#the core of this thing is mean to be more character focused on the crew but i do want them to go on this big quest and engage with all that

[waywardsalt]

i really need to figure out what the main overarching plot of post-ph is. i had some ideas in the past but they no longer fit with never ideas, and god once i get the main plot down i can start figuring out everything around it

[izzyhandslightofmylife]

Official statement on why Izzy's death affected me so much

Our Flag Means Death, is, at it’s core, is a show that focuses on queer joy- a form of therapy for those that have been raised on queerbaiting, shipping minor side characters, or watching, when nothing else is available, queer tragedies. You know how it goes- the two main characters, both male, have chemistry. They say things to each other that seem weirdly like declarations of love. They look at each other with love in their eyes. You see these things and the main man gets married off to a badly written, unfinished female character and is left feeling empty. The best friend dies for the main character to live. When everyone talks about how cute the main couple are, you want to scream all of a sudden, because nobody can see this love story play out except you. It’s queer, it’s tragic, and nobody else can understand it. 

Not Our Flag Means Death. From the moment it aired, it was praised as a show with unabashed queer joy, which means more than I can possibly say. The two main male characters meet, they have chemistry, and they fall in love. It’s not implied, or hinted at, but blatantly obvious. Their romances and the queer romances around them attracted so many queer fans who felt that after so many years, this type of show was a vindication for what they had been through with other media. 

In this show, piracy itself was that of a found family. Though Stede Bonnet and the crew of the Revenge start off with many differences, the core of the show centers around a theme that many queer audiences are attracted to: found family. The Revenge was depicted as a safe space, where everyone could express themselves freely, a refuge from a world of judgment. Queerness was not only accepted but normalized on The Revenge. No homophobia, no coming out, no typical complications of queer romance. Just love and safety. Warmth, which was Ed Teach wished for in purgatory. Which was what he found on the Revenge. The ship was a safe space that so many queer audiences had dreamed of. 

Well, a safe space except for one person: Izzy Hands, Blackbeard’s First Mate, who was a man painfully stuck in the wrong genre. This is the general consensus by both fans and the cast: Izzy, Edward and their crew had been in a gritty action movie, whereas Stede and his crew were in a muppet movie of sorts. While the majority of Blackbeard’s crew quickly acclimates to and celebrates the change, Izzy doesn’t. 

And right away, many fans felt a deep attraction to Izzy. The reason that Izzy couldn’t get Edward to love him was because, in the end, the only way that Izzy knew how to love was through blood. To give and receive pain in an action movie is one of the greatest forms of love, but Izzy fails to realize that Ed is not in an action movie anymore. He is happy with this stability, and the reason that so many people felt Izzy’s presence so was strongly was that he wasn’t. 

So many queer people are, in a way, addicted to tragedy. Tragedy is all that is represented in queer media for the most part, or was until very recently. Take Achilles and Patroclus, one of the most celebrated and recognized queer love stories of both ancient and modern times. Why that one? There are other greek love stories, many of them queer. The tragedy of it- Patroclus’ death and Achilles’ rage- made it all the more appealing. Many in the audience of Our Flag Means Death were not comedy fans, they were horror or drama fans, attracted to a comedy because of the love story. But Izzy, to them, was a physical representation of who they were, carrying an awareness of homophobia, of blood and pain that so many queer relationships had previously been illustrated by (i.e. Hannibal). Though Ed may not have understand this type of affection, the audience did- Izzy’s Otherness from the crew despite it’s safety, his expressions of love and his unrequited love story were all things that the audience were familiar with feeling. 

If Ed and Stede were good queer representation, Ed and Izzy, for example, were a foil of that. They were evil, messed up, and fed into the worst parts of each other because it brought them closer. This is a theme present in a lot of queer media, and by extension, queer lives: “if you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand”, is an excerpt classic queer poem about unrequited love that fits the situation. The very reason Izzy stuck in people’s heads because he was of a different genre. His grittiness and bitterness made sense to the audience. They saw Izzy and saw what was familiar. He was exquisitely written, simultaneously making even casual audiences both hate him, and against all odds, find him oddly endearing. The idea of this man sacrificing every inch of himself for an unrequited love was a concept of tragedy, leaking into a comedic show. 

So fans projected onto Izzy. He was a catalyst for the heartache, for the audience’s sheer inability to have a happy show. For one reason or another, some of the audience simply couldn’t live with a show that was all fantastical, which I theorize is because they couldn’t see themselves in it. So Izzy became the epitome of queer suffering: pining longingly after another man that couldn’t understand him. This projection of suffering, however, led to a new wish: happiness for Izzy. If Izzy in Season 1 was a tragedy, assimilating him into the found family in Season 2 would have elevated the safe sense of the ship all the more. It would have proved to so many of these Izzy Fans that yes, even though you view yourself as unloveable, even though you see yourself as Israel Hands, Villain, even he can be loved too. Why can’t you be? 

And Season 2, for the most part, delivered beyond our wildest dreams. Izzy had people who cared about him. And though the genre shifted into the darker, Izzy himself shifted slightly to the comedic side as well. His life, which had been centered for so long around a man that didn’t reciprocate his feelings, was gone. He started a new life, and this life, again, focused on queer joy. The queer joy from Season 1 was suddenly for everyone, even those like Izzy that couldn’t have understood it. He sang, he whittled, he talked about feelings, he dressed in drag. Many elder queer fans also saw Izzy as another metaphor, too: that queer joy can be attained overtime. You don’t have to have had it the whole time, but you can accept yourself even when you are older. The message of Izzy was one of resilience and stubbornness, one that the queer community needed to hear: that you don’t have to be like this, you don’t have to create pain for yourself. You don’t need to watch tragedies all the time. You, too, can heal from the past.

And then, the season finale happened. By this point, many argued that Izzy had stolen the show. Con O’Neil’s acting mixed with his general arc of self acceptance had made him a fan favorite. In the last episode, it is Izzy himself who sums it up perfectly, accepting that he belongs somewhere despite his pain and flaws. Despite the darkness within him, he was still accepted and loved. He says it right to the face of Prince Ricky, who thinks himself above it all. That piracy, a metaphor for otherness, wasn’t actually about being alone; it was about finding others that understood you when nobody else could. 

Listen, this show is known for it’s nonsensicality. In the finale of Season 1, Lucius is thrown overboard by Ed and survives by simply swimming to another ship. Stede reunites with his crew by sailing a rowboat. Buttons turns into a seagull. Stede stabs Ed for a comedic bit. Earlier in the season, Izzy himself gets shot and survives. This queer joy show was celebrated for being, well, joyful. Even when things like getting thrown overboard did happen, they were, ultimately, a blip in the character’s journey towards acceptance, healing, etc, which was what made the show unique. Our Flag Means Death, whose audience had been living for years off of the “Bury your gays” trope, was adored because it illustrated a world where things didn’t have to be that way. A place where the impossible, such as Izzy Hands being loved, could happen. This show was one of survival. 

But not for the one person that was seen to struggle with this concept the most. Not for the one person that was a metaphor for belonging in this place, who became, over the course of a season, the embodiment of the message itself. Not for the Unicorn, the very symbol of this magical, nonsensical ship. Not for the most stubborn, most indestructible, most enduring (queer) person in the show. Not for Izzy Hands. 

This trope, honestly, was one that many have seen before, both in mainstream and queer media. A character, previously shown to be a villain or else to have gone through a lot of pain, is shown to heal, to get better, and then to die in order to “complete their arc”. This trope is common: Loki, Cas. even Ted Lasso, who doesn’t die but goes back to the very place that broke him in the first place. But the reason that Izzy’s death, while it might have been expected in another show, felt like a betrayal in this one is because it was known for subverting those tropes. From the “Bury Your Gays” to the “Up For Interpretation”, it was known to look those tropes in the eyes and say “fuck you, these people deserve to be happy”. And this did happen! Except for the one character who’s healing journey was one of the most relatable, at least to queer audiences. 

What also made it so jarring was that all the other characters got to be happy, except for the one that had struggled with the idea of happiness the most. In the scene immediately after Izzy is buried, Lucius and Pete get married. In the scene after, a montage of queer joy and found family is shown amongst the whole crew. In the final scene, Ed and Stede, our main queer couple, are shown healing themselves and starting a new life together. The last shot, however, showed Izzy’s grave, visited by Buttons the seagull while Ed and Stede had dinner. A tragedy in it’s finest. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Izzy to live. Because, in the end, his death meant nothing. His healing meant nothing. He died and was moved on from in a matter of seconds. He was, as I mentioned, the catalyst for tragedy, more specifically, queer tragedy. But because of this, of his genre, Izzy didn’t get to live. He had to die in order for the rest of the characters to keep living in this fantasy world. This death was, in a way, a preservation of these other love stories.

I maintain, however, that it would have meant more if Izzy had lived. If he had been  able to show to us that yes, despite what you have been through, despite what you may have inflicted upon yourself, you can switch genres. It’s possible. Izzy’s survival up until that point had been a profound testament to many that it is possible to heal, that queerness does not have to mean sadness. It would have continued to be a testament to that if only Izzy had lived. And so, this pirate that we latched onto, not in spite of his darkness but because of it, was buried on land on the side of the road. 

As a side note, many previous incidences in the story point to the idea even though Ed and Stede will definitely stay together, it’s uncertain if the inn would have worked out. It’s likely that, being a whim, those two might have chosen to move, or go back to the sea, or sail to China. If this is true, they would have left Izzy’s grave by itself, like a family pet buried in the yard. If this is true, Izzy Hands, a metaphor for belonging, would rot alone. 

Long live the tragedy addicts. Long live the Richard Siken poems. Long live Izzy Hands. 

*When I talk about the "fandom" I am referring to the canyon.

[mdhwrites]

I’ve been watching Amphibia while studying. I should definitely do a rewatch during the summer, but it’s occurred to me that Amphibia’s strengths are criminally underrated.

Amphibia feels like a more focused show than TOH. It has its flaws ofc especially in Season 3, but Amphibia’s cast comes across as a lot more developed than TOH’s cast. I mean, Andrias got a dedicated flashback episode and Belos didn’t???

Amphibia’s execution of the found family trope is one of the best things I’ve seen in animation. In contrast, I always felt that King, Lilith, Eda, and the Hexside crew are plot devices to get Luz where she needs to go. Eda has some depth but generally speaking TOH never “got into their heads,” unlike with the Plantars, Sasha, Marcy, Grime, and Andrias.

And I gotta praise Amphibia’s ending!!! I wish more kids cartoons embraced the idea of permanent, bittersweet change. The idea of letting things go but not forgetting them.

So while I agree Amphibia is more focused, I actually don't think that's what the bigger difference is between TOH and Amphibia that I think needs to be highlighted. No, instead, I'm interrogate something you said: Does Belos not get a dedicated backstory episode? For that matter... Does he potentially get MORE time spent on backstory than Andrias?

Andrias literally only gets The Core and the King. He actually gets VERY little screentime, mostly because the effects of his cruelty are more important than what he does himself. So for backstory, he gets 11 minutes. MAYBE you could stretch to like 12 or 13 if you want to include hints to Lief but that's all post her time with him. So 11 minutes because Andrias only gets one segment, not two.

What does Belos get?

Well... I think everyone just forgets about Elsewhere Elsewhen. That IS backstory. That is previous characterization. It's not a flashback but it is still interacting with a Belos earlier in the timeline, like a backstory exposition dump or a flashback does. And interacting with Philip is the main purpose of the A plot of the episode, even if it takes a bit to get to him and then he dips out before the end.

As the author of the journal though, he also counts for backstory whenever passages of the journal are told to us. It's unreliable but it is still previous characterization. So stuff like Eclipse Lake and the end of Looking Glass Ruins adds a little here and there.

Then of course... What the fuck do you call Hollow Mind if not a dedicated backstory episode to Belos? The majority of the run time is literally go through his brain, and his memories, to show his rise to power. His backstory. And while there is technically a B plot, it doesn't take up much time so probably at least a third of the episode is spent on this and these are 22 minute episodes. If just two thirds get spent on backstory, that's more than Andrias gets.

So why doesn't it feel like that? Why does it feel like we get a VERY complete version of Andrias' backstory, despite seeing cumulatively three days in a row of his life, while it feels like we were never told Belos'?

Efficiency. Amphibia is a VERY efficient work. It crams a LOT into its run times. It's part of why the episodes are so satisfying because they actually manage to tell complete stories with morals, sometimes their own A and B plots in an 11 minute segment and actually move the characters forward a full step within the span of that time. It does this while also being hilarious and action packed, much more than TOH or, honestly, a lot of cartoons. Not every episode segment counts for this but ESPECIALLY the important ones do and The Core and the King should be taught in classes for how to get across a character's motivations and backstory in a nuanced, breezy way while also being DENSE. AS. FUCK.

In eleven minutes, we get a clear idea of the utopia that Andrias used to live in, the cost of that utopia, the pressures upon him as a prince, how deep his relationships are with two other characters, Lief gets some genuinely good characterization that helps explain her choice, a logical progression of events that matches with the sillier side of Andrias we know of, an escalation and then a climax. We can VERY clearly see what Andrias lost, what he is trying to get back, and why he would want it back on multiple levels, both societal, familial and even personal, that will motivate into being a MONSTER for a thousand years. All while still being a lot of fun and having some really great jokes. It introduces so many elements but it never feels bogged down by any of this. Instead, it chose the PERFECT moment to get across everything it needed to and left very few questions that you as an audience couldn't figure out yourselves. This also all while being explicit about much of the motivation and what not instead of relying on background details.

Which TOH can't claim for Belos. In Elsewhere Elsewhen, we see that Philip hates witches, that his journal is unreliable and that he has ALWAYS been an asshole and a manipulator. That's befitting who he will be but doesn't actually tell us jack shit. It also includes I guess how he met the Collector but that's moving plot, not expanding on your villain. Because the journal is unreliable, it tells us very little to nothing about him except for some reason he donated his journal to the people he fucking despised. Then Hollow Mind shows how he came to power... But not who he is. Not his motivation, what he actually wants to accomplish besides murder, etc. like that. The paintings in the background tell you far more just by being far more suggestive of what he's been through.

TOH is fucking awful when it comes to density. Most episodes, not even just Belos, have the problem of only taking half steps. Each of Belos' parts are those half steps. Revealing only one or two elements when it easily could have shown more to be more satisfying. As an example: Amphibia has a GREAT episode between Ivy and her mom about rebellion, the consequences of fighting what your parent wants for you, why they might do the things they do, etc. like that. In 11 minutes, we get a genuinely complex relationship between Ivy and her mom who haven't had much talk about each other or their relationship up until now. Meanwhile, TOH decides to focus on Luz being expelled for the episode about Amity and Odalia, meaning Amity is in like... Three, maybe five minutes of that episode? A full minute of that being the intro to the episode where she's just showing off the abomaton?

Because it isn't actually focused on Amity, the relationship between Amity and Odalia isn't actually explored. Because they can't explore that, they also need to now make Odalia cartoonishly villainous so as to fit the fact that Luz also spends very little time with her due to making the conflict be about Hexside so we have to waste some time with a stock standard montage of Luz, Willow and Gus trying to get back in. And by the end, what is the resolution between Amity and Odalia? "Get in my way again and I will kick your fucking ass."

Much deep. Very brave.

There's TONS of stuff like this where Amphibia is genuinely the work trying to do more interesting, more meaningful and deeper things than TOH and managing to do it in literally half the time. If not even less. That breakneck pace is part of what makes Amphibia feel like a kids show but it's also what makes it just more enjoyable to watch.

Which actually makes TOH fit in better with our current era of streaming television. TOH is constantly baiting you for the payoffs it promises. It keeps swearing that its elements are deeper than they appear so make sure to tune in next week because this SURELY can't be all there is to, right?

Unfortunately, that is all there is to it. And once you realize that and look at the show with that sort of lens, it starts falling apart. It's part of why TOH should be thankful it was shortened. It lets people more easily claim that it just needed another season. Another fourteen episodes. That TOTALLY would have solved all the problems with episodes that happened even before the shortening.

That is extremely rarely how this works everyone. Sorry.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[beanghostprincess]

Saw somebody once saying that people's arguments to say Nami is a lesbian are always about her negative traits and focusing on her not liking men and... Why do we have to have any arguments when it comes to a sexuality headcanon? Why can't I just say that she doesn't like men, and that's all? But even if you needed arguments, "not liking men" isn't a bad trait or something negative at all. She just is uninterested in them, imo, both romantically and sexually, and that's quite literally the definition of being a lesbian. Yes, obviously we can focus on her appreciation of other female characters and how the way she reacts around them is way different from how she reacts with the men of the show, but saying "she likes women" isn't an argument to prove she's a lesbian because bisexual girls exist. Or really, just any other sexuality regarding women. It's beautiful to focus on her love for girls, but if we're looking for arguments here, I think the best one of all is saying that she doesn't like men. And that isn't a bad thing at all and it is quite literally the only argument you need for your headcanon to work. And yes, I do agree that a lot of people use negative traits of her to call her a lesbian (a "mean lesbian". A term that I personally despise. When it's a joke about a character who's actually mean it's okay and funny, but lesbians are already demonized enough, and Nami isn't even mean. People just hate that she has a personality and stands up for herself) but I've never seen somebody say "she's a lesbian because she's mean". I just see people saying she's a lesbian because she doesn't like men, and, again, that's not bad as long as you don't stereotype her and say she hates men and put her in a little box of "being the mature one" because she's a lot of the time as silly and careless as the men of the crew. Not liking men is not a negative trait. It's literally just being a lesbian. Like we could talk for hours about her relationship with women and womanhood in the show, how her character behaves around them, and the way they portray her. Because yes, I don't know if I'd say she's queercoded but she definitely is way more fond of girls than she is of men and her relationships with them seem way more genuine and organic than the one she has with men. But... Again, the core point of all of this is that she doesn't like men. Easy as that.

[dgcatanisiri]

I'll be honest here, I legitimately enjoyed Section 31. And the big thing there is that I genuinely do find it hard to actively hate things Star Trek. The things I hate are when it actively goes against its own values, like the racist mess that is Code of Honor, or the victim-blaming attitude that unfortunately permeates Voyager's Retrospect.

What I see with 31 is that the plotline of the originally planned first season got condensed into this hour and forty minute production, a story that would have had around ten episodes to breathe and explore compacted down to about the span of two.

And, as a result of that compacting, the things that I think a lot of fans would have wanted from a Star Trek product labeled Section 31 were unfortunate victims of that - the exploration of this dark underbelly in the utopia of the Federation, the question of IS 31 actually a necessary evil, or is it a bunch of people using "for the greater good" as an excuse to just do whatever they want, how do you justify this in the grander Star Trek universe... All of that unfortunately was pushed out because the general storyline of this film was too busy having to introduce elements that couldn't get the development they really deserved already.

Still, I saw good things in what it did with Georgiou - it built on the fact that the reason she was able to come back to this period of time was the Guardian of Forever deciding that she was not the genocidal emperor of the Terran Empire. Georgiou talking about there being no benevolent dictators felt like what was the core of her development, the things that probably would have been better explored in more time, but it still speaks to her development in how she says it. Georgiou as introduced in Discovery would have been dismissive of the very idea. Georgiou here says it as something that she is speaking from experience, which she does, considering the events of Terra Firma Part 2. Regret of it having been tried and being unable to enact it without seeing her supposed allies turning on her.

What I think would have helped here would have been to have this as a limited series, rather than a movie. As things tend to go, Star Trek often needs time to find its feet when trying new things, which these TV movies focused on individual characters rather than a core cast of characters is for them - every Trek movie before this was centered on the various Enterprise crews.

I'm not gonna say that it's top tier, must-see Trek, the new vital aspect of the franchise that must be viewed by everyone. But I'd still rate it around the middle of the Trek movies that have been made. And I'm okay with it being in the general tapestry - to me, it felt like a filmed Georgiou-centered novel from the banner of "the Lost Era," the time between Undiscovered Country and TNG, which is what it is.

Would I have liked more? Yeah, absolutely. I do think that there's more to the concept than we were given here, but, again, I think the fact that this is basically taking what began as a season of TV and condensing it into a TV-movie took out a lot of those elements. Maybe a name change, so that it wouldn't give people the idea that it was going to be ABOUT 31, would have helped temper some expectations. Maybe a theoretical followup would do the kind of things that people were expecting of it, since it would be a story broken with the awareness at the start it's only a movie, not a series.

Star Trek is open to experimenting with its style and format. And it's also got room for a quote-unquote "mindless action movie." I mean, we had Star Trek Nemesis, which I will say I rank below this film - at least this was trying to maintain a character thread that actually existed, rather than having to build it up. This was paying off seeds planted for 31 back in the lead up to Georgiou's departure from Discovery, while Nemesis had to outright create both Shinzon and B4 in that film. I'd even say it's at least trying to ask questions, which is more than 09 Trek was really doing.

I'm not saying that it's perfect, that it is without flaws, that it pulls off everything it tried. But I see an effort, and when it comes to Star Trek, I will often appreciate effort and attempts, even if they fall short. Because that is one of the things that I love about Star Trek, the idea to reach for things and trying to achieve something, even when they do not accomplish that, because it's worth trying.

Again. It's not perfect. But there's always been imperfect Trek. Trek has room for imperfections and misfires. Trek is about making mistakes and learning from them, to see what can be accomplished.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Doctor Who: The Well (15x03)

A pretty good horror episode of Doctor Who!

Cons:

Okay, to be honest I think I was slightly more distracted by the connection to "Midnight" than I was compelled by it. The moment of reveal was a literal goosebumps moment, so fucking good, but then after that I was busy thinking... but wait, why is this same cosmic entity doing a different gimmick this time, what is the connection, does it matter to the entity that the Doctor has been here before... it just wasn't adding up to me as a continuation of a story, and felt like it could easily have been its own thing.

It also bothered me slightly that nobody figured out that Aliss might have a different relationship to the monster of the week because she's Deaf... like, for one thing, it might have been explained a bit that not all Deaf people are entirely without any hearing, and might have some slight ability to hear, but Aliss could have explained that she has no hearing whatsoever, and that probably should have clued somebody into the fact that hearing something is probably what triggered the "mad" behavior of all the other people on the crew. It was a little silly that this didn't occur to anybody until towards the end of the episode.

Pros:

I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this episode, it was properly spooky, really well done in that regard. The dead bodies, the different ways they died, the spookiness of coming across just one living person among all these dead, and having her not know what's going on... I like that we got the shadow of a glimpse of the "thing" whatever it is, but never saw it properly. And that ending, with the ominous suggestion that perhaps the thing made it off the planet anyway... I mean, it's a pretty obvious trick within the horror genre. The end... or is it??? But it happened to work quite well here, in my opinion.

We also get the continuing A-plot stuff sprinkled in, what with Belinda and the Doctor still unable to travel back from the day Belinda first left, and then also Mrs. Flood turning up at the end as the boss of these soldiers, clearly keeping tabs on the Doctor. A lot of people have pointed out the parallels between this season and the first one with Gatwa's Doctor. Each episode seems to mirror the one of the next season in some way as to its theme or setting... episode two of both seasons are interacting with performance in some ways, with "The Devil's Chord" and then "Lux" being about musicals and movies respectively. Episode four of Gatwa's first season was the Ruby-centric episode "73 Yards," and next week is poised to be another Doctor-Lite Ruby-centric adventure. What is happening here? I'm into it, whatever it is.

This was an excellent adventure for Belinda. While in the second episode she was more of a true sidekick (not in a bad way, just wasn't a ton for her to do in the plot), here we see her really taking an active role in events. She's there to help with Aliss's injury, and then she becomes a voice of reason in a room of people otherwise fraying at the edges. She's the one who figures out the logic of what they're up against, and she continually intervenes to defend Aliss from harm or suspicion. I really liked seeing her step into her power as a real agent of action in this episode, while at the same time maintaining the core of her character arc, which is... I want to go home.

I want to talk about that opening sequence in the TARDIS a bit. I love that we're sticking with Belinda being focused on going home. She talks about her parents, lamenting being away from them, worried for them, and the Doctor makes a promise that he'll get her home. She likes the Doctor, she trusts him to have good intentions, but she doesn't know if she really believes in him to get her home. I love the tension here! She's along for the ride, and she's making the best of it, and even enjoying some of the wonder and interest of this crazy life of adventure. But her primary motivation is to get back to where she started. And I love the Doctor kissing her hand and making this solemn vow. Is this going to come back and hurt later on? We'll see!

Another oft-discussed element of these last couple seasons of Doctor Who is the budget injection from Disney. And yeah, I feel like the sets in particular with this one looked so cool and creative and big. "Midnight" was a budget episode with just the one set for the majority of the episode, and this concept was similarly contained mostly to one room, but it had such a big scope and a lot of visual splendor!

I'm always excited to see Deaf characters in media, and I really liked Aliss! Obviously they're signing BSL not ASL so I couldn't really follow along with it, but it was awesome to see Gatwa doing some real sign. I loved the little world-building details like the fact that it's illegal to be a nurse in this future without knowing sign language. An insensitive and shitty version of this story would be like "in the future we cured all deafness" but that ignores the culture behind it, and it's a much more interesting and I think true version of a future to say that in the future the world is adequately and fully accommodating to Deafness, not that it's been eliminated. I also liked how brave Aliss was, standing her ground and trying fruitlessly to explain herself, all while being terrified and very alone in these bizarre circumstances.

I think I'll leave it there! I'm excited to see Ruby again next week, that will be a treat I'm sure, especially if we get a reunion with the Doctor in there for good measure. And I'm eager to learn more about Belinda and where all this is leading - how long can we maintain the narrative tension of the Doctor not able to get her home?

8/10

[altocat]

Do you just talk about Sephiroth?

Sephiroth is my favorite of the lot. But he is by no means the sole focus of this blog. I'd be very happy to talk about the other characters as well, whether that's Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, etc. I just don't get asked much about them that often, or about my feelings on certain ships or dynamics relating to them.

Tbh the Sephiroth focus, for me, sort of the thing that helps the blog stand out. So many people dedicate a lot of love and attention to the main crew so I figured why not branch out and explore a different area of the fanbase? You got the Crisis Core trio, you got Lazard and Hojo and Jenova and all the drama going on with First Soldier. You got the wider lore in Shinra before the official story starts. You got the Jenova Project. Lots of really cool, interesting, mostly untouched areas that the fanbase typically ignores in favor of main story/shipping/etc. And hey, there's nothing wrong with that. Like I said, I'd love to answer questions on that as well. But I like that this blog sorta has its own space on the FF7 timeline, focusing on a more niche area of history and characterization. You'll find that Sane!Sephiroth takes center stage far more than the Sephiroth we know to be a villain. And if I can get people to appreciate him more for it, then cool!

...But Cloud is also like my second favorite character in the series so you guys can ask me about Cloud and company as much as you want lmao go right ahead.

[the-xp-budget]

Goblins - Part 2 (Pyro)

Through the smell of old books and wisdom kept preserved for ages upon ages, you catch the scent of something else. Burning. Something is on fire.

Smoke erupts from a nearby shelf, and as you duck behind cover, someone steps through the fumes. Grey-green complexion, pointed ears, this is a Gobin.

His eyes are glued to a single mote of flame that dances around on his palm, but then you see him look around, registering an unfamiliar presence and searching for you. His mouth twists into a snarl, and that fire in his hand begins to grow and lash out. It’s hungry.

Roll initiative.

Goblin Pyro

The air in the temple suddenly grows hot, too hot to bear. You duck under a blast of flame and turn around to see what appears to be a Goblin emerging from behind a statue. You see a heavy woollen cloak over a suit complete with a bright orange cravat that matches a sash over his shoulder. The left sleeve of his jacket is missing, showing off an arm that doesn’t match the rest of his body, apparently made from polished obsidian refined into an appendage that terminates in three, clawlike fingers. You see the arm begin to glow as he prepares to hurl more fire towards you.

In my previous post, I talked about Goblins more generally, and a lot of that information still stands with this entry into the crew. Goblin Scuttle can still be used for defence and for repositioning, for example.

In that post, I focused on the martial Goblins, meaning that our spellcasting friends had their own post to themselves. I did plan on covering both in this post, but this post got long with the two of them, so here’s the Pyro. Here’s the general information.

Generally speaking, spellcasters are more vulnerable than martials, since they have a higher damage output on average. The Pyro fits this, although with an Armour Class of 16 in comparison to the expected 15, it doesn’t appear to yet.

The devil is in the Hit Points. The average for a creature of level 1 is 20, but the Pyro only has 15, so he’s not going to stick around and tempt fate. He’ll deal lots of damage then skiddadle when things look rough.

However, here is the important kicker for running spellcasters in PF2e: You don’t have to cast all of your spells. Fights in this system go quickly (a little too quickly for some people), and that means that certain abilities aren’t going to get used. This is fine, everything has a time and place, that’s why this blog exists.

You are playing to have fun, not to win. This blog exists to challenge players, not turn them off the game. The creatures aren’t the main characters, the PCs are.

For the sake of argument, lets quickly go over the Pyro’s melee option. It’s a torch, with a +7 to hit and a damage output of 1d4 +1. If we apply the strategy of “move to a target and hit it twice”, we end up with this:

Two Attacks: 0.5 * 3.5 + 0.15 * 7 + 0.35 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 7 = 4.38

A reminder that the Warrior, a creature two levels lower than our Pyro friend, had a damage output with this strategy of 5.08, and that doesn’t take into account flanking, which makes the Torch look even worse by comparison. This is a last resort item when the Goblin can’t escape or cast spells, and his enemies won’t accept surrender.

The Goblin grimaces and looks down at the almost burned-out torch still in his grasp. He gives a resigned sigh, and begins to flail wildly, leaving a trail of embers with every swing.

To better illustrate how rubbish of an option this is, I made a graphing system. Essentially, I need a graph with three points on it. The minimum damage, the maximum, and the average against a creature of the same level.

This is fairly simple, but it doesn’t mean anything on its own. To form a baseline, I look to the creature standardisation tables in the GM core.

The average attack bonus for a level 1 creature is +7, and the average strike damage is 1d6 +2. As such, the equation and graph for for that looks like this.

Generic Strike: 0.5 * 5.5 + 0.15 * 11 = 4.4

Now do you see what I mean? The Pyro’s physical weaponry isn’t a viable option, so let’s look at spells instead.

Our Pyro has a spell attack modifier of +6, and a save DC of 16, which means that, against a generic level 1 creature, he will hit with spell attacks 60% of the time, and the creature will fail against 50% of the saving throws he forces it to make. Bear this in mind, it will affect everything I say later.

Light isn’t a combat focused spell, and considering the Pyro has Darkvision, it’s not really useful at all, except as a distraction. Show me a TTRPG player of any system who won’t see a glowing golden chalice on a pedestal and immediately try to pick it up.

Ask the players if they touch the chalice halfway through. It means you can enjoy watching them suddenly contort their methods to avoid directly making contact with it, and it will take their attention off their surroundings, allowing the Puro an advantage when sneaking up on them.

The statuette glows with a flickering light that illuminates this entire space. Golden, warm light, almost hot to the touch.

There’s no mechanical benefit to this (although if a player tried this, I would allow them to take the Create A Diversion action using their spellcasting modifier in the place of deception), but it would distract the players from taking the search action, and that’s some decent risk assurance.

Telekinetic Hand, meanwhile, is best used like the force. That is a role-playing spell, allowing the Goblin to feel magical if the characters engage with it. Maybe he lifts a drink to his hand from across a table or holds a book in the air in front of him so he can read and gesticulate at the same time. Alternatively, it can grab something off a high shelf or put something up there so it can’t be stolen.

The Goblin leans back in his chair and flicks his wrist. “Manus Liquefacta” You see that arm of his begin to glow once more, as an ember trails off into the air and begins to expand into the shape of a hand that floats idly beside him.

Ok, now we have the useful spells. These are the ones he will use most often in combat, and the most obvious of those is Ignition, a two-action spell that targets AC and has a critical hit function that makes my math more complex.

Each round, after a creature takes persistent damage, they can make a flat check to recover from the condition. It’s a DC 15 flat check, so there’s a 30% chance of succeeding. So, for the sake of math that doesn’t make my nose bleed, we’ll say that it will probably deal about 70% of the damage it could.

The length of the condition is assumed to be one minute, which translates into the game as ten rounds. At 1d4 persistent fire damage per round, that’s 25 damage if the effect runs its course, and 70% of that is 17.5.

So, with all that and the chance of succeeding I mentioned before, our equation for the damage of one strike is this:

Ignition: 0.5 * 5 + 0.1 * (10 + 17.5) = 5.25

That’s not a lot of damage, I will admit, but we aren’t done yet. Remember that this spell requires an attack roll, so it works with conditions like Off-Guard. This Goblin has a +7 bonus to his Stealth checks, so we can mess with that if we want to.

The expected perception score of a level 1 creature is +7. With the +2 bonus from cover, our Pyro friend has 65% chance of succeeding on his roll. That increases to 75% with greater cover and look at what that does to the damage of this spell.

Hide Then Cast Ignition (Cover): 0.65 * (0.5 * 5 + 0.2 * 27.5) + 0.35 * (0.5 * 5 + 0.1 * 27.5) = 7.04 Hide Then Cast Ignition (Greater Cover): 0.75 * (0.5 * 5 + 0.2 * 27.5) + 0.25 * (0.5 * 5 + 0.1 * 27.5) = 7.31

Before we put that on the graph. We need to take into account that this spell takes two actions, so the single attack options need to be accounted for.

That is a massive spread, but it’s the averages that matter. Theoretically, if everything goes well, this spell can deal 56 points of damage, but that is very much theoretical.

“Fides Ad Ignis.” Even whispered, the voice echoes against each of the columns in turn, sourceless and indirect. You feel the hairs on the back of your neck raise and turn in time to see the Pyro stepping out of the shadows to hurl a ball of flame like a discuss towards you. You throw up your defences, and by the time the fire reaches you, you have lost track of its cause entirely. That’s a twenty-four to hit.

Worth noting, since this is only this blog’s second entry, I’m still working on the formatting and even this graph specifically. Bear with me, I’m experimenting.

The final cantrip in the Pyro’s arsenal is Tangle Vine, which takes a little more fenagling to work out the efficacy. First up, it doesn’t do damage, it’s a mobility hampering spell. Best used as a means of escape, so it needs to be judged on a different scale.

So, let’s assume that the Goblin is a sphere and apply some baselines. The GM core tells me to assume a speed of 25, which is the same as the Goblin Pyro, so let’s go with that.

The Pyro has two options, either use all three actions to sprint the full 75 ft. Or he can only move 25 ft. and cast Tangle Vine. Limiting his own speed in return for a single round of movement penalties applied to his target.

In the below graph, the lighter circles represent the starting point, and the lower of the two darker circles corresponds with stopping to cast the spell.

The opponent meanwhile has three options that they can take, each dependant on the spell. First, the spell misses and they cover thirty ft., catching up with the Goblin and rendering their defensive spell moot. Second, the spell hits, and the target’s speed is reduced by 10 ft. As such, they only cover 45 ft., but they do still catch up with the Pyro. The third option occurs on a critical hit, which immobilizes the creature, limiting their movement entirely for the round.

Here are those three options on the map.

I think you can see where I’m going with this, but just to be clear, let’s work out how likely each option is to happen.

The Pyro has 60% chance to hit with this, that means a 10% likelihood of immobilizing his target. As such, the formula looks like this:

Tangle Vine 0.5 * 45 + 0.4 * 75 = 52.5

Not even accounting for the fact that an immobilised creature can just use an action to try and escape, this spell is not worth it as an escape option.

You see the Goblin’s eyes light up for just a moment as he draws himself to his feet. You hear him say “Manete”, and then feel your limbs begin to resist your motions, like something very hot is trying to latch onto you. Does a nineteen beat your armour class?

Most likely, this is a last stand spell. This is a spell for when the rest of the Goblin’s crew is trying to get away, and our friend is making himself the easiest target. In that case, his companions can use their full movement to escape, while the Goblin will use his turn to slow down the threat, and hope he has enough time to get away on his own, most likely in the opposite direction to his friends.

This spell has a range of 30 ft., so it is best used at the limit of this distance.

Alternatively, if the goblin gets reduced to half HP and the battle is still ongoing, he might throw out this spell before making his escape.

But that’s enough of the cantrips. The Pyro has three spell slots that can be used for either Grease or Breathe Fire, and we’re going to start with my favourite of the two.

Grease is a control spell. It messes with people and sets up allies by knocking anyone in its space prone. Since it takes an action to take cover while prone, that means any character who failed their save is off guard against everyone until they move.

Let’s compare outcomes. Because this is the support spell, let’s assume we have another Goblin who can move into melee. The Pyro will most likely be accompanied by Warriors, so let’s bring back our friend from the previous post.

Once again assuming everything is a sphere, let’s say that there is one opponent (level 1), and the two Goblins, who are both within 30 ft. of it and, for the sake of argument, hidden.

Here’s our first scenario. On his turn, the Pyro will cast Ignition and then hide, while the Warrior will emerge from hiding and shoot the target twice before ducking back behind cover. This is a simple equation, modifying the warrior’s formula a bit to account for a higher target AC and adding all the totals together.

Both Goblins Attack: 8 + (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.25 * 12.5 + 0.35 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5) = 14.73

Alternatively, the Pyro can cast Grease, while the Warrior’s strategy doesn’t change. In that case, the Warrior’s second attack would be against an off-guard creature. Applying what I said earlier about likelihood of success, the formula looks like this:

Grease: 0.5 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.25 * 12.5 + 0.45 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5) + 0.5 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.25 * 12.5 + 0.35 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5) = 6.9

Notably, this tactic doesn’t work with just one other Goblin. But let’s consider a few more options. For the sake of space, here’s another graph.

Here, each +1 means a single Goblin other than the Pyro.

Once again, this is a dead end. So, let’s consider another use case, setup.

What if we combine this with the Light spell from before? Lay Grease on the ground near an entrance and Light on something shiny, then wait for potential targets to rush in and slip. Like I said before, fights go really quickly in PF2e, so running out of spell slots isn’t really an option.

As you reach the bottom of the stairs, you feel your feet begin to lose purchase on the ground. Apparently, you’ve stepped on something slick, like ice or oil. Everybody make either an Acrobatics check, or a Reflex save as you find yourself struggling to keep balance.

Theoretically, a character actively seeking wouldn’t have to make a check to notice the spell’s effect. But again, if I put something glowing on a pedestal, the likelihood of someone searching is diminished.

On the other hand, if a player searches for traps and subverts the Goblin strategy, that’s not a bad thing. It means the player is engaged with your world enough to want to look around and to try and predict things, and it allows that player to feel powerful without the need for special magic items. You’re playing this game to have fun, remember?

If successful, the Grease gambit would mean that the fight starts with a few of the Pyro’s opponents on the floor, causing them to waste multiple actions getting up, drawing weapons, and then moving towards the Pyro, essentially destroying the entirety of their first turn and possibly setting up the Pyro for the last of their spells.

Speaking of which, Breathe Fire is an area of effect spell with varying degrees of success. Considering the predicted save likelihood of 50%, as mentioned above, it is incredibly likely that the target will take at least some damage. Here’s the formula and graph for that damage against one person:

Breathe Fire (One Target): 0.45 * 3.5 + 0.45 * 7 + 0.01 * 14 = 4.87

This has the benefit of scaling directly with the number of creatures in the area. At two creatures, it outpaces Ignition with an average of 9.74 damage, and this continues with three or four creatures.

For the fun of it, the maximum amount of creatures who can fit in this area is seven. Here’s what that looks like on the graph:

You watch the Goblin rear backwards, breathing in heavily as he speaks the incantation. “Aetnae Ira!” His words trail into a scream as he breathes out an enormous cone of fire so hot it's tinted blue. I need you, you, and you to please make Reflex saves to try and get out of the way of this blast.

So, we have our strategy for the fight. Start with a Grease trap with a glowing valuable item serving as bait. Preferably with more Goblin Warriors by the Pyro’s side than there are opponents. Then, open with a Fire Breath while the trap is still in effect and its subjects are prone and trying to work out what’s going on. Then duck back into cover for a third action.

Spend the next few turns peppering opponents with Ignitions from a hidden vantage point.

If the opponents clump up again, the Pyro will use his final spell slot on another Fire Breath and assess the situation. Generally, if a target hasn’t been killed by two spells, the Pyro will take the hint and back out of the fight.

He will also flee if reduced to half hit points or fewer, or if half of his fellow Goblins are slain or otherwise removed from the battle.

For the greatest effectiveness, the Pyro will want to fight in as little light as possible to take advantage of the fact that his opponents can’t see. Also, fire looks cool in darkness.

Alternate Spells

Since most of this Goblin’s vibe is summed up by his spell list, so theoretically you could swap out all of the spells and make a Goblin Necromancer with next to no trouble. But I wanted to pick spells that fit the theme.

I am partial to the Forge spell, which would replace Fire Breath for a ton of single target damage that is especially effective against construct opponents, although I’m honestly not sure how many there are of those with whom the Pyro will come into contact.

Forge: 0.45 * 7.75 + 0.45 * 15.5 + 0.05 * 18 = 11.36

Obviously, it doesn’t match Fire Breath for multi-target damage, but Fire Breath needs three targets to beat this, so this is better for small groups or those that like to spread out. Of course, the Pyro can't decide what size their target is before they pick their spells, but they are aware of their strengths, which affects when they do and don't pick fights.

If the enemy flees, that’s still a victory, and generally all the Pyro has to do to start that domino chain is get someone on the opposite to seriously doubt their safety. If one person flees, their allies will probably join them.

As for Cantrips, I genuinely think Ignition is the best for this theme, so maybe replacing Tangle Vine with Eat Fire would be helpful. It’s situational, but maybe the goblin pokes himself with his own torch. He would resist all the damage he can take from it, then release the smoke to conceal his retreat. It ain’t prefect because he can’t see either, but it could definitely shake up a battlefield.

Conclusion

I am of the opinion that a creature’s worth is in its inspirational value, rather than any numerical advantage. The creature that makes you want to tell a story about it is more valuable to me than the heavily balanced boss monster with two voice lines.

As such, I like the idea of a Goblin who is also a fire mage. Fire is fun, and it can look phenomenal in the right situation. So that’s a plus to me.

I also appreciate the versatility of this stat block. You can replace every spell and get a completely different creature, and while I would prefer if it had an ability that made it stand out for itself beyond this, you have to respect the baseline.

If you have any suggestions for creatures you’d like me to cover, send me a message or put your suggestion in the replies or the ask box. I’d be happy to oblige.

All credit for this idea comes from the The Monsters Know What They’re Doing blog, I have simply ported the idea over to PF2e.

[zemantler]

Hey Mac! I just saw the new video you made about episode 4 and 5 of Our Flag Means Death and wanted to share with you a perspective I thought might be interesting to you.

(p.s sorry its so long and wordy! I tried to condense my thoughts as much as possible😅)

I read an article recently by Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/our-flag-means-death-season-3-release-date-cast-story-everything-we-know/) which says that our boy David Jenkins himself mentioned that if the show gets renewed for a third season then season 3 would be the final. He apparently also said that he has the entirety of the show beginning to end already mapped out, and this information kind of changed everything for me in terms of how I view the show and the way it is being created.

Shows that go for 5 to 10 seasons (roughly) are shows MADE for streaming, that being said their formula is usually to follow a storyline that can be started and ended every season and it's the characters that keep us coming back. OFMD isn't like that, I think the key is to think of it more like a long movie. and what we know about movies, or just classic storytelling in general (literally one of the first things you learn in elementary or middle school) is that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. If you think about the seasons of the show like this-season 1 beginning, season 2 middle, and season 3 end-it kinda makes all the pacing issues and the ‘Ed problem’ make sense (or just seem more intentional-again David says he has this all planned out) and you can follow the trajectory of the show actually pretty clearly from there. Take for instance season 1, you said it yourself it's like season 1 (baring the last two episodes) is like setting up the story (love story) with rose coloured glasses on. That being said the show also lines up with a rough outline of what your classic hero's journey looks like-call to adventure (the opening of Stede and the crew in ep01s01 and the flashbacks of Stede and Mary's unhappy marriage), meeting with the mentor (Ed-who is also the love interest-and the whole 'teach me how to pirate i'll teach you how to etiquette' deal). You can think of the last two episodes of season 1 as like the crossing of the threshold (aka glasses come off) cause not only does Stede realize he wants to be a pirate indefinitely and leave Barbados for good, but also because season 2 opens with the next part of the hero's journey which is meeting new enemies and allies (Zheng Yi Sao, Archie, Richard Banes,etc.(Does Izzy count as a new ally?)). 

Again, it's all very classic in format, but usually just not how tv shows made for streaming choose to operate-cause most of the time network execs are literally just trying to make the most money by keeping a concept going probably longer than they should-but I digress. Also again, if you factor in the part where season 3 would be the last season it's not unusual at all.That being said I think the reason they decided to have the crews trauma and ESPECIALLY Eds issues only start being addressed in the 5th episode is because they are hoping to have this be one of the plot points that drifts its way into season three and subsequently have resolution occur at that time as well, instead of forcing hollow resolution in the final three episodes of s02 and then have nothing to work with in season 3-this is another point that Screen Rant made in their article.

Using the three acts/hero's journey formula, we can start making really rough guesses as to how season three might pan out and given the circumstances of season 2, it kind of feels more right to me. Not to mention our dude Taika is the guy who wrote the initial screenplay of Moana which focused more on family than the screenplay which actually got made into the Disney film, so I can't imagine him and David of all people just glossing over all of the emotional reconciling parts of the core relationships. Anyways I thought this was interesting to think about and might also help in easing the nerves over the last 3 episodes of this season, again there is always the possibility this might not be true, or work out this way, but I thought it clicked too perfectly in my own head just to not talk about it. Like seriously the hunch is hunching right now!

Anyways Mac, loved the video and hope you have a great night! 😊

Hi!! First of all, thank you, I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Hope you'll have a good day too. Wow thats a lot of text, sorry if I misunderstood something.

While I understand what you mean, series dont really work like that. There are lots of "series like long movies" -plot based, not too stretched out, character dynamic focused, few series long, etc. For example, Good Omens, Sherlock, Hannibal (i think, never seen it) and more...

Movies start plotline in the beginning and have to resolve them in the end. BUT that doesnt mean there cant be a cliffhanger at the end, to help a sequel continue the story. And thats how (good) movie franchises are born- multiple movies are made to elaborate on the first original story, because there simply wasnt enough time to tell it in its entirety in one movie.

Series like ofmd go hannibal etc.. Were made to be series, because they couldnt possibly fit the entire story in a movie format. But when you make the decision to make a series, you also have to comply to the series format. So if its not a limited series, it will probably have multiple seasons, overall theme and will start a plot in first season that will to some extent, continue until the last one, while at the same time having multiple sub plots that will end with each season. They have to end at the end of the season, otherwise the overall season experience wont be satisfying. You watched all that and for what? Just to wait another year to actually see anything happen?

Now i can finally explain what I meant by all this :D OFMD in its entirety cant be like a movie, for its a series. They are formatted differently. If we wanted to compare it to a film, then the only way to do so is to make each season a new movie in a franchise. Each season has to have a satisfying experience on its own while ending in a way that leaves stuff that the next season can work with.

You cant make a bad season and then try to excuse it with "Its only a filler between act one and three" because while that would be excusable in movie, it's not really in series. because then youre just left with a second season that feels unfinished and rushed.

But even story wise, it just doesnt make sense to start redemption arc of the protagonist in act 2, get him together with the love interest and then actually redeem him in act 3. Its weird idk

I'm not saying that this season is bad when it hasnt dropped in its entirety yet tho. Dont quote me on that. I love ofmd and i really am enjoying this season. It just has more flaws than the first one.

Sorry that i rambled a bit and also sorry if it doesnt make sense. Im in school rn its hard to write something sensible while trying to pay attention to geometry or whatever we're doing

[billveusay]

I watched Mobile Suit Gundam and...

Okay, so I had fun doing a small review of Hathaway to get some thoughts out of my head, and now I want to extend the courtesy to every Gundam thing I’ve watched. I’ll go through them in the order in which I watched them, which means I’ll start with 0079.

Well, I actually started with the compilation movies about a year ago, when I needed a mecha fix after Armored Core 6 and some friends kept recommending it. However, I recently decided to go back and watch the complete show, and discovered to my satisfaction that it is still very good! Though, I wonder how much my appreciation came from my expectations, because like Mother 3, you’re gonna be blindsided if the bright colors and toyetic aesthetic trick you into expecting the story to be light and toddler-targeted. I’m guessing if you compared it to many actual war stories it would fall short, but on the standards of an animated show to sell toys, it is indeed very good.

Now the question of “is it good?” is not quite the same as “does it hold up?”. Animation has certainly aged, as well as some story beats. Having a big interest in the medium and being nostalgic for old school animes I watched as a kid certainly helped. But even then, I’d say it holds up, in that it still has something to teach in its domain. So let’s start with what it does well on a small scale.

Writing an episodic action show where you can’t rely on the overarching plot to carry the investment of the viewer is hard. Each episode needs to be interesting on its own without too much repetition. And Mobile Suit Gundam is really good at finding creative use of its limited cast and vehicles. Most of the time it’s not just “hey, we’re getting attacked by a bunch of Zakus, let’s pull out the fighter jets, the big robots and smash some action figures together”. This is a complaint I have about Zeta but we’ll get to Zeta. You get slow, tense situations (“Time, be Still”), high-octane action with interesting twists (“The Core Fighter’s Escape”, “Hand to hand combat”) and more character focused episodes. Sometimes, and actually most of the times, a combination of those and more. It feels like almost every episode has at least one idea that we’ve never seen before.

On a more macro story scale, it’s also pretty good. The rotating cast of antagonists keep things interesting while mostly giving us enough time to appreciate each of them. The beginning is absolutely masterful, immediately getting us invested in this young inexperienced crew thrown into a conflict way beyond them. Not all stories benefit from going from zero to a hundred in the first episode, but if you’re gonna have a quick and explosive start, this is an excellent point of reference.

However, having good pacing and interesting set-pieces for action only works if you’re invested in the characters, which brings us to the cast. Conceptually, Amuro is… not the most original character, I don’t think that’s a hot take. Young teenager, good natured but on the impulsive side. But I don’t hold that against him, cause he’s a perfectly serviceable vessel for the goal of the story, which is to fill that poor boy with as much trauma as possible. Evangelion gets a lot of rep for showing what forcing a kid to fight in a giant robot does to its mental health, but Gundam really was doing it all in 1979, albeit with choppier animation. And even compared to other Gundam shows that take themselves more seriously, I’d still rank it as one who addresses the psychological aspect of warfare on its soldiers the most (not qualified to estimate if it does that the best). As for the rest…

I’d say let’s go over them rapid-fire style, but I know I have too many thoughts on some of them so just assume I’m using an old crappy gun prone to jamming.

Bright Noa: saved from blandness by decent writing and the delicious memes.

Fraw Bow: as serviceable as Amuro in her respective role, convincingly likable and helpful but that’s about it.

Sayla Mass: Has really cool moments and some iffy ones when it comes to her brother. I really like how she spends a good chunk of the show helping Amuro and the other pilots stay calm and focused in combat from the bridge, and then when she starts fighting as a pilot herself, Amuro helps and reassures her with the combat experience he gained thanks to her. It’s really good character writing.

Mirai Yashima: I like her. At her best, she manages to feel like a kind and compassionate person without compromising her strength of character, like when she takes the initiative and roasts a Zaku with the White Base reactor. Sadly, because the show was probably really progressive for the time, it also makes for sharper contrast with the moments that have REALLY not aged well. And she has a bunch of them.

Hayato Kobayashi: He doesn’t get that much screen time sadly, so it's hard to judge his character. He’s okay I guess.

Kai Shidan: Probably my favorite character, starting out as a cowardly and cynical a-hole and getting one of the biggest character arcs, while also providing some pleasant sass and funny moments. He’s the only character who makes it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to be in the army, which elevates the sacrifice he makes for his pals by keeping on fighting.

Ryu Jose: How to make a character death impactful. Being the most experienced fighter (even though he’s supposedly 18, I’m headcannoning him as being in his thirties) he was a pillar of stability for the ragtag crew, and you feel how much his loss affects all of them.

Matilda: Kind of in the same boat. Very effective knife-twisting to have someone that provides comfort and stability to characters in constant stress and panic, and then WOOPS, explodified.

The kids: I’m surprised at how much I didn’t hate them, but don’t have much to say.

Sleggar Law: From the moment he was introduced, I counted the episodes leading to his explosion. Fuck that guy.

Now onto the villains:

Char Aznable: Iconic for a reason. Cool as hell design, convincingly menacing but also somewhat cares for (some of) his men, the fact he has his own agenda adds a lot of depth to his character and he ends the show with a swordfight, what more could you want?

Garma: Effective enough, and one of the first signs that the show will be of greyer morality than expected. Also a good sacrificial lamb to get thrown in front of a bus by Char to showcase his duplicity.

Ramba Ral (and Hamon): RAMBA RAL! YES! Everyone knows Ramba Ral is the coolest and that he and his wife are absolute relationship goals.

Mquve: Ah yes, the boring one. So boring that I’m pretty sure they cut him from the compilation movies, and the reason I’m only 95% sure is because even if they included him, I don’t think I’d remember.

Lalah Sune: Ok, so little tangent. Newtypes? Not a fan. One of my main issues with the concept, especially in later works, is that instead of characters being good at piloting through hard work, training and experience, it’s just “Yup, they’ve got the good at stuff gene, sucks to be everyone else”. It also has some really icky connotations with the “superior genetic race” thing. But to be fair, it’s not as bad in the first show, they only get introduced in the last ten episodes and it almost feels like a reward to Amuro for making it this far. “Congrats, you have become so good at piloting that you’ve unlocked piloting superpowers. Want some more trauma on the side?”

Even then, not a fan of Lalah Sune. Very obvious sacrificial lamb, too pure for this sinful world, a bit quirky and detached from reality, she’s a blueprint for many of the worst Gundam female characters. Also, the woman dying in a fight between two guys who love her is already not a winning trope by itself, but Amuro meets her twice IRL and they exchange two sentences. And I guess they form a telepathic bond later, but you can’t shortcut your way into a believable relationship with three recycled shots of a teenage girl melting into space custard.

Dozle: Would qualify as a himbo, but sadly war crimes are disqualifying.

Kycilia: Very effective as a slightly less a-holeish of the two a-holiest Zabis. It’s nice to see Gihren get his comeuppance for his arrogance and stupidity. And I don’t know how anyone cannot yell “YOOOOO” when she meets her own fate.

Degwin: A surprisingly nuanced character that I wish we’d seen more of. He must have been quite devious to assassinate his way to power, but then he just seems tired and reluctant to fight. Maybe he’s a MacBeth figure, but where the power-madness and cruelty got to his son instead of him, and he was just haunted by his actions.

Gihren: Y’know, grey and grey morality is cool and all, but sometimes we need to remember that there are people out there who are just the worst. Thank you Gihren for representing this demographic. I genuinely have no complaints about him being a total genocidal maniac, and he makes for a good BBEG.

Now for the final notes, I’m not a fan of the most toyetic aspects of the show, like the color palette and the G-armor/G-fighter switcheroos. Especially when every time they launch the gundam as a tank or a fighter jet, they end up going “darn, we’re in trouble, let’s transform into Mobile Suit mode”. Just launch it in Mobile Suit mode if it’s demonstrably more effective, dammit! But I know very well why they had to do it. Those 43 episodes weren’t gonna fund themselves and it’s a small price to pay for all the great stuff we got from this franchise.

So in conclusion, yeah! Mobile Suit Gundam is indeed very good, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested and not turned off by the old animation. 

My gundam reviews :

> Hathaway's Spark > Mobile Suit Gundam > Gundam Zeta > 0083: Stardust Memory > 0080: War in the Pocket > 8th MS Team > The Witch from Mercury > Gundam Thunderbolt > The Origin > Turn A Gundam > F91 > Gundam Unicorn > Gundam 00 > MS IGLOO > Gundam Narrative > Iron-Blooded Orphans

[timeturner-jay]

Timeturner-jay, thank you for your kind and detailed comments on An Unadmitted Defeat !!! The reason I haven't replied directly to your message is because I want to keep it in my inbox forever!!! Journey to the West and Lotus Lantern hold a special place in my heart and I love these wild and fun and volatile and lively characters that amplify things we're so familiar with - familial disputes, friendship, betrayal - into a cosmic, mythological scale. It's been a while since I could work on any of my fics, but this one is on extended hiatus. Though it really is another one of the many retellings of Lotus Lantern, one that focuses on Sun Wukong and Chen Xiang's relationship and training time. The core of the story is there, and the next part is up to Chen Xiang to save his mother :) I really wonder if Light Chaser studios or another animation crew is going to pick up something Lotus Lantern related soon. Thanks again, I'm so glad you could read this work and find joy and inspiration. I'll always be into JTTW and LL.

Awww, I'm really happy that my comments mean that much to you! :D You deserve them though - your writing is so heartfelt and lovely, and I haven't stopped thinking about it!

Fun fact, I'm re-reading chapter 9 of An Un-Admitted Defeat right now because I miss Sun Wukong and Chen Xiang's Sifu-Túdì relationship so much. :') That chapter was my favourite - Wukong just cares so much about this kid! And he teaches him so much more than just fighting. He teaches him how to read and write, how to listen to nature and recognise its creatures from sound alone, how to give aura to others and how to use it to create wards, how to play Go... And he also makes sure that this kid gets to have a proper childhood. 😭 He shows him how to do the perfect cannonball into the pond, he shares sweets with him, ropes him into a cricket fight, lets him play and make friends with the monkeys - and if he can present a lesson or a training exercise as a game instead, he does. He sees this kid who is so jaded and hurt and determined and traumatised and far far too filled with hatred for his young age, and he helps him be a child again and watches over him and soothes his nightmares, and I'm just so emotional over it. 😭 There's nothing he wouldn't do for that boy.

He'd even throw away his hard-won peace and fight Heaven all over again just to keep him safe, evidently. :')

I just care about them so much. The way you write them and their relationship is everything to me!

Hey guys! Go read An Un-Admitted Defeat please, it's really good and it owns my whole heart and I'll never be over the cliffhanger it left off on! 🙏

[ixcaliber]

Top 10 Games I Played In 2023 (Yes I Know What Month It Currently Is)

I barely played anything in the second half of last year and fell out of the habit of making these lists and then adhd kicked in. I’d like to go back to making little monthly media lists and I feel obligated to make some kind of 2023 Top 10 before I can do so… so here it is only five full months late.

10. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

Armored Core begrudgingly gets a spot on the list. Its sort of a frustrating experience for me specifically because while I really loved the fast paced dodge-focused combat a lot of other stuff didn’t click for me at all. I felt completely discouraged from exploration. I straight up did not gel with the equipment system and relied on Forgie to outfit my mech with whatever parts I had acquired. 

The dynamic between 621 and their handler is like so close to what I want from a game, but fundamentally unappealing because… it’s Walter. It’s some guy.

Look. Genuinely if this game allowed me to pick the gender of my handler it’d probably be my game of the year. Overall minute to minute I was having a good time but this is the least I’ve actually connected with a Fromsoft game. The only times I was really able to engage with it on more than a mechanical level was when Carla was on screen which just wasn’t enough of the time. 

9. Pseudoregalia

Pseudoregalia was my favourite Dark Souls game of the year and yeah I know how dumb a statement that is on the face of it (especially given I have at least one higher ranked Soulslike game on this list). But my favourite part of any soulslike game isn’t the combat or the big boss fights, its just the experience of exploring a cool and atmospheric location and Pseudoregalia does a fantastic job of this. 

Also yes I love Sybil and she is very fun to play and move as. 

8. The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog

The only Sonic game of 2023 that actually felt like Sonic. The playful tone and interactions between the characters made this a joy to play through. 

7. Chants of Sennaar

I think the name for this genre of game is ‘information game’. Consisting of games like The Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol and recently Botany Manor kind of does this as well. In these games you are given information that it is up to you to interpret and then asked to use that information, usually with some kind of notebook you can fill in to check your answers. 

I like this genre of game and yeah I like this one as well. While I do enjoy it I don’t hold it quite so highly as the others for kind of a complicated reason. 

In Chants of Sennaar you are climbing a tower, learning the languages of the various peoples who live upon the tower. At any point you can type in a guess as to what you think a glyph means and it will display this guess alongside that glyph whenever you see it. I think this works well as a system, the problem is you intermittently get shown a journal page where there are drawings of all the things that the glyphs you have seen could mean and you assign them to those images to validate them. 

The problem I have is like in comparison to Return of the Obra Dinn where you’re given the entire crew manifest up front, here you’re given word meanings shortly after encountering the glyphs they are attached to. The context of when you get the information changes the feel of the puzzles, makes them more simple to solve given that you’re not choosing from a large possibility space. 

All that said it is a fun game and I don’t know how you would work around the problem of verification without limiting the possibility space and simplifying the puzzles. 

6. Steelrising

There’s just something so compelling about clockwork automata and the trappings of Revolutionary France. I enjoyed the combat. I really enjoyed the exploration. I can’t think of any other Soulslike game that puts you into recognizable real world landmarks, and yeah I just really loved this one.

5. Coquette Dragoon

I need to catch up with Coquette Dragoon. 

The last time I talked about it I think I overemphasized the melancholy of this game. Maybe I was just in a weird headspace but I don’t feel like when I think back on it that that is the tone of Coquette Dragoon. The way I’d describe it now is soft. Soft with an undercurrent of sadness maybe. Soft that can’t escape being set in a real world with all the complications that come from such a thing, but soft nonetheless. 

4. Viewfinder

I wish there was a good term for puzzle games that sort of remind me of Portal. Predominantly first person puzzle games with a strong central mechanic, usually given to you as some kind of glove or gun or something and strong iteration on its mechanics. 

Viewfinder is one of those. The gimmick of this one is that you have a special camera that can reproduce anything it takes a photograph of in 3d space. 

It’s a fun game, the only criticism I would have is that the tool you are given is so powerful that it kind of feels like it trivializes many of the puzzles. Its like. Sometimes it sort of feels like if you were playing Portal but every single surface was portalable; it would be trivial to sidestep around the intended puzzle design.

This isn’t entirely a flaw though. Giving the player such a powerful tool and allowing the flexibility to use it is neat it just doesn’t necessarily lend itself to focused puzzlesolving. All that said, some of the later levels do increase in difficulty such that you can’t just brute force them with the same techniques you’ve gotten used to throughout the rest of the game.

3. Lil Gator Game

Lil Gator Game is a game about a little gator who wants to play a sort of Legend of Zelda LARP with his sister and pretty much every other kid on the island has been recruited into providing quests, monsters (cardboard cutouts) and loot (confetti). It’s a really neat little game that uses its setup not just to provide a fun experience but to say something about the joy of making and playing games.

2. Pizza Tower

Even though I’m bad at speedrunning through the levels as the game would really like me to, I can’t deny how well designed and fun this game is. With a great sense of humour and interesting mechanical variation in almost every level. This game somehow got me to enjoy boss fights with hidden extra health bars, which is saying something.

1. The Case of the Golden Idol (and The Spider of Lanka and The Lemurian Vampire)

I love information games. I love the deductive reasoning necessary to piece together these mysteries. I love the way the game builds some narrative elements in background, allowing you to figure them out at your own pace. 

The Case of the Golden Idol is just extremely good at what it does, its puzzles are pitched perfectly, providing you with enough prompts and clues to keep everything understandable and solvable, but never overdoing it and making it too easy to be satisfying. 

Look forward to Rise of the Golden Idol as my game of the year 2024 probably (unless Silksong actually comes out (it won’t)).

[jutpa]

AU Guide

Note: While I am capable of answering questions in character for some of the characters (as I'm certain of what they've been through and I can use all that to help give hints as to the lore), I currently do not have the talksprites for any of my characters, with the sole exception of ALTSWAP!Sans and Papyrus, who have no talksprite.

To make sure I know which character you're asking, just put in the acronym for the AU, shown in brackets.

WALL OF TEXT UNDER THE CUT

EXTENDED SHIFT

An Undertale AU based on Storyshift, but with more characters to shift. The first shift's roles are:

Gaster > Frisk > Mettaton > Asgore > Gerson > Undyne > Papyrus > Chara > Mad Dummy > Gaster Followers > The Six Human Souls > Napstablook > Toriel > River Person > Alphys > Sans > Asriel > Ruins Dummy > Gaster

UNDERTALE - Retake

A collection of takes on certain AUs.

Fable of the Fallen (FotF)

An Undertale AU in which Frisk swaps with the six fallen humans, among other things. The areas are also inverted, meaning smaller areas like the Core and New Home have been massively expanded while more significant areas like Snowdin and the Ruins are a lot smaller...

It is heavily story-based and I intend to eventually make a sprite comic for it.

You can ask Chara, the Story Person, and Gaster questions.

????

The Deltarune counterpart to Fable of the Fallen. I'm not willing to reveal any information about it currently...

ALTSWAP (AS)

A very, very random swap take with some influence from Deltarune, although I doubt Deltarune could have possibly influenced me deciding to swap Gaster with Sans and Papyrus.

You can only ask Sans and Papyrus questions, don't worry, there's still plenty of lore there.

Pastlaw (PL)

The Deltarune counterpart to ALTSWAP. A secret-main boss swap fused with a chapter swap.

WARPEDSUN (WS)

A Deltarune AU based on the original version of Underswap. Kris swaps with the Vessel, Susie swaps with Ralsei, and the rest? Well, you'll have to wait and see...

AFTERMATH (AMX, see AFTERMATH Guide)

A very ambitious take on the post-neutral concept, seeking to create some form of timeline for every possible variant of the neutral endings, with the exceptions of the Dog and Dirty Hacker endings.

Currently, you cannot ask any characters questions. However, once I've got talksprites set up, you'll be able to ask all of the leaders (Toriel, Undyne, Mettaton, Papyrus, Alphys, all in their respective endings) questions. I'll have another post that just covers all the endings that are being covered so that it'll be somewhat easier for me to tell which timeline you're talking about.

SOULRIFT (SR)

How many reboots is it now? It's just a Papyrus-Frisk swap along with some more custom human-monster swaps and... finally... an official lore explanation for how monsters won the war.

Darkmyth (DM)

A lightner-darkner swap AU and the Deltarune counterpart to SOULRIFT. While SOULRIFT was mostly a swap AU, this one's a lot more focused on shifting roles, and is intended to have an independent story from Deltarune, as Seam and Jevil search for Ralsei in the transformed ruins of the destroyed Light World...

You can ask Seam (who swaps with Kris), Jevil (who takes the role of Susie), Dess (who swaps with Ralsei), and Kris questions.

VISIONSWAP (VS)

A take on DELTASWAP specifically inspired by Vision Crew's future chapters take. Chapter 1 swaps with Chapter 5, Chapter 2 swaps with Chapter 3, and Chapters 6 & 7 are both very confusing and probably going to be completely replaced with brand new things, given I've already decided on swapping Ralsei with... Hex, of all people.

Asriel swaps with Kris and Vi swaps with Susie.

SUPERSHIFT (+S)

My take on tripleshift or whatever you call storyshift but three times.

Basically just a side project, although I have a basic idea as to how the characters will be written. You can ask Frisk, Toriel, Asgore, and Napstablook questions.

REBOOT INCOMING, MAJOR LORE CHANGES WILL HAPPEN, DO NOT EXPECT ME TO ANSWER ANY +S ASKS RIGHT NOW.

Hosted on AO3.

[miloscat]

[Review] Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (PS2)

More like Elite Dorks.

Created during Voyager’s heyday on TV, Elite Force fits squarely in Raven Software’s tradition of pushing the Quake engine to try and make more interesting and involved shooters. A few years before this was Hexen 2, and not long after they’d be doing sequels to Star Wars Dark Forces. Sadly they’re forever imprisoned in the Call of Duty mines now, but I’ll always remember them for their HD Wolverine game.

Anyway, Voyager’s a pretty cool show. The concept of this game is that during their jolly jaunt through the Delta Quadrant, the ship is sucked into a pocket dimension and has to contend with other unfortunates to escape their alien captors. What follows is a heavily Half-Life-inspired first-person blast-em-up with lots of alien buttons to press and alien lifts to ride.

The blasters: the new-for-this-game Hazard Team commando squad. The blastees: a nice variety of cuttlefish aliens, crablike aliens, mechabots, Borg (of course), and a scavenger faction that includes Klingons and a surprise appearance of TOS-era mirror universe Terrans. The blasting: an escalating set of sci-fi super-guns, using one of two universal ammo types. This means you’ll usually stick to one of two weapons, and the rest become just distractions to cycle through.

Hazard Team is Tuvok’s baby, but all of the Voyager main cast as of later seasons voice their roles here (the PS2 port does have Jeri Ryan as Seven, who was patched in post-launch for the PC release), and I must say their blocky forms do a good job capturing their likenesses. The team is led by a supposedly Australian man—according to the instruction manual and in-game bios—who nevertheless sounds decidedly American. Anyway, he gets assimilated by the Borg for some dramatic scenes later, so the player character steps up halfway through.

Alex Munro is their name, and I chose the female option... who gets erased in the comic adaptation and the sequel, sadly. Below them is a dizzying array of minor characters; they should perhaps have focused more on the core group who get the most screentime anyway (you know, the scared one, the jock one, the quiet one, and the girl one), but there is the opportunity for the player’s actions to have some kind of influence on things, as it’s possible for these AI squad partners to die in battle. In between missions you also get a few corridors on Voyager to spend downtime in and chat to your crewmates, or do holodeck training, which is nice, although this aspect is underdeveloped.

Although half of the game is the multiplayer deathmatch mode in a wide variety of Star Trek-flavoured maps, the fully voiced and modelled ship and crew gives the single-player campaign some oomph, and the cutscenes help make it feel more like an episode of the show. Although for some reason the Voyager theme is not present, only a cheap home-brand replacement! Still, the focus of the game is ultimately the shooting, which is... fine. Maybe I’m spoiled having been raised on Goldeneye and Halo, but the combat feels shallow and mediocre, undermining the decent attempts at alien variety, setpieces, and environmental interaction. Even so, I appreciated having a story-driven Star Trek adventure to play through, as the franchise has many ship combat simulators or strategy/management games that aren’t to my liking. Oh, also the game drops frames frequently and the load times are long, but what are you gonna do? As Janeway says, “There’s coffee in that Playstation 2.”

[shadowfaerieammy]

Book Review: LOVELY DARK AND DEEP by Elisa A. Bonnin

Official Book Summary:

Ellery West has always been home for Faith. After an international move and a childhood spent adjusting to a new culture and a new language, the acclaimed school for magic feels like the only place she can be herself. That is, until Faith and another student walk into the forest, and only Faith walks out.

Marked with the red stripe across her uniform that designates all students deemed too dangerous to attend regular classes, Faith becomes a social pariah, an exile of Ellery West. But all she has to do is keep her head down for one more year to graduate, and she gets to keep her magic. Because when students fail out of Ellery West, they have their magic taken away. Forever. And Faith can't let that happen.

Except terrifying things are still happening to students, and the dark magic that was unleashed in the forest still seems to be at work. To stop it, Faith and the other Red Stripes will have to work together, risking expulsion from the magical world altogether.

My Review:

This is probably one of the most found family-focused stories I have ever read and it's delightful. Every step of the way, the main character Faith gets closer to these people she never would have before thought to befriend, and they fold her into their group without hesitation. It brought me a lot of joy to see her find some sort of peace and belonging in herself on this journey. And while it is not necessarily the core plot of the story, it is still an essential part that brings the story together.

The core plot itself, of Faith being exiled from the student body proper and investigating the events that led to it, of something being taken from you that was never yours to give, is layered over itself and revisited in ways that will keep you thinking about the intricacy of it long after you're finished reading. This story is about being betrayed, abandoned, left behind. Who hasn't felt that way at some point in their life?

Those two points alone are enough to make this an amazing book, but then we move on to the characters. As an autistic individual myself, Alex has to be my favorite . Everything in the world is too loud and they're scared but they fight against it to be brave anyway. It hurts to do, but their friends are worth it, even the new one who doesn't yet understand what it means to be Red Striped. This entire crew is ride-or-die and cares so deeply. But then, on an entirely flipped note, there is Rose. She is not a likeable character, more of a mean girl than anything, but learning the depths and intricacies of her as a character over the span of the book makes her just as fascinating as the others (however I won't expand on this point to avoid spoilers).

TLDR: It's a great book and you should read it. 10/10 will read again.

[joculatrixster]

How’s it hanging?

i feeeel my fixation fading but its not rlly like detrimental like how cr or loz felt? i was never AS into mcyt as i was either of those things idk why - its just a vestige of what it once was and i kinda know what my next one is gonna be bc i keep thinking about these characters i havent in months but its something no one ik is rlly that into nor has a massive fandom presence so im gonna be real - a bit of a bummer

anyway im in some rlly easy college classes focused on creativity rn so no stress there yay!

and writing a novel length fic! i mean the fic is for the fandom im not mentally ill about anymore but i was never fixated on the fic + it is just meant to be writing practice so its fine if my flow isnt as insane as before as long as I push myself still

also im getting more into my ocs, ebbs and flows w them but me and my friends have a one piece crew that im the captain of and I finally feel like i found my stride w that character!! her name is core and shes my beloved little silly goose(she is a cannibalistic merfolk raised to be a feral pet then to be a monstrous fighter) :D

so basically? im chill what about u? been a while!