#thank you friendo!

[epersonae]

Ask game! Ask game! I'd love to read your thoughts on 17, 31, & 56.

17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

Sort of depends why? Sometimes I have to just admit that the spoons are just not available (which is what happened last night and is happening again tonight), brain and body have just done too much for right now. Leg Broke, is the right now, but I've had that before, too.

Sometimes I need to think out loud to someone, if what I'm stuck on is "what should happen?" in a story I'm working on. Rubber ducking is such a helpful term that's jumped over from programming; if I can talk through what's not working or what I want to happen and can't figure out, then I can either solve it myself, or one of my smart thoughtful friends will have an idea. (the number of times I've rambled on and then gotten "ok, pitch" from @emi--rose...)

I feel like "going for a walk" is sort of the solitary version of that, which is partially about physical activity being good for the brain and partially about thinking time; same with taking a shower.

Sometimes I just need the peer pressure and time pressure of sitting down for writing sprints. If you know pomodoro method, it's kind of similar; most of the discord servers I'm in have a sprint bot that will set a timer, keep track of word counts, do leaderboards, etc. When I have some idea but the executives are not quite lined up, sometimes it's simply a matter of putting the damn fingers on the keyboard. (This goes well with "freewriting", where if I'm sort of stuck I will just write whatever garbage until it kicks loose into the actual writing. Also recommended: yelling out loud MAKE BAD ART while writing words that are not quite there.)

And then, finally, like low spoons, acknowledging that sometimes it's just not happening, and giving grace to rebuild the creative energy. Do some other creative activity, read or watch something, edit someone else's work, etc etc etc. Trust that it'll come back given a little space.

31. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

Yes? No? A secret third thing? Character, I think, mostly, because I feel like that drives the plot. What I actually start with, though, is almost always a snippet of narration or dialogue. I can have lots of ideas, but I need an entry point.

56. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

This is not a general thing about my writing, but it is possibly my greatest achievement as a writer to date, so I kinda have to: that I wrote 62k with a protagonist who never gets named (and in close third person TAKE THAT DAPHNE DU MAURIER) (I guess technically, oh god, almost 100k????? with the other two after that. jfc.)

[get to know your fic writer!]

[kcrabb88]

29 and 30 for AO3 wrapped?

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Touuuugh choice but this passage from After the War (Part the Second) that I wrote for QuinObi week:

Best friend. That’s not enough of a word to describe Obi-Wan and him. It’s not wrong, but it doesn’t encompass the everything and the in-between they were. Are? He’ll settle for are. Friends. Lovers when there was time. They were always in love in some weird way that only made sense to them. Even when they both had other people in their hearts too—Ventress, Satine, Siri—they were still like that. In love. It was always after the war whispered against rumpled sheets and tangled fingers and sped-up heartbeats, over crackling comms across lightyears where Quinlan could still hear the creak of Obi-Wan's bones and the exhaustion buried deep in his voice until it was a part of him. Sometimes they couldn’t talk. Sometimes he was on a mission for months and communication was forbidden until it was over. Sometimes Obi-Wan wasn’t much more than a saber in hand and the dust and dirt on his boots from the muck of a long campaign. They went from dreamy Padawans with the world stretched out in front of them to masters who only knew the day the minute the second coming next. Somewhere in-between, they were knights with their kids cuddled up together on the sofa while the two of them drank the tea Obi-Wan loved and that Quinlan pretended to like. After the war. They never knew what after the war meant.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

I've really dug into some darker topics that I haven't done as much work with before and I think I did them really well! I've always liked writing about intense and heavy things, but I always kind of pulled my punches and didn't dig in the way I wanted to, but that's been something (both in fic and my original writing) that I've really let shine. And I think letting myself do that has allowed my love of recovery arcs and resilience to really come through all the more. And my prose I think too, has gotten even better, and that was a nice little surprise. So, it's been a good year for improvements, I think.

Talk to me about A03 Wrapped!

[moonflower-rose]

Hi!! I just wanted to say that your blog never fails to make me smile, I love to look for your reblogs and feel the happy hormones go. ❤️

Ahhh thank you! I reckon about 90% of my reblogs are intended for me to go back to if I need a cheer up, and it probably drives some people nuts. Sorry to those people but hooray for me and anyone else who found a lil nug of joy in there too! I hope you continue to get a little boost from them buddy 🥰

[rachi-roo]

Sending love Rachel🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🖤🩶🤍🤎💖💕❣️💘💞💝💓💗💟❤️‍🔥

Rant to me about your favorite anime. It’ll help distract you

*catches the love* Oof, thank you friendo! I needed that 😌🩷💕

My favourite anime? Hmmm... I don't think I could pick just one. Noragami will always have a very special place in my heart. Always in my top 3 🥰

The plot is so unique, and all the characters are so lovable.

In case you didn't know, the story follows an ancient God, Yato, who is struggling to stay in work in the modern world where no one wishes upon God's anymore. He now performs day to day tasks such as cleaning and store managing for anyone who will pay him, alongside cleansing demons that may plague the humans whilst living on the street. He meets a girl, Hiyori, who accidentally gains the power to leave her body and move around as a spirit.

Yato now must find a way to fix Hiyori whilst keeping work coming, slaying demons and making sure he isn't finished off by other gods along with his Regalia, a spirit boy named Yukine who can turn into a blade. The whole show retains a fairly lighthearted vibe throughout, with some serious fight scenes and drama thrown in. Much like the vibe in Demon slayer or Jujutsu kaisen.

The animation itself is beautiful. The characters are so expressive and full of personality! Yato especially. Voiced by the great Kamaya Hiroshi (Levi, Ranpo, Saiki) in sub and Jason Liebrecht (Dabi) in dub, Yato is truly a wonderful character in both worlds.

With his childish and happy-go-lucky side contrasting his 'I'm literally a God you should worship me' side, it's so amusing to see him desperately trying to scrape together every penny he can in order to get a cold beer. 🥰

Please. I beg. Watch Noragami 😭💙🩵💙🩵💙🩵 He's a silly, goofy, stinky street rat and I would do anything for him ☺️

[buggy-mars]

*crab noises*

🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀

[findmeinthefallair]

for the letter fandom ask: A, E, J, K, L, T, V, X

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed Owl House: Raeda, Huntlow (okay with platonic or future romantic), and Aladarius. Arcane: Vi x Caitlyn, and a very very crackship for Voltron which is Lance x Luka.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what? Not quite. Only recently did I draw my Voltron son and Owl House son brooding at a McD's but I wouldn't say it counts.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.) The Owl House. And sure enough, it has become the neverending brainrot.

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc? Ah, I think it hasn't happened yet coz I'm optimistically anticipating a very moving arc for Hunter in Owl House. But for now, I really like Sokka's arc from Avatar.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate. Hooty from Owl House is absolutely hilarious and great.

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? Keith (Voltron) really aspires to be kind in the way his father was. Hunter (Owl House) argues with his palisman at least once a day.

V - Which character do you relate to most? I hardly mention her but Acxa from Voltron might be consistently the most relatable for me. I should reblog a gifset to fondly remember her after this.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom. The timeless Found Family trope.

[arctic-hands]

Psst the checkout person at a library is sometimes a librarian but often just a library worker! My best friend works the checkout desk at a university library and they just have an unrelated bachelor's. They also have a 5lb lift limit and chronic pain and stuff but are able to do the job okay with minor accommodations! So it's probably something worth looking into if you're interested!

Oooh! SSI has a "ticket to work" thing where you can work and still get SSI, tho I'm not entirely clear how this works

[wanderingaldecaldo]

🌈💖✨Send this to the twelve nicest people you know or seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome 😎💜💚💙🩷

Kelsey!!! Thank you, you're so sweet! Glad to know you! 🥰

[saltpepperbeard]

Stede + Letting his eyes linger closed after a kiss <3 (insp by @appleteeth's tags)

[ari-dark-raiden-simp]

[sillypikmin]

For your consideration: cowboy pikmin finds a horse

🌼🌼🌼🌼

YESSSSSS OMG ...... A REAL HORSIE FOR HIM

[babacontainsmultitudes]

*breathes* Okay I finally listened to the teen talk proper, no longer just specific clips and reading other people's summaries of things, and can I just say I wish I'd done this a week ago, cause I definitely feel better about some things now, and it's a pretty entertaining teen talk overall (since this episode is available on the site anyways I'll probably clip some specific bits soon to highlight!). Regarding Sparrow and Norm specifically there's definitely more nuance to what is actually said than what a lot of the recaps/paraphrasing I've seen here had me thinking (for one as a Sparrow freak with a lot of Opinions, knowing that Will immediately follows the bit on Normal's interpretation of the love wolf scene with "but that's not necessarily right cause that's not necessarily what Sparrow is feeling" would have spared me a lot of psychic damage, personally, but also on the topic of Normal's future I mean I'll still be picking and choosing from what was said I won't pretend I love all of it but I think the whole discussion and depiction of it is more nuanced and optimistic than much of what I've seen on that front too). You might expect that I, Baba "I like overtly disagreeing with popular fandom opinions" C. Multitudes would think twice before taking fandom interpretations of something for granted, but I didn't, so honestly fuck me I guess. Still side-eyeing a lot of fandom takes but Will Campos you are free to go 😌. Otherwise Matt's discussion of the gothcleats in the epilogue and everything Will had to say about Nicky gave me life, but I'll clip that stuff soon like I said and *maybe* say more on some of that then lol.

[sky-kiss]

Really genuinely uncertain how like...one person is blessed to have so many incredible and talented friends. But apparently, I hit the jackpot.

The beautiful and supremely talented @dungeonspawn was kind enough to make this piece for Raphael and Joi's shopping adventure.

Please take special note of his brooch. It is imperative that you note the brooch.

If you have not already followed her, I highly recommend it. She's a lovely person and just PSYCHO TALENTED? So, like. You need more of that in your life.

Find her at:

@dungeonspawn and @youngearlgrey-partdeux.

[pickles4nickles]

Pickles Played Persona 5 Tactica and Has Some Words

I finally finished Tactica and its DLC sans some challenge stuff and I do wanna do some cleanup, but I thought I'd write a review for it.

It's long (like, 3k words long) and there's spoilers and overall... it's an Okay(tm) game, but... here, just lemme talk about it a bunch:

Alright, I'm not gonna mince words.

Persona 5 Tactica is not a game I can reccomend to anyone.

But is it a bad game?

Well, no.

But I have no idea who it's for.

Maybe it's for people who want more of the P5 characters? Not exactly? Both stories' focal points are on new characters and the Phantom Thieves just kinda happen to be there. There are some nice interactions, but this isn't a story about the PTs like Strikers.

Is it for people who like tactics but aren't really into P5? Well... it might be the other way around, actually? It's an okay tactics game with persona elements, but both parts of that are watered down when compared to base game persona and other tactics games like XCOM.

With that being said, lemme just ramble about what I thought about the story and gameplay.

THE STORY

The best way I can sum up my feelings about Tactica are "the story was told well, but I'm not sure if I liked it." This is a game that's less about the Phantom Thieves and more about Toshiro and Erina and focuses around the internal conflict of rebellion versus self-preservation.

Toshiro is probably why I'm neutral towards the game At Best. Erina grew on me but Toshiro...

Ehh.

At the beginning of the game, he's a big wimp and he's constantly telling the PTs and Erina that they have to be careful. From a theming standpoint, Toshiro's behavior makes perfect sense.

But from the petty bitch inside of me, this is infuriating because not only do YOU know that this is the Phantom Thieves that have taken down Shido (and also Yaldaboth), but TOSHIRO knows it as well and he's being Like This.

Like, he kinda sucks in the beginning and does so for the first two acts, understandably, but by the third act, when The Big Persona Moments happen, my opinion of him just kinda stayed the same. They swayed in a different direction, but... still on the negative side of the spectrum.

The reveal of Erina as Toshiro's Persona... makes sense. She's Toshiro's spirit(?) of rebellion and is based off of his classmate that once inspired him to stand up for himself and others.

Did I like this revelation?

Hell no, I was punching my thigh and screaming in voice call "No fucking way, Toshiro's so lame, though" as loud as I could without upsetting my parents in the other rooms.

From this point on, Toshiro now has the resolve to do what's right, even if it's scary... but he comes off as a little too strong in my opinion. I kinda have the same feelings about Zenkichi once he gets his persona in Strikers. In the beginning they feel like a new character meant to balance out the insanity that is how the metaverse is, but once they get their persona, they're full on inundated in the anime stand battles and they're a little too extra about it.

Having two full acts of "hey guys maybe we shouldn't help the hat people out of hat people slavery," pivoting into "WITNESS OUR POWER AS ONE" has the same vibes as a relative who's not really an asshole, but one that you've been trying to convince for years that economic inflation is the reason why our generation can't live comfortably, and once they finally understand, they come off a little bit too strong and righteous about it that you're not sure they're genuine or if this is a "he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit" situation.

And then god happens.

In persona games, I usually don't fully understand how or why the god-being is doing all of this, but I especially can't wrap my head around how they work in Tactica. It's mostly because Toshiro's metaverse is kind of a Silent Hill kinda deal where it's a mental torture labyrinth for him personally, as opposed to Mementos, which is naturally the collective unconscious, connecting everyone's minds and hearts together.

The jump from "I'm going to bully this one guy in particular" to "now EVERYONE will be as lame as Toshiro" is lost on me. Maybe politics?

It's... it's fine, there's no reason to lose sleep over it.

The ending of the story is nice and reasonable, though. It sorta redeems Toshiro for me. It's one thing to yell in your own metaverse hellscape how you're going to do the right thing, but once he's back in the real world, he actually stands up to his dad and fiancé and steps down from his political position to build it back up from scratch, but better.

And, yeah! I respect that.

That being said, though, the game isn't devoid of new Phantom Thief interactions. There's some good ones like Futaba "I don't kinkshame" Sakura, casually bi Joker as seen in that one "who would you marry" bit, and a guys only sidequest in which they think they're looking for Toshiro's porn stash (yeah, I know) (it's not). I wouldn't say it's crumbs, but you're not getting the whole loaf that you'd get from, say, Mementos Mission or Strikers.

The story also does this thing where the Phantom Thieves can relate with Toshiro's issues, but something about it feels... off.

Toshiro's in an arranged marriage with Marie for political reasons! Just like Haru! His fiancé sees him as a pushover! Kinda like Makoto! His mom died when he was young and he blames himself for it! Wow, Yusuke and DEFINITELY Futaba can relate to that!! Eri, the real person that Erina is based on, had to transfer schools because she was accused of a crime! Gee, that SURE sounds familiar-

Part of me thinks I'm being a little too unfair on the game for creating parallels like this because Strikers also kinda did this. But in Strikers, the PTs being able to connect with the jail rulers was integral to the plot. Here, it's just kind of a wink wink nudge nudge kinda thing.

And my knee-jerk reaction to that is a small "I get it, shut uuuup."

Again, and overall because I think that rounds out what I have to say about the story, P5 Tactica's main story isn't bad. It's told well, but I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of it.

GAMEPLAY

I've only played Strikers and I don't think I've played a true tactics game, so I don't know how much weight my opinions hold.

So um.

I dunno, the gameplay was fine.

The pacing is weird because it's kind of a visual novel first, and a tactics game in-between, but I got used to that after a bit.

It's a really simple tactics game and... yeah things don't get too complex outside of sometimes there are buttons that'll open doors or raise and lower platforms, sometimes height matters, but the mechanics don't get too crazy outside of certain boss battles.

The game revolves around downing enemies to get Once More's so you can either encase the enemy in a triangle formed by your units to initiate an All-out Attack or you can chain together Once More's to extend your unit's range and move them across the map. This mechanic took a bit for me to understand fully, but I never really got tired of doing it.

Boss battles were kind of hit or miss in this game. The fights with Toshiro's Dad and Salmael I enjoyed as they were kinda formatted as "here's a weird stage, go figure out what to do." However, Marie and *checks notes* "the scary Eri Natsuhara that Shadow Toshiro made" I didn't care for as much since they changed the game from "your decisions on where to move your units are key for this" to "you need to do exactly as we say." Which always kinda sucks, y'know?

Character selection is also kind of a weird thing in this, too. It doesn't seem like it matters who you take with you into missions, which... feels weird to me considering past Persona games. The elements have all been kinda smooshed down into less of a weakness thing, but just a special move that can hinder movement, do damage over time, or change enemy placement entirely, but which type of special you bring along doesn't seem to be as crucial as other Persona games. Each character has a slightly different attack, gun spread, and movement limit, but it wasn't anything drastic that I noticed apart from Haru (she is very slow but apparently hits like a truck) and possibly Morgana (his attack was very weak for me, but I'm not sure if that's because I didn't have him kitted out properly or that's intended).

I played the game almost entirely with Joker and Ann, while swapping between Erina and Ryuji for the last slot and I didn't run into any problems.

The last stretch of the game is... a strange one gameplay wise. Toshiro becomes a party member except... he's Different(tm). He doesn't get a skill tree, is a permanent fourth party member, and can initiate All-Out Attacks, but isn't a part of the triangle that forms it. He does have a gun, but it's in the form of a 0SP attack that Ernesto/Erina can use... that also happens to ignore walls entirely. And he also gets Almighty attacks, which kinda just do big number damage for way more SP.

It's hard to say if the game did a good job scaling the level difficulties to incorporate a fourth party member as staying on top of your persona fusing, weapons, and the skill tree can kind of make the game a breeze. I also played on the normal difficulty, so maybe in harder difficulties, Toshiro becomes more of a necessity than a party member that breaks the game.

My only big gripe with the game is just... the weirdness of the undo button. I don't know how it is in regular tactics games, but the undo in this game doesn't work on a "clear the last action this unit did" basis, but on a turn basis. If you happen to screw up on turn one, unit one, you have to back out COMPLETELY to the mission start screen, which is hella annoying especially if you're playing on the Switch because of the load times.

"But Pickles, what about the DLC? Surely you have just as many thoughts about it?"

Y'know?

I actually don't.

I liked Repaint Your Heart a lot. Again, it's less a story about the Royal Trio and more about Guernica, but it's closer to the traditional Persona 5 story format where they're changing someone's heart. This story also had much higher emotional... fidelity? I guess you could put it?

Guernica needed to remember her main inspirations for creating art - being abandoned and homeless and her big sister dying because of it and she embraces that anger against society into art that inspires hope in people less fortunate. While being groomed into a political pawn from basically birth and then, later in life, being thrown into your own mental hellscape sucks, in terms of emotional weight, Toshiro's story feels like a feather compared to Guernica's.

Also her design is just cool and the paint aesthetic is definitely more my speed.

In terms of Royal Trio content, I think this was the best case scenario we could expect from Atlus.

Emphasis on "from Atlus."

Yeah, we didn't get Black Mask Akechi, but there are MORE THAN ENOUGH moments where he lets the facade slip. His default spell is Megidola, but his skill tree lets him have both Light AND Dark spells. He'll cuss at you if you hit an enemy into him. I don't know what he's doing viscerally screaming half the time he summons Robin Hood.

Sumi. Is also there.

She is fine.

Guernica's connection to the thieves is also written in the same way as Toshiro is, in that it's a little shoehorned in and doesn't add to the story beyond that. After finding out that Luca is Guernica's sister that died, Sumi definitely feels motivated and inspired to help her out, but Akechi also being an abandoned child, scorned by society, and angry at the world because of it is never touched upon. This is probably for spoiler reasons, but... still.

Because this is a story that takes place during Sae's Palace in the main game, they all have to have amnesia about it in the end. Which, understandable, and at least no one in the trio had extensive character development but...

*clenches fist*

Man,

Having tackled this after the main game, I enjoyed the gameplay a lot! It's basically P5 Tactica but with Splatoon mixed in. When a unit is on a tile painted the opposite color for them, they can be instantly knocked down and combo'd on, which adds a whole extra layer of complexity to the game. I wish there were a few more levels to play, but the length of the DLC never overstays its welcome.

Hokay.

If you made it this far, congrats! You reached the end. And my tl;dr section.

I think that's just about it on what I cohesively have to say about P5 Tactica. This isn't a terrible game by any means, but I don't know if the audience it's intended for actually exists. It has a just okay story and just okay mechanics, but the DLC has a more than okay story and the core mechanics are given a fresh coat of paint (yeah, boo, I know) that makes the game more interesting. I would not go paying $80 USD to experience the DLC alone, though.

Thank you for reading my review if you made it all the way to the end! P5 stuff (well, mostly Akeshu) has been my muse these past few years and playing a game that was "just okay but why did they..." got into my brain real bad, so I wanted to write some stuff out.

I'll close this out with some bullet points of thoughts that I couldn't really cohesively fit into my review:

I really really liked how they got little costumes for the old timey Japan kingdom and I was hoping we'd get more of that and every kingdom was based on a new theme... but we only got three kingdoms and the last one before "Smithy's Forge from Super Mario RPG" was............ School.

SATANAEL'S BACK IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS (BUT ONLY POST-GAME)

Erina also being Ernesto thing is mostly weird to me because she's still her own entity but also not???? The possible genderfluid connotations are cool though.

There's a quest where Haru asks Yusuke how to be fast. Yusuke tells her she has to "Become a Black Hole." I do not know what this means.

After the quest, Haru says that even though the axe slows her down, she's very partial to it as her father didn't like her chopping wood as a kid, but she'd sneak out and do it anyway. She later found out that her dad knew she was doing this, but decided not to scold her for it. She took this as a sign of kindness from her father and that's why the axe is so special to her. I do not know what this means as Haru's father was a horrible capitalist who basically tried to marry her off in pursuit of power.

The weapon designs in this game are generally kind of silly, but I appreciate that they exist in the game. There's a chompy gun with teeth that Joker gets and I really like it :)

God the Lyn tracks from the DLC FUCK

...what

Futaba says "sus" at one point in the end

[humming-fly]

throws the 🧋 at you gimme the sweet sweet goods (either)

🧋 (Boba Tea) - Come up with a Kirby Café item themed around your OC! It can be a savoury dish, a drink, a dessert, or something else entirely. [Kirby OC ask meme]

glasses you with these

[carnivoured]

V2 decides it will become real.