#dev is much more likely to ignore that empathy

[just-horrible-things]

There’s a bunch of different ways it can go from here. Most of them are pretty grim.

One is that Anders shoots her. He’s very on the fence both emotionally and intellectually about whether it’s the right choice. On the one hand, she reminds him of himself and the other numbers and his impulse is to help her. On the other, she’s a torturer, she’s everything he hates, she hurt Alex, he despises her. On the one hand, executing her would be fair for her crimes and a clean death would be a mercy. On the other, how can the Resistance take her life as well after committing an atrocity like this against her.

If he doesn’t kill her, Anders helps her. If he helps her, the only reasonable outcome from there is to let her go. Keeping someone prisoner indefinitely is almost as antithetical to his ideals as torture. 

How much help Anders gets her and how long she’s therefore in his care, is essentially up in the air. The situation is too close to Anders’ trauma and he’s making erratic choices. 

At the lower end, he still almost certainly gets her a (paid) healer at least once – enough to fix her ribcage before it kills her, enough to stabilise the worst of the displaced breaks. It’s a lot of damage and, although a paid healer will have more magic available than a half-starved Alex, one session of healing still leaves her extremely injured and helpless.

At the upper end – perhaps he’s thinking more about the cost to the kept healers who will undoubtedly be made to heal her otherwise – she’s his prisoner and patient until she’s more or less mobile and capable of simple self-care tasks. Still a lot of healing, natural or otherwise, to go, but at a point where she would heal naturally.

Alex wants to help, if/when he finds out what happened, because his sister did this and he feels culpable. He probably isn’t allowed. If he doesn’t see how bad it is, it’s easier for him to accept that maybe he doesn’t have to be involved.

Either way, when Anders decides he’s done enough, he leaves her somewhere out of the way with a burner phone, and either calls emergency services for her (if she’s not able to use a phone yet) or lets her do it herself. 

Ariadne goes to hospital, she gets debriefed, she gets some kind of mandated therapy (that honestly is probably more like reaffirmation of patriotism, self-sacrifice, and hatred of magic). Her family get a confusing letter of “sorry, the notification of death we sent you previously was actually in error”.

She tries to go back to work as soon as possible. She can’t really handle interrogations anymore and she’s too injured and traumatised for field work at least for a long while, so she gets a desk job. She finds it a bit tedious but it’s okay. In some branches of possibility, she does quit. In most, she sticks at it. The organisation is her support network, she doesn’t know what else she’d do.

She hates warlocks and magic more than she ever did. Why they changed their minds after torturing her and nursed her back to health and handed her back, she’s very confused about. Her lead theory is that Anders Reyan is actually just crazy. (Not too far off the truth.) But the fact remains that they tortured her pretty horrifically.

This scenario lacks the absolute undeniable self-sacrifice of Alex running off with her, so it doesn’t have the same impact on her views. She’s still a prisoner. Anders is spending resources on her, yes, but not at great personal cost. Her caretaker is not someone she personally hurt. And Anders did hurt her before he “changed his mind”. She’s left confused, not convinced she was in the wrong.

The government uses her torture as propaganda, evidence of the crimes of the cruel Resistance terrorists. X-rays of her skeleton are in the papers. She hates this, but as a loyal government agent she cannot protest. 

Taryn is in so, so much trouble. Anders is absolutely furious with her. In the immediate aftermath he screams at her, tells her she’s just as bad as their enemies, and makes her wear anti-magic cuffs because she cannot be trusted with magic. She’s devastated. Not least because she sort of agrees with him.

Daniel –  her mentor and almost-parental figure is angry too, if in a much more controlled way. Not only was it an awful thing she did, it was also thoughtless. The resulting propaganda has done serious damage to public perceptions of the Resistance. She is stripped of her semi-formal position as next-in-line to lead the Resistance in the event of Daniel’s death. She doesn’t want it anymore anyway, she’s appalled with herself.

All in all it’s a pretty dark timeline. Not the worst, but nothing is improved by things going this way.

There are other small-likelihood scenarios that branch off of this timeline, but I’ve written quite an essay anyway so I’ll stop here haha.

[h-worksrambles]

The Arches build 7 is finally public and I just finished rereading the whole game, so screw it. Spoiler heavy rambling about the new update below:

-Howly pulled an Undertale and went meta on us in the best possible way, as Cameron’s reaction to the town allows him to see different possible futures. In short, he beomes a VN player, save scumming between the outcomes of his choices. Oh were you wondering why Arches is the only Echo game without choices? Well here you go! They’re here, but we’re not the ones making them. These games never cease to impress me in how well they take advantage of the medium. - This is even more fitting when you consider Cam’s character arc. Much of Cam’s character conflict is built around his self loathing and the belief that he doesn’t deserve happiness. He’s well on the way to recovering from his addiction, but he still feels deep shame over it. He feels he shouldn’t have survived while his mother died. He escaped an abusive relationship but convinced himself he was just as bad as his abuser. And his relationship with Devon is dogged by a fear of rejection. A belief that he’s a freak who will ruin Dev in some way. And yet, when given that final horrifying vision of his own death in the mines, Cameron chooses to act. He makes the choice to live. -Building on Cam’s visions, it kills me that Cam’s ability allows him to see everything, to understand even the minds of the people that have hurt him. In a series all about fractured psyches and traumatised people trapped in their own heads, unable to relate to reach other, the eleventh hour superpower that ends Echo’s multi-century spannig history of violence and tragedy is cosmic levels of empathy. Call me pretentious, and I get that it’s largely the result of drug addled disassociation, but I think that, as a message, is goddamn beautiful. -Brian’s demise was a cathartic end for such a monstrous villain. I enjoyed Cam’s rumination that spelled out what Brian represents at the end of the day, something I’ve already talked about here before. He’s emblematic of the most harmful kind of selfishness. Of falling into the same loop of self destructive coping mechanisms that make him a danger to himself and even moreso to others. Time after time he chose his own selfish pursuit of pleasure over basic human empathy. He refused to stop moving in circles, and so became a walking symbol of the town itself. And as such, he dies with the town. -The actual fight with Brian was viscerally horrifying. Arches has consistently been perhaps the most suspenseful and dread-laden out of all the Echoverse games. And this may just have cemented it as their scariest game to date. My heart was in my mouth the entire time and Cam’s last fake-out vision left me in a state of almost sickened shock. -Ending things in the mines was such a perfect choice. The place where Brian killed his victims, the place where Flynn died and was swallowed up by the town itself to become the Socket Monster. The place where Mary Applegate and others like her were killed by whatever was lurking down here during the events of The Smoke Room. It’s the place where all of this started when Sam killed Jack. Where the tragedy of the town has kept repeating, and now it’s where it all ends. -Devon and Cameron both come to terms with the people they’ve lost in the past. Devon, who has blamed himself for the death of Lupita, accepts that he can’t keep chasing shadows to run away from his guilt over her death. Fixating on the paranormal nearly got his friend and the man he loves killed. So he resolves not to go in circles, not to repeat the same mistakes. Not to ignore the warnings before it’s too late. And so, he saves Cameron. Cameron comes to terms with his feelings over his mother’s death, and accepts that he loves and misses her. And I love that Arches does this without confirming one way or the other the existence of any kind of afterlife (outside of Echo’s own supernatural influence that is). Chasing after ghosts out of grief was what got them into this mess after all. Instead, it’s really down them to decide how they feel about the people they’ve lost and so make their own closure.

-Just as many of us predicted, Arches delivered on its foreshadwing through the motif of half-circles splendidly. The arch goes from a symbol of Cameron’s inescapable trauma to an image of breaking cycles and moving on. The final scene drives this home.

...He found her arch. And she was right. It did save him...

Arches might well be the most oppressive, suspenseful and intense visual novel Echo Project has made yet. It got so dark that before now I couldn’t blame someone for being exhausted by it. For being worried that it would just be sheer misery right up to the end. But Howly played the long game. He went to dark places, in order to tell a heartbreakingly beautiful story about overcoming grief, breaking cycles of abuse and self-harm, and of the role selfless love can play in helping us become better people. And as a companion piece to Echo, a story in many ways about broken people who struggled to healthily love one another, that feels so fitting. Cameron and Devon are the absolute purest couple. This story has been devastating and terrifying but goddamn if I’m not invested in these two and their love for each other. That final scene was more hopeful than I could ever have dared wish for. Even with the darker implications of Cameron’s final vision. They’ve been through a lot and this is going to leave deep scars but they made it. Together. When that final build comes, I just hope Howly finally lets them rest. They deserve it so, so much.   

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

You wanna know what might actually kinda make me the most annoyed, at least as specifically a fan of Dimitri and Claude's dynamic (as a shipper or otherwise)? GW very clearly just makes Claude the Very Obvious Bad Guy to Dimitri's Very Obvious Good Guy. Like, gone is the equal but opposite forces of good that attract each other and let the other grow as better people, now I'm seeing people basically describe Claude as an evil yet annoying gnat that won't leave Dimitri alone (due to some lines they say to each other in GW).

Their relationship in 3H was so much more equal man! They both did questionable things to others and wanted to better themselves in different but similarly impactful ways, they both always did the best they could do for the other (unless they were explicitly in a fractured state of mind), and they had similar struggles that manifested themselves in drastically different ways. But now instead of that we get Claude being EEEEEEVIL (and dumb as rocks) and Dimitri being The Good One. Plain black-and-white relationship, no nuance, nothin', just another boring Bad Guy Flirts With Good Guy And Good Guy Ignores It.

So glad for fanfiction. I can either read others fusion dance the few good aspects of Claudelgard and slot in them in some of the holes of 3H!Claude to create the Claude IS is too cowardly/inept to write themselves, or try to do it myself. Not like I can possibly do any worse than this shit lmao

(sorry for the rant but MAN do I again pick all the gods and thank them for allowing this entire game to be noncanonical lmao)

Dimitri definitely benefits from having the events of Houses in our peripheral; it makes his decisions to remain levelheaded more potent, because we know how bad it can get for him. I don't understand, though, why the devs say this is supposed to be a "everything is worse without Byleth AU" because Dimitri . . . doesn't go into isolation and has his friends and doesn't have his kingdom ripped out from under him. It's not that he doesn't suffer, mind; poor guy's bring put through the wringer. But it's like you said, and there's a duller edge to his character. There's no bad deeds, no darkness, to make his goodness stand out.

And it's like. Schemer with a smooth moral compass and heart of gold meets gentleman who battles with his mental health and is crushed by his empathy. They're both good, and in a shitty world they're capable of bad, to the detriment of themselves, but they're best when they work off each other.

Hopes gave us a plate's worth of crumbs though. Will be reforming it to suits Houses!canon Claude at the earliest opportunity.

[horansqueen]

Stuck With You - Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Tell Me

🡪chapter 1  🡪chapter 2  🡪chapter 3  🡪chapter 4  🡪chapter 5  🡪chapter 6   🡪chapter 7  🡪chapter 8  🡪chapter 9  🡪chapter 10  🡪chapter 11 🡪chapter 12 🡪chapter 13 🡪chapter 14 🡪chapter 15 🡪chapter 16 🡪chapter 17 🡪chapter 18 🡪chapter 19 🡪chapter 20

College Enemies To Lovers AU

characters // masterlist // instagrams // mood board

Tell me what it's like to be with you Remind me of the things we use to do And tell me that this time will never end Tell me what it's like, tell me again

Everytime you stay It never feels quite the same And everytime you go It hurts a way you'll never know

Everything I fear Shows itself everytime you're here And everything I know (I know) Leaves with you everytime that you go

click here to be on the update list

NIALL

                                               It was not easy to ignore her. I had spent days doing exactly that but now that she had pushed me away, I couldn't do it anymore. I felt like a creep whenever I'd find myself staring at her for a bit too long. How could I just forget about her and pretend that nothing had happened between us? How could I just pretend I didn't care about her anymore? That I didn't think about her all the time? That I didn't have feelings for her? It felt completely stupid to go on with my life as if she hadn't been the most important part of it in the last few weeks... as if she was not still a big part of it.

I looked at her as she walked out of our class, laughing with Daxia and Asher about something I didn't hear. She raised her nose up in a grimace and giggled a bit more but I just pushed my hands in my pockets, remaining motionless as she left. She was better than me at pretending, and if I couldn't remember the way she had kissed me in the elevator, or the way she had looked at me when she found out I paid half her rent, I would believe her. Luckily (nor not?) I could clearly remember all of it. The way she had ground on my thighs as we kissed deeply and how she had whimpered when my cock had swollen between her legs... The way she let me touch her, the way she sucked on my tongue when we kissed in our room... but most of all, the way her eyes fluttered when I placed soft and slow kisses on her lips after my claustrophobic crisis... the way she had looked so hurt and sad whenever I left for whatever reason... the way I could hear pain in her voice every time I rejected her. It was all those things that kept hope alive inside me. You can't just forget about someone like that, right? Not someone who had that effect on you, no, I didn't want to believe it.

I waited, hopeful that maybe she'd glance back, giving me just enough fuel to keep hoping for something, but she didn't, and I ended up walking back to my room only to grab my guitar and my notebook. I scribbled a few words quickly, the first things that came to my mind when I thought about Devon, and found a melody just as fast.

I stared at some of the words written and felt my eyes flutter as I breathed in. I tried to stop the tears and swallowed them hard before clearing my throat and rubbing my eyes. It couldn't be the end, I didn't want it to be, and now that Devon was ignoring me the way I had ignored her, I couldn't help but hate myself, knowing it was what I actually put her through, and probably even worse.

I took my phone and snapped a picture of my notebook and my guitar, wondering how Devon would have taken the picture and knowing it would definitely have looked better than the one I was now posting on instagram, but it didn't matter. Somehow, I wished she would see it and realize it was for her, but I knew there was only a tiny chance for that. I hesitated but added a few words from the song I had just written in the description part and blinked a few times staring at it, wondering if it was a mistake.

"Every time we get this close, It's always pulling us apart."

--

Turns out Devon didn't like the picture or commented on it. I was not really expecting it but I was hoping for it, but if I knew one thing about Devon now, it was that she was really stubborn. It was not what emanated from her the most, in my opinion, and it wasn't as important as her intensity, her feelings, her fiery, her empathy and her sensitivity, but it was still a part of her that I couldn't deny. I couldn't blame her, most artists were stubborn, I was slightly entitled myself, but her stubbornness was strong and I liked it, even if it caused a problem at that exact moment.

When Lewis invited me home to watch the game, I almost refused. I wanted to see Devon, but she had asked not to see me, and it would have been wrong of me to go to her place, knowing she didn't want me around her. I wanted to respect her and what she wanted, even if I was desperate for a conversation with her. I knew I couldn't force her to have feelings for me, or to act on them. It was on her, and begging her or harassing her wouldn't change anything. In fact, it would make things worse and anyway, it was not the kind of things I did. If Devon ended up giving me a chance, it would be her decision, the same way it was my decision to push her away and not take all the chances she already gave me. A bad decision, but it was all mine.

I finally accepted when Lewis told me Devon was leaving for the evening and even if I was disappointed, I didn't show it or mention it. I couldn't stop wondering where she was going and with who as I drove to my friend's and when I parked. I stayed for a few minutes, sitting behind the wheel, trying to stop the erratic beatings of my heart. I hadn't felt like that for so long. It felt like a heartbreak all over again, except this time, the whole break up was my fault and the problem was me. I leaned my forehead on the wheel and sigh until I heard someone chuckle.

"Are you napping before the game?"

I sat up and leaned my head on the bench before sighing loud enough for Louis to hear.

"You’re here for Devon, I'm guessing." I just let out without enthusiasm, not even looking at him.

"Nop, I'm here because Lewis invited me to watch the game."

It made me frown and I turned my head his way as it was still leaning on the bench. "What?"

"Ya head." Louis shrugged, glanced at the door of the building before looking back at me. "I thought Dev was going to watch it with us."

I raised my eyebrows and started my car again, shaking my head slightly as Louis got closer. "Hey, mate, where are you going?"

"Devon doesn't want me near, I'm certainly not going to spend the evening in her vital space and make her uncomfortable." I explained, putting both my hands on the wheel.

"Dev doesn't want you to avoid her."

I sighed again and turned my head only to meet Louis' eyes. "She was pretty clear."

"You know she likes you, right?" Louis raised his eyebrows. "She wants you in her life."

"But she made it clear she didn't want me around. I can't just go with your words, okay? I have to go with hers."

I couldn't pretend it didn't feel good to hear from her best friend that Devon actually liked me, but I was also aware that Louis wanted me happy. He had been taking care of me ever since that story with my ex girlfriend. I didn't know if it was out of guilt or pure friendship but either way, I couldn't deny that he was there for me, no matter what. I had been blabbing and complaining to him every single day since that stupid blind date at the restaurant and even if he was annoyed by all the shit I threw at him, he remained calm and collected, which was a first for him.

"You're right." Louis admitted, taking one last pull at his cigarette and throwing it on the ground. He pushed the smoke out of his lungs on the side to make sure it wouldn't come in my face and licked his lips. "You do give up quite easily though don't you think? She came back every time you pushed her away." he pointed out in a gentle tone.

"No, she didn't." I shrugged a shoulder. "We just ended up being locked together in random places."

"Maybe Lewis' apartment can be that random place."

I moved my head closer to the window and looked up at the building before sighing. "If I have an inkling of a feeling that she's uncomfortable, I'm leaving."

"Good."

I ended up in the elevator with Louis, rubbing my hands on the back of my jeans. I was more and more nervous as we got closer to his apartment and when Lewis opened the door, I felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest by my throat.

I didn't ask about Devon but she didn't seem to be there and we all sat in the living room with a beer. There were a few guys from some of my art classes too, sitting on the floor, but I decided to sit next to Louis on one of the couches. I finished my beer quite fast and got up to grab an other in the fridge. My heart skipped a beat when I closed the door after grabbing a beer and my eyes got slightly bigger.

"Hey, Devie." I let out in a low tone, swallowing hard as my eyes roamed on her. "Uhm you-you look great."

"No need to lie, Niall." she shook her head with a sigh. "I don't know why I let Daxia convince me to wear things like that, this is so uncomfortable."  She pulled on the bottom of her dress roughly but all it did was show part of her bra. She was leaning a bit and I let my eyes roam on her cleavage for less than a second before looking away.

"You shouldn't do that." I pointed out, clearing my throat. "It's- it's pulling it at the top."

She looked down at her breasts and groaned, letting her head fall back on her shoulders. I had to admit I didn't remember her with that much cleavage and I licked my lips.

"Are you.. are you wearing a push-up bra or something?"

She looked up in my eyes with surprise and her lips parted slightly before she moved her head slowly from left to right. "How did you..." she didn't finish her question and shook her head faster. "That's it. That's enough. I'm getting changed!"

"No wait!"

I grabbed her wrist, two of my fingers and my thumb wrapping around it loosely. She stopped and breathed in, and I wondered if it was because she was annoyed that I stopped her, or annoyed because of that electric feeling that probably crossed her body the same way it had crossed mine at the contact of our skin.

"Devie, you look amazing." I admitted in a low and soft tone as she turned around to face me. I hated thinking she was going on a date, and all the scenarios in my head made my heart sink in my chest, but I couldn't lie to her. I would never lie to her again. "You really do. You look beautiful."

She bit her bottom lip and nodded as I let go of her wrist and she pulled on the top of her dress again to cover more of her breasts.

"I'm sorry, Devie. I know you're leaving but, if me being here bothers you, I can leave."

She looked up again and her eyes met mine. She just shrugged and cleared her throat, looking back at everyone in the living room before turning back to me again.

"No it's okay, I know Lewis is your friend." she shrugged, grabbing her purse on the table. "I'm leaving for the evening anyway, so it doesn't really matter."

I remained silent and pushed my hands in my pockets, holding my breath. Was I allowed to look at her the way I was looking at her?

"A pair of shorts."

"What?" she asked with a frown.

"If you wear a pair of shorts under your dress, it'll bother you less that it's short."

"The problem is mostly that I hate my thighs but I guess you're not wrong." she chuckled, raising her eyebrows. "It's a good idea."

I waited patiently until she came back, walking by the kitchen and waving shyly at me. "Bye Niall, thanks for the tip."

It took me a few minutes to go back to the living room. No one had noticed I had left for a while except for Louis, who turned his head my way as soon as I sat next to him. "Did you tell her?"

"Mm? Tell her what?" I asked, staring at the tv as I leaned my elbows on my knees.

"That you love her."

I turned my whole body his way, now only focusing on him, and shook my head. "No, and I don't plan to." I explained slowly. "Louis, she hates me."

"She doesn't hate you and you know it."

I didn't answer and turned back to the tv for a few minutes and finally leaned my back on the couch. "You think she's gonna shag a guy tonight?" I asked low and a bit sad, looking down at my beer as I turned it in my hands.

"No."

"Why not."

"I know Dev, she's not like that." Louis explained, letting out a sigh. "Would you shag a girl tonight? A girl that's not her?"

"What does it have to do with anything?"

"Dev is a lot like you." he finally confessed. "I'm sure you've noticed before. You two react the same way, you've been through the same things... both of you gave up on love and both of you are completely in love with each other. You stopped having sex with Mandy because Devon is all you think about. Trust me, you're all Devon thinks about, too."

"She told you that?" I asked, closing my eyes and swallowing hard.

"She'd kill me if she found out I told you."

---

An other week without Devon, an other week getting drunk and complaining to Louis. I had missed a few classes and always ended up in the music room to write songs on the piano after everyone had left until very late at night. I would probably get denied the access to that room if they found out I was drowning my pain in vodka, beer and rum while I was composing but I didn't care.

On friday night, Louis had begged me to join him in class. He had asked for the keys to classroom to finish his work and apparently, he wanted me to write a song for him that he'd use. I had never written a song for kids before but I was always ready to try new things. Besides, Louis had been there for me a lot in the past few days and I felt like I owed him at least that.

The days were getting shorter and it was already dark outside. Weirdly, the hall was barely lighted but I noticed the open door of a neon-lit room. I walked in and noticed Louis, sitting on one of the desks. His lips curled when he saw me and I realized I hadn't seen a small classroom like that before.

"Neil, hey, I'm glad you're here." he raised his eyebrows, jumping off the desk and walking to me. "I really need you."

"Yea, of course." I frowned, looking around the room. "I mean we could have worked in my room, or yours?"

"Mm no, we couldn't." he replied, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and bringing me closer into a weird hug. "It really had to be here."

"Okay, you're being weird. It sounds like a bad horror movie. Are you gonna kill me or something?"

Louis chuckled as I looked at him and he took a few steps back, throwing his arms in the air.

"I'd never do that, Niall. You're my best friend!"

I took a step closer when he reached the hall and he moved his hand in front of himself, making me stop immediately. "Wait here a minute or two, okay?"

"Alright."

I sighed and sat on a desk, my guitar on my lap, and let my fingers slide on the strings gently. It's only when I heard a voice in the hall that I looked up and frowned. My heart skipped a beat when Devon walked by the door, her eyes covered with Louis' hands but I frowned and raised my hands up when I noticed Lewis, slightly behind them, who was telling me to keep quiet with a finger on his lips.

"Lou, I hate surprises, you know it." she let out, nibbling on her bottom lip.

Despite all the stress my friends were putting me through, I still found myself thinking about kissing her as my eyes fell on her mouth and I held my breath.

"Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them, alright?"

"Mmhm."

Slowly, he removed his hands from her eyes and I stood there, not really knowing what the hell they were trying to do. Devon didn't want to talk to me, she didn't want to be around me or hear about me, and bringing her here was not going to change anything, I knew it. It's only when Louis closed the door and I heard the lock that I understood.

"No!" I Iet out, jumping off the desk as I gripped my guitar tighter. "NO!"

I hit the door a few times without looking back at Devon but I knew that by now, she had understood what was happening. Our friends had decided to lock us in a room without our consent and I could feel myself get dizzy at that thought.

"It's not funny guys! I'm claustrophobic!" I yelled, hitting the door again with the side of my fist. "Let me out!"

"The room is big enough and there's like, five windows, Niall!"

"Yea!" Lewis agreed. "Feel lucky, at first we had thought about the janitor's closet!"

"Guys, it's not cool!" I begged, leaning my forehead on the door. "And it's useless."

"No it's not!" Louis let out as I closed my eyes and groaned low. "Solve your shit! I'm tired to hear both of you talk about each other!"

"Plus, we stole your phones." Lewis let out with a laughter. "I took Devon's when she was not looking and she just thought she lost it. Louis stole yours a few minutes ago."

I frowned and my hand reached for my pocket, realizing he was right and I just rolled my eyes. My heart was beating so hard I was wondering if it would just stop completely at some point. It was not a claustrophobia crisis though, it was just the fact that once again, I was locked with Devon somewhere but this time, the roles were reversed. She was the one who was avoiding me.

"Neil, tell her, okay?"

I didn't answer him. I just licked my lips and turned around, scared of what was going to happen. Devon raised her eyebrows at me and pressed her lips together, her arms wrapped around herself. She tilted her head and I had to swallow the lump in my throat.

"Tell me what?"

-

Request

[caustic-synishade]

About Why I Left...

Let me begin with this. I don’t want trouble. I don’t want drama. I don’t hate Mark. I just need to speak. 

I don’t like to stay quiet when I feel wronged, but I kept my mouth mostly shut for a little bit, because I felt like I had no choice. Either stay quiet and have a community hate me, or talk and have a community hate me. A lose-lose situation. I wanted to move on, but I’m grieving. I miss it. I miss being in the community. I miss Mark. And now he doesn’t want to talk to me. Which is fine, I wasn’t expecting to befriend him. But I was expecting differently from the situation.

One of my friends talked me out of doing this, saying it wasn’t worth it. But I care about Mark and the community. I just want things to go back to normal. I want the old Mark back. Or what I perceived as the old Mark.

I think that he has changed for the worst. He’s not a bad person and I do not hate him, but I think he’s changed negatively. People change, I 100% get that. We all grow and change, and Mark has matured in ways and has grown in others. But I noticed red flags awhile ago and ignored them. Within the past 2 years, actually.

This originally went with my problems with a few in the community, to problems with Mark. After being unmodded, I didn’t care about being a mod anymore. I didn’t care about those problems anymore. All I wanted was to be heard and listened to, to have a proper conversation with Mark, but he shut me down and ignored me. Then when I got upset, refused to talk with me further. He doesn’t have to give me the time, no, but getting shut out like that was such a slap to the face when all I wanted was to explain my side of the story, which he didn’t bother to hear. Or at least, it didn’t feel like he was listening to me. It sounded like he just wanted to push it aside and ignore it as long as he possibly could.

I thought different of him. I thought he cared about his fans, and I thought he would care enough to hear me out, understand why I was hurting, why I was upset. I thought he would want to resolve the issue, rather than push it aside and ignore it. But he has done this stuff for awhile.

Fandom trouble has always lead to Mark ignoring the situation and/or making fun of it. When the ‘cult’ was harassing people, he didn’t do much to shut it down. He didn’t seem to care that people were being doxxed and making people uncomfortable. Sure, he cannot control his fans, but it was something he started and encouraged. I thought he cared about the well being of his fans? I thought he was the internet sweetheart? 

He openly made fun of a developer of a game, then bragged about the views it would get and the money he would make and the attention he would bring the dev. Not in a sweet, fun way, either. At the time, I thought Lord Markimoo could do no wrong, so I ignored it. While everyone else called him out… And he ignored the hate he was receiving for it. 

There are other things, too, if you wish to contribute. But this isn’t meant to shame him or call him out like that. I’m just pointing out, he’s had a history of ignoring problems and pretending they don’t exist.

Now, with the things he has done, it really feels like he doesn’t care about his fans and only of himself. Which, fair, he’s not obligated to interact with us at all. But he could at the very least show some more empathy for people, other than those who worship him. At least, that’s what it seems. I want to be proved wrong, here. I want him to show he cares, show he’s still the internet sweetheart he was always portrayed as and showed himself to be.

I found Mark back in 2014. My sister showed me him. And she knew I’d like him. And I did like him. I loved him. I cared about him. For 3+ years I did nothing but draw him as various creatures and on endless adventures. I looked up to this man for so long. In a way, he was a father figure. I hate using that term, but it’s the closest thing I can think of. I didn’t have my father much growing up, and he sort of replaced that “love” and “validation” I was desperately lacking. He made me feel wanted, welcome, at home. And that’s why it hurt so much the way he reacted. 

I in no way hated this man, and again, I thought he could do no wrong (I’ve called him out for little things before, however, like using my edit without credit (which he also has a history of that with art)). And I also in no way hate him now. I’m just mad and upset and confused. Mostly upset. I just want to resolve things and be at peace, whether or not I come back after all is said and done. I never wanted to leave this community with hate in my heart for him, and I still don’t. I want things back to normal. To know everything is okay. And that Mark isn’t an asshole. 

This may come across as a bitter ex-fan, but I really want things to go well. I want to be back to normal. I want to not throw out all my merch and burn it in a pit. I just want to be back in the community and know Mark is not what I fear he is. An asshole who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I’ve always fought for what I cared about, and this time is no different. I expect people won’t be happy, and maybe Mark won’t be, either, but I feel like this is important. I’m standing my ground as much as I can. If he hates me after this, then so be it.  I just need to speak my mind. And move on, where ever it takes me.

-Vincent

[mbti-notes]

So I was talking with a friend about a deep experience I had with forgiving others and self-forgivdness. I am an ENFP and I said I didn't felt good with myself anymore for doing bad to people (I have been hurt/ hurting, ex: craving for revange) and I explained: if I myself know how painful being hurt can be, why would I want to do smthg like that to another human being, but the reply was philosophical, ethical, moral? Humans like evil and even rejoice in the suffering of others. (part 1)

[con’t: We are no good, we are imperfect, we seek hurting, we even feel good about it. the empathy you describe is beautiful but utopian if we think about human experience in society.” Then I said I wasn’t thinking in a philosophical way but in a personal one and that despite the lack of objectivity, factuality and “philosophy” in my view, I was certain of the importance of my empathic perspective for my personal and everyday life. But the question is: do you think my thoughts are conforming with Fi dev? Or I’m sounding like a “light chasers” (…) “they wanted the “light” of knowledge to overcome the “darkness” of suffering.” And also do you have any philosophy book that deals with the issue of morals and ethics to recommend me, please? I would not like to be always too naive and with idealistic thoughts/ speeches, friends often call my attention in this sense. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this!]

Yes, it might be related to Fi development, but more universally, it is consistent with human moral development to learn how to take full personal responsibility for: 1) the kind of person you want to be in terms of what character virtues you choose to nurture in yourself, and 2) the moral consequences of your decision making in terms of whether you’re causing harm to yourself and others.

Anybody who’s really devoted themselves to studying human psychology and/or moral philosophy will tell you that the human mind is extremely complex and that there’s a lot more to moral reasoning than reductive blanket statements. Humans are not just one thing, and if someone tries to convince you that they are, they’re usually pushing a hidden agenda and/or trying to bamboozle you. 

Examples of weird motives? Someone who tries to discourage others from betterment usually has a deep vested interest in preserving the status quo for themselves. Someone who feels threatened by positivity is usually a failed idealist and projects their fear of hope onto you (in a misguided attempt to save you from the disappointment that they’ve suffered). Someone who tries to convince you to take the easy way out might actually be seeking validation of their own bad choices. 

Any time someone tries to convince you of something, especially when it goes against your best instincts, you should question their motives. By pushing on your moral beliefs, they might be doing you a favor by forcing you to reflect on the quality of your moral reasoning (this seems to be the open-minded attitude behind your question), but they might also be doing you a disservice by making you constantly doubt your own moral instincts… and to what end? It’s fine to want to defend yourself better when your values are under attack, but not every fight is worth fighting. Healthy Fi grants a strong sense of moral responsibility. It’s not there to make you feel “unshakeable”, rather, it’s there to give you good judgment about when harm is being done so that you feel compelled to stop it.

Research strongly suggests that infants already possess a rudimentary sense of fairness and get upset over injustice. Some scholars speculate that human morality evolved to help us succeed through cooperation, and our sense of morality became increasingly complex as we established larger and larger groups. The more people you have in a group, the more difficult it is to keep them together, so rules have to be drawn up and people have to commit to following them. You don’t need to become a moral philosophy professor to understand morality. It’s built into your judgment process, and I argue that developing your F function is exactly how you get in touch with the natural moral instincts that compel you to address unfair/unjust/harmful treatment. Actually, to understand morality only in the abstract often does more harm than good. When you don’t have the basic components of morality in the form of genuine empathy and compassion, then it’s easy to intellectualize moral concepts and then use twisted logic to justify all sorts of negative behavior. Hitler is the cliche example in that he seemed to genuinely believe that he was righteous in using genocide to achieve some abstract ideal of a perfect society.

There is already quite a lot of research about moral psychology and moral reasoning, and it handily proves that the cynic you’re paraphrasing is misguided. If they genuinely believe that human nature is irredeemable, I would advise against being friends with them, since that belief system, taken to its logical conclusion, would render someone morally bankrupt and completely incapable of loving relationships. Other than a basic sense of fairness, you aren’t born with a whole moral philosophy that you can write down in a book, rather, you pick up your moral beliefs through life experience and learning from the choices that you make. The moral beliefs that you choose to hold on to gradually come to define your moral character. For instance, to believe that human nature is fundamentally irredeemable actually tells everyone that you have absolutely no faith in yourself - it’s a projection.

If you really understand what “personal responsibility” means, whether or not other people choose evil is irrelevant to what you choose for yourself. A cynic either has to argue that humans can’t choose to be good because they are “born evil” (fatalism) or that what they choose is “meaningless” as long as others choose evil (helplessness). Either way, it means relinquishing the natural creative power of humans to be better and make things better. And what do you have left after you’ve given up your creative power? Resign yourself to powerlessness? A cynic chooses powerlessness, so they cannot help but begrudge your attempts to use your power.

Again, humans aren’t just one thing. They are indeed capable of evil, but disappointment about evil must not obscure the fact that humans are also granted the intellectual power to overcome their basest impulses. The fact that being moral is often the harder road to take makes it all the more meaningful when you’re able to choose it consistently. For civilization to be possible, for love to be possible, for long term planning to be possible - all of them difficult uphill projects - a significant number of people have successfully devoted themselves to performing socially beneficial behavior. The proof is right before your eyes in the people around you. Just because some people relinquish their moral responsibility, doesn’t mean you should ignore all those who embrace and accept their moral responsibility. Ignoring all the good is just as illogical as ignoring all the bad - either way, you’re not in touch with reality.

Are you a “lightchaser”? A lightchaser lives in fear of darkness, so they live in denial of their own darkness. Repressing it is what causes it to turn into something ugly and evil. However, once you recognize the reality that humans are a very mixed bag of positive and negative motives, you free up your mind to nurture your potential and address the things that hold you back from being your better self. You have the power to identify and address the things that promote evil behavior. How you choose to use that power is the main point.

[svtskneecaps]

i’ve been enabled

here’s the sitch on the goddamn harry potter hogwarts mystery app game

it fucking sucks

here’s my main issues in a handy list i’ll go down later:

the gameplay

energy

art / visuals

the story

the writing

the choose your own adventure like elements (technically gameplay since there isn’t much else l m a o)

and i have receipts for most of this stuff. fun fact, i’ve been taking videos of all plot relevant events since year 1.

some context:

i’ve played up to year 3 myself. i have watched up until the very beginning of year 5 in someone’s youtube series (will bits? that was his main character [henceforth referred to as MC]’s name, however that was a year ago and it was in the background like a podcast so the details are sort of fuzzy. i have not played the game since march (it’s september, ish), but i’m loading it up as i type this just to get a feel for it

idk whether to assume my audience has or hasn’t played the game. i’ll keep my complaints as clear as possible.

i’m mainly an author so the storytelling sections are where i’m really going to pop off, since that’s something i have the most experience with and passion in, but i’ll be touching on everything else because compounded it’s all pissing me off lmao

[a couple hints at spoilers for maybe an event in year 1, and year 3, but nothing major]

let’s start with: THE GAMEPLAY

there isn’t any

literally. there’s like. zero gameplay.

you tap some highlighted figures, and then sometimes you get to trace a little shape, and sometimes you get to play rock paper scissors to fight somebody (they did manage to make duelling slightly better but it’s still not good by any standard)

sometimes you get to choose between three dialogue options, but those have barely any impact on the story or on your character. any impact they have is limited to a couple stat points, or maybe some house points, or like. some event at the end of the year. but like barely any make any real serious difference (but i’ll touch on that more later)

and then there’s the factor of stat points (and this gets kind of mathy, so feel free to skip to the bolded sentence)

for those who haven’t played the game, you have three stats (empathy, courage, and knowledge) that you can level up by taking classes, 1, 3, or 8 hours, for various rewards

back when i stopped playing, i had gained 8914 points in courage. if i recall correctly i was only about halfway to leveling up that stat. if you take an 8 hour class, you receive consistently 200 stat points, with a possibility of extra rewards that i can’t count for since those are randomly generated.

to get those 8914 points, i would have had to take 44.57 8 hour classes (while 8 hour they only take about 7, counting for the 2 hours it takes my energy to recharge to full). with 44.57 classes taking 7 hours each, to get halfway to level 24, i would have had to have done:

THIRTEEN STRAIGHT DAYS OF GRINDING, ASSUMING THAT ALL I HAD BEEN DOING WAS CHECKING ON THE HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS MYSTERY APP

and again, I WAS ONLY LIKE HALFWAY TO LEVELLING UP

I AM BARELY BEGINNING FOURTH YEAR. I AM NOT EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH THIS GAME.

i think they’ve fixed this now; it said i had 8914/1550 courage and when i got stat points it fixed itself and jumped me from level 23 to 28, so thanks for that jam city.

but it doesn’t change the fact that the grinding is fucking horrible and i’ve done my fair share of hours, and who knows what it’s going to look like when i get to a higher level again

the energy

yes, i know it’s an app game. i know they want my money. but holy FUCK the energy recharges disgustingly slowly, and every bit they expand my energy bar is an insult

“here, have another energy capacity!” they say, and then add to the amount of energy it takes to complete a task at the same time, so now shit just takes me even damn longer

it’s an insult. don’t think i didn’t fuckin notice jam city.

since it’s an app game, naturally, energy requires paying real world money or the (semi) rare in-game currency to get more if you blow through your bar. they want your money. i know they want my money, but it doesn’t make me any less disappointed by how damn blatant they’re being. app games like bakery story probably also want my money, but at least those are still fun to play.

the art / visuals

now i’m not an artist. nor am i a 3-d modeller. but if solo indie devs and 10 men teams can make video games that have to have models with a much fuller range of motion (since there’s ACTUAL GAMEPLAY and not just little cutscenes of characters moving around) and that don’t make me sick to watch, then jam city working on a HARRY POTTER GAME should be able to (jk rowling fucking sucks but her books have brought in so much goddamn money that they can afford to pay their devs enough to make the game look good; in this case i’m not entirely sure where the blame lies)

there’s like. 10 motions characters can use while in the cutscenes and talking. like 10. and i can recognize every one of them, and there is not a single motion unique to a character. the characters are something i’ll touch on later in the storytelling sections, though. just, please god give them SOMETHING even SLIGHTLY different. like make two versions of a couple of the crowd animations at LEAST, so that when people celebrate at the end of the year there’s not twenty people in the shot doing the same “pump my fists in the air in celebration” motion at the exact same time. PLEASE.

sometimes animations in story events and classes sync up too, which is. beyond distracting. like it’s completely immersion breaking and i mean please, please jam city, if you haven’t fixed that please fix it. please.

the animations that roll in flying class are fun, ONCE. when you’ve seen them eight hundred thousand times because you’re grinding up your courage stat, they get hella boring. all of the classes are like this to some extent but flying is the biggest offender since those were the longest animations. if they haven’t implemented a skip button since i last played it, they should. they fuckin should.

also the fertilizer animation in the greenhouse scenes is gross. you pick up a deformed cone of dirt with your shovel like a slice of cake and then shove it clipping through the edges of a pot, where it disappears without a trace. i hate it. jam city please make the game look good.

if you still play the game please tell me it looks better; i’ll be playing through a couple things after i post this but it’s hphm. it’s gonna take me a goddamn long time to hit all the points and confirm whether what i complained about has been fixed or not

also also, wearing dresses is so distracting, especially while dueling. the way the dress flexes around your legs is like you’re wearing clothing made from jello and when my character does the idle animation her hands clip through her skirt, and there’s all kids of glitches with hair where it clips through outfits (and why in the fuck do the necklaces float a full foot from the character’s body)

the storytelling

alright there’s a lot to cover so strap in

i’m not mad about the story having some of the same beats as harry potter. whatever, right? if it worked, it worked. having a big climax at the end of the year just works well for storytelling. having a school bully antagonist also works well for easy storytelling (it’s kinda cheap, but whatever works, right?) it’s what you DO with the archetypes you use that makes or breaks your story

jam city broke it

i don’t know how to organize my thoughts so here’s a bulleted list

it is very clearly obvious they wrote this as they went along (ex. a previously unseen character pops up in year 3 and was supposedly the best friend of your greatest enemy in previous years) and didn’t think to fix the plot holes

there’s too many goddamn characters (i love them, but with a big cast comes a whole host of problems [I WRITE FOR A KPOP GROUP WITH 13 MEMBERS, I HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH THAT], and we’ll get there)

there’s too much goddamn filler for the sake of forcing us to spend time and in-game energy (yes i KNOW it’s an app game and they want our money but THEY COULD BE A LITTLE MORE SUBTLE ABOUT IT)

what honestly pisses me off the most about it is that IT COULD BE GOOD

IF THE STORY WERE GOOD, I WOULD FUCKIN IGNORE ALL OF THAT OTHER SHIT

but it’s not, and here’s the biggest gripe i have:

none of the choices you make matter. none of them. to the point where it’s immersion breaking at BEST

for example, while my MC is a hufflepuff, i know a lot of people play in slytherin. scenes where snape gets upset with your character and takes away house points no longer make sense for a slytherin MC, because snape would be infinitely more likely to give you three years of nightly detentions, or pitch you off the astronomy tower, than he would be to take house points from slytherin

honestly, they should have waited. if they wanted to put choose your own adventure elements into the game, they should have planned out every single one of those story arcs in detail, and THEN released the game. they could leave some of the more basic choices in and those choices only mattering for short term effects wouldn’t irk me as much as it does right now because THERE WOULD BE CHOICES THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

your very first choice over how you felt about your brother’s disappearance only matters for what wand you get (which i immediately forgot which really says something about the impact of that choice :)))) ). no matter what you pick, you still end up chasing after him for the rest of the game, so who cares?

story beats don’t land different based on your house. you could absolutely play it that merula hates you regardless of your house, that’s fine. just remember that if your MC is slytherin and lives in the female dorms, she probably shares a room with merula. which makes things fucky for all kinds of reasons, none of which jam city addresses in the current game, as far as i’m aware

also, there’s the deal with rowan

rowan is a character that goes into your mc’s chosen house no matter what (and as rowan changes pronouns with your player, i’ll be using “they” [or “she” as my player is a she and that’s what i’m used to; i’ll try to refrain but i might slip up occasionally] ). as far as i can tell, rowan’s personality remains the same no matter what house you’re in. they don’t try to play up the traits that match the house, rowan is just usually a sweet bookworm. why would the hat have put them in gryffindor? rowan khanna for me has never seemed to display any gryffindorish traits; or at the very least, no traits that should be prioritized over, say, the ravenclaw traits they have VERY STRONGLY (since rowan fills a sort of hermione role; rowan knows things about things and is your go to for research)

can we just put rowan in ravenclaw? sure, it would make it hard for fans in different houses to communicate between each other about the story for a time since certain sequences of events would play out differently, but here’s the thing:

if events play out differently based on your choices, people will want to play your game multiple times to get every ending

that’s the fun of a choose your own adventure game. if events play out distinctly differently if you’re a hufflepuff or a ravenclaw or a slytherin or a gryffindor, then people will want to play through the game four times at LEAST, once for each house, to get all the fun pieces of story (WHICH MEANS, they’ll be spending more and more time and using more and more energy, so you can make the same amount of money off people buying energy and watching the ads and maybe MORE while being able to cut out some of the more shitty pieces of filler)

in the current version, your house is just, what color are your robes and who is your prefect. i haven’t watched anyone who wasn’t a hufflepuff, but i’m sure that certain scenes and conflicts play out the exact same no matter what house you’re in

as an example, your house should affect how the duelling confrontation in year one should have gone. snape and flitwick should have different dialogue based on whether you’re a slytherin, or a ravenclaw, or a gryffindor, or a hufflepuff. snape fucking hates gryffindors, so he should be far less lenient against gryffindors, and on the flip side he should be battling between himself with how strict to be if you’re a slytherin; maybe he hates your guts because of a grudge against your brother, but you’re still in his house and we all know snape plays favorites. flitwick should be more disappointed if you’re a ravenclaw, because that’s his house and he had higher expectations for you. neither of them have many ties to hufflepuff that would skew the confrontation in a drastic direction, but had this been the first version of the game, then the confrontation that plays out in the current version we have would work fine for hufflepuff; you’re one of flitwick’s favorite charms students and he taught you this skill, and he’s disappointed to see you use it in this way, but not nearly as much as if you were one of his own

AND NOW PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY THE GAME MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET ALL THE DIALOGUE, WHICH MEANS MORE TIME, MORE ENERGY, AND MORE MONEY, JAM CITY, ARE YOU HEARING THIS??? MORE MONEY!!!!! IT’S A WIN WIN FOR EVERYONE

while we’re at it, change jacob to match his house. if you’re still gonna make him have the same house as the MC, make him match it. from how all the characters describe him that bitch is as slytherin as they come, if you’re gonna make him a hufflepuff with me then give him a clear, hufflepuff motive god damnit

finally,

the characters

there’s too many.

the problem with a big cast is no one gets enough screen time and some characters end up getting shunted to the side. that’s just what happens. you HAVE to zero in on four or five side friends and let the rest of them slip to the side. looking at my friends menu there are 17 characters you can befriend, not including hagrid, the quidditch crew, dobby, talbott, and chiara (since those are, as far as i know, unlocked via side quests, which are... fine. i don’t have any particular gripes about the side quests except for the thing with lupin being twice the size of tonks which, if you’ve read the seventh book i don’t need to explain how weird that is to you)

and BECAUSE there are so many, a lot of them have to be defined by one trait. ben is a coward, rowan’s clever and booksmart, penny has her hand on the school’s pulse and makes potions, liz likes creatures, charlie fuckin loves dragons, tonks likes pranks (seriously that’s her whole personality), andre likes clothes, barnaby is a dumb jock that likes creatures

like, traits are fun. but if that’s ALL THEY HAVE, that’s when things get a little fucky

how many of these characters have dimensions? i’m in year 4 chapter 4. the first screen recording of the game i took was on december 5 of 2019, and assuming i played about a minimum of 8 hours a day (”““played”““) until the final screen recording [may 20, 2020] before i dropped the game for about six months (i know for certain it was more than that, since i had some kind of activity going on at just about all times for at least a month of that, but i’ll take the generous estimate), at bare minimum that makes 1344 hours i spent playing this game, or about 56 days (keep in mind, this is a LOW estimate)

in those 56 days of gameplay, i don’t know ANYTHING about the characters other than their utility in my quest. i don’t know penny’s favorite color or even her favorite potion to brew, or how and why she started and when [there’s a reveal in third year that i watched someone play through, but i don’t know if i ever played through it myself; i don’t have any screen recordings of the event]. i don’t know anything about ben or his family aside from the fact that he’s muggleborn. i know some basic facts about barnaby’s family, and that he’s tough and likes creatures. rowan grew up on a tree farm and i have a vague recollection of her mentioning siblings. do we know anything about them?? do i know anything about how the characters interact with each other?? are barnaby and liz friends? they both like creatures. do they talk to charlie?? do ben and penny hang out while we’re not there? are ben and jae friends?? are jae and charlie??? DO THESE CHARACTERS EXIST WHEN THEY AREN’T NEEDED FOR THE CURSED VAULTS???

why in the fuck don’t i know these characters?? why don’t we know anything about tonks other than her affinity for pranking?? there’s a sharp bias in who the writer’s favorites are (they like the characters with angsty pasts they can twist around; what do we know about ben aside from his blood status? and he’s been around since first year; he’s the second friend you unlock. i know more about barnaby and i’ve known him for a much shorter time)

if you separate the routes, you get a chance to zero in on certain characters and actually develop them. if you’re a gryffindor, you befriend ben, charlie, and jae much more quickly and they make up the closest of your friends, along with rowan, if jam city is determined to keep their tutorial character constant across all plotlines (i still think rowan should be solely a ravenclaw, but i’ll allow rowan’s house to change so long as their personality shifts to emphasize certain qualities in order to match the change in house; your house should not just determine the color your robes are)

if you’re in slytherin, maybe you befriend barnaby in place of ben in the original game, or maybe there’s an arc where you clash heads with merula (who can still be an enemy even if you’re both in slytherin; merula doesn’t like competition and the MC is exactly that) and the rest of the slytherins in your year find themselves caught in the middle; maybe there’s an arc where your MC finds themself totally alone without allies due to the conflict between them and merula (might i suggest year two, while coming up on the climax of the year?)

hufflepuffs get to focus on tonks and penny much closer. ben can also be in this plotline, but he shouldn’t take center stage (characters should cross over plotlines, but only take center stage in one, aside from perhaps rowan if rowan remains constant). maybe chiara can get implemented into the main plotline to fill out the roster, and if not, diego caplan can get implemented earlier (i haven’t met him yet and know nothing about his character)

and ravenclaws get the ravenclaw characters BUT YOU GET THE POINT, i don’t want to bore anyone by repeating myself; this is long enough as is

what i’m saying is, these characters all have a different enough base that each route will be different just by focusing on different characters; ben and jae will respond to a situation much differently than penny and tonks might, which would ALREADY shake up the storyline of each house based on which house you choose in the beginning, and then characters overlap plotlines so you could leave hints in each route to the other characters’ unique backstories and motivations that leaves the player wanting to get to know the rest of your WELL DEVELOPED CAST (((MAKE SURE THEY’RE WELL DEVELOPED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK)))

WHAT I’M SAYING IS, THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD

if they put more effort into the story then maybe i would have gunned through the hufflepuff route so quickly and then restarted to go through all the rest of them. if you want people playing your game for longer then THAT is the way to go

yes, it will take time. yes, it will take effort. but you know what?

IT’LL ALSO MAKE YOU A FUCKTON OF MONEY FROM PLAYERS PLAYING EACH ROUTE IN FULL AND THEN PLAYING THEIR FAVORITE ROUTES AGAIN SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR

anyway, what i’m saying is, i hate this game so much because of the potential it had to succeed, and the potential it had to be a really good game. even if they didn’t change the gameplay much, even if they didn’t change the models, i could get past ALL OF THAT if the story was interesting

so uh. jam city, if you’re reading this, please. i will let you take away all of my days of playing this. i will let you render all of my progress obsolete and send me plummeting back into my first year at hogwarts to go through the game again, if you JUST, MAKE, MULTIPLE, ROUTES!!! MAKE MY CHOICES MATTER DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!

i’m also willing to let you use the ideas i posited here without credit or payment. because that sounds like a legal hassle and i am far too lazy to deal with that sort of thing, i just want to play a good game. please. please give me a good game to play.

also, make energy take 3 minutes to recharge. please.

so uh

TL;DR : i hate this game. and i wish i didn’t hate this game.

[missnight0wl]

What do you think about the personality of mc? Personally, I don't think there's much depth in it (I think so that player could provide the personality via the choices) but at the same time I feel as though mc has their own personality regardless of the choices

The thing that probably bothers me the most is that MC is just… not very smart. They’re great when it comes to academic skills, but I really wish they were more observant and questioning. I know that not all the plots can be solved right away, but I’d like to see that MC actually thinks about the things they’re discovering. For example, we could’ve been getting the scenes every now and then where MC is spacing out and then they say: “Oh sorry, I was thinking about Olivia Green/my brother’s notebook etc.” to which someone would reply: “We have more important issues to worry about now!”. I’d also love to know that MC has a box with all the clues that they’re looking through sometimes. Even if we didn’t have access to that as a player, it’d be an opportunity to pretty easily bring up past events. Because currently, it’s usually MC saying that they’ll return to a certain thing later… and then they usually don’t. And I’m getting tired of an explanation that “oh, they can’t remember everything”. They’re supposed to be good at solving mysteries.

Other than that, I’m rather fine with most things. MC’s personality is a bit generic, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it doesn’t have much depth. They’re extremely devoted to their brother who is always the main motivation behind their actions. They’re a loyal friend, and they’re compassionate which shows their high level of empathy. They were stigmatised themselves, yet they decided to overcome it by self-improvement. They’re ambitious, courageous, kind of stubborn.

But that being said, I agree that it’s pretty much a set thing, and the player’s choices within the main story don’t make a big difference. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they don’t matter at all. I do appreciate moments where we can express MC’s opinions on particular situations, and I can’t say that each MC is exactly the same (even aside from all the headcanons most of us add). But in the end, MC will always act a certain way in some points, simply to move the plot forward. Even when we’re getting seemingly more freedom in shaping their personality, it ends pretty much in the same place. I’m thinking here mostly about choices related to Ben, and Jacob. No matter if you were supportive or distrustful about Ben during year 5, he acts the same way in year 6. No matter if you trusted Jacob in the Portrait Vault or not, MC doesn’t continue to be suspicious of their brother.

We’re telling the same story - the differences might be in how we’re doing this. Of course, it’d be great to have a bigger impact. I’d love to see changes especially in the last two examples I mentioned above. There’s definitely room for improvement, and there are things where Jam City could’ve put more effort into - I’m not denying that. But truth be told, I’m also fine with a thought that there will be some limitations since it is just a mobile game. In fact, I’d rather see the devs being more open about the fact that MC is their own character, and we don’t decide about many things. Let’s take MC’s backstory, for example. I really don’t understand why we still know so little about their family. What their home situation looks like? Why the father is nowhere in the picture? Those are things that had to shape MC’s personality so just tell us about it. Show us exactly why MC is the way they are. Because sooner or later, it will be brought up – at least I assume so, seeing how it’s MC’s love for Jacob that put everything in motion. And what’s the point in letting people fill those spaces if they’ll later have to adjust their stories to new information or simply ignore it?

[wispywillo]

muriels traumatic background is handled in the most insensitive way possible

The Arcana is a game that indulges in many fantasies that varies from creative (magicians) and just jumps straight into inappropriate (BDSM, slavery) for a PG13 game.

I’m gonna handle the slavery fantasy because Yes. It’s there. Speaking as a diasporic black person, slavery is an incredible touchy subject for me. While never having gone through it, intergeneration trauma is most definitely a thing and even if it wasn’t -- empathy exists.

Muriel is an ex-slave. He used to really resonate within me as a character who suffered trauma and considers himself a loner. He is loved by the fandom because of his outcast demeanor. A lot of players probably suffer from social anxiety and thus see themselves within him. But let me get one thing straight:

the way he acts like this is 100% because of childhood trauma and trauma only exacerbated by the treatment of lucio

And that trauma more explicitly is from being held captive and turned into a slave.

From what we know, Muriel grew up homeless and was tortured/bullied by other school children his age. At such a young age, being without a family, being homeless, and being bullied leaves you vulnerable. It’s a vulnerability that most of us could never even dream of relating to unless you experienced it firsthand yourself. Count Lucio literally took a traumatized child’s vulnerability and abused him until he was at his beck and call.

Something that a lot of people don’t seem to realize is that slavery is one of the most traumatizing thing someone could experience

Slavery Literally Ruins Your Life

Slavery literally runs on vulnerable people’s entire lack of agency and safety. And if someone ever defies their owner in choice of having autonomy -- they’re punished with any and all kinds of abuse. 

slavery shouldnt be something you take lightly

but thats EXACTLY what nix hydra is doing to this character.

especially in heart hunter:

(cred. anonymous @thearcanasucks)

Muriel was coerced into fight under the guise of “the Scourge”

Lucio basically molded Muriel into a fighting machine persona, just so he could enjoy watching slaves fight and kill each other. He had no concern over Muriel’s physical or emotional health -- if Muriel ever died doing what Lucio forced him to do he wouldn’t even care. And muriel was put into a situation where he had to murder if he valued his own life. 

And let’s not ignore race -- Muriel is a brown man. He’s big too. And he murdered people (who were most likely stuck in the same situation as him). Nix Hydra thought it was acceptable to make a man of color into a violent racist caricature. And this is racist in so many ways -- it just matters how you apply it. And nix hydra gives you plently of room thanks to never confirming his race:

native american men face the violent stereotype of being deemed “savage” and being bloodthirsty warmongers. Muriel being a brown man tied up in chains? Living in wilderness? Fighting to the death? Checks all of the anti-native narratives.

Being a man of slavery? Slavery is already hugely racialized. Some of the biggest and longest standing slave trades involved african, arabic, and native american people. And since we don’t. know. his. race. we can just assume that he’s all of the above and fits yet another racist trope :)))

now we know that slavery is Bad and Traumatizing and we ESPECIALLY know that Muriel Is Traumatized. But does the writing know? because no.

back onto the heart hunter topic (because im a bitch who doesnt know how to organize) Heart Hunter is a minigame where youre meant to collect as many hearts as possible to win a photocard and some coins and stuff. every time you collect a heart you’re shown a cute interaction between you and a character -- or a character and a character. These interactions are meant to be lighthearted and fun, maybe even romantic. And it worked for a while.

Until the writers at Nix Hydra somehow thought it would be lighthearted, fun, and romantic to write about Muriel’s slavery. Multiple characters bring up Muriels slave persona as if its not a sensitive topic you should only approach with as much care as possible. Slavery is a repulsive practice and it should be treated as such. 

And even if you ignore slavery being slavery, Muriel as a character is shown being traumatized by his past. he tries to bury it as much as he can even if that means making people forget about him entirely

Muriel is CLEARLY bothered by his past and wishes no reminder of it -- but what do the other characters do? exactly that. They explicitly call him and refer to him as “Scourge” his slave name, even right to his face. So either everyone hates him wants to trigger him or the devs hate us and wants to trigger us. 

and this screenshot shows that even years after Muriel becoming a public embarrassment, that he still doesn’t own an ounce of his own privacy. This 2-lined interaction shows us that people are still buying and selling his personal property without his consent. All because they KNOW slaves don’t own their own agency, their own life, their own image. That isn’t okay.

what also isn’t okay is the fact that they brush over it like its some cutesy ‘oh oops!’ moment. Portia shouldn’t be enticed by the fact that her friends underwear is being sold on the black market. She should be horrified. Especially when we see Muriel uncomfortable at the fact and even his reaction isn’t a well written one.

would this your reaction if you found out someone somehow got a hold of your used underwear and sold it to creeps for god knows how much money?

Its obvious that the writers at Nix Hydra also don’t see Muriel as a character with his own agency. They will shove his own trauma in his face, but write him indifferent -- because they don’t care that Muriel suffered trauma for nearly his entire life. Nope. Because caring for a trauma-ridden brown man would just be too much work for them.

they’d rather use their time to turn their slave owning, abusive villain into a quirky little power hungry ghost uwu or whatever theyre getting at...

this isnt good. its offensive. and i almost broke out in tears at the way theyre handling this man’s situation. it fucking sucks. stop supporting these racist shit bags please i beg of you

[thebiblesalesman]

Thoughts on Genji in Storm Rising

Storm Rising reframes the beginning of Genji’s journey and his interaction with the original Overwatch. Gone is the Genji who “single-mindedly set about the task of dismantling his family’s criminal empire” and abandoned Overwatch when his mission was complete.

Instead Storm Rising is the latest bookmark of a Genji who invested himself in Overwatch for an extended period of time and has finally begun to encounter support and friendship as a part of the Strike Team. Perhaps most importantly, the mission shows us that Genji is already capable of responding to positivity and that his Retribution-era coldness was not so much an inability to be properly social as it was a reflection of the dark personalities around him. 

There are a few gaps between Retribution and Storm Rising that might be relevant to Genji’s personality shift: (1) we still don’t know exactly how his Shimada Clan mission went, or (2) the reason his cybernetics were upgraded (aside from his Blackwatch design looking very prototypy). We do know that one year prior to Storm Rising, Genji was sparring with Tracer while Blackwatch was on suspension and did not yet have his new cybernetics. In the year between Uprising and Storm Rising, a decision was made to export Genji to mainline Overwatch for some reason. Blackwatch is (kinda) back in action at the time of Storm Rising- I think I’ll talk more about that in a dedicated “plot developments” post.

We also know from other media that Storm Rising takes place within months of the destruction of Overwatch HQ. Any support Genji gained during his time with the Strike Team will be lost very soon, and I have to imagine that various revelations about Blackwatch and public opinion on Overwatch as a whole could do a lot of damage to someone whose body has been extensively modified to assist the organization. In the even more immediate future, Genji is going to be badly damaged by Doomfist despite his new cybernetics.

These defeats raise other questions, like did Genji perhaps avoid other members of the Strike Team purposefully after Overwatch ended, or did they simply not reach out to him? This is a particular quandary for the new character Captain Sojourn, who is shown in Storm Rising to be committed to supporting Genji as a fellow cyborg.

But there are a lot of routes the developers could take on explaining Sojourn’s absence in Genji’s life after Overwatch. For example, maybe Genji’s Nomad skin is literal rather than thematic canon and he actually disguised his identity in the most fashionable way possible. Maybe Sojourn was injured during the destruction of HQ and acquired triple amnesia. Maybe she was arrested after the arrival of the Petras Act. The possibilities are truly endless. It would really be nice to get some sort of media about the destruction of HQ and its aftermath...someday...

Genji’s persistent discomfort with his cybernetics seems like it should have been addressed by support specialists sometime before Retribution or in the two years since. Maybe it was, and there is just no interest in showing Genji’s psych evaluations as part of a poppy bright mission cutscene. Experiences like Genji’s don’t go away with one or two visits from a qualified professional, or ever, so it’s entirely possible Overwatch put as much support as they could into him and it simply was not helping. 

But it is interesting to me that Sojourn is the one showing some empathy to Genji’s condition, whereas the doctor who saved his life generally makes light of her role. Other interactions in Storm Rising do seem to indicate that Mercy is not very good with people, and I would be remiss not to discuss the Gency interactions in the mission, but I think I’m going to do that in a separate Mercy-focused post. She got a lot of love this mission too, and not just from Genji.

I think what’s got me scratching my head is the sanitizing effect the Storm Rising personality shift has on Overwatch’s disgraceful conduct toward Genji.

On the one hand, demonstrating Genji’s preexisting ability to be something other than an angry boy and showing off how he responds to positive people dovetails nicely into his eventual meeting with Zenyatta. The interactions in Storm Rising also elevate the other members of the Strike Team, showing how they are genuinely trying to be Genji’s ally. Contrast this to the Blackwatch team, who frequently refer to Genji as an asset rather than a person.

On the other hand there is a Marvel-like unwillingness to explore the ethics of the story Overwatch sets forth for Genji, but given the punchy comic book underpinnings of the lore I guess that should not be a surprise at all. There’s a hyperintelligent hamster in this game. 

And while there may be a lack of emphasis on certain human rights situations, the devs are very interested in covering how the heroes in Overwatch altered the trajectories of each other’s lives. Genji and Zenyatta was always the classic example of this, but now we know Genji was not a wall to everyone that came before. He is, in fact, quite human. :)

Just in case you left this mission with the sense of “why does he even need Zenyatta then?”, I’ll reiterate a few things. First and foremost, Overwatch is about to be destroyed, and then Overwatch activity is made illegal by the Petras Act. Genji’s hero profile still describes him as having “abandoned Overwatch”, but maybe it was more that he was torn from a purpose he was serving as a replacement for having a life.

I’m not convinced Genji has a sense of himself beyond his occupation in Overwatch even during Storm Rising. But whereas others in Blackwatch could be brazenly ignorant of what he was going through, the Strike Team seems to be mostly on-board with including him as a friend as much as a coworker, leading to interactions such as this:

Genji’s sense of humor is much more obvious in this mission overall (”mAYbE hE jUST liKEs to loOk at IT”), but his tone also oscillates wildly, going cold when there is a brush of conduct that sounds like Blackwatch work (”he’ll talk”) or when the subject turns to his cybernetics (”was that a joke?”, but he isn’t laughing). Most people have by now noticed elements of his behavior in the cutscenes such as him checking with the team about what he needs to do, then his arm shaking when he is not allowed to outright kill Maximilien. His embrace of the Strike Team could just be another prop to keep himself going.

When Genji says the ocean is beautiful in the quote a little ways above, he is looking at the sea under the influence of a hurricane, covered in lightning.

Genji’s anger is not something that ever goes away, even years later during the events of Dragons. It is not something even Zenyatta can take from him, because the goal of healing is not to erase a feeling that exists, but to improve how we deal with it.

(As an alternative hypothesis, the shaking is not just anger but some issue with the new cybernetics. Considering how robotic the motion is...did something happen to his remaining arm? Note how Maximilien, who is completely machine, moves with far more grace and control in the same scene.)

I also want to note that Genji considers Maximilien “dramatic”, and his tone when speaking about Maximilien and his money tends to be disdainful. Genji comes from a rich criminal family himself, but no one on the Strike Team appears to pick up on that angle of his responses. I think it’s safe to say he is holding a few cards close to his chest and trying to stay macho about the whole situation, but that’s not really what he needs to heal. 

So get to it, Zenyatta.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND IMAGES

Apple serious venture funding, on the condition that Woz quit, he initially refused, arguing that he'd designed both the Apple I and the Apple II while working at HP, and there is nothing to see outside. Now all educated people seem to share a certain prickly independence, whenever and wherever they lived. And the Internet makes copies easy to distribute. The other side may even break the deal; if they do that, they'll usually seize on some technicality or claim you misled them, rather than admitting they changed their minds.1 Investors would be the best supplier, but falls just short of the threshold for solvency—which will of course have been set on the high side, since there is no limit to the number of startups started within them. Believe it or not, the two senses of the word. In both painting and hacking there are some kinds of knowledge that get in the way of seeing a work of art that would appeal equally to your friends, to people in Nepal, and to have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but for your readers. You might come up with that kind of works. Six weeks is fast. Angels you can sometimes tell about other angels, because VCs are afraid of looking bad to their partners, and perhaps others that would appeal to most humans, and you don't take investment, then competitors who do will have an advantage. To them the company is worth more.2 There are two problems with this, though.

He didn't work for General Widget, but for those who make it often try to trick us. Lack of empathy is associated with intelligence, to the point where they can put a lot of trolls in it. It doesn't even have y.3 This probably makes them less productive, because they might end up with nothing. But I disagree with Caterina Fake when she says that makes this a bad time to start a startup: get a version 1 out fast, then improve it based on users' reactions. But there is a Laffer curve for government power, just as professional theater was being born, and pushed the medium so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. Don't be Evil?

Especially if other parents are doing it. Instead of making one $2 million investment, make five $400k investments.4 If you turned it over, it said Inside Macintosh. Hewlett-Packard, wouldn't let him do it at a low enough valuation. It's probably a combination of factors. Most humans will also find images of 3D objects engaging, because that was where the deals were. It was a new one, and instead of physical knobs it had buttons and an LED display. So startup hubs like Silicon Valley benefit from something like the marketplace effect, but shifted in time: startups are there because startups were there. I thought I was ready to question everything I knew. A lot of the spread of the Industrial Revolution that wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to get rich, he'll hire you as a bargain if you don't need them. I'm optimistic we will. The median visitor will arrive with their finger poised on the Back button.

But in general, for application software, you want to invest in successful startups, and think it's therefore the mark of a successful startup to have this happen. Yes, he may have extensive business experience.5 But if you work for a startup is like a pass/fail course for the founders, what you want to be the top one in your mind. Children of kings and great magnates were the first to grow up out of touch with the world. Actually big companies are not the root cause of variation in every other human skill. Your Hopes Up. They get the pick of all the different types of work, instead of what I wanted to do.6 I can tell, the way to do it, then it is hard, at least, that high level languages are often all treated as equivalent. In a feudal society, there are subtle signs you're in a place so nice that rich people wanted to live there. Another is to stand close. The final contributing factor is the culture of a large organization.

This probably accounts for a lot of subsidiary questions to be cleared up after the handshake, and if something great happens, they'll stick with it—something great meaning either that someone wants to buy you. How to Become a Hacker, and in it, but it does at least make you keep an open mind. If so, now's the time. Really? I've seen grinds to a halt when they start to think for themselves. It was more like the high school trick of breaking up with someone before they can break up with you. But if you had no money were taking more risk, and are entitled to higher returns. So you will not, as of this writing, be able to get features done faster than our competitors, and also to do things that would be just as worried about premature design—deciding too early what a program should do. Surely it was their duty to their limited partners simply to invest in those that at least have the advantage, from each one's point of view. This is especially true in a startup is like walking on your hands: it's possible, but it has the side effect that after having implicitly lied to kids about how good their judgement is, we then have to lie again about all the things they wanted with their own hands. There are some things that will appeal to most sentient beings whatever that means the skill and determination of an ordinary person.

Data is by definition easy to copy.7 So you have to do things I knew she was about to do anyway. Investors have different risk profiles from founders. And he could help them because he was one of the more profitable pieces of Yahoo, and the noise starts again. Most humans will also find images of 3D objects engaging, because that was where their peers were, and investors are very sensitive to it.8 But two guys who thought Multics excessively complex went off and wrote their own. Another much less subtle influence is brand. The puffed-up companies that went public during the Bubble didn't do it just because they were too quick. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not made equally. If you don't yet have any traffic, they fall back on number 2, what other investors think. Most deals, for investment or acquisition, happen in two phases.9

Notes

All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads. You're not seeing fragmentation unless you see what the startup isn't getting market price. This is the only way to see what they're capable of. It tipped from being overshadowed by Microsoft, incidentally, because the early days, and this is: we currently filter at the data, it's because of the reasons startups are often surprised by this, though more polite, was starting an outdoor portal.

Stone, op. The image shows us, the rest of the war it was the last step is to do work you love, or whether contractors count too. Scheme: define foo n lambda i set! Successful founders are effective.

Good investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable.

This is the converse: that the founders of Google to do it.

They don't make wealth a zero-sum game. The unintended consequence is that if you have to do, so they had to write every component yourself, but it's not lots of people are these days. One way to be some things it's a seller's market. These were the case of Bayes' Rule.

Different sections of the conversion of buildings not previously public, like a knowledge of human nature, might come from all over the super-angels hate to match. At first literature took a shot at destroying Boston's in the definition of property is driven mostly by technological progress is accelerating, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is a great programmer might invent things an ordinary programmer would never have left PARC. Why Are We Getting a Divorce? Well, almost.

Though they were friendlier to developers than Apple is now. Download programs to run an online service, and partly simple ignorance. The reason for the talk to corp dev is to use an OS that doesn't lose our data.

In part because Steve Jobs doesn't use. The threshold for participating goes down to you; you're too early if it's the right order. Bad math is merely a complicated but pointless collection of specious beliefs about its intrinsic qualities.

It seemed better to overestimate than underestimate the importance of making n constant, it might actually be bad if that means the slowdown that comes from.

[error01010110]

Vincent Cavalier shares our delusions. They are an unknown age, a Horsemen (Pestilence) who looks just like Grant Gustin. They are a sponsor. While they might be enthusiastic, sometimes they get obsessive. They are a switch in bed, and pansexual. They are into voyeurism and temperature play, and want a dom/sub/switch partner

There has always been confusion over what mantle he's carried, Conquest or Pestilence, but the answer is both. In the beginning Conquest wasn't the same person but playing games in the mortal world has a way of changing people. There was a realization along the way, a deep wound, and something shifted. From that point who they first were was gone, and so was most of the lust for power he used to feel. He stopped caring about the things that used to matter and resolved to no longer let the unpredictability of mortals simply pass rather than indulge it.

Having spent more time ducking in and out of the mortal realm than his siblings, he's seen humanity take its' stumbles along the way. He might have more empathy for mortals but the more popular opinion among the family is that too much time directly in the company of them has left him legitimately insane. It’s not an unfair assumption.

He's certainly felt rough spots dealing with the living, his sister Izzy refuses to let him keep any of the various connections he's made with the living over time as mortals do have to die and Vince never wants to let them go. The two have it out occasionally when a friend or lover he's overly fond of dies, usually ends in a shouting match and cold shoulders for a while before he forgives her for doing her job.

Being the 'oldest' of the Horsemen does absolutely nothing to instill reasonable maturity in him. It does make him intensely protective of his siblings though, knowing they can look after themselves doesn't stop him from being the annoying big brother every chance possible. The type of big brother who nags, bothers and basically makes a point of being in their business. Out of love, of course.It's generally one of the few things he does take that seriously and it's not a great idea to test his tolerance of people bothering his family.

Vince fully understand and accepts that his siblings are equally off-centered and messed up in their own special ways. It’s a fact he adores them for; their jobs would wear anyone down over time and it is just trying to cope with the burdens. While he does enjoy teasing them over their quirks, Liam often the target of choice because annoying his ‘little’ brother to the point of shouting matches is something he finds hilarious, he’s the first one to defend them as well, even against each other.

His own habits are hardly what most people see as typical at times. He absolutely has converted the basement of their shared home into his own little mad scientist lab of sorts where he toys with all sorts of diseases and works to invent new ones to keep humanity on its’ toes. It’s a hazard to anyone who wanders down there because things are often broken, out of place and there’s no telling what he’s busy with but, thankfully, none of the siblings aren’t human enough to be affected by anything he creates.

He very often fights over control of the TV with Dev because he gets tired of her watching wrestling shows when he would much rather binge watch Martha Stuart or a dozen other crafting shows that he clearly has an addiction to. But really they should all appreciate it more than they do because the house looks much better because of it, thanks. Or Bill Nye, the old kids’ show is still a favorite he has every episode saved on the DVR and even the thought of erasing it carries the threat of terrible consequences.

Entirely overly indulgent in practically everything, Vince gets carried away in most things he does. It makes him a very interesting person to drink with, yes. But he also fixates on ideas and will get stuck in the pattern over it until someone manages to shake him out of it. He’s very much a details person and if he does get focused he’s brilliant at solving problems, or creating them. It’s just the getting him to break that focus that proves to be difficult.

Since he is Conquest/Pestilence, he is, surprisingly, a good archer. The old tombs and scrolls that mention the objects each Horseman carries are true, and Vince has always carried the bow. Said weapon doesn’t seem all that dangerous compared to something like Dev’s sword until you consider the fact that the the arrows are very, very toxic with all sorts of infection-causing bacteria. Not something you’d want to deal with.

His two pet rats, Typhoid and Salmonella, or Ty and Sal for short, are adorable really. They’re are infected with a few stray diseases but nothing contagious or dangerous to the fuzzballs. He loves them and often wanders the house with at least one of them perched on his head. Ty is an red-eyed albino and Sal is a black Norwegian roof rat and both are rather large, curious and excessively friendly. Sal drools a lot too but just ignore that.

Vince has an affinity for glitter, shiny things and sparkle. He gets excited over the most random things and has, on several occasions, tried to tape a horn to his horse because of his affection for unicorns. All of this translates into his owning a craft supply store in town where he’s seen roaming around often enough, though like his siblings he has no real grasp of time so the place has no consistent hours.

He also very much enjoys technology, a real nerd in fact, and has been trying to figure out a way for decades to extend his power to the area of computer viruses as well. He finds random gadgets very interesting and spends far too much time on Youtube or medical forums, he processes new information very quickly but just as often he’s just there to entertain himself and will sit and watch videos of people making home decor out of cardboard or whatever other strange DIY weirdness that has his interest. He has a more impressive account on site than just about any Pintrest mom out there. 

In spite of the gravity of his purpose in the world he’s a fairly cheerful, clumsy and at times downright awkward guy who is painfully optimistic. Sure, the world is probably going to end sooner or later but at least he’s going to know about it beforehand since he has to start that nonsense, right? Until that point life is so much better than wallowing in misery. The real darkness is lingering out in the world now, which does worry him since even he hasn’t encountered anything like that before, but so long as his siblings are safe inside the town he doesn’t really see much point in being down about it.

//Powers//

He’s Pestilence, by design that means diseases, illness and wasting away. He’s responsible for crafting new sicknesses over time and allowing them into the world, as well as controlling somewhat the spread and direction of diseases. While it seems like a dismal job it has a very important purpose; humanity has always feared death and sickness and from fear comes change. Mortals have grown and progressed as a whole as a direct result of trying to survive so his role isn’t so much to destroy the world anymore than it is any of his siblings, people don’t see it however that the real point in what they do is to keep mortals moving forward and evolving with each new challenge the Horsemen throw at them. It’s a job he enjoys, finding a great deal of pride in and respect of mortals for their intense determination; he really is very fond of them.

There are limits to what he can do directly to a person. It requires contact and willful intent so he doesn’t really cause harm without purposely doing so. He is also limited to sicknesses that a person has, in fact suffered before in their lifetime or already has the predisposition for; he cannot infect someone with an illness or condition that might not have already been in their genetics; he basically just speeds it along. So if a person has ever had the flu, for instance, he can cause them to suffer it again with his touch. Or even if they’ve never shown any signs of it but somewhere in their genes there is the marker for something like cancer he can bring that to the surface and cause it to rapidly develop. He couldn’t do something like infect someone with the Bubonic plague, however, unless he actually had the virus with him at the time because it’s not something people inherit.His power runs the range from physical sickness to mental illness as well, the latter is, however, harder to ignite in a person.

While his powers are basically useless against his siblings because there is some built-in clause to the idea of the Horsemen not harming each other, plus he wouldn’t want to harm them, his powers have erratic effects on other inhuman races. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, there seems to be no logic as to why or how or even what the end result might be when he tries to cause sickness in the inhuman.

That power does work on himself though, and he’s often experimenting with it to experience what mortals do in regards to various diseases or conditions. Sometimes the end result is a sickness or disorder that will stick around a while before it finally fades away. Narcolepsy is the current issue and he does at times fall asleep without meaning to.

Along with his work directly with sickness in mortals he also can extend his powers to other natural things; plants, animals, most anything really. Animals in particular are an area of interest for the simple ability he has of being able to control ones that suffer very dangerous diseases. With that control he can direct them to do as he wishes or can gather limited information from them through sight and other senses. Rats are his favorite in that regard, he very often uses them to keep an eye on areas of the world where he cannot physically be at the time but needs to know the details of how his work is playing out.

Along those lines, he is very acutely aware of the world. He knows where sickness dwells and at any given time can focus and track the progression of it anywhere in the world. He keeps nearly endless records in the basement, keeps track of epidemics and the state of mortality with them. He’s incredibly well organized in keeping up with his work and how it is effecting things, and that nearly constant devotion of part of his attention to the idea always in the back of his mind is part of the reason he lacks the ability to keep his attention trained too well otherwise. He is nearly always aware and distracted by his power because his is one that is consistently out there changing things day to day and requires very close supervision to keep in check.

[tarunjtejpal]

Tarun J Tejpal - The Missionary Position

Tarun J Tejpal - We all love sentimental trash, especially if it can masquerade as something artistic and meaningful. Often it needn't even do that — in an act of self-affirmation we invest it with these virtues. Slumdog Millionaire is one more representation of India as the white man sees it, not as we do. It's a five-hundred-year old tradition. Look carefully, the triumphant picture in the papers could be the enlightened missionary with the tribal boys. The tradition is strong: we've always been cosy with the representations. It's worthwhile to remember we did not tell an Indian story and force the world to recognise it. They told us an Indian story and forced us to applaud it.

A bit like Thomas Babington Macaulay, who declared from behind the musketry of the colonial conqueror that a "single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". Looking up a long barrel with gunpowder at its end, we quietly acquiesced. Quietly turned our backs on hundreds of classical and medieval texts, including the great epics, the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads, the medical, ethical, linguistic, erotic and political treatises of dozens of pathbreaking thinkers, the plays of Kalidasa, the deeply humanist and philosophic poetry of the sufi and bhakti singers, and the luminous memoirs of emperors and commoners. And having acquiesced in our classification by another — ill-informed at that — proceeded to spend the next nearly two hundred years hunting for approval.

The argument does not proceed from narrowness, from a bristling us and them. Artistic domain, and license, is boundless — even if the art is only commerce. Everyone has the right to tell anyone's story, in whichever way they choose. But if the story is specious and yet is taken for a master tale, it's reason to wonder at the state of cultural discourse.

From a distance, through the refractions of many media lenses, I like Danny Boyle. He exudes great energy and humility. Qualities that make astonishing things possible, qualities that are on display in his rollercoaster film set in Mumbai, his Concorde ride to showbiz stardom. Yet, from a distance, through the rapturous din of critics and viewers, I wonder at the film. Setting aside AR Rahman's ever-enchanting music and the visceral brilliance of the little kids, I try and understand why a reasonably entertaining, mildly inconsistent, mildly incoherent, mildly sloppy in its casting, mildly sloppy on its facts film, with a banal narrative trajectory, and dodgy politics at its heart, becomes such a phenomenon.

One feels awe not for the film, but for its miraculous journey. Clearly, in an increasingly low-brow ocean of publicity and hype, the idea of true excellence is a drowned raft.

Not shorn of the hype, but because of it, to an Indian, the film ought to disappoint. It tells me nothing that I don't already know; and it tells me things I know to be not true. Unlike Amitabh Bachchan I have no problems with the film focusing on India's abject poverty. That focus is salutary, and crying out for further exploration. My problem is the opposite— that it trivialises it. Uses its excreta and chopped limbs to tell a dubious story that leaves the viewer not disturbed but cheerfully smug. You leave the seat exhilarated, not in pain.

The film tells a very big lie: that India's poor have a happy shot at leaping out of their misery into affluence and joy. One day you can be in the crap heap — diving into excreta — and the next running down a slum girl who may have failed to make school but seems to have managed to walk through Vogue's offices on her way to teenage. With a stunning lack of plausibility you see the slum child Jamaal grow into a refined public schoolboy who must surely be eating cucumber sandwiches for lunch. India's wannabe wealthy — billionaires among them — would slice their fingers to boast such a sophisticated son. For that accent alone, they would throw in their toes too.

As many cooing admirers have remarked, the director is on a lickety-split run, pacing his film like a Kobe Bryant fast-break in an NBA finals. Throw, catch, feint, weave, leap, dunk; turn and start running again. Aw! Gee! The camera is shaking, the story is sprinting — there is no way anyone can tell if a few chapters have fallen out, several links of logic lost. You have to be grateful Jamal only grows up to be Dev Patel. Given the absence of any need to explain the miraculous transformation, he could well have become Brad Pitt or Prince Charles. To further celebrate the carnival of implausibility, Master Dev acts with the cool flatness of the cucumber sandwich (that he surely must be eating) — no neuroses of the slums tarnishing his soul.

For those celebrating the authenticity of the film, here's a secret: the makers clearly had no interest in verisimilitude. It's been the rough approach of artists working the India material for the last hundred years. It arises from a clear understanding of "audience". The awgee mobs filling theatres around the world, and paying in dollars or some such muscular currency, cannot tell the difference between Hindi and Hindu or the vast distance between Mumbai and Agra. Much like the American tourists at the Taj Mahal, who cannot distinguish between an unlettered, ignorant urchin and a licensed guide.

The awgee mobs — which include vast swathes of awgee India — will not be held back by the remarkable metamorphosis of Hindi-speaking slum children into English-speaking teenagers — smoothly accomplished whilst riding the roofs of trains, without the intervention of any forms of schooling. Nor will they wonder by what divine principle some of the desperately destitute speak Hindi and others English. In the happy world of air-conditioning and popcorn — and fountain Pepsi — the poor can be made to do whatever we wish. Dance, sing, love, win quiz contests, murder with a Webley & Scott, die in a tub full of currency notes. What is the meaning of being rich if you cannot make the poor do whatever you wish? What is the meaning of being Hollywood if you cannot make India whatever you wish?

Aptly then, the awgee army will not be detained by the representation of the police either. It knows Mumbai's police have vanquished murder, rape, riot, theft and arson. All its working on now is nabbing crooked quiz contestants and torturing them through the night with electrical shocks to evoke the correct answer. If the art direction is right — squalid files and furniture — and the cop is fat enough, there is no reason for further doubt. It also knows behind the fatness and toughness the police hide the soul of Mother Teresa. Once the boy who eats cool cucumber sandwiches begins to talk, his heart will melt, and the empathy flows like faeces in the slums.

THE AWGEE sociologists also know that the grand hosts of India's grandest shows all come from the slums. Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan — the only two who've ever hosted the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And, of course, now Anil Kapoor in this fast-break film — who chooses to host it in English, because the slum boy has lost his Hindi as he grew up (just as Kapoor himself did — the upward mobility from the slums is a veritable avalanche!). Awgee and awgee also know that these grand hosts play sinister games, like planting wrong answers and summarily handing over contestants to the fat and tough police (for electrocution and empathy).

The media tells us the film is about hope. And hope, as we all know, is greater than inconsistency, inaccuracy, implausibility, dodgy politics, and party pooper critics. And since the film is about the triumph of impossible hope, it is impossibly greater than all of the above. QED. And yes, of course it is also a fantasy, a fairytale. And since, for these poor sods, hope too is a fantasy, it all coheres, hangs together beautifully.

The awgee readers of awgee media know that this is the crucial difference between people like Satyajit Ray, Mira Nair and the Slumdog millionaires. Their films were about poverty and street children; this one's about fantastic hope. In their heart of hearts, the awgee readers know the poor are desperately in need of hope. They also know that hope is all they can — and will — give them. And let's be honest — false or true, fantastic hope is still hope. The media knows something even more fundamental. Never criticise the celebrity whose interview keeps your shop alive. The road to poverty is paved with robust criticism.

The world of entertainment is studded with shining pyramids of implausibility. Each one's true reward is a singing cash register. But great awards, fools argue, must go to the fragile hutments of truth and excellence. The wise, on the other hand, know the wages at the Oscars better. They know they have a rare gift (as in the film) for turning ordinary shit into tasty chocolate and peanut butter.

It's  Written by Tarun J Tejpal. Some rides are so giddy you can't see the truth, says Tarun J Tejpal.  According to Tarun Tejpal “sorrow must not be cultivated: it is a poor lifestyle choice.” Tarun Tejpal is a journalist, publisher, and novelist. In a 26-year career, Tarun Tejpal has been an editor with the India Today and the Indian Express groups, and the managing editor of Outlook, India’s premier newsmagazine. In March 2000, he started Tehelka, a news organisation that has earned a global reputation for its aggressive public interest journalism.  Also you can check Tarun J Tejpal.

[billion-heartbeats]

Money Matters and Love cares!                                                                                                                                                       M- Momentarily O – Owned                                                                             N- Not                                                                                                                                                                         E- Eternally Y- Yours                                                                                                                                                               Love and money are two extremely complex subjects in their own right. When they're mixed haphazardly, it could be a recipe for disaster. Money and love, is the glue that keeps lives together. Money symbolizes security and happiness. Without love, everything you do seems meaningless. Without love, you will live empty inside. Without love, you will feel like you are incomplete. More importantly, there will be no one to celebrate with you even if you are rich and have all the money in the world. Does this make love the more important than money? Money is important, but not the most important, because it is tangible. At heart we always crave for the intangibles - God, Grace, Devotion, Blessings, love, satisfaction, praise, liberation, pleasure, fragrance, oxygen etc. Things desired but difficult to get are precious. That which is ultimately sought after, yet remains beyond reach, beyond actual touch, that which could only be felt is invaluable. E.g. - Oxygen! Money- what it can and what it cannot!                             Money can buy you medicine and not Health. Money can buy you amusement but not happiness! Money can buy you books but not wisdom. Money can buy you a bed but not sleep. Money can buy you food but not the Appetite. Money can buy you a companion but not a friend. Money can buy you a house but not a home. Money can buy adulation but not respect. Money can buy services, but not loyalty. Money can buy flattery, but not self-esteem. Money can buy designer clothes but not the inner beauty. Money can buy an expensive watch and not the Time! Money can buy jokes but not a sense of Humor. Bottom line: It is good to have money and the things that it can buy, but it’s good too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost out on the things money can’t buy. Money talks The adage-Money makes the world go round is more than true. When you have Money with you, you forget who you are! When you do not have money, others forget who you are! Money Is the Megaphone to Identity! Money gives you power, dignity and honor.   Money by itself is neither good nor bad. Usage of money makes it good or bad. Choice is yours; Money is just a tool. Eighty percent of the world’s money is with twenty percent of the population, while the rest 20 percent of the world’s money is with eighty percent of the population. In the pursuit of money many of us lose our values and ethics. Having money for the greed is criminal but earning money in the right way is spiritual and is your right. Steve Jobs once said: I don’t care to be the richest corpse in the cemetery! We lose our health to make money and then lose money to restore the health. We live as if we will never die and die as if we never lived. The want for more never ends. Everyone dies, but almost no one really lives. Money can never be the ‘be all and end all of life’. So is everything else! Life is more important! Having lots of money can be like being high on drugs. It can make you feel powerful and giddy. It makes you feel invincible. Money makes us feel that we’re better and more important than we really are. Money fattens our ago! It has power to bring people together and also tear them apart. You can’t escape money - the more you chase the more you get it! The more you get the more you want! Money is rightly said- is an Aphrodisiac! Money is not acknowledged and appreciated the way it should be. Human lives are a tragic enclave of contrasts. There seems to be a statistical disconnect between money and happiness. If you are able to enjoy what matters- love, relationship, compassion and empathy, which is what money can't buy, Money is secondary! Once we escape the trap of poverty, levels of wealth have an extremely modest impact on levels of happiness. The central assumption of modern society is- more money equals more pleasure. We've been led to believe that dollar is a delight and the currency rules! To go after money is greed. To have money and flaunt it is vulgar! To spend it is reckless! But giving it to others in need is dharma and takes you straight to god! In practice there is grudging but overwhelming admiration for those who make lot of money. Society envies you! if you have In addition, good qualities it adores you. Love cares Love gives us the assurance that we are not alone in the world. You are not rich until you have something that money cannot buy! Love is when the want is more than the need! A simple question! Who has changed the world more- Bill Gates or Mother Teresa or Borlaug? My vote is for Bill gates and Borlaug! I agree it is not how much one gives, but how much love we put in that act of giving is what matters. Bill Gates used the power of money to change the world and Mother Teresa used the power of love to change the world. Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution used agricultural science to reduce world’s hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. All three are great in their own spheres. You decide who is more powerful! Healthy, wealthy and may be- wise! This is no package! Wealth is an enabler, a catalyst and even validates of your wisdom. The beauty of the wisdom is that it belongs to you forever. Look around you: There is abundance of ignorance! The very notion of ultimate wealth is fallacious and misconceived. • When you are battling poverty, money is the ultimate wealth. • When you are sick, immunity and health is the ultimate wealth. • If you are lonely, love is the wealth you need. There’s something inherently disturbing about thinking of wealth as obscene. For, such a perspective not only limits our understanding of one of the most important and powerful criteria of human progress.   We need to rekindle the law of love within us, and within our children. Let me tell you a conversation I was witness to. My grandson, my son and I were relaxing at home. A neighborhood boy came home and was playing with my grandson. The boy had “I too want that toy looks”. My son told my grandson to give him one of his toys. After some pleas, he finally agreed to give.  He picks up a toy - his least favorite toy!"  My son told him, No dear, not that toy, Give him your favorite toy. At this point, grandson instinctively protested, but then looking at his father's stern-yet-compassionate look, he grudgingly goes to the door to give away his favorite toy. Naturally, I figured that my son will have to console his son when he returns; lo and behold, much to his surprise, the grandson returns with a hop in his step. With an innocence befitting to an 8-year-old, he looks his Father in the eyes and says, "Dad that was amazing. Can I do it again? This is the law of love, and may we all keep doing it again and again and again. Indeed Love cares. Money and Love                                                                                     A lot of women prefer to marry rich men. They prefer a husband who earns more than they can spend. Ever heard of The World’s Most Loving Couple? No. How about the World's Richest? Bet you have. Would you rather cry in a Porsche or on a bicycle? Choice is yours! Dr N prabhu dev Former VC Bangalore University Former- Director Jayadeva institute of cardiology. nprabhudev@gmail.com

[mbti-notes]

I recognize myself doing something like faking empathy or acting out of touch with my needs (and I don't even know what my needs are). My inner motivation all of the time is to get to higher ego development/develop Ni and Fe but that's counterproductive because it makes my intention awry. Yet I'm not able to get out of this way of thought. I've gotten to a point of extreme emotional deadening when I can't care about anything even though I genuinely want to. It seems so annoying to be stuck (2)

[con’t: inside my feelings and constantly checking in to whether I’m succeeding. If the solution to this is proper development, isn’t that also synonymous to getting into higher ego development? I don’t know how I can develop without thinking of the concept of development and success I’ve made up]

I didn’t get the first part of your ask, but this topic has come up many times before by infjs, so I’m not going to prioritize it anymore. The Type Dev Guide already warns about developing for the wrong reasons, but you’re not listening. When you’re not psychologically ready for the next stage of development, you’re not ready. At some point, you have to let things be and evolve at their own pace. When you keep failing, it means you should change your strategy, not double and triple down. Different stages of development require learning very different lessons. A person at a low level of ego development isn’t going to benefit from advice given to a person at a higher level as they simply won’t have the self-awareness necessary to understand it. It’s like entering a heavyweight boxing championship as a lightweight. 

At low levels of ego development, your entire mindset is limited by your ego dramas, so you aren’t able to see anything else outside of that. You are at the mercy of whatever triggers your ego drama, you construct a false self-image to suit your ego’s immediate comfort, and you get upset whenever your false self-image gets invalidated. Some infjs learn to avoid feeling invalidated by hiding away from the world, some infjs go on the attack and walk around as though entitled to constant validation, some infjs become control freaks as a means to fool themselves into feeling at ease. All of it is mere ego drama.

The only way to move beyond ego is to see through it, to honestly acknowledge what it is, to know when it is operating, and to be willing to let it go when necessary. You haven’t done the work to really understand what ego is and what yours looks like, rather, you’re just “following orders” in hopes of achieving some superficial goal. Transcending ego means recognizing that there’s much more to life than your own perspective, your own comforts, your own hangups, your own progress. For example, “empathy” is about recognizing other people’s needs and desires, yet you still manage to make it all about you. For example, “caring” is about expressing your love or passion for something outside yourself, so you can’t care because nothing exists for you other than your self-image.

Your focus is always on getting some form of “approval” in terms of validating the self-image you’ve constructed, which indicates poor Ni development (because you are not concerned about the truth of yourself), overindulgence of Fe (because you only know yourself by superficial in/validations), misuse of Ti (because you think yourself in circles about your feelings rather than confronting them directly), and disconnection from Se (because you can’t see and accept reality for what it is). As long as you crave approval, you are stuck in ego. Craving approval means being afraid to risk disapproval, so you live your life in fear. The reason you are stuck there is because you WANT the benefits of approval, which include, but are not limited to, feelings of: security, belonging, intelligence, confidence, and/or superiority (for having “succeeded”). As long as those supposed ego benefits are your top priority, you can’t let go of the fake self-image precisely because you rely on it for existential comfort. 

Aren’t you stating a fact when you say that you don’t feel genuine empathy? Aren’t you stating a fact when you say that you’re emotionally dead? Why not just accept those facts about yourself? You keep trying to force development. Just stop. Stop trying to be something you’re not. See what happens then. Some people really benefit from the structure of goal-setting, whereas some people merely use it as a crutch - you don’t realize that you’re the latter right now. You have to drop the crutch if you want to see how lame your legs really are and how much pain you’re really in. Using a crutch means that you’re trying to save yourself from feeling bad, and then you turn around and wonder why you can’t feel. It’s useless to ask me how to get away from the crutch that you’re gripping with all your might, because all I’ll say is “let it go”, which is advice that you can’t understand as long as you can’t recognize that the option to let go actually exists. Real learning requires humility, but your chosen approach is to presume to know only to get slapped by your own ignorance again and again. Living life is about exploration and discovery, but all you want is to have it all figured out because you fear what it means to live life without a crutch -> inferior Se.

Personality is complex and layered. Self-development isn’t easy because it requires you to keep digging into yourself to discover the truth of who you are. People hit a hard wall when they don’t want to face the truth about themselves, usually because they are afraid that there is nothing behind the self-image, which often means that being anything, even if it’s fake, is better than being nothing. If you can’t face up to the possibility of your own nothingness as well as the accompanying fear, pain, and despair of being nothing, you can’t build from a clean and humble foundation. 

[eienias20]

Fire Emblem Warriors thoughts

I’ve made no attempt to hide my utter disappointment at this game and I think I made a post some months back that I might be reiterating...but I just want to say it one more time to outline my issue not just with Warriors but with what I encounter quite regularly for being a fan of the older games. Oops. I mean an “elitist.”

In my opinion: Fire Emblem Warriors biggest crime is that it could’ve ended, or at least severely broken “this”. What is this? The split. That’s what “this” is.

Since Awakening/Fates and all that, the Fire Emblem fanbase has been split. Badly. Warriors had the potential to be a Fire Emblem game for everyone. It could feature characters from all across the series’ history that everyone could bond over.

New favorites, old veterans, nearly everyone could’ve potentially had at least one character that really resonated with them, surrounded by many more familiar and maybe even some unfamiliar faces.

You can’t account for every single sense of taste but you could go for most of them. Ignoring that stupid “too many swords” argument the devs tried to use, you don’t actually HAVE to feature every single Lord. I think a game like this would be far more interesting with more of the B-teams from across the series. Some Lords, some plot important characters, A LOT of B-team. Because those B-team characters are the ones that people really invest into on the side, beyond the main lords, beyond the central characters, everyone has those side characters they just love.

And again, I doubt this game could cover every game in the franchise but it could do more than 3, two of which are already related and all 3 of which connect to one another. Warriors stated it would have support conversations. But with these games and casts being so interconnected ALREADY, what’s the point? They’ve already supported with each other once before, that’s another prospect lost.

Going back to unfamiliar characters, new fans would see these cool old characters, much like how Heroes introduces old characters, and they’d be inspired to learn more about these characters and maybe even check out their old games. Which btw Nintendo, you could release the games digitally on the eShop to make money off these new interested parties. In this hypothetical scenario where you did something smart at least.

But of course, in reality, they decided NOT to do that. Catering almost exclusively to the new fans, the new games and ignoring almost ten games worth of heroes and villains, thus widening the divide even further.

The saddest part is that the idea of a Fire Emblem Dynasty Warriors game is not new. People have wanted this kind of game for YEARS! And for those fan who wanted to play as their faves from Tellius, Magvel, Elibe or anything before that! Jugdral, Archanea...their wish finally came true.

Fire Emblem Warriors is real!

And it is nothing at all like how they imagined.

When I regularly bring up my grievances, I’m told to shut up and stop being an “elitist” and given these types of responses otherwise.

“Awakening Saved The Series” every time I hear that I have to bash my head into a wall. What does that have to do with anything?

Look. I think Fates is trash. The worst FE game ever made. And I think Awakening is way to over hyped. It's decent but many other FE games did what it did, BETTER. Did I want those games excluded from Warriors? NO.

I don't like them and they definitely should not represent Fire Emblem as a whole, but they are the most recent games (not counting Echoes because idk why) there was no version of Warriors in my head that didn't feature those games. I'm just so disappointed that they are the ONLY games being featured alongside Shadow Dragon.

Beyond that there is the “Wait for DLC” argument and that is a huge insult and unacceptable. If you are a huge Awakening fan imagine if no Awakening characters were going to be in this game. No one and instead you were told just to wait for DLC, that’ll fix it. That wouldn't feel good now would it? See?

I’m just asking for a little bit of empathy from the new fans for the many old fans being screwed over by this game.

I’ve made my decision that I am not buying a game for a roster comprised only of 1/3 of characters I actually care about and I am not holding over for DLC. It's a disgrace. It's an insult. It's a huge slap in the face. And while at times it makes me angry, it more often than not disappoints me.

When the announcement trailer released, I was hyped. This is a game, a concept, a crossover that seemed SO COOL! I imagined playing a game not unlike Hyrule Warriors but controlling characters I absolutely adore, heroes like Ike and the Greil Mercenaries (Mia stands out) or villains like Ashnard and the Black Knight! And that’s just Tellius! I couldn’t wait to see what they’d do with this game only to get “Shadow Dragon, Awakening, Fates” only shoved in my face.

Yes they said mostly. But you know why I don’t trust them? Because the same thing was said for the last Fire Emblem crossover. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

The game would feature Fire Emblem characters MOSTLY from Shadow Dragon / Awakening. Come release, ONLY those characters are in the game. Caeda, Cain, Draug and Navarre (Shadow Dragon), Chrom, Tharja and Virion (Awakening) fucking knock it off with tharja pls.

But you know what got me MOST excited in #FE? Seeing Ilyana as an NPC hostess for a restaurant. THAT did it, above all else.

This came out longer than I thought it would be but again this is the last big thing I’ll write over this whole Fire Emblem Warriors thing.

If you follow me on twitter, I’ll probably still reference it through retweets or some comments because I just can’t let go of my disappointment. But regardless of what I say, this is my biggest stance.

When DLC is announced I just know its going to be painful. At this rate, I’d rather the DLC as well be restricted to Shadow Dragon, Awakening, Fates. That’d be far less hurtful than seeing my favorite characters relegated to such a role.

I’d go back to playing Fire Emblem Heroes which understands how to represent the series even if Fates/Awakening still hold such a majority, especially since Sacred Stones finally got their banner...but my tablet no longer works so I can’t play it again.

I’m hoping to pick up Fire Emblem Echoes soon, since unlike Fates that looks like an FE game I’d actually enjoy and of course I am still cautiously optimistic for Fire Emblem Switch.

I’ve been a Fire Emblem fan for so long, despite the fact that I feel so bad about the series recently, I refuse to give up on it just yet. I’m hinging everything on what Fire Emblem Switch turns out to be like.

I’m looking ahead to that in 2018 for countless reasons.

small addendum

what the hell happened to the voice acting? in Awakening, I enjoyed the vocal performances. no one stood out to me as bad.

Fates? yeah...poor quality i’d say. Especially in Corrin’s smash trailer. wow that was bad.

but this? VA changes sure, but some characters have their old VAs and according to ppl more well versed in those characters, they don’t sound good. The less we say of the OCs performances the better.

Regardless of if you’re excited for this game or if you’re me who is staying as far away as possible, the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired.