#still had spoiler tags blocked but still got super spoiled

[felassan]

I received a few asks around a similar topic, so I'm popping them together here. ( ´ ▽ ` ) DA:TV spoilers under cut.

[the Felassan Files]

hello! ◕‿◕ thank you for the lovely and fun ask messages!!

lavendervoids asked: "i’ve been dying to know what ur reaction was to seeing felassan in the game was???? the moment i saw him i was yelling and hollering and my first thought was “omg what does tumblr user felassan think of this” LMAO and thank you for all the documenting you’ve been doing up until and past the release of the game, i ended up blocking every dragon age tag a couple months back to avoid any sort of spoilers but i still came to your blog everyday cause i knew you wouldn’t spoil me haha"

hhhh ( ´ ▽ ` ) tysm for thinking of me at that time!! and for the nice comment about this blog and visiting it. I'm really glad to know that my approach to spoiler tagging etc has been okay for you.

littlerune asked: "i don't even know you but you and dragon age felassan are so intrinsically linked in my brain that when he appeared in veilguard all i thought was "ohhhh i wonder how tumblr user felassan feels about this"

hhhh :D 🥺 thankyou so much for thinking of me!! ♡ some say that his ghost operates this tumblr blog, or that he lives still

songofamazon asked: "I'm still on my first play of the game, but whenever I got to the memories in the Crossroads, I thought to myself, "I hope Tumblr Felassan is having a great time. Did you?"

I had a great time playing the game and when playing the Crossroads memories sections, I loved them a lot, they were very cool and a highlight of the game. thankyou sm and for thinking of me, and I hope that you did too!!

phantabula-interactive asked: "im so glad you're enjoying the game!! I had to ask; how did you feel about seeing Felassan in game?? I was so excited to see the notes from him, I wasn't expecting a boss fight MUCH LESS. FULL CAMEO!!! They made him a lot prettier than I was expecting too (/pos)"

thankyou!! I hope that you've been enjoying it too!

so: I was sooo excited and shook to see Felassan in the game!!! I was like

(I yelped/hooted out loud like a clown) and then

and then it was suddenly like too much (pos) and my soul left my body and i astral projected into space/paradise/the Astral Plane/the Void or something etc

and then it took me some time to process or gather my thoughts about it.

obviously I was super hoping that we would see him in the game. I was sure that there would at least be some references to him in codexes/notes etc or allusions made in passing dialogue like Cole and Solas' lines about him in Trespasser. then when the marketing mentioned that we would see flashbacks from Solas' past in the Crossroads, I was like aaa omg, wouldn't that be the perfect time to actually show Felassan??, as a Fade memory or flashback or spirit echo or something. so then I was hoping like 🕯️🕯️🕯️ and yea. but even so, still when I saw him in game for the first time it was still a huge shocked Pikachu moment for me.

I was already feeling psyched from the first Felassan codex/note that I found, then I couldn't believe (pos) just how many codexes/notes scattered around written by him that there was?? I was already feeling spoiled (not spoiled by spoilers but like spoiled from eating good) from that (a bunch of codexes/notes might not seem like a lot but when your fav is a side character that has only appeared in one [1] tie-in novel..) and then he goes and actually APPEARS, AAAA. I feel like I ate so good. with the Betrayal fight and the rune at the end as well, it felt like he was threaded throughout the game and was really haunting the narrative. some assorted thoughts:

first of all everything about his DA:TV appearances/DA:TV references continues to underscore that he is the greatest of all time

it also continues to underscore the pain of his death/story and of his friendship with Solas

may I please go and start a new life living in Solas' memories of Felassan on repeat. i simply do not care that my body would waste away in the waking world from lack of sustenance

in the endgame I was trying to concentrate and punch Elgar'nan in the face and save the world but I like couldn't see straight through the tears after having been given Felassan's Magical Boyfriend Super Rune (morrigan pls.. what a way to twist the KNIFE at an extremely critical moment for thedas hhhh..)

expansion pack where we relive Solas' memories of him and Felassan dating (he didn't deserve Felassan tho fr. but then, does anyone..?)

I know that Felassan would treat Lavellan sooooo right. so well. so respectfully. felassan would pull their chair out for them at restaurants and open car doors and whatever

Betrayal of Felassan refers to Solas' betrayal of Felassan, not Felassan's betrayal of Solas

also i love how they made him DEVASTATINGLY handsome?? in the game (they didnt need to go that hard), but also how, at the same time - even before the TME Deluxe edition illustrations, we all just inherently knew deep in our bones that he was, you could simply just tell from his energy and vibes and dialogue even in only the written word. cool rolls off this guy in waves, and always has done

did his model have smoky winged eye makeup? love that. love that for him

I liked his sense of style. the hair his model has happened to be one of the ones I was debating using for my Rook. it's one of my fav ones from the CC

I appreciated the attention they paid to detail when making his model. Mythal vallaslin, violet/purple eyes, an undercut - as he was previously described or shown in TME, dev social media comments and the TME deluxe illustrations

I liked the actor they chose for him, his voice was cool

I felt like his codexes and notes that he wrote captured his voice and his character. you can see the depth of his loyalty and devotion to his friend, his concerns, and he retains his 'voice' in terms of some snark, wit etc

it's fun thinking about whether Felassan originally manifested from the Fade (and if so, what was he a spirit of) or whether he was born the usual way of other elves. (it could be either one)

Betrayal of Felassan as a manifested embodied regret and its lines like "his back, turned".. very raw. that fight was hard enough mechanically for me as it was, then the lines were like being hamstrung LOL. how could they??? (pos/lh)

I always thought that, a long time ago, Solas was essentially the player character in a different game, the main character of another story. the leader of his own group of companions and friends on their own quest (to stop the Evanuris), and that Felassan was one of those companions. Alistair to his Hero of Ferelden if you will. in DA:TV we learn that not only was he one of his companions, he was basically the second-in-command of his rebellion, a General, his closest friend aside from Mythal and his right-hand man.

he was so cool back in his heyday

pain. paaaaain. but like in a good way (I unironically love to be hurt by stories pls continue 💀...)

there are a few further posts containing more bits of my reaction and thoughts scattered through my Felassan tag. ^^

There were also a few other asks about this in my inbox, but Tumblr appears to have eaten them?? :< so if you've asked me about Felassan and my reaction since launch but the message isn't in this post, thankyou sm and I'm very sorry. 😔 pls feel free to re-send it. :)

I do remember that one of the vanished messages asked me what the Slaughter of the Pillars boss regret refers to - the Pillars of the Earth are the Titans. ("Hail Mythal, adjudicator and savior! She has struck down the pillars of the earth and rendered their demesne unto the People! Praise her name forever!") That undead boss embodies another of Solas' greatest regrets, namely what he and Mythal did to the Titans during the war with them - sundering every Titan from their spirit, severing them from their dreams, which resulted in the Blight as the dreams were driven mad. it also in a sense broke the dwarves in two and caused the fall of the fate of the dwarven people. Beyond the mural-memory that pertains to this in DA:TV, there are depictions of this time in the ancient past in the DA:TV artbook: [one, two]. Annotations there describe Solas rendering the Titans tranquil and capturing their souls; dwarves as a consequence then losing their connection to magic and fleeing into the now-Tranquil earth; and the Evanuris then building Elvhenan using the power of the captured Titan souls.

[broodwoof]

i am so happy i approached davg the way i did

everyone's different, and i know that my method wouldn't work for everyone, so i'm not saying it was Right - but it was Right For Me, 100%

i knew early on that if i let myself, i would build up a very specific game in my head - and when it inevitably failed that (bc it would inevitably fail that, bc my view would be hyper-specific), then i would risk some serious disappointment, which would manifest as a far more critical view of the game we actually got

to support this, i blocked everything. i unfollowed ppl who didn't tag spoilers before release, i stopped watching any trailers or anything, i just cut it all out. and when a lot of the game was released early to certain ppl and spoilers were beginning to make the rounds - including some trolls actively and maliciously trying to spoil ppl - i didn't just increase my filtered tags, i unfollowed a lot of ppl (bc ppl make mistakes! i wouldn't hold it against them, but i saw a few things just bc of innocent typos in tags and i couldn't anticipate every possible typo, so) and also fully stopped using my dash for a while there at the end

i don't regret any of this. i waited almost 10 years for this game and i wasn't going to let it get fucked up at the end, and i have enough self-awareness to know how uncontextualized spoilers affect me (namely: not favorably)

so when i got it, i had no idea. genuinely. i knew solas was there. i knew the player character was rook. i knew the names emmrich, neve, and davrin. really nothing else. didn't know about assan. didn't know anything about any of the characters, really. knew a tiny bit about emmrich but only super vaguely. didn't know about the factions. didn't know about the evanuris showing up. nothing

and for me, that helped a lot. everything was thrilling. i wasn't waiting for any particular plot point to drop or any particular character to show up, i was 100% engaged with the narrative and the pacing as it was presented

obviously, ppl have complaints and critiques. that's fine. but i still suspect that in a few years, davg will be reflected upon more... positively might not be the right word, exactly. but i think it'll be less clouded by failed expectations. some ppl still won't like it, and that's fine and natural. but i'm also basing this off of the fandom reception to da2 and dai. i've been around, i've seen it happen multiple times, and it's happening again now

i know there are valid critiques. and ppl are allowed to be disappointed or upset or have whatever feelings they have about this game. but for myself, i just want to bask in it. being upset with the game we got will not make it into a different game. i've never enjoyed focusing on the critique side of things

i apply a much more critical view to my own works. things that i create, and have control over. again: personal. all of this is always personal. it's good to study things and be able to recognize issues... but it's also good, i think, to be able to enjoy what we have, especially when what we have is a game that is deliberately diverse, deliberately queer, and overall a very, very deliberate and nuanced response to current world events

and of course, some ppl can both critique and enjoy! i struggle with it. and ik myself well enough to just... curate my experience, really. again, i focus the critical lens on my own creations, smth i can impact, smth that isn't already done and released into the world. that's where i want to focus and where i choose to focus

[chromatic-lamina]

chapter 1079 early scan spoilers

Okay, if you're reading this, you've read the early scans, and it's ridiculous that I guess the raws were available from about Tuesday (a day after official release), and I could read the actual early scans from late last night (Wednesday).

It's just too early. I blocked a bunch of people. I'm sorry. Like, I don't filter out the tag 'spoiler' cos you'll never see anything on tumblr, and I read the scans usually on Thurs or Fri to stop myself from getting spoiled.

Anything that came across my dash that wasn't under a cut, or without a long lead-in got the writer blocked. I'm sorry. I'm sure that I'm blocked on a number of lists too.

Alright, Sabo is not confirmed dead as yet, so I'm not taking this as Kid's demise until we get a further "Marco talking to Raizou (was it?) about Izou and loss" scene as some kind of confirmation. We've got a break next week, and then knowing Oda, this won't be mentioned again for some time.

Maybe Shanks will be pirate king, or having the road poneglyph will help him help Luffy. He's powerful, I'm still not convinced he's evil, perhaps amoral (which sometimes sounds worse than immoral) / super pragmatic. (Edit in): In his defence, he saw the future (destruction of the lesser fleets) and did check if Kid was healed before he "fought" him. Also, reports of Kids' rampaging (but the reader should be shown more of that too so that it carries weight).

The actions of Dorry and Brogy as retaliation for Kid's intention (so wipe out Victoria Punk and send all the Kid Pirates into the sea, Kid unconscious and Killer) were brutal, but Luffy really respects or views Kid as on his side and a strong fighter. (End of edit).

Oda has to give Shanks a show of strength, and Hawkins, Apoo and Drake were dealt with in Wano. Bonney's in Egghead, and we don't have enough of a back story for Urouge.

Okay, but Kid wasn't a small time player in Wano, and not way back in Sabaody. If we give him parallels with uncelebrated or under-acknowledged deaths, he played a bigger role than Izou, I'd say, but I'm a bit biased, in that Izou had a fairly big supporter's role in the Oden mini-arc. All the same, with the Big Mom defeat, it's messy for Oda to wipe Kid out so quickly and effectively, BUT then we saw Shanks stop the war at Marineford and stop Aramaki, but Kaidou gave him those scratches, and Kid was able to at least scratch Kaidou.

I am sure that the dudebros are now saying that because Shanks so easily defeated Kid, that Big Mom is obviously a lesser yonkou and Kid and Law's actions against her meant nothing. But she is and was terrifying, and Kid and Law did defeat her, and she has caused death and destruction wherever she went, so in opposition to all the pathetic power scalers out there, none of the three are or were weak.

SO, if Oda is in a race to the finish and just wants to get opposition out of the way, he'll need to wipe out Law too, I think. BUT, Blackbeard not only has Law, he has Pudding and Koby (and he might not have Law). Garp's on his way there, Helmeppo and others tagging along. So, yes, he's got about 6 (hundred) background storylines going on, but I feel that it would be messy of him to finish off Kid here. Or lazy.

Crossing my fingers that it's a Sabo kinda situation (cos I'm sure he's still around, or let's choose Pell, instead), rather than Pedro, cos that actually makes sense more than wiping out Kid for the sake of wrapping things up.

[mell0bee]

btw!! re: spoiler tags. i’m gonna use [#tlovm] and [#tlovm spoilers] for now, unless we get anything reccomended by the cast or official accounts. (may change to [#lovm] depending on what acronym we decide on).

i’m not gonna be tagging it w anything critical role related, since

i hate having to tag things with like 45 different tags, and with my current system this would make things way worse lol

i think there will be a lot of people who will watch the animated show and nothing else from cr, so using separate tags lets them not have to see us talking about c3 or the Final Thursday block and just get content from tlovm

especially because the main campaign eps are airing around the same time as tlovm and a lot of people (namely me) will be catching up on both on the weekend and might be caught up on one and not the other (me again). which will be really annoying to deal with. i wanna be able to see stuff about tlovm without being spoiled for the c3 eps, and vice versa.

in areas where it’s unclear, like the post talks about tlovm and stuff that happens in c1, i’ll tag it with all my usual c1 tags. and if it’s about stuff that hasn’t happened yet in tlovm i’ll use [#cr spoilers]. i’m also just gonna strongly encourage anyone reading this to start tagging spoilers for c1 stuff that hasn’t happened/aired yet in tlovm as well. tlovm viewers shouldn’t have to get spoiled for this stuff yknow.

i kind of doubt the fandom at large is gonna run with this system and it’s just gonna suck to be someone who isn’t caught up with both or is just trying to watch tlovm and see like any content at all, especially because them airing at similar times means people will tag things with the trending tag, but at least on my blog if you’re a person who’s dodging spoilers for one reason or another you should be okay :D

[likesrandomstuff]

Avalance Fic Recommendations Part 4

The final part of this series. Thanks to everyone who reblogged and liked, and a huge shout-out to @heywhereisperry who encouraged and motivated me into doing this.

As I said in Part 1, feel free to add any more stories you think should be recognised to any of these posts, and my ask box is open if you would like more detail on anything.

Part 1: Bite Sized

Part 2: Snacks

Part 3: Meals

Banquets (Over 75,000 words)

When you do not have anything you need to do in the next couple of days

You're My Miracle by bihexualmess

My tags: Ava is FBI, Sara is a Private Investigator, Rip brings Sara on for a case

This just got updated the other week and ruined multiple nights of sleep for me. At almost 350k words, still going, I don’t know how to explain without spoiling stuff that happens a long way in. There are so many layers to both Ava and Sara here, and the trauma, and the issues, and the fact they will not talk to each other about anything. I jumped on this a bit late, as the title and description didn’t grab me, but oh boy, I was missing out. I did get to read a heap of it in one go, but that doesn’t help the slow burn. I would start this even though it’s still a WIP, just because it will take you a while, to read, and also the storylines need time to settle in, because they are heavy, but just amazing. It is now the longest Avalance fic with the latest update.

this is the way that we love (like it's forever) by CoffeeAndArrows, moonlitprincess

My tags: College Avalance dated and broke up, five years later they meet again, Ava’s dating someone else

This fic had me crying in the lunchroom during my second week of work because I couldn’t not read during my lunch break, and it was hitting me so hard. That was after starting it at 10pm, reading to 2am, sleeping until 6am, reading until 11am a couple of days before. Warning for major character deaths; the funeral for one is alluded to in the description. If anyone says something bad about Jordan, I will not be happy; one of the best original characters I have ever read in a fic. Sara’s not in a great place initially, but she gets there. And there’s some cute flashbacks to college Legends too.

you make me smile (please stay for a while now) by CoffeeAndArrows, moonlitprincess

My tags: High School Rivals AU, Ava’s class president, Sara is the superstar soccer captain, they have more in common than they thought

I just looked at the word count for this, and it must be the first time I have, because wow! It is a journey! There’s a couple of prequel, sequel and interjection stories in this universe too. Ava has to deal with her family not being super supportive when she comes out. Sara has to deal with Laurel struggling and their mum having a clear favourite (Laurel). Most of the Legends have really great arcs in here as well. Ava’s family is great. I wanna hang out with her little sister. Don’t be like 2018 me who gives up after the first chapter because they are mad about what Laurel is going through. She’s fine, and there’s a heap of great Sara and Laurel moments. I recently re-read the last 10 chapters, and I still couldn’t stop myself from reading like it was the first time.

i am who you used to love (and you are just a memory) by justpalsbeingals

My tags: The Vow AU, but Ava makes some better choices early on, they’re married, Ava gets into an accident and loses all memory of Sara

I hate the movie this fic is based on. The movie’s fine, and it was a delight seeing Tatiana Maslany in it while I was watching Orphan Black, but basically it is my worst-case scenario, losing my memory. The fact that this fic kept me hooked despite that, is a testament to the quality. The fic itself says “light angst”, I say it’s much, much heavier than that, but that’s just me. Warning, there are some intense twists in here, and everyone is a bit OOC to me, memory loss being considered, which might not be your thing.

and i will stumble and fall (i'm still learning to love) by lucylikestowrite

My tags: SwanQueen kid fic AU, yes, I know go with me on this, Ava adopted Sara’s unexpected baby, said kid finds Sara years later

In general, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like kid fics. Fics with future children coming back to meet their parents, or the couple going into the future? Some of my favourites ever. This has no time travel, but I trust Lucy. This story is under 75k, but the sequel is almost as long, so combined they’re over. The sequel is a WIP. I didn’t watch Once Upon a Time, but it’s the plot of the start of that, except the gay actually happens. There are a lot of issues our girls have to work through here, but the kid is so cute.

and we could try by plinys

My tags: it’s a story mostly told on twitter through fake screen shots of social media, Sara drunk messages Ava, Ava doesn’t block her

I’m sure this format of storytelling is not for everyone, and that’s okay! I was so confused by it at first. I would recommend starting with the shorter one, I can be your hero (in Part 2), just to see if you like it, before jumping into this. I read this when the epilogue, the fic, was released, and I was up until 5am because I couldn’t stop. It became part of my personality. Story wise, Sara and Ava are on different coasts, but both know Nate, Ray and Nora. Ray and Nora get engaged, and Avalance have to deal with planning that wedding, and whatever is going on with them.

take my hands now by plinys

My tags: Another Social Media twitter AU, Sara is The Canary, Ava is trying to arrest vigilantes, Nate accidently gives Ava Sara’s number

Another brilliant twitter story. Some of our gang is trying to arrest the other half. Sara knows who Ava is, Ava doesn’t know that Sara is the person she’s chasing. Everyone has public twitter accounts. Sara actually gets [spoiler villain] to stop an attack by sending them money for a drink.

your eyes, they shine so bright by plinys

My tags: Social Media AU, everyone works for not Buzzfeed, a colab series is pitched, Sara and Ava’s teams have to work together

Ava makes factual videos, Sara does not, they are forced to work together. Nate is everyone’s boss technically, but they do what they want. Nate and Ava are non-biological siblings, and Satan Camp is a running gag. Oh, fake dating is in there too!

right to the top, don't hold back by SJAandDWfan

My tags: American Ninja Warrior AU, Sara’s a veteran and the Legends train together, Ava’s a rookie, rivals to training partners to friends to …

I re-read this every year when the new Australian season comes out. It’s so burned into my brain that when I was watching the speed climbing at the Olympics I genuinely thought “I wonder how Amaya would go in this?”. Amaya’s pre-Ninja experience is rock climbing in this fic. I learnt so much about Ninja Warrior and how the show (at least in this universe) works, and it’s fascinating. Would recommend watching some clips if you’re unfamiliar with the concept. The story goes pretty in detail about the courses. For recommendations, either Jessie Gaff, who was a S1 Supergirl stuntwoman, or Australia’s own Olivia Vivian, who is just stages better than our next female.

biding our time (until tomorrow) by TheTruthAboutLove

My tags: Period setting AU, Ava’s too noble for her own good, Oliver’s dad is the villain

This was a really cool experiment. Basically, told in lots of mini chapters like a soap opera. I do not know much about this period of American history, but it did not matter. A lot of different Arrow-verse peeps show up along the way. I’m sure I complained out loud “you’re allowed to want things Ava!” at some point. There’s an attempt for fake dating, and it’s not the homophobia but the second daughter problem that gets them.

Click here to see all the parts

[wri0thesley]

many many anons under the cut bc i didn’t want anyone to feel like i was ignoring them and i wanted to respond to u all! warning for small text too, it was so long i wanted to make it look smaller fgbnjkgkjn

Anonymous asked: NAT... you can write WHATEVER you want! It's your blog, and I hope that rude anons can learn to respect that. I used to be on your blog just for jjba content too, so when you started getting into jjk I was indifferent but eventually you dragged me into jjk so hard!! I already like bnha, so seeing you write for it only made me happier! I hope that you continue to write whatever make YOU happy:) ❤and yes, longer fics certainly doesnt mean it's better, quality over quantity

ahh i’m happy that you are here for all three!! i always feel so accomplished when someone is like ‘your constant screaming made me think about jjk <3′. all three of the fandoms are fairly popular and i tag everything v carefully so i hope people who do use the filtering find that useful!!! 

Anonymous asked: Goodness gracious. People really be out there thinking they're entitled to dictating what kind of content you should be making

i think part of it might be that i do take requests so people feel like they have like . . . a certain right to certain kinds of my content? i take requests mostly bc they keep me motivated, i like making content for ppl who cant find what they want bc i’ve Been There, but maybe people think i am a pushover? idk i am just trying to have a good time!!!

Anonymous asked: Hi. I only started following you a few days ago but please ignore that rude anon. People are so fucking entitled towards writers it's insane. I recently had someone throw a fit for "spoiling" something in my fanfic, even though the fic was about a manga-exclusive character, so what did they expect?? Overall I've really enjoyed your writing so random assholes coming to guilt you is just a shitty thing that happens. Keep going with what you wanna do.

ah gosh anon i’m sorry about that :(. i’m always super careful tagging spoilers and stuff but like, if someone clicks on a fic about say, naoya or the steel ball run boys and is mad that i spoil something they havent found out yet . . . yeah thats on them fgbnkjgfkjn

Anonymous asked: That...that anon had the nerve to say "we". The fuck?! No no no anon, YOU'RE the only one talking and you're just talking for yourself, don't you dare try and lump us other anons/followers up with you to make yourself look like you're right. We love you nat and we appreciate you. It's your blog, you're allowed to write about whoever and whatever. This brain dead anon just needs to either go read someone else if they're that salty or write their own stuff if they're that impatient.

gosh i WISH some of my mad anons would just write their own stuff honestly. idk if this anon thought they were talking for everybody but i guess they expected anons to agree with them and not be mad at them. i appreciate u anon ;_;

Anonymous asked: Just want to say that ily and you’re one of the best jojo fanfic writers in my opinion 💗 I don’t think you’re half assing jojo fics and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you being multi fandom. A lot of jojo blogs have started posting about jjk so it’s not as if you’re the only one. I’m not sure why you get hate like this but I think it’s just because you’re one of the popular writers and that makes people bitter for whatever reason. Keep being you and posting about the things that make you happy 💕

honestly after so long writing for jojo - i’ve written well over 200 jojo reader insert fics - sometimes it feels like i’m retreading stuff, and that’s when i take a break bc i dont wanna half-ass stuff!!! i love all of my fellow jojo friends who are posting about jjk too, i appreciate them <3. 

Anonymous asked: Hey my dude, ur writing has really grown since the jojo days and its better and awesome seeing u become happier to branch off and write in different fandoms 🤌🤌 those stupid anons are just boring farts that couldnt be bothered making their own content 😤😤 is it possible to block them to ease ur mind?

hello anon!! i run a statcounter for IPs but it doesnt always work for ppl who access through the tumblr app, i don’t think; a lot of the anon hate i get i just use the ‘block’ option, but last night got to me because i’ve been getting that kind of writer a lot which is . . . a bad look for the jojo fandom who are, as a whole from the ones i’ve interacted with, lovely!!! <3

Anonymous asked: People often forget, the person behind art or writing, is just another regular fan. You deserve to be happy with what you create and we should be thankful you share your talent with us. You also have right to change your main interests, and it's very normal thing. Jojo is one of the MANY things that you write for and all you get from that is a like or share. Its not your job. It's your fun thing to do, in spare time. You haven't betrayed anybody. That person was just rude, selfish and bored.

i am just a person doing my best!!! anime fanfic is one of many interests i have and i already devote a lot of time to it honestly, i love when people tell me they’ve enjoyed something i made bc it makes it feel worthwhile but equally it gets to me a lot when people are rude because i am usually trying my hardest. 

Anonymous asked: Bro that jjba anon... the entitlement🤮 Fam, you write whatever you want to write😤 -Saturday

dfnjbkjnkgf i find most fic readers are NOT entitled at all and are just grateful but when they are . . . oof. 

Anonymous asked: It's funny how people throw "we got you popular" and they think you start apologize and cry. Your writing and passion made you gain few numbers on a follow counter, nothing more. I think I'm too old for stuff like this, we are nothing more, but +1 on a number scale. You ow us nothing, we ow you nothing. Popular... Funny word. You just write for fun of it, fake scenarios about someone's manga characters. It's not that deep. Have fun and don't listen to people like this. I knew it's not that easy, but they are really not that important as they think they are.

extremely fun fact for people who think ‘popularity’ is important to me: i would 100% rather have 10 people who regularly comment, reblog my fics with tags and interact with me than 100 people who read my fic and either leave a like or simply move on. i think this is true for the VAST MAJORITY of writers tbh. i’m glad that people think i am a ‘popular’ blog (i am not in the grand scheme of things, one of my ex-best friends used to run a kpop reader insert blog with like 30,000 followers) bc it gives me an ego boost lmao, but i really just want people to read and enjoy the stuff i write!!! 

Anonymous asked: I followed you a while ago for jojo and when my friends started getting into jjk i was like...eh sounds like work...but now that I see you writing for it I feel really motivated to get into it!!! I really enjoy your writing and I want to be able to read the new stuff too!

ah anon i really hope you like it!!! it’s only one season rn if u wanna watch the anime and there isn’t too much of the manga to catch up on either but it is a lot of fun and it’s nice to be in a fandom that’s like, excited about a new chapter and new plot developments every week!

Anonymous asked: Pls dont reply if u dont want to! <3 I'm not sure if this will be of any help to you or not but this is the kind of thing that often helps me and is the only way I know to try comfort others so I wanted to give it a go~

Now im not gonna say 'dont feel bad pls' bc I know that's not really useful but what I do think is useful is just discussing why that anon and many others feel the need to respond that way. As someone who follows a lot of writing blogs myself and have done for a long time, i've seen my handful of favourite writers come and go for different reasons, lose motivation for a while, gain motivation for a while, go from multi to single fandom, or single fandom to multi. Often times as a reader it can be upsetting when things change but it's also important as a reader to understand that some things aren't in anyone's control, I can't control what my favourite writers become a fan of or lose interest of, I can't control things in their personal lives that may motivate or demotivate them to write, but what I can do is support them as long as they're active, and if they move on to do things i'm no longer interested in or i'm the one that changed interests, rather than being upset that they're evolving to do other things or that they're not evolving with me, I think it's important that I still feel thankful for the works that I enjoyed while we were still on the same page and this is how I personally deal with those negative feelings. I think the anons that lash out at you probably just dont know what to do with themselves, maybe they got attached to your works while you were still only a jjba blog and now that you're evolving they're upset, while I understand how they feel, they're going the completely wrong way about it. I've learned to take these things and turn them into something positive for myself or at least something bittersweet that I can move on from but the anons that lash out at you for whatever reason probably haven't learned this yet. Maybe it's because i've moved on and changed interests a lot myself that I know how these things go for both writers and readers but those anons maybe haven't experienced this as much so they dont know what to do with themselves other than complain that you've changed and throw insults at you in an attempt to get you to revert back. None of this is because of the quality of your writing like they want you to believe, it's literally just because you've evolved and while some of your old followers might not like the new content for no reason other than it not being their cup of tea, it's definitely not regressed at all. You are pumping out a lot of content right now but every single thing i've read has just been better than the last. Things that really stand out to me is how well you get characterisation down to a T and all of your dialogue is just on point and from the pov of a reader I think those things seem the hardest to get right so I am such a huge fan of your stuff at the moment and I can tell you're really putting so much thought and care into each and every fic no matter how fast you're producing it, I think the fact that you're also proud of what you're writing at the moment really shines through as well and I just adore the passion that radiates from every completed request as well as in the responses for the subsequent thirsts resulting from these works that appear in your ask box later (I know i've sent quite a few by now~)

Just to be clear i'm not defending those anons in any way, while I can understand what they might be feeling/why they're reacting in the way they are I still believe it's just so immature to be hateful online point blank. Even during a time where I still got upset with writers if they started doing something else I still never targeted that negativity directly to the writer and sending rude or hateful comments whether on anon or not never something i'd stooped low enough to do even when I still had an immature way of thinking, however, I hope that it might make it a little easier to brush them off if we try and understand what they're really upset about, and that they're just putting the blame for their negative feelings onto the wrong thing rather than coming to terms with change themselves.

hello anon!! i appreciate the long message. i do feel bad for people who have no interest in what i’m currently producing and i get that they feel upset about it; i’ve watched a lot of fellow jojo writers move on completely or just stop posting, honestly. this kind of thing is why i was so intense about asking people if it would be better if i made a separate blog but the resounding answer seemed to be ‘i’m just vibing with whatever happens and i’ll block tags as needed’. 

i often return to works by my favourite reader-insert writers who no longer write for the fandoms i like (and i read stuff bc it sounds interesting or i trust the person who writes it), but change can be difficult and i guess at this point i’ve - whether u like me or not lmao - been a fixture in jojo reader-insert tumblr for a While so it’s probably kind of jarring. 

anyway i really appreciate you and the nice words! <3 

Anonymous asked: hi nat! I just wanted to pop in and say that regardless of what fandom you write for, the love and care you pour into your writing and into interacting with followers who care about your work as well is really obvious. you're doing this for FREE and people should appreciate what you've given us so far, since ultimately this blog should be for you, whatever that means to you at any point in time. it's ok to jump fandoms! the important thing is that you feel good about what you're producing and that it makes you happy. everyone else is just a bonus - but, seeing you on my dash certainly makes me happy : ) I hope you feel better soon!

thank you anon! i’m feeling much better and happier today. birthdays are very difficult for me (i did not think i’d be alive at eighteen, much less 25!) so this event is definitely kind of a way for me to concentrate on something else, and i’m a little bit extra sensitive atm. i appreciate you so much, thank you for the kind words!!! <3

Anonymous asked: Hello! I just wanted to say, write what YOU want and make YOUR writings as long as you'd like. 💖 To the anon who is like "We mAdE yOu FaMoUs dOnt HalF asS iT" stfu, let people do what they wanna do. If you think they half do it, write something better and longer you asshat.

this is an open invitiation to that anon to send me a link to their writing blog and i’ll hype them up i promise <3 

Anonymous asked: nat i'm so so sorry about that ask please know that your older followers don't share the same opinion :( sometimes people forget about the living, breathing person behind the screen smh. you are not a machine. you absolutely should not restrict yourself to posting about one fandom forever. yes, we're first pulled in by your amazing content, but we stay for your wonderful personality and work ethic. please just keep being you, taking up projects you feel comfy with! <333 bless u

ahh thank u anon! unfortunately i actually am a writing robot, i’m sorry u had to find out this way. my jojo chip has been removed, please send it back so i can continue to not half-ass my jojo work. fgnjkbgjkfn thank you so much angel!!! i appreciate you ;_;.

Anonymous asked: i don’t think it’s fair for other people to say shit about what you choose to write about because on tumblr and other writing platforms, writers are constantly developing how they write and the fandoms that they write for. it’s not fair for someone to criticize that “you don’t care about jjba blah blah blah” because you can enjoy new shows/manga. and like you said you’ve grown so much!! proud of you nat and im glad that ive been able to read your works (sincerely other nat)

i am STILL waiting for you to come and fight me other nat fgnjkbnf. it’s nice to be enjoying different things! i am constantly learning new things and reading new works and making new friends and improving and i think that’s important. i do care about jjba - a lot! but i can care about other things too! <3 

Anonymous asked: I may not be one of your oldest followers, but i've been here for almost 3 years. Yes, i started following u for ur jojo content, but let me tell u, ur newfound motivation and enthusiam for other fandoms was honestly contagiuos for me. And i say this as a person who finds very difficult to move from one interest to another. Jojo is great, but so are other fandoms. Please don't let some faceless scum rob u that motivation. This is ur blog and u r always free to write whatever u want.

honestly, i have been there! i am autistic and i have special interests and watching other people move on to stuff i’m not vibing with has made me sad in the past, but i want people to be happy more than anything and sometimes that means new things and change! <3 

Anonymous asked: Hi Nat! I saw that rude anon message & I just wanted to pop in & say that they're wrong. You're not betraying anyone & you should write whatever it is you want to write. I followed you for jojo & I'm not familiar with the other fandoms that you write for, but personally it makes me SO happy to see you enjoying new things! It's always good to find joy wherever you can, so keep writing what you're interested in. There a lot of ppl who want to see you happy and healthy <3

honestly the idea of it being a GRAND BETRAYAL is so funny, i am just writing anime fanfic here and thriving!!! tysm anon! <3

Anonymous asked: Those anons can piss off! They have no right to judge how long or how short your writing is. If they want longer content write it their damn selves. I think your writing has improved wonderfully and I originally followed for Jojo and I'm enjoying all the content period. I don't even watch jujutsu ( not my cup of tea personally) but I love seeing the creativity and the interactions. You write what makes you happy Nat and that's on that! You don't owe anybody anything! I know how hard writing is and when your consuming new content it's hard to make content for something else. That doesn't mean you don't like it any more your just doing something different for a while. Love you and your content and I'm enjoying the love your putting into your content whether long or short. ♥♥💕 Sending love your way!

honestly my idea of ‘short content’ is still over 1k words, i’m not good at reeling myself in! i guess it’s bc they see like, 1.5k jojo fic versus 5k jjk fic but it’s not that i didn’t enjoy the first fic, just that the point and the story came a lot quicker and so did the natural end! thank you anon, i appreciate you ;_; 

Anonymous asked: Hello! Just wanted to let your know that I think your writing is awesome, and that you should write for whoever and for whatever you want to! You dont have to stay loyal to one fandom or anything, and your followers shouldn't expect that from you! It's not like they are paying you to write, you are doing this for free, and because you enjoy it and it makes you happy! If they dont like your stuff, they dont have to follow you, they can go to other blogs that cater to their taste, and they definitely don't need to be sending you such hurtful comments, and they dont get to make you feel sad about your writing! Just because they followed you during your earlier stages of writing, doesn't mean you owe them some type of loyalty or compensation! You can write literally whatever you want as long as it makes you happy! That's what your hobby and your blog are for! I hope you know that alot of your followers love your work and think that you are an amazing writer and are down to support the work that makes you happiest! 💖💖

ahh thank you so much anon!!! i am always so bowled over by how many people are nice to me when something like this happens, i am sending you my love <3

Anonymous asked: don’t listen to them!! we love you as a writer no matter what you write, because you’re a good person and a talented writer!! you shouldn’t have to change what you write to please a bitter person, and if they only want jjba, they can go to another blog instead of bringing you down. you’re doing amazing and they should be thankful you grace us with your talents!!

to be totally honest, if i was half-assing or not vibing with content i was making i just. wouldn’t post it. like you’d be able to TELL when i was half-assing stuff just to get words out (source: i have re-read my own nanowrimo works). there are lots of great jjba blogs who could do with more followers n interaction!!! i hope they do find them and i hope they’re nice to them :(. 

Anonymous asked: Please don’t pay attention to that anon. People only have that confidence when they have anon turned on. Them looking through your blog despite feeling that way is peak fan behavior and speaks to how addicting your writing is. Naturally, you can’t please everyone and there will be people who are irrational and feel entitled to tell you what to do or what to write no matter what. Trust me when I say they’re a small minority and are more likely probably passing viewers rather than regulars. I check your blog about three or more times a day because I love reading not just your fics but also your takes, banter with other anons, or even random updates. Brainrot posts? LOVE TO SEE IT!!! Desk update? AMAZING!!! With that being said, don’t feel pressured to continue pushing out content for others. Write what makes you happy! You’ve been writing for JJBA for 4 years and it’s completely normal + healthy to get into new media. I’m not sure if it would mean much, but your love for JJK has gotten me excited to start it too!!

anon i really hope you enjoy it!!! sometimes these anons remember stuff i’ve posted and said better than i do tbh, i am living in their heads rent free i guess! 

Anonymous asked: I've been following you for a couple of years and honestly it would always be a joy to see when you posted. Your writing has improved and I'm very happy you're enjoying yourself ! I know it hurts hearing and seeing stuff like that but I'm happy you're here. I'm honestly blessed everytime you post. Your writing is phenomenal. I love reading it even if its characters that I dont care for. You capture their essences so well and weave an amazing tale within the prompts and whatnot. You're amazing nat!

wehh thank you so much!!! re: the improvement, i really don’t feel like it has and then i re-read something i wrote when i first started and i’m like oh my god maybe it has. did i really write about jotaro acting like that. 

Anonymous asked: Hi Nat. I recently became a follower of yours and I'm really saddened to see you get hate. You seem like a genuinely sweet person with amazing talent! I'm a writer myself and, unfortunately, get the same kind of comments. And when you get those comments, it doesn't leave you feeling motivated. People need to understand that people can and will, at times, grow out of fandoms. (1 Not just that but you're doing all of this for free. Again, I'm sorry you got such a comment. But please know that I'm proud of how far you've come. I'm proud that you're living a life that makes you happy. And no matter what fandom you may find yourself in next, I will always enjoy your writing. Take care of yourself. (2 end

HELLO NEW FOLLOWER I LOVE YOU (i get a lot more a day now than i used to and i feel guilty about not being able to look through so many blogs but i do try and follow back other writers for my fandoms!! ;_;). i’m sorry you get the same kind of comments! i’m always just happy to see people i like enjoying new things, even if i have no interest in it (hello to all of my mutuals who write for hunter x hunter and haikyuu, not interested but i’m sure you’re having a great time and i support you!!!). 

Anonymous asked: I'm sure you're getting a barrage of supportive messages now (at least I hope so) but I figured I'd add my voice, because I'm a longtime follower. Your writing is, and always has been, wonderful. I've been so happy to see you and Haz get to a place that works for you both. Idk if it's obvious for everyone, but you seem like you're emotionally in a pretty good place most of the time these days, and it makes me really happy to see that. I followed years ago for JJBA content, but I stayed because regardless of what content you put out, I find your wit delightful. And I'll stick around even if you move fandoms entirely, because whatever content or editorializing you produce is going to be worth reading, regardless of what it's for.

ahh, anon!! thank you for sticking around so long, sorry if you’re old enough to have been around the vore and jorts and spider rohan fiascos! <3 i am definitely a lot more stable than i have been and - barring the Pandemic Related Mental Health Issues - happier! i’m glad that it’s noticeable! <3

Anonymous asked: It actually makes me mad how entitled some people are. Nat, you're not a content creating machine and those who expect you to be are not worth wasting a thought on. Your love for something is not measured in word counts and for you to write every day without getting burned out in the slightest you really must have a burning passion and huge dedication to your craft. If others decide to send hate then allow me to send admiration because I can feel your love and hard work in each post you make!

i try and write every day bc it’s super good for my little ocd/autistic brain to have routines and distract itself, so i’m glad other people can enjoy them because that makes me motivated to carry on! like, i write for myself mostly bc the content i want i sometimes get find, but filling requests and writing for other people also leaves me with happy warm fuzzies too! i appreciate you!! <3 

Anonymous asked: If people only care about your writing for the jojo porn that’s on THEM, not you. Your writing was amazing when I followed about a year ago, and it’s only gotten better and will continue to get better! I think it really comes through when you enjoy what you’re writing and it adds a whole other layer of worth to it, because not only are you making free content but you LIKE that content and we can all gush about it together!!! More than just fans, I think you’ve created a community here and we don’t just stick around to read smut, I promise you that. -Reronon

i do miss having a discord community bc it was nice to talk to everyone in real time but it was hard work, i am glad that people feel like they can just come into my askbox and gush! i’m not very friendly in real life and people tend to think i am cold and stuck up so i work very hard to try and seem friendly and approachable online, which is much easier for me because i get to think and re-draft before i type! <3 

Anonymous asked: Hi Nat! I’m sure you’re getting a lot of messages like this right now but I just wanted to say for what it’s worth that, as a person who originally followed you for jjba content and hasn’t watched/read any of the other series you’re currently writing for, I’m honestly still along for the ride. This is your blog and you’re allowed to do what you want with it and put out what content you feel like writing. Sometimes??? People acquire new interests??????? Shocking! I know absolutely nothing about jjk or bnha but out of curiosity still read some of your posts about them and even though I might not Get It, I still enjoy them because I think you’re a very talented writer! Honestly, as long as you’re still writing, I’m still down to clown, and whenever you take breaks (which are important!) I’ll still be waiting for your return or supporting and respecting your decision to stay away longer. Don’t let the entitled assholes get you down. Utilize YOUR blog and YOUR space however YOU choose. Your talent and kindness speak for themselves. Love you!!! ❤️❤️❤️

anon i care about you and i am so appreciative of you and everyone for sending me such nice messages! i am running out of ways to say it but it’s true, it really does mean a lot to me ;_; <3

[icharchivist]

first: god, now I REALLY wanna read dgm.... how many chapters is it? if it’s like... 300 or under I think I could handle it. it’s just like the art looks so fun and ive always heard it was cool!!!

second: I’m reading more of winter!!!! so I have Thoughts. azuma ;;; and like. especially when u realize he’s the one with the single in the dorms like... oh my god when act 2 comes around and they get their 6th member thats gonna be so nice. also the way everyone is like. ignoring the part where misumi is like btw I stole some triangles from this shady guy outside our apartment like one fuck yeah misumi but also???? they’re being stalked????? everyone feels like they’re being watched???? also very into how homare just says “nothing” for the on love ch, those r always rly interesting I think! I also love how winter troupe has just been like. oh yeah haunted legends all r coming true. a3 is a supernatural story now and we will not explain any more <3 ahhhh anywyas im excited to see where it goes!! (also. I know I don’t keep up w/ a3 super well so this is probably old news but this event looks. so cool)

👀👀👀OYA OYA (and here i am dragging you into one more thing bc i can’t shut up DLKFJDF)

dgm is one of my fav story ever so i can only encourage this ahah, as long as you know some of the themes can be a bit heavy (grief, trauma, abuse are often discussed) but it’s so.. soooo good. 

Also it has 239 chapters!! chapter 239 just got released by the English translation team. Tho i guess it’s good to warn you that we get one chapter every three months nowadays so the release is super slow. Next chap should be released this month i think?? but yeah therefore there’s no rush nor any fear to have about the manga advancing too much during the time to catch up lmao

if you do intend to read it though i encourage you to block my dgm tags because i spoil like hell, the only spoilers i tag are the latest released chapters and there’s a lot of twists and turns with the story.

ANYWAY if you want to read it i found this website had the whole manga (except the latest chapter for now which can be read here) up and running. most scans website has been nuked recently so *pushes this link*. Some clumsy translations in the early chapters + the weird romanization to know about (like Lavi was spelled Rabi or Lenalee was spelled Rinari ect..) but anyway if you have any questions or anything you can come at me, i care about this manga a healthy normal amount-

so THAT’s for the dgm part, onto the second part +w+

WINTERR god i love this troupe so much. I have SO many feelings for the Azuma’s storyline, it’s just sO SAD and yeah god, the loneliness, especially with the fact he sleeps alone is just... so heartbreaking. tbh once i was introduced to the rookie who’ll share Azuma’s room it physically hurt to go back and reread those chapters knowing he could be with someone atm D: 

AND YEAH LMAO that part is so funny and bewildering to me. I GET that Misumi was like, stealing things, but guys. please. take into account you guys all feel watched and Misumi is telling you some weird dude is lurking around. Com’on dudes, make those three braincells of yours work together in a deduction triangle or something.

oh the Homare arc is one of my favorite (... well all of Winter is but, Homareeee) and this reaction during the On Love chapter is so, so interesting to start with. Can’t wait until you experience it all :3c

AND YEAH RIGHT this always cracked me up so much. Like okay look, sure we have yakuza stories in the game, that’s weird but it’s still a degree of realistic, but now, downright supernatural? okay? are we ever getting a follow up on that? ... hello? dlkfjdf this cracks me up so much. Also it remains funny they needed supernatural intervention to like, address their problems. When you’ve held your problems in for so long that only supernatural events can help you smh.

Always loving reading your thoughts about it :3c take your time as always, no need to rush and all, just as long as you’re having fun <3

And yeah the current event is so cool actually DLFKJDF i loved reading it and muah at the developments in it. Hope you’ll like it when you reach it too :3c

Take care eheheh <3 

[gaypanda]

Not Even Sunflowers Can Grow In Our Toxic Love Pt.1

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Tony Stark 

Word Count: 1.8k

Warnings: Non 

Summery: It’s October in 1995, Tony Stark is 24. All he need is coffee and his lab. Then he meets Steve Rogers an artist. They fall in love. They face the world together. Yet, sunflowers can’t grow in their love, but that’s okay morning glory can. That should be enough.

A/N: Hello, Humans. This is a fan-fiction that I’m working on. I hope you like it. This will also be posted on ao3 with the same title. I will let you guys know there will be somethings that I will tag as I go. I’m doing this not to deceive anyone, but the tags would be spoilers. Any ways I hope you enjoy. 

He stayed in the lab until three in the morning and had a seven A.M class to attend. Sadly he couldn’t just skip it to sleep, because the teacher for some god awful reason gave a grade for attendance. Which meant that he had to actually go to class. In the hopes that he might survive the day he rushed off to get coffee. With coffee in hand he could actually be a person. Only to get to class and have the espresso-filled cup spill on all the notes he had taken that night. With coffee gone and notes ruined Tony end up falling asleep in class. After that two hour monstrosity, he was able to go back and get more coffee before his physics lecturer where he needed to be able to correct the stupid TA that was teaching the class. 

Once Tony entered the coffee shop only to see that they got a new barista. He looked like a blond Superman. Tony stood in line trying to think of a good pick up line to use on the blond man. Slowly the line got shorter and Superman got closer.

“What can I get for you, Sir?” Blond superman asked

“How about you tell me how to time travel from World War Two and my dad’s lab” Tony asked. Only to mentally scolded himself. Why did he think that a pick up line about his dad's failed super soldier experiments during World War 2 would work or make sense? God he needed coffee.”I mean can I have an extra large cup filled with just espresso and a dash of milk.”    

“Are you okay, Sir?” Superman asked while he wrote down Tony’s order. He had a faint smile on his lips.

“No, I need caffeine or I will die!” Tony said pulling out a twenty and handing it over to blond superman,”keep the change by the way.” Tony said as he walked a way to wait for his “coffee”. 

“Espresso for ‘Or I will die’” one of the other barista’s yell a little while later. Tony rushed over to the barista and grabbed the cup and went straight to drinking it. 

When he looked down at the side of the cup he say some writing on the side along with a number. ‘Your pick up lines suck maybe you should try again -Steve’

Tony smiled at the number. He finished his coffee pulled out his phone and put Steve’s number in it.

To:Steve 

I think it worked if you gave me your number. My name is Tony by the way.

Tony smiled as he walked to class. Maybe today wasn’t turning out to bad. Now he just had to deal with mister “I know more Physics than you do so shut up”. The man sucked at physics. Tony was constantly correcting his work. At this point He was practically teaching the class. This is what he gets for trying to be normal. 

After that god awful class Tony was done for the day. This meant he could go home and crash. He lived a couple of blocks away from campus in one of the larger apartments. He lived alone more often than not. His best friend Rhodey would took the guest room when he is home from the air-force. 

Tony meet Rhodey in high school. Rhodey got in the private school by scholarships and pure dedication. He had taken every AP class he could and then he took the test. Somehow he always passed those tests with nothing lower than a 4. By the time they graduated high school Rhodey was halfway done with college. He ended up signing up for the air-force and enrolling in MIT.Tony was proud of his best friend. Every once in a while Rhodey would stay at Tony’s. 

The other person who would stay the night was Tony's other best friend Pepper. Pepper was an intern at Stark industries she was better than the people that Tony's dad had working there. Pepper took no shit. Tony fell in love right away, but Pepper said that she didn’t date spoiled rich kids. From then on they were friends. Pepper calling him out for his shit, and him repaying her with expensive shoes and dresses. By now Tony had given her his credit card when he messed up so she could buy her own apology clothes. When people asked if he was scared that she was just using he for his money Tony laughed and told them if she was then she would have dated and married him. No, Pepper was one of his closest friends, and one day she was going to run Stark Industries. 

Tony smiled as he thought of his friends. Thinking of Pepper, he should ask her if she wants to come over and do a movie night.Tony pulled out his phone to text her when he noticed he had a message. 

From: Steve

You got me. Although what was that pick up line? You need to tell me that story. How about you do that over some dinner. What do say about 6 at the pizza place north of the art building. 

Wow this guy was smooth was all Tony could think as he read the message.

To: Steve 

Yeah I can do that.

Tony looked at the time. It was 12:13 which meant he had just enough time to eat quick sandwich, tell Pepper, take a nap, Pepper barge in help him dress, and get there by 6. Oh how he wishes that could be the case.

Once home Tony did make a sandwich, but only to have Pepper walk in. 

"You have a date, and I'm only being told now." Peppers eyebrow raised as she looked at him and his sandwich. 

"Umm, yea, you were informed the same time I was. Oh yeah his name is Steve. I meet him at one of the three coffee shops near campus. I was too tired to remember which one.” Tony said as he eats his sandwich. Pepper looked at him with disgust as he ate with food in his mouth.  

“Okay,” she sighed,” what time is this date?”

“6 o’clock”

“Do you need help getting read. What don’t answer that of course you do.” Pepper smiled at him. Tony know that she was proud of him for going out on a date with a guy. Tony for the longest time refused to except that he was bisexual. Howard, Tony's dad, was very homophobic. Tony who always wanted his father approve tried to push down the part of him that liked boys. Slowly With the help of Rhodey and Pepper Tony learned that it was okay to like both girls and boys. He still hasn’t told Howard and never will, and Tony’s okay with that.

Tony smiled at her before telling Pepper that he need to nap for at least 3 hours before he could do anything. Pepper just laughed as Tony walked to his room and crashed.

“Tony it’s 4 o’clock you need to get up.” a female voice told. Tony sighed, turned away from the voice, and tried to go back to sleep.

“Tony if you want to make it to your date with Blond superman. Than you need to get up and get ready.” The female voice, now Tony could say was Pepper, told him. With another sigh he open his eyes. Pepper was standing over him. Her red tied back in a bun, along with the suit she was wearing made her look like a mom. 

“ Pepper you look like one of those work moms that is waking up her kid for school, before heading off to work.” Tony laughed.

“God knows I’m not paid enough to wake you up for school.” She rolls her eyes and walks over to Tony’s closet to pick out his date clothes.

“You’re not paid to be my friend Pep. You just love me too much to leave.” Tony said as got up to shower. Stepping in to the bathroom Tony stripped. He turned on the shower and stepped in. The warm water helped wake him up the rest of the way. Tony stands under the hot water letting it wash away the stress of the day. After an unknown time Tony thought it best to rushing through the rest of the shower. When he got out Pepper had already picked out what he was going to wear. She had pulled Tony’s maroon dress shirt and a pair of black jeans.

“I own a pair of skinny jeans?” Tony asked side eyeing to jeans

“They aren’t skinny jeans they’re just jeans. Of course you own jeans Tony want do you wear in the lab?” Pepper respond with a raised eyebrow.

“Jeans but those jeans have holes and grease. Those jeans love me Pep. How did those even get in to my closet?” Tony said as he pulled on the shirt and a pair of briefs. 

“I got you them for your birthday last year, but never showed you to make sure didn’t get rid of them. Now put them on they will make your ass look phenomenal.” Pepper said throwing them at Tony only to have them land on his arm and fall to the ground. Reluctantly Tony put them on. Pep was right they did make his ass look great.

Once dressed Tony made his way to the bathroom to put on some makeup. After being in the public eye his whole life Tony was always having makeup put on him. In his teen years one of her girlfriends thought that it would be fun to do his makeup in the way that girls do it. After that Tony found he liked how he looked fully done up. From then on he would do his makeup for dates and parties. Tony decided to a simple look with only eyeliner, mascara, and a red lipstick. 

When he walked out he saw Pepper sitting on his bed. She smiled at him before telling him, “Now Tony you need to play nice with Steve. Remember that if wants to play you need to be safe. So don’t be silly Tony and wrap your willy.” 

“But mom all the other kids don’t wrap their willies.” Tony laughed.

“ Yes and look at where that got them. Pregnant and getting chlamydia, so lets- lets” Pepper couldn’t finish she was laughing to much. Tony at his friend at they laughed at her stupid joke.

“Okay Pep I need to leave if I’m going to make it on time. Also Pep I’m not the kinda guy that goes wam bam thank you mama.” He said as grabbed his wallet and keys. Before closing the door he hear Pepper shout

“Tony that’s all you did last year.” As she continued to laugh.

Tony walked to the pizza place that he had been told to meet Steve at. He stood at the door looking in and he saw his blond superman. Tony’s heart fluttered and butterflies swarmed in his stomach. Tony knew that this was the start of something amazing. With a deep breath Tony opened the door and walked.

[famder-news]

Video Review Wednesday: Dealing with INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS

Hello, everyone!!! Before we begin, I wanted to let y’all know that due to the new-ness of this video, ALL of our normal top-of-the-post chatter, including the characters in the video and the length of the video, will be under the cut in order to avoid spoilers. This post will remain not properly tagged as well; at least, it sill remain so until 2 weeks after the video’s been up to refrain from spoilers. Mobile users, just,... scroll REALLY FAST!!!

Watch the NEWEST Sanders Sides video HERE!!! (But make sure to read the warning card at the start of the video first!!! Keep yourselves safe!!!)

SO!!! To be fair, I was going to write a video review for Selfishness Vs Selflessness. BUT!!! This video is New and Exciting and we’re going to review it!!! Unlike other Sanders Sides Reviews, I’ll be writing about this one as I watch it!! I’ll be numbering my thoughts as I go under Stray Thoughts plus my random thoughts that might be wrong about the video’s content, along with the time in the video (

put in parenthesis and then italicized

) that I thought of it so that you guys can keep up. I’m really excited to watch this, so let’s go!!!

Video Length: 41:16

Characters In Order Of Appearance: Thomas, Virgil, Patton, Roman, Logan, [DATA EXPUNGED]

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Our video starts with!!!! A CONTENT WARNING!!! The first content warning placed in-video for Thomas’s content, save for possibly Accepting Anxiety because I’m not about to go and check. Then (ignoring the ad), the video opens with a LATE and TOTALLY PANICKING Thomas getting ready to film. I noticed that he looked REALLY tired, but at this point I’m pretty sure it’s Thomas and not Virgil.

Then, the intro card!!!

Thomas is... in a bath robe, obviously exhausted, and trying to film his video. He’s rambling, he’s exhausted, he looks like the emotional equivalent of getting hit by a bus, AAAND Virgil and Patton show up when Thomas is like “yeah everything has gone to SHIT.” Patton looks.... Surprisingly anxious, even for him. Virgil agrees to try and change the subject, but Virgil looks FAR more tired than normal. His eyeshadow is darker than it’s been in a long, long time.

And then Roman appears RIGHT as they’re trying to change the subject. Patton and Virgil won’t tell Roman what’s going on; weird, to be honest. BUT since they’re lying, I’m pretty sure Deceit will appear (2:10). Roman insists that he wants to know what’s going on. Thomas AND Virgil both said Ro wouldn’t want to know, and Patton’s just trying to help kep Ro distracted, and failing miserably.

AND HEEEERES LOGAN!!! Who gets IMMEDIATELY roasted because he’s pretty sure the whole Thomas Feeling Bad thing is because of Lee and Mary Lee VS The Callback. He calls Patton and Virgil’s reactions an over-reaction only to get roasted because of Logan’s self-defined state of having no feelings. Cue the falsehood screech when he gets called out, and then Roman’s STILL trying to figure out what’s going on.

AND LOGAN DAMN NEAR REVEALED IT!!! and EVERYONE starts yelling at him to SHUT HIS MOUTH!!! To be honest, I’ve never seen this happen in ANY Sanders Side video--Like, sure, we’ve had 1 side yell at another, but THIS? Dang...

HE WAS GONNA SAY INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS!!! HOT DAMN LOGAN, YOU GO!!! And NOW I know why there was so much yelling!!! Thomas wants to Not Think About It!!!

And now they’re talking about a movie (that I, Mod Wheat, have never seen), and Thomas... Spaces out. And has an Intrusive Thought. AND holy shit THERE ARE hands BEHIND rOMAN’S TV!!!!!!!

Ladies and Gents, introducing our Newest Side: Bastard Man!!! He’s got the world’s most COMICAL mustache and, honestly, his appearance is Unnerving. But, that’s probably the point!!! I had to pause the video because of my yelling about the new side, so... Back to the vid!!!

And OH WOW, Patton and Virgil are SCARED SHITLESS of him!!! And now Bastard has a staff!!! WHAT IS GOING ON!!! IT WAS A MACE NOT A STAFF HE HIT ROMAN!!! BASTARD MAN IS A DOUCHE!!!!

And NOW we can call Bastard Man Duke!!! I... Don’t know how I feel about how Roman was handled.

AND: MUSICAL NUMBER!!! Duke jumps STRAIGHT into an adam and eve comparison, and we have Virgil and Patton looking uncomfortable and nauseous. AND THEN HE STARTS SINGING ABOUT GETTING THE SCARY PIECES OF CREATIVITY!!! Which, base don the fact that Thomas canonically and IRL doesn’t like Scary Content, is... Weird. And the other sides... Can’t seem to get this New Boi to STFU. WILD.

DECEIT KIND OF APPEARS!!! MY SNAKE SON!!! STOPPED HOLDING DUKE BACK!!! Honestly, it looks like Duke took Dee venting about the whole Lee and Mary Lee situation WAY OUT OF HAND, but still!!!

and NOW we get into more interesting material!!! Duke starts running through... What I would call intrusive thoughts. Licking the blowhole of a dolphin? Wild. Best friend shut inside a coffin? ALSO Wild, but in a less good way.

And Duke just straight-up saying “YEAH you’re a BAD PERSON because you THINK these things????” Like... Holy SHIT, dude. If I had to guess, Duke is Intrusive Thoughts. We’ll see if I’m right.

Music ends, and Duke claims he’s Thomas’s Creativity. But, only a piece of it. The piece that goes to the gore and the scary and the “juicy stuff”, as Duke puts it.

And then they talk about Jeffery Dahmer... Thomas tries to get the Duke to shut up, which only succeeds in getting the Duke to... NOT shut up.

And then they get into WHAT the Duke is. He’s half of Thomas’s creativity--the half that he’s squirreled away, banished as bad imagination. This, in turn, led to the Duke being experienced as Intrusive Thoughts by Thomas. Which, at about 15 minutes into the video, shouldn’t be where they leave the defining off.

And then... Virgil says that Thomas is, inherently, NOT the good person he wants to be. Because of the intrusive thoughts caused by the Duke. Now, I don’t know much about how intrusive thoughts perpetuate, but I DO know that having them doesn’t inherently make you a bad person; it’s when you ACT on them (and by them I mean the WORST ones) that you are.

After that, Virgil tries to claim that the Duke is, well, kind of useless because some thoughts have no meaning. Which is great!!! Except that he immediately crumbles afterwards, stating that clearly they MUST have a purpose otherwise why would they have been thought? this goes on to claiming that the thoughts aren’t Thomas’s, and that therefore means Thomas is innocent. Which... doesn’t end well, since only Thomas can think Thomas’s thoughts.

I’m going to... SKIP a bunch of content here, since I’m 20 minutes in and I want to finish the post before I hit a word limit or my power goes out aka I got distracted watching the video akdfhklshd, so we’re jumping to... LOGAN!!!

Logan starts debunking the Duke, running through why the Duke exists at all as well as the fact that the Duke having as much power as he does is because of Patton and Virgil. Virgil, because the thoughts make him anxious and make the anxiety jump WAY through the roof, and Patton because Patton doesn’t want to just... leave the thoughts be and let them happen.

And with this reveal, and the use of Logic to dismantle the Duke, we are left with several things to think of; the fact that intrusive thoughts can be combated with Logic, the fact that if you just relax and let them go they can’t hurt you (very much), and the Duke’s name: Remus.

After that, Remus nyooms off to... wherever Remus goes, and Roman’s back to consciousness!!! God bless you Roman, we missed you!!! And then... Roman apologizes to Logan for calling him a name!!! Score!!! And then Thomas is feeling alright, and HE THANKS LOGAN AND CALLS LOGAN COOL!!!! AND MY GOD!!! MY SMART SON!!! LOOKS SO BAMBOOZLED BUT LIKE CONTENT!!!! HELL YEAH!!!

And Remus pops back up one more time, Roman reveals that he doesn’t LIKE Remus because Remus is all the BAD things bout creativity, and then it’s Thomas and Virgil. And BOY OH BOY does Virgil have ONE HELL OF A REVEAL!!! For the sake of those whose mobile doesn’t scroll fast enough, I won’t spoil it (even though I’ve spoiled pretty much most of the episode), since SOME things must be discovered for their own merit!!!

And then... it’s the end of the video!!! It’s confirmed that the Thomas that does the Ads in the beginning of the longer videos is the Sanders-verse canon Thomas!!! Really interesting take, honestly!!!

End Card:

Remus is the Trash Man. He eats the deodorant while watching Thomas, it’s fucking WILD!!! And then at the LAST SECOND, Remus pops up like “There’s a snake in my butt!!!” like HELL YEAH REMUS YOU GO REMUS!!!

Stray Thoughts:

(1) The music cover for the content warning is a Bop tbfh (like 4 seconds in)

(2) I know the robe is probably a bad thing but I am LIVING for the tired robe life. Reminds me of college student horse shit surrounding engineering finals (1:42)

(3) “It’s Virgil, everybody give it up for the purp man...” has me CACKLING (3:55)

(4) I do not LIKE the bastard man... But god DAMN does he look good in Green (6:22)

(5) When Duke said Thomas Lacked Imagination after knocking Roman out and then yeeted STRAIGHT into an Adam and Eve thing... Makes me wonder if he can control the Imagination too :/ (6:54)

(6) Ok as much as I don’t like the Duke he is just... a litel creatchure... he canot change this... (17:35)

(7) The duke is... Growing on me. Still doesn’t take Dee’s spot as my favorite, but he’s a Chaotic Neutral at its finest. (25-ish mins in)

Quotes:

"It’s Virgil.... Everybody give it up for the purp man...” -Thomas, un-enthused

"Roman is sort of like Netflix kids and family. He’s the option that you select if you want to--” “Block out all the juicy stuff!!!” -Logan & Duke

“Either way, you’re not my creativity.” “Yeah! That’s the brave, handsome, unbeatable ROMAN!” *Roman, still unconscious and mumbling things* -Thomas, Patton, and Roman

“There’s a snake in my butt!!!” -Remus

This was a super good episode!!! I really like Remus, even though he could, admittedly, be taken to be More Evil than Deceit currently is. I need to watch and re-watch the video to have more theories about it, but I am LOVING our newest side and I cannot WAIT for an episode with both Remus AND Dee in it. It’d be a pretty interesting episode!!!

- Mod Wheat

[runaway-train-works]

11/11/11 Tag 📝 again...

I was tagged by @ham-palpert and @halosboat to do this (thank you darlings!) and they had some great questions so I picked a few from each list to create a list of eleven. And yes, this is my third one but they are fun💕

I realise you are probably all sick of this tag by now, so feel free to ignore this but I’m going to tag eleven different people to answer my questions this time around because I’m nosy and I do genuinely love seeing everyone’s answers to things like this. 

@beau-soleil-louis, @pocketsunshineharry, @kingsofeverything, @crinkle-eyed-boo, @helloamhere, @yourpricelessadvice, @bottomlinsons, @forreveries, @flicker-album, @lightwoodsmagic and @larrymaybe22 😘

My answers and my questions are under the cut.

✍🏻 What trope is your favourite to write?

Hate to say it but enemies to lovers. A healthy dose of sexual tension and angst before the love and fluff, always a winner.

✍🏻 What are your methods for getting rid of a writer’s block?

Writing drabbles. Working on something small and fun that doesn’t really mean anything or require a lot of thinking and plot helps me clear the cobwebs.

✍🏻 Do you consider tags necessary for fics or are they just spoiling the content?

Urgh, I have a serious love/hate relationship with tags. I completely and utterly understand why triggering tags need to used, people need to be safe, but I hate how I feel obliged to tag everything about my fic so people can decide if they are going to read a 40k fic based on a few, possibly out of context, tags. And yes, they are spoilers, sorry that’s a fact. Like my ridiculous fic has a big twist in it and I know I’m going to have to tag what it is because I will get so much shit if don’t and that really annoys me. Also, I think tags are good to be able to find fics again but some tags are completely unnecessary and no good to anyone. You don’t get tags on normal books or movies or tv shows. You get a summary or a trailer and you have to decide for yourself if it’s what you are interested in. People need to be more adventurous and less reliant on tags in my humble opinion.

✍🏻 Was there a fic that made you cry?

Not that I recall, but I don’t read much sad stuff and with happy stuff, I’m more fist bumping the air to myself in bed like the single loser I am than crying with happiness.

✍🏻 Are you participating in any exchanges/fests?

Yes! I’m doing an anon fic for the ridiculous fic exchange (I’m also a mod) which may include a controversial for the fandom trope (👀👀👀), then I’ve got a fluffy mpreg one planned, then my 28 proposals fest fic and then I have an idea for a fic for the royal fic fest which I am super excited about! Basically got the next nine months of fics planned out.

✍🏻 Have you ever been burned by a WIP that never updated?  If so, describe that traumatic experience.

Yes!!! OK so there was a Narry fic ages ago where Harry was a secret admirer of Niall’s but like kinda lowkey stalking him from afar and it was a bit dark to be honest but I got hooked and the writer kept leaving little clues as to who the person might be in Niall’s life and then they stopped updating and then deleted it and I NEVER FOUND OUT WHO HARRY WAS!!!! It was very upsetting. 

✍🏻 Speaking of WIPs, do you like writing (or reading) them?  Why or why not?

Most of the time I avoid them, unless it’s a writer I know is pretty safe to depend on and regularly updates. I worry I’ll get burned AND I also have a shit memory so if they don’t update pretty regularly I forget what’s happened. I’ll be releasing my ABO fic as a WIP but I’m writing the entire thing first so I know it’s good to go.

✍🏻 Do you enjoy writing smut scenes?  Does it make you feel super awkward?  Do you need to have a cigarette afterwards?

Hmmmm. This is hard one (no pun intended). I don’t think I’m very good at writing smut for a start. I read other smutty fics and I’m like ‘jesus, i need a cold shower that was so good’ and I don’t have the talent to make mine like that yet. I do, however, like writing smut in the sense that I love writing the chemistry between the characters and having them be intimate and tender with each other or just go to town and be wild with it, depending on their dynamic and the plot. I hate it because it takes me so long to write a scene because you have to be like ‘shit where was his hand? Are they still in their underwear? Would that position be possible on a sofa? etc etc etc and it can be tedious. I also always want to try and be at least somewhat original somewhere with a smut scene with the way I write it, but there really are only so many ways you can write ‘they fucked’.

✍🏻 Do you click through the recently updated list on AO3 or read exclusively fic recs? Or a bit of both?

I’ve only been on tumblr since last summer, so before that, I literally just had to trawl through Ao3. If I found a fic I liked, I’d then go through the writers back catalogue, then start again with the most recently updated. Now, I go pretty much off fic recs on tumblr. I bookmark a fic I want to read when I see an interesting mood board or people are raving about a fic. my bookmarks are ridiculous at the moment because I’ve not been reading nearly as often since I changed my job and no longer travel for an hour there and back every day.

✍🏻 Are you someone who comments on the fics you read (and liked)?

I’m so bad at this. I don’t know what to say other than ‘i loved this it was cute/hot’. I know I should comment more because I know how lovely it is to receive them, but I guess I’m just too self-conscious about it or something stupid.

✍🏻 Of all the fics you’ve written, which one came to you the easiest?

My camboy one No One But You Got Me Feeling This Way. The whole thing popped into my head fully formed and I literally wrote it in a day.

✨Here are my 11 questions:

What fic/trope do you really want to write but haven’t yet?

What was the first ever fic you wrote and what made you decide to take the plunge and write it?

Is there a writer that you love that you think needs more attention and kudos in the fandom?

Have you got any long abandoned WIPs lurking?

Do your close family/friends outside the fandom read your fics?

Do you ever re-read your own fics after posting them?

If you had to write a sequel to one of your fics tomorrow, which one would it be and why?

What kinds of fics/tropes do you think we need more of in the fandom?

How often do you spend writing in an average week and is there a certain time of day/day of the week you do it?

What are your tips for getting out of a writing funk?

What can people expect from your next fic?

[piximiplays]

Take Us Back “Review” ig

Wow that episode was just... wow 😭 That was actually a really good ending (at least the one I got, I'm not sure about any other endings there might be) to an amazing series 😭😭

Also, if you haven’t blocked the twdg spoilers tag, I’ll put a break here but if you haven’t played the episode and/or don’t want major spoilers for Take Us Back, don’t read the rest of this long ass post. You have been warned. (That sounded super serious sksksksks 😂)

Ok so I’m just gonna start off with the beginning when AJ voiced the “last time on The Walking Dead” like damn that entire sequence put my anxiety (which was already super high because I was literally freaking out about possibly getting Clem or anyone else killed) through the roof. He was listing all the things I’ve taught him in the past and that shit honestly gave me ten different types of anxiety.

So, I got James killed in the last episode so I have no idea what he says in this episode or anything like that, but I’ve heard that it’s not great sksksksk

Anyway, the fact that we literally saw James as a walker broke me so much I was literally crying at that point.

And then when AJ said he wanted to be a firefighter damn that shit was lowkey kinda cute. At that point I was a little more relaxed because we were somewhat safe in the cave.

But then shit went so south when we left the cave and after we met up with Violet.

Of course I had to mention the tree house and omg I almost cried again just thinking back to season 1 when we met Clementine in her tree house 😭 (Even though I’m pretty sure she said she hated her tree house in season 2 abgsfhj)

And of course I had to rename Ericsons to Castle Violet who do you think I am

But the bridge OOF

Fuckign Minerva akajsfkjh I’m wondering if there was a way where she could have lived I highly doubt it but damn I wasn’t expecting her just die like that wow I was lowkey kinda hoping maybe she would get some kind of redemption but wow that whole dragged out death was so gruesome but not necessarily in a bad way, at least not for this series sksksksks

And damn Minnie just had to fucking slice Clem’s leg that shit looked like it hurt askdjashdg

AND THEN TENN FUCKIGN DIED WHAT THE FUCK

I think if I hadn’t told AJ to make the tough calls then he wouldn’t have shot Tenn, and Violet probably would have died instead (or Louis if you saved him at the end of episode 2) Fucking hell

And when we split up and Vi went back to the school goddamnit that scared me because I had a feeling something was gonna go wrong  AND I WAS FUCKING RIGHT WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK

At this point I was fucking crying my goddamn eyes out because CLEM GOT FUCKING BIT WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT JFHJKSGHJGF

I was such a mess at this point there was honestly no saving me

The entire time I was shouting at Clem to just chop her leg off at that point because there was no way that Clem was gonna die in such a stupid way like damn. wait fuck that's how Lee died AKSFJKG IM SORRY LEE I DIDNT MEAN TO DISRESPECT YOU LIKE THAT FUCK

Anyway

And then when I got that fucking achievement after that at that point like, first of all fuck you game, second of all fuck you. But seriously, I was genuinely wondering if there was any way to avoid her getting bitten but idk at this point it’s almost 1am I have school in the morning and I am way too tired to replay the entire episode even though it was a lot shorter than I thought it was gonna be tbh probably because I didn’t look around for collectibles as much and because I probably didn’t pause the episode as much as I usually do while making hard decisions sksksks

And then when we made it to the barn and we fucking started playing as AJ I was freaking out at this point

But when Clem was literally dying I was sobbing the entire time and just fuck, the parallels between that and season 1 when Lee died goddamn that shit hurted

I literally had to pause the game at this point because AJ was crying right in my ears and I couldn’t focus because I was also crying and only one of us can cry at a time buddy

Originally in episode 3 I told AJ to leave Clem if she ever got bit but fuck I didn’t think it was actually gonna happen so I changed my mind and told AJ to kill her because god damn I’m not gonna let her turn into a walker fuck that (even though that’s exactly what I did with Lee fuck) (Also I just looked and I’ve literally used the word fuck in this post like 23 times so far sksksksksks 😂)

And when it cut to black after that, literally all that was left was the sound of my sobs goddamn. And the achievement “final lesson” that shit just made me cry even harder

And the fucking ranch flashback right after goddamnit I was still mourning Clem you can’t just have me play as her again like that, shit. Also damn poor AJ 😭😭

And then when AJ was fishing and Rosie showed up damn she actually put a smile on my face somehow. I didn’t think that was possible at that point

Clem’s hatttt 😭 I was so scared I wouldn’t get it because I kept missing the quick time events but then Rosie got it thank god

And omg when we got back to the school and Take Us Back started playing I was even more of a mess I thought the episode was gonna end there but boy am I glad it didn’t

Also omg Ruby and Aasim holding hands damn that shit was adorable

When the music faded out and shit, I was like ok I think there’s still a little more to the episode but then FUCKING CLEM STARTED TALKING AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING IS AJ IMAGINING THIS BUT NO CLEM WAS ALIVE AND OH MY GOD I LITERALLY STARTED CRYING AGAIN BUT THIS TIME THEY WERE HAPPY TEARS AJHAFSGF

I was so fucking glad that Clementine was alive I didn’t even care about the fact that she was missing a leg I was just so glad to see her oh my god I really thought she was dead

And they all lived happily ever after

Jk except for Tenn GODDAMNIT HE DESERVED BETTER

But seriously, I was so glad Clem wasn’t dead and that mostly everyone was alive I seriously thought I was gonna get a shitty ending (But I’m also a little confused on how Clem survived the bite. I know she obviously cut her leg off and she did say something to AJ about she was glad he didn’t listen to her in the barn which I’m assuming was referring to when she told him to kill her, but if that was where Clem had her leg chopped off, I feel like the bite would already have spread to the rest of her system at that point? Idk I’m not gonna question it I’m just extremely glad she’s not dead)

And the very ending where we walked through the hallway and it showed all the names from the Still Not Bitten Team damn I loved that so much

And omg when we went into the room and were able to look at Disco Broccoli and his friends, I noticed that the option to look at Disco Broccoli kept popping up so I kept selecting it and ALKHASDFJKG I FELT LIKE I ENTERED ANOTHER DIMENSION WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT I don’t wanna spoil it but y’all need to see that if you haven’t already skskskkssk whether you replay the episode and see yourself or if someone makes a video of it on YouTube (which I feel like someone will eventually)

But omg the very ending with the “thank you for playing” that shit hurted 😭 I literally started crying again but not nearly as much as I thought I would tbh I thought I would be bawling my eyes out for hours but at this point I just feel kinda numb 😂 Like it hasn’t really set in that The Walking Dead just ended. Maybe because I can immortalize it forever in my Steam library and replay it however many times I want (and by reading fanfiction sksksksksks) 

(Also this post is gonna be put into my queue until more people play the episode so it probably won’t be posted until later tomorrow. So just know that this post was made at 1 in the morning a few hours after the release of episode 4 and I have to go to school tomorrow morning. Wish me luck)

Long story short, that entire episode was amazing (even if it did fuck with my head a little and was a little emotionally scarring sksksks) and I am so glad I was basically able to grow up with Clementine and this entire series

Also here are some screenshots because why not 😂

sksksksk AJ’s face 😭😂

This shit hurted 😭 (But it’s also a really pretty picture and I highkey want this framed on my wall or at least as my wallpaper on my phone or some shit)

What the fuck when did I ever say it was okay to try and kill someone if they try to steal from you alskhjags (Update: I just realized that this was referring to when I attacked Abel aksjdhkhg AJ THATS NOT WHAT I WANTED YOU TO TAKE AWAY FROM THAT)

This was actually really cool and even though it made me feel a little guilty because some of these choices I made weren’t the best, oh well

And here are my choices because why not 😂

And lastly, I want to thank Skybound from the bottom of my heart for saving this incredible game. If it wasn’t for this company these last two episodes wouldn’t have ever come out and Clementine and AJ’s story wouldn’t have gotten a proper ending. So thank you so much Telltale for starting and creating this amazing game and thank you to Skybound for giving it a proper sendoff.

[chocolatecarstairs]

qoaad theories

 i’ve had these theories for so long but i never got around to sharing them. talk about doing stuff at the last minute! (minor spoilers if you haven’t read the leaked first 3 chapters of queen/tmi spoilers) 

also a disclaimer: i know that some people have gotten their copies early and might be able to confirm/deny these rumors, but i am not one of those people. these are all theories i’ve had written down and dated in a notebook for varying amounts of time. if you are one of the people who got their copies early (you lucky, lucky bastards) please, please, please don’t confirm or deny any of these theories or correct them or spoil anything about the book for me and everyone else who is still waiting for their copy. (at the end of this post i’ll explain how i’ll tag spoilers for those of you who wish to not see them to be able to block and avoid)

the parabatai curse has something to do with heavenly fire: basically jules and emma have both described burning sensations and extreme heat so many times in the series. (ex; emma always notes that julians skin feels hot to the touch, in lm the day after emma heals jules from the posion arrow he applies runes to her and she notices that they burn and sting which is the opposite of what is supposed to happen when your parabatai gives you runes) and in the leaked first three chapters after julian and emma almost frick-frack julian rushes off and looks at his parabatai rune in the mirror and its like glowing and has flecks in it? which is exactly how jace’s eye are describe in cohf when he still doesn’t have the heavenly fire under control and he loses control kissing clary in the alley. we’ve actually never really seen what the heavenly fire does longterm. clary traps the heavenly fire in the morgernstern sword just days after jace got it so it could reason that the heavenly fire drives people insane after a while because they’re not equipped to handle something so divine and powerful. it also could do it quicker to people who don’t have extra angel blood. i also think that this could have something to do with the snippet cassie released about emma’s marks (we all assumed it meant her marks disappeared but i have a feeling that’s not the case.). the snippet was entirely out of context and i think cassie posted it that way on purpose. she wanted us to believe that emma’s marks had disappeared but maybe they were actually glowing like julian’s parabatai mark had been (which could be one of the physical changes cassie mentioned.) and this is how the curse and the heavenly fire will take affect.

diego is going to die: i hate to even type this one out bc over the course of the series i’ve actually grown to like diego as a character, but i think he’s going to die in qooad. jaime will (presumably) be living in la for twp as he is an important character in that series, and i don’t think he’d leave the mexico institute if he hadn’t experienced some great tragedy that made it too painful for him to stay. i know that’s a stretch, but it isn’t my only reason for thinking perfect diego is kicking the bucket. he is currently in a marriage contract w zara and i don’t see the dearborns letting him out of it that easily. even if he can’t give them the heirloom i could see zara and horace forcing him to marry into the family as punishment and as security that if the heirloom ever does turn up zara will be able to use it to invade faerie. not to mention, he is harboring kieran at the sholomance which at the very least would be frowned upon by the clave and considered abominable by the cohort, but it also quite probably illegal. with horace as the new inquisitor and the mortal sword out of commision the cohort will probably spin a tale of treason and faerie-sympathizing on the part of diego and his friends that helped him hide away kieran. this will probably make him a target for everyone in the cohort. not to mention i feel like his storyline will wrap up at some point in qoaad and i could even see him dying in some way to save cristina and repay this debt he feels he owes her for breaking her heart (not to mention he is obviously still in love with her.).

we’re not going to see too much of ty actually mourning, but what we do see is gonna be heart-wrenching: we all know ty is going to try to use necromancy to bring livvy back from the dead (which was one of my earlier theories about qooad) and that the only reason ty isn’t a mess over her death is because he thinks she’ll be back with him soon enough. obviously, almost none of us believe this is going to work and we’re fully prepared for livvy to stay dead. i don’t think ty is going to realize that there is no way to bring her back until way later if not the very end of the book and watching him come to that realization is going to be an incredibly emotional experience for not just us as readers, but for kit and dru, and especially for ty himself. livvy and ty had a bond that i think was even closer than the parabatai bond and so watching him go through the stages of grief and finally accept the fact that his twin and partner and best friend (who as it had been mentioned before he has literally never gone without her a day in his life and has never been in a world she wasn’t in) is dead is going to be one of the most tragic losses/parts of not just the dark artifices but the entire shadowhunter chronicles.

zara dies, horace lives: kind of a simple theory but i’m 50/50 about zara making it out of this series alive. i have nothing to base this on but a gut feeling. i just really feel like one of the dearborns is going to die and think it would be a better death if it was zara. it’s kind of dark and twisted but zara dying would be an amazing cosmic punishment for horace. he would be going on in a world where the only person he had in life (it’s been mentioned his wife is dead and so far they haven’t mentioned any other family) is gone. 

the cohort isn’t going anywhere just yet: in fact, i think whatever happens in qoaad will just give them more power. livia’s watch will (hopefully) give them a run for their money, but at the end of the day i don’t see them being disbanded or falling apart. cassie has even said that at the end of the book things will be “not great for a lot of people”. i think she meant downworlders and non-racist nephilim. people like alec, jocelyn, and aline (and presumably cristina and diana) who have fallen in love with and been involved in serious relationships with downworlders or part downworlders. people like helen, mark, and kit who have downworlder/faerie blood. and finally for allies to the nephilim like maia, lily, magnus, luke, kieran, gwyn and so on who will likely bear the brunt of whatever the cohort has planned.

ragnor fell is shade: not a very original or well thought out theory. just the only person i can think of that we’ve seen before who is green and could possibly have a relationship with church. (he was very good friends with magnus in basically every series of tsc. church was taken care of by magnus for some time after jem became a silent brother which could explain how he and ragnor would know each other.)

kieran is heading back to faerie: i wanna see the hot faerie threesome last just as much if not more than everyone else out there but i have a feeling it’ll be a one and done type of thing. i see kieran either heading back to the unseelie court as king or a prince (hopefully the unseelie king dies) or being reclaimed into the wild hunt. if adaon takes the kings place i think he would welcome kieran back into the court as a prince and kieran would have some sort of gentry responsibility. if kieran is king then as it's been stated before “a king of faerie can have no human consort.” cassie even replied with that quote to a since-deleted tweet that i believe was about keirark or kieraktina. if kieran isn’t brought back to the unseelie court and the unseelie king dies gwyn will probably take kieran back into the hunt. the only reason kieran isn’t with them right now is bc the unseelie king wants him dead, so it stands to reason that, if the king is dead and the courts don’t claim kieran, gwyn will take him back to the wild hunt.

julian will sever the parabatai bonds (parabatai theory #1): we already know that the parabatai curse will be resolved “one way or the other” and right now the only substantial and viable option we’ve been given (besides jules or emma dying which is a fat NOPE) is the severing of all parabatai bonds using the black volume. it’s been heavily hinted at, if not flat-out stated, that julian is more than willing to sever the bonds if it means keeping emma and his family safe. julian and emma will be sent on a quest to faerie seemingly to retrieve the black volume and return it to horace/ the clave. according to one of the snippets, they apparently bring it to the seelie queen and she will only tell julian how to break the bonds. i personally don’t think cassie would have done it this way if julian was just going to tell emma right after. either she won't want to know or he’ll refuse to tell her, so i don't think she’ll even be able to break the parabatai bond. (unless they have to do it together which would be super cool) and i’ve mentioned it before, but cassie has said that the shadowhunter world will be changed forever in and leading up to twp and that the storyline would deal with how the protagonists and other characters adapt to those changes. i really feel like one of those changes could be the breaking of the parabatai bonds.

cortana is the key to breaking emma and julian’s parabatai bond (parabatai theory #2):  throughout the series, there have been multiple references made to the fact that cortana can cut through anything (ex; using cortana emma killed a rider of manaan which was previously thought to be impossible, emma also destroyed the mortal sword in combat using cortana). if cortana can truly cut anything then surely it should be able to cut the bond between emma and julian. i don’t know exactly how that would work, but this could also tie in with the severing of all parabatai bonds. maybe you need a blade made by wayland the smith to severe them. anything is possible.

that’s basically it on my theories for qoaad. i don’t know if any of them will come true, but i had a lot of fun theorizing over the past year and a half while i waited for queen. in the past couple weeks i’ve reread cohf, lady midnight, and lord of shadows in preparation for queen of air and darkness, so i only posted the theories i thought were relevant or most likely based on the proof i had from those previous books. maybe once i’m done with queen i’ll make a separate post of all the theories i had that were correct or partially correct.

since queen comes out tomorrow (technically today since it’s 5 AM) i wanted to make this long overdue announcement. i know i don't have a ton of followers (100 as of just recently!! thank you guys sm!), but many of you guys are tda or shadowhunter fans, so from now until sometime in january (likely january 4, but possibly later as i know some people will be getting the book for christmas) i will be tagging nearly all queen of air and darkness posts with the tags #qoaadspoilers, #qoaad spoilers, #queen of air and darkness spoilers (with the exception of things we already know like stuff from snippets or non-spoilery pictures). if you don’t wish to see any spoilers from me you can block these tags. that way posts tagged as such won’t show up on your news feed. i know a lot of other blogs are doing the same, so it’s a pretty great way to block spoilers all across the board (even cassie recommended it)! if any of you want to know anything specific about the book feel free to pm me, i've literally been talking about this book for weeks so once i know what its actually about i’ll be more than happy to rant about it with any of you!

[eremji]

Thoughts on Infinity War, and Thanos' Motivation

Disclaimer: I'm not a Marvel expert. Some of my information on comic plots was collected from wikis and secondary articles, due to a lack of access to a primary source or the simple inaccuracy of my own memory. I also mostly enjoyed Infinity War, and any criticism herein should not be taken as decrying the whole.

Spoilers behind the cut. Please close your eyes and scroll super fast, block tags, duck and cover, etc. if you’re on mobile, because, seriously, spoilers.

An extremely simplified version of movie production:

From a production standpoint, Iron Man was a huge risk for the studios fronting the money for it. After critical and box office flops from 90s Batman films and other various superhero action flicks, studios typically found comic book movies to underperform in comparison to budgetary requirements for good visuals, making them unattractive. Marvel has taken a large step away from making comic book movies, to making comic book adaptations, because what works on the page doesn’t work in a moving picture.

Marvel Studios’ cinematic success has almost nothing to do with how compelling the source material is – because some of Marvel’s library is pretty much slush pile garbage. This was before your average artist or consumer realized you can get pretty literary while still having cool pictures on a page. They’re valuable because they propelled the comic industry to widespread success, but the source is best examined with a critical eye towards tone deaf and anachronistic viewpoints on race, sexuality, gender, and pretty much everything else. Marvel Studios has done a fairly consistent job of divorcing the cinematic canon from the original medium’s baggage, to which I attribute a large portion of the films’ success in comparison to very lukewarm iterations of DC or X-Men.

As media consumers, we’re accustomed to having a finished product to hold and analyze. When considering story, in terms of plotting and pacing, I personally believe it’s most helpful to compare the scope of the MCU production to be similar to that of a television show, rather than a traditional movie or movie series. It may be startling to know that even very successful television shows, like Breaking Bad or Stranger Things, often don’t even have all the episodes completely written out prior to beginning filming of a season.

Marvel Studios’ movies have been in production for ten years, with many, many different hands in the pot, and earlier scripts don’t always set up the best planting and payoff of character or plot elements later in the continuity. (For visual learners, Lindsay Ellis has a very layman-friendly example using clips from Mad Max: Fury Road.)

You can see where this might start to cause some consistency issues.

Crossover event comics and the necessary sacrifice of emotional development:

For anyone walking in to expecting Avengers: Infinity War to have a lot of character development, I’m very sorry for your loss.

There was never going to be a grand emotional reunion for Steve and Bucky, and there was never going to be whole hours dedicated to bonding and witty bickering and new friendships that weren’t absolutely vital to the plot. That we got things like the Steve-and-Bucky hug, the jealous Star-Lord vs. Thor moments, and Steve introducing himself politely to Groot were for the benefit of the audience more than advancing the plot, which is a huge victory in terms of crushing as much as possible into a theatrical cut.

A film production has a finite amount of screen time to allocate before a movie becomes bloated. When people joke about Infinity War being the most ambitious crossover event, I don’t think some of them realize how on the mark that is from a production standpoint. Hard decisions have to be made between what isn’t vital to advancing plot in a compelling way and what was retained to meet audience expectations. Infinity War often felt like it tried to recapture that Joss Whedon-ish sassy-but-kinda-flat comedy from the first Avengers, and that meant punchlines for jokes sometimes land at emotionally inappropriate times because characters just don’t have cinematic space for witty banter between shooting aliens and losing everyone they ever cared about.

There’s a difference in author-audience expectations of what’s important in these team-up movies, and also gaps between fans actively participating in fandom because they love the characters and casual moviegoers looking for a blockbuster. It all comes down to how much each party in the creative transaction is willing to settle for. Traditionally, Marvel has set up the character-driven plots and subplots in individual comics with occasional crossover cameos for a few issues when another character or baddie is relevant to the plot. The large crossover events, like Civil War, Contest of Champions, or Infinity are almost always plot-heavy and character-light.

This is so much easier in comic book format, where multiple series can be coordinated in regular, paced releases, and different comic issues may happen parallel or directly before/after the event crossovers. Movies take a significantly larger amount of time to produce, through pre-production, filming, post-production, marketing, and distribution.

A brief (I’m serious, they’ve been making comics since the 1939) explication of source material:

One of the largest disconnects for me, as a fan of both the comics and the movies, was the change in Thanos’ motivation, but not his mission. For those who aren't aware of the origins of his character, he essentially wants to murder people to impress a girl – Mistress Death, to be specific. He wants to kill half of all life in the universe so that he can be her equal and win her affection. 

Dorkly did a pretty solid breakdown of some of Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet story and the innate misogynistic slant of his character, including comic panels from the original source material, that paints comic!Thanos an internet Nice Guy™. (Feel free to skim the article; it's a bit slow to get to the point.) Perusing the comic panels, you can see Thanos is hella into negging and is spiteful when Mistress Death shows interest in another dude (spoilers: it’s Deadpool). He clearly believes love is possession, and if he can’t have what he wants, then, good golly, no one can.

He’s also really off the rails – dubbed the Mad Titan even before his objectification mega crush on a badass corpse with a wicked bod – and is personally responsible for destroying Titan. He’s not a villain that believes he’s the hero, and this shift away from his motivation being dangerous-and-horrible to dangerous-and-misguided casts the first shadow on the premise.

My (very personal) opinion on the execution:

MCU essentially played keep away with some of the more supernatural elements of the source material, at least until introducing Dr. Strange. In doing so they had to construct Thanos’ motivation for a comic-book-inspired task out of whole cloth. There is no Mistress Death. Secondary characters that were discrete entities are often pulling double duty*.

(*Or triple. See also: Bucky Barnes, who is wearing the backstory of Captain America's gay best friend Arnie Roth and now White Wolf. If you were previously unaware of this factoid, please enjoy the irony that Marvel’s biggest pro-American propaganda piece had an openly gay best friend circa early 80s but Civil War ham-fistedly had to work in that awkward-as-fuck smooch between Steve and Peggy Carter’s hot young romantic surrogate niece.)

So, okay, they have to reinvent Thanos, who we've only seen in a handful of post-credit scenes and vicariously learned, through Loki in the first Avengers movie and then Gamora in Guardians, is a conqueror and also really Bad News™.

I buy everything so far. And why not? Black Panther made me love Killmonger and his rage, and the parallels to contemporary issues made him fairly empathetic without highlighting that his perspective was necessarily the ‘correct’ one. Similarly, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s villain, Vulture, was believable in the sort of suffering everyman-turned-desperate way, highlighting the fallout of the Space Invaders vs. Avengers destruction without suggesting the audience should root for Vulture.

In general, I am on board for these movies going straight for the throat on the big baddies of the comic universe because movie production is lengthy, expensive, and time-consuming. Dear Marvel Studios, Give me Avengers vs. Dr. Doom. Love, Me.

A villain can be built up over the course of a single movie (or two). Armed with this optimism, and heartened by recent Marvel Studios successes in characterization, I walked into Infinity War expecting as much gratuitous violence, universe-cleansing genocide, and genuine fear of Thanos as I could possibly expect from something Disney-adjacent.

I knew people were going to die. Let me say – there was no way to spoil this for me. The Infinity Gauntlet comic series starts with half the universe dying. I expected there to be ‘casualties’ and even though the Russo bros said that this wasn’t two parts of the same movie, it’s certainly serial. At minimum, I was expecting Thanos bent on conquering the cosmos, worshiping at the altar of death in the abstract, if not groveling for an inevitable-cosmic-force-turned unattainable woman.

And yet. And yet.

We got the purple version of the Kool-Aid man with some seriously unaddressed parent-child issues (mirrored in Tony Stark’s loss of Peter Parker) and a wholly unimaginative motivation. I won’t go too far much into the movie’s alarming efforts at framing Thanos as a sympathetic character despite his genocidal and horribly abusive tendencies, because I am A) not an expert at identifying film technique and B) the push for Thanos to be an empathetic villain has been analyzed elsewhere.

Phenomenal, limitless cosmic power and all you want to do is break shit? For all the immaturity of it, Thanos’ comic book motivation was more believable.

To those arguing that the his motivations in the movie are predicated off of him being the Mad Titan and therefore not rooted in logic: The film did not explicitly plant the idea – except in the way that we know genocide is bad due to an innate sense of morality – that he was unhinged and power-mad, nor did they really give the audience any payoff.

Instead, we get, ‘I don’t really want to do this, but I must.’

There was a point where I started wondering why the hell he wasn’t just being steadily roasted by the Avengers for not receiving some sort of basic education in the evils of wealth disparity and resource distribution.

As an audience member, was I meant to believe this incredibly powerful entity at the center of a massive fleet, accompanied by a group of talented and sycophantic followers, couldn’t think of a better way to bring ‘balance’ to the universe?

Perhaps Thanos’ justification is simply the conceit of the way the universe operates, required to propel a plot forward. However, this is also poorly explained. There are many unanswered questions: Why is it a given that killing half the universe will create balance? What does balance look like? Is this state permanent or is it a routine, necessary evil in order to stop entropy? Is balance a socioeconomic state, or does it have some greater cosmological significance? We know that Titan fell after rejecting Thanos’ extreme solution, but would the population have actually endured and flourished if his plan had been carried out?

For a movie that did so well at handling a cast so phenomenally large as the one involved in its production, Infinity War really didn’t go in very hard on selling Thanos. I would have been perfectly happy if Marvel Studios had taken the risk to lean in hard on making the movie Thanos-centric, given Thanos even more screen time to develop his character, motives, and the rules of the universe – and then make Avengers 4 about, you know, the actual avenging.

Parting notes:

What are we left with?

Infinity War gifted us with some badass action clips, a fairly jarring death performance by Tom Holland, Cheerful Goatherd Bucky Barnes, and emotionally traumatizing bubbles. It never really sells the conundrum it sets up via Thanos. You'll never hear me insist a peice of art or entertainment is required to carry some sort of social commentary or moral message, but I feel like this could have been, tonally, a vastly different film had it considered the core of Thanos' motivations the same way it considered Vulture's or Killmonger's.

Also, where the hell is Adam Warlock (set up at the end of GotG: Vol. 2; revisit planting and payoff) to shit talk Thanos’ lack of villainous veracity when we need him?

[ghitathepanda]

Sonic Forces gameplay actually improve over Generations in certain ways

The keywords being: "Certain ways"

People consider Forces to be OVERALL a step down compared to the likes of Generations and as someone who went back to Generations and Sonic Adventure 1 (Dreamcast version via Demul emulator) I can see where people come from.

Controls

Most points that contribute to this doesn't bother me too much. What I can say that is a step up from Generations are the controls. At least for me. I know the lack of a drift infuriates some people but would the drift actually save you from those curves in Metropolis? You can save yourself by staying at the centre and pushing your analog stick to the direction you are curving to while boosting is you want to boost through the curves. That is more of a level design thing due to lack of railings to keep you from falling, not the control issue which is what we are focusing on instead (again, those curves are part of level design fail which even I admit is a thing despite me loving this game as much as Mania).

And I made sure to constantly switch between the two games in order get legit arguments.

For me, Generations modern Sonic is a little sluggish when you are moving around and switching to opposite directions is actually less sluggish in Forces than it is in Generations because in Generations, Modern takes up a bit more time to turn around 180 if you go from one direction to the very opposite by simply tilting the analog stick from one end to the other. I can tell almost immediately the first time fighting against Zavok that it was partially meant to showcase that improvement but most people seem to go on about the negative things to notice. The homing attack also seems faster in Forces than in Generations.

You could complain about the lack of a drift but first of all, the drift would just cause problems in Tag Team stages since attempting to drift might accidentally cause the Avatar to attack instead and that will break the flow. Secondly, there aren't stages where you actually can use the drift. Metropolis and Mystic Jungle doesn't count. In Metropolis the pathways where one would argue would be remedied by drifting is a bit too small for someone to be drifting with no issue. Pros might be able to drift safely but others could still drift themselves off the edge. This is more of a level design flaw than anything else. Notice how in Generations the places you can drift in usually have railings or small walls to keep you from falling down to your deaths? Even in places without fear of that are done in wide open areas.

The forest level with the area constantly complaint about is something else. I am not sure if I am just SUPER lucky or something else because the only time I actually died was because I wanted to experiment. That area has a lot of speed boosters to keep you from falling. How about you people try steering for once and not just hold down boost and forward? When I first got onto that and I never even spoil myself of this area, I instinctively knew to at least try steering Sonic to help and I made it first try. No dying, no spoilers, no guides. I think everyone else at that point were just too clouded on the negative things they mock the game for to realise that, or they are super unlucky. Heck the first playthrough I watched after finishing the game myself had that happening and I am like, "That can happen?" But then I realised that person wasn't even trying to steer Sonic.

Let's move on to Classic Sonic for now. I went and played Mania, Sonic 2 on mobile and Sonic 1 that isn't the Whitehead version for comparison sakes. First of all to compare Forces Classic Sonic to Generations Classic Sonic. I can tell you now that Classic Sonic in Forces is actually improved over Generations though there are other changes that I decided goes both ways. In Generations and in the classics, landing while moving in the air but not inputting on the controller causes Sonic to slightly move a bit after landing before completely stopping but notice how I said "when you're not inputting on the controller"? In Forces, doing that will get you to stop completely instead of going on a bit more but as long as your analog stick keeps pushed to the proper direction you can still keep that speed. For me this isn't much of an issue and in some cases is an improvement. Some cases I say. This particularly helped with platforming because in Generations, that sort of thing made me fell off a platform and that happened while I was playing for the sake of comparison so that memory is fresh in my mind. There is also the physics issue which people claimed to be an issue. It's a step down from Mania definitely, but a step up from Generations actually. So you know how in Forces' Chemical Plant there is that one half pipe you can't run up? In Generations' Chemical Plant, while there are half pipes you can run up to from similar starting points (depending on WHERE you start), in Forces, this is only because that half pipe is longer than in Generations (I made comparisons) and even if you try going from so much further, Generations had the stage filled with Speed boosters to compensate while Forces doesn't. And I made sure to check out other stages in Generations to make sure that Classic Sonic couldn't do crap by pure running speed alone. He couldn't go through loops properly from the same running distance as he did in Forces where he actually CAN do that and the stages in Generations are filled to the brim with automatic sections and speed boosters (the latter isn't present much in Green Hill) that helps to at least barely go up some slopes in some stages. But I could say that in Generations, the loops in Classic stages are larger then the classic games and that Forces has the more accurate size. But why can't the Sonics in those two games go up larger half pipes easily unlike the classics even with proper head start. That is because according to someone on YouTube, the physics for Classic Sonic in Forces is more based on Sonic 1 in terms of speed. In Sonic 1, Sonic has a speed cap that prevented him from running faster while moving down slopes unless he is rolling. Forces and Generations ended up copying Sonic 1 physics but Forces is actually more accurate in that regard.

But what EXACTLY makes Forces Classic Sonic better than Generations? Rolling physics. It could also be the bouncing from enemy trajectory too because someone somewhere mentioned how in Generations on consoles and PC, Classic always bounced from enemies the same way regardless of prior position. Even the 3DS version actually does a better job at that. But back to rolling physics... well actually more to controls that handles the physics. In Generations, when rolling down hills or anywhere without spin dashing anyway, never hold forward because you will immediately get out of rolling ball form leaving you immediately vulnerable to enemies. That happened while I was experimenting. Letting the game play itself while rolling down actually lets Sonic roll down to his maximum before getting out of ball form but by then when Sonic is done he'll be standing still and vulnerable or if you manage to get up a slope and get up on the air, you need to properly react to get to the proper platform. It does make me wonder if that is why Generations' Spin Dash is so overpowered...

Forces meanwhile is more accurate to at least Sonic 1 physics but not entirely accurate to generally Classic Sonic physics. In Chemical Plant with multiple slopes, Sonic can easily roll through them in Mania and Sonic 2. In Generations, he couldn't do that even when you let go of the controls. He will take much faster to get out of ball form actually which makes him inferior to Forces Classic Sonic who will take more to do it. Sure he couldn't do the slopes as properly as the Classic games too but in comparison to Generations he covers more ground and the slopes in Forces are a bit larger than in Generations so it's obvious to see him covering more ground than in Generations which ironically had the more accurate chemical plant block design thing.

Story

When it comes to story, Forces does seem a bit more ambitious than in Generations. At least in Forces the other characters do something more because despite doing stuff off screen it is a lot more than just standing around outside of stages doing nothing amd certainly better than constantly shouting homing shots. And a lot more action goes on too with occasional battles. Sure there are stuff like the torture bit and the Tails losing it bit but the Japanese never went there. So blame Pontaff on that. Say what you will about the story but if you just go along with the ride without thinking much or you are just emotionally invested, you won't be bothered by the story. The same logic could apply with Generations but that game has even less going on in the story overall so for the emotionally invested, there isn't much going on for Generation's story. You could enjoy it but Forces attempts to go for more and the emotionally invested would get more out of Forces.

To normal people Forces has a sucky story but remember what I pointed out, emotionally invested people like me would have a better time enjoying the story.

Conclusion

So what ultimately made people like Generations more than Forces mostly? Level design. People harp on it a lot and while I don't mind that mostly, Generations had levels designed to be more broad and attempt to cover up certain flaws the gameplay has like the aformentioned Classic Sonic physics.

I admit to loving Forces more than Generations and I don't care for level design as much as long as they are playable but I can tell the level design in Forces are more focused to show off the improvements in terms of gameplay and controls. Most of the Sonic Forces levels are fine really and most of my deaths happen because I was hesitant or over confident. Only once or twice it's the game screwing me over. But others do care and playing games like Adventure make me hope for something more, what Forces does have is fine for me. They are great for short bursts anyway

[kazosa]

Secrets - SoA: Chapter 5

Summary: Reader has lived in a life full of secrets. When her father dies unexpectedly and sends her on a trip all over the country, she finds out just how much like her father she really is. The end of her trip brings her to Charming, CA where she finally gets some big pieces of her family puzzle put back in place and form new relationships with the people there. Chapter 5: Chibs and reader go back to Chibs’ place, reader gets an email Warnings: language, implied smut A/N: If it wasn’t clear before, this takes place after the events of the final episode, so SPOILERS – I don’t write smut soooo, sorry, not sorry Word Count:   2800 Tags: @telford-ortiz-teller  @sam-samcro  @tstieff  @yourcroweater  @kacilove26  @hiddlelove  @evilsorceress  @reallynigga21

IF YOU WISH TO BE TAGGED, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN SOME WAY. ASK BOX IS SAFEST WAY, BUT I DO TRY TO LOOK AT ALL COMMENTS AND REBLOGS. COMMENTS WELCOME! Secrets Masterlist

     Chibs, of all people, knew that life was too short to be wasting time worrying over bullshit. (Y|N) made it clear that she was interested, there was no question. Just because he’d been burned in the past, didn’t mean he would be now. There was something about (Y|N) that told him she was someone he could trust, someone he could let in, all the way.      When he got back to the shop and saw her standing there in the door, the sun making her hair glow, all he thought was “m’aingeal.” When he got close and she called him by his name… Maybe he had a heart after all, maybe he could convince her to stay when her work was done.      Now, with her behind him on his motorcycle, all he could think about was her body and how it was pressed against him, her arms wrapped around his chest. He took her hand from his chest and placed a kiss on the palm of her hand before returning it to the same spot and rolling on the throttle.

     He had taken your hand as soon as he got off his motorcycle and hadn’t let go, like if he had, you might run away. There was no way in hell that was going to happen. You and Chibs were finally going to finish your “conversation” from that morning. As soon as you got in the door to his apartment, he let go of your hand and pressed you against the closed door, unzipping your coat. You looked up into his eyes, his desire for you written in the depths of his brown eyes.      As Filip pulled down the zipper on your coat, he leaned closer and captured your mouth with his. He went agonizingly slow. You could feel every tooth on the zipper give way, all the while, his tongue explored your mouth, licking, swirling, caressing. Your hands gripped his kutte, unwilling to let him escape. Finally, your jacket was open and Filip’s hands grazed your breasts causing you to moan into him. His hands went up to slip the coat off your shoulders and it landed with a solid thump on the floor. Clothes littered the floor as you and Filip made your way to his bedroom.

     He didn’t know what time it was. It was fully nighttime but the moonlight was spilling into his bedroom through the glass blocks. (Y|N)’s skin almost shone in the soft light. She was sleeping on her side facing him one hand up by her face, the other tucked under her elbow. He reached carefully to move away a strand of hair that had fallen over her shoulder, his fingertips brushing over her smooth skin.      “M’aingeal,” he murmured and pulled the sheet up under her arm.      He’d taken his time with her, learning what she liked, making her love every second with him. He tried different things until he found her rhythm. He didn’t stop until she moaned his name. He couldn’t get enough of her. Later, he made love to her until her legs were shaking and screaming for him. He liked the feel of her hands on him, all over his body…the way she seemed to be just as hungry for him as he was for her…      How he was feeling scared him a little. (Y|N) was great. Her sense of humor was close to his, she was smart, she took obstacles in stride, and he was pretty sure that she even liked his brothers. He liked her a lot, maybe too much. He didn’t want to let her get too close, but he didn’t want her to leave either. In fact, that was probably what scared him most, he wanted her to stay… It seemed like whenever someone got too close to him, something happened. Jimmy O had stolen Fi, his wife, right out from under his nose, Althea… well, she was another type of woman. He’d always thought like he was the one she chose to feel a little dangerous with, too.      Even after Althea had told him to fuck off, she still came around now and again, looking to get laid. Only one time, he’d gone against his better judgment and screwed her. That was all it took though, she would show up at parties the club held, the Charming fair, and other mundane places, looking for him. He’d told her to back off, but she persisted. Althea could be vindictive and mean, he didn’t want (Y|N) to encounter that.      “Nothing will touch you, mo ghaol,” he whispered to her.      She stirred just then and he regretted waking her.      “Filip? Are you okay?” she asked, barely aware.      “Fine, lass,” he assured her, “Go back to sleep.”      She rolled over to face the glass window, exposing her breasts. My God, she’s beautiful, he thought, not just meaning her body. He settled in behind her and pulled up the blankets, covering them both.

     You woke to the bright morning light flooding Chibs’ bedroom. This was getting to be an annoying recurrence. Why the hell didn’t he have a curtain, or something? His personality didn’t scream “morning person.” The fact that he’d made love to you three times since getting back from TM told you that he preferred the night. You weren’t even sure if he’d slept much. Didn’t matter though, he was holding you close again, sleeping soundly. Both arms around you, one leg between yours, his breath soft and even on your bare shoulder. Filip Telford had made it his mission the night before to send you into the throes of ecstasy, and he had succeeded each time.      Unsure of the actual time, you picked up your phone carefully so you didn’t disturb Chibs. Pushing the ‘home’ button and the display showed 0545. Fucking military, you thought to yourself. Ever since you’d been in the service, you had a hard time sleeping past 0600. It didn’t matter what you had been doing or when you had actually gotten to bed, your damned internal clock told you to get up at 0600. You noticed one of the icons at the top was showing you that you had an email.      Your email accounts were all linked to your phone, but there was one account that had to be accessed from a desktop computer, your secure email. When you touched the mail icon, you saw that there was new mail in the secure mail mailbox. You didn’t need to know who it was from. Only one person would be sending you mail to that particular inbox, Jack, your COO. Your heart started to pound in your chest. Jack was damned good at his job, but you hadn’t expected him to come through with your request so quickly. You decided that now, while Chibs was still out, was the best time to look at what Jack had sent, rather than waiting.      You hated rolling out of the security of Chibs’ body. Opportunities like this, private time, didn’t often present themselves so you needed to take advantage while you could. Sliding to the floor, you looked around for the SAMCRO t-shirt he had let you sleep in the previous night. You spotted a corner of it and pulled the shirt out from under the bed to put it on. Your bag had been moved into the bedroom the day before and from there you pulled out your laptop and booted it up.      He had a chair and a small table set up by the glass blocks. Pulling the table in front of you, you put the laptop on it and logged into your system. That simple mail icon suddenly looked very daunting. Since arriving in Charming, everyone you’d met was very nice to you. It made you wonder if it was because they were just nice or if because everywhere you went, Chibs introduced you as “Bud’s girl.” You felt a little shitty about being shady like this, but you needed answers. Whatever was in the email from Jack would probably answer all of the questions you had about your father, maybe even your mother, too.      Double-clicking on the message brought up a text body from Jack and there were several attachments.         “Hi Kiddo,

                The name of our gal in the IRS is Alice Montgomery. She’s been helpful for a long time, I’m sure she can be helpful for you too.                 Attached are files about the major players associated with the club. The ones about your dad are noted. Kiddo, when he knew what was coming, we started making videos. They’ve been edited together. It’s his side of the story. It’s a bit rough to watch, but it says it all.            Let me know if you need me,                   Jack”      Well, that’s just super. You weren’t sure that you could look at the video of your dad just yet. Thinking it would be better, you opened the file that was saved as “John Teller” and began reading. The files read like a story, almost. It was memories your dad had jotted down as well as research Jack had done into what things he had been associated with. It wasn’t until you got to his arrest record and saw his mug shot that the memories all started flooding back. You remembered him. He was the uncle that always liked to pick you up when he first saw you. He’d always say how he wanted his own little girl but spoiling you would do just fine. Oh god… What the police reports didn’t cover was added by your dad or Jack.      There were a lot of files and pictures to wade through. Slowly but surely, the picture in your mind of the uncle you could barely remember started to become clearer. To you, he seemed like a man who loved his family, the Sons included, and wanted to live life how he saw fit, then things took a turn. The police report for the “accident” looked fake to you, but you weren’t sure of it until you started reading the file on Clay Morrow.      Your dad was only speculating, and he made that point clear, but you found that your dad had rarely been wrong when he assessed people. It was, of course, how he made a living, reading people, knowing what they wanted and getting it for them. Once you got through Clay’s file, you wanted to kill him all over again. You slammed your laptop shut.      “Goddamn-mother-fucking-cock-sucking-son-of-a-whore,” you grumbled.      “Good mornin’ to you, too,” Chibs said softly.      “Shit, I’m sorry, did I wake you?”      “No, thought you were gone,” he was looking at you, his arm bent with his head resting on his hand. “Then I heard the words of an angel.”      You chuckled, “Yeah, sorry. I was reading something that pissed me off.”      “I pieced that one together.”      He held the covers up for you while you crawled into bed and burrowed in close to him. Your lips met his for a deep, good morning kiss. He broke away first.      Needing to know, “Wha’ were ye readin’, lass?”      His hand went up under your shirt to rest on your hip, his thumb stroking your skin. Your first instinct was to lie to him and tell him it was some bullshit story on the internet. When you looked in his eyes, you didn’t want to lie. Pact or not, you didn’t want to have the kind of relationship with him that was built on lies. Even so, it was still hard as hell to tell him the truth since you pulled some shady shit.      “I asked my COO, Jack, to run a check on the Sons and send me everything,” you were watching him for a reaction. He didn’t seem pleased, but he didn’t push you away either. “My dad and Jack made the files when they knew my dad was dying. They were thorough. I haven’t looked at it all yet. Just John and Clay Morrow.”      “Is there one on me in there?” he asked after a few moments. You nodded. “I’ve not been an angel, lass. I’ve done things that you may not find forgivable.”     After reading the two files, and with your dad knowing ALL of the things you’d done over the years and he was still proud of you… well, you doubted there could be much Chibs could have done to not forgive.      “I’m not worried about it,” you admitted. “I’m not exactly gonna be wearing a white hat anytime soon, that’s for damn sure.”      He perked up at that, “Oh, aye? Enlighten me.”      “Okay,” you said. “I’ll tell you one thing I did that you don’t already know.”      “I’m listening.”     “I have zero debt. In fact, I’ve never had any. Ask me how,” you instructed.      “How?”      “When I was in college, I ran a very lucrative sports book. Paid for all of college,” you confessed.      “How’d you manage that?”      “Laundered it through a buddy’s business. Not even a hint that anyone was onto it. I was very careful,” you told him.      He was looking at you like you were made of cotton candy. “Jeaysus Chroist, lass. Did yer da teach ye tha’?”      It was your turn to look at him with shock, “My dad? No, he didn’t. Did he run a book?”      “Aye, was damn good at it, too,” he said. “Got the club a shitload of money. Buddy was always good with money.”      So, your dad ran a sports book, too, of course he did. No wonder he was always down to watch all manner of sports with you, speculating on how many times the ball would be fumbled during a game, what so-and-so’s 3 point line average would be.

     You laid there looking at Chibs for a moment, debating whether or not you wanted to ask him again where he was all day yesterday. Sometimes, you knew when not to push and judging by the way Chibs was looking at you, it was one of those times. Thankfully, your stomach rumbled, breaking the silence.      “Should we go out to breakfast?” you asked.      “That sounds like a great idea, let’s shower,” he said grabbing your hand, taking you to the bathroom.

     At breakfast, he told (Y|N) that he needed to go to Stockton and check on Diosa. Surprisingly, she knew a little Spanish which led to questions about what sort of establishment it was. She didn’t look pleased that he would be spending the day with escorts.      “Look, I know I just got here, and I have no business presuming I have any hold over you, but…” you felt heat rising to your cheeks. “I’m not one to sleep around, Filip.”      “Neither am I, lass,” he assured her. It was mostly true, but the croweaters and hang-arounds never really fulfilled the need he had, they were just a distraction and he never really did anything with them, anyway. He just hadn’t expected (Y|N) to walk into his life and fill that need so quickly. When he told her he didn’t sleep around, she gave him that smile, the one that would make him do anything she asked.      “Tell me about the club. How it works. What you do. Things like that,” she said.      There wasn’t much he could tell her that she wouldn’t be able to figure out on her own. However, he did tell her how the hierarchy worked, who was allowed to do what, where they were allowed to be, who got to know what things and who didn’t. It was probably best she knew about it in advance.      “I forgot to mention,” he said, “The club is hosting a St. Patrick’s Day party tomorrow at RedWoody.”      “RedWoody?!” she was smiling, her eyebrows raised. “Are you shitting me?”      He found himself grinning back. “Aye, the club is the proud owner of RedWoody Entertainment.”      She put her hands over her mouth as she gasped. “Oh. My. God. Please tell me it’s what I think it is.”      “If you think it is wonderfully profitable porn movie production studio, you would be correct,” he said wiggling his eyebrows.      She chuckled again, shocked expression still on her face, “Well, legit is legit. It’s trashy as all hell, but legit. Soooo, as a friend of the club, do I get to go? Am I invited? Can I bring a date?”      “Aye, you get ta go, but you belong wi’ me,” his tone not leaving room for discussion.      “Hmm… belong with you, huh? Moving things a little fast, aren’t you Chibs? Being your date and all, you ‘claiming’ me such as it is, isn’t that something reserved for your old lady?” she smiled that smile…      Goddamnit, she caught on quick. “Aye, it is.”      “Pick me up at 8, and don’t be late,” her eyes twinkled.      “Yes, mo ghraidh,” he answered.

[terryblount]

Cyberpunk 2077’s UI coordinator talks about gangs, romance, difficulty & more

Alvin Liu, UI coordinator of Cyberpunk 2077, has spoken to wccftech about their upcoming role playing game. First of all some bad news; no Lady Gaga folks. I hope Liu is toying with us, even if it sounds definite. I would love to see Lady Gaga and Keanu Reeves together in the game.

Liu claimed that each individual gang will have different characteristics and goals, meaning each encounter will most likely feel unique and decisions will probably have more weight for the player. Now that’s something I really like.

Romancing in video-games was never intriguing to me, until I played The Witcher 3 as its characters were extremely well made and fleshed out. Take Yen and Triss for example. Those two had completely different personalities and choosing between them was a very hard decision mainly because of who they were rather than simply choosing between a black-haired and a red-haired. As such, it makes me very happy reading that CD Projekt RED is following the same romancing example for this title.

Moreover, it seems that the game’s world will be… open, meaning there will be no restrictions of where you can go. Of course there will be areas with powerful enemies but the UI will help guide you. Chances are you will die painfully when you visit higher level territories, however the option will be available to players.

There will be multiple difficulty settings and the game will even have a hardcore mode which sounds similar to Metro’s ranger difficulty, where the UI is disabled for maximum immersion. I really like the sound of that.

Of course if you are not keen with shooters and you just want to enjoy the story, there will be a setting or settings for you; you can even use the smart gun we saw last year and make firefights even easier. To be honest I wouldn’t recommend it since the firefights looked awesome but I understand we all have our personal preferences here. Who knows, if the shooting mechanics are terrible (fingers crossed it won’t) maybe everyone will end up using the smart gun.

Of course, the big reveal at E3 was Keanu. Can you talk a bit about how that happened?

Absolutely. What we wanted to do is to find the right celebrity match. It couldn’t just be someone from a romantic comedy movie or something.

Yes. I mean, there were rumors about Lady Gaga!

She’s pretty cyberpunk, so she could fit in! But um, yeah, no Lady Gaga. A lot of people in studio love The Matrix, Johnny Mnemonic, Speed and all that stuff and he was just a really good match for our game genre and what we’re trying to do. When we approached him he was like ‘Yeah, I understand the artistic vision behind this, I can get behind it.’ He was just on board with it, which was great.

I’m wondering whether this is something you have been planning for quite some time, or is it more recent?

We’ve been keeping it a secret for definitely many months. I don’t recall exactly when, it’s hard to pick an exact time when it first started. But everything was very smooth. And it was great. I think keeping it a secret was super hard. I remember the first time I heard someone told me and I was like ‘Really?!?’

Keanu’s character, Johnny Silverhand, is also deeply rooted in Cyberpunk lore, correct?

Yes. Johnny Silverhand, he was like a super rebellious Rockerboy who is very against mega-corporations, he would happily run in and torch the lobby of a mega building, just throw the torch in the grounds and go ‘Screw you guys!’. He’s very different than real life Keanu Reeves.

He actually represents what we call Rockerboy from the tabletop Cyberpunk game. That was one of the classes, basically a rockstar. That’s a lot harder for us to do in the game we’re trying to make, you know, you can’t spend eight hours talking about preparing for a tour and going across, but we wanted to keep the spirit of the lore, so that’s what he represents.

He’s also supposed to be long dead in Cyberpunk 2077, right? So he’s kind of a digital ghost.

Exactly. So this is like 50 years from when he disappeared. I don’t want to spoil it, but being a digital ghost allows him to not be you know, like 80 or 90 years old. But there’s a lot more for you to discover about what’s happened to him.

I noticed that in the E3 2019 demo, the dominant theme was attempting to upload human consciousness into machines to attain immortality. Is this going to be prevalent throughout the whole Cyberpunk 2077?

There’s a lot of things we’re trying to do. The Voodoo Boys specifically are very obsessed with that, but other gangs such as the Maelstrom gang we showed last year, they want to be like, the ‘perfect humans’. So their theme is like making them solve this, you know, like replacing an eyeball or something, because, you know, it’s better to see the doctor. And they’re the most the best in the Superman realm. And it really depends on which gang you talk to. But we explore it all, it’s going to be a very big game, we’re going to go to look at different storylines, different characters, and we’ll talk about, you know, transhumanism, we’ll talk about what it means for a company to come in and be very greedy. And you can have romances in the Night City, for example.

Since you mentioned it, can you talk a bit about how romances are going to work in Cyberpunk 2077?

I don’t want to do spoilers, but we want to write very strong characters. We want to have personalities that you can interact with. If you remember from The Witcher 3 where Yennefer and Triss had very different personalities, it was interesting navigating how you would talk to one or the other. So to that effect, we’ve selected some NPCs who’ll have very rich relationships. But we also have, since it’s a modern world, you know, one-night stands exist, so something like that is also possible. And also like in the real world, you can also just exchange money for sex.

Earlier we were talking about corporations. Can you tell me how many will be in the final game?

That’s a good question. I don’t think anyone stopped to count because we have both big and small corporations. We have Militech, they’re kind of like the American military kind of corporation because the government military doesn’t really exist anymore. But people sell them, you know, name, tags and security. So this company kind of represents that. We also have Arasaka and in our history, those companies had a huge fight and that resulted in someone setting up a nuclear bomb in the city. That’s a large Japanese company, very secretive, they do a lot of secret projects. There’s also Orbital Air, they handle space, airplanes and stuff like that. There are so many companies in Cyberpunk 2077.

Right. And of course, beyond the corporations, you also have the gangs in Cyberpunk 2077. Are there any other factions in the game, though, beyond the corporations and gangs?

Yeah, we also have, obviously, the people just trying to live and you know, stay alive in Night City. We also have what we call the Nomads. Outside the city, we have people who just don’t want to live in the city for whatever reason. Maybe they have some very strong family ties in their community, or maybe they hate the idea of, you know, being a corporate slave, working for gangs, and they want to be strong and independent instead.

Does that mean we’ll get to explore the outskirts of Night City, too?

Absolutely. You’ll be able to go out in the desert of California and view things like power plants, abandoned highways and stuff like that. So you’re not just limited to Night City. It’s a really cool place to use our cars and drive them fast, as it’s hard to go super fast in the city. We do have street racing, though.

If you commit crimes, is the police coming after you? How does your ‘outlaw system’ work?

The way that works is that they are basically up for hire, basically, the laws exist to take bribes from corporations. So a corporation might pass a law that you can’t sell medicine anymore, and they’re going to enforce it. The only reason they got that law passed was that they bribed the government and they’re only using it as a proxy. So it’s not a place where you want to trust the government necessarily. There probably are some good people out there also, but it’s a city of people trying to constantly get one up on each other.

We have a system that we’re still iterating upon. People will, you know, not be nice to you if you start killing many people. There are some people you can’t kill because that might have blocked a quest and that’s just by design, but it’s not what our game is based upon. So I would compare it to The Witcher 3 where if you chopped off the head of a villager in the middle of nowhere the guards wouldn’t show up out of nowhere. But if you’re in a big town and someone from the guard sees you and the people nearby run away screaming for help, people will come and try to stop you and they’re going to be usually pretty powerful. We also have what we call the Trauma Team.

Oh yes, I recall them from that memorable trailer.

Yes, they are a sort of police/medic ambulance. They come in and help save you as long as you have their coverage plan, then you’re taken to a medical facility.

Is it possible to get arrested and go to jail after committing enough crimes?

Sorry, I can’t spoil anything about that.

Okay, sure. I assume you’ll have dynamic weather in Cyberpunk 2077, right?

Yeah, we’ve got acid rain as well. Night City is a very polluted city and we’re also exploring that kind of stuff, pollution and global warming and everything.

The NPCs will scatter around when that happens, I reckon…

Yep, that was happening in The Witcher 3 too. When the rain came, people would seek shelter. Generally, we’re trying to make the NPCs very believable, we want it to feel like this is a world where people actually live in, which would make players want to spend time in the world as well.

I imagine the NPCs have daily routines, too.

Indeed. Of course, if you followed someone for fifteen hours, you might see the same thing repeated a few times. But we’re trying to make them do interesting stuff. Again, I think the best comparison would be Novigrad from The Witcher 3.

In terms of the overall scope of Cyberpunk 2077, what are the main tenets you laid out for yourselves during development?

Three things, we’re going to do a really awesome open world that players just want to live in and we’re going to do a very strong story. In Cyberpunk 2077 we’re going to add this new layer of how you make your character and how you want to play the game. So you can play as a hacker person from the outskirts and you learned how to hack you know, from like, scavenged devices. And they really want to hack with a vengeance because they want to, you know, avenge someone or something. Or you can play as like a someone who loves swords and just loves running in and chopping people off with swords. That, I think, will add a whole other layer of how you experience the game yourself. Right? You’re going to be able to live in this world, play how you want with your character but also be involved in this really deep and engaging story.

Sounds great. Is the whole of Night City open from the start? Or is it like unlocked over time?

We’re not going to have this locked, invisible wall where you can’t go past it because we show a message on the screen saying you must go back. It doesn’t make sense, right? It’s like I just crossed the street, what’s the issue? So we won’t have anything like that.

But you might venture into some places where enemies are way tougher than you can handle.

Yep. We have UI to help lead players. Actually, in the demo, you can see the NPCs levels and that will give you a quick gauge of how to make sure that you want to engage. We are an RPG after all and that’s one of the implications of an RPG, you want to do progression. But like in The Witcher 3, you could always just run to Novigrad, you could have skipped the Baron quest, you could even go to Skellige if you managed to get enough money to pay for the boat. That freedom in an open world is pretty awesome and I think Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be very similar. But of course, you know, in The Witcher 3 when you were like level one and went to Novigrad you didn’t have a very fun time. You might expect something similar here, but you can still go if you want to.

Will there be multiple difficulty settings as in The Witcher 3?

Yes, of course, of course. The most fun one I think will be the Hardcore setting where we turn off the UI you live as well. And that will be a real challenge for a lot of players. Also, at the same time, if you want to play more casually for the story and maybe you’re not experienced with shooters, which was a real big concern for us. We want to tell a story and maybe you’re a big fan of The Witcher and you’re not comfortable playing a shooter, we have settings available for that. We even have weapons for that. If you recall from last year’s demo, we had a weapon called the smart gun, which helps you aim. The bullets were much slower and usually a bit weaker. But if your aiming isn’t your forte, you can always pick up the smart gun.

There was a bit of negative feedback regarding your choice to go with a first-person view only for Cyberpunk 2077. Some people also have issues with nausea and similar medical conditions.

We’re going to have many settings for that, starting with a Field-of-View (FoV) slider. We’re also considering accessibility at a very strong level, including stuff like subtitles for people who might have trouble reading some of the text in our game. That’s very important for us. But with the first-person perspective, we are able to do a lot of new stuff, we can do much more immersive dialogue for example compared to the last game (The Witcher 3) where it was kind of obvious when you were going into combat because you saw the black bars, the camera would move… But in this game, since it’s first-person, literally you can shoot someone within a second. You pull the gun and you’re immediately shooting people. That to us is really important and really immersive because it feels like danger. It was one of the big reasons why we actually switched from third-person.

There are still times when you see your character though, right?

Yeah. Even in the demo we saw today, a lot of people might have missed it, but driving was in third-person and the transition was very seamless.

Of course you can look in the mirror and see yourself through reflections, right?

Yeah, yeah, that’ll be really cool. I think the character customization is going to be really well received. When you go unlock the super rare outfits you get because you have super high street grad and you have a high reputation with a local gang, we want to make sure that you can see that. Since you can customize and create your character you will see that as well, if you take a different skin tone you’ll see that on your hand.

Our items have RPG stats, you can craft them and feel rewarded for that. You’ll also be able to modify the weapons a lot, be able to attach things like a suppressor or a scope and also craft and modify those as you wish. You can change a gun’s type to maybe start shooting thermal bullets, which can actually light on fire because they’ve just built up so much heat. But you can also shop for strictly cosmetic items, such as shirts and jackets.

We can justify that because you look super cool, so you get more street cred game. It’s like, hey, you get more street cred experience because you looked cool killing someone. And that to us is a cool balance for items that might make no sense combat wise but because of that, you earn more reputation doing it, which actually makes sense gameplay-wise.

Cool indeed. What can you tell us about the implementation of real-time ray tracing on PC? Also, can you reveal the hardware that ran this E3 2019 demo?

Ray Tracing was on [in the demo]. We were showing off Ray Traced Emissives, Sky Light, and Ambient Occlusion. However, I’ve seen super impressive screenshots internally about raytracing (they get sent out in a digest e-mail), so we’re clearly still working on it as they looked more impressive than what I remember seeing in the demo. Especially at night and with neon reflections. NVIDIA also has representatives and work with our studio to continue to improve and utilize this technology, similar to The Witcher 3 and Hairworks.

The game was running on Ultra, but we are continuing to improve our visuals.

The game demo was running at 1080p, but our trailers and publically released assets are at 4K. The UI is designed mostly at 4K (eventually it will entirely be at 4K native), but we have the technology to swap assets and do intelligent scaling to handle 1080p, widescreen, 720p, 1440p, and so on. We can also design specific UI at 1080p and other resolutions, on a need by need basis, such as on a screen or graphics with heavy icons that might look bad otherwise.

A lot of people, after seeing last year’s debut gameplay demo and the hardware it was running on, have become a bit wary of how Cyberpunk 2077 could look and run on consoles and low-end PCs. Is that a challenge in terms of optimization for lower-end hardware?

Actually no, we have a very custom engine, the RED Engine. And actually, we’re targeting consoles as first-class platforms and it looks amazing there. So obviously, if you spent, you know, $2,000 building your PC rig, it’s going to look better on that. But the graphics are quite amazing for what you’re going to get from Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles and low-end PCs.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on April 16th, 2020.

Thanx wccftech

Cyberpunk 2077’s UI coordinator talks about gangs, romance, difficulty & more published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/