Foolish going in with two totems as a part-totem who never, never uses totems. His screams for Leo as the ceiling caves in, trying desperately to throw her a totem through the barrier. Digging, trying to glitch, trying to problem solve in a situation so chaotic and so impossible, there’s just nothing he can do. Not leaving until his totem pops - until he can’t see Leo anymore. Repeating to himself that she was right there, just right there, he couldn’t even get her a totem, he couldn’t do anything.
Foolish staying behind to make sure Tina and Mouse get out, to make sure he sticks with Cellbit, telling himself he can feel it later, as long as they survive, he can feel it later - and running out of time. If he hadn’t stayed behind digging for Leo, he would have made it. If he hadn’t given all but one of his enderpearls to the others, he would have made it. If he wasn’t looking over his shoulder for Cellbit, he would have made it.
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familiarity, the lack thereof, and the only way it could have ended.
the thing is, ultrakill is a very diegetic game. near everything, from the style meter to the bottomless arsenal to the shitass graphics themselves, are explained in some way by some in-universe fact.
so, what with violence and the implication that V1 was designed to counter earthmovers
what with 7-4 and the fact that it is a culmination of this implication
i wonder. when V1 looked up at that earthmover, did it know, with whatever passes for instinct in a machine, exactly what to do? and if it did, then, how is this conveyed to the player?
diegetic as the game is, how does it engineer a situation in which the player, themselves, knows exactly what they have to do?
the biggest factor, i think, is the fact that the earthmover's health bar appears the moment you lay eyes (or camera, or whatever) on it, and it does not leave until you have finally killed this colossus.
but this factor is much more subtle than it appears at first glance. yes, big honkin' boss healthbar on screen for the entire level, what more to it. there's a good deal more, it turns out.
first off- this is the shortest leadup by far to any bossfight in the game. you slide through a single vent, and you are greeted with benjamin right out in the open. even P-1, devoid of any other hazards as it is, gives you a long trek down the spinal staircase before you reach the flesh prison. 7-4 has none of it. you enter the level, you enter the stage, and there you have it. you know exactly what you are up against right from the outset, and it's not quite a feeling of familiarity but it tells you exactly what you have to do. which is the point of this all, isn't it?
7-4 is also... not a bossfight! it is a full level! it is a full level framed as a bossfight. the health bar frames this full complete level as a bossfight.
and on one hand, this is not new news. on the other hand, i think this is the crux of it. the thing is, most bossfights are near-to-entirely new. you do not know how the boss acts. you do not know their attack patterns. you do not know their capabilities. you are learning something new. levels, though, you have done a thousand times over and so the player knows how they need to play through this bossfight in a way that is not quite present with any other boss in the game.
the content of the level is new, of course, because that's how it goes. but you know the motions. you have done this for two acts prior, you know the motions. you know exactly what to do.
also! this level does not exist in a vacuum. what i am saying is this: the rest of violence layer shifts its storytelling and its tone and even its graphics. it is something completely new in contrast to the rest of the game. 7-4, though, returns to environments and graphics more akin to what you have experienced before, bringing you back to familiarity and again knowing what to do here in a way the rest of violence hasn't let the player experience.
one more thing about this level: it plays directly into expectations. which is something that the rest of the game actually does not tend to do.
the game, at base, is just not a typical FPS. it gives you movement like a roguelite or a platformer, it takes guns you expect to know the mechanics of and goes utterly wild with how far the archetype can be changed.
in a smaller scope, here is a comparison of the earthmover and the corpse of king minos as two separate colossal bosses foreshadowed in similar ways. and i mean, minos's bossfight isn't unprecedented in other works. but i think the thing that matters here is that you are not, in fact, the underdog as is the case with so many other bosses of its ilk. riven of many voices, destiny 2, similar bossfight similar scale. you are hiding from her you are a fireteam of many you are triumphing over a dragon larger than life. project gestalt, madness project nexus, you are pulling out every stop you can to take down something so far over your head (both literally and metaphorically). corpse of king minos- V1 looks up, stands its ground, and parries his god damn fist.
and the thing is, the earthmover plays into a different expectation, but it's playing into an expectation nonetheless. you look at this thing and you climb it and you dismantle it from within, like you have done in many games prior. you know what your goal is from the moment you see that healthbar and you hook onto the conspicuously placed hookpoints that tell you- you will climb this machine; you will fight your way up to whatever its core is and you will kill it. you play through the entire level with this expectation and you get exactly this expectation. you destroy its core and it begins a countdown, and so very many games have countdowns before the collapse of whatever level you have just beaten, and you know exactly what you have to do.
i don't know. i love diegetic storytelling. i love this level.
it's just familiarity, i think. this level runs off familiarity. it gives you, the player, things and tropes and designs you are familiar with. it signals to you that you should know what to do, and it lets you do exactly what you expect to do.
if i were any more cheesy i could absolutely end this by restating something about the only way it could've ended, but uh. i am not that cheesy. this time.
aw crud now i don't know how to end this oh well goodbye then
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PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS
PUSSY.
BIG FLAPPY WET JESUS PUSSY.
JESUS' SOPPING WET PUSS-PUSS
[Edited months after posting to discourage catholics from replying to this post after finding that both the nice and much funnier not-nice responses to this were equally bad for my mental health. I didn't wanna delete it bc I was quite proud of some of my responses and it helps to have a visual reminder of why I left an abusive organization. Also, this means that any catholic who has reblogged this in an attempt to convert me, has now reblogged a post that, if clicked, links back to this. Use MY post for propaganda, will you!]
Thinking about how it was never made clear to me in Catholic school exactly WHY Jesus died for our sins. I just remembered that I was literally never clear on who the dying helped??
I've heard theories as an adult, but basically what I'm saying is pointless martyrdom seems a little pointless, and also with enough propaganda the big logical gaps in a belief system get really hard to see. Especially if questioning anything is blasphemy.
I would have gotten in so much trouble for insisting the teacher explain how Jesus helped us by being tortured to death by Romans even when God could have prevented it! God sent his only Son, they would have said! Be grateful, they'd say! Be guilty! Stop asking why he did that!!!
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four months into getting to know each other, shouto finds him by touya-nii's shrine. his little brother gently sits down beside him and offers a small prayer.
"yumi-nee-san," natsuo wonders if his little brother will ever drop the second honorific, "said you were the closest to him," shouto says quietly.
after all these years and the use of past tense still makes his heart break. 'you are the closest to him' he wants to correct but that wouldn't make sense anymore. touya-nii hasn't been talked about in the present tense since before middle school. does shouto even remember a time before nii-san's dea-, disappearance?
"yeah, i was," he says, eyes never leaving the photo. it's the one nii-san took for sixth-grade picture day. kaa-san had got him all dressed up and he had hated it. somedays he thinks if he looks close enough, he'll see the displeased pout on nii-san face. "why?"
his little brother says nothing for a long time, back ramrod straight. natsuo has no idea what's going on in that head of his. shouto has so few tells that he's practically a blank slate. natsuo hates his father.
then slowly and so quietly, he has to strain his ears to catch it, shouto stammers out, "do-, do you think he would have liked me?"
natsuo's immediate reaction is to say 'yes'. yes, of course, touya-nii would've loved you. yes, of course, touya-nii would've crossed the heavens for you. yes, of course, he would've loved you shouto; you're his precious younger brother.
but he remembers the way nii-san used to spit out shouto's name when he was a kid. the way his brother's mouth wrapped around it, the face he made, like he had just eaten something disgusting. he remembers the way touya-nii had become almost crazed by the end, hellbent on proving himself the rightful heir to their shitty father's legacy. he remembers the way touya-nii had said, "i just need to prove that i'm better than him,"; the 'him' said with such bitterness and contempt.
he knows instantly that touya-nii would not have liked shouto. that this house and his father would have twisted any ounce of love, nii-san would've held towards shouto, into jealousy and hatred.
(this house may have ruined all of them but it only ever broke two of them.)
natsuo can't say any of that to shouto. his kind little brother who forgave him for not being there. his amazing little brother who falls in love with every cat he sees. his wonderful little brother who has a wickedly dry sense of humor. his soft baby brother who loves him and yumi-nee with a passion. his tender-hearted baby brother who still worries if his long-gone older brother would've liked him.
no, natsuo can't tell shouto that nii-san wouldn't have like him. shouto will internalize it like he does with everything else that hurts him. and there is already so much that hurts shouto, he will not add to that list. his baby brother smiles these days, nothing big like his green-haired friend, but quiet, lovely, ones all the same. shouto talks more these days. they have dinner together when natsuo is home. his baby brother laughs now. it's a miracle like nothing else in this world.
shouto is the best thing to come out of their house and natsuo will die before he ever hurts his little brother. so instead, he curls an arm around shouto's shoulders and pulls him into a loose side-hug.
"of course!" he lies cheerfully, ignoring the ache in his chest, "touya-nii would've loved you. you're his — and our —precious little brother after all. there is no universe in which he wouldn't have loved you."
the tips of his baby brother's ears go red and his pleased little answering smile makes the ache of lie go away. natsuo will tell a thousand more lies if it means shouto never stops smiling like that.
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I finally got around to watching the clone wars so here are some Ahsoka and Anakin headcanons that wont leave my brain
They both steal each other's stuff and complain when they catch the other one doing it
As Anakin’s hair grows longer he finds himself looking for hair wraps or something to push it back
And he stumbles on Ahsoka's stash he borrows them mostly when she’s off on a mission so she won’t complain
But she suspects him of doing so cause they’re never in the correct spot he also steals some of her simpler hand wraps when he’s training
Ahsoka's just as bad tho she’ll steal Anakin’s cloaks and shirts all the time cause for some reason the council failed to give her comfortable clothes
It all comes to a head when Ahsoka is debriefing the council and Anakin and she stops and goes “Is that my head wrap?”
The change of topic is so abrupt that no one reacts for a hot second
And then Anakin goes into full-on defensive mode like “What? No your device must be defective cause this isn’t yours”
Which Ahsoka calls him out because “Jedi’s don’t lie so just come clean sky guy I know that mine. And are those my kriffing hand wraps?! Take those off you’re gonna mess them up!”
Anakin is still defending himself and Obi-Wan is stepping in scolding them for using this line for their petty and selfish arguments
And then Anakin says “Wait snips is that my cloak” “Don’t change the subject just cause you got caught” “No no you can’t talk about getting caught you little hypocrite that’s my cloak!”
Obi-Wan is still chiming in half-heartedly but he knows better than to stop a full-on argument between those two
Especially when they’re throwing each other words back at them like “I thought you said I should keep warm” “And I thought you said I need a hair wrap with all this hair”
The argument only ends cause Windu threatens to hang up the com
After the debriefing ends Anakin calls Ahsoka back and the argument starts right back up again
Ahsoka always gets ready with her music playing
And Anakin in true big brother fashion doesn’t want Ahsoka to know he likes her music so instead he’ll just turn on their version of shazam and stands by the speaker in what he thinks is a normal fashion
It always goes something like this “Master what are you doing?” “What do you mean snips I’m not doing anything” “Oh so you’re just standing in my doorway with your device on for no reason” “Yep” “Okay when well have fun”
And in bratty little sister fashion she turns off her music and lights and leaves him in the doorway
Later on she makes a playlist of all his favorite songs and sends a link to it
All she hears is a grumbled “thank you” from the other room
Anakin also plays his music out loud sometimes and it took a small amount of time to realize the songs Ahsoka complains about the most are her favorites
He adds them to their shared playlist and ignores her when she plays those songs more
Over time they make a lot of joined playlists
Some to work out and train to, some to hype them up before a mission, some to wind down after a mission, some to play when they have nightmares
It’s something that they both enjoy more than they probably should
Obi-Wan jokes that some of those playlists will be the death of him
Ahsoka runs abnormally hot to the point where she could wear shorts in winter and Anakin runs cold enough to be confused for a corpse
Obi-Wan Padme and Ahsoka all agree that he needs to get checked out cause no way is it healthy to be that cold
They're both fine in their rooms where Ahsoka can blast the AC and Anakin can turn the heater up as high as he needs
But the common room is where the bickering happens such as “Jesus snips I didn’t realize we lived on Hoth” or “I’m so sorry master that every room can feel like Mustafar”
I also know that they both get nightmares like Earth-shaking soul shattering nightmares
Some where they get abandoned some when they can’t save each other in time and some where they have to kill each other
Not a lot of words need to be said when Ahsoka wakes Anakin out of a dead sleep with tears in her eyes or when Ahsoka wakes up cause Anakin is checking in on her for the third time that night
They both just grab as many pillows and blankets as they can carry so they can make the world's best pillow fort
Obi-Wan has grown accustomed to finding them cuddled up on the floor while the credits of a shitty old movie roll in the background
When they get older I feel like they unlock the childhood nickname status
Don't get me wrong snips and sky guy are their normal nicknames and will never go away but those are mostly used when they’re out in public or on the battlefield
When they’re around people they trust like Obi-Wan and Padme you’ll hear questions like “You good Ani?” or “Be safe Soka”
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