#raz thoughts

[raz-b-rose]

Guys guys!

My niece gave me a little flower for mother's Day 🥺

And my husband being silly (but honest) was like "but she's not a mom" and she said "yeah but she a lady!" (Huge emphasis on laadyyy) "And we will give you something on father's day!"

And I could tell that touched him deeply (father's out of the picture and we've been trying to be a big presence in their lives)

So yeah I'm crying they are just the two sweetest girls ever I am so blessed and thankful for God bringing them into our lives.

(and the flower I am definitely pressing and keeping)

[aestheticallynotdeerlightful]

Thoughts and doodles

.

(Please do not use, or repost my works anywhere without explicit permission from me thank you <3)

[fruifruit]

its hard being a single father when you are ten years old (pokemon au !! )

[hoolyelina]

unassuming wolf next door

[vergolophus-archive]

And here's the general assortment post! With Otto. :)

[bumbldee]

comparing to the first time i drew raz vs my latest raz

[ooliecat]

i edited a bunch of pn2 screenshots to have pn1-ish proportions. edited on left and ogs on the right

[paxcallow]

do you think we could pretty please have some razlili they give me life🙏🙏🙏

DON'T MIND IF I DO!!! i am sorry anon that this is sososo late, i fell crappy ill for several days and also was drawing a whole several page comic in response to this ask for some reason. i'll post that too but here

busteeed

[2hoothoots]

so i get being disappointed that we didn't see more of Milla, Sasha and Oleander in PN2. they're fun characters, it would have been nice if they'd had more screentime! but i think it's kind of odd to say it was a "missed opportunity" or "wasted potential", when... i feel like the camp counsellors being sidelined in PN2 was unambiguously a good thing for the game, in ways that (to me) feel so self-evident I'm surprised it's apparently a controversial opinion! like:

not everyone who plays PN2 will have played the first game! it was a financially unsuccessful niche platformer from 16 years earlier with a cult following. PN2 is deliberately structured to be approachable to new players who won't know who these characters are. taking time to re-establish them will eat up screentime, and feel redundant to people who are familiar with the first game. it's more effective and self-contained to focus PN2's story on the new characters. having Milla, Sasha and Oleander pop up in the intro and then take a back seat to the new additions is objectively a smart writing choice from that perspective.

relatedly, PN2 is already groaning under the weight of having too many characters fighting for airtime. it's the game's biggest pain point, I'm far from the first person to point it out, and it's compounded by the fact that we know dev time was limited and so a lot of interactions and dialogue had to be left on the cutting room floor. if anyone deserves more dialogue and more interaction, it's not the established returning characters from the first game, that's for sure!

like i say, it's obviously fine to think it's a shame that your faves from the first game didn't get to appear more in the sequel. but sometimes i see takes along the lines of "why didn't the developers simply ignore all their ideas for new characters to focus on Sasha and Milla instead? are they stupid?" – and i think that's just, like, fundamentally misunderstanding what PN2 is doing. Tim and co have talked about how excited they were to introduce all these new characters, and to make the world of the games so much bigger. i think that's great – and given that that was the story they wanted to tell, it is imho pretty inarguably a good thing that PN2 decided to let the new kids have a turn in the spotlight.

[sleepyjuniper]

Okay another thing I really like about Psychonauts is the nature of its dialogue options. I collected some screenshots from a video of Pn2 dialogue options to demonstrate this, but it's present in Pn1 as well. And if I had gifs of these exact scenes I'd use them, but alas.

Basically, the dialogue options you're given are literally Raz's thoughts. The paths his brain is branching out towards. These are multiple different things he's thinking about in the moment, and you are just picking the one he decides to verbalize. Which means, a fully conceptualized thought in his head sometimes comes out differently when put into words, because he's literally changing how he wants to word it in real time. Changing his mind about what he actually wants to say.

So, here's my favorite example. (Sidenote: In the first playthrough I watched of this, you could actually see the player debate whether or not to choose this option and it was really funny. They ultimately chose to see what would happen.)

So, you can see that this is a subject he wants to address, and in his head, he knows how he would word it. However, once you choose that option...

He loses his confidence and chickens out. This is an unusual structure for video game dialogue. Your protagonist is not usually unpredictable; what you select is simply what they'll say. In this way, the game keeps you guessing on what to expect. It feels less rigid and scripted. I mean, Raz is literally going off script.

Here's another example because this happens the most when he's talking to Lili and I find it really adorable

You can really see into Raz's inner workings with these dialogue options. It's a deeper look into his thoughts, his character. You can tell he thinks alot about the moment he and Lili had back at the summer camp, but isn't as confident when it comes to actually voicing those thoughts. It makes him feel more human and relatable in a way I can't perfectly describe.

I also just really like how the dynamics shifted and evolved between Pn1 and Pn2. The way Raz matures and his demeanor changes reflects the real life experiences that the Double Fine team collected over the 10+ years between development cycles, and even during development.

The way Raz and Lili's relationship is portrayed is more in line with modern expectations, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Tim Schafer has always strived for portraying his characters and story respectfully, and he only improved with the extra time between projects.

Anyway, bonus dialogue:

Absolute goober

[raz-b-rose]

I was showing my sister a chicken recipe from insta

Her: "thighs are better than breasts"

Me" "Whichever is easier to chop up"

The guys at the table, out of the loop "wait what?!?"

[dudewheresmynug]

Neve seems like the kind of person who, if she finds out that a romanced Rook is ticklish, would find any opportunity to poke at them, but would act totally nonchalant while doing it.

Like, she'd be on a mission with Rook and would just keep poking at them to make them laugh, but then look away immediately, or ask them what's wrong, or make up some silly excuse. Meanwhile she's all giddy internally like the dork she is, because she loves to know the people she loves.

[saucytango]

Mt favorite Aquato

[rathonk]

he should have gotten to do laundry

[sealcubezz]

im cringe but im free im cringe but im free im- (<- visibly burdened by cringe)

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Evolving Truth of Ever-Stronger Will

YA contemporary in 2nd person

a teen’s abusive mother dies and they have to figure out how to heal and survive the final year before they turn 18 to stay out of the foster system, without CPS finding out

when they’re cleaning out their mother’s room, they find letters from their old foster parent who was planning on adopting them before their mother claimed them back - who is still searching for them, and they’re desperate to find her again

autistic, agender, demiromantic acespec MC, genderfluid love interest, SC with tourette’s