#the other twink is artorias

[paranormal-potatoes]

Teague: sorry what? i was distracted by the 11 foot tall twink

Ornstein: what is that and why are you looking at me

Teague: a twink is–

Gehrman, shoving his hand over Teague's mouth: nothing. don't mind him, he's chronically stupid. it's terminal

Teague: *muffled noises*

translation: fuck you let me seduce the twinks

Gehrman: no. behave. or I'm telling what you did last sunday

Teague: *remembering last sunday when he accidentally broke one of Maria's favorite mugs*

Teague, muffled but loudly: FUCK

[spiralcloudpassage]

your favourite SOTE music themes ranked from worst to best?

oh whew. whoever always asks me about music on anon thank u i love these.

1. divine beast dancing lion. divine beast. dancing lion. divine beast, dancing lion. divinebeastdancinglion. it's a good track. every time i read his name i do the FMAB commercial break. i like how immediately predatory it is from measure 1 like the flutes open with 16th notes and the whole symphony swings up.

2. messmer. so good. i'm really harsh on how I feel about messy because he's the flagship i mean mascot of SOTE so like, he's gotta be good! you're lady maria. you're artorias. no one will ever be sister friede sorry. strong track though, i love the surge of the main theme in phase 2. it kept me excited when I was fighting him.

3. romina. such a pussianna boss like i Gasped when i saw her and realized what she was. if only there was another blue fairy..... oh wait! i'm a carian! the riff from malenia's theme made us all clap.

3. midras, lord of frenzyflame. i miss bloodborne.

4. rellana, twin moon night. i missed ds3.

5. metyr, mother of fingers. guys i Really miss bloodborne

6. promised consort. it's fine. i'm glad all miquella can do is follow in the footsteps of others. typical twink know-it-all gifted kid boygirl with asthma. radahn needs to not even try it we loved his set in caelid but we aren't streaming to prog rock right now. never impressed when all a bassist can do when improving is repeat old melodies. maybe theyre perfect for each other..... ):

7. those united in common cause. also Fine but i think it could be better. the swell in phase 2 is good but then it doesn't go anywhere! maybe it would've been more impactful if I knew about Leda.

8. putrescent knight. a good track forgettable but fine boss. i'm glad it stays quieter for the duration and doesn't get crazy for phase 2.

9. bayle the dread. typical dragon ost. none of the ost is Bad but this is certainly one of the weaker ones, i wish it had been a little more deliberate and dangerous. maybe something inspired by Jaws. i like bayle a lot otherwise! the leadup to him is Intense.

10. scadutree avatar. it's okay. did not particularly Strike me. much like its boss fight it drags on. similar to Leda maybe I would find it more moving if we'd been given more insight on the scadutree? but truth be told this track doesn't hint that theres much to be missed.

i think that's all of them. if i'm forgetting something take the hint. it's a good ost! strong heavy hitters but also to be expected from fromsoft.

[autumnbrambleagain]

fondly reminiscing about dark souls pvp, let's rank them

Dark Souls 1

Invasions: Hard to access, if you want to do a low level pvp twink invasion you have to earn it by beating half the game at a low level. Still a chance to run into people 100 levels higher than you who are invader-catching. A chaotic mess, positively. Sometimes you chase a newbie as they run in fear. Sometimes Havel ambushes you. Sometimes infamous hacker Tallgeese sees you but he likes your funny bloated sorcerer cosplay where you cast the laugh spell a lot, so they banish you from their world and send you a message saying "That was amusing. You get to live." You have no idea what you're going to get. A true disaster mess. I miss it every day. You were indicted. 10/10.

Darkroot Garden: A fun sidezone where people invade you all the time, or you can invade people who dare to trespass. Lots of fun shenanigans. Work for a hot cat monster protecting Artorias' grave, the flavor adds a lot to the meal. 8/10.

An Arena or Something?: I think they eventually added a 1v1 pvp zone but everyone just did fight clubs in Oolacille or Undeadberg and that was fun too. No thrill of the hunt, though. Nothing staked, nothing gained, nothing lost. Masturbation. 6/10.

Dark Souls 2

Invasions and Counterinvasions: Holy shit. You mean blue cops now show up to HELP people being invaded? Fantastic. But there's no unlimited red eye, and soul memory means you eventually outlevel your desired zone no matter what (without the ring). You have to do the tryhard arena to get reliable red eye cracks without cheating in an infinite amount. Takes a lot of the luster out of it. BUT, but the level designs lead to a lot of super fun shenanigans, and the chance of fighting, or being, a bluecop, made it more fair for newbies too. Bonfire ascetics means you can reignite a zone and be invaded in it even after you beat the boss once, letting you draw in invaders to fun zones and have silly battle times. Incredible build possibility compared to the last game, with only a moderate chance of running into identical meta builds, lots of creativity if you stick to it. Ultimately loses a point off perfect because of the soft caps on invading, makes it up for all the other improvements. 9/10.

Bell Towers 1 AND 2: Basically Darkroot Garden, you and another rando invade in waves against someone and their friends. Hang out and see how long you can last before you have to run for the exit, or invade people over and over and see how you can ruin their day. 10/10.

Rats: Be the final boss of a dungeon you get to build up over time. Holy shit. The rat king is so fucking hot and he has an entire storyline where he goes from hatred for humans to dreaming of a day where you live and die together as one because of you showing him humans can be loyal and worthwhile too. Holy shit. My king. Work with your rat allies, set up traps, pick your position, bombard them from afar with magic or a bow or ambush them or just stand at the door like the final fucking boss encounter. Get sucked into someone's rat world and try to touchdown travid football them or dig in and fight them back. Fucking fantastic. Holy shit. The best it ever was. 999/10.

Blood Arena: And if that isn't enough, you can just queue up for some 1v1 tryhard face-smashing. Fine enough. Basically grindr for pvp. More build variety than DS1 makes it not so asinine and straight pvp without stakes or environment shenanigans has something to say for it this time at least? 6/10.

Dark Souls 3

Invasions and Counterinvasions: Well, they existed I'm sure. Undid a lot of DS2's limitations on it, but also didn't introduce anything special. ?/10? Kind of depends on where you invaded, when, who. Could be fun, could be boring, could be frustrating. If you liked invading in the previous dark souls you'll have fun enough in this one/10.

Another Forest I Guess: None of the flavor of the first one, and pretty much only visited by low level peeps. Covenant leader is a dead wolf that won't even talk to you. It was... fine. Mindlessly rehashing Darkroot Garden, down to you defending a bunch of Artorias cosplayers. Eh. 7/10.

Anor Londo Is Here For Some Reason: I don't know why you're working for Aldrich because they insisted none of the covenants have dialogue or personality this time around. It's just this but on Anor Londo. But, the monsters are on your side and there's a bunch, and the level is super fun to fight in, so it gets a bit of a pass. 8/10.

Mound Makers: Holy shit. This should have been more fun than it was, and it was already pretty damn fun. The ability to turn on other invaders and work with the players was really neat, be a cooperator and help them against monsters and then turn on them, hilarious, but it didn't get as much play as it could have but that's just on people not being funny enough with it. I wish the covenant had any explanation as to what a mound is or why you're building it, but at least it had a covenant member who explained anything to you. The game's redemption more or less. 9/10.

Arena: A lot of the PVP got shunted into the arena, but it was a decent arena system. Lots of build variety this time around, too. Didn't mind it one bit, but it felt a bit like masturbation when you could be having more organic pvp encounters. 6/10.

Elden Ring

Invasions and Counterinvasions: Only possible on people who already have a cooperator summoned. Usually multiple cooperators. Giant areas and chance to invade anywhere means you can never prepare or control the environment. Constant gank squads, moonveils, rivers of bloods. Rare that you find someone who wants to be invaded or enjoys it, usually people ganking or doing boss runs or coop and they resent having to deal with invaders. Stacked so heavily against the invader it's like they got tired of people complaining about how much it sucks to be invaded they decided to just make it miserable for invaders instead to discourage it from happening. 4/10 at best.

Arena: Again, feels more like masturbation instead of organic, natural pvp. Lots of neat build variety, though! Don't really get anything out of doing it, though. Uh. Wait. Wait is this all there is what do you mean it has less PvP zones and options than the original dark souls holy shit

Concluding Thoughts

Dark Souls 2 was the best dark souls and Elden Ring is the worst, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[styrac0saurus]

i have drawn artorias and gwynfor the most and it must be because one is a very lanky lad (emaciated twink adjacent) and the other an aforementioned stacked dude

not to say that ornstein Couldnt also be stacked, but in my head he has a average athletic body type between arto and forfor

[annelidist]

did you go the long way aroumd through the forest and glitch through the gate or did you do a low level low upgrade run

i haven't been into darkroot garden yet! i'm keeping my SL and WL low so i can get summoned by very early game players, at SL21 i'm summonable down to SL10 and you can go up to WL5 without it affecting matchmaking. doing the helpful equivalent of twinking, basically. also trying to pick up a bunch of stuff that'll be useful defensively in pvp so that i don't get dark beaded into a fine mist by invaders

next thing i do is going to be calling in tarkus to fight the iron golem for me and using the soul reward to buy the crest of artorias. i mostly just wanna go down there so i can jump shiva of the east and take his shield, it's nice in pvp because it bounces attacks like a greatshield but you can also use it for parrying. i think there's probably some other stuff i can acquire at this point that'd be useful either in pvp or sunbro-ing but i can't think of anything off the top of my head