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bookaddict24-7 · 8 months

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REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

EVERY WEEK I WILL POST A VARIOUS REVIEWS I’VE WRITTEN SO FAR IN 2024. YOU CAN CHECK OUT MY GOODREADS FOR MORE UP-TO-DATE REVIEWS HERE.

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8. That Time I Got Drunk & Saved A Demon by Kimberly Lemming--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

First five-star read of 2024 🙏🏽

My friends have read this book and LOVED it, so I don't know why I'm lowkey surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I thought it would be a cheesy and slightly boring read (I didn't read the synopsis, okay? Sue me.) But what I got was SO far from that. Full of adventure, heart, sexual tension, and hilarious sass, I found myself laughing and paying rapt attention.

I loved the MC and her responses and commentary. I can see myself re-reading this just to highlight all of her sass. She's one of those contemporary characters set in a fantastical world that helps keep these kinds of stories light and fun. There's a scene where the demon just stares at her like "Okay, so we are definitely getting married" and I don't even blame him. This woman is a BADASS.

I loved their exploration of their world and how quick it was. Some readers might want more setting development, but honestly? I'm happy with how light and straightforward it was. I also really liked the side characters and how the demon just takes out anyone he wants, especially if they threaten the MC.

This was fun and everything I wish that other cozy fantasy book had given me. The new editions of the other two books have already been preordered 😌.

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9. The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH perfectly encompasses the tortures of middle school, the changing of the people we once called friends, and the effects of grief and how a child's mind may twist in ways that might help them comprehend the reality of death.

Ali Benjamin does a fantastic job of drawing out the history of her MC and her friend. The way they both changed and how the MC came to choosing to stay silent verbally for the majority of the book. Watching her trying to find reasons for why her friend has died was heartbreaking. I can't imagine being a parent in that situation, where you know you can't help your child comprehend the change in their reality.

Also, middle school is a cruel place for a lot of kids (hi, I was one of its victims) and the levels of evil some of these kids get up to is truly astounding. It broke me a little watching this friendship fall apart and this poor, young MC having to remember the last moment she saw her friend alive.

Sometimes things just happen and this whole book is, ultimately, a great source for children grieving. Life can be messy, confusing, and sometimes heartbreaking. Benjamin's novel is beautiful and this is another one of those middle grade books that I think adults AND kids should be reading.

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10. The Skull by Jon Klassen--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If no one has read any other Jon Klassen books, then they're in for a surprise. If they have, then they'll recognize the eeriness of his writing.

You can't tell me that the hat books aren't creepy (there's a couple of pages where the big fish CLEARLY eats the little fish in the long grass). This guy is morbid and props to kids' authors who can write a book both for kids and adults.

The artwork was beautiful as always and the story was a very, very quick read. Perfect for those 5-7 year olds who want to try something themselves but don't mind a talking skeleton or skull.

This also got reeeeeeal dark at one point and I was just thinking of how some of the Gen Alpha kids are.

Highly recommend--especially for those littles who love a little spooky with their bedtime stories.

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11. The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Romantic, at times funny, spicy, and full of characters I wanted to punch in the dick, THE FIANCÉE FARCE was entertaining from beginning to end.

Much like many of my reading experiences, I jumped into this without knowing what I was getting myself into and imagine my joy and surprise when the trope of "marriage of convenience" popped up. I loved watching these characters fall in love with each other, and I loved seeing the thwart the horrible people in their lives. I also loved that one of the MCs has a massive love for reading (shown through her family's bookstore).

Was this the best romance I've ever read? Not really--it had some pretty obvious climactic points and some very over the top villains--but it held my attention and I fell for the couple. I loved that one helped the other find her confidence that had been stripped from her at a younger age.

One of the things that keeps me from giving this a five star rating is how...in a bubble this story feels? Like, we meet other characters as they serve their purpose (as is the usual) but if they're not in the scene, it's like they don't exist. There's one scene where one particular character doesn't speak and it's a pretty pivotal moment for the reader to pay extra attention because this is a huge hint about this character, but Bellefleur doesn't even hint at it? It's like that character is deleted from the scene. This is like taking the adage of "when you're with me, I only see you" and using it to the max.

Other than that, this was an entertaining and sexy story of proving assholes wrong and falling in love despite you believing that you're not deserving of love. Highly recommend for enough looking for a cute romance full of family drama and fake relationships!

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12. Ana On the Edge by A.J. Sass--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Such a powerful story!

One of my favourite messages that ANA ON THE EDGE could potentially give young readers that it is OKAY to be in the process of trying to figure out who you are, but also that it's okay to not have all of the answers at once.

We see the MC struggle with their identity and their relationships throughout the whole book, especially because their world has always seemingly had such clear cut gender norms (Ice skating is a huge part of her world). I can't even imagine trying to find who you are when everyone around you is imposing who they think you are on you.

I also enjoyed that we got to see some of the more pivotal relationships in the MCs life and that messy in-between with friendships when big changes happen--like sudden schedule changes, or new friendships blossom. While this book tackled pretty big topics, I liked that its core it was still truly an MGLit book that explored the importance of friendships and keeping the good ones alive (even when life gets a bit hectic.)

Finally, I adored the relationship between the MC and their mom. I loved that they were a team and even though it took a little bit of time, they had some good communication between the two of them. There were some heartwarming moments and I loved seeing them understand each other better as the story progressed.

I think this is another great LGBTQ+ book to have in my back pocket for when I need to recommend great Queer books to readers!

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13. Mindy Kim & the Birthday Puppy by Lyla Lee and Dung Ho Hanh (Illustrations)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It's been a while since I picked up the last MINDY KIM book but this was just as cute as I remember the last two books being. There were some moments that made me tear up a little, but I'm just an emotional mess sometimes.

I loved seeing Mindy come into her own with her brand new puppy. A couple of my best friends have a puppy and as I read Mindy's adventures (or misadventures), I thought of how difficult it was for my friends to parent a brand new puppy. This is a kid's book, so I'm not surprised Mindy was able to be so successful so quickly, but in reality, puppies are a lot more work than what was shown here. BUT this didn't take away from the story at all! I love that this could be a really great resource for littles who want a puppy, but need a further understanding of the responsibilities behind it.

And much like the last two books, there were some important topics explored here: how families might look, grief, multicultural traditions, and responsibilities one might take on.

Another great addition to the series and I'll hopefully be reading the next one soon!

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14. Suddenly by Isabelle Autissier--⭐️⭐️.5

I had a lot of expectations for SUDDENLY by Isabelle Autissier, but we all know expectations are sometimes the death knell of a story. The cover enticed me, the synopsis further pulled me in, but the clunky translation full of thesaurus-level words and the random time-jump totally took me out of the story.

Normally, I DNF books that aren't working for me because hi, I have a massive TBR to get through before I die. But I will give Autissier this: she wrote a very intriguing beginning to her book. I wanted to see these characters survive and thrive in their new environment. A morbid sense of intrigue had me continuing the story as they mercilessly killed creatures I never thought someone could kill so coldly, and as they had massive introspection about their super privileged lives (and their first world ignorance about their importance in the grand scheme of things.)

These two characters were severely unlikable, but I couldn't help but get attached. I felt such a mixed bag of emotions towards the FMC and when the time jump happened, I felt further disconnected from not just her, but the story as a whole.

I'll be blunt: the second part of the book (or more like 3/4 way through the book) ruined this for me. I understand the importance of seeing the story of the "after" but I hated it. I think it went from being an interesting exploration of survival and humanity to the superficial experience of society marking you as a hero for surviving. I get that this is also the point: the further examination of how society is in (the character's) reality vs. the truths they realized about the societies they had grown in and how wholly unprepared they were for the battlefield of survival. I get that, but I still disliked it. From there, I felt like the story dragged and my attention wavered even more.

And don't get me started on the ending--the page I thought was going to be the last page was a better last page than the actual last page.

Overall, I liked the first half of the book. Despite the dark aspects, the gut churning choices, and the heartbreaking conclusion, I enjoyed that part. The second part of the book brought the whole story down for me.

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15. Fake Dates & Mooncakes by Sher Lee--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

FAKE DATES AND MOONCAKES was a pretty straightforward and easy read, but listen, it was FUN. This felt like I was experiencing a K-Drama or C-Drama. It was such a good time--the dramatic twists, the threats against the middle class guy dating the rich guy, and the CRAZY RICH ASIANS-like trip and event? Freaking amazing. LOL the love interest literally waits for the MC outside of his school standing by his Ferrari. This is juicy Asian-drama level stuff and I ate. it. up.

The romance was adorable and sweet and I won't lie, I sometimes forgot these were teenagers--not because of anything gross, but because these two were so mature in their actions and how they interacted with each other.

The familial relationships were so sweet and I loved how they clearly had each others' best interests in mind whenever something pivotal happened. They were adorable and I loved them.

Reading this was like experiencing some of my favourite Asian dramas again, with a dash of CRAZY RICH ASIANS. It wasn't an earth-shattering read, but five stars for solely being entertaining and making me smile with giddiness. If you want a cute gay story with some truly cute moments, then you might like this--especially as a read for when the warmer weather finally returns!

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Have you read any of these books? Would you recommend them?

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Happy reading!

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lebunnysdream · 2 months

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Spa Day

This dream is a little something that just came to mind. It is a bit long btw, but it was fun for me to write so I hope it's just as fun for you to read! Monster X Fem!Human. Thought it might be interesting to incorporate octopus tentacles to a seemingly normal weekend activity. This one is pretty saucy and a little sloppy, so minors do not interact (obvi). Hopefully you're at home while indulging...but if not, please enjoy at your own discretion. 🐙

TW: Smut, Monsterfck, Exhibitionist, Self Indulgence, Humiliation

It was finally the weekend and you were more than ready to relax at this new private spa you found. You were happy it had super high ratings. The written reviews talked about them having impeccable service with the rooms being aesthetically pleasing and super clean. Many reviews had left the "smirking" and "eyeball" emojis (😏👀) at the end but you believed it was meant for the interior design and suave atmosphere. They open at 4am and close at 12am, for some reason, so you decided to take full advantage.

Saturday morning you arrive early at the location for your 6 o'clock appointment to fill out your forms and sign any waivers. You briefly read through them, scanning over a few "discretionary" and "sexual" words that are assumed to be their professional conduct and privacy policy documents. Quickly, you sign everything and are given instructions to the locker room to leave your belongings.

There doesn't seem to be many people here, you notice, as you stroll down the hall to the locker room. Only a few cars in the parking garage, one lady at the front desk, and about 2 lockers being used on your row. What a relief, you get to explore the facility without being self conscious or anxious.

Inside the locker you find a robe with a tag that reads 'optional' and some cute flip flops. You undress completely and put on the fluffy robe and shoes already feeling excited. Leaving your things in your assigned locker you go and look at a map you spot posted on the corner of a wall. This place is huge! There's the showers, a mud room, a mani/pedi room, a couple saunas, a pool and sun bathing area with a skylight, a small library with a bar/cafe area, and, of course, all the rooms for the massage and stretch sessions. You take a breath calming yourself down knowing you won't have time to do everything before your massage, you only have 45 minutes left the last time you checked. So you head off to find the showers first to get ready for the session.

🫧🫧🫧

The showers are at the end of the dimly lit hall on the lefthand side. As you approach you hear a shower going; maybe there's a few more people here than you thought. You step inside and see about 10 medium sized stalls made of marble or stone and a cabinet of various shower necessities. You pick out some you like and go into a stall leaving your robe on the hook outside your door. The door is frosted glass so you can easily see if it's vacant.

"Mmm.. that feels sooo good... ahh..." You overhear a girl in another stall as you start to clean yourself. You assume she's talking about the shower until you hear weird splashing noises and a vibrator turn on. Oop, you decide to shower quickly (to give her some privacy), which you need to do anyway if you wanted to try one of the saunas. Cleaning you pussy with your fingers you feel yourself a little jealous down there but you don't dwell on it and hurry out. You throw on a thin lotion and a towel before exiting the showers.

You follow the map directions and go down a small corridor where there are two small saunas, maybe for small groups of friends, and a large sauna room at the back of the hall. Since there aren't many people here you decide to use one of the smaller ones to relax alone. You notice they have drinks outside the door so you take a glass of cold, detox water into the room with you for rehydrating.

The room is dark with pink ambient lighting and stars on the ceiling. Walking down the stairs slowly, you step into warm water reminding you of a jacuzzi. It goes up to your waist so your towel got wet but you see more towels on the back of the bench. Since it's only you in the room you open a towel on the bench and lay on it on your back and set your glass on the back of the bench. There's soft sounds of waves and instrumental music in the background as you relax.

🌊🌊🌊

As the steam envelopes you thickly you begin to feel a slickness between your thighs and underneath your boobs. It's not uncomfortable, rather, it's turning you on and you notice something else is a little slick as well. Thinking back to that girl in the showers, how bold and uncaring she was to her environment, lit a curiosity in you. You peer between your legs at the window in the door... no one's passed by in a while so you should have some privacy. And if you can remember clearly, the window must've been smoked... maybe. Your juices start to seep out at the uncertainty of complete exposure and even the thought of somebody catching you. Slowly you trace your fingers down your soft skin sliding through the thick humidity that's coated your body. You slip you fingers down the crevice of your thigh and pussy as you collect some wetness before playing with your clit in a teasing manner.

You're thankful that you can take your time and not worry about missing your appointment because they announce the next appointment time every hour and where to go to meet your therapist on the speaker. With that thought in mind you slowly push a finger inside and feel your juices leak between you booty cheeks. Your body is so heated that your gushy insides are about as hot as the jacuzzi water. You pull it back out smearing it all over your pussy lips before pushing in two fingers wanting to feel the pressure and slight stretching pains more. Squeezing your overheated titty you make yourself more wet so that your fingers are completely coated with your slime. Pulling you fingers all the way out you shove them in hard over and over as you pick up the speed. At this point you've already made quite the mess and you're mixed in with so many juices all you can think about is finishing. You hear something on the speaker that might be your time to leave but you can't focus on that right now as you add another finger and ram it into your sopping pussy. Unable to keep your legs up they fall open giving you more access, but you see a figure in the door window like they're peering in. You can't exactly tell with your eyes blurring a little but it only adds to your momentum and all you can hear is the sloshing sounds of your dripping pussy as you bring yourself to the edge. You moan loudly as you release and ride the wave all the way down. With your whole pussy exposed you roll your head to the side and don't see anyone in the window anymore. Maybe it was your imagination.

You remain laying for a few moments trying to recover before deciding to get up and get to your massage late. However, before you can sit up, you feel a heavy, slimy thing inch it's way up your leg and onto your pelvis. It feels like there's a bunch of wet suckers clinging onto your skin causing you to look down and choke on a scream. You were paralyzed with shock and confusion as to why an octopus was in here and why you had a number of questionable ideas flash through your mind just now.

As though it were reading every dirty thought you had, you realize another tentacle slinked its way underneath your neck and encircled it before shoving itself into your ajar mouth. Some of its slime covers your lips and drips down your chin the more your mouth is forced open with its increasing circumference. You can only imagine how it'll feel inside your pussy as it gradually increases in size; but you also notice there are other longer tentacles that are of one size. Before your mind can wander further, your mouth is fucked hard as the tip starts to jam itself down your throat and your drool is all around your neck. You feel probing at the entrance to your sopping pussy right before a long tentacle is shoved all the way inside causing you to choke a little. The tentacle from your mouth is removed so you can breathe for a minute, but it then slides down instead and encircles your waist and arms together while the other tentacle starts thrusting in and out of you. You're a hot and moaning mess as the the tentacle plunges inside of you with the other holding you tightly in place. You wonder what caused the octopus to show up now instead of when you first came in the room. At that moment the tentacle fucking you becomes more erratic and tries to force more of itself inside your small entrance when you cum so hard it squirts out and splashes all over the bench.

You writhe at the intensity as you slowly come down, but don't fail to miss all the other tentacles rush to soak up your juices. Well at least you are both satisfied. You lay limp with your legs still splayed open trying to calm down when you just barely notice the tentacle that is still wrapped around you very firmly. You then try to move to get up before realizing your mistake. All the tentacles stop, eating... you guess, and kind of turn to look at you. So... maybe the octopus wasn't satisfied just yet... You struggle a little in a futile attempt to get up and a couple more tentacles come wrap themselves around your inner thighs holding them open. Uh oh, you feel your already swollen pussy lips start to swell shut some more as you're turned back on and some juices begin seeping out. The thicker sized tentacle begins pushing inside and you feel your walls expand the fuller you get. You groan in pleasure and pain as it increases in size the deeper it goes. It fucks you nice and slow so you can feel its weight and your walls expand and shrink again. Every time it comes out juices come with it making your body on the outside as slippery as the inside. You feel like a sex toy as the octopus uses you how it wants and your body just complies. Your pleasure is slowly increasing until you are on the edge hearing all the slime squish inside you at each rough thrust.

Suddenly, you barely catch the voices of a few women in the hall but don't have time to panic as your release is firmly built up. The door opens and in walk two ladies who stop in their tracks as they ogle at the scene before them. You're laid naked on your back, held down by tentacles in a heap of slime, sweat, and cum with your legs open butterfly and a really thick tentacle pushing itself inside your exposed pussy. It comes out and shoves itself back in unfazed as the ladies watch you get fucked and groan at each thrust. It picks up some speed and gets more rough as it feels your pussy clench and you groan louder as the pain mixes with the pleasure causing you to cum for the third time today. This time it oozes out like and overfilled tunnel.

The women seem to snap out of it and stumble out the room offering apologies while fidgeting with their towels. Feeling completely humiliated and used you try not to dwell on the women right now and instead on getting out of here before anyone else happens to come in. The octopus completely left you for your juices this time and you grab your towels and toss them in the bin beside the door, grabbing a fresh one on your way out. You sorta hobble your way to the showers and take a really hot one to ease your muscles (which the jacuzzi helped a bit but you didn't stay long). Then you turned it on cold to bring yourself back to reality.

You get changed and decide to just head back to the lobby to pay and tip your therapist you didn't meet since you've definitely missed your appointment. Technically, you've had a couple sessions already plus a work out, so you for sure enjoyed the amenities. You walk past the ladies that saw you earlier but they act polite and as though they saw nothing. Relieved, you go to check out and head home excited for the new appointment you made for next weekend.

Omg after writing this story I realized, octopi can't live in hot water.... lmao. Welp. It's in the fantasy realm so, technically, anything goes; doesn't have to make sense. Just has to be legible, teehee 👉🏾👈🏾. If that's not your style, imagine the pool and sauna room are connected so the octopus only visits sometimes idk. Otherwise, why are you even here? It's utter chaos here. This content is not for you. Okay, bye~ 💋

#monster #octopus #tentacles #tetrophilia #exhibition kink #unexpected #unrealistic #me time

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n7punk · 1 year

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She-ra (2018) Con-Exclusive Merch & Giveaways

I'm assembling a master post of all officially-produced merch for the SPOP reboot, but it's focused on information. I have a separate post focused on promotion-exclusive items, and this post is dedicated to detailed information for the ambiguous middle ground: con exclusives. Some of these were given away and some were for sale.

If I get additional information on any of these specific items, I'll edit the post to add it, but if I find anything new then it'll go in a reblog addition as I've hit the image limit on this post.

Sometimes you have to click photos to see full images, as many are cut off due to varying dimensions. Any [x]s will lead to the source of the images, usually secondhand listings that will eventually become defunct. I use the best photos I can find.

Pins/Buttons:

The buttons (first two images) were at NYCC in 2018. [1st] [2nd].

Han Cholo sells a lot of pins on their website, but the four on the right were exclusive at SDCC one year (concept photo in the final reblog here, this post chain in general has a ton of photos of She-ra merch from a mix of sources). [3rd]

Misc:

A foam tiara (2 photos) and a (seemingly foam and plastic) flat sword were at NYCC 2018 & 2019 and SDCC 2019. [2nd], [3rd]

There aren't any good photos and I'm at the image limit anyway, but there are pictures in the final reblog here of knee-high socks that were given out at promo events (possibly cons) and in reviewer/influencer promo packages. They're patterned after She-ra's uniform and have a cape on the back. Any details on this would be appreciated if you know them.

Temporary tattoos (far left) and stickers (middle left) were at NYCC 2019 and maybe also Power-Con. Coloring sheets and hair ties were at either NYCC or Power-Con. The coloring sheet is watercolor with paint squares provided at the top of the sheet. I believe the hair ties came in three colors (purple, pink, and blue) and the long post* has good photos of the pink one. If you want to look at approximately ten pixels, this listing has all three colors. [1st] [2nd] [3rd]

Bookmarks were available at SDCC one year and likely any other locations that had the books (Power-Con, etc). [x]

Collector card sets featuring 16 of the characters were given out at cons, possibly SDCC 2018. First image is the front of the packaging, second is one of the cards, and the third is the back of the package. [1st] [2nd] [3rd]

Posters:

Buckle up, this is the final, longest part. Posters were at many conventions and some designs may have been available at multiple cons. I mostly want to catalogue the designs here and will list a con just when I know it. Most listings online are of fan reprints unless otherwise specified.

The first four (left to right) were available at SDCC 2019. The 4th & 5th are the front and back of the same poster, which was probably also distributed at places like Power-Con or wherever they sold the books (since it's a Scholastic poster). [4th] [5th]

Here are clean social media uploads of the 2nd and 3rd image. The 2nd was also the cover image for season 3 and the front of the DVD for seasons 1-3.

The character mini prints in the bottom right [6th] seem to have been given out at multiple cons. They were probably at SDCC (year unknown) and/or Power-Con (year unknown). The collector card designs roughly followed their design pattern.

All three of these were at SDCC WonderCon. The first was 2019 and the second was probably 2018. The 3rd was supposedly at 2023 but was (probably) 2018 unless they still just had a bunch of extras laying around. WonderCon also had a variant of the 4th poster from the SDCC section above, but I can't find good photos of it and there's going to be a third variant of it further down too, so at this point I think you get it.

The first design is the cover image for season 2.

The first was probably at NYCC 2018. The right two were given out at a NYCC 2019 panel, as well as sent out with an exclusive statuette to family bloggers to promote season 4.

The first design is the cover art for season one. Its design was also used for a shopping bag at Anime Expo 2019 (photo in the final reblog here). The second one is the cover image for season 4.

Distribution currently unknown (if there ever was one). The second image is the cover for season 5. I'll edit on the distributions if I happen to find them, but I'm fine with what I've got here. I could have missed one or two posters, but since their distributions mostly amounted to handing out flyers, they're hard to find.

#merch #words and things #god i'm a lunatic #a little of this ground is being retread from the long post but I had to get more organized about this #by ''cover images'' i mean those are the cover photos dreamworks uses on its website for each season #and thus were likely created specifically to promote them and might have been covers on netflix at some point too #i lost the link for the first she-ra crown picture oops lol #it was from an archived ebay listing anyway #spop meta

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 1 year

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reading update: june 2023

as promised (to myself) I spent all of gay months reading books by and/or about the gays, no exceptions! (unless you count the heaps of old Batman comics I was reading, but come on. it's all pretty fruity.) the trend will be continuing into July as well because I overshot and still have book I need to finish, so in the immortal words of Janelle Monáe: happy pride forever!

anyway, what have I actually been reading?

Empress of Forever (Max Gladstone, 2019) - man, I've been meaning to read this FOREVER! and I'm glad I finally did. Gladstone's space opera follows ultrawealthy tech genius Vivian Liao, a sort of dykey Lex Luthor who's CERTAIN that she's the good guy. okay, yes, she's trying to get control of the nukes, but she's not going to use them. it's just that the world's a mess and she needs to be in charge. unfortunately our girl Vivian doesn't get far in her master plan before she's transported across the galaxy and finds herself on the run from the all-powerful Empress in the company of a cybernetic monk named Hong and the legendary space pirate Zanj, the Empress' greatest enemy. from there our heroes are off on a slow, messy quest across the galaxy as they make new friends, grow as people, and strive to bring the Empress down. it's a very long book and can feel slow in places, but all of the time devoted to fleshing out the characters ultimately pays off as their stories converge into a resonant narrative about the notion of identity and what it means to be yourself. if you like Becky Chambers' Wayfarer books of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, get on this shit.

also hey listen Max Gladstone is having a bit of a Moment rn; the book he coauthored with Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War, is getting a huge boost thanks to the Trigun (????) fandom??? over on Twitter, and you should definitely go check it out

Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (Jane Ward, 2016) - Ward is a brilliant queer feminist writer; rigorous and insightful while keeping her work imminently readable. while the title may sound facetious, Ward actually takes entirely at face value that there are men having sex with each other an engaging in otherwise homoerotic activities - mutual jerkoffs, hazing rituals that involve anal penetration - that sincerely aren't stemming from a place of gay desire and asks us what the fuck we're supposed to make of that. what results is a fascinating look at masculinity and the intricate rituals that both subvert and maintain it. shockingly thought provoking for a book that contains so many transcribed craigslist posts of men looking for straight guys to have totally normal hetero dudesex with!

The Latinos of Asia: How Filipinos Break the Rules of Race (Anthony Christian Ocampo, 2016) - I was lucky enough to get to see Ocampo (who is gay) speaking at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity this year, and naturally I had to buy one of his books while I was there. I strongly suspect he's about to become one of my new favorite nonfiction writers, because the Latinos of Asia was a brilliant read that I really couldn't put down. Ocampo (who's also Filipino!) delves into the formation of Filipino-Americans' racial identity, and finds that many feel caught between the most conventionally accepted racial categories - feeling alienated from the idea of Asian identity, which is often perceived as pertaining to East Asians like Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and instead relating much more firmly to Mexican-Americans and other Latinos. it's a FASCINATING study on race and one (of many!) loopholes that exists in this very large, messy, totally made up construct of race.

A Lady for a Duke (Alexis Hall, 2022) - for my pride month romance novel I wanted to read something that I might actually like. I've previously adored Hall's genre-fucking ultra-queer Sherlock Holmes pastiche, the Affair of the Mysterious Letter, and Lady for a Duke was really well-reviewed, so my hopes were high! and you know what? I fucking loved this. it was like cotton candy, perfectly sweet and made to be inhaled without a second thought. Our Heroine Viola was the heir to an estate who faked her death at Waterloo so that she could run away and be herself - that's right baby, this is a 19th century trans lady romance! she reconnects with her old BFF the Duke of Gracewood, who's been catatonically depressed since losing his best friend in the war, and reader, you will not believe what happens next. just kidding, you totally will: they want to kiss each other so bad! they're yearning so bad and it's great. it's a very silly book and Gracewood is the most unexpectedly forward-thinking 19th century duke EVER who is instantly down to accept Viola entirely as a woman and thinks that having biological children is overrated, and you know what? that rules. I'm not reading this book for historical accuracy I'm reading it to watch a man beg his girlfriend to fuck him tenderly in the ass. and she does!!! if I'm being honest everything after they finally hook up is kind of nonsense and the book probably is too long, but god it's a delightful time.

Chlorine (Jade Song, 2023) - back in the days of twitter I started following Jade Song as soon as they announced selling this book, the story of a competitive high school swimmer succumbing to obsession as she fantasizes about becoming a mermaid. finally getting to pick up the book from the library and actually read it felt crazy after existing in potentia for so long! while Song's novel is a little rough in some places in exactly the way I expect from a debut, it's still gripping and visceral. our protagonist lives in an intense and demanding world, striving to please an overly handsy coach, wanting to please the immigrant parents she can barely speak to, stumbling through sex with boys on her team while longing for her female best friend. through it all she fixates on mermaids, and the story is told in flashbacks building up to a drastic act of self-mutilation at a swim meet. it's definitely not the right book for the faint of heart or anyone looking for feel-good fluff, but it's harrowing in the best way.

Vagabonds! (Eloghosa Osunde, 2022) - gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous! Osunde celebrates queer life - those called vagabonds, society's outliers - in Lagos, Nigeria, slipping between the real world of social stigma, oppressive religion, judgmental family, and dangerous politics, and the world of magic, gods, and the unreal, blending the two together in an effortlessly dizzying effect. the ultrawealthy hide behind layers of flawless masks to conceal their identities, a lonely woman dying of cancer summons up a daughter than only she can see, and a young man channels the devil to raise his murdered lover. while the stories start bleak, firmly establishing the danger of life on the margins, they gather speed with increasing warmth and love as the story progresses, eventually bringing all of our protagonists together in glorious, life-affirming celebration of vagabonds and all who love them. Nigeria, in Osunde's hands, reads much like family - imperfect, sometimes even awful, but also capable of harboring tremendous love, surprising tenderness, and still worth holding out hope for. I think measuring books in terms of relatability is a fool's game, but as an American queer watching more and more legislation and persecution roll out against my people each day, it was hard not to feel a cord being struck. Vagabonds! is a beautiful reminder that queer resilience is eternal, and reader, I did cry.

Quietly Hostile (Samantha Irby, 2023) - I was a ride or die bitch for Sam Irby even before she picked up and moved to my small Michigan city, effectively becoming my neighbor. (not really, but she is married to the mother of a friend of a friend, so.) despite this, I will freely admit that I was a little underwhelmed by her last release, 2020's Wow, No Thank You. it's possible that WNTY was damned by its March 2020 release, putting it in the awkward position of being a humorous essay collection creeping out into the world at a time when everyone was paranoid and nothing was funny; maybe on a reread I would receive it a bit more warmly. Quietly Hostile, on the other hand, is just stupid funny right out of the gate. Sam Irby is old (see: in her early 40s) and going downhill, writing candidly about peeing her pants everywhere, adopting a rancid little dog, getting sent to the hospital with a severe allergic reaction, and jacking off to plot-heavy porn of elderly lesbian nuns. it takes a little bit of work to get me to actually laugh out loud at a book but man, I was chortling. if you don't already know her work, this is a sign from god (me) to check Samantha Irby out now.

what am I reading now?

Black Water Sister (Zen Cho, 2021) - the was one of the oldest queer novels(TM) on my list and I really wanted to knock it out for pride month. the Malaysian setting and culture is a welcome addition to contemporary urban fantasy, but I'm not sure I'm crazy about the story overall. and yet, I'm over 200 pages deep and don't want to give up, so ? I guess I'm persisting.

Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin, 1956) - my local library lost their copy just in time for pride month, so I bought one on ebay for all of nine dollars. haven't started yet, but I'm really excited to finally pop that proverbial Baldwin cherry!

#bookblr #reading updates

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oldsweetchildomeow · 1 year

Text

Reviewing GG character design part #1 GG 1998 Axl

I chose him first because he's the best char obviously.

Hear me out. Character design is not meant to be appealing to all viewers, they are meant to tell you about the character. If it end up being appealing to you, it's for a personal reason. FGs will, obviously, try to be as appealing as possible with their character menu for you to choose the most appetizing because they need money from your horniness and devotion. But despite all that capitalism mindset, the idea is always to explore the origin, personality, preferences and such, from the respective character.

I will try to separate it into some sections that are relevant, such as: 1. What does it tell about their personality (in Axl's case, British) 2. Is it visually appealing to some extend? (a bit more personal from an artistic pov) 3. Is it actually PRACTICAL realistically speaking? (a bit more logical from a "would anyone actually use this to fight?) and etc.

I was actually considering putting every GG game in this post, but it would take way too long and be boring to read, I think.

GG 1998

This design is quite interesting and pleasant. I see that many of us, Axlettes (this sound literally like a pokemon name, but I will stick to that for serious reasons) seem to like this one.

What does it tell you about Axl?

He's British.

just kidding. Actually... not entirely. He has that damned flag on his boots' tip, and it's a detail that really does tell you where he is from, specially in a game where you won't hear him s'peakin like di's mate. I'm not including his stage bg of course, but exclusively what you can tell by simply looking at him. He wears some grunge/punk-like bracelets, which makes him look like... well, a punk. The bandana he wears, his choice of weapon, his torn sleeves, and even the fact that his eyebrows aren't visible, gives you the impression of someone dangerous, someone you would easily see on a gang. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone who just started this game, and had just seen him, would fear him somehow. To some extend, he gives me the same energy as Billy Kane from the Fatal Fury/KOF series (they are both British and zoners and do the cat emoji smirk).

Is it visually appealing overall?

Short answer: Yes, it is. He wears a short jacket that has the same color as his shorts. That's very, very pleasant to watch, due to the harmony it presents. It gets even better when both pieces are torn at the ends. And to continue this harmonic idea, his boots are the same color as his gloves, and the details on his boots are red like his bandana. It's a never ending cycle of good usage of colors. The only considerably random color choice is that the bracelets have blueish spikes on in-game sprites, but it matches both the blue are of the flag on his boot, and the jeans colored clothing he wears. Although...

Here you can see that on the art they are white, like they were supposed to. It's normal to change when in-game due to pixel reasons, but either way. Now, with that picture from just above in mind, I wanted to say that it's very nice detail from his belt having a skull (he's sooo fire dude wow), which compliments the grunge concept of his one-arm spiky bracelet. His sickle matches the spikes very nicely too, but the best part of all that is the gap between his short jacket and his shorts. They just compliment in a very satisfactory parameter, not making it entirely blueish, but just enough for it to match nicely (it's kind of hard to explain it, but when I keep repeating this over and over on the next reviews it will make more sense).

But what I'm trying to say is this.

Just see how nicely the colors were placed on his design. It just follows a very perfect cycle. I KNOW my friends tend to think i'm out of my fucking mind because of how perfectionist I'm about those little things but it's so amazing really.

Is it actually PRACTICAL to fight with that figurine?

Mostly, yes. I do think so. Despite the fact that high boots really do bother you when you do complex movements with them, I wear them a lot and even when walking sometimes it bothers me, I can't even imagine fighting. But it's just a minor detail, they aren't even high enough to actually be some nuisance. His short clothes make it easier to move, despite being jeans. But it's a nice choice, you can actually fight with that in general and still look cool.

THIS is not practical at all. At some point everyone will see your boobs and it's not nice. But if he wants to be a whore...

Overall

Masterpiece, beautiful and functional. It's something someone like him would wear really, specially from his epoch and all. And I want to kiss Ishiwatari's mouth

#guilty gear #axl low #dude i cant shut my mouth #i would talk about it A LOT MORE

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canmom · 7 months

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VR observations, 10 months in

I've been a game dev for 10 months now. It's pretty great, I'm enjoying it a lot, I get to spend my days doing crazy shader shit and animations and voxels and visual effects. Hopefully the game that will come out of all this will be one people enjoy, and in any case I'm learning so much that will eventually come back to the personal ~artistic~ side of things. I can't talk about that game just yet though (but soon it will be announced, I'm pretty sure). So this is a post about other games.

Mind you, I don't actually play very many VR games, or games in general these days, because I'm too busy developing the dang things. but sometimes I do! And I think it's interesting to talk about them.

These aren't really reviews as such. You could project all sorts of ulterior motives if it was. Like my livelihood does sorta depend on people buying VR headsets and then games on them. This is more just like things I observe.

Headsets

The biggest problem with VR at the moment is wearing a headset for too long kinda sucks. The weight of the headset is all effectively held on a lever arm and it presses on your face. However, this is heavily dependent on the strap you use to hold it to your head. A better balanced and cushioned strap can hold the headset still with less pressure and better balance the forces.

The strap that comes with the Quest 3 is absolute dogshit. So a big part of the reason I wouldn't play VR games for fun is because after wearing the headset for 30-60 minutes in the daily meeting, the absolute last thing I'd want to do is wear it any longer. Recently I got a new strap (a ~£25 Devaso one, the low end of straps), and it's markedly improved. It would probably be even better if I got one of the high end Bobo straps. So please take it from me: if you wanna get into VR, get a decent strap.

I hear the Apple Vision Pro is a lot more comfortable to wear for long periods, though I won't have a chance to try it until later this month.

During the time I've been working at Holonautic, Meta released their Quest 3, and more recently Apple released their hyper expensive Vision Pro for much fanfare.

The Quest 3 is a decent headset and probably the one I'd recommend if you're getting into VR and can afford a new console. It's not a massive improvement over the Quest 2 - the main thing that's better is the 'passthrough' (aka 'augmented reality', the mode where the 3D objects are composited into video of what's in front of you), which is now in full colour, and feels a lot less intrusive than the blown out greyscale that the Quest 2 did. But it still has some trouble with properly taking into account depth when combining the feeds from multiple cameras, so you get weird space warping effects when something in the foreground moves over something in the background.

The Vision Pro is by all accounts the bees knees, though it costs $3500 and already sold out, so good luck getting one. It brings a new interaction mode based on eye tracking, where you look at a thing with your eyes to select it like with a mouse pointer, and hold your hands in your lap and pinch to interact. Its passthrough is apparently miles ahead, it's got a laptop tier chip, etc etc. I'm not gonna talk about that though, if you want to read product reviews there are a million places you can do it.

Instead I wanna talk about rendering, since I think this is something that only gets discussed among devs, and maybe people outside might be interested.

Right now there is only one game engine that builds to the Vision Pro, which is Unity. However, Apple have their own graphics API, and the PolySpatial API used for the mixed reality mode is pretty heavily locked down in terms of what you can do.

So what Unity does is essentially run a transpilation step to map its own constructs into PolySpatial ones. For example, say you make a shader in Shader Graph (you have to use shader graph, it won't take HLSL shaders in general) - Unity will generate a vision pro compatible shader (in MaterialX format) from that. Vertex and fragment shaders mostly work, particle systems mostly don't, you don't get any postprocessing shaders, anything that involves a compute shader is right out (which means no VFX graph), Entities Graphics doesn't work. I don't think you get much control over stuff like batching. It's pretty limited compared to what we're used to on other platforms.

I said fragment shaders mostly work. It's true that most Shader Graph nodes work the same. However, if you're doing custom lighting calculations in a Unity shader, a standard way to do things is to use the 'main light' property provided by Unity. On the Vision Pro, you don't get a main light.

The Vision Pro actually uses an image-based lighting model, which uses the actual room around you to provide lighting information. This is great because objects in VR look like they actually belong in the space you're in, but it would of course be a huge security issue if all programs could get realtime video of your room, and I imagine the maths involved is pretty complex. So the only light information you get is a shader graph node which does a PBR lighting calculation based on provided parameters (albedo, normal, roughness, metallicity etc.). You can then instruct it to do whatever you want with the output of that inside the shader.

The upshot of this is that we have to make different versions of all our shaders for the Vision Pro version of the game.

Once the game is announced we'll probably have a lot to write about developing interactions for the vision pro vs the quest, so I'll save that for now. It's pretty fascinating though.

Anyway, right now I've still yet to wear a Vision Pro. Apple straight up aren't handing out devkits, we only have two in the company still, so mostly I'm hearing about things second hand.

Shores of Loci

A few genres of VR game have emerged by now. Shooting and climbing are two pretty well-solved problems, so a lot of games involve that. But another one is 3D puzzles. This is something that would be incredibly difficult on a flat screen, where manipulating 3D objects is quite difficult, but becomes quite natural and straightforward in VR.

I've heard about one such game that uses 3D scans of real locations, but Shores of Loci is all about very environment artist authored levels, lots of grand sweeping vistas and planets hanging in the sky and so on. Basically you go through a series of locations and assemble teetering ramshackle buildings and chunks of landscape, which then grow really big and settle into the water. You can pull the pieces towards you with your hand, and then when you rotate them into roughly the right position and orientation relative to another piece, they snap together.

It's diverting, if kinda annoying when you just can't find the place the piece should go - especially if the answer turns out to be that there's an intermediate piece that floated off somewhere. The environments are well-designed and appealing, it's cool to see the little guys appearing to inhabit them. That said it does kinda just... repeat that concept a bunch. The narrative is... there's a big stone giant who appears and gives you pieces sometimes. That's it basically.

Still, it's interesting to see the different environment concepts. Transitions have this very cool distorted sky/black hole effect.

However, the real thing that got me with this game, the thing that I'm writing about now, was the water. They got planar reflections working. On the Quest! This is something of a white whale for me. Doing anything that involves reading from a render texture is so expensive that it's usually a no-go, and yet here it's working great - planar reflections complete with natural looking distortion from ripples. There's enough meshes that I assume there must be a reasonably high number of draw calls, and yet... it's definitely realtime planar reflections, reflections move with objects, it all seems to work.

There's a plugin called Mirrors and Reflections for VR that provides an implementation, but so far my experience has been that the effect is too expensive (in terms of rendertime) to keep 72fps in a more complex scene. I kind of suspect the devs are using this plugin, but I'm really curious how they optimised the draw calls down hard enough to work with it, since there tends to be quite a bit going on...

Moss

This game's just straight up incredibly cute.

youtube

Third person VR games, where you interact with a character moving across a diorama-like level, are a tiny minority of VR games at the moment. I think it's a shame because the concept is fantastic.

Moss is a puzzle-platformer with light combat in a Redwall/Mouse Guard-like setting. The best part of Moss is 1000% interacting with your tiny little mousegirl, who is really gorgeously animated - her ears twitch, her tail swings back and forth, she tumbles, clambers, and generally moves in a very convincing and lifelike way.

Arguably this is the kind of game that doesn't need to be made in VR - we already have strong implementations of 'platformer' for flatscreen. What I think the VR brings in this case is this wonderful sense of interacting with a tiny 3D world like a diorama. In some ways it's sorta purposefully awkward - if Quill walks behind something, you get a glowing outline, but you might need to crane your neck to see her - but having the level laid out in this way as a 3D structure you can play with is really endearing.

Mechanically, you move Quill around with the analogue stick, and make her jump with the buttons, standard stuff. Various level elements can be pushed or pulled by grabbing them with the controllers, and you can also drag enemies around to make them stand on buttons, so solving a level is a combination of moving pieces of the level and then making Quill jump as appropriate.

The fact that you're instantiated in the level, separate from Quill, also adds an interesting wrinkle in terms of 'identification with player character'. In most third person games, you tend to feel that the player character is you to some degree. In Moss, it feels much more like Quill is someone I've been made responsible for, and I feel guilty whenever I accidentally make her fall off a cliff or something.

A lot is clearly designed around fostering that protective vibe - to heal Quill, you have to reach out and hold her with your hand, causing her to glow briefly. When you complete some levels, she will stop to give you a high five or celebrate with you. Even though the player is really just here as 'puzzle solver' and 'powerful macguffin', it puts some work in to make you feel personally connected to Quill.

Since the camera is not locked to the character, the controls are instead relative to the stage, i.e. you point the stick in the direction on the 2D plane you want Moss to move. This can make certain bits of platforming, like moving along a narrow ledge or tightrope, kinda fiddly. In general it's pretty manageable though.

The combat system is straightforward but solid enough. Quill has a three button string, and it can be cancelled into a dash using the jump button, and directed with the analogue stick. Enemies telegraph their attacks pretty clearly, so it's rarely difficult, but there's enough there to be engaging.

The game is built in Unreal, unlike most Quest games (almost all are made in Unity). It actually doesn't feel so very different though - likely because the lighting calculations that are cheap enough to run in Unity are the same ones that are cheap enough to run in Unreal. It benefits a lot from baked lighting. Some things are obvious jank - anything behind where the player is assumed to be sitting tends not to be modelled or textured - but the environments are in general very lively and I really like some of the interactions: you can slash through the grass and floating platforms rock as you jump onto them.

The story is sadly pretty standard high fantasy royalist chosen one stuff, nothing exciting really going on there. Though there are some very cute elements - the elf queen has a large frog which gives you challenges to unlock certain powers, and you can pet the frog, and even give it a high five. Basically all the small scale stuff is done really well, I just wish they'd put some more thought into what it's about. The Redwall/Mouse Guard style has a ton of potential - what sort of society would these sapient forest animals have? They just wanted a fairytale vibe though evidently.

Cutscene delivery is a weak point. You pull back into a cathedral-like space where you're paging through a large book, which is kinda cool, and listening to narration while looking at illustrations. In general I think these cutscenes would have worked better if you just stayed in the diorama world and watched the characters have animated interactions. Maybe it's a cost-saving measure. I guess having you turn the pages of the book is also a way to give you something to do, since sitting around watching NPCs talk is notoriously not fun in VR.

There are some very nice touches in the environment design though! In one area you walk across a bunch of human sized suits of armour and swords that are now rusting - nobody comments, but it definitely suggests that humans did exist in this world at some point. The actual puzzle levels tend to make less sense, they're very clearly designed as puzzles first and 'spaces people would live in' not at all, but they do tend to look pretty, and there's a clear sense of progression through different architectural areas - so far fairly standard forest, swamp, stone ruins etc. but I'll be curious to see if it goes anywhere weird with it later.

Weak story aside, I'm really impressed with Moss. Glad to see someone else giving third person VR a real shot. I'm looking forward to playing the rest of it.

...that's kinda all I played in a while huh. For example, I still haven't given Asgard's Wrath II, the swordfighting game produced internally at Meta that you get free on the Quest 3, a shot. Or Boneworks. I still haven't finished Half Life Alyx, even! Partly that's because the Quest 3 did not get on well with my long USB A to C cable - for some reason it only seems to work properly on a high quality C to C cable - and that restricts me from playing PCVR games that require too much movement. Still though...

Anyway, the game I've been working on these past 10 months should be ready to announce pretty soon. So I'm very excited for that.

#vr #computer games #game development #shores of loci #moss #Youtube

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lovingmsjane · 1 month

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Now we are here...

A Nintendo Switch, a book, a laptop, a sweatshirt, a bottle of water, and a Redbull. What you are really looking at here is an attempt at patience... a thing I am not very good at.

I am not a "sit still in this chair and wait for three hours" kind of person. I am a "the lights are too bright," "too many people in here are talking," "that person is sitting too close to me," "dear God please don't make eye contact with me," "I'm bored," "it's cold in here," "if I don't pace this room I will need to crawl out of my skin," kind of person. If you don't know me that well, or haven't figured it out already, I am autistic.

My similarly neurodivergent partner is also not a "sit still in this chair and wait for three hours" person, which is usually wonderful, because we stay at home and avoid social interactions and unfamiliar places and routines like the plague, together.

This morning, though, I paced the house gathering things into my bag, my unnecessarily spacious bag that I bought to haul around my DSM-5 and other social work literature because I will definitely need those at any given moment in my life and they definitely aren't just a several-years-long special interest of mine, because I needed to be the "sit still in this chair and wait for three hours" kind of partner today. I will need to be that partner for now, and maybe, forever.

My partner was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in April 2024 after a myriad of issues worsened and arose following contracting covid two months prior. We met three and a half years ago, and since then I've heard minor rumblings of nerve pain and numbness, annoyances at frequent migraines and clumsiness, and phone calls to neurologists seeking answers that were so close to the right track, it's amazing they fell short. When her covid symptoms didn't go away with ease and the numbness, migraines, clumsiness, and nerve pain increased, my partner became more concerned. When new symptoms like distorted vision in one eye arose, she became panicked. Of course, Doctor Google came in handy for worsening that panic, but she was assured by her neurologist that it couldn't be that big, scary diagnosis, and she didn't need an MRI. She insisted one anyway.

That doctor called on a random Thursday evening following a review of the MRI, the one who said it was definitely not anything more than small fiber neuropathy, and diagnosed my partner, over the phone, with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We were laying in bed when the phone rang, my head on her chest when she answered. I heard every word.

Don't cry, don't cry, don't you dare fucking cry, is the only thing that ran through my mind.

Unlike my partner, I knew about MS. I knew a lot about MS. My best friend, whom I call my sister, has a mother with MS. It is a disease I had heard about, time and time again, for years, from the mouth of a scared daughter, a future caregiver, a person who knew the ins and outs of that feeling I felt when I heard those words over the phone. I knew the power of that knowledge, the power to make that phone call scarier for her than it already was, by letting out a single tear.

She was told to contact an MS specialist, and without a shred of emotion, positive or negative, she said goodbye to the neurologist who should have caught this diagnosis sooner, and she hung up the phone. We just stared at each other for a while in silence.

When we finally did speak about it, she looked at me, tears welling in her eyes, and said softly, "What's going to happen to me?"

Then came her tears.

"I don't know, love."

And that's the thing about MS. You don't know. No amount of knowledge about the disease can tell you what your future with it will look like.

For now, I'll save the details of what I felt that day and in the days after for another post, and get back to what I feel today.

Suddenly, I understand a lot of medical terminology that I should hear as mumbo-jumbo. We have sat up late at night staring at so many brain, c-spine, t-spine, with and without contrast, MRIs that suddenly, I know what I'm looking at and what I'm looking for. I've watched my partner get an IV steroid administered on our living room couch, the couch I bought for my first apartment 5 years ago that traveled with me to the home we bought together a month before her diagnosis, that was suddenly surrounded by a nurse, an IV pole, a sharps container, and a bag of medical waste. Suddenly, I have a file on my laptop where I keep notes of each medical appointment, a running note of all appointments to date, and an excel spreadsheet calendar to keep track of all upcoming appointments. And suddenly, I have learned that I actually do have patience when it's for her, and was disappointed when her 4th MRI since April took half the time we expected, because I had hoped to read more of my book in the waiting room between our hour-long drive to and from the hospital with the special MS MRI protocols.

I also learned today that I forgot the most important resource a companion awaiting their partner at a long medical appointment could have in their bag... snacks.

I chuckled a bit at that when I realized it in the waiting room. I felt like an amateur. The husband pacing the room with his bag of chips, talking to nurses and techs he knew on a first-name basis, who didn't have to pay the $7 parking fee because he knew of a loophole, made me feel like today was my first day as a partner to chronic illness... because it was.

We got past the neurologist who swore it wasn't MS, the diagnosis, the first MS specialist who I'd have some choice words for if I saw again, the rescheduling of MRIs because our local radiology center can't keep their one and only 3T MRI machine in operation, the switch to a fantastic MS specialist at a big, fancy teaching hospital, the beginning appointments of reviewing imaging and setting things in motion and now we are here. We have arrived at the long drives and long waits for MRIs, labs, treatments, and who-the-hell-knows what else to come.

We got home tonight, and I made dinner. My partner accessed the report from today's MRIs on her patient portal while I was cooking and said, "Do you want me to read this out loud to you now or should I wait until we are done eating? If it's bad, I don't want to stress you out."

"I'm not stressed out. That report could say that you'll lose the ability to walk tomorrow, that you'll never fully regain your eyesight, that the numbness will never go away, and it wouldn't stress me out. I've got you... no matter what."

#multiple sclerosis #MS #chronic illness #disability #autoimmune disease #wlw #autism

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ach-sss-no · 4 months

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17, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28

I'm interested in many questions, yeah

(if anyone didn't see the meme this is from, it is here)

17 talk about your writing and editing process

not very interesting, I'm afraid, I usually just go until the fic is done and then. stop. sometimes I rough out an outline beforehand but the story never ends up tracking to it so I'm not sure it helps

sometimes i end up writing a ton of different versions of a scene before i get one that fits in

i edit chapter by chapter because i post chapter by chapter

yeah editing is not interesting it's just looking at a paragraph and changing one word to a very similar word based on instinct, sorry

19 the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

one time i did a deep dive on the behavior and biology of parrots. that was fun. really cool group of animals that i'd always been interested in and never had a reason to think about in depth before that

another time i read a lot about tuberculosis & its cultural history but i thought the end project i made with that was terrible and would've been better without the research so i'm not as enthused about that even though it was interesting

Overall I am more likely to have to research things that aren't interesting, though, because if it's intensely interesting to me I probably already know enough about it for inclusion in whatever I'm writing, though I usually do a quick check to make sure I'm not misremembering facts if something is important

22 do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

not really, i've been writing for a while and i think i encountered all of the Upsetting Feedback™ types long ago (at least all of the ones that fall within the bounds of 'reaction to writing' and don't reach past it into something that's more properly categorized as... something else), and obviously it was survivable. and even if they recur none of them are ever going to feel as bad today as they did when i was younger. actually it's easier to post writing today than it's ever been because the prevailing opinion of the day, at least on AO3, is that you shouldn't leave negative comments. when i started out i don't remember that being as common of a mindset

there is a page on tvtropes dedicated to bad reviews of a fanfiction series i wrote as a teenager. it will be enshrined there forever. at the time i asked the mods to take it down and they ignored me while publicly telling each other that preserving the bad reviews of a teenager's fanfiction that 5-6 people read was an important cultural legacy. (i was reminded of this recently because i saw a bunch of hits to my brand new website from tvtropes and had to unclench my jaw.)

anyway, to my limited mindset at the time, that was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me feedback-wise, and it didn't stop me writing, for some reason. (it did kill my interest in that project which was probably for the best, it really was pretty bad) although apparently i'm still salty about it

i don't use/browse/enjoy tvtropes anymore though

25 besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

i draw sometimes

26 are you able to write with other people around?

i can, but wouldn't do so unless i'm stuck hanging out in a public place without transportation. I have never tried a "write in" or coffee shop thing and don't think I ever will because they don't sound appealing. writing isn't a social process and i can't engage in it without mentally shutting out anyone else who is in the room, which only feels appropriate if they're complete strangers or just... people i don't want to be friends with

27 your favorite part of the writing process

uhh when it's over getting sidetracked into research can be really fun

28 your least favorite part of the writing process

realizing 1 year after posting a fanfic that i got a significant detail wrong

#ask game response #writing #long post

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numetaljackdog · 1 year

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sos

my number one skill is never shutting the fuck up ever and indeed in many circumstances it's more of a curse than a blessing because i genuinely can't control it for the most part but it does come in handy including throughout the entirety of my academic experience as well as just about every desk job i've ever had because it means i can fill a lot of space with a vast quantity of words that scan with a great deal of clarity and cohesion despite ultimately saying very little over the course of that volume. the result of this is that those who are reviewing my writing, which are usually people with varying degrees of power over my continued success, scan the content i've generated and deem it to be of high quality because everything seems well-thought out and competently composed and so they give it an instant pass, at least as long as they aren't paying too much attention, which - spoiler alert! - pretty much nobody ever is. they've all got their own shit to worry about, things that matter far more to them than whether or not you ended a sentence with a preposition in your 10-page report for a course that they're already sick of. now, what i did just there was a little trick where i actually violated my own natural cadence and patterns of writing in order to include a little gag! in the sentence where i mention the concept of ending a sentence with a preposition, i did just that; the sentence ended with "of." but for me, i normally would have phrased that sentence as follows: "they've all got their own shit to worry about, things that matter far more to them than whether or not you ended a sentence with a preposition in your 10-page report for a course that they're already sick of teaching." if this were actually a report with a word count minimum, obviously i would include that final word at the end of the sentence, because getting all cute and meta with the way i phrase things isn't worth losing that extra word of length. but in projects where the minimum requirements are more lax, i find it's helpful for my motivation to allow myself to have a little bit of genuine fun with it and liven the place up some. of course, that only applies if you're like me and you're a massive nerd who has fun doing that sort of thing, but i would say that there's a pretty decent chance that is true about you, seeing as how you're on tumblr dot com, a website that has an observably quite high population of huge nerds, and also you're presumably following me, which means you've identified with my nerd self enough to choose to see more of my blog. for what it's worth to you, my external keyboard seemingly ran out of battery several sentences ago, which is really kind of funny when you think about it. what an ironic time for that to happen, as i'm discussing and demonstrating my ability to type forever and ever! this is the first time i've had the battery in this keyboard die, so it must have had fresh ones in at the time i got it. i wouldn't know for sure, because i got it secondhand from someone i know who was clearing out some old inventory from their workplace's office building. that's where i got my big external monitor, as well. i really like tech appliances but honestly i really don't know much about them, that was never my area of expertise. as is likely obvious from this post alone, my passions have always remained more with the humanities. good god i have to stop now before i give you my whole fucking autobiography but i think by now i've sufficiently proven my point - i could easily do this until the end of time.

i have to create a new block now because of tumblr's character-per-block limitation. the one last thing i'll tell you is that, since i'm now typing on my laptop's keyboard which is at a somewhat awkward angle from me, my wrists are in danger of mucking with the trackpad, and just a few moments ago i accidentally selected the entire wall of text i've typed here and replaced it with what i was continuing to type. so thank goodness for the tumblr post editor's ability to undo, or else nobody ever would have seen this very intellectual and not at all frivolous and annoying post that i've generated here. if you actually read all of this, you're a huge freak and i'm proposing to you right now.

#*char noises*

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itsclydebitches · 2 years

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Well, *I* think that the best part of your V9E1 review is how it highlights what a fair and reasonable person you are. You're not simply ripping into the show, even though it may feel good to tear it down, you always manage to find something in it that makes you go "I liked that, a good job was done here". Your reviews might be more negative than positive, but you never take a hammer to it just because, and you always try to build it up where you can.

Thank you, anon! 🥰

To speak on that lack of balance for a moment, this is one of those instances where I can understand why the otherwise uninformed RWBY fans would take a very negative view of RWDE at face value. (Note: not that this excuses the onslaught of flaming, but rather that it explains why someone might come away with a bad taste in their mouth.) Because if there was a show I really liked, one where I was not yet able or willing to engage with criticisms of it, or if it was a case where I simply never would see eye-to-eye on those topics, then yeah, seeing a 9k review that was primarily negative would not leave a favorable impression on me. I'd question what this poster's "real" goals were and might come to the conclusion - one that many RWBY fans have - that it's stemming from some deeper bias ("You just hate women! Queer people! Shows that are successful when you're obviously not!"), or a desire to stir up drama for internet engagement. Of course, I'd like to hope that in this hypothetical my critical thinking would kick in and I'd realize that disliking aspects of a show doesn't automatically equal such insulting accusations and that making "clickbait" posts on tumblr of all places is ridiculous when this website offers few monetary opportunities... but I can see how the general pipeline of "They're crazy critical of something I love, so clearly something must be going on because obviously the thing I love is not flawed" is going on.

At this point, you'd have to go back 4 - 6 years to see the development from "I love this show!" to "I still really like this, but RWBY's long term flaws are starting to cause bigger problems" to the current "Wow, I feel like there really is more to criticize than praise. That sucks." I don't know a single RWDE poster who came into the fandom hating the show because... who does that? Sure, there are some Nearly Universally Hated shows that people want to talk about (like the new Scooby Doo, for example), but generally speaking you don't engage in a fandom unless you have some investment in the original product. We are fans: those who fell in love with RWBY, write fics for the show, attend cons, create fanart, etc. But I think it can be hard for a lot of other fans to realize that when, yeah, reviews have become so critical, leaving only those "Well, they tried to build it up!" moments to balance things out. Newcomers to my blog aren't going to read a heavily negative recap and then look at the RWBY fic I've written, the holiday exchange I host, the three year old recaps that had a lot more to praise. They see the current state of things and let that and that alone inform how I feel about RWBY. There's little incentive or ability to think about why there's so much to criticize now, beyond those easy accusations. So every Volume now we have this continual resurgence of, "They just hate RWBY! Send them death threats until they leave😡"

#rwde #rwby #mymetas #sweet messages

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beach-illustrations · 10 months

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Would love to hear your review of Artfol once you've settled in a bit! (Probably wouldn't hurt for me to have a more presentable art archive somewhere either, so I'm curious about the alternatives)

of course!! after using artfol for about a week, i do like it! it's still very new, so i wasn't expecting too much off rip from it but it definitely has some good potential if it gets successful!

putting this under a read more because, as per usual, this got long.

to start: the good stuff! good, robust organization thus far for artists. all the art you post gets automatically put in its own separate tab on your profile called gallery in chronological order and any other art and text posts that you share as well as your own art and text posts get put into another tab called feed. the feed is in chronological order from newest to oldest and it's suuuuper nice being able to have an easy place that contains all your original work people can go to without the hassle of punching in specific tags in a search bar (or inputting them into the website url) and hoping for the best. the feed can then be further organized between posts and art, art submitted to challenges, art submitted to submissions and reshares of other peoples stuff.

you can also make collections for your own gallery, so you can have all your fan art in one collection, ocs in another, etc. this isn't just for personal organization either; your separate collections are displayed under the about section on your profile or, if you've got them, links section! i honestly like this a lot. most of my experience of running an art blog comes from tumblr and getting separate pages set up on your blog, while not horribly difficult, does require a bit of knowledge regarding html and manually inputting website urls where you want the links to go. having all of this steam lined is much better. all of this is relatively easy to figure out as long as you're open to just clicking buttons on the website to see what they do, as far as i could find there's no official tutorial available. you can only have a limited number of these without a premium subscription but i haven't a clue as to what that limit even is.

you can also effectively pin certain art pieces that you're proud of to the top of your gallery by putting them in a featured selection. no idea how to do this yet but i do think this in of itself is neat.

customization is light but they cover the basics well. they've got a nice bio and announcement/secondary heading type feature under your username that you can customize, as well as a nice big space for an icon and a big ol' banner you can put your art in. other than that, you can choose a 'theme color' as artfol calls it but it just determines the color of the bar under your banner as far as i can tell on the website version. they also have a separate area for links that automatically turn into the websites icon you're linking back to.

custom warning tags!!! these fully blur the image and you can put as many words to warn others about the content of the art as you want to clarify what someone's getting into if they click show. at first i was worried i could only put one custom warning on an image but nope, it lets you write multiple warnings on the censored image if the NSFW and Gore filters aren't cutting it for the art.

speaking of which; artfol allows NSFW! in places where online spaces have been getting progressively sanitized because big corporations and google ad sense are the ones who can pay the bills of hosting thousands of images and videos on servers, it's nice to see that.

the challenges! other artists can issue challenges to others to either draw their characters in certain outfits, as certain creatures, drawing a piece of art in your style, etc. think some of the various art memes floating around on twitter, except this time they have their own dedicated category! i haven't done any challenges yet but this seems like a great way to socialize with other artists on artfol, as well as stretch your own art skills.

AI art is explicitly banned.

there is an algorithm however it prioritizes art made recently, so artists of all skill level and mediums get a shot at being seen on the front page which is nice! as far as i can tell, your home feed (which is very similar to tumblr's) is in chronological order and doesn't put in any suggested or recommended posts in the middle of the posts of the people you've chosen to follow. the like and share options are easily accessible and when you share someone else's art, it notifies them by telling them that you've pinged them which is... odd to me, but the website doesn't seem to auto credit them any other way in reshares (in contrast, tumblr keeps the OP's username and icon at the top of their own original post when it gets reblogged). i'm also something of a tumblr hermit so this could be a common reshare (reblog?) format else where for all i know and i'm just griping about nothing.

there is a premium subscription you can sign up for as i mentioned earlier. you get stuff like no ads (which you also get if you've got an adblocker on your browser), more collections can be made, you can upload cover art (icons, i think?) for your collections and the art you post, you can have custom profile theme colors (i guess they let you use the color wheel or a hex code instead of the pre seleced colors they already have?) you get more layouts for your featured art on your profile and you don't have to wait 60 days to change your username. oh, and you can make groups that people can join based around one particular thing, however i haven't touched any groups yet because none of them are all that appealing to me.

honestly, a lot of the premium subscription perks are very inconsequential to the core functionality of artfol which is a huuuuge bonus to the devs in my eyes. they easily could have paywalled commission pages or collections all together and them just giving you some extra customization perks instead shows me that the devs are actually focused on making an artist friendly website and app.

over all, artfol is relatively easy to navigate and upload your art to! the base features are solid however the website does have some downsides.

the bad:

the most egregious thing is that I haven't been able to and currently can't access the content guidelines or privacy policy pages. when I first signed up, artfol gave me a link to what the website claimed was the content guidelines however it just linked me to the news page and that really didn't sit well with me.

because the artfol website is so new, I am going to give them a chance and interpret this in the best faith possible and assume that it seems like this is just an issue of certain pages crashing, seeing as I used to be able to access the News page on artfol and now it's just gone like the other pages. on top of that, it seems like every link except for their twitter, android and apple download links, instagram and discord links at the bottom of the artfol website page is broken in the same way. out of all pages eating themselves the content guidelines and privacy policy ones feel like the worse ones to lose. I haven't been able to access the guidelines from the jump and it's been really frustrating. I just got done sending an e-mail to their contact e-mail, so hopefully something good comes from that. in the mean time i've also downloaded the app to try to see if i can find the guidelines and privacy policy on there. I've noticed people complaining about crashing pages in the mobile app reviews so hopefully this is just a case of a website page accidentally eating itself and it's just very unfortunate coincidence that it happens to be some very important pages affected by the crashes.

other than that, the other downsides are that the website takes like a minute and a half to load, clicking on a censored image to view it on your home feed takes you to the individual post and has you un-censor it there rather than directly from your home feed and some features are currently only available to mobile accounts such as commissions tabs, however i'm sure that will eventually be made available to the website version as well in due time. also, while uploading art, not including the custom censor tag or NSFW or gore filters, you can only put 5 tags on your art. these are all only minor annoyances and i'm sure they'll eventually be fixed in upcoming patches.

over all: asides from some concerning hiccups with missing pages, artfol seems very promising for a relatively new, bare bones website! the developers have very much taken a mobile app first, website later approach which at least to me isn't the end of the world, seeing how the website is already doing okay all things considered. the community seems nice and i'm planning on trying out some challenges soon to get more experience using it!

#pristine-starlight #hi hello thank you very much for the question! enjoy this wall of text in return <3 #if i missed anything i'll probably make another post later

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shoulderscars · 9 months

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If you had told 13 year old me that I would be invested in music, both my violin and songwriting/producing, actually did a //sport// (that isn't intimidating, I love skiing AH) and *enjoyed it,* had a stable, loving relationship with all my family, and am settled in the outside appearance of who I am right now... Well. I don't know what she would do that girl was a fricken mess.

And I'm sure I could play this game ten years from now and also be shook... it's just. Sometimes I feel like there is an ever-present ticking behind me, which (news flash for everyone) there is, but being content is not the end of the world. I could go on for many many essays about how settling religion in my heart is just a struggle, and how balancing outside life and who I am is hella hard, but at the end of the day... I can be content in my life and still in crisis.

(there's a cut so I don't waste your scroll time lol)

This year has been... A lot. Around this time last year I was very severely SH-ing, and it was just a bad loop I was in. And I've experienced AMAZING things this summer, and been to places I can even process in hindsight. I've learnt balance, and figured out why my relationship with food is so hard, and how I need to start going about my eating life in light of that. But, a lot does not have to always be bad. I've learnt about parts of my mind (TALKING ABOUT YOU IRRATIONAL FEAR) that I didn't know I had. Also that I like rom-coms.

For every shitty moment that happened in this past year I can LITERALLY FEEL how much sharper my brain is now than before. LITERALLY FEEL IT. And I'm... yk, I'm not actually sure what emotion I'm feeling but I'm just overjoyed to be content.

No, I don't need to fit into a body type I don't have (yes, I do need to learn my triggers, and work with myself to get into a better physical state)

No, I cannot be neutral in my war against myself and a clash of worldviews that I somehow //know// will be beautiful someday.

Anyway.

There were 2 major deaths in the peripheral of my life last year, and I've both understood that grief and losing someone is hard, but it opens doors.

And of course, there is a ticking clock, and I need to be more aware of it in a not paranoid way.

SO.

this was gonna be a skiing appreciation post, but then it just became a year in review post.... So HEH ENJOY THE TEA FRIENDS

hugs hugs hugs!

<33

(P.S. I have the best big sister in the world. Everyone understand, sometime in May some not so great things happened online to my bestest greatest sister in the world, and I think if I don't say this i would have failed my public school training: there are people behind the usernames. Real people. So before you go calling someone some name, or even saying that they aren't a real fan, just think about it. After all, we aren't as important as we think we are.)

(P.P.S. I WAS GONNA SAY IN THE LAST PARAGRAPH THAT MY SISTER IS THE BEST AND I LOVE HER TO DEATH BUT I GOT DISTRACTED LOL. My sister is literally amazing. I love her so much. And I know the next... 3? (it's 2 and I know it but I'm tryna be hopeful) years are gonna be really different that the last however long we've been in this "we are besties and no one can stop us" phase. And I love you. LITERALLY SO MUCH. and you are gonna be a super duper duper duper good nurse. Cause your the super duper duper duper duperistist bestest greatest biggest sisterist everist. Love you @redpiperfox <33)

(P.P.P.S. would anyone read my year in reading reviews? I read books this year, and I wrote reviews on them and and and.... id love to share 🥺 TELL ME IF YOU'D READ IT PLEASE!!!)

(P.P.P.P.S. ok good night for real now)

#year in review #i don't remember writing this #And with that the 2023 season comes to a close #SKIING IS AMAZING #i love my violin #I love my violin like my child #Same goes for my skis #j's irrational fear #a series of j's irrational fears

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adelle-ein · 2 years

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lace's xenoblade 3 review/thoughts

So I finished Xenoblade 3's main story. I'm far from done with the game, but I did all the main character side stories and a lot of side quests, and I do have all the heroes. Most of them aren't ascended yet, and I have many other misc sidequests and places to explore on my list, but I'm going to be doing that here on out while enjoying the post game perks.

Overall it was really good despite some glaring issues. Spoilers, obviously!

Just to make thing clear: I have only played Xenoblade 1. 2's character designs, weird-ass grooming love triangle, treatment of women, fanservice, and obsession with sex and dirty jokes are such massive turn-offs that I refuse to pay money for it. If someone would like to give me a copy of 2 as well as the money for its allegedly amazing DLC then I'll play it, but that's literally the only circumstances I can see that happening in. Also, to be totally honest, the fandom tendency to bully and harass people who don't like 2 has ruined any interest I might have otherwise had. I am generally familiar with 2's lore and how it connects to 1, though, having read up on it while deciding whether to play 2 and in advance of playing 3 - no expert, but I do know stuff.

My biggest issues with Xenoblade 1 were that a) it didn't seem to like its main cast very much and b) it absolutely hated women to a frankly comedic extent. 1 literally is just The Shulk Game, periodically featuring Melia and Dunban. Every significant scene, major moment, iconic line, act of bravery comes from Shulk. Every characters' thoughts, feelings, and motivations revolve entirely around Shulk. Every woman revolves around her love interest (who, uh, is generally Shulk.) Reyn effectively vanishes by midgame, Sharla really served no purpose in the plot whatsoever and was largely there to be a love triangle point, Dunban is pretty much just a mentor, and while Melia gets a lot of plot focus and characterization, it ultimately amounts to a lot of suffering and minimal payoff (slightly rectified in Future Connected.) But it could be worse - Fiora, despite all her setup as Shulk's foil, despite her arc setup about disability and mortality and a literal god in her chest, is nothing more than a love interest, who has no motivation beyond being at his side, who at the pivotal motivation-stating moment has nothing more to say than "Shulk!" And of course there's also Riki, who is literally just a comic relief character and is unceremoniously written out of the game every time a cutscene gets emotional or plot-significant (only to reappear shortly after asking for food at inappropriate moments.) If it weren't for the Heart-to-Heart unvoiced text convos — which take for-fucking-ever to unlock — that would literally be all there is to these characters, and even within the Heart-to-Hearts, there isn't that much to go on. Ultimately, I enjoyed 1 a lot more for its gameplay and potential than anything else. To me, a story that doesn't care about its characters is pretty much never an enjoyable one.

Long story short, Xenoblade and I have a tenuous relationship. I pretty much exclusively play turn-based games due to a variety of disabilities. Xenoblade's combat, however, is forgiving enough on easy mode that I can get by thanks to auto-attacks and not relying on button mashing, so it's pretty much the only one of its kind that I've ever played. I'm including all this context to make it clear going in that I do not consider myself a Xenoblade fan, or hardcore player, by any stretch of the imagination.

My point here is that 3 absolutely blew me out of the water. 3 loves its characters. It adores its characters. It wants the absolute best for its characters. Which, uh…is sometimes an impediment, but most of the time it's great. Every cast member actually plays a role, gets an arc, gets backstory and development, and most importantly of all, they maintain a consistent web of friendships that have nothing to do with Noah. Every duo of characters gets some kind of cute interaction once in awhile, even combos like Eunie and Mio that don't hang out much, and it not only makes things feel organic, it prevents both love-interest-trap and the Shulk Obsession effects that 1 suffered from. Everyone gets a side story, everyone gets big boss fights, everyone gets a big piece of the screentime pie even though Noah is the main focus, and it's the high point of the game. The characters are all, genuinely, really good — Eunie and Taion are far and away my favorites (duh…) but they all overall feel well fleshed out and well loved. Noah definitely gets preachy towards the end, but he doesn't get every single good one-liner the way Shulk did.

Sena, unfortunately, is the only real exception to this rule. The poor girl starts and ends the game as Mio's cute accessory that she sometimes lends to Lanz. While she still gets way more character work than, say, Sharla, and isn't reduced to a love interest, her ascension quest has absolutely nothing to do with her and her "development" makes no impact on her behavior for the rest of the game. Taion changes visibly as a person after the events at Colony Lambda, but while Sena says a few things about being true to herself, every subsequent story scene still has her using her perky, happy-go-lucky persona and being Mio's hype girl. The writers clearly had an idea in mind for her, but really fell down in executing it. This shines in Mio's side story — apparently Miyabi also saved Sena before her death, and yet Sena has never really seemed affected by this the way Mio is. It's never even mentioned before this side story that Sena had any involvement in Colony Omega. I have no idea what went wrong with writing Sena, but it's pretty sad, honestly. All that being said, it's really not THAT bad — it just sticks out compared to how the other five are treated. More of a "five great, one mediocre" type situation, you know?

Honestly, gameplay is great. The combat is insanely confusing and overcomplicated and everyone is yelling constantly but like. That's a given. Xenoblade. If I hadn't played 1 I probably would have just had no idea what to do, but I was able to fumble through despite getting bombarded with "tips" such as "Celestial Arts are special Arts triggered by filling up the Star Gauge and properly timing your Moon Attacks. By triggering a Punch -> Fly -> Burst -> Shine combo, you can turn off the enemy's Rage Meter and Shatter them, thereby executing a Shattershimmer attack. Try it for yourself! Also half those moves don't actually work on most bosses, but we won't tell you that." That gives you an idea of how every single "helpful tip" that pops up in Xenoblade feels to me. Again, though — a lot of this is on me. I don't have the processing skills or memory to be Good At Xenoblade, and easy mode negates the need to know most of this anyway, but man is it silly sometimes. I have some nitpicks about smaller stuff, like how the class unlock system works (luckily the postgame options render this effectively obsolete, whee!) and steering the boats (sound of me getting stuck on a stray monster and crashing sideways into an island.) But the exploration is so much fun and the sidequests are a lot more engaging than 1, and that's what really matters to me in Xenoblade gameplay.

Plotwise, things really do just drop off after the chapter 6 opening. Everyone said so and I was skeptical. I am no longer skeptical. Not sure the writers had any idea what they were doing beyond that point. It's not as bad as some (TEAM ASANO) but it sort of feels like they might have run out of time a little — the last dungeon really just feels like padding, X and Y don't even get death cutscenes, and Z feels unfinished. The basic concept of Z being the personification of everyone's fear and inertia works really well, but — and I can't believe I'm saying this — it wasn't as well executed as the similar final boss in Persona 5. Just not enough time spent on Origin and what its whole deal is, and things stayed a bit too Noah-centric at the end for my tastes. Also that final boss needed to have skip options in the cutscenes, if I hadn't cleared it my first try I would have cried from sheer fatigue lol. I also think the "side stories" are pretty meh, with only Taion's and Lanz's really working for me — I actually quite liked Sena's, but it isn't remotely about Sena and really should have been just a Ghondor quest. Eunie's felt purposeless, Mio's just absolutely destroyed the very concept of death in the entire game, and Noah's was…terrible.

And this brings me to my biggest plot complaint: death has become absolutely meaningless. The rebirth thing, I could get behind. The execution of Taion's side story, for example — while Nimue is drawn to and admires Taion for the same qualities that led to her past self mentoring him, she never regains her memories, and things will never actually be the same again. But that's okay, because she gets to live her own new life now. That can work for me. I can get behind that. Similarly, Eunie found her old husk and remembered her previous death, but she doesn't gain all the life experience and memories of that version or anything, just lives with the burden of a trauma she didn't experience. Moebius recruits gain memories of all their past lives, but they also become evil and warped under the weight of repeated bitterness and loss. All of these approaches worked. Not perfectly, but they worked for me. And then Miyabi shows up and just ruins everything. She's the age she was when she died, she retains all of her memories, she's exactly as she was. She might as well have never died at all. So…what's the point? That sacrifice that shaped Mio's life and outlook — it was pointless, in the end. Miyabi gave nothing up to save Mio (and Sena.) So it wasn't even a sacrifice. These aren't as bad but: Why is goddamn MWAMBA back, that's the silliest thing in the world, he's the Tutorial Party Member and those should never come back (unless you do something cool a la Fiora, and that sure wasn't the case with him.) His Agnus equivalent from Mio's squad whose name I don't even know is back. Cammuravi is back, and while he seems to be retaining his amnesia, he acts exactly the same, he's back to his previous age, and he's ~naturally drawn~ to Ethel (which…their relationship wasn't explicitly romantic or anything but I do feel a little weird about him hanging out with her as a child in this life when they were equals and the same age with some romantic subtext in the past one…) I do know however that some future quest will age Ethel back up, but that was all very weird. I don't think anyone should be coming back at the age they were previously, but even if we're doing that, they DEFINITELY shouldn't be regaining their memories.

In a game that's literally supposed to be about life and death, the value of each cycle, of each life no matter how temporary, where the characters repeatedly insist that each of their lives have value no matter how many times they're reborn — "death" becomes less than a slap on the wrist. I also don't know why Nia revived — probably just a 2 reference, as I understand from the wiki, and if so that's totally fine, but the timing of that after Mio's side story just blew the concept of death off a cliff was really not ideal. Would have been better to have her not awaken until after D was killed, as it just adds to all the resurrection in Mio's story and makes things feel very silly and death extremely cheap. The one good thing is that so far Miyabi seems to be the only cartoonishly bad no-consequences-at-all example, but that could change in other side quests, and frankly, once is bad enough when the game's themes so heavily revolve around the value of life and death.

Moebius is insanely hammy. It got old really fast, and then got funny again when I realized that literally every single one of them is like that. There's a certain refuge in audacity there, imo. They're just all complete weirdos who won't stop chewing the scenery, I can respect that. Although D's "true identity" being treated as a big reveal ("wow! You're a serial killer that has literally never been mentioned in this game before!!") was pretty ridiculous. Also kinda disappointed that we didn't get E, T, L, and S alongside N and M…while it makes sense, and the implication is that this is the first life in which these six got together, I wanted evil Eunie :( N is kinda hilariously pathetic, which may not have been the intention. I got off so many daze->bursts on him during his last battle and he was just bouncing around like a fucked up plinko horse it was goddamn hilarious. Also his armor has a booty window. I can't take this guy seriously. The big M/Mio reveal is really well handled and great, though, and the absolute peak of the plot. I just laughed at N a little during it. Can you really blame me.

I will also say that M/N's story did, personally for me, ruin the idea of Noah/Mio as a romantic couple — seeing a version of them that reached the peak of codependency to the point of genocide taints every version of them. Even though the versions we play as can reach acceptance and part for the greater good, it's hard not to think of N and M and their arc. Again, that's for me — not judging people who do love the couple or anything, I'm just a little repulsed by them together now :') I will also say that while some of the "life cycle"/"yay babies" stuff feels a bit hamfisted, it's really not too bad, especially with the focus being more on babies and life than "everyone's purpose is to make babies." And the language seemed surprisingly non-heterosexual (I'm so glad that Lanz/Sena stayed platonic.) The game sort of glosses over N and M (or some other version of them, but I got the impression that was them)'s teen pregnancy as well as Monica's (Ghondor is 18 while Monica is 33 — easy to miss but Monica was a teen mom) and I do feel weird about that. Not the end of the world but the material sometimes teeters on the edge of…not so great?

Side note: Now that I think about it, why are Nopon entirely outside the cycle and just living their merry lives completely consequence free in whatever parts of the world they want. Why was there no Moebius nopon i am so disappointed. Not to mention they keep inventing shit that just completely shatters all of Z's plans. Nopon are canonically more powerful than Moebius this is a very funny concept to me

All of this being said, the ending itself actually works okay for me. I always have mixed feelings about "but then it never happened!" type endings, I always prefer "let's rebuild the world with the tools we have." I don't like it when "bad/flawed/noncanon" timelines get erased without a trace and become meaningless. This is why my favorite time travel game is Radiant Historia. Have I mentioned I fucking loathe act 3 of Dragon Quest XI, to this day have refused to play it, and actually regret buying it at all solely thanks to act 3's existence? It's a MASSIVE pet peeve. Anyway, the ending narrowly subverted pissing me off — it manages to stay bittersweet by treating the Agnus/Keves separation as a consequence of restarting the world. You could argue that the ongoing "oh, they'll meet again somehow" reassurances ruin this, but to me it just barely manages to work. It might, admittedly, undermine some of the messages about moving on and forward and avoiding the endless now — but I think it's okay, in the end. Even if baby Noah runs into that alley and immediately trips over baby Mio and they get every single memory back, I think the ending as a whole is well-constructed enough that it can work. It wasn't a huge, universal retcon — either the effects of what happened will linger (they'll regain their memories and have to live with that knowledge) or the consequences of their choice will (they'll never meet again, or they'll meet but not remember) and that ultimately works for me. Subjective, though, and I get why some are disappointed with it in one way or another -- I would also have personally preferred a "rebuilding the world together without any Flame Clocks" ending. It's better than "Fiora's just all better and a Homs again with no lingering effects at all" or "Pyra and Mythra just are alive and have separate bodies bc Reasons now" though. *JKR voice* You solved it, Ginny was perfectly happy again!

The characters are what really carry this game's writing as opposed to the plot, and that's generally okay with me. Really, my big outstanding complaints are the death thing, mostly as it applies to Miyabi, and that things are a real slog in the final fetch quest and then dungeon, with that classic "padding an already too long JRPG" vibe. Seriously, I finished at 62 hours as a fast reader with a whole ton of side content left to do — that dungeon could have been ¼ of the length and equally effective, guys. Why.

Miscellaneous commentary — the VA work is great/terrible in exactly the ways I wanted it to be, Nia and Melia's new designs are great (and Melia's really suits how her VA's voice has changed, which is a strong improvement over Future Connected - not anyone's fault, just a weird side effect of things being recorded a decade apart. Getting to properly see and hear adult Melia really feels like it fixes up those issues though.) The Nopon are way cuter than they've ever been, fluffy and big-eyed, and their speech is definitely my favorite from the three games (toning down the mehmehmeh was a very good call, especially since this world is supposed to be a mix of 1 and 2.) Giving Riku that extremely deep voice in the English dub is a hilarious choice and I have endless respect for them for that. The main cast all sounds great, Sena being an American stereotype is so funny, Noah's VA handled his multiple roles really well, and Eunie was just hilarious at all times. Seriously I adore her. Music sounded great, but I was mostly listening through switch speakers so that obviously affected the quality a lot — it sounds way better when I listened on the PC through headphones though so I'm slowly making my way through. Should have won at the game awards but we all knew it wouldn't lbr :') The character models are great and this is definitely my favorite artstyle from any of the Xenoblades — everyone is a LOT more expressive than 1 but not, well, ugly like in 2. Much more facial feature diversity too which is sorely appreciated. Jiggle physics were kind of ridiculous (Mio should not have those!! She's like a b cup!!! why) but at least the outfits and angles weren't too wild, and Monica is the only one who looks outright cartoonish proportions-wise imo. I really enjoy the class system and getting to do wild/fun stuff with it, but I also like that significant cutscenes have everyone using their "traditional" weapons — it strikes a nice balance between gameplay and character fun for me. In general all the fight cutscenes were really well choreographed and lively, with lots of cool touches that made them actually worth watching -- stuff like Lanz blocking a huge long hit while Eunie and Taion use an ongoing sustained heal to keep him alive longer, it's neat.

Also That Photo is so dumb and so poorly timed but hey that's why i'm not playing 2

Anyway, yeah, I have my gripes but it's overall a really good and heartfelt game that feels like a lot of love was put into it! Really good! I…will still be avoiding the larger xenoblade fandom bc What The Hell Is Going On In There. eunie's the boss. why is this so long i just wanted to write a few paragraphs not the fucking iliad sobs

#txt #xbc3 //#xbc3spoilers //#xbc3 spoilers //#lace reviews

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monstersummongenre · 2 years

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Pokemon XY is kind of a mess actually: A longer than I wanted to write analysis of my impression of Pokemon XY so far

Okay, so this week our 20 in Review for Pokemon XY comes out and next week is our favorites list. So I decided I wanted to talk a bit about XY and the reasons I think it's not sparking joy for me. The reasons I've been able to pinpoint are the tone, the pacing, and the group dynamic.

The tone of XY from the first episode onward is fairly melodramatic. Dictionary.com defines Melodrama as "a dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization." And for me that encapsulates the style of XY as a series, at least so far. So many situations feel exaggerated in their seriousness in such a way that it's off-putting or laughable. I believe it was episode 3 in which Ash, Bonnie, and Clemont chase down Fletchling for stealing a berry meant for Dedenne. We learn more about Froakie and Ash catches a new Pokemon, but for all the fuss they made about the initial problem, they completely forgot about Dedenne. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but is off-putting when the show made it feel like a serious slight instead of the minor annoyance it was.

The tone also makes the jokes fall flat most of the time. This season has a pretty downbeat tone, so Pokemon's usual sense of humor, which is often over the top and exaggerated, feels out of place. The other major humor of the Pokemon series comes from the dialogue. And that often falls flat here too, probably because the humor of it is usually the characters reacting to a ridiculous situation. And because of XY's tone it's hard to be so silly. Honestly, they might have been better off going for a different type of humor altogether for XY.

The second issue in XY is an issue of pacing and, I'm going to be honest, wasting my time. The pacing of XY is just not very effective. For example, Serena and Rhyhorn racing. We're introduced to her being agitated with the sport her mother is trying to push on her. Then until she joins the party, we see her start up her journey. She finds Ash, as was her goal, and joins the party. The very next episode she comes to terms with the idea that she just misunderstood her mother and the Rhyhorn all of this time. Just like that without her having really faced any challenges, the issue is seemingly resolved. The same thing happens with Clemont and his gym.

And to be clear the issue isn't the way these issues were handled, but the complete lack of build up before just resolving them. These are both episodes we could have seen further down the line as a way of showing how our heroes have grown since the beginning of the show. So both fell flat in their execution because neither of the problems existed long enough to impact the characters's behavior. Well, I suppose Clemont's did, but that was more of a failure of exploration than anything.

And brings me to my final point, group dynamic and the characters in the group. To be completely transparent about my media preferences, for me, media is all about the characters. I care about their journeys, their relationships to each other, and how their actions affect the world around them. And this group just doesn't do any of that for me. In fact if I've gotten any details wrong in this post it's likely because I was bored to tears watching this show. The thing is I really want to like XY, I really want to like the characters, but I find it hard to be invested in them at all. And it took me a while to wrap my brain around the reason for that. I didn't quite know how to describe the blandness and lack of grit the characters have in a meaningful way.

First I wondered "are they too nice"? But that didn't make much sense. See I've been watching lots of Pokemon recently (the Original Series, Best Wishes, XY, Sun and Moon, and Journeys) and I can say that playful banter aside the series after the original aren't particularly mean, especially Sun and Moon, which has some of the nicest, good spirited kids to ever exist. If niceness was the problem then I'd feel a similar detachment.

So what was the problem?

The problem of XY lies in the group dynamic. I saw someone say recently that Ash as a character was written relatively the same from DP to XY with just minor adjustments. I found this thought a little jarring because I enjoy Ash in BW, but his vibe in XY is not nearly as entertaining. But if I look at him I do see that he's still the exact same person, he still mostly does Ash things except for the way he interacts with his companions. In the words of my younger sister who only watches Pokemon when we put it on while she's in the room "Ash doesn't seem like he even wants to be there. There's no reason he and I should feel the same way."

That is to say, far from the way he usually bounces off the energy of his companions, Ash barely interacts with the XY gang in meaningful ways at all. There are moments that happen in XY where you expect Ash to say something, anything, in response to his companions or their current situation and it's crickets. One example that really sticks in my brain is the episode where Meowth comes to the group for help. Clemont, Serena, and Bonnie all have things to say about the situation, but Ash… silence. Not even Pikachu expresses any opinion on the matter. Odd. When they have to get their faces scratched to stop themselves from being mind controlled and Serena's like "I don't want my face scratched up!" Silence. He doesn't try to encourage her, he doesn't get annoyed with her. He simply does not respond.

Ash Ketchum in any other season would have had some sort of reaction here. I could hear him going "Seriously?!" or insisting "It's not that bad" or even just having a facial expression of some sort.

And it isn't just him. The characters don't interact like a group of friends in general. They don't bounce off each other and react in ways that feel natural. There's no clash of personality traits. There's just flat comedy gags and conversations that just sort of move forward.

And I'd say that while the tone, pacing, and group dynamic brew a perfect mess, that the group dynamic is the part that really fails the series. A good set of characters that actually click is so important for a series like Pokemon. Pokemon spends a good chunk of screen time with the characters just wandering around and interacting with one off strangers on the way to their goals. The cast of characters has to be interesting enough to make that work. And maybe XY will pick up at some point and be more interesting, but having to wait more than twenty episodes for that is torture. I really do want to like XY, but for now it is my least favorite rendition of Pokemon.

#pokemon #pokemon xy #analysis #pokemon analysis #a little annoyed to be talking extensively about xy before other series but Spark says it's xy week #pokeani #kk rambles

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