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#(only takes what he is given and all that)
sun-archeron · 7 months
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thinking abt luffy, and how he grew up so poor that if he wanted to have a decent meal he had to go into the forest and fight big, dangerous animals. but at least he was strong enough to be able to fight, while there were people that lived close to him that had to live amongst the trash, hoping to find scraps they could sell so they could eat once during the day.
thinking abt how luffy values food so much, how he always eats as much as he physically can. how he values the people that feed him, that eat with him. whether its a luxurious meal or just an apple they share.
thinking abt how pretty much everytime he saved/liberated a place/island/nation was bc someone from the place had fed him.
how when he actived gear 5 he was fighting to save a nation that its main problem was starvation. and not only that but the food there had also been weaponized to mock them and make them suffer more. and it was fighting for them that he fully reached the form of nika, the form that will allow him to bring down the current government and its system which creates these areas where people starve
also! how in zoros introduction we see him eat something that was on the dirt, partly bc he hadnt eaten in a long time and partly bc someone made it and risked themselves to bring it to him. and how sanji is always happy to cook for anyone whos hungry and absolutely hates food waste. and how these two are luffys wings
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sapphorror · 5 months
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You know, I think there was a real moment of clarity achieved here with the revelation that he's the thing most likely to get in his own way. That's like, the most self-awareness he's shown over the entire course of IZ canon, I'm almost proud. It's too bad about the brain damage, but,
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orchid-n-petals · 9 months
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So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.
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The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.
You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.
And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.
Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".
His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.
But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.
Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.
And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.
I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.
He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.
He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.
He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.
He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.
But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.
I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.
Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.
I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.
#bg3#baldur's gate 3#ketheric thorm#and I also have a lot of thoughts of how Aylin foils him#I fully believe that he was in the right in the capacity that he switched around his gods when he was literally ignored despite his life's#work. despite all that he has given. I think it's reasonable to expect in the world of gods who actively meddle in mortal affairs on their#whims and make shit worse that in just one single case they would. idk. NOT expect one of their devotees to remain blindly loyal to them#after their prayers go unanswered. like yes; go and try your luck elsewhere because this devotion of yours is clearly being taken for#granted. you get NOTHING out of your worship. you can't even sleep well because your loved ones are dead and you are expected to just what?#deal with it on your own? and remain loyal? why?#some sense of 'honour'?#I really like this depiction of faith actually. I really like when clerics and paladins are given agency and critical thought that hey!#this is actually giving me nothing despite me dedicating my entire life to it! and I have only one of it so why not take it somewhere where#it's actually valued. you know. as a treat.#I *personally* much more prefer this depiction of a crisis of faith than what we got with Shadowheart or Lae'zel; their stories are very#interesting on their own but I think throwing yourself from one end to the other not because you actually have a goal that it could serve#but because you are desperate for a purpose#is a slightly less potent character narrative than having an actual goal yourself. not by much but by a little.#again#PERSONALLY
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cleromancy · 2 months
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god ppl trying to claim jasons "we're the not so different you and i" villain speech to mia WASNT incredibly unsubtle subtext... that they went through the same trauma... like he says theyre alike. she says he knows nothing about her. he lists what he knows. and then he repeats that they're alike.
that's only barely subtext and not text itself, man. trying to argue that isn't the intention that jason was also a csa victim is just willful misreading at that point
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thewingedwolf · 11 months
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luther: the golden child
diego: the mastermind
allison: the peace keeper
klaus: the clown / mascot
five: the rebel / truth teller
ben: the lost child
viktor: the scapegoat
is this something i think this is something
#the umbrella academy#rani makes text posts no one will read#hargreeves siblings#ben being the lost child is kind of forced bc he’s dead but i find it interesting even then#bc ben was unique in the family for already hating being a superhero and his powers due to the horror of them. and however it is he died#it had to be horrific bc viktor doesn’t write about it in his book bc five doesn’t know what happened. and before he died ben’s unique self#awareness seems to have meant they all loved him in a normal way only for his death to poison those bonds completely#so through no decision of his own this very sullen and cranky child has to become a self sacrificing wallflower bc the only way he gets to#even exist is if he takes care of klaus and tries to sober him up. his big moment is sacrificing himself for his siblings! they can’t ever#escape the abuse that reginald heaped onto them!! even in death they’re playing roles reginald forced them into#and sparrow ben is clearly so used to being the manipulator so he’s thrown when his family dies and sloane refuses to be manipulated anymore#and he winds up kind of lost child esque accidentally *anyway* - ignored and repressing his feelings and unable to connect emotionally#also before anyone says diego is too stupid to be the mastermind google ‘the mastermind dysfunctional family role’ it doesn’t require you to#not be a himbo only to be willing to be cruel & as they all say in s1 diego never knows when to stop#pogo is an adult enabler. grace has a weird function bc the umbrella kids love her and diego is convinced she killed reginald bc of abuse#five seems similarly attached to her (makes sense given delores) but the others see her more as an enabler which is INTERESTING#i’m gonna stop rambling now
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ride-a-dromedary · 9 months
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You think Halsin ever just ripped the logs apart with his bare hands when it was his turn to gather firewood for camp, or what
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hella1975 · 1 year
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tams azula is sooo fascinating bc while canon azula doesn't really show her age at all like she's completely desensitised to so much shit 'she is fourteen' is not a justification for ANYTHING both in her own mind and in other people's, in tams she has zuko. and yes the world has been abundantly cruel to her but zuko hasn't. he's basically raised azula and he's done so in a way that she's allowed to show her age, but she still only shows her age in very azula-esque ways. there's no reluctance to see violence like you'd expect from a fourteen-year-old, and like ive said before, that means zuko can't play on that reluctance in order to shield her, but he still wants to shield her from that violence because regardless of what SHE feels about it, as the eldest he knows fundamentally that she shouldn't be seeing certain things no matter how well she can handle them. and seeing zuko effectively PLAY azula in order to protect her is so interesting and complicated and fun
#and also a little heartbreaking bc it's the 'you protect azula but who protects you?'#like in order to shield azula from these things zuko is metaphorically standing in front of her and seeing them himself#as if he's not only sixteen and a child too#but yeah taking azula's canon traits and manipulating into the tamsverse is soooo fun#like the example that inspired this post is how canon azula is logical NOT cruel#like time and time again she follows only the logical route and even actively avoids the cruel route#e.g calling off torture in the boiling rock bc she knew that he was telling the truth and therefore continuing to torture him was illogical#im not saying azula is averse to/incapable of cruelty i just hc that she genuinely just thinks it's stupid#just like any other unnecessary act would be considered stupid. if it's not logical or being used for a greater plan then what's the point?#and tams azula STILL HOLDS THIS TRAIT except because i lean more into her age in tams bc she's been given the freedom with zuko#to liberally be a CHILD without any consequences as a result of that simple thing#her intense logic actually becomes a certain naivety on azula#like she cannot comprehend other people NOT coming to the conclusions she comes to#and that expands to needless cruelty. like she wont factor a person's cruelty into her calculations#because in her head all she needs to dismiss that calculation is 'excessive cruelty here would waste time which is illogical'#she assumes everyone is as smart and to-the-point as she is so when they ARENT and will actively waste time just to do dumb shit#it catches her off guard and she DOESNT PLAN FOR IT so it can really fuck them over sometimes#so this is one instance where zuko has azula beat despite it being STRATEGY aka azula's strong point#bc zuko's immense cynicism and assumption that Everyone Is Awful doesn't hold up against logic 9 times out of 10#but the one time it does is the time azula gets caught out#i just think tams zuko and azula's dynamic is so fucking interesting im so clever for that tbh#twice as many stars
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firstroseofspring · 3 months
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sirella telling a little of how she and martok met in the left hand of destiny
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trashlie · 9 months
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Hiii!! How are you??
I have a question, since you have a big brain- What do you think it means in chapter 235 (I Love Yoo) when Shin-ae thinks about Yeong-gi and the backgrownd goes from yellow to orange to red to black? I thought it was going to end with red as to mean "love", but black?? Is it because Yeong-gi is pushing Shin-ae away?
Hello, Nonny I am okay!!!! I've been a little distracted this last week but I'm doing well!!! :3
You are right about the colors! The background goes from yellow (caution) and slowly starts to warm up, until yes, we see the point, the moment when her feelings go from wariness and caution to trust, where her feelings begin to develop and become feelings of a whole other nature.
But it jumps from the moment she comes to trust him to the moment he is - very pointedly and literally - leaving her in the dark. Consider Shinae's feelings at that moment, when Nol blindfolds himself to hide his tears to hide his state of mind to hide his fears and insecurities and feelings. It leaves her so frustrated and hurt. He's literally left her in the dark. She doesn't understand why he won't show these parts of himself that she is so desperately hungry for to her. It's the moment that her feelings have really come to a head, too; all along they've been developing, brewing, slowly shifting from wariness to friendship to these feelings to want to want to want but in that moment she hasn't figured it out - not the moment when he hides himself from her and not this moment as she's talking about the feelings with Maya.
He's left her in the dark but she, too, is in the dark about her own feelings. What she feels about him now is so much more complex than it once was, full of so much want and need - to see him to know him to stay by his side (to have him[SCREAMS]) and she herself doesn't know what any of it means what she feels. It's left her confused and frustrated. Her feelings are simultaneously a series of comfort and trust but also feeling like crap and so the color is black, because in that moment what she's feeling isn't warmth, isn't comfort but instead frustration, feeling hurt, feeling like crap because he won't let her in.
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Milgram fic idea: the prisoners are bored (as they always are) and they've already celebrated every holiday imaginable. So someone suggests doing a cross-dressing event for a change. Mahiru, Mikoto and Muu help everyone find the perfect fit (Mahiru sews half the clothes herself to make it look perfect).
A bunch of gender crisis ensue.
#milgram#milgram project#milgram fanfic#yuno cuts her hair short “just for the bit” and doesn't grow them back for “some reason”#haruka has a mental breakdown thinking about how his mom wanted a girl and if only he could've been her#fuuta doesn't seem to care that much about presenting feminine. rightfully so. he's rocking this plaid skirt after all#same with muu. she doesn't seem all that changed. after all she knows for a fact she's the most handsome guy at the party#she still feels a bit melancholic for some reason. she wonders if she could go out with girls with this look#shidou has already worn dresses/skirts before. when he was a student he went to themed parties where couples would exchange outfits#he finds it funny. he's quite secure in his masculinity so he's just having a fun time#mahiru takes the role of the prince charming she dreams of. she speaks with a funny voice because she tries to lower her pitch#she's not very successful at it but it just makes her laugh. she's also the one who made sure that everyone felt comfortable in their outfit#kazui is having an existential crisis. he doesn't know what mask to wear anymore. “is this even allowed for me to do that?”#after a while he just has fun with everyone. he doesn't feel the need to drink that much alcohol during the party. he feels young again#amane isn't really interested in all this. she accepted to wear the outfit given to her by mahiru and let her style her hair#but she feels like all of these futile festivities are childish. yet she looks into the mirror every now and then and ponders about all this#Mikoto is in his element for some reason. he likes these kinds of carefree moments#by exploring his gender and presentation he feels like he's getting closer to himself. his identity feels blurry to him sometimes#but this kind of exploration is helping somehow#kotoko doesn't care about all of this. she doesn't really get the appeal of “cross-dressing”. it's just a piece of clothe after all.#the others do find her quite handsome in her tuxedo though#es got woken up by the ruckus. saw what was going on. went back to sleep.
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diluc33rpm · 4 months
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the romance/relationship system in bg3 is genuinely some of the worst designed shit i've ever seen in any game with that feature but at least the memes we get out of it are funny. once saw someone comment something along the lines of 'patch note: waving at gale will no longer cause him to buy a house for the two of you to retire in' and i've never recovered since
#i love gale he doesn't deserve (most of) the incel slander#but it's painfully such a good riff because it really really does feel like that#the player choices being a b/w alternation between 'hey there' and 'YOU SHOULD KILL YOURSELF... NOW!' normally is already comical as is#the fact that it carries over into interactions with the party members who you're presumably trying to be close with is... something else#and what makes it worse is it ISN'T jokey hyperbole. anyone remember 'send a mental image of you kissing him or HIS HEAD ON A PIKE.' c'mon#trying to chat and vibe at the refugee camp celebration and the sum of conversation i get is one (1) line asking how they're doing#because going any further than that elicits marking you down for the path of boning take it or leave it#it's genuinely so hard to get to feel like you can deepen a relationship with the characters in ways that aren't trying to pursue them#yes! halsin! i really want to know you better! i just don't want the ass!! why is trying to hit the only option other than up and leaving!!#99% of the time i expect nothing from media creators in terms of writing interactive relationships#larian are beyond parody in that they've somehow managed to do worse than the already suboptimal majority#we're just going to impose the roadblock of do you want to fuck y/n right off the bat. good luck finding a way to talk around that if not#the obscuration surrounding where exactly the checks are really does not help at all either#when the shit's got even the allos complaining about it you know it's BAD#shame because i was excited for character scenes given that's a lot of what's hyped up about the game#but no it's all just the romances. 'what if i'd like to breathe in someone's general direction-' well now have you heard of our romances?#fish fear them party members fear them and tav is going to have to walk alone on this sinful earth#conservative bigoted relative at the family reunion withers era was a fucking time before they tweaked that line speaking of#just so crazy they can get away with this shit#baldur's gate 3#bg3 liveblog
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loosingmoreletters · 4 months
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slams hand down do it you know you want to do it,,, sugar daddy au and now its just awkward as fuck but they get to Deal with It. bonus points for people laughing at them in the background. i am your inner demon whispering that this is a good idea and you should absolutely write it (no pressure ofc!!! take your time and its fine if you want to!!!)
for ship names. yeah very sad. i havent settled on like. a combination of their names that sound appealing to me so im just. sitting there awkwardly in Yun Taeheon x Shin Junseo. simple but it works. ill bonk my brain for ideas later,, i have cut down on thigns i need to hand in tomorrow im procrastinating because the thing i need to do is so horribly boring
maybe the korean side of the fandom has something going on but that would require me to go on twitter and figure out what korean words to put in the search box and I'm already failing at "go on twitter".
sdkhldfkhg the inner demons are winning. now I'm kinda contemplating how this would even start, which made me realize we know fuck all about Shin Junseo's past??? We only knew that apparently he had a shitty job before he awakened and didn't have any friends and seemingly also has no family.
So like? Local man signs up on an app bc honestly at this point being a sugar baby would not be worse than another horrible shift at whatever minimum wage job he has to pay the bills?
And cool, he hits it off with Yun Taeheon, something something business man. It's a lot less hollywood-pretty-woman than he expected, more nice dinners with genuinely entertaining discussions, and sure getting laid is nice too, and then, well, the world goes to shit for a hot second and well, the contract written before runs out, isn't renewed and Shin Junseo has a moment between picking up a shitty job again and awakening where he comfortably lives on his savings while his,,, ex? well, no, ex would be implying they dated. boss is also not quite the term, his previous situationship, made himself a guild master.
whatever.
and then the world goes even more to shit and he drags corpses and the memories of a world annihilated out of a dungeon. He makes his plan, keeps his head down and then fucking Yun Taeheon is standing in front of him again.
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probablygayattorneys · 5 months
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I was reading a list of female characters clearly written by men and this is about X-Files but yes yes yes this is EXACTLY what replaying Layton games (particularly Unwound Future) is like!
#professor Layton#professor layton and the unwound future#the way flora is completely shafted whenever it’s inconvenient#the way the ptofessor says multiple times a gentleman always keeps his promises#and then specifically promises he won’t leave her again just to ditch her at the first opportunity#the way that Claire is the only one to suffer any real consequences#and she accepts it because it was their fault for trying to mess with things they didn’t understand yet#that were not made to be messed with#and yet instead of being like ‘I wasn’t the head researchers#I was a lab assistant#and the bare fucking minimum from a work-study experience#should be asking to be provided a safe working environment’#no instead she graciously takes all the blame#she accepts her death as if this was all her design and now she must pay the pied piper for the consequences of her actions#rather than being angry that the people who were supposed to keep her safe#just completely brushed her death under the rug#even bill hawks is given#what? a few harsh words from Chemley?#like I know hurt people hurt people and that’s not a good thing#but I kind of see where Clive is coming from on this one#like at least this is something they couldn’t ignore#and there’s no woman around to martyr herself for something that shouldn’t have been her fault#Jesus Christ#THE PERSON WHO PUSHED FOR THE EXPERIMENT#REGARDLESS OF THE LACK OF SAFETY PRECSUTIONS#HE’S THE ONE WHO SHOULD SUFFER#NOT SOMEONE WHO HE HAD A POSITION OF POWER OF#AND YET SHE ACCEPTS HER DEATH AS THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF AN EXPERIMENT THAT WASN’T HER IDEA#JUSTICE FOR CLAIRE#JUSTICE FOR FLORA
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blueskittlesart · 1 year
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Hi! As someone who now kinda wants to check out Trigun because of the hype, do you recommend that I can start with Stampede? Or do I really need to watch the OG anime first to better understand/enjoy it? Thank you! 🙋🏻‍♀️
you can start with stampede! i'd say knowing the context of the original enhances the experience but isn't necessary to enjoy the show. I would consider stampede more viewer-friendly, especially for those of us who are used to modern storytelling conventions (the original suffers the consequences of general writing trends in anime at the time it was produced and of the fact that it was produced long before the manga was finished, so the story is somewhat disjointed and has a lot of filler which makes it REALLY hard to get into.) if you do end up liking stampede, however, I'd suggest trying out watching at least SOME of the original because it adds a lot of cool nuance and context to the story that stampede tells!
#your only REAL handicap is that you're missing out on references that clue you into the context of the story early on#and quite a few references in the finale. but none of those references are hugely necessary to understand the plot so you should be fine!#i didn't DISLIKE the origial and like i said im glad i watched it first but it was. REALLY hard to get into.#even as someone who understands writing trends & enjoys a lot of older anime trigun is. a product of its time.#there's almost no context given for the story you're witnessing until a good 20 episodes in.#the main villain isn't named at all until halfway through the runtime#and even TWO EPISODES BEFORE THE FINALE i still did not have enough information to fully understand what the hell was going on#vash was going into the final fucking battle and i still didn't know what knives WAS let alone what the fuck he WANTED#not to mention nick was FULLY DEAD and i still didnt know what his deal was. like ok go off king have ur moment bleeding out in the church#but can you EXPLAIN WHATS GOING ON BEFORE YOU SUCCUMB TO THE BLOOD LOSS PLEASEEEEEEEE GOD#stampede does that whole thing WAY better imo. it sprinkles the backstory more naturally throughout the show#again. part of this is 90s writing conventions. but there's only so much i can take fr#it was like comparable to evangelion in terms of LACK OF CONTEXT#anyways. this isnt supposed to be me complaining about the original. it had its moments. i watched 24 episodes of it like it was not BAD#but like. i think the story really benefits from the way that stampede chooses to lay everything out. is what im saying.#tldr watch them in whatever order but if you like stampede try the original#you might not like it more than stampede but you WILL feel cool when you realize how it all relates to stampede#asks#vash is also WAAAAAY sexier in stampede. HOWEVER. the women of the show are like 10 times sexier in the original. so. pick your poison ig
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waywardsalt · 1 year
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thoughts on totk now that i’ve beaten it
under the cut bc of length and bc there is honestly a fair bit of negative stuff
i don’t really think i can say that i liked totk.
it’s fine, it’s genuinely fucking incredible from a technical standpoint with ultrahand, recall, the three map layers and with how smoothly it ran for me. as a game it’s fine.
i’ll start with the things i dislike and end with what i actually liked
i honestly didn’t really like ultrahand? i disliked how much the game leaned on it, since so many puzzles and whatever just boiled down to ‘make something that’ll work’ and it just... it was far too clunky for me to really enjoy using it, outside of using some of the same few designs for traversal. there were a few times when i could see what the game wanted me to do with ultrahand and the given zonai parts and sometimes it just... didn’t work at all. more often than not ultrahand was frustrating for me to use so the game’s reliance on it just made it into a chore sometimes.
in a similar vein the dungeons were serious letdowns. i mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re fine, they had good themes and (mostly) had good aesthetics and general looks and identities to them, but the fact that they were just... basically twenty-ish minute little things was kind of disappointing. i hate that they all had the exact same ‘go hit x number of switches’ gimmick. it really limited what you could do and fucked with the dungeon design, too. the only one where that really worked for me was the fire temple, which was my favorite overall. the water temple was especially dismal, with the least inspired look and just being an astoundingly easy experience. the puzzles in those dungeons were so awfully easy, too, especially since half of the time they just hand you what you need so you barely need to really assess the situation and put a plan together
i hated the water dungeon’s little mini-areas where you do a single piss-easy puzzle to automatically get your prize, i hated the wind temple’s god damn ‘pull a lever and get your prize’ kind of puzzles, i hated how soul-crushingly disappointed i felt when i took a look at the lightning temple’s map and realized that every fucking floor had a singular room just for the switch puzzle. god forbid it’s as fun as the lowest level of that temple. i really miss stuff like mini-bosses or rooms where you have to do a puzzle in order to just... progress, i miss dungeons that i could get lost in or spend a while in or just had... something more interesting or some more substance so that i can’t just breeze through like it’s a glorified shrine. most of the puzzles in those dungeons were simpler than some shrines i did.
i didn’t care to do much exploration since there honestly isn’t much motivation to explore the surface map if you’ve already played botw, and the scarcity of materials this time really got to me, it took me a while to have a half-decent stock of materials, and i still had trouble not running out of stuff even though i was using amiibos to stock up on some things. the money situation was rough, too... a lot of things are cheaper to sell, but some armor is still really expensive plus you have to pay the great fairies to upgrade your equipment in addition to having the correct materials. that especially felt odd- having to grab a handful of (goddamn hard to get) lynel guts is hard enough to upgrade the soldier’s armor, but you want me to cough up 500 rupees, too??
(the scarcity of monster guts also got on my nerves, but i’ll just chalk that up to just some kind of really weird difficulty thing. it was annoying until i tracked down the stronger monsters.)
the story is probably the weakest part of the game to me. it’s really hard to have a baseline investment when you don’t care about these characters, anyway, and what i saw in this game’s story still failed to endear me to hardly any of them. link’s role frustrated me; he just comes off like a tool rather than a character this time through, he barely has any actual relevancy to the story segments beyond being the guy who can use the master sword and being the player’s vehicle to get from point a to b in the story. the blank stare and limited emoting worked in botw because... there’s a given reason for his lack of outward emotion in the past, plus he has no memory in the present. it makes sense. but this time around, he’s gotten memories in the years between this and the last game, but he just feels like a background character in most of the story beats. 
he has no role in the memories and in the present just exists to gather some stuff for other people, he gets the master sword from zelda and then helps the other sages get their secret stones, but he’s barely addressed as his own character in the grand scheme of things unless he’s being directly spoken to. he’s just the swordsman capable of wielding the master sword and zelda’s chosen protector as far as the story is concerned. he has no opinions outside of doing what he’s told and looking for zelda. at least not as far as i could really tell. at least in botw, the story directly concerns him, and it’s his story we’re following. this time around zelda and the sages seem like the most important characters, link’s just... there, doing what he’s been told to.
the new sages are fine, none of them really endeared themselves to me, and i will say that making the player watch essentially the exact same cutscene each time you finish a dungeon was BAFFLING. they were long and you learned almost nothing new after the first one, and there was nothing done to make them very distinct to each individual pair of sages or their respective regions; at the very least, it could have been interesting to meet the ancient sages not in the exact same stone garden, but perhaps at the top of a snowy mountain for the rito, near a volcano or something for the goron, maybe in a shallow pool of water for the zora, and in the desert for the gerudo- but no, they’re all effectively the same thing just with the speaking character swapped out with some minor changes.
(the sages themselves are a pain in the ass to use, having to chase them down to activate their power or accidentally activating a power when you don’t want it; yunobo was honestly my favorite, but because i generally defaulted to having them all activated at all times, i had a lot of trouble with tulin blowing shit away from me when i was trying to grab it while midair. they’re half-decent for combat)
i didn’t really care for rauru or sonia, either. rauru in the present as a ghost was fine, he was kind of interesting and seemed to have changed from his time in the past, but he never managed to be a character i particularly liked. i wasn’t really a fan of his... arrogance? or something in the past scenes, and he never really came off as very interesting. sonia was nearly completely uninteresting which is a shame since she has an interesting design, she just felt delegated to the role of supporting rauru and zelda and then dying to motivate them.
ganondorf is a character i was really looking forward to seeing, and it really fucking sucks that he’s so god damn one-dimensional this time! the story can’t be fucked to delve into him beyond just giving us scenes that just tell us that he’s evil and wants to rule hyrule and get the secret stones and nothing else because fuck having complex villains, i guess. especially frustrating because within the game itself you can draw more interesting motivations up for him, but the game really just doubles-down on him being evil for the fuck of it and wanting to end the world because uhhhh... he’s evil don’t fucking worry about it
the ignoring of the triforce in this game sucks in that way, too, because the way the triforce works and how it can grant wishes made it a much more interesting goal for ganondorf to attain, rather than some poorly-named ‘secret stones’ that do nothing more than just amplify power or something. it sucks how black-and-white this damn story is and how it seems like it just wants to do away with any possible nuance or gray area. no one but the bad guys or side characters are flawed in any actually interesting or significant way.
at least ganondorf was still the most interesting character in the flashbacks.
and then zelda, oh god ZELDA. i honestly really liked her in botw. i liked how you saw her as a flawed, insecure, pressured teen, and how you saw her struggles to relate to link and how she eventually warmed up to him. you saw her as a flawed person who develops and as someone who cares deeply about her friends and her duties and gets frustrated by her failings.
and then in totk a lot of her more interesting traits- her interest in sheikah tech, her excitement over field study and research, her more defining traits as this incarnation of zelda- are basically sanded down and she’s just this perfect flawless princess with great power and an insanely passive role in the past beyond finally taking some kind of action after one of her friends dies and she’s pushed to the brink. cool. great.
she has practically no flaw in totk. if anyone in the present talks about her, they have nothing bad to say and just want to please her and follow her orders, she is right in telling the gerudo how to train their troops she is right even when misheard to tell people to put themselves in danger and she is hardly meaningfully questioned when her imposter is doing very clearly suspicious shit. neither the story nor any of the characters wants to let her be flawed. she’s just perfect in damn near every way and barely retains any interesting characterization she got in botw. there are some interesting snippets in her being a teacher and setting up memorials to those who died in the calamity, but there’s hardly any more than that, and it makes it really hard for me to give a damn about her. she’s not interesting this time.
the whole thing with zelda becoming a dragon too, is... it’s fine. it’s ok. but the fact that she turns back at the end with no problem whatsoever is one hell of a fucking misstep. why talk about draconification being forbidden for a good reason anyways if it doesn’t actually matter anyways??? if you never actually see any of those fucking repercussions why even bring them up??? i really feel like it would have been more effective for there to have been actual consequences for zelda beyond just fucking flying around half-conscious for a millennium or whatever- have her lose her memory when she’s brought back! there you go! there’s the reason why draconification is forbidden! there’s the thing about losing yourself! plus, zelda losing her memories as a result would mirror link having lost his memories in botw! that has so much more weight and significance then ‘oh uh ignore the warnings from a while back she’s completely fine dw abt it’ i hate that she’s back just like that without any of the consequences that the game suggests.
the dragon’s tears in general kinda just felt weaker than botw’s memories anyways bc you’re more just. watching stuff happen then actually learning anything. it has less characters and yet i feel like you only get to know like half of the important ones. like three of them are all about the same event. a few times they just replay parts of old memories in new ones. if they ever reference a past memory they just show you what they’re referencing instead of leaving you to piece it together. just play the voices or something don’t break the flow of things to play a clip of something i’ve already seen.
plus the fact that totk... barely acknowledges that it’s a sequel to botw really rubs me the wrong way. i understand that loz is extremely loose with its lore, but totk is a direct sequel set in the same world a few years later, and yet the events and characters of botw have might as well been forgotten and its all either ignored, brushed aside, or straight up replaced by something else for no good reason. the continuity between these games is absolutely dismal and to see the different ways in which the events and concepts or botw are just... disregarded really just left a bad taste in my mouth.
just- i love good stories and worlds in video games, and while some games can coast by for me by feeling good to play, having a good and engaging story and characters is usually essential to my enjoyment of a game, and when i don’t care about to the point of disliking the story and characters, and when none of the important areas are fascinating or distinct enough from each other, and when the game even fails to really reel me in with the gameplay...
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i wanted to like totk, but it really just did not work for me. i just ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed and even sometimes bored with all of the major stuff and man. totk is really, REALLY, not for me, and it just left me wanting to play older zelda games instead.
...
HOWEVER! there were actually some things i really loved about totk! it’s not all doom and gloom! (well, not all doom, at least)
so! the music was great! not all of it really fit or made a lot of sense with the context in which they played or failed to evoke the feeling they were meant to, but the new tracks in this game were great! i especially love the first two phases of the fire temple’s theme, the depths music, and most of the new battle and boss themes. zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music.
i did genuinely like the fire temple- yunobo’s ability was used the best in this dungeon, and it had the best five switches gimmick, i loved how you had to hit the gongs (sometimes having to construct a path to account for the weaknesses of yunobo’s ability) and how it then ‘scared’ each of the five statues holding a part of the gate- it was very cute and fit in very well with the general feel of that part of the story. it was the best in terms of difficulty and complexity, but it didn’t have the best boss- the lightning temple had the best boss, and i will admit that even if most of them were easy, i really enjoyed the mirror puzzles, as well as the process to unlocking the dungeon. the wind temple had my favorite visual identity and aesthetic, though, i liked it being a part of this old rito song, and how it was the most distinct in looks from the other dungeons.
the sky islands were honestly fun, even if they weren’t all that interesting. getting to some of the harder-to-reach islands were some of my favorite times i had to use ultrahand, and stuff like the zonai forge island and the one orblike island with the mirror puzzle, and pretty much all of the more complicated parts of the sky islands were a lot of fun to explore and figure out.
being able to ride on the dragons was just really cool, and the fact that they come out of the chasms was fun.
the new horns for the monsters were cool, it helps differentiate the different monster strengths and i just thought they were really neat.
the quest with lurelin village was fun, even if the pirates just being monsters was a real let-down.
the stable trotters were also a fun bunch of characters, that was a good, new way to open up fairy fountains.
all of the new stuff with the yiga was really fun, like getting their outfit and being able to pretend to be one of them and learning the blademaster attack- so much fun it was so cute.
most of the new outfits are really good and useful, and while a bit janky and not that great, the house-building bit near tarrey was endearing.
while none of the main characters interested me, i really, especially liked tauro and yona and penn. for some reason they just appealed to me and i really wish they had bigger parts in the game because they’re interesting and they have good designs and i’d really like to know more about them.
the underground gerudo shelter was pretty cool, to be honest, and the look of the caves was really cool.
i adored the proving grounds shrines- easily my favorite shrines in the entire game, i had no problem spending a decent amount of time in those kinds of shrines, they were fantastic.
the new ingredients and recipes and new weapons were cool.
the way you basically return to the area you started at on your way to ganondorf is pretty cool, that whole path is really neat.
ganondorf in general was a pretty cool boss, even if he ended up being kind of easy for me. the whole final boss sequence was neat.
by FAR, though, my absolute favorite part of this game was 100% the depths. the fact that there was just an entire second layer to the map that was the same size as the surface, just inverted and dark and filled with new bosses and locations... i spent hours down there without going back up to the surface and absolutely had a BLAST screwing around in the dark, lighting up my path with brightblooms and tossing together little vehicles with lights so that i could get to the next lightroot off in the distance. the depths was probably where i ended up using zonai vehicles the most, and it was honestly pretty fun to go around spotting and reaching every lightroot, coming across different mines and weird little landforms and coliseums and yiga camps. the music and plantlife and look of the depths were so good, and it really felt distinct from the rest of the game in a very good way. doing all of the lightroots and getting enough zonaite to max out link’s energy cells was definitely a good move since it made finding shrines and dealing with later zonai machine stuff easier.
overall, tears of the kingdom was a severely mixed bag for me, and while there was stuff i did like, i don’t think it’s enough to really get me to say that i really liked this game overall- after all most of the stuff i disliked was unavoidable parts of the games, and it definitely put a hamper on my interest in the rest of the time. totk is fine, but it’s really not my thing. 
#i just- *slams head into brick wall* bro i did not have a good time with this game#going back to my silly little comparison point; totk was $70 and my copy of phantom hourglass was $70#$70 is a bullshit amount for a game but thats no the point here#totk from a technical baseline standpoint as a GAME is worth $70#its story and the amount of enjoyment it gave me was not worth $70 tho. the story and enjoyment i got from ph was more worth $70 to me#salty talks#loz#legend of zelda#totk#'zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music' if you talk shit abt ph's soundtrack i'll kill you. i like the dungeon track#i partially have the shinji chair image saved for this but i did also initally save it yesterday when i finished nge#listen this was fine on a surface level but it just wore me the fuck down#link was just some flavor of stonefaced or surprised or determined in any given cutscene and like. idk. wasnt too interested in him either#look i know about the silly little dialogue options. still didnt do it for me#link getting his arm back only makes sense to me bc i got every last light of blessing and heart container and stamina vessel#the gloom in his body is 100% gone hes squeaky clean for me. whyd you take his shirt off tho. at least keep his hat. cant take it seriously#put him in the archaic set or smth his arm is fully visible that way at least and its full circle thats what he wears at the start#couldnt take the whole grabbing zelda sequence seriously bc i missed the (hold) prompt and link flew away lol#totk spoilers#also wasnt really a fan of most of the voice acting yeah sorry. kinda rough all around aside from like ganondorf and dimitri- i mean rauru#mineru and the rito sage were fine too ig. im not going to bother watching any vids or whatever to check again#riju and sidon were fine too#sonia was cool too but everyone else was a lil rough tbh esp with having to say 'secret stone' that name sucks shit#my switch died in the middle of the credits. i had like 25% when i started fighting ganondorf.#it died twice actually cuz i charged it for a few minutes and what like yeah 5% should be good and nope. died again#anyways whatever. im not giving it a rating im tired of this game i dont think i'll be replaying or even just touching it any time soon#music was top notch again tho. made me feel stuff more than the actual story did. cool ig#bitching abt totk
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akkivee · 1 year
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absolutely in love with the narrative that, similar to the way dice gets, this whole time otome’s been on a gambler’s high since she’s been on a roll with all that she’s gambled away and that the off arc is where her luck runs out because she didn’t know when to quit, also similar to how dice gambles 😭😭😭
#this is vee speaking#the most fun thing about hypmic is how the way people parallel each other gives them all depth man 😭😭😭😭#like the way everyone with parents issues all wind up very similar to their parents anyway (ichiro samatoki dice kuukou)#but that also in turn reflects what troubles said parents are facing#(rei feeling like he’s weak for not being able to protect his wife otome high on freedom)#on this vein i’ve been looking at the ‘kuukou’s adopted’ thought#thru the lens that he and dice also parallel in the sense that they were given up by their mothers#like i previously thought kuukou and dice paralleled because they’re both sheltered kids who grew up under high expectations#and maybe that still holds true!!!!! but i was wondering if the more direct parallel might be ‘given up by their parents’#hence why kuukou is also of the belief that ‘the only reason a man should cry is because their family is dead’#shakku consoled kuukou being given up by telling him this and it serves the same purpose as samatoki telling ichiro the same#there’s still a chance kuukou could meet her so there’s no point in crying thing#and that’s what i mean by they all parallel and it enriches them!!!!! 😭😭😭😭#i kinda wanna take it a step further and say team kuukou are bound by being passed around as kids#since we don’t know who raised juto afterwards and all three share youth delinquency#but that’s just my hcs for juto’s backstory coming in play lol#c: otome#c: daisu#c: kuukou👑
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