(no subject)

[wolffyluna]

I've mentioned this on tumblr, but I realised I haven't mentioned this on dreamwidth. I'm currently getting into a couple new canons!

The first is The Magnus Archives. It's a horror anthology podcast with an overarching plot, about the archives of an institute that investigates the paranormal. Each episode is a recording of a witness statement, made by the new, incredibly skeptical and unpersonable head archivist. It's almost like a mirror image of the SCP foundation? But where in SCP stuff, the horror is in the form or impersonal, professional documents, the horror in the Magnus Archives are the stories of random nobodies who did not sign up for this shit. I'm quite liking it so far. I avoided it for awhile-- a lot of horror for me is Too Much, and I much prefer dread to terror-- but it turns out it hits the spot. The fact that these are statements taken after the fact, the fact we're hearing the stories about the blood and the screaming with no one actually screaming in my ear, makes this podcast very much my jam.

I have also been playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. And it's eaten me a little. It's a Fire Emblem game (strategy game, units with colourful personalities, etc), set in a school for officers, that your character has been shanghai-ed into teaching a class for. The assignments are fighting battles. Naturally. I'm quite enjoying it! On a game mechanical level, I really like how they force you to not battle all the goddamned time, and I think it does wonders for the pacing, and the new way supports work is awesome. (Basically, in old games, if characters stood next to each other or paired up, they'd eventually get these little conversations, and their stats would go up when they were next to each other/paired up. But while pairing people up often was tactically advantageous, you didn't always want to do that, which meant you had to trade off strategy vs fun conversations. But now, characters get support points if they are both able to attack the same enemy, even if only one of them actually attacks. So you get supports more often and easily, and rarely have to trade off tactics against it!) And I also really like the characters. Fire Emblem characters can be a little one note, but in this game, most characters are at least one and a half note? Also, I have yet to find any character completely irritating (though I'll admit to a high tolerance.) Normally I only play games once through, but I'm having so much fun, and this game does have multiple routes, that I am tempted to play it more than once--

Comments

[stonestrewn]

I've been meaning to start the Magnus Archives for ages now, lots of people whose opinions I respect are into it and it seems like good horror! The only thing holding me back is that I know I'll be annoyed if they get archiving wrong, which is silly of me, but here we are. One day though!

[wolffyluna]

I can't speak to the accuracy of the archiving, but it is kind of a Thing that the archive is poorly run? Like, the archivist narrator is often complaining about his predeccessor's mismanagement of the archive. So if 'the authors know it's wrong, it's meant to be badly run' helps with the annoyance, that is a thing/

[stonestrewn]

Oh, that's good to know! I definitely should check this out, everything about the horror aspect and the overarching story sounds so up my alley. I'm glad you're enjoying it!