#the time loop actually had interesting puzzle mechanics

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Having vivid dreams the past two nights leaves me with the conclusion that I’m okay with violence against me in my dreams as long as it’s funny. Being stuck in a time loop and dying instantly in the exact same way two loops in a row because I know there’s no consequence and this can in fact get me closer to my end goal? Hilarious. Gonna remember that one for a while. Getting a first person POV of being attacked by a vampire and him trying to peel the skin off my forearm? Wish I could forget that one!

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

the last chapter for walking study in demonology was CRAZYYY im so happy you updated. im so curious about what your thought process in writing it and if youre willing to share?? you dont have to if you dont want to btw! but in any case thank u so muchhh

hey thank you! appreciate it

okay super long answer below

honestly this one was difficult. idk if its bc its been a while since i write fics from scratch so i might have forgotten how difficult the whole thing is, but this one was tough. ch 8 wasnt from scratch tho cos i had the drafts since like 2022 or smthg lol

ik the formatting is non conventional in ch 8 and i was aware that itd be hard to read for some people. but i do think abt the readers often when i write.. mainly not what the readers want in terms of storyline (altho ofc i consider this too sometimes lol) but what the reading experience will be like for them.

i.e consider if id written the chapter in a linear, traditional way and narrated the confrontation between 1-A and LoV (or even other wackier “Villains” like godzilla and invading aliens or whatever). the truth is, although def easier to read, that version will be very boring.

(i know bc i tried and scrapped those versions.)

(im sure a better writer can write it interestingly but i am not a better writer.)

the thing w writing these traditional fight scenes is tht im sure — im 1000% positive in fact — that the readers have read it before. there r literally thousands and thousands of bnha fics out there with great fight scenes, on top of the actual manga, where youve read these characters fight their assorted villains. why would i make you read that again, esp when i know i cant do it better? i already know the readers r just gonna skim the chapter if thats the case. ive been a reader, ik what fic fatigue is like — esp with bnha when everythings been rehashed infinity times in infinity different ways.

same thing also applies with even the “metaness” of the fic itself.

i dont want the fic to come off like its talking down to readers, whom i believe alrdy have the instinctual knowledge of what the fic is trying to do. im willing to bet tht the readers have read something similar to this before, like multiverses n time loop n meta stuff, also cosmic horror. i still end up narrating some things even though often i feel im being too explanatory. i jst feel like the readers will know what im talking abt by virtue of their familiarity to the tropes involved.

therefore the least i can do is serve it in an interesting way, aka the fuckass formatting. like although the tropes im doing r done so many times before, at the very least i cld let the readers hopefully have fun by piecing it together puzzle-style with the fragmented formats — so its more of an experience thing rather than jst a lore dump. i dont like lore dumps, they can be condescending.

demonology def doesnt succeed in avoiding that however. in fact its fallen to that exact trap. ch 4 and 6, those r very lore-dumpy. i tried to make it fun w the humor dialogue style but its not perfect. i know tht by ch 8 that tricks alrdy old, and the readers have all the puzzle pieces at this point anyway so itd be even more repetitive than it alrdy is. even so i still feel im being too explanatory esp with the emotional arcs but thats a skill issue on my part

overall i feel demon can be more oblique and “elegant” in its mechanics.

but anyway, it IS crack… it was never meant to promise intelligence, least of all eloquence lmfao. its never meant to be taken seriously.

of course, at this point u can tell that i actually am taking it pretty seriously LOL. i never meant to write meta fiction. i have some gripes w it, namely that i feel meta fiction is used by weaker writers as a storytelling crutch n it can come off as lazy — demon is guilty of this too. but now that i end up writing meta fiction, i might as well fucking commit and try to push it as crazy as i can. if its not gonna be good, at least it can be interesting, or weird.

blah blah im yapping. point is, ik the end product might look very “random” and pastiche as if i was jst doing whatever i wanted … which, true … but it went thru a lot of trials and errors until this final version. you would not believe the amount of time ive rewritten this chapter, due to all those ^ considerations.

however i always knew i was going to start ch8 with the classic mary sue “fanfiction” — that segment was written a long time ago like in 2022/2023?? and mostly stayed unedited since, unlike the rest of the fic which i stripped and repainted and restripped again lol

ok thanks for reading abt my wack anime crack fic writing process that, again, shld not be taken seriously. i will admit however that i do put a lot of effort n heart into it so i cannot pretend i am aloof and disaffected. id be lying if i say its been easy. i consider it a miracle i updated at all. i keep saying its not meant to be taken serious but if i managed to make it even a little bit meaningful, id be very happy.

ah also. bnha ending actually forced me to scrap a lot of things too. but it kinda ends up for the better, maybe.

[lapsedgamer]

Inscryption (PS5)

An interesting little game about game design which sacrifices mechanical elegance and overall tidiness so that it can expose the difficulties in designing and balancing a deckbuilding card game, and particularly how extra mechanics can give players an assist without undermining tone or intent. It's a little hard to describe how the trick works without spoiling some of the fun, but suffice to say that this horror-tinged roguelike card battling game is more welcoming than that combination of words implies. Well worth a quick look if you've got one of the subscription services where it's currently free.

SPOILERS below:

So this is very clearly a game about trying to prototype and execute a good computer card game. Throughout, it revels in letting you discover and exploit overpowered combos, and ultimately best the game through breaking the design. If this was trying to be the next Magic the Gathering, it would be an unbalanced disaster, but as a lesson in game design, and as a way to encourage the player to think carefully about the way cards interact, it's very effective.

Starting at that first fully-developed act in Leshy's cabin, we're presented with a very nicely balanced and mechanically nuanced roguelike deckbuilder which requires careful thought to progress, plus the occasional leg up from the items around the cabin. This is by far the most challenging part of the game, perhaps a bit too much so. The Failure dialogue implies you're meant to have bested Leshy multiple times before you discover the trick that will let you break out of his loop, but I've yet to encounter a player who didn't have all the necessary stuff unlocked when they first reached him. There are mechanics here that can be exploited for an easier win - unkillable squirrels, say - but they're rare enough to be unpredictable.

Nevertheless, this sets a baseline for what comes next. Here's this game as its best self, you've had a satisfying time mastering it, and then you find yourself somewhere else entirely.

The second act is game design at war with itself. Every conceivable mechanic for the game is on display, and also immediately at hand in your deck, and it makes intentional play and deck design almost impossible. I think this is entirely intentional, an opportunity to see the different prototypes of what would become Inscryption literally fighting it out. It's initially maddening, and methodical players will be frustrated by the fractious decks they're forced to assemble in the early rounds and the lack of explanation of how the new mechanics work.

However it's also clear that this interlude is not meant to be played with care and deliberation. There's an "autofill" option for deck design; battles can be repeated at will; and the actual challenge level is considerably lower, aligned to the Pokemon style graphics. This is a game to be hashed through, a quick guided tour of all the possibilities that this particular card game format could offer, and an explicit narrative instruction that only one of these possible designs can "win".

So we get in to Act 3 and that toad P03 clearly bullshitting his way through his game's narrative, but carefully and gently re-introducing each of the mechanics used in act 2. Here is another way Inscryption could've turned out, we see. The return of the locked room puzzles from the cabin emphasises this, but they're noticably toned down, presumably so as not to interfere with the arch rules beard's vision for how everything will play out.

For all that it's aesthetically apalling and narratively unsatisfying, P03's version is a genuinely excellent card game in its own right, demonstrating that the rules we encountered previously could've worked in harmony. That realisation adds to the bittersweet tone of the finale as the rest of the Scrybes reluctantly embrace the void. Leshy's final duel is actually touching, and the quick excursions to the two other possible game styles draw a tidy line under a very untidy game.

Exposing its own design process and integrating that material in to the story and structure makes Inscryption a bumpy ride, and will alienate players who buy strongly in to the refinement and style of the first act, but it's a unique journey. I was less convinced by the overarching meta-narrative about a CCG player who discovers the game is a bit of a dud, and would've been improved if some of the more foundational information from the game's ARG were included. "The game's disk was home to a malign force" could've been on the critical path somewhere. However these are little details around the edges of a confident fusion of process, play, and storytelling.

[beesmygod]

So TotK seems to be clicking where BotW wasn't. Any insight on what the key differences are that work for you?

note: i played botw up until the calamity ganon fight and then went "yeah ok ive played a zelda game before", put it down and never went back. didnt play the dlc

i dont think anyone would be surprised to know that im a "majoras mask was the best zelda" guy but the reason has little to do with the "darker tone" or the lore but because reusing assets allowed the dev team to greatly (GREATLY in this case holy shit) expand on the actual contents of the game itself. i love gold/silver best for the same reason.

botw is like running around an empty movie set. theres nothing in that fucking game. at the time, due to the proliferation of crafting mechanics infesting literally every AAA game, it felt like nintendo was more focused about hitting all the checks on a checklist of tired mechanics that were included just for the sake of saying they had it. crafting! weapon durability! open world! pbbbbt.

none of these things proved to be enjoyable to me. keeping in mind that ive been playing zeldas since the snes (skipping only a handful of handheld games), the changes felt like steps away from what makes zelda games unique. crafting felt like an arbitrary step between me and potions. i wanted to swing my master sword with power, not experiment with clumsy weapons that stop existing after i finally get a feel for them. and the open world, frankly sucked.

mm rewarded me for my curiosity. experimentation and exploration would lead to interesting or gratifying results (did you know theres a paper airplane in ikana canyon...). botw is like playing in the window xp background. theres barely any landmarks, except shrines, or anything to do outside of getting the yiga clan's ass. theyre easy to pick out because theyre literally the only people on the road. the world is put to waste; i cant play with it, i can just observe and be extremely artificially hindered by its vastness.

this doesnt really fit anywhere else in the above open world rant, but trading the shrines for small and sparce dungeons was a huge let down. i was hoping for a series of cohesive puzzles intended to help my mastery of my newest weapon or ability. you know. like a zelda game

totk fixed this and every other problem in the best way possible; the devs dumped a ton of toys into my playpen, gave me a hot glue gun, and told me to go buck wild. i love to build a horrible contraption to solve my stupid problems or kill me instantly. i love that experimenting with weapons involves actual experimentation if you desire or you can have an inventory exclusively full of spear type weapons with vastly different properties by gluing a bunch of rocks or monster parts to it. but most importantly....the "stock up->head out->explore->return" loop no longer feels like i have to go to the dmv over and over.

sure, the depths are artificially large in the way that the map in botw was; theres not a lot to do except reveal the map and do plot stuff. but the overworld was given a complete overhaul using the empty map as a starting point. theres actually stuff to look at, ruins to explore, caves to investigate, holes to jump into, and all that shit in the sky to explore. the sky map might be sparse but its meticulously crafted so that just the process of explorating the archipelagos feels like a puzzle you need to solve, as opposed to a hurdle you have to jump.

there is so much more to do in totk that im pretty sure im over 20 hours in and havent done any of the regional main quests. ive been running around picking up side quests, uncovering the map, exploring the depths, fucking around in the sky, and dying my clothes. but its not annoying or overwhelming. it feels more alive and less like a weird map in an abandoned gmod server. im having fun.

for crit: imo, one of the biggest criticisms i have for both these games is that the voice acting is horrendous. nintendo has too much money to be tapping people who sound like they just got out of the shenmue soundbooth. zelda was not improved by voice acting and they should probably go back to everyone just having short exclamations like "HEH HEEH!" or "hmmm...".

also link doesnt roll anymore and its really fucking me up. im really struggling here lol. i keep trying to do dark souls shit and every fight involves me accidentally zooming in with the sheikah slate instead of locking on, hitting l1 istead of shield, and whistling for my horse instead of drinking estus.

also nerf rain

[ode-to-odes]

IFComp Reviews: We're Not Sailing in Circles... Right?

Here's the next three reviews from the comp! For some reason, all three of these involved going back in time/UNDOing/time loops. Makes you wonder how random that randomizer is.

Last Valentine's Day by Daniel Gao Polished little time loop. Fun to play, thoughtful commentary on love, romance, and relationships. Short and sweet; I actually couldn't find any meaningful difference between options (this one is choice-based), which I don't love, but if you're looking for a ten-minute piece that'll make you think, this is the one for you.

One King to Loot Them All by Onno Brouwer TLDR: Linear parser about wearing a loincloth and swinging an axe. Fun to play, and I'd actually recommend this to players just starting out in IF (though you should probably play a game with standard commands first).

DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS by Hubert Janus TLDR: Don't give up after the first ending you reach. Nor the second. Nor the tenth. And if you see flashing neon lights, you've got the wrong file.

Full reviews (and spoilers!) below the cut.

No full length reveiw for Last Valentine's Day. It's so short that what I wrote above is really all I have to say.

OKtLTA: My favorite part about this game was actually the custom commands. They added an extra element to the tone of the game without being so outlandish as to confuse the player into checking the command list every other turn. The writing was very consistent with no obvious mistakes (the combat scenes were especially engaging and fun to read), and I encountered no bugs while playing.

The game is very linear, with no red herrings; don’t go into this game expecting a puzzle adventure, because that’s really not what the focus is. The one thing which was unexpected and moderately confusing (moreso to a seasoned player than a new one, which is interesting) was [SPOILERS] the use of the UNDO command in the game. I struggled with how far back I had to go with it before the end goal became obvious. This was mostly confusing because it’s a new use of a mechanic which is typically unused or relatively ignored within games, so seeing something different done with it was jarring. However, once you get used to it, it’s actually really cool. Make sure you read the descriptions as you’re going.

To players used to twisty, puzzle-y parsers, this game might feel a little too linear. That was certainly how I felt, but I don’t think it makes it a bad game: just one that I didn’t feel as engaged in as some other parsers I’ve played. I do think it would be a great game for a beginning IF player or a player looking for some more slashing and hacking than they might normally find in a parser game. The helpful hints and storymode contribute to that rec for beginners as well. It’s clever, funny, and a strong debut work which I had fun playing, so. There you go.

DMGKitN:

Okay, I’ll be honest: this game wasn’t next in my randomly assigned list. But after reading through the confusion regarding the two versions of this game floating around, I just had to play it. I managed to access both versions of the game. When I chose the “Play Online” version, I was given the crazy one, with flashing colors and words and general confusion. I do think this version is elevated by the fact that there’s an actual game to be played elsewhere, or else it would definitely be a very confusing entry (as we’ve seen already). To be so honest, as someone who’s never used twine, I actually thought the flashing colors and weird changing perspective of the page was kind of impressive, but maybe that’s actually easy to do. I wouldn’t know.

The longer and visually calmer version of the game was fun, though. This one I got by downloading the game file, by the way. I did suffer through a few iterations before realizing that the undo button was not there for decoration and I could just go back if I made a choice I didn’t like. That said, I saw quite a few of the endings, and I’m pretty sure I made it to the fullest ending, which was definitely worth the wait. While it took me a minute to get into the story, once it’s really going and you’re exploring the different options, it’s actually a pretty funny experience.

And as a checkmark, all the writing, grammar, coding, etc. was perfect. Points for polish.

[nescefur]

How Gareth Coker improved the Ancient Wellspring

Composer Gareth Coker did something interesting for Moon Studio's Ori and the Will of the Wisps, more specifically for a certain track that plays in only one part of the game, we're talking about the track Turn, Turn, Turn Again that plays in a puzzle room in the Wellspring, one of the game's subareas.

The puzzle room revolves around a mechanic, where by pulling levers you can rotate the entire room, creating new options for platforming and movement. Any other composer would just loop the one track over and over, justifying that decision by acknowledging the fact that the area is so short anyway, that it won't matter. Not Gareth Coker, however:

"In the Ancient Wellspring, there's this puzzle room, it's mainly for platforming and it rotates. Each time you pull the lever to rotate the room, there's actually a new music cue that plays.", said Coker, in an interview with YouTube channel "Easy Allies". "It's based on the one that precedes it, but it's slightly faster, slightly higher in pitch and it's slightly busier, and each time you pull the lever that happens again and again."

Coker wanted to make sure that, even though this track only plays in such a relatively insignificant area of the game, it was perfect, and that there was as much attention to detail as the other parts of the game.

So, what was first only 1 track, now became 3, which of course had to be implemented perfectly. Coker also had to make sure the switch between tracks wasn't too distracting, and that the tracks weren't too dissimilar, it is still the same overall area after all.

"And it's not just a cheap trick where I've like loaded up a plugin and done a cheap pitch shifting technique. It's actually a fresh recording each time. It's complete overkill, and there are some people who won't even hear all of the different variations."

But even though it might not be noticed, small details like this add up quickly. It very much adds to the overall experience.

"It's just those little details to make sure that the environment evolves as you play through it. I always wanted to make sure the player felt like they were moving forward, and there are those subtle shifts in every environment in the game."

There's a fine line between when something is not enough and when something is overkill, and I believe Coker achieved this perfectly in this track. It's just subtle enough to not be obtrusive, but it still adds so much to the experience of Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

Written by Niels Hennissen

Sources: Easy Allies (28 august, 2020). Ori - A Musical Perspective with Gareth Coker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFhJS7nNYE

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2021-08-23

I have been injected full of delicious viral chunks and my body is producing powerful enzymes from complex proteins you couldn't even comprehend.

Listening: "Peace for Triple Piano" is a mathematical musical art piece done by Vi Hart and Henry Segerman. It could really go in the "watching" section but I also just really like the song, so.

The video is a spherical video, so you'll want to click and drag around in it (although there's a stereographic projection here if you want to see everything at once) and it is actually one, single video taken by one spherical camera, expanded out onto the plane, and then wrapped back on itself 3× (as a cube root in the complex plane)

Each resulting third of the repeated video is then timeshifted by a third of the length of the song's main loop, producing a song that is in round with a video of itself, where the various Vi Harts and Henry Segermans move around the weird triple piano. It's intended to be a kind of time crystal, which is to say, a structure that only has (non-trivial) symmetry in time AND space together.

There's a lot of interesting things going on in this video and I highly recommend you watch it and then the "Making Of" video, which also features an equirectangular projection of the video at the end so you can see everything at once.

Reading: A mixture of Wizard Stories and fanfic, I really enjoyed the "Guyal of Sfere" story from Dying Earth this week, it's a very Rules Lawyer-y story with some good Spooky Vignettes, the insatiable desire for knowledge, and also ghosts. I've been reading more of the Wizard Stuff mostly because I have Wizards showing up soon in my Pathfinder game and I want them to be suitably insufferable.

Watching: ROV Hercules and ROV Falkor from EVNautilus and Schmidt Ocean Research both put out some interesting overview videos. In particular here's one from Falkor about the construction of the ROV umbilical.:

Playing: Pathfinder game with the high school friends, I'm about to get into dealing with Character Plot Motivations but first they had to fight several dinosaurs. As much as I like simple RPG's it is cool to have something really complicated so that you can do really specific puzzles like "Can I throw an axe to chop down the branch those goblins are sitting on" or "what happens, exactly, if I fall in leech-infested waters" and the Pathfinder system really does provide a lot of mechanical answers.

Making: Not too much this week around, but I did do some Home Improvement. My dad manages shipping for a chemical plant, so he deals with a truly absurd number of spreadsheets. We set him up with a third screen (he's been using dual-monitors for years already) which involved whipping up some spacers and blocks to clamp an arm onto an antique desk without damaging anything.

Computer Stuff: I finally set up Calibre on my new PC since I was mostly reading old eBooks off my kindle until recently. Calibre is exceedingly useful, it's the best way to manage an eBook library. A cool feature I didn't know it had until now is the ability to pull books back off a Kindle, so when I was transferring a new book across I also just pulled my library onto this computer off the Kindle all in one shot. Pretty neat!

It's not a pretty program but it gets the job done, and you can fine tune the ebook reader it comes with pretty much to your liking if you have an okay hold of CSS, although you could just point it at a reader of your choice.

[itsbenedict]

I didn’t post about everything I played this year, so here’s my opinions on the stuff I played that I didn’t make a rec post for:

Raging Loop 

Raging Loop is one of them twisty meta Zero Escape-y branching-path visual novels where an ensemble cast is trapped in a mysterious circumstance where people are dying gruesomely, and you have to find out what’s happening and stop it by looping a bunch. 

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because... it tries to have its cake and eat it too with the supernatural elements. Clearly magic is real and has important impacts on the scenario, but then other parts are trickery you’re supposed to see through, and it’s entirely uninterested in cluing you in to how that trickery was accomplished. Not exactly a fair play mystery, in that regard- you have to kind of just be along for the ride, rather than try to figure it out.

That said, it’s a good ride- pretty strong character writing, and the central conceit of the Werewolf/Mafia-style murder scenario creates really interesting drama. It’s more concerned with making itself feel clever than letting the player feel clever, but it’s still well-paced and gripping and has a pretty decent resolution.

Detective Grimoire

I recommended Tangle Tower, the sequel, pretty strongly- and this one, while obviously a little rougher around the edges with the art and mechanics (the suspicion tracker system is a total dud; I didn’t even realize it existed until I realized I was missing an achievement for using it), it’s still pretty darn good. Really fun character designs and animations, fully-voiced, and a solid whodunit backing it all. Plus- while the two are more or less self-contained, the continuity threads with Tangle Tower raised some really interesting questions.

Contradiction - the all-video murder mystery

This one was pretty fun, largely on the strength of the actors. The main mechanic of interrogating people on evidence and using their own statements against each other was some good stuff, too. Definitely had that Phoenix Wright quality to the deductions, and Jenks is a really fun character. (Had a few points where progression was just linked to standing in a certain previously-abandoned area of the map where a clue was suddenly there for no reason, there- good thing it had a hint system.)

As a mystery, it could use a little work- most of what you end up finding out is sequel bait (for a sequel that never actually came together, unfortunately), and the actual whodunit is just sort of hiding in the cracks of all that. And... cornering the culprit just sort of happens out of nowhere once you’ve got your hands on the right piece of evidence, without much fanfare. You’re following up on leads like usual, you find a little lie in someone’s testimony, and then- oh, shit, they’re just confessing everything! Unlike all the previous times you questioned them and they were super evasive like everyone else! And then the game is over. 

All in all, it’s pretty meaty and entertaining and I’d recommend it, but unfortunately the creators have moved on to other things, so there’s not going to be any follow-up on the stuff it left unresolved.

Ikenfell

Ikenfell is a tightly-designed RPG about kids at a magic school, with Paper Mario-style action command mechanics and a battle system that makes a big deal out of careful positioning and movement, which was really enjoyable. The difficulty’s a little high (I recommend always always always speccing into max damage because killing things before they kill you is worth more than any amount of defense, speed doesn’t work, and healing is cheap), but I found it really satisfying.

There’s... something... off? About... I don’t know how to put it, it’s... doing that “yes, everyone is queer and mentally ill, deal with it” thing, which, sure, okay. But for a lot of them it’s such a background thing, like... half the playable cast is unambiguously nonbinary, but like... I don’t know if it’s trying to make some statement on how there are no rules to being NB and you can 100% perform a particular binary gender presentation but still count, or if they wrote the whole story and then changed the pronouns of some of the characters for Representation Points, or what. Probably the former? I dunno, it just feels weird. Maybe I’m just not woke enough to Get It.

(unrelatedly: why the heck is the official art they use everywhere so... off-model? none of them look like they do in-game- they look like the creator commissioned someone to draw a group shot with one reference image each and didn’t tell them anything about the characters. how much you wanna bet they commissioned a friend and it came out wrong but they were too polite to say “sorry, no, this is wrong, can you do it over?”)

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Hoo boy. It’s... not great, and it’s not great in a pretty predictable way for an even-numbered entry in the Trails series. It happens every time- first there’s a game in a new engine with new characters and a new world to explore, and it’s really nice and does interesting things... and then it ends on a cliffhanger, and then there’s a sequel game in the same engine with the same characters and the same world, reusing as many assets as possible. Also the League Of Generically Evil Anime Supervillains is there causing trouble for reasons they refuse to explain, and the plot is a storm of magicbabble and macguffin-chasing that makes little to no sense. 

Cold Steel IV is that for Cold Steel III, full stop. Welcome back to all the same places you visited last game, except this time there’s some stupid magic apocalypse happening (not that it stops you from taking the time to do random sidequests constantly, of course). The whole “oh, the evil curse mind controls people and that’s why they do stupid bullshit that’s in no one’s interest” plot point is leaned on super hard, and it’s just a big yawn the whole way through.

It’s still really fun, though, because the battle system remains really well-designed. (The same battle system that was just as fun in Cold Steel III, mind you, but it hasn’t gotten old.) And- though they’re struggling to square it with the dumb mind control apocalypse plot, the NPC dialogue continues to make the world feel believable and lived-in. They don’t slack on the parts that make Trails good- it’s just the parts that make Trails bad are making themselves more evident than ever.

did finally get to date Towa though so that’s a win

One Step From Eden

OSFE is... uh. It’s fucking hard is what it is. It’s sort of a deckbuilding roguelike, and there’s this combat that takes place on a grid, and- wait, it’s like Mega Man Battle Network, it’s exactly like Mega Man Battle Network. Man, I forgot about that, but the mechanical influence is extremely obvious. It’s MMBN meets Slay the Spire.

Except it’s super duper hard as hell, because unlike MMBN you can’t pause and swap out chips or anything- everything is just always happening so much, all at once, everywhere, and you have no recourse but to git gud and learn all the enemy patterns and the behavior of your own spells and develop the twitch reflexes necessary to not fucking die from all the shit that’s on the screen always.

(What’s the story? Uhhhh, there was some kind of magic apocalypse, and some anime girls are trying to reach a city for some reason that doesn’t really get explained ever. The game doesn’t really care to build its world at all- it’s all mechanics plus a little token character dialogue that doesn’t say much.)

The point is it’s really frickin’ hard but I am an epic pro gamer and I got ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, MOTHERFUCKER. If you’ve played it, I expect you to be really god damn impressed with me, okay???

A Short Hike

This one was really relaxing! It’s a platformer where you explore an Animal Crossing-y island of cartoon animal people, collecting mobility upgrades- but like, mainly it’s about straight chillin’. The flight controls are fun and there’s lots of little secrets to find and it’s just a nice time that doesn’t drag on too long. Not too much to say about this one.

Pokémon Sword

Ehhhhh.

I’m not here for the hot takes about how Dexit is good actually. Development hell happened, they had to make cuts for time, I get it. It’s disappointing and makes the game a little bit worse, but it’s not the end of the world.

Apart from that... perfectly serviceable? The Wild Area could’ve used a little more technical polish (as could most things in the game, really) but was a step in the right direction, giving the player a wider array of early-game team-building options than ever before. No HMs is good. Story and characters were kind of nothing, but that’s par for the course. “At least this time they’re not shoehorning in some kind of stupid evil-team-wants-legendary-pokemon-to-destroy-the-world apocalypse plot”, I thought to myself before they managed to shoehorn one in at the last minute with zero buildup- but, hey, beats wasting half the game on it.

It’s nothing special and it’s missing a lot of polish, but its problems are mainly due to being rushed, and presumably next gen they’ll be able to reuse a lot of the models and animations (maybe even improve the animations so they’re not so boring??? a man can dream) and make something interesting. SwSh seem like they were testing the waters for something else, and not taking too many chances in the meantime. 

(yo why would you sell all these cosmetic items and then turn them all off during gym battles, though) 

Hades

Hades is- oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows Hades, it’s the game of the year, greatest thing since sliced bread, Supergiant are heroes, yada yada yada. I’ve played almost 300 hours of it and I’ve completed everything except all the Resources Director levels (currently a Sigma Wraith), it’s extremely fun and you don’t need me to tell you that.

Petal Crash

It was that thing the Paranatural creator helped on? It’s, uh. It’s a block-sliding puzzle game thing, sort of in a Puyo Puyo vein. It has fun character designs and some good dialogue, like you’d expect from Zack’s involvement, but it didn’t really leave an impression otherwise (besides how got dang infuriating some of its Turn Trial puzzles can be.) The story is... kinda heartwarming, kinda didactic, kinda childish, not especially deep or interesting. Hard for it to be, when it’s told through little bits of fluffy character dialogue that exist to set up a puzzle battle as quickly as possible. Not super recommended unless you really really like block-sliding puzzles.

Hollow Knight

Man, why’d I sleep on this for so long? It’s a metroidvania platformer with heavy Dark Souls inspiration, in terms of tone and difficulty and death mechanics and environmental storytelling. And it’s... apart from all that, just really good as a game, with tight controls and juicy movement and great animation. Progression is linked as much to mastery as it is to upgrades collected- I found myself in lategame areas facing down things that would’ve killed me ten times over at the start- not because I had the best gear, but because I’d learned the game’s language and understood how to move in ways that wouldn’t get me killed.

(Usually. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and sit on a bench and suddenly there’d be a boss fight and I’d get slaughtered. Ain’t that just the way it goes?)

Anyway, on top of all that it’s just charming as hell, with a really unique and well-realized world full of little bug people. I love how, like, your character is clearly some kind of eldritch abomination, but it’s small and cute and so everyone (besides enemies that attack you on sight because they’re possessed by some kinda evil mold) is like “awww, who’s this little guy? want some help, little guy?”

(except Zote, who is just an ass hole. i love him.)

[blueeyedrat]

Games I played in 2021.

This year got off to a slow start. I was in the same place I left off in 2020 — shut in, just kinda spinning the wheels, not getting all that much accomplished on any front. Things gradually picked up for me as the year went on— I made another game over the summer, and I finally landed a steady job a few months ago. Sure, I'm still a huge shut-in, but I'm actually doing stuff again, and even getting paid for it now. It's honestly kinda weird to think about sometimes. Even if I'll be more occupied with game dev work going forward, I still want to make time for playing games, and I'd like to continue recording my thoughts on games that stand out to me.

There are a few games added to my backlog that I never found time to play (like Chicory: A Colorful Tale, or New Pokémon Snap), and a few new titles I was looking to pick up but have yet to do so (like Monster Hunter Rise, or Sable). Some of these may already have a spot reserved for next year's list. I'm also planning to spend some of my newfound income on a new computer in the near future, so I'll have access to a lot of games that I can't run on my old laptop.

That's all looking ahead, though. For now, let's look back at 2021. It's a slightly different spread compared to previous years, and it mostly falls into two categories: steady time sinks (like Animal Crossing, which carried over from last year), and catching up on games I've wanted to play for a while. Among those, and all the other titles I played this year, these were the highlights:

(2020 ⇐ 2021 ⇒ 2022)

Signs of the Sojourner

Of all the games in my backlog, this one stood out to me well before I loaded it up and played it myself. The gameplay concept intrigued me — a narrative deckbuilder where your deck represents your character's personality and every encounter is one of conversation rather than combat. It's an interesting idea that I've seen other games explore since, and this particular game more than lived up to it: Signs of the Sojourner has some of the best ludonarrative design in any game I've played. Mechanically and narratively, both the world you're in and the ways you interact with it, everything fits together, and it's topped off by a distinctive art style and an excellent ambient soundtrack. The setting provides a large variety of routes and places and people to discover, and offers so many plot threads that it's impossible to get the full picture in a single playthrough. It's a fascinating game, and one that I'd love to explore further.

Carto / A Monster's Expedition

I try to sort these lists chronologically, but I had to bend the order a bit for this one. I played Carto early in the year, and A Monster's Expedition (Through Puzzling Exhibitions) near the end of it. I'm grouping them together because they overlap the same categories: They're both on the catch-up list and specifically are both games I've written about and expressed interest in before, alongside titles like Dorfromantik and Beasts of Maravilla Island, which I also picked up and played this year, and Chicory, which is on the to-do list. They're also part of my ever-growing collection of puzzle games, which this year included colorful titles like Linelight and She Remembered Caterpillars, high-scoring challenges like Mixolumia and Tetris Effect, and mind-bending works like Portal Reloaded and Manifold Garden.

Above all, they're both very charming and abundant in clever puzzle and world design. Carto weaves a sweet, simple story with a colorful cast of characters, and its central map mechanic is used in a nice variety of puzzles. A Monster's Expedition (the latest and best offering from Draknek, who is low-key one of my favorite puzzle game devs) is light on story but has plenty of wit, and its sokoban-esque puzzles grow incredibly complex and loop around upon themselves in ways that make them immensely satisfying to solve.

Dorfromantik

I'm fond of city-builders and sim and sandbox games, even if I haven't played many of them recently. They tax my old laptop a bit too much, unfortunately — I can barely get Cities: Skylines to run now, and I have multiple games sitting untouched on my backlog like Airborne Kingdom, Before We Leave, and eventually The Wandering Village when that releases. All that said, I like some aspects of the genre more than others. I can take or leave the management — population, resources, and the like. This goes for a lot of sandbox games, not just city-builders (one of these days I'll boot up Minecraft and actually do survival stuff again). Most of the time, I just want to build things and make 'em look neat.

Naturally, the notion of taking the building aspect and paring it down to only that, making it something more akin to a puzzle or board game than a sim game, appeals to me very much. Games like ISLANDERS and Dorfromantik fill that niche quite nicely. There's a certain satisfaction in finding patterns, seeing your towns and rivers and railroads continually grow as you add more tiles onto them, making every piece fit together just so. It's well worth the time, and I look forward to seeing it develop further.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

I replayed Ori and the Blind Forest this year, so I could experience both games in the series back-to-back. It held up pretty well — the characters and environments are memorable, and the controls are loose and flowy, but in a way that makes it very satisfying to move around. It does have some odd quirks that I recall from my first playthrough, which were all the more apparent this second time around — an unwieldy checkpoint system, sparse combat, and level design that often asked for more precision than the aforementioned loose controls were equipped to handle. It's a good game, but not a perfect one.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps, on the other hand, is phenomenal. It addresses all the problems the first game had — the odd checkpoints are gone, the combat is leagues more complex, and the level design and controls feel tighter without losing that satisfying flow. Not only does it improve on Blind Forest's weakest aspects, it improves on its strongest ones as well. The movement still feels excellent, especially with all the added abilities. The world is more vibrant and varied in its environments, and more polished in its sound and visuals, not to mention the larger cast of characters that populates it. There's so much to explore and discover. I rate it very highly.

Grindstone

I got a new smartphone early in the year, so I've added a few mobile games to my day-to-day routine. Nothing too fancy, more along the lines of Piffle, Wordscapes, and Two Dots — the sort of game you can pick up and play a few levels when you have a bit of spare time. Grindstone has that same feel without any of the free-to-play baggage. A simple yet satisfying puzzle mechanic, continually iterated on and applied in interesting ways and new permutations, with a finely-crafted visual style and soundtrack. A clever, addicting time sink.

Sky: Children of the Light

I vaguely heard about this game around the time it came out on mobile, but since I (as mentioned) don't do a lot of mobile gaming, I didn't really look into it further at the time, and didn't really hear about it again until the game got a Switch release. That was enough to rekindle my curiosity — a free-to-play not-quite-MMO game with the same vibe as Journey? Sure, sounds like it could be interesting. And it is! In the back half of the year, I probably invested as much time into Sky as I did to Animal Crossing. I find myself quite enamored with its world and characters, and it's fun to fly around, explore, and take part in seasonal events. Gathering candlelight feels like a slow grind at times, but acquiring new capes and outfits and instruments to play has a certain satisfaction to it that makes it worthwhile. I think Sky's approach to multiplayer and communication is what interests me the most about it — the game is entirely non-competitive, and lets you engage and interact with other players as much (or as little) as you want, with a heavy emphasis on expressing yourself without words. Whether you're hanging out for a while or just passing through, it's always nice to light a candle and say hello.

Mini Motorways

Mini Metro has long been a favorite of mine. Its gameplay is fun, its minimalist sound and style appeal to me, and trains and subways are just kinda neat, okay? I've gotten a lot of hours out of it. Late in 2020 the game added custom level support, so going into this year I jumped at the chance to make some maps of my own — experimenting with the system, and recreating some transit lines close to home, rekindling my love of the game all the while.

Which brings us to Mini Motorways! With how much I admired their previous game, I had to give Dinosaur Polo Club's next title a go as well. The minimalist style and charm is all still there, and there are some interesting mechanics and a variety of challenges to play around with. There are subtle differences in the gameplay in ways that haven't quite clicked with me yet — Metro lets you be a lot more reactive when managing passengers, whereas Motorways requires you to be much more proactive when accounting for traffic and managing your resources. Even so, I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I don't know if it'll ever knock Mini Metro off its pedestal, but I'm happy for all the time I've put into it, and all the time I'll put into it in the future. Hopefully this one will get a level editor too.

Ikenfell

I like to branch out every once in a while, and play genres that aren't my usual cup of tea. I don't play a lot of turn-based RPGs or tactics games, but Ikenfell had enough charm with its characters, pixel art, and music (especially the music) that I was curious about it and wanted to give it a shot, and I'm happy I did. The combat was relatively easy to pick up (if a bit unwieldy at times, though that may have been my own fault as much as the game's) and offered a good variety of characters to use, and the story did its part to keep me interested and introduce new ideas and areas, never overstaying its welcome. A nice time, all around.

Tetris Effect: Connected

Sometimes you can't top a classic. What can I say? I like puzzle games. I like Tetris. I've gotten pretty decent at Tetris. I've wanted to play this one for a good while, so like Sky, its Switch release came as a welcome surprise and gave me the means to finally try it for myself. I enjoy Tetris 99, but I'll take a good single-player experience any day, and Tetris Effect provides that in spades. It is the quintessential Tetris experience — the gameplay is classic Tetris with some optional bells and whistles and a variety of challenge modes on top, and the visuals and sound design are immaculate, making each of its levels a feast for the senses. Seriously, look up a video or listen to the soundtrack or something. Whether you play Tetris or not, this is a game to be experienced.

Night in the Woods

This one... took me a while to get through. I started it late last year, set it down at some point, and didn't come back to it until the end of this year. The art and music are good, the gameplay is simple and straightforward, but the core of Night in the Woods is its narrative. The setting is well-crafted — it's bleak, but a very mundane bleak, where the days come and go and the world keeps turning literally even as it slowly falls apart around you metaphorically. The story is compelling, though it's the sort of compelling that I could only handle in small doses. It's raw and emotionally charged, at times uncomfortably so. The characters are well-written, and the main character in particular fascinates and frustrates me in very deliberate ways. Every so often it seems like there are no good choices, and you don't even get an option to just say nothing — the only way to proceed is to make her say the wrong thing and make everything worse for herself or her loved ones. It can get pretty rough, but maybe that's what makes its emotional moments, the moments of hope and forward progress and reaching out to others, all the more impactful. It's heavy, but it's a good sort of heavy.

-

Now that I've indulged myself and had a nice look back at 2021, it's time to start looking ahead again. I've got some good forward momentum going into 2022, and hopefully I can make the most of it. Best of luck to you all in the new year.

[aion-rsa]

15 Best SNES RPGs Ever Made

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SNES games might not be much to look at now, but in many ways, they were a massive improvement over any console games that came before. SNES developers could create massive worlds with detailed sprites that actually looked like what they were intended to represent. New advances in technology also meant that games could take their first real steps toward becoming the kinds of cinematic experiences we arguably take for granted today. And while 4 MB wasn’t even a ton of storage even space back then, it was still more than enough to fit an impressive script for a 40-hour story.

In short, the SNES was almost perfectly set up to be the home for RPGs. While the console RPG scene was still finding its footing at the time of the Super Nintendo’s release, many developers were more than willing to dip their toes into the genre to see what kind of experiences they could craft. That combination of experimentation and all-time great creative voices eventually resulted in some of the most beloved role-playing games ever made.

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the SNES in North America, now feels like a great time to look back at 15 of the best RPGs on the SNES. 

15. Shadowrun

In the early 1990s, console RPGs were synonymous with turn-based combat and medieval settings full of knights, sorcerers, and dragons. So, no one really knew what to make of a cyberpunk game with real-time combat set in a dystopian Seattle. However, those who stuck with Shadowrun found one of the best and grittiest stories of the 16-bit era, as well as some surprisingly innovative conversation and hacking systems.

Shadowrun was truly ahead of its time in almost every way. While it didn’t get that much attention when it was released, games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Ascent proudly carry on its legacy to this day. Even the Shadowrun franchise itself finally got its due with a trilogy of successful PC RPGs released over the last decade.

14. Soul Blazer

Even today, Soul Blazer is a title that not many gamers have heard of. Admittedly, it’s a little rough around the edges. Arriving early in the lifecycle of the SNES, the graphics and music aren’t quite up to par with the best games of its era, but the gameplay makes it a worthy addition to this list. Taking some inspiration from Actraiser, another beloved Quintet game, your goal in this action RPG is to clear out various lairs, rescue various souls (that could take the form of plants, animals, or other humans), and free the land from the evil Deathtoll.

Quintet would go on to hone Soul Blazer‘s best ideas in several other games (including Terranigma, another fantastic action RPG that sadly never made its way to North America). Unfortunately, Quintet shut down in the mid-2000s, and it’s unclear who exactly owns the rights to these games at this point. That sadly makes any official re-releases of these often-overlooked gems unlikely.

13. The 7th Saga

The 7th Saga is an excellent example of a game that had a lot of great ideas that never quite came together. Probably the best thing about the game is the playable characters. You have seven to choose from at the start (including a robot and an alien), and you eventually meet six other characters that you can either fight or recruit. It was also one of the first RPGs that didn’t include completely random combat. Enemies could actually be avoided through an innovative “radar” system.

Unfortunately, The 7th Saga is also unforgivingly difficult, with some enemies always surpassing your stats no matter how much you level up. So, while it may not have aged as gracefully as other games on this list, it’s an utterly fascinating project with incredible ideas that have since been incorporated into numerous genre classics.

12. Breath of Fire II

To be honest, Breath of Fire II doesn’t have a particularly memorable stand-out feature. Sure, there’s a town-building feature that lets you fill a town with various NPCs you meet throughout the game, but it’s easily ignored. Having a giant talking armadillo in your party is also pretty cool, but it’s obviously hard to recommend the game based on that alone. 

So why should you play Breath of Fire II? Well, it’s just a very solidly told fantasy story with a lengthy quest and strong turn-based combat. It’s nothing flashy, but it’s a strong overall entry into the Super Nintendo’s RPG library.

11. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

The release of Lufia II was overshadowed by the release of the next-gen systems and a SNES library already bursting with classic RPGs. It took a while for a lot of gamers to dig up this hidden gem, and some gamers simply never found it at all. To be fair, the story (which features a typical fantasy hero who has to save the world from the four evil Sinistrals) is a little mechanical, but Lufia II features some of the best graphics and music of any game on the console. Plus, there are tons of puzzles to solve and a 99-level randomized dungeon to eventually tackle. Honestly, Lufia II might feature more “gameplay” than any other Super Nintendo RPG.

While it’s billed as a sequel, Rise of the Sinistrals is actually a prequel to the first game, so you can feel free to dive right into it without playing through the first (though Lufia and the Fortress of Doom is well worth checking out as well). 

10. Harvest Moon

Arriving at the tail end of the SNES’ lifespan, Harvest Moon made a lot of gamers re-examine what an RPG could actually be. There’s no combat and no great quest to save the world. You’re just a simple farmer growing crops and raising livestock on the land you inherited from your grandfather. It sounds boring, but the gameplay loop is remarkably addictive. There’s a reason why the Harvest Moon series continues to this day and has inspired dozens of imitators, spin-offs, and sequels (most notably Stardew Valley).

Admittedly, some of the recent Harvest Moon games haven’t lived up to the series’ standards, but thanks to charming characters, witty writing, and its simple yet deep gameplay, there’s a very good argument that this first Harvest Moon game remains the best in the franchise.

9. Illusion of Gaia

The spiritual sequel to Soul Blazer exchanged the town-building mechanics of its predecessor for more involved combat, which honestly made it a better game overall. Illusion of Gaia also forgoes the traditional leveling of most RPGs for a roguelike system where protagonist Will can choose to increase his attack, defense, or health stats after clearing each room of enemies. As such, how you choose to proceed can make the final bosses of each dungeon significantly easier or much more difficult.

While it’s not technically set in the real world, Illusion of Gaia does incorporate several real-life locations, such as Egyptian pyramids, Incan ruins, and the Great Wall of China, leading to some of the most unique locales in any SNES RPG. It’s also a much better-looking game than Soul Blazer, fixing one of its predecessor’s biggest flaws.

8. Secret of Evermore

Square Enix (then Squaresoft) is primarily a Japanese developer, but after the massive success of multiple titles in the ‘90s, they decided to give an American studio a crack at the Square formula. While the basic gameplay of Secret of Evermore is obviously inspired by the superior Secret of Mana, Evermore mixes things up by restricting combat to just you and your trusty dog. There’s also a new alchemy mechanic that allows you to create potions when battling the game’s many tough bosses. 

For better or worse, Evermore is also graphically a much darker game than other Square titles of the era. It all mostly works here, but Square was ultimately not interested in pursuing Americanized versions of its games and Evermore is now more of a curiosity than anything else.

Read more

Games

25 Best SNES Games of All Time

By Chris Freiberg

Games

25 Best RPGs Ever Made

By Matthew Byrd

7. Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen

More of a military strategy sim than a typical RPG, The March of the Black Queen might be the most demanding game on the SNES. You will spend a lot of time managing units, some of which include ninjas, griffins, and witches. But when you pick just the right strategy, it’s oh so rewarding to watch them take back the continent of Zetegenia from the evil Empress Endora. It also features one of the denser stories of any 16-bit game. Many of the best plot beats may even remind you more of Game of Thrones than Lord of the Rings.

This is actually considered the fifth episode of the Ogre Battle saga, and while several sequels were produced over the years, the first four games that would have presumably featured the rise of Endora were never made. Sadly, though, Square Enix now owns the property, it doesn’t look like the Ogre Battle saga will ever be completed either. 

6. Final Fantasy IV

Plenty of RPGs were released before Final Fantasy IV (also known as Final Fantasy II in North America at the time of its release), but this was the true turning point for the JRPG genre. Of course, the graphics and sound were better with the move to more powerful hardware, but what really set it apart was the distinction of being one of the first RPGs to actually feature a fully fleshed-out plot complete with a complicated love triangle and a sympathetic villain in Golbez. It was also the first Square game to include the Active Time Battle system, which showed that JRPGs didn’t have to just be plodding turn-based affairs.

Honestly, the only downside of playing Final Fantasy IV on the SNES is that the original English translation is a little iffy. That’s been fixed in later ports and remakes, so while it might not be worth checking out on the SNES anymore over other options, it’s still worth playing in some form.

5. Super Mario RPG

Both Nintendo and Square were arguably at the height of their abilities in the mid-90s, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when they finally teamed up, the result was an absolute masterpiece. Super Mario RPG expertly combined the beloved Mushroom Kingdom setting and Mario platforming with Square’s top-tier storytelling abilities and advanced RPG combat systems for a truly epic game. 

Those who have played through Super Mario RPG still yearn for a true sequel developed by Square or, at the very least, the addition of Geno to Super Smash Bros. Given how beloved the game is, it’s surprising that Square and Nintendo still haven’t teamed up for another RPG. The Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi games are good, but none have surpassed this classic.

4. Secret of Mana

Closer to The Legend of Zelda than Final Fantasy in gameplay, Secret of Mana was perhaps the most innovative RPG of the ‘90s. It introduced many gamers to faster, varied combat, three-player multiplayer, and an absolutely massive game world. Even better, it’s all wrapped up with some of the best music and graphics of the generation. While still confined to the 2D limitations of the SNES, Secret of Mana’s systems are closer to what we see today in modern RPGs and action games than anything that came before.

While this game has been ported and remade perhaps more than any other game on this list, none of those versions quite match the first release. The original version of Secret of Mana still looks and feels timeless. 

3. Earthbound

RPGs were generally considered more niche games in the ‘90s. They rarely sold well, but at least did well critically. Earthbound is even more unusual because the initial reviews were rather tepid, yet it’s now considered one of the greatest games of all time. Most gamers just weren’t ready for an RPG set in the modern world that alternated between the cheery enthusiasm of childhood and the ominous alienation of growing up. In that way, Earthbound could be considered a PG-rated South Park that debuted two years before South Park even premiered.

Surreal, satirical, and sometimes just plain weird, Earthbound remains one of the more unique and innovative RPGs ever made. It’s a triumph of the genre that dozens of other games have attempted to emulate, but none have yet surpassed. Now, if Nintendo would just get around to finally putting out an official English localization of the sequel…

2. Final Fantasy VI

Two decades and nine sequels later, there are still some RPG fans who consider Final Fantasy VI to be the pinnacle of the series. That’s debatable, but it’s easily the best of the 2D entries as well as a kind of swan song to the gameplay that introduced many gamers to RPGs for the first time, with its pitch-perfect ATB battles, a huge, varied world to explore, and an epic, apocalyptic story. 

But it’s the cinematic aspects that make Final Fantasy VI stand out. The rousing soundtrack pushes the SNES to its absolute limits, making moments like the famous opera scene and the final battle against Kefka feel especially epic. Square arguably came to rely on CG movies a little too much in later games, but Final Fantasy VI is proof that the developers were master storytellers long before that.

1. Chrono Trigger

Is there really anything to dislike about Chrono Trigger? The time-traveling story that sees our heroes journey across millennia to save the world is simply outstanding. The characters, from Frog to Magus, are among the most memorable in any RPG. While the combat system might be a little simpler than some of the games on this list, letting party members team up to use their “Tech” abilities in different ways is endlessly customizable and entertaining. Of course, all of that occurs before you even dig into the new game plus and dozen different endings.

It’s difficult to label any video game as truly perfect, but Chrono Trigger may be the closest thing to perfection that gaming has ever seen. More than two decades on, it remains a high point in the RPG genre that all gamers need to experience at least once, and it’s easily the very best RPG on the SNES.

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[thescatterbrainedwriter]

Just Some Coffee

After finally getting her dad to open up about her mom, Jessie notes Emily seems to like his company and suggests he take her out for coffee or something to talk

Word count: 2,993

Warnings: none, just some fluff

Flash Fanfic

**Note: at this point in time, none of team Flash know what Estrata’s real name is. Estrata = Emily. Also, Emily is my personal character. I just like to stick her in places 😅 Enjoy!! 🥔 🎨

———

Harry didn’t want to do it. He was already on good terms with team Flash, he even became friends with Cecile. How much more socializing was he supposed to do anyway? This never would have happened on Earth 2, he had his lab he could hide in whenever he wanted. He was actually starting to miss the days where people left him alone because they were afraid of him. ’She seems to genuinely enjoy your company,’ Jessies voice repeated in his head. ’I think she might actually like you.’ Henry growled in irritation as the sentences played on loop. He didn’t want to admit it but, since she would often sit quietly in the corner of whatever lab he worked in, he didn’t mind her company either. At least she knew how to be quiet and her occasional inputs were actually pretty helpful. He growled to himself again, standing in the middle of Cisco’s lab having no where else to really wander to once Jessie left for Earth 3, trying to get back into the mindset of working on the Thinker problem but couldn’t quite do so. He couldn’t tell if it was from the mishap with the thinking cap he built or the suggestion Jessie made beginning to worm its way into ‘good idea’ territory. With a huff he decided to do something about it and nearly stormed out of the lab in frustration.

Making his way into the cortex he found everyone enjoying some down time doing mundane tasks on the computer or looking over data sheets. Emily was sitting at one of the desks with her usual holoscreen up reading something. He couldn’t tell what it was but it didn’t matter, he had a question and only she could answer it. So he strode over and stood awkwardly stiff just outside of her peripheral. Emily glanced up having felt his approach and smiled. “Oh, hey Harry,” she greeted before looking back to her screen. “Hey, hi,” he said rather forced. She continued looking at her screen for a moment, Harry still standing there, before she looked back at him with a curious face having not felt or heard him leave. “Can I.... help you?” She asked, Cisco and Ralph observing in curiosity and amusement.

“No, well, yes,” Harry stuttered. “I suppose, suppose it depends on your answer. Anyway...” Emily cocked an eyebrow turning her full attention to him sitting up straighter from her slouched position over the desk and now everyone else was beginning to quietly observe what was going on. Harry paused suddenly unsure if he should go through with his question or just bail to return to Cisco’s lab to sulk as usual. “Would you... want to go for some coffee?” he asked sounding somewhat constipated. Now it was Emily’s turn to freeze at the unexpected question. Cisco got a really amused smile on his face also not expecting this and eagerly anticipated the conclusion as did Iris, who had been sitting at a computer, and Ralph.

“What?” Emily asked with a confused chuckle.

“Coffee,” Harry repeated. “Did you want to get coffee?” She blinked still processing the question making him more uncomfortable than he already was. “Jessie.... suggested it....” he added. “For socializing purposes. I guess.”

“Yeah, ok,” she agrees with a smile. Harry continued standing stiffly for a moment not quite knowing what to do now. “Good. Great. Ok,” he said before turning and beginning to leave.

“Hey wait! Harry!” Emily called making him stop and turn around again. “You never told me when,” she said still smiling.

“When what?” Harry asked oblivious.

“When you wanted to get coffee,” she replied with a little sigh. “You wanna go now? Later? Tomorrow?”

“Now is fine. Does it work for you?” He asks.

She grins again, a little wider, reaching a hand toward the holoscreen still open on the desk and makes a fist closing it. “Yeah, that works,” she agrees standing. With out much of a nod he turns around again and briskly walks toward the exit, Emily trying to keep up, while everyone watches them leave with amused smiles. Her drones Medi and GP float behind talking amongst themselves.

“Are they going on a date or something?” Medi asks. “Looks like it?” GP confirms. “Should we follow to watch?” Medi asks uncharacteristically mischievously. “Definitely!” GP agrees enthusiastically.

“You will not,” Emily scolds turning around just before leaving and pointing at them.

“Can’t stop us,” GP taunts.

“Oh yeah? Steadfast Protocol,” she ordered. Medi and GP groan in disappointment as the protocol initiates preventing them from leaving S.T.A.R. Labs property. Emily smiles triumphantly turning back round to follow Harry to Jitters. She vaguely heard the drones trying to beg Tinker, her third drone who had moseyed over and was not under the protocol, to follow them on their date and Tinker refusing as he wasn’t interested in their stalking activities.

——

Unacceptable. Simply unacceptable, Harry thought to himself as they walked. How is she so amicable? We’ve been talking about nothing in particular and it’s been.... nice? Not in the least bit annoying? They opted to walk to Jitters and in their awkwardness, had begun making small talk about nothing really in particular. It only took a few minutes to arrive and Harry opened the door for Emily then chose a two seat table toward the back of the shop sitting awkwardly in silence. Emily was somewhat amused by his odd behavior, she had never seen him act like this before, and just studied him sitting in the seat directly across from him. Shortly after they seated themselves, a barista came over to take their order. “Hi,” she said with a smile. “Welcome to Jitters. What can I get you?” Harry’s head turned so fast to her out of surprise Emily thought he may have snapped his neck. “Just a regular coffee, black,” he said.

“And I think I’ll have a hot French Vanilla, small, just cream please,” Emily added with a smile. The girl nods before heading off to fulfill the requests. More silence with Harry staring everywhere but in front of him amusing Emily some more. “So....” she says trying to garner his attention, “what do you wanna talk about now?” Harry finally looks her in the eye looking like he suddenly became constipated and couldn’t talk. “I think you should pick the topic,” he deflected. “I invited you out after all.”

Emily got a mischievous idea and shook her head. “No, it’s ok. You pick.”

“No, I really think you should,” Harry insisted. “I don’t have anything interesting to talk about.”

“Well, what topics do you have to talk about?”

“Well.... mostly science stuff.... technical things.... You know, not interesting things.” Harry attempted deflecting. Just then the barista came back to deliver their drinks. “Oh, thank you!” Emily said with a bright smile. “No problem!” the barista smiled back. “Let us know if you need anything else alright?” Harry nodded and she walked off back behind the counter to help other customers.

“Oh, I don’t mind listening to those things,” Emily said getting back on topic. “Friend of mine would go on and on about the things he made and going into detail about his mechanical and engineering feats. Even discussed coding and programming.”

“Really?” Harry asked incredulously.

“Mhmm,” she confirmed nodding her head looking into her coffee. “You know my drones right?”

“Yeah?”

“He helped me make them,” she smiled. “I came up with the concept, he helped me fabricate the parts and program them and told me how to fix them if I ever needed to. Now I can do their maintenance and any upgrades blindfolded.” She leaned her head against her hand while leaning over her side of the table. Harry blinked in impressed disbelief. “I was also the one who programmed their personalities in,” Emily added running her finger around the rim of her cup.

“That.... doesn’t surprise me,” Harry commented.

“What’s that supposed to mean??”

“Just that, well, they seem like different parts of your core personality,” he explained casually before sipping his coffee. Emily squinted suspiciously at him. “Explain.”

“Well, Tinker is your creative, GP your inquisitive, and Medi your protective.” Emily looked at him thoughtfully and was surprised he picked up anything like that about anyone, least of all her. “That, and they’re a touch annoying,” he concluded.

“Yeah, they are huh?” Emily agreed staring off into space reminiscing about their usual hi-jinx. Harry raised his eyebrows curiously. “You’re... not going to protest that?”

“Nah,” she dismissed casually. “I’m fully aware I can be really very annoying. I just have a hard time turning it off sometimes,” she said sitting up and finally drinking some of her coffee. “Well at least you can acknowledge it,” he said amused.

“Of course! I did make it a mission of mine back home after all,” she grinned. Harry couldn’t help but chuckle and sipped his coffee again. “So, why don’t you choose a topic to change to,” Emily proposed. He shook is head in response. “No, I told you. I don’t have anything interesting to talk about. Jessie and even Cisco could tell you that I’m... well... long-winded.” Her face soften and she smiled thoughtfully. “Hmm, ok, theeeeeen.... tell me about quarks?” He looked at her puzzled. “You..... want to know about.... quarks? Really?”

“Well, maybe not but. You know about quarks, and I don’t really know about quarks, so talking about quarks would probably be a good place to start,” Emily half rambled before sipping her coffee and trying to look innocent. Harry just looked suspiciously at her trying to figure out if she was serious or not. “What?” She asked noticing his staring. “I may be primarily geared toward entertainment but I still like learning about this stuff too.” He just sighed in amusement. “Ok, alright. Fine. I’ll talk about quarks,” he relented lighting up Emily’s face in anticipation. He felt weird noting it had been a while since he felt something similar; back when Jessie was a kid he would sometimes talk about scientific principles to her even when she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was pretty sure he explained atoms to her when he fed her that mush trying to pass as baby food. Whenever Jessie asked about something science related he was always happy to over explain. “So, a quark is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter,” he began. “Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, you probably know them better as protons and neutrons.” Emily settled in and sipped on her coffee quite invested in his epic monologue.

——

He had no idea how long he had been lecturing but eventually Harry became aware of how much time had passed. Their coffees had long since gotten cold or finished, the light outside was not as brilliant, and the place had gotten noticeably more quiet. Emily was still very much invested in what he was saying and would occasionally glance at passing customers, so when he wound down his topic she became a bit unhappy. “Eh, so nanotechnology can have more practical applications in medicine and general sciences than, well, making Barry’s suit more portable,” he concluded. Finally giving Emily more than a fleeting thought, he realized she was still waiting for him to say something else. “Ah, it’s getting late. I didn’t realize I rambled so long, sorry.” She smiled a little straightening her posture with a deep sigh.”oh no, no need to apologize. I really enjoyed listening to you.”

“Really?” Harry asked not really believing her. “Mhmm,” she nodded in confirmation. “You light up when you loose yourself in your knowledge and go head first into explaining you passion projects.” Harry just stared not sure how to respond. She stood grabbing her long empty cup and stretching. “You should smile more you know. You have a nice smile.” He stiffened at the unexpected compliment making Emily smile in amusement before she headed toward a near by trash can. “Should probably get back now, don’t you think?”

“Hem, yeah. Yeah we.... should,” Harry agreed standing quickly and grabbed his cup to toss out. Smiling awkwardly he ushers her out and back to the lab.

——

It was relatively late when they got back, sun was getting really low but twilight was still holding onto the sky in defiance of the night. They continued to make small talk, pauses between topics becoming longer and longer as they began running out of things to say, but Emily noticed a bit of difference in is speech patterns. He seemed to be deliberating on what to say next for longer periods than usual. Before she could ask about it, they rounded the corner into the cortex where Cisco and Caitlyn were still around. “Oh hey guys,” Caitlyn greeted with a smile.

“Soo,” Cisco stared turning around in his chair. Emily lifted an eyebrow in preparation for whatever he was about to say. She could tell by his tone it was going to be something tease-y too. “How was your coffee date?”

“It.... wasn’t a date...” Harry tried denying.

“It was... kind of a date,” Caitlyn agreed. Harry looked at Emily for help but she just nodded making the ‘little’ hand gesture. “It was very nice,” Emily continued looking around Harry to Cisco.

“It wasn’t a date!” Harry denied again a bit more frustratedly. “We just went for coffee! We socialized!”

“Coffee can be a date,” Cisco challenged.

“Well, doesn’t always have to be a date date,” Emily countered trying to defend Harry at least a little bit. “Coffee dates can be among friends and colleagues too just to talk or something.” Harry pointed at her turning to face Cisco as if to say ‘yeah see?’. “Besides, we talked about quarks, quantum mechanics, astrophysics.... he even went into detail about what the pipeline does.”

“Ok yeah, definitely not a date,” Cisco relented.

“That’s what— been trying to tell you!”

“Alright, we’re sorry Harry,” Caitlyn apologized. “Just teasing you a bit. That’s all.”

“Well, regardless, I had fun,” Emily semi-teased smiling up at Harry. He just looked down at her unamused and unable to think of a rebuttal. He just huffed and turned to leave. Turning her attention back to Cisco and Caitlyn, Emily just smiled cheekily. “You guys gonna head out?”

“Yeah, we were waiting for you guys to come back so you could tell us all about your experience,” Cisco said standing to stretch. “But it sounds like nothing happened really.”

“Well, he was pretty awkward, didn’t really have much to say other than going on and on about sciences,” Emily explained. “But, I didn’t mind.”

“You.... actually like that stuff?” Cisco asked. “You never really seemed like the science type. Not like us anyway.”

“Yeah, funny thing. Some of the things I can do require a basic knowledge of science. Haven’t had much opportunity to learn the more complicated stuff so it was nice to have someone talk enthusiastically about it.”

“Well I’m sure you made him very happy listening to him,” Caitlyn concluded picking up her things preparing to leave. “Have a good night, Estrata.”

“You too Caitlyn,” Emily returned.

“Sooo, Estrata,” Cisco started sauntering over to her. Emily sighed smiling a little at him wondering what he would go on about now. “Did you actually have a good time?” Emily just looked at him sighing again. “C’mon, you can tell me the truth. Was it really horrible?”

“Cisco...” Emily said placing a hand on his shoulder. “It was fun, honestly, I had a good time.”

“Hmmm, yeah. Ok,” he dismissed not fully believing her. “See you tomorrow. You and Harry behave now,” he teased pointing at her as he left. Emily just left him with a highly unamused look. “Goodniiiiight Cisco.” He just smiled smugly as he left leaving Emily in the cortex. Flicking her hand in a downward gesture, like one would do flipping off a light, the lights went out as she left the room herself. Wandering the halls making sure everything was set for the night, she found herself drifting off into thought and nearly collided with Harry. “Oh! I’m sorry!” She squeaked taking a quick step back. “Lost in my own head, didn’t see you.”

“What are you doing?” He asked kind of sternly.

“I’m.... uh.... locking up for the night? I was just about to go downstairs to check everything before heading to bed.”

“Ok,” he replied flatly. Emily stood there staring at him wondering if he would say something else, and he seemed to do the same before making a move to turn away. “Hey wait, I have a question,” she piped up. “What?” He asked turning around again. “I, uhm, noticed you seem to pause, a lot more often than you used to. Which was basically never.”

“....And?”

“You didn’t.... use dark matter with your thinking cap.... did you?” Emily asked nervously causing Harry to pause. “Because that would probably be a bad idea. Especially after you told Cisco you wo—“

“I didn’t,” Harry interjected. Emily paused studying his face. “Ok,” she said dropping the conversation. “Ok, I’m gonna go, do a once over downstairs and theeennnn.... go to bed.”

“Ok,” Harry said nodding.

“If you need anything you, know where to find me,” Emily stated turning away to head down the hall. “Yup,” Harry replied flatly again turning to go his separate way. “Oh, by the way!” Emily turned around walking backwards down the hall now. “Thanks for coffee!” She smiled wide turning around again disappearing around a corner. Harry stood for a moment watching her go before cracking a smirk. Dangerously charming, he thought continuing on his way. Not the worst thing I suppose.

————————••••••••————————

~Fin~

[dario-novak]

“I’m with you, Master Bruce. I’ve always been with you.” 

Name: Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth.  Age: 70 Species: Human Birthplace: London, England Current Whereabouts: The Mousehole, Sokovia

BASICS

Gender: Cisgender male Sexuality: Heterosexual Birthdate: April 8th, 1951 Height: 6′ Occupation: Butler Affiliations: Bruce Wayne, Bat Family Public Identity? Yes Signed the Accords? No Abilities:  Expert in prosthetic makeup and costumes Trained in emergency medical techniques Proficient with mechanical and computer systems Expert in domestic sciences Proficient with firearms + Intelligent, steadfast, caring - Sarcastic, blindly loyal, perfectionist

BIOGRAPHY

Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth was born on April 8th, 1951 in London, England. He was a quiet and bright child, doing well in school, though he didn’t exactly have dreams of going on to university as much as he liked books. He decided early on that he wanted to be a military man and could have seen a career for himself there. Maybe it was being a kid in post WWII London but stories were everywhere and it seemed like a noble profession to follow. He enlisted in the British Armed Forces when he was 18 and from 1969-1972 he served, largely in Ireland where he saw and dealt with many horrible things. While he hadn’t gone in as a medic, he had a knack for it and became very good at emergency medical procedures and was also fairly apt with his guns.

His military career was much shorter than he expected (though, admittedly, after everything he’d been through in four years he wasn’t sure he wanted it to go on much longer) when his father’s dying letter requested that he come follow in his footsteps and serve as the Wayne family’s butler in Gotham City. It was a shocking change of pace but, a dutiful son, he did as he was asked, somewhat grateful for the excuse to leave the army.

Alfred didn’t know much about being a butler but the Waynes were kind, and rich, and since they’d trusted and respected his father so much they agreed to take him on and pay for his finishing courses. It was certainly a far cry from the bullet ridden streets of Belfast and Derry but the change of pace was actually welcome. He’d only been working for the Waynes a few months and was still taking his finishing courses when their son, Bruce Wayne, was born. The boy would change Alfred’s life in ways he never would have anticipated.

After his courses, Alfred took to his duties as butler seriously and set very high standards for himself. He grew to love and respect the Waynes and their young son, even though he was somewhat of a trial. Tragedy struck when the Waynes were gunned down which left Alfred the sole caretaker for young master Bruce. While he mourned the boy’s parents, it was clear he was all Bruce had left so Alfred took on that duty and was only thirty when he became Bruce’s legal guardian. He approached that duty as seriously as he had any other and did everything he could to help Bruce through the following difficult time.

Secretly, Alfred sometimes wonders if he could have done more, though he felt that he gave it his all at the time. Bruce went his own way at the much too young age of fourteen to train and travel and Alfred, in spite of his protests, was left behind to look after the estate. It was difficult to argue with Bruce, even then, and Alfred was above all an obedient servant so, in spite of not thinking it was in Bruce’s best interests, he stayed.

It was over a decade before Alfred saw Bruce in person again though he fretted and worried and was grateful for every check in Bruce made, though they were often few and far between. When Bruce finally returned to Gotham he was a grown man and in some ways hardly recognizable as the same child he’d been. Still, Alfred welcomed him with open arms and accepted it, as best he could, when Bruce took up the mantle of Batman soon after. It wasn’t as though he had much of a choice in the matter, as with most things where Bruce was concerned.

The decades that followed unfolded chaotically but Alfred was always there, supportive, learning new skills as best he could to try and give Bruce what he needed, and accepting into his heart and home the various members of a growing family of vigilantes. Alfred never expected to be involved in this kind of life but at least it wasn’t boring.

Tensions started increasing with the ISA and the Accords, eventually culminating in their departure from Gotham at the behest of Wonder Woman, and the burning down of Wayne Manor, which had been Alfred’s home for decades. It wasn’t easy but it had to be done and so he came to Sokovia with Master Bruce and has, as ever, tried to adapt to their ever changing lives.

HEADCANONS

Given that Alfred isn’t a master of hand to hand combat (and it has been quite a long time since he was in the army) or particularly acrobatic, he is the only member of the Bat family who Bruce permits to have guns. Alfred generally sees himself as the last line of defense and he is good with a gun, though he strictly aims to incapacitate, not kill. There were a few handguns stashed in strategic places around Wayne Manor though Alfred’s go-to weapon was an umbrella gun, with the rifle disguised to look like an umbrella. He’s had to use it a few times and it was certainly something he’s brought with him to Sokovia, though most people in the Mousehole probably assume it is just an umbrella.

Alfred keeps in diligent contact with the members of the Bat family. He was the only person Barbara told that she kept in contact with Jason Todd and ever since he’s sent messages to the former Robin through her. He maintains several group text messages with the various Robins and Batgirls and also texts them individually just to check in on them. He is also the most reliable source for updates on Bruce’s wellbeing and will loop people like Helena Bertinelli, Superman (before he joined the ISA anyway), and Diana Prince into those communications.

It may appear to some like Alfred never sleeps. He’s generally there, in the background, cleaning or puttering around in some way and he never failed to see Bruce off and welcome him back home no matter when those two events occurred. In truth, Alfred does sleep, a few solid hours a night at least, but also has mastered the art of the power nap. He stealthily snatches 20 minutes here and there throughout the day to keep himself going so that he can be ever accessible if Bruce or someone else needs him. It’s hard to catch him in the act but if someone dedicated a considerable amount of time to it they might be able to.

While Alfred has certainly not befriended everyone in the Mousehole he is generally seen as a benign, supportive presence. He’s started to learn the habits of at least the more long standing members and will often bring the late night workers a cup of coffee without being asked, or toss off a suggestion to someone obviously puzzling through something, or bring a sandwich or a snack if he’s noticed that someone seems to have not eaten for some time.

Since they’ve arrived, Alfred has been diligently studying Sokovian and can sometimes be seen with the book he picked up about it, reading it in a corner or by a fire. He doesn’t like the idea of not being able to communicate, though curiously there seem to be few Sokovians in the Mousehole. Regardless, he wants to be able to speak the language of the country he’s in so he studies.

[cateringisalie]

Village: Resident Evil ramblings

(Some spoilers)

Ethan Winters is a goddamn idiot.

I say this without a shred of nostalgia; I first encountered him in RE7 and feel less than nostalgic towards the guy. RE7 without the benefit of the former entrants was a FPS horror and pretty good. Though you couldn’t escape that the characters you remembered were the Baker family and Mia; Ethan was a walking camera with a gun and some very simplistic emotional responses (fear, rescue wife, escape, swear occasionally). Having now run through the whole sequence of games, Ethan stands out starkly as the blandest and least interesting protagonist the series ever produced. He is possibly worse than Piers. Village updates Ethan’s personality. A bit. Well. Not really. Still got that fear, still got the swearing. Still got a mind to escape. But rather than rescue his wife, it’s about rescuing his daughter. I mean; Mia was gunned down and shot a further 9000 times by infuriating series stalwart Chris Redfield a little under ten minutes into the game proper. Not that Ethan really comes to terms with the trauma. By minute fifteen of the game the van you’ve been shoved in by Chris (who doesn’t shoot you for no reason he feels like explaining) has crashed and Ethan’s daughter is missing. Mourning Mia doesn’t actually enter into Ethan’s thought process. Goddamn idiot. Not to say that life with Mia was exactly picturesque; a few years after RE7 the couple are now somewhere nebulous in Eastern Europe in a very lovely house with a distressing number of empty wine bottles in the kitchen. A happy marriage this does not seem to be given Mia doesn’t want to get into the events of RE7 anymore, but Ethan does – but also failing to understand that the cover-up of the incident might be why no one is talking much about the whole mess in Louisiana and that bringing it up both distresses and angers Mia. But; the inciting incident has occurred and we’re propelled into our new scenario. Ethan; once again fish out of water, and its not like we have a choice. This is not to say Village does not repeat the same narrative trick of changing POV character, but there is both less of that, and the Half-Life-style regimented first person view jarringly completely goes out the window in the last quarter. It was less than consistent at points, but sparingly when occasionally and jarringly camera angles shifted to depict an introduction. But the game is also perfectly happy to render whole FPS sequences with gun visible and everything as it plays out a story beat, so... I don’t know? Fortunately Ethan’s environment and the setting are much more interesting. The unnamed Village is a satisfying knot of tangled streets, locked doors and environmental obstacles. Enemies don’t respawn per se, but additional enemies are added on subsequent visits to the effective hub of the game. There’s livestock to kill and give the Duke – the merchant playing a similar role to the pirate-like guy from RE4. Duke’s an entertaining character (some have objected to his physical and hugely overweight depiction); chatty and far more knowing than he will let on. He has a dangling thread come the end so perhaps will reappear elsewhere. He’ll sort the gun upgrades, supplies, let you sell treasure and point you towards your next destinations. Which is just as well as the human population of the village dies out somewhere between the first and second hour. No one left and any futile attempts to save people end in almost hilariously disastrous tragedies (no Ethan, don’t go higher in a building that is on fire). Leaving you with Lycans, zombies and gargoyles to fend off. Occasionally there’s some bigger foes on the level of the Executioner from RE5 but nothing on the level of the Tyrants. That kind of thing is left to the Village Lords. The villagers – before they all die – have a curiously unfamiliar religion and praise a figure known as Mother Miranda. She reportedly kept the village safe, but something has changed and now the Lycans run amok and without restraint. Not hard to pin that the reason for the change is Rose’s arrival (or could it be Ethan? COULD IT? No. Man is a goddamn idiot). The only door out of the village you can open is to Castle Dimitrescu and... It feels unnecessary to even get into what awaits. Given fandom have been so noisy about the tall lady and her vampiric daughters since the first trailer. She is so very, very tall. The castle is the first mode of Village. Possibly closest to RE7; Dimitrescu’s daughters are vulnerable based on certain environmental details (read the notes!) but otherwise should be fled from. Dimitrescu herself is invulnerable to everything bar one weapon and you need to work at getting that, so she needs to be fled from. Otherwise, explore the castle, find treasure. Sneak. Solve puzzles. It all looks suitably gorgeous and you get multiple chances to see if as you loop through the rooms and unlock more doors. The Village macro mechanics wrought as micro here. There’s a canny hint at a late reveal in the blunt utility of in-game mechanics to be had too. But – really should have been obvious given their prominence in the trailer – given Castle Dimitrescu is the first level, it means we must say goodbye to the very Tall Lady with knife hands and move onto someone else. In between levels, we get the first reinforcement of a tease from the trailer; the symbol of the Umbrella corporation. Its engraved into a location called the Ceremony Site. Its daubed on a cave wall as high as the Tall Lady. Its on the strange structure you insert the yellow flasks each Village Lord guards. And it means... almost nothing. RE's meta-plot has always been a mess and everyone’s favorite pharmaceutical company hasn’t been so active for a while, so the idea that we might be getting into some interesting weirdness with them again is oh so appealing. And yet – I was disappointed. Despite the repeated glimpses of the familiar white and red logo, the connection ultimately comes down to one letter I found at about 7/8s of the way through. Oswell Spencer – founder of the company – visited the Village years ago and saw the cave painting and adopted it as his logo. Oh. That’s... underwhelming. The same letter does at least prod at wiring Village’s latter reveals into the formation of the company along with tying in some parts of RE5 but if you thought this would be the company or the family dynasty origins or anything like that, you are in for a disappointment. It’s a tease and one that goes nowhere and does little. Oh we might now see how Spencer got into the whole inadvertent zombie making mess but its not a factor in the plot of this game nor does it really change the stakes of the previous. Perhaps I should be glad it’s so frivolous given other retcons in certain other franchises, but it feels so suspect to have drawn the attention and then shuffle the implications out the side-door. At least the other village lords have their own appeals. The second level is RE once again stealing PT (the PS4 demo to announce Silent Hills) given Konami outright don’t care about it anymore. Stripped of your guns and inventory, it’s a claustrophobic puzzle level requiring you to hide with mechanics familiar to both Evil Within and Alien Isolation. That same loop of rooms as you seek out puzzle solutions and hide from a staggeringly distressing malevolent entity. The third is combat light until the final confrontation; the fight staged in a flooded village – oh and Chris who still doesn’t shoot you but refuses to explain anything. And the fourth cheats. Heisenberg is thoroughly entertaining and grabs two levels for his own; an assault on a stronghold and his horrible cyborg factory outside of town. He has Magneto metal powers. Heisenberg is the camp villain to outdo the other camp villains. He’s having fun, he kinda likes Ethan and is oddly on his side. He found time to put together massive signposts to direct Ethan onto the last two levels (a good thing too given his lack of sense). But both levels are lacking. The Stronghold is a relentless firefight against hoards of mook enemies; the factory is overly long and maze-like. I am as tired as Ethan when he exclaims “What more?” And after Heisenberg is dealt with; the long, convoluted lurches to the ending. First person goes out the window. The game dabbles in characters toying with your understanding of what was going on but in a strangely limited way and completely ignoring the other implications of the reveal. Suddenly you mow down more and more enemies than ever before, bullets scarcely a concern. The final reveals of who/what/where/how come through. Not exactly explicable for what’s on-screen, but the effort’s been made to tie Village’s overt supernatural tendencies back into a world setup in RE. Its not magic and those are not truly werewolves. And the villain’s motivation is! Hugely disappointing. Connected as it is to the Umbrella letter, you might hope for something completely out there, but its unsatisfying and feels pretty sexist too. Or at least lacking in imagination to an astonishing degree and yet here we are. The game feels sloppiest as the final boss fight arrives flitting between characters without the shaky but workable character hand-offs RE7 deployed. Back in first person mode to talk to Duke one last time before engaging in.... a relatively simple boss fight. All the boss fights have been pretty easy – there’s nothing on the level of RE6’s sometimes horrendous contextual fights, or the annoying two-player RE5, nor the demanded accuracy of hitting specific weak-points as in RE7. And I don’t mind that. Unload all your weapons and keep your health up. And victory. There are fix-it fics already, but really, I don’t see the point in trying to fix the issue these people have. There’s an obvious setup for a game past this one with a strange throw-away reveal in the end-sequence (whither RE9, Revelations 3 or something else there are no clues as yet). There’s a spoiler for the sting given the end-credits lists a character who didn’t appear in the main game. The sting itself might wind up drawing on the sting from Revelations 2. Village is not RE at its best, but is at least more in the spirit of goofy, campy nonsense than 7. It at least is more at home with playing with the trappings of horror while not actually trying to be outright scary. As with 7, the villains are more interesting and more memorable than the good guys. And – as I found out after completing the game – we were robbed of Ada Wong dressed up like a Bloodborne character somewhere in the game. And that I think is the biggest shame of all this.

[codylabs]

Having the Time of My Life Overanalyzing Voltron Science, A Visual Novel

The team’s little mantra in the original show was “ Activate interlock! Dynotherms connected! Infracells up! Mega thrusters are go! Let’s go Voltron Force!” And they said this each and every single time their 5 lions formed together into the combined robot.

In today’s essay I will be deeply examining and wildly speculating about what exactly interlocks, dynatherms, infracells, and mega thrusters are, why it’s entirely crucial that these 4 items be part of the Voltron preflight checklist, and explaining why (or at least inferring that) you should take it all seriously.

Interlock

The Interlock is easy. It’s probably whatever system is used to attach the 5 lions together. So what are they? Magnets? Docking rings like on spacecraft? Just mechanical latches? Hard to say. But something as simple as a mechanical latch isn’t something you’d have to ‘activate’ or actively call out during pre-flight, so I would suspect ‘interlock’ is likely a catch-all term for not only the mechanical attachments, but also the control circuit used to synchronize the computers onboard all 5 lions. It would be a complex integrated system within the black lion, which also explains why they refer to it in the singular instead of plural.

Without the interlock, Voltron would just be the 5 lion with their individual brains tied together like duct-taped dogs. The interlock synchronizes them into a common intelligence, under the direction of the centralized black lion.

I don’t know what the mechanical structure of the interlocks would be. Conventional material science would suggest that a robot as large as Voltron wouldn’t be able to even stand, let alone run and jump and fight, so even if we assume nearly-indestructible exotic alien materials, I think you would still want something more than hooks and pins to connect the various pieces together. It would be best if the actual structural elements could somehow fuse at the molecular level. Welding is the most obvious method for that, but there’s also Vaan-Der-Waals forces, which could bond together flat surfaces that could then be slid apart. And maybe if you had superconducting cables running between the elements and then ran a ton of current through them, then you could use magnetic binding? I’m not sure if that would work, but it sounds futuristic enough to be true. IDK.

Dynatherms

I can’t tell if this is ‘dynatherms’ or ‘dinotherms’, but the first sounds less prehistoric, so I’ll go with that. So it sounds like pieces of the words ‘dynamic’ and ‘thermal’ mashed together, which don’t really mean anything except in the context of thermodynamics, so.... What is this? A reactor? A steam engine?

Of all the various components this one puzzled me longest, but I think I’ve got it.

The dynatherms are the cooling system, meant to radiate away the massive amounts of heat its engines and motors would generate. Most spacecraft, heck most vehicles in general, have a system analogous to this. Here’s the one the ISS uses:

Voltron doesn’t have any weird extendo-wings like this, but it’s conceivable that they could be built directly into the outer layer of its armor. The black lion’s little red wings are likely a part of the system too. If you ask me, the surface area of its armor isn’t nearly enough to dissipate enough heat to keep a thing like this cool, but I think I can ignore that.

So anyway. At first this explanation doesn’t seem to fit, since they say ‘dynatherms connected’, not ‘coolant pumps started’ or ‘refrigerant levels maximum’ or something. You don’t ‘connect’ the heat radiators, they’re always connected. You just pump water through them. Right?

Wrong! Here’s my sufficiently futuristic explanation: Voltron’s cooling system doesn’t use coolant and pumps or any type of conventional refrigeration at all! Instead, the ‘dynatherms’ are a network of thermally superconductive cables connecting all its motors and engines to radiative armor panels on the exterior. Thermal superconductivity is a concept I learned from Star Wars and later found out is a real-ish thing. Basically any vibrations in any part of a thermally-superconductive material can frictionlessly travel to any other part of the material. Since temperature is based on vibrations, this means that if a hot thing touches one part of the material, everything else touching the material can instantly feel that heat, and even dissipate that heat. You can think of it as Marvel vibranium or as warmth communism.

Since there’s no fluid flow, the only way to control this cooling system or increase or decrease its dissipation is to connect and disconnect individual cables. Hence why they would have to connect the dynatherms before forming Voltron; combat in combined robot mode is one of the most taxing conditions of the machine’s operation, so they need all the cooling they can get.

Infracells

Now HERE’S where it starts to get interesting. ‘Infra’ roughly means ‘below’. To take the most common example, take ‘infrared’ light, that is, light existing at frequencies lower red light, which is itself the lowest frequency in the visible spectrum. Infrared is invisible, so the only way to describe its color is ‘somewhere below red’.

So as far as I can tell, ‘infracells’ could mean one of three things. They could be some kind of infrared light sensors, like FLIR imagers used for night vision and targeting on modern military equipment (which I consider unlikely, since that’s not the type of thing you would specifically call out during the preflight, or something intrinsically useful to the Voltron assembly process.) Or it could be an armor layer consisting of some kind of cells literally ‘below’ the rest of the armor (which I also consider unlikely, because why would that be important to the Voltron assembly either? You wouldn’t need to even worry about it until you take damage to the outer armor layer, right?) Or, finally and most interestingly, it could have something to do with lower frequencies or lower speeds in general.

Here’s my theory:

The infracells cause time itself to run differently. You all saw the movie Interstellar, where time aboard the spacecraft passed slower for the crew whenever they were inside powerful gravity wells. If you had high buildups of negative energy within cells inside Voltron, it would produce the opposite effect, causing time to move faster inside the cells than outside. Anything inside would experience the rest of the universe in slower motion, meaning lower acceleration, lower forces, and lower stress.

Therefore, if such ‘infracells’ were installed around Voltron’s skeletal frame and motors, it may explain the machine’s great strength and indestructibility. And it would make sense that this would be the type of thing they would call out during the pre-flight, as even one down infracell could spell disaster once that section of the frame is attempting to support the entire weight of the robot; it would buckle and break. Every infracell needs to be up before forming Voltron.

Mega thrusters

Now, this just sounds silly. They’re likely the engines that Voltron uses to fly, but the show creators put ‘mega’ in front of the name to sound cool. Might as well call them ‘super rockets’ or ‘the ultra drive’, right? But mega is an interesting word, as it’s actually a scientific term in the metric system meaning to multiply by a million. Like a kilometer is a thousand meters and a kilogram is a thousand grams, a megameter is a million meters, and a megagram is a 1000 kilograms. You may have heard of ‘megaton’ when referring to nuclear explosives; a three-megaton bomb is a bomb with the explosive yield equivalent to three million tons of TNT. A lot.

So, uh,

Why would you call a thruster a ‘mega thruster’, then?

Well, I know approximately jack-diddly about the original show, but I know that in the newer show, most large spacecraft in the universe get their energy not from nuclear reactors or solar cells, but rather from Balmeran crystals. The crystals are able to produce apparently infinite energy so long as you don’t damage them or overtax them. I don’t know where the crystals get their infinite energy, but that’s not what I’m here to speculate about, so I’ll just treat that as one of the universe’s rules, like bending in Avatar.

So! How do you set that up to make an engine? Well, infinite power is good! Higher power to the engine means hotter, faster exhaust, and hotter, faster exhaust means higher fuel efficiency and higher thrust. So the question becomes, how do you get the most power in the safest and most efficient way possible?

For the sake of some rules, let’s say that you need to give the crystals a little bit of stimulating energy to make them produce energy. That seems fair, I think. Let’s say they produce 5 times the energy they absorb.

So you give a crystal 1 watt, you get 5. That’s great; that means if we need 50 billion watts to run the thruster, we just need to get a big crystal, and feed it 10 billion watts. However! Where do we get that initial 10 billion watts?  Well we could just take a portion of the crystal’s own output and cycle it back around to the input, but that’s a dangerous game to play, since if the percentage you cycle around is even slightly more than 20%, you could create a “positive feedback loop” where more input means more output, which leads to greater input which leads to even greater output, and so on and so on until the crystal breaks or the ship blows up or something generally unfavorable happens. This is approximately the experience of the people at Chernobyl, and is not recommended.

So instead of having crystals feed themselves, you’d instead want them to be fed exclusively by an external source, like a battery or an entirely separate smaller crystal. So the initial crystal would feed larger ones, which would feed larger ones, and so on, each stage in the chain becoming more powerful, but always stable and dependent on some initial external input, so as to never go out of control.

And now, I’m thinking it would be nice from an engineering perspective to have all the crystals together in one shielded location. And from a tactical perspective, it would be nice not to have a bunch of bulky, vulnerable, high-energy cables running around the entire vehicle. So, you would want as many crystal stages as possible in the places where the power is needed most. Namely, the engines.

Therefore, a big part of the engines would be made of armored shells to contain dozens of stacks of crystal beds. They would accept a small amount of power at the top, and multiply it internally to get enormous output at the bottom. Hence, ‘mega’ thruster. It multiplies input by a million.

Boom.

Done.

Headcanon deployed.

So now the next time you’re watching some stupid show and think that something doesn’t make sense, pause to consider that maybe you’re just not using enough imagination, or else I will be with you in spirit to wrong-shame you.

(If you use your imagination and it still doesn’t make sense, then don’t worry. This means that the show is trash and you are right.)

Now go to bed.

[thedarkreichenbach]

DARK : What did we missed, What Ifs and How it should've ended

S3 gave us everything, an ending to a beginning of the greatest time travel show to ever exist. While most of us were overjoyed with the climax, I personally thought it could've been better and here's how.

Human Triquetra Origin

Agnes should've been the daughter of Magnus and Franziska, thereby explaining her surname being Nielsen and closing the family branch with her instead of the couple being childless. It really did not contributed to the plot by her being Noah's sister.

This way it would've manifested as a human triquetra origin, the strongest symbolism ever - with Unknown, Agnes and Noah being the core progenitors of the family tree in Winden.

There should've been more backstory on these 3, especially Agnes and Unknown, how they met, their childhood, how did they became what they're now as adults. The creators did not do justice on the Unknowns after hyping up their characters so much. IMO the Adult Unknown should've been introduced way before in S2 maybe while having a philosophical conversation with Jonas or Martha or any of his relatives, in between his travels all while keeping his identity secret, which would've probably been a better pay off in the S3 opening scene, where he's accompanied by his young and old versions.

How did he turned out so dark like a psychopath ever since his childhood, how did he learnt how to kill, the knowledge of time travel and his opinions on Adam and rest of his family members, how his time travelling experiences made their way to his infamous personal Triquetra Diary, all these aspects seemed crucial to the plot besides him acting as a henchman to merely manipulate events by time travelling and following his predestined path.

The HOWs

The creators avoided the 'How' by always implying the question was 'When'. How did the time travel worked actually? What were the mechanisms of each of the time travelling devices, how do they differ, how does a person actually operates the devices to time travel to a specific time? I cannot fathom how and why did they left out such interesting concepts to explore and instead gave us random characters repeatedly telling each other about some apocalypse or drop of an ocean.

The splits in timelines

Every time during the final cycle due to the quantum entanglement, the timelines split. However, we are not shown if they converge. If they don't, we are not shown what happened to the timelines when Jonas and alt Martha die. Cause in one timeline/reality, Adam gets to kill young alt Martha in his world, and Eva gets to kill Jonas in her world via alt Martha 2 but in the other timeline/reality, maybe none of these things occur.

Predetermined path, Causality and Effect

Stranger Jonas knew that Adam existed in 1921 alongwith a fully operational Giant God Particle with electric Tesla control yet he only choose to follow (alt) Martha's letter given by Noah. If only Stranger Jonas had noted down what his previous iteration went through, he could've taken things into his own hands for once. Things would surely had been different in Adam's world had all versions of Jonas worked together, like alt Martha and The Unknowns in Eva's world.

If Adam had not cheated or manipulated his younger self into false pretences, young Jonas could've been on a different journey and might have formed a new quantum entanglement cycle from 2052 itself by travelling to 1921 and changing things.

The entire show runs on a really dark premise that even if humans were given choices to their decisions, they will still choose the exact same option infinite number of times, no matter what and thereby, turning free will into a mere illusion.

What Ifs

What if Unknown, Agnes and Noah had more than one child in their lifetime. Yeah obviously it would complicate the story further, but hey why not?

What if someone, preferably from Adam's world, maybe Noah, tried to kill the Unknowns at some point? Noah wanted answers and who could have it better than the Unknown. Most probably Noah would've ended up dying in this scenario.

What if Jonas did not choose to go to 2019 to prevent Michael's suicide? Maybe Michael would've still been alive.

What if Jonas had a child with his Martha? The Unknown would definitely be uncompromising and uncomfortable with a sibling.

What if the Unknowns had followed Jonas and alt Martha into the Origin World? It would've been thrilling to know how this would've turned out.

What if young Ulrich goes missing instead of Mads in Eva's world? I wonder how the change in genes, story and plotline could've worked out.

What if instead of Jonas dying in Eva's world, it's alt Martha who dies in front of Jonas? This would've played out pretty dark IMO with this Jonas having witnessed the deaths of both the Marthas. And having knowledge of the family tree from Eva's room, he sets out on his own journey to slaughter everyone who he believes is the cause of death of both Marthas making it the darkest timeline and quantum entanglement.

What if most of the incest driven family branch were to be non-incestuous?

What if instead of killing, people were imprisoned or seemingly sent somewhere out of the loop?

What if there was more than 1 ending to the show?

How It Should've Ended?

Baran and Jantje did a phenomenal job pulling this off with such grace, but maybe just maybe we could've gotten more than one ending.

Ending 1 : the original, won't wanna change that. It gave off an ever reflecting moral that living and dying infinitely in eternal time loops is damnation and the only way out of that is ceasing to exist, in death.

Ending 2 : After knowing about the Origin World via Claudia, Adam actually takes the entire Sic Mundus and maybe even all members of Erit Lux there to finally settle down and calling it a truce while playing with time.

This way Adam and Eva would've finally got to settle down with their son, Unknown with his little family of Agnes and Tronte, and Noah and Elizabeth would have got to see their Paradise. Everyone finally got out of the time loops and could choose to live their lives freely at last.

Ending 3 : Introducing the God Particle in the Origin World, maybe giving it to H. G. Tannhaus. This would've been a rather chaotic ending as compared to the previous peaceful one.

Tannhaus probably would have used it for good purposes though and could've researched it so thoroughly that he was able to make the process and formula to create the God Particles in a not so destructive way that requires the coherence of 2 alternate world's power plant disasters.

Maybe it would've given rise to new time loops and quantum entanglements, with respect to the other 2 worlds and this would've been proved to be a complex quantum puzzle to solve.

Ending 4 : Tannhaus actually operated his Quantum machine more times than we know, and has in fact created more than 2 worlds by multiple splits. Totally mind boggling.

Ending 5 : So far we know that based on intelligence levels,

Noah<Adam<Eva~Unknown<Claudia

But what if the Unknowns finally strayed a little from their obedience to Eva and started working with Noah, Tannhaus or Claudia OR maybe even with Tannhaus and Claudia from the Origin World. This way the Unknowns would've diverted from their predetermined path and started to think by themselves.

This would've been fun to follow as it would've put them directly in a sort of Mexican standoff with his parents. At this point, a sensible fanfiction about the Unknown wouldn't hurt.

Ending 6 : Exploring far future, maybe the farthest ever possible. We know the world doesn't completely ends after the 2020 apocalypse, not atleast Jonas's world and like a Futurama scenario, Jonas time travels to far future to find out answers and he finds a new descendant. Bonkers right?

Feel free to jot down your thoughts and theories or any other details I might've missed here.

[mspa-music-analysis]

Beyond Canon - exclusion zone

alright first song in the Beyond Canon album, exclusion zone. lets break it up. 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS/LISTENING EXPERIENCE

I got literal fucking shivers. Holy shit. Holy shit. The first twenty seconds of this song is it’s own fucking experience. When the vocals come in at 00:46 I feel as though I am standing on a craggy cliff face, maybe on a mountain, the sky is grey, there’s mist and magic in the air, and I should be dreading something. I feel like taking a deep breath and preparing to see an army coming up over the adjacent hill. I feel like I’m about to go up against something huge. 

When I first clicked on the new Homestuck album in disbelief, double checking the release date, I wasn’t expecting much. Sure Homestuck music is utterly wonderful, but I’ve never been able to listen to instrumentals very well, they don’t capture my attention without lyrics to focus on. but hearing the first few notes of this song. Holy. Fucking. Shit. I am not the same man. Oh my god. This first minute is what got me to listen to this entire album in one sitting.

At 1:00 you hear a muffled voice and the sound of breaking glass, and it feels like the illusion of nature and magic and dread shatters. A robotic voice chimes in ‘you just made a monster’ and you get it, for just a second. You feel like something terrible has happened and you have no idea how the fuck you’re going to pick up the pieces. This song sets the stage for the album, and it makes anticipation thrum through your bones, especially on the first listen. 

The latter half of the song is letting this feeling sink in, letting your anticipation, your excitement, your dread, grow into a magnificent beast. As the last bit cycles you feel your heartbeat quicken, your breath catch, and you just have to sit there for a second. Holy shit. This song feels like saying ‘holy shit’ in reverence. Over and over again.

The ending feels like you have no idea what the fuck you’re getting into. All you can do is click onto the next song. 

INSTRUMENTAL/VOCAL ANALYSIS

I’m no musical expert, but I’m going to try to explain this as well as I can. Music snobs, sorry, experts, please remember I am but a humble fool who has never taken a music class beyond fifth grade. An amateur if you will. 

I’m going to be using the word synth so fucking much in these, aren’t I. I’m torn between some sort of string, a synth, or an organ playing the opening notes, and I’m fairly sure it’s the synth. Homestuck music wouldn’t be Homestuck music for not the synth. 

The synth, as I am going to call it despite how unsure I am that it is one, immediately gives you an overwhelming cathedral feeling. You get a little while to marinate in this feeling before the vocals chime in. The vocals and the synth meld so beautifully into each other, they feel so natural coming together. There’s a moment where you say ‘yay! vocals in a Homestuck song!’ which will later seem oh so ironic. 

Then, in a change of tone, a muffled, hard to understand, male-sounding voice pops in. It sounds like a frantic report, breaking news, or a call for backup. It could sound to some like officials chasing dangerous dissenters, and to others a discreet warning to fellow rebels that the brass are coming. I tried so fucking hard to get an audio editing program to pick this shit apart, but I have a Chromebook for some godforsaken reason. Sorry, folks, we’ll have to see if anyone replies to my tweet with our answers. For reasons, which are definitely real actual reasons with no attachment to aesthetics, I am going to call this voice ‘the radio’. 

Directly after the infuriating piece of walky-talky Esq vocals, there’s a sound of breaking glass. I think perhaps that is my favorite moment in the entire track, if not the entire album. Not to assign too much meaning to a singular bit of sound, but it feels like every expectation I had for Homestuck music was completely shattered. Like the glass ceiling that prevented Homestuck music from becoming legendary because it was just a shitty web-comic (which was already untrue) is broken through with just the first half of this song. Does that make sense? In short, this album really is on an entire other level of music entirely, and it knows it. This is possibly supported by the album cover, which is Ultimate Dirk sitting in a pile of previous Homestuck album covers. Must I explain this one? (I will if you ask, really. I’m perhaps a bit too eager, in fact.)

Directly after the glass shatters, more instruments join in. I think these are also synths? It sounds techy, it sounds dystopian. You know when people say techno is just beeps and boops? Yeah, there’s a lot of beeps and boops in this, and frankly, I love it. Then, another distorted, techy, mechanical, feminine?, voice pops in saying ‘you just made a monster’. I’m going to call this voice the monster, but not necessarily because I think they are the monster, and I will elaborate on this later. This is my second favorite moment in the track. It’s just. Wow. Breathtaking. The monster repeats for a while, the rest of the song. The third time, an almost more human sounding, but not by much, monster joins in. There’s an air of indignance, of anger, desperation, vengeance. It sounds like there’s another phrase buried under some sounds there, at 1:28? I absolutely can not make it out for the life of me, and it is driving me crazy. 

The monster is chopped up and distributed evenly throughout the rest of the song, quite fucking marvelously. At 1:39 there’s a pause in the instrumental, and for just a second, you’re left with this steady note sung by the monster. It’s haunting. I didn’t notice it my first few listen throughs, but now that I’ve been sitting here looping the track, I can’t help but hear it. It definitely gives me a feeling, but I haven’t decided what that feeling is yet. 

The sound bits that sound like a broken robot, or another voice saying ‘anoyie’ over and over, are quite possibly going to drive me insane. I find myself desperately needing to hear where the fuck these audio bytes came from. I need to hear the originals. I do not care if they are random mouth noises. My curiosity is insatiable. I am fairly sure it is just the monster cut to hell, but there’s just something nagging at me saying otherwise. I don’t know, perhaps I’m finally going insane from looping the robot song for two hours. 

I don’t love the ending? There’s one last monster repeat, a sort of clapping sound (an interesting change of pace), silence for half a second, more of that damned ‘anoyie’ and I am further convinced it is not the monster, and then nothing. It isn’t quite unsatisfying, but it isn’t satisfying either. It is most certainly an ending. I can say for a fact there are instruments in the ending. And that’s all I have to say on that.

HERE’S WHERE SHIT GETS CRAZY

Alright, time to sound like a madman. Here is where I am going to assign arbitrary Homestuck-related, possibly plot-related, meaning. Take all of this with a grain of salt and forgive my overuse of phrases like ‘I feel’ and ‘I think’. 

So, putting the song in the context of the album title ‘Beyond Canon’, and therefore most likely The Epilogues and Homestuck^2, I do indeed have a few theories. Not all make a whole lot of sense, and a few are based quite heavily on ‘feelings’ and ‘vibes’. I hated putting vibes in quotes, never make me do that again. To start with, the beginning, before the radio, reminds me very much of Ultimate Dirk (Ult. Dirk), Terezi, and RoseBot on that new planet. Perhaps because of the air of desolation, not in relation to the note, and foreboding? Perhaps because I have assigned an air of forced serenity to this part, and I very much feel like Ult. Dirk is trying to force serenity onto his section of the narrative, despite what’s coming his way? Hm. Much to think about. 

The radio, I cannot puzzle out exactly. DaveBot, perhaps? Trying to break through from the Candy universe and coming out muffled? I don’t have much to go on, and I am waiting until I have figured out exactly what the radio is actually saying. 

The glass shattering. Oh, the glass shattering. Fenestrated plane, anyone? The fourth wall, anyone? Good god, shattered glass + Homestuck = SHIT IS GOING DOWN. This makes me very excited. It could just be metaphorical, as I was saying before, but I very much have a feeling that things are going to get that particular brand of very Homestuck fucked soon. And I am oh so excited. 

The monster! Oh, how I love the monster. There’s so many things I can see the monster being, as well as referencing. Lets get right the fuck into it. First! The Auto Responder, or Lil’ Hal. You know how every splinter and alternate self combines to create the Ultimate Self? (I have so many theories about this, oh my god, I might make an entire other blog for more Homestuck analysis) Well, what if it isn’t a perfect meld? Dirk is a Prince, after all, a destroyer. There’s no way, however Ultimate he may be, he’s perfect and whole. What if specific splinters find their way to shine through? Like, for instance, Hal accusing Dirk of making a monster out of all his iterations. I know, it’s far fetched, and I took quite a few liberal steps to get there. But just perhaps.

A not so wild theory is an obvious one, I think. The monster is Rosebot. It’s vaguely feminine, robot-y, and references a recent creation. Rose’s consciousness breaking through Dirk’s command? Seems likely to me. 

A third! Perhaps it’s DaveBot? It seems less likely than the RoseBot theory, due simply to the femininity of the voice, but at the same time it seems like DaveBot would be more likely to fight Dirk’s control of his personal narrative, if only because we haven’t seen his robot form be entirely complicit yet. Either way, I doubt this one. I just want it on the record in case I’m right. *wink*. (I refuse to use a winky face in a semi-serious analysis, it just feels wrong.)

And this one isn’t really a theory, but I keep coming back to it. Is anyone else reminded of AradiaBot? Especially that second of the monster just singing with no instrumental. I can give no explanation except for a feeling. I wasn’t going to include this, but, well, trust your gut or something. Maybe she’ll come back and my random thought will be justified. 

Now, do I think this will be used in Homestuck^2 as a flash at some point. Short answer: I don’t know. Long and less shitty answer: I feel as though it could go either way! I can’t really see a song with vocals like this getting a flash, if only because it’s very straightforward and I don’t know if you can jam a whole lot of plot into this song, unlike some of the others. That said, it would be just like Homestuck to completely blow away my expectations and jam the entire ending into it. Hey, Homestuck? Please don’t do that. I love Act 7, I really do, but also just please don’t. Ever again, thank you. 

Maybe Meat Kanaya will liberate RoseBot from Ult. Dirk’s control and this song will play as she beats the shit out of him. I would like that, I think. 

CONCLUSIONS

Personal Rating: Holy Shit 

Objective Musical Rating: Robots Have Never Sounded So Vengeful And I Love It

Plot-Relevance Rating: It’s Possible But The Outlook Isn’t Good, Chief 

Would It Stand On Its Own?: Fuck Yes It Would. I Sang This When I Came Out Of The Womb.

did u nut tho: yuh