#but npc or not.. your feelings are still real right? your pain is real and what you feel when people talk to you is real | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

satureja13 · 3 days

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(Poll below)

Jack logged out from his Therapy Game and he couldn't be happier. Tiny Can did a very good job. Though, he'll have to have a word with Tiny Can and the goats about that BL content. But maybe he's supposed to start a romance with Lou to forget about Kiyoshi?

Saiwa is so happy that Jack didn't feel the pain from his rash ingame :3 So it seems that the feelings from ingame do not effect their life here (like Vlad's ingame hunger) and the feelings and sensations from out of the game won't necessarily affect their characters ingame. Poor Vlad is torn. He's happy that Jack's therapy went so much better than his own playtest, but he's afraid to send Ji Ho in the game. What if he really is going to marry Caleb? But he can't be selfish. Ji Ho deserves his therapy. And if it helps Ji Ho, he will survive it too.

Jack: "So Sai, my friend. When will you go to your therapy?" Sai: "Uhm..." Saiwa is hesistant. He's their leader and should have been the first to check the Therapy Game and if it's safe for the others, but he's not ready yet to face his problems. And that's fine. The door to change can only be opened from the inside. (This quote is written on the wall at the front desk of my psychiatrist. Another one says 'Change needs time'.)

Jack: "I'm just kidding. I bet no one can stop Ji Ho from checking out now if he's really Caleb's bride! Right, Ji Ho?" Ji Ho laughs a bit nervous: "A haha, yes. Can't wait." Of course Ji Ho can't wait. Caleb is the dream of each of them (well, except Vlad's). But he also knows this will hurt Vlad.

Vlad has to leave to care for Jeb and Kiyoshi. They quickly charge the Bond and Vlad tries to let Ji Ho know through the Bond that he's ok with whatever happens in the Therapy Game. But he's not even fooling Diablo...

Ji Ho is torn. Is it really ok to hurt Vlad's feelings when it's necessary for his therapy and well being?

Ji Ho asked Jack and Sai what they would do. Jack thought about it too. But he does not have a partner right now so he's up for it should Lou hit on him. Saiwa agrees that Ji Ho should go for it. It's just a game after all and NPC Caleb is not the real Caleb. Nothing is real in the Therapy Game.

Jack: "So, it would be ok for you if Jeb had a boyfriend ingame?" Saiwa hisses and Jack realized that he went to far. Jack: "This isn't as easy a decision as it seems, huh."

It's time to go to bed. They are tired but Jack is still happily chatting about the game and they are glad it went so well for him. And even though they saw some scenes on the screen, they listen. It wasn't possible to watch everything anyway. Jack had been away for a few hours and they took turns to watch over him. And it's interesting to hear how it had been for Jack and how he experienced his Therapy Game.

If Ji Ho's therapy goes well too, Saiwa will try it. One day they will have to return back home to the others and he'd better be prepared to face Kiyoshi and Jeb again. He misses Jeb so much it hurts. But he has no idea how they are supposed to get over this fake realtionship he had with Kiyoshi. Even though they both agreed to it because they had no choice.

'May the ghosts that howled round the house at night Never keep you from your sleep May they all sleep tight down in hell tonight Or wherever they may be

As I walked on with a heavy heart then a stone danced on the tide And the song went on though the lights were gone And the North wind gently sighed

And an evening breeze coming from the East That kissed the riverside So I pray now child that you sleep tonight when you hear this lullaby

May the wind that blows from haunted graves never bring you misery May the angels bright watch you tonight And keep you while you sleep'

Lullaby of London - The Pogues (Such a beautiful song. Shane McGowan, the head of the Pogues, died November last year but he left us all his beautiful music. He was so gifted.)

Outtakes

A screenshot from the Therapy Game and a photo of Jack, 'The Pioneer' ^^'

Because no way we're having a normal meal where we all stay sit at the table and have a normal meal together -.-

From the Beginning ~ Underwater Love ~ Latest Current Chapter: 🕹️ 'The One' from the beginning ▶️ here 📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 17-22 ~ 23-28

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1o1percentmilk · 10 months

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hi! regarding your social queues post

i feel like i'm experiencing a thing that's a bit similar to what you are dealing with down to the "I'm not autistic but this shit isn't neurotypical" thoughts (and if not, I'm really sorry for an impromptu vent just ignore all of this please and have a kitty ฅ/⁠ᐠ•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠ᐟ⁠\ฅ)

several of my prev psychologists link it to general anxiety and social awkwardness and yeah, that sounds reasonable, but what bothers me is that idk how to improve

i tend to overthink everything I say to the point where, even though I know what a normal response should look like I can't convince myself that what I said/wrote is articulated in a way that doesn't sound dumb/conveys literally the opposite of what I'm trying to deliver. answering a message after days of silence, which actively worsens my relationships, while I fear that answering with a 'stupid' message would be even worse or agonising over a comment I'm trying to leave on someone's work because, well, I think it's neat and cool and I want the artist/author to know it, but when I start typing my words look wrong and not genuine is a constant thing and I'm tired

and yeah, the worst is comforting people. my friend feels terrible, I can clearly see that and my heart is breaking for them, but I can never find a good thing th say. irl you at least can physically be there((maybe)) but online it's a nightmare

I was always told that words should come from the heart and I never got a feeling that was the case for me which just. i dunno what to do with this

hi hello! no, you're good, I have my ask box open for a reason and that includes venting n stuff like that, i don't mind at all!

yeah this is exactly what i'm talking about... like i have no problem picking up on things between the lines... but i always take too long to respond and by the time i think of something i am either too nervous or the window has passed. in my case, I know its because i have a "slower processing speed" than other people, which i've had since I was little, it's easier to think when i can type on a screen and be able to check if im making sense, but i don't do verbal stuff very well.

i've been in therapy as well, a long time ago, and i've been told i might be on the autism spectrum, and/or have add, but i'm pretty resistant to getting a formal diagnosis or even self diagnosing for some reason.

i think for me, and i don't know if this will help for you, i want to 1) get rid of the... mental block? filter? that my thoughts have to get through before I say something... because sometimes i come up with the thought, but don't say anything due to nerves. that'll help me get more thoughts out there and 2) get more practice with people... which is hard! i tried out both improv and drama club in high school because this is an issue i've been working on for a long time... it didn't really work, but i've learned that there are a lot of... scripts! that i can just use in a pinch. even if its just like, small talk and stuff, or if i don't have anything, i just turn the question on the other person and just listen!

i've been trying to make peace with the fact that i will probably never be as good of a talker as other people, but you and me brother we are probably just meant to be listeners... and nothing wrong with that... there IS stuff we can do to get better at talking, which i encourage. but don't get down out of reason for being quiet.

SORRY that got really long despite me not having alot of good advice but im struggling with it with you, good luck with finding something that works.. if u want to talk u are always welcome here, i enjoyed reading your ask!

#sorry im very bad at respondin g to things LOL #but i mean all of this genuinely #its tough not feeling like u are as alive.. or have as much of a heart... personality.. genuine... as other people #like ur a lowly npc...#but npc or not.. your feelings are still real right? your pain is real and what you feel when people talk to you is real #i believe you're real #but yeah it sucks and i hope we can find a way to live with it #cathugs \(•u•)/#ask #anon

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mono-dot-jpeg · 9 months

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new universe - y. welt

summary; while you didn't mind playing hsr, you didn't want to be in hsr!

genre/extra tags; headcanons, isekai! reader, father figure! welt back in action, fluff, angst???

[platonic] [16 years old! reader] [gender neutral! reader]

a/n; never wrote for isekai'd reader but im down to try. this is probably gonna be unintentionally angsty bc idk abt u but no matter what world im waking up in, im gonna lose my shit too.

you played quite a bit of hsr

you had your fair share of liking a bunch of characters, gambling on them just for that 0.001% chance of feeling joy that you finally got that character

and you liked the story and all

but you didn't want anything more than that

so imagine the absolute panic of waking up like you were trailblazer.

march's face near yours sending you into freeze rather than flight or fight

"march step back, give them time. they just woke up."

you literally go through the 5 stages or grief as you slowly realize, oh shit, im not home anymore

and then it sinks in again

and then you start crying.

you're stuck in denial as you cry your eyes out

you're stuck in a fantasy space world where you are just as powerless as a citizen npc and you know there's a bunch of enemies in game that look really painful to deal with

you dont even realize that you've been taken to a room to wallow in peace.

welt's room to be specific.

you calm down after a while, sitting down in embarrassment bc oh fuck you just cried in front of some of your favorite character but to be fair you might be stuck in this world which does almost send into another panic

but welt comes in at the right time

"i'm sorry we didn't wake you when we found you, but we wanted to make sure that you weren't injured. do you remember anything of what happened?" he speaks calmly, making you feel calm in return

"i only remember my name.." you're really lucky to know that you speak the common language in this universe, or maybe they just know it. "i don't know what happened and..." your body shakes, feeling overwhelmed. "i don't know... 'm sorry."

he shakes his head. "you did nothing wrong. we didn't think or account for this. it's okay. it's okay to be scared. we're here to help you."

and it kind of breaks your heart bc you don't think there's a way to get back to your real home.

"would you like to know how we found you?" he hands you some water to drink.

you nod weakly, drinking the water.

and he explains how they found you in a different planet and stuck in a forest. "so you don't remember anything else?"

you hesitate. "i don't..i-" you close your mouth. "i don't think you'd believe me."

"it's okay if you don't want to tell me. but are you sure you don't know where your home is?" at the mention of home, you feel your eyes water.

"my home isn't where you think it is." you whisper weakly.

you don't elaborate and he doesn't expect you to elaborate.

"thank you for telling what you wanted to tell. i'm sure you're still scared and worried. and that's okay. but this does mean, you don't have a home.."

and he ends up taking you in.

you stick with him for a long while. it takes you a long time to get used to everything.

eventually you do get somewhat accustomed to it all.

with welt by your side you feel a bit more safe and less scared.

but on those nights where you remember that your normal is not the normal of this world, you find yourself looking for welt.

it's just silent comfort, just having his presence around you makes you feel better as you lay down by him as if you were a younger kid.

you just let him read his books as you wait for your body to make you sleep.

"thank you welt." you can't help but mutter.

and his reply is just a gentle pat on your head, a sign of him always listening to you and caring for you.

#honkai star rail x reader #honkai x reader #welt yang #welt yang x reader #hsr welt #honkai welt #honkai star rail welt #welt x reader

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autumnslance · 1 year

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#on the one hand i do like when in-game mechanics are explained via in-universe lore #but at the same time #teleportation always feels like it takes away from the story #i don't know why though

More tags from the teleportation post, and my own thoughts on why that might feel that way, especially for story purposes.

It can make the world feel smaller, when so many people can just bounce around to where they need to. But I think in approaching it from a character's perspective and why and when and how people do teleport under what conditions, it tells us more about the world and the expectations of its denizens.

The game takes pains to show that it's not quite that simple; not everyone can teleport, or if they can, they can't do it as often as some others might be able to. One has to be familiar with a location to use its aetheric beacon to get there again--and also attune to that beacon, "memorizing" its location in your own aetheric pattern.

In the case of the Doman troops, it may be those who went to Eorzea the first time with Hien, or those with the capability "tagging along" on Yugiri's and others teleport. And it's not going to be a large force, but a small vanguard to help until the bulk of the forces can arrive weeks later, as that sea voyage is about 6-8 weeks, if lucky.

Thancred's inability to teleport at all is, honestly, often elided in later parts of the game, but his genuine interest and excitement in the experimental aetheryte between Sharlayan and Thavnair is obvious; he's limited by his aetheric disability, and this is a means to get back some of that freedom of movement that makes his role as a Scion easier.

Also I wonder if he finds it easier to get around in the Empire. It's interesting to me that Garlemald has mixed technology and magical teleportation; there are a lot of non-Garleans in the capital, after all, and there is (per the lorebook) some small percentage of Garleans who can do some aetheric manipulation, but overall, how much can they use a typical aetheryte? Is it a basic thing they can manage, or like Thancred, do they need a specifically fitted beacon to accommodate their lack of ability?

And I've noted that instead of immediately doing a teleport animation when needing to go places, most NPCs walk away, to where it's notable when one of them actually does teleport right then and there. It'd also be difficult to jail or trap someone, as has happened multiple times, if everyone can simply teleport willy-nilly.

(In a classic Sci-Fi novel, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, most people in the world can teleport--they call it "jaunt"--and so there are all sorts of ways in the book on how, based on the rules of jaunting, they keep prisoners or protect locations, with complete darkness or mazes and other means of disrupting access or exits.)

It indicates to me that using a beacon to go as well as arrive is likely far more common and even necessary for the majority of people who can teleport, or they only teleport when they absolutely must.

As I show in another post, too, that the world is MUCH larger than can be seen in game; we're told of distances and time taken, and there's the simple logistics of people, armies, industry, farmland, and so on, while only so much can be shown in game.

In the real world, we get around what would be crazy long distances normally in vehicles; what would be an all day trip by foot or even by horseback is maybe a half hour, 45 minutes in a car, or an hour or two by public transit. Teleportation, to me, ends up being similar; since Garleans were the only ones with automobiles, the rest of the world shortens their travel with magic. Which makes sense.

In the end, it's a game play convenience for players to get around. I mean, I still like to headcanon the aetherytes are much smaller than what we see in game, more akin to the size in the 1.0 cinematic where it's inside the tavern. I just really appreciate the times they actually do add gameplay to lore, and not in a way that feels like it's a lampshade handwave don't look too hard (how we get back to Elpis and Ultima Thule all the time, for instance, feel very "don't worry about, it's just cuz" they can't block off entire content zones). Teleport actually has plot significance and adds to the world and how the characters have to think and interact with it, which to me, opens up new ideas to consider, rather than restricting things.

#Final Fantasy XIV #Teleportation #game mechanics #blogging #literary analysis #lore #musing

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topramenfinds · 11 months

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Major Tears of the Kingdom Story Spoilers!

So I’ve been seeing a lot of comments lately about Link looking kind of dumb when talking to NPCs about Zelda after he’s already found her. The common criticism is “Link knows where Zelda is so why doesn’t he tell people that the person they saw isn’t her?” However, I haven’t really felt this way when playing and I think it’s for the following reasons.

1) Most people are trying to find Zelda because she gave them weird instructions and they want answers. Link can figure out it’s not really Zelda even before actually finding her, and the “goal” of these encounters doesn’t change much even with this knowledge.

Take the gorons, for example. The player can figure out pretty quickly it’s not Zelda talking to Yanobo. But even if you know it’s not her, you still have to try and find this person to figure out who they are and what their end game is. Link isn’t going to be like, “well, that’s not the real Zelda, so why bother?” He’s still going after them. It’s the same for Yanobo. Knowing it’s not Zelda doesn’t change anything. They’re still going after her because there’s still the mystery of who this fake Zelda is. Besides, the person looks like her, so why not call this person Zelda until they figure out who it is?

2) Most of the people looking for her are random NPCs and there’s literally no reason for Link to recount the entire somewhat complicated story of why that’s not Zelda to these people. I mean, most people don’t even recognize Link, so imagine recognizing a celebrity as they come to your horse stable, this celebrity tells you not to go near your well. You are so convinced this person is who they say they are, and that they have your best interests at heart, that you follow their instructions. And then some random twink cryptid comes up and explains a psycho story about how he saw (clearly drug induced) visions of the past, so he knows that the celebrity was sent back to the dawn of civilization and they turned into a dragon so the person you saw isn’t really the person you think they are. Even if the guy has a degree in engineering, you’re probably not going to believe him. Link is not going to explain that to every random person he meets who thinks they saw the princess. At the very least, it’d be too time consuming. I’d argue even people he knows marginally well wouldn’t believe his story, so if he is going to explain it to someone, it has to be someone he really trusts and who really trusts him.

Which brings us to the question of why doesn’t Link tell people he’s close to, like Purah or the sages? Well…

3) The whole thing is traumatizing. When I found the Master Sword, I just sat there, staring at the Light Dragon until she moved out of view. Every time I see her I stop and watch for a few minutes, just out of grief and as a sort of tribute. And that’s because I’m just playing this game. The character, Link, who is probably in love with her, is likely worse off. Whenever I, as a player, meet someone that I, as a player, know and care about, I feel like I don’t want Link to tell them about what happened. Because why am I going to make Link experience that trauma again? And why on Hylia’s good earth would I want to bestow that trauma onto those I care about? These people are full of hope that she’s still out there (and they’re not wrong), and I’m still hoping there’s a way to bring her back (I haven’t finished the game yet so no spoilers please).

I just got to Gerudo Town and talking to Riju is the first time I was a little surprised Link didn’t say anything about Zelda. But, at the same time, Riju doesn’t need to know right now. She’s got all of Gerudo Town to worry about and I still have hope that the real Zelda will be back to visit her someday.

I feel like Link would be the type of person keep his pain to himself, to try and minimize the suffering of others by not putting them through what he’s been through. Even in Breath of the Wild, we saw in the memories how he suffered alone, and that’s why he stopped talking. It’s because of this that Link’s actions in Tears of the Kingdom make sense to me. He’s not refusing to tell people about Zelda because he’s dumb. He’s not telling them because he doesn’t want to burden others with the pain of knowing the truth. He’s traumatized and doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions in a healthy way. Also explains why he keeps building war machines…

#totk spoilers #tears of the kingdom spoilers #trauma #my boy can’t handle emotions #leave him alone #he’s committing war crimes to cope #legend of zelda #light dragon #totk link #Link’s not dumb he’s sad

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cubic-watermelon · 9 months

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My big fat Pokemon rant:

Hey there lovelies, this is going to be a long rant about my thoughts on the state of the Pokemon games.

WARNING: Personal opinion ahead, proceed with caution!

I love Pokémon, if you can't tell, I'm basically a Poké-artist at this point. So it pains me to have to do this but I can't leave these feeling inside any longer. I feel like the last genuinely good Pokemon game was either Black and White 2 or X and Y. In gen 7 (Sun and Moon) the hand holding was absurd, I remember just wanting to play the games and was interrupted several times in the beginning of the games. But I could have excused that if not for the Ultra games... they're DLC for Sun and Moon at the full price of a new game and it bothers me that they did this...

this brings us to Scarlet and Violet, the broken, unfinished first open world games of Pokémon's history. Before this, gamefreak experimented with Legends Arceus, in my opinion the best recent pokémon experience. it has a lot of flaws, like not being able to play PVP matches, the lack of breeding and proper competitive training, the graphics, textures and, some times, lag.

It looked like a Gamecube game. People kept comparing it to TLOZ BOTW and why it couldn't look like it. Is the Switch too weak? NO! the switch showed time and time again that it can handle graphically complex and beautiful games, like monster hunter and dragon's dogma. So, is the Pokemon team this incompetent? Remember pokemon Let's go eevee and pikachu? say what you will about those games but they looked polished and beautiful!

Also, you could ride your own Pokemon. But yes, not the same type of game, so I can't compare. And hey, graphics aren't important and I had so much fun with Legends, I also never encountered any glitches besides the camera going through the floor.

Sword and shield are not amazing but at least they have some polish! no major glitches, fun game play, decent graphics... where they fail is in the areas we've learned to expect from pokemon, the character pop ins, the grass growing, the textures loading and in the animation department - If a character is going to do some "complicated" animations, the screen just fades to black, sound effects play, fades back with the character in a new place... It's 2023, those "animations" are inexcusable! Also the horrible and recycled character animations:

but that alone doesn't ruin the games, it's just that Pokemon is a BILLION dollar company! You'd think they could afford good animators. But I actually like Sword and Shield so let's talk about Scarlet and Violet. Man, where do I start with this. I mean, we've all seen the glitch compilations online, but I myself have only seen the regular going through the floor ones, but that's no excuse. the character animations are better (specially during cut scenes) but nothing to write home about. What really bugs me is the amount of lag that almost makes the game unplayable to me. if they weren't ready to make an open world game, they shouldn't have. if they needed more time, they should have delayed it.

the Pokemon and overworld characters keep popping in like in the previous games but it's somehow worse(?) you'd think Mesagoza wouldn't have lag because it´s closed off and has a loading screen but you'd be wrong. the towns and the ppl in them lost their souls, you can't go in the buildings and NPCs have nothing to say. The graphics are, somehow, worst than in sword, shield and legends! (legends had those texturing problems but was still very pretty).

Sure legends isn't a real open world game, but need I remind you BOTW runs on the same hardware?

And what other Open world and semi-open world games are there for the switch with much more complex graphics and textures that run without lag?

Meanwhile Scarlet and Violet here looking like a game from the 2000s

But one thing it did right was making the Pokemon textures better.

But if that's why the games are unfinished, I don't want them.

let's talk about the new gimmick now, the tera raid battles. they´re a mess, there´s nothing else to say.

The tera Pokemon are fine and a good addition but the raids are almost unplayable. I can't tell what's going on half the time! Sometimes my Pokemon disappears or goes through the floor. Sometimes no one moves for 5 minutes, the menu is gone, you can't input commands, everyone goes invisible, the tera mon is not there and then someone died 5 times, it's all over and I did nothing! WTF!

you know what I loved and was fun? Dynamax raids! Why not just do the same but with tera mons??? I´ll never know. who the fuck made these games? The B team? Probably the Z team!

If it sounds like I'm being too harsh, it's because I love Pokemon, but I hate this. I don't want this. I really like Scar/Vio's Story and characters but I could not enjoy this game the way I wanted. It's not a money issue! give your guys more time to make games!

And to finish things off, here's what I'dd add or fix:

- Let me mass release Pokemon in boxes! GOD!!! I do a lot of breeding! I need this! Pokemon Legends had it and it didn't had breeding WTF!!! - if your'e doing an open world RPG with a leveling system, please have level scaling! it's not hard to implement! I got lost, beat the gyms in the wrong order, the games overall was a cake walk. if your afraid it'll be too hard for the little babies just have - easy - medium - hard - difficulties! that should have been in the games by now! - Give me a reason to want to replay the league and play on the tournaments! by now I have full teams of competitive level 100 mons, but the tournaments keep the "high" levels of the late game and stops scaling them, so if I want to test out my teams, I can't. Also the prizes could be actually good! like battle items or mints or ability patches. Make the tournaments hard!!!! it's post game!!! it can be hard!!!! Also throw us a bone and add old characters participating in the tournaments like in Black and White 2! - why can't I see the meal power timer screen while camping? that's just weird! I want to know how much longer I have egg power on! why can't I see it!!! makes no sense! (also if you're making a sandwich beware of the tiny earthquakes that happen during the making of the sandwich... much polish) - for the shiny hunters: Legends did it right. There's an audible queue when a shiny spawns, a visual effect and they DO NOT despawn! Meanwhile here I am looking at a group of Flabébé like:

and if you look away for 3 seconds, it's GONE!!!

also can we talk about the random balls? yes, the ones that show up sometimes when you go inside rooms or during cut-scenes:

yeah, what's up with that???

What do I want for the future of Pokemon? Finished, polished fun games please. Also Megas, but Megas are controversial, I loved them. this is a minor thing but I'd like a proper character creator. Most of the ppl playing are adults and we can only play as 10 year olds... why cant I be a middle aged man with a full beard chasing pokemon around the world to be the very best?!

I'm done ranting! I think I said everything that was on my mind. I still love Pokemon, I'm gonna keep playing this broken ass game. Feel free to agree or disagree with me, and tell me how I cherry picked my examples XD I'd genuinely love to know your opinions on all of this.

Stop defending billion dollar corporations just because they give a product you love! sometimes they need to be called out on their bullshit.

Have a good one.

#pokemon #scarlet #violet #legends #sword #shield #rant #glitch #negativity #do better #funny maybe?

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nonsensical-questions · 1 year

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Hey happy new year pal! Do you have any sensetale updates? :D

well first of all happy new year! second off, i really wish i did, but i guess i can use this to give more of a situation update so that people understand what's been going on, so after i released part 3 i started working on the next part almost instantly, but i knew i had to do some real life stuff too soon, i was able to build some of the monster village and a few npcs along with writing part of the parts dialogue, after that i got spriting block, well rather i felt like the sprites i was making were not good enough for the future parts and so i stopped till i could find some motivation, that time has yet to come and even if it had come at some point i was in no position to work on sensetale, i needed and still need to figure out some irl stuff before i'm able to really commit myself to sensetale, i tried asking for help with sprites or writing a bit so i could just like... get part of it worked on while i was dealing with stuff but i guess not many people saw those posts and those who did either didn't wanna help or couldn't which is understandable, i've had to cut back on some projects i was helping on too. but with staggering motivation, mental blocks and issues keeping me from working on sensetale and even a physical block of my computer not having internet for a while, it's been a bit of a nightmare, i've been working on other projects when i didn't feel like working on sensetale, and a few of those are close to completion and i will be advertising them here so hopefully that will help things a bit but sensetale is sorta in a rut right now, without a lot of time to work on it, making things is slow and will most likely continue to be unless i get some hands or help. right now i just need to get improve my mental health a bit and find a way to convince myself my sprites don't suck so i can start working on things fully again, and since the village isn't finished i can't even start making panels for the comic i know this isn't the update you wanted but as much as it pains me to give a status like this it also feels cruel leaving people in the dark, still part of me still fears this will have people lose hope in the au but i do genuinely plan to finish sensetale in it's entirety, no matter how long it takes me, i never want to end sensetale off without a proper ending unless it would be damaging myself to continue, even if no one watches or enjoys the comics i just wanna finish something and leave a mark. anyways while there is that i do have some vague info about the other projects, guess just some thing to build mystery or get people interested in those other projects without completely spoiling them project 1 teaser: "Within the frozen snow and ghastly fog, you will be put to the test. for a god walks among us, shining bright as a star, lets see if you can play your role or fall to the protector of all monsters!" project 2 teaser: "halls of the forgotten, left to ruin, a plan he never thought he'd have to use, but with how all the others have left, who's to say this one won't do the same. stopping you from leaving to save others. that's the promise he made to himself, but will he be able to keep it? or will he falter, either way. let's hope this won't be the end of your tale." as a note: - both of the projects are undertale related - these are not new, just seen from a "new light" - this is not related to sensetale

anyways that's all for now hopefully there will be more to report on later

#sensetale #undertale au #undertale #update #something like that #oh well #ironically both projects are part of unfinished au's as well #there's your secret hint in the tags

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owlyteas · 1 year

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So hey I think I’m finally ready to show that secret project I’ve been hinting at a bit.

...And that would be this Digimon fan game I’ve been working on since...sometime last summer I think?? I was doing basic stuff on and off but for the past few months I’ve been really knuckling down and making a lot of progress on it. It’s technically playable but it’s VERY basic and there’s no real progression yet. Should probably also mention this area is just a test room to make sure new features I add work properly so the layout is kinda shitty lmao.

So what I’ve got so far:

Agumon’s sprites are mostly all done and just require some additional tweaking and some more “optional” sprites that aren’t necessary but they’d be nice to have. Since I can make a recolor pretty easily I’ve made BlackAgumon and SnowAgumon/YukiAgumon sprites so technically they’re done for now as well. Gabumon’s idle animation is in but that’s all I’ve progressed on and it was just so the test NPC had an nice sprite to use.

The player character is customizable! But it is suuuuuuper basic because I have to draw all the different clothes for the three different body types I’ve put in and it’s a huge pain in the ass, but I guess it’s worth it because you can see I made MEEEEE :) Not a whole lot of options yet but new clothing types aren’t a priority right now.

The player can swap control to their Digimon partner in order to attack enemies, and the player is able to speak to NPCs and interact with shops once I get those implemented.

Got a basic inventory system working and the rocks you see are breakable and can drop items, and the enemies can drop items once defeated. The items themselves don’t do anything yet though.

Got basic stats for the Digimon partners like attack, defense, HP, SP (which is what special attacks will use), as well as element and attribute so attacks will do more or less damage depending on both of those.

Speaking of attacks, I’ve got Agumon’s attacks implemented and working. Each Digimon will have a “basic” attack that doesn’t use SP and two Special attacks that will.

I’ve also got the ability to get other partners implemented and the player can have two other Digimon in their party that they can swap their current partner with.

I...kinda have Digivolving working. Right now it just makes whatever Digimon you have turn into Greymon who does basically the same things as Agumon but is stronger. Digivolving uses the player’s Power and drains it while they’re Digivolved and will devolve once the player runs out of power.

And finally I got some very basic enemy AI in the game. I’m still figuring out how the controls feel so I’m waiting until I’m happy with that before I make more complex enemies like minibosses and that sort of thing.

Things I still need to work on:

I mean obviously the rest of the game like the actual areas you’ll go to and all the actual enemies and NPCs and all that stuff. It’s literally just test rooms right now.

Gotta finish getting Digivolving to work how I want it to.

Being able to equip different things to your Digimon and yourself

Shops/other NPCs

Implementing items that actually do things

Haven’t come up with a name yet actually I’ll probably call it something basic and dumb like Digimon Quest or something

A BILLION MORE DIGIMON SPRITES OH GOD

??? Probably a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t think of right now.

I’ll have little progress updates as I get new features in and working but it usually takes a while to do so don’t expect anything big right away haha. Plus I’ve got a few other things I need to be working on besides this game so even though it’s currently a priority that doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way.

#Digimon #Fan game #my projects #game dev

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rungalwaysheretolisten · 2 years

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I can't deny it...`my sibling is right...

My dnd oc that I want to play some day: Dinin Moonflower and Rasnan Herry Fappletwist aka the thief npc.

They are kinda are simpler Stolas and Blitzo from Hell of a boss!!

Spoilers from here on out!

Contents my sibling and I where talking about my dnd character and they point out they he was very simpler to Stolas and at first I was like what that crazy no way, but then I remind the new episode that came out about his backstory and I was like whole shit he is like Stolas and they also point out that his thief is also like Blitzo and I was like whole shit your right! How the hell did that happen!

Okay, yeah big differents one is that they fuck and do a lot of stuff that Dinin Moonflower and Rasnan Herry Fappletwist have not done together aka Dinin still a virgin. (Not sure about Rasnan Herry Fappletwist but I know for a fact Dinin is because I wrote his backstory!) The other he not divorce to an awful person like Stella's or has a daughter Octavia, and finally yes, I don't feel like Rasnan Herry Fappletwist dose not have the type of issue that Blitzo is having unless the dm decides to give him that type of issue but again that up to them but yeah, there is a bit of things they do have.

Like for Stolas he has only had one friend in his life and real person who he could love, other then his daughter! Someone who could also love him in return and it not being 'fake' love (Although we know Blitzo deep down love him and just having anxiety about it). Dinin also has never been really loved, sure his grandparents do take care of him, make sure he still alive, they only doing it to one, to keep him from being killed from his other family member's but also in fear that he might become evil like his father said he could be.

That fear of him being a drow even thought it normal for dark elf's to be born in elf family's to them they might say they doing because they love him but real truth is, they do not love him one bit or if they do it a very warp type of love just like Stella. Although she love tormenting Stolas, and Dinin grandparents are not doing it to torment him, they remind him all the time of how he could become dangerous to others, remind him how his father die because of him, that he be safer in a tower, which is very sad to think about.

He never made friends, he been alone all his life, then for a theif like Rasnan to drop in his tower, show him just the smallest type of kindness, any type of love. Like that whole seen where Blitzo trying to steal the book, doing all thought things and then that line where he say "I've never had anyone want me this way. You have no idea how long I've craved this kind of passion and how much it means that the one who wants me is my first ever freind!" Then he decides to stay with him for just the night, it like crazy similar.

But the craziest thing of all, is that this didn't come out when I had thought of the idea for my dnd character! I got the idea from listen to this song!

youtube

Yeah, this song inspired me to make my dnd character Dinin because I wanted him have a moment like this where a song like this is playing and he is reach out for someone he deeply loves and care about, who he would tear the world apart for, who he would do anything to make him happy. But also become someone amazing and not hold back from all the pain they when throw, growing and becoming something either amazing or terrifying.

(Because it dnd either good or bad path could happen to Dinin depending how the dice roles and how things go.)

But yeah there some things very similar to Stolas and Blitzo, did I do that on purpose no, it just happen and it funny.

If you want to read the fan fic backstory I wrote for my Dnd character here it is in the link below, I am still working on it a bit and might put some more thing in there like adding the grandparents more.

#Rung mun is talking again #might delete later #my dnd oc #Rung mun dnd ocs #dnd #hell of a boss #spoiler warning #Dinin Moonflower

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nebris · 2 years

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Failure to Cope "Under Capitalism"

The inability to do basic tasks is not always a political problem

We have generational trauma. We are living through a global pandemic. We are literally neurodivergent and a minor. We are riddled with climate grief. We are, for one reason or another, unable to cope.

I can respect an inability to cope. A nervous breakdown once in a while does wonders for your overall perspective, and there are several arenas in which I function well below your average well-adjusted teenager: I’ve never been able to leave a party at a reasonable hour, get a driver’s license, keep a phone, or sit still long enough to climb the corporate ladder. The inability to cope in one domain or another is part of being human, and attempts to eliminate it are for people who enjoy living in San Francisco.

But there is a strain of discourse that insists an inability to cope in one’s day-to-day life is in almost all cases a political problem, or even the primary political problem. By volume, the most examples are on social media. Sometimes it’s an elaborate hypothetical in which asking a disabled person to make alternate arrangements and forgo ordering Instacart groceries for one day of a strike is tantamount to a genocidal program. Sometimes it’s a prompt tweet inviting you into a post-revolutionary fantasy world where, instead of collecting municipal garbage, you will be “doing art.” In the right-wing version, it’s a yearning for the bronze age civilization in which you would have been a feared warrior king rather than a software engineer answering to female product managers. Somehow, being born into a historical moment when moderate clerical abilities can lead to impressive status and resource acquisition is still to be crippled by fate, NPCs, or Soros agents.

What binds these pleas together is an application of “the personal is political” so expanded in scope that, for a certain kind of person, personal problems, anxieties, and dissatisfactions are illegible or illegitimate unless described as political problems. This can be a compromise with a guilty, self-punishing instinct of the self-consciously privileged, especially if the political problem in question is borne on behalf of another. For the would-be steppe warlord, it posits an artificially withheld world in which, naturally and without friction, you would be every bit the man you long to be. In either case, the complete identification of human foible with structural failure excuses you from identifying and dealing with personal problems as such. Especially when it turns out the real culprit is capitalism.

Capitalism is the reason we sometimes tie our identities to material status objects. Capitalism is the reason we want to be paid for writing. It is capitalism that makes you feel bad that you didn’t learn to bake sourdough during quarantine.

“‘Why aren’t I working more quickly, doing more?’ thinks the capitalist part of my brain,” writes Huffington Post author Monica Torres.

Capitalism, in this rhetorical strain, is not so much the object of analysis or a concrete historical phenomenon as an all-purpose gesture. “Capitalism” is useful everywhere: as the punchline of self-deprecating jokes about the way we live now, as a perennial-but-distant bogeyman that explains chronic frustrations without ever causing enough pain to force serious disruption. Most importantly, its invocation immediately establishes a phenomenon in the realm of the political, without any further work required.

Perhaps the foremost chronicler of failure to cope under capitalism is Anne Helen Petersen, who leveraged the massive success of her 2019 BuzzFeed essay on millennial burnout into a book on the same topic, and now writes a Substack exploring the various indignities of modern life. Over this period, Petersen has conjured up a somewhat frightening vision of the average millennial: paralyzed, exhausted, unbearably burdened by the stress of maintaining relationships and living life. A 2019 piece suggested that the benefit of a cooking startup is that its boomer coaches are available to guide you through the process of buying and cooking your own food. Petersen writes “It’s not unlike having a mom-like figure on call to text you tips, only without the baggage of actually texting your mom.” This assistance is required because of burnout, which, in Petersen’s view, is a cross-class generational phenomenon imposed by a variety of social conditions. We all have it. And more recently, Petersen has turned her attention to the various ways we are all exhausted. A recent newsletter entry describes the experience of hair loss, which Petersen attributes to pandemic stress.

“We compartmentalized the stress and ongoing trauma, flattening it into something survivable, but we nonetheless ate it for breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. We swam in that stress. We slept in it. We swallowed it in gulps. We lived through it, and we told ourselves stories of resilience, because what other choice did we have.

But the body is bad at pretending. It keeps the damn score.”

Most writing about burnout (and there has been plenty of it in the wake of Petersen’s original BuzzFeed essay) tends to lean heavily on “we”; it accords with the contention that burnout is a universal ailment. But who is the “we” of pandemic stress? The line cook who watched his co-workers die? The children forced to adjust to the misery of zoom school? The laid-off bartender? Or the information economy worker with a yard, no dependents, and disposable income to spend on delivery? Did all these people really experience “trauma?” in a recognizably similar way?

There are of course no incremental units of suffering doled out inversely by income, no guarantees that comfort will protect you from the profound ravages of life. But the failure to cope mode of culture writing avoids the personalization of pain. The claim is not “I am stricken because I had to bury my father or recover from a long illness or lose my job or confront my relationship with alcohol or bid farewell to a lover.” Despite formulaic acknowledgements that of course others have it worse, the basic claim remains the same: “The persistent low grade dysfunction I am experiencing is a social problem.”

This requires sleight of hand. To project an experience outward onto the collective, a writer must first draw the concrete sufferings of others inward, subsuming them into a continuum of what “we” experience.

A Vox article about election night self care warns:

“The cumulative stress and trauma most Americans have experienced this past year is still weighing heavy on pretty much everyone. It’s wishful thinking to believe that those anxiety levels will be collectively reduced once the election is over.”

One Boston-based writer of queer fiction describes how his pandemic cluster took between a day and a week of vacation to recover from the experience of watching the tallies mount up. “I remember last election, the day after was such an overwhelming emotional experience that I couldn’t imagine doing that all over again, so I took the day off.” Here, finding televised electoral politics a grueling ordeal that requires recovery time indicates, not an anxiety disorder, but a functioning civic conscience.

I believe there are people sporting gray hairs with worry solely over the fate of the republic. I can imagine a tortured citizen-statesman lifted from a Ciceronian oration crossed with A Tale of Two Cities. But I do not believe this is a particularly common problem.

Nor do I believe, as Petersen often posits, that personal underperformance is not only the result of oppressive social relations, but a potential form of resistance to them.

In an essay on “revenge bedtime procrastination,” she writes that the habit of routinely delaying needed sleep with unsatisfactory activities such as social media scrolling can be understood as a form of rebellion against the demands of employers. She even sees possible glimmers of a revolution. “Poke it a few more times, give it a bit more language to understand itself, and it might, might begin to understand itself as an early, bewildered, form of a movement.”

Petersen is not wrong that anti-human economies tend to make for bad living on the individual scale. The question is whether, if important causality occurs on the macro level, you have any capability or responsibility for dealing with it at the micro.

Failure to cope says no — if only political problems are legitimate, only political solutions are admissible. This has the odd effect of filtering all attempts at self-integration through a political lens. Hence the proliferation of articles explaining why brushing your teeth in the morning is a radical act. Even basic self-soothing behavior seems to count — hence Petersen’s otherwise inexplicably naïve belief that staying up too late scrolling on your phone might someday become a movement.

It may be the case that many personal infirmities can only be fully repaired in a repaired world, but this does not obviate the need to pull ourselves together as best we can in this broken one. Any serious attempt to topple capitalism would require more discipline, more courage, more endurance, more capability, not less.

When living “under capitalism” becomes a catch-all explanation for what you can’t manage — whether that’s getting on the metaphorical treadmill or stepping off it — it assumes the nature of a complaint to an adjudicating authority. Since capitalism has impressed such impossible conditions on us, we can’t reasonably be expected to deal with it until they improve. But in fact there is no one to adjudicate between you and capital, no one to say yes, that really is too much, let’s reassign this project. There is no political program that will release you from the necessity of doing more than you should have to or feel capable of doing, in politics as in every other part of life.

If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small.

And of course, there are more sinister possibilities than learned helplessness. Since under capitalism no one is really responsible for their actions, since we’d all be making better choices if the referees would just level the playing field, you can’t be blamed if you build weapons for Raytheon or AI for Facebook or write vacuous propaganda for the Washington Post, or climb to the top by betraying others . You’re not cravenly protecting your own interests at the expense of principle, you’re just participating in society somewhat. The totalizing nature of capital’s domination simultaneously excuses us both from revolutionary action and from an attempt at a life with honor within it.

And yet in the end I am guilty of the same sins as everyone else. Having laid out at length the political problems with delegating the responsibility for coping with your own life to a political program, I must confess that my primary concern is personal, not political. I do not hate the knowledge workers at whom this type of essay is directed (I am one of them). I believe that large swathes of them are experiencing anxious alienation from their own lives. I agree that super-individual forces are significantly involved. But I also think there is something debilitating about hearing and internalizing the message that the paralysis and malaise that seems to afflict so many is wholly externally imposed, that constrained choices are not real choices, that sending emails 16 hours a day is something only collapse of capitalism can mend.

Petersen’s most acute insight is perhaps in identifying a link between relentlessly optimized childhoods designed to prevent downward mobility, and the professionally competent but profoundly enervated millennials overwhelmed by the prospect of canceling plans, of keeping plans, of cooking food, of texting their mothers. I think she is correct. I think it’s possible that for many, considering the shape of your life and then living it with vigor is so difficult because it cannot be externally validated. Unlike education and work, it offers no socially obvious meritocratic path. The moments where, like sourdough, it proves, are largely invisible — in cooking, in walking, corresponding with a friend, in chatting with a neighbor or registering to give blood. They cannot be tallied up and put on a resume. They are never “finished.” The progress you make is spiraling rather than linear; circling steadily, slowly, around your weak points, taking two steps forward and one step back, building habits so slowly that only in retrospect can you see your life become different than it was. And there is no one who can tell you that you did it right. But this is not the condition of life under capitalism, this is life itself. And it is a sad irony that though the fear of life may be produced by class imperatives within capitalism, the impulse to restrict it to a problem of capitalism is itself part of the same fearful rejection of the task of living.

There is good news. None of us are children anymore. You can and should organize for better working conditions, but you can also turn off your email notifications. You can choose to prioritize the good life over a promotion or pleasing your boss. You can live with the loss of status and resources that this probably will entail. You can leave your job and take on the risks of finding work that does not corrode your self-respect. You can bring new life into the world knowing they will face intolerable danger and suffering, and take a type of comfort in the fact that on an individual level, this has always been the case. You can raise children in a too-small space and with too much debt.

Or you can not. You can devote yourself single-mindedly to a career and enjoy the struggle to the top. You can decide that to ride the ebb and swell of New York’s changing moods is worth whatever price you pay. You can pledge your life to your craft or the cause of Monarch butterflies. You can turn down invitations to weddings and let friendships lapse, you can go to bars every night and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. But whatever you do, don’t kid yourself that you’re doing it because you have no choices.

If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small. But an imperfect struggle to live well and love a world badly in need of repair is better than staying still because things are terrible, because you might look like a loser in the meritocratic game, because it’s easier.

This is your life. You do not have time to wait for the revolution to begin living it. You will always be able to find someone to give you permission not to live it. But no one is coming along to live it for you.

Clare Coffey currently resides in Idaho.

https://www.gawker.com/culture/failure-to-cope-under-capitalism

#capitalism #our doomed future

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that-foul-legacy-lover · 3 years

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Digital Heart

Foul Legacy Childe x Reader Gender Neutral (no pronouns mentioned) Angst Warnings: Falling, fighting, minor injuries, nausea, breathlessness

In which Genshin is an interactive RPG accessed through an immersive headset, and you find yourself pushed to play it by your friends.

~ * ~

It started with a game.

For thirty days and thirty nights, your friends have been pleading for you to play it. Genshin Impact it was called, an free immersive open-world RPG with hundreds of weapons, characters, and power ups. Accessible through a specialized headset that tracked movement, it had only been a month since the freely downloadable game’s release and it was already a success, garnering praise from the customizable main character and the interactive playstyle. Play it. Your friends beg. You’ll love it. We can play together.

You refuse at first. The game might be free, but the headset isn’t, and you need to save that money to pay for food and clothes. Alongside your financial state was your schedule, a long list of work and chores that left little time to play games with constant updates like Genshin, so you told your friends- politely, as that’s how you were raised- that it’d have to wait. They agreed, quietly.

Then the next day, they ask again. You make an excuse- too much work. They agree, again.

The second day, asking. You’re too tired, you say. Of course, they respond.

Everyday, the same question. The same request, the same demand. It wears on you, amused exasperation drawing a sigh from you everytime you open your notifications.

Play it.

You can’t.

Play it.

You don’t have time.

Play it.

You need to focus!

Play it.

…

…Alright.

Finally, you cave. You create an account, a headset en route to your house. You clear an area in your house so you don’t accidentally hit anything. The headset arrives, and you insert the batteries, said to last up to an entire day playing nonstop, a stage you dearly hope you never reach. You pull it down over your head, cringing at the thought of your hair getting so mussed, and switch it on. A long and potentially worrying warning flashes before your eyes and you blink, not used to the in-depth cameras yet, as the screen goes white.

Welcome to Genshin Impact! Please name your character… appears, and you subsequently slip down the rabbit hole.

It’s fun, you find. Your friends were right, you did like Genshin Impact, although you thank your lucky stars that you weren’t as attached as some players were, as you still had work and life to attend to. The combat and story were enjoyable, and the characters were funny and diverse in personality and playstyles. The main character, who was also your customizable avatar, was quite literally you, the story explained, a traveler from distant lands who fell face first into Teyvat by mistake and tragedy. Of course you still haven’t gotten entirely used to the whole immersion thing, and sometimes shuddered under the eerily real programming of the NPCs and characters, but that was nigh unnoticeable when focusing on fighting monsters. Your deep love for exploration and discovery surfaces, and you take as long as you want exploring every inch of the wonderfully modelled map as you follow the main story, or “Archon Quests”. You calm the great dragon Dvalin and bid your friends at Mondstadt- Kaeya, Amber, Lisa, Diluc, Jean, and Venti- goodbye, Liyue sprawling out before you in wooded forests and cloud-covered mountains. A mysterious man runs across you at the Inn, the immortal Adeptus Xiao, although you would’ve thought he was quite young due to his short stature, and you encounter Zhongli in the Harbor, along with Lady Ningguang and her subordinates, Keqing and Ganyu. A member of the malicious-seeming Fatui also greets you and introduces himself as Childe, a name you don’t trust for a second, yet find yourself getting strangely attached too. The story progresses with you at Zhongli and Ningguang’s sides, the suspicion being pointed more and more to the Fatui, and you find yourself staring up at the elegant pillars of the Golden House, the mora mint building.

You gulp. You know this is where Childe’s boss battle takes place, and you’re not sure if your team is prepared, even if you stocked up on food right before leaving the Harbor. Inhaling a deep breath, you shove the enormous front doors open, and a cutscene pulls your fear tight against your throat. Everyone’s suspicions were right- he was here to steal the Geo Archon’s gnosis, and you have to stop him.

Easier said than done. The cutscene of your face shows a determined, fierce expression, instead of the nervous one you had in real life, and you almost laugh. You dearly hope your characters are strong enough, and step into the arena.

Phases One and Two are relatively short, as you quickly learn to avoid using Childe’s respective elements of his Vision and Delusion while his shield is up. The battle is fun and fast-paced, and you feel a thrill in your bones as you dodge another attack before swinging your sword in retaliation. Childe stumbles, and Phase Two ends with a cutscene. The corpse of Rex Lapis, something you considered a bit gruesome, is discovered to have no gnosis, and you can feel the raw anger in the Harbinger’s voice as the air crackles and hisses. A horrible, blinding light shines, and Childe is gone.

At least, human Childe is gone. In his place floats a monstrous version of himself, nearly 14 feet tall and complete with horns and armor, and your mouth drops open slightly as you gaze at him wide eyed. But your focus is violently shifted when the floor cracks and turns to dust, sending you tumbling down into the belly of the Golden House. You land with an unceremonial thump, thankful that the creators hadn’t been cruel enough to make you feel the damage you took in-game.

And Phase Three, the final phase of Harbinger Tartaglia, commences.

He has considerably more health, and his attacks can range from irritating to deadly, you just barely dodging the falling Hydro arrows that would’ve slaughtered your current character. Of course, it doesn’t help that you’re sneaking glances at your attacker every few minutes. Your mind wanders to the lore as you shield yourself from violet lightning. Does this transformation hurt? Where does it come from? Why does it look like a moth? Maybe one day you’ll get answers.

Despite the raised difficulty, Phase Three also ends rather quickly. Your characters, it seems, were overleveled. The remainder of the Archon Quest passes, Childe reappearing once at the end, and it’s over. The screen blips off as you log out and place the headset on a table before laying on your bed and using the last few hours before bed to contemplate what you’ve just seen.

The next days quickly fall into routine. After completing all your work, you’d take an hour or two to play Genshin, leveling up your characters even more and going through various quests, Childe’s included. You see his transformation, dubbed the Foul Legacy form, again, and almost swoon before stopping and giving yourself a harsh scolding. You fulfill requests and tasks for various people around Teyvat, or at least the parts of Teyvat you can access, and improve your skills and stats. You have a talent for dodging, you find, and use it to your advantage while fighting.

And every Monday, when the clock resets, you re-enter Golden House to battle with Childe and claim your just rewards.

Of course you could do it everyday, but a squirming, guilty feeling in your gut stops you, making you feel like you’re hurting him, no matter how many times you try to tell yourself that he’s simply a video game character, a program in an electronic system.

This thought makes you a bit sad, you think.

The fights are getting easier, something you credit to your rising stars of characters, and you stand before the Ley Line Blossom quicker and quicker each time, something you expect to be no different today.

Phases One and Two are just the same as you take advantage of Vaporize and Overload, drowning out Childe’s pre-programmed sounds of pain with your own abilities. The battle pauses, and you’re transported to the same chamber underground, with its fiery walls and glittering arches, as the fight resumes. With the same attacks and characters, it’s becoming a tad dull, and you frown, wondering if you should try to get another character soon.

You’re lost in your thoughts when you slip and fall.

This you feel in the real world, having landed hard on your back and knocked the air out of your lungs. For a few moments you struggle to breathe, and Childe takes the opportunity to appear right over you, his spear flashing purple. You swear internally, bracing yourself as he readies his weapon.

But the strike never comes. You inhale desperately, oxygen finally flowing into your chest, and open your eyes. The graphics of your game are gray and fuzzy around the edges, framing Childe as he slowly puts his spear down and, to your amazement and slight terror, jerkily reaches towards you. Voice clips play overhead, pieced together to make not words, but a static-interspersed whining sound, much like a concerned beast. Your eyes widen, and Childe stops, withdrawing slightly almost as if he’s worried that you’re afraid, and you whisper his name once, as a tentative question.

Then with crackle and a ping, your game crashes and everything goes black.

You gasp and rip off the headset, chest heaving as you struggle to comprehend what just happened. You’re shaking, nervous and fearful, but curiosity runs strong through your veins. Your finger slides towards the On button, and you press it and slip the device back on.

You’re standing outside, the doors of the Golden House closed as if the battle never happened. The guards surrounding it look ordinary, occasionally repeating phrases you’ve heard and ignored countless times. Glancing around and trying to squash the nauseous bubbling feeling in your gut, you push the doors open again.

It’s different this time. Instead of being in the upper room, you fall a short distance into the Third Phase Chamber, your shoes clicking on the tiled floor. Childe floats in the center, his back to you, and you take a tentative step forward. He turns and looks you dead in the eyes, before flinging his spear to the side and rushing towards you on his feet, kneeling to your height. Instinctively, you jump away as he sits on the ground before you, letting out joyful chirps and trills, sounds you didn’t even know he could make. You approach him, sword held loosely in your hand as an extra precaution, and he tilts his head and coos as you cautiously sit with him. Your hands are trembling as you try to understand that this is real, he is real, all of this is happening.

And if it’s not, then it’s some damn good programming.

Questions start to fill your mind, one after another, and you ask him, responses coming as a nod or a headshake.

Is this real?

Yes.

Or programming?

No.

Could you always do this?

No.

Just today?

No.

Over a period of time. Yes.

How…?

The final question hangs in the air, and he shrugs slightly, then points at you. You did this. You woke him up, made him feel pain, sorrow, and happiness, all stemming from you, his love for you. From the minute the Archon Quests let you meet, he was vaguely curious, the most emotion he’s ever felt in his cold, empty programming since before. And when the code broke, he adored you, not like Childe viciously adored battle, but a soft adoration, one with all his digital heart could muster. You smile, and he purrs at what a wonderful smile it is.

Something flickers in the corner of your eye. Then another. And another. You turn and squint, then gasp as your surroundings begin to dissolve into colorful squares, the game taunting you as it glitches and lags. You and Childe leap to your feet, only to watch helplessly as the world crumbles away. You look down at your hands and see them beginning to break apart into pixels. Childe reaches out to hug you, to hold you close, but his hand passes right through you, a sickening reminder of how unreal he is. He wails in anguish as you both try to grasp each other, only to shatter more, the pixels covering your screen like rain on a windowpane.

Your game crashes for a second time, the only sound a desperate whimper that soon fades into an electronic squealing.

It takes a week to fix your device, the tech people saying that it was “overloaded”. Finally the repairs are finished, and you’re back at the Golden House, the doors already ajar. You slip into the room, expecting either a battle or, hopefully, someone to greet you.

But the room is empty. No one, human nor monster, stands in the center. Instead there is one lonely Ley Line Blossom, waiting, the final gift from an impossible love.

497 notes · View notes

zukuist · 3 years

Text

in the moment [hcs]

“they are desperate for help when admirers swarm them, and they choose to seek for your assistance”

fandom/s : 僕のヘロアカデミア // boku no hero academia (bnha)

includes: h. shinsō, k. bakugō, i. midoriya

your name is shortened to y/n, last name is shortened to l/n gender neutral, use of the pretend lover trope, they’re actually pining.

further note: yes i’ve been gone for more than a week, and yes it’s because of school. i promise i’ll be posting more!!

REQUESTS ;; OPEN !!

—

shinsō hitoshi

finds it super annoying

and this is coming from him, someone that’s not easy to irritate

he’s conscious and aware that people find him attractive (which for some reason, he still questions why)

eventually, admirers are bound to appear like it or not, but they’re not this insistent as this girl, nope.

shinsō has never experienced something like this, in his entire life.

noriko was a familiar face, but not in the best way for shinsō hitoshi.

she used to be one of those girls that’d band wagon with her opinions. whenever people were hostile towards him

she would be hostile too

but as soon as everyone started finding him attractive, she’d change too.

and it’s.. a mess. what more when he himself is pining on someone that’s not noriko

let alone, a student from class 1-A?

and it’s not like he could brainwash her into leaving him alone

as soon as she would be released by his quirk, she’d tell everyone what he did. therefore, leaving that out of the many solutions

and now he’s backed up into a corner, with her chasing him all across the hallways.

he can only hope for a solution.

— scene —

“this is ridiculous..” taking another turn in the hallway, shinsō mutters to himself quietly, the sleep deprived student can still hear her shrill voice

and by ‘her’, he’s referring to the admirer that has been tailing him down ever since the day had started.

“there are times like this where i wished i didn’t care about looking villainous” is what he’s really thinking. damn quirk stereotypes, and curse him for not having a quirk like iida tenya

“what.. are you doing?” was he lucky, or unlucky? it just so happened to be that he bumped into y/n l/n, out of all people

“i’m in a bit of a situation,” his palm rests against his nape, and he has to hope that you get the message, when noriko’s nearly deafening voice cuts through the air

“you’re quite popular with the ladies, huh?” you joke, and shinsō would’ve laughed if he wasn’t being trailed down.

“as much as i—”

“there you are !” noriko exclaims, slightly out of breath from the insistent chase, “you still haven’t answered !”

“i have, and i said no.” he makes his intentions concrete, compared to earlier (which was a mistake) when he rejected her in the nicest way he could’ve done so, but it wasn’t enough to make her quit.

“well earlier, you’ve said you appreciated it !” the whine pains both of your ears, and you contemplate if you should just grab his hand, and make a run for it.

but, she’d just chase you down again. so maybe not.

“yes, but i also said i can’t accept your feelings.” in instinct, he backs up so he could stand next to you, and he looks at you with his own style of desperation, which was obviously different than noriko’s desperation.

“i happen to be taken.” shinsō claims, hooking his hand along yours. which might’ve been done because he’s desperate, but could’ve been done because he wanted to

getting the motive, you lock away your shock, and play along, accepting his touch.

“i don’t believe you.” noriko blurts, “you two look like best friends more than anything. i’m not stupid !”

you didn’t think it would have to resort to this.

with not much of a thought, you grabbed shinsō by the collar, and smashed your lips together. his lips are warmer than you’ve anticipated, the distinct taste of coffee makes you lean into him further. while at first taken aback, shinsō decides to accept the act by pushing you even closer to him

you let go, deciding it was enough, and when you stare back at noriko, tears dotting at her waterline, and she sputters in humiliation and rejection.

“i never liked you anyway !” she uses as a defense, before storming off. the both of you feel a sense of relief when her figure turns at the end of the hallway

“sorry for kissing you like that. it was kind of in the moment,”

shinsō chuckles, “didn’t expect our first kiss to be like that.”

“well, there are more opportunities to come for you, you’re quite popular.” you tease, and shinsō flicks your forehead in retaliation. in return, you hiss at the sudden sting of pain.

“we’ll have more opportunities when i take you out for lunch on saturday.” he pats you on the shoulder, before he presses a quick real kiss on your cheekbone.

bakugō katsuki

also finds it super annoying. actually, he might as well just fight them and move on.

bakugō knows it well that he’s.. well-known, for all the right and wrong reasons

but what he doesn’t know is that he’s also known for his good looks, rough and boyish in nature.

so eventually, there’ll be that one brave and fearless soul that’ll take one for the team. or even two, or three.

he hates it. doesn’t his aura and demeanor alone scare off all of the suitors?

since when were they super persistent, smh.

it didn’t help that he was trying to drown and suffocate his feelings down the pipeline.

because curse bakugō katsuki for having normal, teenage feelings. he had other important things in life, right?

but he couldn’t help but wonder if you’d ever confess to him like that

(not that it would happen any time soon. you were too busy being a tough training partner)

but everything aside, he wishes that people would just take the hint already.

because ignoring doesn’t help all the time.

the girl named fumiko would be a dreadful sight he’d be constantly reminded of.

from his shoe locker being flooded with love letters that speak nothing to him, and to the obnoxious commentary on his looks

he’d think that they were just harassing him to get a reaction, but bakugō katsuki will remain unbothered!

but he spoke too soon, because he was approached directly right after his late training session.

—scene—

bakugō hates it

he hates extras, he hates being outshined, and he hates distractions. what more was there to dislike in the world? everything clearly.

he can handle things properly, and with that tough demeanor of his, and he definitely doesn’t need a quick and easy solution, from the girl that’s glued to his side.

he told himself that a persistent extra is nothing, he can just simply ignore them and look at them, like how he always looks at useless pebbles, and they’d go away. but clearly not this girl

“get off, you fucking extra” he pushes her off, grabbing his water bottle and immediately storming off, but it doesn’t convince fumiko (he learned her name unfortuantely) to finally lay off.

“c’mon katsuki! this would’ve all been over if you just went out with me!”

bakugō can’t hide the cringe on his face, hearing his first name, ugh. he doesn’t know how she found out about his late training sessions, considering that she wasn’t in his class or class 1-b

he doubts that he’d run into anyone at this hour, they’d be all in the common room, and he did say that he wanted all of them to ‘fuck off’. but luck does work in mysterious ways.

“..what’re you doing here?” he questions, clearly surprised by your presence, and his frustration would’ve disappeared at that exact mom“dinner’s almost ready. actually, why do you look so.. alarmed? is there a villain?—”

his palms are starting to sweat, and it’s not because of his training, or because of the girl that won’t leave him alone. “no! fuck no. okay, there’s just some shitty extra that’s been following me around like some obsessed freak.”

you decide to be smug, “i knew there was going to be a brave soul out there, ready to sacrifice themselves.” you rest your hand on your left side, like it was heart warming, but the blond is not amused with your gesture.

“right, right!” you hold your hands up, surrendering. “okay, what do you want me to do?”

“just don’t say a fucking thing.” you can hear foot steps get closer and closer to the both of you, and in a hurry, he pushes you closer to him, the smell of caramel evading your senses.

before you could even say a word, he kisses you. it’s rough, and it makes you feel warm, and it’s definitely not because of his quirk, or because of the large, warm palms that rest against your sides.

you get a grip on him, holding onto his shoulder when you feel your knees buck because of the butterflies in your stomach, and it seems to get worse when bakugō holds you even tighter

“okay geez, i get it. you’re taken!” you can hear the girl exclaim in humiliation and disgust, “ugh, a guy like you wouldn’t be able to handle me anyway.”

and when she finally scurries away, the both of you break the kisses, the wind out of you being knocked out cold from his sudden act of ‘romance’

“i sorta understand the hype now.” you grin, your lips still tingle from the kiss, and you’re convinced that you want more, despite the kiss being out of spite, and for fumiko to back off.

“shut up.” you would’ve laughed at him if it was any other day, but for now, you’re left silent. your heart flutters once more, when his lips press against your cheekbone briefly.

“c’mon, idiot. we’re gonna miss dinner.”

midoriya izuku

he’s so alarmed, and honestly very scared

he wasn’t popular, or well known to begin with, and people only started treating him like he was a real person in highschool

he’s just so used to being looked at like a background character, or a npc in a video game.

so the sudden swarm of suitors, and people that want to date him shocked him to the core.

he was never treated like this in middle school, or elementary!

it flatters him, and he’s glad that people actually like him. but.. he’d never actually think about being with either of them

because they’re not you, obviously. but wait, what’s so different about you exactly?

well.. you’ve treated him with kindness, even when he looked like this.. really awkward kid that sat at the back of the classroom.

so yeah, he’d never think about accepting anyone else’s confessions, as long as they’re not you

but still, midoriya has treated all of his admirers with kindness, despite not wanting to be with any of them

knowing how it feels to be humiliated, he wouldn’t want to do that on any of them

but.. this one particular girl was one he’d never truly be comfortable with, as much as he’d like to fake it.

rieko was.. something. probably the most persistent one out of all of them.

he would’ve appreciated it, if it weren’t for the fact that she was super obnoxious to other people.

and most importantly, he didn’t understand what she’d get out of it, and it wrecked his nerves!

— scene —

standing next to you, all lined up for lunch, midoriya shifts uncomfortably as he tries his best to ignore the loud and obvious commentary that’s being directed to him.

at first, it was flattering. but now? he just wishes things would go back to the times where people had no interest in him, whatsoever.

he knows what rieko really like him for, and it’s honestly disheartening. the girl would compliment him on things like his looks, and even his new moves!

but as soon as he elaborated on how he did it, the interest would fade away from her eyes

not that it did matter though. midoriya didn’t really have any feelings for any of the people that’ve approached him, wanting to date him. he’s been kind, and they’ve been kind in return, getting the hint and backing off.

the freckled boy was flattered but, not interested

but clearly, rieko didn’t get the message, despite the way midoriya would back away uncomfortably. how he’d immediately excuse himself whenever he’d see the girl.

just.. all signs of disinterest

“go! just ask him already!” he can hear her friends encourage her, but he’s not very enthusiastic to know what they’re cheering her on for

“he won’t be able to resist! just walk right in and do it, you guys will be an attractive couple anyway!”

midoriya’s palms are shaky, and he tries his best to calm his nerves down by clenching his fists. this doesn’t go un-noticed by you.

“you okay, midoriya?” you ask, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, and the green haired boy hopes that his cheeks aren’t turning red.

the both of you guys are awfully close! not that he’s complaining, it’s just that—

“is it about them?” you ask in a nearly quiet tone, and midoriya’s aware that you’re talking about them.

“uhm..” midoriya tries to formulate a proper answer, not wanting to sound as bothered as he actually is. how would he be able to explain this? “don’t worry about it,” midoriya reassures, “it’s just—”

“do you think that he’s dating that person? you know, the one beside them?” he hears that the topic of the conversation has shifted, and the group of girls are referring to you.

midoriya wasn’t planning on telling anyone about the dilemma. let alone his crush. it was something he was going to ignore, until the mess calmed down.

but now? you’re roped into it, and his nerves didn’t calm down at all.

“izuku dating them? no, it can’t be. he’s too good for them!”

“that’s the spirit, rieko. you should just go like.. now!”

to him, it’s the other way around. you’re too good for him, and you’re out of his league. so, this comment upsets him to all ends.

he’s pondering on what he should do, and before he could take you out of the line to get food at some other place, he feels something warm enlace his hand.

he slightly shivers when he realizes that it’s your hand he’s holding, cheeks flushed with crimson.

your eyes are ahead, a lot more composed than he is clearly, but if he looked hard enough, he could sense the nervousness in your hold.

“you wanna leave the line, izu?” his first name sounds different when you say it, and he thinks to himself that he prefers it a lot more when it comes from you

“y-yes.” and you smile, pressing your lips against his cheek quickly, before tugging his hand and pulling him out of the line, walking away from the group.

it’s a miracle that he didn’t drop onto the cafeteria’s floors.

you can feel his anxiety subsiding. despite his flushed cheeks remaining, he looks better than he did a few seconds ago, and you’re glad.

deciding the both of you were at a safe distance, you peek over your shoulder. you can see the absolute defeat on rieko’s face, and the scowl on her friends’ faces as they attempted to comfort their heartbroken friend.

“thank you, y/n.”

“no, it’s nothing, really. anyhow, what do you plan on eating for lunch?”

757 notes · View notes

lenofiga · 3 years

Photo

NPC Oberon Voice Lines [Spoiler]

Voice Actor: Toyonaga Toshiyuki

Section 13, Arrow 6

Battle Start: Retreat is not an option. Barghest must be defeated here. I am the lord of the Woods of Wales, Fairy King Oberon!

Skill 1: Let’s come up with a clever plan. Skill 2: No, this power isn’t mine alone. Skill 3: The real fight starts now. Here we go. Skill 4: Thanks~ I’ll give it my all.

Command Card 1: I kinda feel bad for them. Command Card 2: My pleasure! Command Card 3: I must say this makes me feel guilty.

NP Card 1: Let me tell you a kind, warming dream. NP Card 2: I’m counting on you all. NP Card 3: Fight your battles peacefully, yeah?

Attack 1: Hahahaha! Attack 2: Let’s go all out! Attack 3: Glimmer of life. Attack 4: Remnants of a dream. Attack 5: This is Hippolyta’s bow! Attack 6: I mean, we’re in the woods, you know? Attack 7: Sorry it’s handmade! Attack 8: This is Heracles’ loincloth! Attack 9: Sorry, no entry. Attack 10: Fairy dust! Attack 11: Alright then! Attack 12: Go, go! Attack 13: Armor of Theseus! Attack 14: I’m right here!

Extra Attack 1: Faster than a memory, just like a shooting star! Extra Attack 2: Whew! A speedster indeed! Extra Attack 3: Go!

NP 1: Yes, I know. Everybody wishes to become slightly happier than they already are, right? Very well! Wry Rhyme Goodfellow [A Tale of a Dream Held Against the Distance]! NP 2: This is just about what I can do. My innocent dear, after a midsummer’s night…Love is not to be caressed but to be yearned for. Wry Rhyme Goodfellow [A Tale of a Dream Held Against the Distance]! NP 3: Slumber is unavoidable. The veil of night. The lark at first light. Dreams are something we all have in common…no matter its nature.

NP Damage: Oh no, it’s all over! Normal Damage: Ouch!

Victory 1: I can do it if I try. Being a king isn’t just about sitting on a throne. Victory 2: Is it over? I understand we are enemies, but I’m still hesitant to defeat them.

＊＊＊

Section 30, Arrow 3 / Oberon Vortigern

Skill 1: Such reckless valor. How revolting! Skill 2: Hahaha! Nice. I couldn’t ask for anything better. Skill 3: Grr!

Attack 1: Well…? Attack 2: Shall we? Attack 3: Were you underestimating me? Attack 4: You’d best not move. Attack 5: Take that! Attack 6: Here—my treat! Attack 7: My condolences. Attack 8: Theseus! Attack 9: I’m an insect. What did you expect? Attack 10: Heracles! Attack 11: Want this? You can have it! Attack 12: Argh! What a royal pain!

NP 1: The veil of night. The lark at first light. The end of a dream decaying like blight. Have a taste of twilight…! Lie Like Vortigern [Eyes of a Dream Falling into the Distance]! NP 2: There is nothing left…for me to say. It’s all a midsummer night’s dream. NP 3: Don’t swarm around me. You make me sick. Tell me… Can you arrange an apocalypse that can surpass this!? –Begone. Die. Perish.

NP Damage: What a sight I make! Normal Damage: Hmph!

Break Bar 1: A rotting slumber just for you. Break Bar 2: Did you seriously believe you stood a chance against me? Break Bar 3: The performance is over. The tragedy ends here.

#fgo #spoiler #oberon #oberon vortigern #mytled

104 notes · View notes

jetxstreamx · 2 years

Text

( Darrens apartment, probably while Darren is still supposed to be away somewhere / @thecollective-npcs )

tw: violence, guns, gross behaviour by men, gendered slurs.

It isn’t easy to relax anymore. To find comfort in the surroundings. Darren’s apartment is warm and well heated, but Arya can’t help feeling cold lately. Shakey and a little uncertain. He was worried about Hourglass, and worried about the rest of his friends, and worried about the new insecurities he had been confronted with. The danger was starting to feel way too real, like it could come for him at any second. But he was trying to feel safe here, the way he always had. He just wished that Darren would come home –– even if he was worried that Darren was only putting up with him because he had to, because it was a job. Arya wanted to see his face. Arya felt safer with Darren around, despite his better judgeemnt telling him he should keep on the fence about it. Catalyst would yell at him for trusting too blindly. Hell, everybody would. It was one of his fatal flaws.

He’s exhausted, despite his inability to relax. He spent an hour or two tacking peices of paper with stray thoughts up to the chalkboard wall, things he meant to tell Darren when he got back, ideas he wanted to share. He felt like they needed to kick into high gear at some point, as much as he wanted to draw this out so he wouldn’t have to leave. But maybe it would be better, at the end of the day. If they solved the mystery and Darren sent him on his way, he’d at least know where they really stood. He’d know if what Clint said was right, or they were something like friends after all.

He’s washing his face, exhausted, and bleary eyed. He thinks he should lay down and try to go to sleep, make the most of an empty bed –– even though he knows, and Darren probably knows by now, that he sleeps better with company, with someone beside him. He’s imagining a night of laying awake, despite how tired he is, thinking about fire and pain and the collective probably hating him at the end of all this.

He hears the door open, in the distance, The quiet click and the sound of footsteps, heavy boots. It isn’t completely unlike the way Darren moves, and he doesn’t really stop to question it. He’s the only one whose supposed to be able to get inside, after all. Arya just keeps going through the motions. “You took your damn time out there,” He calls out, as the sounds draw closer, and winces a little at the sting of soap in his eyes, wiping at it with a hand and then his face cloth, letting out a small ‘ouch’.

“Awh, Jet. Sorry I kept you waiting.” A familiar voice greets him, but not the one he was expecting. And he feels like he could throw up, because suddenly there’s an arm around him, a gun against his side, the smell of cigarette smoke close and cloying. “Your new boyfriend leave you all sad and lonely, huh? I’m so sorry, I know you hate that. But that’s what you get for acting like a traitorous whore.”

He swallows against the panic, finally blinks his eyes and focuses on Vic. Victor, as strong and imposing as he’s always been. He was such a scumbag, and Arya should have seen it from the get go. But he was a guy with space who wanted to fuck him, had jobs for him to do on the side. It seemed like a good arrangement. And Vic had liked to have him around, to show him off. Real life Vintage Teen Terror to use as arm candy. He swallows, and shifts his hands, ready to portal out of here. But the gun jams closer against his side, and his hands start to shake a little bit. “Vic,” He says, with a breath.

“Careful, baby. We both know you can’t portal faster than a speeding bullet.” And Vic presses a kiss against his jaw, quick, stubble scratching against his skin before he moves them out into the wider area of the apartment with a firm grip. “Lets get cozy and have a little chat, huh, just like old times.”

“Just chill the fuck out, man.” He says, frantic, boarderline willing to beg. But Vic shoves him, and he feels a sting across his cheek, a small trickle of blood where one of Vic’s rings must have caught against his skin. He stumbles and lands on the soft edge of the couch, thankful that it isn’t the hard floor of Darren’s apartment. And the gun is back, pointed at him too close to escape, even if he could get his hands to co-operate and create a portal for him.

“Chill out? Chill out, and you’ll be a good boy for me, is that it baby? Sorry if I don’t fucking believe you. You fucked up, Jetstream, and you’re going to learn exactly what happens when little freaks like you run off to the Guardians.”

He swallows, holds his hand in plain sight, so that Vic can see he isn’t making any moves. “Please, just –- Mind Master is going to be back any second, and he’ll... you can get away. I won’t tell him you were here.”

“No he’s not. He’s not gonna be home any second.” Vic says, with a chilling confidence, holding the gun against his head, using his other hand to carress Jetstreams hair. “Hes in Cleveland, right? Little birdie gave me the heads up. So we have all the time in the world to teach you your little lesson.”

#oh no!!!!#well well welll if it isn't the consequences of my actions #( mind master )#( mind master 03 )#please ignore this LENGTH there was a lot to get through

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gaiasnewdawn · 2 years

Text

So, overall, I am loving Forbidden West. It’s been a really excellent second chapter to the whole story. That said, I do have a few minor complaints. Nothing that is ruining the experience for me and mostly stuff I hope will be addressed in upcoming updates. But still, a few small issues. And, just to be perfectly clear, these are only my opinions and experiences. You may well disagree. That is fine. I’m not trying to rain on your parade.

- Free climbing. While it’s an addition I was looking forward to, the execution isn’t exactly perfect. I’m finding there are a lot of times where Aloy just gets stuck, despite having obvious handholds within reach, or at the top of a climb. She just... won’t go. Also, because there’s really no differentiating between climbable things and non-climbable things, I find I’m using the focus to find climbing surfaces so much, they might just as well be marked.

-Glitches. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been seeing a decent number of glitches. NPCs caught in mid-air, twitching dead bodies, hand holds that make Aloy’s hands freak out, and most recently in and around Cauldron Iota, there were several machines who’s bodies glitched out completely. I had a couple of Grimhorns armour running at me without any Grimhorn inside them. Same with the Rollerback inside.

-Loot boxes. I can’t explain what it is that I’m not crazy about, but they seem so... out of place? I don’t know. It felt like they were a little bit more organically placed last game. Maybe it’s just me.

-Rocks. Okay, I KNOW this is super petty. But, sweet lord, there are SO MANY FUCKING ROCKS. I don’t need them all marked. Who is using that many rocks? My screen is so cluttered with markers.

-Plants. Again, I know I’m being petty. It does feel like there’s way less variety in plants this game. Especially medicinal plants. I liked being able to spot different plant species in different areas and learning where they grow best. The lack of the old plants seems very weird and the abundance of food plants is, like the rocks, a bit overwhelming. And they’re all the same thing. If it was a whole lot of variety, maybe it wouldn’t be wearing on me as much.

-Watchers. I cannot be the only person missing the watchers. And don’t talk to me about redeye watchers. They are not the same and we both know that.

-Alert times. Another “maybe it’s just me” but it feels like when a machine notices you, it stays on alert for an excessively long time. If you want to tank your way through, that’s fine. But playing stealth, it gets real old having to wait it out. Actually, there are a number of times I found myself thinking that they went out of their way to make playing a stealth style difficult if not impossible and I don’t like being forced into a play style for arbitrary reasons.

-Recovery time. Sweet lord Aloy takes FOREVER to get up in this one. Honestly, there have been more than a few times it seems like she’s moving excessively slowly. But the recovery from being knocked down is painful.

-Characters. Okay, this one comes with a huge disclaimer. THIS IS ENTIRELY MY OPINION. YOU ARE WELCOME TO DISAGREE. I feel like everyone is kind of grumpy and it’s weird. Especially Aloy. And I get that she is just fucking exhausted. I don’t blame her. But like... I miss the lighter moments and the humour. It seems to be a little muted this time. Don’t get me wrong, I love my girl with all my heart. She just seems... off? Also, everyone is being so mean to Erend??? Leave my son alone??? HE’S DOING HIS BEST OKAY???

-Seeker face paint. I’m gonna end on the pettiest one of all. They changed the colour of the Nora Seeker face paint and it’s annoying me so much. Does it really matter? No. Does it make my eye twitch a little? Yes.

All right, that’s it. Like I said, you’re welcome to disagree. Please keep any comments civil. I’m not interested in fighting or drama. I’m just talking about my own feelings. I love the game a lot and I just want it to be the best game possible.

#hfw #horizon forbidden west #spoilers #maybe #I dunno #just to be safe #The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of this station

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badass-at-fandoming · 3 years

Text

Just Little Malkavian Things ~

Malkavians these days can do nothing but de-conceptualize, Dement, eat hot chip, and lie.

Since people seemed to enjoy the #JustLittleVentrueThings VTMB adventure, here's a matching Malkavian one. Though I'm gonna be real with ya here, I had less fun D:

I finally figured out why I have such trouble wrapping my head around depictions of Malkavians in VTM media. Books, Storytellers, and fans say it's like having a mental illness and being linked to a massive group chat. But, listen, I've lived around and with mental illness all my life. I've been in massive group chats. Being Malkavian ain't like that.

It IS like being an early-twenties English major in the midst of an existential crisis, over-worked and cross-faded outta your skull and watching horror movies to Cope(TM)

So it's like drugs. It's like you had too much weed and too much wine and are let loose on Los Angeles. Which. My friends and I have and we, coincidentally, also "fought" a stop sign. The Malkavian PC never really seemed like a character to me: she's like a collection of cliches and dude-bros doing blunts while watching slasher movies. I named her Liotta after the Psychic Shop owner, and I'm sad Liotta didn't really get to be a person.

I wasn't surprised by any of the dialog. It's a pattern. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. It lost its charm.

Often, I didn't know what the FUCK I was saying. Which is the Malkavian Experience(TM), according to Rosa.

Anyway

Nonsense time

Most characters have an extra paragraph of dialog to Acknowledge That You Are A Malkavian. Some get an extra conversation branch. For example, there's lots of new Bertie dialog and he was all impressed Liotta knows about Gehenna and Thin-bloods <3. The Anarchs characters, especially Skelter, get a lot more. Skelter, Ash, and Liotta totally vibe.

If you sneak around the Santa Monica drug house, they talk about Mercurio?? Hello?? Mercurio, you bent Masquerade by not getting beat up real good.

Zero pretense about Voerman. Yes, I have DID; yes, I am making it your problem.

When Liotta talked to Beckett, he said the DID was "something to look forward to." Goddamnit, Beckett. That's not how the Bane or mental illness works! >:-(

I've never sneaked before!!! Did you know that the Tong AND the American gang downtown have fakes in their suitcases??? Like, Full On, "it's just stuffed with newspapers, brah." They were going to kill each other over newspapers. For some reason the Tong brought the REAL suitcase along too, but I'm so past having VTM make any sort of sense. It's fine.

Accidentally pissed off Nines. I meant farmer (affectionate) and Nines thought I meant farmer (derogatory). :(

The Dementation powers are (a) pretty purple loop-de-loops, (b) not as effective as Dominate (reaaaallyyy missed a good AOE attack), and (c) oddly enough, gave more compassionate dialog choices. I mean. In the pen-and-paper version, Dementation isn't conflict-focused, so the devs had to jigger it to use as attacks. But I was touched when Liotta made Hannah believe she was Paul, so Hannah got to say goodbye. Making Samantha believe Liotta was a pet turtle was funny and spared her the pain of her friend vanishing a second time. Heather thinks her entire experience was a dream and returns to her life, more or less unscathed.

Boris?? Asked Liotta to kill Venus for him???? DUDE, WHAT. I didn't know he could counter-offer!! What happens if you take up his offer? Who controls Confession? Does it close down??

Pro Tip: don't trust the pale woman in a cowboy stripper outfit who comes out of your vent and tells you everything's fine.

I went through an ENTIRE Ventrue playthrough without puking and Liotta ate one (1) unhoused person and blew chunks. I didn't realize Diseased Blood was a threat. What happens if you skip the Plague-bearer quest? Should you just never chomp on the Downtown unhoused community?

Strauss called Liotta "young one" and I was like, sir. You're not Beckett, you can't trick me.

A rat dances in the Downtown sewers and tells Liotta that the grass is greener in someone else's asshole.

And also will take you places.

Do you know what it's like for a Capri Sun to suddenly start speaking and offer taxi services.

LaCroix: how did Bach find me??? also LaCroix: [names his company after himself] [lives in Ventrue Tower]

Liotta told Beckett that Kindred are a joke and I got extra EXP for being so sneaky.

DMP produced snuff films even before Andrei???!!!! I thought all the blood was from the lil geo-dudes.

Liotta agreed with Andrei that Caine is here and boot-scooting around in his lil Angst Mobile. :D

As bad as Liotta was in group fights, she repeatedly made bosses cower and stand quietly while she beat them to death. Andrei had a full on lay-on-the-floor temper tantrum in his war form and Liotta just. Smacked him until he exploded. She didn't even take damage!

Imalia's computer password is ALSO "cleopatra." Just like Tawni's! Dual reference to the Embrace type

IDK why I never asked this before, but, um, who does Mitnick share the bunk bed with? Barabus..?

I went back to the Empire Hotel Penthouse suite to fetch the educational book and the Russian mob dudes were still there?? Hello, sirs, your leader is dead. You can leave now.

Liotta heard the real thoughts of the Red Dragon hostess...and also some debate about the Dark Father's presence in LA, heehee.

I thought it was fun that one of the "take me away, Cabbie!" taxi replies mentioned riding in a car like father and child. :D

"Why is the Mandarin giggling at me" is a sentence that came out of my face.

With the different dialog options, sometimes it's impossible to be polite to NPCs. For example: Liotta could only call VV "dolly/doll/toy doll" instead of her preferred names; the Chinatown gun seller felt frightened, thinking we were Police or Immigration.

Some great fourth wall breaks in the dialog: "I don't want to get involved either, but tell that to whoever is playing me!" to Beckett after the Giovanni Mansion.

"You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is."

"If I cannot win with effort, I will cheat my way to victory. I am gone." Funnily enough, this was my first run where I didn't hack in to boost stats.

"I just want it to end. I feel like I've been playing forever."

Some nice wider lore references: "I devour knowledge like the great worm devours the corpse of society" could refer to how Salout, in tapeworm form, is devouring Tremere's body and destabilizing the Clan and/or Kindred night society.

"They should have a channel devoted to you in my head" to Beckett. In his Diary, Beckett witnesses Malkavians devouring Malkav and may or may not join the Cobweb (PS check out this great fanfic where he does).

This made me stare into space for a minute and question my life choices. During the Sabbat massacre, Liotta didn't snack on any of the blood doll ghouls (ya know, the ones with the eyes gouged out). She had such high Inspection + Finance that she had $4k in her wallet and could buy blood. I wanted to test a rumor that if you don't feed on the blood dolls, you get extra EXP. You do. BUT anywAY, right before the Tremere miniboss, Liotta was sword-fighting some goons and the blood doll...attacked him for her? Like. He moved on his own. When the goon was dead, the blood doll asked if Liotta was all right. This might have been a glitch but...the horrific implications that those men are still conscious, still willful, still feeling. ACK. I hope they got out the next morning.

RIP Ming Xiao. Flamethrower right to the tiddies.

I stole @ryttu3k's idea and noclipped through the werewolf section. Liotta still killed the Garou, but I didn't want the stress.

Caine is very Caine. "Don't you get it? We've already been judged!"

Liotta went Anarch because what little backstory I came up for her was she considered Smiling Jack her sire. Nines complimented her ability to murder.

Sheriff got sooooo dizzy that he fell over right onto Liotta's sword 27 times.

Dancing werewolf ending! Seemed fitting. :D

#vtm #vtmb #vampire the masquerade #malkavian #anarch #smiling jack #sebastian lacroix #nines rodriguez #cuthbert beckett #ming xiao #andrei the defiler #text post #my vtm nonsense

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