rides a freaking hover bike anyway, only she rides the animal.  The boss is a giant Final Fantasy looking leopard monster, followed by an equally FF looking bird monster, THEN THEY LITERALLY JUST FUSE FOR NO ADEQUATELY EXPLAINED REASON.  You don’t even kill them, you “prove” yourself to the fused beast via combat then it flies you the rest of the way.  This game made me yell “I WANT TO FIGHT THE MOON!” in the let’s play I did of it with a friend so like, ten out of ten.

Speaking of that, the co-op.  The original game had co-op as well, and it was… not a good idea.  In fact it was arguably the worst idea, and only those speedrunners with too much time on their hands who do the 2 player 1 controller thing should bother with it because it is literally 2 people controlling the one character.  One person on movement the other on aiming.  It’s not a good idea.  The co-op in this game is a great idea because player 2 is just a spare reticle and gun to join in the fight, it’s proper 2 players, it makes the game a little easier… yah, good idea.  Cue “good idea, bad idea” from the Animaniacs here.

All in all I really loved this game, and as it’s exactly a Treasure fare, short high speed action game, it’s the kind of experience you can just pop in again at a later date when you have the itch.  It’s got some funny moments, some dramatic moments, Treasure’s usual mass of crazy imaginative bosses, and a decent soundtrack.  Definitely check it out.  And of course, happy gaming!

.

.

.

Seriously not enough “light gun” games on the Wii and the console was tailor made for the style.  A crying shame.