#dashingthoughts

[dash-n-step]

Continuing off an old post I had about the currently unobtainable TwistedSwd that's been vaguely hinted at since chapter 2:

If you've played chapter 3, you know at the end there's a fight against The Roaring Knight that's seemingly unbeatable.

Keyword seemingly, as if you're determined enough to survive the battle, you get the next Shadow Crystal, more specifically, you get the Black Shard, an item described as being part of "the Black Knife"

At the moment, the Black Shard is the strongest weapon you can have in the game, not only because of the whopping 16AT, but because of its special property to deal damage to Dark enemies, which doesn't gain significance until towards the end of chapter 4:

Dark Enemies, like the Titans and the Titan Spawns

Enemies that when defeated with The Black Shard, increase a new counter on Kris's status screen: Slain

This squarely puts the Black Shard as a thematically important item: Anything strong against the main threat of the game's a big deal, and the amount of effort put into it, more than all the shadow crystals before, signifies the weight this new item carries, and the weapon the Roaring Knight carries if what we have is simply a shard of it

But that's the thing right? It's a weapon tied to getting the shadow crystals, just like the twisted sword, but its effect of slaying dark enemies is so strong, what makes the twisted sword so special?

Going back to the stats again, 16AT isn't just the highest AT stat in the game, it's also the EXACT SAME AS THE TWISTED SWORD

Which, by looking in the data, ALSO has the effect of doing extra damage to Dark enemies

So not only are we four chapters into the game with what we now know was only a glance at what seems to be the strongest weapon in the game, the added bonus of whatever "Trance Down" truly means only heightens the significance of the twisted sword

Because if the guess on how to get the Pure Crystal is correct, to make the twisted sword you have to not only beat all the secret bosses (INCLUDING THE ROARING KNIGHT) but also either need to abort a weird route run, or somehow give Noelle a different ring later in the game, after already going through said route: which outside of abandoning the route, a player might only do if they "are done using Noelle" to get it in the first place, so they give her weaker items (looks at "She was Used Up"), or they give her an even stronger ring

Toby Fox what are you cooking???

[dash-n-step]

Sorry, I woke up for something important that made me mildly upset, and got reminded of this, it's so fucking stupid, because it obfuscates any actual discussion of what "icky" is because if you don't know op's whole thing is just being "freaky incest girl" you get to have the moral high ground of the other obfuscation of "erm, being mean is bad ok", as if there aren't one hundred percent instances where the right thing to do IS to point out someone is a danger, post PROOF of them being a danger, and get them out of public spaces, like, oh, the obvious fucking example of racist and bigots who love the exact same stuff you do and DO get called out so they have less social power to continue spreading the harm they do, but oooooh because you're doing it in a "queer and kinky" way, you're suddenly "based" and "epic", here's your 4000 notes and vague posts and what have you because your "niche and transgressive" art is one of the most popular and conservative expressions of sexuality since the age of fucking pornhub categories

Every fucking post like this is always about being as vague as fucking possible until you actually press literally anyone who fucking posts about it and it always ends up stemming back to "erm, sweety, you need to accept my heckin chungus incest, lolicon rapeplay art as queer liberation, you're not a *real* trans woman if you don't enjoy me posting abotu my siscon fetish every five fucking seconds", and they cannot even FATHOM that maybe the stuff you posts makes people not want to fucking interact with you, and will have them talk to other people who ALSO don't want to fucking interact with you based on the same critiera, AND THAT THAT ISN'T FUCKING CENSORSHIP WHEN YOU ARE BEING OSTRACIZED BY YOUR PEERS

YOU CAN'T CRY ABOUT BEING BULLIED FOR THE THINGS YOU DO WHILE ALSO TOUTING IT AS "FREAKY" AND "TRANSGRESSIVE", ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR ACTIONS AND THE WAY PEOPLE WILL REACT TO THEM AND GROW UP, you fucking morons

[dash-n-step]

I think the thing that gets me about Monster Hunter Stories 3 is that, like, it so clearly wants to grab the main monster hunter crowd

[edit: or at least, in an ask I got, I'd say it's at least attempting to "grow up" with the people who played the original games while failing to account for what brought audiences to it in the first place],

cause like

Look at the difference here

Monster Hunter Stories was so loved it had an anime, two advanced the style while keeping the general vibe and was so clean they used it for a gacha game, these were games with pretty cutesy designs but the stories told were willing to get serious and too

Now all of a sudden you're the only rider in a "kingdom" looking like link from legend of zelda?

and it's a bit early, but the babies seem to just be smaller versions instead of their cutesy silly look?

I mean part of the appeal of MHS was the contrast between the cute style and their designs, and the sillyness of their moves, so it's kind of worrying if they end up leaning too far from that

And of course, other people have already discussed how weird it is to go from riders being their own indigenous group that conflicted with hunters and other riders to now being a kingdom's special little guy?

[edit: someone did point out to me that we are a kingdom of riders, we're just the only RATHALOS rider, which at least does offer up a new perspective on what being a rider means]

I think the game's going to be good, but it reminds me of the weird vibe MH Wilds had with how you sometimes interacted with the natives of the new land, and somehow in all their time living there not once did they think of doing anything like you did

Just something to think about now that the initial hype of a new game is sort of watering down, like the game will probably be good, the story will probably be serviceable, and I don't think anyone who doesn't see any issues with the game should suddenly turn around on how they feel, but I hope it doesn't sacrifice its core too much, since even the main MH games are quite silly

It's very telling that Navirou is nowhere in sight, is all I'm saying [not as a bad thing, just that it may simply be going for a more serious vibe]

[dash-n-step]

I do think it's funny that people are apparently getting heated about the beforan designs feeling "off", especially "fujo aradia", like

the whole point of the ancestors is that they're vagure reflections of the characters they are in the other universe while being an influence on their present counterpart

"why wasn't beforan aradia an archeologist" cause that's alternia's aradia's thing

you are just asking for aradia again

@dash-n-step

[dash-n-step]

I've seen at least two videos comparing Hades 2's ending with Steven Universe's ending, and it's annoying because on the surface I get it, but it falls into the usual traps people have when discussing Steven Universe where it completely sidetracks the contexts of which the diamonds were "redeemed" and

Why it was so important to talk to the diamonds instead of just completely destroy or imprison them

the main focus also being the various types of grief the diamonds were going through and how the story was also about that

all the behind the scenes issues with steven universe not being allowed to last as long as it really wanted

but one video's a tiktok that's sort of taking a potshot, while the other is a 20 minute video bringing it up slightly, so you can't really expect these tangents to be all that in depth, but it still a little annoying

@dash-n-step

[dash-n-step]

As someone who has largely only gotten glances at the hades 2 ending, I think an underlying thing with all the discourse that leans into the main thing people are complaining about is just how much the game really drills into you that the gods aren't perfect and that they've screwed over so many people that it almost makes sense for them not to be in charge, and how even people on your side are saying "yeah, this fucked up thing happened because of the gods, and I know for a fact it didn't need to happen"

But because the *actual* thing the games are about is the struggles of a dysfunctional family and not the people they're in charge of or their history beyond that, those themes get brought up and juggled around but aren't really meant to be anything more than set dressing

Fundamentally, this is a story about "fixing a broken family" without really tackling *why* it's broken, *who* broke what, and also *who* is affected due to the fact this isn't just a random family but literal gods whose conflict lead to ruined cities and poisoned lands

The main person I'm watching play the game hasn't gotten to the "true ending" yet, so I'll see how it actually goes, but I can understand how the main complaint about the ending happened considering how it seems they're treating this "minor" part of the plot

@dash-n-step

[dash-n-step]

For my honest thoughts on the pilot I will say: I think it was okay

It felt a bit fast but condensing like the first 100 or so of pages into an 11 minute pilot will do that, and considering how it ends, it's clear this is way more of a "proof of concept pitch" than "this would be the first episode of a syndicated cartoon", with how much they moved around, glossed over or pushed to preview in the last seconds, even if they do choose to continue from here should a series be picked up.

I will say it feels like they were hamming up the cursing. Yeah, Homestuck is infamous for its high curse count/slurs, especially early on, again there's a lot of cursing in the comic overall, but when it's said out loud rather than being portrayed as the characters texting each other online and it's condensed into 4 minutes instead of 10s of pages of dialogue with dialogue breaks, it feels a bit awkward.

It felt so silly that I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they did it on purpose to lean into the "Vivziepop writing jokes" even with her not actually writing it, because they thought it'd be funny. Do a little bit of trolling towards the people who worried about that kind of thing.

Art style was fine, I'd say there was only one part I thought looked weird, and it was when Dave was leaning on the line for the phone conversation, but, like, overall, animation seemed pretty good.

At the end of the day, I finished the pilot going "wait that's it" and "I kind of wish there was more", which I suppose is the point, so it did a good job on that. Time will tell if anything else comes from it.

[dash-n-step]

"what sparked your ranting this time" remembered that a self-admitted pedophile is, like, the stem of all fan designs of a subspecies of a mario enemy, and figured that most people don't actually know nor spend time "grappling" with possible "ramifications" of using it, and the possible debate of if they even should

And then remembered that one artist who pretended to be a woman to sext lesbians while also being racist who's still going strong, albeit I think that case he changed names and accounts so less people realized it was the same person

And only just now remembered that one anime artist steeped in the "make cute art and then hide something fucked up in the background or give an uncomfortable undertone that can be missed" who got called out for making a joke about the holocaust but I still occasionally see his stuff reposted