#I'll do more sillies at some point | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tradingjack · 6 months

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These were the concept pages I drew for my original writer in the @vashwoodbigbang event! Unfortunately they have disappeared on me 😅 and also bc god hates me I guess, the day I was supposed to post these, yesterday, saw me dealing with first a wifi outage and then a whole electricity outage so. That was fun lmao

Details about the drawings below since. I don't know if my writer will ever post the story, unfortunately 😔

So this was originally coined as a stardust au! I believe it was primarily based on the movie that came out in the 2000s (?), though I believe my writer was familiar with both the movie and the book it was based on. Honestly, it doesn't pull much at all from the story itself, just the general concepts of stars.

In this version, Vash is a star, and he decides to try and find his long-lost siblings (Knives and Tessla). In his search, he comes across a planet he hasn't visited before, and while he's descending to it, he's shot down by something mysterious that causes him rather permanent injury (not new; I believe he'd already lost his arm previously and he has all his scarring from travels to previous planets, this specific technology is just new to him).

He manages to crawl some distance from the resulting crater and is rescued by the odd pair of anthropologist Milly and journalist Meryl, who are tracking fallen stars on their planet in order to research them. Vash is horrified to learn that stars on this planet are rather brutally searched for and used for their power, so he tries his best to keep his real identity as a star secret.

In the next town, he learns about Star Cultists, who are the leading experts on stars. Our dear Wolfwood is one of them, and though he's a priest under the head of Chapel, he seems pretty jaded about the whole thing. He also spends some time poking fun at their visitor Vash when he stumbles on the doorstep of the church.

Unbeknownst to all, Chapel is the one who shot Vash down, and he suspects Vash is his target. When Vash, Milly, and Meryl skip town, Wolfwood is ordered to tag along with them against his will, and he begrudgingly forces himself into the group with his usual grace lol.

Through some shenanigans, including an interesting fight with Livio/Razlo who is a martyr (a human who ate at least part of a star and became consumed by it), the group all grows closer to each other. Naturally, Wolfwood and Vash hit it off with their usual ideology clashing and homoerotic team fighting. The tension comes to a head when both of the boys are drunk and attempting to stumble somewhere after getting kicked out of the bar, and with the help of liquid courage, Wolfwood admits to Vash that he's what's known as a "Star Eater:" a human that has consumed part of a star, and by some genetic luck, isn't consumed by it and instead gains some superhuman abilities so long as the magical tattoo (i forget what it's called off the top of my head fuck) that forms around the presenting star isn't broken.

Vash is understandably horrified. Wolfwood is confused by Vash's rejection bc he isn't aware Vash is a star; he's under the impression Vash is just some very talented guy Chapel really wants to feed a star shard in the hopes he becomes part of their superhuman cult.

Vash sobers up and manages to drag a very drunk and eepy Wolfwood to their hotel.

The next day is the turning point; the star cultists, including Chapel, catch up to them and confront Vash. Wolfwood has to learn very quickly that he'd been Wrong and Vash, in his panic, flies to where it feels most safe; the city's Star (storage area?? Idk). He ends up cornered there and, in his panic, accidentally goes nuclear trying to escape and blows up half the city in a column of flame. While he's barreling across the desert in an attempt to get away, he's trapped by a net the star cultists set up, made of the same shit used to shoot him down at the start, and he can't escape it on his own.

Luckily he's found by Wolfwood first, who's decided he owes it to Vash to try and fix his fuck up, and using his superhuman healing, he manages to free Vash. Both are exhausted and ultimately rescued by LR, who's been tailing them.

Tbh my memory's kinda foggy... my writer only managed to share up to that first LR fight, so I don't remember exactly what's supposed to happen between here and the fight at the orphanage?? I remember Vash somehow finds out what happened to his siblings (a hella long time ago, Tessla was consumed by the people of the planet and Knives, in his rage, fuckin just annihilated everything, turning it into a desert planet, and has been laying dormant for the most part since then) and also we learn that martyrs gain better control of themselves, and the crystal growth consuming them stops, when in proximity to enough additional star power. Vash, as a star himself, allows LR to easily think as they did before they ate a star shard when in close enough proximity.

Anyway, fight for the orphanage, Vash shows up in time to see Wolfwood getting his shit rocked and his magical tattoo (I'm so annoyed I can't remember what it's called. My mind is supplying sharingan and i know that aint it) shattered by Chapel, who accomplishes this by running Wolfwood through with his cane. Vash, believing Wolfwood's dead (bc like. Lmao it's pretty hard to live getting impaled, like, fully), loses his temper and basically obliterates Chapel. He moves on from Wolfwood's body to try and dismantle the entire Star church so Wolfwood's orphanage can stay safe. In this process, he confronts a Doctor Conrad, who was behind the whole thing, the remains of Tessla, and somehow Knives?? I think Knives, sensing Vash's anguish, just tried to fuckin nuke everyone, and Vash stops that. I feel like Knives dies in this process somehow... I think it was by saving Vash from something Conrad made??

By the end of it, Vash is wounded and exhausted, and ends up being saved by Milly and Meryl, I think.

When he recovers, it's to find he's lost his ability to leave the planet; while still functionally a star, his power has greatly diminished, his hair is black, and he can't even hide his wings anymore. Last I knew, my writer was actually merciful and let Wolfwood live! Albeit as a martyr (thus the wolf form with the uncontrolled star shard bursting out of the hole in his chest you can see on Wolfwood's page lol). Luckily he's got Vash around, so he gets to keep his mind, if not his human form.

With Knives dead and the star cultists mostly dispersed and no longer able to fuck with the planet, the story ends with our characters getting to experience rainfall on the planet for the first time in centuries.

.......

I like the story :P I imagine it'd be a lot better written out in actual novel form by the person who'd actually thought it up than my shitass, too-long summary lol.

Honestly my writer was communicating up until like, a month ago?? And then they just.... disappeared :/ which is weird bc I checked with my mod for this event (shout out to mod sana, @pushclouds, you're an amazing mod and I appreciate the heck out of you) and they submitted literally every check-in. Honestly I'm more worried for them than anything, if anyone knows what happened to @lohikaar I'd appreciate anything you can tell me. I hope they'll publish this story whenever they can, I'd still love to read it in its entirety.

Additional shout-out to @priellan for beta-ing the story they shared with us, and for overall being a super supportive team member :D

Also they did assign me a pinch hitter writer since we have no idea wtf happened to my original writer, so I'll be doing more drawings :D priellan agreed to beta for them too, which I'm super happy about! And thanks again to mod sana for your hard work and arranging that so quickly!

An admittedly strange first big bang experience, but I don't think it was overall bad, and I'm excited to work on more stuff with my new writer :D if you read this far goddamn. Thanks lol. See you again for sure on January 1st! (I'll try to post other shit between then and now hopefully)

#vashwood big bang #my art #stardust au #man im. idk. it really feels like the universe was against me on this one but fuck the universe I'll do what i want #i deserve to make silly little drawings of queer silly little guys. i think ive earned that this year. good god #anywayyy will be making more #and fr like. if aster does see this im not angry! im not even really disappointed i know shit happens #really i'd just like assurance that you're alive and well at this point 😅#feel like we've been through some real scary stuff this year #trigun #fanart #primarily based off trimax tbh #still plugged a lot of christianity into this one dont worry #vash the stampede #nicholas d wolfwood #werewolf??? ig????? it's not technically a werewolf but also shit dude i was looking up werewolves as references so #vash x wolfwood #ik there's really none in the drawings but that was a focal point of the story #which the concept pages are about

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hella1975 · 1 year

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ive got an essay due at 3pm tomorrow and ive not even looked at it i am so so unserious about my degree and by the grace of some higher being i somehow keep managing to crawl through it's actually getting a bit funny

#me and an old friend of mine used to have a running joke during a-levels that im just one of those people where shit Works Out #and it started bc we shared two a-levels (english and economics) and in BOTH classes i regularly didn't do the homework #or the reading etc and yet it would ALWAYS work out for me #like we'd walk into a class neither of us having done the homework and they'd get yelled at while i went under the radar somehow #or that one english essay i got the highest score in the class when i literally hadn't even read the fucking book it was on #and when we pointed the theory out it started just becoming really prevalent #like no matter how late i am for things i'll arrive and by some miracle the thing im late for is also late (e.g a train or teacher)#like im just one of those people that has very very mundane luck #and low and behold i am fighting this degree with bloody fists putting the absolute bare minimum in for my own sanity's sake #and i SOMEHOW keep pulling through. literally failed two modules last year and STILL got a 2:1 average #and the last essay i wrote was the worst essay id ever done in my life and i get my standards are higher bc ik im good at essays #but the point still stands and you know what? i got a FIRST #literally was pure waffle i have never blagged it so hard and i got a FIRST #and all this shit just makes me cockier and cockier and go even more by the skin of my teeth and it ALWAYS WORKS OUT #it's soooo silly but im not complaining. anyway ill keep u posted about this essay <3 it's econ history so is actually interesting #but the most ive done for it is ask the sc ai lmao and for context degree-level essays usually require a good few days of graft #live love laziness #hella goes to uni

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icewindandboringhorror · 10 days

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finally finished all of one character's entire quests/optional dialogue/questions/etc.... 100,000 words... .... aughhh

#Given some of it IS lines of code and stuff but like.. minus all that it's still probably at least 85 - 95k words hhhhhh #AND I have to do this for another 3 characters. Then a few partial quests for 3 others. THEN the other random misc stuff in the game #(like there are public areas in the city like a park and a forest that you can go and do a few things at. and chat with a few random #townsfolk that aren't actually full characters or anything. And there's a community board where you can #browse some of the random job advertisments or silly things that happen to be posted around #and also pick up a few odd jobs of your own to help earn coin to buy gifts for the npcs. etc. etc.)#Originally I was thinking like 'ah I'll make a short little game just to try it out! :3 It'll take maybe a few months!''#haha........................hee hee........................................hoho #Also evil that it would have been done already if I didn't totally drop itand stop working on it for like 5 years randomly #i could have made 5 years of steady slow progress gradually. instead of like 'one initial idea dump + about a month of art and writing'#...... 5 year break..... 'sudden mad dash to try to get probably 400.000 words written in a year or less' lol #I just really want to be done and have something out there already so it can lead to doing other things in my world..!!!!!! T o T #Like this can be an introduction and then maybe from that I can make other games. or short story anthologies. or other such things #But there needs to be some initially not very complex easy to interact with starting point first I guess... if that makes sense #That's part of why I stopped posting worldbuilding lore dump stuff as often because its' like.. massive walls of novella length #text are much more inacessible to engage with than like.. ooh a game! and there's characters! so its more approachable! and theres #visuals! oo! and the text is broken up in small bits line by line with other things in betwen! oo! etc. etc. lol #Not that THIS is even very accessible. I think dialogue heavy interactive fiction/visual novel type stuff is pretty niche and considered #boring or tedious compared to something with more ''gamplay'' like where you can actually move around in a world #and shoot things or whatever lol. But its an inbetween point. something SLIGHTLY #more accesible for now. Since i just dont have the budget or means or ability to make some skyrim type thing obviously LOL #Though maybe if theres any interest in the visual novel that could lead to making other things too. or at least I hope. I have a VERY cool #idea for a more ''gamey'' type of game that is a super fun concept and etc. but I would need to hire at least 2 people to make it.. ough..#I could do all the writing and probably half of the art. But I think I'd inevitably need a 3d artist and someone who can Code For Real hbjh #the system for ren'py (the thing I'm making a visual novel in) is not that complicated if you stick to just simple dialogue and stuff.#Making a whole moderately sized 3d game with minigames in it and a bunch of quest features and etc. would be out of my simplistic scope #''just learn it yourself!!' ... i barely manage to eat and sleep reliably every day lol... i do not function well enough to spend months #learning that many new skills. I already have a lot of of things I'm good at (not in a braggy way but just factually like.. i already have #a wide variety of different things under my belt).. at some point I have to just be happy with what i CAN already do and focus on that #and admit I need to get outside help sometimes ghjbh... NO more new skills/hobbies!!! ... ANYWAY

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turbo-tsundere · 1 year

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I’m usually not one to make such kind of a post but... well, well, well! This detective from Rain Code sure does remind me of someone... and it’s beyond amusing XD

#gonta gokuhara #shuichi saihara #danganronpa #master detective 3 #Zilch Alexander #rain code #shitpost #SAIGOKU LOVECHILD XDDD #ok - I'm obviously joking about this but the design choices and details sure do make me go hmmmmmm is that a purposeful reference #those red eyes and frown and stern aura/rbf couln't be more on point even if they tried #AND THE GLASSES #then there's Shu's figure and general features plus hairstyle (only if it were with Gonta's unruly hair)#the outfit color is similar to Gonta's pregame gakuran but it all has Shuichi's fashion sense #and the hat with what might be wolf ears? come on xD #and it's a master detective?#anyway I love this and I might have a silly idea or two #some other characters in code rain feel like clever mashups of dr characters too or give off familiar vibe #it only fuels my suspicions XD #(no names revealed yet afaik and I dunno if I'll like this characer in the end but they've got my interest)#(I'll FLIP if they somewhat really do relate to gokuharas XDDD)#Edit: ha now we know his name so imma put it in :D

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tvuniverse · 2 months

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Listen i just want to preface this by saying I don't even personally hate Tommy, but that's not really the point i want to make so here goes nothing.

The way a lot of people act as if it's impossible to dislike him because the characters have moved on so so should we, right? and that's the thing right here, as poc we're always being told to move on. We can't express our feelings, we can't hold grudges, we can't complain about issues without making it something more than it is, we always have to just... move on.

I know people are going to say it's just a show, it's not that serious, but the issues it touches on and the way fandom speaks on those issues are.

I've seen a lot of comparisons between Tommy and other mains, how each of them are flawed and have screwed up one way or another, and you're right, but it's still unfair to compare him to them. We've seen each of the main characters experience guilt, or be ashamed of their action, we've seen them apologise, put in the work to actually grow, and they have. There's not enough time in an episode for us to see that for side characters. In this case, Tommy didn't do any of the above and that's normal, he was a plot device to show some very real societal issues, and especially what people of colour/women might go through in the workplace, and once he served his purpose he didn't get much more beyond a few scenes where it seemed like everything was fine between him and chim/hen. It would be more appropriate to compare him to the buckley parents, (who appeared in more or less the same amount of episodes) like if people suddendly started saying no one is allowed to hate them because they got their redemption, their kids more or less forgave them, they more or less tried to be better parents. And yet it's still not enough for a lot of people, because how they treated their children, the shit they've said to them, hits a little too close to home for a lot of people and so no matter what the show says or does, they'll still be mostly hated by the audience, and that's more than okay. But if margaret buckley is your favourite character than by all means be my guest. And listen, i love this show, it's all about hope, and it means everyone gets a redemption arc, as short as it is (sometimes even just a sentence lol), but we won't always be satisfied with these arcs, especially if they don't feel proportional to the hurt the characters may have caused to our mains, so we'll all have different reactions to them.

I swear liking a morally ambiguous/grey character says absolutely nothing about you, but making excuses for them, antagonising people who might dislike them (for good reasons) or acting like suddenly triggers don't exist for people, does say something about you. One of my favourite characters is literally the worst person ever, an actual bigot, but i won't ever write essays about why people are not allowed to dislike him actually because he's my babygirl.. i very much understand why people would.

All of this to say, everyone will have different opinions about Tommy. Some might love him, some will be completely neutral or at worst slightly uncomfortable/bothered by him, and some will straight up hate him, and all of these are fine. Live and let live, love whoever you want to love, and hate whoever you want to hate, but please stop trying to dictate how others should feel, i'm begging. And this really does go both ways.

#i never ever get involved in fandom discourse. ever #my blog is my safe space and so i just want to reblog some silly gifs of my silly little characters and move on about my day #but nothing gets to me more than being told to 'move on'#anyway i know the casual (and not so casual) racism is rampant in this fandom but boy has this week been hell #but just another week in this fandom i guess #(also i know some people hate him just because of buck/eddie and this is a whole other discourse i won't get into)#anti tommy kinard #not really but just in case #fandom discourse #also i said dehumanisation because that's what he did to chimney #acting like people don't exist until they do something that's beneficial to you and that's when you'll finally treat them as human beings #that shit hurts like crazy but it doesn't get talked about enough tbh #and that's also kind of why i think it's hard to know if he's really Grown or if it's just a case of 'these people are the exception'#and we can't really know until we actually see him interact with other minorities #but that's just my opinion #also i know we're all tired of this discourse and i'm sorry to bring it back but every day i've opened this app and saw something about it #and closed it right up lmao #i just needed to get this off my chest once and for all #i'll go back to never getting involved in fandom discourse again #anyhoo #i'll probably delete this at some point knowing myself

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c0smiccom3t · 11 months

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Silly Bandicoot Doodle Batch !!!

(Turns out i can draw the bandicoots in the same exact artstyle as in the "It's about time" game... Well, except for Aku Aku, kind of.... idk.)

(OK thats all the fanart i can make. time to work more on my webcomic until its time to draw more fanart!!)

#crash bandicoot #fanart #coco bandicoot #aku aku #crash bandicoot 4: It's about time #crash bandicoot fanart #art #yes. aku aku adopting crash and coco certainly happened at some point... HE'S THE MASK DAD #btw the reason i say child is because i hc current crash to be 16-17 while Coco here is certainly 14 years old.#btw im surprised my first coco fanart got 44 notes!! it's not much but... WOW! this is awesome!!!!#thank you all for your support on my fanart.#now you better hang onto your rears because IM DRAWING MORE.#and also YOU'RE NOT READY FOR WHAT MY CORTEX FANART IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE . MAYBE ON FRIDAY OR... ANYTIME REALLY.#anyway i love silly bandicoot game series im so excited for what new stuff Toys For Bob has to offer!!#also we need a cartoon tbh. AN EPISODIC KIDS CARTOON.#ALSO... these two bandicoots definitely have autism. BARE WITH ME HERE.#also about the cartoon. i was thinking of making a pitch.#ill do it when i'll have the time... but for now... oc time. :D

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sillyfudgemonkeys · 2 months

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Me, at my coworker: I finished both Kyoshi novels. Coworker: Uh oh. How you holding up? Me: I thinking about walking into traffic

#silly talks #silly story time #no this is a legit interaction #they're going to listen to the novels too fkdjsafj;dfa #Me: I have two Yangchen novels left and then maybe the author's two original novels (and roku later this year but by a diff author)#me: but if rangi's not in it then why the fuck should I still be alive??? TT0TT #(I'm currently going through yangchen's now dw i'm not walking anywhere that'd require effort ....that's a joke it's all a joke really dw)#please god please FC Yee I'm on my KNEES #gimme one more Kyoshi novel I BEG TT0TT #I'll take a prequel have kyoshi rangi and yun go on a lil adventure please #maybe it's after they first met! and they're getting to know each other (I just need more Rangi/yun interactions they dont talk a lot TT0TT #and have both rangi/yun vying for Kyoshi's affection at some point and kyoshi is just fucking BLIND about it lksdjflkj it'll be soo funny #I'll take a sequel too! i wanna see what a more established/stable Team Avatar (Kyoshi) is like!#maybe foreshadow more of her path to (near) immortality and chin's rise to power #maybe even get a jump start on the Kyoshi warriors (and maybe her and Rangi finding and adopting Kok? *w* maybe she's the first warrior?)#'silly you just want more rangi and rangshi content' I DO I'M SO FUCKING SOFT ABOUT THEM RN TT0TT #(I'll take a szeto and kuruk novel idc if kuruk's story was basically summarized i'd love to hear more uwu)

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theabyssgazesalsointoyou · 10 months

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to me the beauty(?) of royal pains is. chloe is of course the most toxic gf with all sorts of issues you couldn't even imagine while jake seems all well-composed and able to deal with her shit. however the truth is that he is not, in fact, able to deal with her shit. he's just as if not even more unhinged than her.

#this gets dark so. i'll elaborate in the tags instead of the post. tw suicide mention in the following tags >>#some time after jake's parents leave and his mental health plummets they get in a fight #chloe is drunk and yells at jake to kill himself and jake grabs a bottle of her perfume and raises it to his lips #like 'yeah okay sure i will. fuck you.' out of pure spite. and chloe screams again but this time out of horror #and she doesn't know how to deescalate the situation so she's just like 'you fucking idiot that won't kill you put it down'#but jake is high as hell and passively suicidal at this point. he's like 'how do you know that?? let's find out huh??'#she has to wrestle the bottle from him like she's taking something a dog shouldn't eat from its jaws #when they sober up they never speak of the fight again. chloe does not suicide-bait jake again and jake does not threaten suicide again #but they are very aware of how toxic they are capable of being #oh boy i can't believe all this came out of me trying to figure out if royal pains would fit into a silly meme #bmc #be more chill #royal pains #chloe valentine #jake dillinger

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thebirdandhersong · 11 months

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:'))))))

#darn darn darn DARN. like!! tears in my eyes!!!#do you ever want to ask someone so hilariously clueless #like. sir. have you ever been in love. like. have you??? do you know what it is??? to be fond of someone?????? WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR MIN #anyway FIRST boy i've been able to converse with about dickens and tolstoy and dostoevsky and theology comfortably and for WHAT #APPARENTLY my brain jumped immediately to fondness rather than friendship. FOR WHAT!#anyway that's on me for clown behaviour and general silliness #pray for me lolllllll i am literally so so sick of this!! i too would like to live life without the weight of this!!#i've had 'i'll come back to you' and 'i don't want you to be alone' going round and round my head for the whole week.#like. my dude you have someone waiting for YOU back home what are you TALKING ABOUT #a note from the logical side of my brain: girl you don't even agree theologically with major points also he doesn't want to have a family o #be a father. and you knew that before he casually mentioned he was seeing someone. like. clearly it wasn't going to work anyway. let it go #but alas it is SO so horribly easy for me to grow fond of a person it is SO so horribly hard to claw my way out of that #i do not want this!!!! i do not want silly feelings!!! what's more i do not want complicated emotions because he IS my friend!!!!#it wouldn't bother me so much if this weren't like the tenth time i've had #some form of hope and reality hit it over the head with a two by four!!!!

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dobythealpaca · 2 years

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u guys ever watch this anime-

#It's been Al ost a mo th since I've posted proper art frrr #Sorry guys ajdhdjhd I promise I'll post more stuff soon fr I just saldy have been demotivated an dliie lip down lately :(#Ik it'll pass an dill be better soon fr!!!#I have lots of stuff I wanna make and do but it's probably gonna have to wait #And plus I need the motivation for it :((#But it will happen at some point!#I'm sure sillies #You 3 people will get ur dob dob content I pwomise #eddsworld #eddsworld larry #eddsworld tomatoredd #ew larry #ew tomatoredd

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sysig · 30 days

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Having fun, more and more! (Patreon)

#Doodles #Unicorn Tails #Dangersoft #Villainsona #Just Desserts #True Villainy AU #Okay fine I'll talk about the really silly fixation I accidentally fell into lol #It's all Jello's ISaT stream's fault they mentioned Wall Day and I got curious!#Actually it was Jello reciting Will's line as the mad cultist in a kids' unicorn game that got me interested lol he just went all out #And it really is a kids' game! Like yeah some of the lore is dark and ominous and weird but it's genuinely just a nice unicorn game #And the character customization is cute and you can buy a spider hat! I want a spider hat #I'm fully onboard at this point lol I intend to buy it for realsies and play as an alicorn and go hunting for the Estranged Rabbit #Dangersoft is great of course <3 Neon green horse love that for her #Some happies <3 I've been quite happy lately :D Big Loves yay <3 #If there is an article of clothing I can hide in I will take the opportunity every time lol #Regularly hiding in hoods and collars - it just feels nice!#More Charm more cutes <3 I've had the idea of her cutting her hair for S3 since she was created but I still don't Actually have anything lol #She's just cute and I love her! She's adorable no matter what she looks like #I think I was thinking something along the lines of her long hair being used against her in her True Villain form #Like how it's normally up and ice cream shaped but Kaiein wanted it down and it gave her a different look #But short it can't look like that :) She's always light and fluffy if it's short! I like it <3 #Speaking of - her candle wings popping out from her Kaiein wings!#It's weird to see her with her hair down and glasses on in that context haha #I do like the symbolism of dark inky wings being cut through with fire and light :) Still drippy tho lol #And rounding off with a Just Desserts bee <3 I posted that one JD Pet Bee a while ago but I think bees are also wild animals #They're important for sweets production and pollination! Fruit-based sweets need them!#I personally really love bees I think they're the cutest but I also get really stressed about buzzing :'D #Does Not help that my hair is a colour they're attracted to so they come up right next to my head to investigate agh #So Charm is the same! Loves bees! They're wonderful and important and cute! But the buzzing...#She's being very brave tho <3

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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...

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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