#anyway there are entire classes on character design for a reason

[rainrot4me]

Love Me Like I’m Yours

Summary: Eijiro’s got it bad for you, but he won’t admit it out of fear of messing up your comfortability with him. He’s your rock, your stability, so when you sleepily ask him to stay the night, it takes everything in him not to ruin that wall he’s built.

Characters: Eijiro Kirishima x Female Reader

SMUT WARNING MINORS DNI

TW: Pining, secret feelings, friends to lovers, gentle sex, fluffy sex, fluff, emotional, embarrassment, morning wood, longing, vaginal, vaginal fingering, morning wood

Words: 4.0k

There was something so hypocritical about Eijiro loathing movie nights.

It was exactly what he loved: spending time with his friends, hanging out together and sharing something, exactly what he always wanted to do anyway. His classmates could never understand why he always wanted to go out on the designated movie nights, spending Saturday evenings trying his best to make some excuse. Still, Mina dragged him down to the couches forcefully, rolling her eyes at how the redhead grovelled about not wanting to be there. Why wouldn’t he want to spend time with his beloved classmates snuggled on a couch?

He’ll tell you why. The reason was walking straight towards him.

Your cute little face was already cheerfully smiling as you plopped down in your familiar spot beside him, blankets wrapped in your arms. The routine was the same: On movie nights, Eijiro let you lay on him (you always fell asleep before the movie was over), and you brought your weighted blanket big enough to cover you both. At first, it was sweet, a close friendship that the redhead genuinely enjoyed entertaining, always eager to see you snuggled against him.

But the weekends passed, Saturday nights rushing along, and eventually, Eijiro found himself blushing and tense as you snored quietly on his lap. You had become comfortable with him, he was happy for it, but another part of him cursed himself for letting it happen. You were his best friend, besides Katuski and the others, Eijiro felt the most comfortable just being with you, the happiest in your company. So, when he let his happiness slowly fade into a crush, everything came crashing down. He was supposed to be your friend, you were supposed to feel free around him, not like he was about to ruin your friendship with one slip of a wrong word. 

“Hi, Eiji, what movies tonight?” You smiled, throwing the blanket over you two as you both hauled into the corner of the common area couch, the rest of your classmates finding their usual spots on the floor or on the couch with you. Yaoyorozu and Denki were to your right, Jiro nestled on the ground between their legs and offering a bowl of popcorn up to you, the buttery scent nice as you scooped it up. Bakugo and Ashido sat on the couch adjacent to you all, her legs thrown over his thighs as she tapped away on her phone, the blond craning his neck to try and talk to Tokoyami about some band stuff. Everyone was settling in, Ida making sure everyone was comfortable before he switched off the lights, starting the movie up as the pictures flashed across the large TV. “Some American movie, I think,” Eijiro whispered, tensing as you already began to lay your head on his shoulder, skipping straight to his point exactly. “An older one.”

You hummed, tucking your legs close and wrapping snugly in the large blanket, tossing the extra onto Eijiro’s lap. Everyone was quietly whispering, shushing each other as the movie began to play. The class was relaxed, spread out, and took up the entire common area. Eijiro was already stiff and rigid. You already knew, despite what he thought. It barely took you even speaking to him anymore before he was a mumbling mess, hurriedly apologizing for having to leave and get out of your sight. The redhead never was good with being straightforward, not with you, at least. With everyone else, he was always giddy, always so excited to have people piled into his dorm and hanging around, but if you entered, there were sudden complaints of being tired and needing to get some sleep. This, unfortunately, was the only way you were going to get to be around him. Whether he liked it or not.

The movie dabbled on, some old romance from the early 2000s you couldn’t bring yourself to care about as you felt your eyelids dip. You couldn’t help it, Eiji was just so warm, so stupidly warm and cute when he was like this, stiff as a board under your heavy head. There was no use fighting, you knew he’d wake you up at the end anyway…

Eijiro glanced cautiously, stunned when he watched your eyes fluttering closed and cheeks squished against his shoulder. He blushed, adjusting his position so it was easier for you to get comfortable, your breathing quiet and labored beside him. 

These were the times Eijiro really enjoyed, the moments when he could just look at you without fear of being caught or called out on it, where everyone else was so focused on the movie they couldn’t even see his eyes roaming, grinned with your pretty little face. He would just let you sleep, tucking the blanket closer under your arms or letting you slobber into his shirt sleeve, but he didn’t care.

-

The movie’s credits rolled, everyone tiredly shuffling towards the stairs with their pillows and blankets tucked under their arms. A few straggled towards the kitchen, reaching for some late-night snacks to tie them over till morning before making their way up as well. Eijiro waited, like he always did, until everyone was gone before he lightly tapped your shoulder, stroking his finger across your plump cheeks to coax you awake. You were snuggled in tight tonight, lips parted and cheeks squished against his shoulder, his t-shirt slightly stained with your drool. He smiled, tapping your shoulder again, but you just wouldn’t wake up. “[Y/N]...” He cooed, nudging his arm a little to jolt you, but you just slid down, head bobbing down until it fell onto his thigh, and laid completely down.

Eijiro jolted, panicking slightly as you laid your head on his lap, just as deep into sleep as you were before, completely unaware. “Ah- Shit… okay.” He huffed, sliding his hands under your head and propping you back up, tucking his other arm under your body to haul you into his lap fully, cradling you. “Rough day. She was up studying in here until morning yesterday. Stressed about finals or something.” Eijiro looked up, Mina’s pink curls filling his vision as she leaned down, smiling at your sleeping face. He hadn’t even heard her come in, too focused on making sure you were still comfortable. “Oh, shit.” The redhead replied, wiping your bangs off of your forehead as you turned your face into the crook on his shoulder, settling in, tucking the blanket back over you. Mina chuckled, waving and heading back towards the stairs with a bag of chips in her hand, knowingly giving a wink. Eijiro sat, a little pink on his cheeks as he watched you breathe, holding you tight. “We gotta get you to bed then, huh?” He asked, smiling at you as he hauled you up, carrying you in his arms, you were practically light as a feather. 

The walk up to your room was full of your quiet sighs and fingers clenching into his shirt, sleeping soundly. You were always good about being able to wake up and haul your own self to your bed, but Eijiro knew that was out of the question tonight. 

Pushing your door handle down with his elbow, Eijiro pushed open your dorm door, clicking it back shut with his foot as he turned into the dark space. He realized he had never been in here before, never confident enough to stride into your room without getting all flustered. It was cute, the decorations matched your sweet personality. He fumbled around, the streetlights outside your window illuminating through your curtains just enough to find your bed, setting you down on top of the sheets. Eijiro noticed the way your whole room smelled like you, your nice perfume and hair products mixing and making him smile, tugging your soft sheets down to help you under them. 

It was funny, as he tucked you in you didn’t stir once, his awkward touches not rousing you until he pressed away, his presence retreating and causing you to flutter your tired eyes open. “Eiji…?” You mumbled, turning on your side as you watched the muscular boy slide towards your door quietly, tossing your blanket onto your chair. He hissed, turning slowly to see your eyes lazily trained on him in the dark. “Don’ leave…” You mumbled again, letting your eyes close as you shoved the covers down, inviting him in. The redhead blushed, cheeks flushed as he stepped closer, shaking his head. “You need to sleep, [Y/N]. Me too.”

“Then sleep here, kay?” You lazily smiled, reaching out as he began to retreat again. Eijiro groaned, fighting his every instinct to jump into bed with you, his nervousness overtaking him once again. “I can’t. You won’t sleep comfortably with me in there.” You shook your head, this time pushing the covers down to your knees and sitting up, reaching out to grab his shirt sleeve and tug him towards you. Eijiro stuttered, muttering excuses as his heart raced, but you dragged the large guy towards your mattress, his knee raising to press against the bed to stop you from pulling him down. You sighed, plopping back onto the pillows as you held his shirt sleeve, refusing to let go. “Get in bed, Eiji…” You smiled, looking up at him through half-lids and giving his sleeve a good tug. “Or I ain’t sleeping at all.”

The redhead sighed, giving up as he kicked off his shoes, pulling the covers up as you victoriously smiled. You knew him, his lack of capability when it came to you. This was the only way you knew to break that, the only way you knew to push past that wall he had built for himself and get him comfortable. Straight to the point, you supposed.

Sliding over, Eijiro slid under the covers, anxiously lying with space between you two as he placed his head on your pillow, refusing to look at your face as you rolled your eyes. “So far…” You huffed, turning your back to him and tugging his arm with you, smiling at how much larger even just his arm was compared to you. You hauled him closer, forcing his forearm around your shoulder and holding on tight, his chest pressing to you. You could blame it on being tired and delusional, but you knew what you were doing, and you had a suspicion he did too. “Ah- okay…” Eijiro cringed, awkwardly adjusting up against you and trying his best not to impose. He just took up so much room though, you getting swallowed up against him as you breathed deep, settling back into sleep. The redhead just watched, nervously nibbling on his bottom lip as he watched you effortlessly slide back into slumber.

Eijiro thought that was his favorite view. No matter where, he always enjoyed watching you sleep, just how peaceful and relaxed you looked. It was the one time he wasn’t freaking out about you potentially catching his gaze. Making sure you actually were asleep, he pressed closer, letting his arm relax over your waist and wrapping close, pressing against you comfortably. He grinned, breathing deep and still trying not to stir you, letting his own eyes shut as your hair tickled his nose. He would leave in a little bit… Yeah…

-

Morning came faster than expected, the sunlight peeking and lighting up your dorm. You both snored quietly, Eijiro’s arms now completely wrapped around you and tugging you closer as you gripped onto his hands. His mouth hung open, hair a mess and shirt tugged up to his chest, you cradled practically under him. Everything was peaceful, the Sunday morning creeping slowly as you stirred, eyes gently popping open.

You smiled, realizing that Eijiro hadn’t left and had stayed throughout the night. You leaned your head back against his shoulder, letting your body contort to his largeness and accidentally letting your ass pressed back to his hips, gasping when you left his boner already present. Morning wood. Eijiro felt the stimulation too, because he was already rousing awake behind you. You refused to move, shutting your eyes back quickly as he groaned, his hips instinctually pushing forward for friction until he realized what he was doing, jumping awake.

The redhead sat up quickly, knocking your head off of his shoulder and hissing when he realized he had woken you up, quickly apologizing. “Jesus- Uhm… sorry.” He groaned, gripping the covers tight over his hips as you sat up, smiling awkwardly. “It’s fine…” The air was tense now, Eijiro glancing back and forth between you and the door, anxiously trying to find an out for himself without you seeing his very untimely bulge in his gym shorts. You knew but tried to act oblivious as you crawled over him, sliding off of the bed and reaching for your phone, noticing the time was later into the morning, almost noon. “Damn, heavy sleepers, huh?” You laughed, Eijiro nodding but cheeks giving him away, their redness almost concerning. “I, uhm… I gotta go.” Eijiro smiled, trying to nonchalantly stand up but you blocked his path, crossing your arms sheepishly. “Why? Cause your boner?” You teased, popping a hip out as you stood that the redhead definitely took notice of. The redhead stuttered, face turning deep shades of red as he gawked, embarrassingly trying to state otherwise, but it was too late.

“[Y/N]...” He grits, looking to the floor but desperately wanting to look at you. “Can’t help it.” You smiled, pushing back onto the bed beside him. He hesitated, trying not to let you get too close but you were already holding his arm, pressing against his shoulder. “It’s alright Eiji… But, we do gotta talk.” You grinned, leaning back into your headboard and dragging him with you, his hand tight on the covers to cover his crotch. “Can I say no?” He smiled awkwardly back, trying to stop himself from leaving altogether. Shaking your head, he sighed, relaxing back as you held his arm. “You can’t avoid me anymore.”

Eijiro groaned quietly, looking in the opposite direction but eventually finding his way back to you, his cheeks a dark tint. “It’s just… I don’t know. I can’t explain it.” You huffed. “Try.” The redhead locked his eyes onto yours, admiring how the sunlight from the window accentuated your cheeks, how cute. But he was also keenly aware of how close you were, nervously letting his arm relax as you traced his veins with your fingernails. “It’s just… I’m so good with people, making friends, anyway. But, something about you is just different. I just feel so embarrassed and nervous, I’m never like that. Only with you…” He cringed, nose crinkling as he pushed his hair out of his face, the usually spiky strands looking a lot more limp and tangled. “I think I like you, maybe…” He sat awkwardly, hesitant for your response. 

You laughed, “You think?” Eijiro answered by covering his face, sheepishly laughing with you as you slid your hands down to hold his hand, his rough callouses from working out tickling your soft ones. “Eiji. It took you long enough.” You finally broke, smiling at him as he looked into your eyes, trying to find some hint of a joke or a tease but being left with only butterflies. “You’re very obvious, by the way.” You chirped again, giggling as you slid closer, letting his body press close as he contemplated, but eventually fell into your touch. “Sorry… So, what does this mean, or like, uhm…” He laughed, trying to gauge you but not being too blunt, jolting when your face was suddenly close to his, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “That.”

Eijiro looked at you for a moment, stunned and far too excited to realize what had just happened, body moving before he could think. His hands were around your cheeks in a second, tugging your face close to his and pressing a firm kiss onto them, his roughs ones resting comfortably with your soft ones. You melted in, pressing your hands to his chest and gripping his shirt, trying to drag him closer. “Ei…” You groaned, letting his arms wrap behind your back and tug you onto his lap, the redhead assumingly forgetting the morning wood that was very much still present underneath your ass. Pressing your lips firmly against his, you let him lead, wrapping your arms around his shoulders as he gripped your hips, unconsciously pushing you down firmly. 

“Ah- Ei-” You laughed, pulling back off of his lips as he leaned forward, trying to reconnect them before coming to. “Shit! Sorry- Ah, jeez… Sorry… Just wanted to do that for a long time…” He confessed, slightly out of breath as he realized what you meant, your wandering eyes alerting him to his morning wood turned boner. “Fuck…” He groaned, embarrassment causing him to push your hips off and tug the covers back over. You laughed, pressing back closer for another kiss, tugging the sheets down as you pressed onto your knees. “Well, can’t just leave it unattended, right?” You teased, pulling the sheets off of the redhead and watching as he became startled, slightly panicking as you tried to slide your fingers into his shorts. “Wait- Ah, are you sure..?” You nodded, pressing your fingers up into the hem of his shirt and slowly sliding it off, pushing the fabric over his messy hair as he settled in. “Have been for a while…”

Eijiro let you lead, setting back against the headboard as you tugged your own shirt off, the sight of your tits making the redhead squirm. He sat forward, forgetting himself and pushing you down to the bed, his eagerness catching you off guard, but his hands were gentle. “Sorry… jeez, you’re just so pretty.” He smiled, dipping his large hand into your shorts and tugging them down, looking into your eyes as you giggled, pressing kisses against his cheek. 

Laying down beside you, Eijiro pulled your shorts off your ankles, face growing dark as you were half-naked beside him. “Listen. I don’t want you to think I’m doin’ all this just cause I wanna get laid… I… I really like you, [Y/N]...” He reassured, your answering kiss on the lips easing him, still nervously tracing his fingers along your stomach. You sat up on your elbows, watching as his thick fingers pressed past your panty line, down towards your folds. You were so excited, hips practically arching upwards to get his fingers closer faster. When you finally felt his thick pads press into your already wet lips, you groaned out. 

Eijiro was peppering your cheeks with kisses, making sure you were okay every couple of minutes as he pumped his fingers in, stretching you slowly. “You okay, love?” He mumbled, eyes trained on how his fingers looked as they tugged out of you, his digits slick with your arousal. He slowly, lazily fingered you, making sure to curl upwards against your squishy walls just enough to make you whine, but always making sure it felt good. “I’m okay… Faster…” You mewled out, letting your head rest against the boy’s shoulder, breathing his scent deep as you fell apart to his fingers, their size much larger than your own could ever reach. “Just breathe, baby.” Eijiro hissed as you wrapped your hand around his wrist, holding his hand still as you ground your hips down, practically riding his fingers. His palm jerked against your clit, making your eyes flutter as your face felt hot, angling so his fingers would reach up into your g-spot. “Need you, Ei…”

The redhead groaned, tugging his own shorts down with his free hand as you still worked, soaking onto his fingers before tugging them out, just to push them right back in. “Okay, okay.” He smiled, kissing against your neck as he lazily pumped his cock, you gasping at the sight of it. He was big, girthy anyway, but definitely bigger than any dildo you had taken. Whining, you tugged his fingers out, spreading your legs and staring into his eyes as you smiled, arching back into him. “Please, Eiji…” The boy groaned, laying flush behind your back as he tugged your leg up, spreading your cunt apart as he aligned himself with your entrance, gauging your reactions as he slowly pressed in, moaning at the way you gasped. “So big…” You mewled, smiling wildly as he pushed further, letting his cock spread your entrance wider and your plump lips swallow him in, your cunt just as desperate as you were. “Shit, baby…”

You reached behind yourself, gripping onto a tuft of Eiji’s hair as he lazily fucked into your warm cunt, kissing the back of your neck and cooing lovely words into your ear, telling you how beautiful you looked. Despite his size, Eijiro was so soft, so considerate towards you and every reaction you gave him, his love far more than just mental. “Doin’ so good, love.” He smiled as you gripped the sheets, his cock pressing against your walls and tugging moans past your lips. You wanted to submit, to let him do this all the time, every day even… “Ei… date me…” You gasped between moans, giggling as he rocked his hips, stuttering at your request. “You ask that- ah- now?” He groans, letting his head fall to your shoulder as he breathes in your smell, already knowing his answer. “It just… felt appropriate…” You smiled, a hiss rolling from your tongue as his cock stretched you, your leg growing tired as Eijiro held it up, stretching your hips wide. 

Eijiro gasped quietly, burying his head into your neck as he agreed, smiling like an idiot as he pushed your leg past his chest, pushing into your hips and placing his arms on either side of your head, rolling his hips in. “Jeez, baby, feels so good. You look so pretty…” He huffed, kissing against your cheeks and lips as he fucked into you, your cunt swelling and pulsing around him. “Gunna cum…” You moaned into his mouth, breathy sighs fogging his cheek as he wrapped his arms under your back, keeping a steady pace to tilt you over, rocking more intentionally now…

“Eiji-” You whined as you came, pressing your lips to his as your cunt pulsed, aching pleasure through your body as he groaned, trying to push past your tightness and ride you through your orgasm. “Fuck-” He tried to press in as long as he could, giving one finally thrust before tugging out, stroking his cock quickly before releasing onto your stomach, his apologies quick as he moaned through them, your hands roaming his body as he panted. You smiled as he eventually calmed, kissing your cheeks as he pushed off, grabbing a napkin from your desk and cleaning you off with a teasing apology.

“So…” You smiled, still out of breath as you settled into the covers, reaching for the larger boy as he laid back down, cradling his arms around you. “So..?” He chirped back, a goofy smile spreading across his face. “Jesus I love you.” You laughed, rolling into his arms and kissing his skin.

-

Saturday rolled around again, the scheduled movie night pressing closer as everyone piled into their seats, the usual pairings snuggling up as Eijiro waited patiently, scrolling on his phone. 

His vision was blinded as hands reached around to cover his face, the redhead’s arms shooting back to grab the mystery arms and tugging the light body over the back of the couch, right into his lap. You giggled as you hauled the blanket over with you, landing comfortably into your boyfriend’s lap and smiling wide, pressing a kiss to his lips. “Gotcha.” 

“Sure.” Eijiro smiled, pulling the blankets from your hands and throwing it over the two of you, his arms finding their usual spot cradled around your body and holding you close. Knowing pairs of your classmates' eyes watched, some smiling as Iida turned the lights down, everyone turning their attention away. But you both continued to look at eachother, admiring the way you slotted against each other so perfectly. 

Finally turning to look at the tv, you smiled, Eijiro’s eyes still trained on your pretty face. This was the first time he was able to look at you and not feel embarrassed, nervous you would catch his gaze any minute. Now he just looked, unashamed and longingly, smiling every time you glanced back at him.

He’d never look away again.

This was an anonymous request!

Comments and reblogs are appreciated! 𐚁₊⊹

[dr-spectre]

Hey all, so i wanted to discuss something a little bit different compared to my usual Splatoon ramblings because i have something that's been floating in my brain for a while now and I really wanna talk about it! But don't worry, I'll tie it back to Splatoon in this blog post!

So i have been seeing a lot of criticisms towards the new "hit game" Concord and a lot of it is very VERY well deserved. And one of the MANY criticisms is aimed towards the character designs and mostly on these characters who have become punching bags for the entire gaming community.

NOW! Let me come and say it, i am NOT going to be defending these designs at all, i am NOT a professional character designer but, these designs are flat-out dogshit and it's not for the reasons you think. I am not saying these character designs are bad because "WAHH!!!! FAT PEOPLE!!! WAHH!!! I HATE BLACK PEOPLE!! WAHH!! I CAN'T GOON TO THIS CHARACTER NOOO!!! WAHHH!!! I ONLY WANT STRAIGHT WHITE BARBIE DOLLS TO JERK OFF TO!! WAHH!!" If you're someone like... ahem.... asmondgold. And whine about how you can't goon to these characters and you're scared of fat and black people. Then you need to fuck off and genuinely go outside. And like... Idk, jump into a pit of lava.

The reasons why these designs suck is because they have terrible silhouettes, poor balancing, too many random colours that have no harmony whatsoever, lack of strong shapes and a lack of any clear cut qualities to tell us who the fuck these characters are. A good character design will tell you who a character is based on looks alone.

Let's take a look at how to properly do character design in a video game, shall we?

We will first start off with an iconic tank character, Heavy from TF2.

Heavy has a strong use of squares on his body, arms and hands, showing us that he is a strong and meaty character. Squares are used in larger characters to show that they are durable and strong. Heavy also has appropriate accessories on his body to show us what kind of character he is, like his bandolier, pouch, fingerless gloves and tactical looking vest. His legs are also small compared to the rest of his body which tells us that he probably isn't the fastest runner out there.

All of these simple design decisions the characters designers chose to include add up to create an iconic character who you can gather that he is a large and in charge weapons expert from the design alone.

Tell me something, what the FUCK do you get from this character?

He's a big person... That's it. I can barely gather any sort of character traits from this character. There's nothing. THEIR GUN IS FUCKING BORING TOO! AT LEAST HEAVY HAS A BIG ASS GUN! THAT'S JUST A BASIC BITCH ASSUALT RIFILE!

Now let's look at another iconic tank character. Reinhardt from Overwatch.

Reinhardt has a VERY strong silhouette, with his iconic helmet with the 3 spikes/horns, his giant shoulder pads, the pointy tips on his boots, his... groan... flap? thingy? idfk what that is but anyways, Reinhardt is an iconic tank character because his design is super well balanced, his concept of a futuristic knight is dope, and the lion emblem on arm showcase Rein's personality and origins.

I genuinely get nothing from this design. Like... Fuck all, i get NOTHING!!!

They are a tank character with a big gun... Okay? Is there... any cool details? Uh... there's a tiny flag.... What the fuck is that supposed to tell me about the character? The silhouette is boring, the character looks like a Fallout knock off. It's just... BORING!!

I could talk about the other tanks in Overwatch and how incredibly well designed they are compared to Concord's "anchors" and other classes but i don't wanna be here all day. Just know that D.VA slaps, Doomfist slaps, Ramattra slaps, ALL OF THEM SLAP HARD AND HAVE SUPER GOOD SILHOUETTES AND COLOURS!!

Now for our final "tanky" design, let's roll it back to Splatoon and talk about a character who is bigger compared to the rest of the cast.

BIG MAN!

His silhouette is actually so well done and is a masterpiece in character design, it is so incredibly distinctive and unique from other characters. He has a unique headpiece too, he has these droopy eyes that give him a relaxed look. He has some cool patterns, he's just a really well designed character that you can gather his personality from really well.

The reason why Concord's character designs fail is because it feels like Sony brought in a novice fashion designer to make characters in an hour and call it a day. The only designs from that game i can say with my full chest are okay are these guys, and even then they have ISSUES!

Haymar is supposed to be this fire user yet nothing tells me that they use fire. It's so easy to... oh i don't know... USE MORE RED?!?!? ADD FIERY PATTERNS?!?! WHY IS SHE COVERED IN FUCKING ANAL BEADS?!??! HELLO?!?!??

Roka is just.. fine, her colours suck but... I guess i like the helmet?

When the best looking characters out of your fucking 5V5 HERO SHOOTER are just... eh? You know got a massive problem. If we take a game like TF2 you can see just how well the designs are at showing the player what kind of personality and traits they have.

Scout has rolled up pants with tight socks on, bandages on his hands and a cap on his head, showing us that Scout is a fast and somewhat reckless character who gets into trouble but can get out due to his speed and wit. Medic has a simple pallet of white and red which are common colours used in hospitals and doctors. I could go on but you get the point.

If you're going to create a new hero shooter with a large roster, for the love of god, actually have characters with better silhouettes, colour balancing, accessories, etc.

Take a page out of their books and come back with a better fucking game. Or not. Sony... You piece of shit. You ain't beating the "PS5 has no games" allegations with these wack ass games. (This is coming from someone who has a PS5.)

[cooliogirl101]

What do the rest of the Cullens think about Mia? Do they know why Edward is so invested in listening to her thoughts? Does he later retells the stories he hears to his family and they also get invested?

Also, lmao at Jasper. Poor boy, being hit by a fuckton of angst without ever knowing why. Can’t Mia think up some sappy fluff to go with her hurt no comfort fic?

(Damn you for getting me invested in Twilight out of all things)

Rosalie: Is pissed af because ain’t no way Edward is seriously considering giving away their secret just so he can ask about the next season of Whatever-The-Fuck-Is-Going-On-In-Mia-Chen’s-Brain

(Edward protests that he’s only ever considered divulging his mind reading ability, not the vampirism).

That being said, she’s mainly pissed at Edward and not Mia. She warmed up to Mia significantly after Edward told her Mia used her face as inspo for a fantasy race of devastatingly beautiful Heavenly warriors.

Emmett: Finds this whole thing hilarious. Keeps bugging Edward to see if Mia has used him as inspiration for any characters of hers.

(She has— all the Cullens, flawless and captivating by design, are fantastic sources of visual inspiration to imagine angels, demons, fairies, elves, and pretty much every fantasy race out there. Sardonically, Edward notes that she’s never once used them as inspiration for an ordinary human).

Jasper: Alternately annoyed and impressed at her emotional range.

(Edward can’t help but wonder why Mia keeps referring to Jasper as “the Southerner” in her thoughts. Like sure it’s a part of his backstory they’ve provided but not a prominent one.

Little does he know Mia’s expending significant mental effort not to refer to Jasper as “Jasper-the-Confederate” every time she sees him).

Alice: The only one with a legitimate reason to interact with Mia. They share an art class together and at first, Mia was going to do her level best to avoid the hell out of her (yes, yes, she’s always imagined what it would be like to meet characters from the books she’s read, the Cullens included— that being said, she’s since discovered she would much prefer to only meet them in her imagination, not in reality).

Then they got assigned to do an art project together. Alice suggested something to do with fashion, which Mia readily agreed to. Somehow, the conversation shifted to a discussion over, hypothetically, the differences in fashion that would exist between deep sea mermaids vs shallow water/reef mermaids, in the event that mermaids existed.

Alice somehow manages to wrangle a promise out of Mia to come over to the Cullen house (“Oh, this’ll be so much fun! What a fantastic idea! We’ll play mermaids— or design mermaid clothes, at any rate. Don’t worry about the materials, I’ll have everything arranged”). Mia, so caught up in their discussion that she temporarily forgot the whole vampire thing, agreed without thinking.

(Edward is not jealous. He’s not).

Esme: Honestly just loves that Edward is interested in something again (he’s been idly composing soundtracks for his favorite scenes).

Mia, who was always kind of pissed that Esme’s (who had a pretty interesting backstory, all things considered— SM was always decent at coming up with those) entire character had been basically reduced to “wife and mother”, decides that since she’s stuck going to the Cullen House anyway, that by God she’s gonna find out what this woman’s passions are outside of devoting her entire life to her husband and kids. Otherwise the whole thing offends her character development sensibilities.

By the end of the visit, Esme is bemusedly shopping for a car alongside a delighted Alice and a fuming Mia because “What do you mean you’re the only one in the family without a vehicle?!”

(She ends up rather fond of Mia).

Carlisle: Confused but supportive. Mia, side eyeing him, keeps dropping hints about how much she loves sleeping and eating and animals and going out in the sun, just in case he starts getting any funny ideas.

[terramythos]

Anyway here's my breakdown of the ffxiv jobs, my opinions on playing each, and the tier rank of how good their story was

TANKS

WARRIOR - warrior is so fucking funny why did they make it able to solo heal itself and the entire party in 90% of the content in the game. Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting is so broken in dungeons its hilarious. And then they have like 3 additional healing skills on top of that. And they kept buffing it throughout Endwalker. So it is currently the easiest to play, does the most damage (i think...?), and has the best healing of any of the Tank jobs. 2nd fave probably.

Story Tier: C, it's ok, Curious Gorge is a good name. i have like nothing to say about it it's a generic AF story

PALADIN - I used to hate PLD but I think the partial rework they got halfway through Endwalker helped it a lot. It's much less clunky now. Probably still my least favorite Tank though Hallowed Ground is fun and it's pretty close to Gunbreaker for me.

Story Tier: F, this is the worst class storyline in the entire game. It's so stupid. The writing is so bad the writers acknowledge it makes no sense at all and I'm like. Yeah, thanks, I am experiencing this shit. Perhaps write a story that makes sense next time instead of pointing that out.

DARK KNIGHT - Unfortunately this is my favorite Tank 🫡 which is rough since it has the worst survivability out of any of them. But I love how you use MP and the silly number of OGCDs. The Blackest Night is such a fun ability and it's a crime that it's not a baseline skill you get from the start. Why do they have so many DRs that only cover magic damage. I must ask.

Story Tier: S, there's a reason it's the most popular and well regarded class storyline. It's really good, also the only questline I know of that uses the quest log text as part of the narrative. Outside maybe a few of the very late Endwalker quests. And, well... same writer lmao

GUNBREAKER: I think GNB looks cool as fuck and I like that it has 2 DPS rotations. The Gnashing Fang combo is so fun. Superbolide memes are always fun. My main issue with it is a skill issue because I am just constantly misaligning its burst windows.

Story Tier: C. It has some interesting lore but I found it pretty forgettable as a story.

HEALERS

WHITE MAGE: I hated White Mage for a while but something clicked and now I totally get it. I find it fun in dungeons cause you get to Holy spam and stun lock everything. As uh. The healer. That's fun. Once you get Afflatus heals (and then Afflatus Misery) it clicks. It's fun maximizing damage and playing chicken with the tank's HP.

Story Tier: B, you get a lot of lore around the Padjal, and I think the Stormblood story where you find a padjal living in hiding with her mother is pretty good! Also it's not technically the job storyline but there's a WHM side quest to get a unicorn mount? i guess it's technically a CNJ quest but same diff. no one else gets that shit. so that's cool

SCHOLAR: probably my least favorite of the healers... it just feels super clunky. You can tell a bunch of different design philosophies went into it over the years and none of them mesh very well. They've made it so the Fairy Gauge controls literally one spell. Why have the gauge at all? It's also a huge missed opportunity that there's no tie in or interaction with the fae in Shadowbringers. I love the idea of a battle tactician healer but I think it needs a rework.

Story Tier: B+, I liked the characters and its the main way to get backstory and lore on what happened with Nym.

ASTROLOGIAN: While I think AST has a similar issue to SCH (lots of different design philosophies over the years) I find it way more fun to play. I like the card mechanic and how it interacts with the rest of the party. AST is basically the only job that has its own like. Minigame? As part of its rotation. And I know a lot of people don't like the RNG for it but personally I find it fun. I know AST is getting a redesign in Dawntrail so hope it's good.

Story Tier: C? I think? I'll be honest I don't remember it super well but I didn't find anything objectionable about it. And I like the tarot aesthetic and lore and how it's healing based on manipulating luck.

SAGE: I think SGE is tons of fun, I'm not sure if I like it or WHM more. I love all the skills SGE has for preventing damage and the gimmick where your DPS heals someone in the party. Visually the hi-tech laser shooting healer is a lot of fun. IT HAS A GAP CLOSER. The only thing i wish was it wasn't so MP negative and that it did more damage. It's a little sad its DPS output is so low compared to the other healers (even AST when you factor in how it buffs the party). Since SGE is supposed to be a healer that heals through damage it's silly its damage kinda sucks.

Story Tier: A, I loved this storyline. Both the Endwalker job stories are very self contained and interesting. While the twist is pretty obvious it's still an interesting exploration of uh. Scientific ethics. Yeah

PHYSICAL MELEE DPS

MONK: I've probably played MNK the least of the phys melee but I like the whole adaptable combo thing. Not much else to say since I have played it so little. Might bring it back out and try again. It DID have the funniest guide in the Balance discord for a while.

Story Tier: D. I think? I remember thinking it was dumb, lmao. Sorry.

DRAGOON: MAN I wished I liked DRG more. It looks so fucking cool and I like how it interacts with the dragon lore. But I find it very punishing to play. To do good damage you have to align so many different cooldowns... and snapshot your DOT correctly... and screwing one thing up just fucks your DPS output forever. Like AST I believe this is being reworked in Dawntrail so I hope it feels better to play.

Story Tier: C+. I think it starts strong since you get to meet Estinien pre-Heavensward and it melds nicely with that story. But I found it pretty directionless post-HW which is a shame.

NINJA: I remember finding this one fun. I like that there are different combos you do that have varied finishers depending on the situation. I am just... bad at remembering which combo to use to get which finisher, lol. So I haven't played it as much. NIN gets a lot of flavor other jobs don't get with their unique run and jump animations. And you get a Bunny of Shame on your head if you fuck up a combo, which is incredible.

Story Tier: A. The Rogue story is probably the most memorable of the basic class quests. Ninja just has great characters and a fun story. What is with that one guy. Karasu? If you know you know. I also like how the Rogue characters show up later in the Ninja story. That's fun.

SAMURAI: I had a similar experience to WHM here because I initially hated it then really came around once it clicked. SAM seems very complex, it has a ton of buttons and different combos. But it is actually quite intuitive once you figure out the general pattern. And it does INSANE damage. I think it's the highest DPS output in the game? I love building the combos and then doing a huge finisher for a bajillion damage. The guaranteed crits and constant OGCD weaves make me feel unstoppable. I think this is tied with RPR for me.

Story Tier: B+. I found the exiled samurai character and his journey toward redemption very compelling. I won't spoil beyond that. However it does fall apart a little in the second half. Still fun but not as good.

REAPER: I love RPR, the teleportation is a lot of fun, and I love finally unleashing the demon form and going ham on the enemy. The weapons are the coolest looking in the game. Every scythe design hits. I probably played this the most in Endwalker. My main critique is the Death's Design mechanic. I hate having to keep a stupid debuff on the target to do damage. It's like a dot but without the optimized snapshotting. If they want to keep this idea i think it would feel better to change it into something like SGE's Kardia where you apply it to one enemy to do increased damage to it without having to worry about reapplying it. not sure how they would balance this for aoe but that's not my job. But even with that caveat I still really enjoy the job.

Story Tier: A+. While it doesn't reach the highs of DRK's story it comes close. I love the badass old lady main character. Her hunting a voidsent that possessed her grandfather would be cool enough but making her a Garlean exile in hiding who grudgingly agrees to train you just adds an extra cool factor. I really enjoyed this story. As a bonus theres a lot of incidental dialogue in the post-6.0 Endwalker story if you completed the RPR story because it ties in a lot.

PHYSICAL RANGED DPS

BARD: It's a bit clunky, its got some outdated design elements, it has one of the lowest damage outputs in the game... and i LOVE IT. this was technically the first job I ever played? totally different character like 8 years ago. and i was so so bad. I think i am actually pretty good at current BRD. the animations look cool. i like that it's a class you really need to work for and optimize to eke out that last bit of damage. and boosting everyone else's damage by existing is kinda neat.

Story Tier: B. I'll be real I barely remember this but I do remember it was gay as fuck so immediately gets an extra tier for that.

MACHINIST: MCH is really funny right now because like. It's phys ranged, right. The design behind phys ranged is you have 100% uptime cause you can freely move around and not have to worry about cast timers or melee range or anything. So the trade off is that they do less damage than other classes. Endwalker MCH did not get the memo and does insane damage anyway. My controversial opinion is that it has similar burst DPS to RPR. No i will not elaborate. I'm also bad at doing good damage on MCH which is impressive since it is easy.

Story Tier: B+. Some Ishgard noble's gay son wants to build machines instead of killing dragons the good old fashioned way and has to prove himself to get taken seriously. A tale as old as time. See I haven't done this quest in like years but I still remember it. He is a memorable character. It's just not like. knockout wowza compared to the A tier stories.

DANCER: Dancer is the second easiest DPS job in the game behind SMN. So if i am sleepy it's the one I like playing. You play simon says. you do a lot of damage when you play simon says then do almost no fucking damage otherwise. I think it's the lowest direct damage in the game? for a dps i mean. You have high stakes sexual tension with a DPS of your choice via Dance Partner. I wish other DNC players knew how Dance Partner works. YOU CAN DANCE PARTNER ANOTHER DANCER. THE BUFF STACKS. BUT YOU CANNOT DANCE PARTNER THE SAME PLAYER AS ANOTHER DANCER. THOSE BUFFS DO NOT STACK. ok i'm good. anyway

Story Tier: C. there's some shit about negative emotions and purging them? in theory i think this has some interesting implications with Endwalker lore considering Dynamis and its role in the story. Very similar mechanically to what's going on with the DNC story. but i really don't think the writers made the connection so it's like pure speculation and not the actual story. It's meh. fine i guess. i did like all the flashy dancing sequences.

MAGICAL RANGED DPS

BLACK MAGE: I am so so so so so so so bad at BLM. i pull up the guide. i read the guide. it all makes perfect sense. i go into a dungeon or trial or something. somehow i always get like Zeromus or some shit. and i drop Enochian or something and everything goes to shit and i'm yelling and i'm not even like slide casting or teleporting or anything i just run around crying. then i remember i have like 10 more buttons i haven't been pressing and oh god the dot fell off. people play this? for fun? i admire it. apparently they do a ton of damage if you can play it. could not be me.

Story Tier: B? There's some voidsent and Thirteenth lore. all the black mage characters are Lalafell because it's funny i guess. OH YEAH it has like the one named male Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te NPC in the entire game and he's fun. look at this twink:

sorry i don't have anything to say about BLM i am bad at it

SUMMONER: easiest DPS job in the entire game. they redesigned it for Endwalker so it is practically a new job. i have no idea how it played before. but it is super streamlined. maybe too streamlined? it's another one to play if you want to turn your brain off. i like that at 90 you summon The Actual Primals instead of little representations of them. and i like the way your burst phase switches between Bahamut and Phoenix. it all looks very cool. they should add Leviathan as a summon in Dawntrail.

Story Tier: C.. i don't remember a single thing about this questline except you interact with Y'shtola's half sister. i think you go to Cartenau at some point. idk

RED MAGE: RDM is one of those jobs that looks really complicated when you start then you actually play it and it is just super super easy. that being said i think it's really fun. I like balancing the white and black magic gauges. Dualcast is a great gimmick and it feels cool to lob two big spells in a row at something. Dualcast Verraising a chain of dead players is so fucking funny. it's a shame that the existence of Verraise means RDM does shit damage to compensate for its utility. It and DNC just sit at the bottom with BRD barely scratching ahead of them. i think? i don't remember LOL

Story Tier: A, I really like the story and characters. I like that you have a middle-age world weary catboy (catman) as your mentor. and i like that he canonically trained Alisaie too and you chat a little about that. it's a fun story!

BLUE MAGE: what the fuck is a blue mage

Story Tier: ???

[auriidae]

more of these guys :] (part 1) (part 2)

classpect thoughts under cut! yippee

these absolute fools gave me SO much trouble. i changed each of their classes and/or aspects like twice while drawing this lmao.

pearle was going to be a rage player initially! i had her down as one for the chaos — yknow, ‘red’s my favorite color’ and all that. but the catch ended up being that in this au, as rage represents in-game chaos and bloodlust, it only exists while the game is in effect, and so rage players don’t have much dominion over stuff that happens after that period ends (which has all sorts of delightful implications for grienn’s character, but anyways). meanwhile pearle definitely continues playing and also grows as a character even in times of peace. i was thinking in terms of comparing her arc in double life to secret life in particular — ‘she left the tower’ and all that, yknow? she went from being terribly isolated and functioning on a completely independent scale, winning only for herself, to being a key member of a team and finding a purpose in helping them. which is pretty incredibly space-coded, in my mind! my personal qualification for space players is that they’re destined to be lonely, often physically separated in some way from others, for a while but not forever — because space is about creation, after all. and if you look at being a witch from the perspective of reinvention — what pearle manipulated or reinvented here was herself. she found her place in the story and the person she wanted to be. witches are also some of the most powerful characters in terms of specifically manipulating their aspect, i think, which is great because i’ve heard she's pretty great at pvp lol

ignore that martyn’s color palette is not particularly great it’s hard to unify the design of a character who is super rustblood-coded but also inextricably linked to the colors green and yellow of all things. i’ll redesign him later. anyways! at first i had thought there might not be any light players in this session — since light is about sort of seeing through the laws of the game and often deliberately defying them, as well as having a certain degree of control over narrative agency due to this. and because, yknow, the life series is a minecraft youtube roleplay series, realistically the ccs aren’t going to be playing any characters that go out of their way to completely ruin the game or refuse to play it by the rules altogether. but then i started thinking — and i don’t know an awful lot about martyn’s character so forgive me if i’m going a little bit off the rails here — does martyn want to understand? because if he as a character tries to understand and affect his destiny even though he’s ultimately limited by the nature of the story itself, then he could totally be a light player. so that’s where i was coming from here. think about how he won limited life in the end, for instance — not by playing into what the game itself had been leading up to, but by acting on and finishing his own story. he’s a knight because i do think knights are a certified Narrative’s Little Guy class — they persevere through so much pressure and often also have that sort of dual persona thing, both of which are particularly endearing to an audience. it’s hard work, keeping up with the narrative and fulfilling his own quest for understanding while he’s at it!! but he does it!!

renn is Such a blood player guys he is such a blood player ohhh my goodness. playing the game in terms of your relationships with others, right? basing how you go about it on allies and interactions, and being a leader above all else? i’d say that’s pretty ren the dog coded tbh. i don’t have too much to say here because i think seer of blood renn is pretty self-explanatory — he sees the entire game as a game of relationships and ties. he has a lot of knowledge about this field specifically, and shares it with his allies in the way he helps direct them and keep them alive. the reason he’s blood instead of light is because he puts his allies over knowledge, i think — he’s far too busy dealing with all that stuff to speculate for too long what the purpose of it all might be, and that would detract from his goal (of winning alongside others or dying nobly), anyway.

again questions abt them are open forever always :3

[utilitycaster]

Jumping off the Bell’s Hells vs. Mighty Nein question…what does Bell’s Hells need most right now? What can Sam bring to the table that would make BH as complete as MN? Is it just “a life cleric” for maximum healing, or do you think there’s something better out there?

Hi anon,

You would need a drastic reworking of the entire party. One person swapping out can't fix it.

I'm going to stick to combat and not more general stuff [high INT doesn't matter much in combat unless that's your casting stat but GOD it's not optional in a longform campaign] but in short:

You're fucked by having two (mostly) sorcerers in a party. It's one of the least versatile classes by far; all the glass cannon of a wizard with a fraction of the utility. As my url indicates I am nearly always a caster main but also very much NOT a casters as blasters person and sorcerers are basically designed to be this (except divine soul love u dariax).

melee line is strong so that's pretty good, though Ashton's stuff is unpredictable by design and as a result they're a touch behind Yasha, and the fact that Chetney runs the risk of attacking the party in wolf mode is something of a liability that the Nein did not have.

None of the melee tank line has quite the range the Nein melee line had at the end: Yasha could fly; Beau was a monk; Fjord had a trillion short range teleport options and could also if necessary fly. Ashton, Chetney, and Orym have comparatively limited options and Ashton's can't be relied on. I love Ashton's subclass but whenever you can't control the situation you cede something in combat to someone who does. I do actually own a copy of The Art of War for non-douchebag reasons and I'm pretty sure it says that.

Really, hexadin is literally one of the most bonkers good verging on broken combos and if you don't have one you are probably at a disadvantage over a party that does.

For all I am a Rogue Hater Of Some Renown, they are very good in combat scenarios when on a party with a strong melee tank line. Burst damage is overrated but man it is kind of great when, simply because your melee fighters are doing what they do best, the rogue can eliminate a handful of d6s worth of enemy HP for free.

Fearne would need to be played very differently. This isn't a judgment of how Ashley plays her - I love her choices and feel they're in character. However, to compete with the Mighty Nein she would need to be played rather more like Jester, with a more even split of offensive and healing. She can do this, and sometimes does, but that's not her usual style.

The Nein had two main healers plus a hexadin plus Yasha had a little; Bells Hells has only one person with any healing at the moment.

The Nein had two people who could cast Counterspell. Laudna has no one to counter Caleb when he counterspells her counterspell.

This is very subjective, but also, I think the Mighty Nein really played to a lot of the cast's strengths mechanically, and Bells Hells are an expansion of their comfort zones, which is a good thing but it also means they play the Nein more optimally.

Anyway I think full cleric (most subclasses will do) is probably the wisest bet for Sam and if he can throw in a high INT score (knowledge cleric? wizard dip? Just a smart guy?) that wouldn't hurt, but yeah the Nein are still winning this one unless you replace like half the party.

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group F Round 4: Talentless Nana vs Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun

#F6: Talentless Nana (Munou na Nana)

Normal school until stuff happens

#F8: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun (Marimashita! Iruma-kun)

Young boy gets sold to a demon to be his grandson

Details and poll under the cut!

#F6: Talentless Nana (Munou na Nana)

Summary:

Fifty years ago, horrific creatures dubbed as the “enemies of humanity” suddenly appeared around the world. To combat these threats, teenagers gifted with supernatural abilities called “Talents”—such as pyrokinesis and time travel—hone their powers at an academy on a secluded island.

Nanao Nakajima, however, is quite different from the others on the island: he has no Talent. With many “Talented” teenagers around him, Nanao is often a target for bullying, but even so, he still strives to complete his training. Soon after, two transfer students, the mysterious Kyouya Onodera and the mind-reading Nana Hiiragi, join the class. But just as everyone starts blending as comrades-in-arms, mysterious disappearances begin to threaten the class’s entire foundation.

Propaganda:

I’d like to start off by saying that this is NOT a copy of My Hero Academia, even though it sounds as such. It’s kinda hard to explain the show without spoiling a major plot point, but it’s pretty much as the summary says. Honestly, if you want to watch this, don’t look up anything about it—you will get spoiled right away, and it does ruin the experience. I started this without knowing anything about it and I think that’s for the best because it’s plot twist after plot twis,t and you’re not sure what to expect next. That’s honestly something I really liked about it because you don’t know where the story will take you. Anyways, highly recommend because more people should know about this series.

Trigger Warnings:

Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Graphic Depictions of Cruelty/Violence/Gore

There’s a Nazi-coded character who does eugenics, and he’s also the reason for the child abuse tw

Sexual assault attempt on main character

Necrophilia (there’s a character who controls another person’s corpse and act like they’re dating)

#F8: Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun (Marimashita! Iruma-kun)

Summary:

Fourteen-year-old Iruma Suzuki has been unfortunate all his life, having to work to earn money for his irresponsible parents despite being underage. One day, he finds out that his parents sold him to the demon Sullivan. However, Iruma's worries about what will become of him are soon relieved, for Sullivan merely wants a grandchild, pampering him and making him attend the demon school Babyls.

At first, Iruma tries to keep a low profile in fear of his peers discovering that he is human. Unfortunately, this ends up being more difficult than he expected. It turns out that Sullivan himself is the chairman of the school, and everyone expects him to become the next Demon King!

Iruma immediately finds himself in an outrageous situation when he has to chant a forbidden spell in front of the entire school. With this, Iruma instantly earns a reputation he does not want. Even so, he is bound to be roped into more bizarre circumstances.

Propaganda 1:

The main character, Iruma, is very kind and wholesome, and you really just want to see him succeed throughout the series, especially after knowing everything he’s been through. He was neglected and used by his parents, but now he gets to live out a nice life despite being surrounded by demons, as his new grandfather spoils him. The demon that adopted him, Sullivan, is an extremely powerful figure in the demon realm, but through most of the series, he looks like an egg. The side characters are also well-designed with interesting personalities. The main two, Asmodeus and Clara, become almost inseparable from Iruma after they become friends, and the three of them are very cute together. There is also a canon nonbinary cat person, who is technically Sullivan’s servant, but he is treated as part of the family, and he’s a disaster bisexual.

Propaganda 2:

It’s really good in terms of art, plot, and characters. There’s nonbinary representation in the form of Opera, and there’s friendship galore with very poly undertones. It’s so sweet and good, and it’s just rahhhhh. Everyone is silly but also realistic and well-developed. There are reasonable arcs, and there’s a well mix of plot-driven growth and character-driven plots. I love every person who appears onscreen, even for like two seconds. The world building is lovely and so bright and colorful.

Propaganda 3:

You should vote for it because it is genuinely one of the best animes I’ve ever seen. It has good character development, mysteries, focuses on the cast well, and it is not a harem anime. The plot is also really good and is suitable for all age groups.

Fun fact: the main character crossdresses three times in the first three seasons

Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse (mild)

When reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

If you want to criticize one of the shows above to give the one you’re rooting for an advantage, then do so constructively. I do not tolerate groundless hate or slander on this blog. If I catch you doing such a thing in the notes, be it in the tags or reblogs, I will block you.

Know one of the shows above and not satisfied with how it’s presented in this tournament? Just fill up this form with your revisions, and I’ll consider adapting those changes.

New: Starting round 5, screenshots will be included in the poll post. You can submit screenshots through the form linked above, or through here, via ask or dm.

Guidelines in submitting screenshots:

No NSFW or spoilery images.

Pick some good images please. Don’t send any blurry or pixelated ones.

You may send up to 9 screenshots, but not all may be used.

[snellyfish]

Why is Angie your favourite character?

This is really funny I just got off call with Glownary and was talking about how much I don't miss Danganronpa discourse. Anyway I hope someone finds a way to get mad at me in this post!

((Admittedly I'd probably actually place Korekiyo above her because he ACTUALLY has a relevant and specified canon story,,, but, y'kno))

Plain and simple, she just has a handful of design and character tropes I super adore in characters! As a base, I'm usually not super into,,, well-adjusted, well-liked , reasonable, and rational characters. LMAO. They're fine but I live for exaggeration. I LOVE when they're little freaks and not watered down at all for the viewers sake/comfort, I love when they (both the writers and the written) just keep twisting the knife for no good reason other than the bit despite how unconventional it may be.

One could argue that her not being watered down and being as shitty to the other players as she is is a trauma response, or just a mentally ill person being mentally ill. It can be neat to think of her that way sometimes! It's of my opinion that almost all Danganronpa characters are super open-ended lore/personality-wise and we as fans are just making up canon as we go because it's FUCKING FUN, and, as such, all the ways that Angie can be interpreted is very interesting to me-- EVEN if that's seen as "the irredeemable annoying religion-force-feeding zealot antagonist." Which is, of course, an objectively awful way to view anyone REGARDLESS of media illiteracy, but, you know! I like weird freaks so this "flaw" they see is simply more food for me. Yippee!!

Whether I think she's canonically A) genuinely malicious and sadistic, B) traumatized from an abusive religious sect, C) honestly caring about the other players, and/or D) none/all of the above? I'll never tell! Oops all bangers!

Tropes I enjoy, whether or not I found myself enjoying them BECAUSE of Angie herself;;

Religion, especially if it's horrifying and...bad! (Most of my own characters deal heavily with religion and religious trauma, I think it's cool to play with, whether or not it's a fantasy religion like I think Angie's is)

CULTS! Cult behavior! Let's live in a commune!! (GUYS I LOVE MIDSOMMAR)

Dark skin / light hair contrast color combo goes hard!!!

+ The pansexual flag palette is literally my favorite color combo ever!!!!

Manipulative little shits!!!!!

Small scary women!!!!!!

Islander stuff, it's very nostalgic to me and I just have a deep love and appreciation for the beach and ocean!!!!!!!

Piercings!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cutesy sunshine character who could and would stab you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IDK HOW THIS WASN'T MY FIRST POINT!!!!!!!!!!

AND SHE'S JUST FUCKING SILLY!!!!!!!! SHE'S GENUINELY SO FUNNY AND CUTE ESPECIALLY IN HER INTERACTIONS WITH SHUICHI!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE HER SO BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She was an IMMEDIATE favorite when I played V3 and when I found out that, like, everyone fucking HATED her and she's probably the least liked character in the entire class by the fans, my brain immediately went the contrarian route to find reasons to like her even MORE. I tend to do this a lot, but when it's a character I already enjoy, it's even worse, dude.

ummmmm obligatory Shinnaga mention sorry but I frequently tend to appreciate a character a lot more based on potential dynamics alone. Ships, romantic or not, have legitimately gotten me to enjoy characters I hated before, based on interesting interactions unique to them alone. So while Kiyo and Angie's (they're making out btw) ingame dynamic and dialogues aren't REALLY what my sick and twisted mind views them as, it's worth noting that my honest belief and interpretation of the two of them could even give me a sliver of that dynamic being possible .......... means she's fuckin slay ............ it means love wins..... It means Vote For Yonaga 2024

[genericpuff]

Hope you don't mind my asking but do you mind elaborating on why you don't like Mongie too much? I know all about why everyone dislikes Let's Play itself. There are various videos and post upon post online tearing it to shreds with criticism but I've not heard much about the creator herself like I do Rachel Smythe. Does she also run into the same issues that Rachel does or is her behavior different but equally questionable/annoying?

It's kinda equally questionable, kinda different. They both have the same issues of like, fetishizing youthfulness and creating unhealthy power dynamics. They also haven't done a great job at depicting POC in their comics, you can tell they're written by white women who don't understand other cultures but are trying to make their series more "progressive" by including stand-ins for representation.

That said, considering Let's Play is set in a real world setting, the POC characters (and the casually racist issues in their writing) are a lot more obvious than in LO (where you have to know the context that the neon-colored nymphs are based on POC to really realize that they're lower class POC people who are getting the shit end of the stick from the rich upper class main protagonists).

And I don't even mean in the usual "there aren't any POC in this comic" or "the POC in this comic are stereotypical/poorly written", I mean in the sort of white-victim-complex "I added in other ethnicities and people got mad at me anyways so what more do you want!" kind of way (paired with the "they're poorly written and stereotypical" aspect).

Dean is a good example of the stereotypical designing and writing, IIRC he's a Hispanic man but he's written like some Spanish soap opera character who flirts with every woman he sees and always has rose petals falling around him.

Even in that sentence he says "part Asian" which is weird because he's looking for Marshall who's supposed to be his best friend and it's been established in the comic that Marshall is half-Japanese, but that brings us to the other instance of mongie being casually (if not directly) racist and even more so than with Dean...

Apparently mongie thought it was a good move to say that it was "more inclusive" to make Vikki only vaguely Asian. Which is just... so not true LOL Asia is an entire continent made up of MANY different cultures and ethnicities and so generalizing all of them to just "Asian" is not a great take from someone who's trying to seem "more inclusive".

But of course, when her community called her out on this and asked her to elaborate, she and her mod team basically dug their heels in and made up excuses that made mongie out to be a victim instead of just acknowledging she made an error that didn't connect well with members of her audience.

And theeen in comes mongie ready to torch the place. Note that up until this point, it's basically been her mod team speaking up on her behalf and giving her benefit of the doubt, so when mongie DID get her chance to speak, she jumped right to:

"FINE, SHE'S HALF CHINESE HALF KOREAN THEN, STFU AND STOP ANALYZING ME WHEN I INCLUDE CHARACTERS FROM RACES THAT DON'T ALIGN WITH MY OWN !!!" (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻ is very much the vibe people got from this, understandably so. It's also odd (and extremely privileged) for her to say that she'd "rather focus on a character's personality and not their race" because it's very "I don't see color" which has been proven to be counterintuitive to understanding and celebrating different races.

And then we get a lot of self-victimizing "well I can't win no matter what so you people are ungrateful and actually it's MY feelings that are hurt" excuses:

Again it's weird because she had NO problem specifying that Marshall was half-Japanese and she didn't make him into any sort of weird stereotype like she did with Vikki. So I don't know why she's having such a hard time grasping that being vaguely Asian for Vikki isn't inclusive.

Although, let's be real here, the only reason Marshall is half-Japanese at all is because he's a self-insert of Markiplier, a half-Korean Youtuber who mongie apparently worked for on payroll as a graphic designer prior to Let's Play. Which is just a whole layer of ick that I think surpasses even Rachel Smythe and Mads Mikkelson. Like the Rachel and Mads thing is definitely creepy and weird because she's literally drawn herself - an adult woman nearing her 40's - being swept off her feet by a smoochy-faced Mads. But at least she didn't work for the guy or ever interact with him directly like mongie did with Markiplier. That's a whole separate level of "ew".

That said, mongie continues:

Which is just such a half-assed non-apology. Not "I'm sorry for misrepresenting a culture" or "I'm sorry I didn't do proper research", but "I'm sorry people think I'm being insensitive or that they need specific representation in my work that I'm claiming to be representation to be good". Completely shifting the blame from herself onto her audience for not being happy with the bare minimum that she gave them.

There's more though. Probably one of the worst parts and it's not even her, but one of her mods:

The fact that this is one of mongie's mods telling mongie's audience that her feelings - as a white woman who's just legitimately patronized her audience - are more valid than the people whose feelings were hurt by mongie being so insensitive... it's a real gross move and I can't believe they even pulled that.

Oh, and of course, as people like this tend to do, she goes on about "cancel culture" and how "terrifying" it is to her and then comes up with some imaginary scenario where a kid pays a hitman to kill her ?? as a defense for herself that really just further victimizes herself over her own misled actions ??

And this is something mongie does a lot, at least in this instance - she comes up with justifications for her decisions based on completely imaginary scenarios that she came up with and assumed, rather than just, idk, doing her research and being open to learning new things about cultures she's clearly not educated on. Shit like "well if I do xyz you'll be mad at me anyways so fuck you!"

When in reality? No one would have been mad at her if she didn't have any non-white characters in her comic. Would readers be disappointed? Probably. But - and I can't speak for everybody out there obviously so this is just my opinion - I know I'd much rather representation from someone who wanted to represent my respective groups and identities and put love and effort into it, than get it from someone who was just doing it because they made up a scenario in their head that they would be cancelled for not doing it. No one really has any tangible ground to stand on if they get mad at you for writing a cast of all-white characters you wanted to write, there are plenty of webtoons like that on the platform. We do need more stories that uplift and represent POC voices, but it shouldn't be from white victim complex people who only do it to virtue signal and ensure they don't get "cancelled". You know what WILL get you cancelled? Attempting to write other ethnicities and racial groups purely based on stereotypes for the sake of "representation" and then getting mad when people ask you to be a little more specific than "Asian".

Oh yeah, and then have your mods censor/delete any mentioning of educational resources regarding Asian cultures, and then essentially dox one of your community members by revealing their Twitter to the entire Discord group to boot!

oh boy mongie, if you think THAT'S drama, wait until you see the shit I do here LMAO

[greyplainsttrpg]

5e Villain Arc 2

Last time we discussed 5e's stupid non-name. This time we're going to talk about chapter order.

I saw a post earlier about giving suggestions to 5e Players to "read the rules." While it is always a good time to poke at the children, I don't think that it is actually their fault (entirely) that nobody playing the game knows the rules. The Chapter order of 5e (and most TTRPG books, for that matter) is not conductive to actually knowing how the game works. This is compounded in 5e in particular because the game design is such that you never really have to learn anything outside what your character can do.

It is okay to divide chapters into parts. That's fine. What upsets me is that the Chapters have titles, but the Parts do not have titles. What is weird is that the game's introduction actually provides pretty good names for the three parts, albeit in inconsistent formatting: Adventurers, The Three Pillars of Adventure, and The Wonders of Magic.

Those align pretty much exactly with the three Parts of the book. Why is that not their names? Why must I divine what the parts are by intuition. This is not an abstract art piece--this is a textbook.

More importantly, the order of information is entirely wrong.

The reason why Players do not know how to play that game is because the rules for the game show up in between things that they actually care about. The game is so hyper-focused on a player making a character that it abdicates the responsibility of knowing how to play the game exclusively to freaks who actually want to read the rules in depth. You know: min-maxers and rules lawyers. The average player's interaction with the book is thus:

Read the introduction and get the gist of the game.

Make a Character through part one.

Oh wait, now I need to flip to the end of the book for spells (since more than 3/4 of all characters will have spellcasting)?

The Player FEELS like they have read more of the book than they actually have because they went through the process of flipping through it from beginning to end. However, at no point did they ever get a real understanding of how the game actually functions. They grasp that they have a thing called an action, a thing called a bonus action, and they have some amount of movement, but what these do does not mean much to them outside the confines of what their Character can do with those elements. They never learned what those terms actually mean, because the action economy of the game is not explained until WAY later (page 189). Even if you bother to read this section, it is entirely divorced from other important, very relevant sections. In particular, the exclusion of Saving Throws and Conditions from the Combat Chapter means that it will be even harder to guarantee a player will have read them.

Why are conditions in the appendix? They should not be in the appendix. They are standard things that players will encounter during regular gameplay.

Why are backgrounds AFTER class? Would it not make much more sense to put the background BEFORE the class? It is, after all, your background, the thing you did before gaining a class level. If you pick a background that compliments your Class by giving you similar skills, then you just get to pick random skills instead? This would not be a problem if you picked a background first (which gives you a set of skills without choice) and then you picked the skills from our class. I suppose the problem might still arise from tool proficiencies, but tool proficiencies suck, and they should be done away with, anyway.

Now that I'm looking at it, another case of "why are these in two different chapters lmao."

The reason they designed the book this way is because of the tradition of D&D being laid out in the dumbest way possible. Do not trust Gary Gygax's ability to convey information through text. He was not good at it. AD&D is a disaster of explaining its mechanics to the player, and 2nd edition is not much better.

The formatting of the book also sets a really bizarre trend throughout modern gaming that making a Character is the first thing every new player should do in a system when, like, no? Making a Character is a complicated process in most, if not all, games. At least in the sense that you have to make a lot of decisions upfront. The best way to introduce a player to a system is to have them play a pre-made and put a book in front of them whenever they want to review whatever is listed on their sheet. Once they've played the game, then they can evaluate how to make a Character because they will actually know what they are building towards. The formatting D&D has maintained funnels GMs and game designers everywhere to force new Players into a awkward, decision heavy first couple of hours instead of playing the game.

I'm not saying players can't make a character before ever having played the game. People want to do that sometime for my system; however it is a lot of work and time on my part to babysit you reading the most complex part of the book and answer your questions when MOST of what you are about to ask would be covered during typical gameplay.

Okay, that's pretty much all I have to say about this, I think.

Next Villain Arc Post:

Previous Villain Arc Post:

[kerubimcrepin]

Exploring dofus-le-film.com and talking about movie-related events. [PART 1]

This will not go into the goldmine that is the interview Tot and Xa give about Joris. This is just a little, self-indulgent post. I hope you will enjoy it nevertheless.

The first silly action I took was extracting the site's icon and enlarging it in Aseprite, so here's your daily dose of cute official Joris pixel art. Anyway.

I love how the movie blurb literally lies about Khan being Joris's life-long idol.

CHARACTER BIOS.

Most of them include the information we already know, so I will only be pointing out things I personally find interesting.

For example - this art here depicts Joris's bald head under the hood as very round. Very useful info for us joris enjoyers. Reblog to slap his bald head, like to slap his bald head.

(Hacks up blood) Deeply caring in nature... papa poule... It is the second time, when Kerubim is called that, in his character bios, and I would like you to remember are these different explanations of this word combo:

I'm insane. I love him a lot.

Bakara is a pleasure to have in class :)

Anyway, I love how non-specific and non-alarming these character bios are. We can't scare the hoes by saying that beneath her cool exterior she wants to kill people around her and also drink 20 gallons of vodka, so "shy and stuck up" it shall be.

Again, it's hilarious how non-threatening these character bios are, considering Lilotte's whole parent thing is basically: (substitute "women" with "kids with families")

Coloring pages + Crayon Contest

A part of me wanted to be "haha, I colored all these coloring pages, for the Full Understanding of The Experience of this movie."

Then I realized that, as a person who is making a Joris painted music video, and had drawn at least 1:07 minutes worth of artwork of him and some other characters of this movie, I would rather-- [remembers that suicide jokes are bad] take cactus for a wife, than draw him for this blog too. I'm sorry.

Not much to be said about the contest, though this is epic:

This little Joris can be found at the bottom of the "win some crayons" page. It's cute.

BLOGPOSTS

This image was drawn for MIFA.

I want to unpack what is occurring here:

Goultard is holding his dragon boyfriend rather gayly on the shoulder. Interesting.

One of the candles landed in Nox's face?

Atcham, Joris, and Lilotte were holding the cake together. Lilotte is sitting on Yugo's shoulder, while Joris is standing on Kerubim's arms. It is reasonable to assume that Yugo turned to the camera, which made Lilotte turn as well, which made Atcham fall, which made Kerubim step away, and the only people carrying the cake who are still even a bit happy are Joris and Yugo.

Adamai is getting ready to catch Joris when in like 5 seconds all of them are going to be tumblring down Atcham-style.

Incredible. But this illustration is not the only gem that Annecy has brought us!

It also brought us more of Atcham being cool and awesome.

I'm insane.

There's more rare art here: these t-shirts featuring designs from a fan contest.

They were made in limited numbers. I'm including them here because we don't exactly have copies of the artwork, and I am insane about preserving art. It might be somewhere — but that somewhere is probably 2016 french facebook, so as far as I'm concerned, trying to seek these out is a lost cause.

Exclusive Merch

There were playing cards, and I am happy to report we DO have artwork for them in HD:

And also, here's a slightly higher definition little game sprite esque Joris:

This is the future crepinjurgenites want.

Kerubim VS Atcham Rigged Pet Contest

I am sad to report that Atchamheads have lost again, in this rigged contest. Imagine asking:

Would you like a fluffy guy you have watched an entire series about, or this bald guy who appears twice in the franchise?

At the very least, this gives us a canonical kitten Atcham design.

(Also, both of them were added, jsyk... Still salty though.)

Maliki Art

Maliki is a webcomic not made by Ankama, but with a long relationship and connection to Ankama due to being published by them in the past.

It's cute, really.

[spritebug]

What do you think the MS characters studied during FCU/at university generally?

Thank you for the ask! ^^

My FCU knowledge is very limited, so I’m sorry if this is ooc or goes against cannon 😅

I’ve also never done something like this, so I hope the layout is okay!

What the main Mystreet characters studied at FCU/College/University

———————————————

Like I say, I don’t remember much of FCU. So this will be based on their MS and PDH personalities!

(Also I’m British so I’m sorry if I mixed anything up!)

Aph

-I strongly think aph went into a creative subject.

-Specifically Graphic Design or Drawing and Painting

-I also think she could have taken Creative Writing, after realising that she could make Fan fiction her entire job if she just “got it published”

-turns out it wasn’t that easy.

-(I think she’d have considered a Veterinary course, but decided against it after realising she’d have to see some of the animals pass on)

Katelyn

-I truly don’t talk about Katelyn enough.

-The easy answer is obviously a sports based course.

-Such as studying/training for volleyball or Sports Coaching.

-BUT I think she also could have done something in Drama, specifically Acting and Performance.

-I think she would have taken up Boxing Lessons during this, either for fun or to try cover her love of Theatre.

Nana(kc)

-Bakery.

-It’s easy, I know. But I really think she probably would have taken a Bakery and Patisserie course.

-If we’re also talking in universe stuff, then I think she might have taken some form of Magics Classes.

-And depending on when her dream of starting a maid cafe started, she could have taken Business Management to try and do that.

-I like to think she had a part time job at the Meif’wa scouts as a scout leader.

-(Probably also considered Veterinary as an option)

Garroth

-This man was way too difficult

-But it’s okay we love him anyway

-I think Garroth would be the type of person who just panicked and applied for a course in whatever he got the best grades in at the end of secondary/high school, even if it’s not what he wanted to do. (Which is valid)

-He probably could have continued in Baseball, but realised he’d rather keep it as a hobby and not a career.

-Garte absolutely offered him an apprenticeship at his business, and definitely tried super hard to get him to accept.

-Thankfully, Zianna pushed for him to do what he wants not what Garte wants. We love zianna.

-But, Garte definitely made him do a part time course in Business Management “just in case”

-Garroth doesn’t know what he wants to do in life yet, and that’s perfectly fine.

Zane

-Ahhh zane. Just as difficult as his brother.

-I think he could have done English Literature or some form of Poetry, gotta get the angst out somehow.

-But other things MCD and the wiki also make me think he could have done Business management to try and please his dad and become the favourite child.

-Garte probably offered him the the apprenticeship after Garroth declined it, but it was too late to accept.

-He probably considered an art course because of his love of MLP 2D animation.

Vylad

-MY BOYYY

-I have so many opinions

-Okay, so for some reason I really think Vylad would take a Photography course. It just makes sense in my mind.

-If not photography, I think he would have taken any course that involved him having to travel in order to study.

-I think Vylad learned at least 1 other language during college/uni.

-Probably took baking classes at one point, but kept eating his projects before he could present them.

-I don’t think Garte got around to offering him the apprenticeship, but he wouldn’t have accepted anyway.

Laurence

-This man. I love him, but his wiki is….lacking compared to everyone else’s.

-But we continue anyway

-I’m tempted to say he didn’t go to Uni/college, and instead helped on his parents farm for a little while or did some form of Apprenticeship.

-if he did I think Laurence could have continued football/soccer, but I think he’d get bored and choose something else.

-I think Laurence would be the type who chooses his courses based solely on what he enjoys doing, without a real plan on what to do afterward. (me too)

-I think he would have taken a culinary course, mainly surrounding savoury food.

-college/uni is probably where he learnt Japanese.

-I think Cadenza would have convinced him to do a part time Fashion and Beauty course “or she’d disown him”.

-Definitely did Babysitting as a part time job.

Dante

-Dante. One of the hardest out of this list.

-I’m honestly so stumped for our dear Danny boy

-I can imagine Dante going into something like Engineering or Film.

-I literally have no idea why, it’s just all I picture when I think about it. I wish I could provide more information

-I think he probably got a job pretty early after leaving Secondarily/High school. Like just something small, not a stable forever job.

-I think College/Uni has to be around the time he toned down his PDH-era flirting.

Travis

-I feel like Travis could have went into Media or something along those lines.

-Or social studies

-He seems like he’d do an apprenticeship somewhere, but I’m not sure where.

-he’s a tricky one

-he definitely did cooking lessons at some point

-I think college/Uni is also where he learnt a martial art

-He defiantly went to the same place as Dante

Aaron

-I think Aaron didn’t have much control over what he studied. I think he was heavily influenced by his parents.

-Definitely took Business Management

-Definitely took some form of Werewolf classes

-And definitely lost interest quickly

-100% made use of the on-campus gym. He probably spent more time there than classes.

Lucinda

-Magic time

-Definitely took multiple Magic Courses.

-Specifically about Familiars and Witchcraft

-Took bakery classes on the side, and tried to mix the two together.

-I think she could have also taken gardening on the side.

Nicole

-I think Nicole’s dad would have tried to convince her to study Law or Politics, but after less than a year she switches.

-I think she would have taken Sport and Exercise Science, to better herself and others.

-I think she could have taken Veterinary part time too, like a wildlife sanctuary or something.

-She probably took martial art classes in between classes.

Cadenza

-CADENZAAA

-yes I’m including our girl

-She absolutely took Fashion Design.

-And possibly Beauty on the side.

-She knew exactly what she wanted in Secondary/High school, and she hasn’t changed her mind since.

-Definitely took self defence classes

-Also helped out at her parents farm for a little while.

———————————————

I hope this was okay, I had to re-do the whole thing three times cause I kept accidentally losing all the progress 😅

[quibbs126]

if you’re still doing the fankids thing, how about chilirye ?

Jesus Christ, this request was from like, March. But I finally got around to him this is Pepper Bread Cookie

Also I feel like this isn’t the only request for chilirye I’ve gotten, but screw it, I’m too lazy right now to go through 100+ asks to find newer ones

So I originally started making Pepper Bread probably in March, but he was never more than a circle that was meant to be his head. But I was waiting for like an hour for a class, it was 10 minutes past when we were supposed to start, and only a few people had shown up, and we eventually just decided to leave, but in that time I was finally able to come up with something for Pepper Bread here

Anyways I’ll get into his name. So I believe his name is just based on bread that has pepper in it, since rye can be made into bread. Though his design is mostly based on this one specific picture I have saved in my Photos

Pepper Bread:

So today I finally had the idea for what to do with Pepper Bread, and that was to make him an innkeeper. Partially inspired by that idea I had for a Chili Cookie that’s an innkeeper (I do still want to draw her though). So that’s what I did with his outfit. The Innkeeper family from the Red Dragon update were pretty helpful as refs

Though I do also have to admit it makes his outfit more boring looking. Maybe he has some sort of adventuring outfit, maybe I’ll draw that someday

I basically just really wanted to make his hair look like the reference picture, which was the reason why I kept it in the first place. As in like, having orange hair with red flecks. Later on I got the idea of giving him red freckles, which are supposed to be like, pepper flakes in his dough, and I wasn’t sure I should keep the hair idea, but I did and I think it looks nice. It’s also why I gave him the braid, since that’s how the bread looked. It was going to be bigger and longer, but I couldn’t get it to look right, so it just stays on the shoulder now

I’m not sure if he looks too much like Chili Pepper, but oh well. I generally like his design, though I don’t think it’s what I envisioned. The one thing is that I couldn’t make his outfit look that exciting, but them’s the breaks I suppose

So let’s get into his character. So the main thing keeping me from making him is that I couldn’t figure out what to do with him, like specifically what his job was. Chili Pepper’s a thief, Rye’s a bounty hunter (or is she a sheriff? I’m not entirely sure), should I choose one of those for Pepper Bread? Or should I choose something else entirely? If so, how do I choose one that sounds in character for chilirye kid? One idea I had was to make him more straight laced than his moms (since let’s face it, Rye’s just as chaotic as Chili Pepper), and so an idea was to make him a sheriff, but I wasn’t sure. But then as I said, I had the idea to make him an innkeeper, and so yeah

Pepper Bread just wants to live a normal, honest life, so he got himself a tavern and opened it up, he’s gotten business (maybe not a lot, but at least enough to keep him afloat), and he’s pretty happy like this and treasures his inn. Generally speaking, he’s a friendly guy, someone reliable and honest. Though, if you cause trouble in his inn and mess things up, he will not hesitate to throw you out, or throw hands to do so. And while he may love his mas, if they cause trouble in his place, they get the same treatment

Also I imagine him with a strong Southern accent like Rye

Anyways yeah, I think that about covers it for Pepper Bread. Hope you enjoy!

[eruscreaminginthedistance]

Okay so. I've been sitting on my full first impressions of the game until after the gameplay reveal, cos I know shit can get twisted in marketing.

I was NOT a fan of the trailer. The vibe was off; I cringed a lot; it gave a off very bog-standard hero team saves the day kind of vibe which I inherently dislike because it seems like Dragon Age has just given up on giving you the freedom to be a bastard, or any kind of character that isn't on rails to be everyone's favourite boy. It also failed to bring any dark fantasy to the table. BUT I know from experience, namely the DA2 trailer (not the CGI one. the other one), that marketing is intent on making Dragon Age look like the goofiest shit possible to appeal to the dregs of society (normies). I watched it. Hated it. Moved on to life stuff.

Now with the gameplay reveal out of the way, I have some more solid takes on everything we now know about the game overall.

Things I liked:

The companions all look pretty cool; I've been excited for Devrin for years now, and seeing that he's a Dalish Elf as well as a Warden is quite exciting to see; everyone else are also not only well designed but don't feel like rehashes of our previous companions (apart from Harding)

The return of multiple weapon sets. Thank fucking god. This may even make archer a viable build again. Also I noted that you only have a set number of arrows which the UI tracks, which I'm a huge fan of

The look and style of Minrathous. I like that Bioware is showing their hard work in coming up with a unique area based entirely around magic-tech and I think the result looks great; I am really intrigued by the dark panopticon vibes and hope that becomes a major theme going forward

Different demon designs. I hope there's a bit more variation as the game progresses, but I liked little details like the Pride demons having some kind of armour aesthetic

Dialogue wheel. No notes; she's here, still the same comforting presence as ever. Praying with fingers crossed that it doesn't turn into a super bland protagonist situation like Inquisition

Choosing a faction in character creation that isn't locked to one's race; this one is a really cool idea and if origins don't come back it can be a decent alternative if the reactivity to your choice is the same as in the prologue

Things I didn't like:

Action wheel. Like. I'm a PC person, so I have no idea what the final UI will actually look like for me. But Bioware hasn't elaborated on their UI style at all and if Inquisition is anything to go by, I'm stuck with shitty console-centred UI for the whole game. I would rather just have the ability bar back, for my sanity.

The two-person companion limit. It automatically restricts people into a specific party build depending on their class and I hate that

The Mass Effect-style gameplay. Party tactics was a HUGE draw to the DA series for me, and is what got me into retro RPGs in the first place. Seeing it replaced completely to the point where we can no longer manually manage our party is a huge disappointment. I am willing to keep an open mind, just because I love Mass Effect that much, but it hurts knowing for a certainty I'm never gonna engage with Veilguard like I did with Origins or 2 as a result

The voice acting. Was this an out of date take, or did everyone sound super flat to anyone else? Especially Neve, who didn't seem to know what she was reacting to, just really wooden. It was disappointing, cos I love her voice overall. Wasn't a fan of Rook's voice but I don't plan to play a man anyway

The breaking pots method of looting. This is gonna feel like such a nitpick but I immediately pulled a face seeing that cos I could TELL some suit somewhere asked the Bioware team to "make it more like breath of the wild" and now for some reason it's not dynamic enough to just click on a crate and choose what loot to take; now Tevinters are storing exactly one (1) random health potion in decorative clay jars around the city (more likely than you think!)

The aesthetic of the veil and spirit stuff so far; it's just all a bit bright and noisy, doesn't really grab me as something fun to explore or fight (again, I'm an Origins girly so I'm biased)

Harding coming back. I know she's cool and everyone likes her and I like her too. In Inquisition. This is just a preference, but if I'm gonna start a new game as a new person I don't want to be inheriting pre-bought friends from the last protagonist ://

Things I HATE:

Why does everyone look like play-doh; it's disconcerting.

Like guys I know DA2 is having a renaissance but I don't think anyone was getting nostalgic over everyone's pudding faces.

Everything put out so far has basically crushed any hope I had for this becoming Dwarf age :/ No new dwarf characters, no mention of Kal-Sharok, Harding being the only dwarf companion basically confirms that dwarves will be unromanceable AGAIN. not a fan

TLDR: This is still definitely not a day-one buy for me. The series has just strayed completely from the genre and format that I loved about the previous games into a full action RPG derivative of games from four years ago. Without the focus on party tactics and the low-tech, dark and gritty worldbuilding from the first two games it just fails to excite me. It looks too much like other games for me to really register it as a Dragon Age game.

I love the story and the world of Dragon Age though, so I do still intend to buy it when it goes on sale, but this is definitely a "wait and see the reviews" situation for me, which is a first when it comes to this series :/

[anyablackwood]

OC Origins Tag

Thanks for the tag, @mysticstarlightduck! This is really cool! I'd love to do another. I'll be covering some of my MCs from various stories because I'm TOTALLY normal about this <333

Rule: "talk about the origins of the names and personalities (and maybe even the design?) of a couple of your OCs!"

Itazaki Katsuko (Katsuko no Monogatari):

This name came with a level of investment that was disproportionate and frankly unnecessary for a short story that I initially wrote for a class, lmao.

Itazaki was part of the alternative name of Hangaku Gozen, one of the onna-musha (female warriors) in Heian Japan. She's not as popular as the legendary Tomoe Gozen, probably because she was on the opposing side of the war; but not only is Tomoe kinda too stereotypical for me, but she didn't technically have a last/secondary name, from what I gathered? I mean Itazaki wasn't Hangaku Gozen's last name, but it was part of her title and sounded like a better last name for Katsuko than Jo.

But a more important reason is that she's one of the few onna-musha with a fairly clearly documented and relatively HAPPY ending for a warrior on the losing side of a war (she was a member of the Taira clan, who lost the power struggle against Minamoto clan in the Genpei War). Which is quite an achievement considering not even Tomoe Gozen got a clear ending, let alone a good one (there are various accounts about how she lived her life after the war, NONE of which are happy, unfortunately).

While I knew it didn't really matter, I'm kind of incapable of naming characters without deep diving into the meaning of the names and the history of it. So I went with Itazaki for Katsuko's surname.

As for her first name, Katsuko, this one's more simple. "Katsu" literally means "victory/to win" in Japanese. "Ko" means "child". Putting them together essentially means "winner", "victorious child", etc. Which, while kinda on the nose, I also chose because it's a fairly gender neutral name (if you drop the "ko", anyway. "ko" is almost always used for girl names) and is seen as kind of a tomboyish (?) name. I would've gone with "Katsu", but that's my great-grandmother's name. She was the inspiration for the name, but I didn't want to actually give Katsuko the EXACT same name because of emotional distancing reasons, lol (my great grandmother was very much alive until recently, and I'd feel weird to do that when I knew her personally).

Appearance-wise, Katsuko is a fairly standard looking Japanese woman. Her hair's decently long, as was the standard, and she mostly wears armor, since she's not only a guard, but there's also combat scenes. She uses a naginata, since that was the standard weapon for onna-musha and onna-bugeisha (female guards).

Megumi Wilson (Asteria Heights):

I intentionally chose the name Megumi because it was Japanese, but could also be shortened into a Western-sounding name (Meg). This is because, in my personal experience, most Japanese-American/half-Japanese families would give their kids names that are either foreign but simple enough to say in Japanese, or have alternative or similar versions in both languages (assuming these are families that still have connections to Japan/Japanese culture; many Japanese families chose to entirely assimilate, especially if they're not first-gen immigrants).

While I would've loved to do the latter (which I'd say is more common), there aren't really that many of those, and with how picky I am, none of them felt like they fit (plus I have multiple half-Japanese characters who already took other names). Also, to be honest, many of them were a little TOO similar to mine and my siblings' names, lol. And I obviously didn't want that.

I could've given her a Japanese name that couldn't be Westernized, but me and my sisters always had beef with how people would butcher our names growing up (even though mine isn't even just Japanese!!! My legal name is also Western!!!) and I didn't want to do that to my girl Meg, even if she isn't real, lmao.

Luna, Iris, Claire (Traveling Bards):

Okay, these are fairly boring in name, but that was intentional! I won't say why SPECIFICALLY these names, but I was looking for simple names in general because I wanted names that were easier to pronounce for Japanese people because I'm a bit willfully ✨delusional✨ and I want to at least get a translation of the story one day, if not an animated adaption (yes!! I know!! Unrealistic!! Let me DREAM!!!!)

Their personalities, as I've mentioned in a previous post, are based off of some people I love very much in my life. They're not 1 to 1 the same, but their cores are. This story actually initially started off as a what-if scenario when we were watching an Isekai (reincarnation) anime together and kept getting frustrated at some dumb characters and situations, and then got into talking about what we'd do in a situation like that. And then I was like "this shit slaps ngl" and after some revisions to their persons, here we are!!!

This was so fun! <333 I'll end it here because I can honestly go one for DAYS about them. I'd have covered some more but this is too long already, so please feel free to tag me in this again!!!

Leaving it as an OPEN TAG for whoever wants it. Might come and retroactively add people later.

Gently Tagging: @amaiguri, @paintedbutton, @pandoras-comment-box, and anyone else who wants in!!!

[epithetical]

2024 UPDATE (OFFICIAL)

Hey, everyone. Longtime no talk. Despite being weirdly active on this account, I haven't really made any textposts since high school. So I've decided to fix this by giving a gigantic update post about my very busy 2023. If you're new and don't know anything about me, or knew me as a teen and are wondering what I'm up to now: buckle up.

TL;DR:

Dropped out of art school. Released an award-nominated(???) dating sim, ValiDate. Killed the Golden Girls Take Manhattan DX. Conquered Jaw Explosion Disease. Hung out with some friends. (Also, a lot of NDA shit that I can’t talk about.)

ART-SCHOOL DROPOUT

From 2021 to 2022, I was attending a prestigious and overly-expensive art school for their (brand new!) game design program. When I first graduated from high school, this college was my dream choice, and coming off the success of my early game dev career, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to polish my skills while I kept working on the side. My first commercial game was still in development, but we were feeling comfortable, and I felt like getting greedy.

Pride before the fall. Full Icarus mode. You know how it goes.

The school itself was…alright. Satellite campus, mid-pandemic, hybrid learning. Close enough to commute comfortably, classes just long enough for masks to not give me a headache, and the handful of remote courses helped keep my medical problems at bay. Problems that the school was a little unequipped to help with, though the disability office did their best. I had to drop a class because my body, at the time, couldn’t handle eight hours of classes without some Crazy Side Effects. 

(Keep in mind that every class was, minimum, four hours. And I had to take at least five a semester. Each class also saw me make an entire game from scratch. My body was already at its limit.)

If you knew me in high school, you’re probably waiting for the shoe to drop: I was, famously, the worst at academics. Never did homework, rarely finished projects, slept through first period at least once a week. Surprise, though: I was fucking great at this. My GPA doubled. Turns out that going to school for a discipline you already have a career in, and are kinda obsessed with, kinda does wonders for you. Unfortunately, I picked the worst time to care about school, since my commercial game’s release was the same exact night that my five school games were due.

TL;DR, I didn’t sleep for a week, almost fucked both up, and got burnout so bad that I couldn’t do anything for a calendar year. So I dropped out! Now, about a year of job hunting later (the game’s industry is imploding right now, and the only studios that considered me were… questionable, to say the least), the expensive art school wants me back. So badly. Turns out the whole school is so broke and understaffed right now that they’re basically chomping at the bit for that tuition money. Got a week to decide. Jury’s still out.

VALIDATE POST-MORTEM

So, if you couldn’t tell from the above section, we released a game in 2022!  I was supposed to write a post-mortem for it, but… burnout from the above, combined with general “post-release depression,” and I didn’t feel like touching it. 

Part of me still doesn’t! 

Yet I kinda think the feeling of me not wanting to talk about ValiDate is still worth discussing, so here we go:

For those of you that aren’t aware, I was a head dev on ValiDate, a dating sim that released in 2022. Volume 1 (of 3) did, anyway.

Did a lot of music, did a lot of writing, created some characters people really care about, created some characters people really want to fuck, made a couple Tweets that my boss hated, got accused of being reverse racist a few times. It was truly one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. And, yes, we’re still working on Vol. 2 behind the scenes. 

That’s actually the reason why it’s kinda hard to talk about Vol. 1!

It was my first commercial game, my first publicly released game, and I think there’s always gonna be a… natural embarrassment toward your first “real” project. Combine that with my natural “if you stare at me for too long, I will kill myself” tendencies, and the game’s release was a special type of torture. It’s one thing to watch people play through a game that you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into, knowing full well that they might hate it (or just misunderstand it), but shit gets so much worse when you know that you could have done better. 

It’s a very special kind of psychological torture to have creative decisions you feel were mistakes, things you half-assed because of burnout or deadlines, or things you did wrong because you just didn’t know any better! The embarrassment was overwhelming, so I just… dipped for a while. Didn’t watch gameplay or read reviews, didn’t do much of anything.

Took me a while to realize that me being embarrassed about the project isn’t because ValiDate was bad or anything. I was embarrassed because it was an incredible learning opportunity for me. The amount that I picked up on game design, community management, leadership, marketing, pitching, porting, etc. in two years is more than any school could teach you in four. Volume 1 was a game made by amateurs, still wet behind the ears, trying to build something from grassroots. 

But Volume 2 is a game-ass game. 

And having done all the work we have on Vol. 2 (which, while I can’t talk about it publicly, is a lot!), looking back at our first release feels like… revisiting your awkward middle school photos. Sometimes it’s hard to not feel contempt for who you were when your biggest struggle was becoming, but learning to choke down that shame? It taught me to feel grateful for the you of yesterday, who clawed their way through uncertainty so that you, today, can stand on sturdier ground. Growing up is embarrassing, and it turns out you keep doing it well into your twenties! Sucks. 

For the past few days, Dani and I have been watching a Twitch streamer play through Volume 1. We’ve been so deep in planning for the future that we figured, hey, may as well revisit the past. Detached from all that embarrassment of becoming, I gotta admit: we made a fun little dating sim. People like it. Hell, I like it. Sure, I know all of its flaws and shortcuts, and I have my fair share of critiques… but fact of the matter is, if I have a problem with something, I can just fix it. 

Admittedly, In the past, that attitude of mine has actually been more of a problem than a solution. “I can fix this myself!” is all fine and good when you’re a solo dev trying to throw something together, but it turns out taking on excess responsibility in a collaborative setting is a way to make shit suck for you and your team. During the Kickstarter demo era, I was literally on every team besides art. Writing, programming, music, I got my fingers in all those pies. It was fun to me, and more importantly, it was sustainable. 

Until it wasn’t.

Volume 1 coinciding with my tenure at [art school], using a (finicky and, frankly, shitty) new game engine, being much larger in scope, introducing minigames (which, surprise, I was team lead on)... I pretty much killed myself trying to get it all done. Honestly, I blame half of our day-one bugfixes on me specifically. Every single one of them was an oversight made because I was pulling the classic “I’m unmedicated so crunching is the only way I can feel alive” type shit. 

Except for the OST. That one sucked because art school sucks all the joy out of creating.

Happy to say that our workflow for Volume 2 has been much more sustainable for me, even if I’ve officially broken my “no art” rule for it. Yeah, turns out I’m finally making use of that animation major. Sucks.

Self reflection over. Except for one last note:

If you’ve followed ValiDate, played our demo, donated to the Kickstarter, replied to our Tweets, played our second demo, bought our game, or just talked about us to a friend… I am so, so grateful. Beyond what words could possibly describe. It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember become a game developer, and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you guys. Vd8 wasn’t what I expected the cornerstone of my career to be, but honestly? I couldn’t have asked for a better one. We have Vriska in our game. How many people can possibly say that?

And to those of you still waiting for Volume 2:

You haven’t seen anything yet.

GAYMING AWARDS

Speaking of ValiDate… Did you hear we were nominated for some Gayming Awards last year? We were! 

Three other head Vd8 devs (Dani: Production, Alexis: Art, Cam: Code) flew out to beautiful New York City for the award show last March, which was actually our first time actually meeting up IRL. Really funny how I’ve known Dani since I was fifteen, but here we were, a decade later, finally meeting face to face. She’s so much taller in person. I’m still taller, but barely.

Meeting up with internet friends is one thing (and more on that later!), but meeting up with internet coworkers? It’s interesting. This was the first moment that ValiDate felt “real,” seeing as it was suddenly important enough to give us comp’d flights and a hotel room, but more than that: the people I’ve been working with for years exist? We’re all hanging out together? We’re wandering through Manhattan all day? We’re eating the most disgusting food at Junior’s in Times Square? We’re trying to figure out what this mystery liquid is? How much did this food cost again? (Seriously, my onion rings were 90% dough and 10% onion.)

While I won’t bore you with the minutiae—I think my friends would prefer the privacy anyway—the entire trip to NYC was fun, exhausting, and a dream-come-true.

Except for that goddamn award show. Jesus CHRIST, what a trainwreck.

No, I’m not saying that just because we lost. We did lose, though. (Personally, I was fine with it, but I also had to travel the least distance to get there. So…) I’m saying that because the entire Gayming Awards industrial complex was, uh, kinda busted this year?

So imagine, you’re us: bunch of twenty-somethings on your Sex and the City shit. Big award show tonight, formal attire. We’re talking high heels, long dresses, full suits, the whole nine yards. Now what do you do in Manhattan? Walk. Sure, we weren’t walking in formal attire the entire time, but it was still a good five blocks to the award center where—wait, what do you mean they relocated the ceremony? The hall they rented is closed for mysterious reasons? Where the hell are we doing the award show?

If you answered “the drag bar where the afterparty was supposed to take place,” congrats, here’s $20. Way further away from our hotel, which meant more walking, and also a way smaller venue with a lot less… formality, let’s say. But we’re young gay people, we don’t care about formalities, who gives a shit! As long as it can seat all of us, then—oh there’s no seating. Ohhhh. Oh! Okay.

I’ll admit, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There were a handful of couches, VIPs only. Realizing quickly that, oh shit, we’re VIPs, we managed to snag some front-seat couches before any of the pesky old people could. (We’re young! We deserve to sit! You’ve had your entire lives to sit, established games industry people! Let the new generation have a turn!) Unfortunately, when I got up to cash in my free-drink voucher, my seat was stolen by some white lady. 

So I sat on the floor.

March 2023. You, sitting at home, have decided to tune into the Gayming Awards “live” on Twitch, curious to see what Britain’s premiere gayming magazine had to say about, uh, esports. 

This is important to you. 

Fortunately, this year you’re watching a decently shot and scripted award show filmed in a (noticeably claustrophobic) little bar, complete with charming presenters (many of whom are local drag queens) and a myriad of corporate sponsors. You can hardly tell that the entire show was uprooted and moved hours prior!

Yet, for some reason, whenever the cameras cut to the audience… There’s some large man, right in front of the crowd, slumped down on the floor as if he’s bleeding out. With every award given, his clapping grows weaker. The more the camera cuts to him, the more life drains from his body, as if his existence itself is anathema to “gayming.”

Imagine, for a moment, that this man is nominated for an award. 

Imagine that he, after a lifetime of potassium deficiency, has been teetering on the edge of a Charlie Horse Reckoning for hours.

Imagine that the microsecond that his game’s name is called as a nominee, the Reckoning begins. 

Now imagine a world where he wins that award. 

A world where he is forced to stand—from his corpse’s rightful place on the ground!—in front of his peers and superiors, pretending as if he’s not afflicted with a life-ending muscle cramp.

So, yeah. I was pretty fine with losing.

Later, we ditched the “afterparty” to drink at Applebees. (Turns out “green tea shots” don’t have any green tea in ‘em?)

EULOGY FOR THE GOLDEN GIRLS TAKE MANHATTAN DX

Big announcement! I was a team lead on The Golden Girls Take Manhattan DX, a certified Tumblr Gold™ fan-project (by the immortal Grawly) about the eponymous Gold Girls in a Persona-esque parody game! 

Slightly bigger announcement! The game got cancelled. Sorry.

Feels a little weird talking about this, since the year-ish I spent working on the game passed in the blink of an eye, and I’m not going to lie and say that I was an instrumental piece of the team or whatever. I was lucky enough to lead a very talented team, and to play with some very fun devtools, but the game was definitely more important to me than I was to it. (Grawly, if by some off-chance you’re reading this, please click off now. You can peek back in at the Jaw Explosion Disease subheader. I promise I’m very nice and respectful.)

I was in high school when I was first made aware of TGGTMDX. My friend group was very into Persona (in the pre-P5 days), and one of our favorite video subgenres was “videogame UI on top of sitcom scenes.” It didn’t take us long to stumble onto early-build footage of TGGTMDX on Tumblr, and what spawned was a years-long fascination. I’d even consider it one of my many… game dev awakenings? The idea that the only thing stopping me from making “American Persona”—one of my many white whales—was commitment to the bit. Just one of the many things that fueled my teenaged suicidal overconfidence.

Speaking of suicidal overconfidence, about a decade later, I was invited to work on the game! Coming fresh off ValiDate, I was desperate for a chance to make a real portfolio piece (visual novels, while popular, will never get you a job), and this sort of opportunity only presents itself once in a lifetime. Fulfilling a teenage dream while furthering your career? What could possibly go wrong!

That makes it seem like there was some explosive drama behind the scenes that ruined everything. Sorry to say that most game cancellations aren’t that exciting, and that this game’s death was by a thousand microscopic cuts. Most of which are not my place to talk about: this game wasn’t my baby, and cancelling it wasn’t my choice to make! Many people worked on this for much, much longer than I even knew how to code, and they deserve to have their feelings prioritized. Whenever that post mortem gets published, I’ll be the first to reblog it, trust me. 

Instead, I’d prefer to talk a little about this as being my first real “loss” as a game dev. Certainly not my first project to go under, and I’ve had my fair share of shelved prototypes, but something about this cancellation was… different. Working on your dream project is all fun and games until you feel partially responsible for it dying, y’know? It felt Sisyphean at a point, like trying to dig a hole in the sand with a pitchfork. I would work at the game, and work at the game, but nothing I did felt like it made a dent. 

Part of me knew I wasn’t giving it my all, between the school-based burnout (above), jaw explosion disease (below), and ValiDate (omnipresent), it’s not like I could’ve afforded to put more of myself into it. Besides, I was literally a team lead, half my job was telling other people what to do. But the spectre of “you’re not doing enough” was hard to shake. Even when all these other responsibilities ebbed and I could afford to give this game my all, the difference felt minimal. 

We spend a lot of time pitying Sisyphus for having to push that boulder uphill over and over, but none of us ask ourselves “could we even move that big fucking rock in the first place?” Apparently, I couldn’t.

I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, it turned out. In fact, pretty much all the friends I made on the project felt the same. If there’s any “real” reason why the project got cancelled, it’s that. No big falling out, Disney didn’t give us a cease and desist, no secret rebrand going on in the background. Just a bunch of lads getting sick of pushing a boulder. Hell, Grawly’s been doing it for a decade. Let him rest.

Not too much rest, though: we’re already working on a different game together (Date Knight: check it out if you haven’t!), and some of us ex-Golden Girls devs have some ideas for what else we can cook up. 

For money, this time.

JAW EXPLOSION DISEASE

Probably the biggest “development” of 2023 was my sudden horrible nerve pain in July, which started as a sinus infection on the left side of my face, and soon became a horrific jaw pain. Long after my sinus infection healed, the jaw pain remained, which is a pretty bad hand to draw when a considerable portion of your day is spent “talking,” or “eating.” So, for the back half of 2023, I didn’t do much of either.

Instead, I had to take a considerable amount of ibuprofen, visit one doctor, three dentists, two hospitals, and four oral surgeons to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. The dentists discovered an exposed nerve, caused by wisdom tooth removal complications (sick!), the oral surgeons went “okay, we can fix that,” got me all numbed up. But it turns out that my left jaw is immune to local anesthesia! Thinking this was an infection, they kept putting me on antibiotics over and over in the hopes that it’d suddenly work. Took a note from my childhood dentist explaining that, “no, he’s always been like this” to find a surgeon willing to put me all the way under. (And then, the first time they tried, I woke up in the middle anyway! I got a full refund on the copay, at least.) 

Ultimately, I found a very nice surgeon in December that treated me same-day, and did it perfectly, but the damage to my liver from all that ibuprofen was… bad. But it turns out that livers just… regenerate naturally? So, give it a few months, I’ll be at 100%. Hopefully.

OOMFCON

Hilariously, six months after we met up for the Gayming Awards, Dani and Alexis found their way back to NYC for a little combination meet-up/vacation we affectionately titled “Oomfcon 2023.” This time, with bonus friends! Our entire friend server, whose name I’ve been advised not to post publicly, had rented an AirBnB for anyone willing to drop everything and go to Brooklyn. 

It took about a year of planning (mostly by Alexis) to get us all out there, but Jesus Christ, it actually worked.

Admittedly I’m a bit hesitant to talk at length about “taking a vacation”—even though I’m already… from here?—but it really was the highlight of my year. First for actually happening, when most friend groups I’ve had would have written the idea off as a pipedream, but mostly for being a really good time. A lot of walking, a lot of talking, a lot of drinking, a lot of dining. (This was during Jaw Explosion Disease, so you can imagine how my body took most of that.)

To Dani, Alexis, Miles, Haven, Grim, Xtine, and Ty: thanks for coming up here! The city is a lot more boring without you guys in it. I promise to have less health issues when we do this again!

And to everyone else outside the groupchat that I met and bored with my job hunt stories: Nice meeting you guys! Sorry that fate decided every single one of you is forced to keep in touch with me. (And I didn’t even get the shitty corporate job!)