#so take this with a grain of salt. im basically taking what doesnt differ with canon as canon and discarding the rest

[graythursday]

‘gotham gazette’ newspaper promo for ‘the penguin’ hints at harvey dent addition to the universe— “is our legal system dented beyond repair?” + riddler crumbs :>

[mittykidi]

okay so pico and otis ramble at 2:30am because showers this late make you think a lot about things. im gonna put it ubder the cut bcz i hate scrolling through longass text posts hhdgdghd

i think pico would be envious of otis sometimes in relation to their family. i use envy and jealous different btw, to me jealousy is when youre mad at someone for having what you want and you want to lash out at them, and envy is when youre happy for that person but you also feel kind of sad/mad (not at them tho) because you wish you had what they had. in my brain anyway, theyre different like that i hope that makes sense.

otis's father, based on what little we see of him, which isnt a lot so maybe take this all with a grain of salt, at least tries getting otis out of the house. he at least gives otis positive feedback and he seems like he's trying to be enthusiastic for him. even when we first see him in the game, i feel like the dialogue was a little banter-ish, but that could just be me being bad at reading tones. and towards the end he clearly cares about their safety, although you could argue hes just looking out for himself, i dont think thats the case.

meanwhile, pico clearly doesnt like his father, he basically says he hopes he fucking dies- which is aggressive and probably very sincere since pico has very clear lines drawn in his head for who deserves death/ judgement and who doesnt. i dont think he was exaggerating at all. i imagine picos father probably forgets pico exists, or would go places without even asking pico, e.g. he would go visit the grandmother without bringing pico, although personally i dont think picos father even seems like the type who would visit their mother lol. pico probably wanders around the streets all the time/ visits friends/ visits otis cause he doesnt wanna be home.

anyway, i dont really have a point to all of this except to say pico being exposed to what a healthier relationship around family looks like makes him angrier at himself and his father for not being able to have that growing up. otis can kinda pick up on this sometimes, pico doesnt know it but otis tries supporting him subtly, asking him to join in on things n such.

actually thinking about it now, in picos cousin 2, they all seem to move together. tbh it wouldnt suprise me at all if pico just slowwwly moves in with his cousin instead of returning home and being neglected. his father probably wouldnt even notice as long as hes getting benefits still.

almost completely unrelated- but pico has definitely plotted murder against his father- only in his head though, he would never act on it, as muchn as he hates his father its still his father. unless like.. he snapped or something. i mean the gun is right there.. hes familiar with how it works. or maybe he could rig the car to explode, hes seen darnell rig one before, it shouldnt be hard... but that would never happen right? right? righ- <- pico when he has intrusive thoughts about murdering his dad (hes only ever even mentioned this to darnell and nene)

[crossnamara]

Hello time to ask about your ocs hehe

Ok first of all are there any sorts of rivalries between them or are they one big happy family? Pretty much are there any notable relationships between them?

Also I have to ask about Hector Jekyll and Edgar Hyde because I loveee Jekyll and Hyde so so much. Anyways, is it like the original novella where they are pretty much one person but they switch and change both physically and mentally? If so, had this always been happening or was there a potion of some sorts (like in the novella) that caused this? You can also mention other stuff about them if you want :))

Ok now hand over your bones /j

they are NOT one big happy family uh. lets see

everyone hates hector (and edgar). oh and on this point, they are in one body, but they switch! it started more as like.. a bit more similar to how something like did works (i dont know everything about did so take what i say with a grain of salt, and this character is NOT a system), but as the changes got more frequent, more differences in their physical appearances started showing up until they basically look like different people. it was not a potion (unfortunately), just something that started happening!

you cant see it in this but hectors eyes are green and edgars as blue (also old ass drawing im sorry)

anyway! back to rivalries! wirt and hector specifically fucking HATE eachother

jesse hates everyone except mary (and edie, because shes marys friend)

tato is bitchy to most people but doesnt hate any of them. wirt does not like them though, and harley is scared of her

there is some overall bad blood towards nessie after a.... certain event.. but before then, everyone loves her

as for notable relationships!!

wirt and tammy are siblings, obviously

tammy and damien dated once, but it didnt work out. theyre still friendly, though

nessie and lunar have a very sibling relationship

wirt looks up to lunar a lot (lunar does not see himself as a role model and it scares him)

as stated earlier, jesse is super protective over mary, like a guard dog and edie is bffs with mary

harley is besties with wirt, and kinda treats edie like a younger sister when he gets to know her

edie clings to lunar and treats him like an older brother/almost father figure

miss gray is very much like a grandma figure to everyone, but especially carmilla since she was raised there. nessie is like an older sister to her

the horse girls are like. fun cool older cousins to nessie. they helped her with her social transition

tato and lily are dating (but theres one little thing putting their relationship on the rocks... youll see)

lily and damien have a siblingish relationship, she braids his hair

here you go

[pumpkinsy0]

any dally and johnny hcs?

i LOVE them and not enough people write about their FRIENDSHIP

this was so real of u. i thought that by more ppl being more not???jally shippers????? u would get more content of them as friends but i dont think ive seen much of that😭😭😭then again im not rlly on here that much looking at post, so take what i say w a grain of salt :P

•dally goes in a strict dont ask dont tell policy that only johnny has realized. hes always told the gang that if they just asked dally something, more chances than not, he would just answer em cause he likes them enough. hes not THAT mysterious and hes way closer to the gang than the gang realizes. like from johnny JUST questioning hes learned that dallys just REALLLYYYYYY whitepassing, the gang JUST has to ask but they dont, johnny thinks its funny but also sad💔💔

•dally has a habit of calling johnny, john when hes rlllyyyy drunk, johnny cringes each time, that serious ass name😭😭

•theyre both relatively the same height, their height difference isnt insane. theyre both relatively malnourished, (johnny more so) johnny stands behind dally and is hunched over all the time unlike dally whi stands more tall w his shoes adding like 3 inches to his height, basically most of the time ur not even seeing their real heights

•a vvveerryyyyyy lesser known nickname for johnny is j.w. (johnny winston), its from ppl who dont rlly like dally but notice he has a soft spot for johnny, they just refer to johnny as his little brother. the gang dont kniw about em, johnny dont know about em, its rlly just dallys and dallys beef alone

•theres been times where dally and johnny shared a room at bucks for a place to sleep, they dont cuddle, god no, but dally let johnny have most of the sheets he needed em way more and what else but dallys “great abs” is better to first see when u walk in

•out of the whole gang, dally and johnny r the only ones who dont eat like tomorrow they wont, so when foods cooked, dally eats his small bit, makes sure johnny has some food (even if he doesnt wanna eat rn he will later), combines his left over and johnnys food so johnny has more to eat

•dallys always talked about what johnny should do when dally dies, never talked about what dally should do if the other way around, thats not a possibility in their heads (lol)

•instead of a lynx like pony compares dally to, to johnny, dallys more like a husky w those OBSCENELY blue eyes, like REEAAALLLLYYYYY blue eyes

•funniest moment w dally was when johnny was trying to teach him how to roll his r’s, in that moment instead of looking up to dally, someone whos untouchable, he saw dally as more human

•johnny hates how protective dally can b sometimes he hates being treated like a doll, “whats up w that bruise who did it to u” and johnny just hit himself on a corner of a desk bc hes clumsy, leave him alone🙄BUT bc its dally johnny just doesnt tell him off for it. then they both tell self deprecating jokes but johnny is just NOT allowed to do it near dally bc dally tells him to stop it, johnny hates it, stop telling him what to do

[the-s1lly-corner]

I want to request like. A cuddling session with Slenderman, who is having a bad day and we comfort him

(つ≧▽≦)つ

I'm addicted to the idea of him pretending to be okay with people calling him monster, but deep down he has this longing for it to stop, since he wanted to get along with the proxies and others he deemed second family.

So he like, rant about his day while reader comfort him.

Maybe get him a little fluster aswell （〜^∇^ )〜

(Take your time and have a good day/night)

All Entwined in One Web

obligatory im stuck in the 2015 era of the creepypasta fandom and ive been mulling over this sort of approach in my head for the past month because i revisited an old slenderman x oc fanfic that had a death grip on me and shaped the way i will interact with + and consume creepypasta stuff for the sake of saving grace and not revealing HOW cringe i was im not going to drop the fanfic name (unless yall dm me because!! i still wanna support the author even if it seems theyre inactive now!) i blame this author for making me a demon sympathizer/j/lh written kinda different than my basic bullet list of hcs! got silly with this one, sorry if its jarring compared to my usual stuff </3 this post is mostly just my hc on like. slender (and by extension all demon characters) being neutral and a simple part of nature that stems from zalgo (yay im finally dropping zalgo lore for my au since he functions differently in my au/hc!!) so take this with a HUGE grain of salt since i feel this deters from the main take people use (that ive seen, at least) this one ended up being more.. sad than i first intended and imma be honest i kinda got into my feelings when i was writing this anywaus i hope this isnt too cringe since i dont talk much about my HUGEhcs/au stuff/rewritten stuff so!! plus i dont usually write BIG detailed stuff like this sobsob tldr; slenderman isnt good or evil hes just a neutral piece of nature in the world and hes trying to cope with it. the demon gods really fucked up by making him sentient and able to process human like emotions

death is a force of nature and people curse it for simply being a part of life; people curse wild animals for being, and people will curse the weather

in this universe, or timeline, demons exist in a similar manner. slenderman exists simply because hes a part of that huge web of nature. of course, that includes every single ugly instinct that humans hate so so much. and he can understand why, even if its his nature.

the one responsible for that web, is zalgo. the beginning and end of everything. neither alive nor dead, all demons stem from zalgo in one way or another.

a solitary creature that prefers to stay alone in the comfort of its home, it doesnt tend to reach out to harm others unless theres harm. only really attacking people that threaten to expose it or get too close...

except, you... you were the one exception. regardless of how you managed to worm yourself into his heart, and become his lifelong companion, hes grateful for your presence when things begin to build up.

he knows that in the eyes of others, he ugly and vile, but he knows that ultimately thats what protects him. he insists that its better this way, sticking to the forest away from the prying eyes.

SURE, he could follow in his brothers footsteps and make a false human body and try to blend in with the people. but is that really efficient? is that really something he wants? hes a powerful being but that would eventually take its toll on him..

ultimately he resigns himself into your arms; once oozing powerful and command, now crumpled and curled.

he never had a childhood, when zalgo created him, he simply.

was

no adolescence, no developing, no growing. he was always what he was meant to be, but he likes to think that when youre holding him, that this is what it feels like to be so small and vulnerable.

humans had it so easy, hed think. theyre born and they die and the process repeats itself for everyone. they dont have to be feared or hated, or kill to survive.

yes, to him, being mortal was far more preferable to being condemned to being a lonely hermit who corrupts and breaks everything it touches.

even with your comfort, theres only so much that you can do; youll eventually pass on as well and hell be stuck in his cycle once more

but for now, as you hum softly and whisper nothings to him as you let him crumble; hell let himself weep just this once.

because as much as he envies your life, and what humans have, he cant deny that he cant bring himself to truly hate them, because like him, theyre simply a piece of natures web.

[fictionfixations]

whose ready for emerald witch arc in like one day and one month (april 5th i think?)

i both am and am not ready

aAAAa

after watching public school arc i went on a binge through the manga starting off from where public school arc ended and

....guys

we're two arcs away from my favorite being adapted into the anime 😭😭😭

i mean like who knows if we'll get the next arc soon animated after. but we're SO CLOSE

i kind of regret going in blind but like partway through i noticed there was an anime-manga differences page on the wiki and i looked and realized hey wait a second 💀 ???? so im just sat here with a faulty understanding of wtf is going on like ??? i have a better understanding now but for a bit i struggled to keep the image of the queen and ??? the whole i think being young and also doing.. something??? separated with the actual canon queen who... doesnt do that stuff last i checked and is an actual old lady (i still dont understand that anime-only plot what do you mean there was a fake which ones the fake!?!?!? ???) like i tried going through it anyway knowing it wasnt canon because hey more black butler for me but i genuinely just did not understand a thing 💀 think i wouldve been better off that if i wasnt reading the manga, then to skip anime-onlys and then when i have a better idea of the characters and all that go back and maybe see whats going on in there? idk

anyway yapping about manga stuff now

i still remember some of what happened but my memory is bad if im not constantly refreshing it on the story so i have like a basic idea? i remember being a bit confused but tbh i think its something id understand better by rereading but i tend not to do it for manga because ill just be sat here like. okay what chapter was it mentioned in again ??? I have no clue dude om 💀 so i usually rely on the wiki to clarify stuff im confused on, though i digest stuff better in an animated format so yippee. genuinely helps me to know how it plays out so then going through it again i can get a better understanding of it imo

...guys. guys. we're gonna get hints to blue memory arc arent we??!?!?!?!? IM SO FUCKING EXCITED. oh heres where i tell you that i went into black butler knowing that spoiler, that was one of the only things i knew about black butler before i got into it (it actually made me even more interested). im keeping it vague in case people are looking at this manga chat here for stuff about emerald witch arc. BUT OH MY GOD GUYS IM SO EXCITED AAAAAAAAAAA

i want to give more hints to remind you if you forgot what im referring to (like i would if i wasnt focusing so intensely on those scenes) but i also feel like itll be enough scraps to guess so i rather non-manga readers who read manga spoilers but maybe dont know that much can experience it firsthand in the anime

anyway things im genuinely not ready for that kinda made me a little squeamish is like.. uh. the curse?? whatever its called i forgot, but like seeing that im gonna like cringe away as it was very gross imo though it will probably be on screen longer when animated. ive sat through worse stuff that made me want to turn away (that i DID turn away from and listened to it progress in dub because it was that hard to stomach) so ill be fine ill probably just like cover the top half with my hands and read the subtitles lmfao

and like the foot binding thing? i forget what exactly its called but i just. dont really like that practice at all, and when a panel of that character appears i cant help but stare at their feet and feel a little sick like oh god wth 😭😭😭

itll be good tho im rlly excited

the date feels SO CLOSE yet it feels so far away dude omg

like 32-ish days? maybe? take it with a grain of salt i cant count💀

[alstroemerian-dragon]

theres something that really bothers me about the way a lot of people talk about and write peko re: her place as fuyuhiko’s “tool,” especially when it comes to like. despair. and i feel like it stems from a few different places and one of those is definitely uh. distance from the source material. because. w. did we play the same game

like. the second trial is a lot of things. annoying. about the death of a character i dont really care about. kind of confusing. Very Sad At The End. but the one thing it shows beyond any shadow of a doubt is that peko Does Not Want To Be Fuyuhiko’s Tool. she leans into it a lot in that trial, past the stupid. serial killer shit. which is literally just desperation and quick thinking on her part (and non diagetically meant to parallel the first game but whatever). but she does that because it is the only option she thinks she has if she wants to keep fuyuhiko alive. because thats her ultimate goal, right? sure, she’s his tool. sure, theyre Badly and Unhealthily codependent. sure, she was basically groomed to stay at his side no matter what. but…

she also cares about him. genuinely. she loves him. for all that teenagers can properly conceive of love in all its forms, but she at least think she does. but she does truly care about him.

did anybody do her free time events other than me? genuine question. because i dont think someone who wants to ask the guy shes sworn to protect on a date would be content being just his tool. that sure sounds like someone who wants to be on equal footing with him.

like. look. say what you want about the anime. take it with a grain of salt. cherry pick what you like and toss the rest of it out. that sure is what i do!! but even if you do that, youve got to take the text of the game itself into account if you want to have any semblance of regular characterization, and the game makes it clear that she hates this!!! she doesnt want to be his tool! she will fight him on things if she has to! she will disobey him if she has to!!! thats the whole point of the trial!!!!! he told her to run and that he would take the fall and she told him no!!!!!!!!!

and you cant ignore the fact that the time between them starting at hope’s peak and the tragedy hitting the ground running was two whole years. people can change a lot in two years, especially teenagers, and especially high schoolers. idk how long its been since you were in high school (unless you currently are in which case. dear gd im so sorry. good luck) but your mental state in high school is so fucked. you have no idea who you are and neither does anybody else and can you even imagine the kinds of pressure the ultimates would have been under?? again, taking the anime with a grain of salt, but even if you go along with it and think the school was barely a school at all, the pressure from society, from family, from peers still has an impact. everyone was telling them who they were and that thats who they were going to be for the rest of their lives and i doubt ANY of them felt like it.

and even if you subscribe to the idea, like me, that their second year was a downward spiral because of junko’s presence and influence, they still needed somewhere to fall from. the idea that peko was uniquely comfortable being quiet and violent and doing whatever fuyuhiko wanted so she didnt need despair to be his tool is ridiculous. i see the argument of “well watching her friends fall into despair and spiral made her spiral in turn and grow numb to it and retreat into herself until she needed to become fuyuhiko’s tool again as a coping mechanism” but. buddy. That Is Despair.

sometimes i feel like the only person who thinks about despair complexly and maybe thats its own post because this ones too long already but. despair isnt just Being Brainwashed Into A Monster. ignore what the writers told you. okay? look at me. Look Into My Eyes. The Writers Are Fucking Idiots And Dont Know How To Write Good Drama With Genuine Stakes. despair as a nuanced concept is so much more horrifying. different post. sorry. peko.

if peko had not been pulled down by despair just like the rest of them she would have fought tooth and nail to keep fuyuhiko above it. she would have demanded he explain to her why he was doing what he was doing. and she would have told him no.

and of course heres where i get into the accusatory part because the other place a lot of this comes from is, and im sorry, an unwillingness to write complex or nuanced women. not pointing fingers, but reducing peko down into “fuyuhiko’s tool” and “she does whatever he says without question” completely destroys any minuscule amount of agency she has. shes a fucking person. yes, shes pixels on a screen. yes, shes a representation of tropes. but diagetically, within the fiction of the game, she is a human being, and if you want to write her, and not be puppeting around a gddamn cardboard cutout, you have to think of her as a person with agency who makes her own fucking choices. sometimes those choices are taken away from her. but they shouldnt be taken away by you.

[gammagoop]

@3000-200-grains-of-salt

well first of all, thank you so much! i'm really glad, because thats exactly what i strive to achieve :D

and also thank you for letting me talk about these things because i loooooove rambling

here's the list (the last life members were added manually so sorry if they look a bit odd) ->

all of these rankings are subject to change, but this is where i'm at right now!

the second tier might seem like a bit of an odd distinction from the first, and it is, because it describes a kind of abstract 'vibe' i get from them that i'm not sure how to communicate to other people :p

here's some more in-depth thoughts about a handful of these:

under the cut because it got looooooooongggg

these are in reference to how i see their 'base state', basically just how they are most consistently. beef is human even though he became alien-ish in season 8, whereas cub changes visually because i think he just does that regardless of season or lore. (can't pin him down! one episode he is a normal man and the next theres something Different)

i also am not taking into account the empires server, because unlike hermitcraft or the life series, those guys are specifically designated as characters in a story-- so it doesnt have bearing on that 'base state'

i've tossed around hybrid ideas for false before (eagle is popular in fanon i think, but i also thought it would be cool if she were a bat [mcc9 is close to my heart]) but i think she works best to me as a human

i debated where the last 4 people in the 'normal human' tier should go tbh. impulse and skizz read as normal guys to me but i also haven't completely settled on that with them. bigb is like. the sweetest person ever which made me thing hrmmm maybe he's *inhumanly* nice but no i think its important he's human because inhuman kindness is actually extremely human and beautiful. and jimmy..... jimmy.... let me make another bullet point for him

if anything jimmy would go in the second tier. i know the canary curse thing is popular fanon and i think that's fun but honestly, in a similar way to bigb, i think thats just the way humans can be sometimes (obviously, since jimmy is actually a real human) and im so attached to the concept of people being 'supernatural' in extremely natural ways. i always find a way to bring in my philosophies when i talk about this stuff........ anyways . what i mean with jimmy is that you might think he is cursed and doomed but actually its just a bad string of events and he will thrive despite them

etho...................................................... my etho thoughts are so lengthy idk if i can put them all here

honestly keralis could be anything. i think keralis is hilarious because no one really agrees on how to draw him, and it's highly dependent on any one artist's style. because his skin is cartoonish and irl he's just an adult man with a big grey beard and i feel like even his voice is a wildcard. i can't pin keralis. i never could

joel. joel. i am a joel fan 5ever. i dont have much else to say about him...... other than i think we as a people should start giving him more facial hair. i'm doing my part. are you?

everyone in the 3rd tier from the top except stress is like. they are completely visually human but they're not *actually* human and i, me, mason, haven't decided on what exactly makes them inhuman. its just their aura

whereas stress (the exception) is completely visually human but she has a bunch of weird beady eyes under her hair swoop (you can kind of see them in my hermitaday stress). hence, stress monster. but she's not a 'monster' in terms of personality. she's full of joy.

cub and pearl are similar in terms of i think they change appearance sometimes. cub moreso than pearl. i think it just kind of.... happens.... with cub. he's like innately tied to supernatural happenings (not just through convex) so he's just kinda visually unpredictable. personality wise he is always the same, though. wheras pearl is like some sort of celestial body who you would genuinely believe is human until like a full moon or something where she can't keep the appearance up. that's my pearl lore. she's very grounded and human in terms of personality though

scar. scar? idk. similar to cub except he changes appearance for like. 'roles'. i dont even Know with scar. he's like mostly human but sometimes he got elf ears. what's up with that guy. idk that's scar.

the only one in the 'nonhuman/hybrid' tier that i dont have a set 'species' for is tango. he could be like an elemental or something.....? or he's just a weird humanoid. ? shrugs. cave beast this season.

all the others there are p obvious though. cleo zombie gem deer ren dog jevin slime (i dont actually watch jevin that much but he was an obvious pick for this category soooo)

doc gets his own tier because he has so much going on. not a fiber of his body is human. god bless

i think? thats all

if i made any typing errors in that just ignore it pls... if it bothers me too much i'll edit the post to fix it once i get the energy to read back over these . passes out

saw your ask for the canon/fanon/your design challenge, have you done skizz?

tempting because i love drawing skizz but honestly my design for him isn’t all that different from canon or even fanon

i know the fanon right now is that he’s an angel/part angel but recently i’m not the biggest participator in hybrid designs :p

(i answered this ask and then proceeded to use this ask as an excuse to ramble about some of my design process….)

i do think its really cute though, especially when paired with demon impulse, because their personalities don’t perfectly match what would be expected from angels and demons typically.

skizz is wayyy more chaotic and impulse is betrayed more times than he betrays other people, just as examples, yet i still find the designs fun as a duo!

(begs the question though — angel and demon from what? the christian heaven and hell? the minecraft heaven and hell? is this a watcher lore thing that i don’t know about because i don’t keep up with the watcher lore? probably none of those actually, it doesnt really need explained [like how theres no explanation really needed for how cleo’s a sentient zombie, its all for fun])

i don’t really do hybrid designs as much as fanon does because my goal with designing them is to capture their vibe, or how i perceive their personality. like a person who’s watched a lot of hermitcraft but has never seen hermitcraft fanart could look at my drawing and say “i’m almost certain that’s bdubs”. and doing hybrids doesnt always fit in to that for me! you’ve probably noticed i’ve gone super back and forth on my zed design, particularly whether he should have long or short hair and whether he should be a sheep hybrid or not. i’m partial to the ‘not’ but i havent really decided yet— we’ll see!

though if a person’s mc skin is already a hybrid or if that just fits well with their energy (ren the canonical dog ; gem just reads as a deer/similar to me) i do draw them as that! i just don’t always hop on fanon hybrids, like grian is never an avian or any other hybrid in my recent drawings, and etho has become more and more human as well, etc.

i should make a chart or something of how i choose these things. like a tierlist— human to nonhuman. would anyone want that. would anyone be interested. leave a comment below if you are intwrested and dont forget to subscribe and smash that. fucking like button 🫡

[suffarustuffaru]

what do you think of 'grasp' so far

like that Pridebaru fic where he gets kidnapped by Reinhard

ooh this is an interesting question… anon im curious as to why you asked me HAH but i suppose im flattered!!! very grateful to have the chance to speak my Opinions… (warning this is gonna be kinda long i have a lot to say 😅 i put it under the read more!!)

i really like grasp!! pride if reinsuba seems to be pretty popular in this fandom (which im guessing is because reinhard and pridebaru are both like. powerful in their own ways. and they have the most feral relationship out of any version of reinsuba) and tbh i eat up any pride if reinsuba content every time. i enjoy their dynamic and i like seeing the different takes people have on it!! grasp is particularly fun for me in that iirc there isnt really much fics specifically about reinhard capturing pride, plus reinhard’s characterization here is super interesting. grasp emphasizes how much reinhard genuinely cares about subaru and also emphasizes reinhard’s softness—even as hes. you know, kidnapping pride, imprisoning him, gaslighting, etc etc. and grasp’s reinhard is Specifically most likely from the main route, judging from the events he describes. i love seeing darker versions of reinhard in general, and i suppose it’s unique to see a reinhard from the main route act like this. though i will say that reinhard in like ch6 does say he doesnt “give a fuck” iirc which. im sorry i cant imagine reinhard saying that 😭😭 but i do like the addition of him going fuck you to the literal council though!!

on the other hand, though, i feel like grasp’s pridebaru characterization isnt sharp enough for my personal taste. like i know grasp’s pridebaru is still like not that far into pride if—like he was whisked away right before he killed petelgeuse. but at this point i still feel that like. hes jaded and accustomed to violence and i feel like he would be A Lot More Pissed Off in this situation (being imprisoned by reinhard of all people). like the way i see pridebaru, he very much Is Pride, you know? hes stubborn as hell and he wants to be in control and Powerful at all times and he LOATHES reinhard specifically for his power and heroism. i just feel like that even while pride is afraid of reinhard here for knowing personal shit about him + insisting that main route events happened (ie subaru being close with emilia, saving the day, etc etc), i still feel like prides gonna like double down and do Everything he can to make this difficult in any way for reinhard. like i feel like to pride, hearing reinhard talk about this other version of events is like. prides like hearing about basically some other version of himself, which probably sounds like hearing about a literal stranger to him bc Why would he even be friends with reinhard. itd sound totally alien to pride. but this is like, all my personal opinion and i mean no disrespect!! that and 95% of my personal taste in fiction is like composed of the most unhinged things, meaning that my general (kind of biased) consensus with most ifbarus is that you might as well write them to be as insane as possible T^T so take my opinion with a grain of salt maybe, i suppose!

but anyway that aside thats just a very long explanation of basically saying while grasp’s pridebaru take isnt a personal favorite of mine, i do really really enjoy the fic and seeing reinsuba shenanigans happen in it!! and ill definitely be tuning in for each update whenever i get the chance :o

[professionallydeadinside]

Wanna preface this with 1) Bioshock spoilers big time!!! And 2) Booker and his story/game is actually the one I know the least of. I should have the major parts of his story mainly down, but the details should be taken with a grain of salt at times, so just beware of that

OKAY SO BASICALLY BOOKER IS A GUY WHO HAS A DAUGHTER, HER NAME IS ANNE OR ANN OR WHATEVER BUT ITS LIKE ANNE. HE GETS FOUND GUILTY OF A CRIME. HE SERVES TIME FOR A WHILE BEFORE EVENTUALLY BEING RELEASED. HE GETS RELEASED INTO THIS FLOATING CITY WHICH IM PRETTY SURE IS CALLED COLUMBIA OR EDEN OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. I THINK ITS EDEN BUT IVE ALSO HEARD COLUMBIA SO JUST ILL USE THEM INTERCHANGEABLY. EDEN COLUMBIA IS RAN BY THIS RELIGIOUS NUT NAMED COMSTOCK

THE CITY BOOKER IS IN IS VERY RACIST AND NOT GOOD, COMSTOCK IS THE BAD KIND OF RELIGIOUS NUT. HE BELIEVES IN CHRISTIANITY BUT LIKE THE NOT GOOD KIND YKNOW THE ONE THAT SAYS GAYS ARENT HUMAN AND POC ARENT HUMAN AND JUST. THE SHITTY BIBLE BASICALLY. THERES A GROUP CALLED THE VOX POPULI THATS MADE UP OF OPPRESSED PEOPLE AND THEYRE LIKE A REBELLION BASICALLY. BOOKER/THE PLAYER HAVE TO CHOOSE WHETHER TO ALIGN THEMSELVES WITH VOX POPULI AND THATS WHERE THE GAME GETS A BIT WEIRD LIKE IT STARTS TO TACKLE RACE BUT ITS TRYING TO ALSO NOT SCARE OFF RACISTS AND BAD NUTTY CHRISTIANS SO BASICALLY ITS JUST A MESS AND IM NOT GONNA GET INTO IT

BOOKER FINDS HIS DAUGHTER BUT DISCOVERS SHES NOW NAMED ELIZABETH AND I THINK WAS RAISED BY COMSTOCK HIMSELF IDK. SHE HAS THIS THING KNOWN AS THE SONGBIRD WHICH IS LITERALLY JUST A HUGE FUCKING MECHANICAL BIRD THATS MADE TO KEEP BOOKER AWAY FROM ELIZABETH. THERES A THING WHERE COMSTOCK DOESNT WANT BOOKER TO FIND ELIZABETH/ANNE FOR REASONS I HAVE NO IDEA, I ACTUALLY KNOW THE LEAST ABOUT BIOSHOCK INFINITE, THIS GAME, OUT OF ALL OF THEM SO TAKE BITS OF THIS INFO WITH GRAINS OF SALT. MOSTLY THE SPECIFICS SO THE BROAD STORY SHOULD BE MOSTLY CORRECT THOUGH

BUT SO THE SONGBIRD KEEPS KICKING BOOKERS ASS AND EVENTUALLY HE DROWNS IT I THINK??? EITHER WAY IT DIES AND YAY DAUGHTER GIRL!!! AND DAUGHTER GIRL IS LIKE YAY DAD MAN!!! AND THEY BEAT UP OLD MAN COMSTOCK.

ALSO ELIZABETH CAN OPEN PORTALS INTO DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS AND UNIVERSES THUS MAKING THE MULTIVERSE CANON IN BIOSHOCK

AND SHE MAYBE KINDA WANTS TO FUCK THE PROTAGONIST OF THE FIRST GAME JACK WHO IS LIKE THE ONLY ONE THAT I KNOW FOR CERTAIN CAN GET A HAPPY ENDING SO YKNOW

I DUNNO ABOUT SHIPS FOR BOOKER MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE IS A CRACKSHIP WITH HIM AND A CHARACTER FROM BIOSHOCK TWO NAMED STANLEY POOLE WHO IS BIG STINKY BASTARD MAN PERFECT FOR THE BIG STINKY BASTARD MAN THAT IS BOOKER

I CAN GO MORE IN DEPTH ON CERTAIN THINGS I DIDNT SAY HERE, LIKE HANDYMEN (LIL MINI BOSS TYPE GUYS THROUGHOUT THE GAME) OR LIKE TENEBAUM, A VERY IMPORTANT LADY IN THE OTHER TWO GAMES BUT IDK ABOUT BIOSHOCK INFINITE. BUT IF YOURE CURIOUS ABOUT THE ITHER GAMES I SCREAM ABOUT THEM TOO IF YOU WANT. I PERSONALLY RECOMMEND FRANK FONTAINE FOR YOU CONSIDERING YOU SEEM TO ENJOY LITERALLY THE WORST CHARACTERS AND THATS WHAT OLD FRANKY IS. THE FUCKING WORST. ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY LIKE HOW STANLEY IS THE WORST BUT IN A JOKEY WAY. FRANK JUST GENUINELY FUCKING SUCKS AND I WANNA WRING HIS NECK

BUT ANYWAY YEAH DENIM ON DENIM MAN

IM INTRIGUED????? I THINK BOOKER AND ETHAN SHOULD MAKE A CLUB OF "OP DAUGHTERS" AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I LOVE ELIZABETH ALREADY,,,,,

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

disclaimer: this is an old post from my drafts that i was furiously writing while in the midst of watching the show on youtube and cross-checking tumblr’s opinions about it. i personally do think it is better to finish a piece of media before forming final opinions since knowing the end will will help u know the journey and the beginning better, so take this post with a grain of salt; i have not seen the show in its entirety yet and dont know if that is ever going to change, for personal reasons. but my heart!!! cant accept this unfair reality!!! in which there exist so many floating opinions talking trash (AND NOT EVEN ANALYTICALLY!!111!!!1!!1111!!!) about advance bravely and so little different viewpoints so here is my (old, but stil gold) piece of mind.

advance bravely: let’s talk

there is something here i do not get. maybe its misunderstanding, but if it was intended as i took it, a lot of viewers have no idea what this show is all about, aside from the thinly veiled homoerotism and the loose set up of an older brother taking care of his sister by taking care of her crush. as i understand it, many people recognize the gayness as it is, and enjoy the story, but dont really have faith in what the show is doing. from what ive seen so far, and im only at episode 11, this drama is telling the story of two closeted gays getting in contact by chance, staying with each other by choice, and indulging in each other by attraction. xiao yao is in denial about his gayness for most of the time, its episode 11 and he is still in desperate denial even about the reasons behind his own choices, while yuan zong is much more self-aware and indulgent, but also keen on staying safe and keeping a low profile, which is not that stupid actually. maybe this plays into his army experience plotline, but he has likely recognized the danger he is in very early and learned to adopt to the circumstances without hacking off his own legs. xiao yao is repressed, trying to appease to heteronormativity and the law, trying to like girls and creating excuses when it doesnt work. now hes experiencing attraction on multiple levels, is maybe really in love for the first time, and finds he really likes this guy, and yuan zhong notices it from the start, their compability. there is a lot of background noise and minor conflicts, but on an essential level yuan zhong is basically coaxing xiao yao out of his shell and into the world of the self-aware, safe gay, while keeping an eye on both their safety. this is very meta because the drama is set up such that even the show itself is playing into that protection, keeping these gays safe and happy and in their little storyline untouchable to maybe even the otherwise generous viewer. comphet is oftentimes not acknowledged as such even when explained very plainly, and breaking out of comphet is oftentimes misread, the actual struggle underestimated. i dont really know why, but it is my personal lesbian experience. the background noise is a ruse. in my opinion this is about comphet and allowing yourself to be happy in a smart way, and it can be read as a lot of minor conflicts that distract from the main storyline or that allow you to create heterosexual explanations.

[iconsumeheadcanons]

yall i REALLY thought i was on to something about joker’s hometown bc in the cutscene where he’s in shibuya for the first time the camera shows a close up of his navigation app

i didnt know enough kanji to read all of it, but i thought the first line might of been where he started (aka his hometown) and i was like, “ooh, 宇多川町ーUtagawa Town?! Where’s that?” and i tried to look it up but all i got was 宇田川町ーor Udagawa which is literally Shibuya....so atlus punned me...also when i actually translate all the kanji, the top line says Current Location and the bottom line was the train route he was using (i think). The train line is called “Kyousei” which is the same train you can hear about in game (im pretty sure).

okay OKAY but the next interesting thing here is (tho take this w a grain of salt bc i dont use navigation apps enough to know for sure) but the next important thing are the words underneath joker’s finger

so the kanji on the left 坂下 says “Sakashita” as the most common reading and the kanji on the right 駅前says “before station” so like ‘right before the train station’. This train station at Sakashita seems to be joker’s starting point to his current location MAYBE. MAYBE.

so i was like “Fuck i need to look this up what i this is where he came from?” so i do that and gogle tells me this

god i hope you can see this. ANYWAY is get 4 places on the maps with 坂下 in it: A store(?) in Fukushima, 2 different town areas in the tokyo area (marked in red circle on the map), and the town Sakashita in Gifu Prefecture. so. So. im like holy shit okay here we go

heres a satellite view of Sakashita in Gifu. its green and mountainous, its got two rivers surrounding it (one of which is named Kawakami pfft, probably unintentional), has like 1 set of schools named after the town, normal government & community spaces, a few shrines, and a train station for the Chuo line which goes to Tokyo(eventually)! id say its remote enough that the PT calling him a country bumpkin is granted. the town has buses and everything for the long roads, but i imagine a lotta students and workers walk/bike to work.

i like that Sakashita is south of Tokyo bc i like holding on to the fact that joker speaks the kansai dialect (most often associated with characters that are Different, but comes from a real place yknow) and kansai is south Tokyo. Now Gifu region is not in the kansai region but its close enough yeah? like maybe his parents came from closer to Osaka or Kyoto or some shit yeah?

i even made sure the roads near the Sakashita station kinda fit the map on Joker’s phone. i thought, “oh, its like a simplified version,” but then i focused on the (6.7 km) part and i was like hmmmmm.....

.....so i rewatched the cutscene to see if i could see more and i am :(((

this is earlier in the cutscene where you can see more of his screen. the part i have highlighted in pink at the top is the same Utagawa pun from the beginning of this

heres the map in gogle of Shibuya Crossing area. The red line is the subway ans the green is a road named 宮益坂下 or Miyamasu-zakashita which uses the exact same kanji. basically joker was just walking from somewhere to the station, and the 坂下 (sakashita) that i saw that was close to a station and the Kyousei line was just referencing the main road that all the vehicles uses with the large crosswalks that Shibuya Crossing is famous for...so i was wrong But BUT!! that doesnt mean Sakashita in Gifu prefecture is not valid (at least for me). I normally like to headcanon the Idiots in Inaba AU because it makes my heart warm for all the connections that are possible, but sometimes i like to use a different setting just because. and i want that location to be as close to real life as possible bc i love maps so much and hhggg im just like this

now that im done info dumping plz enjoy

[empty-altars]

im very interested in whats going on with zayns team. does he intend to get one? shaed seems to have reached out to him directly for trampoline. is that weird? i’m not pretending to be an expert on the music industry (ot4s can’t relate), but it seems odd from what i do know. i’m hoping for more good things moving forward!

I also am not claiming to be an industry expert (lol @ your shade) but I always take "this is how this collab happened!" stories with a grain of salt. But if indeed they reached out to him personally and directly rather than through an intermediary, yeah that's a little unique.

Basically, Zayn's career has been in a state of suspended animation for the better part of this year and I think that's a sign of good things. If he is, indeed, in a transition period between ending his contract with RCA and choosing a different label (pleeeaaaase AWAL), then things are going to be pretty quiet while all the strings and loose ends are wrapped up.

BUT. His former team is gone, his contract with Gigi appears to have ended for good, and his last modeling contract signed while with his previous team expired. It looks to me like all the former associations and contracts are finishing up.

Which is why this collab with Shaed feels so different to me. It feels like a choice he made for himself and it's been nothing but positive press combined with decent advertising. The fact that all the articles have not mentioned his "personal life" even once feels significant to me because I genuinely can't remember that happening before.

Promo that is about Zayn and his talent? And doesnt mention the leech even once? I am 100% here for it.

Eta: I forgot to answer the team question, but I assume so? What that looks like going forward is TBD tho

[deniigi]

Hello! Just about to sit down and read your newest fic, so excited about it! I had a question for you (you very well may have answered this already, so sorry in advance!), but do you have advice for writing? Advice in terms of getting start, plotting out stories, helping get the creative juices flowing? I have all these ideas but seem to lack the drive to get things written out. I know the best advice is to just write, but I'm having a horrible time starting. What do you do in those moments?

Hello my dear!

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. The lord has blessed me with a head cold and ruined all my plans of productivity for the day, so I can finally answer this ask! I’ll talk a little bit about both how to get started with a story and then some little things that help me motivate myself.

I have started a tag for writing advice here: http://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-advice

This is going to be a long post, sorry mobile users.

I am going to preface all of this with the understanding that I am technically a professional writer in terms of like, a handful of ways, but I have absolutely zero training in creative writing, so take everything I say with a grain of salt!

So, I personally find that, on the whole, that psychological hurdle of getting started comes a lot from the anticipation of the kind of response a story will get (how many hits, how many comments, how many kudos) in addition to a bit of anxiety or fear over  theloss of sustained interest in that story (by yourself and/or by your audience). I find that this can be alleviated by really, truly internalizing the understanding that you are allowed to write your work however you damn please, for whoever you damn please.

There will be work you write for others, and there will be work you write for yourself. Not all work needs to be published; sometimes, it is really nice to just write shit for yourself; it is a plus for humanity if you decide to share it with others, but you do not have to do that.

Furthermore, I would like to present you with this:

This is what my current folder for under fire looks like. And you might notice that there are almost always multiple drafts per chapter. Yes, I did in fact rewrite chapter four 5 fucking times, you bet your ass I did. And I’m not ashamed of it. I think the story is better for it. And that’s the important thing here: you do not need to produce a perfect draft the first time around. You will not produce that perfect draft. Accept this. Embrace this. Embrace it and your cat at the same time to really ingrain it as a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Liberate yourself from the pressure of needing to produce the perfect, most right draft and you may find starting the piece overall to be a much easier, more pleasant experience.

And along with this beautiful, uplifting spiritual advice, I also bring a practical thought: when it comes to getting started, a lot of times, people feel like they need to set the stage, yadda yadda yadda. Ha. No. Fuck that.

That’s a surefire way to bore the shit out of yourself. Start right in the middle of a scene that captivates you if that’s what you want to write. It’s a free platform. No one’s gonna arrest you if you stick Spiderman upside down in trash first thing. They might even applaud you actually, because you didn’t make them slog through some of that ‘It was the evening of the 25th and it was cold out in the streets” bullshit we all learned from Dickens.

Alright. Now let’s talk about actually getting started making words appear on paper.

So, from my knowledge there are generally two ways that folks write creatively. You have what I’m going to call the planners and then you what I’m going to call the monsters (I call them this entirely affectionately, I’m sure there’s a better word for these folks, but I don’t have it atm, all I have is a headcold). Planners are folks who sit down and work out their major plot points, who write outlines, and who create the scaffolding of their work before they set out on their magical journey. I think of these folks as architects.

And then you have the monsters and these are those fuckers who just sit down and write stream of consciously like the heathens all our high school teachers tried to teach us not to be.

I am both a planner and a monster. And a lot of that depends on the length of work I’m going for. I have never in my life planned a one-shot, for example. I just attack that as it is. I follow my heart, if you will. But when it comes to longer chaptered fics, I really do think that some outlining is super helpful.

You might find it useful for one-shots, though, I dunno. Maybe give it a try and see what happens?

The two main fics I’ve done proper outlines for are Inimitable and under fire and I actually find outlining to be immensely helpful in psyching me up to write the story (I go through and re-read my outlines when I start to lose interest or diverge too much from the plot outlined there in the actual writing. 9 times out of 10, re-reading gets me stupid excited to write all over again) and it also helps me keep momentum going throughout the plot.

Here’s a pic of some pages of under fire’s outline.

Physically writing the work is really important for me because it forces me to only put down key points/feelings/ideas I want to include, whereas typing gives me far too much room to get lost/distracted by extraneous detail. And since my handwriting is a teacher’s worst nightmare and I cross out shit and write huge with emotion, I’ll give you a little bit of what the middle page here says:

Miles-

there’s something thrumming

vibrating in his ears wherever he goes

-closes his eyes and somehow enters blackness- emptyness (Stranger Things style)

beat

beat

beat

“help.”

–BACK - everything is gone

closing his eyes doesn’t bring the space back

–it makes him panic. He doesn’t know why. His heart is pounding. He’s sweating He has a horrible feeling of doom.

beat

beat

beat

its gone.

he goes home anxiously. Pretends everything is normal.

his neck crawls

So basically it’s less of a formal outline and more of a collection of stream of consciousness feelings and screenplay directions which I’ll flesh out in the actual story.

Personally, I love writing these kinds of things because they get me pumped for the story I’m about to tell. I get to write out the key scenes and work through all the hard parts first, and then, while I’m writing, I work through the little fun details and banter and I have to write to figure out how we get from one scene to the next and I love the challenge of having to fit those pieces together. I very rarely stick strictly to my outline, (as anyone who is currently reading under fire can tell you right now), but I do try to stick to the main plot points in it and my writing is certainly better for it.

So yes. Outlining is very good, but it is even better when you do it to some kind of music. I listened to What’s Up Danger from the Into the Spiderverse soundtrack on repeat while I wrote this outline to kind of transfer some of the relentless pace conveyed in that song to the piece’s plot.

I highly recommend using music to set the mood of your piece while/before you write a piece of any length. It helps get you in the right headspace (excited or somber or angry) to write. You need emotion to write creatively. You can’t just make that happen sometimes; you need a little help.

A couple other things which might help:

1. Leave your house or the space you’re normally in. Go to a cafe and find a nice corner and have a think and a try in there. Sometimes moving to a different space helps you escape cyclical thinking patterns.

2. Write what you want to read. Don’t bother writing for other peoples’ interests; that’ll just bore the shit out of you all over again.

3. Find an atmospheric mood sound to listen to on Youtube or smth (I personally like Rain on a Car Windshield for slightly somber fics, but you might be into ocean storms or dripping caves or whatever).

4. Heat your feet. I don’t know why but I am entirely unproductive when my feet are cold. Maybe this one is me-specific, but whatevs. Heat the feets!

5. If you’re still having trouble just sitting down and pounding the story out, that’s okay! Maybe it’s not ready to be written yet. Maybe you’re not in the right headspace yet. Sometimes that’s just how it is. One story makes its way out in like, a hour, and the next one takes like, months to finally be written. We all work at different paces. We all write for different reasons.

It might help to figure out why you want to write a story before you write it. Like, if its for attention, it’s gonna be hard as hell. But if there’s an idea that you feel like is important or if there’s a mood you’re trying to work yourself into or out of, then that might be a little easier. For example, I wrote a piece called make it work which is about Fogs finding his motivation to be a lawyer and fight for justice when Kavanaugh was confirmed and I felt super helpless in the face of our present justice system. That story kind of wrote itself and it needed to be written, I feel, not just for me, but for others who were feeling just as helpless.

Writing is catharsis in that way. Maybe you just need to find out what you need to wring out of your soul.

Sorry that got very metaphysical. But I do want to stress that getting started and ending a story are the hardest parts of writing them, so you are definitely not alone if you feel like you’re ramming your head into a wall here.

I hope something here helps you, my dear!

[cultsykes-archive]

who is butch hartman and what did he do? im confused

agh, shit, i thought i reblogged another post abt the whole situation somewhere.

hmmmm its 6am and i havent slept so please forgive me if i get things wrong or dont make a lot of sense, i also have a couple different videos that i watched on the situation that i feel sum it up p well.

basicallyyyyyyyy overall hes just rlly fuckin pandering to his audience always and obvs doesnt like,, know who his audience is, so first theres that.

second (and the main reason i think people are like Really Mad at him) is that he tried to make this video streaming service akin to youtube, netflix, etc that was gonna have all that Family Friendly Alternative Content on it, i guess it was something about how kids are being exposed to shit they shouldnt be seeing like, yknow, horror and gore and sex n stuff. so he set up a kickstarter for it, raised all the money,,,,, then came out and was all like “oh Whoops did i forget to mention im basically gonna use this to spread my v christian beliefs,,” something along those lines??

lmfao take everything i said with a grain of salt tho, im like 99% sure i got some detail wrong. watch the videos i linked, they do a 20x better job at explaining stuff. dont ask a sleep-deprived bat to explain things like this blease lmaoooo

[bastardrobocop]

on fallout 76

so, because im a fool i pre ordered fallout 76. frankly, i was going to buy it on release anyway because im starved for anything fallout and new california was a complete bust. 

anyway, this means i have had access to the “B.E.T.A.”, which isn’t really a beta. it’s just server stress tests. i’ve done every pc round so far and i feel like i can say pretty conclusively that it’s just not very good.

sorry, this is going to be a long meandering post

i dont know if its something they can fix in the like, week before they launch the game, but the delay/latency/feel is so fucking whack it’s unbelievable. the multiplayer fallout new vegas mod feels like it has better netcode. in addition, it is dreadfully optimized. i play on a laptop, so maybe take my perspective with a grain of salt, but i’m not the only one who has pointed this out. i use an nvidia 970m, which runs fallout 4 at around 50/60 frames per second. fallout 76 tops out at around 10-30 on average. just wandering the world, the framerate is atrocious. performance is best in small interior cells and in wide open spaces with nothing in it. in more dense and enemy populated areas, the game stutters hard. more than once ive had the game freeze for several seconds during a firefight. its honestly inexcusably bad most of the time. with poor latency and framerate chugging, the gameplay experience is trying. it makes literally everything painful, including just inventory management and crafting. 

the gameplay itself isnt too awful in that its just fallout 4 again but without the pretense of minimal rpg elements. performance problems can make some engagements suck, but most common enemies aren’t too hard. however, the real nasty ones that are higher level than you can be nigh on impossible to take down solo, which sucks because my friends arent always available and dealing with online randos is always bad. but it’s also the only way to get like, good weapons. but anyway, the core gameplay loop is almost the same. i say almost because the ‘workshop’ storage is your only storage. and it has a 400lb limit. which takes into account anything you put in it. this should seem like an obvious issue; you basically cant afford to store things if you gather valuable resources. im currently stuck carrying this big fucking rocket launcher which is useless right now because i dont have any inventory space for missiles, which weigh a ton. also, ammo has weight now. and you can’t scrap ammo for ammo parts like gunpowder or lead. and you can’t sell ammo either. so instead you just have to like, dump hundreds of rounds just on the ground since you can’t store them in the workshop because you need space for steel and adhesive and that M2 Browning that you can’t use yet but want to hold onto because it looks bitchin. however, you can bulk scrap with plastic, which reduces weight by about half. however, therein lies another problem; plastic becomes a precious resource because you can’t make a bulk pile of wood without it for some reason. plastic is currently more precious than literal gold. still, you get stuck holding a bunch of valuable scrap in your inventory which you can’t put into your stash because it’s full and you can’t go out and find more plastic because then you’ll be over-encumbered and you cant afford to drop this circuit board and you can’t build any more things in your camp because the budget is painfully low and even when you DO get enough plastic to bulk things the bulked stuff goes into your inventory and wont necessarily fit back into the stash and i’m still carrying this fucking missile launcher please god let me put down this missile launcher please oh please god

the ui is a disaster. it’s like they turned 4′s console/gamepad control scheme and doubled down on it; on pc, random keys are bound to multiple things and then also bound to a separate key, and you can’t re-bind things individually. so that means middle mouse is both ‘open favorite item wheel’ and ‘enter third person’ and ‘enter build mode’ when there’s also V which is also ‘enter third person’. you cannot change this. there will always be one button for this. there is still no separate binding for bash and grenade throw, of course. if you press escape, it opens the map. if you press m, it opens the map. to open the pause menu with things like ‘options’ and ‘microtransaction store’ and ‘quit the game’, you have to open the map with either escape or M and then press Z. there is no direct button to take you to the pause menu, as far as i can tell. when you go up to a workbench, there are three options; E to craft, R to scrap, Space to repair and modify. from this menu, if you want to scrap an item, you must mouse over it, and then select it. however, DO NOT MOVE THE MOUSE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. even if the prompt is open and asking if you want to scrap, say, a pump action shotgun, if you mouse over and the highlight moves over to your only power armor chest piece, it will scrap the power armor chest piece. even though it was asking if you wanted to scrap the shotgun. its potentially one of the most hostile interfaces ive ever seen. the bindings for ‘scrap mode’ and ‘scrap item’ in different menus also change. if i’m in the repair menu, G scraps an item. if i’m in scrap mode, spacebar does. the only good thing ive seen so far is the favorite wheel and also you can set it so you can see through your pip boy background while browsing it. 

the world feels desolate and boring. the lack of human npc interaction has been replaced with finding some dead persons holotape. there are robots. there is at least one AI. but all the questgivers are pieces of paper, holotapes, or voices on a radio. sometimes it’s a robot. you don’t actually interact though. there’s no interaction beyond listening and being told what to do. while im bitching about how the world feels, lets talk about factions. bethesda has kind of casually hyped up factions as being some kind of meaningful, cool choice. they’re literally nothing. there is no indication to other players what faction you are in. you can join every faction and reach top rank in every faction. you cant see if anyone is a member of your faction unless theyre in your faction specific base. there is no inter-faction conflict, there are very few faction quests aside from random events, and once you’re done with the main faction quest, you’re basically done for good except for repeatable ones. i honestly expected factions to be a meaningful choice, which was probably my mistake. i was hoping it would force you to commit to your current faction once you joined it, or would prompt you to abandon another faction in order to join a new one. but there’s just nothing. i was expecting something like, i dunno, destinys faction thing. like joining new monarchy. and maybe butting heads with members of other factions, like i figured the Brotherhood faction would be my enemy if i joined the enclave. but it’s just nothing. the world is nothing, the quests are nothing, everything just feels pointless. 

this is also a personal gripe, but there are like no energy weapon alternatives to small guns aside from the errant laser pistol, but ammo is extremely rare. the only new energy weapon i’ve seen so far is the plasma gatling, which is a big gun. otherwise, it’s just the crappy pistol/rifle converting laser and plasma rifle. no plasma pistol, just a pistol conversion. no laser pistol, just a pistol conversion. i’ve always loved energy weapons and just like. not getting any variety while guns and melee weapons get tons of variety is grating. there are many new ballistic weapons that look neat. the 10mm smg is back, and i am admittedly fond of it. however, 10mm ammo is painfully rare. i spend basically all my lead making more ammo for it. i can kind of get by with my laser pistol and my shotgun always makes up however much ammo i lose because a lot of enemies use shotguns, but my 10mm just goes up in smoke and there’s none to be found elsewhere. there’s a shocking amount of .308 because almost every early/mid enemy uses a hunting rifle, but i guess it makes sense because the big MG-32 thing takes .308 so they want you to be able to use it when the time comes. still, i’d rather be using an energy weapon. i want like. a recharger pistol. or the plasma rifle with all the tubes. or a pulse gun. just like. anything other than the ugly aer9 pistol conversion. i think the folks down at bethesda just dont like energy weapons very much; theyre leaps and bounds less viable than small guns. 

the enemies look okay. instead of raiders, you have the Scorched. they’re Marked Men, but weaker and also a cult formed by radioactive bats. there are super mutants, because bethesda cant be bothered to go outside of the comfort zone of Things People Recognize and also they hate lore i guess. the wild animals are kind of fun. theres a big toad that looks cute, and frogs that have MASSIVE arms that they run on, which looks funny. theyre small though. things like the mothman and snallygaster look neat. the flatwoods monster is okay. the grafton bastard is big and kind of easy to cheese out. there is a monster named after a flawed and racist interpretation of indigenous beliefs. theres a big sloth, who i love. the mole men (called mole miners) are intimidating and ANNOYINGLY precise with shotguns. they’re later game enemies and very aggressive. they drop a neat looking unarmed weapon that ive been using, called a mole miner gauntlet. it’s like a power fist with big claws. there’s a big bee called a honeybeast. ive basically covered all of the new monsters, though. everything else is from fallout 4 and dlcs. this includes things like anglers, which had obviously evolved on far harbor along with the lure plant so it doesnt make sense for them to be there, and gulpers which are big salamanders so i guess that’s more okay. there are swarms of bees that are just he same repeated png of a bee, spinning around. oh yeah, there are a couple new insect types; ticks and fireflies. both use the animations of the radroach and bloatfly, respectively.

solo play can be kind of boring and difficult. most randos you meet will either ignore you or call you a slur and run away. ive only had one guy break into my house and i murdered him. however, even though he had a bounty on his head, he was still allowed to get ‘revenge’ on me which meant he could spawn right next to me and this time he had a power armor suit, so he killed me a couple times before logging out to avoid my wrath. coward. if you’re out there dude, i’ll kick your ass. also, quick note about the bounty system; its kinda rough around the edges. i tried to save someones garden by shooting a ghoul that was stomping their flowers in the back. however, my shot somehow curved around him at point blank and broke a blackberry bush. from then on, i had a 20 cap bounty on my head. i had to hide from people in my secret enclave bunker and get my friend to kill me so i could perceive other people on the map again and also not live in fear of every tom dick and larry with a power armor frame and a bad attitude. 

i feel like i should wrap up. fallout 76 is not very good, but if they can work out performance and latency it wouldnt be too bad for just dicking around with friends. in terms of being like, a fallout game, it’s worse than 4. i haven’t gotten into story spoilers, but its not great. and it feels remarkably desolate for a game thats advertised as being a cool time with your buds. maybe itll be better when there are more people playing. i dunno. its just not very good. i dont recommend it.