#and a lot of times it is intentional on the part of modern devs to actively deviate from the original style

[odetoscavengers]

i think one of the major things i see with modern games/artists that try to replicate a late 90s/early 2000s low-poly style is that they tend to go a bit too hard into readability. All the games I've played from that time have a style sort of characterized by the fact that their texture is more 'complex' than the actual 3D model itself, which sort of causes objects/enemies/npcs/whatever to often look stretched or largely ambiguous about what they're actually supposed to be. Like don't get me wrong a lot of people are ignoring that sort of texturing on purpose because they want their art to be readable (which makes sense, and can lead to very visually pretty results when done correctly) but I am a bit sad to not see practically anyone trying to replicate what games at the time actually looked like. It's especially sad to see game like dusk or gloomwood not go 100% into this because their subject matter would greatly benefit from it imo. Just think about how many games at the time had these almost eldritch, otherworldly set pieces and motifs! they had those because their models were often hard to decipher and kind of gross looking because of the limitations of the technology they had to work with, and so rather than just going welp the game looks bad oh well, they made creature designs that actually worked with this. none of this ultimately matters but I am kind of tired of seeing so many games made that try to emulate this style that don't understand why it existed in the first place.

[lilinagaming]

An Explanation of Our Mentality With Localization

Almost a day removed, and I have to say I am very happy with how everyone has responded to the announcement of Lil' Nordion. It's still a work in progress with many changes up for debate, but I figure it may do well to further explain the primary mentality we had when making some of our more... out there terminology choices.

First and foremost, the job of a translation is to make it playable for the intended audience, no doubt about it. It was constantly in our mind that this patch would be for those experiencing Jugdral for the first time, switch era fans if you will. As such, we wanted to cater to the most recent localizations the series has used as of Fire Emblem Engage (Perceptive is a bit tricky, see ThePsyShyster's blog). Off of face value, some of our decisions may also seem to contradict that by deviating from series staple terminology in English.

That's where the middle ground comes in. Making things approachable for new fans, but also honoring the game's uniqueness as well as we can. Especially for terms which don't have official localizations (like the zantetsu no ken and Forrest, though the former at least had zantetsu localized as ironbane/piercing in FE Warriors) we wanted to elaborate on what the unique Japanese text was trying to convey. Using Forest Knight > Ranger in Sacred Stones gave us the idea of trying to do something unique with Duke Knight, which is how the historical reference in Banneret, seasoned (bannered, heh) knight commanders who often lead lance knights in specific, was born. We followed a similar idea with Forrest > Forester (called Hero in PN), completing the correlation that class had with Forest Knight/Ranger. These are decisions in line with what NoA does even today, Timerra's classes in Engage being a great example; Vigilante > Sentinel, Pitchfork > Picket. The decision to revert Shaman is another interesting one I could make an entire post about as I was the strongest soldier in favor of the change.

Admittedly, we wanted to find something more flavorful for Mage Fighter and Thief Fighter as well, Spellblade came up often for the former, but figured it might be safest to stick with the other "Fighter" themed classes for now. Of course, we are always open to suggestions.

This reasoning is related to choices like Heal and Ironbane Sword as well. With the primary goal still being to appeal to that modern audience, we also want to preserve FE 4's unique terminology when we can — that middle ground. Part of a game's flavor and identity comes from its namechart, after all. I was against Lord, Hero, Priestess, etc. in PN because it removed so much of the intentional differences in how FE 4 presents itself compared to the rest of the series. Heal (assumed to be a precursor to Renewal) being named differently to match the adjacent Recover skill is part of that. Yes, Renewal is what more recent fans know a skill that heals you every turn to be, but simply naming it that also removes the intentional parallel FE 4's devs wanted to draw with the naming conventions of the skills and staves at the time. FE 5 went on to call this skill of similar effect by its modern name, but with "heal" returning in a skill context as of Three Houses (although doing a different thing), it feels a bit wrong to blatantly ignore what the Japanese text says here just for simplicity sake. It's tricky, as something is missing no matter what name is decided.

Now, a lot of these points were just argued off of vibes prior to FEH and Engage making the conscious decision to bring back the classes of Sword Fighter, Axe Fighter, etc. In a post Engage world, however, where Sword Fighter has been differentiated from Myrmidon twice now, I can't help but feel NoA cares about these small and unique differences in terminology as well. Thus, we followed suit. Like I said many times, this doesn't mean we aren't open to change, far from it! We will even have a discord taking feedback coming soon. This post was just to explain our perspective better than a chart could, provided I did a good job explaining myself, haha.

[jessicas-pi]

for the three sentence prompt, could you do sabezra in a mythical creature au, whether it be the mer one or another variety if you want?

so i DID start writing some mer-fic but then I realized it actually worked a lot better as part of a current mer-WIP I have going, and I also had another idea and uhhh long story short this is kind of a continuation of this one!

--

Ezra perched cozily in the window seat, carved into the soft golden-toned wood that made up the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room. Spiderweb-fine curtains (that may or may not have actually been made of spiderwebs, he wasn't sure about that) fluttered as a light breeze brushed through the window, bringing in the scents of flowers and the distant chatter of hundreds of voices.

In the middle of the room, the Seelie stood, watching him just as intently as he watched her.

"You know," she huffed, breaking his gaze and crossing her arms, "I was really expecting more of a reaction to all of this!"

Ezra tilted his head indifferently. "I mean, I've always wondered if you'd have wings or not, so that answers my question, I guess."

Her pink-violet wings, which looked like something between bumblebee and dragonfly, twitched at this. "These are a little creation of my own, actually," she said, a pretty smile pulling at the corner of her mouth as she shrugged one shoulder. "I liked how your modern, storybook fairies had wings, so I gave myself some. Started a fad, actually."

"Modern fairies?" Ezra repeated. "Fairies have had wings for a long time."

"Yes. Well. They didn't when I first visited your realm. But that was..." She paused to think. "About five hundred years ago, more or less."

"You're five hundred years old?!"

Her smile grew. "Time is flexible in the space between realms. If you counted the days I've been alive, they would add up to just under nineteen years. But... I have been visiting your realm since about 1361, so..."

"But---I thought you said five hundred years ago, you first came?"

She looked at him curiously. "Is it... not... 1855?"

"It's 2024!"

"...oh." She chuckled nervously, and if he wasn't mistaken, she might have even blushed at her mistake. "I---I lose track of time, sometimes."

"I'll say you do," someone snorted as a door that Ezra hadn't seen---it blended smoothly into the wall---was thrown open. A new Seelie sauntered in. "Because you missed dinner. Again."

She startled at the unexpected entrance, and glanced at Ezra for a split second. It was enough, apparently, because the new Seelie looked over his shoulder, right at Ezra.

He stared at Ezra.

Ezra stared at him.

"Hi...?" Ezra ventured.

The new Seelie looked over at the first one and stated, "I'm telling Mom you brought a human home."

"I'll kill you," she replied without missing a beat.

Ezra held in a laugh at that. "So, I assume this is your brother?"

The pretty Seelie gave him a look that was dripping with exasperation.

"Unfortunately, yes." She took a deep breath, then sighed. "Brother, I'd like to introduce you to... Jabba-the-Hutt-Lando-Calrissian-Brom-Titus-Dev-Morgan."

"The third," Ezra added, deadpan.

part one || part two || part three

[anheliotrope]

Prison Architect has offputting aesthetics to me. This includes Prison Architect 2.

I know, I know, everyone has issues these days. Developers can't just make a game and not have people talk about structural social issues and oppression, yadda yadda. And I know the devs working on Prison Architect were explicitly thinking about how people might react or judge them over the game.

I think it is extremely exhausting for people who want to explore game design spaces to have to put a lot of effort into avoiding being framed as insensitive and problematic. We've reached such levels of this that for some people Minecraft is fundamentally dislikable because it instantiates a colonialist fantasy and makes people think this is okay, normal and unremarkable. I really don't agree with that take.

That being said, that doesn't mean that I don't feel disappointed by Prison Architect's aesthetics. The games look very generic! It's as if it's signaling that prisons are just like any other thing. We have Theme Park, Theme Hospital and now we have Theme Prison. Which in fact is the opposite of what the creative director, Chris Delay said was their intent!

Chris Delay, creative director at developer Introversion Software, told me that it deliberately picked the darkest part of prison life for the first chapter of the game. “It would be very easy to think of it as building a hotel or something,” he said. “Right from the very start, we knew we had to let the player know that this was a different experience, he has to think differently about it.”

(Also very funny last name for anyone in game development)

The aesthetics suggest the idea that the game has a neutral take on prisons. I am sure the developers didn't mean to say anything about anything. The game is trying to be inoffensive. But then you can also read the description of the game on Steam:

Only the world's most ruthless Warden can contain the world's most ruthless inmates.

Uh oh, sisters! This doesn't sound very focus on rehabilitation!

And well, there's a sort of good reason for that. The concept of prisons in game design will whispers into the ear of any mildly creative designer... inverted tower defense... Well, not necessarily tower defense specifically, but you know! Rather than building up your fort to keep people out, you do it to keep people in! It's interesting! For your inverted defense design to be validated, you need rowdy inmates.

---

Oh, jumping to a different thread in this topic. Prison Architect has you executing people the state tells you need to die. Of course I don't need to phrase it like that. Of course, the context of this is a western republic, so it's one of the less bad than if you're doing it in the context of Nazi Germany, but hmm... I just don't think the neutral aesthetics of the game combine well with me executing people.

Worth noting that you do have to research death row as a technology, it's not just thrust upon you.

Interestingly enough, if you execute death row inmates that were actually innocent, you will get fined. Do it three times and it's an instant game over. The moment you execute someone, you know if they were innocent. Which sounds a bit funny. All of it sounds a bit funny, because it's such an garbled idea of how the justice and penal system could work. I don't think this misinforms anyone, but does make the in-game prison appear (artificially?) more just. Ultimately, as far as I can tell, it's just a gameplay mechanic to force you to keep death row inmates around for longer, which provides a challenge.

---

And you know what, going back to the Steam description -- I do feel moderately motivated about the idea of containing some bad sons of bitches. By adding any amount of fantasy into the setting, you can have that, the fantasy that you're sure these people need to be here and stay here. But Prison Architect occupies this... diffuse position. The inmates are analogues for modern real world inmates, with all of their nuance. But they also look like very abstracted human beings and are mechanically simple. It's just kind of a straight forward game overall. The real world theme of Prison Architect implies nuance, but its mechanics don't really model that nuance.

Prison Architect's game design direction, at least in some sense, prefers that inmates be a problem that needs to be suppressed violently. And that's fine! This is the mechanical direction that I want the game to explore. I just think that if you make Gulag Simulator it should not have the aesthetics of Sims 2. Prison Architect is doing something like that but much less egregious.

And to be clear, I don't know that I care much about how this is problematic. Rather it's just that it feels... a bit spiritually impoverishing? There is the absence of something, a void. It's just kinda boring! Man, sorry to whoever had to draw all that shit, you did an OK job, okay? I just complain a lot on the internet.

We should strive for a balance between treating the medium very seriously and "it's just a video game".

---

But yeah there's so many other ways this could have been themed. And I understand why it was themed this way, it has the widest appeal, or rather the narrow anti-appeal. A lot of other takes would alienate more people. Boring them is a less bad outcome. And the current aesthetics are pretty flexible, you can project on them.

Anyway, here's a bunch of alternative themes that visited my mind:

Butcher Bay: You play as a corporation in the business of containing, exploiting and/or rehabilitating inmates through your private prisons. The theme dispenses with any pretense that you are benevolent. You're trying to find ways to maximize long-term profit. Maybe that's putting your prisoners through a program that gives them a useful skill and you a cut of their earnings once they get out, maybe it's something more violent. Of course, you get to set up big monitors that flash demotivational messages! Hey, I'm sure the other corporations are much worse?

Maxsec Dungeon Keeper: It's Dungeon Keeper, but instead of keeping heroes out, you keep heroes in. Bonus points if you brainwash and corrupt them to join your side! How evil! But is it actually unethical if they're having more fun now?

Bleeding Hearts Penitentiary: Your focus is to ensure good social outcomes for your inmates. Society might be crapsack, but your institution is the Mother Teresa of prisons -- well, minus the deeply objectionable parts of Mother Teresa. The prisoners are rendered in a high detail way, borderline fantasy, but still somewhat grounded. It could even look like everyone is out of a dating VN. You really want your roguish purple-haired murderer to repent and do well in life! Your relationship to the inmates is both that of antagonism but also they borderline feel like your own unruly RPG characters.

Supervillain Supermax: You don't need supervillains per se, they could just be your average level 12 D&D character. Ultimately they're very dangerous, they're superpowered and they've caused a lot of trouble and now you need to contain them. Better make sure you have a fallback for when the pyrokinetic's suppression collar malfuctions!

Moonscorch Reality Failure: OK, this one is kind of cheating, very tenuous relationship with the prison system. Everyone in your facility isn't there because they've done something wrong, but rather it's about what they are. They all look like normal people and at least most of the time, they are. But unfortunately, each and every one of them is also a potential reality breach that under certain conditions will trigger and cause them to morph into monsters, warping reality around them into a nightmarish landscape, which may or may not relate to their individual neurosis. Suffice to say, this is very bad. These poor fuckers can't even die anymore! Your job is to contain them and make their life be somehow tolerable. Your job is especially to avoid cascade triggers and do very good damage control. You may set the psychiatric-care-allegory dial anywhere from 0 to 10. Personally, I was just thinking 0, since I didn't consider that until finishing writing this paragraph. But other values could also be really interesting.

[sapphire-weapon]

Clive, hush. Not only is it appropriate to give you the title of Mythos, but it’s one that you should’ve reclaimed and taken for yourself. In fact, I don’t know why Ultima even gave you that title. It’s kind of like naming a kid “Roger Stabbington” and then being surprised when he says “ok” and stabs people.

FFXVI had a lot of storytelling problems, but one of the issues that stands out the most is the refusal to explain the whole Mythos/Logos thing. There’s ATL entries about them, sure, but they’re kind of the most barebones, reductive explanations as to why those particular words/titles were chosen for Clive.

It’s time for me to put my “I was raised in an obnoxiously Greek family” hat back on once again and -- just as I did with the Hades II trailer -- break down all of the dumb ancient Greek nonsense being thrown at us in a video game.

“Mythos” isn’t actually a word that’s meant to be used as a title. The word “mythos” in and of itself refers to one of two things, depending on how it’s being used:

1. the compilation of folklore around a particular subject. For example, there’s the very famous myth of Hades and Persephone’s marriage, but there’s a whole mythos around the explanation of why seasons exist, and Demeter’s mourning of the loss of her daughter is only part of that mythos.

2. the plot of an ancient Greek tragedy -- just in general. The mythos of the story should have some sort of reversal (either the story starts off with the protagonist in a good place and ends with them in a bad one, or vice versa), and the intention should be to evoke fear or pity from the audience. Aristotle believed that the most tragic of stories were those involving violence between friends and/or family (and who does that sound like?) -- and, the worse the tragedy, the stronger the mythos.

So, to use the word “mythos” as a title implies that the person holding this title carries with them the legends and stories born from the hearts of mankind -- the “reason” behind mankind’s existence -- and then, through great tragedy, will become a legend in and of themselves.

Yeah, that kinda sounds like Clive, doesn’t it?

Ultima’s a fuckin idiot moron for naming him that and then expecting him to become anything else.

Another fun fact about the word “mythos” and how it relates to Greek tragedies, though:

Greek tragedies were historically performed in worship of Dionysus, who was the god of pleasure and indulgence. So, for Clive to be the human embodiment of Mythos, that means that his very existence serves the purpose of exalting carnal pleasure.

Clive Rosfield is actually, literally just personified sex appeal. He, himself is not a walking libido, per se -- but he’s meant to inspire that in everyone around him.

And he kind of does, considering how many characters in-game want to polish his knob.

Anyway. We’re getting off track I WANT HIM TO GIVE ME SADDLE SORES THAT LAST AT LEAST THREE DAYS

The word “logos” is also not meant to be a title -- and, to be completely honest, I don’t feel like it works the way that the devs wanted it to work. Like, it’s fine. It’s serviceable. But it doesn’t exactly fit what Clive becomes the way that Mythos does.

A more modern interpretation of what the word “logos” means would probably be The Discourse(TM). Logos is the use of logic and reason to explain the nature of the world and mankind’s role in it. Aristotle basically thought of logos as being the thing that sets humans apart from animals -- it’s our sense of self and our ability to think objectively enough to create an actual moral compass.

So, basically, by calling Clive “Logos” Ultima’s just saying he’s attained free will and learned to think rationally on his own -- but that’s also a very basic bitch way of thinking about logos as a concept.

And it’s not as clean of a fit for him as Mythos is, considering that it wasn’t exactly Clive’s sense of self that got him to where he was (he spends like 85% of the game wondering what his purpose is), nor did his attainment of power have anything to do with rational, logical thinking. In fact, the game even goes out of its way to say that Clive is being held up by the faith of those who believe in him, which, I mean --

sure, if you also take into account the whole “Jesus Christ is thought of as being logos incarnate” thing, but like. Then that pulls away from the whole ancient Greek philosophy thing happening and goes into a different metaphor entirely, and everything just gets really muddy.

There are some scholars who believe that the concepts of mythos and logos aren’t mutually exclusive -- and, in fact, that logos actually grew out of mythos. The idea was that people started looking at the myths that they were using and started to apply logic and reason to them in order to get a more nuanced view of the world. But like...

In XVI, mankind started with rational thought when they realized that God (the God that they knew existed and were not just making up as myths) had abandoned them, and then they joined together as a community to create their own image for the world through their use of mythos.

So, I really think the game got it backwards. Clive wasn’t Mythos who became Logos. He was Logos who became Mythos.

But like. Gold star for trying.

I’M JUST SAYING THAT CLIVE HAVING THE TITLE OF “MYTHOS” IS REALLY FUCKING HOT AND EVERY TIME SOMEONE CALLS HIM THAT MY PULSE QUICKENS BECAUSE HE IS LITERALLY SHOULDERING THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF MANKIND AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE POWER OF HUMAN CREATIVITY IN SERVICE TO A SEX RITUAL

[clowngames]

What is a game engine? I see a lot of video about it, but a lot of them tend to skirt around what it is. They give examples like unity but not actually give details on the structures.

This is a great question! Defining a game engine is like defining a chair - most people just get comfortable in one and leave it at that.

The short answer is: a game engine is a series of libraries, tools and interfaces designed to make developing games easier. But lets break that down.

A library is a programming term for a bunch of functions and classes you can import into your project to make certain functionality easier. For instance, a default library for javascript is Math, which has several functions to let you do arithmetic, ie, "Math.sqrt(num)" returns the square root of the supplied number. "Math" is the library, and "sqrt" is the function that the library gives you access to.

A game engine will have a collection of libraries, or one large library, that adds a ton of functions. Unity has the MonoDevelop class that all objects belong to, which contains the Update function that is "automatically" (for all intents and purposes) called every frame. The developer can define what happens inside this function.

Unity, Unreal and so on have huge libraries designed to let you make a variety of different kinds of games but some engines are more specialized. Ren'Py is built to make visual novels easier and RPG Maker is built to make Dragon Quest clones.

There's an additional layer which is that game engines also have enough ground work set up that when you start a new project you can hit play and there is immediately a game. A game with nothing in it, of course, but there are objectively graphics and a framerate and things like that, which you would have to set up yourself if you were just creating a new project in Visual Studio.

A tool is software designed to make accomplishing something specific easier without (necessarily) programming. This and interfaces are intertwined, and these are probably what most people think about when they think of game engines, because they're the part people are actively using at all times.

An interface in this context is the thing that packages tools together. This isn't a technical term but the best way to describe them for non-programmers (interface means something different for programmers). You can think of an interface as the UI of a game engine. Through it, you navigate between tools and connect them with one-another.

In Unity, the camera system may be a library, but when you add a Camera into the scene editor, you're using the scene editor tool which is one of many tools in the Unity interface.

For a less traditional example, developer Tyler Glaiel always programs his own engines, and he always uses a tool he wrote himself (along with libraries) that recreates Flash's art pipeline since he and the people he works with loved the way Flash did it and it works better for them than modern proprietary engines' systems. Now, Glaiel tailors his engines to his projects' exact needs, so this works for him and his team while it might not work for someone who is used to Unity's art pipeline. As to what Glaiel's interface looks like... well, he would know and I wouldn't! I know he's shown off a bit but I haven't had the opportunity to look.

Sometimes the needs of your project necessitates adding to the engine in some way. Game Maker's room editor used to be notoriously terrible (while these days it's only slightly bad) so most devs would build their own room editor tools using Game Maker. As in, they made an in-game level editor which they then used to make the actual game levels. Most of these games included the level editor as a reward for being the game, since it was already a part of the project.

Unity actually lets you edit the Unity interface directly to add your own tools. Instead of making tools inside the engine, you can create your own libraries and tools and then import them into any future project. RPG Maker has a similar but worse system, where you can add and edit as many libraries as you want but you can't change anything about the interface which dramatically limits how you can implement user-made systems.

So, what all of this means is that even Excel Spreadsheets can be a game engine if you try hard enough - it has functions that can manipulate variables and the spreadsheet's appearance (libraries), and the ability to... make spreadsheets (singular tool + interface). I would not recommend using it as one, but I wouldn't recommend using a computer as a chair either, and someone will inevitably find themselves in a situation where it seems like a good idea.

[vv-ispy]

Ooo, ty for the detailed reply! (Asking instead of reblogging because of that first tag.)

To be fair wrt Zhongli, the AQ plot is him deeming his position of power outdated and letting an all-female trio fully take over the country from him (and in a way that had them as active participants instead of passive recipients even if Zhongli masterminded the whole thing). The cutscene introducing Ningguang also sort of frames her as a godlike figure, and I feel like the Jade Chamber pushes that further, resembling a mini manmade Celestia from a distance.

But even if so, the points about Zhongli being designed to be an ultimate patriarchal figure make complete sense. Especially when he's the mascot for the devs' home country: genshin edition.

Standard disclaimer I am not an expert on chinese culture or china and I'm drawing on my experiences with immigrant conservative chinese parents. Putting it under a read more bc politics and personal experiences in my silly escapism game

Actually in a sense, I really liked the liyue archon quest! I did really enjoy the idea of 'the leader is stepping down, it is time for the people to shine.' 'The world is modernizing, liyue needs to keep up' 'There's a lot of stories about the adepti but I want to tell stories about humans in the age of humans!' And from someone whose parents tried to uphold tradition on me, I loved that story! I still enjoy that view of it — China does need to modernize. There's such strict expectations of people playing their Role in society, the expectation to conform — and hence disabilities, mental illness, being queer, not starting a family, not being unquestioning loyal to your parents/family, not going into a STEM field well paying respectable job, is all looked down upon. If you have mental illness, get over it don't make it anyone else's problem. If you deviate in any way, don't talk about it. Chinese people care so much about saving face and putting on a good image. Chinese culture talks so much of respecting their elders, but elder scam is so common in China. A lot of the good parts of chinese tradition feels like empty words to me, and the bad parts… they're dumb. And being raised by conservative parents who were immigrants and didn't know what they were doing meant I experienced more of the bad parts/expectations/things they try to push on me, as opposed to the good parts and the culture you'd get in china Which is to say, a story about how we need to move on from all that and modernize? I love it! We do need to care for the common folk, acceptance and supports for those who are disabled and cannot work, acceptance for those who deviate from the norm. China needs to modernize in that sense, and need stories about regular people who don't fit the image of an Model Chinese Person. I really like that reading, I really like that narrative, heck initially I was surprised that was allowed in a chinese game if the government is represented by the adepti

But that's one reading. I feel like liyue can have a lot of readings depending on how you want to spin it, who represents what, etc since China does have a really long history. Obviously some readings have a lot more justification to it and I am by no means an expert or even very knowledgable in chinese history so. But at the least, I don't think my initial reading of the quest is how it was intended.

Happening upon this reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/q2na5e/an_oversimplified_explanation_for_the_liyue/), I think it's a pretty compelling argument for the intentions and historical influences — after all genshin puts a lot of historical influences in its game so why not for its home country of China? Saying that, I don't know enough about chinese history/mythology to give much of an opinion on it other than yeah I can see it, since Zhongli is a literal god who can bestow approval on Ningguang and the humans

But I also concur with the comment that another possible reading of the archon quest is the end of the imperialist Qing empire and creation of the PRC, if you instead want to view Zhongli and the adepti as representative of imperial rule, and the Qixing and representative of the communist party. And I think the reason I get these vibes is more the way the transition is talked about — that it's time for the gods to step down and the people to lead. CPP ideology includes a people centric approach ie. the communist party represents the will of the people, so time for the people to rule -> support for CPP rule? Or the constant 'we need liyue to modernize' to me is quite reminecent of China's current race to modernize technologically. The idea of a new era of liyue, the age of humans, also really reminds me of those children's songs with lyrics that tell of the rise of the communist party with lyrics such as '没有共产党，哪有新中国' (without the community party, how could there be the new china?) <- sung during the 2010 cctv new year gala. Actually every new year gala there's at least one or two 'look how great China is' songs(okay nationalism is very standard across every country) and one 'Yeah! Regular people working together for progress!' song. Liyue being the economic center of Teyvat….well China sure wants economic prosperity in real life too(<-again nationalism and desire for prosperity is not china specific but we're talking about china here), Chinese people sometimes call themselves 唐人 where 唐(tang) refers to the Tang dynastry during which China was very prosperious. And the conflict between liyue as it was ruled by gods vs the age of humans, reminds me a lot of China's current traditional vs western conflicts, eg. if you're queer a common conservative shutdown is 'that's a western idea'. Put together it makes me go 'yes I see liyue is a reflection of current china striving for prosperity and (technological) progress, but shouldn't we strive for social equality and acceptance instead?'

Saying that, of course not all chinese people are a monolithic with the same thought, and there's many chinese who're critical of the goverment/culture of conformity/outdated traditions. Considering hoyo's japanese influences and general in depth research they do for their world and characters + suspiciously lesbian characters in their games + the voice actors themselves look at gender bent zhongli art (I'm not kidding, from chinese lumine VA's stream), I wouldn't be surprised if the inspiration is the chinese mythological references -> imperialist rule + they're writing stories of China needing to modernize from outdated traditions, but for government-support reasons they put an emphasis on The People and We Need to Modernize part of Zhongli's stepping down. I do realize that my negative reading of liyue's story hinges only on two points (even if those two points come up repeatidly) and the rest of it is very vibes/personal experience based

Again, Gaming's lanturn rite story is a very chinese family conflict, but a more traditional chinese story to teach Values definitely would have involved conceeding that his parents know best and put emphasize on how he's now going to be a good child through consistent consideration and respect to his parents. As a child I've learned quite a few chinese aesop children's stories about kids who are fair and take the smallest pear to let parents and elders have the big ones, or warming bamboo mat beds as appreciation for parents who work hard all day. So the fact he reaches a halfway agreement with his dad is…it's a sweet story that's sympathetic to both sides, and I can see hoyo taking a more modern approach to chinese society. On the other hand, Xianyun's 'the elders must look out for the youth' is a pretty traditional chinese sentiment — elders look out for the youth, and when the youth grow up they take care of the elders. Not to say it's necessarily a bad sentiment, ya know support each other and all. But still a more traditional one.

Anyway, in summary Liyue is a story of change. It can be read in many ways. Either a retelling of historical change, or a call for change. I still really like the hopeful 'We need to modernize' reading of it, just certain parts of it gives me a bad impression due to personal disillusionment with chinese culture. Besides, it's not as if american media is free from nationalism. But we're talking about genshin here

Hm. Moving on

Agreed on good representation doesn't have to be intentional, I may just be overly critical over intentions. And that Furina is written really well! I love her! She also doesn't get sexualized which is v cool too! And absolutely agreed on the sort of constraints that being gatcha puts on the characters — though I would like to toss in, again, how being a chinese game affects the characters. Many people rightfully point out the colourism issues which is a cultural issue as asians really value light skin and. can be quite racist. there is a racism problem in asia despite asians also being poc. With regards to LGBTQ rep, China does censor it (shoutout to tamen de gushi ending due to it) — which again isn't an excuse to call china homophobic there are many queer and trans chinese people (shoutout to trans activist Chao Xiaomi). Arlecchino who is given a whole backstory to explain 'she's called Father because of mother issues not trans reasons' like. Yeah that's what I'd expect from a cis-normative game from a society that adheres to gender roles. Sure. Of course. I wonder a bit if the recent trend towards more buff man have anything to do with china's recent thing against effeminent men, like. Diluc and Kaeya are built very different compared to Alhaitham or Wrio, but that could also be early game limitations (and I know people like to say Venti is dressed like a femboy but he's likely based off the Colongne Carnival prince https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Carnival). General boy-could-be-mistake-as-a-girl seems to be a consequence of the anime style, but also part of the appeal of anime style is pretty girls and boys. Anyway genshin girls I'm glad you're saved from having to find a man due to game target audience

And yeah I do enjoy how genshin does have female characters like Xinyan who are dark skined chinese + rebellious and it's not presented as a bad thing apart from offhanded mentions of getting into trouble with the law, and Yunjin's relationship with her plays around with the idea of elders being stuffy about traditions and expectations of her to be a refined young lady. It's interesting the sorts of different things they try with their characters, despite the gacha/don't-be-so-rebellious-it-catches-the government's-eye limitations. Genshin has some well developed female characters for sure. It's just also interesting to me how as a chinese game, their chinese characters really carry chinese values. Sometimes you get those weird people saying that genshin would have been better if it wasn't chinese but I think it's really interesting viewing genshin/liyue as an attempt at a story/character driven game filtered through chinese views filtered through chinese politics filtered though live service and gacha demands.

Uh, this probably sums up all the culture thoughts i currently have on it though. until the next lanturn rite and I start heaving deep sighs over people complaining about hoyo never missing a lanturn rite look lunar new year is as big as christmas and new years combined in china there is no way lanturn rite is ever getting skipped genshin is still a chinese game at its core even if it uses a japanese slant to advertise to a western audience

[lunarsilkscreen]

The typical Mobile-App Node/Firebase Model

Every mobile-app uses more or less the same model. And due to "Concurrent Connect Money Model" that is; the number of users that can be connected to your "backend" at any one time impacts the cost of your "database-like".

Backend-services charge *both* on data-storage AND simultaneous users. I suspect this has to do with the number of Millennials who downloaded [whole ass cars] so they could get to the movies or a concert or something.

The template they use is something like this;

[User ID]{ Name::string, FreeCurrency1::integer, FreeCurrency2::integer, ChatStats{complex object}, inventory::[array], etc...}

For logins, however; they have a supplemental datasheet:

[Login] {user::{id,password,email,phone number,social media, RMTCurrency(fake money you bought with real money)}

The business model requires that a lot of *stuff* is done on the user's device. Because of the [Concurrent Connections] thing.

So it's limited to transactional Commands sent to the server via {RESTful API}(which is just a fancy of way of saying HTTP).

So the commands to the server are kind of like;

[sign up,login,Google/Apple pay{me money}, perform action(action_name)]

With a lot of the in-game logic being performed user side and verified by the backend. I suspect that many newbie app developers aren't too concerned with security and so a lot of "verifications" are done dumbly.

Again; cuz of the concurrent Connection thing. Otherwise they run the risk of server-slowdown when they're at the max connection.

A few apps in particular even have "AI" users that a player can recruit that are simply externally connected NPCs. Players run by AI, instead of AI run on the backend.

Because of this you see MobileApp developers follow *the same* process when developing new content.

"Add a currency value related to new content, and then worry about all the frontend stuff later"

Because they're all connected to the [pay me money] button; pretty much all in-game currencies can be purchased *somehow*.

I highly suspect that the lack of "developer-user friendly interfaces" for modern backend-services *coughFireBasecoughcoughAWScough* effectively serve as a limiting factor for developer ability to use the platform creatively.

Limiting the kinds of apps that *can* be developed *because* most developers don't really understand the backend service of what it's doing.

There's a lack of good backend interface tools that would accomplish this.

Because; and I can't stress this enough; there's *no money* in customer service, and allowing developers to create their own *interfaces* is a potential security risk.

It's odd, because many devs already understand DataSheets(spreadsheets) AND the JSON (JavaScript object notation) model... Yet dealing with these services is harder than using Microsoft Excel... Which; I think that's a good metric; if your DataSheet software is harder to understand than Excel--that makes it bad.

Part of this has to deal with JSON being *more* complex than traditional SQL(talking to databases language) yet... It's also because of Large Software Enterprises buying as much as they can of the landscape.

Google, on their own, has *several* database-solutions ALL with their own notation, niche-usecases, and none of them are cross-compatible unless you pay a Google dev to build it.

And none of those solutions are *really focused* on... Being intuitive or usable.

Firebase, before Google, was on its way to being a respectable backend utility. Yet, I'm still wondering *why* the current ecosystem is *so much more of a mess* than traditional SQL solutions.

Half of the affor-mentioned services still use SQL after-all ... Why are they harder to understand than SQL?

Anyone familiar with JavaScript or Excel should be able to pick up your *backend service* and run with it. Yet... A lot of those people who *do* don't understand these services.

It's hard to say it's not intentional or a monopolized ecosystem that hinders growth and improvement.

[mecha--maniac]

I'mma ramble the thoughts this very thought-inspuring post makes me think.

I do say a lot of stuff like him being my ickle baby boy who never did anything wrong and is perfect in every way, but I do want to preface with assurances that, yeah, I'm definitely joking :P By no means do I think Solaris is entirely sympathetic -- he's a god, and gods are almost never depicted as being perfect -- but I personally like to point out the sympathies a lot because the game sure doesn't, and most people will pick up on what they (almost certainly correctly) perceive as a biblical Satan/demon analogy, and thus are predisposed to assume he's evil for the sake of being evil, as those themes usually go hand-in-hand. This might be what the devs were intending to some degree, buutttt the story for the game seems pretty clearly unpolished, so it's hard to say for certain that someone on the team didn't purposefully add a lot of background trappings that imply the history of the area is more proto-indo-iranian than the modern european parts of the setting would imply, and thus the themeing could actually be more of an observation on how christianity absorbed traditions from other cultures and turned positive things into negative things, such as the neutral-to-positive origins of things like 'hell' and 'demons' and how they became synonymous with 'evil' and 'bad' when transplanted. It wouldn't change much in regards to good/grey/evil readings outside of evidence of author intent for nuance; but it would support that the past has been obscured purposefully at some point. Historically, it would have been obscured by the ruling class with something to gain, but since deities are a Real Thing here it could also be Solaris himself, and that'd be really cool to explore.

(But again I really do honestly think a fair bit of the game's story is an accident... I kinda assume the bg/asset team somehow had more time to work than the script writers, and so more of the environmental storytelling was completed than the actual scenes. This game was rushed to Hel and back, and the writers probably would have wanted to have added more detail and script revisions. I think they wanted to play with grey areas more, but didn't get the chance to actually put in the stuff they were building to with it, which is a tragedy imo)

And honestly, I love any reading of the character; good, evil, and especially especially the shades right in the middle. I'd like to see more done with the old story mentioned (I think about it a lot) and I'd say I'm surprised that I haven't seen anyone go down that 'Solaris was malevolent the whole time' road when exploring him... But this is the gay weirdo website, and historically gay weirdos tend to sympathize with the demonized monsters, so I'm not actually surprised he's usually played with more benefit of the doubt here (plus there's a distinct reverse correlation between tone of a subject vs tone of the fan interaction; the darker the thing, the lighter the fan content, and vice versa)

That old story might not prove Solaris has ever been malevolent, but that could very well have been the intention -- I always assumed it was, and assumed the average reading was 'oh the game characters have this story wrong, Solaris is secretly the bad guy here' -- but it's not proof, which I think is really really good for us that like to explore the many different possibilities! Folklore is one of my favorite world storytelling devices, since there's so many levels of truth and fiction that it could be, giving us something to build on and speculate with. The lines tell us for sure that there is a story about Solaris, but what details are truth and what details have been skewed over the years are so fun to imagine. It may sound to us -- with outside biases -- that Solaris faked saving the city; it may sound to them with their ingame biases that Solaris did save the city; but there's a whole lot in between there too. An incident similar to the story probably happened, but we can't say for sure. What inspired it? What are the lasting effects, if there was an event? What are the implications for what might be embellished? Did anyone mix it up on purpose, if it was? Or maybe the oral tradition has actually been pretty accurate and gotten the legend fairly accurate; in which case, what have the opinions of the citizens always been about the story, and how might they have changed? There's just a lot of juicy worldbuilding possibilities there :]

And while it seems like the obvious starter of the fire would be the fire god -- again, I like that interpretation too -- consider that devastating blazes that destroy entire cities are a thing that happen in modern times, and thus probably happened in any time period (probably more often, what without fire codes and such) so it's a possibility too that Solaris was innocent. A legitimate blaze could have just happened; and who better to douse it than someone that can control fire? Maybe Mrs. O'Leary's cow starts a fire; fire god cleans it up; fire god decides to be the city's patron; citizens honor patron deity with ceremonies. Or maybe there was even a mix, since we definitely can't know Solaris's intentions; maybe he did start it as a trick, but later legitimately cared for the people, only for the people to betray him so now mass murder is back on the table. Maybe it wasn't a trick, but he's pissed enough now to throw away the loyalty to his followers.

My point is there are a hell of a lot of interpretations to be made with what is frankly a scaffolding of a script, and that's what I like about it. There is extremely little we can confirm in the game, unless we see it actually happen, with all included intentions of the characters stated (for instance: Mephiles literally never kills Sonic. No blood; he comes back; even the characters 'sense he's still there'. Did he intend to? Maybe. Probably. The writing probably isn't that deep. But all he actually needed was Elise to think he was dead, so we can't say for sure he didn't pull a trick there.) Cause characters like Mephiles can seem all dramatic and evil and trickstery, but dude might just be ye olde theatre kid. And this leaves a loooot of room for different readings and fanworks that don't even need to actually contradict the game, since so little is known for certain. So; I just like to point out that it's possible this debacle was more a tragic misunderstanding of hurt people than a good vs bad situation; although it's also possible it was that! But most likely somewhere inbetween. I kinda imagine the writers probably went pretty basic with the ultimate theme being the usual 'you versus the bad guy' with the starters of some deeper stuff before corporate rushed the game out the door. I'd love to know what the real story behind development was, and if there was anything missing from the game or easily missed by audiences. This game is so fascinating to me.

P.S. I usually ignore everything after the game when it comes to interpreting it, but if we did count modern stuff, SXSG drops a damn bombshell with that 'I want to exist' line, and talking about restoring himself to the timeline. It's still just a theory, but man; that sure seems to imply he never was trying to destroy reality and/or time the way Eggman told everyone he was. That's just more fuel to the tinfoil hat 'Eggman was goading everyone on in that fight on purpose since he had a lot to lose, as Solaris was aware Eggman was trying to use him' theory.

P.P.S. Also, like, Solaris was confirmed for sure stuck inside a stick and a t(w)eenager for a decade, and I doubt anyone could come out of that making rational decisions. Meanwhile the other side are almost all children that have possibly been a bit rattled by all the time traveling, chaos energy, and trauma they've been injected with over the course of that three days or so (+for Silver and Blaze), so I find it hard to judge them, either. I can judge Eggman, though. Dude was definitely just a dick. He's proven that plenty.

P.P.P.S. Main complete fuckin mystery in the game to me beyond 'probably just an unfinished plotline' is the Mephiles trying to get Silver to kill Sonic thing. I don't see how it makes sense in any case whatsoever; if Solaris was somehow a saint, why the hell would he take such a roundabout route, particularly since he obviously didn't need to? If he was a schemin' demon, same goes -- why go so roundabout, why pick Silver for it, why get so complicated, when it backfiring was so obviously a risk? Maybe because he knew Silver had something to do with Shadow (vis a vis the lab incident) and maybe he found out Shadow was kinda-sorta friends with Sonic, so he just... Hoped it would be ironic for the half-moment between victory and pulling the plug on the timeline? I dunno man, and I'd love to hear more theories about that from folks, particularly since there's a lot of room for introducing ideas of there being limits or rules to Solaris's power/time travel/the universe itself/etc that might justify playin' what is essentially an intradimensional combination hopscotch/cat's cradle.

Tl;dr: Pretty much all bits of this game are up for wildly different interpretations, as little is ever actually confirmed, and we have a whole lot of unreliable narrators. I think that's beautiful. Thanks OP for your post, and sorry for ramblin' so much, but it made me think about the meta of interpretation <3

Just a heads up; I rewrote portions of this post to have a kinder voice and better get across the point I was going for, since the original post was a bit hostile. Apologies! I'm autistic and have trouble managing tone, especially over the internet. If you wanna reblog this post please reblog this version!

A lot of people recently have been posting about how Solaris as a deity is a sympathetic figure, and how he was a victim in the grand narrative of Sonic ‘06.

I really like this reading, but I'm also a fan of more gray and ambivalent readings. I’m gonna try to demonstrate how moral ambiguity is a theme that ‘06’s story definitely and intentionally explores, and note some important details about Solaris presented within the main game of '06 and its paratext:

To best illustrate what I’m getting at, I want to talk about Solaris chronologically. To do that, we need to discuss some deep lore that has come up on my blog several times in the past. (And no, it’s not the fact that the owner of the shops in Soleanna is named Enrique.)

Most people know that Solaris is represented by an eagle in Soleanna’s religion, but for those who missed the symbolism, Soleanna’s crest depicts an eagle standing proud with wings outstretched underneath a simplistic depiction of the sun, with the prominent feathers protruding outward in a manner reminiscent of sunbeams. Considering Solaris is known as Soleanna’s sun god and the eagle here is clearly represented as being a proxy for the sun (with the wing-sunbeams and all), and based on the fact Solaris’ physical form heavily resembles an eagle, it’s safe to say the eagle became a symbol in Soleanna due to worship of Solaris.

Additionally, the stained glass murals found in Kingdom Valley seem to show the eagle—Solaris—having some connection to or dominion over the day cycle, with the mural depicting this in a serene, positive light.

With that connection in mind, I would like to bring up the most insanely loaded and impactful throwaway NPC dialogue of any Sonic game:

Now, I’ve posted about this dialogue plenty before, but I wish to reiterate how this completely missable dialogue from some random woman in Soleanna’s New City contains deep lore that is heavily implied to be the origins of Soleanna’s symbol of their god, and may even be an origin story for Solaris’ worship in general.

The story is about Soleanna being overtaken by huge flames, until out of nowhere a huge eagle saves it. We know that Solaris’ physical form has the appearance of an eagle, so it’s barely conjectured to say that this story represents Solaris saving Soleanna—otherwise it would literally just be a narrative red herring. Additionally, the NPC specifically says that some people still believe the story to be factual, so this is clearly meant to be some manner of biblical non-fiction in the Solaris religion.

Clearly, this event sparked worship of Solaris, which, as previously mentioned, was viewed by the people of Soleanna as a positive deity—the “Eternal Sun,” which was paid homage to via the Festival of the Sun, which involved (description from the game’s official guide but this is also just what’s shown in the intro cutscene) “lighting a beautiful fountain of fire, bathing the city in the crackling glow of a thousand flames,” which I would say is representative of the great fires that overtook the ancient Soleanna, then afterwards “fireworks fill the sky, and there is much rejoicing by the general populace.” I would consider this as representing Solaris appearing from the call of the flames, but that’s conjecture—all that we need to focus on is what’s textually stated, which is that fact that there’s “much rejoicing by the general populace.” This is mirrored by the dialogue heard in-game, in which Elise, whilst lighting the fountain, prays: “Sun of Soleanna, guide and watch over us with your eternal light.”

The next event that we know of chronologically is, after somehow taking the form of a meager sentient flame, Solaris was entrusted to the royal family as the “Flame of Hope.” We don’t know how this happened, just that it did.

Later down the royal family lineage, we get to Elise’s father, the Duke of Soleanna. At some point, his wife—Elise’s mother—died, and conveniently the Duke then became infatuated with the altruistic idea of harnessing the power of time to allow his people to rectify past mistakes and avoid bitter fate. To that end, he started the Solaris Project, which aimed to study the Flame of Hope the royal family had been entrusted with and, more bluntly, manipulate the super-dimensional god-being Solaris for its power.

It is noted that the Living Flame had to grow larger for this power to be harnessed.

It is explicitly stated in-game that Solaris disagreed with this treatment. During the cutscene “The accident 10 years ago” which shows the Solaris Project experiment failing, a scientist notes that out of nowhere an electromagnetic pulse has been generated, which is causing a meltdown. The Duke responds to this by saying, “Why, Solaris? Why do you refuse to listen to my voice?” which suggests that Solaris itself generated the EMP, despite the fact that this causes it to fracture.

Furthermore, the game’s official guide (which should admittedly be taken with a few thousand grains of salt, as it’s a Prima Games guide and those are rather notorious) has this to say regarding Solaris and the experiment:

So, pretty cut and dry when you view it all like that in isolation, right? Solaris was a benevolent god that was abused by the duchy of its people and driven berserk from said abuse, which is why even after reforming its darkness and wrath it still sought to destroy all time.

Obviously no hate to people who prefer viewing Solaris in a strictly sympathetic light (I literally wrote a fanfic with that as a partial premise), but you have to admit that it muddies the narrative. And, additionally, what a lot of people ignore when they come to that conclusion is the fact that Solaris has shown malevolence.

First of all, consider the fact that the Flames of Disaster were a known thing in Soleanna’s faith—specifically known as Solaris’ wrath.

And when you remember the fact that Solaris takes the form of fire, and is known to be the being whose wrath is released in the form of flames,

Suddenly the story of the eagle has an alternative reading!

I am SO firmly in the camp that that NPC’s one-off dialogue is meant to suggest that Solaris manipulated its way into a position of worship, and that it being reduced to a meager flame was a saving act—which is why said flame was then entrusted to the royal family.

As stated above, this isn’t even an unheard of concept: Elise just casually tells Sonic about the potential of the Flames of Disaster, and all of Eggman’s actions throughout this game hinge on the fact that he wants to take the power of said flames (which he already knows about, just not how to channel) for himself.

Not to mention the fact that the component parts of Solaris don’t do the sun deity any favors. Iblis is literally a destructive manifestation of blind wrath, and Mephiles is a misery maximalist who literally overcomplicates plans to a fault just so the absolute most amount of karmic irony and sheer misfortune can underline all of his actions.

So… Solaris was vastly malevolent, ergo the Duke’s actions were completely justified, and Sonic ‘06’s narrative is about defeating ontological evil?

Also probably not!

A major theme of Sonic ‘06 is the dichotomy between the actions of an individual and the impact those actions have on the whole of society/the future—impact those actions hold in general:

Elise’s decision to sacrifice her relationship with Sonic by unmaking the instigating event of their meeting from the timeline, all to save the future, that’s just the underlining of this theme. There’s also the fact that Elise had to bear the Flames within her and repress her emotions in order to lead her people and hold back Solaris’ wrath, and the fact that Silver grapples with the idea that to save his future he has to personally kill an individual. Shadow has that whole moment where he says if the world chooses to become his enemy he’ll still fight like he always has, and even Amy gets the (admittedly pretty funny) line where if she had to choose between the world and Sonic, she’d choose Sonic—and for what it’s worth, that arguable ideology did plant the seeds of Silver questioning whether what he was doing was right or wrong. Even Blaze, who’s notoriously underutilized in ‘06, sacrifices herself to seal away the flames of Iblis for good.

I feel like the intended reading you’re supposed to have is that, yes, Solaris did terrible things, but the Duke of Soleanna and contributors to the Solaris Project were also terrible and attempting to harness powers no mortals should possess, and both sides acted in manners that impacted the wider world in direct and indirect ways. It’s supposed to be a little difficult to work your head around and completely justify in one direction or the other—it’s trolly-problem-esque, in that sense.

So, in conclusion… all of this being said, there is still room to be made and interesting narratives to be constructed around the idea that Solaris was a victim—and personally I agree there’s some sympathy to be felt for the Flame and the experimentation it underwent even with its malevolence—but I feel like the actual narrative presented is much more intentionally nuanced.

[theskoomacat]

dove into Dredge recently. it is good, but frankly more plain than i imagined. objectively i would rank it high enough, but it is beyond my power NOT to compare it to its peer, Dave the Diver, and Sunless Sea. and when i do, i find it a little bit lacking.

survival is a lot less brutal than in Sunless Sea, it is too easy to farm everything you need without being in danger, or to move to a (nominally) more dangerous location and rack in cash by selling expensive local fish. i wish there were some time constraints (DtD had time constraints both in each mission and between them) and perhaps overfishing mechanics where you are at least forced to move between locations for fishing to remain profitable.

again, compared to DtD, i miss having a more linear experience. right now it feels really dissonant to be doing a quest among the ruins of an ancient temple to become the next prophet of Dagon or whatever the fuck - and at the same time feeding the capitalist machine of the modern not-oil-rig next door. yes, you can tell me: "you can just choose not to move on to the next thing before finishing the previous one" sorry i suffer from the chronic "every moment i am not producing ice cubes i am wasting time and money" disease, so when presented with the opportunity to take every possible quest and only then start doing them at the same time i will do so. and it's the devs' job to stop me.

depending on whether it was the devs' intent, it might be sad that the horror aspect is lackluster. i wish it leaned even more heavily into the whole lovecraftian horror thing, i wish the town started going mad from the deformed fish i sell them, for example. the lighthouse lady asked me what i was doing out there and i said "just fishing", and while she got offended i "lied", it wasn't a lie to me. my mind really is preoccupied with fishing and ways to improve my fishing ability, not the horrors.

otherwise - the graphics and art (hello Darkest Dungeon) are nice, i really enjoy the storage puzzle piece mechanics, i like exploring and ticking things off the to do list. there's a lot to do, and it makes complaining about having too much money and a too fast engine ring hollow lol. (the only bottleneck to my unstoppable growth is the research parts. the rest is very easy to get.) i love that the game has a camera, but i'm still not sure if it actually takes pictures and/or registers animals on the photos. bumping into stuff often feels like pure bs, but, again, i have enough money to not give a single shit. Traveling Merchant, i have feelings for you.

[ponett]

curiouscat has been weird lately so i am going to take this opportunity to archive some more SLARPG-related Q&A stuff in case it goes down again. here's a big dump of questions covering a wide range of topics from throughout 2021:

How much Sonic influence would you say SLARPG has?

there's definitely sonic influence, but it's less specific references or even an intentional desire to make something Like Sonic and more just... sonic was the first game series i really got into as a kid. there's probably gonna be some level of sonic influence in everything i make because those games and the archie comics were formative media for me

i started drawing furries because of sonic. melody is a fox because my first fursona started out as a sprite edit of sonic advance tails, and working off of those sprites (as well as mega man 7 ones because i read bob and george) influenced my pixel art style. the wasteland is on a floating island because angel island made me think floating islands were cool - although it's not intended to just be a reference to that, since obviously sonic isn't the only thing with sky islands. i didn't intentionally set out to make a game about colorful anthro characters going on adventures in a world that blends fantasy, sci-fi, and modern earth elements because i wanted it to be Like Sonic, but i probably like that kind of thing in part because of sonic

beyond that kind of thing there's very little in terms of intentional nods to sonic, but i will say that there is one (1) easter egg referencing idw sonic. but you'll have to play the game to find out what it is!!!!!

SLARPG gets a movie with an all a-lister ensemble cast. Who does Jack Black voice?

i can't say because said character is a spoiler

Do you think any members of the zany cast of SLARPG would make good parents/parental role models? Why or why not.

i mean there are multiple characters on the cast who are literal parents. beyond that, jodie and faith would make good parents for sure. and beverly. probably holly too. they've all got that nurturing nature in their own ways while also having their shit more or less figured out

i am normally not invested in shipping but that tiger and unicorn need to kiss more often

i regret not actually having any scenes where jodie and faith interact in the demo but you will be pleased with the full game

is it possible for the different sapient (are they different races or outright different species?) in Reverie to interbreed? Would an Elf/Beastfolk mix have the potential to basically be a kemonomimi?

we don't currently have any hybrid characters in the game, but it's definitely possible. a lot of traditional fantasy creatures would probably just be part beast folk and part elf/whatever on reverie. centaurs, fauns, that sort of thing. and yes, kemonomimi are probably a possibility

(note: this was answered in june, we now have a couple characters that could be considered species hybrids in there)

if you could add one thing to the game, regardless of potential cost or dev time, what would it be?

i've heavily considered adding alternate costumes, but i just don't think it's feasible. given unlimited resources i'd love to go for that. rpg maker's sprite sheet requirements mean that all of the sprites for the party members (their normal walking poses, specific actions, bespoke poses for story scenes, lighting variants, etc.) are split across a bunch of different sheets, and it'd just be a total pain to have to juggle costume variants on top of that. especially when you get into combined sprites for stuff like two characters hugging, which would then need alternate versions for every possible combination of costumes

on future projects, though, when i'm not working under rpg maker's restrictions, i'd love to do alternate costumes

i mean i'd also love for the game to have a full blown anime-ass opening so that it could truly become the shounen anime for sapphic furries that it exists as in my heart, but the costumes are a thing i've thought about a lot

you mentioned implementng ff6s relic system, are you gonna add any kind of deliberately overpowered BS?

i'm trying to keep the charms fairly balanced so that they all feel useful in their own way, but there's an optional one in the late game that you can only find one of that has the potential to be a little broken. if it suits the build style you're going for, anyway

Would Claire eat a hamburger, with no one in Greenridge (or anywhere with a beastfolk heavy population) thinking it's weird?

there is a very clear delineation drawn between beast folk and regular animals on reverie, so in-universe i don't think these sort of things bother anyone. melody is not a literal fox, she is a beast person who looks like a fox, and so on and so forth

but i just kind of avoid touching on that kind of thing because people can get fixated on it. most of the food items in the game are sweets and drinks or vague things like "picnic sets" lol. if i depict any meat it'll probably just be fish or something made up just so people aren't weird about it

Tell Melody that I said her knees are cute n sexy

i will not tell her that

claire would definitely try to run a speedrun of her own video game just to prove she can and to hold a world record for a day or two before its beaten

claire would absolutely do this

you've mentioned that Melody came out when she was 16, but when did Claire's egg crack? at a similar age, or later? pre or post moving to Greenridge?

claire started to figure it out around 16 or so, but it took her a bit longer to come out. the details will come up in the game

As the creator of SLARPG, do you or anyone you know well enough that have already had opinions formed of all the characters, have any headcanons you kept yourself from fully implementing, or scrapped before finalizations? Or maybe just stuff you would never implement but would keep in your head because it didn't for the narrative or was too spicy?

i think it's natural to have lots of little ideas about your own characters that you can't quite fit into the actual story, yeah. although i'm not sure how much of that i'd wanna share here. given the writing style of slarpg a lot of my fun little character ideas make it into the game as optional dialogue and sidequest content and that sort of thing

like i've been asked if the party plays any video games, and if so what, and now allison's got a fightstick in her house for a little extra flavor. or i decided faith would probably read schlocky romance novels in her spare time, and so you can inspect her bookshelf in her office and there's dialogue about finding one of those

Are there dwarves in SLARPG? Are they the type of dwarf where even the cis women have full blown beards?

i won't rule out the possibility that they exist somewhere on reverie, but there aren't currently any in the game. but because of this i can't comment on what they'd be like

Will you release an image of the world map you made (even it if turned out to be a work in progress when you scrapped it) after the game comes out?

i mean the thing is that the overworld was cut so early that it only ever had proper locations for melody's house and greenridge. the rest is just a vague archipelago where i figured i'd stick the other locations later. (and it's not a huge game, so it's not like there'd be that many locations to visit on the overworld - which is the main reason why it got cut)

right now what's left of the scrapped overworld just looks like this

(note: the overworld was cut from slarpg because i chose to make the areas connect directly to each other pretty early on. the assets made for the overworld are now used for other things)

Is there any antagonists happen in SLARPG? I wanna see the boss fights in the game

the game does have villains, and quite a bit of the story revolves around them. to say there's a lot we haven't shown would be an understatement. we're keeping them under wraps for now because i think it'll be more fun for players to discover that side of the game for themselves. you'll see what i mean

folks are gonna like them, though. they're fun

What's the Watsonian reason why beastfolk are part animals? Do they share a close common ancestor to Orcs/Elves/other sapient races? Are they technically primates?

the origins of beast folk and the other sapient species on reverie are kind of foggy in-fiction because of all the business with magic and gods and whatnot. it's unclear what's due to natural evolution and what's the gods being like "hey wouldn't it be cool if our planet had cat people?" all beast folk are technically members of the same mammalian race, though, even the ones that look like birds and reptiles and whatnot. and yes, they're presumably closely related with all the other sapient species

Would Paula and the Fortune Teller get along? I'm envisioning Paula overhearing Allison saying that the guy was a jerk and thinking "well if Goleta doesn't like him there's a chance he ain't that bad"

i had to ask anthony and he says: "I think it'd be one of those things where, no matter when or where you ask him, he'd be like, 'Which one is that?' or 'Who?' and then the person would explain and he'd be like, 'Oh, erm right right, she's good. I like her a lot, she's a great friend.'"

personally i think they would get along but they aren't really Friends. acquaintances though, sure. but also paula would definitely be too scared to get a reading from him

we know about the other 2 but what breed of dog is Holly?

holly is a sheepdog, but anthony only decided on this long after designing her so she doesn't really look like a sheepdog

we built this city but the three cows is just claire in different outfits

this is the secret ending of slarpg

[barbariccia]

it’s time to talk about Hydaelyn.

i’ve been sat on this theory for a long time - i’m pretty sure i didn’t come up with the original idea myself, but the more i think about it the more it makes sense to me. i’m not sure HOW it’ll come into play in the story, necessarily, but the new year’s eve poem posted last night has me rubbing my chin even more. so:

Hydaelyn exists under Silvertear Lake and i won’t hear no for an answer.

(please note there'll be spoilers for 5.0.)

we have known since 1.0 that there’s Something Under Silvertear. admittedly, in 1.0 it was likely just Midgardsormr, because the times have been a-changing and while the dev team has done a truly admirable job at building on what lore remained from the 1.X days, they couldn’t and didn’t keep everything intact. i do not at any point consider this a downside, just something worth noting!

the Garleans, headed by Gaius van Baelsar (acting under solus-selch’s orders), after the invasion and successful annexing of Ala Mhigo, pushed into Mor Dhona as the next part of their “invade Eorzea” project as a central location that would make continued pushes into the land easy. not only that, but Mor Dhona is noted as being (and has been since 1.X) the center of aetherial connections in Eorzea, if not the whole world, though Eorzea is particularly topped up with aether compared to other landmasses. Cid Garlond in his 1.X iteration suggests that Mor Dhona is where aether returns to rejoin the Lifestream. Quote:

Cid nan Garlond: All aether would - should pass through Silvertear Lake upon returning to the Land, but it now appears that something is bending the energy's course - drawing it away.

in 1.X, Nael van Darnus was originally drawing Dalamud down to fall on this area, where Castrum Novum (now Castrum Centri in ARR and beyond) was built, until adventurers put a stop to that and the transmitter was relocated to Coerthas, where the Rivenroad was ripped from. I’ll accept it as a happy coincidence - the castra was built in this area, it makes sense for plot events to happen there - but it does strike me as interesting, especially where the parallel between the Garlean’s Meteor Project and the original Meteor from FFVII is concerned. Sephiroth wasn’t just calling down a giant slab of asteroid for shiggles; he was doing it specifically to create a wound in the Planet that would require an immense amount of energy to heal that he could siphon off of and become a god. If XIV’s Meteor had hit (and not hatched like an egg), a similar thing might have happened.

And there’s no better place to call a lot of aether to the fore than somewhere entirely rich in it. Almost like there’s a great being in that area dependent on aether that directs the Lifestream through itself to preserve not only itself, but all life on the planet.

The second the Garleans got too close to the lake, Middy burst out with a whole host of Dravanians and the Battle of Silvertear Skies began (and ended with Dravanian victory at great cost). This sequence from 1.X is notable as being one of those things that has to have been changed from ARR onwards considering what we now know about primal summoning (they weren’t just ‘let loose’ into the world, they’ve been actively taught to certain peoples (though why only ‘now’ and not ‘before, too’ is still up in the air)) - not to mention we know that the Echo started manifesting after the battle, too, almost as though something felt like it was in danger and needed thralls (1) to protect itself - but Middy came out to protect something. He’d been known as the great protector of Silvertear Lake for a very long time, since he first appeared to the source. Quote The Rising Chorus, from patch 2.5:

Minfilia: [...] an unlikely ally came to Eorzea's aid that day─Midgardsormr, legendary guardian of Silvertear Falls, burst forth from beneath the waters of the lake and led a host of dragons against the Garlean airships overhead.

Minfilia:  Midgardsormr was once worshipped as the guardian deity of Silvertear Falls [...]

Minfilia: One of the ancient myths regarding Silvertear Falls states that when the waters came into existence, so too did the great wyrm. Althyk and Nymeia, Brother Time and Sister Fate, decreed that Midgardsormr ever watch over the source, from which all water─and magic─was said to flow.   I wonder... What if this was the covenant of which he spoke, and 'twas not the gods with whom he treated, but Hydaelyn Herself? 

minfy and ourselves can only guess as to the nature of the covenant forged between hydaelyn and midgardsormr. Following the Omega questline, we know that Midgardsormr fled the Dragonstar with his seven eggs to get away from Omega, crossing the vast expanse of space at great cost to his own personal strength. We don’t know at what time Midgardsormr appeared to the Source - whether it was before, during, or after the time of the 13th Reflection being turned into the Void as we know it - but it would have been post-Sundering of the Ancient world, considering he was able to make a pact with Hydaelyn at all (2) (not to mention there’s no dragons on the First; if there were dragons everywhere we’d know they were reflections of the First Brood! i’m still angy there’s no Azdaja and Vrtra. fucking PLEASE squenix i’m DYING for info on them).

(1) this is a good a place as any to mention that in 1.X, Minfilia - then known as Ascilia - witnessed the Battle of Silvertear Falls with her father Warburton and her Echo awoke a few years later. interesting to think that the primal that tempered Ascilia in potential desperation would later scour her clean and use her for its own purposes, though i know this wasn’t intentional from the devs at all as a plot-point.

(2) the nature of Hydaelyn and Zodiark’s battle makes me doubt that there was much time between Her summoning and the Sundering of the world

There’s an interview from 2014/15 with Koji Fox where he notes, quote,"There's a presence [at Silvertear]. It wasn't just Midgardsormr there, it was more of a force[...]". There’s definitely something there that isn’t just the dragons. Something big. It’s Hydaelyn!!! It has to be. (highlights in the excerpt mine.)

My interpretation of this event is that Midgardsormr agreed to protect the physical ‘body’ of Hydaelyn in exchange for the safety of his eggs - the First Brood - which is what he’s been doing for potentially upwards of 10,000 years. The battle at Silvertear is pretty explosive otherwise for what’s effectively a non-event. There might not have been dragons in Gyr Abania, or in Ilsabard, or Othard or anywhere else they’ve been pushing into - but there’s never been any indication of the dragons being particularly territorial. The Dravanians shared their space with proto-Ishgardians back in the day, and their issues with the elezen of the Source was due to some choice eye-vorage, not encroaching on lands like the sahagin and kobolds.

As for Hydaelyn’s physical form - well, it’s known that Zodiark has a physical form which was sealed directly into the moon. The true moon, known to us colloquially as Menphina (3) (is there another name for it? i haven’t seen anything). It stands to reason that Hydaelyn has a physical form as well, then, hidden away somewhere safe, because as we known, primals can be defeated and their essences scattered to return back to the Lifesteam.

(3) Hey, it’s worth noting here that Menphina, the Lover (whose divine stone is parked right where Haurchefant’s grave is) is said to be the younger sister of Azeyma, the Warden! and boy, while we’re thinking about the misremembered names of the Convocation coming back as names of gods in modern day, what significance does that have?

The Antitower: In all of creation, what greater mystery could there be than the fate of this very star? To sound the deepest depths, to study the aetherial sea itself─for these purposes and more was the Antitower built. Abandoned by her Sharlayan caretakers following the exodus, it has since been overrun by the magical guardians they left behind. Yet were one blessed with Her gift to brave these dangers and descend to the furthest reaches─to hear, feel, and think at the heart of this world─what would they find?

(emphasis mine.)

in the cutscenes following the Antitower, we meet Hydaelyn in the aetherial sea, and Her mouthpiece, the Word of the Mother. and by using the Antitower, something specifically Sharlayan-built, no less. I’d be very interested to know if you can reach the aetherial sea from only the Forelands, where that dungeon is, or from anywhere. I’m gonna make a stab at anywhere.

It’s been brought to my attention that in the cutscenes post-Antitower, Hydaelyn mentions in the quest The Word of the Mother (patch 3.2), and Ardbert echoes later in Shadows of the First (patch 3.4) that “across ten and three were [we] then divided, reflections of the source, each possessed of a shard”, which seems to imply that not only the people of the world and Zodiark, but also Hydaelyn Herself was sundered and became weaker in so doing. which is FANTASTICALLY interesting, all things considered! maybe She wasn’t just becoming weak (and finding it harder to take mouthpieces and the like) because of the land’s aether being drained by primals (and other sources).

The just-released (as of time of writing) New Year’s Eve poem makes me think that the “last chapter of this story” might relate back to this in some way.

[EN]

Our progeny may never know Wherefore we look unto the sky Nor why we dig for truth below; We bear their scorn or watch them die.

[FR]

With our mouths closed, we pile stone upon stone, To form a staircase leading to the lands of knowledge, As well as another pointing to the heavens of existence. Our children will remember it, no matter how angry they are.

[GR]

Committed to our silent office We seek wisdom in the deep earth. Put tomorrow in starry hands, Sung by children's lamentations.

[JP]

By staying silent and saying naught, we will not accumulate the crystals(?) (4) To gain knowledge, we climb into the earth, To survive, we climb to into the heavens. Even if our progeny resent us, it is all for their sake.

(4) 石 meaning stone rather than ‘crystals’, 水晶 meaning ‘crystal’ (and used in the JP title of the Crystal Exarch).

*** translations from THIS reddit post and THIS tweet for the EU and JP translations of the poem, respectively.

something something 6.0 is looking more likely to be Sharlayan than anywhere else, something something big tower something something learn stuff from within the earth. c’moooon, i wanna go beat some answers out of crystal mom. walk freeeee indeed.

Getting away from the poems again and back to Stuff On The Source, we can take a look at the First, a much more pristine reflection of the Source due to having no Calamities happen to it ever. The Source (not to be confused with the Source), the equivalent of Silvertear, is being presided over by none other than... Bismarck, a member of the fae (and BOY i’d like to know more about whaleboi in this world!!!!), in exactly the same position Midgardsormr is, presumably protecting something of equal importance. Having said that, I don’t know if by splitting the world, Hydaelyn also split Herself.

Having said that, there’s an environmental anomaly in that area. Fly out to Bismarck’s (5) nose, and then dive under the waves. There’s a crystal formation coming out of the ground that can’t be found anywhere else on the First - there is nothing else similar to this formation - that has patches of light emitting from bits of it. A friend of mine noted that the way it seems to be coming through in only this location is almost cancerous in origin - that is to say, uncontained and Wrong in some manner, more complex than we have words or knowledge of. The only way you can interact with these crystals is in the level 78 mining levequest Crystal Meds, which notes that you can yank salt crystals out of that formation... but it seems a little too suspect to leave as ‘just salt’.

(5) Speaking of Bismarck, from that earlier interview with Koji Fox, he also has this to say, which... what else have you been hiding in plain sight... (highlights again mine.)

Or the Crystarium’s just going around seasoning their meals with primal mama, who knows.

Eep, this post got away from me. Anyway, i’m not really sure what to DO with any of this information. as many of my friends know i’ve been harping on about this for years at this point, and i’m not the best at speculation and guessing accurately where stories end up going - but it feels more right than ever to talk about it now after that poem was release.

hells, maybe they’ll give us another tower. say... a tower of bab-il, to take us to the moon? 6.0 FFIV expansion pretty please??

[welllpthisishappening]

Welllp This is...Books. Lots and Lots of Books

That gif is something of a lie. Some of these books were not great. But! Some of them were very good! And some of them were marketed weird — seriously, what does qualify as YA — and some of them I read in, like, six hours and some of them I raged about for six hours after I finished them.

Or: 2020!Laura reverted to 2004!Laura and read just a lot of books and then her husband got her a Kindle and she read even more books and has thoughts on most of those books that she is now going to share with the internet while also making absurd category names. Note that these are only books I read for the first time this year. So, the list is missing some of the stuff I used as coping devices. ALSO SOME SPOILERS AHEAD, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

FAVORITE BOOKS THAT MADE A SHITTY YEAR SLIGHTLY BETTER AND ALSO LIKELY MADE ME SWOON A BIT

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.

At least, he's not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she's been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin-and his world-forever.

— I kid you not, I had to do a lap around the apartment after reading the second book in this series. Why didn’t I read this before? Why isn’t there more fic? Why I am constantly falling for dark-haired sad dudes in love with their wives??? I cannot rec this series enough. It’s got world building and found families, and that dark-haired sad dude, and magic and lore and banter, and it’s so good and I don’t understand why it was marketed as YA. The literary world is weird, guys.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians (and the Heroes of Olympus) by Rick Riordan

Accompany the son of the sea god Poseidon and his other demigod friends as they go on a series of quests that will have them facing monsters, gods, and conniving figures from Greek mythology. Do they have what it takes to save the Olympians from an ancient enemy?

— Straight up, how did you guys cope with Percy and Annabeth when you were kids reading this? I would have been OBSESSED. Quarantine felt like the perfect time to finally read all of these books, and I know it’s sacrilegious to like Heroes of Olympus, but I might have liked parts of that series more? Just because it felt like they were older and I was super into Percabeth being properly in love. Also, now I get why everyone was so upset about the movies. Fair.

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth's fate hinges on one girl. . . .Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She's a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister's illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai's, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world's future.

— Yet another YA series that I will admit to loving this year. Started off a little slow, but once the world building really got underway —and it gets underway — I was hooked. If I had read this at an age-appropriate time I would have been super in love Captain Carswell Thorne. I was still kind of in love with Captan Carswell Thorne. So it should come as no surprise that Cress was my favorite of the series, but I enjoyed the whole thing, really.

Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.As a huntsman of the Church, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. But when Lou pulls a wicked stunt, the two are forced into an impossible situation—marriage.Lou, unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, must make a choice. And love makes fools of us all.

— YO. Y O. THIS WAS SO GOOD. World building! Magic! Marriage of convenience! Well-written enemies to lovers! As soon as I finished this, I bought the sequel. And then got upset the third book in the series isn’t out yet! That’s a frustrating theme for me this year.

The Roommate by Rosie Danan

The Wheatons are infamous among the east coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She's the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara's childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too much to resist. Unfortunately, it's also too good to be true.

After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive—not to mention handsome—for comfort, but there's a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn't looked him up on the Internet...

Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton's most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they're lucky, they'll help everyone else get lucky too.

— I LOVED IT. L O V E D. As I told Justin “there was more porn than I was expecting,” in that porn and the adult film industry was a legitimate plot point and not just a part of Josh’s character, but it was incredibly well written and interesting and I cared about the plot. Sometimes I also wanted to shake Clara, but that was kind of the point.

The Marriage Game by Sara Desai

After her life falls apart, recruitment consultant Layla Patel returns home to her family in San Francisco. But in the eyes of her father, who runs a Michelin starred restaurant, she can do no wrong. He would do anything to see her smile again. With the best intentions in mind, he offers her the office upstairs to start her new business and creates a profile on an online dating site to find her a man. She doesn't know he's arranged a series of blind dates until the first one comes knocking on her door...

As CEO of a corporate downsizing company Sam Mehta is more used to conflict than calm. In search of a quiet new office, he finds the perfect space above a cozy Indian restaurant that smells like home. But when communication goes awry, he's forced to share his space with the owner's beautiful yet infuriating daughter Layla, her crazy family, and a parade of hopeful suitors, all of whom threaten to disrupt his carefully ordered life.

As they face off in close quarters, the sarcasm and sparks fly. But when the battle for the office becomes a battle of the heart, Sam and Layla have to decide if this is love or just a game.

— More well-written enemies to lovers! It’s possible! Seriously, the banter was so good. The kissing was even better. Ridiculous and interfering family is one of my favorite things, and this had it in SPADES. It also made me want to eat samosas, which is kind of my base setting, but I really wanted Indian food whenever I was reading this. Also, the end scene was so goddamn cute I cannot believe it actually happened.

Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev

— The one that got away is one of my favorite tropes, and this modern version of Persuasion did it so well. Everyone was annoying, but in an almost understandable way that made me ache and I just wanted them TO KISS. And then they did kiss! And it was so good! Plus, at the risk of being a little self-indulgent, it was kind of Out of the Frying Pan esque and I liked that a lot. If there is a downside: it’s how quickly the relationship starts up again, like zero to 60 in two seconds flat, and that there were a lot of POVs. Which wouldn’t have been an issue if they’d been labeled, or weren’t bouncing around the timeline randomly. Sometimes I’d have to be like—wait, who’s talking about what?

Chef Ashna Raje desperately needs a new strategy. How else can she save her beloved restaurant and prove to her estranged, overachieving mother that she isn't a complete screw up? When she's asked to join the cast of Cooking with the Stars, the latest hit reality show teaming chefs with celebrities, it seems like just the leap of faith she needs to put her restaurant back on the map. She's a chef, what's the worst that could happen?Rico Silva, that's what.Being paired with a celebrity who was her first love, the man who ghosted her at the worst possible time in her life, only proves what Ashna has always believed: leaps of faith are a recipe for disaster.FIFA winning soccer star Rico Silva isn't too happy to be paired up with Ashna either. Losing Ashna years ago almost destroyed him. The only silver lining to this bizarre situation is that he can finally prove to Ashna that he's definitely over her.But when their catastrophic first meeting goes viral, social media becomes obsessed with their chemistry. The competition on the show is fierce...and so is the simmering desire between Ashna and Rico. Every minute they spend together rekindles feelings that pull them toward their disastrous past. Will letting go again be another recipe for heartbreak—or a recipe for persuasion...?

The Good Luck Charm by Helena Hunting

Lilah isn't sure what hurt worse: the day Ethan left her to focus on his hockey career or the day he came back eight years later. He might think they can pick up just where they left off, but she's no longer that same girl and never wants to be again.

Just when Lilah might finally be ready to let Ethan in, though, she finds out their reunion might have nothing to do with love and everything to do with improving his game. But Ethan's already lost her once, and even if it costs him his career, he'll do anything to keep from losing her again.

— HOCKEY ROM COM. HOCKEY. ROM. COM. Apparently this lady is regarded as the queen of “hockey romance,” which I kind of take offense to, but will give a pass on because this was a very cute book and everyone was cute in it and I was only marginally frustrated by those same people being idiots. As is required by rom coms. Hockey, or otherwise.

A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

Fall in love, break the curse. It once seemed so easy to Prince Rhen, the heir to Emberfall. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he knew he could be saved if a girl fell for him. But that was before he learned that at the end of each autumn, he would turn into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. That was before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.

Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother barely holding their family together while constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, she learned to be tough enough to survive. But when she tries to save someone else on the streets of Washington, DC, she's instead somehow sucked into Rhen's cursed world.

Break the curse, save the kingdom. A prince? A monster? A curse? Harper doesn't know where she is or what to believe. But as she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what's at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin.

— Beauty and the Beast AU!!! Fantasy! Magic! Romance! I loved this, even when Rhen was being a whiny idiot. But he was also cursed, so like—fair. This dives into the politics of a cursed kingdom, puts a fun spin on the original fairy tale and also has a sequel. Which I read, and possibly enjoyed more. Only to realize the third book isn’t published yet, and then got annoyed by that.

QUESTIONABLY-GOOD FREE FANTASY BOOKS ON AMAZON

The Silver and Orchids Collection by Shari L Tapscott

What happens when a feisty adventuress, a lord looking to make his own way in the world, and a handsome sea captain set out to find Kalae’s rarest and most valuable flower?

Trouble—and lots of it.

— Snarky flirting! Adventure! Sword fights! Listen, this is not prize-winning fiction, but Lucia is a fun heroine, the rest of her adventure-seeking friends are an absolute delight and you don’t have to think too much while reading it. All four books wrap up their individual storylines, but help set up the next one and while the ending felt a little forced (and way too quick) I didn’t hate it enough to throw the Kindle across the room.

Forest of Firelight by Shari L. Tapscsott

After the sudden death of her brother, Princess Amalia is charged with what feels like an impossible task—she must choose the next king. Youthful thoughts of love are pushed aside as she accepts her fate, setting upon a quest throughout the kingdom to find a man worthy of her father’s throne.

Little does Amalia know, someone has already set his sights on her.

Rhys is a man of secrets, and his mission is simple: befriend the princess of Renove. Coax her to trust him, convince her to follow him.

Betray her when it’s time.

All goes according to plan until Rhys meets the princess. Amalia is a disaster. Never has he met someone so drawn to trouble. Never has he met someone so irritatingly likable.

He’s not allowed to fall for her.

She could never entrust him with a crown.

But, unbeknownst to them, their unlikely partnership might be the key to saving their entire world from a darkness that’s slowly creeping from the wounded earth that separates one kingdom from the next.

— FORBIDDEN LOVE! It’s good! Real good! I read this whole series (or the three books in it, so far) in a questionably short amount of time. Again, not the deepest story, and Amalia is occasionally frustratingly dumb. While Rhys is also sort of all-knowing in that fantasy hero sort of way? Y’know what I mean? Still, they banter very well, and eventually kiss even better.

LESS GOOD FANTASY BOOKS THAT PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE JUST BEEN AVAILABLE FOR FREE ON AMAZON

Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian

Theodosia was six when her country was invaded and her mother, the Fire Queen, was murdered before her eyes. On that day, the Kaiser took Theodosia's family, her land, and her name. Theo was crowned Ash Princess—a title of shame to bear in her new life as a prisoner.

For ten years Theo has been a captive in her own palace. She's endured the relentless abuse and ridicule of the Kaiser and his court. She is powerless, surviving in her new world only by burying the girl she was deep inside.

Then, one night, the Kaiser forces her to do the unthinkable. With blood on her hands and all hope of reclaiming her throne lost, she realizes that surviving is no longer enough. But she does have a weapon: her mind is sharper than any sword. And power isn't always won on the battlefield.

For ten years, the Ash Princess has seen her land pillaged and her people enslaved. That all ends here.

— I wanted to love this series. So much so that I read the whole thing. All three books. And I’m still not sure why. The world building, maybe. Which was very good, and the politics actually kept me interested, but every single character was the absolute worst and I kind of wanted them all to die. That’s not even an exaggeration. Spoiler, they didn’t all die. I was only marginally disappointed.

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

When the ruthless Pirate King learns of a legendary treasure map hidden on an enemy ship, his daughter, Alosa, knows that there's only one pirate for the job—herself. Leaving behind her beloved ship and crew, Alosa deliberately facilitates her own kidnapping to ensure her passage on the enemy ship. After all, who's going to suspect a seventeen-year-old girl locked in a cell?Then she meets the (surprisingly perceptive and unfairly attractive) first mate, Riden, who is charged with finding out all her secrets. Now it's down to a battle of wits and will... Can Alosa find the map and escape before Riden figures out her plan?

— Alosa was kind of the worst? Like, STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER who had to keep reminding you how strong she was because she would kill anyone, and had an all female pirate crew. And the whole time I was just like, ok...cool. Still, I read the sequel too and that was slightly better.

The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller

Alessandra is tired of being overlooked, but she has a plan to gain power:

1) Woo the Shadow King.

2) Marry him.

3) Kill him and take his kingdom for herself.

No one knows the extent of the freshly crowned Shadow King's power. Some say he can command the shadows that swirl around him to do his bidding. Others say they speak to him, whispering the thoughts of his enemies. Regardless, Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she's going to do everything within her power to get it.

But Alessandra's not the only one trying to kill the king. As attempts on his life are made, she finds herself trying to keep him alive long enough for him to make her his queen—all while struggling not to lose her heart. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?

— I cannot explain this book any way except to tell you it is so weird. Like, sometimes I remember I read this and all I can think is: why did this book happen? It felt like it started in the middle of the story, which is not a knock on the story itself, but mostly on the world building. Which was lacking to say the least. Also the resolution was super rushed and even more weird and I was like—why does he like her??? I still don’t know, honestly.

The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne

Engagement season is in the air. Eighteen-year-old Princess Leonie "Leo" Kolburg, heir to a faded European spaceship, has only one thing on her mind: which lucky bachelor can save her family from financial ruin?

But when Leo's childhood friend and first love, Elliot, returns as the captain of a successful whiskey ship, everything changes. Elliot was the one who got away, the boy Leo's family deemed to be unsuitable for marriage. Now he's the biggest catch of the season and he seems determined to make Leo's life miserable. But old habits die hard, and as Leo navigates the glittering balls of the Valg Season, she finds herself falling for her first love in a game of love, lies, and past regrets.

— Another book whose lack of world building hurt it. Stuff just happened, and we were expected to understand it and be into it and I was neither. I had no reason to care about anyone in this book, especially Elliot who seemed like an asshole.

To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo

Princess Lira is siren royalty and the most lethal of them all. With the hearts of seventeen princes in her collection, she is revered across the sea. Until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. To punish her daughter, the Sea Queen transforms Lira into the one thing they loathe most—a human. Robbed of her song, Lira has until the winter solstice to deliver Prince Elian's heart to the Sea Queen and or remain a human forever.The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Hunting sirens is more than an unsavory hobby—it's his calling. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she's more than what she appears. She promises to help him find the key to destroying all of sirenkind for good—But can he trust her? And just how many deals will Elian have to barter to eliminate mankind's greatest enemy?

— This book did not go the way I thought it was going to. Not a bad thing, but also not the best and the ending was...bleh. The middle, though? That was legit, and the action was good. I am always a fan of sword fights. Still, there was something that left me waiting for the final push towards great and it just never really came.

ROM-COMS WITH ONLY PASSABLY FRUSTRATING PLOTS AND GOOD KISSING

Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory

Dating is the last thing on Olivia Monroe's mind when she moves to LA to start her own law firm. But when she meets a gorgeous man at a hotel bar and they spend the entire night flirting, she discovers too late that he is none other than hotshot junior senator Max Powell. Olivia has zero interest in dating a politician, but when a cake arrives at her office with the cutest message, she can't resist—it is chocolate cake, after all.

Olivia is surprised to find that Max is sweet, funny, and noble—not just some privileged white politician, as she assumed him to be. Because of Max's high-profile job, they start seeing each other secretly, which leads to clandestine dates and silly disguises. But when they finally go public, the intense media scrutiny means people are now digging up her rocky past and criticizing her job, even her suitability as a trophy girlfriend. Olivia knows what she has with Max is something special, but is it strong enough to survive the heat of the spotlight?

— It was cute. Max was occasionally an idiot. The kissing was legit. Most of their problems could have very easily been solved, but that’s kind of this genre’s schtick.

The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa

A wedding planner left at the altar? Yeah, the irony isn't lost on Carolina Santos, either. But despite that embarrassing blip from her past, Lina's offered an opportunity that could change her life. There's just one hitch... she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials. Marketing expert Max Hartley is determined to make his mark with a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Then he learns he'll be working with his brother's whip-smart, stunning—absolutely off-limits—ex-fiancée. And she loathes him.If they can nail their presentation without killing each other, they'll both come out ahead. Except Max has been public enemy number one ever since he encouraged his brother to jilt the bride, and Lina's ready to dish out a little payback of her own.Soon Lina and Max discover animosity may not be the only emotion creating sparks between them. Still, this star-crossed couple can never be more than temporary playmates because Lina isn't interested in falling in love and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again...

— Once you got past the hooking up with your ex’s brother thing, it was cute. Max was endearing in an earnest sort of way, even when Lina was STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER in a cliche sort of way. More solid kissing. Side note, why are so many rom com dudes named Max? Does it sound hip? Passably cool, but also approachable? Discuss. 

Not that Kind of Guy by Andie J. Christopher

State attorney Bridget Nolan is successful in all aspects of her life—except romance. After breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, she's been slow to reenter the dating scene. To be honest, she has more important things to do like putting bad guys behind bars. But with her brother's wedding right around the corner, she suddenly needs a date and fast. Lucky for Bridget, the legal intern is almost done with his program.

Matt Kido is dumbstruck by Bridget—total love at first sight—but there's one problem. She's totally off-limits while she's his boss. But the moment he no longer reports to her, Matt asks her on a date. An impulsive decision takes them to Las Vegas where, as the saying goes, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Unless you put a ring on it.

— Having written the “wake up in Vegas married” trope before, I know it’s difficult to do right. Consent’s a thing, y’know? And stuff gets dicy with forgotten memories, and all that, but mostly what kept me from truly loving this book was the intern thing. Don’t date your interns guys, it’s weird and off-putting. Literally if he’d just been a junior partner, or a visiting partner or something else I would have been all in.

Meet Cute by Helena Hunting

Kailyn Flowers was always calm, rational, and controlled—until she ended up sprawled all over Daxton Hughes, the former actor she totally crushed on as a teenager. Then she did the unthinkable: She became a mortifying fangirl in five seconds flat, which may or may not have included professing her undying love. And oddly, he didn't run away. In fact, their meet cute led to a friendship she never saw coming. Of course, she never saw his betrayal coming, either...Now Dax needs her help. As guardian to his thirteen-year-old sister, he's in way over his head. And though Kailyn hasn't forgiven Dax, she isn't heartless enough to make him fend for himself, either. Soon their friendly meetings turn into flirty dinner dates, and Kailyn can feel their chemistry is as explosive as ever. But how can she possibly let down her guard again to a guy who has heartbreak written all over him?

— Once again here for the one that got away trope, even if this comes with dead parents and some sad storylines. It still managed to be cute. Everyone was cute in it. Occasionally Daxton was a dick. As rom com male leads are apt to be.

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

If faking love is this easy... how do you know when it's real?When her partner of over a decade suddenly ends things, Laurie is left reeling—not only because they work at the same law firm and she has to see him every day. Her once perfect life is in shambles and the thought of dating again in the age of Tinder is nothing short of horrifying. When news of her ex's pregnant girlfriend hits the office grapevine, taking the humiliation lying down is not an option. Then a chance encounter in a broken-down elevator with the office playboy opens up a new possibility.Jamie Carter doesn't believe in love, but he needs a respectable, steady girlfriend to impress their bosses. Laurie wants a hot new man to give the rumor mill something else to talk about. It's the perfect proposition: a fauxmance played out on social media, with strategically staged photographs and a specific end date in mind. With the plan hatched, Laurie and Jamie begin to flaunt their new couple status, to the astonishment—and jealousy—of their friends and colleagues. But there's a fine line between pretending to be in love and actually falling for your charming, handsome fake boyfriend...

— FAKE DATING THAT LEADS TO REAL FEELINGS. The ex-boyfriend was an assssss, the fake boyfriend was charming, everything was good AND THEN WE GOT TO THE END. Which felt more than a little rushed, unexpected and not really in line with the rest of the book?? Give ‘em a slightly better, in-character ending, and I would have been sold.

BOOKS THAT I WAS LIKE...EH, OK

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.

— I think this book was too smart for me. The prose was gorgeous, and the whole thing was very pretty and I definitely swooned when Marco said he wished for Celia. And yet. By the end I was like...eh, ok. Maybe it was the timeline? Jumping around, or how little dialogue there was. I wanted to like it all so badly, and I’m just not sure I did.

Acting on Impulse by Mia Sosa

After a very public breakup with a media-hungry politician, fitness trainer Tori Alvarez escapes to Aruba for rest, relaxation, and copious amounts of sex on the beach—the cocktail, that is. She vows to keep her vacation a man-free zone but when a cute guy is seated next to her on the plane, Tori can't resist a little harmless flirting.Hollywood heartthrob Carter Stone underwent a dramatic physical transformation for his latest role and it's clear his stunning seat mate doesn't recognize the man beneath the shaggy beard and extra lean frame. Now Carter needs help rebuilding his buff physique and Tori is perfect for the job. It doesn't hurt that she makes his pulse pound in more ways than one.Sparks are flying, until a pesky paparazzo reveals Carter's identity. Tori is hurt and pissed. She wants nothing to do with another man in the limelight, but she's still got to whip him into shape. Can Carter convince Tori he's worth the threat to her privacy that comes with dating a famous actor, or will Tori chisel him down to nothing before he even gets the chance?

— Dudes have gotta stop lying about who they are. It’s not a great trope. Other than that, the kissing was good. The romance was like...eh. I honestly don’t remember much else.

Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren

During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world's biggest film stars—ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.

Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he's the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it's possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason... and whether "once in a lifetime" can come around twice.

— This book was...weird. The early romance was wonderful and delightful, but then shit hit the fan and Sam and Tate are adults and...weird. Like, I cannot come up with another word for it. Also, they didn’t really talk much? As adults? Working on the same movie set? W e i r d.

I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella

Fixie Farr has always lived by her father’s motto: “Family first.” And since her dad passed away, leaving his charming housewares store in the hands of his wife and children, Fixie spends all her time picking up the slack from her siblings instead of striking out on her own. The way Fixie sees it, if she doesn’t take care of her father’s legacy, who will?

It’s simply not in Fixie’s nature to say no to people. So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, she not only agrees—she ends up saving it from certain disaster. To thank Fixie for her quick thinking, the computer’s owner, Sebastian, an investment manager, scribbles an IOU on a coffee sleeve and attaches his business card. Fixie laughs it off—she’d never actually claim an IOU from a stranger. Would she?

But then Fixie’s childhood crush, Ryan, comes back into her life, and his lack of a profession pushes all of Fixie’s buttons. As always, she wants nothing for herself—but she’d love Seb to give Ryan a job. No sooner has Seb agreed than the tables are turned once more and a new series of IOUs between Seb and Fixie—from small favors to life-changing moments—ensues. Soon Fixie, Ms. Fixit for everyone else, is torn between her family and the life she really wants. Does she have the courage to take a stand? Will she finally grab the life, and love, she really wants?

— Let’s be upfront, I’ve read a lot of Sophie Kinsella in my life, and more often than not I enjoy what she writes. I mostly did here. It was a book. With obvious rom com problems, that could have very easily been solved, but it wasn’t horrible. So, that was good, I guess.

The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory

Maddie and Theo have two things in common:

1. Alexa is their best friend

2. They hate each other

After an "oops, we made a mistake" night together, neither one can stop thinking about the other. With Alexa's wedding rapidly approaching, Maddie and Theo both share bridal party responsibilities that require more interaction with each other than they're comfortable with. Underneath the sharp barbs they toss at each other is a simmering attraction that won't fade. It builds until they find themselves sneaking off together to release some tension when Alexa isn't looking, agreeing they would end it once the wedding is over. When it's suddenly pushed up and they only have a few months left of secret rendezvouses, they find themselves regretting that the end is near. Two people this different can't possibly have a connection other than the purely physical, right?

But as with any engagement with a nemesis, there are unspoken rules that must be abided by. First and foremost, don't fall in love.

— Eh, this book happened. I still have no idea why they couldn’t be together from the get. Obstacles for the sake of plot, I guess. Also political side stories? I don’t know, guys.

WEIRD POST-ENDING FEELINGS WERE INDUCED

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They're polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

— Listen, I enjoyed this a lot. For the most part. It was funny, and introspective in a way that didn’t make me want to gag too much, and I wanted to defend January’s love of love with everything in me. But, then it—ended. And it was like...all tied up with this nice little ribbon and happily ever after, and I was like...oh, ok. Part of me that it was glad it ended like that, mostly because of who I am as a person, but the rest of me was also confused that after everything January and Augustus had been through and how messy their lives were it could just get all wrapped up in this HEA.

HITTING JUST A BIT TOO CLOSE TO HOME

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet's favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he'd be finished in Hollywood.April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she's long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her "real life"—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction. On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she's Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep from her.With love and Marcus's career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?

— Here for plus-size heroines who get the guy and don’t have their (entire) storyline defined by their looks. Less here for the weird fandom culture, the ensuing second-hand embarrassment that came from that and the thankfulness that both Colin O’Donoghue and Bob Morley appear to be happily married so it seems very unlikely they’re writing fic about their characters under pseudonyms. Stop using Ao3 in actual published stories 2k4ever.

RAGE-INDUCING BOOKS OF ABSOLUTE FURY

The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

Kristen Peterson doesn't do drama, will fight to the death for her friends, and has no room in her life for guys who just don't get her. She's also keeping a big secret: facing a medically necessary procedure that will make it impossible for her to have children.Planning her best friend's wedding is bittersweet for Kristen — especially when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. He's funny, sexy, never offended by her mile-wide streak of sarcasm, and always one chicken enchilada ahead of her hangry. Even her dog, Stuntman Mike, adores him. The only catch: Josh wants a big family someday. Kristen knows he'd be better off with someone else, but as their attraction grows, it's harder and harder to keep him at arm's length.The Friend Zone will have you laughing one moment and grabbing for tissues the next as it tackles the realities of infertility and loss with wit, heart, and a lot of sass.

— LISTEN THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE, BUT I FEEL LIKE YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THIS BOOK IS A SECRET GUT PUNCH AND PEOPLE SHOULD BE AWARE. Not only is infertility, like, the defining theme of this book, but the BEST FRIEND DIES. Just—dies. It’s horrible. Absolutely God awful depressing. And for a second he looks like he won’t, and it’ll be fine, but then it is not and he’s just D E A D. I know, I know that sets up the sequel, but this was so goddamn heavy in an unsuspecting way that I have absolutely no intention of reading the next one.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca

Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him?

The faire is Simon's family legacy and from the start he makes clear he doesn't have time for Emily's lighthearted approach to life, her oddball Shakespeare conspiracy theories, or her endless suggestions for new acts to shake things up. Yet on the faire grounds he becomes a different person, flirting freely with Emily when she's in her revealing wench's costume. But is this attraction real, or just part of the characters they're portraying?

This summer was only ever supposed to be a pit stop on the way to somewhere else for Emily, but soon she can't seem to shake the fantasy of establishing something more with Simon or a permanent home of her own in Willow Creek.

— FUCK THIS BOOK. And fuck Simon, specifically. Oh, you have a sad story? Cool, you’re still a dick. He was a dick. Listen, I know enemies to lovers is a hard trope to write, but it’s even harder to accept when those enemies just announce I LIKED YOU THE WHOLE TIME and then everyone starts ripping off their clothes. No, it’s dumb. I hate it. Apparently there’s a sequel to this book. Maybe that’s better.

Kiss My Cupcake by Helena Hunting

Blaire Calloway has planned every Instagram-worthy moment of her cupcake and cocktails shop launch down to the tiniest detail. What she didn't plan on? Ronan Knight and his old-school sports bar next door opening on the very same day. He may be super swoony, but Blaire hasn't spent years obsessing over buttercream and bourbon to have him ruin her chance at success.From axe throwing (his place) to frosting contests (hers), Blaire and Ronan are constantly trying to one-up each other in a battle to win new customers. But with every clash, there's also an undeniable chemistry. When an even bigger threat to their business comes to town, they're forced to call a temporary time-out on their own war and work together. And the more time Blaire spends getting to know the real Ronan, the more she wonders if it's possible to have her cupcake and eat it too.

— Listen, I wanted to like this one. There were plenty other Helena Hunting books on this list, so like—I don’t hate her. I just hate poorly executed enemies to lovers plot lines. Give me at least one moment where they are interested in each other aside from just being attracted to each other. Also: Stop Having Dudes Be Dicks Because Of Their Sad Backstory 2k4ever.

Don’t You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane

You always remember your first love... don't you?If there's anything worse than being fired from the worst restaurant in town, it's coming home early to find your boyfriend in bed with someone else. Reeling from the humiliation of a double dumping in one day, Georgina takes the next job that comes her way—bartender in a newly opened pub. There's only one problem: it's run by the guy she fell in love with years ago. And—make that two problems—he doesn't remember her. At all. But she has fabulous friends and her signature hot pink fur coat... what more could a girl really need?Lucas McCarthy has not only grown into a broodingly handsome man, but he's also turned into an actual grown-up, with a thriving business and a dog along the way. Crossing paths with him again throws Georgina's rocky present into sharp relief—and brings a secret from her past bubbling to the surface. Only she knows what happened twelve years ago, and why she's allowed the memories to chase her ever since. But maybe it's not too late for the truth... or a second chance with the one that got away?

— HE WAS JUST PRETENDING NOT TO REMEMBER HER THE WHOLE TIME???? WHAT?? WHY??? D U M B. Dumb boys are dumb.

Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher

Jack Nolan is a gentleman, a journalist, and unlucky in love. His viral success has pigeon-holed him as the how-to guy for a buzzy, internet media company instead of covering hard-hitting politics. Fed up with his fluffy articles and the app-based dating scene as well, he strikes a deal with his boss to write a final piece de resistance: How to Lose a Girl. Easier said than done when the girl he meets is Hannah Mayfield, and he's not sure he wants her to dump him.

Hannah is an extremely successful event planner who's focused on climbing the career ladder. Her firm is one of the most prestigious in the city, and she's determined to secure her next promotion. But Hannah has a bit of an image problem. She needs to show her boss that she has range, including planning dreaded, romantic weddings. Enter Jack. He's the perfect man to date for a couple weeks to prove to her boss that she's not scared of feelings.

Before Jack and Hannah know it, their fake relationship starts to feel all too real—and neither of them can stand to lose each other.

— This is actually the prequel to Not That Kind of Guy and I honestly can’t believe I read that after hating this book so much. They were awful to each other! Their whole relationship was based on lies! Mean lies! Horrible lies! Don’t lie to your significant other!

[writingonjorvik]

Few Quick Thoughts

I’m seeing a lot of mixed feedback recently on how frequently SSO is releasing horses and I wanted to throw a few thoughts into the mix. Some of them may be “no duh’s” to those familiar with my stances on this matter, but I wanted to put it out there again for new folks.

Firstly, it’s important to remember that a lot of SSO’s income to support a multimillion dollar project like an MMO is going to come from its microtransactions on Star Coins. They do need to release content regularly in order to encourage players to buy and that does not make them a bad company. What would is if:

This was a predatory system using some kind of gambling mechanic to lock content (see loot boxes and gacha games that lock main feature content around drops).

They were aggressively targeting children and supporting unhealthy spending habits. I would argue that this could be up for debate because of a point I’ll bring up in a minute, but having content released on a monthly schedule does not make this predatory, it just means SSO is widening its catalog of options for players.

Horse development does not cut in to development of quests. The horse team and world team work on totally separate projects, and while it would be nice for SSO to more fully break down each of those teams’ full areas of development, releasing horses more regularly doesn’t mean SSO isn’t also working on quests.

I have seen the criticism that horses being released so frequently and not fixing existing horses is an issue and I do think that’s fair. While it’s most likely the horse team needs to hit a monthly quota on releasing a new breed, I also think more time needs to be put into existing models and fixing glitches, to include methods of updating old models (my suggestions withstanding). More than half of SSO’s current horse “catalog” can’t use modern tack and for a game that has a large dress up/fashion element, that’s rather shocking.

I think it is a dangerous mentality that some members in this community are developing that they feel the need that they must buy new horses at release. This is not a good way to look at any business, and, as someone who often falls into overspending tendencies myself, I would encourage you to look at your own spending habits before blaming SSO for being exploititive. Them increasing their catalog does not demand that you buy the whole thing.

I understand that there is a concern on the magical horses in the game and their frequency, which, again, I do think there is some degree of overpricing on those particular horses and SSO not clearing up if they will be limited or not. I think that releasing a new magical horse, even if they are only offered once, every three months is not ridiculous, though it would be better if we could be confirmed that horses will return.

I do think that it would be better to pair these horses with holidays specifically though and have a rotating herd of magical horses offered during the holiday events, like we currently have with Brincle and Fawncy for the winter holidays, but I still think considering their limited time nature and the fact that players will most likely try to collect these horses for “clout,” it would be a better practice to lower prices for limited time horses.

SSO has been offering bundles around the releases of these horses, which I think are great, but that they need to offer these for lower bundles down to the 1k bundle. Asking for players to buy at least a $50+ bundle every three months is not ok, and that should be challenged by the community, as it would set players up to spend in the $200+ mark on horses that people will often reaction buy because it’s limited.

I don’t think that horses, overall, are a fair price in real world currency conversions, and I think the dev team has, in some ways, expressed a degree of agreement on that. When I interviewed Leila, she said that horses are priced as they are because they’re supposed to be an experience and part of the main gameplay loop between quests, but she agreed that current gameplay of buying a horse does not reflect that $30 price tag and if the team can’t add that kind of content with a new horse experience, then the price should be lowered.

If you feel like, as I do, that the price of Star Coins is overpriced, then vocalize it, with your words and your actions. But more specifically, give reasons. $30 is the average price for an expansion pack for most MMOs, so push SSO on responding to whether or not each horse matches a $30 experience in content and what they plan to do to reflect the amount of money that they’re asking for.

Devs and PR team don’t control the prices for Star Coins! While the devs may set Star Coins in game, they have no control over how much Star Coins cost for us to purchase. This is on the higher ups in the company and it is important to remember that! While it is important to vocalize concern on prices to the team, remember who does and doesn’t set the prices lest you silence something that may have been well intentioned.

I agree wholeheartedly on the comments that the in game prices set for what is the new JWH are fair, as this is clearly one of the higher end horses in the game.

 I do however think you can and should make a case for the real world cost, since, again, by the devs’ admission, buying and training horses is supposed to be a core gameplay loop and that’s not accessible without asking players to spend a lot of money or avoid the game for long periods of time while they save.

And I’ve realized this was less than a few quick things, but there it is all typed out. Obviously conversation is always important, and people who tells others to shut up for having differing opinions is never helpful. It’s important to be critical and fair with that criticism. Criticism only helps us refine our understanding of something and improve it, though no two people are going to have the same opinion. What is important is that we’re respectful and put our criticism towards where it needs to go and not towards each other.

[landsoflightanddark]

Why I think Game 4 might bring back the open world

I miss writing long posts about my thoughts on the games.  When someone on  a Team Ico Discord I’m on (not to imply I spend a lot of my time on Team Ico Discords, I don’t, the ones I am on are pretty barren and I have no idea if there are big ones out there) said they hoped Ueda would make another game similar to Shadow of the Colossus, I wrote a response about why I think the next game might bring back an open world.  I planned to copy and paste that response here, but when I did I realized I wanted to expand it into more of a full-on essay.

The question of “why do I think Game 4 might bring back an open world?” made me start thinking about the way I think about these games, and Ueda, and all media, and how that differs from others. Whenever I’m a fan of something I always try to think about why the creative decisions in it have been made.  I always try to think from the perspective of the creator, which is something that I see a lot of people not doing, especially in works full of mystery like these games.  As you might think from reading that, I tend to come off as being against the idea of the ”death of the author” when discussing stuff.  Even though I totally understand where people come from with that, and that a work can mean different things to different people, I think the author’s intent and who they are should at least be considered more than it tends to be these days.  You often hear it said that when you create something, you’re doing it for you, and because you want others to understand you, and that your work is a reflection of yourself.  These kinds of things are said to people who want to create, but when we’re looking at things other people have made, suddenly people forget this and say you can just think whatever you want about a work.  It’s odd.

A large part of my refutation of the popular theories that “darken up” the games - That Ico and Yorda die and the beach is the afterlife, or that Wander is presented as a villainous character and Mono becomes the Queen from Ico - is the simple truth that anyone who plays these games can see that Ueda cares about his characters and has never visibly killed any of the main characters in the games, and the truth that the final shots of all three games are decidedly optimistic.  

Like I said, I don’t see this type of reasoning talked about much in discussions about these games.  I think people don’t like straightforward answers that aren’t theories or inferences deduced from something in the game world itself.  They like the mystery of the games (as do I) and they don’t want to lessen it.  They don’t want to hear that maybe not that much thought was put into what the purpose of the colossi’s home areas are beyond making something that looked cool and worked for what they wanted to do with the fight.  They don’t want to hear that maybe the Ico ring in 13′s desert is just there as a reference more than a connection, similar to the barrel added by Bluepoint in the remake.  Now, I don’t KNOW these things, and am not even fully committed to thinking them, but I just think that a lot of Team Ico fans don’t like hearing that these things are even possibilities, period, despite Ueda having said that the main reason there are so many ruins in his games is for gameplay purposes.  Now, Ueda always talks about things MUCH more from a gameplay/technical perspective than he does from a story one, despite the stories in his games being so emotional.  Whether he’s trying to downplay the importance of his stories, or visual storytelling in the worlds of his games for some reason (humility and an unwillingness to appear arrogant, maybe), we don’t know.  We can only go by what he has said.

So my reasoning for why I think there’s a big chance the next game will have an open world is derived from things he’s said about the way he makes games, but also from looking at the actual games themselves as creative works that are influenced by the ones that came before them - so there is some theorizing here, but it’s theorizing about how Ueda works as a dev, instead of about something in the game’s world.

So, that’s why I think what I think, but what the heck is it that I actually think?  I think it would make more sense for game 4 to be more similar to Shadow than The Last Guardian was, because over the course of these three games we’ve seen that each game iterates on the one before it, it takes what that game did and changes it.  Shadow took Ico’s basic gameplay and put it in an open-world action game, having you climb on moving creatures instead of static architecture.  TLG took the character crawling around on a giant creature and then put it back into an Ico-like linear adventure, with the creature now acting as your AI companion (that specifically was because of the unexpectedly strong response to Agro in Shadow).  There’s a pretty clear thread throughout the three games, where Ueda looks at the game before it and thinks how can he and the team do new things with what they’ve already done.

And there’s a great rationale for believing this will continue in game 4, because one of the first things we learned about it is that there will be another giant creature in it!  At least one, some kind of pig-like ogre.  In the 2018 new year’s card we saw it sleeping near a girl sitting on a platform.  So what’s the easiest, most logical way to think Gen Design might change TLG’s dynamic of having a game about the relationship between a child and a giant creature?  I think bringing back the open world is the clearest choice.  Whatever kind of gameplay they end up going with - still playing as a kid but with the ogre pursuing you (I would love to see an openly antagonistic creature play a bigger role in an Ueda game), playing as the ogre, switching between both - another open world would allow them to break the game up like they did in Shadow, or do sections that are very different from each other in the way they look and work, or allow the player to do the levels of the game in an order they choose - There are many things they could do to make the game feel like an evolution on the others.

Another reason I think they’ll do this is because Ueda has said several times that he’s always limited by the technology of the console when he makes his games.  It’s the reason both Ico and TLG started development on one console and ended it on another.  It’s presumably the reason why Shadow abandoned the original multiplayer idea, and part of why there are many cut colossi in that game (though I still believe the main reason for that is simply that the 16 we got were the most fun and unique).  I think in one of the GenDesign interviews he even used console limitations as a reason why there aren’t NPCs in his games.  He’s always trying to push these consoles to their limits.  But I think the PS5 - or let’s say any modern platform considering this game will most likely be on other platforms - may finally be powerful enough to match up to Ueda’s imagination.  We know there are robots in this game, something not seen in any of Ueda’s games before.  Robots that, going by the other teaser art we’ve seen of the robot arm, seem incredibly detailed and complex.  If Ueda feels that modern platforms are powerful enough to bring something like that to life (the PS4 probably was good enough, but TLG did not start development there.  If it had then maybe he would have put the robots in it), a large game world makes sense to go along with that.  A world with structures and set-pieces even bigger than the colossi, or the falling towers in the Nest. Or maybe he won’t do that.  My starting point for this was the fact that I WANT to see an open world in the next game, and I think my rationale is pretty convincing and that it’s a likely thing, but he could end up making another linear adventure, which would probably be great as well.  Or we could get a huge open world with tons going on and NPCs, totally different from what we had in Shadow.  It could go either way.  I just don’t think we should assume that Ueda is fully content keeping his games in the areas (of aesthetic and gameplay) that he’s kept them in, but whether he changes things in a big way or not, he’s made three great games and I’m more sure that Game 4 will be another classic than I am of anything else I’ve written here.

[novarose24]

Writings from Offline {Ep.2}

Raavanan

Director: Mani Rathnam

(Warning: spoiler alert)

Raavanan was an effort by the director to show the perspective from Raavanan in a modern sense. The title pretty evidently conveys that by the end, we would understand Raavanan’s perspective of the happenings in the Ramayana.

The movie, without any elaborate revealing, shows the widely perceived antagonist in the very first scene. One of the prime setting of the movie, water and river is also revealed in this scene. From here, we meet “Sita” who is then abducted by “Raavanan”.  We also meet the eagle for the first time, in this sequence. Being a symbol for Vishnu, it is of significant importance and visits again in later parts.

The title scene follows which has red, fire and shades of brown dominating the background. The song says “Veera” which literally means a brave warrior, giving an aura of justice and righteousness to the character.

The scene that follows is the one where our “Ram” is intimated about his wife’s kidnapping. The coolers hide his eyes, but it was pretty evident that he was more upset and angrier than worried. His face showed an expression of determination to kill his enemy.

The characters in the story embody the traits of the characters in the Ramayana, but are conveniently modified to suit the needs of the story. “Raavanan” is manifested as “Veera”, a dacoit who is a savior to the people but a villain in the eyes of law - in some sense, a robin-hood. The people who inform the police of their encounter with Veera have ten different accounts to give of him, almost like he had ten different faces. The repetition of the reference to ten faces is a common occurrence in the progression of the film. Ten different voices too torment him. There is no transition of character in the film except that he falls in love with the woman that he had kidnapped. His ideals and values remain the same. The change occurs in the perception of the audience.

The audience observe this change through the eyes of “Sita”, here “Raagini”. Since the emphasis is only on Raavanan in this story, Sita only functions as a tool for us to observe this change; she doesn’t express her story despite being given almost an equal amount of screen time. In the scenes following her abduction and in the scenes at the end, she does express her opinions and her desires; otherwise she follows the conventional-ideal-wife trope. She has an undying love for her “Ram”, portrayed as “Dev”, who’s name literally means god. The naming might be an intentional action to draw attention to the juxtaposition of his name and his actions. He is a police officer, we are initially of the feeling that he is a good cop who is honest and righteous, but eventually we see that his determination to catch Veera turns into a bit of an obsession. He lies to his wife and hurts her in order to get to Veera. Rescuing his wife is not his main motive; much like Veera he uses Raagini as a bait to reach his target. There is no difference between the two men in this spectrum. Dev plays an important role but has approximately the same screen time as “Singaraasu” who could possibly be a representation of “Kumbakarnan”. Veera’s other brother is the most decent and “civilized” among them, like “” and is called “Sakkara”. These two are always on their brother’s side and help him with his work. Their representations don’t exactly fit their counterpart in the epic.

“Hanuman’s” representation as “Gyana Prakasham” suffers the same fate. He is a forest guard with good knowledge about navigation in the forest, but is crippled by his addiction to alcohol. It is confusing that Hanuman’s modern version is a drunkard.

“Lakshman” is also represented in a contradictory context; but he still hurts Veera’s sister,” Venilla” the same way Lakshman hurts Soorpanaka.  Hearing the story of his sister, Veera’s acts of revenge are diluted of their viciousness. We understand that there is a valid reason on his side too. The alternating shots between the flashback and Raagini’s shocked concerned face creates this feeling.

The scene following this tells us how this account from the criminal’s past has influenced Raagini. Raagini walks to the middle of the river where there is a broken statue of Vishnu. She prays for her anger to keep burning because she fears she pities Veera and is falling for him. She stands near the head of the statue but Raavanan stands at the feet of the statue. This simple placement of the characters captures the gap between the two in the social order.

In a successive scene, the exact opposite is conveyed when Dev flips the back-to-back photos of Raagini and Veera. It could stand for how he considers his journey to rescue his wife is equivalent to triumphing over his enemy or his doubt on his wife of being in close proximity with his enemy. His shouting for Veera and the talk about lies-detector support this. The interesting thing about the accusations that he frames on Raagini is that it is set in the tunnels giving us the feeling that we are in the dark regarding the true motives. The colour of their dresses in this scene is pivotal. Both Dev and Raagini where white initially. When Raagini meets Veera, Veera is still clad in black like he usually was in the film. When Dev emerges out of hiding, he is clad in white shirt and brown leather jacket for the first time instead of his usual pale colored clothes.

The majority of the screen is green and when Veera and his folk come in, it is covered in earthly colors of brown and black. All the songs with his folk involve rain, water, mud and great lyrics! The “Kodu potta” song is important in terms of their message to the world. They want their land and the freedom to govern it themselves. Another observation is that Raagini who shelters from the rain at first is seen getting wet in the during the end; not a significant act but it could possibly mean that she is learning to enjoy their ways too. Another example for the developing soft corner in her heat is her clothing. Could be said to be a requirement of the plot, but the fact that she dressed in a red saree that turns brown in the rain is significant in my view.

The music and the songs all act as a measure of civilization. The songs of the tribe are more upbeat with mainly percussion and some kind of horns. The dialect used for the lyrics just like their speech is different. The song of the “civilized” world, “Kalvare”, is more classical and has a more refined version of the language. Also, it is the only vision we have of the two and their life before.

The narration of the story shifts from the actual chronology of events. The story begins with no pretext, with the kidnap of Raagini, then we have a short idea of Raagini and Dev’s happy life, the story continues showing the different sides of Veera and Dev and the dilemma that Raagini faces, there is flashback giving us Veera’s backstory and then the events flow to the climax.

The jumps from scenes and the sequencing were typically good but the editing didn’t quite meet expectations. A lot of unwanted scenes were left unedited.

The other is the references in the film to Ramayana. The story by itself pretty evidently points to the Ramayana. The constant references in dialogues seemed unnecessary personally; if the details were played more subtly, it would have been more interesting to search for the tethering between the two tales. For example, repetitive scenes that emphasis the distance that Veera maintains with Raagini was overplayed that it got a bit boring.

The only time he touches her is prevent her from harm when Dev shoots during the climax. In the consecutive scenes, Raagini and Veera reach out their hands to touch each other but that doesn’t happen. As the audience are waiting with a yearning for the two of them to meet, they are left uncompensated and conflicted with the death of Veera.