#and as the plot progresses he will return to Dev

[wonderfull-star]

I don't know why, but the more often I re-watch some moments, the more I begin to feel bad for Dev, and Peri reveals a worse side.

Like so many people basically portrays Peri as a better father to Dev than Dale himself, although he himself probably never even said that he "cared about him" until the finale. Unlike Hazel, who showed more care for Dev than his own father and fairy combined.

Dev doesn't even need fairy, he just needs care and love.

[skeedelvee]

Carry On Countdown Day 10 - Dinner

For this year's COC I've decided to put together daily fic rec lists! Let me know if you find any new favorite reads from these <3

For todays prompt I've gone with fics that prominently feature a meal or food

Lemon Blueberry Shortbread by @aristocratic-otter and @letraspal

Rated G, 2,912 words

Two afternoons of learning to cook a family recipe, thirty years apart.

Good to You by @otherworldsivelivedin

Rated E, 11,032 words

Simon has decided to treat Baz to a sophisticated meal for Valentine’s day; but, when they get there, they find they're more interested in each other than the food.

Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye by @facewithoutheart

Rated M, 588 words

(I'm counting this because it relates to the family dinner in Snow for Christmas)

Malcolm goes into the kitchen to grab more champagne and gets more than he expected.

Domesticity by @bloodiedpixie

Rated T, 743 words

Baz tries to make dinner for Simon.

If I Fell In Love With You by @bazzybelle

Rated T, 4,417 words

This is ridiculous… I am being utterly ridiculous. I am a ridiculous, romantic fool, who has gone completely soft for a walking disaster with bright blue eyes and soft bronze curls. On a crisp, fresh, October evening, Baz decides to surprise Simon with a romantic dinner and something extra special for him. For no reason, other than he wants to find a way to show Simon just how much he loves and cares about him, and this is really the only way that makes sense to him. Takes place after Carry On, but before Wayward Son.

Love Season by @krisrix

Rated E, 3,922 words

It’s Valentine’s Day. Which is not something I’ve put any thought into since Agatha and I broke up. I realize that makes me even more of a terrible boyfriend to Baz than I already am... Except, well, maybe not as terrible any more, given we do actually have plans for the holiday for once. They’re Baz’s plans—still, I agreed, so that’s progress. Even Baz asking at all is progress.

Take a Walk on the Wild Slice by @youarenevertooold and @that-disabled-princess

Rated T, 20,302 words

It's almost time to be heading back to school for their final year at Watford. Dev & Niall drag Baz off for a night out at a new pizza place as a treat, because it has, according to the internet, a Very Hot Mascot. Meanwhile, Simon has managed to find himself a job to while away the tedious hours of summer. It's not ideal, but fortunately no-one from school will ever see him dressed as a ridiculous slice of pizza. Right? Pizza, pining, and plotting ensue; all combined with a healthy side serving of friends helping you realise what's actually important.

crisp and sweet by @mostlymaudlin

Rated T, 4,134 words

The White Mountains are almost as far from Las Vegas as you can get in the United States. That’s comforting to me. I don’t think I could keep up our no-murder streak if I ran into the King of the Vampires again. In her travel diary, my grandmother described the town of Conway, New Hampshire in October as “bloody picturesque,” and she was right. We’re surrounded by deep reds and golds, kind of like the desert of the American West. But instead of feeling like we’re surrounded by flames, it’s more like being bathed in gentle candlelight. - Five years after the events of AWTWB, Simon and Baz return to North America with one mission: to peep some leaves.

Straight Boy by @bazypitchandsimonsnow

Rated M, 30,804 words

Simon Salisbury is totally straight...but there's this guy... Based on "request kiss" request.

Too full to hunt by anonymous

Rated M, 2,167 words

*THIS IS A BELLY STUFFING FIC* *DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE NOT INTO THAT* This takes place right after one of the last scenes of awtwb. "Simon." "Hmm?" He hums cutting another spoonful of cake. "I'm very full." "Do you want me to stop?" He asks as he puts the spoon in front of my mouth. I don't have to take it. I know he would stop if I told him to but his gaze is on my lips and his pupils are bigger than usual. Simon with a stuffing belly kink, wow, so shocking

If you have any recs that fit the prompt that I've missed, feel free to leave them in the comments! There's plenty of gaps in my reading so there's a good chance I may not have read it

Also I've had a hard time finding if some people are here on Tumblr, so if you know someone who hasn't been tagged, feel free to leave that in the comments as well <3

@carryon-countdown

[sheep-shearing]

OKAY YIPPEE!! LESSON 52 SPOILERS!!

Talking about Lesson 52 and expectations beyond!

So, we've got our plot on track. It feels a little bit like some of the old stuff is being revisited; obviously Simeon. But we've also got MC's magic! Looks like they've gotten even more powerful, to the point Solomon even points out that they no longer need an incantation to use magic in some cases!

I think the plot progression is going to be as follows:

♡ Simeon becoming a demon, he will either fully fall, or return to being an Angel. Personally, I would prefer the fall, but considering the devs bias towards the Celestial Realm recently, I think he's more likely to return to being an Angel.

♡ MC is going to lose control of their magic again. Solomon makes a point that they might become sick from excess magic, and Diavolo is implied to be concerned about this. I don't think it'll be the same as season 2 in the OG game, but rather MC's last hurdle before becoming a fully fledged sorcerer. Maybe spending time with each of more powerful members of the cast to learn from them. I think we could explain this with MC making pacts with the brothers in the past, and thus making the original pacts even more powerful.

♡ I think that we're going to see active challenges to Diavolo's power in the Devildom. The House of Lords has been a problem repeatedly, and with Meowcao shown to house KNOWN opposition to Diavolo, the brothers, and the exchange program we'll probably have to spend the next season working to spread the popularity of Diavolo's peace. I think if we're really lucky, we might even get to see Diavolo crowned king.

♡ At some point during this, the events of the Nightbringer timeline will probably become relevant. I think a pre-Fountain of Knowledge Barbatos is responsible, but I think the Simeon theory holds weight as well IF he becomes a full demon. A future MC as Nightbringer is ALSO good, but I can't see the devs taking that route. Regardless, it's likely to become relevant either at the end of this season or the beginning of the next.

[mallowmaenad]

back when i was trying to get back into brute forcing game dev (i am very stupid) I had aspirations of making an RPG in the Doom engine inspired by stuff like Strife, Hedon and Lycanthorn as well as a Hylics mod my friend was making for Doom which gave me the idea to make it about a cartoonish wizard that used spells with goofy hand gestures in place of regular weapons. I got disheartened when I was told about the limitations of DoomBuilder and my depression and then my life when to absolute shit before I could do anything but hold onto my soul like the safety rail of a rollercoaster car. I still thought about it a lot in the back of my mind, about enemy types like necromancers that would turn dead enemies into animated skeletons, a large battle between two castles the player would get into, secret forest mazes, magic items that would give you a double jump or a hover, the Doom Eternal-like rhythm of strafing and swapping spells for certain enemies, even a small class system that affected your starting gear and a plot about animated dolls and the sheltered life of a wizard's apprentice. Inventory would be managed in a "mind palace" where you could also check your quest progress and find secret levels taking place in the player character's psyche. One of the spells in this drawing is "shooting star," where you hold down the fire button to conjure more stars and release to fire them one after the other or press alt fire to release them all at once in a shotgun-like spread.

I have a friend who might teach me rpg maker which I'm excited for but I don't think it's what would fit what I had in mind for this game. Maybe with some encouragement and guidance I'll return to DoomBuilder or something similar. I'd like to, but thinking about doing it and actually doing it are two different things. I think when I started making music I was imagining it'd be this game's soundtrack, I know making a game on your own especially the open world zelda-meets-dragons-dogma adventure game I had in my head is incredibly difficult, but I think I could at least do the music, graphics, writing and maybe a portion of the actual meat. It'd look a bit ugly on purpose like if a team of deviant art users were tasked with rebooting a 3DO game with an insultingly mediocre stab at imitating the works of graham kartna, toby fox and some of niel cic's older stuff like what he was doing under the name Deporiatz.

I don't know. Ive felt stupid all of my adult life, I hate being stupid and learning is hard, I've been extremely insecure about my art ever since ny ipad shattered and I could no longer draw with the same polish I had before, last time I asked for art criticism I was told "this looks like you don't draw very often" by an artist I really adored and that kinda put me in the muck about it. I still draw I just rarely post it out of anxiety. Idk I guess I'm trying to rip some sort of band aid off and see what happens. Probably nothing, the number of people who will see this are probably in the single digits and ill probably delete this post out of embarrassment in a few days, but the thoughts will stay with me.

[drsanjayortho]

An Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tear is one of the most common knee injuries, especially among athletes and active individuals. It can significantly impact mobility and require proper medical attention for a full recovery. Dr. Sanjay J., a renowned orthopedic specialist, provides expert care for ACL injuries, offering advanced treatment options to help patients regain strength and movement.

Causes of ACL Tears

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Sudden stops or changes in direction during sports.

Direct impact or collision to the knee.

Landing improperly from a jump.

Overstretching or twisting of the knee joint.

Treatment Options for ACL Tears

The treatment for an ACL tear depends on the severity of the injury and the patient’s activity level.

Non-Surgical Treatment

Physical Therapy: Strengthening exercises to restore mobility and stability.

Bracing: Providing knee support to prevent further injury.

Medication: Pain relief through anti-inflammatory drugs.

Surgical Treatment

ACL Reconstruction Surgery: Replacing the torn ligament with a graft.

Minimally Invasive Arthroscopy: A procedure used to repair or reconstruct the ligament with less downtime.

Recovery Timeline

Recovery from an ACL tear varies based on the treatment approach and individual progress.

0-2 Weeks: Pain management, swelling reduction, and gentle mobility exercises.

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6-9 Months: Return to sports-specific training and full recovery.

Dr. Sanjay J. emphasizes personalized rehabilitation programs to ensure a safe and effective recovery for his patients. Whether through conservative management or surgical intervention, he guides patients through each step of the healing process.

If you suspect an ACL injury, consult Dr. Sanjay J. for expert diagnosis and treatment options. Early intervention is key to a successful recovery and returning to an active lifestyle!

[semi-imaginary-place]

5.0 rambling and 5.x adventures

when was it established that summoned being return on death of the summoner. also if you're tearing into the rift shouldn't bringing and sending be equaally as easy/difficult

elidibus seeing zenos walk up sword drawn and running away is so funny. he just noped out of that situation. not sure why they cut the scene at gaius attacking zenos, zenos has way too much plot armor to die by gaius.

oh hey amurot and all it's people are still hanging around. would have thought with emy's death they would have all dissipated and the city returned to ruin. i think it has something to do with how the game is coded. just like how the garleans didn't disappear after 2.0. if anything making amurot an instanced area might have been a better idea would have really hit home the transcience of everything that this place was like a liminal space. but unlike other areas after msq progression dialogue does not change here although this effect is lessened since in like 2.0 and 3.0 they didn't change much either.

Ok time to look things up. Right 7 calamities, 6 elemental, bahamut, and the doom timeline #8. G'raha awoke then went to the first 100 first years ago just in time for the Flood. I wonder how many source years that was would be would be. The wods went back tot he first in patch 3.4. actually they were on the source for a while since 3.1 at least. How much time passed on the first. Ironworks timetravel might have actually been pretty accurate in their rewind. G'raha was sent 100 years ago into the First's past but that might have only been a few months ago source time.

Looking at everything i think the devs just wanted g'raha back and then wrote a timetravel plot point to bring him back into the story. And there were so many ways to kill him off in 5.0 like if emy hadnt shot him and he'd actually died on gulg or the timeline dissolving thing (could also mean the 8th rejoining could still happen but let's be real, it's because g'raha is the dev's favorite i mean i got spoiled he's now a scion and is in dawntrail. The devs just want him to continue being a part of the main plot.

Sundering happened to break up zodiark and seal him

Wonder what the advertisements for ascians was like we heard varis about a true glorious humanity. Wonder how lahabrea, elidibus, and emet-selch got the others onboard because the ascians in general (thanks arr) seem pretty bwahaha kick puppies evil.

So the 13th was never rejoined so um real calamity of darkness. So 7 calamities + the first + the failed 13th + the source. Only 3 other intact shards.

arr and sb were both about geopolitics, war, military power, and garlemald. hw and shb meanwhile were more sentimental narratives that had less to do with the mainplot. good thing i like both. idk what dt is about seems like a beach episode.

Another plot point lost is that the devs could have made the crystal exarch the g'raha tia of another shard instead of doing timetravel. Yes yes the game game would have to be remade im not talking about that, im talking about when the devs storyboarded abd outlines shb they could have done this differently. Now with multiple timelines any character that dies (hades) can also timetravel back into the story. Narratively it means no one ever ends. And between this and zenos im never going to believe a character is gone for good. The wall has been broken.

Was thinking about Ardbert and emy again. Ardbert was 1/14, death, and so faded he'd sort of hlf forgetting himself by the time we meed him in the story. In addition whenever he's with wol-chan it's like the sun covering up the sky no was you are going to see some faint star. No way Emet-Selch saw him around the wol. And he'd have no reason to notice Ardbert outside of that context. And even if he did I don't think emy would care.

Azem is the title. Sidenote let's be real because the devs cycle names like lahabrea (and maybe even emet-selch) were likely originally intended to be names. The writers for shb likely retconned them to be titles. Like what do lahabrea, and emet selch even mean is there an ancient language and these are just untranslated? And then you can tell azem was conceptualized later with its connections to azemya and azim. I did get ew spoiled just bit as bad as shb for ew it's like i have to deliberately not put the pieces together because im very good at putting the pieces together. Anyways ancient names seem to be greek inspired like hylotheu...s the talking shade or hades is straight up mythology. Venat is an import character from ffxii where she seems to do the exact same thing and play the same role? (I'll get to ew eventually... probably...). So if azem with their sun connections follows the pattern then they'd be something related to apollo or helios. The devs are never going to confirm an azem personal name because this fandom runs on wol ocs and people would riot over their special little baby.

i saw a pixie die. maybe

ok actual moral dilemma in the qitari we don't have enough information to tell what is the truth what actually happened. instead the game is asking the player what story should be told. if this was irl the father's story would be more likely but this is a videogame and ffxiv loves it's historical twists (im looking at you ivallice raids) so who knows what is actually true the devs probably never decided. so the question is of what effect each story will have on the future if the ronkan emperor is framed as a subjugator would this act as a cautionary tale about power? if the son's interpretation is enshrined would this be about the benefits of encountering different cultures? im probably overthinking this.

for some reason the player is given the choice on which interpretation of history will be recorded. not enough info is given to be able to tell which interpretation is better supported by evidence. so it becomes a moral question of what history should be remembered. that's the qitari's first contact with the ronkas was conquest and slavery, or as saviors and and protectors of the weaker

oof this is the hardest decision in the game. because I'm on the side of truth what I would do is not restore the stela and leave it as be open to interpretation and then like write competing academic analyses. but there is no truth here only the story we want to tell. i keep going back and forth. the ronkan empire seems to generally have a favorable reputation, the vii are still loyal to them but we don't know about it's formation or relationship with the qitari. also i dont like empires the inherent nature of conquest and satellite states.

the twinning: ah back to the crystal tower trapped in there for 76 years in alliance raids. DOOMED TIMELIME IRONWORKS MADE A MINI ALEXANDER that's how they did the timetravel! i just connected 2 dots. and we learn why g'raha is crystalized, he was merged with the tower to survive the "infinite chaos" of the rift and this was done somehow by studying how omega could?? does that mean omega's world and the omega raids were in the rift???

i think it could have been cool to play in a rejoined world. obviously this wouldn't work because of player customization and what not but i personally like the idea since i have little attachment to my player characters.

[cortexreaver]

okay i think i remember where i was going with this sort of umm so a) i feel that the gathering and use of materials both being firmly in the player's hands is crucial to idk The Immersion. like the actual crafting of consumables in da2 and dai, in addition to being tedious from a mechanical perspective since you have to hoard materials *and* return to a specific location to make use of them, imo feels less fulfilling from a roleplay perspective since it's presented as a task being outsourced to an npc. fitting for dragon age: liberal paramilitary commander sim i guess but imagine if origins' skills had been carried over into da2 and a hawke with maxed poison-making could notice anders was asking for help acquiring shit you could make explosives with (maybe one could even assume anders might be aware of how risky asking hawke specifically for help would be in that case). i already touched on the insanely short dev period that game was allowed so idk why i'm even thinking about this though lol

b) hmm how do i put this okay so like in the witcher (1) or morrowind for example alchemical ingredients have assigned sets of properties and most recipes are simply a particular combination of specific substances derived from ingredients rather than specific ingredients themselves, which is more mechanically flexible for the player because they don't have to worry about their supply of one singular material and suggests knowledge/resourcefulness/curiosity on the part of the player character (reflected in both examples mentioned above–the witcher has the player learning to identify plants and studying their uses alongside geralt as he re-learns things he lost to amnesia; ingredients in morrowind have their properties revealed in the ui as the player increases their character's alchemy skill; in both cases the player can also discern properties through experimentation, and the witcher additionally always allows for an item to be created whether or not the combination of base substances is a valid recipe, and the player/geralt has to use the result to find out what it does). obviously this isn't the only approach that can make a system satisfying to engage with, but as i sort of half-explained in my original post it's one that i think works well for games that have the player interacting with lots of flora fauna etc because it illustrates a relationship between a setting's natural world and its inhabitants, and thus i feel it's one that could've fit into.... let's say inquisition because that's the one that has the player doing the most gathering and where resources have the most relevance to the main plot. it is sort of how its armor/weapon crafting works given that a majority of the materials involved have shared properties and are thus technically interchangeable, though it once again is a system where quantity still equals quality to a degree, which i could see theoretically being a means of throttling the player's access to overpowered gear too soon but with the merciful addition in one of the last patches* of the ability to sync acquired schematics across playthroughs it's still very easy to do that–ironically i think fixed-component recipes would have been the way to go with armor and weapon schematics because locking access to higher-quality materials behind the difficulty threshold of the areas they're found in could impose the same limitation while adding even more necessity to explore new regions as their challenge becomes viable for the player, mirroring the expansion of the inquisition's occupied territory and (implied) resource extraction operations plus it would've been consistent with the previous two games using items' material type as an indicator of quality. ive gone off on a fucking tangent again but i started with my point this time instead of forgetting it halfway through so that's progress

*unless you played on xbox 360 or ps3 in which case all you got was another L

it's a shame that bioware never designed a satisfying crafting system at any point in the dragon age series because crafting can add a little somethin to a game not just in terms of strategy (i.e. what a player can do with crafted items) or character depth (i.e. what skills does a character have as a person beyond combat and/or magical prowess) but also as a means of familiarizing the player with the world or at least the region they're in by providing them with another way of interacting with it–it tells them which plants are native to an area, what kinds of animal products its inhabitants use, which metals are common and which are rare, and so on. origins has a nice range of items, but its range of components, most of which are poorly described, is relatively limited, resulting in a system where (for me) the recipes all kind of blend together because the main variation ends up being in component quantities instead of combinations. dragon age 2 had a nine month production period. inquisition has the widest range of components and a decent range of biomes to find them in, but the crafting system is still one in which quality and quantity are essentially the same thing, and in the case of consumables (excluding runes) is out of the player's hands again and contains a glaring disconnect between the herbs that go in and the potions/tonics/grenades that come out. idk what my conclusion was meant to be here or why these stupid fucking games still have me in their grasp. im like 2 months dragon age sober except for the time i booted up origins a couple weeks ago to look at my elves which doesn't count because i wasn't Sober sober at the time. my elves are in there serah

[inhuman-obey-me]

Are y'all excited for nightbringer

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes with...reservations. We think. We think we're excited?

(spoilers for Season 4)

We haven't been too active for a bit and thus we never did jot down all our thoughts about how Season 4 panned out in Obey Me, but the simple summary is: they dropped the ball.

Now, not everything in Season 4 was a waste -- we did defend Lesson 70 back when it released, and there were some other nice nuggets of information throughout those twenty lessons. We met new characters, finally got the Simeon reveal (if a bit anticlimactically), and MC became the first official non-demon member of the RAD student council, which, as a reminder, is the governing body of the entire Devildom, so that's a pretty big deal.

However, Season 3 had a relatively flat writing progression with not much of a climax, all in service to setting up a bunch of things in Season 4, and many of those things were then...not used well, to the say the least.

Raphael was built up to be an antagonistic character, but we kind of got a wet mop instead. Season 3 also made a big deal about MC needing to become a trained sorcerer and how difficult something like teleportation and summoning would be, but teleportation is learned basically immediately, and summoning Lucifer, the most powerful of the demon brothers, across realms, on the first try, is highlighted for all of about ten seconds and then never really talked about again.

They built up Simeon's situation for almost all of both seasons combined, but rather than actually becoming a "fallen angel" (aka demon), it's revealed as simply "not having angel powers anymore" and only properly clarified later that he's now "human" -- which we still have a million questions about, because it has been fairly well established that angel physiology is much closer to demons and far different than that of humans, so what does that actually even mean? Even within Season 4 itself, Mephistopheles is first introduced as somewhat hostile to MC and non-demons at large, but he too is reduced to little more than another comedic fool by halfway through.

So, suffice it to say, we don't presently hold the highest opinions of the OM writing team...

With the little we've seen of Nightbringer so far, we are already seeing a bit of possible retconning -- for example, RAD not existing before the Celestial War, when lore wise it did exist and is discussed in Lucifer's base UR card Devilgram, The Glory Days. But with everything we've said here, we can't really be surprised that Solmare seems to constantly forget their own lore. So, how much more will be retconned in Nightbringer? Who knows!

The devs also just did an AMA, which confirms that they will not be continuing the main story in the OG Obey Me game, but instead eventually continuing it in Nightbringer. How they're going to connect the story which involves MC going back in time disguised as a demon to where they left off at the end of Season 4 is a mystery, but we'll find out soon enough...hopefully.

Also, we worry that seeing the characters fresh from the Celestial War might very well increase misinterpretations in the fandom when it comes to the characters. No offense to most of the fandom but, uh, we don't think the Seven Demon Lords of Hell from actual demonology need to be treated as angsty precious meow meows that need to become angels again to ~heal~ them. The excessive woobification we sometimes see of these characters is, hmm, not quite to our taste, and a big reason we keep to our own little corner. <3

But, all that said, that deep desire of ours to see OM actually embrace its demonic backdrop and the much darker world it has been suggesting forever, is exactly what we're excited for in the new game! The art and plot they've shared so far is right up our alley, and we're at least minimally hopeful for the seeming return to darker content that they've been avoiding since the initial backlash in the game's early days.

The opening animation is beautiful and the prologue video they've shared is interesting (more Barbatos lore?? More Barbatos lore!! More Solomon lore???). We're hoping that we'll get more fleshed out history on both the characters and the world, especially if we'll be learning more about the Great Celestial War and the aftermath, including the creation of Satan. It'll be interesting to see (or at least, we hope we'll see) the character progression of the immediate post-fall angels suffering the grief of their transformation and loss of their home, to coming to accept their new lives as demons even if we're not thrilled that it's probably MC coming to the past to play family therapist yet again.

And the Ruri Tunes demo was pretty cute back when they did that one-stage beta, so that should be fun? Even if, thematically, a rhythm game seems maybe like a bit of a strange choice for the darker direction this story is taking...but then again, dance battles were kind of weird thematically in the first place anyway.

We'll also finally get a canon layout of the House of Lamentation, so if nothing else we'll at least have that? Please confirm there's more than just one bathroom.

[leam1983]

Disney Dreamlight Valley - Thoughts

It's like staring into a portal into an alternate dimension where Disney and fucking Gameloft are actually design-conscious devs in their own right, and will somehow package the Most Corporate Shit Ever with the single strongest distillation of the Life Sim formula I've seen yet.

I'm shocked, seriously. The premium elements are strictly cosmetic, the required commitment is minimal and none of the Valley's inhabitants adhere to a schedule that hampers your progression. Goofy's downed something like sixteen Adderall and cannot stop pacing up and down the central plaza, when he isn't stuck in a stumbling loop while fishing in one of the meadow's three lakes. The last I spoke with him, his shop was open and fully available by 3 AM.

Everything's accessible. Nothing's gated, except what should be gated in the context of a Life Sim, to induce a sense of progression. You've unlocked pathing tiles for the Village? You're free to cover the entire plateau in cobblestones, if that's what you want.

What the actual fuck. Coming out of Gameloft, devs who consistently paywall parts of their offered content, this feels like a Twilight Zone episode in its most positive form.

I mean - Yes, the quest-givers don't shut up and pester you for a constant downpour of menial shit that supposedly ties into reviving the Valley, but that's only if you do decide to interact with them. If you don't, you're free to spend entire days tweaking the Village's layout.

So, how different is it from Animal Crossing, exactly? Well, first of all, the whole damn thing has a Copyrighted symbol in full-view. If you're one of the staunch anti-Disney posters on here, this is a definitive mark of avoidance for you. Past that, it's basically a name-swapping affair: Tom Nook is split up between Scrooge McDuck (for personal housing needs) and Goofy (for exterior farming resources). Isabelle is more or less handled by The Sword in the Stone's Merlin, and Mickey eventually serves as your Blathers analogue. The one outlying mechanic is an Energy system, which asks you to either keep some food on you at all times to keep topping off, or that simply suggest you return home for a few seconds. Considering how most of the game will take place within walking distance from your personal plot of land, this is an extremely generous implementation of that mechanic.

If I had to dock Dreamlight any points, I'd mention the lack of obviousness of certain quests. I've reached one of the themed Realms in my current save; Realms being tiny instances themed around characters that aren't part of the House of Mouse's main stable. Take, for instance, WALL-E, from the movie of the same name. I've ended in his tiny little pocket world, and was asked to find something to repair one of his treads. I went looking and only found scrap that the game did define as quest items, but never specified what I should do with.

I'd assume this is just a matter of taking five to go check out a walkthrough online, but I really shouldn't have to do this. Even Crossing's most annoying event, like Gulliver's visits, typically include clear cues in the character's dialogue. WALL-E only spews "Directive?" at the player and disengages. Your 'toon somehow immediately grasps what's going on and realizes the robot needs repairs, but the process involved is never made clear. There's a crafting bench nearby, but no amount of fishing around got me close to anything resembling gear or tread blueprints.

Past that, color me pleasantly surprised. The farming mechanic is even more forgiving than Crossing's, the game's client-side currency is generously doled out, and the server-side token is actually not accessible in a Cash Shop!

At this point, it's sort of hard to figure out what the game is doing online. Apart from analytics, the occasional ad served in the Store page - which you can entirely miss - and the gatekeeping of Dreamlight (the currency, not the game itself) to structure player progression and avoid abuse, it behaves entirely like your average PC offering, complete with a flawless response rate on the Steam Deck and a gaggle of easy exploits accessible with a trainer. Can't pay back Scrooge's loan fast enough for your liking? Just pick a trainer producer of your choosing or hex-edit yourself a berjillion coins, and move on right ahead! No online-only bullshit as you would've expected from Disney and Gameloft!

It's a very pleasant surprise, overall. Skip it if you're allergic to remixes of When you Wish upon a Star or if Disney's older stable feels so saccharine to you that you'd rather jam sporks in your eyeballs - but it's actually a very competent Life Sim that's surprisingly lenient and pleasant. It's the most pro-consumer flex I've seen the Mouse pull off in a long time, and a great alternative if you're looking for something to fill in that Tom Nook-shaped divot in your heart, in the absence of a Nintendo Switch or a copy of New Horizons.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi lovely! I was wondering if you have any fics where Sherlock buys John gifts? Maybe a new coat or something adorable and thoughtful? Anything really! Gift giving is my love language so would love to see it with my favourite couple!

Hey Lovely!

AHH it's mine too! I love making people happy, so it hits right, hahah :)

Ah, ones I can immediately think of:

Sibling Rivalry Or Fighting Over John Watson By Jessa7 (T, 8,085 w., 1 Ch. || Romance / Humour) – Mycroft is just as much of a genius as Sherlock is. He keeps randomly kidnapping John for chats, and the locations get better. Cue Sherlock’s younger sibling complex rearing up and jealousy ensues.

The Devil You Know by PipMer (T, 9,300 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous Sherlock, Romance, Friends to Lovers)- Mycroft flirts with John. Sherlock gets jealous. John’s just along for the ride.

Licence to Kiss by fellshish (T, 13,739 w., 4 Ch. || Post-ASIB, Sort-Of Bondlock, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Angst and Humour, Bed Sharing) – Sherlock loves John, and John loves... James Bond. He only made Sherlock watch every single film. Tedious. And now John's birthday is coming up. Sherlock can't tell him how he feels, but he can organise an amazing gift: John's very own spy adventure. Sherlock begs Mycroft for a real case with some extra gadgets. And perhaps some actors pretending to be criminals. What could possibly go wrong?

Our Enthusiasms Which Cannot Always Be Explained by withoutawish (M, 32,961 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TRF, Case Fic, Mild Gore, Sherlock Whump) – The list that is tacked haphazardly on the refrigerator of 221B reads, ‘Kidney(s), and/or a full cadaver (preferably male, late 30s, under six feet tall), bag of fresh toes, sixteen cow’s eyes (corneas retained), dual exhaust hand –held flame thrower, an unopened first edition copy of Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness', and no less than ten abhorrently gruesome murders in the upcoming month.” The one neatly hanging next to it simply reads, “Sex.” One of these lists is not John Watson’s. If John Watson were to put what he really wanted in list form, to live in a land somewhere beyond ‘almosts' now that Sherlock Holmes has indeed returned to him, he would never be able to look his flatmate in the eye ever again.

The Wedding Garments by cwb (E, 105,390 w., 36 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Alternate Future AU || Alternate First Meeting, Dating / Arranged Marriages, Romance, First Kiss/Time, Heavy Petting, Cuddles, POV Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn / Falling in Love / Dev. Rel., Nervous/Anxious Sherlock, Jealous/Cranky Sherlock, Hiking, Vacation Homes / Honeymoon, Sherlock’s Family, Horny John/Sherlock, Patient John, Massages, Hand Jobs, Assassination Plots, Oral Sex, Case Fic, Emotional Love Making, Bath Time Fun) – This is the story of a young consulting detective who wants nothing to do with marriage and an army doctor who wants to find true love. It's 2020 post-Brexit England and the British government is encouraging arranged marriages. Candidates meet through state-run agencies and date in hopes of finding love (and tax benefits). Sherlock doesn't need or want a spouse, at least not until John Watson shows up. Hesitant to give in to his more carnal urges because of the way they derail his mind, how will Sherlock progress toward the more intimate aspects of a relationship? The answer lies in a very special wedding gift.

------

Ah, you can also probably check out these few lists that will obviously have gift giving:

Christmas Fics (Dec. 2017)

Christmas: Oblivious That One or The Other is In a Relationship

Christmas 2019 Part 1 (All Bookmarks XMas and New Years)

Christmas 2019 Part 2 (Marked for Later)

G / T / K+ Rated Christmas Fics (Dec. 2018) (Updated Dec 2021)

Community Recs: Christmas 2020 (Updated Dec 2021)

Birthdays

I know I'm missing a TONNE MORE, and I know I've read some and can't remember what they're called... so if anyone can add some more, please do, because I would love to add them here!

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.

Dragon Age II

DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest

Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art

Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)

World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”

DAI

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge

On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries

For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

[shadowphoenixrider]

Brief timeline recap, with added retcons and general housekeeping

Wow. It’s been a while! I’ve finally got motivation and time, so let’s get into it.

I’ve become more laissez-faire with time and timelines in my headcanons now, which is a great relief as doing a pregnancy timeline for Draggka was a lot and very rigid, and boy I cannot summon up that much energy to do that any more, holy heck! (Where did all that energy go, please can I have it back?)

But roughly Draggka became pregnant with Zal’ria before Battle for Azeroth, and her pregnancy progressed through the expan up to I think when Zandalari formerly joined the Horde, as it was becoming too dangerous for her to be active, what with all of Sylvanas’s nonsense. Dranka took over all of her Speaker of the Horde roles (until it was later passed to Zekhan as of Shadows Rising) whilst she rested in Karazhan, although she did briefly go to Saurfang’s funeral, and stayed waaaay away from all the N’Zoth stuff.

Zal’ria was born in the gap between BFA and Shadowlands, and Draggka pretty much just stayed home with Khadgar (and Medivh) looking after the young’n and was a non-entity during the whole expan. (Ingame she was still my main, though in lore I think I would let my Alliance mains take centre stage for a while.)

Zal would be...3 or 4 years old as of the time skip and Dragonflight’s start, so she’s either starting or close to starting whatever amounts to a school in WoW’s thing. So probably the convenient time for Draggka to return to the action, along with Khadgar. (It’s fine, Medivh’s in Karazhan, he can babysit...sort of.)

As much as I resent Activision-Blizzard’s upper management and the awful things that still disgorge from their fetid maws (fire Bobby Kotick, preferrably into the sun), I can’t deny longing to go back to Azeroth. I had a brief visit back to relieve the need some weeks ago, and I think I will eventually play Dragonflight in the future. Just...in time. The devs are making the right noises right now, I just need some more winning over.

As for retcons...as some of you may or may not be aware, I was writing Draggka and Khadgar’s story as very much intertwined with another friend of mine’s story of her character Camdyn Morris and their courtship of Varian Wrynn. As you can imagine, we broke the canon pretty hard to do so.

It’s with a heavy heart I have to admit I can no longer maintain the internal canon whilst hooking it to ingame canon as easily now. I could do it with enough time and plotting, but the effort to do so is now counterproductive.

So instead of retconning it altogether, I will leave it as a split branch of Draggka/Khadgar’s timeline. Their core story will adhere more to the main game story, although that’s not to say I’ve not meddled here and there - I will break the Shadowlands story over my knee rather than admit the Jailer was playing 60D chess with us all and have Sylvanas apparently unable to realize she was being played.

Speaking of splitting branches, the existance of Draggka and Khadgar’s 2nd child, Khara. She’s not appeared in their canon as of yet so the removal of her is painless, especially since I’ve really not had time to gift her with much of a personality (a curse of a lot of my characters, many in my account will head towards deletion due to it).

That’s not to say I won’t bring Khara back in another form - I like her name a lot, afterall. I just need to think on how. Perhaps an AU of Zal’ria? Rule nothing out, I have been one-manning lore for an entire Star Wars race of recent.

Wanted to get this out, and it’s nice to write a proper Tumblr post about fandom again. Felt the gears starting to move in a way I haven’t felt in years, and I hope with some tweaks and changes and time being made to write things, perhaps I can start creating again.

Here’s hoping, and thank you for reading down to here! ^^

[ajaxwrites]

Genshin Impact Fanfic Rec List

(because this is my most current obsession~~)

The Narwhal of Dihua Marsh by GreyLiliy

Childe hears of a strong Adeptus living at the Wangshu Inn. Despite warnings from Zhongli that fighting Xiao would be a deathly mistake, Childe seeks out the Adeptus living in the Dihua Marsh eager for a proper fight.

However, Childe severely underestimates his opponent, and the consequences of his actions may keep him from returning home to Snezhnaya.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: This fic is interesting primarily because it's not necessarily what you would call an easy story to read. The content can surprisingly get quite heavy as the relationship between Childe and Zhongli isn't healthy and it becomes increasingly obvious as the story progresses. You swing between wanting to separate the two and also desperately wishing that they'll work out because there is something there. The story snowballs from what seems like an innocuous, if stupid and rash, decision on Childe's part to a complicated mess that you can’t help but be enthralled in. I went in expecting your typical romance and ended up in something that was more complex than I expected but also beautifully thought provoking.

Entirely Out of Spite by Bgtea

"Welcome to a new user experience! You have triggered this interface with the keywords, ‘Stupid game! Stupid devs! I want my f*****g money back!’ You are now bound to the character Tartaglia, the Eleventh Harbinger of the Fatui, codename: Childe! We hope you have an enjoyable user experience and we welcome you once again to Genshin Impact 2.0!”

Those are some of the first words Ajax, starving college student extraordinaire, has the misfortune of hearing upon waking up in a brave new world from what he's fairly sure is a very, very fatal accident involving water and a shit ton of electricity.

Okay, so he's not dead. That's good. But what's this about him being stuck playing the character Tartaglia? Tartaglia, as in the shitty, one-dimensional, cartoonish villain who met his untimely, gruesome death in the first act of the original game?

Fuck that noise. Like hell Ajax is going to share that fate.

And so begins one man's journey to unfuck himself.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Whenever this updates, I squeal. If you’re a fan of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System or just transmigration/reincarnation plots in general, you’re going to love it. Bgtea does a beautiful job in balancing humor with the trauma that comes with the whole reincarnation plotline. The whole of it is beautiful written and watching Childe/Ajax interact with the other characters (and the perspective of those characters) is a delight! 

the sister by glassdrachma

The tragic and unexpected death of Zhongli-xiansheng of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor occurred to the sorrow of many and the deep skepticism of a few.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: glassdrachma has a gift for humor and romance. In short, Zhongli fakes his death for plot reasons and comes back as Jianlao, the bereaved twin sister. Shenanigans ensue, featuring overprotective Liyue-ians (?), chaotic gremlin Venti, and Kexing. Very light hearted, good for the soul.

The White Cicada Society by clementinesgulag

After his little brother is bundled back to Snezhnaya, Childe makes good on his promise to the traveller and takes the first boat out of Liyue Harbor. Any sense of homecoming lasts about as long as an uncooked steak in front of Xiangling, however, when his boat sinks, grounding him back in the mainland.

It's just as well, because the next morning, a body is found in the Northland Bank. A visit from a fellow Harbinger reveals a far more insidious plot than anything Childe could concoct with a god of the vortex and twenty minutes without supervision. The murders aren’t limited to the one Bank. They’ve been trailing down the Liyue border, getting closer and closer to the city. The Tsaritsa has a new mission for him: to figure out who, or what is targeting Fatui forces.

Against his best wishes, Childe is forced to see Zhongli again at the morgue. It becomes clear that he’s going to need a guide, and Childe resolves to quash his pride, and their differences to request his help to navigate Liyue and solve the case.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: A diamond in the rough that I slept on and then stumbled back to by accident. I had it marked for later on AO3 and forgot about it for like a good week to my utter self-disgust. It. Is. So. Damn. Good! The mystery is intriguing but I live for the realistic portrayal of the aftermath of the whole gnosis plotline. The betrayal, the bitterness, but ah, the sexual tension. The harbinger interactions in this fic make it gold though.

Lungs full of Roses by SecretlyACatLady

Childe had always assumed that he would die young. He had accepted that a long time ago, ever since he accepted the mantle of a Fatui Harbinger. However, he always thought that he would die in a glorious fight, his body broken but spirit relishing the strong opponent that had bested him. He was okay with that type of death.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Fate had decided to add one last insult to injury, because, here Childe was, dying because he had fallen in love with the ex-Geo Archon. The same Archon who seemed to have discarded him like an old toy ever since the Osial Incident. --- In which divine beings are cruel and a cursed Childe starts preparing for his inevitable death because no Archon could ever love a mortal.

…Right?

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: The fic that started it all for me, the one that sucked me into the fandom. This fic is heartbreaking. We always do love a hanahaki plotline but something about the way it frames the disease and the shame that comes with it...I highly recommend giving it a read. The angst is real I tell you.

The Bride of The Golden Dragon by Erika_Bee

“You’re to be sent on a special mission, Tartaglia.”

The young man’s eyes gleamed in interest. “How special?” He asked as he wiped the blood off his daggers.

His superior grinned. “Special enough to put your name in Snezhnaya’s history books.”

—

In which the Archon War ravaged the land of Liyue and to ensure the people’s survival, the God of Geo established the Harvester Contract: One bride per village, every year, in exchange for protection and a good harvest.

Or: Childe is sent on an undercover mission to kill the Geo Archon, but things don’t go as planned.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Don’t let the title scare you off--this isn’t one of those fics where they feminize one of the male characters and reduce their personality to a mindless submissive bobblehead to the point that I want to throw my laptop out of the window. Not that there’s anything wrong if you like that kind of thing, just not my cup of tea. This fic though---READ IT! There’s just something refreshing about the writing and the plot, the way that Childe’s character reads off the page. I live for the interactions between the characters and how the author has mapped the relationships. Warning that recent chapters have swerved decided into NSFW territory though.

the brothers grim by izabellwit

Left in an unfamiliar land with a mission he never wanted, a young Kaeya lies, survives, and somehow finds a family in the process.

Or: How Kaeya came to Dawn Winery, and why he left it. Includes lore, sibling bickering, found family struggles, and a more in-depth look at the years between Kaeya’s arrival and Crepus’s death.

Ships: N/A

Notes: Ahh, little Kaeya. Cheeky ass little shit that’s too angsty and adorable for his own good. I don’t have words for this fic. It makes my heart warm but also makes me want to weep because god, this fic covers exactly how traumatic Kaeya’s situation is and why child soldiers/spies just shouldn’t be. And the dynamic he has with Diluc and Crepus--do me a favor and read it. Screams found family.

the wind through the mountain tops by glassdrachma

Boredom brings Barbatos of Mondstadt to bother a certain ex-Archon of the Earth.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: A light-hearted, humorous and fluffy as hell piece. Short word is that Venti comes to Liyue for some fun, causes chaos, accidentally plays matchmaker, and steals some vegetables. A get-together fic for Childe and Zhongli that includes a surprisingly self-aware (if blunt and snarky) Zhongli and jealous Childe that gets increasingly flustered.

melt (speak or forever hold your peace) by anatakana

Falling into bed with Diluc was an unbelievably bad idea given their tumultuous shared history, but Kaeya’s impulsive urge to amuse himself knew no bounds.

It’s all fun and games until emotions got involved.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: THIS IS NSFW. With plot though? This is THE FIC that got me shipping the two (though the game did a good job on its own). The angst is real here and we love the sheer gal of both of these two stupid men.

Cascading (In a good way) by Hubbleablubble

Kaeya is a fascinating annoyance.

(Or: A series of events in which Albedo gets to know Kaeya, and they slowly go from strangers to acquaintances to something more.)

Ships: Albedo/Kaeya

Notes: Sweet fic. Not my typical ship pairing. Loved the Khaenri’ah mentions. Kaeya is Trans FTM here though it’s only briefly mentioned. There is also an incomplete sequel (as of May 2021) featuring an Overprotective Big Brother Diluc on a warpath giving shovel talks to everyone except apparently Albedo that’s also worth reading.

The Language of Flowers by Jules (Penwyn)

Kaeya Alberich has made a habit of lying—after all, the only truths he’s ever spoken cost him everything—but there are only so many lies a man can tell before the truth comes spilling out.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Hanahaki! Except not! Basically, Kaeya pukes up flowers that say the truth whenever he lies. Cue, angst! Lovely and quick read--love Kaeya’s voice here.

i know i'm where i'm meant to go by paperclips (pastel_paperclips)

"Childe," Zhongli says suddenly. "I am enjoying myself greatly."

Childe’s face breaks into a grin. "Then-"

Zhongli gasps, grabbing his wrist and tugging him over to an unsuspecting peddler with a cart full of rocks. "Is that an intrusive igneous pegmatite formed in the Inazuma regions?"

Childe’s grin smooths into a small, adoring smile. He has all the time in the world to figure the other man out.

OR: Finding the Geo Archon is on Childe's to-do list but hanging out with Zhongli is significantly more fun.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Childe, you idiot. Humorous and funny, very light hearted. Makes you wonder if Childe has an IQ. He’s too busy pining/lovesick to realize that he told his target that he’s going to kill him for his gnosis. Zhongli and Liyue remain confused on how Childe still DOES NOT get it but half-ass hiding his Archon status anyway.

the bird without wings by Anonymous

"Kaeya!" someone yells. Small arms wrap around his waist tightly, red hair spilling out of the ponytail, and Kaeya's heart almost stops.

He's talked his way out of all types of situations. From placating international disputes to buttering up his informants, he's always had a quick response to everything.

But for once, Kaeya is speechless. He stares down at the boy with puffy cheeks, slightly crooked teeth and sparkling bright eyes.

Eight year old Diluc beams back.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Diluc gets de-aged and Kaeya gets angsty. The interactions between the two are heartwarming and will induce tears. Childe makes a brief appearence that *chef’s kiss*

call me "lover boy" by Anonymous

Zhongli turns back, eyes bright with amusement, a stray lilypad still stuck in his hair, and Childe thinks, wow. I want to kiss him stupid.

Childe's not into the whole "swooning maiden patiently waiting for his beloved to swoop down and smooch the daylights out of him" thing. Nah, that's not his style. He's Tartaglia, eleventh of the Fatui harbingers, and he's going to kiss Zhongli right now.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: FUNNY AS HELL. Childe is straight up just trying to plant one on Zhongli but fate and people just keep interfering. It’s a weird trope aversion where the character is actively trying to confess rather than avoiding it but life gets in the way. 

springtime in snezh-nya-ya by miaomaomei

Tartaglia’s body moves before he can even think about it. He arches his back and flattens his ears against his head, baring his teeth in a hiss. Considering he barely even reaches Scaramouche's knees — Scaramouche, of all people! The guy is practically the size of a fourteen-year-old — he doubts that he is cutting as imposing a figure as he hopes.

It isn't a surprise, though. No one could become a Fatui Harbinger if they were scared of a little cat.

OR

Tartaglia is turned into a cat and he goes to Zhongli for help. It goes about as well as expected.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: TOO ADORABLE FOR WORDS. This is just pure fluff I swear. Love how Childe is written and the interactions between the two are just ahhhh. A balm on the soul.

Melt by tanktrilby

“My name is Diluc,” he says. A scowl naturally furrows his brow, and Kaeya looks like he wants to laugh.

He’s looking at him through his lashes again, blue eyes teasing and warm. “Diluc,” he says. “A knight in overalls isn’t quite where I thought my preferences would lie, but here we are.”

(or: Kaeya loses his memories and makes some assumptions. Diluc can't honestly tell him that he's wrong.)

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: As the summary says, Kaeya loses his memories. Diluc plays babysitter for plot reasons. Meanwhile, Kaeya freaks out and has an essential crisis because his instincts freak him out which = angst. Simultaneously, sort of love confessions? 

you are cordially invited by ktenologious

When the Traveler receives a mysterious invitation from a Snezhnayan businessman, they seek out help from the only Snezhnayan they are on good terms with. They decide it is a wonderful idea to go to this business party in the middle of the ocean because, well, what could be better entertainment than watching a Fatui Harbinger at work? It is too bad Childe couldn't come with them...

Meanwhile, the Tsaritsa needs someone to track down the source of a brand new drug at a party on a cruise; it just so happens that she has two Harbingers who specialize in causing chaos and sinking ships. Scaramouche is a sadist and loves this, and Tartaglia... Well, Tartaglia just wants to know why is he the one in the dress again.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, sort of Diluc/Kaeya & Scaramouche/Childe

Notes: Features a crossdressing Childe and Kaeya for plot reasons. Funny as hell. Love Fatui dynamics/interactions. Highly recommend. Go read it. I’m serious. It’s so beautiful, I can’t. Also Zhongli is so love-sick and jealous, it’s hilarious.

The Road to Snezhnaya by paranoid_fridge

Everything's done and over. Now, Zhongli only needs to adjust to living like an ordinary mortal. Or that is what he thinks until a familiar face shows up in Liyue. Teucer comes looking for his brother who failed to return to Snezhnaya on the Fatui ships. And as Childe's declared "friend", Zhongli must help Teucer find him.

Or: Teucer drags Zhongli on a cross-country goose chase looking for Childe. Zhongli just happens to find a bit more along the way.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: I have no words for this fic outside of the fact that it is clear that Teucer has the only functioning brain and should be Best Man because he obviously did all the work here. Features an oblivious Childe and overprotective Zhongli, plus bystander Kaeya that is getting allll of the gossip. And also the most destructive group of children ever.

basket of knives by oronine

“I just want to be loved,” Childe says to himself, to whoever is listening. “Is that too much to ask?”

They are on the roof once more, this time Childe’s foot touches the edge of the building as he daydreams of something that cannot be. The sky is blank and cloudy and perhaps Lumine fears it’ll all end when he takes a step.

“Not at all,” she says. It’s still the truth.

Contrary to popular belief, Childe hates his family but loves them all the same.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: TW for suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, self-harm, depression, etc. Not a light read by any definition. Set in a modern AU, not in the genshin impact universe. Features a Childe that is Not Okay, good friend but also probably traumatized friend Lumine (and her brother Aether), and Zhongli. Family dynamic is messed up as hell and explores mental health quite well in my opinion. I’m not sure how healthy necessarily Childe’s relationships are but I think that’s a given considering the context and how derailed his mental health is in this fic. Definitely angst as heavy, made me tear up quite a bit. Read, but pay attention to the content/trigger warnings as it does get quite explicit.

Bane of All Evil by tzitzimeme

When Chongyun unintentionally offends Liyue's second most powerful adepti, he vows to mend the thorny relationship between Adeptus Xiao and human exorcists-- even though no one has succeeded in currying Xiao's favor for over a thousand years.

His best friend Xingqiu offers to come alone, mainly because he's worried about what kind of trouble Chongyun will run into. Along the way, they receive help from others: Xiangling packs them meals for their journeys, while Zhongli gives them advice on what demons to track.

Childe is just there because he thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

Ships: Chongyun/Xinqiu

Notes: JFKLFJS I LOVE THIS. I love Chongyun’s characterization and the interaction between all the characters. The dynamic between Chongyun, Xingqiu, and Xiangling are to die for. Also, this line: “Stuck-up Persnickety Bastard.” Random note but Xiao throws Chongyun off a balcony yet is also 100% a softie.

Talks about Nothing by tzitzimeme

In which Zhongli unlocks the Memory of Dust, only to find out:

1. Guizhong is 100% alive (just disembodied) within it, 2. Guizhong has been watching over him this whole time, and 3. Guizhong is very excited by the prospect of Zhongli getting a cute Snezhnayan boyfriend.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, Venti/Xiao

Notes: The pure judgment that Guizhong unleashes on Zhongli (as well as her sass in general) is pure comedic gold. The dynamic between Xiao and Venti are also adorable. Meanwhile, Childe misunderstands and also just wants to know what the fuck is going on.

xi wangmu by tzitzimeme

Xiangling scales entire mountains to satisfy the palettes of her two pickiest customers.

(Or, two men who are emotionally stunted by their own immortality inadvertantly turn an overly enthusiastic chef into their messenger pigeon.)

Ships: Zhongli/Xiao (?)

Notes: Not sure if it reads romantic exactly, can definitely be read as platonic. The fic boils down to Xiangling trying to expose Xiao to variety because just eating plain almond tofu is a no no. Zhongli gives advice/uses Xiangling as a messenger pigeon. Backstory is explored!

Falling (Fallen) by asinglecrow

It’s only when Childe finds himself in front of Zhongli, a spear protruding from his stomach, that he thinks oh I might have fucked up.

Or: The worst (best) day of Childe's life.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Funny and lighthearted! Gets sort of NSFW with passing mention of mpreg but otherwise, it’s just pure humor/fluff. Get-together fic featuring deadpan dragon Zhongli and Childe that is just done with everything. 

the louvre by morisuke

Here in Liyue, the air is filled with the ocean, and the sun shines through the mountains like it’s flowing through a crack in the sky. Here in Liyue, there is a man with no wallet at a vending machine that is going to waste the rest of his day showing a stranger around their school campus for a pocket sized can of iced coffee.

It’s interesting here in Liyue, Childe thinks.

or

Where Childe flirts with a stranger at a campus vending machine.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Set in a modern/college AU. This is a relatively quiet, soft kind of story. Childe comes to Liyue because reasons and falls in love quietly. It’s more of a snippet of life type of fic that’s sweet and peaceful. Love the change that comes over Childe as he finds a home.

[deusexlachina]

Secretly Pacifist Games

There’s a difference between a game letting you make false assumptions and a game outright trying to convince you to make a mistake.

Not only can Undertale be played without killing anything, that’s the only way to get a good ending. Flowey tells you that levelling up is good, but in the same scene he proves himself an evil liar and also tries to kill you, so if you trust him that’s on you. On top of that, the much more trustworthy Toriel immediately and pointedly contradicts him, and goes out of her way to make clear how to spare enemies and that you should.

Contrast this with Vampyr, which also demands a pacifist run. But, very early on, the game stresses that Jonathan should eat at least some people. Unlike Flowey, those who encourage you to murder are normally trustworthy - Jonathan’s maker (who is sinister but honest and trying to help you), Jonathan himself (who unsubtly hints that you’ll need to feed to catch up with the enemies later in the game), and even the instructions/hints, which explicitly tell you that killing innocent people is the fastest and easiest way to get stronger.

What Vampyr doesn’t tell you is that doing the actual storyline already gives you all the experience you’ll need. Not for any particular reason, mind you. It just so happens that progressing the main plot nourishes a vampire just as much as sucking blood. Upgrading your weapon is far more important than level-ups, and the latter also give very diminishing returns - the earliest, cheapest upgrades are the most useful. But the game doesn’t stress this.

The story itself doesn’t give any hint that vegetarianism is the way to go, and implies that vampires have to eat. At the beginning of the game, Jonathan is a mindless monster until he eats his own sister, and even Nice Vampire Elizabeth eats numerous patients (“they were dying anyway”) to sustain herself (she feels really bad about it, guys). Besides that, you can’t avoid killing! You are repeatedly forced to kill vampire hunters in large numbers. They...don’t count. Even if you suck their blood. That’s Combat, not Murder, so that has no consequences. The game never explains why you’re free to not eat people, and, if you can, why all the other vampires don’t go cold-turkey.

Worst of all, on top of giving you much worse endings, feeding on people makes the game harder, which is exactly the opposite of what the game says it does. Shopkeepers (important for upgrading your weaponry) can be impacted or outright killed. Monsters can roam normally-safe areas (and fights give you very poor XP and can be hard to avoid). The final boss is harder the more people you’ve killed (starting at “embarrassingly easy” and going up to “stronger than you could possibly be”).

It can be fun for a game to trick you, but it shouldn’t do that by disguising bad advice as useful hints straight from the devs.

[hopeymchope]

Parascientific Escape: The sci-fi “escape room” visual novel-style series nobody talks about

I can’t help thinking that Parascientific Escape would probably have an active fandom somewhere on the Internet if it wasn’t TRAPPED ON THE 3DS ESHOP.

I mean, it’s an escape room-centric visual novel-style sci-fi Japanese game that is clearly inspired by Zero Escape and very anime in its style. There are endearing characters, including optimal waifus/husbandos, plus a gradual buildup of an interesting fictional world full of political intrigue, its own countries, its own companies, and of course... psychic powers. Because you can’t have a trilogy of Japanese visual novel-style games featuring escape room puzzles without mental powers, now can you?

But as I said... they’re trapped as download-only titles for the 3DS. That’s fucking brutal. 

Even so, there’s a pretty big 3DS/2DS user base still in existence. It’s not like they’ve never been translated or something, so at least we have the capability to play them. So if you look into them, what are you getting?

A basic overview: Parascientific Escape is a trilogy of anime-style games about solving escape room mysteries and tracking down evildoers via the use of psychic powers (obvious Zero Escape influences). There’s an overarching plot about a mysterious mastermind who believes it’s time for the recently emerged psychics of the world to take their place as the next evolution of humanity and get their own nation (obvious X-Men influences).

They don’t work very well as standalone stories; each story relies on information from the last one, culminating in a game that stars the protagonists of both parts 1 and 2 together as they finally unravel the motivations behind the events of the whole series and face off with the people behind everything. In addition, the escape room puzzles start out pretty easy in the first game build to be pretty frustratingly obtuse by the tail end of the third. And on top of all that, each game taken on its own only contains about 3-4 escape rooms. So when you bundle all three together, that’s when it all works as a single satisfying package. 

Don’t worry about burning a lot of cash to play the whole series, however. The three games are $5.00 US each on the 3DS eShop and are usually on sale for $2.50 each these days. I got the entire trilogy for $7.50 US!

So let’s break down the gameplay and setup in a little more detail. Don’t worry; I won’t give any spoilers that go beyond the first five minutes of any game in the series. The twists and turns are part of the fun here.

The first game is Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas. You play as  Hitomi Akeneno, a high school girl (because of course she’s a high-schooler) with the dual abilities of mild telekinesis and a type of clairvoyance that lets her peer past barriers or into the insides of objects. She finds herself trapped on a sinking cruise ship where some mastermind keeps systematically locking her into isolated sections while she’s trying desperately to escape. 

I really liked how you could look inside of an object with clairvoyance and then use her telekinesis to manipulate the various switches and levers within, gradually pulling some object you need out from within a maze. I also thought it was clever how the solution to a new escape roomight require you to backtrack to a previous escape room to investigate some object or area that wasn’t relevant to that previous room’s original puzzle. 

(One of the things I found most fascinating about this one is the ethical debate raised by Hitomi’s friend Chisono regarding how Hitomi got herself involved in all this. Chisono offers a perspective that is extremely unusual to see in most fiction. You can even say it’s pretty cold, but it’s not without having some merit to it. I don’t want to say too much about what I’m talking about, though; it’s better left as a surprise.)

The second title, Parascientific Escape: Gear Detective, almost seems standalone at first. You play as Kyosuke Ayana, a private detective and actual adult (!) who is 22 years old. A young woman shows up at his office and asks to hire him for protection. See, there’s a serial killer on the loose, and she believes she’s the next target.

We are swiftly told that Kyosuke was once in an accident that necessitated the replacement of his left arm and right eye. He volunteered to be a guinea pig for some very special prosthetics that granted him artificial psychic powers. As such, he now has “chronokinesis” — to the power to look back in time. However, he can only look back for five days, and he only has limited ability to move or manipulate the things he sees in the past. 

Naturally, Kyosuke’s investigation winds up trapping him within some escape rooms that require use of his unique abilities to solve. Some of the hints at the proper timestamps or exactly where you should be looking when you peer into the past are a little vague, though, which can cause momentary frustration. Because I like to always be making forward progress, I actually preferred Hitomi’s telekinesis/clairvoyance powers from the first game. Still, Hitomi had some pretty basic puzzles in her rooms. I can’t deny that these puzzles took more thought.

Outside of the escape rooms,  everything is undeniably a huge improvement. The first game presented strictly linear segments of storytelling between the rooms, but this one is more of an adventure game. You can choose where you go, select from a limited menu of things to do when you get there, and do all of it in any order you like. There’s usually a correct sequence order to progressing the story, but it’s typically pretty clear what the next step is, so it’s not like you’re just flailing about and trying a bunch of locations blindly. Besides, there’s no way to get stuck, so don’t stress it. There are even a lot of actions you can take that have no impact on story progression at all — they’re just there to generate additional dialogue that further develops the characters. 

The tradeoff is that you actually get fewer escape rooms overall. The first game had four, but the second only contains three. This is also the first game in the series to introduce multiple endings; you get a number of dialogue choices throughout, and unfortunately, it’s far too easy to trigger the “bad” ending. There are guides online to help you trigger the Gold Star “true” ending, however. Just hit up GameFAQs. You might want to use the guide on your first playthrough, because I can say from experience that it’s annoying to have to replay all the dialogue sections just to make the correct choices. (Luckily, you can skip over any irrelevant sections of each chapter — including the escape room puzzles.) 

In spite of my above whining, the second one is probably my single favorite story in the Parascientific trilogy. It’s a lot of fun.

The final game in the trilogy is Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon. Mysterious characters who were plotting offscreen for the previous two games are finally given faces, locations that were talked about extensively in both are finally visited, and the two protagonists of the first couple games finally meet and team up. It’s absolutely a culmination of what they set up in the first two.

The narrative jumps around from the perspectives of many different characters, but the most time is undoubtedly spent with Hitomi and Kyosuke. Sadly, there is no gameplay usage of Hitomi’s powers this time; the escape rooms are all done with Kyosuke, and they are more devious now than ever before. Personally, I found the next-to-last one to be incredibly obtuse and frustrating. I ultimately had to consult a video playthrough on YouTube for that. (The YouTuber in question didn’t seem to have the same issues figuring things out that I did. So I guess your mileage may vary.)

The “adventure game” segments make a return here as well, although they’ve also become a bit tougher to figure out. There are a couple of times when you might find yourself wandering the various location options, clicking on every possible action to try and progress. Luckily, there aren’t so many default options that you’re left flailing for very long. Even the longest period of clueless wandering lasted me a maximum of 15 minutes.

Once again, you have to make the correct dialogue choices if you want a positive ending. And once again, GameFAQs is your friend and co-pilot.

Ultimately, even the gated endings and occasional puzzle frustrations did little to curb my enthusiasm. I really had fun with these characters and their stories, I greatly enjoyed the majority of the escape rooms, and I was pretty satisfied with how it all wrapped up. The character designs/artwork get better and better as the series goes on. The selection of music tracks may be the same throughout the whole series, but I really dug on them, so I can’t complain. Do I have any other misgivings? Well, just one; the English localization is pretty sloppy. There are a pretty large number of typos, and the dialogue can sound stilted and awkward at times due to being a direct translation. It’s actually at its worst at the start of the first game. Luckily, after about 30 minutes of playtime, it settles in and finds its voice.

Seriously, they should really figure out a way to re-package these games for another system that doesn’t use the the dual-screen setup. Put all three of them together, and it’d easily be satisfying as a full retail release!

But for now, if you have a 3DS/2DS, they’re only $7.50 in total most of the time (and $15.00 at the worst). Do you like adventure game-style mysteries and visual novel-esque progression and, of course, escape rooms? You should give these a shot! And I hope these devs get to make games with bigger budgets and better localizations in the future.

[rainofaugustsith]

SWTOR and Companion Death

So. Some thoughts about companion deaths in SWTOR in general.

I'm not a fan.

SPOILERS FOR KOTFE ONWARD.

I do know the name of the franchise is Star WARS, and people die in wars. It would probably be extremely unrealistic if we had a scenario where our characters spent literally 17 years of their lives (and counting...well, 12 if we don't count carbonite) fighting and nobody around them died.

However, in SWTOR I think that most of the deaths could been avoided. I don't think they benefit the story. I think that all they really do, in the end, is deprive the audience of a lot of interesting characters. 

I do think there are occasions when a player's character may wish to reject or kill a companion, but I also feel that there are ways to write so that it is an exception, and not commonplace.

And we have not even gotten to the NPC deaths. It has been a bloodbath for years with SWTOR and the writers show no signs of stopping it. Nathema - the body count from Nathema has taken almost twenty NPCs out of the main story. Onslaught? Yeah. Many more. It's become more unusual for an NPC to actually survive for the duration than to have a kill option.

I feel there are better ways to write than to take a Game of Thrones approach and kill everyone. When you eliminate everyone's beloved characters, and you leave the player with nothing more than a rotating cast of strangers, it's quite difficult to get into the story after a while.

Going through the companion deaths from KOTFE to Iokath:

Tanno Vik: The voiceover artist who played Tanno Vik died several years ago, and apparently the devs decided not to make the character recruitable in KOTFE because of that. I can understand this one. It seems that Tanno may die regardless of your choices, too. If you spare him during your meeting, he may not have survived the attack on Asylum, especially if the PC chose to use Valkorion's power.

HK-55: Yes, we get it, you wanted to show everyone that Arcann is a big old monster. The "thrown into carbonite," "slaughtering the Scions" “subjugating both the Republic and Empire” and "ruling as a harsh dictator" plot points didn't get it across quite enough. Dramatic. Yes. And they do bring HK-55 back

My objection to this death is not that they did it - because it actually does fit, even if it's a little extreme - is that they didn't make HK-55's return available to all in the actual main story of the game. I can understand making Shroud of Memory a bonus, because it's cute and funny but doesn't tie super directly into the main plot. But Arma Rasa? I think that should have been for everyone. Yes, I know you can buy it now - and I did - but I still think it should have been main story. If it were, we could have enjoyed HK-55's commentary in the rest of KOTFE and KOTET.

Kaliyo Djannis, Aric Jorgan: Fan service. But it makes no fucking sense. What exactly are you killing them for? They didn't listen, after they tried to compensate and salvage a mission that had gone south? They were left in the lurch because your PC was mission critical and went on a hallucinogenic hiking trip and didn't show up? There's literally nothing you can do to make the mission go right. It always fails, no matter who is in charge or what you tell them to do.

In Kaliyo's case, I really question why the devs thought that she, of all people, would be the character that most players would just love to spend an entire chapter with in one-on-one quality time in KOTFE. I think her kill option was a response to that - "yes, we forced you to play a chapter with this character but look, you can let her go now." Or perhaps it was a response to the frustration some players had with not being able to kill or reject her in the class story.

I think the class story could have sustained a branch where Kaliyo was asked to leave after the Wheezer incident. I think it's reasonable that a player's Agent may not have wanted to continue associating with her at that point. There were four other characters who could have taken her dialogue in the class story missions. But to do it years later? Eh.

In Aric's case, I have no idea what they were thinking. I've never had the feeling he's a character that is widely disliked. They needed to give an option to kill someone along with Kaliyo. I don't know. But it's weird and doesn't make sense IMHO.

Senya: So she's saved her boy. We get it. But considering that Senya also spent several chapters insisting that her children needed to be brought to justice, and was fully willing to engage Vaylin in combat if not kill her - the change of heart was confusing. I think Senya's fate was attached to Arcann's simply to give Arcann greater odds of survival. It seems that people like Senya even if they don't like Arcann. If the two had been separated, I really think less people would have saved Arcann.

Koth: Fan service. Nothing but fucking fan service. I'm sure it had nothing to do with Koth being a LGBTQ+ Black man who actually protested the player's actions and didn't let them off the hook. No, nothing to worry about here with that. That;s sarcasm in case I need to clarify. If things get to the point where Koth has left, your character literally works with him to save the ship and then can kill him while Lana stands there and watches and not a single person protests. After Koth has hijacked the ship and planted a bomb on it. The ship he adores. I can’t even. They could have done so much with this character and they just...did this instead. And then chose to completely ignore him even if he remained in the player's story. I still am salty, years later, that he didn't even get a cameo in the Nathema story. It's not as though the Gravestone's fate would have bothered him at all, amirite?

SCORPIO: One of the few kill options that actually might be justifiable, but the larger question is why she was trusted so much to begin with. And why the game feels it's light side to let her merge with a planet that keeps a necropolis of billions of organics it has slaughtered as research subjects.

Arcann: I feel Arcann should be handled and considered separately because he was not established first as a companion. He was framed and written as an adversary for all of KOTFE. But here we are forced to choose between "let Arcann live and become your new BFF who takes over Lana and Theron's place of trust with no punishment for his crimes" or "kill him on live television! I'm sure I'll be an Instagram Influencer now! Follow me at AllianceCommanderOdesssen uwu!"

Vette; Torian: Completely unnecessary. You have an Alliance that is so large that fighters are literally on the cliffs and in the trees helping you as you progress through the chapter. The Gravestone's taken to the skies. And yet nobody is available to swing by Torian or Vette's position to help them. You and Lana/Theron or Senya/Arcann are literally THE ONLY PEOPLE EVER who can do that. Oh, and the super-smart Hutt scientist in charge of your Research and Development team has given Vette an assault cannon for this huge battle against strong, skilled forces, despite the fact she's only operated an assault cannon...once? For a few minutes? *thumbs up, Oggurobb!*

I feel this was simply done to try to evoke emotion and to erase any sympathy the player may have had for Vaylin, since it immediately follows the Nathema sanitarium visit.

If they really felt the need to go with this, I feel they could have tied it to player actions earlier in the game. Did you do a lot of Alliance Alerts? Did you raise the Specialists' influence above 10? Did you do some of those veteran Star Fortresses and pick up a few extra companions? Then maybe you have enough extra personnel to save both. Quinn: More fan service, served up for those who would have liked to kill or reject Quinn all those years ago in the class story.

Just like Kaliyo - and Skadge, and Tanno Vik - I think the class story could have gone on without him if the Sith Warrior had been allowed to reject him after the Quinncident. I would have rejected him at that point. The writing in the class story could have sustained it. They could have given the healer role to one of the others. And then you'd get a branch where if Quinn was present, he'd show up on Iokath. If not, it would be someone else from the Sith class story, like one of the many Moffs the Warrior meets. Maybe the dude from Ilum, since he doesn't die. Or Hesker.

Theron: Now, here's the issue. The story sets up a scenario where asking Theron to leave because you no longer trust him is understandable. But I plead the case that it never should have gotten to that point. The entire betrayal story was completely unnecessary. Theron NEEDED to go undercover like that? He had a secret language he and Lana developed and just never used it to tip everyone off? He thought frying the Commander on Iokath or throwing her out the train window would be fun? After working so hard for peace, he literally sparked the next galactic war by tipping off everyone about Iokath and manipulating them all into going there so they could learn lots of fun new ways to kill each other?

Come. On. It doesn't make sense. Even in a spy game, I don't think Theron would have really thought that prodding the Empire and Republic to war with each other and the Alliance would have been worth it.

I feel like they could have done so many other things with the Order of Zildrog, and even had the same flashpoints, without making Theron appear to betray the Alliance. 

DS Jaesa: *sigh* So she saw the Commander on the Holonet, never thought of coming to Odessen and instead went to Iokath to slaughter Alliance troops. Oh, and threaten to kill Lana, who may be the player’s partner. Again, it sets up a scenario where it makes sense that a player might kill her, but why was that even necessary? The scenario itself doesn't make sense. If you have Master Ranos, she says that Jaesa was spotted hunting for artifacts, I think? Maybe just maybe they could have worked with that?

Xalek: You're killing Xalek for...um...terrorizing miners...and...yeah. Okay. Dude was in the class story for about five minutes so I don't think anyone knows what is going on here.

Broonmark: Yes, he's basically a cold-blooded killer. But he's going after this Wookiee senator because he's allying with the Republic? Or getting some Talz to be allies? The Talz already seem to be aligned Republic. He's a bit late to that party. Why is it that I don't think Broonmark would be into politics or watching the news and would not care about this?

Rusk: Um, yeah, Bey'wan, about that guy you wanted me to recruit, he's, um, dead. Because I decided to sell him out to a Black Sun gang leader. Don't be mad?

Skadge: One of the few kill options I think most could agree is...not that bad. Your mission with Rusk is to kill him. He was an adversary in the game. My headcanon for my bounty hunters is that he never gets on the ship after Belsavis. There’s no way they would have ever brought him along. Another case of correcting something from the class story?