#this is honestly just talking circles

[404name-not-found]

Vent post about system stuff incoming:

Also if you don't support in-system relationships just fuck off this specific post ok? Not in the mood to hear it

The concept of spending the rest of my life only ever half able to touch my wife (he/they) is fucking depressing. I can feel him because I mainly sit internally, and I know he can, to some degree, feel a ghost of where I'm touching him (not that way I'm referring to cuddling and kissing the rest is no one else's business) but it's not the same.

I will never be able to hold him the way his partner with a separate body can. While I'm not jealous of said partner, it does feel like something about me will always be inferior. I know if I had my body, I would not be able to hear his thoughts and know his feelings so we wouldn't work as well as we do, and probably would not be anywhere near as in love as we are because we don't deal with all the time wasted by misunderstandings and such. But I also know that if I had my body I could marry him legally, and I could be supporting him because my body was not disabled. I could take care of him in ways I just can't as things are. If I had my body, I could fill the roles I can't fill because we share a brain and body.

I wish with everything in me I had my body and still had the ability to communicate the way we do. I wouldn't have seen him in so many abusive relationships. I wouldn't watch him struggle to get things done and get what he needs. I was able to work in my fictional canon! I made plenty enough to support us! But I can't.

I know a miracle let me literally cover a gap between worlds to let us be together even though here I'm considered fictional. And somewhere deep down I know it wasn't a miracle, it was a world of hurt I wish he'd never gone through. And I know I should just be grateful I have him and we can be together despite how absolutely impossible it realistically is that we managed this.

I couldn't imagine a world without him, and I would never want to take the step back that would come with losing sharing the same head the way we do, but there's just a lot about sharing a body that makes a relationship like ours feel like we're so close to being perfect and the only thing in the way is one missing electrified meatsuit.

Don't misunderstand, while despite all the scientific knowledge I do have, I have no understanding of the science that makes it so he can kiss the air or a pillow using the body and *only* have the same biological reactions as he would with another body if one of us is kissing him in the head at the same time, I am eternally grateful for it. But for once, would like to stop being scientific wonder and be a man and his wife with nothing extraordinary besides the amount we love each other.

There's nothing to say or do to make it better; I'll feel okay tonight when he's laying in my arms since the body dissociates well enough when we're laying down to sleep that we can almost entirely feel each other, but for now it sucks and there's nothing that's ever going to change it. I spend 99% of my time grateful that I was given the chance to know him and love him and be loved by him and I wouldn't risk it for anything, but that doesn't mean I don't wish we could fill that last gap to where this would be perfect for him the way it is for me.

He deserves a relationship that can give him everything someone with another body can with someone who would *never* use that body to cause him harm, not with someone who is in the process of being taught not to. He deserves to kiss someone without flashbacks of that person forcing that kiss a few short years ago.

He deserves to have the whole experience of a relationship with someone who genuinely loves him without any backstory of beating or assaulting him in any way. Instead the closest he gets is always wondering if the only reason I'm safe is because I don't have a body to hurt him with. And I do not blame him at all for wondering that - every non-middle school relationship he's had besides one that didn't end up with that happening has been with those of us in his head. But I want to prove to him that people can love him without causing pain. That he SHOULD be loved in ways that do not cause pain. That no one should be hurting him and calling it love and there is nothing about having a body that causes them to behave that way. That what they did was choice they made and kept making, not inherrent to using body separate of his. Maybe then he'd be able to understand that he deserved better than what he got.

[gayvampyr]

forgot for a second that oscillopsia is in my brain and not external and i almost tried to record what it looks like to me to show people what i mean

[cosmicterrorthe8th]

Another Grant headcanon:

I think he wrote love notes when in relationships, and he went all out with like making the paper scented and stuff. But like he had no good perfume so he ended up using his horrible body spray. So like the lucky boyfriend would like find a paper reeking of the body spray like every once in a while.

Also I think he was someone who fell deep into romance because having a crush and feeling butterflies in his stomach was better than numbness. So he would pursue every crush even if he knew it would not end well because of the thrill of it. I think this sucked but I think he atleast felt like this is a normal way for life to suck.

[queseraphita]

Lies of P could exist in Yoko Taro's Drakenier universe, and no one would even notice it being anywhere out of place

*smacks my string conspiracy board*

WHITE CHOLORNATION SYNDROME

[kaltacore]

sometimes I wonder what bioware actually wanted to achieve when they wrote the whole anders arc and then decided how they should treat it in DA:I. like they created a guy who was helping people in need for years risking his freedom and sometimes even life and then they said you know what this guy is BAD and WRONG. actually much worse than organization that ultimately fails at its main goal which is maintaining peace and balance. oh that poor chantry lady who didn't even try to keep her favourite templar and her mass murder tendencies in check

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Finally forcing myself to do an alternate run of DA2 with a lady warrior just so that I can spend time with Bethany for the first time and my feelings are all over the place.

Whattya mean I give her a portrait of Leandra from before she ran off with Malcolm and her reaction is to say "My whole life, Mother's been so sad and worried. All because of my cursed magic. It's nice to have a reminder of a time when she still knew how to smile."

Like... that's so loaded and heartbreaking, what am I even supposed to say to that??

[readingbythestreetlights]

(x)

part two of the jenson congratulating nico saga :))

[star-scrambled]

hey this goes without saying but unironically dni if you hate paani octonauts. like actually.

[marshmellowtea]

anti ai art arguments try not to be fascist or ableist for two seconds challenge

[waywardsalt]

small little thing abt botw/totk and the future of zelda games considering it seems likely that future zelda games might be in the same style as those two and how i feel like botw/totk don't actually feel like zelda games (kind of messy i just typed this out in a kind of informal or whatever way) (this post is long af btw so uhhhh yeah)

im part of the group that claims that botw/totk aren't 'real' zelda games but... i guess they are technically 'real' zelda games, but... they sure as fuck don't feel like it, and because of that, i'm not at all excited with the idea of future loz games being in the same style, especially with the pitfalls these last two games have fallen into having been things that past zelda games did especially well, it feels like things have been sort of flipped on their heads in terms of what's being valued or whatever

like... the best parts of older zelda games were things like the story and the characters and the puzzles and the dungeons and stuff like that... the best parts of botw/totk right now are just the gameplay. people enjoy these new characters, but they dont have the narrative backing that older games do, they don't have the same impactful arcs or roles allowed by a more linear story

the point i want to get at though is how botw/totk honestly don't feel like direct evolutions or steps up from past zelda games but rather just... entirely different game styles (open world games) with the zelda flavoring and worldbuilding and story styling slapped on top.

i mean... i feel like a half-decent example of some other well-known franchises that have jumped on this (honestly kind of thoughtless) open-world bandwagon are mario (mario odyssey) pokemon (sword/shield and scarlet/violet) fire emblem (kind of. with some free-walking segments in 3 houses and engage) and the soulsborne type games (elden ring), these are all other well known and storied game series' that have somewhat made the move to open world, and i think that switch was a bit smoother, kept the core and integrity of the games that came before much better than botw/totk did

elden ring is the easiest to explain- the gameplay loop and core mechanics are the same and build upon past games' you just have more room to run around and get killed in with some little open-world flourishes like material gathering.

fire emblem is... a bit less flexible in terms of changing up the core gameplay, and the addition of open-world segments are added to add bonuses to the strategy gameplay and allow for more support-building oppourtunities and little minigames, and its more or less evolution from echoes' dungeon-crawling bits and the customizable castle in fates. the core gameplay still effectively works the exact same, just with some little class or mechanic tweaks and additions.

mario odyssey, though each world was pretty massive, still had your typical 3d mario platforming, and the new hat stuff fit in pretty well with olderpowerups and gimmicks, and the boss battles feel and work pretty similarly to the way they used it- odyssey does feel like an evolution from past mario games (ps. playing two-player with one person as cappy snaps the game in half. its the secret easy mode lol)

the new pokemon games are pretty much just the same as past pokemon games, theyre just open world and buggy as fuck rip have extra little open-world flourishes that build on what past games set up. the battling works the same as ever and the progression is the same with a number of powerful trainers you have to battle to continue forward.

with botw/totk... the progression is dramatically different in terms of power-scaling, world presentation, item-gathering, puzzle-solving... pretty much everything in the established zelda format. i get that it was pretty much the aim with botw to have a fresh start and throw out a lot of the old standards but it just makes them feel so dramatically alien to past zelda games; theyre completely different experiences in pretty much every single way, and as such they dont feel like what we've (well, people who have started with and spent a lot of time with other loz games) learned to associate with the zelda titles.

with open world games in general it's a bit harder to have a truly impactful narrative akin to those in past zelda games, anyways. i will admit that botw was a good execution of trying out something entirely new, and the narrative and gameplay and world actually complement each other very well, so despite what i've said in the past I can't really fault it's narrative too much since it's a less traditional sort of narrative and effectively does what it aims to do very well.

totk, on the other hand, proves that this style of game does not mesh with the old style of storytelling at ALL. linear games can have proper narratives with coherent stakes, developing characters, twists and reveals and building emotion and mood- and all of that is thrown out the window with totk when they decided to try and have both a more linear story with actual reveals and development and emotion, while also letting you literally spoil it for yourself out the gate.

you can't really have a well-executed story when players are capable of doing things drastically out of order and of jumping into story beats without the prior buildup and straight-up ruining what could be otherwise emotional reveals, and players being capable of doing this is hard-baked in how the game fundamentally works. I honestly feel bad for people who found the fifth sage by accident before anything else.

you can't effectively have a linear story with character growth and plot developments and impactful moments while also allowing it to be experienced out of order and with massive time gaps in between; with this kind of stuff, you can't really have your cake and eat it too. say what you will about the linearity of past zelda games, but i bet you that midna wouldn't be as beloved as a character as she is if it weren't for the linear order of the story and its events. certain parts of storytelling may demand for a linear manner of telling that story.

botw's story works because none of the memories reveal anything groundbreaking taht you don't already know; they are optional and merely give you more information about these characters from link's past and simply inform you about the girl keeping ganon at bay. if you find a late memory first, that's fine- it technically doesnt reveal anything too important to you, it just fills in some gaps for you and your player character. it makes sense within the story itself for the world to be so open and for you to be able to do what you can; the story is not the focus, nor is it even needed to beat the game. the story was made with the gameplay and what you are allowed to do in mind, and as such doesn't include things such as in-depth character development or important plot-twists.

on the other hand, you can easily spoil totk's biggest plot twist in a handful of different ways completely by accident, just by getting curious about the world around you. this can shatter a lot of the mystery or tension in the plot and this can happen completely by accident to someone playing the game organically and blindly. the story itself doesn't take this into account, it reads more like a linear story that would be more suited to a linear style of play, coming across things in order to ramp up the stakes and let things be revealed at the best possible time. (tbh totk's story doesnt seem to take the player into account in general, if the game forcing you to watch basically the same long cutscene four fucking times says anything, jesus christ)

narrative pitfalls aside, botw/totk put heavy emphasis on gameplay, but not in the same way older zelda games did, and as such trade away the unique items and gimmick-y game-specific mechanics for a small toolset handed to you out the gate. what botw/totk do- giving you everything you need from the start and having very little true varation in the gameplay from then on out- make sense and works just fine for an open world game. there is, however, a lack of actual depth to that gameplay that other open world games do have (off the top of my head, the ability to unlock and upgrade abilities and have general character upgrades in fenyx rising as well as the impressive depths of elden ring's combat and character customization system). the most depth botw/totk has to the actual gameplay is just the fourish different weapon types and the ways you use your fourish abilities (saying fourish bc for real ultrahand and fuse are fundamentally the exact same thing). there is also just raising the little defense numbers on your armor and getting more stamina and health, but that does absolutely nothing to the actual gameplay but make link more durable.

i mean, sure, health in past loz games just makes link more durable, too, but thats how health upgrades in any other game work.

the gameplay switch makes sense, considering the switch from a linear puzzle-adventure concentric game to a more sandbox-esque open-world game, but it does not mesh with the former loz formula at all, so while the shift in style makes sense, it makes me think that you can't have a previous-style loz experience in an open-world sandboxish sort of game. especially with how in totk you can very easily bypass most of the fire temple just using the mechanics handed to you at the start. you can't have the same type of zelda dungeons in a game where you are allowed to do it 'wrong' and the game itself does not allow for the same kinds of puzzles.

i am of the opinion that so long as future zelda games work the same way botw/totk did, we will not get old-school zelda-style dungeons again.

the loss of a variety of items used for specific puzzles and environment switches is the loss of a varied dungeon experience and the loss of the same kind of world and character progression as past zelda games.

you are handed everything you'll ever need at the start of botw/totk. the only thing that will meaningfully change is how much damage you do. there are no alternate strategies opened up by new items that can double as weapons, no new traversal options or routes opened up by things such as grappling hooks or clawshots or whips or specific wands. even the battle system is drastically different, instead of being enemies that take specific amounts of hits to die while you can obtain progressively stronger swords, enemies are just damage sponges and you can get all kind of weapons that just do different numerical amounts of damage.

the bosses themselves- big staples and draws of zelda games- also work extremely differently. instead of having to leverage specific items to expose weak spots or having to fight in a specific manner to do damage, you are just asked to... do damage. even in totk's bosses, where sage abilities are most certainly helpful, the only boss i found to truly require a sage ability was the lighting temple's boss; the others i either hardly used the sage at all (i didn't use yunobo at all in the second phase of the fire temple boss and hardly had a need for tulin with the wind temple boss [esp considering i was using a 3-shot lynel bow to make the poor fucker a cakewalk]) or found that alternative solutions felt better, like resorting to splash fruit on repeat water temple fights instead of wrestling with having to activate and use sidon's ability. the sages are honestly fairly poor replacements for dungeon specific items.

this kind of causes botw/totk to play more like a poor man's dark souls or just like any other open world rpgish game. i don't play botw/totk for the experience of a zelda game, i play it because it's an open world game that i can walk around in for five minute before switching to something else because i liked something in that other game better.

the combat in botw/totk isnt designed in such a way that makes it feel good. mineru's mech is fucking dismal, but since it's just either shooting with a bow or attacking with one of three types of melee weapon with some timing for a dodge, it can get stale fast. it doesn't necessarily even feel good, since there's not enough variety for it to get really engaging. (this is def an uneven comparison, but elden ring's combat feels considerable better with the different dodges you can do and the amount of attack options you have with just one weapon, not to mention the amount of control you have over your general fighting style.) combat in botw/totk at hour 1 is the exact same as combat in botw/totk at hour 100, the only different being the amount of damage you do or how much of a beating you can take.

it just... the styles of botw/totk can't allow them to feel the same as older zelda games. the shift in style was clearly a good move to draw in series newbies and shake things up, but it comes at the caveat of making them feel distant from their predecessors and uncomfortably similar to other games like them. it's hard to avoid comparisons with elden ring when on the surface they are very similar games, one just feels more true to its core identity

this all is said without mentioning the way in which botw/totk lore feels almost dismissive of past series staples and seems intent on not looking back while also taking every fucking attempt to nudge you and say 'hey, remember that zelda game' and honestly all that shit does is make me want to play a different zelda game.

botw/totk seem altogether very desperate to distance themselves from past zelda games while also being unable to really tear itself from what came before and it just culminates in me spotting linebeck island on the map and going 'damn i miss linebeck' and turning the fucking game off to play phantom hourglass instead. say what you will about phantom hourglass, but it certainly handles its story progression and character development infinitely better than the game that lets you accidentally shatter the impact of the story by deciding to check out that cool temple in the distance of the depths

[dandyshucks]

blinks tiredly. i decide "hm maybe i should try to expand my circle and step outside of it a little, lets go look at the main community tags" and im just greeted with a bunch of edgelords who think saying "fiction doesn't affect reality, don't like don't read" is peak activism and "fighting censorship". head in my hands. this is partially why i do not ever go into the community tags, my nervous system cannot handle blocking fifty weirdos every single day just so i can have a normal experience in the community tags hfdsjkl

[mymp3]

okay I got feelings out of my system. I'm a changed man now.

[aeide-thea]

i do wish, like, literally anyone i knew were even a little bit hesitant or skeptical about the institution of marriage where i could hear them

like—i accept that presumably the thing can be done in a more radically ~examined~ way or whatever; but how does that happen if no one ever actually, you know, examines it through a lens that’s anything but rose-colored? or at least, not out loud where some actual collective discussion and theorizing could happen?

and also i just, as always, think there’s value in voicing a variety of visions for how to live, because i think a worldmodel in which there’s a default goal, and then a stigmatized alternative for those who can’t or won’t meet it, is in fact worse for everyone, even the normie or normie-passing, than a worldmodel in which that false, stifling binary gets expanded back out into a full range of free, deliberate, joyous choice, and the original default becomes just one of many, equal, gorgeous possibilities…

[nonuggetshere]

I HAD A FEELING

So, in FaaF, the whole Radiance issue gets resolved before he ever defects so he remains a lord and has a good relationship with his sisters. With his daughter, though? Not so much. He tries to be a good father, yet she keeps her distance from him as she doesn't feel she can trust him when it comes to her relationship with Ze'mer. She just knows he wouldn't approve and would react badly.

When it comes to him and Flower specifically;

I saw a theory that the Mantis Lords were also involved with the Pure Vessel's training, which I implemented into FaaF.

Being a father himself, the Traitor Lord - named Taiga here - grew fond of the Pure Vessel against his sisters' warnings, who told him it wouldn't end well for him. He, of course, denied having any fondness towards the "little beast" as he called them. Well, his sisters were right, just not in the way they expected. Everybody's shocked and a bit shaken up after the reveal goes down.

Taiga is...a bit of an outcast in his tribe. Now, yes, he's a lord but...he has a very difficult time forming connections with people, and at times he even feels like an outsider yo his own sisters, feeling as if he doesn't quite click with them the same way they do with each other. On top of that, people's general perception of mantises is that they're scary, so when you're a giant guy lord of the mantis tribe get treated...differently at times. So when he sees that the court now treats Flower differently and even hears the nasty whispers behind their back, he can't help but sympathise. Though, he still keeps his distance like most of the people, at least at first.

That kind of changes when he one day takes a long, long walk to clear his head and comes across Flower in the greenpath, abusing some poor boulder with their nail out of anger and frustration. They hear him approaching and spin around, at which point he reveals himself. They just kind of lower their blade and turn back around, collapsing onto the ground and hugging their knees as they cry. He hesitantly approaches and sits next to them,