#the coolest level start in the game don't @ me ^^

[octakiseron]

LEAVE THIS BODY

[luciluck2046]

WHOOOOHOOOO

It's my bday :3

Not a big deal...

Me and my friends actually contributed to this drawing. Respect to them.

They're some of the best friends I have. But I don't have that many friends. Tho literally every one of my friends is a good friend :3

But I don't only have friends around me.

I have some in other countries.

Far away.

But that doesn't make them any less of friends :3

So I will say a good thing about EVERY friend of mine.

Starting with my friend group.

Then the online friends.

I RL LOVE YOU GUYS <3

MY GIRLFRIEND, MY BELOVED GIRL TO MY SOUL AND HEART. You've been the light of my life, glowing when things became hard, and supporting me when I couldn't speak. I owe you my life, and I hope you have a LOVELY day <3

MY BESTIE, MY FRIEND AND SILLY RABBIT. You're the friendliest, yet most violent, one of the friend group. You're a cool motherfucker and I wish you the best. Now go fuck yourself.

MY FRIEND, MY SILLY AND YAP LISTENER. You're a cool, interesting girl and yapping to each other about out current hyperfixations is something I absolutely love.

MY FRIEND, MY UNRELATED OLDER SISTER. You like Undertale too! And Stardew, and other games and fandoms. And you're a very good artist, and are very silly.

MY FRIEND, MY FELLOW SILLY AND FOOD GIVER. Thanks for all the food I swear, I can't only survive by my food. BUT you're cool, and sing very well! hope the pans are safe

MY FRIEND, MY FELLOW SOUL TWIN. How tf do I relate to most of you? Anyway have a duck 🦆🦆🦆🦆

MY FRIEND, AND VERY COOL YAP LISTENER. You're tall. Also you listen to my yap sometimes. And you're so chill how do you do that?

AND NOW, THE ONLINE COOL PPL <3

@a-mess-of-a-crow. You're a very good writer, and a very good artist. I love your art and I like talking with you about different themes :3 Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

@akanemnon. You're the reason I even installed Tumblr. You inspire me and you make so much cool art, I hope you realize that we're so thankful for your comic. Also thanks for being a cool content creator.

@theomniplayer. Cool au, cool art, cool player, cool in general. Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

@ultrabean. ONE OF THE COOLEST COMICS. I rl wonder how y'all can do that. Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

@okamiz36. HOW DO YOU DRAW SO WELL, MY FRIEND, YOU'RE GOD BLESSED WTF. Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

@purpleeggyboi. Your silly levels are OFF THE CHARTS. Man you're a star. Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

@th3-r4t-48. Man we both go insane at times, or have our breakdowns. I hope you are doing a bit better, but I'll silly with you if you want :3 Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

@slasher-jax. Your ocs are WOW. Just WOW. You're a great person. Also thanks for being a cool mutual.

But the most important thing. THANK YOU ALL, MY FALLOWERS, MY FRIENDS, FAMILY, LOVED ONES, EVEN STRANGERS! THANKS FOR EXISTING AND BEING A COOL PERSON!!!

Now have some cake :3

(sorry the drawing isn't finished)

[punkeropercyjackson]

My audhd brain won't stop telling me to do a full breakdown of the parallels between Percy and Hobie so i will.Alright,let's do this one last time!

Troubled but good kids

Afro-dominican New Yorker/Jamaican-English(NY and England are where punk first started)

Anarchists,proffessional instigators,always helping out around communities(it's implied Percy participated in Rachel's protests and charities with her)and looking out for the little guy

So they're actual punks instead of just EdgyTM douchebags because they wanna do the right thing no matter what

No masking game autistics

Trans femmes who come across as masc only to normies

Chillaxed and super kind and love cute shit and people but also have major street credit,a huge edge and strong as fuck backbones and the reason they're so kind is that their childhood was beyond brutal so as they grew up they decided to be the positive older figure in younger people's lives they didn't take to have to the point they turned into Team Dad's

The EXACT same sense of humor

Blue-coded

Alt music lovers

Expressions are always either super intimidating or meme worthy goofy

Pet supernatural dog(Spidermutt and Mrs O'Leary)

Widely regarded as the coolest ever in-universe and correctly so but they're huge dorks when you get down to it but that only makes them even cooler-They were this cool the whole time

6'something with guitarist hands and described as so attractive it's shocking

Go by a nickname instead of their full name and have a common black surname

Oldest and most experienced heroes in their main casts

Hobie's dad is a deadbeat who left him as a baby to do supernatural shit

'I'm not a role model' 'I hate the a.m,i hate the p.m,i hate labels' 'I don't believe in consistency' / 'Was i a troubled kid?Yeah,you could say that' 'I AM impertenent' 'The sea does not like to be restrained'

'Calling yourself a hero makes you self-mythologizing'Hello???????????

Gwen is the Hazel to Hobie's Percy.She's a younger trans girl with a ghost motif who's a pastel ray of sunshine and runs her mouth as much as they do and has a dead mom,an abusive corrupted figure dad and their own impressive experiences in heroism before meeting them

Nico is another teen Ghostkid who Percy gifted a Ramones shirt and gave shelter to multiple times when he was homeless because Hades/Pluto is as much of a fucking cunt as George Stacy is.Nico is also a Miles kinnie because he's an optimistic softboy who's nerdy,a fast food lover and a lot stronger than he gives himself credit for and Percy is the big brother mentor to him the fandom thinks Hobie is to Miles(Nah fr Hobie and Miles are ambigious but Percy's canonically a grown ass man and Nico's Miles' age,P*rcicos pack it up and get over that your ship only works for transfem Percy proof)

Karl=Jason(the cooler St*ve R*gers,the actual voice of reason on the team but just as unhinged as the rest of them,very nice guy vibes and Hobie's righthand),Riri=Annabeth(Black girl genius who takes no shit but is still written as a person instead of a stereotype)and Mattea=Clarisse(red-coded,rowdy tomboy and war paint)

Mayday and Margo are basically just Estelle and Rachel,Jessica makes a pretty convincing Sally and Miguel reminds me of Poseidon but especially when he's interacting with Hobie

Sarcastic troublemaker smiles i've always found endearing(Rip to Annabeth but i'm different)(Also for Hobie i mean this platonically)

Immaculate rizz that's mostly unintentional but reaches critical levels when on purpose

Cocky asf and self-loathing at the same time

That one scene of Hobie leaving Gwen a Watch with the 'In case it don't work out' note with a lil doodle of him on it after getting her dad's ass/Percy sending the Olympians Medusa's head in a box after slaying her with a note saying 'Best wishes' to spite them

Goofy ahh who are nonetheless taken seriously cause Watch Out

They even both have terrible singing voices

And technically not the same thing but Hobie's also pink-coded so they're cotton candy colors and with Percy's white streak they can be the trans flag too!!

[bluelocksource]

Itoshi Sae’s trivia (source: twt & Egoist Bible 1 & 2).

"I'll see with my own eyes what kind of FW (idiot) will be born in Japan." (EB1)

"I'll show the next view only to the fools who can keep up." (EB2)

☆ Weapons: Kick accuracy, skills, tactical awareness, and physical ability—all at world-class level. (EB2)

☆ Character's colour: Adzuki bean color (reddish-brown).

☆ Nickname: ‘Japan’s Treasure’.

☆ Birthday: 10th October.

☆ Current age: 18 (3rd year of high school)

☆ Zodiac: Libra.

☆ Birthplace: Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

☆ Family: Mother. Father. Himself. Younger brother.

☆ Current height: 180 cm.

☆ Foot size: 26.5 cm

☆ Dominant foot: Left foot.

☆ Blood type: A.

☆ Starts playing football: At age 1. “Before I knew it, I was playing soccer.”

☆ Team before returning to Japan: RE・ALE (レ・アール) Youth FC.

☆ Favorite food/drink: Salted kelp tea (shio-kombucha). “Because I can go back to 0.” (meaning he feels refreshed after drinking it)

☆ Disliked food: French fries. “It’s deadly delicious but it’s deadly to my health.”

☆ Favorite animal: Seagulls. “I like migratory birds that doesn’t stay in one place.”

☆ Favorite season: At the end of summer. "It seems that the world is starting to get lonesome."

☆ Favorite football player: Álvaro Recoba. “The left footer that casts a rainbow (perfect curve) on the pitch.” (Sae was referring to Alvaro quotes: “If today's game is on a rainy pitch, I'll draw a rainbow with my left foot.”. Álvaro is known for his curling-free-kick.)

☆ Favorite music: ‘Mercury’ by tofubeats ft. Seira Kariya. “I listen to this to cool down.”

☆ Favorite manga: Gegege no Kitaro.

☆ Favorite movie: Taxi Driver. “This De Niro is the coolest.”

☆ Favorite TV show: Chibi Maruko-chan. “It reminds me of home.”

☆ Favorite brand: “All of my sponsors. They know they're not crazy for betting on me, they have good eyes.”

☆ Hobby: Analysing data of football players and teams. “It’s easier to see the numbers in visualized data.”

☆ Mushroom shoots vs Bamboo shoots: “Depends on the mood.”

☆ What goes best with rice : Salted kelp (shio-kombu). “They don’t have it in Brazil, so I asked my parents back home to send some here.”

☆ What makes him happy: “A play beyond my imagination.”

☆ What makes him upset: Being forced to carry Japanese soccer on his back. “I’m talking about you guys.”

☆ What he thinks his strength is: He has flat ways looking at things. (meaning he look at things objectively) "People often calls me dry**, but who cares?"

☆ What he thinks his weakness is: The fact that he doesn’t know anything else other than soccer. “You guys shouldn’t live this way.”

☆ Favorite/Best subject: “I don’t know since I’ve only focus on soccer and didn’t pay attention in classes.”

☆ What made him cry recently: “Like I'd tell you, idiot.”

☆ Usual sleeping time: 8 hours (7 hours sleeping + 1 hour nap)

☆ Place he washes first when taking a bath: His bangs’ hairline.

☆ Fixation: Buttocks. “You’ll know an athlete's ability by the shape of their buttocks.”

☆ Number of chocolates received from previous Valentine: Around 2000. “That’s what my manager told me.”

☆ The first time he got confessed to: “I don’t remember which one was the first, octopus.” (here, octopus is just an insult like 'idiot' or 'fool', etc.)

☆ What will he do if received 100 million yen: “I’m not interested in such small amount of money.” “I don't care. It's just pocket change.”

☆ At what age he stops receiving presents from Santa: At age 10.

☆ What was his last wish from Santa: “My own talent that I have yet to discover.”

☆ How he spent his holiday: Gazing at the sea.

☆ What will he do during his last day on Earth: Give the world's best striker the world's best pass.

☆ Favorite historical figure: "Nicolaus Copernicus. A person who overturned the world's common sense."

☆ If he hadn't encountered soccer, what will he be doing: "Probably living a normal, happy life. My personality might not have been like this."

☆ If he could only take one thing to a deserted island, what would it be:  "Nothing. I’ll live freely without rules."

☆ If he had a time machine, would he go to the past or the future: "I’m not interested in either. I won’t have any unnecessary expectations or disappointments about my past or future. Live in the now. You guys are annoying."

Last updated: 31/10/2024

*Not sure about the exact pronounciation but the most of the translation says 'Les Halles'. Updated! (25/7/2024)

Spelling of Sae's team, レ・アール : Left image: RE・ALE. This was from months ago (twt).

Right image: RE・EARL. The left image is from the recent twt :

** In Japan, there are terms called ‘dry person’ & ‘wet person’. ‘Dry person’ is someone who can think rationally without being overwhelmed by emotions and because of their calm demeanor, they are thought to be cold and unapproachable. ‘Wet person’ is the opposite of ‘dry person’.

note: i want to apologize in advance for any mistake made in the translation!

[weltato]

The Ramble About Klavier (AA4 spoilers)

Going off this post I made a while ago, here's a ramble about everyone's favourite rockstar prosecutor :)

This is gonna be a long post, so I'mma put it under a cut, but the TL;DR is that Klavier's damage sprite hurts me physically and I absolutely think that Kristoph is the cause of it :)) Also, using Franziska as a bit of a comparison at points because I could go on about her as well honestly, but that's for a different post.

(obligatory headcanon disclaimer here)

*Warning for mentions of verbal abuse, if that's uncomfortable then please scroll on and stay safe!*

You still here? Grand.

This sprite hurts man.

(I couldn't find a gif file for young Klav, had to use the icky webp file from the wiki- I fucking hate webp it's such a stupid file type)

You see how it's the same? You see how both sprites are the same? They move exactly the same! Now, you could say that it's something related to the chord that plays every time we see the sprite crop up, but he's gonna be smart enough to know about ear protection when doing rockstar stuff. Could be a sensitive ears thing, or a cringe thing at the sound of the chord (bc it does sound bad, I'll grant that), but it's never said if Klavier has sensitive hearing or smth (afaik, bc I haven't seen SoJ yet). We know Athena does, but nothing about Klav.

So! Remember Kristoph? Remember how shitty of a person he is? Welp, in the same vein as Franziska's damage sprite making everyone go "ooh, MvK did bad things" I put forward that Kristoph also did bad things.

But not physically. Kristoph is a man who uses his words as his weapons until he just casually has to poison people and then stalk everyone for seven years bc a fangirl screwed up his plan.

The sprite when Klav's 17 is labelled as "Disbelief (Unused).

Sure, it's unused in-game, but they still made it and they made it exactly the same as present Klav!

But when he's older, it's simply listed as "Damage".

Damage is a word used for quite a few sprites tbh, since it's when they...well, take damage, from their opponent, either through scripted event or from player decision.

However! Going back to a point I made in the original post: Franziska has a different distinction. Her older sprite is listed as "Shocked" but her younger sprite is given the "Damage" title.

Look! Her sprites are different! It doesn't give any good vibes tbh, she's sort of holding herself higher up and more with both arms than with the one arm her younger self uses, but that's for a different ramble about Franzy. This is about Klavier.

Franzy goes from "Damage" to "Shocked", potentially meaning that whatever is being thrown at her doesn't hurt anymore, merely catches her off guard and this is a reflexive response.

Klav goes from "Disbelief" to "Damage", which tells me that his younger self refused to hear and his older self is now realising that things are SO much worse than he feared and that HURTS.

With Franziska, it's pretty obvious that MvK was a pretty distant parent in parenting terms. I mean, he was always there, sure, but he didn't really show much love and affection. Franzy realises this and carries on because that's how she was brought up. She can handle that. (Don't get me started on the cry sprite omg-)

Kristoph was the same.

All my homies hate MvK and those same homies should also hate Kristoph. His nickname was literally "The Coolest Defense in the West" - this man was known for being level-headed! He was known for being a cool, calm and collected person! You never know what's going on under that.

Klavier was absolutely verbally and emotionally abused. I don't think it was physical abuse in any way, and if anything happened then at most it might've been a slap in the face, but Kristoph doesn't strike me as someone who gets off on holding power over his brother by beating him. After all, Klav is in the public eye 90% of the time as a rockstar, he doesn't want to risk make-up being applied wrong and the paparazzi picking things up. Kristoph strives for perfection in everything (again, the wiki literally says this, although I'm aware that the wiki can be edited by anyone) and he sees it in his brother too: he wants Klavier to be perfect.

But then he went to be a prosecutor and a rockstar and that's...well that's not good, it might ruin the name he's made for himself if his little brother goes off gallivanting with people like that (poor Daryan). Kristoph sets impossibly high standards that Klavier just can't match because he's not the same as his brother, he's not like that, he cares about people and his decision to go study in Europe is met with more disapproval from Kristoph, but Klavier takes it all as brotherly encouragement because the boy is SEVENTEEN and there's an eight year age gap, surely Kristoph knows best...

Then we get to the final section of Turnabout Succession.

When presenting the nail polish, Klavier recognises it immediately because that's the brand his brother uses. When Apollo asks about his hesitation, he says it's nothing.

They never checked Vera's nails either and Klavier is unable to say anything because Apollo is on a roll and Klavier really hopes he's wrong, so he asks if the bottle belongs to Vera and Apollo asks back if he knows someone else with one of those...

"No." he says, "Just checking."

YES. HE. DOES! He knows immediately as soon as that nail polish is brought up, everything clicks and he's so distressed by it that he refuses to believe Kristoph could've done this. He's in prison right now, how could he poison someone??

And when the Judge isn't convinced by this, Apollo deals him the final blow.

"Prosecutor Gavin doesn't seem to think this is inconceivable."

No response. His face is unreadable, or maybe it's anguished, and when it's suggested to bring Kristoph up as a special witness, Klav says this: "I've known for some time that an impenetrable darkness lurked at the bottom of this. ...A darkness that has swallowed even myself."

He knows and it's time to face The Devil that orchestrated all of this.

Maybe he's known for a long time and only just removed the rose-tinted glasses he was seeing Kristoph through - and he's crushed by it.

When Kristoph is in the room, Klavier's words are especially defeated here. Kristoph even asks Klavier to explain what's going on.

"You're being accused again. By him. Again."

And when Kristoph asks if Klav agrees with this, he says nothing. What can he say? That yes, his brother is a dark man? That yes, he's manipulative enough to do this kind of thing? That, if given the chance, he do it again to get rid of everyone who's in his way?

Trucy even says in one of the pressed statements that Klavier "must be nervous with big brother watching!"

Kristoph even takes over from Klavier's Objection when Kristoph's pressed by Apollo about the likelihood of Vera wanting to poison herself. That bitch! He's so obsessed with control that he takes control over his own trial from his own brother who's trying to 'defend' him. When Trucy says the two together is a force to be reckoned with, Apollo notes that they could do with more teamwork.

In that pivotal last statement, Klavier acts more like his brother than he ever has in the whole game and Apollo picks up on that. Kristoph is the reason Klavier is acting different, the reason he's trying so hard to get Apollo to notice the difference - Kristoph is clearly the threat in the room.

Kristoph is cruel in public too, but only now that Apollo is cornering him. See, the abuse towards Klavier was only ever subtle in public and far more pronounced in the home, but in this trial there's nowhere for him to go and Apollo would pick up every detail. So, when Apollo brings up the stamp and Klav's taken aback by this, Kristoph takes that moment to pounce: "You've upset my poor brother to the point of uselessness. Allow me to clarify this matter[...]"

We all hate him, right? He's such a dick.

Klavier is quiet, just watching everything unfold since he has no way to confront Apollo when he himself believes that Kristoph is guilty, and when Kristoph worms his way out of things he belittles Klav: "Really, Klavier. You should be seeing through these weak-spined bluffs by now."

What can he say? It's the same kind of thing he was always told - that he should be better, always pushed further than he could go.

But then he doubles down. He's sick of this, sick of Kristoph always being the perfect brother. So he fights back and calls Kristoph the bluffer. Kristoph is shocked; never once has Klavier outright pushed back on him. So when Klavier starts to side with Apollo, Kristoph plays the game.

Now, I'm not going through the whole case beat for beat, but there's another point later on when Apollo goes "oh btw Phoenix didn't do this and lol here's evidence" and Kristoph tries to deny this by saying "oh but defense attorneys are only assigned the day before anyway" but Klavier objects and turns to Apollo, pleading with him because he needs to know the whole truth on this.

Even Kristoph is caught off guard because he thought he'd kept Klavier on his side but NO! NO HE DIDN'T! HAVE YOU SEEN HIS DAMAGE SPRITE HE'S HURTINNGGGG T^T

ahem-

Anyway, Kristoph tried to dismiss this and Klavier objects in his face and keeps his focus solely on Apollo - he even calls him by his actual name instead of Herr Forehead (which I think is kinda sweet actually but anyway-) and fuck man, this hurts me.

And as it closes in towards the end, when Phoenix's recording is mentioned and Kristoph says that his "brother is incapable of making rational judgments at the moment" (angy Wel grumbling) we soon get this:

I LOVE KLAV HAVE I SAID THIS YET!?

AND HERE'S THE KICKER:

KRISTOPH IS WORRIEDDDDD

AND KLAV DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE YES!

CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW GOOD THAT FEELS? HOW CATHARTIC THAT IS? THIS MAN WHO'S DONE NOTHING BUT CONTROL HIM AND USE HIM FOR HIS OWN BENEFIT AND BELITTLE HIM WHENEVER HE DOES ANYTHING EVEN OUT OF LINE IS FINALLY GETTING HIS COMEUPPANCE AT KLAVIER'S HANDS!!

OH it's great to watch, we love to see it.

Better still is the very end, after the breakdown, after Kristoph loses his cool:

The sass is strong in this line. To me, it's a final 'fuck you and everything you ever did to me' from Klavier.

We end on this line after the Judge says that nurturing is the task for all human beings: "Except for you, Kristoph. You aren't changing. You've stopped. You're not needed anymore."

And it's true. Klavier doesn't need Kristoph anymore. He's 24, he can live his own life and he doesn't need a cynical and condescending brother like Kristoph breathing down his neck every two seconds. He's broken free from Kristoph's control completely and he's relishing that.

So this is why his damage sprite hurts me to see. It's a point of pain and discontent, it's Kristoph lingering in Klav's head, it's the want to have a normal brother that loves him as he is and sees him as an equal. He got his first trial against him taken away, and we never know if there was another opportunity for the two Gavins to go up against each other again, but by the sounds of it there probably wasn't - and that's a good thing! If Kristoph had faced off against Klavier, it would have probably broken Klav's spirit to be a good prosecutor like we see in AA4 and to some extent in AA5 when he crops up in the Themis case.

On the whole, the damage sprite is a look into how Klavier hid from his brother's verbal abuse - by covering his ears and not listening to it. He didn't want it to be true, but it came at him anyway and he hated that. But it's also a parallel to how he feels about Kristoph: that is his brother and he can't bear the thought of Kristoph being not just a murderer, but also a scheming manipulator that's been skirting around the law he so desperately hides behind for seven years. Once again, he didn't want it to be true but it came at him anyway and he hated that he couldn't get away from it.

It's a good sprite, I won't lie. Great storytelling at the conflict between the two and that Klavier loves Kristoph probably more than Kristoph love him, but it still hurts me to see it because all I can think about is what kind of manipulation has Kristoph done to keep his power over Klavier. Kristoph is manipulative even to his own brother and there is nothing Klavier could have done about it. Throughout their interactions in the case there's this underlying current of "if I get out of this you're so dead" and that feels like it's been a thing forever between them.

I hope this makes sense because I should be writing my assignment rn and I just couldn't bc this has been taking up all the space in my head lol. I'm tirrrrrred, uni wears me out man >.>

[eggbert9000-blog]

My Thoughts on Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (PSP)

In my last post I talked about how I got into the Persona series starting with Innocent Sin on PSX, I also talked about how much I thought Innocent Sin was one of the best JRPG's I have played in recent memory, so I only figured that I would talk about what I thought about the next game! For my playthrough I actually chose the PSP fan translation over the PSX version. I did that because I heard that the PSP version of EP is basically completely faithful to the PSX version in terms of difficulty and menus, so I figured it would just be the definitive version to play, and I heard that the translation is fairly close to the original PSX version anyways. I played this literally the day after I completed Innocent Sin because, without going into spoilers, there's no way I could not see what happens next.

So what did I think?

I'm going to be fully transparent and say that Persona 2: Eternal Punishment has become, not only one of my favourite JRPG's, but one of my favourite games of all time. There's so much I want to talk about but just like with the Innocent Sin post, ill start with some things I disliked about the game.

The Grinding

My understanding is that this game has gained a reputation of being one of the harder, or even hardest Persona game in the series, and I sort of agree. Not that I dislike grinding, but there were some times where I had to step away from the plot and grind levels or tarot cards to get new personas for the party, and then grind the persona levels to unlock the skills. But again like in Innocent Sin, you can farm free tarot in the Air Raid Shelter to basically unlock whatever persona you want, and I spent a decent amount of time there levelling personas as well. Although honestly I was having such a good time experimenting with personas that I didn't even notice or even really care about grinding (I do that in most RPG's anyways).

Demon Negotiation (Again)

Credit where it's due, Demon negotiation is a whole lot better than in the previous two Persona games. Each character now has one specific action and most of the rest come from combining them instead of having 4 options for each character. I like this system a lot more, but I did wish it didn't matter what order you selected the characters in to determine the contact (for example, Katsuya + Ulala is different from Ulala + Katsuya). And sometimes it still felt like just guesswork without a guide. The interactions are still as fun as ever though!

Silent Maya

I'm not quite sure what the consensus of this is, if this is like a popular opinion or "hot take" but I really wish Maya wasn't a silent protagonist, or even just like had more reaction to the events around her. She was one of the coolest characters in Innocent Sin and I remember being kinda bummed out realizing she wasn't gonna speak. Although the more days I sit on it, the more I become fine with it. It's easy to believe a lot of Maya's kindness and actions because we saw it first-hand in Innocent Sin. And we still get to see her personality through her responses and contacts, so not all was lost.

(OH YEAH, I should mention that in the PSP translation I used the one that restores the original PSX english voice cast, I know they are made fun of a lot but I find that the voice acting has a lot of charm to it.)

Alright, Time for what I loved about it.

The Story

DON'T WORRY IM NOT GONNA SPOIL ANYTHING, IM JUST GOING TO GIVE MY THOUGHTS ON IT!

This games story is really good, it serves as a fantastic capstone to the original Persona trilogy, It has a huge sense of finality to it, It reminds me a lot of how Dark Souls 3 could be considered a capstone for the Trilogy, bringing in elements from all the past games to wrap it up in a nice bow. There were so many times where I was so invested I would just play for hours until I lost track of time.

Rumors are back baybee and they are as cool of a concept as ever, and they are still used in such a creative way.

And of course just seeing what happened after Innocent Sin and seeing why the world is the way it is and what happened to the characters got me hooked immediately.

I can't exactly talk about this story without going into mega spoilers for not only EP but also IS so just trust me in saying that this story is something that is worth playing two whole games for, ESPECIALLY THE ENDING. Im just going to say that this story and the ending are my favorite in the Persona series and leave it at that. Go and experience it yourself! It's good!

The ATMOSPHERE MAN

This games atmosphere is completely unmatched in my eyes. The world has a constant vibe of "theres something wrong" that I can't explain. Again it takes place in that modern setting with grounded dungeons that I found so great about Innocent Sin, but the whole world just feels different and "darker" in a way that I can't exactly describe. I think its the difference in the story telling, whilst IS was more goofy with serious undertones, It feels like EP really hones in on the dark side of Sumaru City. There's a lot more death and undergound corruption this time around, It really feels like EP is trying to tell a more adult story this time around, and I really dig it.

(If you kinda want to get the vibes, watch the original PSX intro, it's literally one of the greatest intros to a game ive ever seen and it perfectly captures the sort of vibe EP is going for).

Another thing that I think contributes to the atmosphere is that incredible soundtrack. Just like with Innocent Sin, I was excited to go to the next dungeon every single time to see what kind of music would play, and some of those Eternal Punishment versions of the Innocent Sin songs are really good as well. Some of the standout tracks are Aoba Park, Smile Hirasaka, The Round Sun, and ESPECIALLY Monado Mondala, one of the best tracks in the series. The battle theme and boss theme too are incredible.

The Characters

This party has got to be one of my favourite parties i've ever seen in a JRPG. I know everyone already talks about how this game has an all adult cast as opposed to the other Persona games, but I don't think that's the only reason why they are great.

They all have such good chemistry with each other and as a person who was turning into an adult playing this game, I feel like I related to a lot of the characters internal struggles. Their stories felt real and I ended up seeing myself in a lot of these characters, especially Katsuya, as I am an older brother myself, I relate to him trying to build a good relation with his brother. I Related to Ulala's inferiority complex more than id like to admit, Baofu's story and motivations are really interesting as well and his dynamic with Katsuya, an officer of the law working with a wiretapper for the greater good, and his cynicism feels realistic given his experiences.

However the character I related to and like the most was Tatsuya himself. Tatsuya's struggle to find out how to be a responsible adult and how to make amends for things he has done wrong is something I feel is done realistically, Tatsuya tries to do things that he thinks an adult would do, and it's this kind of coming of age story that I think is relatable to me specifically. And unfortunately I can't say all the reasons why I like Tatsuya without going into spoilers, but all I will conclude on is that Tatsuya is my favourite Persona character of all time and he, and the rest of the cast gave me hope that going into adult life wouldn't be as scary as I initially thought it would be.

I Love this cast so much, I don't even think I said everything I wanted to but I think the main takeaway should be that this is my favorite party in all of Persona and their stories still stick in my head to this day.

(You might notice I left out two characters, because spoilers sorta, but to let it be known, I picked the man).

The Gameplay

Okay, I have been rambling on for a while now so Ill try not to make this a full university length essay. The gameplay is about the same as Innocent Sin, which I praised for being fast and fluid in battles and having really great customization options that I really appreciated such as being able to switch personas on the fly. its just my love for it has intensified because I was more used to the mechanics this time around and I was excited to go into this game thinking how I was going to build each character. It was a fun time, if you want a more in-depth explination of what I thought of the gameplay you can check the post I made about Innocent Sin on my blog (no pressure though).

One thing a really appreciated in the PSP remake is how they ditched the Innocent Sin PSP menu and recreated the PSX menus for Eternal Punishment PSP. So that fluid and nice menu from IS PSX is back and makes its so that I think EP PSP is the definitive version of the game.

Conclusions

Even though I feel like I've written so much about why I like Eternal Punishment, I feel like I haven't given a definitive reason why it's my favourite Persona game. And I think if I had to sum it up quickly, its that the world of the original Persona Trilogy is so well developed and well written that I couldn't help but get sucked into it. And Eternal Punishment was the one that that gave me an experience that I wish I could have over and over again, the world, the music, the characters, the story, even the charming sprite graphics, it all worked together to give me an unforgettable experience. I haven't even mentioned everything I love, I purposely left out things I already said in my Innocent Sin post like how much I love fusion spells or the whole customization thing. And I didn't even talk about Tatsuya's Scenario either. which is also incredibly good.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is great. It's a shame that the earlier Persona games aren't widely available on modern platforms because I believe that Eternal Punishment is something really special.

My final thoughts are for whoever is reading this and somehow hasn't played through the duology yet to at least give it a shot. I kept my thoughts on the game as spoiler free as possible so please give it some love. And like I said in my Innocent Sin thoughts, you might find a new JRPG that you will love and will stick with you for a long time, just like I have.

[theminecraftbee]

Hi, here with a vault hunters question — what's the best way to start with the big tech mods if i never played with any of them before (or, haven't played with three of them and lowkey hated Botania)? I'm not *quite* at that point yet, but i want to try them and don't want to get too overwhelmed to play.

it depends on what you’re looking for! first, let me say that none of the big tech mods will become required at any point; production mods probably define your farm-building capabilities way more than your big mods in most cases, and unless you’re playing in skyblock or with grindy crystals you can normally last well into the late levels without needing absurd farms for much (although most people identify a specific pain point they want modded farm for eventually, and this can be a good reason to go into a specific mod). choose a specific thing you want to be the First Task you do with a big tech mod, and focus on getting the steps done to do That Specific Task; that often gives you the path to learn everything you need!

from there, if you’re a beginner with no preferences, my advice is that you will probably want to watch or read tutorials! all four big mods have wikis/guides of varying qualities; botania also has the botania lexicon in-game, and create has the “ponder” feature. these will help you figure out how to play one of the big tech mods, once you’ve decided which interest you!

as for how each mod plays: thermal expansion is less powerful than its cousins, but is far, far simpler. almost everything thermal expansion does is a one-block solution, and I’ve never had to chain more than maybe two machines together to do any given task. you will craft a machine using all components you can craft at a crafting table, provide that machine power, and you’re off to the races! so if you like simple solutions, this is probably the mod, especially since it doesn’t require any mod-specific crafting.

mekanism is all about chaining machines together. it can do a lot of things thermal expansion can do much more powerfully thanks to the ability to upgrade many of those basic blocks into factories, but boy do some processes in mekanism require a LOT of pipe spaghetti, machinery, and steps to get things done. luckily, determining what these steps ARE tends to be fairly simple, as you can just follow backwards in JEI from your intended endpoint to the eventual one or many starting points you need, and there are a lot of video guides, plus a wiki. if you LIKE some of the most powerful ore processing and tech and eventually power production in the game this is for you, but it can be complicated or intimidating at first glance.

botania also, from what I’ve seen, requires chaining multiple machines together, this time in order to send mana from place to place. the hard part of botania, at least for me, is wrapping my head around how to move mana around; once you understand that, I suspect it’s a bit simpler than late-game mekanism, but its logic can feel VERY different from the other three mods due to that mana abstraction. it and create also make the coolest decorative blocks in my opinion, with botania having a lot of cool “natural” blocks.

create is the mod that requires the most “thinking” in my experience to get things to work, but is often the most capable of being cheaply powerful. you will need to use spatial reasoning to figure out how to connect gears together in order to make anything work, and you’ll likely need to use create’s conveyor belts to move items around. this can make doing anything in create feel very complicated if you don’t like it, but extremely satisfying if you do like it, since in create you will often feel like you can use your own, special solution for things, instead of a set chain of machines set up the way anyone else would. a lot of players who otherwise dislike tech mods also tend to really like create, despite it being that deep down! it also has by far the best in-game documentation, with the ponder system on every single mechanical part letting you see what they do in-game, with animations to demonstrate, and it’s probably the most useful all-in-one package of the big mods for the most things, even if not necessarily the best at each of those jack of all trades things it does.

so yes! hopefully this helps you out! all of the big mods have sort of their own playstyle, and maybe this helps you figure out where to start!

[bettsfic]

bg3 build: beast priest (shadowheart respec)

i'm playing around with some new builds! after scrounging the internet for good build guides, i didn't find any that i thought were interesting. in my current playthrough, i'm trying to respec all the companions to be the classes they would have chosen without their various traumas.

the beast priest is my respec for shadowheart. if you haven't noticed, shadowheart's basic build isn't great. when you find her, she's already level 1, which means the game chooses her subclass for you: trickery domain. and that doesn't make sense at all, narratively or for the stats she's been assigned. so to make her a good trickery domain cleric, you would want to respec her anyway just to fix level 1.

but i don't want her to be a trickery domain cleric. i don't even want her to be a healer. i want her to be an emo bird girl. the Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way of bg3, emphasis on raven. by endgame, we learn that shadowheart loves animals and nature, and she's a bit of a rebel (my graffiti queen). without having been kidnapped by the mother superior, i can see her either noping off into the woods or staying in the city to be the type of person who accidentally acquires really a lot of cats. so my goal is for her to have lots of animals, do a fuckton of damage, and fight off the darkness with lots and lots of light.

you can find the full build on eip. more detail and a level by level breakdown under the cut.

the beast priest build involves taking 6-7 levels of beast master ranger and 5-6 levels of war priest cleric. you start off as a ranger, because rangers have great early game damage and are also imo the easiest class for beginners. you stand in one spot and you shoot stuff. you can also get Harold (crossbow) pretty early on and it can be your main weapon through most of the game. it does insane damage and casts Bane.

i'm not familiar enough with armor and weapons to include recommendations in this guide (beyond Harold. get Harold). that is too much for me to keep track of, and i swap things out a lot. use whatever you find most helpful and/or looks the coolest. you probably can't use this build for lone wolf tactician or anything, but i do think it's very fun for an explorer or balanced playthrough, and it fixes a lot of the problems in shadowheart's base build.

this build does a few things:

uses war priest weapon buffs to increase ranged damage

minimizes concentration spells to prioritize ensnared strike and hunter's mark

backup heals (unfortunately this means either respeccing another companion to take on main healing duties or building a main heals tav. i'm working on a bardadin build for this very purpose. there is also always halsin, but he takes a while to acquire)

it's very beneficial to astarion that the bird can blind enemies near him so he can gain advantage to sneak attack (i'll share my build for him too eventually; he is also part ranger)

toolkit against undead (guardian spirits is a must)

important team utilities like guidance

what this build can't do:

be the "face" of your team, by which i mean initiate dialogue. we have no charisma or proficiency in anything related to talking to people. we are a gloomy emo girl sequestered to the back of the group and we shoot stuff and hang out with our bird

steal shit, disarm traps, lockpick. i mean, you can, but you'll probably have another character better equipped for it. we'll be wearing medium armor or heavy armor (optional), so we'll have a disadvantage on stealth anyway

here's how i've broken down each level:

initial build

if you're respeccing shadowheart, you won't be able to change her race or background, which means she'll remain an acolyte and have proficiency in insight and religion.

if you're making your tav a beast priest, you should choose whatever background and race makes sense for your character's narrative. the caveat being, as stated above, stealth and sleight of hand are kind of useless here, as well as dialogue proficiencies like persuasion, intimidation, deception, performance, etc.

what *is* helpful is having proficiency in the things you walk up to and go "oh shit, what's that?" so survival and perception are pretty important. folk hero and outlander are therefore both good background choices, but again, what's important to me in a build is that the story makes sense.

note you will not need investigation because we'll be taking bounty hunter as a favored enemy.

level 1: ranger (1)

proficiencies: survival, nature, animal handling (see above for more explanation; really just take whatever you think will be useful)

favored enemy: bounty hunter

bounty hunter gives disadvantage to enemies hit by ensnaring strike. very helpful for astarion and your companion. however, it's sometimes difficult to choose when to use hunter's mark versus ensnaring strike.

natural explorer: beast tamer

all of these are kind of useless, tbh. but i chose this one because early game, your companion dies very easily and this way you'll be able to bring it back without using a spell slot.

from my understanding, in EA you could either have your summon pet OR your companion out, not both, but in full release you can now have both summons out at once.

level 2: ranger (2)

fighting style: archery

we are going to be very far away from our enemies and Harold is going to be very dear to us.

spells: hunter's mark, ensnaring strike (ranged)

both spells require concentration so you can only pick one. ensnaring strike gives disadvantage to an enemy but hunter's mark does more damage, and your companion does more advantage to it as well. for cc situations, i'd choose ensnaring strike; for taking down one big dude at a time, hunter's mark. hunter's mark can be recast as long as you maintain concentration.

level 3: cleric (1)

deity: any (if you're respeccing shadowheart, your deity will remain shar)

domain: war domain

cantrips: guidance, sacred flame, light

the only one that's important here is guidance. the other two can be whatever your party needs most. the reason we're taking one level of cleric early and the others later is because guidance is a must. if someone else on your team has it, or if you have a bard, you can stay as a ranger until 5.

level 4: ranger (3)

subclass: beast master

spell: cure wounds OR speak with animals

for shadowheart's respec, i would say cure wounds so that she can start subhealing. however, if you don't have anyone in your party who can speak to animals yet, that's pretty important. the strange ox you meet in the grove provides a lot of endgame help, and it's fun talking to the owlbear and scratch.

level 5: ranger (4)

feat: resilient (wisdom)

taking resilience in wisdom gives us a proficiency in wisdom saving throws, which we'll need for both cleric and ranger spells.

level 6: ranger (5)

spells: anything that would be most helpful to your team.

you probably already have somebody who can cast longstrider as a ritual spell. enhance leap is helpful although this is pretty late in the game to be getting that. i try to avoid concentration spells because of hunter's mark and aoe spells because astarion and karlach are always in the thick of it and i don't want to hurt them.

what's important this level is that your companion's AC and damage increases, and it gets an extra attack.

level 7: cleric (2)

you get turn undead and guided strike this level. both are very useful, particularly guided strike. nothing to choose though.

level 8: cleric (3)

new spells! these can be prepared based on what you think you'll need for a given scenario. lesser restoration is a must if you're letting astarion bite you every night. but if that's the case you probably already have it.

level 9: cleric (4)

cantrip: whatever's most helpful at this point

feat: ability improvement (1 in wisdom, 1 in dexterity)

if you have auntie ethel's hair, then you might want 2 in one or the other.

level 10: cleric (5)

here's where you get guardian spirits, which is the single most important mid-game spell you can have (although in this build you get it pretty late). make sure when you cast it, you have as many movement speed spells and potions you can get. you're going to cast it and run around like mad killing everything.

level 11 & 12: ranger OR cleric (6 & 7)

here's where you have a difficult choice to make. your last two levels can be ranger 6 and 7, which will give your companion a huge buff. or you can choose cleric 6 and 7, which will give you war god's blessing, which gives you a +10 attack roll to give to someone else on your team.

you an also do cleric 6 and ranger 6, which will grant you war god's blessing AND allow you to take ranger knight as a favored enemy, which gives you the ability to wear heavy armor (if you want that). you can also gain resistance to cold, fire, or poison, but since you encounter all of those things in pretty equal measure, i never know which to choose.

i think it'll depend on what sounds more fun to you. personally, i think seeing my animal companion destroy everything is very fun. but if you enjoy reactions and buffing your teammates, i can also see wanting to stick with cleric through the end.

unlock to level 20

you might be thinking it's not worth it to only take two half classes instead of one whole one and lose out on late game spells and abilities. and i agree with you completely. my favorite part of beast master is when your companion gets two special abilities at 11. if you're playing completely vanilla, this is the major sacrifice of multiclassing. you're prioritizing creativity and cool combos over fancy spells and abilities.

but if you install a mod that lets you level to 20 (no class can go beyond 12, but you can multiclass to 20), you can take 11 levels of ranger and 9 levels of cleric. level 11 of ranger maxes out your animal; level 8 of cleric gives you divine strike, and level 9 gives you flame strike.

i didn't find anything from 10-12 in cleric very helpful. there's divine intervention which you can only use once in the game, ever, and i used it at a very integral time and it didn't do enough. heroes' feast is helpful but halsin has that too. heal, which should be the best healing spell in the game, is currently bugged and i don't know when they'll fix it.

you could also do level 12 of ranger for the extra feat if you don't have both wisdom and dexterity to 20, and stay at 8 for cleric.

if you do unlock to level 20, i would download the double xp mod (although i haven't gotten mine to work yet) so you can get to 20 at about the same pace you get to 12 in vanilla. this obvs is extremely unbalanced and makes you very very OP but that makes the game more fun for me. and anyway, if it gets too easy you can always play tactician or honor mode.

i hope you found this helpful! i'll probably be tweaking and updating it as i go. i'm working on respecs for astarion, karlach, halsin, jaheira, and wyll right now. gale, lae'zel, and minsc i'll be able to look at once i play around with them more. i haven't used them much yet in my teams.

if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to send me an ask!

[trashcatsnark]

*Makes tea* Omg, can we please get your thoughts on the dlc and THAT ending?

ABSOLUTELY

Suffice to say, spoilers and a very long post, I am a verbose whore Ngl this is coming fresh off finishing it all last night, so my opinions may still be settling in a little bit and I also had to play it in more spread out sessions than I usually do with games.

Firstly, on a just a technical level, for me personally as someone who started playing at launch, finished all the endings, and had like 700+ hours in the game before Phantom Liberty was even announced- to me it felt a little out of place, granted might be because I jumped into on the tail end of an almost finished save. So, maybe for folks who started new runs it flows a bit better.

Like getting a dedicated credits listing as if the game is over after the decision at the orbital station just to cut back to Johnny going Wait, V, you're still dying!

It's a little strange, I understand you wanna give full credit to the Phantom Liberty specific team but also, was that really the only way to transition V out of the space station?

Songbird, I'm mixed on, I don't hate her but I don't love her like I think the game wanted me too. She feels a little... pushed on V for my liking. Like early on, it really felt like CDPR rattling a barbie doll at me and screaming at me to think she's the coolest thing in the universe and she's alright. I get why she does the things she does, I get that she is a narrative reflection of V, that her and Solomon honestly are meant to mirror the V and Johnny relationship.

The ideas of betrayal, the idea that the person who's trying to save you, and wants to save you the most is the very one who's gonna be your end.

I like that component for sure, like honestly, to the surprise of no one- the biggest things I got out of it was related to SilverV I also really do love Songbird's connection to the Blackwall and the way it's eating at her, I love those touches and when at the Orbital station you link with her to like- release Blackwall pulses. Very cool, still feel like there's more there to sink our teeth into, but very much liked the Blackwall in particular coming back.

My first impulse and choice was to side with Songbird, because even if I didn't love her like CDPR wanted me to, I did feel some connection to her through her being in similar situation to V and just being desperate to survive and live.

That said, it is disappointing that Songbird is... another person who was just lying to V in hopes of getting what she wanted. I get the desperation for survival, but it did feel like Hey, what if we did it again?

Like- that's what the game is, just over and over. I love it, but the game is V gets a lead, goes full steam ahead in trying to save themselves, and oop- someone was lying and V gets kicked right in the fucking teeth. Again. Again. Again. Again.

And I understood we weren't gonna get a magical fix it ending, but it is frustrating to be like- hey, wasn't it fun when the VDB betrayed V? Or when you found out Evelyn lied? Or when you finally found Hellman and all he gave was a hospice recommendation? Or when Hanako finally hears you out but only if you kill her brother and even then lol not really you're still gonna die? Or when Alt says oh btw you're still gonna die?

What if- we did it again?!

And in a similar vein, I really loved a lot of aspects of the Tower Ending (I believe it is?) where you side with the FIA.

The conversation with Johnny in the AV is fucking beautiful. That alone was worth all my money. Him saying that he feels more at peace than he ever has before, I still fuck- I love the way they play up that even in endings where Johnny doesn't necessarily agree with V's actions, he's just happy they're gonna survive. He's at peace with dying again, he's at peace knowing this time it means something to him. He died before his ideals, so convinced when he stormed Arasaka Tower that when he died in the flames it'd mean something, it'd fix something. Only to come back and find that despite everything having changed, nothing really did. He died and the world just moved on. But this time, him going means V gets to live, he gets to go out knowing (at least believing, hoping) that by doing so they'll get to live on, they'll get to fight another day, and can go away content knowing that he'll be leaving the world just little bit better of a place- because V will still be in it.

Got emotional there, my bad.

That said, beyond that component.... more of the same?

Like, it's the Devil Ending. Reskinned, revamped- but it's Devil Ending. V sided with the shadowy secretive shady corporation/agency, underwent extensive medical treatment, and oop- turns out none of your friends were worth a fuck, now deal with the consequences!

And like, I don't know, I do find the idea interesting of V no longer being able to have like combat implants and physically just not being the same, the idea of them being forced into trying to carve out a normal life after everything is actually pretty neat.

But it still feels like a reskin to me.

I also really just don't like the way CDPR tries to illustrate bad ends by making V's friends/love interests worse people? Like don't get me wrong, I can completely vibe with the idea that A) they'd have some grievances with V siding with FIA or Arasaka and B) that after two years of not knowing what happened to V, they would've moved on in some capacity.

But do they have to be like, mean?

Like Panam going full scale, don't answer the call, have Mitch tell you to fuck off. I was in a coma???? Like, I know she doesn't know that, but also maybe listen??? Like that feels like yeah, her character hasn't developed at all, she's still incredibly stubborn and won't even hear you out.

And River selling police secrets for Randy's rehab, so he's in a guilt spiral, so he just... can't meet up??? Like legit, CDPR, honey- what the fuck is your fascination with ruining this man's life? Literally, one of if not the only LI who can canonically die??? Or go to jail???? Like, what did River do to you????

Judy moving across the country and being married, I don't have inherent beef with, I think that does make sense for her character- that said, convo still feels weird, like the whole "please don't ruin this for me" like I'm sorry??? V literally nearly died for you several times and murdered for you several times and has been so nice to you- but you just assume they're gonna show up at your door and try to ruin your life? Wow, great to know what you think of me....

And of course Kerry is just busy with his career, that said I did find it kind of funny/in character that V calls and the first thing Kerry wants to do is talk about himself. Like, yeah, that's Kerry. But also, like again, the dialogue heavily implies that when he makes the bare minimum offer of hey... maybe we can hang out in four months, that no- you probably won't, it's bullshit.

Like, it just sucks because I really love all of these characters and feel like they do genuinely have love and affection for V, but this constant- oh nope they're all abandoning you, oof, pull on any ending that isn't Star or Sun is just.... frustrating and really undermines it and honestly reinforces that V's best friend and the one person who cares for them most is fucking Johnny.

Vik selling out to Zetatech also sucked ass, don't do that to my ripper- but hey, at least he made five fucking minutes for V. Even if he spent trying to convince them he's happy and eventually they will be too.

Misty I loved seeing again in the ending- though I don't know why, maybe it's just me- is her VA suddenly doing a harley quinn impression??? Like that kind of Boston(?) accent she suddenly has in the DLC for .... no fucking reason? That said, even if I'm sad to see her go, I am happy she's finding her peace, though kind of wish there was a "can I go with you?" option, because- V literally doesn't have a home anymore??? Maybe someone should help them.... not be homeless, that'd be cool. Maybe my V wants to go to the old forest in Poland too???

Also, also- Delamain, more of a true friend than any of the love interests in that ending. Picked V up, got them booze for them and Vik, helped them catch up on news, said they missed them, and were happy to see them again. Fuck yeah, Delamain.

But uhhh, overall, I think my opinions are there are some interesting and fun things within the DLC, some fun concepts that I definitely wanna play with in my fanfic. Some solid fucking SIlverV content. But like narratively and story wise- it's just alright. It's nothing ground breaking, I don't feel like the game needed it, I don't feel like it "fixed" the game. I think people who got into Cyberpunk 2077 through Phantom Liberty and praise it as what "saved" the game- just like Cyberpunk 2077. Like, cause the DLC is more of the same, like it's fun, it's a good time but it's the same narrative structure we've had times 3 within the main game. It's like if I eat a sandwich, and CDPR said "Hey, I know what will go well with that-" and handed me a third of the same exact kind of sandwich. I don't dislike it, I liked the sandwich, a lot- but also it doesn't complement or add to it like a side dish or a dessert might to a meal. It's a just a bit of the same- maybe it has a slightly new condiment on it, but its overall the same.

Like I said, this might change if/when I do a full replay of the game and can handle doing it as like a full run rather than kind of tacking it onto the end of another save. I think that might help with making it feel a bit more a part of the story.

But I think I'd still land in the same overall space of, it's was alright- some parts I loved more than others, and if this had been in the base game, I'd probably feel very different because Reed and Songbird probably wouldn't feel as sprung on V to me.

All that said, I also do feel a bit more confident and secure in how I'm gonna implement it into my fic- which is gonna mean heavy rewrites which should be fun. So, I definitely got a little something to sink my teeth into.

[asherlockstudy]

um im just scrolling through the streamys tag and i saw your posts and i thought "oh they seem cool i wonder what the blog is like"... then i went scrolling and you mentioned link coming out??? huh??? (i haven't watched gmm in like years year years) you seem like a level headed person to ask.... link is... gay? did this happen recently??? i am so confused but i know that if i google im gonna get garbage results. so yeah

Hello! Sorry for the late reply, hope you get to see this.

The answer is... yes and no. While there isn't anything explicit / certain / definite over all this time, it seems there is some restlessness on their side, with several projects such as their recent scripted videos, but also as far back as Hazel, the GMEs and Ear Biscuits that point towards the possibility of them taking a very slow, long way towards this direction, especially Link. In fact it seems like Link can't stand being in the closet anymore but Rhett dreads leaving it. That's my general impression.

While I might be considered the most stark supporter of this theory around here (or at least the one who verbalizes it the most), a few days ago more people started considering it thanks to a moment during GME where Link did something very close to a coming-out.

In case you haven't watched any of the GMEs, GME (Good Mythical Evening) is a paid live show they do once a year, which is like the strictly adult version of GMM. There, strong references to sex are allowed and they also drink enough to get inebriated and foul language is also allowed to some degree.

All that on its own would be already a lot to consider, but GME has also strong homoerotic traits since Rhett and Link play a lot with their ship there. Last year, they re-enacted rhink fics where they were having sex (basically handjobs?), I don't remember exactly. And they acted LIKE they were doing it. This year, they took it up a notch and Rhett actually sucked Link's nipple, among other things. And I mean, he really did it. For a few seconds. But he did it...properly. Don't ask me why they do this stuff. I don't know. I think nobody knows. I am just presenting you the facts so I can give you an idea about what is going on.

So, during a game in this latest GME, this dialogue took place regarding what the act of "docking" is:

Rhett: I was right! It is a gay thing! Stevie: Whaaat? I mean, well, Link also agreed with your answer so... Rhett: We both get points! Hold on, though... one guy needs to be circumcised. Link: Yeah you only need one circumcision for docking. Stevie: Oh you're asking ME? Rhett: I think..... I don't know a lot about this but I think only one guy needs to be uncircumcised. Link: Do you think docking actually happens? Because I don't think docking increases pleasure. Rhett: I don't know, man. I can't do it, man. My parents didn't give me a choice. They just circumcised me, man. Link: I know, but even after you're circumcised, you can try. Rhett: With someone who's not circumcised...... And also, I am not gay. Link: Hey, that's okay. It's okay. Rhett: Yeah, I mean, it's cool to not be gay! Link: No, it's not "cool"- Rhett: No, it's "okay" to not be gay! By "cool" I meant it is "okay" to not be gay! Link: But just go ahead and explain yourself completely. Rhett: But I might do it for scientific purposes! Link: This is what I wish you would do when I say something stupid. Rhett: If they needed to figure it out, if two scientists wanted to figure out whether two guys need to be uncircumcised, I'd be like "okay", I mean, I'd check with my wife first. Link: Yeah, but just say it is equally cool to be gay. Rhett: It is cool to be whatever you wanna be. Link: Yeah. Exactly. It's cool to be whatever you need, you want to be, you are. It's cool to be who you are. That's what I am deriving. Rhett: Yeah, that's the coolest you can be, to just be who you are. Right, Stevie? Link: I, you know what, I feel like, Stevie, I feel like I have been on a journey. Stevie: Okay. Rhett: Yeah. Link: To know- to figure out who I am. Rhett (mutters): Yeah, yeah, right. Link: And it's extremely rewarding, challenging and- Rhett: But we won't be docking later... Link: And..... rewarding. And we wanna- Yeah... can you... I was saying something important. Rhett: Because we're both circumcised. Link: Yes, but we are not gonna be docking later. Rhett: Right, because we're both circumcised. Link: But you can be circumcised and still have enough of a skin left after the circumcision to dock... In Good Mythical More we are gonna answer questions from the crew and we 're gonna have conversations about - (meanwhile Rhett talks simultaneously and almost over him about unimportant docking musings) Link: ...Right, so if you are not gonna come to Good Mythical More, please you can still get a ticket, join us for Good Mythical More, but for now we're gonna move on. Rhett (sarcastically): Don't you want more of this? Link: In the More. Stevie moves on with the game.

So, what happens next, Link also had two-three more moments when he seemed to consider talking about something and Rhett explicitly told him "Whatever it is you want to say, just keep it to yourself" and also in another moment "You can tell your Uber driver on your way home but not here".

During the More, at which Link hinted, there was a red box with nosy questions asked from the crew. Rhett was the one taking the questions and reading them. He chose to not read loudly and thus answer at least two questions, even though he pulled them out of the box.

Link eventually did not make any more similar statements.

You should also know that a couple of weeks ago, during the GME promo, Link had said that one reason we should watch the GME show was that he might even make an emotional speech before its end.

Another thing, the last months Link has also expressed in interviews and even in a college graduation that it is important to find who you are and explore your identity, addressing this especially to young adults. He always seems emotionally charged when he does it.

That's it. To me it just seems like there's one explanation only, but I will leave you to your own conclusions.

And one last detail. Rhett did everything in his power to not let Link finish what he started - almost bullied him out of it. Despite all that, notice what he said. While Link was trying to say whatever he was trying to say, Rhett said:

But we're not gonna be docking later.................. because we're both circumcised.

And he repeated the explanation once more.

+++

[marina-the-witch]

My Souls Hot Takes

Decided to write up a couple of my less popular opinions for souls games. Please don't get upset over any of these, if you disagree that's totally valid

Dark Souls 1:

Bell Gargoyles is my favorite base game boss

I don't like Ornstein and Smough that much

Gwyn's theme is nowhere near as sad or dramatic as its made out to be in my opinion

Painted World isnt fun to me at all

Tomb of the Giants isnt that bad

I miss the whimiscal 80s fantasy aesthetic the series lost in the following entries even if i understand it narratively

Dark Souls 2:

I'm not just a hater or fail to appreciate an underrated gem, I simply dont enjoy this game

I think Darklurker is mid and the runback gimmick is stupid

The world and lore arent that much better to me than any other souls games and dont save the game

Life Gems are actually pretty okay

Old Dragonslayer is really not that big of a deal

Royal Rat Vanguard is the single worst boss in souls to me

Fume Knight is just kinda alright to me, I enjoy Sir Alonne much more

The health cap loss fucking sucks i hate it

Its perfectly fine to both love and hate this game please calm tf down

Dark Souls 3:

Soul of Cinder isnt that exciting, I might just be biased though bc i started the DS games with 3

Jailers arent that bad, Thralls are way worse

Ancient Wyvern kinda funny tbh

I really really dislike Sister Friede

The random wolf guy in ariandel is the wost boss in 3

Corvian Knights are the coolest enemy in the trilogy

The game isnt actually as ugly and monotone as people say

Pontiff Sulyvahn is sooooo mid to me I could not care less for his parry bait jojo stand ass goofy fight

Yhorm is such a nothing boss without the siegward narrative to me

Demon Prince solos literally any other duo boss and its not even close

R1 and O spam is a dark souls staple to me, not DS3 exclusive at all

Dragonslayer Armor and Oceiros are insanely underrated

Sekiro:

Demon of Hatred actually slaps

Corrupted Monk actually slaps

Great Shinobi Owl is really mid to me, too gimmicky

Guardian Ape has the same issues as DoH just to a lesser extend

The 2 giant beast (serpent and carp) area hazards are so good

Souls should give underwater another shot imo

Most of the minibosses are kinda bad to me

Bloodborne:

Laurence is actually peak

Not really a fan of Maria's fight, gonna replay the game soon to see if it'll finally click

Winter Lanters are pretty cool

Micolash fans are weird why are there so many

Yharnam Sunrise is the most boring ending of any souls game

As much as i would love it, I cant feasibly see a logical contuination of the Bloodborne universe

Saw Spear mid idc

Chalice Dungeons are both infinitely better and worse than people say I really dont know how to feel about them

Simon's Bowblade is one of the coolest weapons in fiction

Elden Ring:

Morgott is underrated

Dragons are underrated

Placidusax's theme is kinda eh to me

Radahn and Malenia are equal, both fandoms can stfu, it said fought to a standstill for a reason

Rykard is genuinely a good fight even with the gimmick in mind

I don't care for vyke, frenzy, shabriri or any other madness hoobla

I hate using great spears so much

Summons are VALID. If they were cheating they wouldnt be in the game. Get over yourself

Idc how much you can counter it I dont like malenia's waterfowl dance and health regain

Godskin Duo isn't that bad, the REAL enemy is valiant gargoyles

Royal Revenants, Birds and Runebears at least have the decency to be rare... Imps and Lobsters though

Volcano Manor is underrated as fuck, such a unique level for a souls game with so much cool lore and visual flare

[blazehedgehog]

How is progress on your Ghostbusters RPG?

Almost dead, unfortunately. I think about it from time to time but I haven't done any meaningful code work since my Mom died. At some point in the last year I decided I'd write out the entire game script, since I was coalescing around a story idea.

With making an RPG in Clickteam Fusion, planning ahead is your best friend, so knowing every story beat ahead of time would give me a clearer picture of what needed to be coded on the back end.

But naturally, the opening to the game is going to be the most text heavy, outside of the ending. I wrote about three chapters, encapsulating a teaser and a recap of how the original Ghostbusters ended, and have been too distracted with other things to write more.

The general gameplay flow I was gravitating towards was something like Metal Max. Not long after starting this GB fangame, I watched somebody stream all of Metal Max NES and the bounty system in that was really interesting. Basically, over the course of the story, you'll hear rumors about special creatures and bandits roaming around the overworld, and if you can kill them, you earn a big reward by turning in the bounty.

If you ignore bounties, it cuts the gameplay length in half and you lose out a lot of level ups and gear. Taking/ignoring bounties almost ends up being kind of a difficult selector. Like doing a three heart run in Zelda.

For a Ghostbusters RPG, all of this just made sense, and it'd make it easy to reuse areas. You get calls about ghosts to catch, and you can either go catch the ghost (your bounty) or you can follow the story. Maybe the bounty is along the way to the next story event, maybe it's in a previous dungeon. It's up to you where you go.

I dunno if the game will ever get finished, but I'll let you peek on what I'd decided story-wise:

So it bothers me that a lot of recent Ghostbusters movies are kind of hero worship. Ghostbusters Afterlife is all about how these four guys were total legends that saved the world, and what a tragedy it is that they've been forgotten. "omg you kids don't know who the ghostbusters were? let me, paul rudd, educate you on the coolest, strongest and most epic titans to ever dress like sweaty service industry workers."

That's dumb. The Ghostbusters are working joes. They stumbled into this job, and saved the world kind of by accident. They are barely heroes and could have ended all life on earth as we know it just as easily. They just wanted a paycheck and were looking for a niche to fill.

And in the wider view of producing the first Ghostbusters movie itself, that too was kind of an accident. The movie got rammed through production, the script was an unfinished mess so they adlibbed a lot of it, and basically nobody expected it to do as well as it did. It is the very definition of lightning in a bottle, and it hasn't really been replicated.

So I wanted to push in on that. These guys aren't looking to save the world. They aren't actually that strong or cool. They don't have a sense of duty. They're just regular people, and they can (and do) make mistakes.

When Egon says crossing the streams is like "all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light", I imagine that means it's more than just a really big explosion. Ray calls it "total protonic reversal", which makes it sound more like the creation of a black hole, or something.

When the Ghostbusters crossed the streams and directed that into the doorway to Gozer's world, in my story, they effectively collapsed an entire dimension. Erased it, and whatever it inhabited.

I wanted there to be consequences for that. It was an impulsive action they made out of desperation to save themselves, and though it worked in the short term (sealing the door, almost certainly killing Gozer) I wanted there to be much worse long term consequences. They more or less punched a hole in reality, and there's really only two things that happen with holes:

They get bigger and deeper

They get filled in with debris

Ultimately I wanted to say that when the Ghostbusters crossed the streams, it was a mistake. They didn't know any better. They were messing with forces vastly beyond their comprehension. And the thrust of the game would be them figuring out what they did wrong and trying to come up with a plan to do a better job at fixing it.

But they don't know if they can do it. What happened with Gozer was a happy accident (that turned out to be not so happy). The scale of this problem literally dwarfs them. They are so small that they are barely even specks of dust. This is a supernaturally cosmic issue.

To me, The Ghostbusters are screw-ups that were in the right place at the right time and did the wrong thing. But not maliciously, just ignorantly. And the decision to take responsibility for that mistake is the grease that turns the gears of the narrative.

[chronotsr]

No. 7.5 - 1978 Reflections, and the Halls of Mystery

Welcome back to the end-of-the-year recaps! This is technically the first TSR iteration of it!

1. Coolest ideas

It's a lot of stuff from D2. The big ticket item is "neutral-ground hostile shrine" -- any time you can muck about with otherwise hostile people without drawing swords immediately is a big win. I know that the reaction table is supposed to mitigate that some but, cmon. Sometimes you just can't think of a good reason that the 9th goblin pack tonight is not immediately hostile. This is a way more natural way to handle it. And it lets you talk and such and experience their culture from their perspective!

2. Coolest Module You Haven't Heard Of

This is honestly a hard one because all of these modules are intensely well known. Gun to my head, I would probably vote for G1. The D-series is cool but frankly there have been more better and more interesting iterations of subterranean hexcrawls -- Veins of the Earth being the currently famous one. But the thing about G1 is, G1 is a surprisingly natural and fun location. Unlike the others in the GDQ series, G1 is genuinely an adventure you could slot anywhere with no context. It is simply a fun raid on a fortress, which I never get tired of. The twists of "they're piss drunk" and "there's a slave revolt in the basement" are really good (albeit in 2024 a little stale) twists on the classic raid-on-fortress formula.

3. The Growth of Module Design

Honestly 1978 represents a rather stagnant year for module design. The most innovative design feature I see is how D1-D3 feeds into one another in a much more naturalistic way than its predecessors, and all through that deeply useful combination of hexmap and random tables with a handful of pre-programmed setpieces. I am eager to see hexmap technology get much better going forward.

…

Surprisingly, 1978 wasn't too much to talk about? I don't generally think of Gary as an "innovator" in module design space. His main contribution is taking things that already exist and making them feel more natural. Which is not to say that I now buy into Gygaxian Naturalism as this great feat, more than a lot of his competition at the time was seemingly intentionally anti-Naturalism. Their work feels like the reaction to me, Gary is just staying the course of "this should make an amount of sense". Although, his random dungeon monsters mishmash still feels as nonsensical as all hell.

The Halls of Mystery (From Dragon 21, December 1978)

And as threatened, we're going to have a very brief section on The Halls of Mystery, which holds the dubious honor of 1st Dragon Magazine dungeon. I would throw the full header at you, but everything is by Don Turnbull. You may recognize his name, at publication time he works for Games Workshop and he will be heading up TSR, Inc.'s UK branch starting in 1980, leading to the much-beloved Fiend Folio.

So. Not much to say about this, actually, It's a very large room with some branches. The main schtick of the Halls is that the main chamber contains several mirrors, some of which are magical. There's a big riddle on the desk on the south side, the riddle solution is actually quite obvious (say Excalibur three times -- and hey, Don told us the answer and rationale of the puzzle! Thanks Don!). When you move the central cylinder, it teleports you to the corresponding position in the dungeon. The rest is a lightweight stocking of the dungeon with monsters, treasure, et c. If you're keeping score, this is a Zelda puzzle. It's very cute and lightweight and honestly it's so neutrally written (no statistics are given and it would be trivially easy to restock it at any level) that you could genuinely use it in 2024 with very little effort. It's adorable! It is also wonderfully lean, clocking in at two total pages and frankly it's super refreshing to have such a light read of a module here.

Happily, next time we will be covering B1 - In Search of the Unknown, which is the second Basic D&D adventure we will be reviewing in this series (The adventure printed in the Basic rulebook, Tower of Zenopus, was first. This is our first lettered Basic adventure.) And, funnily, the first TSR module in this lineup I've never read before. See you then!

[itsmearia]

New to Arknights: Beehunter

Why did nobody tell me about Beehunter?

Character design wise let's start with the fact that this bear is code named Beehunter. Excellent.

Her color palette is black/yellow. Perfect.

A cute little bear charm hanging from her chain. Love it.

Her nail game is pristine. I'm envious.

She doesn't want elaborate weapons. She's just here to punch things in the face. I respect it.

This DPS guard is a total bad ass boxer. Want her to float like a butterfly? Throw on that s1 and have her dodge incoming attacks with her passive. 40% of them at rank 7! Need her to sting like a bee? S2 rapidly improves her attack speed. Which is nice because her passive bonus is that consecutive attacks on enemies increases her attack! Faster attacks that hit harder and harder sounds excellent.

To top it off, she has some very relatable dialogue: “Boss, let's go grab a bite. On you this time. What? You bought last time? Doesn't sound right to me.”

I have no idea if she's actually good to use compared to other operators but I don't care. This is one of the coolest designs I've seen in this game when you look at the whole package – both conceptually and with gameplay – that I've got to level her up and try her out. She's only a 4 star so it shouldn't cost too much.

[catnatch]

okay so with all this au talk, the DnD college au is actually occupying most of my brain space. here's how it starts (LOTS more info under the cut):

Yosuke is a college first year and has had terrible luck doing the whole fresh start, make lots of friends (and get tons of babes) so far.... so while he doesn't like his suitemate Kubo too much, when Kubo wheedles him to join him for some dorm board game thing (so he doesn't look like too much like a creep going alone; and "it's not like YOU've got any plans on a Friday night, Hanamura") to get close to Yuki-chan- "and there are other hotties there!!" Yosuke doesn't protest TOO much. plus there's free food!

board game thing was actually a DnD session a couple of other first years are trying to put together. also in attendance are: Souji (the dm), Yukiko and Chie (they're already friends but don't know the rest of the group), Kanji, Naoto (Rise is there briefly (she's Naoto's girlfriend); she won't be joining but she wanted to steal Souji's cooking and catch up a little as she, Naoto and Souji are already friends- Naoto is the one to help convince Souji to put together this DnD recruitment, actually. Rise's very busy but she'll appear on occasion throughout the campaign when Souji begs her to play a dramatic bit parts for NPCs) and Ai just cos I feel like other people than the IT should join for a lil bit (she will make an excuse 20 minutes in "ohhhh something came up I'll be right back." she doesn't.) Mitsuo will not be returning after the first session after Yukiko flatly turns him down. Teddie is back home with Yosuke's parents since he's not college age yet and won't be a part of this at all, probably

first session is a little messy (the enthusiasm levels vary wildly among the players) but what hooks Yosuke and gets him to come back again is one of his off the wall ideas in combat actually worked and won them the battle and the dopamine he got from that is unmatched

what's the campaign look like: UHHHHHH i don't know but I have the vague idea it would somewhat mirror the events of p4- so instead of some world ending adventuring maybe the gang uncovers a serial murder plot? but more fantasy. and maybe the murderer's story is somehow tied to the NPC that Yosuke eventually falls in love with idk

the gang's characters!

Naoto already had their character planned out beforehand: an elf ranger ♂ (Souji had to talk them down from going into some super specific off-book combo to not scare off the newbies that hopefully would join). Yukiko, Chie, and Kanji had all actually read the recruitment flyer for this event so had a vague idea of their characters but haven't played a ttrpg before so just went with what appealed to them rather then how they play. Yukiko: tiefling warlock (and after she learned Naoto is x-gender she thought that sounded fun and made her character x-gender as well; Naoto thinks maybe they're being mocked but it's genuine on Yukiko's part). Chie: human monk ♀. Kanji: halfling cleric ♀. Yosuke had no idea what he was getting into so he's just going for what's Coolest. he considered being a super yolked warrior but nah... not even in make believe. But he could be an awesome stealthy ninja!! So he chooses rogue. as for race, he's not going to be an elf that's basically like being a fairy, right, and he's not... but he thinks they get cool bonus powers or something so he'll go with half-elf.

(Ai tried to be an elf princess but Souji gently maneuvered her to elf druid. Kubo went with the first things that caught his eye: dragonborn barbarian)

as for names, only Naoto came up with one already (Erawin <deeply into western high fantasy>); the rest of the gang workshops names at the table:

Yosuke: Jira (i'm not creative what do u want from me .)

Chie<sweating, desperately trying not to say her literal first thought > : her name is……uhhh… <gives up> Lee…

Yukiko just tries vague grunts to turn into a name (“Grgk!” “no” “Aaaht!” “no” “ERP!” “sounds like a belch” <yukiko laugh > “is that a name?? er- no” “Hrk!” “OKAY YES HRK YOU CAN BE HRK”)

Kanji: Usagi (it is for the reason you're thinking)

anyway the main meat of the au is an NPC appearing and then reoccurring throughout the campaign that Yosuke's character forms a natural rapport with... Souji picks up on this and fleshes out the NPC beyond what was a throw away background character. the gang try to do their DnD sessions every week for at least a couple hours, but it still takes them weeks and weeks to get through what Souji planned. since it's so gradual, Yosuke doesn't notice when their characters' banter turned from playful to outright flirtatious...

and he swears he's not like THAT but he can't help getting so genuinely upset when he dies* in Jira's arms and Yosuke can't separate character from person when he hears Souji's voice tells him before he dies that he- he loves--

*temporarily; I'm not a monster

[liauditore]

Cub and Pearl would both be competitive trainers 100%

Gem and Stress would be contest coordinators and have the cutest sparkliest pokemon in the world. (Your stress line up is on point)

False would be champion of the elite four but I’m not sure what type. False fans would need to help me out on that one-feels lazy to say fighting or steel type.

Etho would be the trainer for the first gym and have ghost type/dark type mons that look the coolest and most “ninja-like” (kill him) plus one really silly looking one. He’d get the shedinja after the post game level up.

Iskall would have a really fucking irritating set of normal type mons to battle and be the trainer for the eighth gym. His higher level team would be all slakoths fuck you man

Keralis would have like three of the Pokémon that evolve into sexy furrybait

Xb would just have three magikarps

(also your skizz lineup is so real. The lillipup made me chuckle)

LOVE THESE.

For my AU I purposefully made it so that none of them are "serious" trainers (because pokemon in day to day living was more in line with what I wanted to explore) but yeah in a context where that was an option, Pearl and Cub would absolutely reach for the sky. I think Jevin would too but eventually chill and settle down into being a gym leader instead.

Gem as a coordinator is so real but I also do think she would start vibrating violently on the spot if she was bested in a battle. Her uber-competitive nature won't let her rest!! I can see her having contests as her main thing but don't be fooled those pokemon have tighter training regimes than navy seals and she will DESTROY YOU no matter what you're challenging her in.

Since Gem and Pearl have been on my mind and I have a tendency to main characterify Pearl in a lot of these I love the idea of like. Pearl being mainly a trainer and Gem being mainly a coordinator but because Pearl really likes to learn new things and Gem is the world's sweatiest sweat they end up rubbing off on eachother and Pearl learns to be a coordinator on the side cus of Gem and Gem's passion for battle only becoming stronger from the fact that she can never seem to defeat Pearl.

Anyway Stress as a coordinator is so true I can see her being someone very well-respected as a veteran in the contest scene, probably gets invited as a judge just as much as she competes.

For False I can see her either being flying for her aviator theme or dragon because of my personal cynthia-inspired design bias. Alternatively the thought of False in Lusamine's outfit just crossed my mind and I would love to see her with a Bewear.

THE ETHO AND TEAM CANADA THING IS SO CUTE I LOVE THAT SO MUCH. My personal headcanon for my Etho in this AU is that he's an ex gym leader/e4/champion and has now gone into retirement so the thought of Beef and Pause witnessing essentially his entire career is so. augh I might steal that idea.

I love the Iskall section LMAO that one I might yoink as well or just some other really annoying team. I also like the idea of him having gulpin idk why it just makes sense to me and I think it'd be his little buddy and he'd take it on adventures and talk to it like his kid. Also like the idea of him having mons adjacent to Stress, like she has a smoochum and he has an elekid/magby or something (or alternatively, a wailord for the skitty)

The Keralis team is so funny cus I have him down as just having like. a pack of whismur that follow him around everything. and now I'm just imagining a mass of whismur + one lopunny like when farmers get an alpaca to look after sheep.

Xb being that one trainer in every game with 6 magikarp 😭😭 I'd like to think one of them has evolved and he either somehow hasn't noticed or just doesn't care that much and still treats it like a little guy. and everyone who comes over is terrified because holyyy fuckwhen did that thing get big.and he's just like what that's just fish 3