#i keep collecting scary damaged characters and bringing them into my home(mind)

[danveration]

me when he

[vestigiallegs]

And more specifics: 37 Sam, 22 Ike, 36 Ancha, 41 Mira, 14 Stranger, 1 Terry, 44 Chris

THIS IS A BIG ONE!!

37: Do people have justified grudges against your character?

Oh, certainly. Another way in which Sam is a Shrek recolor is that she is not merely unfairly maligned for circumstances out of her control, she also creates problems for herself and makes situations worse than they need to be.

There are a  few ways in which she contributes to this problem, in general:

1. If someone thinks she is scary and it annoys her enough she will lean into it, “for fun.”

2. She interprets a lot of conflict as fun and games because she is kind of a dick and she does just... enjoy fighting. Since she shrugs off this fighting as fun and games, she often misjudges how much her opponent might forgive because she’s using her own skewed metric as reference.

But those are general statements. You’re probably looking for specifics, and I’m afraid I must let you know I do not really have them at this time. Despite Sam having a variety pack of enemies, I’ve developed Sam’s relationships with the people SHE has grudges against (ie Lance, Page) more than I’ve developed the specifics for anyone who has a running grudge against HER. It’s more of a nebulous crowd of people whose toes she has trampled, some from her shitty younger days, some fresh new enemies...

(I do have one specific Person With A Justified Grudge On Sam that I keep contemplating but I’m not sure if he/she/they/??? will ever make it out of the development phase and become a real character/story element.)

22: What is the worst thing your character has ever done? 

My idea was that I was going to answer this disincluding things Isaac has done to himself because that’s a rock bottom that he keeps digging deeper, but even when he does bad stuff to other people it tends to be in tandem with bad things he is doing to himself...

Isaac has plenty capacity for being a dick, and spent a good portion of his life not considering other peoples’ feelings very hard. But, at the same time, he's naturally reserved and at the time where he was the most empathy deficit he also was in the habit of minding his own business. So he was more of a jerk in passing to people than out there doing real heinous shit...

I don’t want to say “cheating with Mira and everything that happened for years after is the worst thing he has ever done” because that feels like a cop out even if it’s probably technically true...

Lying to everyone with his “ah yeah, that’s me, Able-Bodied Man” LARP is bad but in the end he’s doing more damage to himself than anyone else with that one... not that the emotional damages it does to the people who care about him don’t matter because they do...

I guess he doesn’t have a whole lot of Big Worst Moments, just a long resume of being kind of a shithead, letting himself get worse by putting himself in the company of other shithead(s) and taking their shithead advice, and then course-correcting his behavior in a way that makes him also kind of a shithead in a different way.

36: Does anyone want to harm your character?

Oh, probably. Ancha is good at making enemies for a gentle pacifist.

In her youth, participating in politics games routinely earned her all manner of dangerous enemies. Of course, she’s long since outlived anyone who wanted to assassinate her, considering that she’s outlived politics and Atlantean society in general.

Considering there are other (undeveloped at this time) immortals out there, she probably still has SOME enemies...

At the very least, Lucas would probably take a shot at her if he thought he could get away with it!

41: Would your character want to have any children?

“No” with exceptions. Mira is not a nurturing person, nor does she particularly like children, and doesn’t put any value on ideas of “continuing the bloodline” or “making the next generation better” or anything like that. She doesn’t dream of having a family. She’s very much a career woman to the exclusion of other things in life. It’s an easy cut and dried “she shouldn’t raise children which is okay because she doesn’t want them anyway” situation until it isn’t.

You see, all logical reasoning points to “Mira doesn’t want and therefore wouldn’t have children,” but she’s also not immune to the allure of dramatic projections of the future. I could see her keeping an accidental pregnancy, or procreating on purpose if her partner framed it in a romantic, ego-buffing way.

The reality would remain unappealing to her though. Best case scenario she is one of those overbearing achievement hyper-focused parents who is extremely invested in and proud of their child’s talents and accomplishments but emotionally not there.

14: What is the cutest thing your character has ever done? 

You come to my own home and ask me to write a hit piece on my own character. How dare you.

I suppose Stranger’s #1 “cute” behavior is how they behave when they fail to find an excuse to hate someone or be rude to them. Stranger doesn’t need a big reason to dislike someone, and will often pick out little things to justify being a prickly son of a bitch. But there is a method to their misanthropy, a sort of equation/assessment they run in their head in order to determine that they are Right to be a bitter and rude in a given situation. Despite the fact that this assessment is extremely rigged, occasionally they run into someone they just cannot justify being an asshole to (example: Nikki).

When this happens, they have no choice but to try feign being normal despite the agony trying not to be a freak to people brings them. They make small talk like it’s actively killing them, hissed and grunted through gritted teeth.

It’s like aw. They’re trying. Not doing a good job, but trying.

1: What is your character's biggest fear? 

Terry doesn’t have a lot of big, conscious fears. If you asked him his biggest fear he’d probably say something like, Santa Claus, or a specific Five Nights At Freddy’s jumpscare, shit in that ballpark. He’s not terribly in touch with the concept of fear, same as he’s not super in touch with the concept of mortality.

He does worry about some things that are actually real, but not very deeply and not very often. None of those worries are centered on himself either, he’s confident that he can bounce back from anything and more or less sees himself as endlessly smart, talented, evasive of consequence, and unkillable. Instead he worries about things he knows to be more fragile than himself, like Nugget with her fragile avian bones and respiratory system, or Ike with his fragile human feelings.

44: What is your character proud of? 

Chris is not proud of much, and she undermines her few real accomplishments as incomplete or not counting. During her youth as an ELF WIZARD competing in the championship challenges, she was quite accomplished. She withdrew from the tournament, though, and never made it to her televised match. She’s got one of those “if you aren’t first you’re last” sort of attitudes, so as far as she’s concerned, it’s failure all the way down.

THAT SAID she can do a sweet kickflip. She’s proud of that. She has a SWEET GAMER COLLECTION of VIDEOGAME, and she’s proud of that. And she makes for a great, reliable mafia goon! She’s really proud of that one.

[sollea]

Dolorem et Consolationem Ch17

LeaIsa fic. Characters in chapter: Lea, Isa(, Balsam) Words: 1959 Read the entire fic on AO3

Summary: Dog crimes and emotions.

Moving with access to two other houses to live in during the process could’ve been far more comfortable, but Lea insisted that they should just move in right away. Bring whatever they could in boxes that day and fall asleep on the floor with an excitable and confused dog.

It wasn’t exactly Lea’s most comfortable idea, but sitting on the floor with an open pizza box and fighting to keep the dog away from it while laughing was a gentle kind of comfortable. Lea with his phone out and Isa physically wrestling a pizza slice away from Balsam was a scene that anyone would smile at.

“Get that— No! Balsam, get that out of your mouth. Onions are bad for dogs.”

“Told you we shouldn’t have gotten onions on the pizza!” Lea couldn’t stop laughing, his breathing was ragged and his sides hurt as he watched Isa wrestling an entire pizza slice out of Balsam’s mouth.

“That is absolutely not the problem, Lea. The problem is we don’t have a table in the house yet and we ordered pizza and I wanted onions.”

“It’s the moving experience! C’mon, we’re gonna have coffee out of bowls tomorrow and it’ll be fun.”

“Lea, if Balsam manages to eat this and thinks he can get away with it later, I’m going to kill you.”

Lea snorted and opened the pizza box carefully, watching Balsam move his head towards the sound immediately, dropping the pizza slice so he could lunge for the pizza box just as it closed against his nose. Lea grinned a triumphant grin while Isa picked up the soggy pizza slice, shoving it into a bag they’d brought along for garbage. 

Isa, now without a dog in his arms, smiled. Lea didn’t get to see it for long because Isa immediately grabbed Balsam again and buried his face in the dog’s fur. Muffled laughing could be heard from Isa as Balsam began to whine and wiggle, wanting to be free for more attempts at pizza theft. 

Lea joined in on the laughing, shaking his head. “So, was I right? Is this fun? Having the moving experience is fun?”

“I’m not responding to your question, Lea. I have a dog in my face.”

“The dog has your face on him.”

“I suppose he does.” Isa looked up from the dog and sighed, content smile on his face. “You’re obnoxious.”

“I missed hearing the fondness in those words,” Lea moved over to sit directly next to Isa and Balsam, kissing Isa’s cheek and scratching at Balsam’s head. “I’m only as obnoxious as you are rude to me.”

“I’m only rude to you when you’re being obnoxious. Or when you were obnoxious when it’d be bad to be rude to you, like when we’re in public and trying to make a good impression.”

“Like when?”

“When we were trying to get picked up as apprentices is one time I can think of. Oh, when we were trying to reintroduce me to Kairi, you were being horrible when I was trying to apologize for what I, personally, put her through,” Isa said, shoving gently at Lea’s shoulder then resting against it. “I felt bad, but you wouldn’t let me. It was horrible, you’re a horrible friend.”

“That was one of the first times I got you to smile after I got you back, wasn’t it?”

“I smiled when I saw your face the moment I woke up. How long did you wait for me? I wasn’t told.”

“Oh, you woke up right away. I think it took a few hours at most. Most of the damage you got was from Roxas and his light attacks. I’m not sure any of my attacks towards the end even hit. I don’t think you can get hurt when you’re in the middle of starting that whole thing, can you?”

“Not that I’m aware of, though, I’m not aware of much when I’m in that state. It’s not really me, especially during that last fight. I was further gone than I’d planned on being.” Isa sighed and took his hand away from the dog’s fur, moving it so he could fully snuggle up against Lea. “It was scary a lot of the time. I don’t want to talk about it much, but with power came… great horror. I thought every time that I would finally just lose myself. Then the final battle came about and all of us were more formidable, not through training, but through additional giving ourselves away. Xion was saved from that only because she was able to take from me enough that it wasn’t necessary to have her become a darkness in… other ways.”

Lea sighed and ran his fingers through Isa’s hair. “Hey, we don’t need to talk about things you don’t want to talk about. We’re fine to just… sit here with our dog in our new house. We can be happy for a while. Get ready for rougher things later, yeah? I don’t think checking our old houses for our parents every night’s gonna be easy on us.”

“That’s… Yes, that’s why I…” Isa tightened in on himself more. “Never mind, it’s fine.”

Lea took in a breath. “I’m not saying we can’t talk about it now, just that you don’t have to. It’s like you putting the tears on my face are commanding me to stop crying, it’s just… reminding me that you’re there for me. That I can.”

Isa nodded, moving his hand to grab onto Lea’s shirt instead of leaving it curled against his chest. It took him a few minutes to speak again, letting Balsam slide between him and Lea. Collected into himself again, he took in a deep breath. “I had enough darkness in my heart to be counted among the chosen.”

“Wasn’t that your plan?”

“Yes, but it worked.” 

Lea could feel Isa’s hand shaking as he tried to keep holding onto his shirt. The dejection in his voice stung, hearing Isa’s heart break again was too painful. “You’re not actually full of darkness, Isa. You’re a good person.”

“Only I am. I have more than the man who used to experiment on people, Lea. Yes, that was the plan, it was exactly the plan, but he…” Isa’s voice was breaking in a way Lea hadn’t heard in years. Perhaps ever, perhaps the memory of hearing Isa like this was his mind reassuring Lea that his friend wasn’t broken beyond repair, that surely this had happened before. “I let myself fall. I leaned into it. I leaned so far into it that I’m not sure I’ve come back all the way.”

Lea held his breath as he realized now was a time to not say anything. He just held Isa as he felt the other man’s chest heaving. Gentle touches to let Isa know he was still there would hopefully be enough to help Isa come back. Falling apart was never fun, especially when things were going right. Lea was slowly learning to recognize that being broken wouldn’t always feel permanent, but it… probably was.

Isa cried for so long that Balsam walked away, sitting at the door patiently like he’d been taught to do when he wanted to leave a building. They couldn’t get up, he’d have to wait. Isa clung to Lea’s shirt for so long that the Radiant sun began to set, something Lea had hoped would be exciting to see for the first time in their new house. Isa’s breathing returning to normal took a few minutes more than the sun took to set. When he sounded like he was back in control, he wrapped his arms entirely around Lea. 

“Sorry. It just all hit me again,” Isa mumbled against Lea’s chest. “It all hit me. That I’m not worthy of all of this. That coming back twice was far more than I deserved.”

“Hey. Hey, no. That’s not true at all and I’m not gonna let you say it.” Lea’s words were firm, his opinion on the matter unbending. “I was gonna just let you cry it out, but I can’t let you think I agree with that. You deserve everything that’s happened since you came back. You risked yourself for everyone, all worlds. Literally everyone that exists. You risked your life again when you organized a coup. I’m never sure what any of those assholes, Xemnas and all the rest of them, would do, but we’ve seen people punished before. Hell, even back in the original Organization, you were sticking out your neck more than anyone. Nothing you did was darkness for evil’s sake. I… caused plenty of your darkness and I’m sorry. We’d been able to talk without words for so long, but you just weren't understanding and I never… bothered to try. I know I’m talking a lot, but I need you to realize that you feel bad about things that you caused and it wasn’t entirely on you. We fell apart for a while.” Lea adjusted his hold on Isa, burying his fingers and face in the other man’s hair. “I would’ve come back to you if I could have, Isa. If I wasn’t kicked out. I still loved you, leaving you alone on purpose was never my play. I didn’t get Roxas, I didn’t get to try again. I was still mad, but I would’ve tried. I wanted to save her as much as you did and I… wanted to save you. Once I realized how… bad it was. I was so fucking selfish as Axel, I’m still selfish, I’m making this about me without meaning to, but…

“But I love you. So much. You’re more light than I’ve ever been. You hide it real well, but… It’s all you.”

Lea’s words were heard, but Isa couldn’t manage a proper response to them. They sat in near-silence, Balsam’s whining and chattering had grown in volume, but there was nothing either of them could really do about it. 

Isa eventually fell asleep against Lea’s chest, leaving Lea to carefully lay the other man on the floor, making sure to not wake him. He was lucky Isa was such a sound sleeper because, despite getting him moved away from his chest and nearly on the floor, his hands slipped and he dropped Isa. All that greeted Lea’s mistake was a noise from Isa and a small adjustment of how he was laying.

Lea got up and put Balsam’s harness on, hushing him as nails hit the floor and excited barks tried to communicate just how badly he had to go outside.

It was a long walk, exercise for Balsam and a way to clear Lea’s head. He stopped briefly to talk to Yuffie, one of the people who made an appearance every time Balsam was taken out for a walk. By the time Lea returned home, it was the dead of night and Isa was still on the floor.

Lea knelt down next to Isa, looking at the visibly uncomfortable sleeping man. Sighing, Lea pushed hair out of Isa’s face. And of course the most gentle and careful motion was what woke Isa up. 

“Sorry, Isa. Go back to sl-” Lea couldn’t finish his sentence before Isa interrupted him as though he hadn’t heard Lea at all.

“Are you ready to find them?” Isa asked, propping himself up on his elbow and rubbing at his eyes with his other hand, yawning immediately after words escaped his lips. He moved to lean on Lea’s legs, closing his eyes. It was almost as if he’d forgotten the breakdown.

“Yeah, I think I am,” Lea said, nodding, confused by the sudden question. “But that’s not what’s important right now. Are you?”

“I will be soon enough. We should start tomorrow.”

[operationrainfall]

Title The Bug Butcher Developer Awfully Nice Studios Publisher 2Awesome Studio Release Date November 8th, 2018 (Switch) Genre Action, SHMUP Platform PC, Switch Age Rating E for Everyone – Blood, Fantasy Violence, Crude Humor Official Website

Though I am a fan of classically styled video games, I mostly gave The Bug Butcher a shot cause I was previously familiar with 2Awesome Studio. They developed the entertaining Dimension Drive, and though it had its flaws, I thought it was an admirable first attempt for a small team. When I saw they were shifting their focus to help publish games, I had to investigate. Which brings us to today’s review. Though published by 2Awesome Studio, The Bug Butcher was developed by Awfully Nice Studios, a two-man studio with experience making games for a company you might have heard of called Blizzard Entertainment. Now they’re set on making games for themselves, and decided to start with a comical and energetic side scrolling SHMUP. Was this a successful inaugural attempt, or does it get squashed under the weight of cosmic vermin?

The concept of The Bug Butcher is old school simple. A space station is crawling with massive bugs who are keen on devouring the scientists working inside. Thus the scientists hire our hero, Harry the exterminator. He’s a gun-toting killing machine, and the only hope the terrified scientists have. That’s pretty much all there is for plot. There’s no sub plots or revelations whatsoever. But considering the genre, I’m pretty much fine with that. The Bug Butcher is a SHMUP inspired by Super Buster Bros. I had forgotten that game entirely, but the similarities are readily apparent. Both games involve a character that can only fire upwards facing off against hordes of bouncing death. In this game though, you aren’t just facing nasty bubbles, but horrible grotesque insectoid monstrosities. And they can do a lot more than just bounce on your head.

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The way gameplay works is that Harry has to make his way through a series of 30 stages in Arcade mode, blasting everything in sight to a gooey stain. You fire with the A button, dash with B and activate power-ups with Y. The catch is that each level is timed. The idea is that the scientists are so desperate to kill the invading bugs they are planning on gassing everything in the facility to death. If you don’t beat each stage in the allotted amount of time, usually two and a half minutes, you’ll be gassed along with them. Since a dead Harry is no good for anybody, it’s your job to work fast and fight strategically. Thankfully, you have a lot of tools at your disposal.

When you see those skull symbols, it means bugs are coming

Your main weapon is a machine gun with unlimited ammo. It does the least amount of damage, but it does a respectable job of keeping things away from you. As you progress through the stages, you’ll gradually unlock other tools to aid you. First are the various weapons that you can find in crates. These have limited ammo but do significantly more damage, as well as having unique effects. The laser beam will cut through enemies like butter, while the Gatling gun is a more powerful but unstable version of your standard gun. A personal favorite of mine was the lightning gun, which would blast any group of enemies that was too close together. Besides your weapons, you can also utilize a handful of power-ups. You fill up your meter by killing enough foes, and once it’s full, you’ll unleash one of three power-ups at random. The most basic is Boot Juice, which speeds Harry up and makes him invincible for a few seconds; a personal favorite is the Freeze Grenade, which temporarily freezes all foes on screen, leaving them vulnerable; and finally, the Homing Missiles, which will blast everything in a close radius. All of the power-ups can give you some much-needed breathing room, especially since the bug hordes will do their very best to overwhelm you.

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There’s a lot of creepy bugs in the game, but the standard variety is a pink critter that bounces on the floor slowly. That might not sound too scary, but the larger ones will separate into smaller varieties as you kill them, meaning one can quickly turn into a swarm. Some of the more unique varieties are the slow-moving yet devastating fireflies, which shoot laser beams from their butts, and a purple eggplant monstrosity that crawls on the floor and tries to jump on your head, instantly killing you. There are also ones I classify as mini-boss monsters, such as a hovering blue bug that spits purple blobs when you damage him, or a nasty one that vomits lava and spits lava blisters. You have a health meter, and can normally withstand four hits before Harry croaks, but you can get overwhelmed pretty quickly. Thankfully, as you cull the bugs you’ll get health drops, as well as temporary gun enhancements, such as increased firing speed and double damage. You can keep track of how long these last by looking at the helpful meters that appear on screen, and the same goes for power-ups and weapons. You’ll never be in the dark, which is very good strategically.

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Also worth keeping in mind is that later stages introduce unique features to help and hinder you. The most important and prevalent are the vertical shields. They can’t be penetrated by you or the pests, though you can turn them off manually by running up to and standing on their buttons. While that may sound useful, it can be tricky too. For example, if you let a foe get sequestered out of reach, you may not be able to reach it before your combo meter dissipates (more on that later). Another trick is that the shield walls have a tendency to turn themselves off unexpectedly. That’s not a glitch, it’s a feature to keep things fresh. The other significant mechanic that’s introduced is a smashing piston introduced in a very late stage, which can kill bugs and Harry alike. Finally, you’ll encounter elevator stages which have no weapon crates, and these are much more challenging, since you have to rely solely on your machine gun and power-ups. Put together, all of these features do a good job of keeping the gameplay from getting too stale.

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Though I didn’t notice until I beat Arcade mode, you can use the money you acquire from killing bugs to upgrade your weapons and power-ups. This improves the power of your weapons as well as how long your power-ups last. You can also use coins to unlock boosts you can equip for Harry’s stats, such as increasing how long the combo meter lasts. The latter is what determines your score. Basically, the longer you go killing monsters without getting hit or taking too long, the more the combo meter goes up. It’s not required for anything other than showing off, but it is a good incentive to replay stages. The game also keeps track of how you do through online leaderboards. My only complaint with them is that sometimes they load, and sometimes they don’t. More than once I’ve gotten to the end of a stage, only to have no score shown for my trouble. It only seemed to happen when I paused to take a break mid-stage, though.

The upgrade screen is a bit clunky, but invaluable for making Harry more powerful.

Besides Arcade mode, there is also Panic mode. This can be done single player or co-op. Though I didn’t try the local co-op, Panic mode is pretty fun solo. It’s basically survival mode. To offset the short timer, you can collect clocks to add a few more seconds to your time as you play. You can also use your money to upgrade your loadout at any time during Panic mode, whereas you can only do it from the start screen in Arcade mode. The waves are random and get progressively more difficult. Generally I would die about six waves in, though sometimes the random enemy spawning would make that shorter. Another new thing about Panic mode is there’s a unique enemy that looks like a slot machine with wings. By blasting the shit out of it, you’ll get a whole heap of coins, which are vital to surviving more and more waves.

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Visually speaking, The Bug Butcher is delightful. It reminded me a lot of Alien Hominid, but in the very best way. There’s a lot of humor and cartoon mayhem in the game, despite the colorful candy coating. The bugs do a good job of threading the needle between being adorable and hideous as they bounce and splatter. Harry himself is well animated, though I do wish we got to see his face behind that visor at least once, just to see a bit more personality. Musically, the energy of the game is very techno. There’s a great beat to the game, and the sound effects are also terrific. My favorites are the sound of the scientist screaming in terror when they’re captured by the tentacles of the spider monsters, as well as the screech those creatures make when you squash them.

There’s a lot I enjoyed about The Bug Butcher, but I do need to mention some issues I ran into playing portably on Switch during Panic mode. I will preface this by saying I talked with the publishers about them, and they confirmed they are planning on fixing any and all problems as soon as they can. That said, the following are worth noting. While in Panic mode, I would occasionally be holding down the fire button and my gun would be unresponsive. That’s problematic, to say the least. Another problem was when I would be prevented from moving somewhere by invisible barriers other than the shield walls. Lastly, I would find that items on the periphery of the screen randomly couldn’t be picked up, despite me being right nearby. All those should be fixed, but outside of them I have few issues, other than the game occasionally slowing down when things get particularly busy.

I just want to see my score…

Overall, I feel The Bug Butcher is a success. Fans of classic games are sure to enjoy it, as are those who love vying for the top spots on leaderboards. For $7.99, you get a respectable amount of game here. I probably spent a couple hours playing through Arcade mode, and easily that long playing around with Panic mode. It’s not a huge game, but it also didn’t feel too short. Most of the replay value is found in trying for better scores to earn stars and additional coins in stages. Really, the only thing I wanted from the game that I didn’t get was a bestiary showcasing details about the creepy bugs, as well as a couple actual boss fights. But that’s just cause I’m an old school gamer, and I always want epic boss fights. If you want a fun and challenging game with old school charm, I would highly recommend The Bug Butcher. 2Awesome Studio has published a great game, and I’m eager to see what else Awfully Nice Studios has brewing next for the future.

Damn skippy.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: The Bug Butcher Title The Bug Butcher