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Did some pixel art recently. There's also a trans pride Miku somewhere in wplace Poland, see if you can find them all.

I kinda like the half finished ones more.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review (full spoilers)

Overall this a rough unpolished game but very interesting and innovative I really like it. With how popular it is I hope it spawns a generation of games. While it is good it is also massively overhyped, this game is riddled with problems of every kind.

The combat system sucks it relies on reaction commands (parry, counter) to cover the giant holes in it's combat system which is oretty boring and simple. E33 is an action game with a thin coat off turn-based colored paint. The turn based system itself is overly simply and lacking in depth. The pictos menu sucks. The menus in general need to be streamlined. I can't find anything. It's too easy to overlevel, the end game area should have been level scaled, especially the final boss. You should have to fight your actual party member kit.

I forgive the weird pacing and tone shifts to a parent's grief not mixing with a child's painted world. But it is still not good.

The story content is suprisingly low, it's not quite sparse but I wouldn't call this a story heavy game (the story is heavy as in emotional, there just isn't much there. The story beats are expedition sets off, gets nearly wiped, find Maelle in weird mansion, pick up Sciel, Gustave killed, Verso joins, kill painted Renoir, kick Aline out of the painting, painter Renoir gormages Lumiere, Maelle regains her Alicia memories and power, kick Renoir out of the painting, Verso and Maelle fight. There's one major twist otherwise the story is very simple. Which is fine I think this story as outlined is fine, however the presentation is lacking and barebones. By focuses on cutscenes which require expensive animation and voice acting E33 really knee capped itself and was forced to cut scenes that feel like they should be there.

This game desperately needed some bridging scenes and for some of the side content to be streamlined and mandatory. All of Act 3 hinges of Maelle having a found family arc with Lune and Sciel in Act 1 and 2, which never happens. They get like 1 scene otherwise Lune and Sciel have like 8x more interaction with Verso who they have less of a reason to talk to than Maelle. Sciel gets her character established in Act 3 side content which is an abysmally bad writing decision. She should have been established immediatley on and after introduction. Instead she's just there for the majority if the game with no stakes or emotional connections. Lune, Sciel, Maelle, and Gustave all know each other but they don't act like it, and instead of scenes together it's all scenes of each of them with Verso. One of the worst decisions of the game. Since this undermines Maelle's actions when she says that she's fighting to save the canvas because she's bonded with the people here. What bonds? That never happened.

The social links were painfully bad. The weird switch between omnescient 3rd person narration and dialogue was jarring every time. The writers use these to lore dump character background and this was a poor way to exposition dump, this information should have been integrated into the story or side quests.

Despite my complaining E33 has many amazing highs there's so many brilliant moments. The whole prologue relly, Gustave's death, Lumiere's gormage, the epilogues, etc. They're really well set up to build and release emotion. Quite dense with all the meaning that is implied but not said. Just count the number of times the camera has Verso in the background looking away it realy sells without words how conflicted and untrustworthy he is. This game portrays uncertainly and ambiguity very well and Verso exemplifies this.

Despite Maelle being the main character, Verso is probably the most interesting. He's a very conflicted man who badly lies constantly. So you've got a lot of juicy inner conflict but because he wars with himself his actions also become unpredictable you never know which side in him will win out. He ends up really morally grey. He's deeply emotional and also so secretive and put in a situation where he doesn't know who/what he should prioritize/protect. Maelle also has pretty good character writing. And this is her story but the game is less about her as a person so much as her situation. Internal vs. external vonflict. A world outside where she cannot escape her guilt and that her beother died for her. A world where she has been silenced, blinded, scarred. A world that she has given up on finding any joy or meaning in. And then she gets amnesia and loses her most important person. But she has a chance to bring him back to have everything that has been taken from her and more. Together the form the core of the game's character writing which is a good thing since they're the deutagonists and most important characters.

Gustave has about as much characterization as Maelle and that is praise for how poignantly writen his character is. He's immediately established and sympathetic. He's awkward and soft but also protective and nuturing. He's humanized immediately through his relationship with Sofia and feels real with all his connections to people in Lumiere. And then during Expedition 33 we get to see him nerd out over past Expeditions and tech, but also always be aware of Maelle who he's taken under his wing. The devs did an excellent job at making his death hurt. Sadly every other character gets left by the wayside. Monoco and Esquie have decent writing but just so little of it they end up one note. Although Monoco probably has the best social links. Sciel is just badly written for most of the game she has 0 personality and is just there. Most of her character writing is in those god aweful social links and those are only with Verso so we never see her an a person with the other characters. Lune is alright actually but suffers the same problems as Sciel to a lessrr extent.

Environments were beautiful, excellent art direction for this game. Also just cool visual ideas from underwater, to the red forest, the frames. The game is visually stunning in general. The cutscenes were well directed and animated.

Not sure how I feel about the initial premise being completely dropped. The game starts with this looming existential threat. Lumiere grinding at this force bigger than humanity (literally). It's about people mourning the shortening time left, their tomorrows are finite. How they calculate how many years they will gave with their children. How they never grow old anymore. Then the reveal at the end of Act 2 was really facinating and I loved it but the story does hard pivot to being about the family drama and tragedy of the Dessandre family. So I can see why people who loved the first story moght not love the second. Luckily I like both, however I do think they could have been better integrated. The motif of "tomorrow comes" gets dropped entirely, yeah sure Maelle says it but by that point it has lost it's narrative weight and doesn't mean anything.

In a lot of ways the game feels unfinished but non seo much as the forshadowing that goes no where. Repeatedly thorugh the game many characters (from painted Alicia, to Renoir and Clea) emphasize how they believe in Maelle/Alicia's ability to forge her own path, that she is in charge of her life (the painter of her canvas), and that if anyone can find a solution different from Aline and Renoir it's her. The game repeately emphasizes that the player should Take a Third Option. It's excellent forshadowing for a hidden 3rd ending, which doesn't actually exist, which is incredibly fustrating writing wise.

An ambitious and innovative game with many soaring highs but also plunging lows. Overall I loved it and look forward to what the studio comes up with next.

Read more E33 thoughts here

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clair obscura expedition 33 liveblogging full spoilers

oh so it works by twos. Say this year 45 is painted and you are 44. Next year 44 is painted but you are now 45. So it's these 2 year cohorts that get disintigrated together. Prologue was good I liked it.

Love the soundtrack so far.

maelle main character coded. special girl with connection to nevrons weird dreams with the antagonists. does that make us the mentor character (grizzled old man at 32).

ok so silly adventure time with the wacky paintbrush people

oh god now there's 3 of them. Maybe I'm face blind but i did think white haired man and gustave looked similar and now there's this dude (verso I think). I assume this will all make sense in hindsight. also thanks youtube for the first e33 result being death scene. "renoir wants to live forever" I am guessing this is a blatant lie. what is he after. gustave 2.0 lol aww i liked gustave. maelle gets a scene with esquire and verso but not sciel or lune?? weird choice although i dont think either would be very good at comforting grieving teenagers. is esquire our mount now.

yeah they totally replaced gustave. another fluffy dark haired man with scruff but he's like 10% hotter and super mysterious. i want gustave back! also i liked the earlier tone of expeditioners charting a new world. vs now it's follow verso who knows everything but refuses to tell. Really should tie him up and interrogate him harder.

why is the damage cap so low usually you don't reach damage cap until endgame. Also modern system can handle way bigger numbers than 999.

is this like an extended and very cosmically messy family feud. gestral maelle? maybe im hearing things but i can hear "alicia" and "Verso" in the song lyrics as the house burns.

these social links are kinda bad. they're pretty aimless what the hell is this dialogue. also gonna be real i don't like verso as the pov character/protagonist I'd rather be playing as maelle or lune. or maybe if these scene were with characters other than verso that be ok. like sciel desperately needs characterization have her talk with maelle (her scenes with lune were desperately needed by the game). instead of an inferior copy of persona social links I'd rather have fire emblem style supports so all the party members can talk to each other. the placement is also pretty awkward since the camps happen right after major story events like why aren't they talking about what just happened. These would have worked better if like in pokemon swsh (or dragon age origins) there was a button to camp while in the overworld so that theses convos could happen while sidequesting.

I can't tell if verso is a tortured soul and thus a mess or he if is actively manipulating the party. could be aspects of both

we're having casual sex in this game???? ok monoco and verso i can totally believe.

ok so the cracked puppet people there's a sister with connection to maelle and now it's revealed that the one following maelle around is the dad with connection to renois. in the paintress is the mom then where is verso's puppet guy.

Things both make a lot more and a lot less sense. Up until defeating the paintress i was going to say this game is overhyped and kinda mid. the world feels disjointed with like snow area and underwater but not area and sand area, and there's these massive narrative mood swings between very serious story about grief and very silly gestrals. also this game was advertised as belle epoche and we only got a tiny bit in the lumiere prologue. but the mom and dad have magic painting powers and im assuming lumiere was a painting. and who is clea? oh did real verso die in the fire? oh is this why verso didn't have a cracked puppet thing. they're aline's paintings. there's a feud between painters and writers well there goes my theory that this is irl we're in alternate paris but at least it isn't alternate alternate paris anymore.

i take back the monoco sex joke.

hmm oldest creations.. ah so it was never the paintress causing the gormage but renoir trying to get her to stop painting, well painting renoir.

I havent been this excited for plot since theopening with sophie and gustave.

Real renoir isn't wrong alcia is essentially trying to slow suicide by staying in verso's canvas. He would lose 2 of his children.

Oh I just realized my interpretation might be different from others here is what i think happened. In some version of France the Writers' and Painters' Guilds are feuding whatever that means. Alicia gets taken advantage of to set a trap for the ... Dessante?? family. They maybe caused the fire? Verso sacrifices himself to save Alicia's life but she is still maimed by the fire. Aline drowns in grief and goes into Verso's canvas to recreate their family. Renoir goes in after Aline and the game begins. Renoir is trying to stop Aline's power by killing her creations and that causes the gormage and paintress. Their conflict over the canvas causes the Fracture. The Dessendres while in the canvas world look like cracked puppet people. After about 50 canvas years Act III's prologue happens, Clea and Alisia hide Verso's canvas, Alicia enters but gets painted over by Aline and become fictional Alisia, losing her memories and living out 16 years as Maelle. Which doesn't quite explaine masked white haired Alisia in Acts 1-2 my best guess is that she got split. Anyways Expedition 33 happens, Act 1-2 happen and the expeditioners take down the paintress (Aline) kicking her out of the canvas. This means Renoir can begin erasing the canvas starting with all the Lumiere people. Verso remembers he's not a real boy and Maelle-Alisia merge.

Which just made me realize Alisia has 16 irl years of memories and 16 Verso's canvas memories so 32 total which is the age of the 33rd expeditioners. I sort of just assumed Verso/canvas Verso was also 32 on zero evidence just vibes. Which is a pretty big age gap but assuming Clea is the middle child it makes a bit more sense.

The axons are renoir's version of their family?? Huh I did not catch that. Analysis brain overloading. The masks one represents verso?? He who guards truth with lies. WhT does that mean!

Maelle/alicia is definitely the main character why are we even playing as verso. Now that the mystery is gone maelle's relationships with lune and sciel are far more interesting than theirs are with verso. Like yeah it's probably because they were the most recent but given maelle's importance (she's basically a creator god to this world) and how she bonded with these two enough to being them back first, that's the important relationship not lune going "i knew you were sketchy" towards verso. Anyways saying that maelle painting lune and sciel first is fine but the devs should have developed their relationships more if they wanted to go this route. Otherwise why didn't she paint gustave? Maelle is the one driving the plot she's the one making decisions that matter she's got the deep lore connections and the stakes.

I do want to clarify that the reveal has made me love verso. Before, yeah yeah he's conventionally attractive and packing heat. Whatever i don't care as a person he came off as so... he was just so... Slippery like non-commitive he wants to help e33 but also doesnt. Fence sitter. There wasn't much to his personality. I suspected he was a tortured soul with an angsty backstory. But now the painting aspect is really interesting. Made by Aline her "best work", denied by renoir, but alisia confirms his personhood seperate from dead verso. Alisia is still his sister but he isn't her brother. Extremely interesting. Does make me wonder about canvas verso and renoir they have either similar or identical memories to the outside versions and know they're in the canvas did they know they were painted? I should rewatch that. I also did have a pet hypothesis that verso never existed which I think now is wrong but it's just verso seemed like a weird name. alisia, aline, renoir, clea all sound like real names, but verso didn't so maybe im just unfamiliar with french names

Rewatching scenes. Hmm back in old lumiere who was the female painter alisia hid behind? Aline? There's so many versions! The painters, renoir's axons, aline's versions. Ok now im confused. If masked alicia seen in act 2 is aline's painting why are some of aline's paintings white and some flesh colored. did aline paint herself into the world as well to live in the manor. Hmm no no that is out of canvas aline. So alisia is the odd one out the only painted that looks like a paintersona. Painter renoir/curator, aline's painted renoir. Aline/paintress, renoir's axon aline. Aline's painted verso, renoir's axon verso. Aline's painted alisia that looks like a painter alisia, painter alisia who for painted over by aline and became maelle. And canvas verso did always know he was painted and that og versi is dead. oh they're color coded renoir's power is red, aline's white, alicia's yellow. hmm why didn't canvas verso get wiped by the gormage like all of aline's other paintings? maelle's power preserved him even without her knowing? renoir spared him? hmm and alicia's gormage petals aren't red so awakening her memories isn't renoir's powers acting. they look white so aline releasing her? or it could be cenematic greyscale? i don't know.

lune and sciel are taking this remarkably well. everything you know was created as some woman's out of control grief coping mechanism and that girl you were traveling with is her daughter and also a god who can shape/create/destroy this world.

the thing that tips me in renoir's favor is 2 things. maelle by choosing the canvas robs him of another child. he has to has to witness 2 of his children die. second is that the canvas world is fragile. not that it isn't real but it can so easily be changed by the will of an external factor. i made this same argument for stuff like persona 5 royal and naruto, that what sets them apart from smt 3's personal paradise ending is how fragile the former are. Clea could or anyone else could always destroy verso's canvas or paint over it. I guess a third thing is that it would make verso's sacrifice meaningless which is a complicated thought for me. because on one hand the gift of life and choice is just that, given without burden it is maelle's choice to live in the canvas while her physical body withers away. verso died so maelle could live not so that she could be robbed of choice. but on the other hand it feels bad man. Aline was clearly painting out of pain and escapism and it would be easy to say maelle is doing the same but it's not quite the same. 1 maelle did grow up in lumiere she talks about having 1 sets of memories 2 lives lived. Second is that there is an element of love and joy to her painting. An element because maelle does want to leave her love as aline. She loves the dessendres but seeing them is painful. It speaks to a real thing that the boundary is blurry between wanting simething because it brings you joy and wanting something because you want to escape something rlse. In the lived moment these two can be impossible to distinguish which is well reflected in e33 where the game "both sides" the situation pretty well. I usually think it's a bad idea to run away from pain although silver spoon nakes me question that if running away isnt the better option if you end up somewhere better instead of engaging in emotional masochism and wallowing in your own pain. I don't want verso's canvas and all the people in it to be destroyed. Paint life or paint death? If only maelle had gotten alisia's letter or maybe that wouldn't have made a difference.

original verso is haunting the narrative. we know nothing about him directly. we know line made a masterwork is recreating him in the canvas. that to renoir verso guarded truth with lies (still don't know about this) and that in the end he died so maelle could live. every character is thinking or talking about him but we no nothing of him as a person. we spend the entire game in the world he painted except with one brief instance in the family manor. we see him in portraits and dreams and memories but we never see him

Does maelle have the maturity nd strength to leave the canvas of her own volition. To leave it undestroyed without losing herself in it? Also if she isn't killed she'll live to see both ww1 and ww2. Oof.

back to the game. situationship break up sex? really sciel? I wish Lune talked about her parents to sciel instead of verso like sciel would better be able to relate to growing up under the shadow of the paintress and expeditions. the other reason i hate having verso in lune and sciel's support convos is that he doesn't contribute much he just "..." while they monologue and exposition dump their backstories. he has like 1 meaningful sentence to contribute each scene but otherwise could be replace by a lamp. wow do we need a suicide counter for this game? that's gustave, sciel, maelle, verso.

it is kinda messed up that canvas verso almost never spends time with canvas alisia the entire game he's been focused on maelle. ouch.

that's another one of the suicide counter. clea painted over the clea that aline painted and she's the grey-gold. im done making sense of these design choices.

Painted Alisia wants to end and be erased. This choice forms a fascinating parallel to out of canvas alicia/maelle. Maelle wants to stop the canvas being erased and she wants to stop existing in reality and only live in the canvas. Both don't want to exist in a world weighted by grief where they are scarred and voiceless but do so in opposite ways. Painted Alisia leaves painted verso all alone. Maelle wants to stay with him and the others. I wonder what would have happened if painted alisia's letter had reached maelle. Would maelle have been able to find a third way? a way to save both families?

So there's 3 alicias maelle, aline's alisoa forever scared, and renoir's alicia hoping and reaching for a piece of the sky. Verso is such a dirty liar, he can lie about not being able to save Gustave! And he's not even good at it he's so abvious when he lies! I am growing fond of this morally grey man.

Truth and lies. Creator and creation. Reality and fiction. What I think e33 is trying to say is that the canvas people are real people with thoughts and emotions and life even if they are painted. This means that e33's world is a way is like greek myth the gods are extremely powerful (omnipotent basically for the canvas people. They are the painters) but also extremely human (falliable, emotional, caught up in their own personal problems). And what happens to a person when you give them absolute power over life and death.

Everyone in this game seems 2 hours away from an emotional breakdown.

Ok clea's trials definitely imply there's like a hidden 3rd ending that isn't losing yourself to the painted world (alinel nor trying to destroy/control it (renoir). Future dlc?

White petals... aline's power let's canvas verso into the core? Why were esquir, monoco, sciel, and lune destroyed by renoirs power before the fragment of verso's soul was destroyed? And when the versos were erased those were also red petals. Out of canvas verso was almost 27 when he died. Where did the 32/33 come from? Was it just to parallel alicia? In a life to love lune gustave sciel turn to red petals, canvas verso white, maelle yellow.

a life to paint. Hmm a lot of ambiguous face close ups. And the final closeup of maelle with the painter powers and verso hesitating at the piano almost looking like he'll slam his hands down then back to maelle then he plays. Also very big contrast that Alicia's introduction has her establishing canvas Verso as a seperate person from original Verso but here as he begs to be erased she calls him "brother". Guess he did get erased in a sense.

I was expecting both endings to be happy but both are ambiguous. In a life to love is maelle/alicia still suicidally depressed? We dont know. In a life to paint is she repainting verso constantly to be compliant? We don't know! My brain is exploding.

Would e33 have been a more effective story if gustave had been brought back in act 3? It always felt weird that maelle brought back sciel and lune immediately but not gustave. Establishing relationships between maelle lune and sciel was poorly done as in it wasnt done enough where as gustave is maelle's main motivation in act 2. It could have been interesting having him play the emotional support role in act 3 for maelle.

Hey if out of canvas Verso was 26 and they've had dog monoco since he was a kid (like 8), just how old is dog monoco because he's still there after Verso dies. Magic dog lives 18 years.

For a game that so heavily forshadows a 3rd ending (painted alicia, clea, etc.) it's really weird there wasn't a third choice ending. All the way in Act 2 the letter painted Alicia writes for Verso and Maelle encourages her to find another way that isn't Aline's drowning in grief escapism to the canvas nor Renoir's denial and destruction of the canvas. Then there are more little hints in the game which culminate in painted Clea also saying she believes in Maelle/Alicia's potential as a painter to do the Great and Impossible and Wonderous (grasp a piece if the sky), not letting anyone else define her. And then in the end you have to choose between Aline's method or Renoir's method.

I still stand by Maelle is the main character and protagonist it's her actions and relationships that drive the plot. Overall in the end I think I'm ok with her never being the point of view playable character we always see her from the outside. Not sure what to make of it still

Read my review here

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it's a shame za looks to be action instead of arceus' hybrid combat. Fast paced real time are the things i hate most. I might have tolerated hybrid but i guess im skipping za entirely. Which is sad since i never got to play xy and never had access to a mega evolution game. I guess I'll get my mega gardevoir in pokemon go... (I also hate the combat in this game)

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Amaury Guichon (chocolate guy) does it again

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SPOILERS. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy liveblogging 1: 0, romance, killing.

aw i'm actually invested in these two, she's gonna die isn't she. this is perfect horror colorful mascot characters that are just a little bit off. for a blood aesthetic magical girl transformation sequence the outfit is boring but at least he got free eyeliner. (is that a police uniform?)

wait. despair waking up on a school desk. is this actually danganronpa i know nothing of this game.

Siri sus af. "I don't know how any of this works, here's a convenient enemy to fight" blatant lies. And the commanders look suspiciously like the black/grey growth of the left chest of the students.

Well that's a subversion siri dies. Wasn't sure what was going to happen with Hiroko. Also they all just gave up figuring out what happened to her. They were going to search for her the next day got invaded and seemingly all forgot she existed.

Everything continues to be sus. Food was spiked, woke up 2 days later to the fridge burned down. Got lured outside and ambushed and then knocked out for 4? days.

We got more weirdos! Hey darumi finally has someone to match her freak.

I'm still not convinced everything isn't a simulation or that the tokyo residential complex was a simulation and not karua isn't helping.

Alternate universes. God damn it.

The memory thing is a recurring motif. From shouma's repressed memories to speculating on amnesiac karua. Human experiments and those pods in the memory are the same as those in the school. They were all experiments in the pods. Fake memories or simulated residential district hypothesis gains support.

There really are a lot of unesessary flashback what is this naruto.

ngl the persuading kako she can't fight feels real bad like yeah let's just tank her self confidence and enforce learned helplessness and codependency. Idk if intentional but thos overlaps highly withtcurrent right wing rhetoric aiming control and subserviate women with the excuse that it's to protect them. So glad kako sticks to her decision. Suprised ima didnt snap i was he did a quicker turn around than i expected.

Hmm is hemoanima having an increasing physical toll?

New conspiracy theory nozomi is a robot that'a why she cant use hemoanima. Moko is an alternate moko

But they didnt find ima's transmitter. Why was the signal coming from that location?

Wild

This game is a slow build I didn't get a strong impression of it until the end of the first 100 days when things got interesting. This second 100 days so far is more interesting. It took a long time for the atory to build.

Takumi is so bad at this time traveler thing.

Someone get me out of this het romance hell i dont even like kurara. I'd reset but im watching a crystaaaahl's playthrough. Nozomi is the vampire huh. Save me. Is takumi not talking to anyone else for 75 days? How isolating. I'm cheering on the invaders. Wipe us out. The story has really stalled we're just getting crumbs from the invaders like humans attacked first. Flipping back and forth between the serious invader plot and the empty romance sections are really jarring. The momentum was so good going into the second 100 days and then it cratered! I am amused that kako isnt part of this because ima would slaughter you.

Despite not seeing much of him yet i think yugamu is becoming my favorite character. He'a so gay he's barely functioning. He's a freak AND a romantic. I actually like the organ haori. Second's dynamic is lesbian polycule + gay goth

If a lack of hemoanima stop revival, why can't someone donate some blood? Is hemoanima isperson specific then absorbing cloack dude should enable it.

I was thinking about 13 sentinels' story pacing and structure and how reveals are dealt with. All through route 0 there's some sabatour or traitor who ends up being eito. If nozomi had been revealed as an outsider then she would have looked incredibly sus and might have helped route 0 be more interesting. Then again dr2 has a similar plot point. Also whether nozomi reveals her past or not should be her decision not takumi's yeah sure we can talk to her about itbut she knows keeping quiet will be unpopular let her choose her consequences.

Eito: haha you can tell me all your worries. And then takumi falls for that blatant information fishing attempt and spills the entire situation.

One of these routes has to ve a killing game. Darumi won't stop talking about one.

The revivo-matic is so blatantly a plot device to move things forward this is like the 3rd time it's broken

Read the kodaka q&a (note s&m in japanese and chinese net culture can mean sadist masochist but also dominant submissive). Kodaka responds with "both" for yugamu and takumi. Yugamu's favorite animal is humans and he wants one for a pet. Hiruko likes eating wine and bread (is she a depressed frenchie? She cant even legally drink). And then eito deliberately ruining his eyes so he doesn't have to see humans. Man weibo loves darumi. Hiruko wears black and eito white.

Minus maybe takumi and moko everyone in this game has a "no friends" vibe. 100 line is just the most friend-less people you've ever seen locked in a cage together.

Is this invader hint the killing game? "Normal" guy takumi be like "i have to convince everyone to kill each other". Some of takumi's thoughts are pretty uh, out there. He'a so normal. Guilt tripping takemaru is messed up. Takumi! Stop being mean to Takemaru! Wow takumi sucks takemaru is right this could end with everyone horribly dying to each other for nothing.

If you can't hurt the sponsor why not try to imprison or restrain them. Can you try to trap the bees or kill them. And that suit are they a timeline hopper

Happy Pride month hiroko turned darumi into her personal puppy. And yugamu is here this route is saved.

Did takumi think everyone had forgotten about eva? She's clearly a commander whether she has a mask or not. Has no one thought to investigate that mask for like technology?

Yugamu is so caring and consideate for both Takimi's physical and mental health he really is holding takumi together despite takumi trying to spiral.

Wow hiruko actually cares about darumi. I keep waiting for her to die again she's being too useful.

Yugamu jumping to play bad cop to takumi's good cop to get tsubasa's engineering skills necessary to analyze the suit. Yugamu really is like im going to save takumi whether he like it or not

The bomb seems unesessary to take down the sponsor same with declaring a duel. Ambush them take firing positions and use rifles. Or if the bees show up you can still use a machine gun while in the suit. Writers just chose this to keep their identity secret. My wild guess is au eito.

Why didn't takumi tell yugamu and tsubasa that he woke up in the strange room even if he doesnt remember getting injected by the 2 suit wearers. Also this is the second time no one remembers hiruko. First time i can excuse as no one likes her given she said fight or die but them all forgetting her a second time is strange. Well wonder if this will be the plot for the next 70 days.

Why didn't someone shoot the bee on sight. I wonder if the sponsor actually has multiple bodies or it's a group pretending to be one person. And this is why the insindiary was so contrived. What's interesting is that they kept takumi alive. I don't buy that bravery excuse, takumi is important to them somehow just like hiruko knows he's important but why. Main character plot armor. The invader hunt is pushing them to be aggressive and wipe out the invaders but on the other hand ot's killed kurara and hiruko (still don't know about gaku). And killing the only people who can do the job seems counter productive but maybe they calculated the costs of the people most likely to resist. Well darumi will be happy the killing game is back on.

Choosing to focus of repairing the escape pod and escape the school is a bad idea. Tsubasa already said they have to find qb liquid which is no where and then rebuild the entire pod that's going to take most of the remaining days (or whatever the plot demands I guess). But more importantly whoever sabotaged it once can do so again and reset your repair progress back to zero. Of course there's also the ethics of leaving everyone behind. Didn't nozomi become takumi's reason for existence in route 0 with the revel that she has karua's scars and remembers "takky"? And he's just going to leave her to die.

Damn shouma really the only one willing to be subversive until the end. And now he's dead. This escape pod plan looking more dubious by the second how are you going to sneak everyone on to there without the bees noticing, i doubt they haven't already noticed.

"i'm sorry i broke our promise and didn't give you back your mask, pleae forgive me" then proceeds to still not give mask back. For all hiruko says takumi is kindhearted sometimes he really isn't.

He's trying to take everyone on the escape pod. Uh does he think the sponsor won't notice with that many people acting suspiciously. Also someone already knows about the pod. Also i guess he forgot about the whole save humanity from the vile invaders thing since an empty school won't be able to repel them. Bye bye fire boy o7

[semi-imaginary-place]

Takeaways from listening to NPR this week: the Iranian Revolution is happening to America right now, and Gen-Z are have a point about being afraid of heterosexual intercourse.

PBS, NPR, and the National Park system are some of the best things America has ever come up with so of course the molding orange had to destroy them. NPR will probably survive in some form but gutted. I mean they currently do daily news and tons of reporting, interviews, and analysis and I imagine 90% of that is going to go away. Same with PBS they have their current licenses but I don't know what their costs are. will any of them keep the lights on? Rangers are working 7 jobs to keep parks open and at this point they should just close them (many already are), let the American public really personally experience what budget cuts mean.

I only vaguely knew of the Iranian Revolution before this, that it's the reason Iran has a nutjob reactionary extremist government and that it used to be better. I'd heard of the American diplomat hostage thing but never connected the two dots. So here's a summary of what I learned. In the 70's Iran had a monarchy that had been installed by the British colonial government a few decades earlier. As far as brutal dictatorships go it was ok, middle of the road in terms of paranoia, incompetence, and brutality. The thing about the last (and second) Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was that he tried of modernize the country and bring it closer to Europe and the US. Iranians hated him. The economic movement meant that a lot of men moved from the countryside to the cities (Tehran in particular). These were deeply religiously conservative rural hicks (think the Taliban) who had never left their birth villages and they were seeing cosmopolitan women with bare ankles for the first time. They lost their minds. And all that got funneled into anger towards women, and foreigners (classic I know). They didn't like their modernizing country and alliance with the US, they wanted to go back to the 1300s. Anyways Pahlavi got increasingly paranoid and authoritarian and unstable and swung wildly from brutal crackdowns and torture to instant forgiveness and bribes. And during this the US was in Iran completely clueless. The US didn't hire anyone who spoke Farsi, and they were only spying on the Russians, 0 information gathering about what was rapidly happening in Iran. Extremely incompetent.

Point is countries can rapidly backslide. Liberal democracy is not destiny, everyone has to work for it and then work to maintain it. And the biggest threat to democracy and civil society is religious extremism. The Middle East in general is a case study in this. If measures aren't put in place to ensure tolerance, secularism, and justice. You know who wins? The populist extremist who is stupid but extremely loud. This is how you destroy a country. For anyone old enough to remember the Arab Spring which was a series of revolutionary movements in Arab countries, well a lot of those countries ended up worse off afterwards. A lot of it (Libyia) devolved into civil war along religious lines. Increased sectarianism. Islamist extremist movements rose to fill in the gaps of society and gained a lot of power. Which brings us to Syria which only months ago concluded (hopefully) the civil war which started during the Arab Spring. HTS says (they prommy!) that they aren't going to devolve into a repressive Islamist extremist regime. Time will tell. Syrians (and the world) really seem so hopeful about the new regime and it really reminds of when I was in highschool during the Arab Spring. That naive hopefulness budding from ignorance and misunderstanding of the realities of revolution. See like many kids I had a rather simplified vision of revolution, a Persona 5-esque idea of revolution if you will where revolution was for an aesthetic than real political actions and consequences. Reality of course is much messier, even the most glorified of revolutions like the French Revolution resulted in an imperial dictatorship and a European land war. Indian independence had an current of Hindu-nationalism (and so you're screwed if you aren't one of the many many groups that aren't Hindu). So I hope the best for Syria but I doubt this is going be a sugar coated happy ending.

Which brings us to the West. Europe, North America, Australia, none of these places are immune to backsliding, just this week the UK ok'd surveillance and censorship. The Iranian Revolution is a warning to what will happened if you let religious extremists (Christian in this case but religious reactionaries all follow the same patterns) take over your government. This doesn't just happen to "third-world" non-white countries, it is happening right now to the United States of America. Backslider will happen if you do not stop it.

On to the next topic, this episode was about why Gen-Z are having less sex, and I feel like it slightly misses the mark. Better sex education about all the dangers of sex is a small part yes, as well as the ongoing trend of digitally mediated social isolation the lack of ways to meet people etc., but the growing cultural gender gap is much larger than I think the producers realize. Gen-Z are just as interested in sex which leads to a lot of porn (and I suspect live-streaming) and a lot more hardcore porn and kink. The problem isn't kink but when a bunch of stupid young men think porn is real, porn is not real. The podcast mentions women who get choked and or beaten unprompted and unasked for on the fist date. Quite reasonable for that to turn off anyone from ever dating men again. choking or violence is fine if you negotiate that beforehand but you don't just assault someone out of no where. I don't know what the cause effect relationship is, but at the same time less (heterosexual) sex is happening, there's also been a massive surge in women identifying as bisexual over the last decade. I can't be bothered to find it it's somewhere in Gallup or Pew but in the last decade the main increase in queer identification in the US has been an increase in bisexual women (as % compared to the total population). I mean if men suck so much (or the possibility of meeting a shitty person is much higher among men) yeah why not date another fellow woman.

There's a third podcast out there about how being single is neutral and better than being in a bad relationship and the increasing economic and social freedom of women in the last century. Why chain yourself to a man that will just drag you down. There was also a part about how a lot of young men lack role models and so turn to the only popular public who identify like they do (straight, white, cis, male) and a lot of them are right wing grifters. Young men feel attacked when confronted by leftists (rightfully) about how harmful toxic masculinity is and take it as a personal attack on them. But instead of deconstructing the toxic masculinity they participate in they run crying into the arms of the people that reaffirm that they deserve better than everyone for random luck of the circumstances of their birth. So there's this growing cultural divide between young men and women where young men and jumping onto the backlash against recent progressive gains. And that's the root of things the podcast skimmed over. I was disappointed the producers didn't interview a trans man. Who else is better equipped to answer how to dismantle toxic masculinity and build a constructive and healthy form of masculinity than a man who had had to do just that. It is ridiculous so much of current American masculinity is about harming yourself and others around you, tough guy stuff like making yourself illiterate and uneducated because reading is for girls (it also makes you easy to manipulate by grifters and grifter politicians), tobacco, alcohol, never see a doctor, express emotions with violence. There's a reason historically and currently men have shorter lifespan averages, not all of it is hormone system, a lot of it is lifestyle. "Not all men" true. But there comes a point when the odds are so stacked against you that it's understandable why you don't want to go berry picking in the minefield

[semi-imaginary-place]

disco elysium notes 1

There's something about seeing someone at rock bottom that makes me feel better about my life, things could always get worse. Just this man with hank hill ass wandering around in only socks and a tie, the swollen soppy flesh sock, how does this man have a job. At "I want to have fuck with you" I laughed so hard I started crying, and then I was just crying.

Wait. We're not in some weirdly frenchy city on earth. Where are we. There's no government. This game really was made for leftists. I've met to many anarchists. And like no you're ideas dont work they aren't grounded in reality. Also cryptozoologist just means cryptid conspiracist but who knows what's real in this world.

Of course the fascism vision quest is the gayest thing in the game. Not even sarcastic here fascism often has extreme latent homoeroticism while in the same sentence condemning it.

That there is no disco cop copotype is immensely disappointing but i suppose harry tried disco cop and look where it ended him: the begining of the game. Maybe I'm reading too much into things but an interpretation of the skill system is that getting amnesia levels of drunk wiped his eccentricities and made him relatively normal and stable and through the game leveling up skills harry regains his character flaws. So the game seems to be headed towards another mental disaster. I wonder what kim's skills are high in authority, composure, and espirit de corps.

how are there so many ttrpg players in martinaise that they can support a dedicated dice maker in the poorest part of a wrecked city. there's something special about her the last surviving business in group of failed businesses, she's living in the walls and doesn't really go out.

Suprised there's been no police critique so far game is critical of every other power system in this world from the eu to multinational corporations. The main thing so far is that there isn't a police presence in martines so understaffing. How does harry still have a job if he's always like this blackout emotional drunk, wildly suicidal, trashed a hostel and didn't do any investigating for 3 days. Is police brutality or corruption not a thing in europe? I thought the italian police were hella corrupt. The most that's happened is his coworkers treat him like a joke.

Mob union. Communo anarchist hell

i like joyce even if she is a dirty libertarian. im suprised she has the patience to entertain the wacky amnesiac guess she likes to talk

oh there it is the rcm can just kill people and take bribes and 1000 is low for a serious crime when companies are out here making billions. and then i remember harry is going around robbing people, beating them up and generally harassing them.

Harry is so obviously a masochist submissive it hurts. He wants to be dominated so bad.

Ah so he was good at his job that explains how harry got away with so much for so long and 20% of the vehicular budget. Wonder why he declined promotion twice. Was it really to keep doing field work?

[semi-imaginary-place]

monark notes 2

huh so there's flexibility on what order you do the story arcs after pride. Like either lust or wrath and possibly others can be done next.

I was not expecting trap in the soundtrack but it's good.

I've semi joked that monark is an edgier tokyo ghoul style p5 but i'm actually liking monark's writing more. Like monark dives head first into actual social issues relevant to japanese high schoolers and doesn't dumb things down to kids rule adults suck. Part of this is that monark deals more with peer-peer relationships but overall so far there's more depth to it's narratives and topics: bullying, suicide, slut-shaming and dating culture. A lot of the edginess does feel like im 13 and this is deep but this seems to be aimed at highschoolers who are just starting to explore serious topics so maybe that'd appropriate.

I'm growing more convinced protag doesn't really exist. No one remembers him. But what does that mean for chiyo?

Doing scarf guy's story. So we have 2 ally pactbearers. We going to have to kill ourselves at the end to free the school wonder if we'll see/shatter those ideals? Pc is vanity, student council guy was pride, twins lust, bullied stalker wrath, rich bro is gluttony, anshin heiwa is sloth, priest dude probably envy, so that leaves greed. What's her name is like a knight to a king her power is derivative of our. The middle school boy is also deriving his power from another monark/pactbearer but not sure which one, us? What about chiyo? For as bad as the in game graphics look I do like the character designs. We got a priest, a mage/witch, a knight.

finally listened to the awake album and how does it go so hard. I've be convinced by pleiades what a boss theme

[semi-imaginary-place]

Ace Attorney tarot thoughts

Narratively Ryuunosuke is the Fool as the protagonis who starts out not really knowing who he is or what he wants he is primed to begin the Fool's Journey. What he becomes afterwards I'm not sure.

Kazuma fits either Justice or Chariot. Chariot is the arcana about achieving goals, charging ahead without thinking about the consequences or side effects of one' actions, single minded focus. Justice is about justice and rationality but also vengence and the clouding of objectivity and judgement.

Although given that this js a series about lawyers pretty much everyone can fit into Justice.

Hierophant is the symbol of the establishment. Traditionally the Pope of the Catholic Church Hierophant governs the principles of societal and external spiritual compared to Emperor's physical realm or High Priestess' (Popess) personal spiritual. So narratively a number of characters can apply from Judge, to Grossburg, to the Paynes, von Karma.

A lot of the end game/series antagonists would fit Tower as pride before the fall, Stronghart in particular but arguable Gant as well.

Stength is about inner strength, that of spirit overcoming powerful obstacles. The gentle hand of the the woman controlling the brutish strength of the lion. So a lot of AA characters would fit. It's a possible reading for Susato although High Priestess could also fit.

Death is about radical transformation, rebirth, extreme life changes basically so a number characters fit. Barok van Zieks not because he looks like a vampire but because his life radically changed after his brother died, his search to reclaim his life after that. Mimi Mimey because of how she tried to reinvent her life after almost dying. To an extent narratively Kazuma too since from Ryuu's persoective he came back completely different.

[semi-imaginary-place]

Gandalf in The Hobbit: You are Took and that makes you absolutely suited for adventure!

Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring: Who the FUCK let the Took come on this adventure?

[semi-imaginary-place]

We are losing the Alaskan husky, is that ok? (I went down another mid-night research hole)

Most pre-Columbian Americas dog breeds are extinct (even if I never met you, I miss you Salish Wool Dog), and even those that aren't have had their genetics largely replaced with European dogs such that they only retain their names (xolos, chihuahuas, the carolina dog). Alaskan huskies used to be one of the few remaining American landraces, related to other arctic basal spitz type dogs like Alaskan malautes and Siberian huskies. One of the tipping points was the formalization of sled dog racing with the first Iditarod in 1973. Instead of being a landrace, in the past 50 years, Alaskan huskies have since been crossed with lighter speed vased dogs like german shepards and pointer dogs like saluki's to breed the perfect racing dog. In the same way that throughbred horses were defined by racing and ultimately radically changed by it, Alaskan racing dogs are on a rapid pace to being a new breed.

Now side note "breed" is a bit of a nebulous and socially (human) defined category. The rules for kennel clubs are kind of stupid and largely based on what repressed English people believed in the 1700s. There's definitely breeds in there that are the same. And there's this obsession with keeping lines pure which more or less means trying to artifically preseve a snapshot of history (usually from like the 1700s) even though the breed was changing before that. But it has it's uses in defining regiionally distinct dogs we can all tell a lion dog is different from a terrier.

Alaskan husky is not formally a breed and with racing driving crossbreeds the original landrace indigeinous American dog is at risk of being lost. Maybe. Afterall what is a breed? 500 years ago how were Alaskan huskies and malamutes different? They were likely both the same fluffy spitz type dog living around Alaska. It was only with the formalization of the breed by the American and international kennel clubs that malmutes and huskies became different things. So really what are Alaskan huskies leaving behind? One way to do things is just let go the Alaskan dog is somewhat preserved in the malamute, let the husky go. The other option would be to formalize the Alaskan husky as something different from Alaskan malamutes, Sibedian huskies, and racing dogs, and I don't know enough about the topic to have an opion on whether that would be valuable. But if that were done that would split the breed into traditional Alaskan huskies and Alaskan racing dogs or maybe Alaskan sporting huskies. The racing dogs could remain informal or eventually also be formalized as a seperate breed.

These Alaskan racing dogs remind me or Throughbred horses. Throughbreds originated as a crossbreed of multiple existing horse breeds in pursuit of the perfect race horse largely Middle-eastern and Central Asian stallions with British Isles pony mares. This was done is the pursuit of breeding the fastest horse. And they ironically closed the studbook to discredit Anerican bred horses who were faster. The closed studbook is wrecking generic havok on Throughbreds much like Holstein cows. They are incredibly inbred as breeders seek the fastest horses and race winners are disproportionately bred. The same would likely happen if Alaskan racing dogs were ever stabdardized as a breed as the American Kennel Club is mostly closed studbook.

Because this is tumblr which likes to not read, and oversimplify slyhings to black-white good-bad, let me clarify that I am highlighting a trajectory I am not making a moral judgement. I'm asking people to look at the current situation and think about the future and what is valuable to them. I personally don't care either way (I just can never stop thinking. It is a curse..

[semi-imaginary-place]

"female only species"

The subject of mystique and sexualization in human media, I've been seeing this everywhere this week from the Gerudo of Legend of Zelda, to the asari of Mass Effect, to whatever Umamusume has going on.

In Mass Effect asari are massively sexualized both in universe and out, they look like conventionally attractive human women but blue with like horn ridge things instead of hair. ME1 has like one line about how asari aren't actually women and then the writers ignore that for the rest of the series and functionally treat them as women in everything from voice acting, characterization and character roles, fashion, animation, romances, etc.

Gerudo are generally seen as the women only group in Legend of Zelda. To Hylians and the audience voe seems to correspond with man and vai with women and Gerudo are all vai except for 1 voe born every 100 years. However Gerudo allow Gorons into their vai only cities and Gorons are generally interpreted as an all male people. Which begs the question in the absence of the other what are male and female. A more interesting interpretation than "female only" is that the voe-vai gender system is not a one to one for a male-female system, perhaps vai means something more like the most common gender.

This list is in descending complexity of worldbuilding and as last, Umamusume blatantly doesn't not care about worldbuilding, space and time and science aren't real. Don't think about it there's horsegirls. They all have human fathers and a bunch are based off irl stallions but they're all horse girls. They're stuck in eternal highschool but if they get injured they might die just like a real horse. Don't think about it. (Also I've never played and never will so this is all discord gossip).

All 3 species seem to need a partner to reproduce so let's compare. Asari can reproduce with asari but culturally prefer not to, all children are asari. Gerudo have some ambiguity but seem to reproduce with Hylian men and all the children are Gerudo, maybe. Umamusume reproduce with human men, girls are horse girls boys are human. Asari have some bullshit lore about aligning nervous systems to use as a genetic template which makes no sense.

Let me introduce you to the concept of gynogenesis which happens in some vertebrates (one ant) where sperm is needed to trigger egg development but does not contribute to genome. This could explain what is going on with asari (if I ignore the nonsense), except that asari can breed with anyone, any sex, any sapient species (which reminds me of axolotl genus salamanders except no DNA is actually transferred for asari). So maybe there's like a chemical signal (hormone) when melding happens. This is pretty good fit for Gerudo but there also isn't enough information to confirm.

Umamusume though can have like human brothers which means something else is going on. also two humans can have a horsegirl???? this looks like some hybrid shenanigans maybe a multi chromosome sex system??? hmmm assuming humans are still on the XY system... hmm no that wouldn't explain the two human parents. I guess uma-verse humans built different like an XYZ system or triploid genomes. Or well in some ZW sex chromosome systems like in boas you have ZZ males, ZW females, and ZZ females. If uma-verse humans stay XY males and XX females, then YY could be umamusume as with an XY partner they would produce YY umas or XY males. The ploidy idea is that uma's are triploid like XXY or XYY but those conditions already exist irl, mmm no YY would just die. unless the content of uma-verse Y chromosome is different from real life. Maybe XYZ does make more sense in that umas are ZY and thus with a XY human make can make XZ non viable, XY male, YZ uma, YY nonviable but that doesn't explain the humans. 1 single gene activating so many morphological changes seems unlikely that would have to be really deep in evolutionary history like umas predating the evolution of mammals lol uma frog. x0 z0. If those human uma relatives are socially but not biologically that opens many possibilities like facultative parthenogenesis. but i haven't heard of human daughters from umas.

im going in circles losing my sanity. goodnight.

[semi-imaginary-place]

post-canon akechi wouldn't have long hair/ponytail. Dude had a breakdown and shaved. He's a hage now. You just want long hair akechi because you like pretty boys and or are projecting. You fell hook line sinker for his "cool" "pretty boy" idol persona. Post p5 he'd want to leave that persona behind. And that includes the hair. Buzzcut akechi endgame.

[semi-imaginary-place]

r/JRPG: What is the most criminally underrated/overrated JRPG in your opinion?

FF7 and P5 criminally overrated. Both are good games for sure but not especially better than their contemporaries. People like them because they were their first serious videogame not because they're the best games ever. Both have good first chapters and then the pacing stalls. P5 is plagued with writing problems from pacing, to word economy, to consistent characterization, to thematic execution. FF7 just wasn't that good it was fine, I liked it well enough, had interesting ideas, which is about the same as every other game I play. I think most people on r/jrpg agree that ff16's story was very bad but it's still generally popular so I'm considering it overrated. ff16 is like a carnival ride it's flashy without substance. It has visually simulating animations and graphics and good voice acting and fun kaiju fights and that's it. Ben Starr moght soundnice but there is no content to the lines he's bot actually saying anything. The characters are hollow the story is a trainwreck the lore isn't presented well (it's either nothing or final boss motive monologue).

Some underrated games that aren't necessarily good but aren't as bad as people say/just aren't talked about are The Diofield Chronicle, Wadanohara, FE Echoes of Valentia. Diofield isn't a good game but it does some things no other game does. In a lot of ways it's like drakengard except a far better playing experience with far fewer fans. Diofield is one of those rare subversive game and it'a criminally underaplreciated. Wadanohara is just unknown it's a free indie game with charming visuals, great characters, and a pretty good story too. No one talks about Echoes but it's the best Fire Emblem game the story is amazing, the characters are great, the split route playstyle is fresh, the visual design from illustrations to UI are amazing, rhe music is amazing. OG Nier Replicant/Gestalt is underrated. Ver 1.22 didn't actually change all that much, put a 1.2x speedup on combat, better graphics, and added in cut content, that's about it. OG OG Nier was goated and yet it's rated way below ver 1.22. 1.22 is also underrated as one of the greatest games of all time, but not by as much. FF12 is also underrated overall, not by much on r/jrpg, it gets some love here. I think people thought it would be star wars wild west adventure and were disppointed that it was a political drama where if you knew anything about Ivalice you'd know it was a political drama from the start.

[semi-imaginary-place]

yeah this explains a lot. Mentally ill white queer women in their 20s projecting onto gay men as a coping mechanism. Willing to bet most of them are cis. (Because this is tumblr i must clarify this is neutral in tone read this with the intonation of a tax accountant who still uses exclusively paper copies on a friday afternoon. Or an elcor).

Stop fetishizing gay and trans men and just own up to liking girls (this is the judgemental part)

The AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 was an unofficial demographics survey of 16,131 AO3 users conducted in January 2024. We have just finished posting our initial results, so here is just a taste of the graphs and data you can check out now over on AO3!

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A full list of the survey questions with links to the relevant data is below the cut!

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[semi-imaginary-place]

It's been like 13 years and I'm still being haunted. As disturbing as the content is I liked the ending from a literary standpoint the blending of the physical fog, mental fog, and moral fog as Nier loses it. The villagers believe shades to be the enemy much Nier has experienced how humans can be worse. On it's own it's pretty good but as part of the game I'm conflicted, does it make more or less sense considering in game Nier's slide into seeing shades as the ultimate enemy.

I've got moxed feelings on the Jakob one. It feels like the novella is making everyone edgy and insane. On one hand it's sort of a reminder that everyone has a breaking point and can be pushed to extremes but on the other hand it makes all the characters feel the same.

Fun fact is that the Beepy one is part of the Automata deep lore.