#i think it's an interesting medium

[daily-rayless]

ABYSSWEEK: DAY FOUR -- LOYALTY

Is it love if it was destiny?

Is it loyalty if you’re loyal because the planet remembers that you were?

[b4kuch1n]

podcast people in my phone

[sysig]

How far did you get? (Patreon)

[oranglesswrld]

i don't think ive seen this discussed but everytime i think about it it makes my brain explode anyway in securite kepler calls jacobi his good right hand and then in into the depths, where jacobi's trust in kepler starts to fracture post contact event is also when kepler loses his hand. the script even points out it's the right one. love tangible manifestations of character relationships

[5-pp-man]

no you don't get it. i literally love stories where they dive into people's hearts/minds (literally or figuratively) sm it's my favourite type of storytelling.

[cinammonelles]

I want to talk about this page in particular because the implications here are so riveting.

Lavi is currently 19. Allen is believed to be 16.

Which means that either

The Bookmen are lying

Bookman Jr. did die then and Allen either didn't age the first few years or his age got fucked up multiple times before he met Mana

The first seems highly improbable at this point tbh. If the Bookmen were planning to make Allen take the poison to make him remember his past then lying about when Past!Junior (presumably) died seems counterintuitive and would only make Allen mistrust them more once he was in full possession of his memories.

It doesn't seem like Allen de-aged to an infant. He says his earliest memories are from when he was in the circus. Even if he did age back to an infant, he would've needed caretakers and nothing in the story suggests he had any.

(Note how little Allen doesn't have his Innocence in the last panel. What the fuck does this mean Hoshino.)

Allen looks perhaps 4-5 in both of these panels. If Past!Junior died over 19 years ago and Allen aged linearly since then, then he would have to be 23+ by now. Even considering the possibility that he aged back to an infant, he he should be 19+ by now and he looks barely over 17.

We can assume that he must've aged in a somewhat even fashion once he joined the circus because otherwise the performers would've commented on it at some point of time.

What happened in the years between Junior dying and little Allen getting into the circus? Was he in a child's body till he acquired his Innocence? How did he even acquire his Innocence in the first place?

There's also a final possibility that came to me while I was writing this post— Lavi was born while Past!Junior was still alive. He was born with the 'mark' because Past!Junior was no longer fit to be a Junior. I genuinely have no idea how Hoshino will explain this. Will it be some sort of corruption? Memory loss? Chronic illness?

All of them seem equally unlikely options at this point. But so did the possibility of Allen and Bookman Jr. being different people before this chapter :)

Either ways, this was a very intriguing chapter and I'm looking forward to whatever Hoshino has in store for us.

[wubbybubbly]

something that I find fascinating in bridge to the turnabout is when edgeworth says that while he was caught up in the middle of the dl-6 investigation, he had actually met misty fey himself.

I’m sure this was before the channeling began. whether or not he was actually in the room when it happened is up for debate. but because edgeworth never alludes to a reunion with his father, I think it’s safe to say that the police barred him from interacting with his spirit. maybe he was forced out of the room. or maybe he just sat there, crying to himself believing his father was right there and he couldn’t speak to him.

what’s interesting is that edgeworth vehemently dismisses the kurain channeling technique and sees all spirit mediums as frauds (even when mia is channeled in court and clearly visible). so, it’s possible that this anger stems from something a lot more personal than “it’s scientifically impossible.” I think he staunchly refuses to believe in the fey clan’s legitimacy because accepting it means that he could’ve seen his father again, but wasn’t allowed to. so he’d rather think that there is absolutely no way to bring back the dead, ever. it’s a way to protect himself—the police were wrong, so he didn’t actually miss his chance to speak to his dad.

I don’t know, there’s a lot more to edgeworth seeing misty as a fraud than just this, and maybe I’m totally wrong. but it’s a possibility that I thought of.

[yellowocaballero]

Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?

Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!

I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.

I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.

I am going to talk about the prologue.

The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.

Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.

But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.

They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.

I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?

Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.

Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.

At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.

What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.

It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.

But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.

ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?

When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.

[jacksoldsideblog]

just randomly floored again by how good fight club is. thinking about the scene where the narrator is desperately tracking tyler across the country. both the book and movie do it perfectly, though in different ways. the movie is very intentional, there's a sense Tyler is playing with him, the narrator is desperate and his only goal is to track down Tyler. i do love the added Tyler was setting up franchises line. but also, it's interesting to think about how it wouldn't work in the book because the tone of all of it is different.

in the book, he's actually still working. it's after he — he alone — takes the sacrifice of hessel, and has 12 licenses in his pocket, he's searching for Tyler not out of suspicion but because Tyler dumped him and he wants to find him. in the book the narrator is much more on board. during his search there's a sense that he's starting to realize, doesn't want to realize, and then the bartender spills it all and he hates it. he hates it because it means Tyler isn't real. and when Tyler establishes the new status quo, there's a distinct sense that the part the narrator hates the most is simply that Tyler isn't real. yes, all the project mayhem is horrifying he guesses, but that pales in comparison to the fact that Tyler isn't real and he can't unlearn that. And Tyler says he won't disappear, but he won't see him either, and that's when the narrator gets all pissy.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

looking at the 13 era books and audios like do we have to do everything our fucking selves around here

[nitw]

just watched the finale of keith ballard's echo playthrough (;_;) and when i saw this quote again from the epilogue something hit me:

yeah uh i'm really starting to accept the "sam was the one who made the decision/fueled chase's drive to make the echo documentary" theory as canon at this point because this is Just Chase

[moe-broey]

One thing they don't tell you about the Senshi tulpa that WILL inevitably manifest in your mind to tell you to eat better is that. Every time I make myself a coffee via kuerig instantly, I can hear him. Lamenting the fact that I have become so accustomed to convenience and ease that even a standard coffee machine has become foreign to me. I am thinking about how to make coffee without use of a machine in the first place, I am wondering where my french press went, I can see him. In my mind. Showing me how to make coffee in The Dungeon. Dungeon Coffee.

[hephaestuscrew]

A book asks the reader to imagine any sensory input of the story, whereas a film or TV show provides both sound and visuals. Audio fiction lives in the space between these two approaches. I think there's a unique power to that middle ground. I love how audio drama asks the listener to co-construct their sensory experience of the story.

Audio drama allows me to simultaneously experience 'This character feels real to me because I've heard their voice' and 'This character feels real to me because I've pictured them myself'.

What the characters are experiencing is both directly presented to me and left to my imagination. There's no page or screen between me and the story. It's there in my ears. It's there in my mind's eye.

There's a strange sense of intimacy to that, the intimacy of feeling like a fly on the wall during a conversation or of hearing a character speaking as if directly to me. Perhaps it sounds contradictory to say that experiencing a story only through sound allows me to feel uniquely connected to that story, but that's one of the reasons why I love audio fiction so much.

[spacefjords]

Hello! It's been approximately a billion years, because i really haven't drawn anything that isnt just.. occasionally my own dnd characters, for a long while? and i haven't had anything i've felt like drawing fanart for in ages (maybe i will again one day, but, atm no), so i've just not had anything to post here.

BUT! i'm getting into traditional art again, i'm in my gouache and learning to draw animals era. which is definitely v different from what i've used to post here. but if that's a thing anyone's interested in seeing maybe i'll remember how to post art on the internet again, and give it a shot?

[do-you-have-a-flag]

me: oh remember when i used a specific painting as reference for dressing up for medieval day in high school? what if i did an edit of another one of the artist's paintings to kind of look like me?

[remembers that there's already hundreds of mediocre filters and generative 'ai' dreck out there that promises to put you in any art style or time period]

me: hmmmm...... but i don't just want a quick result! i want to have fun and add interesting details!

[makes this edit of a William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting manually without including any photos of myself in the file]

[nursemimosa]

best friend he never asked for. well, he's stuck with her whether he likes it or not. good luck to them both.