#this was a lot of fun! i got to use my excessive throne design AND draw fancy jewelry <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[vpofcookies]

Two pieces for @voicesfortheblade as a gift for Eloise with the prompt: Boar's head replica pendant with ruby eyes and a thin gold chain

[rubykgrant]

The Reds and Blues (your full group and anyone else you might wanna add) are in a Pride Parade. What is everyone doing? All I know is that Sarge is driving a float and Simmons here is IN CHARGE OF CONFETTI. (This ask is brought to you by me going to my first Pride Parade yesterday)

Hey, first of all, congrats! I hope you had fun~

Sarge is definitely driving his own float, and Lopez helped him build it; the thing looks like a big rainbow version of Red Base, with multiple flags of various gender/sexuality combos (but also, they all have the Red Team insignia in a corner somewhere). Rather than drive it out of sight, Sarge is towing the whole thing in the warthog, and he's wearing a special version of his armor (just this ONCE he will be more than pure RED; he's the sunset lesbian flag, because- "It's got all of us on there!". he fully embraces this, let's go lesbians!)

Simmons is once again the Social Chairman, so he got put in charge of trying to organize everybody's duties and make activity schedules. He had to revise it several times (because he tried to micro-manage EVERY LITTLE THING), but it finally worked out pretty good. Once everything is going good, he can finally just... relax. People can still check in with him for specific things, but he mostly just gets to chill and walk around with Grif (my personal ideas for Grif and Simmons- Simmons is trans and gay, Grif is bi. they've both been in different levels of denial/awkward about this over the years, but now they can finally be themselves and embrace it. Simmons felt the need to wear a binder for years, but for the full effect of feeling accepted and proud, he has a light button-up shirt with the gay rainbow as stripes opened with a loose-fitting binder that has the trans colors underneath. then just some jeans. such minimal clothing! in public no less! Grif's in shorts and his own opened button-up shirt with the bi stripes. they participate in the parade at one point, holding up a banner that reads- "Why Are We Here? Because We're Queer!")

Caboose is the confetti king, with Freckles naturally helping! He's wearing his helmet (just regular clothes instead of full armor), and Church helped him figure out how to make the visor outwardly change to different pride rainbows without messing with his vision

Doc has a booth for anybody who needs any medical attention, and also walks around to help re-fill hydration stations, plus a variety of free snacks for people (with plenty available for people with specific diets/allergies). He has a lot of helpful references for anybody who wants to read and learn about gender/sexuality (so family and friends who want to be more accepting and mindful can get more info, and other people can figure out how to find their own community)

Donut is handing out coupons for places that sell special soaps/candles with various pride color themes. He has his own float in the parade as well, and it is a WHOLE musical number, with some flamboyant special effects and excessive glitter

Tex is just walking around ready to intimidate the absolute heck out of anybody who tries to disrupt the events. No cops or bigots at Pride, just Tex (she WILL throw a car if she needs to). She and Church participate in the parade for a bit, just kinda having fun with casual drag (she's in a masc outfit, he's in a dress. Donut helped make sure he'd be very pretty~ nothing fancy, but they have fun going with a rock-a-billy theme)

Church is handing out different kinds of glow-sticks as the sun goes down (some of them the bracelet/necklace kind that clip together). Once it is really dark, he and the rest of the Fragments put on a light show, with Theta creating the most AMAZING pride color fireworks!

Kai helped get a few different live music things going, and set up booths that have various merch/clothing for people... and once that is done, she took her rightful place in a throne on a float (there are several intersex, bi, and pan designs... but she also has a crown that says "Slut Queen", and the kink flag as her cape~)

Carolina sings some songs, and helps with some of the booths here and there... but she's mostly just enjoying the chance to take this all in, and appreciate everybody all around her

Locus is still awkward with crowds... like Sarge, he's in full armor, but similar to Caboose's visor, his can change to different rainbow combinations. He's actually more comfortable being in the parade, where he doesn't have to TALK, so he does that most of the day

Tucker is helping with the kid-friendly areas (and gives anybody who wants to call this "forcing kids to be gay" MORE than a piece of his mind). There are a lot of games, snacks, free clothes/merch. When Tucker participates in the main parade, he sets off some confetti canons with his sword (on the float, he skips a shirt, and wears leggings with the big community pattern)

Wash has clothes with his ace, trans, and gay colors, and he helps set up different booths/floats. He also passes out free key-chains and bubble bottles for people

My OCs Poppy and Junonia would help as well; Poppy would be on a float that has different flowers arranged in pride color rainbows, tossing out fake flower bouquets to the crowd. Junonia has a booth for disability inclusion (with info for people who want to learn more), and also hosts artists/craft creators who are selling merch

[primordial0riginator]

L, Q, A, and Z for the alphabet game >:3c

>:3

I’ll talk about one for each just because I’m unhinged and have a fair amount for all except Q and Z who only have one JFKSKFK

Now L my first choice is always Lane but I talk about her 1949394949929 times any chance I get so THIS time L is going to be Lucin

^^^This is she. You’ve drawn her before but I changed her design a bit recently

Anyway Lucin is a Necromite with psychic magic so immense that it causes direct damage to her health, this is because she was born mutated, and what that is in Necromite standards is essentially a defect in genetics but it’s like more complicated.

Necromite mutations are varied and generally manifest in the form of extra or lack of limbs or damaging magic types to the person that don’t match up to the parents they come from. In Lucin’s case, she was born with an insulator which is the large eye directly on her forehead, generally a Necromite picks an item as an insulator at a young age that they store their magic and souls in but Lucin’s just all attached itself to this eye and so she is considered very vulnerable and fragile in the species standards because she cannot regenerate properly like most others can.

This also means she is prone to nasty effects of her magic, since it’s all stored in her head essentially she can be afflicted with varying things that range from migraines to full-blown seizures if she overextends herself and expends too much energy. She’s got it pretty tough, and there is a lot of pain involved in her condition.

However all of the eyes on her body can store and release this excess energy she has, and she uses them to regulate herself and function properly. That being said, she is not a fighter and uses her magic to look into the future and help make decisions for the village, nobody matches her ability to accurately predict what will happen and she is always asked before doing much of anything. She is generally grumpy and quiet because she doesn’t feel good a lot of the time, but she’s a really great and smart person who has saved multiple people’s asses in really bad situations I will be real JFKDKDK She is a very valuable member of the village elders who she considers to be her family and she is just chilling most of the time. She’s also a lesbian and has a very lovely gf

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Now Q I only have one character and it’s Queen

Anyone who knows me knows Queen is the love of my life like JFKSKDK

She’s the monarch of the Necromite species, and she is very very fucked up. Originally a little gardener girl born into nobility, she took interest in fighting because there were tournaments held by the original king Andronicus, and she wanted to participate but knew she wasn’t cut out for it. However, he took notice of her and took her under his wing, training her up and teaching her how to improve her fighting and her magic. She became very bonded to him, but sadly she was manipulated and the true intentions of him doing this were to get her to take his place on the throne, and he had to die for that to happen.

It’s much more complicated than this plot-wise but basically he lashed out at her one day and forced her to kill him in self-defense. She was injured badly both mentally and physically in the process, and afterwards she was pumped full of his magic as it left his body and latched onto her instead. She was driven mad by all of these things, and when she woke up she was never the same. Nowadays she is a strict tyrant who only seeks power and does not care who has to die for that to happen. She’s dangerous as hell and my most favorite villain I have ever made <3 There’s a lot more to her but she has years of development and I will spare everyone reading my rambling JFKDKFKD

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Now A is Andronicus ! I did just talk about him up there so why not delve a bit more into him.

Now this man is still being developed but he is a fun weird little dude. He was the first Necromite ever made (in terms of the story, not the first one I ever made JFKSKDK), and therefore he is the most powerful one by far, not a single other Necromite would be able to take him down in any regard, and that is scary!

He has many attributes that are considered mutations in more current day Necromites, but these do not negatively impact him; in fact he can freely shift his body to do things others never would be able to with no ill side effects. Necromites have changed biologically since his time due to evolution and the older the Necromite is the more similar to him they are, but many speculate that mutations in modern Necromites stem from Andronicus’ biological makeup because he was the root of all Necromites essentially! This is why mutated Necromites have such insanely strong magic, but sadly they cannot control it like he can so it causes more bad than good.

But anyway Andronicus was very much loved by all of his people. He was a gentle ruler and just a kind person, he made sure everything also flowed smoothly and that all Necromites always had a safe place to be. He was more powerful than anyone but he used this power for solely good, and he constantly interacted with his subjects and participated in fun activities with them. He seemed to genuinely care about everyone, and when he died everything fell apart VERY quickly. Some of the older Necromites still alive remember Andronicus quite well, and there isn’t anybody that doesn’t miss him. Queen’s still agonized about the fact he betrayed her because she considered him a close friend to her, she never wanted to kill him but he quite literally forced her to or else she herself would die.

There are strange things about him though…. I can in fact tell you he was not in physical control when he attacked Queen. Someone else was pulling the strings on that one for sure, and alsooooo he may not be as dead as everyone thinks he is. But that’s all I can say for now :) (at least in this tumblr post JFKDKDK)

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Andddd finally Z is for Zekial

Zekial is a species known as NULL, who are born from the souls of those who were deleted from this plane of existence. Usually when somebody is deleted, it is because they’re considered a hinderance upon the world and generally broke certain universal rules, it’s a fate much worse than death. Usually what happens is that the soul is sent to the Void and fades away, consumed by a very destructive magic that will ensure they never come back, but this is not always the case. If someone has enough fight in them, they will not disappear and they will morph into this monstrous species that only seeks to destroy. Usually those that survive and become NULL do not retain sentience and become more akin to feral animals who do not remember their past lives, but Zekial here is a very rare instance of retaining both human levels of sentience and even potentially some of his memories…. but if he does he certainly plays dumb about it. There’s more to him than meets the eye, I don’t even think that’s his real name rather than an alias but …. 🤫

He is a pretty boisterous and obnoxious person despite the situation he’s in, his personality can be pretty disarming if it weren’t for his terrifying appearance. He is still incredibly dangerous though, he is immune to most damage because of the state of his body, and while he is still trapped within the Void along with others of his kind, he has been planning to escape for quite a long time and get revenge for being tossed away….he just needs one more person smart and strong enough to help him…. so he waits patiently. (And this does happen in one of the arcs, the Void’s gates are opened up and a massive attack on every universe breaks out basically but I won’t go into that here)

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AND THAT’S ALL THANKS FOR COMING TO MY OC TED TALK

[mountain-ash-and-rusted-iron]

this is an oc masterpost of all my haf-formed ocs languishing on pinterest with their messy aesthetics and unedited blurbs, in roughly chronological order of their creation, plus sorted by fandom. this post is only asoiaf, harry potter, hunger games, and riverdale, cos i have tooooooo many original characters otherwise and the post was getting incredibly long. (note that i love my ocs but these one’s are not polished or even the final versions of their characters, i just wanted to post them lol)

under a read more, if you’re on mobile start scrolling i guess, sorry,,,

Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire:

Laeya Targeryen: (child of Rhaella and Aerys Targaryen, born 280 AC - three years older than Danaerys) 

Fearful of her impending marriage, Laeya is eleven when she takes her younger sister and flees across the sea to Dorne, hiding herself and Dany with dyed hair and badly controlled magic. As Leia and Dani Sand they learn to live normally. At 15 Leia joins the Royal Guard and secures Dany work as a tailor's apprentice. When she is 17, an assassin tries to kill her in front of the Dornish court and everything changes...

- so laeya straight up has magic, which im considering an extension of the dragon thing dany has - she can control flame and for the disguise uses her ‘inner fire’ to make her eyes white-blue like super hot flames, cos the purple eyes are super distinctive. and then she’s discovered and suddenly politics are happening. honestly she’s entirely a way for me to remove the child marriage bits of the targaryen storyline (stop marrying off your twelve-year-old baby sister viserys u asshole) - in terms of meta/basics, laeya doesn’t have a fc cos most of my early ocs don’t, and bcs i picture her as emilia clarke with faked dark hair and blue eyes lol

and a quick aesthetic below:

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Kyrra Snow: (child of Robert Baratheon and Maery Snow, birthdate ???)

Kyrra Snow is the eldest natural-born child of Robert Baratheon, current King of Westeros, and daughter of Maery Snow, a Southron (but Northern-born) merchant woman. After her mother realises Kyrra was growing up a little too much like her father in looks and needed to leave the far South before she caught the wrong sort of attention, Kyrra was sent off to travel with her aunt and cousins. She is 17 and heading further north, to Winter Town, when Jon Arryn dies.

- kyrra’s another child of everyone’s favourite asshole king, and she’s got a lot of people after her head, but she just wants to travel and continue her work as a simple peddler. (riiip poor girl) honestly she’s not that developed but yolo -

aes:

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Brynn Stark: (child of Catelyn and Eddard Stark, Robb’s twin sister)  

Brynn believes in honour and family, and she is loyal to Winterfell and the North above all else. Likes - archery, embroidery and weaving. Betrothed to [some young Northern lord] to keep the bonds between the Norther families strong.

-i basically made brynn as a contrast to sansa’s pro-southnness and excessive femininity and arya’s anger and desire for swords (relatable mood tho lmao). so brynn is here to mediate, extoll the virtues of both needlework and weapons, make a decent marriage to someone she likes, if not loves, and hold down the fort in the North while shit gets increasingly messier in the South. and a possible faceclaim is Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey - 

aes:

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Rosienne Lannister: (child of Joanna and Tywin Lannister, born 273 AC)

Rose is looked at by the realm with dismissal, a consolation prize for her father, a spare daughter only useful for matchmaking, but at least able-bodied and pretty, unlike her brother. After a long betrothal, Rose is married to Willas Tyrell at the age of eighteen, cementing her role as the next Lady of High Garden...

- Rosie/Rose is a bonus Lannister, bcs why not. likes cyvasse and the harp, soft and kind and maternal, powerful in her own way. originally she was from a minor divergence where joanna survives tyrion’s birth and goes on to have another kid, but not sure if i’ll keep that aspect, so for now she’s tyrion’s twin -

and her aes (yes that quote is cropped, no i don’t care rn):

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honourable mentions to my other got underdeveloped got/asoiaf ocs who need more effort before i post properly about them:

Tamlen Storm, a rookery apprentice (working for the Maester of House Tully, managing the ravens) who may or may not be a reincarnated si-oc trying to save westeros, 

and an unnamed northern huntress who stumbled into the plot somehow and wants her normal life back (entirely inspired by Keira Knightley as Gwyn in Princess of Thieves, when she’s doing archery stuff and looking v butch).

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Harry Potter:

Taurus ‘Ara’ Lestrange:  (child of Bellatrix and Roldolphous Lestrange, born 1978) 

Raised by the Goblins after a legal mix-up following her parents' imprisonment in Azkaban, Taurus is good with a sword and aiming to be the next Minister of Magic. She attends Hogwarts with the other magical kids her age, under the fake identity Ara Burke, unknown cousin of a minor half-blood family. When the Potter brat’s drama starts destroying her change at an education just as her fourth year, her OWL prep year, begins, Ara intervenes.

- im tangentially aware that as bellatrix’s kid she’s almost occupying the place of whats-her-name from the cursed child, but considering that i know nothing about the cursed child and don’t care about it anyway, i have elected to ignore this. her actual parent might turn out to be some smitten half-blood from a minor branch of the Greengrass family, or it might actually be Rodolphous, who knows. slightly inspired by the fic ‘Harry Crow’ (by robst on ff.net) where harry is raised by the goblins -

messy aes:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Valerian Potter: (child of Lily and James Potter, born 1980)

After the Potter twins’ parents are murdered by Voldemort, they’re dumped on the doorstep of Number 4, Privet Drive. Dealing with two traumatised magical orphans, Petunia and Vernon Dursley turn to violence and neglect to stay in control, acting far more harshly than expected. With the arrival of two Hogwarts letters, life gets complicated incredibly quickly. (Self-sufficient and scarred from abuse, Val and Harry are immediately Sorted into Slytherin). 

- val’s fic is basically an angst fest, okay,,, -

aes:

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and shout-outs to: holly addison potter, a half-baked reincarnation si-oc (i love that concept a lot, can u tell) and my fav girl thea dursley, who already has her own fic and so isn’t getting a proper spot in this post 

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The Hunger Games:

Asher: (District Two, age 18) 

[rip no blurb for asher]

-asher is a career from two, who wins the 70th games. mostly im focusing on her recovery and how the games function in two, with training volunteers and mentoring and collecting sponsors, plus eventually the rebellion. lots of the D2 headcanon i have is inspired by @/lorata but i defintely made a distinct effort to have my own stuff, cos where’s the fun in plagiarism -

aes for Asher’s Games:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Rowan Everdeen: (District Twelve, age 19)

Rowan will do anything to protect her family. This extends to going to Head Peacekeeper Cray on a cold winters night, charging the most she can get for her virginity.  It extends to Reaping Day, when she steps out in front of the crowd and says “I volunteer as tribute” in the steadiest voice she can muster.  It extends to clawing her way out of the Arena, bloody and exhausted, with blades in her hands and violence kept tucked behind her teeth. It extends further, to a simple ‘Yes, President Snow’ when he coldly, carefully implies her family might meet with an accident if she doesn’t play the good little Victor (and fuck the people who pay the Capitol for her company). It extends to joining the Rebellion, to looking President Coin directly in the eye and agreeing to be a Mockingjay, a symbol for the people to rally around.

- another everdeen kiddo! as the big sister, rowan volunteers for prim, and goes through the Games - she’s a healer and a hunter, and a decent enough actor that she can manage interviews and a camera presence, unlike katniss. rowan also pairs well with a minor au i have, where the reapings are spaced out over a week and official training is a longer, giving the capitol a nice, long buildup to get excited and place bets, etc., and giving the poor, underfed tributes from the outer districts a better chance, which makes for more interesting television and better Games -

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Adrasteia Crane: (The Capitol, age 28) Unlike her big brother, Adrasteia doesn’t want to be a Gamemaker. Instead, she wants to create clothes, artwork, to enrapture the Capitol. She wants to be a Games stylist. After years of design school, of working her way up the ranks, first a PA’s assistant, and then fetching and carrying for Twelve’s prep team, and then eventually on a prep team for the dull tributes from Six, Adrasteia Crane finally has what she wants - the position of stylist for District Three’s male tribute in 74th Hunger Games. 

- tbh adrasteia is only seneca crane’s sister because i couldn’t think of a suitable last name for her lmao. i think i’d actually prefer her to be unattached to any major canon players. however, his death is a good motivation for her to join the rebellion, so we’ll see. she’s got a bit of the capitol fashion thing going too, with soft pink hair and diamond-effect skin on her face and shoulders -

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also bonus hunger games content: another oc, Sarsaparilla Verran, from District Eleven, fifteen and alone when she goes into the Games. An orphan, her siblings lost to the Community Home system years ago, her relatives dead or uncaring. So, Rilla is a wee lonely bab tbh. she did not want this, unlike most of my other hg ocs, and she’s not excited for weeks of murder. she just wants her family back, but since that isn’t possible, she’ll build a new family instead. and uuhhhhh,  spoiler alert, she dies before she can have this ://///

and my hunger games aus - a canon divergence where katniss joins the careers instead of peeta, her desire to go home to her family outweighing her reactive hate for the concept of training/volunteering to kill other teens, and a fem!Haymitch au where she’s a little wiser to the dark side of the capitol before she commits acts of rebellion (she still rebels anyway tho, just smarter).

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Riverdale:

Cat Cooper: (middle child of Alice and Hal Cooper) Cat Cooper (17) is the black sheep of the Cooper family. Her piercings, brightly dyed hair and connections to the Southside Serpents make her the odd one out among her sisters and constantly at odds with Alice Cooper. Cat’s life is occupied with her Serpent friends, work at a local coffee shop, and training - martial arts, supplemented with cross country, gymnastics and swimming. Until her older sister is shipped off to places unknown and her baby sister starts getting caught up in murder investigation with the absent Serpent heir... 

- haven’t decided between Catelyn or Catherine for Cat’s full name lmao. she used to be Kit, actually, but I changed it cos i prefer Kit to solely be my divergent oc (kit serafim). Cat is an ADHD disaster who loves her sisters and her friends and wants to get the hell out of Riverdale on a sports scholarship (she does either boxing or karate mainly, need to figure that bit out) -

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Georgie Andrews: (child of Mary and Fred Andrews)

Georgie likes soft drinks, cheerleading, and hanging out with the Blossom twins and Polly Cooper, their closest friends and a welcome distraction from their own problems. After Polly and Jason vanish, Georgie’s support system is almost gone, and they has to deal with everything they’ve been bottling up, just in time for Fred Andrews to get shot.

- also just angst ngl.  so georgie’s gender is basically ???, they enjoy cheerleading and not much else. they spend half their time dealing with depression, by trying to ignore stressful/hard topics and focus on the good side of everything. this isn’t a great long-term coping mechanism and has the fun side effect of pissing of the people around him when she seems unable to be serious or empathetic to someone else's pain (bcs she’s too busy deflecting for the sake of her own fragile mental health), so it gets fun when fred is shot and archie starts getting in too deep with the lodges -

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Sera Thornstone: (parents ???) Southside Serpent. Going to the Riverdale Community College and running errands for FP Jones. And secretly meeting up with her Ghoulie lover down by the Sweetwater where nobody goes. 

- everything about sera is vague and undecided lmao. but she has a ghoulie gf/bf/nbf? and they’re hiding that they were down by the river on the 4th of july, cos a serpent is an immediate suspect. going to community college to work on getting general credits before saving up for fancy school for law or journalism. the aes isn’t entirely accurate cos sera’s built from the remains of another serpent oc who i scrapped (she does have a baseball bat tho) -

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and honourable mentions to jen johnson and octavia blossom-murphy, my other riverdale ocs who actually have content, plus an in-development unnamed oc who gets adopted from the soqm by the Muggs family and growsup with Ethel. and my riverdale role reversal au, which i will never write but have some nice aesthetics for under the tag wip: bughead role reversal au.

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all my mini-aesthetics here are unsourced images/from pinterest. any similarities to other people or characters, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

alrighty that’s it. now i have to tag this behemoth argh

[zachsgamejournal]

PLAYING: Thief (Gold)

I was expecting to see guards and locked doors. I was not expecting to see giant spiders, zombies and fart-breath monsters. Regardless, I’m having lots of fun!

I meant to play one level today. I played three. I’m getting addicted. Part of that is learning HOW to play the game. I said before, I’ve given up trying to be stealthy on my first pass, instead, I run around getting used to the level layout, often with every guard chasing me. It helps me better plan my sneaky attempts. It’s kind of like casing the place, right? That’s thievey. It’s been working out great, but I’ve also become more comfortable with how to be sneaky and knockout guards. That’s worked wonders.

The first level seems so long ago, but it’s more or less what I expected Thief to be: explore a place and steal shit. The next two levels were a little different than my expectations. Level 2 is breaking into an old mine, working my way up throw a “factory” and into a prison. There I’m suppose to rescue someone. That turns into a another quest of finding “evidence” (or something) from a locker in the guards’ barracks. This is also where they introduce zombies. It was a curious situation because I’m trying to go for no-kills, but this thing is already dead. I mistook my water arrows for Holy Water Arrows and made one zombie a little more soggy than it was before. Beyond the zombie, the mine was a bit maze like. Some what irritatingly, the multiple branches basically looped back in on themselves. This made the maze more confusing than necessary (though not that confusing). The elevator, strangely, would not visit every floor from every floor. So sometimes you had to go to the fourth floor to get access to a third floor button, which it would only go to the bottom--or something like that. I did find a few extra things to steal, but it was hardly worth the confusion of the mines. At the top of the mines we meet some guards finally. There were about two or three ways to get into the factory (there were even signs directing you), but that seemed excessive. The fact that there were choices made me more disoriented and caused ey to back track. So it wasn’t like I had choice, I ended up going everywhere. This was a little annoying, but I also gotta give respect to the designers for trying to give me freedom. (I keep thinking back to my lesson in level design in school. The professor pointed out that older level design (90s) featured branching paths and maze like structure. Contemporary level design was much more linear: impossible to get lost.) Once in the factory area, I did a little exploring. I was motivated to take out all the guards, but that proved completely unnecessary. I found my sneaky way in and that-was-that. It was cool, though, in the factory they were making hammers. You can actually pull the levels yourself and do the work. I was a little sad there didn’t seem to be any real advantage to doing this. The prison was a little confusing, but finally figured it out. The designers kindly gave me a map so I could really make sense of how to proceed. The game is really dark, though. I’m not sure if there’s a way to provide more light, but it made it hard to see door locks when they were hidden in shadow. Then came level 3. I kind of hate this level. There’s an old crypt or something that has a horn for me to steal. Turns out lots of people have tried and failed. Mostly cause there’s zombies and fart-breath monsters. I have mixed feelings about this level, because on the one hand--it’s huge and confusing. On the other hand, there’s no guards--so I had free reign to rush around. The beginning area isn’t too bad. Maybe more confusing than necessary, but it’s small and easy to scope out. Lots of little secrets to find. Then you find yourself in a cave. There’s a very general map (almost useless) that gives you some idea of where you are. But when you fall into the caverns, a new section appears that asks, “Where am I”. I lol’d.

The caverns are awful. Much like the mine section, there’s tons of tunnels. They mostly lead back in on themselves. So there’s a few, complicated to get to, secrets that are also dead ends, and then there’s tons of paths all leading to the same place. It was confusing, and took forever to explore. I didn’t mind it too much cause I was just dodging clouds of fart shooting from slow-moving and slow-thinking monsters. But I didn’t love all the time exploring tunnels that looked the same.

Then you climb out of the caverns into a huge area of interconnected hexagonal rooms. I have no idea what this was meant to represent. Kind of looked like the face-basement in the House of Black and White in Game of Thrones. It was filled with zombies, and had multiple floors. Moving between the floors and finding secrets was a crazy, 3D maze. This also took forever to explore. It’s annoying, because there’s no clear way to know if the path you’re following is taking you toward your goal or not. Sometimes I want to find the secrets, not the level exit... After getting whacked by zombies and falling to my death a few dozen times, I finally found the exit and decided explore-time was over. It wasn’t challenging in that I feared for me life, but it was challenging in that it was too big and confusing to be enjoyable. Though it did make me feel like Tomb Raider, both because of the graphics and level design, and also because I was in crypts stealing shit. Then I got to mission 4. This is what I was expecting. It opened with a neat gimmick of having a colleague assassinated. You then have to track the assassins back to their “hideout”. The tracking area is a city block filled with twisty alleyways. If you don’t keep sight of the assassins, it’s easy to get lost and not know which way they went. But you also have to be wary of your visibility and sound levels. It was fun. Finally ,you arrive at a mansion surrounded by a fortress wall. The guards left the entrance unattended, so I just waltzed in. While trying to do my rush-exploration, I was able to break into a guard tower, then jump to a balcony from a window. This was a fun way to get in. I immediately started robbing the joint. The map they give you isn’t great, but after a while, I felt comfortable of knowing generally where I was. It was a pretty neat area with different rooms. This is exactly what I had in mind for this game. But at one point, i found an alarm and I set it off (I was curious). But there’s no way to turn it off, so I had to listen to it through the rest of my play through. I was caught and killed a few times, but I was also being pretty reckless. Eventually you have go into the basement, which gets really confusing, but I found my final goal: Ramirez’s purse. Unfortunately, maybe cause of the alarms, Ramirez was in a room with three other guards. I doused the torches and hid right outside the door. I then jumped up and down to get them to come to the sound of my bouncing. Comically, Ramirez walked right up to me and I snatched his purse. He saw me and pulled back his arm to smack me with his sword...but then: BOOM--Mission Accomplished. I’m not super following the story. It’s confusing because you get this little monologue summary at the beginning, and then you spend a few hours playing a level that has almost no story development. I’m definitely gonna read the plot on wikipedia when I’m done. The pre-level videos are kind of interesting. The music is not “period” at all. I’m guessing they want you to be excited about being sneaky. Well no need, I already like being sneaky! The next level looks pretty in depth, but also really fun. I’m worried the levels are going to keep getting bigger and more complicated, but I’m also really enjoying the game. I’ll probably play more tomorrow.

[bertiebrocki]

British Museum

It was really fun going to the British Museum as I got to see different sculptures and artefacts from throughout time up close. There is Definitely a difference seeing something in real life compared to on a screen. The art definitely shared similarities to the primitive theme of the brief with it’s simple resources and look.  

Assyrian Friezes

We started off in the Egyptian era of art which used a lot of primitive materials such limestone and sandstone. I was amazed by the large Phoenix which had the head of a human and body of a lion. Even though it’s quite a hard material the use of texture makes the stone look quite alien with it’s boned tubed legs. The hair looks plated with half circles that give the illusion that the hair is long and  flowing beside the face. Opposite from the phoenix was a statue of a goat,  fur is normally quite hard to convey in art but with a simple triangle it looked like it had  fur. 

Throughout the museum I made sure to draw what I saw. When doing observational drawing it allows you to focus more on what you are seeing, You definitely notice more details than if you looked at a glimpse. You got a reference to look back on in your book and by drawing what was around me it helps inspire develop ideas of your own. 

There was a room full of Assyrian friezes which were put in the throne room in what would be today modern day Iraq , the sculptures kept in a cool room to help preserve them. They are very old and fragile so they could break easily in room temperature. I enjoyed looking at the images of battles and people working. Although some use very basic shapes for bodys for example a triangle for a robe, it gives the impression of what it’s trying to represent. They are like the first comic books but instead of a piece of paper with panels they are carved images in limestone walls. 

The Hindu God Shiva 

After I had a look around the Egyptian section of the museum I went to see the Indian art which is also related to the primitive theme. I was fascinated by the many religious statues. One of the ones which I recognised was the Hindu God Shiva appears as the Lord of the dance Nataraja, in a ring of fire. This is one of the principal deities Hinduism made of copper alloy which has verdigris from oxidation. 

It is intended to be movable. That is why it is smaller in size and has a circular base for lifting and placing on the shoulder. It would be used in parades with priests chanting prayers and blessings. It is encased in a circle of fire representing the cosmic circle of fire a continuous creation destruction of the universe. It is a cosmos of mass, time and space. 

It’s appeal to me is it’s complex hidden meaning, it is easy to see it as a decorative statue but it is much more than that. It is like it is telling a story through shapes and symbolic meaning. Although my pollution concept is very different I feel the use of meaningful objects can make my dharma stand out. This would definitely get my message across to the viewer. 

Guardian Lion carved in limestone

The Guardian Lion were placed in front of temples or palaces to protect the buildings. Usually in twos, typically in a seated position with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth. This gives a sense of majesty and awe showing strength, power and a sense of courage.

The concept of Lion Guardians was prevalent all over West Asia, Greece and Egypt. The Lion like many symbolic images continues over many years and cultures. I have learned that sometimes meanings of objects can be widely interpreted everywhere and without written

 explanation it still conveys to all its message. I can see that part of designing a sculpture is understanding that the audience needs to read these clues and come up with their own conclusion and understanding.

Making a bowl 

To make a bowl I first rolled out the clay to an even thickness and layed it over my bowl shaped mold. I needed to gently ease the clay into shape over the mold and finally cut the excess off at the bottom rim. I was very inspired by the fish patterns I saw on the Assyrian Friezes and decided to add fish to my bowl. It related to my diorama theme of pollution and was a good way of testing a new medium.  It was important to leave it in wrapped up in plastic afterwards so it didn’t dry up. When I came back to my bowl on Wednesday I tipped it out of its mould with a piece of wood underneath so it doesn’t damage the table.  

[kayleygoestolondon]

Hola, Spain!

I’ve just logged on and realized that I haven’t posted since last summer... eek. In my defense, I didn’t travel anywhere exciting the first half of the school year, and by the time I went to Paris and Morocco, I thought people had surely lost interest in reading my posts. We have more important things to read about! Brexit! Donald Trump’s latest tweets! What bizarre name Kim Kardashian will give her newest baby! However, I had such an incredible time in Spain and Portugal that I figured I might as well write it down. Even if my grandparents are my only devoted readers, it’ll make a good memento for me to reflect on fondly when I’m 80 years old in a retirement centre in Camrose. 

My latest trip began with arguably the best flight I’ve ever had. Since I usually fly alone, I’m always stuck sitting beside one of the following Flight Ruiners™:

Crying infant who will not be soothed

Severely overweight person who insists on taking up most of my personal space

Armrest hogger

Somebody with a terrible illness (most likely the plague or Ebola) that coughs and sneezes the entire flight

NOT THIS TIME! I was seated with two guys from central London who were on their way to Barcelona for a bachelor party. At first, I expected the worst: when I flew to Morocco, an entire bachelor party boarded the plane at 6 AM already drunk and proceeded to be the most obnoxious human beings I’ve ever encountered for three hours. These guys redeemed my faith in good old British lads. They chatted with me the whole way about travel and insisted I have a drink with them to celebrate being hired at a new job! They even paid, which was great, because I am the stingiest person in the world and would never pay for a beer on a flight. It’s also part of my personal vendetta against RyanAir.  When we arrived in Barcelona, it was after midnight and pouring rain, so they offered to share their cab with me to make sure I got to my AirBnB safely. Chivalry isn’t dead after all!

My friends from Canada (Dillon, Candice, and Bal) were waiting up for me at the AirBnB with McDonald’s chicken nuggets and a batch of questionable homemade sangria. If that isn’t a welcome, I don’t know what is. 

BARCELONA

We had breakfast at the cutest tiny cafe and I had the best omelette of my life made by an equally cute and tiny Spanish woman. Also discovered that “cafe con leche” (Spanish coffee with milk) is pretty delicious.

We did a walking tour of the city and learned lots of interesting historical facts while seeing some of the main sights. On the tour, we met some other Canadians so we went for drinks with them afterwards. What a small world. 

Discovered you can go into a store and buy an entire jug of wine. Or, if you’re an efficient on-the-go type of person... wine juice boxes.

Checked out the Sagrada Familia. I’ve been to nearly every famous cathedral in Europe (#humblebrag) and this was the best one. If you go to Barcelona, it is 100% worth seeing.

Walked up to Parc Guell, which has a beautiful view over the city. Fun fact: the park was designed by Gaudi, the same designer of the Sagrada Familia. If you’re gonna read this all the way through, you bet I’m gonna give you some unrequested knowledge. His architectural style is pretty distinct and I really loved seeing how those elements were incorporated into the design of the park. 

Hopped in the car and prepared for the first portion of our journey. This is where it’s really important for me to note that we started our trip with “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under” by Shania Twain (more like Shania SPAIN, am I right? lololol). This song did not leave our heads for the entire week. I’m not exaggerating. We sang it constantly. In the car. At the beach. In the bar. SHANIA TWAIN EVERY DAY. 

DRIVING IN SPAIN

Since Spain drives on the right side like we do (sorry UK friends, but the left side is stupid and I will fight you about it), it was pretty easy to navigate... excluding the massive traffic circles with stoplights in them and no lanes marked. We circled those in terror, not knowing what we were doing but somehow avoiding collisions.

There are tolls EVERYWHERE. We paid 40 euros in tolls between Barcelona and Valencia, which is a toll-tally ridiculous amount (lol, I’m not even sorry for these jokes)

The highways are really well-maintained, but are virtually empty. We encountered almost no traffic at all and didn’t see any police either. Dillon did not take advantage of this and drove a respectable speed the whole way, rather than living out our Fast & The Furious fantasy

The Spanish countryside is really gorgeous. It’s much more mountainous than I realized, particularly the areas that we drove through. We got some really stunning scenic views along the way.

We all had important roles within the car. Dillon was the Driver, I was the Navigator/DJ, Candice and Bal were the backseat Snoozers and Snack Providers. This meant that Dillon was the MVP of the trip, because he drove without any road rage at all (how is that even possible... my driving is just like a constant stream of swearing), whereas my sole contribution was playing 500 Miles by the Proclaimers as often as possible. 

VALENCIA

We had the unfortunate timing of arriving Valencia just as a massive football game was ending; Valencia had won against Barcelona to win the Copa Del Rey. The streets were swarming with people and the honking was endless. Easily the second-most stressful part of our drive. Want to know the worst one? READ ON FOR MORE (#clickbait)

Spent our whole day there at the beach. The weather was great, if not a bit windy, and Dillon was magically transformed into a red lobster thanks to the sunshine. We all went home with sand everywhere. I think I still had some in my ears at the end of the trip.

We enjoyed beers and a selection of meats and cheeses on the beach. We ate so much meat and cheese during this week. You may be thinking, “Meat and cheese seem very impractical to eat on the beach because of all the sand”, and you would be CORRECT... but sandy cheese is better than no cheese. 

There were no toilets or change stalls at the beach so we had to go on a bit of an excursion to find somewhere. We eventually infiltrated a fancy hotel to use their lobby bathroom. Candice and Bal got caught going in the second time when the concierge asked if they “had enjoyed the toilettes, and would they perhaps now like to pay for something from the hotel bar”. They ran away. Classic escape!

We sampled a traditional Spanish drink, horchata, which is a “plant-based milk drink” according to Wikipedia. Sounds appealing, right? We collectively hated it. That’s what we get for trying something non-alcoholic. Therefore, it was logically much safer to stick with beer for the rest of the trip. At least, that’s what I told myself.

GRANADA

En route to Granada, we passed through a place called Lorca. High on top of a mountain, we could see a massive fortress. We spontaneously decided to drive up there and check it out. Turns out Castillo de Lorca was built in the 9th century and is one of the largest castles in Spain. Super cool... and we were the only tourists there!

Most Stressful Driving Moment: leaving Lorca Castle. Obviously because it’s on top of a mountain, the roads coming down were windy and steep. Our Google Maps got confused and took us down a side road into this local area that was hellishly narrow and we ended up going down a road that was like a 75 degree angle. I had visions of us driving our poor Volkswagen Polo off the edge of the cliff. Dillon, ever the stoic hero, got us out of it while I panicked and failed at asking locals for directions.

Our apartment in Granada was in the historic part of the city, within the old city walls. Think super tiny, winding cobblestone streets with high buildings. It was very charming, if not excessively sweaty climbing all the stairs. Good thing there was beer at the top!

In the evening, we went for a really great traditional dinner and then to a flamenco show. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me. For some reason, the waiter did not seem to think we were capable of drinking 2L of sangria when we first placed our order. We proved him wrong.

We sampled churros with chocolate the next morning. This is apparently quite a traditional thing and honestly I could eat it every day for the rest of my life. Who doesn’t want to start their day with deep-fried dough and chocolate dip?

As we left Granada, we stopped at Alhambra Palace & Gardens. It was founded in 889 AD and mostly constructed in the 13th century. The gardens were stunning and were more impressive than anything I’ve seen before, including the gardens of the Taj Mahal. (#humblebrag2) 

SEVILLE

It was a long walk from our AirBnB to the centre of Seville and it was about 35 degrees out, so we punctuated our stroll with frequent beer stops. This meant that we were feeling pretty good by the time we arrived at the Plaza de Espana. Some scenes from Game of Thrones were filmed here, so you could probably add our names to the credits now.

We then had the best seafood paella and sangria at a local restaurant! The paella was HUGE... and we ate all of it. No regrets. 

Seville was one of the friendliest places I’ve ever been. When we went for breakfast the next morning, we went to a local cafe where literally nobody spoke any English. The manager seemed really excited that we were there and got us our own separate table. There was no menu, so we managed to communicate that he could bring us whatever he wanted. We got this awesome selection of incredible sandwiches and he checked to make sure we were happy with them. Everywhere we went, people were super eager to please and would joke around with us, despite the language barrier. I’d go back here in a second.

FARO

We crossed the border into Portugal after leaving Seville and made a pitstop at Praia de Faro. It’s a small island that’s basically just beautiful beach and little bars and restaurants. We had some great beach time and beers because it was a scorching 37 degrees. Dillon attained an even higher level of lobster. 

Women on the beaches of Spain and Portugal often go topless... so when we asked a stranger to take a photo of the four of us on the beach, I realized afterwards that there was a mostly-naked lady in the background. Thank goodness for Photoshop; I made that disappear. 

LISBON

People in Portugal speak better English than people in Spain. I only managed to learn two words in Portuguese: “cerveja” (beer) and “obrigada” (thank you). I got along with those pretty well :)

The metro system in Lisbon is super easy and efficient, so for the first time we took advantage of public transit and spared ourselves walking everywhere in the extreme heat

When we went out for dinner that evening, we discovered that boiled meats are pretty standard in Portuguese cuisine. This was not my favourite :( On the other hand, Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata) are phenomenal.  

We checked out the seaside and a couple of cool markets. We also took a walking tour here to learn more about the city. Our tour guide recommended a super cool bar underneath a church. There was some kind of street festival going on, so there were outdoor bars and decorations everywhere. We explored that and then ended at an outdoor cinema. 

I had to get up at 4:30 the next morning to get an Uber to the airport. Note to self: next time I have an early flight, don’t have so many cervejas the night before. Lesson learned. 

If you’ve made it this far, wow - you probably need a hobby! This trip was so much fun and so interesting; I really wanted to take the time to tell the story. If you haven’t been to Spain or Portugal, maybe I’ve convinced you to go. I couldn’t recommend it enough. I owe the biggest thank you to Dillon, Candice, and Bal for being my travel companions and for making me laugh a million times during the trip. What an amazing final experience before I head back to Canada in August :) 

[mylifeincinema]

My Week in Reviews: March 29, 2019

Skipped last week because I’ve been watching a lot more Game of Thrones lately than I have movies. Anyway, here’s what I’ve seen since last time.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

**This Review MAY contain SPOILERS**

Going into the cinema, here’s what I was hoping I’d be writing about Jordan Peel’s Us:

"Cementing his promise as today's master of suspense, Jordan Peele’s Us has officially done to mirrors what Psycho had previously done to showers, what The Birds did to, well, birds, and what Rear Window did to, uhhhh... peeping on your neighbors? From today on, seeing my reflection will never not make me uneasy. And it’s a damn shame, too, because as a narcissist, there’s nothing I love more than staring at my reflection adoringly."

Or something like that.

Sadly, though, mirrors are still safe.

Jordan Peele has fantastic instincts; the patience for tension and the audacity and wit to fill each pivotal moment with a bizarre, piercing social satire. But so far it feels like he has an issue with focus.

Peele’s building of suspense, here, along with the unnerving atmosphere he maintains throughout, that Michael Abels score and the performances (especially Lupita, duh) are all insanely effective. They make for an eerie and exciting genre film for the first two acts. But then we get to the third act, which is wildly underwhelming in comparison, throwing us into the deep end of an underdeveloped mythology and building to a final ‘twist’ that was glaringly obvious from about ten minutes in.

Then there's that final shot, that's supposed to drive home the story's magnitude, but falls short thanks to an earlier scene hinting at it and the fact that Karyn Kusama's The Invitation pulled it off so much better. - 6/10

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Dean DeBlois, 2019)

Fun character design and all-around dazzling animation, and an exciting action/adventure story are just the cherries on top of the final chapter of this story about a boy and his dragon.

This trilogy has been as consistent as they come, boasting plenty of color and goofiness for the kids and enough depth and heart for the adults. The moments between Hiccup and Toothless here are unsurprisingly resonant, and take the film’s otherwise familiar story-line to the next level by further exploring the friendship between these two characters. And that third act was a masterclass in how to properly close out a trilogy. - 8.5/10

Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

Neither the story nor the characters are good enough to warrant such a long running-time. What makes it worse is that Zahler seems dead-set on focusing on aspects of this story/these characters that any filmmaker less pleased with themselves would trim. The entire Jennifer Carpenter sequence could've been trimmed down to her time inside the bank, and we'd feel just as connected to her as we were with the out of place, sluggish aside we get. We get some background on Slim, but none that goes any further than stereotypical, 'he's doing this for family' nonsense. And the villains are poorly realized, especially the two masked men who I didn't know were separate people until we eventually see them together in the bank.

Then there's Zahler's use of violence. The overly, ultra-realistic (which is to say, completely unrealistic), Troma-like displays of violence take away from their effectiveness, and immediately knocked me out of the film. This style worked in Brawl in Cell Block 99, but this film is far too much a straight-forward crime-drama to warrant such a cheesy approach to violence.

But despite its abundance of flaws, Dragged Across Concrete is just about worth the time for two reasons, and their names are Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn. Both are great here as textbook tough guys; two jaded detectives struggling in a world of changing politics and rules of the street. Zahler gives them an almost excessive amount of tough-guy dialogue, which they deliver with flawless gruff, spite and wit. If not for the rest of the film around them, I would've gladly taken two-and-a-half hours of these two alone in a car.

Sadly, though, that's not the movie we were given.

Seriously, though... edit this down to just Mel & Vince's scenes together, and you've got an enjoyable and effective tough-guy flick that would succeed in its cynicism and moral ambiguity. - 5/10

Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

A grim noir that does its job and does it well. One of those films I didn't dislike on the first viewing, but will certainly like much more upon future viewings. - 6.5/10

Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)

Overall it's not quite one of my favorite Kurosawa films. But still, the cinematography is stunning, and that Battle at the Third Castle is some of the most breathtaking shit AK ever put on film. - 8.5/10

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[k-renne]

King of Pain Pt. III

Previously:  I, II

You watched the snowfall from the view of your window; it coated each branch in a soft layer of white. The sky was completely overcast, almost the same color as the snow. The cold from outside seeped through the windowpanes. It was invigorating. You were interrupted as Martha knocked on your door.

“Hello Martha, it’s lovely to see you again,” You greet Kylo’s handmaiden.

“You’re too kind my lady,” She smiles.

“Martha, I have a question for you about the King,” You start. She nods, signaling for you to continue. “I was wondering about his suitors, and if there was anything to indicate his interest in me, it just seems so random,” You voice your curiosity.

“Many women fancy the King, but he rarely pays them any attention. Speaking from personal experience, his majesty looks at you differently and after the duel he would ask around about you,” She explains.

“I see, I believe you, though I don’t appreciate that he expected me to marry him so easily.”

“Well he doesn’t have much experience with woman, he’s learning. But let me assure you that he has a great respect for you,” She justifies.

You take in a breath and let out a sigh, maybe Kylo was a bit demanding, but after getting to know him your initial opinion of him changed. You had suitors before, men trying to charm you, none of them had captured your interest like this one. His directness was almost refreshing, he knew what he wanted and he was honest. It was a change of pace from some of your past crushes who just wanted to play games.

Martha leaves you to reflect, Kylo was slowly worming his way into your heart, and you didn’t know if you really wanted to stop him anymore. Physically he was incredibly handsome, with his strong nose and pink mouth, all framed by his black hair. His stare was striking; it made you feel dizzy, and his voice. Oh that would be the death of you, just thinking about it made you flustered.

You open your door to see Kylo standing outside of it just about to knock on your door. His eyes light up when he sees you, flashing you a bright smile.

“Y/N, I was wondering if you would allow me to give you a proper tour of the castle today,” He offers.

“Sure,” You reply. Kylo offers an arm for you to take and you give him a skeptical look.

“Come on Princess, please,” He urges. He wanted to show you off to his people.

“Fine, I’ll appease you today,” You roll your eyes. You rest your hand on his forearm and you swear you can feel his muscles tense underneath. He smiles warmly at you before beginning to walk with you. He explains some of the history behind the castle, showing you various paintings a long with a self-portrait. 

“You looked so stoic,” You comment.

“I guess I didn’t have a reason to smile then,” He grins at you.

“It’s also off center,” You add.

“That’s because traditionally a space is left for the Queen,” He explains, eyes full of mischief. You scoff, now he was teasing you.

He continued to show you the palace, in all its grandeur. There were a lot of reds, silvers, and black, to match the royal crest. It was very modern and sleek, designed for protective and aesthetic reasons. The ballroom by far was the most extravagant, huge arching windows and a grand staircase that led to an upper standing area.

“Here we have many events, the biggest one being the Winter Soirée, which is actually coming up in a few weeks,” He says.

“I see. I haven’t been able to come in the past but I can imagine that it’s wonderful,” You speculate.

“Why not? I always invited you,” He questions.

“Well I never really had a date to go with, or even a friend. I don’t like to go to such big social events on my own with a room full of strangers,” You explain.

“Hmm, I’ve never had a date either, but I guess it’s a little different when it’s your own party.”

“Yes, I’m sorry I let my fears get the best of me. Maybe this year I’ll gather the courage to come,” You hope.

“Don’t apologize, I understand.” He squeezes your hand in a comforting gesture. “Although I’d love to see you come this time, you could stick with me, be my date or just go with me as a friend if you prefer,” He suggests.

“Okay, I think I’d like that,” You accept his invitation.

“Wait, as my date or as my friend?” He asks.

“We’ll see Kylo,” You answer, smirking at him. He shakes his head at your ambiguity, unsurprised at your refusal to give him a direct answer. You liked to mess with him, he was certain of it. He would just have to go along with your little games.

He continues to show you his palace; though he can’t show you every room he shows you the most important ones and the things that might impress you. An example of this would be the throne room, where he spends his time greeting the court and his people.

“What? Kylo why exactly are you showing me your bedroom,” You question.

“I just thought you might want to familiarize yourself with your quarters, know where they are just in case. It’s not easy to find,” He flirts with you.

“You’re impossible, you know that?” You sigh.

“Only for you Princess,” He teases.

“I mean do you really need that big of a bed, it’s excessive,” You criticize.  

“You’d be surprised how much space one might need, why don’t you try it out?” He suggests.

“What! Are you serious?” You question.

“Always, come on try it out. It’s very comfortable, I should know I sleep there every night,” He goads you. You’re flabbergasted by his shameless attempt at flirting with you, at the same time you kind of love it. Seeing his bed of silken sheets, thinking about him lying there got something going in you. Probably not the best idea, but you decided to entertain him, flopping on to his bed like a starfish.

“Isn’t it great?” He asks, lying down next to you on his side, eyes appreciated your form on his bed.  You push him away playfully, but he only moves closer, barely budging from your hand. You decide to lie back against his soft pillows and close you eyes, enjoying the feeling of the cool smooth fabric against your head and the delightful smell of fresh linen mixed with Kylo’s scent.

This gives Kylo a great opportunity to stare at you openly, admiring your features while at the same time trying to ingrain them in his memory, so he could see you clearly in his dreams. He shifts so that he’s just hovering above you, face just inches from yours.

“Kylo, What are you doing?” Your eyes snap open at the feel him his breath against your face. His brows furrow, he feels like he can’t control his own actions. Your eyes hypnotize him.

“Y/N-I, can I kiss you?” He says barely above a whisper. Your eyes widen, and before you can think you blurt out yes, too caught up in the moment. He leans in slowly and you tilt your head and close your eyes, anticipating the kiss. It’s so gentle and soft, like he’s afraid he’ll hurt you, and before you get the chance to deepen it he pulls away. He looks at you again, cheeks pink, completely bewildered that you would humor his request. 

“Uh, I should probably show you the library.” He gets off the bed and looks at the floor like he’s about to ask it a question.

“Oh yeah, right,” You agree, beginning to come to your senses. There was something about this man that made your brain feel all fuzzy, thoughts muddled. You felt your heart beat just a little bit faster at the sound of his voice; you couldn’t believe that you’d ever find anyone that made you feel this way.

You walk over to him, “What you aren’t going to offer your arm this time?” You tease him. He shakes his head, against better judgment you grab his hand and begin walking. You don’t see him smiling down at your hand, fingers intertwined with his own.

Kylo leads you to the library, where you’re greeted by a bunch of kids. They all come up to you and Kylo, leaving their story time. “Who’s this Kingy?” They asked, calling him by their nickname for him.

“This is Princess Y/N, she’s my guest,” He presents you to them, crouching down to their height.

“Wow a Princess! You’re even prettier then the story!” A boy remarks.

“She is pretty isn’t she? Just beautiful,” Kylo asks the children, they all agree with them in a chorus of voices.

“Aw you gonna get mawwied?” A little girl asks. Kylo laughs and you become flustered at the relevance of the question.

“Maybe if I’m lucky, it’s up to Y/N though,” He answers. The girl turns to you and gives you big puppy dog eyes, “Pwease?” She pleads. You laugh at her cuteness.

“I won’t say yes, but I won’t say no either right now. We’ll see,” You answer vaguely.

“Can I be the flower girl?” A girl chimes in. “Yeah and I’ll be the ring bearer!” A boy adds enthusiastically. In their minds you basically said yes and they’re already thinking of the future. Kylo laughs seeing your frown, and he can’t stop himself from smiling at your answer. No longer was it a complete rejection, it was much more possible now.

Next the kids all join hands and encircle you two, dancing around while singing ‘Here comes the bride’. Kylo gives you a penchant look, before snaking an arm around your waist. You let the kids have their fun with their little game.

“Kingy can you read us a story?” One kid asks and others join in until Kylo finally agrees, asking you first if you mind.

You’re surprised that Kylo has such a good relationship with these children; they’re completely unafraid in his presence. There’s always something charming about seeing a man good with children, it’s a sign of good character, patience. Kylo can be pretty monotonous, but he reads the story with enthusiasm, putting effort into entertaining the kids.

By the end of the story they’re all leaning in, fully invested. You sit on the floor with the children while he sits on a chair. The kids are sitting close to you, holding your hand and sitting on your lap. Kylo smiles down at you and winks, seeing how much they are taking a linking to you.

After the story Kylo has to leave you to go and get some work done, he still has to run the kingdom after all. While he’s gone you go into the training room, where his loyal knights who are eager to speak with you meet you.

“Princess Y/N, it’s wonderful to finally properly meet the one that Master Ren keeps on talking about you, we’ve all heard great things,” A Knight greets.

“And we were particularly impressed by your swordsmanship, who taught you?” Another one asked.

“Thank you, I started teaching myself when I was a kid, sometimes taking a few classes here and there. Eventually I was trained properly by a veteran from my kingdom,” You explained.

“We’d love to spar with you sometime if you’d allow us,” They say eagerly.

“Ah more challengers, well someday we’ll have to, but I don’t think now is the best time. I’m sorry.”

“Of course Princess, we wouldn’t want to steal you away from Master Ren, he’d get jealous,” A knight answers.

“It was lovely to meet you all, but looking at the time it seems as I must go,” You say goodbye. They all wave and you leave to meet Kylo for dinner. He looks much more exacerbated then before.

“Are you alright? You seem tired,” You voice your concern.

“Yes, I’m fine Y/N. Even though I have great stamina in battle the proceedings of the court never cease to drain me,” He sighs. “But let’s not talk about that, I want to enjoy your company,” He adds.

“Well I am great company,” You boast.

“Yes you are my lovely, now let’s eat,” He directs, gesturing to the food. His term of endearment makes you breathless. You eat dinner with him, discussing your encounter with his knights and telling him more about yourself while he listened with rapture. After desert he places a velvet box on the table, he gives it to you to open and inside is a silver necklace with an opal framed by more silver.

“It’s for you, I hope you like it,” He addresses.

“It’s beautiful, this is too much. Thank you Kylo.”

“Nothing is too much for you, here let me put it on for you,” He offers. You nod and he gets up and walks behind you, taking the necklace in his hands. He gently brushes aside your hair, fingertips lingering on your neck before unclasping the necklace and putting it on you.

“Beautiful.” He coos, placing a kiss on your neckline.

“You’re too much,” You shake your head.

“You know I’d give you the moon if I could,” He speaks honestly.

“I don’t need you to spoil me, I’m already a princess,”

“That’s the whole point, no one ever needs to be spoiled, and if you think you’re spoiled now just you wait,” He promises.

“You’ll never give up will you?” You ask.

“Never,” He replies immediately. It was the truth, giving up was just not in his nature. He would fight for you till the very end; he was determined to win your heart. If you truly detested him you would’ve left and more importantly you wouldn’t have let you kiss him. He was more than willing to be patient for you if that’s what you wanted. He’d even give you his heart if you’d let him.

Kylo walks you back to your room and gives you a kiss on your cheek goodnight. This is when a messenger comes running over out of breath, Kylo, not knowing who it is stands defensively in front of you.

“Princess Y/N, I have important news,” The messenger breathes. You move in front of Kylo, reassuring him with a squeeze on the arm that he could trust this man.

“Yes, go on,” You urge. Kylo looks at you with concern.

“It’s your kingdom, we’re under attack from the North!” He exclaims.

Fuck, looks like something from the past was coming back to bite you in the ass.

A/N: Hope you guys enjoyed this, I’m having a lot of fun writing it and it really makes me feel inspired. 

[ideahat-universe]

Harvest Mooooooo-

Ever had a lot of spare time while also being busy at a moments notice? That’s what I was going through and the solution to that problem was to buy a couple time sinks. The first one was Dragon Quest 7 but I couldn't wait to play it so I got a quarter through it by the time my trip actually started and it ran out of steam by the second week. I finally beat the game and after finally beating it I must say. 

Not as good nor as engaging as Cursed King. Heavenly Bride’s throne is untouched in relationship engagement. I wish the plot in this game was in Heavenly Train (Dragon Quest 9) and that created characters can have a personality of a sort. It wouldn't take a lot to make them engaging. 

There’s an aftermath mode where you get to fight an even harder opponent and as Gajin Goomba once suggested, the Japanese don’t make much distinctions between the devil and god when you can fight them both like common final bosses. 

I don’t really get what they don’t get. 

Part of the changes to add more gameplay was in letting you invite people into your town and having a monster ranch so you can have them run out and find tablets for you to use. Everyone else’s tablets up to the point where the monster ranch builds it’s second location is useless and once you get them out there to find tablets you’ll find it’s nothing like the key system in Dragon Warrior Monsters 2. In fact it’s much worse. 

There’s no incentive to grind the other classes I mean you could but for what? So that every monster flees from you and you can one God himself?

Be my guest. That’s not a carrot I want to eat. 

So I thought about buying Rune Factory 4 but I was nowhere near a store and it would have taken half my data on my 3dsxl and some clown thought it was a good idea to change the card type and to completely cover the SD Card slot. 

So I downloaded a much less intensive game that’s legendary for sinking time. Harvest Moon. But which one? There are several in the Nintendo Store and Natsume makes a lot of games that are like Harvest Moon but aren't (and one of those games is Rune Factory but not quite) so after some research I was told that A New Beginning is the best one and well. If A New Beginning was the best one than I’m going to go on a limb and say that I really wish Stardew Valley was the DS. 

Holy crap the game is lacking in content. The character’s don’t really interact, you run around looking for resources but will find very little reason to buy or build anything and once you get some golden tools and animals you kind of run out of things to do. 

The Blueprint idea is great but it’s excessively woeful in it’s usefulness. Contrary to popular belief I do NOT have aspergers or autism and therefore I can’t actually be assed to use every asset in the game to meticulously design a town I’ll barely pay attention to. I had more fun pretending that I had a comedic back and forth with my horse than actually playing the game. 

That’s some post campaign mode faffing about and I was only in the 4th restoration. Everything is stalled out making the game really boring as you just wait for months to pass. The only thing to do is to hit on the chicks in the game and they are all terrible but eventually I put all my chips on one girl and she turned me down so I forced myself to pass out in a forest and uninstalled the game. 

I finished the roleplay by killing myself out of boredom and sadness. At least I could make myself that weird shade of brown Japanese people put in games and wear a dress despite having gender locked suitors. 

I finally found the time to go to a store and buy Rune Factory 4. It’s a lot of fun but I sort of expected that. I had previously played Tide’s of Destiny and I enjoyed that one as well. 

These games are missing something. Why is it that in none of these games you can have a giant family? My understanding of farm life is that once you find someone you basically work the farm and relax and by relax I mean a lot of heavy petting. 

Oh my god don’t google that phrase pretend I never said that. 

Despite all appearances I actually find animals a lot less engaging than people and I would rather have couple of gremlins who have my face and my wife’s hair terrorize farm animals and dump water on seeded soil than get some pets to do that.

I just got done playing a game with special side characters who behaved generic and the whole point of having a specific cast of characters is for their unique personalities and their ability to really engage in events but that didn't really happen so I don’t see why we have to have these specific characters. Should be able to invite random characters into town from a generator that goes with stuff you build for the town and or village. There should be a village, a town, a farm, and a forest with dangerous animals because farmers didn't make their living in the 100 acre woods it was kill or be killed every now and again! 

I don’t understand why The Sims hasn't created a Harvest Moon type environment for you to play in that progressively becomes the suburb of standard Sim games as the generations go by or why Harvest Moon games don’t allow for the Family Legacy Challenge.

Is it too hard? Does no one want this? I want this. I have all this money to throw at something like this but no one wants my money....

[erinhime83]

To go along with the fifteenth anniversary of Mirror Image, I figured I’d go ahead and post up some designs I’ve basically been sitting on for a few years, because I’m trash like that.  Keep in mind that these designs are basically for a version of the story that’s not a collab, so they’re kinda how I would design them now. Well, obviously, since I was the one who designed them.  ^^;

This version of MI goes back to the roots of the story, where they’re all in England for various reasons when they get summoned, and just sort of flail around for a bit, not having a clue wtf is going on.

Jennifer Hannisen/Shizuka and Ryu: Considering this is my character, not much has changed about her.  Every time, I keep trying to give her more traditional clothes, just to go back to something like this.  I was going to give her those weird thigh highs she originally had, but…the skirt is a little too long for that, and the capris make a little more sense.

Jennifer is about to start her senior year in high school, and her parents decided to take her on a trip overseas to celebrate.  She’s a bit of a dreamer, and wishes something exciting would happen just once in her life.  She embraces the summoning just a bit more than everyone else before she realizes that this isn’t the sort of adventure she was looking for.

Ryu is her Guide, and he’s a Dragon Tamer, but just barely.  His dragon is the tiniest to ever be tamed, and the rest of the Tamers don’t think too highly of him.  Except they have to respect him because he’s the Sumikian Guide.  He’s sort of out to prove himself, because he’s been looked down upon his entire life, even after it was discovered he is the Guide.  He and Jennifer get along really well, because they have similar personalities.

Lance MacFarlane/Sethos and Kiya:  Lance’s background a changed a lot, but I think it’ll make sense once I explain it. ��Lance is from Scotland, but moved to the US when he was about fourteen due to his father’s job.  He attended the same high school as Jennifer, and actually befriended her to a degree. She’s about the only girl he was interested in dating there, but because he absolutely hated the entire move and knew he was going to be going back home the moment he could, he didn’t want to really attach himself to the place.  She’s the only person he friended on social media, and he sort of regrets not pursuing her. 

He’s a bit of a delinquent, although he’s basically the straight man in his group of friends.  He doesn’t have any real aspirations at the moment, since he’s basically catching back up on his old life for the time being. The reason he was in Stonehenge was for the lawl of it, honestly.  Also, I didn’t really change his design too much, because I really like it a lot.

Kiya is his Guide, and she’s an instructor for the royal family of Azibo.  Most people don’t take the fact that she teaches the princes swordfighting because she’s a woman, but she ignores most of the criticism about it. She’s the motherly one out of all of them, taking it upon herself to take care of these ‘children’ from another world who are just really confused about everything.

Elena Guerrero/Evangelia and Antigonus: Elena is Argentine/Canadian, and out of all of the Chosen, she’s the most popular. But, she is actually just as introverted at the other Chosen; she just happens to benefit from the introversion that allows her to enjoy social gatherings for a short period before she has to recharge again.  She’s the most freaked out about what’s going on, refusing to believe any of it at first and only wanting to go home.  She’s in England because of her grandmother who recently moved in with them who has an obsession with Eva Perón.

Her design isn’t anything like any of her other designs, but rather something I tend to do with my Greek/Roman inspired characters.  But I really like it!  But then again, I guess that would make sense, wouldn’t it?  I did keep her hair from one of the old designs, so I guess that’s something, right?  I don’t have a real handle on her character other than the fact that Evangelia and Shizuka end up getting rather close despite the differences in personalities.

Antigonus is a bit of a rebel as far as the Guide as concerned, although he himself isn’t a rebel. Guides are always the around the same age as their Chosen, but the current Guide died before the Chose crossed over.  Antigonus was a former Guide before the new generation took over, and he took the position temporarily while they hunted for the new Guide.  Except Evangelia showed up before they found him. So Antigonus, despite being old enough to be their grandfather, is forced onto this adventure.  He was the former Emperor of Caelestis, having given up the position to his son so he could enjoy his later years.  Melohdia is a peaceful country, so most rulers just give up their thrones in their old age.

Desiree Dahlquist/Freyja and Nannin:  Desiree is the one I have the least handle on, but that seems to always be the case.  All I know is that she’s a photographer, she’s from New Zealand, and that she’s the oldest of the Chosen at twenty-three.  Oh, and that she’s most definitely bi, although I’m not sure who she ends up with, honestly. 

I do really like her civilian design, but I also really like the edgy undercut look, so there’s that. I love the idea of her having dyed her hair teal at one point, but it’s growing out now.  And the only reason I changed her sleeves like I did was just because her old sleeves, while looked cool, was a pain to actually ink.  >.<  (And yes, she does still have the feathers on her circlet and her boots, I was just too lazy to put them in.)

Nannin…okay, Nannin is the true rebel of the Guides. See, one of the rules of the Guides is that they’re always the opposite gender of their Chosen.  However, Baldurnan in the time since the last Chosen came to Melohdia, became excessively matriarchal, and they refused to accept a male in such a prestigious position. Nannin, for her part, didn’t really want to take over for the guy, but she was sort of forced to.  The others really don’t have any idea – the other Guides are sort of confused at her presence among them, but don’t really say anything – until they come to Baldurnan and accidentally meet the guy. 

Freyja is given a choice at that point, and she ends up deciding to keep Nannin as her Guide, since they’ve been through a lot at that point, and formed a bond.  It also turns out that the original Guide isn’t exactly the best sort of person, and they’re left wondering if maybe this was supposed to happen.  But that’s one reason why Nannin has colored hair while the others don’t – she wasn’t born a Guide.  She’s actually got the most gentle personality of the Valkyrie, which is the governing body in Baldurnan, but she’s a perfectly capable warrior.

Dimitri Kaminski/Drustan and Raelin:  Dimitri is the only truly foreign one of the Chosen, being Russian whose studying in England.  He’s a wanna-be novelist, and his divining powers sort of leaked into our world s he’s been constantly writing about Melohdia.  Most of his stories are about Chosen from the past, so he has the most knowledge about what’s going on.  At first, he thinks he’s accidentally taken himself into the world of his novel before he realizes what’s going on.

As Drustan, he’s the soothsayer of the group, although his powers are sporadic at best, and only really through dreams.  His combat skills are about on par with Frejya’s, though, so it’s not like he’s completely useless.  He’s biggest boon, though, is just knowing shit that the others don’t, and more or less helping them understand what’s going on.

Raelin is a princess of sorts, being the daughter of the chief of the biggest tribe in Frelic. She’s definitely rough around the edges, and tends to clash with the other Guides because she wants to rush off into battle all the time without thinking.  She’s pretty much spent her whole life trying to prove herself, since she’s one of many children her father had and is forced to compete with them to succession.  She might not want to be the next chief, but she hates people looking down on her because their perceive her to be weak.

I suppose I should explain the whole colored hair thing.  See, I had this random idea to give Shizuka pink hair, just for the fun of it, and got to thinking how it would be neat to make their hair our favorite color (with Drustan having red hair because his color is red).  And once I started doing it, I liked it.  I wanted to make all of them have colored hair, but I couldn’t think of what color hair the Guides should have, save Nannin, so just stuck them with natural hair and colored eyes.  Basically, the people of Melohdia aren’t really restricted like regular humans are, so they tend to have anime features.

The difference in skin tone comes from the idea that they actually have different bodies in Melohdia. I played around with making this a straight isekai, but considering there are parts where they go back, I couldn’t quite do it that way that they’re different people.  It’s a bit more complicate then their souls being transferred, because their bodies don’t exist on Earth when they’re in Melohdia, but I figure I can think about that later. ;P

It’s always fun to think about this story, and sometimes I do wonder if I should just…go ahead and tackle it someday, because it is rather interesting, even if we never go anywhere with it.  But I think I’m hesitant to do so because I feel it’s not really my story to do that to.  But still, its fun to go back every now and then, and I am shocked it’s been fifteen years now!  Feels like not that long ago and ages ago at the same time. :D

[ciathyzareposts]

Prophecy of the Shadow: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

            Prophecy of the Shadow

United States

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Date Started: 24 June 2019

Date Ended: 10 July 2019

Total Hours: 19

Difficulty: Easy-Medium (2.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Summary: Prophecy of the Shadow is a “lite” RPG that takes inspiration from Faery Tale Adventure and recent Origin Systems games. A sole character, presented throughout the game from an axonometric view, is thrust into the world when his mentor is assassinated as part of a political purge of mages. As he grows in power and skill, he learns of a prophecy that foretells the return of an ancient enemy named Abraxus. In his quest to counter the prophecy, he kills an evil regent and restores a princess to her rightful throne. The world is small and easy to explore. RPG elements–including combat, inventory, and character development–are simplistic but effective for the scope of the game. Graphics are mediocre in quality but are thoughtfully drawn to create interesting scenes and scenarios.                ****

          Prophecy managed to pack a lot of stuff into its small continent, but the full game took less than 20 hours regardless. I had the most fun exploring the game’s 10 indoor areas, all of which managed to accomplish some fun things graphically. It’s still relatively rare to find a game in which the environment is hand-designed instead of rendered as “textures.” Aside from notable pioneers in this area, like the Ultima series (and particularly Ultima Underworld), we typically see it in adventure-RPG hybrids like the Quest for Glory series.

It’s taken me a lot of games and time to understand how I feel about graphics. I’m not impressed by them just because they’re good. Textures, no matter how advanced, can only take me so far. Even well-designed monster graphics, like the ones in Crusaders of the Dark Savant, fail to impress me if their appearance and animations are all abstract–that is, when they jump and dance around the screen, they’re just following an animation pattern and not specifically responding to my characters in the moment.          

I consider these good graphics–not because of the raw quality, but because of what they clearly depict. Such “scenes” are uncommon in RPGs even in the early 1990s.

           I want my graphics to be functional in some way. I want the monster animations to tell me something about their reactions to my attacks. Most important, I want environmental graphics to set a mood, to tell a story, to offer a certain ambiance. If they do that, my bar for what constitutes “good” graphics is very low. Most people probably wouldn’t think that Prophecy’s graphics are anything special, but they establish their environments better than any game I can imagine recently. As I walk through a castle, I can clearly pick out the kitchens, and the guard barracks, and the torture chamber without any titles specifically announcing those places.             

Assaulting my way into Granite Keep.

          In the first two sections, my orphaned character found the titular prophecy and brought it to the Guild of Mages, which was soon slaughtered by the forces of regent Cam Tethe, ruler of the land in absence of the missing princess. As I loaded, there were five major places I hadn’t visited:

            The city of Jade

The Fell Swamp

Granite Keep

The abandoned Silver Mine

The city of Malice and its temple

Abraxus’s Castle (I didn’t even know about this one until I teleported there for the endgame)

               I visited them in roughly this order, albeit with a bit of backtracking. The City of Jade was mysteriously purposeless–just another city with a few services at the southeastern tip of the continent. I don’t think a single NPC had anything new to say.

North of that was the Fell Swamp. I probably forgot to mention in previous entries that if you walk into a swamp in this game, you don’t get very far before an animation shows you drowning.         

Entering the Fell Swamp at my own risk.

          For that reason, I had been circumventing the Fell Swamp, but I decided it must be there for some reason, so I took the time to experiment and soon realized that you could walk through the swamp on squares that depicted foliage. Following paths of these squares, I reached a hut at the center of the area. It was occupied by a powerful witch named Esme who said that she’d killed Tethe’s mage hunters.

As by now I was wont to do, I tried giving her my various objects. She had an immediate reaction to Larf’s head, saying that if she could assemble the ingredients for a potion of “Necrotelecomicon,” she could learn from him the secret of the resurrection spell. Fortunately, I had already picked up all the ingredients on her list: the fruit of the Desert Pango, the tongue of a Torlok chieftain, some spider venom, and a vial of acid, which apparently every “black potion” is.             

I give the ingredients to Esme, who looks like a young Anne Ramsey.

          With these ingredients, she soon learned the “Respirare” spell and then immediately attacked me. I killed her in a few blows. I spent much of the rest of the game wondering what I would do with a resurrection spell since the game is single-player. I went back and tried to cast it on Larkin’s grave, but I got a message stating that I didn’t have a powerful enough catalyst.

I next headed for Granite Keep because I didn’t want to deal with the eye tyrants up near Malice. The keep’s front door had blocked me in the past, but some NPC had hinted at a side door, and sure enough, I soon discovered one. Using my Death Warrant got me inside, and I had to kill two guards right next to the entrance, a fight that occasioned about five reloads. The entire castle was very hard, with enemies whacking away 25 hit points per blow, and I began to wonder if there wasn’t some armor I might have missed. I had to rest frequently and gulp as often as possible from my “Everfull Flask,” a healing potion that regenerates every five minutes or so.           

If the penalty for everything is death, then you leave me with no incentive not to kill you.

         There were multiple levels to the castle, including a dungeon with a large locked door as well as two locked doors on the second level. Eventually, I found a servant sympathetic to the Resistance who gave me a key to Cam Tethe’s chambers, one of the doors on the second level. He attacked as soon as I entered, and he killed me with his “ebon ax” in about three hits.          

Killing Cam Tethe on my fourth trip.

     To defeat him, I had to “door scum”: enter, attack him a few times, leave to rest and heal, save, and enter again. It’s worth mentioning that I had a “Time Stop” scroll that you’re almost certainly supposed to use in this fight, but I had forgotten about it. When Tethe died, he dropped a copper key and his ebon ax–a magic axe that returns when thrown.

The copper key opened the door in the dungeon, which released Princess Elspeth. I thought this would be the end of the game, but I realized I’d forgotten about the city of Malice. Elspeth gave me a key (that she’d palmed) to Tethe’s torture chamber, then fled to reclaim her throne. It’s worth pointing out at this time that the game world is not dynamic, and after Elspeth left, she was nowhere to be found. All NPCs reacted to her name as if she was still missing and as if Tethe was still alive.            

The young princess, looking a little worse for the wear. She is played by an actress enigmatically named only “Kelly.”

           The torture chamber held a set of “evil accoutrements,” which turned out to grant me access to the temple of Abraxus in the city of Malice. Tethe himself wasn’t the shadow of the prophecy but merely the high priest of Abraxus’s cult.

After I left the Granite Keep and sold my excess equipment, I finally had enough money to purchase “acrobatics” training from Chester the Great and increase my agility. I also bought a potion that permanently increased my strength. Between these upgrades and the ebon ax, no combat in the game was really much trouble after this. Maybe some players manage to save enough money to get the agility increase earlier.             

I admit, this guy looks like a “Chester.” Sometimes, I wish I’d picked a better pseudonym.

         On the way to Malice, I remembered the silver mines. I had a much easier time this time, and after some combats with gnomes, I found the Shadow Sword. The weapon negates magic when in your inventory and wipes your spell points if you wield it, so from the moment you find it, you have to go through an annoying process of dropping it and picking it up again every time you want to cast a spell.            

Finding the Shadow Sword on the gnome king. This is not a weapon that you want any earlier than necessary.

          Malice had a handful of NPCs who praised Lord Abraxus and whatnot. The focus of the city was a large temple, where I killed a number of evil priests and walked out with a mysterious “Fan of Shadows” and a gold catalyst. I should mention at this point that from the various dungeons, I’d assembled several other spells, including “Cremare Magnus” (volcanic eruption), “Lamia” (steal life force), and “Umbra” (invisibility), none of which I ever found a reason to cast. I almost always needed to save my spell points for “Curare” (healing). I also never got much use out of the “Oculorum” spell or the redundant crystal ball, which shows your position in the context of a larger area. The larger area wasn’t really large enough to be useful.

The final area was reached via a teleporter north of the temple in Malice. I’d learned to watch for those pairs of rocks. They’re scattered all over the main island, but most of them just warp you a short distance from the origin. This final pair sent me to an island somewhere. A new monster called a “morgoth” attacked a few times, but it wasn’t very hard.              

This is one mean-ass morgoth.

            The island housed a large keep with four corner rooms and a pedestal in each room. Each pedestal had a riddle that discussed a certain element and prompted me for a particular object. I hadn’t realized I was saving the objects for this purpose, but it wasn’t hard to figure out where they went. The “Fan of Shadows” went on the air pedestal, the “Everfull Flask” on the water pedestal, the “Eternal Lamp” on the fire pedestal, and the “Wand of Earth” on the earth pedestal. When all four were placed, a door opened in a northern wall, taking me to the catacombs.             

Interpreting one of the pedestals.

          The catacombs had a brief battle with spectral priests before leading me to a bier on which the body of Abraxus lay in state. Even though it seemed like an absurd thing to do, since I couldn’t do anything but cast the “Respirare” spell on him, that’s what I did. The ancient sorcerer awoke, laughed at me, and attacked me.         

I love how the hero’s one dialogue option for the insane resurrected sorcerer is “hello.”

        My hit points had been reduced by the ritual to 30, and as I fumbled about with my ebon ax, Abraxus swiftly killed me and, I supposed, took over the world. On reloads, I both discovered that only the Shadow Sword could damage him and remembered that I had two “Time Stop” scrolls. Through trial and error, I settled into a pattern of action: drop the Shadow Sword, resurrect Abraxus, use a “Time Stop” scroll, gulp all my healing potions, use another “Time Stop” scroll, pick up the Shadow Sword, and start hacking away. This sequence ultimately brought me victory over the sorcerer.          

Conserving those “Time Stop” scrolls was key to defeating Abraxus.

        The endgame was slightly reminiscent of Questron as the game showed my character marching through the halls of Granite Keep, NPCs arrayed around me, before I finally came to Princess Elspeth. She named me her Champion, Hero of the Land, Savior of the People, and announced a seven-day celebration. The ending text, cribbing from Casablanca, suggested even more rewards to come for our hero.          

Lord British never offered to marry me. Just sayin’.

            All in all, a satisfying ending that leaves me feeling positive about the game. Prophecy won’t rate nearly as high as an Ultima, but in adopting Ultima as its model, the game provides a perfect example of the adage that if you aim for the moon, you’ll at least get over the fence.

In a GIMLET, Prophecy of the Shadows earns:              

5 points for the game world. It tells a story commensurate with its scope, has a few moments of originally, and does a good job drawing you into the world graphically and textually.

2 points for character creation and development. Definitely not a strong category for the game. With only three attributes, each serving multiple purposes, there wasn’t much to develop, and there was virtually no creation process at all.

4 points for NPC interaction. While you do learn a lot about the land and its lore from NPCs, the system was very mechanical and featured no one with memorable personalities.

                Um . . . where did that last line come from?

           4 points for encounters and foes. Enemies are mostly unmemorable, excepting perhaps the fireball-spewing gazers. But the puzzles were pretty solid, and I liked the large variety of what I call “contextual encounters”–when you’re given a clear reason for the combat to follow, even if you don’t get many role-playing choices in those encounters. I wish some of the lesser creatures had respawned because the economy is otherwise very tight.

3 points for magic and combat. I’m being generous here because I feel I should have probably experimented more with the spells. I did particularly appreciate the “Mark/Recall” pair. Aside from spells, the combat targeting system works fine but doesn’t give you very many tactics. Enemies rush into range so quickly that missile weapons are particularly useless.

             Fighting a row of guards in Granite Keep.

             2 points for equipment. It’s hard to countenance at title that gives you nothing to wear or equip except a weapon. But there are a few additional potions and scrolls, and lots of items useful for exploration and quests.

4 points for the economy. Between regular equipment, food, potions, and agility training, you have plenty to save up for, and finding silver never becomes useless. You have to make some tough choices for most of the game.

2 points for a main quest with no options, alternatives, or side quests.

                 The victorious champion walks past rows of NPCs on his way to his knighting.

                        4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The sound is nothing special–a few scattered effects–but as I’ve indicated, I like the graphics and the interface is top-notch, with redundant mouse and keyboard commands for everything. My only quibble is how using any other object un-equips your weapon.

5 points for gameplay. It gets half credit for nonlinearity. The game is mostly linear but not completely. I don’t see it as replayable, but the level of difficulty was pitched about right. Some individual combats seemed awfully hard, but in the context of a short game they weren’t too bad.

              That gives us a final score of 35, right on the “recommended” threshold–a good score for a modest game of modest ambition.           

Given what actually transpires in the game, the box seems to be depicting me waking up Abraxus.

          Almost every contemporary review of Prophecy seems to be patting it on the head, marking it as an interesting direction for SSI–the first single-character title from the publisher, a game clearly for new players, and so forth. Jeff James’s review in the January 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World praises it repeatedly for its simplicity: “no equipment to buy, no spells to memorize, and only one character to keep track of . . . no need to fumble with bizarre ingredients . . . byzantine game mechanics take a back seat to ease-of-use and an engaging storyline.” Similarly, from the Malaysian newspaper (who knew that they were reviewing RPGs?) that I quoted in a previous review: “[A]ctions are simple to execute . . . Gameplay could not be better. It’s just a question of taking things and bringing them somewhere.” The review concludes, however, “Just don’t give us any more recycled trash like Dark Queen of Krynn,” which shows that this source can be excluded from future consideration.

Almost everyone praised the full motion video, but I’ll let that go–it was a delusion that affected nearly everyone in the 1990s.

More recently, my colleague Saintus (who hasn’t commented in 3 years–hope he’s okay) completed the game in January 2012 on his “CRPG Revisiting Old Classics” blog. His review aligns with mine nearly perfectly. He liked the game world, the balanced economy, the short completion time, and the generally casual nature of gameplay. He didn’t find any more combat tactics than I did, nor any use for the crystal orb, nor much use for a lot of the spells. He defeated Cam Tethe the same way I did. The game kept his interest to the end despite simple mechanics.

A lot of contemporary reviews suggested that Prophecy was a new direction for SSI, that we’d be seeing a lot more single-character role-playing adventures from the publisher in the coming years. Scanning ahead, I can’t quite tell if this forecast comes true. SSI certainly offered a diverse variety of RPGs in its prolific 1992-1996 period, including the last of the Gold Box titles, the third Eye of the Beholder, new Dungeons and Dragon series based on the Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and Dark Sun settings, and a handful of one-off titles generally developed by other companies. But judging from screenshots and summaries, it’s hard to find any that feature quite the same simplicity as Prophecy or that even make use of a similar engine.             

Whatever else Dave Sayers went on to accomplish in life, he played “Lord Bitchin'” in a 1992 RPG. How do you follow that?

               Although I suggested in my opening entry that Prophecy was part of a deliberate SSI plan to dominate all corners of the RPG field, it turns out that the game’s development was less master-planned than that. It began as a project by independent developer Jaimi R. R. McEntire called Merchant’s Quest, in which the character would be a merchant in a traditional RPG setting. EA rejected it but SSI agreed to publish it. Ultimately, McEntire, working with an SSI team, significantly changed the original conception. Friends and a local theater group served as models for the FMV characters.

An Amiga version of Prophecy was planned and made it all the way to the alpha stage, but the team had problems working out several bugs, and just about then, the Amiga market began to collapse. Rather than finish the port, they turned their attention to the sequel–which would have brought the son of the original protagonist to a larger continent–but unfortunately never finished that, either. McEntire turned his attention to developing a raycasting engine called 4DX, used in a MMO called Underlight (1998) and several other titles. A new engine called 6DX was used to develop a title that would have been based on L. E. Modessit’s Recluce series, but it was never finished. Game development seems to have always been a sideline for McEntire: his c.v. shows primary employment in corporate software development, including banking software. Nonetheless, he told me in an e-mail exchange that he is working on a new RPG now, and making good progress. I trust he’ll visit to let us know when it’s ready.

It’s time now to wrap up Darklands and then head into the predictable comfort of a Gold Box game. But first–a surprise!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/prophecy-of-the-shadow-won-with-summary-and-rating/

[archonreviews]

The Archon’s Review of Supreme Commander

Supreme Commander is a real-time strategy game by Gas Powered Games and published by THQ. In the far-flung future, humanity has colonized space with the help of space portals (which can apparently be hacked, which presents a massive security risk, I should think, but nevermind that). This led to an era of peace and prosperity unseen by humanity ever before. During this time, an old, enterprising scientist named Dr. Gustaf Brackman fuses an artificial intelligence with a human brain (again, this presents a massive security hazard, but nevermind). The new, half-computer, half-human people are called “Symbionts”. This development spooks the Earth Empire’s bigwigs who hack the Symbionts and enslave them. Disgusted and not at all aroused, Brackman takes a corps of his loyal Symbionts and forms his own Cybran Nation with blackjack and hookers. Meanwhile, on a far off world, a human colony finds religion via an alien race called the Seraphim (in a surprising twist, it’s the Seraphim who’re presented with a security risk, rather than the humans). The Seraphim teach the colonists the way of “The Way”, shortly before being obliterated by the millenia-in-the-future equivalent of a Neo-Nazi, who really just could not stand that the other humans were finding a peaceful religion brought to them by a benevolent green people. Jokes on that asshole though, as the destruction of the Seraphim brings about the Aeon Illuminate, a sort of Knights Templar in space. After these two factions finish tearing up ye olde Earth Empire, it reforms itself into the United Earth Federation, because it’s always a federation, isn’t it? Can’t be a cadre, or a union, or a confederation, it’s got to be a federation if it’s in space, doesn’t it? Anyway, the three factions develop a cool mecha called the Armored Command Unit, or ACU, which can pull entire military bases out of their “mass”, and command entire armies of automated(?) tanks, boats, and planes. With the ACU, war becomes easy-peasy, so the three factions decide to have one for a thousand years, just for kicks. That’s where you come in. You take command of one of the three factions, hoping to end the Infinite War once and for all.

Hah, I thought the F/GO intro was long. Sorry mates.

So, I like real-time strategy games. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of my top two favorite genres of video game. Which makes the fact that I’m only now reviewing an RTS a somewhat criminal act of neglect. I was first tuned in to the Supreme Commander series when I was a teenager, playing Supreme Commander 2. Incidentally, this is also when I would learn about Steam’s DRM, when I was so used to just installing stuff from a CD. In any event, I found SC2 a lot of fun, once I figured out how to play the game properly. So, SC being on sale a while back, I decided to see if it lived up to the fond memories of it’s descendant. The short answer is, “Eeeehhh... Kinda?”

The game’s primary objective for a standard game is to destroy all of the enemies’ ACUs. In fact, the ACU is the most important unit for any player, as it represents the player themselves. In addition, the ACU builds your base before you gain access to Engineers. As far as objectives go, “regicide” is pretty straightforward, and given that all the other units are possibly automated, it makes sense. Sadly, the story campaigns decide to complicate things significantly.

This objection may be subjective, but I have a feeling it’s less subjective than I suspect. See, I’m used to an RTS presenting me with an overarching objective in each mission, flowering with optional objectives or minor complications as the mission progresses. Supreme Commander, however, does something slightly different. In the beginning of a campaign mission, you will be presented with a very simple, deceptively easy objective. Something like, “Kill these dudes we’ve essentially tied to posts for you,” or “Hey, see that building over there? Yeah, send your ACU over there and grab it for us, ya?” But then, once you’ve completed it, the map will expand to reveal a new objective. At this point, things’ll be okay, with only minor adjustments in strategy required. But then, it’ll expand the map again, and you’ll be faced with your final enemy... and usually a massive wave of enemy units that you couldn’t have known were coming on your first go-through. To add insult to injury, they’ll usually give you the ability to produce a unit that would help a lot, but with the wave of enemy dudes bearing down on you, you’d best hope that you’ve got adequate base defenses while you build your new units, otherwise, to paraphrase Richard III (or maybe Game of Thrones), things will go very hard for you.

The best way I found to deal with the game stringing you along like this is to develop a super economy mid-mission, and put off your objectives as long as you can. This strategy, however, presents two challenges: first, some objectives are timed. Second, and perhaps more annoyingly, is that as you procrastinate, a comms officer or a superior will occasionally complain at you for not completing your objectives. It’s kinda funny at first, but after a while, it sounds like a middle manager reminding you of a minor job-related obligation that nobody performs anyway. Anyone who’s ever had to push a credit card will know exactly what I mean.

^(Large robot friend building up my super economy. Also, my apologies for the console box in the corner, I had to change the screenshot button to the ` button, as the F12 button brought up an even more obtrusive thingie.)^

Now, it might sound like I’m ragging on the game, and to an extent I am. The game doesn’t seem to have too much of a player-base to battle against and I imagine single-player skirmishes can only be exciting a few dozen times. Most RTSes base much of their content on their story campaign, and indeed, that’s where I began, but while I didn’t much like the way the individual missions were formatted, the mechanics of the game itself were actually pretty fun! Building up a base with your big robot friend and then later, your little robot friends, is generally gratifying. Churning out a massive army of gunships and raining hellfire on your foes is quite entertaining. Watching stuff explode is almost as primordially engaging as a Michael Bay movie without the casual racism, sexism, poor acting, and poor screenwriting. Watching boats explode is a particularly fun thing, and this is coming from someone who is usually uneasy about commanding naval forces in RTSes.

That said, there are a couple more nitpicks, but these are some pretty big nits. First off, the pathfinding for ground units may be best argument for self-driving cars ever, ironically. When in formation, they will move the front line first, then the lines behind, until they’re all moving, instead of everyone moving at once. This can create major problems when you’re trying to roll out an attack force into an enemy base and their turrets just shoot down all your bots as they come. Otherwise, they tend to just move however they want to, which may interfere with your strategies, and it gets worse when you realize that the only way to get rid of enemy shields is to march your land units inside the shield and shoot at the generator from there, more or less necessitating the insipid groundlings. In fact, if it weren’t for shields, I probably would’ve relied solely on air and naval power, as air units don’t need to pathfind, and naval units don’t have any obstacles to get tripped up on and their range is long enough that even if they did, they could still perform their essential function, i.e. total boat obliteration.

^(It’s difficult to see, but on the left is a fleet of my submarines demolishing an enemy fleet on the right. Note the lack of physical obstacles. Note pictured: My joy at the destruction of my enemies.)^

Also, the tutorial is absolute bollocks in cheese. It’s basically a bunch of videos detailing basic concepts, and then they let you loose in an empty map with an ACU from each faction, and that’s your lot. This game is actually fairly complex, and an actual tutorial wouldn’t have been remiss.

The aesthetics are nice. Environments are pretty, if a bit sparse in places, and all the robots look pretty cool. Each factions’ units are distinct enough that you can tell friend from foe immediately; the UEF has this sort of “basic Earth unit” look to them, all blocky with lots of things on wheels and conventional design, the Cybrans are all spikes and doom fortresses (only somewhat ironic, as their goal of freeing all enslaved Symbionts is actually the most morally justifiable), and the Aeon design is half cathedrals-on-legs and half Space Alien(TM) aesthetic. When the game is being all wiz-bang-kaboom, it is indeed rad A.F, but the flipside to that is that I frequently got the disquieting feeling that I was doing something wrong somehow. Like because I wasn’t wiz-bang-kabooming all the time, I wasn’t playing properly. Or maybe the game’s marketing was a big fat liar; who knows?

(^What I expected vs...

what I got. I mean, there were shades of the first image, but the vast majority of my time was spent constructing like a hyperactive Mincraft player.)^

The music isn’t much to write home about. It’s alright, I guess.

The reason I believe the player-base is sparse is because looking up walkthroughs for this game was excessively difficult. There were no Steam guides except for those telling you how to get the game to work; which wasn’t a problem for me. The only GameFAQs walkthrough I could find was very light on actual details, preferring instead to provide me with information I probably could have figured out on my own. I finally had to find a Youtube playthrough; and incidentally, Ser “SergiuHellDragoonHQ”, if you happen to be reading this, it is generally considered bad form to periodically pop in with obtrusive demands that I subscribe in the form of extremely distracting low-res graphics. I was only there for a walkthrough on that particular mission, we’re not that close bruh. That said, you have my gratitude for your walkthrough, which taught me the “super economy strategy”, mentioned above. All of that said, it may just be that the player-base are super leet haxorz and therefore don’t require any walkthroughs.

^(The notes I took on SergiuHellDragoonHQ’s walkthrough. Note the rushed handwriting and Gudetama in the bottom left.)^

Ten slotte, SC is fun at it’s core, but the lack of a good tutorial and the frustrating and drag-out campaign format kinda kills it in places for me. I would recommend it mostly on the basis that the person I’m recommending it to would play with me so we can, as wise men have written, “git gud”. I’m probably not going to keep playing it, unless I start playing SC2 again and a major plot point comes up that necessitates me playing through the campaign of the original. As for social commentary... well, it’s actually remarkably progressive in places. The while the Earth president is a dude, and the main character is also a dude, the high commander of Earth’s armies is a woman with a badass battle scar; you know she’s seen some shit. In addition, the Aeon Illuminate are ruled by a Princess, and most, if not all of their commanders are women. So apparently the Infinite War is much more gender-equal than today times. That said, everyone appears to be white, although the cockpits of the Aeon commanders are poorly lit, and it looks like maybe there’s a Latina commander somewhere. So the lack of racial diversity’s a bit of a problem. Also, the Symbiont slavery thing has some pretty obvious parallels, and while it often isn’t mentioned by UEF commanders, the Cybrans will talk about it constantly. Almost like their primary objective is freeing a marginalized group of people from government enforced bondage. Almost creates a parallel to a certain real-world tragedy that was enforced by the government and resulted in a certain war that itself resulted, ostensibly, in a certain marginalized group of people being granted their freedom. That said, the parallel isn’t too clear-cut, and I didn’t get far enough into the campaign to see where it goes.

All in all, if you’re looking for a sci-fi strategy game, you could do worse than Supreme Commander, but I remember the sequel being better, so go play that maybe.

^(Pictured: The prelude to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”.)^