#well except for the all NPCs bcs i unfortunately do not have an all knowing knowledge of every dndads NPC and cannot do that bcnsnxnd

[dndadspolls]

there are probably going to be some doubles in here.. you are this fandom's bravest soldier for opening this poll

transmasc lark & transfem sparrow ofc

transmasc tony

transfem lesbian kelsey

genderqueer francis

bi Glenn, bi Taylor, bi Tony

aro Link (politely giving agent schmegan an aro/ace solidarity high five while staring him down during the interrogation)

agender pansexual autumn

genderfluid linda/susan stampler

Scary has a fluid sexuality and gender identity and doesn't work well with labels

non-binary terry

Can we put down every S1&S2 NPC is bi unless stated otherwise

also so sorry but I love cishet ron

alrighty , those have all been added !

[misterradio]

okay here are some tron 2.0 thoughts TEE HEE....... you have been Spoiler Warned for REAL!

tron fans talk abt this game with me okay 🥺

THIS GAME IS BEAUTIFUL .... MWWWWWAH!!!!!! i just love all the different environment designs, the color coding that went into the different computer systems was really cool too. my main takeaway is that the visuals Rule.

the npc designs were cool too but i kind of wish there was More variety (visually as well as voice acting)... but i really enjoy the design direction here ::-) why so many bald antagonist though? lol (AND WHY SO MANY MEN?)

In regards to gameplay i felt like it was pretty standard? i ended up using the basic disc weapon for most of the game because switching weapons takes Way too long if youre actively fighting, which is kind of a shame cuz there are so many weapon options... i did really enjoy the energy claw though 👍also the light cycle racing SUCKED and there was a graphical glitch that made it so that a bunch of visuals to my cycle were missing so i couldnt even enjoy the new design that was hyped up lol. as complicated as gameplay felt up front it definitely felt much better as it went on so it was pretty good.

game progression was very straightforward which i didnt expect..? go do this and then do that, etc. i thought it would be more open. this isnt rlly a complaint bc at least i wasnt lost or anything.

finding all the build notes was thankfully not hard but i enjoy poking around as much as i can in games already... and i liked the mechanics of searching archive boxes and being able to read emails between people ::-) YAY NOSINESS !!! despite finding all the build notes i still didnt end with the highest version i couldve...🤔 no idea how that works then...

moving on 2 story...

all the characters felt a bit flat so that was unfortunate... i wouldve liked to see some more emotions from everyone, bit more personality, etc...

i dont rlly know where jet's attachment to mercury came from, is he in love with this girl, if so why?? im thinking that since she was the first program to really reach out and help jet, that he latched on to her. but as the player i was kind of neutral on her SORRY although her design is cool

i was in disbelief that lora died and i was thinking she would just have been digitized and b in the computer somewhere? and there are allusions to her at least being superficially present in the program ma3a/ma2a etc (they have the same actress ^^__^^) but neither jet nor alan mention this which really shocks me??!!!??? thats your deceased mom or wife can u show a bit of tenderness or something..... maybe this can be cooked up more in an AU or something . idk i was really hoping she (and yori) would be around. i held on to hope for so long ✊️

OBVIOUSLY WISHING TRON WAS THERE... but omg alan being in the digital world shocked me so much i really liked that HEHE. him wearing tron's outfit was fun. i saw someone else in the tag say this, but if tron is "retired" then where is he?? INQUIRING MINDS WANNA KNOW !! he and jet werent very fazed by being digitized which surprised me buuut they also have to adapt fast given the urgency of their situation..

i felt rlly bad that thorne died SNIFFLE SNIFFLE jet and alan just watched a real guy die in front of them thats MESSED UP!! he was really cool too i enjoyed the corruption concept ::-) i was really worried the three fcon employees were gonna die too but im glad they implied that they could be repaired and manifested again.. (what is the word for un-digitized..?)

evil ma3a was really cool 👍 tbh all the antagonists are cool except im neutral on the kernel. i was confused that he was red i thought he was evil like in the original movie with the MCP's soldiers.. but i think hes just a guy who happens to be red. and also trying to kill u but just bc you (jet) are a freak of computer nature and should not be there. thats fair. i enjoyed his boss fight too.

THE FCON MONSTER WAS RLLY COOL HOW AM I NOT SEEING ANY FANART OF THEM.... ::-( i have to fix this... ALSO I WISH they had dialogue. like are they even aware of their situation. missed opportunity !!

okay thats all i can think of now.

WAIT UM I READ THE COMIC CONTINUATION(?) the ghost in the machine AS WELL and i dont have many thoughts on it bc it was really confusing BUT i did enjoy the layers of horror and unreality which i really did not expect. was also expecting the titular ghost to have more to do with lora (SIGH I REALLY WANNA SEE HER AGAIN) but it didnt but thats okay. i really liked the art of the first book specificaly.....

do any tron fans also like soma (2015) haha just wondering [TWIRLS MY HAIR

[honshew]

thoughts on bg3

overall, i had a lot of fun and would recommend to anyone interested! very ambitious game, and i'm amazed it exists tbh. there are so many really, really great aspects of it. however, i'm also glad to be done with it, bc i started to have less and less fun with it at the last part. which is an unfortunate place to have the worst part of the game. i really wish it wrapped up in a more satisfying way, because i became really attached to the characters and the incredibly detailed world. a shame it had to be rushed toward the end of development. it's incredible, though could have been more still.

i'm spending some time trying to figure out what i liked about the game, so this may or may not be updated as thoughts come to me. there will be spoilers all the way thru the end of the game so here's your spoiler warning

i think while people unfamiliar with dnd can play and still have a good time, it probably will feel overwhelming and there will likely be things you won't understand unless someone explains it to you. i can't even really call the tutorial a bad one as much as it's barely there. but i do know plenty of people with zero dnd experience still having fun and simply enjoying learning on the go!

on the other hand, being someone who plays dnd, once you figure out the interface it's a pretty smooth experience. there are some things that are a little different to accommodate how the game works (e.g. second-story work reduces your fall dmg rather than increasing your climbing speed, since the game doesn't really count climbing as distance), but those are pretty quick to learn. seems to me that the devs thought people who didn't play dnd wouldn't be all that intersted in bg3, but a ci'd be curious to see how many bg3 players will look for a dnd group to join from here.

act 1 was solid and was paced well. i really liked how many characters ended up showing up later in the game, as opposed to characters you save once and never see again. i think what was most fun was getting to know what i could get away with LOL not just an exploration of the world, but an exploration of the game itself. i have video of me talking to auntie ethel while my friends set up and set off a circle of flame barrels, so i got a front row seat of her being blown to smithereens.

act 2, also solid. i really enjoy quests that involve impacting a place in a really tangible way, like in okami, so the shadow-cursed lands were pretty cool. unfortunately, the game doesn't really show you this happening except a liiiiittle bit at the end, so it doesn't feel as good as it could. still, i liked exploring the area a lot. all of the mini-bosses of the area were unsettling, but we got past literally all of them via high charisma rolls. actually aside from the exploring, a lot of the fun was seeing how we could cheese boss fights, which carried into act 3

act 3 felt way more all over the place and buggy, which significantly lowered my enjoyment. ofc a game this massive will have issues, but i'm still sad that the last part of the game where everything crescendos is where i enjoyed the game the least. small things not working the way they're supposed to (e.g. certain npcs not running or climbing up a ladder when they are fleeing I'M TALKING TO YOU ZUMBO PUMBO AND FEATHERWEIGHT FALSON, astarion falling sleep to a spell even tho he's an elf during his end-of-quest fight). what sucks about things being so frustrating too was that the main quests had really great setups or concepts, but the execution was messy. still, we had a lot of fun messing with bosses. cazador couldn't do anything bc he was forced to dance while we killed him, orin was disintegrated, gortash turned to stone. kinda wild having a bard with 100% spell hit rate....!

i do wish we got to explore baldur's gate more. i totally get that would be a huge undertaking tho. i had a thought that maybe act 3 should've been its own game, but then i guess you couldn't call it baldur's gate 3 if you never get to baldur's gate. i didn't play the previous bg games, but i liked how they wove in the story from the previous installments and ttrpg modules without leaving newcomers to the series out of the loop too much.

i liked shadowheart's, astarion's, and wyll's quests a lot. the ansur part of wyll's was really cool. i adore trials to test character as a setup, especially ones administrated by some major figure. but also? fuck balduran for what he did to ansur and later to me. he's the city's hero, but he only really looks out for himself. which is cool for me as a viewer, not cool for the character i play as LOL

i have more thoughts but i will type them up here later maybe this has gotten long enoguh

[manasurge]

GW2 30 Day Challenge

8. Favourite expansion?

Surprising to absolutely no one who knows me, it's Heart of Thorns!!! (HoT). As a Sylvari player this seems to be kind of a commonplace (bc of the extra Sylvari flavour that comes with it), but also I just really like the Mordrem and the HoT metas, and it's the beginning of the Aurene journey AND it was sort of "started" by Scarlet Briar (whomst I love and adore), so there's just lots of neat things! I also love the Mordy Meta fight bc it's cool to be able to see a lot of his details, even if his dialogue is a bit silly (tho it is unfortunate that Zhaitan didn't get the same treatment). I know the maps are a bit hard to navigate (TD especially), but after having a little bit of a routine doing metas and all that, I've gotten used to it lol. I wasn't crazy about PoF bc I just don't really care about Balthazar and even more Human lore (also I hate the Forged with a burning passion, and wild Djinn and JACARANDA are also my bane). EoD was still the nicest Human lore expansion imo. I think EoD and SoTo will be tied for second place for these reasons only: Soo-Won/Aurene/Elder Dragon content/pretty scenery and Peitha lol (also the QoL updates too). Story-wise I love HoT and it is my favourite, even despite all my grievances of all the things that weren't included or removed due to restricted time reasons and whatnot. I do feel that it's a really good idea for RP immersion reasons that there are a lot of things that are unique to different races like what they did with HoT, and I wish they did that more with the other expacs/LWs (except for humans now bc THEY HAVE ENOUGH!!! I am still salty for IBS not being Norn and Asura focussed. It should've been I was looking forward to that wtf!! makes no sense!!!! ljflsf). Below is just me being sad and salty about things not included in HoT that I'm forever mourning:

Although i"m going to be FOREVER salty about the vast amount of Sylvari lore that wasn't included/removed for time reasons and everything else (I'm still sad). Malyck never came to help us, Diarmid's portion was cut (leaving a confusing plot hole during the progression), NO NIGHTMARE COURT PORTION (I'm so salty about this!!!!!!!!! literally a super big thing that wasn't included, leaving another huge plothole with nothing extra with Duchess Chrysanthea, making it confusing to see her there. Literally they should've just replaced one of the other lanes as the Nightmare Court lane cuz HoT is kind of a big deal for Sylvari lore!!!), also another thing I am a bit salty about is like... there's no apologizing from ANYONE about the mistreatment and racist discriminatory treatments towards the Sylvari AFTER it all had been concluded??? like, instead we got the Sylvari still APOLOGIZING for it all, despite it being even harder for THEM, even if they themselves (as the individuals) didn't do anything, and like, I don't remember seeing any NPCs apologizing for acting that way towards them. Also outside of HoT, Sylvari have had little to no development or presence outside of this either. I know they're the youngest race with basically no history, but it's still sad. Human and Charr have lots of settlements and history everywhere, Asura get to at least have the presence of Asura tech everywhere as well as settlements like Rata Novus, but Norn don't really have much of anything ither, and I feel like they should. I think at this point in the expansion progress we're just sitting on the sidelines... again :/ Also there's like.. the absolute silence after the Pale Tree was badly injured. Like, we get little tidbits here and there WAY afterwards, but really no direct action taken to help her. Let us do something to help!! even if its' just Sylvari side!! Like, it feels like they just stopped using her as a character after this and it makes me so sad. All the other races have their active "Leaders" but we still don't. Just feels like we were thrown under the rug :( heck we don't even really get to TALK to her afterwards! I want mom to be okay!!!! Also like.. no more Nightmare court development or story afterwards either. We get little tidbits of a couple in Wizard land, but other than that it's just radio silence.

Sorry I went off on a bit of a tangent T_T

[larnax]

tentative ochette rework with unfucked formatting

so ochette is a little different than throné in that her problem is fundamental and so basically everything but the bones of her story is Bad, for one simple reason: the implementation of the beastlings sucks ass

now that being said i am not going to sit here and explain why the beastlings are handled very poorly bc 1) ive already done that and 2) it's actually a really easy fix. just make beastling a trait you gain becoming a hunter and the rest of toto'haha are just normal fantasy pacific islanders. they did this with tropu'hapu and it was fine so they clearly can make a normal fantasy pacific islander region if they want to, so just. do that. and then because beastlings are just humans who've become hunters, treat them like humans. they speak the language they're already all native speakers of fluently and they are just people do not be weird.

but you may ask, how would becoming a hunter give you cat ears? and the answer is very simple, deus ex subjob menu. in ot1 the subclasses are literally blessings from the gods, so you can just imply that a similar thing is happening here where draefendi blesses you with the power of kemonomimi once you join her hunt. or a wizard did it who care. beastlings 100% exist primarily so the hunter class can make your characters catboys bc thats awesome so its better for everything if we're just honest with that

how does this fix everything?: well 1) as the beastlings are no longer infantilized animalistic caricatures, there is less racism in the game, 2) this makes the hunter subclass no longer technically racefaking, and 3) it means that the 20 year old woman who is the only protagonist from toto'haha no longer has to be treated like a toddler

yes i know this breaks temenos' chapter 5. i dont care. skill issue.

so anyway ochette. unfortunately ochette's entire character is noble savage/toddler so she needs an overhaul

my proposal is to make her more autistic keep her caring a lot/focusing on her interests, which are now: hunting, cooking, and languages.

these were mainly chosen based on her existing mechanics, except for languages which is tied into the fact that i want to change her night path action to be swapped with hikari's so befriend now gains you information. (yes i know this would make bribe identical to hire so you would have to change what mechanic it relies on. idk which one im not a doctor). this is mainly because ot2 already does a lot of interesting things with path actions even outside of character stories and i wanna push the thing where some NPCs can only have certain path actions just a little farther and make it so that not all NPCs can be info-gathered by all characters because some of them only speak other languages. yes ik this would require them to create some conlangs but it doesnt have to be Every character and creating one fairly simple conlang for ochette's story and maybe like 3 more for random NPCs to have 1 line in seems fully possible. they already made a couple different writing systems. actually they could literally just keep the writing systems and just write romaji/english/etc sentences in them if they dont wanna do a real language.

why ochette? Because I Said So. i told you guys i held back on throné ochette not having much of a character means i get to enter silly mode

anyway so Ochette Autism activate. she will now love cooking. she invents new recipes and likes finding ways to cook complicated stuff with only things she can gather in the moment. she has extensive knowledge of every edible plant in toto'haha. her first thought when she sees an elemental spirit with no physical body is "yeah i could make a mean fucking soup of that creatyre". she would hunt regardless as the main hunter for her village but the reason she Loves hunting is that she loves finding her own ingredients. she also really loves languages. no longer is animal language automatically translated, now she just learned how to speak the languages of animals from toto'haha and some others from juvah. she likes talking to people and is academically interested in languages. this partly comes from convenience bc shes had to get used to learning languages to speak with the village and her animal companions but its also partly because she has trouble communicating with people and its one of the ways she tries to account for that. also more on that in the story since its what ill be focusing on. she cares a lot about sustainability and is fundamentally against killing what you won't eat. her main flaws are that 1) despite her love of languages she often has difficulty communicating with people even if she can understand them, 2) she doesn't really care about anything outside her interests, and 3) due to her living her entire life in a small village of people who all knew her she's kind of unfamiliar with the concept of a stranger who doesn't immediately get her and can sometimes be overly familiar or opaque to people who don't understand her

her extensive cooking knowledge will mostly be used for jokes and in travel banter while her language skills will be the driving force of the story

also due to this im rewriting her relationship map lets just go in order. so as she and castti now are both knowledgeable about plants and meat(most of the human body is meat) the two of them keep finding things they have in common, and also because ochette's prepared food grants a bunch of positive effects she and castti end up talking about the benefits of healthy eating and medicinal properties of food a lot. she and throné initially have an awkward relationship because ochette is very satisfied with her life and she. isnt, but as throné goes through her story where she's worried that a killer is all she'll ever be and she's a permanent net negative for the world, ochette provides her with an example of someone who has a sustainable relationship with life and death and gives her hope that she might eventually be able to find an occupation where she can use her skills to benefit herself and other people, and also they are gay. osvald and she are initially very awkward because ochette talks a ton and osvald is completely unreceptive but as their stories progress osvald decides that ochette would probably make a pretty good scholar if being a hunter ever falls through for her and shes like yeah haha maybe in another life. partitio and her are mismatched despite being similar because despite both of them being singlemindedly determined about their interests but coming off as endearing because one of those interests is befriending people means they get along on a lot of fronts, partitio is very focused on progress and increasing in scale whereas ochette simply isn't and couldn't care less about inventions that don't have anything to do with her specialties. agnea finds out in her chapter 2 that ochette actually has a really good singing voice and spends the rest of her story trying to get ochette to contribute a verse to the song of hope but hijinks ensue as ochette only knows how to write lyrics in languages agnea can't understand and in the case of a bird language can't replicate. temenos and she spend basically all their travel banters fighting about theology because ochette could not give less of a fuck about any gods besides draefendi and temenos is like What do you mean "tell aelfric to call me back when he can give me awesome cat powers" and "if my religion was existentially threatened by the existence of other religions i would simply not lmao". she and hikari are just kind of on the same team because she's very against killing without purpose

now onto her story. the basic structure will actually be the same, i'm keeping the night of the scarlet moon and her journey to be finding and bringing back the three guardian beasts, However the how will be different

chapter 1: i'm removing the territorial dispute entirely partly bc as beastlings and humans are now the same theres no village divide and also octopath's tone and writing simply aren't equipped to handle this issue well, so we're cutting it. we are keeping the flashback of ochette choosing between the jackal and owl though, and the first scene being her hunting the king iguana its basically just that the companion is like "can we not wait until we get back to town to cook this thing" and ochette is like "no it tastes better if you cook it immediately" and then theres a little cutscene of her grilling it on the spot. she gets back to town and is sharing the jerky with everyone and then goes to speak with juvah, who tells her she's going to be the village guardian. ochette is reluctant because she enjoys her current life where she's able to only do things she finds interesting, but juvah says she's the only person strong enough to do it, and they talk about how the forest is changing. suddenly cohazeh shows up and says that a woman has wandered into the tomb of the wanderbeasts and can someone go get her, ochette says yeah of course and sets off. when she arrives the woman is acting very strangely and ochette has to provoke her. after being defeated she calms down and can be befriended to gain information about being attacked by a weird creature. after that she joins the party and they return to find juvah fighting the weird creature, with her taking over after he's injured and defeating it. after it's defeated, juvah takes her to the tombs and tells her about the prophecy and that this will be the final test of whether or not she's ready to be the guardian and then falls asleep. ochette reluctantly sets off, unsure if she'll be able to pass this trial.

chapter 2: the structure of 2 is actually mostly fine it's just ochette as a character that's changed. when she shows up she's frustrated by the way conning creek differs from the village and has an awkward confrontation with a food stall owner because she doesn't understand the concept of making food when you might be making more than you need before being stopped by her companion and reminded what she came here for. she goes to the coast and finds alpione who blocks her path and tells her that she'll be encroaching on sacred land if she goes to the island, ochette insists she needs to go and is confused by alpione not trusting her even though ochette knows she's not going to do anything bad, but fails to communicate this effectively. alpione has to be challenged and after her defeat ochette goes to find the island completely empty. at the tail end of the little spiral alpione shows up. she initially refuses to talk but can be befriended, at which point she'll share that cateracta was killed by a strange hunter and left to rot. alpione and the other guardians made use of her remains out of respect. ochette is angered by cateracta's death but is relieved that she at least wasn't left to decay, and alpione finally realizes that ochette holds the same respect for animals that she does, at which point she asks why ochette wanted to meet cateracta. ochette explains her situation more clearly and alpione is like. why did you not say that before. and mentions that there's one piece of cateracta that remains, and that it too shouldn't go to waste, giving her cateracta's egg which hatches into acta. before leaving, ochette is again conflicted and reflects on what happened. she still doesn't really get why alpione took so long to understand her motivations and wonders if she could ever be capable of being the village guardian when she feels like she'll never really understand people even if she can talk to them. she'll especially never understand people like the hunter, and doesn't know what she would do if she ever came across someone like that.

chapter 3: ochette shows up in crackridge to find the earthquakes and goes around asking about tera but everyone refuses to talk to her about it, except for an old woman speaking a language she doesn't understand but who reacts to the name 'tera' by speaking a lot. ochette has to go around befriending people until she finds the woman's son who when befriended will share the location of a [language]-solistian dictionary which ochette can use to understand how to befriend the woman, at which point she gives ochette directions on where to find tera. ochette finds the sleeping tera and tries to wake him up but nothing works until the old woman from before shows up and shouts something in [language], at which point tera wakes up, but attacks ochette. after being captured, he calms down and recognizes that ochette is from toto'haha and figures out what's going on. he says that the old woman is a descendant of the first inhabitants of crackridge and that she's been waking him up to feed him while he tries to recover from a fight with the hunter. ochette asks why he attacked her and he says that the hunter tricked the woman's ancestor into revealing his location and he thought this was another case of that. ochette is like ohhh i see, and tera says he's healed up enough to accompany her back to the island. tera also teaches her how to thank the woman for her help, and he explains what's going on to her and that she won't need to feed him for a while. on the way back, the townspeople get angry at her for all the earthquakes but ochette says that she subdued tera and he won't be back for some time and also will be calmer when he returns. the old woman's son finds her and says he's surprised that anyone actually bothered to understand his mom, saying that although plenty of people have tried to calm down tera all of them gave up when they realized she didn't know any solistian. ochette says it's lucky she's good at learning languages, but the son says that it's probably also that she realized ochette was trying to help. he wishes her luck on her journey. ochette stops to think about things. she's still conflicted, now aware there are lots of kind of miscommunication, but found it satisfying to actually use her skills to talk with someone she otherwise wouldn't have been able to . she still doesn't want to be the guardian if it means she can't just do what she wants, but wonders if she might get to feel this satisfaction over being able to help resolve an issue using her skills if she did take up the job.

chapter 4: ochette arrives in stormhail and after befriending a townsperson is told that glacis lives on the peak of the mountain, but the townsperson warns her that the blizzards have been so intense that trying to climb it will be extremely dangerous. ochette says that she doesn't really have a choice and sets out for the mountain anyway. she's blocked by the sanctum guard and although she tries to explain why she needs to get past the guard refuses to listen to her and she eventually resorts to knocking him out. just before she starts up the path, she's stopped by heig who Again warns her and ochette, now very annoyed, snaps at him that for the last fucking time she just needs to see glacis, heig insists she'll die just like the others, ochette says she's built different and leaves anyway. on the way up the mountain she finds several frozen corpses which she and her companion figure out must have been caused by glacis. heig shows up and is like "see? all these great hunters were felled by glacis' fury. you're fucked". ochette realizes he's trying to help her and befriends him to figure out his perspective, he explains that this is his old crew and they were trying to hunt glacis. ochette asks why, he says for glory. ochette's disgusted that they were just planning to take her head and leave, and says she doesn't have any sympathy for the dead hunters. heig admits they were acting selfishly and says that he only survived because he hesitated, and then fled while glacis was killing the rest of his party, so now he tries to atone by making sure nobody else makes it up the mountain. ochette says she has no intention of killing glacis and that he's actually preventing anything from getting better by just locking her away instead of actually trying to make it up to glacis herself. heig is like.... shes a bird, and ochette explains that all animals are sentient and can be reasoned with if you're willing to learn their language, and that he should apologize to her personally. he leaves, but ochette notices that he's going up the mountain instead of down. she thinks that just leaving the bodies here is wasteful, but eventually decides it should be up to glacis who hunted them what to do. she gets to the peak to find heig unconscious in the snow and a furious glacis who attacks her. after being subdued ochette asks glacis what happened and she says that heig started shouting at her. ochette explains that she told him to apologize for he and his comrades' selfishness. glacis is surprised, but allows ochette to get heig, and when he wakes up glacis says she'll listen to ochette if she translates for him. heig apologizes on behalf of his party for attacking glacis and says that he's spent the years since then trying to atone, but that her blizzards are wrecking stormhail and killing innocent people and it may be time for both of them to move on. glacis is suspicious that he's only apologizing because ochette made him, but reluctantly accepts that he actually never attacked her earlier and was just talking in a way she couldn't understand. she agrees to accompany ochette back to toto'haha, and says that when she returns to stormhail she will protect it instead of attacking it. she also says that if heig learns how to speak to her, she'll allow him to atone for the attack by becoming her helper, which he agrees to. ochette asks what glacis wants to do with the bodies of the fallen hunters, and glacis replies that now that the blizzard is gone they should naturally be consumed by the animals of the mountain. heig is resistant to the idea until ochette explains that it's a sign of respect to allow them to return to nature in death and should be their way to make up for their actions since they're not alive to do it themselves, which he accepts. ochette leaves the two of them and returns to stormhail to think. she's still angry on glacis' behalf at heig and the hunters, but this has shown her that there are cruel or selfish people who can be convinced to change if made to understand the problem and people who appear to be acting cruelly who just don't have the full context. she also realizes that understanding people means considering the perspectives of people she's diametrically opposed to even if she never comes to agree with them. from her experience with juvah she knows that being the guardian comes with the responsibility to protect the entirety of toto'haha, even the parts and people she doesn't particularly care about, and thinks that she would probably have to change as a person to achieve that level of understanding. could she do it? does she want to? does she have the obligation to even if she doesn't want to?

chapter 5: ochette returns to toto'haha with all the guardians. juvah is relieved, saying that the amount of weird beasts in the forest is increasing and that people were starting to get hurt. he asks her if she's ready to take on the mantle of guardian, and ochette admits that she's still not sure. suddenly, night falls and the blood moon is out. that sequence is mostly unchanged, you're fighting tons of Weird Creatures and using the guardians to bust through until she comes upon the companion she didn't choose and gets thrown into the ocean. she's rescued by the might of her current companion who channels the same force of draefendi that gives ochette her beastling power and they drag her out to the beach where she comes across the darkling. the climax is already very good so i'm leaving it unchanged except for ochette befriending the darkling and getting an info window that mentions that the darkling can now rest. the epilogue is juvah asking her the same question as before and ochette realizing that it's worth it to be the guardian and she's willing to grow to fill that role, deciding to continue on her journey until she's gained enough experience to confidently be a good guardian.

ochette's crossed paths is actually mostly good and in fact her translating the dourdour boar is one of the reasons i thought of the language thing for ochette, basically the only change is that ochette and castti have a different dynamic so no milf jokes(29 is too young to be a milf anyway. sorry) and the joke is instead that ochette is like "hmmmmmm. i wonder if i could cook the shadowy being" and castti is like "i feel like that would at least give you food poisoning"

[bug-crimes]

wow hi hello jumpscared by genshin on my dash

as your local genshin player that likes to make fun of the character designs I actually have some input here!! ignoring the fact that I can sadly immediately tell who all the characters are from their silhouettes.

they do have five (5) whole basic character models for playable characters! there's tall guy, short guy, tall gal, short gal, and female child; all the basic animations (walking, running, jumping) will remain mostly the same within these categories, with a few exceptions (variant run animations, different climbing over ledge animations)

the silhouettes in the image are all sized up to be equal! in reality there are height differences, but otherwise, yeah, they do all just Look Like That.

also important to note: there are more character models for NPCs and human enemies than there are for playable characters. there are chubby people, old people, stupid levels of buff people, etcetc

so they sure can do it! they just choose Not To for the playable characters, presumably because the animations are much more complex for PCs and not using one of the five whole body types ever would cost moneyyyy and timeeeee :c

and when it comes to hair: it is INSANE how lazy they get with even flat hair, but you can really see it with Layla, a character that has twintails with big ol' curls (this is the closest we have really gotten to curly hair in game unfortunately)

in her splash art they look fine! (for those that don't know: the art that will appear when you pull her in the gacha)

but then you see her in game and the curls are just... completely flat. it's hard to see exactly what I mean just in image form, it's more the animation where it just looks... wrong. her hair is Boneless, they don't bother rigging it so it actually moves how hair should! it's more painfully obvious in hair with curls like Layla's, but it's like this for all longer hair in the game. Majority of it is animated like one big flat sheet that go up and down and it's just! wow that sure is not even close to how hair work!

this isn't even getting into how they design outfits bc I have a lot of opinions there too but like. I will say it's not quite as immersion breaking as you'd think? like at first when you're playing it Absolutely is, but you do get desensitized after a while and just accept that everything in this game is a little bit ridiculous and the main character syndrome is so strong you don't even Question if a new introduced character is gonna be playable because you know the moment you meet em.

like. I'm not even TOUCHING on how they do shading and texture and depth in 3d models I am restraining myself here you have unlocked a deep well within me of Things I Have Too Many Opinions On

genshin impact and vtubers have done irreparable damage to the state of character design

[supercantaloupe]

on Aelwyn Abernant, the Reformed Villain Squad, and redeeming teenage antagonists

an analysis on antagonist character development in Fantasy High. spoilers through sophomore year and (mildly so) the most recent roll20 oneshot. essay under the cut bc i am very long winded

the turnaround with Aelwyn in s2 is handled so well  i cant get over it. she was such a major antagonist in the first season and just. despicable. she had no pathos. we hated this bitchy older sister who tried to kill Adaine and her friends and raise an evil dragon, and when she gets knocked on her ass and thrown in jail, we cheer.

and then s2 fucking starts saying “hey she’s in jail still if you’d like to look into that” and pursuing that thread ends up being almost as comedic an idea as it is a reluctant one; it’s also quickly shunted to the background as soon as more pressing leads present themselves, to the point where we almost forget about her until Adaine is kidnapped and then the first time you see her it’s just. viscerally upsetting.

she’s bad. she did evil. she got what she deserved.

but she already got what she deserved. last season.

she got her ass handed to her by a bunch of 14 year olds including her little sister (how embarrassing!). her plans were thwarted. she got punched in the face and made fun of. she already got her punishment.

it just……immediately registers as over-the-top Wrong to be told “hey, remember that antagonist you beat last season? she’s still being punished for that, except it’s way worse than just going to mumple.”

and there’s that reminder that like…this is a teenager. a child. who has been manipulated and abused. which is a really fascinating look at this character we used to see pretty much unilaterally as a one dimensional bitchy villain.

i mean we got a more in depth look at Penelope’s and Biz’s motivations in s1 (Penelope being the popular rich girl sorceress obviously hungry for power and the alllure of the high school clout that is being prom queen, but also we know that her having to turn on her best friend Sam Nightingale as part of the scheme was something she was reluctant and not happy to do; and Biz being that predatory incel creeper type dude besides just a nerd with computers and a lack of social graces). and they were as much willingly active in the plot as Aelwyn was. yet in s1 they really never do bother to explore Aelwyn’s motivations. i remember after watching s1 but before s2 that was one of my biggest lingering questions: why tf was Aelwyn involved?

well. she was manipulated and abused. her terrible parents raised her in an awful environment that conditioned her to Listen and Obey and Behave and Be Perfect, and then Kalina helped cinch the noose around her neck with threats and coersion into the KVS Kaper and the NMK crown debacle. she doesn’t freely choose any of it; she’s coerced, manipulated, abused.

and she already got justifiably punished for her bad actions in s1. the torture is almost literal overkill. it’s just……there’s this immediate turnaround in sympathy and view of the character. on first watch, it’s viscerally upsetting to see her getting so brutally punished for actions she already faced consequences for, and on rewatch, it makes your skin crawl to know she’s being tortured for terrible things she had little choice in carrying out. and tortured by some of the very same people who coerced her to behave terribly in the first place, to add insult to injury.

and it’s still fucking frustrating when they rescue her and her memory gets reset and she goes back to her parents because it’s like “well shit, she’s evil again, and we just wasted all that effort for nothing” but it’s also sad cause we know she’s running back to her abusers and she isn’t happy about it but doesn’t feel like she has a choice. and it’s sadder still that what eventually inevitably gets her to turn to good for good (i.e. away from her parents) is just. a full dissociative mental breakdown.

(but then she survives and it’s gonna be good!!! until Adaine dies in her fucking arms. which is. almost funny. she’s been through so much shit and that isn’t something that Brennan would have just. preplanned. like a written in plot point. no, that was just an unpredictable consequence of the battle. what a juicy fucking moment. she’s been through All That Shit™️ and has finally turned to fight for good and her sister just fully dies in front of her. yeowch)

and she turns out okay in the end. she comes out the other side alive and whole and supported by her sister and her friends, with the hope of a future and recovery. there is an acknowledgement that A) she can and will grow from her mistakes and damage, B) it’s going to be really hard, and C) the post-s2 one shots both prove that she’s doing okay now. hell, she has a whole squad now of other former-teenage-villains-turned-good-guys. she has friends now, Ragh and Zayn, with common ground, and a secret handshake and everything. they’ve all grown from the mistakes of their past into better, happier, healthier people

and about Zayn and Ragh. we’ve seen a lot of characters, protagonist and antagonist, teenage and adult, PC and NPC do some really fucked up shit and get punished for it. but why do they get happy endings? why are Aelwyn, Ragh, and Zayn the only members of the RVS and not someone else like Biz or Penelope or Dayne? 

well, the latter two are dead by then; but then again, Biz and Ragh were also killed by the Bad Kids in s1, and subsequently resurrected. (Zayn died too, but was neither killed nor revived at the Bad Kids’ hands, so i’ll get to him in a sec.) and there are plenty of adult antagonists the Bad Kids face who are killed and left that way by the Bad Kids without second thought: Johnny Spells, Coach Daybreak, Captain Wicklaw, the Abernant parents (presuming Arianwen doesn’t survive in the forest for very long, which i doubt). why do some characters get second chances while others don’t?

in the case of Zayn, his death was pretty much out of the Bad Kids’ hands, and they later found out he was manipulated by Daybreak into being bad anyway because of his sad living situation. he was a pretty minor antagonist in the scheme of things, and when we re-meet him as a ghost in the s1 epilogue, he’s pretty obviously remorseful for his actions. and dying seems like a steep enough punishment to me for the shit he did to contribute to the KVX caper; returning as a ghost, free from the trappings of his unfortunate living life, he now has the room and freedom to grow into a better person.

in the cases of Daybreak, Spells, Wicklaw, and the Abernant parents: these are bad people who should know better. these are fully grown adults who actively choose to do evil. whether they think it’s the right thing to do or not (in Daybreak’s case), whether they think it will benefit them and don’t care about anyone else (in the Abernants’ case), or whether they don’t care much at all and are just doing shit because they feel like it (in the cases of Spells and Wicklaw), these are all adults who consciously make the decision to do terrible things and hurt other people. of course Johnny Spells, who is generally a punk thief and thug, is not on the same level of bad as Angwyn, who kidnaps and tortures his own daughters for political gain, but the point remains. these fuckers should know better. they’re grown ups. they had their chances to be good and they chose not to heed them. their minds are set on bad actions and they are a continued danger to other people as long as they are alive. when they die, the Bad Kids do their damndest to make sure it stays that way.

now, in the cases of Penelope and Dayne: these are teenagers who actively chose to participate in an evil plot. Penelope, Dayne, and Biz were all fully cognizant of what they were doing trying to raise KVX back to his former power. why? well, to some extent, we can only speculate. i suspect Penelope was just one of those Regina George bitches who is rich and popular and powerful and obsessed with power and popularity within high school as if that’s the end-all-be-all of existence (which, like, when you’re currently in high school, is a somewhat understandable worldview i think). Dayne being her boyfriend and a musclehead jock probably falls into a similar line of thinking. they are actively and willingly trying to cause harm, and teenager or not, must be stopped. they’re killed, anyway, during the Climactic Battle™️ anyhow; it’s not like the Bad Kids were going to gain anything at that point by keeping them alive.

now, Biz: Biz is the creepy Nice Guy incel type, sees woman as a prize he deserves to win, yadda yadda. he does, like Penelope and Dayne, actively choose to help KVX. there might be something to be said about his motivation the Bad Kids discover after the arcade battle by detecting his thoughts (that being to upload the captured maidens from the palimpsests to “call the shots” himself) is an altered memory; whether this was his original motivation from the start or not, i’m not sure. but the Bad Kids do kill him – and then resurrect him for important, time-sensitive information. and they beat it out of him – he gets two of his fucking fingers blown off. and Riz reattaches them once they have their info, and they realize his memory is altered. of course, the Bad Kids don’t know at this point that the altered memory was something he, Penelope, and Aelwyn had planned and agreed on and done to themselves, but this points to something important in my opinion: the Bad Kids, and the narrative/show as a whole by extension, acknowledge that external manipulation affects how guilty someone is in a crime.

which brings us to Ragh. Ragh, introduced from episode 1 as the meathead jock. Ragh the archetypical one-dimensional high school bully. Ragh who works with the harvestmen in effort to (ostensibly) end the world/provoke international war. Ragh, whose low intelligence but high loyalty and internalized homophobia led him to be fully swayed and blindly led by his coach and captain, who have actively chosen to do evil. Ragh who is killed in combat by the Bad Kids and resurrected for information, not Daybreak. Ragh, who the Bad Kids realize was probably not aware of exactly what he was being made to do and how bad it really was. Ragh, who by their kindness in sparing his life and directing him on a better path, becomes a well-rounded character and an active ally to the Bad Kids during and after prom, an invaluable companion during their quest in sophomore year, and overall a really good friend and person. 

(it might also be worth considering the case of Jawbone here, too, who started out a very minor antagonist in a fight but ended up becoming a major NPC because the Bad Kids talked to him, found out he came from an unfortunate situation and set of circumstances, and showed him kindness in offering the school guidance counselor position, a kindness that isn’t really owed but given anyway and ends up changing his entire life for good.)

and then, Aelwyn, whose case is already discussed above. so, why is the RVS what it is, why them but not others?

if you’re familiar with Avatar: the Last Airbender, you’re probably familiar with Zuko’s character arc, and how it’s often lauded as a masterful example of developing a villain into a hero over the course of a narrative. what makes Zuko’s arc so well done and exceptional is that he starts out as a kid in a bad situation under the influence of bad adults seeking to do bad deeds, but he later realizes the error of those ways, actively removes himself from that situation despite the difficulty and danger in doing so, goes through a lot of shit and reflects on his past mistakes and learns from them, and then actively chooses to fight for good in the end with the help of close, trusted friends, found family. 

this, i believe, is the same in the case of Fantasy High and its treatment of the RVS. its members, like Zuko, are all teenagers who came from shitty situations and were manipulated by evil adults to do bad. they are punished for their bad actions, and they learn from their errors and mistakes. with the kindness and help of good people, friends and chosen family, they are able to escape their abusers and bad situations and grow into their own people. and they actively choose to improve themselves with that help and fight for good.

Fantasy High, through the arcs of Jawbone, Zayn, Ragh, and especially Aelwyn, asserts that it is not your fault if you come from a bad situation and are forced to behave badly as a result. it does not pretend that you are absolved of any responsibility for those actions; quite the opposite, as even though they were externally manipulated into their evil actions, all of those mentioned characters face tangible consequences for their actions and later express remorse for their mistakes. but Fantasy High also asserts that even if you have made great mistakes in your past, even if you came from a bad situation beyond your control, even if you were manipulated and abused, with care and love and support and a hell of a lot of work and effort, you can improve your situation and find good, happiness, peace, you can thrive. evil adults who should know better don’t get redeemed. teenagers who aren’t coerced but actively choose evil don’t get redeemed. but abused kids deserve another shot at happiness. with enough work, and some love and help along the way, they can get there, even from the lowest imaginable point, from rock fucking buttom. it’s possible. 

[spirit-shroud]

i replayed kz again tonight and managed to beat it in 4 hrs instead of 11 !!! which is rly cool imo, i think i got a max of like 50 deaths or less for the full run ??? i was just playing regularly but usin the prism blade for the cool blood effects, not in speedrun mode for the counter, and i managed 2 drag my friend into hyperfixation hell with me :} but also i have some thoughts and opinions im not rly sure how to compile in a meaningful way, so here’s the like. pure brain-down-on-blog post version under the cut. if this gets auto-tagged into the real actual tag for this game im very sorry for my hubris im just. thinking emoji

so id like to start this with the final boss makes me SO sad :( like yeah she doesnt have much dialogue but idk she just makes me so sad. she’s so desperate and she Knows shes going to lose and im just like. no!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you’re so cool!!!!!!! Please Be My Friend We Can Work Together. I Know A Guy :c like usually final bosses are like weirdly emotional for me but she was just SO COOL and realizing like WAIT THIS BOSS OPERATES UNDER THE SAME RULES I DO was just like WOW even if as i kept dying (and i think i spent like... 3 hrs on the final boss alone lmao the first time, i killed her on my third attempt this run which was very cool of me) i finally realized that she IS pretty repetitive and got all her patterns n variables down super easy, but like, fighting another null who Should for all intents and purposes be just as absurd and powerful as i am, and eventually being able to down her effortlessly, and then the withdrawal affects of the chronos kicking in as well, and its just like. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

dont even get me STARTED on that ‘to be continued’ like yeah there’s a dlc comin but the game mentions repeatedly that its just the first act which has me like OKAY. SPECULATION TIME (what am i speculating on? literally no idea im not even rly at the speculation phase im still in the WOW COOL VIDEO GAME phase) 

and i rly like the dragon/fifteen but the first time i saw him i was just like. who’s this f*llmetal alchemist looking bitch ??? what’s he doin here?? go HOME and controlling him is AWFUL i hate the dragon tape so MUCH >:C but also he’s like. cool. i want to know more about him n his plot 2 take down Juncture n the government n whatever. 

but also i was listen 2 Full Confession bc it’s just. what the heart wants rn. i need to be sad and caffeinated in order to get into the Writing Zone rn and then i was THINKIN like my friend mentioned while we were playing the dragon tape that the song that plays is very similar to Full Confession (which i had sent him earlier while i was losing my mind over the final boss) and then i was like. Hm. these are very similar but have such wildly different moods -- Breath of the Serpent is much more like. ‘you’re going to be afraid of me’ while Full Confession is like ‘i’m afraid of you’ and i think that the different Vibes from these two soundtrack bits about important Null characters is just like. WOW and i wonder how a version of it that was purely Zero’s might be. would it be more triumphant? more flat? what desperation or emptiness is in there that could be drawn out by this melody??? i dont KNOW and i can’t write music unfortunately but im just like AAAAAAAAAA

i also rly wanna know what snow has going on ??? like. shes clearly important. she is a vital npc. but Why. she didnt even rly do anything except Show Up???

fuck V. all my homies hate V. the motorcycle fight was a lot of fun tho i rly liked that section even if my therapist was mad at me afterwards

also i think elizabeth/the little girl is rly cute and the fact zero was just like. ‘hm. well guess i have a daughter now’ so fast w/ her (at least, with the dialogue trees me n my pal kept going down) and im just. So Hoping we can rescue her in the dlc :( i miss her so much and im so like. worried abt that like pls give me back my daughter you dumbasses i cant even read ur dialogue without my brain being like ‘yeah these r just squiggly lines, boss. gl’ 

i also want to believe that the masked men arent real (bc idk, it’s just easier for me to process that they’re the result of chronos withdrawal) but the problem w/ that is like. they definitely kidnapped elizabeth, and i want so desperately to believe that elizabeth IS real n that zero genuinely wants to protect her (and by extension, the part of himself that is still human) 

ALSO THE PSYCHIATRIST i was just like. Okay. I Must Get A Good Grade In Therapy. n kept being nice n cooperative and helpful to this clown ass and then THAT ENDING ??? like i didnt even get the Bad Therapist Ending i was just like. fucka you! attacka you with a rock! (i do however want to try the therapist boss it sounds like a lot of fun) but i just. i hate him! he sucks! find a better therapist zero u rly need one im sorry for ur problems disorder :( like hes clearly a guy who just works for the government n wants 2 keep a leash on our man 

n the contradictions, hes like. yeah ur killing everyone related to chronos so it can no longer be produced ♥ but dw ur special we totally wont just withhold chronos from you as soon as u finish ur tasks dw about it ♥ and its like. Hm. I Dont Think Thats Right !!!! 

also i wanna learn more about what Juncture has going on??? what are they like. Doing besides poisoning water n making lighters ?????? it’s clearly a lot 

also the art for this game is just so GOOD,,, like. i didnt rly notice a lot of the backgrounds my first playthrough bc i was just losing my mind the whole time trying to solve each puzzle but the second playthrough im just like. AAAAA. and the soundtrack? effervescent. groundbreaking. perfect. So Good 

and the GAMEPLAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh my GOD i was SO vibing with it, the difficulty curve was kinda extreme imo but as soon as i started like. Getting It? and started looking at each room less like combat/fighting and more like a puzzle that needed to be solved it made it so much easier 2 get into the headphase of ‘okay how do i clear this’ and it was just like. YOOOOOOOO

and zero is just a lot of fun 2 play as. legitimately everything about him is just so ridiculous. his dialogue options? ridiculous. his design? absurd. the implications that hes like. 22 and just having the worst 10 days of his life? mood, buddy. this guy likes samurai movies and card games and mushroom pizza and has worn the same outfit every single day for who knows how long and hes also a war veteran, an emotionless serial killer and a drug addict. and hes 22 and 5′10. literally NOTHING about those traits make sense together but here he is, just Vibing. 

i love him so much. im going to make a self insert oc that’s just giving him a friend who knows how to cook n is just like ‘oh wow, that’s rough buddy’ when hes like ‘i only feel alive when i kill people’ and conveniently knows how 2 get bloodstains out of things bc i think he needs that kind of person in his life since his like. therapist is conspiring against him n he keeps having 2 kill his friends 

also, unfortunately, i want to get every achievement, which i feel like is going to become hld....2!! where i get all but 1 of them and am stuck at 96% for 2+ years >:T

[shellheadtmarc]

connections!

you get to be my post about moe bc you already know all of this shit since you’re like 50% of the bullshit that happens in this verse.

anyway, for those that don’t know, have a seat.  we’re gonna talk about the npc present for fallout 4 verses on this blog named moe.

or more specifically, M.O.E.  what it stands for isn’t actually that important - he, like jarvis, has outgrown the words of the acronym his name comes from.

+ moe is a gen1 synth.  you know the kind - the skeletal looking ones full of pumps and tubes and all that fun stuff.  he was one of the ones zetta blew apart on her rampage to get to kellogg.  he doesn’t remember this.  he doesn’t remember anything from the institute at all, and this is a feature, not a bug.  tony doesn’t want them to be tracked down - not that the institute could crack his programming with how they’re still running on robco code.

+ speaking of bugs, moe is full of them.  figuratively speaking.  he was supposed to be a limited run to test ai coding because he had plans to rebuild said synths he finds in the commonwealth into something of a ground force for the iron legion.  (he does eventually do this for the record - they’ll eventually serve as something of a security force for settlements with a cosmetic overhaul all with distinct personalities.)  he was going to be shut down and wiped repeatedly as the code worked itself out but…well.  elle (as in elle days, courier six from the mojave) got attached to moe.  moe got attached to her.  and tony realized he was learning on his own.  not at the same pace as those that came later, no, and in a different way, but he learns and develops his own personality and in the end tony doesn’t have the heart to pull the shut down trigger because it starts to feel horrifyingly like murder.

+ so moe’s not perfect, but he’s his own person.  and proof that with better coding all synths can be sentient and self-governing.  he learns most things from the people he’s around most often:  tony, elle, stephen, maccready.  which means he’s incredibly innocent in a lot of ways, and incredibly stubborn and persnickety in others.  he’s very stubborn about problem solving on his own (he gets that from tony), has a surprisingly dry wit (tony and stephen), loves a good bad joke or prank (maccready and tony), and somewhat trusting (elle) and sweet-natured (elle) when he’s not trying to work something out.

+ tony did not cosmetically alter moe.  in fact, he’s barely touched moe at all since he was brought online, except to patch fatal bugs and add a directive or two here and there.  he’s also been damaged since being rebuilt, because in the beginning there were no enclosed parameters for where he could wander and it turns out moe doesn’t have much in the way of self preservation (tony, stephen, elle) and got attacked by some feral ghouls, losing his bottom jaw until he managed to overcome them and limp his way home, where tony patched him up (he’s still missing his lower jaw for now).  after that, he’s got defined borders that, if nothing else, keep him safe and among a populated area with override codes, in the chance tony decides to take him along elsewhere (he stays in fort hagen/fiddler’s green trailer estates).

+ he’s also something of a companion for elle.  elle is a little…clingy, and sometimes tony and stephen (boy elle and stephen, i’m glad that’s not a can of worms i gotta dig into) are, you know, busy.  but tony is soft.  he’s so very soft on elle, and feels bad, because she’ll slice you right to the soul with puppy eyes, so moe is kind of like a friend/companion/babysitter(?) for elle in a lot of ways.  it’s because elle is trouble.  unfortunately, moe is also trouble, and tony realizes that Mistakes Were Made but it’s honestly too late to do anything about it now.

+ moe isn’t some silent hulking skeleton robot.  he talks!  one minute he’s asking a million questions that remind you violently of elle, the next he’s delivering a stinger tony would wipe a tear of pride over.  he also has his own likes, dislikes, and methods of judgement for people, and tony won’t lie, it’s been with not a little bit of pride that even his buggy work works.  like all of his bots and ais, moe is as much one of his kids as they are.

+ moe mostly helps out around the house and the lab, he’s…kind of like tony’s own babysitter in a way that he handles the things tony forgets because he has a three-dimensional form and can do so.  did tony get distracted and leave something on the kitchen table?  moe puts it away (and as he develops learns to complain loudly about tony as he does so).  he’s very stubborn and set in the way things are To Be Done around the house and has no compunction about correcting something someone else has done.  right in front of them.  while staring them directly in the eyes while he does so (learned from tony and stephen and probably mac).  

+ tony didn’t leave him defenseless, either.  he’s as locked and loaded as any of the later synth rebuilds and while his coding may be buggy, his defense protocols are most certainly not (one of the fatal errors tony did fix in his programming).  

+ all in all, moe’s as much on the badger tony to take care of himself train as everyone else, because he’s made the connection of them doing it, and why they’re doing it, and calculations suggest tony taking care of himself is better than tony not doing so.  he’s been known to pull the breaker in the house in fort hagen and shut the power down completely if tony stays up too late.  sure, tony could give him the command code to plug it back in, but at this point it’s to be used in dire emergencies only, as moe has consciousness and free will, so he’s left with no choice but to give up and go to bed (so how are you feeling about synths now, maccready).  moe’s as much of a figure in fort hagen as tony is, and while there’s definitely a need for “don’t shoot the synth” signs, you get used to him.  really.