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bean-bean2000 · 2 months

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The Maid - Part 4

Pairing: Loki x reader (on going series)

Warnings: Angst, abuse, mental health (depression, mentions of suicidal thoughts), swearing, mentions of torture and rape.

Please read at your own risk. Your own media consumption is not my responsibility. Please read and review the warnings before proceeding.

Thank you and enjoy!

Part 3 Series masterlist Main Masterlist

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You don't see the king for a few days following your conversation in the kitchen, however, he specifically requested you be placed back as his personal maid exclusively and indefinitely.

You were surprised to have not seen the snake in a while, assuming he had taken some time off. However, once word got out that the king specifically requested you as his maid, the energy in the maid's quarters shifted negatively towards you.

The guards, albeit not the snake, continue to beat you every chance they got.

"You think you're special because the king requested you?" one asked as he hit your face.

"Is that why the snake is missing? What did you do to him? What did you say to the king?" he yells at you as he grabs the collar of your shirt and punches you once more. You can hear the bone of your eye socket lightly crack.

"We knew you're a witch. You cast a spell on him. That is the only reason he chose you. Admit it!" another yelled at you and kicked your side.

"Where is the snake?! Did you curse him you filthy witch?!"

"Maybe we have to burn her at the stake!" one shouts.

"Maybe, the king chose you because you're just a really good whore" followed by another slap.

"Shall we indulge in what the king is so intrigued with, hmmm?" they snicker as they approach you menacingly.

You're too weak to fight back as they tear off your night shirt.

Doubled over in pain, they notice the bandages around your torso.

"Oh, what is this? I heard the snake had you whipped. Who would want to fuck a whore with such ugly scars?" he spat at you.

"That's revolting. How could anybody ever want you. You're disgusting." another spat at you again.

Your eye is swollen, lip bleeding. They laugh as they walk away and leave you in agony, bleeding and barely conscious on the damp stone floor.

You cough as blood spills to the ground and you push yourself up to walk back to your cot.

Exhausted and in pain, you leave your bandages on, without airing out your wounds and cleaning them. You can feel that they ripped open again, blood spilling onto the bandages, soaking them once more.

You're too tired and broken to care.

You fall to your bed, laying on your stomach and pass out.

The next day you are scheduled to clean the kings office. You wake up and notice your cot is stained with blood, so you go to the common bathrooms to bathe. You turn around and notice your night shirt is also soaked in blood. You take it off but it sticks to your skin, and you observe your back. They bandages are soaking wet and the skin around looks yellow.

You're eye is purple and swollen, your lip is split so badly it hurts to speak.

Banner isn't here for another few days, you ran out of the balm, medicine and have no spare bandages. You decide its best to leave them as is, and simply wash the rest of your body with a cloth. You convince yourself that you can survive a few more days before his return.

You're slower than usual, your back pulsates in pain, unable to properly heal from the constant movement of your work and the never-ending abuse from the guards. You can feel yourself getting warmer and stickier everyday, sweating more than usual.

Walking to the kings wing proved to be extremely difficult in this state. Every movement cause pain to shoot through your body, crumpling you over and having you groan out loud. It takes you significantly longer to reach his office, for which you are scheduled to clean for the day.

Unfortunately, it is the one area of his quarters that requires the most stretching to get between shelves and corners. You sigh and grab your supplies.

Taking a deep breath you start to climb the ladder and stretch to clean the top shelf of the library. You hiss as you work, doing it as quickly as possible to minimize the pain.

Are the consequences of the king's disappointment in my subpar work better than sustaining the current pain I'm in?

You slowly walk down the ladder.

Taking deep breaths you focus on finishing the each task and distracting yourself from the pain. It has been long over 2 hours by now since you started cleaning. Clinging onto the library, you feel your head spinning, you're panting and sweating.

You place your head down against the shelf to steady yourself.

The door to the office opens with a loud click and you pause in fear. You hear shoes clicking on the tile, bracing yourself with fear that it is the snake or any other maid manager that has come to reprimand you for being so slow.

"P-Pardon my tardiness. I- I am aware of my sluggishness. I am unwell and f-finishing soon.'

You're shaking, you can't bring yourself to turn around and face who may be there. Suddenly, you feel yourself swaying, your vision gets blurry. You grab onto the shelf to steady yourself but your weakened state has you slipping. Somebody catches you and you scream out in pain from the pressure on your back. The last thing you hear before passing out is "What happened to you?".

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You wake up, laying down on your stomach. You shiver at the cold and realize your back is exposed. Your heart starts beating erratically as you push yourself up in an attempt to flee.

"No! I'm sorry, please!" you scream as you try getting yourself up.

Your shoulders are pushed down roughly and your head is forced down to look at the ground. You being to sob and shake.

"No... please.... stop..." you whisper between sobs.

"Hold her down. This is going to hurt."

Your head snaps up at the familiar voice. "Banner?!"

He simply shushes you and tells the man holding you down to keep me still.

You hear some liquid sloshing out of a bottle and spilled onto a rag. The doctor approaches you and places it on your back, dabbing the flesh. You screech in pain.

"I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's severely infected. I have to clean it with alcohol. Be brave for me." Banner says to you as he continues cleaning your wounds.

You're screaming and crying out in pain until you can't anymore. Eyes sucked dry from tears and throat raw from screaming.

Suddenly you hear the door burst open.

"What is going on?!" he sees your wounds as you lay bare on the table.

"Norns, what happened?" he says in disbelief.

"I don't know. I went looking for her and found her in your study. When I approached she fainted and screamed when I caught her. That's when I noticed her back. Her entire attire was soaking in blood and sticking to her open wounds. I have to clean them, they're severely infected. She may die." Banner explains.

"Couldn't you have knocked her out first?!" he questions angrily.

You can't see who is speaking and you can't hear over the pulsing in your ears. You're mind is focused on the pain in your back that you don't notice him and Banner approach you. One more dab to your wounds and you pass out from the agony.

He curses and grabs the rag out of Banner's hands.

"Bring her to my chambers, carefully. Make sure nobody follows." He commands to the guards.

"I need to figure out what is happening within my castle's walls. This is not how I rule my palace and this is not how I will let the guards treat my staff." He turns on his heel and walks out.

Reaching his chambers, the guards gently place her on her stomach in his bed. He reaches his window and opens it, as his beloved pet flies to the ledge. The crow caws for greeting.

"Hello my pet. I have a job for you. Find out what is happening in the maid's quarters. I want names and details. You have never failed me, don't start now. Report to me by morning." The crow caws in response and flies away.

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Part 5

Tag list:

@gruftiela

@elegantcheesecakecrown

@chxco-hyujin

@cheshire-salvatore-mikaelson

@i-am-amora-the-enchantress

@cakesandtom

@dorck26

@buckitostan

#fanfic #marvel #loki x reader #loki #loki laufeyson #loki fanfiction #thor odinson #thor #angst #bucky barnes #captain america #natasha romanoff #tony stark #the maid #fanfic series #the maid - Part 4

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cerastes · 3 months

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How do you rate the gacha booty shooter?

NIKKE sure is a game! It's the funnest mixed bag I've played lately. As a side game, it's been pretty good, because it's good at what it does good, and not terrible at its weak points, leaving you with a pretty "Ok :)" feeling overall.

So what's up with Nikke? Yeah, let's have a talk about that so I can explain a bit by what I mean with "fun mixed bag".

Nikke's setting is the same old tired, you've seen it a million times: Once day, humanity was almost decimated by a mysterious enemy that came out of nowhere... We call it... The Enemy! They were simply too strong, so humanity had to deploy its strongest weapons: Anime Girls. And you are the lucky Authority Figure that commands the Anime Girls to defeat The Enemy! But... The Enemy and Anime Girls have more in common than it seems...!?

Replace "The Enemy" with "Rapture", "Anime Girl" with "Nikke", Authority Figure with... Technically "Commander" but more on this in a bit, and you've got Nikke. In other words, the game's setting and premise are just a few word swaps away from being Punishing Gray Raven, Snowbreak, and a bunch of other properties. But here's the thing: Whereas Punishing Gray Raven tells you its story with all the charm and pizzazz of a Wikipedia article, and Snowbreak... Uh, stands there staring at a wall Blair Witch style because nothing ever fucking happens in Snowbreak, Nikke actually has good moment to moment flow. Allow me to elaborate.

Read More break here because I wrote a lot more than I intended:

Nikke has probably the dumbest premise to open with: The Nikkes are basically superpowered cyborg girls (war machines with human brains) that look like supermodels on purpose because they were created, in the game's own words, "with the ideal form in mind". That's all a wordy way of saying they are super hot girls with very powerful guns and superhuman physical capabilities. The dumb part is that Nikkes are treated like absolute shit in-universe by humans. You're telling me humanity is making cyborgs -- not even full on robots or AI, these are straight up people getting turned into weapons -- that are hot as fuck and have tits bigger than my head and asses that could crush cars under their sheer heft and then decided to hate them and treat them like shit, and also these cyborgs are the ones actually keeping humanity alive? Well yeah we need a reason for the Main Character (you!) to be Special and bond with them, so your thing is that You Don't Treat Nikkes Like Shit. In fact, you care for them.

Now, this is all absolutely fucking stupid, but then, the game sort of... Realizes how stupid it is? And some may say "this was always the plan" but to me personally it feels like they kinda realized how god damn stupid this all was as a premise, and they started veering the car mid-trip because for a while this all feels REALLY sincere, not in a foreshadowing way, but then you have some developments such as "no yeah, Commanders are a dime a dozen, are brainwashed into seeing Nikkes as walking garbage and that they'll be heroes, risk their lives for pennies and are extremely expendable", and there's also what I consider a really good and consistent thing the game has done: Nikkes were always a desperate last minute rushed product as a concept, so the safety measures in place so that they don't rebel against humans were never perfect.

This is what I mean by the moment to moment being good: The plot is absolutely whatever, the setting is something you've seen a million times, but the actual scene by scene, beat by beat, is fun. On the micro level, the game knows how to be entertaining and interesting, and when they expand these micro nuggets of gold to a macro level of writing, it's when they end up with their best bits of narrative and world building. I want to use two examples about the whole safety measures thing: Crow and Rose.

Crow is a Nikke that hates humans and is part of a squad of known dangerous elements that Missilis, the most irresponsible of the Big Three companies, is responsible for. This squad is Exotic, and Exotic works with you (your squad is named Counters) on this one mid-game chapter. The thing is, they never really intended to work with you, and Crow wanted you dead because Crow wants to spark a Human Vs Nikke conflict in the Ark (humanity's last big home), because you might quell the hostility between both sides. But, Nikkes can't intentionally kill humans (accidents happen and a Nikke may be ordered to subdue a human, but they are hardwired to not be able to shoot at them or kill them). So, how does Crow go about it when she betrays you? She has her squadmate Jackal plant a steel plate on the ground, and then shoots the plate in a way that the bullet ricochets and hits you. NIMPH, what's used to, among many other things, make sure Nikkes can't turn on humans, was so, so easily circumvented, and this is consistent with what we've been told about the Ark and Nikke in universe development in general: It's sloppy, it's lazy, it's not good. Rose, the other example, is a Nikke from a flashback story around a hundred of years before the start of the game. Rose was a prototype Nikke that was geared for melee combat instead of ranged combat, as all Nikkes are, and she was one of ten such units. Basically, Rose realized that their human Commander was intentionally trying to get them killed until one remained, which would be deemed the success of the line in Darwinian fashion. Rose got so immensely, justifiably angry at this that she plotted to kill the Commander. How can she do this, though, with the NIMPH that prevents her from doing so? Well, Rose was an actual swordmaster, and what she did was wear a blindfold, convince herself that what she was slicing was not a human, but a Rapture, and then she easily killed the shit out of him, unimpeded by her system. The NIMPH, end of the day, is sloppily made, highly dependent on the mental state of the Nikke, and easily circumvented. This is a very important plot point throughout the story, and the way they show this in multiple ways is really good.

Another thing I like is how the game goes about the player's title. It's technically "Commander" but the truth is, most every single Nikke calls you a different way relative to your relationship with them or their impression of you. Rapi and Anis some of the few that call you Commander, because they are in fact your subordinates, but Rapi says "Shikikan" while Anis says "Shikikan-sama" in a sarcastic way initially and after a while in an affectionately playful way, Neon calls you "Master" (Shishou) because she likes the way you use firepower, Liter calls you "Greenhorn" because you are, well, that in her eyes, Moran calls you "Partner" (Ototou, "little brother" in Japanese) because she's the head of a crime syndicate and she considers you as a cool person under her protection, the sports inclined ones call you "Coach", the school themed ones "Teacher", Viper, the flirty one, "Honey" or "Darling" depending on the scene, and so on, the old timey Scarlet calls you "My Lord", the religious Rapunzel uses "Believer", and the coarse, rough around the edges Snow White just uses "You" (Omae). It's a great touch that I like when it's done.

So, basically, you have a charming combination of a setting that's been overdone infinite times with plot beats that vary between legitimately good (the NIMPH and its logistics) and legitimately bad (Whatever the fuck Chapter 18 was, to name one case), and moment to moment that's really charming and entertaining.

The gameplay is honestly extremely unbalanced, and the sheer disparity in strength between units of the same rarity makes you wonder if they have anyone in the team that actually cares about balance, but honestly, putting the issues of balance aside? It's fun to point at stuff and shoot a million bullets and rockets, and they even get pretty creative with the fights sometimes in terms of enemy types and how they use them against you, so gameplay balance is awful, gameplay itself is suprisingly good for how simple it is.

I know people are going to be like "Dreamer, You Didn't Even Rate The Asses" so okay here:

First of all, the ergonomically perfect ass of the VIXEN that lured me into the game in a moment of weakness, Scarlet:

And next up, the Clothed But Massive Ass of Snow White

In fact, I appreciate the variety, because if it was just bare cheeks and panty shots, it'd be kinda whatever to me, but bodysuit ass and clothed but noticeably huge ass? Fresh, to be honest.

Also notable is that progress in entirely gated by passive production of resources and daily stuff because there's no stamina system. Bold!

But yeah feel free to ask more specific questions, but this is pretty much how I've felt about it.

#long post #nikke

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thewertsearch · 8 months

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[ there was more to this ask, but some was spoilers 😆 - C ]

Ooh, that is a fun challenge! I might make this a bigger Title post, actually, because it's been a good while since we've had one of those.

...alright, I just finished, and this one kind of got away from me. I hope it's ok that I sort of hijacked your post to talk about Aspects as a whole - but rest assured, I did answer the original question. Let's get into it!

Unfortunately, it might be kind of difficult to make Class guesses. My theory is that they're Sburb's take on RPG party roles - and for obvious reasons, we haven't seen how any of the non-Player characters would fit into a Sburb party. A full analysis of the hypothetical Midnight Crew, Exile and Guardian sessions would be fun, but it's a little out of scope for this question.

Personality certainly seems to be a factor. I don't think it's a coincidence, for example, that the Seers are the most inquisitive members of their respective parties. Dave and Karkat both hide their true emotions behind a persona - but then again, so do Feferi and Jade, two happy-go-lucky Witches with incredibly dark backstories. Dave may be the worst offender, but half the cast is hiding behind some sort of facade.

John, for his part, doesn't seem to have anything in common with Equius - at least, nothing I can see. I might dig a little deeper for human/troll Class parallels once we've seen more of Equius and Feferi, but our sample sizes are so small that it's going to be hard to tell which shared traits are intentional.

Anyway, none of the other classes feature a pair of Players that I could toss into a Venn diagram, so we're at a bit of a dead end.

I suppose I could approach this from another angle, and try to extrapolate a Class from each character's life circumstances - for example, by speculating that Grandpa's inheritance of the Betty Crocker brand makes him a potential Heir - but that's clearly not an accurate method, given that literal heiress Feferi is a Witch.

See, Classes are a tough nut to crack! The main issue here is that the comic has given us very little to work with - it's been tight-lipped on Titles in general, and there's been almost no exposition on Classes specifically.

It might be easier just to try and assign Aspects to each of the non-Players - so that's what I'm going to do. I'll also take the opportunity to put forward my best guess for what each Aspect means.

Without further ado:

Time means time.

This one seems extremely straightforward. Not all the Aspects are quite so literal - Breath, for example, seems more closely related to wind than the body function it's named after - but Time is about engaging directly with its namesake. It may have other meanings as well, but we haven't seen any yet.

If you wield Time, then you're the session's designated time traveler - which is a lot less cool than it sounds, because it means you're on Doomed Timeline cleanup duty. Enjoy the corpse disposal!

Both of the comic's Time Players have fashioned their own personal time machines out of musical instruments. Music seems to have some connection to Time - which makes sense, since it's an art form of pitch, rhythm and beat. Music is time.

We can also talk for a second about Dave's Quest. As we'll see, each Land Quest seems to directly concern the Player's Aspect. Dave's Quest is to...

...um.

Well, one of these is Dave's Quest. The LOHACse is the only one of the two which is directly related to Time, but I've speculated that Dave's sword-in-the-stone quest will involve him rewinding Caledfwlch to an earlier point in its timeline. Plus, the Caledfwlch quest also speaks to Dave's Class as a Knight, so I think it's the real one.

For the sake of completeness, let's also talk about the Time Lands. Each Land always seems to feature one trait which either directly or obliquely references its Player's Aspect. LOHAC is self-explanatory, but Aradia's Land of Quartz and Melody is an interesting case, as its 'Aspect trait' could be either of its two descriptors. Quartz could reference the quartz in a modern clock, and Melody could reference the musical connection I mentioned above.

I can't think of any non-Players with particularly strong ties to Time - aside from the Felt and Lord English, who we know very little about. Let's say they're all Time Players, and English rules over them as a Prince of Time. As a mob boss and destroyer of worlds, he undoubtedly shares some of Eridan's megalomania.

Space... well, we actually don't have much for Space. We haven't seen Jade or Kanaya do anything with their Aspect, nor do we know anything about their Quests.

We do know that both Space Lands contain the Forge, so maybe there's something to that. Presumably it's going to forge something, and I think it's probably where you're supposed to create the universe. If your task is literally to create Space, it makes sense that a Space Player would take point - but that begs the question of what would happen in a session without a Space Player.

Maybe the game prefers a Space Forge, but it can spawn on another Land in lieu of one - or maybe Space is the 'default' Aspect, and it's actually mandatory in every session.

As far as Space's symbolism is concerned, my assumption is that it's as straightforward as Time, but we'll need to see more.

While I'm here, I guess I should dip my toe into this hot mess.

Yes, LOFAF's Space Word does appear to be Frogs. Yes, that does imply that Kanaya's was also Frogs, or something equally mysterious. No, I do not know what this could possibly mean.

These frogs are apparently heralds for their god, Bilious Slick, whose shadow has been looming over the comic for months now. I guess their appearance on the Space Lands implies that Slick is Space themed, which is at least consistent with my theory that he's the final obstacle between the Players and their universe.

Moving on, because I give up.

(Oh, and if anyone's a Space Player, it's Bec. You could also make an argument for Mom Lalonde, since her home was fitted with an observatory, but that's very tenuous. We don't know much about Space, so I don't know how else to tie a character to the Aspect.)

There's a lot going on with Light.

All Quests so far have had ties to the Player's Aspect, so whatever Jaspers thinks he's talking about here should have something to do with Light.

Jaspers... seems to be talking about different ways to represent information, and instructing Rose to find a particular DNA sequence. (I have to assume this isn't the MEOW sequence, because I don't think Sburb wants Rose to fill LOLAR's oceans with First Guardians.) So, it sort of looks like Light is information, doesn't it?

Well... maybe. See, things are are complicated by the fact that Dave's Quest above was also Knight-themed, so this spiel from Jaspers could be partially Seer-themed. How can we tell which is the Seer stuff, and which is the Light?

Recently, Rose said this, seemingly confirming that her Title is about information ('knowing shit'), and also implying that the 'knowing' is a Seer thing.

This allow us to compare her to Terezi, the other Seer. As we'll see below, she specializes in discerning people's personalities and motivations - literally, seeing into their minds - so it sounds like being a Seer is about perceiving or 'seeing' things that relate to your Aspect.

Rose, the Seer of Light, should therefore have an advanced perception of Light - but just what is Light? What can Rose see?

Well, she says she can see 'the big picture'.

I think Rose's powers allow her to zoom out, understand the broad strokes of a situation, and see how it all ties together - and I think that is the essence of Light.

Dave wonders how he's going to navigate the Furthest Ring's twisted-up space, so she scans the overall situation with her Light powers, and vaguely understands that it won't be a problem. Dave will be able to play his part.

However, if he asked why, exactly, it won't be a problem, or how he's going to do it, she'd be stumped. That's not her department.

I think I sort of understand what Light means now, but I can't think of a succinct way to describe it. The zooming-out Aspect, maybe? The everything-is-connected Aspect? The don't-sweat-the-details Aspect?

Guys, I think I'm starting to understand Homestuck!

Ah, shit.

Yeah, I don't know how Vriska or her powers slot into this interpretation. As the Thief of Light, I guess she'd be stealing... the bigger picture... from other people? And that lets her take their luck, somehow?

I guess when you give yourself 'good luck', you are sort of improving your situation in the general sense, rather than the specific. You don't know the details of how your luck will manifest, but you don't really need to - all you need to know is that it'll be good for you.

I don't know. This is getting messy, and more than a little abstract. I'm sure Vriska will be doing a lot of luck-stealing, so we'll hopefully learn more as we go.

At least the Land of Maps and Treasure fits Light-as-the-big-picture. A map is, literally, a big picture.

A flurry of disquieting happenstance is related to the ADORED SOVEREIGN. With no other options, her counsel is all that is left to be sought. Abdication is never ideal. But in the face of inevitable conquest, conceding ground can supply the only remaining advantage.

WQ, then, seems like a good fit for a Light Player. After listening to PM's full report, she seems to understand how the pieces fit together.

The Queen knows that Jack wants her dead, and clearly understands how dangerous a Player item can be, in the wrong hands. She doesn't know what's in the package, or what Jack will do with it - but she doesn't need to. She can see the writing on the wall, so she retreats.

I did a bit of Breath research for this post, and landed on the above quote. I think Breath is about direction and destination.

TT: John? TT: Are you there? -- tentacleTherapist [TT] is now an idle chum! -- EB: hey, yeah i'm here! EB: and not dead i think. TT: I know. TT: I've been watching you scramble through the house like a lunatic. TT: You should have answered me sooner.

John's a meandering kind of guy. He's wandered haphazardly around the session for three thousand pages, but he always seems to reach his goal. Despite not knowing where to go, he always seems to be where he needs to be.

John's Quest as the Heir of Breath has been explained in detail. He needs to unclog the pipes of LOWAS and defeat Typheus, freeing his Land's fireflies from their cloudy prison. In essence, John's Quest is to give these bugs a new direction, allowing them their full axis of movement once again.

There might also be some Heir stuff in this Quest, but its ultimate goal seems to align pretty well with that Breeze quote above, so I'm willing to accept it as Breath evidence.

AG: Have you ever tried to fly? I 8et you haven't! AG: How a8out we take to the skies, Pupa! AG: Hahahaha, oh you like that idea, Pupa? Yes, you do. I can feel it in your simple, mallea8le 8rain. AG: You want to fly so 8ad!

Breath might also have something to do with agency - or at least, the ability to choose your own actions. John's freedom-themed Quest isn't the only example of this - Tavros's entire arc is about how Vriska keeps denying him agency, while pretending she's doing the opposite.

(I'm going to avoid comparing Homestuck to other works, because this post is long enough as it is, so you're just going to have to imagine the twelve paragraphs of Deltarune meta that would otherwise be placed here.)

AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP,

Tavros just wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to ignore the game and float around Prospit, away from everyone's expectations - but he was denied this opportunity, again and again. It's no wonder that he's on a bit of a high right now, after being granted the freedom of his new robo-legs.

As for potential Breath Players - well, CD reminds me of John a little, but he seems a lot more likely to stay on task. I don't know what Aspect he'd be assigned.

Now - we're onto the Aspects we've only seen in trolls. We don't have as much for most of these, since we haven't seen any troll Quests, nor any Aspect powers sans Vriska and Terezi.

Terezi, the Seer of Mind, deals in personality - or maybe, more generally, vibes.

CG: WE'RE NOT EXILING JACK, HE'S COOL. [...] GC: [...] 1 DO NOT G3T 4 GOOD F33L1NG FROM H1M! GC: H3 K1ND OF CG: STINKS? [...] GC: W3LL GC: SORT OF GC: H3 DO3SNT SM3LL B4D 4CTU4LLY GC: H3 SM3LLS R34LLY CL34N 4ND SH1NY 4ND D4RK D4RK D444RK L1K3 4N O1L SL1CK 4ND TH3R3 1S 4 T1NY H1NT OF L1COR1C3 TH3R3 TOO GC: 1TS MOR3 L1K3 GC: TH3 W4Y H3 MOV3S GC: 1 SM3LL H1S SMOOTH MOT1ONS 4ND TH3 W4Y H3 SQU1NTS H1S 3Y3S 4ND 1T G1V3S M3 TH1S R34LLY N3RVOUS F33L1NG

When she smells someone, her Mind-enhanced perception doesn't just tell her what they look like - it also seems to communicate that person's essence. Terezi can see the idea of Jack Noir, here. She's smelling what it feels like to be inside his head.

GC: TH3 D4Y 1T H4PP3N3D W4S TH3 F1RST T1M3 1 3V3R H34RD FROM MY LUSUS GC: SH3 WOK3 M3 UP, 4ND 3V3R S1NC3 H4S B33N T34CH1NG M3 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO S33 GC: 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO P3RC31V3 3V3RYTH1NG 1 GU3SS, NOT JUST 1N 4 S3NSORY W4Y

Terezi is also a naturally perceptive person, so it's sometimes unclear whether her reads are due to Seer clairvoyance or her own deductive abilities. As a general rule, I'll only treat her insight as a Mind power if she explicitly refers to her sense of smell as its source, since that's the avenue for her supernatural perception.

GC: T3LL M3 YOUR R34L N4M3!!! >:[ TG: ok lets say its TG: dave why not GC: D4V3! GC: TH4T SM3LLS L1K3 TRUTH GC: 1 W1LL D3C1D3 TO B3L13V3 1T >:] TG: fuck

Therefore, I'm pretty sure her powers do, in fact, allow her to detect lies. Mind, then, might be related to the concept of truth - as in, your Mind is the truth of who you are, stripped of all illusions.

I was initially going to place Droog here, since he seems to be the only Crew member with his head screwed on, but I no longer think Mind is about being rational or analytical.

Blood is the first Aspect I don't really have a guess for. Maybe it's got something to do with genetics - Karkat is a carcinoGeneticist, after all, and a mutant to boot.

Spades Slick is blood brothers with a Knight of Blood, and he's got a lot in common with Karkat, commanding his party with a moderately annoying leadership style. I'll put him here on the strength of those parallels, and I can revisit it when Blood is explained.

We don't know much about Nepeta, so we don't know much about Heart. Shipping is all about drawing them, though, so maybe Heart is about romance - or, more broadly, relationships and connections.

Nepeta's Land of Little Cubes and Tea is a lolcat joke, so it might not conform to the Aspect Word pattern. I guess, since the cubes are sugar cubes, it might be a pun on 'sweetheart'? Who knows.

I'll put Hearts Boxcars here, and not just because of his name. He's the only member of the Midnight Crew with any interest in shipping.

Feferi revived Sollux with a kiss, so Life is probably healing, as it is in many other element systems.

How her Land of Dew and Glass relates to Life is a mystery. While dew can refer to condensation on any surface, it's often used to describe the water droplets which accrete on grass and other flora. That's kind of a connection to a living thing, but feels like a stretch and a half.

Let's also put Nanna here, since she's the only true healer in the cast. I don't know why the other sprites don't use the healing beam.

Our Void Player is in a Land of Caves and Silence - a hole in the earth, and an absence of sound. Void seems to represent negation, or a lack of something.

Also - this might be a reach, but Scratch describes the gaps in his clairvoyance as 'pockets of void', so perhaps Void also has something to do with uncertainty - aka, a lack of information.

Most of the Guardians could go here, really. Bro seems the best fit, since he's constantly hiding from Dave, and completely vanishes for most of the session.

When a timeline is marked for destruction, we say that it's doomed.

Doom seems to represent death, obliteration and entropy. Sollux Entered into the Land of Brains and Fire, and I think it's pretty clear that Fire is the trait which is tapping his Aspect.

Doom may also be the Aspect of prophecy. After all, Sollux is a prophet of Doom - so maybe he's a prophet because of Doom. It could also be related to his nature as a Mage, but Mages haven't been explained, so I can't speculate.

I originally thought that Sollux might be a Seer - but the Seer Class seems to be about gathering information related to a particular Aspect, rather than directly divining the future. Maybe a Seer of Time could see future events, but it's certainly not a default ability of the class.

Grandpa seems to have some ties to Doom. He prophesized Jade's death to her when he told her about her dead Dream Self - plus, he's a hunter, with a house full of corpses. Also, his entire presence in the session is overshadowed by the spectre of his future death. This is probably the Aspect guess I'm most confident in.

I guess there's also Hope, a brand-new Aspect with no lore. Eridan's 'hope' would seem to be expressed in the fact that he constantly hits on people, hoping in vain for a yes. Thankfully, we're not aware of any non-Players like that....

The mail is the one final hope for resurrecting a dead planet from its ashes, and the letter carriers are the brave soldiers of God in this righteous crusade. They are the defenders of the light of knowledge, free communication, and the exchange of ideas. They are the bold toters of all those little papery conduits of freedom, the white postmarked angels that whisper a message on their deliverance, a promise to the yearning: "There is hope yet."

...but PM is pretty much screaming about hope in her mail monologue, so we'll put her here.

ORDER IN THE COURT. YOU WILL HAVE ORDER IN THIS COURTROOM. IF EVERYONE DOES NOT SETTLE DOWN YOU WILL CLEAR OUT THIS COURTROOM, YOU SWEAR TO GOD.

It's hard to classify the Aimless Renegade. He's all about crime and punishment - which is certainly a Terezi trait, but I don't think it's a Mind trait.

As for Dad, he has a well-established gentlemanly personality, but I don't know what Aspect is the most 'gentlemanly'.

I could try and classify more obscure characters like FedoraFreak, the Pen-pal, Jaspersprite or the Hussie self-insert, but I'll tell you right now I don't have any guesses. Still, that was fun, and it was a good opportunity for me to update my thoughts surrounding the Aspects!

#homestuck liveblog #full liveblog #act 5.2 #theories #asks #deep dives #classpect

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samble · 2 months

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kyubey's main defense for "why do you cause the suffering and deaths of billions, if not trillions, of children?" is something about how the magical girl system (girls contracting, girls turning into witches, etc) creates energy to combat entropy and the heat death of the universe. while kyubey and incubators as a whole are presented as extremely advanced, logical, and emotionless as a species, this "defense" shows how irrational and paranoid they are.

the universe is still in its "early" years. it is not near its end or even its middle years in any sense of the word. entropy and heat death will not be any concern in the slightest for trillions of years, and that's an absolute low ball amount based on my pathetic math skill guess of the figures. the actual year estimates until heat death i can find all have numbers so large they aren't even written out normally, they're written using scientific notation. a few have said numbers listed like "1.7×10^106yrs (if protons decay)". that is a truly unfathomable amount of time.

yet the Facts And Logic, "why is human thought so irrational?" species is so worked up over this far future event (that is not an immediate threat in any way, shape, or form) that they use their irrational paranoia over it to justify murdering children and causing them to turn into the literal personifications of their own personal misery. "for the greater good" and "the ends justify the means" don't apply when the argument is this backwards.

even if you want to headcanon that maybe entropy was approaching at some point, and they had to beat it back before, which is why they're so worried — it's implied in canon that the present day pmmmverse is in no immediate danger. besides the fact that they'd likely be issuing contracts to literally anyone and everyone if that were the case, all that is said is that madoka witching out caps their necessary quota or something, so they don't need to worry about it for now. this sort of implies that it's not a current crisis, or else why would they stop the second they met this "cap"? why not continue elsewhere to get extra energy?

if incubators are immortal and are concerned for that reason, they have a literal infinite time to figure out a better or more convenient solution. current human theory already has questioned whether things like creating other/new universes intentionally is possible (and seeing that ours exist, "creating universes" is clearly possible Somehow). why not try to contact (adult) humans and exchange information or theories? sure, incubators are supposed to be highly intelligent and almost see humans as cattle, but they've been outsmarted by even human Children before in canon (madoka's wish being the prime example, and that was something thought out by a middle schooler). logic can only go so far, and this is said by someone who, irl, tends to look and act like the -_- emoji when not masking. humans could toss "dumb/silly" ideas at the wall, and incubators could use their advanced technologies and experience to see if they would work. perhaps a solution to escaping the universe/preventing heat death/etc could be found via cooperation, as opposed to "we must murder children because we are scared of something that will happen a zillion years from today, it's not our fault 🥺". many a human idea has been born simply out of "i wonder if this will work?" as opposed to only sticking to logical steps or only doing one thing forever, because you know that One thing For Sure works. even if it's tedious/more trouble than it's worth for the outcome. but incubators do not know or try this, because due to canon implications, it seems their MO has always been "lets murder the populace for miniscule amounts of energy" (as seen by the alien magical girl in one of the games) instead of "maybe we should try to find a solution together".

#pmmm #madoka magica #madomagi #essays #<- ish #upl #sambling

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mdhwrites · 11 months

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Have you talked about the emperor's coven? How the story treated it is confusing because I can't tell if it's suppose to be a serious threat (besides Belos himself) that we or the characters should be concerned about when it didn't feel like that until S1 finale. It's like I was watching a different show when the last episodes dropped, packed with angst out of the ordinary.

So I actually haven't talked a lot about the coven itself outside of talking about the show gutting them in S2 as they're... Hard to talk about. Until the last quarter of S2, they really don't exist. Not in a proper form. Really, they're just their figure heads of Lilith, Hunter and Kikimora. Not even Belos interacts with them enough to reflect on the coven really and Kiki still doesn't do a lot with the scouts, Hunter never does anything with them (mostly, we'll get into it) and Lilith is more about her sister.

Before I get too far though, I actually want to start with stating the simple fact that unlike a lot of shows, TOH DID need a governing villain for its theoretical main themes. It needs someone to enforce the norm in order for the weird to be embraced and for adventures to be about conformity versus self-expression and BOY WOULD IT HAVE BEEN NICE IF THEY DID ANY OF THAT!

For S1 though, the figurehead approach works actually for the same reason as why Stormtroopers work because that is what they're evoking with the guards. This isn't even a knock against it as the Empire is an amalgamation of a lot of tropes with Nazi Germany on top of them. The specific dynamic in S1 though is that of the original trilogy. Of VADER and the Stormtroopers.

See, regular guards in most media aren't a problem. Despite their training, they're just easily available fodder. So long as you allow the guards themselves not to matter and not to truly represent the larger governing body, they work fine for that. But that means the onus of intimidation is on the figurehead. This is why the Stormtroopers can suck and be a meme but you don't inherently assume the Empire sucks because they answer to Vader. A problem they can't deal with is answered by someone who NEVER gets brought down. Who never loses his intimidation.

Lilith is OKAY at this. Covention is a REALLY good showing for her and S1 doesn't knock her down until the very end of it when Hooty beats her. She's the butt of some jokes and can be tricked but her power is never in question. You know that if she took this seriously, you'd be screwed, a promise she makes good on in Agony of the Witch which makes Hooty making her a joke of that episode more okay because it's supposed to demonstrate a contrast to what she's doing at the end.

Also, points to her for actually playing with themes of conformity versus self-expression. That is explicitly the line between Eda and her. The comforts of conformity versus the freedom but risk of self-expression. Of a normal industry job or freelancing as I see it a lot. She never transfers to Luz though besides Luz wanting to check out Covens in episode 5.

But... Also the coven is hard to figure out properly in S1. The scouts themselves show up in probably like a handful of episodes at most and mostly at the finale. It's part of what points to a shift that SHOULD have happened. That we're not dealing with prison guards, we're dealing with royal forces now. Inquisitors (or those red guards in Star Wars) rather than Stormtroopers.

And then we meet Captain Phasm- I mean Hunter. Captain Phasma in Star Wars is pitched as the elite stormtrooper. The new leader of the forces not to be fucked with. She gets few intimidating moments building her up and then she comes head to head with the heroes and... Dropped in a garbage shoot. How different is that from Luz taking Hunter so not seriously as to lick his hand or other annoying, smug actions that are more to a rival than someone who tried to murder you and your family the last time you two met (as a note, the transition for them between Changing Tides and Hunting Palisman is... Awkward. It's not the worst but you really feel like there should have been an inbetween episode for them). But for the purpose of this blog, there's another element important to this beyond Hunter's arc.

He is our new figurehead and while intimidating at first... Now he's a joke. He's a mad but sad boy who no one, including the Coven, treats seriously. So... Why should we take his coven seriously?

And the show only doubles down on this. By the next time we have a major encounter with them, Kikimora is both the figurehead now AND she is being knocked down because she is literally nothing but crazy and paranoid that entire episode to the point where she makes mistakes that wreck her entire squad but one without ANY real intervention by the heroes. So now we don't just have implications but explicitly the show is showing us that the EC is pointless and ineffectual.

The final nail for this coffin is of course Sport in a Storm where... They just shoot the theme that the EC is there for in the head for really, REALLY lazy character work. Hey, all those bonuses to conformity, reasons to work with the EC, etc. like that to have this push and pull? Nah, they're pure evil and even take on what modern society sees barbaric practices by the Spartans of yeeting kids onto mountains because how old was Hunter when he was doing the test? In fact, a LOT of coven scouts don't seem happy in the coven and one explicitly leaves at the end of Labyrinth Runners and so does Steve in Titan, Where Art Thou'? And with no consequences for either of them.

It reinforces a feeling that was already present LONG before now with Amity in S1/S2A of conformity and telling authorities to go fuck themselves not only to be just objectively the right thing to do but easy. After all, when Amity did it, she got a power boost, despite letting her grades slip, and no one ever gave her real consequences that lasted for more than five minutes despite the show claiming that her parents are pure evil and hyper controlling. The EC in the last quarter of S2, the part they're most involved in and so the only time they actually start creating an identity for themselves, feels a lot like this. Like this force and law that we've been told is hard to break, hard to fight against and now... It's nothing but a joke. An easy hurdle to bypass.

It's made even worse frankly by the fact that the literal only time, in the ENTIRE series that a normal coven scout is treated as a threat by ANYONE... Is at the start of Labyrinth Runners to make it clear just how objectively wrong Amity is about Willow's strength. So even then, they're not being taken seriously? And why should they? S2 almost OPENS with the coven scouts being replaced as a threat by the Abomatons. We haven't EVER seen the scouts fight properly except for the end of S1 where Hooty beat them easily. You haven't tried to make them as threatening as most Power Ranger footsoldiers before you're adding a new elite enemy who is supposed to be taken seriously... Who we ALSO never see actually pose a real threat to anyone (besides when plot demands it in Clouds on the Horizon shortly after Willow effortlessly BURIES ONE). The first one we see in a group of threats that are active are taken out by the environment in Eclipse Lake for a Coven Captain to instead be Eda's enemy but by then, Coven Captains haven't been built up and the abomatons are still waiting for a moment to be than more menacing.

The EC is just... Of a kind though. I mean, in S1 it worked... But only kind of. In that season, Lilith is still a joke. She isn't knocked down but she's put in a dog's body, she still loses the duel in Covention by trickery, she still feels the need to cheat rather than just believing in the strength of her pupil, she loses the Grudgby match against Eda and she is taken out by a bird tube on ACCIDENT. It's VERY easy not to take Lilith, and thus not to take the EC, seriously in S1 which is just matching the tone of S1.

But when it actually had to cash the check of the concepts it was writing, it couldn't do it. The foundation wasn't there, the care wasn't put into it and so the problems of S1 that could be ignored because the show still felt like it had any real interest in being a kid's show shatters when it is claiming to be more serious.

But the Emperor's Coven is never more serious. They're always a punchline. The joke is on the viewer though who ever expected the cast to be challenged or for the main threat of the series to actually have a point.

==========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #The Emperor's Coven

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toonqueen · 6 months

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Duckvember Day 17: Jobless Duck

I really couldn’t come up with anything for jobless duck so instead here is a list of Mighty Ducks OCs that don’t play hockey. WHY.

Annabelle Knix -

She was a friend of Duke’s in a smaller thief group he was in before he joined Brotherhood of the Blade. Sometime later she was thought to have died in a heist that went wrong. Turns out though she did live but was put in a government lab as an experiment with some badass cyborg technology. When Dragaunus attack she was released by the lab because they were like, “Heyyy so your a super soldier can you go fight what’s going on.” and she was like SURE and then once she was released she just cheesed it out of there because it was not cool being held in a lab and being experimented on by your own government. She did later join the resistance at some point lolol. Once on Earth she can’t play hockey cuz kinda cheating to go up against someone with robotic limbs.

Kirqut Freeduc -

ALSO someone from the smaller thief group Duke was in when they were younger. He was actually Annabelle’s boyfriend. When Annabelle was thought to be dead he got himself into trouble. Long before Dragaunus attacked he was already off the grid. Duke didn’t know where he was and assumed the worst. WELL THEN- years later now on Earth Kirqut showed up with a bunch of space fire warlocks being a master of sorts in fire magic. He challenged Duke to a duel, for some reason blaming him for Annabelle’s death even though he had nothing to do with it. Turned out Kirqut was a bit brainwashed by whatever bad magic group he got tangled in. Duke informed him that Annabelle was alive and just a few hours away. The two of them fight until Anna shows up and is like WTF and slaps some sense into Kirqut and everything is now then fine and they have to beat up some space warlocks its fineeeeee.

Anyways Kirqut can’t play hockey anymore because of his abuse of fire magic he can’t be on ice long or it starts to melt. Look man I was 15 when I originally came up with this stuff. I dunno WHY. Both Anna and Kirqut end up living in Malibu and called in to help in fights when needed.

ALL OF THE CHERIBU TEAM -

Created by @fluxchix and then kinda shared. All of the colorful ducks on this team are from a renaissance planet with magic and knights and stuff. Nina who is the team’s healer would probably learn some general ice skating out of curiosity. She gets shipped with Grin. lol. Bo who is the team’s leader would learn some skating and casual Hockey out of curiosity I believe too but never play professionally.

Bleu is too busy being a badass witch to get into games. Gobi is more of the business side of the team. Back on their planet he was more a merchant that was funding the team but also could do a little fighting. Would rather have Phil’s job than play hockey. The other person on the team I can’t remember how to spell his name lol. Soldren? Something like that. I think he would be interesting in learning ice skating/roller blading but that would be it for him too. OH GOD I forgot the strong guy on the team that was pretty much GRIN lawd. Yeah he wouldn’t play either.

REX -

He’s a char that is Dragaunus’ son but ends up going to the duck team with the second generation. He would totally want to learn everything about hockey. Maybe partly motivated by the fact he end up dating Mercedes who is Nosedive’s daughter and his mom is my main OC Duluna who is Duke’s sister. Though, while the NFL is letting Phil get away with an alien duck team when they see a 7 foot tall lizard they’re like NAH we gotta draw a line somewhere. So he doesn’t get to play professionally. Lol.

RICHARD??? -

I can't remember his name. Son of Falcone. Not interested in playing hockey because I just decided that right now.

I THOUGHT I WOULD HAVE MORE OCS THAT COULD NOT PLAY HOCKEY FRIK. I feel like I’m forgetting SOMEONE.

I should draw them all maybe later I’M BEHIND ON DUCKVEMBER I CRIEEEE.

#duckvember #duckvember 2023 #mighty ducks the animated series #mdtas

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gamesception · 8 months

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Sception Reads Cass Cain #17

Batman: Gotham Knights #5 Writer: Devin Grayson Pencils: Dale Eaglesham

Young Justice (1998) #21 Writer: Peter David Pencils: Todd Nauck & Sunny Lee

Batgirl #4's cliffhanger stretches on for another post at least because we have a couple guest appearances from July 2000 to look at, in addition to the Azrael issue we looked at previously. Not too much to say about these, but I'm pretty busy this week, so that works out.

.....

First the Gotham Knights issue. The villain is an escape artist with magic powers who for looks more like a barrow wight than a stage magician. I will say his little lockpick talons are kind of cool, though for some reason they're just boring old claws on the cover art? As per last time I don't want to just rehash what happens, you can find the comic online easily enough, and it's an ok read.

The main thing Cass is doing here is that the villain has magically 'unlocked Batman's violent urges' or whatever, so Bruce is on a rampage and Cass and Jean-Paul (nice to have one last story with the two of them as a team) are trying to fight him while simultaneously saving the villain/other random criminals from him. It's an interesting contrast to current events because while Bruce does manage to fight off Cass and Azrael simultaneously, he doesn't just beat them. More that he fights them to a standstill and slips away by first injuring the villain enough to get Azrael to stop fighting to tend to his injuries, at which point he's able create enough distance from Cass to make a break for it, and later he just throws a guy off a roof, forcing Cass to rescue the guy and again giving time for Bruce to slip away.

It is a solid example that even in her earliest prime, Cass's abilities didn't mean she could automatically or easily beat Bruce in a fight - Bruce's size, strength, experience, training, and resourcefulness put them more or less on par, particularly if circumstances are such that Batman has some extra edge - in this case the magical willingness to injure his opponent or random third parties where Cass is still holding back. Cass's special body reading puts her on the level of the best non-powered martial artists in the DC universe, but she doesn't automatically beat any of them, including Bruce.

The marked difference between this and, say, the recent Batman issue where Bruce beats his entire family simultaneously, isn't the outcome where Bruce comes out on top, it's more the process of getting there. That it is a fight, that Bruce just barely gets away, it doesn't feel like bad-god fanboy wankery. But whatever, the big two comic studios have long been asylums run by the inmates, ascended fanboyism often runs wild, you just kind of learn to live with it.

Back to the comic at hand, we've looked at an issue or two where Cass was drawn by Eaglesham before, and he does a pretty good job here as well. Though again he occasionally draws her weirdly muscularized, like here when she's catching some guy Bruce throws off a building:

If I had to complain about anything in terms of Cass's depiction here, though, it's not the art, but rather that she's mostly just a physical presence, when some of the themes of the issue are things that her personal experiences and character motivations should allow her to contribute to more meaningfully. But this is before her new verbal paradigm had worked its way around the studio, so I guess this stands as another example of why that change was overall a positive move, even if I will forever dislike how it was done.

.....

The Young Justice is a fun sorta stand alone bit. Klarion has turned Lobo into a little kid, so a younger looking but just as powerful Lobo is on a rampage fighting Klarion to try to force the Witch Boy to turn him back, which he can't do for multiple reasons that don't really matter. Young Justice tries to break up the fight, leading to a bigger fight which makes a mess in Gotham, which is justification for Cass to show up as a guest star.

I don't have much to say about this one, it's a fun little stand alone story with an amusing enough resolution. Cass does cool ninja stuff, but she's still not talking yet outside of her own book, so again her presence is pretty purely physical. We do get a neat inversion of the common problem of Cass looking too old when drawn by other creative teams because in this style if anything she looks too young.

We do end on this amusing bit of over-protective Bat-dad with his "I don't wan't you playing with those other kids" schtick.

...

So yeah, a couple fun stories. Honestly, going back and looking at every single appearance of Cass has made me realize that she did show up as a guest in other books a fair bit more than I remembered, at least early on. The writers and editors at the time gave her more of a push than I in my faulty memory have given them credit for. At least early on. Though this was before DiDio was in charge.

Next time (?) back to Batgirl proper, where we'll get to meet up with David Cain again, back when he still was David Cain.

#Cassandra Cain #sception reads cassandra cain #Batgirl #late upload today #been distracted lately

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musubiki · 6 months

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Has...Oscar tangled at all with the merchant before? Maybe made an impression that made the merchant think "wow this kid is actually kinda annoying" ? It also makes me think, okay if oscar is mentored by madame springs and he succeeds her, that would certainly be a heck of a way for them to be "worse than her."

Nosy persistent conspiracy theorist who wants to uncover your true nature AND who's also trying to run you out of a business in the healing sector? I'd start losing my patience. Tho this is assuming oscar's penchant for the weird lives on even in older age

you know...this is definitely something i need to explore more because!!!! true!!! he is going to eventually replace madam springs, and that means on some level, oscar will know the merchant beyond "npc guy who sells things with limited dialogue options"

for now (and throughout most of the story) oscar is just "the apprentice." madam springs is always still the one to interact with the merchant, and you see oscar just kinda smiling and listening in the background waiting for them to stop bickering.

BUT when oscar DOES interact with the merchant (in a non-buyer-seller context), he IS worse. but its in the "I'm a better healer than madam springs and also she charges too much for the work we do imo." so hes even WORSE competition. and i think this is the only way to actually irritate the merchant, is if you start interfering with his business in a way where he cant oppose you.

lore fact: the merchant really does have the best goods at the best prices!! hes the kind of npc you would see on RPG guides about "if you need [item] you need to / should get it from the merchant because hes the only one that sells it / he has the cheapest price and refresh rate." and the ONLY one who can beat him (not even for everything, just for healing items) is madam springs. so her business is the ONLY thing that is mildly a threat to him, and he hates it. i dont think you see him get irritated at anyone/anything else except her!!

(and he cant steal her formulas or kill her either. "Her business patented the formula before the fall of the witch king, so I'm assuming he can't legally take it and sell it in his own shop." --Sulluvan about madam springs and the merchant)

on the note of oscar trying to uncover his true nature, oscar is smart enough to not mess with it. its mochi and lime who almost fucking die trying to uncover it, against the advice of EVERYONE telling them to leave it alone. the only reason they didnt die is that the merchant spared them because he knew they both still had a part to play that hadn't come to pass yet. (also i want an episode that delves into who/what he is without my main characters dying LMFAO). so after that incident, mochi and lime both tell oscar and the guild about it, so he leaves it alone

(side note: at the moment, lime is actually the one in the guild who knows the merchant the best, strangely. i think its the black canvas thing about him, that whatever magic the merchant uses that prevents people from questioning his nature, it doesnt work on lime. and by "knows him the best" i mean he gets a bit more cryptic dialogue from him than the others)

#obviously doesnt know him as well as sulluvan does #but someone in the guild needs to be able to actually get cryptic hints from the merchant #lore #text #bpp #i like the idea that all the guild members are slightly close to the crypids #mochi->sulluvan #lime->merchant #oscar->madam springs #evetually coco will get one probably

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ro275805 · 11 months

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An exploration: a scenario where Jack has more time to bond with Cyan and Rose (and its potential impact on the story)

Below is what was originally a conversation that I had with a friend, cleaned up to be slightly more comprehensible and easy to read. With that in mind, it may read slightly oddly or stilted in some areas. There is messiness in the writing due to it originally being written collaboratively in a conversational context. Still, I hope the idea is clear and can be enjoyed!

(Also, this one's pretty angsty, so heads up for the usual Shadow-related angst. There's some violence and a close main character death, but no actual death or bad end.)

Instead of Jack finding the witch village and the village being raided that day, Jack is allowed to bond with Cyan and Rose over a period of months. Secrecy is incredibly important in this case, but Rose has taken such a liking to the boy that she urges Cyan to welcome Jack and similarly wants him to visit again... And so, when Jack can manage it, he sneaks away to the witch village and spends time with Cyan and Rose. Cyan's dream is to one day travel the world... Of course, Jack has such a plan ahead of him, too. Together, having started to form something of a genuine friendship, they make a lighthearted pledge to one another that when they get older they’ll travel the world together.

During one of Jack's visits, he's unintentionally led Clover directly to the village—a mysterious boy consistently going to a 'hidden' place was something that ended up being tracked... And so, the events of the anime play out. In this case, the loss of Cyan and Rose is even more deeply traumatic. It is not something he so easily forgets... Cyan still becomes 'Shadow Joker', but there is so much more pain and conflict with the exchange. Especially when you can plausibly shift more genuine blame on Joker, even if it still truly wasn’t something you could reasonably call ‘his fault’ outside of Shadow’s grieving and traumatized perspective.

Of course now, he's had so much more time to learn what that boy was like in the past—people change, but they used to be true friends. They promised to travel the world together.

And I want Shadow to be more unstable in this scenario, for him to be able to hide that's he's suffering less. During one of his fights with Joker, he accidentally makes an earth-shattering mistake—enough to make it obvious that he's not going after Joker solely of his own volition. It devastates Shadow... because Shadow knows what the stakes are, and what such a slip means. He retreats from Joker and is unable to defeat him... and Clover knows of Shadow's grave mistake, having Shadow closely watched. He ties Shadow up and beats and injures him far more severely than he ever has before.

Eventually, Joker and the other phantom thieves manage to invade Clover's base (with assumption that a lot of events happen differently to canon), everyone's broken up into different areas—so it's just Joker who finds Shadow, alone. Tied up, bloody, like a ruined soulless doll. Horrified but with years of training that’s allowed him the ability to push through initial responses of shock to respond as needed, Joker is able to promptly attempt to untie Shadow, who appears barely conscious.

Joker speaks but the words meld together in Shadow’s brain, incomprehensible. He doesn't understand anything except the a phrase that turns his blood ice cold: ‘I'm going to help you.'

Joker is able to free Shadow from his restraints, but as he's doing this, Shadow is becoming more aware and just as steadily, more panicked—he can't let Joker save him, Clover's going to find out; Clover's going to find out and he's going to kill Rose—he already messed up and put her life at risk…!

And so, despite Joker attempting to save the boy from certain death at the hands of Clover, Shadow makes a move to kill Joker.

Joker is likely only able to catch the brief glint of something reflective that slips out from Shadow’s bloodied sleeve—and Joker is stabbed with a sharp dagger.

Shadow looks so withered and fragile—he's stabbed Joker, an effort to take his life, but he's shaking so terribly... He chokes out a sound akin to a sob. The sort of panicked, tortured crying that's breathless and like hyperventilation... not loud, but so intense. I want Shadow to have had the opportunity to stab Joker in a place that would have sealed the deal. But Shadow's notably stabbed Joker in a spot that would certainly leave him alive—though dead if not treated relatively soon.

And I think... Joker is prudent in this way. Joker would understand very quickly why Shadow would be so reluctant to trust him. Rose's absence didn't get past him. Joker is the type to have likely pointed it out long before this point, and so he'd cough and groan, and then choke out, "I get it... That bastard's got Rose, hasn't he? You can't ask for help because you're the only one who can protect her."

He's struggling to speak, but he might even... Smirk a little bit. Because Joker gets it. It's so cruel, it's so fucked up—he honestly should have seen it sooner. That Shadow was placed here as bait by that horrible monster of a man, everything orchestrated so that Shadow would be forced to make an attempt on Joker’s life.

And Shadow… despises himself. He trembles in a culmination of pain, terror, and adrenaline—he hates Joker, but not like this. Shadow’s killed, but he's never wanted to.

I think it's possible that Shadow, especially this Shadow, would become jealous of Joker's miracles. He always comes out unscathed. He's always in control. If he just had Joker’s abilities…

He really wishes he could take Joker's life. Take his abilities, his brilliance. Ruin Joker for how Joker ruined him. Save Rose and disappear together.

… but another part of him wishes to be friends with Joker again, and beg for his help.

Surely if anyone could find an opening to defeat Clover, it would be Joker...

Shadow steeled himself and held the dagger with the genuine intent to kill—despair and such hatred flickering in his eyes as the opportunity he’s sought for so long presented itself—but as he brought it down, despite it being something that would have been so easy .... He misses the intended spot.

And he's not that clumsy, even in his injured state. Clover made sure to leave him uninjured enough to do what was needed of him.

The part of his brain so spiteful, so jealous, so full of hatred, battling with the part that's SCREAMING to be saved—and that conflict of mind is enough.

—Of course, I want Joker to still save Shadow. Shadow, who attempted to kill him even when Joker was attempting to save him… However differently things may turn out in this scenario compared to canon, in the end, Shadow and Rose are still saved, and Joker manages to get the help he needs in time. Just as it’s the case in canon, Joker and Shadow have a bumpy, difficult relationship. As two boys who struggle to voice their emotions and make themselves vulnerable, with as much pride and trauma that they have attached to vulnerability (in different but distinct ways), becoming ‘friends’ in the way that their childhood selves had gradually been becoming appears to be an unlikely thing to occur.

But also their own very individual ways, especially with how forgiving Joker is and how glad he just is to have the two safe and sound, I like to imagine that slowly there is an unspoken trust and bond formed that helps the emotional scars heal over a bit… A post-saving-Rose dynamic between them may gradually become a bit friendlier than what’s shown in canon—and as a trio, I think it may be possible for there to be a bit more naturalness to their interactions (that doesn’t result in Joker being quite as frequently uptight and awkward).

They will need to talk about what's been left unsaid eventually, though...

#kaitou joker #joker (kaitou joker)#shadow (kaitou joker)#rose-musing

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samijami · 11 months

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More about my Slapface!AU

Slapface is a horror movie available on Shudder, Roku, and other streaming platforms. It's about this boy, Lucas, and his brother, Tom, whose parents died in a car accident to which the kids were the only survivors of.

Tom is the older, and adult (legal drinking aged) brother, while his younger brother Lucas is around a pre-teen or early teen. Their parents were close friends with a cop, who now repeatedly gives Lucas get-out-of-jail-free cards when he gets in trouble. Tom is an alcoholic, pouring his mourning and stress into alcohol and days out to the bar.

Tom has a girlfriend, whose name I already forget and don't care for, who constantly argues with him and leaves for days on end after arguments when she's supposed to be helping take care of Lucas.

Lucas has a girlfriend, who he's implied only have a crush on at the beginning, though later on we find out he's actually dating her. Her name is Moriah, and she has two friends--Donna and Rose--who bully Lucas and beat him up for 'stalking' Moriah, and 'stealing' her journal, when she's dating him and let him have her journal. Yet Moriah lets them believe that he's a creep so she doesn't speak out against her friends, since they're her only friends. She also participates in harassing Lucas because of this reason.

The main plot of the movie consists of Lucas receiving bullying from Moriah & Co. aswell as his brother playing 'Slapface' with him everytime he does something wrong. Slapface is a game where you take turns slapping each other to see who can slap harder. Tom plays this game as a correctional thing, and even when Lucas doesn't want to play it, Tom makes him, aswell as making him slap back so its 'fair'.

Tom's girlfriend snaps at him once about how it's abuse, and how you shouldn't deal with a kid's problems that way, in which he responds 'I don't abuse my kid brother!'

Lucas finds this abandoned house in the woods, which Moriah & Co. make him explore on his own, promptly sprinting away when hearing him scream from the inside. The Virago Witch, the 'monster' as Lucas calls her, lives there and found Lucas, trying to take him for an unknown reason. Lucas gets away but finds her looking at the sunset, so he joins her in curiosity. A wholesome friendship between the witch and boy follow.

Virago slowly becomes more and more protective over Lucas with the more he tells her of his home life, and she slowly starts killing off everyone who has hurt him. It started with Tom's girlfriend due to her leaving Lucas and Tom from an argument for 2 days. This, Lucas is implied to have known when seeing evidence of the murder, in which he covers up for Virago.

Then after a dog, it's Moriah (who is shown to have barely survived, recovering in the hospital), and Lucas is blamed for her attempted murder and arrested since Donna and Rose saw Lucas with Moriah's unconscious body when he found her there, afraid that she was dead and begging her to wake up. He is questioned, (illegally without a guardian present due to how tired these cops are of the kid), and the police do not believe his 'monster' story. He is left in the interrogation room, when Virago breaks in and kills every fucking police officer in that joint and unlocks the interrogation room for Lucas. Lucas leaves cautiously, taking a gun from a dead officer, as he is scared of Virago at this point. He looks around, before dropping the gun and running out back home to then posses a knife.

Virago shows up there, and he asks her is she's good or evil. Because at some point earlier, they did have fun together, but Virago teased him about his dead mother by grabbing one of her clothes and draping it out infront of her like she wanted to wear it, and danced with it. He got mad at her, she got mad at him, blah blah. But ontop of her aggression, Lucas now sees that she is killing people.

Tom ends up coming home since Lucas asked him to, and Tom plays Slapface with Lucas, who hid Virago in the closet so she won't be seen. He didn't want her hurting Tom, so when she approached to do so, Lucas hugged Tom and told him he loved him.

And then minutes later, she ends up killing Tom anyways by playing Slapface with him in return, Lucas kills her with a knife, then her body disappears and now Lucas has blood on him. The cops come in and arrest him, the end. It is implied that Virago was nothing more than a figment of his imagination and he had committed those murders, or Virago framed him and disappeared deliberately.

But I like the 'this kid imagined a monster when he really just meant himself' story, also considering the implications throughout the whole movie for this ending. People kept asking him, 'Are you sure you're not the monter you're talking about?'

So I wanted to make an Undertale AU off of this movie, and follow this theory. I was also going to change a few things, and slightly exaggerate the abuse further. In the movie, Tom did shove his brother when he was drunk, but I'm going to make it more of like, he kind of hurts him doing that, or almost hurts him (with like hitting) since the movie was going for that but didn't show it.

It's also going to follow by the logic that the Virago Witch is nothing but a figment of Lucas' imagination, in place of himself as a coping mechanism to convince himself he is not a killer after he broke due to his parents' deaths and constant bullying/abuse from those who are supposed to love him.

And yeas, I turned every straight ship gay.

Here's the cast:

Sans as Lucas - he/him, 13 years old, pansexual, cisgender

Papyrus as Tom - he/him, 22 years old, bisexual, cisgender

Mettaton as Tom's 'girlfriend' (boyfriend) - he/him, 20 years old, asexual panromantic, transgender man

Grillby as Moriah - he/him, 14 years old, gay, cisgender

Catty as Donna - she/her, 15 years old, heterosexual, cisgender

Rosie as Rose - she/her, 15 years old, heterosexual, cisgender

MonsterKid as that random kid with the dog - they/them, 9 years old, dunno, nonbinary

Annoying Dog..as the dog

Undyne as the police officer - she/her, 26 years old, lesbian, cisgender

Chara as the Virago Witch - they/them/fi/fir, dunno, dunno, nonbinary

Gaster as the dead father - he/him, dunno, heterosexual, cisgender

Morana (custom skeleton OC) as the dead mother - she/her, dunno, bisexual, cisgender

The rest of the people..as some sort of pedestrian or role I haven't thought of yet

Please ask these characters questions as I am very sad cuz I can't draw them digitally at the moment due to my digital drawing pen being chewed up by my kitten-

Please-

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creepypastakork · 10 months

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G Witch Fanfic Outline: Suletta vs. Lauda (Alternative ep. 23)

I really liked imagining if Suletta stepped in to stop Lauda and got one last one-on-one right before confronting Eri, so I'm writing my ideas out now.

Right before Lauda goes in for the kill on Guel, Suletta flies in and stops him with Calibarn, with Chuchu and the others not far behind. Lauda now redirects his anger to Suletta, which she uses to take the fight away from Guel and Miorine, having overheard enough to know they're both in danger.

Suletta tries to reason with Lauda, reminding him that Petra's still holding on, and how all she wanted was to spend more time with him, which won't happen if he keeps using the Schwarzette. When that only manages to make him angrier, Suletta moves on to trying to defend Guel and Miorine.

"While you may be right that they've both made mistakes, they're both trying their hardest to make up for them right now! So please, stop this!"

Sadly, he's unwilling to listen to anything she has to say, having gone berserk for a while now, and so he continues his assault. (On her end, even Suletta starts to lose her patience hearing Lauda badmouth Miorine, but the last thing she needs right now is to lose her cool.)

Fortunately, at permet score 5, the Calibarn is plenty fast enough to avoid all of his sword slashes and shots. However, Suletta never fires a shot back at him, staying entirely on the defensive.

"She doesn't want to risk killing him," Miorine realizes, "she doesn't want to make the same mistake she made at Plant Quetta... but she still needs to take control of the fight somehow, or it's only a matter of time until..." Miorine can't bring herself to finish the thought.

Suletta's tenacity is matched by Lauda's sheer rage, and the fight seemingly reaching an impasse. Having attempted the rest of his options, Lauda pushes himself to permet score 4, combines his gund bits with his sword, and raises it upwards, unleashing multiple beams at once in an attempt to overwhelm Suletta ("I'll end you, you Mercurian witch!")... unintentionally giving her just the opening she needed.

"There!" Suletta calls out, finally firing a shot. Watching this, Guel is, for a split second, terrified that he's about to watch Suletta kill his brother. Thankfully her target is not the main body, but the Scwarzette's sword. The beam hits true, melting both the Schwarzette's gund bits and sword down to the hilt!

"I... I can still beat you!"

Lauda tries to fly in close and bash her with the swords molten remains, but in the heat of the moment, he loses track of her completely. He heard boosters going off, but didn't know where she went. That's when he sees a light in the distance, a cross of light that's quickly growing bigger and brighter. It's the Calibarn, and it's headed full speed right at him!

Suletta decides to end this by taking a page out of Chuchu's book. She closes the "broomstick's" thrusters, letting the momentum propel her, and lets the Calibarn rotate just as she reaches Lauda, leading into a golf swing with the weapon aimed right at the Schwarzette's head!

"What... What the hell are you!?"

*WHAM!*

The gundam's head is caved in, destroying its optics and severing permet links, and sending the mecha spinning helplessly. Lauda himself, meanwhile, is completely dizzied by the blow, but alive. Finally unable to keep fighting, this lets Guel get through to him, as well as letting Felsi interject and tell the both of them off.

"Thank goodness," Suletta says to herself, watching this play out. Seeing these two siblings settle their differences reminds her of Eri and Prospera, and what she still needs to do. Reinvigorated, she resumes the mission with the others and continues the trek towards Quiet Zero.

#me posts #g witch #gundam the witch from mercury #fanfic

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xb-squaredx · 1 year

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The Bittersweet Taste of Bayonetta 3

PlatinumGames is among my favorite developers out there. Rising from the ashes of Capcom’s Clover studio, they are on my short list of developers that make amazing games that really resonate with me. Their games are quirky, often mechanically deep and a bit unwieldy. They’ve managed to carve out a cult following over the years, and by far their most infamous series has been the stylish action of Bayonetta. In 2017 Bayonetta 3 was announced but as the years passed with no news, many grew nervous. Platinum’s output since then has been quite inconsistent, and earlier this year they released Babylon’s Fall, a game that didn’t crash and burn so much as spontaneously combust before it ever got off the ground. There’s this cautious air around Bayonetta 3’s release; it isn’t enough to just be a good game in its own right, but many feel that Platinum’s future rides on it succeeding. In the weeks before the game released, the game became the catalyst for a discussion on properly compensating voice talent. Bayonetta’s original voice, Hellena Taylor, called for a boycott, claiming she wasn’t offered a fair wage, though later information would imply she was omitting information to make her case look better. Regardless, the air around Bayonetta 3 wasn’t all that positive and I’m sorry to say that, after having gone through the game, I find it didn’t come out the other side smelling like roses. Bayonetta 3 is a very interesting game to talk about, for a variety of reasons both quite positive…and unfortunately very negative. One of my most anticipated games of this year, it has given me some mixed feelings and leaves a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

ENTER THE BAYO VERSE

After two games where Bayonetta has taken on the legions of heaven and hell and taken on a few gods, there’s really only so much the series can do to raise the stakes. The game opens with the introduction of our main threat: Singularity. A being so strong it threatens not just the universe, but the entire multiverse. As Singularity consumes one unlucky world, a young woman named Viola just barely escapes, traveling to another universe and enlisting the help of Bayonetta to stop Singularity and save all of reality before there’s nothing left. There’s definitely a more dire tone to a lot of the game, as we can see firsthand the destruction of Singularity’s forces, with Bayonetta and company being pushed to the limit to save the day. Of course, there’s still plenty of fun, campy moments throughout, like impromptu dance offs, a demonic concert (complete with glow sticks!) and more than a fair share of tasteful nudity and the sensual style that has made the series infamous. The opening prologue level certainly hits a lot of the same beats from past entries; Bayonetta’s living it up in town, something goes wrong, Enzo is made a fool, and she beats up some basic enemies while taking her clothes off and eventually showing off some fantastic new guns. Viola serves as a pretty interesting foil to Bayonetta at the start as well; despite putting on a cool front, she’s clumsy and goofy, frequently at odds with Bayonetta as she struts about with all of the confidence of a seasoned Umbran Witch. With the titular witch taking on a bit of a mentor role, it’s a decent starting point for another adventure. The promise of interacting with different variations of our heroine as they jump from world to world also just seems rife with possibilities. That said, this strong start can’t quite hide the game’s frequent rough edges in the presentation.

As the Switch gets on in years, the lacking quality of its hardware only becomes more apparent, with even Nintendo’s own first party offerings often having to make sacrifices to run on what is ostensibily an outdated smartphone. The Bayonetta series has never really been a graphical showcase, though there’s aspects of 3 that definitely feel more than a bit dated, even going back to the original game’s release during the seventh console generation. NPC character models look and animate quite stiffly and environments are often extremely empty and lacking in high-quality textures. Sadly the game’s performance follows suit, being a bit of a downgrade from even the previous entry on the Wii U. The game targets 60 FPS but often is somewhere closer to the 40s or 50s, with occasional dips below that in more hectic moments. Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most sensitive to this stuff and it never really impacted my gameplay, at least to a degree I was consciously aware of it, but it is a shame the game can’t give more consistent results.

(source: Eurogamer )

I do find the game is smooth enough most of the time, and it’s clear Platinum brought their A-game when it came to the overall presentation despite all of this. Cutscenes are still directed with that manic energy that makes Platinum’s titles such a joy to experience. Bayonetta herself, and most of her enemies, are animated extremely well, with tons of personality oozing out of many attacks and even idle animations. The menus are a bit sleeker than past entries and generally things are as seamless and smooth as could be when getting into and out of combat encounters. There’s a lot less of the stop-motion cutscenes in this game as well, which helps the overall story feel a bit more high budget and consistent. Music is also pretty consistently great. From the eerie, ethereal music often accompanying Singularity’s minions, to the peppy battle themes accompanying Bayonetta and Viola’s various scraps, there’s a lot to like. One of the real highlights would be “Fertile Rondo,” an operatic jam that doubles as a huge reference to The Fifth Element.

Voice acting also remains generally strong throughout, with returning actors like Yuri Lowenthal, Grey DeLisle, and Dave Fennoy feeling right at home with Luka, Jeanne and Rodin respectively. I have to really credit the amount of charm Anna Brisbin gives to Viola, and overall the character made a good impression on me. Of course, this also means I have to touch on the controversy with Bayonetta’s voice change. Taylor’s take on the character was great, and regardless of who replaced her, it was always going to be a bit awkward, but Jennifer Hale is a pretty good get in that case. A veteran in voice over, Hale’s credits are numerous and should honestly speak for themselves, and I would say she nails this take on Bayonetta, to the point it almost feels like she’s always played the character. There are points she sounds almost uncannily like Taylor, though admittedly it isn’t always consistent. But overall, she embodies the sass and style associated with the character and makes the transition about as flawless as could be hoped for overall.

I have…more things to say regarding the overall story, but we can save that for later. Instead, there is still an underlying action game under all this, so I’d better get to talking about that.

SIZE ISN’T EVERYTHING (BUT IT HELPS)

There’s been a fair bit of escalation throughout the Bayonetta series from game to game. The first title mostly focused on Bayonetta herself beating up hordes of angels, with only occasionally summoning limbs of demons for her Wicked Weave finishing strikes, and often a fun QTE at the end of major encounters to finish off bosses that teased more of the demon. Then in the sequel, Infernal Climax took center stage, where for a brief time ALL of Bayonetta’s attacks summoned demons, and at one point you were even directly controlling the demon Madama Butterfly for part of a boss encounter. But the threat in Bayonetta 3 is so great that summoning the whole demon is both frequent and required to even hope to win. In a bit of a twist on things, the main villainous faction are man-made homunculi, and since they aren’t angelic in nature Bayonetta’s summons have no real desire to help out in battle. Thus, she invokes the Demon Slave ritual to take direct control over them, allowing players to control the demons in real-time. There’s definitely some stipulations though; Demon Slave constantly drains Bayonetta’s magic meter and once emptied you’ll have to wait for it to fill to a certain amount to summon them again. Demons can also eventually turn on Bayonetta and go on a rampage if attacked enough, and perhaps worst of all, Bayonetta is stationary while players are in control of demons, meaning players need to learn the proper time and place to invoke it. Players can equip up to three demons at a time and freely switch between them in combat, in many ways allowing demons to serve as additional weapons to Bayo’s arsenal. Admittedly, some of the demons are a bit unwieldy and require practice to use efficiently, and some are a bit situational, but all of them bring something unique to the table and further expands Bayonetta’s combat options.

One facet I really enjoyed about the game is the Demon Masquerade system. Depending on the weapon equipped, at points Bayonetta can take on a form similar to the demon said weapon is based on, which can drastically change her mobility. With her default guns, Colour My World, she takes on Madama Butterfly’s visage and gains the ability to slowly hover through the air on her wings, while with Gomorrah’s weapon, the massive G-Pillar, she takes on a more feral stance and hops about, with a fast air dash to help her cross gaps quickly. Players also use skill trees for each weapon to unlock more moves in her arsenal that also have her transform to perform them, like powerful crowd-clearing attacks, or the near-universal gap-closer moves that have her home in on the nearest enemy. Demons also have a similar skill tree to enhance their own movesets, and by filling out both you gain one final upgrade that fleshes out each moveset. It’s a bit different from being able to buy moves in Rodin’s shop, but it works well enough as incentive to keep fighting and trying out different weapons.

On that note, Bayonetta 3 has some of the best weapon variety in the entire series, if not THE best. While this game does away with the ability to set weapons on both your hands and feet, thereby reducing the amount of interesting weapon combinations and synergies, this change allowed them to go all-in on some out-there weapons that wouldn’t have worked otherwise. One of my favorites is Abracadabra, a combination of a top hat and cane that allows Bayonetta to moonlight as a magician, allowing her to summon various projectiles out of her hat at random, as well as utilize powerful electric blasts. Or there’s Tartarus, a slow but powerful weapon consisting of thick, stone doors that can plow through enemy attacks, but when opened can summon a variety of weapons, including some powerful gatling guns that rip through targets. I could go on, because there are TONS of weapons in this game with their own quirks and uses, all with their own demon that has their OWN intricacies. Many demons are often large beasts, like the dinosaur-esque Gomorrah, or Baal, a giant toad, but there’s more than a few unique demons like Wartrain Gouon which…is a train. And when you summon it, you have to draw the train tracks and hit attack buttons along the route before the train barrels on through and slams past all in its wake. The sheer options available is amazing, to the point that it’s a tad disappointing you can only have two weapon sets at any time. That said, while weapon variety is great, enemy variety leaves a bit to be desired.

Most of the homunculi enemies suffer from one of two major issues: they have samey designs that keep them from standing out and feeling distinct, or they’re giant enemies that are basically designed purely for demons to rip through their inflated health pools. If you’re someone who ends up hating using demons in combat and would rather ignore it, then have fun chipping away at these damage sponges! Of all of them, the Virga enemy might be the least fun to fight in the game. Basically a giant Wiggler enemy from the Super Mario series, it never stops moving or attacking and often has no reactions to any attacks done to it, making it difficult to get through the fight unscathed. That’s on top of the camera frequently clipping into it and making it almost impossible to see. Really, the camera might be the greatest enemy in the game. Not only does this game employ a “soft-lock” and force Bayonetta to attack whichever enemy has triggered it, but the “hard lock-on” often forces the camera to make strange, sweeping movements, and it isn’t long before that lock-on is broken and you’re forced to do lock-on again. On top of that, enemies break the series tradition of mostly not attacking when off-screen, and won’t hesitate to take potshots at you with little warning. With the combat areas in general much larger to accommodate the demons and large enemies, this can also mean it’s quite easy to lose track of some smaller enemies and be forced to whirl the camera around frantically to find them. After the previous two games had such a tight camera by comparison, this is a bit of a downgrade unfortunately.

Generally, when Bayonetta’s core combat is allowed to shine and it all clicks, it works amazingly well, but sadly there’s even more things inserted into the game in the name of variety that often bogs the entire experience down a bit.

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

While Bayonetta’s flashy combat is the star of the show for the most part, at various points in the story players will engage with different gameplay styles and different playable characters. This is really nothing new with most games from Platinum, as they love to sneak in schmup sections and setpieces to change things up, though I find that in the case with THIS game…they don’t often land and come across as annoying padding. There’s multiple instances throughout the game where Bayonetta will ride atop a demon, or players just get to command it directly, which are far more sluggish and unresponsive than in normal gameplay, Demon Slave or otherwise. A good example would be a timed platforming section as you ride atop the flaming spider Phantasmaraneae that is noticeably slower and less agile than when it is used in Demon Slave combos, OR the much faster, responsive Demon Masquerade version of it, complete with an awkward camera that’s often far too close. But then we go bigger with more climactic battles culminating in Bayonetta invoking the Deadly Sin ritual, offering up her own heart to empower demons and allowing them to go even further beyond their original powers. I wouldn’t say these sections are all-together bad, but the variety frequently goes against what I came here for in the first place. I want to play Bayonetta 3 for high-octane action, not weird rail shooters or slow kaiju fighting games and DEFINITELY not rhythm games, but you’re forced to play these if you want to advance through the game. This series is a more arcade-like action title that really tries to get you to replay levels and get better scores, and these sequences are kind of a drag to do again. Had they been their own self-contained chapter, I wouldn’t mind as much, but they’re often at the end of already long chapters and really bring down replays. That said, this game now saves your highest score for each separate Verse of a chapter, and you can pick specific “checkpoints” in a chapter to minimize replays, so it doesn’t sting as much as it could.

That said, it doesn’t stop there. Throughout the game you can play as both Jeanne and newcomer Viola, but sadly there’s a lot to be desired there. In Jeanne’s case, you play through short 2D side-scrolling segments with a focus on stealth as she seeks out a scientist to assist in defeating Singularity. So you have a series that prides itself on cool, kick-ass characters and suddenly force them to hide in vents and do stealth kills to the cannon fodder grunts? Feels more than a bit out of place. Again, these aren’t really BAD…but they’re not that fun and take away from the very first time Jeanne has been playable during the main story, as she’s usually relegated to being an unlockable moveset clone of Bayonetta after you beat the game.

Viola though is where my real disappointments lie. We’ve had different playable characters before, but they’re either near identical to Bayoentta in gameplay (Jeanne and Rosa), or restricted to a separate mode (Rodin and Balder), so Viola being an out-and-out NEW character that’s playable during the main story SHOULD be really interesting but she instead feels half-baked. Armed with a katana, some throwing darts in lieu of a gun, and the demon Cheshire as a familiar, Viola on paper seems like a fun enough alternative to Bayonetta. She’s got some fun, flashy sword combos, and in an interesting twist, when she summons Cheshire to help, she’s free to continue moving around and attacking because Cheshire isn’t under direct player control. It gives her a completely different bareknuckle moveset and feels satisfying on its own. But unfortunately, it becomes clear this game was not designed with her in mind. The bigger enemies are clearly made for the Demon Slave summons to tear through, but Cheshire just doesn’t cut it. He’s often slow and at times actively lofts about and smokes on his pipe rather than attack, leaving Viola to fend for herself. Some friend. Adding to this, Viola’s moveset is decently fleshed out…but it’s still just ONE weapon compared to the plethora of other weapons Bayonetta can mess with. She lacks variety and feels really stale after a bit. With so many weapons in this game, surely they could have spared at least ONE for Viola. But the worst aspect has to be how she activates Witch Time, a core mechanic in these games. Bayonetta dodges attacks to activate it, slowing down time and letting her go to town on the defenseless enemies as a result. Viola meanwhile must parry incoming attacks by blocking, which brings to mind Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, another Platinum title. A couple problems here though: most enemies don’t seem balanced for the parry at all. They either do huge, sweeping attacks that either miss Viola completely, or have ridiculously tight timings to even land the parry in the first place. It’s WAY less forgiving than Bayonetta’s dodge and one optional challenge mission involving you only being able to damage enemies while in Witch Time nearly had me tearing my hair out. Playing as Viola frequently feels like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Maybe that’s the reason she’s only playable in three of the game’s chapters, falling behind even Jeanne’s side-scrolling missions in frequency. She feels like a last-minute inclusion, despite playing such a big part in the story.

IN CONCLUSION (kind of)

With all I’ve said up until now, I have qualms with some aspects of the core gameplay but I largely had a blast. When the game just lets you focus on fighting, the game is fun and dynamic, with TONS of satisfying tools to learn and master. The game’s larger levels allowed for more downtime as I searched out optional missions or collectibles, and I largely appreciated the change in scope. Some levels left a bit to be desired, feeling more like large boxes than real places, but there are times when the game really shines. The levels taking place in an alternate Egypt are what I wish the entire rest of the game was like. Huge, sprawling locations with tons of secrets tucked away, what felt like small dungeons with some quick puzzles and interesting combat encounters, and probably the best of the Deadly Sin gameplay change ups. I largely enjoyed Bayonetta 3 as an action game, with spectacle that few other series can match. Despite some rough edges in performance and visuals, and some annoying setpieces, it is clear Platinum gave it their all to make a game that attempted to surpass the high expectations of fans. The music goes HARD at times, the story has some real standout moments that I loved, and in a lot of respects this might be the most fun game in the series when you factor it all in. This feels like not just an evolution of the Bayonetta series, but Platinum continuing to tweak and iterate on ideas found in their other titles. The DNA of many of their games exist within this one, serving as a bombastic, content-rich entry that in many ways was well worth the near five-year wait from the initial reveal.

With all that said however, the game’s ending left me extremely conflicted on the entire product, and I want to go into that, but also I’d rather not spoil it for people that might want to go into it themselves. I’ve put my concluding thoughts here ahead of a spoiler-filled section on this ending for that reason. So, overall despite some rough edges, Bayonetta 3 is a high-quality title that stands up with some of Platinum’s greatest….as long as you just completely ignore a terrible ending that feels like they’re trying to torch the franchise and run away.

THE ENDING: MESSY, RUSHED AND UNEXPLAINED

PlatiumGames isn’t really known for their storytelling; they make really fun, goofy action games, and barely anyone really talks about those games’ narrative. So, for anyone that hears Bayonetta 3’s story is bad, it makes sense to think “Well, who cares about story in a Platinum game anyway?” In general, a lot of video games place gameplay over story, so is it really that big of a deal if Bayonetta 3’s story falls flat as long as the gameplay is good? For a lot of people, I’m sure that is enough and I can understand them brushing off complaints. But that isn’t enough for me. Just because this is an action game, I don’t think the story should be half-baked. Plenty of action games, not just from Platinum, manage to strike a better balance, and despite the shortcomings of the previous games in the series, I like the world and characters Platinum have created here. Which is why the ending stung as hard as it did, as it feels almost vindictive towards all that came before, and if that wasn’t the intention, they really botched the execution.

Bayonetta 3 has a lot of great ideas for a fun story, or even a great one. But the problem is that Platinum tried to shove too much into one game, and as a result almost every plot point and bit of narrative potential is wasted. Multiple important details that make the story comprehensible are locked away in character bios that most players aren’t likely to dig through and read. Certain elements of the endgame feel unearned, and the game’s tone changes so often the whiplash is constant and jarring. So, let’s delve into those points one at a time.

I’ll start with the tone. Most of Platinum’s work are over-the-top and not really meant to be taken too seriously. They employ humor throughout the vast majority of their work, they aren’t afraid to blatantly homage things they think are cool and to me they’re at their best when they just have fun with their premise and setting. Bayonetta 3 has a lot of these moments for sure, but they attempt to blend it together with a darker, more dramatic turn and it just does not work at all. The prologue chapter has the entirety of New York flooded, as Singularity begins his assault. The death count alone in this chapter easily eclipses the other two games. Even Enzo, the plucky comic relief, is reduced to tears as his family has seemingly been killed. So when Bayonetta and Rodin are just quipping back and forth it really feels misplaced. Did this game want to be serious, or just as irreverent as past titles? They needed to pick a lane and stick with it. Honestly, I don’t think being more serious fits either Platinum or the Bayonetta series, and if they did want to try to branch out, I think they overcompensated.

(Bayonetta without a confident smirk on her face is just...wrong!)

Bayonetta, much like her predecessor Dante from the Devil May Cry series, is a power fantasy. She’s sexy, she’s powerful, she’s always in control. The draw of these games is seeing her mop the floor with celestial beings without breaking a sweat. So when this game tries to up the ante and establish higher stakes, they really struggle with doing so in a way that feels organic. The game opens with one universe’s Bayonetta being killed by Singularity, which works as a demonstration of the threat he poses. The problem is that this keeps happening throughout the game; every single alternate Bayonetta we encounter gets about five minutes of screentime before being unceremoniously killed in a cutscene where they become uncharacteristically incompetent. No one in this game ever looks behind them. So there’s drama here and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, but that comes at the cost of Bayonetta as a character looking less powerful and capable. This dark tone and constant death toll also just kind of spoils all of the fun a multiverse tale like this could have had.

When promotional materials made it clear this was a multiverse story, I was looking forward to all of these various character interactions…so imagine my surprise when there’s not much done with that premise at all. For all of the infinite possibilities that come with bringing a multiverse into your story, all Platinum could seemingly think up was “What if Bayonetta lived in another country?” There’s flashes of interesting elements that never get fleshed out on-screen at all. The Tokyo Bayonetta is a delinquent while the Egyptian Bayonetta is a princess with Jeanne as both her bodyguard and her superior in combat. I did enjoy the Paris Bayonetta sections though. Working with her mother Rosa, they’re a pair of thieves with that world’s Enzo chasing after them as a cop, like Lupin III’s Zenigata. But I wanted MORE of that! The Chinese Bayonetta is a war general who apparently lost her eye in an interesting story…the game has no interest in telling us that story though! They had an opportunity to really shake things up; what if we had a world where Enzo was the one with the magic powers, or one where Bayonetta was a Lumen Sage instead of an Umbran Witch? I also find it odd that while we do get to see some alternate Jeannes and Enzos, we only get one alternate Luka and zero alternate Violas, when having more could have made some interesting contrasts. I could forgive a curbed roster if they did much with them, but the bulk of the game just has us hopping from universe to universe, taking every alternate Bayonetta’s demons and weapons for our own and promptly forgetting about them. The Egyptian Bayonetta has a character arc concerning her lacking confidence and overreliance on Jeanne squeezed into two chapters of the game when that could have been fleshed out over the course of the game instead. With our “prime” Bayonetta serving as a mentor to Viola, it could have been interesting to see multiple Bayonettas attempt to give Viola advice, to showcase how different these alternative selves were, but alas, there was just no time apparently.

Further adding to the missed potential, there is the entire concept of fairies introduced into the series with this game. Now, if they wanted to introduce a new faction I have no real objections. Bayonetta’s already fought angels and demons, and spends the entire game fighting these strange man-made homunculi, so beating up some fae folk isn’t really that big of a stretch…except the game barely touches on them at all. After two games without them being mentioned, suddenly Luka is revealed to be part fairy, and this influence is then retconned to be the reason he became a journalist. Despite the fact that the first game made it clear he was obsessed with “the truth” because he watched his father being torn apart by angels he couldn’t even see so uh…that doesn’t really fit. If this is meant to merely tease them being fleshed out more in a sequel, this really wasn’t the place to do it.

I can’t talk about Luka without touching on the controversial romance subplot with him and Bayonetta. Now, this is controversial for a number of reasons. For one, while Bayonetta did flirt with Luka a fair bit in the first game, they barely interacted at all in the second game or this game for that matter. The chemistry just wasn’t really given time to develop. That’s not even getting into the backlash from the series’ gay fans. Over the years a lot of queer folk have kind of “claimed” Bayonetta as a series, mostly from the game’s constant campy tone, combined with a lot of romantic subtext with Bayonetta and Jeanne. But the backlash goes beyond just a ship they liked not being made canon, but moreso this strange subtext applied to Bayonetta and Luka’s relationship in this game that many feel is at best “bi erasure” and at worst downright homophobic or heteronormative. At various points, Singularity calls Bayonetta “Arch-Eve” and Luka “Arch-Adam” so there’s this idea that they’re like…a universal constant and are destined to be together? This coupled with Jeanne not really getting to do much in this game is viewed as a slap in the face by some fans. I don’t really believe Platinum was intentionally going against their gay fans here, and I do think some fans took their own headcanons a bit too far. I’ve heard some even try to claim that there just was no way straight people could get anything out of the series and uh…yeah I don’t really see that point at all. For my own two cents, I just think this romance was really rushed and should have been fleshed out more throughout the series. Or just have Bayonetta, Jeanne and Luka in one big happy threesome, I don’t know.

All of these rushed plot points and dashed potential end up getting twisted up into a very long, grueling final boss fight where…things just kind of happen suddenly, without any explanation before or after. All of the killed Bayonettas (and Jeannes) are revived…and then disappear again, the game being unclear on if they’re still gone for good or were saved. Two more Bayonettas, each clad in the first and second game’s designs respectively, appear to help out in the final battle, but they also vanish without a trace randomly. Then the final blow is dealt to Singularity and a vortex opens up in the sky at the EXACT moment Bayonetta loses control of her demonic summon. This is all a contrived situation purely to force Luka to save an unconscious Viola as she’s pulled into said vortex, thereby allowing Gomorrah to kill Bayonetta definitively. Luka cradles Bayonetta’s soul as they are both dragged into hell, all while Viola cries out for her mother and father and pounds the ground in frustration. Cue credits. Oh, except for the part where Viola suddenly fights…Dark Eve. A character that isn’t explained in-game at all and is only fleshed out in the character bios that update after the game is beaten. By somehow fighting off this uh…dark amalgamation of all of the other dead Bayonettas…somehow this means Viola has proven she has what it takes to take on the mantle of Bayonetta. We get another stinger where we see she is taking on jobs from Rodin, with the game seemingly setting up that any future Bayonetta games will have her in the starring role. Cue dance party ending!

Where do I begin here? The game’s inability to confirm anything really muddies the waters here and makes the ending come across as more somber than I think was intended. New York seems fine in this stinger, and Enzo’s family is seemingly alive and well…but what of the other worlds? If they’re all back to normal…why isn’t Viola with her real mother and father? On that note, why did the game wait until the exact last second to confirm something most fans guessed before the game even came out? I feel that dragging out Viola’s parentage until the very end of the game did nothing for the story, especially seeing how little Viola really factored into the story at all. Then there’s the ending with her as the new protagonist. The game sets this up as an optimistic passing of the torch but…I just don’t think it’s earned at all. Throughout the entire game Viola is showcased as being a bit of a joke. She never gets to actually defeat anything of real significance, and even in the final battle with Singularity she’s batted away and becomes a liability at the end. Sure, she defeats Dark Eve, but the sudden appearance of this random character the game barely tried setting up undoes any amount of triumph the moment should give the audience. I like Viola, but she isn’t ready to headline this series.

In the time since the game’s release, series creator Hideki Kamiya has commented on the backlash, stating that Platinum hadn’t been as clear with some things as they should have been, and that Bayonetta 4 would address these concerns and criticisms. Of course, there’s the question of if PlatinumGames as a studio will even exist long enough for another game to come out, but assuming that it does happen, I suppose there is a chance they could smooth this all out. Maybe we see that Bayonetta and Luka are living it up in hell, and all of the other universes are fine and dandy. Maybe Jeanne is still around and can help out Viola as she comes into her own. That’s a lot of maybes though, and there’s no guarantee THAT game wouldn’t just drop the ball in its ending too.

A lot of the issues I levy at this game could also apply to the other two games. All three games feature villains with no actual substance to them, with no motives for why they do what they do; they exist to be a big boss fight to cap off an action game. All three games don’t really explain everything as well as they could, with the first two having time-travel nonsense wrapped up in the narrative. I wouldn’t call the stories for the first two games good, and going into this game I didn’t really have high hopes on a good narrative, but I assumed there would at least be a fun one. I think that’s the biggest problem here; the fun is gone. Bayonetta 3 tries to raise the stakes but in the process, it lost a lot of what made the first two games so compelling for people. Yet they try to carry on like everything is fine, with a dance party ending filled to the brim with characters that are, as far as this narrative tells us, dead, and we’re left with a character we barely know headlining the series as everything else fans have come to love about the franchise is long gone. It feels like Platinum saw the ending to Devil May Cry 5 and thought “Hey we can do that too!” except they completely misunderstood why that game’s ending worked as well as it does.

Not to go into it too much, but Devil May Cry as a sister series to Bayonetta has already done the passing of the torch thing, with Dante eventually letting the younger Nero take over. What I think Platinum missed here is that it took Capcom TWO games to fully allow Nero to graduate to the main protagonist role, and even then, I feel like the massive gap between the two games is what allowed fans who previously disliked Nero to eventually cool down and come to accept him. Adding to all this, Nero was at least playable for half of Devil May Cry 4 and roughly half of Devil May Cry 5, whereas Viola gets barely three levels to herself in Bayonetta 3. Even though both Bayonetta 3 and Devil May Cry 5 end with the previous protagonists in Hell, Dante doesn’t seem all that bothered by it and the narrative allows enough wiggle room to bring him back with little trouble. In Bayonetta’s case, her end seems far more permanent. Despite some similarities, the contexts differ dramatically.

I think I’ve gone on long enough here. I really want to stress I didn’t expect to come out of this game feeling as down about it as I did. I heard people not liking the ending, and assumed they were just jaded Bayo/Jeanne shippers…but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s frustrating, as in some respects I feel like Platinum can and HAS done better. For as silly as it was, The Wonderful 101 had real heart to it, and I think to this day that is the best story Hideki Kamiya has ever written. While Bayonetta 2 didn’t have the best narrative, I think it was an improvement over the first, and humanized Bayonetta a fair bit. My criticisms stem from my desire to see Platinum succeed. I am without a doubt in their corner and want to be excited for their games, and in recent years it’s been hard to be a fan. Astral Chain was pretty interesting, if a bit wonky at points (and also didn’t have the best story), but from 2020 onwards Platinum felt like a shell of their former selves. Using a Kickstarter to port a barely-touched “remaster” of The Wonderful 101, releasing self-published titles like World of Demons on the Apple Arcade and nowhere else, or the ridiculously overpriced schmup that is Sol Cresta. 2022 opened with the disastrous launch of Babylon’s Fall, and now this game, despite delivering on the action, had to stumble so hard at the very end. When they first started their company, co-founder of PlatinumGames, Tatsuya Minami stated that they chose to be named after platinum because “platinum never loses its luster,” and that was their motto for making games. But as 2022 draws to a close, their shine has dulled, and I’m having a hard time coming to terms with that.

Ultimately, that’s just my take on things. I value story a lot, as you can probably tell, so a bad ending for me matters a whole lot more than a lot of Platinum’s audience I’m sure. As I’ve mentioned before, Bayonetta 3 is still a high-quality title when it comes to stylish action, with plenty of fun setpieces, tons of weapons and tools to master, and a presentation that is constrained only by its hardware. I wouldn’t for a second label Bayonetta 3 as a bad game. It’s great, in fact, and one I would recommend to others…I just wish I didn’t have to attach an asterisk to the end of that recommendation. Despite it all, I’m glad this game finally came to fruition and I desperately hope Platinum can regain some of their luster in the years to come.

Until next time.

-B

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