#that in itself shows how little i'm actually losing in this upgrade

[palimundo]

Hearing about Switch 2 gives me FOMO as a leisure gameplayer. You're telling me I have to sink another stack of money for a new console if I REALLY want to play a game? I thought I was in the clear for buying my Switch five years ago! Say it ain't so, Nintendo! Say it ain't so!

[odusseus-xvi]

Pomme's paranoïa

Because aparently I can't stop talking about this little egg. I wanted to touch this subject because it is something CRUCIAL to her character, and from what I've seen Richas, in his letter to Forever, has actually talked about that and how he is worried for her.

I want to talk here about WHERE that paranoïa might come from idea by idea (more in depth than my post about Pomme as a whole) :

Bobby died THE DAY after her arrival, that probably didn't help. That also caused a startle in everyone on the island making everyone a lot more paranoïd that they already were at Pomme's arrival, she then had the realization that life was EXTREMELY dangerous and limited on the island VERY early on, in a way a bit similar to Richas if we think about it, though Richas experienced it and so processed it wildly diferently, she got a dreadful suspense ; when is it coming to me ? To the others ? Because that's the thing, she is not as scared of losing her lives as she is scared of losing the others and the others losing her.

Not long after Dapper lost his first life to the code, that not only added to the already constant background aprehension, but that also made her the LAST egg with two lives, and from now on, everytime people talked about her was about how she was the next target of the code.

And then she WAS : Targeted by the code next to Ninho after everyone was worried of the tweet from Quackity Studios, and after she was saved THREE times from the codes she saw the people she cared about turn against each other because she had been not careful (Her french dads becoming suspicious of Forever, and therefore of Baghera.) (she was in fact "mind controlled" to come outside but from her POV it was still her fault.) From now on SHE CANNO'T let her guard down, this is both too dangerous for her and the people she loves.

A bit later was the attack that was then considered not canon by the admins because the attack was WAY too powerful : It broke a lot of totems at once and broke all of her armor. Though her death was not considered canon by the admins at first, Pomme (and the admin) played it as actually existing, not as a nightmare, not as non existant, but as an actual event she was saved from by someone or something : She talks about it from time to time, she truly died a bit that day.

(a little quote from that event from her diary because it's Heartbreaking)

"The pain was excruciating. It pierced my body, and with each hit, I felt the life leave my body a little more. The noise of the totems was deafening, the pain prevented me from running to escape. Just a few seconds later, I felt intense pain, even more intense than the previous blows. He had just finished me off. I no longer saw anything, I no longer felt anything. The pain had vanished in an instant. It was cold, I was scared. [...] While I was sleeping. something strange happened. As if the missing part of my soul was repairing itself. When I woke up, I no longer had any pain anywhere. But I'm still scared, more scared than ever. I'm terrified. [...] I never want to suffer so much again. I never want anyone to suffer so much again. I have no other choice; I have to get stronger. I'm going to have to live with this fear from now on, so I might as well put it to good use."

She then starts to actually show her paranoïa in a lot of aspects of her personality :

She is INCREDIBLY quick at trading her butterfly wings for her chestplate at any potential danger. She has also shown multiple times and SAID on her sign that her inventory hotbar is the most paranoïd thing ever : Filled with totems, her weapons, regeneration 2 splash potions (that are also very likely refilled with the backpack upgrade knowing her parents)

She, after learning the codes could imperssionate them now, immediatly figured out a code to make sure she was truly herself.

The day after ElQuackity was exploded by BBH and Max and that he threatened them, Pomme asked Baghera to build another safe room 200k away from spawn as she was not feeling safe in Ninho anymore.

One other interesting thing : She is not just the only egg with two lives, she is the egg that survived the LONGEST with two lives. And two things comes out of that : The fear of losing her first life because it would cause suffering to her AND her loved ones, but ironically also that SHE would be the one that could sacrifice a life to one of her siblings, she would feel terrible if one of her siblings died instead of her "simply" losing a life and she did nothing because she was scared.

A fun (not fun) little fact is that recently this paranoïa for the other's safety has started to transform into anger : She was first scared of ElQuackity, but the second she learned that Dapper was captured by him, she was FURIOUS, Baghera had to tell her multiple times to not go after ElQuackity, and though she is most of the time very empathetic of someone's situation, she has only expressed disgust and hate towards ElQuackity since then, talking multiple times how much she wants to kill him herself. (if that's how she loses her first life : dying trying to kill ElQuackity... I don't what I would do (probably cry))

I could probably find 100 more things to say but I'm writing that in the middle of doing something else and I'm getting a headache so I'll stop there. If you can't tell this was just an excuse to talk about the egg of all time. Let's finish by the quote (that I really like) that crowns her wiki page :

"J'ai beaucoup de questions mais je suis pas sûre de vouloir connaître les réponses"

"I have many questions but I'm not sure I want to know the answers"

[tigressaofkanjis]

Dumb Things To Do In Immortals Fenyx Rising (That I Have Already Done And Somehow Succeeded At!)

Attack one of the four main mythical monsters located in each of the four lands of the Golden Isle with little to no weapon upgrades and a beginner health bar.

Me being a dumbass went looking for one of them, Ozomene the Harpy, and it went pretty much as you would expect. But did I back down? Two hours later, 30 minute boss battle (each try) camping on the cliffs above the battlefield waiting for her weakest moment to strike (because she could one hit kill me) and second stage staying to the side under the battlefield, I defeated her with a measly dumb axe and terrible health.

Camping in a Wraith Zone (waiting for it to disperse on its own)

Don't do this, those Wraiths of the Fallen Heroes are almost as difficult as the Wraiths in the real fight...and a terrible time waster. Speaking of which...

Taking on a Wraith Lair with little to no weapon upgrades and a small health bar.

Achilles can suck my dick but like Ozomene, patience and a lot of dodging will get you far. One could argue why I didn't upgrade first then returned but I'm notorious for this, don't pity me.

Heading straight into boss battles without getting a concept of the dodge technique (which is very helpful mind you).

I'm...not going to explain this one. It speaks for itself.

Legendary monster hunting...with no experience with the game.

Also speaks for itself.

Tartaros Vault shopping spree when the powers and upgrades required to complete each Vault have not been unlocked.

It was fun...

Taking on purple (powerful) enemies when at a low level.

Pays good, takes a lot of manpower and determination. And death.

Bear hunting.

If you see the bear(s) in one area but reach said area and lose track of them...you should run away. You aren't going to have a good time.

The Icarus run (testing your wings up high with little stamina).

Made funny when deliberate and trying to skydive straight into a body of water but missing.

A.I. testing.

Sometimes you get stupid enemies...every other time you do not and you pay heavily for it.

Become Typhon's entertainment.

Every time you die, it'll give you a game over screen and Typhon is laughing his ass off in the background faintly. Finding 1,000 ways to die makes the show that is your dumb life perhaps funnier than the real life show (1000 Ways to Die™) of the same name. It's a good way to see how far the game lets you go and something to do if you really want to see what you're capable of...also out of boredom. Typhon has zero qualms about this and certainly agrees.

Killing your mounts.

Can you actually kill your mounts? No, but you can eject from them off anything you can summon them on and it's either really funny because you realize now your pet pegasus can't fly or you're just a psychopath (then again who isn't?).

Be an asshole to the gods.

In a way, you can but there's not much consequences to this (though I'm very curious what would happen if you actually could choose to aid them or Typhon instead or at least choose your relationship with each god Mass Effect style) because it's more along the lines of avoiding their quests and fucking around in the game ala Breath of the Wild then actually doing what you're supposed to do. Basically when their Vault is opened to you, you could help them get their essences back...or you could leave their cries for help to let them rot in the Vaults just so you can fuck around doing other things and enjoy the scenery because why not?

Exploring King's Peak and Typhon's Mountain...when you're not supposed to.

Did you know you can defog both King's Peak and the Gates of Tartaros early in the game? You can! Bbbuuttt....it won't be a cakewalk and the game will do everything in its power to stop you. If you have too many stamina mushrooms, why not put those bad boys to work and test your climbing skills at King's Peak? Sure, it'll deplete you of all your stamina back ups but hey, you just beat the game's harshest environment and you can get that pesky Bird's Eye View trophy very early!

Troll Typhon by ignoring him.

You may ask, how do you ignore the big bad when he throws things at you left and right throughout the game? Well simple, you just don't engage them. It defeats the purpose of the game and many things won't be able to be obtained but who needs them? This is the most pacifist route you'll ever get in this game (even though there are enemies you are required to beat to move on in the story) but at least Typhon will see he means nothing to you, just a speck of dirt in your road to a victory not as well deserved as normal.

And that is a wrap for some of the stupid shit you can do in Immortals Fenyx Rising. There's more but it would take a while to list everything.

[franken-fan]

wanna tell us more about steven? i know the basics and i'm trying to do researches in details about his story in every album he's part of but i can't seem to find much :/

If this isn’t what you were looking for let me know! I can talk endlessly about this character!

I looked back at my first Steven info-dump and I already kind of did an album to album analysis (though it was very brief), but I guess I’ll go into more specific detail for each album and do a character study of sorts.

In brief, Steven is a recurring character created by Alice Cooper who is featured across many albums, some comics, and a full stage show. He is the main character of the concept album Welcome to My Nightmare, which is Cooper’s first solo album. Steven is essentially a personification of everyone’s child-like curiosity and sense of fear, in the form of a seven year old boy.

This is quite…..long. So I’m going to throw it under the cut. I’ve covered every piece of media that I can think of that Steven appears in. Not many pictures this time, but I’ve provided links where appropriate.

It should first be noted that there isn’t a ton of official, specific lore written about Steven. Everything comes from the albums, and as is with music, very open to interpretation (so my opinions are definitely not to be taken as fact). Cooper is a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and is often quoted as saying that the inspiration for a fluid, recurring character came from Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout, who is similarly featured or mentioned in several of Vonnegut’s novels. Here is a link to a video of Cooper’s own take on Steven.

Summary: Steven is a man who experiences violent night terrors, and due to traumatic childhood experiences, spends much of his life stuck in the mindset of a young boy (approximately 7 or 8 years old). Most of his story is told through his nightmares, which are written out over the course of 4 concept albums, in which he is usually seen fighting against the devil. In a single track on the Hey Stoopid album, it is confirmed that Steven is in some sort of psychiatric care facility, and has been there for a majority of his life. Along Came a Spider follows the story of a serial killer named Spider, where Steven is specifically named in the epilogue at the end of the last song. It is stated that he has been in this hospital for 28 years, which means that Spider is another nightmare album. Steven faces his death in Nightmare 2, and is “officially” killed off at the end of the album. Steven is depicted as a very innocent, naive person who has a very black and white sense of morality (much like a child), but is still quite mischievous. It is clear that his abusive past has haunted him through the course of his whole life. He is a very dynamic character, and Cooper has put a lot of effort into developing him throughout his career, Despite his “death” at the end of Nightmare 2, I don’t entirely believe that he is done with the character either.

Welcome to My Nightmare (Album, Tour, Movie): The original Nightmare album follows Steven on a guided tour through Hell. In the album, the character Alice Cooper serves as Steven’s guide, while Vincent Price is featured as the Devil himself. The first half of the album occurs in Hell, where songs like Welcome to My Nightmare and Devil’s Food set up the premise of the tour. The album continues to progress through various scenes in Hell, very similar to circles of Hell as seen in Dante’s Inferno. The album itself does not really feature Steven’s own reactions to these songs, but in the accompanying television special, “The Nightmare” (which has finally been remastered in ridiculous HD and released on DVD after literal decades of it being impossible to find), has some small quips of Steven dialog, especially in the Devil’s Food and Black Widow scenes; he is simultaneously very timid and also not afraid to mock the Devil to his face in his own home. He is curious about everything that he is seeing, but seems to immediately regret almost all of his decisions. It isn’t until Years Ago that the album takes a more real turn, in which it starts to be suggested that Steven might not actually be the little boy he is written out to be. The song suggests that Steven is grown man who is mentally stuck in his childhood for some reason or another (this reason isn’t even explored in this album), but who has very little control over which version of Steven he is at any given time. The transition into the song Steven is amazing (and can only be truly appreciated on vinyl), and once more brings out more of Steven’s true character. From this song (and I say this hesitantly), he appears to suffer from some sort of psychosis, and has a very lose grip on reality; this idea isn’t touched upon more until Hey Stoopid, and the “calling” that he hears in Steven is likely the voice of his wife trying to wake him up, as he hurts her in his sleep (because of the night terror he is experiencing, a realization that he has in The Awakening and then tries to run away from in Escape). There are two main ways in which you can view the progression of the first half of the album: as either each song representing some sin that Steven is witnessing in Hell, or as each song representing some repressed part of Steven is experiencing (in his sleep or in his past, that’s up to you). Cold Ethyl is, ehm, questionable….in it’s true meaning to the character. I personally take it in the alcoholism interpretation rather than the necrophilia one. Only Women Bleed is a commentary on abuse, where I see it more as Steven’s personal stance and understanding, but Along Came a Spider most definitely skews this.

Alice Cooper Goes to Hell: This album is a direct follow-up to the Nightmare, in which Steven is once again stuck in Hell/his dreams. There isn’t a terrible amount of character development in the album itself, the album focuses more on the character of Alice than Steven. The dust sleeve included with the original vinyl release (and I believe the re-release too, I’m not sure though as I have a pretty decent original and didn’t feel like upgrading) has a little story printed on either side as a beginning and end to the album, which implies that in this nightmare, Steven is sent back into the Hell of the first Nightmare in order to go save Alice from his place in Hell (this is also touched upon in the title track of Dragontown). The exact wording in the text is that Steven must “free” Alice, and essentially take his place in the nightmare. This would explain why Steven goes from being an innocent, child-like character to becoming so malicious in subsequent albums, because it isn’t really Steven, at least mentally (and the Alice character has always been written as a villain). Whether this is a truly paranormal event or a psychological one is up for debate, and truly depends on how you personally view the character. This wasn’t a hugely successful album either, and is by no means his strongest one. I Never Cry, Wish You Were Here, and I’m Always Chasing Rainbows are my personal favorite tracks, and are honestly the most Steven-y, along with Wake Me Gently, in which Steven is once again struggling to wake up. The title could be a throwback to The Awakening, where Steven can’t be snapped out of his nightmares quickly without negative results, but the lyrics themselves show that Steven is drifting away from himself and he can’t control it, which would confirm the theory that Alice is taking over.

Hey Stoopid: So the only song on this album that directly relates to Steven is (my personal favorite) Wind-Up Toy, which is the final track on the album. This is the first time Steven is mention in over 15 years (since Goes to Hell), and he comes back in one hell of a track. In the song, Steven is in a hospital, grown up but clearly still stuck in his childlike state. He’s been abandoned by his parents and it is suggested that he is at the full mercy of the hospital staff, which he seems to claim as being anything but helpful. It is also suggested that he ended up here after being caught from escaping at the end of Welcome to My Nightmare (so then Goes to Hell is likely also a product of whatever drugged up stupor he’s been in), as seen in the line, “Preacher crucifies me, Warden wants to fry me,” so he’s clearly been caught for something that would warrant a potential death sentence. The lines, “I was never young, never just a little boy,” also confirms that Steven, at least in the course of the time frame in which Alice writes him, was never as young as the first half of Nightmare would have us believe. Steven’s name is also explicitly stated in the last couple seconds of the song, albeit quietly. In live performances of this song, he brings real life to Steven, and I am eternally hoping that he will bring this song back to touring. If you really wanted to stretch, you could argue that the rest of, or at least a majority of, the album could also be about Steven in some capacity (namely Might as Well Be on Mars and Die for You), but again that’s a stretch and not really worth going into more detail with.  

The Last Temptation: This is another concept album, which was accompanied by a comic book of the same name written by Neil Gaiman. The general plot follows the story of a boy named Steven as he is tempted by a character named The Showman (who is depicted physically as Alice Cooper) to join his traveling show. It plays on the themes of dystopian America and the issues of morality. I do not personally see this album as a development of the Steven seen in the other albums, but more of a spin-off. It honestly isn’t too far off from the original Nightmare. Stolen Prayer is basically a Steven soliloquy about his moral dilemma in regards to joining The Showman, and realizing how twisted his show really is, which is very similar to Steven fighting with the Devil in the Nightmare albums. In Unholy War, Steven decides against The Showman’s offer. In this song you can start to tell that The Showman is another Devil character. Lullaby is a killer track, though. It’s a direct conversation between The Showman and Steven, and is the best link to the original Steven character out of the whole album. This entity (The Showman or Devil or what have you) is turning on Steven now that it has realized that he’s a lost cause, and Steven admits that up until this point he has truly been deceived by this being. The voice acting in this track is incredible, and I think is just as strong as the original Steven song. The last track, Cleansed by Fire, shows Steven casting out The Showman (and confirms him as a fallen angel/the Devil by referring to him as “a fallen star”), but there are also a couple hints that could potentially link it to Along Came a Spider. Steven still questions what happens to him if he falls into the trap, but explicitly declares his victory over The Showman. One of the things that The Showman offers Steven is eternal life, and later in the song there is the passage, “What about death? What about sin? What about that web you’re trying to spin?” Now, there is a 14 year gap between The Last Temptation and Along Came a Spider, but Steven’s uncertainty in his own future after encountering The Showman could mean that Steven wasn’t as successful in his moral battle, and would directly link this album to the rest. The comic follows the same plot as the album, and the artwork is really gorgeous.

Along Came a Spider: This album is one of my all time favorites, and I wish he’d ended up doing the sequel he planned (it was to be called The Night Shift and I’m still mad it was never made, and am forever hoping that he’ll one day release some demos off of it). Along Came a Spider is about a serial killer known as ‘Spider,’ who wraps his victims in silk after stealing one of their legs. He claims that he has to do this to build his own spider, and thus needs eight victims to complete the task. He is a stalker, using this method to learn everything he can about his victims before using this info to make a quick seduction and then kill (as told in I’m Hungry and (In Touch With) Your Feminine Side). There are some slight hints at potential cannibalism (in I’m Hungry, obviously, and Catch Me If You Can with, “She was not the first and she won’t be my last, my hunger and my thirst”), though I’ve always taken these references less in the literal sense and more in the “hunger” equals “strong/insatiable desire” sort of way. Through the course of Feminine Side and Killed By Love (and INCREDIBLE ballad by The Coop), Spider falls in love with his final victim and struggles to come to terms with the “fact” that he must kill her. He lets her go after much internal debate (The One That Got Away), and starts to come to terms, or more so realization, with all of the horrible things he’s done. I Am the Spider/Epilogue is Spider’s confession and he’s not humble about what he’s done. The plot twist comes in the epilogue portion, in which Spider says, “We’ve been in this cell for 28 years, Steven. We couldn’t have done all those horrible things” (a part that had me screaming the first time I listened to it). There are a couple of interpretations that I’ve come up with on this point. The first is that this whole Spider scenario is another one of Steven’s violent nightmares, and all of these events have occurred solely in his head. After all, if Steven really has been hospitalized since before Wind-Up Toy, then he really couldn’t have been out there doing these things. The second (that I don’t like as much, due to the extremely negative implications of it), is that Steven and Spider are in fact the same person, in which case Steven either escaped or was released from wherever he was is Wind-Up Toy, committed the crimes chronicled by the album, and was then arrested as Spider. The re-release of the album features two bonus tracks (three, if you count the “acoustic” version of Salvation) which flesh out Spider as a character a bit more. Shadow of Yourself is Spider admiring his creation, and is basically a love song to his murder plot. I’ll Still Be There is another stalker song, though the way it’s written makes it sound like a letter he’d send to the woman he let go. Both tracks are absolutely phenomenal, and I honestly wish they’d been released on the original album because they are very, very strong.

Welcome 2 My Nightmare: This album is a direct follow-up to the original Nightmare, it can be looked at as if none of the albums between Nightmare and Nightmare 2 exist, or as a continuation of the Steven developed in those albums. This is also the last canonical appearance of Steven in the albums (though I always hope that he will pop up in the next album). The album opens with another powerhouse of a ballad, I Am Made of You (don’t be turned off by the auto-tune, this is one of his best songs), though who it is about, we just don’t know. He’s obviously fallen in love with someone and grown as a person because of it, possibly even out of his seemingly permanent child-state as this song boasts of a much more mature Steven, mentally and emotionally. However, he’s beginning to spiral again, and viciously fighting sleep in Caffeine. He knows what’s coming for him if he sleeps (“Because I know inside, if I close my eyes, it’ll be the death of me.”), and the line, “I’m shaking in the ice cold shower, I’ve been here for about a week,” suggests that Steven has been released from (or escaped from) the hospital he’s been in for so many years. He loses his battle with sleep and is brought back into the original Nightmare with the throwback track The Nightmare Returns. Now, Steven travels back through his Hell, but with little to no fear. This is another Dante-esque album, where the tracks The Runaway Train through Ghouls Gone Wild are another tour of the different rooms of Hell (featuring Rob Zombie as “The Guide” in The Congregation and Kesha as another incarnation of the Devil in What Baby Wants). This album also gives us a look into the event that likely caused Steven’s psychological trauma with the song When Hell Comes Home, which is about Steven’s father and some serious, serious abuse (the specifics of the abuse are not stated, but it’s definitely physical in the very least). This is not so much part of the nightmare as it is a memory. The tone and lyrics of the song are incredibly dark, and while the song is about one night in particular, it not so subtly hints that this is not an isolated event. Steven’s mother is in denial of anything that is happening, both to herself and to Steven, and this is what gets her killed. After the solo, the father’s enraged voice can be heard bellowing Steven’s name while Steven quietly chants, “no.” Clearly Steven is aware of what is about to transpire, because he says that this time he’s ready for him, and that he plans on fighting back (if not also killing his father). In I Gotta Get Outta Here, Steven recaps his nightmare for the album, and then realizes that he doesn’t get to wake up from this one, though he doesn’t want to accept that yet. The song ends a a sort of cliffhanger, as the last track is just an orchestra medley of both Nightmares. There are many bonus track associated with this album (spread out over many different editions). The two most important are Under the Bed which is an old school, scaredy-cat Steven track about a monster under the bed, and Flatline. Flatline is three minutes of ambient noise and a heart rate monitor. The monitor flatlines at the 46 second mark and then holds the tone until the end of the track. 12 seconds to the end, a voice calls out Steven’s name (Someone trying to wake him up? Or someone calling to him in Hell?), This track confirms that Steven is dead. Flatline was only released on the vinyl version of the album, but thanks to the vinyl purists of the world, someone took the time to convert the track to digital, which can be heard here.

Other: I personally feel like Paranormal from the album Paranormal is a Steven track. It’s a song from the point of view of someone beyond the grave comforting a loved one. Steven dies at the end of Nightmare 2 and has two ballads (I Am Made of You and Something to Remember Me By) on that same album. There is clearly an unnamed love interest for the character which would count as “unfinished business” for his soul. He also led a very troubled existence, so it wouldn’t be too far of a jump to assume that even though he died, his ghost remained behind (going by the stereotypical explanation for ghosts). Also, in Goes to Hell, Steven is contacted by Alice during the night (as seen in the sleeve text), and is tasked with going to save Alice by taking his place, who’s to say that Steven didn’t have to die to do this? In which case, the paranormal events of the song would be Steven following in the footsteps of Alice.