#his biggest op is 9 he's so funny
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jialun was sick of his younger sibling arguing all day so he made them touch grass for the afternoon. he ended up teaching chu hua how to ride her bike and failing to teach zi rui how to play football
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crcom: kamigami no asobi
episode 1
- what the fuck is the opening scene
- no seriously what the fuck?!
- please put on pants
- everyone needs a break from serious stuff and this was my choice, i do not regret it at all
- sword portkey!!
- ~pretty boys with flowers~
- pleasantly surprised by the different mythologies being represented/used
- i think i found the main love interest, spoiler alert he’s blond
episode 2
- do you get on the pegasus with the pretty boy you just met? of course you do this is a romance!
- can you fuck the teacher? asking for a friend
episode 3
- beach episode?
- stripping! because everyone wants to see shirtless anime boys!
- ah yes fireworks make everything better
- the more i hear apollon’s voice the more it annoys me
episode 4
- “going home club” i would join that lol
- hades is a drama queen
- something tells me the boys™ don’t want you talking to hades, that was too many accidents to be a coincidence
- oh my god he likes making puns
episode 5
- thoth has some great nicknames for the boys™
- mmmmm plot induced sword fights
- i spy a tsundere
- it seems we have entered the one episode per character focus segment
- why does she have to be in mortal danger so often
- we made it to the unlocking tragic backstories part
episode 6
- i’m all for the “physically stuck together until emotions happen” trope, but handcuffs (deathnote style) are more fun than rings
- haha thoth just,,,kabedon’ed yui while Tsukito was kneeling on the floor
- let me just cross off “stalking friends while they are on a date” cliche
episode 7
- how did loki miss the entire premise of the show? of course yui is human
- loki you gotta stop being jealous and flirting with balder by talking about meat
- someone tell loki that seducing your ex’s current crush is not a good idea
episode 8
- those are the biggest and creepiest candles ever apollon
- thoth...is a good business man but what is his obsession with red bean soup
- of all the characters to have a yandere side, i was not expecting balder
- ...maybe not ex’s with the amount of be together forever talk between loki and balder
- wait what??!! cliff hanger much??!!
episode 9
- haha the comments on crunchyroll for this episode (and most of the others) are talking about thoth and his wall slams
-
closing remarks
- not my favorite reverse harem/romance anime (it’s kinda bland?) but it has funny and cute moments
- if you like pretty boy fanservice, you will probably like this
- the op and ed are pretty too
#kamigami no asobi#crcom#crcom anime#yui kusanagi#Apollon Agana Belea#Hades Aidoneus#Tsukito Totsuka#Takeru Totsuka#Balder Hringhorni#Loki Laevatein#Thor Megingjard#Dionysus Thyrsos#Thoth Caduceus#Zeus Keraunos
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Umireread: Legend of the Golden Witch - Chapter 8: Legend of the Gold
Sat, Oct 4 1986 - 10:00PM
The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Please do not read if you are yet to finish it.
Taking a quick second here to say that I’m kind of disappointed that the Steam Version doesn’t play the OP every time you boot it up. I really loved booting it up every day during my initial read and watching it to get myself hyped again. Like yeah, I suppose nowadays I can just watch it on youtube whenever I want, but it’s just not the same, you know?
It’s almost like having the fantasy they’d constructed of their parents shattered by the grim truth of reality is a negative thing or something. Someone should write a 1.1 million word visual novel about that idea
23 year old talking down to a 17 year old moment. It’s always funny how young adults see themselves as full fledged adults rather than kids.
Yeah wow this scene is really going all in on the theme, huh. At first glance, it’s a pretty normal scene of kids being upset that their parents are mad. But really it’s just another proxy of the horrors of truth without kindness.
Saving this as a reaction image for whenever Battler says something perverted.
And so our great countdown begins! Honestly one of the coolest parts of the overall mystery of Umineko is going through the motions of there being a potential 19th person on the island, to there only being the known 18, to Kinzo being dead, to Shannon and Kanon being a single person. So, so good.
Another one of those lines where Ryukishi definitely smiled to himself while writing it. Yeah, there sure aren’t a full 18 people on the island!
Oh, and here’s our first Devil’s Proof - it’s interesting that Battler is the one to bring it up. I wonder if this is a concept that he discovered on his own, or whether it’s another hand-me-down from Kyrie that he’s grown accustomed to.
And hey, Chessboard Thinking! I guess this chapter is just “THEY SAID THE THING” central. I suppose that makes sense given this chapter is basically named after the episode title.
I’m not so fond of it when Ryukishi has a character do something and then immediately use the narrator to talk about them doing it, but this kind of line is really good in my opinion. We picked up on Battler using this type of thinking on the boat in Chapter 1, and now we’re getting confirmation here (several hours later) that it’s something that he picked up from Kyrie. If nothing else, I’m glad that Ryukishi isn’t the kind of writer who’d say this without justifying it elsewhere with an example.
Kyrie caps off this section by saying that her logic is full of holes, but honestly, she lays out a pretty solid deduction. It’s funny how many times someone will get something right and then go “nah that can’t be it”.
Man, my heart really breaks for Maria here. REALLY liking her more than I did first time round. I kind of want to say that she’s even more upset here than she was at Rosa’s mother of the year moment in the rose garden, which is an interesting look into her psyche if so.
God, the cut back to Kyrie here is stark. A 9 year old is all by herself in the hall, practically traumatised, and here’s Kyrie going “hey she can give us the answers!”
What makes this one interesting, however, is that it’s framed as Kyrie trying to cheer Battler up. I’m… not entirely sure I agree with this being portrayed as a good thing? Like, it’s not a conversation Maria will learn about, so it’s not going to hurt her, but being so lackadaisical to someone else’s suffering doesn’t sit well with me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the world’s biggest advocate for “Don’t set yourself on fire to make others feel warm”, but I kind of wish there was a little more here about care for Maria’s wellbeing from at least Battler (if not Kyrie). I don’t know, this one just feels a little off.
So this is probably going to be my hottest take for the entire reread - but I don’t like this line.
When you read it the first time, it’s a HUGE point of intrigue, and honestly one that causes a lot of readers to perk up and start paying attention. After all, murder mystery, Epitaph talks about sacrifices, and now someone says they’re going to be killed? That’s got to be important.
But the thing is, I feel it’s a little… unwarranted? Like, in hindsight, this line feels way too dramatic. I’d argue it’s unearned, honestly. I’m not dismissing Rudolf’s sentiment behind this line, but given what he’s alluding to - a confession about Battler’s true lineage - it definitely feels like it’s being written unrealistically to make the story seem more mysterious. I just can’t see anyone actually saying this in this specific manner for the given topic.
Of course, a facetious “You’re probably gonna kill me” doesn’t carry the same weight, so trying to find something that keeps the mystery without sounding needlessly obtuse is kind of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. I guess I’d opt for something like “There’s something that’s been building up for a while… And it’s gonna come to a head tonight. …Honestly, it’ll be a miracle if I’m still here in the morning.�� That’s still a bit needlessly obtuse, but it feels way more natural given the circumstances.
After the earlier observation of “Episode 1 is written with an intent by Yasu to make Natsuhi suffer”, I can’t help but notice it showing up over and over again.
Once again we’re literally telling it as it is. I do wonder how different people would be treating this if it hadn’t first been introduced as Genji dressed up as Beatrice to discredit it.
Yeah Yasu is REALLY going in on Natsuhi here. It’s uncanny.
LIKE FOR REAL, ALL IN
You know, I was about to comment about how tense this scene is, getting everyone into position for the first twilight. Making a point to separate the different groups. And then Battler just has to go and say this, huh.
Another scene where both Shannon and Kanon are being addressed independently by Genji. Kind of interesting to think of it as the final meeting for how the night is going to go.
A special case indeed.
Another win for self indulgent self insert Yasu writing her to be sleeping in the same place as her crush. Next you’ll tell me there was only one bed.
It’s EXCEPTIONALLY funny to have Shannon gushing over Battler, and then the plot IMMEDIATELY misguiding you to George. I legit don’t think there is any way you could even notice this on a first time read unless you were approaching Umineko from an uncannily adversarial approach. Like, I think it’s reasonable to pick up on Kanon potentially liking Battler from the big bulging muscles scene earlier, but unless you’d somehow figured out them both being the same person, I don’t think you’d really be able to pick up on this detail from what you’d already seen from Shannon.
Ah, and here’s the Fukuin name drop. Very funny that the latter part of it is the “on” Kanji once again. I wonder how many more examples of Kanji wordplay we’ll see as hints to the Epitaph?
I made a note back in Chapter 3 where I’d forgot about this detail and thought the other “on” servants were additional identities of Yasu. I actually edited that post to respond to a reply about that and address it, in case anyone missed that.
You know, it’s very telling that George’s response to Shannon saying “I would have to obey that request if it was an order, since I’m furniture” isn’t “you’re not furniture”, it’s “that’s an order”. Very romantic.
George’s relationship skills in this scene overall are just pretty creepy. The impression I’m getting is that Yasu is writing this from a space of heteronormativity - by all sensible metrics, George looks like an atrocious partner for her here, but this is the kind of relationship that society wants you to have, right? He’s a rich disney prince here to whisk her away for a happily ever after. She should want this, right? She doesn’t believe that in her heart, but she feels like she should want it, so it’s written out of a place of obligation rather than love.
For some reason I remember Thank you for Being Born playing here, and man, it really isn’t. Pass isn’t a bad song, but man, I do not care for it. Another one that feels overly generic - funnily enough, it kind of reflects the forced heteronormativity by sounding like what “heartfelt confession” music should be without really saying anything special, but I’m almost certain that isn’t intentional.
Yeah George? You sure understand the meaning? Not even a hint that there’s something more going on under the surface here?
Really, the most realistic part of Umineko is that I’d also want to kill everyone in my immediate vicinity if George proposed to me.
Oh the glass shattering here is phenomenal. Perfect mood setting.
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hey i just read through ur ace attorney au comic and i just wanted to make a list of things i love about it:
-the color choice omg!!! the way u use bold colors to create stark contrasts and silhouettes is so inspired and unique
-i would sell my soul to be able to do composition as creatively as you do
-the expressions! im in love
-gregory....h
-the way you're not afraid to make edgeworth unabashedly an ass. i hate seeing him being an ass but it hits HARD. it really drives the emotions of the whole thing home
-the. the panels wi. with the three. the elevators. and then edgeworth on the stairs. i dont know what fucking emotion it makes me feel but it deals psychic damage while also adding 10 years to my lifespan
-ur style reminds me of the opening of the Great Pretender anime. which is one of my fave anime artstyles so
-(not the absolute fave im sorry but mob psycho 100 will always fuck the hardest)
-d. dahlia....the ncklace.....h
-BABY MIA
-literally everything about part 9. i cant. i cant even words about it
-OK I CAN DO ONE WORDS ABOUT IT AND THAT'S. EDGEWORTH'S FACE WHEN HE WAKES UP I CACKLED
-WHY IS THE BLUE BADGER IN THE FUCKING REALM OF THE DEAD???????????
-the 3d glasses that mia and edgeworth wear
-mia isn't dead she's braindead....is this....a surprise tool that will help us later?
-phoenix choosing all the dumb fuckin investigation options that we didn't choose in our playthrough because neither of us can handle secondhand embarassment
-all the little stylistic flourishes! from the dialogue boxes to the silhouettes to the little rays around miles' alarm clock
in conclusion: outstanding work op
THANK YOU SO MUCH i have put by this point literally hundreds of hours into drawing this comic so getting feedback like this means a ton to me... im glad edgeworth being a complete bastard is hitting because tbh i feel like there's a tendency to underplay exactly how awful edgeworth was when he was at his Awfulest but i think the extremely good redemption arc he gets in canon is a lot more meaningful when you remember that he was genuinely a pretty terrible person who ruined a lot of (very likely innocent) lives without it ever really registering as an issue for him.
i have not actually seen great pretender but i've heard of it and so i just went and watched the opening on youtube and this is a very flattering comparison so thank you! this is exactly the kind of art i like. and mob psycho too, definitely one of my favorites of all time - i was literally just watching it in stream with a friend for the millionth time directly before seeing this ask, and we were as always gushing about how much we like both the directing of the anime and the paneling in the manga. definitely some of my biggest artistic inspiration. i originally wanted to go into the animation industry and never really intended to draw comics so pretty much everything my comics do is to try and attempt to capture the really fun transitions and motions of animation within the confines of a static image, so i'm glad it's having some of that impact.
the proto-badger is in the realm of the dead because i think it would be funny for him to be there. that's the whole truth of it.
mia being braindead rather than dead is very much a surprise tool that will help us later - now that i've done all of the Setup things are going to begin diverting more heavily from the original sequence of events in the game. otherwise, pretty much everything would be essentially identical to the way it plays out in canon and there's not really any fun in drawing something like that. so yeah. lots more to do ! hope y'all like the rest of what i've got planned !
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Of crocodiles and rings and a possible connection to a teased weakness
Crocodile is a guy that is real extra and dresses sharp and loves his bling bling, right? He’s a man of high standards, so of course, he’s gotta wear bling to show that. Other bling loving characters are Capone Bege and Blackbeard for example. All three of them like to show off that bling. Now why do I mention the other two? Coz look at these three bling loving gentlemen, wearing rings on every finger and tell me where the difference lies. I’ll wait.
Exactly!
As opposed to Bege and Blackbeard, Crocodile doesn’t wear a ring on every finger. Obviously he cannot wear 10 rings coz he only got one hand with 5 fingers but he also never wears 5 rings. No, no. This guy, ladies and gentlemen, kinda makes it a point to always leave out one finger and that’s the ring finger. Ha- interesting.
Now, of course this could be mere coincidence. But let’s be realistic here, it’s Oda. He clearly has a reason for it as he’s been true to this detail ever since Crocodile was introduced over a decade ago and the only real question is ‘why’?
Why would Crocodile do that? He clearly loves wearing rings so why not wear them on every finger? Why leave out the ring finger for crying out loud? If one wanted to leave a finger without a ring, one would probably leave out the pinky or the thumb but who puts rings on every finger and leaves out the ring finger? I tell you who.
Crocodile. That’s who.
If you’re one who believes in symbolism and all that stuff, then you’d probably find it interesting that the ring finger symbolises releationships with others especially romantical ones as it is seen closest to the heart and therefore or because of it is the finger a wedding ring is worn on. In most cultures the engagement ring is worn on the right hand and the wedding ring on the left as the right hand is often the ‘physical’ one and has a greater visibility. It’s probably interesting to note that the left hand is considered to represent your character and beliefs. Ha. Interesting that Crocodile is missing that one, huh? Anyhow, in Crocodile’s case left or right hand doesn’t really matter as he only has one left (duh) so an argument can be made that sides don’t matter and the importance lies on the finger itself.
The way it looks right now is that he’s making a statement leaving out the ring finger and there are a few possibilites here. Of course it could be a family ring and he could be from an important family but really, not only would that be a bit to similar to Doflamingo, it would also not make sense to not just replace the family ring on the occations he’s not wearing it. But he never wears a ring on that finger so one can only come to the conclusion that there’s some sentimental thought behind that.
The most logical would be that there is a ring he believes should be on that finger. Either he’s keeping it free for a future event coz he doesn’t have the ring yet (which I doubt) or he’s keeping it free coz technically there already is a ring for the finger. This could be a ring he doesn’t have anymore and regrets it (like he lost it with his left hand or threw it away) or a ring he does have but decides not to wear for his own reasons. Whichever it is, it clearly has such an important value that he doesn’t just covers it up or replaces it.
Now, given the ring finger and it’s symbolism the thought of a wedding ring isn’t too far fetched. We don’t know enough about his past to say that he could never have been married so I think it’s worth looking into.
Let’s just imagine for a second, that the ring missing is indeed a wedding ring, what could that mean?
He could have had a wife but she died and even though he’d technically not be married anymore, people who lost their partner almost always keep their wedding ring as a memento. If they move on, they don’t wear it anymore but they often keep it. This could give another perspective to the ‘wounds’ Daz was referring to after Marineford as he was clearly not talking about Luffy’s physical wounds but about the emotional wounds that came with losing a loved one.
Crocodile could have had a wife but she betrayed him and he took the ring off as to break the relationship and connection. Then the choice to not wear a ring on that finger in the future could serve as a reminder to himself not to trust people, not even those close to you. This could possibly explain his huge trust issues.
However, these two scenarios, while possible, don’t strike me as the most likely simply due to the two following scenes:
“If you want to protect something, do it right!!”
This could be totally random and only refer to the moment at hand but it could also indicate that he knows a thing or two about how to successfully protect someone. Which leads us to the infamous
“I know one of his weaknesses ...!! But if he cooperates with us ... then I won’t say anything about it!!”
Think about it, the biggest weakness ANY pirate of Crocodiles caliber could have is a loved one or people they care about and their identity and location to be known by the public or enemies (marines, pirates etc.) because no matter how powerful a pirate you are, if information like that was to spread and reach the wrong ears, this could have catastrophic consequences for you and the people you care about. It’s used over and over in OP stories like when the marines hunted down Gol D. Rogers offspring and slaughtered all newborn who could potentially have been Roger’s child or when the marines swore to kill Luffy for being Dragon’s son or when Zeff was used as leverage to force Sanji to comply. I doubt anyone knows Usopp is Yasopp’s son or that he had a woman and child in Syrup village otherwise someone would have probably attacked them to get back at Yasopp. Maybe that’s one of the reasons he left them. As to protect them.
Ivankov and Croc met years ago when Croc was still considered a rookie, so in his early/mid twenties. If there is indeed a ring to that finger and the person is still alive, Ivankov could know her identity or location and this could totally be the weakness Ivankov was refering to. Of course this only works if the person is still alive.
Now I know, you’re probably scratching your head, thinking I might be a bit nuts going this direction considering it’s Crocodile we’re talking about but really, think about it. His choice of jewelry is mega weird so what could be the reaaon for it? Also it’s hardly the weirdest theory out there (looking at you femCroc theorists).
This would also tie in neatly with why he decided to have his Baroque agents working in teams of two with male/female. I mean, unlike other characters, he clearly doesn't seem to see women as the weaker sex and him having his agents work in pairs has to be grounded somewhere. Maybe he was raised like that and his parents where a good example of how well men and women complement each other or maybe he made the experience himself. If so, I tend to think that he wasn't betrayed by the woman... or maybe he was and that's one of the reasons why he was so paranoid and basically expected Robin to betray him. All possible, really.
It’s also apparent that Oda incorporates marriages a lot more often nowadays than he did in the early years of One Piece. Mr 9 and Mrs Mondey got married on a cover page and have a baby, Capone got married and his henchman Gotty married too, Sai and Baby 5 married, Sanji and Pudding were meant to marry and let’s not forget poor Senior Pink’s backstory.
Last but not least, I’d like to point out a seemingly random fan question Oda answered in an SBS which seems just kinda odd once you consider everything I said above.
Now the question focuses on “they never had a child” and “I wonder what faces their children would have”, yet Oda starts with “They’ve been to weddings before ...” ... WOW. Really? Why would he say that? XD No one even asked about weddings. Funny. So they’ve been to weddings, huh? As what? Guests? Grooms? You know? It doesn’t seem to mean anything but if you consider Crocodile’s rings and such imo it’s just a weird thing to say. Then the mysterious “I wouldn’t say whether they had children or not ...” .....
Note: Especially during Alabasta Oda often forgets to draw Croc’s rings at all or accidentally leaves out the wrong finger but he is consistent with the rings since Impel Down. He still forgets them from time to time but he doesn’t switch the fingers anymore so one could reason that he had a vague idea of Crocodile’s reasons behind the rings when he introduced him but only solidified it or gave it more details once Croc showed back up. The anime and games however often just leave out the wrong ring probably thinking that it doesn’t matter.
#one piece#sir crocodile#crocodile#eiichiro oda#one piece theory#crocodile theory#wani yarou#crocoboy
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Cat’s Not-All-Encompassing Character Ranking
Okay, so I have to admit that I omitted a lot of characters I don't have strong opinions on. Most of them were one-off akumas, so don't get your panties in a twist, your faves are probably still on here (and ranked lower than you think).
As a preface again, these are just my personal opinions. They can't hurt you. You can still like characters more or less than me. And I don't care how you feel about them. This list is for me. And the person that asked for it. So shut up. Go make your own rank list if you’re so butthurt.
We're going in reverse order this time, starting from the bottom:
84. Gabriel Agreste- I mean, is anyone surprised? I am not private about how I think Gabriel should go to jail. Or fall off a cliff. Or be erased from existence. Rip to those that like him, but I’m different.
83. Thomas Astruc- Honestly, he’s down here on principle. Self-inserts are generally a no-no, and I just laugh every time I see him on screen because he really put himself in this show and said boohoo no one appreciates me XD
82. Bob Roth- I feel like this one should also be obvious. He’s just a dick. Terrible human. I give him 0 stars.
81. Tomoe Tsurugi- We all collectively hate her, right? It’s not just me?
80. Su Han- This mans has small peepee energy. And he bad mouthed Fu, so get FUCKED, my dude.
79. Rolland Dupain- Listen, I get it, he liked Marinette in the end, but I could do without the racism.
78. Nathalie Sancoeur- My opinion of Nathalie took a nosedive after the s2 finale. I just do not care that she is in love with her boss. Don’t care that she’s dying. Just do not have it in me.
77. XY- Justin Bieber ass wannabe.
76. Nora Cesiare- I didn’t care for Nora. I know Thomas loves her, but the overbearing sibling trope is tired.
75. Anarka Couffaine- I underestimated how much I don’t really like her. Like, it’s not full-on hate, but I just do not care for her.
74. Otis Cesaire- Got akumatized because a kid said he could outrun a panther. I’m still not over it, Otis.
73. Andre Bourgeois- No love for the crooked mayor. I hope your wife divorces you.
72. Alec Cataldi- The real villain of Stormy Weather. Like fr why is he such an asshole?
71. Roger Raincomprix- Is Officer Roger just doing his best? Sometimes. But like sometimes this mans just needs to take a chill pill.
70. M. D'Argencourt- Please get out of the 1600s
69. Ella/Etta- These two are basically the same character, and I am indifferent to both of them.
68. KnightOwl/Barbara- Listen, I would have liked you more if you were less controlling.
67. Majestia- Same as above, but like I guess I like you more
66. Theo- *Mean Girls principal voice* Stay away from underaged girls!
65. Andre the ice cream man- I just want a scoop of chocolate, Andre. Is that too much to ask??
64. Amelie Graham de Vanily- We haven’t seen much of her, but she seems like a snake bitch.
63. M. Kubdel- I mean, if my son wanted to resurrect an ancient mummy and believed in aliens, I’d give the family heirloom to my daughter too.
62. Jalil Kubdel- Lolol, buddy, pal, dude, my guy. Chill.
61. Vincent (Adrien's photographer)- Head empty. Mom’s spaghetti. Idk he’s alright.
60. Manon- I don’t hate Manon. She just gets on my nerves every time she talks.
59. M. Ramier- This mans got akumatized a billion times because he gets emotional about pigeons. I mean, honestly mood.
58. Mme. Mendeleiev- She doesn’t put up with Chloe’s shit, and we respect her for this.
57. Baby August- Someone just give this mans some food. He’s a growing boy.
56. Santa Claus- If I were Santa, I too would list Ladybug as the best kid in the world.
55. Art Teacher- He doesn’t even have a name, but I vibe with him. He seems like he likes to paint scenes of nature with his pet squirrels.
54. Prince Ali- Lil mans just wanted to have a good time. I can respect that.
53. Duusu- Duusu, I get that your Miraculous was broken, but get with the program, girl. You is a hostage.
52. Other Kwamis- Idk, all the ones we haven’t seen as much. I don’t have real opinions on them yet. Just neutral.
51. Sass- He gives me dad vibes.
50. M. Damocles- You go, you funky owl man
49. Jean (Chloe's Butler)- He deserves a raise. What is your name, sir? We may never know.
48. Mireille Caquet- She’s pretty cute. No complaints.
47. Aurore Beaureal- Baby’s first akuma. I love her design. She’s a cutie.
46. Claudie Kante (Max’s mom)- This womans just wanted to go to space and live her dream. We stan a hardworking queen.
45. Hot Dog Dan- I like him more than Andre the ice cream fraud. Sure, my hotdog might turn me purple, but if I ask for chili on it, I bet he’d oblige.
44. Nadja Chamack- I mean, she’s doing her best.
43. Audrey Bourgeois- So, as I said in the episode ranking, I have a love-hate relationship with Audrey. She’s the worst, but that’s why I love her. I love her ironically. Like, yeah she’s atrocious, but I just want to watch her burn the world.
42. Luka Couffaine- Directly in the middle, like he’s always been.
41. Nathaniel Kurtzberg- My opinion of Nath improved after Reverser surprisingly. I ship it.
40. Chris Lahiffe- I like Chris better than Ella/Etta. He’s just a little mans out here living life wanting to grow up. Don’t believe it, Chris. Stay little forever. Being an adult suuuuucks.
39. Fang the Crocodile- The goodest boy.
38. Nooroo- I just want to give him a hug.
37. Mlle. Bustier- She’s doing her best, but I mean, when ya whole class keeps getting turned into supervillains, I’m surprised she’s not an alcoholic.
36. Penny Rolling- I just like her. I think she’s neat.
35. Ondine- Mermaid queen! She’s so sweet, and I love her with Kim. I hope we see more of her in the future.
34. Marc Anciel- Marc is a little cutie bean. Idc if he’s based off one of Thomas’s irl friends. He can stay.
33. Wayzz- He loves Master Fu so much I cry.
32. Felix Graham de Vanily- I know everyone hates canon Felix, but tbh he exudes massive chaotic neutral gremlin energy, and I actually kinda vibe with that. And he pisses with his uncle which is a whole ass mood.
31. Tikki- Tikki is very cute, but bby please work on the preaching. You don’t always know what’s right, babe.
30. Sabrina Raincomprix- Sabrina deserves better. I hope we see good things happen for her.
29. Lila Rossi- Surprised? I actually like Lila. The first fic I ever wrote for this fandom was a Lila redemption. I think she is a good antagonist and foil to Marinette. I absolutely want to see her get dunked on in canon, but that doesn’t mean I hate her.
28. Wayhem- I don’t know why, but Wayhem makes me laugh. I love him XD
27. Uncle Cheng- He’s just a good mans with a birb who wants to make you tasty food. What’s not to like?
26. Trixx- Trixx shot up after GoS. Chaotic bean make Eiffel Tower go bendy
25. Jess- She’s pretty cool. She’s a vibe.
24. Aeon- The cutest bean!!! She saw Adrien and Marinette and said yep. Those two are meant to be together. Jess, we gotta make it happen.
23. Ivan Bruel- Ivan is such a gentle bean. We love him.
22. Mylene Haprele- Smol
21. Fei Wu- I still have not watched the Shanghai special with subs, but I liked her.
20. Gina Dupain- The grandma I aspire to be.
19. Marianne Lenoir- I love her. She is good. She and Fu are so cute. And she seems like she would have kicked le ass back in the day. (and even now)
18. Rose Lavillant- I am so excited for Pigella!! Rose is too cute. We love her.
17. Gorilla- aka Adrien’s real dad. If the series doesn’t end with Gabriel getting yeeted into the stratosphere and Gorilla adopting Adrien, I don’t want it.
16. Clara Nightingale- She’s in love with Marinette. You can’t change my mind. 16 is also how old I hc her to be, so don’t nobody come for me.
15. Tom Dupain- Most. Supportive. Dad. Soft bean. Just wants to make you fresh bread.
14. Sabine Cheng- Good mom vibes. We love to see her.
13. Juleka Couffaine- Shy goth bean. Just wants to have her picture taken. Definitely a lesbian. We stan.
12. Nino Lahiffe- The goodest boy. He’s just out here doing his best, loving his friends.
11. Chloe Bourgeois- Chloe is another one I have a love-hate relationship with. Her brattiness is funny to me. We had high hopes for her. Honestly, she ranks this high because I like to play with her in fic.
10. Max Kante- He smol and smort. And I adore his friendship with Kim and the fact that he made an AI himself at 14. What a legend.
9. Alya Cesaire- Rip to Alya salters, but I’m different. Outside of Chameleon, Alya is fine. She’s a supportive bff. All yall people that are mad she doesn’t kiss Marinette’s ass all the time need to go out and make real friends. I said what I said.
8. Alix Kubdel- I love Alix. I love how she is always so done with all the lovey-dovey bullshit. She is tiny queen, and Bunnix, while OP af, is still super cool. We love to see her.
7. Kagami Tsurugi- I will fight anyone who shits on Kagami. She has done nothing wrong, you guys are just haters. All she did was exist, and yall said, wow what a toxic bitch?? Disgraceful.
6. Jagged Stone- We are going to ignore the deadbeat dad trope that canon thrust upon him. He is a Marinette stan, and we love that.
5. Kim Le Chien- I really love Kim, you guys. Does that surprise you? Listen, my favorite male character types are sweet beans and himbos. Kim is both of these.
4. Master Fu- If you didn’t pick up on how much I love Fu from the episodes ranking, then idk what to tell you. I want him to be my grandpa. I would trust this mans with my life. He did his best. You paint those pictures, you funky little man. I love you.
3. Plagg- My galaxy trash man. Love him. 10/10 chefs kisses all around.
2. Adrien Agreste- The biggest Marinette stan there is. I just want him to kiss her on the face. And marry her. Idk, I just think that would be neat if he could do that. I just want good things for them.
1. Marinette Dupain-Cheng- Honestly, are you surprised? I have always been and always will be a Marinette stan. If you expected anyone else to be in this spot, then clown suit rentals are off to the left.
#cat speaks#cat spoils#character ranking#okay fr tho dont ever ask me for anything ever again#take your complaints to your dashboard button and off my blog#idc if you dont like my ranks#theyre not for you#heck off
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revolutionary girl utena review
ep 1-5
the plot is actually kinda different from what I thought ?? in my mind the plot was: utena was a girl in a princess school who each and every princess would be "conquered" (for a lack of better words rn) in a ceremonial duel by a prince who fancied them, maybe she didnt wanna wanna marry anyone or she liked Anthy already but anyway in my mind utena showed up in the ceremony with duel clothing and then, in a very brave tm like-scene, she would openly declare she refused to be conquered by anyone and tbh I'm not even sure how Anthy would come into the plot... but back into what actually happened in the episodes everything so far is very introductory and just showing what mechanics will be explored further down the line I think?? the op is really good too
also every boy so far reminds me so much of knights of the zodiac?? maybe it's just the design I guess...) and nanami can get these hands, jealousy is a disease and she's the sickest person on earth for all I know
dont ask me why bit I just feel like room of mirrors - gfriend has a very well fitting vibe for it but I'm not exactly sure why hm.... 🤔🤔
ep 6-12
ok so why does this school just have random animals around 😐 I could understand the horse but a bull and a kangaroo?? what ...
touga just says the most random dramatic things and then just casually says anyone who believes in friendship is a fool ?? the guy wouldnt last a day in the naruto universe tbh, he kinda irks me in some way but I'm not sure why so I'll live with this strange feeling for a while I guess
↳ okay so watching ep 10 made me especially kinda creeped out, I know I've watched only 10 eps so far but like can he fall downstairs and break a neck or something already ...
also haha what if I watched that bet on it fmv and gave myself a bunch of spoilers would that be funny or what 😍 this is why i cant have nice things yall.... hope my memory goes to shit when sleep so I dont remember about it this week while I finish it
I feel like the main thing on the episodes are parallels, one way or another I always feel like they're setting up parallels and giving me clues for a bigger picture and a deeper plot arc that is still to come and the bet on it fmv just made this impression stronger, also I wanna say it's done in a good way, one that is both mysterious (??) and "honey you've got a big storm coming" at the same time 🤔🤔 much to think about honestly
↳ just saw ep 11 and even though I already knew this was coming sooner or later it still felt like crap seeing utena lose to dick head, at the end of the episode when he says anthy was always just reflecting utena's own wishes for himemiya (in another way bc I dont remenber the exact words) it felt like 😐 bc yes I knew that (the way she was working her thoughts was simply a copy and paste of what utena was saying) at all time I kept those essays about anthy in my head, I dont think theyll be truly relatable to what I'm seeing rn but yeah anthy rights (even though I know you betray/cheat on utena down the line bc of the bet on it fmv but I'm sure you had your own motivation)
↳ saw ep 12 bc I just couldnt handle being in a cliffhanger and yeah it happened what I absolutely thought it would lmao not that it was that difficult to foresee but yeah, I kinda liked how utena did it for her instead of being like "oh I wanna save anthy from touga" and treating her like a damsel in distress (I know that's kinda her position as the rose bride for what I've been told so far and that this is a subject spoken about in many many essays on tumblr but yeah) bc so far she's been treated as a trophy and a way to get something else, for the green haired guy it was a way to see something eternal, for miki it was a way to hold on into his "shining thing" and for touga it seems (so far) like a way to manipulate (just like he does with nanami) and just mark his position as above everyone else as he seems to view himself?? man I might be saying random stuff rn but it kinda does makes sense in my mind with the information I've had to this point
ep 13-25
honestly 😐😐 through 9 whole episodes I felt like they were trying to make the side characters deeper and show their hidden face and motivations but it felt so shallow...... not even actually shallow, just not deep enough that it would make me care about these characters and the fact there was no actual build to showing us why we're getting to know these characters backgrounds was just kinda meh too, didnt really help that all episodes had all the same formula and the same timing just for the developers made in those episodes be forgotten at the end and also just that pink haired guy could be like "ah failure again", it felt like watching the same episode over and over again, it was really tiring and like?? girl help I do not care about these characters at all, I feel like it could have been done well (like the keiko ep in comparison to the furuba chapter that deals with the yuki appreciation (??) club president graduating.... the way this ep was done and setup didn't really bring me any emotions) overall not to my taste and tbh I feel like I could have skipped all those episodes except for maybe the miki and juri one so 😑
all nanami focused episodes are the worst so far, she's so boring and I cant stand now annoying she is, the diary episode?? the cow episode?? the episode when tsuwabiki fuels with utena?? honestly I know they're trying to show me a better and different side of her but it just doesnt!! work!! bc i feel no sympathy for her, my biggest wish rn is her and touga just disappearing and no more filler episodes🗣🗣
I thought akio was utena's prince?? but apparently he's just anthy's brother and like.. I'm do done with his little talks with utena and yadda yadda, I just wanna see their duel is that too much to ask I'm dying over here (if this lenga lenga continues until ep 25 i will be so mad bc why were so many episodes wasted on such boring and and not necessary side characters backstories?? idc about them at all man aaaaaaaaaa)
↳ ep 25 was good finally we got what we deserve boys 😭😭😭😭😭 can utena just beat up akio already I'm tired of his ass, he exhales both "I'm a feminist I even take women studies classes #herstory" and "if she breathes she's a thot" energy also he has 0 style that mullet is simply horrible I bet there's a hairstylist community who considers him a criminal bc like 😐 it is simply so bad (q bit less when it's tied up but when it's all lose jesus Christ)
also touga thinks he's suuuuch a genius, sooo smart like king, I do not care about you at all can you shut the fuck up please and can we tall about the pink haired guy episode?? wack. honestly thought it would be more emotional or something, I binge watched 12 episodes with his ugly haircut face and did not even feel a thing he can choke I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ANTHY TAKING A SWORD OUT OF UTENA'S CHEST??? OSCAR WORTHY KINGS❗❗❗and then her lame ass brother being like "oh ho ho idk idk" shut up no one cares no one cares I swear to you no one cares shut uuuuup
ep 25-39
first of all, ep 25 was good but kinda reminded me of the nine episodes (13 until 21) where absolutely nothing interesting happened so I hope I'm wrong also can I just say just seeing the preview of the next episode made me roll my eyes so bad I almsot saw my brain?? bc yeah I'm fucking tired of nanami fosuced episodes she's so annoying oh my god nobody cares about a goddamn egg and much less one coming from her let her die or something pls she's so annoying there's nothing I've learned about her that was not against my own will I'm basically rotting over here 🤒
↳ ep 30 has me thinking Akio has a foot fetish or something 😐 bruh leave utena aloooooone I already know your plans and schemes you're not fooling anyone that's embarrassing for u and also... utena you're not very bright are you.... you start seeing every duelist you face with the same exact car and then when you see akio has the same car you didnt even stop to think about it that 1+1 equals 2 ... girl help yourself 😐
↳ yet again another nanami focused ep 😐😐😐😐😐 even though I do understand her better now I still don't find her particularly enjoyable to watch, call me a woman hater but like. idk she's still a bit annoying to me (but touga is straight up evil and is manipulating her so I feel bad for feeling like that tho.....)
↳ ok last 2 eps to go but listen. I thought the akio duel would have happened much sooner, maybe on ep 33 max but well didn't this age well lmao ngl, it did seem a bit too slow paced for my personal taste but also I feel like there's a certain level of drama that comes with slowing the pace down....
↳ aaaaaa yall I'm kinda 😢😭 over the ending omg........... even though it took the best of me to keep going in some parts I still enjoyed the ending aaaaa I thought i wouldnt really like it bc I just usually dont enjoy this type of ending but stil 😢😢😢😢 wait for me utena 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 girl I cried and then anthy walking in the end god utena and anthy holding hands 😭😭😭😭 akio can suck my dick
there's obviously many things I've missed or that I kinda didnt really pay attendance to so please dont take this serious, I was just writing as I watched the episodes so it's more like a thought compilation than anything, still I can see why there's many essays written about it and why it is held as a masterpiece by so many people
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Top 20 Games of the Decade
Hi, I felt like writing about my top 20 games of the decade because I kept thinking about it. This is a semi-ranked list, but I decided not to throw numbers into the mix since, really, outside of the top 2, I can’t think of how to rank the games prior to them. I also commissioned hyiroaerak (@/HRAK__S2 on twitter, https://hyiroaerak.weebly.com/work.html) for art to commemorate this occasion. Our characters are cosplaying as characters from our games of the decade!
Mega Man 10
I actually like Mega Man 10 more than Mega Man 9 out of the two platformer revival games in this series. Though a bit of background on this: Mega Man 4 is my favourite, and I prefer the games that are not 2, 6, 7, or 11, so I suppose that contextualises this for others. Either way, despite it not having weapons that were as useful as Mega Man 9’s, I felt like 10’s level design and pacing worked more for me in my favour. Though I’m saying that as someone who liked the double fortress design in earlier games so that might invalidate how I feel.
Time Attack mode from Mega Man 9 returns as well as Proto Man (but he’s unlockable right off the bat). It also has a proper Challenge Mode compared to Mega Man 9’s challenges, whereby challenges for certain levels or bosses are unlocked when you actually do it in the main game. Being able to play as Proto Man off the bat allows for the fluidity Mega Man had in 3 and beyond by letting you slide and use charged shots. I personally liked being able to play as Proto Man off the bat as while he has the 3 and beyond advantages for his moveset, he is a glass cannon and you still have to watch where you’re going.
I feel like the levels were a little better designed and if I needed more of a challenge, Hard Mode was still there to cut my teeth on. I liked the colour schemes throughout the level maps a lot more than 9’s as well. The bosses felt particularly gripping and trading blows with them fit into a nice rhythm.
It has more content than Mega Man 9 and I had a lot more fun with 10 than I did with either 9 or 11. The formula itself is pretty static compared to other Mega Man games, but I like simple things. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s just a nice piece of cake at the end of the day and that’s all I really want.
Trauma Team / HOSPITAL: 6人の医師
When I started university for the first time in 2006, I was pre-med. I eventually got sick and tired of the politics and people in the program (ie: folks saying they only wanted to go to med school so they can get rich or make friends with pharma reps who might give them perks), and I left the program to pursue program majors and a minor to prepare me for speech-language pathology instead.
We had a Wii in our student lounge. My main university campus wasn’t exactly big and a lot of the people who hung out in the student center were kind of cliquey. I think I had the benefit of being really good friends with one of the guys who was the biggest social butterflies at the school so I got to meet a lot of people or get involved with stuff if I felt like it. So that meant I got to play with other students in games or wi-fi sessions during classes or after classes if I didn’t have to commute home right away.
Because almost everyone I knew at my school wanted to go into medicine, everyone played the Trauma series. Some kids played Under the Knife during class. Some kids played Second Opinion on the Wii in the student lounge. Some kids played New Blood. This was before like… Farmville took over everyone’s computers at the time.
Trauma Team came out way after that, and some of us were either graduating or staying in school an extra year because we didn’t know what to do after the recession or knew what to do but needed extra courses for graduate school. So the Wii was free to use. I don’t think people hooked it up as often anymore anyway. By 2010, a lot of us who had met each other in first year decided to go our separate ways, not even in the same majors or programs anymore. A lot of us either branched out into research, psychology, neurology (like me), kinesiology, epidemiology, forensics, genetics, etc. So Trauma Team for the rest of us who were still there was a good fit.
Trauma Team took some influences from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic considering that was when the development phase occurred. Now, I live in Canada, and Canada was one of the focal points for the 2003 SARS outbreak. This was when health bodies in the country decided to make some changes to how they respond to potential pandemics. A lot of things they tell medical students or any students studying health policy (like I was at the time) emphasized how different parts of the hospital or medical or health care staff need to work together in order to care for a patient. I actually find the different professions involved in Trauma Team useful and a reflection of what my class of 2010/2011 became later on (a lot of us graduated in 2011 and took an extra year).
Diagnostics and Forensics were what I was really interested in since they don’t play the same as surgery/emergency medicine since they played out like a point-and-click. Later on in life, I had to look at so many medical reports and radiology reports and file them but by then I realised what my patients had but I can’t tell them myself since I’m not a doctor. But Trauma Team gave me a chance to do so and practice my terminology as a student. A friend of mine, who ended up becoming a doctor at a hospital in Toronto, really enjoyed endoscopy since it merely involved using the Wiimote as an endoscope and the nunchuk to steer. A lot of us played co-op too.
The difficulty in Trauma Team, I felt, was decreased from previous games. But that doesn’t really spoil it. It was a varied game and it looks fantastic. It’s a shame that the game style hasn’t been replicated or given a sequel in later years, because while I’m older and my classmates are doing completely different things and I haven’t seen some of them in years, I’d love to take a stab at these types of games with a well-practiced laboratory technologist’s hand.
Sonic Colours
I think it goes without saying. My first community when I joined the old forum was the Sonic community. Just a bunch of people who were interested in talking about Sonic so much in almost every thread that we ended up making a community thread together. I don’t post in the new forum everyone is at but I still talk to mostly everyone via different social mediums.
I wasn’t around when Sonic Colours came out but I think I remember reading the joy everyone felt when nearly universally everyone in that thread seemed to really like Sonic Colours. I remember the thread title still. I preordered Sonic Colours because apparently previews were saying it was… good? I didn’t bother playing Sonic Unleashed until after I’d joined the forum, but hearing Sonic Colours would be a return to form since I was one of those people who didn’t adjust well to the 3D games made me interested.
Sonic Colours is everything I wanted from a 3D Sonic game. Or rather, a 3D version of a platformer. I didn’t really like where 3D platformers were going because they were hard to look at, hard for me to pay attention to, and to be honest I got dizzy while playing a lot of them since you’re expected to work in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D space so it was really hard for me to process. I really like the hybrid nature of the level designs that’s where Sonic Colours got me.
Sonic Colours isn’t without its hangups: some of the levels are really short; existing mostly for ranking/getting red rings. Sonic’s jump is pretty floaty. The script is fairly short even if the jokes can be funny. Bosses are reused. Sonic Colours is not a perfect game, but the attempts it made were fantastic enough in its own right.
The music continues to be great, but the areas are visual spectacles. Whatever you think of the series, it’s fairly undeniable that the games try to have style. From the lighting, to posing, to setpieces, to colours used in assets in the level design – Sonic has always had really great ideas. Sonic Colours is no exception – areas like Aquarium Park, Planet Wisp, and Sweet Mountain have a variety of neat level ideas and they look good trying to execute it. From popcorn on the floor to one of the best darned water levels in all of video games due to the drill wisp, to a fresh take on a grassy knoll with beautiful music, Sonic Colours can bring tears to your eyes because of what it attempts. Terminal Velocity Act 2 is also one of my favourite parts of the Uncolourations games partially because it’s a well-executed setpiece, but it also showed me that maybe those 3D racing bits aren’t that bad.
The bosses may be really easy, and the final boss ends far sooner than it should before it could perfectly execute its Kamen Rider reference, but I think the point was to fully enjoy the theme park that Sonic Team threw at you this time.
In 2020 I like to say that out of all of the Uncolourations games, Sonic Unleashed is my favourite due to the balance it struck and its presentation/artstyle, and basically having one of the best soundtracks of the previous decade. But I recognise everything that Sonic Colours brought to the table. If it wasn’t for Sonic Colours, I wouldn’t be friends or acquaintances with so many people that I am with now.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Have you ever played a game that made you feel warm and toasty? Canadian winters can be really cold, you know.
When I lived at my old run-down house, my old room didn’t have good insulation. Whenever it got cold, my room got really cold. I had my own personal heater because we didn’t really have a good heating system in my room either. So I only wore flannel pyjamas, wrapped myself in faux-wool blankets all the time, and went to sleep covered in at least four quilts or comforters (which is something I still do out of habit sorry). I used to make hot choco every day because it was just so cold in my room.
I love Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes me feel warm and toasty inside because I think of being wrapped up in yarn and sheets and scarves and I just feel so happy. There are so many pastels used in KEY’s earlier stages that I can’t help but to feel toasty and happy when I’m playing it. It’s not the most challenging game. The game is really easy and all you mostly do is collect furniture, music, beads, and parts of the results wheel in every level, but I don’t think that’s the point of it. The point is just to have fun. Watching Kirby turn into a car to sprint, watching him turn into a little parachute or transform during those vehicle bits, you just can’t help but to feel so enveloped by the cute.
Being able to interact with cloth by pulling a loose button and releasing something, taking off tags, pulling on stray thread, spin balls of yarn… it feels so fulfilling because it’s a clever use of the medium. It’s exactly what you’d do if you’re stitching or knitting. Placing furniture around Kirby’s little apartment makes the Animal Crossing fan in me so happy.
I appreciate the lengths Good-Feel went to producing the level designs. They took photos of the fabric they bought and created the graphics that way. The music is calm and relaxing, with lots of woodwind and piano and lighter sounding instruments. The entire game feels so soft and sweet. It’s a visually-impressive game since everything animates incredibly fluidly.
Cuphead
Like anyone my age or older, I grew up watching a lot of older cartoons by Max Fleischer with watercolour backgrounds, hand-drawn characters with a lot of focus on expressions, rotoscoping, etc Lots of slapstick and musical scores out of that decade. I would have never believed I’d play a video game that looks like that but here we are playing Cuphead this decade.
Cuphead is a blend of that artstyle with older run and gun style games. It combines a gunning experience with puzzles, reflexive actions, and dying… and dying a lot. And learning. Underneath it’s cartoony and child-friendly veneer lies a game that is unrelentingly difficult. There aren’t really any checkpoints in the game save for one. You can’t regain lost health. It’s just you versus the game. You may spend hours on one single level learning everything about it. And you can’t beat the game until you finish off every other level on regular difficulty.
Different levels have different forms: they can be run and guns á la Contra, which are actually, oddly enough, breathing room levels. They’re probably the “easiest” levels in the game. Other types of levels can be straight up shmup-like boss fights where you’re flying in a plane. They can be hard as a regular shmup.
The best crafted types of levels are the ones that include platforming as part of their boss battles because they use the artstyle and ideas involved in the art piece as interesting platforming mechanics. You have a more limited control scheme but the scenario you’re involved in is really interesting and unique. You fight a woman in a play and the setpieces in the play change according to how far you are in the boss fight, for example. The game also has a parry mechanic whereby you can double-jump off of anything that’s coloured pink and fill your super meter in order to kill bosses faster. The parry cues change per boss so it’s really cool to see what they look like every time you encounter something new.
I think while Cuphead can be utterly unforgiving, I think it should be experienced at least once for how much work was put into making things look so fluid and how creative every boss and level can be. It’s what I wanted the UBIart framework to eventually evolve into. I think the game’s aesthetics and sound are its own reward in addition to that feeling when you finally conquer That One Boss.
Asura’s Wrath
Asura’s Wrath was a game I was incredibly iffy on even buying at all. I heard about how the ending was part of paid DLC, that the game didn’t have a lot of gameplay, and that it was incredibly unremarkable. I don’t think I had a remarkably low bar or anything for this, but I decided to purchase it on the cheap.
Asura’s Wrath definitely isn’t a game for everyone, and I feel as though it’s an acquired taste. The main character’s art might not jive well with everyone, the lack of ‘play’ will probably deter some folks, and its episodic nature/final chapter unlock sequence would probably get on people’s nerves. With that said, at first, it seems to be an action-cinematic game without necessarily expanding on the “action” part. A lot of it at first seems to be a bunch of QTEs to move the narrative along, with the narrative not necessarily being that strong in the first place. I think that’s due in part to the game’s structure initially. The first few chapters and the first act truly don’t seem very remarkable. The Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the game are very obvious and very central to the game’s plot, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be specifically mentioned whenever someone talks about the game to me. The Asuras were not one singular character or a god, but a race of warlike beings exhibiting wrath and pride. They were incorporated into Hinduism and Buddhism through their mention in The Rigveda. With that said, I was continually impressed by how many references—whether it was mere mention of regular terms/concepts/people, the artstyle and inclusions of things like lacquer skin, mandorlas, Vajras and Pretas, and also Siddham script—was included in this game. Asura’s Wrath ended up feeling incredibly natural and a nice way of shedding some light on non-Judeo-Christian religions.
Anyway, I genuinely liked that the game felt like a playable anime. I don’t feel like the game would be as effective if it were put into another genre, or were less cinematic. It ends up getting its message across with its carefully-researched artstyle, great scene direction, well-composed music, and penchant for feeling like it was a fantastic shounen anime. I also feel like the game has more combo-based gameplay than people give it credit for. A lot of the complexities come to the forefront on Hard mode, and going for S-ranks and finding ways to do that quickly and effectively on higher difficulty modes is always an interesting affair.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
I finished marathoning all of the Ace Attorney games in 2010. I don’t recall if I was doing it before Ghost Trick but I think what enticed me to get the game was its amazing animation. I hadn’t seen 2D sprites move that fluidly in a very long time. Characters have exaggerated movements, exaggerated dances (ie: the panic dance), and they have big flashy gestures to show off the game’s animation engine.
You’re introduced to all sorts of eccentric characters, many of whom don’t overstay their welcome (Circus case from AA2, I’m looking at you). You have a desk lamp, a doggo, a dancing detective, a little girl who’s the focal point for one episode, etc. Everyone’s dialogue is relatively snappy, their expressions and animations make them stand out from others, and due to how everything is presented right down to the character art portraits, everything just jumps off the screen.
Because you’re a spirit with amnesia, you’re given the ability to go through time, and also the ability to through environments by hopping from object to object and possessing them in order to influence what happens in the past to save people in the present. This is just a path to trying to figure out who you really are or to find who or what killed you. A lot of the gameplay revolves around trying to figure out which objects to manipulate and when in order to influence an outcome. It makes the game partially point and click, but also partially a physics puzzler. I don’t think I remember a single object in the puzzle segments that was wasted. In other circumstances, you must manipulate time in order to save someone in their last four minutes.
If anything, I feel like Ghost Trick is a necessary inclusion simply because of its style and attention to detail, as well as its sort but sweet story where nothing overstays its welcome. Its soundtrack also feels similar. The game is fairly consistent and nothing really changes in terms of progression over most of the game. But I see that as a plus as opposed to a minus for the most part. It helps to bring the game to a compelling and surprising conclusion.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
I marathoned all of the Assassin’s Creed games in one year prior to Assassin’s Creed III since I wanted to see what the deal was with the series because the first game wasn’t that great from a play perspective for me. The thing that resonates the most with respect to Assassin’s Creed for me is marshmallow-flavoured birthday cake and a bag of regular Bugles. I started this marathon on one of my birthdays that decade.
Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favourite games out there, but Brotherhood adds so much to the formula despite its middling storyline compared to its predecessor. But that’s because most of Ezio’s growth happened in the previous game. He is a middle-aged man searching for the Apple of Eden, and while the story does not carry as much emotional impact, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for with respect to the earlier AC games.
One of the things I absolutely love about the earlier AC games is its attention to detail even if it isn’t necessarily completely accurate. At first I missed the fact that I could explore many different towns like I could in AC2. But then I realised how big Rome and its surrounding area is. Rome is gigantic, and it has so much attention to detail with historical buildings everywhere (which you need to pay to rebuild), old tapestries from the era, citizens dancing in the streets, lovers flirting with each other behind pillars, etc. There are more roofs and buildings to parkour over and between. The game adds towards that require you to take over them before you can use them to gain access to vendors and things to renovate. You can also find the glyphs (much like the ones from the previous game) to solve puzzles in order to gain access to more lore.
I genuinely love the renovation aspect of this game. It’s more involved and a lot better than what the previous game tried to do with its economy. You renovate in order to gain access to shops, which in-turn generates income for you, and then you can renovate other stuff based on the income that you generate. It’s something that I’ve come to miss in later AC games. It felt a lot like a Suikoden game in some aspects.
Platforming missions return in the form of finding parts of a cult and cutting the beginnings of a conspiracy off by its limbs. They’re faster paced than AC2’s tombs and there is more variety in terms of what you platform through. I like both types equally since one allows you to marvel at the beauty of a cathedral, while the other allows you to clock a few folks while making your way through a lair.
In addition to the lairs, there are different types of missions for each faction that you forge alliances with, there are Da Vinci missions that involve new war toys and blowing things up in a scripted way. Assassin missions can vary in terms of how you carry out the assassins (albeit still scripted; improvisation was not a thing until ACUnity).
The crux of AC: Brotherhood is being able to recruit assassins to your cause. Random citizens throughout Rome may be under attack by Borgia soldiers, and once you save them, they are recruited to join your cause. You level them up, send them out on missions, improve their gear, and ask for their help when you can and when they’re available. This feature gets expanded upon in later AC games but it gets a very good start here.
Brotherhood is so full of content and a lot of little things that playing it for me makes it feel like comfort food for me. It may not have the best story and it certainly isn’t as memorable in that sense as its predecessor. But it’s so fun that I can’t help but to feel satisfied every time I turn it on.
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
I played the original Pac-Man CE on 360 years ago at my cousin’s house, where they added a timer and a morphing maze to the base original game. I thought it was a neat novel thing at the time but didn’t think further.
Pac-Man CE DX adds more mazes and more mechanics and more modes to the championship edition base. It added sleeping ghosts where, if Pac-Man moves near them, they wake up and they chase him around the maze in a line until you can finally eat them all and rack up a huge score. You can also elect to use a bomb at a small expense in order to save yourself and send ghosts to the middle of the maze again. These changes assist in maintaining the game’s flow and it never makes a score attack daunting or boring.
Devouring big long conga lines of ghosts following you is so satisfying while you’re listening to a bumpin’ soundtrack and chilling out looking at the cool lights on the maze. Really and truly, while at its core, PMCEDX is a score attack game, it makes for a beautiful loving chill sensory experience and I couldn’t ask anything more from it.
Deadly Premonition / レッドシーズプロファイル
I think I, like a lot of people, was introduced to this game via the GB series. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 so I eventually imported the Japanese version for the PS3. The game’s dub was already in English; the text was in Japanese and it was pretty easy and reasonable to get through. Deadly Premonition actually the Guinness World Record winner for most critically polarizing horror video game since the reviews at the time were so all over the place. And yes, I will contend that Deadly Premonition is definitely not for everyone.
I am not the type of person to play shooters. I actually hate them a lot. I don’t like gushing blood in video games, and I don’t really like the act of murdering someone in a game. I used to play a lot of survival horror games when I was younger on the PS1 and PS2, but a lot of the time you’re dealing with the undead or oddball things going on around you so it’s not nearly as bad I think. It’s funny; I deal with people’s bodily fluids and body parts all the time in real life as part of my job (ie: I’ve had to help dissect someone’s stomach before fresh out of the operating room), and it doesn’t bother me. But the mere act of seeing it done or doing it, makes me feel squeamish. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching blood being drawn from me or needles being stuck into me, even though I’ve done it to other people as part of my work.
For the most part, inexplicably, in Deadly Premonition, you’re dealing with the undead anyhow. I’m not the best person at shooters, but I certainly know what’s a good one and what isn’t. Deadly Premonition is not a very good shooter. It’s really janky. Some of the weapons don’t make sense in terms of how balanced they are. The controls are also really janky. This is not really a surprise considering the game’s strength wasn’t supposed to be its shooter aspects. In fact, those parts weren’t even supposed to be there.
Deadly Premonition is often cited as an artistic piece or a good game simply because of its story and character writing. It has an excellent main character who was cast almost perfectly. It has a lot of eccentric characters filling the town of Greenvale to help you solve the murder mystery or help obstruct it. The end result of having an unreliable narrator works out in the game’s favour. It helped sprout pop culture references, weird humour, quirky dialogue and more. I have certainly never watched Twin Peaks but I got the allusions either way since the show was so big. Slowly uncovering how every cast member lives their lives throughout the town and every day makes you more emotionally connected with them.
Greenvale is more of a sandbox than just a place where a crime is committed. You can play darts. You can race cars. You can do a ton of sidequests somewhere that will reward you elsewhere. You can collect trading cards??? You can carry some lady holding a pot everywhere? You can taste-test for one of your coworkers? You can do a lot of stuff that makes zero sense but I still end up enjoying it all anyway.
It looks like a PS2 or Dreamcast game or something and I almost found that utterly endearing in the era in which it was released. The soundtrack itself is so dissonant and doesn’t always fit the situation. Sometimes the sound mixing is so all over the place that it often results in making a scene more hilarious than it should be. There’s a song that’s just… American Idiot… on the soundtrack for some reason. Along the way, you start wondering “is this game real? Am I real? Is this really happening right now?” and yes, yes it is.
In the end, because of its cult success and getting people talking, it allowed Swery 65 to make more games. Deadly Premonition was lightning in a bottle for him. He followed up with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (unfortunately in limbo). He cowrote Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse. He recently released The Missing. If anything, I’m more interested in what he makes. I’m eagerly looking forward to The Good Life.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Text/Puzzle-adventures, rather than pure visual novels, became a staple of some players’ libraries due in part of the popular Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton series, and whatever Mystery Case File games that were published by Nintendo. 999 is not a pure visual novel. It’s a puzzle adventure game with visual novel elements. With art by Kinu Nishimura and a story written by Kotaro Uchikoshi (who had a few visual novels under his belt), it was difficult for me to ignore this game. I was also at a point where I really wanted to get into a lot of the games that Aksys published so it was a natural choice to buy.
A lot of the localization and language in this game was edited so that while it stays true to the spirit of the original language, a lot of care was put into making the dialogue and writing sound natural in the English language versus going line by line exactly. It worked out in the game’s favour because the script was fairly large. Based on Uchikoshi’s past games, he likes to ask a question and generally incorporate some pseudoscience in his narratives. 999’s version of pseudoscience ended up being morphogenetic fields (see: Rupert Sheldrake). This theory ended up the basis for a few characters and it is the way the story unravels. He also took inspiration from another older game of Chunsoft’s: Banshee’s Last Cry where the player is put into an unsettling position right off the bat. Indeed, 999 starts the player in media res, but the player is already in trouble when you begin to control the main character.
The puzzles were added to the game so that it would be received well by a wider audience than just visual novel readers. They were naturally and seamlessly integrated into the experience that the game became almost wholly about the puzzle rooms and whatever flavour dialogue occurred during the puzzle rooms. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from browser-based escape games like the Crimson Room from 2004. Escape the Room games were a subgenre of point and click adventure games and it was nice seeing the concept integrated in a narrative experience that wasn’t Myst (see: http://www.fasco-cs.net/ for more information). Due to the puzzles being a fundamental part of the game’s story, with them getting more and more difficult, the final puzzle for the entire game at the end of the true route is both a relief and also incredibly impactful due to using both of the DS screens and also revealing a lot to the player about the narrative.
If I had criticism for the game, I feel like it would be having to play the game repeatedly, doing the same puzzles repeatedly in order to unlock another prerequisite ending for the true ending. I did not play the later port which rectifies this but I’m not entirely sure that being able to see the branches would be great for the game either. I also feel like, just like a lot of Uchikoshi’s writing and previous games, that when the characters start cracking jokes when they have to urgently do things to not die, the tone feels a little off.
With that said, 999 is one of the more compelling text/puzzle-adventures from last decade, and it uses its native platform to its advantage. There weren’t a lot of games that used the DS screens to convey a narrative properly but when you are faced with the revelation that the game was using the two screens for a remarkable reason, you feel like the game is a natural and powerful addition to any DS library and gives significance for the dual screens.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
The funniest thing about Metal Gear Rising was that I actually disliked it at the beginning when I first started playing it. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and I didn’t ‘get’ the parry mechanic. At first, I guess I was playing it for the sake of playing it? It definitely took me a while to even warm up to it. The camera was obnoxious (and still gets to be obnoxious in some places), and I felt incredibly nauseous while playing it sometimes.
It wasn’t until I got to the Mistral boss that I finally … found what I was looking for… I’m sorry. I’m serious, though. Metal Gear Rising truly shines during the boss battles. When I finished that particular boss battle, I’d reflected that I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. I don’t think I’d fought satisfying boss battles in years prior to that. Returning to previous chapters told me that Platinum really likes to frame and teach players via trial by fire. Learn to parry yourself, here’s a test to see if you can parry well and you can get a trophy for it, here’s the final test to see if you can even parry (Monsoon). I loved that Metal Gear Rising threw a lot of what we knew about Metal Gear Solid out of the window, with a significantly interesting score, boss battles that centre around the climax of a battle (expertly done via excellent sound design as I noted in my SotY writeup this year), and a more interesting and personable version of Raiden. It relies far more on offense than defense and stealth, and that’s okay to me. It ends up separating Raiden even more from Snake.
The final boss is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of affair, and I ended up loving every single part of it. I felt like it was one of the best final bosses in years. Don’t know how to parry? You’re fucked. Don’t know how to use the game’s other offensive rush tactics like Defensive Offense and running? Good luck. The game makes sure you try to know how to do these things before even bothering to attempt the boss, with the major roadblock being Monsoon. And if you can’t parry by then, the game brutally tells you that you aren’t doing it right by making the boss battles ramp up to significantly require you to use one of the game’s core mechanics for elegant combat. This isn’t the most elegantly-designed game whatsoever. In fact, it can be really sloppy. With that said, it’s one of the better action games I played all decade.
Papers, Please!
Papers, Please is work. It feels like work because it is work. You can grant freedom and admittance to people, or you can just take their freedom away or not permit them to cross the border. Everything you do is controlled by the government, or by rules and regulations. If you do something wrong, you’re written up. Do enough wrong, and your pay is cut. Do enough wrong and your pay is cut multiple times, and you can’t provide enough for your family. Everything about the game just feels like work. Even right down to the end of the day when the whole thing feels like a budget calculation and spreadsheets. Everything about the game’s UI feels a lot like work. Where do you allocate space to do your job? How much money do you allocate to heat/food/medicine? It ends up feeling very tedious, but somehow fulfilling.
You are an immigration officer in a fictional Soviet state. The interesting part of the game is that it doesn’t only feel like a job, but it also feels like government and self-evaluation. You end up studying why the government keeps regulating the border the way they do, and thinking about how mundane the job can be. You know that people’s livelihood and family lives hinge on whether or not they cross the border, and sometimes your penchant for following the rules and disallowing people across the border may be called into question when people plead with you to go through. Do you accept docked pay so you can reunite people or save people from slavery, or do you do as you’re told and live with the consequences of your actions. In a small way, your ethics are called into question. It’s a nice reminder that a lot of things, despite people being people and having their own stories, generally seem to come down to bureaucracy and pieces of paper as opposed to a full understanding of humanity or extenuating circumstances.
I’d also like to add that Jorji is one of the best characters of 2013 to me. I think his glass half-full philosophy / if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again philosophy is something to look forward to whenever I encounter him in-game.
In many ways, Papers, Please feels a lot like the Milgram experiment. Are you going to make cruel judgement calls to separate a family, or keep people in slavery because the authorities and higher-ups essentially tell you to do your job so you can keep your family healthy? Papers, Please in many ways is written incredibly well. It doesn’t use reams of text to make you understand the overall premise of the game but through your actions, you’re also helping to tell the story. That’s the sort of weird and wonky player “agency” that I find interesting.
World of Final Fantasy
The Final Fantasy series had a better decade than the last decade, I feel, considering the quantity of releases increase from the previous decade. However, it had a lot of growing pains to deal with at the beginning of the decade. Final Fantasy games sell well all the time, and more people playing games than ever, it makes sense that sales numbers continuously increase. Attach rates aren’t as large. Final Fantasy XIV came out in 2010 and it was not a good game at all to the point of having to be structured for its 2013 re-release. Final Fantasy XIII had mixed reviews, as well as its subsequent direct sequels. Final Fantasy All the Bravest wasn’t exactly the best mobile debut for the series. The brand also suffered from dilution – the Final Fantasy name was attached to almost anything and everything for the sake of sales, and numerous spinoffs were released and the quality varied.
Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, originally planned to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis setting with Final Fantasy XIII were renamed and rebranded/redesigned to be their own titles: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Type-0. Both games also had mixed reviews and multiple delays. If anything, I can probably say that this decade was the most divisive for Final Fantasy fans.
World of Final Fantasy came out during the same year Final Fantasy XV. I think I’ve made my feelings about Final Fantasy XV fairly well-known. Perhaps my feelings about that game influenced how I felt about World of Final Fantasy but as someone who has played this series for decades (for reference: the first game is one year older than I am, and my first Final Fantasy was the first game), I felt like World of Final Fantasy was a love letter written to fans like me. I am a long-standing fan of the series over the course of decades and have been through its up and downs, and while I don’t like every game in the series (we all know how I feel about half of the games in the series, after all), I can still look at them for their influence on the rest of the series. I also like the newer games equally as the older games and dislike and like games from all of the eras, so I don’t really have issues with how the series is represented in general unless the games are really bad.
World of Final Fantasy feels like a Kingdom Hearts-esque exploration of the Final Fantasy games while throwing Pokemon into the mix. It involves a lot of older references as well as bringing new references in and throwing it into a presentation mode that fans of all ages can enjoy. The main characters are chibi which fits right into how the older games represented characters, but they can also grow taller to represent how the newer games are represented. You can create stacks of party members according to their height and balance well accordingly out of classic Final Fantasy enemies and characters in order to battle against other classic Final Fantasy characters, villains, and monsters.
The game is exactly what I wanted a mainline Final Fantasy to look. It retains a cartoony look, embracing stylization while adding so much detail to the areas’ setpieces so that they also stand out while the characters move around on the map. I also felt like the score was also a brilliant blend of old and new: with Masashi Hamauzu composing the score but also remixing older Uematsu themes to fit within the context of the score. The score was loftier compared to Hamauzu’s older works and the strings, synth, and piano works incredibly well to bring the game’s world to life.
The idea for WoFF was to try to bring younger fans into the fold, hence the Pokemon-like influence for using and rearing many classic FF enemies so that children could start to recognise them. The loftier script was also written in-mind taking into account both lighter storytelling from older FF titles and some darker bits taking into account newer Final Fantasy games. I’m not too sure that SE was very successful with bringing younger fans into the fold, but the way the game was written fit well with what I remember liking about FF for the first few games I had played. I also enjoyed that characters were chosen for their involvement to the plot versus them simply picking the most popular ones. This is why we got characters like Eiko and Shelke as well as regular FF mainstays. All of the characters were woven into the story well, as citizens of Grymoire as opposed to characters who just have their regular identities transported into Grymoire instead.
I felt like the Pokemon mechanic was handled well. I even loved it enough to have the idea commissioned in combination with our FFXIV characters. I liked that it changed up whatever skills you had access to, it influenced your stats, and it looked adorable to boot.
I would absolutely love to see a mainline game made by this team because I felt like the loose style of storytelling and worldbuilding made for a very good Final Fantasy game, and in essence, WoFF was the real Final Fantasy XV to me. It felt more “Final Fantasy” than a lot of the games released in the same decade, or even compared to ones released in the previous decade. It was a nice step and touch to demonstrating that there were staff members who remembered what Final Fantasy is to older fans.
Va-11 Hall-A
I’m too young to have a big attachment to older PC games like the ones on the MSX or the PC-88/98. But I’ve always had a fondness for their graphics and their music, like sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time or something. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated hard to the PC Engine—I felt like it was a way for me to finally experience stuff like that.
Valhalla is supposed to be a bartending simulator but in reality, mixing drinks is a bit of a break and distraction between the visual novel bits. Usually if you’re stuck in a futuristic landscape akin to Bubblegum Crisis or Blade Runner, you’re asked to investigate a mystery or explore it. But nope, you’re a bartender making drinks and making enough to scrape by and pay your rent. You hear a lot about the world from various clientele while you serve them drinks but you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the information they give you.
I worked as a medical administrator for a few years and over that time, I got to hear a lot of stories, meet some famous people (like been on TV people or youtubers or people who got paid to do things for celebrities), and just meet a lot of neat and interesting regular people. I got to hear stories about people’s health or their personal lives or witness people falling in or out of love. You don’t necessarily have to do anything with that information (in fact you can’t due to patient confidentiality), but the stories become sealed in your head. I can’t help but to think of some of these people I met for those few years or where they are now. I actually run into some of them at my current lab so I keep getting to see some of their stories. You eventually learn how quickly icebreak in situations like these to make people feel at ease or find a topic of conversation while they’re waiting. I even used my phone to gauge news because a lot of the time when I got home, I was too tired to do anything or getting news in the palm of my hand was incredibly easy to do.
In this sense, I understood Valhalla. It may look dull and it doesn’t look special but you’re the one who makes it so that it doesn’t have a dull moment in the bar. You’re the one who has to make it enjoyable even if your pay sucks. Because you don’t want to be miserable either. It’s through the conversations with others that you learn about Jill because she has to add commentary too. Everyone has a different way of requesting something and it’s up to you to figure out how to decipher it. It’s a lot of like practice in being in the service industry. You need to consistently gauge a conversation in order to actually give the client what they want to unlock more conversation.
The pacing in this game may be a little slow, but it doesn’t feel like a hindrance because the writing is really good. Something always happens to keep you interested or you have to mix drinks to keep yourself on your toes. The humour comes across well, and nothing really falls flat. Part of the reason why I feel like the writing is genuine is because the game’s developers wanted to write something that reflected how they live in Venezuela, akin to laughter in the middle of despair according to the developers. The writing is balanced well with the music and the visuals which makes the whole package a wonderful experience.
This game also has Rad Shiba so it belongs on the list by default.
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
I had gone to Catholic Schools all my life. I was even in a nursery school operated by nuns when I was a toddler, and they always tried to get me to write with my right hand instead of my left (which left me ambidextrous for some things lol). Because of my experiences with religion growing up, I absolutely had questions and doubts and concerns with metaphysics, theology, and epistemology. Every Catholic, I think, as they grow up and have to take religion classes, and having to take what the province mandates as metaphysics are somehow inserted into math and biology syllabi without even being mentioned in the coursework at all, questions it. And that’s okay. You should. The best religion and philosophy teacher I ever had growing up always said we should question everything we learn including what he taught us.
Going through school, though, and reading the Bible and having Bible study, my friends and I always sorta wondered what it’d be like if a game was made about this stuff? I know it may be a little sacrilegious but there are so many stories in there that would fit a game. Throughout my life, as I became acquainted with others from different branches of Christianity or other western religions, I talked with others who played games who… surprisingly had the same ideas and desires? It probably won’t ever be done. El Shaddai is inspired by the Book of Enoch and while it is considered as non-canon in most Christian and Jewish sects, I guess it might come close to what some of us wanted.
El Shaddai was a game that I picked up mostly because I bought almost every niche game back then. I just looked at some of the trailers, thought it looked just okay, and picked it up because I felt like Ignition was going out of business and it would be a novelty item. Ignition did not have the best reputation among the people I talked to back then. I played Lux-Pain whose localization left a lot to be desired. Nostalgia was a middling RPG. Arc Rise Fantasia’s localization left a lot to be desired despite being a good game. Deadly Premonition had an English dub already but the text localization wasn’t that great. I felt like El Shaddai was the most polished game that Ignition released. They got incredibly great voice actors, including Jason Isaacs. They developed a score attack combo ranking system for replayability. They had a fantastic art director and background art. They made two bishounen that screamed for female audiences to pay attention.
All of it didn’t exactly work out for the time the game came out, and I always contended that the game was released before its time. Unfortunately, all the effort put into El Shaddai didn’t exactly save Ignition. I feel like if El Shaddai were released in the later half of the decade, it would have been accepted. However, I also feel like its marketing was mishandled. It doesn’t feel like a Devil May Cry successor. It shifts between genres continuously. It is very much like Nier in this regard: it is not for everyone and it has its own unique feel that sets it apart from other games. It is also a score attack action game, not a hard character action game.
One thing I really enjoyed about El Shaddai was that all of the setpieces aren’t exactly the same. It ranges from a watercolour painting to abstraction to 2D children art to more abstraction to Final Fantasy VII and keep going like that. It references rhythm games, 2D Platformers, racing games, action games, Devil May Cry (with its own brand of Devil Trigger to boot), and other genres to create something that syncs up very well with the rest of the game due to lore reasons: different enemies prefer different things so that’s why each environment looks different or the gameplay styles may be a little different. I’m okay with this because it shakes things up per chapter and the game doesn’t feel stale at all. You’re expected to adjust to new mechanics per area.
The combat is a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, where certain weapons beat other weapons, or some bosses change which weapons they’re weak against (and the game gives you other weapons so you can adjust accordingly during fights). The weapon you wield also modify your platforming abilities (ex: one allows Enoch to dash, one weighs him down, etc), and they also vary in terms of character strength. In order to obtain G-rankings for each stage, the player needs to analyse which weapon would be the most useful for certain enemies and combo while guarding, guard-breaking, and stealing enemies’ weapons.
I am putting El Shaddai on this list because I really enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a brilliant score attack action game with a fantastic soundtrack and fantastic art design. It made for a pleasant sensory experience and made some religious figures fairly compelling with good character designs. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding and prettiest score attack games I’ve played this decade.
To the Moon
Everyone goes through life with regrets. I’m in my thirties now and I think I’ve done things I’ve regretted, or I didn’t other to do something and I’ve regretted that. Kan Gao was inspired by his grandfather’s illness when he was writing and making To the Moon, he’s noted that when he gets old and when his time would come, he might end up regretting some decision he’d made throughout his entire life. Everyone goes through that when faced with introspection. You can have the courage to love, you can feel pain, you can live your life fully, or not live it enough. To the Moon explores this, and while the writing isn’t the best and can be a little messy (this gets improved on in Gao’s later sequels to this game: A Bird Story and Finding Paradise), I understand what To the Moon was trying to accomplish. To the Moon is an exploration of everything that life throws at us, and the results of the decisions made throughout our lives that touches everyone and everything around us until our time passes.
Eventually you build up so many wishes and have a big bucket list but eventually there will come a time where you won’t remember why half of those things are on those lists. To the Moon relates the story of Johnny Wyles, an elderly man on his deathbed with one wish: to go to the moon. The problem is that he could not remember why. The general flow of Gao’s games have involved two scientists from Sigmund Corp, specialising in wish fulfillment at the end of someone’s life, creating memories for people in their final moments to generate comfort for the patient. How ever you may feel about the moral implications of generating false memories for someone prior to their end of life, this is merely a set up for traveling through time to understand what the patient had wanted and what they’d accomplished.
Johnny’s character revolves around another character with an ASD. I will also note that my brother has autism (compounded with a multisystem syndrome). While the central focus was on Asperger’s Syndrome (Tony Attwood books being mentioned in the game), I’m a little happy that ASDs are being brought up in games and the game truly hit home for me. The writing may not be stellar, but I felt that the theme of the impact of medical disorders was communicated well. Particularly the theme of why communication and connections with others is so difficult for those with ASDs and those who take care of those who have ASDs. It’s easy to sympathize with the characters trying to express what they mean to each other.
The game itself is relatively short. Regardless of its length, players must confront some uncomfortable situations and emotions that people struggle with daily or even at different points in our lives. I’m older now and I appreciate this game a little more since I’ve come to experience more of what the game had been trying to tell me a decade ago. The writing may not be the best, and it can be a little messy at times with respect to how it’s presented and written, but a lot of its messages come across as utterly genuine. Slowly unraveling the reasoning behind Johnny’s desire to go to the moon is beautiful. This game is quite human and I appreciate all three games that are a part of this subseries that came out this decade. I am looking forward to more.
Nier Gestalt
If you’ve played a Drakengard game or the first Nier game at all, you kind of know what you’re getting into. Not the best graphics of the decade, plays pretty janky, having bosses that can be difficult to manage, etc. So going into Nier Gestalt in 2010, I knew what I was getting into. Not a lot of people bothered playing this game since I don’t think it got as much promotion considering it came out during the same year a mainline Final Fantasy game got localized. Nier also got a little scrutiny since the west got a different protagonist from the Japanese version. I will say that this worked out in its favour, since the protagonist being one of the central character’s father versus her brother makes for a better, more interesting story than having yet another shounen protagonist.
I will support the case that, like the Drakengard games before it, Nier Gestalt was difficult to get into. The gameplay is jank. Easy is too easy. Normal doesn’t drop enough stuff to warrant playing on the mode. Hard can be a little hard but eventually it evens out. I generally used spears for the charge portion of the combo but in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter what weapon type you use. It doesn’t even matter if you use magic or not unless the game prompts you to do so. It’s either broken or not and the game doesn’t have a set balance for anything. Combos are boring and you’re essentially mashing a button. Even playing through the Nightmare DLC for extra drops, it continues being like this. I was used to playing shmups so it wasn’t necessarily revolutionary that AoE attacks looked as though they were spat out from a shmup either.
I wasn’t quite understanding why game started acquiring a cult following, because what I’d played of it was pretty boring and standard. “It’s just a regular ARPG starring an older character versus a young protagonist,” I said to myself. I guess that was the reason. I didn’t quite understand why, even past acquiring Kaine, because I guess I accepted that there weren’t a lot of NPCs and certain towns were the way they were due to, what I surmised were, RPG conventions. It wasn’t until I finished the questline for the brothers, where their mother tried to run away with a man and abandon her children, that I finally started to understand.
Within every substory, there was something that resonated with someone. I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to abandon their responsibilities, and at the same time I understood. Sometimes you just want to take care of yourself. With the way the older brother sort of understood why even through his anger and disappointment, it resonated with me. I finally ‘got’ the story, so I wanted to play more. This became one of those rare games where I played only for the story and lore and abandoned any hopes of the gameplay getting better. I fished, I upgraded weapons, I did enough sidequests for the trophies. I almost platinumed this game, but since the drop rates are so terrible for this game, I didn’t.
I started enjoying the game for what it was. It was genuinely a fun romp where it feels like everyone taking part in the game’s design contributed something unique and something they were fond of. If you read any interview from Emi Evans from this time period, you’d realise language is something she’s particularly fond of, so much of the composition and lyrical content of every song was a phoneme from any language that would make it sound like an evolved or a sort of Esperanto version of a current language. This came into play with the game’s lore, and many of the interviews were interesting to read from back then.
Many of the game’s stages borrowed from different genres of video games. There were the obvious shmup references, the rail shooter reference, the visual novel reference, the Resident Evil/fixed angle horror game reference, the Shadow of the Colossus references, the 2D platformer references, the Zelda references, the top-down puzzle game references, etc. For what the game lacked with respect to its combat, the game excelled at reliving genres and putting maps together in such a way that it felt like an ode to other games and genres that inspired it. The City of Façade’s language being a loose phoneme reconstruction of Japanese felt right at home with the dungeon’s Zelda references complete with Zelda fanfare for me. The Forest of Myth being one long visual novel was so hilarious and unique at the same time.
Playing more of the game and opening up the lore with every playthrough was neat. I don’t particularly like when games waste my time, but Nier made each new playthrough worth it. Killing bosses quickly for a trophy, redoing dungeons to see the enemies’ perspectives, and unlocking more of the story and learning more about the world that came from a Drakengard ending felt satisfying. As someone who was studying linguistics at the time, constructing nonsense words from drops out of different morphemes to act as accessories or armour was really amazing for me.
Much of Nier felt organically put together, from characters’ writing and what they wanted from each other, to the dungeon design, to maybe even the combat design… it felt like a truly special game made from the heart with as much lore as it could possibly include. I had purchased the Nightmare DLC primarily to get weapon drops and while it isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the game, it has some implications for the lore. The music and resulting soundscape lends so much to the worldbuilding and includes many peoples’ languages from the area with French, Japanese, English, German, etc phonemes thrown around to sound utterly organic and special.
At the end of this, I have come to realise that despite saying to myself that I never played this game for the game… I’ve been lying to myself this entire time. I actually did play the game for its game parts. Those are the bits I remember the most about it, and they’re the reasons why I genuinely loved the game. It’s unforgettable for me and it’s why it’s one of my favourites in general.
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
I did not care about MMOs in my late 20s because I was far more focused on finishing school and actually working hard in my field. I think by the end of university, I barely played games because I literally didn’t have time for them. I probably stressed myself out a lot. I threw myself into a semester where I had what felt like 500 evaluations, had to study a lot, had to write papers, and I ended up breaking up with my ex-boyfriend amicably. I was on my own a lot and to be honest, I think I felt okay that way. I think maybe others thought I was unapproachable.
My best friend now turned fiancé had been begging me to start playing Final Fantasy XIV for a really long time, since he was in the beta prior to its 2.0 release. I made excuses and said I won’t play until a speedster class was implemented since nothing really stuck out at me. In reality, I was mostly busy. Well, Ninja got implemented late 2014, so I ran out of excuses. I got a copy of ARR but to be honest, I didn’t have time for it and I didn’t play it much so I didn’t bother to try harder since my focus was elsewhere.
Luckily, I got into a semester where I didn’t have that much coursework to think about so I ended up playing XIV more. I caught up during ARR and really my intention was to only play through ARR and finish the story and quit. But my fiancé’s friends were so nice and welcoming to me. When the servers shut down for Heavensward maintainance and I’d finished the ARR storyline literally that night, I made the conscious decision to buy Heavensward. By that time, I was falling a little too hard for my best friend and I really liked my newfound friends. I wasn’t ready to leave Eorzea yet.
Of course, I had some quests to finish up during Early Access so I didn’t get the opportunity to play with anyone I knew during the main storyline for Heavensward. Heavensward was leaps and bounds above anything I experienced in ARR. The story was well-written, the English voices were recast and given better direction, character deaths were meaningful, a smaller cast made for good character building, the environments were large and you could only assume things happened in each area eventually (they didn’t in the long run), each area was different, it reminded me of Canada… Heavensward made me feel at home.
Almost every job felt built on, since nothing was really truly culled. A lot of what you got felt like an extension of what you already did. The three new jobs didn’t start out too well or too balanced. Machinist was a mess. Astrologian felt weird. Dark Knight had some growing pains but probably performed the best out of the three once the Alexander raid was implemented given that its specialty at the time centered on magic defense. I was one of the five people who really liked bowmage since it required you to think before you cast but you still did a lot of damage if you thought before firing. I swapped to an omnihealer main officially halfway through the patches because my fiancé requested it.
Heavensward had a lot of growing pains. For all the team did for the base game, they took a six-month vacation to recharge. 3.1 wasn’t really worth the wait and a lot of people quit the game or stopped playing because nothing really meaningful was added to the game other than a faceroll raid, poorly-tuned exploration missions, and two dungeons. Gordias earlier in the expansion nearly killed the raiding community as a whole. 3.2 didn’t fare too much better, though it did add the best raid tier that has yet to be topped. 3.3 was when FFXIV solidified itself as an MMO with a grand story to tell, with one of the best conclusions a Final Fantasy game had seen in almost a decade. The sound design was near-perfect for this patch, and it was when a lot of us genuinely felt comfortable with the game and its future. Heavensward wasn’t perfect; it still had its missteps and balancing issues, but it was the most comfortable and profoundly skilled I’d ever felt with the game.
Final Fantasy XIV may not be what it used to be. I feel old and I feel like I’ve played the game for a really long time. Now while it’s riding the wave of success, currently having the best story Final Fantasy has seen in a very long time, I can’t help but to remember Heavensward when we finally felt assured about the game and it felt like a cohesive gift to players who were active at that time. I got to know so many people during Heavensward, and now I’m engaged to my best friend partially due to our experiences together playing at that time.
Undertale
The late half of 2015 was a really bad year for me. The first half was really great. I started playing FFXIV often, I finished the hardest year I’ve ever had of my 9 years of university so far with high grades and was going full-on hard into my residency year, I fell in love with my best friend. I was pretty happy since I finally felt very successful.
If anyone can recall (or this may be new to the person who is reading this), towards the end of 2015 my dad was falsely accused by our neighbour of possession of a weapon (it was a gardening tool), and he had a restraining order put against him so he couldn’t live with us anymore. My little brother is severely disabled so that’s why I still lived at home so I could help out. Without my dad around, it was so much harder. I came home from my days at the hospital every day after a 12-hour day, had to babysit my brother since my mom still cooked food to carry for my dad who had to live at my aunt’s, somehow had to find time to study for my licensing exam and do some work for school and my thesis, had to find time to socialise a tiny bit otherwise I’d go crazy, maybe had to take my brother to his appointments by coming home a little early, and then had to find whatever time I had left to sleep. I stopped posting on message boards because I literally had no time to do so and I wouldn’t have anything of value to contribute to discussions either.
I detached myself from a lot of people. It was actually kind of lonely. It was really hard. I lashed out at people when I shouldn’t have. I don’t look back on those days other than the bright spots with fondness at all.
Before that, everyone was telling me to play Undertale but I sort of didn’t want to? I felt like the fanbase was sort of making the game unapproachable around the time it came out. By the end of the year, I was so out of the loop about games that I didn’t give a hoot. A friend of mine, Shadow Hog, bought the game for me on Steam. I still have the e-mail message for it.
My now-fiancé got his own copy so we could play it together because at that point I didn’t want to do much of anything alone. I was actually sinking deeper into depression and verging on a mental breakdown. I was not mentally sound and every single week it felt like someone had to save me from doing something stupid.
I started Undertale and I didn’t really think much of it at the start. I can’t remember when it started clicking with me but maybe it was around the time I got into a battle with Tsunderplane and Vulkin and got to Hotland that I gave up and started having fun with it because it was just… silly. It was time to let down your hair and have some fun for once and not feel completely guilty about it.
The idea of having to win and achieving a certain ending by sparing your enemy isn’t necessarily new – SMT’s demon negotiation, Silent Hill 2’s morality system, and MGS3’s fight with the Sorrow have some sort of sparing mechanic. The hybrid of a turn-based battle system with enemy negotiation, as well as dodge system inspired by a shmup makes every encounter both strategic (ie: having to avoid bullets while also sparing enemies in a set order per battle) and consistently active. Unless you are going for a certain other ending, you cannot just sit there and hold down the attack button and expect to win. That said, this makes a lot of encounters a little longer than a standard RPG battle, but the flavour text for each uniquely-designed enemy makes many of the battle worth it. Undertale isn’t a hard game unless you’re playing on a certain route. But I don’t necessarily think the gameplay part of Undertale speaks properly for it. The dungeon maps are relatively simple. They all have their little gimmicks. The battle system is relatively easy to understand.
The reason why Undertale has such a prolific fanbase is primarily because of its character writing and ability to make and use memes properly enough that they catch on. Many of the characters are easily encountered early, are easy to draw (propels a lot of fanart), and understand due to the character writing. What also helps is that the game is 4-6 hours long, and it came out at the right time with the right kind of word of mouth. Undertale could have easily fallen into the sea like so many other RPGs before it but it didn’t. My fiancé and I were shopping for work clothes one day at a store that sells business clothing, construction clothing, and scrubs. He was wearing a shirt with the Delta Rune on it since he loves game shirts that are relatively subtle. Even then, one of the sales clerks pointed it out and was pretty excited to see it. It was pretty crazy to both of us how popular Undertale had gotten. I don’t think the popularity was unwarranted. I think it’s a fantastic game, helped by a considerably lengthy varied and catchy soundtrack. Granted, I was not as exposed to how explosive its popularity was when it came out. But I understood why so many people liked it. It wasn’t for its gameplay.
As I progressed through Undertale, instead of thinking of the lore (which was well-written), I was thinking of how the monsters treated your character with respect and love because you treated them that way. They didn’t go out of their way to fear you, and welcomed you as one of their own. In the end, they were hesitant to even kill you, and you were hesitant to kill them. Even then you still had the spare/save commands.
At the very end, you only had the Save command.
And that’s how I felt. When Hopes and Dreams started playing, I couldn’t help but to cry. When I was repeatedly nudged to press the Save command, I didn’t actually feel like the game nudged me to do so. That was something I wanted to do. Just remembering how depressed I was when I started playing this game and then progressing to its true end with Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World playing, I couldn’t help but to feel like my hopes and dreams were still alive.
Even if I was going through a really hard time in my life, hope was still there as long as I had people around me that supported me all the way through. That was the time in my life that I realised who my real friends were. And in the end, I felt like Undertale told me my friends saved me and that my dreams weren’t crushed, now matter what threw at me.
And that’s why it’s my game of the decade. It may not be the most perfect game that came out this decade or the objectively best-crafted, but it did so much for me. When I was prompted for my game of the decade, Undertale was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t question it. I just knew. I don’t think we’ll get another Undertale again in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say that I gave it a shot and I love it for what it is.
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Ah I love so many of those cute questions! And I know you like stuff to distract you, so how about you answer all of them? 😘 Can be in batches or all at once.
I hope you are talking about these questions c:
1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?I don’t eat cereal tbh
2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?YES! I loove cold, especially when it’s all snowy around, then I feel so alive!
3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?I have two bookmarks so I don’t use any other objects as bookmarks
4: how do you take your coffee/tea?I take my tea with two spoons of sugar and sometimes with milk if it’s black tea
5: are you self-conscious of your smile?Oh hell yea, I hate my smile most of the time
6: do you keep plants?Nope, I’m not much into keeping plans
7: do you name your plants?Nope
8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?I used to write... Now i barely use any artistic stuff to express them :/
9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?Nope
10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?I sleep on back and on my both sides
11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends?Oh, I had so many that are now dead because I don’t talk to them anymore. One of them was naming my bag after Janick (lol). That there is one where we call Richard Kruspe Diva, this is such an old inside joke that usually I’m not even saying his name, just saying Diva.
12: what’s your favorite planet?Saturn probably
13: what’s something that made you smile today?That Tobi post on facebook
14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?Oh it would be messy but with so many posters all around since we both love them
15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!Mercury is still shrinking
16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?Idk, I just love every kind of pasta
17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?I’d love to try black and maybe turquoise
18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.Me talking only about Rammstein for 5 hours straight and my best friend had to listen to that and he did. I still say sorry every time we remember that
19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?I have my travel journal where I write about every trip I went to
20: what’s your favorite eye color?Green and brown
21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.Oh that’s got to be my red backpack. She’s been to almost every trip I went to since probably 2016. She is old but she is the best one but soon it’s gonna be the time for her to retire
22: are you a morning person?Hell no
23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?Sleep
24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?Maybe my best friend, I mean he already know probably every secret I had
25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into?I haven’t broken into any place
26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit?Maybe my New rock boots?? I mean idk
27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor?Spearmint
28: sunrise or sunset?Sunset
29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?She used to make necklaces and make it as a birthday gift. I still have two necklaces that she made for me as a gift and I still wear them and I still love them
30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?Oh yea
31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.Socks are cool and I love them, only that I usually forget to buy them and then I’m like “damn it, I’d love some nice socks to this outfit but I don’t have any..”
32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.I think it was 2015 summer and I was totally drunk with my best friend, we were both fangirling/fanboying over Tobi and I remember he did something really hot and sexy - he poured some whiskey on my neck and licked it. Idk if he remembers that but my gods, I still can remember that and yea lol
33: what’s your fave pastry?Pies, cakes, buns of various kinds
34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?It was a big pink sheep, I loved it so much because it was so cute and big and yea. I don’t think I named it. Idk, I hope my mother didn’t throw it away
35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?I don’t really use them, tho I have one for when I’m writing
36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now?Danheim and Wardruna
37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?Totally messy
38: tell us about your pet peeves!This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I really hate those fans who are like “I’m gonna die if I won’t be in a first row and I’ll do absolutely EVERYTHING to be there”. Yes, I get them and yes we all live being in a first row but man, those fans are so damn annoying. Like sure, I always try to be in a first row but I don’t bitch if I’m not
39: what color do you wear the most?Black, bit of red and blue
40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you?My Mjolnir necklace. Well my old one was missing and till this day I haven’t found it so I bought the one I have now and well, it’s my amulet so it means a lot to me
41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?Good omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!I don’t really have favorite one
43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?This makes me sad because I never did that
44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?Last autumn when I was in Krakow
45: do you trust your instincts a lot?I dunno
46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.I’m so bad and thinking of puns tbh
47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?Beetroot soup
48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?Darkness. Oh no, I loooove darkness now
49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?YES, I love it. Last ones were the newest Rammstein album and Wardruna - Runaljod - Ragnarok
50: what’s an odd thing you collect?I don’t think I collect any odd things
51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?Sooner than now by Sin cos tan
52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?I don’t think I have any???
53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?I’ve seen Beetlejuice and Pulp fiction and I love both of them
54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?Me
55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point?Cry
56: what are some things you find endearing in people?The way they talk about something they are passionate about, the way they blush or try to be modest
57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?I always have goosebumps when listening to it and yes I do sing along
58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?Group of friends? hahah, it’s so bold to assume that I have a group of friends..
59: what’s your favorite myth?I love the myth of Ragnarok
60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?Nope, I don’t like it
61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?Can’t remember in both cases tbh
62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?I don’t drink juice in the morning
63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?I try to keep them organized
64: what color is the sky where you are right now?Dark but almost clear with few clouds
65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with?YES
66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?Maybe something like this
67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?I dunno, sometimes I love it sometimes I don’t
68: what’s winter like where you live?We used to have cool snowy winters
69: what are your favorite board games?Monopoly
70: have you ever used a ouija board?Nope
71: what’s your favorite kind of tea?Black
72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it?I guess, never thought about this much
73: what are some of your worst habits?Being lazy, kinda being hot head
74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.Smart, pretty, tall, has a good heart, funny, serious, helpful, has their own strong opinion about a lot of things, stubborn
75: tell us about your pets!I don’t have any :/
76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?I dunno, maybe
77: pink or yellow lemonade?Neither
78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?Neither
79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?My best friend giving me a nickname which happened to be the one I use a lot now
80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?It’s creamy color, well I had a small voice of choosing them but I’m okay with them
81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.Oh no, I suck at describing stuff like this
82: are/were you good in school?Noo, I was sooo bad in school
83: what’s some of your favorite album art?
84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?Yep, I have so many plans for them. I’m still planning on getting more band/lyric related tattoos, also Tolkien one and the one with wolf and triquetra
85: do you read comics? what are your faves?I tried to get into reading them but I can’t buy any of them here and I hate reading them online
86: do you like concept albums? which ones?Yep, well basically all Avantasia albums lol
87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?The Matrix, Kill Bill, Intouchables, Wild tales, The legend of 1900, Scent of a woman, Wag the dog
88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?Idk
89: are you close to your parents?Not really
90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.Krakow. The city that feels home to me, not only because it holds so much history of Lithuania but also because there is something about it that I just can’t describe... As my dad said it is a king city and it feels so, Krakow has a Wavel castle and so many other ancient buildings, maybe that’s why I love it so much. Even it seems that the life in it goes bit differently from any other cities, but from small Old town streets to Jewish district and to beautiful cemeteries everything makes me so happy there.
91: where do you plan on traveling this year?I do plan to travel to Poland, then to Czech republic and then to Germany
92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?Cheese, yes I love myself a lot of cheese on my pasta
93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most?I don’t have any other hairstyles other than the one I have in all my pictures
94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?My best friend
95: what are your plans for this weekend?Don’t have any
96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?It depends on my mood
97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?ENFP, libra and i have no idea of my hogwarts house and I don’t really care
98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?Last autumn, yes, I love hiking
99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Far From Heaven by Battle beast Dancing With The Beast by Battle beast So Good It Hurts by Lord of the lost Harvest by NightwishRunaway train by Avantasia Hoffnung by Doro I Wish by Battle beast Traust by Heilung Serpentine by Pretty maids Ich weiß es nicht by Lindemann
100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?Definitely past, because I have so many mistakes to fix and so many moments to relive
Thank you and sorry if my answers suck
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a.c.e in toronto 2019
okay so this is just a summary of my favourite things from the concert
- i met like 9 people at the concert and they were all so sweet and funny and we had such a good time talking before the concert and while we were waiting for hi touch and photo op to start
- seeing black and blue live is an expERIENCE let me tell you
- oH ANd do it like me!!!!!!
- chan and byeongkwan were so precious when they were singing their ost it was so cute akjdcnsk
- youngblood was so hype and they seemed really happy to see us all singing and dancing with them
- OH MY gOsh their napal baji cover was my favourite it was so fun and weird and i couldn't stop laughing and smiling it made me so happy
- they played the vcr where they're all dressed up and after that when they came on stage jun and sehyoon imitated their parts and it was so funny. junhee was so smiley, i looked at my video of it and he was smiling so big the whole time
- after that chan said we weren't cheering that loudly so we started cheering louder and jun was so surprised he made the cutest shocked face then he gave us 2 thumbs up, a heart, and bowed hahaha
- dessert was also really fun she's truly the biggest summer bop and i love her with all my heart
- when we raised the bias stars during star they seemed to really appreciate it, they just looked so grateful. tbh it made me wanna cry because we do these things to show them how much they mean to us and sometimes i forget how much we mean to them too
- then they left and the crowd was chanting “you're my star” then “ace”
- they came back and did cactus and undercover back to back (idk how they survived) and the fan chants for undercover were soooooo loud it was really impressive
- byeongkwan doing a cf with the “ice water” had me cackling he drank in such an extra way askjcnsk (i have pictures of 4/5 drinking water if anyone wants to see that lol)
- donghun tried to wrap himself in the canada flag but it was upside down so choice were trying to tell him but he didn't get it so chan took it from him and draped it on donghun’s shoulders the right way
- during their ending comments sehyoon said something that made me kinda sad.....he was saying how he doesn't know what he is to us and that kinda broke my heart because he means everything to me and just his existence makes me so happy and i wish he knew how big of a role he has in ace and especially in choice’s hearts
- during if you heard they were so cute with the banners and sehyoon was playing with some lightsticks and they took some of the bias stars it was so precious
- on his way out junhee hit the woah like 1823488348 times sjkcdnkjs
- okay so the staff rushed us super hard during hi touch and photo op but it was still so amazing i just wish it could have been longer
- it was all kind of a blur so i only remember chan and byeongkwan well
- chan was first and he did a 2 handed highfive for the girl in front of me but he put his hands down after so i went in with 1 hand but he went in with 2 so he grabbed my one hand in both of his and i said “chanblood” in the tune of “youngblood” cause he said it during the concert and he gave me the cutest smile while holding my hand in both of his
- i told byeongkwan i love him and he gave me the cutest smile and nod
- during photo op they were sitting crosslegged on the stage and we were supposed to stand behind them
- they all looked at us while we were making our way behind them and i just remember making eye contact with donghun, byeongkwan, and chan and chan was still smiling idk how he manages to seem so genuinely happy to see us the whole time when they all must’ve been exhausted at that point
- i just hope i don't look like shit in the picture
- oH ALSo byeongkwan looked back at us while we were right behind him and my heart literally stopped he's so beautiful and i love him so much i already miss him
- we got our signed posters at the end too which was good
- gahhhhhh it doesn't feel real
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Stef’s not so quick dislikes from mayura
1. Marinette’s hero’s day plot being cut down to where it’s resolution comes out of no where. Adrien: ‘Rose is right!’ About what Adrien. About what. Psyche I know what about, just wish we could have seen Rose actually say that and why lol
2. Chloe and Sabrina. Her treating Sabrina like shit is not funny, and it’s never going to be funny. How dare they try to pass off Sabrina sobbing as being funny.
3. Chloe in general. Can this show make up it’s mind? Why is she having these grand hero moments I’m suppose to obviously cheer for but at the same time still treating her best friend like garbage? Would it have been so hard to make her accept the cookies from Sabrina? I get not making Chloe buttery soft but there are ways to do that without making her a giant bitch to Sabrina or Marinette all the time.
4. Nathalie’s character. That and her relationship with Gabriel just make no sense when you consider the rest of the story and how dismissive he is with her from the start. Nathalie went from stoic assistant who was just trying to do her job, and I could buy that she cared for Adrien and showed that in small ways. In Queen Wasp she suddenly has deep feelings for Gabriel, but wants him to give up what he’s doing, so now she’s a woman deeply involved with her boss and who just wants the best for him, and her silence on his doings makes her complicit in what he does. But in Catalyst and Mayura the woman is suddenly like ‘fuck yeah let’s roll out the plan!’ She’s his deepest supporter. She loves him so much that she’ll do anything for him apparently? Kay, sure, even though 3 episodes before that you wanted him to stop. Sure. Kay. And the same can be said for Gabe, who apparently feels something very deep for this woman and showed more concern for her than he ever has for Adrien. Right.
5. The fact that I still have to endure another season of the Agreste plot, now with it’s own very unnecessary love triangle. Why the actual fuck-
...hopefully Fu is way more prominent next season.
6. I don’t know if this is some weird french to english translation issue, but purple-edged?
7. Gabe’s plans always wind up petering out and being stupid at the end of the day. For having as many akuma as he did (OP much? why does this miraculous have this much power) the fight was easier then it should have been. It’s not a major complaint really but what I think they should have done was stick with 5 akuma to fight the 5 heroes. It’s still a lot but more manageable at least, so we could have had more solid fight scenes.
8. The peacocks powers being that similar to the butterfly’s is just weird and strangely disappointing. The bee and ladybug having similar weapons I get, because their both insects, but their main power is at least wildly different. But the peacocks almost acts only as a support to the butterfly, which makes sense for Nath and Gabe’s characters, but not the tools they used. Surely they could have thought of another long distance power?
9. Mayura being used as a name is also disappointing. They’re usually pretty mindful about the characters and their choice of a name, I would say with Ladybug being the one exception since it’s english for marketing purposes. But a sanskrit name? It was chosen I guess just because it’s pretty and that’s it lol
10. We just needed more of Lila. Her being built up to be a mini boss would have fit so much better than whatever they’re doing with Nathalie.
11. This isn’t an episode thing but more of a fandom thing. ‘Nathalie can do better.’ Can she? She’s been complicit this entire time in her silence, and now assists Gabriel readily. She knows he’s put Adrien in harms way multiple times and yet, now she’s his biggest supporter. She can go down too.
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Suck Me Shakespeer (Fack ju Göhte): Film Review (x)
Turkish-German director Bora Dagtekin and star Elyas M’Barek reteam for another winner, following their hit TV series "Turkish for Beginners" and its 2012 cinema spin-off.
A criminal who can barely spell is forced to become a substitute teacher in Suck Me Shakespeer (Fack ju Göhte), the new comedy from Turkish-German director Bora Dagtekin and star Elyas M’Barek, whose hit TV series Turkish for Beginners inspired the eponymous 2012 box-office smash.
The German title is a phonetic transcription of F*ck You, Goethe and immediately suggests the protagonist’s poor spelling as well the film’s school environment and irreverent tone. This story of a newly-released convict who becomes the world’s worst teacher in order to get to his buried loot consists of too many stand-alone set pieces and is, at almost two hours, definitely too long. But the rapid-fire dialogue, the amusingly over-the-top acting and antics, and the great chemistry of M’Barek and female lead Karoline Herfurth (reunited after 2001’s hit comedy Girls on Top) ensure audiences will nonetheless have a pretty good time.
The film’s $9 million local opening was the best score for a German film this year and second-biggest opening of 2013 and could also interest producers looking for Bad Teacher-inspired remake ideas.
Zeki Mueller (M’Barek) was in jail for 13 months, just enough time for Goethe High to construct a new gym on the exact spot where Zeki’s stripper friend, Charlie (Jana Pallaske), buried his loot. In order to get regular access to the school’s basement, from where he hopes to drill a tunnel to his spoils, Zeki takes on a job as a substitute teacher offered to him by the prim principal (Katja Riemann, in a delicious cameo), who is one teacher short after one of her staff (Uschi Glas) had been so maltreated by her students, she jumped from a second-floor window, shouting “They’re all monsters!”
Nevermind that Zeki has no teaching certificate or any accurate knowledge of German (his mangling of the correct gender and cases is a running gag). Of course, Mueller finds himself teaching a class that’s full of horrible teenage monsters indeed, who devise booby traps that have nothing on the work of seasoned special-ops soldiers. By dialing the film’s tone way past hysterical -- and at times, hysterically funny -- from the start, Dagtekin succeeds in creating an atmosphere in which anything goes, but as in his previous work, he does ensure that the characters remain recognizable, even if their personalities have been greatly enlarged to augment the laughs.
Mueller’s main foil is the bespectacled good girl Lisi (Herfurth, M’Barek's equal on all fronts), a fellow teacher who went to Goethe High as a teen. Her behavior is as saintly as Zeki’s profane; where she gets all worked up when someone chews gum in class or uses an inappropriate word, her against-all-odds love interest does nothing but smoke, drink, swear, flip the bird, push one kid’s head under water or shoot another -- and that’s when he’s teaching. Their sweet rapport is a nice antidote to much of the gross-out, caricature-like humor, and the occasional injection of highbrow references, such as a ditzy blonde student who’s called Chantal Akerman, is further proof that Dagtekin is a master at blending different registers. He's equally apt at balancing the story of the protagonists with that of the impressive lineup of supporting players, who are all clever variations on clichés and are played by the impressive ensemble.
Though many scenes, which editors Charles Ladmiral and Zaz Montana punchily string together, work fine in their own right, not all of them snugly fit into the film’s larger story arcs, with the writer-director at times repeating himself, such as an unnecessary second school excursion or a trip to Charlie’s strip club.
An updated version of the world’s most famous school play, Romeo and Juliet, is good for the film’s biggest belly laugh. Combined with the English-language pop songs on the soundtrack, it injects the proceedings with a sense of Anglo-Saxon cool. Visually, the film’s dominant colors are pink and cobalt blue, further underlining that this tale is set in an alternate universe.
#elyas m'barek#karoline herfurth#fack ju göhte#bora dagtekin#suck me shakespeare#.news#.news fjg#.movie#.movie fjg#obviously no longer news#but it was at some point ^^
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can i be a psycho and your worst nightmare by asking ALL the writers asks?
You are a demon omg. I love it though this was so much fun to do.Since you didn’t specify fic specifically for some of these questions I’m just gonna write about The Devil Has Come for all of the “in xxx fic” asks.
Answers are below since this is such a long ask :):):)
1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction? 12/13 it was between 7th and 8th grade and it was all anime fanfiction
2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one?Far Cry 5, RDR2, Assassin’s Creed, DC, Marvel, Fallout, Skyrim, Preacher. Far Cry 5 is definitely my favorite to write for though
3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.Personally, I prefer OC’s, with OC’s I can build their character, give them a personality and growth. I like shaping the character as the world changes based on their actions
4) What is your favourite genre to write for?Action or romance unless I totally misread that question
5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi-chaptered stories, which would it be and why?The Devil Has Come!!! It was my first in the Far Cry fandom and it’s my baby. I love all the characters and the world that I’m building. It’s got action, romance, some twists, it’s exciting
6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?If we’re talking things that I’m currently writing and enjoy writing then I guess Bridges only because it’s the same characters as TDHC just in an AU form so I’d survive without it.
7) When is your preferred time to write?Night, 10pm on basically.
8) Where do you take your inspiration from?Everywhere really? TV shows, movies, video games, other fics
9) In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote?So far my favorite scene that I wrote in TDHC that has been published was either the confrontation with Rook in Chapter 11 or Jacob finding Sarah in the hotel in Chapter 8. They were both really fun to write.
10) In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternate ending in mind?Well it hasn’t been ended yet, but there were two possible endings that I was originally considering. I’m not saying much more other than the ending that I went with is gonna hurt me when I eventually get to it.
11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?Not after posting but I have amended stories due to criticisms. If I’m a bit worried about a particular scene I’ll share the doc with my best lady @farcryfuckmeup and get her opinion. She usually points out things that aren’t great and I go from there. She’s the closet thing to a beta reader that I have.
12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why?Sarah!!! She’s my best girl and I love her personality and attitude. In terms of canon characters though I’ve been writing some stuff from Arthur Morgan’s pov and that’s been really fun too. I really love playing around with his sense of self and morality.
13) Who is your least favourite character to write for? Why?I don’t have one yet? We’ll see how the future plays out there. It might be Ethan Seed but I’ve never written stuff for him so I’m not 100% sure.
14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx? - You can ask about multiple stories.Almost every fic name is from a song. The Devil Has Come is from Blues Saraceno’s “The River”, Icarus is from Bastille’s “Icarus”, and I’m not sure where Bridges is from but I’m 90% sure it was a song. The series that TDHC and it’s connected stories are a part of is called Bottom of the River from Delta Rae’s “Bottom of the River”.
15) If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names?I use name generators for modern characters or look up names with a specific meaning. If the character is from the past (ie cowboy times or pirate times) I look up names popular in that century. Sarah’s name I got by looking up popular names with religious meanings and Sarah was on the list.
16) How did you come up with the idea for xxx?I came up with the idea for TDHC by playing co-op with @farcryfuckmeup. It was originally supposed to be a crackfic based on the dumbshit we did in-game. Then in my desperation to pretend that the game didn’t end the way it ends I started coming up with ways it could have gone differently and thus my fic was born.
17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on.I have so many wips! I’ll do a few because I’m in a sharing mood.Fallout 4 WIP: “‘You don’t even use power armor, why did you steal so many?’”RDR2 WIP: “Valentine was a crap town with crap people and even crappier whiskey. It was tiny and smelled like mud and horse shit and something else that she was pretty sure was vomit.”Another RDR2 WIP: “Trouble was the bastard was clingy apparently as he was hot on Arthur’s heel.”
18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?Yes, a few. I got bored or I decided to focus on other things. I do intend to one day finish them but who knows
19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?The Devil Has Come!!! I can’t wait to write a sequel and I haven’t even finished the current fic.
20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?Sometimes I wish I’d written a follow up to my judge fic Joseph and his Judge. I’m not totally sure if I like how it ended.
21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?@farcryfuckmeup first and foremost, she’s amazing. I also love gwennolmarie and OutlandishWhalesharks on Archive of Our Own.
22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?My anime fics from middle school. It’s still posted and I won’t tell you what it’s called but every time I remember it a little part of me dies.
23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?Music mostly but it sometimes depends on the scene. For certain scenes I need silence but for the most part it’s music music music. I have playlists for all sorts of scene types.
24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes?I love it, idk if I’m any good at it but I do like writing them.
25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?Yes, I’ve been writing some future parts of TDHC and I have cried a bit writing some of it.
26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write?The smut scene in Chapter 10 of TDHC, it was the first smut scene I’d ever published so I was really worried about that and kept rewriting it.
27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?Bit of both I guess. There is a vague outline in my head but only for like the big events, everything in between is go with the flow shit.
28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?It’s not going to be an instant hit. When I first started posting works back in the day I was always so upset when I’d check the next day and see only like 12 people had read it.
29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?Icarus :( It’s only a baby fic and it’s in a mostly dead fandom but I love it.
30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?No, I love all the attention my fics get.
31) Send me a fic recommendation and I’ll post it for my followers to see! (The asker is to send the rec not the answerer)I’m gonna recommend one myself. Since this is a Far Cry blog I’ll recommend a Far Cry fic: come a little closer by lowtides on AO3Also here’s a Fallout 4 fic that isn’t finished but I absolutely love: RAIDERHEAD by TaraTargaryen
32) Are any of your characters based on real people?No real people no. Thomas is a combination of a few fictional characters though.
33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?I’ve gotten a few comments of analysis on chapters I’ve posted and honestly I love that so much. Nothing warms my heart more than seeing that someone not only read my fic but sat there and actually thought a lot about it.
34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?Like I said before I haven’t gotten a lot of criticism, but I guess the harshest for me was when I was discussing a character that I had really started to like and my friend (who I was ranting at about him) asked me to honestly think about what he brings to the table. Like is he actually necessary or just a throwaway character that won’t bring much to the story? I ended up scrapping him and putting a nameless character in his place to fill a few of his scenes.
35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?I share them with one (1) person and that person is my irl best friend @farcryfuckmeup. Everyone else has to wait until I post stuff I don’t want to spoil any big surprises.
36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s?It’s a chapter very far in the future for a fic I’m sure you can guess but I won’t outright say.“Against his better judgment, he reached out and grabbed the hysteric woman, tightening his grip against her struggling and pulling her into his lap. He wrapped her in a tight hug until she finally began to calm down, humming softly and running his fingers through blood-soaked hair.“
37) What’s the funniest story you’ve written?I haven’t written a lot of funny stuff. I mostly do angsty. But when I was in middle school a wrote a novel where I spent two paragraphs talking about my MC’s hair color and current outfit and I cackle every time I read it. 70 pages or pure cringe, it’s hilarious.
38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it.@farcryfuckmeup hmu bitch!also you @onl-you
39) Do you prefer first, second or third person?Third, every now and then I write in first but idk I just don’t like it much.
40) Do people know you write fanfiction?My close friends do
41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written?Thomas Moore, he’s a lot of fun to write for.
42) Song fic - What made you decide to use the song xxx for xxx.I don’t actually have any song fics in the traditional sense. I do however have some fics inspired by songs. I listen to music almost constantly, sometimes a song comes on that gives my fic vibes and I add it to my prompt playlist.
43) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it?@/farcryfuckmeup has but I don’t try too hard to keep secrets when she’s around
44) What is the last line you wrote?“John rolled his eyes and finished unbuttoning his shirt.”
45) What spurs you on during the writing process?This is cliche probably but the readers. I don’t want to leave someone waiting around for the next update forever. I also want to see how things play out myself so my own desire to see the finished product also helps.
46) I really loved your xxx fic. If you were ever to do a sequel, what do you think might happen in it?Again, going with TDHC for this. I am writing a sequel currently (I know it’s not done). It’s going to focus on a different character but Sarah will make appearances. I’m also working on a standalone sequel for her but that won’t be posted until the first sequel fic is complete.
47) Here’s a fic title - insert a made-up title. What would this story be about?I used a title generator: Hidden Midnight. It’s about a pair of idiots in love, one is a vampire so they can only meet at night and it’s very secretive. The human dies at the end.
48) What’s your favourite trope to write?Forced partnerships. I love it when two characters are forced into a partnership. One of them can’t fucking stand the other but slowly grows to like/love them in secret. If the chill one is in danger the annoyed one freaks the fuck out and does everything they can to get to their partner and afterwards claims they couldn’t care less what happened.
49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?I don’t remember the name of it but I’m pretty sure it was a Supernatural fic. I think it was Destiel (don’t just middle school me) and a high school AU. I’m not 100% sure. It was either that or a Fairy Tail fic and I like to forget my anime days.
50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?Angst. I love fluff and smut but in the end, I always go back to angst. It’s so much fun and there are so many ways to do it.
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Highly recommend. 16 points submitted 17 days agoA Monster Calls by Patrick Ness really got to me when I read it. It all about a young kid (named Conner) who dealing with his mom having a really bad illness. Once you have a good number of them, you can start looking for what items appear often and buying those. Last suggestion I have would be to try shopping at stores that are more geared towards adults/young professionals. You can get an idea for what fashionable among those demographics, and anything you buy from there will likely fit your fashion goals.. I have a major soft spot for her because I adore her style, her taste, and the fact that she adopted her pup (who has three legs). I don't quite see her the same as I used to but I feel like we could totally be friends in real life. I'm genuinely happy for her if she's happy with Grant, but I always hoped she would find someone better. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style 무안출장안마 sheets, images, and videos. It needs to be high up, and you gotta draw it with your eyes open so you know the line won disappear when you open them. I a lil busy but I give u some more advice in another comment in a few minutes. Seems like you are on a great track overall. They seem 무안출장안마 to included in some palettes purely for initial pan appeal, because as actual eyeshadows, they are useless. The problem we mainly have is that we don get a lot of the popular US items for these brands and also it incredibly store dependent, including shade ranges. Like if you don live in the right town or city then your store might not stock a shade range bigger than 10 different shades of pale fair. The fans understand this stuff; they have the life experience to truly appreciate the pointlessness of it all, to realise that Bojack not just funny he says something deep about everything turning to shit. As a consequence people who dislike Bojack Horseman truly ARE childish of course they wouldn appreciate, for instance, Bojack crippling alcoholism and pill addiction, which itself is a cryptic reference to his desire to destroy himself cleverly disguised as a humourous coping method. I smirking right now just imagining one of those over cheerful simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Raphael Bob Waksberg adept depiction of mental illness flies over their heads as mere "comedy". This study had limitations too, of course for one thing, only 9 percent of the participants were male, so it's unclear whether results apply to the general population. But incorporating a few Brazil nuts to your daily diet may not be a bad idea (again, only if you're not afflicted by an allergy): They're one of the highest known food sources of a mineral called selenium, that researchers have previously suspected could be connected to insulin and glucose regulation, which is important for heart health. Nutty, right?. But double dancers is the biggest bullshit and you see more and more of that as you rise, since it gives a pletheora of possiblities to the most OP and insane characters this game has. Not only that, it can literally be a lvl 1 dancer, since they make no difference in combat. How is that balanced you say? I don know.
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What Happens in Vegas Part 26
Rob Benedict x Reader
Chapter Summary: Rob has finally given into what Reader wants, no matter how hard it is for him to do that. The next convention proves to be difficult when the reality of having a baby is very noticeable, and Rob begins to feel left out. Briana stumbles upon Reader’s secret and also reminds Reader that this isn’t all about just her.
Word Count: 23642
Warnings: swearing probably, angst
Notes: Moving along...
Catch Up: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25
Rob’s POV
He had taken a few days to think about what had happened recently. He knew he had to accept Y/N’s decision and move on from it, regardless of how much he loved her. He had been trying his hardest to not lose her, but just the look of devastation that was constantly present in her eyes was finally enough to let him know that he had done something that she couldn’t forgive him for. Then, there was the knowledge that they were having a baby together. He knew that at this point, that had to be his biggest concern. He had failed miserably as a husband, he didn’t want to fail as a father either.
He and Y/N had talked very briefly about what would happen next, but even she didn’t have the answers to anything. She had looked at him with an almost pleading look in her eyes as she admitted that she had no idea what she was going to do.
All he could do was remind her that he was still there with her, even if they couldn’t be together.
That had been the basis of their interactions lately. He stopped trying to convince her to stay, and she stopped yelling at him. They kept their conversations strictly about the baby, which was still difficult for Rob as he still felt the need to just try to do what he could to make her believe him.
Throughout the next couple of weeks, they stopped talking completely, or rather, she stopped talking to him. He made sure to text occasionally, just to check in to see how she was feeling or to ask if she needed anything. Mostly, she just insisted that his help wasn’t needed at all.
By the time the next convention weekend rolled around, Rob knew that seeing Y/N again was going to hurt.
To top it off, he hadn’t heard anything else about the divorce at all. At this point, he didn’t know when she had filed or even if she did.
Before he even had the chance to work up the courage to ask her about it, she had sought him out.
He was surprised that she was even willing to look at him after everything that had happened. He was even more surprised when he noticed that she was definitely visibly pregnant. Despite the fact that when she did approach him, looking just as angry as ever, he felt a bit of happiness inside at the sight of her.
“Wow,” he mumbled. “Look at you.”
She looked down at herself, making the movement to try to cover her belly with her sweater.
“It’s really noticeable, isn’t it?”
“Uh, y-yeah,” he stuttered out, still in a bit of shock as the reality of it was finally setting in.
“Shit, I’m just trying to not make it obvious. I swear I woke up the other day and I had just grown overnight.”
“Why are you trying to not make it obvious?” He asked as he stared at her stomach. “You’re pregnant and you’re going to get bigger. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Um, maybe you’ve forgotten that no one knows about this,” she replied. “And we’re divorcing. Can you imagine the field day people with have with this?”
“I didn’t think about that I guess,” he admitted. “How far along are you now anyway?”
“Twelve weeks,” she replied after thinking about it for a minute.
“Wow. I didn’t even realize…”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s already going by fast. I’m actually doing an ultrasound when this weekend is over.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m supposed to be able to hear the heartbeat and see what the baby looks like.”
“That’s- that’s great,” Rob replied, feeling a knot grow in his throat as he tried not to get upset over how casually she was talking about something that she obviously didn’t want him to be a part of.
“Also, did you realize how long it can take to get a divorce?” She asked, now changing the subject.
“Uh- yeah,” he replied. “My last one took months to be finalized.”
She let out a sigh, looking defeated as he said it.
“Um, when did you file?”
She glanced up at him, giving him a look that he couldn’t quite read.
“Right away,” she said. “Of course I filed right away.”
“Well, we have at least another month of being married before it’s officially over,” he continued. “Possibly up to a year.”
“A year?” She asked, exasperated by the thought of it dragging out that long.
“Sometimes. It just depends.”
“Okay,” she sighed again. “I just wanted to make sure that we’re on the same page. I don’t want to make a huge deal out of this. I know we talked about making it obvious that things were falling apart, but I’ve thought about it and I’d rather just do this quietly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can we just not talk about it at all until it’s officially over?”
“You want to pretend as if it’s not happening?”
“For now. That doesn’t mean that I want to be around you or that I’ve forgiven you in any way, but we need to remain friendly at least publicly.”
“So, I’m not allowed to announce that I’m about to have another ex-wife?”
“Don’t joke. This isn’t funny. I don't want people to be suspicious. I think it’s best if we just continue to be married, like we are, and not raise eyebrows by letting people see that we’re not happy.”
“I don’t know if I can do that…”
“You forced me to pretend that I was in a happy marriage,” she reminded him. “You can pretend for my sake. You owe me this.”
“Fine,” he breathed out. “You’re right.”
He felt guilty as it was, all Y/N had to do at this point was lay on more guilt to make him agree with her. He wasn’t sure why she had changed her mind about the plan that they had worked out in the very beginning. They had wanted people to talk, to speculate that maybe things weren’t going well. They had thought that by doing that, it would not only make the separation real, but it would also make their fake marriage look real.
Now, she spoke to him with a look in her eyes that only made him feel as if she were regretting this decision. What was it that made her choose to keep their divorce a secret until it was actually over? He could be wrong, but maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that their fake marriage had become very real, and now they were both faced with the pain and embarrassment of it ending.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I just- don’t need people in our business. This is hard enough as it is, especially when people inevitably find out that we’re having a baby.”
“Yeah, I guess this all became a lot more real than we expected it to ever be.”
“It really changes everything,” she said softly. “I just feel strangely protective of our baby. Really, that’s the only reason I don’t want to make it known just yet that we’re separating.”
“I understand.”
“Good. At least we’re on the same page about something.”
“Don’t you think that we should just announce that you’re pregnant though?” He asked suddenly. The longer he looked at her, the more he felt that people were definitely going to notice.
“I think that’s a terrible idea,” she muttered.
“Okay, but I’m just saying, it’s noticeable. Might be easier to announce it before we’re officially divorced too.”
“God,” she sighed as she considered his idea. “What a mess. Huh?”
“Yeah. We really did make a mess of things.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll think about it. Maybe it is better that we just tell people while we’re still pretending to be happy. Might make this all look a lot better than it really is.”
“Whatever you want to do, Y/N.”
“I’ll let you know. But for now, I have photo ops and I have to figure out how to make this a bit more discreet,” she explained as she turned from him. “I’ll see you around.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” he offered. “No matter what, I’m here for you.”
“Sure, thank you.”
“And keep me updated on the divorce. I’d like to be aware of when it’s official.”
She forced a half-smile, nodded, and turned from him.
He watched her walk away again, feeling that all too familiar pain in his heart. He had hoped for a lot just then. Hoped that maybe she’d say she reconsidered filing for a divorce; hoped that she might consider asking him to be a part of the whole ultrasound thing. But obviously, she was pretty focused on doing it all by herself, even though he so desperately wanted to be a part of the baby thing as well. At this point, given how terrible he had been to her, could he really say anything?
Reader’s POV- later that evening
“I’m almost ready,” you said as you let Briana into your room.
She sat on the couch as you wander off back to the bathroom to finish getting ready.
“Is it really just a girls night?” You called out to her as you pulled your hair up.
“Yeah, just us girls. I promise, no Rob.”
“Good. I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with him. I can’t wait for this to be done with.”
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled. “You’re obviously really ready for it to end.”
“Did I tell you that I had to beg him to sign the forms?” You continued. You focused on applying your lipstick, still talking to her as she waited in the other room. “It took him weeks. He did it on purpose so he could make me go see the therapist with him. Can you believe that?”
“Well, I can believe it actually. Seems like he’s just trying to save his marriage. Can’t blame him for that.”
“Really?” You scoffed as you left the bathroom. You stepped into the hotel room, slipping on your jacket as you stared at her. “You’re taking his side on this?”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side.”
“Of course you are. He’s your friend. I don’t know why I thought anyone would take my side.”
“I’m really not,” she insisted. “But, if you’re so mad about him lying to you, then why are you lying to him?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never lied to him.”
“I was right there when you told him that you filed for the divorce.”
“You overheard that conversation?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” you replied. “We’re divorcing. People just need to deal with it.”
“You never filed,” Briana said sternly.
“What? Of course I did.”
“You told me that you hounded him to sign those documents, and when you finally got what you wanted, you didn’t even go through with it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about…”
“Really? Because they’re right here,” she said as she held the envelope up for you to see. “You still have them.”
“You looked through my stuff?”
“I saw it in your bag and I was curious,” she grinned. “You never even signed them.”
You froze, not knowing what to even say to that. She was right, you had been caught. You had forced Rob into signing them, rushed him even, and you never even signed them yourself.
“Why did you go through my stuff?” You asked, trying to take the focus away from the fact that you had lied.
You suddenly felt humiliated that you had been caught. Truthfully, you didn’t know why you hadn’t filed the paperwork yet. You had begged Rob to sign the forms, and when he finally did, you felt so much relief. It wasn’t until you got home later on and sat down to sign them yourself that you felt a wave of sadness wash over you.
You stared at the documents for most of the night, trying to talk yourself into just doing it while fighting the fact that you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You tucked them away back into the envelope when you realized you couldn’t do it just yet and convinced yourself that you would do it the next morning.
The hesitation dragged on. For days. Each day, you went through an internal conversation with yourself. You wondered if maybe you were overreacting. You thought about the possibility that maybe he was being truthful about everything else. At the same time, you were still angry at that one lie and it in turn made you believe that everything else had been a lie.
Knowing that you couldn’t make a firm decision based on your ever-changing emotions, you decided to wait. You chalked it up to hormones and mood swings from your pregnancy. You told yourself that you weren’t in the right mindset to make a choice.
Now, you felt bad for the fact that you were letting Rob believe that it was already said and done. He thought the divorce was in process, and you realized that he wasn’t the only liar here.
“I guess we can all be a little untrustworthy,” Briana said. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Just tell me why you haven’t signed them.”
“I couldn’t,” you choked out. “I almost did. After therapy, I was so upset with him, I was ready to do it. But, I started thinking about everything and I stopped myself.”
“Then why are you saying that the paperwork has been filed? Rob is moping around thinking that his marriage is ending sooner rather than later, but you’re lying to him.”
“Don’t tell him, please. I’m going to do it. As soon as I get home after this con, consider it done.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself? Because it sounds an awful lot like you are just trying to talk yourself into it.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” you admitted. You felt the sting of tears build up now that you were confronted not only by yourself, but by someone who cared about both you and Rob.
“Look, I get that you’re convinced that what he did was malicious and manipulative. And it was in a way. But, that man loves you so much. I know he does. I know that you know he does.”
“It doesn’t matter,” you said sharply. “I don’t love him. I can’t even look at him without being angry.”
“Are you sure about that? Because if I really hated the man who accidentally married me, lied about what he remembered, and convinced me to stay married for his own benefit; I would’ve ended this thing in a second. But, here we are. Months later and you’ve got the paperwork with his name on it, and you can’t even bring yourself to do your part.”
“The difference is that we’re having a baby.”
“No. That doesn’t matter,” she said bluntly. “You’re having a baby whether or not you’re married. The fact is, you’re dragging this out now because you know you’re making a mistake.”
You pulled back, upset that she was calling you out like this. When and how you chose to go about this wasn’t her concern. She had no right to come in here and tell you what you were thinking and feeling.
“The only mistake I made was believing him.”
“He told you the truth, Y/N. It might’ve taken him way too long to do it, but if he really only wanted to stay married to you for his own benefit, he could have easily never said a thing. He could have kept that secret that only he knew to himself. No one would have known.”
“He felt guilty.”
“Of course he did,” she said. Her face turned up in what seemed to be anger as she defended her friend. “Because he loves you. He couldn’t continue to lie to the woman that he loves. He just thought that you were both so in love with each other, you could move past the mistakes. He thought you could forgive him.”
“Would you?” You asked bluntly. “If you were in my shoes, could you forgive him for that?”
“Yes. Because everyone makes mistakes, but sometimes forgiveness is necessary. Even when it’s something really bad. I’m just saying, he cared about you enough to be honest finally, even though he knew it could ruin everything.”
“That was a huge lie,” you choked out as you felt the tears well up.
“Yeah, well, you’re not doing anyone any favors by insisting that you don’t even love him. You’re allowed to love people who hurt you. You’re allowed to forgive. That’s all love really is.”
You hung your head, staring down at your shoes as you let her words sink in. You hated when you were wrong, and you knew all along that you were in this case. You did love him, which is why it was so damn hard to move past this.
“Tell me, what’s the real reason you haven’t even signed those papers.”
“I just- think about everything I could be giving up on,” you finally admitted. “He’s a good husband, aside from the lies. He’s going to be the most amazing dad.”
You started to cry as you spoke, feeling the pain of knowing that you could be giving up on a lot.
“Yeah he is,” she smiled. “He’s a good man. He’s a massive idiot, but he’s a good man.”
“I just don’t know what to do.”
“If you’re second guessing this decision this much, you have to take time to think it through. I don’t have answers for you, because it’s your life. But, I will say this… you’re rightfully angry about the lie. We’re all angry about that. But, you’re lying to him and to yourself when you say you feel nothing for him. I don’t know, maybe I just feel like lying about not loving someone is worse than what he did.”
“Really? You think he was right to let this happen when he could have stopped this mess before it started?”
“No. But, I sort of believe that things happen for a reason. You both made a stupid decision that night, sure. But, near the end there, you were so happy. Y/N you were thrilled when you found out you were pregnant. You wanted to have a baby with him. Maybe that mistake was the only thing that was going to get you two to that point. Unless you don’t believe in things happening for a reason.”
“I don’t know what to believe in,” you admitted. “I am honestly so confused right now.”
“Well, you gotta figure that out for yourself. I will also say, it’s not fair to ask him to pretend that he’s happy and that things are perfectly okay between you if they’re not. If this is ending, then he has the right to be sad about it, even if that’s publicly.”
“He literally asked me to fake a happy marriage for him. I think he owes me this.”
“A fake happy marriage that turned into an actual happy marriage. Don’t lie and say that there was nothing happy about it.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“You’ve got a decision to make,” she said. “Just- think about what I said. Really think about the reason why you’re so set on a divorce but you still can’t bring yourself to sign those papers. Something is stopping you and you owe it to yourself to find out what that is.”
You hung your head, taking in her words. You knew she was right. There was a reason why you were stopping yourself from ending it the way that you insisted that you wanted to. But even you didn’t know why for sure.
“Oh, and another thing,” Briana started. “That was really shitty of you to talk about going to the ultrasound and not even asking him to be there for it.”
You swallowed hard, feeling your heart stop briefly as tears welled up again. You honestly hadn’t even thought of it at the time and now you suddenly felt like the worst person in the world.
“Bri- I-”
Before you could articulate words, she was stopping you. She held her hand up to cut you off, indicating that she didn’t want to hear whatever lame excuse you were planning on spilling.
“We have dinner to get to,” she said. “I don’t want to hear excuses, because it doesn’t matter to me. We’re gonna drop this conversation right after this last thing that I have to say.”
She stared at you, frightening you with a serious tone in her voice that you were not used to hearing. But, you listened. She obviously had a lot to say about all of this, and while it was definitely not her business, you had to admit that she had good points.
“You don’t have to forgive him. And you don’t have to stay in this marriage. You can also keep lying about your feelings for him if you want. But, you don’t get to leave him out on the baby stuff. That’s not fair”
“Okay,” you said softly.
That was all you could say. She had scared you out of saying much else. You knew that she was right though. You hadn’t purposely meant to speak about baby stuff to Rob as if he had nothing to do with it. That had been unintentional. Now, at least Briana had talked some sense into you by reminding you that it was your responsibility to encourage him to be involved if he wanted to be.
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Ranking all Dark Souls 3 Bosses from easiest to hardest (personal opinion)
After a couple of days i finished Dark Souls 3 and "slaughtered" every Boss except for one. You will know soon which.
All Bosses are in their own way hard, but some are easier than others. Dark Souls 3 + Ashes of Ariandel & The Ringed City has in total 25 Bosses. 17 main (M) and 8 optional (O).
No. 25
Deacons of the Deep (M)
Don't wanna say anything about it. Be fast. Easy kill.
No. 24
High Lord Wolnir (M)
F this "Lord". His fog has the most shitty hitbox ever.
No. 23
Iudex Gundyr (M)
Wow. I love this Boss. It's a great first (Tutorial) Boss. Moveset not very complex so after a couple of times he's just an easy kill.
No. 22
Vordt of the Boreal Valley (M)
I would say Vordt is easier then Iudex Gundyr, but Vordt's second form is much more aggressive than Gundyr's. Love to fight him with fist xD.
No. 21
Ancient Wyvern (O)
To be honest. This fight is maybe the easiest of the whole game but... If you don't hit his head you're maybe dead and the enemies deal pretty much damage. So i place him here at this place.
No. 20
Crystal Sage (M)
Very easy if you know the spawn points. Yeah, the clones are sometimes very op xD.
No. 19
Curse-Rotted Greatwood (O)
Its funny cause he's an optional Boss, but without deafeating him you can't craft Boss weapons. Great idea FromSoftware, not. F his Hand, dafuq is this?
No. 18
Yhorm the Giant (M)
Damn is this Boss cool. After nightmares with The Last Giant from Dark Souls 2, Yhorm showed me how badass a Giant really can be. It's not very difficult if you can charge the Stormruler and dodge. Just be carefull, Yhorm has a high Range.
No. 17
Old Demon King (O)
I hate this Boss. Thats it. Sometimes its easy, other times its hard.
No. 16
Champion Gundyr (O)
Ouw damn. Iudex Gundyr is chilled. Champion Gundyr just wants your ass. I love the Gundyr fights. The kick from Champion Gundyr is just amazing.
No. 15
Dragonslayer-Armour (M)
This Boss is so fucking gorgeous. His moveset is incredible. A nice Boss to Git Gud.
No. 14
Aldrich, Devourer of Gods (M)
The fight is pretty lame. Yes, he's very strong and i still struggle with this Boss sometimes.
No. 13
Abyss Watchers (M)
This is one of the best fights in the entire series, in my opinion. The perfect Boss to learn and understand the mechanics. I really suck at this fight xD.
No. 12
Pontiff Sulyvahn (M)
Another boss that i hate. Pontiff Sonovabitch. This dude is really really fast.
No. 11
Soul of Cinder (M)
Wooooooooooooooow. My favorite Endboss fight. For me easier than Abyss Watchers or Sulyvahn. But this Dude deals a lot of damage. And his attacks has ultra awesome Delays xD.
No. 10
Sister Friede (M)
Waifu Friede. This Boss has a fucking Bloodborne moveset and 3 (THREE) forms. Friede/Friede and Ariandel/Blackflame Friede. The Blackflame Friede is just insane. WTF FromSoftware, she's a fucking Lady Maria xD.
No. 9
Slave Knight Gael (M)
My favorite Boss fight in Dark Souls 3. This fight is very intense and after 30-35% of his life he gets his ultra badass op second form. In NG+ and up a very very very hard Boss.
No. 8
Oceiros, the Consumed King (O)
I hate this Boss too. Hahahaha. Just killed him to get to Champion Gundyr. Fuck this Bloodborne beast.
No. 7
Halflight, Spear of the Church (M)
F this dude and his fucking mage. The shittiest Bossfight ever in DS3.
No. 6
Dancer of the Boreal Valley (M)
This boss is so elegant and smooth. Pretty hard and damn cool.
No. 5
Demon in Pain & Demon from Below/Demon Prince (M)
Please FromSoftware, please. Stop making this bullshit Demon Bosses. Did you defeat that fuckers?
No. 4
Lorian and Lothric (M)
Damn this Delay attacks. Get rekt Lothric. Stupid moron.
No. 3
Champion's Gravetender and Gravetender Greatwolf (O)
The Champion's Gravetender is easy. The Greatwolf is just WTF????
No. 2
Darkeater Midir (O)
Midir is the coolest Dragon ever. And this Dragon shows you what happen when you're to greedy. I'm sure that he haves one of the biggest Healthbars in the series.
No. 1
Nameless King (O)
Yeap. I still can't defeat the Nameless king yet because of his stupid Dragon and his stupid Delay attacks. I love this Boss, only his Dragon is disgusting. I hit his fucking head but he says no, you don't bitch.
#dark souls#dark souls 2#dark souls 3#remasterd#ds#dsr#ds2#ds3#scholar of the first sin#ashes of ariandel#ringed city#boss#bosses#ranking#git gud#game#gaming#cinder#soul of cinder#abyss watcher#friede#ariandel#lothric#lorian#dragonslayer#you died
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