#this is basically the first canto right

[peccatulumirae]

limbus company more like little guy company i dont. i dont know

[tortelette]

OKAY MEURSAULT BRIEF INCOMPLETE ANALYSIS BECAUSE I LOVE HIM

CANTO 6 SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Canto 6, omfg I love it

Heathcliff needs a break from everything what happens there so I decide to pinpoint the rest of my sight to Meursault out of all of the sinners.

First things first, he is still good at the adaptability and basics of reading between the lines of a conversation and his environment. The part where he reads the newspaper with Don and Rodion and he still sticks to what is more important even if the other things can be interesting still makes him a very formidable ally when he mentions what he reads in part 3 of Canto 6. It is the most Meursault-coded behavior but he is still shows his prowess of understanding things even though he prefers a direct approach to things.

Second part, concern. My dude is the first one who can read the room properly ever since Catherine's "death" when the team arrived in Wuthering Heights, he expresses genuine remorse to Heathcliff and is expressing his condolences in his own way. Not telling it to Heathcliff straight to the fact like he used to since he is concerned on the way how Heathcliff will react to it if he bluntly tells him on what is in his mind.

He even expresses his own judgment about waiting out for the Golden Bough to be available to avoid the thunder strikes for the sake of Heathcliff's well-being. Even if the possible result of this decision is the failure to retrieve the Golden Bough. Which shows that his mind is not entirely on seeking the best result of the mission due to his contact but also to his concern for the safety of his co-workers and to avoid the dangerous risks they went through.

The third and final part, decisions. The surprising out-of-place cutscene in Canto 6 where he uses his base EGO to restrain Erlking Heathcliff... it was not placed there just to bring an epic power move ever since Vergilius' battle sprite shows up during the Wild Hunt basement.

I believe this is a way for them to show his development as a character.

Because this is a pivotal moment about him as a person.

He is a man who follows orders to the T, and he will not conduct a task or an action without permission or if it is against the rules to do so. Even if things are hectic, he needs orders from the higher ups for him to act even though it is common sense or morally right to do so if one has the ability to do it in that situation.

The fact he does this without the orders of Dante out of all people, since he knew the weight of the situation, shows how he grew as a person and can act on his own without others ordering him.

The fact he can remove the cold and hard disposition and the factual speech shows that he is opening up in the journey he went through with his company. Revealing a more relatable yet frank tone so he can be understanding to his fellow coworkers.

Gosh, I want to see this grown man cry.

[snackugaki]

... my ass actually got like 6+ images deep before realizing i hadn't posted shit-- oops

my tmnt  iteration (where everyone made it past their 20s, splinter’s alive just old, venus is here, and they deserve some goddamn respite and shenanigans)

tmnt  iteration part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10

tmnt  iteration omake 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

lny visit 1 | 2

IDW spoilers below, teeechnically Mirage & Next Mutation spoilers too ig?

blah blah blabbering because that's one of the many things you can do on tumblr.com

bloopity bloopin, turtles all being traded on the black market as pets, medicine, or decor to be... "prepared". 'cept Jennika, keeping her IDW origin because it's badass and I like it. eco vigilantes freed them one fateful night, same night someone(s) stole some mutagen for a rival company to TGRI, boom collided in their getaway routes, away floated Venus just like in NM and some others who lalala may or may not be some mutanimals

playing mostly with coloring, Rise introducing markings is such a nice and refreshing change from the all sam green turtle, different bandana color turtles I grew up with. fanon taking that concept and applying it in conjunction with actual turtle colorings also scratches my visdev brain node just so

hm... still fiddling with their plastrons... Venus' and Jennika's are fine though

Leo

funky li'l ringed map turtle

can't see it but, he got them little ridgey-spikies on his shell

christ, I'm finding a way to attach Iris symbolism to him, either through markings or something else

Iris in hanakotoba is... basically all Leo; nobility, bravery, honor, courage, heavy samurai association

5'2"

Raph

McCord's or Amboina box turtle idk idk idk can't choose

stuck on coloring him with a scale mail feeling to match the box turtle photos I found

....I needa draw him beefier, he can stand to be beefier

5'6"

Donnie

literally just googled which turtles exhibit the highest INT, wood turle consistently listed plus some have funky geometrically patterned/shaped shells

tossing on how do the plastron coloring, really liking the dark spots on it

probably keep the lightened belly/inner limb coloring

...probably... lol idk

5'8"

Mikey

my perfect chonky boy, no notes except he (and his brothers) need plastron do-overs

and now i am stuck with the heart-on-his-sleeve marking

canon 2 my iteration it is done

he gets to be the slider this go round, if just 'cuz he's technically the first born (in terms of creating TMNT and its story and world)

let him have the fluttering, finger drumming on everything and everyone because he's bursting with "i love you" energy anyway

5'4"

Venus

"my pretty daughter" iykyk

sea turtle as per last couple iteration posts

cultivator instead of "shinobi"

"i aM ShiNObi"... guh, just, I dunno, the term "cultivator" wasn't really known back in '98 like that, but she had the medicine box, she worked to learn how to throw a fireball at Vam Mi, she was pleased at her progression when she defeated the counterspell from the staff of Bu Ki. that's cultivator shit right there.

she's still a pugilist more than a iron fan user

looks up to April like a big sister, speaks canto and hakka with her

cuz she's still a linguist scholar like in Next Mutation so duh she speak all the languages (to an extant, she has a lot of studying left to go after all)

the greenified hawksbill coloring is growing on me...

still needa futz more with the plum flower motif on her

also figure out her huadian situation or just scrap it idkidkidk

her bandana + 50% green coloring is also growing on me....

5'10"

Jennika

technically also ringed map turtle since it was Leo who gave her the blood transfusion

I like the idea of bringing her Blaschko's lines to the forefront post-mutation but just... it's a lot of stripes. and goddamnit I ain't even gonna go deep into much of anything with the comics I just... can't not world build rip me

6'0"

April

still so tickled at April being closer to the turtles' ages in these new reboots and fascinated how it's played out

...but mine is a clean 44 yo, so. (turtles in late 30s)

Laird originally conceived April as an asian woman in his notes, Eastman drew her as a biracial woman he was dating at the time (April Fisher) and... idk what to tell y'all, people are running around being mixed in this world all the time, Brooklyn got hella Jamaican/Chinese so there you go

can speak canto and hakka

April being a "weirdo" as I've seen mentioned in Rise can stay, I'm picking that, that's a great trait to her character, big fan of Poly Styrene, loved Rachel True in The Craft

where "weirdo" is just she's into alt subculture and being in New York... she got her hands everywhere in those scenes

She and Chu Hsi get to have the most shoujo fuckin' romance because it's cute

and she's still a living drawing which I'm changing around a bit being why she felt like a "weirdo" and leaned towards subcultures and the turtles, she did eventually begin to destabilize but Venus stabilized her by trapping her in a scroll so she could work on a solution. ...where she has a long, happy relationship with Chu Hsi in the painted world scroll because lol time dilation

saw somewhere on the hellsite that the tooth gap is passed around every iteration... so April gets to have it

5'7"

Irma

i'm not ashamed to say I just reupholstered Nadia from Russian Doll

87 Irma went through a lot so she can have some dry wit and humor and be fly as fuck, big hair, big glasses, and a big attitude

still besties with April

likes moths, they're just neat little guys with rabbit ears iykyk

there is a very specifc size of her hair I am battling to keep consistent the problem it never feels big enough

says "fuhgeddaboutit" and has yelled that she is, in fact, "walkin' here,"

... she might also have a little bit of Myrtle from AHS: Coven sprinkled in now that I'm thinking about it to sum her up

she knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody for any random thing you could want to try to find

all the delis and bodegas know her

discusses plot lines from soap operas with Splinter on weekends, they get heated

5'5"

... god all this and I was just gonna have them play spades and play a round of pickup street ball in silly little comics

[offshore-brinicle]

see now i'm wondering if his ring ID is the kind of person yi sang could have become if he didn't join limbus company. like he internalizes the thinking pattern of "i'm a fool and not worth a damn and everything i do only hurts people" and expresses that self-loathing via his art. eats drywall

OK SO. I TOOK SOME TIME TO ANSWER THIS ONE BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO GET HIM FOR MYSELF. I don't even really play the game anymore and keep up with the story via YouTube but. Y'know just to prove a point basically and Virtual Yi Sang Collectionism while I find myself with too much free time again so you might have gotten to see it by yourself by now but. Still.

Actually looking into this with his story and all of his dialogue they really did just give him an actual Bad End ID like Nclair, Ahabmael and G Corp Gregor (with some variation of Erlking joining eventually? but I have no idea how that will work taking in count the plot aspect) since Spicebush Yi Sang doesn't really Qualify as one of those and is even framed as being empowering in a way for him taking in count its release was timed so it could be used in the Farmwatch fight instead of waiting for the end of the Season like the others. I believed that W Corp Yi Sang was this spiritually; since it depicts him at his lowest point imaginable following on the track he was on already and the themes of Canto IV perfectly though not related to it, but now Ring Yi Sang has shown us a much more connected, and much darker potential path for him. So I'll take this post as my chance to analyze this:

In regards to his self-loathing it's very interesting that he actually seems to feel a sense of pride not seen in any of his other IDs, talking about "what he deserves" and disregarding everything that doesn't cause him a reaction. He now uses creation itself as a way to fill the emptiness inside of him, while in the main story, Yi Sang's resolution was that his impulse to create was his way of connecting with others.

You can see that in these lines, where he has completely disregarded everything about life and other people, pretty much all of his dialogue revolves around wanting to create and he has only interest in what can inspire him, to the point he nonchalantly kills civilians for failing to make him feel that way.

I feel like this is even expressed in the Sins for this ID compared to base Yi Sang, the set-up is the exact same; S1 Gloom and S3 Sloth. However, the one that changes is S2. Regular Yi Sang has S2 Envy while Ring Yi Sang has S2 Lust. Added this to Ring Yi Sang's passives even being fueled by Lust as well while base Yi Sang's are fueled by Gloom. I take this as a representation that he has taken this Lust, an obsessive desire, as being what will drive him forward throwing away all the self-loathing and regret, with many of his lines calling the past meaningless.

Now I'll tackle his story and do a rundown on it while giving my observation, as it ellaborates into this and what his mindset is (and frankly, it's utterly fantastic). First of all, we get a unique, dissonant track that so far seems to have never been used in any other instance in the game to my knowledge.

Yi Sang's approach to his scientist position is very...unique, because he does so as an artist rather than more proper scientific people like for example Faust, Dongrang, Aseah and Gubo. People who simply want practical application and results, means to an end. Dongbaek seems to be the only person who shares this approach he has which is why their bond is treated as unique compared to the other League of Nine members. At his core, what fascinated Yi Sang so much about technology and sciences was simply the euphoria of discovery itself, finding new things. Which is tackled immediately when Ring Yi Sang's story begins as I am showing here.

With science, you never truly "create" anything, you go through right and wrong answers until finding something that works or causes some effect, he even says so himself in Canto IV. And he goes on to criticize his prior fascination with technology with this particular aspect in mind. Even more shockingly is that he calls the League of Nine's conferences a "waste of time" now, each of their creations predictable which could tie into him being a one-of-a-kind genius, which is also somewhat tackled in Dongrang's observation log. To him, everything else his friends made was child's play.

So instead, he looks towards what made him so fascinated with The Mirror in the first place, echoing this particular point he makes during his log for Dongbaek, both of them are driven to reach something abstract and inconcievable and ended up using technology as their path to that vague destination that can only be described in poetry.

And finally, he completely foresakes his past at the League. He even he believes he finally has his wings but calls them fabricated, and there is something obviously wrong with the entire thing on multiple levels. They are fabricated wings because he was guided to this conclusion by the hand of another, rather than the introspection throughout IV. His chapter title is "The Unchanging", and it's the only chapter where the trait assigned in the title to the focus Sinner is a positive; him staying true to himself and his ideals was the key, but he needed to actually move past his apathy and actually grasp them, but here he has completely changed beyond recognition. Turned arrogant, callous and utterly irrational, discarding all of his self-loathing by divorciating himself from the self that he hates, yet the Sloth—the apathy remains, instead of moving past it, fighting it back with his Lust in an endless cycle of dopamin chases while growing numb to everything else and even destroying it if it fails to satisfy that Lust so that it will, as shown as he kills failing students to take delight in their shock and agony.

But at the same time it frames that portrait of the League in his background art a completely different meaning. It is most likely that this portrait is a mockery of all of them, regarding the past and the life he lived until now including his past self with the same condescencion he does examinees that fail to impress him. Specially when you take in count how his own face is much more well-painted than the childish erratic strokes he assigns to the other, making them look ridiculous. But at the same time, Yeonsim is there under them, but flipped to its underside, he still held onto it but as far as we know it might be completely broken and only keeps it as part of his insulting work going by another of his idle chatter lines.

This dark inversion of Yi Sang's journey even before Limbus and Canto IV is also emphasized by Pointillism in particular being chosen as the subject for this ID, this was first pointed out by this Korean Twitter user (and fellow irl Yi Sang enjoyer going by the layout) in the original announcement for this ID:

Of course, this theme compliments Yi Sang's resolution in IV pretty well. He loved the League and grew to love Limbus because they were his resting place. I can't find any translation of Jochunjeommyo however, so I can only rely on summaries and posts put through machine translation. But from what I can summarize, the story is about an artist who can't find a place to breathe and simply exist due to the materialistic, capitalistic nature of the city he finds himself in, which fits pretty neatly with Yi Sang's story as a whole.

I'd also like to point out how a less overtly unhinged variation of this kind of development is shown in his Dieci ID story (which I wanted to make a post on for a while because it really feels like it was preliminary to this and not enough people talk about how messed up Dieci Yi Sang actually is) and how he comes to adopt a mentality just like Ryoshu's, with her already being linked to The Fingers and knowing about their workings personally to the point she might have been affiliated at some point though we cannot confirm, however I will instead link to this post by my friend on the topic since they already did a dissection on how Yi Sang and Ryoshu act as ideological foils and they pretty much said it better than I could: https://www.tumblr.com/ishcliff/743271628518129664/so-any-thoughts-of-well-the-blade-lineage-itself?source=share

So that's all I've got for now! Honestly I am so over the moon with this ID and the potential implications going forward as you can imagine.

[firestorm09890]

just some rambling about lcb’s canto v part 3 things vs the source book

It felt like they combined the personalities of Starbuck and Stubb, and then they replaced Stubb’s personality entirely with Flask’s (the third mate), who was always the one described as irritable while Stubb was the jovial one.

Book Stubb was also pretty uncool, despite being so casual. Pip had to be the replacement oarsman in both cases, but the reason Pip’s sanity snapped in the book was because he jumped overboard out of fear once, Stubb told him they’d just leave him behind if he did it again, and then when it happened again, Stubb did leave Pip behind, and those few hours out at sea before the Pequod rescued him were what broke him; here, Stubb saved Pip from a fate worse than death, and then what happened to Stubb after is what broke Pip.

Speaking of Pip, weird choice to make them want to be a landlord. That’sss all I’ll say about that

Also, RIP Tashtego. Constantly got the short end of the harpoon in Moby Dick (basically first to slay a whale on the voyage but Stubb got all the credit, fell into a whale and almost died, saw the White Whale at the same time as Ahab and should’ve been awarded the gold doubloon for it but Ahab insisted he was first) and the trend continues here by giving his incredibly homoerotic moment of being saved from drowning in the whale by Queequeg to Ishmael instead, with him just not showing up at all… actually maybe Tashtego won in this case lol

The flashback with Ishmael going into Ahab’s cabin made me think that they would give her the dilemma of “should I kill her right now in her sleep”, similar to what Starbuck had in the book, but nope.

There’s a huge difference in the way Starbuck butted heads with Ahab in the book vs in Limbus. Book Starbuck definitely had a lot less faith that the captain was steering them right- forget “after we kill the Pallid Whale it’ll all be okay” that Limbus Starbuck thought, no, book Starbuck repeatedly told Ahab to please, turn around, please stop trying to go kill the White Whale, your revenge quest is meaningless because it’s basically just a force of nature and you can’t get revenge on nature, we can just go home, we've had bad omen after bad omen, don’t you see you’re leading us to doom- and he did this from the very beginning all the way til the very end, when they literally saw the beast. However, despite his pleas and disagreements, he did still follow the authority of the captain (can’t have a mutiny when it’s just you who disagrees; can’t shoot a man while he’s sleeping when you have too much of a conscience and a fear of going to hell to justify becoming a murderer) and inevitably helped Ahab get what he wanted. That’s something both Starbucks share.

Overall… it’s probably because they had a different story to tell. They had to make Ahab worse™️ than in the book so everyone surrounding her had to be changed to facilitate the fact that she had such a hold over all of them

The thing with Ahab promising gold coins to the crew (with it being clear to the audience that they’d never get them) was the progression of the book’s singular gold doubloon, which was promised to whomever saw the White Whale first. In the book, it was merely a symbol, with a bunch of different characters attempting to analyze its symbolic meaning in-universe (mostly in an astrological sense) and not really wanting it for monetary reasons (Flask even says that it’s just worth $16 and could buy 960 cigars. of course, that was in 1851, and inflation is one hell of a problem…) Here, that promised money is worth a lot more, both monetarily and as something to keep the crew going.

And then! The cult-like aspects. Kromer had her inquisitors with artificial brainwashing and it’s very stereotypically cult-like, but Ahab’s crew was a lot more accurate to how real-modern-day cults work. The recruitment of Ishmael made that clear. Here, she was at a low point in life, with no idea where she should go, and then boom, Ahab steering her. In Moby Dick Ishmael already wanted to go on a boat, as did every other sailor there. None of them even knew who their captain was until after they’d been out at sea for weeks because Ahab is weird like that. He got all his sailors into a disturbingly powerful fervor one night about the White Whale but for the most part they seemed to be mostly in it for the whales they encountered along the way. Book Ahab even recognized that in order to keep his crew from mutinying, they had to pick up some other whales- and unlike the gold coins keeping the crew motivated in Pequod Town in Limbus, this was an actual, tangible thing. More of a compromise to keep the crew happy than a lie.

Limbus Ahab’s boat was completely Ahab, with desires completely Ahab, completely enrapturing her crew. Book Ahab’s boat was The Pequod, a whaling ship that just so happened to have a monomaniac at the helm. Limbus’s Pequod crew had faith in Ahab until they died by her hands; book Pequod crew eventually recognized how completely fucked up Ahab was and how screwed they were, but to quote the book itself, “their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate.”

that’s about all the braincells I have for this

[amphibimations]

Hello, I am sorry not sorry in advance but I just need to rant like a madman about Canto 6 and Heathcliff because OH MY GOD.

so, I forget if this was mentioned by anyone else but a major part of Limbus Company is Mirror Technology. Basically Multiverse Tech, allowing multiple versions of characters called Identities across multiple potential universe (It's how the Gacha is explained, it's a major part of the over-arching plot, you git the jist.) Well what do we see for the first time ever in Canto 6 Part 2?

THAT'S RIGHT, WE GET FUCKING BOOK HEATH!!!!

LOOK AT HIM! LOOK AT HOW FUCKING HAUNTED HE IS! Turns out he's travailing the multiverse to kill every Heathcliff because he considers himself Cathy's Murder and that she is destined to be miserable because of Heathcliff! Every like third line of his is a quote from the books it's great!

The best Part is that this man's a Boss fight in this part too! And He's really Hard! You really gotta manage his sanity well since if he wins too many clashes things can go bad really quickly, especially cause he will always full target Heath and get even stronger if he manages to get any hits in. Made even worse by the fact that if Heathcliff dies it's an instant loss so you really play this fight on a knife's edge.

And look how hard my boy is taking it! Throughout the entire fight Heathcliff is completely silent. no combat dialogue, no voice lines, no nothing. Even E.G.O's, this game's equivalent to limit breaks, which usually come with a unique voiceline, are completely silent for this fight. What's more, and I'm so upset I can't do this justice with images so you'll have to watch this after but each character has their own special story E.G.O with Heathcliffs being "BodySack". so at the end of the fight Heathcliff just starts wailing on Book!Heath over and over again and again to the point of breaking the UI while vowing to just tear down everything and everyone that shoved him down and got in between him and Cathy.

and it all culminates with a scene of Heath Distorting through his perspective. Now Dustortion is the other side of E.G.O's coin. they're the two options you're given when your entire world and psyche collapses, you can either move forward and gain an E.G.O or give into your despair and selfish desires and become a Distortion. For reference Hindly becomes a Distortion in this same part (which I will talk about later!). The whole process also has a bunch of lore connections to PM's other games but unfortunately this ask is already way to long and I won't be getting into those but yeah, as a long-term PM fan I have chills.

And this is all still just Part 2! we still have a whole other part to go!

woah.................................... this is really cool. <3 i love the picture of him crying <3 <3

[eresia-catara]

So, not trying to assume that Dante wasn’t straight but were he and Guido more than pals?? 😭

Diversity win! Your failed-friar poet and heretical philosopher are tangled in a tragic bromance!

but really, look. look. none of us here is assuming anything okay? but. none of us here is saying he was straight either alright? We can speculate both ways, considering the great margin of interpretation that sources leave us, but this is tumblr dot com no one wants to hear why Dante could be straight, so here is why he could not be (based on the philological and critical skills of someone who has NO authority + lots of essays I've read),,, under the cut.

I personally think it wouldn't be an unfathomable interpretation, seeing as there are elements that point to that; but I prefer to proceed with order, so let's first analyse Dante and Guido individually, and then together (otherwise my speech becomes a confusing ramble).

So, if we want to focus on what Dante ALONE tells us about his sexuality, we don't have many solid arguments. In general, the topic arises through his Comedy:

as we know, he put sodomites in Hell (Inf. XV-XVI). In it, we find three politicians (XVI), whom he speaks to with the formal voi (in english it's a plural you), instead of tu (singular you) which is informal and in Hell is used to basically look down on the damned; furthermore, this act of respect is strongly enouraged by Virgil before he speaks to them, and Dante expressedly says that, if it hadn't been for the raining fire, he would've gotten closer to them to hug them. So we can see that there isn't the usual disgust or harshness. This voi is also used for Brunetto Latini (XV), his teacher from youth, whom we know for certainty was a sodomite (thanks to a sonnet Latini wrote). The two have an affectionate conversation and Dante shows to profoundly respect the man. About this behaviour, Boccaccio, in his commentary on the Comedy, writes that since Dante showed compassion towards those sins of which he himself felt guilty of, perhaps he was a sodomite too. Now, I am not usually inclined to believe Boccaccio when talking about facts, but this does seem at least reasonable.

what people often ignore is that Dante put sodomites in Purgatory too. And what is more astonishing, is that he puts them right before the garden of Eden (instead of towards the bottom, seeing as Purgatorio is the mirrored version of Inferno), together with heterosexuals. Basically, the sin becomes not sodomy, but lust. This implies that he saw sodomy as 1) a forgivable sin (not an obvious statement, considering the changing society at the time) and 2) just as serious as heterosexual lust. However, there is a contradiction with Inferno, where they are distinct and sodomy is a lot worse that heterosexual lust (the former, as I've said, is found in the canti XV-XVI, the latter in canto V). This could be explained through the fact that homosexuality implies a sin against nature, which the other one doesn't have, but then we circle back to Purgatory, where they should be put further down as they have technically sinned more. Things don't add up, and when things don't add up, especially with Dante who was obsessed with symmetries and symbology, it has to make us raise our eyebrows. Who knows what little theological game he played in his mind to get to this conclusion? But more so, why did he play in the first place?

From the social point of view, Dante was more traditional, which at the time meant being more accepting of homosexuality; in fact, it is towards the XIVth century that judges start burning sodomites at the stake, pressured by the burgeoisie which Dante despised, while before they usually only imposed a fine, and Florence in particular was more tolerant than the rest of Italy.

Now, with Guido things are different. We have objectively less material to work with, but what we have is less vague. First of all, Dino Compagni (politician, poet, writer, collegue of Guido inside the Commune for a while) in his Chronica tells us Corso Donati had given him a nickname, 'cavicchia', which can be interpreted as 'passive sodomite'. But sure, Corso was his number one enemy, of course he'd say that. Okay, but his wife's brother says the same, in a different way. Guido basically writes a poem about a shepherdess having sex with him and his brother in-law slips in and goes 'Look. just admit it was a guy. I talked to a guy who confirmed this.' But let's be picky and say he was joking. it's just satyre between family members. Okay. But then there's this correspondence with Guido Orlandi (a friend) in which they debate about a statement our Guido had made in a poem, with which Orlandi did not agree, and they insult each other. A critic once suggested there was a double meaning to the correspondence, because the terms used and the phrasing suggested a second layer of interpretation, that is, one in which Orlandi, among the many things, accuses Guido of being....a passive sodomite! Or...a bisexual man! (bi win!). If I remember correctly (forgive me I cannot check the exact words right now), he said something along the lines of 'when you can't get the ladies you turn to the men' or 'when you can't get the young men, you turn to the older ones', it depends on the interpretation, but anyway the preference for a passive role was in both. Yes, you could argue he was in need of insults, he made them up merely to be offensive! But the same insult from three different men, with three different relationships with Guido? Finally, going back to his shepherdess poem, he DID write that it was the shepherdess who led him under the tree, when usually it is the man! And mind you, this type of poem has a vast tradition in provencal poetry, there was a clear code to follow that Guido knew perfectly...and decided to ignore. And if we consider him an atheist and nobleman, he didn't even have religious or social motives to be against sodomy. Heck, he probably didn't giva a fuck.

So let's consider the final question: were Guido and Dante more than pals for life? It seems that Dante spent his 20s and 30s among queer men, in a notoriously queer space that is the literary field. It seems that the two most important figures in his life, two teachers, were not so straight, just like...who? Virgil? Dante knew Virgil's Bucolics full well, he knew Virgil was not straight. So is it a coincidence that we can make extensive parallelisms not only between Virgil and Guido, but also between Virgil, Guido and Brunetto Latini? All three of them teachers, poets, deeply admired and respected by Dante, none of them are judged, they were all benevolent towards him, all queer (specifically, two out of three are certainly queer). Dante himself says most of the damned in the circle of sodomites were clergymen and intellectuals. As I have said, there are no coincidences with Dante, that little freak calculated everything (I say this with affection). And if we shift towards Guido's perspective, the sonnet addressed to Dante 'I vegno il giorno a te infinite volte reads like a true break up poem. Guido says 'I come to you [Dante] infinite times a day but in a way that you can't see me', a.k.a. 'I think of you constantly even if you don't know it'. I mean. you can't really deny much with this statement. An important critic tried to interpret it as the god Love talking to Dante, but another respected critic accused a contradiction in the resulting meaning of the poem, with which I tend to agree (I will not dive into it because this post is already long), so the only redeeming hypothesis falls.

In the end we don't have exactly concrete proofs, but at the same time the fact that there are all these details, all these arguments that are coherent with each other, mathematically speaking, make it probable that not only this is a real, concrete question, but also that it could be the truth. Alas, we would still need more informations which we will likely not have :0

Hope this post helped! At the end of the day, no one can stop you from making love win on tumblr dot com 🌈

[difeisheng]

hi ash, i think i may have asked this before, but from one asian diaspora to another, i was wondering how, if you're able to, you keep up with your chinese practice in a country that's dominated by english (and/or french canadian since ik you live in canada). bc i know a lot of suggestions are like turning your tech to the language you want to learn, put sticky notes on objects with the name in the language you want to learn, etc. but like. i feel like it doesn't matter how much i try and practice bc i'm not in a class, so i don't get it consistently enough, and the rest of my day is filled with english bc, well, that's my first language, and what is needed for my job and every day living. do you have any recs, strategies, or tips? i'm getting desperate; i used to be so much better than i am now. thanks!

hi! honestly, most of my chinese upkeep since i stopped taking mandarin classes (which tbh was relatively recent; this april, and then i'll be taking a cantonese class next term so i can learn to read it) has been a lot less I Need To Practice My Chinese through exercises or dedicated study time, and more just making sure i have frequent exposure to the language that i'm also engaged in. which is a long way to say that basically c-media is how i'm maintaining my proficiency.

i listen to music, i watch dramas and variety shows, look up other vids on bilibili that catch my interest, sometimes read articles, and (very slowly) read fanfic, with pleco open to note new words. just generally scrolling through chinese social media has helped too. having that environment i can immerse myself in helps me learn new vocabulary and practice using what i already know + listening skills, but it also doesn't feel like work or study, just dealing with things i like and am interested in. (this is important for me because i'm so exhausted when i get home every day lmao, if language upkeep outside of class felt like additional Student Time i might have tapped out on attempting it. this way turning on a c-drama at the end of the day just seems like relaxation first and then chinese exposure on top of it).

just by poking through c-drama or fandom things, i know my vocabulary has definitely expanded since i finished my last class, instead of shrunk. even though i watch c-dramas with english subtitles (or chinese and english depending on the platform), i've still picked up stuff from them, and when it comes to things like variety shows i don't rely on subtitles anymore/make myself not. you absorb a lot more of a language than you think just through exposure, imo. although as a caveat for reading specifically, picking up new characters, recognizing them, and reading has been one of the easier parts of learning chinese for me, when it's probably the inverse for a lot of people. i don't know how well just casually reading things will work as a method for others, ymmv.

the thing that i struggle with is getting opportunities to practice speaking, because it's english in my classes and usually with my friends, and either english or cantonese with my family (and i'm not living with them right now). however, i do have a lot of diaspora friends given that i'm in vancouver, and we occasionally dip into speaking mandarin or cantonese. this isn't perfect, but hopefully in future i'll be able to get more speaking experience somehow. what's also helped me with keeping up pronunciation despite these limits is learning to sing chinese songs. singing is one of my hobbies anyway, so i'll use pinyin or jyutping as a guide (getting better at sightreading characters for singing though!) and it's helped me work on certain sounds i had trouble with, and improved my accent. (watching c-dramas even if i don't speak as often has also aided on that front tbh; i listened to recordings of myself from last year and i sound less canto when i speak mandarin now compared to back then, or even earlier this year).

if you want a place to start that i personally think has helped me maintain chinese proficiency, i would choose a variety show you're interested in and try watching it without english subtitles, when you've got free time and want to do something fun. most will have chinese ones you can use to practice reading along with listening, and people usually speak at a conversational enough level that it shouldn't be too difficult to follow along (for ref, after a year and a half of heritage learner mandarin classes at uni i could watch 《我们的歌》/Our Song without english subtitles and understand most of it). variety shows are also really accessible lmao, so many have full seasons on youtube.

tl;dr it's been media exposure for me all the way down since i left classes, wherever i can get it.

not sure how actually helpful all this rambling might be, but this is what i do to keep up my chinese proficiency and keep learning in daily life nowadays! hopefully maybe you or someone else will be able to get something out of it :)

[nemo-of-house-hamartia]

Hello again!

Thank you so much for welcoming me into your corner of the internet (it really feeds into my Ac obsession, as if I needed more of that lol, but really it’s nice to see other ppl that like some side characters ahem *likeFedericoand Greencoat*ahem). And thank you for your answer abt Feducia as well, I’m glad you liked the library gifting idea for I have another one : Imagine if the library had secret alcove(s) and/or passage(s) and one of them lead to a small balcony. Do you think Federico would stand below said hidden balcony to read poetry/Lucia’s favourite pieces while she stood up there and admired him from above ? (A bit like the infamous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, the inspiration came after reading @giuliettaluce’s seriously adorable fanfic “Upon their holy act, the heaven smiles”)

Oh! I also really like your Aranea x Mephisto ship and I’m so excited abt your new(?) OC Tatiana Volkov bc I seriously thought the Flables/The Wolf Among Us fandom was dead when I arrived late as usual 😂 And I love both ships dynamics, I think it just suits them very well

Hope you had a good day and keep going, xx

(Ps Im sorry abt the long long asks I’m just excited to share my ideas with you)

Hello there again, Nonnie!!!

Please, do partake in coffee that I just made (wish I could truly offer you one through the screen)!!

AND OMG YES. PLEASE, DO ALLOW ME TO ABSOLUTELY FEED INTO THE HYPERFIXATION FOR ASSASSIN'S CREED.

I myself have been going strong for almost 5 years, AND AM STILL GOING STRONG.

THE OBSESSION IS REAL

So please, do sit tight and enjoy the ride!

AND OMG YES. YES.

FEDERICO AND GREENCOAT ARE MY BEBE.

Like, I still get super SUPER salty about the fact that Federico has met his end basically 5 minutes in the game (infact, around here, we absolutely throw canon out of the window, and Fede is alive, well and living his best life with his love, somewhere in Italy - in my particular case, in the Kingdom of Sicily with Lucia. Trapani has never been more beautiful than when they lived there!).

To say *absolutely* nothing of HOW SALTY I AM ABOUT GREENCOAT. 2 MINUTES OF TRAILER, AND UBI HAS NOT DEIGNED TO GIVE US A *GLIMPSE* OF WHO HE WAS, WHAT'S HIS REASON WERE, HIS PURSUITS, NOTHING.

BUT.

As salty as I am about that, I am also immensely grateful, because if the Baguette Bois were full-fledged NPC, then I would have never created my Mathias, and as you will see now that you are here, he is my most beloved brainchild alongside my darling Dorothea <3.

SO YES.

WE STAN THE TERTIARY CHARACTERS THAT ARE BASICALLY OCS!!

Now, onto your question:

YES.

YES.

TRIPLE YES.

I *absolutely* believe that Federico would stand below said balcony and recite Lucia's favourite poems ( probably the Canto 5 passage of Paolo e Francesca from Dante's Commedy, her most favourite AMONG ALL).

I can envision it so well, with Lucia just beaming and listening to him as he recites those poems, waiting for him to just climb up her to her balcony (because she KNOWS he would do that. Man cannot stay away from climbing around, as much as he likes to make it believe that it's becasue he needs to follow Ezio and make sure he's not going to fall face first lolol).

AND OMG YES, JUST LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET. ABSOLUTELY

(it kinda helps that my FC for Lucia is the beautiful Olivia Hussey as Juliet from Zefirelli´s movie).

AND I KNOW RIGHT??? @giuliettaluce IS THE *ABSOLUTE* PROFESSOR WHEN IT COMES TO ROMEO AND JULIET, AND HER WRITING IS JUST SO IMMENSELY BEAUTIFUL.

Seriously, she wrote for me the Federico/Lucia one-shot based on Romeo and Juliet that was EVERYTHING, and she wrote for me a one-shot about Mathias/Dorothea that I have never shared, but that I reread truly often and it melts my heart each time. She is such precious friends and beautiful person, it warms my heart SO MUCH knowing that you appreciate her writing <3 she deserves ALL THE PRAISE.

ALL THE PRAISE.

AND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

MY MEPHISTO/ARANEA AND BIGBY/TATIANA.

they are my "dark pairings", so to speak, because while I love to dwell in FLUFF galore, and this is something that I generally explore with my Assassin's Creed pairings (though, there is a certain dose of darkness there as well), with Mephisto/Aranea and Bigby/Tatiana I LOVE to explore the darker side of the relationship between two lovers (though, tbh, Mephisto/Aranea take the crown in this, but that's easy because Bigby and Tatiana are still very much decent people altogether, while Mephisto is a freaking Archdevil and Aranea is his Warlock/Consort, so they are bound by their own character alignment - which is firmly on the evil side).

AND OMG, LISTEN, NO FANDOM IS TRULY DEAD UNLESS I AM DEAD, TRUST AND BELIEVE.

I AM STILL HERE, WRITING AND DRAWING STUFF FOR FFXII, AND IT HAS BEEN ALMOST 20 YEARS SINCE ITS RELEASE.

So trust and believe, no fandom is ever truly dead, and you are MORE THAN WELCOME to discuss whichever fandom you fancy at present! :)

(and please, do not worry about sending me long asks. I *ADORE* reading them, the longer the better. GIMME A DOORSTOPPER ASK OR GIVE ME NOTHING LOLOL I am kidding of course! always feel free to send asks as long or as short as you prefer, at your own convenience <3 just know that they are always welcomed! <3)

WISHING YOU A PLEASANT, BEAUTIFUL DAY NONNIE.

HERE, TAKE SOME LASAGNA I MADE AT LUNCH.

*gives lasagna in tupperware*

--Nemo

[gffa]

Hi!  I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be because my view of the sequel trilogy lives in kind of a nebulous space, where I really like the characters and I actually like a lot of the potential of the storyline, but I dislike TFA, greatly dislike TLJ, and was actually pretty okay with TROS all things considered. I don't want to dig too deep into the negativity of my feelings but they're basically - TFA was too much of a repainting of ANH for me, the initial shine of it was through its potential, but when that didn't pay off in the other movies, the shine came off TFA, too. - TLJ was set too close to TFA, Finn's character should have been tied into the Canto Bight plot (which was exhausting as it was), as a stolen child soldier he has the most reason to hate the rich, but absolutely nothing was done with him, Luke being on that island for that long was out of character for him, Rey's entire story became wrapped up in Kylo Ren, neither of those characters had nearly enough connections with others despite having very good reasons to, like why do we not spend more time on Luke & Kylo?? and it played at being subversive but it absolutely was not, it's all been done before (and I really hated the way Force abilities worked in the movie) and killing off your main villain in the second act was a baffling decision - TROS' biggest problem is that it should have been two movies instead of one, it was a series of trailers rather than a story with breathing room, and it suffered the most from the lack of planning + the main villain being killed off in the second movie But here's why I still like The Rise of Skywalker the best:  The bones of what's there are a pretty good Star Wars story!  Yes, Rey Palpatine came out of nowhere and was very silly, but if you can't handle silly, I don't know how you can make it as a Star Wars fan, it's such a silly franchise! I'm not afraid to love a scene I laugh out loud at--and, yeah, I laughed RIGHT OUT LOUD the first time Kylo dramatically said, "You're a Palpatine."  I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes and let me tell you, I fucking LOVE that scene now. Or how the last words of any Skywalker, the last word Ben Solo/Kylo Ren ever says in the movies' franchise is, "Ow."  I am laughing RIGHT NOW, please, p l e a s e, that is so on-brand, I can't handle it, it's too funny. But I also like the basic storyline because Rey's story in TROS is her struggling with her own inner darkness, that she feels there's something dark in her soul because she's Palpatine's granddaughter.  The movie isn't saying that's true, but that Rey struggles with thinking it's true, and she has to wrestle with her dark side, just like every Jedi before her has as they're coming into their power. Anakin wrestled with his dark side and lost in Attack of the Clones and even worse in Revenge of the Sith. Luke wrestled with his dark side in the vision he sees of himself in Vader's helmet in the cave in ESB and in the climactic scene of ROTJ, where he nearly hacks his father's arm off in rage after his sister and friends are threatened.  He has to claw his way back out of that. Ezra Bridger struggles with the dark side in Rebels as he comes into his power and he has to claw his way out of it as well. Rey has to struggle with her own lure towards the dark side as she comes into her power--she rips a ship apart in the sky because she was so determined that Chewie was hers, she was so angry at Kylo that Force lightning burst out of her.  She's seeing Sith visions of herself on the wreckage of the Death Star.  This is a theme that has been there since the very beginning, that Jedi have to struggle through a temptation to the dark, and her relation to Palpatine preys on that. That's kind of why I wound up loving Ben's scene with Han as well, because that was an entirely imagined scene, but it represents that the way the Force works, you have to dig yourself out of the hole you're in, that Ben using the memory of his father, the last moments of connection he had with his mother, to pull himself out of the dark, really worked for me.  And I'm okay with his death, because this is Star Wars, people die before they should all the time. I even liked the political message of the final movie, yes, Rey vs Palpatine was the big Jedi vs Sith showdown, but the main galactic battle?  Had people showing up.  Just... people.  One of the themes I've talked a lot about, especially because The Clone Wars kind of has it as a running theme is that the average galactic citizen doesn't do jack shit about the state of the galaxy they live in.  The Rebellion had people starting to stand up, but it was an organized effort, it recruited people. TROS had just people showing up, that Leia and the Resistance had been trying to rally the cause, but ultimately it was the galactic public finally, finally saying, "We have to stand up and fight for ourselves, not depend on other people to do it."  Was it ham-fisted and not nearly as polished as it should have been?  Oh, no doubt.  But the message.  Just people showing up to fight against the First Order that was trying to bring back the Empire.  That meant a lot to me. And I loved Luke's character here, that he admitted when he was wrong, and gave us that banger line that's spot on:  "Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi."  Yes.  Yes.  FUCKING YES.  LUKE SKYWALKER AND JEDI PHILOSOPHY.  MY HEART.  Nailed it. Does this movie hang together as well as it should?  Absolutely not.  It needed a stronger writer, it needed more time than it got, and it needed better build-up.  But the bones of what was there were actually pretty good and, man, any movie that has Daisy Ridley in that white outfit with the hood where she looked practically ethereal cannot be all bad, in my opinion.

[necronatural]

i really want to dive into your limbus hyperfixation but the gameplay. how long does it take for you to understand it. i look at the little circle icons and cry a little

limbus gameplay is FOUL. it took me until halfway through canto 2 i think. Just focus on damage type weaknesses at first, then pay more attention to Sin(Element) damage as you adapt. It doesn't expect you to know how to play the game until Canto 3 in my personal experience, at which point it hates you and wants you DIED for not knowing. Canto 4 is worse. 4-48 is impossible If you don't read very carefully; just bringing characters with the right type strengths isn't enough. Also the entirety of Canto 4 was like "bring blunt characters with NO blunt weaknesses or DIE" and then here comes 4-48 going Sorry. Bring Slash Damage And High Rollers. Exploding You. Exploding You. Exploding You.

Basically: Clash to avoid getting hit. Coin number high, win a clash. Coin flips heads (lights up), you get a damage bonus+higher coin number. Losing a clash makes you lose sanity. Low sanity makes your coin flips suck ass. -45 sanity makes your EGO moves corrupt. If it says "struggling", you should either use an EGO to patch in a super high coin number or guard. (With abnormalities, you can make someone who has higher speed number over their head rescue the person being attacked.)

You can borrow units from friends by turning off Sinner selection, going into their Identity window, and switching to the assist tab. They can carry you like a vulnerable little baby usually.

You are going to have to do an insane amount of reading though. A lot of characters have weird quirks like Mariachi Sinclair being a super weak unit but also reducing his own likelihood of being staggered while increasing the enemy's likelihood of staggering, or most of the Charge characters getting all their damage from their final fully-uptied skill. Some enemies will do weird stuff like get healed by Bleed.

Anyway. Here's my user profile <3 (click the Limbus Company Logo next to your user level to go to profile)

A594219994

[thegaycondor]

this is the ask about ninth house and dantes inferno, from someone who loves both and woud love to hear the theories!

i feel like this is less theories and more analysis of textual influence. while we don't get the one to one journey into hell comparison there is a lot of things that perk my interest as a little literary goblin. truly truly there's way to much for me to get into all the little things that i think have a connection to dante, but i will get into some of the basic characteristics of hell and how they are mimicked in hellbent, along with the more direct literary references. however if you want another post about other parts(the leopard, lion and she-wolf characteristics being able to be transplanted onto alex,, the call into hell/darlington & beatrice comparisons,, the roles of virgil and dante,, etc.) , i will do it.

ok, brace your self for a far too short analysis

the most glaring reference we get to dante's inferno is bardugo labeling part 2 "the descent"[242] directly after dante's canto 2. not to mention the titles of lethe themselves being derived from the story. i cannot find it but i believe someone in either hellbent or ninth house say "abandon all hope ye who enter here" (if anyone can find where this is said i would be eternally grateful). ok so, it's known that leigh took some inspiration from dante, but let's get into how she characterizes hell in comparison to dante's version.

the beginning of canto 1 and chapter 27 start very similar. in dante's inferno(working from John Ciardi's translation), we start alone in a "dark wood" which is is "so rank, so arduous" that "it's very memory gives a shape to fear" [1.3-7], with a dawn sky over head. in hellbent we start in a similar state. alex finds herself alone, in an orchard, feeling afraid, confused, and lost. specifically the journey was supposed to cause fear, just as the forest for the lost souls in the first canto.

then just as the group find the hope of getting darlington, they are attacked by wolves. while wolves and dogs make multiple appearances in the inferno, the most notable is the she-wolf seen in that first canto, right before virgil comes in. if this is a one to one comparison(not suggesting it should be), than these wolves are the counterpart to the leopard, lion, and she-wolf. they represent the sins committed by the group, while also preventing them from bringing their and darlingtons soul to safety, or salvation.

i could go into more details about other things that come to fortition when looking at hellbent through the lens of dante's inferno. i would love to talk about alex and the wolves in the inferno, but i could fully write a 10 page paper on it if i wanted to. honestly if you already like/own/have read the inferno, i just recommend reading the two books in tandem to each other. it's fascinating.

[strangefellows]

(SPOILERS FOR MURDER ON THE WARP EXPRESS DO THE EVENT BEFORE COMING HERE)

Okayyyyyy holy shittt. Okay. So the two most important things are number one the Faust network is confirmed canon and number two BLOODFIEND DON QUIXOTE HOLY SHITTT.

Took this from Reddit, but the Kindred system is basically right out of Vampire:The Masquerade. Basically, Kindreds are generations of vampires. So say if you got bitten by a Seventh Kindred bloodfiend and transformed, you would be an Eighth Kindred. Bloodfiends get weaker as the generations come by so an Eighth Kindred would be weaker than a Seventh Kindred, so Don being called the Second Kindred is HUGE. She is apart of the second ever generation of bloodfiends and is only weaker than the first ever bloodfiends to exist. The only way to become stronger is if you bite another bloodfiend that’s higher up than you and drain their blood, which is what Casetti almost did to Don. It’s also a massive crime, which is why Don was so pissed about it.

Anyways. Don’t have much to say about Faust’s discord server being canon except that’s gonna be a real interesting plot thread when we get to her Canto (and the existence of Faustcord mods). And how much her personality changes when she’s not connected to them.

Since a lot of our Sinners are turning out to be really important/strong people (Don being bloodfiend royalty, Outis definitely being instrumental to the Smoke War, Ryōshū’s connection to the Fingers, Faust being apart of a hivemind, Hong Lu’s family, Sinclair and the Sign) I’m getting pretty confident that the Dante is X/Dante is a clone of Ayin theory is real. Unless there’s something else we’re missing, it’s pretty much the only way to top these insane twists

Yeah that's what I was seeing RE: the Kindred system so she's basically like WILDLY OP BLOODFIEND and oh my godddddd. Holy shitttttt.

It all makes sense tho!! What's her base EGO? Sangre de Sancho. What does it and several of her IDs do? Bleed and self-heal. LIKE. BRUH. BRUHHHHHHHHHH.

FAUST NETWORK REAL

I looked up what she called it and it's the German word for 'company' so looks at that curiously hmmmmmm.

BUT YEAH. YEAH I SEE YOUR MATH. With everyone so wildly important and like, the way Bloodfiend Don ( tentatively going to call her Alonso til the reveal ) looked at him with pity...yeah. Yeah I'm still 100% convinced of the Dante is X/Ayin theory.

[kira-moonrabbit]

many many years late... my big criticisms (not review!) of limbus company just from a gameplay standpoint. tl;dr... its kinda bad. this is both my opinion, and also how i explained said opinion, but i need it off my chest.

so preface: i dont play limbus anymore, but did for about one and a half cantos when it was brand-slappin' new. when i say brand new, i mean fresh out the box when there were still big server problems killing everyone's ability to play the game.

i went partially through the intro and then i had to sit through some more issues; then i had to replay the intro AGAIN when i came back. i figured skipping it would still allow me to view the in depth tutorial for how the actual game mechanics work in the same sequence; it did not give me this luxury and i had no idea how to re-find the tutorial. i had to scrape by with half-remembered fragments from watching someone else stream limbus and manage to view the whole danged thing. such is my preamble.

unfortunately i dont have the energy to find screenshots to use and i am not about to re-install limbus at 4 in the AM just to make an angry post about it. i'm opinionated, not petty.

i believe that a game should, even without a tutorial, be able to have its mechanics gauged just from looking at the UI and just generally observing. obviously tutorials are good, and not everything should be given to you this way, but as a rule of thumb you should be able to at least pick up a few rules about how things work just from watching un-commentated gameplay. lobotomy corporation has this. library of ruina has this. Limbus Company does not give you this.

the game is dogshit at explaining what the hell skills are. you are told there are coins, that are flipped, and dice are rolled. there are comparisons on the upper screen as to how two different skills will match up... and looking at these things, gave me no indication as to how the hell everything is CALCULATED! People who view with no commentary need a whole paragraph explaining the topmost UI! at least with ruina the dice math is simple. limbus needs a god damn calculator for every step.

disembodied micro-nitpick corner! the game doesnt tell you exactly where to go to uptie things, or when you unlock this ability. AND, it takes two whole cantos to unlock a way to earn major resources like, yknow... basically anything other than just more Lunacy for more gacha-ing.

defense skills are also not entirely perfectly explained. you think your "fuck shit everyone is targeting me" buttons would have a little more explanation behind them to help you use them better, but the descriptions for them completely sailed over my head and i had no idea which situations were and were not appropriate to use them. and each person has their own different defense skill so you better hope you have the right one for the situation when you need them! Else, S.O.L.

but yeah. i expected i'd have a handle on things by Canto 2. but by then, i just felt more confused, because in dungeons you just have a different combat system than in the main game for some reason??? one that i think is better executed because you actually have decent control over who's receiving what attacks. i had no idea what the hell i was doing the entire time still. i was just throwing out attacks and hoping the UI wasn't lying about matchups. my trial by fire wasnt even a trial, it was just... arson.

my other major criticism? sin. you know how one of the first things the game explains is sin resonance and absolute resonance? before the actual mechanics for how to calculate sin clashes? yeah, absolute resonance is literally just a damage boost that you can MAYBE hope is convenient. delibrately going for sin resonance was just getting my butt kicked. the game said to do this as much as possible but it just acts as a red herring for ACTUALLY learning skills that will get you further in the game.

sin in general feels like such a nothingburger of a mechanic. Cool, an elements system! to go with the last game's elements system! the two systems stack! i thought it was gonna be cool! But nnnope, its mostly just fuel for EGO. things DO have sin resistances, but they just feel like an afterthought.

what i liked about pierce, slash, and blunt is that they each had a slight archetype! Pierce was mainly status effects, Blunt was mainly damage, and Slash was something of a middle ground that focuses on power stacking (long live swordplay of the homeland with purple tear and slash power stacks).

with sin, its like... they're the colors attacks come in? and they have a status effect they're associated with. it doesnt feel like it adds an extra layer of much. i probably can't go as far as to say you can take away sin and lose nothing, because it does fuel EGO, but its... i dunno, it just feels like it's not needed.

i'll spend less time on the gacha because we all know gacha is gacha. but its like... ruina felt good, because you slowly accumulate more and better resources for the challenge ahead. you feel yourself slowly progress. In a gacha system, things have to generally remain at the same level of power as each other, give or take. And some things are just... better than others, yes. but there's very little in the way of like, teambuilding opportunities. you use the same really good units for pretty much everything. there's no progression aside from gacha, gacha, gacha over and over.

and this makes the reward for beating story missions just more gacha-ing, and lore. no feeling of getting stronger... no new toys to play with. the side resource modes, too, only serve to pump up your units. there's no customization of how you tackle things. i guess that ties in to the disconnected side bit a little, but still.

if you want my opinions on if the story is good, i cant give them to you though. i'm a gamer. i have practical opinions. to jump into the story would fall under the purviews of things like literary analysis.

but there is also a minor thing i will bring up that has to do with the story, in a way.

and there you have it, a casual gamer's opinion of limbus company as a game. a common person's opinion, in short. i'm not going to claim my opinion is the be all end all, far from it. I'm sure others have put the same ideas forth more eloquently. but sometimes you gotta hear what just a regular person who plays video games to have fun has to say about something.

Limbus Company all but demands you to have played Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina before playing it. the loading screen explanations do shit to tell you the kind of world you're getting into. some concepts don't quite go fully explained. and the things in the prior games are essential to the understanding of limbus company, such as the reasoning behind why L-corp fell, just what the Smoke War even was, and just what caused the Distortion and EGOism phenomenon. Anyone jumping in because "ooo, nice gacha!" is going to write off the prior games as useless, when they're actually incredibly important for understanding the story and why certain things are the way they are, and for understanding the whole game's themes!!! as to WHY they're important, I'll leave that to the more wordsy folk. [EDIT: it was brought to my attention by a kindhearted anon that i was wrong about how much story you need to be able to understand limbus. this is why i wanted to keep my story-related opinions to a minimum, as i havent played much past canto 1 myself. i admit this paragraph is a little bit brought on by me being grumpy that many players who play limbus just because its a gacha completely disregard the previous two games. all in all this paragraph isnt very fair.]

and before anyone says anything... i will not be arguing over this post. if i said something wrong, i said something wrong, such is life, pobody's nerfect. i am also not asking for tutorials about how to play the game, either. i feel like the game itself should be able to give me a satisfactory one for me to want to play it.

and lastly? i will ESPECIALLY not be arguing with people who have spent money on a gacha, any gacha. i feel like this should explain itself.

[an-aussie-button-masher]

Everything You Should Know About Star Wars Outlaws

   It is a period of civil war across the galaxy…a perfect opportunity to make it big in the treacherous criminal underworld! Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws, an open-world adventure set in the famous galaxy far far away, puts you in the shoes of a cunning new scoundrel on the scene named Kay Vess as she takes on a dangerous heist job to earn herself a real reputation. Explore numerous planets - some new, some familiar - throughout the job, stealing right from under the nose of a notorious gangster and evading the Empire’s attention as you reach the top of the galaxy’s most wanted list. Outlaws is set to release on August 30th 2024, but if you need to catch up on any news beforehand, I’ve gathered here a rundown on all the details we know about the game for you to enjoy. Read on!

The Basics - A Good Blaster at Your Side    Outlaws is the first of its kind for the Star Wars gaming repertoire - a singleplayer, story-driven open-world adventure, at a considerably larger scale than the previous major games like Jedi: Survivor. It features wide-open free exploration of numerous planets in the galaxy far far away, in a choices-matter narrative where every move you make could earn you reputation across worlds or land you in trouble with the Empire. Explore, sneak, steal and fight your way across the most famous fictional galaxy in the most gorgeous high-definition graphics it’s ever been witnessed in - I almost thought a handful of the games’ screenshots were taken from some upcoming show!

Gameplay Details    The game truly allows the player to pick their approach to any situation. In action, will you go the stealthy route, or would you prefer a straight fight to all that sneaking around? Guns blazing is always an option, or you could send your faithful little companion Nix to distract enemies, grab weapons or activate diversions. When things get too hot, you can activate a special focus mode to slow down time - even in the midst of a high-speed chase on your speeder - and carefully line up your shots to take down your targets.   By completing certain jobs, attacking certain factions or making certain dialogue choices, you can earn reputation (good or bad) with the various crime cartels you’ll encounter - but of course, gangsters don’t play nice with each other. Pick your allegiances carefully, as working for one gang will often make you an enemy of another. When the Empire catches wind of your crimes, you’ll deal with Grand Theft Auto-style wanted levels as increasingly difficult stormtroopers, death troopers, walkers and even TIE fighter patrols are deployed for particularly troublesome scoundrels. When the pressure gets too high on the surface, you can flee to the stars in your ship - unless there’s a fleet of Star Destroyers or bounty hunters ready to ambush you in orbit for an all-out dogfight!

The Characters    So, who are the stars of the show here? The player controls Kay Vess (Humberly González), a scoundrel who grew up on the corrupt streets of the casinos of Canto Bight and wants to finally make a name for herself in the criminal underworld scene. Accompanying her are her faithful pet merqaal Nix (Dee Bradley Baker), who is excellent at distracting enemies and grabbing items, and Clone Wars veteran commando droid ND-5 (Jay Rincon) that has managed to stay mostly in one piece in the decades after the war and now works as a personal enforcer.   The game sees them pulling off a daring heist job that promises to put Kay’s name on the map, masterminded by notorious gunrunner Jaylen Vrax and targeting the mansion of the dangerous crime lord Sliro, who commands an army of bounty hunters to “discourage” any wannabe thieves. Additionally, Kay and crew will be tangling with various galaxy-spanning cartel gangs, including the Hutts, the Pikes, Crimson Dawn and more that will make either powerful allies or vicious enemies.

The Time and Place    The game’s story takes place during the events of the Original Trilogy - more precisely, in the year between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The Empire is busy fighting a full-scale war against the Rebellion, allowing the scum and villainy of the galaxy to thrive in the background. The familiar “used future” aesthetic of the Original Trilogy is ever-present in Outlaws, with the classic screen-wipe scene transitions, rusted chrome ships, and Kay’s extremely 80’s mullet and jacket.   There’s plenty of worlds to explore, both familiar and new - visit Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine (and catch a glimpse of a certain scoundrel frozen in carbonite), survive the mean streets of Canto Bight, and navigate the snowy alleys of Kijimi. Brand-new planets are introduced in this game too, such as the windswept savanna moon Toshara and the war-torn jungles of Akiva. The player will be able to soar across the open lands of these freely-explorable worlds on Kay’s trusty speeder bike, and fly through the stars beyond aboard her ship, the Trailblazer.

   That’s all there is to know about Star Wars Outlaws before it releases on August 30th! I know I’m excited for this fresh new look at the galaxy far far away - let me know if you are too! Feedback, reblogs and likes are all much appreciated, and thanks for reading!

An Aussie Button-Masher

[fireemblems24]

Fire Emblem Engage 18 - 20

Spoilers beneath the cut. This game is SO much fun to play, even if the plot is a bit basic.

Also, I'm shipping Alear with someone HARD.

Ok, so I paired Lief with Goldmary because I thought she'd benefit from the extra build staff and he 100% friendzoned her in their support, lamo.

Time for just about everyone to get Canto. About to see a lot of Sigurd's support conversations. Ivy, Hortensia, Seadall, Chloe, Goldmary, and Merrin are all getting Canto. Alfred already has it. I have Kagetsu with Sigurd right now and may or may not leave it that way. We'll see.

Ouch, Ivy's and Sigurd's support hurt. He talked about knowing the pain of a grieving child. My heart. 😭😭😭 His with Hortensia is pretty much the same. 😭😭😭

Goldmary commits to her gimmick. She is gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss all in one.

Has anyone found a good use for Ike's blessing? It's makes everything so heavy and the rewards don't seem worth it.

Ok, so it looks like they already patched in (or added) a way to grind supports as a free update (I'm getting the DLC, but not yet). That was one of my biggest complaints about this game is how hard it is to get supports, esp since it encourages you to constantly replace your units, like every single freaking chapter almost throws superior units at you. Way worse than previous games. This should fix that a bit.

Oh, wow, and it got me Alfred and Yunaka's A support first time! I dropped her because I swear she didn't get a single strength point in her level ups, but their supports were really interesting so far. But I didn't get Ivy and Zelkov's C when they swam together so . . . not sure how strong this is, but it's welcome nonetheless. Doing it twice unlocked their C support. Not bad, esp if you have this from the start next time and can grind out more supports.

Rosado taking his life in his hands claiming he's cuter then Goldmary. And Yunaka and Alfred's final support was pretty cute.

Eirika talking about Lyon will never not hurt me. Her paralogue was a big step up in difficulty from Corrin, I feel. I think it was the map layout constricting movement so much and her wing sword making is harder to take advantage of the flier friendly areas.

Somniel is more fun gameplay wise than the Monastery because it's less necessary and feels less tedious, but man does it mess with the storyline way more than the Monastery did. Lief is like "there are still rings in trouble!" and Goldmary is just . . . lying in her bathing-suit and tanning. It's unintentionally funny.

Sombron is pissed that he lost Eirika and Sigurd. No mention of Lief though. 😭

So . . . Alear and Veyle are siblings, right? That means Lumera had sex with that dude.

Yessssss I was so hyped seeing a chapter on the water. I love ship battles. And a recruitable enemy too! This is like old-school FE.

So "the Miracle" that all the Emblems are discussing and mentioning Lumera, is it reviving someone back to life? Also, cool that Sigurd took the lead there.

Man, I just had one of the most satisfying overrides yet. It was during Lief's paralogue, and Kagetsu!Sigurd with Ridersbane must've taken out like 6 of Lief's mage horses.

I also sent Alfred way out by himself to chase down the speedwing on Lief's map. I "told him" that if he survived, he'd get the speedwing. Boy tanked everything like a champ and ended up MVP of the battle (deserved), so now he's 2 points faster.

Both Kagetsu and Ivy are level 19, so I'm doing Ch 19 before Sigurd's paralogue hoping they reach 20 there, and I can reset before doing that chapter where there's a TON of units to fight.

Are we going to fight wolves AGAIN? I hope they die for good this time.

So is Mauvier only staying with the 4 wolves to protect Veyle? Or partly? So I still predict we can recruit him later. I wish we could recruit Griss. Dude is unhinged. I'd love to see supports lol.

I think it's cool that Alear wanted to leave the area because there's no one left. But also fell a bit harder for Alfred who struggled with that decision the most.

This map is going to be VERY annoying with all that purple shit everywhere. Though, do I get Micaiah and Roy back after this?

It's amazing to me that we can destroy the Wolves so many times, and they keep trash talking. Somehow. They're so pathetic. And then, yet again, our heroes are chitchatting and somehow the enemies keep running away. I think it's best you just turn your brain off.

Alfred is like, "should we really let them go?" The voice of reason, finally. But Roy and Micaiah back!

I like Ivy so much more than I expected too. She's hilarious. Her B support with Panette was gold (and some really good voice acting too).

Why does no one ever want to spar with Kagetsu? 😭 There are so many supports about sparring, but not poor Kagetsu. He needs to support Alfred. He's always down for training.

There are so many characters I want to use next time because I like their personalities: Jade, Citrinne, Rosado, Fogado, Zelkov, and Boucheron are some. Pannette has promise. Lapis seems cute. I'm sure Timerra MUST have more to her than songs about eating meat.

Chloe and Merrin are girlfriends. Also, Goldmary starts stripping naked in her support with Framme. Didn't put that on my bingo card.

Micaiah's paralogue map is an amazing choice. Alcryst is the 3-13 Archer this time I guess lol. And there's a stand-in for Sothe too I see. Glad he got a little shout out there.

I GOT THE DEER 😭

Goldmary needs some real issues in her life. Homegirl is having a breakdown because she made a funny face while eating. Who knew her and Framme's support would have so much entertainment?

So at the end of Roy's paralogue he's like "I used to know this demon dragon who wanted to wipe out humanity, you kinda remind me of her." Uh, thanks??? What are you trying to say exactly, Roy?

Mauvier is a Camus archtype 100%, except hope he's recruitable.

Alfred's reassuring Alear. I swear, these two are literally perfect for each other. I've never shipped a self-insert character with someone this hard before.

Oh, will I get Celica back this time? She deserves much better than Griss. He's like the anti-thesis of what Celica stands for.

How come Griss gets to use Ragranok every. single. turn. I never get to do that. Kagetsu finally sent that asshole back to his tile. Couldn't have done it if I didn't trust Alfred a metric fuck ton and just sent him out there.

Woop, got Celica back. She's free! Only Marth left.

Griss was easy to deal with after he stopped attacking me every round. Also, why are we not killing Griss and just letting him laugh about whatever he's so amused over.

Poor Alear just learned that she's the child of Sombron. Ok, Alear needs some headpats. She's confused how she can be Lumera's and the Fell Dragon's child. My dear, it takes two.

Alfred says he doesn't believe it. The only one who said something to try and help her feelings and not about the situation.

I like seeing Sigurd get more focus again. I really hope this means FE4 remake is coming.

So Lumera isn't Alear's blood mother? But, the writers DO know you need two to have a baby divine/fell dragon, right?

Alfred being the first to support Alear 😭😊❤️ And so unquestioning and complete about it. Alear's response to him got me too. Like, I'm falling for this ship hook, line, sinker. I'm going to have a hard time pairing up Alear or Alfred with anyone else unless their S-Support is a dud.

Like, I like Dimileth and Chrobin well enough and all, but I ship all 4 of those with other people too, and sometimes more (like Dimitri and Chrom). But, like, I ONLY am shipping Alfred and Alear with each other so far.

I love how casual Alear is seeing Mauvier wander up, when like we've fought to kill each other multiple times.

Also, I'm rich again! Thank you, Elusia. I may actually be able to afford the cute outfits now.