#whereas this blog was created last year

[lemotmo]

I’ve seen people say that before that tumblr is just overrun by BTs and it seems like more people ship BT than Buddie on tumblr - I also think a lot of this is because the small BT fandom also includes a lot do people that straight up changed their blogs/created new ones to be solely focused on Tommy/Lou including usernames and icons whereas a lot of Buddie fans that have been here for ages don’t necessarily have 911 related usernames or profile pictures. Their fandom definitely reads as a loud minority that thinks they’re in the majority. I’ve seen several try and claim that the general audience loves Tommy when from what I’ve seen the general audience doesn’t really care one way or another about Tommy they just care about Buck (rightfully so he’s the main character we’ve been rooting for for 7 seasons)

Yeah I agree. The general audience just wants to watch the main cast do their thing. That's why they tune in every Thursday. They have probably already forgotten about Tommy, because he was hardly even seen in the last episodes.

And as I said before, I get the appeal of a new shiny canon couple and the buzz around it. It's great if you love them and want to ship them. Go on, ship them and be happy. I don't care.

What does bug me is the fact that there is this very loud core group within the minority who do not subscribe to the phrase of 'Ship and let ship' and who keep on bugging Buddie shippers, calling them homophobic and problematic.

Most of us are just here, biding our time, waiting for season 8 to see Eddie come out as queer on our screens and for Buddie to happen. We aren't doing anything wrong besides doing what we have been doing for six seasons now: ship two firefighters with insane chemistry.

That is it. So why do we have to defend ourselves for that? It's very strange fandom behaviour that I have never seen before in all my years of hanging around in fandom spaces.

But whatever. This too shall pass. It always does.

[motheatenscarf]

Finally caved and watched Season 1 of Interview With The Vampire after like, twenty years of dodging any Anne Rice intellectual property and thought, yeah, okay, that was actually pretty good. I guess I get the hype. Some moments were kinda goofy for how self-serious it seemed to want to be, but admittedly still entertaining, so whatever.

Got like two episodes into season two before I realized, OH. The vampire theater murders people on stage to eat them and the audience just thinks it's part of the stagecraft? That's so fucking dumb, I love it, this is camp! Like, emotional truths within camp, sure, but, this is like, proper, gothic horror/romance in all its beautiful unhinged silliness. And boy does it not care if you think it is silly and that silliness does not prevent you from buying in.

I am now fully invested. I need something to be about 60-70% emotionally compelling in someway, and then like 30-40% dumb as hell in a fun or interesting way for me to get actually invested beyond "I enjoyed that." If it's too good, catharsis is achieved, I move on almost immediately. If it's too dumb, it's popcorn and I have zero object permanence for it. I doubt a scholar of this blog's history could name 5 shows I've watched in the last 10 years for this reason alone.

But yeah, finished the second season, love it. Horrifying fridging of women and all, I personally found it to be a compelling point exposing the horror of being a woman who was created to be a prop for a man's ego without her ever feeling like a prop character.

Still don't think I'll ever touch the books with a ten foot pole, but uh, yeah, show good! I think the first season is more 70/30 good-to-stupid whereas season 2 veers closer to that 60/40 range, but I still kinda love it. It's MY brand of stupid. Repo! is one of my most rewatched movies of all time. It's that kind of camp. I.... I really love it, lol.

[genericpuff]

my thoughts on tears of the kingdom (on a non-zelda blog)

so here's the thing, I love Zelda.

I've been playing the series since I was a child, practically raised on it by my oldest brother whom I have a 10 year age gap with. One of my most cherished childhood memories was when he got me Wind Waker on the Gamecube as a birthday present, I would have been around 7 years old and he would have been 17. Zelda was and still is a huge part of our lives.

So skip to today, we both got Tears of the Kingdom on launch day. We're both busy adults now who live far away from each other so we've just been updating each other on our progress and sending memes.

But I've got a lot of thoughts about the game that I really want to get out, as someone who's been with this series for two decades. My brother started with games like A Link to the Past and that was practically my first exposure to the series as well as it's what I would watch him play, alongside Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.

There will be mild SPOILERS ahead concerning the gameplay and story, so don't click the jump unless you've already played the game or don't mind getting spoiled!!! LONG POST AHEAD!

So I guess let's just get on with this, yeah? I'm not gonna separate it into "good" vs. "bad" because I find everything in this game has good shit that comes packaged with bad shit. It's a lot of pros with cons attached, so trying to separate it cleanly between "good" and "bad" isn't going to be a very productive approach.

I've seen TOTK described as "DLC" for Breath of the Wild (derogatory) while on the opposite end, Breath of the Wild has been described as the "tech demo" for Tears of the Kingdom (positive). Frankly, I can see where both sides are coming from. There are lots of elements in TOTK that feel like they could have been in BOTW, whereas other elements can confidently stand on their own separate from that of BOTW.

One such example is the new Sheikah Slate, aka the Purah Pad. While there are some features from BOTW that are surely missed (Cryonis, sigh) others have been replaced with far more beneficial features such as Ultrahand and Fuse (the bread and butter of this game) and Recall, which - controversial I'm sure - is far more functional and has way more opportunities to be useful than BOTW's Stasis ability. The Ultrahand ability alone is a massive upgrade, allowing you to go wild with the game's physics engine. The shrine puzzles are a lot stronger in this respect, having more to work with by combining the Ultrahand ability with thematic Zonai devices, often times taking you through a gauntlet of rooms with similar puzzle-solving, each more challenging than the last. There's nothing more satisfying - and doubly frustrating - than seeing the solution to a shrine you've already spent three days on and going "Wait, I could have done that???" It just goes to show that the inventive creativity necessary to solving these puzzles from BOTW has carried over twofold into TOTK.

However, I feel like these new features are less rewarding as the game goes on. While mechanics like Cryonis and remote bombs made exploring feel unique and accessible in BOTW, the lack of these features in TOTK have made exploring feel far more difficult than it should be. What used to be an easy - albeit slow - endeavor such as crossing a river by creating ice block bridges with Cryonis has now turned into an exercise in futility and physics knowledge. You can't just cross a river, you have to build a boat out of whatever resources you can find or use to cross said river. And while this is a very inventive feature that has really stretched the creative bones of its players, it's a feature that becomes draining. Sometimes you really do just want to cross a river without having to build a spaceship or a ferry. Sometimes you do just want to be able to get up to the top of a cliff without needing to build a hot air balloon. Even with the Autobuild ability, these new mechanics do really start to feel grating after a while, especially for someone such as myself who struggles with executive dysfunction and doesn't want to build yet another boat or flying car just to travel 10 feet.

Regarding that last statement, I think the inclusion of the Ascend ability helps to combat tiresome climbing, but it never seems to be an option quite as often as it could be. I've seen people praise the ability stating that it helps them avoid climbing cliffs entirely, but more often than not, I've found the ability is only usable for a third of a rocky mountain where it happens to have a platform jutting out that's close enough for Ascend to reach - with the rest of it encouraging you to just climb up naturally, or, you guessed it, use the Ultrahand ability to build your way up. The Ascend ability - like Statis from the game's predecessor - is very specific and not accessible enough in the world's design to make it actually helpful. You know exactly when and where you're supposed to use it, and trying to use it outside of those instances won't get you anywhere. Of course, I'm not going to judge this ability too hard because it's still more than what we had in BOTW, but I find its application isn't quite as useful as it could be.

And boy, there are a lot of things in TOTK that don't have as strong an application as they could. I think there's no truer place this could be said than the expansion of the game's map, through The Sky and The Depths.

Disappointingly enough, just like in Skyward Sword, which suffered for having a strong premise but weak delivery with an open sky that had nothing to do in it, Tears of the Kingdom has barely fleshed out its Sky and Depths areas enough to make them feel memorable or worth going out of your way to explore. Once you've explored 10% of either, you've experienced all of it. While the Sky and the Depths each have their own dungeon, neither of them really feel justified enough to explain why they had to be there. The Depths don't add anything to the nature of the Fire Temple - by the time you're finished with it, you'll forget you're even in the Depths - and while the Water Temple does have the addition of lowered gravity up in the Sky, no other islands have this, so it feels like a random addition in the way of a gimmick that doesn't actually play much of a role in the dungeon's puzzle-solving.

As for the Depths, I do have to say that the game introduced it in the best way possible. No one spoke of them, outside of an NPC in Lookout Landing sending you on a quest to find a nearby one, but they still don't describe to you what you're about to come upon. It wasn't in any of the gameplay trailers. You see a big hole in the ground with gloom coming out of it, you know you can jump down into it, but it's not until you actually do that you realize you're diving down into the belly of a completely different beast. Link keeps falling and you're realizing how dark it's getting and hoping you can pull out your paraglider in time to hit a ground that you realize you cannot see - when the music shifts and the horns blare and your stomach sinks realizing just how dark and vast this place is.

The Depths are what I truly fell in love with in this game. I was struck with that primal fear in my gut that I hadn't felt since playing Majora's Mask as a child. For the first time in forever, I felt like the smaller species, like a speck of dust in unfamiliar territory. It was a welcome feature for a game that - if you had preceded it with Breath of the Wild - needed something to shake things up.

But, unfortunately, that initial thrill wears off eventually. The Depths become just that - a vast expanse with nothing in it. Aside from the odd treasure chest containing a piece of gear, the Bargainer's Statues, and a couple main story quests that take you down there, the Depths have nothing. Mapping them out is a feat in and of itself, even more daunting than mapping out the above ground with its tens of lightroots, but once you get at least 50% through the map, you realize that there's really nothing else to it. In fact, the map of the Depths exactly mirrors that of the map above you, with even less to do due to its lack of notable landmarks (outside of a central mining area, the Korok Grove, and the aforementioned Fire Temple), lack of biome distinction between areas (aside from the Eldin area created specifically for the Fire Temple), and lack of shrines. Once you figure that out, mapping out the rest of it is an unfortunately boring cakewalk.

I think both of these new inclusions in the game are unfortunately half-baked, making TOTK in and of itself feel like a tech demo for something that could have been more expanded upon. That said, it's a tall order, to ask for the game to run an in-depth open world map on three separate levels - the hardware itself already often struggles to load the Depths if you dive down into them too quickly, as the fall itself is its own cleverly hidden loading screen - but it's a shame to see it essentially repeat the mistakes of Skyward Sword, and it's where I feel that "this could have been DLC" complaint comes from.

There are features that feel like mild downgrades from BOTW, such as its new Fuse ability to fuse together weapons. While it seems inventive at first, the amount of inventory being carried over from BOTW makes the gameplay grind to a halt as you scroll through your pop-up inventory list to find the right thing to attach to your arrows or weapons, often times mid combat. While you can sort your menu into different sections - such as 'most used' and 'most powerful' - such a thing could have been fixed by allowing the player to create their own custom lists of items or just reducing what is and isn't capable of being fused. It feels like an unnecessary extra step thrown in to BOTW's weapon degradation mechanic just to make it feel more unique.

Moving on, this is where I want to talk about the game's story. Like the last game, it asks Link to piece together the memories of companions already gone. The story woven within these memories is a tragic one, with an emotional depth to it that I found myself relating far more to than in BOTW, which asked us to sympathize with characters who we had never met and were already gone. On the flipside, TOTK manages to tell a similar story with a lot more emotional depth, now using Princess Zelda as the tether between the present and the past, in a way that I feel works much better than in BOTW. Its climactic twist felt like something you would find in Spirited Away, and its one that I felt was appropriate for the game's setting and themes. That said, I still do not find myself compelled by this game's version of the Champions, similarly to what I experienced in BOTW. At the very least, it brings back cast members from BOTW for us to connect through, such as Purah and Lady Impa, who I was happy to see return.

And then there are the Sages.

I have a lot to say about the Sages.

The Sages have to be the single worst inclusion of this game. And that's not to say they ruin the game, but in a game full of wonderful moments and amazing gameplay, they definitely feel like a tarnishing C- on an otherwise perfect report card. Just like in Breath of the Wild, the game's main story gameplay is the weakest part of Tears of the Kingdom. While BOTW had Link conquering the out-of-control Divine Beasts, TOTK asks Link to unearth ancient temples and awaken the spirits of sages long gone for their powers to be reborn through their descendants, three of which happen to be the successors of BOTW's Champions: Riju, Sidon, and Yunobo. While the development team and press surrounding this game called these temples "traditional dungeons", they are fundamentally the exact same as the Divine Beasts, following the same 4-beat structure in which you have to activate 4 'locks' (themed around the dungeon's setting) to unlock the dungeon's boss. I found these dungeons were often even easier than the Divine Beasts of BOTW, essentially asking Link to solve four separate shrine puzzles to get to a boss that follows a simple mechanic loop. While the bosses are far less repetitive than the Blights of BOTW, they are also far less intimidating or punishing, barely requiring any extensive thought to figure out how to overcome them. The hardest boss in the game - the Gibdo Queen - ironically had one of the easiest dungeons out of the four.

But here's the thing - Tears of the Kingdom is built the exact same way as Breath of the Wild, giving the player freedom to choose the order in which they complete dungeons, if they even choose to complete them at all... but unlike past Zelda games which offered this freedom, TOTK fails in how it delivers these dungeons and the narrative surrounding them. I was miffed upon completing my second dungeon - the Fire Temple - and realizing that the cutscenes it presented were the exact same as the first one I did - the Wind Temple - and sure enough, that same cutscene played out from its respective sage for the following Water Temple and Lightning Temple. They are all the same. While one could argue this was their way of navigating around the freedom of choice - to allow the player to experience neutral cutscenes that won't be out of order or out of context - the memories themselves are also out of order and out of context so having the dungeon cutscenes be varied should be a feature, not a bug to patch out. Currently, with its repetitive cutscenes and what you gain from completing a dungeon, it makes them far less enjoyable to do, knowing you're essentially just doing one big shrine with a giant enemy (one you can find in the Depths for farming, which makes them feel far less unique or imposing) with the reward of a heart in the end.

Of course, I'm forgetting to mention the other reward you get after completing a dungeon. Sage abilities. The biggest downgrade from BOTW by far.

In BOTW, upon completing a Divine Beast, you would be granted with an ability from its respective Champion, typically a passive one - meaning, if you had the ability enabled, it would activate on its own or you could trigger it a specific way, such as Mipha's Grace which would automatically revive you once in between cooldowns (basically a fairy you didn't have to catch) and, the fan favorite, Revali's Gale, which could be triggered by holding down the jump button and would grant you so much more ease of exploring.

Tears of the Kingdom, instead, asks "What if we made all of the Champions their own characters who could run around you, get in your way, and offer even less useful abilities?"

The present Sages - Yunobo, Tulin, Riju, Sidon, and Mineru - are akin to a teenager taking way more dogs than they could handle out for a walk. They are five nuisances who will run away from you when you need them, and run around you when you're just trying to pick up an item, causing you to accidentally trigger their abilities which are simply mapped to the A button. Too many times I've had them trigger a fight with enemies I was trying to avoid, blow away loot I was trying to grab, or blow up explosives that I wasn't aiming at, killing me outright. While they can be turned off, I feel like it could have been far easier to implement them in a way that wasn't so distracting and obtrusive - currently, the way they're implemented basically demands you keep them turned off until you absolutely need them. Considering a map of the Switch controller buttons comes up with the A button highlighted, it begs the question, why even have the other three buttons visible onscreen if they can never be mapped? Why not make use of different buttons for different companions? Or make them passive abilities similar to that of the Champions from BOTW? Overall, their inclusion feels clunky and not well thought out, and their abilities aren't near beneficial or useful enough to justify this much headache. At most, Yunobo is helpful in blowing up rock walls when you don't have Bomb Flowers, and Tulin is helpful in gusting you towards a landing spot while gliding through the sky, but that's about where their usefulness ends. Unlike in BOTW, the efforts required to gain their abilities barely feels like a reward, but more of an obligatory chore, making the dungeons feel even less rewarding to do.

With all that said, unlike in BOTW, Tears of the Kingdom never becomes a smoother experience to explore. The effort you put into completing the dungeons and gaining better weapons and gear never feels rewarded with anything substantial or worth working for. The Sage abilities are a burden and give very little benefit to exploring or combat the same way BOTW's Champion abilities did, the dungeons themselves aren't experiences worth writing home about, and the story is so milquetoast and repetitive that once you beat one dungeon, you've experienced all of them.

That said, while I've done a lot of complaining, there are a lot of things about the game I'm enjoying compared to Breath of the Wild. One such thing are the sidequests - there are a LOT more of them in this game, and many of them feel far more engaging and rewarding than Breath of the Wild. Accessing the Great Fairies requires an actual sequence of quests now, in which you bring a travelling band back together, and from that point forward, you can always hear them playing their music at the stables scattered throughout Hyrule. Hateno has its own questline that rewards you with what's possibly Link's greatest piece of fashion ever, Cece's Hat. Even the small quests feel more rewarding to do because TOTK feels far busier than BOTW did. There are far more NPC's, and the world itself just feels more lively; I wouldn't expect any less in the sequel to BOTW which experienced a cataclysmic event that wiped out the population of the kingdom. It's nice to see the difference in how the towns operate in TOTK because you can feel it through its sidequests. There are still Yiga Clan members in disguise on the surface, but it's far less now compared to BOTW where you couldn't talk to an NPC on the road without getting shanked.

Of course, it wouldn't be a BOTW sequel without one of its most daunting sidequests of all - the Korok Seed quest. This time, there are 1000 Korok Seeds to find, with new puzzles to find them, most notably the escort quests, which require you to build whatever godforsaken Roman-era torture device you need to build to get wandering Koroks from Point A to Point B.

That said, the unfortunate news I have to break to you after finally seeing someone complete the quest themselves - all that awaits you in the end, once again, is "Hestu's Gift" which I have to say, isn't as quite as funny the second time around. While in BOTW it felt like a funny nudge at completionists, in the vein of "Haha, look at you! You worked so hard to get all those seeds and all that awaited you was a pile of poop! It's all in good fun! The real prize was the adventuring you did along the way!" but having that be the end prize again in TOTK where we're exploring regions we've already explored before feels far more passive-aggressive, like it's making fun of you for really doing what the devs expected you to do a second time, with a snarky, "Seriously? You're that stupid? You really thought there'd be something new this time?" Especially considering the Koroks exclusively populate the Sky and the Surface - giving players even less incentive to want to explore the Depths, further robbing this new expansive area of less identity. Ironic that the Depths, an area so big that it requires its own hidden loading screen, would end up having even less to do than the Sky itself, which barely covers any surface area in the game's overall map by comparison. It's a damn shame the devs couldn't be bothered to think of something to reward the player with for all their work. At least in BOTW it could be said the reward was the exploration, as so much of BOTW's map goes untouched by its main story and its world was brand new to us back then - it's not brand new now, though, and the areas that are new are going completely unused.

I realize this review is getting quite long, but I want to close it with one final point - Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom's place in the Zelda franchise.

There's a startling lack of one specific thing that makes a Zelda game truly Zelda, despite the dev's best efforts to return its old school elements such as traditional "dungeons" and its nods to previous games in the title through its referential gear sets implemented right into the game (vs. exclusively as DLC in BOTW) - and that's the Triforce.

It's said that a true Zelda game can't contain its core triad of characters - Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf - without containing the Triforce in the center of all of it, and yet Tears of the Kingdom did this, and frankly, it just proves that point.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not good at singling out a 'favorite'. Whenever people ask me what my favorite Zelda game is, my mind races through all the titles I played as a child - Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess - and yet I rarely think of Breath of the Wild and likely won't think of Tears of the Kingdom either. It's not for lack of trying or consideration, I do think both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are respectable games, both inclusive and exclusive of one another, but rarely does my mind go to them because to me, they don't feel like true Zelda games. And I didn't realize why until I recalled that the last game we had featuring Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, and the Triforce as core setpieces... was Twilight Princess. A game that will be turning seventeen this year, and will likely be twenty by the time the next mainline Zelda game releases. And one could argue even Twilight Princess doesn't count because Ganondorf was a last second addition - if we want to be really obtuse about it, technically we haven't gotten a game featuring Link, Zelda and Ganondorf as our main characters since Wind Waker, a game that turned twenty years old last year!

I felt its absence especially in Tears of the Kingdom, seeing Ganondorf manipulate his way into stealing the sigh 'secret stones' (I'm sorry but that name is so fucking cringe, please just call them "sacred stones" or "mystic stones" or SOMETHING more interesting than "secret stones", we don't even get any sort of lore or hinting towards where they came from, they're just magical McGuffin's with a stupid name) but not once mention his true motivations prior to finding out about the stone's existence. There was no emotional motivation such as what can be seen in The Wind Waker through a Ganondorf scorned by his lost culture and the kingdom that he just wanted to see wiped out to make things even; or Ocarina of Time Ganondorf who sought to access the Sacred Realm and take the Triforce and all its power for himself. Shit, there wasn't even a mention of Demise, the massive plot-twister of Skyward Sword, which Nintendo attempted to make the ultimate explanation as to why the games and their stories experience the same warring cycle from generation to generation; an explanation that could have worked, if they had actually followed up on it through BOTW and TOTK - yet, despite having the opportunity to do so, seem to just be whistling around the issue, pretending like it's not there. Despite having an Ouroboros in its title art, this cycle of death and rebirth is noticeably gone in Tears of the Kingdom.

Look, I get it. The developers have already stated that they're intent on moving forward with its open world format in future Zelda games. It's making them a lot of money. It's refreshing. It's bringing new fans into the franchise. And it's bridging the gap between generations by re-introducing classic exploration elements of retro Zelda while trying to also balance the narrative elements that modern post-N64 Zelda fans have come to expect.

But when you tear apart all the original components of a franchise, of its themes, its characters, its stories, and replace them with new components only slightly reminiscent of the old... can that franchise really be called the same thing anymore? When people ask me what my favorite Zelda game is, I don't think of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom because to me, they're just not Zelda games. They're just what they are - Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo had a huge opportunity to make Tears of the Kingdom into a game that could tie its predecessors together with a neat little bow, and yet it still took the half-baked way out, layering it instead with its own story that doesn't even really work or take advantage of the foundation it's standing upon. They're their own games, and that's okay, but I can't help but feel that the further we go down this road, the less it'll encompass what made Zelda what it was to begin with.

And yeah, I'm sure I'm just being a typical 'old Zelda fan' who's complaining about the exact same thing that people complained about in games like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. But when your Zelda game featuring Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf does not mention a word of the Triforce, I think both retro and modern Zelda fans can agree to even a slight extent that you can't have Legend of Zelda without the Triforce. That would be like having Super Mario without Power Stars (or some equivalent of them) or Kirby without its existential nihilism or Sonic without Chaos Emeralds. Sure, you can have games in their franchises without their respective trademarks, but do it enough times and people will start to notice something's seriously off. I think we can all agree that while Twilight Princess and Wind Waker may be, aesthetically and thematically, completely different games, you can't deny they're Zelda games at their core because they still have that signature cast fighting over those pesky golden Doritos.

In this respect, Tears of the Kingdom feels like it's suffering from the same problem Star Wars is suffering from - it exists to spite the titles that came before it, but knows it won't succeed without the fans of those titles so it makes as many cheeky references to those titles as it can without paying actual respect to them. It even opens the game with references to things that retro gamers will recognize - Rauru, Ganondorf recognizing Link's name, etc. - but then all those elements are later revealed to be unique to TOTK, such as Rauru being the first King of a Hyrule that's exclusive to the BOTW timeline, or Ganondorf only recognizing Link's name because a time-travelling Zelda told him his name, not because it's the same Ganondorf of titles' past. It feels incredibly disappointing to have all this setup and so little payoff especially for these games that are claiming to be the 'next step' for the franchise. It feels less like a 'next step' and more like a complete reboot for a different audience. These games are not reminiscent of what pulled me and my brother into the franchise way back in the day.

But I dunno, maybe it's a weird hill to die on. I don't want to be one of those "not my Zelda" puritans but when the games don't even contain elements of what made them distinctly Zelda back in the day, down to its trademark features, it makes me wonder what exactly where the series is headed.

Anyways. That was a lot. I do want to make it clear that I am enjoying this game, very much so, but like many games that top the charts with solid 10/10's on release, I feel like there are definitely still places the game could have been further refined, despite the extra year it took to polish it. From the inconvenient gameplay halters like the inventory fusing, to the obtrusive butchering of the Sage abilities, so many things could have been tightened up just a bit more to further improve on what Breath of the Wild started, rather than trade out what BOTW did for weaker alternatives. It's a game of gimmicks, rather than one of substance. While Breath of the Wild lacked substance itself in many regards, it at least had the benefit of being a brand new format, with a vast world one could spend hours exploring - with that same world returning in Tears of the Kingdom, with very little done to flesh out the attempts to expand it, it very much feels like it's simply riding off the coattails of Breath of the Wild, and in that regard, I can agree to an extent with the "DLC" arguments, while also agreeing that there are things in TOTK that very much improve on BOTW and make it look like a tech demo.

One thing I will recommend in the end to those of you who might be reading this - do not play Breath of the Wild right before Tears of the Kingdom. Whether it's your first time playing BOTW or you're wanting to revisit it, don't do it. I was fortunate enough that my last time playing BOTW was several months ago, but I've seen loads of people not enjoying TOTK because they replayed BOTW in the days before its release, and let me tell you, this game is far less of a unique or fun experience if you play BOTW right before playing TOTK due to the world design. If you play them one after the other, you'll burn yourself out on it and not get to appreciate what TOTK adds to BOTW's world as much as if you had gone in partially or mostly blind.

And that's all I'm gonna say on that. Tears of the Kingdom gets a 8.5/10 from me. I am excited to see where the franchise goes next in terms of its open world concept, I hope Nintendo can at least stray away from this version of Hyrule so we can get something new like we did in BOTW. Tears of the Kingdom was by no means a negative experience for me, and I'm planning on getting back into it tonight and tackling more of its sidequests, which are probably one of my favorite parts of the game. I could very well be way too hard on it, so this opinion could change over time as I spend more time in its world, but these are my general experiences that have come up in the back of my mind over the past couple weeks since its release.

Thanks for reading!

[shadowdaddies]

why do you have to post ship stuff on this blog???? like i really liked your writing but then i have to scroll and see gw*nriel art. i reblogged from you but deleted it, maybe consider your audience😘😘😘

I usually just delete rude messages, but after sitting on this for awhile (and noticing a couple other writers receive similar anons) I decided to reiterate the purpose of this blog: my blog.

I got back into reading through the ACOTAR series last year, and writing fanfiction became a form of healing self-expression for me. These books brought me hope at a time that I really needed it, as did writing. I thought that others loved these books for the same reasons, but the absolute hatefulness and vitriol that is spewed at each other over fictional characters breaks my heart a bit.

This blog is not anti any character, nor does it stan any character. These "couples" are ink on paper and completely subject to the whims of the author who created them, whereas the people you are speaking to on here are very real.

I have preferred ships, but I share artwork and writings of pairings that I do and do not ship. If you do not like my content, feel free to keep scrolling, but there are far better ways to spend your time than to be mean. There are real issues happening in this world, and you do not know what others are going through. Be kind.

[hot-take-tournament]

HOT TAKE TOURNAMENT

VOCALOID RECOMMENDATIONS MASTER POST

I've been collecting all your vocaloid recommendations in one place, so everyone can take a listen!

And if like me you knew nothing about vocaloid before that nuclear discourse, maybe you'll find a hidden gem you wouldn't have found otherwise! <3

Submitted anonymously

Thought I'd add to the Vocaloid discourse by pointing out that several "irl" bands actually started out by using vocaloids. You can find a few who talk about it in the Hatsune Miku live concerts (super cool use of holo developed for those too!). That's really the crux of what sets vocaloid apart from much of the machine discourse; it's CREATED oppourtunities for small musicians instead of taking it away. Specifically by not just supplying a synthetic voice program to work with, but by tying a star identity to each voicebank that makes people more willing to explore obscure artist music. It also distincts the works made by the vb's from the artists who were paid to voice them, so you can't make them say things that sounds like you're putting bad takes in the original artist's mouth. Everyone knows and understands it's a fake version for the purpose of artistic creativity, not an attempt to steal the voice of the original singer.

Anyway since we're doing Vocaloid recommends now:

Giga - BRING IT ON (Inferiority superiority) ft. Kagamine Rin & Len

"Hop! Step! Instant Death! A Happiness Dance Death-Trap" and "The Path to Eternal Happiness...I Found It" both by Utata-P

Entomologists, Appetite of a people pleaser and Rotary Dial by GHOST

VIRAL ft. Meika Hime and Melancolia ft. GUMI by QueenPb

(note - Melancolia contains flashing images right from the start)

And last but not least, my personal Vocaloid feels song, TELL YOUR WORLD by kz, who sums up some of the beauty of the Vocaloid fandom pretty well

Submitted anonymously

Ok, I know the blog was kinda overflown of vocaloid discurse asks. So instead of discussing I brought RECOMMENDATIONS❗

Because, like, Defoko is pretty known in the Utau world, but she may be one of the worst examples of "human-like voice".

So to bring some counter examples of voicebanks that do not have much of a robotic vibe, I have here:

Some utuaus

【Namine Ritsu】-ERROR 2018ver.【UTAU Cover】

【Sukone Tei】Love Me, Love Me, Love Me (Music box ver.) 【UTAUカバー】

Some not so known vocaloids

[Aoki Lapis] Circus Monster [VOCALOID]

[Mayu] VOCALOID 3 ~Kodoku no Bannin~ Guard of Loneliness

【Galaco】 The Beast. 【Vocaloid3 Cover】

【MEIKA Mikoto】 Cantarella 【カバー】

And some slow songs, that require whisper-like tuning <3

【24 VOCALOIDS CHORUS】 Hirari, Hirari ひらり、ひらり 【HD】

Kamui Gakupo A Doll's Voice

Submitted by @indigo-flightly-falls

Oh!!!

If we're doing vocaloid recs, I'm here to suggest A Crow's Trial!

Vane - A Crow's Trial (ft. Dex & Gumi Eng.)【Vocaloid Original】

it's one of my favorites and has some Vibes. It's a bit hard to understand the story but the last verse lives in my head rent free :D

Submitted anonymously

speaking about the vocaloid debate- they haven't submitted the playlist yet, but if they listened to English songs using Japanese/Chinese/other voicebanks then it'll inherently sound a little off. different languages and different voicebanks have different pronunciations needed for speech, and are thus recorded for the voicebank. use a Japanese voicebank for an English song and you won't get the right words pronounced right, or you'll get an accent, etc etc.

also some vocaloids only have one or two voicebanks and that's it. Big Al only has one (i might be wrong on that, but i know his is for V2 software), whereas Hatsune Miku has every single voicebank made over the years (V1-V5) and has versions made to sing in Japanese, Chinese, and English. she has so, so much more variety than other vocaloids and can be more fluent and clear compared to lesser known vocaloids.

and since we're sharing favorite vocaloid songs to convert the submitter, here's two of mine because i have too many favorites to share:

Carnivore - OrgansDotOrg

this one has Big Al as supporting vocals and it absolutely slaps, also OrgansDotOrg is my-all time favorite artist pleaseee go support them!!!

Seraphim on the Ring - Mitchie M

seriously, if you're looking for realistic vocaloid vocals then go listen to Mitchie-M!! Katio and Len just speaking in this one sound just like real people

Fools are attracted to anomaly - Utsu-P

vocaloid is not all pop and 'kawaii', vocaloid metal is some of my favorite to listen to

some other producers i also like:

tart

Ferry

Riproducer

PinocchioP

Kikuo

SweetSoSweet

KakyuuKei

KaitsukoP

Submitted by @ssilly--ssadass

utau is underrated. not a hot take just my segway into giving you utau covers [also covers cuz nobody gives anybody but teto good originals. pick up the slack people. also sidenote no teto. cuz i was priortizing other utaus only to realize i added too many songs and couldnt fit a teto one in. sorryn't]

Aishite (covered by Defoko)

GHOST RULE (covered by Defoko)

Bug (covered by Chanchopin V1 and Giga Lacan)

Darling (covered by I think Darling- I dont know this utau and am going off the description being like "lmao Darling utau covers Darling maretu heehoo")

Corpse Dance (covered by Defoko)

ECHO (covered by Defoko)

(note - ECHO contains flashing images)

Submitted anonymously

really funny hearing the take about how vocaloids/voice synths can't have singing styles when there's multiple voice synths explicitly modelled after particular styles. prima (opera), sachiko (enka), and maiko hakaine (screamo metal) are just the ones i can list off the top of my head. and even if a voice synth isn't modelled after a singing style, they can still be tuned that way!

anyway, for song recommendations! gothic and loneliness is breathtaking (it's also a nightmare in project diva lol)

Gothic and Loneliness [Kagamine Rin] - Narushima Takashi

Submitted anonymously

oh wait can we still send in vocaloid recommendations? if so…

• koisuru beam by kyaami/cillia : this song is so cute and rin’s tuning here is some of the best i’ve heard

•jitterbug by hachiya nanashi - goes hard as hell and i adore the mv the song has

•lost and found by sasakure.uk - i only recently heard of it (idk how i only just found it) and it’s mesmerising i love it

uhh i can’t think of anymore right now but uhh i hope that if u hear these u will like them

<3 <3 <3

[anti-dazai-blog]

Hi, recently discovered your blog, love it <3

I started reading the manga around the Kamui Reveal, and back then already worried about the entire arc. Personally, the Dazai-vs-Fyodor-Setup felt undirected and predictable (back then and yet again at its end).

To me, it’s been already pointed out how Asagiri might have a hard time deleting the original cast from the story, which I don’t fault him for. (He likes creating and writing characters and you can tell, I actually love it.) My problem would just be that he needs to change stakes to the plot, it’s getting in the way of immersive storytelling (because he seldomly pulls through with the stakes long-term regarding the original character cast.)

You can actually write a story with good stakes that are consequential to actions without killing characters off; if you do it well, not having death threats hanging over every characters heads won’t take away from the story. (However, with a setting and worldbuilding like bsd it’s a little unrealistic to not have death as side effect/consequence or characters die.)

Back to the arc that’s been going on for years, it feels weird (unplanned), because that’s opposite to how the previous arcs (and especially the light novels) felt and it’s one of the longest arcs; I would have assumed Asagiri had something in mind for a proper (plot)conclusion (it’s a personal opinion that this arc is not properly concluded (currently)).

When we had chuuya drowns and dazai gets shot scenes, I wasn’t for one second thinking they actually died, I was thinking, how is Asagiri gonna write himself out of these scenes (because to me it felt like he didn’t have a solution, reviving the characters, prior to their death scenes), which is a pretty non immersive experience as a reader.

And it’s really weird to me, because I can’t think of a good reason of how all this happened.

Asagiri is not a bad writer, that’s established and the (i think) last „side“ project Stormbringer was exceptional (personal opinion (and I was still baffled(slight negative connotation) at Verlaine being kept alive (who knows wether he will play a role in the future)), it’s really weird thinking about Stormbringer and this arc being written out at a similar time. (I personally have a theory as to why the light novels are so good: He likes writing snd creating characters, but having them interact in this huge cast and series is understandably difficult, whereas the light novels can be seen as a backstory/part of a character, something he is incredibly good at constructing.(He also doesn’t really struggle killing off people here, because the consequences don’t affect the main story.))

He doesn’t „pander“ to people either I think, or at least it wouldn’t make sense. Bsd might possibly have attracted a shounen audience, but it got popular because of seinen themes and characters (which affects the plot) in the first place, so changing things towards to a shounen lane would be dumb, and also not something like Asagiri would do.

I’ve also skimmed across my rant here and I sound like I hate the arc or his writing, but I actually don’t haha, I actually liked a lot of this arc, themes and characters and still have faith in him as an author and this series, it’s just these particular things that kinda hugely scratch my opinion on this arc and how what’s currently happening feels like a non-answer to everything that came before it.

I’m interested in hearing your opinion on this, if you want to take the time for this huge complaint rant (I’m not mad if you don’t haha), in which ways you agree/disagree/could possibly educate me further.

You blog overall is really cool, love your analyses; lots of love <33

Thank you for the ask, I’m so glad you’re enjoying this blog!!!

You’ve summed up the current arc’s issues perfectly— it seems to be out of place when compared to everything else Asagiri wrote in both the previous arcs and the light novels. It came across as aimless— as if Asagiri himself wasn’t sure where he was going with it and was as taking it chapter by chapter.

That being said, I do believe that it might just be a matter of personal taste—maybe Asagiri’s tastes in storytelling has changed over the years, and the current arc is the type of stuff he’d be more interested to write about going forward. I’d be a bit disappointed if that’s the case (and as far as I could tell, I won’t be the only one), but he might form a new fanbase that this current type of story is more catered to.

Either way, I still have hope that future bsd arcs might revert back to how bsd used to be four years ago.

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

I know one of your special interests is the Titanic, so have you heard about that submarine?!?

Hi, anon. Yes, I know about the submarine - I haven't been on this blog since last weekend but I posted about it on Monday (I think) when the news first broke on my other blog @alwaysahiccupandastrid (that blog is the one I'm logged into on my phone whereas this one is the one I'm logged into on my iPod and laptop). Obviously since then the news has been a huge deal, it's been all over the news, so it's been pretty strange to log onto social media and see "titanic" trending so much.

I want to be clear that I don't wish death on anyone, I truly don't, and also that two of the people who were on that submarine actually lived a 15 minute walk from me, and I only found out because it was posted on facebook on my village's community group/page - they were the father and son, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, who were onboard. All of this said, I'm sorry but it's really hard to sympathise with billionaires who were basically trespassing on what is a grave-site for 1500 people. If they had been researchers then I might hold a little bit more sympathy, but these people...with the exception of the 19 year old who apparently only went because of his father because it was Father's Day last weekend, I struggle to understand why those billionaires were going down there.

Here's the thing: as you said, the Titanic is one of my special interests - I am literally obsessive about not only the film made by James Cameron but also the ship itself, the history behind it, the stories of the people who were onboard etc. In fact, the reason I love the film as much as I do is because James Cameron had an obsession with the wreck too and went out of his way to be as truthful to the tragedy as possible - he even went down to the wreck for hours and hours recording footage, and even after the film came out he's continued to dive not only down to the wreck but also even further down into the ocean (I will talk about him and his dives in a moment).

All of the above in mind, would I want to go down to the wreck myself? Probably not.

A part of me would in fact want to do it because of my special interest, to see that once beautiful and magnificent ship in person, while being respectful as possible and taking the time to remember the people who suffered - but the other part of me would not because firstly, as I've said, it's where 1500 people died and trespassing on the graves of 1500 people just seems incredibly fucked to me. It's not a tourist attraction, for fuck sake, it's the site of a horrible tragedy. It's also important to note that because of all of the deep sea dives down there, because people keep disturbing the wreck, it's making the ship start to disappear - yes, part of this is due to it being 111 years since it sank, but submarines constantly disturbing it are not helping preserve it quite frankly. The man who discovered the wreck, Robert Ballard, has even said that he wished he hadn't told people he'd discovered it because of the way people have desecrated it. (side note: I borrowed his book on the Titanic from my local library in February and only gave it back last weekend because I ran out of renewals)

All of that aside, however, serious questions need to be asked about that submersible because the design of it was clearly not appropriate for that dive, and it's clear the people who made it wanted to cut corners and save money when they created it. We've all seen the memes about the fact it was being steered by a remote control you can literally buy on Amazon (the one that looks like a video game controller), and the fact that the submersible was so small it would have been like being shoved into a Pringles can. While I find the memes insensitive, it can't be denied that OceanGate have a LOT to answer for when it comes to that submersible and the design of it.

As for James Cameron, before anyone starts asking why I'm not criticizing him, the thing is that he went down to the wreckage on an actual submarine with an actual crew who do this for a living - these people were on a submersible, not a submarine. He's also made 33 dives, not just to the Titanic but also to the Mariana Trench and other deep parts of the ocean; he also designed a 24-foot submersible called the Deepsea Challenger, which took 10 years to build at a cost of $10 million, and is made of principally from syntactic foam, a high-strength, low-weight material which enables it to withstand the huge pressure exerted on it by the ocean. He has literally done his research of the ocean, his research of submarines and submersibles, and it's very clear he holds respect for not only the Titanic but also for the ocean as well. He did an interview recently about the Titan submersible, criticizing the choice of carbon-fibre composite construction of the pressure vessel, saying that it has "no strength in compression" when subject to immense pressures at depth; he also criticized Stockton Rush, the chief executor and co-founder of OceanGate who was on the submersible, and Rush's real-time monitoring of the submarine's hull as an inadequate solution that would do little to prevent an implosion.

To sum it up, while I'm personally not celebrating anyone's death in this situation and I think the memes aren't strictly appropriate, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for them - for their families who have been left behind, maybe, but it's difficult to find sympathy for a group of billionaires fucking around and going to the wreck for...for what? Shits and giggles? Because they could? As Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park, "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" - and that's exactly what I feel about these people and a lot of billionaires, quite frankly, that just because they have money to do shit like this, it doesn't mean they should. I especially can't find a lot of sympathy for the co-founder who was on that submersible because, quite frankly, if he and his company hadn't been so tight-fisted and cheap when making their submersible, this might not have happened.

As a side note, I've seen people asking the authorities about recovering the bodies, and I don't think people are understanding that there are no bodies to recover, no remains, not even a single bone - there's quite literally nothing left of those people anymore. The submersible imploded, and the people inside would have literally been turned to mist at that pressure, like they would have literally disintegrated. I hope that the families of the people on that submersible can find some comfort, if nothing else, in knowing that the death of their loved ones was probably quick, that they didn't suffer - it's likely they didn't even know what was happening because of how quick the implosion would have been.

[the---hermit]

Hallo! Hope you don't mind me asking, what was your course structure like in Italy? Like we study Ancient in Bachelors first year, Medieval in second and Modern in third. We also did Ancient Greece and Rome in the second semester.

P.S. your blog REALLY inspires me to study more and your photographs are just so aesthetic, thank you so much 💕

Hello anon!

I don't mind at all, I'll try to be as clear as possible in my explainations, in case anything is confusing let me know. I wiil of course base this on my personal experience, it might be bit different in other universities but the general idea should be the same.

in bachelor you get a basic course in all historical eras so: ancient greek history, roman history, medieval history, modern history and contemporary history. these are all 12 credts value, so they are all pretty dense. Usually classes with this value are divided in two halves, and the second one has a focus on something specific (for example i had a insight on medieval economy in my medieval history calls, whereas in my contemporary history class we had an insight on the rise of scientific racism and creation of criminology in the late 1800s). Usually you have more options and you pick whichever class depending on which professor seems better to you and which focus is more interesting to you.

this idea here is that no matter what your main interests are you need to have a base of everything. this is clearly because you need to know at least in general all eras to be able to fully comprehend everything. with no base knowledge you couldn't get a real understanding of all passages because at the end of the day everything is linked to what happened before too strongly.

an important thing i have to mention is that we have a lot of choice in general, you have three or four classes to choose from at least. and that also includes all the other classes you take during your degree (if you are more interested in what i did i can definitely sit down and tell you about some of the classes i had in my bachelor). then other than these more basic classes you have many more that add up during you 3 years of bachelor. i did some italian litterature, philosophy, anthropology, two English classes, archeaology classes, as well as more practical classes like the modern history seminar i did where we learned how to actually be historians, how to work on different kind of sources and so on. The whole idea is that you can create an academic path for yourself that follows your interests. I should check but if i remember correctly we had 6 exams on the first year 12 on the second and 6 the last but to be honest i could be getting confused. I should definitely check my old bullet jorunals to tell you the precise number of exams.

During your masters you also get a lot of choice, but the classes are more advanced and on more specific topics! Again i can get a bit more specific if you want.

I wrote this and didn't reread if before posting so again if i am too confusing or didn't explain things well lmk, it's the end of the day and my brain is struggling.

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

seiga kaku?

im gonna actively try to keep myself concise and to single points because its been so easy for me in the past to get lost in wicked hermit thoughts and veer off who knows where... Part of it surely has to do with how a long time ago i used to have an rp blog on tumblr where i spent everyday thinking about seiga to some extent!

General opinion/How much I care about them: there was a long period of time where i would say without a doubt she was my single favourite character in touhou. I couldn't properly point to any one reason, or any tidy chain of events that might have led to it, other than learning about her, reading and seeing various very formative doujin works featuring her and the th13 crew, and maybe some old-fashioned projecting led me to latching onto every aspect of her... These days, there's a lot of touhous I obsess and go wild over and to even greater extents than her, but seiga objectively has the longest history of making me go a little nuts, whereas even aya took a little more time to nettle into my brain.

I like Seiga a lot and ive thought about her a lot, is what im getting at!

A ship I love: seiyoshi (seiga/yoshika) is funny in that it has a lot of little 'requirements' to me. Like if intepreted as just purely the evil hermit controlling a tool that she herself murdered to obtain, i think thats boring. But likewise, if its intepreted as just the hermit tragically trying to preserve her departed beloved, well that might be better but still lacking to me.

i couldnt possibly get across my ideal backstory for them right now, but the ultimate gist of it is that Seiga definitely did care for the living Yoshika who then died unexpectedly, before Seiga could decide herself whether she would commit to teaching her the ways of the hermit or simply get bored and move on. Her main motivation in performing the most ludicrously evil magic and create a jiangshi was because she refused to let even the natural order of life and death take anything away from her.

....Thaaaat all aside, i think their interactions in present day are just really funny 😄 Seiga 'spoiling' her dear Yoshika who laughs off being a meat shield because its not like she can die again!

A non-romantic relationship that I love: I think Seiga and Futo have the most oddball dynamic among the taoists and also Futo is probably the only one Seiga wouldn't have intense romanctic tension with. Futo who is a weirdo herself, acknowledges Seiga as their wise teacher of the arts (calling her seiga-donno) and yet also does not think of her as above any of them in their little personal hierarchy because Futo knows Seiga has no interest in being a proper retainer to Miko, so all of Futo's formalities almost come off as either sarcastic or as a really esoteric form of endearment. Meanwhile, Seiga probably thought a long time ago Futo would grow weary of things like loyalty and matters of noble blood or talking like an ancient old person, but none of that happened and Futo remains the same as ever, which has been altogether surprising, charming, and exasperating for Seiga (and everone else but they're all mostly charmed 😊)

The NOTP: i guess you'd have to work especially hard to get me to gel with pairing her up with any of myouren temple's folks. I get the temptation since every other taoist has one or two easily paired up counterpart there, but its not enough to just cross a checklist and leave it at that!

(that said, if you were gonna pair up buddhists and taosists thematically, i get why one might put seiga with shou since they were technically most vital in backstory with miko/byakuren respectively, and also because they both have a servant, one jiang-shi and a mouse. but i always thought seiga made a better parallel witn nue personally)

My biggest headcanon about them: most of this post is already headcanon, but as for another 'big' one...

I believe over the last thousand and whatever years, Seiga made semi-regular (as in maybe once every few years or a century?) visits to the tomb where Miko and gang slept, indulging and refreshing her memories of them, chatting up Tojiko who is now a ghost. And then sometime in 2011 right as her hermit senses told her it was finally time to meet them all again, she went to to tomb to greet them all only to find out literally the entire place was gone 😨

so all within like a week or something, Seiga had to go on a mad investigative quest where she discovered they had all been whisked to Gensokyo at some point, had to learn what the heck Gensoyko even is, how to get herself there, and then arrived just in time to get blasted by the incident resolvers. Really busy time in her life!

An idea for a fanfiction I would like to write/read about them: ha... one day, my multi-part seiga backstory fic incorporating every stray headcanon i've ever had. and then i quit writing forever maybe n_n

That aside, a funny scenario would be Okina appearing trying to stir drama because Seiga is basically the reason why Miko divorced Okina. And Seiga has no idea who she is or about any of that because Miko never mentioned it 😌

Something that makes me think of them: pretzels.

also its someone elses fault but luo tianyi is just the seiga vocaloid to me 😑

[vergess]

(and I mean very lately, we're talking the last couple weeks at most) neonazis have started adopting the phrase to infiltrate Palestine rallies

hi, this is really bad and i hadn't heard about this before! Where can I learn more about it? there's a lot of bad faith info out there and I'm not sure who I can trust

Good instincts. Unfortunately, my claim relies currently on firsthand witness accounts from people I trust, along with two (2) private photos of neonazis (one wearing vests with nazi symbols, one with Nazi tattoos) participating in these sorts of rally.

The good(?) news is Nazis aren't subtle. Here's neonazi Nathan Damigo of Identity Europa fame, very publicly co opting the phrase last month:

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/hamas-attack-draws-cheers-extremists-spurs-antisemitism-and-conspiracies-online

Here's more explanation on why this happens:

And more examples of the increase in outright white supremacist and neonazi groups attending these rallies:

And the phrase itself has always been popular with antisemitic hate groups, whereas its popularity in general spaces varies by year, in part because the simplicity of the chant leaves room for both peaceful and genocidal interpretations, serving as an ideal dogwhistle:

[stormysquiggle]

#ACEAlastorWeek2023

last week i posted the art i'd made to contribute to #ACEAlastorWeek2023 over on twitter and instagram - and i even posted them on amino. i decided that i wouldn't post them all here on tumblr individually though, and that instead i'd put them all together in one blog post. so this is that blog post!

prompts for the week were created by @mallowtonmouse​, who also hosts the event! it was great fun and i hope i'll be able to make time to take part next year!!

DAY 1: Ace-ceptance

DAY 2: Acesthetic Fashion Day

DAY 3: Celebrating QPRs Day

DAY 4: International Asexuality Day

DAY 5: Date Night

DAY 6: Ace-Sexy Saturday

DAY 7: Cake Day

as an ending note ig, Alastor’s asexuality does mean a lot to me personally and is what draws me to him most as a character, so it was fulfilling to express that through taking part in this challenge/event. being asexual (aromantic too), i appreciate him tons and he’s become a special comfort character for me who’s also helped act as a protective figure throughout my trauma recovery, whereas my main Hazbin OC that i pair him with, Harlene, acts as a nurturing figure in that. so basically, getting the chance to draw them both for this week was really good for my mental health as a whole, as i basically got to draw my fictional parents together while also celebrating asexuality through one of them at the same time.

overall, this was a lovely week, and while i had made all this art in advance, i appreciated the art that i did see made by those who were able to take part. i do hope more people are able to participate next year though, especially as Harbin Hotel will be out by then! but only time will tell, so ig we’ll all just have to stay tuned~!

[soul-dwelling]

Regarding the last post, and not that anyone asked me, but, hey, I've been on this blog long enough that I'd feel awkward if I didn't say something about the recent news:

This is also why this weekend's obnoxious "OMG we are so going to get a reboot!!1" conjectures piss me off.

Beyond how much Fire Force has flat-out ruined a lot of Soul Eater for me--

(But that's on me: I can debate whether Fire Force in fact ruined Soul Eater, but for me, yeah, Fire Force ruined a lot about what I enjoyed about Soul Eater, albeit not really ruined the initial experience reading and watching it, and certainly not the fandom experience I had years ago.)

--beyond how it ruined Soul Eater, I just see this monkey's paw problem coming. And I have ranted so much about this monkey's paw problem that I really hate getting into it again, because I have nothing new to say that I haven't said already on this same blog repeatedly. Y'all wanted a reboot or a continuation so badly? Well, enjoy seeing the worst parts of the manga finally getting animated (which, again, looks worse after Fire Force, given that now nothing stands in the way of Ohkubo being horny-in-animation because no editor and no animation studio stopped him with Fire Force). And enjoy the lackluster tie-in to Fire Force, a manga that single-handedly took so much of the creativity of Soul Eater and flushed it down the toilet to be a shoddy prequel that erases so many more fascinating ways you could have set up the Soul Eater world but didn't.

"It was our world all along!" Oh, fuck off.

Like, I have wanted to not post this, and I make sure not to tag this stuff in the #SoulEater tag on social media, because who wants someone raining on their parade. But I just can't stand this fixation on getting that reboot, because Fire Force just soured me on this entire experience.

I don't want this to sound like nostalgia rose-tinted goggles: "Ugh, you like Fire Force? I'm a person of culture, I enjoy classic works--like 2003's Soul Eater." That'd be pretty obnoxious, and I hope I'd be a little better than that. I can admit what didn't work in Soul Eater.

The original anime had its own flaws. For example, the Arachnophobia vs DWMA arc divides its attention so much between Maka, Kid, and Black Star so that, while Black Star's narrative feels like it makes real progress, it is diluted by how all of these stories are spread out. And Soul in the anime acts unnecessarily dickish towards Maka, whereas in the corresponding manga chapters he was supporting Maka without being intrusive. And of course Maka suddenly manifesting weapon powers and winning with the punch of courage, even if this many years later we can debate the merits to these choices, were divisive then and still remain controversial because of how abrupt it all feels.

And it's not as if Fire Force created flaws that weren't already there in the original Soul Eater and NOT mangas, in particular how the plots for both series sometimes feel they are just spinning their wheels without progressing characterization or plot, especially around the Sky Whale chapter and pretty much all of NOT.

But it is hard for me to get as excited as other people are over just two pieces of recent news that they are so desperate to read as proof a reboot is coming when, no, even if this is testing the waters for a reboot, the first goal is to just make more money off of our nostalgia for Soul Eater.

Yes, BONES coming out with 15th anniversary merchandise surprised me--but that is primarily just to generate new art they can put cheaply onto cheap raw materials (shirts and maybe tote bags and keychains?) and secondarily to test the waters for a reboot.

Yes, I am really surprised the companies involved negotiated to put Soul Eater stuff into a dull-looking Fire Force mobile game (...that was mean, but, jeez, I thought Fire Force looked uniform and boring already, making it a mobile game looks even worse--at least BONES and other companies made more varied artwork for the Bungo Stray Dogs game, and that is a simple drag-and-aim marble shooter, much less complicated gameplay than the Fire Force game). Sure, maybe that is testing the waters for a reboot, or winking at the audience to anticipate what they already know is coming at the end of the Fire Force anime. But this seems like crass "let's tap into people's Soul Eater nostalgia to get more downloads for our game."

And that's what really pisses me off about all of this. Don't get me wrong, this news has gotten a lot of attention on the shitty bird app, and I expect the shitty bird app has a bigger imprint online than Tumblr does. But I can go through Tumblr every day and see people adding more and more Soul Eater content. I see a fandom that, even if the frequency of posts is less, is still thriving. I don't see that with Fire Force.

I see this news--"OMG, new merch and a collaboration for the mobile game!"--as these flashes-in-the-pan that spur a ton of reactions to trend on the shitty bird app--then, crickets, things die down, no one talks about it for months. It's not a consistent engagement. Maybe that works from an economic standpoint: you sell a lot of merch all at once, then things die off, whereas fandom work is ongoing but also not making the creators any more money. But it is also why I find Soul Eater more endearing: at least people keep making stuff based on it, I rarely come across Fire Force stuff (and it's not like I don't look for it: I may despise how that series ended, but I still want to see how fan creators mostly improve upon what is wrong with that series).

So, TL, DR: I don't dispute that these two pieces of news are to test the waters to see whether an audience would be into a reboot. I find it surprising to get these both at the same time. I'm not disputing whether this can or can't lead to a reboot being announced. But Jesus Christ, calm down, this is just content to get you to buy more stuff, and it's content to prop up a lackluster Fire Force, and it just reinforces how much I hate how it seems like Fire Force depended so much on Soul Eater for nostalgia factor instead of standing on its own as a story.

[ofmermaidstories]

OOOOOH OOOOH ME ME ME ME🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️

Okay okay Mermie I gotta know……..#11, #17, and hmmm let’s do #27 (of course I wanna know them ALL but that a little too much hehe)

LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!!!✨🫶🏻💗

kimmyyy hello, hi, ily2. 💕🥹 ok lessgo.

11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on this blog how hard I rode for Tamora Pierce as a kid, lmao, and how like… formative that was. If you’ve never read her stuff it’s fantasy -adventure, with a dash of romance, kinda? The first series in that world is The Song of the Lionness, where Alana trades places with her twin brother so she can train as a knight and he can study as a mage but the first series of Pierce’s I ever read was the third, The Protector of the Small, which is like idk, twenty or so years after Alana’s made waves in the world? The main character, Keladry, is the first girl since Alana to train—openly—as a Knight, and like, whereas Alana had magic and literal Gods behind her, Kel has to struggle through it alone and just sort of make her way through this infamous boys club, and you know, old men that resent her (and Alana) and dslkfjsldkfj. idk!!! It made such an impact, you know? After I finished that series I backtracked to the next one my library had, which was The Immortals, which follows a girl called Daine who can understand animals and how she ends up learning how to control her magic under the tutelage of the most powerful mages in the country (there’s an age gap romance involved that one, as a head’s up.)

The fun part tho is that like, Immortals is set oh idk, a while after Lionness, and then Kel and her struggles happen a few years after Daine’s last book and all these characters like, show up in each others stories!!! 🥹 Like, they affect each other’s worlds!! They have weight, they create change!! Alana pretends to be a boy in order to train and ends up like, becoming the first female Knight, opening the land up to the Gods—and then a few years later Daine comes along, and with her wild magic tears the space between the land and the Gods wide open, sending monsters throughout the relam and making knights like Alana—someone who Daine now knows, thanks to life at the palace—scatter across the land to fight them. And then years after that you have Kel coming along, at like, what, twelve? Kel who wants to train as a knight because of the stories about Alana and her efforts in that war, Kel who grew up with brothers who like, rode off to also train as knights, who end up having to face the last of the monsters that ended up trapped in their world when the heavenly rift was closed by Daine. Daine, who’s still at the palace when Kel trains—who’s there to talk to her horse, because he’s not listening/cooperating with this young girl. This young girl who’s like, all alone in her training because the King—who’s kinda scary, who used to be a smart-assed prince who’s best friend was a girl pretending to be boy—has forbidden Alana from talking to her. And I’m not even like, scratching the surface in how they’re all interwoven LOL. They make up that whole world, they have lives outside of their own series and idk—I’ve just always liked that. 🥹 In the wake of finding Tamora’s stuff I ended up making up my own little fantasy story: it was just a rip-off of Tortall, lmao, but I napped out like a good three hundred years, roughly? Of like, interconnected generations and characters. 🥹 Like it literally starts with a random noble girl getting kidnapped by pirates and then two hundred years later her descendants marry onto the Throne like. LMAO. Tamora is a stand-out for me for like, truly instilling that interconnectivity and next-generation type storytelling in me. Her and the V.C. Andrew books, and then Juliet Marillier. The trifecta of fiction that arrived roughly the same time—just at the most perfect, impressionable age. 🥹

17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have?

tbh I can’t afford to have true rituals to write—I’d never get anything done, ever, LOL. A reoccurring habit I do have though is that I end up in the same coffee shop with the same order when I’m forcing myself to write, though!! Being outside kinda puts a timer on things, which ends up prompting me to write more than noodling around at home does sdlkfjlsdkfj.

27.  Favourite line/scene

out of my own writing? easy. the ending of something (just like this). the last scene, specifically. 🎆

[ratsandfashion]

Continuing to do well at not logging into my Tumblr account or looking at new boards. I did break a little last night and start scrolling through the blog of an RP partner though. I don't know why the desire to go back is hitting me NOW. I think maybe I've had enough time for the upsetti spaghetti, stress, and just general constant CONSUMING of my thoughts and staying glued to my phone to wear off, so now I'm just longing for the positive aspects again. And maybe I will be ready to do so again one day. But I know it's not time for that. Even if I was mentally ready, I'm too busy. I will check in with myself in June and see if I still want to join a board and have the time, or go back to that server, or what. But I don't think, as much as I want to, that I should go back to Tumblr. When you're at a server or a board, your interaction is limited to the people THERE, all of whom are people you know, with other people there to witness it, and admins to handle things (even if they don't always) if there is an issue. Whereas on Tumblr, you're exposed to all of Tumblr, some total rando can just find you and ruin your day out of nowhere, a post that made a dumb mistake or an unpopular take can spread like wildfire and lead assholes to your door, anon is a thing, harassment is a thing, etc. And there's just SO MUCH going on that even the good aspects actually weren't going on for me in the end; I got such a delighted high from positive interactions with people that I would constantly be checking my notifications on my phone, often staying up way too late, or trying to sneak a peek while driving. That's just inexcusably dangerous behavior, not just to myself but others. I feel like I may be more vulnerable to this addictive behavior because autistic (and addiction issues run in my family in general) but whatever the reason, I know that I don't think I could ultimately handle it any better if I went back. Which is a shame because the people I met were/are a DELIGHT, like such WONDERFUL folks, and I truly enjoyed our conversations and things we created together. Which, I guess is what I'm missing. But I know I gotta be firm with myself on this. And all things considered? Seven years was a pretty damn impressive run for an RP blog!

[tchallasbabymama]

Hey... this is just a vent I feel you would understand most:

for the past few years I've been drawing exclusively for Black Panther or other PoC fandoms/characters and I don't get much interaction on my works beyond 5 reblogs and 17 likes in the first few days and then radio silence even if I tag it profusely.

Now don't get me wrong, I still love Steve Rogers/ Bucky Barnes, but it's a movie from fucking 2014/2016 and I've still somehow got over a hundred notes in 2 days on a blog I made last month.

My undetailed Carson Shaw painting from ALOTO, a show most people haven't even heard about - still got 93 notes while my well thought out, well detailed Hobie Brown painting from a $689M grossing movie is at 31. Both are on the same blog.

I don't draw for the notes or the attention. I wasn't cranky about thinking that I was a small artist who was just one of those blogs who never got noticed much. But this got me feeling EMPTY.

Maybe it's not that deep and there are other factors why this is happening, but being a brown girl and seeing numbers like this makes me wanna puke.

Sis, it’s definitely that deep.

Artists and writers on this app that create content for nonwhite audiences are always struggling to get engagement. But fandoms tooootally aren’t racist [heavy sarcasm.]

This is why most of us become disillusioned with writing and making art and just sort of fizzle out. I’m a good ass writer, and my most popular works still barely get any engagement, whereas I’ve seen other writers who write white characters get thousands of likes/comments/reblogs. Off the top of my head, I think my highest performing oneshot has maybe 300 notes, and that one was part of a writing challenge with other writers. As far as series go, even my best one, Troubled Waters, has minimal engagement (I don’t think any singular chapter broke 100 notes) and it’s a goddamn masterpiece.

White supremacy is a bitch.

[king-fae]

6/100 days of code.

1.3.24

happy new year! im late, but it still applies

this is not a personal blog, so ill keep this brief: life happened, and c++ took a backburner. im not abandoning this project! in searching for inspiration to do this challenge before i started, i noticed that not many got very far- so ive decided in this time between the last post and now that i need to go at my own, albeit weird, pace. aka: do days as i can, and not do the catch-up thing i was doing. adhd can do that to ya. once im back on a schedule with school ill be able to incorporate c++ into my routine, whereas aside from my new job im flying solo which makes it historically difficult for me to get stuff done xP

where i left off a week ago, doing W3schools's C++ tutorial, i finished the function section, and today i began the classes section, which peaking at the section headers, made me excited. object-oriented programming is not something i learned in my intro to cs class with Python, and i know C++ does it well, so im pumped to be able to start programming with this.

unfortunately, though, the problem of it being a fairly informal educational resource does rear its head in this section, as im reading and studying this stuff, but can feel it not retaining. this website is better used as a reference resource, rather than a study one, but it is still worth studying imo as it breaks down concepts very simply. thus: im now beginning the C++ beginner course from exercism (an open source resource!!!!), which has a built in compiler, course material, and ability to get support on their discord. cool stuff! it took a minute for me to get acquainted with how it works, as i assumed the instructions were solely a repeat of the lesson, but there were. actual. instructions. beneath that lol so once i got that figured out i was able to properly solve the first exercise without issue.

the lesson material moves fast in its examples, but that is not reflected in the exercises, which was a relief as that impacted my first run, over-complicated tinkering i did before i realized there were actual values given i was supposed to input. theyre complicated but not too difficult to parse, which is a good show of what ill be learning to create as i progress.

final note though, as this is getting long: having W3schools as a resource while doing exercises material is very good, as while the first exercise i did went easily, the second one is jumping into if statements before ive had the chance to learn them from the website, so being able to refer to what they operate like was very helpful. this below is what saved me from error hell, as i had forgotten how to format them already:

im a goof and overcomplicate shit, so was not supposed to use if statements. oh well. this still helped to make it accurate lol

int myAge = 25;

int votingAge = 18;

.

if (myAge >= votingAge) {

.....cout << "Old enough to vote!";

} else {

.....cout << "Not old enough to vote.";

}