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storm-of-silver · 1 year

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The Dreamkin

The day’s events flashed through her mind, pushing its claws into her heart and turning her blood to ice. Why didn’t they believe her? Why? She shuddered as she remembered seeing the gods, remembering the visions and warnings they forced onto her. So much death... She didn’t dream it. She didn’t. She didn’t. She couldn’t have. This was real.

“Why would the gods speak to a lawbreaker?” Marigold yowled, a mask of fury and disgust plastered on her face. Dreams knew the routine too well by now. She saw the delight on Marigold’s face at another opportunity to rip into her, to humiliate and hurt. Everyone else, meanwhile, was blind to it. “Only oracles have the privilege to speak to the gods. Even if she was speaking the truth, why would they speak to such a sad excuse of a colony cat?”

No. It can’t end like this. She felt her paws moving, and before she even realized what she was doing, she had silently moved past the main room and out into the settlement. Her eyes settled on the nestings, and her brain caught up to her paws. She couldn’t save the forest, and the colonies had turned her back on her. Maybe she couldn’t have to save everyone, but she could save someone…

By the Squirrel’s tail, was she really going to do this?

After Dreams left the festival, worry and anxiety kept her up throughout the night. Something was absolutely wrong. She couldn't stay, but she couldn't just leave her colony to die. Impulsively, Dreams sneaked into the nestings and stole the only litter within- three kits, just weaned off their mother. Dreams fled into the night, and that morning, the colonies were gone, leaving her alone with her three children.

Heart of Ember

[Image ID: Heart of Ember, a tortie molly with green eyes. Drawn by FelisChaos on TH. End ID]

A striking reflection of Dreams when she was in her youth, Ember is a stubborn, brash, and loud molly who tries to see the best in everyone. When the three were young, the Followers of the Lynx had found them and offered Dreams and them a place to live among them. While her mother refused, Heart of Ember would later return to accept that offer in her mother's stead.

Acting as their healer, Ember was fortunate to find a place welcoming of her and her opinions. Dreams had become known as many things over the years- a lost saint, a failed oracle, a cowardly demon. To Ember, Dreams was nothing less than an angel, and boasted her relationship to her often. In a world where many still see Dreams as a liar and false prophet, her stubbornness and conviction has flared up in defense of her mother, especially amongst family.

Dreams and Ember's relationship grew strained, as well as amongst her siblings. Ember only saw her mother's past, not who she was now- a broken, tired woman. Dreams feels like she failed Ember in some way, while her siblings often disagreed on how they viewed their mother. Despite everything though, Ember cares fiercely for all of them, and has put aside her differences to visit or help them when needed.

Breeze of Dawn

[Image ID: Breeze of Dawn, a orange mackerel tom with green eyes. He is wearing a backpack. End ID]

Breeze of Dawn grew up with a deep, hungry curiosity for the world, always wanting to know more about how it worked. The medicines and plants his mother taught him about sated him for a long, long time, and it took Dawn much longer to leave her side than his other siblings did. By the time he left, he felt lost- he knew he wanted to help others, to make a difference, but how?

Dawn eventually found a group called the Dreamers- three cats who dedicated themselves to helping others who couldn't help themselves. The issue was, however, that they were repenting for their mistakes. For speaking out against Dreams, his mother, and dooming the colonies. Despite their origins, Dawn joined, wanting to just help. He didn't care how they started or what they had done, and decided to hide his past in favor of the future.

His tongue grew sharp as his view of the world grew (why did the world he love so dearly have to have so many morons in it??), and his relationship with his mother worsened. Dreams, reasonably, despised the Dreamers and wanted her son to stay far far away, while Dawn argued that he was helping cats and saving lives by working with them. The two, firm in their stances, decided to drop the subject entirely. But the issue continues to worsen in their silence, and the two grow more distant.

Riddle of Raven

[Image ID: Riddle of Raven, a black tom with white markings and orange eyes. He is wearing a necklace made of claws, with a bird skull. End ID]

Taking most from his mother, Raven was always a quiet and soft person. None of the siblings had ever heard him raise his voice, or grow angry with them- only once had it ever happened. Dreams had never hid that she had adopted the three, feeling too guilty to ever lie like that, but she had hid their parents fate. She told them they had both died during the Final Light. The reality was, she had no clue. Raven was furious, and the two had fought.

He never held their adoption, their upbringing, none of it against her. He was mad that she hid that their parents might be alive. That she took them without ever wondering if their birth mother stayed up at night, believing the three to be dead. The thoughts haunted him. By the time he was old enough to leave, Raven went to try and find the truth about their parents. Dead or alive, he just wanted to get some closure.

For a year it's eaten up at him, with little to no success on finding anything out. He eventually apologized to Dreams for his outburst, and the two started mending their relationship slowly afterwards. His relationship with Ember meanwhile soured as she refused to believe their mother was in the wrong. Dawn and him remained close however, with Dawn trying to convince Raven to join him with the Dreamers. While the offer was tempting, Raven still wants to close off the missing chapter of his life, deciding only to go with his brother when he finally learned the truth.

#Literally none of them share an artstyle lmao #Finally got this done. Took me long enough rip #I wanted all three to have varying views on Dreams ranging from really good (Ember) to Not The Best (Dawn/Raven)#Sorta ended up with Ember thinking Dreams is a demigod and Dawn/Raven going 'Ember why. shes a 50 year old woman leave her alone'#ALSO THIS WAS THE BACKPACK THING. FUCK U DAWN U TOOK SO FUCKING LONG WITH UR FUCKING BACKPACK AUUUGH #final light #neverlight era #call of dreams #breeze of dawn #riddle of raven #heart of ember #wip #characters #art #writeblr #writing #worldbuilding #dreamkin

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igneouswyvern · 4 months

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Interrupting my usual posting to talk abt Cereza and the Lost Demon because I just beat the game today and I wanted to share my thoughts. Keep in mind I have never played a Bayonetta game in my life lmao

So first off the game is fucking fantastic. I had a wonderful time with it truly. The game is gorgeous to look at and it uses the storybook artstyle to its advantage and it is AWESOME. Nearly every area in the game had my jaw dropping cause it just looked so beautiful. In a similar vein the music was really good and I will definitely be going through the soundtrack for my playlist.

The gameplay is honestly really solid. Basically you control Cereza with the left stick, and use her actions with the L and ZL buttons, and you control Cheshire (the demon) with the right stick, and use his actions with the R and ZR buttons. The D-pad lets Cereza use one of four items and the face buttons control Cheshire's transformations. Controlling one character with each stick takes a while to get used to but it does work really well. The puzzles using this mechanic were really good too and I enjoyed them a lot. The combat can be a bit clunky at times but I think it works pretty well, using Cereza as a support character to hold the enemies in place while Cheshire wails on them. I will say it gets to be a bit of a slog towards the end of the game when every required Tir na nOg is an enemy gauntlet and none of them are puzzles, but it's not too bad.

I must say I wasn't expecting the game to be a metroidvania but it really is and a well-designed one at that. Getting blocked off by something you can't get through until you have a certain power and then coming back to it later is fun and looping back around or opening up shortcuts is always something I enjoy. The unfortunate part of this is that the game's map SUCKS ASS and the areas are very mazelike, so I had a lot of trouble trying to clean up items. I really wanted to finish off more of the skill tree before I beat the game but I wandered around in many areas and made very little progress with actually obtaining the items I could literally see just sitting on my map but couldn't figure out how to get to. If the map was better designed I probably would have gone for 100%.

Speaking of the skill tree, I liked it a lot. When I first saw it I thought it was gonna be tiny, but it actually expands twice more throughout the game. And I like that they don't let you get to the good stuff right off the bat, cause that means there are still cool upgrades to strive for by the end of the game. One thing I wish is that there were more upgrades that didn't cost Inferno Fruits/Moon Pearls cause when I have a fat stack of cash but cannot find a way to access the other items I need, it ends up being really frustrating.

As someone who has not played another Bayonetta game ever, I liked the plot a lot and I can confirm you don't need to play any other Bayo games to enjoy this one. It works really well as a standalone, and it establishes the lore and mechanics of the Bayonetta world pretty adequately without needing any background. It's also just a really heartwarming and fascinating plot. I cried at the end. I thought it was gonna be super basic and conventional but it did some really unexpected (for me at least) things in the end.

Tl;dr, if you like metroidvanias with cool artstyles I highly recommend it, whether or not you've played Bayonetta. I'd give it a solid 9.5/10.

A few more spoilery (and rambly) thoughts under the cut:

CHESHIRE AND CEREZA OH MY GOD MY HEART. Their friendship was so well done. The fact that you can SEE them growing closer in their animations together AUGH I love it so much. They try to go their own separate ways but they just can't do it without each other. Cereza is pretty helpless without Cheshire but he can't do it without her either. AUGH

I LOVED the Jabberwock sequence. Letting Cereza struggle with her own fear and then overcoming it and unlocking an ability that will allow them to defeat it and the confidence that comes with that. Meanwhile Cheshire realizing that he's not strong enough to beat it without her help and being deeply humbled by that fact. And when they team up to defeat this monster, this thing that has destroyed witch and faerie alike, and that Cereza was paralyzed with fear of and Cheshire almost got killed by, and we KILL it ONCE AND FOR ALL, it's so empowering and grand and awesome GOD.

And Cereza rejecting her teacher and every convention of being a witch and cutting her hair to save Cheshire. It's SUCH an impactful moment. It really shows how different she is. Everyone is telling her that demons are nothing but tools, to be used for the gain of a witch and then cast aside back to Inferno like they're nothing. But right from the start Cereza shows she's different. She refuses to use Cheshire as a tool, respecting him as a person and understanding that she has to get him back to Inferno because that's where he wants to be. She reasons with him, instead of controlling him. She works with him. She protects him, she sacrifices everything to save him. She is probably the only witch who has ever treated a demon like a person. GODDDDDDD

Okay onto the ending stuff. I remember as I was playing the game I was like "what if Morgana was a villain lol." And during the cutscene where Lukaon reveals his name I was like "this stuff sounds hella manipulative, it would be funny if he was the villain." But the story seemed pretty basic and formulaic and I kind of assumed the villain would be pretty boring. Like why would you fight the friendly person who's been guiding you through your whole journey? Why would your beloved teacher turn against you? But god, they really did it. And I LOVE that they did. Neither of these twist villains were a surprise to me, but that didn't make them less awesome.

The fight with Lukaon was super cool. I loved having to get all of Cheshire's transformations back, and then transforming into the Unbound form and getting a whole new awesome moveset was so freaking good. It was truly the culmination of everything we've accomplished, both in the fact that we get each transformation as an attack on the face buttons but also that Cereza and Cheshire control together, showing how they're a team.

Oh and kind of an aside but speaking of Lukaon I really liked that blue was always the color of the faeries, the color associated with evil. That's true for everything...except the tracks of the White Wolf. EXCEPT LUKAON/THE WHITE WOLF IS A FAERIE AND ENDS UP BEING OUR ENEMY (briefly). That just occurred to me but like THAT'S SO COOL I LOVE THE FORESHADOWING

The final fight with Morgana was hard as BALLS though. I got maybe three game overs in the whole game up until this point but it took me seven tries to beat Morgana. And of course I ran out of all my healing items and they didn't give them back. It was awesome to win but it felt like an odd difficulty spike right at the end though lol.

Man I'm not ashamed to say that I CRIED when Cheshire went back to Inferno. I was hoping against all odds that the two of them would stick together (ofc that wouldn't happen) but of course he had to go back. But their mutual promise to see each other again, to be stronger when they each meet? YEAAAHHHHHH THAT SHIT MADE ME CRY AUGH

Okay that's it. I saw this game in the direct last year and was quite intrigued by the artstyle and gameplay and decided to pick it up but I didn't think it was gonna be THIS good. It absolutely exceeded my expectations and I'm gonna be thinking about it for a while yet.

#wyvern rambles #bayonetta origins #cereza and the lost demon #long post #YEAH IM INSANE ABOUT THIS A LITTLE BIT SORRY #truly did not expect this game to go this hard

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ticktockmyclockworkhart · 2 months

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I'm perhaps one of the most easy to please Pokemon fans ever. I wouldn't identify myself as a nintendo fanboy or anything even though I love a lot of their IPs (largely because the number one prerequisite to being a "nintendo fanboy" is hating Nintendo more than anything on earth it seems), but I will be the first to admit my standards are much lower than they should be. I eat up everything Pokemon related like the blindly eager little consumer I am, I've beaten every main series game and damn near every spin-off.

All this to say I think it says something when even I haven't beaten BDSP yet, and not for lack of trying. But the game bored me to tears. I've reset my saves on that game more than any other I have in the hopes that "well, maybe the next file I'll be more attached to". I can eat my way through new Pokemon games when they first come out in a few days and never put them down, but whenever I'd put BDSP down I'd have to reset my file again when I picked it back up because I no longer cared about whatever I had going on.

I've been grappling with this for a long time, trying to figure out what it is about this remake that makes it the one Pokemon game someone as easy to please as me couldn't care enough to finish. I'll be fully honest when I say I'll happily take whatever table scraps Game Freak cares to toss me and I'm not proud of that fact lol. I love Gen 4, it's one of my favorite Gens, and I actually like the BDSP artstyle too, I think it's a fun way to keep the spirit of the original games, though it really would have been cool to see Sinnoh at full scale and free to explore in 3D.

But today after another attempted replay I think I figured it out. It's the dumb. Fucking. Experience Share.

Pokemon is a turn based RPG, battling is literally the main gameplay loop and I found that I kept putting the game down because I would get so incredibly bored by the battles. None of them felt necessary and all of them felt way too damn easy. Pokemon Scarlet/Violet had this problem too, I noticed, but what got me to finish those games was I'd never experienced the story before and I wanted to see it finished. But with BDSP I know the story, so why should I finish it if the battles are such a drag? In the original Gen 4 I'd make a point of battling every trainer on every route. I'm very meticulous about my leveling and my Pokemon all need to be within one level of each other, lol. So my incentive for fighting every trainer was to keep my team at a high enough level and also to keep my levels rounded out. But with that EXP share they're always rounded, or god forbid they have different growth rates and I have to keep putting Pokemon away to prevent overleveling which just bothers my OCD more than anything lmao.

It also makes me care so much less about my Pokemon. I cared about my team because I took time to individually raise and train each Pokemon, and if I don't care about my Pokemon then frankly I barely care about the game. In Scarlet/Violet where trainer battles have become entirely optional for the most part I barely did any of them! And in BDSP all I am is annoyed by the trainer battles. There's next to no new content to keep the game interesting and give me a reason to keep playing, and when the main gameplay loop isn't even fun anymore, why would I play at all?

I was worriedly thinking that maybe I'm just getting old and it's hampering my enjoyment of the games (Terrifying thought) but I have just as much fun with ROM hacks that I did with older games. Most notably, there's no broken EXP share. Can't we at least get the option to turn it off? I get trying to find a solution to make grinding less of a miserable drag, because grinding is always the worst part of playing Pokemon, but the broken exp share hasn't made grinding less tedious, it's just made battling as a whole feel hollow and boring.

I still want to beat you some day, BDSP, I really do. Nothing makes me feel sadder than being bored by a franchise I love and I know can do better.

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