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singingkestrel · 9 months

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tag game (Horizon)

stolen from @foibles-fables / @finrays.

1.ride or die ship (your otp): Ereloy fics and art give me so much serotonin it's unreal.

2. most annoying ship: I don't find any ships annoying. There are some that are not for me, sure, but if people love it who am I to judge?

3. second favourite ship: Ugh, I dunno. Beta/Milu is adorable, Aloy/Ikrie is classic, Niloy can make for some very interesting reading, but I guess Hawk and Thrush makes the most sense.

4. favourite platonic relationship: It's got to be the Erend and the guys in the Vanguard. Their endless jibes and grumbling at each other are very reminiscent of some of my very best friendships. Varl and Erend's interactions are great, too, they're just so easy with one another.

5. underrated ship: I really like ships that involve minor characters - the recent rair pair roundup has been delightful for me. I long for a fic about some of the Oseram salvagers getting to know the Tenakth whose land they've invaded.

6. overrated ship: see no. 2.

7. one thing i would change in canon: Like, a lot. There were some pretty big chunks of HFW (and Burning Shores) that just didn't sit right. I don't think I can better the responses of @foibles-fables and @finrays (both of whom might be actual geniuses), but I'd settle for the returning characters (Varl, Erend, Talanah, Avad) to be treated better!

8. something canon did right: I think the Horizon series is best when it focuses on poignant storytelling over action. The way the history of the metal world slowly reveals itself at the Grave-hoard and in the Zero Dawn facility below Sunfall is hauntingly beautiful; I'd love to be able to play them for the first time again. In HFW, the quests in Dunehollow to recover POSEIDON were practically perfect, and Gildun's return in Burning Shores was the best part of the DLC by a country mile. In both these cases you get to peek into the lives of a person from the past via emotionally impactful datapoints whose recorded thoughts parallel the people you're trying to help in the present, yet it never feels too on-the-nose. Of course it helps that the people you're trying to help are some of the best realised characters in the whole game.

9. a thing i'm proud of creating for the fandom PLEASE BRAG ABOUT YOURSELF I WANT TO SEE/READ YOUR ART: Eh. Alas, I'm not artistically talented. I just take virtual photos of stuff I like. I put a lot of effort into my machine headshot series, though. If you go to @singingkestrel and search for 'headshots compilation' (or 'hfw machines') they should all come up.

10. a character who is perfect to me (wouldn't change a thing): None of the main cast were treated 100% right in HFW. I mean, there are some things that make me genuinely angry if I think about them too much. Varl dying for no good reason, Erend being turned into a bumbling oaf, Regalla being criminally underused... ugh. UGH I SAY!

But you know who is perfect?

Morlund.

I love his optimism and his determination and his intelligence and his companionable nature. He's a nerdy mad inventor and a very strong candidate for the most overtly hopeful and kind chap in game (I mean, there is also Varl. And Gildun.) and I just adore him.

11. the character i relate to the most and why: I look at the Oseram in both HZD and HFW and see myself, my friends and my home. I adore their aesthetic with all of its chunky wood and sturdy iron, I love their down to earth attitude, their culture of hard work and social drinking and affectionate insults, their adventurous wanderer spirit and inventiveness and willingness to argue about everything. Are they flawed? Sure! Like me, they're loud and blunt and often speak without thinking, thinking they know best. Unlike me (I hope), they're too dismissive of other cultures, their lack of environmental awareness is deeply concerning, and we all know 🕯The Claim🕯 is going to be a hideous hotbed of rampant sexism - one that I will gladly watch Aloy tear to pieces like a tasmanian devil with a grudge. I don't think I can pick a single Oseram character I totally relate to, though.

But I do relate to Tom Paech. As soon as I heard those broad antipodean tones swearing about wanting to inflict actual bodily harm on Ted Faro I knew I'd found the scientist I was supposed to identify with. He was hot-blooded, as he put it, whilst also revering nature, the 'miracle of life.' And him wanting to help, despite significant reservations, and then not wanting to live on once the job was done? Exactly how I think I would have reacted. Plus as a marine biologist/ecologist (assuming I'd be in any way qualified!) I'd end up working on ARTEMIS too.

12. character(-s) i hate the most and why: There are characters you are meant to hate. It's fun to have a villain. Ted Faro, Helis, the Ceo... but the hate is both intentional and enjoyable. They're good characters. If I had to pick a character I disliked where this wasn't the aim, however, I'd have to pick... hmm. I'm not sure. Amadis seemed largely pointless and annoying in HFW though. Talanah deserved better.

13. something i've learned from the fandom: Before HFW came out, I hadn't been involved in any fandom for about a decade (maybe longer, eek!) - I was a solitary creature. Coming back made me rediscover the joy of sharing my obsessions with others. Also that it doesn't matter how small your contribution is, someone will enjoy it.

14. three tags i seek out on ao3: That's between me and my ISP.

15. a song i strongly associate with my otp/favourite character: I don't, really. Bit weird, considering how much of my life involves music, and how readily my brain seems to play musical association with images. But I can't think of a single one. Sorry 😕

tagging: No pressure, but I didn't tag anyone in the last one so I thought I should do it this time. @mehoymalloy @robo-dino-puppy @meep-m33p @maybirdie @nerd-artist @astralpaint @i-lavabean @pikapeppa @banukaihelpme aaaand anyone else that wants to.

#tag game #horizon stuff #my thoughts

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notthephantomthievesreal · 11 months

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Happy Birthday to Rise and Akechi! It must be nice to be born on this month.

Oh my god im sorry anon i lost this in the. Mailbox. - ORACLE

Wait. Rise like... THE Rise??? Risette??? ah, i guess so.. I dont know why you'd tell us this but thanks. I am kind of a fan i suppose..I have a poster of Risette on my room.. im thinking of getting another one..

Also huh. Akechi? Mr detective? That Akechi??! do not speak his name this is an akechi hater zone. Hope that guy trips and self destructs. I hear hes such a loser actually and he sucks at cooking

WAIT haha. . Actually my good friend CROW is the biggest Akechi hater. Yes hates that guy so much its unreal. Right? - JOKER

^^ hate is such a strong word! But naturally as all our fans know, mr akechi has expressed his disapproval on our mission... although, JOKER, hasn't he recently changed his views a bit? - CROW

Ugh. Yeah i guess. fine. Tch. Hes ok hes a. An ok guy i think sure whatever. Happy birthday to that nerd . Hope you LIVE another week at least!;!! - JOKER

I'm sure he'd be delighted to read this ^^ - CROW

#rival blues #JOKER #CROW #ORACLE #(i like how they forgot the month comment entirely)#anon #ask

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romegaketh · 2 years

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i'm really in love with your writing style. What books do you think have influenced your writing style the most?

anon!!! this is so kind of you. i am such a fucking baby about how distinct my style is - i am keenly aware it's not everyone's cup of tea! i'm listing authors under the cut. most of these i've posted about #onhere and none of them are particularly deep cuts. hopefully this isn't too dull! it is pretentious tho. sorry can't be helped.

ursula le guin. i (re)read her entire bibliography earlier this year and the depth and strength of her prose - as well as her ability to align it with polemic! - blows me away to think about. (top three: the dispossessed, tehanu, five ways to forgiveness.)

margaret atwood. particularly the poetry collections. i haven't read a lot of atwood in recent years - she's politically intolerable, among other things! - but power politics is definitely at the root of how i want to write and wish i could. parts of the handmaid's tale are, on a craft level, simply astounding.

seth dickinson. i never shut up about how wonderful the traitor baru cormorant is, because it is that wonderful. dense and complicated prose, dense and complicated plot, all of it excruciatingly beautiful to read. laws of night and silk is a beautiful short story with similar themes that i adore, and there's a neat post on his blog about how he structures sentences that i think about often.

jeff vandermeer got me at a good time. borne is the book of his i'd recommend most - i think his less linear work is very beautiful but revels in its strangeness too much to be easily accessible.

china mieville has abuse allegations against him and seems like a total asshole. (also his new stuff sucks.) that said, iron council is a tour de force i loved so much i finished reading it and immediately bought a copy to send to a friend (before i learned abt the allegations). you have to like mieville's style to like it - you can't really half ass your way in, he's complicated and self referential - but if it works for you, it works. the denouement of iron council is... i get shivers when i think about it. (illegally download them, though. fuck that guy.)

i would be remiss if i didn't include Formative Fanfiction. i could never cover it all but i really like the specific house style used in like, mid 00s sorkin fic, which you also see sometimes in stargate atlantis fic of the same period. kind of spare, talky, vivid. a super specific often obfuscatory narrator. i don't do it bc i like parentheses too much, but it's in my heart. (i do the narrator thing though.) in no particular order:

even sugar peas run out of snap. sports night. you don't need to know sports night to get this fic, you just need to like breakups and getting your ass kicked by a narrative.

shoeless joe and the sunshine kid. captain america. this fic is my north star, lol. it's incredible. the shit it does with genre and expectation! unreal! if you can go in unspoiled that's best, and i never say that.

take clothes off as directed. sga. incredible construction, both word by word and as a functional world. (and as commentary!)

this was very fun to think about, sorry none of it is cutting edge! feel free to ask for specific recs if there's something you like, or warnings, or whatever. god i love... to read. thanks again <3

#ask: anon

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nverl0st · 5 months

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november song recs

i know this month hasn't ended yet, but i know it's gonna get busy after thanksgiving break, so i'm gonna write this now. i want to start writing these to sort of remember these months by songs i liked. a good reminder to how each month was like. this month was a lot less vocaloid centric than usual. maybe that's good. i'm becoming more normal.....

---this december - ricky montgomery

the second i heard this song i immediately fell in love. it felt like something i've heard before, something that would have played a lot during my childhood. it's so familiar. it really reminds me to not be so depressed and hopeless this winter, reminding me how wonderful life can be. because maybe, this winter, "i'll remember".

---internet yamero - needy girl overdose, kotoko, aiobahn

i tried to listen to this song before (because the vibes are immaculate), however i did not like the parts before the "chorus". well... i gave it another try because the chorus is just too good. the parts before the chorus i recently found to be so cool as well. the deliriousness kind of brings a smile to my face... it really is a song that encapsulates the internet well.

---spoiled princess - fujiwo

yeah i already wrote a post about this so i won't say much. what a nice song in a specific trope i really like. emunene cover is also splendid.

---animal - deco27

why am i still listening to this i swear it's been months. i first listened to the amane cover (which i honestly... like better. the instrumental is different and the timbre of her voice is really nice) but i recently started listening to the og vocaloid one too. one of the few deco27 songs i like... i guess the onomatopoeias are very catchy... as well at the 8-8-7#-8! that it does. a lot

---gehenna - wotaku

very recent addition, but it's very memorable. it vaguely sounds like happy halloween??? the instrumental/verses have such a different feeling compared to the chorus... but what a wonderful song in terms of its lyrics. "'i want to stay alive'/ i don't know why/ but 'i want to stay alive'" as well as "'i want to stay alive'/ 'I don't want to stay alive'/ it's so unfortunate/but we have to live"... and the whole last stanza on "deceiving" and "couldn't tell you". i love how it also says "and this is so sad". what wonderful wording. because no matter what, we just have to keep living. one thing that's throwing me off is the vague rapping in the background...? what is going on in the instrumental. also wtf mr. shanti guy made this. such a different style.

---phantasm suite - hoyomix "the golden midsummer"

okay. hear me out. it's a really really good instrumental piece okay... and the spoken word really makes it even better. "often times, i could not even see right in front of me/we will meet again, no matter how far along down the road", "to you from the past, i hope you liked this song", "please, be proud of all that is unreal... for we are greater than this world", "it has never voiced a complaint, for that is its destiny"... it reminds me of summer when i played this event.

---those eggs aren't dippy - jack stauber

the first 10 seconds are so fucking good????? especially the "let me in your eaaarrrr" i even made it my alarm! it's perfect because it's so short. unfortunately it's not doing a great job of waking me up. it's too catchy.

---love ka - hiiragi kirai

even though i personally did not listen to this song a lot this month, i recommended this song (via musescore) to a friend, and they really loved it so that's pretty notable. getting everyone hooked on vocaloid. seriously that musescore cover is so good. they adapted special quirks love ka does in its instrumental/vocals for piano, but not in the exact same way. they made a piano arrangement, not transcription. like tremolo for piano instead of vibrato???? gives it such a nice touch!!!

#vivid thoughts #vocaloid #music thoughts

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temporarymoods · 7 months

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perpetual novice

hey blog, i've thought about you every day since i made you, and i couldn't quite settle on what to feed you next, but like, whatever!

at this moment in our arena, please welcome me and my haircut (!!) and the girls on tinder and jane: an abortion service, plus the sophie lewis book on my nightstand I could practically draw "z"s above, (that's my bad.)

blog, I'd like to take the time to say that I've been feeling vulnerable when it comes to queer dating! because obviously, but also because of perceived external judgement from within the community, ow. looked in the mirror my therapist held up for me and saw that I'm much more comfortable with my gender than my sexuality, after being asked to spell it all out. this is, not in terms of definition-- we're solid there-- but praxis. and i think this is because gender is something you can do more fully alone in your bedroom. sexuality is too, but at least people can demand more than your word for it. right? haha

yeah, been falling in love with this unreal image of a gay relationship i have in my head. eye contact and shit, you know. and more 'equal' stuff, including but not limited to a kind of greater understanding and intentional kindness. still really mad about the patriarchy, who would've guessed? bunch of guys were talking with my one man professor, who is great, in class today and i started thinking about barnard, lmao. and i think that's fair--- not that i should be concerning myself with the look of the opposite*, but worth saying, i guess. it's fair to be feeling done! rahhhh (there's obviously so much more going on here re. my anger with men but I will not [yet] divulge to my baby blog) *i.e., worrying about looking like a feminist that's "unfair"

anyway, if i could make a mood board, which i cannot without getting frustrated, for my current passionspace, it would contain the following: lots of soft pinks, purples, and dark grey-blue, the end of "parachute" by caroline polachek {starting at "closing in"} (what a mother figure), splashed puddles of water, this specific capricorn-themed mug with hot tea, 'full surrogacy now', BLÅHAJ, my noise-cancelling headphones, masculine clothing, flowers of the wild variety, tissues, PLL (got such a crush on spencer), the quote "finally there's a way to be both free and safe", 'bottoms' promo art, and other elements to ensure cohesiveness.

so it's almost sweater season, team. i've gotta take my winter stuff out from under my bed-- an event which i'm already planning catering and lighting for. figured out that i'm the type of person that needs to remind themself to light candles, etc. an entailment of the great bath bomb revelation from years past. <- solid me lore

on a similar note of control: craving leadership of late. i want to run shit so bad. god i'd be so good. the dog sits in me, unbarking and chained. looked into theatre production opportunities, ended up feeling that thing i haven't quite found the right way to express yet... degrounded? fucking sucks is what it is. when you go too far up the imagination slide; a kind of altitude sickness. so maybe i won't be doing tech exactly but soon i'll have another full-time job. lol. that'll be cool. hopefully i can make shit happen. feel myself have an effect on the world.

🎶 it's time to be a big girl now 🎶

i wish i could better articulate my current thoughts on "'girl' stuff," especially as its been coming up in the dumb discourse recently... i think i'm too online. well, now I have to go finish typing up my geometry homework in an itsy bitsy coding language I've caught onto-- for extra credit!

the door? the gate? no, just kate 9/18/2023

p.s. god i fucking love caroline polachek's music

#pang #pretty little liars #desire #biggirlsdontcry #autumn #women

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lynsburner · 8 months

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your fics are so amazing!! where do you usually get inspiration from?

Thank you so much! Also, my apologies, because as always, it's time to give an unnecessary, long-ass answer to questions that should take a second to respond to.

So, this is threefold.

One: I love me a rom-com. I love two people who should be together finally find their way to each other. Some of my favorites are What If? (also called The F Word in some places) which to me is friends to lovers excellence, and there's a scene where they turn the "grand gesture" trope on its head that I LOVE, About Time (and the message of living every day to the fullest), and I really did like Plus One, which is another great friends to lovers time. Also, as we know, I am a sucker for Practical Magic. I just like writing stories like these lol

Two: .... don't hate me for this, but spite/determination LMAO. There were fics that I wanted to see/read but couldn't seem to find them... so I wrote them myself!

I didn't really get into reading/writing self-insert until a few years ago, and even then, I was mostly reading the silly/Wattpad-level bad ones with friends as a joke. But, like most things I do, it went from being ironic to unironic really quickly and I thought to myself, "Hey, if these people can do this, so can I!" Most of these stories lived on my notes app and I exchanged them with a single friend. The more (once I realized who and who wouldn't judge me for writing these) friends who saw them encouraged me to publish them. And now I have this burner account lol.

So, long story short: there are just things I wanted to read and I thought "Well, if no one else will... guess I'll have to step up to the plate. "

Not that I think I'm writing anything revolutionary. This is my burner account self-insert blog. My name isn't really Lyn. This is my little secret aka my commitment to the bit is truly... unmatched.

And three: My first ever published fic from this account was inspired by a genuine long-distance relationship I was in at the time (he was also just as tall, and had long hair, but from a neighboring country lol) and being frustrated I couldn't meet them because of the pandemic. So I kind of channeled that want (and even some of the moments we had shared) in there.

The second one in that series was inspired by more real-life experience, as well as a shit ton of tik-toks of plus-size women having shared their experience of more conventionally attractive people trying to flirt with their significant others in front of them. I really wanted to attempt to subvert expectations with that one and say while it might feel good in the moment, constantly being overlooked because of the body you lived in fucking SUCKS.

The third in that series literally came together in a week of just an idea I had that was just like... yeah this relationship is hard... and no one's perfect.. but love, man! I also just desperately needed a vacation IRL lol Plus, a lovely anon kept messaging me about that series and I had the urge to revisit it.

With the most recent one, that angst was actually scrapped dialogue from the third in that series that I just wanted to explore more? Like that one had the end goal of them getting engaged and I knew if I had them genuinely yelling at each other, that engagement wouldn't be earned. So to a blank slate of a couple it went to! Also, lbr, Unreal Unearth is truly so tragic when it comes to its themes (specifically about love) so I pulled from there a teensy bit.

And, then the chaptered one was fully inspired by that tumblr post that was like "He's a sound guy. Shite Craic. Would not have him round for cans, on my life" where they described Andrew as a dude who only mopes and smokes weed. I just thought it would be very funny to make him a bit of a cynical asshole. Plus, I technically have a film degree, and dreams of becoming a professional screenwriter in me, so writing dialogue is my absolute favorite thing. Love silly banter between two people who just need to kiss already.

Again, so sorry for this being so long, but I am a sucker for an ego-boost-filled deep dive.

#lyn needs to stop talking #lyn’s lore is complex but it involves silly bits and a man from what i hear is the new jersey of ireland #truly there is no immediate source it's just my brain going 'what's on the menu today madam' and then running it by a few friends #but yeah that real long distance relationship is why I don't listen to unknown when I listen to UU in full I'm sorry andrew it wrecks me

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 2 years

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I always wondered why Marinette tried to learn Mandarin when her uncle visited. The show clearly states that her family is from Shanghai, and they don't speak Mandarin there: they speak Shanghainese. The languages are related, but it's unreal how different they are: for example, Mandarin has four tones, while Shanghainese tosses tone out the window and has a pitch accent system. It's fascinating stuff, but it further demonstrates how people don't recognize (1/2)

On one hand, I can kind of understand what they’re trying to go with here by showing Marinette’s disconnect from her Shanghai culture. I have Irish and German ancestry, and I feel like I know more about my Irish heritage than my German heritage, mainly thanks to my mom and grandpa, who knew about certain aspects of Irish culture, while I never really get to see the only relative I have on my German side who’s fluent in the language compared to my dad.

I also know nothing about Chinese culture outside of some of the stuff I learned about their history in school and from some of the cartoons that taught me basic Chinese ideologies, like Kung Fu Panda and Xiaolin Showdown, so I don’t really know much about how much this show’s screwed up Chinese representation other than the “How did nobody see this as stereotypical?” moments, so I really appreciate the little lesson on the Shanghaiese and Mandarin languages and how the show got both of them wrong

On the other hand, it’s strange that Sabine, someone who was established to know a lot about her heritage given she’s from Shanghai, didn’t even bother to teach Marinette about the culture and instead decided to save up money to send her on a trip to Shanghai on the off chance she actually asked to learn more about her mother’s side of the family.

Like, seriously? You didn’t even try to bake any food from Shanghai to teach her? You didn’t even try to teach her some of the language? You didn’t even try to teach her about your home’s fashion even though Shanghai is a city known for being a big place for fashion?

If Marinette was just never interested in learning about her heritage, I could have bought it, but the first episode to bring up how little she knows about it, “Kung Food”, showed how embarrassed she was that she didn’t know much, and once again, needed to have her own damn culture explained to her by a white guy learning the language himself.

There are so many recent cartoons and animated movies that feature characters with various heritages that do more with their respective cultures than Miraculous Ladybug has done in years. There’s Soul, Coco, Moana, Luca, Hair Love (it’s only a short film, but goddamn, does it feel like it actually earned its Oscar for once), Amphibia, The Owl House, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Let’s Go Luna, Molly of Denali, and most recently, Encanto. All of these feature characters with differing races and cultures, take time to teach kids about certain cultural touchstones occasional issues associated with said races and cultures, while also giving kids of those races characters they can relate to more than something about a white character.

Miraculous Ladybug clearly wants to be one of these shows with how much Astruc prides his work for being inclusive, and while we don’t know if it’s the result of executives saying Marinette needed to be less Chinese in order for the show to be more marketable, or if the writers just didn’t do enough research, but the show simply fails to take advantage of Marinette’s heritage compared to some of the characters in the works I mentioned above, and only tries to do so when there’s an opportunity to teach Marinette about her own culture.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug salt #ml salt #ml critical #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #sabine cheng

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davidmann95 · 2 years

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here we go here we go here we go

* I want you all to know I had the Square Enix Youtube page loaded up and I went to that first thing in the morning, and then physically blocked the screen with my hands and slowly uncovered it one calculated sliver at a time until I saw a runtime on a video that seemed right and looked to see it was indeed 'Kingdom Hearts 20th Anniversary Announcement Trailer' without seeing any potential individual trailers, so I got to go into this totally cold. Even up until the last second I didn't know if it was gonna pull a fast one and technically be some kind of interquel.

* Damn this is crisp, especially since it's running on Unreal Engine 4 when the finished product will be 5.

* "Your options are endless" suggests this could go well beyond Quadratum, but I hope they commit (at least on Sora's end) to this being a full-fledged open world game.

* That does indeed look like a Star Wars AT-AT foot! That'd make that gorgeous landscape Endor, and I do like to think of Sora escaping Quadratum, thinking "oh thank god it's funny animals and generic bad guys, the world makes sense again", and then a dad is trying to murder his son with a sword while a spooky old freak cackles in the background and Sora just breaks down. With the franchise's degree of influence on Nomura I'd be fascinated to see how this plays out, and also being extremely real Kingdom Hearts > Star Wars so I'd be happy to see the material elevated.

* I thought using The Caribbean's style engine in the Yozora fight was a very deliberate choice, and following that up here by giving Sora a relatively realistic 'do rather than his classic Goku hair is tripling down on that.

* I bet I would be extremely excited about Strelitzia if I had played the mobile games.

* Someone immediately doxxed Sora and apparently the flat he's in is $1.2 million in the real world, our boy's living in style. If he has a permanent living space in this game, might there be a day-night cycle ala Final Fantasy XV? Jesus, would rather than camping out like Noctis' crew the lost boy in the city with no way home literally have to sleep under bridges or on benches if he can't make it back to the apartment safe haven?

* THE REAL WORLD IS KINGDOM HEARTS HELL

* This thing seems to have as much in common with the Invisibles or to my eye even the Dark Inferno as much as the old Darksides.

* The little shot of the guy falling out of his car is the bit that truly brings it home for me as 'holy crap, this is basically the real world'; I had wondered why they put Big Hero 6 in the game before this when it'd potentially undercut the impact, but the contrast is a stark one.

* Getting a full look at it in motion, while it can't beat the iconic power of II, this might be my favorite look for Sora after that - that was the peak of what it was doing, this is the next step in an entirely new direction that III only started on the road towards. Pour one out though, I now assume Sora injured his feet as a kid and slowly gained courage throughout his adventures to tone down the padding:

youtube

* I don't read many Kingdom Hearts fanfic these days, but I'm still following @kitsoa's IV[or]y Wall, and the beginning of the trailer so closely mirrored the opening of that that I legitimately wondered for a second if Sora wouldn't be able to summon his Keyblade.

* I only recently started paying attention to Yoko Taro's work - one of the mandatory multiple playthroughs of Nier Automata, and watching one of the Drakengard endings - but that's enough to see he's had influence on Nomura, especially with Quadratum. In that regard, the fight on the freeway and especially this Heartless seemingly draining most color from its surroundings (pay attention to the cars it's hefting) definitely gave me Copied City vibes.

* Crushed that the move to a new saga isn't met with the restoration of the Command Deck, but apparently the last COMMAND option below items is now 'Build'?

* A lot of Sora's moves here are clearly previz fakery in the same way as the reveal trailer for III, but that this is even suggestive of what they have in mind is pretty stunning.

* I know it's a drill which I understand has some Gureren Lagann vibes (another show I want to watch someday), but let it not be overlooked that before it forms Sora fully does a Kamehameha.

* Even just that pan up the building emphasizes how different the visual storytelling is here than anything we've seen in Kingdom Hearts before.

* New logo slick, and the triumphant horns accompanying it? Magnifique.

* Glad to see the boys and glad to hear the sound effect to emphasize that there's at least a slice of this that still plays by the old rules; their destination makes sense but boy, they really gonna bring James Woods back again?

* If Kairi is not journeying with Donald and Goofy I will be incensed.

* I have spent 13 years (13, damn you Nomura) obsessed with the vibe of this old fanmade Kingdom Hearts IV boxart, and it is shockingly close to the vibe here.

* There have been different translations/interpretations regarding a key comment: one that Nomura chose between making Kingdom Hearts IV or a Verum Rex game first and chose IV because folks were worried about Sora, the other which I find more plausible is that the debate was which of those two to name this game and he chose IV out of concern that players wouldn't associate it as a mainline Sora game otherwise (and presumably because Disney wouldn't be having any of that) - I've seen other comments supposedly from him elaborating on both, one saying he didn't want to develop two games at once, the other that they still call this Verum Rex around the office, but barring a crash course in Japanese I'm pretty sure which take I believe for now. In any case, that they considered naming this after their Final Fantasy self-parody if not in fact literally making that is beautiful to me.

* I assume I will be in my 30s by the time this comes out but that it won't be a 6 year wait like last time.

* I was worried that the success of III would lead to Disney clamping down on Nomura, but instead they seem to have really decided to let the mad freak to whatever he wants, and I couldn't be happier.

#Kingdom Hearts IV #Kingdom Hearts #Sora #Analysis #Opinion #Youtube

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delimeful · 3 years

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the shapes in the silence (13)

warning: illness, mild emetophobia, arguing, panic attack, dissociation, altered mental state, guilt

They had very little time to process, after Puff-- Anxiety-- their rescuer collapsed limply to the ground.

Roman and Patton each burst into their own hysterics, but Logan was utterly silent. He was frozen, mind racing and connecting a thousand little dots, like realizing a constellation had been right in front of you, you’d just somehow missed the brightest star.

The form of Anxiety was sprawled out undeniably in front of them, struck down by the attack that had been levied against Puff, because he was Puff. He’d wondered why Anxiety wasn’t prone to their shrinking dilemma, but he’d been dealing with it the longest. Anxiety’s withdrawal and Puff’s strange behavior were causation and correlation.

Anxiety lay before them, but whatever he had done to change his form, to protect them against attack, it had changed him. Small purple scales curled over his cheekbones, two curved, deer-like ears lay limp on the sides of his head, and even a tail where there had been none before.

If there had ever been any way to refute his connection to Puff, his appearance now countered it single-handedly.

In the end, it was the doubts that snapped them all out of it.

Sinuous, shifting forms that changed with every blink, they crawled up from their blind spots, appearing in the corners of their vision.

Roman snapped his sword hand back up reflexively, frowning, but Logan could easily read the confusion scrawled across his posture. He’d complained at length about the creatures, their persistent aggression and the way that they always heralded Anxiety’s appearance in this realm, like the world’s creepiest minions.

But Anxiety lay prone at their feet, in no state to control anything, and furthermore, the glittering eyes of the doubts seemed almost… locked on him, glinting with malice.

More questions, and the only one who could answer them was unconscious and quickly gaining a sickly tint to his skin. The doubts were creatures of despair, and if they reached Patton or Anxiety-- the more emotion-driven pair out of the four of them-- the results could be disastrous. They needed out, now.

Logan firmed his shoulders, moving to cut through the panicked back-and-forth his companions were doing.

“Roman,” he called, taking reference from every instructor that Thomas had ever respected to insert authority into his tone, “pick Anxiety up.”

The creative side jerked, his eyes drawn down to Anxiety for a second before flickering away. “And give up my stalwart defense? We’ll be overcome before we reach anything resembling an exit!”

“You need to pick up Anxiety,” Logan repeated, and took a deep breath, shedding all the dirt and gore that he had accumulated while trekking through the Imagination. “I’m bringing the exit to us.”

Applying his function to a space that wasn’t real tended to... destabilize it. It was a last resort, the sort of thing that they’d figured out early on should be avoided. Roman demonstrably put his heart and soul into his work, after all, and fracturing it hurt Creativity as much as the realm itself. Even something as small as Logan breaking his own immersion made Roman twitch, let alone what he was about to pull.

Roman’s eyes went wide with understanding, and then grim determination. He sheathed his sword back into nothing and knelt down at the fallen Side’s side, only hesitating for the barest moment before sliding his arms under his shoulders and knees and lifting him into the air.

The motion seemed to jar Anxiety, and he let out a pained whine that wouldn’t have sounded out of place coming from Puff. Lifted up like this, they could see the singed gouge that tore through the back of his hoodie, the smoking, rotting injury lined up on his spine in the exact same place it had hit Puff.

“It looks bad,” Patton whispered, his eyes wet and his hands half-pressed over his mouth. The doubts were closer now, circling like wolves. They couldn’t be allowed to worsen Anxiety’s condition.

“We will handle it,” Logan said, not allowing even the slightest tremor in his voice as he held his hands out. He met Roman’s eyes, one last warning, before closing his own and focusing all his attention on dismantling the environment around him.

It was all illusory, from the faint scent of ozone lingering in the air to the cold stone around them. None of it was real, not the magic or the monsters, not when one thought about them logically. The Imagination was a limitless space, shaped and crafted by Creativity, and so any distance between them and the placement of an ‘exit’ was simply imaginary.

There was no logical reason to traverse an imaginary path, and so with one yank, Logan pulled and then folded the space between them and the exit, like crumpling a piece of paper to make two ends meet.

The landscape crinkled around them, bricks shattering and environments crashing together with discordant scraping. Roman would be feeling the effects of the hole in his work for a while, but there was a doorway ahead of them and the doubts were scattered and caught in the folds and tears Logic had created.

“Move,” Logan said through gritted teeth, and Roman staggered through the exit, Patton hot on his tail. He stepped through as well, the door slamming shut on its own behind him. His presence wouldn’t be tolerated in the realm for a good long while after this.

He beckoned Roman over, shoving away the guilt he felt at the other Side’s pained grimace. If his power had just held long enough for the Imagination’s effects to be wiped from Anxiety as well--

The wound pulsed once, as though to announce its stubborn survival. It was glowing a painful violet, the injury resembling nothing more than a slowly expanding Lichtenburg figure.

Logan’s knuckles went white as he looked down at it. He hadn’t even managed to make the injury into something real, something more manageable to treat.

He reached out, grasping again for that sense of unreality, of rejection, and Roman pulled away, backing up.

“No more,” he said firmly, his voice a sharp contrast to the shaking of his arms. Logan felt that familiar guilt threaten to flood for a moment, before-- “Specs, you’re about to pass out. You used too much.”

He blinked, glancing down at his hand. It was shaking, too. He’d overtaxed himself, been too involved in the previous daydream to shut it down without any backlash.

Logic shouldn’t have been too involved in anything. He clenched his fist, abruptly furious with himself.

“Whatever that witch’s calamitous curse caused, it’s spreading slowly for now,” Roman announced, still seeming almost skittish with Anxiety in his arms. “We have yet time to uncover the truth.”

Patton pressed the back of his hand against Anxiety’s forehead, hissing sympathetically. “He’s burning up. I don’t know about curing curses, but-- we can at least help with this.”

They all had memories of Thomas’s parents coaxing him through fevers and flus, but Patton was the best at actually following that example. He directed Roman to the couch, flitted back and forth between the kitchen and the living room with all the classic illness aids.

“This is a spell-based sickness. There’s no reason to believe that this illness will function similarly to Thomas’s past experiences,” Logan started, and then was promptly cut off by Anxiety jerking halfway up off the couch, twisting, and vomiting into the small trash can Patton had just brought out. “... I stand corrected.”

His voice seemed to drag Anxiety’s attention from his retching, his head bobbing up to look around.

He stared out at them with bleary eyes for a heartbeat, all of them quiet and frozen and waiting, and then he slumped back down into both the couch cushions and unconsciousness. A mutual breath of relief went around the room.

“So, are we… going to talk about it?” Patton asked, as though half-dreading the answer.

“Talk about what?” Roman snapped sarcastically, crossing his arms. “The fact that apparently our dear draconic companion has been none other than Anxiety, the scourge on our home, the blight on our fields, the bane of Thomas’s existence, this entire time?”

“We don’t own any fields,” Logan interjected.

“Well, if we did, the guy would probably blight them! He’s a-- a blighter!” Roman replied, increasingly higher in pitch. “This is probably some kind of trick, a foul villainous plot for some greater purpose we don’t understand yet. Anxiety can’t possibly be— have been—!”

“Talking shit?” A familiar drawl rang out, a dark figure appearing on the stairs between one blink and the next and making them all jump. “I thought I heard someone say-- Anxiety?”

There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone looked between the two identical figures in the room.

“Well,” the Anxiety that was clearly actually Deceit said, glancing over the three of them, “I don’t suppose I could convince you that he’s the fake one? … No? What a shame.”

He lifted his shoulders from Virgil’s perpetual slouch easily, shedding his disguise in favor of his usual attire. Several more puzzle pieces clicked into place.

“You were the one who appeared when we introduced Puff to Thomas,” Logan said, cutting off the startled exclamations from the others. “And just now-- you returned from appearing to Thomas, didn’t you? As Anxiety, not yourself.”

Deceit rolled his eyes, adjusting his cufflinks absently. “Yes, well, someone had to do his job while he was… preoccupied. Or were you all so remiss as to not notice the decline that comes with a complete absence of Anxiety?”

They all bristled in unison. “All we’ve been doing as of late is trying to figure out why Thomas has been struggling recently,” Logan replied stiffly. “We cannot jump to conclusions based on the seemingly random reticence of one Side.”

“Oh, but now you know it’s not random at all, don’t you?” Deceit purred, stepping down the stairs one by one. “After all, Occam’s Razor has never proved to be true before.”

“You’re the one who’s slithering around impersonating other Sides!” Roman cut in with a sharp accusation. “How do we know you’re not the reason dear Thomas has been acting off?”

Deceit’s lip curled, displaying a curved fang. “I haven’t been the only reason Thomas hasn’t fallen apart entirely! But if you’d really like to cast blame, I’m happy to inform all three of you that this is your fault.”

“Our fault?” Roman and Patton’s voices overlapped, one outraged and the other alarmed. Logan frowned, smoothing down his tie absently.

“Are you speaking under false pretenses again? Only moments ago, you were claiming that Anxiety’s… disappearance was the source of Thomas’s recent struggle.”

Deceit’s gloves crinkled with the force of his grip on the banister. “You three are the ones who drove Anxiety to believe that he was superfluous, to the point that he decided somehow trapping himself in the form of a— a pet was better than spending another moment as himself in your presence,” he spat, each word furious and bitter.

There was a tense pause, and Deceit visibly reeled in his anger with a deep breath. “I refuse to spend any longer debating sins with you. If you’ll hand over Anxiety—,”

“No!” Logan startled himself with the sharp response, but Roman and Patton alike had echoed it. They exchanged looks, all of them struggling for a moment to put it to words.

Finally, Patton turned to where Deceit was staring at them with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t know why Anxiety chose to— chose this, but I do know that he got hurt trying to protect us. And if it really is our fault-- ...Well, it wouldn’t be right either way, making you or him deal with this alone.”

“And that’s assuming you even have the tools to deal with it,” Logan added, earning himself an irritated glare from the Dark Side. “That was not a slight against you. To elaborate on my meaning, Roman’s experience with the realm and the perpetrator behind the injury could be invaluable in treating it. It would be remiss for us to not offer aid.”

There was a beat, and Roman looked up belatedly from Anxiety, his face pale and eyes distant. “Right,” he said, and then stronger, “Right. We’ll help Anxiety overcome this curse, and then speak with him ourselves on the matter of blame.”

Deceit looked between the three of them assessingly, gaze occasionally flickering down to where Anxiety lay. “I could handle this perfectly well,” he snapped, “but fine. However. If you worsen his condition and force me to continue this ridiculous charade… you will all certainly enjoy the consequences.”

He let the threat sit in the air ominously. Logan thought his forced disdain was a rather strange way to express protectiveness over Anxiety’s well-being, but to be frank, Deceit’s motives could be difficult for him to parse on a good day.

“Deceit,” Patton called before the other Side could sink out. “You’re welcome to come check on Anxiety whenever you’d like. I… I just wanted you to know.”

Deceit cast a glance back at Anxiety, unreadable, and sank out without another word.

—-

Half an hour after Deceit’s revelations, Anxiety woke up.

They hadn’t noticed at first. Patton had been in the kitchen, making enough soup to feed a small army, and Logan and Roman had been preoccupied with bickering, trying to piece together a timeline.

“—can’t be certain that any of the appearances prior to Puff’s introduction to Thomas were Deceit. Anxiety did not withdraw entirely until after that event,” Logan was saying, sharpening his tone to keep Roman from interrupting for the sixth time.

“But the things he said, it has to have been Deceit,” Roman retorted again. “Perhaps this has been going on for months, all part of a plot to replace Anxiety!”

“And do what? Thomas actively ignores Anxiety as often as possible,” Logan stated, the fact making something in his stomach twist oddly. “It would be pointless for Deceit to replace someone with little to no influence.”

“Who knows how the minds of Dark Sides work?” Roman scoffed, and then glanced over Logan’s shoulder and stood. Logan turned to watch him adjust the blankets that had shuffled part ways off of Anxiety.

Roman paused, and then leaned in slightly. “The curse mark—,” he started, and then was cut off by two and a half blankets being tossed directly at his face.

Anxiety scrambled off of the couch with surprising speed for someone who clearly could barely feel any of their limbs. His eyes were wide with unmistakable terror, pupils slit, and Logan lifted his hands non-aggressively.

“Anxiety, calm down,” he started, and Anxiety shot off towards the stairs with frantic and unsteady steps. From this angle, Logan could see the way the wound left from the curse was pulsing and expanding, and felt his own jolt of fear.

Patton rushed out of the kitchen just in time to see Anxiety overshoot and slam into the wall beside the stairs, bouncing off without a sound and struggling to regain his momentum like an animal mindlessly fleeing for its life.

“Patton, grab him before he hurts himself even further!” Logan called, and Patton hurriedly half-tackled the Side, pinning his arms and lifting him up.

Anxiety keened, voice warping into that double tone, and then kicked out against the wall, nearly toppling the both of them. By now, Roman had freed himself, and he jumped to Patton’s side to lend a steadying arm.

Logan hurried forward, careful to stay out of range of Anxiety’s still-kicking legs.

“Anxiety. Anxiety, can you hear me? You need to breathe deeply now, please follow this pattern,” he tried to count steadily, even as Anxiety stared right through him and made awful, gut-wrenching whimpers. His eyeshadow was streaked down the sides of his face like inky tear tracks. “3, 4, 5– Please, Anxiety, we’re not trying to hurt you.”

“It feels like it’s growing,” Patton whispered, Anxiety’s back still pressed to him. Roman pushed the neckline of the other Side’s hoodie aside, and swore at the dark, angular tendrils that were creeping up to his shoulder blades.

“We need him to calm down,” Logan said, but there wasn’t a single soothing method that would work if the person was too far gone to even sense him. “I don��t—,”

“Okay. Okay, I’m— I’m going to calm him down,” Patton said firmly, and then stepped back from the other two and maneuvered Anxiety so he was facing Patton. Logan recognized what Patton was attempting only a moment before Anxiety was pulled into a firm, encircling hug.

Patton’s ability to share positive emotions through physical contact— once jokingly dubbed a ‘drug hug’ by Roman— hadn’t been used frequently since they were all significantly younger. Nowadays, with Logic clearly not needing emotions and Creativity too prideful to ask for one, Patton mostly only used the ability accidentally— slipping up when he was hugging someone while too excited or happy.

Since switching over to this half of the Mindscape, Anxiety had never been exposed to this particular ability. The other Side twitched in Patton’s grasp for a moment, tail thrashing, holding out far longer than Logan expected before slowly melting into the embrace. When Patton finally pulled away, Anxiety was blinking dazedly but seemed considerably more aware of his surroundings.

“His back,” Logan started, and then stopped short.

The wound’s unnatural spread had stopped, the previous panicked pulsing of it reduced to a slow, muted metronome.

“His— Is it based on his heart rate?” Logan asked, bewildered and hating it. “It can’t be consciousness, he’s conscious now and the growth has stopped entirely, but it hadn’t receded at all earlier—,”

“Fear,” Roman said, his mouth set grimly. “A curse for Anxiety that feeds on fear. That’s exactly the kind of cruel irony that the Dragonwitch loves.”

Patton tightened his grip on Anxiety’s hand, his face wrinkled with worry. After a moment, Anxiety squeezed his hand back, still seeming a little distant from the actual conversation.

Logan knew from experience that getting one of those hugs at full power could feel like the emotional equivalent of being dropped into cold water unexpectedly-- it was a shock to the system, one that took a while to adjust to. He wouldn’t be surprised if Anxiety’s nonverbal state lingered for a while longer.

“Then… how do we fix it?” Patton asked. “Do we need him to… stop being afraid for real? Can we do that?”

Logan was quiet, thinking about how fearful Anxiety had looked for the brief moments he was fully aware around them. Roman looked away, and then shook his head.

“I need to return to the Imagination to check on something,” he announced, gaze distant. “I should… probably begin restructuring it, as well.”

Logan hid a wince. “I apologize for being so rough on the realm,” he said, remembering the way Roman had shaken with strain.

Roman waved it off. “You did what you had to, to get us all out. More useful than… well, consider yourself magnanimously forgiven.”

With a smile that seemed a pale facsimile of his normal one, he departed.

Logan turned to Patton, who looked a little wobbly at the knees. “We will be able to help him eventually, we just need more time to investigate,” he said as gently as he could, leading them both back to the couch. “Until then, we can take shifts to look after him.”

Patton curled his free hand around Logan’s, searching his gaze as though seeking some kind of solution. “We’ll figure this out together, right?”

“Right.”

#sanders sides #tsits #tiny dragon virgil #this one goes out to everyone who thought this fic was abandoned: i lived bitch <3 #the shapes in the silence #my writing #ts logan #ts roman #ts patton #ts janus #ts virgil #writing #i turned virgil into the dragon equivalent of a catboy #because its my fic and i choose the self indulgent nonsense

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thedeadhandofseldon · 3 years

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The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

#unprepared casters #bombyx mori #haley whipjack #long post #this is really rough but I don't have time to keep working on it and it's already a month later than intended

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dangermousie · 3 years

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I just finished watching the Rurouni Kenshin movies, loved them, and want to tentatively dip my toes into some jdrama (i love both cdramas and kdramas). Any suggestions? I like historical stuff, action, romance, anything that doesn't end too tragically.

Those movies were awesome!!!

Pls keep in mind I largely peaced out of jdramas about a while ago so except Watashitachi wa Douka Shiteiru (heroine wants to solve who framed her mother so gets a job at the traditional bean dessert place where the murder happened and gets involved with the haunted young heir to the business. Mmmm) all my recs are going to be a few years old.

Also I am gonna leave out all the dramas with bad endings or dramas like teacher-student and other problematic things since I don’t know your no gos. (Between those two factors a lot of my faves are out :)) Without further ado a sampler of my faves:

Aishteru to Itte Kure - I made a rec post on this recently. A love story between an aspiring actress and a deaf/mute painter. It’s probably one of my favorite love stories.

Bara No Nai Hanaya - our hero is a gentle florist with a small daughter who is generally kind and helpful to everyone. One day he helps a blind woman and they slowly fall in love. Little does he know this is the start of a horrific plan to ruin him. (I promise, happy ending!)

Buzzer Beat - a young musician and a basketball player fall in love. This is just sweet.

Haha Yori Dango - jdramas do Boys Over Flowers. This is, hands down, my favorite adaptation and the only one except the 2001 Taiwanese one that does not pull punches that its ML is a psycho. It has a certain manga kooky vibe at the start but even if it’s not your thing I rec pushing through because there is a magic moment I started being so invested it’s unreal. The two leads have crazy chemistry and the rumor is were together for ages in RL. I have a tag for the drama.

Innocent Love - sometimes you just want a melo with excellent actors. True love and angst!!! I was obsessed enough with Kitagawa Yujin - ML actor - at the time it aired I went and listened to a ton of J-folk rock (he’s a member of duo Yuzu.)

Itoshi Kimi E - the gorgeous gorgeous Fujiki Naohito is a photographer who finds he’s slowly going blind but also falls in love with a nurse. God, this drama!

Love Shuffle - the story of a bunch of dwellers of a fancy apartment who all decide to go on blind dates with each other. It’s sharp and moving and I either love or find interesting all of them but I remember going FERAL for the burned out war photographer x suicidal artist obsessed with death. Even thinking of them right now is giving me a hit of serotonin.

Otomen - sometimes I like fluff about wholesome people! The love story of a seemingly macho boy who secretly loves cooking and knitting and all girly things and a tomboy girl. It’s both a lovely love story and a great take of being loved for who you are not who you are expected to be.

Pin to Kona - the world of kabuki! Also if you’ve ever wanted the secondary guy to be the lead and get the girl, come right in! Heroine has been obsessed with kabuki since childhood. Hero is the heir of ancient kabuki family who has issues thanks to his father (who needs a small stab.) He falls in love with her kindness and becomes a wonderful friend but all she can think of is her scheming first love who wants to be n1 in kabuki world. This is love and a lot of kabuki stuff to boot!

Pride - a tough, don’t believe in love hockey captain falls for a salarywoman who is waiting for her boyfriend who went abroad to work. Doesn’t sound like much, but was an insane hit and is my n1. Jdrama of all time.

Smile - a mute girl and a half-Filipino worker fall in love. They are both outcasts from society (her due to her disability, him due to not being pure blood Japanese) but they find happiness. Which is shattered when he is put on trial for murder.

Tatta Hitotsu No Koi - I love this drama so much!!! A poor young man x a rich sheltered young woman who recovered from cancer. (I promise happy ending!!!) It’s so tender and wistful and angsty and just!!!

Anyway gonna stop but hope one of these is your bag!

#asks #jdrama

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silverflame2724 · 3 years

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WWX is utterly desperate to not be related to Jin Zixuan even by marriage and instead of punching Jin Zixuan tries to matchmake his shijie to anyone else while also ensuring a love match of good standing, it's actually really funny to watch. Madam Yu hears and thinks that WWX will fail but hopefully in the attempt make JZX see sense.

It's even funnier when WWX recruits LWJ to his efforts when its obvious that LWJ only agreed to help so he could pine after WWX from closer up.

Wei Wuxian would not accept it. He would not accept it, damnit!! He would not accept that damn Peacock as his Shijie’s suitor.

From the way he struts forward, flaunts his money, and insults his Shijie, in all the ways, he was not deserving of Shijie!!

But for all that Jin Zixuan was a good for nothing who did nothing but make Shijie cry, Shijie still loved him. And Wei Wuxian wanted to cry at that. Shijie wants to marry someone she loves.

But then he brilliantly thought of an idea.

If Shijie wants to marry someone she loves, it doesn’t have to be Jin Zixuan, right?!

So for the next two years, he desperately tries to find suitable people to make Shijie happy. In the first year, he scours Yunmeng and its subsidiary sects for suitors with good personalities, good standing, good reputation, and of course, those that don’t have any nasty secrets behind hidden doors.

He finds three.

When he sets them up in random “accidental” meetings, they fail on every account.

The first guy wasn’t even trying before getting bored of the conversation. The second guy was instantly enamored but kept his distance since Shijie was still a betrothed person, after all. The third guy got along with Shijie well enough. He even made Shijie laugh. However. However!!!! He had the audacity to limit Shijie to just being a housewife!!! The fucking audacity to disregard Shijie’s abilities was unreal!

The suitors in Yunmeng were not good enough. He had to find elsewhere to look!!

So he spent the second year looking for suitors in Qinghe.

Nie Huaisang, he got along well enough, but perhaps he wasn’t the right fit for Shijie……hmm. He’ll leave that idea to the side for now.

Nie Mingjue on the other hand……he was strong, he was honest, he was forthright, he properly respected Shijie, and he had some anger management issues that Shijie could calm him down from!! He checked ALL of Wei Wuxian’s boxes and Shijie even seemed to warm up to him!!

Now all he has to do is wait for Shijie to tell Madam Yu that she doesn’t want to marry that Peacock anymore……

………..

Shijie friendzoned Nie Mingjue!!!!! Why??????!!!!!!!

……………………….

He had to go to Gusu but he wasn’t going to give up!! There were still the suitors in Gusu!!

(He was so desperate that he convinced Madam Yu to bring Shijie with them.)

He got himself punished the first month to see if Lan Wangji was a good match for Shijie but hmm. While he could see Shijie and Lan Zhan getting along, it was more in a distant friend or even acquaintance-like way. Lan Zhan is proper and respects the rules so he kept his distance from all females so that couldn’t be helped but there was still Lan Xichen!!

Lan Xichen was nice and kind and actually, kinda reminded him of Shijie.

But they were starting to be good friends! But he didn’t know what Lan Xichen was like so he roped Lan Zhan along in this scheme.

“What.”

“Like I said, Lan Zhan! I’m desperate, desperate, for Shijie to marry anyone but the Peac—Jin Zixuan!! Lan Zhan, please help me! I’ll even behave in class for a month!!” He even did the - he winced at the name - puppy eyes and batted his eyelashes at Lan Zhan. It always worked in convincing people!

Lan Zhan took a deep, controlled breath. “……..Alright.”

Wei Wuxian gasped with delight and, forgetting that Lan Zhan disliked touch, gave him a big, tight bear hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!”

Lan Zhan stiffened and clenched his fists.

Wei Wuxian released him not later and dragged him towards Lan Xichen.

“Now Lan Zhan, please get your brother to come to Caiyi town! If he’s too busy, then I can plan around it, but if not, then get him there! I’ll push Shijie towards him.”

“You sound experienced.”

“I’ve been trying to change Shijie’s mind for years! It hasn’t worked but I’m going to keep my mind open.”

Lan Zhan nodded and went to talk to his brother. Wei Wuxian observed them and Lan Xichen looked straight at him and smiled.

Shit. Does he know?

Lan Zhan shot him a strange, indecipherable look but Wei Wuxian didn’t understand what was going on.

Lan Zhan walked back to him, “Brother agreed.”

“He did? Yay! Thank you, Lan Zhan!!”

So he spent the next couple of days pushing Lan Xichen and Shijie together. Though…..it was strange how they always seemed to be talking about Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan from what little he could hear.

It’s great that they’re getting along - and that he sees Jin Zixuan sometimes looking a little lost and maybe a little jealous (haha! Take that, you jerk!) - but shouldn’t they talk about something else?

Wei Wuxian shrugged. Oh well, at least his hard work (and Lan Zhan’s) is paying off!

…………………….

Wei Wuxian can’t believe this.

Wei Wuxian cannot believe this!!

How did this happen?????????????

It turns out Jin Zixuan confronted Shijie on her recent outings with Lan Xichen to which she brilliantly replied, “And why do you care about what I do with my friends, Young Master Jin?”

“I—you’re my betrothed!”

“And when have you cared about that?” Shijie looked indifferent and Wei Wuxian had hoped that this was a sign of Shijie moving on.

Jin Zixuan’s face was red and got redder as Shijie turned her back on him. “It’s because I like you!!!” The entire plaza went silent. Except for Wei Wuxian who screamed, “ NOOOOOO—mmph.” And was subsequently silenced by Lan Zhan.

“Oh. Was that so hard, Young Master Jin? And to think it took me pretending to show interest in Young Master Lan. It seems you don’t like me as much as I thought.” Shijie’s tone was fondly teasing and Wei Wuxian struggled in Lan Zhan’s grip.

“Mmph, mm mmh mmmmmp! (Shijie, don’t do thisssssssss!)”

Jin Zixuan took a few deep breaths, “I…..I admit I didn’t see your good points before but—! But I do now!! I do now and I really really like you!! I’m sorry for acting like a…..a spoiled brat!!”

“Mmmhmmm, mmmph mmph!! (Peacock, shut up!!)”

Shijie smiled and took his hand. Jin Zixuan had the nerve to let out a small squeal and run away.

Wei Wuxian straight up fainted from this right into Lan Zhan’s arms. He could not take this.

Out of everyone she could have, she chose Jin Zixuan……..

(Ｔ＿Ｔ)

__________

Words cannot explain how much I loved this prompt.

#wei ying #wei wuxian #lan zhan #lan wangji #jiang yanli #jin zixuan #lan huan #lan xichen #courting #WWX desperately attempts to avoid being brother-in-law to JZX #Spoiler:he fails #Madam Yu is not mentioned but she is definitely enjoying this from the sidelines #LXC and JYL are matchmaking their little brothers

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