sugar-spice-and-pretty-men

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RNG is looping F88 for hundreds of time, enough to raise Kiwame Honebami and Namazuo (x2 exp) from lvl 46 to 51, and not getting a single Hakusan.

But getting Onimaru from the first F90 clear 😶

Anyway Underground Treasure Chest 24 over, got some koban and exp, time for Regiment Battle.

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hey Professor who’s your cute goth boyfriend?

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can you imagine Dream dropping into Hobs lecture while he shit talks Shakespeare o̴u̴t̴ ̴o̴f̴ ̴j̴e̴a̴l̴o̴u̴s̴y̴

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am i (500m) the asshole for telling my friend (???m) that he was lonely during our once in a century reunion

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Tokyo Revengers who? After this latest chapter, I only know

(watermarked with my Instagram handle)

I'm still processing the absolute bomb drop in Chapter 268 (seriously, WHAT???) and had to whip my rusty editing skills out of the closet to cope with this information. All I know is next Tuesday can't come quick enough.

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God, there's something so horrifying about Johanna Constantine telling Dream that she'd heard rumors about the Burgess estate and how the Magus had, "The Devil locked up in his basement."

To her, it was just a rumor. To Dream, it is a reminder of the inhuman torment he suffered, but it's more than that.

Johanna Constantine hearing that rumor means that people knew where Dream was. Oh, they didn't necessarily know it was Dream. It was perfectly reasonable that the rumor would be treated as outlandish, that no one would piece together the absence of a mysterious figure like Dream and one ridiculous rumor about a "Magus" who was almost certainly a charlatan.

But from a survivor's perspective, from Dream's perspective, I think the tears in his eyes and the devastation are because it's so much worse to know that the clues to find him and save him were out there. That others heard rumors about the suffering he was going through, but that no one followed up on them. No one out there searched for him. No one tried to help.

(The one friend that tried was murdered for it, in front of him, and he had to sit alone with that grief, without hope, for years.)

It would be better to emerge from that living hell to hear that no one, anywhere, had any idea where he was. It would be better than to hear that his suffering was known, or possible to know had someone just looked a little deeper, and that no one did.

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lucifer losing against morpheus because they can’t counter his “i am hope.” and the following “what power would hell have if those imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?” it makes me wanna scream, because of course!

hell’s first prisoner was its ruler. and they too dream of going home one day. and they can’t give up that hope. this dream is what gives hell power.

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Sandman ep 7+8 impressions - Is The Corinthian a Nightmare or an Incubus? Like damn everyone he came across wanted to fuck him. - All the eyes related horror in these 2 eps are so icky ugh - I laughed at the serial kill- oh sorry, “collectors association” part. They sure were polite and orderly, even paid money for an official gathering and to invite a guest of honour. - The child abuse was terrible, that man really made the poor kid sleep in the basemen with the rats... - Lucienne and Pumpkin-head: watch out for anything that shock and upset Rose, that will be dangerous Morpheus: fucked off with Gault, forced an emotionally distraught Rose and her little brother to wake up Me: sighed and facepalmed Like bro can you fucking not? - Speaking of which, Morpheus was easily able to locate Corinthian in the first ep, why is he having trouble finding all the rogue Nightmares now? - Okay here we go again with the age fuckery, Unity must be over 110 years old by now, so... what give? Is it because she felt into sleep nearby Morpheus that for some reason or another his power affected her? Also whose fucking baby was that?! Like who is the father?? Goddamn it Morpheus, this was all because you were a petty asshole who couldn’t negotiate for shit even when the offer was already on a silver plate. - Speaking of baby, how the fuck did Lyta get pregnant and whose baby is that? The way I see it, Rose’s vortex power is unconsciously leaking out and fucking up Lyta’s barrier between dream and reality. I would tell Lyta to stop sleeping on the same bed with Rose but it seems a bit too late for that now...

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Sandman ep 5+6 impressions - As usual, Morpheus proved to be the biggest fool, he went to John with no plan whatsoever and only luckily got the result he wanted because John was an ignorant idiot. - Ep 5 was hard to watch, it’s not just the gore, but the atmosphere was so tense and unsettling, you just know things were going to go so wrong and you’re forced to witness how they all unravel. - So all of the Endless knew Dream was imprisoned and they all ignored him to have a family party dinner but they missed him. What?? Also Dream was sulking that none of his siblings came to his rescue, but now he’s fine with Death? In fact the whole conversation with Death at the park was so fucked up. Dream was kept in a cage for a decade but Death didn’t come to him once, yet the moment he was brooding on a bench she came over because she’s worried?? Like what the fuck is that fucked up priority? “Did you think I could be worried about you?” Well maybe if you came to check on him when he was caged for a hundred years we could tell that you cared? Mr Neil, this is fucking shitty writing. Sorry to say but this is on the level of Rune Factory 4 arc 1 quality. Where you want things to happen a certain way so you do it, but couldn’t be fucked to explain why other things couldn’t have happened instead, so some characters just get to be stupid or jerk for no reason. - The whole Dream & Death interaction was so fucking off to me. Like bro no I don’t buy this sweet get along siblings bullshit. It’s not my job to come up with Death’s excuse for you, it’s your job as a writer to tell me exactly why despite being so fond of and care for her ~dear little brother~ she just let him be in a little cage for 100 years. The whole kind and wise Death they tried to go for completely fell flat for me. Felt like I was being feed artificial sweetened with absolutely no substance the whole time. - The story with Hob was good at least, I liked how they showed things change yet stayed the same. I’m sure Hob was lonely and treasured his friendship with Morpheus too, given that Morpheus was the only one to stay alive along with him. Also I guess as terrible as the whole Roderick ordeal that resulted in millions of deaths over the span of a whole century was, Morpheus did come out of it a bit less of an ass and more honest with himself, so hey, tiny silver lining.

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Sandman ep 3+4 impressions - Joanna Constantine was surprisingly cooperative. When she pointedly told Morpheus to fuck off and only cared about her job I thought we’d spend the whole episode playing bullshit game to get her to help, but she actually didn’t mind lending him a hand, which was a breath of fresh air after the first ep where 90% of people involved refused to compromise whatsoever. Granted she only wanted to get rid of the nightmare and did try to slip away, but overall that went well enough. - Matthew my dude, the reason why she got away was because you distracted Morpheus! Speaking of which, Matthew was a human who died and the next thing he knew, he was a raven. Dude sure took it in stride, just shrugged it off and went on with his new job. - Poor Rachel falling in love with the wrong person and suffered terribly for it. Still, 6 months and no one went to check on her?? Where the heck were her friends and family?! - Now I know why Morpheus was stuck in the basement for a decade, it has been 10000 years and he still hasn’t forgiven Nada, dude’s just petty as fuck. Then again Gods and the Divines in mythologies are rarely known for being forgiving lol. Really curious what happened between them though. - Morpheus owe both Lucienne and Matthew a heartfelt thank for looking after his ass. - I thought Morpheus was going to get his ass kicked by Lucifer, but then they started playing a game of who is stronger Naruto vs Goku... - I feel like I missed something with the “hope” one, wouldn’t despair kill hope? Or did that not count because Despair is his sibling? Why did Lucifer look so shaken? I didn’t quite get that part. - I have seen Neil Gaiman hyped up Lucifer’s casting a lot, so I was looking forward to Lucifer��s performance but honestly I was disappointed. First of all the hairstyle they chose for her fucking sucked, her face was already so round and soft, so that puffy curly hair just made her look like a Karen. She didn’t look ethereal and threatening at all, she looked like a childish middle-aged woman ready to throw a tantrum. The only thing I liked about her was her height, I liked how they used the camera angle to show her dwarfing over Morpheus, that was cool. Also her outfits were dope. - Rosemary my dear, showing too much kindness to the wrong person will only result in disaster. That amulet John gave you, please for the love of all good thing in the world, throw it into a fucking lake or something. That will only cause trouble, you don’t want to accidentally have some people fucking explode while defending yourself. At least she’s alive though, god I was afraid she was gonna die. - Ethel was a great character, I feel conflicted about her. She genuinely loved her son but she was also a terrible mother, she accidentally created a monster and didn’t know how to deal with it. - If I understood it right, Ethel was 116 years old when she died, she had John when she was fairly young, like when she was 20-ish? So John must be around 90 years old? Wait that doesn’t feel right, he’s too mobile and clear-minded for a 90 years old. He seems more like 70-ish to me. But let’s say he’s 90yrs old and was kept fairly young because of magic or whatever, he said he had been locked up for 30 years. So he stole the ruby and made a mess at... 60 yrs old...? Like really? Rebellion at the retire age...? - The timeline is kinda fucked, like Morpheus said he was imprisoned for a decade, but Alex already looked like 8-9 yrs old when Morpheus got caught. How the fuck did both Alex and Paul come to be in such great shape at like 110 years old?? As far as I know they had no magic shit lying around because Ethel stole them already, and Alex wasn’t really taught magic by his father. So what the heck? It’s especially confusing when you consider how Alex wasn’t that much younger than Ethel. He was already like a late teenager when they met, and Ethel was like only a few years older than him. Without the Amulet of Protection, Ethel crumbled to death, but Alex was healthy enough to be able to stand and walk a little by himself. The characters’ age is kind of a fuckery. I should have paid more attention to the date but I’m also not sure if that would helped lol.

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Sandman ep 1+2 impressions - Lucienne does not get paid enough for all the bullshit she has to deal with. - Morpheus is a fucking stubborn idiot and his mess would have been 1/10 as big if he could just agreed with Alex to not harm Alex and his boyfriend. Like yes I was heartbroken over the bird too but Morpheus my man, Alex was a teenager with a shitty abusive father, he did shitty things but he knew better than to become a shitty person. All he wanted was for you to leave himself and his love alone, but you stubbornly refused and see how well that worked out for you. You basically tortured both you and Alex for what? 60+ years? Because you wanted revenge and couldn’t forgive him. And of course Alex didn’t know about how keeping you there was ruining the world, you refused to speak a single word! - From following Neil Gaiman’s tumblr, Death was supposed to be a loving older sister to Dream, but in ep 2, Dream was upset that his siblings knew about his capture and none came to his aid. I’ll see if that gets a satisfying explanation later. I’ve watched too many anime where the big sister just “ara ara” her way through shitty behaviours, and no one ever calls her out because omg big tiddy pretty woman. Sandman is not anime, but as much as I like Neil as a person, he’s a cis straight man who have also fallen into the trap of ~pretty women~ trope before, so I’m watching with weary eyes.

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Losing my mind over Yumekuro’s goddamn inconsistent battle system!

Mikage, Crow and Alex have the same damage range in their description “中範囲内の敵” aka “enemies within medium range”. In practice though? Both Mikage and Alex hit only one row of enemies, while Crow hit two rows of enemies. Why??

But the worst case has to be this, both my Ren and my opponent’s (Toy Market) Shion also have the exact same range in skill description - “中範囲内の敵” aka “enemies within medium range” - but again, my Ren only hit the first row, while Shion hit both middle row and back row, while ignoring tank in first row. WHY????

What is even more baffling though, is that Yumekuro JP Wiki has the correct description for Shion’s skill! -> “ 円形中範囲内の敵に1回3HITの魔法中ダメージアタックをする。さらに20%の確率で状態異常「気絶」にする“ - basically hit enemies in a circle But Shion’s official in-game description is just this fucking copy-paste mess bullshit.

I play Yumekuro for the pretty boys so honestly, while I was annoyed at the Mikage vs Crow difference, I shrugged it off because the battle was easy so it didn’t matter that much. But with the introduction of PvP where the dev pushed players to make the best teams to fight each other rewards, this kind of vague and inaccurate description is really unacceptable :/ They seriously need to fix this already.

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Tokyo Revenger ch 261

Goddamn it Wakui let Senju go punch some sense into her brother! You can’t just knock her go down then make her sit there and be a goddamn spectator like that?? Her whole family is involved here, she’s not an outsider, where is her resolve and passion?! It’s bullshit to build up Senju into this super strong fighter only to let her do fuck all in an actual fight :/ We all know the endgame is Sano vs Takemichi, but let Senju solve her conflict with Sanzu at least = =

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Rune Factory 4 Special Arc 1

I don’t understand why everyone freaked the fuck out over Venti dying, she’s a Native Dragon that has lived for thousands of years, what’s wrong with her dying now? Is Native Dragon supposed to be immortal or what?

The plot line of Lest being reckless and charging into the Forest of Beginning with only 1 return ring is so absurdly stupid I can’t fucking even. You have THREE Earthmates sitting on their ass in town RIGHT NOW who could use Omni Gate to summon you back! Why the fuck did you say absolutely fucking nothing to them then just went ahead yourself??? We even had a big dramatic scene where everyone was like “We will help!”, it’s not a bigass secret what you’re trying to do! I assume it’s because they wanted to give Venti a dramatic entrance to save Lest and wrap up arc 1 but man, maaaaaaaaan it was middle school level of writing for real.

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Current quick impression of each FFXIV expansion

Base game - Main story: Basic RPG, mostly fun to go through casually without rushing. However, there are a few disgusting quest-lines here and there, most notably the Little Ala Mhingo arc where a few nameless female characters were raped for the sake of a male character’s story. - Alliance raid story: Fun and interesting with neat lores. - 8 people raid story: I played this with some shitty toxic (now ex) friends who rushed me through it, and not let me read the story because I was “wasting other people’s time” for clearing it for the first time. So I don’t remember anything other than blah blah Bahamut. - Class/Job quest story: Mixed bag, some good, some bad, some just plain boring. Mentioning because I despise the Arcanist class quest where they decided to dress up a former traumatized sex slave victim in a sexualized outfit and ogled her. => Overall: Mostly okay but there were some teeth-sucking parts to get through.

Heavensward - Main story: It has been so long so my memory is just mostly nostalgia, though I remember having fun finding out the truth of the war and destroying the shitty noble system of Ishgard. - Alliance raid story: Fun adventure with sky pirates and a stuffed cat ft the Void. - 8 people raid story: Convoluted time-loop story, banger raid music. Last time I did any raiding seriously. - Trial story: Completely skipped this. Sophia raid has a dangerously catchy song though. => Overall: Personal favourite

Stormblood - Main story: Disjointed 2 halves between Ala Mhigo and Doma parts. The Doma part was mostly well-written, the Ala Mhigo part was boring and lacking in interesting characters. A lot of conflicted feelings about how they handle many aspects of the story, overall rather meh. - Alliance raid story: A big mess, not sure if it’s a writer issue or a translation issue but a bunch of parts didn’t make sense. Also not a fan of “descendants who look exactly like their predecessors” trope. Last but not least, this quest-line has one of the most insufferable NPC, the dude who sent you on a fucking stupid errand to get wine for a dinner party with his wife. Whoever wrote that quest deserves to be punted. - 8 people raid story: I’m immune to Alpha’s charm so whenever the story tried to go “look at this cute baby uwu” it was a bit annoying. However the story line itself was good, and I liked Cid vs Nero bickering. - Trial story: A bit disappointed you didn’t get to fight the final big boss, however the story itself was fun. => Overall: Passable Shadowbringer - Main story: Overall very interesting story that completely get dragged down by the writers’ obsession with their fetish loli waifus and licking Y’shtola’s feet. The stupid decision to not introduce female and male Viera OR female and male Hrothgar at the same time also ruined the immersion of Rak’tika Greatwood storyline for me. - Alliance raid story: Hollow, there is nothing there, it’s bare-bone. The twin sister’s real identity was also unnecessary confusing. - 8 people raid story: Interesting story but terrible execution featuring sexualized teenager (Ryne’s Shiva outfit and transformation scene), and everyone becomes spineless in front of a foul-mouthed teenager because the writers want to be stepped on by her. - Trial story: The absolutely worst. The orphans became orphans because of Gaius wrecking war and havoc but everyone conveniently ignored that. Completely walking back on Gaius to try to make him into a ~loving father~ and victim-blamed Livia for her obsession with him, even though she was groomed by him. The whole thing trying to turn Gaius into “he’s a good person actually” was completely disgusting. It also left a bitter taste in my mouth that they let Gaius be the leader for the operation to free that region, they didn’t even do the bare minimum of giving them a leader who could stand on equal footing with Gaius, and let them cooperate to fight against the enemy. Whoever wrote that part deserve to be punted twice at least. => Overall: Most disappointing expansion that does not deserve all the hype.

Endwalker - Main story: Venat is a piece of shit, this storyline completely ruined Hydaelyn for me and now whenever I hear “mother crystal” in ff14 my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Her worshipping both in-game and irl make me want to block 90% of ff14 community. Aside from that, I find most of the story interesting, but the main cast, frankly I’d happy if they all die so the game can stop shoving them into my face and tell me how much my WoL love them. You wrote a MMO where customization is a huge selling point, fuck off and stop telling the players how to feel.  

And that is where I currently stand with the game’s story.

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Tokyo Revengers - some thoughts about Koko & Inui

The way Wakui handle Koko-Inui’s story is so fucking weird. I can’t get over how: 1) Akane is Inui’s sister but we barely delved on what he felt about the whole incident and how he overcame the trauma of both the fire and her death. It’s all about Koko and his ~lost love~ 2) Koko was happy with just saving who he thought was Akane alone, and didn’t think about Inui in that moment at all. Would he have gone back in to try to save Inui if he got Akane right at the first try? I doubt it. I don’t blame him at all, he was literally an elementary school kid. However if I was Inui I’d feel some type of way about how Koko saved “the wrong person” and now spend his whole life being angsty about it. Like wow sorry you accidentally saved me instead of my sister and regretting that “mistake” for the rest of your life? I don’t know if Inui not thinking about the shitty way Koko treated him as second class compared to his sister is just him being a saint, or a lack of foresight into how fucked up their storyline is.

Also not sure if I’m just reading posts from the wrong sides of fandom or what, but I never see anyone talking about Inui’s pov, it’s just “poor koko uwu” all the way. Like yeah Koko’s situation sucked, but also Inui’s situation was even more fucked. His house was on fire and he got caught in it, his family was too poor to save his sister’s life so he got to watch her bedridden in pain for months before dying, and now his best-friend is upset 24/7 because said best-friend accidentally saved him instead of his sister. Trauma and survivor guilt galore.

Either Inui’s superpower is having mental strength tougher than carbon steel, or Wakui got blinded by hmm delicious elementary school kid tragic love story and forgot about Inui.

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I got Shichiseiken, he’s very beautiful as expected, I love the twin-tails in his casual outfit and his voice.

The bad news however, is that this fucker is goddamn useless in a fight. I went to UTC F2 with him as the leader, he was at 49 stamina. By the time I finished F4 he was in fucking red. According to the discussion I read, he gives 30% bonus exp when he has sakura fubuki, 20% when he’s in normal stage, and 5% at red. So you can’t even brute force it and use someone to babysit him, because he barely does anything at red. Seriously are they going to just leave him like this? I can understand if he can’t gain any stamina as leader but to keep losing it so rapidly like this is just stupid.

-sighs- guess he’s just going to sit prettily in my Honmaru as the secretary then.

EDIT: As it turned out, I was just bad at the game. Apparently Shichiseiken loses more stamina when he’s the leader, so you just gotta put him anywhere else and give him long-ranged troops so he gets mvp often and galaxy gramp will work just fine. Alright back to the battle field you go sweetie.

EDIT 2: Finally have time and energy to sit down and test Shichiseiken out myself instead of following others. My conclusion is that it doesn’t matter if he’s a team member or the leader, the key point to using him is still making sure he get MVP often. While it’s true that he lose less stamina as a team member, the leader position itself gives 3 stamina each battle, so in the end it balances itself out. In practice if you dont make sure he gets MVP, he always goes from 49 stamina to red in 3 floors, no matter if he’s team leader or team member. So yeah, I still find this so stupid lol, his skill is good but the drawback is really annoying to deal with. There are ways to make it work this event, but I think there will be events where it’s just not worth the trouble of using him. Because if he keeps getting MVP it doesn’t take long for the rest of the team to go red themselves lol. Ah well we will see.

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Very unhappy with the shortened event duration in Yumekuro. Toy Market and King’s Game both were 14 days long, but Outside Holiday is only 13 days long.

It feels like in the dev’s attempt to soothe the player-base after Toy Market’s bad feedback, they went overboard with being generous and gave out too much crystals in the event for their liking. But they can’t walk back now, so they quietly changed the duration to make people spend more crystals for AP refills, hoping that it’ll balance out a little.

This works out terribly for me though, because the 14 days duration was just barely enough for me to get to 300k points for the rewards without AP refill. With one less day I definitely won’t hit this point, I don’t even know if I could hit 280k points without forking out a refill or two.

This is really annoying, I don’t like it at all. The game is still new so of course they’re still making adjustment and balance, but this yo-yo back and forth between generous and greedy troubles me. I like stable schedule and making plan to go with it. So when they keep going back and forth like this, it makes me feel uneasy.

There is also the issue of clashing design philosophy. The dev obviously wants this game to be the type where crystals are plentiful, and you’re expected to spend crystals on AP refills and other things beside gacha. However I’m not the type who rely on gacha luck when rolling for characters, for me it’s always spark or burst, it’s too risky otherwise. So trying to make me to use crystals for anything else but gacha is like pulling teeth. From my calculation, you can roughly save up 4 sparks a year in Yumekuro, that means I can only pull for 4 event gacha characters while my fav list right now has like 10 chars in it. I’m not going to spend crystals on anything that is not absolutely necessary.

Another factor that influences my decision is the possibility of event reruns. Yume100 from the same company is pretty good when it comes to rerunning events, but I don’t know how Yumekuro is going to handle it. If they do rerun regularly there is no need to spend like 2000 crystal on the initial runs just to max out event chars. However if they barely do it, that changes things a lot and you gotta go hard right away. Given how crazy generous Yumekuro is when it comes to giving out free crystals compared to Yume100, I’m afraid of that it’ll come with a catch, and the event reruns will be the sacrifice.