#I don't LIKE having to turn off autonomy in my games but

[pynkhues]

I kept thinking about how much Louis bases his worth on money and work and realized that he never really experienced poverty. He was well-off as a human, he struggled briefly in Paris but since he got with Armand he pretty much lived the life of a luxury lmao. Nothing comparing to the poverty that Lestat and and Armand experienced. Ngl, l was a little dissapointed when it turned out that Louis took everything in divorce. There's a line in iwtw when he was like: he could make me kill children but not part with my money, so what would it take to make Louis willingly part with his money? Can you ever take the capitalist out of him? I really wanted to see him living in a hovel wearing rags like he did at certain point in the books not live that rich capitalistic lifestyle lmao, but I don't think we gonna see it :(

Mm, he never experienced poverty per se, no, at least not in the way Armand, Lestat and Claudia all have, but I think Louis' relationship with money is very complicated, in no small part because money is used against him as a form of racial violence when he's a young man in New Orleans.

I've talked about it on here a couple of times now, but I've been doing a lot of research lately on the culture of money for a project that I'm working on, because it's systemic failures to understand that money is not an objective thing, but something that wields enormous social power, that allows for financial abuse to happen. While I'm researching it specifically through a domestic violence lens, there's a lot of crossover with that when it comes to racism and government failures in acknowledging how money is used to further entrench not just inequity, but racial violence (I've actually been particularly researching dowry and remittance abuse too, which is fascinating and uniquely awful [not dowries and remittance payments themselves, but the way they can be weaponised particularly in culturally blind systems like we have in Australia]).

The first few episodes are extremely clear that Louis' experiences as a professional man have been limited by his race, but they're also clear that he's a victim of financial abuse by white society men who'd pay him a fraction of his worth in exchange for a seat at the table they clearly don't think he belongs at. This is pretty much said explicitly at the card game scene in 1.01 (and not really here nor there for this post, but I think a vital point of connection in that Lestat sees this for what it is and maintains the ruse while helping Louis to cheat a game that's rigged against him).

Louis swallows it because he's ambitious, yes, but also because he's the sole provider left in his family given nobody else in his family has the want or capacity to work.

We don't know the entire situation with his father's sugar plantation, but the implication is that it wasn't in good shape when he died, which is a part of the reason Louis became a pimp. He needed to make money to keep his family not just financially secure, but thriving, but at the same time, Louis' desire to earn is, in my opinion, about more than just personal ambition and providing, it's about social power, autonomy and independence. For him, money is symbolically something that was used to keep him low and to keep him out of what he knew he deserved, and I don't really think that's changed for him. He uses it to buy what he wants, yes, in art and interviews and blood donors, but it's also I think about having social power over the society that once exercised repressive and racist power over him.

I think the version of the character we get on the show would never give that up, and honestly, I wouldn't want him to? I think thematically it's too important now as it's tied inherently to Louis having both options and autonomy, and I don't really like the implications for his character about what it'd mean to give it all up.

As for Armand - we don't actually know if he ends up with nothing post-s2. Yes, Louis keeps the Dubai apartment and kicks Armand out, but I kind of assume they'll have done some sort of asset split (although I do imagine Louis will take most of it, because of his association with money and power). Given how rich they seemed to be, I imagine even if Armand does get a fraction of what Louis keeps, it'd probably still be an eye-watering amount of money, haha.

[victorluvsalice]

And then they all settled into the break room to watch the latest Season Premiere! Yes, because it just so happened to be that particular pop-up holiday, and I was like, "Well, they have a nice big TV right here." XD They thoroughly enjoyed the shows on offer, though about midway through Smiler and Alice both got distracted by flirting with Victor. XD But they watched enough of them all to complete the tradition, and that's what matters!

And better yet, by the time they'd all completed their required watching, the blizzard had cleared up, and the snow outside was starting to melt as it was in fact now kind of warm! "All right," I thought cheerfully, "let's just get a picture of the trio in front of their new store, and then we can open!"

...yeah, uh, that ended up TAKING SOME DOING. The first issue I ran into was when I tried to set up the tripod myself at the edge of the lot and have Alice set the timer for a picture -- apparently it was too close to the front of the store, meaning that instead of standing OUTSIDE the store as I'd intended, the group went INSIDE and stood behind the flower-arranging bench in front of the windows. Which, might have been okay if I believe Alice hadn't been entirely blocked by the shelves of flowers. XD So I had to put the tripod and camera back in Alice's inventory and have her place them in the world in the middle of the road, hoping the tripod would face the right way when she did. Fortunately, she did put it down facing the store, yay. First hurdle passed!

Second hurdle -- uh-oh, Smiler is feeling the thirst. Well, fortunately, that is easily taken care of -- they always carry a bunch of plasma packs and plasma fruit. They sipped on that while Victor and Alice had a little make-out session, and ended up refreshed enough that I didn't have to worry about shitty needs while taking the picture. Second hurdle passed!

And then we came to the third hurdle -- ACTUALLY GETTING THESE IDIOTS TO TAKE THE PICTURE. Dear lord, this was SUCH a thing. Because either Alice would go to set the timer, and then just IDLE there for long enough that I would think something had gone wrong and cancel the interaction, or while "waiting for the photographer" Smiler would randomly wander off down the road, and if I tried to teleport them back into position by changing poses when Victor and Alice got in front of the camera, they would end up merged INTO Alice, which, not good. FINALLY getting the shots I wanted took so long that not only did I have to have them change clothes halfway through as they were too hot in their winter wear, it was SUNSET by the time I went "FINE I'M TURNING AUTONOMY OFF SO YOU CAN'T MOVE." *facepalm* Granted, I actually think the sunset photos look pretty cool, and I was happy with the photos once I got to take them, but cripes. Make me suffer for my cute threesome shots, why don't you, game?

[gummilutt]

Autonomous crafting for all teen+ Sims

I've never before been so happy to share a creation! Get ready to get crafting, because it's about to get autonomous! Released today in collaboration with the wonderful @joplayingthesims who has built a community lot for the mod, seen in the pictures below. Exciting!

In my game, I have a community lot with crafting stations for Sims who can't afford one, or don't have space for one. But as I visited it recently with one of my college students wanting to learn flower arrangement, I got a bit depressed by all the empty stations and the other visitors just standing around chatting. I wondered if anyone had added autonomy, and I came upon iCad's autonomy enabler. While neat, it only adds autonomy for the active household which is the opposite of what I wanted. So I made my own that enables it for visiting Sims as well, only to quickly realize how annoying that got. All these Sims asking me to pick a recolor for them, blergh! So I went on tweaking, fixing the annoyances as they came up, and here we are! Finally it is possible to have a lively crafting studio where all Sims participate, without being annoying for you the player! Are you excited? Because I am excited!

What does the mod do? - Enables autonomy on "make many" and "continue" (see readme for more info on why not make one) for all five original crafting types - Robots, toy making, flower arrangement, pottery and sewing - Does NOT charge your Sims money for background Sim crafting. Money sounds and visuals show for all Sims, but only your current households crafting charges household funds. - By default only autonomous on community lots. Has optional autonomy on residential/apartment lots, you can enable autonomy on those lot types by placing the Autonomy Toggler object somewhere on the lot (custom object made using parts of the FT crafting clutter, found in hobbies/misc for 1 simoleon). I set it up this way as residential autonomy sounds irritating to me, but I'm all about flexibility for the user. Perhaps you want to run arts classes at your residential playable school, or you simply like autonomy more than I do :) Please note that autonomy advertisement is tuned with community lot use in mind, so it might be higher than you'd want for residential. If there's interest I am happy to make a second version with lower advertising for those who primarily want residential use. If you are somewhat familiar with TTAB edits yourself, you can try changing attenuation code to low or medium to limit advertisement distance which will reduce appeal to Sims. VER 2: Toggler object now also works on community lots, turning off autonomy if present on community lot. Residential/apartment behavior remains the same as before. - Fixes annoyances with background crafting, such as selecting recolors and pop ups about progress - Changes inventory mechanics to allow for owned studio-type use, in case you'd like a friendly owner Sim present to provide instruction. Crafting now only goes to business lot owner if done by an employee, otherwise crafting Sim gets the object. Includes home business, so if it bothered you that family members don't get to keep their work, this also fixes that. If that part annoys you, see readme for how to remove this feature.

Download mod on simfileshare | Download ver 2 on simfileshare (New version out, fixing a bug reported by Nemertes. More info here)

You might say "Okay well fun for you Gummi, but I don't have a community lot with crafting stations, so why would I need this?". Well fortunately Joandsarah has the solution for that problem! Check out the cute crafting studio she built to give all of you a place to start community crafting! Available on MTS

Conflicts: Only known conflict is iCad's original autonomy enabler, you have to pick if you want hers version of autonomy, or mine :) Readme contains breakdown of the functionality of all parts, to help you decide a load order should you encounter conflicts. It should be possible to resolve conflicts though if there are any others, so please report them to me :)

Credits: @joplayingthesims for collaborating with me and providing a lot that you can get started with if you don't have one, iCad at @dramallamadingdang for the original autonomy enabling mod, @cityof2morrow who helped playtest the mod

If anyone else builds a community lot intended for autonomous use, I hope you let me know somehow so I can add links to it in my post :) If any other modders see ways to improve on what I did, please feel free to do so :) I am hoping to eventually post an update that sends all crafting to inventory to fix the make one issue, and the station clogging that happens over time.

[felassan]

New article from IGN: 'How Dragon Age: The Veilguard Used Lessons From The Sims to Craft Its Character Creator and More'

Inside the intricate systems that bring BioWare's RPG to life.

"Corinne Busche wasn’t looking for a job when she sat down for lunch with BioWare’s leadership team in 2019. She had been a fan of BioWare’s games since the days of Dragon Age: Origins, and she wanted to, in her words, “meet my heroes.” “So I went to lunch with a couple of folks in the leadership team at BioWare, and we started riffing about progression systems and skill trees and economies, and we just really resonated with one another,” Busche remembers. “And much to my surprise, they expressed an interest in me joining, and it was kind of the question you don't have to ask me twice. That was such a dream opportunity, and to be able to step in this space, visit the studio, see my favorite characters on display throughout the walls, I was immediately sold. Immediately.” Busche was coming off a stint at Maxis, where she helped design the systems on various The Sims projects. In taking the helm of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, she became part of a wider talent pipeline flowing from Maxis to other parts of the games industry. It’s a pipeline that includes the likes of Eric Holmberg-Weidler, who was credited with fine-tuning many of the systems that comprised The Sims 4 before spearheading the Professions revamp in World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight expansion. Justin Camden, who also worked on The Sims, is one of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s technical designers."

"Systematic discovery At first blush, it might not seem like The Sims has much in common with an RPG like Dragon Age outside the fact that they both feature romance in some way. Going back to its release in 2000, The Sims has garnered a reputation as a casual, frequently silly lifestyle simulator; the game where you remove a ladder from a swimming pool and watch your poor little Sims drown. Under the hood, though, The Sims is a complex web of systems, progression and relationships. Sims have jobs. They gain skills. They fall in love. “Maxis is a great place for designers to hone their skills,” Busche says. “There are many projects across differing platforms and service models happening simultaneously which give a rare opportunity for a breadth of experience. What people may not realize about the Sims, given its playful outward nature, is the underlying systems and mechanics are deceptively deep – especially as a dev. One of the more interesting parts of coming up through Maxis as a designer is the experience you get with simulation, emergent gameplay, and emotionally relatable player experiences. It’s just a really unique opportunity being a part of these teams, and those are skillsets that can benefit a number of different games and genres.” Busche’s systems design background is evident throughout The Veilguard. It includes extensive skill trees, with sub-classes that are geared around different weapon types and styles of play, and the choices you make also resonate deeply throughout the story. It’s also possible to level up your relationship with individual factions and shopkeepers, which in turn opens up new possibilities for acquiring unique gear, and characters bear long-lasting scars depending on the choices you make. Systems are layered throughout Dragon Age, deepening the player’s intertwined connection with the world and the characters that inhabit it. “What's so wonderful about [The Sims] is there's so much autonomy in that game, and we find that RPG players are hungry for that same sense of autonomy, making decisions, influencing characters. And what you might not realize in the Sims is behind the scenes, there are some really robust progression systems, game economies, character behaviors for their own AI and autonomy… a lot of really fascinating parallels,” Busche says. “So in that regard, I'm very grateful to my time there, being able to take some of those learnings, whether it's about how to convey romantic progression to the player, or design skill progression, game pacing, a lot of really interesting transferable ideas that you might not think about on the surface." In The Sims, characters go through their daily lives in an idealized world filled with strange but charming characters like Bonehilda (Dragon Age, it should be mentioned, has its own living skeleton in Manfred). While Dragon Age’s characters are still bound by the demands of the story, BioWare goes out of its way to make them seem more alive. As we talk about in our hands-on preview that went up last week, Dragon Age is filled with little messages noting how, for instance, you “traded verbal jabs” with Solas. As we’ll go into in a future article, both platonic and romantic relationships are a big part of how characters grow in Dragon Age. And of course, as anyone who has played a BioWare or Sims game knows, both games have their share of woohooing."

"How Dragon Age learned from The Sims' character creator Ultimately, though, it’s the character creator where the resemblance between the two is the most apparent. Dragon Age’s character creator is extensive, allowing players to adjust physical characteristics including chest size, the crookedness of a character’s nose, and whether or not their eyes are bloodshot, among other features. While custom characters are a time-honored BioWare tradition going back to the days of Baldur’s Gate, The Veilguard draws from the lessons of The Sims in everything from body customization to the flow of the user interface. Cross-pollination like this is common within EA, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard borrows from plenty of other sources as well. That incredible hair technology, for example, got its start within EA’s sports games, meaning your Rook can have a luscious mane like Lionel Messi. But the character creator is perhaps the greatest inflection point between Dragon Age and The Sims. “Character creators are extremely complex, and in many ways even more personal. It’s so important that players feel they can be represented and feel pride in that representation as they go through the creation process,” Busche says. “In particular, I remember we were struggling with some of our iconography, and we turned to each other and said ‘how did The Sims 4 handle this?’ While the technology and UI is quite a bit different, the underlying goals and lessons were quite similar.” She adds that Maxis has a “tremendous wealth of knowledge when it comes to representing gender, identity, and the surprising number of localization issues that come along with that when you’re releasing in different regions and languages.” “It’s always nice when you can draw from that prior experience. See what worked, what didn’t, and how expectations have evolved. The fun part is now we get to pay that forward and have been sharing our knowledge with other teams,” Busche says. On a moment-to-moment basis, of course, The Sims and Dragon Age are two very different games with very different goals. One is a single-player action RPG, the other a lifestyle sim. As studios, too, BioWare and Maxis are in very different places right now. The Sims has been a powerhouse franchise for more than two decades, and EA is seeking to expand its reach with a new movie. BioWare, meanwhile, is seeking to rebuild after stumbling badly with Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda. But when creator Will Wright first decided to focus on the people inhabiting his games, the world he crafted wasn’t too dissimilar from the one found in Dragon Age. Both use unique systems to create reactive, imaginative worlds full of interesting choices, filled with characters with their own inner lives. It’s a philosophy that’s always been part of BioWare’s legacy; now, in The Veilguard, it finally gets to be on full display once again. Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on October 31. Make sure to keep an eye on IGN all this month as our IGN First coverage continues."

[source]

[lost-in-beacon-hills]

I think at this point everyone has different opinions on each of the Districts and honestly I love that. It's so fun to read people's thoughts.

(I'm sure I'm not the first person to think or say this but) I have a theory on why District One/Two win so many of the games beyond just being Volunteers in a game full of people going in blind.

It's something I've thought heavily about and even incorporated into my own fanfics.

But District One, I think, they win by raising their volunteers to be pretty. They train them to fight, yes, but I think they pull sponsors by making their kids "sexy." In both the book and movie, Glimmer is heavily sexualized. In the book, she's in a sheer gown that shows everything. In the movie, they tone it down but still show quite a bit of her body during the interview. Even the two victors we get to hear a little more about (Cashmere and Gloss) are mentioned to be pretty. Despite being a sibling duo, they're incredibly popular within the Capitol.

But even after they get 'popular' they don't turn down their attractiveness. She still dresses pretty with make up and smiles like she's been taught to do. He's still beefy and hot. You would think if they had any bodily autonomy they would start to tone themselves down in order to get away from the sex slavery.

I think sex appeal is what makes them a victor. Literally. People 'sponsor' them in the hopes of getting to fuck them. They get told that these people are who they're indebted to and most likely are forced into sex as a way to 'repay' them. Everyone says if Glimmer had won she would become the next Cashmere. Which is true. But no one points out how this is planned and a tactic that one consistently uses. Once they win they realize how fucked they are. They don't know they shouldn't want to win until it's over. It's too late to back out. Part of why Cashmeres life is devastating is because Gloss knew what was coming and he wanted better for her. But it happened away. And now they're stuck repaying the Capitol with their bodies.

In Two I think they raise fighters. They put all their effort into skill, endurance and survival. Out of all of the districts I think they do the best at giving them a chance. They make sure they send the best trained, the most skilled and the smartest. Clove is such a good example of this. She never missed her target. (Except for when Katniss moved the backpack making her miss). She was brilliant. Cato too. He was strong and a fantastic fighter. They only lost because the story demanded Katniss win. Hell there's so many moments where Katniss almost dies at their hands only to **magically** get away. (Thresh owing her, tracker jacker nest, not seeing her a few feet away) all of it. They weren't stupid meat heads. They were warriors. Children raised to kill.

I think they delbrately send plain victors. They don't want want to send "pretty" kids. They tone down any sort of beauty their tributes have. One of my favorite examples is Enobaria. She's pretty. And I think that's her downfall. It's mentioned in the series that she wins by ripping another tributes throat out with her teeth. (A popular theory is she was raped and used the very last thing she had in order to get away.) But she ends up getting her teeth filed down. While a lot of people think it was the Capitol, I believe it was her mentors. They filed them down, knowing she wouldn't be able to be raped again. I mean, who would have sex with her knowing one wrong move and you could be dead? She can bite your dick off in seconds if she wanted to. (Not to say she doesn't get booked) It would sway a lot of people away. I think much like Haymitch fighting against Katniss's breast implants, her mentors fought to get her teeth sharpened.

If they're able to I believe Two will alter the victors in order to make them less desirable. One plays it up, Two tones it down winning off skill and merit alone. Any sponsors they get isn't driven by sex.

It's why they win so much, and why the other districts have such a hard time getting sponsors.

I also think that District Four, the last of the career pack, has it's own way of creating victors. They send tributes like the rest but I think they do something different from the rest. My own headcanon is that they send orphans. It's fucked up but if I remember correctly they never mention Finnick having family.

I think they take the kids with nowhere else to go and put them in a training center. Whoever scores the best goes that year. Unluckily for Finnick, he was picked at 14. He was attractive, and part of me thinks Mags played into that to give him the advantage, thinking he didn't have family to leverage. It would have been fine, but then Annie happened. They use her as a control tactic.

I also think Finnick is the reason it was a one and done on leaning into the sex appeal. It fucked him over. Annie was pretty too but she wasn't used. (No one has ever said ah yes she's crazy let's just not rape her, fuckwads do it anyways.) But I think Mags learned from her mistake and played Annie down. Made her less pretty like they do in Two.

It's fucked. The entire system is fucked. But I think each 'career' district creates winners any way they can. No one in Four would volunteer they're disillusioned unlike one and two. So why not send the kids who have nothing, no one to come back to? In Two why not train them and maim them after to keep them safer? In One why not make them fuckable to win? They won't understand until its too late?

Maybe I've overthought this. Probably have. Idk. Just a thought.

[verosikastrikerstellaexcuser]

Stella, her existence for the sole purpose of birthing an heir, and Octavia:

I could see Stella absolutely wanting nothing to do with a kid she was only tjere to produce, and feeling absolutely horrified at having to lay an egg that she (probably, based off how dismissive in s2(but was that rewriting to make her seem more bitchy?)) disconnects emotionally from Octavia for several years and made it harder for them to connect, especially in the beginning.

The creeping guilt of "i wanted nothing to do with this,b ut she's my daughter, so i have to care" and struggling to find the line between "i have been mentally scarred but i shouldn't take it out on A Literal Child" and either then turning the anger inward (why do i hate something that came from me) or outward (this is also partially Stolas's fault because he played a part) and struggling to hide it from Octavia as she grew up.

The balance of hating the pathway to how Octavia was born vs trying to remember thag the child herself is innocent.

She finally finds a balance between the two, just for Stolas to upend their life for someone he brought into their bed. They could have, if either of them really tried, discussed it ages ago and set up a 'we are married for x reason, but here is y, z, a options for pur sexuality clashes and how we want to portray our life to others' but you get flat, 1 dimensional characters who only exist to prop up male characters.

Maybe in the beginning, Stella would have been open to a discussion about Stolas being gay and figuring out how to work with it. But it's all just a game to stolas ("i thought love would be fun" is the line i think of when it comes to Stolas & Stella's marriage. Unsure if it's from when he's singing in his library in the beginning of s2 or from jlmw music video) and Stella is no longer playing the game.

She's bitter, she's never had fun, she was there for one reason & one reason alone.

And it's such wasted potential to talk about how people who have kids suffer post partum and absolutely have a hard time connecting w kids they want, let alone kids that are the product of abusive & r*pe.

Is Stella a bad mother? We don't know because we aren't shown. Is there potential for her to suffer from the marriage and it affect her relationship with Via and make it 1000 times harder to connect, vs Stolas, who didn't have to carry(???) an egg (it's so confusing on the dynamics of egg birthing in this show. Don't just drop a single "glad the egg fell out" like. Give us details, world building, background, please) and thus can connect with a child easier?

And they were maximum 18 when Via was born, which makes all of it so much harder to process & deal with when you become a parent so young.

YES YES YES YES YES OH MY GOD YES YOU GET IT YOU UNDERSTAND.

SERIOUSLY... seriously seriously Stella is such a wasted opportunity to explore what happens when you force someone who doesn't want to bear a child to bear a child. They could have explored amazing stuff like not making her the best mother at first that only bonds with her daughter later due to postnatal disorder, and showing her feelings changing overtime as she comes to terms with losing her autonomy in place of gaining a daughter who didn't ask for any of this either and that shes going to make the most of. Just as 1 example. So much could have been explored...

and I'll just say it. Representation is important. But honestly. This show could have benefited more from more and better focus on other stuff like addiction and not just so much shipping/relationship stuff (tbf I'm talking about the het ones too but I feel like I have to preface in case anyone thinks this is me being annoyed at the existence of any ships/any gay ships at all, its not. Its just a wish some other stuff could get more of a focus because often the content sitting right there for it would have been better).

[hollowtones]

what'd you think about jade shadows?

I put it under a read-more because I don't know how to talk about this without talking about spoiler stuff. The tl;dr is "I liked it but I wish there was a little bit more."

One of the things I didn't like isn't even really part of the quest itself, but I saw a mutual bring it up a few days ago & it's been on my mind since: it feels a little odd to have a content warning before your sidequest, and then not give you any way to skip the quest if it's content you don't think you'd be able to handle. Especially given there's a whole event & rewards that only unlock afterwards!!

OK on to the contents of the quest itself. There's a lot of themes of love and connection and empathy in the face of systemic cruelty or indifference, in this game in general, and a lot of how that manifests is stories about characters fighting for self-determination and agency (the Ostrons trying to stay free of the Grineer, the Solaris trying to destroy the systems that keep them in debt & deny them bodily autonomy, Umbra, the Tenno, the Lotus, etc etc).

I think it's interesting to try and explore a tragedy where we aren't able to help someone in time, where the powers that be have brutalized someone and we as individuals aren't able to get there in the nick of time & help them claw their agency back. I think it's an interesting thematic & emotional through-line (with very strong parallels to Ordis... very smart choice to make him the event vendor / narrator, I'm feasting good on all the new dialogue LOL), and I think there have been enough well-written woman characters in the game that don't get written out or killed for the sake of some man's tragedy or growth that I don't immediately roll my eyes about them trying a So Sad The Woman Dies story.

I do also think this would have hit harder if we got more information about Jade herself!! I realize "this woman broke a law and was completely dehumanized / made into a Thing by the empire, stripping her of herself to suit their ends" is Kind Of The Point, and they make enough of a fuss about "wow there's a lot that's redacted about her history, huh!" that I assume this is a plot thread they're leaving hanging for later. But I feel like the big moment would have resonated better if they gave us a little more info to establish this character, other than "she was heterosexual" and "the Orokin were fucked up, don't forget" haha.

(I do find it funny that the storyline about Ballas, who got Divorced So Badly that he Caused Nearly All Of Today's Problems, is all wrapped up, but the story keeps going "no no, don't worry, there's still plenty of opportunity to remind you how fucked the Orokin were." Here's these two people that broke some insipid law about conceiving a child & so their bosses and leaders broke their brains and turned them into bio-weapon lapdogs as punishment. Every time they go "BTW Something Was Deeply Wrong With The Orokin & We Still Feel The Aftershock Of That Today" I clap my hands like a seal.)

Warframe Babies Are Born!!!!! This little tyke is fuckin weird. What's their problem. I think it's weird and cool. I don't really feel much about "this character is a parent now!" type of storylines. (I did pop off when Stalker got to do his shithead honourable samurai defending a child with one arm thing. I'm a sucker for that & they made it coooooool. It feels like they're setting up some kind of "Lone Wolf and Cub" situation. The scythe being juiced up with BabysPower was also funny.) The baby thing is neat to me from the perspective of, like... This is something weird and new that's never happened before in this universe. That's exciting and kind of scary! I'm interested to see where they go with that. (Presumably in a year or two. Very funny to drop this on us when a completely different major story arc is right around the corner with 1999.)

Gianni's delivery was fuckin killer. I'm excited for whatever next arc they do with Stalker if it means they're gonna pay my boy to grunt and yell and scream more. It feels very strange to be acquainted with two people who've done voice acting in "Warframe" now. Me next? ^_^

I like our new Corpus weirdo. I hope she comes back. Fun to get more stuff with the Sisters of Parvos & with Mr. Granum himself. But I liked her a lot. It got a fuckin laugh out of me to have her through all the quest excited about her big promotion that she's going to get & resolving that with "Is that a fuckin baby??? Fuuuuuck! They don't pay me enough to shoot a baby with a gatling gun!" I wish her ending scene was a little more than just stoically standing aside but literally anything else I can think of feels way too cheesy or on-the-nose.

The facial animations on the Operator were really fuckin weird. I just remembered that. I thought that was just a thing on my end but I watched someone else play & the faces looked weird for them too.

Hunhow's a good inclusion. I like him seeing the Stalker stewing in his own misery because he hates the only people that could offer him help & going "aw man, c'mon buster, don't be like me now." I like his signature that he puts in his emails. I like that he's still an emotionally constipated weirdo that hates us but is still endeared to us in some way. (They make nods to The New Strange in his ending email, which makes sense given that this also feels like a quest setting up More Weird Shit In The Future, but I do get a laugh that it also reads as "JADE WAS PREGNANT? OKAY... WELL. DON'T FORGET THAT I HAVE A WOMB TOO, KID." Thanks Grandpa. Love you too Grandpa. Thanks for the sweeties Grandpa.)

The event quest feels like a nice bow on top. I like the parallels between Jade and Ordis. Wanting to afford her the dignity in death he could never be given. Acknowledgement of Ordan Karris is fun!!! (The line about him being conflicted with the thought of Granum un-cephalon'ing him has me rubbing my hands together.) I'm excited that we're getting so much of Parvos Granum lately. What a shit head. It's funny to see him so hyped up about Ordan. "Duuuude! Your history's famous killer!! That's awesome? Do you wanna work for me? C'monnnnn we both hate the legacy of the Orokin. Wouldn't it be awesome if MY rule was the one dehumanizing you and wielding you as a weapon instead?" This is something they've been establishing as early as "Parvos and Ballas in bed with one another doing shady back-room deals over a Warframe bodyguard and specter particle research" but it's fun whenever they sow the seeds of Parvos being so much like the Orokin he hated.

I wrote more than I thought I was going to!!! I like the thematic through-line idea of this quest but I wish they executed on it better. I like the stuff this is presumably establishing for the future. I really like the event quest as... not quite an epilogue, I guess, but as an addition. Other than that I thought it was okay! I wasn't expecting anywhere near the level of Whispers in the Walls, but that quest being such a high bar makes a "pretty okay" quest stick out to me a little, haha.

[plumbaleena]

My Personal MCCC Settings for Storytelling

I've had a lot of people ask me what my personal settings are for MCCC that make it easy to story tell. If you're part of my Twitch community, you'll know that I don't play the game, I tell their story. And when telling their story, I don't have time for them to take 100 hours to pick up and put down a damn infant, or go to the bathroom. So here are my own personal settings that you are welcome to try to see if it can help relieve some stress off of the game.

Life Stage

For my game play, I do custom days for all age groups (except newborns) and I also play with aging off from time to time. Depending on how the story is going and if we need a lot of extra time with a certain character, I will turn it off. However, when it comes to their normal age spans this is what I have.

How to edit the life stage in MCCC

Click on MCCC via a computer > MCCC Settings > Set Age Span Duration > Human > Normal

Life stage / Normal

Infants / 5

Toddler / 7

Child / 10

Teen / 14

YA / 35

Adult / 45

Elder / 25

Needs Decay

As stated before, I don't play this game, so my decay is set to 0, however you can change around the percentage you want so that it's slower, or faster.

How to edit the motive/needs decay in MCCC

Click on MCCC via a computer > MCCC Settings > Gameplay Settings > Motive Decay > Sim Motive Decay Percent > 0 [this is because I do not play the game]

Multiple BFF's

How to enable multiple BFF's in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MC Tuner > Change Interaction Behavior > Enable Multiple BFF's

Notification Settings

This section is for all the stupid ass notifications that come up that I could care less about. Like someone adopted some random cat, or a person won the lottery. Who CARES!? I only want to know if someone in my family has been visited by the Grim Reaper, so here's how to do that.

How to change your Notification Settings in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MCCC Settings > Notification/Console/Menu Settings > Notification Settings

Aging/Death Notifications / Show Death Notifications > Played Only

[Everything else is disabled]

Auto Bills

How to enable Auto Bills in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MCCC Settings > Money Settings > Auto-pay Bills

Disable Twins/Multiple Births

How to disable Twins/Multiple Births in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MC Pregnancy > Offspring > Maximum Offspring > 1

Change Autonomous Behavior

How to change Autonomous Behavior in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MC Tuner > Change Interaction Behavior > Allow Instant Upgrades, Disabled Monster Under the Bed, Enabled Multiple BFF's, Kisses Always Available Disabled, Stop Random Flirting Enabled

Change Interaction Autonomy

How to change Interaction Autonomy in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MC Tuner > Change Interaction Autonomy > Autonomous Mean Disabled, Autonomous Flirty Disabled

Relationship/Friendship Decay

How to change Relationship/Friendship Decay in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MCCC Settings > Relationship Settings > Romantic Decay Percentage 0, Friendship Decay Percentage 0

Add More Club Members

How to Add More Club Members in MCCC

MCCC via Computer > MC Clubs > Club Member Count 10

[bluerose5]

The Portrayal of "Bad Boys" as Good

Part 1: Zevran Arainai

Let me preface this by saying that I am not approaching this so much as to be critical of fandom spaces (okay, maybe a little /j) in regards to this. That's not my intent, but I want to approach these posts more in the sense that these are experiences and patterns that I have observed in various fandoms when it comes to what are popular romances (among fandom that is, not the overall gamer demographic). I would also like to mention that I am looking at male characters specifically because 1) this is a certain type of romanceable character I'm referencing and 2) I could get into how female characters with similar personalities and traits more often get villainized rather than romanticized but that would be a whole post on its own. Alright, let's get to it.

To start off, let me say that I'm going to simplify things a little by referencing DND's alignment system for this, since it fits well for RPGs and the characters therein. Specifically, I am looking at the good, neutral, and evil alignments. What I find interesting is that sometimes in fandom spaces, we have these characters who are kind of like the "bad boys", so to speak. Because let's be real for a second, Bioware and others have cracked the code on fandom. Outside of the Prince Charming types, if you give fandom that one hot, bisexual/pansexual, morally corrupt man —one with a tragic backstory and the potential to do good— then people are going to start foaming at the mouth over him. Guilty as charged! It is what it is.

However, there comes a pattern when these characters are sometimes developed and/or interpreted by parts of fandom to be good, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are portrayed to have better intentions than what is realistic —for lack of better terms— for their characterization.

One such character is the man, the myth, the legend himself. When it comes to Zevran Arainai, our beloved former Crow, sometimes you'll encounter posts out in the wild that either turn their nose up at the thought of him doing bad things, or they're the other extreme where they flat out call him evil, both of which do his character a disservice. Overall, his alignment comes across as neutral with what we are presented in canon, which is why I am starting with him first.

First things first, Zevran is an elven man who enjoys killing, and he enjoys reaping the rewards of killing others. As much as people like to joke about certain characters being the "I can fix him" types, nothing the player character does changes this fact about him. Zevran tells the character that the assassin life is suitable for him. It's what he knows, what he is comfortable with, and that is what he wants to continue doing in the future with or without the Crows. He doesn't say, "Oh, I will only hunt bad guys." or "Oh, I will only hunt good guys." No, he says that he wants to continue in this profession where murder is the name of the game, and the only difference now is that he gets to do it this time on his own terms. He now has the luxury of denying contracts if he wants, and he gets to rake in all the profits to spend however he pleases, now that he is outside of the Crows' clutches.

While he is one who favors freedom and autonomy, his own especially, Zevran also favors practicality over emotional choices, even though he can be prone to the latter as well. One major example of this is how he encourages the return of the golems, which I personally don't see people mention as much compared to the moments when he encourages mercy. Of course, threatening to turn him into a golem changes his tune pretty fast, but he is not someone who is above utilizing unsavory means if it means getting the desired outcome.

On the other hand, we also see a more empathetic side to him in instances such as when he speaks out against the Circle's Annulment and when he sticks up for the Dalish in the Brecilian Forest. The latter of which, he has a vested interest in given his mother being Dalish, no matter how he tries to play the whole "I'm Antivan first and foremost" angle. These examples act as a good counter to those who claim he is outright evil; however, I would argue that they aren't enough to tilt him over to the "good" side of the mortality scale. I mean, let's face it. It's just basic decency to go "Hey, maybe we shouldn't kill this entire group of oppressed people with innocents among them because of the actions of one or a few." Not trying to downplay Zevran's responses, but come on, Bioware! Is the bar that low?

Now, in my opinion, if we had to pick one in-game set of approval and disapprovals that represents Zevran's morality the best, I would say look at his reaction to your handling of King Cailan's body in the Return to Ostagar quest. Zevran is the only one who approves of you leaving the body where it's at. Why? Because Cailan is dead. He died. There is no "honor" in that. His corpse is not anymore worthy of the time and effort of a funeral pyre than any of the other bodies that are going to be left there in the fields to rot, king or not. Again, there is that aversion to sentimentality, especially when applied to death. Likewise, he also disapproves if you choose to throw Cailan's body to the wolves. While he does not always go out of his way to do what others deem "right", he also does not go out of his way to commit acts of cruelty just for the sake of doing it. Not that he is above it. It's only that, if there is no purpose or logical reasoning behind doing so, then he does not approve of such actions.

At most, I would say Zevran is a "good-leaning" neutral character, and that's still being generous. At the end of the day, he's not completely good in terms of morality, and that's okay! This man was driven to the point of sending himself on a suicide mission because of the institution he grew up in and what he did in service to said institution. I think it's understandable that his first priority when it comes to approaching problems is to prioritize his wants and needs above others, even if he has these slightly hypocritical moments when he disapproves of the player for doing the same if there are emotional influences involved.

All of this to say that Zevran is a perfect example that, in order to preserve his characterization, it is important to realize that neutral and evil characters are capable of doing good things. Neutral and evil characters are capable of showing empathy and compassion and acting on it accordingly. Neutral and evil characters are capable of being counted among the heroes. However, that does not have to change who they are at the core of their character. Not to say that characters can't develop from one alignment to another. I'll get into that when I get to Astarion, but it can do a neutral or evil character an injustice to assume that, because they've had moments of growth and development throughout the journey, that it automatically turns them into these shining beacons of all things good afterwards. That they are suddenly the sweetest, most romantic men who scoff at the very idea that they could still associate with bad people or do bad things. Oh, no. Not them! Of course, if given the proper time and attention and context, I'm open to considering anything as potential to be "in character", but what I'm referring to is more when our resident bad boys are portrayed as good as soon as the curtain closes on canon.

Which will lead me to the next subject for the next part. Reyes Vidal.

[persona-brainrot-real]

a very long about haru because i love her and im upset about how the game let her story get overshadowed at every turn

its nearly 3am rn but i'm thinking about how genuinely insane it is for persona 5 to introduce Haru as a character who is struggling to find any of her autonomy and treat her the way that they do. her father is marrying her off to a man who makes it explicitly clear he wants to use her for sex and even Okumura, in his palace, is shown to understand this.

[ID: three screenshots of Persona five royal. In the first, Haru in her Phantom Thief outfit says "Father! You want me to be that mans plaything to satisfy your own ambitions?" the second is of Shadow Okumura, looking angry, saying "This is the only value you've had from the very beginning. The third image is before the boss fight against the cognition of Haru's fiance. He is saying "let's have fun! I'll play with you until I get bored!"]

even outside of the palace, in their daily life he makes it extremely clear that he has no intent on trusting Haru with company business (likely because he expects the company to be handed off to her husband after he dies) and he doesn't acknowledge her feelings or anything she says to defend her own autonomy (i know this is me reciting everything in the game i do have a point)

[ID: three screenshots of Persona five royal. In the first, Haru is upset as she says "So I'm not even allowed to decide where I will live, am I?". In the second, Okumura is saying "not only do you come home late, you've even stayed out overnight without permission..." looking disapproving. In the third image, Okumura is saying "I have my hands full right now with the company. Don't cause any more trouble for me." He is holding his phone.]

even when she first joins your team, she tries to insist on being useful and fighting, considering this is her request and her fathers palace, and morgana tells her she cant. i know its 'for her own sake' that she cant fight, but considering that Morgana was there when she first awakened and planned on using her to get through a palace alone, its really frustrating to then see him say shes not strong enough to fight in a team.

[ID: two screenshots of persona five royal. Both are taken in Okumura's palace. In the first, Haru is saying "I can fight too! Please, let me join you in battle!". In the second, Morgana is saying "Your persona is too weak to fight safely at the moment. Just leave that side of things to us for now."]

and this comes in AFTER morgana, while using her, gets her to insult his friends on his behalf because hes annoyed with them, even though she's visibly uncomfortable doing so, contradicts what morgana wants her to say, and is shown later to have no real malicious feelings for them - and all of the bitter feelings she DID have were because morgana told her that the PT's were mean and didn't treat him right or didn't need him, which wasn't true to begin with, and is why she has to ask him for direction on what to say,

[ID: Haru looks upset. She stands opposite the Phantom Thieves and looks at Morgana. She is asking him "What was it again?"]

and you bring all of this into a brilliant character of a girl who is so self-assured, so firm on what she wants and her own autonomy - i want to be a Phantom Thief, i want to be a hero, i want to have my autonomy but more importantly i want to earn it, i want to change my fathers heart myself so that he becomes a better person and a better business owner, i want to prove to him that i can be trusted with the company and that i have more worth than being married off - but never really gets to express that? Even when it comes to the fight with Okumura and her chance to have her moment - the moment where Yusuke tells Madarame he's a coward who lost sight of his passion, where Ann gets to tell Kamoshida that he's only alive because she wants him to live through all he's done (both in the palace and the real world), where Futaba gets to talk to her mom directly in a scene that always makes me tear up - Haru's moment to stand up to her father is overshadowed by her father speaking to Morgana instead!!!!!

i know that this could also be a huge meta moment - he sees his daughter standing up to him, defending herself, and dismisses her entirely to try and appeal to the next rational subject, a man, but . the man is a cat. it doesnt work as well if he turns to a cat to be like "well certainly you'll be more reasonable" and turns the focus to Morgana - who has already taken up a lot of time that Haru deserved to have recognised!!!!

i have issues with morgana, yes, and I believe a lot of that arc could have been really useful character building for him if it had been handled slightly better, given more weight and better pacing, but it really wouldn't have been such a big problem for me if it hadn't been pushed so heavily during Haru's character moments, because she is SUCH a good character!!!!

in her first appearance she makes for a really good subversion of what the PT's think that they are. her insistence on working for justice helps them work through their temporary doubt for what their purpose is and by having such a difficult situation happening in her life, she unites them all on something that they have to do. At least until they go to Okumura's palace for the first proper investigation, the intent to rescue Haru from her fiance is more important than the Phan-site and more important than any of Okumura's business practices.

she prioritises everyone elses happiness over her own to the point where she watches her father die on live television and tells the PT's to continue having fun at destinyland without her without considering that they'd want to be there for her. She has always suspected that people only wanted to be her friend for her money - and this seems to have affected her so much that despite being 'secretive about her history' at Shujin, she still doesn't mention at any point whether or not she has friends and is only seen speaking with teachers.

after her fathers death she has no real reason to trust any of the PT's - they were navigating with an unknown method, with no proof to show that what they were doing wouldn't cause a mental shutdown, they barely know each other, and yet she trusts them in spite of this and places her faith in the PT's regardless. even when faced with the person who DID kill her father, she understands that his death was a larger piece in a bigger plan and that it wasn't akechi's fault, it was the fault of Shido for ordering him dead, and in Shido's palace she's able to get the catharsis of killing the cognition of the person who aired her fathers death publicly on TV.

And what I think is a more frustrating part than any of that - where all of the Phantom Thieves, after their palace, get following story beats that increase their importance to make sure that you, as the player, can get attached to them, but the more PT's that join the team, the harder it is to juggle all of those characters and a lot of them have very vocal and prominent personalities that keep them involved. Yusuke's general quirks and behaviour keep him interesting, Makoto has an entire arc that's established ages before she's involved in Kaneshiro's palace, Futaba becoming navigator keeps her relevant, but where Haru's arc is taken over by Morgana in the palace where she's introduced, all subsequent story beats are entirely overtaken by Akechi.

Don't get me wrong, I love Akechi and he is in my brain 24/7, but it is extremely unfortunate that her fathers death immediately kickstarts the section of plot where the PT's realise that they're being tricked, meaning the plot suddenly ramps up, and during the school fair (something Haru is explicitly very excited about), Akechi's growing popularity and prominence in the story takes centre stage, especially as a day later he blackmails the PTs and joins their party.

Again, not complaining about Akechi, its just unfortunate that Haru's main story is clouded over by Morgana having a character arc and then the fan favourite comes in and immediately becomes the most prominent character for almost the entire rest of the game. It's sad because I love Haru but it wasn't until I romanced her that I realised how much I love her and how much there is too her - which ESPECIALLY sucks because it makes the section where you're reassuring her in the velvet room fall so flat compared to how you reassure everyone else.

ALL to say that i think it's wild to have a character whose entire arc routinely revolves around proving herself and reclaiming her autonomy from the men in her life, like her father and her fiance, and having her character arc so heavily influenced and even overshadowed by morgana, a male character. thank you guys for listening and if you disagree with me consider writing what your opinions are on your own post and not on mine :3

Anyway. huge rant post over. Haru is my wife and my girlfriend and my silly rabbit and i think she should be hyped up way more. ESPECIALLY for her showtime attack with makoto because that's fucking adorable. everyone must post one thousand haru okumura positivity posts right now

[ID: a gif of Haru Okumura, in her Phantom Thief outfit, holding her hat with one hand and pointing with the other. She says "I am no longer your subservient puppet!" while looking determined.]

[marshmallowprotection]

I’d actually like to hear your thoughts on that Unknown birthday cg

I actually love the composition of this artwork. It'd be wrong to share it without sharing the other half to it, though. Saeyoung and Saeran are a package deal. But, as it stands, these images stand in contrast to each other for a reason. Saeyoung's at a party that his friends put together for him, and Unknown's at a party Rika made for him. There are undeniable facts about these images.

Unknown's staring into a mirror, his eyes in a trance as he watches his reflection, and to me, it's always read like a dissociative episode. He's spaced out for a reason. He was trained to hate his face because it was his brother's face. He avoids looking into mirrors for a reason... and yet, on his birthday of all days, he's staring into a large mirror at his reflection.

A reflection that's known to spark feelings of contempt, sickness, and anger in his heart.

Why?

Why is looking into a mirror when mirrors are known to make him feel sick? Unknown wouldn't choose to do that on the day that sets him off. He wouldn't! I think, one could argue that maybe he would if he thought it might remind him of why he's upset to begin with. But, he doesn't purposefully go out of his way to trigger himself throughout the game, if it happens, it's far from happening on purpose.

Which is what led me to believe Rika hung the mirror from the wall OR choose that spot purposefully—to hurt Unknown. That much I can say for certain.

Even on his birthday, he's not ALLOWED to forget what she's trained for. He's not allowed to be happy. He's only allowed to think about the brother who STOLE EVERYTHING from him while he rots away with nothing to his name in the walls of a Paradise that will never a sincere Paradise. He has to think about the brother who MADE HIM feel bad. He can't escape it. Rika won't let him escape it because he's a simply a weapon for revenge now, no longer does she see him as a son.

His birthday cake is made of chocolate and his pint of ice cream is chocolate, too. There aren't many things he talks about enjoying in the game, but he does make it clear that he enjoys mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Ray revealed that fact in 2019. I mean, could that be his favorite flavor and not Unknown’s favorite? That's always possible, after all, they're not the same person. But, I have always operated under the suspicion that they share favorite ice cream flavors. They like how it stays on your tongue, cold, sweet, and just a little bit chewy. It's nice on a hot day.

I don't think he's super picky about ice cream since you probably can't go wrong with ice cream in his eyes, but the fact that he's able to establish a favorite kind of ice cream shows me that he does care about what he gets if he's allowed to have a choice. Like, I would love vanilla ice cream if it's offered, but if you had an assortment, I'd want chocolate or mint chocolate chip!

This is a character who has been repeatedly robbed of his autonomy time and time again, both with contempt and with a naive thought to protect them without thinking of his choice, and if he was asked what kind of ice cream he wanted for his birthday here, I think he'd pick his favorite if he could.

He clearly didn't pick here. I mean, you can check out the seasonal chats if you want to for 2020. Unknown tells Yoosung and Zen that he loves ice cream and even if they think he's some kind of program and not a real person, he still wants them to leave out the ice cream because, hey, what kind of person wouldn't want an ice cream if it was offered to them? I don't know people who would turn down the ice cream.

But, again, if you can choose the ice cream you're given, won't you pick your favorite flavor?

If you buy the folders from the market, you'll be treated to Unknown and Seven enjoying each other's ice cream, but while Saeyoung looks content with his ice cream, Unknown isn't enthused by Superman ice cream. My boy isn't picky about ice cream but he probably wouldn't want to consume his twin brother's favorite flavor... especially not at a time wherein anything related to Saeyoung makes him want to gag.

If the only ice cream he had to eat was that of his brother's favorite flavor, I think he'd do it, but I don't think he'd be happy about it in the end. It would take the ice cream experience, but he's not going to say no to something that makes him happy in a world that already has caused him to feel apathetic about most things. Yeah, it might not make him happy to have something that reminds me of his brother, but most things remind him of his brother and it's an inescapable tragedy. 

I don't think I need to talk about the representation of black roses in this game when it comes to this character, either. He is given this particular flower whenever he is in a timeline that doesn't bode well for him. It is a representation of the fact that he no longer has hope for a brighter tomorrow. All he sees on the horizon for his life is death and apathy.

Death can also be transformative, but that is not the reference we are meant to take away when we see it represented like this. GE Saeran's got a black rose around his throat during the RAE when you team up with Rika to turn him into a product of consumption to "survive" in a world that lets Saejoong get away with everything. But, anytime I see those flowers with him, I associate it with a loss of autonomy.

I associate it with Rika's control.

The one thing that's bothered me ever since I've seen the image is that bottle of alcohol sitting in the background. I mean, it doesn't have to be alcohol in that fancy sparkling glass, but there aren't too many drinks that are placed inside of those containers and the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I become. I try not to think about it, and I often tell myself that the only reason why it's there is because the artist might not have been told about the character's trauma.

After all, if the artist was made aware of this fact, it means the choice was intentional to place the bottle of alcohol within the image. I have no idea if the artist was made aware of that fact. The only reason why I tell myself that the artist might not have known is because Rika was also represented with alcohol in one of her birthday pictures, and she does not consume alcohol frequently or at all, either. 

In fact, Rika canonically scolds Jihyun and Jumin often for their poor drinking habits and reminds them to be responsible. There's a chat in Another Story where Jumin and Jihyun turn silent when you echo the words Rika once told them about alcohol.

The alternative in this situation if we don't believe the artist made a mistake without being aware of the lore is for me to believe that she specifically chose to put alcohol on the table knowing that it would trigger him. 

Because, unfortunately, since the artist made that decision, it leads the player to interpret that she purposefully put that bottle there to hurt him. I recognize that most people aren't going to think that hard about this and for the most part, it might fly over your head without a second thought, but it bothers me. I am a stickler for fine details and if you're a person who loves to speculate and dig into some media for everything you can find, this is one of those things that’ll haunt you. 

At the end of the day, it comes down to how you want to interpret the image, if you want to take it at face value for what it is and recognize that the artist likely didn’t know, that’s okay. If you would prefer to read into it as something that makes your stomach turn into knots knowing that Rika might’ve hit him where it hurts most, that's alright, too. 

I try to suspend my disbelief as much as I possibly can to ignore that bottle, but the bottle is there, and I can’t avoid it no matter how much I want to unsee it.

I have a hard enough time in the fandom when it comes to people representing the twins and alcohol as it is. These two are never going to drink a drop in their life, and if they do—There is a situation where Saeyoung drinks champagne in V Route, but it’s when he’s hit rock bottom and he thinks his brother is dead and it’s been two and a half years since then.

The last time his brother was alive, there was going to be a party. The trauma is going to come back to life as soon as the party is brought up again, and that is the only reason why I think he decided to drink that day. He was at the end of his rope, and he decided he would do the one thing he promised never to do because he thought it would numb his emotions enough to survive the way he saw his wretched mother tried to numb every miserable moment of her existence. 

I don't think he enjoyed it, though. I think he took a sip of it, and then he immediately wanted to throw up. He gets rid of the rest of the tiny glass and he never touches alcohol ever again. 

I've seen far too many people represent these two as characters that will drink without a second thought. There is no mention of their trauma, there is no regard for what they've been through, and there is not a second in the narration that even remotely points to the fact that they have trauma that stems from their mother's alcoholism. 

I can't tell you not to write something you want to write, just as much as someone can't tell me not to write what I want to write, but when you have no regard for this specific trauma, it makes me wonder how much compassion you have for somebody who has the same kind of trauma in real life. 

Because, this may be a huge stretch, I know, but if you can't respect a character who said they don't want to drink anything that contains alcohol and you write them doing it anyway, who’s to say that you’ll respect a real person telling you the same thing? 

Far too many countries have socialized drinking to the point that anybody who doesn't want to drink, regardless of the reason, will be shamed or ostracized for it by others in the room. I can't tell you how many people have tried to tell me to take a small sip of alcohol since becoming an adult, and I’ve refused. It's fine and dandy if that's what you want to do, as long as you're doing it safely!

But, why am I the one who is asked questions for saying no?

I don't shame anybody for enjoying and consuming alcohol, so why is it that I hear, "Well, just take a sip! How can you know if you've never had it? Here, let me shove this in your face and keep pushing you to do something you're clearly not okay with!" I don't want it.

This is also the case for many people my age who aren't interested, because I've heard the same thing from others who have been poked and prodded at like me. None of us owe you an explanation as to why we don't want to consume alcohol for whatever reason. No means no. That should be respected at the end of the day, point blank. 

Saeran hasn't said it as bluntly as Saeyoung, but you should be able to infer quite easily.

[infinitevacancy]

Was looking through some tags and I saw you reblogged a picture of Jill Valentine and you basically gave some meta about the catsuit and why Wesker did it, and I just wanted to let you know that your observation/meta was spot on and I like the way you think. Hope you’re having a very good week.

ty! idk how long ago this was but for anyone reading this after the fact:

i hate jill's design in resident evil 5 because it's so anathema to her character - the devs of the time pretty blatantly said that they wanted to make her look sexy, which is also why the P30 control device is on her chest - and it's generally, from a doylist perspective, the worst thing that can ever happen to a person's favourite character.

however.

however.

if you take Jill's change of hair, outfit, and general presentation as a direct result of Wesker now having complete control over her... it all makes a lot more sense.

Wesker is an egomaniac with a god complex who sees everyone else as inferior to him - so to have two regular people - jill valentine and chris redfield - continually pop up to ruin his plans and by extension contradict his worldview must be maddening.

then Lost in Nightmares happens, and despite once again failing to kill chris thanks to jill, wesker now has her in his clutches. the in-game documents shed some light on what happens next, so i'll just focus on the fact that now the bad guy with a god complex now has one half of the biggest obstacle to his supremacy over the human race under his control.

Wesker is arrogant. you could consider it his fatal flaw - he has a lot of those, but his arrogance proves to be his downfall by the end of the game... because he doesn't just kill Jill. he wants to break her and Chris, psychologically and emotionally, and let's face it he might not even want to kill them then. i think it'd be perfectly in character for Wesker's projected endgame plan to involve having both Chris and Jill as unwilling thralls, unable to resist and screaming silently the whole time as he forces them to help him destroy the planet and watch.

so what Wesker does is he puts Jill in a torturous situation - it's not expanded upon much but he forces her to infect civilians with bioweapons; which is absolutely going to fuck up someone who has dedicated their life to preventing such a thing, and also gives some insight to how Wesker views said civilians - as tools to further his own twiated ends. he even further assaults her mental state with the aforementioned catsuit and blonde hair, the superficial changes that act to remind Jill that her life and body are no longer her own to control - that's Wesker's territory now. you could extrapolate a deeper meaning from this about how patriarchal society views women's bodies, but RE5's dev team already proved me right.

so Wesker dehumanises and degrades Jill for three years, files off every sign of autonomy he can find and forces her to commit atrocities in his name. and then he pits her against Chris in a fight to the death, knowing that the only way it's going to end is with at least one of them dead - if not both - and the survivor wracked with guilt and misery.

but he doesn't count on Sheva. Wesker practically ignores her at every turn in dialogue, and i think he only refers to her once ("don't you two ever tire of failing your mission?") and i think it's another case of accidental brilliance by capcom where they want to make the game a big Chris vs Wesker showdown, but have to reckon with the fact it's a 2-player co-op game. Sheva helps Chris in disarming and freeing Jill, and then they work in tandem to exploit a weakness (that they only know about because of Jill! because they were able to save her because Wesker didn't just kill her!) and then finally they kill Wesker together, as partners and equals.

i don't really have a conclusion to this post, it was a lot of rambling, but my read of RE5 is that Wesker is very much aggrieved by Jill having the audacity to interfere with his plans and then putting her down in every way possible as punishment - and does this in big ways (P30 mind control shenanigans) and small ways (putting her in sexualised outfits) in order to cause her as much trauma as possible.

[strawberrysweater]

something i've thought about for a million billion hours even though it's probably not even this deep i just like danganronpa ok

i love how kaede shuichi and kiibo are all protagonists of v3 in their own ways: shuichi is the protagonist to the player, kiibo is the in-universe protagonist, and kaede is sort of... a protagonist only to herself. she tells us when we meet her and she wavers between being an in-universe protagonist and also just a plot twist device to the player. dr does this thing where every game has Character Archetypes and i like that "protagonist" is a role so strong that it has a defining physical trait (the ahoge) to the point that like. toko gains an ahoge in udg because she steps into that role. kaede shuichi and kiibo all have one. shuichi's is hidden under his hat only for him to reveal it after kaede dies and passes the role onto him. kiibo's is literally an antenna that i assume lets him receive wireless communication from audience surveys or whatever so it LITERALLY makes him a protagonist, it physically lets him fill that role. it's funny

AND i like the way they all deal with their protagonist roles - kaede and kiibo both do something that pushes them out of the role and breaks their narrative constraints, and it gets them killed and it falls to shuichi both times, someone who was never meant to have it in the first place. and THAT'S why he was able to end danganronpa for good because he's not tied down by the battle between hope and despair that every protagonist has had to go through (this is literally spelled out in the sixth trial you guys already know). i just love that theme of breaking everything and refusing to play a part, making your own meaning out of it, the importance of fiction and also of autonomy, etc. as soon as shuichi becomes the protagonist, the breaking down of the narrative is set in motion, and it culminates in the fourth wall being literally shattered. v3 is all about the reality inside the tv show, and i feel like anyone who steps out of their predestined role is able to see it, to feel it, even just a little...

like we have these two characters who are obviously protagonists who both act in their roles perfectly (kaede leading the group and wanting everyone to be friends and escape together without killing, kiibo listening to the audience and showing them the game and following hope) UNTIL they do something they weren't meant to do. a protagonist has never orchestrated a killing before. as soon as kaede started planning it, even if she ultimately failed at killing the mastermind or killing anyone at all, she was no longer a protagonist, because danganronpa protagonists don't kill

and because of kaito's execution, led up to from his and kokichi's last big fuck you to the narrative and the mastermind, kiibo is totally disconnected from his purpose and can do what he was never meant to do either. a protagonist is supposed to play along and win in the name of hope over despair (like how he acts as soon as he gets his connection to the audience back), not just indiscriminately destroy everything to bring the killing game down. he becomes a total wild card who breaks the fictional world apart, pulls aside the curtain, lets shuichi find out the flashback lights were fake, destroys the physical fourth wall for good, etc. and speaking of breaking the fictional world, when kaede "passes on her role" she literally causes the neon-lit-up trial UI to shut off and shuichi turns it back on again. a fantastic visual that has not left my brain. we love a kaede kiibo breaking the fiction parallel

tldr in both of these instances, kaede and kiibo stop being protagonists (in danganronpa's very distinct specific terms) and the role falls to shuichi, someone who was never meant to have it. and because of that, this danganronpa collapses in on itself. i think that's sick as hell

[jeremiahthefroge]

Man there's really something about the way MCD very slowly sinks you into this bigger narrative and makes you forget it's "just" a minecraft world. Sure, as far as episode 24, we're still getting YouTube intros where she introduces herself as Jess, but we've also got Levin, and all of her struggles with potentially having to give him up. And there's the looming threat of the shadow knights, there's Sasha in the village, the subplot with dale and molly and logan and Donna, there's Zenix being missing. We've got Aphmau acting stressed, acting sad, acting worried about the NPCs in her village, regarding them more and more as people as they appear to BE people.

Side note, all the plot stuff with Lords being a reality-warping force, turning simple NPCs into evolved thinking + feeling characters and having those characters devolve when they're away, are we meant to see this as "the NPC's AI gets so advanced they become more involved characters in the video game but if you turn off the video game they cease to exist" or like "minecraft is a sort of portal for irl people to interact with this other dimension, which they see as the minecraft world, and they're warping the reality of another real place, and real people are forgetting their memories when the lords are disappearing" or what?

Players don't seem to be the only people who can be lords, given Bright Port's Lord Burt, who clearly has the same/similar effect on Brightport that Aphmau has on Phoenix Drop (his absence causes some guards to start forgetting things and acting weird, as well as some of the roads disappearing). Plus there's definitely some variance in the personalities and stories of the NPCs around her, Lord Burt says that Azura is a special guard that can't be corrupted by the king bc she's pure of heart and has a bond to him. I don't think we're meant to believe the NPCs are just NPCs, at least not by this point in the series.

I'm interested to see how this develops and I'm curious as to how I'll want to handle it in my potential rewrite, if I decide to divorce the plot from the game of minecraft entirely. Which I did intend to, to give the characters a bit more breathing room. I wanted to start out with all the characters being fully themselves so we can get good early interactions.

Though there is very much something to be said about Garroth being stuck in that NPC state and Aphmau being around slowly brings his memories and autonomy back. Especially since she never seems to hold it over him, just glad to get to know him as he becomes his own person again.

Could make it a curse that the King cast, to prevent the people of the kingdom from organizing against him on their own after he starts killing off lords to steal their land. Making the only real threats to him the remaining lords and not just any town full of peasants with a bone to pick. Much to consider.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Sooooo I am very curious about your Durge and how they are built. Do they link into the lore of the earlier games? Are they a resist or accept type? Tell us more! 👀

You mean built as in "how Bhaal made him", or as in character build, or as in characterisation? Well, I'll answer them all anyway. Here's more rambling information than anyone needed about my fucked up, socially-unacceptable mess who needs therapy!

[Be aware dead doves may be present, ymmv]

Resist, technically. He woke up with a tadpole in his head and no memories, he wasn't going to trust a presence in the back of his head that kept stealing his bodily autonomy until he understood what it was. As he grew fond of his party, he began to be pushed towards doing good things and helping people to please them (and because it honestly does feel good to see people happy, even as it makes the Urge hurt him).

Of course there were a few exceptions where nobody except Astarion was looking where he was a bit pragmatic or just plain mean, because it was funny.

Then he got his memories back in Act 3 and had a full blown nervous breakdown as he realised how badly he had failed Father and his sole reason for existence by allowing himself to fall for the delusion that he was a real person. He tried to go back to just being Bhaal's evil little puppet, but it was too late and his loyalties were torn between being what his friends wanted and being what Bhaal wanted. There was another panic attack when he couldn't bring himself to kill Minsc because it would upset Jaheria, Wyll and Karlach. Still murdered a few innocent people and a celestial being behind their backs. Also every Flaming Fist in the Lower City, but that was their own fucking fault for having stupid AI. Turns out you can't have everyone you love, but luckily he got to solve this issue by letting Father kill him as punishment for his failure! He repents for his failure and his friends get to believe that he died a heroic sacrifice and move on with their lives - win-win! Except that Jergal interfered and now he has to carry around this tainted, stolen flesh he doesn't want to claim - damn you, old man.

Post-game he's living with Astarion; both having their bad days where they have time to stop and process their trauma now, and also having good days where they adventure; grow into being fully free willed individuals; hunt and kill people for fun, blood and profit where socially acceptable; and get some research done on stuff like Bhaalspawn and vampires. He'll probably be ok in, like, a decade or twenty, once he's finished coming to terms with the idea that he was genuinely miserable and terrified living under Bhaal's control and has formed his own life and a stable identity. In the meantime - abandonment issues, identity crises, issues about autonomy, paranoia about retaliation and religious guilt!

If he had failed in his duel against Orin and been condemned to lose his autonomy (and seen his friends immediately give up on him), or had he not been given death as a choice, he probably would've forsaken the party and fulfilled his original purpose in the end game. But he would've quickly killed them in their sleep first as a mercy! He's not totally heartless! He's an absolute mess.

He doesn't have much in the way of connections to the original games.

I go back and forth on how old I want him to be and haven't settled yet. I don't think he's young. Originally I had him be born in the temples before the Time of Troubles, along with the other Bhaalspawn but then it turned out that Durge's backstory is weird.

Going off of what we're told about being carved from Bhaal's dead flesh, having no birthday and being conceived beyond mortality, I'm assuming he was created from a part of Bhaal's corpse on the Astral Plane, where there was no time. Probably shortly after the end of Throne of Bhaal, in 1369 DR - maybe Bhaal was paranoid about Amelyssan and Bhaal's failure to be resurrected triggered the failsafe and initiated plan B: the Dark Urge.

Or Vel was born after 1372 DR, when Bane was reborn and Bhaal maybe felt a little insecure.

I have contemplated having my Charname meddle with his "birth" to piss Bhaal off, adding part of her own essence into the mixture. Technically it's not incest, because it's purely by magic, but it's still enough to make her sort of his mother and make it weird. Just to make the family tree even more complicated. Also technically makes him a half-human, half-hin, sun elf, quasi-deity. Nothing in this guy's life makes sense.

He's a ranger, because hey, he's a hunter - he just hunts people. He's comfortable hunting and surviving in urban or natural environments; he learned to live off the streets while being homeless after his foster family's death (and the subsequent massacre at the Ilmatari shrine that sheltered him) and learned to live off the land after fleeing into the wilds to lie low. It's also how he's familiar with poisons and venoms. He has an interest in death as part of the natural cycle, so the nature class suits him. Also likes animals, who are significantly less judgemental and more pragmatic about killing. Scavengers tend to follow him around for the corpses he leaves, and he ended up with a few rat and corvid animal companions (though Bhaal often forced him to kill them if he got too attached). It also lets me play a divine spellcaster, although I assume in his case the power is coming from his own soul rather than a patron god.

He's a divine being and an excellent killer, he knows this and it gives him self-confidence in his actions that some have described as "insufferably arrogant" or "suicidal". His go-to tactics for dealing with a problem are: Step 1) Promise death if subject does not submit Step 2) If subject does not submit; kill them Skipping to step two is also always on the table. All problems can be solved with murder.

His dump stat is intelligence, because the poor kid who ended up alone and homeless didn't have much time or resources for education. In another life he would've been a bard, he has a knack for carrying a tune and writing prose. I like to think Orin would've enjoyed art and maybe the theatre in her own alternate Bhaal-free universe, so it's an interesting parallel for them.

He takes an approximation of elven form because Bhaal decided to reverse engineer the Blessing of Corellon, using the soul of one of his elven kids as a reference, to give Vel a physical fluidity/flexibility that would be useful to his plan to breed an army of Bhaalspawn using Durge. Also works as a threat; obey, or there are other uses I have for you, and some of them will see you locked up for nine months. (Vel goes by male pronouns and presents as a cis man, but is somewhat flexible and accepts they/them pronouns. Not she/her though.)

Vel also has a million and one hang-ups about sex because of stuff like this; namely that he won't have any kind of sex that might cause pregnancy, and he used to kill the partners he begrudgingly took so that they wouldn't be able to perceive him during the act or remember him sexually. He makes a special exception for people who he's assigned an "equal" or "higher rank" over himself - they can do what they like with him and it's their right. Those exceptions would be Bhaal (Vel's body is Bhaal's body, as far as he's concerned), sort-of Gortash (except Vel didn't fully trust him and their relationship makes Bhaal irritated, so every time they had sex Vel had to leave and have a panic attack afterwards) and Astarion (who has his own hang-ups). There might have been something kind of going on with Orin, partly due to pressure for them to have "sacrificial lambs" together, but neither want to talk about it. He considered Ketheric, but Ketheric can't die and that would ruin it because Vel would be too busy trying to kill him to actually have sex.

Originally he was going to be the son of a member of the Eldreth Veluuthra, who turned to Bhaal for divine aid because the Seldarine still won't aid the terrorist organisation in committing genocide against the human race, for some strange reason. She would've raised her little abomination into be a weapon to set on them, and enjoyed the irony of humans being slain by an abomination spawned by of one of their own gods.

Since "the Dark Urge" gets you some funny looks when you use it in public, mine concedes to being called "Vel" - a name that only gets you funny looks from the minority that speak elven, because you've just introduced yourself as "dagger/knife." It's a description of him as a tool, not a person. His foster family did give him a name, but he refuses to acknowledge it because it was intended for a person who only existed in their imagination and he'll stab you if you call him by that name. He technically got the name from Gortash, who once "jokingly" referred to him as his favourite weapon one evening, enjoying the success after one of their joint plots to exploit some noble or other and advance both their goals via assassination/politicking. Vel has identity issues and complicated relationship with real Tel'Quessir, so he chose the elven word for the irony (no real elf would accept association with a Bhaalspawn, least of all this one).

Mostly he goes by no name at all. He might pick a new one, in a few decades when he's grown, healed a bit and feels secure in having his own identity.

Vel is Lawful, and alternates between Evil and Neutral depending on his mood and situation. He will fall to pieces without a purpose to structure his life around. He doesn't care if people around him are more Chaotic though, it's purely a personal code. If he takes a mercenary or assassination contract or something, he will fulfil it to the letter and make no attempts to backstab his employer or get any more than the agreed upon payment. He makes zero promises about the actions of anyone working with him, they can do what they want and it's not his problem.

He has a hierarchy in his head: Bhaal > Himself, Gortash, Astarion > Orin, the party > everyone else

His moral compass is a twisted thing that he's cobbled together out of scraps over the course of under two months, it's not very complete or useful. On the good-evil axis, he doesn't usually have second thoughts about taking actions that are evil, and he's not keen on the concept of morality as a whole; there was never any point in developing a sense for it. He never had any real say in his actions and he kind of resents people who judge him for them.

He kind of misses Sceleritas, his "great purpose" and all the power he used to wield, and he would make a fantastic Sharran.

[garden-of-mancers]

Do you have any examples of when you would want to send out an imaginary friend?

I do! I don't have any suggestions for a specific time to send an IF out, (I'd usually send one out overnight or for a few days, just whenever I felt the impulse to do so), but I do have examples for why you'd do it. Also, most of these suggestions are based in magic and witchcraft-flavored spirituality, so I understand if this stuff is really Not relevant to everyone.

A couple specific examples I can think of are as follows:

If you want them to become more autonomous or eventually leave you for good, sending them out is good practice. I know autonomy is more of a goal in traditional tulpamancy, but in my experience, having an IF who's done a few tasks unsupervised makes lucid dreaming with them a bit easier? In this case, sending them out is like a practice exercise; it's just one of the many activities you can do to increase their ability to act alone.

If you have some kind of mystical or non-material thing you want your IF to retrieve for you. Maybe you accidentally left another imaginary friend at an outing. Send your IF out to go get them! Does your IF come from another land where they have unique items? Send your IF out to go bring you some! (And you might spend their time away crafting the actual items for them to give you when they return.) If you've lost an item, there are many superstitious solutions to help you find them faster. Some I've heard of are astral projecting to look for the item, visualizing yourself finding it or having it, and saying the name of the item and sticking a sewing pin in a couch cushion. Well, why not send your IF out to look for the item? Who knows, it might turn up once they've returned. (And if it does, you can say your IF told you where to find it or that they put it there.)

If you just want to be alone. If you're doing a ritual or meditation that requires solitude, (something like the hide and seek alone creepypasta is the only thing I can think of off the top of my head lol), or if you're burned out socially and you need to make sure you stay alone, send them out. Sometimes when I'm in a bad place mentally and want to fight with everyone, it was nice to tell the one person I could control "We need some space" and let her vacation halfway across the world for a bit. If you think about them while they're gone, you can remind yourself that they're at the lake or whatever. And if they pop back in anyway, you can always say, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be at the lake?"

One psychological perk of having an IF is that you have a degree of control over them that you cannot exert over other people, pets, or headmates (if you're a system). I'm not saying this in a "you're my servant and you have to do what I say" kind of way; just that being able to create something, decide their appearance and traits, and have them come and go at your desire gives an IF's creator a level of autonomy and control that can be beneficial to your mental health. As an action, sending an IF out has the benefit of a caring act (packing, walking them to and from bus stop) AND asserting control over your environment. Hence: easy mental health hack.

Yes, I get that you can *technically* just make your IF disappear or stay in your headspace/inner world/wherever IFs go when they're not currently interacting with you. However, I prefer having near-omnipresent IFs. I'm unemployed and housebound, so it's not obtrusive for them to be there hangin out 24/7. So, whenever I get overwhlemed or DO want some alone time for more than a few hours, why not turn my IF's absence into a game or a part of their lore and experience?

And my final reason:

Just to let them go on an adventure! Honestly, I only started doing this because I had a travel journal that I never filled. I'm too disabled to travel now, so I would just send my old IF out to various locations and then write her adventures in the journal instead lol. It was a really cute journal! I wasn't gonna waste it lol.

-♥️-

(Sorry if this was overexplained or sounded patronizing. I am an overexplainer over text; if someone asks for clarification, I want to make SURE you get your answer the second time 'round 😂)

TL;DR: Sending an IF on an adventure by themselves can make them more autonomous, give them an active role in various magic spellwork, and provide psychological benefits for both the IF and the creator.