#this ended up getting kind of long lmao

[richtercard]

points you. Opinions on the GBA/DS era of Castlevanias if you've played any of them.

circle of the moon - i put it down after 15 minutes of playtime and never touched it again because of that FUCKING WALK SPEED. it felt like i was walking through molasses with a 40lb backpack on or something. also the protagonist has the exact same name as my dad and that just makes me feel weird.

harmony of dissonance - i find it to be a kind of middling game but at the same time i think it's way overhated by some people. it's got its flaws, sure, but the castlevania series has put some real stinkers out there and to put it on the same level as, say, haunted castle or the gameboy games is a bit unfair. also i unironically love the soundtrack and can't be trusted with the aux cord because i WILL start blasting offense and defense.

aria of sorrow - it's a great game, what more is there to say? it's fun, the music and art direction are great, the characters are lovable, and i adore how the castlevania series now comes with a pre-built modern au (well, i guess it's more of a near future au since it takes place in 2035, but it definitely feels closer to modern)

dawn of sorrow - i have. complicated feelings about this game. dawn's version of the soul system focuses way more on the grinding aspect than aria, and the luck stat is fucking broken, meaning the only way to actually increase the drop rate of souls is to get the $300,000 soul eater ring, so either you're spending hours grinding souls or hours grinding money with no real in-between. also i don't like the story and feel like it took away a lot of the impact that the ending of the first game had. in aria, soma rejecting his role as the dark lord felt like it had weight, like he was effectively putting an end to the thousand-year cycle of death and violence that dracula started. but in dawn of sorrow, it turns out that no, the cycle didn't end, soma's actions just meant that someone else will become the dark lord. it's something that's always left a sour taste in my mouth. but at the same time.......... i think the game's kind of fun?? for all of my gripes, i had a blast playing it (especially julius mode) and i think it's really charming. i know everyone constantly gives this game and portrait of ruin shit for their budget anime art style, but i've always thought that at least the in-game sprites are pretty cute. idk. i hate dawn of sorrow but i love it but i hate it.

portrait of ruin - THEE best game of this era!!!!! it's SO fun and plays SO well i love the dual character system so fucking much. the music and overworld design are on POINT it's such a perfect jaunty vampire movie pastiche of a game. i've gotten 1000% completion in every bonus character mode (or at least the closest i can get) because it's just so fucking good and replayable. in terms of raw enjoyment it's probably my absolute favorite castlevania game of all time (in terms of true favorites it's only beaten out by symphony of the night, purely for emotional attachment reasons) it's the goat!!!!!!!! THE GOAT!!!!!!!!!!

order of ecclesia - UNDERRATED AF!!! i really really love the first half of the game and how it strikes a happy medium between linear progression and non-linear exploration, and i think it's nice to see other locations in a castlevania game beyond dracula's castle itself. also shanoa is hot.

[mobius-m-mobius]

OWEN WILSON as MOBIUS M. MOBIUS in LOKI (2021 - )

[dailyloopdeloop]

loop and mirabelle. That's it that's the ask

DAY 84: enrolled in the gossip wars

[lokh]

what do you think toshiro's version of laios would've been like if he was still with the group during the shapeshifter shenanigans

there have been a few speculations in the tag and among the fans and they are all very good SO i am going to take this opportunity to insert a bit of my shipping bias as i like in my interpretation LMAO agdsfgdfgv

i noted that in actuality shuro seems to have a very good grasp on laios' character??? this is most obvious in the manga later on but even seeing how he criticises laios in their fight... iirc nothing he says is actually untrue or wildly exaggerated, and while he does express frustration over something he feels like laios Should have control over (noticing his cues), he is also aware that laios isnt being malicious and that hes Just Like That. what i mean to say is that while i think his version of laios may seem more pushy and in-your-face, i dont think it will be overwhelmingly so. if its post-fight, i think the idea of laios (and marcille) being willing to do anything to get falin back made a big impression on him, as well as the idea that they need to eat and rest in order to succeed in their goals, so those aspects would be prominent in his version. he seems pretty observant, so i think for the most part the physical traits would line up, but i think there would be specific things that stand out to him that would appear strangely striking on his version of laios (like. idk something about his eye colour or the subtle contrast of his armour and chainmail. he seems to have a weird sense of aesthetics if extras are anything to go by lmao). if hed actually been paying attention all those times laios had gone on about what the hell ever, then it might be even MORE hard to tell apart his version since he would also have a good grasp on what laios should know. so either his version of laios is pretty difficult to pick out, OR despite the character being accurate his appearance is too. stylised lmao (exaggerated features or something) OR!! they just get him to pull out his monster gourmet guide thing and are able to tell from there. iirc everyone was surprised at its appearance so its possible toshiro had also never seen it before

IN MY IMAGINARY SHIPPING SCENARIO............ lets say that his laios isnt able to be picked out immediately and that the monster guide thing also doesnt immediately occur to anyone. what the real laios Specifically notices is how close this other laios keeps getting to shuro. and hes like. ??? why is he getting so close to him, theres no way i get that close to him??? but no one else seems to be picking up on it as weird, so hes having a small crisis like do i REALLY get that close to him???? and now that hes on the outside he notices shuro subtly leaning away and he feels both a wave of shame and..... protectiveness??? (JEALOUSY??????) and he immediately steps in and grabs him like Hey!!! cant you see hes uncomfortable???? weve been through this already!!! and like. ok i cant believe im doing this again but i need to separate this into different endings

a) the whump route: i dont think shuro ever envisioned Actually Telling laios about his frustrations outside of being basically cornered into it. has he ever spoken up against what was expected of him?? has he ever been confrontational???? i think part of what held him back from expressing his frustrations, along with the cultural norms, could be fear of what the reaction would be. if he had done the same in any other aspect of his life (his family, his inheritance), i think he would expect disappointment, disapproval, more proof that he doesnt add up to expectation. to be honest i dont think he Truly believes that laios is the type of person to react like this. but it was strong enough to prevent him from acting and i think would be projected onto his image of laios. maybe fake!laios says something dismissive like Well if it really bothered him hed say something right? what, he cant even stand up for himself? cmon, shuro, prove that you cant handle it just like everything else. and thats pretty much the fastest giveaway that it isnt really laios. of course this would be a HUGE tonal departure from what the actual episode/chapter was, so:

b) the dumbass route: both laioses break into fisticuffs, and, yes.... barking. and so they speedrun the entire encounter as the shapeshifters true form appears and, after laios points out that thinking too hard about others versions of you can tear apart groups and peace of mind, they pointedly do not speak of it again. they think about it though. a LOT

c) the normal route: both laioses argue normal like and the group ends up being able to tell them apart because the fake laios goes on a little too long about how theyre all here for falin and everyones like ok its not like he DOESNT love his sister but.......... the rest of the scenario probably goes like canon, though then i would want to see what everyone Else thought of shuro

[skitskatdacat63]

His bullfighting days aren't over quite yet.

+

[not-poignant]

Tbh one of the reasons I haven't gotten around to Palmarosa yet is because I knew I had to do a fuckton more worldbuilding research and couldn't be bothered because I was like 'this is going to be a lot more work than it needs to be.'

And after 4 straight hours and over 50 tabs which distilled down into 2000 words of worldbuilding that isn't even me getting to the chapter yet, I was right lmao. But in good news, it means I can officially get started! We're going to Luskan, folks :D

[mars-ipan]

some postgame doodles for pride month

[firefl1ezz]

i just. hit s+ rank in splatoon and i never honestly thought this would happen?? am i cool now.. do i get to be a part of the s4? do i get to be watered down to my running joke all the time?

[boiwcndr]

i feel like dick's "no-kill rule" could have so many different interpretations because of contrasting characterisations upon his many years of comics where people could argue that he has taken in bruce's "no-kill rule" for himself due to his intense loyalty to bruce but when it comes down to his own thoughts and feelings, he can, will, and has killed or that he also has his own deep devotion to that "no-kill rule" (because of his own backstory or because of bruce) and he would never kill, and both would be correct.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

kinda wild to me that one of the most compelling aspects of both Chuuya and Kunikida's characters to me, that I never really see talked about, is how they're heavily set on a doomed crash course towards complete and utter destruction, and how I am so, so worried for them both.....

[ocpdzim]

what you’ve got to understand about working conditions in education (and also other care-oriented careers) is that if they’re shit, two things are true at once:

that does not ever excuse being cruel to a kid, no matter what

until those conditions are fixed, education will continue to suck absolute shit

this is because when working conditions for teachers are really bad, many of the good teachers who recognize when they are reaching a point where they can no longer be the sort of teacher the kids deserve due to burnout WILL quit. they will do the responsible thing and go away for their own sake and the sake of the kids. and you end up stuck w a combination of new teachers who are trying their best but won’t last long, burnt out teachers who are trying their best but have nothing left to give and therefore aren’t very effective at actually teaching, and cockroach shitheads who take out their misery on the kids.

we have all had terrible experiences with bad teachers, many of them flat out traumatic, but for fuck’s sake please try to look at the systemic underpinnings of the problem for one minute. spitefully declaring that teachers don’t deserve good working conditions or even the right to complain about bad working conditions because ms. whoever in 5th grade was a bitch is only going to create more of her. if you want good teachers then we need an education system they can survive in

[non-un-topo]

I do not know how it's possible to work for 6 fucking hours and still end up with more work than before at the end of the day every single day, but it astounds me

[illithiddies]

So I never realized that Astarion's cantrip ability comes from being an Elf actually, I always thought it was from being a Rogue.

The dndbeyond page mentions that High Elves tend to have an affinity for magic, and use the Wizard spellcasting list and mechanics for it.

And while BG3 doesn't specify between Sun and Moon High Elves (of which Astarion is probably the later) the FR wiki mentions this about them:

It's not really talked about at all during the game, but Astarion definitely has at least this tiny bit of magical ability. Even more so if Arcane Trickster is chosen as his subclass later on.

Firebolt is his default cantrip, but it's default for everyone so I'd say it's up to interpretation if that's what he would have chosen. With his constant discussion about how much he loves the warmth of the sun, I feel like he probably would have taken firebolt, or at least maybe changed to it after he was turned.

He would have had this one singular magical ability with him for most of his life, both as an elf and as a vampire. Maybe he ignored it, maybe he relied on it, for self defense or maybe even comfort. Cantrips are the one thing you can almost always reach for, even when you've been disarmed.

There's a chance he might have had some further arcane knowledge in the past, but I feel like he most likely just didn't personally care to explore it. It might've not been worth his time as a magistrate. But, alternatively, he maybe 1) wasn't allowed to pursue it during his time under Cazador's influence, or 2) he actually did have some more magical affinity, but it was wiped out with the tadpole, as it was with Wyll.

Anyways, I feel like this can add a lot of fun extra context to his interactions with spellcaster Tavs or Gale!

[snailwitdamail2]

KWAN MY BELOVED!!!!!!

[ra-vio]

2b and 9s I've been working on for far too long

mask-less under the cut

using them as guinea pigs cause I wanted to draw faces. these kinda match

[peachypizzicato]

The Five Of Cups: An Open Letter to Dorian

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my soapbox (or, if you see this and by some divine happenstance don’t know me: Hi! I’m Felix! Or Anemone. I go by many names.)

As you can tell by my Big Boy Letters, I’m comin’ to talk about kind of a serious subject. At least, it’s serious to me anyway. I wanted to talk a bit about the game The Arcana. You know the one. The definitely not at all divisive one. That Arcana. (/s)

(Warning: I will be touching on depictions of racism, misogyny, anti indigenity, antisemitism, and just general mistreatment of marginalized people!)

TLDR; The Arcana is full of harmful portrayals of marginalized people and the fandom at large ignores it at best and encourages it at worst. The best thing we as the community can do is make it abundantly clear to the company that this is not okay and should not continue.

To be completely upfront here, I’m not going to be going in-depth on every single problem with the devs or the distributors or anything. We’re all busy people and there’s not nearly enough time in the day. But what I am going to do is touch on a few things I’ve witnessed firsthand that I think are worth sharing with the wider community.

One of the behaviors I’ve noticed most often is what I can only think to call… Strange treatment of the love interests. Not by everyone, mind you, but on a startlingly normal basis. Now, what do I mean by “strange”? Well, it really depends on the character honestly.

With Asra, much of the portrayals feel significantly more sexualized than that of their peers. Drawn and portrayed as if their body exists to be ogled by someone else rather than lived in by themself, y’know what I mean? That, combined with blatant orientalist imagery baked into much of their designs, makes for a feeling of feast or famine when seeking out content. And this isn’t even to comment on the intense focus on them as defined by their relationships to others– namely Julian– and all of the mischaracterization that comes with that.

It’s not much different in regard to Nadia, if you can believe it. The image of “step-on-me-queen dominatrix” cultivated by the original writers persists in the community, with overwhelming focus put on her body and her sexuality over anything else. Anyone who’s known me since I discovered the game knows I actually really liked her at first, but it’s hard to have a genuine attachment to a character who seldom even gets to have a personality outside of basic traits and Having Tits.

Julian is, admittedly, a difficult one. I am not jewish myself, but I’ve heard testimony from jewish fans that his portrayal is less than ideal (to put it lightly). At the very base, his design itself is riddled with common antisemitic imagery and was based primarily on a real brown-skinned jewish man whose melanated skin they excluded, surely coincidentally (/s). but it goes even further than that (depicting a jewish man as a bloodsucking vampire, anyone?). I don’t claim to speak for any groups I do not belong to, but with the knowledge I do have it simply makes things uncomfortable to witness.

Muriel. Oh, Muriel. Again, if you’ve known me for any significant amount of time, you probably knew I was dreading this. But as much as I’d like to think nothing could ever be wrong when he’s around, there are definitely problems. Now, I could go into all the issues with the way the writers concocted his route, his story, his character as a whole (brown man with a ~foreign~ type of magic lives in solitude in the woods and is “in tune with nature” to the point of communication, very original /s), what I really want to touch on here is how this informed the way the community treats him. Listen, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this, a lot of Muriel fans are not subtle about their (most often white, but not always) savior complexes. More times than I care to remember I’ve seen him babied, treated like he’s incompetent, made at best into an animal to be tamed and at worst into an uncontrollable monster. I’ve seen pieces of fanfiction call him, a very blatantly indigenous-coded character, a real actual slur. Not to mention how watering down the trauma he faced has become something of commonplace. And this isn’t even an exhaustive list of ways he’s mistreated! For as much as it makes me angry, it’s also extremely saddening. The devs and writers made one of their most genuine kindhearted characters into a metaphorical punching bag, and the community has only continued swinging for years afterward.

But, I think I’ve made my point. Moving on.

Portia is a combination of problems I’ve already touched on. Conveniently, all of the stereotypical traits that Julian inherited happened to skip right over his little sister. What didn’t skip over, however, was the gene of being shamelessly and gratuitously oversexualizing of her. Take a look at any of her CGs; most if not all of them are centered on her chest or otherwise use color and design to draw the eye there. Every one of her sprite outfits are low cut to show varying levels of cleavage. And the few vocal fans she does have only serve to perpetuate this over and over again. To be completely clear, there’s nothing wrong with characters who embrace their sexuality. That goes without saying. However, for being the one “plus-size” love interest– which really in this case only means short and curvy– the emphasis on her body over anything else about her is startling and sad.

Finally, we find Lucio. Our one ethnically white male love interest. You may be wondering how a character like that could possibly receive “strange treatment”. Or maybe you’re not. I will elaborate anyway. The biggest problem with Lucio, with the fans and absolutely with the teams behind the game, is and has been for the longest time the complete and utter lack of awareness of his role in the world and the consistent retroactive rewriting of his character. What I mean by that is this: Lucio, originally and in every route but his own, is blatantly written to be an unforgivably cruel and immoral man. He seeks the best treatment he can get while cityfolk all but die in his streets, he takes advantage of the kindness and generosity of others and punishes their trust. There are many assumptions that can be made but we are shown explicitly that he can know Asra, a child (as an adult himself), and make sexual advances on them in adulthood with absolutely no guilt. He blackmailed Muriel into being and staying his slave and in turn forced him to perform brutal public massacres for an indeterminate amount of time: all we know is that it was long enough for a colloquial name to become well known and for his appearance to grow unkempt and haggard. All this plus more things that I don’t even have the time to list. And yet, he is arguably one of the most popular characters. Take two steps into the fandom at large and you’ll see countless postings about how his childhood was so tragic and how he’s so very sorry, he’s just a little oopsie whoopsie uwu soft boy! The few times I personally have seen his horrible actions even addressed by his fans was to underplay them, to insinuate that he has it worse than anyone he hurt. In spite of, or maybe even because of his extensive list of broadly observable crimes, he thrives in the community. The people love him. I don’t think I really have to explain why this in particular is so extremely chilling to me.

So, with all of these things laid out… What now? We’ve acknowledged the problems, there’s pages upon pages of other posts outlining ones I didn’t even cover here, so now what do we do? What’s the solution?

The answer to this isn’t quite cut and dry. There’s no simple solution to murky waters that run as deep as these do. But, for what it’s worth, I have a few suggestions I’d like to propose.

First off, I understand that all of the routes are finished. They had all completed well before the Dorian acquisition, I’m fully aware of that fact. However, in regard to said acquisition, I feel as though Dorian dropped the ball when transferring the property to their own app (and I’m not even talking about the writing of the tales, which is its own can of worms). Rather than simply copy-pasting the routes from the existing app, things could’ve been redone, remade better. Problems could have been solved now that the game had gained new life. This was much of the inspiration behind my own reworking of the concept, to address the problems and fix them. I don’t even believe that it’s too late for them yet; routes have only just begun being uploaded to the Dorian app, in theory there’s still room to reconsider things.

But that’s the problem. I don’t believe that the crew behind Dorian really cares. I don’t believe the original development team or Nix Hydra crew really cared. If the people involved really cared about these problems, there was ample time within the last nearly five years to fix things. They did nothing. They continue to do nothing. People like me shout endlessly into the void, hoping someone will hear and actually listen to the issues happening within their game. But they don’t care. They continue to make money, they continue to draw in players, why should they? If racism and misogyny and every other form of bigotry under the sun doesn’t hurt their bottom line, why change anything? Why care, why change if the community at large not only ignores it but actively encourages and supports it? Why listen to criticism if you can just block it and soak up praise from your unconditional fans? Why?

As I said, I don’t have a simple solution for any of this. But I’ve made personal choices in my own life to give less of my time and money to the company. If I want merchandise, I seek out independent artists. If I want to see or read something again, I can find screencaps. As much as I miss certain things, I don’t play the game anymore. I can’t help being attached to characters who have been important to me for as long as I’ve known them, but what I can do is make purposeful choices in response to the affection I feel. Maybe my singular actions won’t mean anything to them, but specifically and purposefully refusing to support the profits of a fundamentally flawed game that doesn’t even have the self awareness to be ashamed of itself means everything to me.

Thanks for listening. I hope anyone who happened to make it to this point can take something good from my impassioned ramblings.