#unlike the third game which i have a lot to say about but nothing good

[tench]

It's funny for me how many unintentionally rad things Borderlands 2 has, like, for example, after that one guy's death his friend got his adoptive kind and his girlfriend - his job as a faction leader. I am really not going to get into how neither of them were prepared for that shit. But is also interesting how both have bird motif and how both are struggling with addiction which they got as a result of coping with isolation and trauma.

And I find it very cool how the game starts with blunt manipulation of the players to take the place of the bl1 vault hunters "whos time has passed", but by the end of the game they are arguably in the better parts of their lives. Except Roland (rip) but you know, his death was kinda a big deal that brought his friends together and strengthen the bond through the grieving process.

[dailycass-cain]

2023 was another big stepping stone with Cass. The character was featured in A LOT of stuff this year amongst a few negative antics.

But unlike prior years the good really outweighed the bad. BY A LOT.

So let's take a look back one final time #CAINAISSANCE2023...

The year started STRONG with the release of Batgirls #14 aka the BEST solo story that involved the character this year.

I've gone in LENGTH on how AMAZING this tale was. If you haven't read it DO SO. You don't need any context but to just take in the masterpiece given.

Writers Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad gave artist Jonathan Case just this canvas of an issue to tell AN EPIC mostly silent issue.

If there's a tale Batgirls will be remembered for it'll BE THIS ISSUE.

I've lost count to just taking in the gorgeous art Case delivers here and just letting the actions and emotions tell the tale.

The only regret is well no full payoff to what is fully learned within this issue.

It just hits EVERY mark and is something any Cass fan CRAVED, but never got in Batgirl Vol. 1. Batgirls #14 was a worthy issue that should be talked about amongst fans of Cass for quite some time.

February gave us Cass's grand entrance to Ram V's Detective Comics run (#1069) and what an entrance it was! Literally, I can't let it go of how AMAZING it was.

And the run itself? It just keeps delivering as THE Batman book out currently.

It's a slow burn and when the run lays the payoffs IT HITS THOSE PAYOFFS. The series just ended an exceptional bi-weekly event that featured Cass and well, I'm extremely curious where this run goes with the character.

If anything, I just want MOAR from Ram V or a smaller secondary story involving Cass. But given the various characters he's been rotating and given next year is 2024 (more on that later) I'm keeping my fingers crossed for ALL OF THIS.

This run does work in trade but I digress you'd be missing the GORGEOUS covers this series has been shelling out. If anything BUY the single issues and read the run this way until you get to the present.

Or reread them like I've been doing. 😋

The early half of 2023 marked Cass's surprise return to an actual role in mega crossovers. She took part in the final issue of Batman vs. Robin being one of the random factors to stall the possessed Batman until ALL of DC's magical users came to cast it out of him.

The weakest of the crossovers the character was involved in I have to say was Gotham War. It was a nothing burger that made me swear off the Chip Zdarsky run of Batman completely.

Honestly, I feel more rewarded reading Tec more. Unless Chip pulls off a miracle turnaround in 2024.

But I digress Zdarsky was only half of the problems with the other being Tini Howard and yeah, if you were a Bat Family member who wasn't Jason Todd (how did that mini turn out to be more entertaining then the ENTIRE event?!)?

This story SUUUUUUUUCKED. Quite possibly the worst Batman event story since War Games/Crimes for me.

Sadly, the most disappointing stories I'd have to say are on equal ground in Beast World and Knight Terrors. As there was interesting concepts with Cass involving them, and both stories just go NOWHERE.

I feel more so robbed with Knight Terrors as the design for Cass within it went hard. It's just that you give us THIS design and tease us with this little nugget and give us NOTHING?

COME ON!

Beast World was a whole nothing burger as well, save the pretty art and a full confirmation that Cass's old NML is now canonically her defacto one again.

Even if we had it mentioned earlier last year and again in the best crossover event involving Cass...

WHICH WAS IN LAZARUS PLANET: DARK FATE #1. It gave us Alyssa Wong returning for a THIRD time to write Cass and they were joined by Haining on art which introduced us to the world of Xanthe.

That in itself led to a spinoff mini-series that had Cass in it with SPIRIT WORLD. It did more with the new character Xanthe and laid out their origins and powerset nicely while also laying some seeds for MAYBE future Cass stories.

Again, I feel like a repeating record on how GOOD this series was. Like, I can't wait for the trade next year to take it all in again. But besides the creative team delivering it gave us Dustin Nguyen AND Marcio Takara drawing Cass again OFFICIALLY AS BATGIRL!!

Even when this series ended, I STILL WANT MOAR!! Like what memories did Cass lose? What the heck happened with Spirit World twisting her memories of Batgirl Vol. 1 #72?! How will Xanthe be with the Jade Court?

SO MANY QUESTIONS!!

Something else that left me with MANY questions was DCeased universe as even though the story ended back in April.

I still crave more starring Cass, because let's face it STEPH/TALIA DESERVE CLOSURE!! Cass could be the gateway to that.

Doing so would tie up the final loose ends as well. Let's see how Rose is raising her kid with Jason. Silent Olsen. Harley/Ivy. Ollie/Dinah. Jim Gordon.

But I digress. It gives us more Cazzam. We need more Cazzam.

But an alternate universe Cass just didn't pop up there we had a Cass show up in various other comics. Knights of Steel which also had me hankering for MOAR and Harley Quinn & the Legion of Bats.

I know some didn't like it, but me? I think it was LEAPS and BOUNDS better than what we got in the actual season of HQ.

Let us never talk about that season again…

Now something we SHOULD talk about more is the first actual appearance of Cass in a DC ANIMATED MOVIE!! Yes, Kai Li Cain from Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham.

I was blown away at the extended role they gave the character in the film (to the, "Oh right Tim is here and alive." role in the books).

Kai Li voiced perfectly by Tati Gabrielle gave a balance of innocence and reason with the batshit craziness this film throws at us.

Like, I really REALLY want a sequel. Just to see what she'd do now given full access to Bruce's fortune? Will she follow his path? I mean yeah we want steampunk Bat!

Speaking of which artists we need designs for this stat still!

It just adds that anchor where you want to see more of this universe and the characters that inhabit it. I mean that's the sign of a REALLY good Elseworlds. Where you want more and sometimes you get just that.

But with all this good came the sad, and that was the canceling of Batgirls. I know many were against the series (especially after #7-8), but the series found its footing with #9 and ran into something I hope more positively can be talked about it.

It's true failing wasn't the creators behind the series, more just elements outside that just slotted it's end (Batgirl movie getting canned making #7-8 more wasteful), Evil Oracle #4 aka the pitch, and just being something it couldn't be).

I'm grateful for each and every creator who worked on this book because it was a GIFT that I'll always be appreciative of.

I'll say it again, THANK YOU TO ALL! 🙏

And its spirit lived on in the Nightwing back up a few months ago. It was something that was TRULY needed after the garbage fire that was Gotham War. It gave us this Cass/Dick sibling stuff and GIVE ME MOAR!!!

Unlike the past where we'd be done, DC brought us back up giving us the current BIRDS OF PREY ongoing which has Cass in it.

Really the series is a revelation of giving us things I always wanted that I'd never thought we get. Cass with Dinah? CHECK.

Cass meeting Big Barda and the two having a bond? HELLS YEAH CHECK! Anytime that bond grows I squee even more.

Just give writer Kelly Thompson ALL the time and ideas she has to churn this out to the proper conclusion she has envisioned. Just give me fifty-plus issues of her, Leonardo Romero, and Jordie Bellaire.

Finally of course there was Batman: Wayne Family Adventures which gave us THREE banger Cass stories. One where she and Steph are a MENANCE (as they should), Cass scaring the crapbaskets out of EVERYONE and of course...

Season 2 gave us A LOT of things I wanted in general (her interacting with Damian) and just showing the world why I really really love this character. Why I talk about her daily.

Really as 2023 closes and 2024 is about to begin... Well, it's the character's TWENTIETH-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 25 years of kicking ass and ripping our hearts out.

It's been a journey for sure.

really REALLY hope DC honors this anniversary and continues to mend the bridges burned all those years ago.

Give us that Omnibus. Give us a mini or SOMETHING to celebrate this character. If not, I'll take whatever Ram V and Thompson give us.

#CAINAISSANCE2023 may be over, but #CAINAISSANCE2024 will be the most important year yet.

25 YEARS OF CASS!! LET THE CELEBRATION BEGIN ON JANUARY 1st!

[fermiomoriblog]

The pitfalls of every Sunny ship

Diving straight into the hot coals with the first post. But it has been on my mind lately.

The setup in Omori is naturally quite mentally (and in some cases physically) taxing on every main cast character, and a shipper can very easily be overenthusiastic about getting a "happy ending" for their preferred pair, glossing over inconvenient problems and dynamics. I think that it really is rather contrary to the game's themes that this occurs, but it is also understandable that not everybody does a full psychoanalysis of every plot point in their story. I'll list some "common" problems I've personally encountered with people making content about sunburn, suntan and sunflower. I'm more familiar with the dynamics common on ao3 than elsewhere, so if you have any other observations or things to add, please feel free to do so.

# OMORI SPOILERS BELOW #

Sunburn

The "canon" ship. The fact that the ship is explicitly mentioned in game means that the ship is viewed as the "default", and it can lead to some lazy dynamics or lack of justification. You have to remember that no matter what headspace says (and headspace says a lot of things that aren't true), the first thing Sunny and Aubrey did after four years is beat the shit out of each other. Sunny knows nothing about the Hooligans, even though we do, and Aubrey thinks Sunny abandoned her (which is a feeling unlikely to abate after the truth). There needs to be basis for the ship as well - they aren't going to just pick up where they left off (presuming they had anything to leave off in the first place) right away. Which leads us to the first common problem:

Basing the relationship entirely on the past

This is the default reaction and requires the least writing creativity, so it is not surprising that it is common. Simply porting the HS dynamic or the swing scene to the future and copy-pasting is fun and cute and all, but it ignores the fact that both Sunny and Aubrey have changed massively. There's a lot of guilt that is going around, both with Sunny for obvious reasons and Aubrey for pushing Basil in the lake, and Aubrey has a bunch of new, closer friends whom depending on your interpretation are either theatre kids or delinquents. This is not really just going to get talked away on the swing set - they involve third parties.

I would venture to argue that this is actually a very problematic pitfall, despite it being generally not a very serious transgression in real life. Omori, as a game, is about moving on from the past. If you write a fic where the characters forget about bad things in the past but hang on like hell to the good things... that's Headspace. You've just put Sunny in a new Headspace.

Getting Basil out of the way

Even among sunburn/suntan shippers, it is pretty generally accepted that Basil was somewhat attached to Sunny even before the accident. So if you don't want to do sunflower, how do you deal with that?

You can write angst, where Aubrey and Basil end up fighting over Sunny. Weirdly, I've never seen this actually happen (probably because it's too heartbreaking). You can have Basil go to therapy, and get rid of an unhealthy attachment. You can also go the seriously angsty route of Basil hating Sunny for abandonment, Sunny hating Basil for his role in the incident, or a less intense version which just puts a barrier between the two. You can also have Sunny reject Basil. Or you can argue that the attachment was platonic, which is entirely fair.

What you cannot do is have Basil be romantically interested in Sunny, but "get out of the way" for Aubrey "so that Sunny can be happy". Or, well, you can do that, but you can't frame it as anything but serious angst from Basil's POV.

Unfortunately, many, many "pure fluff" Sunburn fics do this, because "pure fluff" fics don't want to untangle the whole thing as most methods involve some degree of emotional turnmoil. This is no ordinary infautation - Basil has waited for Sunny for four years. Nursing unrequited love like that is really, really painful. It is certainly not something that someone with Basil's character and history can do with a smile on their face. If you need any further convincing, I point you to Note to Self: Don't Be Gay in Faraway Town by witheredahlia.

A version of this which I think is a lesser sin (because it is at least framed with some nuance), but a sin regardless, is Aubrey getting annoyed at Basil for "stealing" Sunny's attention from her. This gets dangerously close to the reddit comments you see about "the friend group will be better off if Basil never joined".

Suntan

Despite sunburn being the "canon" and sunflower being the natural alternative, I actually think that this is the default. After all, Kel was the one to bring Sunny out, generally saving his life, and is his first friend, etc. Kel is also a clean slate character, with nothing anyone can particularly hold against them, and as a result suntan is the "healthiest", "least questionable" ship. This commits the customary mistake of believing Kel's parents when they say "eh, it's Kel, he'll be fine".

"Kel's fine"

No, he's not. He's spent the better part of four years trying to forget the happiest times of his childhood, and has been going around doing nothing but fixing and saving other people, putting others' needs far above his own, for the entirety of pre-canon and foreseeably for a good part of post canon as well. Suntan, especially with Sunny still in a vulnerable state post-canon, can very easily be written into Kel being Sunny's unpaid, untrained therapist, and his mood/health being Kel's only/majority source of validation. Kel's self-worth independent of his friends needs addressing and development, and without a lot of development, Sunny alone is not really equipped to provide that.

In all fairness, while I would be somewhat confident in saying that the majority of canon-compliant sunburn fics run into the problems above, suntan fics do usually handle it better. That might just be because there aren't that many suntan fics though.

Sunflower

It goes without saying that sunflower has the highest potential to be unhealthy. But precisely because of that fact, people writing sunflower are usually very careful to address it. Either the fic is written as a work exploring codependency/attachment/trauma/other general unhealthiness (which you can make your own judgement on whether it's a legitimate art form or problematic), or there is at minimum an attempt at pacing, therapy and general juggling of the various mental issues the game leaves Sunny and Basil with (for a shining example, see These Days Without You by Smitty1899, my go to answer for when anyone says "but sunflower toxic!!1!").

The issues that can make sunflower unhealthy and problematic are generally pretty obvious - shared crime, codependency and attachment, commitment and abandonment issues, and the whole "getting together before their friends forgive them" thing (which can still be done well, but from the POV of especially Hero can be kind of eh, and unlikely to be conducive to a healthy relationship given that it kind of depends on their friends' pending "approval".) As a result, there aren't a lot of works that don't address them in one manner or another. However, I do think there is one major pitfall that some fics fall into in the other direction:

Having everything in the relationship be dependent on someone else's approval.

In an attempt to make sunflower as healthy as possible, some authors make it so that Sunny and Basil effectively never make decisions on their own. There's always a third party present to psychoanalyse them, tell them what's fine and what's not, etc. and every step they make in their relationship is with the express blessing, support and help of the rest of their friends. The problem is, that's not healthy either.

I feel that the value of sunflower is greatest in the context of the themes of the game of moving on and forgiveness. Making it so that Sunny and Basil hang on to their guilt forever and robbing them of any "right" to decide for themselves what makes them happy is very much contrary to that - they're on crutches for the rest of their lives, and the point of the good ending is the hope that they won't need to be. It also is just not a good thing for any third party to intervene so extensively in a relationship.

Conclusion

Omori is emotionally deep, with many, many themes to explore. Ships in Omori have unique meanings and themes, which in a canon compliant context is quite hard to simply wipe away. Rushing into a ship with insufficient pacing and development, which works in "cute" fandoms, generally leaves lots of outstanding holes in Omori.

This post doesn't necessarily mean that I think less of any particular ship mentioned - to reiterate, every ship has unique meanings and themes which is interesting to explore and form a part of the message of the game. It is however true that some pitfalls in some ships are easier to fall in, and overlooked, than others, and the obvious problems get a lot more bashing than the non-obvious ones. (Yes, sunflower bias. Sue me.)

And of course, in a plotless or AU context, cute art is cute art.

[ladyarrowhead]

The poetics of the Vlad the Younger vs Vlad the Older in so far the Haruspex and Bachelor Route are just keeping me up, and Vlad the Younger being a possible adherent, supposedly only removed for the sake of not accidentally auto-game-over as the Bachelor just adds to how interesting this choice is to me. Lots of musings below this, I do not know where I am going with this

Additionally, "Panacea Blackmarket" ALSO takes place on this day in which Vlad the Younger is linked to it, something that Daniil first detests ("The man won't let a single penny past his purse! It occurs to me that he is no better than Bad Grief), with a hint of Dankovsky-typical "wait maybe the worms framed Vlad for this, let me check"). The Bachelor is only to change his opinion once he finds out that Vlad is now trying to "make amends" by distributing the panacea to the people he had doomed (Yes, people do change a lot. Before, I was convinced that this man was beyond salvation. I thought that nothing less than death could make the leopard change its spots. But I see a new man before me now. His former self has died; but not before he gave the entirety of his panacea stock to Mark Immortell.)

"Subterrarean Rot", to me becomes interesting because Daniil very much likes to align himself with the truth and slowly and surely has been shown and expected to lie tooth and nail to protect himself. Finding our who is behind the Termitary's state, Daniil is originally to decide who to deliver to Taya, but his journal entry is SO interesting about this:

The whole thing proved to be a trivial affair, but no less terrifying for it. When Isidor informed the Olgimskys of the impending outbreak, it was the younger who did what the elder did not dare to. But as the consequences became known, it was the father who shielded his son from the ramifications. A double deceit. This being known, I am in a strong position to speak with the Olgimskys.

I remember my jaw dropping at this when I found out Vlad the Younger, who had seemed so reasonable, had been the one to lock up the Termitary, but Daniil describes him as doing "what the elder did not dare to." Calling Vlad the Younger out, he is more than ready to carry the consequences, while Vlad the Older decides he will take the blame for his heir. When Taya asks Daniil to bring him "who is responsible for it", he (and the game's writing in so far), identify Young Vlad for it.

So how would Daniil decide then when this is how it comes about? When the man is showing so much change? Well, he can take a third option and just not decide - he brings Taya her toybull instead.

And oh goodness? The potential conflict of "the truth is my shepherd" seeing a person who makes an effort to change (if genuine or not that, like so many things, another question) to deliver someone? The choice to take a third option because, in the end, what does this matter if there is a town to save?

It just says so much about what could be Daniil's priorities. It's fun! And then we have Artemy...

"A Son Will Not Be Punished For His Father's Sins" is already named in a very interesting matter - and it immediately calls back to the Haruspex's own position as a "son". This takes place on the day Artemy claims his inheritance in front of Foreman Oyun - it is the day where, unlike the Bachelor, Artemy himself CANNOT avoid making this decision - one of the Olgimsky men needs to die.

There are two fun layers to this - on the one hand it is learning that Taya does not directly care who of the guys she is getting (something I think she also mentions to the Bachelor but I cannot check right now) and learning more about the polcies of the families in the Steppe. Artemy learns it is common among the merchant families that one sacrifices himself to protect the heir at all costs - and that what matters is that someone is punished for a crime that is committed.

Artemy's journal entries for the quest are very interesting leading into this:

So, Vlad the Heavy surrendered himself to Tycheek's daughter? It's clear enough that he isn't the real culprit… I only have to decide if I should tell her the truth. I wonder how that story ends…

Once again, Day 8 offers another quest from Vlad the Younger, because we are all about parallels. This time it is "Below the Ground" where Artemy is asked to retrieve the book detailing the kin's history from the tunnels which may or may not have been a setup given that the tunnels are closed directly once Artemy has entered them . While the book itself is not succesful, it makes Artemy wonder about the parallels between him and Vlad as Vlad himself is also apparently trying to unearth something - though he speaks of him with much more distance (So, Vlad the Younger has managed to reach beneath the ground as well. Is he trying to emulate what I am doing? He has found life down below, just like I have. [...]The ancient wisdom of the Kin was concealed there, locked away until the moment I unearthed it. I'm almost amused by the coincidence.)

Surrendering Vlad the Younger to his death to Taya in also, wonderfully, framed as Artemy taking his place among the kin:

Yes. Let Vlad the Younger die. Whoever makes a decision will be held responsible for it. With every passing day, I feel that the life of the Kin is my own life. I must protect it and avenge its suffering. Whatever fate had in store for these few thousand people, Vlad the Younger is directly responsible for their death.

No. Let Big Vlad die. I should inform Georgiy of my decision. I wouldn't describe Vlad the Heavy as a sentimental man. If he chose to die, he must have had good reason to. Or could it be that he thinks he deserves the punishment?

Surrendering Vlad to Taya matches with Artemy taking his own place - and Vlad the Younger is thus not punished for his fahter's sins but his own, meanwhile Artemy is about to take his father's place and heritage, trying to finish what Isidor created.

An honourable mention goes to the entry as to letting Taya kill Vlad the Older instead:

I am excited to find out more about this, if there is more - knowing this is Pathologic there is certainly more but it will not bring more clarity. But what is it for Artemy then, to be the one choosing it is time for the father to die and thus for Young Vlad to take on his heritage? It certainly is missing the poetry of the entry when choosing Vlad the Younger - but it makes it just as interesting.

[basslinegrave]

i was being a completely sane person today (/s) and was creating a timeline tree for snm would anyone even be interested in that. and collecting my shipping thoughts (or specifics about them being a couple etc). know that i still consider my knowledge of the franchise as poor. its just tidying it up in my head so when i talk about something i can pinpoint a specific thing (i was too deep in fnaf theorizing so now i have to suffer thru a franchise that doesnt even have a canon)

in short/tldr the comics are the base that happened in every possible timeline and everything else is derived from that, happening after, except the cartoon, which shows some events the same way so that would be more intertwined; not everything is connected/within one timeline. and the cartoon is my most fav and where i see them as a true couple.

long rant ahead

on one hand i really like the time travel theory where its like comics -> ttg -> cartoon etc by them travelling back in time for that, however there are many holes especially thinking about their families and stuff so

i like the idea of things branching off. one branch is comics - htr - cartoon, as something more intertwined

second is comics -> ttg -> poker night 2 (since it references ttg events) (idk bout 1 i havent played/seen that)

third would be comics -> ttiv (or comics -> htr -> ttiv, i have no idea atm if bosco's is mentioned in the comics but it is in htr and mentioned in ttiv. ttiv is also set in the year it came out, so theres a huge gap inbetween ttiv and htr but i wouldnt say its where the ttg games happened!)

and i dont mean this in like a multiverse way, since the creator seems to dislike that, its simply just a very loose canon that differs with each installment (simply due to different people working on these imo. nothing too deep imo)

but the juicy part!! i even made brackets that im too lazy to remake digitally so i will just write it out for each bigger installment. im excluding poker night 1 as i havent played it nor watched much gameplay

M = married, BF = best friends (in all technically)

comics: M - unlikely; BF - yes absolutely

htr: M - possible; BF - yes

cartoons: M - i take it as canon here. BF - yes million percent

ttg all seasons: M - no; BF - yes.

poker night 2: M - not sure, implied dating, i take that as good enough; BF - yes

ttiv: M - absolutely not. not a couple at all. BF - they seem too tense, yes, but from my experience playing, their interactions were imo the worst in all of their media, so i wasnt buying it at some points

note - ttiv has to be like the straightest they ever were and i also see it in S.P.'s more recent work. im looking too deep into that, perhaps, but im just thinking were never gonna get anything similar to what we got from back in the 90s again, if theres any future projects

people are also saying they got married like 4 times and its making me a bit confused here. do people mean cartoon, htr dress up card, cake topper and tdph ring scene or am i missing something big?? because to me that is married once, other ones being just for jokes (first one as well but its less vague), and in the ttg games its so extremely vague i cant count that (being realistic here) that said its still fun to joke about them getting married several times, but in this case wouldnt it be more of a marriage per timeline?

and to end this, a personal tierlist

my most fave obviously is the cartoon. not only is it the easiest to work with for me, with the fast pacing and short watch time (but ofc i wish it was longer) i absolutely love how their relationship is depicted there, even if a lot of stuff there is just jokes, but if everything is a joke then its also fine to take everything as canon within this media, to me! like when haters say that people only take the wedding scene out of the intro and ignore the rest - as if the other stuff couldnt happen (isnt one of the shots them fighting a giant octopus, which they end up having an episode about too. like cmon. anything goes here) even if it was contained within this specific part of the franchise, im ok with calling them a couple here. and its S tier overall

another S tier is the comics. nothing else to say

HTR is like A tier to me, only taking off points because its soooo sloooowwww and playing it after watching the series took 3 years off my life immediately. otherwise gud game.

ttg is like A to B tier for me, because of some specifics and preferences but thats just me being nitpicky so, the games overall are good. A- it is. thats all

poker night 2 is fun, i watch the gameplay a lot lately when im too tired at midnight to do anything else, A tier

ttiv. oh how mixed i am about you. gameplay by itself and my first experience with the game - S tier. it made me so giddy more than one time and i kept wanting to come back until i finished the game fully. i dont mind the bugs, its just what i expect in VR games and even tho it made me a bit frustrated at times it wasnt all that bad. its also the only vr game i played for over an hour once and didnt get motion sick - the exception was the level at the store which seemed too bright and actually made me nauseous. which is a feeling that somehow comes back whenever i think about this game. what i dislike was the dialogue, while most of it was fun and fine, i had moments where i just burst out laughing, they (or max especially) were way too mean towards the player. i know its a joke and you could chalk it up to max being unhappy with us/jealous, but it got like, generally unpleasant very quickly. with stuff like good throw - "nice!" bad throw - *neverending insults* and the second was how painfully straight it was and like. the vibes i got from them two was like, oh theyre fed up with each other and my shipping self was just left quite disappointed. i did not get all lines during my gameplay which made it great but upon going thru every line manually after, i was just more and more uncomfortable with what they said in their banter. this drops the game to like C for me? maybe B if i squint. being generous. i also got sick of their talking animations over time... the models are fine just got to be too much. bonus points for max ragdoll physics tho. coming up with a conclusion that this is a completely separate timeline and has nothing to do with anything other than the comics and perhaps HTR. i talked so long about this one cause its the one thing that prompted all of this lol.

but its not that serious! i just knew this franchise for ages as "oh its the two animal guys that are married and its funny" and now that i got into it fully, i see a lot of the shippers are obviously daydreaming and taking things out of context - which is fun, i agree!! i also do that. but it just painted a completely different picture for me. so no. theyre not married, theyre not a couple, except for the cartoon, where its implied, which stays on top for me. but in ttg at least, they love each other, its not as romantic, but i can ship them there (so i ship them in the context of the cartoon and ttg basically)

anyway. nothing is canon for them, everything is canon for them, and everything they say or do is a joke so. its not that deep at all. they gay tho

[shuttershocky]

"accidentally"??

So in highschool, once a year they would make us go to these retreat places for a few days (all Catholic retreat places, but since we were a public school the activities were more about palanca writing and group bonding instead of praying).

Our third year retreat went rather disastrously due to the property damage (and more) wreaked by a couple hundred bored and hormonal teenagers made to sleep in one place for three days while talking about their feelings. It was so bad that our school and everyone in it got banned for life from the place—there were broken doors, a broken toilet, someone somehow managed to steal a whole mattress, underwear was stolen, and some monster of a highschooler managed to create the scariest thing ive ever seen in a bathroom: the poopsnake (but this is another story for another time)

So in our senior year, they went for a place that had a whole lot of little houses so the students wouldn't all be gathered into such large groups, and the houses with the more mischievous students (like yours truly) would have to stay with a teacher for a chaperone, and an Actually Responsible student, just to be sure.

Now the teacher assigned to stay at the same house as me and my friends was our physics teacher, an educator of incredible restraint and unlimited patience, honed by the endless hours they spent trying to teach dumbasses like me how magnets worked. They had also been assigned to chaperone my friends and me in our third year and we actually didn't get into any trouble at all unlike the rest of our classmates, so they probably thought chaperoning almost the exact same set of kids was going to be no problem.

However, my third year retreat had only been uneventful because I had nothing prepared. For the fourth year retreat, my friends and I bought a sari-sari store's worth of satchets of Milo and Tang for reasons I don't even remember anymore (I don't even like Milo really). We had so many powdered drinks we could barely fit them into the empty suitcase I brought.

Anyway, once it was nighttime and lights out was enforced, my friend and I got bored and decided to play a game called Don't Wake Up A, where A was the responsible student assigned with us in our house. They and our physics teacher were both sleeping in two beds up on the indoor balcony, while the rest of us slept on mattresses in the first floor. The goal of the game was to throw a sachet from the first floor up into the balcony, and get as many as you could as close to A as possible without waking them up (which we assumed actually hitting them with the tossed sachets would do). Once we'd run out of sachets we would sneak upstairs and tally the Milos vs the Tangs, only counting the ones that landed close enough to A to have risked waking them up. If we actually woke up A though, then well... We'd be in trouble.

Amazingly we did this for a good chunk of the night without making too much noise, and we actually ran out of sachets to throw. When we snuck up the balcony though, I was in for a shock.

My aim was both a little too good, and yet completely off target. I had been throwing all my Milo at the wrong bed assuming A was in it. Instead, our physics teacher had been buried under sachets of Milo, but had not woken up at all.

This meant two things: 1) my friend won by default, and 2) we were fucked. We picked up all the sachets that we could and brought them back downstairs, but we couldn't do anything about the Milo our teacher was still happily snoozing under, since if they woke up from us picking Milo sachets off their face there would be no explaining that.

So a few hours later (morning), our teacher woke up with Milo sachets all over them, their bed, and their luggage. Needless to say, they were very confused, but with like 10+ kids in the same house and seemingly no one with any knowledge of how that could have happened, they weren't going to bother worrying about it.

A though, A gave me the stern glare of "I know what you fucking did I just don't know how to even begin explaining this and what could possibly have compelled you to do this" look. Ultimately there was no property damage or even harm done so there was nothing really I could actually get in trouble for, it was just really, really fucking weird and nonsensical.

Even I don't know why my friend and I suddenly decided to start tossing powdered drinks up a balcony. We were simply compelled to be annoying.

[buldrokkastee]

@nenestansunsthings I would absolutely love to talk about Deepcolor some more so thank you for giving me this prime opportunity. Although I'll preface everything I'm about to say with the classic 'I am not an expert or even particularly good at the video game Arknights'. I'm not doing big brain clears and I'm usually splashing around waves 1-4 of IS3 at the highest. I get through most new and old content with the classic winning strat of big fish with big numbers.

That being said, this is what you'll need to start off on the path of being a Squid Expert. A Squexpert, if you will. Now then:

This here is going to be your perfect Deepcolor.

Obviously she isn't going to be your go-to for DPS or serious tanking or anything like that, your general use for her is going to be as an opener. With her Module it costs 11 DP to get her and her first tentacle on the field (Yes that's the same amount you could use to put Mountain down instead but that's boring) so for most stages you pop her down asap right after your flagbearer and use her summons to block the early enemies around the map until you have DP to retreat them and set down your Big Boys. Easy, cost-effective, simple.

Aside from that, her summons are decently tanky for their cost so you can also use them to bait ranged attacks or the bomb drones or kill annoying spiders in the corner of the map. She can heal them back up too with her S1 if they survive, something none of the other summoners in the game can do so far (Though most of them have a way to refresh their summons, which Deepcolor can't do without retreating and redeploying). Basically you use the tentacles as mini-Gravels. With her module you'll have seven to work with, which is more than enough to get through most maps.

In SSS she's pretty much going to be a very cheap Supporter you can drop in and retreat immediately for free transfer permits, and in Reclamation Algorithm she's good for quickly scouting out around a new map with her summons. Nothing too fancy for those game modes.

The place I bring her out the most is as a starting pick for IS3, since in the early floors you'll usually have deployment slots to spare that she can fill right up with cheap blockers until you've built up your roster a bit more. You can use her S1 in situations where you need the summons to stay in place for longer, but her S2 can also come in clutch if Gopnik the One Punch or the invisible dog show up and you need to stall. For the cost of 3 whole hope you'll have 7 funny little tentacle guys with 35% dodge (50% at M3) that can keep the bear from hell in one spot for a surprisingly long time even with terrible RNG.

She's unfortunately useless against the duck, but you can't win them all.

You'll also find a whole lot of little spots in maps where you just need something that can safely kill a spider, or bait the stun snipers, etc etc. No she won't carry you past the third floor but she'll pull her weight very well while you're starting off.

Relics Deepcolor has good and/or funny synergy with are:

Glory Pack - Congrats you now have seven stun bombs ready to go anywhere on the map.

Sui's Wrath - And now you have seven random 3K damage airstrikes waiting to drop for 3DP a pop.

Glorious Kazimierz + The Return - 35-50% dodge on all allies in her range means she can really help these bad boys proc when you need them.

Timeworn Poetry Strips - Mostly self explanatory, but also: Unlike Ling, Deepcolor's summoning is only limited by your actual deployment slots. So she can put all 7 of her tentacles down at once with this, which is mostly just very funny to see.

Hand of Flowing Water/Stalwart Aid Books- I wouldn't recommend getting her just because you got these, there are other units that use them way better. Doesn't hurt to have them though.

There aren't any specific operators I can think of off the top of my head that she has unique synergy with, since the whole point of Summoners is just to fill in gaps when they're not soloing stages. But if you put her next to Andreana in your base or on a map I'll consider it a treat for me specifically.

[fixfoxnox]

the older MW games really seem like a 'Bad Ending' style whereas the new one seems like 'Have a good ending'

Very much agree with this!

You learn like extremely quickly when playing the original trilogy that the characters you play as, are not safe. They make it clear from literally the second (third if FNG counts as a mission I can't remember) mission in the game that they are not afraid to kill any characters.

Two playable character die in the first game (to be fair one of them you "play" as for one mission and you really don't do much but still). Outside of that, they introduce you to several side characters who you grow to like only to watch them be killed as well. Griggs and Gaz's deaths happen moments apart from one another as well and there is nothing you can do about it as the player.

And the games are very harsh with the characters that they kill. They don't shy away from showing you how just like that, a character is dead. Gaz, Griggs, and Ghost all die within a few seconds. Their deaths are quick.

I believe the only two playable characters in the entire game who we know for sure live are Ramirez and Frost (I assume Price lived, but its left pretty vague considering all of his injuries).

At the end of Modern Warfare 2, we as the player had witnessed at least 6 main character deaths with 3 of those being characters we played as. Compare to the current MW2 where we've lost no main characters.

Its actually one of the reasons that I've been so surprised with how nervous people seem to be about MW3?? Like so many people are like "they're gonna kill Ghost and Gaz and Soap again!!" And like, while I do think its possible a character will die (though if what was said about mw3 supposed to be a dlc thats just getting extended then I actually think we're probably pretty safe. Idk I just feel its unlikely that they would have killed a character off in what was meant to be a dlc) I seriously doubt it will be several of them at once.

I actually think the newer games have a problem of NOT killing characters. In my opinion, the older games killed too many people (after Roach died in MW2 I feel like most of the deaths were expected), versus the newer games that seem afraid to kill anyone. As much as I hate to say it, Alex should be dead right now (please don't hate me guys I hate to say it but come on).

They've backed themselves into a corner where they've backtracked on a death already and not killed anyone, so when it comes time for a character to actually die (my bets on Soap, soz) a lot of people are going to struggle with believing if its true or not.

I think that with what they've done so far, it wouldn't hurt them to just not kill anyone off. Their fans wouldn't be mad so long as the story is satisfying. That being said, the two new games have (in my opinion) not been as good at building a story as the og trilogy. Like we're just now getting introduced to Makarov, and I do not trust that they won't try to rush the entire Makarov storyline into just one game. Like the OG games, the Makarov story should span two games in my opinion. He is THE villain of the COD MW games with his claws going all the way back into even the first game. So the fact that they didn't even really seem to start setting him up until MW2 concerns me a bit.

Now I could be wrong, they could surprise me. This was very ranty, and I apologize for that but yeah, I fully agree the newer games definitely seem to be more geared toward a "happy ending" style versus the older games which I would describe as a "bitter ending" (because while we won, we lost everyone along the way so was it really a victory?).

[sunshinecherryblossom]

Official news about Naruto's fandom... My opinions

I have to say, Naruto fandom in general will never cease to amaze me. Let's start from the beginning: remember that survey on the most loved couple in Japan as SS that we heard about with so much hype last time? Well, it turns out to be false (why am I not surprised?). There is no specific data on this poll nor is it known when and who voted; the SS simply published a screenshot of a post taken from a Japanese site but nothing else is known; there is no link or anything to access the site. Also, chatting on different forums and seeing how ships are currently rated it is highly unlikely that SS and NH are higher than KiriSuna or IchiHime, especially seeing how NH itself is received with most of the Japanese fandom complaining about Hinata as not a good mother or how there isn't enough chemistry between the two, so much so that the couple is defined as "boring". For SS the matter is a little different given that Sakura is an overly loved character, regardless of who her partner is or not but considering the disgust of the Japanese at the way she was treated after marrying Sasuke I honestly doubt it (of course, if this is a survey done only by young women who are excited by the handsome Uchiha and do not take history into account then we already have the answer to our questions). Among other things, I would like to remind everyone that to do a real survey requires a lot of time to collect data and everything, here we are talking about immediate responses from a random survey lasting a week perhaps? Remember, objectivity first and foremost. Secondly I have to say that it is always fun and ironic to see the constant wars between SS and NH even though they have both been canon for years now (like Sakura now Naruto and Hinata have also gotten their own post on the big screen in the big cities and now we have the war between who stole the idea from who and who is envious of who... right, because now these are the important news about Naruto. No the story, no the new video game with the main protagonist who eliminates himself, not a Franchise which, due to them and their closed mentalities, has been falling apart for years. No). Third, recently Boruto cards with different scenes have been made available and we have been asked to vote on the ones most requested by the fandom in general and as I suspected people are aiming for the real shonen sense with Sasuke and Naruto as the main requests and the return of the team 7 as adults (the story of Boruto and the canon couples are of no interest to anyone. People have always loved the dynamic of team 7 and it's a fact)

Last but not least, it seems that a live action of Naruto is underway apparently. I expected it after OP's success but honestly it worries me a lot. Hollywood works differently than Japan. If a character doesn't like how he is represented in the original story, the producers and directors will make sure to totally change his behavior in order to acquire more money and audiences (based on what Western fans want they will act accordingly). There can be three hypotheses at this point and it is not certain that the history of Hollywood will follow the original one. For SS (in case they see that the couple is well received then they will try to focus on their strengths i.e. anguish and dramatic tension and will try to eliminate Sakura's fangirl behavior with Sasuke. Be careful though, the same thing could happen with Karin because if the character is more liked with Sasuke than Sakura then that couple will have the spotlight). For NH, well their dynamic is not that of a typical Western fandom relationship (I tell you this from experience as I myself am part of that fandom) therefore, if the purpose of the live is to emphasize the current couples then it is possible that they will eliminate the defects of Hinata and those parts of her that may seem boring in a relationship to the public and instead will focus on her merits. In all this we must also understand whether Kishimoto himself will be involved in this work or not because it may also be that these years have served him as a lesson and he has learned from his mistakes and therefore this time it will be more for the continuation of his original story and an obvious NS final given Sakura's now well-known popularity. Or, it could also be that the live broadcast will have as its objective the main ficus of the story and therefore SasuNaruSasu and the dynamics of team 7. Many factors come into play and we don't know for sure how things will go... I don't know what to think but for sure I can say with certainty that it will not be a live action that will remedy the damage suffered to the Naruto/Boruto Franchise. What's done is done and now we have to live with it by accentuating reality and thinking about what could have been and wasn't

[burnwater13]

Image depicts three pit droids standing on a packed dirt surface looking at someone out of frame. Image from The Book of Boba Fett, Season 1, Episode 5, Return of the Mandalorian. Calendar by DataWorks.

“Once upon a time, a long, long time ago there were three little pit droids who were supposed to prepare a feast for an exalted Jedi. The first pit droid was supposed to set the table, but forgot the napkins. The second pit droid was supposed to fetch the quarrel juice, but forgot the glasses. The third pit droid was supposed to bring a dozen flash fried gorgs on a stick, but only brought three. The big bad Peli told them if they didn’t get it right next time they would be pumping out the rancor’s privy for the foreseeable future! Now get it right you three! Grogu’s depending on you!”

Peli Motto’s voice went from a soft, sweet, story telling voice to a yelling ‘Fire’ at the top of her lungs voice pretty quickly. Grogu was impressed. She had so many skills that he just hadn't considered and the pit droids seemed to be magical at bringing them all to light. He wondered which skill would be revealed next.

The pit droids, for their part, ran around and fixed everything, but not before bumping into each other, dropping stuff, and being yelled at again by Peli. Grogu would have told them to slow down, take a breath, and focus, if he could have been heard over Peli’s much louder communications, of ‘Hurry Up’, ‘I’m not getting any younger’, and ‘I’ve seen slime molds move faster than you lot’. 

Grogu wondered who Peli’s teachers had been. They must have been good at a lot of different things. She was an exceptional mechanic according to the Mandalorian. Grogu could vouch for her inspirational speech making. Fennec had commented more than once on Peli’s way with math because she seemed to always make more credits than seemed possible for the repairs she completed. Peli had commented at time that when you keep your overhead low it’s easy. 

Boba Fett had observed that when your parts came from the Jawas it was easy to keep your overhead low. Peli had replied that the Jawas were just possessed with entrepreneurial spirit unlike some other people she could mention. That’s when his dad asked if she was talking about pirates. He’d been on the receiving end of a frosty stare from her and then she shouted at the pit droids to get Daimyo’s speeder bike so they could review the work she had done. There had been enough ‘chitter, chatter’. 

The pit droids had done as she asked. The speeder bike looked better than new and she made a big production about how the Daimyo was not he receiving end of a special discount given only to her best repeat customers. When Boba Fett raised his eye brows at the total, Peli announced that Treadwell had obviously forgotten to include the Daimyo discount, the well armed business partner discount, and the Mandalorian discount. 

“It’s been nice doing business with you, Lady Motto.” 

Boba Fett shook her hand and Fennec stepped forward and made sure that nothing had happened to the Daimyo’s vambraces or gloves and that his credit purse was still in place. Peli pretended to ignore that which surprised Grogu. Someone must have given her acting lessons as well. He had once seen her chew a customer out who thought that the bill had been padded. She had been so outraged that the Mandalorian gave her some extra credits just to stop her tirade. Grogu should have recognized her acting skills then.

“Listen, kid. Why don’t you go play a game with the pit droids while I have a conversation with your dad about customer service paradigms?”

Grogu had been baffled by what she was talking about, but any invitation to spend time with the pit droids was worth the confusion. They had recently upgraded their games of ‘hide and peek’ to a version they were calling ‘hide and sneak’. They took turns hiding near Peli’s location and then sneaking in closer to listen to what she was saying and identifying who she was talking to. The winner was the droid or Grogu who didn’t get spotted, yelled at, and told to sweep the sand off the street that lead to the garage. 

Grogu had only won once. The pit droids had never won. That’s when Grogu began to wonder if perhaps Peli had spent time at the Jedi Temple. Not necessarily the one on Coruscant. But there were lots of other temples. Maybe the Monks of B’omarr had trained her to hear silence? 

“Nah, kid. My dad trained me. He didn’t stop until I could hear him sneaking out of the cantina in the middle of the night. That’s when he told me he might have taught me a little too much. But I don’t believe in too much of anything. Come on. Let’s have our lunch and then we can play some Sabacc. Who knows? I might win this time, if the pit droids don’t mess anything up while we’re playing.”

Grogu thought that was unlikely as the droids were still sweeping the streets of Mos Eisley. She had trained them really well. 

[thygoddessouijathicc]

Compiling and analyzing Dave’s reptilian qualities

Ok so I have done a lot of analysis on DSAF Dave. Like more than I probably should have given that part of his appeal is that we don’t know what the fuck this man is. As you probably know my leading theory is that he’s some kind of alien.

But let’s cast the theories relating to what Dave actually is aside for a moment, and focus more on what Dave is very heavily implied to look like.

Yes, we do get art of how he looks in the game, and that is where I am getting a lot of my evidence for what he might realistically look like, however since these depictions are drawings, all semi, but not completely realistic, some missing important details that we do know.

Dave is most comparable to a combination between a lizard and a human, more along the lines of being just a humanoid lizard rather than a fusion. I guess lizard people don’t run the government, they just work at shitty pizza places.

Now Dave being not human is one of the few things we know for sure, not only is it pretty clear that just simply deformities, even in a fictional setting, probably can’t make a person look, and function the way Dave does. Not only that but Doggo himself has stated Dave to be a Cryptid, which is not a species, rather in this context I think just means he’s an inhuman humanoid who just kind or coexists.

Now that we’ve got the not being human out of the way, let’s talk about what a hyperrealistic rendition of Dave Miller would look like, in reference to him being reptilian, comparing his physical traits to one’s that exist in the real world to paint a picture of how he’d look.

First things first, general body shape. We know from a lot of art and his sprites that Dave is rather slim, in fact, most of the cloths he wears seem to give off the impression of being too big, or at least too wide. This, alongside his coiled neck has made me see Dave as being particularly snakelike, and in fact, I think that his neck would look like the body of a snake. As for his head, while I don’t recall ever seeing it from the side, from the front it’s very humanlike, although it may be more reptilian from a side view, we just don’t know that, however I find it likely it simply is very humanlike.

As for facial features, this is where it gets more snakelike. Dave does not have visible ears (he likely has ear holes on the sides of his head), he does not have a visible nose (it could be a very narrow snakelike one), and weirdly, he doesn’t show his teeth often, but we do know Dave probably has teeth because there is one image of him in the tapes in which he had human teeth, so Dave does have human teeth. Dave’s face is also visibly wrinkled.

To get into a detail I have not yet talked about, his hands. Dave’s hands are very interesting as they are probably the part of him the most similar to a real animal that isn’t a human. Dave has long fingers, and no visible fingernails, which is important because all primates have fingernails, unlike most other species which tend to have either talons, claws, or neither. On top of not having visible fingernails his fingers also come to a sharp point.

These strange hands have an almost exactly matching real world counterpart.

The hands of a marine iguana. Of course Dave’s fingers are longer and the composition is more humanlike, but it’s not a stretch that something with hands like the marine iguana could evolve to have hands like Dave’s.

Now, the point I’ve been sort of dancing around. Dave is purple. He also has purple blood, which is not seen in reptiles but does exist, although that’s not relevant right now because his blood has absolutely nothing to do with his pigment. Dave says ingame that he has a “scaly hyde”, I believe sometime during the good route of the third game. Dave is purple because his scales are purple. Scales are a thing seen on no actual depictions of Dave, but he definitely does have them, it’s something that’s always peeved me because he’s never drawn with arguably one of his key inhuman traits. This also means that Dave probably canonically CANT grow hair due to a lack of follicles. Now the size and shape of Dave’s scales is not known but I do believe they are probably relatively small and flat to his body. Also as a side note, I take Dave’s multiple shades on his body as canon under the belief that Dave has multiple shades of purple scales.

Now, why is he purple. This question actually matters quite a lot. There are 3 possible answers. The first is camouflage, unlikely and in fact impossible unless he comes from a place in which purple is a common pigment. The second is sexual selection, specifically akin to that of the peacock, the bright colour of the male peacock is due to the females of the species finding that trait desirable for the exact reason that it’s not, since the bright colours make it easier to be spotted by predators only the strongest survive, the brighter the pigment the stronger the bird would have to be, and thus to survive with this bright pigmentation means the peacock is genetically better as a mate than ones with duller pigments because in a counterintuitive way it actually means the offspring will have more overall fitness, Dave being bright purple could be a similar strange evolutionary path. The final reason Dave could be purple is that it could potentially be a warning sign, it’s common in nature to not want to be seen so having a bright, rare pigment is never ideal, unless you WANT to be noticed as part of a survival strategy, in order to encourage larger predators to avoid eating them many animals develop not only poison or venom, but a bright colour as well, it’s less common with venom because venom is less defensive more offensive, but reptiles are rarely actually poisonous and far more likely to just have a deadly bite, and that’s not to say none employ this warning sign, I’m not saying Dave is venomous but I’m also not saying he isn’t.

This is all the reptile Dave evidence I have thus far although I may find more. Now you are all ready to invision what a realistic rendition of DSAF’s Dave Miller would look like.

[lexsnotdead]

I absolutely loved BG1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark and Neverwinter Nights 2 too are among my most favourite RPGs. But Larians writing, particularly in D:OS2 turned me off so much :( How different is BG3?

big wall of text under the cut and before anything else i want to say that criticizing a game does not equal not liking it

i thought a lot about my response to this ask, since i must admit i have never played bg&bg2 and jumped straight into the hype train of bg3. and i'm genuinely curious what exactly about dos2 turned you off that much. here's what i personally think:

i played d:os1 and d:os2 and while i'm a big fan of the latter… dos1 couldn't keep me entertained even when playing with a friend in coop, which shows just how exhaustively boring and unmemorable it was. i really love dos2 and despite what i will say next, nothing is gonna change my love for this game. but. imma be honest, it was 3 and a half characters that kept me playing. i love sebille and lohse, i love malady — the mystery around her has its own appeal, but it's still a huge miss not to expand on such intriguing character as herself. i slightly care about ifan and fane, i couldn't give a lesser fuck about beast, i fucking hate the red prince and his writing is one of most unlikable from any rpg game i ever played (i can elaborate. but that's a post for another time). in short: lack of memorable characters, and those who are there have to make up in quality rather than quantity.

and larian is still... larian. their ambition makes them bite more than they can chew, you don't need to be nitpicking on purpose to notice just now empty act 3 of d:os2 was compared to fort joy or driftwood. in similar-ish way act 3 of bg3 feels less polished in terms of performance and content. like they even had to add an alternative ending to karlach's quest only after the game's release lol. there are quite a lot of bugs and players who are doing an "evil" playthrough like me found themselves deprived of content — sometimes you're just locking yourself out of quests, encounters, characters entirely because of decisions you made, quite literally making the game harder for yourself.

another important thing that i'd point out that dos2 felt kinda lacking in terms of the character creation because ocs always felt less immersive and shallow compared to the playable origins (i had the time of my life playing as lohse, tho). i know people who managed to have fun filling the blank spaces with their imagination, but i'm not one of those people, unfortunately. when i tried creating a drow character in bg3, however, every third npcs made sure to glare at me distrustfully and be fantasy racist towards the drow. like really? thanks for noticing! this might sound weird, but i liked that. it enhanced my feeling of immersion thus making it more satisfying to play. like yeees... yes... i indeed am a drow!

i'd rather stop focusing on its shortcomings because it feels unfair to larian when they are listening to the playerbase and trying their best to deliver patches as quick as possible. after all, what makes a good dnd adventure for me is always the story and characters — banal it may be, as long as it is fun, it is a good dnd game. and bg3 is very fun and addictive. there's this unique feeling when you're planning your next playthrough and considering what you would've done differently when still doing your first. i like it more compared to dos2, because... i'm not sure why myself? interpersonal interactions just feel a bit deeper, and i actually care about almost every companion, even the ones i did not expect to care about (like gale, astarion, shadowheart). and variety of the character creation, of course. and i can bet on bg3 being next the goty haha

to sum this all up:

if you like dos:2, you will like this game

if you like dnd e5, you will also like this game

if you like bg1 and bg2 then i genuinely don't know i'm sorry

[nirvanaida]

you should say the p5 take out loud

okay. it’s not gonna be what you think though. p5 mutuals please don’t kill me but here’s the take:

in general, what makes the characters of persona 5 and persona 5 royal so interesting is how they all try to shatter the status quo. this is the main theme of the game – people realising the injustices in their society and rising up against it, rejecting the idea of “this is just how it is”. the characters embody a desire to break free from the unbalanced conventions of society, from the protagonist to the minor social links. however, there is one character who fails to live up to the standard set by the other characters; they have a weak arc, are unreflective, serve no real purpose that couldn’t be replaced by another character, and ultimately undermine the themes that persona 5 tries so hard to emphasise. a lot of people might think they know who i’m talking about here, but i might surprise you. i am not talking akechi goro.

i’m talking about makoto nijima.

makoto is hands down the worst character in the game, in my opinion, because of the above reasons. now, most people who dislike her do not do so for fair reasons – let’s be honest, it usually boils down to misogny. but i’d like to present my ideas around why makoto is such an affront to the rest of the cast in a more fair manner, without focusing on the aspects of her character (like her attitude, her interestin more “masculine” activities, her mary-sueishness, etc) that the afformentioned people focus on.

spoilers under the cut

first, when compared to the other characters in the game, makoto contributes nothing to the narrative. morgana is the link between the velvet room and the metaverse. ann and ryuji are joker’s first comrades. yusuke is the first non-shujin phantom thief. futaba has practical functions as the navigator, a link to the mental shutdowns through wakaba, and explores the idea of a palace soawning from non-evil desire. haru is used to explore goodness through selfishness as well as emphasising okumura’s death, sumire cements the ideas of the third semester, and akechi is joker’s foil. makoto’s role is supposed to be that of the tactician – the “brains of the team”. however, unlike the other characters who actively fulfill their respective jobs in the story, makoto’s “necessity” is a forced contrivance. she never displays any intelligent or deductive reasoning besides pointing out the obvious. in order to make makoto’s input seem useful, the previously competent pts are suddenly made out to be so dumb that they are amazed when makoto suggests the basic idea of forming a strategy. it’s also worth noting that after futaba’s palace or so, makoto accomplishes nothing within infiltrations. the game insists that she is a brilliant mind, but never does anything to indicate to us that this is true.

in addition to their practical roles, the pts are also used to thematically delve into the various flaws of japanese society, all of them eventually coming to the conclusion that they must reject the idea of continuing on in complacancy. in their respective awakenings, ann and ryuji work up the courage to defy kamoshida, as does yusuke madarame, haru her father, futaba her delusions, and sumire her grief. when akechi dies in the engine room, he has a similar experience in that he comes to terms with the fact that his violent spiral has lead to his death. however, makoto’s awakening is a rejection of kaneshiro, which is hardly something that radical for her character. it could have had more effect if it were someone like kobayakawa and sae who she was defying, a respected figure of authority in her life. she’s not overcoming anything when she calls out kaneshiro for extorting children. in general, makoto is all over the place when it comes to theming. it seems like they want her to realise that complacent in the suffering of others by not calling out authority figures, but again, neither her awakening nor her later actions reflect this. similarly, they focus on her trying to be “useful”, which is completely dissonant from the rest of the characters’ motivations. i ask this: what does makoto’s awakening add to the themes of the game?

if your answer is indeed to focus on how sometimes we must disobey authority to do what’s right, i would like to point out that the game does not manage to convey this theme it refuses to explore the consequences of makoto’s noncompliance. Yes, she refuses to name the phantom thieves in her report to kobayakawa, but her life continues on as normal despite this. she keeps her high grades, her student council presidency, her university prospects, and we see no effect of her abandonment of the reference letter having a strain on makoto and sae’s relationship. yes, she champions the idea of changing sae’s heart (although… not really, akechi suggests it first), but there is no confronttion between the two sisters in the end. she has overcome a non-difficulty, so how has she overcome anything at all? when we compare this to what the other pts lose for their refusal of society – a working leg, a best friend, a guardian, a safety net, a father, vengence, peace of mind – makoto’s arc pales in comparison. so the fact that the narrative treats it with the same gravitas as the others’ is a travesty.

furthermore, in some ways makoto undermines the themes of the game. reflecting on oneself is something that is emphasised by the narrative – most of the character at somempoint realise that they have been lacking in some regard, both in the complacency to society and within their social link. makoto never really reflects on herself, however. she is an incredibly flawed character, but the game and herself refuse to acknowledge this. for example she appears as a character who finds satisfaction in being better than others. she is incredibly demeaning towards ryuji, she wishes to solve kaneshiro’s case by herself (or at least be the one to provide the crucial evidence), she emphasises her “mental superiority” at every chance possible, she is desperate to prove that she knows better than eiko in her social link, she delights in one-upping akechi in the interrogation room, etc. most attrociously, when ann suggests that makoto, as student council president and thus one responsible for student wellbeing, may share some blame for kamoshida’s abuse, makoto turns the blame on ann, saying that she should have known shiho would attempt suicide. most people say that makoto’s decision to become a cop is out of character, but it’s sadly not. makoto’s refusal to reflect on how the pts ended up where they were, her refusal to actually examine herself as a character, her insistence in her superiority that she can fix a broken system… it all leads to the same place. now, none of this makes makoto a “bad” character (aside from the cop part /hj) – if anything, it makes her more interesting. however, makoto is more often than not portrayed as in the right for her actions. aside from at the very beginning, she is never challenged, never reflects, never acknowledges her flaws.

makoto could so easily be replaced by a variety/combination of characters, and the game would be better. akechi would have been a better it for the kaneshiro arc, even if it may have been more difficult to incorporate. futaba or morgana could handle affinities. akechi could work as the connection to sae, or sae herself. and i wish it was different! i wish that makoto contributed something, i wish she was interesting, i wish she was more than what she is. but she’s not. and it annoys me when people insist otherwise.

[surreality51]

Hi, I just wanted to say your ask to Emungere is the reason I have fallen in to the Fedal rabbit hole - so thank you!! I would NEVER have looked them up if I'm not following the Hannibal fandom and her Tumblr. I know next to nothing about tennis in real life but two days ago I saw the hand holding and shirtless posts (among others) from you...My heart just goes to Rafa :D I am now completely converted and wanted to read/watch everything about them. Any suggestions where I should start? Thanks!

Welcome, anon!

I just joined two months ago myself, so I'm new too, but so far everyone on tennisblr has been lovely. I've also delved headlong into Fedal, and there is a ton of great content you can sink your teeth into. I'll put everything I know in this long post, but tennis mutuals feel free to jump in with more recs!

Tumblr peeps

Cool people to follow on tumblr <-everyone on @hubillusion's list is awesome

@tennisandlife is another awesome blog to follow, even though they stopped posting in 2020. I literally spent 3 hours going through their archive, there is SO MUCH quality Fedal content.

@tennis-out-of-context is also fun, although it's not exclusively Fedal content.

Books on Federer and/or Nadal

Rafa: My Story by Rafael Nadal and John Carlin. A must-read for any Rafa fan. Rafa in his own words, through 2011. What I love most is getting Rafa's insights into his own game, his approach and preparation for matches, his journey.

The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer by Christopher Clarey. Probably the most comprehensive Federer biography to date, published in August 2021. Clarey traces the development of Federer from boyhood to 2020 in an attempt to figure out the how and why of Federer. Along the way you get a lot of insights into Roger's game, his team, but Roger himself still remains somewhat inscrutable and untouchable. Not unlike the man himself. If you contrast this to the confessional approach in Rafa, where you actually get into Rafa's head, you could make the argument that the distance in The Master is due to the difference between biography vs autobiography, but I also think it's very fitting for Rafa's personality vs Roger's. Still, given the challenge of the task, Clarey does a commendable job in attempting to unravel Federer. A must-read for any Roger fan.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal: The Lives and Careers of Two Tennis Legends by Sebastian Fest (2018). This was the third book I read, and I assumed that it would retread much of the content from the other two books, but I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, the book rehashes many of the key moments in their rivalry, such as Wimbledon 2008, but it also covers a lot of the behind-the-scenes things that the other two books don't--things like the ATP Players Council and Roger/Rafa's political fallout in 2011-12, Rafa's knee injuries and treatments, how the anti-doping measures impact players, etc. A good supplement that gives an interesting view into the challenges of being a professional tennis player.

I haven't read the following yet, but I'm hoping to get my hands on them soon:

Roger Federer: The Biography by Rene Stauffer

The Roger Federer Effect: Rivals, Friends, Fans and How the Maestro Changed Their Lives by Simon Cambers, Simon Graf

Fedegraphica: A Graphic Biography of the Genius of Roger Federer by Mark Hodgkinson

(I love Rafa, but you can probably guess which half of Fedal comes out on top for me)

Fanfics

I'm not going to recommend specific fics, but rather favorite writers on AO3. Any Fedal from these writers is awesome, you can't go wrong.

Mystivy - everything from mystivy is the best. I just finished reading the "Joy" series, which is simply beautiful. Only parts 1 and 2 are written; part 3 looks like it was never posted so it's technically an incomplete series. 

emungere - you know emungere, so no need for me to explain how amazing her writing is. "Wild Card" is the fic I needed when I first dived into Fedal. You must be logged in on AO3 to view emungere’s tennis rpf.

rilla - "The Long Experience of Love" is probably my favorite Fedal fic overall, even though it's an abandoned WIP.

Serenade - mostly ficlets, but each one is incredibly insightful and makes you go "oof."  “Tennis Is Not A Game You Play Alone” has my favorite line from any Fedal fic: Rafa met his gaze, dark eyes unreadable. "I would rather lose to you," he said, "than win everything in a world where you never exist."

eliane - I haven’t actually read any of eliane’s fics but I’ve seen multiple recs, so this is next on my to-read list. Must be logged in to read on AO3.

louise_lux - I also haven’t read any of louise_lux’s solo work, but I read the joint fics she co-wrote with emungere and they were fuckin’ hot. Also on my to-read list.

Video

Strokes of Genius - feature-length documentary of the 2008 Wimbledon final. You can find it on YouTube (here's one link but not sure it works. I watched it on these links: part 1, part 2, part 3) Also the Rafa and Roger bonus features.

Rafael Nadal Academy - 4-episode documentary series on Amazon Prime. Takes you into the daily life and operations of Rafa’s tennis academy in Manacor. You meet the staff there and follow the stories of 8 students who are pursuing their tennis dreams. And of course you see Rafa in the episodes too, but it’s primarily about the academy. I wish they would do a season 2.

The bazillion videos from 2017, 2019, and 2022 Laver Cup on YouTube. Fedal played doubles in 2017 and 2022, and were supposed to play doubles in 2019 but Rafa got a wrist injury.

Roger Federer: Everywhere Is Home: documentary of Federer’s 2019 Latin America exhibition tour, produced by ESPN: Vimeo

Roger Federer: The Reunion: documentary of the 2020 Match in Africa charity exhibition match with Rafael Nadal. Available for rent or purchase on Vimeo

NBC/Credit Suisse documentary about the art installation project that Roger was part of: Portrait of a Champion

Rafa Nadal Academy’s Instagram has tons of videos and photos of Rafa as well. Here’s a video about when Roger visited the Academy for its grand opening in October 2016. You can find other videos from the grand opening on YouTube, like the press conference and speeches.

I want to say that there’s a 20-min or 40-min documentary about Federer vs Nadal in the 2017 Australian Open produced by AO Films or something like that, but I can’t find it now. :( Maybe other tennisblr folks can help? Found it!

YouTube also has highlights or full matches online. I recommend 2008 Wimbledon final, 2017 Australian Open final, and 2019 Wimbledon semifinal, and their associated press conferences/interviews.

Miscellaneous

ASAP Sports Transcripts does the English transcripts of pre & post-match press conferences for multiple sports, including tennis. Here’s the archive of Federer’s press conference transcripts and here’s Nadal’s.

Rafa’s diary from his old website (copied by someone on LiveJournal for posterity). 

I read somewhere that Rafa wrote a couple of tour diaries or blogs for the ATP tour way bay when as well, but I can’t find them. Tennis mutuals, any help? Is that the same as the link to Rafa’s diary from his old website?

Rafa Nadal Fans website - I haven’t really looked at this, but at first glance it looks like a ton of Rafa content.

Stalk Follow them on official social media accounts for Roger, Rafa, Severin Luthi, Rafa Nadal Academy, etc.

Tons of interviews and articles from major publications such as New York Times, Sports Illustrated, GQ, you name it. Just google “Roger Federer cover story” or “Rafael Nadal interview.” There’s also the tons of interviews and articles in Spanish, French (L’Equipe), German (Blick, Tages-Anzeiger), etc, some of which you can translate on Google Translate.

[ideahat-universe]

Youtube's insane war with Adblock

Anti Adblock has been the bane of any casual website viewing experience and any website I visits that had those banners is typically written off entirely, and now Youtube is one of them but they take it to a whole nother level. Apparently on the Ublock reddit. They have to routinely change up how they block the banner every couple of days and by extension, you will have to update your ublock every couple of days for it to work and may have to only use Ublock because it can conflict with other blockers.

How did we get here? Oh right, every multi million dollar corporation keeping the lights on with advertisements. Advertisements so bad the our governments actually consider it a good idea to have ad block on because advertisements are a hotbed for malware to speak nothing of deepfakes or outright scam ads that the FTC considers too small a problem to get rid of.

I mean ever since Ross from the game dungeon released his video where he said that Games as a Service are Scams I've been workshopping basically the same sentiment for advertisements.

Companies sell ad space with no expectation that customers will click on the ads, only that for all intents and purposes, they presented the ads to you and are thus owed money for providing that service.

Advertisers dump tens of thousands of dollars just so the advertisement can be clicked on with the possible chance of making a sale as that's the only way to actually get a return on the investment of the advertisement in the first place.

After all a really great product doesn't even need an advertising budget per se. Word of mouth is so powerful, hell, a 7-10 review of a product from a random youtuber generates more attention and sales than a million dollar super bowl advertisement. As long as you get the right Youtuber it's way more cost effective to not have traditional ad spaces.

Not that sponsors are free from guilt. Sponsors are often scams as well. There's been more than a couple sponsored products that were scams but unlike Youtube/Google which can sell ad space to con artists and never suffer an issue, one video from Scott Schafer can convince the youtube community to effectively deplatform a bad product or service.

I mean Raid Shadow Legends still falls through the cracks but it's better than nothing.

But I've been preparing for this, actually a few people have. Louis Rossman has been working on some Manhattan project called Grayjay that will bring multi platform streaming all under one app.

There are of course other streaming platforms with different, more affordable hosting methods as well as ways to monetize content that hopes to not make the same mistakes Youtube makes with budgeting.

There's my method which is downloading every video you think you'll ever want to watch more than once, putting it on a single hard drive and then using some server hosting service like Plex and you just stream your own content to yourself (which by the way is really affordable to do as long as you are okay with 1080p to 360p as higher resolutions on very long videos like streams will soak up a lot of space for what is just one video).

A third method is installing Linux on a machine and gain access to some linux exclusive apps like Freetube which removes the bad aspects of Youtube and only has the videos as well as sponsorblock with no ads to boot (you won't be able to block content though and there's no algorithm so you better know what you want to find because you are on your own for real).

The last method is Vanced. It was supposed to be dead but like a building that's closed 11 months in a year, it sprung to life one day and now lives although you will have to have a android device and learn the side loading method to get it really working.

I've been saying this about Youtube and Twitter X for awhile now but you really should consider a future where Youtube doesn't exist, companies are tightening their budgets across the board, once the advertising firm gets slashed basically everything dependent on it will evaporate. Not enough people will ever use Youtube Red to keep the lights on for Youtube as Youtube's budget is constantly scaling and impossible to price in.

The lost media Youtube will create when it shudders is beyond your comprehension.

[nitrosodiumofficialuses]

Music Games Investigation

This time, I have broader genres. Any game that uses music or sound in an interesting way, for my purposes, is a "music game".

Friday Night Funkin - This is a game I was obsessed with back in 2021. It's a prototypical falling-arrows rhythm game, with the funky counterculture aesthetic of late 2000s Newgrounds. You know, Madness Combat, Pico's School, all of that. Mechanically, it's nothing special, but a few of the tracks really stand out, and the levels have interesting gimmicks - Week 3 has a rushing train to throw you off, and Week 7 takes place in an active warzone, with soldiers running about and tanks rumbling across the screen, further blocking your arrows. The fanbase is... difficult, it seems they can't go a week without ending up with a mod cancellation or some new drama. But, mechanically, it's fine. I'm no way near as good as I used to be at it, but sometimes I still open it up and play a round or so.

Metal Hellsinger - I've only seen a little of this game, but it looks really sick. You enter Hell with a cool sword, and then you kill demons to the beat of heavy metal, starring actual metal singers. I don't know what else to say; it's pretty distilled, no real bloat or feature creep. You can do combos and executions, and the longer you kill on beat for, the more your combo meter increases. Interestingly, unlike a lot of music games, the focus isn't on going at ludicrous speeds, it's about staying on beat, so the character is actually pretty slow.

Hi-Fi Rush - I've heard of this game, but I honestly knew nothing about it until today. All I know is it's a rhythm game and possibly a JRPG, and it stars a cat, and it's all really stylised and cel-shaded. After watching a few videos, I've found it's pretty cool! It's some sort of third-person action game, where everything in the world is tied to the beat - screens flash, trees bob, and enemies move according to the music's BPM. You also have to attack, using elaborate combos and moves to the game's alt-rock soundtrack. Everything in the environment just pops with colour; it's a very bright game, taking you from lava pools to gigantic robot factories. It seems like something I'd actually enjoy, to be honest.

Also, here's a quick look at dynamic soundtracks. The first one I'll look at is the hi-tech hack n' slash Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Apart from having some of the best music in the Metal Gear series, the music is sort of dynamic. In boss fights, it loops the bridge of the song until you get to a point where you can critically wound the boss, at which point, the chorus flares up, perfectly timed with you slicing a chunk off your current cybernetic foe. Once you've cut them down to low health, the lyrics kick in. It's so amazing. Doom 2016 had a similar system, where the music would fast-forward to a high-octane segment when you got into combat, and the beat would loop until you were at a point in combat where the beat would drop. The earliest dynamic soundtrack I know of is System Shock. Different parts of the soundtrack would be louder/quieter, higher/lower pitch based on your current health, SHODAN's grip on the floor you were on, whether you were in combat, and a bunch of other features. Thing is, nobody noticed it, and so they removed it for System Shock 2.