#tsunderin

Dungeon World - Mnemosyne

As much as I want to play Mystic Messenger’s newest route, the better part of my mind is annoyingly making a pretty convincing argument for not completely trashing my sleep schedule for the time being. So, I’m left getting my visual novel fix from other sources. Luckily, I stumbled upon one before the urge became unbearable.

Despite sounding like something I would name a fake game as a joke, Team Salvato’s Doki Doki Literature Club takes the typical slice of life school romance plots and uses its medium to make something truly memorable. While every dating sim and visual novel can be interpreted as a small, in-depth exploration of human (or human-like) nature, Doki Doki Literature Club uses its story to explore the extents of kindness and humanity, and if it can or should cross the boundaries of the narrative fourth wall, leaving players evaluating and re-evaluating their first impressions of the main characters. Before you continue on, reader, I highly suggest you experience everything DDLC has to offer before I spoil it for you. Team Salvato is offering the game for a “name your price” cost on the game’s itch.io page, as well as for free download from Steam. The first run will more than likely take around four hours to complete, but in my opinion it’s entirely worth it. One more thing: please, please heed the content warnings on the game’s page--they aren’t fucking around.

Massive spoilers below! Trigger warning for depression and self-harm.

🎃Black Cat: Are you superstitious?

Not especially?  I do have a policy of just not fucking with certain things, because you never know, but I don’t believe in random shit like it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding or anything.

🎃Werewolf: What is your favorite urban legend?

I’m not sure if it counts as an urban legend, but I’m rather fond of the local cryptid legend: the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf).  Legend has it that this little demon trickster creature has been hanging around Detroit for 300 years and is either a protector of the city or a pest.  Some people think he was present during the riots in the 60′s.

🎃Cauldron: What kind of potion would you make if you had the opportunity?

I can't deny that Sailor Moon was my heart growing up. In the wider scope of cartoons/anime aiming for a younger demographic American audiences weren’t so readily exposed to these shoujo magical girls and doki doki gakuen series as they were shonen series like DBZ and its ilk. So, while I often liked to fight in the name of the moon, I ended up much more well acquainted with the hand motions to perform a proper spirit gun technique or trying very hard to ignore that Goku had been on the same battle for four days in a row.

These days, however, audiences have grown restless in their consumption of the same old tropes. We want more. When an anime comes out that attempts to deconstruct the genre, audiences flock to it hoping to gain some great knowledge from it, or some sense of satisfaction. When I started watching Mob Psycho 100, I wasn’t expecting anything mindblowing (despite claims from my friend otherwise), and it wasn’t. Don’t take that as a negative thing, because it’s certainly not. Shonen series are all about the capacity for audience’s minds to be blown, so much so that every arc tends to follow the pattern of the hero needing to get a ridiculous new power to defeat the new powerful enemy. Mob’s deconstruction of the genre comes from its refusal to bend to the shonen tropes that define its world, and the result is something purely human; nothing more, nothing less.

Spoilers below the cut! 

what are your MC’s Trinkets? what do they represent? ( it does not have to be 4 trinkets, they can be less or more)

Starlight Blue - A bottle of blue ink with silver shine in it used to write everyday notes as well as letters never sent to an absent mentor.

Raven Feather - A reminder of a faithful night at a tavern.

Potted Plant - A vivacious sprig of sage in a grey pot with “Lord Fredrick” written across it.

I’ll be honest: I’ve been away from the webcomic scene for a while. I’ll see an update of one of the series I used to read often floating around online and hum to myself, “Oh, so that’s what those wacky kids have been up to.” It’s nice, but also leaves me somewhat  nostalgic for the time where I had several series I kept up with. While today’s web crush may not get me back on the webcomic routine (by no one’s fault but that of my own inattentiveness), it did achieve the one thing that many other series in the past years have tried and failed at: it drew me in enough to actually read through the archive.

Also, it’s cute as hell, so how could it not?

With E3 just around the corner, it’s difficult not to get hyped up about the video game industry!

...No, I lied. Given the last couple of years, on the whole E3 has kind of been lacking on what the emerging, diverse gaming populace want to see in their games. Some game companies are trying, like Guerrilla Games and their game Horizon Zero Dawn, but still end up missing the mark; for example, with Horizon, many Native players and onlookers found that their culture was appropriated and misrepresented because there were no actual Native people serving as consultants or even on the writing team. With game companies being so strangely reluctant to actually collaborate with people from the culture their game is going to represent, I found myself keeping away from one game series in particular: Far Cry.

The Far Cry series has been around for more than a decade and the gameplay within its more recent installments (FPS with both action and RPG elements) always attracts praise from critics and players alike. However, what put me off the series is the way it seems to embody the idea that cultures not our own are in some way barbaric and in need of liberation. For instance, 2012’s Far Cry 3 stars Jason Brody--like, seriously, have you heard a more “white guy from Orange County” name in your life?--who is captured by a pirate crew during a party along with his friends and brother on an island in the Indian Ocean, and gets caught up in some slavery ring/drug cartel business because of course that’s what’s happening. 2014’s Far Cry 4 feels like it takes a step in the right direction, having its (still male) protagonist Ajay actually have ties to the Nepalese-inspired culture of Kryat, where the game takes place. However, I can’t find anything that leads me to believe that Ubisoft actually consulted anyone from the Nepal area to help with their worldbuilding, and instead simply sent their team to Nepal to draw their own conclusions. Yet with the upcoming Far Cry 5 I can’t help but be excited because for once, the protagonist won’t be restricted to being a dude. Additionally, there’s no uncomfortable feeling of going overseas and bringing American justice to foreign people. Far Cry 5 takes a controversial--or perhaps just controversial given the political climate--look at a villainous group that’s been avoided for far too long in the series: white people.

Things haven’t been easy in the RWBYverse, and with the way things are going they won’t be for a while. With the big bad getting her cards in place for her final hand, Season 5 is sure to be filled with even more pain and pressure for the cast. I’m not here for speculation today, though. I’m here… for comfort fic!

Season 3 left everyone, but especially the students of Beacon Academy, reeling and looking for whatever safety they could manage to find. And since the CRWBY arguably completely botched Yang’s recovery arc (and gave no signs of going into anyone else’s recovery), I’m no longer trusting them to take care of anyone else. These kids suffered through their school falling to evil forces and their friends getting hurt and even dying—there’s no way everyone is as well-adjusted as they seem! Especially not the remains of Team JNPR! Today’s fic explores the long, hard path JNPR started on during the timeskip between the third and fourth seasons; the path that led them from being lost to being closer than ever and prepared to set out once again as Hunters.