#This is actually a playthrough I started last year

[kelbunny]

Honestly same. I would too. We've even got a fairy with us if you want some white wings to mix it up a bit.

Also, I love having that immense dread this sidequest brings. Like I know what happens and I still wish it wasn't so.

But seriously, the Chapter 2 sidequests are DARK.

[the-maple-leaf-collective]

god why is ren so fickle. like im sorry we're being hunted by ghosts and i'm trying to keep everyone alive while ur getting stoned?????

[cryiling]

guess who finally beat ganon after 6 years.. FINALLY

[goldensunset]

hehe i can begin pokémon violet tomorrow >:3

[buttercupshands]

I honestly can't believe it took me 7 years

[sansevierias]

one thing i hate about open world games is that most of the time the pacing of the story is dependant on player's actions. like they fill these games with fetch quests or even just smaller but still interesting missions, and if you want to do them, you pretty much always fuck up the flow of the story. like i hate that as a player it's my responsibility. and especially on first playthroughs you simply can't know what and when to do things for the story to flow nicely.

[calistozom]

In the last playthrough, I suddenly got really into this drider. It's a pity that he cannot be included in the party and didn't even play a particularly big role in the plot. Ooh, but how great was his potential. >_<

While I was drawing him, I thought that with this lantern (the only thing that can disperse the coming darkness) and the crazy preacher’s speeches, he would be a very cool secondary boss ...

With a big spider lair in the church, where adventurers were to be constantly stuck in the web forced to fight off not only spiders, but also the approaching darkness. With the same insane flock, half consisting of spiders capable of burrowing and unexpectedly attacking from a huge number of crevices/cracks/caves. And, of course, with great emphasis on the cult of the Absolute, and not Myrkul and the rest of the Trinity. It would be ironic if a new "divine essence" actually took root and began to form there, coming into direct confrontation with the Trinity...

... But okay, I got a little carried away.

I'm quietly "warming up" after the holidays and starting the year again by drawing a wallpaper, but this time for the phone. (last one was a Hastur for the computer) / Well, also, a couple of variations with spiders separate from each other.

P.S. - also add a process... cause I can \(￣︶￣*\))

[shima-draws]

Tell us about the AU! I know you want to!!

WAUGHHH. AGHHH. OKAY. OKAY SO. I've been watching one of my favorite content creators play through the DLC. Early on in the playthrough he was tossing around theories and said "Maybe KIERAN is Ogerpon??" and that gave me a BRILLIANT THOUGHT.

Ogerpon Kieran AU.......

I've already thought of a very long and complex backstory for this LOL but to simplify it. Before the ogre and its human companion came to Kitakami, said companion was actually living a very happy life with his child. However, they were caught up in the midst of a great war that ended up taking the child's life. The man was so overcome with grief that it summoned a great being (I'm thinking Xerneas), who blessed his dead child with new life. And that child was reborn as Ogerpon!! So kinda like how children who get lost in the woods and die are reborn as Phantump.

Fast forward to many many years later. A long chain of events leads to Carmine's grandfather's...father (so, her great-grandpa?) meeting Ogerpon and vowing to make it a new mask, a mystical and powerful mask that could grant wishes. Sadly, Carmine's great-grandpa wasn't able to complete the mask before he died. This project was eventually picked up by Carmine's father (and I have a whole other thing about him but I'm not gonna get into it right now lol). Carmine's father forms a very close bond with Ogerpon as he continues to gather materials to finish the wish mask. He expresses his desire for Ogerpon to finally be able to walk among the villagers with its name cleared, and for Ogerpon to meet his only daughter. He leaves for a journey to find the last material for the mask...and never returns 😔

Carmine's grandfather has a whole complex about the wish mask, but after seeing both his father and his son dedicate so much time and care into completing it, he takes the last material, imbued with the hopes and dreams of his family, and finally finishes the mask. When he presents it to Ogerpon, Ogerpon dons the mask and its wish is granted...it becomes human :") So it becomes Kieran, basically!! Kieran's wish was to be able to say thank you to all of the generations of mask makers that had helped him, and. To be part of their family 🥺 What he doesn't know is that his wish to be human stems from the fact that he already was human, once. But he doesn't remember his life before he was reborn as a Pokemon.

So, Carmine's grandfather happily accepts Kieran and his desire, and takes him home to live with him and Carmine. Note that Kieran is probably around 5-6 at the time, so he's BABY. And Carmine is only about a year or two older. She isn't sure what to think about suddenly getting a new brother, but she's happy to have someone to boss around lmao.

And once a year, during the festival of masks, Kieran lets his facade fall and wanders around as Ogerpon again. Just to keep in touch with his roots haha

So obviously with Kieran being Ogerpon the events of the DLC will play out differently than canon. Kieran slyly compliments the ogre in front of the player and mentions that maybe it's just misunderstood. He's been trying for a while to change the villagers' minds about what happened to him and the Loyal Three all those years ago, but it hasn't been going...too well lol. So when the player shows up, and things start to shift, Kieran gets really excited bc he realizes he finally might be able to clear his name :")

Is this AU silly and dumb as hell? Yes. Does it not really make sense with canon and is full of plot holes? Yes. Am I brainrotting over it anyway? Also yes.

Take a little edit I did of Kieran's official art to fit what I had in mind for the AU ;) I wanted to draw it but I'm at work rn lmao RIP

ALSO LITTLE DOODLE OF THE BOY

ALSO bc of Ogerpon's original gender Kieran probably goes by he/they pronouns in the AU

[ezlo-x]

“Wow I hope BotW gets a sequel someday…” - my TotK summary <3

It’s been a year, and honestly. I did not complete that game at all. I watched lets plays and cutscenes in youtube and a few playthroughs of my friends. And every time, my regret of buying this game grows ever so slightly. I know I sound mean and harsh but I prommy I got nothing against ppl who actually enjoyed TotK. This is more of my personal experience of how my excitement playing this game completely burned me out less than halfway through the game.

Gameplay

I’ll start with gameplay first, as I have issues with it. Let’s start with the physics of the game itself. Ngl, there was a small worry in the back of my mind when I realized there would be in-game physics and that you have to rely on those said physics. I personally don’t have a good experience with game physics and they usually tend to frustrate me. Which somewhat happened when playing the game. It didn’t happen too often, thankfully, maybe because the zonai parts didn’t tend to last long. Speaking of Zonai parts and builds

I wish building Zonai stuff was a bit more fun. Or at least give us more time to experience our builds. We already have a disadvantage by having a limited amount of batteries that you have to slowly upgrade throughout the game. So, seeing that one of your Zonai pieces starts to flash and disappear is annoying. I understand we can obtain more zonai parts throughout Hyrule, but I wish it lasted long enough. Also, the fact that you can’t really travel a lot in many of the builds, oh how disappointing it was to build a cool Zonai truck with big ass wheels but get frustrated that it couldn’t pass through a few bumps on the road. I feel like the Hoverbike is the best Zonai build of the game.

The Ultrahand is fun when trying to solve puzzles or merge random items. Fusing weapons, on the other hand, is my favorite thing in the game. There’s something really satisfying about fusing a really powerful weapon together. I really don’t mind that the weapons are breakable if that means I have a spot to make a strong weapon. Weapon durability never really bothered me. Both games push you to explore around to look for weapons. I think it would be boring if they weren’t breakable.

The shrines are a big improvement from BotW's shrines. I wished there were more challenging Shrines over the many King Rauru blessings. I can't really say much about the dungeons as I only completed two out of the five. But I think there was a bit to be desired; it's almost a Zelda dungeon.

Sage abilities. I want to speak to the game designer who thought it was a great idea to activate the sage abilities with the same button you click to pick up items on the floor. A total downgrade to the way you’d activate the Champion abilities in BotW.

Rupees. I would like to speak to the game designer who thought it was a great idea that you now have to manually press A to pick up rupees from the floor rather than casually walking in front of it to automatically pick it up. From my previous point, do you know how many times I’ve tried to pick up rupees only for Tulin’s ability to fly them away from me?

The sky islands, ohh boyyy, finding out that they had to reduce the amount of sky islands is disappointing, but I understand in a game design aspect. BUT it is disappointing that the game was advertising itself for the sky islands, only for there to be very few in the final. Like remember back in 2021 when they were advertising SkSw HD, and then i think a year later a totk teaser dropped and Link was falling from the skies? Good times ❤️

The Depths: I enjoyed the Depths a bit more than the Sky Islands. But it does get boring after a while if you’re not there to fight monsters or look for treasure, which is also disappointing. I love the OST descending down a chasm and entering the depths. Also, don’t get me started on how frustrating it is to use Zonai builds there compared to the surface or sky islands.

I think those are all my thoughts on the gameplay. I still have a few more issues with it but I feel like it mixes with the story so lets get that over with

Limitation vs Freedom

My biggest issue with this game is that it gives you the freedom to do whatever you want. However, there is still a story attached, and the story still wants to play out linearly. So, we have a game that grants you total freedom on how you want to play this game, but the story is still linear. But even if you decide to experience the story while doing dungeons and shrines. The game doesn't update with the piece of information that you discover.

The Dragon Tears are a really flawed way to experience the story. Zelda's memories are scattered across Hyrule; the number of times I've seen ppl say they accidentally got the tears out of order cause they thought it was similar to BotW's way of getting the memories. Basically, if you happen to be near one memory, you might as well get it cause it'll get annoying to go back and forth. Only to the person's shock, they got a cutscene meeting the Queen and King and then going up the Hebra region as that's the closest memory from the previous one. Just to see Queen Sonia dead on the floor.

What also bothers me is that the game doesn't update when you make a discovery in these memories. For example, I found out that Phantom Ganon can transform into Zelda in the memories and walk up to the NPCs in hopes of a change of dialogue. But getting nothing, walking up to Purah, Tulin, then Yunobo, and seeing no change of dialogue got really tiresome. It's as if the game doesn't believe you're smart enough to connect the dots.

Also, for people who decided to explore and get the Dragon Tear memories before entering any dungeon. There is very little change of dialogue, suddenly the game strangely punishes you by not letting the npcs acknowledge what you just discovered. While it's not an actual in-game punishment, you're stuck with characters asking a million questions that you already know of. Suddenly, the game's freedom to do whatever you want gets put to a halt because you decide to have the freedom to experience the story however you'd like.

NOW I get to move the part that I’ve been waiting (dreading) for!!

Lore

Sheikah Tech…I don’t care how simple the explanation is on why they are gone. It is probably the dumbest explanation I’ve seen. The fact that it wasn’t even questioned in-game and by the developers baffles my mind. How does it vanish in thin air? Their explanation is that the Calamity no longer exists doesn’t make sense to me either. The Sheikah tech has been there for more than 10k years but only in a dormant state. I don’t want to ask any more questions, or I’ll be here all day, but it drives me up a wall how the lore of the Sheikah got shafted to the side for the new stone technology aesthetic. Speaking of which-

Zonai in general. The fact that WE DONT EVEN GET LORE from the Zonais aside from being viewed as gods is sooooo ughhhhh I wish there was more. Why are there two remaining Zonais? (This probably got answered tbh but idc to look) Who’s the ancient hero and how come he looks like a Zonai or just in fact a different race we’ve never seen before?

Draconification…god. I have many thoughts and also many thoughts about the secret stones. It is an idea that I find interesting and could’ve worked for me. If it didn’t contradict itself in many aspects, as in how becoming a dragon, you will lose your sense of self. I think it would be a nice foreshadowing of the fate Zelda could’ve had. I think making the other dragons take a role in that and expand on it would’ve worked. Idk I think instead of implying it, it could’ve been expanded and shown a lot more severity of the situation.

Apparently I don’t got much on lore, but you know what I got much of????

STORY

This one is going to be a FAT one so bear with me. God where do I even begin here, I'm going completely omit the part where the game feels like it’s gaslighting you through the npcs cause I feel like everyone knows that.

My biggest frustration with this game is that it has such interesting story concepts and cinematic moments. But I can’t but feel like these moments were there first, and everything else was built around it. However, whatever suspicion I feel about how they created this story, only to my shock and horror that there isn’t a credited group of people in the credits, only an outside team (company?). Before I continue, I think it’s dumb when people say TLoZ didn’t have much of a story when previous Zelda games had a storyline to follow (OoT, MM, WW, TP, fucking…even Link’s Awakening, and more). So yes, TLoZ does have stories. It’s not just about the dungeons if I'm being honest.

What I find so odd is that Monolith Soft has games such as the Xenoblade games, where the latest game of that series does have a credited team of writers. Hell, BotW had two credited writers. But I won't go far speculating why they decided to hire a company outside the team to write TotK; it is only interesting to me why they did that. Since there really isn't a solid team of writers, I will focus my issues on Fujibayashi as a story writer; after all, he is the director of this game. And I've seen multiple interviews after the game's release where he explains a lot of the game's "lore" and story that should've been easily explained in the game in the first place. I think this will be me sharing my opinions rather than critiques... boy where do I even begin...

Sages—the ancient sages, not counting Mineru, are pointless. I felt no connection seeing the Ancient Sages meet their predecessors. Can't believe Age of Calamity made me feel more strongly about the Champions meeting their predecessors than the ancient sages did. - I also think they really don't share anything important. Maybe the first time, yes, but you could easily remove their cutscenes and just have Mineru explain how everything went down, and nothing will change. - Now, to the present Sages, I can't really say much, sadly. Tulin and Yunobo were the only characters for whom I completed their quests, and I enjoyed their character arcs, especially Yunobo's. If I could pick up TotK again, I would try to do Riju's arc, as it seemed really fun to play from the playthroughs I've seen my friends do. I don't really care for Sidon. Before I dropped the game, I was going through his quest and got really irritated fast for many reasons that I have mentioned here previously.

King Rauru and Queen Sonia – There has never been a character that I've enjoyed where I think they deserved much better than what they were there for. I get it; Sonia was only there as the character to be killed off to move the plot forward, but oh my god...I could've saved her. I wished we could've seen her more involved in the story than just standing by Raruru's side. - King Rauru, my brain turns foggy when I think of this man, and sometimes there are too many words to explain my issues. But to water it down, I feel we centered ourselves too much on these characters who don't even affect the main protagonist to some degree. Sure, King Rauru first appears at the beginning to show you his magic hand abilities. But I guess I was hoping something like how the previous TLoZ games had your companion help you throughout your journey and are the key fact of many things in the story (Midna and KotRL appear in my head when I mention this).

Zelda—sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I think this game would've been 10x better if she had been the protagonist. I know it probably wouldn't make sense because she turns into a dragon by the end but Idc. What frustrates me about Zelda is that she's given very few options. It's a war or nothing. It's becoming a dragon or being stuck in the past forever. I guess that's the tragedy of her story, but instead of me feeling sad, it frustrates me.

Link—Oh god, here we go. Link has a very small role in this, and you can disagree with me. But how is it possible that this is one of the few Links that has little involvement in the story? Link just happened to stumble into a bigger mystery than it already was. Link didn't even prove himself to Ganondorf why he's a threat to him aside from the first cutscene and Rauru.

Ganondorf - .........I hope this is the last time we see Ganondorf in the series. I know that sounds shocking, but if Fujibayashi is going to take the lead in storytelling for future games, I don't want him to make another iteration of Ganondorf. To me, Fujibayashi works better by making completely new Zelda villains. Ghirahim and Kohga are perfect examples. Ganondorf in this game was so underwhelming and disappointing. He never directly confronted himself with either Link or Zelda. Gameplay wise, he's great, but the story? What is he doing here? Literally, it feels like they only brought Ganondorf back because people questioned about Ganondorf back in BotW.

Conclusion

There are many aspects of the game that I enjoy; however, in my case, the bad outweighs the good. That's why this game frustrates me: There was a lot of potential to be seen. There is probably more for me to say that I'm either intentionally leaving out or just forgetting cause there are many things. Happy one year TotK 🎉🎉🎉

[shuttershocky]

I tried playing Nioh 2 like a year ago but it seemed… Kind of absurdly difficult? I couldn’t get past the first boss, and just Ran from all the mini-bosses. I’m considering picking it up again, but do you have any tips for what the game expects from players?

Let me start out by saying that Nioh 2 is the complete opposite of minimalist game design. There are mechanics behind mechanics behind mechanics behind shit that only gets unlocked in your next playthrough, so I'm just going to let you discover most of that for yourself.

Okay so first off you're going to see people call Nioh a Soulslike. This is false.

While it has shrines to act as campfires that respawn enemies, you should be approaching Nioh far more like a 2000s action game like Ninja Gaiden: you have to be fast and extremely aggressive. You don't wait for an opening, you make one, and when you've got an opening you don't just attack, you do as large a combo as you can manage.

How do you do that when you have a limited stamina (Ki) bar that you need for dodges and blocks? You learn how to do Ki Pulses. When you attack, you get swirling blue orbs that surround your character. Tapping R1 lets you do a Ki Pulse, refunding part of the Ki you just spent. Tapping R1 at the perfect time (right as the blue orbs enter your character) refunds you a lot.

Mastering Ki Pulses is what makes Nioh a different beast from any Soulsgame. Nioh assumes you're using it and fighting with deceptively far more stamina than you actually have, because you do. Some of the weapon skills you unlock also grant you bonuses for good Ki Pulsing, such as letting you swap stances with a bonus, buffing yourself up, etc. Ki pulses also purify the air around you, so if you find yourself inside the Yokai realm that slows your Ki regeneration, a Ki Pulse cleanses in the air in a small AOE, allowing you to fight monsters properly in spite of their dirty tricks.

Master this simple concept, and even if you're in unfamiliar territory (which is 70% of your Nioh 2 experience) you should be able to defend yourself no matter what. Enemies also use Ki in battle, so if your Ki management is better than theirs you can wail on them for free once they're tired. You can also grapple exhausted enemies to stun them and really make them free kills.

Also at the start of the game, you choose a Guardian Spirit. This Guardian Spirit determines your Burst Counter, which is a special kind of parry move that lets you outbullshit enemy bullshit. Basically, enemies will glow red when they start up an unblockable bullshit move that will end you. This is only unblockable with your human parries, but if you use your Guardian Spirit to Burst Counter (R2 + Square) you hit the enemy with your own insanely powerful move that also stuns them, though how your Burst Counter works depends on your currently equipped Guardian Spirit (one gives you an attack with super armor, another is a dodge with an after-image the enemy can attack to trigger the burst, and the last acts as a standard parry but much flashier).

Burst Counters work even on bosses, meaning you can instantly turn the tables on a boss pummeling your face in if they get greedy and pull out their super moves.

____

Without sugarcoating it, Nioh 2 can be a really difficult game. However, its secret is that you are powerful, so much so that Nioh players doing challenge runs like to play the whole game at Level 1 without upgrading themselves. Once you get into the mindset of tapping Ki Pulses to the rhythm of your violence, you realize you're actually stronger and faster than most enemies in the game. You CAN get punished for overstepping, but the lesson isn't to tame your greed, but to refine your aggression. You can dodge in the middle of combos in this game; you can afford to make one more slash at that boss.

Also, unlike a Souls game where bringing in a friend is limited, Nioh 2 can be played in true co-op. The whole campaign, end to end, both of you progress and you can play together as soon as you finish the tutorial. With how powerful you can get, co-op isn't exactly balanced, but it IS extremely fun, if you're here for the over the top ninja-wizard-warrior shenanigans and not for the challenge.

[snapscube]

What got you to start editing out the intros on snapcube 2? I suppose it helps get to the games faster, but as a hardcore Vodhead, I kind of liked those.

I've gone back and forth about keeping pre-streams in the VODs for a couple years now. Whenever I decide to take them out I always have a couple people being like "aw I liked those", but then when I leave them in I can tell the majority of viewers will just skip to gameplay anyway and of course there's the age-old "skip to [timestamp here] for the game" comments. Not that I really mind people having the option per-se, but essentially over the years I've gotten the impression that there's always gonna be someone who feels like the experience of the VODs could be improved by either including them or cutting them and it's just gonna come down to individual preference, so I should go with my gut and how I like to produce things.

SO to actually answer your question as it stands technically, what got me to start removing the opening sections of streams RECENTLY is that I actually just completely upended the way I produce these VODs. I used to have an entire, seamless recording running from the moment I started streaming to the very last second, when I hit my "go live" button the recording would turn on automatically and I never touched it. Then when it came time to post I would put the recording in my editing software, cut out the starting soon screen and all the breaks, and then render and upload manually. At some point during or right before the Tears of the Kingdom series I changed this completely. Having to render out new versions of cut down VODs overnight became way more trouble than it was worth, literally hours of downtime where I couldn't do much on my PC while it was working on exporting them.

So I created a new method that goes something like this:

start the stream, play music

after a few songs, hop on mic and settle in with chat. talk about stuff, chill.

once i am ready to Do The Actual Content, i hit the button to start recording stream locally so the recording only ever begins when i'm ready to go.

i address vodheads and introduce them to the stream separately, then the show starts for real

if there are any stream breaks, i pause the recording as i leave and start it up again once i come back so there is literally nothing i have to edit out of the final recorded file

once the stream is over, take the recording and quickly convert it to mp4 so i can upload it to youtube as-is. every cut is already made, it's in full quality, and i don't have to render it.

now, i totally could just start recording once i hit my "bootup jingle" sound and hop on mic earlier in that process! the practical difference would not be really much to sneeze at on my end. i actually have already done this a couple times! however, what also ended up happening is that the Tears of the Kingdom series like.... REALLLY cut down on how much time i was even spending in the pre-stream to begin with. i was so pumped about that playthrough and i wanted to really maximize my time playing the game while i was live, so often there just really wasn't anything interesting in the pre-stream chat to begin with. this wasn't always the case, but it was reliable enough that i got used to just starting the recording when i started the game. then once i got used to it i kinda started to like it and like how the final VODs turned out when you could just click on it and jump right in, and i've kinda kept up a similar pacing and cadence to my streams post-TOTK.

ultimately, the TL;DR answer is that it's just how i prefer to produce the VODs right now and it makes my workflow a lot easier and makes me feel good about the final product! not saying this will never change, again it's something i go back and forth on. but it's how it is rn!

[miukki960]

Okay, so I just finished Love for Love's Sake and..... I have so many thoughts. I could wax poetic for hours about how much I loved the show, but right now what I really want to talk about is my theory on the ending and the whole concept of the "game."

Please bare with me as I don't make posts like this (or any at all for that matter) often. Please forgive me if it's incoherent, my thoughts tend to run faster than my fingers can type lol.

Here we go!

First, who is the author sunbae? I think he's the embodiment of death. When Myungha wished on the shooting star for 1. Someone to care for him and love him and 2. To disappear,he was wearing what I'm pretty sure is the same outfit as when we first see him in the bar back in episode 1. This leads me to believe Death heard his wish, so when Myungha decides to end his life and regrets his decision in the last moment, Death decides to give him a chance to change his fate.

So he creates the "game" based on a novel he supposedly wrote. I believe this is a false memory he gives to Myungha so he will willingly play the game and try to change his fate. Which leads me to my second point...

Myungha is the author. The show did a very good job at keeping this subtle at the beginning. We as an audience are led to believe he is simply transported into the videogmae world and is at the mercy of the dating sim, but they show us multiple times that that's not the case.

Once, when Myungha mentions that the missions are written in his handwriting, a second time when we get a flashback of him actually writing these missions in a notebook at the bar, and a final time when we see him pen the shows Ultimate Mission using the Author's Pen, "Please make Cha Yeowoon Happy."

I started to get the idea that Myungha was the author back in the first few episodes when we started to see the side missions. Every mission he got screamed to me "this mission is actually for you, not Yeowoon." What was the first thing he did when he was supposed to get Yeowoon more friends? He befriended Kyunghoon himself. Save 3,000,000 won? For himself. Get Yeowoon followers? Using HIS Instagram. Which leads to point number three....

The game Myungha is sent to is actually a reenactment of his senior year of high school. All the characters he meets are actual people in his earlier life, his grandma, Kyunghoon, Sangwon. But in his original "playthrough" he didn't bother to befriend or interact with them, so they went about their lives unaffected, and he forgot they existed. I say all this with the exception of Cha Yeowoon.

Cha Yeowoon is a mirrored reflection of Myungha created by Death and inserted into the game. Myungha said himself at the beginning that Yeowoon was his favorite character because he reminds him of himself. Later on, we learn that their backgrounds are almost identical too. Yeowoon lost his mother, has an absent runaway father, and was raised by his grandmother. Myungha has a dead father, absent runaway mother, and is being raised by his grandmother. So at the beginning when Death asks Myungha if he will change Yeowoon's fate and rewrite his story, he's really talking about Myungha.

Adding to this, I also noticed something rather spectacular narratively in the second half of the show. The whole show, we watched Myungha try and (mostly) succeed at making Yeowoon happy. But suddenly I realized, as we watched him get happier and happier, Myungha was falling deeper and deeper into a sadness rivaling how we saw Yeowoon in the beginning. We stopped seeing the calculations of Yeowoon's affection level, and instead saw error messages and system malfunctions, representing Myungha's emotional state.

Which begs the ultimate question on everyone's minds to be answered. If the whole point of sending Myungha back to his 19yo self and giving him Yeowoon was to get him to love himself and be happy, why were the system malfunctions so devastatingly awful and cruel? Answer: because Myungha is the author, and he's depressed and self-destructive.

He begins to feel happy with the changes he's made, he sees Yeowoon happier and he feels like he's succeeding, yet the countdown message to his death still appears. It's ominous and impending and a constant reminder that he's failing. So as the author, he tries to revert back to factory settings by getting rid of the major changes to his life, Yeowoon and his grandmother. The two people who love him most, and the two people he thinks he deserves the least.

Sangwon said it the best. Myungha's main issue is that he refuses to receive love, both from others and himself. Which is why he fails the game and dies a second time. He followed the missions for Yeowoon and refused to let them break down his own walls like they were ment to.

But Death does see the change in him through Yeowoon. Being Myungha's mirror, Yeowoon represents the change that was supposed to happen to Myungha. So when Myungha (the him he hates) deletes himself in order to make Yeowoon (the him he loves) happy ("please make Cha Yeowoon happy"), Yeowoon is able to go full-meta, breaking through the game and rewriting the mission to "Please make Tae Myungha happy."

Thus saving Myungha and allowing him a third chance at a happy life, where he receives just as much love as he gives.

Don't ask me about the "he comes back disjointed from Yeowoon's timeline" thing bc I don't understand it narratively but it sure does make for a visually pleasing ending.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I played the last game by myself? to find it-> 🎮👾🕹️

So I [26NB] and three of my friends have been playing this game series for a while now it’s been probably a little under a year at this point that we’ve been chugging through these games (there’s, I believe, five games in total with a spin off and each game has multiple parts/chapters). We’ve been setting aside a day every week depending on our work and life availability to play through it. Normally getting a chapter a night or half a chapter depending on the length. Of course not every week we can do it cause of life and that's totally fine.

A little extra info on the games because I find it relevant. So the first game I actually played by myself cause the other three started without me (this was their thing they planned and invited me into later when I showed interest in the game) and I spent that time working to catch up to where they were in the game so I could join them. I did have a lot of fun playing the game as the game play is just as fun as the story to me and even when I get stuck the walk throughs are really easy to read and helpful. I'm not known for my gaming and actually watch playthroughs for stuff instead of plaything them myself cause I just all around suck at video games but this is one of the few games I like playing personally.

Once I played through the first game I hopped onboard the group plays with the other three to hang out and play together. Two of the friends have already played the whole series (lets call ‘em Lucy and Zeref) and know all the story where me and the third friend (let's call them Gray) didn't know anything at all about the series before we started playing. Part of the joy of these games for the both of us is getting to experience the exciting story in real time. As these games actually have a fairly large following and are pretty popular but some how both of us have gone most our lives with little to no spoilers for the series. This game is also full of crazy twists and turns that are VERY exciting to experience live.

Because of this fact I've also spent so much effort and time staying away from spoilers but still trying to interact with the fandom which is where not impossible just kinda frustrating cause there's a lot of art and fics and convos I'm missing out of because of it. I've even made another friend outside of this small group who ALSO likes these games but we don't talk about them much cause they're afraid of spoiling things for me by accident. Which, while very kind of them, is also in it's own way kinda frustrating.

We are currently on the fourth game and, honestly I've been thinking about just playing the last game and the spin off by myself at this point. There's two reasons for this. The first is that the games are just dragging on far too much to be fun anymore for me. I think it’s a mix of the fact that this fourth game is apparently one of, if not the, longest in the series and also that because of scheduling changes our weekly get togethers are much shorter now. Both of these factors causing us to take much longer to get through the chapters and this game. It’s really making it much harder to enjoy and even my roommate last week said I looked really tired and seemed burnt out during the session. It also doesn’t help that these meetups are online so I also don’t get to physically play the game myself and I can’t just ask to have the controller for a bit cause all of us are states away. 

The other part to this is that, honestly, me and these friends have not been talking as much. Something happened around the time we started the fourth game where I had a bunch of huge life changing events happen to me and I was severely depressed and grieving because of it. Due to some mixed up emotions on all sides and miscommunication, we had a hiccup in our friendship. There was a moment where I was genuinely scared of losing them but we talked it out like adults and things were better. However, ever since then it really does feel like the three of them talk a lot less to me now. I, at first, believed it was just my imagination. I do have some issues with my perception of reality due to mental heath but I always keep a very strong foot on the ground and go to people when I really feel like I can’t tell if I’m being crazy or not. So I chalked it up to me having a Moment(™) and just kept on like nothing was wrong. I even threw myself into DMs and out a lot more to try and make up for it. Instead of hiding away and being sad I tried to get them to interact with me more by really engaging in our friendships and chats. Unfortunately this hasn’t really helped the feeling of growing separation and light (possibly even unconscious) ignoring on their parts and I’m really feeling weighed down by it these days. It’s making these sessions even harder for me because no matter how much fun I have with them it makes the silence outside of the calls even more hollow and gut wrenching. 

A while back I did actually go to Gray and talk about my feelings mostly towards the way us playing the game is taking so long and causing burn out, and even suggested that instead of leaving the game nights completely, just playing the rest of them on my own and still hopping in with them when they do it. Gray was really sad with this cause they really enjoyed how both of us were going in blind together and they didn’t wanna be the only one who didn’t know anything while everyone else did. I understand that and felt really bad so I kept playing with them as a group. But the above feelings just got worse and worse. 

To top it off, Lucy has stopped coming to the game nights all together and I don’t really know why. As far as I’m aware they haven’t said anything at least not publicly in our chat about it and I didn’t feel it my place to pry. They also just haven’t been talking in the chat at all which feels extra bad cause I’ve always felt closest to Lucy and Gray at the end of the day. I’ve been chatting with Lucy in DMs here and there and they never seem disinterested in our conversation or like they no longer wanna be friends or anything. But it’s still really saddening as I am not really the DM type of person and am better at interacting in group chats and the like. So I feel like our already dying friendship is just going down hill faster. 

I just really wanna play the games and get it over with. I miss being able to play them physically and these game nights are starting to just worsen my mood as we go. I’m really not sure what to do cause I know Gray (and probably Zeref a little too) will be real upset if I drop out completely or if I play ahead of them. A part of me almost thought about playing the games in secret and pretending like I didn’t to spare their feelings and still make it fun for them and relieve all this stress off myself which I don’t know if that would be better or worse

What are these acronyms?

[jevilowo]

I have an idea for an Omari Au

Instead of being a roleswap where Mari kills Sunny, it's like. Canon divergence.

So canon happens, Mari gets mad at Sunny for screwing up the song and throwing his violin down the stairs and Sunny accidentally pushes her. BUT! She doesn't land on the violin.

Basil still took photos and is still like "omg you killed Mari quick let's do an overcomplicated plan where we pretend she hung herself" and Sunny still goes along with it. But while they're setting up the noose, Mari wakes up.

She still got a massive bang on the head, but she didn't land on the violin so it wasn't fatal. She sees Sunny and Basil carrying her but she doesn't really know whats going on so she just mumbles their names. The two boys fucking PANIC and drop her and lowkey have breakdowns over how she isn't dead and oh my god we nearly actually killed her.

They drop Mari and Sunny tells Basil to go back inside and call an ambulance while he watches Mari, who in the meantime went unconcious again. Sunny sees the noose, still swinging there and he feels nothing but guilt over what happened.

On the spur of the moment, he decides he should punish himself. After all, he nearly killed his perfect older sister who did nothing but love him unconditionally. He hates himself.

He wonders what it would have felt like for her, and before he's processed what he's doing he's stepped up on a box and put his head through the noose.

He doesn't actualy mean to kill himself, but he slips off the box and the noose does its job. Mari comes to again, and what she sees of Sunny's hanging body from her angle on the ground becomes her Something.

When Basil sees what happened, he fucking skedaddles in panic. He has no idea what to do. So he does nothing.

Eventually the ambulance arrives and takes Mari and Sunny away.

Mari spends the three years Sunny spend hiding in canon in a coma. She had dreamspace explained to her enough by Sunny, and as the last things she saw were her brother, dreamspace kind of takes over her mind.

She still plays the role she did in canon: supporting from her picnic rug while the others go on adventures. In canon, Mari tries to make Sunny forgive himself, and in this Sunny is trying to make sure Mari stays oblivious to what happened as she doesn't remember and hate him.

However, Mari wakes up in the real world after the three years and that's where things start Occuring.

I haven't actually beaten the game yet myself (my puted deleted my progress when I was in Sweethearts Castle and I haven't felt like putting in another 6 hours since) but when I do (or watch a playthrough) I can develop further.

The dream before she wakes up is the same as canon, except as it's from Mari's picnicy POV the player doesn't see much. It's kind of similar to White Space in canon, Mari just roams between a toy piano, a computer and Mewo and there's a few cutscenes where she wonders why she's confined to the Picnic. Basil disappears (she sees this in like a vision sort of thing) and then she wakes up! Gasp!

She wanders her room in the hospital for a while, picks up an oversized syringe and even heads out into the corridor, but she's stopped by a nurse and she falls unconscious again.

Mari is still stuck at the Picnic back in the dream, saying nothing and smiling while her friends and Sunny talk (yeah he gets to talk here lol) about how they're going to help Sunny surpass his fear of heights, and then she's left alone again.

In this, whenever the party aproach a canon save point, the Picnic blanket crumples up with Mari and her things inside it, and it's dragged through a tunnel of sorts before popping out at the save point.

So on her second night, she decides to use her syringe to cut through the blanket and she does. She holds onto Mewo and the basket so while the blanket rolls off, she still has the cat and the ability to save her progress.

I'm not entirely sure what goes on from this point, but it likely involves Mari going on her oen adventures in these mysterious areas below the Headspace, maybe even having Stranger join her party at some point so they help each other figure out what's going on.

At the end of every night, Mari emerges from the tunnels and is found by her worried friends who take her back to the playground and she wakes up

The secon time Mari wakes up, Hero visits her in hospital where Kel did in canon, and he offers to sneak her out so she can see everyone. Really he's just desperate to talk to her again, and she isn't saying anything now and he thinks going outside may help. I'm thinking maybe he started interning at the hospital over the summer if he still was forced to go to medical school, and so knows how to sneak her in and out.

Like I said, not sure what happens from here but Basil feels even more guilty from contributing both to a death and a serious accident, Aubrey hasn't dyed her hair yet (she's waiting for Mari to wake up first) and Mari still doesn't say anything. She's amnesiac to be fair, and only remembers who Hero is from her dreams.

This whole au thing was inspired by me thinking about Mari as a character. We barely know anything about her other than that she was the perfect sister/girlfriend/mother figure to everyone. Maybe that's why she was a perfectionist. She was seen to be so perfect all the time and felt pressured to act that way.

Sunny's entire life revolved around her, they always spent time together and she's the reason he had friends in the first place. But what if Mari wasn't 100% fine with this? She loved her brother, sure, but maybe she just wanted something that was just hers. Not her boyfriend's, not Aubrey, Basil or Kel's and not even Sunny's.

Thus, the piano, and subsequently the recital. She got to be on her own for five minutes every day doing something she enjoyed (...to an extent, she got very frustrated when she fucked up) while her parents were forced to actually pay attention to Sunny for a while.

It's implied they were quite neglectful (didn't see Sunny drowning that one time, was away from the house long enough that the stairs and hanging incident went off without a hitch) and I'm sure this only added to Sunny's clingyness to Mari.

Which was why he got so upset that he couldn't spend time with her every second of every day when she started up with the piano. I'm not villainising him, obviously he was just a kid with neglectful parents, but I am saying that maybe he overreacted a little. Mari couldn't have been spending hours and hours at the piano everyday and even if she was he still had his other friends like right there, and he'd have more time with her after the recital.

So of course when he got upset and their friends started pointing it out Mari was all but obliged to include him somehow. Thus, the violin. And, perhaps, just a little resentment on Mari's end.

The violin that Sunny kept missing notes on. Mari was better at the song because she had practiced for longer, but it was easy to forget this when it kept happening. Over. And over. And over. And...

Eventually the resentment built up. Sunny was going to ruin her performance, the one she had put so much effort into practicing. Was he even trying?!

And so they argued, the violin was thrown, Mari shoved Sunny and he shoved back and–

We all know what happened.

So yeah the au idea came from my long long train of thought. Hope this ramble makes sense lol.

Oh yeah I'm thinking I might call this au like Kyojakuna (infirm), Konsui jōtai (comatose) Yowai (fragile, frail) or some variant bc Mari isn't a Hikikomori she's literally just stuck in hospital lol.

[pokemonheritageposts]

I have finally finished my complete pokedex run of Pokemon Crystal, capping off by catching Celebi in Ilex Forest.

This is such a weirdly emotional moment for me. Ignoring that this is the culmination of hundreds of hours of effort, requiring me to play through Gold and Silver as well as two seperate playthroughs of Yellow just to get everything not available in Crystal proper, I have a very personal attachment to Generation 2. I'm pretty sure that it's the game I've spent the most time playing across my life.

I've been here since the beginning, Red was my first game and I loved it to bits. But Gold version is infinitely more nostalgic to me. It's the first game I was ever excited for. There was almost a mysticism about seeing all the new details in magazines, about Togepi, about Marill, about Donphan, about the new starters, as more details started to trickle in.

Then one day in 2000, I got a gift. A pirated gameboy cartridge with 20 games on it - including the Japanese version of Pokemon Gold. I couldn't understand any of it, and it couldn't save, so I could only play through as much of it as could be done in one sitting, since the Game Boy Colour ran off of AA batteries and couldn't be left running indefinitely.

I must have played that almost every single day for like a year.

The furthest I could ever get in one go was Ice Path, so everything after that was no man's land to me until the English game dropped. April 6th, 2001 - I remember that date clearer than I remember most of my family's birthdays. I got it, and I played the hell out of it. And nothing could have prepared me for what would happen after I finally beat the Pokemon League - getting to play through Kanto again. Getting to fight Red.

I loved it to pieces. Later, I even bought Pokemon Silver and Pokemon Crystal, despite that I grew up poor and could only afford about two new games a year. I hold these games so dear to me. Even with HeartGold and SoulSilver offering many QoL improvements and additional content, I still find myself more drawn to them. (Also, Crystal actually has some improvements that were left out in HGSS - I'd still say it holds some significant merit even with the remakes as they are).

Sadly, my original copies of all the Gen 2 games mysteriously vanished (presumably stolen by my dipshit childhood friend), so I wasn't able to play them for a long time. But coming back to it as an adult, playing it all again, reliving everything I loved about them the first time - it's all been incredible. And finally having done the last thing that's left to do in it, seeing the last piece of content from these games that was never available until the Virtual Console release? It feels like the end to a grand journey for me.

[lorablackmane]

ISAT Act 5 Missable Interactions

I missed a shitton my 1st playthrough bc I was on that Siffrin mindset during act 5's loop and I realized afterwards I had a save in the meadow b4 everything. So I decided to compile stuff I found I missed 4 others who might've missed things too! Please keep in mind that below will be spoilers for this act and the next, and that there are some concerning things about Siffrin found here that I've labeled this post with a few trigger warnings. Check them before reading to decide if you want to read!

Updated!!!!!!!

Please note the section on the favor tree has new info!! If you don't want to know how a secret boss fight goes please skip the 2nd to last dot.

• Literally every kid in town is terrified by Siffrin now, ignoring him or telling them to go away. You'll walk away from the shopkeeper if you try to talk to him, causing Odile to look at Siffrin with concern. He eats the pain du chocolat in one bite, concerning the pastry maker.

• Says stepping on the banana peel isn't in the stage instructions if u try to use it now.

• Everything that had a smell in earlier chapters now smells like sugar.

• If you interact with the cookies on floor one Siffrin will try to eat one. It's as hard as a rock.

• Interacting with the landscape drawings in the broken egg key room makes them hysterically ask if they'll ever see anything outside this loop ever again.

• A new group of drawings are also here of Siffrin with his face completely blotted out like the friendship drawing.

• The dictionary makes him scream that he isn't taciturn anymore, is he?!

• Interacting with the "grape juice for adults" makes them say they hate alcohol (jlmfr) b4 taking a swig.. only to discover its actually just juice. They remark hysterically they can't even get drunk in peace here!

• Mira's dying plant reminds them of someone, and they remark how there's four happy, never changing plants all together on the other desk before hysterically laughing. Rubs their arms when passing the desks to try to simulate the human contact they'd get in earlier loops from their family.

• Says they'll make all the wishes come true if you Interact with the Head Housemaiden's wish survey.

• Rips the info on the King, if interacted with again they attempt their breathing exercises to no avail then suddenly smell sugar again.

• Looking at the drawings in this office will make Siffrin start thinking about defacing them, but remarks he doesn't have a pencil as he hysterically thinks scribble, scribble, scribble.

• Mocks themself for thinking odile is there if u interact with the checked out book list in the library.

• Gets upset if Interacting with the diary area bc they still can't say the name of their home country. Calls himself a stupid blinding idiot.

• Gets upset at the theater scroll section, stating why read one when you're in one. Tells themself to stop going off script and go if interacted with again.

• Wonders if they'll ever carve again when Interacting with the carving wood. States they'd like to carve the King if so so they can snap him in half if interacted with again.

• Interacting with the cupboard with eyepatch makes them say they're cold, their stomach hurts, they can't stop shaking and a headache is forming from thinking about their mistakes. Then they take the painkillers, one over the recommended dosage for their size.

• Interacting with food shelves makes them ask why their stomach hurts so much and they're so hungry like they haven't eaten in years.

• The croissant cookbook makes them grip their coin.

• The anthology of horror stories makes them repeat the scene with their family, before they mock themself again for knowing it by heart since they have always wanted to never forget

• Breaks one of the statues on the change God shelf in the pottery room.

• Refuses to take the gizmo, stating a fair fight or none at all.

• The clothing closet where Isabeau talks about your cloak makes him repeat the scene though says he's had this cloak forever in shaking text. When Isabeau goes to check the cloak Siffrin says that he doesn't touch them because they're disgusting. They say they're so cold. This time they realize they're hallucinating the others being there when they are going to do the final reply.

• They tell themselves to stop monologuing if they try to go towards the bathrooms.

• You can see the House inhabitants if you leave the final room!! And go back to Dormont to see the party they were getting ready for. The others will join Siffrin out of corcern for his mental state instead of stopping him which is nice. There's a bunch of interactions here I won't note but they're delights.

• Loop is gone, but Siffrin will leave their silver coin where they sat in a custom from his homeland.

Edit: thanks to @cleverretortnotfound for the hint that this changes! Instead of nothing there u find a silver coin. If interacted with he'll remark its the exact same as his own and call out to Loop, then ask if they should call them by their previous name... and Loop reappears. Silently they let Siffrin look them over, and though they don't have any features that mirror Siffrin's own... he knows. Theyre the same person. He takes their own coin out, flipping it before sending it to Loop who catches it without thinking. They look at it for a moment, before saying, "Oh stardust... so, you've won, haven't you? You broke the loops? Defeated the King? Talked to your party? Realized that all along, the reason you were stuck here was because of a stupid blinding wish you made? Awww. I'm soooo happy for you. You got your perfect ending, after all. And now... I have nothing left to say to you. So you should go."

Siffrin doesn't reply, causing Loop to ask why they're there still. What does he want them to say? WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY? HE'S WON!

Once again, Siffrin doesn't reply. Loop laughs, before saying "oh, Stardust! You know, you know I was just like you once! A stupid, aimless traveler, trying to find any reason to keep going! And then, I met everyone! And I felt that finally, I had people i could count on, people I could love! And then, I got scared! And made the exact same mistake you did! Make a stupid blinding wish, hoping I could stay with them! Went through the House, tried to fight the King, tried to win! Did that for so long, I couldn't even give you a number! And then... I couldn't do it anymore. ...You see, not unlike you a few hours ago, I did a very special kind of giving up. But unlike you, who gave up on your wish, and almost destroyed the world in the process... I gave up on my wish, and destroyed myself.

And made another wish instead. I wished it could be over. I wished I could get out of here. I wished for someone to help me. For someone... Anyone, to help me!!! And someone did help me, right? The Universe did! They got me out of here! And trapped me in some other Siffrin's loops instead!!! And it was fine. It was different. It was even peaceful, for a while. I didn't have to stay inside the House, trying to defeat the King. I didn't have to fight, I didn't have struggle, I didn't have to do anything.

(Note: during the last paragraph, during the I wished section up until the scream for anyone to help,, we see stills from the intro animation where Siffrin eats the star. Theres a new still though, a close up of Siffrin crying out before he ate it.)

I just had to watch, and be happy that at least, I wasn't the only idiot out there who trapped themselves eternally in time. I just had to be happy that at least, this time, it wasn't me. And now. And now. AND NOW YOU-!!!

So! Since you won't leave, here's what I'm thinking... let's fight, you and I! Let's have a cute, minuscule, old-fashioned little fight like a bonded couple. Okay~?"

Once again, Siffrin doesn't reply and Loop laughs, "nothing to say, still? Haha... HAHAHAHA!! STARS, killing you would make me SO HAPPY. (note: during this sentence temporarily Loop turns into Siffrin and looks rather... concerning) Are you ready?"

Siffrin tries to speak up, but Loop says they don't get a choice.

The battle commences, with Loop saying let's just get to it. Loop strikes with stars but isn't very strong, they loop back the 1st time you win, the 2nd, the 3rd, and on the fourth the photo changes (will add link to another post with pics later).

At the end of the battle Loop looks away before saying, "you... Siffrin, Stardust, whatever our real name actually is... just kill me."

Siffrin is shocked and asks why. "Why," they say, "Are you stupid? Isn't it obvious?! I wanted to kill you!! So I could take your place!! I wanted what you have!!! Stars, I still do! You... you don't.. you don't want another you walking around. You should just kill me and get on with your stupid life!!"

This makes Siffrin laugh and reply their self-hatred isn't strong enough that'd they'd kill another version of themselves. Loops laughs at that and says he's got weird priorities... then say but what if they're asking him? What if Loop wants this? What if dying is the ending they want?! Siffrin doesn't reply and Loop starts to beg, "Stardust, please, please just kill me!!! I don't want to be here! What else is there for me now?! You've won, so I should be gone!! I can't go back to how it was before, because that past is gone! I can't go back to my friends, because they wouldn't recognize me!! There's nothing else for me to do, no script to follow, no Universe to lead me, I-"

They can't continue, sobbing. "Why.. why did it have to be you...? I could've... I wanted to... if only back then, I... if I had held on longer... maybe then..."

Oh Loop, Siffrin thinks. But don't you get it, he says. Loop asks what is there to get. The reason he succeeded, he replies, but Loop still doesn't understand. They take Loop's face into their hands as they say Loop was the reason they succeeded! Without them, he would've given up too. Because they were by Siffrin's side they continued going. Yes they didn't tell him everything, yeah they didn't know what to do... but knowing they were here and he wasn't alone...

They tearfully reply he's lying, but he says he's not. They shout again Siffrin is lying, but they reply again they're not! They try to scream it again, but siffrin stops them by saying, "Loop. Mira sends her thanks, by the way. They all do." Confused Loop repeats the word thanks, adding "...to me...?"

Siffrin laughs, and reminds them they helped the others get to the King. That they sent their thanks for leading them to Siffrin. For helping them save him. Loop can't reply, and Siffrin says, "See?"

"Stardust... why couldn't it have been me...?" Loop asks, to which Siffrin replies they don't know. Maybe it was the script, maybe it was the Universe, or maybe... maybe it's no one's fault. Loop is silent once more and he replies, "I'm sorry, Siffrin."

Finally using Loops real name. Then adds, "And thank you, Loop. Without you, I would've given up a long time ago. Thank you for helping me, this whole time."

Loop doesn't respond and Siffrin goes, "Loop, we can-"

Loop cuts them off, "Siffrin." He flinches as they continue, "Please, you're going to have to talk to them, from now on. No more keeping how you feel from them. We both know where this leads. And if one day, no matter what you do, everyone's paths and yours diverge... you'll have to learn to be okay with it. We cant... we can't do this again. Hold them hostage, against their knowledge, against their will, just because we're lonely. Learning to talk to them... learning to let go... it'll be hard. It'll feel impossible. You might think you'd rather die than share how you feel. After all, isn't bottling things up the reason you managed to break the loops? You didn't have to tell them anything until the very end, and it turned out fine didn't it?"

Siffrin is silent, then attempts to say but, but if I talked to them earlier, then maybe - then gets cut off by loop, "Yeah, dummy. If only you had been strong enough to talk to them, maybe this whole story wouldn't have happened at all. If only... oh well. It doesn't matter now."

Loop starts to disappear. Siffrin asks where they'll go now? Loop sadly replies, "Oh, stardust... I don't know! I'll join you so we can become one? I'll Die? I'll stay under this tree forever? Does it matter?"

You can choose between it does and I guess it doesn't. I won't update this with the other, I'm sorry but this is taking a toll on me, so I'll atleast tell you what "It does!" Leads to.

They laugh, then say Siffrin's sweet. "Aww, don't worry, Stardust. Somehow... I'm sure I'll see you again. You... and everyone else. Mirabelle, Isabeau, Odile, and Bonnie. I need to accept their thanks in person, don't I? That's just basic etiquette. And I'll need to give you back your silver coin eventually!"

Siffein agrees, and Loop continues, "...hmm. I'll see you all again soon enough, Stardust. I promise! I super promise! I super duper promise! So don't forget me, okay?"

The screen fades, leading us back to the gang. They welcome Siffrin back and ask if everything's okay. He says he thanked Loop, to which they're relieved. Odile says she was hoping they'd bring em back so she could thank them in person, and the others agree though Isa says they looked shy so maybe they were too embarrassed. Which is too bad because he had so many questions, and so he hopes they see them again soon. Bonnie says they wanted to know how Loop glows and how it felt, to which Mira chides them saying you can't ask someone how they glow. Bonnie is flabbergasted, making the others laugh.

Odile adds she hopes Siffrin told them they can see the gang anytime. Sadly Siffrin smiles before saying he did, and how they too hope Loop says hi again soon. The others note Siffrin looks sad while saying this to which he replies he was thinking of Loop. The others tell them they'll have to tell the gang more about them then soon. Like how they met and why they're a star. Also how they knew about the loops. They then go back to the final room.

• The best artist ever has something new in the epilogue.

Souvenirs

Silver coin

B4: grips it in his pocket.

Epilogue: remarks that it's been with them through it all and feels like it could've been used for something. Backstory no longer unlockable, but can be used at the Favor tree.

Drawn card

B4 epilogue: says it's a traveler walking to their death with open eyes, rips it apart.

The end: looks at the card and just says "it's you!"

Epilogue: says it's a traveler starting a new journey, the card is labeled the fool.

Bright flower

B4 epilogue: tears off all the petals then discards it

The end: says it's still here.

Epilogue: you still have the flower, he says before deciding that it's theirs now!

Friendship doodle

B4: Siffrin's face is blotted out, no reaction to viewing this..

Epilogue: their face is no longer missing. Unknown whether this was a hallucination on their end or not.

Clay

B4: presses it between their hands to try and help them with their breathing exercises.

The end: squish, squish they say.

Epilogue: Clay they say, before making a star. 

Piece of glass

B4: uses it to self harm by piercing it through a bit of the back of their arm multiple times. Says stars afterwards, can't tell if being sarcastic and calling the dots they made that or screaming the word like a curse as usual. (Updated: if used a second time Siffrin says they're making more tiny stars. Concerning)

The end: they say hide it, hide it don't make the others worried.

Epilogue: they become scared and startled, saying they need to be careful. Then they toss it before they can hurt themself.

Broken doll

B4: fixes the clothing on it, if u click on the cupboard it's from again tells it it'll see the end if it's the last thing it does.

The end: turns the doll so it can see everything.

Epilogue: they hold it close as they look at the sky, saying they both made it.

Crumpled poem

B4: genuinely could not read this the first seven times but using the capture reveals after reading it Siffrin repeatedly says they want to go home.

Epilogue: they read it, then say they'll never go home again, but maybe they can make a new one. They can't wait to see if they can.

Mirror picture

B4: no reaction. Says its of them and the actors despite no one being there.

Epilogue: they grip it tightly before tossing it, saying it's in the past now. That they're fine, they're fine! And if not they will be soon.

Long thingy-thing

B4: tosses it, saying it's not needed anymore.

Epilogue: they say it's their long thingy now.