#this really is probably dumb sorry

[lem0nicle]

figuring out how to draw him🤷

im not really sure how to caption this

im feeling a lot more anxiety lately because of the approaching school year and i wanted to get it out??

i headcanon 8 with anxiety, idk why, its probably dumb sorry

also i hope im not bothering you with this

[collaredkittyboy]

[starrysharks]

the guy (haven't watched the new movie yet :P)

[undercreative]

The Achaeans soccer positions (based on my teams formation, the players on my team & vibes)

Striker: Achilles (kinda obvious (will occasionally play wing mid too))

Attacking mid: Idomeneus (saw him described as a berserker when fighting a few times, gotta be everywhere, get to everything & support the attack)

Wing mid: Menelaus 

Wing mid: Little Ajax

Center mid: Patroclus (was gonna put him attacking but I feel like he’d be back on the defence a bit more too (its a toss up, him and Idomeneus probably switch positions sometimes))

Center mid: Agamemnon (man is always yelling & trying to command everyone (also I hate the person who plays here on my team))

Wing defence: Automedon

Wing defence: Antilocus (fast and small)

Center back (stopper): Diomedes (get’s to everything, nobody is getting past this man)

Center back (sweeper): Odysseus (gotta have a good kick with those goddamn thighs Homer kept talking about, strategic, sees the entire field)

Keeper: Greater Ajax (large man, plays aggressive, will not hesitate to come out of his net to stop someone)

Coach: Nestor (man rambles the entirety of halftime away)

Assistant coach: Phoenix (wise advisor)

Manager/medic (my teams manager is a doctor): Machaon (obvious reasons)

[skrunksthatwunk]

KUWAMESHI SKETCH DUMP KUWAMESHI SKETCH DUMP in which they are little shits who cannot stop messing with each other

also obv zoom in to see everything bc this shit is CRAMPED. but it's all neat i prommy

[moltage]

saw this tweet and it's kind of recent so it got me wondering what Tom Mcgrath is doing nowadays.. come back king we miss you

[turning-monday-blue]

Sweets (1/?)

The snugness was barely tolerable. She had overestimated herself. She looked surreptitiously over her shoulder and ducked around a corner. The only thing following her were her bad decisions, but she felt chased all the same.

Okay. Calm down. Breathe (but not too deep). Evaluate the situation. What are your options? Can you loosen anything?

She looked down at herself. Past her swollen breasts, past a fluffy roll of upper belly, she examined her waistline. Nope. The button was the only thing keeping the zipper together, and vice versa. For the millionth time, she lamented her morning. What a bright idea, interviewing for a job with a snack company. She was very well aware of how sweets affected her.

Could she find somewhere discrete to wait out her... little metabolic mishap? She looked around for a discrete nook to accommodate her fresh bulk.

The little atrium she had found had a series of plush benches around the walls. She sighed and headed for the one in the corner. She sucked in as best she could and sat down. Some horny little corner of her mind made note of how it felt as her tight belly shifted against her puffy thighs.

Sitting like this, only barely upright lest bending too far compromise her jeans, she couldn't ignore how her waistband was trying to cut her in half. She thought back to how she had done this to herself. The lovely HR manager had very explicitly pointed out the basket of the company's sugary offerings there in the middle of interview table. The woman had been insistent that she try at least one of each, gushing like any good salesperson about their rich flavors and subtle textures, occasionally even peeling one out of its wrapper and handing it to her.

How could she have done anything but eat what was offered to her? And by a beautiful woman, no less. She knew how her body reacted to food like this, but she had been desperate to make a good impression, to look good and eager and employable. A good girl. She ignored that last thought, and the accompanying shiver through her frazzled tummy.

She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth (but not too deeply). All she had to do was calm down, and give her body a chance to do the same. Then she could find a back door to sneak out of, go home and hope that somehow that she hadn't blown the interview.

She opened her eyes again and caught sight of herself in a mirror across the room. Holy crap, she was huge. She had been her normal, narrow self, and her outfit had fit very very normally, when she had arrived. But now? Now it looked positively painted onto her. Her breasts were trying to spill out of her tastefully exposed bra and over the lapel of her blouse. She was more balloon than woman at this point. She ignored another tingle.

As she watched herself in the mirror, she noticed something change. Slowly but surely, the last wrinkle in her blouse smoothed out. Uh oh. That meant... she was still filling out. Panic. She tingled again.

No. No. Calm. Breathe (but not too deep). She closed her eyes again, and could feel her plump body quietly grow. Crap.

Panic. Calm. Breathe (but not too deep). Calm.

Maybe if she didn't look, it would go away. That had never worked before, sure, but there's a first time for everything, right?

As she rationalized to herself, she noticed the sound of heels clacking towards her hiding spot. Panic!

Maybe their owner would pass and not notice her?

No such luck.

The woman who had interviewed her rounded the corner.

"There you are!"

She struggled to stand. So tight.

"You left your purse upstairs. I get it, though. Interviews can be pretty stressful, huh?"

Like nothing had changed. Did this woman not notice that she was currently three times the size she was when she had shown up? Could this woman not hear every seam in her clothes creaking in harmony? Could the woman not see how wide and deep and round she was becoming?

"It's such a beautiful handbag, I almost wanted to keep it for myself!" The woman laughed. "Oh well."

She took the bag from the woman. "O-oh! Thank you!" Leapt out of her.

"Listen," said the woman, "technically I have to review a few other candidates, but I think you're a shoo-in for the position." The woman moved closer. "No one else has shown so much... enthusiasm." Closer still. She basked in the smell of the woman's musky perfume.

"Oh... that's great!" she managed to squeak out.

"In fact," the woman continued, "if you'd like to come back upstairs, we can have you fill out the onboarding paperwork now, so you don't have to come back just to fill out some forms if... when we give you the job." So close now.

"Um! Okay!" What.

The woman placed a gentle hand on the side of her massive, tight, growing belly. "Listen, between you and me, that passion you showed today will take you far with us. Do you feel like the offer is fair? We can negotiate further if you need." The woman's eyes were so sincere.

What was going on here? She could barely think.

The woman placed her other hand on top of her belly, well hidden by her burgeoning breasts. "I do hope you'll say yes."

"Um..."

There was a pop. Her button pinged away across the room from her overburdened jeans. It made a little thwack sound as it hit the far wall. Her zipper flew down, zizzing audibly. Her belly erupted through the breach. Her blouse retreated upwards. The tingling became a roar. All the while, the woman, as though no tectonic shifts were happening right there and then, continued to implore with borderline puppydog eyes.

The world held its breath with her. How had this woman not reacted to any of that?! What? Was the woman still waiting for an answer?

"...okay?" She tried. She wasn't sure if her brain was still working. "Sure?" Best to stick to small sentences.

"Yay!" cheered the woman, "I really think you'll love it here!" The woman launched in for a quick hug around her exposed belly. The woman's arms didn't go even halfway around her. And still the woman didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong.

"Well! If you'll follow me back to the elevators, we can at least get the formalities out of the way."

The woman took her by the hand and pulled, still gentle. She followed, mutely. Even the horniest, shamiest corners of her mind were silent, waiting with bated breath.

As they reached the elevators, the woman pushed the up button and stood to the side. "Please," said the woman, "after you!"

On autopilot now, she stepped into the elevator and... wedged into the door. Stuck. What. Panic? Calm? The elevator dinged again as if to say "I'm waiting!"

The cold of the elevator doors brought her back to reality. She put a hand on either side of herself and tried to pull herself in. As though this were somehow normal, the woman chirped "Oh, here, let me help!"

She felt a gentle pair of hands press into her oceanic bottom. Her horny brain thrilled again. She clamped down on those thoughts. No time to be a pervert.

Between the two of them, they muscled her into the elevator. She turned to face the doors in time to watch the woman press into her in order to let the doors close. Normally equipped for eight full-sized human adults, due to her immensity, it very barely fit two.

"We need floor thirty," said the woman into her barely contained cleavage. She tried to reach for the panel of buttons, but by now there was simply too much of her in the way.

"I've got it," said the woman, reaching behind her without looking.

They rode the thirty floors quietly. She could feel herself still widening, pressing towards the walls of the elevator car. Her embarrassment had burnt out, leaving only a kind of stunned peace in her mind. She tried to will her body away from the woman, but where else could it really go?

By the time they reached their destination, the woman was firmly pressed against the doors, still showing no indication of the extra-ordinariness of the situation.

As the doors opened, the woman stepped back, grabbed her hands, and pulled as she tried to wiggle through the door. Eventually she floomped through, and they set off toward the HR suite.

Full-on waddling now, she felt an inner tension release. She had stopped growing. Relief. If nothing else, at least things had stopped getting worse. Sure, she was almost round enough to roll. Tingle. Sure, her clothing had been reduced to barely covering her... rude areas. Tingle. Sure, a beautiful woman was acting as though this was all perfectly normal. Tingle tingle tingle. But hey, at least it finally wasn't getting worse.

The woman pushed open the double doors to the HR suite and welcomed her in with another glittering smile. They seemed to be the only ones there. The woman led her, patiently, to the front desk area. The woman ducked behind the desk, looking for something.

"Hmm, it looks like I'll need to go print off more some more copies of the forms. Shouldn't take more than a minute or two." Finally she'd have a moment to collect herself.

Then the woman produced a basket, laden with various goodies, from underneath the desk. "Here! Help yourself, sorry to make you wait." Uh.

"Oh, here, allow me," said the woman, picking out a chocolate confection, peeling it, and pressing it into her mouth. "I'll be right back!"

She chewed and swallowed the treat.

Uh oh.

[ganondoodle]

i often really do feel like an .. unwanted part of the fandom, i dont draw beautiful landscapes, i have unpopular but strong opinions im constantly annoying about and rarely change, dont like/dont draw the pretty young popular twinks and hot gurls to fanboi over nor do i turn characters into one, the opposite moreso, draw only one ship no ones heard of really, got little energy to interact with the few people that are nice to me and send me asks so it probably looks like im ignoring everyone and unfortunately but still rarely get so stressed i get overwhelmed and emotional about pehaps seemingly minor things and spiral almost into a breakdown feeling super embarrassed about it afterwards but the damage is already done and i look like a freak or agressive weirdo

[3-aem]

MY BRAINS NOT WORKING AND THE CUTE BOY I WORK WITH KEEPS CORRECTING MY GRAMMAR THIS IS SO AHAIWIAKSDHDGRRRRHRNE

[efverse]

👗 or 💍 for ditto!

two alternate wedding dittos??

[theloveinc]

(On one hand, Enjin is excited to have his own baby. So excited that he can't think about it for longer for a few seconds before his bones start turning to liquid and his gut fills with something so euphoric he's afraid it might cause him to up and float away.

But then on the other hand, part of him dreads it, almost, is annoyed by his excitement for it—not so much the actual having of, caring for a baby part, but the... creating one from nothing part. The... putting another living, breathing being onto this earth, part.

Babies are... no, children are quite a sore subject for him. Everything about them, about his experience as one, are the antithesis of his existence. Reliance on others in and of itself is far from a bad thing, he knows this to be true... but children have no choice in the matter as to who they are surrounded by and who they are helped by, much less whether or not they have to exist in the first place.

Besides, for all intents and purposes, Enjin has children. Grown-up children, children he only partially raised, but a family of the them, nonetheless, who'd choose him as their mentor in this life and the next. Having another, from conception feels selfish, somehow. Unnecessary. Disrespectful.

And he doesn't want to name it. Of it all—your pregnancy, the birth, the whole shebang—naming it definitely feels the worst: slapping on what will one day be an independent person an identity nobody else has the right to choose but them. He went through it, Rudo went through a version it... and he's certain any child of his will, too. It's why he has yet to come to terms with it... and has absolutely zero ideas for a name.)

[proselles]

our souls unite on the celestial plane and we learn that i am the only one that can bring you back from the brink of insanity in every universe and you saved my life as a child over and over again and i never gave up on you, even when the world was falling to pieces, reinventing itself into the worst possible version and you were at the forefront, and youre in a SITUATIONSHIP??? this is why men shouldn't having fucking RIGHTS. they always RUSH THINGS. a WOMEN would know what this is, which is a NORMAL FRIENDSHIP. a BASIC one even. group project partners that you never see again ass friendship requirements i can't believe men dont consider this the bare level of being friends this is why theyre so emotionally shut off everyone thank arcane for shining light onto this terribly darkened subject

[neurotonic]

Ouh. I really like how out of all the antagonists in the series, Prism's motivations (and her turning to Zoraxis) are directly influenced by Phoenix's track record. She has the most personal beef with the agent, though it's a little ironic that her TK implant helped the agent's success. If it weren't for Prism, Phoenix wouldn't be the legend that they are known for.

...Except...That's minimizing Phoenix's own ingenuity and skill with the implant, isn't it? It's a useful tool, yes! But in the end, it's just a tool. Phoenix was able to use it in unique ways, and that's not counting whatever else Phoenix has to do in the moment without TK. If it weren't for Phoenix's own efforts (and their strange ability to not Die), Prism wouldn't be forced to take revenge.

They're their own self-made people, but inevitably they left such a huge impact on each other before the third game...and if Prism wasn't the one who personally added the implant in Phoenix's head, then they haven't even interacted in person!

It could be seen as a little tragic, and it sorta is--Prism's desire for revenge is a little misplaced (and, yes, it is bolstered by Zor when she switches to their side). For all we know, Phoenix never intended to be the villain in Prism's story. But Prism's frustrated and angry and devastated about being reduced to the One Project she made. She just wanted to make something bigger than herself.

And it's really nice to see Phoenix help her once she recognizes that Zor's been using her all this time...even if it takes some time for Prism to really let them help her.

It takes the combination of their unique skills, brainpower, and their eventual trust in one another to destroy Zor's volcano kinesium base. Prism gets saved by the person she thought made her dreams impossible, and in return, Phoenix gets saved in the one IEYTD ending where they're not declared legally dead. I feel like that's something interesting? Because this is also the one finale where Phoenix has an active ally working with them close to their side (...as close as Prism and Phoenix could get, anyway).

Well. Anyway. What was I talking about? Enemies who are closely intertwined with one another's journeys end up becoming each other's most important allies? Okay, yeah. Let's go with that.

[geddy-leesbian]

just going to be bitchy on main one last time before making myself go to bed

For real idk why the fuck I'm still bothering with my high effort location/details screenshot compilation posts when I can just make lower effort posts that get SIGNIFICANTLY more notes. Like why the fuck should I even bother to spend at least a couple hours curating screenshots for part 2 of Luis's lab details which will get a maximum of 50 notes when I could just spend like 20 minutes making a few gifs like this and get HUNDREDS of notes

[rxttenfish]

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

[ranger-danger]

Y’know when I first got The Chrystal Shard I was like “I wonder if Joyce and Drizzt would get along” because I like thinking about rangers. But then I started reading it and went “oh, Never mind. They might as well be cousins.”

Let’s see:

rarer mistreated race ✅

double wields scimitars ✅

follower of mielikki ✅

was shown to mielikki by another ranger ✅

Seems to enjoy & seek danger to feel truly alive ✅

Like I didn’t know about Drizzt when I made Joyce a long while back. But like. The accidental similarities still make me feel kinda shocked. Is Joyce a ripoff of Drizzt? Can you make a rip-off accidentally?