#what a shameful first platinum trophy....

[ububunes]

Anyways I finished psychedelicha of the black butterfly... Like a week ago? Man I'm slow...

Anyways. Spoilers if... Literally anybody cares about this game. It was truly mid up until the very end but I have to give it some credit for that. Content warning for child death, attempted SA, some baked in misogyny (from the game), and gaslighting (from Karasuba). Now time for:

Basic character info

Beniyuri/MC/Ai

She's the heroine and because of that, she's kind of lacking in personality. Maybe. I'm sorry, at a certain point I started skipping through the side stories... But in the main story she's mostly defined by her willingness to help, her honesty, gullibility, and her fear. She's got some trauma and is fairly stuck in the past.

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Yamato/Takuya

If you went to his TV tropes page, I'm 95% sure he would have something like "Needs a hug". They aren't wrong, honestly. He's got a short temper and is almost always fighting with Karasuba. His favorite sport is soccer and when he was a kid he would "tease" (frankly, semi-bully at times) MC because he had a crush on her. Don't do that in real life. Monshiro's twin brother.

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Karasuba/Aki(to?)

My least favorite! He just keeps finding new ways to try and get MC to himself, and will not stop making very uncomfortable advances before calling them jokes. He is the character who figured out Hikage first though, and by his good ending he decides to work on himself and improve with MC. Still not redeemed but congrats! He would get upset if you followed any other dudes on social media, get anxious if you make even a slightly too long phone call or look at your texts too long. Would also beg for your PIN and get sad if he wasn't your lock screen AND homescreen. No thaaaanks.

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Hikage

Look. This image just goes so hard I HAVE to show it in it's full unaltered glory. He's the evil big bad and tricked the entire cast blah blah yeah he's basic as hell. He's also misogynistic! If I hear him talk about how all women are weak one more time, I frankly might just break down. He's like. So generic anime bad guy that I can't hate them for it, they're just following the assignment.

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Kagiha/Natsuki

This dudes dead! He's been dead since he was like, eight actually. I'm not sure how ethical it truly is to date him but I also am too tired to care. He's another of the least favs anyways. He made a promise to marry MC when they were kids and man is this dude taking it way too far. I have no idea what his plan is if he 'comes back to life' like Hikage promised since he's been presumed dead for ten years... He's also working with Hikage.

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Monshiro/Kazuya

Again I'm frankly not too sure on how ethical it would be to date him. He's been in a coma for ten years, since AROUND age 7. He leans on MC for comfort and has been wandering the mansion for ten years waiting to give MC her ribbon back. I don't know what else to say about him, he's not that fleshed out imo... Yamato's twin brother

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Usagi

Truly the most underdeveloped character. She's Hikage's little sister and the reason he's insane. I would ask her to get him to therapy or to be his therapist but there aren't any therapists here and if he saw her face he would genuinely lose it.

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The story is honestly pretty much summed up as "repressed memory trauma with otome game action and shooting segments." I'm sure it can be explained better than that but if I'm being honest I'm already starting to forget details. Whoops.

My favorite endings have to be the Yamato true end, the best ending/common route ending (it's literally just called "best end" on the flowchart, I don't know what to tell you), and the secret ending. I find it kind of strange that Hikage and Kagiha (whose names I continually mix up. I'm not very good with names) only have one ending each. I guess you could could the singular bad ending, which is also an honorable mention just for being there and being kind of awful if you accidentally trigger it, as an ending for Hikage since it's (probably) his book, but that sounds lame and doesn't completely check out. I guess you can also count the best ending as Kagiha's true ending but again, seems cheap? But also way better than his default ending where you seemingly lose your mind in the mansion and live in "happy married bliss" with Kagiha.

Probably also a good time to mention that Hikage and Kagiha are both dead.

Basically the whole story goes as follows

The main characters (minus Hikage) go to a summer camp at around ages 6-8. They get warned not to go to the lake because weather changes quickly in the mountains (where the summer camp was, I guess.) They go to the lake, find an abandoned mansion and start exploring, find some glass shards that ARE lore important, just ten years from now. Anyways it starts to rain incredibly hard and the kids desperately try to get to the shore and back to camp. Unfortunately MC and Monshiro both get swept under the water. Kagiha rescues MC first, then Monshiro who is still comatose from the accident ten or so years later. Kagiha ends up drowning and his body is never found*

(*His body is found in the common route ending, but I don't remember any mentions of it in any other endings.)

Ten or so years later, Karasuba, Yamato, and MC meet again after Karasuba and Yamato moved, following the accident. MC is still pretty torn up about Kagiha's death, partially from guilt, and semi-refuses to talk about it. Yamato has been visiting his brother in the hospital every day, also from guilt. Karasuba moved on, and was more concerned with becoming stronger since he could only stand and stare as MC and Monshiro drowned. They go on a Fun Bus Ride!™️ And plummet off the side of a cliff after the driver... Falls asleep? Gets hit by mother nature? I dunno.

They end up comatose and in a mansion that's in a place between life and death. They have to find the shards of a magical kaleidoscope so they can return to earth and Hikage can get his wish fulfilled. Frankly uninteresting romance happens. Yamato turns into a monster and then partially back. This all sounds cool when simply laid out but when you're playing the game multiple times and the slowness of the max speed of the skip button starts to hit? Maaaaaan it sucks. It also makes some sections of the game unintentionally funny because while voices don't play during skip mode, sfx do and it's kind of hard to take Hikage seriously when he's in his evil mode but his walking sounds like someone chopping veggies really fast.

One aspect that really disappointed me was that there was only one real (labeled) bad ending. There are no endings where you all end up trapped in the psychedelicha forever because you can't find the last shard, there's no ending where you give up, no ending where, in a mansion with deadly and aggressive monsters in it, you get killed. That might sound weird and honestly maybe it is but the one bad ending simply being a choice of whether you open a book (bad end) or not (you get to continue playing) feels out of place. Yes some of the characters endings can absolutely be counted as bad ends but... They don't get you the achievement that triggers when you get the 'Bud' ending. (I am unsure as to why it is called that.)

The true endings are all nice. Again Yamato's feels the nicest simply because he gets to apologize to his brother and make amends. He also gets reassurance that no, he isn't an awful person just because he made an admittedly very awful decision as a child.

Karasuba gets shown that he's kind of awful and gets to grow into a better person with MC. Good luck with the relationship.

Monshiro gets to give MC her ribbon back and also gets told that no, you didn't deserve to die instead of Kagiha. Good for him. I'm still conflicted.

The additional scenes unlocked after certain endings were nice too. Seeing Karasuba confront Hikage about his identity was honestly really cool. Seeing what Hikage was up to scheming before the games events was nice. Seeing Kagiha and Monshiro interact was neat, especially since they don't really do that very much. Plus it adds lore.

And finally... The secret ending. You get to make the choice of actually staying in the mansion during the summer camp, keeping everyone safe and alive. It's definitely a nice addition after spending this whole game in danger and having to deal with issues. I honestly had started to wonder why they didn't do that. Like yes they're kids but... None of them had thought of it? Damn. Being able to not traumatize MC was great. Having to deal with four clingy guys? Not so much.

Here's the complete in game flowchart if anybody was curious as to what it looked like!

In conclusion.... Yeah no I can't completely recommend this game. It kind of sucks, it's vita exclusive (I think?), and one of the mechanics forced on you (the butterfly hunt mini games) are kind of jank and annoying to replay and replay for points. And again this game is exceptionally mid. Not good mid, not bad mid, just true neutral mid. Anyways, remember: hooray! Hooray! Beniyuri-chan! Hooray! Hooray! Kagiha-kun!

[prototypelq]

I'm not into the Burning Shores hype for a number of reasons:

- Game studious absolutely shouldn't make main game cross-generation and then have DLC be available only on new consoles.

I have been heavily burned by DA: Inquisition (which I first played through on a xbox 360 (intense flashbacks to 10 min loading screens I am not kidding here)) and the Trespasser DLC (which was basically a Final Chapter+Epilogue to the main story that was, for some freakin reason, cut into a DLC) which was only available to new consoles and PC.

I was very surprised and happy HFW came out on PS4, thank you Guerilla. But I will shame you and Sony for locking out Burning Shores for older generation.

- I did not like the direction of the story in FW, and even more so in Burning Shores. For me Horizon was and will be about tribal people surviving in a very dangerous world against metal dinos. Space people in spandex trivialise the amazing designs of machines and fights against them, and makes the whole thing look like child's play. I do not like the space opera direction, so a DLC that is marketed as 'Aloy goes to Hollywood' is not appealing to me at all.

- Aloy gets a new Quen follower(?). This is probably nitpicking, but the followers in the main game a very much underdeveloped (except maybe Kotallo), and I wish we got more time with them instead (Beta especially, she was a trophy more than a character in the story, and needs much much more time to be compelling).

- if they revive a Horus and Aloy gets to fight it....I have no freakin idea how to come back from that. Horus is THE manifestation of catastrophy, fear and inevitable doom in Horizon. The main vista you can see from the Embrace in the opening hours of the first game is an enormous Metal Devil that these people have built an entire religion upon. You get smacked around by simple watchers, you Cannot fight that monstrosity.

The Gravehoard mission is my favourite because it shows you a small portion of the horrors the 21 century humans had to live and die through, and it leaves you shocked and terrified to your core.

Seeing the lands of the West be Plagued by these horrible monstrocities kept me unnerved the entire time (and I had a great time exploring FW).

...basically I have a lot of feels about Horuses and how menacing they are, and if we get to see one functional (and not just hear a small fraction of the horrible noises they make as in black boxes) and kill it then all these feeling of dread they symbolise and stand for are trivialised, and it's story-wise a point of no return for the Horizon. Metal Devils? Not a problem now, but space barbies? Oh, space barbies are the horrible antagonist we all should be afraid of.

- where is the tomato husband content guerilla please, erend had better characterisation in the trailers for forbidden west than he actually had in-game

Sorry if this sounds very negative. I'm a huge fan of Horizon, but I love it for different reasons (amazing tribes with interesting cultures and music, incredible machine design, beautiful world that has grown from the apocalyptic and hopeless horror of the previous one, very fun monster hunter game)

than what it is morphing into (space opera with universal stakes, sony new epic about, powerful heroine fantasy).

p.s. gotta return to the game to finish that platinum and learn to play strike. It seemed genuinely fun, and I adore the small wooden figurines.

[saintoji]

summary - osamu is convinced that you belong with him and not his brother. now it was just all about showing you that.

pairing - miya osamu x f!reader, atsmu miya x f!reader.

warnings - non-con scenario, pseudo-incest (osamu is your brother-in-law), slow burn, smut, abuse(the better twin isn’t that nice in this one), cheating (NTR), unrequited love, best friend Osamu in denial and pining, mentions of body shaming and weight insecurities, alcohol consumption, unhealthy relationship, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it, kids),mentions blood, slight GASLIGHTING, headspace scenarios (?), an unhealthy amount of pining, size kink, nicknames (he calls you pretty thing, cockwhore and slut), attempt at recording w/o consent, open ending (I couldn’t resist, sorry<3)

word count - 7, 160.

a/n - this fic is a repost. not beta'd.

NOTE -

This fic is a part of the Haikyuu HQ Server’s Collab Fic! You can find the masterlist of the same here!

Check out other authors and their contributions to the collab as well!

The prompt given for the collab is:-

“I wonder what he’d do if he knew you were with me right now.”

You were his first.

You’re smiling at him - his brother; his asshat of a brother who’s supposedly the elder out of the duo.

He smiles right back at you, eyes creasing up gracefully to show how happy he is with you.

You were his first love.

The rings are slipped onto the couple’s fingers - an elegant diamond ring on nimble ones and a platinum band on his.

The priest permits the newlyweds to seal their marriage with a kiss. Atsumu dips you down gently, making you giggle in delight. His lips crash with your own, making the crowd gathered around you cheer in joy at the completion of the holy union.

Osamu tried to fix his tie without avail. The people are too loud, the bride looked too happy to be with someone like him and Atsumu-

He’s relishing his sweet victory.

The title of ‘Best Man’ has been wrongfully donned on him by his brother, for Miya Osamu wished nothing more than for his brother to drop dead and set you free from this sham of a marriage.

And you were supposed to be his last.

But now you are his brother’s - till death do you part.

Or so those sickening vows of yours said.

Your marriage falls apart real soon though.

Osamu is not surprised, but he had to commend Atsumu’s ability to not let his volleyball career overshadow his new bride - for the first 3 months at least.

Competition season comes by in a breeze and you are left alone to rot at home as a trophy wife - because clearly, your husband earned more than you ever did at your 9 to 5 white-collar job.

'And moreover, wouldn’t you prefer not being stressed out by your shady coworkers?’

Or so Atsumu had said to you. And look at you now, bored out of your mind - dumbly switching channels to land it on a cooking show.

You have finished the chores of the day, always do first thing in the morning - a die hard habit you had inherited from your mother. The dishes were the easiest because you only cook for one, except for that one time Osamu visited and brought you some food from his own restaurant. It was nice; the stifling silence was easier to bear with Osamu silently eating by your side.

“Come over to my shop”, he had said before leaving you alone in the cold apartment that was once your home.

Osamu was kind enough to invite you over to his establishment during the day. You didn’t hesitate to come over from time to time.

Free Boba and good food, alongside kind employees who were willing to entertain you in your need of boredom…..

What more could you ask for?

When your husband has been missing your calls and barely texting you at ungodly hours, you really cannot be greedy enough to exercise the freedom to choose, can you?

Things seemed livelier in the shop ever since you had decided to come in daily.

Some days you wear those tight blue jeans that make your butt look good with cute frilly tops. You get free Boba, courtesy to your kind brother in-law. You order sashimi on those days, Osamu had noticed. Maybe to avoid letting your stomach bloat in those little blouses of yours.

Osamu loved resting his head on your soft tummy after practice ended. You would always end up stroking his silver locks softly as you’d read out your Keats and Shelley out loud; if he caught you on a good day, he’d request you to read Murakami’s stories too.

On others, you barged in as early as 7 am. Red hoodie and grey sweatpants covered your body on windy days when you went out on a walk around the block and back. Those days you end up ordering miso soup only. Osamu wonders if Atsumu’s inability to shut up had caused your insecurities to act up again.

He remembers seeing you cry after visiting the school doctor on days allotted for physical examination. Even now he wouldn’t hesitate to break the very jaws of people who took one look at the scale and decided that you were not worthy of respect - worthy of love.

And then there were days such as today. You had dressed up in a yellow sundress with white flowers printed on it. Your hair were clean and freely moved in the air from each bob of your head. You smiled as brightly as the sun outside, just brightening up the Miya Onigiri establishment with your mere presence.

These were the days he loved the most. You looked almost like the best friend he used to have - the woman he fell in love with before you decided to confide in him about your ever-growing crush on his brother and falling for him - which eventually led to where both of you are now.

You, unhappily married.

Him, still pining.

You chatted lively with Misaki, a new employee they had hired only a week or two ago, ordering a hefty meal of their assorted sushi and their famous onigiri rice balls for brunch.

After the rush hours were over (which was around 4 pm), Osamu took it upon himself to deliver your order of Boba tea himself with a kind smile on his face.

He saw you typing away on your laptop; apparently, you had taken it upon yourself to find a job after staying cooped up in Atsumu’s empty penthouse for weeks on end - at the moment, you were just applying for jobs and taking up freelance projects to fill in the hours.

“Here’s your order”, he startled you with his quiet voice, making you jump slightly in your seat.

You whipped your head back, calming down at the sight of his gentle smile he had reserved only for you. You smile back brightly, kind and thankful, to your best friend.

Is that all he ever will be to you?, he wondered, as he watched you sip happily from your sweet beverage in hand.

“You seem happy today”, he mused, admiring the long lost sparkle return in your eyes again.

“What’s the occasion?”

He really shouldn’t have asked you that.

Turns out it was your and Atsumu’s first year wedding anniversary today. As soon as you mentioned that, you started gushing over your husband - talking about how much you miss his brother and how you couldn’t wait to see him after so long.

Osamu felt sick to his stomach.

He was gonna throw up.

He left you to your sunshine thoughts, deciding on checking on today’s inventory and accounts instead.

Maybe then he would stop thinking about you.

It was time to close up the shop.

The patrons of Miya Onigiri started leaving as soon as the first flickers of stars in the darkening sky was visible to the human eyes.

Misaki had left the shop as soon as the clock had struck 5, eager to return to her dormitories before the dark settled in. You volunteered to escort her there, already planning on leaving for home and getting ready for your anniversary date later tonight with Atsumu.

Miya Osamu may not admit it to anyone, but the sight of you leaving the shop - leaving him behind, made him bite his tongue hard enough to make it bleed.

He had to rush into the kitchen to get rid of the coppery tang of blood in his mouth.

It was almost 10 pm by the time he finished the kitchen inventory, keeping in mind the things he has to order later on in the following week.

A sudden thumping against the restaurant’s door broke his focus from the clipboard he held tightly in his hands. Deciding to drop it onto a table nearby, Osamu finally discarded the apron that had been tied around his waist. Cracking a few of his bones and stretching for a minute, he slowly stalked his way across the threshold of his shop.

In the time it took him to reach the door, the knocking outside had incessantly increased, causing Miya’s ears to ring. He flung the door open, desperate for the unpleasant noise to stop; he did not need someone to bother him just as he was about to leave-

And the open door revealed you, in a gorgeous red dress with a thigh slit, tears running down your eyes.

“Y/n, I-”, he never got a chance to finish his sentence before you engulfed him in a hug, wetting his black t-shirt with your heavy tears, sobbing into his neck.

It didn’t take him long to lock bring you inside, locking the door behind him.

You shivered on the plush sofa seat in Osamu’s office. You didn’t think it would be possible for him to create a space for himself in Onigiri Miya, given the space. But anything is possible when it comes to Miya Twins, apparently.

You snuggled into the jacket Osamu had draped over your shoulders, thankful for the warm piece of clothing protecting you from the cold nipping air. Your tears have long since dried and you’re grateful that you used waterproof makeup, or else you’d have looked akin to a circus clown.

“I brought food”, Osamu entered the office, with a tray in his hand. Settling beside you onto the sofa, he gently placed the tray in front of you.

You knew that Osamu was not too fond of Continental food, but for your sake, he had made some pasta - your favorite kind with the sauce you always preferred whenever you would dine out with the Inarizaki Volleyball Team for their victories.

However, you were confused at the sight of two empty glasses placed beside your plates. Osamu shuffled around, pulling out a bottle of Chat Noir from his liquor cabinet.

“Drinks?”, he asked, already filling the glasses up with red liquid, “I think you need that, especially if we’re gonna talk about my stupid brother screwing things up today”.

You nodded, picking up and swirling your glass around. You sighed as you took in a whiff of it.

It smelled like sweet heaven and relief.

After sipping from your glass, you began:

“Atsumu stood me up”.

Hours have passed by and if you peered outside, you could hardly see the street lights glimmering dimly outside, illuminating the concrete road for the latecomers to travel.

Your conversation with your brother-in-law had wrung dry all the tears your soul had wanted to weep over the months. He had provided you what Atsumu had failed to supply you with after you got married to him. He made you feel needed.

You felt important. You felt like you mattered.

Waltzing onto your wobbly feet, you finally asked your companion to excuse you and shakily make your way to the washroom. Quickly you relieve yourself into one of the stalls located in the women’s restrooms, you marvel at how dutifully clean this place was, despite its many patrons visiting.

In comparison to your messy husband (you were still irked at him shirking you on your anniversary), your best friend’s workplace was immaculate. It seemed as if running this place took a lot of elbow grease from Osamu, despite its many employees.

Wiping your wet hands dry, you reach inside your Chanel purse (courtesy of Atsumu canceling yet another date night three weeks ago) to take out your lip-gloss when you finally notice your silent phone buzzing with multiple ignored notifications.

All of them were from Atsumu.

Quickly unlocking them, you begin reading multiple texts sent by your husband dearest.

[sent at 18:14] Tsumu❤️: I’m sorry, sweetcheeks. Practice is running late. Don’t wait up.

[sent at 19:50] Tsumu❤️: Can you order some takeout for me from that sushi place we visited a while back?

[sent at 20:21] Tsumu❤️:Shit, sweetheart! I’m so sorry I forgot! Hang in there for a minute! I’m omw rn

[sent at 21:07] Tsumu❤️: Baby….where are you? I’m at the restaurant but I cannot find you anywhere…..

[sent at 21:11] Tsumu❤️: Haha, baby. Very funny. I get it, okay? I’m sorry I forgot. I’m sorry that I came here only when Omi-kun reminded me. Just stop hiding and come on out, please.

[sent at 21:12] Tsumu❤️: I wanna make it up to you, baby. Please let me do that at least. I owe you that much.

[sent at 21:28] Tsumu❤️: I’m going home. Call me when you grow the fuck up.

[sent at 21:48] Tsumu❤️: WHERE ARE YOU

[sent at 21:53] Tsumu❤️: Okay, Y/N. I’m begging you rn. Just please come out. I wanna see you. I miss you so much, baby. Lemme see you this once.

[sent at 22:02] Tsumu❤️: Baby, just text me. I’ve called everyone. You’re not at your family’s. Yer friends got not a clue. Please just lemme know you’re okay.

[sent at 22:34] Tsumu❤️: I hope wherever you are, you’re safe. I’m sorry for being such a shitty husband. I’ll be staying up if you decide to come by. I’ve made katsudon if you wanna eat with me. Please give me a chance to make it up to you. I love you. <3

Checking the time in your phone, you realize that the last text from him was almost an hour ago. There were at least twelve missed calls and a dozen more voice messages your frail heart did not have in it to listen to without falling apart.

So, you don’t. Instead, you read the messages again, feeling your heart break a little at it.

He made you katsudon.

He remembers what food both of you ate after a long and tedious study session at the library.

He still cared.

Fuck.

Your eyes watered at his consideration, even though you have blown him off - even when you were justified to do so. You missed him. You still loved him.

You wanted nothing more than to hold him, touch him, kiss him - to remember every beauty mark and every little scar he got as a careless child.

You wished to remember your love for him.

You wished to remember what Atsumu has been to you for so many years.

Wiping your eyes with the back of your hand, you look yourself in the mirror and it gave you a bitter reminder of how miserable you were without your husband.

How miserable his absence had made you.

Exiting the washroom, you come face to face with your brother-in-law. His eyes unreadable, not giving you a hint of how he feels at the moment.

“Geez, Osamu. You gave me a scare”, you laughed halfheartedly, lightly tapping his shoulder as an indicator for him to move aside.

He doesn’t budge.

“You were taking too long in the washroom”, he responded, almost sounding bored.

You grimaced internally at the thought. Between running the store all day and listening to you mope around about his twin, he hadn’t really caught a break for himself.

Anxious to return back home and to get out of Osamu’s hair, you began:

“Atsumu texted me. He’s really sorry about what he’s done. I’m still angry but he’s worried and I’ve kept you up for so long; I wish I could make it up to you somehow. But I am so sorry for keeping you up this way. Thank you for everything. I swear I’ll make it up to you! You can count on me for that, okay? Take care and close up quickly - you must be tired!”

Making a beeline for the front door, you try your best to steadily exit the Miya establishment when you hear him scoff behind you.

Paying no heed in your drunken haze, you failed to notice the heavy footfalls catching up to you.

You yelled in surprise, feeling your back slam into the hard wall and you glanced up to look at your best friend, who gave nothing away from how impassive he looked.

But his eyes did.

They always gave away what he felt.

And this time, you were afraid that those widened pupils of his carried an omen worthy of your fears getting the best of you.

Osamu heaved heavily, looking at your timid form shrinking in fear and anticipation. The moment you told him you were going back to his piece of shit of a brother, it seemed as if a switch in his mind turned off.

Almost as if his brain did not want to process any sane thoughts anymore.

“Pathetic”, he spat out, slamming his fists against the wall, caging you in between the hard cement wall and his wide body.

It took you a moment to process what he had said, but when you did, your eyes narrowed and you retaliated, “E

He replied, feeling the jealousy rear its ugly head for a lethal attack:

“I said that it’s pathetic how you’re dressed like a whore just to get a crumb of my attention”.

Your palm made contact with his face before you could think it through.

Osamu’s head turned to the side without his volition (When did your hands become strong enough to pack such heat?) and he felt his cheek sting as a result of your mindless assault.

He heard you gasp out in shock, touching his face to inspect the damage you had done unto him. You were asking him to tell you if his cheek hurt or if his bloodied lip stung hard (When did he start to bleed?). You kept on talking - begging and apologizing profusely for your mindless actions.

Even when you suffered from bouts of fury, you were beautiful.

It was starting to piss him off.

So he grabbed you by your face and kissed you.

There were times you wondered what it would be like - a life with Miya Osamu, that is.

He was kind, nurturing, caring - always diligent with his work and calm in the face of all adversities life threw his way.

Unless Atsumu provoked him.

Atsumu was to Osamu what kryptonite had been to Superman - a very potent weakness. And the older twin used this to his advantage whenever the opportunity presented itself.

From mundane fights over who gets the last slice of pizza to haughty taunts about who’s the better player at volleyball, the dynamics of their relationship was akin to that of a pair of passionate frenemies - hellbent about dragging the other down so that they could get ahead.

Of all things, you never thought you’d be the one thing they would fight over. But the way Osamu holds you in his arms - with a deadly grip around your body, tight enough to break your bones if he added just a smidgen of pressure onto you as he crashed his lips with yours told you another story.

You are stunned into inactivity by his brash actions and then you’re enraged. How could he? How dare he? Does he not know that you’re married - to his older brother no less?

You struggled to get out of his hold but he’s been clinging onto you like his very life depends on kissing you breathless. No matter how hard you tried, it seemed he had no plans of letting go of you.

At least not willingly.

He used his lips to nip at your own, prying your mouth open to assault you further. Thinking on your feet, you let him - opening up to him just wide enough that he ends up lost in you and lets down his guard.

And then you bit his tongue.

Osamu had to push you away, making you crash against the concrete wall of his shop. Choking on the metallic taste of his own blood flooding his mouth, he heaved heavily, coughing up a few drops of scarlet onto the pristine marble floor.

“How fucking dare you?” you spat out, your eyes blazing with disgust at his actions - and it made him feel so small, so vulnerable for some reason; he recalled the times he would get reprimanded for stealing the sweets his mother would store in the glass jars for later.

He felt embarrassment creep up on him, heating his ears till he could stay still anymore.

“I’m married to your brother, Osamu! When the fuck did you think it would be okay to kiss his bloody wife?”

Atsumu’s wife. That’s what you were.

Not his, never his.

His legs moved before you could make an escape, his clenched fist making contact with your jaw and he watched as you stumbled down to your knees, your hand finding purchase on the smooth floor below, trying their best to repel the effects of gravity dragging you down.

Whatever little air your lungs had inside you was knocked out by Osamu punching you out of the blue. Over the years, you had never expected Osamu to be the type to throw fists when angered. But maybe you were wrong.

Maybe you still had a lot more to learn about when it comes to your best friend.

Wheezing out, you cradle your bruised jaw in your arms and inch your way away from the man towering over your kneeling form. Your hands stung and your knees were red from the sudden fall. When you looked at the floor, you noticed how your crimson blood tainted the white marble floor, complimenting the few drops of blood you had squeezed out of the younger Miya by slapping him dumb.

“Fucking hell, Osamu”, you attempted to reason with him, slowly crawling away from him, but it seemed your voice had knocked him out of whatever stupor he had been submerged in, for he started to make his way towards you.

Step. Step.

“Miya”, you warned him, but the wobble in your voice from frustrated tears left unshed and the alcohol in your bloodstream gave away how scared you were of the man at the moment.

You crawl further back.

Step. Step.

He’s taking two steps at a time, giving you just enough to see what’s behind you as you wriggled your way further away, trying to put a respectable distance so that your muddled brain could formulate some coherent thoughts - anything that would aid you in your inevitable escape from the deserted restaurant.

“Stay the fuck away, Miya”, you spat out, cursing yourself for not texting your husband that you’d be on your way home.

Maybe he’d have come for you if you had.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

You were so stupid for not doing that.

Your back crashed against the wooden dinner table.

“Fuck”, you whispered, and lo and behold, Osamu was hovering over your cowering form.

Only Osamu knew how much he struggled to get you up from the floor and bend you over the table you had cornered yourself into while trying to escape him.

For one, you were intoxicated and jittery due to the copious amounts of wine glasses you had consumed as if your sanity depended on it. And given how the distance between you and Atsumu had increased with each passing day, maybe it really did.

Secondly, his assault earlier had left you on edge and whatever little movement he exhibited was met with fierce resistance from your end. This only resulted in the younger Miya to get irked beyond no belief, his hands itching to take said annoyance on everything around him, but that would only scare you further. So he attempted to refrain.

‘Attempted’ being the keyword here, for as soon as he laid his hands on you, you started to unhinge, pushing and screaming like a rabid creature. Your nails left thin red lines on his arms, angry and oozing with rivulets of his blood.

You kicked around, thrashing your way out of his embrace desperately, but luckily his large stature gave him an advantage as he easily picked you up, presenting a comical caricature akin to a parent carrying their grumpy child throwing a temper tantrum.

Apparently, you were not done with yours.

You spat in his eyes and that was when he slammed you onto the table, pinning you down on your stomach with his muscular arm.

Your stomach lurched as you made a harsh landing on the wooden table you had crashed into earlier. You knew you were doomed.

Fuck, you could feel it in your bones.

Writhing around helplessly, you strained your neck to look up at the man who was about to decide your fate. His eyes were blown dark - whether it was due to the adrenaline in his system or because manhandling you actually made him feel a sick sense of satisfaction, you’d never know.

Still, somewhere in your heart, you held onto childish hope and wished that if you pleaded, then maybe he’d stop hurting you further.

Maybe he’d stop being so scary.

“Osamu”, you choked back onto a violent sob and continued your pleas for mercy, “I-I’m sorry for hitting you. I’m so sorry for hurting you, but please stop. You’re scaring me”.

That brought him into action and your eyes lit up as he freed you for a moment, only for them to widen in horror when he leaned back onto his heels, only to pull out his belt from the loops of his jeans.

Seeing your eyes water up, he mocked, “What, you honestly didn’t think that I’d let you go, did you? Especially after you have been acting like an entitled little bitch”.

Pinning you down on the table with his arm again, Osamu caught your dainty wrists in his arms and tied them together with his leather belt, tightening them hard enough so that your wrists couldn’t budge out from its hold.

Your eyes look up at him, tears freely falling down your face and he sniped back, “Aw, poor you. You do realize that it’s your own doing, right? Don’t want you to use your claw on me anymore, do we now?”

“Why are you doing this?” you wiggled around helplessly like a worm in the wet garden soil. It was pitiful.

You yelped as you feel both of his hands land on your butt harshly, wincing as he roughly fondles them soon after. You felt pure, unadultered fear when his hands refused to leave your body, instead inching closer and closer still towards the hem of your dress.

Your legs buckled in an attempt to deter his advances, but he was much stronger than you and he re-positioned himself, so that his knees constricted your legs between them.

And you could feel his growing erection between your thighs too.

You felt like you were going to throw up. You wish he’d let you go so you could do just that.

Instead, he pulled your dress all the way up to your waist and marveled at the sight of your cunt clad in a pair of black lace panties.

“Hm, so this is what you had planned for him all along”, he mused, relishing in the way you shook your head and repeatedly said no - over and over again.

“Too bad he’d been such a neglectful fucking husband, hasn’t he?” he asked, only to get pissed off when you don’t agree.

“Guess I’ll have to show you how a man is supposed to care for his wife”.

You could feel his hands all over you, leaving goosebumps in their wake as they gently trailed over the newly exposed skin. You swear you could feel your heartbeat ringing in your ears - whether it was due to the alcohol running through your veins or the apprehension you held for the next course of actions your perpetrator had in mind, you wouldn’t know.

You gasped as you feel one of his fingers rub you through the flimsy fabric of your panties, feeling how cold his silver ring is against your warm cunny. You felt yourself shiver against your will and horror filled your mind as you feel your thighs get sticky with the slick drooling down your sensitive cunt.

How can you react this way to him? Why now? Why him?

You sent a quick prayer to the Gods above and prepared yourself for the worst.

You felt so soft under his touch. So smooth and pliant - so submissive, all for him to use and break. He felt his fingers sink into the curve of your back, and as he slid them lower, he could feel the lace rub gently against his fingertips. Mesmerized, he spanked you again and watched you flinch in response.

That made him smirk.

Slipping a hand between your thighs, he slid a finger languidly against your slit - the black lace acting as a barrier between him and your pussy. And yet, he could feel you get wet at his ministrations - no matter how much you begged and pleaded otherwise.

“Look at your cunny drool. Hm, can you feel it?” he taunted, pressing harder into the fabric and trying to locate your clit, “How your body is desperate for a cock?”

You shook your head, and that made him tick. As a result, he spanked you again and made sure to make his ring adorned fingers dig into your plump ass hard enough so that you end up gasping in pain again.

“N-no”, you replied, your voice heavy with tears and drowsiness, “I-I don’t want anything. Lemme go, Osamu. I just wanna go home”.

“Home?” he barked out, laughing at how outrageous your thoughts were.

“You call a place that has no kids, no husband - literally a place where no one cares about you, home?”, he asked, offended at the very idea of you still wanting to leave.

“But ‘Tsumu is home-”, he interrupted before you can go any further.

“Does it matter where he is? He wasn’t there when you waited at the restaurant, was he? And he won’t be there when you need him the most”, he used the very insecurities you had opened up about earlier as precious boons, forcing you to stay with him.

“But I have. I’ve been with you through it all. Let me show you that I can stay with you still”.

Finally, you gave in.

Maybe it was because you weren’t sure where Atsumu and you stood. Both of you wanted to work it out, but the question remained - would it actually work?

Who could guarantee that his work or your ambitions wouldn’t ruin it all again?

Maybe it was the wine - blurring your vision, lowering your inhibitions with every soft promise Osamu whispered in your ear as he fondled you. Maybe it was the fatigue seeping into your bones due to the frantic escape you had attempted minutes ago.

But your tense body went lax at the touch of Miya Osamu, shivering as his hand gently trailed down from the nape of your neck to the small of your back - his fingers mapping every inch of your body.

Your eyes widen in surprise as you feel his fingers slide your panties to the side. Nervously, you ask, “W-what are you doing, Osamu?”

He went down on his knees, staring at the slick cunny of yours with dead eyes - concentration etched onto his face. He looked like he hadn’t heard a word you’d said and without further ado, he licked a long strip all the way from your little clit, stopping just short from the perineum and the puckering hole of yours.

He shifted under you, repositioning himself so that he can torture your clit with his tongue some more. Your legs were shaking by how his teeth softly grazed the little button and almost slammed your head onto the table when he pushes in two of his fingers inside you.

“L-Listen, this isn’t right-”

“Shut up”, he finally looked up at you, his eyes narrowing, “Stop pretending you do not want this. Or else you won’t be so needy, pretty thing”.

And then he dived back in.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Osamu had his shoulders placed below your thighs, he was certain you’d have dropped onto the floor like a dead weight. Your knees buckled and luckily you settled onto his shoulders, wrapping your legs around his head as he assaulted your senses with unwanted pleasure.

Your whimpers of protest weren’t coherent enough, but that wasn’t enough. Osamu wanted to make you scream. He wanted you to be all his, even if it meant breaking you bit by bit - till you were left barren, with nothing to shield you from him ever again.

He added a third finger and you moaned out loud - sweet, saccharine and almost siren-like and all he could compare the euphoria he felt at hearing you lose your inhibitions was akin to tasting the honey Kita had farmed at his village for the first time.

Maybe even more so.

You opened your mouth and tried to beg, your pleas interrupted by broken moans, “P-Please-”

“L-Listen, ‘Samu. Please”.

What were you begging for, he wondered.

Did you want him to stop?

Or did you wish for him to continue to make you cum for him, like the good little whore you are?

‘Pick one, you stubborn brat’, he thought, thrusting his fingers in till you’ve swallowed up the few rings he had worn today. You squirmed at the uncomfortable stretch, wiggling your hips to find a more comfortable position.

He spanked your ass in response, and in a raspy voice, he commanded, “Stay still, woman”.

“Please”, you begged once again, and as he averted his eyes upwards, the sight of your flushed cheeks wet with tears made the sadist in him thrive.

He wanted to burn the very visage of you trembling while you experience the highs and lows between the threshold of pleasure and pain, over and over again.

Even if it was a one-time thing.

You were on your tiptoes - trying to hold off the tidal crashing of your oncoming orgasm. Yet Osamu was relentless in his pursuit, wanting nothing more than to make you cry out his name like the only mantra you were aware of.

The moment he sucked onto your clit, you screamed, “Osamu! ‘Samu, please! No more! T-Too much, it’s too much! Please!”

And just as he grazed it again with his warm tongue, you felt yourself crash in waves of overwhelming pleasure - only for it to come to an abrupt halt as Osamu let goes of your thighs, instead of getting up. The tears in your eyes slid down, due to a weird concoction of shame and arousal invading your mind.

You craned your neck back to look at him stroking his now hard cock, the tip red and angry - oozing clear droplets of pre-cum. (When did he strip? Was it when he slammed you onto the table? Or when your ears could hear nothing but static when he ruined your forceful orgasm?)

Pushing your face into the wooden table, he pressed himself flush against your hips and grinded lazily on your ass, spreading his pre-cum all over your reddened skin.

“Wait, Osamu”, your voice came out muffled, almost as if it was a distant call for mercy, “You cannot be serious, right? We cannot do this. I don’t want to-”

Spank!

His hand made contact with your pussy, his rings hitting your clit and as a result, you convulsed violently, your knees knocking together to shield your intimate parts away from his brutal hits.

But he had lodged his knee between them and it kept your legs from closing entirely.

“Why do you want me to stop, baby?” he asked, and if it wasn’t for the events that have transpired today, you’d have taken the change in his voice to be confusion.

But he wasn’t confused.

His voice held a dark promise - a promise of no mercy.

A promise of unleashing his dark side.

“Don’t you want me to feel good too?”

And with that, he slipped his cock inside you.

Miya Osamu has had his fair share of flings. Some good, some bad. Some of them were downright embarrassing; he had buried those memories into the deepest pits of his minds, never to be unearthed no matter the circumstances.

But you….

You were enchanting. Such a beautiful wreck - with tears and running mascara and hair all messed up; your ass still red with his stinging spanks and the way your tight little cunny was wrapped around his cock, coaxing him in and then some.

You were the goddess he wished to worship.

And he was the one true devotee.

He’d show you that.

Even if he has to use force to make you see how he’s much more worthy than Atsumu.

“Fuck”, he groaned out, finally bottoming inside you snugly, his hipbone rubbing against the cheeks of your ass. His hands grabbed you by your hips as he slowly pulled out of you, feeling his cock drag out of your slick walls and reveling in the way you whine and clench around him.

“Do you want more, pretty thing? Want me to fill you up? Fuck you dumb till you can no longer think about anything else?”

Your eager nod of approval was all he needed, as he pulled all the way out and slammed inside of you.

You moaned at the way Osamu took away the last shreds of your dignity by slamming you onto his cock. Your jaw still throbbed from his punch earlier and yet the moment you feel the tip of his cock caress the spongy spot inside you, whatever little hesitation you held in your mind against him was forgotten.

“Shit, I can’t, ‘Samu”, you whined, feeling him grind against your weak point over and over again.

“What are you talking about? Of course, you can”, he replied, inching his fingers closer to your clit and rubbing it in circular motions, finally letting out a soft moan as he felt you tighten around him even more.

Rutting his hips into yours and flicking your clit with the rhythm he had set up, he leaned over and marked your neck with wet kisses that slowly progressed into harsh love bites.

You could only hold onto the table as your legs wobbled and threatened to give away to the overwhelming pleasure flowing through your body.

All sensible thoughts had escaped your mind and your moral compass was no longer working. Not when the man behind you was hellbent on making you cum around his cock.

Dumbly, you moaned and squealed like a bitch in heat, begging for him to ruin you. And you knew that the younger Miya must’ve been gloating in all of his glory

“Osamu, shit. Please don’t stop! That feels so good! It hurts so good. Too big, too much. Want you. Only you”, you

Feeling his ego inflate, he goaded, “Oh yeah, you like that, huh? Come for me, then. Come all over my cock like the good little cockwhore you are”.

And for some reason, you did.

His gaze fell downward, eyes fixating on how prettily you cream around cock and painted it white. This only served as the motivation he needed to let loose and to fuck you well into a twitching, overstimulated mess.

“Look at you”, he gently tapped your ass with his palm, watching you break under him due to his slightly sadistic approach.

“You’re creaming so pretty around me. Falling apart on my cock like an adorable slut. I wonder what he’d do if he knew you were with me right now.”

Picking up the phone you had dropped earlier, he unlocked it easily (he felt his blood boil a little when your phone passcode was your wedding anniversary, of all things) and angling the camera to where both of you were joined together, he asked with amusement, “Should I send ‘Tsumu a souvenir? Should I show dearest brother how his sweet wife his coming on my cock instead? Maybe I’ll send him a little video too”.

He felt your body stiffen in shock, hips trying to break free from his strong hold and your legs kicking in retaliation. That turned him on even more.

Speeding up, he relished in the way you tried to break free and cried out to him, begging him to not tell Atsumu and how you’d be willing to do anything if he let you be. Soon enough, his thrusts turned languid, his thighs slapping against your own as he finally slowed down till he finally came, emptying himself inside of your wet cunny.

It was over. He finally got what he wanted.

And you were left to deal with the bloody aftermath of it all - the guilt, the regret….feeling like the shittiest person alive.

Granted that you were not necessarily a willing participant in all this, but you did sleep with your brother-in-law. What kind of person does that?

What kind of person does that make you?

And Atsumu……

Oh God, your husband-

Did Osamu actually take any photos? Did he send those to him? Does he know that you’re an unfaithful slut?

You resisted against the fatigue haunting your sore limbs and craned your neck back, locking eyes with him; he halted in his movements as your eyes reflected anguish, guilt, and…..regret.

Why the fuck did you look at him like that? Was he that repulsive that you couldn’t spend one night with him like this?

Your violent sobbing was what snapped him out of his critical thoughts.

Tears falling down your eyes, you lamented (certain that you were looking pathetic in his eyes), “Osamu, please don’t send your brother those photos-”

The sound of your uncontrollable wailing echoed throughout the walls of the empty restaurant. All Osamu did in response was to pick you up and take you inside his office, hoping to clean you and comfort you despite his obvious helplessness at your sudden outburst.

Tired and emotionally drained, you let him.

You couldn’t put up much of a fight even if you wanted to, you thought as you let yourself lull into the warm embrace of his arms and fall asleep.

As he sat beside your sleeping form, his face softened at the afterglow on your face, the moonlight only enhancing your calm face. Carding his fingers through your hair gently, careful to not tug onto any knots, he hummed a soft tune as he basked in your presence.

His phone buzzed and he got up, walking all the way to his office desk, picking up the device that was threatening to disrupt your sleep. Unlocking it quickly, he noticed that he had an unread message from his brother.

[sent at 1:34] Atsumu: Take care of her for me, will ye?

He smiled softly as he looked back at your sleeping form, slumped all over his leather couch.

He did take care of you in his own way, didn’t he?

[cowboymantis]

Let's talk about Kazuto Arase

Yakuza / Yakuza Kiwami , Yakuza 3 side content spoilers. Later on Yakuza LaD too, but I'll give a warning before that especially since a lot of people haven't played that yet.

So I have a lot of thoughts about Yakuza on my mind and just want to scream into the void about it somewhere to write 'em all down somewhere! I'm starting with... Arase.

Yeah, I know, a mostly very hated character (personality and battle-wise) that has so little screen time on top of it all too, is the first thing I'll be talking about.

Hear me out, I actually really love this character and only really started to appreciate him after I went for the Yakuza 3 platinum trophy... I've replayed this game so many times, I didn't mind it when I played through it first but seeing all the hate it has gotten, I went to replay it just in case and with that replayed it again and again because I just somehow loved it so much-

And you know, one part of Yakuza 3, also completion related so there was no way I could've missed it, were the Hitman missions. In general, after playing through all the main games I started to come back to a lot of characters I didn't like or minded the first time playing that are now some of my favourites (other examples are Tamashiro or Lau Ka Long, hell even Katsuragi)!

To come back to Arase, let's start with, well, the start: Yakuza / Yakuza Kiwami.

Introduced already in the very first Yakuza game, Arase is just there for a brief moment in the game, yet has a heavy impact on the game's story and Kiryu. It starts with Arase's oath brother Shinji being shot by Arases subordinate, Mochizuki, at least it looks like it. Shinji came here to rescue Reina, whose corpse then gets dragged on the roof of the Dragon Palace by Arase, Sergeant of the Nishikiyama Family. Now that's a pretty... heavy and sadistic first image for a character introduction, and honestly, his strong personality like that seemed also to be the reason he wasn't exactly loved by other members of the Family.

His battle theme in the first Yakuza game is called "Turning Point" which also puts more emphasis on how important this scene is, Kiryu breaking down, his scream when he sees Reina's body... It's really a turning point in the story.

In Kiwami, his new theme "Virtical Point" is also used as the intro song (or at least, the intro song "Vertical Point" is similar and shortened). Which also once again shows the importance of this piece.

Of course, he's not the most important character in the story, but it's still interesting to see how much there is around him other than his rather short appearance.

Then, his fighting style. Yeah, most hate this too and also the fact that starting from there, other bosses also sometimes use his moveset or a similar one. Like, take Jiro or Jo Amon or Andre Richardson... Basically just the usual dual wielding guns while being an athlete on crack - layout. It is actually not that bad, it's even less bad when you've got the right equipment but I have to admit I didn't really have that much good equipment when I first played all the games and basically just rushed through them because I just couldn't stop!

Arase's goal here of course was also to beat Kiryu but well, just like every other character ever, he couldn't do it and got beat instead.

And that's the end of that... The end of his part in the story and also the end of his part in the Nishikiyama Family, because he got disowned right after his failure.

Which is so... hmm... It makes me think. Many others have tried to take Kiryu down, too. And I mean, Arase was normally a very successful assassin, right? Yet this one failed attempt, at which everyone else too failed, got him disowned? Seems to me like they didn't like him and gave him an impossible task to have a reason to throw him out, huh?

And with that wonderful transition, let's get into his appearance in Yakuza 3.

You get introduced to the concept of the Honest Living Association, in short the HLA pretty much after Kashiwagis death. An association, founded by Kashiwagi to help Yakuza / former Yakuza who weren't meant for this life or just wanted out but just couldn't do in it on their own. For some, all they knew was the criminal life, so having a thing like this is especially helpful. Although, I'm kinda sad this was never a thing anymore after Yakuza 3. The whole concept of it was very cool.

Kiryu gets asked by Ibuki to help the HLA because there is an organisation of hitmen, also known as The Reapers (or The Avengers on PS3) whose goal was a different one than the HLA's, it was to kill Yakuza. The Reapers consisted of former criminals, mainly Yakuza, who were wronged by their superiours and expelled, disowned, you name it. Basically what happened to Arase.

Apprehending those hitmen is a totally optional part of the game and I have to admit, I didn't finish it my first time playing. Which is such a shame because it goes by so fast too when you play it after finishing the game! And the individual stories are all so interesting too, I've really enjoyed this side content and also replayed those missions already. You don't really expect someone like Arase to be behind all of it when it turns out to be him who is the founder and the leader of it all. I was already taken aback by Shinzaki being the lieutenant, or part of it at all. I often stopped by to listen to his guitar playing and talked to him, often asking myself is there's anything else up with him.

And once this one hitman contract came in and guitar playing was mentioned, I was just thinking "It can't be him...?", god, this whole side storyline just was so good. And here people come and say Yakuza 3 was a bad game.

The whole build-up to then reveal Arase was just so cool, honestly. It made me start to look more into his character after this confrontation. The fight was really cool too, just having to fight Shinzaki so many times wasn't really necessary, but Arase seems to like to fight alongside others, so fair enough.

And his theme "End Point" is also just so good. It's more similar to Turning Point than Virtical Point was. The name is also again fitting, since this is the end for The Reapers and Arases power.

It is made clear here that Arase has a strong hatred against the Yakuza and especially holds a strong grudge against Kiryu. He sees Kiryu as the reason he got wronged and had to leave the Yakuza behind, while also seeming to be very aware of the fact that the others there probably didn't like him at all.

He's so angry at him, he holds this whole speech and talks about revenge while Kiryu tries to talk some sense into him, eventually Ibuki also joins and tries to reason with Arase too. Telling him how that's what Kashiwagi wanted, even for Arase to find a new, honest life.

Arase is too strongly lead on by his grudges, so even though it seems like he might be thinking about turning his life around, he decided to not let them help him. Then he goes on about how he will definetly return to take revenge on Kiryu... Well. That's the end of that.

It becomes clear that Arases stubborn way of thinking is kind of childish. Not taking responsibility for any of his actions, thinking that his vile personality and actions are in fact the reason he got disowned. Failing to beat Kiryu was just the final puzzle piece to have a solid reason to throw him out. He's clearly unstable, doesn't think twice before shooting someone, he could turn on anyone and wouldn't be sorry for it. Just, he doesn't seem to really think about what he does.

I guess he probably thinks he's strong enough, he doesn't need to be careful. Also fitting for that is his fighting style in Dead Souls, how when he gets low on HP, he pretty much fends for himself, disregarding orders and just charging head first with full strength.

His Dead Souls appearance is also interesting. Okay, we all know, this game isn't canon, it's a spin-off and just doesn't fit in to the story. But it is interesting how he teams up with Kiryu for a bit and then leaves again. The game itself takes place after the events of Yakuza 4, meaning at this point RGG did remember that hey, they have a rival that swore to beat Kiryu one day. But after that... radio silence.

Really, this is such a shame. Just alone from his short appearances I can talk so much about Arase because he really is an interesting character with so much more potential! The only thing that's good about it is that he didn't die, making him technically one of the longest surviving characters in Yakuza which really is a great achievement.

Okay, we don't exactly know that he's still alive, but assuming due to there not being a mention of him being dead, he's probably alive. He might be, might not. Schrödinger's Arase.

One other thing I thought about is Jo Amon. I mean, his outfit and fight style is also similar to Arase, but that's not what I'm mainly thinking about. So the name Amon is for the greatest assassins, right? And they have a strong hatred against Kiryu at the beginning too.

So, putting those things together, Arase being a former assassin in the Nishikiyama Family, then the leader of a dangerous hitman organisation... Then, to fight Jo Amon in Yakuza 3 you also need to do all the hitman missions other than the substories and the IF7 fights. And to start the search for Amon, you also need to go to Ibuki again, where you got all the other hitman missions.

Yeah, it's a bit far fetched, but ... not too far fetched to think that maybe Arase and at least Jo Amon could know each other. I'd say, they could team up in a future game but. Well... Yeah.

Now some more things I thought about, I'll put a warning here though.

Yakuza LaD spoilers ahead!

Soooo, in this game we've gotten a couple of characters "back" ... Some more real than others... Thinking about Joon Gi's body double.

But one character that survived is Kashiwagi! Now the bartender of a bar named Survive. What a fitting name. After surviving such a heavy attack and believed dead by, well, everyone, it was the best approach to keep a low profile, start a new life. Also, he doesn't seem to be fit for any fighting after the incident.

So Kashiwagi is still there. And, now I just thought about, what if there was a possible redemption arc for Arase? Kiryu is believed dead now too, alone the fact that it seems that Kiryu never met Kashiwagi while being in the same area is kinda sad. I like to imagine they met each other...

I think it could go either way, Arase somehow got information on Kiryu being in Ijincho. He is a professional after all. Plus, by now Kiryu is also, well, not really working with... but. You know, not fighting with the Amon Clan anymore, even having Shin Amon to help determine Ichibans strength with the (True) Final Millennium Tower.

And, now, maybe there can be some other comnecting inside the Amon Clan and some info got out to Arase, ah, hell, I don't know, it's all so far fetched but I just like to have those possible headcanons of Arase somehow coming back!

Another possibility could also be Arase thinking Kiryu has died, just per chance being in the area and just going to the Survive bar? He'd probably be way more open about the thought of redemption and with Kashiwagi probably being pretty good at talking former Yakuza into that, given how the whole HLA was his doing.

Just... Thinking about possible things.

Yakuza LaD spoilers end here!

Well. That's that.

At the end of the day, the chances of Arase returning are pretty much 0, other characters you never thought of reappearing sometimes appear in one way or another, so it can be possible, but probably won't.

But one thing is clear, looking more into this character made me really appreciate him more. I guess that's the fact with a lot of characters, not just in Yakuza, but in general.

The characters in Yakuza are just so well written and even though it has some very weird and silly plot points and plot twists, I just love this game so much and looking more into it and replaying it is just so much fun.

I even started to like the minigames in Yakuza 3, even though I got very hopeless at the last pool opponent and the goddamn Mahjong completion, ugh. But at the end of the day it's all just really fun once you get the hang of it. It hasn't aged too well when you play it after the other Yakuza games, but replaying it on all the difficulties and then casually, then trying to beat it as fast as I can just made me love the game more and more every time.

So, uh... I don't know if it's a blessing or curse for me to often really like the characters that either everyone hates or have almost to screen time. Because well... there's such a lack of content and appreciation but hey that's what I'm writing this for!

I hope maybe someone starts to appreciate Arase more after this - if anyone even reads further after learning that I love this character. :D' I swear I tried to write it with as little bias as possible. I do know he's a morally very very grey character but after all, it's a video game character. (...There's no way I'll ever like characters like Yoneda...Ogita...Or Kume though... ugh)

Well anyway, with that, I go!

[eienias20]

TALES OF ARISE

As I stated before, I beat the game a few days back and just got the Platinum for it, so pretty much a 100%. First time ever doing that for a Tales game. Zestiria trophies are absurd and the game is mediocre at best, I have to play through Berseria one more time to complete it which is pretty doable considering how much I love that game.

BUT THIS IS ABOUT ARISE

Arise was a ton of fun, kept me guessing all across its story. Nearly all the theories I threw out there were wrong. I was right about one thing and right but also wrong about another, everything else was incorrect.

I really enjoyed the cast, the world, the gameplay. The battle system was very different from Berseria and Zestiria. Honestly more similar to older styles in that you had a standard attack in addition to artes while having what is essentially TP back but in a single pool for everyone and only healing draws from it. Which as far as I’m aware only half the party can heal. Shionne, Kisara and Dohalim

Gonna keep the more spoilery bits under the cut so keep reading at your own risk!

So about my theories, upon reaching Mahag Saar with the missing female Lord, I was under the assumption that it was Shionne. That she ran away from the place for some reason. Seeing how it was all bombed to heck you could see why. Not to mention she got pretty defensive about “Lords don’t run”

I thought the Zeugle research being done there was somehow tied to her wanting to get rid of her thorns. Of course it became obviously not once Almeidra was introduced.

I had theories that Alphen was a former Lord or even a previous Sovereign. At one point i thought he was the previous Water Lord given that Vholran’s rise to the position was commented on being strange. Wrong about the Water Lord. Right about the Sovereign tho at the time I believed the Sovereign was the Renan Leader as opposed to some puppet for a ritual.

The Red Woman bothered me so much, every time we fought a Lord she was there and yet no one commented on her. I thought she was like, a secretary for the Lords. It was odd there was no scene about her after Balseph and the point where it was clearly planned was when she appeared next to Vholran, then of course she came in to steal the Renas Alma.

My guess leading up to that was that the Red Woman was the main villain. Not so.

The whole “who is the main villain?” thing for this game reminded me of how Vesperia handled its final conflict. Duke didn’t really feel like a final villain to me. Heck you don’t even kill him. This time around the “final villain” was an entity, doing everything to continue living. A very strange final foe to be sure. Was nice to get one final duel with Vholran tho. That felt good.

As I reached the end of this game there was one thing I really really wanted. I wanted Alphen and Shionne to admit their feelings for each other and maybe even kiss. I doubted that’d happen but I wanted it.

When it happened, I cheered. We’ve gone what? 20 years of Tales games and yet no on screen kisses till now? SHAMEFUL! The main relationships in Tales titles I always thoroughly enjoy. Especially Luke and Tear. At the very least, there was no better time to get the damn kiss than with Alphen and Shionne. That felt good.

Lotta end game talk but yeah. I honestly thought after defeating Vholran and the Red Woman escaping, the game was ending. I thought credits were gonna roll and they were going to release a 2nd part thru like free dlc or something. But nope, whole nother section of the game was left with a second intro. They pulled a Radiation Gate on me that’s for sure XD

I played as Alphen the most followed by Kisara and Law, then Shionne then Rinwell and Dohalim. I enjoyed all their playstyles but I’m always about going in swords blazing rather than casting and/or healing.

Only things I can say i was negative about: i wish the Lenegis section was bigger, longer. Wish there was more to do there in terms of gameplay, a longer dungeon and such. And that the heavy narrative sections around there were more spread out. No joke, Lenegis and the space station with Hevrekt 35 had so. much. talking. obviously it was to explain the truth behind everything going on, i get that and it helped me a lot learning that everything was a lie or half truth. but one play session i had was like, a few fights, a boss then the entire space station talking before i stopped. it was a bit much. i’d say lose all the skits up there and just limit it to the cutscenes.

At the very least, at the end of all that talking they had the “night before the final battle” with the team breaking up into pairs and having heart to hearts. That was really nice. Made it all worth it.

Also the challenge was very well paced. Because EXP scales you are never overleveled. Enemy encounters feel great and bosses always felt tough. Especially the Lords, i really enjoyed that.

Spent a lot of time talking about plot twists and such but the gameplay was stellar. had a blast. Learned how to swap characters mid fight and was like YES! THEY KEPT THAT FROM BERSERIA!

Anyway, this has gone long enough. Anything more specific you wanna ask me about my time with the game, i’m open to hearing it :D

TALES RANKING

Abyss <3

Berseria <3

Symphonia <3

Arise <3

Vesperia <3

Zestiria -_-

Symphonia 2 >:(

[eternallostboy]

WORMS

Worms. I've been playing a lot of it recently. I'm jumping between games in the franchise, which has almost gotten me killed, mostly just trophy hunting. I've said before that the only thing that makes getting the platinum trophy hard for me is all the online centric trophies. Still, even ignoring the trophies it's been fun going back to play all of them.

I've been a long time fan of the franchise since I first played Armageddon on the ps1. A friend of my dad's introduced it to us one night and we loved it! After that night we just had to find a copy of it for ourselves to play. We eventually got our hands on a copy of Worms World Party for the ps1. I actually still that original copy and it works perfectly.

I know Armageddon is the crowd favorite, for good reason, but World Party and 3D are my personal favorites. I wouldn't say there's necessarily a bad Worms game but some are certainly lesser than others. Battle Islands isn't one I care for but I wouldn't say it's bad. Worms Forts is underrated in my opinion. I never hear anyone talk about it and it's a damn shame.

I'd like to be able to replay Worms Forts but alas my ps2 wont read it. The disc is perfectly fine, hardly a scratch on it! No, the main issue is that it's one of the purple/blue ps2 discs and my ps2 just can't read it. I've seen work a around for that though so I'll to give it a try cause Worms Forts really is the most unique in the series. I highly recommend you give it a try if you're able.

I can tell I'm rambling a little and for that I apologize. I didn't write this with much in the way of any real goal in mind. I had a lot of thoughts that are very jumbled now. They left me when I went to go type all of this, same thing happens when I go to draw sometimes. I suppose this is what I get for playing a bunch of them back to back.

Talking about the games individually might be good idea though. It'd help me untangle my thoughts easier I'm sure. Plus tumblr is severely lacking Worms content. Seriously though there's so little Worms content on this site that a drawing of a worm I posted about a year ago, with no likes, is in the top searches. Maybe I'll make a long post about Armageddon or World Party, I haven't decided which one. I hope to see ya there!

[kyndaris]

A Heady Feeling

I was unsure what to make of Control when it was first announced. Though the premise intrigued me, the first few trailers hardly hyped up the title. Still, when it released, I was one of the first in line to purchase the game. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have telekinetic powers? It was also a game from Remedy. That, in and of itself, gave the game a kind of pedigree. This was the team behind the likes of Max Payne, Alan Wake and Quantum Break. And, for the first time in a long while, their title would not only come out on Xbox but PlayStation as well. 

Of course...should Naughty Dog release a new IP, I would be just as eager to pick it up, if not more so, having been a fan of both the Uncharted series and The Last of Us. Particularly because I adore how much the studio devotes to telling blockbuster narratives, with a strong focus on single-player, and who pull on the heartstrings.

But back to the title that released on the 27th of August.

The story of Control centres on Jesse Faden, a woman looking for her brother after he was abducted after a tragic incident in their hometown of Ordinary. After searching for approximately a decade and a half, Jesse stumbles upon the Federal Bureau of Control in the heart of New York in a building called The Oldest House. Minutes after she enters the 1950s style building, she finds the Service Weapon in the Director’s Office and, after picking it up, becomes the new Director. Her first day on the job, though, is complicated by the presence of the Hiss. A menacing force that is represented by a red eerie light and a consistent chant that follows you as you journey deeper into The Oldest House.

As I played through Control, I was reminded strongly of Prey (a title from Arkane Studios that is known for the Dishonored series). While the settings could be considered quite different: one being in a space station and this latest title exploring the paranatural Oldest House, the unsettling feeling of both locales, the mystery behind the enemies and the scattered documents and media collectibles helped cement my initial impression. Another contributing factor, I think, might have also been the architecture of the buildings. Perhaps it was because Control focuses on the brutalist movement, one that came about in the 1950s and the core of the Talos space station was also supposedly built in the same time period. In any case, there is a certain vibe that permeates both games and it doesn’t help that there were so many sectors to explore, all of them leading back to the other through elevators.

This is further compounded by the fact that much of the Bureau is empty of life. Only a select few humans remain, protected by a strange device that is strapped to their chest: the HRA. As MacGuffins go, it isn’t completely terrible and as one progresses through the story, there is an explanation for how it prevented the Hiss from taking over other employees of the Bureau (whether or not there’s any basis in science for how it works, I can’t rightly say either way).

Control also features intuitive gameplay. While there seemed to be a few performance issues in my playthrough on my PlayStation 4, I still found it great to run and gun or launching fire extinguishers at the Hiss. In fact, unlike other third person shooters, Control encourages the player to keep moving. Whereas other titles would have their main characters pressed up against cover with their health recovering after a few seconds, Remedy took a page out of id Software and the Doom series. Health is dropped by enemies, not regenerated automatically. This, in turn, meant a much more aggressive style of play in order to survive. And while cover still exists, Jesse does not stick to it. Depending on the angle, one can crouch behind partitions or stand behind pillars. However, staying still also meant enemies would zero in on your position, flanking or flushing you out with a few choice grenades or rockets.

With regards to the boss battles, though, I’ll admit to cheesing a few of them. Particularly against the optional ones against Mr Tommasi and Essej. In fact, I found them quite challenging and had to develop certain strategies to defeat them. It’s quite shameful to admit, but I died numerous times trying to find the best way to bring them down.

What proved a little disappointing when I first started the game, though, was discovering that there was no option to change the difficulty setting of the game. While I did struggle on occasion, it meant that Control may not be as accessible to other gamers.

Though there are a few stand-out moments with the characters of Control, such as the films featuring Dr Casper Darling and Emily Pope, I could not help but feel that many other characters could have been better fleshed out. It would have also aided the game if we could help understand more of Jesse’s motivation in finding her brother beyond stumbling upon a few documents or reports that detailed the events of the incident in Ordinary. Yes, there were recorded sessions Jesse shared with a psychiatrist, but there was a sense of disconnect between it all.

Marshall, the head of operations, also disappeared halfway through the game. Despite the fact that several characters comment on it, none of it was properly followed up. Although, perhaps it might be done so in a future DLC.

Still, while I would have preferred to fall in love with the characters, overall, it felt the stakes were not as high as I would have hoped (particularly after playing through Fire Emblem).

I would have also preferred a photo mode. Unfortunately, at time of playing, it had yet to be implemented. 

Gripes aside, I managed to wend my way through the story and even managed to achieve a Platinum trophy (a fact that provided me a bit of an ego boost) due to my unflappable curiosity and need to dig down further into the mystery. For those looking for something beyond the norm, and watching everyday objects from the previous decades become important power pieces that Jesse can bind to, look no further than Control. Whether that be an oversized floppy disc that was purported to contain the launch codes for nuclear missiles, a Home Safe or a Merry-Go-Round Horse. That absurdity made trawling through the Federal Bureau of Control, at least for me, such a joy from beginning to end. 

[zombriekid]

Power [Alucard/Gender Neutral Reader]

Series: Hellsing 

Summary: after your gargantuan failure on the last mission, it’s time to pay the piper and take responsibility for your actions. pray you survive.  

  Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing is the very definition of elegance, the epitome of regal nobility, distinguished English aristocracy personified, and in everything she says and does and owns reflects that.

  You currently have the privilege of “holding council” in her office, and being surrounded by such extravagance makes you entirely all too aware of the sock peaking out of the toe of your eight year old shoe. The space of the room itself is about twice the size of your first apartment, with an ornate ceiling towering hundreds of feet above your head and bearing the weight of a series of glistening crystal chandeliers; the floor is made up of glossy black and white tiles that were installed in a checkered pattern, and though the style isn’t anything you would’ve chosen the quality of the polish delivers your reflection so clearly that you can almost make out the small coffee stain on your shirt. Stretching along the length of the room is a curtain of windows, the kind that are broken up into modest squares all of the same size, and due to the fact that none of them have any drapes there’s a surge of moonlight that is just flooding the space. And there, sitting behind a large desk made of dark wood and intricately carved filigrees is sir Integra in a matching chair with a high back.

  Chair, you ponder, more like a throne.

  “Hunter Murray, care to explain what exactly happened on the mission?” 

  You may have the honor of speaking to your boss in her opulent study but it’s the purpose of the meeting that fills you with dread. Sure, being in her presence never fails to induce some ripples of an anxiety attack, however you’re no stranger in dealing with the British upperclass- you’ve been in the Hellsing’s employment for the better part of a year after all, and hell even your former boss Mr. Holmward comes from a not-so-long line of nobility- so it’s needless to say that you can hold your own against old timey rich people who look down on your bargain-bin clothes. But that’s not the purpose of the meeting, is it?

  No... no, your current boss is asking about the mission you’ve just returned from, and why you shouldn’t be receiving any participation trophies for it.

  Do you dare lie to her face?

  Shit Murray, what the hell are you thinking?! She likely already knows. Just fess up, don’t ruin what goodwill you’ve managed to build up! 

  “Yes ma’am- uhh sir.” The temptation to stare at your shoes is, admittedly, rather strong considering that her one good eye is trained on you with no one else in the room to cushion the intensity of her attention. But you don’t, you maintain direct eye contact. “On the way to the location, I believe I may have offended mister Alucard in some way. Because of this He told me to hang back while He took care of the target, so I did... I... I stayed in the car. Mister Alucard did everything. You can verify this with both Him and the driver.”

  Sir Integra keeps staring at you, the lines marring her face relaxed as she steels her expression to preserve the usual air of cold aloofness she carries. Her hands fall behind the desk to open a drawer, and from there she takes out a small wooden box followed by some sort of silver contraption. Inside the box lies a neat pile of slim cigars, a brand that she’s often seen puffing on between her teeth, and she retrieves one only to slip the tip into the opening of the contraption. The gadget’s mouth closes around the cigar leaf, bites into it, and flings the loose piece away. She’s quick to chomp on the tobacco and light it with a match (likely from years of practice), and still she doesn’t look away when she draws in a mouthful of smoke. 

  (You’ve always hated the smell.) 

  “I have to say,” she starts, thin, willowy trails slithering from her lips around each word, and you brace yourself for what she says next, “I’m most disappointed in you, Murray.”

  Just nod, kid. You deserve every bit of this.

  “You’ve proven yourself a rather capable monster hunter, proven my initial conception of your mediumship to be false. In the past year you’ve had seven missions grand total, three solo, two with Hellsing soldiers, two with Seras- and all successful.

  “You work well by yourself, you work even better with a team, and you’ve shown that a partner’s species doesn’t matter to you. All this... and yet you personally failed on this mission. So why? Why did you not put in any effort?”

  Why indeed, that’s the million dollar question. Well the immediate answer is a vampire in red named Alucard; since the moment you were introduced to Him He’s regarded you with outright hostility, as if by merely existing you serve as some sort of huge offense to him, as if you’re an enemy, and one that He’s ready to snuff out at any given chance. So yeah, His hatred for you despite not having any goddang good reason to seems like the right answer. Can’t be the fact that He told you to stay in the car, your stubborn American pride wouldn’t allow that. It’s just... that’s not it, at least not entirely. 

  It didn’t occur to you until after the mission was over and you noticed the specks of blood peppering his pale skin simply dissipate into His pores. The reason He feels so different from other vamps, why He truly scares the holy hell out of you- why your instincts go absolutely apeshit whenever He’s near. 

  Hundreds upon hundreds of years of human evolution fine tuning your sense of self-preservation to prepare you for the very moment when you come face to snarling face with the most dangerous of predators. It’s primal, it’s ancient, and it’s name is Alucard.

  You’re scared of him; as simple and as basic as that sounds there’s no other way to describe it. He scares you. And that’s why you stayed in the car. 

  You explain all of this to sir Integra, who continues to puff on her cigar without interrupting you, and it’s only when you grow quiet that she cradles it in between her index and middle finger and removes it from her teeth. She decides to grace you with a single question.

  “Is Alucard your employer?” She asks.

  “I... what?” You respond, totally caught off guard and utterly confused. 

  “Is He your employer?”

  You can only gawk, an awkward moment that lasts about five heartbeats and three blinks, before you answer her. “N-no, sir Integra.”

  “No indeed. He is but a servant, a tool to be used at Hellsing’s discretion for the betterment of England; an effective, if not deadly, one but a tool nonetheless.” She loosely points the smoking end of the cigar in your direction, “you’re an employee, sworn under a contract that’s currently standing in my responsibility. Do you understand?”

  You think you do.

  With the silver moonlight casting in from the windows and bathing down on her platinum waves, green eye ablaze in the dark and mouth in a firm line, behind her desk sir Integra presents herself as a lord, a boss, and now you realize the true depths of her words. 

  Alucard is certainly a threat but only when His master allows Him to be. You’re an employee, you’re something of an ally and until you render yourself an enemy to the Hellsing organization you’ll be protected by the ironclad word of Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing.

  So feel free to be afraid of all that He can do to you but it’s ultimately her that has all the power, and don’t you dare forget that.

  The corners of your mouth pull up ever so slightly, and you give her a nod followed by a simple bow. “Yes, sir Integra. I do understand. I’m sorry for my crappy work conduct this past mission, I’ll make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

  In the shadows and through the smoke, you swear that you can see your boss smirk a little.

  “Good, see to that. Now unfortunately I’ll have to withdraw any payment considering the fact that you didn’t do anything, but perhaps I’ll find you another task to complete soon.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Very well then. You’re dismissed, hunter Murray.”

  In a corridor relatively close to sir Integra’s office is an old painting of an English queen. The contours of her face look nearly familiar to you, one of the Elizabeths you think- the one that never got married maybe? You at least know for a fact that she was a majorly influential figure in history and though you give her credit for being a strong monarch in ye olde patriarchal times... you always do your utmost best to avoid this part of the manor.

  See the painting is a front, a facade to conceal the doorway that lies behind the canvas. Where it leads to you can’t really say but one thing that’s for sure is this: that’s the entrance to Alucard’s lair and you may have newfound confidence fueled by a combination of trust in your boss and indignation of the mission- but yeah, you’re still going to stay out of Count Prickula’s way.

  Such a shame that He doesn’t feel the same.

  “It seems that my master has finally grown tired of this game,” He purrs somewhere from behind you. “She may yet cast you aside like the pathetic garbage that you are, revenant.”

  You don’t look for Him, don’t rise to His bait and turn around to confront Him mostly because you have yet to cope with your fear and you just know that, if you do, then you’ll more than likely lose what little faith you’ve gained from the meeting. So you just square your shoulders and clench your fists; you can’t look at Him, and His negative energy is still way too stifling, but you’ll be damned if you don’t defend your honor now.

  “You’re right, mister Alucard. I’m more than capable of handling a lone vampire and some ghouls so I should’ve done something. I didn’t- I should’ve, but I didn’t, and now the best thing I can do is move forward from here. Sir Integra has given me her blessing and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”

  You feel ballsy enough to glance out of your peripheral and over your shoulder (and you don’t see anything but you know He’s there.) 

  “There’s only one person here that I’m trying to impress and I’ve been doing that for the past year, so you can hate me all you want, I don’t care, because it legitimately doesn’t matter anymore.” 

  Taking a moment to catch yourself before your rambling gets you into too much trouble, you decide to wait to see if Alucard wants the last word, afford him the basic decency He keeps denying you, but when you realize that He’s likely not going to say anything you wish him a goodnight.

  ...

  But damn your American southern pride!

  “Oh, one more thing. A revenant is either a revived ghost or an animated corpse, two things I’m obviously not, so I don’t get the reference. Maybe you can try using my name for now on? At least it’ll make sense.” 

  There’s a swell of anger, and cold air, and negative energy that rushes your back, and you’ll readily admit that it freaking terrifies you knowing that it’s coming from Him but now you understand the truth- the secret that you’re safe from Him as long as She wills it- and so it’s with that note that you keep striding forward, as if the most powerful monster that you’ve ever had the displeasure of encountering wasn’t currently picturing your demise. 

  This exchange will likely come back to bite you in the ass in the future, but for now you’ve got a date with a mound of plush throw blankets and you fully intend on keeping it.

a/u: so... this entry gave me such a freakin hard time but voila. sorry for the lack of alucard. i’m actually pretty damn proud of how this turned out, feels organic murray’s transition from petrified human to... well petrified human but now with enough backbone to kinda stand up to the count. hope y’all agree. like and reblog this ish if ya enjoyed it, and if you wanna see anything specifically then feel free to hit me up. 

[altanjhungid]

Forebears

The narrow corridor leading to the main hall was dotted with countless toys and obliviously happy children. They ran, laughed, and tustled together on the thick carpeting, delighting in the purity of play while their caretakers stood nearby carrying nothing but dire expressions.

While the gravity of the situation wore down each man and woman’s smile in turn, the children could not grasp what it meant that their grandfather was laid out below in the icy crypt. They didn’t understand how their sects of the family had come to hate each other, why their parents argued loudly several rooms over, or their role as obstacles. Kuzhuk, on the other hand, could understand them no other way.

Where others saw delightful little fountains of optimism, his eyes fixated on their raw little pink noses and the constant sniveling that came every time the snot formed a blockade halfway down their nostrils. They picked and rubbed incessantly at the mucus tortured flesh, covering their hands and thus the area in a fine patina of filth.

“What’re you doing just standing there?” A voice called out to him and he turned his head to meet the sight of a nameless guardian. “Did you lose your way, dragon-man? Through the hall and to the right, like I said.”

“...right, thank you,” He replied thoughtlessly, and before he knew it his legs carried him into the mindfield. His gaze remained low as he twisted and turned through the room, careful not to take in a single breath until he made his way to the other side, away from the little plague carriers that dotted the room. If those in the room stared, he would not notice; but of course they would.

A deep breath exited his lungs when he finished making his way through the gauntlet and came out the other side relatively intact. If disease worked its way into his system, he wouldn’t know for days. The thought made his skin lurch even as he opened the door to the main hall and walked to the gathered crowd of finely dressed Elezen to issue a sweeping bow.

“Kuzhuk Avagnar, at your service.”

He was met with laughter. They sat around the tablet with goblets of wine, eight in total. Four men, four women. He knew exactly who they all were, a sentiment they likely shared towards him.

“What adorably couth mannerisms for a dragon man,” a platinum haired man with a sharp grin mused. “I’m Marius.” At once, the wives shut their mouths while their husbands amused themselves.

“Auphoix,” another said the looker of the bunch with a passive glance.

Then the only one to hold his wife’s hand spoke: “Leon.”

“Isrien,” Weary but familiar eyes settled on him, the oldest no doubt. “But we met once before, didn’t we? You read Anthony’s will… Gods, I never would’ve thought our father would be next to pass...” An unease overtook them all. Perhaps despite the circumstances and the arrival of greed, they could still be shamed. If only for a fleeting moment.

“Yes, that’s correct. I knew your father too… I mean, ah, of course did,” Kuzhuk said with a gentle smile. “But we were friends when he asked me to be the Guarantor of his estate. He was a man of remarkable foresight.... He knew this would be a turbulent time and wanted someone heading the process that could successfully guide us all through troubled waters.”

“Then why the fuck did he choose a dragon-man?” Marius roared with a sneer, hinting his disgust.

“I’m sure father had his reasons,” Auphoix said through a frown.

To everyone’s surprise, Isrien spoke up in Kuzhuk’s defense: “He did a fine job with cousin Anthony’s belongings. I trust him to put father’s affairs in order.”

“Oh?” Auphoix replied as he turned his scrutinizing gaze on his brother, “Am I to believe that you just happen to know this Blackhorn?”

“Clearly it’s nothing to worry about,” Marius added sarcastically, “It’s about every other day that a man dies and some felcher from the south comes to divvy up his property, isn’t it?”

Auphoix chuckled and nodded, “Nothing suspicious here, lizard man. Let me personally show you to the treasure room and turn my back so you can rob us blind with my brother!”

Kuzhuk could feel himself wince as the gesture moved over his features. A sigh escaped his lips and he held out his hands with open palms, “My lords, I wasn’t chosen to be fair…” He admitted with a coaxing ease, ”I was chosen to represent your father’s wishes. You may not like what he wanted done, but the will was his.” His tone turned sharp as he looked at each man in turn, ”You’re not the ones laid out on the marble dais in the basement.”

“I intend to contest,” Auphoix said, raising a goblet in the air with his hand as he decreed it. They’d all planned on doing the same, but that didn’t keep them from rolling their eyes when their youngest brother was the first to act. “I’ve already sent a clerk to the courthouse, so if you so much as lift a single vase to hand it to either of my brothers I’ll have your horns as a trophy, dragonman.”

He shook his head and half-turned his body, unsure of what was worse: the journey or the destination. “So be it, I suppose I’ll be seeing more of you soon.” Kuzhuk let out another bow and turned to depart. Behind him he could make out the stifled sniggers as he walked from the room with long steps, pausing only to stand at the entrance of the corridor full of children that seemed to get along better than their much older parents.

The scorn of men who thought themselves better was one thing, but this?

From behind him, the same guard’s voice roared out as he stood, frozen in place, “What’re you doing blackhorn! I don’t recall my masters giving you leave to stare at their bloody kids.” With a shove from the chainmail clad man carrying a halberd, he lurched into the room. ”Get out.”

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games:  Bloodborne (From Software, 2015)

I wanted to finally do one of these for Dark Souls 3, but realized that I'd finally have to do one for Bloodborne first.  This is something I've put off for two years because I wasn't really ready to try to articulate my thoughts about it, but it's time to face these demons and cut them to ribbons in the process.

From Software's deeply, deeply flawed masterpiece of werewolf killing and beast chopping devoured weeks of my attention, and is to date the only game I felt driven enough to 100%.  Which is strange, because after two and a half years, I still can't tell if I liked it or not.  Let's try to sort through this mess.

I'll start by, as I did with Dark Souls 2, outlining my experience.  I played through Bloodborne on three different characters, took one all the way through New Game+, and got the Platinum trophy for getting all the other trophies.  I killed Ebreitas, I slogged my way through all the Chalice Dungeons, and I've gone through the game using each weapon for a respectable amount of time.  But I never ended up buying the expansion, and I wasn't at all broken up when a random brownout during a loading screen deleted all my saves.

Bloodborne is a game that feels more like two halves of very good but separate games inexpertly mashed together to form a perfectly serviceable single game.  It's enjoyable, don't get me wrong; I don't at all regret the time I put into it and have even entertained thoughts of starting over, it's just that I never follow through when I start to think ahead to the second half of the game.

See, Bloodborne starts off as and is sold to you the player as a Victorian-era werewolf/beastman hunting simulator.  And for the first chunk of the game, it is.  A very good one, too!  Combat is speedy and interactive, enemies are grotesque things that were once familiar but now are not, and the environment of a crowded turn-of-the-century English city is a perfect sell.  

The gist is that for currently irrelevant reasons, the city of Yarnham partakes in odd medical practices that involve consuming blood in some manner.  Can't really say if it's by drinking it, injecting it, or by smearing it all over themselves.  You do two of those things.  The blood is great at curing diseases, but has the unfortunate side effect of slowly turning people into a whole manner of gross shit, and occasionally the city locks itself up to allow a force of Hunters to come in and clear out the worst of them.  A perfectly reasonable setup.

So you go through some impeccably detailed environments, cutting down mutated townsfolk, wolfmen, weird birds, gross dogs, and big lumbering dudes who look like when Mr. Hyde wore a three-piece suit in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  

This is easily my favorite part of the game.  The level and environment design is among From’s best, with the twists and turns of Central Yarnham sprawling through sewers and into residential areas, over bridges and across areas you'd been in half an hour ago and didn't realize there was more to.  Capped off by a stroll through what I consider the best-realized “Spooky Forest” in a videogame that leads to a shortcut back to the starting area that made me relive taking the elevator down from the Parish church back to Firelink, the first big chunk of Bloodborne is expertly presented.

And then you get to Byrgenwerth.  Byrgenwerth is the game's Creepy Oxford; hyped up as a massive university where terrible experiments of alchemy and black magic are carried out.  It's supposed to be the place where this all started, where the old scholars got their ideas and unleashed this blood plague upon the city while trying to pursue immortality.  At this point in the game and pretty much until the end, the game tells you that there is no place more important than Byrgenwerth.

So it's a real shame when you get there and it turns out to be a single room.

Byrgenwerth marks the end of the grounded concept the game started with, as well as the end of my fascination with it.  Byrgenwerth marks a massive shift in how the game is presented, how the narrative unfolds, what your purpose is, and why you've come to Yarnham.

Byrgenwerth is where you start fighting aliens.

To be fair, you can do that a tiny bit earlier in the Spooky Forest, down a hidden side path.  But once you beat the boss at Byrgenwerth, you get a cutscene that basically tells you “Yes hello now it is time for weird shit” and then you get teleported to a new part of the city.  And there are aliens.  From this point on, the game ditches the werewolf-hunter angle entirely and makes it all about tracking down this weird baby who’s part alien god or something; Vaati can tell you more about the story if you really care.  

Design-wise, it all starts to wobble a bit.  Levels become smaller, bosses become less mechanically interesting, and everything starts leaning super heavily on Lovecraft.  Weird aliens, possible space-gods, literal body snatchers; it’s all so jarringly different from the first half of the game, and not in a thematically interesting way.  It’s just incredibly different.

Okay, so the first part of the game is, again, essentially a massive single level that spirals and crawls all over itself in a way that is extremely satisfying to go through.  After Byrgenwerth, you’re shuffled through smaller and smaller levels that are barely connected until you just kind of find yourself at the end of the game.  There’s a place called the Lecture Hall that’s supposedly connected to Byrgenwerth, but it’s not anywhere near there, and the two exits on either side of it lead to entirely disconnected areas in The Nightmare Frontier, a place made entirely of bleeding tombstones and poison water, and Nightmare of Mensis, an area that while technically better put together than Lost Izalith, elicits many of the same reactions.

The Lecture Hall is two floors of simple, boxy rooms.  Nightmare Frontier is an uninteresting, flat expanse filled with enemies throwing instant-kill projectiles at you.  Nightmare of Mensis is a big creepy castle guarded by some of the most annoying enemies in the game and populated with the others.  Neither are actually horrible, but the lack of connection to anywhere else is just disappointing.  Add in secret bonus areas that are supposed to have a pretty big amount of plot significance like The Orphanage (a single room) or Cainhurst (a big impressive castle that you barely actually go through) and it all just left a bad taste in my mouth the longer I thought about it.

I said at the beginning that the game felt like two halves of other games inexpertly stitched together.  What I mean by that is that the story of that first game didn't seem done being told.  There was still a lot of mileage I felt that could have been gotten out of the setting, and instead of giving it a satisfying conclusion that rolled naturally into the second half, it was rather unceremoniously cut short to make room for this new thing that suddenly came into existence.  And the problem then with that new thing is that it didn't seem to have nearly as much care and attention put into as did the thing that had just been yanked offstage Vaudeville style, complete with comically oversized shepherd's crook.

My personal preference, then, is that the entire game would have been about this creepy blood plague people get from drinking weird fluids they found in an ancient catacomb.  It could have even gone the alien angle later, maybe saving that for the last third or even the last quarter of the game rather than an entire half.  There just seemed to be so little to go around in the latter half, while the first part still seemed brimming with ideas.  Instead of having us get transported to a secret sealed-off part of the city, have us go down into those catacombs and find what started this whole thing; make the last bit of the game one frantic rush to just barely touch the surface of what's really going on in Yarnham.

But oh wait, they tried that.

Yes, enter the Chalice Dungeons, a system for making procedurally-generated maps and mazes to fight through!  Only the finest square hallways and maddeningly repetitive rooms here, filled full of enemies that didn't make the cut for the main game!  Grind for hours to gather materials to make a new map, all for a chance to find a marginally better Diablo 2-style insertable weapon gem!  Chase that +1.3% increased critical damage, good Hunter!

In a word, Chalice Dungeons are shit.  But they're ignorable shit, there solely for those who find joy in them and the treasure hunting they allow.  Or they would be, if the true final boss of the game wasn't locked in there four-deep.

Throughout the game, you're occasionally given new chalices from boss encounters.  They don't do anything on their own, and are there only to participate in this system.  But you can't just put them on their little altars and hop over to the maps they control, no no no.  You need crafting materials to make the maps, even the ones that aren't procedurally-generated that make up the four story-relevant ones.  You get . . . most of them along the normal course of the game, either through drops from specific bosses or as out-of-the-way item pickups.  Others drop from enemies, so draw your own conclusions there.

The story-relevant dungeons are at least hand-crafted, but it doesn’t do a lot to get rid of the issues.  There’s no real theme beyond “blocky dungeon,” even when mildly-different tilesets add environmental decals and different decorations.  You have a short hallway, a long hallway, an L-shaped hallway, three or four flavors of rooms with enemies in the same places each time, two different trap rooms, and two different big setpiece rooms.  To their credit, they do (sometimes) populate the dungeons with unique enemies and bosses, but as I said above, a lot of the stuff you can only find in Chalice Dungeons feel like leftovers from scrapped main-game content.  

I don’t know what the Chalice Dungeons were supposed to be.  Maybe they were supposed to be a side project that got rolled into Bloodborne when the deadline started to loom, maybe they were supposed to be way more involved and part of a more complex post-game, or maybe they were just supposed to be a neat distraction for people who wanted more.  But the problem with that last one is that you are forced to go through four of these things to get the true final boss, and they are anything but short.  Each dungeon is pretty sizeable, certainly larger that some lategame areas in the main game, and the challenge they pose is on par with the rest (unless we’re talking about Cursed Pthumerian, holy shit that was painful).  I could understand having to go through one heavily-curated dungeon as a way for From to say “hey, come check these out!”  But that there are four of them that make a hefty demand on your time and resources, I just don’t know.  To make it even worse, enemies in Chalice Dungeons only drop materials for crafting new dungeons.  No dungeon-specific weapons or armor in the four of them to reward you, only dungeon crafting materials and those randomized weapon gems for nigh-inconsequential bonuses.  There’s just no tangible bonus for doing these things past what it takes to fight the end boss.

And speaking of resources, let’s dive into that.  The game does away with Dark Souls’ Estus Flask - the rechargeable, always-available but limited healing option.  Instead, we’re taken back to Demon’s Souls-style consumable healing items, with a couple caveats.  There’s only one type, you can only carry 20 at a time, they increase in price from vendors as the game goes on, and later-game enemies, for the most part, simply do not drop them.  

I realize I’ve not actually spent much time on the game’s mechanics, so let me jump back a second to talk about the Regain system.  Combat in Bloodborne was, at the time, much faster than anything in any of the Souls games.  Rather than focusing on slower, more cautious and methodical combat, Bloodborne fully expects you to trade hits with the enemies.  Combat is rapid; your roll is replaced by quick-stepping in any given direction, leading to dodges that cover less distance but that treat avoiding damage as secondary to repositioning.  Even the largest weapons swing quickly, and most hits stagger enemies just enough that the game wants you to dance around groups of them, using a series of unrelenting attacks to manage the crowd rather than waiting behind a shield for your opening.  So when you do inevitably get hit, the game doesn’t want you retreating, it wants you to jump right back in there and earn your health back.  For a short but generous-enough time after taking damage, hitting the enemy will heal you for up to the amount you were at before, and it’s absolutely possible to fully negate the effects of a swipe to the gut.  

So with that in mind, having 20 Blood Vials that instantly-regenerate 40% of your total HP seems reasonable, and it is for much of the game.  Coincidentally, the first half of the game.  Early on, you often face groups of 5 or so enemies at once, or individual ones that are slower.  There, the system works great.  Do a bit of damage, trade a few hits, dash back and use a single Blood Vial to give yourself a safety net, hop back in to finish everyone off.  Get a couple vials back off the enemies as a prize.  Later though, you’re facing down enemies mostly by themselves or with only one other, and they hit much harder while still being fast.  It becomes a lot riskier to try to get the full heal off the Regain system, so maybe you want to dash out and pop a vial.  As you go on through the later levels, it can be a pretty common occurrence to see your Blood Vial counter dwindling; not out of any real fault of your own for not playing well enough, but just because the game, again, expects you to trade hits, and has now changed how your damage matches up versus your enemy’s.  

You can store up to 600 extra vials in your storage box at home base, and your personal stock of 20 is replenished from that total when you respawn or go to a different area, so it’s not like you have to rush back to buy 20 more every time you use them up.  But you do definitely find yourself running out faster at the end of the game than you were previously.  You can only Regain the effects of the most recent hit you take, and nothing past it.  So if an enemy has, say, an uninterruptable frenzy attack that does multiple hits you can’t escape from for a small amount of damage each hit, well . . .  Blood Vials are the only way to regenerate health you’ve fully lost.  In Dark Souls, topping yourself up before a tough enemy encounter was a reasonable thing, because you’d get that estus back at the next bonfire.  In Demon’s Souls, chowing down on some Half-Moon Grass beforehand was fine, you were carrying 80 of the damn things, plus dozens of the other types.  Dark Souls 2 gave you Lifegems to make up for a smaller stock of estus, and even the King’s Field games had refillable health potions mixed with findable and buyable Earth Herbs.  Plus, each of those games had healing magic.  Bloodborne has “fight for the health you just lost” or “heal 40% of your HP, 20 times.”  Yes, as I said before, you can in fact buy more vials, but the increasing price combined with the carry limit make it difficult to rely on getting them that way.  

The game treats bullets much the same way.  Oh, right, you have a gun in Bloodborne.  You use to parry enemies, don’t worry about it.  Like Blood Vials, you can carry 20 on you at a time.  But you don’t just use them to shoot stuff, you also use them as ammunition for certain special attacks, or to cast spells.  So I’ll just come right out and say it, doing “a mage build” in Bloodborne is pretty much a waste of everyone’s time.  You don’t get useful spells until halfway through the game, and you cannot reasonably hope to defeat enemies with magic because you simply don’t carry enough bullets to make it happen.  

So, bullets.  Enemies at least drop them a little more generously than they do vials, and there’s a nifty little thing From put in the game to help you out.  At any time, you can press a button to sacrifice 30% of your health for 5 extra bullets.  It’s a neat system, it plays nicely with Regain, and it helps you conserve resources.  No complaints there.  

Alright, I’ll be honest here.  I’d taken a step away from this massive wall of text for a few weeks, and I think it’s best to just close the book on the whole thing.  If I haven’t been able to show you that my thought on Bloodborne are super conflicted by now, it won’t happen even if I write another five pages.  

Bloodborne is a great game.  Combat is fast and responsive, the graphics are superb, the aesthetic is wonderfully realized, the level design starts off so strong, and the difficulty feels natural.  But Bloodborne is also a mess.  Some systems feel half-baked, the superb graphics combined with too much post-processing leads to slowdown fairly easily, the level design turns to garbage in the lategame, Chalice Dungeons were a mistake, and the game clearly has no idea what it wants to do with itself.  For the third time, it feels like two different, unfinished ideas were mushed together to make a technically finished product, but it just ends up feeling like you’re awkwardly stepping from one to the other.

What I’ve felt about Bloodborne from the first time I finished it is that From had a lot of ideas, but spent far, far too long fleshing them out before actually considering how they would function as a game.  They allegedly started working on it while Dark Souls 1’s Artorias of the Abyss expansion was being made, which gives them around three years to have put the entire thing together.  Quite long for a modern game, but considering that so much changed from the Project Beast trailer that came out 7 months prior to Bloodborne’s release, I just don’t know.  

So much stuff feels like it was cobbled together at the last minute.  It feels genuinely unfinished on a conceptual level.  The actual mechanical gameplay doesn’t suffer for it, but something definitely feels missing from every other part of the game.  Maybe we’ll see it again some day, like March of 2016, or April if you don’t live in Japan.  And then two weeks later on PC for no reason.

[extraquarterblog]

I gave up on Achievements and Trophies

It's late out, with only the luminescence from the TV lighting the room. I feel my eyes starting to burn as I continue my pilgrimage to get just a few more trophies. I'm already over caffeinated and I can feel my legs going numb. I just need a few more trophies to unlock the holy grail of all trophies, the Platinum trophy. 

Gold, Silver, Bronze, Hah! I say. Only the Platinum trophy matters. You can have 1000 Bronze of 1000 silver trophies, but it’s the Platinum trophy that makes people stop and envy your success. 

I check what trophies are left, the fabled "Make every item/weapon/accessory" is next on my list. I see how many items I've already made, then count how many I have left. Just 9 weapons on my list to go, shouldn't be too hard right? I pull out my phone, doing a quick Google search and see how quickly I can knock these last few items out. But it would seem, fate is cruel to me. As those last few particular weapons, require a random chance of a monster to appear, with a random chance that it will drop the piece I need. 

Regardless, I power on. I must accomplish this!

An entire hour goes by; I've only captured 1 piece of many. I do some quick math in my head and figure; it’s going to take me another 10hrs at the going rate to make just a few of those weapons. It's 3am. !@#$% it, I'm going to bed.

I never tried again, ever, to work so hard for a single trophy.

Nothing like a night of frustration, fatigued and missing out on social events that makes you do a quick reflection on your life, or just how you’re spending the evenings. After my failed attempt on collecting more trophies I skimmed through my trophy list, I then check my Account level. I reached level 13, not bad; I got a couple of Platinum trophies, yeah! I can hold my head held high. I try to convince myself that I've already done so much, why concern myself on getting more?

I check how other players are doing...I'm blown away. I'm like a child who can't even crawl yet, compared to the behemoths that have over 100 Platinum trophies. All the sudden, my few Platinum Trophies look laughable. 

I did for a moment felt that I brought shame to my family name. (Over dramatic)

The same story could be said for my Xbox Achievement addiction. Oh, don't lie, we've all been there. Nothing like blowing through a heard of zombies, seeing the achievement points appear on the screen for getting 100 kills with a specific weapon or achieving so many head shots. It’s such simple yet addicting systems that encourage you to play on. 

So not only is it cool to pass a hard part in a game, getting points adding to your account is like rewarding you for your troubles. 

Like so many others, I begin to devise ways to achieve the most amounts of points in the quickest times. Typically, when playing a new game, I would crank up the difficulty to the highest setting. It may be grueling and discouraging to play through a game, for the first time ever on the hardest difficult.  But once you beat the game, as you see the credits roll, the screen begins to fill up with Achievement points for beating the hardest difficult, as well as every difficulty underneath it. It's like killing 1 bird with two stones, or depending how many difficulty's there are. It can be like 3 or 4 birds, with one stone. 

However, you can find it hard to enjoy a game when every part of it is punishable as you stumble around trying to learn the games mechanics for the first time.

Though, much like my Trophy episode. I take a moment to pause and compare how I stand against my fellow gamers, I should be good right?....yeah - no. There players out there with near 1 million points or more. 

Again, I step away from the achievement scene. 

Trophies and Achievements were one of the most exciting and addicting features the previous generation gave us.  I still remember when trophies first came available and everyone was playing PixelJunks Eden, jumping from plant to plant. 

As I said above however, the grind to accomplish a Game 100% began to wear me down. It’s also doesn't help that achievements and trophies more or less have many of the same requirements to unlock them despite what game you may be playing. You begin to feel you've seen this same magic trick time and time again. Thankfully developers are trying to be more creative with new ideas on how to unlock your points or trophies, to help gamers be engaged. 

But for me, I can’t justify, burning hours after hours to unlock 50 points or grind the same area/monster to get a single trophy. Is it my own fault on trying to compare my success to other gamers? Yeah, but how can I not enjoy a friendly rivalry from a friend or two, on who can have the most achievement points or trophies. Though, eventually, it begins to creep up with me, and the fatigue trying to win, beats me down.

At one point, I just have to wave my white flag.

So, I no longer go out of my collecting points or trophies. I just boot up the game and go about my journey, If I get points, cool. If I collect a few trophies, neat.  But I’m done being involved in this points/trophies arms race.

The way I look at is, instead of being stuck to a single game, trying to achieve that 100%, I could better us that time playing a new game or two.