#which i kind of like. trying to find out the plot of something via art and memes is fun

[copepods]

maybe the real ultrakill is the ultra we killed along the way

[hazbinsponsoredbyvee]

Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel!

Welcome to the ask blog for the Hazbin Hotel, featuring all of the residents, along with their newest sponsors - the Vees! They're here to answer all of your questions, and might occasionally reblog things they like. Vox runs the website and handles most things around here, but the others are here too. Also me - hi, you can call me Mel (she/her), liaison between the hotel and the Vees. But I'll mostly let the others do the talking.

So, send in an ask! You can request to talk to someone specific, or someone (or multiple people) will reply at random. As I said, you can expect to see Vox the most, but Lucifer, Alastor, Charlie, Angel Dust, and Husk are all decently active here. The others might pop in on occasion.

THINGS TO KNOW

This blog is set not long after Season 1 of Hazbin Hotel. (It is canon-divergent in that anything that happens in canon after this blog was established is not canon to the blog, unless I choose to make it so.)

The blog has its own lore, and all asks exist within the same continuity. (All major story arcs are tagged on the navigation page to easily keep track of plot developments.)

Here you can find the rules for how the universe of this blog works. (You'll see here that you can do things such as lock characters in a room together, but I request that at least one of the major characters on this blog be involved in these kinds of situations.)

NSFW themes are allowed, but I'm unlikely to get graphic with anything. 

Due to the nature of this, this is an 18+ blog - MINORS DNI. (This is for everyone’s protection - these characters will say inappropriate things when responding to asks, so I can’t risk a minor being on the receiving end of such things. If I find out a minor is sending in asks, you will be blocked.)

OCs are welcome to interact, but please no children and no one who's related to/has history with one of the characters.

Canon characters sending in asks will be treated as though they're from a different universe. (This is because I can't expect your portrayal of the character to necessarily adhere to the lore of this blog.)

Please don't try to dictate what anyone on this blog does. (This includes characters and miscellaneous creatures such as pets and Alastor's shadow.)

RP is done through asks, not reblogs.

If you send a link, please include a brief description of what the link is to. (It can be as simple as 'an edit of Lucifer and Charlie'.) Also, NO LEAKS.

The majority of these characters aren't good people, so don't expect them to always be nice. (Similarly, just because a character says something doesn't mean I, the moderator, agree with it.)

I will answer most things via queue, which posts 5-10 times a day. (There will also be exceptions, such as if the asks are connected to a current situation that’s happening, a limited time event/game, or you know, if I feel like it.)

Be kind and respectful! (Giving the characters a hard time is fine, but spreading hate to anyone who interacts with the blog is a blockable offense.)

NAVIGATION

A navigation page can be found here, where you can find posts tagged by character and ship, as well as art, fics, and lore. This is also where you will find all of the story arcs in chronological order!

A list of all the animals and other characters present but not answering asks can be found here.

A timeline for the blog and its characters can be found here.

MODERATOR

Mel is my OC name that I go by here. She is a demon who works for Vox as a liason with the hotel, but I'll also talk about my normal life under that name. A few facts about me:

31

AuDHD

bi/ace

Married

2 Cats, 1 Dog

CST time zone

Also, here is where you can find my triggers/phobias, if you could pretty please avoid sending in anything involving them - thanks! And here are my opinions on all the characters.

Personal Blog -> @hyperthusiast AO3 -> songofhell Leave a Tip -> Ko-Fi

[demonfox38]

Completed - House Flipper 2

All houses are living creatures of chaos, when you get down to it.

There are many arts I'm not great at. Most fiber crafts for one. Watercolor painting, two. Interior design, big time. Like, I'm not going to let my house get filthy, and I'm going to keep everything running to the best of my ability. (Hell, there's something empowering about replacing a toilet's float!) But, by nature? I'm just about keeping things picked up and in general functional order. If you're gonna ask me about what's fashionable when it comes to interior decorating, you're going to get a response that looks like something out of a 1970s Sears catalog. I'm about being functional, economical, and comfy when it comes to my house. Not cool or trendy.

Cool people don't have a wood-paneled basement, oak-laminate particleboard cabinets, or CRT television sets.

Since I'm an aficionado for mid-to-late century American interiors (and the weird vibes they can produce), I tend to follow blogs online that showcase such rooms that still exist in the modern era. Two such blogs include Unteriors and Roomhole. As a response to Unteriors, another blog called Unteriors-In-House-Flipper-2 has crossed my dashboard from time to time. Their skill in rendering such locations is shockingly good. Like, I think you could trick people into thinking these were real-world images. As someone who has dinked around with a few 3D editors, I was fascinated about the tool they were using. What was "House Flipper 2"? How could its users make something that looked so good so fast?

Well, practice is an obvious answer. Familiarity with the tools. A good understanding of lighting, too. But, having the tool be pretty good to begin with also helps!

As the name implies, "House Flipper 2" is a design tool/game that simulates the reconstruction (or straight up construction) of various spaces. You can do this either to your own whims or to those of various clients in the game's story mode. While a person can just dive right into a sandbox and mess around with tools as they see fit, the story mode does give structure and context to how each tool works. The plot there is nothing to write home about, but the houses themselves…man. No shit "Crime Scene Cleaner" is a game that exists. Garbage-based jump scares abound, and I'm not just talking about the awful wallpaper your character's parents keep putting up.

Hmm. Both "House Flipper 2" and "Crime Scene Cleaner" are under the Playway publisher page in Steam. The games have different developers, but I do wonder if their staff members were talking to each other. Perhaps even sharing employees…

If a player is hoping to get something a little deeper than an HGTV television show in terms of plot, they may come away disappointed from "House Flipper 2." I'm not saying that a person can't draw their own conclusions from the details they find around the house they are cleaning. (I'm pretty sure a couple was copulating in the bathroom at one house concert, for one.) You're just not going to deal with anything more complicated than cleaning up a house post-flood. Which, trust me. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I have a lot of empathy for that. But, it's not exactly navigating the factional relationships between Pinnacove town citizens and designer corporation Accenzo, like being in some kind of housing-based "Shin Megami Tensei" RPG. It's just generally trying to make people happier.

I mean, if we're being super honest, most of them pissed me off via jealousy over familial/economic stability and being able to pursue their own dreams. But, I did think it was pretty cool that one of my clients had vitiligo. I mean, I guess all video games with Michael Jackson in them also star someone with vitiligo, but that's a unique and thoughtful design choice.

To complete your jobs, you get (or gain access to) the following options:

Hands (for moving objects around)

Flipper Tool (responsible for selling or duplicating items, as well as changing their appearance post-purchase or copying their style)

Collecting Trash

Cleaning (for stains and windows)

Vacuuming

Demolishing (for wrecking walls)

Building (for building walls)

Edit Wiring (to hook your electronics up to switches)

Surface Finishes (for tiling, wood, and wallpaper)

Painting

Most are intuitive, once you get access to them. The more you use them, the more perks and abilities you can unlock for them. Since there's not a great real-world equivalent for the Flipper Tool, that one may take a little more time to get used to. Just remember that it has a submenu for selecting its various features, and you should be good to go.

Client demands are highlighted on your tool wheel with yellow exclamation points. Getting into your quest menu will also show you an itemized list of tasks to perform. When you have a tool selected, you can hit a Flipper Sense button to have what needs to be acted on highlighted in yellow. Very handy, especially when you can't see what to destroy or clean up.

Usually, you'll have the best luck doing the following in order:

Sell off unwanted stuff.

Bag trash.

Vacuum.

Clean stains.

Clean windows.

Paint.

Resurface walls and floors.

Buy wanted stuff (and arrange as desired.)

Unpack boxes (for stuff the client has already purchased.)

Some of your objectives get hidden behind furniture, so be sure to fling that aside if you get stumped. Might as well spam the Flipper Sense, too. You do get points for it, after all!

The only "threat" you have is your budget. I put that in quotes because, assuming you are following the client's requests, you should never go anywhere near running out of money. Even in your own projects, you can repeat previous jobs to get more cash, should you get in a pinch. Just put in enough attention and elbow grease to max out your job to three stars, then cash out.

You do get into a lull, working through those jobs. At a certain point, you may hit a level of brain fatigue with redesigning whatever items your customers want you to purchase and just give into their requests, regardless of how you feel about the style of the products you are purchasing. The game's just checking that you made the right purchases, not that you placed them well or used a certain style. Perhaps this brain fatigue is what makes coming across a junked-up room all the more shocking. You're just trying your best with making an efficient, pleasant space, and wham! Thirteen pizza boxes chucked across an attic space, complete with grease stains sinking into the hard wood floors. Like, there's worse things to find in a house. I've seen worse in real life. But, it doesn't mean that it didn't make me curse or shudder.

Man, though. I get where real-life house flippers just keep doing the same crap over and over again. White walls and gray laminate floors aren't just the results of creative bankruptcy and penny pinching. It's also mental fatigue and executive dysfunction.

Additionally, the game will occasionally treat you with a furniture assembling mini-game. Successfully getting at least 2 stars on your assembled product will grant you a small discount to purchased items of that class in game (somewhere between 2-6%, depending on the difficulty of the item in question.) They work well enough, despite some arguments I had with the game's camera. Whoever made the time limits to beat on those mini-missions needs to have some kind of intervention for whatever stimulants they are abusing, though. Like hell I'm repeating something that took me 20 minutes to put together just because they think it can be done in 15.

You can also platform across "Floor is Lava" maps, but man. I'm just here to fix up houses.

If you did want to cut out the story and get right to the point, a sandbox mode is available for you. The tools aren't an exact 1 to 1 with the tools you get in the story mode, but there's enough overlap that playing the story mode will help you out here. Additionally, there are tools for assigning quests, jobs, etc. in the event that you want to upload your map to mod.io and have other players play your map. You can also control the lawn growth and punch holes in the map, which man! Would have I liked those options in the main game.

When you are allowed to take full control over a house and exercise your skills, you will likely be happy with the variety of colors, textures, and items to play with. The furniture is somewhat restricted to modern creations akin to something you'd find in IKEA or on Wayfair, with only select deviations made for the occasional appliance to look mid-century modern. (Which, for someone who has a fair amount of CRT television sets around the house, is a bit of a bummer. The one CRT they have in game is just not the vibe I'm going for, either.) Each furniture item and texture set can be dyed in at least three sets of color styles separated by vibrance, sometimes also coming with different pattern, wood, or metal types. In the right circumstances, you can also use photos off your own computer for additional artwork! For someone that remembers the more static days of the original Sims release, it's particularly impressive! Significantly fewer dead people around, too.

I'm always amused when guys discover exactly what gals did in "The Sims" games. Those games were pool-based slaughterhouses. Girls had to get their cool graveyards somehow.

When I had hiccups with the game, I could get around most obstacles by figuring out how to talk to the game in its own logic. Like, once I removed a timber log to paint behind it, then had to resize said log into a sliver to get it back into place, then resize it once more to its original size. Hooking up electrical wiring also wasn't explicitly taught, but I figured it out after messing around with light settings in a ranch house. The only problems I had that couldn't be fixed were being unable to cut triangular shapes out of bricks or placing bricks down in spots where the game arbitrarily said no. Annoying? Sure. But, that's a surprisingly low limitation.

Although, it would have been nice to be able to manually freeze items into a single group. Or, just have a bunch of items for purchase as a group. (Like, I'm talking having a block of books instead of having to arrange one at a time. I suppose you could put them onto a tray, move them, then delete the tray, but man. That feels weird.) Also, it's kind of weird that there are so many toys, but not a generic teddy bear or doll. Like, there's action figures for fake games, but not much in the way for dolls or stuffed animals. I don't know. Just seems like a thing kids would have.

Another weird thing—I ended up having this intermittent input issue with a Nintendo Switch controller that I was using from time to time. For whatever reason, right stick input would lock into a counter-clockwise circle, and I'd have to shake it out of that bad behavior. I doubt many people are using Switch controllers for PC gaming, but hey. Guess I’m weird like that. (I didn't have any issues with an Xbox 360 controller or the standard keyboard and mouse, for what that's worth.)

"House Flipper 2" is an awesome tool that happens to have a decent game mode attached to it. I am wondering how this could be used more as a partner tool or competitor to something like Sketchup more than expanding the boundaries and lore of Pinnacove. I imagine an average interior designer could get a lot of use out of something like "House Flipper 2," even if that's not the exact purpose of it. A person is never going to get exact furniture matches with it, but I imagine you could at least mock up a room relatively quickly with it. To those in the right industry, that might be pretty neat.

The base price for "House Flipper 2" is around $39.99 with a bonus DLC Starter Pack for $9.99. I suspect this price may change depending on how many people they want/need to pull in for co-op playtesting, so watch for any potential sales. I'm not exactly certain how many of my readers would be into building homes and decorating them, so for them, this may be too expensive. But, hey. It's important to engage in non-violent, constructive play, from time to time. This is a good way to do just that.

Although, if an option opens up to smash some digital NIMBY or HOA president's car in with a sledgehammer, I'm all for that, too. Gotta make this housing market more affordable somehow.

[eldritchwyrm]

finally watched dune (2021). assorted thoughts

i really enjoyed this movie but i'm having serious trouble explaining why. i didn't get the same type of enjoyment out of it that i'm typically looking for in a big-budget sff movie. i wasn't worried about the characters' fate at literally any point. i didn't find it "exciting," i didn't "relate" to anyone, and i wasn't "emotionally invested" in the character relationships. i wasn't even intellectually invested in the adaptation project from a critical perspective. i was drawn in by... something else?

felt like timothée chalamet phoned in all his lines. it was like he was doing a cold read of the script over a zoom call and the vibes were just absolutely flatlining. but i don't actually think that was his fault? i think that was an accurate depiction of the character as given to him?

as far as i can recall this is the first time that a sci fi movie actually gave me a gut-swoop feeling via its portrayal of LARGE SCALE. every other sf movie tries soooo haaaard to get me to care about Identical Giant Spaceship #28489211 Did I Mention It's Big, but this is the first time i actually had a "oh that's BIG" feeling

pretty sure that effect was almost all shot composition. lots of extreme wide shots in which architectural features / space objects formed austere, abstracted shapes

i really liked every shot EXCEPT, ironically enough, the ones that featured dunes (lowercase).

me pointing at a generic sand dune: i've had enough of this guy

related to the sand imagery. i am Aware that dune enacts a complex critique of imperialism over the course of several novels and that the Point is to make you uncomfortable at first. i am still uncomfortable. this is fine. this is the point. but i find the move of "immerse you in white saviorism for a whole novel, then subvert it" a lot easier to handle in book form? the cinematic gaze is very different from the novelistic gaze. it does Things to the portrayal of otherwise very similar plot events. still deciding if i like that

then again it's been so many years since i read the novel... idk

i did feel like maybe i should've seen this on a big screen. and i will probably attempt to see the sequel in theaters? something i have not done of my own volition in many years, even before the pandemic?

whatshername who played jessica was an incredible actor. profoundly weird in exactly the correct way

i was surprised by how little emphasis they gave to the litany; it was present just enough but they didn't Make A Scene of it. i'm guessing that's being saved for the sequel

okay now that i've thought about it more: i think i enjoyed this movie the same way i might appreciate an art film.

so the thing about arthouse films is many of them prioritize reflective, reflexive commentary, often in a brechtian or approximately brechtian mode. often this promotes certain kinds of immersion (an ill-defined term! which we use a lot regardless!), especially the intellectual and aesthetic, at the cost of other kinds of immersion.

there's a certain liveliness of character that can be found in the best "commercial" artworks — the sort of thing that makes people say the characters "jumped off the page". that particular brand of liveliness is much rarer in "literary"/arthouse texts because the particular flavor of reflective mode that's fashionable right now puts up a barrier between that "liveliness" and the reader/viewer/etc.

i don't mean that these texts can't directly engage audience emotion or deliver a gutpunch or whatever -- i'm trying to get at the fact that they exhibit a deep distrust of charm. charm as an affect is contradictory to brechtian detachment. that's not particular to 21st century literary fiction or arthouse film, that's a cultural movement that's been happening in fits and starts in america and britain for a while now?

(this is reminding me i still need to read erin horáková's dissertation)

(damn that's reminding me i need to find her dissertation)

(i could always. ask. but that seems. embarrassing)

anyways these aren't inherent qualities of genre. they're not foundational.

you see plenty of texts that employ "commercial" modes of audience engagement that are later recuperated into the literary canon and treated as literary fiction, even if they weren't originally marketed as such. to kill a mockingbird is a decent example of this

ANYWAYS i'm almost sure i enjoyed dune (2021) as an arthouse film? i found myself wishing i could turn down the character voices into a low murmur so that i could just be whisked through the interplay of light and shadow without being bothered with "plot"

despite my apparent lack of investment in the characters, i thought duncan's death was a great example of a classic trope done right? i just found the whole scene incredibly satisfying, narratively? idk.

i got seriously tired of seeing dreamy wordless visions of zendaya's face tho. so you paid for zendaya to be in this movie. WE GET IT.

[ginoeh]

Shipper Tag Game

I was tagged by the lovely @tj-dragonblade , thank you!

What ship were you completely obsessed with as a teenager, but now you don’t care about anymore?

As a teenager... well, that was quite a while ago lol. I suppose that would have been Harry/Draco. First fandom, first queer pairing, first smut stories. I was such a sweet sweet summer child XD The early 00s were wild

Which ship would you consider your first one?

Soooo. Funny story. Way back when, I got into fanfiction via fanfiction.net. You know how their filter system is bad/non-existent? Yeah. Little me, on her first outing to ffnet, didn’t know how to operate the character settings. I clicked on the first story on the top of the first page of the HP section. It was a Snape/Hermione star-crossed lover deal. It flash-fried my brain, taught me content curation in a crash course and incidentially made me partial to the ship for quite a few years...

Your first fanfic was about which couple?

See above lol. I will never ever forget the experience. I tried to find that story later for downloading (like an ugly beloved keepsake ig lol) but never managed.

If you mean fanfic I've written: it was gen.

Do you remember the first couple you saw fan art of?

Kakashi/Obito

Have you ever gotten into ship discourse?

Nope. Scraped by a few times since I entered the tumblr bubble but managed to stay out of it. I don’t get the point. It's freaking fictional characters in fictional worlds. Go touch grass or something instead... (but you will make me fucking mad if you try to drag me into these things with wild ad hom accusations based on what i ship or dont ship)

Did you used to have a NOTP or have one currently?

No, not really. It's only ever preferences. There are some I dislike due to my own hc/inability to suspend my disbelief but I wouldn’t call them NOTPs. I just don’t read them.

Who were the last couple in the last fanfic you read?

Dreamling

Currently, do you have any OTPs?

I actually dislike the term OTP. It's a scale of preferences for me. There are few (read: none) fav characters that I can only see with one love interest (and anyway, sometimes i do prefer plot over love story. wild take i know) and the more time I spend in a fandom the more I diversify.

Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting into?

I don’t get this question, sorry. If I'm interested, I'll search it out. Even if the fandom is old. AO3 is an archive for exactly that reason.

Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they’re kind of interesting?

Not that I can think of, at the moment!

Do you have any ship that, in the past, would have been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

Probably? I'm not clear on what all one is getting cancelled over this week/month/year by which group of 'concerend bystanders'. I suppose I might get cancelled for the mentioned Hermione/Snape?

What is your favourite crack ship?

I'm so glad you asked. It's clearly Dream/Helm (thank you for that @writing-for-life ) Or Gollum/The One Ring (thanks go to Neil himself here). Or - actually, never mind lol.

What is the couple you read the most fanfics about?

At the moment it's Dreamling. But I cycle through fandoms/pairings periodically...(btw im looking for more Johanna/Death? If anyone could point me in the right direction?)

What do most of your ships have in common?

At least one character has a dark/unknown/violent/tragic past (they can be victim or perpetrator!!! I'm all for character development babey)

What do you absolutely hate in a ship?

I don’t hate ships? As I said above. Possibly the reduction on 'I can fix him/her' or 'my love will save him/her from depression/"the darkness"/etc.' but that is mostly a matter of the author's style of crafting characterization and plot and has nothing to do with the ship itself.

I'm tagging @bazzybelle , @seiya-starsniper , @writing-for-life if you want to or maybe just point me towards your post if you've done it already?

[smellslikebot]

hello hello long time follower first time asker. all your posts about neopets have made me curious about the site bc i have only ever really existed on the fringe of neopets and used other virtual pet sites in the 2010s (whereas neopets is more 2000s)... so questions: are you on the Actual Neopets Website or like a "rewritten" version (cause i think i heard something about those..? idk) and also what would your tips be for a Neopets Beginner? thank you sorry this question is long and sounds a bit silly. have a good day :-)

hey thanks for asking!! i've been thinking about writing up something like this for a while, but i hesitated because neopets is kind of weird to recommend to new players. i'm currently on NEOPETS.COM™ because all the neoclones i'm interested in are invite-only or aren't always accepting/processing applications... anyway here are my Tips(?) (i don't even know what to call this anymore because i got carried away writing it)

(i'll put any warnings/disclaimers at the end because i don't want to look like i'm trying to talk anyone out of checking out neopets lol. there are just some things to be aware of)

most importantly, try to have fun! =)

you can earn some neopoints by giving the games a try, or earn trophies for your profile by getting one of the high scores for the month. not all of the Flash-based games are working at the moment (they're using an emulator that doesn't have full compatibility yet), but Neopets also has a lot of browser-based game options like Sakhmet Solitaire, Dice-A-Roo, Cheat!, and NeoQuest. since those games involve reloading the page a lot, they're also a good way to trigger random events, which can yield NP, rare items, faerie quests, etc.

check out the spotlights & contests! you can earn nice prizes for some of these, like the Art Gallery and the Poetry Contest. even if you don't care to enter, I think it's interesting to browse the old entries and see what it took to win the Beauty Contest in the early 2000s.

you can read up on the lore and history of the site on Jellyneo's Book of Ages, which hosts information about the site's characters, old plots, collectible cards, and more. the Neopedia and the Gallery of Evil are also worth a look!

if you're interested in pet customization, Dress to Impress is a great resource for planning outfits and trying out wearable items you don't own yet, and I think it's pretty fun to play around with! just be sure to filter out Neocash items from your searches.

every Neopet has its own customizable webpage, so you can find all sorts of neat petpages-- guides, petpage directories, character pages, etc.

making "progress"

Jellyneo and The Daily Neopets are great resources! Jellyneo's Item Database in particular is nice for looking up approximate item prices

if you explore the site a bit, you'll find some activities and freebies you can access daily. do these dailies consistently for a decent profit and a chance of getting rare items. Jellyneo has a useful list of dailies here! Trudy's Surprise in particular will pay out increasing amounts of NP if you spin on consecutive days.

you can win 15 items a day by beating opponents in the Battledome, and even the easier opponents-- the Chia Clown and the S750 Kreludan Defender Robot-- have some decently profitable drops. start training one of your Neopets at the Swashbuckling Academy on Krawk Island using Dubloons, which you can receive from dailies or purchase via the Shop Wizard. some inexpensive beginner equipment: Scroll of Ultranova, Ridiculously Heavy Battle Hammer, Parasol of Unfortunate Demise, Downsize!, and Magical Healing Potion. oh, and don't train the Movement stat-- it's mostly useless!

browser extensions and userscripts can make the site more user-friendly/less janky! I use Ruffle to fix some of the broken Flash elements, and out of this list, I use the following Tampermonkey scripts: Search Helper, Sidebar Dailies, Grumpy/Wise King Autofill, BD Winnings Counter, Random Events Logger, and Shenkuu Lunar Temple Solver

right now, an event called the Faerie Festival is going on! every day until October 19, you can receive a free Faerie Quest, which usually only happens by chance. open a Shop Wizard tab before you receive your quest so you can easily look up the requested item. a lot of users have been receiving the sought-after Fountain Faerie Quest, which gives you access to a single free color change for one of your Neopets. you can pick almost any color, so choose wisely!

warnings/disclaimers

DON'T talk about most external websites or try to exchange contact info on Neopets or you'll get warned, even in neomails! here's a list of their approved fan sites

as a website founded by white British university students in 1999, Neopets' portrayal of other cultures has often ranged from insensitive or orientalist (several "tribal" pet wearables/a character from the Lost Desert in a stereotypical "belly dancer" outfit/the existence of a single East Asian mishmash land) to outright nasty (the "Sacrificers" plot in 2000 revolving around violent "cannibal islanders", plus a lot of issues with Mystery Island's lore/designs in general). the site also has a "no religion" rule and blocks words like "Jewish", but has a Christmas color for pets... I don't necessarily want them to remove old content entirely, but maybe some parts of the site warrant a Neopets version of that Looney Tunes disclaimer lol.

Neopets is heavy on gambling and chance, and random events (which have a chance of occurring every time you load a page) can be positive or negative. put valuable items in the Safety Deposit Box as soon as you get them, because they can be taken from your inventory via random event or unlucky wheel spin!

each individual pet has foods they will refuse to eat, books they will refuse to read, etc. Certain Neopet species may have unique "allergies" or other quirks, e.g. the Grarrl and the Skeith can eat non-food items, which can be useful for discarding junk, but can also result in accidentally feeding them valuable items... NEVER click "feed" when you're trying to use medicine/potions!!

overall, the site is kind of a mess right now! there are frequent errors and slow load times caused by increased traffic, poorly-implemented word filters that restrict words like "grape" and "cucumber," and the site currently exists in a half-converted state between the old and new layout. it's also outdated/poorly coded in a lot of aspects; pet and user names can never be changed, for example, so if you create or adopt a pet with a name deemed inappropriate, they will straight-up just delete that pet. this recently happened to someone on the subreddit who advertised the fact that they'd adopted a pet named Meowyjuana. RIP 🫡

[polyesterpeacock]

How To Play

Good evening, lounge lizards! My name’s Pierrot (or Felix), and i’ll be your host!

I’m a nonbinary trans man, born 1993, I use they/he pronouns, and, like Larry, I am a strange, silly short king.

Now, allow me to lay out the ground rules:

🍒 Like the games themselves, this RP blog is 18+ only. I’m an adult, and prefer to roleplay with other adults. Your muse does not have to be an adult by any means, but Larry is only going to flirt and schmooze with ADULT muses. I will never, under any circumstances, initiate or participate in threads with non-consensual or “dubiously consensual” sexual themes, and there will be no outright not safe for work roleplay on this blog.

If you ever feel uncomfortable or if I have crossed a line in any way, in or out of character, please let me know via Tumblr messenger (or my Discord, if you have it).

🍒 This is a sideblog, likes and follows will be through my hub, @starlitcircus!

🍒 I’m mutuals only and a little selective of who I thread with. I promise you it’s nothing personal, it’s just in the interest of preserving mental energy. Writing can take a lot out of me. Non-mutuals and non-RP blogs are more than welcome to send asks, but please do not reblog any roleplay-related posts!

🍒 I have issues with my memory and comprehension skills, which can lead to slower replies and possibly require a bit more out of character discussion. If you would like to plot something out, or if i’ve forgotten or misremembered something in a thread or ask, please let me know via Tumblr DM’s or Discord. I will message you if I need a reminder or clarification on something as well. 

I draft all my replies, but I do sometimes forget, so you are more than welcome to send me a DM on Tumblr/Discord to remind me. 

🍒 I am very open to writing with both canon and OC muses! If there is some kind of pre-established relationship you’d like, please send me a message! (Even if you’re playing a Sierra character, I encourage you to message me regarding any pre-established relationships. Try not to approach under the assumption Larry will know you.)

🍒 I am Jewish, and my muse is Jewish. I will not, under any circumstances, play with muses portraying Nazis or fascists, even those with fictional ideologies only “mirroring” real-world Nazism. (Marvel’s Hydra organization, for example). This includes AUs and OCs. If I find a blog following me that has this kind of muse, I will soft or hard block as necessary. Also, please avoid calling Larry things like a "goblin" or a "gremlin". I choose to portray Larry as ethnically Jewish, and those words have incredibly antisemitic connotations.

🍒 All art under the ‘(Mun Art)’ tag is my own. Please do not repost it or use it for anything.

How I play Larry:

🍒 General - Larry’s Old™ and very, very out of touch about…well, quite a few things. He doesn’t really understand all that much about diversity in genders and orientations, but he’s also generally very accepting of all kinds of people, and if he’s corrected on an outdated assumption he’ll be chill about it.

🍒 Source material & influences - My portrayal is based off the original Sierra games, primary influences being 1 (Land of the Lounge Lizards), 6 (Shape Up or Slip Out), 7 (Love for Sail), and the Casino spinoff because those are the ones i’m most familiar with. Magna Cum Laude is semi-canon, in that Larry’s got a nephew following in his footsteps, to predictably detrimental results. I’ve also got headcanons and personal interpretations thrown in there for good measure.

🍒 Interacting with other Muses - Larry’s a straight up, capital T, Toon. He’s from a parallel reality that more or less mirrors real life, with the exception that things run on cartoon logic. (Think Roger Rabbit. He’s 2D, but you can still interact with him as if he were three-dimensional. So, more like 2.5D, I suppose?)

Classic Sierra games have implied, and sometimes flat-out shown, that the Multiverse is very much a thing, so Larry hopping to different universes or dimensions is not out of the question. 

But, and this is a pretty important distinction, unlike the games have portrayed, my Larry is not a self-aware video game protagonist. I feel like things could get way too meta and silly if I played him as such. Larry’s his own man, with his own life, he’s just also a goofy cartoon fella!

If you’d like me to play it a little more straight let me know and I can just play him as a Regular Human Person (That’s kinda what the faceclaim’s for).

🍒 Shipping and Pre-Established Relationships - As mentioned earlier, i’d like any pre-established relationships to be brought up and discussed beforehand. If you’re playing another Sierra character, for example, try not to assume Larry will know your muse.

I’m open to shipping only with consenting, adult muses (And muns, of course). I won’t be doing any outright not safe for work threads or asks on the dash. If that ever comes up, it will be done over Discord DM’s. 

For more info, check Larry’s bio!

[landofwindandskyscrapers]

A/L A busy start

So, I’ve decided to continue writing in this blog - at the very least, once per month. I’m proud of managing to write an entry a week for all of 2024, but on the other hand…it was indeed a lot of work. But so! First off, what I managed to read/listen to in December 2024 - since I also like having a written record of the media I’ve consumed. There are no accidents - by Jessie Singer This book made me angry. Or rather, the contents of this book made me angry. I thought it was going to be something like “The Field Guide to Understanding ‘Human Error’” - a book on industrial best practices to avoid accidents. And while “There are no accidents” does refer a lot to that book…it’s more of a long, extended rant on US policy practices. A good, necessary rant! It brings up excellent points!1 But it does make for a reading2 full of negative emotions. The crux of the book is the idea - which I believe is borne out of actual, accurate and precise data3 that American society as a whole is engineered in a way that pushes responsibility for “accidents” onto private individuals. While ignoring the fact that “accidents” kind of don’t exist; what does exist is risk, and the measures taken to mitigate it. Measures which America doesn’t want to take, because of…the usual suspects: racism, classism, misogyny, greed, the “Shirley Exception”4... As a book, it made me very happy that I live in the EU. Thresholder by Alexander Wales This book is actually ongoing, but since it’s already more than 750k words long I consider it an entire book I have read. This is more classical reading-for-pleasure fantasy (....and sci-fi, xianxia, horror….it blends genres a lot, is what I’m saying), but at a scale I’ve seen only rarely. The main character Perry, travels from world to world - and fights other world-hoppers all the way. The worlds themselves are a cornucopia of magic, cybernetics, martial arts, powers….so the fights get to have very high power levels, very quickly. There’s a meta-narrative about finding out who or what set up this frankly demented system - but at a lower level I like to think of it as a way to explore culture clashes, and the feeling of being a tourist somewhere, picking up the best things from a country, but knowing all the time you have to leave quite soon. That kind of bittersweet feeling. Oddly enough I’m not sure if I’ll continue reading it - the chapters are quite long and involved, and I had to sort of force myself to finish it. But the plot is complicated and fascinating, and I like the author. Now, for something completely different: I’m going to write at least 10k words in the month of February. Possibly more. What’s life for, if not for doing foolish things? I don’t have a lot of free time - and I will have even less, since I’m buying a house extremely soon (!!!). But writing is something I’ve tried to do a lot in the past. It’s difficult. It takes a lot of effort for me to avoid procrastinating. But I enjoy it after I’ve done. I might publish on Royal Road or Spacebattles, and I’m not sure but I might try to eventually try my hand at NaNoWriMo. Consider it my project for 2025 - writing more. We’ll see if I can make it. Subscribe now 1 Specifically how “accident” is kind of a nonsense word. Accidents are predictable, controllable, and outside the bounds of personal responsibility. We just pretend otherwise. 2 Well, listening. I listened to it on my commute to work on Audible. 3 (although the book itself is slightly light on that - but that’s because my standards are too high, in my opinion) 4 But surely, they’ll make an exception for me! Everybody else must follow the rules, because it’s their fault if they break them, but when I do it there’s a legitimate reason! Words spoken by many pro-life women when they have to get an abortion in states which outlaw them. See also: Fundamental Attribution Error via https://ift.tt/Xfyr1aT

[the-collector-series]

RAHHH okay!

Prepare for a little infodump :3

Okay!

Let's start with the plot.

So I don't have the whole thing entirely plotted out yet, but I have most of it drafted (in my head, cough cough)

It's a mix of an adventure/quest, and a royal plot, with kind of like...crime ring undertones. (with LOTS of found family and ZERO romance, besides like...past romances. Pretty much all the love shared between characters is platonic or familial (or both))

So BASICALLY (this is the part where I share my drafted plot ideas)

Zell, the main characters best friend, does work for this mafia-esque boss named The Collector. No one has ever seen The Collector's face, heard their true voice, or knows anything identifying about them. They do exactly what the name implies, collect things. Artifacts, literature, art, clothing, and some darker things as well, such as flora, fauna, and even some species of merfolk, and fae.

Zell does work for this person because he needs money to provide for his family (His main focus is his family, he loves them very very much.) One day, Merissa, the main character, gets roped in to helping Zell with a mission for The Collector. Consequently, this gets Merissa noticed by The Collector.

Fast forward a bit past some parts of the other plot line that's happening, and Merissa and Zell are forced into accepting a mission from The Collector that involves traveling through ancient civilization ruins, jungles that haven't been touched in centuries, a forest predominately lived in by Fae, a mountain range that is widely considered to be dragon territory etc etc etc.

They, along with the members of 'the gang' that they've recruited so far, go on the mission. While they go on this mission, they realize that not only is this artifact dangerous, but it cannot end up in the hands of The Collector.

The Collector catches wind of their betrayal via a spy sent to check on them. This causes outrage, which results in The Collector sending people to kill them :D

Andddd then it no longer is a quest to go retrieve the artifact for The Collector. Now it's a quest to get the artifact, destroy it, and stay alive long enough to accomplish both of those steps.

So that's plot-line A.

Plot-line B, that is happening at the same time, is the other people trying to kill the gang plot-line

OKAY SO

One of the characters is this kid named Chiyoko :D (Yoko for short)

She's the adopted daughter of the newly appointed Queen Tyra Sable, and has grown up on a rich farm-type home. (She becomes friends with Merissa in the beginning of the book. this is semi-important) However, ever since her beloved Mom has taken the throne, Yoko has noticed that something isn't right with her. She believes that if she goes on a quest with Merissa and Zell to find the artifact, then The Collector will pay her, and she'll be able to use that money to help her mom.

HOWEVER

After the Queen discovers Yoko missing, she thinks that Merissa, Zell, and the rest of the gang, have kidnapped her, because she's been receiving anonymous threats that say bad things will happen to her and her family if she doesn't step down from the throne. (Important to plot-line C)

Therefore, she sends people after the gang to kill them. Yay! Now the gang has two groups of people trying to kill them. (three if you include the large masses of bounty hunters trying to claim the bounties on their heads)

This is plot-line B, although it is less important than plot-line A, and C, it's still important.

Plot-line C is the royal plot plot-line (going to refer to the collector as TC)

It's a widely known fact in the underbelly of Theona (the city where the story starts) that TC wants to take control of the throne. Past royal officers have been able to stave off TC. However, TC has grown restless. They want the throne. They start sending in threats to the new queen. The queen storms the underbelly of the city with an army, but everyone knows you can't find TC unless they want to be found.

So while the gang are out and about, there's a civil war going on back home, and one of the sides is Yoko's mom.

THAT'S THE PLOTLINES

Any questions, suggestions, etc?

+

Any other information you'd like to request?

@nowjumpinthewater tagging you in this cause I think you like hearing my info dumps too

THE CHARACTERS:

Nearly every story I can think of off the top of my head has characters. Characters are what compel me personally to keep reading/watching something. If I feel for the characters, my chances of enjoying the media goes way up, and I'm sure others feel the same.

So without further ado, let me introduce the stars of the show!

The main character is named Merissa Shermann. She's 22, has red curly hair (kinda like Merida lol), hazel eyes, pale skin that burns easily, and she's 5'6". She's incredibly caring, and has a soft spot for both kids, and animals. She also tends to worry. She is strong, but only because she does a lot of household chores because her dad is old and can't really do much. Her stake in the story is that her dad's life was ruined by the queen way back before the queen...well...became the queen. On top of that, what kind of best friend would she be if she didn't help her friend do a favor for a certain crime boss?

The childhood best friend is named Zell Odison. He's 21. My boy here has dark hair, dark eyes, and brown skin. (I may give him a tattoo sometime in the future ;)) He's 5'11". He's very dramatic and goofy, but will also do anything to take care of his family (including doing jobs for a well-feared crime boss). He and Merissa have been friends since they were little, and they're super close. His stake in the story is that his family has a hidden secret and he needs answers. Along with that, his favorite crime boss needs a favor...

The blacksmith is named Raymond Clyde. He's a small man, being only 5'2" at the age of 53. He's a brunette, but it doesn't really show because his hair is graying. It's pretty ratted, but he normally keeps it under goggles and a bandana anyway. He's a grumpy old man with wet cat energy but we love him. His wife died fifteen years ago, and his daughter never visits him, so he mostly stays at home, working. He runs into our main character, and her best friend on an average work day, and accidentally ends up gaining two new children. His stake in this story is that his wife's death isn't what it seems.

The soldier is named Aeriel Clyde. She's 30 and 5'8". Blonde, blue eyes, but the kind that stare into your soul and make you question your existence. Her skin is tanned, and starting to turn leathery from all the days that she's spent hunting, and finding bounties. She's obsessed with killing the giant who took her mother's life, and that's how she finds out that her mother's death is not what it seems. She's arrogant, and negative, but as the story progresses, grows as a person. She tries to rebuild her relationship with her father. Her stake in the story is that she has a vendetta to fulfill.

The child is named Chiyoko Sable. She's only 10 and stands at 4'8". She's very petite, as fair as children go, and has straight black hair, and brown eyes. She can always be seen with her cat, Cinder, that her birth mother gave to her. She's very bubbly and excited, and doesn't let anyone put out her spark, no matter how hard they try. She was born to a maid in one of the rich plantations, coincidentally owned by Tyra's sister. After being adopted by the late queen Tyra when her mother died, however, she starts to discover that all is not as it seems. Her stake in the story is that her adoptive mother is not who she says she is.

The alchemist is named Hugo Holloway. He's a broody little teenager, at 13. He's only about 4'11". Him and his mother are usually the ones at home, with his father being a palace guard. Since his father is gone all the time, he decided he needed a way to protect his mother, so he became the apprentice of an alchemist. He's very determined, straightforward, and doesn't do well with 'feelings'. His black hair can never seem to lay straight, and his skin can't decide whether it wants to be tan or pale, even his eyes can't decide what color they want to be, with one being a brown color and the other one being more of a hazel. His stake in the story is that his father has been betraying his family, and Hugo wants to know why.

The artist is named Sasha Holloway. Married to a palace guard named Noro, Sasha is on top of the world. She soon realizes that being married to a palace guard means a lot of cold beds, and solo parenting. And then...he left. Permanently. She struggled with raising Hugo, and providing enough money to stay alive, that is until Hugo got a job as well. Once her son became older, and more independent, she got back into her art. Dancing, knitting, painting, and the arts became constants in her life, once more. She's 5'3", and 37, and you better not touch her son. Her stake in the story is that people that she cares about are being threatened, and she can not let that happen.

And finally, the wanderer is named Estelle Foxglove. She has been a loner her whole life, always doing what it took to survive. That evolved into becoming a natural at causing trouble. And cause trouble she did. She decided to retire from chaos after a particularly sour mission, but that hasn't gone too well for her. She is 19. She's black with dreads, usually pulled into a ponytail, and stands at the tallest of the group: 6'0" (Can we get more tall women in media please???) Her background is a mystery, to both her and everyone else, but after figuring out that the notorious crime boss: The Collector might know something she doesn't, Estelle decides to un-retire for a bit, just to get their attention. Her stake in the story, is the want, the need to find out who she is, and why she is.

These will be updated as I go!

[lauramkaye]

Disco Elysium For Beginners

So apparently my cunning plan is working and some of my mutuals are interested in learning more about my recent obsession by playing the game Disco Elysium. Great!!! In your honor, and so that I will have more people to talk about the game with, I present to you Laura's Beginner's Guide to Playing Disco Elysium.

What Is It Even About?

Hope, despair, poverty, the human condition, politics, pinball, art, love, loss, communism, experiencing a bisexual awakening in your forties, colonization, dancing, substance use disorders, unions, mental illness, truth, trying to be a good person in a completely broken society, beauty, the end of the world, joy, complicated relationships, kindness, intersectionality, the complex and problematic nature of the profession of police detective, cryptids, juvenile delinquents, PTSD, and falling helplessly in love with Kim Kitsuragi.

Oh wait, did you mean the plot?

You play as an amnesiac detective who wakes up after an apocalyptic bender that obliterated his memories. There is a dead body hanging in a tree behind your hotel, and you are there to find out who killed him with the help of Kim Kitsuragi, a detective from another precinct who has also been put on the case and who will be your partner while you are in town. You can, as the official site puts it, "become a hero, or an absolute disaster of a human being."

Where to Get It

Disco Elysium is available for Mac and PC via Steam and for XBox and Playstation (both current and previous generation) and Nintendo Switch. The current version is "The Final Cut" which includes full voice acting. The Steam version goes on sale pretty frequently - I'd keep an eye on Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales if you're interested in picking it up. The MSRP is $40 but you can often find it for around $20 if you look for a sale - the PS4 version is $17 on Amazon right now (11/15/2022).

I'm Not Really A Gamer, Can I Still Play?

Absolutely! DE does not require any "twitchy" gameplay - you interact with the game by reading/listening to text, selecting dialogue options to talk to people, and clicking things/people to interact with them in some way. It runs very much like a tabletop RPG, where all the uncertain things are decided by skill checks and dice rolls.

Notably, DE is quite replayable even though the solution to the mystery doesn't change, because different character builds will have very different experiences and may even see completely different sidequests and dialogue. Unlike most RPGs, DE makes many checks silently, in the background, and if you don't pass the check you just don't see the relevant content and never know you missed anything. I'm on my third full and sixth partial playthrough and I still find new things.

Mechanically, playing Disco Elysium goes something like this:

Go into a new area.

Look around. You will see little colored circles appearing, either on top of items/people in the environment, or sometimes around your player character's head.

Click on the colored circles to interact with them. You will learn something, do something, or start a conversation.

Doing stuff and talking to people gives you XP! Every time you get 100 XP, you get one Skill Point. You can either use it to increase one of your skills, unlock a slot in your Thought Cabinet, or forget a Thought from your Thought Cabinet. You don't have to spend them right away; you can save them up if you want to.

Once you have clicked everything you want to click and talked to everyone you want to talk to for now, go somewhere else.

Repeat.

What the Hell is a Thought Cabinet?

As you go through the game, you will unlock "thoughts" that you can ponder. You have a certain number of slots in your "thought cabinet" where you can be mulling over an idea; you start with three slots and can unlock more up to a max of 12. Thoughts will have certain effects while you are thinking about them, which might be positive or negative. While you are still thinking them over, you can equip or unequip them at will. Each "thought project" takes a specific amount of time.

Once you have spent the designated time on a thought project, you will see the message "Breakthrough Imminent" and then you will "internalize" the thought. The thought will have effects on the gameplay, which can include skill buffs and debuffs or other effects. Once the thought is internalized, you can no longer unequip it. It will take up that slot permanently unless you spend another skill point to forget it.

So what thoughts should I internalize?

A lot of them are mainly for flavor or role-playing but a few notable ones:

Actual Art Degree gives you bonus XP when you pass a passive Conceptualization check. This is the most common passive check in the game, so AAD is the thought to take if you want to get as many skill points as possible. You unlock the thought by talking about art as much as you can.

Get Jamais Vu as early as you can on Day 1 by talking with Joyce Messier at the dock. It opens up some key dialogue options and skill checks as well as giving you bonus XP whenever you click an orb.

Ace's High or Ace's Low gives you extra Empathy bonuses towards Kim. Which you will want, because Kim is the Best.

Wompty-Dompty-Dom Centre is available starting on Day 3 and will give you $2 and some XP when you pass an Encyclopedia check.

Homo-Sexual Underground. Its only effect is to allow you to talk about sexuality with Kim. Therefore it is the most important thought in the game, because approximately 90% of players will be in love with Kim by the second in-game day.

Okay, What About Skills?

Your character "build" (strengths, weaknesses, abilities, etc.) is primarily determined by two things that you can adjust as the game progresses by spending Skill Points: Skills and Thoughts.

Skills in DE are similar to skills in other RPGs in that they determine how good you are at various things. The main difference is that instead of the more traditional skills like strength, dexterity, or charisma, DE has skills like Savoir Faire, Rhetoric, and Empathy. As befits a game that emphasizes the story and characters over combat, the skills are a lot less about how good you are at punching monsters and a lot more about the state of your character's head. The skills are broken down into four categories:

Blue or Intellect skills - brainy stuff like Logic, Rhetoric, and Encyclopedia.

Purple or Psyche skills - emotional stuff like Empathy, Volition, and Authority.

Red or Physical skills - the condition of your physical body. Endurance, Electrochemistry, and Pain Threshold live here.

Yellow or Motorics skills - how well you use your physical body. Things like Hand Eye Coordination, Perception, and Composure.

There are good descriptions of each skill in the game. At the beginning, you can choose from three predefined archetypes (Thinker, Sensitive, or Physical) or create your own by allocating 12 points between the four skill categories and picking one skill as your "signature."

What Is The Best Skill Build?

There isn't an "best" one! You can play the game equally successfully with any build, but different builds will feel very different to play, especially early in the game.

That said, I would recommend against doing a 3-3-3-3 build because it just won't be as fun. Most skills generally start to really show effects at around a 4, and failing skill checks is often funny and shouldn't lock you out of completing any checks except if you've done something really unusual.

Basically the "best" build for you is whatever is the most fun - pick something that speaks to you and go for it.

In general, Intellect builds will get a lot of worldbuilding and lore and be really good at detecting. Psyche builds will have a better sense of other people and the world and strong intuition. Physical builds tend to be able to punch their way through obstacles but aren't very smart or empathetic and struggle with following their gut instincts/cravings without thinking about it. Motorics builds will find several early-game skill checks a lot easier for them and will be good at skills like shooting, picking locks, noticing stuff, keeping cool under pressure, and talking about cars.

Some key things to consider when deciding on your character build:

Encyclopedia is the skill that gives you lore and worldbuilding information.

If you want to min-max your build to get as many skill points as possible, make sure you have good Conceptualization so you can unlock the thought Actual Art Degree.

Esprit de Corps is similar to Empathy, but it works specifically on other cops. Doing a run with high EDC helps unlock a ton of lore about many of the other key characters in the game.

Electrochemistry will try to get you to drink, smoke, have sex, and take drugs. It will also give you insights into the drinking/smoking/drugging/sex habits of others. VERY high EC will allow you to unlock a leopard-print unitard underwear option for your player character.

You have two health pools, Health and Morale. Health is affected by the Endurance skill and Morale is affected by the Volition skill. If you start a game with only 1 point in either purple or red skills, that can mean you die very easily early in the game. My first playthrough I did a high INT build and I died in the first room of the game from turning on the lights even though I had a terrible hangover. So just be aware.

Shivers is my favorite skill in the game and I'm not alone there. Shivers allows you to have a connection to your city. A lot of the best moments in the game come during Shivers checks and the writing is generally really evocative. Great for atmosphere.

My favorite skills are Esprit de Corps for character knowledge, Shivers for cool atmosphere, and Drama because Drama is just really funny.

What Else Do I Need To Know?

If you seem stuck, go somewhere else and talk to more people OR spend a skill point to level up a skill.

You can zoom in and out. My first playthrough I didn't realize this for a while and kept missing certain characters who were standing somewhere I needed to be zoomed out to see.

A lot of things that are usually part of game menus have to be unlocked. You get a map by buying it at the bookstore. You get your stats and to-do list by finding your police ledger.

Cuno seems horrible but if you gain his trust there's a lot of depth to his character. There is also a potential ending where Cuno acts as your partner during the endgame.

Do the sidequests. They are often the best stories in the game.

Don't be TOO afraid of disappointing Kim. If you avoid being racist/sexist/hurting people, he will usually come around.

That said, if you play as a terrible person he won't be your friend anymore. I don't know how people can take the emotional trauma of that, but some people do!

Save frequently, Just In Case.

Don't be too hasty to reset. Let things play out. Most of the deaths are pretty funny and sometimes you might think you died but really you didn't.

That said, it's fine to reload a save if you messed something up. It's a single player game, it isn't "cheating" to do this if you want to.

If you fail the red check at the church it is extra double okay to reload a save and make that not have happened. (This is probably one of the two highest-stakes skill checks in the game because if you succeed you get one of the best scenes in the game and if you fail you get one of the worst.)

Look at everything and talk to everyone.

I like to keep at least one unused skill point at all times in case I need to unlock a skill check I've failed once.

If you arrest someone or send the body to Processing, Kim will be gone for the rest of the day. There are some things you can only do with him and some you can only do without him, so plan accordingly.

Hope this helps and always feel free to ask if you want more help/get stuck/need hints/just want to scream about the game with me!!

[miloscat]

[Review] Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova (PS5)

I love to see budget licenced games still being made.

Prodigy is one of my favourites of the (many) new Star Trek shows. It’s got some Star Wars vibes, not just from the The Clone Wars-esque art style, but also the story of a band of misfits coming together to survive in a crapsack galaxy. Now that I’ve caught up with part 2 of season 1 (which was split in half for some reason) I thought I’d check out this companion game.

Like the show, the game could be classified as “for kids”. It’s not dissimilar to the Lego games which I always enjoy: a semi-isometric perspective, puzzles and simple combat, objects to bash and collectibles to find. The two main gameplay modes of puzzle-solving (via block-pushing and logic gates) and robot-battling (via bashing and pew-pewing variations on the show’s Watcher drone) are fairly well-developed if lacking in variety, while the rest of the experience is rough around the edges. These two modes are also very discrete, with rooms basically alternating between the two.

The game is wired for co-op but is technically playable solo by swapping between the two characters. Dal has more ranged options with different kinds of phasers, and for puzzles can lift heavy boxes and “camouflage” past security cameras. Gwyn is more melee with her “fretwork” heirloom morphing between sword, fists, and spear, and can also use it as a bridge or shield against certain lasers. Rescuing the rest of the crew is the main initial objective and once found, they can open certain themed doors and periodically activate a combat effect.

While the game is set in the mid-season gap, there’s a few plot details that are more impactful coming from the show’s second part as opposed to their insertion here. For example, the antagonist is a third Drednok from the Vau N’Akat Order who has enslaved the three-world system that is Supernova’s setting. It works well as an interquel adventure, and the show’s actors all reprise their roles nicely (although the two leads only having two oft-repeated attack and dash grunts gets grating).

The lead game designer and co-creative director Pere Suau Massanet of the upstart Spanish dev studio Tessera is credited with the original story, while actual writing fell to freelance Brit Martin Korda, many of whose most recent credits centre around the Fifa games’ story modes. Some questionable tendencies seem to have snuck their way into the game script, such as Janeway at one point cloaking the ship (something the Protostar is not supposed to be able to do!) using “Bajoran magic” (???), or out of nowhere giving Dal the character trait “constantly making shallow and nonsensical references to Star Trek stuff”, along the lines of “it’s hotter than a Cardassian fire pit” or “it’s colder than a Betazoid freezer”. On the other hand, there is some fun to be had such as with the collectibles, one being a toy version of Voyager’s Salamander Janeway, and I enjoyed the running gag of the crew picking up the expression “check it” from Dal as a part of their official communications.

After rolling credits, I considered replaying levels to find more relics for the captain’s quarters or to unlock more concept art, but having to redo the busywork of puzzles I’d solved before and undertake yet more repetitive combat was a prospect that lacked appeal. But I had a decent time playing through it once. I just wish there were more than two of those attractive, stylised motion comic-style cutscenes that bookend the game. Not that the in-game graphics don’t look good and match the show (except for Dal who looks a bit weird).

Two final notes. I called this a “budget” game because it has a budget feel on the development side, but on the consumer side it’s actually quite expensive at the A$70 mark. Try to get it on sale. And I loved seeing some casual nonbinary rep in this game from Lorn’ess, one of the two oppressed natives you meet. This is in addition to the main cast’s Zero of course, who joined the ranks in new Trek alongside Discovery’s Adira and Strange New Worlds’ Captain Angel. Pride!

[gugf]

Man, i really don't know about theories from now on.

The new series for me is a sort of enigma with "What was the point? What was the message?" questions. Although it seems like this, I really doubt that there is no point at all. Even from the early interviews it's been said "We also get a lot of people just asking ‘why have you made this? and what is this for?’ which is probably the worst response for us."

But, reading more and more interviews, I kinda get a feeling, that what's going on it's so weird and inconcrete, that even creators themselves can't describe this. That's why their descriptions feel so vague.

And, as a person who enjoys making abstract art herself, for me at least, I can relate to that. Usually I just come up with theme or idea, some cool looking things and metaphors, and organize it into something that feels coherent. Than, just interpret it how you feel.

Yeah, the reason is very subjective. But with all interviews, that is why I personally don't buy theories that suggest that dhmis has some complex lore, and all of this can be explained logically via simulation or something similar. No offence for those who enjoy that reading, btw. The whole point with dhmis is that nobody is really sure what is going on, and you can fill the gaps by your own liking, making it into something special specifically for you, and it will not be wrong.

But if we're going for an intent... Than we need to find a theme of the series. All art is created with some message. Even if it's something as simple as "look how pretty this tree looks".

That's why i find a simulation theory about web series sounding really boring (no pun intended). Especially if it adds a villain with a cartoony motivation such as "more money" or "i hate my son so fucking much, but i still make sure that he wouldn't be socially isolated". It makes the conflict just really simple, and requires a story being taken by a face value. And the message, i guess, don't let some weird puppet produce your show? Cause it's not like creators going for "situation sucks but we still have each other", looking at how cynical the show is, and how creators describe the characters themselves. They are straight up calling them: "pathetic", "moron", "asshole" c'mon. And also there isn't such scene in the series where they try to comfort or even understand each other to be that kind of message. It's much likely to be intended as a metaphor for something far more simple. Something that's also relatable for the creators themselves.

If I understood it correctly, of course. I know, there must be the reason that theory is so beloved, but I, for the love of god, can't get it. (And it's kinda about the whole categorie that goes under the description of: characters are in distressing situation by the direct fault of roy and also leslie all along).

And I also personally don't want to believe in "characters have a souls of a real dead people from mullhoven in them" I know, it has some basis, but it's basically a plot of most analog horror, or games with creepy hidden lore out there. It's done to death, and I'm not really sure if it adds anything to the story, besides Yellow being Leslie's dead son. But still, eh? Why does it's "you're not my real son", then? (Maybe Yellow is just based on him? Or, if Leslie didn't create the characters, just one that looks the most alike, who knows. That was really what my "you will never be a real boy" drawing was all about)

But, the things I set with, honestly, not better. Now, besides the "Desperately trying to tie two series together", after reading the interviews, I can only say they that here might be something TAWOG-esque going on, like, with the TV in the teaser playing the show, and the sitcom logic being incorporated into the story.

It's kinda because the show doesn't even feel like a finished story. And the words "I don't think this is the end" only support this. Even if it's kind of jarring that after 6 years we got only a part of the story, that we are not even sure when or will it ever be finished, I'm really glad, that at least now theories have more variety to them, and people willing to let go of the original series as its own independent story if it's true or not. Now, it's almost feels like real science.

I think, only time will tell which was the closest one. But, It doesn't mean that I won't continue to study this thing from all the different angles. I know, they want to say something to us. And I really want to know what it might be. Besides, it turns out as something boring (what is unlikely), I always can create an interpretation myself.

This was mainly discussion about the show, not an attack on theories or headcanons. Remember this, ok? I don't want this post to discourage anyone to be wild and creative. I mainly wrote it as a frustration about how seeing the show from a perspective of only one theory makes discussion about what show might mean really stifle.

[evilsillyputty]

Review

Yankee Jk Kuzuhana-Chan

Or: Delinquent High School Girl Kuzuhana-Chan

Genre: Harem-Comedy

Summary/plot: An all girl school that teaches fashion, business, and cooking opens its doors to boys and our MC is the only one to join. He does actually go there for the fashion curriculum as his family owns a tailor shop. Unfortunately all the girls there are delinquents and they all teas and bully him for being a guy. One day while getting bullied he is saved by the first main girl, Kuzuhana-Chan. This snowballs into him slowly making friends with other girls, no tsundere though. Unless you count a once-bullier to friend as tsundere. Harem stuff happens. Girls like boy, boy thinks it’s all just teasing him, you know the drill. But it does have some unique qualities to it.

Art Style: It uses stock backgrounds, but they don’t look bad. The characters have a round shojo look. I would say it is a more unique style, but not non-manga style. The artist draws the girls with thickness in mind. No thin as a stick people they all got some curve and chonk on them.

Personal thoughts: Comparing it to other harem manga, I think this one is a breath of fresh air so to say. Mostly in how the characters act and how the plots work out. You’ll find yourself saying “Oh that’s a bit different than normal harem” here and there. They don’t rely on misunderstanding plot points too much. Really, it’s only used for the MC to assume that the girls are just teasing him rather than actually liking him. Which I will say he has good reasons to think this, being that most of them have teased him with flirtatious behaviors. There are a few points were a typical harem plot starts up but then quickly gets resolved. Some of the girls are also more malicious in personality. Something else that is different, is that the characters actually communicate about their problems. It may take a chapter or two to build up the courage or get a good time, but they do in fact have growth moments. The only thing they don’t confess is their love (because we gotta keep the manga going) but if they are feeling left out, or they want to clear the air about something, or if they feel like someone is mad at them, they tend to eventually talk it out. In the recent chapters they’ve been working on the MC getting out of the keeping things to himself and not recognizing the other’s feelings. They have gotten to the point where they have introduced so many girls that the original main ones are being left behind. The OG main girl Kuzuhana-Chan has been getting less and less chapters, and her name is in the title of the manga. Like really the others I can understand but give or main girl her spotlight back. Also, its heavy on the panty shots and about equally so with the boobs. There is a decent amount of falling on top of each other in perverted positions too.

Characters:

Saotome: Our MC and only boy in the manga. A fashion manic or at least he really likes designing clothes. Will do perverted stuff without noticing because he’s too engrossed with clothes (this is not overused). Pretty typical for a harem protagonist but maybe a bit smarter and more aware. Easy bulling target but will also try to protect others even though he probably needs it more.

Kuzuhana: The first main girl. She is the “big scary” of the school. Once beat up a shit ton of people and got the reputation for it. She a sweetheart under a tough shell. There’s a “dere” term for this but I don’t know it. She solves problems with violence and or intimidation and where she can’t do those any kind of sport-like competition will work, except for swimming. A bit of a ditz and pushover when it comes to romance though.

Takae: Bitch, ok now that’s out of the way she is the most cunning evil one of the harem. Her first appearance was her attempting to extort money out of Saotome via black mail. Though she joined the harem and has become less of a problem now. She is probably the smartest one of the group. She’s good at identifying threats and formulating plans around them. 2 faced is a good description of her. She does improve though the story.

Usigome: The big-titty ditz. You know the type. She pretty loose with shoving herself on Saotome and acts all airheaded. To her credit she can be smart and tactical. Generally nice and supportive to others.

Kodera: The cool calm one. She is kind of disconnected from the harem but still a part of it. She has 2 other friends she always hangs around, who after getting over the fact she like a guy, helps her out with it. She isn’t too aggressive but has problems with interacting with men.

Madoka: The childhood friend. She is in the cooking class. For some reason she never checked in on her childhood friend whenever she heard that he happened to be the only boy in their school, but whatever. She isn’t featured much. She has the typical “childhood friend you haven’t seen in a while and is in love with you” personality, and thus has the “I like him but how do I get him to see me more than friends” deal.

And of course more girls come in down the line.

Other info: As of 2/23/23 there are 142 chapters. They are of typical length so it may take a bit to get through. No anime I’ve heard of for it but wouldn’t be surprised to hear one is coming.

All in all: I’d recommend this one. It’s different from most other harem manga so it will keep you engaged. If you like harem and can get over the panty shots, you’ll like this one.

[carriagelamp]

Art of Aardman

I found myself a cheap copy of the Shaun the Sheep movie, so I was rewatching a bunch of Aardman films earlier this month and decided to hunt down some books too. For anyone that doesn’t know, Aardman is a British stop-motion studio that does fantastic work like Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, Early Man… tons of cool stuff. They’re always quirky and funny and warm-hearted. This was just a very nice art book for anyone that’s a fan of Aardman stop motion and wants to see a bit extra; it shows some cool concept art and blows up the neat details in Aardman work, especially in their intricate stuff like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Asterix and the Picts (Asterix and the Chariot Race, and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion)

I decided to try a couple of the new Asterix comics that were done by the new team, just to see if they stand up to the old ones (that and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion cause I’d never read that one before). They were pretty decent! Asterix and the Picts was my favourite of the two though I wouldn’t say either are going to contest for my favourite Asterix comic... but still! The art looks good and the stories felt like what I would expect, they made for a pleasant couple evenings of reading especially since it’s been so long since I’ve read a new Asterix comic. If you’ve never read Asterix it’s one of the biggest name French comic series in North America, as far as I know and very worth the read. It’s about a single Gaulish village that’s holding out against the invading Romans through sheer force of will, slapstick hijinks, and a magical super-strength potion brewed by their druid. Lots of fantastic visuals and cute wordplay, even in the English translations.

Bear

I found out about this bastion of Canadian literature via tumblr post that was losing its collective mind over the fact that some bizarre bear-based erotica novella somehow won the most prestigious literary prize available in Canada. Since I too found this hilarious and unspeakably bizarre I had to give it a read, obviously. And yes, the flat surface level summary is... a librarian moves out into rural Ontario and falls in love with a literal for-real not-supernatural-not-a-joke bear. And I have to say… it is actually worthy of an award, which I was not expecting given that I was there for a laugh. It has beautiful writing, and the subtextual story is pretty interesting… it kind of makes me think of The Haunting of Hill House actually in terms of themes. (Womanhood, personhood, independence, autonomy partially achieved through escaping the male gaze by claiming non-human lovers... listen if I were still in university I would right a paper comparing the two novels).

I dunno man, it’s fucking weird. Actually a well-written book, but sure is about a woman falling in love with a literal bear. Give it a read if you want something bonkers but like… high-brow bonkers.

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites

Best book I have read in like… a while. A long while. I am not a fast reader, and I consumed 90% of this book over a weekend. It’s not at all like Terry Pratchett, but at the same time it scratched an itch for me that I haven’t had satisfied since Pratchett’s death. A very clever, hilariously funny poly romance between a disabled werewolf, an anxious vampire lord, and an incredibly powerful woman, with heaps of social satire, political commentary, and sinister undertones. The whole thing reads a bit like fanfiction and I say that in the most flattering way possible -- it is so easy to jump right in and be immediately taken over by the characters and the world and the plot, you never feel like you’re fighting to engage even though the world-building is fascinating and expansive. It welcomes you in right away, it was the book equivalent of a quilt and a hug which is something I sorely needed with all this pandemic bullshit. If you read any of the books on this list, go read that one while I sit here in pain waiting for the sequel.

Kid Paddle

I watched the cartoon of Kid Paddle as a kid and was thinking about it recently, so I decided to hunt down some of the original comics online. They’re fun and weird, with a cute art style and fantastic monsters designs. (My favourites are always about Kid either daydreaming or playing games that involve Midam’s weird warty troll creatures. It’s like a cross between Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot with the fun sort of quirks that I love in Belgian comics. Unfortunately, unlike Asterix, I’ve only come across these ones in French, but if you can read French it’s totally worth popping over to The Internet Archive and reading the ones they have available.

The Last Firehawk: The Golden Temple

The lastest Firehawk book. Despite being written for quite young readers, I did enjoy the early books in this series quite a bit. They’re about a young owl and squirrel who found an egg for a magical species that was believed to be extinct. With the newly hatched firehawk, the three of them head off on a mission to find an ancient firehawk magic that could save the entire forest. Very basic adventure story but a good intro to the tropes for children. Unfortunately the quality really feels like it drops with each subsequent book; this will probably be the last one I bother reading.

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

I honestly think I enjoy these Lumberjanes novels even more than the comics just because it really gives time to delve into each story and examine how the camper are really thinking and feeling about everything. (Also I’m always weak for novelizations of anything.) The Moon Is Up is a book that focuses more on Jo, and takes place during the camp’s much anticipated Galaxy Wars, a competition between cabins that goes over several days. While the campers prepare for these challenges though, they also run into a strange little creature with a penchant for cheese and theft. Roanoke cabin needs to keep ahead in Galaxy Wars and somehow deal with the fearsome Moon Pirates that a closing in...

Lumberjanes v4 (Out Of Time)

One of the Lumberjanes comics, a cool, girl-focused, queer comic series. Honestly, this is just a fun series that I never got as into as I should have. My advice is honestly to skip book one because it gets better as it continues, and I’ve really been enjoying the later books now that I’ve given it another go. It follows five campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types (Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley) as they handle all sorts of challenges, from friendship to crushes, camp activities to supernatural horrors, getting badges to not being brutally killed. Great if you liked the vibe of Gravity Falls but want it to be queer-er.

Mooncakes

Another queer graphic novel, but unfortunately not a very good one. It really looked appealing and I had high hopes, but the book itself really didn’t hold up… I actually couldn’t even finish it, the plot was just too… non-existent. The art is fairly mediocre once you actually look at it, especially backgrounds, and it feels very… placid. Not much conflict or excitement or even a very compelling reason to keep reading. If you just want a soft queer supernatural you may get more mileage out of it than me, but it didn’t really do it for me. There’s better queer graphic novels out there.

New Boy In Town

One of the worst books I have ever read. My girlfriend had ordered a very different book online but through a frankly stupendous error was sent this 1980s pulp romance instead. Absolutely nauseating on levels I couldn’t even begin to enumerate here. Naturally we read the whole thing out loud. Probably took us 10 times longer to finish than it warranted because I had to stop every two sentences to lose my mind. If you like bad decisions, baffling hetero courting rituals, built-in cultural Christianity without actually calling it that, and gold panning then boy howdy is this the book for you.

(seriously, you better have patience for gold-panning if you attempt this one, because I sure learn that I don’t)

Piggies

This was a picture book I enjoyed as a kid and had a reason to reread recently. Honestly it’s just very cute and simple, and the art is completely mesmerizing. Wonderful if you know a young child that would enjoy a simple goofy boardbook.

Shaun the Sheep: Tales From Mossy Bottom

Related to my Aardman fascination earlier this month. I tried reading a varieties of Shaun the Sheep books — most of which are mediocre at best — but the Tales From Mossy Bottom Farm series is genuinely good. Just chapter books, of course, but the illustrations match the series’ concept art and each story feels like it could have jumped directly out of an episode. They’re just cute and feel-good! Kinda like Footrot Flats but more for kids, and from the sheep’s perspective moreso than the dog’s.

[warm-like-autumn]

Little Witch academia theories

Since now there's the possibility of an upcoming Lwa season I thought it was the perfect time to share this theory I've had for a long time, along with what I think the upcoming season could be about, possible episode ideas and… maybe future villains. And as I’m rewatching this show , I developed this theory that I had for a long time and even came up with ideas for the new season and what it could be about.Let's speculate!!

My main theory is about Croix Meridies and how she could possibly be related to the Hanbridge family.

This might be me over analysing things, but after seeing someone on Tumblr point out to how similar Andrew and Croix's eyes are, I believe they are connected in some way, but the creators didn't have time to develop on that. Especially in how in ep 24, there was put a strong emphasis on both of their eyes. In a scene that was supposed to parallel their reactions.Especially in a show like Lwa, where all the important characters have unique eye shapes that match their personality, having two important characters have the same eye shape and the same eye color raises some questions.

And this is not the only evidence I have to Croix being related to the Hanbridge family. In episode 19, Andrew even states that him and Diana are sort of related. And now on to the Paul Hanbridge part, it would be weird for a man who claims to dislike magic so much to be related to witches. So, what if his wife was a witch, because I think there's a reason we never saw Andrew's mother, and even though we don't see all of the characters parents and flashback moments in this show, Andrew's backstory seems to be pretty important and his father is always present throughout the story.

And for a father that is so strict it raises some questions that his mother is absent. So what if his mother is… dead, and what if her death had to do something with witchcraft, possibly being a reason why Paul hates witchcraft and forced his son to have the same opinions , thinking magic is a dead practice, and his hatred seems too personal to be political in the first place.

Another interesting factor is how Paul's hatred for witches seems to be different from Blackwell's hatred for witches. Whereas Paul's reasons are more justified since he hates the art, not the artist and thinks magic and witches are outdated and have no place in the modern age, Blackwell holds this opinion out of pure bigotry.

And as much as he hates witches, Paul still tries to keep a good relation with them, even if trying to "keep his enemies in debt"

as he says in ep 6 and he seems to have had a good relation with witches and Luna Nova for a long time. So something must have happened along the way for him to hate witches and that something may involve… his wife. What if witches or witchcraft were involved in his wife's death.

And this gets us to the important part of the theory, Croix and how she could possibly be Paul's daughter. What if Andrew isn't the only child Paul has, and this theory is plausible since Croix is around 28 years old,(she graduated in 2007, the anime takes place somewhere around 2017)

and Paul seems to be around his middle or late 50s, basically old enough to be her father. Another piece of evidence I have to that is how there not anything known about Croix's past before she joined Luna Nova, and despite her achievements and the fact that she was described as a "magic prodigy" she was also described as timid and reserved during high-school days, and back then she wasn't as confident and over the top villainous as she is today, her stance being much more distant and reserved, compared to Chariot, who was much more extroverted, even a bit of a show of, always surrounded by people.

She seemed as if she was hiding from something… or someone. What if Croix ran away from home in order to pursue witchcraft, since Paul could have been just as strict about witchcraft to her as he is to Andrew.

And it would make Andrew and Paul's connection to the Chariot and Croix storyline deeper and better, since even the magic shop owner was more relevant to the plot than those two at this point, and they acted as spectators in the second half of the story. Another interesting factor is how Paul constantly says that magic is dead ,obsolete and not necessarily in modern times, while Croix's main motivation is to prove that this exact thing is wrong and that magic is still useful by fusing it with science. And think about it for a second, the damage Croix's monsters did, how Croix fueling the protests for her experiments almost sparked into ww3, all of these things affect the government, which Paul is a part of. Her villain plan might have also been a revenge plan at her father, for being an awful parental figure.

On top of that, neither Andrew or Paul ever directly interacted with Croix or even saw her, and all of the important characters saw Croix and interacted with her, except those two. And at the end of episode 25, right after Croix was arrested and left the scene, Andrew appeared, almost as if the creators didn't want the two characters to interact just yet.

And knowing that Andrew and Diana are cousins, this would also make Croix be part of the Cavendish family, Meridies being possibly a fake name she took to distance herself from both of the well known powerful families. Andrew and Diana often parallel each other in the show, and Croix and her relationship to Chariot is also supposed to be a foil to Akko and her relationship with Diana. Therefore Andrew and Croix were supposed to be a foil to each other, Croix kind of showing Andrew what can happen if he quietly held a grudge against his father and not standing up to him at the right time for two long until he eventually could snap and do the same thing as Croix. Her story of being misunderstood,missguided, filled with jealousy could serve as a cautionary tail.

And Croix being Paul’s daughter would also make sense given her overambitious personality and her constant need of validation from others , including Profesor Woodward and desire to be on top.All of these factors could have easily shaped her into the sort of person that despite having good intentions doesn't have the best ways of achieving them , often putting others in danger to do so.Her being Paul’s daughter would also make sense of why she is jealous of Chariot , since Chariot not only has the shiny rod , but also support from others and appreciation .

A reason my theory could work is how Andrew was originally supposed to be Akko’s love interest , but the creator of the show , Yoh Yoshinari scrapped that sconcept at the request of staff and voice actor , he ended up making Akko a “girl who’s not interested in boys” , so Andrew needed a new purpose in the story , and maybe him discovering Croix is his sister and potentially also becoming a wizard could be those purposes , since they already been kinda set up.

But this theory also raises some questions .How did Andrew’s mother die?Is Andrew a wizard?Did he know he had an older sister? These could be interesting themes to explore in the potential upcoming season .Other things that would be cool to see in this potential season what happened after the missile, Croix redemption arc, my theory becoming cannon and Croix and Chariot having to deal with the mistakes they made, how Akko feels about all of these, and more stuff with the nine new witches, are they considered like superheroes, are they famous now??

Now , onto what the upcoming season could potentially be about :

- As I stated in my theory , Croix and Andrew having to deal with the fact that they are siblings

-Croix redemption arc , maybe more development with her relationship with Ursula/Chariot

-Maybe another episode focused on nightfall , maybe Akko using a spell to make the Nightfall characters real for Lotte’s birthday.

-More flashbacks about Chariot and Croix’s years as Luna Nova students

-Lore behind the golden age of magic and the nine new witches

-New villains

-Return of the shiny rod , but in a unique way

-Maybe the stories could deal with Arthurian Mythos via Appleton Academy

-Male Wizards , maybe more episodes with Andrew and Frank

-More action scenes and serious moments

-The preparation for the spring festival mentioned at the end of episode 25

-More references to other pieces of media (maybe more kingsman , marvel and star wars references as well…)

I should go in depth with some of these aspects :

1.For example , even after episode 25 showed everyone cheering for the 7 witches,they were happy and cheering because otherwise the missile would have killed everyone.They now are happy that they are saved by the witches , and possibly entering a new age of magic , but what if somehow , it is discover that it was because of Croix’s magic that the missile attack almost happened in the first place.How would they react knowing a single witch was capable of such a feast.Especially how would the politicians react.Because at the end of episode 25,Paul was willing to learn more about Andrew’s opinions about witchcraft and even be open to it .But maybe after he finds out the truth about the missile attack,his hatred for witchcraft is even more reinforced , maybe ruining all the progress Andrew has been trying to make in teaching his father about magic ,for him to hate it even more now.Maybe it would even push him to become a villain in the show.

2.Another idea for a villain in the upcoming season I theorize about is Daryl , Diana’s aunt , even though she was kinda redeemed by the end of the season , she is a strange figure , possibly using dark magic , maybe after Diana became head of the Cavendish family , Daryl does not agree with some of Diana’s ways of improving the Cavendish family title and returns to villany , maybe serving as a possible introduction to dark magic (Like she literally can go through walls and has a snake as a pet AND HER EYES GLOW RED)

3.After rewatching episode 17 (Amanda O’Neill and the holy grail) I came up with this silly idea for a plotline , what if that episode wasn't just about an epic fight scene and showing us Croix’s first experiment test , but set up something even more interesting.Even if the title of the episode is a reference to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” , in the Arturian legend of the holy grail it is Galahad the knight who is chosen to find the Holy Grail. Galahad, in both the Lancelot-Grail cycle and in Malory's retelling, is exalted above all the other knights: he is the one worthy enough to have the Holy Grail revealed to him and to be taken into Heaven , so Galahad is the one to have found the holy grail.And for a first test , Croix’s monster worked quite well , and we also know in Lwa , spirits and ghosts exist and they tend to attach themselves to objects.And if Croix’s pixels were in the grail before Louis broke it , why didn't they start working yet.My theory is that Galahad’s ghost was attached to the Holy Grail and the cubes only powered the ghost up , making it able to separate form the grail ,but decided to stay still until Louis broke the grail , pissing the ghost of Galahad off and thus punishing Louis by possessing a nearby knight armor along with Blackwell himself, combining both into a violent berserker.After Amanda destroyed the armor she could’ve weakened the ghost of Galahad , thus everything instantly went back to normal , but what if the ghost started regaining strength , adjusting to life not being attached to the grail , but planning to stroke again , to punish Louis and the other students of Appleton for ruining the reputation of the school with their hatred for witches .Appleton academy could possibly have lore connected to Arthurian legend to it , with how much they hold the importance of tradition , duels , and gentleman like behaviour , almost knight-like.Maybe the next season could have a plotline that involves stopping the Ghost of Galahad.

4.Last but not least , even after the shiny rod vanished in episode 25 , i think there is a way for it to return without ruining the impact it had in the show. There are seven words of arcturus , and seven of the Luna Nova students are part of the nine new witches , right ?So since the rod became a constellation at the end of the show , seven of those stars could be the seven words , so what if each of the seven words materializes as weapon of their own on earth and each of the seven witches(Akko ,Diana, Lotte,Sucy, Amanda , Constanze , Jasminka) get one of the seven words that became weapons .Because even if the rod disappeared , it came to Akko’s help in a different way , since even if the quest to bringing a new age of magic is far from complete.

[captaincoffeegirl515]

What the hell was that last act???

So first of all I want to say that I did enjoy most of the movie. It was okay. The sex scenes didn’t do anything for me though since I’m just not interested in sex at all. But while I more-or-less liked the movie, I felt that the big plot twists in the last act and the ending were badly done because… how the fuck did ANY of them manage to get away with ANY OF THAT??? Like from a legal standpoint it’s just ???

This got so much longer than I anticipated, so the rest is under the read more. And yes, there are so many spoilers. So if you haven't seen The Voyeurs yet and don't want spoilers, please avoid this.

Seb and Julia literally confess to selling their old apartment in order to spy on the people who live there and use them for their art show. Like, yes, they put that clause in the Terms of Agreement for the apartment (which literally no one ever reads) but there is still the matter of Informed Consent. Informed Consent is usually in the form of a contract Pippa and Thomas both need to read and sign, or via verbal questions and answers which is filmed so Seb and Julia would have physical proof of an agreement. This is basically telling them what footage was taken, how it will be used, and if Seb and Julia have permission to share the footage publicly. In Thomas’ case, since he’s dead, his next-of-kin will be asked. Only then are Seb and Julia legally allowed to publicly share and showcase the Pippa and Thomas’ pictures. And Seb is a professional photographer! He should know that!

Have you ever seen prank shows? Like even the ones on YouTube. Have you noticed at the end of some videos, there would be a part where the filmers would approach the person who was pranked and ask if they could use their footage in the video. That’s Informed Consent. They need to ask permission to use a person’s footage in a video or if they need to blur out the person’s face for privacy. Seb and Julia even showed a picture of a dead man for chrissakes! Remember the outcry when that YouTuber posted a video of a suicide victim in Japan???

The Japanese interviewer was right to disapprove of their methods because even though there was a clause in the Terms of Agreement, the prank (because isn’t that what that whole show they did was?) or experiment still resulted with someone killing themself (yes I know it was murder, but the world doesn't know it). They can possibly still be held liable for causing Thomas to kill himself the same way a prankster can be held liable if their victim dies from a prank because of this thing in Law called the Eggshell Rule or Eggshell Plaintiff.

What this means is that a defendant is liable for any injuries caused by the defendant’s actions, regardless of how unforeseeable or uncommon the plaintiff’s reactions to the defendant’s actions are. So for example, there is a scary prank where the prankster jumps out of the bushes and terrifies people. One of them turns out to have a heart condition, suffers a heart attack, and dies. Regardless of the victim’s frailty, the prankster can be held liable for exacerbating the condition and causing the victim’s death. Likewise in the movie, they can say that Seb and Julia, by orchestrating the whole thing and making Thomas see his girlfriend cheating on him, could have caused him to become broken-hearted and kill himself. Therefore, Seb and Julia can be liable for Thomas’ death.

And then here’s the kicker! The famous photographer and his wife, a famous model, both suddenly end up blind AFTER their big art show where they displayed Pippa’s scandal. And not by accident. No. This was obviously surgically done. And NOBODY suspected foul play?? Nobody thought about revenge?? Nobody thought it strange how their blindness was clearly done with a surgical/medical precision nor suspected the couple’s subject, Pippa, who they thoroughly humiliated, who also worked as an optometrist technician at a lab that has the machines that could cause that kind of blindness??? And they're both still alive! They can easily tell the police who did it!

It should have been way too easy for the police to know that it was foul play. Blood tests can tell that Seb and Julia had been drugged. How they were blinded can be traced to the optometry lab. Pippa would be the easiest main suspect due to her connection to them with revenge as the main motivation after they humiliated her in that art show.

And yes, I agree that what Seb and Julia did was wrong. They used Pippa and Thomas, and then murdered Thomas so they can have some juicy story to tell!

Even so, what happened to Ethical Codes in the medical field? What happened to the Hippocratic Oath? Non-maleficience rule? “Do No Harm”? Pippa should have been slammed with, idk, medical malpractice or something, after using her knowledge of the LASIK machine and using it to permanently blind people (which is an actual fear real people have about LASIK surgery), have her license revoked, be fired from her job, and possibly serve jail time. Why is she walking free all willy-nilly and still being allowed to continue stalking Seb and Julia?

I’ll admit though that maybe I’m being more harsh towards Pippa because I myself used to be a Board Certified medical professional (my license expired last year because I hadn't been working in that field for a while) and because of that, her actions angered and horrified me more.

Normally, we as an audience are made to root for the main character or hero, but I found it difficult to do so because Pippa herself is a terrible person. She's a pervert and a creep. She was obsessed with the lives of other people, stalked them, and even went as far as committing crimes in order to fuel her obsession - trespassing, breaking and entering, destruction of private property.

And my goodness this actually makes me think of a few Ben Hardy stans who are like this. Well, idk if going to Ben's school so that she can get a copy of a school film he was in can be considered a crime, but it's still fucking creepy.

Pippa’s got that Savior Complex where she tries to rescue this poor neglected wife from her horrible cheating husband (the same one she herself wants to fuck because she’s obsessed with him). And then when it all goes south, she immediately turns around and blames THOMAS of all people because “he started it”. Like, so what if he did?? He still had enough maturity to realize when they were taking it too far, and decided to stop with the stalking. He told her to stop multiple times but she was too blinded by her obsession and lust for a man that she doesn’t even know.

AND THEN!! She stalked a grieving husband (I know we know that was a lie but Pippa didn't know that) and proceeded to cheat on her boyfriend with said grieving husband. And frankly, I don’t understand why she’s so vengeful about Thomas’ death considering how easily she forgot him so that she could cheat on him. Like. Who knows, maybe he still would’ve killed himself regardless of the poisoned drink because the last thing he saw was his girlfriend cheating on him with the man she’d been obsessed with for the past idk how long. Even in the scene after Thomas died, there was a momentary grief where Pippa was all “it’s my fault Thomas died” but it was all too brief and immediately after she went back to obsessing and asking about Seb. And they want me to believe that she’d want to avenge Thomas’ death? No. I think she blinded Seb and Julia because she was angry at being called out for her obsession. For being told that she was wrong to go that far. It wasn’t about her “love” for Thomas. It was about how humiliated she was about being wrong.

Can you believe that Pippa gave this whole speech with the fable about being content with what you have and not to try to be greedy by wanting more and then she just immediately DOES THE OPPOSITE OF THE MORAL by cheating on her boyfriend because she wanted more aka Seb???

The more that I think about it, I feel like the true villain of the movie is Pippa herself. Her obsession with Seb is what started the whole thing. If she had been able to keep a healthy distance, none of that would’ve happened to begin with. There would be no fights over how far things were going. Seb would have no scandal to tell. She worsened Thomas’ insecurities of not being enough for her, making him go to great lengths just to try to please her. Poor Thomas. He truly deserved better.

Pippa also has awful friends. Instead of stamping down the creepy behavior, they’re giving tips on how to listen in on other people’s private conversations! And then later try to excuse her cheating on Thomas. And then help with her obsession AGAIN.

Acting-wise, I felt that Natasha, Ben, and Justice were incredible and I loved them. I love how conflicted Ben played Seb and how you can see it in his eyes. My favorite scene was the one where Seb and Julia had that confrontation over the wine where Seb asks if she ever felt guilty and Julia just stares right back and stares him down. Natasha was brilliant as Julie pretending to be all friendly and vulnerable with Pippa. Justice was very emotional and I love the scenes where he was horrified at how far Pippa was taking everything. For me, Sydney was the weakest one at acting. While there were some okay parts, her face can be really stiff at some points, like during the sex scenes.

Overall, I thought the movie to be quite thought-provoking especially in this day and age where people can find the most intimate details of another person’s life so easily, be that through Carrd, Instagram stories, Facebook feeds, and other social media sites. It makes you think about parasocial relationships, how people can be so obsessed about people that they’ve never even met, and how that obsession can easily grow into something dangerous that can ruin lives. Good movie, terrible last act. Too much sex for my taste, but then it wouldn’t be called an erotic movie.

Outside of the movie, I really love the chemistry between the four of them. I love watching their interviews and seeing how they interact with each other.

Last but not the least, I know this may be random but my brain likes to zoom in on the weirdest things. How on earth did Pippa manage to get Seb on top of that operating table?? No offense but Pippa is fucking tiny. Seb’s like twice her size and mostly muscle AND unconscious. Like ??? Sorry but that threw me off so much it’s ridiculous.