#ITS ACTUALLY BEEN PRETTY GOOD

[arytha]

🫡

[elftwink]

to preface this post i am anti-advertising i think we should explode the entire industry but it's sooo funny when you people make posts like "and they don't even work!!" like. sorry to be the bearer of bad news but yes they do. that's why we have to put up with so many despite everyone hating them and thinking its annoying. because they actually work really well and make a shit load of money

[realbeefman]

stacy is sooo interesting because she's in love with house but knows that they will never ever be able to have a healthy, stable, sane relationship because they're too similar so. she finds house-lite instead and marries him and. essentially moves on with her life! and is successful in this because she's a moderately well-adjusted person!

wilson, in contrast, never manages to escape the inevitable, in spite of his best efforts to find a house-lite of his very own, because he's an absolute fucking freak and ends up glued to house to the bitter. bitter end

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[midnightclover]

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story (ATLUS, 2003)

[biblically-accurate-dca]

sb humanizations + various vannys :3

[socksandbuttons]

SO. SO LIKE THEY ADMIT IT. SUN ADMITS IT.BLOODMOON IS CONSTANTLY USED AND BEING CONTROLLED. AND YET AND YETTTT

'he gets no redemption' you just explained bloodmoon was being used here for purposes they probably dont get yet.

[avornalino]

she resells her thrift finds at a 500% markup on trendi...

[rohirric-hunter]

For reference, in case anyone's curious about the coin shown in the epic coinflip emote.

I believe the profile on the heads side is meant to be Aragorn, which would make this a very strange coin to have for a PC who's not that far along on the Epic.

[beetlesandblood]

Happy (almost) third birthday to the first whump series I ever read - Riot Kings

Here's a very beat-up Melchior to celebrate!

@befuddled-calico-whump hope i did him justice :)

[unicornsaures]

i think im so scared of the outsiders fandom because people have serious pfps and i see everyone AS their pfps.. down on amrev tumblr we have the equivalent of a .5 of your favorite historical figure and call it a day; its hard to be scared of someone when your first impression is G.Wash with a cute lil bow.

[cleromancy]

"tim needs to get a new mantle he didnt steal from his siblings" wrong. Say hello to the new huntress

[warriormoustache]

Got my first shrimp goby pair last week and this is my impression of them so far.

[yellowocaballero]

Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?

Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!

I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.

I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.

I am going to talk about the prologue.

The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.

Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.

But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.

They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.

I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?

Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.

Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.

At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.

What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.

It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.

But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.

ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?

When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.

[retros-artandstuff]

vriska + a transmasc dave doodle

[pinayelf]

I know fans joke abt how the warden is more competent than the inquisitor bc they did all that w/o much help but the funny thing abt amihan is she actually isn't

she was 20, angry and hated herself and the world, she ended up in the situation she was in bc she was...a petty snitch. she also hates being a grey warden and continues to hate being one through dai - she actually leaves but then decides to search for the cure

for most of the Blight, it was fuck up after fuck up. like I play it so that I have enough ppl to help me fight the archdemon, but in my personal headcanon, she pissed off a lot of potential help (whether it be Circle mages who overheard her saying she was "gonna annul this shit" out of anger, eamon's men who did NOT like her, bhelen who didn't really trust the fact that she knew nothing about politics), left a bad taste in people they came across and picked a fight with anora

which I think makes sense for a 20 year old ill-adjusted young woman who had to learn how to be more selfless. beating the archdemon was pure luck mixed with people just NOT WANTING the Blight to destroy ferelden and realizing joining the fight was the only way to stay alive

amihan does grow, but it's slow, she has to process trauma, understand she hurt people and ruined their lives and to actually experience what it's like being loved (both platonic and romantic)

I tend to not post so much abt how much amihan fucked up and almost let a Blight swallow ferelden bc I tend to feel anxious abt how ppl will receive it but I think it's important to her character and it's fun and interesting for me to play with it in this case

immy is 100% more competent than amihan, in spite of her own flaws, but I love both my messy and my scaredy cat girl all the same