#Eidolons review

[sopejinsunflower]

I feel so incredibly lucky that i stumbled upon your works,,, literally read all the chapters of Eidolons in one sitting and let me tell you I AM OBSESSED because ugh the plot, details, characteristics , the humour,, everything ughh, I'm not good with my words but overall it's so good that it feels illegal to read for free haha. 💗💗

Hi there! Thank you for taking a chance on fics! I love reading about new people coming in 🥰 awww thank you so much for thissss~ i’m a little insecure about Eidolons cuz fluff isnt my thing but im glad it’s getting love! Don’t worry, sweets, best believe it’s all FREEEEEEE~~~~ LOL i hope you continue to enjoy reading from my little corner 💜

p/s: your username is so frigging cute!

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Who is the Best Fiction Podcast Artificial Intelligence?

After receiving 57 submissions for 36 characters from 30 podcasts, a few disqualifications, and one preliminary poll, we have our bracket!

Bonus Poll: Which semi-sentient automobile is sexier? (The Ruby Seven vs Odyssey-San) (Ends May 10th.)

Round 1

Hera (Wolf 359) vs Flamingo Chris (Eidolon Playtest: Eidolon ROCK)

Proxy (StarTripper!!) vs ANDI (Marsfall)

Blue Sky A.K.A GORD (Red Valley) vs Tumnus (Moonbase Theta, Out)

Chester (The Magnus Protocol) vs Echo (Khôra Podcast)

SAYER (SAYER) vs Jet (Under the Electric Stars)

Keychain A.K.A. Otto (Not Another D&D Podcast: Trinyvale) vs Fern (inc: The Podcast)

The Divine, Arbitrage (Friends at the Table: The Divine Cycle) vs Dax (We Fix Space Junk)

Ship (ROGUEMAKER) vs QWERTY (Trial and Error)

The Audio Tour Guide (The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality) vs Fan (Red Odyssey)

Imogen (Stellar Firma) vs MORIS (Inkwyrm)

SPEAKER (SAYER) vs Potential Parent A.K.A. Ai (Monstrous Agonies)

Sergey Ushanka (The Magnus Archives) vs Minerva (Tales From The Fringes of Reality)

Eris (Wolf 359) vs Ellis (Tartarus)

Alexandrite (Not Another D&D Podcast: Campaign 3) vs Seth (Lost Terminal)

Larry (Friends at the Table: COUNTER/Weight) vs Sec (The Vesta Clinic)

Mr. Ceiling (Rusty Quill Gaming) vs Dad (Deviser)

[simbib]

New video is live!! I love all my children equally. Even the ones that aren't from FFX.

[ladymirdan]

Unhinged book review time!

Ok, not really a book but a flavour text to be honest.

This book does not stand on its own legs, this is very much just a little snack for someone who already loves the EC boys.

If you dont already love Eidolon and the gang of royal bitches this book will make zero sense 😂

But if you do, its pretty fun. I like Julius in this (no im not spelling his last name, fuck you 😂) and im usually not a fan of him.

And also, Who the actual fuck is Cyrus? He is cool as fuck. Is that someone who shows up anywhere else or did they just need a Lucius and couldn't use Lucius?

I would give this book 8/10 Dramatic boys. I kind of wished it was longer, but as short stories from GW it actually was on the longer side with 46pages.

Just give Eidolon a book series already!

[franticvampirereads]

Holy fuck. Holy fuck!! This book. I am speechless and yet I have all the things to say. But first, holy shit, this was a wild ride and it’s definitely one you have to read if you’re reading The Tarot Sequence series. There are so many pieces of information that were littered through this that are finally starting to pull (some, not all) things together. My brain while reading this was like one of those conspiracy theory boards with all the strings connecting the things together.

And holy shit! I can’t forget about my favorite characters! I loved seeing some of the events of The Hourglass Throne through Quinn, Max, and Anna’s perspective. I also loved seeing the adventures that they got up to while away from their adults. I loved that Anna is finally starting to grow into her powers, and that Max is gaining the confidence he’ll need to be a leader, and that Quinn is still finding ways to be mysterious and cryptic. God, I love these kids so much! I’m so excited for their spin off series. And now I really, really need to get my hands on the next Tarot Sequence book. I can’t wait to see how all the info drops in this book will effect the next one. The Eidolon is getting a solid five stars!

Reading Challenge Prompt Fills:

Read Queerly 2023: tarot cards

PopSugar 2023: a book with a map

Shop Your Shelves: fills a a square for another bingo or a challenge

[everygame]

The Eidolon (Atari 8-Bit)

Developed/Published by: Lucasfilm Games / Epyx Released: 12/1985 Completed: 07/04/2023 Completion: Beat the final dragon. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

The Eidolon is one of the very first games I got for my Amstrad CPC. Mind those mail order club “eight CDs for a penny” scams, where you’d get a bunch of things for free as long as you give the company “implied license” for them to send you things at full price in future unless you can work your way out of it? Well, we definitely did one of those when I got my Amstrad CPC and my dad definitely managed to get out of it ahead… somehow. 

Of course, it depends on your definition of “ahead.” I was given full freedom to select the games I wanted for the Amstrad, and considering I was a tiny child it’s not like I had any (literally any) critical faculties. So I know we got the Amstrad CPC conversion of the original Star Wars Arcade machine. And outside of that, I know we got Inflitrator and I know we got The Eidolon.

Strangely, I’ve already written about Infiltrator once in passing, and in a write-up of one of Lucafilm’s “launch” releases, Rescue on Fractalus (the other, Ballblazer). With Infiltrator, I could never get the bloody helicopter to take off because I was a tiny child. With The Eidolon? The disk almost never worked.

So maybe we didn’t come out ahead, even for our penny. As far as Infiltrator, I remember getting the helicopter to take off once. With The Eidolon, I remember getting it to load once, or twice, being confused by what was going on, possibly seeing the first dragon that I’d looked at for so long on the back of the box, and giving up because I had no idea what to do.

Well, it’s 2023 and I have to say that with the manual to hand, the entire interne on offer, and “being an adult” it took me a bloody long time to understand what the fuck you’re supposed to do in this. 

To not get ahead of ourselves, let’s start with what The Eidolon is. It’s one of Lucasfilm’s second “wave” of releases from the end of 1985, which amounted to The Eidolon and Koronis Rift. These titles begin the “forgotten” era of Lucasfilm between Rescue and Fractalus/Ballblazer and Maniac Mansion, and are almost totally unheralded (although some people do seem to like Koronis Rift a lot.) Oddly–and I don’t have my copy of Rogue Leaders to hand, nor offhand knowledge if it even covers this–the unfettered creative hotbed of early Lucasfilm knocks out two games entirely built around the fractal landscapes of Rescue on Fractalus at once, which… well, I guess it’s efficient.

The Eidolon’s take is to just “flip” the mountain landscapes of Rescue on Fractalus to turn them into caves, which is, to be fair, a decent use. The problem is, unfortunately, the game designed around this. Designed by Charlie Kellner–who doesn’t seem to have stuck with video games after 1994’s the Page Master–the game was originally intended to be a narrative where the player plays as the dragon versus a knight, but due to the limits of what they could do with the Atari 8-bits they ended up sanding things off until all they had were, well, caves to walk around, and thanks to Charlie’s interest in HG Wells, the game suddenly became about an inventor of a mysterious craft being transported to the depths of his own mind which just happened to look exactly like a bunch of samey grey caves.

To be fair to Charlie, there’s a couple of firsts or near-firsts here. The Eidolon, in some respects, one of the earliest “first person shooters” considering that it’s the main way you interact with the world (even though, as I’ll go on to explain, not in a way you’d expect); Maze/Maze War from 1973 is definitely earlier, but there’s a dearth of examples in between, and this is (as far as I can be arsed to research) the earliest with smooth 3D movement. And The Eidolon is probably the first steampunk video game. Sure, the genre feels embarrassing now. But not if you were first!

Anyway. The Eidolon has a beautiful manual, written from the perspective of the inventor, that (unfortunately) it takes real effort to understand the intended play for, so I’ll summarise it here.

There are eight levels.

Your goal on each level is to defeat the dragon you’ll find somewhere in the maze. You can’t get to the dragon until you collect the associated crystals required to awaken in.

You collect the crystals by killing monsters, all of whom are sleeping in dead-ends in the maze until you wake them up by walking up to them.

You defeat monsters by shooting energy balls at them, usually the red ones. You’ve got four types of energy ball to fire: red (damaging), gold (only useful against some dragons, I think?), blue (freeze enemies), green (transform enemy into something else. Doesn’t transform dragons.)

Sometimes there are red energy balls flying around that will damage you; fire a red energy ball at them to turn them into a harmless gold energy ball.

Everything you do costs energy, but handily there are energy balls floating about all over the mazes and you can capture them.

When awoken, dragons will also fire energy balls at you, but you can capture those too!

You’ve got a time limit to finish the game, and only get a couple minutes added for each level you beat, so you can’t dawdle and need to accept you’ll have to map the mazes to actually finish the game (or *cough* find a map online *cough*).

You die when you run out of energy.

That’s about it, basically. It is not especially deep, and I have to admit once I’d finally worked it all out I was pretty disappointed it was this slight. While moving around the maze is breezy enough, the technical limitations make most of the action, at best, clumsy button bashing. Every enemy is just standing in a corner, basically waiting for you to walk up to them and fire just enough fireballs at them to kill them (it’s amusing that contemporary reviews complained “why can’t you talk to the monsters”) and combat with the dragons locks you into the space so you basically just have to hammer the “fire energy ball” and “capture energy ball” buttons as fast as you can to get it over with as quickly as possible. There’s supposedly some tactics to it, but fireballs are on screen for a handful of frames making it almost worthless to try and time it out.

In fact, playing this rather brutally aggravated my wrists as the final boss is a marathon of button bashing (I read one forum poster stating that they had to put their Atari on the floor to mash the spacebar with their foot!) and it leads to one of the most hilariously baffling ending sequence where (spoilers!) Robert Goulet hands you a pterodactyl egg. It is… not worth it.

I hate to say it but the problem with The Eidolon is that it’s not really… anything. It’s a collection of things, for sure, but they don’t actually add up to a video game. The only thing I really thought was that interesting was having to use the “transform” energy ball on certain enemies so you could defeat them, but that’s… not much.

It’s a real missed opportunity, too, because the smooth scrolling cave represented a perfect opportunity to push the CRPG forward. Yes, Ultima IV had really only just come out, but Wizardry had been kicking since 1981, and the tech here is good enough that it’s not like you have to do anything nearly as complex. Just a simple dungeon crawler would have been pretty incredible, but it’s possible I’m asking a bit much. I mean… if you really get down to it, Wolfenstein 3D is less complex than this, so it may simply be that this was the right seed of an idea at the wrong time technologically, and as soon as things moved forward a bit both Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld would be possible. The Eidolon just doesn’t really manage to be a forefather of either.

Will I ever play it again? I won’t. I did think about playing through the CPC version of this instead of the original, which is a bit more colourful if a touch slower. But I was worried it wouldn’t load properly. Some things stick with you..

Final Thought: Above I mentioned this was from Lucasfilm’s forgotten era, and I really do mean it: it’s quite remarkable how little information is about this game online despite being from one of the most beloved developers probably ever, and I do think it’s a shame, dead-end or not. I mean I’m very glad I finally played it. I got my dad’s penny worth. Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[senorboombastic]

Live Review: Tapir! at YES in Manchester 20 March 2024

Words: Andy Hughes Right – cards on the table – I bet me and the missus were the only ones in the crowd at Tapir! on Wednesday night at YES who’d met an actual tapir. Two in fact. Most Certainly the only one who’s who’d met a family of capybaras… As it turned out though, I don’t think such a gloat was a requirement for entry as when we opened the door to the basement, it was to a literal wall of…

[draculancer-flow]

Using SISYPHUS to get the perfect Balatro run, shoving a straight flush up the Psychic's asshole. As some someone who regularly has carnal relations with eidolons, the boss fights in this game are basically foreplay. Skipping the whole ante just to rush into the Pillar's Pillarussy. Getting to Ante 29 cause this shit ain't nothing to me, man.

(Inspired by this S-tier Balatro review I saw)

[outivv]

https://x.com/dailycaelus/status/1812890084045389960?t=pnMzWIplb4Qsjeu200JClw&s=19

Very important information!

Long story short an anon insider from Hoyoverse is stating that while raising awarness on social media apps is great. We should take a step further and start dropping reviewing on any Playstore Site that has Genshin.

Express why you are dissatisfied and use hastages to bring more awarness. As for right now the Playstore reviews are dropping that it went from a 4 star review to 3.0 review. Hoyoverse is desperately trying to get reviews back by adding bots.

We shouldn't be just doing this with Genshin. Do this with ALL HOYOVERSE GAMES. Honkai Star Rail, Tears of Themis, ZZZ, etc.

HSR is facing the same problem as Genshin with Boothill being Native American coded, Penacony reloving around Jazz but have no Black character, Aventurine being Romani etc.

YEA YES!! I tried talking about this in my Hoyoverse boycott post, but I only touched on it briefly- but Hoyoverse games IN GENERAL are the overall problem. Tears of Themis has issues with being orientalist- and just shitty. Zenless Zone Zero apparently has actual blackface! Not good! Uhhh- outside of the record store on one of the little record poster thingies I believe. Honkai impact third has… straight up racism, and a subpar character plot about learning to love your skin color no matter what and she just goes “ummm actually no :)”, and oh my god I haven’t talked much on Honkai Star rail on this account but ykw I’ll go further into it.

Boothill- Boothill is based off of Native American culture, and is supposed to also be Latino. In the CN ORIGINAL translation of the game- his planet is named after two very real Native American tribes, his backstory recreates the same colonization that happened to native Americans specifically- calling Boothill’s people savages, and putting them in reservations after completely carpet bombing his planet, killing most of the population, and destroying the ecosystem. However, despite this Boothill has nothing to show for his heritage, or the fact that he is based around native, and Hispanic people except for the fact that he’s a cowboy- and even then sometimes I feel like he’s played up in game as like actually stupid for comedic relief when he’s not stupid AT ALL. (Sorry, Boothill’s one of my favs and a bad hyperfixation so I’m super passionate about how he needs proper representation)

Aventurine- aventurine is called a slur by sparkle, both sparkle and dr ratio point out specific racist stereotypes against aventurine that are usually targeted at Romani people which is who aventurine, and his entire home planet are based off of (that’s why I’m not a huge fan of Dr ratio x aventurine personally. Dr ratio isn’t racist imo, he’s just lowkey fucking mean and said the wrong thing to the wrong person). Aventurine’s backstory is also fucked in my opinion, and the way people in the fandom take his backstory and treat him as a character only really started getting bad bad after we found out he was Romani, but that’s a fandom issue- it’s still something to comment on.

Arlan- while Arlan is the darkest character Hoyoverse has made to date, he also has his talent names beeee references to slavery. Straight up. “Shackle breaker”, “frenzied punishment”, “swift harvest”, and then his eidolons- “breaking free”, and “hammer and tongs”. Not cool, kinda fucked up.

And that’s just the characters I can think of off the top of my head- not including Jade and her shit cause I know she has some stuff that’s like fucked up about her and ik she’s racist I just haven’t done my research on how she is racist and like gathered all the evidence basically lol, but that’s also just the characters, not to mention what you said anon- how penacony is based off of the jazz age but has no playable black characters? Girl whatttt? Gimmie a slay ass like black singer who’s besties with Robin, cmon now- don’t a coward Hoyoverse, you know DAMN WELL that she would sell too.

Hoyoverse games overall are like this, so please pay attention to all Hoyoverse games, and Hoyoverse mostly only listens to the App Store reviews so PLEASEEEEE go and review bomb ONLY Hoyoverse games. Start with Genshin and Honkai Star rail, go to Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Impact 3rd then finish with Tears of Themis, don’t do it all at once if you can’t!! Just go review all of them one stars!!

[alex31624]

Duck Comic Reading Club Week 8: Paperinik New Adventures: Portrait of the Young Hero

A bit late, but finally, here's the review for week 8 reading.

And this number starts with a bang.

What an absolute beauty of a page. Magnificent.

Also, those technicians have the longest hair ever. Kinda suspicious. And at that very moment, we have a hostage situation, what are the chances?

But when PK went to fight against those evil doers, he encounter Evronians. Bigger, stronger. And now some response team appears, what the hell is going on?

But of course, we travel in time. To the year 2255. It was so obvious.

The technicians put a time machine in the elevator they were supposed to fix. Everything makes perfect sense.

No, it doesn't, why is PK in the year 2255? Who is this Styvesant guy? Why everybody has such a long hair? Were scissors prohibited after the great hairdressers war? We need answers!

PK broke his jaw in this panel.

What if I cry?

Well, it looks like they send PK to the year 2255 to make him appear on TV. PK is the greatest hero from his time, I guess I can't blame them for wanting him.

After a brief encounter with the Evronians, we met yet another victim of the great hairdressers war, Odin Eidolon.

He looks so bored watching the super weapons.

Also, he's watching Alien on TV. Everyday I love Donald even more.

How is possible that everybody want to trick PK in some way or another? Raider is the only one with honor around here. (Bring Raider back).

PK reunites with Odin, and those Evronians attack again. But now, they're finally destroy by our hero.

Turns out Styvesant is just a TV director and wanted PK for his last scene. Talking about a TV series with a big budget.

But something go wrong and La Valle tried to kill PK. Who's La Valle? Yet another victim of the scissor ban and actor in the PK series. I didn't mention him before because he's as relevant as Bluescreen Beagle.

But no, he was being controlled by the last Evronian, who tried to kill PK right there.

Could you imagine if he got away with it? The whole galaxy, doomed, just because a jerk wanted more rating.

Well, PK wins, goes back to his time and, finally, stops the kidnappers.

The last page reveals that Odin was Uno all along. What a plot twist.

To be honest, this is the first that I can said that I didn't like it. Is a shame since we came from Earthquake, and that was amazing.

Not all can be good, and that's ok.

[ars-matron]

The Tarot Sequence Reread

Nothing has given me brain rot in a long while like the Tarot Sequence by K D Edwards has. And since I just finished reading all the supplemental stuff right when my hold for The Last Sun came back up I thought I would do something I have only done once before-and in a much less flattering way for a book I hated-and live blog my reread.

There's just so much in this series I need to pay closer attention to. And usually I would go on here and read some metas, but there is literally nothing!! The only things in the tags for this series is people wishing there were more people reading it, a handful of very wonderful fanarts, and an account of the decline of a discord that evidently used to exist for it. So, maybe this will encourage some people to read the books too.

Because there are some heavy topics in this series anytime I talk about such topics I will tag for them, but if they don't come up in the chapters I'm reviewing, I won't. So if you have certain things back listed you might not see all my posts on it. Anyone who is reading along and is curious about it can DM me.

NOW! Predictions and things I want to pay attention to under the cut for spoiler reasons.

The Tower. At the end of the prologue of the first book my thoughts were, " So we trust NO ONE!!" Except Queenie, because why would Rune and Brand live with her if she was evil? Then the children showed up and I had to trust them, they were too young to be part of the, whole thing, plus they are so cute. You have to trust them. And then Addam came along, and of course we trust him, he's an Addam, he's a giant dancing teddy bear and I love him! So I read the whole series (that's out so far) expecting we would find out the Tower was an evil guy, that he had had something to do with the fall of the Sun Throne. Honestly by the end of the third book I didn't think that any longer, and I was starting to before that after finding out he was also Qunn's godfather because!!! There is no way Qunn wouldn't have seen if the Tower revealed he had been a part of all that. (I'm still asking myself HOW exactly he or Mayan wouldn't have noticed an astral projection listening device being installed in Rune's room at their freaking tower that is super locked down! But then it happened for two other locations that were supposed to be super warded and protected my other companions too. So maybe it isn't his fault. I do think he might blame himself, I do think that some of his stand-offishness might also be guilt for not being able to stop the attack on the Sun Throne to start with. We will see...) I'm going to go into this read through with the assumption he is just lonely and sad and not a bad guy.

QUEENIE!!!! Because, WHO THE FUCK IS QUEENIE!? I was already suspicious because every time someone asks Rune and Brand where she came from, or how long she's been with them, they say "She's been with us forever." Every time! It reeks of mind fuckery. Then Eidolon and the epilogue that wasn't came along. Current theory is that she is the Empress, and also that she's probably Rune's mother. I would be willing to bet she was the woman at the end of the third book who spoke up to the river after everyone else. Edwards did a good job of making her disappear in the background, but I'm gonna be hunting for every mention of her and how she acts around everyone.

Ciaran, just because I love him and at first also suspected him of evil deeds. But he's just your gay vodka uncle and he loves all his adopted family so much and I just want to keep a closer on him at the start of the series.

Kellum. We only see him once in the second book, but he's mentioned in Eidolon by the Fool (Or Queenie pretending to be the Fool, again I'm not sure, there's Queenie interference for sure) And he was in one of the supplemental novellas. I think he will be making a bigger appearance in the next book.

Quinn's prophecies. I'll probably make a list of those for a separate master post.

Tallas. The Atlantean soul mates. This is a MAJOR spoiler. Rune says that Brand and he formed a talla bond the night of the attack. That it was what brought Brand out of the geas and got them to safety. The bond was gone when he woke up in the hospital and he's spent this whole time thinking he's somehow broken their talla bond. Something definitely happened between him and Addam in the Westlands, and I don't think Addam was wrong in assuming it was the budding of a talla bond. Because something sort of bond-like is also there now after the Hourglass Throne, after he used his bond with Brand to get him and Addam back to their time. My theory here is that they might be each other tallas, all three of them. Together. We know that it doesn't have to be a sexual relationship, though I don't think Addam would mind that one bit. Everything is pointing to the three of them being tied together somehow, and my theory is mostly that, before they were together together, no one talla bond could form and take precedence over the other. Now that they are together all the time, going on missions, living together, they have more opportunities for a bond to fully form and take hold. Assuming it involves all three of them.

And with that, I'm going to go read!

[sopejinsunflower]

Hey,

I have been reading Eidolons and what a beautifully written story that is. I felt everything sighted in there and the way the story is paced is brilliant.

I hope you are doing good in your life. I will wait for the ending however long it takes you to write it. I just hope when you do, you are excited and happy to finish it.

I hope I get to reach the end.

P.S. House of Omegaverse is still one of the best pieces of literature I have come across.

Awww anonie 🥹🥹🥹

Sorry for the late reply 😭 Thank you so much for loving Eidolons ❤️

I’m doing my best to find time to write but with my current job I’m left drained most days 😅 but honestly thank you for taking the time to leave this msg. It means the world to me and it does motivate me to write 🥲 Eidolons have everything charted and mapped out so I will do my best to continue to post 🙆🏻‍♀️🥰

And thank you for loving House of the Omegaverse too! I hope you have the best day! 💜

[quipxotic]

[Team Issylra joins Elder Joan Abaddina back at her house to rest for the night.]

Matt/Abaddina: You all look at me like you are uncertain if you can trust me or if you wish to kill me...and I understand that. But whatever you may decide, I still thank you for at least trusting...us.

Bor’Dor: No more killing, please. Just wanna go home.

Abaddina: Well, let us indeed try to help you on that path come the morrow. Do you have concerns? Questions?

[The group talks about the future of Hearthdell; the nature of Predathos, the divine and the elemental powers, and the eidolons; Prism’s desire to help by researching everything that’s going on; Orym’s feelings about the Ruby Vanguard after they killed his husband; and Laudna and Prism’s plan to review the papers taken from the Dawnfather’s temple.]

Laudna: Are you alright, Bor’Dor?

Prism: Yeah, are you okay, Bor’Dor?

Laudna: You look quite frankly horrible.

Bor’Dor [quietly]: I got pretty fucked up.

Aimee/Deni$e [chuckling]: That means a lot coming from you.

Laudna: One-hundred percent. Absolutely.

Prism: You fully saved all of our lives in there.

Bor’Dor: I don’t think so. I don’t understand what’s going on because we...uh...killed a god. [Crosstalk while the group briefly discusses the difference between divine messengers and gods.] All I know is...it didn’t seem evil. It didn’t seem evil.

Deni$e: What if there’s no good and evil? What if it’s just a spectrum of behavior.

Matt/Abaddina: The elder grins and chuckles under her breath, “Now that is wisdom.”

-Episode 61 “Crisis of Faith,” Campaign 3

[alexissara]

Quick Review: Stray Gods

Stray Gods is among the rare, the few, the musical video game. This is a visual novel/musical that reinvents Greek myth and provides a modern story about reincarnation, trauma, pain, murder, mystery and romance. The games gameplay is very simply put, making choices, there isn't more to it then that but the choices feel impactful.

I played one run with my GF and my Metamore romancing Persephone. After that run I did listen on youtube to more of the outcomes and possibilities [in particular the rest of the Freddie romance] but have not replayed it or anything like that. I feel like I got everything I wanted from the game with just that alone but maybe one day I'll revisit. We had a play time of roughly 8 hours but a lot of time was us talking over choices together or on a pause menu the game is fairly shorter than that if your playing it solo. Especially if you just lock in on one person you wanna grab romantically. Even more so in further playthroughs where you aren't going to need to ask as many questions.

The games music is good but I don't think there is a lot of stand out banger songs. Like I am not really belting these songs out in my head or wanting to rewatch the song over and over like with many other musical moments in animated series or from proper musicals. I really love You and I (Reprise) and that is the one song that atm has returned to my head. I think a large part of why the songs aren't super sticking with me though is that the tone of the songs are mostly more somber and mellow where I prefer a more action packed or upbeat song from my musicals. I do think the songs can feel a little weird because their designed in pieces to fit together by player choices but when you listen to them on the soundtrack they do pretty much all clear.

The queerness in Stray Gods is better than average, a progress pride flag exists in Freddie and Grace's room but that flag is a generic pride flag not putting a particular label on Freddie or Grace's sexuality. As far as I can tell no character uses any labels one can assume Grace is bi in so much that she can romance 2 men and 2 women but perhaps they want you to self insert your sexuality into her. Still it would have been nice to talk more about sexuality in this game especially when talking about passing down Eidolons and stuff. Perhaps it's too messy of a topic but it was something in my head. We do some a touch of unavoidable queerness with Persephone having a past lover who is a woman who as far as I know is not at all optional to miss. That said Freddie's feelings for Grace are pretty unavoidable but I know straight people aren't very smart so I do think they could somehow miss it. The game also sadly lacks polyamory despite being about Greek gods and that not making any sense.

Overall, I think the game is really well voice acted and good experience. I recommend listening to a song or two online to see if the music clicks with you because you probably won't want to play the game if you don't enjoy that since it's the main event. It's a fun time with a good cast and fairly simple. The story can get fairly dark with suicidal ideation, PTSD, Abuse, etc all being themes but for me they were all handled well but perhaps that was how we handled choices. I really like the game overall and I will probably be on the hunt for Grace X Freddie and Grace X Persephone art for however long people keep drawing it.

If you enjoyed this review feel free to check out my Patreon or Ko-fi for more stuff like this.

[pseudotsugas]

16 and 17 for the spotify asks?

16: what kind if headphones do you prefer?

I tend to do over-ear headphones - for physical comfort reasons, and because I get fed up with ear buds falling out of my ears. Currently have this cheap-ish pair I got off A****n and I'm really happy with how well they've held up.

17: do you listen to any podcasts? recommend one?

I listen to MANY podcasts.

I don't listen to them on spotify, because spotify's podcast functionality sucks ass and also I am fundamentally opposed to getting podcasts through a proprietary service rather than through rss feeds as god intended. I use Podcast Addict personally.

I'm not going to just recommend friends at the table even though it IS my favourite, because you've been following me long enough to be probably sick of my fatt evangelism, and I know you don't like actual plays anyway (though I do think if you were to like any, it might be fatt:Partizan). A few other podcasts I really like include:

I Am In Eskew & The Silt Verses - 2 really really good horror-ish podcasts by the same creative team

Completely Arbortrary - podcast that discusses and reviews tree species

Eidolon Playtest - really really good actual play inspired by jjba & persona

A More Civilized Age - star wars TV shows discussion podcast. I don't like star wars but I love listening to people who like star wars talking about star wars.

Girls, Guts, & Giallo - movie podcast focusing on the history of obscene, controversial, and trashy film

Blowback - history podcast about US foreign policy from a leftist perspective

Media Club Plus - TV rewatch podcast run as a side project by the fatt crew, currently covering hxh

[qr-sa]

a visual analysis of saezuru c50

prefacing this with: I didn’t end up going to art school but I have done a lot of drawing, so these are just my personal notes and thoughts on yoneda’s visual language

I’m not sure if people will actually enjoy this kind of thing, or if it’s redundant… let me know either way!

I really enjoyed the saezuru notes @eidolon-azii writes, and Ive been wanting to throw out some ideas about the art bit. This is incredibly late but I hope someone will love these things with me

I… actually wanted to review chapter 52, but I got sidetracked and I guess this will be focused on chapter 50 instead!

Yoneda uses many types of shading, along with lines, to create mood. Usually, she uses light, clean lines with white and black, and a wash of shading, which is consistent with normal lighting, as seem above.

This changes a bit when we get to moodier or more emotional scenes.

Right after yashiro grabbed doumeki , we see a glow around doumeki, basically chiseling him out from the dark background. The halo of light serves as a focal point, drawing your eye to doumeki’s expression. His expression could be considered placid, and many characters from nanahara to kamiya have noted that he is hard to read. Bringing focus to this expression was a really great way to push the intrigue. We, from yashiro’s pov, are brought to wonder what doumeki is thinking about. Is he upset? Does he feel like he’s being pushed away again? What does he want to do now? Personally, I feel that the (faint) rough pencil shading brings the panel from a doumeki fashion shoot (which… he’s fucking gorgeous here, hello) to a really raw moment. It’s details like this that really control the mood.

We also see a tone shift when they go to “doumeki’s woman”’s club. Rather than shading consistent with the rest of the club or environment, we get liberal use of shading, with crescents of light left to indicate volume. In this context, it seems to convey a quiet sort of turmoil. You see that yashiro’s shading is often darker than his environment warrants… which is something that I’m really enjoying. The framing of yashiro in the center of the stairs with harsh shading is a lovely severe touch to set the dark mood he’s in while he’s probably grappling with jealousy

Something I think we all need to commend sensei for is her incredible, sensuous shading. From her early doujin days, her shading has come leaps and become truly masterful— you can see the effort she has taken to study volume, and to convey the softness and suppleness of flesh. I can’t find this amazing panel of misumi’s old man abs, but somehow they looked to me to be amazingly soft… the slight slackness of collagen loss from the aging process on top of muscle. This sort of feeling is one of the hardest things to convey visually, and I really admire her touch… IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE THIS PANEL IS PLEASE TELL ME I’ve been crying over being loss of misumi’s old man abs for a while now!!!

Here are two panels from chapter 50 where there is also sensuous shading. In these two frames, there is a great use of highlights and shading to create volume. I love the way the doumeki’s hands and yashiro’s legs seem so real and full— you can imagine the plushness of the leg and the firmness of the hands as the light hits it. The gradient in the shading brings a softness to the otherwise sharply defined volume, making it dramatic but sensuous, which I would say is a signature for sensei is work in saezuru.

Note: sensei also occasionally does fully soft panels where the shading and the gradient are both done gently, but they are rare— likely because saezuru is not a soft story and cannot or should not be conveyed in that way

Another thing I really enjoy seeing yoneda use are what I will be calling “moments of impact”. These are composed of totally flat panels of high contrast colors: black, white, or flat shade. She uses clean, crisp lines, and the strength of the contrast is so great that the impact gives you a tiny pause. This is a moment that she wants you to see. She doesn’t use this style often, so when she does, I feel the need to pay attention. Below, both of these panels are cropped in a way such that you only see one singular action. Starkly, we see below a moment of rejection and a moment of protection.

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I can’t really think of anything else for this chapter, but I hope you enjoyed these panels and my thoughts on them! Stay winning (or crying, because I am tired and I really just want them to get together yesterday, for my peace of mind)