#sonkitty

Ah, so we did get a Good Omens 3 something this Good Friday, even if it was not a trailer.

In that case...

Happy Anniversary to my post, Did Crowley create the universe?

Yay!

SonKitty/Kazamacat Tekken 7 Review

Video Transcription:

Greetings, all. I'm Cathy also known as Cat to some people. I'm going to review Tekken 7. If you're unfamiliar with me, I'm a huge fan of Devil Jin and Jin Kazama. In fact, I mostly play these games for those characters. I do not play at a competitive level and mostly practice and fight the CPU in modes provided by the games. I will approach the game from this viewpoint, and a very large chunk of it will be about the story.

In fact, that's where we'll start. I am not going to shy from spoilers, so if you care about that, stop watching now. The story presented to us throughout the trailers over the years is Kazumi asking some figure, we later learn to be a guest character, Akuma from the Street Fighter fighting game series, to kill Heihachi if she can't. He's going to do all these terrible things, he being Heihachi, and the trailers build up this big final showdown between Heihachi and Kazuya with Jin not at all present. Kazumi aside, Tekken players have seen this story before, and it ended with Jin being a big factor-by that, I mean Tekken 4.

Well, in the case of Tekken 7, we got the story that was advertised. I'll say that. And I had a lot of complaints about Tekken 6 not being that, because that was going to be some big showdown between Jin and Kazuya and instead, we got an entire mode dedicated to two crappy expansion characters. Of note, Alisa is one of my mains, but my head-canon of her is extremely different from Namcanon. I even change her name to Melissa to indicate she's my version of Alisa.

I think the story mode was handled better in that I got to be some different characters as opposed to stuck with two expansion characters. Overall, I still prefer the Tekken 5 approach best. In that game, characters get prologue art, a cut scene or two I call interludes with other characters they meet at the tournament, of relevance to them, and then an ending.

The story itself is really bad. Let's start with the voice-over telling us repeatedly throughout the story that fighting is about who's left standing, nothing else. That's it? Nothing about training? Nothing about learning through failure to be better? And while we're at it, “left standing” and “still alive” can mean two different things, but the context of the climactic moment in this game is Kazuya kills Heihachi, which would mean that main theme of the story then is that in order to fight, you should kill the person so you are the only person left standing. I don't think that's a good message. And I think even if the message were that the game seems to confuse fighting with winning and to me, they're not the same thing.

Another bad component of the story is the Jin hunt. There are a lot of characters who should be going after Jin in some capacity: Kazuya, Raven, Miguel, Hwoarang. Nina was having the Mishima Zaibatsu search for him, but when Heihachi showed up and took the Mishima Zaibatsu from her, his logic went that in order to expose Kazuya, he needs Jin and my initial reaction that was, “No, you don't.” And then  the story proceeds with them not getting Jin and exposing Kazuya anyway, so that pretty much confirmed exactly what I thought. And do not get me started on Lars. Oh, nope, it's too late, we have to do this. If you don't know me, Lars is my most hated character ever. He goes after Jin under the pretense of, “We have to put everything on Jin. Now my initial reaction was, “I don't know what he means. What, like execute him, put him on trial? What?” And by the way, no, he doesn't.

So let me see if I have this straight. This turd from the last game, last mainline story game, went and took over half of the Tekken Force, as part of some rebellion to the hostile world take-over and then after he gets exactly what he wants in Tekken 6, he still think she needs Jin, that Jin can solve the entire world's problem because Jin was the entire world's problem. Now I have always had a problem with the fact that Tekken 6 includes this “over half” line of the Tekken Force because I don't actually believe some half-baked expansion character can do that and this now half-baked plot point only further convinces me. But anyway, Jin's like, “yeah, the solution for everything is for me to kill Kazuya because I have the Devil's blood.”

Now, they could have made this work better with instead of saying, “We need Jin for reasons that don't make sense, actually, we don't want Jin's body in the wrong hands because the likes of Kazuya or the UN may not simply kill him but try experiment on him, and he's dangerous because Devil.” Oh, and you do not save people from tyranny by killing one person.

I really wish I could be done talking about Lars, I hate him so much, but this story is so, so bad. I hated playing Scenario Campaign, and I especially hated the contrived drama of Alisa's shutdown as some dramatic death and the ridiculous excuse for a friendship these two had and all of this awfulness is shown as, “yeah, we really did that, and we're sticking by it.” Alisa could be so much more and better without him. But anyway, back to that annoying butt-head. The story also says that the only reason Heihachi fathered this turd was to prove that he did not have the devil gene. The story also says Heihachi dropped Kazuya off a cliff to prove it to him that Kazuya had the devil gene. Otherwise, the fall would kill Kazuya. So, based on the game's own logic presented in its own story mode, Lars should be dead because Heihachi would have killed him in trying to prove he did not have the devil gene and yet...what a failure.

The narration is by a man who lost his family to the war, and one of the reviews I skimmed said the deadpan narration was comical though perhaps not intended to be so. I mainly found the opening funny because I wondered what story I walked into that started talking about a son's love for his father. Anyway, I kept wondering if he'd be Gigas or something, but no, and overall, I don't think I cared for it.  The story mode focuses on the Mishima family so a lot of characters do not make the cut for having a presence here, yet nameless here does.

Can you believe that I'm still not done in telling you how bad this story is? So, as mentioned earlier, Kazumi asked Akuma to kill Heihachi and, we later find out, Kazuya too. Akuma, he's in this story even though a lot of other Tekken characters aren't, goes to do that, defeats Kazuya, and given that he was asked to kill him, said he was there to kill him, guess what he did not do? He did not check to see if Kazuya was dead, meaning he did not kill him. He just left!

I feel disappointed that Kazumi really was dead because that means we have five Mishima characters throughout the series (Heihachi, Kazuya, Jin, Jinpachi and now Kazumi), and the only woman among them is the one who is so definitively dead, her role in the story is actually a flashback even though she was the arcade boss.

I'm almost done on the story part. After you beat the story mode, you can get endings for other characters by playing their episodes. On the one hand, this made unlocking their endings really easy. On the other hand, most of these endings were not very good and even if they had good points, they were generally pretty short, presumably because of time and effort dedicated to the awfulness of the Mishima story. Devil Jin appears in his own and Hwoarang's episodes. Jin appears in Miguel's. I knew going into this game that I couldn't think of any version of the story that would satisfy me after the debacle of Tekken 6 so my main bar was some good Jin and Devil Jin footage and there was so little of it, I'm overall disappointed.

Onward, to everything else.

Arcade Battle is only 5 matches and left me confused with the ending of Akuma flexing his power and then getting a Game Over screen, thought I'd done something wrong. I haven't really looked back since playing the story mode. Treasure Battle is similar to past Ghost Battle modes, but you do not get to pick from three different opponents and you do have to deal with these gimmicks like turbo battle, double damage, aerial combo and Special Matches against certain characters. They are Kazumi, Heihachi, Devil Kazuya, Jin Kazama, and Akuma. After awhile, these gimmicks are mildly annoying and if I'm not in the mood, I will exit. Rare items are too rare. After awhile, you're mostly earning money and just waiting around to hit the 2,000 battle mark to unlock everything at once. I mainly wanted Jin's Tekken 6 coat and since I'm not very good at using him, I tried Katarina and Lucky Chloe some, that also took a long time.

The practice mode is great. It has the usual elements and maybe past games had this feature, and I didn't notice but you can practice at specific points in the stages that have wall, balcony and/or floor breaks. I've done a lot of practicing. I think because I didn't play Tag 2 much and my mind struggles a lot since November 9th of last year, it helps alleviate stress and maybe one day, I'll be able to do those electrics every time or almost. I can say that I've been doing them more often and even got up to 3 at once.

New game-play mechanics include a Rage Art and Rage Drive. I love using Rage Arts. I usually don't even try for a Rage Drive but if I keep practicing, maybe I'll work them in. Devil Jin starts with a hellsweep, but the one or two times I focused on trying it in a Treasure Battle match, it didn't go well and I guess I gave up on it. I saw this really powerful Rage Drive combo with a Katarina player on Twitter and tried to learn it. I never did, but I learned the first part, and she has since become one of my mains. Hopefully, I'll remember to go back to trying it. My mains this time around include Devil Jin, Jin Kazama, Katarina, and Alisa. To a degree, you could include Lucky Chloe though I admit, it was mostly for manipulating the CPU. I picked up at least one combo. And you know, I wanted to add more mains, but when you start dedicating time to specific characters to learn more. well, it feels like there's only so much room in my brain for them sometimes. I missed Xiaoyu and Lili so played them a little but when I do a rotation of my main characters in Treasure Battle, I don't even think of trying them. Maybe I will, now that I've written this review.

That was quite a tangent but back to mechanics. Bound is gone, and now we have um, a tailspin move, and I don't remember on Tekken Zaibatsu if the “s” stood for “spin” or for “screw,” and the game itself doesn't seem to actually say, so, but it's a spinning move. And the spin can be used in combos. There are also, some moves have new properties called Power Crush, like Jin and Devil Jin have had Corpse Thrust for at least since Tekken 5, no, even longer um, but that is now a Power Crush move. Um, and for someone like me, that was extremely helpful against the CPU in Treasure Battle. The game lacks other usual modes from past games like Survival and Team Battle. Um, I liked Team Battle so I miss it. Survival's nice too, I mainly like miss Team Battle though.

Customizations are again not as good as what Tekken 6 offered. My Alisa customization in Tekken 6 wore a blue best over a long-sleeved black shirt, not an option. She wore shorts with her Battle Boots. You can get the Battle Boots this time but if you want to use them, they are with the bikini bottom. Again for all the tops like in Tag 2, you cannot pick say a specific pair of gloves you want with a shirt or jacket. Gloves either come with it or they don't. The hair options regress even more because I can no longer get the bushy ponytail I used to be reminiscent of Leona from King of Fighters for Alisa. For me, that is a significant part of my vision for the customization I want so that was a loss. I'm thinking about making a video of how backwards customization has gone for another time.

Another thing that's gone is replays. They'd be a few seconds to show what happened at the end of the match, and you could use that time to pick a button for a specific win pose if you wanted. You can still try to get a win pose you want, but the time frame is much tighter, and I miss the actual replays themselves as well.

The game has this cool feature that offers a jukebox where you can customize what music you listen to in the game. You can use tracks from past games, and that's really great. I tend to turn the music off because I concentrate better with none at all in Practice, and then just don't bother turn it back on a lot of time but when I do have it on, I don't like some of the Tekken 7 tracks, so I'm glad I had this feature to set them to other ones.

Moving on, I really, really love that technology has come to a point where we can all so easily share things, especially on PS4. I can show off my customizations and clip some random funny thing that happened. I've even used it to analyze what I might be missing in practice through like a frame-by-frame replay.

Quick remark on customizations. Before Patch 1.03, you could get some really dark black colors on your people and then after the update, many of them turn to a lighter gray that I know myself and others did not like at all. That it was so hard, it was hard to see sometimes, like in actual matches, but I find it hard to believe that it couldn't be better handled.

Anyway, back to sharing. I can see if my PS4 friends liked the things I shared on Twitter. Another perk of technology sharing is being able to watch so much top-level Tekken play so easily, thanks to YouTube and Twitch.

So, all in all, I found some things to enjoy this game, and I do intend to keep playing. Um, but I do kind of feel, that with the long wait, um, and even with my, what I felt, tempered expectations, of kind of saying, I didn't like Tekken 6, I didn't like these things, I know that these things can happen again, and trying to ready myself for what it could be, I'm still disappointed that so many things changed and not for the better. And I do hope that eventually, if this series continues, um, we can go back to a better place, similar to what we had before instead of feeling like the series is slowly stripping away some of the, a lot of the things that we took for granted um, in enjoying what Namco, not gave us, but you know, they put forth for us to buy. And so, you know, hopefully things will get better. Well, let me re-phrase that because I am not an optimistic or hopeful person when it comes to Tekken. Um, it'll be nice if that ever happens. I'll say that. I do not expect it to happen and it is, I do hope, that things do not keep getting worse. At the very least, I can say that.

All of my Tekken fanfics are on AO3 now:

Soul Regained The Jin Saga Devil Jin Existence The Jin Saga 2

Admittedly, they have been since sometime in December 2025 (I think), but this post is the first time I'm noting it here on Tumblr.

And I hope to get the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfics there eventually too.

For today, I've only got The Master Mev, Chapters 1-20:

The Master Mev

TMM has 100 chapters total, so I've got my work cut out for me on getting the rest of it there.

You can find all of these on in my DeviantArt gallery though TMM's main place that I recommend for reading it is still FIMFiction.net

I do still have my one and only Good Omens fanfic there too:

Strange

Strange is more like a move in my playing Earthly Objects without realizing it. My favorite line/idea from it is actually part of the decoding process for the hidden poetry in the Good Omens book. I'll share that info eventually, I hope, but not just yet. This piece helped for the Good Omens 2 poetry as well.

These could just be coincidences, of course.

…

@/GoodOmensPrime on Twitter, 3/19/2026 (link):

Absolutely feral. #GoodOmens3

In my fanfics, only one of them uses the word "feral," and that is My Vampire Companion (MVC hereafter). The word was used 4 times, all in Chapter 9.

So, I took note of course, especially since it was the day right before the Day 66 if we had been counting up from when @/GoodOmensPrime first posted "1".

…

@/GoodOmensPrime on Twitter, 3/20/2026 (link):

It’s bad to see them again, isn’t it? #GoodOmens3

I used the word "bad" plenty in MVC. Given the context of how "bad" is used here, I figure the reference goes to this part in Chapter 1:

"Coco…can I really not die, ever?" Rainbow asked. She was too startled by the idea to figure out if she thought that was a good thing or a bad thing yet.

Now this one was on Day 66 after @/GoodOmensPrime first posted "1".

Plus, I had been on alert for anything this day because of the one-year anniversary to my post about Sir Terry Pratchett's writings and rank since some clues hinted the day might be significant, or at least a convenient coincidence in how it lined up with the incoming May 13th release date.

…

@/GoodOmensPrime on Twitter, 3/25/2026 (link):

Just a peek inside. #GoodOmens3

Alright, did I use the word "peek" in MVC? Yes, yes, I did, and only once.

That text goes:

Fluttershy flew up to see if she could somehow peek through one of the higher windows to no avail. Every shutter was completely closed.

Fluttershy was also trying to look through windows though she could not in her case for that chapter.

…

@/GoodOmensPrime on Twitter, 3/27/2026 (link):

Simply put - Muriel ❤️ #GoodOmens3

This time, the text references my fanfic, The Master Mev, instead of My Vampire Companion. In particular, it goes to the "Simply put" part of Chapter 96. I don't have that two-word phrase in my other fanfics.

That one goes:

Rainbow Dash blushed. "I like the form. So long as I'm in an aggressive, hungry state like that, it's the form I wanted. Simply put, I thought it would be cool. That tail helped too."

…

I'm happy to finally see Muriel.

My thanks to the Good Omens team for these little references to my fanfics.

Well, today, we got a video with a release date of May 13, 2026.

Yay!

But I must repeat...

But still...no Crowley before the Chinese Lunar Year of the Wood Snake finishes next week? :(

I am not going to study the contents of the video itself at the moment due to other things I found while pondering about the date.

A Wednesday? Really?

I mean, I found some welcome connections while wondering about it, but still, I was surprised.

So, why Wednesday?

I don't know, but if I want to connect it in special ways to my My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfic, The Master Mev, I do have that option.

In TMM, each pony of the Mane 6, and Starlight Glimmer, has their own assigned "day" of the week.

Fluttershy's day is Wednesday.

My speculation has gone that Sir Terry Pratchett's favorite of the Mane 6 was Fluttershy.

So, that's a nice connection.

To further strengthen that connection idea, I think each of the 6 Threshold Tricks of Good Omens 2 is connected to one of the Mane 6.

Fluttershy's connection is The Window Trick. While the Trick itself is performed on Friday, there is a very special windows sequence in S2E3. That episode takes place on Wednesday.

That gave me a little smile.

But there is another special Wednesday I can connect with in here.

In the past month, I thought I found a "one day early" clue.

And today, something lined up with that option.

In MLPFIM, the ponies have a holiday called "Hearth's Warming" so call it that. This holiday has a resemblance to Christmas.

One of the episodes focused on that pony holiday is titled A Hearth's Warming Tail, and it has an original air date of May 14, 2016.

Hence, GO3 will be "one day early" for the 10-year anniversary of that episode air date.

In my TMM fanfic, Hearth's Warming plays an important role in the later part of the story. The ponies are using the magic of the day itself for something they hope to accomplish.

The last chapter of TMM is titled "Warmth," and it is Chapter 100. It starts on a continued Hearth's Warming from the previous chapter before leading into the eventual countdown on New Year's. The story ends just after said countdown completes.

In TMM, most chapters were published on Saturdays or Sundays since those work best with my schedule.

There are some chapters that were not released on those days.

Of the entire 100 chapters, only 2 were released on a Wednesday.

The first of the pair was Chapter 65: Captivating Prizes, where I had Rainbow Dash turn into a dragon for the first time.

The second of the pair was Chapter 100: Warmth. Hence, outside of the story, in terms of my publishing schedule, that story ended on a Wednesday. Technically, it also ended on a Wednesday in-universe since it has the "Happy New Year!" moment along with a few paragraphs before finishing.

An extra touch in this pile of the coincidences is the "..." that @/GoodOmensPrime on Twitter has been using.

If you start on January 14, 2026, with 1, and take it all the way to May 13, 2026, counting upward each day, you would get 120.

TMM is 100 chapters.

There is a leftover 20.

If I search for "..." in the last chapter on FIMFiction.net, I can find "..." 20 times albeit one of them is the Author's Note.

Coincidence? It could be. It was just one of those little oddities I wonder about, especially since the "..." came up earlier with how I use that to space out and format my posts here on Tumblr.

So, I took in clues from @/GoodOmensPrime, and the universe, that I was supposed to count upward from 1 to 17 with the count ending on my birthday (January 14 through January 30).

That went up.

I have since stopped counting, but now that we have a release date, I imagine other fans are going to start counting down. We are starting at 89, rather than 90, for this countdown, but still, we have it. That is with going that we will end at 0 instead of 1.

Since 17 is my number, and I play with the ideas given in the clues, here is what I will do on this blog.

The arrows from Wiling Wednesday #3 showed arrows that went down, then up. The most recent Wiling Wednesday, #5, offered a key, a wing, and three dots. I already posted about using a flipping key to match with the ring.

Then here we have a trailer where we were ensured to see someone with a ring flip the sign from CLOSED to OPEN.

So, now we flip.

A 17 is also the result of 8 + 9. The "8" and "9" are visible digits of the number 89.

We will count down, instead of up.

Will we count every day?

I don't know, maybe. Most days I can make at least one post, but you know, life happens. Plus, I would probably want a still picture or a GIF. I definitely have ideas and like the idea of making that a project but one step at a time.

Three months just might be enough time for me to finish up my last two Trickery videos. As for my "Fancy" edition play-through of the sideburns game, it's already been on pause for a good, long while so will stay on pause. I have worked on further poetry focus, but this GO3 info has stalled and distracted me.

By the way, Good Omens 3 for May 13, 2026 and Rivals 2 for May 15, 2026 gives us a David Tennant pocket with May 14th in between. That's such a Crowley-style move.

Anyway, we are at 89 days away from Good Omens 3 and counting.

For today's picture, I have a GIF:

S2E1, Crowley: How?

...

Oh, I do also want to add a few little Friday, the 13th things.

TMM starts on Friday, September 13th for a year mimicking 2019.

In my GO2 theories, GO2 ends on Friday, October 13th, 2023.

Today is Friday, February 13th, 2026.

There actually is a cute little TMM anniversary to February 13th as well, that one being a Saturday instead of a Friday. I published a chapter titled "Batty Indulgence" on that day.

As the year 2022 closes out and 2023 begins, I find myself at a crossroads.

I have finished writing a My Little Pony fanfiction, The Master Mev, that is over 275,000 words, which is similar to writing a long novel. The word "long" is a relative term here and compared to what I've read of beginner authors trying to get published. I wish I could have finished earlier, but I needed time and space to work on other things or shift focus at times.

I have been waiting for this point mainly for a new project that takes me by surprise.

My favorite MLP fanfic is the Austraeoh series written by Imploding Colon, also known as shortskirtsandexplosions. The series is incomplete and spans over 3 million words. I have never read a series this long, for anything. Often, once I read the first book in a series, that is enough for me.

Due to my Rainbow Dash obsession and longing for something to let her be awesome, well...Austraeoh fills that wish quite extensively. It's not all perfect, but it's still a story I enjoy a great deal. So much so, that I have wanted to do an audiobook reading of it for years. I have, in fact, done an audiobook reading of my favorite chapter in my favorite book already.

Anyway, so I just find it weird and I confess, a little questionable, that this is the project I want to do with my time. You see, Austraeoh is long. It is so, so long. I don't want to do only the first book. I want to do all except the currently incomplete one, Ofolrodi. The series could remain incomplete at its current point. By my calculations of handling chapters for my own fanfiction, working on such a project is something I might not finish before I die. It is not impossible to finish, but it is highly unlikely.

Yet...I *still* want to do it.

Why? Don't I want to do other things with my time? Animate, draw, play video games, write more stories? Of course! Yes! So very much yes! One of the things that truly shocks me about this desire is that an audiobook is auditory. I've always thought of myself as more inclined to visual projects, even if, when I truly think about things, writing can be found in either such form and is what I feel most comfortable at in the hobbies I spend time on. I usually read my work through the visual way and save editing it through speaking aloud quite far into a draft, for fictional chapters. I certainly never read it aloud for a post like this one.

I guess audiobooks do give me a chance for acting, which is another hobby and what I longed to do when I was a kid. I wanted to be a famous movie star, which admittedly, this type of project will not lead to that path. Still, acting *is* fun.

Anyway, I'm just a little down about what I am possibly giving up by choosing "Austraeoh audiobook reading" over so much else. At the same time, much else is in the calculation of how long the reading will take. I have admitted to myself that the project is so impossibly massive, I *cannot* abandon what needs to be done, such as basic chores at home.

With this very important factor in my head, I have actually been cleaning and tidying more at the house, in a very good, productive way, that makes me genuinely proud. This strange calling is helping me focus those things. And, I will hopefully, somehow, some way, make time for those other hobbies too. Some things will have to be given up, and that's what makes me sad. I will figure them out as time goes on.

Something else I don't necessarily *want* to do but am considering is looking for a means of passive income, either through POD designs online or writing books. Writing books somehow feels more possible with the completion of my most recent fanfic. The main issue with writing books for money is it might take some of the fun out of writing, which I mainly do as a hobby. Of course, that still might not make money if no one buys the books. This whole idea stems from not really seeing a retirement in my future. The amount of passive income I've made so far would never make up for it, but if I were more committed, maybe that could change. That's what it comes down to, though, isn't it? Is that something I wish to commit to? So far, no.

But...there's another part of me that thinks I'm going through a phase. I'll do this Austraeoh audiobook project for awhile, get tired of it, and move on. I do see this result as the most likely one. The part that doubts it is the part that's been waiting years to do it at all and motivating me to take care of the house. Regardless of how it goes, I won't be short on ideas of what to do. Commitment is the true question, and it is one answered with time. I won't resent myself if I give it up. I know how truly big of a project it is, and the other doors that open in turn. I might slightly resent myself if I stick to it, but not enough to stop myself. It's a calling I want to and will answer...for now anyway.

More here: