Mia's Musings @miaaoi - Tumblr Blog

Oh to be a tonberry with SUSHI.

25-35 is such a weird fucking age because you’re 100% a bread-and-butter Standard Edition Millennial but the cool teens are like “ok boomer” because you have a Real Job but the actual Boomers at your job are like “I’m not going to listen to a literal fucking child” as they download 16 self-replicating viruses and meanwhile the Gen Xers are telling you to refinance a mortgage for a house you don’t have and you’re sitting there at the Adults Table with the pretty tasty casserole you cooked because you’ve finally figured out how to do that now but everyone is eating the Boomer’s store-bought macaroni instead and admittedly they do sort of taste similar so it probably wasn’t worth all the trouble of cooking from scratch and you’re trying to comfort the freshly-graduated sobbing 22-year-old next to you because she just woke up here and doesn’t know where she is but you have like maybe 5k dollars in a savings account labelled RETIREMENT that grows approx. twelve cents a year and you keep eating dry macaroni while smiling incomprehensibly and periodically blacking out like ??????????

onewinged-sephiroth

onwesterlywinds

One Last Step

So still this broken melody And therewith shoulder thee One last step only leaving An empty hearth down by the sea

Content warning for suicide. | Contains spoilers through 5.0.

In the weeks before the Calamity, Ahtynwyb Eynskyfwyn often dreamt of a tempest of mythological proportions. In those dreams, the storm would bring itself to bear against the mighty cliffs of Quarterstone, upon which perched her grandparents’ cabin. The seas would rise in a deafening pulse with waves fit to level any lesser artifice, breaking against the wall of stone and sending their spray up into the blustering sky.

And she would stand alone at the top of those cliffs and know, even in her dreams, that naught would ever be the same again.

Keep reading

rennebright

どうしま@doshimash0:ライダースジャケット着たライダー ※Illustration shared with permission from the artist. Please do not remove the source. Make sure to support the original artwork by visiting the source!

malfyre

@miaaoi

kiwi

I NEED A HIMBO

IM HOLDING OUT FOR A HIMBO TILL THE END OF THE NIGHT

hes gotta be strong

and hes gotta be fast

and hes gotta be dumb and polite

femmefurina-deactivated20240814

mysticalwonderworld

It Kwehmas.

stormsbourne

let’s talk about ffxiv

I’m not gonna tell you that you should play ffxiv because the team is a scrappy little team of upstarts fighting against the mainstream and therefore deserve your cash or anything like that. my stance on “you should consume mainstream AAA media for the woke points” is well known. instead I will say that this is one of the best final fantasies in years and probably my firm #4 behind 12, 8, and 4. and sometimes it climbs higher depending on my feelings at the time. right now it’s very high. I think I’d put it in top 2 or 3 at this point. it’s that good.

ffxiv had a really troubled development. 1.0 is infamously known for being a computer-crashing wreck that had no jump button and a horrendous crafting/gathering system. after months of bad feedback and unhappy customers, the entire team on ffxiv was fired and was replaced with a new team, headed up by ffxiv’s beloved yoshi-p (naoki yoshida) who immediately went about taking the game in a new direction. ffxiv 1.0 nearly destroyed square-enix as a company. it nearly tanked the ff name for good. yoshida had a lot on his plate, and he had to completely revamp the game in order to save not only the game itself, but the final fantasy name.

he did this by blowing the world up and starting anew 5 years after bahamut blew everything up.

highly recommend this youtube series, fall and rise of ffxiv, by speakers network. there is also a noclip documentary about it.

ffxiv relaunched as “a realm reborn” and since then has had 3 expansions: heavensward, stormblood, and the current amazingly popular shadowbringers.

look, it’s yoshi-p personally thanking me in the game for playing it

in ffxiv you are an adventurer setting out on your first quests, who keeps having odd flashbacks to things you weren’t there for and hearing a mysterious voice speak to you. all of this develops into a story about resisting a powerful imperialist empire, finding the truths of society hidden under centuries of lies and plain old misinformation, the works. you are the warrior of light, a chosen warrior of the sentient world you inhabit, and it’s your duty to help keep it safe whatever way you can. and that’s just the ARR story, without getting into HW (a story about the ways people maintain power and control in the midst of war), StB (a story about the people subjugated in imperialist conquest and fighting fascists), and ShB (a story about hope at the end of the world and the bonds we have with one another).

you can level all classes on one character if you like, so if you find out you hate tanking, there’s no need to reroll, you can just switch. there’s a plethora of content to do, from leveling classes to endgame raids to crafting/gathering to building reputations with other races, to buying a house if you’re lucky and making cute outfits (a common ffxiv joke is that “glamour is the real endgame”).

ffxiv is currently having a black friday sale on its complete edition, which comes with all the expansions so far including shadowbringers. you can get all that content for a cool $30. if you’re not sure it’s for you, there is also a free trial up to level 35 (which doesn’t apply to one class only, so you could get one class to level 35, switch, and keep playing). there’s also a cheaper subscription option if you’re willing to only have one character per world – and honestly, you’ll never need more than one, because you can do everything on that character.

if you like mmos, I’m telling you this is the best one I’ve played, with the most care and dedication put into its worldand characters, and the most respect for its player base.

also there’s a very good elf boy in it who deserves your love and affection. ok. storm out

apocalypsegay

Do you remember them?

catchymemes

sigynpenniman

as an IT person I would like to sue this screen for emotional damages

miaaoi

I feel this so hard.

shuttershocky-deactivated202512

This is gonna sound weird and absurdly nerdy but turn-based RPGs aren't the best video game format for a Fate work because the really limited nature of turn-based combat means there's none of the "Powers levels are complete bullshit here's a collection of wild circumstances or superior strategic choices that absolutely buttfuck the expected results of this fight" shtick that colors the Nasuverse.

The turn-based, class-based advantage/disadvantage system of FGO means you're matching lineup vs lineup and not only is there no reason to not just counter an enemy with an approriately classed servant, but there's no (nonlove)reason to pick a weaker servant if you have a stronger one with the same class and the same niche.

I think it's a matter of possibility space, or what you can and can't do given the limits of the game. FGO's battle system can be deeper than it looks, but in the end its still not a whole lot. Turn-based, class advantage-based design means you're not exactly gonna see Nameless (EMIYA Archer) hold his own against a Cu Chulainn out to tear him a new one. Unless AI Cu decides to spam skills instead of attacks until near death, he's gonna hit Nameless eventually and chunk him for half his HP.

I was watching a lot of FGO Arcade out of boredom and there was this Ryougi player who started the game eating two crits from an enemy Waver and getting brought down to 10% HP. Not only did Ryougi continue to fight, she survived to the end of the match and CARRIED her entire team, taking on multiple full health enemies with barely any HP and simply outplaying them with good dodges, blocks, and using the environment for cover.

The Waver that almost killed her at the start got beaten when Ryougi lured him into a corner, blocked his shot, and then softened him up with a barrage of attacks before unleashing her NP right as he threw another attack that was sure to kill her. Even if FGOAC keeps the class advantage system and Waver deals double damage to Ryougi and takes half damage from her, the real time nature of FGOAC's arena brawler format meant a severely injured Ryougi wasn't a lost cause against a Caster with full HP (and having SSR stats vs her SR stats). She could still outplay him hard, and she did. The Ryougi player continued to do that for several more opponents for the rest of the match, all of them full health vs her sub 2k HP, and handily defeating them all one by one.

You... Can't really do that in regular FGO. It's a numbers+typing game, and combat isn't even in tactical rpg form ala Fire Emblem or Battle Moon Wars so there's... Really very little possibility space to just outplay the enemy. You either brought the right combination of servants, an OP combo of skills or are praying to RNG that the AI targets the wrong servants.

It kinda leads to problems like Berserkers in FGO being glass cannons when they really shouldn't be. They're infamously durable and terrifying combatants, but the inability to control them fully and their lack of other skills balances them out. FGO's battle system can't translate that, so it just makes them effective vs everyone and takes bonus damage from everyone, making the whole class ultra reliant on simply not getting hit by a random crit.

Imagine if you increased the possibility space just a little and reworked FGO's combat into a tactical rpg (so now placement of units matters ), then you also change classes so each class gives specific skills / attributes instead of being type advantage. If Berserkers were durable, powerful units with high stats but moved less tiles per turn (hard to control), suddenly they're units you throw into the enemies' frontlines to draw aggro while your other servants flank them. Now that's more like a Berserker.

In a real time action game, you can do even more. You can return the Berserker type advantage and disadvantage because now they can actually avoid getting hit by being skilled fighters, and the risk/reward of using a Berserker now no longer relies on praying to RNG. In a PVP action game like FGOAC, being a Berserker would mean youre a major threat to anyone on the other team, and entering a fight means youre the center of attention as everyone will take bonus damage from you and deal bonus damage to you. With some good game design you could encourage aggressive, ride or die style gameplay on Berserker class servants and really nail how it would be to fight as one.

All that being said, maybe the best format for Fate games would still be tabletop rpgs. With a creative imagination, a willing DM, and a few lucky dice rolls, you have all the possibility space in the world to make your bullshit comeback mechanics authentically Nasu.

Anyway, I just think it would be neat if Type-Moon did more action games. Extra and FGO's battle systems are just fine (okay maybe not Extra), but I do love the idea of getting to play a real servant brawl.

ginkgocrown-old-blog

I showed this post to my boyfriend and he tried to take his shirt off like a girl and

yeah

castielsteenwolf

Out of the 82k notes my post got this is by far the best comment holy shit thank u for being u

wingscanspeak

So i tried it both ways and uh

i mean how do you do the first one without pulling out all your hair?

zorobro

this made me laugh really hard….

and it made me realize that girls and boys pull their shirt off differently. /amazed

but seriously I think girls just do the cross arm thing because of HAIR like demonstrated

wingscanspeak

So one year, one URL change, and a hair cut later, I decide to try again… FOR SCIENCE!

Its not science unless you write it down so

30secondstocalifornia

First method:

Well done, i guess…

Second:

I fucked up

Girls… how?

ohshititsmama-deactivated201812

I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW WE CAN HAVE SUCH DIFFERENT WAYS OF TAKING OFF SHIRTS AND SO MUCH DIFFICULTY DOING IT THE OTHER WAY

iprayforangels-deactivated20220

I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!!

It’s all in the way that girl/boys shirts are made.

Girls shirts have less armpit room then boy’s do and are generally shorter so pulling it off over your head is more practical because by lifting your arms all the way up you make enough room for the sleeves to just slip off.

Boys shirts have more room and are generally longer so it is easy to slip them off over your head.

but if you take a girls shirt off like a boys shirt you will get your arms caught because there isn’t much armpit space.

and if you take a boys shirt off like a girls shit you will still have your head in it when you’ve lifted your arms all the way up because of the shirt’s length.

It has nothing to do with us. It is entirely to do with how our shirts are made. I figured it out for you. YOU’RE WELCOME!

prince-cake

bless you

wingscanspeak

look what is back on my dash. Jesus.

panicatthegym

This came back but with ACTUAL SCIENCE you are the saviour of our generation

rightplace-wrongtime

I have no words

zazzcrafting-deactivated2017061

I seriously just needed this

setbabiesonfire

This deserves the 1 million+ notes it has.

clown-strife-deactivated2021041

I’m a guy and I’ve been taking my shirt off on the girl way my whole life. Didn’t even know there was another way

insecuredragon

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT KNOW

THIS IS A TRUMPET

THIS IS A TROMBONE

THIS IS A TUBA

AND THIS IS A FRENCH HORN

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME

jackadittyditty

You mean trumpet

Slidey Trumpet

Big ass trumpet

Drunk Trumpet

insecuredragon

I’M GONNA PUNCH YOU

random-homestuck-things

My sides

mosaicabstract

AT LEAST YOUR INSTRUMENTS LOOK DIFFERENT

mrchrismad

those are some fancy guitars

thepantaloons-deactivated201609

EXCUSE YOU THAT IS A BASS, A VIOLIN, A FIDDLE, AND A VIOLA

charlesoberonn

Those are big mama violin and her little violings

cannedcream

String trumpets.

goddammityouscrewedupagain-blog

THATS NOT A BASS YOU DICK THATS A CELLO GET UR FUCKIN STRING INSTRUMENTS RIGHT JFC

spacememepng

things heating up in the orchestra fandom

xxhorsmaxx-deactivated20260511

I know what a trumpet is I play one

lemon-catto-deactivated20200427

Time to reblog this and give my friends a stroke

funkiidoinkz-deactivated2020072

Being a past trumpet player and now a French horn this post makes me very angery

mystic-quartelz-deactivated2019

I tap keys

zzoupz

But hey what about

h-cand-deactivated20210530

Wow… Those are really strange trumpets, where did you get them from?

faustandfurious

What about this six-string viola I found?

verycorrectlotr

acoustic trumpet

faustandfurious

#m gonna punch you

Violins is never the solution

lakeffectqueer-deactivated20240

my favourite instrument is this weird fiddle

broadwaytheanimatedseries

oh look its gotten worse since I last seen it

sea-anon

Those are all some pretty weird saxophones

captainsnoop-deactivated2020041

big dick energy

captainsnoop-deactivated2020041

a few people have replied stuff to the effect of “damn this looks cool but i don’t know anything about Doom” and that is officially my cue to start nerding out about it

This is the Doomguy. Demons call him “The Doom Slayer,” but everyone who loves him calls him Doomguy.

Once upon a time, Doomguy was a security guard working for the Union Aerospace Corporation. He was stationed on a remote space base on the Martian moon Phobos. He used to be in the Marine Corps, but he was dishonorably discharged after his CO ordered him to fire on unarmed civilians and he responded by putting his CO in a full-body cast. He spent most of his time as a security guard jerking off to porn on the clock, according to the original game’s manual.

One day, his bosses at the UAC fucked up super bad when experimenting with teleporters and opened a portal to Hell. Demons quickly swarmed the base, possessed Doomguy’s fellow security officers, and started taking everything over. Doomguy thought that wasn’t very cash money of the demons, grabbed a shotgun, and started asking them politely yet firmly to leave.

Doomguy does this on Phobos for a bit, dies, finds himself on the Martian moon of Deimos which had been swallowed in to Hell itself, and gets right back to fighting demons. He rappels down from Deimos in to the depths of Hell, kills more demons, and then escapes through a portal in Hell to Earth.

When on Earth, Doomguy discovers that the demons killed his pet rabbit Daisy. This motivates him to power through a bunch of extremely difficult levels designed by American McGee, a bunch of really shitty rushed ambitious levels designed by Sandy Petersen, three expansion packs designed by fans, a short jog through some levels designed by Nerve Software, and an entire game that was exclusive to the Nintendo 64. During these games he kills a lot of demons, saves humanity, stops the demonic invasion of Earth, and resolves to stay in Hell for the rest of eternity to make sure this never happens again.

And… he does that. He spends eons traveling between Hell and parallel dimensions, putting a stop to demonic invasions across the multiverse. He does this for so long that the demons canonize him as a part of their weird demonic religious belief system, dubbing him The Doom Slayer. The demons chronicle Doomguy’s rampage in a collection of stories called The Slayer’s Testament. He meets an order of alien knights in Hell called the Night Sentinels, whose own home world was pulled in to Hell by the demons and who had become just as effective at killing demons as he had. He pals around with them for a bit but eventually the demons get the better of them all and all that’s left is the Doomguy. This pisses him off really bad, so badly that when he went on his latest rampage he didn’t notice that the demons were leading him in to a trap. The demons drop an entire temple on his head, knock him unconscious, and lock him in a sarcophagus.

An undisclosed amount of time passes, and eventually the UAC from an alternate universe busts in to Hell by accident again. The UAC starts pulling natural resources and artifacts from Hell and using those resources to power all of their technology. Turns out, using Hell Energy to power your electronics makes people go crazy, and eventually this turns in to another full-on demonic invasion. This is where DOOM (2016) starts, with the Doomguy waking up from his nap in a UAC lab where they had been studying his sarcophagus. Doomguy realizes that he’s in a “same shit different universe” situation and gets to work stopping the demonic invasion and angrily ignoring the input of every single person that tries to talk to him. He’s seen all this shit before countless times and is sick of hearing excuses and monologues. He’s through with the niceties of it all. Characters tell him to “carefully deactivate” all of the different science machines that let humanity safely use Hell Energy. He smashes them to bits with his feet. Characters assure him that this was all for the “greater good,” he knows that the greatest possible good for humanity is not fucking with Hell anymore. They don’t know what they’re messing with, he does, and he has to fix the problem in his own special way.

The clip above is from Doom Eternal, set to release March of next year. The clip of Doomguy casually strolling through his UAC base and just sort of asserting himself is the result of the character having experienced several thousand years of this bullshit and being just So Through with it all. He’s not gonna hurt these people because ultimately he’s fighting to protect humanity, but as far as he’s concerned he doesn’t owe anyone in this scenario the luxury of his politeness or respect.

The demons are coming from a portal at the core of Mars? What a coincidence, he’s on one of the Martian moons and there’s a gun designed to blow up planets right outside. There’s also a bunch of demons outside, so that’s gonna need to be addressed. This guy has a key to the door out? Sweet. He’s just gonna borrow that right quick. That guy has a plasma rifle? Doomguy always liked that one. It belongs to him now. Time to go outside and hit things until the industrial metal stops playing.

supersexygamergirl

kortzite

This is like unearthing an ancient artifact from a forgotten civilization

knightoflodis

I like this joke!

askagamedev

Any thoughts on the Hong Kong Blizzard situation?

I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. Those who participate on our [Discord] server have probably seen my comments and thoughts on the Hong Kong Blizzard (and greater China) situation in real time over the past few weeks. It is a very complicated topic to cover (as geopolitics tends to be), but I will attempt to distill it down for you. Fair warning, this is a long post.

Before we begin, for those who don’t understand what’s happening in Hong Kong, here’s a [quick link to a BBC summary of what the Hong Kong protests are about].

Now… a little more background about doing business in China. You have to realize that all Chinese companies operate in China at the whims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). All companies above a certain size must have a CCP representative on their board, and all companies above that size just happen to be run by people who have deep ties to the CCP. There are no exceptions to this. To compound this, all foreign companies must partner with a Chinese company in order to do business in China. This gives the CCP unprecedented control and leverage over all major businesses in China. Blizzard’s Chinese partner company is NetEase.

The CCP is very sensitive about certain things. They tolerate no dissidents and have built massive internal systems of social and economic engineering to maintain that level of control - things like individual [social credit scores] that determine a citizen’s ability to travel or buy a home, [massive facial recognition software] to pair with the literal [hundreds of millions of cameras everywhere], and the [”Golden Shield”] - China’s special “walled garden” internet with rigidly controlled access to the outside world.

Let’s go back to the Hong Kong and Blizzard thing directly. One of the competitors in the Hearthstone Grandmaster tournament was blitzchung, a Hong Kong native who, during a post-match interview, put on a gas mask like those the protesters are using and said “Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times” - the HK protester slogan. In response to this, [Blizzard banned blitzchung from competing for a year, took back his prize money, and removed him from Grandmasters]. The day after, the official Hearthstone Weibo (essentially China’s version of Facebook) account posted this:

For those who can’t read it, the text roughly translates to this:

We are very angered and disappointed at what happened at the event and do not condone it in any way. We also highly object to the spreading of personal political beliefs in this manner. Effective immediately, we’ve banned the contestant from events and terminated work with the broadcasters. We will always respect and defend the pride of our country.

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s talk about Blizzard and their business situation in China in general. China represents an enormous portion of Blizzard’s market. One of the designers I know at Blizzard said “I was once told that Warcraft is to China what Star Wars is to the US” and I believe it. China has gone so far as to build a Warcraft-inspired (but not licensed) [theme park]. You’d think this might give them some clout, but you’d be wrong. The CCP has no qualms about completely banning any company that steps out of line.

It’s also important to note a few other relevant details you might not be aware of:

[Several of Blizzard’s own employees staged a walkout in protest of the company decision]

[Blizzard is far from alone in this behavior]. The CCP has their foot on the necks of many foreign companies.

The Hong Kong Blizzard issue has also garnered [mainstream] [media] [coverage]

[Both Republican and Democrat lawmakers have criticized Blizzard’s response in this incident]

Here’s the thing - a lot of Blizzard’s critics in this situation are saying that it’s greed motivating their decision… but I don’t think it’s just greed. If Blizzard gets cut off from China, it would be disastrous for their bottom line, as well as Activision-Blizzard’s valuation. That would not only mean they lose a lot of money, but the entire company (and many of their employees’ jobs) is potentially in jeopardy. Given just how much of their business is done in China, I would not be surprised if being banned from China would be an existential crisis for Blizzard as we know it. For anybody within Blizzard, that should be terrifying.

Now that we’ve been through all that, here are my own thoughts on the matter: Blizzard is stuck between two awful choices. This has become a full-blown international incident, which puts it in a different class entirely than the usual kinds of gamer recreational outrage. It’s a public relations shitstorm of the highest degree and one that will likely take years to recover from. However, their only other option is potential ruin with many, many lost jobs and irreparable harm done to the company at the pleasure of an authoritarian government. If I were in their position, I would say that (some of) the players could possibly be won back by making good games and keeping a low profile while a ban by the CCP is not something they can appeal. My view is that Blizzard as a company is essentially a CCP hostage at this point. Maybe it wasn’t when they first launched WoW in China back in 2005, but a lot has changed in the 14 years since then. It certainly doesn’t excuse what they did, but I don’t believe it is as simple as “they want China money so they compromise their ideals”. I believe the CCP has them by the neck and will not hesitate to squeeze.

PS Edit:

I wanted to paraphrase something that Brian Kibler, former Hearthstone caster, said today. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to step back from this. Do not take your anger out on the other casters, or streamers, or employees of Blizzard. This is not the kind of decision that comes from the rank and file. Most likely they’re just as angry as you are.

[Join us on Discord]

The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.

[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]

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