#How do we want it? NOT LIKE THAT YOU USELESS DEVS

[heloflor]

So this was supposed to be part of my other fop post but it got way too long (both posts did tbh) and is a different topic than the other one. So yeah here’s a bunch of random thoughts about the show in general from what I’ve seen of it. For context I’ve only seen the first 4-5 episodes + “Battle of the Dimmsonian” + the Cosmo-Wanda-Peri scenes in “Lost in Fairy World” and “Operation: Birthday Takeback”.

SPOILERS for “Operation: Birthday Takeback” for the last three dashes (2.4k words below):

- Putting it in first since it’s still related to Peri but I’m pretty amused by the whole “Tumblr sexyman” situation. I mean, less than two weeks ago all canon pics we had of him were baby pics. It’s the same deal when I see people call him a father figure to Dev, I can’t help but be like “wdym father figure? He’s barely an adult! He’s too young!”

It’s like imagine you have a neighbor who have a baby when you’re 9-10, then they move out and 20 years later you meet their kid as an adult. You can clearly tell they’re an adult and treat them as such but also it’s a bit weird bc your last and only memories of them were of a baby. Idk, I see Peri’s character as an adult but also he’s still a bit of a kid, you know? I feel like I explain this better in the other post tbh.

- In retrospect it’s also very funny to see how, when people talk about the decline of fop, they point at the inclusion of the new characters, including Poof. Yet look where we are now! If you thought the baby was the problem, apologize to him, now! /j

But yeah more seriously, personally I never minded Poof. He was definitely a useless addition, like outside of the handful of episodes focused on him he mostly just stands there looking at the other characters, but he was also a cute baby, so I’ve always been fine with him being around. He’s a useless but inoffensive addition, and I think the decline of the show around that time had less to do with him and more to do with the writing as a whole.

- Last thing about Peri before moving on to the show in general, which tbh I could've put in the other post: I've seen people talk about the idea of Hazel and Dev switching fairies and I kind of agree with it.

Not only because Cosmo and Wanda have the experience needed to help a kid like Dev (though it wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows) while Hazel's situation is easier for Peri, but also it's worth noting that Dev needs a parental figure, which Cosmo and Wanda can be, while Hazel misses her older brother, who Peri is around the same age of. Idk, I feel like this could work, or at least make things easier for everyone involved (but also especially for Dev).

- Something I originally wanted to put in the tags of the other post but fuck it: I’m really not a fan of them releasing the episodes so soon one after the other. With serialized shows, I’m always been more of a fan of having an episode a week you can chew on and theorize about, rather than being given everything at once. Also it takes a while for the cargo to get on the ships if you catch my drift.

I’d also complain about seeing all those plot-related episodes one after the other with none of the more casual stories in-between that give us more character moments, but honestly that’s on me for looking up spoilers.

- Going to the early show, I think the first episode is such a good introduction! I especially like the amount of focus on Cosmo and Wanda, it’s good to have them reintroduced given how flanderized they became in the og show. I’m especially happy with Cosmo! He arguably had it worse than Wanda in the og and it’s so good to see him shine this much in this first episode (also I love his human form having a bit of a gut)! On that note, they did a fantastic job having them around a lot while still giving Hazel enough time to be introduced properly and get us to care about her as the MC!

But yeah I really like this first episode, fantastic beginning to the show! The only issue I “really” have with it is the way Cosmo and Wanda go back to being godparents just because Hazel made a strong enough wish or something, it felt a bit arbitrary rather than them just telling her who they are.

And on that note, big fan of that one scene where they immediately notice her trying to run away and try to talk her out of it. I love the contrast between them starting off as disasters being barely capable of passing off as humans at the beginning of the episode, and them being perfectly in their element the second they start talking to Hazel about her running away in this scene. It’s such a good way to see how much experience they have with taking care of kids!

- I’m not going to go episode by episode but one thing that bothers me a lot in the second one is that rule of “kids should get whatever they wish for”. Doesn’t that...go against the whole concept of having rules in the first place???

They should’ve replaced it with something along the lines of “a kid should always get the fairy that fits them the best”, not only bc it would work perfectly well for the episode, but also from what I’ve heard Foop (now Irep) is coming back and I could 100% see him use that rule to his advantage given Peri and Dev were such a bad match (I’m guessing anti-fairies don’t actually follow Da Rules but maybe they could still use it as an excuse regardless since fairies do have to follow them or something?)

- Call we talk about the fact Hazel is clearly autistic? Like is this a canon thing in the show? Are there people out there talking about it? No because seriously:

The fidget toys (Cosmo and Wanda’s disguises), her special interest for rocks, her anxiety over making new friends which is reinforced as uncommon when that one girl she befriends comments on how easy and not scary it is to approach other people (also Hazel’s “what am I supposed to talk about with them? School lunches?” comment in the teachers friend episode), her liking for fries which could be seen as her being potentially picky (bit of a stretch tho), her comment about liking the DMV if only for the reaction she gets that makes her seem “different”, her struggles to come up with a wish on the fly with minimal/vague instructions (episode 2), her character arc throughout the show apparently having to do with her not wanting things to change (me too girl), her being considered mature for her age, the angry outbursts when things don’t go how she hoped, pretty sure there’s also a lot of stimming that I have yet to pick up on (see if any of them repeat often). Like, there’s no way ALL of that was a coincidence!

I’d also like to mention at the beginning of the Dino episode, when her dad is explaining things to her, he starts talking louder and louder in excitement until his wife tells him to quiet down. Makes me think her dad’s likely neurodivergent as well. Also this moment hurts my soul a bit, as someone who’s both been on the receiving end of it and done it to someone else, in both cases it sucks.: /

- Took me until like episode 4 to realize the town she lives in is named after the Dimmadomes, with the hat in it (the very first shot of the intro). Also you can see their infinite house in the background, both in that shot and the show in general, and I absolutely adore that they committed so hard to this joke! That giant ambiguously-shaped-like-a-hat skyscraper that we never see the top of is just *chief kiss*.

- On that note Dev’s introduction in the first episode made me laugh, if only for the references. I also find it kinda funny he has such a big speaking role considering he doesn’t do anything for the rest of the pilot and the next few episodes. Then again I guess it’s in character for him to make such a show of introducing himself.

- Still on general stuff, I’m a bit curious about how the timeline went in regards to Cosmo and Wanda retiring and going on vacation “right after” Timmy (iirc they don’t voice it like that in the show). Like I’m having a hard time believing they would just ditch their then-child son to go on vacation, and then come back when he’s an adult. So I ended up having a bunch of headcanons.

Basically, after leaving Timmy they do take what was supposed to be a short leave to think of their future since it feels strange to get a new kid after so long with the same one + I like the idea that Cosmo and Wanda’s marriage did suffer while living with Timmy and they want to work on it before getting a new kid (the whole thing about them feeling confined, made worse if the “stopping time for 50 years” wish is canon) + Poof/Peri is struggling with the reality of having to leave Timmy behind and is nervous about his parents having a new godkid because of it.

Eventually they decide to retire, got to marriage counseling, possibly get Poof/Peri into therapy, and raise their son until he’s an older teen/young adult, at which point they leave for their vacation. And while the vacation is 10 thousand years for them, it’s like, 5 years at max in their present. And in that meantime, Peri starts his godparents studies (or however it works), leaves the house and changes his name.

Btw Cosmo and Wanda would 100% invite him to the vacation, he’d just refuse in a mix between wanting to be away from his parents for once, wanting to maybe surprise them a bit with his work and/or just get started with work, and not knowing how long the vacation would be. He’d also probably tell them to just use this time as some new honeymoon to finish rebuilding their marriage (though by that point it must’ve gone back to being strong). Oh and Cosmo and Wanda would send Peri postcards every so often, which would also let him know how long they’ve been gone.

Once they come back from vacation, I’d imagine there’s like less than a month between them “moving to the human world” and meeting Hazel, hence why they didn’t reconnect with Peri. They didn’t really know how to contact him and were busy with the move, and afterwards they had a godkid to take care of so they couldn’t exactly go back to Fairyworld.

As for Peri, he hears through the gravepine that his parents are back, and would be happy until he realizes they’ve been gone for 10 thousand years, hence him freaking out about meeting them again (he doesn’t know how much they might’ve changed with how long it’s been). Also he can’t contact them bc he’d hear about them coming back due to them taking in Hazel, meaning they’re in the human world and he doesn’t know where. Also he might be intimidated to contact them, which doesn’t help his decision-making.

So yeah, that’s all for how I could imagine this whole vacation thing going and how it fits with them having a child.

- Since I’m talking about Cosmo and Wanda’s marriage, I’ve heard about the whole “they fixed their marriage” before watching the show and oh my god I can’t get over how fucking adorable those two are in this show!!! I fucking love them.

- And on that note I’m incredibly amused that this show had the balls to reference the mpreg. Twice. Especially since it doesn’t even specify the whole “that’s just how fairies work”! In the eyes of people who never watched the og show, “A New Wish” just casually dropped the fact that Cosmo’s a trans man (bc let’s be real, how else are you supposed to interpret those lines if you haven’t watched the og show?) or you get the vibe that the writers wanted to make him trans (+ Wanda by proxy since she’s Peri’s bio mom) but weren’t allowed so that’s how they got past the censors.

And I love this because you just know Hartman would be furious about it! With our current society more aware of trans people and how men can in fact get pregnant, I could definitely see him sweep the whole mpreg thing under the rug, hoping people would forget about his “”accidentally-progressive”” (and also very sexist 😒) episode, but nope! New show said Cosmo was pregnant and gave birth! And better yet it didn’t even elaborate further! It just goes “btw this guy has an uterus and was once pregnant, here’s his bio child if you need more proof” and then walks on like nothing happened, I love it!

- Going back to the episodes talk for the last three dashes, there’s that shot at the very end of “Operation: Birthday Takeback” that I really dislike. It’s the one when Dev lashes out on Peri, with him hovering over Peri who’s laying on the ground in fear.

Really not a big fan of this shot bc 1. It makes Dev look way too much like a villain, especially with the way Peri’s laying like a servant that gets beaten up, and 2. Peri, honey, you’re a grown ass man; why are you so scared of that 10 years old scarred kid that’s lashing out while in a very vulnerable mental state? What are you doing on the ground buddy? I’m not asking for him to fight back but at least stand up! Don’t act like that kid can actually hurt you! Btw I’m completely fine with Peri afterwards looking like a dejected puppy (after Dev makes his wish), it’s just that one shot with him on the ground that I dislike.

- Obviously I’m genuinely curious to see how things are going to go in the next episodes (which apparently air tonight?). Like obviously Dev is going to spiral but if you have a scene at school how will it go? How will Hazel feel about the whole thing? What about Peri? Is he going to be gone for a few episodes? Be a temporary third fairy to Hazel? Crash at Cosmo and Wanda’s for a while?

(Personally I’m hoping for the third option, it would be a good way to still give him appearances to show the main plot’s still going without giving him to much screentime, which could take away from Hazel. Also given how much he wants to appear independent, I don’t see him being a third fairy to her, though I think he’d be ok with staying at his parents for a bit, if only for emotional support (though tbh I doubt they’ll do that, most likely he’ll be doing his own thing off-screen for an episode or two). Also I want to see a “human” design for him)

OK so I wrote this yesterday before the Irep episode came out, so on one hand nevermind all that but on the other hand I’m letting it in bc I AM curious as to how things are going to evolve with our main cast, especially with Dev spiraling and pushing both his bestie and fairy away.

- Btw is nobody going to talk about how Vicky’s dress might be a reference to one of the “Oh Yeah” shorts?

- VERY LAST SECOND ADDITION, SPOILERS FOR IREP: So yesterday before I finished both this and the other post the new episodes dropped, with a few clips shared on Tumblr. And OH MY GOD IREP’S DESIGN!!! The fact that they kept him as a cube makes me so happy!!! I was HOPING at least ONE part of him would be a cube and they delivered!!! He looks like absolulte dogshit I love it!!! Bc yeah for some reason I remember Foop as a character you’re not supposed to take seriously at all? And as a result I really like how stupid Irep looks. A+ design right there! /gen

[muffinrecord]

Ooo all this stored info is great!

But my previous ask was about the english archive app, the thing they left behind after the english magia record eos'd. Do you have anything on that?

OH

I'm sorry aaaugh

Uhhh Honestly I do not. The archive app was very buggy. It's been a while so others can correct me if I'm wrong, but if you had too many characters then it didn't record any of your account's progress.

Oh! Actually I found one screenshot I took. Here:

The images never showed and if you tried to watch the transformation video, it just gave you Tsuruno's. Needless to say, I was pretty disgusted by how useless it was and deleted it pretty quickly.

Thinking back on it, I'm thinking that the archive app at the end for NA was made by maybe one or two people who were probably overworked/underpaid trying to deliver a product that ultimately didn't work. I'm thankful that the development of the archive app gave us another month before NA's EOS though, because it gave me more time to record things.

However, for the upcoming JP Archive, we do have some select information. And it looks like it's going to be different than the one for NA.

There was a big livestream earlier this month that combined Magia Record news with Exedra news. I made a post that just copy+pasted Raz's thorough summary from discord: you can check out the link here.

It looks like you'll be able to see what girls you had along with progress on them (how many slots, magia, doppel). It doesn't look like you can look at card art, but you can see their sprites?

NA looked like a modified version of the archive, while this looks like you can see the girls in the character screen.

From the earlier Exedra stream summary, we also know that we'll be able to see:

Your Magical Girl info screen, from which you can view all of your Magical Girls and their levels/Memo Slots/Magia Levels/Transformations, etc.

Your info archive, which shows off the information of all the Magical Girls, Memoria, Doppels, Witches, and Uwasa that you have encountered during you Magia Record career.

So it combines the Archive with the Magical Girl Info screen?

The last thing I want to say is that the NA Archive sucked, but that's because I think we weren't going to get one in the first place-- it's been a while so my memory might be wrong on that. It was sort of thrown together at the end to placate angry players.

I don't think that JP is going to be as buggy and messed up as NA was. It still sucks that we won't be able to view events in the archive but it appears that the version we're getting is more comprehensive. Additionally, just based on the way the game is going out at the end, I feel like the devs do care about the player experience. Some things are very slow at getting fixed-- for example, the issue with Kimochi capped numbers-- but they were eventually fixed. This is for a game that is going to EOS in less than ten days. They didn't have to jam a bunch of cool events for two-ish months (THAT BRING THEM NO MONEY) but they did, and I think it's because-- despite all the flaws and the predatory nature of gacha games-- the devs do care about its players.

Maybe. I dunno. Probably?

My point being, I am tentatively hopeful that the upcoming EOS archive app will be far more useful than the NA one and much less buggy.

I hope this helps? I apologize that I didn't have a video or screenshot for you more than that one. I think I remember people posting images on the subreddit, if that helps with giving a direction to look for.

[fioras-resolve]

"Is the Berlin Interpretation still relevant?" Part 10 - Results

So, I guess I should finally explain what I'm talking about. I promise I'll stop spamming these tags now.

The Berlin Interpretation of Roguelikes is a genre definition that was made at a roguelike dev conference in 2008. It was a handful of people who were inspired by Rogue to make their own procedural death labyrinths. This was just before Spelunky. It was before The Binding of Isaac, it was before FTL, and it was before Risk of Rain. In other words, this interpretation was made right before the definition of a roguelike radically changed. Before these genre fusions, roguelikes were mostly games like NetHack and Angband, games that were directly inspired by this RPG from 1980. They were roguelikes, because they were "like Rogue."

But let's talk about what this interpretation is actually doing. It is not, in fact, a set of rigid guidelines of what features a game needs to be part of the genre. It is a set of high and low value factors, that a game may not have all of, but the more it has, the more it is, well, Rogue-like. There isn't a game that purely embodies each of these factors, because there's doesn't have to be. Even Rogue isn't fully faithful to this interpretation. It's just that if your game has enough of these factors, then it's clearly working in the same design space, and part of the broader conversation. That's all it was doing.

So is it still relevant? Well, kind of, but not really. Sure, permadeath and procedural generation are still important to people, but for it to be turn-based and grid-based aren't necessary anymore. And I guess for the later polls, either people got tired of me posting these in their tags every day, or they just don't have an opinion one way or the other, because their vote counts didn't even hit the triple digits. It seems like complexity, resource management, and exploration/discovery are still important, while non-modal gameplay and hack-and-slash aren't as much. But I hesitate to give these results the same kind of credence because of how many people from the earlier polls didn't vote on these ones.

It seems like, these days, the roguelike isn't really about its base mechanics. It's a structural genre. You can graft any base mechanics onto it, as long as you start a new run after you die, and each run is made unique by randomness. It seems pretty straightforward.

Okay, what about Mystery Dungeon?

The Mystery Dungeon games these days are mostly known for being Pokemon spinoffs, but the series goes back to the 90s with games like Shiren the Wanderer. These games are directly inspired by the original Rogue, complete with grid-based movement, item discovery, and heavy resource management. It's more "like Rogue" than a lot of modern roguelikes. But because it's structured more like a Japanese RPG, with checkpoints, persistent progression, and a full-blown story, it would probably nowadays be called a "roguelite." Even though it precedes that term by decades!

I'm honestly really surprised that Mystery Dungeon doesn't come up more in discussions about roguelikes. Like, it's a really obvious point of contention, and one that's worth talking about. But only one person in my replies actually mentioned Mystery Dungeon in their thoughts about permadeath. I suspect it's because most of the roguelikes people are invested in these days are indie PC games from the West, while Mystery Dungeon is a Japanese series on console and handheld. But I can't prove it.

Speaking of roguelites though, we have to talk about that term. I don't think that "roguelite" is an inherently elitist term, or that it's useless as a label. it clearly serves some purpose in conversation, even if I wouldn't use it myself. I don't want to prescribe my definitions of terms from on high. I want to understand how people are using these terms in daily practice.

And it seems like it comes down to two definitions. One is the Berliner standpoint. It's less common, but it sees some use. Basically, if you're not making a grid-based dungeon crawler, you're not really making a game "like Rogue," are you? Genre fusions like Risk of Rain and Slay the Spire play completely differently from the roguelikes of old, so it feels weird to just call them roguelikes. This is treating it as a mechanical genre, defining roguelikes by dungeon-crawling in the same way we define a shooter by shooting.

The other definition is a broader one, defined by two key features: procgen and permadeath. This is the most common one in modern conversations about roguelikes, because it takes it as a given that these genre fusions are what roguelikes Are. By this framing, a roguelite is any procgen game that features persistent upgrades. Something like Rogue Legacy, where your progression isn't just you as a player, but your character growing more powerful. Permadeath and procgen serve a very specific purpose in conjunction with each other, and there is a sense where either of these factors being diluted misses the entire point. But plenty of people don't put stock into the like/lite distinction, because they don't see it as mattering. No definition here is wrong, they're just all operating under different beliefs.

(sigh) Look, genre is a lot like gender. In fact, in some languages, they're the same word. It's vague, it's arbitrary, and it doesn't make sense if you squint too hard. But it's important to people, either to describe what they're doing or to understand what others are doing. There's never going to be a strict, clear definition of roguelike that perfectly covers all cases, because that's just not how genre works. Roguelikes are what we mean when we talk about roguelikes. It's very easy to poke fun at a genre label like this, but it's a lot harder to understand what it's doing, and what it means to people. That's the conversation that really matters here.

Is the Berlin Interpretation still relevant? Not as much as it used to be. But your interpretation is what's really important.

[genshinconfessions]

Honest to god, the more I see people behaving like actual monsters or children throwing a temper tantrum over characters not having skin as black as the abyss the more I flat out just do not have the capacity to care. I get it sucks that the characters aren't being diverse enough, I get it, but throwing death threats, slurs and god knows what else at the devs while behaving like spoiled rotten brats just makes me not care to any degree. If people can't behave like ACTUAL ADULTS and genuinely have polite points to say other than "Time to attack the devs again/slander the VAs or whoever for agreeing to go with this" whenever a character isn't dark skinned, they have no one to blame but themselves if the devs elect to not listen to what basically amounts to spoiled two year olds not getting what they want. I genuinely feel bad for people who want more diversity but are less hateful and end up being lumped in with the assholes who think threatening the devs lives is a okay, and I also feel bad for anyone genuinely excited about the Natlan characters getting absolutely harassed and ripped to shreds for not "thinking they're ugly for not being dark enough". I feel like if the fan base were ALOT LESS VITRIOLIC about the issue of diversity the devs would likely listen more. But as it stands now I can't wait for the harassing and death threats being thrown around to die down again so I can actually browse genshin twit and tumblr again in peace without having to worry about running into anyone being genuine human trash towards the devs over the color of fucking pixels. I've got enough stressing me out like grieving the loss of a parent, I don't need people being assholes to add to it and it sickens me that they don't see anything wrong with how they're acting. I'm just. I'm tired and wish people could be less like bullies or arseholes for once over a silly little gacha game they claim to love yet act like this. Sorry for this being a long confession, I just needed to get this off my chest cause it's been bugging me and stressing me out so much since the Natlan teaser got released whenever I've gone to look at Genshin stuff practically everywhere lately.....

i'm very sorry for your loss :( and if it will help you feel less alone, i generally agree with your sentiments.

for me, i am a pretty staunch hoyo defender (evident in previous posts when we used to comment on asks more frequently), but i must admit, i was slightly disappointed in the natlan characters since i believed the fan edits with darker skin did look better, and i wished hoyo would have listened to the intl fandom regarding south american/african/indigenous poc things.

that said, it's never okay to send death threats to anyone for any reason. i'm sure the devs are a lot less willing to make changes if all they're getting is death threats and, like you said, vitriolic hate. constructive criticism helps ppl realize where they're wrong and how to fix it; unconstructive criticism is generally useless and tends to be ignored.

the societal issue of colorism runs very, very deep, both in asia and generally around the world. it's not something that hoyo can fix singlehandedly by changing some characters. granted, i'm sure it would set a very good example for future game devs, and it would be really great if they did listen to intl feedback! but if they choose not to, that's not smth we can change their minds about.

side note, regarding a lot of the 'natlan is colonized' comments, we don't know the story yet. it's possible that hoyo will address it as social commentary, or it might be something totally different. leaks and the search for instant gratification have really made it difficult for people to enjoy a drawn-out storyline, and that's really sad.

we've said this a lot on this page but i'll say it again: why spend so much energy hating fictional media? if it no longer brings you joy for whatever reason (i.e. you dislike the natlan characters), stop playing. if the fandom is the main source of negativity, stop engaging with the fandom, block users and tags, curate your own experience. if you claim to hate everything about it but continue to engage with it, that's quite hypocritical and unconvincing.

in any case, if you like the game well enough to keep playing, keep playing. you don't need to justify your reasoning to anyone, and you definitely don't need to fall into a trap of radicalized (and dare i say often performative) social justice.

[seasidesketches]

Expose is much better than I thought it'd be!

(Spoilers below)

I was kinda concerned at how simple it started out in part 1, but it picked up really fast, and now it's lowkey one of my favorites! I'm getting a lot of Estero Harbor vibes from it, and I think that's what the devs are trying to do with Tangton.

But unlike Estero Harbor.....the story's actually a lot better and interesting.

Part 3 is hands-down the best part, and we got some....VERY yummy Ikki moments 🍽 JUST LOOK AT THESE! He's so pookie, but he's a sad pookie....wants to avenge his dad so bad.

And Su Jue jumpscared me, but it was a much appreciated jumpscare

It was so nice to see everybody from Farewell Fireworks again! Really makes the espers in Tangton feel like one family trying to work together against all the esper-racism conspiracies going on

So, here's my theory as to what's gonna happen next:

-Fu Shi is coming next. Leaks point to it, and the devs pretty much confirmed it. He's gonna be real important player in the story. Idk what he's gonna do exactly, but I have a gut feeling it's gonna be huge.

-Floating hottie with the spheres is most likely gonna be the final piece of the puzzle here. Again, idk what he's gonna do, but I hope it's important. All I hope is that they actually use him as a character (I don't want my bbg to be useless in the lore!)

-This whole "Tangton-being-the-next-Estero-Harbor" will definitely end when celestial anomaly ends for 2 reasons:

1-the estero harbor stuff ended at event story #4 (Farrah's)

2-it'll be 2nd anniversary time, and the CN server will no longer be newbies in terms of how long they've been in Dislyte

I'm really excited for the upcoming stories, along with pulling for characters. I'm currently saving for floating sphere babygirl, but if I get lucky and get enough wishstones in time, I MIGHT splurge for Fu Shi too...

oh and these are my inferno record savings watch me NOT get a legendary from them, like what happened with my flow records💀

Anyways, sorry for this giant essay of a post. This is probably the longest post I've ever made, but tbh....that's what happens when you're excited about your interest. You type, and then realize you've written a book.

Imma end it here. Check my account on March 19th for Jiang Man's and mine's bday art!

[rottenbrainstuff]

Don't you guys love it when I unearth the most random unrelated niche bullshit and then ramble about it incoherently for you all to read?

The latest thing giving me the dopamine hit atm is a silly otome game called Love & Deepspace, details of which mercifully hidden for you below the cut:

A friend of a friend recommended this game to me and it's turning out to be surprisingly fun. I'm impressed by how little content is paywalled or monetized. Like, I wouldn't mind dropping a little money on the game cause I'm enjoying it, and I HAVE spent a couple bucks here and there on items, but it doesn't really give you a huge advantage in the long term over someone who is playing it for free and that’s kind of surprising. (My god though this game is fucking chonky. If it keeps needing to download stuff I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to play….)

Unlike some other otome games where you have very clear relationship paths with the focus on one single person, here you develop relationships with everyone sort of all at once. I know some people like that, but I personally don't prefer it - it seems even in video games I am too monogamous to have multiple boyfriends at once. I started out focusing on Zayne, cause the older and more serious kuudere character is the one I tend to like in the silly games like this, but then Sylus popped up and now I have abandoned Zayne, I'm so sorry babe, it’s not you, it’s me.

Sylus is very much giving me vibes that the devs all had a design meeting and said "oh the girlies really fucking like Astarion from BG3 right now, why don't we make a copy of that, we could make him the tsundere criminal antagonist character or something?" One of the audio stories has the MC teasing him about looking/acting like a vampire and that's so funny, the devs absolutely knew what they were doing. Hilariously, one of the Sylus-specific custom titles you can win is a nickname I used to have back in the dinosaur days when I was in college, and I find that endlessly amusing. I like how he complains you're in the way if you get too close to enemies in combat - I will choose to interpret this as protectiveness, and it suits me just fine anyways cause I can't fucking dodge properly, and prefer to shoot shit from a distance.

Sorrrrry but I find the english audio way too cringe (particularly Sylus' VA?... sorry) so I have been playing it with the japanese audio. (because I understand a little japanese, and perhaps because I want to shame myself for not practicing at all in the last couple years) I'm sure the japanese audio is no less cringey to native japanese speakers, but the point is that *I* cannot tell. And you see, it increases my vocabulary of useless words I will never need to use - for instance this week I learned the word for "gun". I also like to note the translation choices where the audio and the subtitles don't match up, I find it interesting, like little easter eggs. In this case my understanding is the game was released in Chinese first, so instead of comparing a translation to an original, I am comparing one translation to another translation, but I still find it amusing. (Pie the fox is called “six dumplings” in Japanese)

I enjoy the little details... Sylus is very good at the card game and I can almost never win, Zayne is ridiculously easy to bully into swapping cards and I almost never lose. Sylus sucks at the crane game to the point where it's ridiculous (or maybe I just have bad luck???) but Zayne cheats and uses ice and wins a lot - myeh I dunno. It's cute, I'm easy to please, it's making my brain happy.

The fine details of the story are a bit incomprehensible and the interface takes a little getting used to. I do appreciate all the moving parts here, the story and the collectible content and the combat and everything, but it's a little bit humorous how all the bits don't overlap tidily, for instance I am getting event-related texts that are giving away spoilers for things I haven't learned in the main story yet. And Sylus' separate chapters popped up I think after I finished the ... second main story chapter? And it begins with mentions of a serious disaster that happens in the main story that I hadn't read about yet. It's funny though, just funny. I just got access to protocores and now everything is a million times more complicated. I have no idea why dumb shit like this releases the dopamine in my brain but whatevs. I dunno. If you found this post through a tag search feel free to jabber at me about this game, these little niche things I find, I have so few people I can talk about them with. Every once in a while I will holler my thoughts out into the void here. Blah blah blah. Etc.

[papenniesandbentoboxes]

Spoiler-Free KEY Review

Alright. I finished KEY. I'm going to play it again with my sister and then probably do a more in depth review of it, but for now I've got a just-finished-it review, and we'll see how this one compares to my second review after a second playthrough.

Plot:

The plot wasn't too bad! A bit linear compared to other games but I did enjoy it. It wasn't as visual novel-y as MID but wasn't as interactive as some other games. But overall it was fun and entertaining!

Characters:

The characters were enjoyable. I liked having some characters there being only barely involved when others were SUPER involved, so we have a lot more range with suspects and suspicions. I definitely would have liked digging deeper into the characters, like in CUR and GTH and SAW and such. Although, I'll admit, in most of the other games we didn't get super deep backgrounds either. There weren't a lot of dialogue options, so maybe in the future we can get more dialogue and character deep dives! I want more substance!

The only part about the characters I actively didn't like was a certain character's hair (bro, that's some Assassin's Creed Caterina Sforza hair, Sims hair, idk but it wasn't good enough), and the random unimportant NPCs. The NPCs were a bit distracting and did take me out of the game if I paid too much attention to them, so that's my take on that. In the future, I want to random unimportant NPCs to be completely gone and I want to VEN sound design back. That was immersive without needing the actual people standing around.

Now the phone characters were almost useless, only there to push the plot forward with barely any fun shit. In the future, I NEED more interaction with them. Less texting, more actual conversations. And they don't even need to be strictly about the game, give me conversations like what we had with Savannah Woodham. Not just a phone call here or there for only the purpose of moving forward in the plot. I need weird phone calls where they're like "hello! what do you want!" and the only dialogue option is "bye!" so then you hang up. I also want to actually be able to call them, because if there isn't a plot reason for it, you can't call them. So. Yeah. Oversight from the game devs.

Controls:

This game I feel was not designed with point and click in mind. I feel like it was added as a second option while favoring the "modern" controls of free roam stuff. However, I enjoyed the free roam! Maybe this is because I play a lot of other video games that aren't point and click, but I ended up really liking it. Other than that, the controls CAN be a bit clunky to get used to, but that happens with every video game with new controls you don't know yet (when I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 I punched my horse so many times because I couldn't get used to the controls and I felt so bad). I think they could definitely work on it more, but it is WAY better than Midnight in Salem. Way WAY better.

Music:

While not as iconic at the Kevin Manthei tracks I am in love with, I did like the music! It was pretty good, with some tracks standing above the others. I will say though that the track that plays in the tech store is my least favorite as it just sounds... meh. In every sense of the word.

Puzzles and Minigames:

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. There are actually puzzles!!!! After all, what, two puzzles in Midnight in Salem, we actually get REAL PUZZLES! They have some new puzzles, some recycled puzzles (THAT I WANT MORE OF), some pretty puzzles, some clunky but fine puzzles, and just a good variety of them. They also offer hints if you are struggling.

I think my favorite puzzle is... Well, I don't want to spoil it, but there are a few contending for the top place. (Although fuck math, all my homies hate math.)

As for the minigames, the coffee making is fun, although a bit daunting with the instructions. I recommend making your own notes aside from the in-game recipe books. The latte art can be irritating but eventually you get the hang of it. Not quite as bad as the SAW calligraphy but nowhere near the delight I got from the SPY cookies minigame.

Glitches and Issues:

I did catch a few typos and a few glitches, but they weren't the norm. Just look at the HeR site for what to look out for, and make sure your PC can handle the game. I didn't need to look out for that since I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and my laptop is running that fine (on low graphics lol). Way less messed up than MID, worse than some of the other games, but hey, it's not like we've never had bugs in the games before (there have been a few times the games have crashed on me because of bugs). And this time we have autosaves to help out with that.

Overall Impression:

It's a solid game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the UI and controls are still similar to MID, the game itself is a step in the right direction where I want the Nancy Drew games to go. It isn't perfect, I don't think we'll ever get a perfect Nancy Drew game, but it's good enough for me.

I'm happy with it. I got to have the joy of a new Nancy Drew game, which is something I haven't had since Midnight in Salem, and we know how that went. I got to find new clues, see new places, meet new characters, complete puzzles that were both new and recycled, and enjoy a new mystery. It brought a smile to my face multiple times and made me squeal in delight when I solved something. I haven't had a good new Nancy Drew game experience since I played SEA when it came out.

So I'm happy. Is it my favorite? No. But do I think it's bad? Also no. I think it's somewhere in the middle for me, but that's okay. These games make me happy, and I hope we get more so they can continue my happiness in the future.

Tentative rating: 7/10

[sleepymabel]

it's so weird to me how many star stable fans are so up in arms about the devs updating the game and switching out old assets to support a viable future for it because of nostalgia but none of them ever talk about the way bigger problem under the same umbrella; there is no way to replay the story of the game without making a whole new account and paying like 60 bucks. the amount of new characters ive made just to play the very limited but free beginning of the game over again is devastating. how is this just. the way it is. i want to know what the hell all those quests i did when i was 13 actually was about again. spy squirrels? detective figuring out who stole those god damn chickens? climbing up the firgrove mountain and something about a song at night??? the WALKING ON WATER PLAYING THE HARP THING?!?! oh my god the election of jarlaheim. opening epona! that guy getting kidnapped and then unkidnapped! whatever happened in the big forest over mistfall!!!! all of marleys siblings having different quests or something? a wedding? the vineyard and the basement flooding. sticking it up to mr kembell several times i think?? the dog named disco or techno or something? rabbit mans long lost love... sending his love letter by canon!!!! traveling to the oil platform in a FRIDGE. James committing fraud? theft? idk he did it all. James falling asleep (?) because of the dark riders???? or something? trying to save justin several times but we just kinda went in there and had a little conversation and then walked out again. over and over again. OUR HORSE HAD WINGS ONCE?!???!?! and it talked to us!!!! several! random! times! WE TALKED SOMETIMES!!!! NOT IN A 'choose 1 of these 2 options' WAY BUT A LITERAL TEXT BOX OF YOU SAID THAT (?????) WAY!?!?!??! okay that makes no sense but alas. pandoric portals! what the hell was up with evergray how did we even meet him! oh my god and what was the thing with ricky winterwell and the new hillcrest stable almost being sold?? why did fripp almost die?!??? what was up with the buttergoods and what about that one nice brother??? what was darko even doing again. derek being the most useless mailman ever but we love him anyway. that old lady getting addicted to some scary pole riding game and made a race out of it out in buttfuck nowhere mountains because okay. us doing said death trap pole bending race because we needed the game for something???? some big conspiracy about the mistfall water and GED was stealing it or something and raptor was involved? what the hell were we even doing in dino valley

[occasionallyprosie]

Devotion - Chapter 6: "In A Minute"

Dev reunites with one person from his past, and watches another from afar.

Meanwhile, instead of getting therapy himself, he gives it to his new kids AKA Captain Link, Mask, and Tune.

Read on AO3

First Chapter, Tumblr

"I know you," Ravio said near instantly.

Dev shakily inhaled—a useless habit—and nodded.

Ravio walked over, noticing Tune curled up and asleep with his head in Dev's lap, then his gaze raised back to Dev's face.

It visibly clicked. "Link," Ravio breathed. "Mr. Hero?"

"Ravio." Dev reached toward him and Ravio moved closer. Ravio took his hands but steered them, both Dev's and Ravio's both, to hold Dev's face.

"Look at you," Ravio whispered, studying his face. "You look like I did when we first met. Wrong eye color though, and not pale enough... Why so different?"

Dev blinked and his form quickly changed.

Lately, he had been using a form that better reflected his sword form, or rather a sort of mix between the Golden Sword and the Tempered Sword. He had violet hair that barely reached his shoulders but tied it up in a green ribbon, another green strand wrapping around a bit of hair by his face. He'd given himself a darker tan, one he had when he'd spent months at a time working in his orchard when he was still human, it turned out the sun couldn't tan sword spirits. Then he wore a pale, golden-yellow jerkin over a faded, burnt orange undertunic, the fabrics and style more reminiscent of a dream long ended than his once-favored red mail.

Suddenly, he was paler, still freckled but distinctly paler and those blemishes harder to notice as they nearly faded. Purple hair turned golden blond and a pink streak on the same side as the green ribbon, which remained. Gold and orange became dark green and red.

Ravio smiled almost blindingly. "There you are. How long, Mr. Hero?"

"Over three thousand," Dev managed. "Oh goddesses, Ravio."

Ravio squeezed his hands and pressed their foreheads together. "It's alright. You've done so well, Mr. Hero. You've gone so far. You're so incredibly strong."

Dev couldn't help but let out the small laugh that bubbled up. "Don't do that."

"But it's true. You've lived so long and I can't imagine you just hid from everything the whole time. You've must've saved the world so many times, met and lost so many people, and you're still making friends." Ravio nodded toward Tune's sleeping form. "You're so strong."

Dev closed his eyes and just relished in it. In Ravio's touch, his voice, he committed it all to memory.

"I remember this," Dev whispered. "It was while I was first—After we did the ritual, during that first year or so, right? You disappeared, stopped visiting for a while and I panicked so much. Then you came back and told me about this war and-and all these people you met and you had changed and I was so proud of you."

Ravio smiled at him. "Then I guess I don't have to worry too much about not going back home."

"You will," Dev swore. "I'll make sure of it."

"You haven't changed, Mr. Hero," Ravio laughed. "Not a bit."

Dev chuckled. "Maybe a bit. I don't fight with a sword anymore."

"Oh really? How do you fight?"

"If all goes well, I never will again. I... I've had to, but I don't want to fight anymore. Not myself."

Ravio smiled. "You know, that is different."

He did. He did have to fight.

A battle later that month went south. Mask got hit and downed, and Tune was with him, across the battlefield, desperately trying to protect him. Soldiers were spread thin across it, other displaced individuals fighting for their lives. Ravio would basically be playing wack-a-mole with the monsters, as more kept appearing no matter which he hammered into the ground. Midna was handling herself but that's as far as she could do.

Link got isolated and was getting overwhelmed.

"Dev, no," Fi intervened, her spirit wreathing around Dev's in a way to sort of stop him though they both knew it was ineffective. "We should not interfere."

"I'll interfere if I want to," he snapped at her. "They're going to die!"

She went silent at that.

Link brought tried to parry some attack and was disarmed, the Master Sword flying through the air as Link frantically brought his shield up as his only defense.

A huge, axe-wielding monster was about to break that shield in half, and Link as well. Fear shone clearly in his eyes.

A wall of flames suddenly exploded and Dev was standing between them. His hand held up, catching the giant axe, and looked like golden crystal and unbothered by the sharp blade. He held a fire rod in his other hand and a vicious grin was on his face.

"Don't touch my kit," he snarled and shattered the axe with a blast of magic.

He'd done some practicing since his sprite.

Flames roared around them as he turned to Link, pulling the Magical Sword from his pouch and offering it to him. "Get to the boys. I'll help clear the way."

Link just nodded, clearly a little bit awestruck and there was an odd warmth to his face that Dev couldn't quite place.

Dev burned his way through the battlefield, slashing and burning everything down around him. The bottoms of his fire rod had a sharp stiletto at the end and he used those to take down monsters and usurpers alike. He pulled out his tornado rod to help expand the reach the flames had.

Link made it to Tune and Mask's side, Dev trusted him to keep them safe as he began to thin the herd.

He couldn't let another hero die on his watch. Not another one, goddesses please.

His own magic helped the flames curve around soldiers and allies, shielding them even from the brunt of the heat no matter how close it came to them.

In minutes, the tide of the battle turned and Dev was standing back as the young ones finished the fight in favor of Hyrule. He let out a sigh and was about to return to sword form when he was assaulted.

"Mr. Hero! That was amazing!" Ravio gushed as he appeared beside him, robes torn and clearly exhausted yet alive with adrenaline. Dev offered him a red potion the moment he noticed the blood. "You know, I've said it a thousand times, but you do look like a dancer when you fight!"

Dev laughed lightly, attention flicking across the field to account for everyone as Ravio drank the potion.

"You have, and every time I've said that you should see Cadence," Dev reminded him and Ravio grinned.

"Dev! Ravio!" Link walked over to them, Mask unconscious on his back, arms loosely hung around his neck. "We're going back to camp. You... You know each other?"

"You called him, Mr. Hero," Tune said, half leaning on his sword. He was clearly exhausted, Dev guessed the kid, even for his alleged two adventures, was not used to fighting for hours on end, days at a time.

Dev chuckled. He went over and picked the pirate hero up. "Did he, bunso? I dunno..."

"I have no clue what you're talking about," Ravio declared.

It took no time after he picked the not-quite-a-teenager up, that Tune slumped into his chest. "Y'er warm," he muttered, clearly about to fall asleep.

"That's what happens when you burn things, you tend to be a bit warmer. Proximity to fire and all that."

Ravio snorted beside Dev as Link gave a long, suffering groan. Midna yelled for Ravio to join her and Linkle, and Ravio soon ran off to join the other dark-worlder.

Link smiled at Dev, offering his sword back.

Dev shifted Tune to his back and took the Magical Sword, letting it disappear into his pouch.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

"I'm fine," Link assured, his voice a bit softer than usual as they fell into step. "You know, you're scary when you're protective."

"Hmm?"

"When you appeared. You looked ready to burn the world to the ground... just to protect me," Link explained, looking down. "I don't get it. You also called me your kit."

Dev blinked, then he chuckled softly. "You are mine, you know that? The moment you pulled me from the pedestal, I adopted you. That's just how it works. And... And well, I would."

"You would what?"

"I would burn down the whole world just to keep my kids safe. You, these two..." his Sprite, "I'd do anything for you."

Link looked surprised, but he didn't continue the subject any longer. Instead just falling silent as they headed back to the camp.

"Come on! There's another new person, she's so cool! She knows the same language we speak on Outset!"

Tune dragged Dev through the field of tents, Mask perched on Dev's shoulders.

"We're coming! You don't have to run," Dev teased, one hand on Mask's leg as the kid rested his chin on top of his head.

"Hurry up then!"

"He's always in a rush to meet people," Mask grumbled. "It's weird."

"Maybe, but you're weird for hating them," Tune responded cheerily.

Dev chuckled amusedly. He tagged along and as they finally came up to the mess area where a bright voice was singing some jittery tune alongside the slamming of mugs and stomping of boots.

He knew that voice.

Standing atop a table, shaking and hitting a tambourine, was the girl from his dreams.

Marin.

Dev didn't breathe, he didn't have breath, but even so it felt like his was stolen. Tune laughed and went up to join the singing and dancing, Mask even lightened up a bit in the cheery atmosphere. Dev watched Marin dance on the tabletop, he saw her pull Tune up to join her. He hadn't noticed it before, but the two had similar energy, similar warmth and enthusiasm, they had the same bright smile too. Dev found himself smiling.

She looked happy... He'd let her live this. If she recognized him, then he'd talk, but if not... He wouldn't bring up old wounds, because she was older. She looked to be at least in her twenties and they'd been sixteen when Link--when Dev had washed up on her island.

If it was a dream for her too, then... Then best she live on and forget about some boy she knew in a world they'd never get back.

He was far too old and much too immortal to let her dwell on that.

"Kit," Dev sat down on the castle wall beside the Captain, who glanced up at him, "what's wrong?"

"You know, why do you call me kit?" Link asked, the nickname apparently distracting him from whatever turmoil was in his mind.

"You remind me of a lion, a prideful, protective, ferocious, fierce lion. So kit," Dev gave him a soft look, one that generally got his kids to talk in the past, "what's got your mane in a mess?"

Link rolled his eyes with a soft laugh. "I... I'm tired, Dev. I know you probably wouldn't get it, being an immortal spirit and all, but..." he looked up at the moonless night sky. "How... How am I supposed to keep fighting when I'm leaving them all behind? There's... It's my fault. If I just gave myself over to Cia, this wouldn't be happening. They wouldn't be dead. Everyone around me is dying, Dev," he choked a bit, "how am I... Why can't I save them?"

Dev sighed softly. "I do get that, actually." Link looked at him. "I'm immortal, kit. I'm young in comparison to Fi, she's had many other wielders than you, like Mask and Tune, but I only had one and I existed for centuries before he was even born. I... I helped the royal family for a while, helped raise the princesses, hide the princes, saved the country a couple times by telling the ruling body to use some common sense. I raised those kids into great kings and queens, Link. They all died. My wielder, he died too, bled out in my arms, I half raised him too."

Link was silent.

"Then there was a mage, a long time ago, multiple but that's not the point. This one mage wanted this specific child, two of them actually but more specifically he wanted the Princess. If, theoretically, we had given him that girl, it wouldn't have mattered. He still would have destroyed all of Hyrule and killed its people."

Dev looked over at Link. The teenaged war captain was still watching the stars, but clearly listening.

"If you gave yourself to Cia, it wouldn't end this war, kit. All it would do is make our side lose you, our captain and leader, our friend and ally, our brother." Link looked at him at that last one. "She isn't alone, those monsters wouldn't stop attacking. She has ancient evils on her side, evils that the heroes of the past had to fight off. All that would happen if you gave yourself to Cia, is exactly that. You'd be with Cia. The war would not end, peace would not be won or bought, everything else would continue, they would keep attacking, and you'd be trapped in the heart of it at the whims of a madwoman."

Link flinched a bit, tugging his sleeve slightly. Impulsively, Dev set what was now his signature purple cloak around his hero's shoulders.

"I know it's hard, people are dying around you and you believe you're responsible for saving them." Link nodded slightly to Dev's words. "But this is war, Link. This is bigger than just you, even if Cia is obsessed with you, that's not how this works. Something else would have been corrupted, someone else, Lana maybe, maybe some random mage who decides to raise an ancient evil, something would have happened. Maybe you would've had to travel across all of Hyrule to gather some magical items from dungeons deep in the ground to come back and fight them alone. But I speak from experience when I say the death toll would not have been better. Without the armies to protect them, monsters would've flooded villages, flooded the castle even, or maybe the armies themselves would've been mind controlled and men you know and trust would be turning against you."

Link grimaced. Dev knew he already hated having to kill the men who had willingly betrayed the crown, to kill men who had done it unwillingly was...

"Frankly, there are dozens of other ways this could have played out," Dev continued. "But it played out this way, and when I look at our status, the statistics from battles, how you're managing your men when you're barely an adult yourself," Link flinched at that, "you are doing incredibly, Kit. Better than I would have ever done, even if I were my age and not your age."

Link tugged the cloak more around his shoulders. He let out a long, shaky sigh and silence lingered for a good few minutes. Dev just stayed at his side.

"Thanks," Link whispered into the air. "Thanks Dev."

He hummed softly. "Of course."

Dev crossed his arms as he stood in the entryway of a certain tent, Link was leaning over at table, scarfless. Dev knew that both Mask and Tune were curled up on their bed in another tent with the scarf wound around and over them both.

"You faked them out," Dev said and Link startled, reaching for a weapon only to raise Dev's own sword form against his intangible spirit form.

Link sighed, sheathing the Master Sword. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The boys are out cold with your scarf around them. You got them to sleep and then left. You know they hate it when you don't sleep too," Dev chided. He moved over to look at the map on the table.

"I have to finish this, and finish that report," Link said as he gestured to a stack of papers on the nearby desk. Dev moved over to it and flicked through them. "I don't have time to rest."

Dev sighed. "Goddesses... you have no idea how often I told myself that."

Link made a confused noise, looking at him.

"Just—When I was younger, I had a lot to do and little time to do it. I was right of course, I didn't have time to rest, but the difference was," Dev placed a hand on Link's shoulder, "I didn't have people who could take my burdens from me."

Link looked confused and Dev chuckled softly.

"Let's finish those reports together and then you need to get some rest. What helps you relax?"

"I... doing things with my hands. Knitting, training, braiding my sister's hair, stuff like that," Link said quietly. He unsheathed the Master Sword and set it out. It disappeared in a slight flash and Dev let himself become tangible and he picked up the reports.

"Well we're currently out of yarn," Dev noted, "and training is absolutely out of the question..." he hesitated and sighed. "Fine. Sit."

Link looked a bit confused but he sat on the edge of the bed and Dev sat down on the ground in front of him. A bit of magic had the papers floating in front of and around him, and he changed his form a bit.

The green ribbon fell into his hand while his violet purple hair grew out to his mid-back. Link startled and Dev combed one hand through it.

"If it helps you relax," he said softly.

Link made a small noise, something a bit strangled but deeply touched. Fingers slid through his hair and Dev worked on the reports, murmuring what he was reading and doing to Link while the young captain braided his hair.

"When'd you have long hair?" Tune asked after a battle.

"Because Link needed to calm down and he said braiding hair helped," Dev answered, cleaning the blood off Tune's face with a rag. "Goddesses, bunso, you either gotta clean up your act or you're joining me for training after this."

Tune grinned. "Can I braid your hair?"

Dev shrugged. "If you want, sure. Not now though. Later."

Tune lit up.

After that, Dev just kept his hair long, usually braided by either Tune or Link, and then he became Mask's practice as the fairy boy wanted to learn how to as well.

It was the nature of all things to end, and war was counted among them.

Dev pulled Ravio into a tight hug, as the merchant was one of the first to go back home.

"I'll see you in a minute," Ravio joked weakly.

Dev wanted to cry. "Bye, Ravi."

"Bye, Link," Ravio whispered, his words unheard by everyone else. "Be happy."

Dev tightened his hug before finally letting go. Ravio squeezed his hands before he gave another boisterous goodbye to everyone. Declaring they'd get discounts if they ever visited his shop.

Then he was gone.

Dev stepped back beside Link.

"You knew each other," Link said.

Dev gave a strained laugh. "You could say that."

Midna had insulted them all on her way out. Marin left with a promise to never forget them.

One by one, everyone returned home, then it was just four three heroes remaining.

Mask did the best at staying strong. Link pulled them both into tight hugs, Tune clung to him but declared that Link would be alright and now Tune had plenty of stories to tell Aryll when he got home.

Mask had quietly told Link that he better take care of himself from now on.

"You hear me?" The little fairy boy glared weakly at Link. "You take care of yourself! You eat every day and sleep properly! We-We—We won't be here to make you do it anymore, so you—You gotta do it."

Link was in tears. "I will, Dev's still here to be annoying. I'll be alright, Sapling. Just—Go home and be happy, okay? Promise me that you'll find something to be happy about."

Mask's facade broke and he was in tears, crying against Link's chest.

Tune stepped away from them and he turned to Dev. He approached and hugged the spirit, and Dev wrapped the young pirate in a tight hug.

"How... How do you and Ravio know each other?" Tune asked, his face against Dev's shoulder.

Dev smiled into the boy's hair as he tilted his head. "I was just like you once," he admitted in a quiet whisper, so quiet that neither Mask nor Link could hear him. "A hero. I was younger than you, maybe even younger than Mask, when I first started."

Tune's eyes widened and he stared at him as he pulled away. Dev gently brushed his hair from his face, keeping eye contact.

"I saved Hyrule so many times, bunso. One of those times, I met this merchant... You may never visit this place or hear of it again, but there's a land called Lorule, and it's the opposite of Hyrule."

"Ravio said he's from Lorule," Tune recalled.

Dev nodded. "He is. But just as Lorule and Hyrule are mirrors, so are its people. Ravio is my mirror, he is my Lorulean counterpart. If you ever saw him without his hood, you would've seen the resemblance."

"But if he's from your past then... He's died," Tune realized. "That's why you were crying."

Dev chuckled softly. He kissed the top of Tune's head before mussing blond hair and dislodging the green cap.

"I've seen a lot of loved ones die, bunso," Dev admitted. "Ravio was one of the first, but he didn't die during my adventures, nor while I was Hylian. He died of old age. That's better than some fates I think we've both seen."

Tune nodded. "You're... you're a hero?"

"Not anymore. Now I guide the hero so they can succeed. If I have my way, I'll never have to raise a sword again... Magic rods are okay though."

Tune laughed wetly and he hugged Dev. "Love you, Dev," he muttered. "Thanks for being my big brother."

Dev hugged the kid as tight as he could. "No, thank you."

They pulled apart and Dev squeezed his shoulder.

"Now go conquer that ocean of yours, little pirate. And tell Aryll and Tetra hi from me and Fi."

Tune nodded rapidly. He hugged Link and Mask one more time, telling Mask he better take care of himself or he'd time travel just to make him do it. Mask had laughed wetly and teased Tune that he better tell Tetra he had a crush on her. Despite the prompt argument, they went through the portal holding hands, only letting go at the very last moment.

Dev spent that night talking with Link and hugging the young hero until he passed out from crying and losing the two kids he adore.

Next>>

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo 2022 wrap up

As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to look back at these past months to let everything really sink in. We people sometimes forget how hard we have worked to get to where we are and tend to focus instead on what's still left to do, on what is missing—so I think the best way to remind us of how far we've come is to write down some achieved milestones and some goals for next year!

We wanted to first and foremost thank you all again for the overwhelming support we have received in the short time we have been active on socials. We weren't expecting it whatsoever, and the huge welcome you all gave us is everything we could ever dream of! 💜

This is another long post of what has been done and what's to come, so feel free to skip it if you want to! We hope you finish this year surrounded by love and that your start of 2023 is full of energy and good vibes!

✦ One of the most important milestones of the year was our social media release.

As we worked on the game this past year, there were times where we thought it would never happen. It was never the right time for one reason or another, and the world seemed to throw a punch at us whenever we were about to take the plunge. To be here writing this post doesn't feel real yet!

The week prior and the first week of our social media release on Twitter was frantic for the team; designing the many posts, planning them and the objects game, writing everything down...Plus the anxiety of what would the response be. I'm sure a lot of fellow devs reading this (specially those like us who are working on their first project) can relate to that feeling.

And then the response came, and in almost two months we have exceeded all expectations we had. We tried to be realistic with them, so waking up each day to comments, likes, asks on tumblr, even DM's from professionals wanting to work with us was just...ah. There's something indescribable about putting something you love out there and have people be interested in being part of that love. I could cry. So let's just jump to the next milestone before I keep writing :').

✦ We had our visual identity established! Our GUI is on the way and it's looking amazing so far! We have Re.Alice to thank for that 💜

✦The script for the demo is done!

The first draft was oficially finished September 2021, and I have been editing it since. There were major changes done as Lost in Limbo's story and characters kept evolving, and to this day I'm still doing some changes to perfection it as much as possible. I write a lot and I'm trying not to do that, so I found myself deleting as many "useless" scenes as possible. Right now the demo sits at 33.168 words!

✦All the sprites for the LIs were finished!

We finished Pride, our last one, back in April. As a fun fact (which was absolutely not fun for all of us), we wrote down some fixes to be done to the sprites one week before the social media release. It was little things like a piece of clothing, move this to the left...and then the sprites were basically revamped in the spawn of a week. Specially the faces. We had grown so much as artists since the day we finished them, so Rachel started doing some edits and one thing led to another...And all LIs got plastic surgery! We'll show you the before and after someday, haha.

The sprites are all full bodies so as we saw ourselves overworked, we decided to just edit them from the waist up for the social media posts. Thankfully not all of them needed their lower body fixed—except for Envy, who had no legs. There were no legs under his clothing layer. Now there are. They were our first character designed and the first sprite to be done, so obviously the poor thing had the most flaws.

✦All routes were outlined!

Every LI has a more or less established route, and the main story of the game is slowly blooming into something really strong.

If any, Ara is the one I'm most unsure about as the writer, because I have so many ideas for her that could work! I'm sure a lot of things will change, even for the most solid routes, as we progress and specially as I keep writing, but it will always be for the better!

✦We started coding!

This past month I have been toying with Ren'py and so far everything is coming along great. Right now there's around 4k words coded with the respective music, sound effects, transitions...I have been learning along the way and there's still a lot of things for me to learn and investigate, so it's taking a while. My goal is to have the demo fully coded with placeholders so when all the assets are done, it'll be just swapping files!

We initially settled on Unity but then questions arised, so we decided to work with Ren'py at least for the demo, and then move to Unity if the game needs it.

✦We made a teaser trailer!

Yep! There's a teaser trailer for LiL! We were ahead of the curve with this one because initially we were going to post the teaser as soon as the game was announced, but then we decided it would be best to save it for the demo release. It's an animated teaser of the events of the demo (among other stuff)! As the demo release approaches we will surely edit it some more (I almost descended to madness thanks to After Effects, but here I am) but we are very happy with it right now.

✦And some extras!

We finished our two first supporting/secondary characters and are working on the third! In the demo, there's a total amount of six secondary characters you'll meet!

We worked on some backgrounds! It may sound silly, but this has been an uphill battle for us most of the year. We have four backgrounds ready to be painted, and we'll have one last concept done before the 31st!

We met amazing people. Personally, if I could tell the Seyl from a year ago that she'd be talking to a lot of devs she admires, she would laugh at my face. What do you have to say now, huh?! But on a serious note; it takes me the world to just find the courage to even leave a comment to someone I admire, and managing Lost in Limbo's accounts has given me the push I needed to just stop thinking about the many what-ifs that are never going to happen and just make the possitive thoughts and emotions I feel inside something real. Daily reminder to let the people you love and admire know!!

You thought the post was over? No! YOU ARE TRAPPED HERE FOREVER!

Ahem. Here are some of the goals we'd like to meet in 2023!

✦Finish all the assets for the demo!

The most obvious one! We have a calendar planned for the entire lenght of 2023, but life gets in the middle, three of us are studying a master degree that is testing our sanity, and there will be, of course, unexpected problems along the way. So we'll deal with them as they come!

There's still expression charts to finish, secondary character's sprites to make, backgrounds to paint and animate, CGs, key and promotional art...But we'll get there! And hopefully you all will be here with us to see the process!

✦Open a ko-fi page!

As you may know, Lost in Limbo is a passion project made by four friends who have no money and no future prospects. Rachel and I have been working as freelance artists for a long while now, but it's hard to work on LiL, work on our commissions to support it financially (and getting work is getting harder), and focus on our master degree, which also asks a lot from us.

So far, everything Lost in Limbo has needed that we couldn't provide ourselves with the quality we wanted has been paid out of our dusty pockets, so one of our goals next year is to open a ko-fi page so everyone who may be interested in supporting the project until the Kickstarter drops can do so! 💜

✦The demo? The demo.

This point is dependent on the first one, because if we do not manage to finish all the assets, we will not be able to release the demo by the end of 2023. If everything goes smoothly and as planned, we'll have all the assets done before the last three months of 2023, and we'll use those three remaining months to sort out everything else. This is the most possitive prospect we could think of, so there's a chance we won't make it.

We are adamant not to rush the demo release no matter what, but we will work as hard as we can to make it happen as soon as possible. There's a lot to be done; I'd like the demo script to be proofreaded, we would love the demo to be at least partially voiced, we will have to get the demo tested for bugs...

We know reading this is kind of sad, but we want to be honest with you all. We are the first ones who want to see the demo out there and who want you all to experience the world we have created, but we don't want to sacrifice quality because of it. What we can promise is that you'll get regular updates and that you are all welcome to ask us anything, anytime, about the game, the process, or about us.

✦Be more active in the community!

To end on a positive note, something we'd like to do next year is be more active in the indiedev community. There's a lot of places and ways for indiedevs to interact, but we haven't felt ready to join them yet. We have been following and silently admiring so many projects for so long that the thought of being in the same space as them sometimes feels overwhelming (blame it on social anxiety), but the brief time we have been managing these accounts, we have been given a lot of love and support from other devs, and we want to give it back. We know we will be welcomed when we decide to take the step! Thank you all so much, from the Ravenstar team, for giving us and our project a chance! 💜

✦Stop confusing 'in' with 'on' and viceversa.

Because in is like inside and on is like on top, but sometimes that's not it, and for non-native speakers is confusing as hell and I want to stop googling every two seconds

What a year has been! From starting the project around July 2021 to being here doing a wrap up of 2022, it doesn't feel real yet. And there's so much more to come! Thank you all so much for believing in us and in Lost in Limbo, for taking your time to write a comment or an ask, leave a like, or even just reading our posts.

This final toast goes to my team; to Rachel, Astro and Kayden for being amazing people full of love and creativity. Thank you for a year of passion, hard work and laughter every step of the way. Lost in Limbo could have never been what it is today without the three of you.

Let's all make 2023 something great! 💜🥂 See you all next year!

[moefling]

And finally Any Way The Wind Blows reread...

I really dislike Matali. Like of the the Adults who should have seen The Mages abuse, she is on the top and she is throwing it back in Penny's face!?? (f*ck Matali Bunce)

*sobbing* but also I love angst so also 😈

Dev is a Pitch?!? Idk why but I thought he was a Grimm (tho I did read the fanfic rebel rebel just b4 starting my reread so maybe that's my confusion)

How long is Simon's tail? I'm pretty sure that based on how it's described to twist around things it's gotta be like the same length Simon is tall (5 foot whatever)...

"He already gave me a sword, but I'm not magickal enough to call it." (page 6) this is so sad, I remember seeing a tweet from Rainbow saying the Sword of Mages was still in him he just couldn't call it and just that makes me want to cry for Simon

i love that Fiona continues to use the numpty joke with Baz because that is such a real family thing to do (page 14)

Premal and Simon should have a talk... they both have very complicated feelings about the Mage (i mean Simon wins but)

Poor Penny. she used to solve all of Simons problems and now she can't so she feels useless

"I'm ready to let go - to be me again. The me I thought I was before the Mage ever showed up." (page 37)

"I hate the sight of him. All I see is what I've lost- who I was. His match." (page 62) this f*cked me up because its a call back to CO when Baz says he loves that Simon is screwed up because "they match" and that quotes is VERY popular...

"I know I'll never love anyone like I love Baz. I know he's the love of my life. Of all my lives" "This was my life to find love. The truest love. The biggest. Buti it isn't my life to have it." "I'm too... broken. I don't know how to be close to people." (page 65)

we need for Fiona moments. the fact that she is marrying a vampire but can't ask Baz if he needs to feed? (page 82)

lol Simon showing up unannounced again and commenting on Baz's clothes (page 87)

Simon cuts so deep but i love it because it's real and he is telling everything so Baz knows

"I didn't get to keep anything... What did I get to keep, Baz?" (page 91) i think this hurts even more because he still thinks he's removing his wings and tail. to literally at this moment he doesn't think he got to keep anything: his magic, his mentor, his friends, his purpose in life, the safety that came with knowing what comes next

when Simon tells Baz he loves him to me the tone from Baz questioning it was even sadder because he wasn't just questioning Simon saying it but (to me) it seemed like a question that anyone would tell Baz that

headcanon that not only was Simon deprived of a magical childhood he also didn't have a normal one so he doesn't know things like Disney movies (or really used a cell phone)

i love that Baz switches between Simon and Snow regularly even in his own thoughts

gosh this book has the snowbaz bants that i've been looking for. referencing when they were enemies but now in a funny/ cute way

"'Christ, Baz, I never thought I was straight. I never thought about it at all.'" (page 127)

""I met him the usual way.' 'You chased him off the road?'" (page 167)

i love that there isn't really any comparisons between the Salisbury's and Simon until the end. it's not shoving it in your face if you can't remember the first book (no bronze hair like Simon or Ruth eats like Simon - there is a moment where it is mentioned that Jamie sucked at reading and talking and Simon thinks same but it is Simon thinking it not a comparison someone else is thinking)

is the light touch over simulation or has Simon just never been touched gently before so he doesn't understand it...

""I can touch you less gently, but I won't love you less kindly.'" (page 222)

when Ruth gives the glasses to Simon i remember on my first read i though that was how Simon was going to get his magic back...

i'm 80% sure Lady Ruth was ready to adopt Simon before she know he was Lucy's son and i'm 85% sure she would be very fine with them using the glasses for.... other purposes

the Demon turning to Penny after and basically winking as saying call me...

"'..it was children who brought down the Mage!'" (page 399) i think we need to talk about this more. the fact that Fiona is ok with it but all the Kids have BIG trauma about it all (and f*ck Matali again for victims blaming the Kids)

Simon using a pet name for Baz 😍😍

"'And you don't have to wear a jacket in the middle of June. Do you know how jealous I am?'" (page 407)

(something half baked about chosen ones being warm to the touch)

Baz wearing this boyfriends ex girlfriends sweatshirt

a note that Simon couldn't feel magic at all after Smith zapped him

so Smith's spell.... does it imply that you can waste magic? if you only have so much? or...

so what is Simon.... is he sorta a dragon?

Notes for Snow for Christmas

i love that this exists so we can see happy snowbaz without them doing chosen one shit

i love and hate that Baz tells Simon he is coming back after a fight (page 222)

i've decided that they should tell Lady Ruth about Baz's vamp thing because she would probably blink and then offer to keep blood in the fridge for when he visits. and she wouldn't tiptoe around it either

i like that Simon takes some responsibility to not drink because he kinda has a problem with it

Question... did Baz know he was a vampire before his teeth came in..? cuz knowing his family idk if they would have told him...

do Baz's siblings know he is a vampire? Simon asks but it isn't really answered...

[randomnameless]

If I can be the devil's advocate, the victim blaming helps illustrate how misguided Supreme Leader is and is one of the few aspects that support her status as the villain/antagonist. (And if anyone defends victim blaming especially wrt imperialism, yikes).

You're not playing devil's advocate anon, rather IS/KT's lol

If the devs didn't bail out at the last moment - CF and Supreme Leader could have been fascinating bonuses for the FE series, play as the red emperor - see how the red emperor recruits/their tactics to keep the population ignorant at large and demonise the people they're attacking, etc, etc...

But no, instead Supreme Leader wondering why people are not happy when she's Aymr'ing them is played seriously, and we're left puzzled with the character we see, are we supposed to follow Flamey - who lies and manipulates people, ultimately ditching them when they're useless - on her quest to conquer the world, seeing how this manipulation works, the "must have good PR" tactics unfold etc etc?

Because that's part of what we see in Tru Piss - the lie about Rhea using Nukes, the lie about "unlike u i let people go when i stormed Garreg Mach" and the Aeneid approved "what is a pincer attack?" where Supreme Leader apparently marvels at how the "pincing" army supposedly waited until the first army was already ko to intervene, limiting their losses - when it's just a pincer attack with added plot rain -

And then we have the brainfart moments "why are people resisting?" that completely retcon the entire "uwu blood at my feet" because, hey, you knew blood would rain since you uwu'd about it, so why now you're wondering why people are dying? - that is also played seriously, are we following Flamey and a red Emperor, or someone who thought she was playing with dolls and forgot her own words?

Everything falls flat when the games give the victim blaming lines to other factions, aka the victims themselves!

Like in

(SS's worst support)

Nopes.

I get victim blaming when you're siding/following the red emperor's mindset, because PR, or maybe because they're delured enough to think they're doing this for the "great-err good" - but the invaded parties?

Where the fuck in FE Tellius are people telling Ike started Ashnard's war because he sheltered Elincia? Sigurd pretty much says "fuck off" to people telling him Granvalle might hate him for, hm, sheltering the Prince of an enemy nation instead of dicing him in cubes, because said prince is only a kid in hiding and Siggy will protect him (which will of course be used as an argument leading to his downfall) - When Reptor and Langobalt (and Andrei don't forget him!!!) attack Sigurd and deem him a traitor, Sigurd doesn't think they're right and it's his fault if he and his men are branded traitors because they rescued a child, no, he wants to cleanse his (and his father's !) name by rekting the aforementioned dudes.

Unless we're supposed to understand Supreme Leader's information campaign reached far and wide, why the world blames the Central Church, you know, the Elincia who was kicked out of her home, for the start of the War? What were they supposed to do? Die ?

I still have to check with friends about the accurate translation, but Supreme Leader's battle lines even in Nopes, lampshade this victim blaming, telling the Nabateans or Church peeps she's only fighting because they do like -

you want them gone and they want to survive, it suspiciously looks like some "it's your fault I have to smack you/you made me do this" - but hey, from the Red Emperor, it's normal, they deflect and redirect the blame because they are the Red Emperor, and they manipulate, it's their MO (even if Supreme Leader's quite weak compared to people like Ashnard or Arvis who legit framed Siggy!).

And that's where the Hresvelg Grey pours like an endless fountain - the victims will never be allowed a voice to the chapter - the plot ignores them and so it's their fault, and nothing says the contrary. It's because Rhea is so BaD and sekritly controls the World that Supreme Leader has to invade the Alliance who pretty much doesn't give a fuck about what Rhea says or does.

And no one will ever point that out.

In a nutshell, I love Tru Piss as a concept, the unreliable words you're told vs the world you see - the contradictions between your side's story and the rest of Fodlan, how the dissonance is too strong and culminates with "Rhea BaD she razed Arianrhod" and yet... nothing comes from this. The plot warps at the 11h59 hour to fit with the "world as you're told" and Tru Piss shines on Fodlan.

Sothis forgots you've terminated her daughter (and maybe son+granddaugther?) because Supreme Leader doesn't believe in... Sothis, or how she fulfills her fated enemies agenda to have brainsex with Billy and shares with them some of her power to make sure they still live as she poofs in oblivion if she wasn't S-supported - completely retconning what we knew of Sothis (the supposed loving mother) and what we will later learn about her (the vengeful being who's pretty pissed at people who slaughter her kin).

TLDR : Fodlan's victim blaming could have been better implemented in the Red Emperor "information campaign" to depict how warped information is, in times of war, or in general, the dangers of misinformation coupled with a charismatic person's spouting utter shit to justify... something that is not justifiable. But Tea must be sold, and so everyone buys the "information campaign" even if the world screams against it.

Victim blaming becomes unsufferable in Nopes and in the worst support ever, Rhea's straight out asking Billy if the war - eating nukes, being tortured in Enbarr for 5 years, a continental war, disparition of civilians, Baldos and Waldis being manufactured, etc etc - is her fault and Billy never saying "of fucking course no".

When Ninian blames herself for Elbert's death, Eliwood tells her it's not her fault, Elbert died trying to do what he thought was just, and Nergal was the one who killed him.

Oh well.

[redwizardofgay]

I regret very much to inform all of you that I am still on my bullshit with dnd 4e, and that today I shall be ranting about one of its better ideas: sorting classes into set roles.

So! 4e had this pretty neat idea of actually staying outright, in the rulebooks, what role a specific class was suited for given their abilities. Given that dnd is allegedly a roleplaying game, this is, on the face of it, a good idea. It gives players a good idea of what they're supposed to do in combat beyond "kill the monster" and also gives party building a much more coherent direction than "we need a cleric". Especially with sources acting as a sort of qualifier for what sort of powers and abilities a character could have, this creates a gorgeous symmetry where you could say something like " I want to play a divine striker" and wouldn't you know it 4e has just such a class. As is characteristic for 4e, however, the execution flamed out hard, and doesn't really work as intended.

The game offered a total of four roles: controller, defender, leader and striker. Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well.... by 4e's reckoning "controller" is an area of effect blaster unit, defender is a battlefield manipulator, and leader is healer. Strikers alone actually do what they sound like they should do: single target damage. There are three problems here. Firstly, it's never a good thing when the meaning of a game term doesn't intuitively follow it's obvious meaning. At minimum this slows down acquisition of knowledge and makes communication more difficult than it otherwise needs to be, at worst it actively confuses players and renders the system useless. Secondly, 4e is balanced around there being 5 players at the table, and yet there are only 4 roles. Nothing about that makes sense to me, and I just have more questions than answers there; most notably why certain roles are just not present. Which leads me to point three: missing roles. Long term dnd fans will automatically notice that 4e's role roster leaves out a role for skill challenges (traditionally held by bards and rogues), and the idea of a controller --- something like a Mesmer is Guild Wars or an Enchanter in Everquest fits right in with what 4e is going for, so why isn't there a class to represent that archetype? While I've found a tonne of neat insights from the devs of 4e as to why they made the choices that they did, this is one that still evades me. Like, why would they add this really neat system and then half-ass it so badly? In any case, I want to present you all with an idea of how to fix it.

To begin with, we're going to change around what roles we have. I see no reason to keep the four that we've already got so I'll instead present my thesis of five roles: Controller, Defender, Expert, Striker, and Support.

Controllers are characters who control the flow of battle, most often by manipulating enemy creatures' behaviour (either through mind magic or through punishing effects like countermagic,) the position of friends and foes, and the battlefield itself. A druid's ability to transform the weather and terrain of the battlefield makes them an ideal controller, as does the illusionist's ability to manipulate the perceptions and ideas of their enemies.

Defenders are characters who protect others. While defenders can manipulate enemy behaviour through taunting (an ability common to all classes in this role,) they can also use reactions like opportunity attacks, parrying, and defending (shoving allies out of a space and taking an attack on their behalf) to protect. Fighters and paladins are the quintessential defenders. Fighters' ability to lay down zones of control around themselves and viciously punish anything that gets too close makes them an ideal defender, while the paladin's ability to heal and smite makes them a punishing protector of the weak.

Whenever a party is faced with a skill challenge, they'd best call in an Expert to help them. Experts are characters with oodles of skills like picking locks, recalling knowledge, and tracking monsters that add ample depth to the game experience. In a fight, experts help their friends along by using their skills to get into advantageous positions (in which case they usually serve as sub-strikers) or using their knowledge to ensure every strike is as deadly as it can be (allowing them to serve as sub-supports.) Rogues and bards are quintessential experts.

Strikers are damage dealers, and count both single target and area-of-effect damage dealers as part of their club. As a striker, your primary objective is to hit the enemy as hard as you can from one turn to the next. Wizards and warlocks are both strikers, with wizards being better at multi-target attacks and warlocks being masters of single-target damage. A wizard's ability to command the essences of reality to assault large swaths of the battlefield makes them slow, vulnerable engines of destruction. Warlocks, in contrast, are essentially magical snipers, striking at enemies with punishing accuracy and ferocity before vanishing into magical darkness.

Supports, finally, are the healers, buffers and debuffers of the D&D party. As a support, you are expected to make your allies be all that they can be --- either by patching them up when things go awry, by making them better at things than they usually would be, or by making rest of the world bend to your will. Clerics and warlords are supports. Clerics are powerful healers who magical ability to heal and raise the dead enables many adventurers to push themselves beyond the brink and make it home again. Warlords, in contrast, are tactical super-geniuses whose military know-how ensures that their allies move with the confidence of trained soldiers.

I would also like to introduce the concept of sub-roles that is, a position that a class can play in but doesn't manage to do as well as a proper member of that role would. Rogues, as mentioned above, are adept strikers, even if their primary use is as experts. Wizards, in contrast are primarily strikers but can fill-in for an expert with their vast knowledge of the arcane. With sub-roles also accounted for, classes get to be more than just the role they're meant for, while also making it more difficult for parties to build themselves poorly and suffer as a result.

And that's what I've got one roles so far. I think the idea of having explicit roles for a class can be a good thing, but of course that comes with the caveat that they should be evidently loose. As in, the affinity any class has for a role should be loose enough that only a fool would insist that a rogue cannot be a striker, or a wizard must also be a blaster. That's more for community management than anything else, but I still think it's worth putting down somewhere.

[ai-or-not-ai]

Things to know:

I do not think AI art is inherently evil and terrible. I believe that if the art is clearly labelled and that if the generators are collecting their data and operating their services ethically that it is a perfectly fine tool to use. Unfortunately, as far as I know, that is not currently the case.

the true problem with certain uses of AI is capitalism

In that vein, I hate when AI art gets shown around completely unlabelled. If you claim AI art is its own art form it is imperative to label it as such at least in your tags to prevent confusion between digital or traditional artwork that was created manually.

So many of these AI images are stolen from the accounts that originally posted them. I’m not sure whether I personally consider that theft or if it is even legally theft, but in the process of reposting the picture they leave out important details like the fact it was AI generated in the first place.

These are all my personal opinions. This blog is not intended to be a place for me to open myself up to a bunch of discourse. I may reblog posts about AI but I will not engage with you if you are rude and incensed. That will get you blocked.

I myself am predominantly a digital artist (and sometimes a traditional artist when the mood strikes me) as well as a student of art history. This is my point of view as someone with knowledge in both historical artistic movements and the creation of art itself.

If you do not want to come across AI art I suggest blacklisting related tags. They will not always be labelled but many are.

Some tools that are called ‘AI’ have been around for years or serve extremely useful functions that do actually reduce the amount of tedious tasks a human would have had to perform previously. Such as generative fill tools in photoshop when used to edit a flaw from a photo, etc. AI has become a tech buzzword applied to any and every technology (usually for the sake of getting investors excited about it). This blog is mainly focused generative AI. Mainly images, but also sometimes LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT or video/sound generation. I am not talking about the kinds of AI used by game devs to help NPCs function without coding every single one yourself or how in the Spiderverse movies they coded an ‘AI’ tool to help the 2D lines follow the 3D forms. There are many different kinds of tools called ‘AI’ and it has become a functionally useless term in some instances, as there are many varied forms it takes and often the classic idea of artificial intelligence from sci-fi (being a computer that thinks for itself) is not the actual implication.

If you are worried about energy usage involved in AI generation, please direct those criticisms to the organizations operating the models. They are the ones who are most responsible for that and the ones who can actually make a material change (and some indeed have been trying to).

The best thing you can do to ‘fight’ the negatives of AI is supporting independent artists.

We are all human beings who make mistakes (including me! please, I want you to always use your own critical thinking skills!) Give each other grace.

Post labelling

I will do my best to find the original source, including the original poster and what generator was used if I am able.

I will tag the posts with ‘ai image’, their respective generator (if applicable) and ‘synthography’ a term for computer generated art intended to set it apart from other art forms

I may speculate on images used to synthesize the final artwork if something comes across as particularly obvious to me.

Post submission

Send me posts you suspect are AI generated but unlabelled as such

Send me posts that you know are AI generated but reposted and unlabelled

Do not harass the original poster. If they are a reposter, block and report them. If they are an AI enthusiast and you don’t like AI, block them. If they turn out to be an artist posting their actual art for the love of god I hope you didn’t personally accuse them of generating their art and if you did go apologize immediately and profusely.

Tags to blacklist to avoid AI

Generative Art

AI Generated

AI Art

Midjourney

Dalle 3

Synthography

If I reblog from you….

Sorry

I probably follow you on my main blog

It is not a negative reflection on you if you could not identify an AI generated image yourself. I personally do not just rely on my eyes for these and try my best to find the image source to verify ai generation when possible.

Some AI generated concepts look cool I don’t blame you for reblogging them. I personally just wish people were more obvious about what is AI so that the average person can make better informed decisions about whether or not they want to share it. This is just so you can make that choice.

[yanderefairyangel]

*sight*

Now I understand better why ラファリュ grew in popularity and all and why I am ridiculosly obsessed with it, but still that's such a shame IS didn't manage to make these level of chemistry for more character with Alear and that's really disappointing knowing that not only is it a ship doomed to be underated, but that because it's our traditional "ouups, we did a scamcest" some fans are definitely going to be judged for just liking their dynamic rather then being uncomfortable cause I totally respect not liking it or thinking it has a weird narrative because... it is no matter how you look at it, no one will argue that dating the son of you dad from an universe where your dad isn't your dad isn't weird, but I really think that making a crusade over proving either point is useless and not just because we are talking about pixels and that I personally don't play a video game to ask myself philosophico/moral question, and I personally don't want to have a horse in this discussion even if I am trash forラファリュ cause I don't want to spend my time arguing about a ship just cause I like it and happen to have legitimate reasons to do so especialy when it comes to character entirely fictional so trying to prove that 2 PNG are related is so... silly. IMO the only reason why they are the kids of Xenobron is because the devs didn't had a better idea to make them Fell dragon in a way that is interesting and since they had Nel in love with the other Alear, they also made her a romance for our Avatar (other then the necessity to have the player being able to romance everyone but since they could have mad her platonic like Veyle I guess that's why) and IS seems to be favoring リュエル like they are also infering アルリュ, and i think they made Rafal a romance as well since they already did it for Nel, even if Nel is much more explicit. It's kinda sad that two solid candidate ends up being dragged into that weird wank that exploded 2 month ago, I still remember it, I was here for it and even then people still talk about it. See the Nintendo life interview ? People complaining about losecest commented on the page dedicated to this article even though the devs didn't even mentionned the pact ring with the DLC character nor were asked whether or not Alear is sibling with the twin, they just had to vent under it because this interview was about the DLC, much like how people are so desesperate to prove that it's losecest they have to use Veyle/Nel's support to try to make a point that they are right to be uncomfortable for a ship and you should be ashamed of thinking it's a cute couple. Which make no sense. Granted 2 mont ago I also asked myself the question, but now having cleared a new run, i think it answer itself : the proper game explain that they simply aren't Alear 's sibling because they come from a world where they aren't Alear's sibling. That's literally just it, even if you think it doesn't make logical sense, and you would be right it doesn't make logical sense, but paradox aren't really suppose to make sense!! That's literaly what I ended up understanding when I finally got the time to play a new proper run and unlocked all of the twins's event !! Anyway, I don't see why people pretend to care about their relationship or lack off when we all know it won't stop the shippers nor people who dislike those ships, but I think it's a shame that 2 interesing character with solid ships with Alear have nothing more to talk about then this for some fans *sight* : 3 even more so when there is actual legitimate reason to root for them other then the classical "self insert biais" cause S supporting a character is different then shipping them with the Avatar character.

All the more so when the rest of the cast don't have much chemistry with Alear compared to the one they have with others character and we don't even have paired endings for them

Edit : also, if you are curious, no i have no intention of sharing any ラファリュ ship fanart, at least on this plateform because I don't want people to feel unconfortable and I know that Tumblr's tags can sometimes recomment it unless you block/mute the ship tags

[luxlightly]

An explanation of Tumblr's apparent obsession with crabs, for new and returning users:

For context, there's a popular video of a diver interacting with a bunch of crabs which has been dubbed over with a TTS voice meant to represent the crabs, saying things like "crab. Crab. Crab. Hand. Frighten! Hand? Hand? Crab. Crab." This video was making rounds around the time of April fool's day earlier this year. Tumblr, along with other social media platforms, also famously celebrates the deaths of famous bigots and colonists with the music video for the song "Crab Rave".

Every year, Tumblr does a joke for April fool's day. One year it was a fake election between various lizards. One year it was a "clippy" knockoff named "Coppy"(who apparently is still around and doing a show with Ryan and Shane from Watcher? I don't know the details there). Usually the joke is somewhat topical to something going on in the world at the time.

For this year, Tumblr's joke was making fun of the fact that so many websites are essentially a bunch of buttons trying to trick you into pressing them for the ad revenue. Turning on the joke mode filled your screen with various mostly useless buttons all begging you to "click!! Engage!! Increase engagement levels! Generate revenue!!".

To I think everyone's surprise, including the devs, the joke buttons were WILDLY popular and basically unanimously enjoyed by the userbase. Turns out that just saying "click this. You get nothing in return and we profit from it", which was just a joke about the increasingly opaque and difficult to navigate state of Internet advertising, actually is 100% more effective at getting people to click it than lying about what it does.

Most notably among these many buttons was a button that just said "Summon Crab" which, when pressed, spawned one crab emoji on your dash. Scrolling over it would show an alt text that read things like "hand" "crab" "crab", a reference to the popular video. Clicking on the crab would turn it into a money bag emoji, to continue the joke that these things are all just there to generate ad revenue. Clicking more summoned more crabs. A small counter kept track of how many you'd summoned and clicked.

People LOVED IT. People went crazy summoning so many crabs that it would freeze their whole browser or that they could no longer see their dash through the horde of crabs. It was fun! It was cute! And it was ultimately harmless. It was just nice to have a website add some fun things to click that weren't there to trick you. They're just crabs and you can click them.

This only was for one day, however, and many people who weren't online that day or were only on mobile didn't get to see or play with the crabs and were disappointed, as were the rest of the userbase who honestly enjoyed it and begged the feature be added to Tumblr normally.

With the success of tumblr Blaze, which allows you to inflict posts on random people's dashboards who don't follow you, affectionately called "Tumblr PvP mode", Tumblr eventually implemented a way to pay money to not only give yourself the ability to summon "dash crabs" for 24 hours, but also give them to someone else.

And now apparently the joke checkmarks can also randomly become dash crabs.

So long story short: Tumblr made a joke referencing a popular video and people enjoyed it so much the site decided to make it a feature they can access in return for giving the site some money. And now everyone is just running with the joke because we think it's delightful and we're happy that the site actually seemed to listen to what we wanted and asked for and we want to encourage the more transparent and honest "this is useless but we think you'll find it funny" marketing Tumblr has started to lean towards.