#I DIDNT MEAN TO FLASHBANG YOU

[starsillys]

Ur art constantly stays in my head forever it's just there. Rotating. No matter what. I could be taking the fourth most important quiz of my life and my brain will hit me with "Hey you could. You should go think about that guy's art. So fucking awesome Isnt it" and then I fail and die instantly. Basically I love your art so much you do it awesome it's so awesome I'm gonna go frolic now

oughhh the infection is spreadying AOUGHHH the malware in your head (I am the malware 👇)

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR NISE WORDS… GIGGLED AND KICKEFD A LOT WHEN SAWED IT.. BUT RRHRR I OUHHH I HOPE YOUR TEST WAS PASSED IMSORRGY DID NOT MEAN TO DO THAT😧 hope you had/still are having a wonderful time frolicking,, I love rotation

[volatilemask]

would u mind posting speedpaint, i wanna know how u draw cause ur artstyle too cool i wanna do that too, especially the most recent one

kind of flashy sorry the select tool is mean and flashbangs you thsi drawing is eh and also i didnt record the beginning but i dont feel like recording another one

[henrysglock]

Ohhh my god so re: what i remember you for as a writer theres SOSOSO much to choose from, but I have to go with Ptolemaea!!!!!

And even though there’s SO many iconic scenes/lines in Ptolemaea that stuck wirh me/that I remember you by, the shower scene from Ptolemaea is the one I’m going to talk about right now because it stuck with me and i was flashbanged by it again last night when rereading it HWBDBFN

Like, this part specifically:

“That didn’t mean it was any less appreciated, though, even as the blisters on his ankles burned with it. Hot water meant that the dirt, grime, and blood melted off him with minimal effort. Even so, he took a certain amount of comfort in scrubbing himself pink and toweling off roughly, as though he could peel the past three years off his body the way a spider might shed its carapace. To grow.”

First of all, the line about how the water is making the blisters on his ankles burn is so strong/physical/it’s like I can feel it.

And it’s also such a fantastic line/fantastic use of word choice when it comes to the fact that Ptolemaea being a “Henry got out of the lab early” AU and therefore also a “Henry didnt get sent to Dimension x” AU versus the use of the word “burned” here, especially in the context of Henry trying to scrub off the lab/leave the lab behind versus the way that Henry physically leaves the lab behind in canon being getting sent to Dimension X & getting burned there.

It just works so well to give this subtle vibe/subtle reminded of “what couldve been” and how even though what Henry’s going through right now sucks (ie all of the Ptolemaea horrors, and even just the water from a nice shower hurts his blisters), it could’ve been so much worse/it really nails that “full of horrors but also full of Hope” vibe that Ptolemaea has.

And second of all, specifically looking at this part:

“Even so, he took a certain amount of comfort in scrubbing himself pink and toweling off roughly, as though he could peel the past three years off his body the way a spider might shed its carapace. To grow.”

I cant even describe how much I love this part. There’s so many little layers to the comparison between Henry in the shower vs a spider shedding its carapace, snd how its not just “oh yeah yk hes got the same vibes as a spider shedding its carapace because hes trying to start anew” but instead the comparison *also* so Physical and the mental/emotional change/struggle is convey so Physically and how it’s specifically connected to the way that Henry scrubs himself pink, and the way that this line about how Henry scrubs himself pink evokes the visual of new skin being pink and “sore”/sensitive because it’s new, much like the new flesh under an old carapace.

And then how Henry towels himself off roughly vs that also working so perfectly to really convey that feeling of shedding a carapace in a very very physical way and the Movements of it and im just!!! The WORD CHOICES here are so perfect to convey a really visceral/physical feeling, like with the use of the word “peeling” and with how that use of the word” peeling” is where it all then connects to the mental aspect of it/the bridge between physical vs mental re: henry trying to peel the last three years off of his body (especially with the imagery re: peeling skin off/peeling years off vs all of the mental/supernatural “flaying” in ST vs the peeling skin imagery tying to the idea of literal flaying in the sense of flaying skin off).

And the “last three years” thing always gets me, it’s not only such a good reminder of how long he spent in the lab/how many years he’s lost, But then also, specifically in the context of shedding a carapace/molting, the implication that Henry hasn’t “molted” in three years/that this carapace that’s stuck to him is three years old/literally made up of the past three years really hits me every time re: the fact that spiders shed their carapaces/molt wayy more often than that so he hasnt been Allowed to molt & also the fact that some types of spiders stop molting entirety once they reach maturity (this is the case for black widows)/other types just molt less frequently (once a year) when they reach maturity vs the last three years in the lab being what makes up Henry’s “carapace” & Henry not having “molted” at all in the lab/at all in the last 3 years vs the way that Henry was forced to grow up quickly in the lab but how it Also stunted him & how not molting anymore is a sign of “maturity” /adulthood in spiders.

And especially with all of that/the idea of being forced to grow up quickly but also having your growth stunted as a result vs using the imagery of shedding a three year old carapace to convey that & the way that having a built-up old caparace/unshedded layers would make him seem “bigger”/more grown” when in reality, it’s a sign of *not* having grown/not being allowed to shed it is *stunting* his ability to grow/it’s like he was being forced to “grow” by not shedding (which then also ties SO PERFECTLY into Henry’s canon regen healing & the way that there’s all of this tumor imagery associated with it/unwanted growths) and that weighing up down/the extra “weight”/“size”/“growth” on him re: not “shedding his skin” & how his/a spider’s limbs aren’t going to grow properly unless they shed their skin so then there’s the whole visual of him not growing in a typical Growth way/his metaphorical limbs not getting longer but instead just “growing” by having all of these extra layers/“skin” that hes now trapped in/cant shed to properly grow vs the idea of Brenner wanting him to be like a child and like an adult simultaneously (ie being a Freak & Liking the fact that Henry’s a child vs also stealing his childhood/putting him in a lab/making him behave Like An Adult/making him grow up quickly).

Especially with black widows no longer molting once they reach sexual maturity vs the idea of Henry not being *allowed* to molt/stopped early from molting/being forced to reach that maturity early (smash cut to the SA imagery in the lab) when he hasnt Actually reached it physically.

And then that all also ties so well into the idea of being a Child Forced To Behave Like An Adult/Forced Into Adult Activities rather than Actually Becoming An Adult.

I just!! The line about a spider shedding its carapace as a way of describing Henry’s attempts to leave the lab behind is literally such a perfect line, like there’s something so physical and visceral about it, not only is it such a perfect description of the situation, but the spider aspect then ties so perfectly into Henry’s character specifically.

Especially with the next context TFS Henry & the visual of those spider legs bursting out of his back during the attic scene with Virginia & how that’s Also very Physical in a similar way to this scene (and yet again, Ptolemaea ages like a fine wine.)

And then also, specifically looking at the “To grow,” line, this line specifically always feels like so perfectly like Henry reassuring himself/tears in my eyes over little 15 year old henry “spider guy” creel reminding himself of how spiders grow and how it’s okay even though it hurts, because it just means he’s in Spider Mode and Spider Coded and Based and Spiderpilled HWHDBDDNHEHD like he’s reminding himself that not only do spiders shed their carapaces, but they do so in order to grow/it’s Necessary in order for them to grow. Like it almost feels like the way a parent would try and get a child to do something (ie if a kid loved superheroes, the whole “superman would clean his room 🤨🤨🤨😌😌😌😌” vibe/“a spider would go and clean himself in the shower because spiders need to shed their skin in order to grow-“) but it’s coming from Henry and directed at Himself, which then emphasizes how lonely he is/the lack of parents/Virginia being dead & Victor being locked up & Henry having to parent himself (but then also the other side of the coin and the lowkey Freedom of Henry getting to parent himself in the context of Brenner/no longer being forcibly “parented” by Brenner).

And it works so perfectly with the “grow together” stuff from the VR (yet AGAIN, Ptolemaea ages like a fine wine) vs what I said earlier re: Brenner “forcing” him to grow by making him keep all those unshed layers/giving the illusion of growth when in reality in order to Actually grow, he’d need to shed those layers vs the way that VR Henry is described as “eager to please” etc vs the idea of him not properly growing/not shedding his carapace in order to please Brenner…

Like I just can’t express enough how much I love that part- it that makes me feel like I’m back to when I was first getting interested in Henry as a character (in a very very good way) and is just this instant, perfectly encapsulated reminder of what I love about his whole story/the vibe of it.

Especially with this being Henry’s POV vs the way that not only is this whole part such a perfectly, artistic, extremely thought-out line on behalf of the writer, but it’s also such a perfect insight into Henry’s character & his spider nerdiness & what I said earlier re: spiders not molting anymore being a sign of them reaching adulthood vs when he does finally “shed his carapace”/scrub himself in the shower, he’s comparing it to a spider molting/his “childish” little spider nerd vibes are coming back, he’s both growing and “regressing” because he’s growing into the Child/15 year old that he Is rather than being a child forced to behave like an adult- especially then with adult teacher Henry’s continued love of spiders/the way that “childish” interest remains even when he Is an actual adult.

Anyway! Ptolemaea my beloved….. <333333

it's why he's so small in canon actually. bro hasn't molted in years we can all give him a break for being the world's Tiniest boy.

anyway alkdjflsd WOW

When I was writing that part the biggest thing in my mind was a combination of not molting/being held back/being trapped under the layers of what he had to do to survive but specifically in the way of protective layers being added with each trauma/him being forced to grow this thick outer shell layer by layer specifically to defend against what was being done to him/retain his sanity and dignity. Which speaks to a degree of removal from what was done to him, in my mind, this kind of

"It happened to me, and I'm self-aware enough to acknowledge that...but it was done to an outer layer that I can shed, so is it really something I have to live with? Or is it something i can just put away somewhere out of sight and never actually deal with in a healthy, meaningful way?"

and so while he's peeling the carapace that's stunting him, it's like...every light has its shadow. He's able to grow into a normal boy, now, and even though it's sore and tender all over at the moment, it's a good thing. But is the way he's doing it healthy? Is he discarding his carapace without addressing and accepting/healing the ways its weight and prolonged presence warped him?

Or is he hobbling around on eight misshapen legs like

"Lalalala...It doesn't exist because I can walk on these legs. They're a little weirdly shaped, but I can hide them well enough if I make a home in the neatly-trimmed Kentucky bluegrass lawns of suburban America. Could a damaged spider walk around as well as I do? I'm so normal and also healthy. Being prevented from molting definitely had no lingering effects on my well-being. Haha, no there's no reason why I refuse to go out on the pavement and show you guys my totally normal legs. I just don't want to. No other reason. There's nothing wrong with me, I'm a normal spider :) Anyway, look at my web. Could a broken spider make a web this nice? Didn't think so. I'm totally normal and there's NOTHING in my past that I need to heal from."

Something something "I'm not a freak. I'm normal. I'm Henry Creel."

There's also the more surface aspect of the Will-Henry Mindflayer-Brenner "I felt it everywhere/I still feel him" and Henry thinking that if he scrubs hard enough, he can rid himself of the lingering memories, the same way Will thought that if he could just keep running, he could escape the Mindflayer/the lingering trauma of what happened to him in the UD/the slug stuff.

They're both running away from looming, lingering CSA trauma, just in different ways. Will can run all he wants, but the Mindflayer is going to catch him anyway. His trauma will always catch up to him. Henry can scrub all he wants, he can peel off that outer shell and pretend like he's getting rid of everything that happened to him, but the damage was mental. It's something that's inevitably going to catch up with him until he can't ignore it anymore.

That's also where the burning came from in my mind: Will being rid of the Mindflayer by burning, but him still being able to feel it/it coming back later vs Henry trying to rid himself of his history with Brenner via scrubbing himself raw with burning water because he's still able to feel that history physically/that history will come back to haunt him later much like the Mindflayer haunts Will.

—————

Tell me what fic or line of writing you remember me by

[jackhasfallenx2]

//Also just a heads up if anyone following needs this:

//I did change the meta shenanigans tag to #outside the box, just because the old one didnt make sense with how ive changed the gaming tag.

//I mean its probably not gonna be used for the foreseeable future probably but I dont want to ever flashbang someone with something that could hurt them.

//I did update the pinned as well but like. You read those once and then assume it wont change (thats what i do at least)

[crqelsummer]

I want to hear more about Yuelle/Lightthief

i want to clarify before i even start that these two are both idiots.

edit: ok wtf is this formatting tumblr

elle is the most oblivious girl ever -- she didnt pick up on the fact that yuto was actually interested in her until halfway through their second term of first year.

yuto, is also the most indirect guy ever. his love language is quality time, so inviting elle to hang out with him was meant to be romantic! he even brought her snacks and helped her with her homework. elle didn't know this, she just thought he was being nice (her love language is acts of service)

(she calls him 'sweet!' all the time and yuto is DYING)

their friends figured it out a long time ago (moriko and rin have a betting pool going for the class, seiji and daisuke are winning)

he confessed to her on valentine's day with chocolate and she was a bit bewildered. and then gave him some french chocolate she had from winter break on white day. yuto has never heard of this brand. he is cherishing it nonetheless.

however! they do work together really well! yuto's learning to use the binding cloth well enough to save her if she ever gets caught, and her effective flashbangs keep people off of them pretty well. her blinding means he can usually steal people's quirks pretty easily because they're more likely to answer him.

theyre really good friends!! they started out as friends on both sides, yuto just fell head over heels after he saw elle do what she did best and elle pretty soon after their finals before summer break. still, they joke together and annoy one another just as much as anyone else

they hang into in the bottom five of the class for most of the year just because neither of them are super strong students. they gotta fight for it and adapt as necessary. in the academic rankings though, they compete there too. yuto's a little ahead bc he's like. native japanese speaker v. elle only started learning three or four years ago to attend UA in high school.

yuto is a pretty stoic guy, it takes a lot to shake him. elle is not, she is the most emotional person just about ever. they clash sometimes because elle will get really emotionally invested in something and forget to really think. yuto will occasionally only ever look at a situation through logic and forget about how his interactions are affecting other people.

elle is a really touchy feely girl too. once she and yuto start dating shes always got a pinky wrapped around his, bumps into him on purpose, rests her head on his shoulder, etc etc. yuto is only a bit taller than she is (5'5" to his 5'7") but she can and will try and climb him. like full, limbs wrapped around him like a spider monkey kind of climb lmao. yuto finds this odd at first but kinda just lets her at it. he prefers to just be around her, but this works too.

neito finds out bc aiko mentions it offhandedly to him, who then tells hitoshi who then brings it up during dinner. yuto is losing it.

yuga is actually pleasantly surprised that elle found someone she cares for dearly. monica thinks hes cute, to her chagrin.

theres a box of french cheese in the mail within the week

BONUS:

If Elle ever got into trouble Yuto is NOT responsible for how he responds to whoever knocked his girlfriend out. He almost choked a villain out once and will do it again.

Elle's hands can get hot enough to burn with her Light Quirk, and if anyone ever hurt Yuto she's using that to her advantage because goddammit you do not lay a HAND on him.

[strikkodrene]

Spiders?

SPIDERS SPIDERS I DONT KNOW WHICH SPIDER U MEAN SO ILL TALK A LIL ABOUT ALL OF THEM. if I was in shaded citadel or farm arrays rn id go get photos of them myself but im in shoreline and theres no spiders there so ill take from the wiki

The first form of spider in this game is the smallest and most harmless form, but still not peaceful! I refer to them as coalescipedes, even if the wiki just calls them Spiders. They usually come in the form of small, little black singular spiders and while them alone are harmless, over time theyll join together and form into a big nasty creature (kinda like the one above) and in that joined together form theyll run towards other creatures and kill them by crawling all over them and probably consuming them.

Despite the fact that they do this, they can still be repelled with a light source like a lantern, or seperated with a spear or rock. They can also be directly killed by throwing a flashbang (a little blue fruitlike thing that combusts into a harsh bright light that blinds any creature in nearby radius), which immediately kills every spider in the current room. Overall just little irritating bastards that you should watch out for.

Next is the wolf spider/porcuspider. They’re bigger and meaner than your standard little coalescipede, and are more lethal. Can be killed with one or two spears though. Basically all they do towards you is crawl around and lunge at you when they see you like in the gif above, trying to bite and kill you. Players new to the game that aren’t used to dodging fast creatures can and will be killed by them. Same goes to players traveling through shaded citadel (their main home) without a light source, making them unable to be seen, and only heard instead.

A strange fact about them is that when you kill one, they can come back to life if another wolf spider bites them. Strange and annoying, but they do that.

The final spider is the spitter spider! (Sometimes called ‘tranquillas’ by people in the rw discord server.) I consider them the most dangerous spider out of the three, even if they are also easily killable if you can spot them before they spot you.

Like their name implies, they spit little maggot darts at you. If successful in hitting you with them, slugcat will eventually pass out for a short while. The more maggots latched onto slugcat, the quicker they pass out, and for a longer time too.

Once you’re passed out, if you didn’t get yourself far enough away from the spider to lay before it gets you, or you didnt kill it before passing out, it will simply crawl up to you and just take your limp corpse in its teeth and drag you away to be eaten.

...like so.

Overall, spiders are a semi-dangerous enemy that should be watched out for. They mainly inhabit the dark region of shaded citadel, but some wolf spiders and spitter spiders can be found in other regions, such as subterranean, and a certain room in farm arrays. Subterranean is dark like shaded citadel, but somewhat less so in certain areas.

anyways thank you for letting me scream about 3 creatures at once even if theyre kinda the same djhgdfdghdjd

[mattgambler]

Phoenix Point and why I want it to live

No TLDR this time. I said in the past that I could write pages over pages about this. I guess its time to see how many pages we are actually talking about here. Phoenix Point is currently rather mediocre. From the soundtrack to the many bugs and rather rough implementations, the missing features that were envisioned in the kickstarter campaign, the 5 scheduled DLCS, the epic store exclusivity, the inferior graphical polish in comparison to Firaxis’ XCOM reboot, the inferior complexity in comparison to Longwar, probably even the inferior Idontknow in comparison to the very first XCOM games from way back when, I didnt play those. If you are looking for something to hate in this game, you dont have to look too hard, there is something here for everyone. The reason Ive been a determined defender of Phoenix Point is not simply because I have a different taste in games than the mainstream however, but because I feel there is a way deeper underlying problem at work here. I’ll come back to that later. Btw starting now, when I say XCOM, I mean Firaxis’ XCOM. Personally I want more games like XCOM. More games like Battlebrothers, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Invisible Inc, hell, even Bloodbowl, even though I dont dig the sports angle. Games with permadeath, nameable characters, dynamic overworld systems and missions and situations that are created ideally by circumstance, not by simply playing mission 1, then mission 2, until you reach what the devs decided to be the last one they would make for the game. I thoroughly enjoy that concept of progression and many turnbased strategy titles just dont do it for me because they are too linear, even when they are otherwise nicely crafted experiences. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is a nice example of this, the game looks nice, sounds nice and is very well made, but it lacks the one thing I enjoy most in all the games I mentioned earlier. Along comes Phoenix Point and the moment I look at this game I know that it is all about scratching that specific itch. Not only that, it also brings with it a variety of creative features to even improve the established turnbased squad tactics formula. I didnt lie when I said I think that it is in many ways better than XCOM. Just that... WHAT?!?! ...the overall game doesnt compare well if we look at the sum of their parts at the moment. YOU CANT BE SERIOUS!!!!! About Phoenix Point being better in many ways? Sure, let me make a list. 1) Aiming In XCOM you aim, you have an x% chance to hit, you either hit or you dont. While widely accepted because of the quality of the overall games, its a pretty simple system that becomes especially frustrating when your guns model on screen is touching the enemies forehead and you still manage to miss. Or when a flashbanged and suppressed sectoid crits you in full cover after rolling a natural 20. In Phoenix Point bullets get simulated and trace a path from the barrel of your gun to a target that they then either hit or miss. Smaller enemies in Phoenix Point are hard to hit not because the game designers arbitrarily decided so, but because smaller enemies are simply smaller. In comparison, in XCOM you roll dice. 2) Modular enemies Similar to Battlebrothers, Phoenix Point has you encounter the same brigand thug (crabmen) over and over again. The enemy itself doesnt matter as much, its more about the number of different variations you can encounter. Brigant thugs can come equipped with simple helmets and/or armor as well as different weapons that have different abilities. They also have different faces on top of that. They are by far not the only enemy in the game, but even if they were, by the time you encounter the exact same thug a second time you wont be able to tell anymore because you have seen so many others inbetween. The same goes for most enemies in Battlebrothers (with a few exceptions), it becomes way more about your opponents equipment than about his actual type or class. Phoenix Point goes for the very same approach, but falls short because of  a variety of reasons. To name just one, the first time you encounter New Jericho as a faction, you fight four New Jericho soldiers and all four of them have the same armor, the same weapon and even the same face. To hammer it home the mission also always takes place on a variation of the exact same map. It is an absolute travesty. The ambition is there and in random encounters on the map you can see where it is supposed to go, with every enemy type in the game being designed in a way that allows for as many variations as the devs can think of, from paralysis tentacles and bloodsucking arms to mist generators and everything inbetween. The possibilities are endless and from the standard crab to the giant bosses every enemy is designed with this modularity in mind. In XCOM in comparison, you have a variety of different enemies, but for the entirety of the first month (what is that, 3-7 missions?) you only fight the sectoid. Or maybe the drone too, I havent played vanilla in forever. Longwar tries to spice that up by using preexisting models and assigning new abilities to them, making some models bigger and giving others new abilities, but at the end of the day the sectoid looks the way the sectoid looks. I love what it looks like btw. But modular enemies are decidedly cooler. 3) Scale In XCOM you control 4, later up to 6 soldiers at the same time. In Longwar it goes up to 8, or 12 in that one mission. In Phoenix Point you start out the same way, but to my knowledge you can bring as many soldiers to any mission as you can get there via aircraft. Meaning that as soon as you get a second manticore you can theoretically have up to 12 soldiers in a mission, or 18 with a third. Naturally you would probably want to split your forces instead and be in 3 places at the same time (and you can), but this sort of thing being possible, both the 18 soldiers in one mission as well as the 3 different squads doing missions in 3 different places of the planet, is something XCOM simply does not offer.  4) Other features Be it vehicles, giant enemies, diplomacy or the amount of control you get on the overworld map, Phoenix Point does (or attempts to do) a huge number of things that in XCOM are simply nonexistant. In XCOM you dont get to decide were to fly, missions are simply spawned in popup fashion, the skyranger is on autopilot, “diplomacy” is managed by talking to top secret bald guy representing the council and by sometimes fulfilling a councilrequest. The only opposing faction apart from the aliens is EXALT which can be regarded as more of a separate mission type with human enemies and not really as a faction that contributes in any diplomatic way. Dont get me wrong, I dont think XCOM needs diplomacy in order to be good. XCOM is already good, fantastic in fact. But if we compare based on features alone and not the quality of their implementation, then Phoenix Point is doing A LOT of things that XCOM never even touched. This is in no way me trying to trash XCOM. I love XCOM, especially Longwar. However for the sake of an at least somewhat fair comparison the only games we should compare Phoenix Point to at this Point are XCOM Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, both at launch. Bringing Longwar into the mix is something I do for the sake of providing a third angle, not because I am blind to the fact of how ludacris it would be to compare a newly launched game with an extensive overhaul mod that was in the making for years after the vanilla game and even its expansion were already released. As I was saying, along comes Phoenix Point doing all those very ambitious things. And it gets DESTROYED. To quote Beaglerush, the probably best known XCOM streamer out there: “But honestly, for anyone with experience in the XCOM genre, anyone who likes XCOM games, and anyone particularly who likes XCOM games at a harder difficulty or likes to obviously, like, play well, I do not think it is possible to enjoy this game unless you are getting a big paycheck and you are a good actor.” To be clear, I didnt watch the entire footage that made him come to that conclusion and I dont want to comment too much on what “playing well” means, but i have played Longwar on the highest difficulty in ironmanmode for 2000 hours (without beating it, but also always with Training Roulette active) and I have beaten XCOM 2 on highest difficulty in ironman mode. I do consider Longwar as one of my favourite games of all time and I do consider myself as someone who has experience with the genre, likes games and likes to play them “well”, or at least on highest difficulty. I dont agree with Beagle (duh), but I can of course see where he might be coming from. In its current state Phoenix Point is not finished. Playable, but even for an early access game its still pretty rough, with many mechanics not or only sometimes working (leanout, aim and aimsnapping, end turn, details, you get the point), features missing, performance issues, lackluster soldier customization, lackluster diplomacy options, a rather simple skilltree, questionable balance, etc. Don’t look at me like that, if I wanted to I could jump that hatetrain any time! But if I was to do that, where would that leave us? The XCOM genre, as Beagle calls it, is a niche genre at the best of times. Not only regarding the playerbase but also regarding game developers willing to invest time and money into creating something new. Xenonauts 2 is a year or more behind its originally panned release date with not much news to speak of, Terra Invicta is a distant memory of a game that will maybe one day still be released and Im still waiting for the XCOM 3 announcement and who knows if it will even come. Especially after we, the players, completely demolish Phoenix Point to the point where I would just cancel the 5 planned DLCS right now if I was in charge of the devteam. The main reason I defended Phoenix Point was not because of what the game currently is but because of what the game could be after 5 more DLCs. Ive played every backerbuild of the game and statements like “the game is still what it was 2 years ago” are simply and factually false. Especially between backerbuild 4 and 5 there was a huge jump in quality and between 5 and the release version that same jump has ocurred again - with an entire game that is now playable and completable. Yes, it could have more voiced lines instead of text, yes, it doesnt have the sexy “alerted sectoid” animation sequence when you run into a new enemy pod (pods dont exist in PP but you get me) and sure, the epic exclusive sucks I guess and I dont care much for the soundtrack. But after Backerbuild 5, who knows where the game will be after the next DLC? And the next? If you compare XCOM Enemy Unknown with XCOM Enemy Within, the difference was breathtaking. And here we have a game that has so much work already done, so many assets created, so much code already in place, and we, the players, punch them in the face and shout “NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”. You wanna go back to the drawing board, have somebody else start fresh on something that could be better in a year or two if we are lucky? Ive been looking for a game like XCOM for literally years. Battle Brothers was the closest I found. Tens, if not hundreds of others inbetween failed hard, from “Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus” to “Legends: Viking” to “Wildermyth” and basically everything inbetween. And here we have a game that seems to have the right idea, the right amount of ambition and a good amount of the work already done and we are bitchslapping them left and right just so we can go back to getting hyped about the next mediocre linear story experience. Sure, them releasing already is a shame. But if I was the one to decide, I would give them the same amount of money again and triple it and tell them to finish the job instead of spitting in their face when they come to us and lowkey tell us that they ran out of money. And I would send them flowers and tell them that Im sorry. Anybody can polish a game with extra cash, but getting the core idea right is something that even Firaxis almost failed to do with XCOM 2, as far as Im concerned. I said earlier, that there was a deeper underlying problem here and that I would come back to it and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Modernday gamers are an ungrateful, hateful bunch of whiny spoiled brats, who think they are entitled to only the best of the best while in fact they “deserve” nothing. The entire concept of a kickstarter campaign is that you provide funds and trust so a bunch of people can try to realize their vision. If you dont like the outcome, then that doesnt mean they betrayed you, it means you have poor judgement. Notice how I say judgement and not taste. You dont have poor judgement because you dont like the outcome, but because you gave them money in the first place. I should maybe add at this point that my anger is mostly directed towards the public reaction and the phoenix point subreddit and not towards my own viewership. (hello) Phoenix Point is not the first game that has had me feel like the entire gaming landscape is slowly spiraling out of control. 5 years ago I thought quality means sales. At this point Im worried that a high marketing budget means sales. And I dread the possibility that 5 years from now I might be convinced that a high marketing budget means quality. Some of the best games this year were literally destroyed by players. Artifact wasn’t only boykotted, but actively brutalized, with people at some point purposefully streaming porn and torture under the Artifact tag on Twitch. Pathologic 2 had the devteam almost go bankrupt after poor sales and unfavourable reviews by people that barely grasped the basics of the game. All the while people feed money to the ginormous immortal that is Magic The Gathering and praise Hideo Kojima for his “unique vision” for Death Stranding. I didnt play Death Stranding and Magic can be pretty fun, but does nobody see the smothering double standards in play here? Im not saying that Phoenix Point has no problems right now in terms of quality. Some of the issues player encounter are in fact inexcusable, at least longterm. But XCOM 2 also had a bumpy launch with long loading times and tons of bugs and then they were fixed and today there are people that think XCOM 2 is better than Longwar. Incomprehensible to me how anyone could think that, but time and some postlaunch fixes did clearly change peoples minds. I think the main reason Phoenix Point got so much hate on launch in comparison to XCOM 2 (which also released 3 DLCs ,or was it more) is because its drastically different and more ambitious in many ways, not because it is half as bad as people make it out to be. XCOM is just like Phoenix Point, just dumbed down I guess. Kappa. (I hate it when people use the term “dumbed down”. This is a joke. Ffs why do I have to explain this)

[sugarriene]

both panting heavily and looking exhausted. a grim realisation hung in their expression as they hid into a narrow crevice of a rock wall.

"even that didnt worked...im out of chakra."

both boys inspect their remaining gear and weapon: not a single remaining paper bomb.. smoke bomb.. flashbang..

3 kunais. a badly chipped tanto. and a scroll with brush and ink.

"looks like this is it huh."

"..."

"man.. this stinks. im too young to go out like this. plus.. i was kinda looking forward to that game i bought last week."

*looks to his partner in disbelief...and smirks* "i dont know. i thought this was kinda cool. i mean... isnt this how the good guys are supposed to go down? fighting the villains to their last breathe."

"good guys were supposed to beat the villains in the first place..."

*a painful chuckle* "maybe we're just the side characters afterall."

"that sucks..." *looks up to the sky..lamenting* "hey. shika-"

his hands reaches to inojin's shoulder, silencing the boy. they both looked to each other in full mental grasp of the situation: hes here. they can feel it. that farmilliar hostility predating over their shoulder.

inojin assess the amount of chakra needed to conjure a giant bird... all they needed to escape from that man: just one lousy giant bird. he bit his already bloodied aching lip. no...it wouldnt..

shikadai's breathe hitched.

the enemy was in their line of sight. just standing there out in the open at a with a toothy grin...then he marches towards them. an obnoxious gleeful pleasure seems to be radiating in his sharp eyes.

"here he comes." a kunai raised in his stance. Shikadai gave the man a piercing look.

"Chojuu giga..." a giant bird emerges from inojin's scroll. not a moment delayed: "take him home." he whispers and the beast let out a loud unussual eerie shriek as if reluctant to its master's order.

"WHA-!! GAHH-WAIT!" Shikadai struggles uselessly on the tight grasp of the strange looking bird.

"youve always been the smart one among team ino-shika-cho..."

one swift maneuvere, and the bird was on its way to base camp, carrying the hysterical boy in its claws.

"i know that better.. coz you're like a brother to me. mom..dad.. im sorry. but you know i just cant let him die here..."

readies tanto.

[lilietsblog]

more mirai nikki

Consentes die Juno Jupitor Minerva Apollo Mars Ceres Mercurius Diana Pan Vulcanus Pluto Vesta Venus

so the cop buys into the core premise to make the world better huh

"at this rate, Yuno will always be crazy" yes, most likely :> those things dont just go away like that :> whatcha gonna do about it? (I mean, I'm 100% sure it's possible to make Yuno BETTER, like, when you're out of the murder game and all)

dammit there's The Other Detective and I want him to play a positive role so much???

COME ON YUKKI DON'T JUST SIT THERE DIVE UNDER THE TABLE MAKE A RUCKUS ANYTHING I UNDERSTAND THE FREEZE REACTION ALL TOO WELL BUT DAMMIT THIS IS NOT THE TIME

for fuck's sake Kurusu SERIOUSLY did you not see that coming or did you calculate that precisely p sure it's the latter THAT IS FUCKED UP OF YOU

okay he's still alive apparently bc Yuno is not actually good at shooting ppl cmon everyone knows you shoot the head

ooookay apparently she DID go for a headshot huh

I like the different faces on the extras one of the things I like in quality anime: non cartoonish but clearly distinct faces

YUKITERU FUCK'S SAKE THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FAIL TO DEESCALATE THE SITUATION @ THE POLICE

HONEY IF THIS IS WHAT YOU DID THEN IT WAS NOT A PROBLEM FOR YOU WHAT THE FUCK THAT WAS A VERY ASSHOLE MOVE GODDAMMIT

oh hey Yukki is initiating conversation about parents I AM LISTEN

junior detectives (tm)

THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED

fuck's sake Ninth this is what happens when you mix terrified kids with nothing to lose and explosives what did you EXPECT

oh my god this is so ridiculously stupid

oh my god poor Ninth

welp this was beautifully inevitable

hey that's room 413 ^u^

I wonder if Ninth is going to turn on them immediately after she deals with Fourth or if she has a better plan

Yukki come on!!! yell that you don't want to die!!! say that the detective is trying to kill you!!! THERE ARE PEOPLE RIGHT THERE THE DETECTIVE HAS TO FACTOR THEM IN oh asocial child PLAY HIS OWN GAME

come oooon don't do things like that don't set people to be blown up 'just in case'

OMFG THESE TWO I wonder if she's going to explain the situation now

YUUUNOOO THIS IS A STUPID SOLUTION AND YOU CAN DO BETTER

oh it's a flashbang she probably assumed he knew what it was lol or else set that up on purpose

COME ON IT COULD ONLY OCCUPY THEIR ATTENTION IF YOU TOLD THEM ABOUT IT

seriously Yukki come on you should have talked to the people in masks said you feared for your life and demanded protection they are people and you are a visibly terrified teenage boy jfc

seriously Kurusu are you expecting rational behavior out of her at this point

hah Yuno can 100% tell when Yukki's just saying things to placate her and she still settles for that this is kinda sad

did you... take off the bulletproof vest? did you, Kurusu?? did you???

yay for the happy couple I guess I love Yukki here he really does care about everyone around him and Yuno too since she's around, despite everything

it's... interesting to see Yuno terrified and frozen for a change of someone else acting insane AT her

ANYWAY THE PLAN I SUGGESTED WORKED ALBEIT THE NINTH WAS THE ONE TO ENACT IT

oh thank god maybe they'll be ok if there's someone to testify they were entrapped

OH THANK GOD THOSE TWO ARE ALIVE

this looks like he's going to break his phone to continue the thread of ppl dying from their diaries except the guy he shot

WELP YES THAT HAPPENED PREDICTABLE I GUESS

oh thank god it worked itself out

OH THANK GOD HE DID NOT KILL SOMEONE AFTER ALL

yeah this is why entrapment is a crime

it's kinda weird how Yuno looks tall-for-a-girl and Yukki looks short-for-a-boy and they are actaully the same height??? fucking anime

YUNO DONT TAKE HIS PHONE LIKE THAT YOU COULD BREAK IT ARE YOU CRAZY FLIP PHONES ARENT EXACTLY BRICK NOKIAS

Akise!!! hi!!! long time no see!!! I still like you a lot!!!

awh yeah Akise you have no idea whats happening do you

Yuuunooo why are you carrying that around

so my main question about this story is HOW MANY SUGAR CUBES LIKE UH THAT IS NOT DRINKABLE AT THIS POINT I DON'T THINK

aand this is the last episode I've got where are they going, anyway? something about Yukki's dad? hum there's Akise Nishijima! and they know each other

ah to see the stars going out of the big city I assume I don't think that would help around here unless you go all the way to the mountains )= ...mountains are everywhere in Japan, I assume that helps

hum Deus

huh???? what the fuck Mochi oh that's what happened I guess that sorta makes sense he didnt know about his sons problem when he first met Yukki so he was genuine at first

@ this anime: NO there's not much erotic fanservice but THIS SURE IS A THING HUH at a convenient angle, too

MAO NO also, how gay ARE you jfc

omfg a diary domumenting AVERTED STUPID MOMENTS ahaha copying Yukiteru, this guy this is kinda cute

MAO JFC YOUR GAYMERGENCIES

OH HEY Akise and this guy are working together

Akise might you be overthinking this a tiny bit

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THEM

oh yeah they are suspicious of Yuno they haven't seen her at the hospital it sorta makes sense from their perspective she's not dangerous TO Yukki just ahaha to everyone around him I guess

THEY ARE NOT IN HIDING THEY ARE GOING TO LOOK AT THE STARS JFC

wha.t. this might not be Yuno guys

huh so The Gasai are a thing rich kid Yuno?

okay what the fuck did I miss what is going on here still the same episode...

THIS IS STUPID HINATA VERY STUPID regardless of what the hap is fuckening THIS IS A VERY STUPID COURSE OF ACTION

I still feel like there's some element of the narrative missing

that is most likely NOT Yukiteru

eeeyup there goes the wig WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON THO

YOU IDIOT YOU WERE TOLD TO HOLD THE DOOR WHAT THE FUCK

okay yeah we missed quite a bit of something it seems

okay this fanservice is a bit TOO blatant

ahaha anticlimactic

oh hey take 2 and that explains that scene XD

[marioclash]

i didnt wanna sound mean though i told them “infinite sleep dart/flashbang is grounds for a removal” and i did have to remove people who were abusing it but i always gave them like 3 chances to stop and if they didnt i would just remove them from the game

someone in particular was abusing the sleep dart and i kicked them a few times

i gave them one more chance and they stopped and were really nice afterword

portalworld i love you

good on ya lasagna