#late night shitpost for the soul

[just-existing-idk]

Finished the album :D

Ft. @trashcatsstuff

[nocturni3]

5 in the morning;2nd sleep deprived rant on the sheer fact that in bg3 we can kill children and rule the world by controlling a giant pulsing worm infected mama brain and yet…we can’t ROMANCE Nere nor Kar’niss. Cowards the lot of ya 😤 let me climb the drow.

LOOK AT THEM! 😤🛐

[ratinfestedhole]

fent got me doing the Vendrick shuffle

[josephslittledeputy]

Guess who just got to this cutscene again!! :)))

[rosetta222]

Spotted Ratfish

I've seen some of these in aquariums on the west coast (US) and they're cute and all but

Why do they look like they know what sins you have committed

(Artist's depiction)

[pokemonfangame]

You are Vinny Vinesauce a streamer from Staten Island, New York. On one Sunday night, you planned to play a mysterious game made by your community titled Vinemon: Sauce Edition.

The game is loaded up but your house's power flickers on and off while the internet fully cuts out. Do not presume this was the doing of vineRizon. The power that calls you to this world is far greater than that of those internet providers.

As you exit your house you find you aren't in Staten Island anymore but in a region called "Fanoth". As you look for answers to why you were brought here you discover that Imakuni was also brought to this world and is now your next-door rival. When you begin to share notes a sudden explosion happens and you both rush outside to see the cause of it. You discover the professor panicked and the only Vinemon he has left for you to use is a Water-Typed Vinemon named Scoot.

After being given Scoot and a battle with your rival & friend Imakuni, You are given the VineGar to keep track of quests, manage your PC, and check the map of the region.

As you overlook the map you begin to realize this world is strikingly familiar. Yet these places feel completely different from the ones you visited in the past on stream.

As you travel the region you will meet many of the characters you've created and encountered while streaming. This includes iconic video game mascots, Original Characters (donut steel), Celebrities, Memes, Streamers, YouTubers, and many more!

Explore, Battle, and Catch in Vinemon before it's too late. After all, you still got a Sunday Stream to put on and you can't leave chat alone unattended.

Features:

211 Vinemon

76+ New Items

158+ New Moves

61+ New Abilities

182+ Diverse Songs

104+ Unique Trainers

Aprox. 40+ Hours of Gameplay

Quest System

Multiple Save Files

Autosave

Custom Pause Menu

IV & EV Stat Menu

Keyboard Mapping

VineGear PC Storage

Advanced Dex

Modified EBS

HM Items

Lots of Mini-Games

Game Corner

Unique & Custom Shinies

Corruptions (Alt. Shiny)

Cable Club

Animated OW Cutscenes

Reborn Battle Animations

Original Songs & Covers

Unique Region

Custom Egg Sprites & Anims.

Quality of Life Breeding

Egg Reward Program

Triple Triad Club Challenges

Reworked Safari Zone

Majorly Enhanced Battle AI

Progress Improves Wild Al

Gym Leader Rematches

[vhagarswar]

Daeron returns home shitpost.

Daeron:*returns to King's landing*

Daeron::)

Daeron that night: *asleep in his own rooms*

A door: *slammed*

Daeron: wtfff

Aegon, wearing his hobo cloak: Greetings brother.

Aemond, also wearing his cloak but his is is made of quality fabric: *silence*

Daeron; Hello. I- what is going on?

Aegon: It is time brother.

Aemond: *annoyed*

Daeron:??

Aegon:

Aemond:

Daeron:

Aegon: ask me what it's time for please I have other things to do unfortunately.

Daeron: Time for what?

Aegon: to get It wet.

Daeron; to get what wet?

Aegon: awh he's so innocent bless his innocent mind uwu adorable.

Aegon: *demonic voice* we must corrupt his soul

Aemonds mind; kittens and puppies. Meow.

Aegon: it's time to become a man

Daeron: you want me to kill someone?!

Aegon: what? No. Why do you both think of murder 24/7 what is up with that?!

Aemond: it's the traumas.

Daeron: we are at war

Aegon: fuck the damn war I wanna do something fun and hang out with my brothers!!!

Daeron: Fine. Lets go to a brothel I suppose.

Aemond:*as a big brother* ah he can't use the words whore house.

Aegon: we'll teach him soon enough.

The three of them; sneak out of the castle

Aegon: I can't believe we pulled that off

Daeron: security sucks here

Aemond; agreed.

A deep voice: You have all forsaken me. You have betrayed me. You will all perish

A cloaked figure:*approaches*

Aemond: gods is this..

Aegon: father?

Daeron: wait we have one?

The cloaked figure:*giggles*

The cloaked figure:*reveals herself*

Helaena: I heard you all sneak out. Why didn't you invite me with you? I love late night outings!:))

Aegon:

Aemond:

Daeron:

Helaena: where are we going? Is there food? I like night food. Did anyone bring coin?

Aemond; it is dangerous for you to be here

Helaena: what danger is there for me surrounded by my brother's and the fiercest warriors of the realm?

Aemond:*blushes*

Aegon: are the warriors with us right now?

Daeron: she means us

Aegon: o.

Helaena: so what do we have planned?

Daeron: they were planning to go to a bro-

Aemond: Brother! Our plans have altered last minute remember

Daeron: what but you all promised me-

Aegon: one day, young apprentice. One day.

Aemond: I was never called your apprentice

Helaena: I'm getting bored here

Aemond: i suppose we could take her to see the night Market. That is entertaining.

Helaena: SHOPPING YIPPIE

Later

A witch: do you wish to know your death child?

Helaena: no, do you? I see you hanging from the ceiling of your own house your own neck cracked and twisted-

Witch: *gawks*

Daeron: damn

Aegon, holding four cups of wine and handing it to his siblings: I got everyone a cup. Drink up quickly the night is young.

Aemond, watches someone swallow a sword: that's just a waste of the sword

Daeron: can't imagine it tastes good as well

Later

Music plays

Helaena: I wanna dance!

Aegon; fine

Helaena: No I wanna dance.

Helaena: Aemond?

Aemond, blushing: yes my queen?

Helaena: you want to hold my bag when I dance with Daeron?

Aemond:*demonic mjttering* yes of course

Daeron and Helaena; dance

Aemond:

Aegon: where did he learn to dance as that?

Aemond; can't have been with us

Later

A hobo:

Aegon: who the fuck is that

Aemond; idk keep an eye on helaena. He smells of horse piss

Hobo:???

Helaena: O, hello Ser Criston!:)

Daeron: hello! *unaware who criston is*

aemond and aegon:*gawk*

Criston: *removes his hood and looks at Aemond*

Aemond:*looks away*

Aemond; we can explain

Helaena: Daeron wanted to see King's Landing so we took him out.

Criston: during the hour of the owl? Are you aware how this could have ended for all of you?

Helaena: Please sir criston. *puppy eyes and dark magic*

Cirston: Fine but I stay. You need someone to watch you all.

Helaeana: Yess!

Helaena at some point: you know what we should do?

Daeron; *asleep*

Aemond: no? What should we do my queen?

Aegon: careful aemond I can hear your voice switch between regular Aemond and aroused demon

Helaena: Haha you're funny aegon aemond is as a sweet little brother to me:))

Aemond::(

Helaena; we should get matching tattoos

Aegon: that sounds cool let's do it

Aemond: what kind of tattoo

Helaena: a spider wearing the crown of Aegon I drenched in blood and with "We light the way' under it.

Aemond; I stand corrected that sounds cool

Aegon:*drags daeron as the three of them go find a tattoo person*

Helaena after the tattoos are finished: Oh you are all so handsome

Aemond, looking at his tattoo

Aemond; Uhm he made a mistake.

Helaena: No I changed my mind. I wanted a unicorn instead.

Daeron: It's not the worse

Aegon: What the fuck are you talking about there's a unicorn on my arm

Daeron:*walks up to a village maiden and shows her the unicorn*

Aemond: No way

Aegon: it won't work

Daeron and the maid: hit it off

Aemond:

Aegon: *in tears* my apprentice has become the master. Impossible.

Helaena::)) I'm so glad we got to do this. A positive memory between us all

Helaena:((

Aemond: I will never understand women.

Helaena: so you guys still want to go to the whore house or not?

Aegon and aemond:*nearly choke on their drinks*

---

This is what brainrot looks like

[twiilys]

i saw this game on @themarydragon's page and it looked like fun!

Most hits: The (Not So) Subtle Art of Secret Keeping with 8 649 hits! This one was a collaborative Anne With An E story, where we each had to write the point of view of a character discovering Anne and Gilbert were secretly courting (post-canon). It was lots of fun, especially finding out what the previous person had written and working to integrate that! Like "yes and" improv writing thing. I got to write Jerry's POV (❤️) and the title was my idea! It was a nice challenge (time limit and all) and I'm very glad I participated! And that we got so much nice feedback

Second most kudos: what lies ahead with 254 kudos! This is probably the fanwork I'm most proud of, so I'm really glad it showed up on this list. Anne With An E again, with a canon-divergence/fix-it flavour. I love reading it again, and it's my only work above 200, which is really nice

Third most comments: what lies ahead again, with 11 comment threads, 29 total. Wow so it shows up twice! I'm so glad people liked it. There are comments on here that I reread from time to time, especially when I feel bad about my writing. It helps a lot, thanks to the kind souls who wrote them ❤️

Fourth most bookmarks: of late nights and early mornings with 12 bookmarks! This one is very special to me, it's short-ish but I wanted to focus on Anne and Gilbert's points of view rather than a story (with a plotline etc). I like to think I'm pretty good with setting up a certain mood/atmosphere, and that piece reflects that (i think)

Fifth most words: what lies ahead again again, with 7 652 words! Out of 68k ish total (i removed the other writers' parts of Secret-Keeping and my translation of MaryDragon's "Remember the Spring"). For a while it was my longest work but then the Lockwood & Co bug came along and i wrote 10k in about a month (? wild). I also have an unfinished AWAE longfic that I'm hoping to get back to. As well as WIPs that should be veryyy long, but that another story (pun intended)

Least words: kitchen duty with 960 words! finally something other than AWAE lol (which is half of my works). This one is short and sweet, was inspired by a shitpost and displays my favourite trope, found family (Golden Deer house my beloved). Fear the Deer!

that's it! tagging anyone who's interested in diving in their AO3 statistics and wants to share thoughts about their works (@js589 @practicallyasleep @beckybubbles @cateringfears i'd love to read yours!!)

[hannibalismos-jaaneman]

I posted 1,338 times in 2022

254 posts created (19%)

1,084 posts reblogged (81%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@romqnticstylez

@theonewhocouldmakemestay

@sentimental-bits

@ghostfilesbish

@babo0shka

I tagged 1,039 of my posts in 2022

Only 22% of my posts had no tags

#marvel - 128 posts

#cole shitposting - 127 posts

#my asks - 122 posts

#asks - 121 posts

#mcu - 109 posts

#mutuals asks - 86 posts

#prev tags - 76 posts

#poetry - 58 posts

#poets - 51 posts

#poems - 51 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

we do know that achilles is a bottom right?

119 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

#4

reasons why i just KNOW john richard papen is the pretty boi of the greek class and most probably all of hampden (spoilers, read at your own risk):

he's from california so he has that accent shut up.

he gets attention. now listen, we see him accompanying literally every single one of these nerds yet he's the one who gets recognized, every fucking time. he's literally been to a college party with camilla and judy but he was the one who got taken home while no one even tried to hit on judy and camilla (pretty sure because they were just getting all up and personal with each other so everyone kept their distance i'm allowed to dream shut up-).

he swoons over charles and francis too so... we've seen him call charles charming and he does end up with an older woman by the end of the book, BUT... he never got any attention from any one of their college friends, ik not appropriate but what in the living fuck is appropriate about this book anyway, he doesn't even get noticed by any girl at bunny's funeral... not even SOPHIE! but.. whatever i guess.

he's literally objectively prettier than bunny i don't need to justify that.

francis.. he's a redhead but that doesn't make him less pretty, actually that makes him prettier. people just find richard more objectively attractive. ik we all have this wrecked image of richard in our heads because that's how we decided to look at richard but just imagine richard's features being an absolutely stunning cross between achilles and remus lupin *sighs in gender envy*.

just the fact that he made it into the class.. hear me out. these nerds, including julian, are all about the aesthetic. and richard appearing outta nowhere could not be reason enough for them to just pull him in their "tight-knit circle" as we go about describing the greek class to be. the fact that richard's somewhat proficient at greek, is stupid AND pretty is reason enough? yeah (as i said, a cross between achilles and remus lupin).

julian calls him for dinner (i don't think i need to explain this i think we all know why he did that *ahem* *ahem* pulling the shit he must have pulled on henry to attract him *ahem* *ahem*) which is viable enough for my claims lmao.

i'm biased do what you will lol.

127 notes - Posted October 16, 2022

#3

Dearest Flowers

I like coming home back to you

For it feels like bees buzzing

Over the flowers of my childhood;

Drawing the butterflies of my garden

And chasing the sunlight as it recedes

Into the mountains, wherefrom

The sun peeks at me from a valley;

It feels the same way as when you

Scrunch your nose and smile at me

Like cities on a Christmas night.

I like finding you on the couch,

While Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol

Runs drily on the dreary television.

When I come home late from work,

I like to kiss your eyes and ears and

Make you a sundae from old ice cream

In the refrigerator, while you sleep soundly.

I'd like to do this like a ritual and

Sing my soul out to you on my death bed

Till the last time I breathe and

The last time I see the world in a blur

With your eyes watching me pass.

~ Cole E. Whittaker

Tags under the cut

@tamaraheartz @lucian-evander @lostinmymindpalace @acciorxses @day6andetcetera @poseidonsarmoury@wrendermeuseless@jochase @the-girl-who-cried-wolf @just-a-donut-who-reads @dreamybellatrixanvm @hp-nv-221b-3000 @localbookshop @fierreth-who @feareth-who @thecollapsingneutron @thepoorlywritten @petulanceinaprettyflower @sentimental-bits @hiya-its-amber @seravph @november-rage

(dm or send an ask to get added in the taglist)

133 notes - Posted April 14, 2022

#2

just a thing but oscar isaac had no right to have me obsess over an insane british himbo just for him to die at the end thanks.

147 notes - Posted April 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

random fact but madeline miller did not spend like fifteen sentences in tsoa describing how achilles says patroclus' name just so y'all could make achilles call him 'pat' in the fics please.

278 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[incandesang]

auroraposting my thoughts abt episode six (a shitpost. my thoughts Shit Out into this one post so i can go to Bed)

after rereading the film’s draft script today i am like 99% certain rolin wrote himself into the same hole anne did, wherein trying to make lestat more sympathetic and less ‘evil’ there was no justifiable (in the eyes of all members of the audience) reason for claudia to kill lestat. NOW HEAR ME OUTTT

1992 draft script lestat was still murdered for what he did to claudia (trapping her in the body of a child) but he wasn’t ever cruel to her in the same way tomstat was. he was killed for two reasons: claudia’s eternal torture in a body that doesn’t match up with her ageing mind, and for being kind of a pain in the ass. like he was just. annoying LMAO loveable but annoying as all hell

there was no morbid satisfaction in reading his murder, and that really should be there. audiences should be horrified at what they’re seeing!! they have to agree with what’s happening to him (and be mortified about it), and also want to close their eyes and look away because maybe he DOESN’T deserve this? it’s empty revenge. killing lestat won’t free claudia from the prison of her own body, and it won’t kill louis’ love for him.

i think rolin realised he was writing a lestat who would have an empty, pointless death that wouldn’t be understood by audiences. people would be confused about why it even happened, or what exactly caused louis and claudia to want to do this to him, so he started writing this version of the character we have seen in episodes five and six. (personally i can think of a whole slew of reasons to want this man dead from episode four alone. idk why he needed to have lestat dig his own grave even MORE but here we are)

he missed that nothing any of these characters do needs to be justifiable as a ‘good’ action or a ‘bad’ action. claudia’s murder of lestat needs to be monstrous in its passionate violence, and in its morality. we have to be left wondering did she do the right thing? was this an act of needless cruelty? it has to be an action that makes us think about her character and what constitutes evil to her: a child vampire who kills ‘two souls a night’.

of course sam’s performance brings questioning that to the table, because he is very obviously playing a character who is deeply troubled and carrying a lot of emotional baggage. the cruelty he is inflicting onto the people around him is a form of self-flagellation. he wants to hurt the world as it hurt him, and he wants to hate himself for becoming everything he hated. but it won’t be enough. and it isn’t enough. while sam is an amazing actor he just doesn’t have the writing to back up what he is trying to do with his performance. rolin has gone from writing the lestat of the 1992 draft film script to something much worse than the lestat we see in the novels. it’s really incredibly jarring.

i’m rambling i haven’t slept in so sorry. all this to say that claudia’s killing of lestat has to be morally grey for it to work, and right now? it looks like an avenging angel move to save louis from the evil lestat. it doesn’t. work. anne’s 1992 script didn’t work for the same reason. claudia’s attempt at patricide was just for the lolz. lestat wasn’t the bad guy, not in a way the audience would find any meaning in.

ANYWAYS i’m done i’ll shut up it’s late and i have to sleep.

[mrmallard]

So I was just struck with a thought about Final Fantasy. I've been living and breathing Final Fantasy for months now, first with my FF13 posting and then with Kingdom Hearts, and then with playing FF13-2. I've also been catching up on the Snapcube playthrough of Final Fantasy 7 Remake as I grind in Old-School Runescape, and I'm literally on the last stream of the base game as I type this, so like I've been in the fuckin Final Fantasy trenches lately.

Here's the thought:

Final Fantasy can be divided into "ages" or "eras" pretty easily, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake is arguably the beginning of the current age of Final Fantasy. Furthermore, the third and final FF7R game - whenever the fuck that comes out, probably around 2028 or something - is probably going to be the capstone on this era of Final Fantasy.

I'm doing the classic conspiracy theory method of coming to a conclusion and working backwards, but hear me out.

Final Fantasy 1-3 are the Age of Innovation. FF1 comes out and does its thing, cribs a bit from Dragon Quest on one hand but innovates its own class system and magic and stuff on the other. Final Fantasy 2 comes out and it has this keyword feature where you can learn keywords and bring them up in conversation to advance the plot. It's a bit of a slog, and the levelling system has been overhauled so radically that one of the most efficient ways to grind is to have your characters beat each other up - it didn't stick. But it was an earnest attempt, and it was really interesting. FF3 was then the birthplace of Final Fantasy's job system, which FF5 and X-2 would run with.

Final Fantasy 4-6 is the Age of Refinement. The storylines of the first three games weren't... unambitious, per se, but Final Fantasy 4 kinda bumped it up a notch. You have this story of a dark knight who realises the error of his ways and decides to travel and better himself and is symbolically reborn, and you have this apprentice and this king, and there's a summoner character who the main guy is looking after - I haven't finished FF4, but the part I have played was very good.

FF5 takes FF3's job system and really fleshes it out. The plot is a bit breezy - unfairly maligned by people who want to shitpost about the main villain being a Soul Jar and a large ham - but it's an extremely fun play. Lots of job combos and character specialties and stuff.

And then you have FF6, which I can't speak about very much, but it's widely considered the pinnacle of the 16-bit era of RPGs. Huge, dynamic story, ambitious gameplay, dark themes - at least in America, Final Fantasy 6 was kind of this great marriage and refinement of everything that came before in the franchise.

And that kicks off what might arguably be the Golden Age of Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy 7. Cutting edge graphics, a wealth of things to do and see spread over multiple discs, pushes the boundaries of video game storytelling. Final Fantasy 8 - takes the stocky little Lego men from FF7, turns them into fully detailed, proportionate and fleshed out people and renders an awesome video game weapon that never quite caught on as much as the Buster Sword. People complain about junctioning, and I can't say anything about that, but comparing FF7 and FF8 graphically is night and day.

Final Fantasy 9 then takes the improvements in modelling, texturing and proportion - and it uses it to render a fully realised steam-fantasy world full of hulking knights and skittering mice children, big angry antlions and small, hopping frogs. The 3D games went from little stock approximations of people, to realistically rendered and proportioned human characters, to a wide menagerie of characters from different species, of different heights and builds, textured as well as possible to convey one of the .ost ambitious fantasy worlds in video games up to a point.

Final Fantasy X, warts and all, represents the end of that golden age in my opinion.

It was the final game in the series to be developed by Squaresoft before they merged with Enix. Hironobu Sakaguchi was credited on Final Fantasy games up to X-2 as a producer, though I think he left the company before FF11 came out - I think X was the final game he was involved with from start to finish. And it's an interesting mix of old and new - this is one of the few games not to use an Active Time Battle system, using turn-order instead, but the technology was a step beyond the pre-rendered backgrounds and text-only dialogue of the PS1 trilogy. The setting is also notably unique; I think it's visually based on the Philippines, as opposed to like a steampunk fantasy setting or grim dystopian cyberpunk.

Final Fantasy 11 and 12, imo, is kind of like an Age of Expansion. This is where Final Fantasy began to really transcend what a Final Fantasy product could be. There had been spinoffs like Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon, Chocobo GP and Mystic Quest, as well as stuff like the SaGa games on Game Boy that were localised as Final Fantasy Adventure - and shit, you had an anime OVA based on FF5 and a blockbuster movie which bombed at the box office - but to bring that into the main series for the first time, Final Fantasy 11 was a fucking MMORPG. That was... well, maybe not unheard of given Ultima Online, but it was certainly a bold move to take, especially chasing the success of World of Warcraft.

Final Fantasy 12, to my understanding, takes the sort of tone and ambition of a game like Final Fantasy Tactics and combines it with state of the art gameplay systems that were unlike just about anything that was on the market at the time. And even the spinoffs of the time were especially weird and ambitious, like Crystal Chronicles on the Gamecube. This was also where Square Enix began to publish sequels to older properties like Final Fantasy 4 and 10 - the franchise was expanding and testing the boundaries of the franchise, almost aggressively so.

Final Fantasy 13 then began one of the most notorious flop eras in gaming history.

In hindsight, this era of the franchise was moreso defined by growing pains. The jump from the 6th gen to the 7th was pretty huge across the board, and this is where a lot of Japanese gaming giants had a ton of trouble on console hardware. Capcom had a dogshit generation on the PS3, for example - it wasn't just Square Enix.

But the next step in the main franchise, Final Fantasy 13, was struck by bloat and ambition. They built a whole new engine for the game which cost millions of dollars, and it had a lot of shortcomings - you couldn't really render large, populated areas without slowdown, not on the scale that current-gen hardware kind of demanded in that exponential-improvement kind of way, and the development was beset by logistical issues - my understanding is that at one point the team entertained the idea of making Vanille the main character, but they'd already released the announcement trailer with Lightning at the forefront so they were hamstrung by that creative decision.

This was the period where Square Enix execs began saying stuff like "turn-based combat is dead, players don't want that any more, we want to pivot towards more action-driven combat that provides more immediate feedback to the player". And even then it felt kind of like a desperate pivot to further dig their heels in and double down on FF13's differences - even moreso after games like Persona 5 proved that there was still a ravenous, fanatical fanbase for turn-based combat, and that those types of RPGs were still popular and profitable - but this aspect of the corporate narrative would end up staying the course and defining the next era of Final Fantasy.

The game looked gorgeous, but the resulting release caused such a crisis that instead of moving forward on the other two Fabula Nova Crystallis games - Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII - the core creative team would desperately pivot into a trilogy of games that continued the narrative of FF13, basically trying to iterate on it until it was fixed.

Instead of a thematic trilogy of Fabula Nova Crystallis games, they had a literal trilogy of XIII games, a loosely connected instalment on the PSP that kind of carried the spirit of the original series plan, and a hotly anticipated game - Nomura's baby - that had been in development hell for almost ten years straight. That game would be completely divorced from the Fabula Nova Crystallis series and released as Final Fantasy 15, helmed by a new director and buoyed by an entire self-contained multimedia franchise unto itself, which subsequently had a rough launch and was iterated on with DLC for years until the director quit. At which point Square cut their losses, cancelled the rest of the DLC and released a book to tie up the material that never got released.

And like FF13 and FF15 had its fans, and they ended up being pretty okay in the end. I know someone who adores FF15 and its cast. I have a lot to say, positive and negative, about FF13 and 13-2 - I really love FF13-2, actually, and I'll defend the writing of the first game pretty voraciously if prompted.

But with all that said, I haven't even mentioned Final Fantasy 14 yet. And I'm going to keep it short by tying Final Fantasy 14 into the ethos of this era of Final Fantasy. It is a microcosm of this entire era of the franchise.

Final Fantasy 14 launched as an ambitious, user-unfriendly BOMB.

The developers weren't great at communicating with the playerbase. I think the graphical requirements were pretty high, so a lot of people couldn't play it, and players who COULD play it didn't particularly like it. People stuck with it, but it was a dead game being outpaced by its own predecessor in Final Fantasy 11 and it was something of a millstone around Square Enix's neck.

Final Fantasy 14 went from being one of the worst reviewed, worst selling, worst regarded Final Fantasy games - and a real turd of an MMO to boot - to being one of the most successful, most celebrated and most well-regarded MMORPGs ever.

And it got there by TEARING THE OLD SHIT DOWN A D REBUILDING IT FROM SCRATCH.

Square Enix did that at great cost, relying on the word of a young upstart named Naoki Yoshida, and pulled one of the biggest hail maries in video game history.

And that kind of sums up FF13 and FF15.

Final Fantasy 13 was a rough game. The team decided to make a direct sequel in Final Fantasy XIII-2, and then another one in Lightning Returns, to salvage the engine they used and to try and bank on the momentum of its narrative and characters for the entire generation of video games.

Final Fantasy 15 launched in a rough state. They spent YEARS patching that game, releasing DLC (free and paid) and banking on it as a franchise unto itself.

Neither of them succeeded as much as FF14 did, but they managed to eke out their own niches. Square Enix spent almost ten years iterating, polishing, salvaging. I maintain that this era was extremely fucking rough to maintain or justify, but it did lead us to the big moneymaker - Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

So far I've argued for five different "ages" or "eras" of the Final Fantasy franchise. We've had Innovation and Refinement leading into a Golden Age, leading into a rapid Expansion and being stymied somewhat by... well, let's call FF13 to FF15 the Iteration Age, because "Clusterfuck Age" isn't kind. The games were extremely rough, so they were ultimately saved through iteration.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake aimed to evoke the Golden Age of Final Fantasy while refining the gameplay that had defined the Iteration Age of Final Fantasy.

The mindset behind Final Fantasy 13's combat is that turn-based combat was a dying genre, and the executives wanted to move the brand forward into more action-based combat that would grant the player more immediate feedback. That game used a simplified ATB system, bolstered by a Paradigm Shift system which kept the player on their toes. Final Fantasy 15 had more of an action RPG bent to it, but it was hit and miss - I tried it once, and I couldn't get into it.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake finally signalled the franchise's shift into hard Action RPG combat. It still relied on classic RPG menu mechanics, but this is where you had that immediate feedback they were talking about back in 2010.

The game had a stagger gauge, just like Final Fantasy 13. It had free-wheeling action combat, just like Final Fantasy 15. And it catered HARD to the lofty, lofty expectations that diehard FF7 fans had developed over the years, carting over as much of that Golden Age appeal as they could and welding it to the highest triple-A standard they could.

It was aesthetically based in the old aspects of the franchise. But its core mechanics stemmed entirely from the franchise post-FF13.

That momentum continued with Final Fantasy 16, which was straight-up an action RPG helmed by the gameplay director of Devil May Cry 5. And we now have the second game in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, taking the more menu-based approach of FF7R and expanding it to an entire fuck-off overworld map on 2 PS5 discs. It's a part of a trilogy, but Remake was fleshed out into its own unique, standalone entity, and Rebirth - as a sequel and continuation of that game - takes the expansion of Remake and takes it in a new, crazily ambitious direction: marrying the PS1 era Final Fantasy overworld map with modern open-world gameplay.

It being a sequel isn't reactive like Final Fantasy 13-2 and Lightning Returns was. I mean, as an adaptation of the same source material as the first Remake game, it kind of can't be reactive in that way. I dunno, I'm tired as shit. But I still think despite that, there's a clear difference between 13's mad struggle to salvage itself and the way that the 7R games have been coming out. The iteration is still there, but it's in more of the way that FF7 became FF8 which became FF9, more than how FF13 became FF13-2 into LR:FF13.

That might be giving the FF7R games way too much credit. The way FF7 became FF9 is a way different story to how Remake became Rebirth. But my point is that 7 Remake kind of represents the series finding its footing, with later games - including the latest mainline Final Fantasy game - kind of following in its stead.

It's building a brand new ship based on the previous ship, using what worked in the previous ship while discarding the old. The stretch between FF11 and FF13 was like trying to take an old ship and turn it into a speedboat, and it kiiiiiiiinda worked - but man, it was not an ideal way to sail.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake takes what Final Fantasy 13 started - in spirit, ala moving away from turn-based combat, as well as in function, ala the stagger bar. It's coached in the distant past, but it's built on the bones of the immediate past. And it managed to marry the best aspects of the two.

To strain this already labored metaphor - Final Fantasy 7 Remake retains the form of what it's adapting. It relies on how it looks and how it conveys that air to appeal to an audience.

But it keeps that audience, and any newer audience members, engaged with modern function.

So Final Fantasy 7 Remake keeps everything you love about an old ship. But it never gave up on being a speedboat, as roughly as that worked out the last couple times, and now they've spend thousands of man-hours working out the kinks? This ship has the functionality of a speedboat. Or at least, it offers what people love about speedboats without compromising the image of a ship that people have in their minds.

Look I know that's nonsense, it's almost 5am and I'm tired. Let me wrap this all up.

I wouldn't be able to name this "era" of Final Fantasy, but I know that FF7R signalled the start of a new era for the franchise. We went from humble innovation, to the refinement of those innovated concepts, to a point where the core iterated experience could be taken significantly further than expected in scope. That gave way to a period of technological exploration and a pushing of boundaries and norms, shifting into something of a stubborn decline born of impotent overambition, before the series was finally able to meet its loftiest standards and make good on the decade's worth of promises they started off with.

All I can say for sure is that the same way FF1 signalled what this franchise would become, the way that FF4 refined the best aspects of those first three games and defined the strengths of the franchise going forward, the way FF7 expanded the scope of the world-building and presentation to unseen heights, the way FF11 toyed with what a mainline Final Fantasy game could even be and the way FF13 showed how much you could bungle a mainline release and subsequently salvage it if you try hard enough - and how every game between those keystone releases managed to iterate on and expand on what that initial keystone release did, for better or for worse - Final Fantasy 7 Remake signalled the start of a new cycle of Final Fantasy games. I've tried to explain what I mean, but at the end of the day, that's all I've got.

And the reason why this was significant in the first place when I started writing it is because I was just thinking.

What then?

What happens after the last Final Fantasy 7 Remake game?

What do the 2030's look like for Final Fantasy?

Where is there left to go?

I think the future comes from devs like Naoki Yoshida, the dude who managed to finagle Final Fantasy 14 out of being one of the worst MMOs of its era to being one of the best MMOs of all time.

I think FF7R3 will probably have to mark a changing of the guard, and a bold push forward into the unknown. A new setting, a new standard, breathing new life into a broadly iterative franchise that's mostly relied on the scraps of the past for the last 14 years.

Those scraps have fed some fantastic video games, but I feel like it has to build to a big finale and the next era has to work to define itself. Fuck it, let's get weird. Let's get a Final Fantasy with prominent aliens. Let's get a whole hero's journey in the vein of a Very Specific Video Game I'm Referencing, and have it so you're some random dude who has to get a thing to save your planet or your people, but by the time you return to rescue your people, you're so fundamentally changed that you can't stay there with them any more. That hasn't been done in a hot second.

And I say stuff like that because Yoshi-P's revamp of FF14 was the exact shot in the arm that Square Enix needed. His success in assembling a team to rebuild that game from scratch, and then subsequently becoming the figurehead for one of the most successful Final Fantasy titles ever, partially comes from being new blood to the franchise. He liked it enough and was familiar with it, but he was working on Dragon Quest when he was asked for his opinion on FF14. Final Fantasy 16 was a bold, mature step in a new direction that ended up being hampered by an arbitrary lock to a single platform. It was new - referential as always, but refreshingly new.

We're seeing just how far old concepts can be stretched. But when that's over, when that pet project ends, what's next?

I want to see what a new generation of devs - in proximity to the Final Fantasy franchise, not necessarily in experience - brings to the table. I want to see the next Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, not the next Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

And 7R is fantastic - I'm loving my 7R experience. But there's one more Remake game coming out. Maybe one more mainline instalment between then and now, if we're lucky. And I think that will bring this era of Final Fantasy to a close.

So what does that mean for the next era of Final Fantasy?

Personally? I want to see ambitious new talent take their crack at making their own Final Fantasy 7 - bringing this innovated technology into its own - instead of remaking a shiny new FF7 Remake. I'm definitely not asking for a new Fabula Nova Crystallis situation, that was a multi-car pile-up, but I am thinking about a future for Final Fantasy that is actually a Future.

Man I'm going to bed, sorry for the long post.

[just-existing-idk]

So my friend @trashcatsstuff is showing me this artist and his music and there's like cool lore and stuff but this is all i got from it

[salsalvador]

Warning in advance, taking a screenshot of a tv screen is hard, sorry for inevitable bad quality, be it in this post or in subsequent ones

I mentioned last night that I might do a new Rimworld run and post it to tumblr, both giving me something to do with this account outside of supporting my friends and making low quality shitposts, as well as giving me a reason to really work on my commitment issues and commit to a run, instead of getting mad when something I didn’t like happens and quit. And this is the start of that lol

How long will this series of posts last? Impossible to tell, probably until either all my pawns are dead or my colony is in a stable enough position where I get bored of the run and stop playing it, if it’s the former I’ll probably turn it into a post that acts the “finale” of this series of posts and if it’s the latter I’ll probably make a post mentioning that. This is more of an introductory post, introducing the initial five characters and explaining some of the game settings

Game settings are tribal start, randy random, blood and dust (I think), and the map I chose was a (flat-ish) arid shrubland with a river, containing granite, marble, and a little bit of sandstone

Why a tribal start? I like them, you get to choose five characters that all have the natural backround, meaning you can foster up a cluster of high grade psycasters rather quickly

Why arid shrubland? I like the challange it has with somewhat lesser animal spawns as well as a lot less wood, not to mention it can spawn elephants, one of the best animals in the vanilla game.

Will I be using killboxes? I’ll try not too but no promises, from what I’ve seen the game seems a lot more interesting and risky without killboxes, also killboxes don’t make much sense from a roleplaying perspective (why would your enemies walk into a loaded trap when they see their comrades run into the same loaded trap and die right in front of them), but if difficulty proves to hard I might sell my soul and do the devils box

Now, the characters.

Sam (second image) is from the Bush Sniper backround and is going to probably be my sniper pawn as well as my main hunter and animal tamer, with a 12 double passion in both shooting and animals, as well as an 8 double passion in cooking, and single double passions in construction and cooking, her variety in terms of passions should make up for her backgrounds inability to firefight, plant work, or doctoring, she is 44 years old, and her traits are careful shooter and nervous

Bascullo (last image, not in order sorry) is from the butcher backround and, like Sam, has a variety of passions that will likely make him one of the backbones of the colony, with double passions in shooting, cooking (12), and animals (8), and single passions in construction and melee, he will likely become the colony’s main cooker, he also has pretty alright medical at 4, witch is tied for highest in the colony (yeah I’m doomed lmfao), and he has no incapabilities, he is 50 years old, and as I mentioned in his image he has bonded with the colony’s husky, ambassador, he also has great traits in bloodlust, great memory, and tough, witch will make him one of the colonies primer melee fighters, and he might become unstoppable if we open up the ancient danger and find a Mfer with late game armor

Lena (second to last) probably isn’t as good as a pawn as the former two, he comes from the lore keeper backround and is 32 years old, he has a double passion in artistic (12) and social (8), and single passions in intellectual and mining (both 4) he will most likely be the guy strapped behind a research bench for most of the run, but with both the quick sleeper and psychically hypersensitive traits, he won’t just be working there around the clock, but might become a beast later on with enhanced psychic skills, he will probably be the guy I will be investing the anima tree into first

Porcupine (third image) is from the Vengeful Hunter backround and is 48 years old, she dosent have as much going for her, similar to Lena, but she has my favorite trait in the game, tortured artist, as well as a double passion in artistic (1 lmao), melee (10) and mining (10) she will probably be the colony’s main miner, and dispite her high melee I think I’ll make her a ranged pawn for the time being, I might revert that descision later on once we get more manpower, with her high construction (9, single passion) she is already one of the better tortured artists I’ve seen, and I will likely try to level up her crafting to make her one of the main crafters in the colony as well, her traits are tortured artist (as I mentioned) and undergrounder

Finally we have Salamander, (fourth image) he’s from the plank cutter backround and is 33 years old, he’s the only Mfer in this entire group who can competently plant, only barely being able to grow healroot (9, double passion), his only other passions are in social (single passion, 7) and melee (also single passion, 7), he also has pretty high intellectual at 6 (no passion unfortunately) so he definately will be far from a detriment to the colony, and he is also tied for highest medical at 4, with his traits being sanguine and masochist, as well as the already mentioned good-ish melee, I’ve decided to make him the second melee pawn of the colony

We also have a tamed bunny named Chantel (that you have seen in some of the images) and Marco the Guinea pig (not shown)

That’s all for this long ass post, expect more updates soonish, no estimated timeframe because schedules suck ass

[catgirl-kaiju]

Star Trek: Dark Souls 9

[notsolonelyygirl]

My stickers for my record player finally came today 🥰

[actual-haise]

Those two are the same