#dev on this is so scattered haha......

[foolicue]

was a bit worried about sameface syndrome in my project so did a mini lineup. plus some development of new guys

[theblueeyedeagle]

Surprise! I’ve been Giangio this whole time! Mwahaha!

My friend and I made this coat ourselves! Have some unceremonious hotel pics cause all my friends were scattered to the wind during con that day. So alas, no extra hands.

Very fun that a couple people recognized me. I gave them wishstones! (Some people complimented the Jiminy Cricket plushie I had in my pocket even if they didn’t know who I was, it was very cute haha)

Also thank u devs for making Gio’s face cause now I, a lady with pointy features, can feel like my face is finally fitting for a character lol.

[wraith-caller]

Hi, Wraith! Lemme just start by saying that I ADORE your lore posts. Your mind is incredible and I love reading your thoughts, speculations, extrapolations, etc. Which brings me to a question I’m dying to hear your thoughts for: How did Iji die? I’ve been scouring Reddit and any other forums I can find and everything I’ve found is cyclical non-answers. The obvious answer is Black Knives- because their bodies are scattered around him. This tracks because Blaidd, when you find him in front of Ranni’s Rise, is also surround by Black Knife corpses. However, this does NOT track for several reasons. First: Iji is drenched in black flame, a sorcery (power?) used by the Godskins, not the Black Knives. I’ve seen lots of people say it’s probably just an oversight on FromSoft’s part. Altogether possible, but would make me sad and I deeply want to believe it’s intentional. Second: The Black Knives are (were?) RANNI’S assassin’s. While she’s self-serving and stone-cold, she claims to love Blaidd and Iji (and tells you to tell them). I find it hard to believe she’d have them killed. MAYBE if they were only found near Blaidd (in preparation for his coming madness), I could buy it, but I’m not sure I can get onboard as it stands. Now I did find two interesting thoughts. One, someone said the Nox were recruited as the Black Knives and turned on Ranni when she killed her own body, because the plan was only to kill Godwyn and plant one of their own on the throne. I’ve never seen or found anything in my own playthroughs to support or indicate this, but it would make a lot of sense. Two, and I feel that this hinges heavily on one, someone soeculated that Gideon killed Iji. They pointed out that he uses black flame sorceries, and he definitely tries to kill any threats to his ascent to lordship. Anyway, this got WAY longer than I meant for it to be. But IF it’s a topic that interests you, I’d love to hear your thoughts! (And if not, no problem at all!) There’s definitely plenty I don’t know/understand and if I’m incorrect in any of my points above, I’d be really interested in knowing what I’m missing. I feel obligated to sign this, too, since it got away from me 😂😅 -nightingale-ghost-writer

@nightingale-ghost-writer sorry to answer this way, tumblr's not cooperating with answering asks lol. Hi!! Thank you for the kind words haha I'm happy my ramblings are of interest to others! I do hope you really enjoy a ramble bc your question sorta set me off on one here lol

I've thought about Iji's death now and then, and found some of the same answers you did about the black flame effect around his body. It may simply be a mistake by the devs like people frequently say. Especially since, iirc, there's no deathflame animation analogous to the blackflame one left on Iji. It could have been a 'close enough' kind of thing, which yeah I agree would ultimately be disappointing! However someone in this reddit thread had something interesting to point out:

"There's a weird detail, possibly an oversight: if you use a Blade of Death weapon art (for example Maliketh's Black Blade or the Gargoyle's Black Blade) on a troll, the effect looks like black flame rather than the usual red and black flame. I doubt there's a lore reason, but maybe something about how that enemy type is coded causes that effect to appear like black flame, and that also extended to Iji who uses the same model."

I haven't tested this myself, but if it's true, it lends more support to the idea it's just an unintentional effect. However, in that same thread, a few folks point out that Godskins were spotted in various places relevant to Destined Death - in the Volcano Manor and Divine Tower of Liurnia. Rykard has a piece of the Death rune, and Ranni's corpse is on the tower, along with her cursemark. It may be that they are searching for the Rune of Death themselves. Their presence in Farum Azula may suggest they were seeking to free the rune and restore the true power of the Black Flame. So while I still believe it's the Black Knife assassins who killed Iji, I suppose there is room to argue the Godskins have a stake in his death, too, in that Iji stands between them and Ranni.

While the Black Knife assassins worked with Ranni, I'm not sure that they were necessarily under her command. I think they collaborated as they both thought they could benefit from each other. Ranni would get to shed her flesh through the ritual, and the assassins of the Eternal Cities, who have beef with the Golden Order, get to strike down one of the GOs most shining and noble icons and throw the world into chaos. As you've said, they have their own agenda with ushering in the Lord of Night, who may either be an outer god or an envoy/vassal to one. This Lord may also have some connection with Ranni's Black Moon and, strangely enough, the Tibia Mariners who, in Japanese, are referred to as "Night King's Kin"(more info in this Zullie video here). The Mariners hold deathroot and raise up Those Who Live in Death, so I have been under the impression they only came into being after Godwyn's curse spread, which is of course a direct consequence of the assassination.

So while Ranni and the Assassins stood to gain from each other in this plot, their ultimate goals are sort of actually at odds. Ranni, while devoted to her Black Moon, seeks to remove the influence of Outer Gods from TLB and leave everyone to their own devices. Meanwhile, the Nox/Assassins are seeking to deliver a new one to the throne. We see indications of this struggle in Alecto's imprisonment in the evergaol at the Moonlight Altar and, if you are partial to the theory that Miquella collaborated with Ranni, in Ordina. Then there's the further evidence of the Assassins coming for Ranni's group to kill Blaidd and Iji. So I agree, I don't think Ranni had Iji killed. Like you, I could potentially see her ordering them to kill Blaidd, as she knew he'd be fated to try to destroy her. While it is cold and calculating, she does express her sympathy for him. But she is ultimately dedicated to sacrificing everything to achieve her goals. When we do find Blaidd with the dead assassins, he's not saying anything about them. He's frantically denying that he could be a danger to Ranni, as if their attack on him is connected to that. So I do see how people could connect the assassins coming for him with them being ordered by her to kill him.

But then we get into the matter of why they'd be ordered to kill Iji, and I just can't think of a good one. He's clear-minded, and not fated to betray her in the way Blaidd is as her shadowbound beast. I've seen people claim it's a matter of 'tying up loose ends' but I can't imagine in what way he'd be a 'loose end' given that he's entirely faithful to her. Loose ends are tied up because they pose a threat. What threat is Iji to Ranni and her goals if he is emphatically supporting her to the very end? And then when I think of Alecto in the evergaol, I'm really inclined to believe it's purely a matter of bad blood between Ranni's group and the assassins after the conspiracy was through. It may even be that we led them to her, as her whereabouts were previously unknown until we found her(though you'd hope people would uh check her home before declaring her missing?? lol).

That being said, I kind of like your idea about Gideon's involvement. Some elements of that make sense. I'm not sure how much he knows of Ranni, since he says they don't actively seek her out due to her having cast off her rune. While he generally seems to send lackeys to go do his dirty work, the Carian Manor could be a pit stop he made on the way into Leyndell. He may have somehow or other learned of Ranni's whereabouts, learned she was behind the conspiracy, but what I struggle with is him learning her motivation for it. She reveals this to us only after we've spent some time in her service. So did Gideon suspect her of being after the throne? Would he have known she wanted to rid the world of all the troubling influences of the Outer Gods? If he did, would that be much of a threat to his desire to become a lord? While he wouldn't be an Elden Lord, there'd still be power to be had in a world without the Golden Order. And the power vacuum left in the wake of Ranni achieving her goals would seem like a good opportunity for him to position himself in a leadership role. But I'll be honest, I don't fully understand him and his revelations about Marika's will, and how that effects his perspective. By the end of it he seems to think vying for Elden Lord is a futile struggle and that the whole thing is just a meat grinder that Tarnished are being fed into. So does he even still want that power by the end, if he believes it to be utterly unobtainable? Still, it's not entirely unbelievable that he would eliminate potential threats to that power before he comes to that fatalistic conclusion.

Okay, anyway, I hope all of this makes some sense!! Thanks for the interesting ask and for sharing your theories about this strange little mystery!!!

[katyspersonal]

Also, on topic of how Caryll was intended as unambiguously male character by devs ( x ) and Hemwick stuff. I think I found a way to solve the contradiction!

I still think Hemwick connection makes sense - we find Rune Tool IN Hemwick on the tied normie Yharnam Hunter guy surrounded by scattered papers (as if experimented on), game has theme of three people in the ritual (statue in Hemwick mansion, in Church of Good Chalice, Surgery Altar) but we only fight two witches as bosses, there is a woman statue behind Memory Altar that has either scar on her head or martyr 'crown'.

But what if? Caryll/Karel and the witch are different people? So there was that really smart scholar that created alphabet of the Great Ones, BUT the witch helped to find a way to employ runes! So, invented the tool itself and found out how to USE runes (through unethical experiment I guess...). After all in Japanese original Caryll is scribe/copier/descriptor/translator/etc, never anything close to 'runesmith'.

But naturally Hunters respect and remember the one that made a Hunter TOOL more than the scholar. Honestly this feels so likely. I just decide to stick with my idea of merging 'really smart translator scholar' and 'third witch that helped actually put runes IN brain' into one character, as this makes for a kinda complicated story and personality. But yeah, mystery solved? (No mystery is ever 100% solved in Soulsborne but you get me)

Though that'd be fun to imagine 'real' Caryll sometime haha; After all there is no moral obligation to choose one version and stick to it - fans are people that have fun, not cell a concrete interpretation as their 'brand' they dare not derive from lol xd

[mediawhorefics]

Helloo, for the movie game! 32, 37 and 48 :D

thank you for indulging me maggie <3333

32. Your most anticipated films.

god, remember when movies actually came out ?? feels like a lifetime ago...  i’m def. still super excited for chris nolan’s tenet and every day i think about the fact that my bi ass was supposed to see ww 1984 back in june 😭😭😭 i’m also looking forward to the green knight with dev patel and wes anderson’s the french dispatch.... i’m blanking on other stuff rn mostly because i can’t remember the last time i left my house let alone looked up movie releases rip. i miss going to the cinema so much folks it’s not even funny. 

i mean they’re open again but you won’t catch me there any time soon :/ 

37. Share an unpopular film opinion you have.

oh here we go !!!!!! bold of you to think i can only share one !!!!! 

the princess bride just.... is not that good. i have tried to watch this movie so many times and i just.... fall asleep every time. rip to that beloved classic but i’m different !!!! 

idk if it’s unpopular ?? because it is technically one of history’s most beloved film BUT i feel like it became such a trend to mock titanic for it’s female-led cheesy romance side but that movie straight up SLAPS and still looks INCREDIBLE over twenty years later. none of the movies who surpassed it for the ‘made the most money in history’ record is anywhere near as good. legit james cameron’s best film ?!! !

a star is born (2018) was not a well-written movie; it lacked focus and the script was wayyy too scattered and it tried so hard to be a tear-jerker?? like we get it you want people to cry at the end so you can trick them into thinking the movie is good...... very nice performances but it needed to know what story it was telling and to focus on that to give it direction. 

i hate the breakfast club & ferris bueller’s day off. 

sort of on that topic: genuinely funny american comedies are literally so fucking rare.

the star wars prequels are actually fun and revenge of the sith is one of the best star wars movies ever made. change my mind. 

idk how unpopular these are but: iron man and batman are horribly boring superheroes and i couldn’t care less about the ~billionaire superhero trope... i have never seen a batman film apart from the chris nolan ones because well... chris nolan and i have zero interest in any others. 

i have only seen the matrix once and i do not get the hype surrounding it

the terminator franchise is one of my favourites ever and i’ve liked pretty much everything from it except t3! yes even the latest trashy ones!!

while it’s not as good as the original trilogy, Indiana jones 4 REALLY isn’t as bad as people make it seem. the whole alien thing totally tied into the 50s sci fi genre in the same way the original had that 1930s b movie action vibe

dirty dancing 2 is better than the first one :))))

okay im gonna stop now but i could prob. go on :/ 

48. A movie that took you a couple of viewings to appreciate.

uhhh honestly nothing comes to mind rn ? if i didn’t like it the first time around i’m unlikely to revisit it, even as a huge rewatcher haha. however my mother and i were talking about moulin rouge! earlier and she told me that it took her NINE TIMES to watch this movie to the end because she kept falling asleep so i can offer that anecdote to you instead ?? 

LET’S TALK MOVIES!

[poisonflamegames]

Sea of Thieves: Yarr or Naw?

It's been a few months since the awaited pirate game came out. Back when it wasn't released, a couple of my friends got access to the beta and told me the game was "mind-blowing", so my hype for it was off the charts. Hell, I almost bought it at full price on release, but Microsoft was giving out two-week trials for their Xbox Game Pass service, which in itself included Sea of Thieves, so I decided to "test the waters" before buying it; pun intended. I feel like my thoughts on the game have marinated long enough for me to make a proper analysis, so here we go:

Sea of Thieves, in its essence, is a simulator, though it wasn't designed to be one. The game tries very hard to be an exploration open-world adventure, with combat and puzzles and all of these super cool things; but they don't quite connect well or are delivered in the most coherent way possible.

And no, I'm not biased for the fact that I'm terrified of swimming in video games; I’m looking at you, Jolly Roger Bay.

Let’s start by talking about what you actually do during the game. You start off in a tavern in one of the various outposts scattered throughout the open-world’s map, with a moored ship in the coast. From the outpost, you can pick up missions that will require you to sail to nearby islands and find hidden treasure, at least most of the time. Aside from that, the rest are just things that mildly add to that basic experience, which comes off as extremely lackluster, and trust me, it is.

One thing I really did enjoy though was the sailing. At its core, sailing is very simple: You just got to lift the anchor, lower the sails and control the ship via the rudder. Wind plays an important factor, though it is very simple to understand and react to it as it has very distinct visual queues for both its direction and for when you place your sails correctly against it. It feels amazing.

On top of that, if you’ve got yourself a crew of friends to play with, things just get better. Sailing becomes this huge collaborative effort, with little tasks to take care of that can be easily divided and taken care of as a group; it really gives you off the feeling that you’re a crew, specially once things start going south. It also gives you plenty of room to goof around, because of course, it wouldn’t be a multiplayer game about the pirate life without that.

While sailing is quite a delight (also given that it’s probably what you do for 60% of the game), the rest is a little...boring. For the missions, you get maps with X’s on them, marking treasure waiting to be unearthed. Once given said map, you have to both match the shape of the island with the same one in the ship’s actual map, and then find the treasure once you get to the island. Unless you haven’t been playing the game for more than 20 minutes, these two factors cannot even be considered mechanics because they don’t present a challenge in the slightest.

To add to it, once you do unearth a treasure, you don’t actually get to keep the contents of the treasure, which feels very odd thematically. Instead of keeping what you find, you got to bring these chests of treasure back to the outposts and sell them. I’ll give them the credit that while this is obviously very lame from a pirate-themed game, it makes things a lot more straight-forward when battling other ships, as if you board an enemy’s ships, you can just take their chests.

Speaking of combat...it really isn’t the best. You get a sword with two basic attacks and one of three different guns: a pistol, a shotgun and a sniper rifle. Your ships are also armed with cannons, but that’s really about it. It reminds me a lot of Minecraft’s combat system, and that says a lot from a game that tries to be so immersive. You just slash and shoot at things, hoping that they die and/or sink; there’s really not much else to it in all honesty.

This brings us to another topic in which the game really fails at: progression. As you do missions, you gain coins, but your pirate or your ship don’t really level up. With these coins, you can only buy cosmetic items such as apparel, skins for your weapons or ship parts, but those never make your character or ship “better”, and that, of course, gives you a feeling of no progress. You feel like you never improve or get new things, and that is the exact opposite of what you want in an open world such as this one; because as soon as you’re done discovering most of the map (which isn’t that large), you’re gonna start getting tired of the game very fast.

We can’t forget are the elements that spice up the game every now and then, most notably riddles and the appearance of the Kraken. A few times during the game, you’ll have these random effects trigger to make things a little bit more interesting. You can find bottled messages in beaches which will contain riddles for you to find incredible treasure; but when you realize how tedious and unfun they actually are to get through while also providing the same kind of loot that you got to sell in the outposts, you’ll just start ignoring them as they aren’t worth the extra time and effort.

Lastly, the Kraken. This random event triggers every so often when you cruise around certain areas in the sea with a lot of loot on your ship, and it is...a little boring, honestly. You see the water turn black and tentacles come out of the water, but the fight is easy as cake. You just got to shoot the tentacles and repair the ship whenever it gets damaged, and before you know it, you’ll get through. That’s kind of it. My friends and I were screaming in shock when it first started showing up, but once we defeated, we were solely disappointed.

I’m pretty sure you can picture the experience of playing this game after reading what I had to say about it. While the overworld looks very nice (and has great water), the game doesn’t really have that much to offer. My friends and I played it for about five hours, then realizing that we had done most of what the game had to offer. That wouldn’t be so bad if the game was fairly cheap, but having in mind that this game came out with prices higher than standard retail price, it really makes one scratch their head.

You can really tell that most of the game’s budget went into making that sea water look crispy as hecc, but outside from that, I’m not entirely positive if Sea of Thieves is even a full-fledged game, it seriously needs a lot more to really consider itself one.

Now, one thing I was taught in game dev school is that a designer shall never criticize something without offering ideas of their own to improve upon whatever they’re happening to be criticizing, so I have crafted a few suggest that would perhaps make the game more appealing to others.

For starters, Sea of Thieves doesn’t really have an end game, meaning that ultimately, you don’t have a major goal to complete. It would be nice if the game had some kind of massive trasure scattered throughout the game, much in the fashion of the Treasure of Cortés from Pirates of the Caribbean. It would give experienced players a big objective to achieve while keeping the ground leveled for everyone to contribute to fair and balanced encounters between ships.

Another thing that would be great would be NPC ships! To any person that is starting to play the game, assaulting other ships is really daunting given that you can’t really estimate your chances of victory since you’re on even ground. Players that just pass on assaulting other players’ ships are missing out on a great part of what the game is about, so how about having non-hostile NPC vessels? Crafts that you can invade in an easier manner and pillage them ruthlessly would certainly not only give players more to do, but would also give them the thirst of assaulting actual player-driven hips, haha! 🏴‍☠️

Lastly, and something very important about open-ended games, is giving the feeling that the world the players are in is living and breathing. This could be achieved through the use of events that could happen periodically and players would come to know of through outposts. Things like treasure rushes, races or actual working Wanted! posters that could lead to notoriously violent players.

Given that the game currently has none of those things, you’re safe to assume that the game is empty. To a player, it feels more of a sandbox simulator than an actual objective-driven, fun experience, and I feel like the platform that the game currently is has a ton of potential for great things, but I don’t really know if I can trust Rare to elevate Sea of Thieves to something in which I’d actually want to play again.

[trick-or-triche]

My friend @nagoshi tagged me in this and it took me a real long time to find somewhere with proper wifi here but here it is!

5 Things Tag 😜

🔱5 Things You’ll Find in My Bag ➡3DS ➡Art Stuffs ➡My tablet ➡Wallet ➡My hair brush 🔱5 Things You’ll See My Bedroom ➡my teddy bears and puppy plushies ➡LOTS of paper. Both important papers and doodle papers just scattered about ➡my consoles and videogames in a neat pile compared to my other stuff ➡that one really soft pillow I just love so much ➡some figurines i made bc i am poor as heck to buy collectors figs 🔱5 Things I’ve Always Wanted to Do ➡from what I remember from my childhood I wanted to swim with a dolphin. I just remembered this because of the trip I just recently had going to an oceanic resort. ➡to be a game dev ➡to pick up a lot of people when they’re feeling down/ be a happy pill to others haha ➡have my own room for once ➡let go of the past i don’t even remember 🔱5 Things That Make Me Happy ➡waifus, husbandos, and the faves ➡a small act of kindness ➡videogames!! ➡my smol bean popplio ➡and to whoever is reading this, YOU! i love you my smol follower or whoever stumbles upon my tumblr 🔱5 Things I’m Currently Into ➡Fire Emblem ➡Hamilton (I’ve never actually watched it yet but my cousins remixes of the tracks are getting me hooked) ➡IISuperwomanII/Lilly Singh ➡any square enix game you slap at me ➡idk tho. F it im just gonna put in Ace Attorney. 🔱5 Things On My To-Do List ➡join a dance contest in my current school ➡learn parkour ➡find that perfect angle to play videogames without getting tired ➡play all the fire emblem games ➡SWIM WITH A DOLPHIN! 🔱5 Things People May Not Know About Me ➡I always (and i mean always!) trust people even though its like the first time I meet them. I will literally tell you about my childhood on our first convo or meeting. This is the reason why I’m pretty vulnerable to pain because I trust too much. ➡I like spending my time in dark and cold places (like my room) cause I feel at home instead of spending time with my fam. This is why I’m not very close to my family and cousins in my age group and they won’t even give me attention so I’d rather be alone. ➡I actually don’t like being alone so I tend to be really clingy to people. This fear was probably because of important people in my life leaving and because I don’t wanna feel left out. If I ever am alone I would probably start letting my anxiety and insecurities get to me. ➡According to some trusted sources, my sense of humor is very… unique as they may call it. I love puns a whole lot but stand up comedy is waaaayyyy better and most of my friends don’t get some of the jokes I’d give em. ➡First impressions are VERY important to me cause that’s the only time you can prove that you can be trusted cause I tend to trust anything with legs. If i think you’re not worth my time don’t expect any idle chit chat from me.

Heya there! Yeah you! I’m just gonna leave this here to whoever who wants to do this cause I’m really to shy to tag some people cause they might think I’m being a bit too close than I should be.