#this felt like a bit of a slog to start up and get finished which pains me to say tbh because at the heart of it i enjoy this lad!!!

[304wv66]

10.20.2023 // gonna get bit by that thing

also bonus crop from the desktop wallpaper because i liked it, it made me happy 🥺

[ironwoman359]

Taylor Reads: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea  

I have to admit, when I first started reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, I was surprised by how readable it was compared to H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, despite being nearly thirty years older. I embarked on my undersea journey with no small amount of optimism then, that despite the length being two to three times greater, I would finish 20,000 Leagues in about the same amount of time as The Invisible Man, if not even a little faster.

Unfortunately, the initial readability of the prose and drama of the narrative set up gave way to long stretches of novel where nothing very interesting happens and we are instead regaled with long lists of different species of fish, mollusk, and other zoophytes that our marine biologist protagonist is excited to study, but I as a modern reader found quite tedious. By the end of the book, I was skipping over entire paragraphs to bypass the fish and get to the next part where a location of note would be visited or an interesting character drama would unfold.  I found a reddit comment that sums up the book perfectly:

[ID: a reddit screenshot of a comment by u/burnaccount_12343 that reads “The book is like 70% fish, 20% fanboying and simping over Nemo, and 10% adventure.” End ID]

I made a post recently about how sometimes to enjoy older books, you have to put yourself in the mindset of someone from that time to truly appreciate them, and I still stand by that statement, but there’s another aspect that I forgot to consider as well: often, old genre fiction was serialized before it was published as a single novel. Trying to push through the entire 300+ pages of this book in one week was at many times a slog, but the original audience had bits and pieces of the story drip fed to them over 15 months, and if I take that into consideration, the repetitive lists of locations and fish are slightly more forgivable. Still, I can’t ignore the fact that I found large swathes of this book boring at best and frustrating at worst. 

Frustrating, because the parts that weren’t just a biology textbook in the guise of a novel were extremely interesting, and I wish that more of the narrative focus had been on the interplay between our four main characters. The setup here is really strong, and I think that it’s a huge part of why the story has endured for so long. I genuinely am finding myself thinking about the characters when I’m not reading the book, and just like The Invisible Man, there were many parts that were genuinely poignant.

However, I find myself at a loss on what rating to give this book, because while I can appreciate the parts that I enjoyed, and can appreciate the way its original readers would have enjoyed it (to say nothing of the political metaphors and references that went over my head as I am not a historian or literary expert), reading this book often felt more like a chore than it did leisure. For me, 3 stars is the lowest rating I’ll give a book that I still thought was ‘good,’ or at the very least, good enough that any problems I might have had with the book didn’t detract too significantly from my enjoyment. Often, a 3 star book for me is a somewhat generic ya fantasy, a cozy mystery without a super compelling mystery plot, or a book that I should have really liked, but had some problems in the execution. 

But with 20,000 Leagues, I feel as though my enjoyment was impacted to the point of non enjoyment, making me want to dip below the line and give the book a 2.5 out of 5 stars. And yet, that seems incredibly unfair, both for how this book has stood the test of time and for how much I enjoy the version of it that exists in my head, which is more than can be said for any other book I’ve given below 3 stars. I gave The Invisible Man 3.5 stars, and I wonder now if that was too high and the true answer is that both of these books were 3 stars for different reasons. 

(Honestly, regardless of whether I give Leagues 2.5 or 3 stars, I think I may knock Invisible Man down from 3.5 to 3; the extra half star was a result of how strong I found the ending in the moment, but now a week and a half removed from it, the ending is pretty much the only part I still think about. This indecision is precisely why I do not fill out my physical book journal until the end of every month, by the by.)

[bookie-the-reading-junkie]

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods review

1.5 stars

Oh boy. This book is a mess. I feel that it’s important to preface this by saying that I am a white American and my knowledge of Asian and Chinese culture/history is very limited (I’m a little more familiar with Japanese culture/history because of my love of anime). It is not my intent to criticize this book in ways that I shouldn’t and I don’t know enough about certain things to say if my assessment is correct or not. 

I had heard of this book a while ago when the author of Iron Widow (I love both the author and the book) promoted it, then when the whole thing with the white author review bombing POC debut authors, and then again when it was being called a colonizer romance. I did get spoiled with several things, but I feel like that didn’t matter too much. A lot of people said this book was a slog to get through, but I had just read “Daughter of the Moon Goddess” and this felt almost like a breeze in comparison because that one is 500 pages long and the prose is very similar; incredibly flowery and kind of repetitive. I finished this book in four days a few days ago and I’m already starting to forget what happened. 

I’m going to start off with the worldbuilding: it was a bit all over the place. I wasn’t quite as confused with the multiverse thing that was going on as a lot of people were, but I had many questions regarding the Romans that didn't get answered. Why was Rome/romans chosen to be the colonizers at all? Unit 731 was part of the Japanese occupation and the opium wars were spurred by the British. My guess is that the author felt that basing the colonizers on the Japanese would be too controversial, and wanted to go for a more fantasy/mythological vibe. Like a clash between western and Chinese mythology, which would have been really cool and actually what I expected when I first heard of this book, but wasn’t the case. 

Is Rome a reimagining of our world if Rome didn’t fall? That seems to be the case even though it’s not made clear. I wish that Rome/Roman culture/whatever appeared more because it’s so undescribed; we don’t have a clue as to what it’s like, especially when her own culture is given so much focus. The Romans are a blank slate, you could so easily swap out the Romans with like. Any modern western country, because the only difference between the two cultures is that the Romans are brutal and that they have “overwhelming science.”

That was something that bothered me a lot throughout the book, the constant “our magic can not measure up to their powerful science.” I can’t tell if it’s meant to be a critique of racist portrayals of “primitive people” or if it unintentionally comes off that way. Because to me, it’s the latter. Especially when so often science was technology like planes and guns, instead of what people generally think of when they hear science like chemistry or labs. I feel like if “technology” had been swapped with “science” that connotation I mentioned earlier wouldn’t be as strong. There were so many times Ruying would be like “science is so evil but magic is powerless against it” and it honestly made me a bit uncomfortable. Stuff like “one [world] was rich with magic, one was rife with science (p4)” and “these bracelets of science around my wrists (p114),” which is referring to her magic repressors/shock collar. There were a lot more (some worse) but I didn’t mark where they were. 

The writing was. Incomprehensibly flowery. I’ll be honest, this is a good example of why I don’t like flowery, poetic prose. It’s repetitive and the metaphors and similes start to end up not making sense for the sake of every. Single. Sentence. Sounding like it’s part of a poem or trying to be quotable. I disengage quickly from the story, glaze over, and miss stuff. Though in this case, it’d be pretty hard to miss stuff since it’s very repetitive. And with the gods thing. Look. I get it. It’s in the title. The Romans compare themselves to gods (or did the Panglings do that first? It’s unclear). But Ruying constantly talks about how they are false gods, how they pretend to be gods, how the real gods abandoned them, and false gods rule, and WE GET IT. YOU ONLY MENTIONED IT 20 TIMES IN THIS CHAPTER. I was in all honesty a bit baffled as to why she would compare them to gods so much, doing so only gives them so much more power over them. Some examples of the writing:

P17. Too cautious of his wrath, too aware of my sister's mortal vessel with its mortal needs for opian [magic version of opium].  P155. Our shared moment, beautiful as the embroideries grandma used to sew, came apart, snarled into halves, barely held together by tangled threads. P221. In the meantime, I will let you in on a little secret if you promise not to tell anyone. History is a melody sung by the victors. Truths and lies are what I make of these chords. Stay loyal to me, and I promise the world will remember you as a hero, forged in this war of magic and science. Because, come fire or storm, I’m going to win this game of power, and I can give you a legacy that will outlive you. A name to be whispered for thousands of years. 

The whole book is like this. I have read so many books with this sort of flowery prose in the past few years, especially debut novels and I’m starting to think that young authors need a gentle reminder that not every sentence has to be outstanding and quotable. I get it, I’m a writer myself and so often I feel like if I have a couple sentences that aren’t filled with imagery, then it’s flat and boring. But come on. 

The book is technically NA (though in the UK it’s YA for some reason idk), and while I haven’t read a ton of adult novels, there were times where it felt so painfully YA. The narrative was honestly a bit confusing sometimes; there were times where I couldn’t tell if Ruying was being an unreliable narrator or if the narrative was saying something straight. It definitely fell into the pitfall I notice a lot of bad slow-burn romances do when the love interest where they are treated like we already know them and should root for them rather than them being strangers. Also, the eyes thing, oh my godddddddd I’m so sick of books going on and on about people’s eyes. Right after she stole money from the love interest, she notices his eyes at the end of an alley:

P39. “I caught a splash of green at the other end of the darkened alley” [note: please tell me he’s wearing green and she didn’t see only his captivating viridian eyes. (Edit: god dammit he wasn’t he’s wearing midnight blue)]

My personal explanation is that his eyes fucking glow or something. 

For as much as gods were talked about, Ruying’s gods were only very vaguely discussed aside from that they left about a thousand years (I think?)  ago according to myth. Death is a great example of this, constantly referred to but never explained. At some point I realized she was referring to Death as “he” which was jarring because I’m pretty sure no pronouns were used for Death in the first half of the book, which I preferred because it made Death feel separate from the living world. The only time any gods are talked about is when Ruying tells Antony a story about the goddess Nüwa (which is a real myth, slightly adjusted for the book), but it doesn’t really serve any purpose nor does it really shed light on further worldbuilding. The emperors are said to be descendants of dragons, but that also doesn’t get a lot of explanation. There were a few times I wondered if things like that were referencing Chinese mythology or culture that I wouldn’t get or if there were just things that weren’t explained well enough. 

Moving on to the characters. There was a pretty small cast: the MC, Ruying; her twin, Meiya; their grandmother; love interest/childhood friend, Baihu; her childhood friend, Taohua; Prince Jade Orbs, Antony; and a few other side characters. But we see very little of them besides Ruying and Antony, even if she’s being isolated from them. Ruying constantly talks about what she would do for her family, but we see her interact with her grandma exactly once and every interaction with her sister (which is like. three) is a fight involving both of their views on the colonization and oppression of their people. Meiya wants to fight with the resistance and would rather die than kneel forever at the Roman’s feet. She tells Ruying off and that she’s deluded when she explains that she’s the Prince’s personal assassin in order to protect her family and peace. This book does so much telling instead of showing and it’s very clear when it comes to the characters and the relationships between them. Ruying as a character has a lot of potential, someone who is afraid of their own power and the high that it gives them, both hating and loving their ability, desperate to save their family. I think that if the romance was completely cut out, then she could have been a cool character. But this girl is as delulu as it gets. 

When she met Antony, I thought I might enjoy their relationship, not in a “omg I ship it, I don’t care if it’s toxic” way but in a “this dynamic is so fucked up and I can’t stop reading” way. The few times I’ve run across ships (used in the loosest manner) like that, I’ve been able to enjoy it because even if the narrator is unreliable, it’s clear that it’s not romantic. I backtracked so quickly because the narrative did not want to depict it as abusive and toxic, it wanted to depict it as romantic. My notes went from “okay so far, kind of into this, because it’s so clearly toxic” to “oh god this is becoming romantic FAR too fast.” 

I spent so much of the book intensely irritated at Ruying because she is constantly making him sympathetic and excusing him. This starts from the very beginning, not even when they actually spend time together:

P111. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and my heart beat a little too fast when he said my name, so gentle, so benevolent [he is meeting her in a cell in the dungeon and about to propose that she become his personal assassin or die.] P141. there was a quiet fear in his voice. A softness. As if he were a man confessing something he didn’t want to be heard. In this moment, I wanted to believe his words, see him as someone other than a prince monstrous in his greed. [less than an hour ago he put a loaded gun to her head and said that he would kill her, her family, and everyone she loves if she attempted to kill him again.] Pp 151-152. before I knew it, someone had drawn me into their embrace. A safe place of tenderness to hide from the cold of everything else.  In silence, Antony Augustus held me tight, as if doing so could hold all of my broken pieces together, keep me whole against the cascading gray waves of hate striking me like an ocean striking at crumbling cliffs. Deep in my bones I knew everything about this moment was wrong.  Leaning into his touch was wrong, wrapping my arms around his and clinging to him for life was wrong.  But I did it anyway. [He just made her kill a person. This one of the very few times that she feels something is wrong or that he’s being manipulative until much later and several people tell her to snap out of it.]

If I remember correctly, this was all in one day. He is a little nice to her and she so quickly forgets that he is the enemy. This is the same person who spent the first few chapters talking about how much she despised the Romans and how all Romans were evil. Right after the last segment, Antony tells her his sob story that as a child he lived in poverty and he had robbed his adoptive father, the Roman emperor’s son. His soon-to-be adoptive father came to his house and told Antony to either kill his biological parents, or all three of them would die; he chose the first option. What the actual fuck. And then she says “He was a prince of Rome. He had no reason to lie to me (p158).” I fucking stopped dead in my tracks and stared at these sentences. HE HAS EVERY FUCKING REASON TO LIE TO YOU???? TO MANIPULATE YOU???? YOU CLEARLY DIDN’T THAT HIGHLY OF ANY ROMAN EARLIER

His whole thing is that because he grew up poor, he knows what it’s like be in her shoes, and he also doesn’t want to commit mass genocide like his grandfather or brothers do (or so he claims; we don’t get a lot of insight as to what his grandfather and brother do want to do, though I suppose that’s book two). He doesn’t want a war/genocide and wants her to assassinate key people that would bring war quicker. He gives her very little evidence (though to be fair, also very little choice) to show how this would actually do anything. He says he wants her to kill both Romans and Pangulings, but as far as the reader is aware, she only kills Pangulings. There’s a six month time skip after the deal, and she has killed 48 people and she’s in love with him. This is unfortunate because while I understand the reason for that time skip, those six months would have been crucial in both their character development and the development of their relationship. Ruying is so utterly convinced that Antony is a good person and wants peace and it takes her twin sister and her childhood friend/other love interest telling her to wake up and realize that he’s just using her before she starts to think “maybe? He’s a bad guy?” How did the girl that hates the Romans so much get to this point? We didn’t get to see that. 

It’s not super clear if Antony is manipulating her. I mean, he is to an extent, but how far it goes isn’t clear. Because it would make sense if he was manipulating her into thinking that he is in love with her. But we get one chapter in his POV where we find out he is in love with her and is like “if only we were different people, we could be together :(“ and drops this line:

P293. He had starved himself of love, laughed at the Romeos and Juilets of his world, the love songs that echoed on the radios. Now, in this bed with Ruying beside him, Antony finally understood what his grandfather meant when he said love was a weakness. 

*rolls my eyes in aroace* god, poor baby that must have been so hard. I bet you were pushing away women right and left because who isn’t into someone that experiments on humans and threatens their lives and loved ones. Though you never know with straight people. Oh yeah, he has done/is doing experiments on her people, especially those who have magic. That’s the big leadup for the story, which wasn’t a big surprise to me because I was spoiled by that, but he actually mentions that his people have done experiments on hers and she doesn’t even take note of it?????

Here’s the thing: there’s an author note saying that she was partially inspired for this book by the Russian and Japanese occupation of Manchuria China. Her own grandfather lived during that time and told her fictionalized versions of real horror stories of the Japanese occupation and of unit 731 as a kid, though she didn’t realize this until 2020. She asks the reader to understand that Ruying isn’t a hero, just a girl who wants to protect her family. I have no problems with an author tackling difficult subjects like this, in fact, I think it’s great because it’s a form of catharsis and can inspire readers (especially ones that are less familiar with the subject) to look further into it and educate themselves. 

However, I feel like the author didn’t really do what she wanted justice. Because of that author’s note and attention brought to Unit 731 specifically, I expected the book to focus heavily on that. The actual part that is similar to unit 731 is so short, so glossed over, so contained, that it does not feel respectful or handled well in any manner. What happens is that Baihu takes Ruying into the labs and they see her childhood best friend experimented on (draining her blood? Her life energy? It’s a little unclear even when Antony explains what the experiments are for) and then die. One of Ruying’s requests before becoming Antony’s personal assassin was that he released Taohua and he agreed. So while she’s obviously distraught about her friend dying, most of her focus is that Antony lied to her; not the actual experimentation or any of that. (The reason for the experimentation also feels weirdly out of place; Antony’s world is dying because of climate change, which is why they want to colonize and move to hers; why more people haven’t moved yet isn’t clear. Antony and his adoptive father wanted to find out if people with magic could be, in essence, be used for more sustainable energy because their magic has the potential to be super energy efficient. In theory, an interesting and horrifying concept; in practice, badly executed.)

I watched a couple reviews of this book on youtube who had also mentioned unit 731 and I decided to look into myself because I had heard of it, but nothing more than it was one of the most horrific historical events and that it involved human experimentation. I only looked at wikipedia and I had to stop when I got to the section on experiments involving frostbite (which was not very far in), and I have a pretty strong stomach. The experiments were done pretty much purely for the sake of sick curiosity. Biological warfare was committed on surrounding cities to observe the results. It is truly so sicking, and I can not comprehend how someone can learn about this and have family who was personally affected by it and go “yeah, I’ll put that into my enemies-to-lovers romance where the main love interest is the one involved in this sort of thing.”

At first, I was kind of apathetic to this book. I’m glad that I read a bit about unit 731 (and I should probably look more into it) afterward because it puts it in a completely different light. Now I’m just a bit disgusted. No hate to the author, but I really wish that she had put more thought into this. It also just feels weird because while there is a love triangle going on, the way she marketed it made it very clear that the main romance is between Ruying and Antony, with calling it dark romance enemies-to-lovers, Zutara on steroids, etc. Not to mention in her author’s note, she says that she thinks that grandfather would be proud of this book, which, I don’t know, felt a little weird to me the way that it was phrased. 

I want to go on a bit of a tangent about the whole thing about Zutara and this book relating to fanfiction. I checked out her tiktok page, and 99% of it is basically the same three slideshows promoting the book, and almost every single one is about Zutara on steroids/the tropes in the book. I think it’s very bad practice to promote traditional books based almost solely on tropes and popular ships. It makes sense with fanfiction, there’s an established setting and cast of characters who people are already emotionally attached to. I think that it shows weakness in your writing if you rely on things like “only one bed,” “touch them and you die,” “enemies to lovers,” “morally gray characters,” “knife to throat” to set the foundations of your book on. These can be incorporated into your book and be done very well, but so often now (not necessarily just in this book) it feels like books are being built on tropes. It’s becoming the cake rather than the icing. Anywho. 

I didn’t see how it was supposed to be like Zutara at first besides the broadest strokes of “he’s a prince and his people bad and committing war crimes against hers.” To be honest, I’m not really a fan of Zutara, I just don’t vibe with it and I find that a lot of fans of it are kind of intense. I do like Zukka (mostly it’s like “hey what if dumbass one and two got together?”) and have read a shit ton of it, so I feel like many of the same things about Zutara can apply to Zukka. Anywho, I was more  focused on whether or not the personalities match (Ruying a little, Antony NO), but I started to see some similarities. I guess. Someone said “yeah it’s zutara if Zuko was Ozai” which I think really hits it on the nail. Zuko, while he made lots of bad decisions and yeah, I suppose you could call him a morally gray character, is fundamentally a good person. Antony is not, despite whatever the author was doing to what, humanize him? Make him a sympathetic villain? Am I supposed to be sad for this guy that 1) killed his parents 2) threatened to kill the MC and everyone she loves and 3) of his own will, did experiments on people? Yeah, no. Not to mention that he doesn’t really try to understand her/her culture or what she’s gone through being under occupation of his people; he doesn’t care and thinks that spouting proverbs in her own language every other sentence gets him brownie points. 

I won’t say that fanfiction has perfectly delved into these issues nor can I say much about colonization and its lasting impact on people, but I guarantee you that I have read fanfiction barely beta-ed that handled these topics more tactfully than this book, and included romance between someone who is a part of the oppressed population and someone whose family is directly responsible for that oppression. A few people have said it feels like fanfiction just in general, which I don’t 100% agree with, but it does in the way that we are sort of expected to understand the world and know who the love interest is and the development between the two. There is almost zero buildup and explanation when it comes to Antony, you’re expected to root for him and love him because he gave her a hug after making her murder a person. I think that is the biggest pitfall for authors who started writing via fanfiction or convert their fanfiction into novels; any time a character shows up, it feels a lot like when a celebrity appears in a disney show and the laugh track cheers and you have no clue who they are.

Yeah in short, it started off fine, went downhill and then crashed into a wall. I may read the next book simply out of curiosity, but I’m not sure I could handle it.

[stormhearty]

Hello again, haha :)

Good luck and good work to you! I haven't read Eris's yet, just the reader's and Tarquin's (which I loved). Let's modernize it! Cass😳🙀 ah, I'm fine! It's been a bit of a slog, but today is Sunday and I've taken the opportunity to rest a bit (sleep😂).

I've never read a manwha, but it sounds good. An inspiring manwha! LOL. A recommendation of your favorite?

It's a wonder she's not dead yet. She needs to go to the police station and report him for abandoning a child🤣🤣

Maybe you need to see if the books on your to-read list are also discounted (just to check). Lmao. Well, I'm helping, since you said you have a goal of reading more!

The Narnia books give me the impression that they're much better than the movies! I'll read them one day!

A tag just for me? I feel so adorable! An emoji tag? I love ducks 🦆, or could it be a name? Emerald, because I love green things. So undecided. I could be a parrot soon, since I talk more than I should because my thoughts are always racing and I'm also racing to keep up with them so I don't forget. Make up your mind!

Don't worry, I know how working as a nurse takes up a lot of time and I'd be in bed until I had to go back to work too. I understand😹 I'm studying for today's lesson and I've jumped at the chance to come here hehe. Thank you! I love expressing my opinion, especially if it's about something I like. YES! Ms. SJM should explain a bit more about the other courts. I confess I'd like to see a bit more of the Autumnal Court(?) I don't know why, but I'd like to see more about Eris and the place my dear Lucien had to leave. I also confess that part of my curiosity is to get to know more about Eris, because, amazingly, I have a crush on him after reading a few things here! (Even though I know the poor guy barely has any screen time. Judge me) LMAO. I think a lot of fans were expecting this🤣🤣 let's make a protest for Tarquin to appear more. Maybe Helion too! Bring them all!!!😂😳 Note: Before I felt more mysterious without emoji, but I love it. I feel mysterious with a brand now😘 🦆

Sorry for the broken responses though! And I decided to just put together both of your asks~ It might be easier for me to reply to both!

And thank you! I do hope you enjoy the Eris one! It's very angsty~ Yup! I am having a difficult time with the Modern!Cassian one though~ More like always having difficulty starting it but that's a me problem.

And that's me the past few days. It was my weekend at work and all I did was lay in bed attempting to get some sleep. As usual. And then yesterday I had dinner with coworkers it was fun, that's why I haven't been able to reply to anything the last few days.

My favorite manwha reads (some are finished, some are on hiatus and some are ongoing):

Finished:

Who Made Me a Princess (this is a must to read)

Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

The First Night with the Duke

Flirting with the Villain's Dad

Ongoing:

Villains Are Destined to Die

A Stemother's Marchen

How to Win My Husband Over

The Siren: Becoming the Villain's Family

I Married the Male Lead's Dad

The Dark Lord's Confession

Hiatus:

Secret Lady

Roxana (How to Protect the Main Lead's Older Brother)

The Villainess is a Marionette

Into the Light, Once Again

The Archduke's Adopted Saint

I can't list all of them because it'd be so much! There are many manwha's I have dropped over the years because it got really boring or I lost interest.

But I actually own already LOTR and Narnia books! The Narnia was a behemoth of a book since it was the compilation of all the books. So I have to lug that thing around when I have to read it 🤣🤣 And they are! I did just love the actors for the movie version of Narnia.

Well, I think it has been touched on here on Tumblr that Autumn Court has so many hidden secrets and the betrayal and all that stuff, the secret affairs. It sounds so spicy compared to everywhere else. And SAME! I was in love with Eris even though he barely had any scenes. And our boi, Lucien~

Oh my god. If Rhysand wasn't Feyre's mate I would have so petitioned for Tarquin to be with her. LMAO.

Mysterious with a brand~ my duckie nonnie~

[frauleinandry]

finished persona 3 portable... as expected the ending killed me asdfghk... I’ll talk more under the cut, but ultimately, I really had a good time! it had its faults, of course - some characters and the lore in particular could have been developed a lot more, and obviously parts of the gameplay were dated - but it hit all the right emotional beats, and I think that’s the most important thing here. probably a 7/10 experience, and I’d be very excited to see a remake of it.

I’ll speak about gameplay first, since that’s obviously the weakest thing. there were a couple of bosses which were pretty memorable, like the wheel of fortune/strength battle, and the first part of the nyx avatar fight (where their arcana keeps changing), but ultimately, most of the gameplay was kind of a slog. given how old the game is though, I was sort of expecting that, and therefore wasn’t disappointed. not being able to choose the specific skills your persona inherited though was particularly annoying asdfghjkl

onto the plot/characters, while there were obvious faults, the way the theme of endings/death was implemented was fantastic. I think this shone through in particular during the social links - while some of the school ones were a bit boring sans saori’s, the rest of them really hammered home the game’s central theme. I think this is why I dramatically prefer the social links in P5 and P3 over the ones I’d done in P4 - they really resonate with the story a lot more.

I liked most of the members of SEES, even if I’m not quite as attached to them as I am the phantom thieves. junpei, yukari, and akihiko were great, and I don’t have any fuuka criticisms, even if I’m less attached to her. ken is an interesting character on paper, but I wished they fleshed out his revenge murder/suicide scheme a bit more. koromaru is cute, and while his general concept is a bit silly, the fact that he’s literally Just A Dog means that he doesn’t embrace some of the tedious tropes teddie/morgana do. 

ironically enough, given I thought they’d probably be my favs, I found aigis and mitsuru to be the weakest playable characters. while aigis gets a lot of very good development near the end of the game, I wish her opening up to the team/becoming more human was a bit more gradual, y’know? like, the fight with ryoji/death should have been the turning point in her development, not its start. meanwhile, I think mitsuru is really hurt by her confidant being so late game, in conjunction with her being pretty sidelined during the ken/shinjiro arc, even though the events there should have affected her nearly as much as akihiko. 

speaking of shinjiro, him, ryoji, ikutsuki, mitsuru’s dad, and the non-chidori members of strega each suffer from a terminal lack of screen time/development. while shinjiro’s social link was cute, he really doesn’t do much otherwise except get murdered - fuck, I never even used him in tartarus since he was way overleveled compared to my team. meanwhile, while ikutsuki and strega are interesting on paper, ikutsuki’s whole deal is super rushed, and strega’s whole schtick is all over the place. on the other hand, while I get why ryoji only appears when he does, I think him being around for an extra month really would have given his character a bit of an extra punch. 

in fact, the lore in general is pretty underdeveloped, and I think it’s the main thing they should flesh out more if/when they remake this game. while I know FES’ postgame gives it a bit more depth, that’s sort of like slapping a bandage over a leaky hole. 

still, like I said before, despite its faults, most of the emotional beats resonated with me. when the game wanted me to feel happy, I felt happy, and when it wanted me to feel sad, it punched me in the guts without hesitation. 

[theawkwardterrier]

2022 fic roundup

Buffyverse

A Full and Stumbling Heart

MCU

Things Found at the End of the World

speak low to me, speak love to me (and soon)

The Limits of Dreaming

The Real Heroes

Best Laid Family Plans

What Can Be Found Beneath

things left behind and the things that are ahead: 1971

A Surprise Delivery

Opening Hearts*

Sacrifices*

Memorials*

(might not be our time yet) that doesn’t mean I ever love you any less

Outlander

Here's All the Melting Thrill (And Here's the Kindling Fire)

Each Step Closer (On Our Way Together)

Measure and Man

Days' Break

Inherent and Inherited

Nighttime Guardian*

Missed Moments*

Family History**

Lost and Found*

The First Step Toward Home*

Love in All Seasons*

Watcher’s Wants*

The Sweetness of Home*

Affection (in Context)**

A Different Kind of Customer*

Better to Have Loved*

One Track Mind**

Telling Tales*

Pierce My Heart*

Heal the Healer**

Good Fraser Names*

Unintended Inheritances*

By Example**

Choices and Chances*

Caring Hands**

Muscle Memory

* drabble

** Laird's Room 'verse

1. Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?:

As I’ve said in past years, I’ve stopped finding it beneficial to predict these things (it just seems like pressure to me) but I suppose about what I would have expected, trending toward more? It was certainly a bit of a surprise that I managed to roust myself for both all of Steggy week and Steggy Secret Santa, that I wrote a bunch of Outlander oneshots plus went in once again for a lengthy chapter fic, and that I got back into weekly drabbles.

2. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?:

Fergus as a character and Fergus/Marsali as a pairing! I was particularly inspired by that one episode and it just took off from there.

3. What’s your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?

I like a bunch of the drabbles, and I’m extremely proud of Muscle Memory, but I think the pacing is very good on speak low to me, speak love to me (and soon) - it does exactly what it needs to without overstaying its welcome or getting saccharine.

4. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I wrote a lot when I didn’t want to or just felt obligated to do so, and very honestly even though I can vividly remember the terrible, slogging feeling of it and pinpoint the places where I was feeling it especially strongly, I don’t see it reflected so much in the work itself, and I can’t quite tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I also once again started posting a chapterfic without having finished, but I think that I’ve managed to get a good handle on my timing so I don’t catch up with myself or feel too pressured; I did also learn that having someone to share the story with and talk things over about it keeps me from feeling like I need to start posting simply to have it out there for someone else to see.

(Also, not so much a writing risk as a plotting one: having a bit of an eleventh hour twist when things seem to be settling into fluff 😬)

Oh, and randomly making video accounts of my writing, which was weird and only interesting to me 😅

5. Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

Put the last touches on Muscle Memory and finish posting, get one or both of the Outlander fics I’ve started working on finished and posted, and make my writing more about what I want and what feels fulfilling to me rather than wanting accolades or interaction.

6. From my past year of writing, what was…

Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:

I think Measure and Man is actually written really well as well as a very good character study, even if it’s not really J/C or strongly shippy at all. I also have a bit of a fondness for The Real Heroes – it's both outsider POV and kid POV, which I love, plus I just think it’s fun! – which suffers from similar problems, not to mention being narrated by an OC.

Most Fun:

Probably A Surprise Delivery. I think the pacing is pretty off (I spend a long time on the beginning and too little on the middle and end, so you can kinda tell it was written on a deadline), but the premise and some of the touches are quite a good time.

Most Disappointing:

God, I really wanted Best Laid Family Plans to come out better because I’d had the idea in my head for a while, but the execution turned out not great, firstly because it’s hard to plausibly pull off without them seeming stupid, but also because I didn’t spend enough time writing about their family life to make it seem like a worthwhile investment. Plus the tone was supposed to be kinda light and funny, and it got bogged down by some sentiment by the end.

Most Sexy:

Ya girl is back with on the page sex scenes in Muscle Memory! I actually think both the real and imagined fingering is quite sexy even before you get to the reunion sex.

Hardest to Write:

I mean, it’s not surprising (oneshot girl here!) but Muscle Memory. Chapterfic is just so LONG and you have to spend SO MUCH TIME on it!

Most Unintentionally Telling:

This is a boring answer, but a fic that’s about loving someone even as they might not remember your experiences together? Also I’ve been thinking about my own future with parenthood and that clearly pulled into A Full and Stumbling Heart (plus a bit of Best Laid Family Plans – and what does it say that I also listed that as “most disappointing”?)

Choice Lines:

I struggle with this one because I really like my own writing very much and I don’t want to go wild, so I’ll just say that I’m quite fond of this from Measure and Man:

On those nights he used to turn over and press his nose to Marsali’s neck as she mumbled in her sleep and nestled against him. He would take in the scent of her - flour and grass and work, milk just edging sour - until he could sleep again, but these days even that is too tenuous, too insubstantial for what he needs. Because the memory presses, the thought presses, the very idea of Henri-Christian, of any of his children, ever, ever knowing that smell, knowing the meaning of it such that it can still wake them up lifetimes later—

[option-monad]

thoughts on scorn gradually coalescing (i’ve posted a lot of this to twitter, but i wanted to do a longer form post)

for one, hands down one of the greatest artistic achievements i’ve ever seen. very, very little comes close. not just in terms of presentation (though that is also nigh-untouchably good) but also in terms of clarity and coherency of statement. it’s sorta silly to compare it to anything else given the creators had 9 years to make a ~5 hour game but it sure is winning. this part stays above the cut: if you can stomach gore and some pretty strong allegories for reproductive violence, play scorn. if you can’t play horror games, watch an uncommentated run. and leave the damn fov slider alone unless you’re seriously going to be sick. the rest of this won’t make sense unless you’ve seen all of it.

act 3 is the weakest part, which i think is the best possible outcome. strong start, strong ending. i would say act 1 = act 4 end > act 5 > act 2 > act 4 > act 3. the strongest parts have no combat at all. if the combat were tuned a little better, my opinion of act 4 would be higher. as it is, things take a bit too much damage and don’t deal enough and checkpoints aren’t super kind, so combat starts to feel like a slog. which is a damn shame because i like what they were going for and the animations, ai, and weapon design are spot-on for it. just the numbers are off. 1 hit chickens, 2-3 hit bears, and like 5hp on the player would have worked for me a lot more. act 4′s ending though... zoo wee mama. i want to watch a few more people play it before i figure out if my experience with it was universal, but that stomach drop i got between finishing the puzzle and finding out what finishing the puzzle did, right after pulling the lever when it was too late to stop... manifique. chefs kiss. it feels very deliberately set up to do that, with the whole “oh, puzzle” > clonk > lights out > “OH NO” sequence. strong! other standout moments are turning the moldman around in act 1 (watching jerma play that and having the funnyman temporarily squeezed out of him on facecam was tbh the only time i’ve ever felt positively about a facecam at all) and trying to fill the second goop canister in act 5 and getting... half. of course half. the other one was already half full. god fucking dammit. oh and the parasite reveal in act 5, after the act 1 -> act 2 thing had time to percolate in my brain for a bit. scorn is really a fucking master of chekhov’s gun, huh. that’s probably not quite what i mean, but the style of storytelling just works fantastically. the “? ... oh fuck of course” emotion.

having seen the artbook, i agree that the tower and the crater shouldn’t have both been kept. i think i would have preferred the tower, since the purpose of the creature is a lot clearer there and feeds back into the stuff they were doing in the assembly a lot more, but both would have made one feel stale. cutting the labyrinth is a bit sad since it adds a lot to the world and was definitely doing something different, but hey. can’t afford to do everything. 5 incredibly precise acts trumps 6-7 sloppier ones imo. also having seen the artbook, given that i didn’t properly see what they were going for with the parasite, i think finding a weapon handle in act 1 was a slight misstep. absolutely did not occur to me that i was using the parasite’s tail because there was already a handle elsewhere in the world, i thought i just found my old gun. i think acts 1 and 2 work GREAT for what they were trying to set up otherwise.

the door remote... i really do not like the fucking door remote. the main puzzle in every act does a great job at feeling like i’m traversing an environment that has a purpose of its own beyond being a sequence of levers for me to pull, but the door remote really pulls me out of that. i’m not even sure how much it adds to the traversals after act 2. BUT... i will admit that it’s pretty essential for what act 2 is doing. if it was just “pick up door remote in act 2 start, use until act 2 end” i would be fine with it, but upgrading it just feels silly. a secure facility doesn’t have a terminal to elevate your access permissions one level within a few hundred feet of the door they elevate it to, but picking up a door key from an area intended to manufacture supervisors and using it in that one facility works fine. it’s such a minor thing but every remote reprogramming station just made me think “uuhghghgh right i’m playing a videogame”. (also, while i’m on insanely minor nitpicks, the moldman either doesn’t have enough recorded lines or doesn’t properly minimise repeats. just a couple extra minutes in the booth would have improved that section drastically.)

the ending... absolutely perfect. no notes. i know a lot of people hate it, but i also don’t think those people were paying enough attention. if they went in a different direction with it, i would have made 100 angry blog posts about how they ruined all the work they had done establishing the themes and allegories that they did. scorn’s greatest virtue is how hard it commits to a very clear idea and how much faith it has in itself to make that idea work just by showing it to you. no text, no dialog, no “lore”, no crutches. scorn is not interested in being a videogame, it is only interested in being scorn. you do not get to “win” scorn, you get to finish it. fuck you.

[helloquotemyfoot]

Book Backlog Busting Reading Challenge!

I've managed to read a lot this week because of doing very little else and so I have a fair bit to report!

Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time #9). FINISHED. I am in what is supposedly prime slog territory but I honestly don't see it. There's stuff going on throughout this whole book and it keeps up the excitement and intrigue the whole way through. This is in contrast to Jordan's previous books where I have constantly felt like most sub plots could have been condensed to far fewer chapters. I mean it's still Jordan's heavily introspective style, it's not a fast paced book, but the activity is constant. I finished this in 4 days which is by far the fastest yet for any of the books. Loved it.

New Spring by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time prequel). FINISHED. Meanwhile this book is definitely in the grand tradition of Jordan 'taking 12 chapters to say what could have been accomplished in 3'. Don't get me wrong, I loved the worldbuilding in this book, and the opportunity to get Lan POV and younger Moiraine was a sheer joy. But the actual plot here was very, very slim. In the editions I'm reading New Spring is about 2/3 of the length of Winter's Heart but it absolutely does not have 2/3 of the plot content. I hope Jordan doesn't return to this form in the subsequent main series books; it was nice for a prequel as a diversion but I don't think I could cope with it again for a 800+ page novel.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson. FINISHED. This is a typical Bryson book, which is absolutely a compliment. It's full of fun facts, hidden wonders of the British countryside, and Bryson's wry but nonetheless warm humour.

Now as promised I did start The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper and so far I've made it through the first two books. (Also, look at these editions! Aren't they beautiful?)

Over Sea, Under Stone. FINISHED. Honestly I was a little disappointed by this one, it's a perfectly fine example of the children's adventure books of the time period, with slightly more menace, but nothing extraordinary. I was worried the series wouldn't live up to how I had remembered them from childhood, except...

The Dark Is Rising. FINISHED. Now this is why I fell in love with this series. This book instantly transports you with a sense of otherworldliness, making the ancient battle between the Dark and the Light feel real and powerful. Cooper's imagined world really comes to life in this book and I'm excited to continue it. I would strongly recommend starting with this book if you are thinking of reading the series, and then doing Over Sea, Under Stone as a prequel. The first book honestly makes more sense that way anyway.

And now, for my next trick...

Of course I will be continuing with The Dark Is Rising Sequence, which I expect to finish, they are children's books so they're easy reads. I don't expect the next Wheel of Time books will arrive for another two weeks so I will probably pick out some fiction books at random.

As for historical books, I have a bunch of books about the Reformation I've been eyeing up, but I'm not quite ready to get into them just yet, so I'm picking up a relatively short one in the meantime.

The King is Dead by Suzannah Lipscomb. No this is not yet another book I bought just because it looked pretty, why would you say that? This is honestly a time period which, like any child who's been through the British school system, I know quite a lot about already, so I'm not expecting to get a lot out of it, but I'm always willing to be surprised!

Until next time...

88 books remaining!

[mg549]

tagged by @graveyardrabbit 👍!

last song: mama by mcr <3

currently watching: nothing 😔✊idk its hard to get me to watch tv shows. oh i did jst remember like 2 years ago or sth i started watching Every X-Files Ever with a big excel sheet of all my opinions and shit. but its been hard to get thru bc the later seasons have not been very enjoyable and also ive been Busy with work n putting out consistent art n shit that its hard to justify sitting down and not doing anything for that long ig. ive also slowly been getting thru various slasher franchises&watching iconic horror movies since i love horror but havent watched a lot of the movies, &its easier for me to get thru an hour and a half of sth Complete than 45 mins of a Part of a larger story. the original scream is def the cream of the crop of what ive seen so far, meanwhile i watched the first saw last night and it was incredibly stupid and frustrating to watch. 9/11 rly took its toll on media

currently reading: 😶 even harder than videos bc i absolutely cannot multitask while reading. recently finished frankenstein (which i started literally almost 3 years prior (its not that long or difficult i jst struggle to justify spending time on things that i dont consider “work” in my brain) (also it was p good but you could literally cut out the second part and the story would benefit imo it jst rly slogs down the pace and axes any tension for a lot of details that could be conveyed much quicker if they were explained in less detail)) and the communist manifesto (didnt take nearly as long bc its like pamphlet length gbdkjd) edit everyone go read izroulia actually a new series came out today&i haven't been able to read it yet but its been keeping me going fr i love how earnest it is in being itself its such a good piece of safe media for me if that makes sense

current obsession: ughhhhhhhhh ive been in between obsessions for a lil bit i feel like. idk this is sth i struggle w/ bc the last thing i felt fully like Enveloped in was the adventure zone (orig. arc) which ended. 5 years ago. lemon demon&lemonville came shortly after but it was hard to feel it was on the same scale bc it was actively in creation as i was there and associated #Drama also lessened its grip faster than it would’ve had it been like an existing show or sth. plus theres less ppl obvs. had a brief good omens phase but it burned out pretty quick bc i had so thoroughly dissected it very quickly. &since then ive kind of jst been cycling between existing interests (monster high/fashion dolls in general, mercreatures, creepypasta/slenderman/horror in general) plus the occasional mcr blast but it doesnt quite Grip the same bc there arent like Characters i can rotate. the best ive gotten is obsessing over my own ocverses but its not the same.... idk i rly rly Want to feel the Passion that fandom brings but none of the media thats blown up interests me enough to consider consuming the media or i take a peak&dont like it cause im picky...idk my fundamental problem is that im picky and hard to please bc i can deconstruct things so easily to see its Bones and if a story is more surface level and straightforward and easy to understand its hard for me to keep my attention on it at the stage of my life im in. that being said aquamarine is my fave movie tho so. but then again i think ppl jst write it off cause its a chick flick. idk recommend me things but dont be surprised if its not my vibe ig

ummmmmmmmmmm idk who to tag u can do this if u want to&say i tagged u but i think i was kinda a bummer w/ these answers so 😔✊

[button-mash]

What I played last week #2

I figured I'd better update this lest it be another near-decade long hiatus until the next time. I didn't actually get to play a whole lot of games last week as real life got in the way, but I still managed to tuck into a few games here and there, and actually managed to finish off a childhood favourite, so that's where I'll start. Soleil / Crusader of Centy [Mega Drive]

Over the past few years this game has become quite a bit more well known among retro circles, but I've always considered it as true of a hidden gem as you can get. Usually when people talk about 'hidden gems' they almost always seem to be these games that literally everybody remotely into the hobby knows, but maybe just weren't the banner releases for a system. This is a rare example of a game that for the longest time honestly felt like nobody ever knew of it when I talked about it. I'd only discovered it myself because one of my best mates growing up had it on the Mega Drive when we were kids (shout out Meadey) and I've literally never seen anybody else ever own it, or even spoken to someone else outside of him that's played it - even the cart I own today is actually his cart which he very kindly sold to me years back knowing it would go to a good home.

I'm surprised there wasn't more of a fuss made of this game - not just because it's very good, but also because there were just surprisingly hardly any action RPGs on the Mega Drive, and the console was always crying for something to compete with Zelda. The broad format of the game is the same - it's ostensibly a top-down action RPG where you're moving around on an overworld map into different areas and defeating various dungeons and solving puzzles along the way. The main hook of the game is that fairly early on you lose the ability to talk to humans but gain the ability to talk to animals, and as you go on in your adventure more and more animals join your cause - they essentially become abilities you equip, so the Cheetah helps you run faster, a Flying Squirrel allows your sword to bounce off walls, the Butterfly allows you to control your sword in the air etc - basically how animals make your sword react in real life is how they tend to act in the game. It's quite a neat idea and opens up the dungeons and bosses for some cool puzzle potential to think about who you have at your disposal, and you can equip 2 at a time to come up with different ability synergies and stuff.

The game can feel really uneven in parts and often doesn't lean enough into it's puzzle potential though - some of the puzzles or dungeon areas are excellent and make you use your head a little bit, and then others inexplicably just won't have any puzzles or combat at all, or the puzzles will be so basic they just border on pointless

like in the above pic, I wonder where those blocks have to go... It's almost like they were placeholder puzzles they never actually went back and added in properly. Still, even with a lack of difficulty, the game does an admirable job of constantly changing up what you're doing, making the areas feel visually and mechanically distinct, and it's pretty well paced where it never really feels like a slog. There was actually a point during my playthrough where my save corrupted, meaning I had to start way back from where I was. That'd usually be an automatic playthrough killer for me, but it's all so straightforward once you know where you're going, that it was fine just catching myself up. The biggest peril in terms if difficulty in the game was actually just trying to constantly remember there is no checkpointing or autosaves in games like this, and forgetting to save my game as I went. Can be brutal sometimes if you lose track

The game undoubtedly has some flaws - the combat is pretty bad - your sword swings in this slow arc with questionable hit detection, and enemies don't get knocked back, meaning you can sometimes get caught in a situation where enemies are just sitting on top of you draining your health (plus the noise when you take damage is unbeliveably annoying). The bosses also feel like a bit of a missed oppourtunity - they're both incredibly imaginative and varied mechanically, but almost all of them are trivially easy, making them feel redundant and robbing them of a chance to feel truly memorable. However, the game just feels like it's more than the sum of it's parts. The art style is colourful with crisp sprites, and it has some genuinely impressive parrallax and transparency effects that make areas of the game look beautiful. Each area has a tonne of visual variety that really helps give the different areas a lot of personality, bolstered by the fantastic music that really adds to each area and making it feel distinct and offering it real identity.

What cracks me up is the game has a potentially interesting premise, essentially humanising the monsters and questioning whether they are even bad. There is a point early on where you get turned into a monster and you discover that they are just a scared, misunderstood family, etc…but the game is all over the place with it tonally. You're constantly being shown themes of unity and understanding and empathy, but you ultimately continue to kill monsters the entire game, who will all attack you without hesitation. Even your companions you win over and join forced with along the way are all animals and not monsters, it makes almost zero sense. I remember being really confused by the message as a kid and assumed it was going over my head - as it turns out, it's just an incoherent mess. I did wonder if it's perhaps partly a translation issue from it's origins as 'Ragnacënty', but I suspect it's just genuinely not very good. A missed oppourtunity for sure, but ultimately forgiveable Weirdly for me, this game always occupied a spot in my memory as a beloved childhood game I would borrow constantly from Meadey and has completed numerous times in my childhood. Yet when playing it through last weel, I soon realised that what I'd remembered as being the last boss was only actually about halfway through the game and I had zero memory of anything afterwards, even though I could remember everything else really clearly. That section of the game does kinda function as the end of an initial story arc... so now I am wondering if all these years I was just cheerfully turning the console off all these years thinking Id finished it, not realising there was an entire other half of the game to see. Idiot Anyway, good game that not that many people know about

I also briefly played a handful of games this week - namely the SNES port of Prince of Persia (which I had no idea was essentially it's own distinct, extended version of the original game), and the first couple of stages of The Legend of the Mystical Ninja also on the SNES. Mentioning them here for posterities sake, but I think I'll play some more of Mystical Ninja before writing more about it - the series is a complete blind spot for me despite me loving the SNES, and the Mystical Ninja (or Ganbare Goemon) series being fairly beloved. Prince of Persia [Super Nintendo]

As I was writing that last paragraph I was also going to save Prince of Persia for next week too, but deep down I don't think I am going to finish it to be honest. As mentioned, I had no idea that this was essentially an extended, remixed version of the original game, with new graphics and new stages. It looks absolutely fantastic, and I am a sucker for those rotoscoped animations that the game made famous, and we also saw in things like Blackthorne, Another World and of course Flashback - which is one of my favourite games of all time

(just an excuse to post a Flashback gif tbh)

....Actually maybe I'll catch this up next week after all because tumblr just deleted half this post when I tried to insert a gif - for some reason ctrl+z seems to revert you to a much much earlier saved draft rather than just undoing the last thing you did, and I cannot be fucked to write everything all out again because it already happened twice on this post and I reflexively keep hitting ctrl+z and I am going to lose my fucking mind. The general gist was that the SNES version is a longer and expanded port of the original (which I didn't realise going in), and ultimately probably outstays it's welcome because of it. It looks very beautiful - it's visually a huge upgrade on the original and it's visual variety fosters surprisingly potent atmosphere for a 16-bit game, but that extended length means that the game just starts to drag after a while. Also, from a mechanical perspective, I think that the deliberate, almost rigid control and animation based movement worked well in something like Flashback because the game is never demanding too much of you mechanically at once for the most part.

In Prince of Persia however, is at odds with both itself and you - it's encouraging you to go fast, hurry, experiment and take risks, but also pretty much requires that you go slowly and play methodically and risk averse, lest you die over and over and need to restart. You do get used to the controls for the most part, but the sword fighting in particular becomes more and more prevalant and it's a clunky mess that feels too random to be fun, even though its probably not random at all. It starts off as a fun challenge, but quickly devolves into an (often frustrating) chore. Considering that the punishment for dying is to start the entire level again (with the over-arching game timer still ticking), it quickly begins to become more of a test in patience than skill, and that increased length turns challenge into a chore - especially when deaths often feel unfair or a result of the controls rather than the consequence of a genuine mistake or a poorly calculated risk Prince of Persia is one of those games that has undeniable cultural impact and far-reaching influence, but was also something I'd never really properly played beyond maybe messing around on the first couple of levels over the years. I actually really wish I had played the original now - the SNES version has 20 levels and I got to level 15 before I really started to feel the fatigue of the difficulty and design. The original was only 12 levels I believe - which I think would likely be a much more paletable and well paced game. Actually, most of all I just wish I'd stop reflexively hitting ctrl+z every time I made a mistake - it's actually very fitting thinking about it, you can consider this the more poorly conceived, less well refined version of the blog update, with the original paragraphs I'd written being the more tightly designed and more enjoyable versions. There you go, I've somehow thematically bought it back around, and closed my own loop, so I am quitting while I am ahead, behind, roughly where I was in the first place. No more gifs because god forbid I have to write this piece of shit blog again

(Pic of me having to rewrite half the bloody entry)

[faultychips]

It Begins (Again)!! Switching it up with Picross and Pokémon

Hello and welcome to the new format I'll be using to review game content!! (Those who know me outside of Tumblr know I have a personal site on Neocities where I’ve been posting mini game reviews for a while now. Thankfully this new format lets me start cross-posting to Tumblr, in addition to my own site!) While the old format was fun, it felt a little too restrictive. I want to be able to just talk about video games without putting them into categories; plus I realized it was kind of silly to have categories labeling games as "bad" or whatnot. I've decided that if I simply don't like a game, I just won't talk about it here. But almost every game has something I *do* like in them somewhere, and as much as I'm sure to complain and criticize, I'll include games here because they're worth playing one way or another.

Starting with something I wish I had checked out sooner (and definitely a game worth playing), Picross is a pleasantly fun puzzle game that I recently picked up (I'm playing Picross S8 on the Switch, but you can play it for free on sites like http://liouh.com/picross). Each Picross title will give you a large number of nonograms to solve, which reveals a cute little pixel art image when you've completed it! It's a fairly simple concept but the puzzles in Picross S are a fun challege and there's a variety of kinds of puzzles to choose from (such as Regular, Big Picross, and Color Picross) that keeps each type feeling fresh. I haven't played a true, pure puzzle game in a while so I was expecting to be a little bored with Picross but I think the straightforwardness actually lends a lot to how enjoyable Picross is; it's easy to pick up whenever, whether for a long session of puzzle cracking or for when you need a quick 20-ish minute break. There are a lot of different Picross games, but if you'll pick up any of them, I've seen it recommended that you start from the most recent title and then work your way backwards in release order. I think I agree with that, since Picross S8 has a lot of helpful tutorials and general gameplay polish that I really enjoyed having, and which might not be available in earlier games.

...And also, speaking of complaining, I finished the new Pokémon Violet game that came out last month. I'm in a place where I've decided I'm not going to be buying Pokémon games anymore because their release schedule and quality drops have really started to grind on me, but thankfully I have found ways to play Violet without...spending 60 dollars...so I did that. Without that price tag I was technically able to play the game without the pressure of large personal investment, but that didn't stop the cracks from showing on this one. Honestly it's a perfectly fine game; I had plenty of fun with it, and would end each session excited to get back to playing later. I sunk a good 30+ hours into this thing, so there's definitely something there. Any way you go about it, Pokémon has always had a pretty solid and enjoyable gameplay formula, and despite the new open world feature that element is still very much intact here. However, as much as I enjoyed it, I feel a fair amount of my enjoyment was centered on the story, my favorite parts being the animated cutscenes, which look genuinely amazing. In contrast, when I had to do Pokémon battles inbetween this unraveling story, I found myself getting increasingly irritated, as it started to feel like unengaging and unnecessary padding. The ending of the whole thing is brilliant, and generally feels worth the time I spend getting there, but I can't help but wonder if I could have gotten the same amount of enjoyment out of watching someone else play, or better yet, a highlight reel that cuts out all the slog and boring bits (which there is plenty of). I definitely did not run through all the content and side-quests, but after the credits rolled, any urge I had to ever pick it up again just kind of evaporated. If I ever do, it will probably be when the DLC is released, which I will maybe play, and either way gleefully not pay for.

Aaaand that about wraps it up for my games played over the last few weeks! Not much to talk about for now but with school workloads I haven't had a lot of time to play or to get into new stuff. Hopefully during the next few weeks I can get to some indies I've had my eyes on for a while.... >:-]!

AND LASTLY, THE GAMES:

Picross S8 is available for $9.99 on: Nintendo Switch

Pokémon Violet is available for $59.99 on: Nintendo Switch

or...cough...romslab...dotcom...or somethin...cough...

Thanks for reading!! And see you next week!

[theoutofworld-blog]

Somehow ended up picking Dark Souls 3 back up to finish the DLCs for the first time in the year 2024. Lemme tell you, this game feels way different coming back to it after Elden Ring. You can really see FromSoft's tendency to learn and unlearn certain design lessons between games, much like Armored Core's evolution across AC3-AC6.

The covenant system's more varied PVP styles and objectives was a bit of a design strength, but having achievements gated behind covenants gated behind PVP progression rankled at me coming into this after its multiplayer scene had mostly migrated to newer things. I wanted that "The Dark Soul" achievement, dammit.

The boss fight design is Very Hmm. Base game's bosses feel like they become more akin to minibosses on New Game Plus runs. Expansion bosses felt less like fights and more like tedious puzzles. All the extra phases and health bars felt like they only caused time bloat of your average boss fight as opposed to making it feel as engaging. Sister Friede and Darkeater Midir especially ended up feeling like they were intimidating for a good half hour or so before I figured out the moveset and they became less of a fight and more like dragging bags of sand up a staircase. I think they got the broad strokes of those battles right, but the amount of health involved just made it a slog I wanted to get over with.

Damage and poise systems (or lack thereof, for most of poise) felt like boiled ass. Didn't feel like my armor choices really mattered in the end and that I was actively being punished for not choosing a greatsword or ultra greatsword for longer reach and better hyper armor on individual attack animations. Damn near every attack felt interruptible enough I might as well have been made of wet paper. I feel like there was some kind of design direction overlap between this and Bloodborne during development. Not a big fan of running into a numbers hike that allows me to die in 2-3 hits to almost everything at 40 Vigor and wearing a full set of armor. I think that kind of weakness shows in the latter third of Elden Ring's curve as well. Too many numbers for the sake of numbers, not able to find a fight that feels "just right" on the fun-vs-difficulty curve for me.

In any case, it's done. Two back-to-back runs to get the other endings of the game I missed, and I darked that one guy right in the soul. Ended up using a mix of chaos and dark weapon infusions on straight swords and occasionally switching out to my starting weapon of a Bandit's Knife with a fire damage infusion. That little knife carried that run in its darkest hours. In the Ringed City DLC, I ended up switching it from fire to dark when dealing with the Demon Princes, which created my ultimate weapon: The Dark Knife (TM).

Anyway here's my funny little Unkindled guy for the run, named Schplorpicus:

[dogshit-enchantment]

Just finished Four Swords Adventures and man. I'm glad I finally got the chance to go back and beat it but my god. Some of the later levels were kinda awful. Idk if it's just that I've fallen out of things with puzzle games or what but there were so many puzzles in the last 3 levels where they didn't explain it before hand, give any hints or idea as to what they could be, and never repeated them. Like there's one puzzle where u have to use a boomerang to hit a switch on the opposite side of the wall (like from another room), something I didn't know you Could do and something they never did before and never repeated after. Like most of the more difficult to parse puzzles had a little slab or ghost or something being like 'hey u gotta do smth with This Thing' but this one was stone cold Figure It Out.

I felt like the Tower of Winds was one of the best levels in the game, really utilizing the fact that you got Four Guys and really putting all the previous puzzles' efforts to the test. Really good level. Followed by the Palace of Winds which was fucking dogshit and felt like a slog of running back and forth exchanging items over and over. (Also the tower of winds being a primarily side scrolling level that utilized the Gameboy adapter as the primary way to explore rooms was really well done)

Also the gerudo desert was fucking god awful. I've been through some rough levels before but I fucking HATE the 'oh u gotta pick one of three directions. Oh you chose wrong cuz it's fucking random so we're sending u back!!' like I get it's supposed to be imitating the lost woods but the lost woods has sound and visual clues, this was just At Random and fucking sucked shit oh my god.

The parts I really enjoyed were the sound design, the way it meshed alttp and Minish Cap type graphics together, and the unique puzzle solving for having four dudes in formation. Probably the best puzzle (and one I had to fucking look up the solution for cuz it was a No Clue No Tutorial Final Level puzzle) was one where u have to go into the shadow realm, pick up ur other link from the light realm and carry him across a gap from between dimensions. Exceptional puzzle love that so much, WISH THEY HAD SET UP THE TUTORIAL PROPERLY SO I COULDVE SOLVED IT cuz there was at no other point any indicator that that was a thing you could even do.

Like it felt like they were doing way too much way too late, adding in new mechanics that should have been in earlier, and then reusing the same boss over and over again. I think you fight the fuckin color coded claw mini boss like 4 times, every time it's equally as easy and annoying. Also the gohma enemies were rly annoying, having homing attacks you can't block/dodge and go way too fast, not rly challenging so much as just smth to brute force. Also it never felt like there was real skill required in combat until like, vaati's fight which even that was just timing bomb throws. (And don't get me started on how mad I am that vaati never shows up in his hottie form, he's just in his fuckin balloon monster form and I'm sad about it)

The overall vibe of the game and speed of progression felt nice, the levels that were rly enjoyable (the Village of the Blue Maiden, both Hyrule Castle segments, the Lost Woods, and Kakariko) were huge highlights, the sneaking segments especially felt like a real test of skill and cheese and I really enjoyed it even if they were a bit frustrating to fail. And the segments that were more quest oriented were really good, there's something about a looooong quest line that they did really well.

The difficulty level of this game felt... Strange. It was like they didn't know how to create a difficulty curve. Repeat enemies made things boring and too easy, but since links hp resets with each stage they backed themselves into not being able to ramp it up. Also a lot of the 'unique' (not premade) enemies were... Kinda ugly, tbh. Like not as in monsters have to be cute, but as in the quality of the pixel art was really disjointed. Honestly all of the art was like that. Some assets that were blown up u could see the fuzzy pixel anti aliasing, where as all of the particle effects were Really crisp. Like downright the best part of the game kinda crisp. I fucking LOVE the particle effects in this game, as well as the lighting as a whole it's really pretty in that regard.

Idk this game has been something I've wanted to beat since I rented it as a kid so finally getting that chance I... I don't know. It feels like most of the game (especially the later parts) I was mostly just frustrated, but when it was good it was great.

TLDR; I think I would reasonably give it a 6.5/10, it's fine, it's got some great moments but has a lot of issues that make it frustrating.

[eigwayne]

Today I watched a couple eps of a handful of shows I'd been working on. I want to finish one or two so I won't feel bad about starting Witch From Mercury or Parallel World or something else on my backlog. But man, sometimes finishing a show is a slog.

I'm on episode 50 of Court Lady, a show with unlikable characters and far too many plotlines that just keep dragging on. I forgot about Ma Hainyu and the other secondary/tertiary characters from the pirate group for a while there, they appear so rarely. And it breaks the tone AGAIN from the high drama of the palace, which was gearing up to resolve, it felt like. And now it's just dragging its feet about everything and especially Lu Yingying's arc, which is the worst arc of the whole show and I hated Fu Yin's stupid not-revenge arc a lot. The more I have to see Prince Liang, the more I hate the show, so you can imagine how I am suffering through this part. Also, this is the main character who gets called a Mary Sue the most in reviews (out of the other shows in this post) but is least Mary-Sue-like, imo. She had a modicum of wisdom and sense and self preservation, and apparently that is unbelievable for most viewers, I don't know.

I hit episode 20 of Stand By Me 2021. The main character is still a moron, sadly, but the palace drama and Xuan Lu's character are keeping me interested. I don't mind at all that there's ahistorical powerful female-led organizations- I mind that the main character is the sort that should have been killed for being fresh in front of the emperor in the first episode but faces no repercussions for hardly anything at all. They want me to believe this is such a dangerous court but they let this imbecile prance around with a sword and stick her nose into everyone's business? My ability to suspend disbelief is pretty decent but I am struggling with this. And the emperor's in love with her. If I were Cheng Yi I'd throw out my back on purpose or something to get out of acting in yet another drama where I had to fall in love with a girl who is so stupid she can't hold her own in a conversation with a toddler. This is the third one. Third! The man is cursed by his pretty face- born to do comedy, forced to do idol.

Besides that, I hit episode 7 of Rebel Princess, and this show is twice as long as it needs to be already. Every scene, every plot element is dragged out past its limits, and this is coming from someone who thought the childhood arc in Minglan was fine. They keep telling me the main character is beautiful and virtuous but they show me a spoiled brat. The actress, while beautiful, is too old to believable play a fifteen-year-old, as are most of the other actors, and they should have sucked it up and gotten younger actors for this arc. I heard this is a bit of a vanity project and I'd believe it.

And I'm on ep 12 of Goodbye My Princess. I started the original version, not the director's cut, and sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice. But this is another one with an unlikable, kind of greasy male lead, plus an amnesia arc which is often a snore-fest, plus we just introduced another woman to the love polygon, so we'll see, maybe I will be glad I saved myself three episodes.

I wish I was better about dropping things, but my brain just won't let me. Never mind just these shows- every once in a while, I think about going back to Ashes of Love or Destiny of White Snake or even Hot Blooded Youth. LOL, that one would be my inability to let something go versus my gut reaction to Huang Zitao's face. It'd be a disaster. But I still sometimes entertain the idea.

[thedavesnews]

Disneyland Distance Dash

If you read the last post you'll know that we ventured out to California to visit Disneyland for the first time ever. That was a mostly good experience. Feel free to look back if you want to see about the parks because this will be about RunDisney on the west coast.

Let me preface by saying I have filled out the post run survey and given my feedback to Disney and based on the posts I've seen on Reddit and elsewhere I'm not alone in my feelings on the weekend.

There are things that Disney cannot control such as the weather. It was cold but I'm not holding that against anyone. We prepared for it and the costumes I ran kept me pretty comfortable. I was Russell for the 10k and Judy Hopps in the half. Russell is a new addition to the repertoire but it was a carryover from the previous weekend in Disney World with my family being several characters from up.

So if the weather can't be attributed what can we say should be improved? Sadly, multiple things come to mind almost instantly. Security was abysmal and I covered it a bit on the parks as well. They are using devices that are probably older than I am to secure each person entering and I don't know why they haven't upgraded to match WDW. All items much come out of the pockets, Mylar needs to be shed and with the costumes a LOT of wand waving will take place causing the lines to be backed up. 30 minutes just to get through the security line. In FL it would be less than 30 seconds. It's a major put off for me because it's the first thing I see when I get there and those 1st impressions are important so I enter the event in a negative mindset. For the 2nd race day I had they did let us run through with items overhead but why did it take 3 days to figure that out?

Once we were past the gates it felt like something was off. The 10k went mostly on-time but there was hardly any interaction with the crowd. Don't get me wrong Carissa tried with Tetris but there was no chemistry with the other guy (Matt I think). The half didn't start on time and I heard the 5k was also behind schedule. Not sure if it was a schedule thing or what but releasing whole corrals isn't the best idea even if we wish that could work in the real world. The congestion it creates leaves a lot to be desired. I'm faster than my official pace showed even without training. There just wasn't any room to run.

The water stops were ill placed causing a literal full stop around mile 3 on the half. I counted about 60 full seconds of non-movement and heard from the later corrals it was around 2-3 minutes. That kills momentum and destroys any chance of a PR but if you're doing a Disney race to PR...you are doing it wrong. Then again, some runners do want to have respectable times regardless what race it is.

I run Disney races for the magic and the sights. If I wanted to run a non-Disney race Florida has plenty with scenic views like Space Coast (which I run) or Celebration (which I'm considering). I'm not paying Disney prices to run 8 of 13 miles on the streets of Anaheim. It's not worth it. It was unknown to me that characters were not on the streets. Maybe I should have researched but this was a new come back of the races so those details from previous years may not have been valid. Either way, it was a slog through city streets with no entertainment and nothing to look at. Can I say I explored Anaheim? Kind of. Did I finish the race and get a high five from Jeff Galloway? Finish, yes. High five...no. I barely missed as someone passed me on the right to poach it. It's fine though as I have gotten that last sprint high five in the past.

As of this moment it would take an amazing theme to get me back in California to run a longer distance than 10k. It's not being outside the park as a problem in and of itself since we do they in Florida. It's the fact that we experienced no magic for well over half the race. It might as well been the Anaheim half the way it was done. I'm still going to run in Florida and if they ever give us the Paris Disney run you know I'll be there!

-Dave

California Runnin on such a winter's day

[mushy-bread]

I really wanna like thirteen, I love Jodie! I was enamored by her performance in broad church and was excited to have a woman doctor! Officially! These first few episodes have been a bit of a slog to get through though.

Ep 1 confused me, idk if I just wasn’t paying enough attention, which could emití rely be the case in which that’s on me, but it didn’t make sense. Maybe there is some explanation I missed but the last two doctors started this way and I hated it, the forgetting. I’m just not a fan. The part of 9 to 10 and 10 to 11 that I loved!!!! Was that they were so aware of the change and while they may backslide a bit in development they eventually learn and grow from that version of themselves very explicitly. It felt like that took a whole season for 12 to even try to begin doing, and I have no idea what’s up with 13 yet.

Ep 2 was fine, I remember a desert and finding the tardis and that’s about it.

Ep 3, it’s not awful. It’s not good. I did a little bit of digging when I was finished cause I wanted to know who wrote it and was pleasantly surprised to see a black woman had been kind of the lead on it. That awesome! It still missed the mark for me in some ways, though I’ve never been one for the over aggrandizement of Rosa parks. Did she do a brave thing? Yes absolutely! Was she the first to not give up her seat? No, was she the last, no, did she start the movement? Nope! I’m happy to celebrate her bravery and what she would go on to represent for so many people, however I would’ve liked to see Angela Davis, or Correta Scott King. Stories with them would have been So Interesting!!! Or, and hear me out, Toni Morrison whose books played on supernatural and science fiction ideas and imagery to explain the feelings of being a young black girl, or black mother, in the US. It wasn’t a bad episode I just think it could’ve done something a little more interesting, attacked it a little deeper. Expand on and go where they have only hinted at in the past ya know??

Idk, imma try to keep an open mind and keep going.