#Game reviews tm

[minas-linkverse]

If your still interested in talking about ur opinions on zelda games... how about phantom hourglass

Phantom hourglass is a facinating one to ask about, because the feelings I have for it are so contradictory.

The game looks stale, at worst ugly... BUT it does have some genuinely memorable and fun designs and locations too.

The gameplay is jarring and hard to get immersed in, yet it also does some of the most fun and innovative tricks the DS ever got used for??

The music is nothing new, yet Linebeck's theme slaps extremely hard????

The story is odd, and has terrible decisions like making Tetra into a damsel and the odd choice of ending... 🤨

Yet... I love Linebeck. I love the ghost ship concept. I think Bellum is an excellent and underrated antagonist! The ocean king stuff was neat and oh how I adore Ciela. She isn't rly a character that got written well or respected by the narrative that was supposed to be about her... But what you can make it into with a bit of your own imagination is soo fun.

Not to mention how Phantom Hourglass has perhaps the best humour in a Zelda game and stuff from dialogue to cutscenes is so immersive, silly and lovable.

Phantom Hourglass is absolutely worth experiencing, and to many it'll be a real special hidden gem. Others like me arent gonna be able to get past the many issues... But I think its an incredibly charming clunky mess. I really like it. 💛

[solitarelee]

Okay guys I have NEVER recommended anything here other than books and hashtag not sponsored BUT. I just got my Nike Go FlyEase shoes and they are a disability GAME CHANGER for me.

[img desc: a person steps onto an odd looking sneaker which is folded partially in half. the shoe closes around their foot as they step down]

They are a funky little shoe that literally FOLDS in such a manner that they can be put on and off entirely without your hands; you can just step in and out of them.

The history of them is actually very interesting; the FlyEase line was always designed with disability in mind (the first one was inspired by a teenager with cerebral palsy, Matthew Walzer). They've been a thing for years but they never had one that particularly stood out to me amongst other similar shoes... until the Go.

You see, along with being someone who has only a few bends in me per day before it's all over, I'm also a fall risk. Like a comical fall risk. I've fallen into traffic. I will just roll over and die at a moment's notice. And most slide on shoes are unstable and slip around on your foot. This shoe clamps onto me like a goddamn vice. It's Got Me. It's also got good arch support which is like, a plus. By freeing up a bunch of bend-overs per day, this is going to leave me with a lot more ability and energy, especially on the bad days.

They sound too good to be true (I was VERY skeptical buying them despite the video review), but seriously, you can just step into them--and out of them by stepping on that chonky back heel there. God knows I'm not the only person with difficulty sliding on heels or tying laces in the world, so I thought I would be remiss if I didn't recommend them. If you think they might help you out, they probably WOULD, as they were recommended to me by Footless Jo, an amputee YouTuber, and as mentioned, were inspired in part by people with disabilities ranging from cerebral palsy to past strokes.

They're Pricey but ultimately average when it comes to Nice Shoes(tm), the ones I got were $125.

[welcometoteyvat]

thinking about it again and my favorite sumeru subregion is probably the girdle of the sands (newest one, released 3.6) just because of the heaps and heaps of zoroastrianism refs and iranian mythology sprinkled all over the place it’s absolutely so cool. also sorush. 

[blue-star-above-me]

In light of recent events, I am very, very glad X-Play did not last long enough for them to review otome games once Aksys started localizing them.

[insertdisc5]

I finished ISAT yesterday and I can't get it out of my head. I will spread it to as many friends as possible. Thank you so much for making it. How else can we support In Stars and Time after buying the game?

that is a lovely question to ask!!! um um um this applies to all indie games and all cool stuff you like btw <3

✨✨✨ How To Support Something Cool After Having Bought The Something Cool ✨✨✨

-if you bought the game on steam, leave a review on steam! Reviews tell the Steam Algorithm(tm) that the game is worthwhile and cool, and so the algorithm will be more likely to show off the game!!!

-if you bought it elsewhere uuuuh leave a review on metacritic i guess????

-word of mouth!!! tell your friends!

here's a tangent.

Word Of Mouth For Dummies (written by me, a professional Word Of Mouther) ok so if you wanna make your friends play the game. here is my advice. or at least thats how i do it. i made all my friends play disco elysium and. ive even made one. play. umineko (everyone gasps in amazement) 1. dont be too insistent about it. so, GO CRAZY AAAH GO STUPID AAAH only ONCE. and explain the game in thirty pages there if you want. ONCE. THIS IS YOUR CHANCE. 2. if you know them well and what they like, personalize the paragraph. you like timeloops? thats for you. you like old ladies? thats for you? you keep beating me at rock paper scissors? Do I Have The Game For You. 3. now that you've gone crazy aah stupid aah Once, you have successfully PLANTED THE SEED. like in inception. no need to go crazy stupid again for a while. i know it's hard. but you don't wanna go crazy stupid too much. control yourself. for the Thing. 4. from that point on though, when the game is on sale, just go "hey btw the cool game i told you about is on sale! smiles smiles smiles". 5. every six months go "i was just thinking about a cool game again." "what cool game?" "IN STARS AND TIME" and you can go crazy aaah go stupid aah again. 6. after Some Time (from 2 weeks to 5 years) they will play the game. yes i said 5 years. word of mouthing is a WAITING GAME. little sprouts grow into trees. 7. they play the game 8. ???? 9. profit <3

-word of mouth, 2!!!! SOCIAL MEDIA!!!! tweet about the game! reblog other people's posts! make fanart! make fanfic! write a long essay about which parts made you cry! cosplay as the characters! make a video essay! just yell!!!!! you know how you only got into That One Thing because someone made a post about it? you could be The Post.

-(this one is if you want more merch specifically) buy the merch if it's available! the only reason we have a second Loop wave with the Yetee is because the first wave sold so well ;w;

-ummm that's it really????? that's already a bunch!!! but yeah!!!!!!!!!! ty!!!!!!!!!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TOMORROW (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

I was reared on cyberpunk fiction, I ended up spending 25 years at my EFF day-job working at the weird edge of tech and human rights, even as I wrote sf that tried to fuse my love of cyberpunk with my urgent, lifelong struggle over who computers do things for and who they do them to.

That makes me an official "post-cyberpunk" writer (TM). Don't take my word for it: I'm in the canon:

https://tachyonpublications.com/product/rewired-the-post-cyberpunk-anthology-2/

One of the editors of that "post-cyberpunk" anthology was John Kessel, who is, not coincidentally, the first writer to expose me to the power of literary criticism to change the way I felt about a novel, both as a writer and a reader:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

It was Kessel's 2004 Foundation essay, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality," that helped me understand litcrit. Kessel expertly surfaces the subtext of Card's Ender's Game and connects it to Card's politics. In so doing, he completely reframed how I felt about a book I'd read several times and had considered a favorite:

https://johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-website/creating-the-innocent-killer

This is a head-spinning experience for a reader, but it's even wilder to experience it as a writer. Thankfully, the majority of literary criticism about my work has been positive, but even then, discovering something that's clearly present in one of my novels, but which I didn't consciously include, is a (very pleasant!) mind-fuck.

A recent example: Blair Fix's review of my 2023 novel Red Team Blues which he calls "an anti-finance finance thriller":

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/

Fix – a radical economist – perfectly captures the correspondence between my hero, the forensic accountant Martin Hench, and the heroes of noir detective novels. Namely, that a noir detective is a kind of unlicensed policeman, going to the places the cops can't go, asking the questions the cops can't ask, and thus solving the crimes the cops can't solve. What makes this noir is what happens next: the private dick realizes that these were places the cops didn't want to go, questions the cops didn't want to ask and crimes the cops didn't want to solve ("It's Chinatown, Jake").

Marty Hench – a forensic accountant who finds the money that has been disappeared through the cells in cleverly constructed spreadsheets – is an unlicensed tax inspector. He's finding the money the IRS can't find – only to be reminded, time and again, that this is money the IRS chooses not to find.

This is how the tax authorities work, after all. Anyone who followed the coverage of the big finance leaks knows that the most shocking revelation they contain is how stupid the ruses of the ultra-wealthy are. The IRS could prevent that tax-fraud, they just choose not to. Not for nothing, I call the Martin Hench books "Panama Papers fanfic."

I've read plenty of noir fiction and I'm a long-term finance-leaks obsessive, but until I read Fix's article, it never occurred to me that a forensic accountant was actually squarely within the noir tradition. Hench's perfect noir fit is either a happy accident or the result of a subconscious intuition that I didn't know I had until Fix put his finger on it.

The second Hench novel is The Bezzle. It's been out since February, and I'm still touring with it (Chicago tonight! Then Turin, Marin County, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, etc). It's paying off – the book's a national bestseller.

Writing in his newsletter, Henry Farrell connects Fix's observation to one of his own, about the nature of "hackers" and their role in cyberpunk (and post-cyberpunk) fiction:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-accountant-as-cyberpunk-hero

Farrell cites Bruce Schneier's 2023 book, A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules and How to Bend Them Back:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/06/trickster-makes-the-world/

Schneier, a security expert, broadens the category of "hacker" to include anyone who studies systems with an eye to finding and exploiting their defects. Under this definition, the more fearsome hackers are "working for a hedge fund, finding a loophole in financial regulations that lets her siphon extra profits out of the system." Hackers work in corporate offices, or as government lobbyists.

As Henry says, hacking isn't intrinsically countercultural ("Most of the hacking you might care about is done by boring seeming people in boring seeming clothes"). Hacking reinforces – rather than undermining power asymmetries ("The rich have far more resources to figure out how to gimmick the rules"). We are mostly not the hackers – we are the hacked.

For Henry, Marty Hench is a hacker (the rare hacker that works for the good guys), even though "he doesn’t wear mirrorshades or get wasted chatting to bartenders with Soviet military-surplus mechanical arms." He's a gun for hire, that most traditional of cyberpunk heroes, and while he doesn't stand against the system, he's not for it, either.

Henry's pinning down something I've been circling around for nearly 30 years: the idea that though "the street finds its own use for things," Wall Street and Madison Avenue are among the streets that might find those uses:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/street.html

Henry also connects Martin Hench to Marcus Yallow, the hero of my YA Little Brother series. I have tried to make this connection myself, opining that while Marcus is a character who is fighting to save an internet that he loves, Marty is living in the ashes of the internet he lost:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/07/dont-curb-your-enthusiasm/

But Henry's Marty-as-hacker notion surfaces a far more interesting connection between the two characters. Marcus is a vehicle for conveying the excitement and power of hacking to young readers, while Marty is a vessel for older readers who know the stark terror of being hacked, by the sadistic wolves who're coming for all of us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44L1pzi4gk

Both Marcus and Marty are explainers, as am I. Some people say that exposition makes for bad narrative. Those people are wrong:

https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit/my-favorite-bit-cory-doctorow-talks-about-the-bezzle/

"Explaining" makes for great fiction. As Maria Farrell writes in her Crooked Timber review of The Bezzle, the secret sauce of some of the best novels is "information about how things work. Things like locks, rifles, security systems":

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/03/06/the-bezzle/

Where these things are integrated into the story's "reason and urgency," they become "specialist knowledge [that] cuts new paths to move through the world." Hacking, in other words.

This is a theme Paul Di Filippo picked up on in his review of The Bezzle for Locus:

https://locusmag.com/2024/04/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

Heinlein was always known—and always came across in his writings—as The Man Who Knew How the World Worked. Doctorow delivers the same sense of putting yourself in the hands of a fellow who has peered behind Oz’s curtain. When he fills you in lucidly about some arcane bit of economics or computer tech or social media scam, you feel, first, that you understand it completely and, second, that you can trust Doctorow’s analysis and insights.

Knowledge is power, and so expository fiction that delivers news you can use is novel that makes you more powerful – powerful enough to resist the hackers who want to hack you.

Henry and I were both friends of Aaron Swartz, and the Little Brother books are closely connected to Aaron, who helped me with Homeland, the second volume, and wrote a great afterword for it (Schneier wrote an afterword for the first book). That book – and Aaron's afterword – has radicalized a gratifying number of principled technologists. I know, because I meet them when I tour, and because they send me emails. I like to think that these hackers are part of Aaron's legacy.

Henry argues that the Hench books are "purpose-designed to inspire a thousand Max Schrems – people who are probably past their teenage years, have some grounding in the relevant professions, and really want to see things change."

(Schrems is the Austrian privacy activist who, as a law student, set in motion the events that led to the passage of the EU's General Data Privacy Regulation:)

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb

Henry points out that William Gibson's Neuromancer doesn't mention the word "internet" – rather, Gibson coined the term cyberspace, which, as Henry says, is "more ‘capitalism’ than ‘computerized information'… If you really want to penetrate the system, you need to really grasp what money is and what it does."

Maria also wrote one of my all-time favorite reviews of Red Team Blues, also for Crooked Timber:

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/05/11/when-crypto-meant-cryptography/

In it, she compares Hench to Dickens' Bleak House, but for the modern tech world:

You put the book down feeling it’s not just a fascinating, enjoyable novel, but a document of how Silicon Valley’s very own 1% live and a teeming, energy-emitting snapshot of a critical moment on Earth.

All my life, I've written to find out what's going on in my own head. It's a remarkably effective technique. But it's only recently that I've come to appreciate that reading what other people write about my writing can reveal things that I can't see.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/17/panama-papers-fanfic/#the-1337est-h4x0rs

Image: Frédéric Poirot (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/fredarmitage/1057613629 CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[vivifrage]

I think with Lightfall like. It's fun. I had a good time. A blast, even! Especially with the gameplay, even when I got frustrated because I was playing Legendary and I'm not a good gamer.

It's action movie fun. Which is what it intended to be, really, from all the tropes and the pacing of it. But it got bodied with sudden roadmap changes and Witch Queen as video game Oscar bait.

Yeah, I think it could have used a breather to bond more with Rohan especially, but there was in-game justification for going fast and I'm sure the format A Destiny Expansion(tm) limited the team. We saw it bad in Witch Queen's seasons, and Bungie acknowledged that yeah the seasons structure was limiting them. As someone who works in software dev, nobody likes having to make things worse. But it happens a lot. Sometimes in really bullshit ways that the software folks wouldn't expect to be that level of bullshit, let alone anyone who isn't working with the software day in and day out. And by bullshit I mean "massive overhaul of the entire system just to make one tiny change" kinds of bullshit. Again, nobody likes it. I promise you.

Back to Lightfall. It's a fun action movie. It's also the plot point we'd been hurtling towards since Witch Queen, and probably even well before that: The Darkest Hour. We're struggling to use this new power in time, the mysteries around us have unraveled but in the end it's too late for us to get the upper hand, and it nearly costs us everything. In the year beforehand, we'd been losing in one way or another at the end of the seasons: Crow kills the Psion, our rituals fail to stop Calus, Eramis gets away, Rasputin dies. The Witness accesses the Traveler.

What it also does is it sets up the rest of the year for our Triumphant Finale. We get a thread to follow - how to get into the Traveler - and chase it through the year, alongside other threads like what the Veil is and how we're gonna deal with Xivu Arath. As of the end(ish) of Wish, we've got our answer and are primed for The Final Shape as our finale.

But first we had to have The Darkest Hour. Which, in the short term, being what it is, is a bummer. No getting around it. It's also part of why comparisons to Witch Queen went awry, IMO.

Witch Queen is, as I said before, the Oscar bait, insofar as an MMO looter-shooter has Oscar bait. It puts the tangled web front and center instead of tracing one thread and then zooming out to show the whole thing. It's more philosophical in nature, sitting back and asking us whether we think we're special and what really separates us from one of the enemies we hadn't forged alliances with yet: the Hive. And, of course, if we'd noticed the puppetmaster behind it all. It ties up the question that's been going on since Forsaken: are we the bad guys? (No, not really, we're struggling to survive the way everyone else is. Which, nobody else we've been fighting is really "the bad guy" either.)

It's a really good storyline! I loved it, even if, honestly, I didn't like the gameplay as much as Lightfall. I think it's earned its good reviews and positive reception.

But it is the Oscar bait. And unlike Lightfall, its plot role didn't require the same downer ending. It could sprawl, and honestly? I don't think it would have worked as our Darkest Hour. Not without screwing up the story and making a jumbled mess. Seriously, I don't think Destiny's "everyone gets a second chance" philosophy would have carried well at all if The Darkest Hour was when the Hive got Ghosts. Instead it would have reinforced our misconception at the beginning of Lightfall - that we are the sole rightful Lightbearers and that the Hive getting the Light was a wrongdoing.

Destiny did need something between Witch Queen and The Final Shape. And they moved things - but announced it less than a year before Lightfall released. At their big press conference-y deal, but still. Limited time for folks to get the news.

And then it came out and it was an action movie, not Oscar bait. But it followed Oscar bait, so that's what the expectation was.

Personally, I'm fond of, say, Moonlight. Fantastic movie. Beautiful and heartfelt. I enjoyed it and I think it is worthy of its high praise. But if you ask me what my favorite movie is, I'll say it's a tossup between Pacific Rim and Mad Max: Fury Road. They fit different niches in the cultural ecosystem - Moonlight isn't a bad Pacific Rim and Pacific Rim isn't a bad Moonlight. Not unless you pit them against each other despite their vast differences.

Also I remember there was lots of complaining about how empty Neomuna was at first, but everything about the CloudArk and especially the lorebook is such early pandemic-era fiction.

Lightfall is a good action movie. Witch Queen is good Oscar bait. Both of them have their strong points and weak points. There are technical factors that limit things. There are other external factors that limit things (looking at you, upper management).

It's fair to critique a story but like, I dunno. Bungie's devs, writers, and artists aren't idiots or evil or out to get you specifically. Lightfall is fine but you can't - and shouldn't - expect it to be Witch Queen.

Please, for the love of everything holy, don't let us repeat the nasty bitchy maelstrom we got around Lightfall. Or I'll start shitting in ovens.

[lvrcpid]

tiktok famous - modern!au

includes! : ao’nung being ao’nung. use of y/n. gn!reader

if modern!avatar had tiktok!

lo’ak

— his @ is probably like @/yourmom69

— he’s so corny

— he doesn’t post anything but him doing tiktok dances

— he’s stiff as hell too

— HE GETS LIKES AND VIEWS THOUGH DONT PLAY WITH LO’AK

— probably some sad attempts at getting sturdy.

— probably looks like he’s gonna break a hip and throw something out of place

neteyam

— his @ is @teyams or something like that

— is one of those users who promotes his twitch streams

— he probably plays horror games and minecraft ngl

— his ass would make a minecraft village and make it all pretty

— occasional “thirst traps”

— they aren’t even really thirst traps it’s just him sitting

— THE GIRLS GO FERAL THO SO SLAY IG

kiri

— our girl is an editor

— behind the scenes QUEEN

— her @ is probably @/erenstanz

— mostly attack on titan edits

— pretty popular

— 1.3 million likes anyone?

— posts herself one in a while

— she most likely made her own logo and has her own little “producer tag” at the beginning of her edits

tuk

— QUEEN HAS A WHOLE SLIME ACCOUNT

— her @ is @/tukslimereviews

— the camera is always at weird angles but girlie makes it work

— her slime reviews are very honest and good for a 8 year old???

— PARENTAL CONTROLS.

— probably hacked it and is making fun of her brothers on a burner account

— tuk cyber bully era

— girlie reposts barbie reviews and watches those roblox roleplay videos

ao’nung

— LIGHTSKIN FACE TM

— @/theyhate_nung is his @ LIKE YOU ARE UNKNOWN MOVE

— always making thirst traps. like get a hobby

— posts his basketball highlights like someone gives a damn

— you do but whatever

— probably features you in a lot of his tiktoks

— “this my girl/boy/partner- “please shut the hell up”

— does that weird arm swing that the boys do

— ICK CENTRAL

— he still gets hella likes though.

— for doing NOTHING

tsireya

— her @ is @/reyatime

— she probably posts really aesthetic content like those really well edited day in my life vids

— probably posts singing covers

— FIT INSPO LEGEND

— does those big sister talks for her followers

— hair tutorials for her curly haired followers

— probably is really famous on tiktok ngl

— UNPROBLEMATIC QUEEN

y/n

— you probably post guitar covers

— your @ is probably something like @/(y/n)scorner

— or really aesthetic content

— you are gilmore girls

— you probably voice a lot of your opinions

— you do little ted talks

— probably dank humor

— A LOT OF YELLING IN YOUR CAR???

— yelling does equal funny idc what anyone says.

a.n // three posts in one day???? i am feeding y’all say thank you sae- no i’m just joking but i’m on break and have a lot of free time so TEEHEE love you baby gworls

[pickles4nickles]

Pickles Played Persona 5 Tactica and Has Some Words

I finally finished Tactica and its DLC sans some challenge stuff and I do wanna do some cleanup, but I thought I'd write a review for it.

It's long (like, 3k words long) and there's spoilers and overall... it's an Okay(tm) game, but... here, just lemme talk about it a bunch:

Alright, I'm not gonna mince words.

Persona 5 Tactica is not a game I can reccomend to anyone.

But is it a bad game?

Well, no.

But I have no idea who it's for.

Maybe it's for people who want more of the P5 characters? Not exactly? Both stories' focal points are on new characters and the Phantom Thieves just kinda happen to be there. There are some nice interactions, but this isn't a story about the PTs like Strikers.

Is it for people who like tactics but aren't really into P5? Well... it might be the other way around, actually? It's an okay tactics game with persona elements, but both parts of that are watered down when compared to base game persona and other tactics games like XCOM.

With that being said, lemme just ramble about what I thought about the story and gameplay.

THE STORY

The best way I can sum up my feelings about Tactica are "the story was told well, but I'm not sure if I liked it." This is a game that's less about the Phantom Thieves and more about Toshiro and Erina and focuses around the internal conflict of rebellion versus self-preservation.

Toshiro is probably why I'm neutral towards the game At Best. Erina grew on me but Toshiro...

Ehh.

At the beginning of the game, he's a big wimp and he's constantly telling the PTs and Erina that they have to be careful. From a theming standpoint, Toshiro's behavior makes perfect sense.

But from the petty bitch inside of me, this is infuriating because not only do YOU know that this is the Phantom Thieves that have taken down Shido (and also Yaldaboth), but TOSHIRO knows it as well and he's being Like This.

Like, he kinda sucks in the beginning and does so for the first two acts, understandably, but by the third act, when The Big Persona Moments happen, my opinion of him just kinda stayed the same. They swayed in a different direction, but... still on the negative side of the spectrum.

The reveal of Erina as Toshiro's Persona... makes sense. She's Toshiro's spirit(?) of rebellion and is based off of his classmate that once inspired him to stand up for himself and others.

Did I like this revelation?

Hell no, I was punching my thigh and screaming in voice call "No fucking way, Toshiro's so lame, though" as loud as I could without upsetting my parents in the other rooms.

From this point on, Toshiro now has the resolve to do what's right, even if it's scary... but he comes off as a little too strong in my opinion. I kinda have the same feelings about Zenkichi once he gets his persona in Strikers. In the beginning they feel like a new character meant to balance out the insanity that is how the metaverse is, but once they get their persona, they're full on inundated in the anime stand battles and they're a little too extra about it.

Having two full acts of "hey guys maybe we shouldn't help the hat people out of hat people slavery," pivoting into "WITNESS OUR POWER AS ONE" has the same vibes as a relative who's not really an asshole, but one that you've been trying to convince for years that economic inflation is the reason why our generation can't live comfortably, and once they finally understand, they come off a little bit too strong and righteous about it that you're not sure they're genuine or if this is a "he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit" situation.

And then god happens.

In persona games, I usually don't fully understand how or why the god-being is doing all of this, but I especially can't wrap my head around how they work in Tactica. It's mostly because Toshiro's metaverse is kind of a Silent Hill kinda deal where it's a mental torture labyrinth for him personally, as opposed to Mementos, which is naturally the collective unconscious, connecting everyone's minds and hearts together.

The jump from "I'm going to bully this one guy in particular" to "now EVERYONE will be as lame as Toshiro" is lost on me. Maybe politics?

It's... it's fine, there's no reason to lose sleep over it.

The ending of the story is nice and reasonable, though. It sorta redeems Toshiro for me. It's one thing to yell in your own metaverse hellscape how you're going to do the right thing, but once he's back in the real world, he actually stands up to his dad and fiancé and steps down from his political position to build it back up from scratch, but better.

And, yeah! I respect that.

That being said, though, the game isn't devoid of new Phantom Thief interactions. There's some good ones like Futaba "I don't kinkshame" Sakura, casually bi Joker as seen in that one "who would you marry" bit, and a guys only sidequest in which they think they're looking for Toshiro's porn stash (yeah, I know) (it's not). I wouldn't say it's crumbs, but you're not getting the whole loaf that you'd get from, say, Mementos Mission or Strikers.

The story also does this thing where the Phantom Thieves can relate with Toshiro's issues, but something about it feels... off.

Toshiro's in an arranged marriage with Marie for political reasons! Just like Haru! His fiancé sees him as a pushover! Kinda like Makoto! His mom died when he was young and he blames himself for it! Wow, Yusuke and DEFINITELY Futaba can relate to that!! Eri, the real person that Erina is based on, had to transfer schools because she was accused of a crime! Gee, that SURE sounds familiar-

Part of me thinks I'm being a little too unfair on the game for creating parallels like this because Strikers also kinda did this. But in Strikers, the PTs being able to connect with the jail rulers was integral to the plot. Here, it's just kind of a wink wink nudge nudge kinda thing.

And my knee-jerk reaction to that is a small "I get it, shut uuuup."

Again, and overall because I think that rounds out what I have to say about the story, P5 Tactica's main story isn't bad. It's told well, but I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of it.

GAMEPLAY

I've only played Strikers and I don't think I've played a true tactics game, so I don't know how much weight my opinions hold.

So um.

I dunno, the gameplay was fine.

The pacing is weird because it's kind of a visual novel first, and a tactics game in-between, but I got used to that after a bit.

It's a really simple tactics game and... yeah things don't get too complex outside of sometimes there are buttons that'll open doors or raise and lower platforms, sometimes height matters, but the mechanics don't get too crazy outside of certain boss battles.

The game revolves around downing enemies to get Once More's so you can either encase the enemy in a triangle formed by your units to initiate an All-out Attack or you can chain together Once More's to extend your unit's range and move them across the map. This mechanic took a bit for me to understand fully, but I never really got tired of doing it.

Boss battles were kind of hit or miss in this game. The fights with Toshiro's Dad and Salmael I enjoyed as they were kinda formatted as "here's a weird stage, go figure out what to do." However, Marie and *checks notes* "the scary Eri Natsuhara that Shadow Toshiro made" I didn't care for as much since they changed the game from "your decisions on where to move your units are key for this" to "you need to do exactly as we say." Which always kinda sucks, y'know?

Character selection is also kind of a weird thing in this, too. It doesn't seem like it matters who you take with you into missions, which... feels weird to me considering past Persona games. The elements have all been kinda smooshed down into less of a weakness thing, but just a special move that can hinder movement, do damage over time, or change enemy placement entirely, but which type of special you bring along doesn't seem to be as crucial as other Persona games. Each character has a slightly different attack, gun spread, and movement limit, but it wasn't anything drastic that I noticed apart from Haru (she is very slow but apparently hits like a truck) and possibly Morgana (his attack was very weak for me, but I'm not sure if that's because I didn't have him kitted out properly or that's intended).

I played the game almost entirely with Joker and Ann, while swapping between Erina and Ryuji for the last slot and I didn't run into any problems.

The last stretch of the game is... a strange one gameplay wise. Toshiro becomes a party member except... he's Different(tm). He doesn't get a skill tree, is a permanent fourth party member, and can initiate All-Out Attacks, but isn't a part of the triangle that forms it. He does have a gun, but it's in the form of a 0SP attack that Ernesto/Erina can use... that also happens to ignore walls entirely. And he also gets Almighty attacks, which kinda just do big number damage for way more SP.

It's hard to say if the game did a good job scaling the level difficulties to incorporate a fourth party member as staying on top of your persona fusing, weapons, and the skill tree can kind of make the game a breeze. I also played on the normal difficulty, so maybe in harder difficulties, Toshiro becomes more of a necessity than a party member that breaks the game.

My only big gripe with the game is just... the weirdness of the undo button. I don't know how it is in regular tactics games, but the undo in this game doesn't work on a "clear the last action this unit did" basis, but on a turn basis. If you happen to screw up on turn one, unit one, you have to back out COMPLETELY to the mission start screen, which is hella annoying especially if you're playing on the Switch because of the load times.

"But Pickles, what about the DLC? Surely you have just as many thoughts about it?"

Y'know?

I actually don't.

I liked Repaint Your Heart a lot. Again, it's less a story about the Royal Trio and more about Guernica, but it's closer to the traditional Persona 5 story format where they're changing someone's heart. This story also had much higher emotional... fidelity? I guess you could put it?

Guernica needed to remember her main inspirations for creating art - being abandoned and homeless and her big sister dying because of it and she embraces that anger against society into art that inspires hope in people less fortunate. While being groomed into a political pawn from basically birth and then, later in life, being thrown into your own mental hellscape sucks, in terms of emotional weight, Toshiro's story feels like a feather compared to Guernica's.

Also her design is just cool and the paint aesthetic is definitely more my speed.

In terms of Royal Trio content, I think this was the best case scenario we could expect from Atlus.

Emphasis on "from Atlus."

Yeah, we didn't get Black Mask Akechi, but there are MORE THAN ENOUGH moments where he lets the facade slip. His default spell is Megidola, but his skill tree lets him have both Light AND Dark spells. He'll cuss at you if you hit an enemy into him. I don't know what he's doing viscerally screaming half the time he summons Robin Hood.

Sumi. Is also there.

She is fine.

Guernica's connection to the thieves is also written in the same way as Toshiro is, in that it's a little shoehorned in and doesn't add to the story beyond that. After finding out that Luca is Guernica's sister that died, Sumi definitely feels motivated and inspired to help her out, but Akechi also being an abandoned child, scorned by society, and angry at the world because of it is never touched upon. This is probably for spoiler reasons, but... still.

Because this is a story that takes place during Sae's Palace in the main game, they all have to have amnesia about it in the end. Which, understandable, and at least no one in the trio had extensive character development but...

*clenches fist*

Man,

Having tackled this after the main game, I enjoyed the gameplay a lot! It's basically P5 Tactica but with Splatoon mixed in. When a unit is on a tile painted the opposite color for them, they can be instantly knocked down and combo'd on, which adds a whole extra layer of complexity to the game. I wish there were a few more levels to play, but the length of the DLC never overstays its welcome.

Hokay.

If you made it this far, congrats! You reached the end. And my tl;dr section.

I think that's just about it on what I cohesively have to say about P5 Tactica. This isn't a terrible game by any means, but I don't know if the audience it's intended for actually exists. It has a just okay story and just okay mechanics, but the DLC has a more than okay story and the core mechanics are given a fresh coat of paint (yeah, boo, I know) that makes the game more interesting. I would not go paying $80 USD to experience the DLC alone, though.

Thank you for reading my review if you made it all the way to the end! P5 stuff (well, mostly Akeshu) has been my muse these past few years and playing a game that was "just okay but why did they..." got into my brain real bad, so I wanted to write some stuff out.

I'll close this out with some bullet points of thoughts that I couldn't really cohesively fit into my review:

I really really liked how they got little costumes for the old timey Japan kingdom and I was hoping we'd get more of that and every kingdom was based on a new theme... but we only got three kingdoms and the last one before "Smithy's Forge from Super Mario RPG" was............ School.

SATANAEL'S BACK IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS (BUT ONLY POST-GAME)

Erina also being Ernesto thing is mostly weird to me because she's still her own entity but also not???? The possible genderfluid connotations are cool though.

There's a quest where Haru asks Yusuke how to be fast. Yusuke tells her she has to "Become a Black Hole." I do not know what this means.

After the quest, Haru says that even though the axe slows her down, she's very partial to it as her father didn't like her chopping wood as a kid, but she'd sneak out and do it anyway. She later found out that her dad knew she was doing this, but decided not to scold her for it. She took this as a sign of kindness from her father and that's why the axe is so special to her. I do not know what this means as Haru's father was a horrible capitalist who basically tried to marry her off in pursuit of power.

The weapon designs in this game are generally kind of silly, but I appreciate that they exist in the game. There's a chompy gun with teeth that Joker gets and I really like it :)

God the Lyn tracks from the DLC FUCK

...what

Futaba says "sus" at one point in the end

[sonofanumbranwitch]

Bayonetta has always been deeper character than people give her credit for.

So I have adored Cereza and The Lost Demon a lot more than I thought I would. But I was watching a review video on the game and one of the points they brought up was how the game makes Bayonetta "A more three dimensional character". While I agree with this, it got me thinking about how a lot of the more subtle and deeper aspects of Bayonetta's character are overlooked, even by people who like her.

There's always been more to her than "Dommy Mummy step on me please"tm who kills supernatural forces with style. Don't get me wrong that's still a huge part of her but she does have other aspects of her.

She is very protective and nurturing like we see in the first game with how she protects and cares for her younger self. In Bayonetta 2 when Loki is struggling with his memories she mentors him and gives advice. As much as she taunts him she is still trying to in her own round about way give him good advice.

She is a fiercely loyal friend who literally went to Hell and back for Jeanne. Regardless of whatever wrong direction platinum themselves take their relationship there can be no doubt Bayonetta loves and cares for her best friend. So much so that one of the only times we've seen her drop her confidence and actually panic is when she thought she was too late to save Jeanne.

Her relationship with her parents is actually very tragic. She was separated from her mother at a young age, and even came upon her mother's dead body during the witch hunts. Then she killed her own father thinking he was an evil bastard who used her and her mother. Only to then learn, no actually he did love her and her mother so much he was willing to destroy himself and his reputation to protect them.

Even her relationships with her mundane friends have depth to them. She goes from teasing Luka with her pet name to showing him she recognizes him as a person she respects by addressing him by name. Even the way she drags Enzo everywhere illustrates she has a weird affection for the little gremlin man.

Bayonetta 3's Bayonetta feels so much hollower by comparison because they made the stupid decision to isolate her for the vast majority of it. Bayonetta depth comes out in her relationships to both friend and foe alike.

Cereza and The Lost Demon does a wonderful job of putting her relationships to other characters at the forefront. But that three dimensional character has always been there. People just needed to look a little harder to see it.

[olways-lichrichure]

Finished playing the first two games of the Zero Escape series and fellas is it worth playing the third bc I'm seeing very mixed reviews on it

Tbh probably will still play it bc I want The Lore TM but like yeah I'm vaguely curious if I should stop while I'm ahead

This series is making me unwell I need to put these characters under a microscope and study them

[minas-linkverse]

Feelings on Minish Cap?

Minish cap is a stellar game. Very much underappreciated and my top wish for what should get remade in HD. The soundtrack is marvelous and I wish I could listen to it all day but the ~bits~ of the good old gameboy just don't work well with my migraine prone head. I truly hope newer fans get to experience the game in all it's glory sooner than later and it get the attention it deserves!!

I think Minish cap has a very unique identity. It has a lot of familiar things yet many totally new and unexpected sights! It almost feels like a fan game, but in like the best way possible. It's got that indie pixel vibe of something made with love.

...asfjggsjkf sorry this is another love letter ramble. Minish cap has a special place in my heart. It was the first Zelda game I ever played, although at the time I didn't know any english and would just run around the few areas that are open before the first dungeon, and I'd slap grass for fun. I was easy to entertain back then.

Years later I found my old gameboy colour and finally actually played the game. It's a real solid entry in the top-down zelda game world, although it could be just a LITTLE bit tighter in gameplay. Link's awakening and Oracle of Ages just really keep you on the move in a way modern games don't seem to.

Also Minish cap just has the most iconic official art in the franchise.

Basically Minish cap to me is an image of childhood. We're currently in an era for the franchise that's openly pointing out the horror of it's lore. I think it's high time we remember the joy and whimsy of the series too. The games that bring back that feeling of being a kid in the backyard playing heroes! The hero trope exists as a tragedy, but also to inspire us.

PS. to clarify I think the game is incredibly solid as it exists right now and the reason I want it remade is not because the current version needs an overhaul, but because I know a remake would give more people easier access to a game that's marvelous and also I'd cry. If you have a way to play it right now like... Do it, yo. No need to wait for an imaginary product I invented in my brain.

[magic-is-something-we-create]

2023 recap + 2024 plans

i wrote 261,200 words in 2023; 172,500 of those for Whispers, 88,700 for Goddess-Touched!

i read 16 books to completion, beta'd for an additional 2, am currently reading 3, and got partway through 5 others before having to put them down.

i maintained my streaming schedule with only a handful of emergency-related exceptions, and drew, uh, a shit ton over the course of the year!

writing goals for 2024:

fix Echoseers (full stylistic rewrite, along with some plot tweaks)

finish the first draft of Goddess-Touched (and edit it hardcore as well)

work on as-yet-unnamed book 4 of tms

fix up Whispers with the added feedback of beta readers

start querying Whispers (i'll look into self publishing down the road if i don't end up finding an agent. the way my brain functions i must cling to the hope of not having to market it myself tooth and nail for the time being)

POTENTIALLY. if my brain fixates on it. write the script for The Lost so that i actually have something to work with to make the comic happen

one of my offline friends is starting to get into writing, and im hoping to help them through some of the early rough patches and potentially co-write a thing with them!!

i completely dropped the ball on the weekly writing updates so im gonna try and get back to that on wednesday. and potentially get back into the weekly ask games!

non-writing goals for 2024:

youtube. i want to make speedpaints and worldbuilding videos and shit. ive already made the basic animation stuff to have a lil sona to do the gesturing for me and i know how to make videos i just havent done it in a While

twitch!! i want to stream a bit more often because its fun and if i let myself branch out into video games as well as art itll be easier to do that. u might see me streaming in the evenings sometime soon. (psst im not streaming this weekend as im still doing a shit ton of holiday/social stuff but the weekend of the 13th ill be back to both patreon and twitch baybee)

SPEAKING OF i want to get my shit together enough to do like. monthly short story releases for my patrons/ko-fi members. early access, that is, so if i post one in january, it'll be posted here a month or two later for all to see/read

i want to read as many books as i did in 2023, if not more! im also considering adding book reviews/thoughts to youtube or patreon/ko-fi perks

my weekend hiatuses aren't going anywhere. having time where im not actively engaging with tumblr + don't feel obligated to do Anything online has done wonders for my mental health and i highly recommend it. focus mode on my phone and leechblock on desktop has helped so so so much

and that's all i'm sharing here!! i hope 2024 is a better year for all than the last <3

[yakourinka]

just like with genshin the mandatory mainline story quests in honkai railway gacha are a snoozefest but side quests are interesting. this is not an endorsement of the game.

you're on a doomed planet with a single human settlement left. the catastrophe that happened 700 years ago halted all technological advances. they don't have phones, no way of communicating via signals across distances. but someone in bumfuck nowhere is sending and receiving signals. across space.

so your colleagues ask you to check it out because they're worried that the signal might attract undesirable attention to this frozen wasteland. if a hostile or expansionist alien species were to take notice, these people would have no means of defending themselves. you go to check it out.

you climb your way up through the snow and arrive at your destination. just as you expected, there's nothing and no one there. but your phone rings; you have a new message. it must've been a telecommunications signal.

IT'S A FUCKING AD.

curious, you text back.

it's space amazon! they knew a terrible disaster struck and they didn't give a sliver of a shit, but they've been sending spam ads to a dead planet for the past 78 years. there's a guy in space, in some dark, forgotten cubicle, whose entire job is sending ads to people who can't even receive them because they had an extinction event. clearly the bosses don't give a shit whether people look at the ads or not so long as they get sent out!

in the first player hub there are a bunch of optional interactable objects which are like someone flexing their literary sci-fi muscles. each of them is a short story written from the perspective of aliens, either weird, funny, horrifying, or a mixture of them. love letters to sci-fi. the funny thing is of course you don't see any aliens! in space game! there are just Mihoyo Anime 3D Models (TM).

when I was downloading the game the first review I saw was "there's too much text in this game, let me skip faster!!" and I was like, yeah sure bro have you heard of arknights. but there really is too damn much text in the game. on the first planet alone there are 80 flavour text collectibles; steampunk mining equipment manual, flower dictionary exclusive to planet, planet's NY times best seller. not to mention NPCs talk a lot. and you get texts from both playable characters and NPCs every single damn day.

it's actually kind of sad that so much effort and love went into building the backbone of the most lukewarm main storyline ever written for a game (and possibly cast) and a mihoyo gacha.

[invidiatechdemo]

Meandering thoughts about Pecharunt/possible ecology Stuff(tm) for the specific one in Mochi Mayhem + more general ideas for if you treat them as a species, since a surprising amount of mythical+legendary pokemon are explicitely /not/ single specimen species, just very rare (Shaymin being mentioned as migrating, Latios and Latias entries mentioning flocks, etc)

Pleeease note I'm going to write a post about this with illustrations/partially in-universe perspective in a bit, but I did want to throw out my initial thoughts!!!

Also, with the exception of the first thing I say, I really encourage people to consider Pecharunt from an ecology perspective in their works alongside like. an individual pokemon with its own backstory, because I think that allows for richer more interesting stories! I think if you like Pecharunt and want to attack me with rocks for saying what I'm about to say, please feel free to write your own meta/opinions in your own post, because I also really like Pecharunt and would like to see more stuff written about it as an inidividual animal and also as a theoretical species. I think it's very cute. ^_^

Also I will note that this is steam of conscious style stuff; I may restate my points multiple times, sorry about that!

With that out of the way, let's look at the scarlet and violet website's entry.

The one that has people fighting about this thing's malice or lack thereof.

'Uses Its Cunning To Survive' is a very evocative phrasing.

That line being so carefully combined with Pecharunt being described as 'sly' and doing actions such as pretending to be a baby Pokemon a la Happiny to gain sympathy, and possibly specifically mimicking /human/ kids in vocalization/etc depending on the tone you read it in... that is a very specific sort of evolutionary strategy that this calls to mind.

The information provided on this page, combined with the fact it apparently was living with an old couple, and the fact that in the story of Momotaro, the couple found the child in a peach floating down the river, and decided to raise the child as their own...

...Game Freak accidentally made a Mythical that is a brood parasite.

This probably sounds like I'm jumping to conclusions, but there's a couple other things that make me think that this is a reasonable conclusion about how a young instance of Pecharunt works.

To explain why, let's look at Pecharunt's movelist, and specifically its egg moves! Also, a quick review of what 'Brood Parasite' means.

Brood parasitism as an evolutionary strategy comes about since raising young takes a lot of time and effort; in the more standard usecases, like in birds, this tends towards an egg being placed in the nest, and the hatching animal outcompeting the host bird's actual young by crying louder and more consistently, or pushing them out of the nest to obtain more resources/attention.

Much like Pecharunt, this may seem baffling at first (in cuckoo bird's case, because of the size disparity, and in Pecharunt's case, the Base Stat Total disparity)

This is not always the case, mind; Asian Koels tend to not push other young out the nest (though they still do it Sometimes), and the Black-headed duck is notable for having an extremely extended incubation time in which after that point the duck hatches and wanders off.

'But Pecharunt is a mythical, does it really need that much protection?' Well, lets look at a couple facts you may or may not already know. Here are Pecharunt's egg moves:

Pecharunt at level one has extremely weak moves, and to make matters worse, Pecharunt is in one of the slowest exp gain groupings. Even worse, it learns new moves every eight levels when a lot of pokemon are getting new stuff to learn every four, and does not get a lot of good coverage moves at that!

To put it in even further context, Pecharunt learns Malignant Chain, its signature move and the one that specifically utilizes binding mochi in a more aggressive fashion than the firing mochi/serving mochi seen in game events and youtube video stuff, at level 48.

With that in mind, its growth rate seems to be in a similar range as something like the dragons.

A lot of Dark types, one of the things that Pecharunt is weak to, specifically exist in packs, which would leave smaller less experienced instances profoundly vulnerable. To add on this this, the areas I've been suspecting for original range + what in birdwatching stuff is termed as vagrancy (animal appearing way way outside of normal range) all don't just have Dark types, but in many cases /multiple/ species of Dark types. Poochyena, Houndour, Bisharp... all of these are dark types that live in packs or large groups. Even more notably, Poochyena and Mightyena in the wild have a chance of carrying Pecha Berries, which cure poison. Isn't that something.

These same evolutionary pressures could very reasonably result in Pecharunt's comically high defense! Mightyena and Poochyena are physical attackers, and a lot of the Dark moves Houndour and Doom learn by level up are physical.

On that note: Special Defense notably is /not/ Pecharunt's strong suit, and the weakness to Psychic means that any sufficiently nasty special attacker could rip through the lower hp pool hiding behind the physical defense like wet tissue paper. I'm going to specifically point at Beldum and Metagross and then smile serenely. Steel types in general would be a problem if in a sitation where its unable to utilize mochi properly. Which is where the 'subjugation pokemon' aspect, and its ecological strategy after its lengthy maturation would come about.

So, if Pecharunt were a species, they'd need a lot of extra care and protection to reach anywhere near maturity/full potential, and specifically that sort of care and protection from something or someone that can handle the things it can't whether that's via a more varied movepool/different typing, or the structures and technology of human beings in the pokemon setting (though in another post I mmmaay get into some thoughts about how if Pecharunt is a species, it probably is in decline in the modern Poke-setting. Stay tuned.)

A limited movepool makes sense if ecology-wise, Pecharunt is a parasite, even if one that is significantly more free-living than the ones these sort of things usually apply to; trait loss is pretty common with parasites as stuff gets delegated to hosts/host species. This is a Pokemon that doesn't need to have type coverage because its own ecology is based around commanding other Pokémon that do have the correct type coverage to defend it.

And since that's covered with Binding Mochi, all that it needs to be good at is the things that its movepool is geared towards; manipulating people and Pokémon to protect itself, giving pause and sympathy without the use of poison when it can't directly manipulate something, running away when /that/ fails utilizing Astonish to make a target flinch when alone and Parting Shot when with a retainer/bodyguard, and then finally as a last resort when an old enough/high enough level, the arsenal of extremely powerful non-mochi poison type moves, Malignant Chain, and Shadow Ball... so, the exact sort of actions that Pecharunt one for one takes in Mochi Mayhem.

It even specifically attempts to flee after Arven and Penny are defeated, which lines up nicely with the possible usecase for Parting Shot!

Prior to learning Shadow Ball and Malignant Chain, It has a TON of moves that specifically take it out of the fight and put another Pokemon into the fight with advantages, like Memento and Parting Shot. This, in my opinion, gives credence to this being the in-universe reasoning for the movepool being what it is.

Memento in /particular/ being a move that goes so far as to risk fainting is uh. Interesting, especially since it's one of the moves learned at level 1!

Oh and speaking about its level one/egg moves: on the topic of Astonish!

I think that move reflects something really fun about the peach pit motif. Which is that I think the glowing interiors of the shell serve similar purposes to the false eyes on irl moths + also the pokemon Masquerain (who also learns astonish famously!) Imo, the false eye flashing analogue feels like a really easy pull to make.

A less move-oriented view of this is also kind of established in the scene with Arven and Penny!

This Pokemon tends to keep the shell closed outside of battle and certain interactions, and the scene specifically uses the kind of duller, slow moving animations for the closed form and then has them launch into the mochi thing, utilizing startle response/reflexive action to advantage, comedic as it is.

The mochi throwing also works really well as a two birds one stone defense measure for Pecharunt ecology-wise, as similar 'throw food that was being eaten in hopes predatory animals will give up chase to eat that' is actually pretty common, and hell, Legends Arceus has shown that bean cakes and muffins work very well against many pokemon.

You may ask, 'Invi, does that mean the shell being fully open for the entire mythical encounter fight mean they're puffing themself out like a cat as an agonistic display for the entire duration of the fight?'

And to that I say...Quite possibly! Other instances of Pecharunt in the story showing itself probably land more into deimatic displays/startle displays like those used by butterflies and stick insects, but the fight instance probably specifically is agonistic, considering it starts making aggressive hissing 'chhhrah' noises, especially in contact with the Loyal Three.

As for the Binding Mochi from an ecology perspective/real life analogue... there's no completely direct analogue irl, but it serves two purposes that are very much common strategies!

What Pecharunt did by making the Loyal Three retainers + what it did to Mossui Town is a pretty open and shut example of bodyguard manipulation.

This is something more commonly seen in parasitoid species, but essentially, this is a subsection of behavior altering in parasites where you get your host to do stuff for you to keep you safe. Examples in our real world include wasp species that get caterpillars thrash if potential predators get too close.

In the Pokemon world, the go-to example would be Nihilego, whose venom has some similarities to Binding Mochi, but is noted as specifically messing with someone's preexisting abilities and impulses, while Pecharunt's alterations of its retainers tend to fall in line with their desires/wishes.

As for the fact it's a food item that gets other things to defend it, that's also common! Aphids and scale insects commonly produce honeydew, and get ants to defend them from predators in return for such.

As for it being mochi? The concept of something along those lines being produced as a starchy thing is also not that far out, as a number of psyllid bugs produce Lerps, which consist of sugars and starches. In the case of the bell lerp, which actually utilizes a bird, the Bell Miner, to avoid being attacked by other fauna and flora in return for continued consumption of aforementioned lerps!

I've focused on the brood parasite section, but overall I will say that after hitting Malignant Chain, it likely becomes a social parasite a la certain types of cuckoo bees, and these would essentially intergrade nicely (can start more actively controlling pokemon/people it's with already, move around more freely than the initially probably very nest-centralized movement to keep itself safe until its defenses can develop more properly).

Misc additional notes:

Interestingly enough, while Pecharunt has the 'no eggs discovered' thing, it does have a set amount of time to hatch in game data and it is specifically way shorter than most other Legendaries/Mythicals minus a couple notable exceptions like Terapagos and the guardian deities; Pecharunt's starts at 20, which is the same as eggs for starters like Bulbasaur and etc.

Like for context, most of the other guys have egg cycles of 80-120. This would match up to a really common phenomenon in brood parasites where the eggs actively hatch faster than the host animal's to get a leg up on resources and etc.

... I actually have even more thoughts specifically about what Pecharunt's habitat/original home was, and also a couple different theories about what it eats, as well as more granular things about like, physical stuff about this guy's body instead of a life cycle overview, but I'm going to save those for later because this is already ungodly long. Uhhh closing thoughts:

Hold Pecharunt like hamburger, and give it one of every food and drink. It's safe to do this.

[identifying-guns-in-posts]

welcome!

i'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to guns, and thought randomly at some point that it'd be fun to start this gimmick blog and try to identify guns in various posts. however I do still kind of consider myself to be in the dunning-kruger valley, and gun identification is a bit more complex than car identification due to just how many variants of individual gun patterns there are, and how much easier it is to do modifications of them...

(ask / submission rules and other guidelines are further down in this post)

I'll try to at least identify the general pattern of the gun or any recognizable parts and cross reference with images and articles to make a decision. If your post or submission is from a particular piece of media, it's extremely likely for it to already be documented on the Internet Movie Firearms Database wiki website, so some answers will probably be pulled straight from there.

For example, the wiki clearly outlines that, in the above blog header, which is from the anime/manga Lycoris Recoil (IMFDB link here), Chisato (left) canonically uses a Detonics CombatMaster (variant of Colt 1911 pattern, chambered in .45 ACP), specifically one that incorporates elements of the Tokyo Marui Strike Warrior Airsoft replica (notable in the strike face compensator and modified rear sight). Takina (right) meanwhile uses a somewhat generic Smith and Wesson M&P9 PRO, chambered in 9x19mm, with the extended 5" barrel.

To make up for how garbage I am at getting specifics right, I may also offer some bits of trivia about the gun(s) in question and/or their implementation. For example, although Chisato's gun seems based off of the Tokyo Marui design, it notably has three port holes at the top of the compensator as compared to the single port in the original; it might be a bit more effective as a real compensator than the very-Airsoft cosmetic fixing of the TM replica. It also lacks the accessory rail in the anime. Additionally, Takina's signature sidearm, the M&P9, is extremely common in modern law enforcement (you might even recognize the handle of it in the "(A) Steal Officer's Service Weapon" meme), so it's a bit of a "cop gun" in a sense; which possibly matches how Takina essentially serves as the by-the-numbers half of the pseudo-buddycop pairing formed by her and Chisato. Interestingly enough, all other Lycoris agents are seen wielding Glock 17s instead...

asks

I'm always open to asks if you want to ask me anything, but if you want me to identify something, you should probably make it a submission!

submissions/tags

Only submit requests for identification of guns OR fictional gun reviews (more on that in another section)! Preferably memes and posts. You can also submit things from media like video games and anime, but you could probably get a faster answer through IMFDB than me >~>

If your submission or tag is for a "cursed gun" then some special rules apply. If it's a real life picture of some effed up monstrosity, I will do my best to identify it with a real, pre-built gun; otherwise, I'll try to identify parts that may have been used for it. If it's clearly an edited picture or some other form of drawing, concept, or very clearly fictional gun, this will be treated as a "Fictional Gun Review" instead.

Generally speaking I'm looking at "small arms" guns; I'm not super well-versed on artillery pieces and aircraft weapons and the like. I know a handful of rocket launchers and might be able to pick out a couple but those are also pretty hard for me.

Fictional Gun Reviews

I'm also a bit of a hobbyist game designer and like creating weapon designs myself! I can take a look at strictly fictional weapon designs and give some cursory criticism on whether or not the gun would actually function in the configuration it's in (checking things like barrel/bolt/magazine alignment, etc.), what parts of it I recognize from real guns, and an overall subjective rating.

about me

i'm a 21+ trans woman (she/her) and pansexual/biromantic disaster married to a hot butch wife. i'm also an independent game developer and secretly a streamer on another alias of mine. i like guns! i like the history of guns and the engineering of guns. personal favorites are sniper rifles, particularly the L96A1, the first military-specification sniper rifle made by Accuracy International, which served as the prototype of the Arctic Warfare line of rifles, popularized by Counter Strike's AWP (though the classification of "AWP" is incorrect for the particular weapon featured in the series, it's actually an AWM .338). favorite pistol is probably the Beretta 93R, a 3 round burst fire pistol with a similar pattern to the iconic M9 pistol. i also like the MP7 PDW (obvious half life 2 fan is obvious), the MAC10 (by far the coolest machine pistol to fire in akimbo lol), and the G36C (one of the first guns I ever decided to look up more information about many years ago after picking it up in Garry's Mod of all places).