#i can never get past lvl 4

[youweremyridehome]

once again in a murderous mood due to the menstrual agonies

[blubushie]

did you feel anything when u killed someone the first time mr. bounty hunter?

Recoil.

Ok, now that the edginess is out of the way...

(Warning for mildly graphic description of death by shooting...)

No.

The first time I killed someone, he was also trying to kill me. I went into that job figuring I'd be fine and up until that point every bounty I'd met who'd been armed had only been armed with knives. I have my licenced .38 DetSpec but I hadn't expected to ever use it. Most people are rational and drop the knife once they see a gun in their face. I figured since firearms are heavily restricted in Australia I'd never have to face down a barrel like I would expect in America. I was young, and dumb, and I hadn't quite come to terms with "criminals don't follow the laws", and I hadn't been aware of just how big the firearms black market in Australia is.

When I first started this job, my dad insisted that I buy a vest. I remember him talking to his partner years ago about wearing his vest. Sometimes police are ambushed on the way to work, and my dad had the healthy kind of paranoia. My dad left the house wearing his vest under his civilian clothes. When he got his uniform on at work, he'd be wearing the vest. His partner would argue that it was unnecessary, but my dad insisted that he wasn't going to go back to that house with his partner's wife and little boy and tell them he'd been shot and killed because he figured he had time. A bullet waits for no one.

I wear my vest. I've been shot five times. None have injured me--minus getting a minor laceration on my back from my own ceramic plating when it fractured--because I've been wearing my vest. And I've seen people receive rounds that penetrated lvl-II armour and not make it out, so my armour is lvl-IIIA Flex-Pro.

I'm sidetracked. Back to the story.

The first time I killed someone, he was trying to kill me.

He'd seen me coming and I ran for cover the moment I heard a bullet whizz past me. It hit somewhere off to my left. The bloke was maybe 20 metres ahead of me--couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, you ask me--and there was a gum tree up on my right. I made it there and we exchanged fire for a few minutes. Eventually he came up on my right, with my back against the trunk, and I turned my body toward him and fired. I struck him on the right side of his chest. He struck me on my left. I went down like a sack of bricks.

The thing the movies don't tell you is that being shot fucking hurts. Even if your hero is wearing a vest, if he's shot he's probably down for the count for a few minutes until he can stop sucking wind, because being hit with a bullet feels like being punched in the chest, right on your sternum. The higher the calibre, the worse it is. It knocks the wind out of you, it'll bruise like a motherfucker, it fucking hurts. I was hit with a .40S&W, and it took me maybe 4 minutes to get back on my feet and while I saw my target go down, the first thought in my head wasn't "I just killed someone," it was "I've just been shot."

Then it was repeating that--you've just been shot, you've just been shot, this is what dad warned you about, sitrep, are you bleeding? I'm not bleeding. Did it puncture? I can't tell. I looked at the bounty, saw him reaching for that Glock 22 he had, and I fired another shot at him. Neutralisation. He jumped, and then he stopped moving. I unbuttoned my shirt and checked my vest. I couldn't see any blood, or any damage on the inside of my vest where it touches my skin, and I said a silent prayer to whoever was listening that it hit my vest and embedded there.

Eventually I got back on my feet and made it back to my bounty. He was on his back, staring at the sky. If you've ever seen someone die, you know the smell. My second thought after killing someone was "How do I avoid the smell?" I'm paid far less if I'm bringing someone in dead--there's an incentive to not kill bounties, you know--and additionally I have to deal with an investigation being opened any time a bounty is killed, or dies under whatever circumstances. Being the suspect of a homicide investigation isn't fun, folks. But in the moment, I was worried about smells and stains.

The gravity of it hit me later, after I'd gotten him wrapped in tarp and on the ute rack and was packing up for the night. I stared at that spot where he'd died for a long while, watching the earth drink up his blood with the kind of thirst only a desert can have, and it hit me then. But it wasn't "you killed a person." I didn't have some existential crisis about it. I felt no different after that than I do after hunting any other animal. I just sighed at the misfortune shared between the two of us, and I got in my car and left.

[fictionfixations]

its only playing star rail that got me to actually take the time to build my characters

trying to clear space for zzz (and still not having enough) gave me enough space for genshin LOL so

looking at my builds

wriothesley and furina arent even fully leveled up

also idk how team comps work in this game ive only ever focused on the story in this game

i dont know why wriostheley's here besides 'water + ice makes freeze' like

before this i had wanderer. like. hes. bETTER. uhm. i dont know what stat numbers are considered good but this is better then others. like. HES FULLY LEVELED

i feel like i could create such a better team but in all honesty this is more made up of my favorites. tighnari should probably replace one of them because 1. hes good. 2. I DONT HAVE A BOW USER on the team (the amount of times ive been dying inside facing stuff you need archers for and trying to cheese them with wanderer 😭)

HHHH

to be fair if i had it my way id replace raiden with cyno (but i gave up on him cause i didnt have the commitment to go hunting scarabs. ..i dont know WHY i decided wriothesley was a good idea considering i think you have to hunt shit down for him too) but i think raiden's e like. makes everyone stronger??

or maybe replace one of the anemo boys with cyno but like. i know kazuhas really good. wanderer is convenient for exploration

we're pretending wriothesley doesnt exist (i dont even LIKE characters that consume hp cause im the type who likes my characters fully healed. ..furina is there because furinas my favorite besides cyno)

but in all honesty they arent too bad? like. at least they're decently leveled (talents however... uh.)

(wanderer. i dont have yae miko so uh. i know he cant use it to its full potential but hh)

about raiden. i have this

and this (on cyno rn) and. i mean. the 4 star gives more damage. cause. i mean. yknow. so the 5 star doesnt do as much. and im still mixed on whether to leave it as it is or switch them (or if itd be better by being leveled up to 80)

also this is furina. in all honesty i should probably give kazuha his sword back.

im. gonna go grind and build my characters up. and maybe see if i can get furinas weapon in the meanwhile

ive never been a fan of multiple teams (which means end game fighting content with two teams is kinda rough) but in all honesty i have enough characters fully built that i probably could.

like look at tighnari he has a good weapon. hes lvl 80. he has ok artifacts.

ahdiuhuasdh i have so much i probably have to do in this game. (kind of why im not the biggest fan open world exploration games like this and wuwa. its just. the story is keeping me hooked. its just that sometimes you play so much you get burnt out which is what i did i think. and i dropped the game for months lOL. then sumeru fontaine go brr. more burn out but story cool. BRRRR)

its like. cause theyre both HUGE time sinks. i give star rail a pass because you can set it to auto and do other stuff while its grinding for you ok

which i dont really like but what can you do

..thinking about it now if i downloaded wuwa (i mean if i deleted genshin) i probably wouldnt lag as bad. but also past me has already given me kind of partially built characters. so. less of a time sink. and i dont know if i have the patience to go grinding all over again during the start where you change weapons or characters so many times cause you get better ones and having wasted materials

so uhm. ghjsuifhsiudfj

[a-s-levynn]

Firstly, when you get this, you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)

so i'm gonna attempt to answer all 6 of these in one go under this one but wow.. 30? hooo boy.. let's get to it, and see how many i can manage to scrounge together

ps. up front: It took a bit actually to finish it, it kinda consumed my past day and a half but y'all this was such an exercise in self reflection because you really have to think what is it you actually like or are proud of about yourself not just list 2-3 surface lvl copout. And it turns out can be a lot more than expected. It can be small things and weird things and unconventional things. Just things. It also was such an unexpected morale boost, like.. yo.. i actually don't hate myself as much as i thought?

(also sorry for typos in advance i didn't have the mind or time to correct them, maybe later)

1. Let's start easy. My hair. The natural curls it has. I hated it for so long but by now i enjoying them so much, especially the past year or so when it got longer. (imagine will ramos type curls. it's dead on i just don't have that thick of a mane) I stil lstraighten it occasionally but not nearly as much as i used to. Also in the summer the ends go red 'cause of the sun lightening it up, which ends me up with a real fun natural kind of ombre.

2. I'm a good problem solver. I can be awful practical at times but it helps with situations that needs solving instead of panicking.

3. I kinda like the fact that despite my loath of cooking/baking and all foodmaking in general, i am a pretty good cook.

4. I'm a good listener. At least i like to think i'm a good listener.

5. I'm a fast learner especially if it is shown prolerly step by step once.

6. I'm not the most creative person on the planet but i'm fairly decent and i like that.

7. You know what, i'm actually proud of the effort i make to be judgemental as little as i can. Because nobody is perfect but i actually do try and for most part it's going great.

8. This ties into the 2nd one but i like the fact that i can be objective to a degree that i'm able to emotionally detach from situations to the point that i can assess them level headed.

9. And on that note i'm stupiddly self aware. Of my faults and shortcomings as well as my capabilieties (however limited they are) and it helps me a lot to work on myself to be a decent human being.

10. I'm really good at eyeballing things. Like for example back when i did cosplays i usually didn't had to do any sort of mental gimnastics or calculations to figure out how large my props should be. 9 out of 10 times the first draft was perfectly sized.

11. To think of it i like the fact that i not just realized but accepted that i'm not perfect, never wíll be but that is okay.

12. I'm proud of the fact that i know i'm not the smartest person in the room, ever. I'm not smart academically speaking. I'm more practical-smart, but i'm not all knowing and the knowledge of that makes me want to learn shit. Ther eis always room for improvement and learning.

13. High pain tolerance.

14. Honestly i like that i made it up until now in life and still going. It wasn't always a sure thing but for the most part i'm liking the fact that it happend. That i made it.

15. I like being on a good path with being unapologetic about who i am, what i like and why am i the way i am.

16. I'm actually good negotiator if i make an effort. I'm fairly good at diffusing arguments.

17. This is a funny one but i like that i can identify people i know by their movements from far away. See, my eyesight isn't the best so i usually memorized bodylanguage faster than faces since i was a teenager. So it lead to some fun situations like me and someone else waiting for a third and i was like yeah they are like 500 m away so you can't see the face or anything but i already knew it's the person we are waiting and people go like "wow how did you know?"

18. As messy as it is i like how my handwriting can be so varied. I learned to write tilted cursive but my grandma forced me to learn non-tilted cursive and later i started to use non cursive and it became this weird amalgamation and now i can write in a lot of different aesthetics and i like it. Also made me the go to person for forged singitures back at school but that's an other story..

19. I like the fact that i don't hold grudges. I feel like they are a waste of time and energy and just weigh you down. So i can just.. go past them. I know shit happend, i acknowledge it but i'm not agonizing over it.

20. I like the fun fact that for elementary school i wasn't put into the music specialization because i had good hearing and a decent voice but because i had unusual rythm sense for my age at that time. Than i learned to sing okay but it was so funny. Everyone around me got in because they could sing and i was just riddiculously good at replicating rythmic excercises. (crying shame my father sold out the drumkit from under my ass before i could have really gotten deep into it.. i might've ended up on a different life path.. i mean i did play bass for a time but it wasn't the same, altho i kinda feel the itch to pick it back up again for a few years now just for amusing myself at home)

21. I like the fact that dispite the school system's damnest efforts i still do a lot of thing with my left hand. I was ambidextous since birth but out ancient education system think it's better if every kid is right handed. But my parent's didn't gave a shit, just let me do my stuff however it was comfy for me. So i use for example knives with my left but write with my right, that sort of mixups. It's fun how it can confuse others when they don't know the bg story for it.

22. Honestly i joke about my eyecolour being the literal colour of goose shit but i say that because i find it extremely funny and i like weirdly funny things in general.

23. I like the fact that (as per my knowledge) i'm not allergic to anything. With the level of nihilism i sport on the self-preservation front it would have been an interesting thing.

24. On the artsy and craftsy front i can work with multiple mediums which is fun. When i feel like drawing on paper i can, when is feel like paintig i could, i can do papermashe, amateur jewellery making, sewing, i can also do paper forlding, photography, and as you saw if i have the fancy to dabble in sculpting i have a decent shot for it not turning out terrible. I'm not amazing in any of them but i'm decent enough that i'm not just enjoying the process but i actually like a fair amount of the end results.

25. I'm good with maps and navigation in general. It's very rare for me to get lost at all. (only exception is large buildings.. i'm practically direction blind in closed spaces)

26. I love the fact the i learned english essentially by playing online video games, reading comics and watching movies. Now i have an official exam paper thingie but it was an aftertought for my resumé more than anything else.

27. I like that i'm basically friends with my mom.

28. An other funny one but i find it amusing that if you talk to me about something, even if i have no idea about what you are talking about it, but if you are excited i'm going to mirror you level of excitement without conscientiously trying to do it.

29. I like my sense of aesthetics in general.

30. And i like the fact that i can pick up on the most random small details and be unreasonably excited about it. I like being excited about stuff. You know, child-like wonder and all that i guess. Dunno, i just like it.

And that is it. It was a lot but yeah.. Have a bonus cozy sleeping cat if you chew all this text:

[fionaxandriaa777]

hi :):

well hello there my fellow tumblr users, idk what I'm doing here;) really I'm a noob @ life :): I'm a bipolar bear just wishing for a neurotypical cat to cuddle with....or someone who understands my struggle on any lvl @ all and would like to be friends or maybe even reblog my bullshitty posts?? (>.>) I'm scurd that this world is too cruel 4 me. . . I'm really too emotionally banged up from the past so much PTSD from real small stuff and some pretty heavy stuff that I never really have dealt with and have disassociated myself from from the time it happened ...now I'm so numb I suck my thib and put my finger up my bum. Pretty much.Yes I'm autistic. Yes I'm bipolar. Yes I'm really Ace. Asexual and single now. I was in a really complicated abusive relationship with a straight white male. now I'm all alone in this world with not a soul to hold my cold hands and I feel lost. .. how deep is ur love? /: is it like the ocean? i think I'm out of love at the moment sea you lateR>.> PS: I'm new to this blogging b/s you need to teach me baby like seriously I'm lost on that too. Nirvana. How deep is this site>.> is it like the ocean>.> ooooooh ooooh oooooh OH so tell me how deep is ur blog can u go deepeR?nowwwOWowowow?? Www.tumbl.WOW!!? /////////////////////////////////////////// … Where there's a will, there's a way, kind of beautiful And every night has its day, so magical And if there's love in this life, there's no obstacle That can't be defeated … For every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable In every lost soul, the bones of a miracle For every dreamer, a dream, we're unstoppable With something to believe in … Monday left me broken Tuesday, I was through with hoping Wednesday, my empty arms were open Thursday, waiting for love, waiting for love … Thank the stars, it's Friday I'm burning like a fire gone wild on Saturday Guess I won't be coming to church on Sunday I'll be waiting for love, waiting for love to come around … We are one of a kind, irreplaceable How did I get so blind and so cynical? If there's love in this life, we're unstoppable No, we can't be defeated … Monday left me broken Tuesday, I was through with hoping Wednesday, my empty arms were open Thursday, waiting for love, waiting for love … Thank the stars, it's Friday I'm burning like a fire gone wild on Saturday Guess I won't be coming to church on Sunday I'll be waiting for love, waiting for love to come around feeling lifted gifted feeling so thrifted sugar how you get so fly. Let me steal a kiss...from urSUGARLIPS ;)

[levelzeo]

Level Zeo’s Brilliant Diamond Nuzlocke - Part 1

I’m going to do a Nuzlocke of Brilliant Diamond.  I never played the gen 4 games growing up, and even now I have never finished a playthrough of one (not for lack of wanting to, it's a long story), so this is going to be semi-blind.  I also like Nuzlockes a lot as a storytelling device, so as I play I like coming up with headcanons for my Pokemon and their personalities, and I thought it would be cool to share those alongside the factual info of what happens in the run.

What are my rules?  Well, I am pretty bad at video games.  But I’m also better than the pure damage move spammer I was as a child, so I’m going somewhere in between casual and hardcore.  Rules are as follows:

Pokemon faints, Pokemon dead.

I can only catch the first Pokemon I find on each Route/Area.

Nicknames for everybody!

No duplicates!  If my first encounter is a duplicate I am forced to try again until I get something new.

Level Caps.  Nobody is allowed to level past the next Gym Leader’s Ace.

Items.  I will allow myself to use healing items in battle, but no battle items.  If I find it too easy, I might put a limit on the number of heals I can use in one fight.

I will be playing in Switch Mode.  As I said, I am bad at video games.  I’m going to be losing a lot of Pokemon to stupidity and cockiness already, so I don’t need the extra challenge of Set Mode.

Okay then.  Let’s begin.

I start up the game, pick the base female avatar, name her Zeo, and name my rival Melvin.  Entering the game world proper, Melvin drags me to Lake Verity where we steal borrow some Pokemon from a briefcase to protect ourselves from getting mauled by wild animals.  I pull a d6 from my pocket and roll it into the tall grass to decide which one I will pick, and I end up going with the middle Pokeball, Chimchar.  Do I even need to say how this fight goes?  We all know what happens here.

My new Chimchar has a Careful nature, and a characteristic of being Very Finicky.  That makes me feel as though he is a very nervous creature.  Cautious of everything, even to a fault.  Perhaps he is right to worry so much, since on the way to Sandgem Town, he gets Crit TWICE by random encounters, forcing me to go home and heal each time.  Poor fella.

I finally make it to Sandgem, and can finally give the Chimchar a nickname.  I decided to go with Simmer, since he doesn’t seem like one to turn up the heat right out the gate.  I get my Pokedex from my second favorite Professor, and the adventure can truly begin.  First things first, I buy some Pokeballs so I can get an encounter from Route 201.

I end up with a lvl 2 Starly as my first encounter on the route.  Don’t ask me why, but the Starly line has always reminded me of the seagulls I would always see on the coast.  Because of that, I name this Starly after the food those winged rats would always steal from me.  Chips.  He has a Jolly nature, and is Strongly Defiant.  These traits make me think that this virtual bird would try to steal my food just like the real ones.  A hungry and energetic little gremlin.  I imagine that he would quickly get on Simmer’s nerves.

After 201, I head north to Route 202.  There, I ended up with the encounter I knew I was going to have going into a Sinnoh game.  Bidoof.  She has a Brave nature and Likes to Thrash About.  I probably could have picked a name that goes better with those traits, but since I only get to know them after the nickname, her name is Boof.

This is where I make the stupid mistake of not going back to heal.  Because of this, I almost have a complete wipe against my very first trainer fight in the entire game.  Luckily, newcomer Boof is able to pull through and win the day with a sliver of hp remaining, and nobody dead.  A Brave soul indeed.  I hope this close call is not an omen of things to come.

Next stop is Jubilife.  Pros of Jubilife: the music.  Cons of Jubilife: the clowns.  I get the Poketech before heading north again for more encounters.  Between Route 204 and The Ravaged Path, I gain two new friends.  Doc the Zubat, who is Hasty and Finicky.  And Petard the Geodude who is Jolly and Somewhat of a Clown.  

Between the name and traits, I think of Doc as a bit of a mad scientist archetype.  Cackling maniacally as he swoops in and out of combat, scoffing at anyone who dares question his intelligence (despite not actually being as smart as he thinks he is).  Simmer and Boof definitely aren’t buying the act, but Chips is all for it.  I imagine Chips sees this as an opportunity to make a friend (and also to mooch food off of him), while Doc sees this as obtaining a new minion.  Mwahahaha.  Since they’re both flying types it saddens me that I will need to box one of them eventually, since I probably won’t need two fliers most of the time.

Being Jolly and a bit of Clown would normally make a Pokemon a bit of a prankster in my mind, but something about Petard being a Geodude wants me to go in a different direction.  I’m picturing just a very chill and laid-back kinda guy, always trying to lighten the mood and crack a joke.  Maybe even a bit of a “stoner” (cue rimshot and/or gunshot from the audience).  Him and Boof would get along great due to them both being tanky and willing to roll with the punches.  He is also willing to let Chips perch on his head, which is very cool of him.

I feel like I’m forgetting something else about my Geodude… oh right!  I named him Petard after a type of bomb.  In poor taste?  Maybe.  Does this mean I will be keeping and/or using self destruct when he learns it?

…

No comment.

Something I notice is that Simmer doesn’t really have anyone he can connect with.  Chips definitely thinks their friends, not realizing how much his antics and gremlin energy annoys the Chimchar.  Meanwhile Boof/Petard try to keep Simmer included, but his nerves and caution to most situations cause them to do so less and less.  Doc just laughs and calls him a pitiful cowardly wretch of a fire type.

Poor Simmer.  His loneliness is somewhat of his own making, but you can’t force yourself to be around people you don’t vibe with.  As the Starter he is in a “Team Leader” role by default, and he’s definitely the powerhouse of the team, but is he confident enough in his abilities to be the leader they need right now?  Probably not.

Enough characterization for now!  Let’s get back to the game.

Since northwards is a dead end as of now, I go back to Jubilife.  Popping into the trainer’s school, I have a vague memory of losing all of my Pokémon to the two Charge Beam Abras in there the first time I tried playing this game.  Luckily Petard is immune to anything they do and he is easily able to slowly beat them into the dirt.

After that I head east onto Route 203, where I am immediately jumped by Melvin who challenges me to a Rival Battle.

It’s not a hard battle.  Petard is tanky enough to not be hurt by anything the Starly can do, though I do switch to Boof to finish them off after the bird used Growl enough times to make the fight annoyingly slow.  My decision that these two should be friends solidifies.

I have discovered in retrospect that Piplup has no water moves at this point, but at the time I didn’t know, so I sent in Chips instead of Simmer, who probably could have done it faster.  I choose to believe I was just role-playing my starter’s careful nature.  Chips is probably excited to prove himself though, and he certainly does.  It’s a close battle, but I prove that my bird is superior and win the day (probably also stealing Melvin's lunch in the process).

I thought about continuing after that fight, but decided this was enough for a first update.  If you read this far I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing in!  Again, I think Nuzlockes are a fascinating medium for storytelling, and I hope the personalities I gave my Pokémon are fun to think about.  I know that I like them.  Next time I update I hope to at least get to the first Gym.  Hope to see you then!

(PS, I am not an artist.  I am bad at art.  But for some reason I wanted to draw my Pokémon children.  They aren’t good, but here they are.  Let’s hope none of them die on me.)

[maaarshieee]

my voice shall reach the stars, and eventually you — ✧

𓆩✧𓆪 700+ FOLLOWER CELEBRATION: SAGAU EVENT 𓆩✧𓆪

message from the stars ☆༉

Thank you all so much for 700+ followers everyone! I've taken a liking to SAGAU so I decided to make a theme of it. Although it won't be your regular SAGAU with cults, religious references, and more. It will be fluff and hurt/comfort only! I was inspired by @astranne's "MAX LEVEL FRIENDSHIP series". Each character will be given 5 prompts: LVL 10 BOND VOICELINES, STARGAZING, COMING HOME, and SHOOTING STARS. The 5th prompt will only be written once a character has all 4 prompts finished! Take it as a surprise.

༺☆༻

LVL 10 BOND VOICELINES・They try to communicate with the person behind the so-called 'screen', but divine forces, perhaps Celestia, forces them to keep their mouths shut... So they do the best they can to let you know that they're alive.

⋆

STARGAZING・Behind the skies and stars, just what lies behind them? Does the voice that gently whispers in their ears reside past the border of lies? When did they start hearing their voice again...? What do they think of the nameless person- god? That peers down on them?

⋆

COMING HOME・Upon opening your eyes, you see a familiar face looking down on you. Ah, you must be dreaming! You close your eyes once more to sleep... But snap them back open when you've realized who it was; your favorite Genshin Impact character!?

⋆

SHOOTING STARS・Have you ever had those dreams where you endlessly fell? How odd, it feels so real... You were about to pinch yourself to try to wake yourself up, that is until you hit the ground... Now, where are you— wait, why are your surroundings so familiar?

༺☆༻

message from the stars ☆༉

And that's about it! All you have to do is send me a simple ask, anon or not, stating a character and which prompt you'd like! Anyone is welcome, follower or not! Once a character completes all 4 prompts, prompt 5 will be automatically written!

"Ayato for Shooting stars!"

Like so. You can also add a scenario of your choice! This event will only end once I've written for every character! So there are no deadlines whatsoever! This is for fun and a very long celebration since I've never done events like this for milestones! I will be writing for all male casts only! Regular requests are still available, can you send requests more than once, just not the same character (no cheating to get to prompt 5 immediately, okay?)! Thank you so much if you participated! Have a nice day/night!

Status: ONGOING┊Masterlist

╭﹕🦋｡♡・EXCERPT.1

❝ i poured my heart and soul to reach you, to get past the stars and break this barrier that keeps us apart. and now, i am here, in your arms. ❞

- ̥۪͙۪˚┊❛❛ If you like this a lot, consider reblogging! I'll appreciate it very very much! Don't repost and/or translate my work anywhere. ❜❜ ┊˚ ̥۪͙۪◌

[yther]

ever have something so unspeakable happen 2 u, you got like, A disorder from it or phobic? it's the worst because there's already all the bad, but then you sleep with the lights on for a year idk or you try to wrap everything in plastic to keep it safe even though it's Plastic (bad) but it's the only thing that Feels Clean Enough because you have to be able to make sure it's clean and safe and separate but

it's absolutely against your nature and 100% novel - as in, for ur whole life up until then, this behaviour was not present and I advocated against consumerism shit and plastics but 1. losing all your shit and starting over means sudden spendo 2. trauma is a bitch

3. trauma is such a fucking bitch 4. the urge to salvage something from the terror will have you keeping things in the freezer (lvl 10 crazy) and

the bigger point is it does get easier. I am unsealing things. Past few months especially. I'm not afraid to touch them, and I'm not afraid that they'll get "unclean" and ruined.

Time is a healer, not just amnesia, but reframing! and distance. distance takes time if a space is not moving

away from the Events, or environment etc. I can remember more and that's terrifying but this 2023 I started reconnecting,

and trying to dig out of the grave I made for myself prematurely. I don't feel shame for progress I make that people will never see. I don't feel shame talking about it, either.

[scionheart]

🩵 Overview of my headcanons regarding levels of intimacy for relationship/shipping purposes below. 🩵

Under a cut cause I go in detail.

Sexuality: I HC him straight.

Note: Anything below can alter a bit depending on if any dynamics are pre-planned for threads and such!

Lvl 1) In the beginning, he will have little to no interest in the other, even if they show early interest in him. For example, in a plot where he is an assigned guardian to the other he will only see it as a job, duty/obligation to be followed through with.

Lvl 2) Getting him to open up isn't the easiest. It takes a solid bit of work and time spent around him for him to eventually grow more willing. Plus, there has to be interest from his side in order for him to feel comfortable. If something sparks and he then holds mutual interest, he's more willing to interact outside of business terms/situations.

Lvl 3) So they both know each other a good bit now. He'd consider them a friend. Maybe they've been involved in a few significant situations together. He still has a wall up at this level that will take something strong to break through/convince him to put it down. Whether that be an angsty fight or a confession, some type of ultimatum.

Lvl 3.5) If nothing clicks by now, no further relationship will grow. Doesn't mean it can't in future but perhaps it's not the right person or time. This level is a bit of a dead end.

Lvl 4) Alright, the strong thing happened and was sucessful. He put his wall down/it was broken. He's making efforts to push through his past barriers, trauma and more for the sake of the other. He will fumble in good and bad ways, as he's not too familiar how to tread this new ground, both on his own and together. He's never done it before.

Lvl 5) There's a solid connection, trust, even love. His heart is theirs. His devotion is without question. His roots of honor have grown onto the other. He will do anything in his power to protect while still holding a high level of respect for them. They are an equal. They are his partner.

He will continue to grow more comfortable over time from here. He is not one to show certain types of affection in public, however, in private he's incredibly affectionate.

He will become a little playful. Some banter even shown around others. If the other tries to fluster him or work him up in public, he's very good at hiding it, but his eyes will not lie. It'll be clear what's intended in future response to said flustering. If it's in private, they'll know right then and there.

In order:

1. Physical touch (Having his hair and face touched mutes the world around him almost every time. The first time it happens, though, he'll be conflicted on how to react. This man is touch starved to hell.)

2. Words of affirmation (he needs to hear it, seriously.)

3. Acts of service (it's touching to him to see he's cared about, even if he thinks he doesn't deserve it, because he absolutely believes he doesn't.)

4. Quality time (he's a little clingy, but doesn't want to suffocate his s/o, so he tends to back off when he doesn't need to and might need to be pulled back.)

5. Gift giving (he'll give little wood carvings he's done, even if they're shit, it's cute af.)

[neetlocke]

About, Rules, and Content Warnings

About? Well, I did a nuzlocke run on Pokemmo and decided to make a comic out of it. And since Osomatsu San is my current fixation, I decided to set it in the Osomatsu san world and make Osomatsu the main character. That's about it! Don't expect the art to be very good, I'm a lazy artist at best. Run rules I used and content warnings under the cut.

USUAL NUZLOCKE RULES

Catch only the first pokemon you encounter on each rout or area. If it faints or flees, tough luck, no encounter for that area. *Caves count as one area, no extra encounters per floor. Safari zone gets one encounter per area ( total of 4 ).

Nickname your pokemon.

If a pokemon faints, it's dead. Release it or stuff it in the dead box, never to be used again.

ADDITIONAL RULES

Dupes clause. Cannot catch a pokemon he has caught in the past, nor pokemon in the same evolution line. He gets three encounters to find something he hasn't caught before, and if he doesn't, he doesn't get an encounter there.

Only pokemon he catches himself are valid. This means no gift pokemon, and no fossil pokemon. *The one exception to this is the eevee in Celadon city. But I have to let RNG determine what it evolves into. ** Since no gift pokemon are allowed, this includes the starter pokemon. The first pokemon caught on route 1 is to be used as the starter pokemon. Once that pokemon hits lvl 5, the original starter must be treated as dead and the nuzlocke officially begins.

No overworld pokemon. Example, snorlax.

Pokemmo automatically forces the battles to be in SET mode. So there's that.

WEENIE RULES While x-items ( x-attack, x-defend, ect.) are never allowed, held items and healing items during battle are permitted.

Pokemmo has a built-in level cap, and your pokemon stop leveling up after a certain point until you get more badges. While I normally use the 'Not allowed to fight the gym leader with pokemon at a higher lvl than their ace' rule, due to Pokemmo being notoriously hard to nuzlocke, he's allowed to lvl his mons up to the lvl cap before challenging the gym.

After the fifth badge is collected, his pokemon can only die while in battle against another trainer or gym leader. This means if he gets far enough, he won't need to worry about his team being KO'd by wild pokemon while grinding.

And perhaps the biggest weenie rule of them all, but bear with me. While fighting the E4, your pokemon are automatically healed after each battle. If he actually makes it to the E4, while fighting them, as long as he manages to defeat the E4 member, he's allowed to continue with his full team. In-universe reasoning being that the E4 are highly trained and know how to battle without murdering, go figure. Losing all his mons to any E4 member is still a game over.

Content Warnings

This is set in the Osomatsu san universe. That means you should expect depictions of alcohol, cigarettes, lewd and crude humor, comically censored nudity, animal (pokemon) death, blood, violence, and harsh language.

[yumenosakiacademy]

nothing rly interests me much anymore, I jus watch things 2 distract myself n there might b some things tht make me chuckle; aside from writing, which I can never finish the things I start anyway due 2 the sheer amount of decisions there r 2 make when telling a story, I don't hav hobbies anymore bc my icons aren't needed anymore w tumblrs shitty icon resizing n I see no merit in art when it's not fun nor looks nice when I'm finished; I don't talk 4 hrs w friends anymore bc I've isolated myself n feel waves of uneasiness when socializing nowadays bc it feels wrong; video edits r fun when theyre done but take quite a bit of effort of whifh i often dont feel like doing/cant bring myself 2 do; my mental energy lvls r constantly low n I can't being myself 2 do anything tht requires any sort of anything; I can't even exist peacefully bc I can't handle the disgust tht comes w my newfound fatness n weight from so much impulsive eating I've done n bc my constant thoughts r plagued w feeling empty; I exercise so much a day tht I h8 it so so much n bc it's at the end of the day (2 make things easier) it feels like everyday is jus a hollow buildup 2 when I hav 2 go torture myself for hrs on end only 4 it 2 barely mean anything bc of my bad eating habits bc food is yummy n eating is 1 of the only pleasant things I can experience- like. there's nothing 4 me anymore. I can't do anything tht pleases me, life has constantly felt like an endless cycle of Waiting For My Death 4 the past few yrs I rly can't fucking take it anymore. things jus keep getting more n more bleak 4 myself. at least like 1 1/2 ago I was watching animes n was skinny but nowadays I'm just a disgusting decaying blob waiting 2 b put out of my misery but 2 slow 2 inact its end.

[of-some-variety]

Yugioh And The Heat Death Of The Universe: Mourning The Best Deck I've Ever Played

Chapter 1: What The Fuck Is This

Hi, hello. This was originally supposed to be a video, but my mic exploded before I could even start recording, so, I’m just posting this here. This is an edited version of the script, removing mentions of visual gags and the sorts and reformatted to better match a text post.

Let me explain a few things.

This past year, I’ve gotten back into yugioh. Like really, really back into yugioh. I liked it as a kid but never wanted to put money into it, and basically fell out of interest with it once the game hit series 5. But, last fall I decided to give it a try again. There’s the official online client, Master Duel, and I spent a lot of time with it, before eventually falling off and moving on to play the game elsewhere. But before I did I got to witness the rise and fall of the best deck in Yugioh’s history: Tearlaments

 We’ll get into the specifics of what they do and why that’s good later. For now, just understand that these are some of the strongest cards ever printed. And that didn’t click for me until I actually got my hands on them. I want to talk about what I’ve realized about these cards because, for all the discussion I’ve heard about them from people in the community, I don’t think I’ve really heard people actually talk about the specific aspects I’ve noticed that I feel really pushes them over the edge. I want to try to make it as accessible as possible considering this is mostly going to be seen by my friends (hiiiiii ^_^), so lets hit some keywords, specifically about monsters:

Extra deck: a set of 15 special monsters that can always be accessed and summoned, provided you meet their conditions. The following monsters are all extra deck monsters

Fusion: A type of monster that must be summoned by a fusion effect, using specific material (ex. 1 specifically named monster + 1 type of monster)

Synchro: a type of monster that is summoned using 2 or more monsters, 1 of which is a “tuner” type monster, who’s levels all add up to the level of the monster you’re trying to summon (ex level 3 tuner+ 2 level 3 non-tuners= level 9 Synchro)

XYZ:  Slapping two monsters of the same level to make a monster with Rank, with the monsters used to summon it resting under the monster to be used as fuel for their effects (ex. 2 lvl 4 monsters= a rank 4 xyz monster)

Link: Monsters that can be summoned using 2 or more pieces of non-specific material (ex. “2+ effect monsters”)

Oh and, last thing, Tearlaments, as its described here, no longer exists. The deck has been nuked into oblivion. This is a retrospective, and a memorial.

So uh, strap in, we got a trip to go on.

Chapter 2: Okay, But Who The Fuck Are These People, For Real Though?

The Tearlaments are a people of mermaids that reside on the Primeval Planet Perlereino, living under their tyrannical leader Reinoheart until the arrival of Visas Starfrost, a man scouring the universe for the lost shards of himself. As it turns out, Reinoheart is one of these shards, and he takes on a monstrous form when Visas arrives to try and defeat him. But with the help of the other Tearlaments and their leader, he’s able to defeat Reino and absorb him… then a bunch of bad shit happens that isn’t important to what we’re talking about.

In the real world, they are jpegs printed onto cardboard. 

In my hands, they are tools of destruction. The guardians you find barring you from the next horizon, when you had sworn that the last was truly, the last.

In game, they’re a deck focused around two things: milling and fusion summoning. Each of the three main deck mermaids, Havnis, Scheiren and Merrli, share an effect that says that when they’re sent to the graveyard by a card effect you can perform a fusion summon using monsters in your monsters in your hand, graveyard and field, placing the cards used in this way to the bottom of the deck. Each of the mermaids also have a unique effect. Upon fulfilling certain conditions you can summon them, and then send the top three cards of your deck to the graveyard. 

Merrli is the simplest to activate, all you have to do is summon her by any means and she mills 3.

If your opponent activates a monster effect on the field, Havnis can summon herself from your hand (represented by this phrase, quick effect for my friends), and then mill 3. 

And lastly, if you have Scheiren and another monster in hand, you can summon Scheiren and then send the monster in hand to the graveyard to mill 3. 

Reinohart, as a weird not-a-mermaid-living-with-mermaids, has neither of these effects. Rather, if he’s summoned in any way he can send any Tearlaments monster straight from your deck to the graveyard, triggering triggering the mermaid’s fusion effects. Oh, and if he’s sent to the graveyard by card effect  while you have a tearlaments card in your hand you can summon him and send that card to the graveyard. Each of these effects are, thankfully, once per turn, and so are basically all the rest of the cards we’ll be talking about in this video.. So, even if you haven’t played yugioh Since Fusion was originally cool, the Tearlaments game plan should be obvious. Send as many cards from your deck to the graveyard as possible, and use our mermaids to go into powerful fusion monsters. Speaking of, the deck has three extremely powerful fusion monsters that they specifically can go into, but any fusion monster that has generic components are also fair game. We can talk about those later though. For now, lets focus on Tear.

Chapter 2.2: Mermaids+

We should open this discussion with Tearlaments Kitkallos, one of the single strongest monsters ever printed. I’m not joking. It can be fusion summoned with any Tearlaments monster and an aqua monster (which, every tear but Reinoheart is). Once per turn if this card is special summoned you can add one tearlaments card from your deck to your hand, or send it to the graveyard. So by default it’s a better Reinoheart, giving you flexibility where you otherwise wouldn’t have it. But it gets better. Kitallos lets you target one monster you control, special summon a Tear monster from hand or grave, then send that card to the graveyard. And lastly if it’s sent to the graveyard you mill 5.

This card should not exist. Its only the first of the three Tearlaments fusions, but while our other two serve as big boss monsters, Kit is a pivotal part of the deck’s comboline. Here, let me walk you through the most basic combo Tear can do, by just using Reinoheart.

So, we summon the Reinoheart, sending Merrli (you can send any of them in a pinch but Merrli’s preferable.) Activate Merli’s effect to return her and Reino to the deck and summon Kitkallos. We then activate Kit’s on summon effect to add Merrli to our hand, and follow up with Kit’s second effect to target herself, summon Merrli, then send herself to the graveyard. We can then activate Merrli and Kitkallos’ effects in sequence to mill eight cards. Eight, nearly a quarter of your deck. This combo is known by many names. That’s a lie I’ve only seen one name for it, The Yoinky Sploinky. That’s funny so we’ll be referring to it as such.  In masterduel, all the mermaids are limited to 2 copies per deck instead of the standard 3, but you’re still almost guaranteed to get something good into the grave to continue your combo plays with the sheer quantity of cards Kit can send.

Tearlaments Kaleido-Heart is Reinoheart’s fucked up monster form, and serves as the deck’s first boss. He can be fusion summoned with a Reinoheart and two aqua monsters, and has two powerful effects. First, if its special summoned or an aqua monster is sent to your graveyard by card effect, you can target one card your opponent controls and shuffle it back into the deck. This is a powerful form of card removal, most things in the game aren’t resistant to getting returned to the deck, and not only can you use this to get rid of your opponent’s big boss monsters, but also to get rid of some particularly annoying floodgates they might have on field. Which is just wonderful, cuz I love fun interactive yugioh where both players are allowed to play the game. 

His second effect is basically just an upgraded version of Reino’s effet; if he’s sent to the graveyard by a card effect, he can revive himself and then send a Tearlaments card from deck to grave. So he’s an incredibly sticky monster to try and contend with, who’s effect is can be activated by his revival or just doing our combos normally, and any monster his effect can’t deal with can usually just be punched over with his massive 3000 attack. He does have one downside though this little stipulation that he can’t be used as fusion material. So if your opponent can actually deal with him, its really hard to get him back into the extra deck to be summoned again.

Lastly, in terms of our bosses, we have Rulkalos, Kitkallos’ stronger form she takes on after defeating Reinoheart (or… while fighting him? Its confusing). She can be made by a Kitkallos and a second Tear monster, and has 3 effects. First, she protects her fellow aqua monsters from being destroyed by battle, which, while useful on paper, really only comes up when you’ve begun engaging in truly monkey unga bunga yugioh. Her second effect allows her to respond to your opponent activating a card that special summons a monster; you can negate the card, destroy it, then send one Tear card from your hand or field to the graveyard. Lastly, like Kaleido if she’s sent to the graveyard by a card effect she can revive herself. But she has her own little stipulation: “If this fusion summoned card”; to simplify, once a card is revived from the graveyard, it “forgets”  how it was originally summoned. So, basically, her revival can only happen once, but at worst it means that you can activate her negate effect for no cost by sending herself, then reviving her for the next turn. Whew that’s all the monsters done… don’t look at the run time. 

We’re not done. Not even close. The Tearlaments monsters on their own already represents an incredibly powerful gameplan, but they also have a bunch of spells and traps dedicated to supporting them, that are essential to cover

Chapter 2.5: Reverse Card Open!

So, listen. There are a good handful of Tear spell/traps I won’t be talking about. This is because while not bad, the benefits they have for the deck just aren’t better than other cards. This will mostly be based on what I play in my deck, what I’ve most commonly seen in others, and importantly off the decks people were playing when Tear was viable in the tcg. That said, we’ll kick this section off with a card that is a little nontraditional, but I think is essential in specifically master duel. All these cards will mention Visas Starfrost, because like, lore reasons, but we’ll be basically ignoring those parts of the effect. Also, each of them have two effects: an on field effect, and an effect that activates when they’re sent to the graveyard by card effect, like our mermaids. Anyway

Tearlaments Heartbeat is a quick play spellcard, which, for my friends, means it can be activated like a trap card by setting it face down on the field.. It lets you target a spell/trap on field, shuffle it back into the deck, then send a card from your hand to the graveyard. And if it’s sent by a card effect, it lets you add a tearlaments trap card from your graveyard to your hand. This card, in my opinion, is essential for Tear decks in master duel for a very particular reason. See, its, strange, uh spoiler, but I think Tearlaments is actually a pretty fun deck. But, some people don’t play yugioh to have fun. They play it to make everyone miserable, including for themself, and so suddenly they feel really threatened when a good deck comes along and dedicate their lives to devising the perfect deck list that ensures no one, nowhere gets to actually play yugioh.

They accomplish this with cards like skill drain, that negates monster effects, or maybe something more targetted at Tear like soul drain, which negates effects in the graveyard and banished zone. For these monsters, I like to play one or two copies of Heartbeat so that I don’t try to choke my opponent through the screen. Plus its pretty good to be able to add back your trap cards that you accidentally milled. 

Next up is Tearlaments Scream, a continuous spell card that has two on field effects. First, if a card is summoned to either player’s field and you control a Tear monster, you get to mill 3. For free, yeah. Afterwards every monster your opponent summons loses 500 attack, just to fuck with em. And if it's sent to the graveyard you can add a Tear trap to the hand from the deck. This card is, uh, insane. If you add a scream to the kitkallos combo I mentioned earlier, suddenly you’re milling 11 cards, over a quarter of your deck. I know, three cards may not seem like a lot but trust me, you want to increase your chances of milling the mermaids as much as possible, otherwise you can’t do anything.You play 3 of this if you can (I played 2 because I don’t spend money on this game), since you also want to mill it over the course of the combo in order to add one of our trap cards to the hand. 

Tearlaments Sulliek is a continuous trap card, that so long as you control a tearlaments monster you can activate. Its on field effect allows you to target an effect monster your opponent controls, permanently negate its effects then send a monster you control to the graveyard. And if its milled it’ll add a tearlaments monster to your hand from the deck. Ideally, you’ll always have the card set at the end of your turn one combo, its insane. Permanent negation isn’t something you see often, and the fact you can use it once every turn means if you can keep feeding it bodies your opponent will be forced to find an answer to it. And, its grave effect lets you either extend your combo by adding a Merrli, Schieren or Reinohart, or set you up for your opponent’s turn by adding Havnis. Now, all that said, you play one of this. Heartbeat lets you get it back if something goes wrong, and we really would rather search this through cards like scream and kitkallos than hard draw it or open with it. Also they ended up limiting this card white I was making this video which, is funny cuz this isn’t the card that breaks the deck, like its good really good well get into that later but, really funny. 

Tearlaments Cryme is a counter trap card, a trap card that can only be responded to by other counter trap cards. While you control a monster, you can just, negate any card effect, and shuffle that card back into the deck. Any card in the game,, besides stuff like super polymerization that specifies that it cannot be responded to. Then you send a monster from your hand to the graveyard. And if it's milled you can add a banished tear monster back to your hand. Thiiiis is the a weird one. Objectively, its really good; its an omni negate thats really easy to get to in our hand. On the other, its graveyard effect is just mid. We don’t banish anything as a part of our strategy, so its only useful if our opponent’s banished our monsters (and we have other ways to make sure they can’t). You play a copy of this to search, and generally I would pick sulliek over it if you can only grab one. Unless, unless, you think your opponent is on board breakers, like evenly matched that can banish your whole field. Then you add cryme to protect your board.

And lastly, we have our the Tearlament Field Spell: The Primeval Planet Perlereino. When you activate this card it lets you add a tear monster from your deck to your hand. It gives every Tear and Fusion monster you control a 500 attack boost, and if a tear monster is shuffled back into the deck (aka when the mermaids fuse) you can target and destroy a card on field. I know I keep saying this, but this card is insane. It gets you whatever you’re missing. It fucks with your opponent’s board, or if you’re feeling cheeky (read: want to lose) you can pop any mermaids you have on field to get their effects off. And also, I realize that 500 attack boost may not seem like much, but that boost pushes Kaleido-Heart and Rukallos to 3500. Most deck’s strongest monster caps at 3000 flat. I would say play 30 of this if you could but, from release it was limited to 1 copy. So play this and pray. 

Whew. And that’s all the Tear cards we gotta talk about! I know we haven’t even really gotten into the “why” of these cards yet, but I felt it was really important to make sure we’re all on the same page for these cards, and also to help us focus in on a more “pure” tearlament’s strategy. You see, some people are seeing success combining Tearlaments with another fusion based deck, Branded. And While I’m no stranger combining decks with Branded, I don’t really see the appeal, for a couple reasons. Still, these are builds people are encountering, so its worth mentioning. But by really just talking about the Tear cards here, I think we’ll just get an overall better look at What makes the deck so powerful. And man, just look at what we can do. Our mainline combo is super accessible, the Merrli/Kit play is unbelievably strong for us, and Rukallos and Kaleido-Heart provide powerful forms of interruption and negation, along with our spell/traps backing them up. Of course, all of that in a vacuum means absolutely nothing. In order to grasp Tearlaments’ power we need something to compare them against, and for that, I’ve chosen a very special deck

Chapter 2.78/3 Days: Funny Birdies 

Floowandereeze is a deck full of funny birds. That’s it. Where Tearlaments is a deck focused on milling and fusion summoning, Floo is based on banishing and normal summoning. I’m talking about Floo for a few reasons: 1. Before Tear, it was my favorite deck in the game. Floowandereeze is a very interesting deck that has a lot of gameplay I find lacking in other decks I’ve played, which we’ll expand on later. 2. While Floo is a unique deck in its own right, it has more in common with other decks in the game than Tearlaments does, and I want to use it as a reference point that I’m personally familiar with. And 3. The deck was competitive in the same format as Tearlaments when that deck was at its strongest, tenuously holding the position of third best deck at that time, is just meant to show I’m not comparing Tear to like, garbage that has never seen play, but to another competitive meta deck (at the time of release). We’re not spending too much time here, I just want to give a basic rundown of its gameplay. Basically, the deck is divided into its level 1 winged beast combo pieces and its high level winged beast boss monsters. Each of the level 1 birds has 3 effects, two archetypal and one unique to them that activates on normal summon. They all banish themselves when they leave the field face up, and can return themselves from the banish zone to the hand if a winged beast is summoned. For their individual effects each of them has something unique, like Robina who searches level 1 winged beasts. If they’re able to successfully do the first half of their unique effect, they can then immediately normal summon another winged beast monster. This gives the deck an interesting playstyle: its combo pieces recur themselves every turn, it has access to powerful bosses like Riza the Megamonarch that returns cards to the deck and hand, and with its field spell and trap card it can normal summon, and therefore combo off, on their opponent’s turns. And look I realize that normal summons may not sound that different than special summoning, especially the way Floo does them but its big. It means Floo can fly under (ha) the radar of power cards that are meant to limit special summoning, like any of the barrier statues that lock special summons to a specific attribute, or Vanity’s Fiend that just straight bars special summoning entirely, or, y’know, Rukallos, who’s basically useless against Floo considering her effect is based on negating special summoning.

In the next section of the video, I’m gonna be talking about just what I’ve noticed that makes Tearlaments a powerhouse in a way few decks have ever been. I’ll obviously be using Floowandereeze as a comparison point, but because yugioh is a game with like, a billion cards in it and you would have to kill me before I stop going on tangents, expect me to mention a bunch more along the way. That said, lets start with.

Chapter 3.1: Cost/Effect Analysis

So a very basic idea in yugioh is separating a card’s effect from its cost. Basically if a card has a phrase like, “discard 1 card” followed by a semicolon, the discard is the cost of activating the effect, which is whatever text follows after the comma or colon. This has, historically, caused confusion, because yugioh is a bad card game. The darkworld archetype of monsters have special effects that trigger if they are discarded as a part of a card effect, but since a lot of cards discard as a part of an activation cost, they don’t get to do shit. Now some decks can utilize a card’s cost to their benefit, and it should be noted that if a card says that it just has to be sent to the graveyard its effects can be activated regardless of whether it's sent for cost of effect, but it's something you have to plan and build around. Floo can actually make pretty good use of the costs on some of their cards, particularly with “advent of adventure”, which banishes a floo monster from your hand or field to activate its effect. Paying this cost can actually help the deck in a very particular way that I’ll get into later, but I just want to establish that costs, usually, aren’t massive penalties on cards, and by playing with them in mind you can get some pretty interesting combos as a result. Tear doesn’t have to do that though, because everything in this deck sends cards to the graveyard as a part of its effect. Schieren, Cryme? Effect. Sulliek, Kitkallos? Effect. Kaleido’s send from deck? Oh baby, there’s not a cost in sight. Tearlaments is maybe the only deck I’ve seen who’s every interaction is, in some way, beneficial to them. Your opponent attempts to activate a monster effect? Well just send the Kaleido you have on field to negate it with Sulliek, then use Kaleido’s effect to return itself and send a tear monster to the graveyard, then activate his shuffle effect, and the fusion effect of whatever you sent to the graveyard. So, over the course of limiting your opponent’s gameplan, you’ve  strengthened your own board, with whatever new boss monster you can fusion summon with what you’ve sent. This is not how a normal yugioh deck functions… at least, not to this extent.

Chapter 3.2: Playing on Your Opponent’s Turn:

See when you get down to it, nearly every competitive deck can manage something resembling this, it's kind of a necessity for the modern game. You have to be able to interact with your opponent on their turn, otherwise they can set up their board and kill you instantly.. Let’s look at some examples. The Branded archetype allows you to play Branded in Red, a quick play fusion spell that allows you to perform a fusion summon on your opponent’s turn, something the deck uses to summon either archetypal or generically powerful fusion monsters that act as card removal on your opponent’s board. The Mathmech combo exists practically just to facilitate plays on your opponent’s turn: the deck reliably makes monsters like i;p masquerna that lets you summon on your opponent’s turn, and the deck’s trap card, superfactorial, lets you summon a powerful boss that lets you send 3 of your opponent’s cards to the graveyard.These are powerful plays from both these decks, allowing them to summon singular, high impact boss monsters to interrupt their plays. This is what most decks are capable of… but then there’s Floo. Floo’s spells and trap cards facilitate a single normal summon on your opponent’s turn. So you summon your little bird, activate their effect… and then normal summon again. This single summon allows you to perform a full combo in the middle of your opponent’s turn, potentialy allowing you to end on any number of the big bosses the deck has at its disposal. Of course, interruption at a pivotal point in the combo could end it immediately, which would mean you couldn’t get nearly as much on board as you’d like, meaning that Floo’s plays aren’t ironclad… So Tear.

Let’s look at an example here. Let’s say you got unlucky. Your mills didn’t work out, and the only thing you have on board is a schieren, a set sulliek, and a Havnis in hand. Your opponent start’s their turn and normal summons a monster to begin their combo, activating its effect. First, you respond with Havnis, then respond to the havnis with sulliek, which lets you target and negate your opponent’s monster, and would you look at that you send schieren to the graveyard. You can use her effect to  fusion summon Kit, get its search and mill 3 from Havnis’  summon, and suddenly your whole game plan is online!

It's kind of impossible to prevent Tear from getting to play on your turn if they have anything resembling a board up when they pass it back to you. Even in worst case scenarios for the deck they can usually find their way to a Rukhallos, and her negation isn’t anything to sneeze at by itself. Plus, the sheer existence of Havnis allows the deck to access the incredibly rare, incredibly silly tactics known as the turn 0 combo. If you’re going second and you happen to have Havnis in your opening hand, you can activate her the moment your opponent activates something to summon and mill 3, and if you do, congrats, if you’re lucky enough to hit a mermaid then you could have a Rukhallos on your field before your first draw. Of course, its only 3 cards, with every mermaid being at 2 there’s a decent chance you won’t hit much. Still I consider it good, since it helps thin out the deck. Oh and I really do think that Havnis specifically just gets exponentially better your first turn onward. You mill so much random shit over the course of your combos that by the end of the game you’re hitting the good cards pretty consistently, provided your opponent can’t stop you.

Chapter 3.3 Literally Unstoppable Combo:

Modern yugioh as the concept of the Handtrap, a card you activate straight from your hand to fuck with your opponent’s plan. They’re very powerful cards, and often a necessity given what a deck can do if its allowed to go uninterrupted. Let's look at, by far, the most ubiquitous handtrap in the game, Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring.

 This card can be activated from your hand, discarding it to negate any effect from your opponent that moves a card from the deck to anywhere else, like adding it to hand or sending it to the graveyard. This is, how you say, a very good card. Almost every deck does something this card negates, and some decks can even lose to just a single ash blossom if they open a bad hand. Floo fucking loathes this card. Since ashing your starting monster instantly ends your combo… usually. So, if you would have multiple effects activate at the same time, you get to choose the order they actually activate in, and your opponent can only respond to the most recent activation. This is why banishing a bird for advent actually can help the deck: if you summon a bird and have its effects activate first, then activate a banished bird second, then your opponent can only respond to the banished bird. This helps the deck insulate against your opponent’s interactions. Tearlaments can do this too. But better! Lets look at the yoinky sploinky again, you have kitkallos on field and a merrli in hand, and your opponent has ash blossom. You activate Kit’s effect to send herself and summon merrli, activate kitkallos’ effect first, and Merrli’s second. This means that your opponent now has to make a choice: do they use the ash to negate the mill 3, instead of kitkallos’ mill 5 like they wanted to, or do they save it for another point in the combos. This applies to a shit ton of effects: if you hit multiple of the mermaids in the same mill then, you can decide the order the activate in order to protect the ones you really want to resolve. Okay, okay, lets say your opponent is smarter. Instead of even letting you get to the point in the combo where you can mill 8, they use ash blossom to stop you from adding merrli to hand with Kit’s first effect, preventing you from sploinking your yoink at all. Well shit, goddammit, son of a bitch that’s it! My combo’s over!... except I can just use the Havnis I have in hand, or this second Reinoheart that’s basically dead weight, and would you look at that, I can still mill 5. The result is almost identical! Tearlaments just isn’t weak to handtraps, save for incredibly targeted ones, or the new bystial monsters that banish dark monsters, and like we discussed cards like “cryme” help protect it from board breaking cards, so it's really hard to deal with a tearlaments player. It’s a deck that if you let it have an inch, it’ll take the whole game, unless you’re playing something that can appropriately counter it.

…

I don’t have a good transition to the next section.

Chapter 3.4: Restrictions: 

This is gonna be a bit of a doozy, so bear with me. But if you ask me, I would absolutely call this one of the most compelling reasons as to why Tearlaments is such a dominant deck. See uh, the developers of yugioh usually, with mixed results, actually try to stop decks from being insanely powerful. Let's look at Floo, one last time. Every monster in the deck has this little text stapled onto their effects: “cannot special summon during the turn you activate either effect.” Since the deck is focused on normal summons, it cuts you off from special summoning entirely. And I realize that it may not seem like a lot, considering how many summons the deck has, but that’s missing the point. Without access to special summoning, that makes the extra deck, where all the strongest cards in the game are, completely inaccessible. And its good! The floowandereeze cards would be way too powerful if you could use the extra deck, as well as its maindeck combo pieces and boss monsters. Plus, considering at the time the deck came out, one of the other best decks in the game was also entirely based on level 1 winged beasts, it was a good call to not let the two decks mix much.  The devs just don’t like it when certain cards become too ubiquitous or generically useful, and to prevent that they place certain restrictions on powerful cards. Branded fusion, the staple card of its archetype, locks you into just using fusion monsters the turn you activate it. Several key cards in the mathmech deck lock you into just summoning cyberse type monsters for the rest of the turn, stopping you from accessing generically strong link monsters the deck would otherwise utilize. HERO, a deck I'm normal about, has all of its strongest cards enforce a strict, “HEROES only” limit on the deck, or hell even more restrictive in the case of Fusion Destiny, which also slaps a Dark attribute restrictiong.  They’re, usually, very careful with this!...

Usually.

So, I could just say “Tearlaments has no limitations, and can thus access generic boss monsters” but, but that wouldn’t get the point across. We’d get to the top of the mountain, but you wouldn’t see the horizon. You wouldn’t understand. So, lets so do this. Here’s my extra deck. We’re going to talk about every card here that isn’t a Tearlaments, plus a few others. Strap in, we’re going to hell.

So first we obviously have to talk about generic fusions. Big daddy of them all in terms of our deck is Predaplant Dragostepellia, made using a fusion monster and a dark attribute monster. You may notice. Its extremely easy to get those types of cards on field. So if you already have a Ruk and Kaleido and you have two mermaid activations to spare, just make kit, then make this asshole. What’s he do? He’s a monster negate… that’s it.

Next we have the synchro monsters. But, you may have noticed, we don’t fucking play tuners to make them. To which I say, yes we fucking do. 

Every Tear deck I’ve ever seen plays at least one diviner of the herald, which can send a fairy type monster to the graveyard to increase its level by that amount. Why do we play fairies? Don’t ask! Because once diviner is summoned, if we can get any level four monster on the field we can make one of the strongest Synchro monsters ever printed, Baronne De Fleur! What’s it do? It’s an omni negate!... once. Oh also it can destroy cards on field. Oh also it can return itself to the extra deck to special summon just, any monster from the graveyard, for some reason! But wait, there’s more! If we can get a level two monster on field, which we do SO FUCKING EASILY you can make Draco Berserker of the Tenyi, which can banish a monster that activates its effects and also- I’m, I’m kidding no one, fucking else plays that card in their deck.

. Our deck plays like, a million level 4 monsters. Ignore the fact I’ve only discussed two level four monsters. So we get access to one of the most powerful generic toolboxes in the game, the cavalcade of randomly incredibly powerful rank 4 xyz monsters, and it’s fucking annoying! If you do, somehow, get interrupted enough that you can’t end on a full board, don’t worry! Just get two fours on field and you can make Bagooska, which, in defense position, is just a massive fucking floodgate that prevents you and your opponent from activating monster effects. This guy sucks, I hate him! But hey, at least his floodgate is two sided. Unlike This Asshole, Abyss Dweller. You may have picked up on the fact, by y’know the premise of the essay and your massive fucking brain that Tearlaments is a good deck. Mirror matches are not rare. And I really, really like the Tear mirror, but any time someone gets this asshole on board they can use its effect to immediately shut their opponent out of the game. Oh, and its a quick effect! Why, why is it a quick effect! So yeah this does the same thing as bagooska in the tear mirror, except if you’re too broke and don’t want to go through the effort of getting this guy (like me) you get hit by some weird non games in the middle of stuff. At least you can just punch over it though. CAN’T SAY THE SAME FOR THIS GUY. 

Time Thief Redoer is unique among xyz monsters. Uh, I promised myself I wouldn’t get super super basic in this, but let me explain something. When a xyz monster is summoned, the monsters used to make it don’t go to the graveyard. They stay under the card as material, which the xyz monster can send to the grave as costs for their effects. Time Thief Redoer, is one of the very, very rare xyz monsters, that detach for effect. So, y’know, if you had a schieren attached to him, that's another way to randomly start a combo in the middle of your opponent’s turn. Is this just me complaining about a bunch of very expensive cards I will never have because I’m broke, and don’t want to craft them? Yes, that’s like half the reason I made this video.

G! You cry out! This is already the longest part of the essay! Surely, we’re done! But no, no we have to talk about the worst, most powerful summoning mechanic in the game, link monsters! So what do we have? Donner, dagger fur hire is just a generic monster that can destroy anything, so there’s no reason not to play it. The primary link monster we use is Spright Elf, a generic link that just requires one of the monsters used to make it is a level 2 monster. You may notice, again, we sure do have an easy time getting exactly the level 2 Merrli on field. It has two effects, one of which protects monsters it points to from targeting effects, and the second, as a quick effect, lets you summon a level 2 monster from the graveyard. So, one more way to play on our opponent’s turn by summoning Merrli back, lol, maybe, just maybe, even lmao. Oh but we got some more. There’s one that’s uh, really, really funny in the Tearlament’s mirror match, Dharc the Dark Charmer, guess what the fuck she needs a as material to be summoned, and uh she just lets you summon a dark monster from your opponent’s graveyard. So you can do this really funny thing, where you can steal your opponent’s Merrli and activate her effect if you wanna, or really any of the tear monsters sans Reinoheart exactly. Uuhh it doesn’t actually come up too much but like, what if you destroy your Opponent’s Kaleido Heart twice and wanna fuck with them? 

OH I LIED BY THE WAY WE’RE NOT DONE WITH FUSION MONSTERS. Because, BECAUSE, halfway through writing this they released an update to the game that added a stupid as hell card. Garura, Wings of Resonant Life, is a silly fucking card. It only requires two cards who share a type and attribute, which describes most archetypal cards in the game. It deals double damage for, some fucking reason, and if it’s sent to the graveyard for like anything you just draw 1, draw 1 card for no reason yeah that’s not busted even a little, Christ what do you even say to a card like this?

Sigh, well, that’s it! We’ve talked about basically every reason Tear is powerful. We’re done. We, we don’t have to look, any further. 

Chapter 3.??:

… What? This, was supposed to be the conclusion. I, I talked about every card, shit I talked about a bunch of stupid cards I don’t even play there’s no way I missed something. Surely, surely, I haven’t been blindly ignoring the problem, the final missing piece, the key that will open Pandora’s Box. Surely, I’m not afraid of what’s beyond it. The realization of the inevitable; that this game will ascend and ascend, creep it’s way up this mountain until it can see it, finally, its next horizon. No, no, surely not! There’d be no going back! No way to return to the world I knew before. To before I realized, that it will find its way across, to that next horizon, again, forever, until time is a forgotten dream and all that remains is dying stardust and smoldering cardboard… Before I realized that you can’t forget what you saw beyond the horizon. No matter how awful.

Surely, no one, would be cruel enough to inflict another with that kind of curse. Condemned to the climb, forever, ‘till even the black holes burn out. Just for a chance to see something as beautiful as that first horizon again.

…

Fuck.

Chapter 3.5: Yugioh and the Heat Death of The Universe:

Ishizu Ishtar is a character from the Yugioh Duel Monsters anime. She’s the older sister to one of the show’s antagonists, Marik, and tries to involve Yugi and his friend into a scheme to save her brother from the darkness within him. She duels at multiple points, playing a deck focused around earth fairies. This leads to the creation of Mudora, Agido, Keldo and Kelbek.

These are four cards that do nothing and are very bad. But, in the year 2022, a demon came to the konami dev team, and foretold to them the inevitable death of the universe. They realized all was lost, that the horizon would never, truly, be crossed, and lamenting their woes they vowed to try, anyway.

So they made the cards again.

This is how we got Mudora the Sword Oracle, Agido the Ancient Sentinel, Keldo the Sacred Protector, and Kelbek the Ancient Vanguard. These are the last cards we're really gonna talk about in this. So let's get started.

Two things, one, all of these cards mention a card called exchange of the spirits, a trap card that I do not play. The trap modifies their effects slightly, but I’ll just be talking about the effects I actually resolve in a duel.

Second, these cards are split into two unique groups: the millers, and the shufflers. Let’s talk about the millers first.

Agido and Kelbek have similar effects, but not quite the same. If your opponent sends a card to their graveyard from the hand of deck, you can summon one of them and activate a unique effect: agido summons an earth fairy from the graveyard, Kelbek returns a monster on field to the hand. Alright, but that’s not why we play them. If these cards are sent to the graveyard from the hand or deck, you and your opponent just mill 5. Yup. Yup. these cards are, uh, insane! If you can hit both of them over the course of a standard Tearlaments combo, congrats, you get to mill at least half your deck, maybe more. Near guaranteed access to everything you could ever need.

Mudora and Keldo also share a summon effect. They can both discard an earth fairy to summon themselves, Mudora also sets a gravekeepers trap (a trap card I don’t play) onto the field, and Keldo adds another earth fairy to your hand. These effects are, also, good, but we play them for the one they share. As a quick effect, while they’re on the field or in the graveyard, you can banish either of these monsters to shuffle 3 cards from the graveyard into the deck… which is really good to have, when everyone is trying to fusion summon with monsters in their graveyard.

Chapter 5:  Tear 0

When talking about a deck’s viability, its ranked into tiers . Most of the time in any given format of the game, there’s a couple tier 1 decks that stand as the “best decks”, as the decks most worth playing. Very rarely, a deck with be tier 0. So represented, so definitively “the best deck” that, there’s no arguing it. Tier 0 means that if you want to take competitive yugioh seriously, you have to play that deck. With the release of the Ishizu monsters, Ishizu Tearlaments was born, the first tier 0 deck in years, really to my understanding. It’s kind of funny, the rise of Ishtear was happening just when I was getting back into yugioh. I was watching creators in the scene talk about the deck, complain about the deck, complain about it a lot, really. People don’t like tier 0 formats, and reasonably so. People don’t like it when there really is a “best deck” with no variation between what people are playing, people don’t like it when they can’t play their favorite decks competitively anymore. People don’t like staring down the fact, that we are looking at a new horizon. People just didn’t like the deck for all the reasons I’ve just spent, who knows how long talking about. They complained about how powerful it was, about its ability to play on both turns, about, well, everything it did. In the tcg, it got hit into oblivion, and in master duel the deck was slowly torn apart. Shit in the middle of making this they limited each of Ishizu’s monsters to 1 copy per deck, making it a lot harder to get chains of their effects going. Earlier this Fall they just straight up banned Merrli, severely weakening the deck’s game plan. But even before it was full torn asunder, I didn’t really see people playing Tear much, at least, not as much in comparison to other decks. Do people just not like the deck? Did they get frustrated by the asshole stun players making decks to just counter Tear? I dunno, I dunno. Though, I’ve run into like, 5 different people playing that branded tearlament pile deck, maybe, maybe I should take a look at it at some point…

Sigh

Y’know, I played against a tier 0 deck before.

So, Spyral, was an insanely powerful deck back in 2017. Don’t worry I’m not explaining what the cards do, just, know they were good. So good that they dominated the game for months, it was really the only thing worth playing for a while, and people hated it too. The deck got eaten by the banlist hard, but in Master Duel it’s at full power. Not only that, but cards have been released that are just stronger than what were available at the time. So, a person playing Spyral in master duel today is actually playing a stronger version of that tier 0 deck… 

And that’s what I went up against.

I was still new, playing a janky brew of HERO because, well, wanting to play HERO was why I got master duel in the first place. I’m not claiming to be like, superb at the game, but I’ve made it to diamond playing Floowandereeze and Tearlaments, I think that’s a far cry better than how I was when I started. Anyway, I was going second, no idea what my opponent was doing, I had a single ash blossom that they played through like it was nothing. And I sat there. For… like, 15 minutes. While my opponent did a bunch of combos that just left me sitting there lost and confused, and by the time they passed the turn over, finally, they had a board with 10 negates, and I had nothing good in my hand. I was hit by the crushing realization, that I could not win this duel. I tried in any case, and in just 3 negates they ate all the resources in my hand, and I conceded. I sat there and thought about how I had wasted 15 minutes of my finite existence, just to lose at a card game. I play this game to have fun. I did not have fun. Did my opponent have fun? Did they enjoy the time they spent, building an impossible board with their expert combos? Did they feel happy when I conceded, proud? Did they realize, that they spent 15 minutes, of their finite existence, comboing off on some jackass playing HERO? For me, it was an interesting experience. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend it like, radically altered how I viewed the game. I knew stuff like that was possible from what I saw, but its always something else to really see it up front. I had been forced to find a new horizon. And I did, time and time again, playing decks I had fun with, getting better with, and I managed what I thought was impossible: diamond, in breathing distance of the highest rank available at the time. And I was glad, because I got in just days before Tearlaments came to Master Duel, and I really wasn’t sure if I’d want to be playing before they got banned. But, I was curious, and I did…

Floowandereeze, was, my favorite deck. Despite everything I’ve said here, I want to be clear: I like Tearlaments. I think it’s a fun deck. Does it suck that its head and shoulders stronger than the other decks in the game? Yeah, obviously. But I’ll tell you what, some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing yugioh, was the Tear mirror match. It’s a thrill, it’s insane. The Ishizu cards add such an interesting dimension to the games that just wouldn’t exist without them: the fact that the millers hit both players deck means you and your opponent can easily just keep turning your card effects on, same for theirs, and the shufflers allow for really interesting games of hitting mermaids trying to fuse and forcing out shuffles from your opponent at bad times. You and your opponent interact with each other constantly, regardless of who’s turn it is. And once I had built my deck properly I rarely felt outmatched by my opponent, except in matters of pure skill. Luck obviously plays a factor with random mills, but the combos are so consistent it's nearly impossible to never have something in your back pocket to use on your opponent. This, this is what was actually waiting on the other edge of that horizon, something so fun I… really, can’t go back. I played Tearlaments until it was rendered unusable. Since then, I’ve just been bouncing around decks None of them grabbed me the way ishtear did. And I’m just left here  to hope that this isn't the last time we see a deck Like Tearlaments. Konami, generally speaking, is not a company known for its good decision making, and I’m worried they’ve taken the wrong message from the responses to Tear. If you ask me, well, I don’t know if the game should have ever gotten to this level of power creep to begin with, but lord if you’re going to print a deck so obviously, blatantly busted you could at least have the decency to print other decks around its level. Then maybe people wouldn’t have complained about fuckin, merrli set sulliek pass. 

Conclusion: Staring Directly Into The Sun

So, why, the fuck did I make this? Well like I said at the beginning I just wanted to talk about it, because it interested me. And then, over the course of this project, it stopped being just intellectual curiosity. See, for as much as people talked about Tear, how strong it was, its place in the meta, I never really saw anyone sit down and explain why, exactly, this set of 55 cards was the single best set you could be playing. Could it be that these were just, apparent to everyone involved, and that I’m either too stupid or too new to really understand? Maybe, probably, but I’m really not one for leaving things unsaid. Uh, learning this game from basically scratch has kind of been a nightmare. Constantly, consistently, I’ve looked at cards and strategies that I thought seemed really, really powerful, only to learn that no, actually, these cards are just bad. And while now, I’ve learned to intuit why some cards are just bad, it took a lot of frustration and confusion that just, could have been avoided if someone explained why in plain terms. So, be the change you want to see, eh? Not only that but, iunno this came to be a matter of preservation for me. I thought about reworking it to take the new banlists into account, but ultimately decided that I wanted to capture the image of the deck at the time I was first writing this. And, damn I’m gonna be pissed at myself for a while for not getting a picture of my actual decklist from back before the big limits but, what can you do? I just hope that this weird essay could actually explain what it is that makes these cards so powerful, and allow people like me to get these concepts into their head to keep in mind when considering future cards. I… really, really hope we get another deck like Tearlaments again. Yugioh will not stop its power creep, not the way it’s currently run. Deck’s will continue to get stronger, get more powerful tools, and I’m worried about eventually things getting to the point where it’s basically just not even fun to play. Until the last few months, the arguable best deck was Kashtira, which main gameplan is… sitting behind a giant fucking floodgate. That's just not the kind of yugioh I want to play. I think Tearlaments was genuinely a good example for how the game could progress in power level while also staying interactive for both players. Do I want the game to just, keep getting stronger? Not really, I’ve actually started getting into low power versions of the game. But if they’re going to drag us, kicking and screaming over that next horizon,  can’t they at least make it fun? 

That’s where the original essay ended. I’m mostly keeping it intact for posterity’s sake but, I do want to say, I think somehow Konami did something right. I still haven’t found a deck that’s grabbed me the way Tear did, but a lot of the decks played nowadays are allowed to be as free form and potentially insane as Tear was at the height of its power. Which, I’m happy to see, and I really hope to keep seeing this in the future.

Forgive the melodrama

Have a nice day

[animefinatic]

Spoilers for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

I’m going to talk about the story lines!! All three of them please just keep moving. I beat the game over the past weekend and I was just letting it simmer in my brain and I think I am ready to talk about it.

Team St⭐️r:

I’m not gonna lie when they first dropped info on them in trailers of them just being some rowdy kids who refuse to wear their uniform correctly and causing mischief I was disappointed. Ever since Team Skull from alola the ‘evil team’ just not evil-ing like they used to. I like triumphing over an evil organization. However as I progressed through the operation Starfall story and it just unravels how it was just a group of kids who were being bullied and after clearly receiving no help from the adults decided to band together and confront their bullies and they eventually became the villain after the kids cried and left the school. It’s crazy how the narrative switched up and they became the bad guy after defending themselves. With defeating each boss it was touching to see just how much team star meant to them. Giving me nakama vibes.

Clavell being in disguise the whole time was funny af. He thought he was cool.

Penny being the ultimate boss of team star was shocking for me. Usually I’m good at capturing the obvious reveal but I guess I missed the mark this time.

Victory Road:

At the core I’m a filthy traditionalist and I enjoyed collecting gym badges as usual and I absolutely looked up the ‘correct’ order of who to challenge. I never minded there was an order to the gyms I don’t care if they never allowed us to play the gyms in every order. However since they did give us a choice and really selling the open world aspect I’m disappointed they didn’t scale lvls accordingly. I had Sprigatito and pawmi early on. If I wanted an easy gym badge why couldn’t I go to the water gym and beat his ass? Like sure I could go anywhere I wanted (within reason, like if you could only run on korai/miraidon) but it didn’t mean I should go anywhere. But overall I enjoyed the gyms I enjoyed Rhyme, Grusha and Larry for various reasons. Can I just say Larry looks as tired as I feel. The elite 4 was kinda lackluster. I wonder if it’s because I’m so used to Galar. They made EVERYTHING a spectacle. Other than ‘wow hi Larry’ moment when he came back as an elite 4 member nothing really stood out. Even the champion Geeta wasn’t that impressive like they built her up for being the overall champion of Paldea and it wasn’t impressive. I like she’s involved with the academy and the Pokémon league and she running things but getting that moment to battle her I didn’t feel a spark. The only thing that tripped me up as not knowing what the heck the Gilmora was was and making the mistake of hitting it and having to get poisoned on switch in.

Nemona was an amazing rival, sure I’ve never had a problem with beating her but I can feel she genuinely wanted us to grow and thrive as trainers. Leaning she’s always had to hold back and just wanted a true rival in battling made me want to lowkey impress her with my skills. Though each of her battles were never hard for me. That battle with the tournament where we finally could fight as equals was exciting. This was the battle I had hoped to have with Geeta. My only thing was that early on it’s implied she had other Pokémon when she joined the academy and that was why she didn’t get a starter pokemon, getting the one weakest to ours(Quaxly for me). But I’ve seen her battle with the same Pokémon including the end. I had hoped to see a few different Pokémon on the roster as if to show she really went and got her old and strongest partners to come at us. But when I won and the cam pans over to Nemona it was like holding my breath everyone waited for a reaction. Rather than upset she was ecstatic. The look of joy on her face and just being so excited was such a nice feeling. When I first beat Hop I felt horrible since I killed his dream of fighting Leon but beating this rival felt good in a different way from beating those douche bag rivals of the past.

Mystica Hunt:

Y’all this is the best story in the whole game. I didn’t think knocking out totem—I mean titan Pokémon to steal a magic herb to make sandwiches was going to be good for much other than just be a way to upgrade our riding companion. When I saw Arven being introduced I just thought him to be so pretty and thought with his rude behavior in our intro this would be the annoying rival I was missing with Nemona. But then…2nd mission drops and it’s revealed he just wants to make medicine for his sickly dog who seemed to be an inch from death took me. So much emotion and showing me a different side of him I wanted to help him. But have a cute moment in the caves eating sandwiches and hanging out. With Arven I felt like I had a friend. Rivals like Hop, Barry, Cheren & Bianca were supposedly childhood friends and even the kids in x and y were supposed to be our new friends. But I’ve never felt my character was friends with them. We go our separate ways and occasionally battle. With Arven we were going through things together. And then we finely get his Pokémon back I was overjoyed. Starfall made me feel bad lowkey and the gym challenge is business as usual for me. But this mission felt so fulfilling even when I felt bad about having to battle him and his beloved Pokémon shortly after. The way I was disappointed when the next stage of the story with the professor couldn’t continue until I beat the elite 4.

The professor (Sada/Turo) being not only a robot this entire time but the original professor was dead for years. YEARS. no one, not even poor Arven, knew. Game freak really got me. I did not expect that. It was crazy enough we didn’t meet the professor the entire game mean but when we finally do it’s a robot. I saw one person on tiktok say it feels like it doesn’t fit with sada being scarlet professor and that game is about the past and the robot is a future element. Basically the robot plot twist didn’t fit and they felt like game freak made the plot line for violet and tried to make it fit scarlet. And I disagree. The technology in the Pokémon universe is pretty advanced. Why is it out the ordinary that Turo can make an Ai in his timeline and not for Sada’s? She is studying ancient Pokémon sure but if I’m not mistaken the Ai was made to help the professor with their research. It doesn’t matter the area of study, past or future. using the power of the crystals in area zero to get the Ai to actually run and help with the research is like a fancy assistant. I think it still fits even for the professor Sada story line.

Overall I love the three story lines as it gave me a little more to do than just the usual gym challenge. I like that Gamefreak is starting to breath more life and personality into these characters bc yes I’m always here for Pokémon but I like when the characters around me have personality and have more depth than being just a rival or just an obstacle for me to lvl up my Pokémon in between gym badges. Is the game glitchy? Yes, but it didn’t hinder my game play. I’ve seen some wild glitch stuff happen to others on tiktok and I’m glad I was spared the torment. I always took care to save periodically just in case. Well worth the money imo.

[norsferatu]

[akiisame]

Genshin impact guide - how to into artifacts

How to into artifacts and team set.

A guide by me for my kawaii @stupidneko and whoever is in need.

Okay, so, as a word of introduction before well start with this long ass post, I’ve never wrote anything like this so be patient with me.

ALSO ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE SO SORRY IN ADVANCE FOR ANY MISTAKES

In my personal opinion artifacts are more important than the characters themselves, they can turn every 4* into a main dps (yes, even amber). 50% of your DMG will come from items, then the other 50% will come from weapon, talents and the character itself, but this is a story for another post.

First let’s take a look at what kind of artifacts do we have. Each and every character have 5 slots for artifacts:

Flower of life - or just flower, for short

Plume of death - feather

Sand of eon - time watch piece

Goblet of Eonothem - goblet

Circlet of Logos - head piece

Each of the pieces have two types of stats: main stats and sub stats. The first two pieces, flower and feather, always have the same main stat.

For flower it's HP

And for feather it's ATK

Then for the rest of them it can be anything, from good main stats like this:

(The following items have high stats because most of them are on max lvl)

... to less of a good stats, like this:

Goblets also are the only artifacts that has the possibility to have element DMG bonus as the main stats:

While head piece are the only artifacts that can have CRIT DMG and CRIT rate as a main stats:

... but they too can have less of a good stats like healing bonus or DEF.

Now, to the sub stats. They can vary from less appealing stats like HP, DEF and Elemental Mastery:

To a great stats like CRIT DMG, CRIT rate and ATK:

Unfortunately that's where the tricky part comes in. You cannot chose which substats the item will have. They will randomly appear. All that's left is to cry and pray.

But how do you get more stats on your item? That's simple, you need to level it up! We call it 'enhancing'. Depending on the rarity of your item( they vary from 1* (one start) to 5*(five stars) ) there are different max lvl cap. I'll mostly focus here on the 4* and 5* items. Max lvl cap for 4* is lv16 and for 5* is lv20.

Every artifact you'll get is always lv1. To enhance an artifact you'll need mora and another artifacts. The main stats will grow with each level, but the substats will update every 4th level (so for 5* item new substats will appear on 4th, 8th,12th, 16th and 20th level). Let's take this 5* feather: Bard's Arrow Feather

As all feathers it has ATK as a main stats and quite decent substats. You can enhance it by giving it other artifacts. You can also auto add artifacts of given level (1*, 2* or below, 3* or below and 4* or below)

Or you can chose items manually if you click on the gray '+' icon. Once you do it, there will be a list of artifacts you can use for enhancing. Only items that are not given to any characters will appear here.

Let’s enhance it up by one lvl (there’s limit of pic so I can’t show it ksmosjnwk). As I said, the main stats got better, but the substats didn't change because that was only the 1st level. So now let's enhance it to lv4. Once we choose enough artifacts to enhance it to lv4 we’ll see an information that one new substat will appear. (It doesn’t always have to be new substats. Sometimes the substats that the piece already have can get a boost).

Let's see what I'll get:

... Yea, I'm going to cry.

But for real now, that's how the artifacts work. Depending on your luck you can get a great items or a depression.

Usually people always aim for artifacts with ATK and CRIT as a both main and substats, but that all depend on you team composition.

But Akii, how do I chose good artifacts for my characters? How do I build my team?

I'm happy you asked. We can have up to 4 character in the team. Usually people aim for a team consisted of one main DPS, one healer and two supports, but ofc that all depends on your style of the game and your needs.

What is the most important in building your team and deciding on artifacts is the characters talents themselves. You absolutely have to check their talents and passives before giving them any artifacts, cause for some of them items with HP as a main stat could be actually good (like Barbara, since her role is only healing she doesn’t make more than 100 dmg on her normal attack but she heals a TONS).

Let's take my team for example, I’ll explain what their talents do and choose artifacts accordingly:

Razor as my main DPS

Qiqi as my healer

Xingqiu as my support

And Xiao that is none of the above but I just got him so I really wanna use him lmao

Usually I'd have Bennett in my team that would work as both healer and support, but yea, Xiao happen. Anyway, back to the topic

Since Razor is my main DPS I am focusing mostly on the DMG he can do. That's why when choosing artifacts for him I was aiming for the one with ATK/CRIT.

I do believe right now is a good moment to introduce artifacts sets. Each artifact has its own sets. There are plenty of sets to chose from. Now, the question is, does it matter from which set the item comes? Yes, it does.

Every set has all 5 types of artifacts to offer (a flower, feather, time watch piece, goblet and head piece). Depending on how many of the pieces from the same set you'll have you can get different stats. Let's take everyone's favorite Gladiator's Finale set. If you equip 2 pieces of Gladiator your get additional 18% of your base attack. IT'S A LOT!

But if you equip 4 pieces of Gladiator your normal attack (the single mouse tap, not the skills or the hold tap) will be increased by 35% IF your character has a sword, polearm or claymore (so it doesn't work on characters with books and bows, sorry Amber).

As I was saying, since my Razor is my main DPS and his role is to hit, not deal Electro DMG, I gave him 4 pieces of Gladiator's Finale just so he can have these additional 35%. But his head piece belongs to Wandener's Troupe. Why? Since every character can have 5 different artifacts, and the set's bonuses are only up to 4 pieces, the last one can belong to any other set. I chose Wandener's because it have CRIT rate as a main stats, so it's perfect for main DPS character. (The last piece doesn’t have to be the head piece, it can be any of the other 4 pieces).

You can check the character stats and the difference in the artifacts by going to your character menu and then clicking on the ‘details’.

For example here are my Xiao stats calculated with all the artifacts he has right now on him:

And here I have my Xiao without any artifacts and with 1* weapon:

DO YOU SEE THE HUUUGE DIFFERENCE?

Next we have Qiqi, my healer. One would think that, if she's a healer, then it would be good to have a set that is designed for healers on her, right? Wrong.

Let's take a look on Qiqi elemental skill (You can check your character skills by clicking on ‘talents’ in the character menu):

(APPARENTLY TUMBLR WONT ALLOW ME TO POST MORE THAN 10 PICS IN ONE POST SO ILL HAVE TO PASTE THE INFO FROM WIKI, THANKS)

When Qiqi hits a target with her Normal or Charged Attacks, she regenerates HP for all party members and all nearby allied characters. Healing scales based on Qiqi's ATK. Regenerates HP for current character at regular intervals. Follows the character around, dealing Cryo DMG to enemies in its path.

It's says that the heals she gives is based on her overall ATK. Which means the more ATK she has the better her heals are. That's why, in my personal opinion, it's better to focus on raising her ATK and energy recharge. Ofc, there's nothing wrong in having for example 2 pieces of Maiden Beloved (set's name designed for healers, 2-Piece Bonus: Character Healing Effectiveness +15%) on her. If those pieces main stats will be ATK then this will work amazing, but unfortunately I don't have any artifacts like this.

Next are supports, Bennett and Xingqiu. Since their role is not dealing DMG, but more of a supporting you can give them sets of a 2 pieces. Let's take a look at their elemental burst:

Bennett:

if the health of a character in the circle is equal to or falls below 70%, their health will continuously regenerate. Regeneration scales based on Bennett's Max HP. If the health of a character in the circle is higher than 70%, they gain an ATK Bonus that is based on Bennett's Base ATK. Applies the Pyro element to characters within the Field.

Basically you just ult and switch to your DPS (or whoever you want honestly). If the character you switched to (or Bennett himself, his ult works on him too) HP is below 70%, they will receive heals. If their HP is above 70%, the incoming healing with cease and they will get attack bonus based on Bennet BASE ATK (only when you have him c0, so with no constellations. On c1 (his first constellation is unlocked) there is no HP restriction, so his ult buffs the attack no matter of your character current health). So it’s not the same case as Qiqis. Base attack is the base amount the character have with weapon equipped but without any artifacts on, so the only way to rise base ATK is to maximize character level and to give them weapon with high amount of attack. Then we should focus on giving him as much of an energy recharge as we can so he can load his ult faster. Then it’s up to you whether you wanna make is a healer or side DPS. In healer case you should focus on rising his HP amount by giving him artifacts with that stats and substats cause, on the contrary to Qiqi, the heals he gives are based on his own max HP, not his ATK. In side DPS case you can focus on the overall dmg he makes.

Now let's take a look on my Xiao. His role is a dps, just like Razor. So one would think that it would be the best to max physical DMG on Xiao too, right? Wrong.

Let's take a look on Xiao's elemental skill and Elemental burts:

Skill:

Xiao lunges forward, dealing Anemo DMG to opponents in his path.

Burst:

Greatly increases Xiao's jumping ability. Increases his attack AoE and attack DMG. Converts attack DMG into Anemo DMG, which cannot be overriden by any other elemental infusion. In this state, Xiao will continuously lose HP. The effects of this skill end when Xiao leaves the field.

Both of them covert the DMG into Anemo DMG. Which mean that no matter the physical DMG bonus, if he doesn't have any Anemo DMG he won't be as useful as he could be. That why my Xiao has 2 pieces of Gladiator and 2 pieces of Viridescent Venerer that gives him +15% of Anemo DMG bonus. (y’all have no idea how long it took me to write this thing correctly lmao)

As the last piece i used Wandener's head piece again to give him that additional CRIT rate. (yes, his Anemo DMG can be scaled with CRIT rate, too). Ofc my Xiao still lacks a lot of power we can see on some videos on yt.

Okay Akii, I understand how does the artifacts works and what to which to chose when thinking about the character role, but how do I actually get the artifacts?

That's actually the hardest part. You can get them from domains. Each domain have two sets of artifacts at the same time, which means depending on your luck you'll get the artifacts from the set you want or the artifacts you don't want BUT can use for enhancing later on! Gladiator's and Wandener's don't have its own domain, but can be achieved by fighting bosses like cubes or regisvines and from weekly bosses like Dvalin, Andrius and Childe.

Now that you know everything you need to know about artifacts you can go and start doing the domains...

only to waste all of your resins and get tons of shit artifacts with DEF as a main stats and then start crying after your one good artifact with ATK as a main stat and CRIT as a substat gets shits like HP, DEF and more HP after enhancing. Have fun <3

[bnhaficsforthesoul]

BNHA characters and their genshin experiences

I've been way into genshin for the past couple months, if anyone wants to play with me message me (I'm lvl 45 rn) but be warned I have shitty internet and am a partial razor main

but this is mainly characters I can see actually putting time into genshin

Bakugou

Mains: Yanfei

his main has probably been most every pyro character at some point

he wants diluc so bad, whenever someone else complains that diluc ruined their pity he wants to ruin their existence

before yanfei his main was probably hu Tao

hed definitely play klee if he had her lmao but he doesnt and is patiently waiting for her rerun

he has a lot of 5 star characters and is f2p, he can always get banner characters within at least the first pity, but for standard 5 stars hes gotten keqing and qiqi way too many times and hes livid

especially as a previous hu tao main, he was begging for Jean, still has yet to come home

hes probably a very high level, not fully maxed out considering he hasnt been playing all that long, he was probably forced to start when the rest of the bakusquad started playing it and he just took off

has really shitty artifact luck though, like his characters arent bad or anything but they could be so, so much better

and ugh hes livid

explores everything, has 100% exploration everywhere, but hes not bored hes still got artifact farming to do and he enjoys terrorizing enemies

in co op he will set you and everything around you on fire. cope.

Todoroki

Mains: Xiao or Ganyu

probably only started playing because Izuku asked him to

kaeya has also been on his team since day 1 and he is never leaving doesnt matter his friendship has been level 10 for weeks now who cares

was f2p until xiao, who didnt want to come home at all, and he finally got him on his 180th pull

now he doesnt care and will buy primogems whenever hes bored

he has a lot of constellations on kaeya and hes so proud of that, probably c4, is considering buying way too many primogems just so that he can hopefully get his c6

now his artifact luck is godly, you'll go into a domain with him and be like ugh I got nothing and hes like I got a 4 piece set with all attack or crit rate/damage main stats like haha I hate you

but yeah his characters are very strong cause of this, but he doesnt put effort into building a lot of them, he only levels up and gives good artifacts to his team and a couple other characters he likes but everyone else just sits there for a while

hes not super obsessed with the game, but he does think its funny seeing bakugou get so upset whenever they do domains together

doesnt even bother doing daily tasks really unless hes trying to save primogems

Midoriya

Mains: Venti

hes so good at building characters, like he looks up builds online and watches those "do INSANE damage with these tips" videos - and he sets out to get them done and he does

bakugou is once again livid whenever they play together, because Izuku barely has to try and can do so much more damage than him

he does have to put in a lot of work for his artifacts though because he doesnt settle for the okay ones he needs the absolute best

he builds his favorite characters the most ofc, but he evenly distributes things to other characters he knows can be useful- those characters might not have insane stats but they're still good

will not kill timmies pigeons, hell hunt birds in the wild for fun though

definitely a food hoarder

also does a lot of exploring and probably has at least 90% for each area

Kaminari

Mains: Lisa

he is 1000% in love with Lisa, he took her quest very seriously

and so many people say shes horrible, he hates it, hes made her crazy strong out of spite

his team consists of only his wifus- meaning lisa, beidou, rosaria, and mona

for a long time beidou was his second but then rosaria came along and hes like ugh big tiddy goth gf, but lisa still remains queen

these are the only characters hes built though, save for a couple like probably razor and xiangling that he used before he fully got this team

is an ayaka saver

he doesnt care too much about most 5 stars but will sometimes get them just to say he has them, but they end up just sitting there rotting away because he never puts work into them

he does have hu tao though and would get ganyu if she ever had a rerun

Kirishima

Mains: Diluc Razor or Beidou

they're all on his team, the last person switches out but it's most likely zhongli or childe

hes all about dps, support who, he just wants to hit hard and do insane damage , so yes he made dps zhongli

except his builds arent that great, with some help his builds are decent, but on his own hell be like ugh that's some sexy 300 damage

probably didnt know what 90% of the stats even meant and just put random attack ones on people and went yeah that looks good

doesnt really care though and is just having fun so hell play how he wants (as he should) but he does have to ask for help when farming bosses

loves exploring but misses so much, hell get distracted easily and end up just messing around

honestly probably hasnt bothered to ascend his world since he got to level 35, if he did the quest hed probably go straight to 45 and even then hed still have extra exp because hes been there for so long oml

but eventually he would have to and hed be trying to do it like :,) this is fine and it takes him a lot of tries but he gets there eventually,,, only to immediately have another one waiting for him poor baby

Mina

Mains: Klee or Xiangling

thinks baizhu is hot (and is correct) so shes desperately waiting for him

was a I must play 24/7 player until after the last story quest, then she got kinda bored but still plays frequently so she can save primogems and likes playing co op

goes into random peoples worlds a lot

shes got some pretty strong characters and is proud of her account

definitely makes tiktoks of her playing with the bakusquad cause it's always v chaotic (it's probably only denki and kirishima most of the time, but sometimes either bakugou or sero will join in)

does all the genshin tiktok trends

shes a pretty high level since shes probably been playing for a while and has most everything done

she loves helping lower level people though she thinks it's so cute and loves the power she feels when she one shots things

Sero

Mains: Xingqui

hes a pretty casual player, kinda only plays when hes bored or the others make him play with them

but his stats arent too bad, they're fairly average but he gets by

has so many primogems because he doesnt bother to wish on anyone, probably wants kazuha though

he does get super invested into the story though, hes so curious about the world and where the story is gonna lead

probably watches a lot of genshin theory videos and now he over thinks everything in the game

he explores a lot, not so much to find every single thing but more so just because he likes looking at everything, hes very excited for all the new places

Shinsou

Mains: Childe

hes a very thorough player, he explores a lot and puts a lot of work into building his characters

most of them arent all that great but he has plans to fix them

his main team is very well built, not the best, but still good

he struggles when he has to switch someone out for a domain or something because his other characters are so painfully mediocre right now and he feels so bad

shinsou, playing a character that can do like max 200 physical damage and biggest damage is like 2 thousand, repeatedly saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you deserve so much better, I'm so sorry

even if it's not the worst damage by far, he feels bad about anything under his main team's stats because they're just so much higher

broke. has no primogems. spent them all on childe and his constellations. does he regret it? well he sure does appreciate his c6 so- hell manage

yes he spent real money on his stupid mass murderer who he loves very much

fights childe every day even though he already collected the treasure, he is but a humble simp

probably decently lucky with wishing like he can beat the 50/50 almost every time

Tamaki

Mains: Chongyun and Sucrose

he only started playing recently, probably kirishima got him into it, but he immediately fell in love

kirishima was like tell me when you're level 16 so we can play together !!! and 2 days later tamaki was level 16 and kiri was shook because how the hell did he do it so fast

hates domains, the dread he feels when he realizes the lower level isnt going to give him anything anymore, and he has to move up to the next, and the next,,

asks kirishima to help him only to realize he isnt much help, is too nice to say that so he let's kiri keep trying- one day kiri gets deku to play with the two of them and tamaki almost cries because finally he can get through the level 90 domain and actually get things ugh

cannot get xingqui to save his life he refuses to come home and poor tamaki is so sad he wants him a lot hes even got all his materials saved up

Monoma

Mains: Ningguang

honestly doesnt play all that much but takes pride in making his account seem v good, is a whale

but hes very good at the game, didnt know what the artifacts were for at first and gave people ones based on how they looked but once he figured it out hes fixed them

is a very standard player, logs in every day to do his commissions and use his resin then logs out, he doesnt put too much time into the game and doesnt worry if he misses a day or two

worships ningguang, also really likes xinyan, his other team members are probably venti and albedo

has every single banner 5 star that has come out since he started playing, probably doesnt have klee though and is v upset about it, and is thanking the heavens for all the reruns lately

also doesnt have keqing and wants her a lot cause he likes her

accepts every single co op request he gets, and despite what a lot may think hes actually a very nice person to play with, not toxic at all - unless you're someone he knows then he might be mean to you shshshsh

Shigaraki

Mains: Razor

haha isnt it so odd that they sound so similar haha (if you dont know they have the same japanese va and I'm guessing hed play it in Japanese)

obviously he can be kinda busy ya know being a criminal and all that but when hes not he puts a lot of time into genshin

sadly doesnt have very good luck when it comes to characters or artifacts, but hes doing his best even with 0 primogems and his 50% crit rate

doesnt explore all that much, most of the exploring hes done came from him trying to get all the oculus

his razor is so good though, except that's the only character hes put tons of effort into

except for now zhongli, hes not replacing razor but ugh does he love zhongli

but his other characters are pretty mediocre at best, he could build them if he wanted to, hes good enough at gaming to figure it out, he just doesnt have the time to spend to do it so he focuses on his main team

also (spoiler alert kinda) when we had to go to the wolf spirit to fight the abyss herald and razor was there, afterwards how razor was saying how he was too weak and stuff and was super sad, at that very moment shiggy decided the entire abyss order had to be destroyed - sorry aether (he chose lumine) but razor is more important than you