#these are basically still just practices/me exploring his design lol

[macabrebat-art]

timtam

[mochayoubi]

hello!! how are you? i'm reaching out to you because you're the one i keep seeing my dashboard that's related to japanese learning.

i wanted to ask: how do you suggest a beginner should start studying? like, they're N5, and they know hiragana and katakana, but do not know how to move forward from there because it scares them? (it's me, btw, hi hello how are you how are the kids)

thank you so much!! have a good day!!

omg hi!!! im doing ok (im sick rn but it's fine lol) thanks sm for the ask! :3

i think the best thing you can do for yourself is follow your curiosity! at the early stages of learning curiosity will take you much farther than trying to set hard deadlines for yourself - especially when it sounds like moving forward is a bit intimidating at the moment.

so, i'm going to list out things that might be worth checking out. it takes a while for people to figure out what works for them, and since you mentioned you already know hiragana/katakana you're primed to get out there and really explore your options! embrace the feeling of possibility rather than the fear of the unknown :D i say this bc if you get too caught up in making the "right" choice it might just make learning too stressful to want to continue

anyway here's some things that beginners commonly go for when continuing with japanese learning (under the readmore)

find a textbook and work through it there's a bunch out there, I know Genki I is probably the most well-known, but i'm also familiar with Tobira I, Yookoso, and Minna no Nihongo. textbooks are nice because they're literally designed for learners and offer structure to what order you learn kanji, grammar, etc. and come with lots of practice questions. the difficult part is self-teaching through them since they tend to assume youre also using it with a teacher who can correct you and give advice. however they're still pretty good as references imo! if you google "[textbook name] pdf" they're pretty likely to come up

find an app you can use daily there are also a lot of these, and many of them are designed to be used daily so you can better enforce the habit of studying japanese every day. these tend to be simpler and gamefied to make it more appealing and easier to pick up as well. i would just stay away from duolingo as i've heard their japanese curriculum is bad. some other ones i've heard are helpful are Renshuu and Human Japanese.

find an online guide and follow it by "online guide" i mean websites people have compiled of their own guides to learning japanese, such as Tae Kim. these are more accessible and unlike textbooks tend to assume that you are self-studying, so it's easier to follow independently, but usually don't have any practice questions or ways to test yourself. still good as a reference. you can also check out this website that specifies their philosophy on what makes effective japanese learning and what steps to take as a beginner (imo it's very. long. and winds on for a while. but people have said it helps!)

download and use anki anki is an app (both phone and pc) that uses flashcards and that many learners use to retain vocab. their site has decks other people have created, and you can find decks of "core vocab" for example which has flashcards of common japanese vocab. you can also create your own flashcards of words you encounter in the wild to help practice them even after you've read it. i think anki is super useful, but i would probably suggest using it once you have more of a grasp on basic japanese concepts or else you'll just be rote-memorizing things that don't make sense to you yet. but i'm putting it here in case this appeals to you!

take a class or find an online tutor now this one will most likely cost you money, but it offers the most structure and guidance possible which can be extremely helpful starting out since you're able to ask questions and get feedback. you can look into nearby universities who might offer japanese classes, or you can try one of the many language-learning tutor websites out there. i've had some decent success with italki, and there's also JOI (japanese online institute) that i've heard is very helpful too.

watch japanese-learning videos these can be nice bc you can actually hear the japanese and how it's supposed to sound, and it's typically lower effort and easier to get into than actively starting a textbook or class. miku real japanese, japarrot, and 日本語の森 are channels i've watched before and like, but there's plenty others out there too. i'd just steer away from clickbait-y looking ones like "i learned japanese in 30 days and here's how!!" since they tend to not be that helpful.

read simple stories in japanese reading in japanese tends to be the most intimidating step for people, but there's sites that have stories made for beginners that are easy to follow and only use hiragana/katakana. my go-to for my students is usually tadoku since the stories are short, organized by level, and very beginner friendly. a while ago someone showed me natively which lets you look up japanese books, also by level. if you want some good beginner manga, yotsuba and teasing master takagi-san are what i've recommended before

misc. things you can try!

watch anime but intentionally - try to actively listen and pick up on words they say. a long time ago i used animelon, which puts japanese subtitles that you can adjust to show hiragana only

look up jlpt n5/n4 specific materials. they're geared for an exam so it might not be the most natural feeling, but they do tend to be convenient for lists of vocab and grammar. this website has some helpful resources for that

add an extension on your browser that will let you hover over japanese words and see its definition. i use firefox and have 10ten reader to do this, but rikaikun and yomichan are also similar extensions

when you learn the japanese word for something in your house, put a sticky note on it that has the japanse word. like, for "table" you can put a note on it that says 「テーブル」. i heard this can help with retention (i haven't done it myself tbf)

EDIT: ohh i can't believe i forgot this. but join a japanese-learning community! there's discord servers out there, and if you have a friend willing to study with you you can ask them to be your accountability buddy.

anyway, i know that was a lot but i hope that gives you some direction on where you'd like to go next in your japanese learning journey! ^_^ and again, absolutely no pressure to do all of these. the most important thing is letting curiosity be your guide and fostering a positive relationship with learning japanese rather than being afraid. if i can help out some more lmk!!

[narrators-journal]

The season of snakes and figs

Let’s fucking gooooo! This one’s pretty rough, but, despite how restless I was while writing it, and how much of a bitch it was to find a scenario to go with, I had a surprising amount of fun! It’s still a bit rough in parts, I struggle to clearly describe my more original monster designs in writing, but this was good practice! As for Vash’s monster design here, uhhhhh I kinda just chose to make him a Naga bc I don’t write Naga’s, like, ever, and I’ve seen some absolute banger art on pinterest of him in a more snakey, aphithere form that I enjoy. I hope you guys enjoy it too!

CW: Teratophilia, belly bulges, weird ass genitalia, dubcon energy for sure, aphrodisiacs, oviposition, mpreg basically lol. If I missed anything, let me know!

The blonde creature’s large, mismatched hands slid down your belly while he nuzzled into your shoulder. The smooth plastic of his prosthetic fingers a cold juxtaposition to the hazy warmth that oozed from your skin the same way the storm-chilled spring air that slipped in through the window that the naga-like monster had left open was. So, when his prosthetic hand’s fingers wrapped around your semi-hard cock to massage and stroke moans out of you. His other, warmer, hand meanwhile, continued further down your lust-riddled body until the naga-esque monster could squeeze your thigh and pull your legs apart so that you straddled his pale serpentine lower body.

That vulnerability alone was enough to make you shudder, but the cool smoothness of the creature’s scales beneath your bare ass on top of that let a moan slip out into your dark bedroom. And once that initial barrier was broken the slow tease of the curious creature’s plastic fingers was able to pull other lewd noises from you with a shameful amount of ease.

I really should be fighting more… You reminded yourself while you laid across the blonde demi-human’s scarred chest like a pad of butter on a hat pancake. Completely at the mercy of the monster that kissed and nipped your throat at the same time that he stroked and toyed with your cock. Yet, even with that thought added to the mix of cloudy bliss and need, the monster’s...pollen? Pheromones? You hadn’t the foggiest idea what was to blame for the desire-soaked cotton that filled your skull, but no matter what it was, had you in a chokehold.

So much so, in fact, that it took you a moment to register the tickle of blue, grass-thin feelers against your inner thighs. Though, when you finally did and looked down, you found that a pair of small wings the same color as the demi-human’s underbelly had opened up to let those feelers slither out of a drooling slit in a bare patch where the serpentine scales had seemingly worn away to expose the soft flesh beneath. “Wh...what the fuck?…” You asked through the haze in your head, but the blonde creature didn’t answer. Instead, he simply let your cock go so that both of his hands now rested on your thighs. More than strong enough to overwhelm your modesty so that the tendrils that slid and explored your skin could freely work their way towards your ass. Though, with the pleasurable lightning that they sent over your skin each time that they drew a new trail of slick across your thigh, you were too busy fighting to breathe to squirm or push them off of you. So, you were more than happy to simply moan when the first of the feelers inquisitively dipped into your ass. The minimal friction a spark of relief from the incessant heat beneath your skin, and it only grew when the other feelers followed the first one’s lead to explore your hole.

Which, felt odd. It was odd to feel so many things slip into you and begin to thrust, yet be too thin to fully sate the need that made your now-neglected cock twitch against your belly, but not bad. It simply drove you mad to feel the thin tendrils teasingly nudge and slide over your overly-sensitive walls while they explored deeper and deeper with each thrust. It drove you a bit mad to have the more humanoid upper body of the monster hold your thighs apart so that you couldn’t even squirm in frustration.

All you could do was press your back against his scarred torso and whine into your shadowy bedroom. Though, if your impromptu lover could understand you, all he offered in reply was a buzzy whine like a horribly tuned television and a microphone’s feedback mixed together. At least, until the blonde moved his head from your neck to capture your lips in a heated kiss that swallowed your moans and whines. Until, after what felt like an hour, though it was more likely a simple five minute stretch, you felt a bigger tendril push into your ass to follow the thinner tendrils.

Granted, the smooth, blue tendril wasn’t very big, it was still only the thickness of a ballpoint pen as it thrust into you and suction-cupped itself to every spot that made you arch your back and whine into the demi-human’s mouth. Though, the only thing the naga-like monster did was break the kiss to bury his face back into your neck. Your cock left to twitch and throb while you choked on the grass-scented aphrodisiacs in the air. Your thighs still held apart by the monster’s hands, the coil in your belly tightened by each gush of what you could only guess was either lubricant or some sort of aphrodisiac liquid that made your walls tingle.

Yet, despite the fact that you couldn’t understand whatever ‘language’ your monstrous lover spoke, you could understand the impatient ripple that you felt just beneath the smooth scales of his serpentine lower body. And, you could understand the way that the blonde’s mismatched hands twitched against your spread thighs, and his lower body fidgetted beneath your ass. And, that impatience was confirmed a mere moment later. When a third tendril of sorts slipped free of the slit in the blonde demi-human’s lower body right before your wide, lust-blown eyes.

This tendril was very different from the first ones, though. Even through the thick haze of the pollen or pheromones, your stomach fluttered with a mixture of anxiety and excitement. The tip of it looked like a tightly closed, darker blue flower bud that was the size of your hand on a two-inch-thick vine. Thinner at the tip and about as thick as a coke can at the base of the bud, all you could think of when you saw the way that it shone with a thin layer of some sort of lubricant was, Oh god, is that going to fit? Would this thing be able to pull that out?

However, you weren’t given much time to contemplate that question before it pushed into you and washed the coherent thoughts out of your head in a tidal wave of bliss. And, after that, it was nearly impossible for you to form a thought. Not with the way that the bulbous tip of the new tendril stretched your hole to a nearly painful degree until it was buried in your lube-slick warmth. No thought could withstand the delicious relief that flooded into your belly when the girthier tendril set a slow, thorough pace that let the flower bud tip squeeze every last drop of thick fluid from the squishier, thinner tendril that had just prepped you. Which, still did its best to thrust in time with the larger tendril that created a bulge in your belly once it had worked its way deep enough.

And, all you could do was lay back against the blonde’s torso and moan like a needy whore with each thrust. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” you babbled, the taste of grass still thick on your tongue, your skin still heated with the flames of induced lust, and your prostate abused every time the thick tendril slid back to the base of his swollen tip, and pushed back in with a soft, wet squelch that seemed to make your dick twitch in time with every new curse that fell from your lips.

All the while, the blonde upper body of the monster moved his mismatched hands from the tops of your thighs, to the bottoms. That way, he could lift your legs and easily adjust your position to let his tendrils fuck into you deeper. Let the slow thrusts arch your back once again and press against your neglected cock whenever the bulbous tip of the monster’s tendril bulged into your belly. All while you whined and begged mindlessly into the quiet darkness of your bedroom. “Oh my god, oh fuck, keep doing that. W-wait, no. Go faster, please.” Which, only got you more monotone tones and buzzes from your lover while his tendrils refused to speed up or get rougher with you to fully sate the hellish heat that tightened the coil in your belly until it ached and snapped. Not that your yowls of pleasure, or the ropes of hot cum that splashed across your belly every time that euphoria throbbed through your cock stopped the tendril within you, though.

No. Despite the way that the demi-human’s breath quickened with his own need and desperation, the blonde’s final tendril continued it’s lazy pace until it was satisfied. Until it was satisfied with the pained whimpers that had begun to slip out. Only then did the tendril begin to drag itself out. Your whines muffled by another kiss, especially when the secondary tendril stayed inside of your ass to thrust and spew out more of that thick fluid that trickled out of your hole and made your skin tingle.

By the time that you registered the blonde monster’s moans, or felt a more solid mass slide down the tendril to slip into you and be planted against your twitchy, overly-sensative walls, you couldn’t find it in yourself to care. All you did was count,

1...

2, 3, 4…

Even when the burn of desire began to ebb further from your skin with each breath you gulped down.

5…

6…

You began to squirm at that point. The odd feeling of weight that grew in your belly able to register once the taste of grass dissipated on your tongue. Yet, the scarred demi-human who’d slipped into your room to escape the spring storm simply tightened his grip on your thighs to keep you still and continued to moan.

9…

10, 11…

12.

At long last, all of the tendrils retracted from your ass and left you breathless, overstimulated, and a bowl of jello in the monster’s gentle grip. Too tired to move much, and too tired to fight when the blonde naga-esque monster shifted you so that he could coil his large, snake-like lower body around you. All you could manage to do was get comfortable with your now-swollen belly before exhaustion squished you to your bedroom floor.

[fixationlikeaphoenix]

Starting from the oneshot...

This was pretty fun and I gotta say I loved it. It was actually the first time I read the oneshot! So it was able to surprise me.

The version I read is by Kawa Scans.

What a delightfull image to see haha!

So this one shot features only a few characters from the manga. Kaneki, Yoshimura, Touka, Shinohara and lastly the ghoul activist guy on tv. The early versions of them that is... but they are easily recognizable design wise while their personalities are quite different.

One shot Kaneki honestly reminds me more of manga Touka here. He is angsty from the start because he is a ghoul from the start. Not an artifical half ghoul.

Meanwhile o.s. Touka seems to be an innocent human girl, with her carefree life and simple fears contrasting Kaneki's ghoul struggles.

(Kaneki trying to eat a sandwich lol)

She talks of fearing being eaten by a ghoul, much to Kaneki's discomfort.

I was kinda annoyed she would just be simple a foil character but then...

Anyway, the philosophy the pacifist ghouls go by is different here. Less developed. Ooooor in other words, they arent pacifist at all. It seems that the way Kaneki decides to feed is by going after the bad ones.

Like I said, kinda under-developed. It's a very basic way of thinking, not all that just or fair as one may think at first. But I think it makes sense for Kaneki's character here. I will get back to this later.

Kaneki is being suspected by an early version Shinohara, his personality is very similiar to that of the manga Mado Kureo's. Shinohara is targeting Kaneki because he thinks the recent binge eater ghoul that targets young girls is a teenage male ghoul, on the logic that teenage boys like feminine bodies. He makes fun of the ghoul activist on TV that comments the binge eater must either be an obese or a brat ghoul. While Kaneki thinks the binge eater must simply target young girls because they taste good.

Either way, Shinohara pins that Kaneki is a ghoul because of the way he grimaces while eating and rushes to the bathroom afterward. So Kaneki dons his mask to go kill Shinohara before he himself is killed. It seems like Kaneki is losing until...

(Kaneki's face again haha)

Man I love Touka...

So she was the binge eater. The TV commentor was correct that the ghoul responsible should be young (Kaneki later mentions that younger ghouls have a bigger appetite) and Kaneki was correct that the eater mustve simply liked the taste of young girls. Really emphasizes the arrogant ignorance of an investigator like Shinohara here.

Her being a ghoul is hinted at as well in the way she says she is on a diet and how she kept her friend away from those men who she knew could be ghouls. Obviously things like this are also explored in the manga but this one shot has a small page count to tell its story and I think it is remarkable that details like these that deepens the characters could still be hidden in. And there is more...

The last character revealed to be a ghoul is Yoshimura. It is hinted all throughout with the way he is clearly looking after the young ghouls without them realizing it. But it doesnt seem obvious at first because he always offers them sandwiches and eats them casually himself. But here's the thing:

Kaneki and Touka are inexperienced. Because of how young they are, and they dont seem to have any adult figures to teach them either. Touka is glad Kaneki is there to teach her, who is older than her, which means there must not be anyone else. (This also explains Kaneki's eating preferance. Eating bad people was just what he came up with on his own. He isnt aware of any alternatives. Wasnt taught any that are more discreet.)

Eating human food is perfected with practice. And Yoshimura mustve had a lot of it already. So he offers them human food often to practice. (But also offers Kaneki coffee after to make him feel better)

Yoshimura is later shown (not actually shown, but he recognizably says "Kaneki-kun and Touka-chan" as there arent any other characters who refer to the kids as such) eating the ghoul activist guy. He is saying that kaneki and touka should handle their meals more deliciously? kinda hard to decipher which I am guessing is because the translation has been off all throughout this scan. But I think he targeted the ghoul activist because his knowledge is too accurate and therefore dangerous to ghouls.

I want to finish this post off with this image of Touka and Kaneki failing to eat sandwiches

I think this was the part of this oneshot I enjoyed the most. The way they are really just dumb kids trying to figure out how to live as ghouls, relying on eachother and with the help of an older ghoul looking after them. It makes this one shot unexpectedly sweet and endearing. I wasnt expecting that at all but I am glad nonetheless. It put a smile on my face. I would read a tokyo ghoul alternative of the misadventures of young ghouls Touka and Kaneki and their caring grandpa.

[scrappedidea]

I don't know if you've noticed but i usually just keep my thoughts on your posts (or really any post) to the tags, but since this is my ask ill properly put my thoughts in full here.

I don't know how to put a read more prompt but i didn't realize how much i typed until i scrolled back up lol. Don't feel the need to go over this in detail, its just nice to write down your thoughts sometimes. This is where id put the read more if i knew how so you've been warned. >:)

I hadn't actually logged into the game to check out the details of the new skilltrees until tonight as i saw the news as i was going to bed yesterday and had to work today. I wrote the above ask based off of a quick overview i saw online and missed a few details, but my thoughts are mostly unchanged.

I am mostly the opposite of how you play, i rush to get to the dangerous late game, and usually end up getting bored of a world after i've set up a proper base with late game materials and start all over again. So i can give the perspective of his skills when it comes to the practicality of efficiently progressing through the game's story content and boss fights.

Before the skilltree Wortox was, and still kinda is, the worst character for my play style, but i love his design and quotes so i stubbornly stuck with him. His only real strength for an experienced player that another character cant do better is group healing, which is completely useless to a solo player like me.

When it comes to teleporting he's beat by Wanda, Winona, and lazy explorers, he had no way to deal increased damage despite being heavily incentivized through his reliance on souls to be in constant combat, and he doesn't work or move faster than the average character either. He has two of the harshest downsides in exchange for a resource (souls) that are made completely redundant by basic food management and intelligent use of late game items.

Wortox's skill tree as of this first patch addresses.... none of these issues. It offers a couple bandaids that make his downsides a little easier to work around but don't actually warrant using him over characters with more apparent positives or a more substantially changed gameplay style.

The decoys are useless as escaping enemies and dangerous situations is usually done just fine with a single soul hop and soul echo, so the extra distraction is redundant. The damage they do at tier 3 is so infrequent and small that there isn't much point in spending 3 points on them.

Soul thief 1 and 2 are worthless as if you are playing alone all souls produced around you are caused by you. Increasing the range at which souls spawn around you makes absolutely no sense as you have to be present at the death of an enemy to benefit from the soul anyway.

Soul pierce 1 and 2 are honestly insulting due to the fact that if you are in a tough fight there isn't going to be any stray souls around to increase your damage. If you're surrounded by souls it means that you already killed what you were fighting. i literally don't even understand the concept they were going for here, dealing damage... by killing your target... whats the point? Even in crowd control situations where you're fighting a large group of enemies, it doesn't do substantial enough damage in large enough area to warrant putting yourself in danger to sneak in a kill amongst a group of enemies that will likely stun lock and kill you in the attempt!!! Not even to mention the fact that as you progress into the game more and more enemies don't even drop souls in the first place!!! >:( This is the skill idea that i most want to be removed and replaced with an actually good and easily usable area of effect attack, as every other character that has gotten a skill tree either already had an area of effect attack (and usually got expanded upon in their tree) or had one added through skills.

The Knabsack and Soul Jar are soooooo close to being cool and useful, but as it stands, it is an absurd ask to get the most out of these items. The Knabsack as it is currently is just a more convoluted and arguably more expensive spear. It only does 36 damage (the same as a spear) without the absurd requirement of 5 fully filled soul jars in your inventory. The recipe isn't all that expensive and if you're playing Wortox as most people do (glued to bee hives and spider dens) you'll have an abundance of silk to make as many sacks as you want.... but come on, Wortox is the single most deserving character of an easily repairable all purpose weapon like Wanda and Wigfrid have. It is extremely annoying spending all your pigskin on hambats, but there really isn't a better option as Wortox needs a durable weapon to maintain his soul count. The soul jars are a nice idea but forcing the player to dedicate 6 inventory slots (5 jars and a sack) to a glorified dark sword is a ridiculous hoop to jump through! Its not like Wortox has any other use for the abundance of nightmare fuel you get by choosing to subsist off of the sanity draining souls, so you might as well just save the inventory space and use a dark sword! While I'm at it the fact that the soul jars have to be full (Which adds up to 200 souls with 5 jars!!!!!) completely voids the purpose of an item to store souls for later use! You get No extra damage from a soul jar unless it holds its max of 40 souls, so if you want to make the most of the Knabsack (which only has 200 durability(for reference a spear has 150 durability and a dark sword has 100)) you MUST keep the jar full! This boils down to stockpiling a huge horde of souls that you are dis-incentivized from actually using for soul hops, healing, or hunger!

Finishing my tirade on the skills i think are bad enough to be completely reworked, we get to the nice side of the tree which is... better but not by much than the naughty side.

I'm not going to spend too much time on reaching souls 1 and 2, and soul bastion 1 and 2, as these are useless to a solo player. i will say though that Wortox isn't competing with any other character for area of effect healing, and is more that adequate with his base kit to keep a group of survivors fully healed with little effort. Spending 4 points on skills that are, at best, a minor convenience, is quite the wasted potential.

Also useless to a solo player, Lifebringer 1 through 3 are actually quite nice for a group I would imagine. I'm not a huge fan of Klei adding character specific revive options given that if a group of players are dying so frequently that they feel the need to keep a revive in their back pocket... they can just turn on the endless world setting and revive at the postern. Regardless, i can see the 3rd tier of this skill being fun and useful to groups for not getting left behind by a hoppy Wortox friend. I wish it didn't take up 3 skills and more over I wish it had atleast one selfish use case. a small thing I think would be neat is if you could use this item like Wanda's Rift Watch. If Wortox used it he could choose a place to open a portal that lasts for like 30 seconds. This would be useful for transporting a whole team of players, and/or moving suspicious marbles or moon alters!

For the last of the non affinity skills we end on lifted spirits, capricious movement, and reverberation. Finally a good one! My only complaint is that these should not be spread over 4 skills but the effect is quite nice for extended play-throughs. Reducing a cross map teleport to 10 souls on a fully explored map is a huge cost reduction and will save a lot of time, allowing you to actually get places faster and not spend all of your time smacking bees and spiders to fuel your hops! The extra time with a soul echo is also quite useful for using soul hops in combat scenarios, though it is still clear to me that Klei really hasn't thought the practical use of these hops through... Using soul hops in combat removes the usefulness of a speed bonus as you don't need to kite with the invulnerability granted by the hopping animation. The speed is nice for the early days exploring the surface, but once you have the surface mapped you don't really have a practical use for the speed bonus as you'll just use the map teleport once you've already been to a location once.

I basically already gave my full thoughts on the pan flute skills in the tags of another one of your posts. An occasional free pan flute use is worth a skill point. Longer sleep time and lost aggro though? Not so much.

We end on the affinities and.... yeah they're terrible. Or at the very least they're terrible lore wise. I hate the fact that Wortox, the only character who isn't directly aligned with Tenebrau or Alter (Wormwood), Who has Genuine Inner Magic and a solid personal understanding of the Ancient magics of the Constant, Who doesn't just use machines (Winona, Wilson, Wagstaff, Wanda, WX) or boons granted through a pact with the nightmare throne (ie Charlie or any of the characters brought in by Maxwell specifically(Willow, Wes, Wickerbottom, Wigfrid, Wendy, Wolfgang)) needs Wagstaff or Charlie's assistance to make use of shadow and lunar magic. Bullshit. At the very least just remove the lines about the ''shadow queen'' and ''cryptic founder''.

Getting to the actual skills though, they aren't great gameplay wise either. The lunar skill allows him to very specifically avoid a Single Attack coming from a shadow aligned mob if a soul echo is active, while wearing BrightShade armor. This is so niche it would be hard to make use of even if you were TRYING to get it to work. Realistically if you have a soul echo active you would just use the invulnerability frames granted by the hopping animation or just hop out of the way like i mentioned previously. And really, Wortox is one of the easiest characters to stay alive with, due to the mass amounts of healing he can provide. Tanking 1 (one) hit from a shadow mob while wearing planar armor? Who cares?

The shadow perk is a good bit better than the lunar perk but also has a glaring issue. Similarly to the lunar perk you have to have a soul echo active and be holding a shadow reaper. Hitting an enemy with the shadow reaper while a soul echo is active will double the damage for that hit. This yet again incentivizes you to use soul hops to dodge attacks and works quite well with the hit streak mechanic that the void cowl and shadow reaper have. The issue is, WE JUST INTRODUCED A WEAPON THAT'S STRICTLY BETTER THAN THE REAPER!!!! Why restrict him to a weapon that has already lost its crown as the highest damaging weapon???????? I double checked and the shadow maul introduced in the Depths of Duplicity Does Not Work with Wortox's affinity skill. To add insult to injury they didn't even add new dialog from the shadow reaper when wielded by Wortox. But they did add character specific dialog to the Maul when Woodie is wielding it.

I know you were opposed to the idea of an affinity skill at all for Wortox but i knew for a fact that he was going to get one like everyone else, it just wouldn't make sense with the whole idea behind the plot Klei is building up surrounding ''Them". I'm personally fine with the affinity skills but frankly I'm annoyed that they are often completely restricted to Post Game progression. the only character who gets an affinity skill that's actually useful before you get access to planar gear is Willow and she had the best skill tree so far.

That mostly wraps up my thoughts but WOW I wrote a lot more in an hour than I thought! If you actually read to the end of this, Thank you. I doubt a lot of what i said will even make full sense to someone who plays much differently than i do but i hope it was insightful? There is a good chance a lot of what i just ranted about will be fixed by the time the update leaves beta so i put my whole soul (haha soul get it) out there for nothing but i had fun writing this. Yet again Thanks for giving me an outlet for this part of my brain i have dedicated a startling amount of time to. I spent my whole work day thinking this through for some reason. Your art is great and i wish you a good approaching holiday season.

Wortox skilltree beta is here, and with the first patch, it's looking grim in my opinion :/

They expect you to dedicate 7 inventory slots to expensive gear to get damage equal to a darksword, no consistant area of effect damage like other characters got, affinities aligned with charlie and wagstaff that are exclusive to post rift gear, and worst of all they made the whole tree into a moral choice. So now I have to make him mean if I want more damage :(

Honestly kinda devastated because I doubt they'll make any big change, just small number tweaks, and it's just really underwhelming. I know you're more of an atmospheric player than a fighter, so you'll have no reason to choose the naughty side. I hope this isn't too intrusive, but there's no one else I can think of to confide in this very niche obsession of mine.

Hey, your good! My inbox is always open for various Wortox thoughts :)

I've had a bit of a play around with the new skills tonight, and i gotta preface my thoughts with this; You are correct i am a very atmospheric player, i can't fight and i dont go in the caves, i generally just play to build a fun base and mess around so a lot of the intricacies of the gameplay aspects of his skilltree will be completely lost on me

I like alot of the imagery it puts in my head, the souls sparking at his feet when he gets the speedboost, the little taunt the decoy does, I like the idea of Wortox crafting an item to teleport his friends around, it's just fun :)

I don't tend to mind the moral split, its phrased in a silly enough way to not make it seem overly evil (though some of the new naughty soul quotes eer a bit on the overly malicious side for his character for me) and also the fact that your not locked out of either side if you pick skills from one side, but i can def see why it'd put someone off!

I think overall i'm pretty neutral, i like the character of his skilltree, but I'm a tad miffed that it is so focused on souls, but for it just focusing on souls, it's not quite as bad as it could have been, however annoyed i am that they did end up giving him alignments but such is life

[aqvarius]

[WALKTHROUGH + REVIEW] Her Love in the Force: Ayumu Shinonome: S3 Love’s Battlefield + His PoV

Honestly, I think this route is one that I went into almost completely blind. With some other routes (particularly Ishigami’s and Soma’s), I kind of had expectations going in. But with this one, I basically had no idea what was going to happen.

Ayumu’s Love’s Battlefield is another example of how the quality of Her Love in the Force just keeps improving. I have been so impressed by every single route that’s come out this season in particular. It was heartwrenching and frustrating and some things are still unresolved, but I’m excited for the future. Ayumu’s routes have a knack of setting up the premise for the next part so well that I’m just left impatient for the second half of the season. 

With the walkthrough, please bear in mind that there is no good-happy ending meter in this route for some reason so I’m not sure if all answers will take you to the Happy Ending, but these are the answers I chose that brought me to the HE.

Walkthrough:

Ep 1: "His sharp tongue." "That's not the plan."

Ep 2: "I miss fried shrimp." "Kaga trusts you."

Ep 3: "Is that sarcasm?" Explain

Ep 4: Stay silent. "I meant it."

Ep 5: "What's your name?" Abstain.

Ep 6: "Move, please." (gives all options) Don't check.

Ep 7: It's Ayumu. Hug him. (one of the potential options is give him the finger? lol?)

Ep 8: "I prefer black tigers." "No thanks."

Ep 9: Don't answer. "It's panties."

I don’t have much else to say in terms of expectations or even as an intro, so click on through to read my thoughts about this route and his PoV, character and relationship development, my analysis on Ayumu and his MC’s dynamic vs her dynamic with Tsugaru, and my screenshot of the GREATEST BACKGROUND that Voltage has ever gifted us. Here, I have basically tried to keep major plot details to a minimum but beware of minor spoilers. 

Reality:

Ayumu is the person who had maintained strict boundaries the whole time during her time in the academy, so naturally it makes sense that he’s the one who finds it the hardest to detach from these roles and the dynamics that it causes. This is expressed beautifully in his PoV, which I highly enjoyed and definitely recommend. I’ve been thinking that with this new season in particular, the PoVs don’t cover all the key moments in the MS, but rather they complement them with new scenes that really wonderfully paint a broader picture of these two sides to the relationships. Despite the fact that he doesn’t quite yet know how to break away from these roles, Ayumu’s relationship with his MC changes a lot outside of the Academy. He’s a lot more open about wanting to help her. His hints to her are so obvious that even she gets it. I never imagined we would ever hear our favourite sour patch kid Ayumu straight up say “I’d do whatever it is she wanted if only she’d say something to me”?! Three times over, he practically begs her to open up to him and let him help her, and she’s the one pulling away and keeping secrets this time. I understood why she did it but dear God, I felt so frustrated for Ayumu.

This route is full of super heartwarming scenes where you can feel just how much Ayumu cares about supporting his MC, to the point where he almost breaks rank just to set her up in a good position. Ayumu is someone who, before now, hadn’t yet challenged the bureaucracy of the National Police Agency (unlike Kaga and Soma) and barely even ever goes against the orders of his own boss Kaga, but this route places him in a position where he almost commits insubordination for his MC. I love that we first get to see him deal with things when he acts out in a frustrated way, and then again when he’s calmed down and had a think, and that leads to that scene in the park in episode 7, which is one of my favourite scenes in the whole route. His PoV is (naturally) more enjoyable for seeing his own anxieties and frustrations about the situation. This route reminded me again that Ayumu is totally a one-woman man, and when he falls in love, he falls so hard.

Something that I find interesting and different about this route is thinking about Ayumu’s position now that they are both working in the same division. Ayumu is someone who has spent two whole years watching his MC and setting up the chess board for her behind the scenes so she can make the most of her abilities and execute the perfect checkmate. But now that he doesn’t have the position or ability to set the board up for her, we get to see his frustration at wanting so desperately to help and yet being unable to do anything. At the academy, he had a position of authority as a special instructor. But at HQ, he’s just another lieutenant. Sure, he’s a genius and a specialist unlike anyone else, but ranking-wise, he’s in the same position as Goto or even Kurosawa. That’s something that you also feel with Goto’s route – the inability to affect change in the same way that they could within the setting of the academy. In this new context, Ayumu isn’t like Kaga or Ishigami, who can stand on their own against Tsugaru. Soma too has a higher rank so the issue of power and bureaucracy isn’t something that needs to be explored as much (and also he’s kind of a wild card even within Ishigami’s team and has always done his own thing, including a lot of independent investigations, which is why in his route the main dynamic between Team Tsugaru and Soma is Tsugaru getting Momo and MC to spy on Soma).

I saw a couple of comments about how awful Tsugaru is in this route and one on hand I do think that he is a lot more fun to the MC in other people’s routes (mostly Ishigami’s, then Goto’s, then Kaga’s), but on the other I think that if you hate him here, you’re gonna despise him in his own route. I’ve said it a couple times here and there, but I really feel like the version of Tsugaru in Ayumu’s route is the closest to his true personality. Tsugaru’s own profile calls him the worst boss and the most malicious person. Even Momo calls him 天邪鬼, basically calling him someone who messes with people just for shits and giggles (the term used for a demon who is deliberately contrarian). If you don’t like how little Tsugaru respects the MC in this route, oh boy you are gonna be in for a ride when you see how he treats her in his own. There’s a reason she comes to loathe that smile of his. Weirdly enough, in the Good End, the Tsugaru Squad dynamics seem to get to about the same level as they are in the other routes. There’s even a cute scene in the Good End where Momose actually kind of attempts to console the MC when Misato screams at her, and the Special Story from the Ending Set also shows them interacting in about the same way as they do in other LIs’ routes, with the three of them working as a team. I wish there was more sense of development in terms of building that team relationship (and I will expand on this later too).

I don’t know if any of you have watched Agents of SHIELD but this need-to-know basis (and feeling like there are clearance levels for information) thing gave me severe AoS vibes. At the same time, you do understand why an institution such as Public Safety would need to isolate information, for security purposes. It would be no good to have someone, especially a rash new detective, get caught and tortured and spill all the beans, right? And the thing is, this need-to-know thing is not new to Ayumu’s MC at all. You only have to look at his Sequel and Graduation routes to see her being left in the dark by Ayumu himself in two consecutive seasons. The big difference here is that whenever Ayumu acts, he always keeps her abilities and strengths in mind, with the plan always taking advantage of the things only she can do (such as having an eidetic memory). So she doesn’t need to follow instructions (although he always leaves her clues), but the plan is already designed to work with her usual attack patterns and abilities. With Tsugaru, however, they don’t know each other. She doesn’t know how Tsugaru thinks (nor does anyone except Momo), and while Tsugaru may know what she thinks, he probably sees her as volatile and unpredictable. If she were working under Ayumu in this case, he may have taken into account the fact that his MC might have tried to accost Misato’s assailers in the basement, but Tsugaru (rightfully, tbh) expects people to trust him and follow his orders since he always has a reason for doing the things he does, even when no one (except Momo) understands what they are. 

I’ve previously touched on my opinion that Soma is probably the closest OG character to Tsugaru, which I’ll expand on here too. Actually, let me rectify that statement: Tsugaru is probably the most similar to Soma and Kurosawa – I would say his character maybe sits in the middle of their personalities. The common factor here is not just their enigmaticness, but the way they keep a friendly mask on while they use people as tools without remorse while keeping their plans hidden, or only understood by a select few people who get it without words (which is actually similar to how Kaga does things too). This is why he needs a Momo 2.0, to be able to have a similar sense of foresight and understand why they need to enact certain plans. He needs more pawns like Momo, who allow themselves to be used because they understand the bigger picture, even if, on the surface, the steps towards justice seem unethical. And sometimes they really may be unethical, but this is Public Safety so what do you expect lol.

So even though it’s totally legitimate to complain about Tsugaru in this route, it was necessary for him to be like this in order to demonstrate the shifting dynamic between Ayumu/MC and MC/her new superior in a new context. It’s important to note that both Ayumu and Tsugaru start out by giving the MC seemingly inane errands to do. Because she’s gotten used to the idea that all the small, seemingly useless things that Ayumu makes her do are for her own developmental benefit, she expects the same of Tsugaru. But frankly, Tsugaru doesn’t have the time to do stuff like this. He’s a captain, she’s a working detective, and she needs to start being responsible for her own growth, so when she finally gets it into her head that he isn’t going out of his way for her, she becomes despondent first and then insistent on doing things her own way.

What then happens is an obvious lack of trust between senior/junior between Tsugaru and MC. It’s something that we see her gradually develop over her years at the academy, but she hasn’t yet learnt to rely and trust on people other than Shinonome when they aren’t tailoring everything behind the scenes for her benefit because this is what he has always done. It isn’t said explicitly but this is what he (and Kaga and Tsugaru [and Namba lol?]) are talking about in His PoV when they talk about smothering bunnies, especially when they are in a new family. Because Ayumu has always gone above and beyond to pave the way for her to follow her own sense of justice and still have everything work out, she hasn’t yet learnt to develop trust in other people’s senses of foresight and that acting independently according to her own sense of justice isn’t always the right thing to do, especially when the plan isn’t set up for her sake. Ayumu sets everything up for her because that’s the way he shows his care for her as his mentee and then girlfriend (and we LOVE that about him!), but Tsugaru has no reason to do so at all.

The MC in this route was different. To be honest, I got flashbacks to Kaga’s first season routes, especially when she was just gonna pack up and go back to Nagano. It’s quite a different reaction from Ishigami and Soma’s MCs, who just naturally hone in on work and basically become workaholics when faced with adversity and heartbreak. If Ishigami’s MC’s defining trait is being a workaholic, Goto’s is sweetness , Soma’s is actually being able to do her job well without messing up dependence, Kaga’s is insecurity, and Shinonome’s is how chipper she is. Obviously this is an extreme dilution of her character (and I could write a whole piece just on her characterisation) and she embodies all of those traits listed above and more. But more than anyone else, Ayumu’s MC is the most upbeat and stubbornly optimistic, so seeing a more insecure and pessimistic side of her definitely felt different and a bit odd. In the past, even when she’s een down, she continues to just do her job. The reason why she gave me Kaga S1 MC vibes is because of that insecurity and pessimism. Kaga’s MC is someone who was initially prone to giving up because her sense of morals and justice does not align with what Kaga is willing to do for Public Safety. You get a sense of that with Soma’s MC at the beginning as well, but Soma is gentle enough on the surface and just encouraging enough at the right moments that she doesn’t give up. The relationship between Kaga and his MC at the beginning is similar to the relationship between Tsugaru and Ayumu’s MC in this route, since Kaga is also someone who acts on his intuition and expects others to be able to understand him without a single explanation.

In this route, the MC starts to break away from Ayumu’s protection and act on her own. This is well and good, but what I would have liked to see is her starting to be able to work with her team and prove herself as someone who is compatible with them and not just capable as an independent agent. I loved the silly Eiji cameo (with his yamato nadeshiko tshirt, naturally) but I think that sense of development could have been built up a bit more had she been able to work with Momose. And no I am not just saying this because I love the concept of bodyguard Momo lol, but because then we would get to see her demonstrate her individual capabilities and slowly earn Momo’s trust and respect (and by proxy, Tsugaru’s, since Momo is his dog). We know she is more than capable in terms of technique. In the Happy Ending, Tsugaru even acknowledges that he knows that MC’s specialty is hacking without being traced, so I kind of wish that they had let MC prove her abilities individually but also learn how to work in a new team that does things a different way. Essentially, I want her to get to a point where she can adapt to working under difficult people in the same way that Kaga’s MC understands exactly what he needs even if he just says “file”, or know what his strategy is with one clue, or know what she needs to do when he says the word “jailer” a particular way even when he’s pretending to sell her off to a rich millionaire.

(Once I saw the name Mr Hattori I was like.... this is a ninja name... it could only be ONE PERSON)

Personally, I think that in the Happy End scene where MC and Tsugaru are talking, what Tsugaru wanted to hear from MC was an apology not just for acting on her own but for not trusting him and just running off and doing her own thing. A big part of this route was about MC needing to prove the academy’s, Shinonome’s, and her own worth to Tsugaru and I don’t feel like this was necessarily successful, since the one thing she should have been able to demonstrate to earn Tsugaru’s acknowledgement is that she can adapt and make herself useful to him. Anyway, in the next part of the season, I really hope we get to see her begin to learn how to work in a new team. The unity between the three of them that we see in Goto’s route is incredible, and we even see the moments in Goto’s and Soma’s routes where Momo comes to respect her abilities. I think the best way to show off Ayumu’s effect on her life and value as an academy instructor would be to show off the techniques that he specifically taught her in order to help Team Tsugaru and prove her place on their squad as an IT specialist, instead of acting on her own. 

On a personal note, I also just really wanted more Momose. We’ve seen in other routes (particularly Soma’s) how kind he actually is and how much he cares. In Soma’s route, he even defies Tsugaru to support you. One of my favourite parts about the SS3 routes is seeing Momo gradually warm up to you. I’ve mentioned the little bit in the Good Ending, but it would have been nice if there were a few more subtle moments like that to show how the MC starts to prove herself to her team.

I don’t want to spoil too much about the plot, so I will say that HLITF always knows how to write a compelling mystery, and I enjoyed that they kept us in suspense even when MC cracked the case so as to preserve the element of surprise. I also enjoyed the last couple chapters as well, and what happens just when you think everything is sorted… Of all of the SS3 routes, Shinonome’s sets up the most clearly not only for his Episode 0, but also for the second half of the season.

I did find the pacing a bit odd and not as tight as Soma’s, Goto’s, or Kaga’s (Ishigami’s was……. Wild……) but it wasn’t too confusing to follow, although I would struggle if I had to draw out a timeline since there are so many small ups and downs that it’s hard to pinpoint a specific narrative structure with clearly defined acts.

Aside from that, there were so many little moments I loved. The dinosaur planetarium date, MC being thirsty for Ayumu so many times (what’s new), MOMOSE IN A VINTAGE ROARING TIGER SUKAJAN AND SUPREME T-SHIRT LIKE THE ABSOLUTE HYPEBEAST HE IS, Ayumu’s desperation during the climax, and that one line where she says “Ow! That hoppity hurts, kids!” Let me know what little details you most enjoyed about the route too!

Edit: Can’t believe I forgot to mention this but that ONE SCENE WHERE HE’S ALL EXHAUSTED LIKE “BUY.... ME.... NECTAR” AND SOMA IS JUST STANDING THERE LIKE “WHAT NECTAR DO YOU WANT ME TO BUY FOR YOU” LMALSDKFSLSFDK LIKE AYUMU JUST ACCIDENTALLY ASKED HIS SUPERIOR TO RUN A PEACH NECTAR ERRAND.

The CGs were stunning too – I have absolutely nothing bad to say about them. The kabedon CG and the Happy Ending CG are my favourites in particular.

The appearance of the RMD doctors is definitely… gratuitous lol but I didn’t mind it. I thought they would at least play a bigger role (with maybe Sen in paediatrics at least). I so desperately wanted MC to acknowledge that Sen seems really similar to Ayumu?! But the appearance of the RMD MC in Ayumu’s PoV was even more gratuitous and I HATED IT LOL!!

I wondered if the translation and coding of this route was maybe a bit of a rush job? Or at least affected by the work from home situation. Firstly, there was no good – happy ending meter, which in one sense was quite nice because I got to read the whole thing in one go and just pick the options I thought would work without worrying about the meter not going up. It reminded me of old school Voltage games. Secondly, in episode 6, there’s an error with the option selection during the CG scene. If you select the first option (“Move, please”), it actually gives you the dialogue for all three options one after the other. Thirdly, in the Happy Ending chapter, after the HE end card goes up, there’s an extra scene which is actually a few slides from the ending of the Good End (re: Naru). I’m not sure if this is an error or just needed to give the context to set up for the second half of the season. In his PoV, they also left in a card from the JP version, which is delightfully, painfully heartwrenching to read but was left untranslated.

In Kaga’s, Ishigami’s and Soma’s routes, my heart hurt for their MCs. But in this route, my heart ached the most for Ayumu. I honestly feel that Ayumu’s Love’s Battlefield gave him more character development than his MC, which… I don’t mind, actually. This route was delightfully frustrating to read, actually made me cry once (but not as much as Ishigami’s or Soma’s; the latter made me have to take a break to sob for a good while), and also really hyped me up for his Love’s Trial route (愛の試練編). The special story in the ending set is WONDERFUL and I would highly recommend getting it if you can (although I’m still mad that we need to purchase these stories instead of getting them as a bonus for unlocking both endings like it used to be in the standalone app). Finally, it gave us this absolute gem of a background. Even if the route had been complete trash, it would have all been okay because of this one background.  

[let-me-make-you-proud]

Tangled: The Series Q&A with Kait.

This is a recapitulation from today’s (September 14, 2019) Questions and Answers session with Kait on the Tangled Discord Server.

Q: Which Disney princesses outside of Tangled the series can you see Varian being friends with? Nonfranchise ones included.

A: I think Belle is the first one who comes to mind!! She’s super studious and goes against the grain…not to mention her father is an inventor who’s a little off-base! 🙂 I think he’d be super comfortable experimenting with Belle and her dad and reading awesome stories! (Maybe even sharing the Tales of Flynn Rider with her! …Assuming she hasn’t read it! Haha. ) He could also eat ham sandwiches with Anna. Sorry. Second thought. Lol!!

Q: So Kait, as a storyboard artist on the show what kind of little details, quirks or creative touches did you or any other artists put into Varian scenes you or others storyboarded?

A: Ha!! Any acting scene with Varian I had…I pretty much based off of Anna Lencioni (my best friend/ another board artist on the show.) Anna makes these very specific expressions and she gestures to herself a lot and closes her eyes and creases her brows and says things like “A-huh! Actually…” or “Um!!” Before making a point and it’s always reminded me of him.

She kept a “flynnolium” prop from Halloween with green goo in a vial in her cubicle at work so long it grew mold. She said she was studying it. She found scrap metal in her boot one day. She has a basement lab for her experiments and crafts. She befriended two raccoons at her last apartment. She is the most accident-prone person with freckles I’ve ever met…she’s pretty much him.

Jeremy Jordan’s reads give you so much to work with…and I love that character so much I feel a natural sort of understanding of how he might say something or do something…but Anna would always do these specifically Anna things that I had to use for Varian.

Q: Do you have any specific advice for aspiring storyboard artists or people who aspire to work in animation?

A: Gestural drawings help you learn to draw fast…which is a very important part of storyboarding. I would say storyboarding‘ s biggest requirements are clarity and speed. Lots of productions have different requirements in terms of what they look for from story artists. Tangled‘s leadership cared a lot about drawing skill, animation, layout, etc. because it more strongly informed the animation studio to have those things. The show I’m working on now (Monsters at Work) is a 3D show…so for our production, the emphasis is more on story and speed. We pitch ideas more than we pitch drawings…so clarity is important and acting is too, but we’re far less precious about tying down drawings and animating since we shift into the 3D production pipeline after story. The boards are still very important…but the more technical aspects are a *little* less so. The focus is just more on story and character and what the board artists can bring to their scenes.

So I’d say just practice drawing…maybe try and give someone a prompt or ask a friend for one. Choose a theme! Maybe vampires? What’s the worst thing that could happen to a vampire? What’s the best thing? What’s the funniest thing? What if they were also an alien? Or fused with a werewolf? Or chained to one? What would happen? Giving yourself a starting point for an idea will inspire you to explore all the possibilities for humor, drama, etc. in that idea. If you’re struggling to give yourself a prompt, try looking online…or maybe choosing a song you like or a passage from a book for inspiration.

There’s also this really fun thing you can do to study cinematography and shot composition called a “three tone” exercise. Basically…put on your favorite (live action) film, grab a sketchbook, grab a black and grey marker, and use the white of the page for your third tone. What you wanna do is (as you’re watching or while pausing) sketch a small thumbnail using only three grey tones of what you see on the screen. Draw the shot- where the characters are, try and duplicate the lighting…it teaches you a lot! 🙂 (Phew!)

Q: Do you have any fun non-spoiler head canons about Varian?

A: I think his favorite dessert is apple pie and I think he bakes recreationally very often! He’s probably a good cook. (Though he may have one or two minor accidents……a burnt thing here and there. Minor oil splatters….haha!!)

Q: What’ve been your favorite episodes, both to storyboard and in general? Of course, no specifics if it’s S3

A: Haha! Well…What The Hair and Queen for A Day have special places in my heart because they were such big moments for my favorite character…(Varian, haha.) But I’d say the episodes I had the most fun boarding are all in season 3!!! Which is exciting! I have to start compiling some work to post! 🙂 I think the episode I had the most fun with is one you guys will really enjoy.

Q: Will we get some interesting surprises (In Season 3)?

A: Without any spoilers- absolutely!! The show is always full of those.

Q: So We’ve heard many fans express why they love Varian as a charcter before, I’d love to know what drew you and Anna to Varian as well and why you guys personally found him to be a great character.

A: When Shane Prigmore originally pitched the character to me, he was much younger. He was like 11 or so, I think? Maybe 12? He’s still pretty young…but what Shane said was that he wanted him to go from this wide-eyed kid to this dark, angry person whose bangs fell over those wide, bright eyes…just full of rage. That idea was super interesting to me…it just hit on something in character development that I felt like I’d never exactly seen before? He was so young and it was such an interesting idea to me to make a child the villain and to give that child a strong reason to be angry? It felt like it was taking this child very seriously, which I appreciate. It felt very real and very dark.

The thing that threw me through a loop but also evolved my fascination with the character was Jeremy Jordan’s casting. I listened to a lot of the auditions they had for various actors and I had seen a ton of Shane’s concept art of the character…a lot of them were VERY different than what we have now. One version Ricky Roxburgh (writer) contributed to had Varian cast as an adult in the story. But when I heard Jeremy I felt like I totally understood who Varian really was.

He was a well-intentioned disaster with unchecked emotions. That. Is me! Haha!! I see myself in his imperfections, his emotionality in spite of his creative and often intellectual thinking. He wants to ascend to these levels he may not be ready to ascend to…he feels this need to prove himself and seek validation. I don’t know, I guess I relate to that! And I’m just a sucker for good guys gone bad. The other half of this, of course, is that he’s very charming and cute and super reminds me of my best friend, Anna Lencioni.

Q: Which character do you most like seeing interacting with Varian?

A: It’s a little spoilery for me to reveal that……..but I think you guys are gonna know when it happens! Haha!

I can’t wait to post THOSE boards

That’s actually right out of the episode I think I liked boarding the most, haha.

Q: If there was one prop (furniture, object, the like) from the Tangled series that could be made real and you could keep, what would it be..?

A: I think it’d have to be those little alchemy orbs that Varian throws? They just suddenly clean the whole castle hallway somehow and like…could use me some of that. He also has the one that removes stains from tablecloths, so. I’m sloppy. That’d be a big help. Haha!

Also his staff is pretty cool 😉, I boarded/created that staff…David Lee (prop designer) did its final design…haha

Q: I have a question about a scene in season 1. When Varian got back the first part of the scroll he mentioned that it took him a while to translate it. Has he really been able to read it or has it been a bluff?

A: Varian can indeed translate what’s on the scroll. 😉

Q: Do you have any networking advice for those trying to get into the animation industry?

A: Post your work!! Make it easily accessible, tag it well, just show what you’ve got online! Upload boards, animatics, drawings, etc. Creating an online presence can really help put your name out there. Apply for internships, jobs. I know it’s hard to network because a lot of industry professionals don’t have time to answer specific questions or give portfolio reviews…so it’s sort of important to take some initiative on that and be self-motivated.

For me, I studied the portfolios of Disney feature story artists, CalArts students, etc. and tried to structure the presentation of my work based on that. Also, it helped me get a sense of what pieces of work would best showcase where I was trying to go and what I was trying to do. I’d ask yourself those questions as you develop a portfolio and artistic voice online! 🙂

My first feature job after a trainee program in New York at Blue Sky happened because Doug Sweetland (Pixar animator, feature director, awesome dude) found my work online and liked it. He just reached out based on that!

Shane Prigmore actually reached out to me for Tangled similarly.

Q: Besides Varian, do you have a favorite character that you’ve boarded?

A: I always love Eugene. He’s the second character I think I’m most like. His acting was really fun to play with and I felt like I could push his expressions a lot because he’s so funny. I loved boarding Lance too (I boarded a lot of Lance in S3!!) but MAN was he hard to draw, haha! His face shape is just really hard to draw at certain angles.

Q: With Varian cosplay that is going on, what Disney character would you like to see Varian dress up as next?

A: Jack Skellington! Halloween is afoot. Jack is another well-intentioned disaster. Guess I have a type!

Q: What’s Varian’s opinion on raccoons, are they his favourite animal?

A: I imagine it’s because Ruddiger is always finding interesting things in the trash and giving them to Varian to use in his experiments. Also, they’re fat and cute.

Q: There’s a bit of an argument going on over how many freckles Varian has. Can you confirm how many he has?

A: Ha!!! Yes…one second… 14!!

Q: How big do you think Corona is? Like Vatican City small or Arendelle big?

A: You know, with the wall and all, it actually feels a little on the smaller side to me? I’m sure there’s a little bit of discrepancy between the movie’s version of Corona and our version…but based on where we went within Corona on the show, I’d say it feels on the smaller side.

Q: Are there any non-spoiler Varian scenes or moments that didn’t make the cut that you can share?

A: MAN. Yes. There is one scene that changed after I rolled off the episode and I’m very sad about it. I’ll post it after the episode airs! There was also a line of Varian’s that I boarded to a specific read from Jeremy Jordan and that read was not chosen in editorial later so…I’ll post that one too, haha!

Q: What is your favourite song from the first two seasons so far?

A: All my favorite songs are in season threeeeee…hahahaha!! I think Let Me Make You Proud or the Buddy Song are my favorites. Buddy Song still gets stuck in my head now and then.

Q: What do you think Varian would order at a drive-thru? Specifically at chipotle 😂

A: Chipotle isn’t a drive thru!! Hahaha He’d get the kid’s quesadilla from chipotle. I think Varian is a fries/chips kind of person…something to snack on while he works! He probably also likes milkshakes.

Q: (Continuation from the question above) Chocolate or vanilla?

A: He’d revolutionize by combining them both. FOR SCIENCE!

Q: What is, in your opinion, the most challenging part of varian’s design to draw?

A: His goggles, hahaha. Or just his…hair in general.

Well it’s funny too because when you board these guys, you get used to doing a shorthand for them and then when you go to draw them FOR REAL you realize how complicated that actually is and how wrong your shorthand actually was? Hahahaha

Q: is Varian ticklish at all?

A: I feel like Varian, Eugene, and Lance are all equally ticklish. To the point of absurdity. Cass would fight it as long as she could…but when it finally got to her, she’d laugh uncontrollably. Rapunzel, she’s the TICKLER.

Q: What do you think Varian opinion and belief on magic is now that he’s seen it with his own eyes?

A: I imagine that he certainly believes in it now and no longer underestimates its powers…but I imagine he’s ultimately more comfortable staying in his own lane and working with worldly properties!

Q: If Varian would have been able to meet Demanitus…how would their conversation had looked like?

A: I feel like Varian would have had a TON of questions about his legendary device and whether or not he truly traveled dimensions.

Q: Did Varian have any other friends in old Corona before he met rapunzel?

A: Probably not many…he’s a bit of a hermit. I think Ruddiger is his best friend……. It’s sad but I also think that’s kind of why it hurt so bad when Rapunzel wasn’t able to help him. Also why he was SO excited to have Rapunzel, Cass, and Eugene come visit.

I think the village looked at Varian as a little unstable or worrisome. I’m sure everyone knew he was very nice…but they were likely very unnerved by his inventions.

Q: Do you think Varian ever tried to synthesise gold or the elixir of life like a real alchemist?

A: I’ve wondered that myself!! I think his alchemy has proven to be more about other people…helping others, making people proud. Maybe if someone he cared about was in need.

Q: If you were to meet Varian in real life, what would you say to him?

A: What elixir did you make to get THAT kind of volume? His hair’s so POOFY! Honestly, I’d probably just give him a hug.

Q: How much does Varian know or remember about his mom?

A: I’d say about as much as the photo of her on the wall.

Q: Is there spoiler about his hair streak? Or is it just by design?

A: It’s totally by design. I think it’s safe to assume it’s probably the result of some lab accident!

Q: In what ways is Jeremy Jordan like Varian?

A: I don’t know Jeremy Jordan personally, haha! But I think a lot of these inflections he adds to Varian sort of off the cuff probably come very naturally to him. I know he often wants to do his own pass at the musical arrangement Alan Menken writes…like he’ll want to do something a little different, in his own way, and it will change the song completely!! In an awesome way. That’s a little Varian-esque. In the “Let Me Make You Proud” reprise…Alan Menken had sung that “they are going to pay…they…will…pay” all in a low, downward tone. Jeremy wanted to scream it and make it powerful and angry and loud when he said “PAY” and you could just hear the spite in his voice for the “they will pay.” Genius!

Q: What was the most shocking moment/revelation of the series to you (minus anything season 3)?

A: It’s hard to say because I knew most of what was going to happen long, long ago. I think one of the things that made me go “oh dang!” was something Tom Canfield boarded. It’s that part in Destinies Collide where Lance slices the entire statue down the middle with a sword. What a BAMF!

Q: What were your thoughts on the early concept of Varian having an apple orchard and being a farm kid instead of a young alchemist?

A: He still kinda has those things! Quirin is a farmer as well as the village leader and there are apples on their little farm estate! 🙂 I think that makes Varian very unassuming as a mad little scientist. I’m sure that’s how (Ruddiger and Varian) met! Remember, he used his purple tacky goo stuff to catch raccoons so they wouldn’t eat the crops! And Ruddiger’s favorite snack is apples. 😉

Q: What is his official height and weight?

A: Smol.

Q: How did you guys come up with Varian’s name? And was there any other name suggestions for him before the name ‘Varian’ was chosen?

A: I’m not sure who came up with that name, actually! I’m sure it has something to do with the meaning of the word “variant” which means something that varies, changes in form.

Q: What’s his last name?

A: His last name!! I have NO idea and it bothers me!!! A Disney magazine referred to Varian, Ruddiger, and Quirin as “The Ruddiger Family” and I still haven’t stopped laughing about that.

Q: What sad Disney movie moments would make him cry?

A: Oof. Lion King.

Q: What musicals do think Varian would enjoy?

A: Little Shop of Horrors! I think he’d see himself in Seymour! Or Wicked…you know, that villain arc.

Q: How did Arianna and Fred meet?

A: I actually don’t know off the top of my head!

Q: Would Varian enjoy rollercoasters?

A: I think he’d enjoy how they’re MADE and then scream his head off while riding one, throw up his cotton candy and corndog, and go play carnival games instead. Then get mad that they’re rigged.

Q: So what comes next for you now that the series is almost over? Any big plans?

A: Well the series wrapped for production a while ago! I’ve been on another show for almost a year now! 🙂 I’m working on the new Disney+ show Monsters at Work as a director! It’s an awesome, awesome show…totally next-level…I’m shocked that I’m getting to be apart of something like this. It’s a direct sequel to the movie that serves as an office comedy (a la The Office, Parks and Rec) and has so many characters that fit immediately into the Monsters Inc world. Monsters Inc is my favorite Pixar movie…so I literally come to work and leave work on the same high! It’s an awesome, awesome show with a great crew! 🙂 It’s also just really exciting to be apart of the first original animated property for D+!

Q: How would you compare working as a director to working as a storyboard artist?

A: It’s hard work, just as hard, but in a different way! For me personally, I’m a little easily fatigued by drawing? I get a little creatively frustrated because my thoughts move quicker than my hand. Or because I don’t always feel like I can execute in a drawing what I’m thinking in the way that I want? Part of that is just being an artist…and it’s not ALL the time that I feel that way…but I think I have a certain stamina for drawing that I found challenging to increase.

Directing is just different! It has a lot more to do with managing a team, communication, coordinating, listening, speaking up, problem-solving, being very aware of story as it applies to ALL parts of a production. I don’t draw as often anymore. You have to consider a lot more…more people, more constraints, more difficulties, more opinions, more solutions…it’s just MORE. And you also still have to draw! 🙂 It’s very busy work, but it’s AMAZING and I love it. I feel like I’m contributing to animated storytelling a lot more in this role, actually. I love working with people, I love workshopping, and I love helping! I’m also just spoiled to be working with some great people right now. It’s a blast.

Q: Are any Tangled: The Series crew joining you on that show?

A: Yes!! Tom Caufield and Wendy Sullivan were on it for a minute, but they’ve both moved on to Dreamworks recently! James Suhr (board artist), Isabelle Gedigk (season 3 board artist), Naomi Hicks and Casey Coffey (revisionists), David Lee (props), Ricky Roxburgh (writer), and I are all working together again! It’s awesome.

Q: Does Varian, deep down, blame himself for the amber?

A: I believe he does.

Q: How do you deal with artist’s block?

A: I try to think about the intention behind what I’m doing. Why is the scene I’m working on very important to the story? If it feels unimportant or boring, how can I make it interesting? What can I do on my end to make it more inspiring or fun without going too far off the rails and still serving the scene’s purpose?

If it’s not work-related, I try and start with some fan art or something familiar for me to draw. I have a lot of scribbly Varians in the margins of a lot of my sketch documents. I use him as a warm-up a lot. It helps build my confidence to draw something familiar/ that I think I can draw pretty well.

Q: What’s the hardest scene you’ve ever had to board?

A: Oh God. ANYTHING with action. I’m not an action gal. Lots of stuff in S3. I was board partners with Wendy Sullivan and ended up getting a lot of action to board even though she’s WAY better at it than me!! It was an interesting challenge…but it was very, very challenging. Ben (Co-EP) was a great mentor to me in the scene I did for the mid season. He was very patient with me, despite my shortcomings as an action board artist, haha. I enjoy boarding for comedy much more.

Kait: Anyways, I should probably head off now! Thank you guys so much for all the questions!!!! You’re awesome! I hope you’re all super excited for S3! It’s a great one.

[poetlcs]

books I’ve read in 2020 (so far) + their ratings

non-fiction

crossing the line: australia’s secret history in the timor sea by kim mcgrath: important research into australia’s theft of oil in timor leste. didn’t rate

hood feminism: notes from the women that a movement forgot by mikki kendall: essay collection dissecting modern feminism, pointing out the exclusionary practices of mainstream feminism and offering new frameworks through which feminism should operate. really recommend. didn’t rate

the uninhabitable earth: life after warming by david wallace-wells: good introduction to environmentalism and the climate disaster. a little too introductory for me but good for those new to the topic. ★★★

homo deus: a brief history of tomorrow by yuval noah harari: it is simply not Sapiens nor as good as Sapiens. Looks at potentials for our future but, thought it was a little poorly researched. Some parts were still interesting though.  ★★★

SPQR: a history of ancient rome by mary beard: a little dense at times, but super interesting and detailed look at ancient rome. enjoyed it a lot. ★★★★

sister outsider by audre lorde: collection of audre lorde’s essays and speeches, about feminism, lesbianism, the queer community, being Black and a lesbian ect ect. outstanding, important collection anyone interested in intersectional feminism must read. ★★★★★

all boys aren’t blue by george m. johnson: memoir about johnson’s experiences growing up as a Black gay boy in a poor neighbourhood. Very poignant memoir, written in such accessible language which I liked. guarenteed to get you emotional, another one everyone should read. didn’t rate because it’s so highly personal that felt wrong but highly recommend. 

under a biliari tree i born by alice biari smith: memoir by an Aboriginal Australian detailing her life growing up learning traditional Aboriginal ways and how the lives of Indigenous Australian’s have been impacted through the years, specifically in Western Australia. Probably more aimed at school age people but still a 101 I think many Australian’s (and non Australian’s) can benefit from. didn’t rate 

classics

maurice by e.m forster: gay man coming of age story in college + themes around class and sexuality. forster’s end note saying he thought it imperative to write a happy ending because we need that in fiction, i love him. ★★★★★

emma by jane austen: read before seeing the movie. loved emma as a character but thought this was okay compared to other Austen I’ve read. ★★★½

perfume by patrick suskind: a man with an incredible sense of smell starts murdering young women to try and bottle their scent for a perfume. weirdest shit I ever read still don’t know how to feel about it. ★★★

the color purple by alice walker: follows the life of Celie, an Black woman living in rural Georgia. deals with her relationship with her sister Nettie, her lover Shug Avery, and with God. this tore my heart to shreds absolutely everyone must read it, like even just for the beautiful writing ALONE. ★★★★

a study in scarlet by arthur conan doyle: its sherlock holmes #1 no further explanation required. not my fave sherlock story, was the weird morman subplot needed? ★★½

dracula by bram stoker: yeah vampires!! this was way easier to read and also way funnier than I expected. we STAN gothic aesthetics and Miss Mina Harker here. ★★★★

fantasy

the diviners by libba bray: teens with magical powers/abilities solving mysteries in 1920′s new york. reread. ★★★★★

lair of dreams by libba bray: the diviners #2. reread. ★★★★½

before the devil breaks you by libba bray: the diviners #3. reread. best one in the series hands down.  ★★★★★

the king of crows by libba bray: waited so long for this series ender and it let me down lol. ★★★

clockwork princess by cassandra clare: the infernal devices #3. dont @ me this is my comfort reread series and I was travelling. ★★★★★

we unleash the merciless storm by tehlor kay mejia: we set the dark on fire #2. latinx inspired fantasy about overthrowing a corrupt government with an f/f romance. didn’t like as much as book one but still good, BEST girlfriends ever. ★★★½

wolfsong by t.j klune: basically feral gay werewolves and witches living in a town together. feels like a teen wolf episode but way more gayer. despite that hated the writing style and I don’t like age gap romances so yay the concept no the execution.  ★★

the fate of the tearling by erika johansan: the tearling #3. finally finished this series, dunno why everyone loathes the ending so much I thought it was cool. underrated fantasy because it’s very unique. ★★★★

girl, serpent, thorn by melissa bashardoust: persian inspired fantasy about a girl who is cursed by a div to kill anyone she touches. has an f/f romance. bashardoust writes the most aesthetically rich settings I love her. ★★★★

crier’s war by nina varela: reread. f/f enemies to lovers where the main character poses as a handmaiden in order to try and murder the princess whose father killed her family. PEAK gay content literally a modern classic. ★★★★★

we hunt the flame by hafsah faizal: I was so disinterested in this book I barely can describe the plot but basically it’s a prince and a hunter who are enemies but are forced to go looking for this magical artifact together anyway it was boring.  ★

ghosts of the shadow market by cassandra clare + others: short story collection set in the shadowhunter world. probably the strongest of her collections but they just don’t hit the same as her full length books. didn’t rate. 

a storm of swords: part two by george r.r martin: a song of ice and fire #3. I WILL finish reading these books eventually i swear !! probably the best one yet though. ★★★★

amarah by l.l mcneil: world of linaria #3. high fantasy with politics, dragons, warring races. tolkein/asoiaf vibes if they had more women with agency. didn’t rate because I haven’t decided my feelings on the end yet. 

science fiction

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: f/f enemies to lovers between spies on rival sides of a time war. good book but writing style wasn’t for me (others love this so eh take my opinion with a grain os salt:  ★★★

not your sidekick by c.b lee: main character is from a superhero family but has no powers herself, so she takes an internship working with a superhero corp. has an f/f romance with a villain character. so much fun and super cute

speculative fiction:

the deep by rivers solomon: speculative fiction wherein pregnant African women thrown overboard by slave ships gave birth to babies that became mermaids. main character holds all the memories of her people’s past but runs away after being unable to deal with the burden. about self discovery, intergenerational trauma and the burden of remembering. a little short imo but still all round excellent book ★★★★

how long ‘til black future month? by n.k jemisin: short story collection, many with an afro-futurism focus. hard to explain because there is such a wide variety of stories but this is an AMAZING collection. didn’t rate because I don’t like rating short story collections but wish more people would read it. 

mystery

the family upstairs by lisa jewell: woman inherits an english house and starts to unravel the secrets of a mass cult suicide that happened there years ago. loved it because it was wild. ★★★★★

the hand on the wall by maureen johnson: truly devious #3. boarding school mystery where the main character has to solve a murder that happened in the 1920s at her school while another mystery is happening in present time. my least favourite of the series but satisfying conclusion nonetheless. ★★★½

contemporary fiction

maybe in another life by taylor jenkins reid: dual timeline book showing the two outcomes of a decision the main character makes. cool concept but ultimately boring book because I didn’t care about the main character at all.  didn’t rate because I didn’t finish it. 

girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo: vignette stories of various women whose lives are vaguely interconnected. incredibly well written with such vivid characters. deserves the hype. ★★★★

tin heart by shivan plozza: australian YA, the recipient of a heart transplant wishes to connect with the family of her donor, after she discovers the identity of her donor. good story but didn’t like the writing style. ★★★

a little life by hanya yanigahara: follows the life of a group of friends living in life, especially that of jude, a closed off and damaged man with a troubling past. a little too torture-porny/Tragic Gays but I cannot deny the author has a beautiful writing style and I went through all the emotions. didn’t rate

a girl like that by tanaz bhathena: explores the events leading up to the main character dying in a car crash. set in Jeddah, saudi arabia and explores expectations on women, feminism and expressions of sexuality and relationships between women during teenage years. kinda no good characters but I loved it for it’s messy depiction of teen girls (whilst not condemning them for this). underrated. ★★★★

little fires everywhere by celeste ng: drama in white american suburbs when a new family moves in and the neighbours start investigating their past. eh, I heard a lot about this and thought it was just okay. ★★★

stay gold by tobly mcsmith: trans boy decides to go stealth at his new school and falls for a cheerleader, georgia. about navigating being trans and definitely felt like it was written to educate cis people. it was okay but ultimately not my thing and not really the story I was looking for, even though I respect it being written by a trans author and still would recommend to certain people. ★★½

everything leads to you by nina lacour: main character and her best friend have to unravel a hollywood mystery, all while the main character is trying to get over her ex-girlfriend and find work as a set designer. f/f romance and loved the focus on movie making and the power of stories. ★★★½

the falling in love montage by ciara smyth: a girl meets another girl at a party, but she’s not looking to date due to the amount of family issues she has going on. so her and the girl decide to spend the summer having fun, renacting scenes from rom-coms, but never dating. awesome family dynamics and the relationship between the two girls was sweet also set in ireland which is fun. 

normal people by sally rooney: explores the relationship between connell and marianne, who meet in school, date secretly, and then are inexplicably drawn to each other for the rest of their lives. explores power dynamics, relationships, love and trust, and what we owe to eachother. great book, great mini-series, love it to bits. ★★★★★

the glass hotel by emily st john mandel: impossible to explain this book, but there’s a mystery about grafitti, a ponzi scheme and a character falling to their death on a boat under suspicious circumstances. honestly idk what happened in this book but I liked it. ★★★½

historical fiction

half of a yellow sun by chimamanda ngozi adichie: historical fiction about the biafran war loosely based on adichie’s family experiences. incredibly well written with an ending that punches you in the gut. ★★★★

hamnet by maggie o’farrell: explores the shakespeare family after the death of their child, Hamnet, from the plague, and how this leads to Shakespeare writing Hamlet. cool as fuck concept and boring as fuck book with such tropey female characters. ★★

all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr: WW2 fiction, dual perspective between a blind girl living in france and a german boy forced into nazi youth. I cannot believe this book is award winning it’s so boring and predictable and i reget the time i wasted on it. ★

poetry:

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong: poetry memoir. vuong writes a letter to his illiterate mother, knowing she’ll never read it, exploring their relationship, his experiences growing up as second generation Vietnamese-American, and hers during the Vietnam War. My favorite book I’ve read so far this year, just too good to explain, genuinely just feel like everyone is better off for having read this. ★★★★★

currrently reading:

girls of storm and shadow by natasha ngan

meet me at the intersection: edited by rebecca lim & ambelin kwaymullina

stamped from the beginning: the definitive history of racist ideas in america by ibram x. kendi

get a life, chloe brown by talia hibbert

[ultraclops]

Semi-Live Blogging: Finale Time!

With reaction images this time!

Adoradad

TRAINING EXERCIIISE

Adorabat's practicing her screaming! Bet that's gonna come in handy later.

"Fneh!" Wow what an introduction Eugene

His design is like? Really cool?? He looks practically nothing like Adorabat tho. And why does he have a spade on his stomach instead of a heart??

Badgerclops drew him with a giant ass mustache lol.

Adorabat takes banjo lessons? More importantly, Eugene thought she was at a banjo lesson FOR 8 MONTHS?!

"She scares me" lol

Adorabat ran away from home? Why?

"I thought you were a ward of the state!" Remember when everyone thought Adorabat was an orphan? Yea.

"I thought you were my conscience!" Badgerclops...you've lived with Adorabat for a year...went to her school...AND YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS A PIECE OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS?!

...why did Badgerclops use Adorabat as monster bait...

I expected to hate Eugene but he's actually really cute and interesting?? Aside from the fact he thinks Mao Mao & Badgerclops are criminals. Love to see him again sometime!

Wow her dad has a whole badass mansion!! Why doesn't she just stay there...

Oh...her mom died...that's why he's so protective of her and was so upset when she left. Also her mom looks amazing & I wanna see a flashback episode with her. For some reason I can imagine her sounding like a deeper version of Scoops?

Aww Adorabat's room is super cool! Also Eugene cracking the door for her asfgjkl

"Do you think that monsters attacking the city are gonna - wait, does that have peanut butter in it? " (Cuts to MM & BC eating ice cream while crying) That's a perfectly rational reaction to losing your adoptive daughter

"I can keep it together!" (Cut to Mao Mao trying and failing to shovel ice cream in his mouth with his helmet on) NSADGEDHAMADH

Wait a second. Mao's eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. ISN'T CHOCOLATE TOXIC TO CATS?!

"But you said I was part of the team!!" "Then you're...off the team."

Adorabat crying while showing Eugene the picture OUCH MY HEART...

"I used to go exploring in those caves with Mom all the time..." I'm guessing those are the caves from the promo?

"She wasn't afraid of anything!" " Well Adorabat definitely takes after her mother...

"And then one day, Sonara didn't come back with you." Ooh her name's Sonara!! Pretty!! I can't tell if they chose it cuz it sounds like Sonar or because it means "pleasant sounding"

Glad to see Adorabat's still a die-hard metal fan, even with Eugene

Oof Mao isn't taking this well at ALL if he's pretending Adorabat's molt is her...

OOH SHIT ADORABAT RAN OFF TO THE CAVES - wait a minute no she didn't. OH NO EUGENE WENT TO THE CAVES

Ooh there's Sonara's looking glass, bet that's gonna be important

Yay Adorabat saved her dad!

Damn Adorabat must be super traumatized after basically watching her mother die. No wonder she tried to murder Boba-Chan!

Oh the only way to stop the monster is by screaming!

(Mao Mao hears Adorabat scream) "ADORABAT?!" ADOPTIVE DAD POWERS ACTIVATE

Ooh her mother's figure appears over her when she says she's not afraid of anyone...maybe her spirit's inside of her or something?

REVENGE TIME BAYBEY

HOLY SHIT ADORABAT FUCKING MURDERED THAT THING

Eugene & Adorabat both apologized to each other I...

"You can't just leave without the most fearless member of the group!" YAAY ADORABAT'S BACK (Also how are we gonna explain to Eugene Adorabat's scared of the dark?)

"I'll mess 'em up real good! So good, their mommies and daddies won't be able to recognize them when I'm done..." Daaammmnnn...

"She scares me :)"

I wonder...is Sonara really dead? Or are they gonna pull a Kipo & have her still be alive but in a different form?

Badge-A-Fire explosion

Uhh...where is Badgerclops? And why is Mao Mao on the top bunk?!

Of course Badgerclops is petty enough to install a fake monster alarm on his laptop to wake Mao Mao and Adorabat up.

"This is a super-serious work meeting, as you can see by the fact that I haven't provided any snacks!" No snacks?! This must be a serious issue!! /s

"As you know, I am a creative genius. Sometimes there's so much natural creative genius that my brain overloads, and I enter a heightened state that I call 'Ultra Focus'..." Oh so basically like hyperfixation?

"...where I break into a creative sprint, inventing super-advanced technology at supernatural speeds, unparalleled by anyone in the entire field of science." Okay maybe only a LITTLE bit like hyperfixation...wait a second, IS THAT WHY BADGERCLOPS IS SO TIRED ALL THE TIME?!

Uhh did he get his arm stuck in the front door? HE TOOK THE AEROCYCLE?!

"...I forget everything the next morning." Remember my headcanon that Badgerclops represses his memories? Yea...

"Which is why it's not my fault and I don't think I should be criticized :D" TBH I screamed with laughter at this scene solely because of the expression he made

...HE GAVE THE SKY PIRATES THE GEM CELL?! I mean he clearly wasn't thinking right when he did it BUT STILL?!

"Oh hey, I told you I'd use that weird elevator thing!" Dude you LITERALLY used it in Ultraclops. What are you talking about.

"If the Sky Pirates had the Gem Cell, they would've used it already!" That is a fair point ngl.

Umm...did Badgerclops give Adorabat a BOMB?!

Tbh if my friend woke me up in the middle of the night with weird-looking eyes and handed me a timer while saying something about an explosion I would DEFINITELY not go back to sleep afterwards...

I'm sorry, IS THE WHOLE VALLEY GONNA BLOW UP?! WHAT THE HELL DID HE MAKE?!

Mao wiping Badgerclops' tears I'm

A paper towel dispenser? Well that's not that bad - IS THAT A GIANT PAIR OF PANTS?!

Ooh it's not a shock collar it's a translator!! That makes a bit more sense... "I HAVE NO REMORSE OR CONCEPT OF EMPATHY!" ...if the monster doesn't have remorse or empathy how does it know what those words mean...

Badgerclops keeps telling Mao Mao & Adorabat not to criticize him...hmm...I wonder who criticized his inventions that made him that way...*cough* HIS MOM *cough*

"Are all your inventions this weird?!" "YOU'RE WEIRD!!"

IM SORRY DID BADGERCLOPS BUILD A DANCING MACHINE INTO MAO MAO'S BONES?! HIS BONES?! AND HE MADE ADORABAT A SECOND MEGAPEG?!

What in the absolute hell is going on dgaadhdagdadga

Okay but when Badgerclops clutched his head and started shaking when Mao Mao asked why he made those things...I FELT THAT IN MY HEART I FELT THAT IN MY SOUL

Ngl this scene really hit home for me cuz that's how I act when I have a breakdown...

The timer went off but nothing blew up - WAIT, IS THAT A REPLICA OF MECHA HOSSORAFFASNAKEARANG?!

"Initializing Totally Humane Knockout Procedure." (Proceeds to slam the Sheriff's Dept. into the ground) ajdajdgdad

Ooh...ohh they're on some sort of water park...ride...thing??

"And if I didn't want us to get out, then I made sure we couldn't...with super-strong shoe things." But there isn't any on Adorabat, can't she just squeeze herself out?

Ooh I'm getting Pirates of the Caribbean vibes

There's the Gem Cell, it must be powering the ride! Also the robotic arm slaps Mao's hand the same way Mao slaps Badgerclops' hand in Flyaway skkkk

"My amazing creativity is finally gonna destroy us all..." "Hey, at least we'll be destroyed together!" Fair point, fair point

The shoosh returneth

"I always loved inventing." So he was an inventor ever since he was little? Daww.

YOUNG BC IS SO ADORABLE!! He has a lil medical patch instead of an eyepatch which is def more accurate to real life...but what's the vest for? Protection in case he falls? A pressure stim?

That figure's def his mom since they rejected his ideas & he mentions she was mean to him. Also the theory that his mom's a villain seems a bit stronger since they straight-up hand him a tool kid + a set of blueprints with no regard to his safety...

"Also there was a bunch of other kids at school and some other people throughout my life who mocked me relentlessly." THEN WHY'D YOU TELL ADORABAT YOU COULDN'T RELATE TO HER WHEN SHE SAID NO ONE WANTED TO BE HER FRIEND?! (Also I noticed literally all the kids are other badgers, so I'm assuming Badgerclops grew up sheltered like Mao Mao did.)

So the Ultra Focus is basically a really weird coping mechanism to deal with all the abuse and bullying he went through? Holy fuckkk

"They only made fun of you because they were jealous. Happened to me my whole life!" Umm...

"Even the dance chip I surgically implanted in your brain?" Excuse me the dance chip that you WHAT

"I love you-" HE SAID IT 💗💓💗💓

"I'm finally around people who love and understand me..."

Wait did the cannon misfire? DID IT BLOW A HOLE IN THE GROUND?!

OH HE ACTUALLY DID CREATE AN ANIMATRONIC BAND?! I THOUGHT IT WAS A JOKE!!

"Take it away, Boss Hosstritch!" (Distorted garbling)

Oof Mao caught all the water

"We hope you all enjoyed being Badgerclops' friend." 💞💕💞💕

Not that anyone cares but I noticed there's a picture of some of the Sweetypies on the monitors, meaning 1. Badgerclops tested it out using them first, or 2. Badgerclops just likes those Sweetypies for whatever reason. Tho that makes me wonder why he'd choose Pinky of all people...

THE SKY PIRATES WERE INSIDE THE ANIMATRONICS THE WHOLE TIME?! THE MAN BEHIND THE SLAUGHTE

Zing Your Heart Out

Why are they giving out rotten sushi??

"HOW DARE YOU LAUGH AT ME EATING SOMETHING GROSSLY?!"

Ooh god Chester's gonna be super freaking annoying in this episode, I can feel it.

"What's blue and smells like red paint? Blue paint!" BAYBEY

Jesus what a prick. GET HIM MAO MAO

Ngl that background's really pretty...

Oooh no the Ruby Pure Heart's being weird again. Ooh no.

FUCK YEA ROAST HIM BABY - Did Adorabat's eyes turn purple because the Ruby Pure Heart gave her powers?

Oh so the siren in Badgerclops' robo-arm is a backup monster alarm?

More Sky Pirates - and the Pure Heart's being weird again...

"I'd tell you but despite your height it'd go right over your HEAD!" Asdfgghjjk

"For someone with two brains, you're not very BRIGHT!" EVEN BETTER

Kevin said he was raising money for a school trip, then for a trip to the hospital...which one is he raising money for?!

"SILENCE PANCAKE, LEST YE BE BUTTERED"

OOH NO SHE ATTACKED MAO AND BC

"IT FEELS LIKE THE WEIGHT OF ONE THOUSAND PLANETS!!"

"One second, I'm getting mad, and the next thing you know-" Is she freaking possessed??

Wait, is the Pure Heart TALKING to Adorabat?! How?!

Cluckins you don't ask people what's wrong with their eyeballs...even if there is something wrong with their eyeballs

"I CAN'T FEEL MY SELF-RESPECT!!"

The pure 'oh shit' on Marion's face when Adorabat turns to her

Half of the people she insulted showed up to her party! Didn't that mean she loved them?!

Oh god not this bitch again - nvm, thanks Adorabat

"Taking over the castle and ruling Pure Heart Valley forever does sound nice..." This is starting to remind me of that one AU where Adorabat turns evil, becomes the ruler of the Sky Pirates, then convinces them to kill Snugglemagne and becomes the queen of Pure Heart...she isn't gonna kill Snugglemagne, is she?

What did Adorabat tell Snugglemagne?! I WANNA KNO

Why is Pinky stealing teeth...reminds me of this

NO BC DON'T EAT THE TEETH

"I...hate myself! Therefore, I'm invincible!" So the trick to not getting your ego destroyed...is to not have an ego. Sounds reasonable.

"Your bug platter, my king?" Genderfluid Adorabat rights

"Mao Mao, your head looks like a CROW!" (Mao Mao caws) IT WAS A LIE HE ISN'T A CAT HE WAS A CROW THIS WHOLE TIME-

"It looks like a half-melted ice cream cone!!" That is...a strange way to describe your own neck...

"Well, I'm...bad (◡‿◡)" Kinda weird that the canonically depressed character can't even cleverly insult himself

...why does Adorabat's skin smell like old cantaloupe

OH SHE IS POSSESSED!!

HOLY SHIT MAO WAS GONNA FUCKING MURDER ADORABAT TO SAVE THE KINGDOM?! THANK GOD HE SAW HER JOKE BOOK, HOLY SHIT

Positivity outweighs negativity!

"WHERE DOES A 800 POUND GORILLA SIT?!" "Where ever it wants!◝(⁰▿⁰)◜" Curse you for making me laugh...

OOH NO THE JOKEBOOK! - Wait nvm Mao remembers Adorabat's jokes!

I think the reason they used that joke is because it represents Mao Mao and Adorabat - Adorabat is blue, and she wants to be like Mao Mao, who wears red. What is BLUE, and smells like (is similar to) RED paint?

YAAAY HE BROKE HER FREE FROM MIND CONTROL!! And did BC get Thanos snapped in the background?

"Thank goodness you're alright! We almost..." Fucking murdered you? Yea

"Might we have our crown and kingdom back, yes?"

"Sorry for being such a monster today." "You're a monster everyday." Is that a joke because she was today's villain, a reference to Sleeper Sofa or foreshadowing?

I hope Mao Mao and Badgerclops decide to investigate what's up with the Heart in Season Two, cause I highly doubt they'll let Adorabat getting fucking possessed go under the radar.

The visual gag of Mao trying to stomp out his ice cream cone like a cigarette is perfect. This is peak comedy everyone else go home

WHOOP CHESTER'S ASS GUYS

Strange Bedfellows

"So, your name is Boss Hosstrich, but you're not actually the boss?" How long did it take him to realize that

JFC Mao & Orangusnake are REALLY hellbent on killing each other huh...at least the deputies and the other Sky Pirates have common sense.

Hahaha nice Dragon Ball Z reference - and they both got crushed by the monster! Lovely.

...did Mao seriously think he died and went to heaven?

So does Orangusnake breathe through Tanner or do they both breathe independently & Coby can feel when Tanner can't?

Dang those skeletons remind me of the Steven Universe Future episode Growing Pains. And why is Lucky inside of Orangusnake? "THAT WAS MY LUNCH, JERK!" Ooh that's why.

"They're full of these tiny, little cracks or, as they're known in the medical field, 'whoopsie-boo-boos'." AGSADGASGADGDASG

Damn their skeletons are just gonna freaking evaporate huh...

"The doctor said I was very brave :D"

Ooh shit the Deputies and the other Sky Pirates met at the same elevator, are they gonna fight - nevermind, they're still calling time.

JESUS CHRIST ARE MAO & ORANGUSNAKE EVER GONNA STOP?!

"You don't have the guts!" "I have a million guts." That is...mildly concerning

"Yeah, I wanted to be a baker, before I realized I liked hurting people so much." Then why doesn't she just like, help Muffins or something?

Tbh I thought Ratarang was holding a gun and I'm glad it was just a weirdly wrapped banana

CONE OF SHAME. CONE OF SHAME. CONE OF SHAME.

"Aww, y'all shouldn't have - this is empty." "Just like my heart when you injure yourself!!" He loves him sm...💓💓

"Why didn't you bring me weapons?!" "Because this is a hospital, and I'm a good boy (◡‿◡ )"

"I really feel like this could be a turning point in their relationship." (Mao and Orangusnake proceed to try and kill each other again) *sigh*

Ngl Mao & Orangusnake constantly repeating themselves is getting super annoying.

That hospital bed beeping is giving me flashbacks to all the times I went to the hospital for seizures...

"You know y'all could live like this, like, all the time if you didn't go around hurting people, right?" "Pssh! Tsk-tsk, boy. You know I gots to hurt people." Uhh you guys should really listen to Badgerclops he knows what tf he's talking about

UUhh, whose egg is that? "MAMA" ASGagddahDh

Of course they had to land in freaking CEMENT to realize that maybe they shouldn't kill each other

Did Mao just deflate like a ballo- oh nvm there he go.

Boneless Mao. Boneless Mao.

And Mao saved Orangusnake!! By...breaking every bone in his body somehow.

"I'm the kind of hero who wants to save you so I can fight you later...at the right time and place." Just gonna file this along with the credit score scene from Perfect Couple in the 'Orangumao' folder.

Is Badgerclops duct taping Mao to the stretcher? I mean, at least he won't move & hurt himself again but geez

Tbh Zing would’ve made a better finale than this ep. At least it had a sequel hook

[pixel-cat-1]

I just finished The Outer Worlds

I don’t really ever use this blog for more than reblogging stuff, so this is probably coming out of left field for anyone who follows me, but as you see in the title, I beat The Outer Worlds not a couple of minutes ago. I have some thoughts I’d like to talk about while their fresh, and this is as good a place as any to do that lol

So, what did I think of it? Overall, I think The Outer Worlds is okay game that ultimately fails to meet up in many regards to not only Obsidian’s golden child, Fallout New Vegas, but in some departments even regular ass Bethesda games from years ago. And that’s honestly such a shame, because TOW had so much goddamn potential and yet I finished it and felt practically nothing for the entire last level and final ending sequence.

The main issue I think is that ultimately speaking, TOW doesn’t necessarily do anything different from any other RPG I can think of, and it doesn’t do anything like that super well. 

For example, the combat’s good on a technical level. The controls and mechanics are fun to use (especially the dodge system), but the enemies tend to either range from “complete curb stomp bitch babies” to “bullet sponge that’ll kill me so fast I won’t even know what happened.” Most fights weren’t particularly engaging, and I was basically handicapping myself but not using the companion abilities for about 75% of the game (I don’t know why I never tried pressing the d-pad buttons, but yet again, when I can just shoot shit and huff an inhaler, I didn’t need to think too hard). The disparity of how difficult the game can be is often confusing, and I was more often limited because of my ammo count more so than my ability to play the game.

The RP aspects can be good at times. There are plenty of skill checks that reward you for being a smart little egg, and a part of RPG’s I like is being able to avoid combat and make people happy, and generally make myself useful, so that was fairly fun. Overall the dialogue options and the performances by most VA’s left me not feeling like I was being hindered in acting and responding to situations how I’d like, so at the very least, that didn’t let me down.

The music was overall enjoyable, although very forgettable, and sometimes a bit all over the place: there’s Western-y guitar ambient tracks, also some more techno-y ones? Elevator music that sounds like they got it from a royalty free website. This kinda wish-washyness ties into multiple issues I had with the game I’ll get into further on.

The graphics are good, which isn’t necessarily shocking anymore because every game looks good. There are some aesthetic choices I liked, that being things like the Art Deco style architecture and advertisements from the loading screens. Terra 2 is gorgeous as all hell, with the skybox being particularly amazing (I’ve often fantasized about Earth having rings, so this partially fulfills that fantasy). Monarch is overall also very well done, with making it look and feel like a hostile shithole with ravenous wildlife. The looming gas giant overheard also does a good job of making me feel dread, which is about as much of that feeling I ever got. However, the game never really maintains a distinct “style”, rather it collages a bunch of them at once. Because for all the aesthetic of the Art Deco style that they do for cities like Byzantium. there’s like 10 levels/areas that are just generic as all hell “sci-fi space shit” that you’ve seen before. And then there’s Scylla, which is so fucking boring in design I don’t know why it’s even in the game.

This creates an issue where it’s like they wanted to make the game look Bioshock, but some people wanted something out of Mass Effect. But some people played Borderlands, and wanted to go for the wacky space bandit and hostile environment feel. But they also wanted to stick it to Bethesda, so they made is vaguely look like a Fallout game as well. It’s hard to describe in text, so I’m just gonna post these and show it best I can

^ It looks like space Bioshock here

^ And here it reminds me more of Borderlands than anything else (it’s a lot easier to see if you look at it from the ground, rip)

Scylla is literally just a rock. As far as I can tell, you could probably fucking avoid the damn thing if you avoid side quests. There’s fucking nothing there. Just enemies, a few side quest things, an empty town and a giant terraformer thingy that’s interesting to look at for like 4 seconds. And despite what you’d think, no, there is no low gravity. That would’ve at least made this place have some interesting gimmick or mechanic, but no. It’s just a fucking dumping ground for side quests. God. Fucking. Damnit.

All science-y buildings just look like this for the most part across all levels. It’s not bad, just very generic and same-y.

The Groundbreaker’s fairly interesting, until you realize that all it is is essentially a giant corridor front to back. Actually, scratch that, it’s two corridors! One of which is this Back Bays area overrun with criminals. How do you get to this clearly dangerous and isolated part of the ship? Well a fucking elevator smack dab in the middle of the pavilion of course! So anyone can just go up or down into this apparent no man’s land part of the ship by literally going into it via an elevator. Dear god.

^Monarch definitely has one of the best looking environments in the game, tied with Terra 2 down below

But what absolutely fucks the game overall is despite how much effort they put into making everything look nice (regardless if you actually like it or not), the overall level design in terms of function and whatnot? Mind numbingly boring.

All levels are really small maps with (at most) a handful of major buildings or towns depending on the scale, and the rest is just a bunch of abandoned buildings with some enemies, or a crashed ship or something. There's just...nothing going on with half of these dungeons.

Also the vast majority of buildings have a “Quarantine” sign out front or is locked in some capacity, which means you could have 4-5 buildings in a random batch of them along a road, but only 2 you can explore. And since all the fucking interiors across multiple planets look the exact same, it leads to an incredible feeling of sameiness in a game that has you running around an entire solar system. How the fuck even??? I’d argue fucking Fallout 3 handled this better. At least there was more to do! More overall dungeons and levels! Did I miss something? Am I just fucking stupid and I missed the all the good shit?

Combine this with the wish-washy aesthetics and music, it leads to an incredible feeling of not really knowing what to make of things. You’ll just be sprinting around, shooting all the red things on the compass just to get it over with by Monarch. And when you realize that LMG’s are just...the best weapons in the game as far as I could tell, and there’s no real downsize to them, you’ll just fucking run around gunning everything down while some forgettable track plays in the background until some enemy with a weirdly large health bar forces you to think for a bit before you get back to running around and shooting shit again. 

Despite this though? I still overall enjoyed the combat. I liked running around and becoming the 4th Horseman. Plus with the mechanics overall being fun to use, it wasn’t really that bad. But I can’t say on an objective level I think it’s good for a game to feel like that. Because despite how heavy handed I’m being right now (and will be throughout the rest of this impromptu review), I don’t hate this game. 

Sound design is overall very good. Guns make satisfying shooty shooty bang bang noises, and as I said before, the VA’s are overall very good all around. Parvati stands out as the most interesting character to listen to in general. She has a lot of informal speech patterns that makes her distinct, and is generally a treat to listen talk. At worst, you get a character like Nyoka, who doesn’t sound bad by any real means, but for a lot of her dialogue, I felt they should’ve slowed it down and focused on getting her emotions down. But it certainly wasn’t bad.

Storywise? This game wasn’t particularly interesting. I’m gonna put the keep reading thing here because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played yet and cares about them. Long story short, I think the game was good, but very disappointing given what it could have been. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but often found the lack of anything super special to really hold it back from achieving something I think the gaming industry needed in an era of, ironically enough, hyper greedy corporations with no morals to speak of.

So, what did I think of the story? And I guess by extension, the side quests. Overall, I think the main story was...not very good. There was a lot of good stuff inbetween though, and a lot of side quests and little things definitely were enjoyable. But the plot is just not nearly as engaging as it should be. Given how short it was though, that might’ve been a mercy.

The story, as roughly as I can summarize is, is that you’re a colonist frozen on the colony ship “Hope.” It’s been adrift for 70 years, but you’re woken up by a guy named Phineas Welles (he’s basically Doc Brown, but nicer). The Board (which consists of the 10 companies who own and run the colony/solar system) try to stop him, but they fail, and you’re escape podded onto Terra 2, near a dying town called Edgewater. The pod accidentally kills the contact you were to meet, so now you’re gonna steal his ship and use it to do shit basically.

Along the way, you pick up a ragtag band of miscreants and general shitheads and kill a lot of people and wildlife in a quest to stop the corrupt Board from running the colony harder into the dirt than they already have. It’s very by the numbers, more or less. I guess.

The immediate issue is that, despite being able to join the Board and betray Phineas if you want, there’s absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Not a single goddamn reason, other than for the evulz. This creates an issue where I feel no reason to deviate from the Phineas side of the story. And I know what someone might be thinking “But Pixel! The Board is supposed to be evil!” And I am absolutely aware of that. But the thing is, so was Caesar’s Legion in Fallout New Vegas. And yet, that faction is often considered just as interesting and compelling a faction for the game as the NCR or Mr. House. People will, to this day, still argue over who had the best idea for solving the Wasteland’s issues. Because despite how evil the Legion is, they still had very valid points about the NCR and how horribly corrupt and bloated it was. And there was absolutely an argument to be made about how safe they made their lands for those under their ownership. Stuff like that that makes you actually consider and think about whether or not you're actually making the right choices for the whole of the New Vegas wasteland, and by extension the rest of the Western part of America.

Here? There’s no contest. There is no necessary evils. There is no good reason the Board does anything. No logic, no reason. All they can do is fuck shit up even more, and that makes them such a boring, vague antagonist that there was never a moment in my mind I actually considered working for them. Any potential moments they had to sway me or dashed aside by them constantly proving how they could never actually fix the problems they made. And if that was the intention? Then Obsidian fucked up.

People remember the villains that raise a point a hell of a lot more than they do villains that are just evil for the sake of it (there are obviously exceptions, for an RPG? you need a compelling villain). And that’s why no one will remember this game in a decade. It pales so hard in comparison to New Vegas, it’s not even funny. It’s on par with Fallout 3, at best. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if the whole point of this game was to make a statement against an increasingly morally bankrupt Bethesda.

Let’s look at, per se, Skyrim. Paarthurnax was a supporting character with an interesting backstory: he’s Alduin’s brother, who is the main antagonist. He is a dragon that secludes himself on the top of the tallest mountain in Skyrim, who meditates and focuses on suppressing his inherit evil dragon nature. Despite this nature, he chooses to be good. And he asks a very compelling question.

"What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

In a single sentence, Skyrim asked a more though provoking question than the entirely of The Outer Worlds. And if you played F:NV, then it’s probably weird to hear that, because F:NV was full of moral and philosophical quandaries. So where did it all go?

The thing is, people forget that the Obsidian that made F:NV is dead and gone. The actual people who made that game have all moved on from that company. This is the child trying to replicate the success of it’s parents, without entirely understanding exactly what the parent did to achieve what it achieved.

The biggest difference between F:NV and TOW is that F:NV really forces you to think. TOW just doesn’t require that, at all. 

Phineas good, Board bad. No thinking required.

I think the real warning sign is at the beginning of the game as well. Edgewater, the first town in the game, is dying. People are leaving and the town's also dealing with a disease epidemic. The town’s leader’s answer? Cut off power to the deserters, and force them to work harder despite the fact the town’s basically dying because of the overworking and disease. Despite the fact there’s not even enough medicine to heal everyone, and they have to play favorites with who lives and who dies.

What the fuck logic is this? Why would I ever choose that?

The only other choice, unless I missed a compromise solution (which I would’ve wanted) is to route power to the deserters and finish off the town more or less. The deserters wouldn’t take in everyone though, so a lot of people would die anyways. But even then, she’s still clearly the more competent leader. There’s not a goddamn contest. 

It just continues like that the whole game. I rarely had to think about who I’d side with. because the solution is obvious. The literal only reason I’d side with the corporations is if I was being evil, nothing else.

The best the story gets is when you need to make a compromise on Monarch between MSI (a corporation who got the boot from the Board) and the Iconoclasts (Religious people who are anti corporation). If you work with the second in command of the Iconoclasts, you can depose their extremist, dipshit leader and work out a truce. Which is good! It rewards the player for this too, when these factions come to help in the final level of the game (and when you see specific characters you could save helping out, that also make it feel like your decisions had an impact). You see the two factions...standing next to eachother, which isn’t much, but it’s about as much change you see in the game.

Which is also another thing that TOW fails to accomplish: a sense of longevity with my decisions leads to me feeling that, despite making the right choices, nothing really changes. 

Going back to Edgewater, you’d think after a while, I’d come back and the town would be entirely gone or something, right? 

Nope.

Some NPC’s stood outside the factory forever, as did some guards. There weren’t any lights on. That’s about it.

Well, certainly the Deserters must give me more quests to help out, which can lead to me establishing them and helping them help the Edgewaterers, right?

No. Very quickly you realize there’s very little do or talk about with NPC’s after you do monumental decisions. The only functional difference is an opinion slider, which is another imitation from F:NV that means fuck all. The only in game things it affects is: a) The prices of venders of that factions

b) Whether or not that faction will shoot you on site.

That’s it as far as I noticed. The best idea they had, that being that factions can love you, but also fear you just doesn’t do anything. As far as I could tell, at least.

I’d love to be wrong, because I was so excited to see what would happen to entire settlements and after I helped them. After I made important decisions that’d change the face of the colony. And I felt so disappointing when it became apparent little actually mattered. 

The companion sidequests aren’t too much better. The pacing is so weird, sometimes, depending on how available certain planets are. Parvati’s was especially jarring, despite it being the best written by far.

It basically is you helping her get with an engineer chick from the Groundbreaker. It’s pretty adorable overall, and without a doubt has some of the better writing character wise, but the pacing was so fucking weird. It initially starts with you getting Parvati to talk to her about engineering stuff. They say they’ll email and stuff about engineering stuff. which is neat. So I run around, finish up all the side quests on the ship as I can, then head back to my own ship. I did not go back to my ship at all during this. 

When I come back, Parvati immediately tells me that she and the engineer, Junlei, have been messaging and getting flirty and now she has a crush and it’s just like “Dude, were you texting her while we murdered all those bugs in the engine?”

It’s doubly funny as well, because Obsidian wanted to avoid the player having romanceable characters. Which makes about as much sense as you think. Once source said the reason was that they wanted you to focus on roleplay, and not trying to bang anyone you found hot (okay?). Another just said they weren’t ready for it. And I believe it. As much as I think romance would’ve been another good thing to add depth to this game, I bet you they’d have fucked it up. It’s just funny. Even Fallout 4 had pretty acceptable romances.

Granted the system was fucking basically “Kill shit together until you wanna bang” but fuck, it was something! It also doesn’t help there’s a bunch of cuties all over this game: Huxley stands out as an adorable muffin who becomes a generic NPC at the end of the MSI/Iconoclast questline, despite the fact you can even repair her journal terminal with zero indication at you can do it, which is good! Let me just do things to be nice! But she literally just sits there after you rescue her with a few dialogue options which goes away after the peace deal, and it's so fucking frustrating that I want to enjoy the characters more, but none of them seem to have more than a paragraph's worth of depth to them and it's so sad.

Even the companions are like this. At the beginning I’d try and talk with Parvati about anything, but the only dialogue options would be about getting her out of the party, and that’s it. I can’t ask her what she thinks of things, or of the current quest/situation. There’s such a weird lack of depth in a weird amount of areas, that it felt almost worse than playing a Bethesda game.

I think the penultimate disappointment of the game is, fittingly, the final level, Tartarus. Which is fitting, because it feels very hellish. Not the planet mind you, or the prison which it takes place in, but just the complete lack of anything super special. It’s just the same kind of environments you’ve already run through, but bigger and with more bullet sponge bad guys. Which is funny, because jumping around and killing an army on a purple hell planet that has perpetual lightning storms would’ve been sick as fuck, but nah, gotta run around on Scylla instead of anywhere else compelling.

In my playthrough, MSI, the Groundbreaker, and the Iconoclasts came to help me deal with all the fucking goons, which was mostly cool because I didn’t have to deal with the tediousness of killing every last one of corporate goon myself.

This is about as big of an impact your decisions come to as far as I’ve noticed. Which isn’t saying much.

You meet the Chairman of the Board here, by the way. I just shot him and kept moving. shrugs

There’s also a last minute villain in this Sophia person, who is also apparently on the Board? It’d help if there was a list of the Board people, which could’ve been on a terminal somewhere. Maybe I’m dumb and never found it, which is plausible. 

The final boss fight, (I hesitate to call it that) is just somewhat large robot. It’s a bullet sponge with respawning combat drones flying everywhere and they’re very annoying. I died once after around 10 minutes of fighting, then using Parvati and Felix’s (he’s another companion, he’s also okay I guess) combat abilities I knocked it down and layed into the robot’s weak spot. He died very quickly.

So depending on how you do it, the final fucking boss is either stupidly hard or mind numbingly easy. I don’t know which is worse.

So you go past the dead robot, gun down Sophia in one shot, and save Phineas. You basically become the leader of Halcyon, there’s a F:NV-esque slideshow and commentary about your actions that somehow is worse that New Vegas’s, credits roll, and you sit there thinking “That’s it? That’s really it?”

Yeah, that’s it. 

It’s such a let down, especially because this was supposed to be Fallout New Vegas’s spiritual successor. But all it does it make me want to play that game instead of this one.Which is probably what you should do regardless if you pick this game up or not.

There’s a bunch of other mechanics and stuff I never brought up. There’s technically a character customization screen, but you literally only see your character in the select menu, and there’s no third person. There’s a barber in Edgewater who’s also a doctor, and yet you can’t even get a haircut from him (again, failing to match up to even Fallout 3). 

There’s these Mods you can put on armor and guns, and you find them by the bucket full so you’ll always have those. Just get an aim stabilizing one for an LMG and you’ll be fine. You can also tinker your armor and weapons, making them stronger if you spend credits on it (why not the armor and weapon parts, I’ll never fucking know). You can repair your stuff at a workbench, which is advisable. Just take all the weapons and armor you pick up, take it apart for parts, and never worry about it again. You’ll get money from quests, so buying those parts is meaningless and a waste of money

There’s also hacking and stealth and stuff. Stealth is such a non...thing in the game. There’s no silencers, but since all enemies decided to put cotton into their ears, there’ll be plenty of times I shoot someone, and a guy ten feet away heard fucking nothing. Plus there’s this disguise mechanic where you pick up ID guards and get a hologram disguise that wears out as you walk (passing speech check from suspicious guards restores it), so it’s not like sneaking around was ever a priority. Just put your points into the speech. Stealth is a dump stat more or less. 

Oh yeah, Parvati’s an ace lesbian. Which is nice that they handled that way in a non-dipshit way (you can also identify as ace in certain dialogue with her in her companion questline, which is funny considering they never let you fuck anyways, so it’s weird that you even have the choice). My only complaint is that they should’ve put this representation in a better game. 

What’s funny is that, despite everything, I don’t even hate this game. I feel a remarkable numbness, followed by a desire for something better. I spent about a week burning through it? If I had more free time, I could’ve finished it sooner probably. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was pretty fun for what it was, but knowing that this is somehow supposed to match up to what F:NV was is sad, and a sign of how bad the gaming industry had fallen. 

The only difference here is that unlike the Outer Worlds, I can’t purge the rot of the gaming industry with a haelstrom of plasma bullets.

Would I recommend this game? I guess. There’s still some fun to be had, but don’t expect anything too major or interesting. Get it on sale, it;s not worth $60 right now. There’s apparently DLC coming out for it eventually? I might play it, and I might post an update to this review, or make a seperate post for that eventually. Depends on how well this one does? Or if the DLC makes me feel enough emotion to type something out like this in 2 straight hours.

[thoughtlessghost]

Salem ou alekoum fellow disbelievers,

I decided to write this story down because one of my friends is currently questioning Islam. She said it might be a good idea for me to share my journey to help her and others find inner peace once you have walk out of something you grew up thinking was correct. I think I will make this a 2-3 parts series depending on interest and how she deals with just part 1. There's a lot to go through, and I will try to be brief, but I do not mind elaborating on any section in the comments or private. I am very open and confident about who and what I am. Finally, I want to have at least one part dedicated to my current worldview with the hopes of helping you guys create your moral landscape.

Finally, I would like to complete this preface by saying that I know that we all have personal reasons for leaving a Religion. Some of you have left the faith because you felt as though it was too controlling; others may have felt that God was simply too cruel. I will say that in the end, those were not the deciding factors for me. In my view, only Truth matters. Therefore, for me to stop believing in a concept, it merely has to be proven untrue, whether scientifically or logically. So my journey of leaving Islam did not originate because I had problems with its takes on the world. They occurred in large part because I feel as though Islam is inconsistent with our understanding of the natural world. Given the purpose of writing this is to help people, and that most people don't make decisions based on logic, I will try and emphasize how events and not thoughts affected my worldview to help illustrate how and when the transition occurred.

1. Humble beginnings: I know everybody has a different upbringing, so I would like to give you guys some context of how familiar I was with Islam growing up as a child (4-12). For starters, I am the eldest son of first-generation Algerian immigrants to Canada. This is just to tell you I'm brown, and I went to a school surrounded by non-muslims. In school, I was a troublemaker. I was basically this brainy kid who cared so little of rules and norms that I was almost transferred to this school for a learning disability. In response, my dad would beat the shit out of me every day for not being an obedient student despite my grades being decent (during that period B to B+). Despite his sincerest efforts, I never learned or changed. I'm only saying this because it made Arabic school impossible for my parents to manage since I simply refused to do my regular homework from school. My thinking was something like this: "What's the point of going to ANOTHER school on the weekend and spend all of my time off doing pointless alphabetical exercises in a language no one other than my parents spoke?" This, in turn, limited my exposure to Islam since I didn't interact with other Muslim kids. Finally, my parents bestowed upon me few Islamic teachings or practices. For instance, I fasted, I didn't eat pepperoni pizza, I was a relatively good kid, and I knew of prayer. Still, it wasn't something we did in our household. So I basically ended up with the same amount of knowledge of Islam and Arabic as Mohammed did when he was visited by Gabriel.

2. The quest begins: By the time I reached 14, I began to change mentally (One would only hope). I had stopped being this rebellious kid and became a book worm. I read encyclopedias, watched documentaries, binged read Wikipedia and genuinely wanted to learn everything the world had to offer. Therefore, religion seemed like the next logical step. Another reason that pushed me to that position is my first adolescent trip to Algeria. It was the first time I had truly been exposed to Islam, and I felt like I got a good whiff of what it meant to be a Muslim. And so, I decided I had now come of age and was of sufficient maturity to read the Quran and become a proper Muslim. I purchased a translated version of the Holy Book and waited until nightfall to open it. I vividly remember the mindset I put myself in before opening the book. I told myself the following things:

1. Bismillah. (YAH BOY) 2. I am about to read a book written by a being that is not human. (how fucking cool is that?!) 3. It is a book of ultimate and limitless knowledge and is the literal word of God.   4. It will guide me now and forever, for it is a timeless work meant to guide all of humanity.

By the time I made it halfway through Al-Baqarah, the second chapter of the book, I was mortified. For whatever reason, God presented himself as a terrifying merciless being. So many verses spoke about how powerful God was, and for some reason, it felt weird to me. It's almost like Bill Gates flaunting billions at a homeless person or a fisherman trying to shame a fish on how it cant breathe once it's out of water. I also felt as though too many verses spoke about eternal damnation instead of collective upbringing. In essence, it wasn't the book I expected. I was hoping for the key to save my soul and help humanity. All that ran through my head was that I was unworthy and had to dedicate myself or else face the consequences. But I persevered. Over the next few days, I kept reading while trying to keep an open mind, but I was definitely feeling perplexed. What I could not wrap my head around was the following: If God can indeed do anything, why can't he have a son?  Like all this talk about how Powerful he is, but he can't have a son?

It was around this time I started to explore other religions. However, there were so many religions that existed that it would take an eternity to study and contemplate every single one. So I elaborated the following shortcuts:

1. I skipped Judaism because a "true" faith can't have fewer subscribers than the city of New York. That also threw a bunch of other religions out the window. In my view, a Divine being should do a good job of spreading his work even if he has to do it remotely. 2. I skipped polytheistic religions like Hinduism because multiple Gods seemed odd to me. 3. Buddhism didn't have a deity, can we, therefore, call it a religion?

By that flawless logic (lol), I thought that Christianity was likely to be the One True Faith. But there were inconsistencies. For starters, the faith had multiple subdivisions and multiple versions given the Bible was written after the life of Jesus. Suffice to say, I agreed with most Muslim criticisms towards Christianity's essence manipulated by men. If Christianity is the real deal, then God would have cared a little more. As a side note to my thinking, the book of Narnia really helped me appreciate Christianity. It portrayed a more merciful caring version of God that wanted what was best for his disciples and all that existed. Yet the feeling of a merciful and just God was simply not sufficient to make me convert.

And so I started to think about atheism. However, I could still feel the presence of God. In the end, I just felt discouraged. I wrapped my head around the whole thing when I realized there was a possibility I was simply too immature to understand Islam or the Quran. So, in the end, I decided to postpone my immersion in the faith until later.

3. I committed: By the time I reached 16, I had started rereading the Quran, which actually flowed better this time around. I was relieved to know that my 14-year-old self was simply too childish. Eventually, I stumbled upon a verse akin to the following: Oh, Believers look into the world, and you shall see evidence of Islam. It felt as though God challenged me to learn science and search for proof of his existence in the natural world. And so, I did.

So one thing that occurred to me growing up is that I wanted to learn everything. By the time I reached 12, I thought to myself that if I knew every word in the dictionary, I would end up knowing everything. But the dictionary was dull. So, I decided that if I know how all things came about by reading history, then I would end up knowing everything. So when I read that verse that said learn science, I was ecstatic.  I just doubled down on my readings and started to focus more on scientific theories. I read about physics and the origin of the universe. I read on chemistry and the nature of matter and atomic bonds. By the time I reached biology, Darwinism quickly became very problematic. I thought really long and hard about how to counter it. I started to read into Intelligent Design and watched Islamic Scholars debate atheists. Still, it didn't make sense to me since the evidence for evolution was just overwhelming.

I voiced some of my concerns to a Muslim friend of mine in High School, and we had this long-winded conversation in which he convinced me he was right. I wish I remembered exactly what he said, but I remember him instilling upon me enough doubt to make me not drop the faith. Following that conversation, I decided it was time to commit to Islam finally. Here are a few things I started to do: 1. I started praying 5-7 times per day. 2. I read the Quran. 3. I would watch videos daily on what it meant to be a Muslim and how I can improve on my practice. 4. I would fast every once a while. 5. I went to the mosque whenever I could since it was far from where I lived. 6. I even helped start our prayer group in High School. In that group, we would all sit and eat together. We shared food, laughter and drinks. We were a brotherhood through and through, and for a time, it was good.

Reflecting on this period, I was one standard deviation from being in a CIA hit list. I literally messaged Benjamin Netanyahu on YT, encouraging him to stop his occupation of Palestine and to seak a peaceful approach when engaging with my brothers and sisters. Despite these friendly messages, some darker thoughts flowed through me. So I will say that there definitely is some credence to the idea that the more radical a Muslim is, the more you should worry about him, especially if he is a dude.

So when I say I genuinely believed 100% of what the Quran said, I really did. Some people will say: "Well, yea, I also used to be that way too." Well, I think I took it to another degree. For instance, when I used to walk, I would think to myself there are two people next to me—these immortal, holy beings made of light were sent by God to watch over my every move. I must, therefore, walk and behave in the utmost perfect ways to not only impress them but also uphold my honour. I was 16. 

4.The Masturbation/sleep problem:

Now I'm going to say that the period mentioned above lasted about 6 months. During this period, despite my holier than thou behaviour, I was still a man, and I had urges dawg. Every once in awhile, i.e, once a week, I would lament hypothetically at my hypocrisy. Repression creates obsession; truer words have never been spoken. The more I fought my urges not to masturbate, THE MORE I HAD TO. I created this whole inner mathematical system based on the number 19 since its a particular Islamic number. Basically, I would only masturbate around times when I could calculate 19. To me, it meant God approved of my addiction. I ended up using the time since my alarm clock was next to me. Its such warped logic don't look too much into it for when there is a will there is a way and I can get creative. Here are a few noteworthy examples:

1.Its 1:09 AM. Shit that's 19 to me since all you have to do is ignore the 0, and you have 19. 2. Its 1:45 AM. You guessed it 19. 3.7:00 PM. 19. 4. 12:07 PM. Unzip. 5. 12:17. PM shit, that's 19 too. 12+(1 times 7). Guess its Time for round 2.   6. 12:35 PM. FUCK I have to again you see 1+2+35=38, which is 19 times 2. EYYYY

[Insert COOMER MEME.]

To get over this dissonance, the Devil was responsible for these intrusive thoughts. I was a holy man of God, after all. But the voice that told me to unzip my pants and wax my carrot was the EXACT same voice that told me to go bed when I didn't want too. In the end, I knew deep down temptation doesn't come from the Devil. It comes from me. I decide what I do with my life, not some off-world entity. Keep in mind for later its just this thing I noticed. The Mosque event: So the day started like any other Friday prayer. The Imam began to speak about how God has no equal. He went on about how great and awesome of a sky Chad he was. He said that although he had no equal, there was another being that was insanely powerful as well. My eyes lit up, for I loved Islamic lore. He said that among non-God entities, the strongest was Gabriel. Eventually, he went on to say how to associate any other thing to God's power was literally the worst crime a human could commit. Shirk was worse than murder, he said. It literally guarantees you a trip to Hell.

And so given that I was human when I am told not to think about something, I immediately start to think about it. So I began to think well what if Gabriel stood up to God. I do not know what came over me but I got a literal panic attack from this. [Insert meme it was at this moment he knew he fucked up]

As the Imam had so eloquently put it to associate anything to God, you just committed the worst sin ever. I kept trying to tell myself not to think about it. Still, it just kept repeating it over and over again despite my sincerest efforts. I legit left the mosque and went back home and prayed all night, hoping God would forgive me.

The next morning was wild. I was basically schizophrenic since I kept thinking God was going to smite me for I have sinned. Crossing the street was so hard since I felt God would turn a car invisible and run me over or would simply kill me there where I stood. I lived in utter fear since I felt as though I had a bounty on my head. The inner world that I worked so hard to create had fallen apart from stupid, intrusive, thoughts. How the mighty have fallen.

5.Rethinking the Conspiracies:

A few days later, I started to rethink everything inside my head once I started to calm down. I felt as though my fears were way too irrational for the type of person I usually am and that I could not regain my sanity by thinking I was unworthy. I just simply had to work my way back up to the top fam.

During this time, I also began to rethink my understanding of the political world. For starters, as far back as I can remember, I have always been anti-authority. I believed in political realism, and so large corporations or governments always used their powers to oppress others. And so, what began as a soft-hearted liberal who thought 911 was an inside job turned into a cult of devil worshippers who rule the world and are trying to get us into the End Times.

This political worldview of a small elite who use the Devil to gain off-world power was further validated my understanding of Islam. In my view, the END WAS NEAR. Eventually, people took my ideas and thoughts in High School, and it became its own thing. Just to give you context on the time here, but it was when Lady Gaga dropped Bad Romance, and Kanye West and Jay-Z dropped Watch The Throne. We would analyze the videos and look for satanic imagery, but I always felt like that was a tad bit too far. Why are they being so apparent about something that's supposed to be secret? Predictive-Programming can only go so far after all. I began to pushback on this worldview, and I went so far back that Islam was caught in the cross-fire.

This turned into a three-month-long journey. I started by revisiting natural selection, and I realized that I duped myself. I just did not understand natural selection well enough to defend my position 6 months ago. I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I binged watched George Carlin, and he really helped me overcome any anxiety I had towards leaving my faith because, like him, I really did want to believe in a deity, but I started to realize all of the inconsistencies. [I will elaborate more on this in a later part]

5. The social consequences: By the time I left my faith, I was open about it. I have always been vocal about what I believe in, and I simply told all of my prayer brothers why I stopped going to prayer. Needless to say, they weren't pleased about it. Unlike Elementary School and as a result of our immigration policies, High School had more Muslims in it, and many hated or criticized me for questioning the faith. As time went on, they became more toxic and vicious in their opposition, and so I called them out on their shit. I told them that I am on a journey like each and every one of them, and if they don't want to talk to me anymore, I would not care, and if they wanted to fight me, then bring it on. It was the last time any of them said anything to my face that was negative. Some of them never spoke to me again, some spoke to me less. I respected their choice and moved on; whether they respected mine mattered not. All that I cared about was that I felt that I was moving forward in my life. Eventually, the Muslim prayer group fell apart, and everything went back to normal in my High School.

Now, all of what I wrote happened about 10 years ago, and despite standing up to my fellow peers, I still haven't mustered up the courage to tell my parents. Honestly, I'm glad I still haven't. To this day, I have a good relationship with them, and they are far more religious now than they were. It seems like an egregiously unnecessary thing to do that will not only sour my relationship with them but also with their future grandkids. That just seems too selfish for my liking despite my usual vocal tendencies.

End of part 1.

[lululawrence]

Hi, i know that not many people like it but.. i really like the fics like enemies to lovers, something with bullying and ect. I just enjoy sad stuff that as time goes on it gets better. Like with the bullying, one is bullied, the other saves the day. Enemies to lovers, they hurt each other at first but then they heal the wounds. Lol this was long. I'm asking for those kind of fics.. if you don't want to answer i completely understand! Have a great day!

oh darling. listen. you are NOT alone. you are not. i love these fics and so does @londonfoginacup! i sent a screenshot of this ask to a gc when you first sent it talking about how i felt bad i wasn’t able to answer it right away, and emmu immediately said she could help. i didn’t look up anything myself from this rec, these are all ones emmu sent and outside of the...three maybe?...that i haven’t read, i cosign it! she even found some i read when i first joined the fandom and didn’t have an ao3 to save them to OR i had an ao3 and didn’t understand bookmarks yet. so basically, thank you for sending this, and here are the fics emmu recs and i say AMEN! i hope there’s some in here that are what you’re looking for that possibly you haven’t read yet.

they are kind of divided by enemies to lovers that ease into bullying fics as you go down the list, but to be honest i’m just sending them to you in the order that emmu sent them to me haha enjoy!!

Through a Mirror Dimly by @londonfoginacup / LadyLondonderry

Louis Tomlinson, in his third year at university, does not expect nor want the roommate that is being assigned to his room.

Harry Styles, in his first year at university, has just been kicked out of one dorm and doesn't want to deal with yet another snobby, rich roommate.

They don't get along, and that's just how it is, until circumstances force them to reevaluate.

Driving On The Wrong Side, Thinking Of You by @dinosaursmate / dinosaursmate

“Marcel, darling, why don’t you take Louis to your room and play on your computer?”

Louis’ heart sunk. He would defend Marcel from an infinite amount of gay jokes but it didn’t mean he wanted to spend time with him. They didn’t exactly have anything in common.

“Um, okay,” Marcel said, sounding as reluctant as Louis and slightly miserable.

“If- if you want to.”

“Sure.”---Louis is the most popular guy in sixth form. Don't get the wrong idea, he's a good guy, and he absolutely won't stand for his friends teasing his neighbour, Marcel.

Love Is A Rebellious Bird by @100percentsassy and @gloriaandrews / 100percentsassy and gloria_andrews

AU in which the boys still make music. Louis is the concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, Harry is the New! and Exciting! interim conductor/ex-cello prodigy who "has made Mozart cool again" according to Esquire Magazine (Louis hates him immediately, which is definitely why he internet stalked him in his dark bedroom late at night that one time), and Niall is the best. Zayn and Liam are around too.

Don't hum Bolero.

feel so foolish by @juliusschmidt / juliusschmidt

Louis and his friends keep laughing at Harry; he's sure of it. But he's not sure why.

Pour Your Heart Out by @hrrytomlinson / hrrytomlinson

Louis is his soulmate. Or at least Harry thinks he is. Louis feels the same as Louis. But there are a lot of people named Louis in the world and this Louis might not be the Louis. It’s besides the point though, because Harry knows he can’t allow himself to get close to any boys. He just can’t and he’s told himself this multiple times. He has to simply stay away from Louis Tomlinson. But he can’t. Harry Styles can never stay away from Louis Tomlinson. It’s physically impossible for him to.

Love Is a Kitten from Hell by youbeyou

Louis Tomlinson passes himself off as an arrogant prick at his new school to hide the fact that he's terrified of being bullied again. Just when he's getting tired of putting up walls, he finds himself in a local pet shop where he finds a sanctuary playing with the kittens in the front window.

Harry Styles is the popular football player who works at the pet shop, secretly watching the boy he thought was utterly unlikable prove him wrong.

Partnered together for a class project, Harry gets more and more hints that Louis is actually someone worth getting to know. But the real question is, will Louis let Harry in?

Loner or Lover? by @oops-lt / Vanniebean

An AU in which Harry is a junior who just moved to Doncaster and on his first day of school he makes the schools most popular and loved boy spill coffee on himself. Harry planned on going through high school under the radar, but that quickly changes when he bumps into Louis. Harry gets known to everyone else as the annoying kid who was "rude" to Louis, but to Louis himself, he's stuck on one question. Should he leave the boy as a loner, or become his lover?

Love is like this; not a heartbeat, but a moan by @angelichl /angelichl

"He hates this, more than anything in the world he hates this. His title, his rank, his DNA. Unchangeable. Fated.

And then there’s Harry, born to be unobjectively superior to Louis and all other O’s. Unlike other A’s, Harry doesn’t wear his alpha-ness very well. He’s clumsy with it, like walking around in a pair of shoes a size too big. His life is defined by uncertainty and tentativeness, and those are definitely not qualities alphas should have.

Sometimes, when Louis ponders it for too long, he thinks that maybe Harry resents being an A just as much as Louis resents being an O."

In which Harry loves Louis, but Louis has been cold to him ever since he presented as an omega at age fifteen. Eight years later, Louis approaches Harry with a request, and who is Harry to deny him?

Make It Work by fanshae

Prompt: Arranged marriage AU. Harry is an omega who has reached the age where he must be married due to his family's income status. Only the aristocratic omegas are exempt. His parents try to hide him but eventually the government gets word and in punishment, gives the omega to a spoiled aristocrat son of a lord, Louis. Louis is more than thrilled to have his own omega and once Harry goes into heat, he explores the boy with fascination and unintentionally impregnates him. This leads to a boy used to living carefree and drinking the day away with other nobles to having to face fatherhood.

Be with me so happily by @briannamarguerite / BriaMaria

Harry Styles may have had his doubts at first, but by the time the gates to the elephant sanctuary came into view he was one hundred percent positive. Louis Tomlinson hated his guts. Like hated, hated. Like loathed-him-on-sight hated.

From what Harry could tell, he hadn’t even done anything close to insulting enough to warrant the disdain that was Louis Tomlinson’s default expression whenever he looked at Harry. It really wasn’t fair. Especially since he’d been lusting after the man from the second he’d laid eyes on that pretty, pretty face with those pretty, pretty eyes.

Or ... the one where Harry Styles has a bad reputation and a heart of gold, and Louis Tomlinson wishes he wasn't so enchanted by boys who looked like Disney characters and wore shirts with bumble bees on them.

[aka Louis is the director of the Styles Elephant Sanctuary and really doesn't want to babysit his funder's spoiled lay-about son for two months]

say i hate you but i always stay by @liltinylouis / clicheanna

It was a nice thought, and he must have dozed off to it, because the next thing he was aware of was wet and cold.

Harry shot up in the bed. His hair was dripping, soaked curls hanging in front of his eyes. Droplets of water ran down his bare chest. The sheets and blanket were damp.

Louis stood next to the bed with a smug grin. In one hand he was holding an empty glass.

About thirty minutes later, Harry was parked outside the football pitch. Louis climbed out of the car, duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

He waved at Harry and blew him a kiss as he walked away. Harry flipped him off.

Or the one where Harry hates Louis, he's almost sure Louis hates him, and they live together. Driving him to football practice everyday is not apart of Harry's plans, but Louis is pretty adamant if it means annoying Harry.

don’t believe me just watch by ariadne_odair

The thing is, Louis knows Harry’s name. Harry knows he does. Harry corrects him every time. Repeatedly. Politely. Slightly hysterically that time he’d walked in on Louis sucking a boy off in the toilets.

Uni AU were Harry strongly dislikes the footie captain that calls him Henry no matter how many times Harry corrects him and is unfairly gorgeous. Friends meet friends and somehow they end up alone at Niall's New Years Eve party. Louis says things he wouldn't sober. And do things.

Violets and Paper Airplanes by b0yfriendsinl0ve

Harry likes Louis very much a lot and Louis’ a bit of an arsehole.

Leave Your Mark On Me by @fullonlarrie / FullOnLarrie

When Chef Harry Styles’ unbonded Omega designation threatens to derail his career, he does the only thing he can, and goes in search of a black market bond.

just you wait and see by Orphan Account

In which Harry mistakes Louis' flirting as an attempt to steal his job.

a fully armed battalion (to remind you of my love) by @mediawhorefics / MediaWhore

“He was flirting with you by the way,” Niall says casually once he’s finished saying goodbye to Louis and he’s joined Harry outside.

“No he wasn’t,” Harry replies automatically, feeling his heart clench at the thought. Was he?

Niall simply raises a mocking eyebrow in response before wrapping his scarf twice around his neck.

“Not that it matters!” Harry says quickly, eyes widening. “I wouldn’t care even if he did because he’s awful and the worst.”

Everyone at Hogwarts knows that Professor Styles and Professor Tomlinson absolutely despise each other. It's too bad that they're in love.

[courtingstars]

Notes for The Vanishing Prince, Chapter 4

It’s Chapter Four, hurray! This one turned out a little differently than I expected… Mostly because the scene at Rakuzan ended up being so long. But I decided to keep it as is, because I just love Rakuzan’s team SO MUCH. <3

So as promised, this was Rakuzan’s turn to have a cameo (and by cameo I mean a super long scene, with loads of love for the Uncrowned Kings and especially Reo).

Also, I ended up including screenshots from the anime in this post! So if you’re interested in a basic breakdown of my theory about why scenes like this one prove that psychic phenomena were included in the show from the beginning:

Well read on, friend. BECAUSE OH DO I HAVE THEORIES ABOUT THAT.

(Cut for stuff about Rakuzan, a little about why I love the Uncrowned Kings so much, even more love for Reo, a brief explanation of some of the supernatural/psychic references, and a seriously epic yudofu restaurant because tofu is Akashi’s first love, obviously)

On Rakuzan’s Campus

It was fun to try to figure out what Rakuzan as a school would be like… I’ve had a headcanon for a while that each member of the Generation of Miracles chose a high school (and a team) that generally reflected their personality and priorities. So my version of Rakuzan has a lot of Akashi-esque qualities to it. XD

Canonically, Rakuzan is supposed to be a prestigious school that excels in multiple areas. That’s one reason why I included OCs in this chapter, to show that Akashi is far from being the only overachiever at his school. Which, as Furihata realizes, makes his status at the school that much more impressive! (Plus I like to fill out different areas of characters’ lives that we don’t get to see in canon, sometimes by coming up with new characters… I try not to overdo it too much, though, because I know it might only be interesting to me? //laughs)

As a side note, the Rakuzan students are shown preparing for their school’s cultural festival, which is a common event in Japanese schools, and pops up in anime a lot. It frequently involves each class and/or club designing a different booth or event for the festival (like selling food, putting on a play, etc). I’ve read a few series where the festival occurs in late summer to early fall. I don’t know if that’s the typical time of year or not, but that’s why I included the student council working over their vacation to prepare! From what I understand, it’s not uncommon for Japanese students who are really involved in extracurricular activities to continue participating in them over summer vacation (like sports practices, for example).

I Just Really Love The Uncrowned Kings, Okay?

Hopefully I wasn’t the only one looking forward to seeing how Furihata would get along with Rakuzan’s three Uncrowned Kings! I find their canon relationship with Akashi really fascinating, so I wanted to explore some of the implications of it in this chapter. (And then it went on WAYYY longer than I expected. But I was just having too much fun and too many feelings to stop? XD;)

For me, one of the most interesting questions about Rakuzan in KnB is why the other players elected Akashi as captain in his first year… I have a lot of headcanons about it (and a one-shot fic that I started ages ago, that I still really want to finish!). It’s especially interesting because the Uncrowned Kings had a history of competing against the Generation of Miracles in junior high.

So in this chapter, I ended up hinting at some of my theories about why the Kings in particular would decide to make Akashi (and specifically Bokushi!) their leader. I also implied that Akashi wasn’t the only member of Rakuzan who was forced to reevaluate his priorities because of the events of the Winter Cup. (To me this is portrayed really well in the last few episodes, through Reo’s reactions especially.)

Basically, one of the reasons I love Rakuzan so much is because I think of all of them as hyper-competitive people who originally decided to go after victory and focus on dominating the competition, at the cost of everything else… And then were forced to face the consequences of that decision, and realize it was ultimately unfulfilling, at least in part because they came to genuinely value the bonds they’d formed as a team. <3 So I tried to show this in how they explained the situation to Furihata.

… I’m also kind of surprised that I managed to fit in references to all five of the Kings in this chapter? I did not expect that. (And I definitely did not expect how Kiyoshi and Hanamiya would come up in the conversation. //laughs)

Also, I do headcanon Reo as wearing makeup sometimes! I just feel like he would be amazing at it, honestly. (Or maybe I’ve just spent too much time watching beauty gurus on YouTube or something, lol.) In any case, I’m SO HERE for Reo in general… Especially Reo the Love and Sexuality Guru, finally telling it like it really is? //laughs (Oh my god I worked SO MANY self-indulgent headcanons into that silly conversation… Though interestingly enough, Reo flirting with Takao is from some of the anime outtake/bonus scenes. XD So I didn’t make that part up, at least!)

I should probably also mention that some of Furihata’s assumptions/uncertainty about Reo’s identity are related to Japanese culture… In KnB, Reo is depicted as the type of person who would probably be thought of as an “okama,” which usually refers to a gay man who’s also very feminine in their gender expression. (It can also refer to a drag queen, for example.) I think the term was used in the KnB manga, but I wasn’t able to verify that? (And I should also mention that the term itself can be offensive or positive/reclaimed, depending on who uses it.) So gender and sexuality are distinct aspects of a person, but Reo’s choice of self-expression and honorifics, at least to someone who is Japanese, would tend to imply certain things about both. I tried to make that as apparent in the scene as I could, without going into the cultural concept behind it?

(Also a special shout-out to anyone who figured out why Reo asked Furi his date of birth, and why Furi’s answer intrigued him… Because OH HOW I COULD RAMBLE ON AND ON ABOUT THAT.)

On Empaths, Mediums, Clair Senses, and Auras

So for those of you who wanted to see more supernatural stuff in this fic, I really hope you enjoyed Reo’s little conversation with Furi! (I’ve been looking forward to these two finally interacting for SO LONG. I’ve had a million headcanons about them, ever since I wrote that one chapter of Giving Chocolate ages ago… I even hinted at it in several of my other fics, mostly the Christmas ones. XD)

I won’t go into a super-detailed explanation of supernatural abilities here, since the terms I used aren’t culturally specific to Japan, and are pretty easy to research. But since I see Reo as someone who likes to use knowledge from lots of different modalities of the supernatural (like tarot divination, for example), I figured that I would give a quick overview of some of the stuff he mentioned.

An empath is basically someone who is supposed to be able to sense supernatural “energy” in their environment. The idea is that things like a person’s mental health and emotions manifest as energy—in their aura, for example—and empaths can sense this energy and even absorb some of it. (Sometimes to the point that it’s difficult for them to tell the difference between their own feelings and someone else’s.) Empaths can get very overwhelmed and anxious around crowds of people—or a specific person who is emotionally intense or even toxic—for the same reason. Basically, an empath is naturally affected by outside energy, and tends to let that energy in, more than most people. Even though they themselves may not realize it.

A medium, on the other hand, is someone who can connect with spirits, like those of people who have passed on. (I didn’t mention the term in the chapter, but seeing ghosts could potentially fall under this category.) The ability to do this is believed to manifest in a lot of different ways. Some of the possible ways are sometimes called “clair senses.”

“Clair senses” refer to different types of psychic/supernatural perception. The most common term is clairvoyance, which is being able to “see” supernatural phenomena. (From what I understand, it can be literal seeing, or more of a “in your mind’s eye” type of thing.) There are other types of clair senses too, like clairaudience (hearing supernatural things, like a spirit’s voice), and claircognizance (knowing something supernatural, kind of like having a “hunch”).

And finally, an aura is a form of supernatural energy (or light!) that surrounds a person. Some people think it reveals everything from your overall health to your current emotions. (I’ve always been kind of fascinated with the concept, and I even had my aura read for fun once. //laughs) In Chapter Four, we find out that while Akashi’s aura is more or less a single color (red), Furihata’s aura has multiple colors. Believers in auras often claim that the appearance and colors of a person’s aura can tell you a lot about them, and what they’re going through.

So it might seem like a stretch, to be including this stuff in a fic about a basketball anime… But weirdly enough, the canon of Kuroko no Basuke has a lot of intriguing moments that could be interpreted as referring to stuff like auras and clair senses? I could probably ramble on about my theories on this for FOREVER, so instead I’ll just leave a couple of screenshots here:

(Subtitles/translation courtesy of Crunchyroll)

… Yeah. I definitely did not come up with the idea to include this stuff on my own. XD (You can interpret these moments as symbolic too… But I feel like the story actually makes more sense if it’s literal, at least on some level? //laughs)

(Especially since that’s not even counting all the aura-like visuals in the show. And the weird eye stuff. And characters who can apparently predict the future in various ways. AND THE TRIPPY DOOR VISIONS AT THE END. SERIOUSLY DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THE DOOR VISIONS. Anyway.)

On Platform Dining in Kyoto

I might talk about this in more detail for an upcoming chapter, but yes, the part about dining on platforms in Kyoto in the summer is a real thing! You can find a general overview about it here.

Basically, since it gets so hot and humid in the valley where Kyoto is, some of the restaurants have a tradition of putting up special wooden platforms over the river and serving their customers on them. It’s called “kawayuka” dining when it’s done over the Kamogawa river, inside the city. (An area outside Kyoto called Kibune also participates in the tradition, where this style of dining is called “kawadoko.”)

On the Yudofu Restaurant

Finally, in the longstanding tradition of me doing way too much research about the places in my fics, I did indeed pick out a real place for Akashi’s favorite restaurant!

First off, I should probably mention that yudofu isn’t just Akashi’s favorite food. It’s also one of the most famous regional dishes in Kyoto. (Maybe THE most famous!) Kyoto has a ton of restaurants that specialize in making high-quality tofu, so a boiled tofu dish like yudofu is extremely popular, both with locals and tourists. Yudofu itself was also created in Kyoto, because the monks working in the temples needed vegetarian dishes for their Buddhist diet.

Yudofu is thought to have originated in the area around Nanzenji temple. That being the case, I wanted to choose one of the most traditional, famous restaurants there to be Akashi’s favorite. I had a couple of choices, like this restaurant, which is one of the oldest restaurants in Japan. But in the end, I chose a place called Nanzenji Junsei because the atmosphere of the garden, the ability to reserve a private dining room, and the elaborate set meals all struck me as something Akashi and his family would appreciate. (Plus it seems to be highly rated as well as famous.) You can learn about the history of the restaurant, and see tons of pictures of the buildings, garden, and the food on the absolutely gorgeous official website here.

(Yeah. I want to go there. SO BAD. You can also see more pictures of the restaurant in the TripAdvisor reviews, including more shots of the private dining rooms.)

And while I haven’t been lucky enough to try it in Kyoto, I have made yudofu before! It’s an ultra simple dish that relies on the highest possible quality ingredients. So it’s definitely an appropriate choice for Akashi. (That being said, it does amuse me that his favorite food is basically just, well, tofu cooked in water… Like what teenage guy would say that was his top favorite food EVER? Oh, Akashi. You are such a Kyoto boy. XD)

On a side note, if you want an idea of how old some of the restaurants in Kyoto really are, I thought this article of the top ten oldest restaurants in Japan was interesting! Kyoto still has restaurants in operation that date all the way back to the middle ages.

The city’s culinary fame also inspired a longtime headcanon of mine that the Rakuzan players initially bonded over restaurant hopping… So that’s why that keeps popping up in my fics? //laughs Well, that, and this screenshot from one of the third season endings that literally shows them eating together in a place that looks like a Kibune kawadoko restaurant, and wearing yukata no less:

(Oh Mayu, I miss you, why did you have to graduate before this fic takes place? XD)

(And seriously don’t get me started on the shots of each team from that ending, they’re all adorable with great little geographical/cultural references AND I CAN’T)

Well, that’s it for my notes! I have a draft of the next chapter completed, and while my goal is to work ahead in the story first, I hope to be posting it very soon. (I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say… IT’S A TRIP.) I’ll also be sharing my Pinterest board for the fic then, so if you enjoyed the ones for Storming the Castle, that’s coming up!

[moogsthewriter]

Thoughts on Avengers: End Game

Put below a cut for spoilers, but the spoiler-free tl;dr is that I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it because there’s things I liked, things I don’t like, and things I’m not sure if I should accept.

Let’s be blunt: Pulling off Endgame in a way that satisfies everyone, makes logical sense using reality-bending stones, and ties up 10+ years of movies was pretty much impossible. Obviously there’s a lot of debate, and I’m probably not adding anything new to the discourse, but I keep losing sleep and/or having weird dreams, so I clearly need to get it off my chest so to speak to try and ease my mind. So I’ll just touch on a few key topics:

The Timeline: This I know is getting a lot of hot debate, and it’s actually caused my husband and I to raise our voices at each other over it (which is honestly not surprising – the biggest conflict in our marriage thus far has been that he’s pro-Cap and I’m pro-Iron Man, lol). The most helpful explanation to me has been this reddit thread that essentially compares the timeline to an operating system and that essentially, by Cap returning the stones to their original times, it “rebooted” the main timeline from those points on (though the events still happened for the future characters because of the whole “the past becomes your future which can’t change your past” thing). This – in theory – helps explain why it doesn’t blow up the GOTG timeline to have past!Thanos + army come and be killed in 2023 or whatever year it was. I admit, I’m still a bit skeptical about this, primarily because of the Old Cap ending. The reset works for everyone except him in that case, and I know that Peggy Carter was a badass and could keep a lot of secrets, but I just don’t see it being possible for Steve to hide out and not impact the timeline… I also think it will be telling to see what happens in GOTG 3, because clearly Peter was searching for Gamora, and if this “system reboot” theory holds true, then she should not appear at all in that film, other than in recordings/flashbacks/etc. (unless they try and do something with the Soul Stone, which is a whole other kettle of fish). So I think the timeline can sort of work logically, but that leads into two other key points…

Steve’s Ending: Honestly, this was the worst note for me to end on and is the biggest source of contention between me and my husband on our perspectives of this film. We both agree that it’s totally in character for MCU!Steve to do something like this – husband thinks it’s good to let Steve have the happy ending he wants after everything, but I view it as yet another instance of Steve literally NEVER practicing what he preaches. To me, “getting a life” and having a happy ending that also shows ACTUAL character growth would be Steve finally accepting that he is in the future and it is time for him to move on AND THAT HE DOESN’T NEED ROMANCE TO BE HAPPY. But again… having such an ending would be antithetical to everything they’ve done with Cap since Winter Soldier, let’s be honest, so as much as I hated it (and think it throws the timeline thing into question, as mentioned above), I do think it fits the character.

Morgan Stark: As much as I loved seeing more of dad!Tony, there wasn’t much point to have Morgan as a character in the film unless it was setting it up for Tony to have to decide between the reality with his daughter and the reality with his spiderson everyone else, which is an excellent point that I know others have raised all over social media. HOWEVER, I also think that this isn’t so much a desire for a plot point for Tony as it is to be a... IDK, a consolation prize, I guess, for Pepper – yes, she loses Tony, but she gets their daughter, whereas if they reset the timeline like we all thought they would, she probably wouldn’t have gotten either (more on that in a sec). And THAT idea stems from the general problem of…

The female character story lines: It is very clear to me that the writers really had no idea what to do with the story arcs for the female characters in this film. For a character like Captain Marvel, it kind of makes sense, since apparently the script was finalized a few years ago (aka before the CM movie came out). But they’ve NEVER known what to do with Natasha’s arc, clearly, or with Pepper, either (at least not since the early Iron Man films, if even then), and so to me, the Morgan Stark thing ties more broadly into that. Basically, a bunch of dudes thinking through this problem with apparently little/no input from women (if the writing credits are accurate).

Natasha’s ending: Speaking of Natasha’s arc, this is the character death that is honestly bothering me the most out of the entire film. As much as I love Jeremy Renner and the Hawkeye of the comics, there has never been much compelling about his character (mostly because the writers have never done anything to make him to be compelling, let’s be real) – everything I (and I think a lot of the fandom) love about MCU!Clint is directly tied to his relationship to Natasha. I get that they were trying to not screw him over completely and do… something with him (very clearly not much, because he doesn’t really do much after Vormir????), but if he had been able to succeed in the sacrifice, that actually would’ve given both a point to his weird arc in this film AND would have set up even greater conflict/character development for Nat in a future film. Plus, it was hard to actually mourn Nat’s death because other than those REALLY SHORT scenes at the lake, it’s like it never happened or something. (I do wonder if there’s a bit more of that kind of content in the deleted scenes, but that would also speak to decisions of treatment of women in this film.)

Thor’s arc: There’s a LOT I could say about this, but I’ll keep it short-ish because this is already getting ridiculously long. Overall, I think it’s actually an interesting direction for Thor to go as a character (I can see where some think it’s backsliding from Ragnarok but I don’t necessarily think so… I can go more into that if people want), but it was really difficult to see his PTSD get treated so lightly. This is again where it makes sense for the characters involved – most of his screentime was with Rocket, who is probably the literal worst at dealing with past traumas in a positive way within the MCU, and other than Iron Man 3 and parts of Winter Soldier, no MCU film has really even touched the issue of PTSD well, especially in these later phases – so it makes sense on one level that it was the way it was, but… yeah, still. (Trauma is also why I really didn’t like Tony’s interaction with Howard, but I’m not even going to touch that because then we’ll be here forever.) But yeah, that’s another thing that will be interesting to see if they explore in GOTG 3.

Tony’s arc: This was obviously one of the hardest things for me to deal with, as a Tony fan, but I also was absolutely convinced he was going to die once Stephen traded the time stone to save Tony’s life in Infinity War, so to me it was a matter of figuring out how he was going to die. And honestly? I actually thought it was one of the better ways for Tony to go out. Why do I say that? Two things. One – the “I am Iron Man” line was perfect, even with – honestly, perhaps because of – its raspy croakiness. To me, that summed up Tony perfectly – he is the man in control of and behind the design the suit and thus the true hero (because the suit HE DESIGNED was able to work out getting the stones/gauntlet off Thanos’ hand), and even when he’s at the very end of his rope, he never gives up when it comes to trying to do the right thing (even if he goes about it in the wrong ways and is often his own worst enemy). So yeah, it felt like pure Tony Stark to me. Two – the fact that he went out with his real family by his side. One of my fave moments was him finally laying into Steve and the rest of the team at the start of the film, and I think his closing moments mirrored that well. Yes, he can be on cordial terms with the rest of the Avengers, but they were never his true family – his real family was the ones with him at the very end, and I was honestly so relieved that there was no bullshit last-words exchange between him and Cap that tried to cement some mythical bond that was never really present in MCU in the first place (comics, yes; cinematic universe, hell no) that that overruled everything else I feel about his death. (Though I could obviously go much more into that but again… this is hella long so I’ll stop now.)

Anyway, IDK if anyone made it to the end of this thing, but I feel like I’ve gotten a weight off my chest, so… mission accomplished, I guess? Lord knows I could write an entire novel about my feels as a result of this movie – I didn’t even touch treatment of the Wakandans, Captain Marvel’s non-appearance in the film, or other “implied but never confirmed/denied” elements of the plot. But I’m probably close to Tumblr’s bs limits anyway, so. Congrats to you if you made it this far lol.

[minijenn]

Kingdom Hearts 3: Final Thoughts

Ok well not really final thoughts cause I’m sure I’ll be internally screaming over this game for the rest of time, but I figured I’d leave my thoughts about the game in a more... coherent manner than what my screaming during the liveblogging conveyed. And so, here we go with me basically talking about everything I liked, loved, and maybe wasn’t so ok with (cause the game wasn’t perfect lol) and yeah there will be spoilers aplenty so I’ll tuck it away under the cut cause I have a feelin this is gonna get long. So... here we go:

First I’ll start off wit the easy stuff, the presentation. By GOD is this game fucking beautiful to look out. All of the graphics are so crisp and clean and everything just BURSTS with color. Never before have the Disney worlds felt so alive in a KH game and now they’re JAMMED back with detail. I first noticed this while wandering around Galaxy Toys in the Toy Box and I gasped at just how many little minute details there were to be found, from price tags for toys, to sticky notes on bulletin boards, and so on. Every single place you visit in this game looks like its actually been lived in as opposed to just being another set piece. They were all so much fun to explore and I’ll go into detail about each Disney world at least later on. As for everything else, so much effort was put into just about EVERYTHING! From the ways environments are lit (Corona especially had some nice lighting effects, as did San Fransokyo), from enemy designs, to characters expressions oh god the expressions. KH games in the past tended to rely on stock expressions in some scenes because hey, its easy when ya don’t need to put your whole foot forward, I get it. But here? There are no stock facial expressions, everyone, everyone emotes in such vivid and realistic ways so that you can just see how characters are feeling/what they’re thinking just through their body language and expressions alone (Sora especially aslkdjasld I’ll go on about my son in a bit tho). In terms of other visual stuff, I LOVED how flashy this game could get in terms of attacks (Attraction Flow especially oh my god), some say it might have gone over the top, but to me, it just made me so excited to use everything I had in my arsenal just to see how things looked!

Next the music oh GOD the MUSIC. From the moment this game’s version of Dearly Beloved started playing I knew I was in for a DAMN pleasant listening experience. But what I loved even more was how this game went above and beyond with is score. Yeah ya have your basic level and battle background themes (my personal favs among those include Arendelle’s and Corona’s themes), but then most cutscenes are scored with individual little musical cues, almost like scenes right out of a movie instead of just the same theme playing on repeat in the background! That honestly added such a neat little touch to the game that I instantly noticed and loved IMMEDIATELY (this game also improved Sora’s theme SO much and used it a lot and I fucking LOVED that) and other returning songs were great too (Mysterious Tower’s theme is spectacular now, and even though they didn’t really change Hundred Acre Woods’ theme, they added more orchestration to it to make it sound even prettier!) And of course, don’t even get me started on Face My Fears and Don’t Think Twice, both of those are such AMAZING songs, probably my fav Utada songs out of the entire series (Don’t Think Twice especially lol) 

Next up, gameplay. So I kinda suck at KH games but honestly? I didn’t really have THAT hard of a time with this one. I played it in normal mode (cause I aint about to punish myself with proud mode alskdjalksdja) and I only started dying towards the end of the game and even then I didn’t die that much. But don’t get me wrong, the game isn’t stupidly easy either. The enemies will fuck you up if you’re not careful. I always made sure to reserve my magic to use cure like... fucking constantly because better safe than sorry! As for attacks, I favored using formchanges a lot because I always felt way more powerful with them (I beat the game using the BH6 keyblade imo that’s a good one) and Attraction Flow was also really useful and fun to use! Summons I... didn’t really use that much lol (same old story as other KH games) and team attacks I did use pretty much whenever they were offered to me (the ones with Disney companions were always a lot of fun!). Outside of battle, exploring in this game is SO much fun! Even aside from all the stuff to look at, there’s a lot to find! From ingredients (oh god the game wouldn’t fucking let me forget about ingredients), to hidden Mickeys (laskdjalskdjsad fuckin hell could never find any when the game outright told me there was one in front of me I’m stupid as hell), to the usual chests and whatnot, searching around was always a fun time (unless it was for fucking crabs, but we’ll get to that). Plus can I just say that I adore how smooth it is to control Sora in this game? Like seriously the boy actually runs at a decent pace for a change, his jump doesn’t feel like he’s wearing goddamn cement shoes, and the fucking tricks he can pull off with the whole running up walls and shit? fantastically fun to do. Special gameplay elements in the game were also usually always welcome, but I’ll get to those for each individual world when I go through em. 

But before I do that, I’ll briefly speak on all the extra stuff this game offers for you to do because by god is it packed with content. I didn’t really explore a ton of what it had to offer cause I wanted to beat the main story as quickly as I could, but what I did explore of it was a lot of fun! Cooking with Remy is adorable and even though I didn’t really use any of the dishes I cooked up I still had fun finding ingredients and doiing the little minigames for each dish. Hundred Acre Woods minigames were all kinda samey but tbh it was a fun game nonetheless. I only played one of the Classic Kingdom games but tbh next time I visit the game, I really do wanna try more of them, they’re super cute. The camera function was a delight askdjskd such a cute touch to add, taking selfies with Disney characters is my new favorite thing oh my god and... ugh guess I’ll talk about the Gummi ship here too... I never liked it in 1 or 2 but god they really fucked it up here imo. I know some might disagree with me on this, but by god this game could not get me to care about customizing my own ship. I pretty much kept with the basic ship the whole game, avoided every single enemy I could and mostly just bit the bullet so I could get to new worlds as quickly as possible. And most of the time I didn’t really mind it, UNTIL THE LAST GUMMI MISSION. The way the camera controls and the vertical and horizontal controls fuck each other up is so fucking stupid and trying to navigate that damn ship through tight and tiny corridors only for the camera to have a piss fit every time I so much as skiff by a wall made me so fucking mad why did they do this the rest of the game the missions are in wide open space plains so why force me into a bunch of tight corridors at the very last minute laskdjsldsd oh my god it was terrible 

ANYWAY moving on to much more fun stuff to talk about, how about them Disney worlds, huh? Might as well talk about my thoughts on each one of them, since they all offered such unique experiences that came together SO damn nicely: 

Olympus was, in my opinion, an excellent way to kick off the game. You get plenty of room to explore and see exactly what’s new in terms of gameplay and the game gives you chances to learn those moves and practice them in a nice, controlled environment. The world itself is lush and lovely and quite varied, with Thebes as an entire city environment to explore, the mountain to climb up and avoid Titans on (excellent first real bosses in the game btw I was so hype throughout that entire fight) and the beautiful environment of Olympus itself to slide and glide through). I was also pleasantly surprised in just how much the world set up for the rest of the game, kicking off Sora’s whole arc of having to get stronger throughout the game (more on that later), showing what Pete and Maleficent are up to (again more on that later), showing us that the Organization is still kickin and a threat, and basically getting us hype for everything else that’s to come! I’ll give Olympus an 8/10 I’d say if I had to score it lol

Next up in terms of full worlds to explore is the Toy Box and DAMN this world was impressive. They really did a GREAT job making you feel like a toy exploring a much larger world around you. Most of this level did take place at Galaxy Toys but I really don’t see that as a restriction since the place is MASSIVE and so much fun to navigate and pick out all those little details I mentioned above. Controlling the robots in this level as a BLAST in every way possible, and I do love all the little nods and references they make back to Toy Story itself in this world. Buzz and Woody were great to have along for the ride and I really appreciated how they were actually involved in the plot points of the world (like seriously, Woody fuckin telling Young Xehanort off will forever be one of my favorite KH moments oh my god). Imo this one was for sure one of my favorites, 9/10

After that, we have Corona and I was really excited about this world and I do think they did a great job with it. The environments are lush and absolutely beautiful (as is, again, the level’s music), and there are so many fun little moments in this level (having a splash fight with Rapunzel was PURE as was the entire dancing minigame imo adorable and so much fun). Its just... idk, for some reason i feel like I wasn’t as... engaged in this world as I was with some of the others? Its more or less just the story of Tangled imo, but Sora, Donald, and Goofy are just sorta... there. Hell, there are points where the trio just up and disappears from the Tangled plot and don’t even come into play until much later on which is sorta... why? I get that ya have a lot to convey in a short amount of time, but damn if Tangled wasn’t the perfect world for a KH game and it just felt like the story of it was... not as great as it should have been? Idk maybe I just wanted more bonding between the trio and the Tangled characters, and what we got was fine but I still wanted... more . So yeah, this one gets a 6/10 from me. 

Next up I went to Monstropolis and this one was also a pretty great time. Exploring the factory is a lot of fun and though it is kind of standard in terms of gameplay, everything else here is really great. The humor in this level is especially sublime and I love how the trinity trio plays off Mike, Sully, and Boo imo its pure as can be. And once again we have the Disney characters taking active engagement in the plot of the world (seriously Sully just yeeting Vanitas through several doors like he’s the lil piece of goth trash that he is is right up there with that scene of Woody and YX) So yeah not a ton to say about it, but I liked it a lot. 7/10. 

After Monstropolis, I went to Arendelle and by god this world was way more than I was expecting it to be. Seriously I LOVED how the plot of Frozen worked so naturally into this level, this was honestly much better than how Corona did it if you ask me. We actually got to see moments of connection between Sora and characters like Elsa and Anna and so on and it was great. Plus oh my god that Let It Go sequence was INCREDIBLE the animation on that was simply STUNNING! As for gameplay, I gotta say it was another fun one. The ice labyrinth was sorta meh, but exploring the mountain was a great time (and led to a lot of fun snark between the Trinity Trio imo) and the snowy environments here were just beautiful. Sledding down the mountain was a blast, and having Marshmallow to help out as a brief companion was unexpected but adorable. So yeah this was another one of my absolute favs. 9/10. 

After Arendelle though... things... fuckin tanked. The Caribbean was the goddamn worst part of this game for me, and not just because I haven’t seen the movies and therefore can’t really get a ton of enjoyment out of the characters and the story. Even beside that this world was just damn tedious. I thought the whole ship thing was gonna be fun at first, but then it just turned into an absolute shitshow, with enemy ships unfairly disappearing and reappearing and then completely blasting your ass (btw the ship is fuckin slow as hell so its hard to navigate (and yes I get that its a big pirate ship, but I don’t fucking care this was supposed to be fun so why isn’t it fun???) And don’t even get me started on that whole collecting white crabs bullshit imo that was just about pretty fucking pointless tbh so yeah suffice to say I didn’t have a fun time with this one. It had nice music tho I’ll give it that. And the swimming controls weren’t that bad so yeah. That’s about all the nice things I can say bout it. 3/10.

But GOD did the game ever make up for it when I got to San Fransokyo. I already really love Big Hero 6, so getting to explore the world of it was just GREAT.  The fight on the bridge was a great introduction and exploring the city was AMAZING. Everything felt so HUGE and there was SO much to see (so many buildings to run up!!!). Plus the boss battle against Evil Baymax or whatever was the SHIT in this level, seriously it was so much fun. And hey, it had a really solid original story to it too! I love how the game went out of its way to give each member of Big Hero 6 so much of their original personality from the movie, and it allowed them all a chance to interact with Sora, Donald, and Goofy to really make it seem like unique and engaging bonds were being formed. This world honestly had me so invested and I loved it so much, I’d say its probably my favorite of the entire game. 10/10.

And yeah so those are all the Disney worlds. Gonna not really talk about the last two worlds cause they’re more story heavy than gameplay heavy and speaking of which... guess its about that time. 

First of all, I gotta say that one of my favorite things about this game was its dialogue. Most of the VAs did a pretty damn solid job but the main characters especially so had a lot of emotion put into them. This game has so many fun little chatty moments, and the writing here is probably the most natural its ever been in a KH game. There’s so many fun little moments of sassy banter (between Sora, Donald, and Goofy in particular, seriously I could listen to those three yap at each other all goddamn day its excellent). SO much personality leaks through every character in just about every word they say and I really appreciate it and the effort put into it all! 

Now with that out of the way, the story oh god the story. So I should probably say that, for a preexisting KH fan like myself, this is the KH game that was actually the easiest to understand what’s going on in? Crazy, I know, but this game actually explains most of the off the wall things that happen in it in a way that anyone could readily understand, and personally I really think that benefits it. I think the plot only really derailed itself for me like... once (the whole explanation behind Repliku jfc what a mess). But there were still a few things that the game didn’t explain that I’ll again, talk about later. As for the story itself... 

One of the things i REALLY Loved about it was the character arc Sora had in this game. Riding off of DDD, the game really does set him up as the defeated underdog at the start of it and he feels bad about that and as a result you feel bad and wanna help this sad lil twink bb son get stronger!!! He just wants to help people but he can’t because he doesn’t have the power of waking but the great thing is he forces himself past that handicap and helps them anyway just by being himself and that’s beautiful. I already loved my precious sunshine son already, but this game made me absolutely adore him like seriously, he’s skyrocketed to one of my favorite characters in any fictional medium as a result of this game. He’s such a silly dork who is clearly having fun in all these Disney worlds as he’s off makin new friends, but its clear there’s a certain... anxiety lingering behind all of that. The kid as a lot of pressure on his shoulders and eventually it breaks him and that fucking scene broke me. But in the end, he still fuckin rises above it and kicks ass and then he fuckin disappears but that’s another point to bring up later on cause oh my god but basically the gist is, Sora is my absolute precious son boyo and I would gladly die for him oh my god

Donald and Goofy are also a TON of fun to watch in this game. I may crack jokes about Donald bitching at Sora a lot but you can tell he does it out of a true place of caring. Tbh there were a few Trinity Trio moments in this game that honest to god choked me up a bit, especially near the end. Mickey is sorta downplayed in this game, which is sorta whatever, but I did appreciate Riku in this game a lot (the brief spots where i got a chance to play as him were great). Kairi was... under fucking utilized again and I can’t deny that’s disappointing, and honestly same goes for Axel, though he DID have his moments, especially towards the end. And imo It was a delight to get all the other returning KH kids. Reuniting Aqua, Terra, and Ventus was beautiful, as was the reunion between Roxas, Xion, and Axel. Kinda wish we had gotten more Namine, but I’m glad she got her happy ending all the same. I also appreciate the Twilight Trio in this game, that one scene were they annoy the shit out of Ansem was the best. As for the baddies, same old same old though the game did sorta make them more interesting here and there. Xehanort’s “redemption” is sorta whatever to me, I kinda didn’t really care about what happened to him as much as I did my kids all coming together and being happy together and for the most part that’s what i got so I can’t say I didn’t walk away (mostly) happy as a result. I really fuckin do think the game could have done more with a handful of its bad guys, like they could have maybe implied more about the whole Xigbar=Luxu thing, and imo god did poor Vanitas get the short end of the stick I was expecting so much more on that front and I was sorely disappointed. But for the most part, I liked how this really was a huge KH reunion of heroes and villains alike. In that sense, it felt like one big tribute to the series’ entire history and for that, I love it. 

So I guess that means the only thing I can talk about now is the ending. Oh god that ending. Fuckin thing kept me up all night long last night and had me stressed as fuck this morning while I was at work but honestly? I think I’m over it now. Yeah it is certainly a cliffhanger (especially now that we have that secret movie which raises so many more questions but at the very least it does establish that Sora isn’t dead so I can appreciate that). And hey, it implies that more Kingdom Hearts games are to come, so I can’t really be mad about that since I’m pretty much absolute KH trash at this point. But yeah, that ending got me shook and tbh I think that’s what it was supposed to to, be incredibly bittersweet and all and imo it completely succeeded in that regard. 

Anyway before I go, just a few more points of disappointment I suppose that I haven’t touched on. Pete and Maleficent might as well not have even fucking been in the game for as few times as they appeared imo and the game also sorta just dropped the whole thing with Demyx and Vexen in a similar manner, as well as the whole thing about Larxene, Marluxia, Luxord, and Demyx “unlocking their inner keyblade heritage” or whatever imo game fuckin had too much KHX baiting if you ask me (that one scene where you use a bunch of KHX keyblades to murder a fuckton of heartless was really cool tho). Tbh I feel like the game had several moments of intrigue that it kinda more or less dropped the ball on, like for instance three examples in particular include that bit in Corona where Marluxia straight up knocks Sora the hell out and yeah that’s all he does, imo why even fucking bother with that when the kid just wakes up like nothing’s happened to seconds later? (to get the Trinity Trio out of the plot of Tangled, that’s what jfc), similar thing in Arendelle during the scene where Elsa freezes Anna’s heart, Sora for some reason gasps in pain and clenches his own heart at that exact same moment and the game never fucking bothers to explain why and that’s frustrating. Same thing goes for why Sora disappeared from the cover of Pooh’s book (lol guess that was fuckin foreshadowing the ending) the game offers a non explaination for it that is just... really not that conclusive so why even bother making a big deal out of it in the first place if you’re just gonna drop it? Plus there were a lot of other... smaller moments that I thought the game was gonna do so much more with but didn’t; the moment when Ven and Roxas see each other for the first time and realize they look basically the same but at no point do we actually see them exchange dialogue; Terra and Riku actually having a fucking conversation imo; same thing with any real interaction between Xion and Kairi; or how about the game not actually fucking explaining how the organization brought Xion back at all like wasn’t she a part of Sora how the hell did you do that game you have to EXPLAIN 

Sigh... but anyway, even despite those frustrations, i still absolutely adored my time with KH3. Yeah like I said it wasn’t perfect, but by god was it worth the wait. The game was pure, sheer, fun and its story got me so damn emotional that I actually CRIED at several points of it even though KH has never made me legit cry before. And really? If this stupid as hell game can make this brittle old heart do that, then you know its a good one. 

TLDR: Kingdom Hearts 3 is hella good, it made me cry like a little bitch, kinda fuckin dropped the ball on some points but whatever, and kept me up all goddamn night in existential dread over my precious son’s ambiguous fate. Imo fuckin 10/10 right there I love it and can’t wait to pick it up and play it again

[retphienix]

So I'm about to circle back to where Cid was shot, turning in some more sub-quests on the way, and then just push to the ridge quest that was spoken of in that cutscene, but first I want to say a bit on my current team goals, SOME MORE RAMBLING ABOUT FFTA I'M SORRY AND PROMISE IT'S HONESTLY KINDA POSITIVELY TUNED KINDA WITH A LITTLE COMPLAINING I'M SORRY, and the bazaar system.

So Luso is kinda just going forward blindly, I won't lie. He unlocked Paladin and I went with it, so he's kinda just doing his own thing for a bit and being a beefy tank.

I don't have a "ton" of Paladin equipment just yet, but that's a universal issue for most classes this early on, and is only reason 366 of the 10k reasons the "Learn skills from equipment" system is stupid and bad and every RPG that does it is wrong, so let's just consider that a given lol

Thus far he can pretty much just attempt to fear a nearby enemy into fleeing which is neat but not something I'll ever use, and he just gained access to a self-heal (which is literally just first-aid again, FFTA why do you test me so much).

Pretty bare bones, but hey, I'm doing my best to use the system to make my team each unique which is taking a lot of self control to not try and learn every available skill, because I wager a good amount of why I found the job system so unpleasant in FFTA is because I tried to learn all the skills across my team, which revealed that the races all had facsimiles of each others jobs, which made the glitz and glamor of having so many options feel a lot more homogenized than it even actually was.

While it's fun and rewarding to master jobs in FFT, it was a drag doing so in FFTA, so I wager I simply played incorrectly and would have enjoyed myself more if I didn't.

It also meant I didn't use fun equipment like ever. I bet I could have more fun in FFTA today if I gave it a better swing of things, but tbh, I don't really want to because I did find the game just... not pleasant beyond that. I digress.

FFTA2 has "basically" the same skill list as FFTA if the wiki is to be believed, but I spent a great deal of FFTA leveling classes for different races that thematically presented themselves differently but were actually the same~

(resulting in things like me getting increasingly annoyed that both me and my foes were using variants of the same Blitz, Feather strike, Take Aim and Beatdown skills, or the multiple classes with "This move just ignores reaction abilities and this is for some reason multiple classes signature skill", or how many classes had "Do a small amount of damage and have a chance to proc 1 status" moves for practically the entire game. There is simultaneously a LOT of overlap in the skills for the tactics advance games and honestly a good amount of originality too- but oh boy did the overlap stand out to me in FFTA)

~whereas my plan in this one is to pick end-points and work towards them on each character- thus- hopefully- avoiding said overlap-

AS I SAID, I DIGRESS lol I'm simultaneously trying to accept that I was too harsh on FFTA for not being FFT, while admitting fully that I just Did Not enjoy my time with FFTA REGARDLESS of that bias- and juggling the "I have genuine complaints!" and "I was FAR too harsh!" factoids is becoming a struggle. I feel like I can't admit one without the other being hypocritical but both are true! AH!

FFTA2! So my plan is to ignore learning all the skills, ignore buying garbage items just to master class abilities, ignore ignore ignore! NO COMPLETIONIST MINDSET!

And I'm hoping by doing so I will get to explore more interesting class dynamics and, you know, have fun. A bit optimistic- which is in part because the rest of FFTA2 is like 10x more interesting and fun to me than the FFTA equivalents (story, characters, mechanics) so I'm finding it easier to adjust MY part in what made me dislike FFTA since FFTA2 is doing a lot to adjust ITS part in what made me dislike FFTA.

Still not a fan of the ability design leaning so heavily on "Lower damage to raise accuracy / Lower accuracy to raise damage / Lower damage to add 1 status / Multiple classes have this ability for some reason" being like a third of the skills. But I understand FFTA2 copying most of the same moveset from FFTA since they are directly connected and what not. It's fine. I'll accept it. (It's still dumb, just make better skills and stop giving so many classes the same skills, it's that easy). *cough*

Funnily enough though, I was bothered by the overlap very early into FFTA, but I'm not really hitting the same equipment walls in this one, outside of like, Shieldbearer, which is fine. Perhaps they juggled the equipment accessibility a bit to make it less obvious because the wiki claims the same skills that annoyed me are here-

I was getting annoyed with the "lower acc raise att" "lower att raise acc" moves VERY early into my playthrough of FFTA, and yet none of my party members know those moves yet. Instead the first skills I learned were like Power Rend, basic magic, Focus- and I think the only overlap I have is like shieldbearer and first aid. I think they paid more attention to what skills are slapped on what equipment and what race/class can equip which things so that you don't just turn on the game and have 8 characters with different jobs but the same skills.

That's smart, I like that.

My mage has a goal in mind for instance :P

I'm aiming to make them into a Sage just because tbh. Sounded fun.

My Red Mage is honestly following Luso's example tbh. I WANT to make a summoner, but Red Mage is so much more directly helpful right now, so I'm ignoring leveling the pre-requisite job for now and just leaving her as a stable and stand-out member of the team instead.

Micah has actually reached what I wanted to check with him, and that's Hunter. I know having someone with stable physical range attacks is always a good thing and I figured instead of going the obvious and aiming for a sniper, I'd grab a hunter instead and see what they are about.

I'll be honest, if summoner doesn't pan out for Patrice it's likely she'll end up a sniper because that's just how it goes.

I feel like by the end game I had a tinker in FFTA... maybe that wasn't even a class there and I'm crazy, but I want one. It sounds like guns. I want that.

Moreover I wanted to point at all this because the bazaar system is giving me a lot of ability options a lot faster than I recall FFTA ever doing, it's honestly almost too much lol

Like I'm effectively seconds into the game, in my opinion, and yet I have options like "ATAMOS BLADE" "PREDATOR" The rod that summons IFRIT- like I feel like I didn't get interesting items into mid to late game in FFTA and, again, I never really got to use them. But here, I did some side quests and it's like "BAM" here's a weapon with an ability on it and decent stats, have fun.

I mean, unlike FFTA, I don't "Have" them. They are for sale and are often quite a penny to get, but it's neat to see.

It's, maybe, a little, tiny bit, overboard lol

I feel like I should be getting Long Swords to replace my Broadswords and instead I'm upgrading from iron daggers to SCRAMASAX, LEGENDARY DAGGER OF THE DEEP or whatever.

It's weird. I am enjoying myself and it's kind of working in the game's favor, but it IS weird lol