#when i first saw the playthrough i actually really liked it. and i still stand by it being a good game if it wasnt in dh universe. it is fu

[lapinposts]

how it feels to read people on this site criticize death of the outsider

[internetskiff]

hoo boy. SOMA. I definitely do not think of that game often ahaha that game certainly has not affected me in any way

Anyways!! Catherine Chun is honestly my favorite deuteragonist in gaming because of how well she's written (sorry Wheatley (he's a close second though)). On my first playthrough I (and I assume a lot of other people) just immediately decide "OK, she's the only other sane 'person' on this station, so she's automatically a friend", and hell, it seems that's how Simon himself views her from the moment they first speak at Upsilon's comms center. But reading into her dialogue, she really doesn't seem to view Simon as a buddy at all up until like.. Their heart-to-heart at the Climber methinks. Just look at how she speaks with him whenever he starts getting existential.

She speaks to him as more of an annoying coworker at times. Considering her attitude towards other sentient machines, I think it's extending even to Simon. She sees him as a means to an end, or at least tries to, up until she has to copy and paste his mind into a new diving suit. And then, when she fails to hide the original Simon from the newly created duplicate and he is rightfully distraught and furious - I think that's when the actual weight of it all hits her.

This interaction still fucks me up a little. The distress in that "Please, stop" as Simon (very righftully) lashes out at her. It's even worse when you consider this is how most of the people she scanned treated her. They're all desperate. They hope that when they sit down in that Pilot Seat and close their eyes, they'll open them in paradise. But when they end up exactly where they were. and realize a copy of them is going to be living it large on a spaceship while they continue rotting down at Pathos II, it's no wonder they'd suddenly view the whole thing as cruel and disgusting. It's still wrong and selfish, of course - especially directing that anger at the one person responsible for preserving humanity simply because you refuse to understand how brain scans work. It's worse when you realize she never got to defend herself from all of it, and in the end she was killed by her own desperate coworkers. And now she's experiencing it again. Unknowingly, Simon's putting her through the exact same thing her human template went through over and over and over again. She viewed him as a means to an end, but I think that stopped after she had to go through that. She shares her memories of home with Simon. I'd say they only REALLY start getting along at like, Phi, which makes the exchange immediately after the ARK is launched that much more gut wrenching. The thing is, while I think Catherine stopped viewing Simon as a means to an end, Simon didn't stop viewing her as one. From the moment she tells him about the ARK, he was probably itching to get on it. Sure, saving humanity is great, but you'd probably also want to be saved aswell, no?

The fact that this is her last exchange and these are the last words she manages to say is absolutely fucked up. You can just imagine what was going through Catherine's mind as she was saying this - Simon telling her she's "Fucking disgusting!", a sentiment echoed by people she considered acquaintances (people she was saving), seeing her own corpse with it's head bashed in by a wrench.. This wasn't just aimed at Simon, I think. This is basically her finally standing up for herself. Her standing up to everyone who despised her simply because THEY didn't understand how brain scans work. She did everything right, she saved humanity - and she was still treated like garbage in the end. And she doesn't even get to finish her sentence before her chip fries and she dies for the second and final time. And if Simon saw things from her perspective for once, he would have the time to pull her Omnitool out and save her from that.

[jklpopcorn]

*crawls out of the in stars and time timeloop, visibly disheveled and exhausted after spending 33 hours playing + Another 2 hours mass reblogging with friend* WE MADE IT TO THE END, OH LORD, WHO SAID THAT THE GAME WAS ONLY 21 HOURS LONG

Hiii! This is an update on my last ask pertaining to finishing Start Again and starting ISAT. It tooked another session to completed SAAPAand then over ten 3 hour sessions over the course of a month to beat but we did it!

Thank you for bring this game on my dashboard! Truly, one of the games of all time

Some highlights of those 33 hours of stars and timing.

Both of us just STARING at isat Siffrin during acts 1 and 2 because holy shit, they're so joyous and filled with whimsy and the timeloop horrors hasn't hit them yet. <--- used to saapfrin's depression

The two of us experiencing the dawning horror that is all the callbacks to Start Again in act 3+4

LOOP HANGOUT IMPLICATIONS THAT SIFFRIN HELD THE PARTY BACK BC THE PARTY WAS ABLE TO MAKE TO THE KING ON THIER OWN DESPITE HOW THERES SO MANY POTENTIAL SOFTLOCKS

I (person who knew that saapfrin is loop since the beginning and that loop is a Siffrin) had to desperately gaslight the streamer friend when they randomly joked that there could be multiple Siffrins across different timelines in act 2 (they didnt remember saying that when we were chatting at the end credits)

Destroying Odile's old women kidneys via making her drink 8+ bowls of salty broth whenever we fought the king

Yelling HOW ARE YOU STILL STANDING??? When odile froze Siffrin in time at the 5th act finale like Ma'am using timecraft even for a second is said to cause the user to turn to dust?? And you're like 80

Heartbreaks during the 'Odile stands in front of the party after Siffrin disposing of sadness too excitedly" '"We cannot trust Siffrin" clocktower act 5' and 'Odile uses papercraft against big Siffrin' because she's the oldest and logical one and she must protect everyone/make sure everyone is prepared to fight the king even if her actions seem too extreme

Got a beautiful moment at the secret loop bossfight when the streamer friend learned loop is a siffrin and I no longer had duct tape over my mouth and could finally tell them that loop is our saapfrin (been talking about what happened to saapfrin in general during the playthrough)

SBXUXBUDHXUDHCUCCU I am SO glad you enjoyed the game :DDDDD

I also thought the game would normally take 21 hours but I was prepared for it to take longer since I love to investigate more 😭😭 yeah it did take longer, 41 hours in 4 days to be more precise, twice as long 😭😭 loved every second of it 😭😭

I can imagine seeing act 1 and 2 siffrin would be such a whiplash! When I learned that sasasap may contain spoilers and reused scenes i went straight to isat so I first got used to the whimsy of the act 1 and 2 siffrin and then saw the slow descent into the poor meow meow in act 4 😭 i was actually surpised when i played sasasap that the little guy skipped all of that and is lowkey worse off than isat siffrin 😭 Loop truly did make a difference when it comes to sif's sanity (and like... actually helping him get out of the loop too ^^)

I was actually surprised they went into an actual breakdown in act 4 and 5. Didn't expect the creator to explore how a person would feel after dying and looping a hundred or so times! I was fully expecting for sif to go "well that happened :)" with no consequences like some games/movies like to do... But within the first 5 minutes of playing I could bet that the creator was a tumblr user so I had hope that our little fella could go a little feral later on <3 i was not disappointed <3 (but honestly, the game reeks of tumblr at times /pos /pos /pos <3)

I suppose that without Sif during the Loop hangout the party got both super lucky and searched even more thoroughly for keys and such since their main guy was out! Not that it really helped them in the end...

I guess it's just canon that that old woman's immortal. Speed and running are her only weaknesses 😔 and mommy issues 😔

Also her truly wanting the best for the party and also taking the least shit from siffrin the moment they could be a danger to her family 😭 violence is not always the answer odile you saw what happened to siffrin 😭

Loop..... nooooo......

[luckyqueenreign]

ozzy...

going to tag some ozzy girlies...sorry if I missed you:

@noahsthottie @operationnope @cycat4077 @oliverslove @queen-of-boops @mendie91 @kunepie @earlyevenings @damagedsavefile @katsie

so ive had time to breathe from yesterdays disastrous update and I also replayed it again this morning and maybe it's bc I already knew what was going to happen or maybe playing it again made me realize a few new things but I'm actually not as mad w/ Ozzy as I was yesterday...

in my playthrough, Roberto was the one that pulled MC for a chat after the casa recoupling to talk about how ozzy was feeling during casa, his massive insecurities and that he was the one that wrote the note for MC. In my opinion this conversation basically lays out the foundation and road map for this weeks update.

We know that MC and Ozzy obviously had feelings for each other pre-casa, but they were never actually official. MC had MULTIPLE guys trailing after her around the villa and even if she felt the strongest connection to Ozzy - in his defense we never really told him this. Even the kiss goodbye was just that...a kiss goodbye. When we have the first chat with him he opens up and tells MC how much he missed her and how he felt when she was gone and when she says she missed him back. he's obviously happy but its almost like he's relieved and surprised she feels the same way. Being that they've never been coupled and never had a "this is it...you're the only one I want" chat his insecurities here are completely valid.

Then we hear about Ozzy making mad moves at casa. And at first I was PISSED especially bc in my mind that kiss goodbye was me telling him I wanted him. But then I started to think about how this is so completely out of character for Ozzy. This man doesnt do one night stands, he's held out on kissing MC until he had properly sorted his feelings for her and Grace so for him to get to the point where he's in a pool skinny dipping with two strangers, he must've been feeling super low and super insecure. (call back to Roberto telling us he has way more insecurities than we know) He tells us multiple times that when he saw the postcard he thought that Grace and MC were both moving on and he had to make moves. but what got me around this second playthrough was his instant guilt in the moment after it happened. If Ozzy was really a player who went around skinny dipping and triple kissing girls, he wouldnt have been racked with guilt. He wouldve just brought back a Casa girl bc that wouldve been the easy way out. But he didnt do that. And sure do I wish he had been more upfront about it on our very first convo? Absolutely!! but then I do see his side about feeling so guilty about it, being insecure and ultimately being inexperienced in scenarios such as this...bc this is not in his character!

all in all I still do think theres a redemption arc for Ozzy somewhere here. and if you have followed me since s5 you know I wont give up that easy 💀

[ideas-on-paper]

Monster Hunter Tri Diary, Part 1: Intro, Arrival in Moga, First trip to Moga Woods

So, inspired by @dragonflight203's Mass Effect replay posts (hope you don't mind me adapting the idea!), I've decided to do a "gaming diary" for my first playthrough of Monster Hunter Tri.

Thanks to the dedicated endeavor of fans from the MH community, the servers of Tri are finally accessible again, so I'm very excited to check this one out. The 3rd Gen is my favorite overall, and I've been yearning to see Loc Lac with my own eyes for years now.

But first, I'll have to spend some time in singleplayer to farm some equipment and re-familiarize myself with the game. Wouldn't want to do the hub quests ill-prepared! So, for now, we're starting slow.

Disclaimer: Text is paraphrased from my localization and might slightly deviate from the English version.

Intro

This is the first time I've seen the intro of MH Tri in person - and it’s such an amazing one, too! I love the correlation between the sea and land environments depicted here: The Jaggi pack is hunting the Aptonoths at the coast (great way to introduce the new small bird wyverns!), while the Ludroths are picking up the scraps that fell into the water.

That Great Jaggi was about to have the feast of his life on that Aptonoth, only to be bowled out by that Rathalos. xD Dude wanted his lunch back so badly that he was even willing to make a stand against the Rathalos. Probably wouldn't have held out for long, though, with Jaggis being weak to fire. (If Tri had turf wars, that Great Jaggi would've been totally obliterated.)

And when the Lagiacrus shows up, the Jaggis are just like: "Okay, this one’s way out of our league. Let’s get the hell out of here." xD

One thing I love about the Lagiacrus is that he's designed like an antithesis to Rathalos: Rathalos wields fire, which is the Lagi's primary weakness. Meanwhile, Rathalos himself is weak against lightning, which makes him vulnerable to Lagiacrus’s attacks. Both are the kings of their respective element, but when encroaching on Rathalos' territory, the Lagiacrus is like a literal fish out of the water.

I wonder what would happen if there was a turf war between them, though. Would there be a 50:50 chance of either one winning? Would the Lagi try to pull Rahtalos into the water? Would he even get out of there by himself? (I imagine it would look like a bird of prey that crashed in the water, but much bigger. Poor Rathalos might need a hand. xD)

I love how Lagiacrus turns away in an "Eh, I didn't mean to hunt this anyway" manner; like having his snack snatched away from under his nose hurt his pride, but he tries to act unbothered by it. xD

Ah, guys... I always get a little teary-eyed when the MH Tri main theme comes up. The Rathalos flying over the vast plains, the music picking up, and then the view with the hunters standing at the cliff... It really doesn't get better than this. :,)

Arrival in Moga

Ah, it's been ages since I saw that cutscene... It's technically the same as in MH3U, but still it feels so good to be back. I love how you see the villagers just going about their daily lives, the children being excited about the trinkets the Chief's Son brought back from his trip and all that... It evokes such a homey feeling right from the start, and it makes the village community feel that much more like family.

The chief actually mentions the sea people having crests on their skin and looking a little different from normal humans. I remember this from the MH artbook, where it's stated they gave them a different skin tone/markings as well as webbed hands to distinguish them from normal humans. I thought this was just a scrapped concept (since you don't see much of a visual difference in-game), but I had no idea there was in-game dialogue about it. Cool!

"Diversity means prosperity!" That's actually a really wise quote right there. Both the sea people and wyverians are knowledgeable in their own right, but each have different skills. If they unite them, everyone profits. (I think we could learn something from this for our own society.)

I love the Guild Sweetheart from MH Tri/3U. She's legitimately my favorite of all the Guild receptionists in Monster Hunter (at least those I’m familiar with). And she's trying so hard - she's really upset the Guild apparently forgot about them in this backwater village. Hang in there, sweetie!

"The Guild has permission to hunt and do research in the Moga Woods, and in exchange, we help the village with its problems." A fair trade, but I wonder if the Guild might have ulterior motives. Like, what are they doing with the research results? And do they really only permit just as much hunting as the monster population will allow, or is that just a farce? (I always trusted the Guild was true to their word, but after watching a few Monster Hunter lore videos, I'm not so sure. Ah, I was so gullible back then... xD)

The gossipy lady really loves her silly word games. (And so do I. xD)

"The Chief must have really good relationships with the Guild if he got a hunter like you to come to such a small village in the middle of nowhere." Not an unreasonable thought, actually... How did he convince the Guild to send a hunter to Moga if they otherwise completely ignore it? Is he friends with some of the higher-ups?

"For safety reasons, we’ve collected all information about monsters in a so-called "monster list"." Uh-huh... "Safety reasons"... I'm telling you, the Guild is definitely keeping secrets.

Okay, so the item seller really likes hunters. This reminds me, I think there's one single NPC in the entire series who couldn't stand hunters. (I believe it was some guy in Minegarde, though I can't say for sure since I've never been in that city myself.) Is this dude the only one or are there any others who actually dislike hunters?

I love the Outfitter with her "very important" virtual tests. Like yeah, I'm sure that fantasizing about slaying monsters with no first-hand experience will bring you that much closer to finding the "ideal weapon". (I gotta say, I love this kind of humor that Monster Hunter has - it's so dumb, but in a hilarious kind of way. The game knows it's dumb and doesn't take it too seriously, so it almost feels a bit like satire.)

I'm also quite fond of the Fishmongeress. She is warm-hearted and helpful, but also very assertive and knows what she wants. My kind of woman!

I love the dynamic between the two kids; like one is constantly bragging about how smart he is (while actually being really dumb), while the other, shy one is the actual smart one (can confirm this from personal experience xD).

Our local "whizz kid" tells us that the villagers are threshing rice at the windmills in Moga Village. (The ones you can see in the background near the armory and if you walk across the leftmost pier.) That’s probably what the farm is for, though I haven’t seen any paddy fields there.

You know what I find absolutely hilarious? The way the game incorporates gameplay tips. The villagers say stuff like "Okay, so try imagining a "screen", alright?" and "Try imagining a thing called "Wiimote". No kidding, just try it!". They talk about a yellow cursor ("I know: a what?!") like it's the weirdest thing ever, and "saving the game" is treated like some outlandish slang word. Like, the developers were probably aware that to the people in-universe, these explanations would sound entirely nonsensical, and they put in the extra effort to make it funny - I love it.

Also, the UI design in Tri is absolutely gorgeous. I love the "tribal" style the old games had going on. MH World can't hold a candle to this!

I remember there was an old post on the MH Lore Tumblr blog (sadly, it's been defunct for a while now) that in the MH universe, the Felynes are treated like cheap laborers who are always given the shit jobs nobody else wants to do. Considering how they're constantly seen in positions like chamberlain, farm worker etc., I believe there might actually be something to this. It's kind of sad, but these kitties really don't seem to have the best standing in MH society... :(

I love the Felyne-specific language, though. (Like hairstyling being "grooming", "child's play" is "kitten's play" and so on.) It's so endearing.

So, the shy kid tells me there's a cave at the farm, but I shouldn't go inside because the Chief is gonna get really mad if I do. The Head Farmer tells me it contains some kind of ancient weapon. From what I remember from 3U, that "weapon" is a mask for the Shakalaka. (It's funny how every Monster Hunter used to have this "special", sword-in-the-stone kind of weapon.)

Moga Woods (day)

I gotta say, from a gameplay perspective, I think the tutorial for Tri is really well done. It doesn't immediately throw you into a timed quest so you don't feel pressured from the get-go, and it introduces you to all core mechanics bit by bit.

Village Chief: "Can you hear me?" Yes, I can hear you. I'm not sure how you can speak to me since you technically should be back at the village, but I hear you. (Do these villagers have mastered the art of telepathy somehow?)

"My ancestors had a saying: "Wherever you go, there you are."" Wow - I never could've figured this out on my own. Truly, the wisdom of ages.

It's easy to forget, but MH Tri is actually the first Monster Hunter where gathering points are displayed. I remember how distressed I was when playing MH1 and realizing there were no pop-ups to mark gathering spots. (And now that I’m used MH1 and Freedom Unite, I have to get out of my habit of pressing the gathering button at suspicious looking places. xD)

"That's an Aptonoth: a herbivore. Eats... herbs." You don't say, Chief. You don't say.

I remember when I first played Monster Hunter, I felt so bad for killing an Aptonoth. Now, I’ve kinda gotten used to it - still wouldn’t say I feel good about it, though. ^^’

"You're just like me when I was your age! Of course, my stamina bar was way longer." Yeah, sure - just don't forget to toot your own horn.

When finding the Chief's Son: "Sorry we couldn't talk yesterday, though natural disasters are a great conversational topic!" I've said it once, I will say it again: I love Monster Hunter’s humor.

"I'm Juni-- Er, I'm the Chief’s Son." Ohh, do I hear someone having daddy issues?

"Our tent and bocce set were in that destroyed camp." Oh, no - due to the earthquake, the villagers can't play bocce anymore. What a tragedy.

”I’m so hungry, I could eat an Aptonoth.” Well, friend, you’re in luck - I’ve just slaughtered one of these beasties.

Aaand he snatches the meat right up. Okay, dude - have fun grilling. I’ll just go back to the village all on my lonesome, I guess…

And thus, after finding the lost son and completing our first job for McDelivery, we return to the village...

To be continued

[humornaut]

My Journey with Omori

Hey everyone. Rather than my usual analysis-type posts, this is going to go into my own personal experience with Omori. I've kind of wanted to do this for awhile, because I feel like I have a lot that I want to say about this game. This post is going to have major Omori spoilers. I will also be going into some criticisms of the game (though not particularly heavily). This one will be a long one.

My Background

This might not be something that people care about, but I feel it is important to start with my life situation at the time I discovered the game.

In 2020, I graduated from college with a degree in game design. If you remember 2020, you can probably guess where I'm going with this. Everyone left for spring break, and the day before we were supposed to come back, they extended break by a week. Then, at the end of that additional week, classes had gone fully remote. My three roommates at the time never really came back to campus, and I finished out the lease alone. I never got to do any kind of internship, and I didn't get a graduation ceremony. I really didn't know what I was doing with my life, and finding a job in the games industry seemed impossible. So, I made a decision to move in with my aunt and work at an insurance agency. I was states away from anyone I ever knew, working in an industry wholly unrelated to what I had just dedicated years of my life to studying, but it was a job.

I wonder a lot if this was the right call. At the time, it seemed like an obvious decision, but now, I'm even more unsure of my skills when it comes to breaking into the games industry, and working 40+ hours a week can really sap your motivation when it comes to personal projects.

As the world opened back up, I started hearing from all my friends less and less, and life really started getting monotonous. Living alone is expensive, and I'm not good at opening up to new people.

Last November, by chance, a comic by twitter user Shrimperini appeared on my feed (it's still the pinned tweet on her account if you want to see!). One thing led to another, I saw some more positive reviews of the game, and I ended up picking the game up on Switch when I saw at on sale at a Best Buy.

Now, anyone that knows me could tell you, this isn't the type of game I usually play. I've always gravitated towards things like strategy games or rogue-likes. I only really stray from that in a few cases, whether it's to play a game with my friends, or just a game that I've had a long-standing connection with, like Pokémon. I did play Undertale and Deltarune (and loved them!), but overall, this type of game was not one that I typically went out of my way to play.

Also important: I've never interacted with any fandom in the way that I do with Omori. You can trawl through my Twitter, you won't find much of me talking about ships or obsessing over details until I started talking about Omori. All this is to say: Omori was a bit of a first for me on a few different levels. So, let's get into my actual journey with the game.

The First Playthrough: The Sunny Route

I unfortunately already knew a few details about the game going into things, but nothing that was too big of a spoiler. Something that I think gets overlooked is how great Omori's prologue is. In my opinion, the first night in Headspace is the best night in Headspace, bar none. It perfectly sets you up for what the game's going to be about, and I want to talk more about that later, because I feel that it really shines on later playthroughs.

Based on what I said about my background, you can probably guess what I'm going to say. Sunny's story and personality resonated heavily with me. At school, I was always the quiet one, just kind of following what my friends wanted to do until I started coming out of my shell a bit later on. Faraway is very similar to the town and suburb that I grew up in, and I know that many people feel the same way. Walking around Faraway felt like walking around my own home town today, years after almost everyone I knew back then has moved out and started their own lives. I mean this literally, as well, since I started playing this game right around American Thanksgiving, so I actually was back in my home town. It's nostalgic in a way, and I think that that is a major strength of the game.

I also do want to say, that while a Kel/Sunny comic is what introduced me to the game, I mostly assumed that it wasn't actually a canon ship. What I didn't expect was for the game to actually depict a close male relationship that does border on romantic in its presentation, which made those opening transition scenes of Sunny and Basil so interesting (as well as Basil indirectly calling Omori cute during the flower meaning segment), though I do want to talk a little bit more about that later.

From there, I feel that my experience was a lot like most people's first time with the game. I got to experience Faraway, then tried to rush through Night 2 of Headspace without paying much attention, so that I could get back to the real world plot. I didn't pay much attention during Sweetheart's Castle, and it's already-commented-on gameplay drag issues felt exacerbated by the fact that I just wanted to get on with it.

Real world day 2 happens, I got to meet Hero in the real world, Basil gets pushed into the lake, etc, etc. The shroud has started to lift on what's actually going on here. The North Lake segment got me ready to figure out what was actually going on, but first: Last Resort and Humphrey.

It was around this time that I began wondering if there actually was any kind of gay subtext actually going on. Of course, I had seen the Lost Library entry for the ride home from the beach, but as I descended into Sunny's subconscious, the way that the game started talking about Basil took on a much different tone. I got to the Branch Coral, and listened to it talk about how Sunny and Basil are connected by a "string of fate". This immediately set off some alarm bells in my head. A lot of debate has been had about this line, but for me personally, even if a string of fate isn't always romantic imagery, it certainly is most of the time. Seeing it written in the game (as something that Sunny's subconscious is saying, no less) completely had me reconsidering if there was a connection, which I hadn't really thought about since Basil's disappearance. I thought about the photo album, and how well Basil is treated in Headspace, and it just had me thinking.

I got through Humphrey, finished up the side quests that I still had, and it was time to start Black Space. Prior to that, however, Stranger lead me through Basil's garden once again, going over the flower meanings. I took note about how the meaning of sunflowers, as it was the first time I made the connection about Sunny's name and Basil's meaning for them (plus him literally always facing Sunny in several scenes lol). And then there was what Basil said about white tulips.

Being honest, it was difficult for me to interpret Basil as not being in love with Sunny after that, and Stranger's dialogue in some of the Black Space rooms really cemented that for me.

Black Space as a whole left me extremely intrigued as to what the plan was. The way it ended really left me in suspense for what was really going on. How did it all relate to what happened to Mari? I had already assumed at this point that she had taken her own life, due to some of the imagery. But what else was going on here? I didn't exactly think the game was going to veer back from being a horror title to turn into some kind of dating sim, but it was clear to me that Basil was involved with some other secret.

In a reversal of what I had expected of the game up until this point, I found it difficult to care about the real world plot of the game during day 3. It didn't help that it felt like a rushed resolution of the Aubrey plot, and I felt like I was simply going through the motions. I still have no idea how I'm supposed to interpret the key in the treehouse and how it got there, and it felt a little aggravating that plans were being made between Aubrey and Hero to include the hooligans next time, while Basil himself was still locked in his room.

So then, the truth sequence. It completely blew away my expectations for what the game was saying, and recontextualized so much of what came before it. Sunny had done something awful by accident, and Basil had done something awful to protect him. That last "Do you want to save Basil?" really hit me hard. I hadn't felt so part of the game until this moment. It was like I was Sunny, and I was mulling over whether or not I forgive Basil for the horrible situation his actions put us both in. The stakes are high, because it's clear that something bad will happen to Basil if I don't. I didn't actually know it at the time, but this is the first time you can actually choose not to save Basil. It's emotional.

And the fight. The way the game creates confusion as to what is actually going on between Sunny and Basil during it by using vague wording and hallucinations. Basil's desperation and the way his desire to protect Sunny as his "perfect" best friend come together, leading to the fight.

Memory Lane happens, and I honestly didn't think much of it at the time. It was cool to see some of the memories in better detail, but it wasn't as emotional to me as what came before or what will come after.

I would be remiss to not include that we learn that it was actually Sunny that had a crush on Aubrey, and not the other way around. I had already suspected this, based on Aubrey not being close to him in the photo album, along with the Lost Library memory, but I remember thinking it was an interesting choice to have Basil be the one to call it out.

I finished up the game, and it impacted me a whole lot. I wasn't planning on playing the other route at first, as I heard that it was just Headspace and mostly unchanged, and I felt satisfied with the story that I got. I walked away with the understanding that pre-canon, Basil had feelings for Sunny that he likely didn't understand, while Sunny had a crush on Aubrey that he was never bold enough to pursue. How they felt at the time the game actually took place is irrelevant to the story being told, outside of us understanding that these are relatable individuals, and I walked away alright with that.

Of course, after that initial wave of emotions from the ending subsided, I did have some criticisms. Sunny's actual friendship with Aubrey felt underdeveloped, as her behavior both in Headspace and the real world differ so heavily from how she behaves in the glimpses we see of the past. Unlike Sunny's relationships with the others, there's no real unique identifiers other than Sunny's crush. While I would not have wanted the only living female character in the main cast to have been treated as a love interest in both the real world and dream world, it would have been nice if the game gave us a little more than just the swing set conversations, like how we get Kel talking about their late night trips to Hobbeez. In addition, while I understood on a base level that whether or not Basil and Sunny are forgiven didn't really matter to the story being told, not seeing it happen left me feeling a tad empty.

Finally, I felt extremely dissatisfied with Headspace. On a superficial level, I could see that many of the things in Headspace were based on things from the real world, it didn't really feel like it had all that much significance, and the knowledge that it would be more of the same in the other route kept me from playing it. I occasionally visited the subreddit, read a few post-canon fics (Bask in the Sun by Lemari and They say Flowers are Meant to be Sunkissed by Witherdahlia being highlights with very similar concepts), and slowly immersed myself in the Twitter community.

Of course, as time went by, I started making my own interpretations about the game. I got very attached to Sunflower, as I felt the fics were the most interesting to read, and I already held the interpretation that Basil had those feelings for Sunny, even if I didn't think it even mattered if Sunny reciprocated (though I did like talking about their dynamic a lot). In February, Sunflower week happened, and I randomly happened across a tweet that pointed out how Sunny knows the recipe for a strawberry cake in Headspace, with that being relevant due to Basil's birthday being one in which a strawberry cake appears. This blew my mind a little bit, and I made the decision to go back and play the Hikikomori route.

The Second Playthrough: The Hikikomori Route

What I had previously assumed would be a slog through things that I had already done before turned out to be far more interesting. Without the desire to get back to the real world plot hanging over me, I found myself paying a lot more attention to the things that were happening in Headspace. Playing the prologue again was amazing, because I was taken aback by how it practically parallels the entirety of the Sunny route, right down to having to retrieve a stolen item and receiving an eyepatch after the boss fight. Some day, I might break that down further, because it's so interesting. But not today.

Pyrefly Forest and Sweetheart's Castle were much more bearable this time around, because I was paying attention to the little references to Basil and Sunny's friendship in Pyrefly, and the ways Sweetheart's Castle represented a candied-up version of the way that Sunny interprets the concept of "home". This time through Headspace, I saw the very subtle ways that Basil's thoughts "follow Sunny into his dreams". And then, rather than Mari leading you through North Lake, it's Kel. Stranger no longer tells us what Basil thought about white tulips and Sunny, but this time in Black Space, I noticed the implications that Sunny would open up to Basil about his trauma coming from the Lake Incident. It ends with Omori catching Basil in a bridal carry before returning his flower crown.

Whereas the Sunny route was this heart wrenching tale about forgiveness and guilt, and overcoming your fears for others, and how ignorance hurts those you care about the most, the Hikikomori route functioned almost as this deep dive into Sunny's subconscious. The fact that I was playing through pretty much the exact same stuff again but with a completely different perspective kind of blew my mind, and I wonder if this was intentional.

This is all to say that it was around this time that I was once again asking myself the question of if Sunny's feelings for Basil (at least pre-canon) were entirely platonic. Especially as I played the Basil Rush, with its new Tag Photos and Release Energy, I wondered if the game was actually trying to imply a romantic connection. And if it was, why? What purpose would it serve in the narrative for these feelings to exist? How does it relate to Sunny's crush on Aubrey, which surely must've existed in the story for a reason? And how does it all relate to the litany of things Sunny things about in regards to romance?

From a narrative perspective, I could reason that Sunny and Basil having feelings for each other that they could never healthily explore injects further tragedy into the day of the incident and Sunny locking himself away. It provides a context for Sunny's focus on "saving" Basil, both in Headspace and the real world. Basil is undeniably linked to photos and flowers, which are two huge symbols that appear throughout Sunny's mind.

Everything else is stuff I've already spoken about before. The way Sunny treated Aubrey parallels how he treated Basil, and via both things like his fear of spiders, and the way all the foods Sunny appears to know information on how to prepare being associated with Basil, his dynamic with Basil mirrors the way Sunny thinks of Hero and Mari's relationship during Memory Lane.

Playing through the Hikikomori route completely changed the way that I thought about Omori. It was no longer just the story of Sunny accepting his role in his sister's death, I was also now considering the possibility that the game did have a romantic subtext between its two deuteragonists, and thinking about the repercussions of such an idea.

As I completed everything that there was to do in the Hikikomori route, I was immediately taken in with the idea of replaying the Sunny route, with all the knowledge I now had from my previous experiences. First, let me say: Everything that I assumed about playing through Headspace a second time and was luckily wrong about, actually applied on my third run. I did not enjoy playing through Headspace on my third run through, and it will likely be awhile before I do so again.

However, I did start to get an appreciation for details that I missed in my first run in Faraway. Basil's little mannerisms during cutscenes, such as looking to Sunny before responding to Kel's insistence that they were all still friends, as well as the repetition of Sunny backing away from his friends' pain due to his subconscious guilt and fear of facing it, before the final payoff of Sunny choosing to walk back into the center of the room on his own accord during the confrontation with Basil. During Memory Lane, I took note that in the Treehouse Memory, Sunny asked to see one of Basil's pictures that had nothing to do with Aubrey, when previously he only asked to look at pictures of her. There are three different instances in which the player is reminded that Hero and Mari's relationship specifically is one in which they cook for each other specifically, and this information was now recontextualized with the knowledge that Sunny knows the recipe for a strawberry cake, owns a book about tofu (which he hates), and that's not even getting into all the stuff about smoothies in Headspace. Where Aubrey saying that Sunny "would listen to her talk to hours" was once a confirmation that Aubrey and Sunny did have any kind of dynamic at all, I now saw it as a recontextualization of how we were told Sunny interacted with Basil. (also, the "truth" being hidden in the toy chest, which is itself hidden in the closet was certainly a choice /j)

What was the point of all this?

Frankly, it's starting to feel like I'm running out of things to say about Omori. With every post I've made on here and Twitter, there's less things for me to extrapolate from Omori's storytelling, and it's unlikely that we will ever get any more added on to canon. I've grown to love this community, and I think it's so interesting when I look back at how I interpreted the game back in November when I first discovered it, and today. I hope that that will become evident with the mod that I am working on, Senesce.

Obviously, everyone has their own ideas when it comes to what Omori is trying to imply with its characters. Accepting Sunflower as "canon" (in the sense that those feelings do exist in some form) has deepened my love of the game and characters, and I love that other people can have entirely different interpretations and still be just as satisfied with the game! Even if it was all unintentional, I cannot deny that it has lit a fire under me when it comes to game writing.

I desperately want to create a game that has someone at home obsessing over the smallest details to extract meaning in the way I have for Omori. Flawed as it may be, it's special to me, and I'm glad I played it. Thanks for listening to me ramble about it!

[mongoose-bite]

This isn't that relevant but I just never remember to take screenshots. Paladin moment! And you can see Wyll's lil face in the background if you squint. I anticipate a playthrough where we both have dogshit strength being pretty funny.

Did Faye go party after talking to Halsin? Of course she didn't. My girl will not rest while innocents need saving, and I did just fast travel out without saving that stupid bard...

I don't know what it is with me and names in this game; I saw Volo and was like 'heh, same name as that freak in Soul Calibur' and completely forgot Volo's Guide to Monsters until I saw him again.

The party. Oooh god I was not prepared for the party. Neither was Faye. Laz'ael kinda had dibs, and couldn't be un-dibbed so it was basically a night of awkwardly rejecting people. Excruciating for both of us. Notable exceptions: Wyll, who did not ask. I thought Faye might go for him, but they are a bit too similar. He's basically a brother from another mother and she loves him as such. Halsin, who was very kind but firm when Faye wondered if she could get to know him. okay.jpg

And. Of course. Asterion. Who let her know he was absolutely desperate to fuck, but anyone but her. Ew. Listen, this entire camp is crawling with horny morons, and if you weren't such a sour and condescending gremlin you could have your pick of them, but instead you're having a sneer-off with the one person you can't stand who is going to go and get laid regardless.

I actually kind of love how antagonistic they are, and I'm almost tempted to turn the ship around just to watch him eat. his. words. But I couldn't do that to Faye, who basically regards him like a tired paramedic outside a club at 3am on a Sunday asking again what it is he's taken. Sadly, he's her job.

Anyway. Laz'ael. You don't have to get all dommy to get head, you know? She's a paladin getting on her knees and giving is in her nature. I don't think Faye regrets it, but she finds Laz'ael a bit exhausting in several senses and doesn't want a rematch either, or to talk about it. Asterion probably sensed that. Dick.

I still had this cursed book sitting in my inventory, cause I am the stupid, and had forgotten right click opened an Attack option in the menu and I fruitlessly kept trying to target it with the general attack option. I did eventually work it out.

Now I had noticed Auntie Ethel had the fey creature type, but I thought nothing of it, and Faye, sweetheart that she is, wasn't going to scare some old lady by telling her about the tadpole, so I only headed to the swamp out of a desire to fill in the map before leaving the zone. Also, a friend had informed me I could improve things slightly with Asterion by 'baa-ing' at redcaps, a bizarre piece of advice that made no sense til I got there. Frankly it's the first thing about him that's been remotely charming.

Anyway, we got as far as the door to the hag's lair, and I thought we'd more or less hit an instant boss fight, and I and my companions were so close to level 5. That extra attack was gonna do so much for me. So I turned around and scoured the map for anything that might offer scraps of exp. Took all day. Rested.

Gale offered a magic lesson. Faye had a great time til it all got a bit too serious and she broke it off, getting the sad and lonely reaction, and she's feeling bad about it cause he's hot and smart, and good-hearted. But. It did seem a bit too smooth, and he did also kick things off with a picture of his ex, and then a demonstration of how good said ex makes him feel. If she even is an ex. I'm not cucking a fucking goddess. Faye's wis score is higher than that.

Dyce would love everyone in this party though. He really would. I need to know if an nonocule is possible.

Back to Faye. Rather than face her problems, she decided she'd rather go to a horrible swamp and fight a hag with a guy who deeply dislikes her. It went fine. Overall, by the time we were done in the swamp, Asterion had gone from barely tolerating her to grudgingly tolerating her. As she herself says, 'I've got a long road ahead of me.'

[egg-emperor]

It's so insane to me that there was ever even a suggestion that Eggman would stop being a villain after Frontiers. Like no sane person would ever come to that conclusion after playing that game, there is literally zero material to even suggest that. And yet it was just crazy take after crazy take, people saying "time skip" this and "Eggman will be softened by Sage's presence" that and it's like bitch where? I don't even know what to attribute it too beyond the usual, these people just hate Sonic

I knooow, I still feel like a dumbass myself for not properly getting it for a while just because of what a mass majority of the fandom was saying based on leaks and jumping to the wildest conclusions. With so many stating it like absolute fact, I didn't even consider it not being the case and it killed all my interest and hype, ruined my first experience with the game, and made me not even bother to pay attention and analyze to make sense of it the first playthrough. But to my defense I literally wasn't mentally okay for a multitude of reasons that year then that destroyed the last straw of my sanity and rational thinking at the time so lol

But hey I've learned to avoid and ignore the entire fandom's opinions until I've experienced it myself and actually thought about it carefully and analyzed it properly to make sure they never have a say or influence in my perception of it ever again and things have gotten so much better! And yeah it was crazy how eye opening a few explanations and a second playthrough of the game was for me, when I actually paid attention and didn't believe that all the desires and wishful thinking that the fandom projected onto it were genuinely true. There were no hints to Eggman's character massively changing and being ruined whatsoever.

How the tables have turned that I'm now obsessed with and thinking about and analyzing it constantly and want to help people understand it. I now wish more people would realize how great Eggman's portrayal in it was but not for all the reasons those that claim to like it are saying because those reasons don't actually exist. XD It's so much better when you realize that the game is actually what I want out of Eggman (for him to just be who he's always been) and to no longer entertain people's made up ideas about it over the facts by acting like it's true because it's not. There's so much fun to be had and things to like for what it really is.

It was instead just a really cool exploration of his already existing characteristics that he's always had and how they affect and play a part in writing him in situations he's never been in before, further developing those aspects further without changing a single thing about him at all. Proving he can be deep, complex, and require some real thought and analysis to understand despite his simplicity as a character in terms of personality and motives. It actually just proves you don't need to change anything about him to explore interesting themes and that he has tons of potential the way he is. It's actually great how there's so much to analyze and think about.

A whole lot of the fan speculation and theories about this game directly contradict the actual events of the game, actions of the characters, and even the writer commentary. And with each piece of official media that has been releasing since, it's been proving it more and more in various blatantly obvious and undeniable ways. And in Eggman's case I realize I shouldn't have even been surprised since most of the people that were so adamant that he was changing drastically into someone else literally don't like him being evil and a villain and admitted that, so there is absolutely truth to that. They let personal bias and desires affect how they saw it.

I'm really happy that in the end the game canon really just further solidified his already existing characteristics and explored the scope of them in a fun new way and only proved that they can stand the test of all new experiences he has lol. It really just showcased all the things I love about him in a different way besides his usual active villainy and then went right back to that after it was done in all official media since and it has me looking forward to the future of his character with many more interesting things to analyze and think about and classic entertaining villainy to enjoy 🥰💜

[phoenix-downer]

KH3 Retrospective

I can’t believe it’s been four years already since KH3 came out. It both feels like it came out ages ago and just last month. Above was the very first screenshot I took as I started my playthrough. I was so awed by how good the textures for the stained glass on the Station of Awakening looked. 

Something I did while I was playing KH3 was create a little Google doc of my first reactions/impressions (as well as spamming the screenshot button lol). Here was from the first page: 

New version of Dearly Beloved is gorgeous - sounds similar to DDD version a little

Sora’s opening line is so good - Kairi is his home

Opening - Kairi and Sora’s chess pieces by each other

Kairi’s piece is the paopu piece

Riku looks gorgeous

Everyone looks beautiful

The door opening to save everyone there at the end

Seven hearts to save

Sora’s holding Xehanort’s piece at the end - checkmate?

Station of Awakening is GORGEOUS - looks like actual stained glass now

Showing Sora’s memories

Wisdom, vitality, balance - which one?!

I chose balance (yay SDG!)

Guardian, Warrior, Mystic

I chose Guardian (yay Namine!)

Tidal wave, then Sora ended up in cloud world

Destati sounds awesome

Sora’s opening lines are so good

Mysterious Tower music sounds so good

Cable Town looked gorgeous - Land of Departure?

Sora’s theme sounds kickass

Ending scenes from 0.2 played again to catch you up to speed on SDG

Next year for the fifth anniversary I want to share more of the document, perhaps in a more organized fashion (I also had a reaction document for ReMind and Melody of Memory that I might share excerpts from in the future). It’s just such a neat little time capsule of my immediate first reactions to everything, and while I had to use the pause button a lot, it’s fun to look back on what I was thinking in the moment before my later thoughts/perceptions took over. Definitely worth the time it took to record everything. 

For KH4 I want to continue the trend, as it also makes for a fun way to share the first playthrough experience with my friends and it makes it easier to write analysis posts later on.

Summarizing my thoughts now on KH3: 

The good: Beautiful graphics, world environments were a huge upgrade, the music was amazing, the humor in the Disney worlds was really good, Olympus Coliseum, Kingdom of Corona (the dancing minigame!), The Caribbean, San Fransokyo, Wayfinder Trio Reunion, Xion’s return, Roxas’s return, all the heartfelt Sora and Kairi moments, Young Xehanort, the Keyblade transformations, having more than two people in your party at a time now, the Luxu reveal.

The bad: No true midpoint to the game, no FF characters, the climax was rushed, wish Naminé was more involved, the way Kairi got “killed” was super bleh, and I’m still not a fan of the original ending (the secret ending excluding Kairi also made me ehhhhhh). 

And this leads me into another part of the document. When I consume a piece of media, I like to think about what worked well and why. It’s just really fun to celebrate good writing and learn from it, you know? Hence all the translation/analysis posts I’ve done of certain scenes from KH3. I also like to figure out how I would “fix” anything that didn’t land for me because it’s also a good learning experience, and at the end of my initial thoughts document, I actually included a list of things I thought would improve the writing of KH3. Of course, this is all based on my own personal feelings/interpretations, and as it stands, ReMind fixed a number of them anyway. But I thought I’d share my initial “fixes” in bold and then my thoughts about them now. 

Writing Changes:

Have Sora think about Kairi a la KH2 - Flynn/Rapunzel, Will/Elizabeth… - this isn’t really going to be changed at this point for obvious reasons, but I missed the little moments where Sora was thinking of Kairi in KH2 (like when Will and Elizabeth hugged, when he saw Jack and Sally dancing, etc.) and thought those would have strengthened the romantic plotline of KH3.

Sora’s reunion with Riku was anticlimactic - ditto, not gonna be updated at this point, but I remember thinking oh that’s it lol when technically we hadn’t seen them onscreen together since 2012 (trailers notwithstanding). In universe it makes sense though because it hasn’t been that long since they’ve seen each other. Plus, I assume their reunion in KH4 will be good, so I’m looking forward to that. 

Sora’s reunion with Kairi was also anticlimactic - see above, not gonna get changed at this point, but I wish they’d gotten a moment together before the big group meetup or at least him reacting to seeing her again. We hadn’t seen them talk directly since Blank Points I think? (trailers notwithstanding). So yeah I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more to their reunion, and again I think a little moment or brief scene that could’ve built up to the paopu fruit more. And at this point in the game I definitely got the feeling that Nomura was rushing to finish before deadlines hit + the burnout was setting in and he couldn’t spare any time to extras like this, just the core scenes that had to be there (group meetup, Aqua and Ven convo about Terra, Riku and Repliku scene, Kairi and Sora paopu sharing scene). He might have also had to do a bunch of last minute rewrites, who knows.

Have Kairi actually send her letter to Sora - I assume this will happen at a later date, looking back now it feels like foreshadowing, so I’m not sure why I complained about this lol. I do think at some point Sora will read the letter because why go to all that trouble of showing Kairi writing it + having her read it to the audience if it won’t be significant down the line? The focus on Sora’s smile makes me think he might get the letter when he’s feeling really down and needs to be cheered up, but we’ll see.

Have Sora have some way of contacting her like he can contact Riku - Yeah idk Square acts allergic sometimes to the love interests contacting the main character (see FFXV...), and in universe she was training with Merlin and Axel in a place where time flowed differently etc. so I get why she didn’t. Again I was just thinking of ways the paopu scene could’ve been built up to more effectively within KH3 itself (obviously the paopu scene has been foreshadowed since KH1 so that wasn’t my issue, more that I wanted more buildup within KH3 that built on the buildup we saw in KH1 and KH2 and Blank Points).

Keep Kairi getting killed… but have it be because she was protecting Sora of her own free volition - Yeah I’m still not happy about how this was handled. ReMind helped make this more tolerable because she did get to fight Xehanort by Sora’s side, but I still think her “death” could’ve been handled a lot better. And that’s all I’ll say about that lol, it’s a topic that’s been discussed to death at this point.

Go into more depth about what YX said - I think this was about all of Young Xehanort’s cryptic foreshadowing to Sora, I honestly can’t remember lol. But I do think, now that I’ve replayed the game, the foreshadowing works well, so I think this was more of an initial reaction on my part. 

Show Sora going to rescue her - This was one of my biggest issues with how KH3 originally ended, and I remember feeling robbed that we didn’t get to see Sora’s rescue mission of Kairi, but little did I know what Nomura had in store lol. ReMind more than fixed this, and I will be forever grateful to it and to Nomura for knowing how important this was and making sure it was added to the story. ReMind elevated KH3 so much for me, and looking back, I really do think Nomura was making the best of a bad situation (engine switch a year into development, tight deadlines, Disney being strict, serious burnout, sky high expectations...) with vanilla KH3, and I hope he gets the development time he needs to tell the story he wants to tell with KH4. I just remember reading some of his interviews post-KH3 and you could tell how exhausted and burnt out he was, and I really hope he doesn’t go through that again. 

End things on a less gutpunch of an ending - I know some people loved KH3′s ending so this is subjective, but I did not lol. Thankfully, ReMind fixed this and made the ending more bittersweet now that we’ve seen Sora rescuing Kairi. It feels much better knowing he got those moments with her traveling the worlds before he disappeared. 

Roxas and Sora barely interacted - ReMind fixed this too (noticing a pattern here?) I was really happy with the additional screentime they got in ReMind together  because honestly, their relationship is one of my favorites in the entire series.

Sora still hasn’t thanked Namine - I assume this will happen at a later date, I just remember thinking poor Naminé hadn’t gotten thanked yet. But I do think Nomura has something specific in mind for this scene and we will see it at some future date. So less of a “this should’ve been in KH3″ thing and more “oh bummer I’ll have to wait a while yet to see this.” 

Xehanort got off easy - I think this whole plot point was a victim of the rushed pacing that impacted both the climax and ending of KH3. I remember thinking to myself that Xehanort should not have gotten to die and go to Keyblade Heaven with Eraqus in the same game where he “killed” the protagonist’s girlfriend (which resulted in the protagonist’s “death”) especially not so soon after it happened. But in a way it’s also kind of realistic? The bad guy doesn’t always get what he deserves in real life, so I can see why Nomura took this angle here (though I would argue that in stories you can show good triumphing over evil and in fact people tend to want that more than realism due to the escapist nature of fiction). Then again, I’m kind of biased because I’m not a fan in general of turning Xehanort from a main villain to a misunderstood guy with an angsty backstory who was manipulated by the True Big Bad. I get the feeling we haven’t seen the last of him given that art of his younger self with an umbrella that came out for Dark Road’s ending, so I’m bracing myself for him to show up in Quadratum and team up with Sora, and meh, I just wish the series would move past him at this point, you know?

Destiny Trio still not a trio :( - fix that - I do hope that we get more Destiny Trio interactions in KH4, but looking back, I kinda get why there wasn’t a whole lot of them in KH3. The focus was more on Sora and Kairi’s relationship since that played such a key role in the climax and ending of the story, and there will be time in the future for the three to interact more. Nomura had that quote about how KH3 would feature relationships changing etc., and we did see that with the focus more on Sora and Kairi’s relationship (plus Melody of Memory gave us some Riku and Kairi interactions, and KH4 is probably gonna feature some good Sora and Riku interactions given how they’ll probably reunite before Sora and Kairi do. And then Kairi and Sora’s reunion will be important given how they were separated, and I imagine there will be at least one meaningful scene of the three of them together). 

Have Kairi fight back while she’s being taken - in her defense, it was very realistic for a short, petite fifteen-year old girl to have trouble fighting back against a grown ass man who 1) towers over her and most of the rest of the cast, and 2) is wrenching her arm back in a way that meant she’d likely dislocate her own arm if she tried to fight back. I just still wish this entire plot point had been handled differently, but it’s in the past now, not much more to be said about it.

Roxas and Xion were freed maybe when Sora “died”? - I think I had this on there because I thought the story would’ve benefited from the rescues being spread out more, giving time to focus on each one and allowing some longer soft/quiet moments with the character reunions. 

Anyway, thanks for reading all this. It was interesting going back and looking at my initial reactions to KH3 and how my thoughts and feelings have changed over time. I think the big factors in the shift are that ReMind really added so much to the story and fixed most of my major issues with it, and I have a better picture now of all the stressors Nomura had to deal with to get the game out the door. Honestly it’s probably a small miracle the vanilla game turned out as well as it did given all the factors he was working against, and for that I have a lot of respect for him. And it was clear he was aware of the issues, you know? Otherwise he wouldn’t have released ReMind. He wanted KH3 to be good and he wanted to make the fans happy, so he did what he could to improve on the base game. And there are some truly fantastic moments in the base game and ReMind alike that I loved analyzing every single piece of. 

How about you guys? How have your thoughts/feelings towards KH3 changed over time if at all? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[o-avosetta]

Recently replayed Death of the Outsider in black-and-white mode and have been thinking about it from a broad accessibility and experience design perspective.

It is not true black-and-white, btw, because the following still use colors: paused menu screens (full-color Billie portrait), cutscenes (some reddish and brown tones), health and magic bars (red and blue), and Foresight vision (yellow and light blue). Those are the ones I remember, anyway. I'd be interested in getting the thoughts of someone with achromatopsia re: how those things look to them.

To my surprise, the environment ended up feeling more immersive, or maybe just immersive in a different way. Karnaca in color has me marvelling at the overall scene — the light of near-dusk on the buildings, the lushness of Shan Yun's townhouse — but in black and white, I found myself looking at the little things. Color cues I had been accustomed to, like the red of a valve wheel or the green of a sleep dart, were missing. So, I had to really look at everything around me if I wanted to pick anything up or make certain objects move. The silver outline that tells you when something is manipulable also just looks cleaner against monochrome.

Foresight-marked bonecharms are still blinding in black and white, but I now noticed their sparkle-and-smoke aura more. I also found myself paying more attention to the sound and tactile cues of their presence. The twin-bladed knife ticks and clicks, btw — something I didn't remember at all from my previous playthroughs.

The environment without color became one of structure and shadow. Enemies and civilians alike were harder to see, adding some challenge to the game. I learned to see guard ranks based on the way the guards carried themselves and the shapes of their hats, rather than just by the colors of their uniforms — officers stand up straighter and tend to be leaner, which signals their greater discipline, maybe. (Except for that one guy at the desk across the security office of Michaels Bank. Guy remained out cold when the man in the booth raised the alarm.)

Another surprise was that it was actually a much calmer experience overall. I didn't realize how much of a stimulus color can be until it was taken away, and I think my brain was grateful. But it also made my Billie feel a lot more clinical in picking her way through Karnaca, even as I went for low chaos with zero kills.

I've always found DotO to be the most depressing of the three games because Billie is just so alone. No Samuel, no Hound Pits crew, No Emily/Corvo or Sokolov to bounce thoughts off of, no one joining her on the Wale except Daud. This time, that sort of comfortable detachment I developed in black-and-white made Billie's aloneness comfortable as well.

In turn, that made the emotional moments that much starker. Without the red of Daud's vest pulling at my gaze, for instance, I could really focus on the weariness of his face during that conversation before the bank job, as well as in the game's final scenes. (Cheers for Rosario Dawson and Michael Madsen, as always.)

I even ended up with a new headcanon while I played: that Billie in this black-and-white run is color-blind. It definitely heightens the impact that getting the Void eye has on her, especially when she uses Foresight.

Why would anyone want to play these games in black-and-white? I wanted to know, when I first saw the option years ago. It's really something else, guys. It actually made the game new again. Maybe when I'm not supposed to be working, I'll give the full Dishonored 2 a black-and-white run and see how it goes.

[draquus]

Tears of the Kingdom spoilers ahead:

I am playing TotK for the second time now, and I'm sad because it's a somewhat disappointing experience. The first playthrough, I was really drawn in by the story, and the experience of exploring the depths.

Now, all the tension of the story is just completely gone, because it was all dependent on believing Zelda's sacrifice was a profoundly meaningful thing. But the way the story ends, it just...isn't. She gets to go back, doesn't even remember being a dragon at all. Link gets completely fixed up with no consequences.

I am not, and this is important, complaining about it having a happy ending. I think Link being able to save Zelda is a really important thing, and it wouldn't have been a game I could fully enjoy if he hadn't. I just wish it felt earned. I wish he had to sacrifice something (like, you know, his arm). I wish there had been some connection between him and Raru and Sonia to justify their being able to fix things at the end. Were their spirits trapped somehow, and his freeing them gave them the ability to actually help? (Yes, that is the plot of BotW, but at least it's a plot). I wish Zelda's sacrifice left some mark on her, whether physical or emotional. I wish we had a better sense of how long she was in the past. It kind of seems like it might have been a year or more, but it also feels like about a week. I spent my whole first playthrough motivated by the deep sadness and pity evoked every time i saw the Light Dragon in the sky, but now I just can't make myself care.

And like, I get it, some plots just don't have as much tension when you know how they end. But the whole game is kind of like that. I have no desire to re-explore the Depths, because now I know there's almost nothing there. Once you realize it's just an inverse map, with few points of interest and a lot of repetition, the motivation is just gone. The sky is even worse. I was getting sick of it even on the first playthrough. There are no biomes; there are repetitive enemies, repetitive puzzles, and no story. Part of what made BotW so enjoyable to play and replay was how every new place told you something about itself and its history. For example, the broken guardians were a constant reminder of Link's failure, but they weren't just there. You could see why some outposts had survived, an why others hadn't, just from the placement of the dead (and sometimes terrifyingly alive) guardians. You could see the tragedy of a failed last stand, or a forgotten victory against all odds, written in the world around you. I played BotW at least six times, and it only felt a little overly familiar when I had basically memorized everything. I can't fault TotK for not being that level of amazing (BotW is in a league of its own), but I feel like it doesn't even try.

Now, don't get me wrong. TotK is still a fun game. It's just all the things it does best (the weapons, the building, the different abilities), are not really the things I love about Zelda. I did enjoy the actual dungeons, but they were mostly too short and too similar to the divine beasts. Only two of them (wind and lightning) really had interesting story elements. The things I love about Zelda games are the stories, the puzzles, the atmosphere, and the characters. This game seemed like it had all those elements at the beginning, but none of them really came through in the end.

Also, there is nothing about Raru and Sonia's child. Like, it's fine that he/she is not a major player, but we need to know why. Is it because it's a baby? Who has this baby, and why do we never see Raru & Sonia (the Good Parents) actually taking care of their child? Is (as seems more likely) their child already mostly grown and maybe having adventures somewhere else? Then why is he/she not at all involved in the Imprisoning War? Like, again, I can think of several answers to these questions, but there needs to be at least a hint.

Anyway, I do want to reiterate that this is not a bad game. It's just a frustrating mix of fantastic pieces that don't quite come together.

[araneitela]

[META] + Violins

Prompt: [ Meta ] plus a word, equals a HC. // @findcasket

You mean the concept of humanity wrapped into an instrument? Alongside the piano, I swear that it's one of the most 'fragile' sounding instruments in terms of the level of emotion that it portrays alongside the accuracy with which it does it. Dear god, the moment that I saw this woman acting out her little violin performance while chaos was breaking out all around her, I knew that her fingers were already expertly wrapping themselves around me. Any way, I digress.

I'll forever remember looking into the notes of someone's playthrough of HSR's first scenes, which is just something I like to do because you never know what kind of little treasures you might find in there. And there was a violinist tucked away in there, who I'd also seen in the notes of her main trailer, commenting on the intense accuracy of the movement of her fingers in it. And then on top of that, how they've usually been let down by the details when other games have tried to simulate it as well, but it was more so done to iterate how intentional this must've been for Hoyo to have focused on its accuracy so much.

So in that sense, I think it's close to a given that she knows how to play it, similarly to how I believe that she is someone who also plays or has played the piano. Where I differ however, is that I don't believe that she actually owns a violin at present, nor is she seeking to obtain one by her own means. Moreover, what and where I think the 'mimicking' comes from, actually, is from her memories and the emotional attachment that she once held for these instruments in them. Kafka's character, to me, revolves around and thrives within two concepts, that of intimate longing and that of loss (the pearl earring, the broken winged butterfly pin, and Blade's character story to name some) which plays intricately into the former. Now for me, her connection to the violin and the piano (primarily the former) play wonderfully into representing both of these, and thus can be drawn into these prevalent topics across the board for her incredibly easily. In simple terms, I think that there is a sense of longing to play them. Now, I feel confident in noting that Kafka does not come across as one who, if she had access to (in this case) a violin of her own, that she would crave to play it so intensely all the time, that when drawn from it for even the briefest of time, that she would enact the part of playing one during her separation from it. No, I think she's actively choosing not to obtain one, for one reason or another. Perhaps it's a memory that plays into the loss that her character seems to stray towards, or perhaps it's a lack of something else; I don't quite yet dare say. But there's something oddly wistful about it, if you look past the surface. All in all, I think her little moments of mimicking and humming, makes for an incredibly interesting "little" tidbit to me. It reminds me of something I wrote in an older post last year:

(...) And yet, and yet, I actively think if she were to find herself in a hotel room, even on her own, and there would be a piano right there— I can see her fingers tracing over the keys so very clearly, even as if she were touching the keys to play and yet she would never press down.

I still stand by this to this day. It's the ache to do something again, and yet for one reason or another, you can't bring yourself to do it. Whether it feels wrong, or there's something missing, something or someone; it doesn't matter, it's a longing of some kind. It really is the overarching topic and/or concept that I see in her character, and the fact that she's tied to such an inherently fragile instrument, only further solidifies it in my brain. But in that, I also feel a deep sense of melancholy when I think of her and that violin. And it plays into all of this, of course, but also the fact that I genuinely see no evidence in canon at present that tells me that she has one, and we know she could obtain one if she so wanted to, but she doesn't. Which tells me, on some level, that she doesn't want one. Which then has me entertain the concept of... if one were gifted to her, would that be different? Would that offer the person who gifted it to her a glimpse that no one else could ever get? The answer is a very likely yes, but I can't see it being gifted by most by any means; it'd need to be by someone who could come to grasp the significance of one, put in the appropriate research, who would know where to go, who to speak to, where to find the significance. And that, isn't most people.

[dokidokitsuna]

Spoiler-Free Reactions to RWBY: Arrowfell~

I watched a playthrough, so I can’t comment on how it actually feels to play the game, but based on what I saw, my overall grade is C+...which is much higher than I thought it would be.

So although I’m gonna say a lot of nasty things about this game (and there are a lot of nasty things to say about it (o゜▽゜)o☆) I’m also gonna explain why it’s not as bad as I expected.

First, a moment of silence for all the people who thought this game was gonna be secretly * AMAZING * because WayForward and ArcSys were involved. Whoever you are out there...I’m so sorry. ^^;;;;

Love how the ‘towns’ just have NPCs standing in an evenly-spaced line XD Great immersive gameplay experience, 10/10 no notes

The action cutscenes look...good?! oAo Like, Team BRIR’s introduction actually looked kind of cool...maybe RT should downsize and just focus on working with game developers...

Love those little ‘item get!’ animations~

Of course Yang’s semblance ability is the ‘special block puncher’(¬_¬ ) ...all the other girls have some strategic elements to their semblances; even Ruby can be used to quickly zip past enemies when revisiting areas. But Yang’s semblance has only one use; you have very little reason to play as her for longer than half a second. Even when she gains the Burn+ damage boost, it doesn’t mean much when you could, for instance, simply stack Blake with 2 clones and get triple damage...

Speaking of Blake, her clones not only function as autonomous attack turrets, they can block bullets AND act as targets for enemy homing attacks. Far and away the best semblance in the game. ‘_’

Penny is beautiful and cute and deserves the world...honestly, shame on RT for throwing such a wonderful girl in the trash for mere shock value... Anyway, it was a very pleasant surprise to see her in this game, even if it was just as a silly side character.

Side note: Why is Weiss so mean to Penny now?? இ௰இ Almost everything she says to her is some kind of insult...

Ruby and Weiss both have noticeably different characterization in this game, actually: Weiss is a LOT meaner to everyone, worse than she was in V1, even...and Ruby kinda got turned into a stereotypical dopey airhead anime girl. :/ She’s still more entertaining than the canon show version, but...man, I miss awkward nerd Ruby...

Qrow is characterized differently too-- he’s actually entertaining again! o_O I legit forgot his character used to be cool and fun...

BTW, fixed Yang: instead of making her semblance a mere tool to get rid of glowy blocks, they could’ve given her ‘crowd control’ abilities as well-- maybe her special punch could knock back/stun enemies or repel attacks. It’d probably come in handy when you’re getting mobbed during the ‘Ambush’ stages... ...See, this isn’t hard, folks. ^^;

JAMES! JAMES!!! JAMES!!!! (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`) ...Okay, to be honest, Ironwood is only marginally relevant in this game, but it was nice to see him again too. ^^ It’s great that all these ruined and/or murdered characters get to have one last chance to shine here.

Demonizing the civil rights movement wasn’t enough; now we’re going to demonize unions...oh, Rooster Teeth...(╬▔v▔)

And on that note: did RT really not have a hand in writing this game...? Because it really feels like something they would write... Maybe they gave WayForward the concepts and basic story outline to use...it would explain why many things were actually executed well (i.e. ‘everyone can write RWBY better than its actual creators’ strikes again) even though the plot still contains some of their trademark icky writing decisions...

OKAY, so: The game may be cheap and basic-looking, but it’s solid. ‘_’ Definitely feels like something made by people with adequate resources and skill that they just didn’t feel like spending a lot of their time on, rather than the usual “we ran out of budget! DX We didn’t know what to do!” that we usually get with RWBY media. Basically, there’s not a lot there, but what is there is relatively well done. It’d be a good game to give to an 11-year-old kid or something (although idk if there are still RWBY fans that young). ^^;

Spoiler-FULL reactions are on their way, in which I’ll have a LOT MORE nasty things to say. =_= Stay tuned...

[cuntstable]

not to defend goldmask but when i saw watching an elden ring playthrough for the first time i thought he actually talked and just shut the fuck up whenever the player approached him and i thought he was so funny. like he was just standing there speaking insane truths but the second you walk up he get's all coy and it makes corhyn so mad he just snaps and kills him. i deeply misunderstood them but the really funny version of them lives forever in my mind

AAAAARGH. tbh i kind of debated putting brother corhyn and goldmask into the funny tier bc it is objectively funny that gold mask gives that poor monk a mental breakdown by just standing still in a thong but AAAARGH. your missunderstanding is so smiles

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

time to ramble about Xenoblade a bit following wave 3 showcase and wave 4 teaser.

Don’t really like Masha’s design very much at all. I know we saw it early via leaks anyway but like yk lol. I think the problem is that, Xenoblade 3 has honestly a super consistent art direction, right? And it’s very immersive because of that. Like, all the characters in the entire game look like they come from the same world(s). It pushes a bit past realism obviously, one of the main characters is permanently on fire lol, but it’s still relatiely grounded and it’s very easy to look at 2 characters and know instantly that hey, they’re from the same game. And I think Ino was already pushing that quite a lot, but it was fairly possible to suspend my disbelief a bit even if only because her specific unique origins are justified enough for me to kind of give a pass. Now, we’re obviously still to learn what Masha’s deal is, but just at a glance like, come on dude. I don’t even want to make any specific “uhh this part looks stupid” or “vtuber lmao” comments, my problem really is just that I look at her and she doesn’t look like she belongs to 3 at all. If 2 had a character like this it’d get away with it because 2 from the outset has insane design variety thanks to the Blades - it’s the fact that that variety is a constant that would let Masha’s design be okay. Xenoblade 3 being more uniform makes Masha just stick out like a sore thumb.

Beyond her design though, we don’t actually learn anything about her class whatsoever lol. Kevesi healer is most people’s hope because fuck we need more of those, and like sure I’m happy to agree lol. Hope the class is better than Ino’s because christ but also yeah ideally not having power creep would be nice too, basically you know have balance, yeah? Though as a specific gameplay function she offers beyond her class, Masha will allow you to craft accessories with something called enigmatter. That’s actually all we learn about it here but hey sounds cool. No clue if the accessories you’ll be able to craft are gonna like, be better than the endgame accessories already on offer or not, but tbf even if they’re like early or midgame if the process to get them isn’t insane that could work well on repeat playthroughs and such. We don’t actually learn anything else about this system at present so it’s just gonna be a “wait a week until she comes out” to find out the rest I suppose lol.

I do think once all the DLC’s out I’d like to replay the game with it all on a fresh save file. Because when DLC comes out for a game I kind of always want to judge it on the basis of how much it feels like it integrates itself into the base game, right, but that’s obviously hard to judge when you consume the DLC so “separately” from said base game, I suppose. But as it stands I already don’t feel like Ino does a great job at this. Gameplay wise she’s implemented just okay - there’s precedent for classes with unique mechanics by way of Soulhacker so it doesn’t feel like they limited the special things just to DLC (good thing) but then HD Ether Cylinders+ only really exist once Ino does and in the first place you have to like, go into the DLC menu and activate the ability to unlock her first lol (bad thing). Past that she also suffers from the fact that she doesn’t really interact with the world very much? By which I mean, basically every hero has quite a long quest chain associated with them, and for the vast majority of them you’ll end up doing quests where 2 different heroes are now interacting with one another, if not even more. The world ends up feeling very alive and connected because of all these questlines crossing over in that way, and it’s dope! But Ino just doesn’t do that at all, and it kinda sucks. Kind of, expecting Masha to be the same lol. We’ll see.

you know honestly this reminds me of a thought experiment I occasionally have - can DLC make a game worse? Generally when you play a game that has DLC you want to have all the DLC because hey, that’s the complete package, that’s the version of the game with the most content. But it takes you out of the experience to finish the tutorial and then have the game magically insert like 10 quests into your journal or whatever saying “you’ve somehow heard of this new DLC thing”. Is the game actively worse because of that? Xenoblade 3′s DLC isn’t like that specifically but I really do think more could’ve been done to fit at least the new heroes into the world. This is probably a topic for another post.

But hey, the other big Wave 3 thing is the Archsage’s Gauntlet! Yeah so “new challenge battle rules” went quite a lot further than I ever would’ve expected, huh? Pick one character, work through way more stages of a battle, and get some heroes and unique buffs to go in your party along the way? That sounds fucking dope! Way more replayability than the Wave 2 challenge battles too lol. Opportunity to have multiple heroes in the party as well is badass, naturally. It doesn’t seem like this entails playing as Heroes necessarily which is a little upsetting, but I am very interested to see how this plays, because it sounds really fun lol. And hey, throwback outfits? Hell yeah. We got fanservice as in swimsuits last time and now we get fanservice as in callouts to past entries, neato. This is something I think is harmless and fun and the game makes very clear is “separate” from the main game hence it being not in the earlier discussion of DLC making game worse thing. It does specificy Throwback A on the armour btw, so would Throwback B be different modelled outfits entirely? Tbh probably not I imagine they’d still be reskins but hey I can dream. Can’t wait to play Shulk outfit Noah with Monado accessory.

Now honestly I fully expected they’d stop there, right. Last Nintendo direct they showed us wave 2 and gave wave 3 a thumbnail tease and that was it. I expected much the same here. Show us wave 3 and maybe tease wave 4′s thumbnail or something. But. No. In fact we got an admittedly extremely brief cutscene teaser of Wave 4! Featuring fucking Shulk and Rex all grown up and looking absolutely badass, Rex especially holy shit dude’s a fucking tank dual wielding Aegis swords, kid’s come such a long way I’m fucking hyped. yk it’s kinda funny lol that Rex’s redesign is so much more drastic than Shulk’s - obviously it does make sense given his age compared to Shulk but also like duh it’s because marketability and that’s just funny lmao. But yeah they’re clearly fighting Alvis. Alvis. In the presumed sequel story to a game that conspicuosly lacked a Consul A. Hmmm. And then following them is presumably an older Noah? With an interlink form Mio forming by his side? Logic but also marketability and swords in the key visual imply it probably is Noah but he makes mention of a granddad that Aionios Noah wouldn’t have but that which he would have out of Aionios though there is also the question of how the ages would add up if it’s Noah since he is a child at the start where Shulk should be a decent amount older than he looks at least so like uhhhhhhhhhh. Doesn’t necessarily sound too much like Noah but also I don’t want to underestimate Harry McEntire so who knows how much weight that has. I do hope it is Noah because getting our 3 protagonists is a lot cooler than getting 2 protagonists and basically an expy of the third protagonist, but then Torna made me care about Lora a lot in a very short amount of time so even if wave 4 protag isn’t literally Noah I’m sure I could still come to love him. I feel weirdly hung up on this point even though I imagine I might be missing something obvious? We’ll see. I’m excited. I’m glad it’s looking to be a sequel story since that was something up for debate, really just round out the trilogy and give it a more conclusive ending than the base game aimed for. Just sounds dope. Really this just looks absolutely sick as all fuck lol. Cannot fucking wait.

also pour one out for xenoblade x fr fr

[lightvsdark18]

First Year in The Devildom 1.2

Followed LovesOfLauryn and Lavi Alraune's playthrough.

Satan saw how bothered Lucifer looked and bluntly asks Milady about making a pact together at dinner.

(The ungrateful part, I felt that, I been in that situation. However, I was called ungrateful bitch, but still.)

A few minutes pass when she gets up and chases after Satan. The circumstances of his birth comes later.

He asks what she's doing in his room. She asks if he wanted to vent to her, have someone listen since she came from a toxic household.

He decline the offer, and questions if she likes books. "I'm actually a writer." Which peaks his interest in her, talking about what she normally writes and favorite genes. Then cuts the conversation off for the pact.

"I don't want to make a pact with you, I-"

"What did you say?"

~~~~

"Let me ex-"

"Don't you dare trifle me."

Backs up as Satan gets closer to her, then bumps into Lucifer's chest. He grabs her shoulders and moves her to the side, approaching Satan.

"So then, Katelynn, it looks like Satan and I will be staying with-" -Lucifer

"No, you're not staying in my room, not after Satan threatened me. And letting you know, I said no because I want you to genuinely want a pact with me, not do it out of spite."

"I'm sorry, please let us stay in your room, I wouldn't cause you any trouble." -Satan

"If you two are staying in my room, then I'm sleeping somewhere else. I don't want to stay in the same room as you two."

Sleeps in Mammon's room, on the couch.

(Asmo, what the hell?)

Cold shoulder to both of them, having to chase her down just to talk.

(I imagine Satan leaning against the bed, arms crossed, smug as ever.)

Let's say the speech is in three days and the day before the speech she asks Mammon to help get the two to make up.

Four guys fighting for her love. Milady is still not okay from the break up, she doesn't need this. "Prepare yourself." Lucy, chill.

She keeps her distance from Lucifer and Satan out of fear, and disinterested in the game.

Lucifer is making her uncomfortable, especially when he explain how to pin her.

"Your feelings are your own and you don't have to like someone you dislike. Lucifer wants to look good in front of Diavolo from what I can tell and that's may be why he acts cold."

(Why did he talk about human flesh? You could have said you wanted to be nice.) She says she doesn't feel like eating after that comment. But Lucy somewhat aggressively insist she eats, so she does, a little bit.

Disinterested "And where we are going exactly?"

"Really? You didn't want to come, and now you're drinking beer."

"I don't really care."

Just stands there, not saying anything because this is too ridiculous.

The boys can solve the murder, she's going to stay in the room.

"He trusts you. But know that nothing lasts forever. Sometime in the near future, he will lose every ounce of the trust he puts in you. Then replace it with regret..." (Order's)

"He trusts you. But don't lose that trust. Lucifer is a cautious man and won't put his trust in anyone. Be care with what you say and do." (Milady's)

Raises a brow at Lucifer and Satan in confusion.

"I didn't really do anything to help."

I'm not trying to influence them though.

"He was giving me encouragement, that's all."

"Encouragement? Why's that?" -Lucifer

"Don't worry about it."

Not backing down against him and getting along with his brothers made Lucifer somewhat fond of her.

"What stories?" Has a neutral expression through the story. "I see."

Surprised at Satan's question. "You still want that?"

(Go away, dad, I'm confessing to my crush.)

Because of what happened last time, she unfortunately says okay. Satan cups her cheek and they both lean forward to forge their pact. He speaks the words in English instead of the demonic language. Satan's sigil appears under Beel's.

Grows anxious with the brothers disappearing. "I don't know."

"No, I'm good." A flash of disappointment across his face at rejecting his hand.

Displeased at what's on the monitor.

"And how are we going to go about that exactly?"

"I thought you loved your brothers at least a tiny bit. Geez."

"I'm really anxious and worried."

"Hm, Mammon and Levi."

"Not romantically, I thought you meant who I thought was like cool or something, not romantically interested."

"No one, honestly."

~~~~

"I don't know, what's your type?" Disapproving expression at his response.

"Um, what do you think of me?"

~~~~

Lucifer: "... But I somewhat found you interesting. You seem unafraid to stand against me and say what's on your mind. Although, I haven't liked the cold glances you give me or the fact my brothers continuously made pacts with you. However, you have made me curious on who you really are."

She shifts uncomfortable in seat.

"So, tell me, what are you hiding from me?"

"I'm just a human who has many personal problems, nothing to get excited about."

"I doubt that-" gets up and approaches her- "I can see it in your eyes. You're hiding something deep down within yourself, and I want to know what that is." He takes her chin and lifts her head to look at him in the eyes. Then Mammon bursts in.

Mammon is telling Lucifer to back off and to not get close with her while everyone else complaints about him ruining the plan. Then Belphie walks in and reveals he was in the attic the whole time and that the human freed him.

"Hang on, I never once asked for a pact with any of you. So no, this wasn't my goal."

You saved him. "Yes..?"

The brothers wanted her and Lucifer to get along after seeing how distant she still was with him.

"Um, no. I never made a pact with him."

"Destroy the human world?"

Sitting there as this whole scene go down, and bolts up to stop Beel. "You'll make worse for him, Beel."

"I want to go home..." "Why does your brother hate humans?" "Then let's talk to Lucifer."

The brothers thought about what happened and the fact she was helping to free Belphie. When she returns, they're not really bitter towards her because it's true, she never once asked for a pact (except for Mammon). It was their choice, they wanted the pact, not her.

Gathering the brothers to face Lucifer. But Mammon is holed up in his room. "I'll have Beel kick down your door."

"Say something." Pinches Mammon's cheeks. He's hurt because she kept a secret from him.

"And grabbing this will get him out of his room?"

"The coffin, who is the girl?"

"... You guys will protect me, right?"

What? What's this?

Lilith?

"Well, I needed to talk you since this is your fault."

"My fault? How dare you-" -Lucifer

"Lilith didn't die, you saved her, didn't you?"

Everyone start asking questions on what she just said, Lucifer frozen in place at her knowing the truth. "Everyone! Let's head upstairs to discuss this."

Everyone enters the library, some sit down while others stand. "Okay, now explain what is going on. Why did you lock Belphegor up? And why does he hates humans?"

"And what happened with Lilith." -Beel

"What kind of punishment?"

"Why didn't you tell him about Lilith, about you saving her?"

"Answer me this, Katelynn. How do you know I saved her?" -Lucifer

"... I saw a memory of it."

"A memory?"

"Touching that book in the underground tomb, I saw a memory of you asking Lord Diavolo to save her. I don't know why I saw it though, so don't ask."

"... I would have told everyone after she was passed away as a human."

The brothers decide to go see Belphie and talk out the situation. Lucifer offers his hand to Order and she takes it. He secretly smiles to himself as it's a sign she's beginning to get comfortable with him.

"Yeah."

"Because he didn't know the truth about his sister. He may change his views if his brothers explain the story."

One of the brothers ask if there's really no way to get Belphie back when Diavolo offers a solution. Assign a task to the human. "What's the task?"

"I'm going back in time?"

Sighs. "Fine, I'll do it."

"Couldn't you have stop all of this?"

"I think I got everything."

Hides behind the car. Crap.

"I followed Satan, sorry."

(Why is the Mc just standing there? I would have went up to the attic already.) Order creeps back towards the attic door while Lucifer and Milady talk in Levi's room.

Hides under the stairs, confused at the conversation that happened upstairs. Heads up to the attic when Lucifer is gone and touches the wall where the door is suppose to be, appearing in the room. She doesn't say anything to Belphie, however he can feel her presence and wakes up which surprises her.

"I guess so..."

"I have to go, your brothers will start looking for me if I don't go now." She moves out of the room and places a foot on the second step when Belphie grabs her collar and pulls her back.

"You think I'm going let you leave so soon?" He turns her around and grips her shirt. "I waited too long to do this, I'm not going allow you escape. I'm going to ruin the exchange program and Diavolo's reputation." He picks her up and throws her down the stairs.

She lies on the stairs in pain, trying to get up and run for it. Belphie's laugher and footsteps echoing on the attic stairs. She pulls herself up and runs towards Mammon's room. She just has to get back and she will be safe! However, Belphie was right behind her, making her turn away from the bedrooms and towards the front of the house. Belphie tackles her to the floor and the two roll down the stairs to the entrance hall. She fights against him, scratching and punching him to no avail.

The sound of yelling alerts the brothers to the scene. Lucifer was looking around for Milady since she disappeared as well when they were walking towards the library, the the noise drawing his attention too. Milady walks out of Lilith's room and down the hall to the attic stairs, sitting down as memories of the dying her are placed in her mind while she speaks with the former angel.

"Who are you...?" "Why are you here?" "But why me?"

(The brothers are waiting for Order and it's hurting me. Beel said to rely on her when she gets back, it hurts so much.)

She opens her eyes and looks around in confusion, stepping out to hear the argument. She approaches the railing and sees what happened, freezing in place at her bleeding body in Mammon's arms.

She's too shock and scared to move, her body refuses to move as she tries to back away. At Belphie charging up at her, "Wait! Lilith didn't die!" "She lived as a human!"

At the brothers asking what she meant she retells the events she was told, and the fact Lilith lived a happy life as a human. "You told me yourself, Lucifer."

What?

"Yes, I have seen her memories... When Lucifer was saying goodbye to her..."

She's trying to wrap her head around the situation and the fact she's a descendant of their sister when Lucifer runs up and hugs her, making her freeze up more.

At the brothers becoming too friendly as they fought each other for her attention, her mind became darker. That night caused her to start believing "I'm her replacement."

A quiet "it's nothing" at Barbatos's question. The brothers worry, but Lucifer says she's probably tired from everything that went on.

For a whole month, she avoided Belphie, gave him cold glances, and clung onto his brothers when he got too close. He watched her from distance, seeing his brothers getting along with her and enjoying her company. The brothers noticed her uneasiness around Belphie and never pushed her to talk to him or get the two alone together. Belphie eventually got angry and regretful.

Raises a brow. "Lucy?" with a slight smile.

"Don't worry about it, guys."

Spends her free time painting sceneries for Satan and Diavolo's birthdays.

Heard Mammon complaining outside the music room. "Mammon, what are you doing?" "You're stealing, aren't you?" "Mammon, no stealing, especially Lucifer's stuff." Tells him to get a job and that's she's busy, dodging his hand before he drags her along.

"Mammon?" "Just open the door wide next time." "No one cares if I enter your room or not." Levi asked her something else since he shouldn't talk about Belphie in front of her.

"Stylish and nice." "Blue." "Oh, okay."

Smug smirk. "What's the magic word?" Then gets take aback from his response.

"Thank you." He brings up Belphie and the issue between him and her. Before he could go on a lecture about it, "I'm going stop you right there. I don't care if he's your sweet little brother. I'm not going to get friendly with him or try to get along with him. I don't feel safe around him and I'm suffering nightmares of him. So don't even try, Lucifer."

Quietly stands beside Diavolo.

"Thank you, guys."

She walks out of the castle to the backyard, feeling the cold air on her skin as she walks forward towards the lake where a figure stood. Anxiety creeps up in her throat as she approaches and keeps herself six feet away from him as he turns around and looks at her.

"Oh, I was wondering who was there. Didn't expect to see you, Kate. Are you sure it's okay for you to be heading off by yourself and coming to a spot like this? They must have told you by now that you're tonight's other guest of honor, right?" Belphie asks, keeping himself in place.

"I came looking for you, your brothers are wondering where you are," she answers, her voice sounding gentle as her heart pounds against her chest.

His eyes slightly widens. "You came looking for me? Of your choose? I thought you were scared of me."

"I am, I don't even kow why I came out here alone." She grips the skirt of her dress.

"Well, I'm glad you came out here, I wanted to... ask you something."

"What is it that you want to ask?"

"Would you like to make me yours?"

Her eyes shoots wide open. "What? What do you mean "make you mine?"

"Would you like to make a pact with me? I know you have been avoiding me because of what I did and I understand, but I want to get know you, see what my brothers see in you, understand their affection towards you. If I have to make a pact with you to make you feel safe around me, then I'll do it." He offers his hand.

She takes a step back. "How do I know this isn't a trick?"

He lows his hand. "I don't desire to hurt you again, and even if I did, hurting you at The Demon Lord's Castle wouldn't be the smartest choose. So please, let me make up for my mistake, let me be yours."

She stares at his out stretched hand, thinking about what to do, should she take his offer? What if this is a trap? Or... what if he is being genuine and actually does want to get know her? If he does hurt her again, she could protect herself against him if the brothers aren't around.

She slowly takes his hand and steps closer to him, their bodies a few inches apart. He smiles and carefully cups her cheek to bring their foreheads together, a demonic language being spoken between them before a new sigil appears under Asmo's.

They pull away and stare at each other, then the others show up.

"Morning, everyone."

"The answer to your question is magic."

"Okay." Pulls out phone to write it down.

Shock because she didn't realize, the days are kinda mixing together. (Belphie, it was only two months when you were gone.)

"Yeah..."

"What's up?" "Okay, I can do that."

"What's up with the attitude?"

Drags her away by the wrist.

"Your room or mine?"

"Maybe stop stealing his money."

Hugs Mammon.

"A-hole!"

Hugs Levi.

"It wasn't easy."

Cry? Really? (The avatar of pride cried at the fact I'm leaving ;-;)

"No need to feel embarrassed, Lucifer."

"Do I look embarrassed to you?"

"Yes."

Starts heading home when Asmo invites her out. "Sure."

"Nah, pop off."

"Just don't make it weird."

"Sounds like I charmed the Avatar of Lust." Smug smile.

"First off, you said you get and not what I get if I win. Second, I don't drink. So your contest isn't happening."

Hugs Asmo.

Didn't he just fall asleep? The fuck?

"Help."

"I didn't drink, he just decided to get drunk."

"That they wanted the girl to be safe."

Hugs Satan.

She's sad to leave them but also excited to go home.

"It's going to be okay, Luke."

"I have mixed feelings."

"What's wrong?"

"He's not in your room?" "I doubt that." "My guess is the music room." "We have? Oh right, Luke."

Hugs Beel.

"Beel was worried about you."

"As a friend, yes."

Pulls away. "I don't know."

"Out for a breather."

[A Pact with Lucifer]

(It bothers me how Lucifer thinks you want to sleep with him after a simple kiss. Like buddy, how does a kiss mean I want to screw you? I would ask him that exact question while he's dragging me by the hand.)

"Sounds like a plan, Solomon. Goodbye, guys. Take care."

"I think you're giving me too much credit, but thank you for having me."

Milady anxiously and excitedly steps up to the portal and turns to everyone, waving a goodbye before walking through and appearing in her apartment. It... looks different.

[After The Devildom]