#i should make a game dev tag idk...

[shotbyacowboy]

okay i decided i dint like the cat and remade it. lol

[thelikesoffinn]

been thinking about it lately and Ascended Astarion = Dead Dove content and I'm not sure that's really understood, even by the writers. when I finally got around to the character I decided to ascend him with, I was SUPREMELY disappointed by the conversations options following it. it seemed like the dialogue choices were trying to push the narrative on my character that they made this choice w/o considering the consequences and they are bound to regret it. the closest I could get to answering his question of "why did u let me go thru w it?" was "I wanted u to be powerful".

but with that character? my accept Bhaal durge? that isn't the reasoning. at all. (related: "what do u want as a reward?" "ur body" was the closest answer my character could give. otherwise I'd've answered "murder :))")

for context, this run was born of a conversation w my friend discussing supposed content no one had seen bc "no one's that evil". we thought, what's more evil than killing literally every npc? I failed the conceit of the challenge immediately bc I can't handle senseless animal cruelty in my games. killing children? fine (u need a mod to do this in BG3, but I am thankfully plenty delighted to use mods), killing a neutral animal npc? no can do.

so I started this durge (they are the only character that can come close to "killing" Gale with that first interaction) run with the intention of killing everyone except Shadowheart (only a cleric of Shar can truly kill Aylin) and Astarion (bc I need to smooch him). (and there is a mod for playing an origin character as durge, which would have meant playing as Shadowheart, but I MUST smooch Astarion and I don't tend to do het or female romances, unless I'm forced to (*sighs dreamily* oh, Garrus Vakarian). I'm just not interested in that set of equipment in that way, so may as well just make a durge dude.) somehow something went wonky and Halsin ended up joining us and I was so perplexed I just allowed him to stay. (he's meant to attack if u destroy the grove but free him anyway, but instead he just showed up that night and went straight into his Moonrise spiel. is it bc the wolf Silver never aggro'd me and thus survived???) so I fixed the Shadow Curse all while killing every single humanoid and hostile animal in acts 1 & 2. including Thaniel, which makes Halsin's talks later in act 3 of getting news from Thaniel and the Grove hysterical. idk what I did but I sure as hell broke this poor man.

(on a related note, Halsin will give out to u when u accept Bhaal, but will still give u the "u have exceeding my expectations, also we should bang" in the same conversation. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID BUT IT'S DARKLY FUNNY.)

in the conversation when Astarion is expressing surprise that u let him go thru w it, my durge is just like, yes my motivation is that I like to kill ppl :))). it's not a sex thing for him (that is separate from the murder!), but he's still fine w the outcome. yes, Astarion looks down on him, but that's fine! he's allowed to be wrong about that, durge doesn't care. so long as Astarion lets him kill ppl he genuinely just does not give a shit.

(I actually had the idea that if Halsin were to ever rediscover his morals and tried to leave he'd ask Astarion to turn him so Halsin would not have a choice. as I said, this durge *does not fucking care*.)

this is probably the only character I will play that would let Astarion ascend bc I enjoy dead dove SOMETIMES, but not always or in large doses, but I get so few dialogue options that convey that in an rp sense! I don't think the writers/devs REALLY took that into consideration, sometimes. like, yeah, there are going to be ppl making fucked up choices but surely no one would go THIS far! for THIS reason! honey, u need to look up the Dead Dove tag on AO3, there are absolutely ppl making choices for those fucked up reasons.

(and I understand the whole "this confirms to Astarion about sex yadda yadda". even if that's not Tav/Durge motivation, that's how ASTARION would *interpret* it.)

(oh yes, and also, don't let Orin abduct Yenna. it doesn't matter whether u find out in camp or the sewers, Grub will not survive. I was devastated. if I'd known, I would have made sure Halsin was available for her, but she won't abduct a party member or someone ur romancing.)

long story short, I want to play a durge that even ascended Astarion finds unsettling. that's the dream.

Hello there, duck!

Your run sounds delightfully evil! I wish I could play one of those, haha, but I'm too soft hearted. My one evil run with my durge Salira was ended before even entering the grove because I felt horrible after getting rid of Gales hand! Seriously, I can barely take killing the squirrel as durge, and I always save Alfira because I feel horrendous otherwise!

(Fun fact, on all five runs I've done Yenna just vanished at some point and grubs was left standing in my camp, which was like...eh?)

And yes, Halsin is always somewhat of an issue, isn't he? He's just running around, causing mayhem in peoples games because he seems slightly bugged out, haha. I had one run, where he wouldn't go to the spot where we save Thaniel because he joined the fight against Marcus at Last Light and somehow got stuck, for some reason. Same run, none of his vocals would play, which was also very interesting. Everybody would make noise when they climbed or got hurt but Halsin was always silent and just there! And in another run the dude really straight up hated me - he was so mean and snappy, I swear to god he wanted my Durge dead - and then he suddenly went: "Hey you're super cool and strong and I just want to gently fuck you beneath the moonlight if you'll let me" and I was like: Say what.

Regarding the dead Dove: I've talked to people of Discord before, and some of them mentioned something similar a couple of times, but personally, I do think the writers actually knew what they were doing here!

Of course, I do agree that it relies heavily on the regret notion and that it somewhat shoehorns you into a certain narrative corner, I noticed that too when I was ascending him for research - I hated doing that, but all for the asks, haha - but I thought it was really fitting for what it is!

The bad ending, that is. I know we all somewhat forget that because of how people view him as a character, but ascension is the bad ending. Even on an evil run, where your character may have considered all options, it is very likely that Tav hasn't accounted for one very important part of being a true vampire.

The obsession.

It's still somewhat mild in the game, though definitely there, but it will only get stronger as time goes on, and it will probably get to the point that the only escape is death. Either his or Tav's. So, in the end, ascension will come with an armload of regret and the writers were making sure we know that.

And, on top of that, even if we let him ascend in a pursuit for power - or in in your durge's special case: murder :) - we still cast spawn Astarion aside because he doesn't fit our needs, thus making it very clear to him that who he is isn't enough and his behaviour is the price we now pay.

It's pretty much the same with all the other companions as well - justiciar Shadowheart and ascended Lae'zel, for example. However, it doesn't bother us as much, because we have different expectations towards ascended Astarion than, for example, dark justiciar Shadowheart. We don't expect a positive narrative here, a narrative where becoming shady-shar's loyal subject isn't an objectively dumb decision to make, so we don't mind the dead dove as much. It's exactly what we've been expecting - and Aylin even warned us how Shadowheart would change upon becoming a dark justiciar - so yepp. This went exactly how we thought it would and this is what we wanted.

Astarion, however, is a somewhat special case, because his bad ending is, by far, the one that gets the most romanticised. He's so heavily romanticised by so many, that the bad parts nearly start to fade, even with those who don't like the ascended ending. It becomes just 'the other ending', if you will.

And yet, it's still the bad ending.

Ascension is the bad ending for a character that we've somewhat given up on. That we misunderstood so deeply, mayhaps, that we traded his entire being for power and, quite frankly, beauty. We showed him that he isn't enough, we let the boy run and hide the only way he knew how and now we're faced with the consequences and yes, it's really dead dove but...what did we expect?

[rivilu]

I read your notes about DAQ on that wyll vs dorian post and i just could not agree more. Specifically the thing about krem you said, i absolutely hate how the game while trying to introduce trans friendly concepts just. Forcibly makes your character cis in association. Like no my inquisitioner would not say any of that shit!!! He is trans!!!! And you could tell that shit was not written by a trans person. I think they were trying to avoid using many trans specific words to fit in with the setting but like? "Why do you pass?" Is not a question that makes sense for someone to ask and i hate that theyre taking an existing trans term and trying to make it mean like....the entire concept of transitioning?? Idk i feel like i would be more ok if they could have you be like "oh dw i am also trans" but nah we as the player are just assumed to be cis. Also yeah as you said, inventing transphobia in a series where that wasnt present before, its annoying.

Oh dont get me started I could talk about my gripes with the handling of transness in dragon age (and particularly inquisition) forever. Actually do get me started this has been a long time coming.

i absolutely hate how the game while trying to introduce trans friendly concepts just. Forcibly makes your character cis in association

YEP. Yep yes exactly. your options are 'three flavors of being transphobic' or 'when did you know' . which is what i picked, because you can stretch your imagination a little at least.

But there's also this other tiny elephant in the room issue with Krem that i didnt mention in those tags. Or should i say. Bull in the room ? Because holy shit, way to take away the trans character's speaking voice and characterization so we get to know how much of an ✨Ally ✨the cis man bestie is! Like okay if you're being a transphobic shithead it makes a bit More sense that he'd get defensive and speak up for Krem, but when your question was 'when did you know', Krem answers 'when i was young. not a great thing to know about yourself' and then Bull immediately cuts in to cisplain transness is like? What was the Idea there. Which then makes the dialogue choices being 90% straight up transphobia MORE suspicious, because the game is letting you, almost pushing you to verbally harass Krem.. almost like he doesn't REALLY matter, he's just a vessel to see how Progressive And Trans Friendly And A Good Friend Bull is. Thanks, i hate it.

Even in terms of backstory Bull being Krems savior when he was trying to escape his life etc never really sat right with me. Like there's an underlying demsel vibe i feel the devs stuck in there that really irks me. Not helped by the fact that we dont have a trans voice actor. Also not helped by the fact that this is a fantasy setting with magic but some form of magic hrt? Nah too impossible. Like sure there's some implication that it MIGHT exist somewhere but because magic Bad in the dragon age setting and tevinter magic Even Worse he wouldn't go for it- Like ok. some people might prefer their trans realism in faux medieval media. even fantasy. Im not one of those people. And all those justifications read more like excuses to me. Like you're telling me the circles wouldn't be making BANK out of selling trans-your-gender potions and abusing the shit out of it? And just. Again this makes the setting retroactively much Worse because where before i could point to my warden or Hawke and go 'yeah that's a trans man via magic hrt' and someone who prefers trans realism could ALSO do the same when making theirs how they like. Vagueness in such matters allows for imagination! But now dai is saying noo they had to be cis. And your inquisitor also. Fuck that.

Also yeah as you said, inventing transphobia in a series where that wasnt present before, its annoying.

one tiny correction here. there were hints of transphobia in the first two games, but it was mostly contained in like. Oghren style aged like milk type humor. more meta than text i guess. like in the Pearl in game one if you ask to be surprised there's a chance you get the ever hilarious 'haha you got man in a dress' *crickets* And then Serendipity in mark of the assassin.. well the wiki says she's meant to be a drag queen. So not 100% related to this discussion. But the execution of her character just felt SO mean spirited to me when i was playing that i felt it needed to be mentioned as well. (So i just love her out of spite now. ) But anyway yeah. Out of all the lgbtq things dragon age touches on i feel like gender is one that they. dont really even try to tackle in good faith. And it just got worse as the games went on. I can handle easily skippable side gags that are shitty and unfunny. Inquisition tries to actually bring ATTENTION to the topic, and proceeds to fall flat on its face. Not to mention Sera. Them having one of the main companions being transphobic in banter.

Bioware when I catch you Bioware. Bioware when i catch you.

[pizzaheadtv]

Hi! And welcome to my Pizza Tower blog. This is my awesome epic pinned post that will have all of the information you need!

Let's start with the TAGGING SYSTEM

I always loved themed tags. So. Considering the theme of my blog is televisions... we'll go with that!

PTV News Channel - Any analysis or theory posts I do

Director's Cut - Posts from me that aren't analysis or theories

PTV Arts Channel - Idk if this will ever get used but just in case I post art (or writing) here that I made, here is the tag

Special Guest Episode - Crossovers

Squid Tower - My adventures in Splatoon as Noisette

And all characters are tagged with their names. I also rb Sugary Spire art here too so those will also be tagged as Sugary Spire.

Spoilers will not be tagged. I assume you know spoilers if you follow me, considering this blog is themed on the final boss.

More tags might be added as I think of them!

Okay now. DNIs. I will block you if you're pro ship, aka the fancy term for "I'm okay with children being in romantic relationships with adults or siblings/cousins being in romantic relationships with each other". I will also block you if you're a terf, homophobic, racist, or anti semitic. So don't follow me, this isn't a place for you.

I'm going to talk about this here too. Yes, I know about the controversy. But I am still going to interact with this game and enjoy it.

McPig may have said some racist things five years ago, and he put caricatures in the game, but what he's not doing is donating the money he gets to hate groups. He's not using his platform to continue to be racist and to convince people to agree with him. While the apology wasn't perfect, he did say he regretted it instead of ignoring it or confirming that he stayed the same by doubling down on the racist things he had done in the past.

I see people talk about FNAF all the time despite the creator using the funds to donate to republicans. People still love Stranger Things despite its anti semitism. People love Undertale and Deltarune even though Toby Fox has collabed with "problematic" people, was friends with Andrew Hussie, and even has some racist and anti semitic stuff in his games. Hell, even Splatoon has its faults. The only reason PT is so easy to condemn is because it's new, and people love to hate popular things.

Point is- I'm not going to throw away an entire game just because of caricatures in the game. Maybe it's because I'm used to it already being in everything (I watch a lot of old cartoons). Maybe it's because I've experienced far worse hate towards me, my family, and friends irl than a couple of caricatures.

I still think it's bad. I still think it should be changed. And I'm not going to buy any merch or any dlcs unless things in Pizza Tower change.

Sometimes you just have to be uncomfortable. The caricatures in PT should be making you uncomfortable, they are not okay. And I'm not just ignoring them. I'm not going to defend the dev either. There is not an excuse for what he said and did.

And if McPig ends up to still be spouting hate and saying racist stuff and using his fame to spread more hate? Then I'll eat my own words and try to distance myself from the game.

And with that, let's wrap up this pinned post!

Feel free to send me asks to talk about the characters, I love talking about stuff!

Also my pizza tower discord server is RIGHT HERE! It's small and quiet but we love talking about Pizza Tower.

This is an awkward and abrupt end, but so be it.

[catgirlwheels]

I posted 14,473 times in 2022

That's 2,616 more posts than 2021!

95 posts created (1%)

14,378 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mossy-scaled-dragon

@astralwasteland

@birdfuckeronline

@natalieironside

@drippity

I tagged 10,566 of my posts in 2022

Only 27% of my posts had no tags

#friend - 2,814 posts

#oh dear - 781 posts

#oh no lol - 722 posts

#oh neat - 624 posts

#oooh pretty - 597 posts

#lol - 586 posts

#awwwww - 514 posts

#pfft lol - 467 posts

#🤣 - 418 posts

#paws.txt - 378 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#does the right thing when it counts but they're a social outcast/grumpy asshole/antivillain/etc because of trauma or repeated rejection

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Oh whatever, tumblr search is useless. Excuses to take new pictures! Yay!

Can't see much of the white in the middle and the pockets are kinda useless this way but WHATEVER I'm gay as fuck ^.^

19 notes - Posted April 23, 2022

#4

Why is she like this with these treats we have no idea. But she loves them lol

24 notes - Posted August 20, 2022

#3

I am grateful to the writers of game mods. I used to do that, I know how hard it is. Whether you're doing what the devs should've done in the first place or adding things of your own, I appreciate the heck out of you. Thank you for making our games better.

38 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

#2

I call this a bag plan.

It hacks my brain, disregards rules, breaks blocks, and helps me think about multiple things at once without losing track.

One time in school I needed a break from banging my head against a programming assignment and I went to the only place I ever went off campus: Chipotle. Got my burrito in my paper bag and for whatever reason I decided to dismantle the bag while I ate. Might've just been a little destruction as a treat, idk. Got to the end of my burrito and decided I couldn't avoid thinking about the assignment forever.

I had this nice big paper in front of me that was definitely trash and I couldn't possibly write anything wrong on it because it was already trash, and it was big and there were no lines and no start and I just picked a spot and started writing. Had a different thought and started writing somewhere else. Broke my block, fixed 3/4 of the programming problems without a computer in front of me, moved from the end of the world in my head to a solid idea of what I needed to do in a couple hours and a paper bag.

After acing that group project I got myself a roll of craft paper and just started doing this regularly. I've done this for story scenes, working out different people's needs, designing game levels, shopping lists, whatever.

I used to just keep one of these folded up in my pocket as a notepad (gods I miss clothes with pockets), but it unfolds so I can dump my brain into it if I need to. It's great and I love it.

See the full post

78 notes - Posted March 20, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Things I would like non-wheelchair people to know

Do not touch my chair. Unless I've lost control of my chair and am rolling into traffic, if I have not given you explicit permission, that is a huge violation of my personal space. Think of grabbing my push handles like grabbing someone's shoulders. That's not a thing you just do to people.

If I don't know you, nothing about my chair, my body, my situation, or what I'm doing is any of your gods damned business. Think of commenting on these things to a stranger like catcalling. (If I know you it's probably fine, as long as you're respectful. Just like any other personal topic you might ask someone about.)

If I decline an offer of help, do not insist. I know what things I need help with a lot better than you do. (Nothing wrong with offering, help is definitely welcome sometimes, just respect my response.)

Okay, things that should be obvious out of the way, here's what the post is actually about:

I still prefer the terms "walking" and "running" for the ways I get around. I might say "rolling" or "wheeling" if the distinction is relevant for some reason, since I am ambulatory some of the time, but in general I prefer the same words as you tall people.

I need a much wider space to turn, or especially to turn around, than I do just to pass through a space.

Ask me, rather than assuming you know whether or not I can do something. I would love to go hiking with you, actually, if the trail is light and friendly enough to wheels. No, I can't ice skate, but I'd still rather you ask if I want to come along than assume I don't want to be included.

Which activities are notably more difficult is often not obvious. Popping a wheelie to get over a small amount of difficult terrain or even climbing a single step (if I have something to pull myself up with) can actually be pretty easy. A long stretch of ground tilted slightly to the left or right takes a ton of effort. Carrying anything that fits in my lap is trivially easy, but transporting anything that doesn't fit in my lap is quite hard (though I recently discovered my vacuum fits nicely on my footplate if I wrap my legs around it a little which is cool.) I am constantly surprised by little things that are or aren't harder than I thought they'd be, or are actually easier than before because I'm sitting.

If you are in my path, you moving suddenly is actually really unpleasant for me. I know you're there, I'm not going to run you over. If you're in my way, please do move! But jerking suddenly makes you unpredictable and I might have to stop suddenly to be certain everyone is safe while I process the change, just like if I were driving a car. Also like driving a car, stopping suddenly is unpleasant and a lot of effort, but the small adjustment to my direction I was planning to make is very easy. (Same goes for bikes honestly, or any other vehicle. That's what the chair is, a vehicle.)

If we're walking around together and need to get past some stairs, it's nice if you come with me on the ramp, especially if that ramp is out of the way. It can be really isolating to have to go a different way than everyone else.

If we need to walk close together for whatever reason, you walking directly in front of me is best avoided if possible. Bumping into your heel with my metal footplate is going to be a lot more unpleasant for both of us than it would be if I were on my feet.

In general, you should let me speak for myself. It's my joints that don't work, not my brain or my voice. But. If someone else is being disrespectful, your voice is likely much more impactful than mine in that situation. Use it.

I'm not expecting anyone to memorize these things; as long as you're treating disabled people like people, that's enough. And if you want to do more than that but don't know how, respectful questions are generally welcome. I just wanted to share these thoughts, for people who don't live with them all the time. There are a lot of little differences to being seated all the time that you just don’t think about until you’re there.

Also, while I think most of this is generally true for anyone in a wheelchair, obligatory reminder that I speak only for myself.

3,127 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[arkannis]

Hello,

I just recently got into the Old Republic Fandom, and the Eternal Empire is my favorite arc. I do wish there was more story content to give more development to the characters, particularly in Arcann's case. While I love his romance scenes, I wish there were more scenes about his redemption and relationship with the Outlander or a dark side ending where the Outlander or Arcann takes the throne with the other as a consort. I found your blog while trying to find content further developing his character. Thank you so much for posting all your headcanons and musings!

With that being said, what are your headcanons for Zakuul culture? And could you post a masterpost compilation of your Arcann headcanons? I am trying to find the post where the romance novels headcanon originated in the tags and not having much luck.

Hope you have a nice day!

Hi anon!! Sorry for a late reply. First I’ll answer the second part of your message. The romance holonovels headcanon originated from the this post ; the post doesn’t outright say it, but some people in the tags (when they reblogged it) mentioned that Arcann probably seemed like the type to read romance in his free time. As of what I can remember the tags were from this reblog and this other reblog and both say that Arcann reads romance holonovels. The continuation of this headcanon were in replies or tags, so it’s hard to track them all down! Secondly, my Arcann tag is a mess, and I probably threw in multiple headcanons in reblogs or tags so it would be hard to find them all... I’ll think about making a masterpost, but I don’t think I have time for something like that right now. Ok, now that’s over with... I 100% agree with you, anon! I HAVE so many things to say about the possibility about that dark side ending. I don’t think devs were planning to make Arcann a possible romance option in the beginning, so it wouldn’t have been possible to be his LI and rule as emperor/empress. I also agree with the development of the characters... however, Arcann’s redemption and relationship with the Outlander was definitely rushed, because the plans to make a third expansion was apparently cancelled due to the backlash from fans who wanted pub vs. imp back. I made a whole post complaining about that... Otherwise, I definitely think they would have had more time to flesh out his characters and the other Zakuulan characters as well (Vaylin, Senya, Koth, etc.). I’m like pretty much sure content was cut out from KOTFE/KOTET to make them shorter. Due to such lost content, I have to create my headcanons from extrapolation based on the Sacrifice trailer, available codex entries, existing dialogue, and implications of existing issues. As well as other people’s hcs and commentary!! WARNING: SUPER LONG BULLET POINTS for Zakuulan culture headcanons.

The reason why I don’t have that many Zakuulan culture headcanons is because.... I feel like it’s so weirdly explored in the expansions.

I think the arts is a big thing in Zakuul! The Dragon’s Maw chapter gave me that kind of vibe. I also discussed this mildly (not) with Arcann. Most specifically THEATRE, PERFORMANCE AND SINGING. 

Evidence: Senya sings and composes and there’s the famous Zakuulan holoperformer, Malita Tal. No, I don’t have evidence for theatre, but honestly? Zakuulans are so goddamn dramatic, they most definitely have reality TV series or drama series... 

arcann be like oh you listen to malita tal? name all of her albums in alphabetical order or you get exiled

Zakuulan culture most definitely has idol culture, based on Malita Tal (and reportedly her performances were watched by millions). And those fans apparently also protested against Arcann’s rule. personally i think if they had twitter the u.s. gov*rnment would be wiped out.

I just think singing is a big thing in Zakuulan culture. I mean, even Valkorion sings (if you decide to kill Senya, his force ghost appears. They both have an exchange and it’s actually sweet for like 0.1 second). 

I also think there would be typical Zakuulan fairytales embedded in the culture. Hear me out. Most specifically those type of royal fairytales with the princes and princesses. This can be heavily contributed to the fact that a royal family is essentially in power. 

You cannot expect me to believe not a single person in Zakuul has written a Prince Arcann x reader holofic. You just can’t. Or Prince Thexan. Actually, I think Thexan would be more common, I think he was perceived to be more compassionate and kind compared to Arcann by the common folk? Since I know there’s that NPC dialogue where one of them goes how different it would be if Thexan took the throne instead. 

The fairytales would probably involve a lot of references to the Old Gods. I kinda imagine that the enemy would be some sort of serpent, that is, Zildrog, because apparently he’s just a bedtime story to scare children away. 

I think these Zakuulan fairy tales would contribute to the theatre and performance, acting culture that Zakuul has. 

Furthermore, I just think the Tirall kids probably read these fairytales as well. francis dont talk about arcann reading again

I want to talk about the Old Gods and that religion, which is one of my favorite things ever... probably because the Gods are machines. Superweapon machines... ok ill shut up

Even if Valkorion basically got rid of the religion, it’s clear that the religion is still incorporated into heavy talk in Zakuulan culture (e.g. eyes of Esne, heart of Scyva). 

My headcanon is that there are sanctuaries or small secret churches (?) for those who want to worship the Old Gods. Obviously the Herald of Zildrogs who believe in the Old Way are a cult, so I think people would look for an alternative. 

I think there would be great effort to hide these places, as it can get you exiled. Thus these would probably be located in the Old World, rather than in a more obvious position like the Spire. 

The beliefs of the Old Ways isn’t exactly clear, they aren’t exactly touched upon, which is a shame. I think people would ask for help from each of these gods depending on what they want.

Those who ask for Izax’ guidance want to seek success, accomplishments, power, and glory.

Those who ask for Scyva’s guidance ask for her to guide souls peacefully to death (she is described as someone who weeps beside Zakuulans as they march towards Izax - basically death) , or ask for help/compassion from her. Maybe maternity as well? Or parental love?

Those who ask for Aivela (goddess of passion) want her to guide them with her passion (Aivela accompanies Tyth, who is kind of a god of war/warrior). I think there would also be romance related stuff as well. If someone asked for help regarding their love related issues, it would probably be from Aivela!

I’m not sure about Esne - but maybe in a similar sense, if someone is suffering with jealousy - in any situation, they would ask guidance from her. I don’t know where I read this but I think the “eyes of Esne” expression meant like having eyes of jealousy.

Nahut? I don’t think he was worshipped.  “Nahut was considered to be gray, formless and cold, and was denied worship by all except his mother Scyva.” But regardless, I think he still had a role to play. 

After the Outlander takes the throne, and Zakuul renounces their membership from the Eternal Alliance, I think people would be allowed to openly express their religious beliefs, that is, the Old Ways. Oh, personally I headcanon that they would build beautiful places of worship in the Spire with similar geometrical pyramid designs...!! 

Yeah...I think that’s all I got! I’ll need to see how I can somehow make this post easily found, lol. This is quite a long list, and I have to emphasize that these are my headcanons! They are based on what I see and I just kind of fill in the gaps to fit my own stories. This took a while to write because I KNEW I had these headcanons, but they just didn’t appear at the time I saw this anon ask. Anyways, I’ll probably create more headcanons in the future. Also:

a dark side ending where the Outlander or Arcann takes the throne with the other as a consort

I have so many things to say about this. I know the game won’t permit it, because if you think about it, both the light side choice (Eternal Alliance) and the dark side choice (Eternal Empire) are happy endings for your characters anyways. They can continue as the “hero” or the “protagonist”, so I don’t think this route could ever be implemented. However, I think it would be absolutely interesting if throughout the gameplay, players are given a choice to flirt with Arcann. The Outlander and Arcann agree to get rid of Valkorion, but thats if the Outlander decides to betray the Alliance and joins Arcann instead. And should they join him, they have the choice to romance him... and I guess it’s a happy ending for you both :P Obviously this won’t happen, but maybe it will. I wouldn’t mind being the prince consort of Arcann lol idk! me and vaylin are gonna be besties and we’ll paint each others nails or something Oh and have a nice day too anon...!!

[weaselle]

Sims 4 Build

OK. So. I started a new play through a while back and I wanted my sims to go out to eat and if you aren’t familiar with the Sims there are only bar/lounges and of course that ridiculous place in the faux Hollywood world. So I went to the Gallery and downloaded a couple of restaurants and...

Because I have worked for 25 years in the F&B service industry, I immediately became salty about a number of things.

And that’s why I built this restaurant, full of all the things people leave out of their restaurant builds.

See, it’s not a house. Stop building house shaped restaurants. And, nobody includes parking lots, but since I did, I made sure the handicap spots are the two closest to an entrance and have a loading zone adjacent.

I’m detail oriented in my sims builds.

If you’ve worked in restaurants, you’ll identify with all the commonalities I’ve found missing in most gallery builds that I’ve applied to this restaurant, even if you don’t play Sims.

If you haven’t worked in restaurants but you do build them in Sims 4, you could view this as a tutorial

FOH - The Floor

First of all, idk what people are looking at when they go out to eat, but evidently it isn’t the seating arrangements -- I kept finding restaurant after restaurant that seemed to have no ideal how to set up a dining area with tables. Like, the tables would be so crammed together the sims couldn’t actually walk between them, or they’d have a white cloth establishment with almost all 6 and/or 8 tops (a six-top is a table with six chairs) and almost no 2 or 4 tops; sometimes there would be like, mostly 10 or 12 tops!

Or they’d put chairs on every side of every table even though this makes everything cramped, or they’d jigsaw a bunch of different table sizes into a giant crowded square filling most of the restaurant. But mostly I saw people... doing all of these things at once they were all just doing all of this all the time omg. 

(Though I did see a couple builds where they had a huuge restaurant and then like, five small tables) Nobody seemed to know how many people a space should comfortably seat, or how many tables/seats a restaurant might need, or how to set them up

look

some things to notice: 

This seats 46. That’s good. When we move into the bar the bar tables and seating at the bar are going to bring it up to 63. Depending on your restaurant you’ll usually have between 40 and 80 seats, so I’m hitting my target perfectly. 

more than half the tables are 2 tops, but more than half the chairs are at larger tables; this isn’t like, a rule, but does mean there is probably close to the right mix of table sizes, especially for a white table cloth kinda place. There are only two “large” tables, which is about right.

The layout is easy to comprehend and section out. This floor easily lends itself to a two-server or four-server shift, and three servers isn’t hard to figure out. Like, I know exactly which tables each server would have as a four-server shift transitioned down to the closer over the evening.

It’s nearly symmetrical but not quite 100% which is what you usually see in a restaurant.

The lights are not placed randomly. You might think this doesn’t need to be pointed out. You’d be surprised.

There is plenty of room to move between the tables and have guests feel like they have their own area, with like, lanes to walk down, but there is no wasted space. It’s very full, but not at all crowded.

There’s a defined entrance, with a waiting area. The game tells you that you have to include this host station

which, yeah, some places just have a simple podium, but I built it out to help define the entrance, which has a menu stand and some seating for a wait list and the host stand has clutter like extra table tent menus and a condiment caddy. 

Similarly, the game says you need this server station

but I turned it into this

Now THAT’s a server station, with a drinks fridge, extra menus, plates, condiment shelves, and a coffee pot, which is orange for decaf because theres a regular coffee station that includes an espresso machine behind the bar. See?

Lastly, you can’t really tell from the pics so far, but the dining room and bar seating is only about half of the total space in the building, which is about right.

Here’s the bar tops

and the bar, which has a pass window right to the kitchen line, under the TV (don’t worry, there’s a proper pass for the servers and an expeditor through that door to the right) 

But once I addressed these issues with the Front of House, I realized: there is so much more missing from most restaurants on the gallery.

Like the back office.

BOH - Office

I didn’t find a single restaurant on the gallery that included one, but just about every restaurant has a shitty little back office crammed into what should be, like, a small closet. They all tend to look a little something like this

I had to hunt through debug for most of this clutter - it’s hard to tell in this pic, but that’s a couple stacks of money just sitting out on the desk to the right of the computer. That’s, shall we say, not super unusual to see in one of these crappy little paperwork prisons. And of course the mess of files and mail and shit.

You know what else every restaurant has but I never saw in any on the gallery?

Dish Pit

The game is not set up to allow you to make a proper dish pit. Like, there isn’t an industrial dishwasher or anything. Bu tI made one anyway. From the floor sinks, to the dish racks, to the horrible, heavy-ass red rubber mat that’s such a pain to clean at the end of the shift, I think you’ll recognize this room right away

I really had to fiddle to get this one -- those dish racks? they’re actually overlapped home counter racks that look like this

they were super hard to line up right. The “floor sinks” are actually a drain that’s supposed to go on the bottom of a pool, the dishwasher is actually three floor models raised to the right hight and overlapped facing different directions, and I added the little drain panels on either side by shrinking and raising floor vents to the height of the counters, which are actually overlapping tables. The floor I lucked out on, the Sims 4 has a tile floor pattern that comes in both grungy and clean, so I placed the clean ones on the outside edge of the dish pit floor in half-tiles along an irregular pattern with the edges matched to the lines of grout and added a couple of my own floor smudges so there wouldn’t be a straight line of dirty versus clean tile. Then I put some water stains over the whole thing to mask it better, overlapping some of the water stains to create the illusion of a flow of water going down the floor drain. 

Speaking of the dish pit, most restaurants have this cousin to the dish pit, that I don’t know what to call except maybe a 

Mop Closet

The Sims doesn’t have one of the yellow industrial mop buckets with the squeezy thing attachment, but I did pretty good here. Wish I could have erased the shower head, but I for sure needed the wall spigot handles and the hose. Managed to size up a bucket with water to the right dimensions and trick the game into letting me stick in a mop that’s supposed to hang on a wall. Added some cleaning supplies and stuff to the shelves.

Speaking of shelves, nobody ever includes dry storage when they do a Sims 4 restaurant. You know, with the empty beer kegs and those metal rack shelves full of, like, rows of little bottles and the restock items like six packs of soda and sacks of dry ingredients and way up on the top is the shit that never ever gets used but somehow you have to get up there every other week anyway?

See that door, the one with a light over it and a light next to it and a little temperature gauge? Yeah, you know what else I never see in gallery restaurants builds? 

Walk In

this was a pain, not only did I have to meticulously place every bottle on top of that fridge unit, but those kegs are actually tiny soda cans with no labels that I had to pull out of the vast un-tagged and un organized debug menu. I don’t even think they got placed by the devs anywhere in game, I think they are some kind of frame that gets a label/skin before it gets placed, usually. And see that fan up top in the middle of the wall? That’s actually two separate pieces of nonsense -- like, the center part isn’t a fan at all, its a stone wall decoration. But the design looks like a fan, so I shrank it and shoved it most of the way back into the wall til it was nearly flat and found that other thing that had a circle the right size in the middle. and viola. Oh, and it and those other vents next to it don’t just go to nothing, oh no, they match up perfectly on the outside to these

Okay, now, everybody building restaurants in the Sims DOES include a

Kitchen

And they often do a fine job, so I’m not going to spend much time here, but they do tend to skimp on prep space

(hey, see those shelves on the top right? Those are shelves full of dishes. I never see shelves full of dishes in gallery restaurant builds, but like, you need a bunch of shelves full of dishes. And off in the corner to the far left of the top wall? Prep sink tucked away back there.) 

Dude, let me just say... that prep counter?I placed every vegetable on that counter individually, AND I had to trick the game into letting me put more than the like, three items each counter space usually has slots for. What a pain. Worth it tho. It’s hard to tell, but there’s a knife next to the cutting board.

And lastly, no restaurant would be complete without 

“out back”

okay this post is long enough, but I just want to point out the stack of empty pallets, the discolored liquid and debris under the dumpsters along with a rat trap, and a little smoke break area with shitty chairs and a garbage table with some kind of bowl or something being used as an ashtray.

There’s more to this restaurant, employee lockers, bathrooms, etc, but this post is long enough, and I covered the most important stuff. 

In conclusion, I’m getting pretty good at sims builds, and other builders should ask me for tips on restaurant builds or read this post, because I swear none of them have ever worked in food service

[heart-forge]

I don’t know if you’ve already mentioned it, but did you perhaps have any recommendations for games in the Racial Justice bundle on Itch? I purchased it because of course, games plus a great cause is a no brained, but it’s now 1600+ games and I’m so overwhelmed! Which ones should I play first?

I’m SO glad you asked because I did shade post on my main about how annoyed I am that game journalists are covering games in the bundle like Celeste and Octodad as if we all don’t already know they exist and they didn’t all respective spend a season covering and recovering both games. They’re part of this like. Baby AAA, because they don’t have the budget or employee-power of AAA, but for some reason people still put them in direct competition with single developers working with only one or two skill sets (or the rare one that’s trying to do art, coding, writing, and sound all on their own).

So, I haven’t gone all the way through the bundle yet. Not only am I working atm so I have to get done the day before I can dig it (plus also trying to work on my own games) but I’m also on my laptop which just straight up can’t run some of these things peacefully. So this isn’t extensive but I’m happy to name a few who are getting ignored because why doesn’t anyone care about free games, small games, or games where you don’t kill someone to death as the main mechanic.

Also keep in mind that I don’t really do a lot of table top gaming. Not enough to understand a lot about the free ttrpgs included. This Tumblr user seems to know a lot more about tabletop in general (I think it’s actually his job but like I just follow him so idk) and I believe he’s gone over the bundle. He’s also Canadian. Broadly that doesn’t matter but it matters to me.

And finally, there’s a LOT of game assets included in here from music to sprites, backgrounds, etc etc. These, and I cannot express this enough, are all useful to you if you’re the sort to need them. There’s a lot of lessons to take from 2020 but one of them is definitely take what you can get and use it as well as you can use it.

It Has a Studio Budget So It Goes First Because It Doesn’t Need My Ads

Pyre

I’ve written fanfic for this one! It’s not the best story Supergiant has ever told, and is in fact kind of disappointing as a narrative. It’s got moments of incredible character high that seem sometimes contradicted or flatlined by other moments. It’s a beautiul, beautiful game, it’s super fun to play, and the story is fun to experience, but as I was playing it way back during it’s launch, there’s several character arcs that are deeply frustrating, set pieces that don’t make any sense, and an ending which is deeply obnoxious. I still recommend it. As I said in the tags of a fanfiction that became someone else’s viral tumblr post, it’s a game about taking a group of ragtag misfit political criminals and turning them into a family and a basketball team. Please note that when you meet Hedwyn, he wears that headband because he has nubby little horns underneath. A dev said that like months after it was released and I think about it once a day.

Oxenfree

Yeah I know everyone knows Oxenfree, but it’s a genuinely fun, wild experience. It’s good for exactly two playthroughs and then you’re done with it. I just see it getting sidelined in favour of Celeste and it’s frustrating because I get it mainstream loves the game that’s difficult and you can brag about being good at it and I’m positive Celeste is a great game but it’s one of those ones that were just beat to death in their season of coverage and it’s frustrating when game journalists hold them up as like the only one of their kind or similar to another super popular difficult game.

Okay Now On to Some That I Have Experience With

Night of the Consumers

The link is to a YouTube playthrough which doesn’t show any proper endings but does step through gameplay and stuff. I do like John Wolfe’s channel in general, as long as you don’t go too far past like 2015. Anyway, this game is basically, you’re trying to do your actual retail job of stocking shelves while people ferociously hunt you up in the aisles to help them find things in very clearly labelled aisles. You know, like real life. There’s also like this lowkey thread about a previous coworker going missing but the video doesn’t cover that.

Babysitter Bloodbath

Linked is another John Wolfe video, mind you he does complete the game so like...don’t watch til the end if you want a surprise? 

Babysitter Bloodbath is the answer to the question “what if instead of dying in the first three minutes, the hopelessly trapped-by-a-serial-killer babysitter told her charge to run and then proceeded to go full Rambo”. Avoid a killer while trying to gather the means to kill him and escape, with what I believe is old fashioned tank controls although I can’t be positive.

Secret Little Haven

I just finished this one last night and keep in mind that it’s a deeply upsetting game. I don’t even really have any of the associated triggers warned for and it was still upsetting, and also a little visually difficult to parse sometimes (ie chromatic aberration, screen glitching), but it’s a nice story and it’s not a tragic ending no matter how bad things get. Some story instructions (ie do this to continue) are a little difficult, but there’s guides online. Just remember, it’s LS not IS.

Democratic Socialism Simulator

This was published in Feb 2020 and it does show, but not in a terrible way but just in the way where the progressive choice is to fund police training and not just getting rid of them altogether but to be fair to the developer, it wasn’t May yet. Otherwise this is a very fun game where you’re trying to manage money, the social power of the people, emissions, and your own hold on congress. Everyone is an animal. I’m a little bit in love with the Civil Rights Leader.

Catlateral Damage

Link to a Polygon overview of the game feat Griffin and Justin McElroy. This should probably be up there with Pyre because it received mainstream coverage but I don’t want to misinterpret the actual resources of the developer so I’ll put it down here. You’re a cat, knock stuff down. Pretty straightforward, I’m not like jazzed about it, but it’s notable.

Hidden Folk

This is a very fun find-it game. The difficult varies per level and afaik there’s no like, “okay I give up find it for me” button. Each “find this” prompt comes with a clue to indicate where on the map it is. I play this before bed.

Plant Daddy

A short and fun experience with a dedicated plant community. Grow plants, complete objectives, design two rooms, name your plants, buy some more stuff...I finished it in like three days but it was a wonderful, soothing experience.

The White Door

Part of the Rusty Lake series, The White Door is a narrative puzzle game. The link is to another Wolfe video, who again completes the game so mind how long you watch the video for. It’s kind of dark and can sometimes be pretty gross, but I like that kind of game where you listen to the story and solve puzzle to send it along. The story ties in to a larger Rusty Lake narrative but afaik this is the only game of theirs in the bundle. If you want to know more about the plot, however, it’s out there. I also know that there’s some smaller scale I believe? Rusty Lake puzzle games that are free apps.

As We Know It

This one was free from the developer at the start of quarantine I believe (who can remember that far back?), so some of you may now double own it. That’s okay, because it’s a nice game about finding a place in the community and hooking up with someone while doing it. Highly replayable, narrative VN.

Game Development Cheat Sheets

These are PDFs for like...hey, do you like video games but no one ever told you how to make them or that it was a totally reasonable choice to begin making them? And you wanna do game development? Give these a review. If you’re a little more experienced they may not be super useful but if you’re just jumping in with the question “oh god what now?” then these have some advice for you.

Cardinal Chains

This is a puzzle game, you fill the whole box sequentially. So if some boxes have the number one inside, those have to be filled before the boxes that have the number two in them, and so on and so forth, Lately I find myself craving some puzzle games.

Golf Peaks

You get cards with numbers on them, which indicates how many boxes the ball can travel through. Putting those cards together, you build yourself a golf shot with the goal of sinking it before you run out of cards. Again, this is a nice relaxing puzzle game.

fugue

I like fugue. You do math, you make music. I didn’t know you did math. This game took me a long time to finish the first world. This game tricked me into doing math. One level took me thirty eight tries to get right. I’m not good at math.

Hot Pot Panic

Pretend to listen to your friend while you try to make hot pot. I was pretty good at this one but burning food is so distressing.

OH I JUST FOUND THIS ONE SKIMMING THROUGH:

The Twine Grimoire Volume 1

I haven’t looked through it but it covers some HTML and CSS for Twine so if yall were curious...

OH NO THE BUNDLE DOES INCLUDE IMSCARED. I remember being so fucking afraid of that game in high school. I watched a pt and I was less scared of it but also I wasn’t personally playing.

Play With Gilbert

Another cat simulator. I’m not their biggest fan but it can be relaxing for sure.

Anyway I’d love to do a deeper dive on all the games to pick out some real obscure ones but I haven’t had the time yet so I’ve been focusing on puzzle games that I can peacefully stop and start again.

[rantceratops]

Just gonna get some of my Little Nightmares 2 thoughts out and under a spoiler tag. Need to get it out of my system. SPOILERS BELOW CUT.

First, a Fun Fact: I went into Little Nightmares 2 fully expecting Mono to die. Yet I still got attached to him. I was expecting him to die, but I was NOT expecting him to get the fate that he did. I knew that Six was a morally questionable character from the first game, but tbh it never crossed my mind that she’d be responsible for his demise. At least, not until the bridge collapsed between Mono and Six in the Signal Tower. I immediately knew that either Mono was going down with the bridge, or that Six would drop him. But it still hurt like a bitch.

1) My least favorite theory is one of the more popular ones I keep seeing, which is that the Secret Ending somehow proves that Six dropped Mono because she “knew she was just going to eat him anyway”, so she dropped him to “save” him from herself.

This one is a big NO from me. That is not at all what I gathered from the Secret Ending. First of all, I’m not sure in what universe that dropping your friend into a flesh void to rot in hatred and betrayal for decades is somehow “saving” them, even if you were planning to cannibalize them. If you really wanted to “save” them, pull them up and then just run away from them or tell them to stay away from you, etc.

Secondly, it was clear that Six’s stomach growling at the end of the Secret Ending was meant to be the FIRST time she ever felt the Hunger. Six goes the entirety of Little Nightmares 2 without once feeling the Hunger, whereas in the first game she seems to barely be able to go a couple hours (or in game terms, she can’t go a single chapter without it happening) without having to eat, so I highly doubt she could go the entire second game without eating.

This theory is just not sound to me, and I refuse to subscribe to it. I obviously like to hear most theories because it’s always interesting, but this one straight up makes me roll my eyes every single time I read it.

2) I also don’t much like the theory that because Six saw Mono without his paper bag on for the first time when holding him on the edge, she was able to study his face for several seconds and realized that he was the Thin Man. Unfortunately, I as much as I don’t like the idea of this, I can’t exactly debunk it, as Six does indeed spend several seconds just holding him there for some reason or other. Whether it was in pure indecision, or pure malice as she relished his helpless state before she dropped him(I hope not), or whether she was absorbing his power to leave through the TV*, or whether it was in fact because she was somehow able to put two and two together... idk.

My main issue is that Mono and Six are like 9 years-old, how could she look at a 9 year-olds face and tell that it matched a man that appears to be in his 40s? Just seems a bit far-fetched. But again, as much as I’d like to, I cannot debunk this one.

*This is something that confuses me. Six was able to leave through the TV, but Six was never able to travel through TVs. That was Mono and the Thin Man’s power. Six was not there for the defeat of the Thin Man and so couldn’t have taken his powers, so was she absorbing Mono’s powers before she dropped him? Usually she seems to need to eat her victims to gain their powers. The lack of visual cue that she’s taking his power is also strange. I’m starting to think it was just a weird oversight on the Devs part. There is no logical reason Six should have been able to leave the Tower unless she somehow stole Mono’s powers. (earlier in the game we even see Six pressing against a TV trying to escape from the Thin Man, but she cannot, and it’s not until Mono reaches in and grabs her hands that she is able to start phasing through.

3) Mono = Thin Man = Hanging Man is also a strange theory. Though there is a certain uncanny resemblance with not only the door with the eye on it and the chair, but the pants and shoes and long-limbedness of the Hanged Man himself. However, as far as I recall there are several doors with eyes on The Maw(correct me if I’m wrong please!), so I don’t really consider the door that big of a deal unless I’m wrong. Eyes are kind of a big motif in these games.

My biggest question with this theory is why or how would Mono be on The Maw? How did he get there? Why was he there? Which version of Mono is this? I have so many fucking questions with this one it’s not funny.

4) Time-loop theory is the most popular. I’m on the fence. There is evidence to support it’s a Time-loop, but my initial reaction to the ending was that Mono was replacing the Thin Man, not that he was the Thin Man the entire time. I largely just accept Time-loop as it does seem more likely at this point... I’m not sure how Mono being a replacement would change the narrative... hrm.

5) I really just want Mono to be okay. :’(

6) I already reblogged another post and ranted about this but: People are overthinking why Six dropped Mono. There are one of two reasons that she dropped him, and imo it’s not hard to pick up on.

Reason One (Least Likely): Six was perhaps using Mono the entire time, and simply decided to drop him at the end once he’d served his purpose. To me, this seems less likely of the two, even though Six can be very selfish and sadistic, this just doesn’t add up to me. If this one is true, then the question becomes what was Six’s goal? What was her purpose, and what means to what end did Mono serve? Because imo I am not seeing a dark purpose here with Six... which leads me to the second and more likely reason Six dropped Mono--

Reason Two (Far More Likely): Six felt betrayed by Mono. This was my FIRST thought when I realized Six was going to drop Mono. My immediate thought was that it was out of pure spite from Mono not helping her when the Thin Man grabbed her. To me this is so painfully obviously her motive.

Six and Mono spend the majority of the game helping each other; opening doors, boosting each other, catching each other across gaps. There are so many times Six could have been selfish and left Mono to his fate, but she didn’t. She pulls him out of the TV again and again because she knows something is wrong.

Mono saves Six so many times; she gets captured or separated from him and every single time without fail, Mono comes back for her, he does everything in his power to save her. When Mono finally unintentionally lets the Thin Man lose, Six tries to get Mono to run with her. She stays next to him trying her damnedest to get him to grab her hand and run with her, before she runs off alone because Mono isn’t listening to her. Then, she trips and reaches out for Mono, but Mono is scared and cowering under the bed and does not grab Six in her most vital, vulnerable moment.

Six sees this as a betrayal of trust. Despite the fact that if Mono had come out to help her they might have likely both been caught, and despite the fact that the Thin Man’s presence generally seems to hurt and slow down Mono, and despite the fact that Mono STILL comes after her to save her. Mono tries to pull Six out through the TV, and even after he defeats the Thin Man, he goes to the Signal Tower to save her. He NEVER EVER gave up on her.

But for Six that obviously wasn’t good enough. Mono, however unfairly, lost her faith when he didn’t grab her hand in that room. And to add icing on that cake, Monster Six tries to let Mono play with her music box because she obviously has some memory that she trusted and liked him, and then he smashes it with a hammer. In her twisted state, that was another heinous betrayal stacked on top of the previous one, and I think even after she was reverted back to normal the resentment of Mono smashing her music box remained. Six began to see Mono as the cause for all her problems and a betrayer at that. Regardless of whether the theory that she also saw in his face that he was Thin Man before she dropped him, I still very much think the main catalyst here was the perceived trust betrayal.

Mono never really did anything wrong; in fact, he did everything right, but in the end he still got his undeserved fate.

There is no world or theory which makes Six dropping Mono justified in my eyes, but it is interesting to see how things got all twisted and dark for her to the point that she felt dropping him was in her interest.

I’ve never hated Six, but I’ve also never been fond of Six even before LN2. But I do honestly hate her in that moment that she lets go of Mono. It was fucked up. It was disgusting to be frank. Mono got one of the most horrible fates I’ve ever witnessed such a pure-hearted character get. It was fucking heartbreaking, I get sad all over again just listening to End of the Hall on the soundtrack and remembering the scene and what happened to him.

I teeter back and forth on whether or not Six is even meant to be a true protag or not. She certainly feels rather anti-hero. I also sometimes can’t decide whether she truly did care about Mono or not, but I do feel like there’s a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that she did at some point.

IDK. All I know is Mono was just a good boy and I really wish he could somehow get a happy ending at the end of all this. T_T

[panickypeachboy]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; MUN & MUSE - MEME.

FILL OUT & REPOST ♥ this meme definitely favors canons more, but i hope oc’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. multi-muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

TAGGED BY:  @sternenteile, #1 Geno fan. TAGGING:  Do it.

MY MUSE IS:  canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [ Nope. Most people just call ZPiW the game with anime girls wielding guns. Outside of me, not much fanart is produced of the peach boy, as it’s well, mostly the girls. Miiverse revealed that the ratio is a bit more even but still, peeps really like them girl designs (designed by a female artist) ]

is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ i mean ?? i’ve met and seen many people who have/had crushes on geno so ??????? but i don’t think it’s like. that. ghfskjhgsg??? ]

is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ Personally, I have to say yes. Momotaro is strong as frick because in game, you’re supposed to level towns to “clean them up”. And this is in addition to the traditional Momotaro folktale that, a Momotaro is a strong child who can lift. However, most just look to Snow White as the strongest cuz she dented metal bare handed...and well is the “face” of the game.]

are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK. [ This game is better known for having girls...with guns. But I wouldn’t say he’s really *that* underrated, considering the basic character is just that...basic. ]

were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO. [ Well, my theory is that he just stumbled upon the fight between survivors and zombies so...kind of yes? Momotaro was one to actually gather folks to storm the castle as they say, because it seems before hand the other heroes were just minding their own business. So, being the one who talks the most (ironically) and the one that the game follows...yeah he’s relevant.]

were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [ Sadly so, in the sense that I wished the devs would’ve allowed for branching plots depending on which character you choose. This is including the fact that the game is purposely trying to emulate how old-school games were bare bones in characterizations and plot.]

are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. [ Just another folklore hero in the world of Wonderland...a place chock FULL of fairy tales and folktales. Though he might’ve garnered a reputation of being destructive after ZPiW... ]

how’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / neutral. [ ]

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON?  —  Ehhhh...I think I make do with what I got from the teeny breadcrumbs of canon I got...however, many folks commented that Momotaro looks WAAAAAAY tougher than what I make him out to be so...I guess that’s a fail for following canon strictly on my part. .w.;; If I truly went 1:1, things may be bland...or not...I mean there’s as many subversions to the traditional heroes as there are well, the typical shounen stuff.

SELL YOUR MUSE! AKA TRY TO LIST EVERYTHING, WHICH MAKES YOUR MUSE INTERESTING IN YOUR OPINION TO MAKE THEM SPICY FOR YOUR MUTUALS.  —  Is Momotaro an OC at this point? Probably. But hey, if you guys want a lad who’s adorable but tough...you could look elsewhere...or you can find that in Momo! I wanted to try to represent some stuff of special needs, but I’m still working out the kinks...but the kid’s loyal, and a very good cook at that! He definitely needs a confidence booster, but could that be part of his charm? Maybe. But hey, I think y’all might really like the idea I got for him, and mainly Smash! Like, have you ever wondered what goes on in that mansion? ...well yes, but what about those who aren’t fighters? Or even assist trophies! That’s where the smash verse comes in! Take a peek into the (tough) lives of Waddle Dees and the peach boy, along with other creatures not suitable for Smash! They’re just as handy for making sure the place is well run and fed! If someone isn’t cleaning and cooking to maintain 70+ fighters, and 20+ assist trophies...who is?

NOW THE OPPOSITE, LIST EVERYTHING WHY YOUR MUSE COULD NOT BE SO INTERESTING (EVEN IF YOU MAY NOT AGREE, WHAT DOES THE FANDOM PERHAPS THINK?).  —  This is a character from a game whose designers may appreciate the female figure a bit too much. I always have a tough time recommending this game to others, and hell, I’m terrible at playing it myself. Hell, the fact that most of the characters are minors is just a...”why do you design them like this Bo.mi” thing. Most do seem to think highly of those designs though, as that’s the main aspect of the game I keep hearing in my searches. Now, I’ve received a good amount of concerns over the years that Momotaro not speaking proper English is either racist or babyish...or both. Is my take too depressing? There are often times I think yes, and feel unbelievable shame over it despite others going hard on the angst train.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE?  —  Well uh, I believe I was charmed by his rugged but baby appearance in the game..and it just so happen at the time that I was part of a budding rp group. Despite the theme being mostly “OUENDAN”, that was the start of me shoving Momotaro into every fuckin’ thing because he’s cute as shit and obscure muses can be fun too! It was also probably relaxing for me because gosh dang back then I was scared of getting something wrong about someone canon with more lore...and I am still scared about that to this day.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING?  —  Studying about Japanese culture, learning the language...the fact that I’ve been rping him for almost 10 years (read like 8-9 at this point)...I do wonder if I should stop rping him...and then I keep hearing that people only want characters only in as fighters, fighters are the only important thing about smash and that grows my weird spite and just continue this “backstage” plot of Smash. Yes, getting a franchise in as a fighter is a VERY high commemoration but, I think it’s just as equally amazing when a franchise gets in as an assist trophy or even a spirit/trophy! So yeah it’s petty and I better find some other motivation soon because it’s exhausting.

SOME MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN.

give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

do you think you give your character justice?  yes / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? [ Ahaha....I’m starting to give up on that idea at this point, as several noted that Momotaro isn’t as timid in canon as I write him. But I do try to keep those boneheaded traits of the peach boy in my portrayal. ]

do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? [ It’s a must for Momotaro, whose game is a tribute to how the old timey arcade games didn’t have much to their plots. Otherwise, I would think that playing him would end up pretty dry..whether I play him closer to canon or not. ]

do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO [ ...I should write more. ]

do you think a lot about your muse during the day? YES / NO [ Stupidly yes. Been playing him for 8 years so it’s a hard habit to break. ]

are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF? [ I mean, if I wasn’t confident enough I would’ve dropped him...though I have thought about that several times. There be times where I run into some sort of writer’s block due to his meek (and traumatized) nature, and because of how he speaks, it’s scary. Am I pushing his issues too much...? Or just HIM in general...? ]

are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO. [ Again, writer block happens when some muses don’t click, or personally I don’t want to interact with someone. And then when I do want to write with someone, I fear that my simpler (children’s book) ways of writing would be a turn off. I don’t want to end up babbling too long that there’s too much detail but I shudder at seeing single lines in response to long prose. ]

are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO. / sorta. [ Yeaaaah i get stressed and cry at lot at confrontation and just...anxiety in general. Been trying to keep that off the dash though, as I’m sure peeps got their own troubles already. DMs are good to have y’all. ]

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL?  —  I do my best to take crits when I get them but sometimes it just haunts me because I have mixed feelings on being told that the way he speaks is racist or childish.  But hey, if you got more advice on how to write trauma and special needs, I’m all ears! Particularly because I’m writing from my own experience in my life and research. ...Dad isn’t that superb at speaking English and that's where I got the Momo speak.

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER?  —  Yes please...but at this point I kinda have sadly accepted that’s just gonna be rare because he’s obscure.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?  —  as my take on Momotaro is very meek, I’d like to see how one would take  on a more confident/more canon true take on him. But that’s a pipe dream. Coruse the only headcanon I will never take (that I fear the fandom will have due to perverted nature) is that he’s just a fuckin harem protag wanting to get into pants. To that I say: NO. In canon he doesn’t give a fuck about the fact his teammates are girls...or even acknowledges that they're girls. It’s the time to survive, not boogie on beds...or at a tree.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT?  — I anticipate that wholly because again, I have gotten comments that my take on Momotaro has not properly prepared them to witness the sheer destruction and toughness that is canontaro. Honestly I’d be hyped to see more takes...except for the harem route ones. Am I gonna jinx myself for saying it that much?

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT?  —  I probably would be sad but understanding...I mean it’s not the first time that someone has taken deep offense at Momo and me, mainly in the rp sense. I would hope they would at least go find something that makes them happy.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?  —  Yep yep. Or well stealth editing too, that helps.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN?   —  Ehhhh....maybe...? I mean most think I’m chill but, I’m a ball of anxiety at times. But, I am also one who reaches out because, gosh dang...a lot of peeps are nervous beans and that’s okay. So...it’s a sort of, yeah.

[starlightshore]

Probably a loaded question, but with all the game engines you've worked with, what are the pros and cons for each? I'm really interested in trying my hand. So far I got rpg maker mv for a paid engine, but I'mma l look into free ones also. (Game Maker seems a bit expensive for my tastes :()

GOD YEAH game maker is... so expensive... i’m hoping my bro gets me it for Christmas when its on sale. but even then like. ouch. that price tag.

so here are all the programs I've used to make my fangame at some point:

uh. long ass post ahead.

COST: 15$

its a visual novel making program! like RPG maker, its not code based, but visual based! you just click and drag the stuff from the left onto the right area and boom. game made. Honestly, a really good introduction to making a video game! Its very basic and simple, which is very newbie friendly. Lots of Youtube videos on how to do things too.

You can technically do more with it by using the program’s coding language OR by using java-script, tho personally i’m not good at coding yet so i never really saw what i could do with it. i haven’t really used it in a year but honestly, i can’t thank it enough for being such a good introduction to game development.

Pros: cheap one time fee, easy for newbies and visual based.

Cons: very limited to just visual novels, and even then to do more complex stuff you really have to work for it to get it to work.

RENPY

COST: FREE

THE free visual novel program. It’s a bit of a learning curve since everything is done in script, (ie: no visuals) BUT its VERY simple and easy to learn and once you get it and it clicks, you can do a lot with it! because you code it yourself, the limits are nearly endless. uses it’s own language, but you can also use python (or its built on python? can’t remember lol) and python is built for newbies.

Pros: free, limited only by what you’re willing to learn to do with code, while you can make RPGS its pretty limited since its not built for it

Cons: only super easy to use once you get over the learning curve. if you have any experience w/ code, its a breeze. if not, still easy to learn!, you can only use it for rpgs, NOT a visual program

(and other RPG Maker game engines)

COST: 50$ (EXPENSIVE! but it does go on sale once in a while. i got mine at 20-ish$)

idk if you plan on making a UT fangame too but its totally possible!!! i’m doing it!! and i would be very happy to share/help others with theirs. i mean. mostly its just plugins from other people, but i did set up a pretty nice inventory and i can show ya’ll how i make the sprites. (since UT has a lot smaller tileset size) and honestly, if you need help w/ this program my instant messenger is always open B)

uh anyway. RPG maker is a godsend for someone like me who is very visual minded and has a hard time grasping code. i know python... ok-ish. im still a noob. ANYWAY yah, theres LOTS of tutorials and plugins you can sink your teeth into, big communities who are all happy to share and help each other out. its pretty great! (actually, you could say the same w/ all these game engines! but the RPG maker forums is like. super nice from what i’ve seen)

so like, with youtube you can learn how to use it within a day or two, frankly. and you can do SO much with it w/ plugins. and the community is ages old, and the game itself is a few years old and has plenty to offer. you need something? likely someone else has made a plugin or forum post on the topic and someone has helped them figure it out. HIGHLY recommend this program if you can afford it (and you already have it, so honestly, just go w/ rpg maker.)

i wouldn’t super recommend the default assets cause the community hates them. they’re way over used and people see it as “lazy.” its good as like, a stepping stone but you shouldn’t rely on them for your whole game if you can manage your own graphics or pay someone to make them. if not, theres still free tilesets you can use if you look for them.

Pros: big friendly community, lots of resources to use, capable of A LOT of things, hassle free for the most part!

Cons: price is big, but it goes on sale often and the older versions of RPG maker aren’t that much different/worse. granted, MV is the best but like, the others aren’t bad. quite a bit to learn at first, but really simple honestly.   

COST: Free (sorta. you need a license for certain aspects, but really u could do it free w/ zero issue except for exporting to multiple devices)

ok so like. i don’t. really know how to use unity too well. out of all of these, i haven’t used it for long. while still somewhat visual, you still have to learn a quite a bit of code and look up tutorials to figure out specific things you want to do.

for UT fangames, there is UNITALE/Create Your Own Frisk which uses unity, tho you don’t need the Unity to make games unless you want to make a overworld. since i’m making a overworld and more, i’ll need to learn how to use Unity. It’s a uphill battle but i’m fairly certain i can do it eventually.

there’s a LOT of resources but theres also a LOT to learn. untiy is pretty big and well known, for both 3d and 2d so like, go ham. have fun.

Pros: can do anything

Cons: can do anything so you gotta learn how to do it w/ code.

Cost: has both a subscription and a license you can purchase. its,,, pricey and doesn’t go on sale all too often.

I actually don’t have ANY experience with this program except for like. a few night’s worth. i read the manual if that counts for anything lol.

uh, its very script base and it looks good? uh. idk. its. yeah? i heard its great and i’m sure for that price and for it to be respected so much its got a lot live up to. my brother likes it and hes a Real nerd. so. i guess??? it should be worth it? i’d say wait until around Christmas/later in November for the steam sale if you really want to.

i mean, UT was made with the first one (tho i hear GMS 2 is way better) and toby didn’t know how to code going in so like. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ honestly anyone can learn it and while i haven’t gotten to use it much yet, I want to.

there’s the Undertale Fan Engine made with GMS 2 and i’ve tried it, its pretty extensive and frickin cool.

TLDR; figure out what kind of game and story you want to tell/make. i could of saved a year’s worth of work if i just sat myself down and realized i wanted to make a completely new fangame separate from my old blog stuff. and that i wanted to make an rpg specifically.

honestly, i want to make more games after AL, like, if i could become a indie dev that’d be my dream. (ironic since i don’t play video games LMAO)

but yeah! theres lots of choices, and its all a little overwhelming honestly! if theres anything you need help with w/ any of these programs I am happy to help further. I wish you the best of luck!!!! video game making is hard work but its so worth it!!!

[randomnameless]

I was browsing a tag (i know i shouldn’t do that) and i read an old post nerding about ancient civilisations and parallels with FE16 which made me glee bcs i love to nerd about history 

But then i was disappointed 

Important Agarthans seem to have greek names (?) so they could be ancient greece, okay why not (the superiority complex over the rest of the world feels adequate but then idk if Socrates (Soloncrates?) would call actual humans beasts or not).

But then it was affirmed that Rhea, not the Nabateans, but Rhea, was Ancient Rome (Romea?). She 1) razed the Agarthans, 2) expanded the Church in the continent and 3) allied with Wilhelm of Adrestia and later Loog who represents the various germanic tribes.

Which made me raise an eyebrow.

1) I’ve already posted earlier about the Sothis/Agartha war but here it seems a bit odd to single out Rhea amidst her people for having rekt Agartha when it was, at most, a collective action of several Nabateans, regardless of the fact that Rhea may or not have participated in the first war.

Also, in FE16, the Nabateans gave their technology to Agarthans, who in turn developed it and turned against them. Ancient Rome was tsun-tsun with their greek neighbours, but it is now commonly accepted that the first romans tried to “copy” or at least were heavily inspired by Ancient Greece to build a national identity. I mean Virgil even wrote a poem to make a Trojan ancestor to what would later become the roman people, and that’s not talking about how the old Roman pantheon borrowed the Greek one but with aliases worse than Danved and Devdan...

In FE16, “Greece” actually borrowed/received their technology from “Rome” but tried to attack “Rome” and failed. “Rome” retaliated, destroyed “Greece” to the point where romans don’t even know what “Greece” was and can only make suppositions about its existence. 

This doesn’t match RL history.

2) Expanding the Church in the continent : this is actually speculation, but afaik, when Adrestia conquered the continent, its religion would have automatically been spread? Still, comparing the Church of Seiros to another religion starting with a C doesn’t really work.

Adrestia was founded by a dude who had been annointed by Seiros herself. The Church, or at least Seiros and her pals, already existed before the Empire. Constantine the Great was the first Emperor to convert to christianity, but he was not the founder of Rome! Christianity became a “state” religion after Constantine. Heck, Julian thought his uncle’s religion was lousy so he returned to a polytheist cult.

In FE16, the only schism between Adrestia (the Empire) and the Church happened after the Southern Church was expelled, giving a good 1000 years of church approved Empire.

Saying Romea expanded the reach of the church through out all of Fodlan isn’t wrong, iirc part of the mediation accepting the Kingdom’s existence is to allow the church to preach in the newly formed kingdom, but i’m not sure it could be tied to RL history, because in Fodlan, Wilhelm walked side by side with Jesus, and Jesus crowned him Emperor. Jesus won against Nemesis. Adrestia’s legitimacy/creation comes from Jesus.

So I don’t think it’s Rhea expanding the reach of the Church through Fodlan, but more Seiros is part of the Empire’s lore, she’s that actual saintly figure who defeated the strongest man ever so everywhere in the Empire tales of Seiros and her deeds are heard of, it makes sense to follow/buy her story. 

Also, if the “religion” the church of Seiros preaches is the rewritten history, people must have “converted” after the unification of Fodlan and yet, if Seirosism is the state religion, and the state is controlling Fodlan, can we say Romea expanded her religion through the continent, or Fodlan, after being conquered by Adrestia, automatically became Seirosist?

It would actually echo the bid to allow the Church to preach in the newly formed Faerghus, if Loog wanted to fig off Adrestia, he might even want to have a different religion than the one from the Empire he came from, hell, the Kingdom even returned to the former naming practices existing before Adrestia. 

The Church would have wanted to make sure that no matter what Loog was doing with his bunch of humans in the North, he would still believe crests are a gift from the goddess, they shouldn’t be misused and if you ever find Macuil don’t murder him to make weapons out of his body.

short story long story : it’s the story of the egg and the chicken, did Seirosism became the leading religion in the continent because Rhea actively preached around, or because it was Adrestia’s state religion? idk.

3) Rome “allied” (well, TC said Rome lorded and traded with germanic tribes until shit hit the fan) with germanic tribes. They could be traded with. But they were not roman citizens. I’m not that well versed in this part of the Roman Empire (even if some part of France was classified as Germania at that time! RIP Franche-Comté T-T). Thing is, Rome never asked for Germania’s help to defeat some enemy, hell, when barbarians invasions happened, it hit Germania first and then Rome.

This is where the Romea analogy falls. 

First of all, Wilhelm became Wilhelm of Adrestia thanks to Seiros who annointed/crowned him, without Seiros there is no Adrestia. (iirc in one of Seiros’ books it is said Seiros makes emperors out of men, and the tradition needs the archbishop to bear witness each time a new emperor is crowned, so i suppose Rhea crowned/proclamed/anointed/made Wilhelm an Emperor).

Rome never had that kind of influence (afaik?) on the various germanic tribes. 

Before Adrestia we had Enbarr and, I guess, several tribes. As I see it (it may be wrong!) Adrestia is made to mirror Rome, sort of. Wilhelm “of Adrestia” set out to conquer unify the world. Now, did Seiros told him to conquer the world or did he came to that conclusion alone, we will never know. And yet, in the time period we’re speaking of (antiquity?), there’s no “Germanic Empire”. Adrestia started as an unified state, not as several tribes. Adrestia thus cannot be likened to “germanic tribes”.

Second, Loog did not receive help from Rhea, but it’s implied (still it’s from the shadow library so i’m not holding it against the TC) he received help from Mole People. 

But from what we know, in the Vanilla game, Loog defeated the Emperor of Adrestia. It is during the aftermath that the Empire, House Charon and the Church negotiated and decided Loog could found his Kingdom. I do not see how Rhea “allied” with the guy, nor, again, what kind of germanic tribe he represents given how he actually got his independance from the Empire to create his own Kingdom.

Then we have another set of facts which are less about history and more about the game, but for the history ones : 

Romea cannot 4) enforce the will of the Church and Western branch rebelling mirrors Rome’s western’s provinces being unruly and Romea gradually losing grasp on Adrestia 5) The Church isn’t completely sacked but still remains in CF to mirror Rome’s “gradual” fall/out of powerlessness (for funsies 6) Edel and the Agarthans make Rome face what they did to Greece and represent the germanic tribes coming after Rome after they managed to free themselves from its influence)

4) Unless I’m mistaken, the most occidental border of the Empire was the Atlantic Ocean?  astérix is a product of french chauvinism 

Northern borders were more problematic, we had Hadrian’s Wall to keep Picts at bay and in the 3rd century the “Saxon Shore” to fend off against invaders coming by the sea. 

Of course around this time there was an important crisis that weakened the Empire, so it might explain why there was unrest everywhere. This crisis saw the birth of the Western Gallic Empire, but also of the Eastern Palmyrene Empire (everyone was happy when Diocletian unified the empire afterwards). After, let’s say, 300ish, the Empire, in general, had difficulties to deal with and keep its borders.

Back to FE, the western church rebelling is actually at odds with Rome, because when it comes to religious stuff, the eastern provinces were the most concerned/active, not the western ones (1st council of nicea was made because of the arian controversy (The Son and the Father are the same entity or not? Discuss) in the eastern provinces). 

Apparently, the Western Church rebels because they don’t like/follow the creed of the Central Church, but if we wanted to keep the Rome analogy, it should have been the Eastern church rebelling. From what we see, it is not because they follow another religion, but they have a difference in doctrine (but then it is muddled because mole people, otoh, it is never said that the western church thinks seiros is a hax or the goddess doesn’t exist, they want to claim lands on behalf of Saint Cichol which means they adhere, at least, to the main dogma about saints) and really don’t like Rhea for some reason. tbh i think some “germanic tribes” converted to arianism but they weren’t the theologists who theorised it

Central Church lost its grasp on Adrestia in 1065 (iirc?) when the southern branch was expelled. Idk if everything was fine and dandy before, but given how Rhea oversaw the construction of Garreg Mach after the WoH and tried to resurrect Sothis with the Chalice, I’d say she already said “peace i’m out” to Adrestia and would just be there for some ceremonies (crowning/being a witness for new emperors i suppose).

I’ve said it earlier, but Adrestia is not supposed to represent the “germanic tribes”, Adrestia is Rome. Adrestia having german names could also mean that the devs were lazy because Gaius Claudius isn’t a funky name, but the HRE was situated in western-central europe. Edel’s rebellion against the central church could mirror HRE and the Reformation, save for the fact that Edel dgaf about the goddess bcs humanity doesn’t need gods or something. So the analogy doesn’t really work...

5) Coming to which, CF!Church is not anything like Seirosism or, i suppose, the former Sothisism cult. Various bloggers already tore this take apart, but the “Church” in post CF-Fodlan seems to be less spiritual and more of an organisation which is overseen by the Emperor. 

I mean, if Edel says humans don’t need gods, what is the Church supposed to do? Fodlan has a cult? A religion? Faith? Faith in what? People are supposed to be free to chose what to believe in, but it is clear that “humans” don’t need gods, so what? You can believe in whatever you want, but not in Sothis because we don’t need her, and fig to the children of the Goddess or fig you if you’re still a follower of Seirosism? Rome still exists nowadays as a capital of a living country, I cannot affirm the Church exists, or if whatever the church of Seiros did is still maintained.

Also, “Rome” as in the Roman Empire (kind of) survived with the Byzantine Empire and the HRE. I don’t think offshoots of the Church of Seiros would be allowed to prosper in CF’s Fodlan.

6)  :)

I cannot remember if Romea’s people (well a civilisation cannot have brethrens it’s not a being!) were turned into various weapons by Socrates and Plato (if they had been blacksmiths i’d have been more interested in philosophy classes i swear) but as far as i know Edel’s Adrestia didn’t wage war against Romea because of her conquests or what she did to Soloncrates/Ancient Greece, nope or to free Adrestia from Romea (especially since Adrestia got rid of the church since 1065). Edel wants to conquer the world and change the “system” in place.

Bonus : About names, yes, the devs validated the “Adrestia is both rome and germany combined” which is as WTF as it seems, and yet, last Emperor from the HRE was named Francis II with his birth name being Franz Joseph Karl which is very far removed from, idk, Trajan being Marcus Ulpius Trajanus. I don’t think the devs thought a lot about names tbh, still, if Emperor Wilhelm might sound “german” and yet his second name Paul, is latin (paulus) so idk. Ionius was apparently a name used in Rome?

[lateviews]

Lateview: Absolver

If you've heard the expression, “Biting off more than you can chew”, then you'll understand how I feel about Absolver. Fans of third-person fighter games like “Dark Souls”, “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” know that these types of games require high levels of love and polish to do well. Despite the starved market, there’s a lot of room for mediocrity. Surprisingly, Absolver doesn't pull any punches and goes toe to toe with the best... until it runs out of steam.

Absolver is a third-person fighter game trying to set itself apart from the crowd using two unique mechanics: stances and the combo builder. The “build your own combo” system has been done before, most notably in “Remember Me” and “God Hand” but the way they combine it with the stances really sets it apart. Each move has a speed and damage rating as well as some of the moves having unique properties like breaking guard and interrupting attacks. There are 4 combat stances, visually corresponding to the direction your torso is facing. Changing stances will result in you turning your torso to face to the left or the right of your opponent while others will leave you with your back facing towards the enemy! Each stance can be assigned an escalating number of light attacks and a heavier “alternate attack”. Most attacks transition you from one stance to another; then, since you’re in another stance, you can immediately use that stances attacks. If you build your combos correctly, you can create loops where one attack will lead into one stance before an attack in that stance returns you to the same stance you started in. The end-result is a custom-built train of attacks that you've personally engineered to confuse opponents as you flow from stance to stance. Since you’re changes stances so often, your alternate attack changes over time. Predicting what move your opponent is currently planning on doing is daunting since there is so much they can do. Oh, and did I tell you that you can pull out a sword or gloves and doing so swaps you over to a brand new page of attacks that you need to customise and memorize?

The game has RPG elements to it as well. Gear will drop from mobs as you down them and you'll also find stashes of gear hidden within piles of rocks. Most interestingly though is how you acquire new attacks. You start the game with a reasonable number of attacks but soon you’ll run into people using 'new' attacks against you and if you block that attack, you'll start learning the move. Use your right thumb-stick ability against it and you'll learn it even faster. Story wise, this is a cool concept. Get punched in a particular way a certain number of times and you should be able to know how your opponent punches like that. Unfortunately, in practice, this just results in you actively not killing your opponents. You end up standing around as they are wailing on you while try to block/dodge/parry all their moves; grinding out all the moves before you move along. There is a risk/reward system at play here wherein all the learning you've done during a fight won't be saved until you kill the opponent and exit combat, but there is a lot of moves to learn from random grunts in the world and these don’t really pose a threat once you’ve got a handle on the game. This system gets even worse when you're trying to discover sword specific moves because swords are rare, and by the time you find someone wielding one, they are normally a very strong opponent and you can't afford to grind out these moves because you won’t survive unless you actively damage them.

That's pretty much the entire game. Fight, learn moves, earn gear, equip said moves and gear, repeat. Thankfully that's not as bad as it sounds because hey, it's a fighting game. You came here to fight. So why am I so disappointed in it? Well before I get to the big one, let me just rattle off a few smaller impressions the game left on me: ●       Falling off ledges is far too easy. Admittedly this is a designed mechanic; forcing someone up to a ledge and just pushing them off with attacks is a legitimate way to win a fight but it still felt like it was far too easy to just slip off. Even with nobody attacking you as you’re navigating the environment, one foot off the path might mean falling and most of the time falling is death, because when it's not instant, the insane fall damage will ensure you lose the fight that you just dropped into.

●       The environment is not easy to find your way around. The “map” you're given is essentially 3 circles, and you don't know where you are unless you sit at a bonfire an energy shard thingy or kill a boss as these are the only 2 markers on the map. Many times, vital paths that you NEED to go down are not highlighted or made evident in any way and are sometimes, out-rightly obscured. As a result of this, I completely missed an entire area of the game for a long period of time simply because I couldn’t find the path AND I thought I had already entered that area of the map… There's a time and a place to do-away with the hand holding evident in modern game design but this is too far the other way.

●       Maybe why the environment is so convoluted is to try to hammer in this sense of mystery that the game is so stubbornly trying to instil. The game makes a point of telling you NOTHING about where you are, who you are, what you're doing or why. Thankfully it does tell you what to do (fight people and open a door). It just comes across as entitled. There IS an interesting world here but by the end of the game, nothing is explained at all. Who am I? Why did I teleport when I put on this mask? Why do I need to kill these people? Did I travel through time? Who is this chick with a sword? Who were the people who were here before? The game makes a point in referring to the tesseract-looking particle effect that happens as you kill others, get killed yourself or even unsheathing your sword as “folding” which seems really cool! To sum up my feelings on the aesthetics and lore of the game, I have two words. Obnoxiously Mysterious

Finally, the big one. The game ends. It just ends. No big finish, no special reveal, no closure. Nothing. If you remember before, I mentioned the map being 3 circles? That's it. That's the whole game. I have FOUR HOURS in Absolver, and it's finished. The entire story-mode. That's a third of the I spent in DMC and less than a 10th of the time I spent in Sekiro. Now sure, those are AAA titles with massive budgets behind them, but I cannot help but feel starved of content, especially since the story does not wrap itself up. The game starts with you and a bunch of other initiates standing in an arctic wind before you are chosen, you don a mask and teleport to another world. You then traverse through 12 named areas (3 of which contain nothing) fighting 11 different bosses. There are probably below 50 enemies to fight in the entire game. And then you're done. After fighting the somehow important Risryn, you're teleported back to the place you started with, you graduate from being a “prospect” to become an “Absolver”, you get a neat cape and you get told, “Idk, wait around and grind a bit I guess?” before it teleports you back to the “hub”. To put this in perspective, if the game had 3 times as much content as it currently does, I would still probably call the game short. I have no idea why (besides development problems) the game ended when it felt like Act 2 should have begun.

The game tries to justify this by placing a big emphasis on PVP. There is a system to look up other players and have a tussle and the game is always online so you might find people in the world and decide to start smacking one another but if the game is dead (like it was when I got to it) then all the PVP is non-existent. That's not even mentioning the players who don't WANT to fight other people. As far as I can tell the “latest” addition to the game included the “downfall” mode. This mode (only available after you have graduated to be an absolver) is randomly generated rooms of goons to fight endlessly. The lore explanation for this area only adds questions to the already tall pile of unanswered ones. The game allows you to fight bosses again at a harder difficulty, but this is locked behind PVP progress…meaning that if you weren’t able to find a game like myself, then you just can’t

I hate having to be so negative. Other indie games cater themselves to a casual market and can have all the depth of a puddle and still receive high ratings but because the devs took on such a loved genre, all the depth they have added only makes people want more. I mean really, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I wanted more, there's got to be something good about it. In shooting for the stars, the devs came up short, but the time, skill and effort they put into trying to get there far exceeds a lot of other developers. I can say that the game was bug free and (until it ended) felt close to a AAA title and the sad thing is that it starts to get judged by those harsh standards. For a AAA title, this would be an insult; But for a fighting game? This is a worthwhile experiment; for an indie game? This is one heck of an accomplishment and for your time? This is worth it.

Overall, I'd look to pay $15 to $25 for Absolver, despite its $42 default price tag. It depends on how much you love the third person fighter genre; how much you enjoy PVP (and if you're lucky enough to be in a locale with players online) and how much you want to support the studio. If you can make a trio of yourselves, maybe you can get some mileage out of the co-op enabled Downfall mode, but I wouldn't want to pay much more for that.

[vargatheapprentice]

Honestly like all this fandom discourse is so annoying. Like you can have opinions but y’all are tiring, picking out all the little things in the Arcana and WTNC that you don’t like, making big long posts about how the devs should “change stuff” to suit your tastes.

Honestly if you are THAT bothered by a game, just don’t play it? You don’t need to go on constant public tirades about stuff. I feel like there’s a really simple solution here. I’m super tired of blogs randomly starting with the discourse and having to unfollow them, I don’t want to see this nonsense all over my dash. Idk what’s up with everyone CONSTANTLY hating on everything in these fandoms lately but I’m sick of it. JUST LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS! I’ve been a lot less active lately because of this.

Like at least tag your nonsense so I can block it.

[nateadwell]

task 001

ty for this opportunity to talk about myself it’s my fave thing

YOUR ALIAS & NICKNAMES — perks is my name, but people call me all sorts of things AGE — 24 TIMEZONE — central PREFERRED PRONOUNS — she/her but you could refer to me as a tit and i would respond MBTI — enfp HP HOUSE — slytherin babey ARE YOU A STUDENT? WHAT DO YOU STUDY? — i am a student!! i have a bachelors in english with a minor in creative writing n i’m currently on hiatus from a masters in teaching AND i’m applying to creative writing mfas rn ARE YOU ENJOYING IT? — uhh no :-) LINKS TO OTHER ACCOUNTS & SOCIAL MEDIA — twitter is @hocusperkus, pinterest is /perkseatsass, rp tumblr is @pcrks, my personal tumblr is @cwnt, n my letterboxd is /pcrks but ignore it bc i just made it like a few weeks ago thanks DISCORD USER — perks#9525 WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTION GENRE? — oooo i love ya fantasy!!! but i’m also super into horror and thriller and crime novels too TOP FIVE FAVOURITE FILMS — o dear. shutter island!!!!!!, howl’s moving castle, v for vendetta, spirited away, n primal fear maybe i think A BOOK YOU FEEL “CHANGED” YOU? — it’s a collection of poetry but kim addonizio’s what is this thing called love is fantastic!!!! and should be read by everyone A MOVIE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? — i have lots of dreams where i’m in the spirited away universe/world so probably spirited away WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? — leo sun, cancer moon, capricorn rising ARE YOU INTO ASTROLOGY? — yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT PLATFORMS HAVE YOU ROLEPLAYED ON? — tumblr n jcink WHAT OTHER HOBBIES DO YOU HAVE? i write poetry, i read a lot, and i sleep HAVE ANY PETS? IF SO, TALK ABOUT THEM! — i have two cats, jinx and matilda. they’re brother n sister and i love them to pieces!! i also have two dogs. a shih tzu named finn who is an absolute tyrant and a chihuahua (mix? maybe) named apollo who is the actual spawn of satan idk where he comes from but he’s scary IS THERE A TV SHOW YOU RECOMMEND A LOT? —  i love tv so there’s a lot of shows i recommend tbqh. the tops are fleabag, harlots, handmaid’s tale, and outlander bc i’m a slut for period pieces apparently ANY SHOWS YOU LIKE SOME MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT YOU DO? — outlander?? idk i get the impression that most people who watch it are older but that could just be me misinterpreting things WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT? — shari lapena’s a stranger in the house. it’s not the best but it’s pr good!! CURRENTLY READING? — the flight attendant by chris bohjalian LAST FILM? REC IT? — inspector gadget and ofc i do THREE MOVIES YOU NEED TO WATCH — the nightingale, joker, and call me by your name bc i feel like i’m missing out but ?? we’ll see WHAT MOVIE DO YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN THE MOST TIMES? — shutter island WHAT ALWAYS PUTS YOU IN A GOOD MOOD? — having my cat lay on top of my keyboard so he can get in some snuggles or drinking a rlly cold dr pepper after i haven’t had one in a while or my brother giving me one of his super famous, world-renowned hugs WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIAN / BAND? LIST IF THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE. — wolf! alice! is!! my favorite!!!!!! i wish they would put out new music WILD NIGHT OUT OR QUIET NIGHT IN? — quiet night in, most definitely ANY PHOBIAS? — cockroaches. idk what it is but they make me queasy and i can’t be in the same room as one. also vomit. can’t do it DO YOU LIKE BUGS? — i don’t mind spiders or like..... ladybugs, but not particularly no BIRDS? — yes i lub them ARE YOU A CAT OR DOG PERSON? BOTH? — i like both but i definitely prefer cats!! BIGGEST PET PEEVE? — loud chewing probably FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THE RPC? — creating new characters. it’s super fun and i can’t get enough of it honestly TOP TEN FAVE FCS TO USE? — bill skarsgård, zoey deutch, rami malek, robert pattinson, anya taylor joy, lily collins, taron egerton, dev patel, daniel kaluuya, n zoë kravitz FIVE YOU LIKE WRITING AGAINST? — zoey deutch, laura harrier, saoirse ronan, alexa demie, n zendaya coleman FAVOURITE TYPE OF FOOD? — texmex WORST FOOD? — prunes/plums bc i’m allergic :-( DO YOU PLAY VIDEOGAMES? IF SO, WHAT ONES AND ON WHAT PLATFORM DO YOU PREFER? — yes i do!! i prefer pc games but i also love the nintendo switch and the ps4. rn i’ve been watching a lot of death stranding let’s plays but my fave games are breath of the wild, the nancy drew games, the uncharted games, n the tomb raider games ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE TAG? — i just nearly swallowed a whole peanut butter m&m and i have tears streaming down my face but its gucci LASTLY, HOW DID YOU FIND US? — i’ve known neen for a super long time so anytime she comes out with something new, i peep it

[kosmonauttihai]

I was going to put this in the tags of the previous post but thought better of it when it started getting long, so ramblings about game mechanics in The Isle, which I still haven’t even played but anyway

I hope they do eventually include some way for parent dinos to carry their babies around, because that would be both convenient and adorable, but I understand it’s kind of complicated to put into practice.

I don’t like the idea of the mammal style back of the neck carry (and I think the devs have said they know it’s not realistic, but they could ignore that if it makes the game more enjoyable to play), though it could be a convenient one animation fits all. Otherwise, different dinos would probably have different ways of transporting their hatchlings to safer nesting grounds or to a faraway water source etc. I could see some two-legged dinos like raptors and rexes and such using their forelimbs (yes, rexes - tyrannosaur forelimbs were small but not useless, and also please look at this), or their mouths like in that picture of the Carnotaurus (which admittedly does have pretty useless forelimbs), but this would of course come with the inability to fight off whatever danger they’re in while carrying a baby with your means of attack/defense. Or they could carry the babies on their backs, some birds do that. idk about four-legged dinos, maybe the back thing could work for them, too. Realistically there should be something for the babies to hold onto on the back, and I’m not sure how four-legged babies and smooth scaly theropods would handle that. So I can see it’s not very easy to implement.

Maybe it could be balanced out with a boost of some other means of protecting hatchlings for other dinosaurs and baby carrying enabled for species that could realistically do that? anyway, would love to have it in the game some day.