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linagram · 10 months

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everyone's album covers, song previews and album trailer voicelines!

YESSSSSSSSSSSS I'M FINALLY DONE WITH ALL OF THEM *falls on the floor*

okay okay i'm actually kinda proud of myself?? :'D like i always prefer just. drawing characters even though i don't really avoid drawing backgrounds and i don't find drawing them that difficult but i rarely pay attention to things like. doors so yeah it's kinda cool that i've managed to come up with ten different door designs and draw them! even though most of them don't even look like doors. it's okay listen i just wanted to make them as weird as their mvs okay

(also about some prisoners having the symbols on their uhhh restraints and most of them not having them. well you see i just didn't have any energy left to draw them so i was like "it's fine i'll just draw the actual symbols later" and guess what. i didn't :) and i'm too tired to draw all of them so y-yeah. honestly maybe i'll change the symbols to something else like it takes way too much time to draw them and they're not even that close to the canon ones)

okay sorry for rambling, you can read everyone's song previews, titles (though you can see them on the covers, but still. or maybe you can't see them i'm sorry if the text is hard to read 😭) and album trailer voicelines under the cut! and also more of my rambling

Album trailer voicelines:

Akio: "DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!"

Aimi: "Don't you think that's kind of.. unprofessional?"

Shun: "I-Isn't it a good thing that I'm getting better?"

Naomi: "But in the end, I've simply decided to agree with you."

Kei: "It's time for your punishment, Eiji~"

Eiko: "It's like.. your life finally has a purpose."

Asahi: "I wanna go home, even if I don't have one anymore."

Yurika: "THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE!"

Riku: "Haha, trust me, I'm strong enough to do that."

Reina: "So, yeah, the show's over."

Song titles:

Akio: The King's Execution

Aimi: Mask of Kindness

Shun: Wrong Route

Naomi: Your Story

Kei: Web of Desire

Eiko: As Seen On TV

Asahi: 'Cause I Deserve It

Yurika: Bitter Aftertaste

Riku: Trendsetter

Reina: Death of the Author

Song previews:

Akio: "Come on, fight me, punch me, beat me to death,

Show me how you've really felt about me all this time

There's no one left to support me, no one left to call me "Your Majesty"

I guess it's time for me to admit my defeat"

Aimi:

"Let's have as much fun as we can today, like this is the last day of our lives

I won't ask you to be careful, I know you won't listen to me anyway

Let's make these moments more colorful than ever before

Let's turn today into our best masterpiece"

Shun:

"I know that this is the best option, I don't even need a guide

"Real life"? What's that? Some kind of joke?

I know you will love me in every world and universe

Tell me I'm your everything, let me get the best ending"

Naomi:

"I can't believe I found out about this only now

Why didn't you tell me sooner? Why didn't anyone else tell me about this?

Your life was so short, but so full of pain

Does this mean that I've saved you from all that suffering?"

Kei:

"Congrats, you've fallen right into my trap

Make yourself comfortable, you're in for a long ride

Tying you up, choking and biting

Keep your eyes on me, take those rose-colored glasses off"

Eiko:

"Yay, she did it, good for her! What an icon, am I right?

Haha, thank you, thank you! Serves him right, I know

You've forgiven me, darling, so let me thank you properly

Tell me what you want, I will give you everything and more"

Asahi:

"Give me more, you know that it'll never be enough for me

You want me to repay you? That's funny

Why should you give me so much and get nothing in return?

It's obvious, 'cause I deserve it"

Yurika:

"Please, please, make my world sweet again

This world is so cold, so bitter, if I take a bite, I'll get poisoned for sure

Hey, hey, what are you saying? You want more sugar as well?

Sure, anything for my master! But you're not her, so get out."

Riku:

"Now, listen, I don't like to do this

I'm not the type to abuse my power

But looks like it's time for you to get what you deserve

So get him, everyone, I'll pat you on the head later"

Reina:

"What about my crime? What about my sins?

Well, why don't you figure it out yourself?

I'll let you decide, I'll let you write my story

Aren't you the one who's supposed to judge us anyway?"

Random facts about everyone's song titles, lyrics and doors (spoiler-free. mostly):

The silhouettes from Akio's T1 MV are back!

If you've read Aimi's T1 MV description, you probably already went "Wait, is her song title a reference to that mask from her video?" and you are correct!

Shun's song title is kinda supposed to be a pun? Basically it's a reference to dating sims, character routes and all that stuff, but it's also supposed to mean taking a wrong path in life or something like that.

Naomi's song title was the hardest one to come up with and it turned out to be the most boring one. I am so sorry.

I actually wouldn't say that Asahi's door shows his MV that well, since his video will actually have mostly white and green colors, but I thought that a door like that would look boring, so yeah, I made it more colorful!

"Why is Yurika's door like that?" Oh, don't worry, compared to Asahi's door, Yurika's door shows her MV perfectly fine <3

Riku's door. Riku's door made me go through so much pain, IT WAS THE LAST DOOR I CAME UP WITH. I LITERALLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DRAW. Not even because I dislike his MV, it's just that his MV has this motif that's. Very hard to show as a door. Like all ideas I had just sounded stupid so I decided to go with something like this instead. Also I still hate drawing chains and I used a brush instead.

Yes, Naomi's door just. Looks like a diary. BUT I TRIED TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A DOOR OKAY I TRIED

Reina's door having a more "actor-like" motif probably doesn't make much sense because of the song title, but trust me, it does. And yes, her song title is based on the trope of the same name.

Aimi's song lyrics kinda sound like a sequel to her T1 song though i guess her t2 song can be called that here, but the rest of the lyrics sound more different. And yes, there will be more of their song lyrics in the MV descriptions this time >:)

Kei's song lyrics are actually supposed to be much more sad this time and even the chorus will sound differently in the end.

Reina, please, stop breaking the fourth wall, you're becoming way too powerful.

#also i apologize in case it's hard to tell which characters were voted guilty/innocent like #i tried to do the same thing canongram is doing with them standing in different ways #but i'm afraid their poses don't look that different djdksklsdl #i actually wanted to draw notes on riku's door too but then i remembered that i don't know anything about music #and i guess i could just find random notes online and use them but. t-too much work #i could use the notes as a reference to a song that tells something about riku's character or something but. oh well 😔#(i think i would end up going with something more funny instead)#ah and also yes their album covers show their second image colors too #milgram #milgram oc #milgram project #ocgram #👑prisoner 001: miyagawa akio👑#🌸prisoner 002: hanasaki aimi🌸#💔prisoner 003: ishizu shun 💔#🌿prisoner 004: chiba naomi🌿#🍓prisoner 005: sanada kei 🍓#💎prisoner 006: yoshioka eiko💎#🍬prisoner 007: yano asahi 🍬#🎀prisoner 008: maruyama yurika 🎀#🎸prisoner 009: kuroki riku 🎸#🎭prisoner 010: himura reina🎭

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dark-side-blog3 · 2 months

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From "Phantom Blood" to "Stone Ocean", which JJBA part do you think would be the best to be isekai'd into, and which one would be the worst?

Thanks for sending in the question anon! I've been thinking about it all day and going down a bunch of historical rabbitholes to make my choices (which, after typing out several hours later, I realized wouldn't be much fun for anyone to read).

For me personally, I’d say the best one to be isekai’d into would be Diamond is Unbreakable (part 4), and I think the worst one would be Battle Tendency (part 2).

I give my reasoning below, with some heavy editing, which may make it sound a bit strange. I have a tendency to talk too much, so I've tried to edit it down. It's still a bit long.

++++++++++++++

I can't see any benefit to phantom blood, considering Dio is at full overpower with abilities we never see again in other parts, and everyone else would simply be too easy to force into backing off. Johnathan is easy to manipulate, so is a young Erina. Speedwagon can settle for less than he wants in a relationship if he feels Johnathan will judge him for it. And Zeppeli... Is kinda the only threat, but I can't really fathom what a relationship (platonic or romantic) would be like with him. In any case, not the best, but not the worst.

Battle Tendency has my ass beat. I do not run, I will not run, and what would even be the point when more than half the characters in this arc are superhuman/cyborgs? I can't outwit, lie, cheat, or gross out any of them and expect to survive. Even the ones that wouldn't kill me like Suzie Q just have an impenetrable state of delusion. I cannot win this one. Having a horrible time here. Dare I say, the worst time actually.

Because yes: Vento Aureo is all about the mafia having superpowers, and it's well established that they can be some crazy, creative fucks when it comes to torture and murder. And they should be the absolute worst, because organized crime can do way scarier shit than anyone can in Stone Ocean simply because resources and time aren't hard to get.

BUT! I think since there isn't a world war going on, with cyborg Nazis-- Which is a low bar, but such is life when you overthink-- is what makes Vento Aureo better than battle tendency.

And Stone Ocean is... Bad but tolerable. I'd just try my best to mind my own business, and crumple like a paper ball when someone pulls possessive/obsessive shit. It probably wouldn't even connect in my brain the characters are acting yandere, I would just assume they're doing standard prison things since I got isekai'd into the prison arc.

Now that narrows done the best choices between prt 3, and prt 4.

I'mma go ahead and say it: I'd prefer a small town in Japan to crossing countries and continents.

Diamond is Unbreakable has it all. Modern-ish technology, the original pop culture yandere herself, reliable access to medical care (good luck finding my very specific pills in the middle of a desert), and thankfully: A much smaller cast. Keeping track of all the characters in Morioh? Infinitely easier than keeping track of all the characters in Stardust Crusader. Even if we're including those one-off villains, and random background characters, a-la those twisted wonderland isekai.

Though considering JJBA is a franchise that's mostly manga and anime, it's not likely the multiple characters would become interested in the isekai'd victim, since the mechanics would be fundamentally different. A reader or a viewer isn't really a god, they're more of a prophet, if even that. Or just really good at cold reading someones personality. To continue this tangent just a smidge more, I think if you said you got isekai'd, the only people who would both understand what you're saying and believe you is Toshikazu, and maybe Koichi.

What the hell am I supposed to do being dragged place to place, or sitting in a house for three months? With the tech from the 1980's?

#would you rather ask game #ask game #yandere ask game #yandere jjba #yandere jojo's bizarre adventure #yandere jojo

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secretgamergirl · 8 months

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StarCraft 2's story- Good or garbage?

I'm kind of lurking in the discord of a new RTS that's running a kickstarter right now. I don't know how strongly I want to endorse that because while what they have in the can looks darn good in terms of mechanics and gameplay polish and the people involved seem generally cool, I don't think anything at all is really pinned down otherwise. At the very least though it looks very "I'll make my own StarCraft 2! With blackjack! And hookers!" and I'm down for a game with that flavor of mechanics doing well when made by anyone other than, you know, Blizzard.

It's impossible not to draw comparisons when a game is pretty nakedly marketing itself as "we want to divorce the things we like about this one game from the monsters who made it" of course, and so now I'm thinking about just how powerfully terrible the writing was in StarCraft 2, but I'm not going to go off about it in some poor people who I don't know even have a writer yet's forums. I'm gonna ramble about it on my blog.

Now there's two ways to look at this one. We can look at the story of this game on its own, in a vacuum, or we can look at it as a continuation of the story of StarCraft. It's terrible by either standard, but let's start by looking at it as a continuation first.

Now, I'm not going to jump in here and just slap you with a novella long list of all the flagrant plot holes, direct contradictions, and unrecognizable characters if you actually go through these beat for beat. I've done so in the past. Might have done so on this blog. I mean when StarCraft 2 came out I was absolutely insufferable to everyone around me shouting about these things. Like... I don't even know how you can drop so many balls like that. Maybe they were doing that thing where they didn't even glance at the source material and were just poking around some fan wiki populated with random crap from tie-in novels and comics by people who were just going off on their own things... I do always have to mention though that whether by intent or incompetence they seem to have totally dropped the expansion's story from the canon, at least before 2's expansions came along years later.

But no, I want to focus on just basic themes and character arcs here. So the original base game of StarCraft breaks its story into three arcs, each from the POV of a character from one of the three playable factions in the game. This isn't the greatest structure for maintaining narrative cohesion throughout, especially when one of those factions is the communal hive mind of a big swarm of space bugs who at the end of the day just want to eat everything. And if I'm being brutally honest, there isn't a whole lot to write home about in the back third either. They kinda slipped back into old habits there and it's kinda just the sort of stock fantasy story you tend to get with games. Decadent ancient space elf empire ignores a big obvious problem due to hubris and a frankly incompetent leader, turns out their ancient traditions and prejudices are total BS, go quest for some magic rocks, have your big grand final battle where the hero self-sacrifices to blow up the monsters.

That first third though, and some threads that carry through the rest, have some good stuff going on. We've got a newly appointed magistrate (the unseen unvoiced player) and marshall (Jimmy) on some backwoodsy wild west sort of planet. They're pretty young and idealistic. Space bugs attack, they try to help, trying to help gets them in trouble with their higher ups who don't really buy the seriousness of this space bug invasion. Desperate for anyone to help fight the good fight, they fall in with a fringe militant cult leader (Mengsk) and his right-hand gal (Kerrigan) who he busted out of some government psychic supersoldier program. Jimmy immediately crushes on her, she doesn't reciprocate.

The gang goes along with all of Mengsk's plans, overthrowing the government to gain control of their armies and psychic experimentation programs to deal with these space bugs, and the level of moral compromise this involves gradually ratchets up until everyone finds themselves complicit in Mengsk killing the whole civilian population of the capital by having Kerrigan set up a psychic murderbug attractor and nobody bother's to evacuate her afterwards.

The other two realize they made a really bad choice of who to throw in with, smash up some major military hardware in the process of bailing on Mengsk as he's setting himself up as dictator for life, and eventually throw their lot in with the protagonists in the third arc, just kinda helping out while they do the whole deal of defying the orders of the ancient space elf council, learning the magic arts of the misunderstood outcasts, flying a big spaceship into the main brain controlling the space bugs. Kerrigan meanwhile gets converted into a space bug/human hybrid super soldier which... honestly feels like it's setting stuff up for a big showdown that just kinda never happens.

Still, we've got characters, they've got arcs. Mostly we have Jimmy (and the silent player character) learning the hard way that long-established power structures tend to be too inflexible to be helpful, and you should never trust anyone openly seeking personal power because they will just exploit everyone around them. It all even roughly follows the classic 3 act structure (and I mean, there's literally 3 acts mapping to that too, just that act 2 is all shown from a villain's perspective). In other media, this is sort of just the bare minimum, but games rarely bother with characters growing, changing, or having real setbacks that make them question things along their way.

This was followed up with the expansion, Brood War, which mirrors that same structure. One long story arc for each of three playable factions. Space elves largely doing standard fantasy beats, middle third switching to a villainous POV so radically different the main narrative gets largely put on hold, and some really good stuff with threads stretching through the whole thing.

Here the villain interlude is that it turns out Earth in this setting is run by full-on fascists, they caught wind of everything going on in this region where there'd previously been a big rebellion, and swing back in to clamp down again. They don't interact with the actual protagonists much (generally, they see the space nazis sweeping in and run off to lay low), so we mostly just have them swooping in and quickly mopping up Mengsk's little newfound dictatorship, with the actual story being the relationship dynamic between the guy in charge (DuGalle), his right hand man he's known forever (Stukov), and a local rebel welcoming them with open arms (Duran). Long story short, Duran's actually a double agent and very gradually pits the other two against each other. DuGalle eventually has Duran kill Stukov thinking he stabbed him in the back, realizes that's dumb, ultimately fails at his whole invasion, and in the epilogue kills himself, which if you read the relevant bit of my FF14 summaries, you know is how I like my stories about clear nazi analogues to end.

In the main narrative though, we pick right back up from the big heroic sacrifice with the bummer of a reveal that killing the primary brain of the psychic space bug collective didn't really get the job done, because some of its secondary brains (refreshingly not a concept pulled out of nowhere, these were firmly established to serve the dual purposes of having clear military targets for a giant pile of bugs, and a way to actually have enough characters for dialog exchanges in that third of the story) are trying to put the band back together. In their current disorganized state though, Kerrigan is no longer a semi-autonomous corrupted bug minion, but totally has her free will and sense of self restored, while still being all chitinous and at least somewhat capable of commanding the other bugs.

So as the whole expansion plays out, and the perspective shifts from the space elves doing some real desperate migration and defense because the plan to save their home world from the big bug invasion ultimately failed, through the nazi invasion, and ultimately to the POV of the secondary bug-brain you'd previously played as who'd been buggified Kerrigan's baby sitter essentially, now forced into taking orders from her, we are mostly dealing with this big hanging question of whether she's really good and trustworthy again, or secretly still under bug control, or if she's good for now but any minute that hivemind could properly come back online and take her over again. And of course, Jimmy's all angsty and pining because he never got over that one-sided crush.

While there's plenty of red flags about her being trustworthy over the course of things, the narrative actually manages to play things close to the chest well enough for the ultimate reveal to be a pretty fun twist. She absolutely 100% is fundamentally herself again, it's just that for a series of mostly pretty well-justified reasons, she absolutely hates every other character in the story. Either they've been trying to kill her, they abused and manipulated her, or they've totally objectified her. Or they're nazis who just showed up, who you don't really need a personal reason to want to kill, but just for good measure they're trying to revive and mind control the central bug mind, so, yeah, that's a threat. So at the last minute the whole thing just reveals itself as a big elaborate revenge story with a fairly strongly gendered theme about being denied agency and being othered, where the actually quite clear-headed just ruthless girl wins.

And then, a decade later, we get StarCraft 2. And what's the main narrative of StarCraft 2? We spend the whole time focused on Jimmy, who has somehow gone from this young idealistic biker/space cowboy with thinning hair, talking like a hippie and bouncing around getting in way over his head trying to rescue people from space bugs by just lending a hand to whoever else seems interested in doing that and crushing on this girl Kerrigan who couldn't be clearer about not liking him back to uh... some sort of gruff jaded old former military general with a bunch of old war buddies, a drinking problem, and a full head of hair, cruising around on his big personal battleship saving various worlds from the big space bug threat pretty much singlehandedly, and hoping to rescue his love interest Kerrigan from space bug mind control, with the help of some kind of prophesied magic space rocks you can build a big totem out of. It even completely de-buggifies her in the end, leaving a helpless little naked girl to chivalrously scoop off the ground and carry to safety. P.S. She's white now.

This isn't like, "oh whoops, we forgot the main character lost one of his boots at the end of last season" nitpicking. This is doing complete 180s on the character arcs and backstories of the central characters here. Kerrigan not needing to be rescued from zerg corruption is the ENTIRE point of Brood War's story. Which also establishes there's no longer really a zerg threat of any sort beyond what she personally wants to tell her mindless bug pals to do. And really, even if you want to de-canonize all of that for whatever reason, tacking a "hero saves the girl" ending onto the story we had in the base game of the original StarCraft still just does not work. You're taking a story whose whole theme is "putting faith in the wrong sort of person has serious consequences" and then turning around and going "actually no it doesn't."

And you know, speaking of Mengsk, it's a much lesser point, but StarCraft 2 depicts him like he's some sort of grandiose emperor from some ancient dynasty. Big imperial palace, little silver spoon in his mouth prince of a son who wants to break from his family's legacy, the whole nine yards. Again, this both fundamentally misunderstands his part in the whole central narrative, and everything that happened to him in the expansion (where not very long at all after his big power grab the UED showed up and completely took him apart, and would have executed him but Kerrigan prolonged that to watch him squirm). And when did he have this kid of his? With who? And where is Jimmy getting all these war buddies? He didn't have'em at the start of things or he wouldn't have had to join up with Mengsk. And his war buddies from that war would just be the magistrate and the surviving protoss characters who act like they barely know him here.

So, no. This does not hold up at all as a continuation. How about if we just look at it in a vacuum then?

Nope, still bad. It leans heavily on a backstory we don't get to see. And I don't mean we're missing a ton of StarCraft 1 flashbacks. I mean, we have all these "old buddy" characters, especially Tychus, but we don't get into how they became friends or do anything to show how they still are, so there's no real emotional stakes to where that ends up going. We start with him drinking his life away in a bar over how he misses this apparent old girlfriend, but we never get into the history between them and even the depressed drinking never comes up again past that shot. We vaguely establish some bitter history with this Mengsk guy, but that never really leads anywhere at all. We just kinda have these various vague and generic handwaves at Standard Protagonist Backstory Stuff. Then we actually dive into things, and it's this very episodic affair where you just hop around from planet to planet either showing up to rescue people or showing up to collect a magic rock to help build the magic Toblerone that cures being half-space-bug. And I mean, I already covered how this sort of simplistic no tension, hero always wins, collect all the treasures for victory sort of narrative is the general baseline for game writing, but other people have been trying to move things forward the last couple decades and this is just sitting at the starting line with a princess to rescue.

Now to be fair, the original StarCraft absolutely also had questing around for magic rocks. The protoss have a totally magic rock based electrical grid, the overmind wanted to eat their special magic rocks to make them more vulnerable, the last protoss mission even had a big ancient temple that did an energy blast, but that one just killed all life on the planet outside of its immediate vicinity, which feels like a more grounded thing for an ancient alien artifact to do than... vaporize/purify space bugs and leave everything else alone. And it wasn't scattered in little bits everywhere.

And then of course there's the expansions to StarCraft 2... well the good thing here is they're so divorced from anything in the original game, and even from the base game of StarCraft 2 that you don't have to worry about them messing with the legacy. I mean, OK, Heart of the Swarm has this whole weird reset where we have Kerrigan mostly human again, just so she can go on a big spirit journey and bug herself up again, so that she's strong enough for her ultimate goal of... showing up to take down Mengsk... again. And you somehow end up with a zergified version of Stukov which... OK that's just the weirdest possible way to double back and recanonize that expansion. I'm not sure that Kerrigan and Stukov were ever even really aware of each other's existence, and he died to a bullet through the head in a military base with no zerg anywhere near it. I mean, unless you remember that Duran was a double agent working for Kerrigan. Except the thing there is if you know the plot of the secret epilogue mission you'd know he was ACTUALLY one of the secret ancient aliens who created both the protoss and the zerg just pretending to a horrible bug monster spy for Kerrigan, in turn pretending to be a normal human. And that's a pretty obscure detail I'd forgive someone for missing except that literally in the mission where you're playing as Zerg-Stukov, the whole reason you're playing as Zerg-Stukov is that Kerrigan is busy doing one of those things where the two wizards fire big energy blasts at each other like some kind of tug-of-war with weird phallic overtones, and the big energy phallus she's trying to squish back is FROM Duran, in his revealed-himself-to-be-that-whole-mess glory. They remembered one thing only to get it wrong basically.

But yeah, otherwise that one's just so wild a departure I don't even know what to say. There's just... named zerg characters? They're all like bug centaurs? Because we need people to talk to and they just totally forgot they had cerebrates to get around that problem? Instead of the ancient ancestral zerg being like, psychic ringworms gradually specializing their hosts over generations, here they're like... talking dinosaur puppies who steal each other's "essence" to get huge? Past a point there's so little resemblance to the source material that I can't even be mad. And then the protoss expansion just kinda decides that the whole casting the dark templar out of their society over irreconcilable religious differences is something they've actually done like... 3 or 4 times? So we've got the outcast invisible jedi and the outcast robots and the outcast Darth Vader wannabes with some sort of society-wide ordered queue where there's exactly one person directly ahead of everyone they're allowed to kill to move up in the world. Oh and we're claiming this one robot centaur is Fenix somehow. Despite Fenix being very dead, and this robot centaur neither having that goofy muppet-y orc voice nor the overwhelmingly positive attitude. And he also somehow doesn't notice that he's a robot centaur and not a guy in a life support pod inside a robot spider. They also expect us to believe this little naked twink turned into this pile of steroids and shoulderpads somehow:

Oh! I almost forgot but also there's this thing called the Khala and it's unambiguously this set of religious teachings defining a caste system and such... but then here someone watched Avatar so we're retconning that into some sort of psychic spiritual network you connect to through your hair. You don't plug your hair in though it's just like a wifi antenna. Also it only works if you're part of the main society that keeps throwing other people out none of these other people have hair wifi. Also like the entire deal here is that protoss just are not psychic, it's their one flaw. There's this whole thing with them representing physical perfection but being held back by being a bunch of very religious idiots, while the zerg are mentally perfect what with the hive mind but physically just, like, a ringworm, so the ultimate life form their creators really wanted to create requires the zerg to take over the protoss, or just going screw it and hybridizing the two in a lab. Again, this is one of those really obscure details, it only comes up in the weird backstory in the manual that doesn't even get touched on in the game outside the one secret mission in the expansion... but here we have the same scene both acknowledging that deep lore and totally contradicting it.

But yeah, taken as their own independent stories... well... what stories? Kerrigan wants to be a big buff bug lady so she can depose a jerk she already deposed, and she does that. There are no complications or twists along the way. "Artanis" has to go collect all the protoss the in-group don't count as people, because Satan got into their hair wifi and anyone who didn't just get a haircut turned evil. So he goes and does that. Again, no complications of any sort along the way. Also no real ideological conflicts.

The deal with the robot protoss is some idiots went "hey what if we took all of our greatest most celebrated heroes and we copied their minds into robots in their entirety" and then got super confused that they still, you know, want to be treated as people with rights and such and not just mindless robots. So, you know, simple fix there. Then the... actually just evil ones are... lead by John DeLancey. Everyone likes him. So, problem resolved? And the dark templar are already befriended from before, so nothing's needed there besides going to their homeworld to pick them up. Their uh.... home world everyone already evacuated to and then that was compromised and their leader was replaced with puppet and then everyone maybe died? But yeah they're fine.

So then after all the racism is solved forever by just... deciding not to do that anymore, Kerrigan jumps in some kind of magic pool to transform into a giant naked golden angel, and she does this to become the embodiment of purity of essence we apparently need (which also purges all zerg-ness I guess?) and... look there's no easy way to say this. It turns into Homestuck. That whole convoluted thing from Homestuck where there's this eternal cycle of universes being created by light and dark themed people teaming up to create the next one and in theory kind of operate as it's gods but not if they don't feel like it... we're just ripping all that off wholesale for this complete asspull of an ending. And then everyone shoots space satan in the face. He's a big squid. And then Kerrigan turns back into a normal human girl so she can go on a date with Jimmy. Oh and then there's a third expansion recycling the scrapped plot from that action game they were going to do back on the N64 or whatever but I learned how awful the company was before getting curious enough on that one.

It's just bad. Even by game writing standards, it's bad. And I didn't even get into how bad it is with women in particular. We've got the big doe-eyed scientist who needs to be rescued from the scary bugs and then oh no it turns out she got bit by a bug and now she's turning into one and has to be put down (and no, this has never been how that worked). Then we've got Kerrigan who aside from needing rescuing and purifying and coming out naked has this whole expansion to herself where in theory she's totally in charge and self-directing every decision, but every time you click anywhere the confirmation is just her getting all pouty and whiny? Like a toddler you're telling to put shoes on so you can go to the doctor or something? Like, is it just me? Is it the direction? Is it the voice filter? Was the actress just miserable in the recording booth?

youtube

Then she's got this little bug girl assistant who hangs down from the ceiling, kinda like the adjutant from the original StarCraft, but instead of being all detatched and robotic she's all uwu pwecious? And the protoss campaign just kinda keeps turning women into mouthpieces for Satan. It's... a whole thing.

So yeah, badly written stories all throughout, no matter how you slice it. No continuity, no consistency, no character arcs or tension, just be the big cool action hero, do some getting the band back together stuff, collect some magic rocks and ritual circles, purify this girl here with the big magic circle (3 times no less) and then whatever there's space Satan. It's a mess... did I even have a larger point with this?

Probably not, but it was entertaining I hope? Maybe throw a little cash my way?

#Starcraft 2 #blizzard #terrible writing #game writing #People always object to me pointing out Kerrigan wasn't originally white but oh wow those people have nothing on the bald Jimmy deniers #like people come up and say OK he looks bald in his chat window animations but it's an old game and they couldn't do hair right back then #except no everyone else totally has hair and mostly it looks fine for real there was a conscious design choice to give him receding hair OK #Anyway Blizzard is terrible and nobody should support them in any way just boycott those monsters please

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fioras-resolve · 2 months

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I beat Virtue's Last Reward, thoughts under the cut

-Huh?

-Okay, not huh as in "I don't understand," I get it fully, I mean "Why was this the ending?" I guess I'll have to play Zero Time Dilemma to find out huh.

-This is definitely the kinda thing I'm gonna have to spend several days processing, similar to 999

-I'm thinking a bit about how the ending of a thing can overshadow so much else in a story, like even though I've experienced the rest of the story, I'm struck by just the ending right now.

-I think all-in-all the main thing I'll say is that this game got me to feel things, it got me to love, to loathe, to betray and be betrayed. I don't think a game has done that this well for me in a good while. It's inspiring tbh. Did I mention I'm a game developer? This will definitely influence my work moving forward.

-I cannot fucking IMAGINE playing this game in 2012 and having to wait 4 years for Zero Time Dilemma to come out. Y'all were hanging on that cliff so long, and it was very possible you'd never get up. As an Ace Attorney fan living on hiatus brain, I know the feeling, but also GOD, at least Ace Attorney had a consistent flow of games when I was most into it.

-I am... mixed, on how this game handles returning characters from 999. The big thing right now is This Is Not My Akane. She's basically unrecognizable, even in her past state where she looks the same. I was thinking during that whole ending, "Okay, but why did it have to be AKANE? She's been through this so many times and probably has six layers of PTSD from the thing, so why would she ever agree to this?" And it feels like the answer is a kind of puzzle-box solution that I find really strange all things considered. Like, yes, 999's ending was a mindfuck, but it also genuinely pulled at the heartstrings because like. Yeah, you were saving Akane, and this is someone that we'd built a connection to both as a character and as a player.

-I guess the thing there is that like, that kind of heartstrings ending is a single route of 999, but it's all over VLR. The ending feels like an answer to the mystery, but not to the themes, or the question of "why does this game exist?"

-It feels like Uchikoshi wanted to follow up on the cult success of 999 by making something Bigger, an even more complex mystery with even more paths and even more moving parts. And he got so invested in making this puzzle box cohere that the game ends up sidelining emotional resonance even when it's trying not to.

-I've been talking to a friend of mine who played it a while ago and felt physically ill after the ending, and like. First of all, yeah, different people just have different tolerable levels of bullshit. But also, I feel like plural systems like myself innately have more of a resistance to it because our minds are already fucky enough. Legit, during the reveal of the swap I was thinking "Oh so he dissociated for 45 years."

-Sidenote, Zero Escape feels intensely gnostic, from what little I know of gnosticism. It feels like these games are trying to use science as a conduit/justification for a philosophy I'm not sure if I vibe with. But I can vibe with it for the purpose of storytelling.

-I think I like VLR more than 999? Like, VLR is definitely playing with bigger ideas and following up on 999 in ways I really appreciate. And in general th--

-Midway through typing the previous thing I realized, holy shit, I have a similar relationship to this game that I do to Final Fantasy XIII-2. They're both sequels that follow up on their previous games with blanket improvements to both story and gameplay, but both have endings that leave me confused as to what these games are actually doing besides filling in plot before the next game. And yes, both VLR and XIII-2 are doing amazing things in the beginning and the middle, but the answer to "what is this leading to" for both seems to be "play the next game, fucker."

-I think the thing I'm pissed about is the justification given for the AB game. Like, the mechanic inherently carries interesting themes about trust, self-interest, game theory, etc. The reveals of what everyone else voted are some of the most gripping moments I've experienced in video games. I was ready for this to be going somewhere with these ideas! And then the reveal is that the reason the game was constructed like this was to give you more moments of choice to time travel through. And like, okay, fine, this game's got its higher level stuff about choice and agency and all that, that all works! But for the Ambidex Game to be primarily about making the player make the exact right choices to lead to the perfect ending, it's... Ugh! I thought the point was to explore all these other possibilities, that's why all the different endings!

-I need more time to process this game, but right now my take is this: Virtue's Last Reward is an amazing game until you realize what it is. It's a game that can raise your emotions high and get you truly fucked up. But as you play more of it, it reveals its true focus is this almost mechanical construction of plot. This construction is beautiful in its own way, but it's not what I come to a game like this for. Despite being a game designer who talks a lot about game mechanics and systems, I care so much about story. I want to get attached to characters, I want to see a narrative unfold, I want to have my heartstrings pulled. And the game seems too sure of itself to remember to pull it off.

-Or maybe this is the wrong way of looking at it? Maybe I'm criticizing what it isn't, rather than appreciating what it is. This game isn't trying to be 999 and failing, it's trying to be Virtue's Last Reward and succeeding. And I'm still along for this ride.

#zero escape #virtue's last reward #zero escape virtue's last reward #vlr spoilers

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rxttenfish · 5 months

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Damien x Liam

Zoe x Vera

Shipping meme.

oh, damien and liam is one of those classic monprom ships! i think the very first ship art i saw from monprom was damien and liam? it sounds right, though it has been over five years since i first joined, so that could just be my memory not serving me well. point goes is that it's a prominent one and gotta be one of the most popular of the RO x RO ships, and definitely one that's the most alluded to in canon.

the issue is just... i still don't like it very much. to be fair i like very few m/m ships, and i know this is such a popular dynamic that from the offset it just automatically felt the most like a ship that would get popular, but it's a popular dynamic that i hate a lot. i don't really care for the bully/nerd dynamic nor the things it sets up, and especially with things like it highlighting damien's toxic masculinity combining less than favorably with how much liam openly and directly talks about things like sexism within the game itself. it's just... unfortunate, i think.

it feels like everything just conspired to make me hate this ship. it's liam, one of my favorite characters, with damien, one of my least favorite characters. most of the events with these two involve damien beating liam up or beating him down, and while i would agree that the two are still friends from the events that are exceptions to this rule and how it just plays out when it does happen (liam is... very directly the masochistic type, so it doesn't necessarily strike me as out of character or even a badly thought out part of the dynamic if this is part of the selling point on a friendship with damien for liam), it always feels weird and off-putting to me. i think this probably works best, and i prefer it best, as them being occasional fuckbuddies on top of friends, less as a proper romantic relationship.

zoe and vera is another ship that i've seen before, and i can definitely see it more than liam and damien. though i'm notoriously known for not really caring all that much for zoe as a character, thinking of her as kinda weakly written in comparison to some of the others on top of including tropes i hate, which also makes this complicated for me.

i think vera's also always an odd one to ship with, because there's a duality between her constructed image and how she allows people to approach her, and what she actually wants and needs in a relationship for emotional fulfillment. she needs someone who can make her relax and slow down, provide a way to remove her from her whole constructed image to let her be a person again, but they cannot simply disregard that image and what it means, cannot wholly discard her interests and ambitions and all that she's put work into attaining. there's a careful dance that has to be done to disarm her suspicions and her harshness before she lets someone in, but once they're in they need to be loving and fond and safe in a simple way, an easy way that vera otherwise would deny herself.

it's not that i don't think zoe could do it, could be that person. rather, zoe isn't very careful at much of anything that she does, and she's so overt and sometimes even pushy that i worry more about all of it making vera freeze up, shut down, lock zoe out. vera in comparison is... harsh and blunt, yes, but her personality is multi-layered and multi-faceted where what you see is not always what you are going to get, and being able to navigate the complexities of her moods and emotions are needed. she can be quick to punish and quick to say the exact kind of nasty things upon the slightest infraction that could all too easily hurt zoe. being overtly affectionate and positive can work, as we've seen with her friendship with scott, but it also needs an ability to take the punishment she can dole out, either just not getting it or not taking offense in either manner. this can also certainly be done if the other character is person-smart enough to realize what's going on beneath the surface, like polly. this doesn't feel, to me, like something that zoe can do, rather being more the type to take the first time vera lashes out as deep personal offense and either not recovering from it or taking a much longer time to recover from it.

which, again, isn't to say this can't work! i think it certainly could work well, especially if you're fleshing out a timeline or plotting this out more thoroughly, and after this specific period i could see them being very good for each other, but it's also something that is enough to make me skeptical.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#asks #Anonymous #monster prom #basically vera is bitey #which is exactly the kind of character that i love #LOVE characters who are just. so tightly wound and have so many Issues #that they need someone to perform an intricate dance to disarm their defenses before coming in to love and support them #in the exact way that they need #experienced owners who know how to use a snakehook ONLY. others need not apply.#need someone to love me like caring for a hot snake #also yeah canon loooooooves damien x liam so much. just dropping it in everywhere.

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theinnerunderrain · 2 years

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Are there any writers you like/admire?

Yes! I'm so glad you asked, so here are some writers I greatly appreciate and admire (I didn't proofread this bc I was ranting a lot):

@ddarker-dreams @shumidehiro @bye-bye-sunbird @yandere-daydreams

To be honest, @ddarker-dreams has been such a huge inspiration for me and I've been reading her writings for a while now. I believe I've been reading her writings since 2021 or maybe even 2020 (?) since I remember reading her earlier works for Diluc and Childe. I honestly can't express how much I love her writing, it's just so well written and the way the characters are composed is so - beautifully done. Their personality isn't that drastically different from their game counterparts, and I love how she still incorporates elements of their true character into her writing so it feels like you're actually reading into the character, since I find that many people tend to write a totally different character even though they're writing for a certain person. The writings are just so descriptive and it feels like you're actually diving deep into the character's heart, as if you're truly involved within their world, as if you can vividly see their perspective through her writings. Her writings are just so - beautiful. I've reread certain of her works for a hundredth time already, since they're just so fun to read and I don't think I could ever get bored of them or whatsoever. I really love the way she writes Kazuha and Albedo, the way Kazuha is just so soft makes my chest a bit warm whenever I read any of her works surrounding him. Same goes to Albedo, although he isn't as romantic as Kazuha, it's still great to see his interactions and soft spots for the reader.

Now I could go on and on about how much I adore @ddarker-dreams but I'm going to end up repeating the same thing and accidentally turn it into an essay. But she's a really wonderful writer! Anyone should go check her blog out (even though you should have already or if not, what have you been doing with your life?).

As for @shumidehiro @bye-bye-sunbird @yandere-daydreams, they are very wonderful writers and I would highly recommend for you to check them out if you haven't. Personally I really love the way @shumidehiro writes Capitano and Pantalone, I would even say that her writings are what really got me into them. I honestly never thought I would be captivated by NPCs with screen time less than 45 seconds, but her writings made me fall in love with them. And I mean by as in I'm obsessed with them kinda thing, it's amazing how she's able to get the audience to like two characters that haven't even officially appeared in the game. It's honestly amazing how she builds their characters and makes them unique and charming to read, despite us not having much information on either of them besides the speculated lore from the artifacts. Again, her writings are beautiful and deserve more recognition, and she's a very lovely person too!

@bye-bye-sunbird @yandere-daydreams, they are another pair of phenomenal writers that I greatly love and admire. I don't know if it's obvious but Albedo is one of my favorite characters, or even arguably is my favorite character of all time. But back to the point, the way these lovely writers portrayed him is so - bewitching (?) I was never a personal fan of when writers portrayed Albedo as being a completely emotionless and cold being, when he's more capable of that. Albedo is even implied to be a kind individual within Mondstadt, and we all saw that during the quest where he didn't hesitate to jump after Bennett after the avalanche. Another note, @bye-bye-sunbird's Capitano Agenda is one of my favorite series. Thanks to farafella's writings acting as an introduction to my love for Capitano (!) The way Capitano is portrayed in the Capitano Agenda got me blushing and gushing on a daily basis, and I'm always giggling whenever I read them, it's beautifully composed and makes your heart beat faster so I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in Capitano x reader writings!

@teabutmakeitazure is another writer that I greatly appreciate and love, and I feel like she should be more appreciated and loved for her Childe writing contributions. The way she portrayed Childe makes me want to completely punch him in the face, but I still somehow like him enough to keep reading about him. It's almost like a love and hate relationships (?) And her writing makes you feel like you're actually interacting with him in a sort of way. Tainted is probably one of my favorite writings from her, the way Pantalone is portrayed in this is very unsettling. But you also want to punch him much similar to Childe, but something about him just seems more -smug (?) Then Childe? But you should really check her out for yourself and especially her series involving Childe.

Now, I could literally go on and on about each writer but I had to put a limit on myself so I don't end up writing the same thing over and over again. Because I'll keep saying that their writings are beautiful because I really am obsessed, it would turn into a 2k word essay on how I dearly love them. They are all wonderful writers and I would highly recommend them (!) Especially for Genshin fanfictions since that is my preference but I know that some of them do write for other fandoms as well!

#yandere genshin impact #yandere genshin x reader #genshin impact #genshin x reader #yandere #genshin imagines #yandere genshin au #yandere x reader #yandere genshin imagines #anon <3 #anon replies #anon ask #anon response #anons welcome #anon post #send anons

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mestos · 4 months

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I JUST FINISHED WATCHING M26!

LITERAL CHILLS. My hands are sweating as I'm typing this. Now I can appreciate your art about it even more!

The movie was great but I feel there's something missing but can't point it out. It feels... short?

!!Spoiler for next:

I know it'a fiction but damn, Conan, how could you handle that (probably adrenaline?). And how'd you know it was Haibara who saved you(not that I'm conplaining), it's practically dark under the sea and you have no goggles!

-the fan that's fan-ning

Welcome back anon!!! Sorry this is a bit late, working during holiday season got kinda hectic 😔

Y'know, I get you on the fact that it feels short. I let the movie marinate in my head for a bit, and its been a good couple of weeks now since I've seen it, and I do have to agree that the plot progression from point A to B was kinda disappointingly short.

I think from my POV, as Haibara takes more of a damsel role, it kind of disappoints me that the movie hypes up her kidnapping but she is saved not too long after. I feel this way about the Mystery Train arc too lol that for a Haibara centred movie/arc, she's still treated as a B-plot. And that bothers me a lot.

As a production I get the limits. They can't afford to make too much alterations on the status quo as a long running franchise, which is why they can't quite afford to spend time on already a pretty huge decision (the B.O making direct contact with Haibara after the canon explicitly has moved on since then) so they have to find a way to return back to the floating timeline somehow.

But it's a bit contradictory at the same time, given the fact that they've explicitly established a continuity going on here—Irish & Curacao being explicitly referenced, Akai & Amuro motifs referencing Darkest Nightmare, etc—so at that point, I feel like they could have done much more to adjust the plot with some liberties.

One of the biggest weaknesses about the movies is that they'd market a specific character as a focal point of the movie to grab your attention and make you watch it, only to find out they're actually just the last 5 mins of the movie (The Scarlet Bullet left some scars in me 🥴). This movie surprisingly subverts this where Haibara actually takes a decent amount of screen time and a LOT of plot importance, but it still, mysteriously feels tacked on at the end of the day. I only feel this way because I felt that the movie would jump between intense scenes but not pad it long enough to make lasting impact—Conan & Haibara repeating their iconic glasses exchange was very cute, but the sudden shift between that scene and the next was just off by just a beat imo, for example—and Haibara being saved literally in the first operation Conan goes out to get her felt like the challenge & consequences were a bit too easy. Where was the struggle? Just the suspense? It didn't really feel rewarding to see her get saved, despite the intensity of her kidnapping.

Where I would make the changes? I feel as though the last part of the movie should have interwoven with the rescue in itself. Not that the little coffee exchange wasn't cute, but in the greater picture I feel as though they could've rode on that wave of suspense & thrill and receive a greater payoff than what we had. But, well, that's just me.

Might be asking too much for a detective conan movie 🤪

#neesan asks #sorry anon i took ur ask and made it an opportunity for me to drop my critical review #hope u dont mind. i have a lot of words abt this movie.#also my laptop is broken so i cant even rewatch it.... 🙄until its fixed

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peemanne · 5 months

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Yakuza: Like a Dragon (or just yakuza 7) Review: My Life is Like a Video Game

Hey, it's Pee again! So there's this site called Backloggd that's basically just letterboxd for video games and I've been writing a bunch of reviews there, with a bunch of longer ones for RGG games because of course so. I've got one currently cooking for 0 and in the meanwhile, I've decided to put them up here too, for archiving or whatever. I also get to put silly captions on them now. So with that out of the way, here's the first big review I did: Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Also might as well plug my backloggd in here if you wanna see the rest of the stuff I've done hehehehehe

This review is spoiler-free! Reviewed on Jul 12, 2023 Completed on the Playstation 4 Rating: 10/10 (5 Stars)

(spoilers you're gonna be seeing perfect scores for a bit i can't tell you just how much i love this franchise)

if you play the dub one of the first things you'll hear is the word "cumstain"

Very necessary "review funnies" aside, I adore Yakuza 7. I don't even typically like turn-based RPGS, but Yakuza: Like a Dragon had me in a trance that lasted the entire game and then some. Let's talk about the main gameplay first. Even as someone who doesn't have a lot of experience in this genre, even I can tell it's not exactly the deepest out there. The elements system is either more or less just an extra thing or strictly needed depending on where you are in the game, and in both it just feels kinda tacked on. The environmental system with the characters using the stuff around sounds cool on paper, but in reality it's barely utilized because of either DE physics destroying everything your character touches with their pinkie toe, or because you can't reposition your characters to actually pick it up. This is a shame, since it was a really cool way to integrate a big feature from the beat-em-up games. With these being said though, they're ultimately just small nitpicks. The gameplay is still pretty fun with the MP management, the perfect block system encouraging more active gameplay, and the various buffs and debuffs you can utilize. And the main thing that makes the gameplay here is the sheer spectacle of it all. Ichiban's imagination cranks everything up to 11, and if I'm being honest, that justifies the gameplay switch by itself. Yakuza has always had it's goofy elements, but amplifying it tenfold to differentiate your new protagonist was a great way to introduce this little soft reboot. Thanks to the Job system, there's countless amounts of these different, joyfully imaginative attacks. There's a chef job which has you whacking your opponents with frying pans and throwing kitchen utensils at them. The mage archetype in this game is "Homeless Guy", who uses pigeon swarms and breathes fire by drinking then spiting out alcohol. If you do the business minigame, you gain access to an attack that has you pimp slap the enemy with excessive amounts of cash. And the heat actions are the peak of all of this insanity. I was actually introduced to this series as a whole through a gif of Essence of Orbital Laser with the caption "I don't agree with your opinion". It gets very crazy, very fast, even for this series, and I love all of it. And I must reiterate, I'm not usually a turn-based RPG guy. But I could tell this entire game is just a sweetly written love letter to JRPGs. Even with me only understanding some of the references, I could feel the love that RGG put into this game. And if you're someone who's already an RPG guy, this love letter's gonna get even sweeter for you.

And then there's the story. Yakuza 7 has, in my opinion, the second best story in the entire series, second only to JE. It has a very strong emotional core, which made me cry a few times throughout the story, and finally had me BAWLING at 12:30AM when I played the finale. The themes of fatherhood and found family really come through here. You feel for Ichiban, and you root for him the entire time, as he goes through struggle after struggle. And the characters themselves are amazing, even for the high standards for this series. Ichiban is amazing, but his party members are too. The main 4 bounce off of each other super well and I love their dynamics. And the other 2 party members (no spoilers) have pretty distinct personalities as well which compliment the main 4 some more. Eri is also there, I guess. I like to imagine she's the camerawoman for all the cutscenes. Man, poor girl. The thing that really makes these character dynamics are the little party chats and table talks. They feel like a real friend group with all this really cutely-written banter. I actually just sat down and listened to all the table talks one day and I just had this big dumb grin on my face the entire time. I care so much for these characters just from the main story, but all the side stuff just made me really fall for them.

Let's talk about the rest of the side stuff next. This series is known for it's fantastic side content, but Yakuza 7 goes the extra mile for it. This title's jampacked with both new and old minigames to enjoy. Dragon Kart serves as the "main big minigame" for this one, and it's a fun distraction with all the customization, tracks, and the storyline. The Karaoke selection is strong in this one, which is probably what you wanna hear. Mahjong's not required for completion in this one, therefore I don't have to hear about people complaining about it, which is a plus. I like how the bonuses here for completing the minigames are helpful stat boosts for Ichi, which encourages playing different stuff around the map(s) without it feeling strictly needed. The substories in 7 are pretty good. Not the series' strongest, I'd say, but there's a decent selection here. A lot of them do a good job at characterizing Ichiban, and some of them have the funniest "goofy substory fights" in the series. You can fight a giant out-of-control roomba, a chimp riding a crane, and a "Piss Wizard". The poundmates system is also a really cool incentive for doing them, and has the bonus of reminding you of all the cool stuff you did while you're in combat. Also also, it serves as a "friends we made along the way" thing, which is pretty funny to think about.

Let's finish things off with the soundtrack. 7's OST focuses mostly on electronic music, moreso than the other games. This might be against some player's tastes, but personally, I think it fits really well. It gives a sense of this new generation, and of passing the torch while still keeping some of the sound of the old one. There are some amazing tracks on here that come out of this. To give some examples, Receive You the Hyperactive and Rolling Eyes Fall Down the Dragon Wall are some of the best tracks in the whole series, embracing the past while weaving in a new, crazy spin on it. Tracks like War Maker, Answer From Geomijul, and appassionato are basically rave music. Brutality and Triplet after Triplet are some very heavy sounding tracks which fit their respective boss fights perfectly. Enter the Tiger is a very underrated track and has a pretty unique sound compared to the rest of the OST, almost like it's straight out of a Hong Kong kung fu movie's score. And ism is a beautiful sendoff to it all, and a fantastic final boss theme. The soundtrack's full of bangers, that all fit their respective places well. Fun little tidbit, the track "From Today I'm a Dragon Racer" was meant for a the third fight with Ozaki in Chapter 11 of Judgment, but was scrapped, then reused here, so now the funny racing minigame just has this super badass main theme song.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is just an amazing game, and another fantastic addition to the Yakuza series. This was a wild direction to take the franchise in, but in my opinion, that risk definitely paid off. Fantastic story, fun and imaginative gameplay, lovable characters, a boatload of side content, and a bopping soundtrack. It has it all. I cannot overstate how much I love this game, especially as a fan who's already familiar with the past games. I can't wait for Gaiden and LAD8. It's definitely a great time to be a Yakuza fan right now. Even if you're someone like me who wouldn't consider themselves an RPG fan, I would highly recommend giving Yakuza: Like a Dragon a try.

#rgg #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza #like a dragon #yakuza like a dragon #yakuza 7 #ichiban kasuga #ramblings of the pee-man #game review

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panspy-draws · 2 years

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Troubled was no understatement for Vivian. It was actually spot on. Orphaned at just a few years old, she actually ran from multiple foster homes before actually being able to get away, where she lived on the streets since she was ten. Her only way to survive was crime. Mainly theft, but; it didn't mean she didn't have run ins with hostiles. She wasn't big like anyone else, and had taken a few beatings before. She adapted, used her size to her advantage, using their own against them as well. After a particular run in she was nicknamed Great Grey, after the Great Grey Shrike birds, known for their brutal take downs of larger prey. Though she fought, she never killed, and was against harming someone who didn't wrong her or deserve it. During a normal night she had stolen a few items, mainly food, before coming across someone she recognized threatening an innocent woman. She dropped her things to swiftly (without hesitation) sent the guy to his ass. More goons showed up and she was quickly outnumbered. That was until Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) showed up. Together the two of them wiped them out and made sure the victim was safe and unharmed. Babs obviously knew she was a criminal, but took an empathetic kindness to her. Like most of her family, she was an orphan and only wanted to survive, did good deeds when she could. After lending her a couch to sleep on and an extensive call to Bruce, Barbara took her under her wing like Bruce had done to Dick, Jason, Tim, and now Damien. It took getting used to, having a home after so long and an actual way to do some good for a town that she called home.

Living in Wayne Manor she became another one of his adopted children, but mainly trained with the other batkids, mainly with Batgirl. Although she didn't want to be remembered as a criminal, it was a large part of her childhood. As remembrance of those times, she called herself Shrike.

After a few years of training it was revealed she was born a meta-human, but the power was so miniscule that it went largely unnoticed. She has the ability to probe one mind at a time and alter their vision slightly. It takes great concentration to do any of it, and usually only uses it to create openings in combat. Dick often compares the sensation to being hit with early scarecrow toxins back in the day.

____

This is really all I have written down so far, I actually really want to go further into the story and what she struggles with the most and even come up with a villain that she focuses her attention of like Batman & Joker, or Superman & Lex Luthor. I hope you enjoy it! (Sorry if I missed you dropping their real name, I just improvised cause I love the name Vivian, or Vi for short.)

Okay dude that's AWESOME! I hadn't actually had a name for them yet since it was mostly a self insert oc and its weird coming up with names for characters that are like.. you, but you dont want to use your own name lol. (although my name does have a v in it so its kinda funny that vi/vee could be a nickname for me if anyone ever came up with it). It's so cool to see other peoples interpretations of a character, especially when the backstory work I've put in i've only really kept to myself. If you want, I think i've uploaded pictures of the spinoff villain character, Butcher, which is who Shrike would be if they never became a hero.... maybe that could inspire you a bit ;). Other than that, its a very quick and small detail but I have actually decided that Shrikes pronouns are they/them because they're a self insert. But this is your story and essentially your character building so you don't HAVE to change it but it was just something that bugged me a lil, but you wouldn't have any way of knowing so its no big deal 😅

#but this is awesome!#i have my own backstory figured out for them but i hadnt even toyed with the idea of being a metahuman or even an arch nemesis

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harimenui-forever · 2 months

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I do not wish to be mean, but like, I feel like the format of tmagp is making the horror lesser for me... some stories are too quick for the fear to sink in (first episode) or like it happens at the very end so you don't really get much of it and it just kinda leaves you there (episode 5), episode 6 is very silly to me and like I think it knows that? But that doesn't make it scary and maybe it doesn't want to be idk.

Episodes 2, 3 and 4 are good. They're not necessarily scary, the bit with the tattoo in episode two is kinda silly? But the face thing is good. It's shocking, a different kind of dread but sure.

Episode 3 made me frustrated at the guy, then I realised he couldn't actually leave and like yeah the idea of this is kinda creepy and the acceptance and just I dunno how to put it, it works, but it did not make me shiver with fear yknow?

Episode 4 was fun, probably my favourite, but it's not very scary. To me it makes up for that with the story though, the themes, the morality and the time it takes to go through the story. It adds gravity to it. It's a fucked up lil episode with a lot of story and character

All in all, I have a feeling that the horror is not as much of a focus as it used to be in tma, which might be great for other people, but I've always appreciated the horror of tma, even when I liked the characters and the story. And I understand comparing the two is a bit strange, but... I understand that the "statements" are different here, they're not from scared people who survived something weird/horrible, they're from people who are deep into becoming something else (?), from people who have not survived most likely and, just like for them, there's not enough time for us to be afraid before it's over. And there are strengths to this approach too, I just...

I've relistened to the Anglerfish, because I was scared that perhaps I've just grown numb to the horror, but no. I could still feel the shivers run down my spine, I could still feel the dread building with every new detail, every new small thing that was off and just... terrifying.

The first episodes are so widely different when it comes to horror I think. And it's hard to put my finger on it, but I feel like the role of the investigation afterwards is missing and with it some of the horror.

It feels unfair to compare an entire episode statement with just one statement from the two in tmagp ep 1, but hear me out.

The reveals in mag1 are just very well done. You have the setting being creepy, you have the line being repeated and reenacted in that weird tone twice, before the guy notices on the 3rd time that the figure is not opening its mouth. You have the swaying pointed out multiple times and each time it feels a bit more extreme, weirder, the simile used to describe it, the anglerfish, is so vivid and creepy and RIGHT. When he realises its feet are not touching the ground. The weird way it disappears. AND THEN, because he survived you get the reveal of him finding cigarettes there the next day and connecting them to the missing person. That could have been him. But that's not all, sure Jon is a little bitch, but the reveal of more disappearances adds more credibility. And THEN the cherry on top is the photo, the hand (?), beckoning.

Now let's look at the email from tmagp1. It is very short. There is a set up yes, but the reveal is just...immediate, it lacks the suspense. Like the concept is scary. But the laughter, the laughter is just...sooooo, it's not that scary. Just, it's harder to describe what's not working here than it is to describe what DOES work in mag1. I guess I could focus on the absence of things...

Man, I do sound like an old man swearing at a cloud, my friend would laugh at me and call me 240 years old, I am never beating the allegations

Anyway, in short, I know this podcast aims to be different. I can see it. The character interactions, the more intrusive listening in etc. However, in my humble opinion, the horror gets the short end of the stick here. I wish it didn't

#I am not tagging this but yeeeea #of course it's only beginning and there will be more to the story but #just my thoughts really #tmagp neg

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bahamutgames · 11 months

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AFTERTHOUGHTS - ROUNDUP ROUND 3

April + May 2023

NON Nintendo Switch Online Edition!!

Alright kind of a slow day today but I have a BUNCH I still would like to get done. So I'm taking a small break by writing some thoughts on some games I beat recently. I haven't been doing a TON of gaming this month cause I've been busy doing work or getting screwed over and in my down time I've been going out a lot, hanging out with friends, and not playing too much. I am currently chipping through my next RPG and I'm ALMOST done with it. As well as random small itch games I've been playing and tweeting about on my twitter. But hopefully when I break through this current RPG and finish up some work I can play more stuff more regularly soon.

Pizza Tower (January 26, 2023) - PC

So, something you may not know about me is that I am actually a HUGE Wario Land fan. Like, a MASSIVE Wario Land fan. I've played them all, and I also played and adored Wario World and Master of Disguise even though they're not exactly the same. But yeah I fucking love Wario. And lately I've been really really excited with the wave of Wario Land-likes we're receiving! This and Anton Blast (which looks SO amazing I seriously cannot wait.)

I wasn't able to pick this game up right away but thankfully I had a friend buy it for me which means the absolute WORLD to me for real. And I gotta say, I had a great time with it! It feels awesome to play, gameplay feels wonderful and additions to the formula like combos and parrying is SUPER cool! And of course traditional Wario Land fare like form changes and the general moveset feels great and while I generally am not crazy about beating levels as quick as possible I feel like the moveset is really good for speedrunning in a way that makes it feel nice to speedrun even for someone like me who isn't into it much.

Of course the sprites are so cute, I love the art style. The characters are cute, I appreciate there being multiple playable characters too that was also a great addition. Enemies are cute, the levels look great and colorful. Bosses are all very cool looking and REALLY fun to fight for the most part. The soundtrack is great, I loved the story. I loved the format and the context behind finding stuff like toppins and paying for boss doors. It's all very cool and feels like a wonderful return for Wario Land.

It's small but I also appreciate Peppino himself for being an old middle aged man with body hair as the cool protagonist who gets shit done and like has a huge hero moment at the end where he saves everyone. I ADORE Warioware but a big issue I had with it is that it kinda removes Wario's coolness factor and his strikingly heroic moments from Land and just makes him... yknow... a greedy fat guy and that's IT. So it's nice to see a fat character being more than that again.

It's been a bit since I played it so I don't remember a ton of my complaints. Off the top of my head the biggest issue I had was that the boss fights are WAY too long. They last forever, you have to do them twice. And then they end on a minigame where if you fail you have to do the whole fight over. It's so annoying and makes each one a total chore where otherwise they'd be REALLY cool. Also I know they're not meant to be scary but I did not care for the screamers in that one level at all. They did not do it for me lol. Lastly, this might be a weird way to start this post. But I know this game had a racist enemy design in it. If it's what I think it is, it's a stereotype of indigenous cultures which has been removed from the game from my understanding. But still. This sucks. It's something we see in indie games WAY too often. Too many indie games feature enemies like this. And I know a lot of old AAA games had this too. But it's not okay. And it's something that really really baffles me that indie devs STILL think it's okay to have enemies like this. Stop it.

Aside from that, great entry in the Wario-Land like genre. Was a blast to play (an Anton Blast aha) while also adding a ton of original stuff to make it stand out. I hope to see more and I hope its popularity leads to even MORE Wario Land type games and more games with cute scribbly art styles.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (March 31, 2023) - PC

A much smaller april fools game that also took me a bit to play. But DAMN am I happy I did. This game was a TON of fun! You never see fake games made for April Fools that are like... yknow... actual games you can play! And this was such a cute and fun little game I really shocked by how much of a good time I had with it!

Usually I'm not super into point and click stuff but man this game was SO cute it didn't bug me at all. Fantastic writing, tons of Sonic characters who aren't written to be jokes (I love seeing this becoming a trend again), fantastic and silly references to the whole series (THERE WAS A FUCKING SONIC RIVALS REFERENCE!! THAT'S SO COOL!!!!!) The art is FANTASTIC, the music is nice, I was really surprised at how good and fun the story was? Like towards the end it becomes a real story with real stakes and a pretty moving ending which was SUPER cool to see! Also it had actual gameplay scenes with real timing and platforming? Which was SO surprising but totally welcome!

I really don't have much negative to say? It was free and it's a small april fools joke that ended up being really cool! I loved the outfits for each character (rouge is so hot) AND it introduced a new super cute and hot Sonic Milf! So I say, it's pretty fucking amazing, actually!

Rocket Knight Adventures (August 5th, 1993) - Sega Genesis

This was a game I didn't really have any intentions of playing, but a friend of mine has been asking me for a bit now to check it out. And after playing Ristar and realizing I've been missing out on a TON of Genesis games my whole life, and a total rando telling me I NEED to play this game. I just snapped, I couldn't not. How could I ignore it after all this praise? So here I am! After finally playing Rocket Knight Adventures!

And my verdict? Yeah it's pretty cool! I like the world it takes place in, I like the character designs (Rocket in particular is VERY cute), I like the sprites and music. This is all around just a pretty dang fun game! I liked the gimmick of being able to charge up your jetpack and dash around. And I feel like it does honestly make pretty good use of it unlike Ristar and Pulseman which I talked about before. My only real complaint is that I think the final bosses kinda suck and are a bit of a chore. But I am a sucker for like, edgy rivals who use the same powers as you.

I will probably check out the sequels when I get the chance, though I've heard they're not SUPER great. I would love a new entry eventually that really goes hard into the rocket stuff and maybe has even more shmup levels cause of course I loved those aha.

Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (December 14, 2001) - Gameboy Advance

And last but not least for now, Super Mario Advance 2! If you know anything about me, you know that Super Mario World is one of my all time favorite games! I ADORE the SNES original as in addition to just being a great game, it's actually the first game I've ever played (or at least have memories of playing). And despite the fact the first time I beat Mario 2 & 3 was with the GBA remakes, I had never tried the remake of Super Mario World on GBA until now! But I gotta say, yeah these are great ports!

Super Mario World is just great on its own so of course it's a good game. I still love the sprites, they're washed out here because of the lack of backlight way back when it came out. But I think the new color scheme is nice and still works. I LOVE the music still and it sounds really nice in the GBA soundfont. And there's a lot of really good changes here too! Stuff like a serious playable Luigi, a more serious exit tracker, and having the Dragon Coins function more like Star Coins in NSMB are all GREAT changes that should have been there from the start. But even stuff like additional cutscenes, voice clips (which I LOVE), small sprite fixes on Peach and Yoshi, and the cute fun way enemies roll away with funny sprite rotations when Yoshi spits them out are ultimately not needed but are great changes!

I sort of rushed through this playthrough but I mean, it's Super Mario World, so I wouldn't be surprised if I end up playing more of it and play more levels that I didn't give a shot soon! This is a great port and I still continue to LOVE the Mario Advance games so much! I'll probably have to play it more to see but if I ever get around to 100% completing it I could see this potentially being the ideal way to play Super Mario World which is CRAZY to think about! Good port!

#2023 #thoughts #roundup

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koreandragon · 2 years

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Lol there's two anon eve asks!! Which is great cause that means more people are watching the show (I'm the first anon who sent the one about rael and eunpyeong)

But I realized I didn't say everything I wanted to cause is it just me or do I REALLY not like yoongkyeong. Like idk I just really don't like that man's face?? I also don't think he's phenomenal as an actor, I've literally seen him make 1 expression this entire time aksjsjd. Especially since he's up against two stunning actresses? I mean yes we hate sora but you have to admit the actress is doing an amazing job, especially with her meltdowns this last episode.

And speaking of amazing actresses, I cannot shut up about seo yeji. Rael is SUCH a complex and interesting character because even though it's a revenge story (which has been down hundreds of times) yeji is perfectly balancing the confidant and traumatized parts of her character. We see her fail in her plans when yoonkyeong rejects her (twice!!) but she's always able to come back around. Idk it's so hard to explain

Also … I thought we were gonna have more confirmation about what happened to Rael that night. Honesty I have a theory that she was raped, but the show hasn't confirmed that yet. I don't wanna say I hope she was because that's such a horrible thing, but it really would add to her trauma and there's some signs (her first reaction after seeing the dude who beat her father being a panic attack, the deal with her husband that he doesn't touch her when she's vulnerable, and her self harm habit on her thighs is often done by sexual abuse victims)

And last but not least, these last two episodes really gave me faith in rael ending up with eunpyeong. Rael has expressed many times that she's uncomfortable with bedding him, and only in it for the revenge. Plus there was SO MANY scenes with eunpyeong where he was either watching her or caring for her, their romance makes so much more sense because literally he would fall for HER, where yoonkyeong is falling for seonbin. Also rael and eunpyeong have wayyy better chemistry

Did we also see boytoy these episodes??? I didn't think he was the same as yoonkyeongs driver that sora fucked on her birthday, but if we was I'm just blind. I miss mr toy and I hope he's doing ok 😭

i'm getting so many asks right now and i have to get ready for my brother's graduation so excuse me if this is a bit rushed dksjsl

no but for real i actually looked up that actor because i was like did he act in anything substential or highly rated cause his acting is so underwhelming it's crazyyy. but then again this could be blamed on the director for directing him to act like this. he's definitely being outacted.

i'm not going to comment much on yeji, she's a great actress i'll give her that, she really does bring that dangerous femme fatale role extremely well and it suits her so much.

i didn't actually think of that but that could be true like every time she sees that guy she has a very visceral reaction and has a panic attack almost every time so maybe something else happened besides her dad getting killed.

she said she doesn't like to sleep with the enemy but i kinda got the impression that she's rushing things so much suddenly because she's afraid she'll feel compassion and fondness for him if she keeps delaying it so she has to strike now. rael being vulnerable and crying in front of eunpyeong while he was hugging her did give me a bit of hope and he already indicated that he has feelings for her ("my heart beats for you") so i'm really hoping they're going to go in that direction

#ask #anonymous

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osakiharu · 2 years

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STUDY DATE WITH THEM !!

content : gender neutral reader, fluff, based these at the reader's house/dorm, ran being ran, not proofread because i’m lazy

characters : sanzu, rindou, ran

notes : i wrote most of this when i should've been revising for an exam tbh </3 anyway i'm definitely gonna do a part 2 to this at some point i lauv the idea of study dates <3

˗ˏˋ SANZU

- as much as you’d love to have sanzu’s company whilst studying for an exam that you really could do without

- he‘s basically no help. annoying.

- he's serious when he says he'll try not to annoy you, he just doesn't try for very long

- he said he was gonna study with you but he ends up not doing anything

- 'your pretty face distracts me :(‘

- can't help you study or revise either because he hardly knows how to do it himself so he decides to lie down on your bed, thinking he could just nap so he doesn’t annoy you

- lasts about 5 minutes before he starts wandering around your room... you can hear him picking things up, fiddling with them and then putting them back

- he's not exactly doing anything wrong... but it's the little sounds he's making here and there that make you want to crumple up the piece of paper you're holding and lob it at him

- sanzu doesn't know what an attention span is. doesn't really have one unless it's something he's interested in

- would probably say that you were that something if he got asked 🙄

- comes and leans over you, resting his chin on your head and arms on your shoulders, once he's made his way around your room

- kisses your head as if to say sorry for being annoying even though he didn't know that he was

- covers a part of your notes with his hand

- “w's this about, hm?”

- catches you off guard because you’ve been putting off revising that one bit because you don’t understand it properly

- “i haven’t done that part yet… i really don‘t get it.”

- takes your notes off you and starts asking you to tell him about everything you have on the exam and telling you if you miss anything or get anything wrong <3

- okay maybe he isn’t useless when it comes to studying, sometimes he helps without realising !!

- he gets bored towards the end of your notes though and you can tell he isn't actually listening to you - just looking at you with a tired goofy smile

- “c’mere... come cuddle, you’ve done enough, angel.” does the little grabby hands :(

- you were going to go back over the bits you couldn't remember but... anything for sanzu

- lots of kisses all over your face and him telling you how clever you are <3

- he's nice to have around sometimes i guess

˗ˏˋ RINDOU

- you both have an exam </3

- rin doesn't really care though. never does. he'll probably do well anyway

- at first you're both putting the effort in and helping each other with notes and there's pieces of paper all over the bed

- he keeps looking over at your notes from class because they're better than his and some of his don't make sense because he kinda give up writing and settled with a few random words thinking he'd know what he meant when he looked at them a couple of weeks later

- has his head on your shoulder whilst you do your little flashcards and trying to answer them faster than you

- sighs and smiles whenever you beat him to it

- forgets the answer to half of them though because he's had a busy week and just wants to relax with you

- swears to you that he knows them (he does) he just can't be bothered

- had enough :(

- rin's clever he just doesn't try hard enough (gives me burnt out kid vibes... that's for another time though)

- gets annoyed with his hair when he's trying to write out some extra notes because the longer parts keep falling in his eyes or won't stay behind his ears

- "can i tie it up for you, rin?" "no."

- you do it anyway <3

- carries on with his studying whilst you get a couple of ties and start putting it up

- put it in two little messy ponytails and half of his fringe is still out

- when he looks in the mirror he goes like >:(

- not happy about it. he won't take it out though because you look a little too pleased with your work

- he doesn't revise for much longer afterwards because he always gives up pretty fast when it comes to revision

- "i'll settle for a b." you know he wont

- has his head in your lap whilst you finish studying, thinking of a film for you two to watch

- but then you played with his hair and he fell asleep </3

- rin had a busy week and just wanted to nap with you okay

˗ˏˋ RAN

- now listen.

- mr boyfriend ran has a big brain. a grades every single time.

- you don't even know how he does it because you never see him actually revising and preparing for exams, he just shows up to them and comes out like it was a walk in the park

- however, you have seen him do homework whilst your professor was collecting it because he didn't feel like doing it at any other time

- so obviously when ran found out you had an exam he decided he was going to help you with it <3

- it's in a different subject though so he couldn't basically give you all the answers :(

- he put music on because he said it helps him focus better an then took up half of your bed by lying on it

- lanky ran :/

- you made lots of little flashcards, too many according to ran, but he went through them with you anyway <3

- he was smirking the whole time because you knew everything too

- sometimes you even answered him before he finished asking the question

- "sweets, you know all of these, you'll be fine... you don't need to do all of them."

- "yes, i do." you knew he was just getting kinda bored, there's a reason why he didn't pick that subject

- ran said he was making it too easy for you and that he needed to make sure you could answer them even if there were some distractions...

- at first he just did little irritating things like clicking his fingers or tapping a pen that he had on one of your books

- and then he sat up and sat just slightly behind you... but you didn't pay much attention to him because that's what he was testing you on as well as your questions, right?

- but having ran tap a pen on a book and having ran kiss your shoulder every time you get one right whilst mumbling "mhm, well done, angel." are two different types of distraction

- you could hear his smirk whenever he asked the next question too

- at some point he moved over a little to the base of your neck

- "you strugglin' yet, pretty?"

- "yes." "no."

- asshole :/

- but you got through them eventually !!

- ran was a little annoyed that you didn't give in to him but hey, at least he was right about you knowing all of them

- you know damn well he made you kiss him straight after

- no more revision for tonight ig

reblogs appreciated <3

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