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mybg3notebook · 3 years

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Does Gale love Mystra?

So far in EA, we have been shown that this is complicated to answer: human love is complex as well as the delirious lore of Forgotten Realms.

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

The narrative is clear until the party scene which, as I stated many times across these posts, it's a scene that feels a bit inconsistent for me (reasonable since it's EA). But if we follow what the game explicitly shows us, we know that if we send Gale to sleep at the beginning of the Weave scene in which he is watching the incantation with the shape of Mystra, he will say:

Gale: Long days, yes. And long, lonesome nights.

If Tav knows that the incantation on his palm is Mystra, Gale will explain:

Tav: [insight] You don't have that look on your face when you're looking at “no one” / There's more to it than that. The figure I saw: she means something to you. Gale: [...] I can’t quite describe it, the need I sometimes feel to see her – to draw the filaments of fantasy into existence. [...]

Dev's notes: Passionate. [...] He was recalling Mystra as a lover, but doesn’t say that out loud. [...] Narrator: The Weave evaporates, and as it does so, you realise the night feels suddenly cold and lonesome.

This allows us to infer that, at this moment, Gale is feeling alone and probably very anxious with the oppressing feeling of the "orb" in his chest. The tadpole only increased the number of problems he has, so he resorts to seeing Mystra melancholically. We notice later in the Weave Scene that not having Mystra around increases this feeling of loneliness. The whole scene seems to give us the idea that he still loves her. There is yearning and loneliness in his current situation.

After a moment of passionate description of magic, Gale invites Tav to experience the Weave. The Weave has a particular effect on Gale: "The moment feels intimate. You realise the Weave is making you one." Considering how Gale was feeling while conjuring the incantation, this moment touched him deeply (the narrator implies that this feeling is mutual).

If Tav expresses their romantic interests, Gale will be surprised:

Gale: I.. I didn’t think.. Narrator: You perceive quick-fire gusts of embarrassment, trepidation, and finally.. elation Gale: Sorry, I wasn’t expecting… But it is a pleasant image to be sure! Most pleasant, in fact. Most welcome. Dev's notes: Warm, with real affection.

The narrator is giving us meta-knowledge, we can trust in what she says, and we can see that the situation was truly shocking for Gale. These emotional stages described here made me suspect that Gale is a character who has focused for too long on healing his condition, ignoring any chance for romance. His surprise here may confirm that, in my opinion. He feels embarrassment, a feeling that one can interpret as a sign of the surprise of being thrown into a situation he had not seen beforehand (the death protocol and Gale’s conversations show us that he is a character that thinks ahead). It follows trepidation: fear or anxiety about something that he is going to do or experience. Gale is scared of the possibility. Maybe because he is thinking in the danger he is, maybe because he was already burnt by Mystra's attention and having someone else's attention now makes him feel a bit anxious. And then, the final resolution of the process: elation, which is a feeling of great happiness and excitement about something that has happened. Gale is suddenly excited by the possibility. Something he will be thinking about, many times, for the rest of the EA.

Tav: So what did you think about what I pictured when we were connected by the Weave? Gale: Oh, I was surprised. But pleasantly so, just like I said. Amid the madness that has befallen us, it seems almost out of place to think of a kiss/ of a romantic walk. And yet... now more than ever, it's important to recall what makes us human. [if Tav is not human] Well- you know what I mean. A stolen glance- that sudden heartbeat... Sometimes the little things are worth more than kingdoms. They promise things to come.

So romance was not something he had even considered until the opportunity arose (this is why he won't pursue a Tav who didn't show romantic interest towards him). I think that, since he is a character always living on the edge of death, he will take this opportunity to feel “human again”: after all, he follows the concept of "living life to the fullest".

During the Loss (see the post of the "Loss Scene"), we know that losing Mystra was a big blow for him. He regrets his decisions of the past in this scene, and it reinforced the idea that he is the only one to blame for Mystra's loss. There is a yearning for the lost Chosen powers, but Gale's context in the majority of his scenes seem to reinforce the idea that he sought power not as a means, but as a goal itself to be closer to Mystra and Magic. Since we are talking about a wizard, his passion lies in magic itself, in being one with the Weave/Magic/Mystra. A Chosen of Mystra is so entangled with the Weave and magic that when they die, they are part of the Weave itself. This is the level of passion that Gale has for Magic, and since Magic can only be performed by most mortals via Weave, and the Weave is Mystra, the whole three concepts are, in fact, one; and it makes it very difficult from a lore point of view to separate them.

Tav: There's something I don't understand. If Mystra abandoned you, how can you still cast magic? Gale: The Weave is still here, all around us – inside of us too. As long as the goddess lives, magic is a tangible thing for those who know how to touch. I've studied magic for many years, and in as many ways I am still a more than capable wizard. It's just that I'm no longer able to perform those feats even arch wizards would marvel at. To have one hand on the pulse of divinity. You have to remember that the Weave is a living thing, both the embodiment and the extension of Mystra herself.She can give and she can take away. I'm afraid I'm still very much on her naughty list. Consider yourself lucky you're not.

I personally think Gale will never stop being devoted to Mystra (and won't stop loving her in many ways), because his passion for magic and knowledge is his own life, and Mystra IS those things. He loves magic for the sake of it. So losing this unique contact with magic itself that only Chosen of Mystra have was a terrible punishment for him. His abandonment issues are not just the result of a “guy being left by a girl”. They have an extra complexity because of the nature of Magic in this world and how its deity behaves with her chosen. Gale was not only abandoned by Mystra, but was also removed of a good amount of his capacity to perform magic. If magic “is his life”, the abandonment removed a part of his life away. I think some people miss this point, because, once more, it's related to Forgotten Realm lore and not Dragon Age. Many of these people keep constantly comparing this situation with Dragon Age, which has nothing to do with it. Dragon Age has no wizards, their relationship with Magic is natural, it’s sorcerer-like if we want to compare it, and the relationship with their deities (mostly absent, silent ones) are nothing alike the ones in Forgotten Realm. The context is key, as I repeated several times in these posts and in the one about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation".

Tav: I don't know what to make of what you've told me, but I sympathise. Gale: Thank you. [no romantic weave] I want you to know that you’re a good friend. [romantic weave] I often think of that moment we shared together – one under the Weave. I hope you think about it too. /I'm glad to know you think about it too.

Narrator: You sense a moment of unspoken affection. You want to know where it may lead. Gale: I consider myself very lucky to have found you Tav: I think perhaps we could be more than friends Gale: Perhaps.

Tav: You said you think about the moment we shared under the weave. Do you think about it often? Gale: Do you? 1-2-Tav: Yes / From time to time. Gale: So do I. 3- Tav: Not really. Gale: And yet you ask. I do, as a matter of fact.

Gale: You see. I'm not a big believer in fate, but I do believe in serendipity. Life is a tempest of events that sometimes we brace against and sometimes embrace. You're one such event that one day soon perhaps I'd like to embrace.

So after sharing this regret during the Loss scene, Gale will show affection if Tav remains friendly during the Weave (but Gale will never directly engage it, he is waiting for Tav to give the first step; understandable if we consider he also has a dangerous bomb in his chest, so he may be torn between wanting to, but knowing he should not to). If there is no interest in pursuing romance, he will show a gesture of gratitude for being a good friend during that night of regrets.

If pursuing the romance, we can interpret that Gale, at this point, even though he is still struggling with all the emotions that Mystra inspires, wants to experience something more “human”, a romance with a mortal. We know for sure that Gale is getting interested, slowly, while thinking about it, since in each of the following scenes he will ask (or Tav will ask) about that “moment in the Weave”. He has been thinking about it for many nights, and he is “embracing” the idea.

If Gale is treated with judgement (despite not knowing his whole story) or allowing him to keep the secret of what or who he lost, we will obtain lines likes:

Gale: Good. Goodnight. And thank you for your patient understanding. // And try not to think too poorly of me. A cat can look at a king. A wizard can look at a goddess.

Tav: Another fool pays for his arrogance. A tale as old as time. Gale: Arrogance? Ambition, rather. And ambition is a fine thing – until suddenly it no longer is. Then again, if that is how you judge me, there’s little I can do to change your mind. But know that I have this ambition still. First to save myself, and after that, the licence to dream. (Gale Disapproval)

We could interpret these lines as the only ones so far that may suggest that Gale is still wanting something from the goddess. We know due to the tadpole dreams that Gale’s desire is Mystra. On the comments of the second tadpole dream we know more details about his major desire: it is not just Mystra, but her forgiveness.

Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams? Gale: She's... It doesn't matter. I just know her to be unreal. Tav: What's impossible about what you're been shown? Gale: Forgiveness Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams? Gale: It's indeed Mystra I see. And yet it cannot be her. There was a time when I would have believed - but no longer. I told you that I lost her. Lost her favour and lost so many of the powers I took for granted. What magic I can still weave is met only with undercurrents of disappointing silence. Mystra has not changed her mind about me. That's how I know our dreams are delusions.

I think this scene shows the difference between a standard desire for power as a means, and power for the sake of power itself (since this power allows Gale to be one with the Weave). The scene is ambiguous enough to see it as Gale wanting to return to Mystra’s side as well as remaining as an ardent devotee of her (because she is magic herself). I keep repeating that these scenes show that Gale’s most important thing in his life is Magic, which is Mystra: the extension and the embodiment of magic. So his desire for her seems impossible to be extinguished completely. In previous scenes we saw that he certainly had thought through the idea of loving her more like a devotee than a lover, but certainly the weight of being his first love will remain, especially since she is deeply related to magic itself.

During the Party Scene we find some information about his feelings for Mystra.

I personally ponder the book of Amn’s description as very important because, from a narrative point of view, it's a lot of lines/content that, if they were not important, tend to be removed from the script. If they are there, they are meant to be interpreted. For this reason those lines mean to me that Gale has finally embraced the idea of having something important with a mortal. In my post of the "Party Scene" I go into details, but here I will stick to the interpretation related to Mystra: all what Gale numerates in that book are things that he could not access to with a Goddess. Curiously, part of those descriptions are things that make humans human, so I personally think it reinforces Gale's intention in heading into this romance with the eagerness of finding some shelter (never forget the “orb” has a constant oppressing effect in him, increasing his anxiety and fears) and to experience (maybe for the first time) the love of a mortal.

So, for some assumptions made in the post of the "Party Scene", we suspect that Gale needs to share a night to feel confident enough to speak the details of his “orb” condition. Since he wants this relationship to be strong (after all, he implied commitment during the description of the book) he speaks about the true origin of the “orb” immediately after that night, starting with Mystra (which is, after all, the true origin of his folly). Depending on the version that Tav picks, we have extra information provided by Gale about his emotions for the Goddess:

Tav: What did Mystra’s attention feel like? Gale: Love. Perhaps it was not quite love, but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. [...] One day all too soon, the whispers stopped. The goddess spurned the mortal. [...] and the wizard was left behind heartbroken. Tav: I hate to say it, but he really could have seen this coming Gale: He was blinded by love. Good stories are rife with lovers’ follies after all.

[Short Version] Gale: Before long Mystra tired of me. What was I after all but a mortal plaything in sacred hands? You have to realise I was heartbroken. I was a young man, she was my first love. I thought it would last forever. I vowed to win her back.

[after explaining the mistake of the “orb”] Gale: It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through.. After the night we spent together. Surely we can brave even this side by side

Gale is giving a very detailed context about his love for Mystra: she was his first love, and the first love tends to have a special weight in a person's life and their memories. That doesn't mean the person has become unable to build more relationships for the rest of their life. If we add the fact that he was very young when all this happened (more details in the Post "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1") we find him under two effects: the impression of the first love and the naivety of the youth. Both elements made him believe it was a love that was going to last forever. With a Goddess, no less.

Besides, Gale expresses this, highlighting his naivety and foolishness: he is aware of how silly he was back then, and how impossible it could be for a mortal to keep the love of a goddess. He is a pragmatic and realistic character, after all. He recognizes in the end that he was just a mortal plaything for her.

I think these pieces of information give us a very clear context of his emotional state: he is still nostalgic for Mystra because of all the reasons I enumerated above; she is also more than just a woman, she is Magic itself. But he is aware that those emotions were the consequence of a very naïve and young self that has awakened by the burden of his own mistakes. There is also a reinforcement of “forever”, which recalls the concept of commitment that Gale pursues so much in his romance: he is not there just for the sex “intimacy”, he is there for serious commitment, maybe because he doesn't want to experience another abandonment. After all, we are talking about a character with a profile that shows abandonment issues (see the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Abandonment Issues")

[If rejected] Tav: No. This is too large a betrayal. GALE: I see. I am sorry. I am sorry that it had to come to this. All that’s left to say is farewell. Dev’s notes: hurt but understanding Gale: Farewell. (Leaves) Dev’s notes: A slight hesitation, hurt but understanding. He makes a polite little bow, then we see him walk away.

[If accepted] Gale: I don’t know what I did to deserve the magic that you do.

Despite being terribly cheesy, this last line shows that Gale was more than convinced that Tav would abandon him because he doesn’t deserve Tav. This is why he doesn't put up much fight if Tav chooses to tell him to leave. He will try to make Tav listen to his story, and once it's done, the verdict will fall and he will accept it. He learnt his lesson with Mystra. This line also shows how everything important around Gale is or has to be worded with magic, even a silly metaphor like this is related with the word “magic”: Tav's acceptance is like magic. For him, as important and good as magic itself.

As if that were not enough, after the scene there is a comment in which Gale will reinforce his gratitude for Tav's acceptance:

Tav: If you ever feel the netherese magic overtaking you, what will you do? Gale: If it should ever come to that... if I ever know I am no longer able to stop it... I will do anything I can to ensure no one but me pays for my mistakes. I will find the remotest place on the surface of Faerûn, or perhaps far below in the depths of the Underdark. I will await that death alone. [*] I promise I will not betray your trust... You kept me by your side despite the menace that I am. If worst comes to worst, I will be gone long before the curtain falls. [*] If romanced, Gale will say here "I cherish you."

Which makes me suspect that Gale can disappear at any moment (in full game) if for some game mechanics we are unable to get magical artefacts but the deal with Raphael did not happen (if that’s even possible). But that's just me speculating. Nothing in EA seems to suggest this. What i's clear is that acceptance—that strong concept in the book he put so much emphasis on—is really important to him, so he shows gratitude for that: he promises to protect Tav (and many innocents) from his own mistake. He also says pretty soon an equivalent of “I love you”, in a more formal/meaningful way: “to cherish” is not just to love, but to care/protect as well.

Finally, in case someone lost those hints, or maybe as a consequence of this unpolished scene, we have a direct question with a direct answer:

Tav: Gale, are you still in love with Mystra? Gale: I’ll be honest with you; I don’t know. She is my muse still, the embodiment of magic, but the embodiment of love? Only if we ever meet again will I know

Gale simply says what we have been inferring so far with all the previous information: Gale reinforces the idea that he will remain as a strong, loving devotee of Mystra, because she is magic. I personally don't even consider it possible to remove that love from him. He may not be a cleric, but he loves his deity as one. But he also learnt his lesson that loving gods has its own dire consequences for mortals. He is very aware of it during the discussion about Karsus:

Tav: Nothing good ever comes from mortals wanting to be gods.

Gale: Loving them has its side effects as well. Now, so many centuries later, I tried to follow in the footsteps of Karsus, not to destroy Mystra, but to prove my love for her. It tried to control only a fraction of the magic that was unleashed that fateful day. I merely sought to return one tiny diamond to an imperfect crown. Gale's Folly one might call it. History. Repetition. It's the way things go.

Once more, there is no scene where Gale doesn't reinforce that what he did was a mistake, a foolish action, a Folly.

Finally, if talking about a previous lover immediately after awakening with a new one was of poor taste, Gale acknowledges this, giving an honest apology:

Gale: Before we go on though, do first let me apologise. To share such a night with you only to tell you of a previous lover the next morning... It wasn't the most gentleman-like behaviour. But I had to finally tell you. Silence would have been far worse behaviour still. Nevertheless, I am sorry.

He accepts any rude response or lash-out from Tav without approval penalties. This is an interesting meta-knowledge that speaks about owning up to his mistakes. Unlike the Loss scene, where rude responses made Gale disapprove because Tav was judging him without knowing the whole story [16], in this scene he doesn’t. Now Tav has the whole picture, and he accepts whatever reaction Tav shows. Of course he will approve a forgiving Tav, since Gale is a character very related to forgiveness [12, 12b].

Conclusion:

So, answering the question that gives title to this section: yes. In my opinion, Gale loves Mystra. But it’s not a white-and-black love; it has the complexity of human love mixed with this crazy lore of deities in Forgotten Realms. I believe Mystra will always be part of Gale's life, because the Weave and magic are his life, and she is both. He will always love her as a devotee, even though he now understands the mistakes of his young self and seems more aware of how naive he was when he was a “very young man”. The comments on the second tadpole dreams explicitly show that what Gale wants the most is Mystra’s forgiveness, but at the same time, he knows that he does not deserve it. And this raw realistic view of himself is what makes him understand that those dreams are illusions. During the party scene he is uncertain about his emotions, but still he emphasises that there is a big chance for him to not see Mystra as the embodiment of love any more but reinforces that she will always be the embodiment of magic to him (a very important concept in his character design).

Whether Gale is romanced or not, I don't see a difference in the information he shares on this matter in EA.

This post was written in June 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

#bg3 meta #gale #gale of waterdeep #bg3 gale

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adobe-outdesign · 3 years

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I posted 3,458 times in 2021

1827 posts created (53%)

1631 posts reblogged (47%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.9 posts.

I added 4,152 tags in 2021

#five nights at freddy's - 673 posts

#bendy and the ink machine - 610 posts

#pokemon - 601 posts

#anonymous - 585 posts

#that's comedy - 489 posts

#entomology - 288 posts

#reblog 2: electric boogaloo - 242 posts

#ask - 241 posts

#fnaf: short stories - 216 posts

#video - 207 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#doesn't matter how many pics of rhinoceros beetles i see they're never gonna stop looking like sculptures to me and not actual living things

My Top Posts in 2021

my never ending search to acquire more and more obscure pieces of Pokemon media has lead me to understand some wild shit in gen 1 and 2. like anytime you think “oh that’s weird, why is [thing] like that” it’s probably either some obscure shit or something got changed in beta

for example, you know those weird-ass pokedex entries for Kadabra that are like “lol a kid turned into one of these once. no we’re not explaining anything”

well there’s this book in Japan called Pocket Monsters Encyclopedia released in 1996 that was never translated. It’s notable for basically being the Forbidden Adult Pokedex(TM) that we all want, as it has much longer ‘dex entries for each Pokemon along with more scientific data. While large portions have been retconned over the years, it offers some massive insight into what was going through the dev’s minds when writing this shit, and is 100% canon (for the time period it was written in).

anyway, while it was never translated, DidYouKnowGaming?, being the hero we all need, purchased a copy and had the same translator who translated the games themselves translate the book. Part 1 of the video is below, and I highly recommend you check it out if you like obscure vintage Pokemon shit.

youtube

Anyway, the point is that this is what it says about Kadabra:

FUCKING KAFKA. IN MY POKEMON. IT’S MORE LIKELY THAN YOU MIGHT THINK

So basically the ‘dex entries are referencing an in-universe book plot that’s a reference to The Metamorphosis, except due to a lack of space they fucking cut out the part about it being a book, which seems kind of important, but hey what do I know

(Side note: the ‘dex entries saying stuff like “it is rumored that” and “a theory exists” don’t quite line up with it being a book plot, so it’s possible this was retconned, or the book was based off an in-universe event. but this at least tells us why these weird-ass entries exist in the first place and that’s enough for me)

anyway the most important part of this is that the Abra line is confirmed to not be based on foxes, possums, or cats, but cockroaches. thank you for coming to my TED talk

3371 notes • Posted 2021-07-28 21:00:53 GMT

Pokemon except it’s like real animal taxonomy so there’s like 550 different species of Cutiefly that can only be separated by DNA tests

4199 notes • Posted 2021-06-07 21:01:26 GMT

okay was anyone gonnna tell me that this is how TMs look in FireRed/LeafGreen

can you imagine someone handing you a TM and you go “oh I know what to do with this!” and then smack it directly on your cat’s forehead

5516 notes • Posted 2021-09-30 21:01:43 GMT

Can asexuals feel lust for life? What about bloodlust? Lust for power? Lust to run wild? Or does nothing have power over you?

I can't speak for other aces but personally I constantly experience bloodlust

8790 notes • Posted 2021-08-12 02:22:06 GMT

I realize it’s just because they’re trying to introduce the audience to the concept of Pokemon and everything but nothing will ever be funnier to me than prof oak being like “these are creatures called Pokemon, they live in all sorts of environments!” like imagine if you met a biology professor and they were like ‘I’ve been studying these intriguing creatures called “animals”’

50822 notes • Posted 2021-04-30 21:00:53 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#pardon the ugly ass design tumblr slaps on these #mostly reblogging for my own reference and archiving purposes #the blog #statistics #my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #.gif

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hartofhearts · 3 years

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Tifa's Crescent Moon Charm, Round 2: A Romantic Literary Reference

As the cloti fandom has frequently discussed, Tifa’s Crescent Moon earring hints at her beauty, and the description of the Crescent Moon Charm hints at her feelings. However, the crescent moon might also refer to a Japanese literary quote--where the beauty of a moon is another way to say "I love you," and words aren't needed to express how you truly feel.

(Remake Tifa’s Crescent Moon Charm and Mature Dress, OG Tifa’s Wall Market Model and Concept Art; Remake images sourced from this Tweet)

Full disclosure: I do not speak Japanese nor have I ever lived in Japan, I just have Japanese friends who humor me.

Natsume Sōseki (1867 - 1916) was a well-known Japanese novelist. His portrait appeared on the Japanese 1000 yen note (comparable to a $10 bill) from 1984 - 2004, and the influential, world-famous writer Haruki Murakami named Sōseki as one of his inspirations. (Thanks Wikipedia!)

While there are several notable stories about Sōseki, there is one in particular that applies here. To quote from an article (that I’d highly recommend):

...as the story goes, Sōseki heard his student translate “I love you” from English into Japanese as “ware kimi o aisu.” He explains that “ware means I, kimi means you, and aisu means love. Thus, “I love you.” That is certainly a literal translation.

...Sōseki is reported to have responded: “Japanese people don’t use such an expression, you should say ‘the moon is beautiful isn’t it?’”

...Sōseki’s view was that any Japanese person could understand the true meaning behind “tsuki ga kirei desune” as a profession of love even though none of the words translate to “I” or “love.”

Also:

...[while] the literal meaning of “tsuki ga kirei desune” is “the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” ...in addition to the phrase’s literal translation, it might embody the additional meaning of “I love you.”

(Source: “The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei”)

The significance of this unusual translation and its implications are as follows:

Among the many quotes by Natsume Soseki, “Tsugi ga Kirei” stands as the most popular.... This phrase was used by Natsume Soseki as a form of saying “I love you”. For the writer, two people with deep feelings for each other do not need to use those three words to effectively convey their feelings. Sometimes, even the simplest phrases contain more emotion than direct ones.

(Source: The Story of Natsume Soseki and The Stories He Had Written)

Hmm, so those who have deep feelings for one another don’t need to say the exact words to express their love? That deep feelings can be conveyed without being so obvious and direct?

What’s that again, Tifa?

Anecdotally, a friend of mine who grew up in Japan told me that this line is like any semi-obscure literary reference. Some people will know it, some people won’t. For those who don’t know the literary reference, they would take the phrase at face value and miss the romantic intent. However, if both people know it and if the context is right, they’ll get the reference and the meaning.

So to summarize:

A famous Japanese writer...

Who was especially honored from 1984 - 2004 (coinciding with development of the game)...

Coined a distinctive moon-related phrase which translates to “I love you”...

Which today is interpreted as signifying how in Japanese culture, direct language may not be needed to express deep feeling.

Enter Tifa, a character who is not known for being direct with her locked away thoughts and feelings, who is often associated with the night and moon motifs. In a series where the devs are known to make tons of real-world allusions, is it so out there that they would purposely include this particularly thematic one?

Final thoughts:

I reiterate, I do not speak Japanese--I did my best to verify the content of this post by checking with a non-gamer friend who grew up in Japan (who very kindly and bemusedly explained this to me when I asked). I am not an expert, so please feel free to chime in if you see anything. If you want to learn more about the Soseki story, I do highly recommend this article.

There’s something a little bittersweet about this reference in contemporary times. If both parties know the reference and feel the same way and the context is right--if the conditions are perfect--the feeling will be expressed. If any of the conditions are unsatisfied, the feeling will not be understood. When Cloud receives his Crescent Moon Charm and when Tifa wears hers, the conditions are sadly not perfect (the Lifestream scene with all its implications hasn't happened yet). So this reference--and thus their feelings--cannot be conveyed. Poor Cloud and Tifa!

It’s interesting how the devs state Tifa is supposed to follow a Japanese aesthetic, and Aerith a Western one. It seems that Aerith similarly takes a Western approach to feelings and would directly state them, vs. Tifa who seems to take the more traditionally Japanese (per Soseki) approach and would be indirect with how she conveys her feelings.

Food for thought: apart from the above association between the moon and love, the Japanese word for moon (tsuki, 月 ) sounds similar to the Japanese word for like/have affection (suki, 好き ). This might be yet another reason for the moon shape. Friend-approved article on the significance of suki here.

Given how FFBE: WOTV chose to highlight the Crescent Moon Charm, we know it's an important item for the Cloti relationship at this point of the game. While I doubt a lot of weapons and items will carry over between Part 1 and Part 2, I would be very curious to see if the Crescent Moon Charm makes it. 🌙

#final fantasy vii remake #ffviir #final fantasy vii #ffvii #ff7 #ff7r #tifa lockhart #tifa #cloud x tifa #cloti

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horansqueen · 4 years

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Stuck With You - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Cruel To Be Kind

🡪chapter 1 🡪chapter 2 🡪chapter 3 🡪chapter 4 🡪chapter 5 🡪chapter 6 🡪chapter 7 🡪chapter 8 🡪chapter 9 🡪chapter 10 🡪chapter 11

College Enemies To Lovers AU

characters // masterlist // instagrams // mood board

Oh I can't take another heartache

Well I do my best to understand dear But you still mystify and I want to know why I pick myself up off the ground To have you knock me back down, again and again

click here to be on the update list

"Are you sure you can't do anything?" I asked with a begging voice and puppy eyes.

I knew it probably wouldn't change anything but I was ready to try anything to get an other room. I had waited over an hour to talk to someone who was in charge and then had to wait an other half hour to get an answer. Apparently, I was on a waiting list and they couldn't tell me when they would be able to assign me a new room on the girls' side. It all depended on when there would be a spot available, meaning that a girl had to move out, and obviously, they couldn't tell me when it would happen.

"I'm very sorry." the woman replied, making me sigh.

I could read in her face that she felt sorry for me, but she probably thought it was making me uncomfortable to be in the boys' building. If I wanted to be honest, I didn't really care if I was with boys or girls, I just wanted to be far from Niall. The longer I stayed near him, the more I realized that I actually liked him more than I should. I couldn't even think of what a whole year would do to my feelings.

"Alright, well thank you anyway." I replied, sending her a sad smile and turning around to leave.

It was horrible to think I was still stuck in the same room and I was pissed at myself for even mentioning it to Niall. He probably expected me to leave the room very soon and I was scared he'd be pissed at me for staying.

I walked out of the building as an other idea popped in my head and quickly, I took my phone out of my pocket. I started checking if there were rooms to rent off of campus but still close and I got very excited when I found a few. Unfortunately, they were expensive and I put my phone back in my pocket with a sigh after added them to my bookmarks. Perhaps, I could get myself a job to pay for a room, at least until a room in the girls' building would be available. The thought of moving out over and over made me grimace but at the same time, I knew it would help me not fall in love with Niall, and I was also well-aware of how bad he wanted me out.

I stopped in front of my room and stared at the door for a few minutes. The truth was, I was tired to fight with Niall but I knew it was inevitable. I knew that one of us would say something to annoy the other on purpose. We were both quite good at this game, and I was not in the mood for it. I was also a bit scared that I'd catch him naked on top of a girl again and although I knew it would probably help me with my goal of hating him, I also knew it would hurt me and I was even less in the mood for that. Slowly, I brought my hand to the knob but I felt my heartbeats accelerate and pressed my lips together before putting my palm on the door gently. I took a step closer, turning my head and trying to listen to what was happening on the other side. It seemed to be quiet and I breathed in before quickly turning the knob and walking in.

Niall was not there and the room was quiet. I blinked a few times and closed the door slowly as I was getting a notification. As I grabbed my phone, I realized how sweaty my hands were and how stressed this whole thing was making me.

'Dev, where are you?'

'Can I crash in your room tonight?' I just typed and sent, ignoring his question.

I watched the three dots move for a few seconds before I sighed of relief as I got his answer.

'Of course'

As Louis had mentioned to me, I was lucky that his roommate had recently got a girlfriend and was often gone a few nights in a row because we weren't sure if he would just accept to share the room with me. I had been crashing for two night already in his room, making sure that Niall was out whenever I needed to get something in our room.

When I received a text message in the morning, I groaned, a bit mad that I kept the sound of my phone on. I started late on wednesday's and I could really use more sleep. It was true that I spent my free time with Louis in his room, but most of the time, we were busy with studying and school projects. I was starting to think I was getting a bit on his nerves but I had a job interview in a few days and hopefully, I would get it and be able to rent a room. I hadn't talked to Louis about it because I knew he would try to talk me out of it and somehow, I knew he would succeed.

'7pm at the library'

I sighed when I read Daxia's message and closed my eyes again before sending her a thumb up and putting my phone away again. I lied down on my back, my head on Louis' pillow and I heard him groan next to me. Poor Louis, I was invading his room and invading his bed. It really was time I would give him his space back and find a new place to live.

"Sorry If I woke you up." I whispered, my eyes fluttering open.

"No, it's cool." he said in a husky voice. "Is everything okay?"

"Yea, It's just that project..." I shook my head a bit and shrugged. "I'm dreading this."

"No, you're stressed to see Niall again. You've been avoiding him for two days and knowing you, you'd keep doing it for months." he pointed out before clearing his throat. "This can't be mentally healthy, you know that, right?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Louis sighed and sat up, rubbing his eyes before sending me an annoyed face. "Are you kiddin' me? Dev, trying to hate someone that you actually have feelings for is not a healthy way to deal with this."

"What's the right way? Letting him hurt me over and over again?" I frowned, sitting up slowly. "Anyway, it's just a few hours, I've got this."

Rolling his eyes, Louis got up and searched through his stuff for a towel. "Okay, do as you please." he let out, shrugging a shoulder, but I could read a bit of anger in his voice. "If it changes anything, he likes you too, and he's trying to fight it too. You two are oblivious. And obvious. Oh you know what? You're also both obnoxious!"

"Any other adjective that starts with an 'O'?" I asked a bit rudely, making him turn his head quickly in my direction.

"Yes! Obstinate! And... and... overbearing!" he continued a bit louder. "And obscene, but that's a different story."

My eyes got bigger and a smile drew itself on my lips, making him chuckle. I grabbed one of his pillow and threw it at him, making him laugh even more as he turned a shoulder to block it.

"Shut up!"

"Heyyy, be nice!" he joked, raising his nose up. "I'm letting you sleep in my room so you owe me!"

I knew he was joking but my amused smile turned into a fond one. "I know, thank you Louis. Thank you so much."

I walked to the library a few minutes late and immediately noticed Daxia, sitting at a table a bit further, her books spread on it as she scribbled something quickly. I walked up to her but it took her a few seconds to notice me and she just sent me a small smile as she gathered all her books.

"Good, you're finally here." she whispered, getting up. "Come on, I reserved us a room so we don't bother everyone and we can talk a bit louder."

I nodded and followed her for about half a minute but when I stepped foot in the room, my smile fell and my heart sank. Niall was already there, sitting at the table with Asher, and I had no idea that seeing him again would make my heart drop in my stomach. He looked up at me, the same damn lock of his hair falling on his forehead before he passed his hand in his hair, pushing it back. I held my breath when out eyes met until I realized Daxia took a seat next to Asher and I was the only left standing up. I cleared my throat and took the only seat left, which, of course, happened to be next to Niall.

After a bit more than two hours, we had managed to put both parts of the project together (the one Niall and I had worked on, and the one Asher and Daxia wrote), and we were working on a conclusion.

"Devon, you can not seriously tell me that Dali was the most important surrealist painter of all times!" Niall argued firmly with a small chuckle, shaking his head. "Without Breton, surrealism wouldn't even exist!"

"That is the most stupid thing I've heard today!" I let out, feeling slightly insulted.

"He's the founder of it all!" Niall continued, getting his back straight and frowning at me. "Argue with that!"

"He founded the movement!" I corrected him. "And being the first doesn't mean being the best!"

"This is ridiculous, you're delusional!"

"Now, that's an argument!" I replied with sarcasm. "And Dali was the only one who didn't need drugs to paint!"

"So he was insane even sober? Big deal!"

"SHUT. UP!"

Niall and I stopped immediately at Asher's voice but we kept looking at each other, and something in my stomach stirred. Despite the fact that I believed in what I was saying, I would normally have a calm conversation and probably even agree on some of the things he said. But it was Niall, and I had to do everything to hate him, right?

If I wanted to be honest, though, I had enjoyed our discussion and it would have been near perfection if we hadn't almost yelled at each other.

"You know what? I'll just finish the last few sentences by myself." Daxia proposed with a sigh before getting up. "I think we're all a bit tired."

Asher did the same and finally, Niall and I got up at the same time. We walked out of the library and when I heard my name, my heart skipped a beat. Why did it sound so special in his mouth?

"Need a ride?" he added after I turned to look at him.

The left corner of my lips raised up and I nodded once as we walked together to his car.

"Thank you." I told very low, glancing at him.

"No problem."

We remained silent until he parked his car and he finally turned to me, raising his eyebrows. "You know there's actually no proof that Dali didn't do drugs, right?"

"He used other methods." I shrugged.

"Doesn't mean he didn't also do drugs." he explained, making me tilt my head. "Besides, painters were the worst. They were always drunk or high, especially surrealist painters. You just like Dali's methods because they were... well, they were insane but unique."

I sent him a small smile and shrugged. "Maybe."

"Did you ever try?" he asked, raising his eyebrows with a smile. "Like, staying an hour on your head or, that spoon thing?"

This time, I chuckled and shook my head. "No, I don't work with dreams or images. I mostly work with my feelings."

"That's bold, don't you think? That means people can literally see your soul."

My heart skipped a beat and i lost my smile before swallowing hard. "You do it too with your music." I pointed out in a whisper. "People can hear your soul."

"Touché." he breathed out with a sad smile. "It's a big deal to share that with the world, isn't it?"

"Yes."

I leaned my head on the seat, my upper body turned his way, and when his eyes met mine, I remembered that time he drove Louis and I back to our room. I remembered the kiss and the way he was gentle and sweet. I wanted him to always be like that with me.

"Where were you for the past two nights?"

"I was not even sure you noticed I wasn't there." I chuckled.

"I did." he replied, glancing at his hands on the wheel before looking back at me. "I thought maybe you took a break and went to your parents' or something. I mean you were pretty pissed."

My smile vanished and this time, the image that came back in my head was Niall naked on top of a girl. I swallowed the lump in my throat and cleared it, looking away.

"I was not... I was not pissed." I just replied, a bit scared that he'd ask more about it. After all, I couldn't tell him I was jealous and hurt, right? "I was not very far, I was in Louis' room."

Silence. I finally looked up at him and his face had completely changed. He stopped the car and opened his door as I did the same and followed him.

"Good, well you should sleep there tonight too." he let out rudely, not looking at me.

"Why?"

"You said to tell you when I'd have a girl over?" he added, raising his eyebrows as we walked up the stairs. "Well there will be a girl over in our room tonight."

"Oh."

He unlocked the door and threw his keys on his bed, turning swiftly to me and crossing his arms on his chest. He looked mad and it hurt me more than I wanted to admit. That was exactly why I had to hate him, but it was probably one of the hardest thing I tried to do in my life.

"Grab your stuff, alright? Louis is probably waiting for you."

I stared at him for about a minute, remaining motionless, and finally grabbed a few things. He didn't move and when I was ready to go, I stood in front of him but he was avoiding my eyes.

"Well, goodnight I guess." I murmured and shrugged. "Thanks for the ride, too."

Without thinking, I took a step closer and got on my tiptoes. His eyes finally met mine and his angry expression turned into a surprised one. I kissed his cheek softly, my lips barely touching his skin but I still could feel his stubble scratch my chin anyway. I felt my heart jump in my throat at how bold I was and got back on my feet quickly.

"That was a nice discussion."

I could tell him that I hoped he'd have a great time, but it would be a lie, so I pressed my lips together and took a step back.

"When we didn't yell at each other, yea, it wasn't so bad." he added.

The left corner of my lips raised up in a sad smile and I nodded. It was nice to see a soft expression on his face instead of anger and I breathed in, turning around and leaving. I closed my eyes right after I closed the door and tried to hold back the tears inside. What the fuck was I doing? I was supposed to hate him, and not let my emotions invade me and get the best of me.

Why was I trying so hard not to cry that my throat actually hurt from it? Why did it matter if Niall was going to have sex with an other girl? It's not like I was an option in his mind anyway. But the question that echoed in my head over and over again was, why did it hurt me instead to make me hate him?

I jumped and got out of my thought when my phone made a sound. I knew it was Louis and I just breathed in and out a few times, trying to get back to my senses. I didn't want to bother Louis with my feelings again, and I was not in the mood to have a discussion about Niall. Daxia was right, we were tired. In fact, I was exhausted. I had no idea how I'd manage to go to class, study, work on project, paint and work all at the same time. There had to be an other option but I couldn't seem to find it and I just took a few steps before knocking softly on Louis' door. I could find a solution tomorrow, and anyway, it was not like my brain was functioning properly anyway.

I couldn't stop thinking about Niall and what he was about to do, and my heart ached every single time I thought about what I had seen before. It was one thing to imagine it, but when it was an actual image from an actual memory, it was even worse.

Louis was almost already asleep when I step foot in his room. I just put sweatpants and a hoodie on and joined him in bed without a word. I was tired but I couldn't seem to fall asleep and when I did, I couldn't stop the nightmares from taking over my mind. Maybe I should actually paint from my dreams, too, just like Dali. But then, my painting would only involve a broken heart and two naked forms.

#niall horan #niall horan fluff #niall horan smut #niall horan fanfic #niall horan fan fic #niall horan fanfiction #niall horan fan fiction #niall horan story #niall horan writing #niall horan au #niall horan college au #niall horan enemies to lovers #niall horan uni au #my fanfics #swy

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rpgmgames · 5 years

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March’s Featured Game: acai cOrner

DEVELOPER(S): moca & Mitty ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003 GENRE: RPG, Adventure, Surreal SUMMARY: acai cOrner is about Mizuki, someone who has fallen into the sewers and who happens to find their favorite electric guitar! Upon obtaining the guitar, Mizuki turns into a magical girl who must defend herself against spooky sewer creatures using the guitar's magical powers.

Download the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *moca: Hi, I'm moca, a Starbucks barista aspiring to be a writer and game developer. I have been making RPG Maker games for about six years now, with my first two projects being a Pokémon fan-game and a Corpse Party fan-game. Those two happen to be my two favorite franchises as well! I have also created the RPG Maker game MOMOKA (IGMC 2018). I have founded a group called 'Team Shibu!' dedicated to making horror games! Our current project is a RPG Maker survival horror game named 'Katharsis'.

*Mitty: Hey there, I'm Mitty! I've been working with Moca on several games for a while now, helping with mostly graphics! Please support him, as he is very kind and hardworking!! I'm also the main developer of a game called "Marinette", so I hope you'll check that one out too, when the demo is released!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *moca: acai cOrner is an experimental spooky RPG Maker game that only uses 4 colors! You are a magical girl with a just-as-magical electric guitar that you use to fend off spooky sewer slimes and other weird enemies you find in the surreal sewer system. It's half exploration and half RPG battles. What inspired me to create acai cOrner initially was to actually get myself back into the groove of making games again. I had just recently came back from a hiatus and found myself having trouble getting back into the development of 'Katharsis'. That's when I decided to make a short, experimental game to get the juices flowing.

How long did you work on your project? *moca: acai cOrner was finished in just about under a month!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *moca: I had always wanted to make a Yume Nikki-like game and thought this was the perfect opportunity to try. So for the more surreal parts of acai cOrner, I took inspiration from Yume Nikki and a Homestuck random planet generator. Gameplay wise though, I took inspiration from a RPG Maker game called Ghost Suburb 0! I really loved how unique it was, especially with the timer and no dialogue aspect. I knew I wanted to do something with a timer, so I tried a rogue-like approach with the gameplay.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *moca: If you played any of my previous projects, you know that acai cOrner is vastly different than anything that I have ever done. I'm so used to using words to describe the violence in my games, so when it came to making the story, I had a lot of trouble. It wasn't until I looked deeper into why people like these types of games that I had realized that people like to interpret the story on their own, guided by exploration, to enjoy these games. After that, I let loose a bit and made something more open-ended. Another challenge was the difficulty. I was the only one playtesting the game, and since I knew the game front and back, and had no trouble getting the ending. That's why when I sent out demos to friends, I was really discouraged to hear that the experience was mostly frustrating and rage quitting-inducing haha. I worked closely with their feedback and made changes accordingly to make the experience less frustrating but still difficult. *Mitty: I think I was going through a weird artblock during the development of the game, so for some of the illustrations and backdrops for each area's fights, Moca sketched out the basic idea of what it could look like, and I just put my spin on it! It made the work much easier and faster!

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *moca: Well, the game was meant to be short so there wasn't room for any big changes. Sure there are a couple gameplay changes and enemy tweaks, but not anything mindblowing. I added in the idea of making four surreal worlds kinda last minute, if that counts, haha.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *moca: In the beginning, it was just me! I didn't think I was gonna need any outside help since this was supposed to be a relatively easy project to release, but the further in development I got, the more I realized the game needed pizazz. The four color limitation wasn't enough for my lack of graphical talent. That's when I contacted Mitty about helping with the games battle backdrops and sprite animations! She is also a member of Team Shibu!, but we have collabed together even before that. Her art really made the project shine and I enjoy working with them on games! *Mitty: Moca contacted me, and I wanted to help! We are working together on another game called Katharsis, so we are quite familiar with each other. I like working with other people, especially if I'm not in the lead, it releases a bit of the pressure I feel sometimes ahaha

What is the best part of developing a game? *moca: To me, it's seeing everything come together and just... working exactly the way you envisioned it. As a game developer, you section the game off into parts to make development much more organized and faster but seeing it all come together in the end. Pure bliss *chefs kiss*. *Mitty: I like a bit of everything, but currently I've been enjoying animating and spritework, as well as map assets' designs a little more than usual!

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *moca: Mm... not really! I have an idea of what the engine can do, so when I do go out of my way to player other RPG Maker games, it's usually for writing inspiration rather than gameplay inspiration. Ghost Suburb 0 is something that I accidentally stumbled upon and immediately fell in love with it the minute I played it haha. (Fun fact: the developer of Ghost Suburb 0 is apart of Team Shibu! and is in charge of monster design!)

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *moca: There is a rat in the game that is internally called 'Ratthew' who leads you into a funky room. I relate them the most. *Mitty: I relate to the land sharks the most on a spiritual level. They are pretty much confused beans, and that's very relatable.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *moca: I wish I added more random spooky events and trap rooms. But the game was also supposed to be short and I knew that if I kept adding more and more things, development was never gonna end haha.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *moca: Well, by the time this interview comes out, there should be a new update for the game. The update should include 100% custom music by a talented composer, and a nerf in difficulty. As for sequels, who knows! The next time you see acai cOrner may be in 3D.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *moca: Definitely the fan reaction! The satisfaction of seeing your work being noticed by people and actually enjoying makes me happy. It's also the relief of just... finishing something! *Mitty: For this particular project I was obviously looking forward to seeing what people said about the little animations and such ahaha! I also was curious about the reaction to the timed difficulty mechanic, I had never seen anything like that before Moca presented it to me, so I had no idea on what people's feedback would be.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *moca: How people will handle the difficulty. The game isn't supposed to be completed on your first playthrough, but in 2-3 playthroughs. There are rooms and places that are meant to waste your time that you should ideally skip the more you play. By later playthroughs, you should be shaving time and be better. I understand that it's not handled as best I could, but I think the experience should still be challenging and hopefully fun! *Mitty: I was a little conflicted on the timed mechanic, I loved it because it's pretty original and helps set an interesting athmosphere of worry and unease, and also seems to tell a bit of the vague story; and at the same time I don't like it much because I prefer more story-driven games and the vagueness mixed with the mechanic feels different from what I'm used to playing! I think it's more of a personal taste kind of thing, it was an experimental jam game, after all!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *moca: Take it easy! Take short breaks throughout development. And most importantly, have fun. If it's a hobby and it's making you overly stressed, just take a step back!

Question from last month's featured dev @ressurflection: What would you say is the weakest part of your game development? *moca: Procrastination. I'm so bad at sticking to my own schedule, it's something that I try to keep in check when working with a team especially.

We mods would like to thank moca & Mitty for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out acai cOrner if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpg maker #acai corner #acai corner game #rpg maker games #pixel games #indie games #gotm #game of the month #march #march 2020 #2020 #moca #mitty #interview #needles

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marai-posts · 4 years

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Do you have survivor predictions? Who? How many?

You wanna know? You wanna hear my ramblings driven by psychology, character studies and paying WAY too much attention to game decisions made by the devs?

Well since you asked >:3

Alright let's get into my character survival predictions for the remaining Ultimates!!

Also I know this is the last Dangan game for a while so I'm actually assuming there will be less survivors then usual ( plus the rules suggests as much ) so a lot of these 'predictions' are me just understanding that most of these people are gonna be killed.

But let's start the theories, shall we?

Obviously Shuichi lives, so he takes up a slot.

I'll begin with Kokichi and Miu since they're my faves. I'll be blunt here:

These two are gonna die.

Miu for sure, I can't imagine a final trial with Miu popping off at the mouth every five seconds so she's def gonna kick the bucket

RIP Miu Iruma 100% gonna die sorry you are a hot mess and I love you but you gotta go

Kokichi is the 'rival' character so he has a coin flip chance whether he'll live or die. They 'killed' ( ? ) Nagito but they left Byakuya alive so idk if they'll spare Kokichi but they probably won't cause they like to hurt me

So Kokichi has a 60% chance he'll die but he better die for a reason or I'm gonna be pissed

Next, Korekiyo,,, okay look. I love him, I love his design and I wish he would survive but you know what? He's not gonna.

Everyone knows he's gonna kill someone. Even the game looked at this dude and was like oh yeah he'll kill someone. I'm sure it'll be heart tugging and the execution will be beautiful but I'm just saying if he becomes the focus during any point in the next chapters during that class trial I'm gonna have him pegged as the killer sorry

So yeah 100% gonna be executed

Keebo...is too cute. I want him to live so bad. But he's really sweet so he probs won't??

Like, I'd enjoy him being a survivor and there's a small chance and stuff, but tbh I'm not gonna get my hopes up cause I actually like him a whole lot and if I let myself believe he'll survive it's gonna hurt more if he doesn't

I'm leaving him 50/50 for the sake of hope

Let's do Kaito too, cause I'm pretty fond of this man right now. So it's clear Kaito is not gonna be a survivor for one reason. Him and Shuichi are really close. Like, really close. So close you have to wonder if they're setting up a more impactful death...

My guy deserves better but 98% gonna die

Next is...

Gonta. Gonta Gonta Gonta.

On one hand it's hard to imagine anyone killing him, and I'd be really surprised if he kills someone else, but I also can't imagine him as a survivor? So for this one I really dont know. We all thought Mechamaru couldn't be killed but he got murked so

70% chance he'll die, but I hope I'm wrong

Okay these next two are important:

Tenko is gonna die. She def deserves better but I'm gonna be straight up; she'll die.

I actually wanna talk about this first because it leads into my Himiko prediction.

So she's being built around her love of Himiko and while the kid doesn't even appreciate her right now, if they get closer I imagine she'll be used for development. Tenko is kinda being disrespected by the game and I'd love for her to grow outside of Himiko, but,,

100% killed for Himiko development

On that note, Himiko. I'm gonna be honest, right now I don't like her very much. I'm sure she'll grow on me but at this point in the story she's lowkey rude to Tenko and it bothers me. But that being said, every single game there's a character I think absolutely nothing of and they end up surviving. I usually like them by the end of the game but still. It never fails. I thought nothing of Hagakure the entire 1st game and guess what? He lived. I didn't care for Kazuichi all that much (even thought I love him now) and he also lived. My gut is usually right so I'm gonna throw my neck out there and say she's a survivor babey!! Even though there's definitely better characters that they could keep alive but I probably just need to see where she goes as a person. Rn she's just,, irritating :/ but they're setting her up for some heavy character development so idk

Or I could be totally wrong?

Either way Himiko 95% sure she's a survivor

The other 5% is because she could become an easy target if Tenko/Angie dies in an impactful enough way to make her lose her spirit and just mope around waiting to be murdered tbh she's short maybe Gonta accidentally steps on her or smthn

ANYWAY

Moving on to Angie! I have no idea! :D

She's cute and funny and has a lot of energy but if they keep Himiko alive then she'll probably end up sleeping with Atua.

Sorry Angie depending on where Himiko goes you're either a survivor or a victim. So I'll also place her 50/50 with Keebo

Okay next is Maki, and I'm also gonna say she has Great Potential to survive.

She's Special, and the game likes her so I wouldn't be surprised. I could see her in a final trial setting, plus she reminds me of Toko in the sense that everyone expects her to kill but she won't bother, and no one could kill HER so she just ends up surviving the whole game because she just does her own fuckass thing until the games over lmao

She definitely is Important and I'm pretty sure she's gonna play a part in the final trial. Plus I like her so: 100% she's a survivor.

Okay.............

Alright......

Listen...

I saved Tsumugi for last because ever since I MET her I've been side eyeing the fuck out of her and since then I've been keeping a really REALLY close eye on her....and I'm about to drop either a TOTAL crackhead theory or I ruined the last trials reveal for myself AGAIN WHY DO I DO THIS

And NO ONE is to confirm this in any way okay, I don't wanna know if I'm right yet

But that being said;;;

Tsumugi is the Mastermind.

HEAR ME OUT

Every single character we've met so far actually had a solid act, I understood each of their roles in Danganronpa's favorite trope game but Tsumugi...is just weird.

She has no presence, and only talks to say something odd, and she's immediately glossed over at all times. I've looked over the characters trying to imagine each of them as the Mastermind and she's the only one who like,, feels like there's way more too her then just 'strange' and I've called the mastermind Every Single Game so I'm pretty sure,, I just fucked myself over,, my bad guys,,

Anyway putting her aside, the final results:

100% Survivors: Shuichi and Maki

Possible Survivors: Himiko or Angie

I want them to live so bad but they probably won't and I'm crying: Kokichi and Keebo

I'm sad about it but they're still gonna die: Miu, Korekiyo, Kaito, Gonta and Tenko

Sus: TSUMUGI

Alright now that I've revealed my thoughts on this I'd appreciate if everyone complied and didnt confirm anything I've said

These are just my personal thoughts and whether I'm right on the money or completely and utterly incorrect, I'd like to keep as much of it as a surprise as I can keep from my gremlin prediction brain so,,

Thanks for your understanding!

#danganronpa #danganronpa spoilers #danganronpa v3

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100 7x12 The Stranger

This is an episode I’ve enjoyed a lot more on rewatch than the first time. Which I kind of expected. The first time, I really didn’t like it, but this was mostly because I was too impatient to see Bardo and Bellamy, and really didn’t have patience for the Sanctum scenes, which again took up so much of the episode, or focus while watching them - that is, I did at the beginning, but not in the second half o the episode.

In fact, there was nothing that bad about the Sanctum scenes, and I enjoyed many of them on rewatch, but this storyline is simply not as interesting as the one about the Anomaly, Bardo and the Disciples, especially now when Bellamy has returned and just had a most dramatic character transformation, 5 episodes before the end of the show. And that’s been the main problem of the season so far: pacing. Jumping from one plot to another works when you have two equally interesting and exciting stories, and that really isn’t the case here.

It also didn’t help that this episode - by a first time writer - had too much clunky dialogue, such as so many times when characters were recapping events to each other:

Indra recaps to Memori what happened in a scene we saw 5 minutes earlier (at least this was brief)

Hope recaps her life story to Jordan, which we already saw in 7x02 and 7x04 and heard retold 7x07

Madi recaps what happened to her on Earth (to be fair, we did not actually see that on screen)

Bellamy recaps not just 7x11, but also season 3 and season 6

Murphy recaps 7x03 to Nikki

Now, some of this was probably necessary, but some of it wasn’t exactly - for instance, did we really need to hear Hope’s life story again? The scene was very nice, but we could’ve just have Hope tell Jordan “Dev was my friend” and assume she already told him who he was. This wouldn’t bug me if it was just one scene, but it was so many of them in the same episode. It’s OK to have characters sometimes learn info off-screen, especially when there’s just a few episodes remaining. It’s not that there isn’t enough time left to resolve all the storylines - there are 4 episodes left, about the same net amount of screentime as the entirety of Avengers: Endgame - but the show needs to pick up the pace.

It could’ve been a better episode, especially considering the fact that some big things happened, and the storylines finally converged by the end of the episode, setting up potentially exciting final 4 episodes.

On the more positive note - it was very interesting to see Bellamy’s conversation with Cadogan and his repressed but clearly conflicted emotions in his scenes - first with Echo and Raven, and later with Clarke and Octavia, and his attempts to find reconcile his new faith with his desire to save the people he loves. And on rewatch, I enjoyed a lot of the other scenes -nice character moments with Madi and her friends, and with Jordan and Hope, cute moments with Memori, or even Murphy’s confrontation with Nikki, though I would’ve enjoyed some of them better if they had happened in some other episode earlier in the season.

Bardo

Bellamy is now in full-blown Disciple mode, wearing one of those ridiculous white robes, similar to what Doucette wears, even though Bellamy is not a Conductor or a science-oriented person like Gabriel, hasn’t gone through any Disciple training and isn’t even Level 1 (as seen by the lack of the marks on his face). He is clearly being treated as one of the top Disciples anyway, one of Cadogan’s inner circle, which may be justified by the fact that he has gone through the Etherea pilgrimage. We know that Cadogan’s pilgrimage is a big deal in Disciple religion, which would raise both his and Doucette’s status, but he is also, of course, important to Cadogan because of his connection to Clarke and the “Key”.(Sidenote: I don’t think anyone has been appointed the new First Disciple after Anders’ death. The job of the FD was to act on behalf of the Shepherd and lead in his absence, and wake him up every 20 years to update him on the progress of the search for the Key and the Final Code. Now that Cadogan is there to lead himself, he has no need for a deputy anymore.)

He is also getting to have one-on-one talks with Cadogan. This scene is one of the most interesting in this episode. Bellamy is incredibly repressed, with subdued feelings, but those emotions are still simmering and coming through on his face and in his voice, thanks to Bob’s great acting. Bellamy gives Cadogan condolences for Anders’ death, and Cadogan replies that he really barely knew and didn’t care about Anders, which we knew already. Cadogan interprets this as Bellamy testing him if he has any attachments. I don’t know if that is true or just how Cadogan read it, or if Bellamy assumed Cadogan and his FD must have been close, and/or if he was doing it so he could bring up the issue of his friends, who are supposed to be executed for “their” crimes. (Which are really just Echo’s and Hope’s crimes, but the Disciples seem to have decided they bear collective responsibility, even though many of them tried to stop it - and no one is disputing it.) Cadogan goes on about how trying to suppress attachments and emotions is a long way and says he is still struggling with it after doing it for hundreds of years. (No, Bill, you haven’t been even conscious for hundreds of years. You were in cryo. Shut up.) He says Bellamy reminds him of his son Reese/ Since Bellamy and Reese are nothing alike, I can only interpret this as Cadogan trying to manipulate Bellamy by presenting himself as a father figure. I thought at first that he may really have meant it because he assumed Bellamy would be as loyal to him as Reese was - but that’s clearly not true, since the end of this episode shows that Bill does not fully trust Bellamy.

Bill thinks that Callie must have killed Reese, since he apparently can’t see any other reason why Reese never got to bring him the Flame. It says a lot that 1) he assumes that 1) Reese always remained loyal to him and that 2) Callie would be willing to kill her brother. He always put them against each other and made them fight as children. And he doesn’t even entertain the thought that Reese may have had any character growth and changed his mind. I have a feeling he may be wrong on both accounts.

But Bellamy is good at manipulating Cadogan, too, in order to save his friends - he realizes that Bill’s family is his weak spot. Cadogan was not entirely convinced by Bellamy’s suggestion that the Flame can be repaired, but he was affected - even if he didn’t admit that - when Bellamy told him he may find out what happened to his children through the Flame. I’m not entirely sure if Bellamy believes that 1) the Flame can be repaired (which may or may not happen) and 2) the Commanders' memories would still be there (which doesn’t make a lot of sense and seems unlikely). He is very sincere about his faith, and he says later he can’t lie to the Shepherd, so he wouldn’t be lying... But he is clutching at straws to save his loved ones, maybe even trying to convince himself. And there’s also the fact that he does lie to Cadogan later, during Clarke’s MCap.

We then see two conversations Bellamy has with the people close to him - the first one is with his Spacekru family: his girlfriend Echo and his long-time friend Raven. The second one is with Clarke and his actual family, Octavia. The Disciples again made sure to put characters in cells for two people, but we don’t get to see Bellamy talk to Miller and Niylah (even though the scene was filmed, as we saw in the promo pictures). I hope that scene was not cut due to time - considering how much screentime was used up by the Sanctum storyline, again, and these characters are constantly getting short-changed. But I think it may have instead been cut because of the story structure - to focus on just these two scenes. What’s more, Raven’s role is much smaller than Echo’s in the former scene as she leaves early, and, surprisingly, Octavia plays a secondary role in the latter, which is mostly focused on Bellamy and Clarke’s interaction. And considering how the former scene was changed from the script, - Bellamy’s emotions toned down, Bellamy not explaining his experiences to Echo and Raven as he does later to Clarke and Octavia - which made the contrast between the two scenes stronger, I think the intention was to focus mostly on Bellamy’s relationships with Echo and Clarke, and that the compare and contrast was deliberate.

Throughout both of these scenes, Bellamy insists that he is trying to save everyone from death, while also being true to his faith, but his loved ones, understandably, are shocked by this new Disciple Bellamy, who feels like a stranger, and who is acting as one of their captors and is even willing to let them be put in MCap against their will. He notably does not answer the question Echo asks - if he is ready to watch them die, which is a strong possibility if his attempts to placate Cadogan don’t work. Instead he just says “You know that’s not what I want”, which doesn’t answer the question. Maybe because he is not sure yet what the answer is. But he does answer one other question...

In his talk with Raven and Echo, Bellamy shows emotions (including concern when noticing Echo’s scars), but they are very subdued, and he eventually makes it clear that, if push comes to shove, he is prioritizing his new faith over his people. Raven reacts with typical Raven anger, and throws the words "So much for family" in Bellamy’s face (echoing what Bellamy himself said to Miller in season 5 - "So much for the 100"). Echo is also indignant but tries to plead with him, hoping to bring back old Bellamy in him - without any success. Which may be seen as a sign of how strong Bellamy’s indoctrination is... but looking a little beneath the surface, a lot of what she says makes me wonder how well she knew the old Bellamy in the first place. Bellamy, on his part, asks Echo to believe in him and be on his side, but his argument is to appeal to her feelings for him (”I am the man you love”), expecting her trust and loyalty without really offering anything in return, such as, say, some promise, some mention of his feelings for her. Echo tells him about how obsessed she was with saving him... and then avenging him - she is really channeling S2 Finn with how she refers to her genocide attempt as a grand romantic gesture and sign of love that he should appreciate. Even if Bellamy was his old self, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be happy to hear that. Disciple Bellamy remains stone-faced and gives her only a flat “I’m sorry you had to go through that”.

(And this is what annoys me about this scene and this storyine in general: somehow, Echo is made to look morally superior, after having murdered and betrayed multiple people this season an some two days after she murdered people as a way to torture Levitt and almost committed genocide, and no one has any time to even mention that or blame her for anything. If Bellamy had done a fraction of her actions, it would’ve turned into a huge story of guilt and Bellamy being blamed and needing to redeem himself forever.)

But regardless of how you see these characters’ respective arcs, one thing is clear: they are on completely different wavelengths. Echo mentions how she tried to keep her identity by scarring her face - but that scarring was an Azgeda custom; the core identity she was trying to preserve was that of an Azgeda warrior/spy, which is hardly something to mention as a positive thing to Bellamy. Not only does it have nothing to do with them as a couple or as a team/”family”- her Azgeda spy/warrior identity made her Bellamy’s enemy and caused him a lot of trauma. This is either some weird and bad writing, or an intentional attempt to show the cracks in this relationship that have been there all along. Bellamy, on his part, seems to think Echo will understand the appeal that this faith has for him - a promise of “no more war, no more killing”. Why does he think this is something that would appeal to her? Fighting and killing for her “people” and her “King” and fulfilling her mission is what she lives for, even after having spent 11 years in peace.

Throughout this scene, Echo looks very emotional, especially by her standards, while Bellamy is incredibly restrained. She finally asks him point blank “Is this (his faith) more important than us?” This is a very ambiguous line, because the pronoun “us” can be understood as “all of us, your family/friends” or “you and me/our relationship”. There’s been a debate on which one she meant - I even created a Twitter poll about it (where about 2/3 of voters said they thought she meant their relationship). I can see both of these interpretations, but the intimate way she said that line and the way she was looking at him make me think that she meant “us” as in their relationship. Either way, the fact that Bellamy - after a pause - unambiguously answered “Yes”, makes it pretty clear that this relationship is over. I find it hard to see any future in this relationship even if/when Bellamy stops drinking the Kool-Aid. I do think someone will be able to get to him, but it won’t be Echo.

Echo cries after he has left (which I feel was much more in character than if she had been crying during their talk, as in the script.). Back in 7x04, Echo asked Orlando: “ It must be hard to dedicate your whole life to something that may never come.” I’ve always felt that was foreshadowing for Echo’s own arc - with the way she was saying she wouldn’t know what to do without Bellamy. I didn’t expect their relationship to end for this reason - but this is a much stronger blow for Echo than if they had just broken up for more mundane reasons. She didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost her king. If her arc is to make any sense, the show will have reflect on her life, identity and priorities and her find some purpose in life that’s not about Bellamy or serving another leader.

Octavia and Clarke are together in another cell - and we get a brief interaction, where Octavia tells Clarke she “finally understands” her, because she knows what it’s like to have a child you’re desperate to protect. I’m not too fond of this line, because it feels kind of obvious but also reductive - “I finally understand you” makes it sound like she finally understands who Clarke always has been, since she met her in season 1, which doesn’t make sense. It’s reducing Clarke to the role of the mother, and it would make a lot more sense if Octavia said she now understood the post-Praimfaya Clarke. But understanding was never an issue between them in season 5 - Clarke was simply standing in Blodreina's way. It was back in seasons 1-4 that Octavia had trouble understanding Clarke and her decision as a leader - something that she probably understood when she became a leader herself, responsible for a bunch of people.

Bellamy’s second big confrontation is with Clarke and Octavia. And in this one, Bellamy was much, much more openly emotional, much more vulnerable. This time, he not only told his experience to his sister and Clarke - he is now desperately pleading with Clarke to believe in him. He doesn’t bring up her feelings for him, but their connection and - in a way - his feelings for her, what he did for her, the fact he did not give up and brought her back to life in S6. They are both yelling and looking in pain and with tears in their eyes. He isn’t shouts “I am trying to save you, all of you!” But this is not about Clarke believing in him or dismissing his experiences. She accepts that what he says may be true, but refuses to give in to a man like Cadogan and let him start a war, and she stands her ground, while Octavia turns away from her brother to comfort her, looking at him disapprovingly. If someone can get to Bellamy, if his feelings could outweigh his faith and loyalty to Cadogan, it is most likely to be Clarke (It could be Octavia, of course, but the show is not choosing to focus on their relationship at the moment.)

I’d like to point out that we have seen this kind of angsty conflict between Clarke and Bellamy almost every season, and often around this part of the season, and that it always ended in an equally huge reconciliation. In season 3, it was earlier (3x05 to 3x11). In season 4 it was in 4x10/4x11 with a reconciliation in 4x12. In season 5, it lasted from 5x09 to their big reconciliation in the season 5 finale. They always end up forgiving each other because they can understand each other - and are a united team in every season finale.

I want to address something else I’ve seen people say: that it is “worrying” that Clarke has called Bellamy her best friend twice this season, after never having defined their relationship that specifically before. Which is seen by some as a sign of the show trying to “clear” that they are “platonic” - even though this really doesn’t do that. (Anyone remember a certain real life tweet going: “Recently, I married my best friend and soulmate...”?) If anything, it is a step forward, since she has previously only referred to Bellamy as one of her friends/family. What else would she call him that would give him a special place, unless you expect a love confession from her at a moment like this (or talking to Cadogan in front of everyone), which wouldn't make sense. Specifying their current relationship status of two characters feels like something you would do if that status is to change - one way or other. (I think that Bellamy has also been called Echo's boyfriend for the first time in S7.)

The struggle inside Bellamy continues as he sends Clarke to MCap - which rightfully shocks and hurts both Clarke and Octavia, But he clearly has a hard time seeing Clarke in pain. and, in spite of what he said earlier (that he can’t lie to the Shepherd), lies to Cadogan, claiming Clarke doesn’t know where the Flame is. There is no way he actually believes that - Clarke didn’t even try to pretend that she didn’t know it, and she’s struggling to hide that knowledge. Unfortunately it’s an obvious lie Cadogan sees through, but the cracks in Bellamy’s loyalty to him are starting to show.

(Many people were hoping that the MCap session would allow Bellamy to see Clarke’s memories and that this would be some kind of breakthrough that would let him realize her feelings for him and get him emotional - but I’m glad nothing like that happened, Mind violation is not a good way to bring two people together..)

Clarke, being Clarke, hurts herself rather than giving Cadogan what he wants and letting him start a war, until he promises he release her friends.

The show is really not subtle with its imagery - first we had Kane crucified in season 3, and now Clarke looks like Jesus with a crown of thorns.

So, Cadogan sends the rest of the group (Octavia, Echo, Hope, Miller, Niylah, Jordan) to an unknown location, as a collateral, so Clarke would keep her end of the deal and find the Flame for them. But he doesn’t reveal the location to Clarke - or to Bellamy, because, in his words, he doesn’t trust Clarke. But this means that he doesn’t really trust Bellamy, either - at least not when Clarke is around.

Doucette seems to be constantly hanging around Bellamy - he was there when Bellamy was reunited with his people, he appears after Bellamy’s talk with Clarke and Octavia, and he’s with Cadogan, Bellamy, Clarke and others in the team that goes to Sanctum. I don’t think it’s just because they are the Disciple version of friends - I think Cadogan has made Doucette Bellamy’s unofficial Handler, and that he’s supposed to keep an eye on him and make sure he stays loyal and doesn’t give in to the temptation of emotional attachments to his friends and family. He also has a brief interaction with Echo, where he seems amused and mildly contemptuous. Which makes me think he’ll have some interesting interactions with Clarke and possibly others in 7x13 (but mostly Clarke, especially going by the promo photos) while he is around Bellamy to remind him of his Disciple side.

There’s been a lot of speculation where the group has been sent. It’s certainly not Skyring, Etherea or Nakara or Sanctum, which means that the options are either Earth, or some new place we haven’t seen yet. It would make sense if it was the same place where Gaia was. It certainly seems that we won’t see this group before 7x14, as the upcoming episode will probably be full focused on Sanctum. The Stone on Earth has been shown to be offline - but so was the Stone on Sanctum, and that didn’t end up mattering at all.

What I don’t understand is why Cadogan thinks they won’t be able to find their way to Sanctum - which is why he didn’t let Gabriel and Raven go with them. But they do have Disciple helmets (unless all info in them has been disabled), and Jordan was around when Raven talked about the Anomaly and has spent a bit of time researching the Bardoan text on the Anomaly Stone on Bardo - so I expect him to be able to figure things out.

So many of the characters need to resolve their storylines - Echo, Hope, Jordan? The former two have character arcs that badly need resolution and character development, after they have lost everything. Hope has been driven by anger, pain and revenge all season - and it all came crashing down when she attempted to commit genocide, and unintentionally caused her mother’s death as a result. Diyoza’s last words were to be better than she was. Hope still has Octavia, who has struggled with and resolved the darkness and violence in her soul, and now she also has Jordan to bond with, as they did in their scene in the cell in this episode. They are two of the kids who grew up in isolation and raised on stories of Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, Murphy and others as legends, but with drastically different worldviews and experiences. I expect both of them to survive to the end, together with Madi, as the new generation/hopes for the future of humanity.

As for Jordan, I would say that his arc needs a resolution, but his brainwashing by Trey at the end of last season seems to have been completely forgotten and ignored. Maybe it became a casualty of the rewrites, when the show opted to go with another brainwashing/indoctrination storyline with another one of its men of color. I certainly prefer this Jordan we saw talking to Hope and comforting her, but why didn’t the show keep him that way all the time, without that really annoying Prime-apologism phase?

I feel that Octavia, on the other hand, has completed her character development, but she needs to deal with the loss of Diyoza, have some meaningful interactions with Hope, and of course, a resolution to her relationship with Bellamy.

It really struck me how little Bellamy/Octavia interactions got focus in this episode - their one scene was more focused on Bellamy's interaction with Clarke, and Octavia didn't even get a line or closeup in the scene where they were being sent off (unlike Clarke, Echo, Raven, Gabriel and Miller) nor even a moment of eye contact with Bellamy (unlike Echo and Clarke). That must mean there are going to be big Blake sibling scenes later, probably in the finale.

Sanctum

When you think Sheidheda can’t get more over the top, he does it again. I don’t know if this is a bad or good thing. If you’re doing a cartoonish villain, go all in, right? It’s kind of entertaining, though it doesn’t fit with the usual way this show does villains. This time, he actually has a throne made of skeletons! (That’s one way to use those skeletons of the Primes’ former hosts.)

He’s also borderline Villain Sue, with a bunch of incredible fighting skills that now go beyond Grounder style fight. Now he’s also really good with automatic guns. When did that happen? I mean, Madi does know how to shoot a gun, but still? The scene where he shoots all of the Children of Gabriel would’ve been much more convincing if he had given a sign to Wonkru to start shooting them, instead of doing it all by himself.

Nelson’s (Sachin)’s death was fitting for his character, and many would say it was heroic and impressive, refusing to kneel to another false god. Or one could say it was stupid and pointless - as it did not result in just his death, but also the deaths of all the people he was leading, and that he should have instead taken Emori’s advice and knelt today so he could find a way to beat Shady some other day, while saving his people. I’ll let you guess which one of these is closer to how I feel. In any case, on the Doylist level, I’m not fond of how fast the show is to kill off another bunch of people, but it is what it is, the show has always been fond of mass murder. And this is Shady’s second one this season. First he killed the majority of the Faithful, and now almost all of the Children of Gabriel - so we wouldn’t have to deal with more factions of people in the show’s endgame. And conveniently, CoG got removed from the board just before Gabriel comes back to Sanctum, Now we won’t have to have that arc followed up on. How many people are left in Sanctum now that aren’t Earthkru? There must still be quite a few of the ordinary Sanctumites there, such as Delilah’s parents, but we rarely get to see them. I would hate it if the show killed off the majority of the Sanctum residents just because they’re not major characters.

The only CoG who gets to survive is Madi’s friend Luca, the one other CoG we know. Indra, who witnesses the massacre and saves Luca, must be thinking back to how her mother knelt to save her (just like she knelt to save Madi) and hopefully realizing that her mother wasn’t a coward and did the right thing.

Meanwhile, Murphy and Emori are hiding Madi, the remaining Faithful, and now Luca, too, in the nuclear reactor. Trey, the big believer, has no problem suggesting they kneel to the guy who killed his god Russell, before Murphy points out that Shady would kill them anyway for fear they would want revenge. Oh, Shady - you killed so many people and didn't even have the decency to kill that annoying asshole Trey?

One of the best parts of the Sanctum plot in this episode is Madi comforting a really traumatized Luca - who has lost first his biological family when Shady killed the Faithful, and now his people/his real family - and telling a group of orphaned children a story of her own survival in the Shallow Valley. Whether or not this is foreshadowing for a possible return to Earth (I am in two minds if this is going to happen or not), it is a sweet moment of hope for rebuilding life and society, similar to the scene between Jordan and Hope.

Murphy confronting Nikki and telling her how and why her husband died and that his sacrifice should not be in vain, is a good scene - and won’t be pointless if it finally results in some sort of character development for Nikki, who has been so one-note throughout this season. But she is simply not that interesting. The one interesting thing about her plot is that she could remind Murphy of who was back in season 1, but the show, usually not subtle with parallels, hasn’t done anything with that so far.

There also some lovely Memori moments - they are the one couple in the show who are getting to be happy and have these ordinary coupley scenes. And you know that I have always shipped Memori. But the problem here is - there have been many cute Memori scenes this season; they have both proved to be good leaders, who take care of people, playing the role Clarke and Bellamy did once; Murphy has been proving every episode that he’s a real hero now, coming a long way not just since season 1 but from his questionable and selfish choices in season 6, too. He gets told “I’m proud of you, Murphy” again by someone, this time Indra. All of this is very nice, but repetitive. After so many episodes this season have shown us these things - we get it. We don’t doubt anymore that Murphy and Emori are heroes. Sheidheda is 100% a villain. There is no moral ambiguity - except with minor characters: the only unpredictable thing about the storyline is what Nikki will do and whether Knight will stop obeying Shady. It’s not that this is a terrible storyline, and on rewatch, it was fine in this episode - but the other storyline is way more interesting, and there are so many other characters that are in pressing need of character resolutions, with 4 episodes to go.

At the end, we’re left with a stalemate, as Murphy is captured by Shady, but Shady can’t move to capture or kill Emori and the people they are protecting in the reactor, because she could blow it up, so he leaves Knight to wait for them to come out.

And then, finally, Cadogan and the group come from the Anomaly. Why did we have that Disciple so dramatically disconnect the Sanctum Stone in 7x04? Another abandoned subplot? Wonkru simply moved the Stone and brought it tot Shady, and it worked just fine.

(I suspect the Flame may turn out to be impossible to repair or useless, because the show has been emphasizing Madi’s remaining memories so much this season - and that wasn’t needed for this plot, since Shady also remembers the Anomaly Stone and could have been the one to tell Wonkru about it. The Disciples may end up trying to get her into MCap to see if she remembers the Final Code that Bedca used.)

I’m ecstatic that the Bardo storyline is finally converging with the Sanctum one. But that somewhat initially ruined by the bad direction in the last scene, which made it less clear which of the characters were back on Sanctum, until you went back and paused the scene. Clarke asking “What the hell happened here?” and Murphy’s reply “Gee, where to start” was great, but the fact that so many people were asking “Did Bellamy come to Sanctum with them?” and weren’t sure of it before the Inside the episode and sneak peeks came out, shows how poorly this scene was done. It should’ve made it crystal clear that Bellamy, Raven and Gabriel were coming back to Sanctum together with Clarke and Cadogan - getting people excited for the next episode.

Rating: 6.5/10

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homenum-revelio-hq · 4 years

Photo

Welcome (again) to the Order of the Phoenix, Mary!

You have been accepted for the role of TED TONKS with the faceclaim change of Dev Patel! We really enjoyed your discussion of Ted in relationship to his motivation and family, while also holding that subtle masculinity and sexism of how he feels he should “be the man in the family.” It was really clever and fit his character so well! So excited to see you take on this role!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Mary

AGE: 26

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: My activity level is definitely moderate, mostly active on the weekends since that’s when I can dedicate the most time. Though, my work load is slowing down a bit each week and I’ll be done with teaching completely by the beginning of June. Which means full time to rp!

ANYTHING ELSE: Same ones as before!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Ted Tonks

AGE: 30

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cisgender Male, He/Him, Heterosexual.

BLOOD STATUS: Muggleborn (obvs)

HOUSE ALUMNI: Hufflepuff

ANY CHANGES: Dev Patel as FC <3

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Ted has always been known to be a loyal, hardworking, dedicated young man. It’s hard not to be charmed into his positive outlook. He’s got an adorable smile and a kind, respectful attitude that naturally gravitates people towards him. During his time at Hogwarts, Ted obviously didn’t care for blood status or background, so it wasn’t abnormal to see him mingling and getting along with different groups of people. He was one to empathize easily with any person’s situation and be the shoulder to lean on, if necessary. Becoming a husband and father has only amplified his best traits - pushing him to realize this is what he was meant to do his entire life. He was meant to be a life partner to Andromeda, the woman he loved, and to rediscover hope and new life every day in the eyes of his daughter Nymphadora. Ted has always been good at healing and charms. Becoming a stay-at-home dad has given him reason to perfect these skills, anytime Dora got sick or her young signs of magic would spontaneously appear without notice. Ted has been struggling with keeping the secret of his involvement in the Order from Andromeda. On any given day, Ted is the kind of person to be honest and communicate with his wife. However, with the war going on around them, his whole life is at stake of being taken away from him. Andromeda works hard in the Ministry to provide for the family and Dora grows worried as she hears stories all the way from school, and growing up as someone who was taught to work and sacrifice everything for family, he couldn’t just stay idly by and do nothing. Ted hates feeling underestimated or helpless in any situation, and in times like these, he will tell himself to “be a man” and see this as opportunity to step up for what is right.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

Ted Tonks is the only child of two muggle parents, immigrants who came to the UK from the slums of Delhi, India. His parents yearned for a better life for their child, teaching Ted everything he knows about hard work and sacrifice for the love of family. After moving to Birmingham at the age of 4, Ted learned to live anew in a community where very few people looked and shared a culture like him. Even though he was very likable amongst his childhood friends and their families, Ted knew even in the smallest ways that he was different, an outsider. The deep-rooted prejudices were most noticed in his father and mother’s small shop, and yet, the respect for cultivating a business from the ground up was still tested daily. However, a young Ted never paid too much attention to the way some people mistrusted his family. Even in his family’s most difficult years, getting accustomed to their new life in a new home, Ted found countless moments of simple joys and learned to make the most out of nothing.

OCCUPATION:

For eleven years, Ted has been a stay-at-home dad. However, once Nymphadora went off to school, Ted began job searching, even with the difficult prejudices he faced being a Muggleborn wizard. Eventually after a referral, he’s took on working part-time in the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. It fits him well since he is bridge between both worlds, but in some ways, still wishes he can do more without being judged for his blood line.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

Ted has always been good with healing magic and charms, especially after being a stay-at-home dad for so long. So he’s primarily began helping Emmeline with any tasks she needs assistance with, as well as any potion/charm work that needs to be taken care of. However, if he’s given the chance to go out for a mission, he will jump on the chance to do anything that’s asked of him.

Ted respects the Order of the Phoenix. Not only has it given a chance for him to do more, but he feels that in times like these, being above the law is a necessary evil for the common good. Before all this, Ted might have been the kind of person to back away and watch what happens to the world - but not anymore. He knows that the Order has had some rough patches and yet, that’s what war looks like. With the Order, Ted believes he can work toward making a better world for his daughter.

SURVIVAL:

I think even if other people look down at their relationship, what is really keeping him alive at this point is Andromeda. Even being married to him, Andromeda with her blood line and ties to the Ministry carry weight in this world. He doesn’t like to admit it, since sometimes, he doesn’t quite understand what she does and he feels as man of the house, he should be providing more for his family. They also try to keep a quiet life in a little cottage by the coast, away from the eyes of the Wizarding community. So when you are secluded and keep your business to yourself, people tend to not pay any attention to you.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Andromeda is the person closest to Ted, not only for being the love of his life, but also for the reason that once they got married and had Nymphadora, Ted lost touch with many of the people he had friendships with. He still talks to his parents every so often, but in order to keep them far from the dangers of the Wizarding World, he has kept a good distance from them, chugging it up to now living two hours away from his hometown. Ted still deeply cares for all of his estranged friends and even if they haven’t spoken in years, his loyalty to them will always be there. He might not find the same feeling the other way around and Ted wouldn’t blame them for feeling so. Regardless, he has no regrets for the decisions he has made, as he knows he did what’s best for his family.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: Andromeda/Ted for sure. There’s a lot going on there - between their own biases and withholding information about the length of their participation in the Order. But Ted/Chemistry is most important!! In the end, I ship all the things.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

Being a Muggleborn and person of color, Ted would probably grow up with the least amount of privilege or bias towards anyone. Especially after becoming a father, Ted has been a very tolerant and open-minded person, as he truly believes that you should treat others the way you want to be treated. However, that doesn’t excuse the fact that deep down inside, after years and years of prejudice against his kind, Ted still grew an unconscious mistrust for Pureblood kind. Seeing Purebloods like Isla Selwyn-Macmillan, who have family members so vocal about their support for the Dark Lord, being a part of the Order put Ted in an uncomfortable spot. Even his wife still uses the word ‘mudblood’ around him, and she is the woman he loves, how does he trust any Pureblood outside of her? Ted also catches himself with what one can only consider mild forms left of traditional masculinity, whenever he compares his job to Andromeda’s and internally debates whether not telling Andromeda he is a part of the Order is the right thing to do. As open-minded as he is, Ted still remembers his father taking majority of the role as head of the house during his childhood, and sometimes, he asks himself whether that’s an expectation he should have for himself too.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? I love this rp!! It brought back the wonderful feeling of being in this community of Harry Potter role-play and I wanted to find a new character that was a bit different than Marlene. I’m just looking forward to finding more ways to have fun here :’)

PLOT DROP IDEAS: Oof, if he’s a muggleborn wizard and they start going after those Muggleborn wix, my angsty soul wants to say that he goes into hiding and before/after he does so, he gets abducted or hurt in some way through that. Maybe they even find out he works for the Order? Also, if something happens at Hogwarts and in turn, something happens to Nymphadora? Or maybe there’s a threat on her life so Andromeda/Ted will try to go after her? Possibilities are endless!!

ANYTHING ELSE? I love you guys and this rp!! I’m so excited <3

#harry potter rp #harry potter rpg #harry potter roleplay #hp roleplay #homenumaccepted

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thebeauregardbros · 4 years

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Can you tell me about Yakuza 0? I've never played it before and would like to read your thoughts on it.

YOOOOOOOOOOO LES FUKIN GO (thank u!!)

This review is spoiler-free!

Despite what you might assume a game about a bunch of tough muscley fighting dudes, the amount of moral philosophy in this game could rival a 3-part episode of Star Trek: TNG in terms of surprisingly deep and emotional thought. The struggles the protagonists go through has a huge emphasis on honor, keeping your word, taking responsibility for your actions, standing up to things you think are wrong and persevering no matter how much pain, suffering and threat you personally go through all in the name of trying to be a good person, and emphasizing that the mental fortitude to stand for your convictions is the true strength, not just brawn. Character development is absolutely fantastic and I feel like it’s impossible not to fall for these main characters by the end of the game, no matter how weird or even pigheaded they might seem to you at first.

(Trust me, moral philosophy is probably my biggest autistic hyper-fixation. They did this shit GOOD.)

Another major reason I really love Yakuza 0 is that it takes an unusual setting to the normal person - the incredibly political, dark, yet surprisingly realistic setting of organized bullies, criminals, and the uneducated brawn and bad-attitude baddies of the world and try to show them as worthy of more as humans like you and me than just trash that should not be seen or touched. The amount of humanitarian outlook on these people and the humanitarianism of our protagonists is absolutely heartwrenching and beautiful. Despite appearances, anyone can be a good person - this seems to be a major message in this story which I just find absolutely beautiful.

The yakuza definitely have different rules to their world, and that is one that’s built on violence over paperwork, especially when it comes to showing eachother the extent of their passion about something. I feel like it’s an excellent way of portraying the difficulties any normal person goes through with their mental health while struggling to do the right thing in a very direct and relatably painful way that anyone can understand.

The story deals with not only the importance of preserving life and protecting it with surprisingly pacifist ideologies, but the aesthetics in align with the idea that no matter how dark the world or your life feels, happiness is always an option.

Why you might love Yakuza 0 even if the plot doesn’t sound that interesting to you:

Tons of minigames - I think about 28~30 total. That includes 4 actual vintage SEGA arcade games! There’s also tons of gambling games like black jack and shogi, fishing, rhythm games, bowling, fighting tournaments, pool, darts, stock car racing, doll dressup.. It’s very hard not to find at least one you’ll like!

Tourism. Yakuza 0 has such an incredible amount of visual detail to every nook and cranny of every corner and unseen alleyway in the town maps that it feels just absolutely insane to me. The devs didn’t need to put in all this detail but they did. I could legit spend hours in first person mode just looking at everything. On top of that, every restaurant in town has a detailed menu describing each item despite the fact that all food items are just generic healing items. I think there’s even a bar where the bartender will go on a spiel talking about certain drinks after you order them. The atmosphere really makes you feel like you’re truly taking a vacation in another place. Great for when you’re longing to see new scenery while being stuck at home all the time during COVID.

The amount of optional side quests is absolutely insane. According to a wiki there’s a total of 100 side quests in all. If you’re a fan of JRPGs or a fan of completionism, completing them all gives you a ton of extra content and side-stories that can sometimes be just as gutwrenchingly wholesome or tragic as the main plot, or otherwise be great comic relief.

Speaking of comic relief, this game is notorious for it. The main plot can be incredibly serious and stressful and the devs know that can really wear down on the mental state of the player after awhile, so seeing Kiryu dance at a disco in the most lame awkward embarassing dad way possible, or see him pick up a phone in the most ridiculously over-dramatic way for no reason, or see Goro sing lovey-dovey pop songs is just something that will absolutely kill you with laughter and joy and give you a refreshed break you need to help you be able to keep continuing on.

Big fan of seiyuu (Japanese voice actors)? The karaoke bar lets you hear your protagonists’ gorgeous singing voice. You can even invite some side characters and hear their voices too!

NOW THE FAIR CRITICISMS:

Despite the plot having a huge emphasis on how important the morality is of not killing, fighting animations are often totally lethal. Goro canonically fights with a knife and a bat by the end of the game. Both characters can use guns, swords, poisoned knives, baseball bats and other lethal items as a weapon. One of Goro’s main fighting animations is snapping a dude’s neck. Kiryu threw a dude out of a high window. Kiryu shoots at dudes with a gun in a high speed chase at some point and none of these instances are ever addressed in canon plot as having blood on the hands of these characters - no matter what, the people hurt by these things seem to be able to stand up fine later on like nothing happened. Even the main characters can get shot by an actual gun 20 times in a row and shrug it off by shoving convenience store food down their throat. It’s super dumb but absolutely hilarious in it’s unaddressed B-Movie esque hypocritical nature and became a huge in-joke with the fandom. Despite these Goofy Video Game Logic instances, the main plot (specifically the cutscenes) are all extremely realistic and well done. Actual members of real-world Yakuza say the story is pretty accurate to reality.

One of the minor characters is obviously a trans woman but is misgendered constantly by other characters, including the protagonist (though this may be a translation problem), and is the only female character in the game you can fight and have to fight in order to unlock Kiryu’s endgame fighting style (though he remarks he only fights her because she looks like she can handle herself in a fight). She does end up joining up with you as an ally afterwards without changing anything about herself so that’s a positive, I guess? SEGA is aware of fans’ dislike for transphobia and have removed a lot of transphobic content from their re-releases of future Yakuza games, as well as shown the protagonist, Kiryu, as a huge LGBTQ+ ally.

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

Things you might like or otherwise want to check out relating to the same story style of Yakuza 0 I personally highly recommend:

Kyou Kara Ore Wa!! (aka, "From Today, It's My Turn!!"): Absolutely hilarious gag comedy with surprisingly heartwrenching drama and incredibly lovable in-depth characters. It’s about highschool delinquents in the late 1980s (same era Yakuza 0 takes place!). The two main characters remind me a lot of the protagonists of Yakuza 0 in that one is very straight-laced and honorable while the other is more prone to dirty tricks but still does the right thing in the end. I personally recommend reading the manga above all because adaptations cut out a lot of details that I feel add a lot of depth to the characters, but the OVA anime is pretty good on it’s own and there’s a hilarious live action TV show adaptation if you like slapstick.

Rookies: A story about an impossibly determined formerly disgraced highschool teacher doing absolutely everything he can to be the best teacher he can be. Part of his journey is helping reform a group of delinquents who have self-sabotaged themselves into having their baseball team - the one thing they cared about - disbanded. The delinquents constantly fight the teacher off, believing him to just be another adult putting on airs instead of truly caring, while the teacher perseveres no matter what to prove them wrong. A manga and live action drama - both extremely good.

#yakuza 0 #review

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rewind-reviews · 5 years

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So I Just Played... Owlboy

So I just played Owlboy and I have somethings to say. Owlboy is one of the best games I have ever played If you haven't played it stop reading this and play it right now. I got Owlboy as a birthday present this year but didn't play it for a good four months but when I finally got round to it I just couldn't stop. I’m gonna talk a little about story but I will try not tho spoil too much because that's the most important thing about this game. Owlboy is about a little owl called Otus who isn't like all the other owls, he’s small, mute and he can bearly even fly at the start of the game. Otus is constantly put down always being called useless, weak, weird and no matter what happens he is always the one to blame. This really struck a chord with me because I was in the same boat when I was young and it felt good to be playing a character that was feeling the same things I did when I was small. Life isn't all bad for our little hero though. There is one person that's always there for Otus his best friend Geddy. Geddy is the one person in all of their home town of Ville that truly understands and accepts Otus and seeing their friendship and their take on the world attitude when they are together nearly brought tears to my eyes at times throughout the story. Otus is told by his mentor to do one simple little job but when that quickly spirals into chaos him and Geddy are thrust into trying to save the world with nothing but the support of each other and the friends they make along the way. Now I would love to say more but I honestly feel like if you know the story of this game before you play it you would really be missing out. The next parts of this review are going to be a little hard but hey here we go. The gameplay in Owlboy is pretty simple the game mostly consists of flying around as Otus solving puzzles, exploring and grabbing a limited number of coins to get rewarded at the shop that right not buying things rewarded. you don't buy anything in this game as the coins act more as collectables than they do currency, each milestone you hit nets you either a simple cosmetic change or something to give you a little extra help along the way which I think is perfect because all of it is entirely optional plus the dialog with these scenes is absolutely halirous. Not everything is that simple however the combat is where the gameplay takes a turn. Otus isnt a great fighter he can do a tiny spin which will stun some enemies but can't really kill anything that's Geddy's time to shine. When the need arises Otus will grab hold of his trusty companion and Geddy will use his pistol to dispatch of the bad guy of your choice (it gets more interesting later on in the game but I'm not spoiling anything). When you need to fight the game becomes a twin-stick shooter of sorts you move around as Otus and use the opposite stick to take aim with Geddy to take down the bad guys. I will admit this took me a while to get used to but it soon enough because second nature and I was taking down everything that dared block my path well up until the bosses but you will have to seem them for yourself. Next up is graphics. I'm not the type of person to think graphics are the make and break of a game but if a game looks good hey I'm not going to complain so it's just a bonus that Owlboy looks so spectaular. Everything is done with a pixel art style which yeah is kind of done to death but the detail in this game is something game devs and artists alike should take note of. The art in this game perfectly captures every mood and emotion the story wants you to feel be it full of excitement and optimism when you first see Ville, anxious and fearful in a dark and spooky cave or even full of wonder in a lush green forest it does it all seamlessly. Even the sprite work is downright perfect Otus is constantly expressing his emotion through movement or facial expressions which is great because you know he can't talk. You can always tell what the little guy is feeling through the way he acts and if I'm being honest its pretty impressive because the sprites aren't all that big plus I played through Owlboy on my switch in handheld mode so the screen wasn't super big but I could still see everything the characters were feeling at all times. Owlboy isn't perfect though and fell short in a few places towards the end of the game. There is one section of the game where flight is taken away from you and honestly its the worst part of the game, in my opinion. The whole section is an auto scroller which no one likes at the best of times and you need to jump from one crumbling platform to another while I was playing this I felt like it was impossible, you have nearly no space or time to make the jumps its asking you to do and I had to watch a walkthrough just so I knew what was coming up so I could plan ahead and no word of a lie this one small section took me around an hour and a half to beat. There are also some side quests that I felt were way too hard for a one of event that you only ever see for that quest. Don't get me wrong it is all possible because I did do it all eventually it just doesn't feel like they tested it enough. Overall Owlboy is one of the best games I have ever played, the gameplay is simple but engaging, the graphics are stunning, the music is incredible and the story is one of the best I have experienced in a very very long time. yeah sure it has some issues but that won't stop you from loving every part of this game. So please if you are looking for a fun little indie game to fall in love with give Owlboy a go you won't regret it.

I want to once again say thanks to mousieex on instagram for inspiring me to keep writing here please give her some love she deserves it.

https://www.instagram.com/mousieex/

#Owlboy #Otus #Geddy #nintendo switch #review #video games #rewind reviews #playstation #ville #mousieex #indie #indie games #pcgaming #pc games #fanboy #nerd #geek

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dylancaledavis · 5 years

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Actual Storytelling Advice #1 Writing a Scene: a demystification

A Book Series is a collection of novels. Novels are collections of chapters. Chapters are collections of scenes. Scenes are...well, what are scenes? This term eluded me for most of my writing life. I could say something was a scene (a la, watching a film and saying “what a great scene!”) But I didn’t know what I was saying was the “scene.” Was it when the camera changed? Was it when the character(s) were in a different location? Was there some deeper emotional resonance that indicated a scene break? (short answer? Yes.)

It was even more confusing in reading stories. Are chapters scenes? Are scenes arbitrarily determined whenever the author damn well pleases? (In amateur writing, yes.)

The truth is, scenes are the building blocks of story. So it came as a shock to me when I got into my MFA in Creative Writing program (shout out to Southern Illinois University) that I had never actually had a scene explained to me. (Thanks, Pinckney Benedict, for doing that.) And after I got the breakdown, my writing transformed overnight. So now I want to transfer this knowledge to anyone who will listen.

No matter what type of fiction we are writing, no matter the genre, setting, whatever, we will greatly improve it by using this simple formula:

1. Entering Emotion

2. Conflict Impeding Desire

3. Exiting Emotion

Sure, it’s always a lot more complicated than this, but these are the three phrases that should guide all scenes. But, let’s break them down individually so we can get a better understanding of their functions.

1. Entering Emotion

The entering emotion portion of the scene is the beginning. When a character walks into a room, gets into their car, finds the antagonist, sizes up the monster, goes into the cave, etc. They must start with (and our audience should know) what the POV character’s entering emotion is. This is usually tied to something called the conscious and unconscious desires (read Libbie Hawker’s book “Take Off Your Pants!” for a better explanation of that, though I will do another post which breaks that down another time).

So, if our character is entering a scene, we must establish what their emotion is. Are they scared? Happy? Timid? Worried? Exhausted? Bewildered? All emotions are viable. Here’s an example from something I’ve written. It’s Cyberpunk, so that should be your visual guide, here.

Coming home after a long day at the cricketflour plant, 5icmi slouched in his suspension chair. He didn’t want to go into Samsara, but the AVR world was a helluva lot better than his six by six capsule flat. Maybe he’d go to Ludmila’s club later, if he was feeling up to it.

“Whatever,” he said to himself.

What do we think the entering emotional state of this scene is? 5icmi isn’t happy, not by any stretch. He isn’t jovial (though he does seem a funny in a jaded sort of way.)

Primarily, what 5icmi feels in this scene is boredom. He doesn’t want to do anything, but he also doesn’t want to do anything else, either. This is important for the story because...well, why do you think? Humans intuit story. It’s ingrained in our consciousness. What do you think is going to happen to 5icmi in this scene based on your own intuitions? Is he going to stay bored? Are we going to have to follow a boring character in a boring ass story? No!

We shouldn’t waste audience’s time like that. Instead, we do this:

2. Conflict Impeding Desire

The “Impeding Desire” part of this will make more sense in a later post, as it's a concept I want to focus on by itself. For now, we’ll just talk about the conflict. Conflict is story. You cannot have a story without one (I can write a whole post about this, too, but let’s just accept that part as fact for the sake of brevity). Now, a lot of writers misunderstand conflict.

Conflict does not mean “fighting another person.” We don’t need physical conflict. Not every scene needs to be a fight scene (although, good fight scenes employ the exact same structure as any other scene, just watch this clip from “The Princess Bride.” PROTIP: Inigo’s entering emotion is “smug.”

What conflict is in storytelling terms is something that which gets in the way of a character. This could be physical or non-physical. Frightening or funny (or both). It is an obstacle at its core.

What makes a good conflict vs a bad one? Well, once again, humans intuit this very well in stories. If the character’s entering emotional state is boredom, what should the obstacle be? It wouldn’t make sense to suddenly have a romance conflict, right? It wouldn’t work if the conflict was starvation. Make the conflict reflect the character’s entering emotional state. Let’s return to 5icmi:

5icmi clutched the dangling omnis between his fingers. One by one, he inserted them into the microports on his occipital lobe. Once they were all connected, he flicked the switch and dove into Samsara.

His homeworld was a private one. He’d made sure to adjust his privacy settings so nobody could fuck with his AVR haven. He appeared on his deck overlooking a perfectly trimmed, green yard. A Yutag rifle was propped on the railing. 5icmi shouldered the rifle out of habit, not really caring if he actually hit anything. He aimed at a can atop a stump across the yard. That’s when he saw a face in the bushes looking up at him.

“Who the fuck is that?” he said, lowering the rifle.

“Hello stranger!” the face in the bushes said. They stood straight, and 5icmi noticed the avatar was at least 3 meters tall.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s a person in 5icmi’s private world! He’s not bored anymore, is he? See, we took details about his life at the beginning of the scene: He’s a VR junkie, lives alone, and is very bored. Then we spun them into the conflict. An unwanted stranger has come into his life (this will be another post, too, follow me to read that post!)

The character of this story seems stubborn and almost resigned to being bored all the time, but something impeded it. This will always happen in our scenes. It has to, otherwise the story doesn’t make us feel anything.

I hope that when you got to the part of the face in the bushes, your heart did the tiniest flutter. Maybe you blinked one more time than usual. Your skin went weird.

If it did, I transferred emotion from my character to you (yet another planned blog post.) If I did that, I did my job as a fiction writer.

And so finally:

3. Exiting Emotion

This last part of scene structure does double duty, because not only does it establish the end of the scene, but it usually marks the beginning of the next scene, as well (more on that in a moment.)

The exiting emotion of a scene should be the opposite or opposite-adjacent from the entering emotion. If your character is happy, they should leave sad, worried, disheveled, frightened. If they are sad, they should be happy, elated, or even just a flicker of hopeful. If they are angry, they should be calm or subdued. You get the idea.

The reason for this is because, when you have that miniature emotional arc in your scene, you’ve created movement in your character. Your character has changed, and humans like change. There’s nothing more boring than watching television static or paint dry. We call those things boring is because they don’t change in a meaningful way.

Characters have to change in a meaningful way, otherwise they become static. Scenes are where we get to make micro-changes to your character which will build atop one another to the big change they make at the end of the story.

But there’s something else about exiting emotions that is as, if not more, important.

Exiting emotions inform the next scene. We now know that the character will start scene A as happy and by the end of that scene they will be sad. So scene B starts with them sad, right? It would be weird to start each scene with your character as happy like they have a reset button.

But what does that mean for scene B? If they start sad (because of Scene A) then they should leave scene B happy or happy adjacent? Yes. This was one of the more difficult things for me to grasp when I started writing scenes. It feels clunky and artificial at first to write this way.

After a while, though, I noticed how much more emotional my writing became. My characters started changing, started feeling things. They’d go from happy to scared to hopeful to worried to resolute and I would want to follow them to their conclusion because they were on a journey. It was amazing!

Here’s the end of the scene, just so you can see a curated example:

5icmi raised the rifle again. He trained the laser point on the intruder’s face.

“How’d you get in here?” he said. The intruder put his palms up.

“There’s no need to be frightened, dear boy. I, too, don’t know how I ended up in your space. I was casually dining at the hubworld when suddenly, bloop! I froze and reloaded here. Now I can’t seem to get out!”

5icmi wanted to believe this person, but the smile on their face was toothy and hiding something.

“I’m getting out of here, get ready for a fucking report to the Samsara dev team,” 5icmi said. He rotated his arm to conjure the tool menu. He selected “exit” but nothing happened. He selected it again, nothing. 5icmi tried to remove the omnis plugged into his occipital lobe, but they were stuck. 5icmi looked up, and saw that the avatar had moved closer. The avatar was more hunched now. The smile painted on its face was much, much wider.

“Let’s chat, friend,” the avatar called up. “Just you, and me.”

So, 5icmi has gone from bored, to frightened. Neutral to negative. So what do you think his next emotion should be at the end of scene 2?

If you string enough of these together, you’ll have a short story or a chapter of a novel. If you do that 10 times, you’ll have a collection of short stories or a novel. It’s really all it is, but no one would know without the Demystification of scene structure!

Thanks so much for reading. I hope this has given you a more concrete understanding of how to structure your scenes and why emotion tied to plot is your best bet to keep a reader glued to your words.

Write on! Have fun! Wig some people out!

Until next time,

Dylan Davis

#writing #writingprompts #cyberpunk #fiction #guide #tutorial #blog #story #storytelling #literature #scene #structure #art

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dalishious · 5 years

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[1/9 !!] Ouch sorry for the lenght ! Delete if you feel like it ! Hi Lydia ! Even though I don't think you seek any validation for your values (not sure if the word translate my thought very well) and you're probably super tired of being sent asks about racism I wanted to drop there that peoples who bad mouth you about being toxic in the fandom and such are indeed ignorant whiteys which are part of the problem (if not the whole). I can recognize them as I was one of them few years back.

[2/9] Back then I used to hate each of your posts and interventions because 1)I was in absolute blind love with Cullen's character -Cullenites are homies for peoples who are racists because of their ignorance/lack of researches/because they are comfortable with their racist conditionning, I know you know that but I needed to shout it louder for the peoples in the back- and 2)Your posts were making me think, which meant that I was wrong and needed to learn and adjust my values. Petty ? Absolutly

[3/9] I have a bitter laugh now remembring this but I was so obsessed by « evil sjws » that I even used to read each of your posts trying to find a flaw that would comfort me in thinking I was right and you were wrong. Thing is, your posts don't have any. You source them, you have great analysis skills, you are great to interpret contexts and ideas remained undevelopped/foggy because of lazy writing, you probably have the biggest and nerdiest collections of tweets and codex entries in the whole

[4/9] fandom (which is great and deserve all of the honors, sometimes I laugh alone because I bet everything that you know the game better than the devs), you don't fear to reply to peoples who challenge you (not without insulting you most of the time, I noticed...which says a lot about those guys) and calling them out of their bs, you are strong willed and determined, you obviously are authentic, you don't chop the facts to make yourself look good, unlike the racist fandom you don't « cheat »

[5/9] Gal as creepy as it is, I came to have « good reasons » to hate you and I ended loving everything you do, respecting you, finding you have a lovely personnality and coming to your blog everyday to read your posts because I never have enough of you now.Just imagine how embarrassed and confused I was back then to be wrong, to be forced to face my white privilleges and aknowledge that I was plain ignorant and thus racist. I made a huge knowledges gathering therapy these last years,

[6/9] to be able to see social issues more clearly. You and WritingWithColors (which I knew because of your posts) were the ones who made me think and gave a very important lesson: You can't pretend being against injustices if you're acting as someone who silent/speak over minorities or support peoples who do so (that's problematic that's such thing even need to be learned but sadly it is. If my peoples understood that, then most of the social issues would really have bad days ahead)

[7/9] Even tho I still have a long way to do to unlearn all the racist bs I was conditionned with since my birth (I live in France, the country where everyone is so proud of being « Human Rights Writers » labelled that basically white peoples think that racism isn't a thing anymore and that the whole country is a huge colorblind hell. French peoples are the lazy students who think they did their homeworks and will be offended if they got detention for trashing out the paper)

[8/9] I probably write all of that very awkwardly (with both my wording and my weird english) but I wanted to stress out that you're a very awesome person. Not sure a bunch of racists will make you doubt of yourself, especially because you deal with them on a regular basis, but I hope you don't let your mind overearing this and amplify this. For one dickbags in your inbox know that there are ten peoples who absolutly love and respect you and all the things you have done for the fandom, though

[9/9] they may not manifest because they don't have Tumblr or they're just super shy and anxious. Also I won't have enough of my life to thank you as much as you deserve to for opening me the way of being a far better person with a far better understanding of the world. No gift will ever equal that. You're a great person, and a great teacher Lydia. I wish you the best life !

Merci beaucoup pour le gentil message! Je suis tres flatté, je ne sais pas si tout est vrai... mais merci!

Je vous souhaite beaucoup de bonhaur

(Je m’excuse--mon Francais n’est pas si bon)

#my feel good tag #my most feel good of all feel good tag #this is the kindest message i have ever received #not da #fit for a queue #Anonymous #ask

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mairzymarzipan · 6 years

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Night of the Full Moon Character Reviews: The Carpenter(s) and the Lumberjack(s)

After yesterday’s events, I decided to push my reviews of these characters way up.

Just a note that at this point, I’m going to just sum up descriptions. Some of them get to be really longg and sort of redundant in their wording.

The Carpenter/The Werewolf

The Carpenter, Jerry, is a character Red might meet in the first chapter. He’s usually very weak and a quick battle. I can’t even remember his attacks. His reason for fighting you is he’s worried about your safety. When he talks to you, you can either choose to thank him, tell him you’ll protect yourself, or disregard him. If you thank him, he stops himself from saying something. If you disregard him, he’s hurt.

ofc if you read my post yesterday you that the big twist that he’s also the werewolf you fight in the end. The second fight is definitely more of a challenge. The werewolf has regenerative powers. His main gimmick is that, on each turn, you have to pick one of seven cards, each with a different effect. Two of them actually benefit you but most of them are a pain in the ass. I recommend using the 90% heal and the ‘you can’t use cards’ option while you have a lot of health.

“I don’t know if it’s because he is young and shy or because he’s a werewolf, but the carpenter won’t tell Little Red Riding Hood how he feels. He was worried that on a full moon night he will turn, lose control and harm the villagers. The werewolf planned to go and spend the night in the Black Forest, but he did not expect to be pursued by hunters. He was injured and finally fell at Little Red Riding Hood’s hands...he didn’t even get the chance to say anything.”

So yeah, this is another downer ending. Honestly, idk what is worse- killing your grandma or your childhood friend. This is another weird instance of the text going into first person for no reason. Who’s talking here? The Infected?

The Carpenter description is quite a bit longer, but it summarizes to:

He’s adopted

His dad is the lumberjack

He makes beautiful furniture

He’s well liked

He’s got a secret crush on his friend, Red

He’s a werewolf

He’s kept that secret from everyone

He does not remember when he got cursed

He’s worried he might harm people when he’s a wolf

I would like to know how the heck he managed to keep the werewolf thing secret from his dad, who he lived with. This isn’t like, oh, he has a certain opinion. Nah- this is his body transforming every month. How does his dad miss that?

Him being adopted also kind of hints that his bio parents are werewolves, as does this.

This is the picture you get when you toggle Jerry’s class to hard: a crying werewolf leaving a human baby at a lumberjack’s shop.

Since there’s a full moon and the werewolf is, well, a wolf, and the baby isn’t, I’m going to bet that werewolves in this world don’t start transforming until a certain age. Jerry would be old enough to know that he has to hide himself once he starts. One does wonder, though, why the wolf needs to leave their baby. Does it have something to do with the arrow in their leg?

Maybe this will be like Red’s set. Maybe we’ll get all kinds of Jerry classes and each one will display a scene of him a little older to tell a story.

Here’s another theory: This wolf is the Cursed Werewolf, who Jerry might fight as a boss. I mean it works just as well as Red fighting her grandma.

I must say, fighting as Jerry is pretty fun. It feels as chaotic as a card game can be, yanno? Like you really are a rabid wolf. I especially love the cards you can get, though. A lot of them have Jerry- as a wolf or a human- on them. And they sort of humanize him a lot. He has this whole range of emotions, whereas the cards Red appears on always makes her look like a badass.

I especially love that one.

Anyhoo, I’m gonna give Jerry 🌕🌕🌕🌕 four full moons. He’s a cute kid, and as a werewolf, and challenging fight. It’s clear that they’re planning to embellish on his story more. I just do not care about the romance angle, tho, and I hate that the game does so much.

The Lumberjack

When Red encounters the Lumberjack, he’s wondering what she’s doing out so late, but isn’t really trying to stop her. If you defeat him, he’ll tell you about Jerry going missing and ask if you’ve seen him. He even sees he goes missing every full moon, and yet he still hasn’t put the werewolf thing together yet? Oi.

One bit of interesting trivia is that his dialog actually changed. He used to say, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” So, I guess he used to be just, a guy, but then the programmers decided to make him important. That’s cool.

His description tells us that the Lumberjack found Jerry in the woods, so it clashes with the illustration we saw earlier, but I’m willing to forgive that. Also it was snowing when he found the baby. Either it was winter or the curse was in affect even waaaaay back then.

I’ll give him 🌲�� two trees. He’s a good solid character for what he is. Obviously he is just there to be a part of Jerry’s story but he does as best as he can in a support role. He’s just, not terribly memorable? I’ve fought him several times but I’m struggling to remember what cards he uses.

The Crocodile

The Crocodile is a boss, so you could find him in any of the three chapters. He makes good use of attack cards. He also has some great lines.

“I’m more like drift wood.”

“Family means hope.”

“Crocodiles don’t cry only because...they’re never sad.”

“I could never lift an axe...”

I haven’t talked about the voice artists yet, but I feel like the crocodile gets one of the better English ones. It’s too bad these people aren’t credited! Honestly, why?

But yeah, he really does a good job of making this character sound like a real person. There’s a sense of trying to put on a brave face with self-effacing jokes while honestly being miserable.

So anyway, this guy

“This powerful-looking crocodile was once a lumberjack. Once he learned that the identities of Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother had been exposed, he tried to help them hide. However, the church patroller had other ideas. Things didn’t end up well for the lumberjack, but Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother made it out. Now he still waits for the curse to be lifted from the Black Forest, for it afflicts many innocent people, including his out son: the carpenter, Jerry.”

Is Jerry’s dad.

Jerry’s dad in, another timeline? This whole thing about Red and Grandma needing to hide for a while- that’s not really referenced in the other character bios. Usually it’s just Grandma going out into the woods and Red needing to find her. The human Lumberjack doesn’t seem very protective of Red. He seems totally understanding of her quest and only asks if she’s seen his son. So it doesn’t make sense for him to get turned into a croc while trying to help her the same night when he was on his own mission. But this bio kind of gives the impression that this guy has been trapped for like, months if not years.

I can tell you that Jerry’s line got changed too. It used to be ‘One day, my father went into the dark forest, and never came back”. Now it’s “There are those who go into the forest and never return.”

It almost seems like the Crocodile being Jerry’s father is something the creators want to retcon out of existence. So far this description hasn’t changed, but I keep watching it.

It would bum me out, to be honest, if that were the case. The Crocodile is, honestly, my favorite character. He’s the reason I got so swept up into the lore of this game. Not only does he have the best lines, but his voice actor is really good. You get the sense of a guy who’s losing hope because he lost his family, and at the same time hates himself because he wouldn’t be able to provide for them anyway. But he’s also proud, and doesn’t want Red to know he’s cursed, and certain not a person who cries!

I also love that these two sometimes-animal people are both cursed but also both taking pains to keep the other from finding out about the curse. Wonderful irony, there.

The obvious way to fix this situation with the two lumberdads is...with two dads. In fact, in my fics Jerry does have two dads- a red headed guy who’s still there, and another one who’s missing. He’s supposed to look like this.

Anyhoo, I’m going to give him 🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊 SIX big toothy lizards in the hope that the devs will save my croc son!

#mairzy posts #night of the full moon #the werewolf #the carpenter #the lumberjack #the crocodile #character reviews #jerry #theorizing

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sheeping-around · 6 years

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Sheeping Around Retrospective: By The Numbers

tl;dr: Scroll all the way down for the numbers.

Sheeping Around has been live on the App Store for a little over ten days now. I think it is about time I look back at the development cycle, the good parts, the bad parts and also share some sales figures while I’m at it. I’m following the trend of transparency to help other indie game developers know and understand the market of premium games, for which I gained inspiration from Eric @ Slothwerks and Arnold @ Tiny Touch Tales. I’m also inspired by the way they work: solo devs working with talented people across the world on a contract basis, and I follow the same pattern.

While I’ve worked on games in the past, this is my first official release on the App Store, and I’m really glad to have been able to reach that goal. My previous games got stuck in infinite iteration loops and never got to see the light of the day.

Inception

I have written in one of my previous posts how the idea of Sheeping Around was born. The idea began as a turn based (asymmetric) strategy game, and eventually turned into a card game that it is today. You can read more about it in the below two posts:

Sheeping Around Inception

Inspired by Card Thief and More

Inspirations of Sheeping Around and its inception as a physical card game

Development

I have around 8 years of experience as a Javascript developer. While I am familiar with other languages like Java and Objective-C/C++, my core expertise and speed of development is still in Javascript. Also, I had begun using TypeScript at work since mid 2017 and had loved it. Reminded me of the good ol’ Flash and Actionscript days.

When the physical version of Sheeping Around card game was proven to be fun enough, I began working on a web-based prototype version of it using Angular.js on the front-end and Node.js on the backend in the first week of November 2017. I deployed the system on Heroku on its free plan, and used Heroku Postgres as database of choice. (It was free upto 9000 rows, more than sufficient for a prototype.)

Initial prototype version of Sheeping Around

For the native mobile version of the game, I used cocos2d-x JS with TypeScript.

I pushed the code to GitHub as private repositories. I maintained separate repos for client and the server.

Multiplayer

Initially I had planned on Sheeping Around to be a solitaire card game, but it ended up being too similar to Card Thief. It wasn’t much fun anyway either. I decided to prototype a two player dueling game on paper, and it proved to be a lot of fun. I figured it would be much more challenging to handle a multiplayer game, but given my full-stack experience, I was confident I’d be able to do it anyway.

Architecture of Sheeping Around

Sketch, GraphicRiver and GUI

Around March 2018, I began working on the GUI of the game. I had recently switched my role to Product Design at my company Sumo Logic and had begun learning Sketch and loved it. I bought some assets off GraphicRiver and heavily modified a lot of them and put them together in Sketch.

All screen designs in Sketch

I wasn’t very happy with the initial designs, but towards the end of April things had started looking much better and professional.

Initial designs

Final designs

Google Indie Games Accelerator

The progress in the initial few months was somewhat slow. I spent time refining the balance of the game and tweaking the progression. Meanwhile I was also designing some UI for the native mobile version of the game.

By the end of June 2018, Google announced the first ever Indie Games Accelerator for games made in South East Asia. The submission deadline was July, so I started rapidly working on the mobile version for Android and iterating it really fast. By mid of July, I had the gameplay fully functional. By the end of it, I had the entire progression system and marketplace fully set up.

Some charts from the progression and reward system of the game inspired mainly by Pokemon

While I was not selected for the accelerator program, it did help me accelerate the game development process anyway and I am thankful to the accelerator program for that.

Art and Animation

I discuss a lot about art style with Rashi, and we had finalized that the characters would be anthro. Check out some concept art and final artwork for some of the characters below:

I really loved the idea of in-card animations in Card Thief, and wanted to have something similar in my game as well. I was fortunate enough to run into Robinson Millaguin in the Indie Game Developers Facebook group. He began his work on animating some of the initial cards in Spine and my mind was blown already. Check out the video below:

vimeo

You can see more of the animation GIFs on the official website for Sheeping Around.

Tragicomic Theme and Music

I had contracted someone for music, but it did not sound so fitting. It was very difficult to decide what kind of music would fit this game because it was such a unique premise. I started scouting out for tracks on AudioJungle. Farms are usually associated with country music, but I had ruled it out completely. Western style music with gut guitars and ukuleles are a close second choice associated with farm themes. Somehow that style didn’t fit either, and sounded rather cowboy-ish.

I explored all kinds of genres of music and tried to see if they fit in the game. Finally, I found that the music in Comedy genre seemed to be the most fitting. I stumbled upon the profile of AudioAgent, who had an amazing portfolio of comedy tracks. His tracks are tragicomic themed, and coincidentally, he kept adding more tracks in the genre as the game progressed.

The game now features a total of 9 comedy audio tracks by AudioAgent. (The tracks change every 10 levels.)

You can check out the tracks in the below Youtube playlists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Ajh9Cn23k&list=PLnTakDx63B8L0pBpjPD10VB3NJEcXj2l4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXeq713R444&list=PLnTakDx63B8IS3hr4Sd-tnZXgu5vCIoi6

Sound

I had already made a list of suitable sounds from AudioJungle, but it was from a variety of artists and didn’t seem to fit together. I was not sure if I should hire a sound designer for the project. I figured it would be a good idea to ask around anyway.

I am active on Twitter in the gamedev community, and I found Elise Kates’ profile there. She had done some amazing work in the past for games like Moss, and I thought she’d be a good candidate to help me out with the sound. And it was a great decision afterall. The sound effects added the finishing touches to the polish in the game and really brought the characters to life!

Putting It All Together

I’m glad I’ve been able to put all of this together in a single package. The pun in the name, gameplay mechanics, art, animation, sound and music all come together really well. It would be perhaps be one of my proudest achievement since it is an important skillset to have.

Translation, Screenshots, Trailer and Preview Videos

In December, I took help from the Indie Game Localization community to get the game translated in 12 languages. It was an overwhelming amount of work, about 5000 words. I maintained separate Google Sheets for each language.

But what was harder was designing screenshots and preview videos and localizing them into all languages. But it did pay off eventually because it got the game featured in most of the regions that I had localized for.

Check out the preview video below:

youtube

Robinson helped in creating a landscape trailer for the game as well, since Android needs a landscape video regardless of whether the game is landscape or not. it was more of a theatrical trailer that served as an introduction to the premise of Sheeping Around and dab a little bit into its gameplay:

youtube

Freemium, Premium or Paymium?

The hardest decision for me to take was whether to go premium or freemium (or paymium), and if premium, what would be the price point of the game. Early on I had decided that the game would be premium on iOS and free-to-play on Android, given how easy piracy is on Android (more on piracy in the Piracy section below). I had thought of keeping the game’s price to $4.99, as I had read that Card Crawl had recently upped its price to $4.99 from $2.99 and it increased their month-on-month sales by more than 2x. Turns out, it won’t work very well during release when both developer and the game are new to the market and there are no ratings and reviews. This is also why my day 2 sales were more than day 1 sales, when I dropped the price to $2.99.

My game also has in-app purchases, and most people object to the idea of IAPs in a premium game. But if you look at the top paid charts in the card game category (or even any other category for that matter), you will find that more than 70% of the games have IAPs. This model is called paymium on mobile platforms, and has only recently entered the debate alongside freemium and premium. In the PC world, most games are paid, and the concept of DLCs is fairly normal and accepted, so I don’t understand what the issue with IAPs in premium mobile games is about.

Besides, the IAPs in Sheeping Around aren’t your typical in-your-face popups that appear at the end of every game to give you a reward or to increase your life. They are subtle, just two coin packs that you can buy if need be. You probably won’t need to though.

Pre-orders and the Coming Soon Feature

I set the game to be available for preorder on 31st December 2018. That would make my first new years’ resolution to be to release this game. I set Thursday, 17th Jan as the release date. That is because App Store refreshes every Thursday and it would get greater number of days in visibility if it gets featured then. (Most features last at least a week.)

That is also when I also submitted my game and my story to Apple via App Store’s promote link, hoping to get featured.

On January 5, the game got featured in the Coming Soon section, and it started getting a little spike in pre-orders. From 1-2 per day to around 25-30 per day. On January 20, the game got featured in a lot more territories, including US, UK, South Africa, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. I netted about 250 pre-orders from this feature. But it turns out that in some places, since Apple lets you preorder without having a linked credit card, they would fail to be billed on release of the game. Because of this, only about 200 pre-orders went through successfully. App store still shows -1/-2 net preorders days after the game’s release.

New Games We Love & Top Charts

Upon release, the game was featured in “New Games We Love” in US, China and the Greater China Area (HK, Macau, Taiwan), South-East Asia, India, UK, Europe, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It also went on to become #3 card game in US (iPhone) during launch and stayed between #3-#5 during the first week. In China, which is the second biggest market for me, the highest it went was #9 in card games. (Competition is quite high in that category there, with most paid games priced at ¥1 ($0.15).)

I especially love the words UK editorial team used to describe the game in Games We Love.

Reception

The reviews so far have been positive, with occasional negative reviews talking about some bugs, most of which I have fixed in the week after release. Here are the current reviews and ratings stats for the game so far:

US: 4.6 / 5 (56 ratings, 32 reviews) China: 4.3 / 5 (41 ratings, 23 reviews) Thailand: 4.7 / 5 (15 ratings, 11 reviews) Germany: 4.0 / 5 (11 ratings, 6 reviews) Russia: 4.6 / 5 (8 ratings, 7 reviews) UK: 3.7 / 5 (6 ratings, 4 reviews)

Some encouraging reviews:

“I’ve only played this game for 20 minutes, and I love it already. The creativity, the idea, everything about this game is just beyond my expectations, and I can only assume how addicting this game will be.”

“It a really good game. You should make a physical card game for this game. I really like it and it’s definitely worth buying it.”

“Don’t really review apps, let alone end up playing one a day or two after I started. But this one... this one got me hooked! It’s fairly simple gameplay but sometimes it gets pretty exciting.”

“Pre-ordered it, I've played Card Monsters since release & Hearthstone for 4 years & this game is very solid & entertaining.”

“I think this game is another new twist to a card game, I can definitely see potential for this game. I can’t wait for the next update, hopefully with some new cards to use.”

“This game is family oriented and so easy to play. It has the simplicity of UNO yet with enough strategy to keep you engage but not overwhelmed. This is highly addictive and fun to play. The element of luck is always a factor but how to use the cards given is the key. The games are short but competitive. Those who love card/card battle games should download this without hesitation! Kudos! Look forward to updates to see what you guys come up with next!”

DAUs, Screen Time and Retention Rate

I use Tableau for my data visualization needs, and have custom graphs and dashboards created for all kinds of metrics. 27% of the players have played the game for at least one hour, which is quite encouraging. 4.5% of the players have been addicted and have played for more than 5 hours. I’ve been seeing an average DAU of around 750 and average total session time of over 450 hours. Not that it matters much for a premium game, but I’m tracking it anyway. In terms of retention, my day 7 retention is about 10%, which isn’t so bad. I will give it more time to see what my day 30 retention is.

Press Coverage and Critic Reviews

I had mailed a lot of media sites and YouTubers to review the game. A lot of them covered the game. Thanks to the localization effort, the game was featured in a lot of foreign language blogs.

Specifically Pocket Gamer and Pocket Tactics wrote about the game. The review from Pocket Tactics was negative with a 2.0 / 5 rating, and from Pocket Gamer was somewhat above average at 3.5 / 5 rating. Pocket Tactics review, though negative, gave me a chuckle because of their words of choice.

You can check them out here:

Pocket Gamer: A surprisingly tense, exciting and fun card battler that doesn’t quite have the tactical depth for the long haul.

Pocket Tactics: Sheeping Around looks the part, but sadly the game turns out to be as dull as you would expect for a game based on an animal that stands around in a field all day chewing grass.

The criticism though has been pretty good in these reviews, and I will add more content and depth in the future updates to address the weaknesses they have mentioned.

Piracy

One thing I wanted to point out was that about 25% of the users of Sheeping Around are using a pirated version. I was under the impression that it would be very hard to pirate an iOS game, because it would need jailbreaking and it isn’t very easy to jailbreak your iOS device. Turns out I was very wrong. There are pirated App Stores like AppEven that you can install on your device, and you can install premium iOS games for free using those stores. You don’t need to jailbreak your phone and the whole process is dead simple. Turns out these folks are abusing Enterprise App certificates for ad-hoc app distribution, and Apple hasn’t been paying much attention to them.

Within about two minutes, I was able to download a pirated version of my own game from AppEven. It even added its own ads that pop up once every few minutes that bring revenue to the owners of the pirated app store. It made me a little sad, but that’s the way it is. No matter how many attempts you make to prevent piracy in your app, the hackers will have a workaround to bypass it. They can remove the code in your app that prevents piracy, replace your ads with their own. It is their daily business.

Promotional Artwork

For games that Apple finds worthy of promotion using a banner feature or on the Today page, Apple requests developers for promotional artwork. I got this request last Monday and I submitted the artwork by Wednesday. The game hasn’t gotten a banner feature or Game of the Day yet, so I can only hope it will happen one day in the future.

By The Numbers

And finally, the moment you’d been waiting for. Sales. Sheeping Around was able to break even about 50% of its outsourcing costs (art, animation and sfx) in 10 days since launch.

The top 2 territories where the game made some decent revenue are US and China, followed by Germany and UK.

What’s next?

I’m already working on some new cards that add more variety to the gameplay. These include:

Bonus cards

Peek - Look at the opponent’s hand.

Undo - Undo the opponent’s last move. It can also potentially undo a stolen or whistled sheep.

Lucky Pendant - Draw half the number of cards in your hand (rounded off).

Shepherd cards

Fence N (N = 2, 3, 4) - Build a fence around all sheep preventing any of them from being stolen for N turns.

Electric Fence N (N = 2, 3) - Build an electric fence around all sheep preventing any of them from being lured or stolen for N turns.

Quarantine N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Cure all sheep of Infestation or Intoxication by N turns.

Vaccinate N (N = 3, 4) - Prevent Infestation or Intoxication on all sheep for the next N turns.

Thief cards

Infest N (N = 2, 3, 4) - Infest all sheep with pests to prevent them from being whistled for N turns.

Intoxicate N (N = 2, 3) - Intoxicate sheep to prevent them from being grazed or whistled for N turns.

Thrash N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Damage a Fence or an Electric Fence and reduce its value by N turns.

Termites (N = 3, 4) - Spread termites to prevent building a Fence or an Electric Fence for the next N turns.

Changes to existing cards

Rescue N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Reduce the effect of Trap, Infestation or Intoxication by N turns on one sheep.

Distract N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Reduce the effect of Guard, Fence or Electric Fence by N turns on one sheep.

You can already add an ally that unlocks at Lv. 20 to the game. Future updates may include upto 5 allies in total:

Shepherd’s side

Beaver - Jack Kim (Lv. 10)

Llama - Fuzzy Wumpkins (Lv. 20)

Sheepdog - Casper Cloud (Lv. 30)

Emu - Emily McCoy (Lv. 40)

Donkey - Muriel Miller (Lv. 50)

Thief’s side

Raven - Merlin Kook (Lv. 10)

Eagle - Cradoc McClaw (Lv. 20)

Coyote - Roxy Fang (Lv. 30)

Badger - Agent Chaos (Lv. 40)

Bear - Boris Rockpaw (Lv. 50)

Additional Features I’ll also be working on some features like: - Expressions and dialogs - Offline mode vs AI - Pass and play multiplayer - Quests

Conclusion

Sheeping Around was a fun project, and unlike my other shelved projects, it saw the light of the day, and it is a proud achievement for me in that regard. For the past 14 months, I’ve worked part-time at a consistent pace on this project (and full time for a few months). Especially as a solo developer being able to develop a PvP multiplayer game where people in US can battle people in China with servers located in London, I think it is a great feat.

Look forward to more updates in the future on this blog. Follow the blog on Tumblr or me on Twitter to keep yourself up to date on the progress of the game.

#sheepingaround #postmortem #indiegamedev #gamedev #gamedesign #ios #appstore

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