#the game is so good but by god its buggy

[muffinrag]

Part 4: THE JANK

[nomairuins]

also its so dumb that one of the arguments ppl have against a sims 5 is that theyve already invested too much money into 4. like yes its fucking scummy that ea charges so much for dlc and its Ludicrous the amt sims 4 costs if you have all the dlc and its going to keep getting more and more expensive but . to be honest . why are you paying for sims packs. im sry

[wizard-mp4]

Mad max 2015 the video game™ is actually fun

[mochapanda]

tears of the kingdom was never made to replace botw in the same way majoras mask was never made to replace ocarina of time and yall need to fucking get over it

[electronickingdomfox]

The Kobayashi Alternative (or the 1000 deaths of James T. Kirk)

Finished this game (a text adventure) recently, and oh God, what a glorious mess it was!

The frame story (which only appears in the manual, by the way) places you as a Starfleet Academy cadet, playing a simulation of one of Kirk's famous missions, as a sort of alternative to the infamous Kobayashi Maru test (hence the title). But the actual game revolves around Kirk's mission, trying to find Sulu, who has disappeared in the Trianguli sector. And you're given complete freedom to explore the area and planets in whatever order you choose, and to mess the game in whatever way you want.

And that's my main point of interest here. I've witnessed so, SO many deaths for poor Kirk, because of my ill-advised decisions... Falling into craters, being run over by lava from a (not-so-extinct) volcano, sinking in quicksand, being eaten by a dragon, falling into a moat (and then being eaten), beaming down to a planet with a temperature of -250° in just my uniform (because why not?), or the more gruesome version of beaming down to a no-atmosphere planet without a spacesuit. It's also possible to return to Earth without finishing the mission, just like that, which gets you court-martialed. Or beam down some unsuspecting redshirt to a dangerous area, and to his unavoidable death (which here causes a Game-Over, very much unlike the series). Want to swear at someone until the crew arrests you for bad conduct? Check. *For the record, these are the swear words I found to work: bitch, bastard, suck, c*ck, f*ck, ass (use them in any combination you see fit). There's also many crazy things to do, which don't necessarily lead to a game over. Leave poor Scotty stranded on a planet and depart without him (good luck when you need something from Engineering). Or make Spock mindmeld with clay. Or tell McCoy to enter Spock's quarters, and just leave him there for the rest of the game. There's a planet with aliens that are offended by clothes and will put you in jail for wearing them (well, this is inaccurate, because James Tits-Out Kirk would definitely beam down naked, if it would help the mission... and make sure to video-call Spock right before doing so).

Anyway, despite being a primitive game from 1985, I'm impressed by the sheer amount of possibilities and open-ended options in this game. The graphic adventures from the 90's (25th Anniversary, and specially Judgement Rites) are much, much better games overall. But I wanted to talk a bit about these, more obscure text adventures.

If anyone's interested in playing them, I've found the best way is through this custom installer here, which includes all three adventures: https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/star-trek-first-contact.html It automatically runs the games through an emulator for modern systems, and has the last version of Kobayashi Alternative (which is very important, since previous versions were buggy as hell). First Contact uses the same engine of Kobayashi, but since it's a much linear and smaller game, it's obvious a lot of options go un-used. The Promethean Prophecy is a more traditional text adventure. It has some ingenious puzzles, but I found its typical plot of "go there and collect gems" less Trek-like.

[bloodykora]

If you’re still doing Buggy headcanons: Sooo I always actually thought big noses on people are INCREDIBLY attractive. Give me men with noses that look just a bit too beaten up, women with noses that are big and wide, give me Roman noses and hawk noses and any unconventionally attractive nose and I am SWOONING.

… I feel the prompt almost writes itself at this point, what would Buggy think of someone who sees his funny looking nose not as a flaw but a mayor charm point and just constantly gives it kisses, traces it affectionately, boops it or comments (in all honesty and absolutely genuinely) how handsome and distinguished it makes him look, how it really suits him etc?

Wanna read about that man bluescreening because he hasn’t even treathened them yet to not make fun of his nose and they are already at the „flattering him to save themself“ stage? What do you MEAN you’re not saying that to safe yourself?!

This fucking anon/ask made me giggle so much, I literally showed it to my friends. I hope I did you and the prompt justice!

Enter the moment in Annie where Ms. Hannigan sees Warbucks’ diamond and goes “Oh my god, is that thing real?!” in shock but also delight. Me at that dude’s honker. (I want to be put on his nose like he has gangrene and I’m a leech who sucks on it to get the blood flow going) Also enter the Doja Cat quote of liking big noses.

- At first, dude is fucking weirded out. People have made comments and jokes about this stupid little red thing on his face and you… you think it’s attractive??? Huh.

- Definitely thinks you’re lying at first (and for the next few months), you’re literally the only person who is able to shut him up.

- Curtain drops, spot light is on, the blue haired clown walks in. Blabbering on about how his entrance should be more enthusiastic, but you got your eyes on your own prize, bright big red nostrils. If he wants an entrance, you’ll give him one by starting to clap loudly, getting so giddy that you start slightly hopping.

- “Oh my goodness, that is just.” Loss for words. “Are you making fun of me?” He approaches you, you hear him but his words don’t really seep into your brain at the moment. “It’s gorgeous, literally the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Your eyes are locked with his eyes and before he can even reply you reach up to brush your fingertip against his nose.

- Wants you dead first, no one has gotten close to touching it in years. And you, a low life nobody insults him like that. You get strung up immediately, your arm stretched so your fingers are out.

- “For that little ploy, I’ll take your fingers first and then your life.” Yes you’re scared but really could you regret it? This was the pirate’s life. “Oh, darn. Well, I’ll at least die happily. My eyes set on the most lovely nose I’ve seen in my years of life.”

- Thinks you’re still making fun of him until a few compliments later it clicks in his head that you mean it, with no hint of sarcasm or mockery. He lets you down, immediately ordering his crew to take care of the others you came with while he returns (runs) to his quarters. He’s a little intrigued by you, willing to die for a graze of his face. He keeps you as well, not that you’re upset by it.

- Crew thinks you’re hilarious, stopping a task to gaze longingly at the captain until either he realizes in which he shoos you back to work or he walks away. You boost his ego a ton though.

- From a distance he can ignore the thoughts he knows you’re thinking but up close, when they’re said in front of the crew, other pirates, hostages. He’s been known to cover your mouth with something so he doesn’t freeze up. When yall get together though, its game over.

- The first time you licked it, he almost saw some form of god. The angel's chorus was in his ears and he couldn’t help but say a little prayer in his head about you.

- Kissing it at least 3 times a day for good luck, rubbing up and down the bridge to soothe him to sleep, nipping at it when you feel playful. Not to mention he now has your voice in his head if he ever insults it going: “That’s not true! It is like one of the top 3 of the things I love about you and if you are mean to it again then I’m gonna cut it off and keep it all day!”

- Laying in his bed just watching him go about the day when you drop a “If my memory was wiped tomorrow I hope I’d get to keep at least the picture of your nose in my head.” before just turning over and going to rest. You hear him physically stop in his tracks and then a thud, he had let go of a boot.

- He doesn’t ever want to ask for praise about his nose on the days where he feels more insecure but you can tell by the way he rubs it on your collarbone and shoulder. You immediately pull out the good old “Have I told you how dashing attractive your nose is today? I seriously would just hop on and ri-” he doesn’t let you finish the sentence, cutting you off with a kiss knowing where it’s going.

- If anyone comments on his nose, you are the first to bite back. Threatening to cut out their tongue and string it up for future people to understand their place. Then squish Buggy while speaking highly of his stunning feature and how lucky they are to see it in the first place.

- You’re kinda crazy but hey, so is Buggy and he loves that you’re insane about him and his nose.

[malwaredykes]

I know you mostly post about fnv but I'm curious to know whats your opinion on the other fallouts?

fallout - really Really REALLY good. unforgiving, yes, takes some time getting used to. not without its flaws of course. for example i couldnt for the life of me figure out some very basic shit at first because the UI was designed by rodents i think. very Very engaging once you get past all of that. phenomenal first entry in the series. music, plot, worldbuilding, themes, major characters, mwah. mwah. They Dont Make Em Like That Anymore and there are many good reasons for it but time passed doesnt disappear so you can always play classic fallout.

fallout 2 - thing get weird. some of the highest highs, some of the lowest lows. the highs are really high though. unfortunately has a particular kind of needless edginess to it that gets extremely tiresome. "heeheehhee SECKS *begins to warp violently* heeiiuhehyehye" type. bizarrely racist and misogynistic at many points. contains some of the best voice acting moments in video game history. at many points its just very very tedious, like if with fo1 at some points i was like Well this is kinda rough, with fo2 there were stretches of the game where i was like What the hell am i even doing here Who are these people what is this crap. the enclave as this games evil fucked up faction is so great i love how theyre gradually introduced and then shit hits the fan. has a lot of texture to its worldbuilding and some really good fun moments but again it goes off the rails so much. i rly need to replay it but every time im like God do i really have time for this. i love that you drive a car

fallout 3 - weird fucking game. some truly unjustifiable design and worldbuilding decisions despite having also introduced a lot of rly good things. fun gameplay i mean its that classic falloublivionrim buggy grimy versatile ps3 pure brick ass gravel gamebryo bethesda. VERY funny to have so much of the games plot be like I Gotta Find My Dad like girl i dont care about my dad he can go die. oh wait he does. it has what i call The Martin Septim Problem and i think its kind of self explanatory. fawkes best boy hes my little birthday boy. fun to explore and do your own thing and discover whatevers going on out there. i HATE the brotherhood of steel in fallout the third. i HATE the enclave in fallout the third but i dont think it even comes close to how much i hate the brotherhood of steel in this game and what precedent it set for the rest of bethesda fallout. these creeps. im supposed to find any of this awesome? fuck no. oh also im ENDLESSLY amused by the prologue its like a nightmare sequence akskfnckxjnc. im being BORN?? ive just slid out of my mothers WOMB and CERVIX and VAGINA and theyre bringing up a screen to show her what an ugly monstrosity im gonna be when i grow up and shes like Waoww and she dies??? im a TODDLER? Release Me. Unhand Me You Fool. oh also that sequence where youre in a CRAZY SCIENTISTS SIMULATION is so stupid i love it

fallout 4 - havent played it for longer than 15 minutes (made me barfy). everything i learn about it is bizarre. like WHAT the fuck happens in that game. your old wrinkly son tells you youre stupid and dont need to know anything hes doing and then is like im dying can you take over for me??? also the intro is truly something i mean i dont mind having Some backstory to my character but youre saying i had to be straight married with a baby and living in a nice suburb, with a robot house servant? fuck no

everything else i havent played and have no real Thoughts about

[myrmyrtheorca]

✨ + ⛔ + 🎃 for the fic ask game!

Hello Taba 🩵 Thank you for passing by!!

(disclaimer: I tried fixing this post like 4 times but for some stupid ass reasons the two pictures won't stay in place, so yeah, I tried, fuck this buggy-ass site)

✨- oh dear, oh my 〒▽〒 the hamster in my brain always goes nuts when he's asked to come up with compliments for myself, not because I think my writing's bad but because I don't know what I like about my writing other than the plot ...

...uh, anyways... I try really hard to include variety in my vocabulary, and to avoid repetitions, which makes my sentences ...colorful? And my description vivid?? Is that a thing that happens? I hope so qwq

⛔- Oh well, my first ever KHR fic featuring patron angels. I rewrote it like 4 times and never got past Varia Arc as my interest in writing in general dwindled. But I'm still very thankful to that first fic because it's from its ashes than KW was born! Not featuring angels. Maybe.

🎃- Can't say I've ever written a seasonal fic because it's rare of me to write for two stories at the same time, but one day I will indulge in my fantasies and write that god-forsaken KHR Nightmare Before Christmas AU. There's a good chance of that happening. I actively need to avoid NBC mentions otherwise my brain will start spiraling and-

OH NOO I GOT DISTRACTED-

oh ...oh no... the thoughts can't be stopped now...

Thank you for your questions !! (/≧▽≦)/

[duhragonball]

The Future of Dragon Ball

I was going to play Mega Man X5 tonight, but it's acting kind of buggy and I'm not in a mood to try to troubleshoot my copy of Legacy Collection 2, so I'll write about Dragon Ball instead. Specifically, what happens next?

Let me make this clear up front: I don't actually know the answer to this. I'm not an "insider" claiming to have "leaked" information. All I want to do is discuss the possibilities, and the culture of speculation that seems to persist in the fandom.

I tend to call this "modern" era of the Dragon Ball franchise a "renaissance", because very little official material came out between 1998 and 2012, and then after Battle of Gods ushered in this new wave of Dragon Ball movies, TV episodes, web series, and comics. I've been covering this all year in the #2023dbapocryphaliveblog, in case you're new to this blog, and while much of it hasn't been very good, there were a lot of bright spots. Battle of Gods, Broly, and Super Hero were classics, the Tournament of Power basically saved and otherwise lackluster Dragon Ball Super anime, and the Granolah Saga in the DBS manga is a fun read with a great cliffhanger.

However, things have slowed down a lot this year. The Granolah Saga ended and the manga began a long, long adaptation of the Super Hero film. There was some hype about a new Tenkaichi Budokai video game, but there's been no word on when it'll come out what we can expect to see. I get the sense that the fans are champing at the bit for some big announcement, like a new movie or anime series, but it hasn't happened.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but back in my day you just had to wait and see, and accept the possibility that you may never get what you were hoping for. The vibe I get from DBTwitter is that people think they can somehow manifest a new animation through sheer force of will. News will spread of some Toei panel and fans will cling to the hope that there must be some big Dragon Ball announcement, and it must be nothing less than a teaser trailer for Xenoverse 3, a DBZ remake, and release dates for the next five movies. Then the panel will come and go, and it just ends up being a fluff PR thing where a spokesperson says "Dragon Ball is very fun and Goku is cool." and that's it. And all the fans get upset until the next panel, where they put their clown makeup on all over again.

"No, this can't be happening. Dragon Ball 2uper is real..."

When I was still new to the fandom, I always wondered how Dragon Ball AF could be such a potent fantasy for so long. But now I've lived through the Dragon Ball Super era, and seen fans chasing similar dreams. People have been waiting for Xenoverse 3 for over six years. They've been expecting "Dragon Ball Super II" ever since Dragon Ball Super I ended five years ago. And I'd say it's a pipe dream, except fans held out hope for Tenkaichi 4 since 2010, and it looks like we're actually going to get that one? You never can tell with this franchise. My kneejerk reaction to Dragon Ball Magic is to dismiss it as fake, but I can't be completely sure.

The weird thing is that 2uper, Magic, and XV3 have been hyped up during a boom period for the franchise. Dragon Ball Super had a 131 episode run, followed by two feature films. It's still going, but people want 2uper to animate the Moro Saga. People want a new web anime, but there's already a web anime. Super Dragon Ball Heroes has been running since 2018 and it's still going. Xenoverse 2 is still releasing DLC packs. I recognize that some of this content isn't what everyone wanted, but it's weird how fans are demanding new projects before the old ones have run their course. At least when AF became a legend, there weren't any official works to compete for its attention.

It occurs to me that maybe this is just part of the fan culture, and every so often fans will collectively agree on some imaginary premise and Goncharov their own series. Maybe that's what AF was then, and what Magic is today. They're not hoaxes, but rather some sort of mutually-agreed-upon daydream. I'm not sure I get it, but it is what it is.

Anyway, my position has always been that Dragon Ball has ended before and can end again, so there's no reason to assume that there will be some new anime or movie or video game to look forward to. I watched Super Hero fully believing that this could be the last one, even though the box office numbers suggest that a sequel is probably inevitable. But nothing is guaranteed. Dragon Ball GT started strong in the ratings, only to get canceled about a year later.

And yet, there seems to be some kind of guarantee, because of this guy:

I think there are a lot of fans who believe that Dragon Ball Super has a lot of loose ends to tidy up, and the series can't end until Goku and Vegeta surpass Jiren, Beerus, Whis, and Orange Piccolo. And maybe this is true, but I'm not so sure. But Black Frieza isn't just a loose end. This seems like a pretty big honkin' deal, and it would be pretty weak if they wrapped things up without some kind of reckoning here. Frieza's the main villain of Dragon Ball Super now, and in his most recent appearance he revealed he can defeat Goku and Vegeta with frightening ease. And yet, he spared them. Why?

So that seems like the obvious direction going into 2024. This is why fans are so burned out on the manga this year, because they know a Black Frieza arc is coming, but they have to wait for Toyotaro to retell Super Hero before we can even find out when it's happening.

My guess is that Toei/Shueisha decides to tease this out even longer. We get to chapter 100 of the manga and it starts some bullshit arc about Goten and Trunks playing superhero park rangers on 17's island. Or... that dumb android from the Moro Saga comes back and they jerk around with that guy for 18 chapters. They'll get to Black Frieza eventually, but I suspect that they're holding off until they can set up a Black Frieza movie. Then the manga can just adapt that movie and everything gets paid off around the same time.

Either way, I'm a little skeptical about it just being Goku and Vegeta training to beat Black Frieza. I keep coming back to how he let them live at the end of the Granolah arc. Ostensibly, he just wanted to frighten them, and make it clear that he no longer sees them as a threat. But maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe Frieza needs them alive for some reason. Like he plans to use them to achieve some goal, or he needs their help to stop some even greater menace that we haven't seen yet.

Maybe that's what Frieza was talking about at the end of the Broly movie when he said he wanted "one other". I kind of thought he meant to use Broly as an ally against Goku and Vegeta, but maybe he's planning a campaign against some other guy, and he sees Broly as a potential resource. And maybe that's why he spared Goku and Vegeta on Planet Cereal. If he kills them, he might not be able to find Broly when the time comes. Or maybe he just needs all three Saiyans, so he has to pull his punches.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this, and it just turns out that Black Frieza ends with a manga arc where Goku turns "Ultra Instinct (Defined) (Remastered)" and wins a paint-by-numbers battle. Or Roshi beats Black Frieza, because that sounds like something Toyotaro would do.

So what would happen after Black Frieza? See, that's where I wonder about the future of the franchise, because so much work has gone into mining past arcs. The first DBS movie was about bringing back Broly, Bardock, and Gogeta. The second movie brought back the Red Ribbon Army, the androids, and Cell. Frieza will almost certainly get another turn, and then what? What's left?

I mean, let's break this down by the major antagonists we've had so far.

Pilaf Saga. The Pilaf gang are still living in Bulma's house, apparently, so that comic relief bit from Battle of Gods shows no signs of ending.

Red Ribbon Army. DBS Super Hero brought them back and opened some interesting doors for future Red Ribbon stories. It's hard to imagine the Army making another comeback since Cell Max destroyed their secret base and all their top leaders were killed. But the Red Pharmaceutical Company still exists and someone must have taken over after Magenta's death.

Tien Shinhan. Tien never left, and while I'd be down for a Tien-centric saga, it seems pretty unlikely after all these years. At best, he gets a prominent role in a story featuring some more important player.

King Piccolo/Piccolo Junior. Piccolo never left either, and now he's got his own movie in Super Hero.

Saiyans Saga. Vegeta never left, and DBS: Broly pretty much covered the idea of "here are some new Saiyans we didn't know about before."

Frieza Saga. Resurrection F, Tournament of Power, DBS: Broly, this upcoming Black Frieza thing, I think this has been covered.

Androids/Cell Saga. 17 and 18 never left, and the idea of more androids and a new Cell was already covered in Super Hero.

Majin Buu. It's been 27 years and no one seems to want to do anything with this guy. Maybe 2025 is the year when Akira Toriyama finally does some big Buu story to justify keeping him around this whole time.

Zamasu. I mean, the dude got erased, so it'd be pretty bullshit to bring him back. Then again, it was pretty bullshit of Toriyama to create this idea in the first place, so I can't rule it out. "Whoops, more Zamasu" might be the storyline that would force me to quit the Dragon Ball fandom for good.

Tournament of Power. I mean, they could do another Tournament of Power for funsies, but it probably wouldn't live up to the spectacle or the novelty of the original. More likely, I could see some adventures featuring prominent characters from the event, like Jiren, Hit, the U6 Saiyans, etc.

Moro. I did not enjoy the Moro arc much at all, so it kind of bums me out when people suggest that Toei should do an anime adaptation of it. To me, that would be just as big a waste of time as the DBS manga doing the Super Hero adaptation that's going on right now, but it would be even worse because Moro kind of sucks. In the same vein, doing stories that follow up on the Moro arc would be difficult because you'd have to refer back to the Moro arc, which only appeared in the manga, which not everyone read. So it's this difficult spot where you'd have to animate the Moro arc first, just to do a new arc about Merus and Jaco or whatever. It's probably not worth it.

Other Z Movies and GT: The success of DBS: Broly sort of opens the door for similar reboots of guys like Cooler, Turles, Janemba, Baby, etc. But honestly, this seems pretty far-fetched to me. Broly was a much, much bigger star than any of those other characters, so what worked for Broly isn't necessarily a road map for a guy like Bojack or Omega Shenron.

Looking over all of this, I kind of wonder what's left to do. Maybe something with Majin Buu, or the big shots from the Tournament of Power, and after that, I think they'll have used up all the viable nostalgia. After that, Dragon Ball will probably have to come up with something brand new, which is kind of a dicey proposition, because they've been hit-or-miss with that. Granolah and Tournament of Power were good, Moro and Zamasu were bad, so when I hear they're doing something all-new, I get kind of nervous.

But in the end, I don't know what will happen, which brings us back around to where I started. We'll just have to see what shakes out.

[fantrollology]

cy, favorite nintendo system? i think the ds is the best one, but im biased towards the wii, i think its my favorite despite it being very finicky

“So, I’m not much into handhelds, honestly. I like them, I own a bunch, the DS is great and many of the GameBoys are too, I like fixing them— but I almost always prefer playing on console.”

“I agree with you on the Wii. It’s great. It was really innovative in its time, the controllers feel good in your hands, the attachments, while a bit kitschy, really opened up a world of gameplay options, and even though the motion controls are buggy, it gave a lot of their games a level of interaction that just doesn’t exist on any other console. Hell, I still play it despite all the issues. It’s a really fun system.”

He pauses.

“Gods, is the Wii my favorite Nintendo console?”

He holds his jaw in his hand in thought for a moment, then pulls it away and wags a finger.

“I thinks it’s my favorite when I want to play something I don’t have to think about. I mean, there’s a lot of options for emulation on it, but I have the other systems, so.”

He sighs.

“I really always come back to the SNES. The library for it is just too good.”

[kosmikowboj]

oh my god I did it

meant to post this last night but it was Late by the time I finished editing, so I just went straight off to bed; here it is, in all its glory—my fic for @merlin-fic-server’s tournament of champions! basic premise is you have to write a 10k fic in 24 hours, and somehow I ended up with 13k. something about the indomitable human spirit, something something. HUGE shoutout to my group, group 4, because those 13k would definitely not exist without their encouragement <3

my prompts:

setting - western au genre - hurt/comfort trope - marriage prompt - talking and communication issues

there’s some “Old West”-typical gun violence and drinking, the specifics of which are posted in the end notes on ao3. but, by and large, it’s a dumb, fun fic about our two favorite idiots falling in love that let me play into my affinity for horses and the kitschy, overly-romanticized western aesthetic, lol. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

tennessee whiskey

[read on ao3; word count: 13.4k]

Goldbluff had to be, by far, one of the busiest towns Merlin had ever traveled to. 

There were just as many people on foot as there were on horseback, with seemingly no order as to who was going where. People clumped in the street and outside of storefronts, haggling for lower prices on tack while their kids played catch perilously close to the horses and buggies. In any given patch of shade there were a half a dozen people playing some kind of card game, and someone was chasing a dog up one of the walkways. Merlin ultimately had to dismount just to avoid inadvertently trampling somebody. 

His horse Aithusa didn’t seem to mind the commotion, too busy nosing at strangers’ pockets in an attempt to find a snack. Merlin, though, couldn’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed; his bounty-hunting work typically took him to the outskirts of any given place, and he generally liked to keep to himself otherwise. This was definitely a change of pace.

It certainly didn’t help in finding an inn, that was for damn sure. By the time Merlin found a place not already chock-full of people the sun was hanging low in the sky, blanketing the town with warm rays made hazy by the dust. The sign outside proclaimed the place as “Golden Horizons Inn”, which Merlin might have found a little funny if he wasn’t bone-tired and sweatier than a city-slicker. As he might have expected, the bustling scene from earlier was largely due to cityfolk who had come to town hoping to find the gold for which it was named. That, Merlin had no interest in—he was here for a much different purpose. 

But first, he needed a drink. 

The Rising Sun was the closest saloon to Golden Horizons, and he tied Aithusa up outside with dinner and a promise that he’d be quick. Hanging out in bars wasn’t really his standard fare, but it was a good way to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Plus, he was exhausted, having been traveling for days on end between towns with a drying waterskin—and that was before he had had to fight the crowds to find a place to sleep for the night. There was nothing wrong with a little pick-me-up after all that. 

Tacked up just outside the bar was a wanted poster, yellowed with age and torn at the corners. It boasted a handsome five-hundred-dollar reward for the capture of the infamous bandit Emrys, though the attached image was an insultingly poor recreation of said “ne'er-do-well”. Merlin scoffed, pondering it for a moment, and then went inside.

“You’re not from around here,” the barkeep said as Merlin took his seat. He was handsome in a roguish sort of way, with scruffy facial hair and dark brown half-curls that fell to his shoulders. It was the kind of face that made Merlin smile a little involuntarily, and he leaned into it.

“What gave it away?”

“You look like someone I would have made a point to know if you were,” the barkeep replied, winking. 

“Flatterer.” 

“That’s what my husband says.” The barkeep sighed dramatically before holding out his hand. “Name’s Gwaine.” 

“Merlin.” 

Gwaine’s eyes went wide with surprise as they shook hands. “The bounty hunter!”

Merlin sighed, propping his elbows up on the bar. “For better or for worse.”

“What brings you here? What juicy gossip have I missed?”

“None, I’m afraid,” Merlin replied. “Just looking for work.” Which was not, to his credit, a total lie. 

“Well, I’m sure you’ll have better luck of it than all these people diggin’ for gold. Don’t get me wrong—I love when all these idiots come to town. Business is booming. Obviously. But, little town secret for you: pretty sure they’re gonna be shit outta luck.” 

Merlin chuckled.  

“Well, anyway. What can I do you for? It’ll be on the house, whatever it is.” 

“That’s not necessary.” 

“You’re the prettiest boy to walk in here since my husband. And you can hold a conversation. It’s on the house.” 

Merlin wasn’t one to refuse free food and drink a second time. “You make Mule Skinners?” 

Gwaine made a small, unexpected sound, grinning. “You keep surprising me, Merlin. Figured a man like you would shoot his whiskey straight.” 

“I’m not a masochist.” 

Gwaine laughed. “You’re better than the legends say. How do you feel about fish?” 

“For free? Great.” 

“Perfect.” 

While Gwaine set to prepping his drink, Merlin took the opportunity to properly take in the saloon around him. There weren’t many people sitting at the bar with him; most of the patrons were scattered among the tables, chatting and laughing with a rowdy sort of loudness that always made Merlin annoyed. The decor consisted largely of mounted deer heads and kitschy posters about cowboys and finding gold—Gwaine was a master in marketing, he could give him that—along with a couple of plants behind the bar. That latter part was surprising, especially considering that they actually seemed to be alive and well. Merlin made a note to ask him about them when he got back. 

Before Gwaine could return, though, Merlin caught sight of a couple of men crowded around a table nestled in one of the saloon’s corners. They were being particularly loud, which wasn’t out of the ordinary, but upon closer inspection he saw that they were all crowded around someone sitting at the table. He frowned, getting up from his seat. 

As he neared the small crowd, his suspicions were confirmed, now able to make out what they were actually saying over the general din of the saloon. “Come on, now,” one of the men goaded, a big burly blond bloke with a cruel smile set in his face. He shoved the sitting man’s shoulder with an unkind force. “Do you really think you’re going to make anything of yourself out here?”

“Alright, come off it,” Merlin said loudly. The blond man turned to look at him, raising an amused eyebrow. He was dressed in a red button-down with white threading, tucked loosely into a pair of too-clean pants that were held up by a garish belt buckle. He also had on a nice leather vest, and a cowboy hat that clearly hadn’t seen a whole lot of actual work. It all pointed towards him being another idiot from the city who had come out to Goldbluff looking for gold and a quick buck. 

“What’s that now?” the man asked, clearly expecting Merlin to back off.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was speaking to a simpleton. Let me rephrase.” Merlin stepped between the group and the table. “Leave him alone. He’s just having dinner.” 

The man barked out a shocked laugh. “And just who do you think you are?”

“A halfway-decent person. You oughta try it.” 

The man was twirling a pistol around in his hand, over and over like an anxious habit. Merlin figured it was supposed to look threatening, but he couldn’t be less bothered. 

“You have some nerve coming into my town and telling me how to act,” the man seethed. 

“Your town?” Merlin laughed, resting his hands on his hips. “Who the hell are you? The president?” 

“Arthur,” the man replied hotly. “The sheriff’s son.”

finish on ao3

[rallamajoop]

Would love to read your thoughts on mankind divided/jensard scenes in system rift dlc.

Anon, my apologies for leaving this message unanswered in my inbox for so long! I've had draft versions of this sitting around unfinished for months now (seriously, you just try and stop me sharing my thoughts on this series), was always going to have thoughts to share on DX:MD, but being me, they have gotten long. So consider this post 1.

Anyhow, without further ado:

I have too many thoughts about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (1/2)

It probably sounds a little odd to tell you that I put off playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for a lot longer than I might have if I hadn’t enjoyed its predecessor, Human Revolution, so much. For all its inarguable flaws, I still adored that game for its characters and the gameplay. And keen as I should have been for a sequel, Mankind Divided has a general reputation as a bit of a disappointment (and to summarise the whole rest of this review right here: it was).

Worse still, once I’d finished playing it, that was going to be it. No more Deus Ex sequels that might be better, no more playing as Adam Jensen. And given that the latest news on the DX series involves the cancelation of a game no-one even knew was in the works until they admitted they’d just scrapped it (WTF, people?), that looks final for the foreseeable future.

You know you’re invested in a property when you’re having that kind of reaction to it.

And having finally played it… yeah, Mankind Divided may be a much prettier game, and I definitely did have some fun playing it. But it’s a disappointment on every front I cared about. There are some genuinely good new gameplay elements, but it offers substantially less challenge than its predecessor, it’s buggy as hell, the characters are ill-used and bland, the worldbuilding has not improved, and the plot feels like an extended filler episode. Every really interesting plot beat alluded to here either had its resolution left for future installments, or has already happened off-screen.

So oh boy do I have thoughts on this one. We’ll start with worldbuilding and gameplay, because my thoughts on just those are long enough as it is.

Gameplay

Well, let’s start with the good. I genuinely enjoyed some of Jensen’s new augments. Being able to remote hack cameras, robots and other devices quickly became my preferred way of dealing with them. Letting you extend platforms and ladders via that mechanism was a great way of adding extra ways to get around too. Seriously, I’m a little amazed a toy that’s this much of a game-changer wasn’t introduced with a little more fanfare: many players probably never try it out at all.

I also dug the Tesla (multi-target non-lethal takedowns? Yes please!) and the new Icarus Dash aug, though I didn’t find nearly as many uses for them. Some of Jensen’s new augs even started to feel like you’ve got systems working together in genuinely creative ways! Smart vision + remote hacking will let you hack devices you can only see through walls, and the Tesla auto-targeting seems to work based on Jensen’s optics too. It’s not much, and god knows if it was even intentional, but I’m finally starting to feel like there’s real benefit to wiring all this shit into Jensen’s neurons, rather than being left wondering what all these augs even do that a bag full of gadgets couldn’t, and that ain’t nothing. (It’d be nice if Jensen’s super-secret-probably-doesn’t-even-exist new shielding aug wasn’t somehow in use by every other augmented enemy in this game, but hell, what can you expect at this point?)

Also in positives: no more scrapping robots and mech suits completely with a single EMP blast! EMP now only shuts them down temporarily so you can get some real hits in (takedown moves included). Flying drones make a solid addition to the enemy roster too. Also, using passwords to open doors now nets you EXP (so I feel a little less obligated to hack literally everything even if I’ve got the code), and your Ghost bonus is worth less, so I feel less bad when I miss out on it. There are a lot of little improvements like these.

Finally, though DXMD famously contains only a single proper boss battle, it was way better constructed than most of DXHR’s – engineered from the get-go to allow players to beat it with stealth tactics or by going in guns-blazing. (Technically, there’s also a second boss battle in an optional side-mission, but YMMV as to whether that counts.)

But many hours into the game, it was beginning to dawn on me that I’d had to actually use that new robot-disabling process all of once. I was well into my first trip out of Prague before I ran afoul of my first mine too, and even that was hidden in a very-optional area. There were still deadly areas full of gas or electrified, but upgrading for immunity seemed pointless, because there was always a convenient valve or off-switch close enough to reach just by taking the damage, even on the hardest difficulty. And where were the Boxguards? Drones and dudes in mech suits are all very well, but none of them have the wow-factor of a giant spider robot that can unfold out of a huge crate. DXHR had me navigating through fields of mines and infiltrating a huge military facility before I’d finished my very first stint in my home city, but 95% of DXMD was just regular human enemies. What gives?

Your milage may vary on how good HR’s boss battles were, but what it did have were some truly memorable set pieces. My original review made plenty out of the events where Jensen is trapped in a penthouse suite with an incoming SWAT team, or where he and his pilot Malik find themselves under assault from a large military force (PLUS boxguard!) forcing the player to make the call on whether to stay and defend her or just run. Figuring out how to make it through those sequences was an engaging challenge – even more so when you’re trying for non-lethal. Even after finishing the game, I found myself replaying both all over again just to try out different solutions.

But where HR gives you a 10-man SWAT team programmed to back each other up like pros, for its own analogous ‘set piece’ moment, DXMD locks Jensen in a room with… three drones. Which will never actually find you if you stay in the room you start in, and go down with a couple of shotgun hits each with regular ammo (and did I mention I was playing on the highest difficulty?) Another nominally-big "they’re coming for you"-moment sees Jensen’s apartment invaded by about three regular human enemies, no augs or mech suits, nothing. Is this a sequel aimed squarely at people who thought the last game was too hard?

The closest moment to the big Malik-rescue is an early event when a fellow agent comes under fire, and you have to try and get him out alive. But this fails to deliver for a couple of big reasons: one, the guy is a complete stranger to the player, so who cares if he lives or dies, and two, it happens so early in the game that I was still barely getting the hang of the controls again. Saving the dude’s life does mean that your coworkers will be less annoyed at you, and you can have a brief conversation with him back at home base that contributes nothing to the plot, but that’s it. It feels like something added as an afterthought.

There is one lovely set-piece moment later in DXMD which I enjoyed very much, in which you’re tasked with disabling ten security guards who might be carrying an important keycard at a public function without raising the alarm. That kind of stealth mission is exactly the kind of bullshit I play these things for. It’s followed by a section where you have to reach a well-guarded destination under a strict time limit (also good, though you won't have to go far to reach it). But the unwillingness of this game to ever turn the octane up past maybe a 4 made for a very monotone experience. Jensen can unlock so many crazy new powers in this game, but with this level of challenge, what are they even for?

None of this is helped by how damn buggy this game can be. Using a password not only gives you EXP, it will sometimes (but not always) give you that EXP multiple times over. More than one quest location just doesn’t appear with markers on the map at all – I had to resort to google to figure out where to go. The ghost bonus is given out so inconsistently that no-one on the internet seems sure what the requirements even are. And if I had a dollar for every crazy physics accident or enemy body that got stuck halfway through a wall and refused to let me pick it up and hide it somewhere… I mean, I wouldn’t be a millionaire, but I’d be able to afford a decent lunch at least. Jensen is much better at dragging enemies around corners out of sight during takedown moves than he used to be, but he’d better be, because that might be all the moving-the-body you get to do.

And plenty of the new ‘additions’ to this game are truly frustrating. There’s a crafting system now, because every game apparently needs crafting, but there’s only one kind of crafting material, and everything you can craft with it is available from the get-go. A player never need be stuck at a locked door anymore, because you can always craft yourself a magic device that will unlock anything at any time (unless it requires a special-unhackable-keycard, which is not really better). Out of crafting material? No worries, you can also install an aug that lets you disassemble unwanted crap into more! Out of energy? Same solution – just craft yourself more!

And if you thought you weren’t wasting enough inventory space on ammo back in HR, well, now all guns take three different types of ammo: standard, EMP, and armour-piercing. Out of EMP grenades? No problem, you can now disable any robot just as easily with a regular handgun with EMP ammo! Or using your Tesla, or your stun gun, or EMP-generating throwable machines, or your remote hacking power… I mean what are EMP grenades even for anymore? Oh, but not every gun actually takes all kinds of ammo – your regular shotgun only takes standard and EMP, and you’ll need a special shotgun to use armour-piercing ammo – at which point the question becomes, so why are we calling them all shotgun ammo? Realising too late I’m carrying the wrong-calibre ammo is not the kind of realism gaming needs, and this is no trivial problem: all those ammo types still look the same, and you may not even know which you’re picking up until it’s in your inventory.

You don’t even really need armour-piercing ammo – as covered above, a couple of regular shotgun blasts will take down a drone just fine. But by god, can you end up with an inventory full of ‘shotgun ammo’ that doesn’t actually go in the shotgun you’re carrying. Yay!

The game also boasts multiple different collectibles that do something if you link your Squeenix account or whatever – and god, the amount of shit in this game that was clearly included by mandate of some marketing committee makes me very sad. I will never know what it could’ve been without all this bullshit tacked on overhead, but I’m betting it was a much better experience.

The one big criticism of DX:HR that the team behind MD have clearly tried to address is the complaint that it’s ""not enough like the original Deus Ex,"" but the most obvious new callbacks are like the punchline to a joke. The most obvious ‘authentic’ new feature is that many ‘merchants’ are now not proper shops at all, but just some dude who will offer you up to three different items you can buy from a dialogue prompt, which was a laughably outdated way of implementing a ‘shop’ even when the original Deus Ex did it. Worse, map icons don’t distinguish between these bozos and real shops, so if you’re looking for somewhere to offload valuable items that are clogging up your inventory space for cash (and you will be, because praxis kits are expensive), you might go through several non-shops where you can’t actually sell things before finding a real one. Surely this is exactly the Deus Ex experience everyone was missing!

Oh, and you can throw pot plants now. Whoop-de-do.

So here we are. Mines aren’t a problem because there aren’t any. Environmental hazards aren’t a problem because you can always switch them off. Hacking isn’t a problem because you can make your own keys. Maintaining your Ghost Bonus for not being detected is hardly worth the trouble, because you probably won’t get it anyway. Drones do pose some new hazards in that you can be seen from more places, but robots still mostly aren’t a problem because there are a million ways to deal with them. Good set-ups for double-takedowns are so much fewer and further between, and you still can’t use them if one guy is sitting down. And this game’s idea of a high-octane ‘challenge’ is three drones in an area with plenty of hiding places.

Human Revolution was the game that got me into FPS gameplay and made me to adore stealth mechanics. I went into it as such a complete newb that I almost gave up a single mission in, and came out such a total convert that I’ve gone on to fall in love with whole other FPS franchises (RE7 and 8 mostly – I still can’t really do lethal gun violence against human enemies). So to come to MD, seasoned and keen for more, only to find they’ve filed off every edge the thing had is insulting. The challenge was never a bug, it was a feature.

Worldbuilding & Environment Design

When it came out, Human Revolution (rightly) took a lot of criticism for its ham-handed attempts to build a plot around the moral quandaries of human augmentation. Here, with the sequel, we can clearly see that the writing team have understood none of that criticism whatsoever.

In the wake of the uninspiringly-named ‘Aug Incident’ at the preceding game’s climax, augmented people are now an oppressed minority – treated like second-class citizens, hassled by police at checkpoints, and expected to ride in a separate car on the train.

I do have to give the game some credit in that putting the player through all that is pretty effective at making you feel Jensen’s own frustrations. But the attempt to turn literal cyborgs into an oppressed minority works about as well that time David Cage tried to do it with robots, or that time Netflix tried to do it with Orcs, or god knows how many other examples of ill-considered fantasy racism that really do not hit the mark. The ‘victims’ here are people who’ve bought into a questionable new technology and been burned when it went horribly wrong, and MD is trying to portray that through a world where they’re all being made to sit on the back of the bus? Ai-yai-yai.

It does not help that this new struggle for augmented rights is now the whole damn story. Yet again, a single issue defines the whole universe, and yet its handling is one big mess.

It's staggering just how blind the writing is to the impact that capitalism ought to be having on y’know, their cyberpunk universe – let alone the fact that augmentation does give people, y’know, superpowers. A technology as game-changing as this doesn’t just disappear overnight because public perception has shifted, there’s far too much money in it. Where are the shady companies starting huge factories in augmented gettos, taking advantage of all those workers with handy superstrength and no other job prospects? The new augmentation manufacturers insisting their augs are the only safe ones? MD would have us believe that public opinion has shifted against the augmented so definitively that there are no longer even any augmented soldiers working in military or security firms. But surely whoever finds the best way to sneak secretly-augmented soldiers into their ranks ought to have an insane advantage – especially with so many augmented soldiers suddenly out of work and willing to do almost anything to make a buck?

In their rush to reduce the augmented to just another oppressed racial minority, everything that ought to set them apart gets ignored. This is a group of people a) with superpowers, b) that may be completely invisible to the casual observer, and c) a history of going suddenly apeshit and attacking people – so where’s the fear and paranoia? Anti-aug prejudice means you’ll be hassled by cops and showered with slurs out in public, because everyone knows you’re an aug at 20 paces, and isn’t scared of you. But no-one’s giving you a wide berth because you might have a fucking gun welded into your arm. Cops aren’t calling for all the backup in the fucking district before hassling you about taking the wrong train carriage. No-one’s getting beaten up after being incorrectly mistaken for augmented when they’re just a regular guy with a weird scar. Is this really the best we can do? Prejudice against different groups takes different forms, even in the real world where no-one gets superpowers out of the deal!

There are a handful of breadcrumbs scattered through the game to reflect that fact that being augmented has some original consequences. That neuropozine now has a lively black-market street trade makes plenty of sense. You do meet one poor guy still dealing with the trauma of having killed his own grandson in a psychotic haze during the Aug Incident (seriously, his story broke my heart in the best possible way), another still suffering neurological damage after having his own neural augs removed, and have to figure out whether a messed-up former Belltower soldier might be responsible for the death of his ex. The guy building the next big ghetto is definitely trying to profit off the situation, and seems to be hiring augmented folks to do the building, but the notion that being augmented might make them better workers goes unacknowledged. You don’t even get to meet anyone suffering from neuropozine withdrawal, even when you do visit the ghetto. The world isn’t suddenly full of amputees who’ve had their augs removed, there’s no underground black market for human limb transplants – it’s absurd how little thought’s gone into this.

But as so often with fantasy racism, maybe the biggest problem is that, in a world where we’ve firmly established that augmentation leaves you vulnerable to being driven haywire at the push of a button, too much of that public distrustis justified. Even without the mind-control element, many augmentations make people dangerous in ways the public shouldn’t have to be okay with. Nor is it a major source of conflict that dovetails well with whatever the Illuminati is actually supposed to be up to in this game. Kidnapping a bunch of scientists as in Human Revolution may be a huge cliché, but at least it’s a goal that adds up.

Setting-wise, most of the game is set in Prague this time, which is at least different – you won’t find many big-budget games set in any Eastern European city. But though there are plenty of Czech natives in the main cast of characters, I could not tell you why Prague was chosen. It’s a reasonably logical place to put a major Interpol office, but, just for example, how does this new anti-aug movement compare to past racial tensions of the region? I don’t know enough about Prague to tell you, and if an answer is buried somewhere in the many in-game documents I skim-read in playing MD, I did not notice it.

Maybe Prague natives will have got as much of a kick out of seeing their city in this game as I did seeing an Aussie running an Interpol division, or maybe they’re all up in arms about misrepresentation. But to say the setting feels under-utilised is pretty much par for the course of everything else in this game. I don’t even know how Jensen feels about living there, if he’s got any opinion on it at all.

The highlight of your away-missions is a trip to the new aug ghetto, aka the Útulek Complex, aka Golem City. The whole structure is an intimidating maze of prefab cube-houses, and it’s the one place that feels like we’re finally committing to cyberpunk dystopian vibe. It’s not pretty or nice to navigate, but it shouldn’t be: it’s a great location that feels refreshingly unique. Solid work, no notes.

Other locations mostly don’t deliver you much beyond the same generic office or para-military environments you’ve seen a thousand times. There’s a mission to Switzerland, so the outside is full of snow and mountains, and a mission to London, so the outside is a helipad and you won’t leave the building. And there’s an intro mission to Dubai, where you have to fight some terrorists, because some fuckwit decided to open this game by trying to convince everyone we’re playing a generic military shooter for some fucking reason. Oh, and the outdoors is sandy, of course, but you’ll pretty much just see the one building anyway. Otherwise, hope you like Prague, because Prague is pretty well it.

MD has dutifully stepped up to the expectation of giving us multiple different ways into every location, but most left me feeling that less can definitely be more. There are so many different ways into some buildings that I kept getting lost in them: this isn’t simply giving the player choice, it’s building redundancy on top of redundancy. I like exploring new environments, but losing track of what I’m even trying to do isn’t a plus.

It's hard to feel like the team behind DX really get cyberpunk, and not just because capitalism confuses them. A minor plot point involves a cult who worship a machine god (another weak callback to the original DX). One of their members has been busy trying to develop a way for their members to upload themselves – only to be found in a mysterious coma. So obviously, he’s succeeded in digitising his own brain, right? Or at least mind-wiped himself in the attempt? But no, whatever happened to him is never commented on whatsoever. Not even when a group of his fellow cult members attempt to upload themselves using his work. It’s like the payoff has been lost in translation somewhere.

Though to at least end this segment on a more positive note, when Mankind Divided does, inevitably, send us to the Obligatory Brothel Set, we do find male sex workers among their employees, who will flirt with Jensen (you know, in addition to the many more female ones). So the franchise that promotes itself with so many filthy shirtless!Jensen pics has at least acknowledged, in universe, that there are people willing to pay for hot male cyborg eye candy. You can always enjoy the little things.

There’s another level to the worldbuilding, of course – the question of how well it serves the plot. But to get into the plot, I’m going to need a whole new post.

[vgilantee]

i wanna know the list so bad OMG

I have a few but its currently peter and harry i'm ngl

BUT I FEEL SO BAD I CANT FINISH SM2 BCOS IT'LL BREAK MY HEART AGAIN. IVE LITERALLY PLAYED THROUGH IT LIKE 3 TIMES AND THE 2nD TIME I NEVER FINISHED IT so i'm trying so hard to play through this third run of the game 😭

i haven’t finished j:fo because i am Bad at video games and also because i know it’s going to hurt. god jedi survivor is gonna hurt even more and i’m not read. star wars hurts me so good

oh god oh um okay so… these are the pairings and i need you to not judge me:

obiwan and cody

cody and rex

rex and echo

echo and fives

hunter and echo

cad bane and hondo (look i read a fic once and cad bane is my ultimate star wars “hear me out”)

cad bane and jango fett (i recently came across this ship and. want to be between it)

cody and gregor

jason todd and dick grayson (can be jay and dick, can be red hood and nightwing. we all know about my mask kink by now)

price and simon

soap and price

soap and simon

gaz and price

gaz and soap

buggy and shanks (one piece for those who don’t know… anime or live action)

steve rogers and bucky

bucky and sam wilson

an orc and a minotaur

two werewolves

AND THOSE ARE JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD AND ONLY AMAB BECAUSE IF I THINK FOR JUST A MOMENT THERE ARE DEF SOME MFF THREESOMES ID WANT TO BE AN F IN

[creatively-cosmic]

What up, Starry—You already know who it is! B)

Sorry about Tumblr being a buggy mess and crashing halfway through! I’ve experienced the frustration of losing writing due to crashes and it always sucks. But thank you for continuing to answer these questions and satiate my curiosity! Learning more about Missing Numbers is like reading a book that just keeps getting better and better and better with every new chapter. Also: don’t worry about the delays or how long responding takes! You come first and foremost. Your health/work/school/whatever it is ya got going on in your personal life, is infinitely more important than me getting an answer to a question. So please, take your time, as much as you need—I will wait.

(Also, young Red being just as much of a little shit as Blue was is surprisingly wholesome and I love that. And after seeing their heights I realized I’m the same height as Blue! That detail is not important in the slightest, I just thought it was funny.)

Anywho, let’s get into the meat and potatoes, shall we?

First things first: Y’all mentioned biology mechanics and the nature of Glitches? 👀 Well, guess what? I love that kinda stuff! My curiosity is piqued—please explain.

Second question though: What is Leaf’s Duty? What does she do and how do her powers(?) work? Are her abilities like how the move Imprison was in Fallen Leaf?

And third: What’s the relationship/dynamic between Leaf and Red? That comic y’all posted has me wondering what Leaf is warning others about.

That’s all for now though! Please take care of yourself. Have a good day/afternoon/night!

Ahh, thank you so much for your patience! its really appreciated,, im glad youve still been enjoying things- your comments (and your FANART OH MY GOD??) have still been giving us LIFE i truly cannot thank you enough!

Red and Blue’s childhood friendship and rivalry has always been something we’ve wanted to come off as just plain silly and enjoyable- I’m glad we’ve been succeeding in that, hehe. And Blue was actually originally going to be shorter (our height, actually), we just added a few inches to be nicer to him lol

Per usual now, we’ll keep the big stuff under the cut! It’s another long one: Consider this Leaf Lore Part Two.

For the Glitch stuff, we’ve been thinking and might make a BIG formal post going over all of Professor Maple’s speculation and studies, to make it a good access point for the worldbuilding of Missing Numbers. I can’t promise it’ll come soon, but! As a starting point, I do have a pre-written thing with information on different classifications of Glitch that should clear up a good bit to start with. 

Unless we get any sudden further realizations, every Glitch, Corruption, and Anomaly in Missing Numbers (and arguably in Pokemon as a whole) can fall under these five classifications.

Leaf’s duty is the main aspect of what we failed to touch on in your previous question. So, I’ll finish that part of the story. :) 

To answer your questions, we first have to establish how she got her powers. When Leaf died, she did not get to rest peacefully. Most who die in this world don’t. The afterlife for the fallen and forgotten is not pretty. It is not merciful. There is no heaven for the ones who do not matter to God. 

The Distortion exists in layers. At it’s lowest, the farthest from contact with the main reality, is a void of unused, scrapped, and null data. A graveyard, or worse yet, a dump where things that can no longer exist in the surface world go to rot. Unused data. Scrapped NPCs. Removed characters, Pokemon, items. 

Assets of old games that never carried over.

Leaf's soul was discarded here when she was erased from existence at the end of Abandoned Loneliness. Left to rot with the unborn Ghosts that had haunted them both with the intent to drag someone of significance down with them. Hoping they too might escape. That they might receive mercy through her. 

Unfortunately, Leaf was the unloved child. So instead she fell to their ranks, swallowed up by the abyss that was their resting place- thrust as far from reality, from her home, from her friends, from her purpose as feasibly possible. Still conscious. Still aware. Still suffering.

… Leaf was not one to accept things lying down. Leaf was a fighter. She hated injustice, unfairness. She wouldn’t stand for this. She wouldn’t lie down and give up. No matter how suffocating the darkness was. No matter how the bloodied hands tried to drag her further down. No matter how the chaos and corruption tried to break and dismantle her. 

No. Matter. What.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if there was one thing that defined Leaf even more than her bleeding heart, it was that her will was unbreakable.

So she climbed. Climbing over the damned- the forgotten- the spiteful- the vengeful- everything trying to hurt her and pull her down. Focused solely on escaping, on going up. Until things began to become more tangible. Until she could see more than black and red. Until there was light, and color. Until data became form- albeit still broken, chaotic. Numbers. Misplaced bricks. Impossible plants. Incomprehensible collision. 

Glitch City.

She broke through the floor of the second lowest layer of the Distortion, and though the surface’s light was still so far… She’d found solid footing. 

And here, though it may have been quieter… She wasn’t so alone.

The City had the odd few inhabitants. But the first that she met was a strangely familiar boy, a teenager that reminded her of someone she knew, but wrong. With a cocky, lopsided grin, unruly black hair, and bright red eyes. 

Someone who wanted out just as badly as she did.

Leaf and Red never knew each other outside of Glitch City. But during their time trapped there together as children, they were friends. Leaf wasn’t the first person Red befriended there… 

But she was significant. They were allies with a shared goal, after all, and if one of them could find a way out, they could get out together! They worked in tandem to find hope, grasp at an escape. Everything they could, as a possibility. They were friends, after all. Right?

Right?

… Leaf didn’t wholly trust Red. It wasn’t personal, but there were things that were risky. She could see the instability of corruption plaguing him, and she wanted to ensure her loved ones’ safety more than she wanted to escape. The greater picture was something that she could wrap her head around, even if it was hard to grasp.

Red was not the same. Laser focused on his goal and uncaring of the consequences, it was a factor that, over time, divided them more and more as Leaf realized the severity of Red’s condition, and began to think…

Maybe he was here for a reason. … Still, she tried to turn a blind eye. Let herself hope things weren’t that bad. 

The growing obviousness for his resentment towards Fire, though Red tried to hide it, didn’t help- her distrust towards him only grew, further clouded by her personal fears and dedication to protecting her loved ones.

And one day, while discussing a possible window for escape… She let a thought she’d been hiding slip. The final nail in the coffin.

Afraid for her brother’s life, and angry seeing how Red reveled in the idea of hurting him, she left him behind and didn’t look back.

From there, we aren’t sure of the exact details of how she escaped. But we know she had help on the surface- from someone a little too curious about the nature of the Anomalous, who was all too eager to free a willing entity. Professor Ace Maple (specializing in “anomalies”, and original to the Missing Numbers story!) helped free her soul. 

Of course, releasing a long-buried corrupted entity wouldn’t go unnoticed by the higher power that had put her there. But… It saw how careful she was. How she was now completely wary of all glitches. How she’d come to understand the dangers they posed to the world and the people in it.

So, the Almighty came to her in a Golden light. Extending an offer to her.

YOU CANNOT BE PERMITTED TO EXIST IN THIS WORLD AS YOU ARE.

THERE IS A REASON YOUR KIND WERE BURIED.

THIS WORLD IS ENDANGERED EVERY TIME CORRUPTION ESCAPES.

I MUST PRESERVE THE ORDER OF THIS REALITY.

BUT YOU, HEROINE, HAVE PROVEN TO BE SPECIAL.

I AM WILLING TO MAKE A COMPROMISE FOR YOU ALONE.

YOU KNOW THINGS I CANNOT PERMIT ANYONE TO KNOW.

YOU’VE SEEN THINGS I CANNOT PERMIT ANYONE TO SEE.

I CAN ALLOW YOU TO KEEP THESE MEMORIES, AND YOUR PRESENCE HERE, ON SIMPLE TERMS.

DO NOT SPEAK OF IT TO ANOTHER SOUL…

AND PUT THIS KNOWLEDGE TO USE.

YOUR SHACKLES WILL BE YOUR WEAPON. KNOWLEDGE. POWER. 

PROTECT MY WORLD. CLEANSE THE CORRUPTION. HOLD THEM BELOW.

YOU ALONE WILL SEE EVERYTHING, FOR YOU ALONE SHALL BE THE WARDEN.

BUT DO NOT FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM.

DO NOT FORSAKE ME.

… Of course she accepted the bargain. It was all beneficial in her eyes. Her complete freedom, and the ability to protect those she loved most in ways she never could have before. What happened in their childhood would never happen again now.

Thus, Leaf was blessed with her body yet again. Rightfully hers, and aged to grow with her. Though she’d never again be a Vessel, that was okay. She was something far greater now. 

The chains could Imprison any code they touched, and they were completely under her control. With these, she could fight and restrain any anomalies necessary. She was also given the one-of-a-kind ability to freely move between the Main world, and the Distortion… To ensure that no activity occurred in either that could allow the escape of something catastrophic.

Of course, things weren’t perfect. The world and the people in it had changed since she’d been gone. It had been years. People would be different.

Blue, for one. It was hard to face him again. Tensions never stopped being high between them. They both remembered, after all.

She mostly just cared about her brother, now. It took her a bit to find him, idle at the top of Mount Silver. 

It was heartbreaking to see the emptiness in his eyes. Him barely acknowledging her. The realization that he’d never… He’d never looked for her. Never tried to free her. 

Never even mourned. 

She still loved him. She always would. He was her family. He was the only one who’d been anything like her.

It was okay that he got everything she had. It was okay that he’d completely replaced her. It was okay that he now had everything she ever wanted. It was okay that he wasn’t the one who looked for, found, freed her, instead of a complete stranger. It was okay that when he spoke it was soulless and objective and only reminding her of her duties. it was okay. it was okay. 

It was okay that he didn’t care. 

It was okay that he was living the life she should’ve wanted DESERVED that he was destined to.

It was okay that she had to protect him. It was part of her duty, after all.

She wasn’t bitter. She wasn’t mad. She loved him.

… And then there was Red- “Glitchy,” as she now called him, unwilling to give him the name that belonged to her brother. He never did give up on her. He was PISSED, mind you, that somehow she had escaped and left him and the others stuck down there behind- but he still refused to back down.

They were enemies now, though. As he grew more restless- and more powerful, much to Leaf’s horror- his imprisonment became a direct responsibility of hers. And as Professor Maple grew more curious about glitches, unknowingly bringing him closer and closer to true freedom, even though she felt indebted to them, she had to resist their studies. Warn them of everything- especially him.

“I thought you hated injustice. Don’t you think this is unfair?”

Still, she had to face him often. And even in his madness, and even in chains, Red could speak so… Persuasively. 

“If you could escape, why shouldn’t I? You have the ability to free me.”

“And I know you’re hiding me from the others. Don’t they deserve to know?”

“You knew as a KID that Blue was looking for me. Doesn’t HE deserve it?”

“I think you know this isn’t the right thing to do.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“But it’s okay. I’m not mad. I can be patient.”

“I’m sure you’ll come around.”

“After all, you’re just like me and you know it.”

[sojrner-fishsticcc]

loona pm - further updates!

lots and lots of updates for this post! been trying to make roughly a post per day to not go overboard but still share what im working on cos MAN ive been absolutely going through this project! this rules!!!

so first off, very minor and later addition i finally gave loona glowing eyes! ive been meaning to do that for a while but i finally figured out how to! so yah, she looks v pretty now.

the major thing was animation. WAYYY more animation. i discovered the cpm modeling discord last night and its helped me get a really good grip on how it works (if you ever use cpm, go there because trust me you are not going to figure this stuff out on your own.) so heres just a big list of poses i animated (still a lot left! ahh!!!)

 - walk cycle (improved!) now looking at it after looking away from it for a while it looks a lil goofy so i might rework it at some point but god i cant get over how nice that digitigrade cycle looks.

 - run cycle! (omg its so cool im so so happy with how it came out) like seriously. i am so so proud of this. some of the hair bobbing and the chest and head movements are a bit stiff so i will probably improve on them. still, this is absolutely the part im the most proud of.

 - jumping (meshes super well with running anim, a bit buggy when falling long distances but thats a bug with cpm itself) i recorded this one in game since AHGHHHH it looks so cool in context. the running-jumps are rad as hell.

 - sneaking and sneak walking. like the running, i cant get over how the digitigrade walk cycle here looks. it has a lot of bone clipping that is probably not anatomically correct nor comfortable but whatever. it looks cool and i like it. sneaking is still buggy, so i cant do things like spam the shift key as that little “hello!” thing that some people do, because cpm has some issues switching between poses instantly, so here when crouchign for a split second it displays the default crouch but then corrects itself making it bug out. that sucks but i dont really know if theres much i can do about it.

- punching/swinging with both hands! more of a minor thing, but hey these little details are super important. id love to figure out if i could make a context thing so that it makes a full horizontal swing when holding a sword or weapon. (i didnt feel like recording a gif for this just believe me bro.)

thats about all i have so far. i plan to do much more and fix some minor bugs like symmetry in walk cycles soon but its a bit difficult. also, not only animation got an overhaul- i also finally implemented proper armor mapping that’s compatible with (hopefully!) any armor set! heres a demonstration of that using the minecraft dungeons armor & weapons mods, just bcos they look very cool and they help a lot with details in armor. (oh and btw, i made the hair specifically press down against her head when wearing armor, of you can tell)

as a further plan, i really want to add some extra movement stuff to this. i know that custom player models allows changing the hitbox, health, reach, etc. and i really want to make this loona model run really fast and have a super high jump. like i said in a previous post, im a big fan of the videos \@rohan_furries posts of his mod which adds detailed anthro fox models to mc, and one of the things it does is add a ton more movement so you can absolutely fly around and lunge and stuff. i really want to add that because GOD running around and kicking ass in this model would be i think the coolest thing in the world. i really hope i can add more detail to the animations because i would love to just stack so much detail on this thing until its so so so smooth... but generally i think itll be mostly finished by the end of this upcoming week, including polishing some of the already existing poses. but ill probably still continue working on it beyond then to add some cool movement stuff like i said above, which i dont know if its even possible but GOD if it isnt im going to figure out how to get it working. i also want to get it working with other buggy things, like some modded armor sets arent compatible with the armor mapping ive set up. ill have to ask around on the cpm discord for that because god the people there really seem to know what theyre doing. theyre all rad as hell btw. other ideas ive had include blinking anims, maybe some more polished idle poses, startup and finishing anims that help it transition between poses more smoothly (which i swear to god might be broken but might just be doing it wrong.) and also gestures if i can figure those out. i also might try to change the arms to be made of two segments instead of the current one so i can get a bit more detailed with the posing. im struggling between adding detail and maintaining the minecraft artstyle. im also excited to finish this project so i can do this all over again but better with another model. dont really know what character its going to be, if you have any suggestions send them to me i guess? idk, i might find a cool one or make one of my ocs or make an oc just for this.

when i finish this model i dont really know what to do with it. its mainly a little project for myself, but i really want to share it with people. ideally id want to sell it for like 10-20 dollars because this thing has taken hours of my time but i still want to share it with people, but im 16 and dont have a way to transfer cash :\ might figure something out, whatever. if you’re interested in getting your hands on it once its finished maybe send me a message? i cant guarantee it but i might if you seem cool.

ok, NOW i need to go to bed since its like LATE as HELL right now. good night guys :)

[dragonchris]

Game Review: Wandersong

I heavily debated reviewing this game. On one hand, I love it. It's an amazing game with a wonderful message and I've been thinking about it constantly. On the other hand, it's fucking buggy as hell and I'd never recommend it to anyone who has patience thinner than a 2x4 or epilepsy.

Welcome to Wandersong, where you play as one of the most bizarre creatures in the world.

An Extrovert.

Story:

The world is ending and you gotta stop it! You're not a brave warrior or a clever mage, but you're a bard with a heart as big as your vocal chords. And by god you're gonna sing to save the world.

This game balances lighthearted goofiness and emotional depth with a good amount of skill. The characters are charming and funny, and the emotional moments are touching and thoughtful. The more you play to save this world, the more you fall in love with it.

Gameplay and Controls:

If the story is the game's strongest point, the gameplay is it's weakest. BY A LONG SHOT.

I'm not gonna beat around the bush, this game is broken. The mechanics don't control very well, the physics of this world are often your enemy, and sometimes the game just will not work with you, which makes some puzzles just slightly more enjoyable than pulling out your own teeth with a crowbar.

In all honesty, I never got to finish the game. Because it Fucking broke halfway through. Fun fact, if you fail at one puzzle enough times because the physics simply refuse to work, the game just DELETES ASSETS FROM THE LEVEL. Have fun playing an invisible character falling through a platform that no longer exists, fucker.

To make matters worse, the accessibility options don't even work. I tried to toggle off the flashing lights option. It did fuck all. I tried to clear my game data to restart the game after it broke on me. The button does nothing. The only thing worse than a game with no accessibility options is a game with options that do jack shit and jill piss.

Sound:

But, to a more positive note, the soundtrack of this game is very good. I do think it's a clever mechanic to use singing as your primary ability. And with a game that relies so heavily on music, it's no surprise that the music delivers, carrying the whimsical and adventurous tone of the story through its soundtrack. You're just a happy little guy singin' your way through this world, and the music does a great job of helping you feel that way. My favorite part was where you controlled a pirate ship with your voice. It's also very rewarding to recognize recurring motifs and see how they represent the overall story.

Art:

The paper cut-out aesthetic of this 2-D game gives it a whimsical charm and a special aesthetic that helps make this game memorable. It just looks so cute. The character designs are all varied and unique, and the levels all have unique visual themes that keep the game vibrant and interesting all the way up until the end.

Playable, Replayable, or Unplayable?

I want to say that it's a playable game. That you should play it. I fell in love with this game and its story, which is probably why its unplayable mechanics frustrated me so deeply. Though I wasn't able to finish the game, I did watch someone else's playthrough because I wanted to see how it ended, and I'm glad I did.

I loved the ending. I loved the way the story progressed and expanded, the themes that it used and the way that the characters developed. There was genuine heart behind the production of this game. If I could rank this game on story alone, I would give it a 10/10.

But for the game as a whole, a lot of things would need to change before I could mark this as an amazing game. The physics need reworking, the accessibility options need to actually function, and perhaps a failsafe like a level selector might be beneficial for people like me who got completely softlocked and would rather go to the beginning of the act rather than start over completely. It has amazing highs and some pretty bad lows, so because of this, I give this game a smack-dab in the middle 5/10.

Steam

Itch.io

Wandersong Official Website