#im back in...the trenches

[joculatrixster]

"ill admit i dont watch sos nor raft streams but im calling out ppl who r calling scott specifically abusive and ive literally never seen anyone as vilinized as scott in fics i can think off the top of my head 3 fics ive seen where scott is the vilian and portrayed as jimmys abuser which is NOT true for anyone u mentioned." You can't say Scott is the only one villainized in the same breath as admitting you haven't seen content where other CCs get villainized by the audience.

Many of the *exact same people* who criticize Scott have also come out with posts talking about how uncomfortable Sausage makes them, some of them specifically citing his behavior toward Jimmy in SOS. Of course, I can't say that's true for everyone in fandom who criticizes Scott, but in my experience people critical of Scott are critical of others, too, regardless of their sexuality. Saying the criticism is fueled by homophobia doesn't track when the people criticizing Scott are also criticizing straight CCs/characters for very similar things.

Everyone has a different fandom experience based on what circles/fan archives/discussion boards they're on, and even on the same site people can have different experiences because of stuff like algorithms and who you're following. IIRC I have seen a fic where Grian, Jimmy, Joel and Lizzie were all siblings and Lizzie called out Grian and Joel for not being good brothers to Jimmy, while the only fic I've seen with Scott being "villainized" was a short ficlet where he did something small out of jealousy that didn't have any long term effects. I have actually gone *looking* for toxic FH fanfic and not found any. (I like complicated messy relationship story lines, so I feel like toxic FH in fic form would be fun to read.) Obviously this has not been your experience, but you seem to be treating your fandom experience as if it's the same for everyone else, which it's not.

its nnot just my experience when multiple multiple ppl have spoken out about how prominent it is specifically for scott again if its just a small issue id understand but the normalization is insane, ive seen a fic where scott turns jimmy into his pet doll and he needs to be saved from his clutches. ive read a gic where scott kills pearl and wants to destroy the entire world and has jimmy as his pet who he promised to keep as long as he stayed uner his thumb. ive read a fic where scott just leaves jimmy at the alter and pearl hunts him down and lashes out violently at him and we r meant to side w pearl for attacking him bc he didnt feel bad for poor jimmy. these were not obscure fics or small fics. u seem to assume an issue others r clearly pointing out theyve seen way more than others is only something some fridnge guy is complaining about instead of perhaps something UVE missed hm? uve seen 1 fic where joel and grian r kinda shitty to jimmy and get called out ive read multiple fics where scott breaks down jimmy as a person and needs to be saved from him, ive seen multiple posts calling irl scott smajor am abuser bc of one clip, ive seen pll say jimmy deadass is uncomfortable w FH and doesnt like scott which is just weird ass behavior. yes sausage gets flack i belive this but i haven't seen a shit ton of fics making sausage break jimmy soan mentally then get killed or punished in the end for being an irredeemable abuser. ive seen multiple of that for scott or just seeing scott in general in a veryyy negative light which is clearly due to an unfavorable interpretation of his character. which is fine, but name three fics where grian is intpreted that unfavorably w over 100 kueos. no seriously show me the fics where grian dies in the 3nd and its a thing everyone is happy about in the ficand they do not mourn him at all bc they hated him. go on!

its funny how ur orignal anon nitpicked my post and ur reply again nitpicks one part of a wider post as if the point i said was even what ur replyin to, im talking fandom space but even if i wasnt im talking life series fandom while i do mention oli thats just to ponnt out that One scott clip is not Just a scott thing, girl. vilinized in life series aka what i tagged, dont be stupid here its literally just making u look stupid 😭i used grian as an example bc hes someone who acts similar in the space i was criticizing and not sausage bc i am aware things may be different in a DIFFERENT context. ur majorlyyyy derialing and not rlly proving me wrong ur just proving that u dont rlly get what im saying which is fine but also all ur points r just...not disproving anything l. ur example is 1 grian and joel being criticized in one(1) fic(which is not what vilianized even means dude but hey ill give u this u did find one somewhat grian neg fic!) and 2 a guy not even in the fandom i tagged. girl...

[monofazz]

I peeked back into an old hyperfix for a second-

[astystar]

I love them so so much

[haliaiii]

Makoto sketch, been playing a lot of reload over break

[theelmoarchive]

Remembered that I can literally just draw them if I want to

[expiredfishbuns]

ichishiho yayyyyy

[milkbreadtoast]

Prince Jesse Venetiaan, the Moon of the Divine Kingdom🌙✨

[shadow0-1]

Souvenir

[deerspherestudios]

Hi! Question, so at the end of day 2 mycheal says he can’t let mc leave because he hasn’t tried to find their cat but he knows that the cat is dead I hope this isn’t to spoiler-y but does he have a plan what to do or was it just an impulse thing to keep them longer with him?

Impulse, for sure 💔 He probably already regrets his decision on the way back to his home but what's done was done. Now all he can do is wait for you to wake up and see where it goes from there.

[anon-agent]

2-Dee :]

[moliathh]

alucard

[laviaceae]

your art has spiked my interest haha what’s tower of hanoi and how/where do i play it?

OKAY.

TOWER OF HANOI IS THE BEST GAME YOU ABSOLUTELY, 110% GUARANTEE NO REFUNDS, HAVE NEVER HEARD OF.

LET ME EXPLAIN.

(also known as: i win at all times ever and im glad my tawahano propaganda pays off, HAH!)

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Have you ever heard of... END ROLL? Walking On A Star Unknown? Farethere City? These are all relatively niche RPGMaker 2000 games made by a Japanese game creator known as Segawa (せがわ), with END ROLL being the most popular among Western Fans (you might see the main character, Russell, in some fanart with OMORI or Yume Nikki characters for example)!

In fact, for followers of mine who are In Stars and Time fans, END ROLL was credited as one of the inspirations for that game!

TOWER of HANOI is another game made by Segawa, one released in November of 2020, and one of the final games they've made in RPG2K (so they've got an absolute mastery of the engine).

I'll be in part directing this post towards ISAT fans since that makes up the majority of my followerbase on Tumblr, so there may be ISAT spoilers (including Two Hats/Act 6 Secret spoilers) up ahead! There will also be mild TOWER of HANOI spoilers required to explain the game's premise. Proceed at your own risk.

Section One: So, what is TOWER of HANOI all about?

TOWER of HANOI is a narrative-driven RPG with multiple endings (2 'true endings', 3 'bad endings') set in a futuristic, post-post-World-War-Five society. The game mostly takes place within the TOWER, a hyper-realistic virtual reality simulation currently undergoing playtests that was built to be able to rehabilitate HANOI (androids that look and sound and feel emotions like humans do) who have dangerous levels of mental instability.

The stability of a HANOI is measured through their Stress Level, a numerical representation of that HANOI's mental state. HANOI are generally considered by society to be more of technology or property than people (like your computer or your phone would be), and as such have no rights and are often mistreated by humans. More than 50% of HANOI hate their human employers.

In order to combat the dangerous upward trend of HANOI Stress Levels (caused by their mistreatment), the TOWER was created. In it, HANOI are expected to fight and defeat virtual enemies that approximate humans in order to destress through violence. Upon a successful completion, HANOI are to be returned to their human employers.

Because the TOWER is currently undergoing testing, groups of HANOI are accompanied through the TOWER by a human "Inspector" who is expected to report any bugs or issues they encounter during their playtest.

You play as one of those human Inspectors; Inspector No.102, Coral Brown.

(this is my art! you may have seen him in my ISAT au as taking the place of Siffrin).

He's 33 years old, kind, calm, and soft as a marshmallow. He's also a human being who believes in the rights and wellbeing of HANOI, and sympathises with their suffering. As a child, he was raised by a HANOI instead of his parents, which may have contributed to his feelings towards them.

Over the course of the game and as you progress through the TOWER you'll get to meet and intimately know the ten HANOI under Coral's care with Fire Emblem-esque Support events depending on how many times you bring each of them to battle. These can be between Coral and the HANOI, or the HANOI between eachother. (There are more than 100 of these such events to collect in total!)

TOWER of HANOI's characters are both charming and tragic. They each have incredibly well-realised personalities, backstories, and relationships both with the Inspector taking care of them and eachother. It's easy to imagine day-to-day interactions in Headquarters (your hub area) between them all.

You have Adams, a HANOI built for missionary work and who's Stress Level is the lowest out of all ten (and actually below the 'dangerous' stress threshold)! He's silly and mischevious and adores spicy food. Despite this, he's here at the TOWER because he doesn't believe in God, despite that being an important part of his 'role' in the world. When did he stop believing in God, and why? What is his relationship with the people at the Church that took care of him?

Or Mira, a Childcare HANOI that reminds Coral of the HANOI that looked after him as a child. She loves children, but has to constantly grapple with the fact that she can't have any and that any children she takes care of will eventually, inevitably leave her. How will she and Coral resolve the fact that they both remind eachother of someone they knew in the past? How will she interact with the other HANOI?

There's also Nanashi, a cheaply-made HANOI for miscellaneous chores who's trust and care for humanity has been completely shattered due to his ties with the mafia. He wasn't even important enough to be given a name until Coral gives him one upon their first meeting in the TOWER. He hates humans, hates Coral, and refuses to trust him, instead convincing himself that Coral is merely faking his kindness to get him to let his guard down just to use him like all humans he's ever known have done. Will Coral eventually be given Nanashi's trust? What will he do once he leaves the TOWER, and has to be sent back to the mafia where he came from?

Finally there's Kimon Noroi, a HANOI who resembles a child that fulfils a very special purpose. Noroi is what's known as a Yorimashi (憑坐), and uses her body to allow spirits to occupy it and commune with the living. She's seen how terrible humans can be because of the spirits she's seen and can come across as a bit standoffish (though she's really just as much of a menace as Adams is), and definitely, definitely, definitely doesn't miss the Priest at the shrine she lived in before coming to the TOWER at all! How will she interact with Adams, both having people they miss back at home? How will she interact with Mira, who's like a mother figure to her in this place?

As you progress, you can find the answers to all of these questions, as well as the identities of the six other HANOI I've not even mentioned here- all as well-written and interesting as these four.

However, the HANOI aren't the only faction in the game to worry about.

The very NPCs and enemies you'll be fighting along the way are coming to life, gaining sentience, and realising they want something more in their existence than eternally repeating dialogue chains and fetch quests and death in battle.

The head of this 'rebellion' of 0s and 1s, a computer virus named Shunya, acts as the main antagonist for the majority of the game, but even she isn't... 'evil'. She has her own found family, a group of bugged enemies she's befriended along her journey, all of whom want her to realise her dream of "melting" down the TOWER and returning all of the 0s and 1s inside to their base state of not thinking, not feeling, and not being in eternal pain.

Should you fight these people, if their emotions really are real, and defeat them without caring about their plight? Is it right to, to disregard the thoughts and feelings of 0s and 1s for the sake of the wellbeing of the HANOI Coral's grown so attached to? Should you follow the 'role' you've been given, or disregard it and create your own?

TOWER of HANOI excellently tackles the dichotomy of themes between 'roles' in societies and the 'dreams' people have, and nowhere is this more apparent than Coral Brown himself. Throughout the game, there will be multiple events and opportunities in order to control Coral's own Stress Level, and how he feels towards both the side of HANOI and the side of 0s and 1s he's stuck between. Lower his stress and he'll side with the HANOI and enjoy his job, and at higher stresses he'll begin to hate it, being unable to eat or sleep as he starts feeling awful for the 0s and 1s he spends his time killing in the TOWER....

These branch into the two main 'True Routes' of the game, depending on your Stress Level... but I shall leave the specific nature of those to discover in your own playthroughs. :)

If you've enjoyed ISAT, there's a good chance you'll enjoy TOWER of HANOI. Not only is one of the creator's previous games an inspiration for ISAT, they share a lot of similarities in their characters. Coral and Siffrin are very similar as protagonists, and as for others...

(Loop artwork credit to Insertdisc5 from In Stars and Time)

I could write a whole essay on how these two are so painfully similar and would kill eachother on sight. Maybe I will one day. Who knows. Me when I have a guide character lacking half of a face that has Fucking Issues TM stemming from intense jealousy and shares some visual similarity with our main character. Just look at them. This is the sole reason for the twohats warning. Just look at them.

Section Two: Wow, that's so cool and awesome Mx Lav! How do I play TOWER of HANOI?

You can check out the official website here, and the official downloads page here! I'd recommend following the instructions on this website to get the game working faster (because RPG2K is a pain in the ass on modern systems).

...

...Oh? It's all in Japanese? ...Well-

Section Three: --WAIT WHY IS IT ALL IN JAPANESE??

Yes, that's TOWER of HANOI's One (Big) Thing. The one thing you have to look past in order to actually play the game; it's all in Japanese, and an English translation will never be made (unless Segawa-san lifts the translation ban).

However, you don't actually need to know Japanese to play the game. I sure don't! And all of the other English-speaking fans I know that have played this game don't either.

There are three main ways to accomplish this, but I'll only discuss two here:

Sugoi Translator or similar translators. Sugoi Translator (or Sugoi Toolkit) is a machine translation tool that automatically grabs and translates the text in game you're looking at. The translations themselves make a good amount of sense, too! It's a little difficult to set up, but once you've calibrated it once you never have to worry about it again. This is definitely easiest if you want to read all of the dialogue in the game, including flavourtext (as yes, all 10 HANOI and Coral have unique flavourtext for every item in the game...), but is only available for free on the 15th and 16th each month and is otherwise only available to download on the creator's Patreon.

Google Lens. The easier, plug-and-translate method of the two. Simply download the Google Lens app and point it at the text on the screen, it'll read and translate it for you. The translations here are a little goofier (and sometimes, depending on your phone camera quality or lighting conditions, can be difficult for the app to pick up), but it's easy to complete a playthrough with just this tool alone.

If you can't get past this game's One Big Thing, I get it. It's a hard game to sell to people precisely for this reason. I'm at least glad you've read this far down into the post to get to this point and have showed interest in the game. And now you now about a game you didn't before, and you also have an itty bitty bit of context for all the non-ISAT stuff I post here. But this game has had me in a chokehold for the past two years and I promise that, if you can get through it, it's extremely worth it.

If you have the time and you're willing to try, please do! I love this game with all my heart and it's such a shame that most Western fans will never have easy access to it. I shill this game with all my heart, for realsies.

Section Four: Trigger/Content Warnings

If you've played a Segawa game before, you knew this section was coming. Segawa-san's games often tackle heavy or dark themes, and TOWER of HANOI isn't an exception. I'll add a list of content warnings here just so you aren't surprised by anything.

Suicide, both on and off screen

Self-harm, on-screen through dialogue

Themes of terminal illness, on screen

Hospitals (on screen, a majority of one of the game's dungeons takes place in one)

Death (on-screen)

Abuse (off-screen, but portrayed through dialogue)

Child harm/death (mentioned)

Kidnapping/Child kidnapping (mentioned)

Horror elements (no chase sequences, one jumpscare through an optional and hard-to-find sidequest)

Sexual Assault/Abuse (Not on-screen but talked about extensively, can avoided if you avoid Melitica/Merrytika's dialogue)

Mishandling of discussions surrounding gender identity (this character's identity is shown generally throughout the game to be a positive/supported thing, but some dialogue and design choices are quite ignorant/transphobic- though not maliciously. This can be avoided if you avoid Kathy/Cameron's dialogue)

There is also a substantial amount of screenshake employed near the end of the game. This list is from memory and limited from the amount of dialogue I've personally seen/translated, so it's probably not fully comprehensive. But it is thorough.

Section Five: Conclusion

oof... You've made it to the end! This took me the better part of a day to write, and I'm glad I finally got to advertise my favourite game on main. I hope... any of this makes sense, and that you enjoy! Even if you decide TOWER of HANOI isn't right for you, you at least know a little more about something you didn't before. Thank you so much for getting to the end, and I wish you the best!

[fakecats-art]

relearning how to draw dazai... also 2 sushis

[booberism]

tyclancy saying "feels like everybody leaves" and in the same music video torchbearer comes back after more than a whole album of watching over him in any way he could

[b1asho]

Some muttreazik again, this time specific characters I've had in mind. This is an old drawing (one instance of out of date eye color lore old...), I'd love to draw them again but erm finals. Questions comments concerns???

I'm too eepy to really write a lot but :

Randy is the brown-furred guy, he fills the dad role in their farm fam. Tank-born from a human host, strong, but has trouble walking in either bi/quad for too long and has to switch frequently.

Esmerelda (Es) is the long eared lady (also human born). City slicker turned nature-enjoyer. Enjoys 'old world' dresses (but has to modify them for her tail sometimes)

Vera is an old bat lady; you can tell from her very animalistic appearance that she was definitely not tank-born. She's also most likely from the West, where muttreazik get a bit more wild. Likely still born from a human due to her size, what animal shes mixed with, and her ntelligence (also the fact that her batty features don't really line up too well with any one existing bat species)

!!! Her eyes shouldnt be yellow, this was made before i nailed down those color differentiations in mutreazik eyes!!!!!!!! Anyway, their young ward Juliana (Julie) is also a stray, who got stuck with fused hooves instead of hands and a sheep-ish muzzle from her host mother. As i mentioned in the muttreazik ref, it's very uncommon for intelligent muttrazik to be born from animals for the same reason why it'd be hard for us to genetically engineer our own sophont (there's not much for them to work with and a lot of the time theyre just copying whats already there) but it does happen due to muttreazik's unique brain layout allowing them to get around some brain-size rules and Just Make It Happen. They die a lot in the wild because of high rejection rates from the mother and their overall biology making it hard for them to keep up/thrive like their natural kin. Julie is one such case, thankfully found before a coyote got her or something. She's got a claw to help her grab stuff and write more easily.

They also have an intelligent livestock guardian dog, Doug. He's has rudimentary speech abilities (comparable to a parrot) but exceptional barking abilities.

[lightasthesun]

Obi-Wan Kenobi loves Commander Cody so much btw- pass it on.