#a lot of stuff happening…mostly setup for the trial and then some…

[hey-heigo]

chapter 30 done….

[inoutoftherain]

We did it!

No 24 hours, but fucking crushed HBGs record axolotl-less which was sub 30 and still got WR after 3 hours of 3 people doing nothing but breeding the blue bastards. Total breeds over 5000, median is like 700 or 800.

I had a great experience. The early game plan was so good, the gunpowder farm with Molly and Shoe went so smooth and finished ahead of schedule. Wither skeleton farm had a couple hiccups due to me forgetting to bring two items but we built it right and we built it on time and that's all that matters, thanks to Pocky and to Shoe again for helping to knock that out.

Mobs after that mostly with TJ, hardest part of the run and definitely the longest. I meant to take a break and sleep here and didn't. There were some mistakes made with mob death and lack of organization but mostly I just think all that stuff is a lot. I know TJ got really down that it wasn't fast enough and so am I. I have a lot of thoughts about it, my performance, mistakes and experience, organization and plans and who does what. I don't know. Bottom line is it's a lot.

Server held up great and I could fly the early mobs to the sh from the surrounding area, unfortunately couldn't fly them later on the nether roof due to lag breaking the leads but it was still so much better than last time. Bobby mod was great and TalkingMime loaning the server ahead of HBGs own attempt later this month was really nice, appreciate it.

Everybody got kind of down late in the run after it was obvious 24 hours wasn't happening there was a lot left and not a lot of people to do it. People needed to sleep. It ended up with me, Wonderfulegg and somebody else I think Molly was there at one point? trying to figure out if HDWGH was going to happen or if we had to give up. I was so tired. I was the only person there who ever did HDWGH in their life and I did it in this version once a year ago. I couldn't find the tutorial I used. The setup that somebody started by spawn wasn't going to work for the only version of it that I know. The beacon was in the end, I didn't know where the ingredients for everything were, I thought I did my 1.21 bac run on a different PC and that I wouldn't be able to find the recording. Plus the idea that I can do it correctly with how tired I am is so incredibly dubious. But no like my brain finally unfogs enough to remember it was the same PC and I find the world download and look at that, and I have the setup geometry, it's now possible. So I have to do it. Wonderfulegg gets Zesskyo on who was supposed to have joined the run but had something come up at the last minute. So Zesskyo unlike the rest of us is wide awake and full of energy. And zesskyo does know HDWGH though not in this version. I have the beacon set up by this point. Somebody finds a conduit. I drag over a villager from base. We move the shulker and the dolphin. I spend probably 30 fucking minutes during all of this explaining the whole HDWGH sequence to Zesskyo, who has done it before but not in this version. This 30 minutes has nothing to do with Zesskyo and everything to do with me and my sleep deprived brain, I have no fucking idea what I'm saying or what I've said and I repeat everythign about 40 times because I think I got it out of order or missed something the previous time and I probably did.

I show Zesskyo the raid and trial chamber locations, Wonderfulegg flies around with a riptide trident to locate a monument where the elder guardians aren't dead. Wonderfulegg finds all the potion ingredients and consumables and makes the potions. Zesskyo goes off to do the thing. Zesskyo hits the fucking advancement on the first try.

We're so back! At this point not counting blue axolotl there's like 10 random advancements left. I pick the two that are the most brainless and spend like 20 minutes doing five minutes of tasks because I'm that fucking tired. Its like whatever. Who cares at this point. Jilian's back and I think somebody else is too and they all knock off the rest. So it's just the axolotl now. I try to join them on the breeding but I give up and go to sleep when I realize I'm just staring at the axolotls and not doing anything. So the other three people there who I think are Jillian, Wondefulegg and Zesskyo breed axolotls for three more hours and they get it.

Thank you to TJ and Jillian for letting me be part of this again. Thank you to Molly, Shoe, Pocky, TJ, Wonderfulegg and Zesskyo for being so great to work with. Thank you to Jillian for providing the push to not give up. Thank you to everybody else who took part and got stuff done. You're all fantastic.

We did it!

[zwierzodudle]

i finished dawntrail last night so i'm gonna release some thoughts out of me

overall i would still say i enjoyed myself. admittedly i mostly went in with the plan to just enjoy watching my lizard in the cutscenes, so. not the highest of standards.*

the first half aka the main scenario you expect to happen was honestly perfectly fine. nothing special, but light and enjoyable. you go around helping your new pal with various tasks, shenanigans happen,and there were a lot of sweet moments between various characters. like i don't really have a lot of complaints for that part, it's about what i expected.

the only things that i found kinda meh at that point is that at times the writing felt like they were writing for a kids cartoon instead (but it was easy to ignore for this part), and zoraal ja's motivation was just kinda silly? and maybe a few weird moments where they didn't seem to decide if they want the tone to be serious or comedic.

post-coronation when shit hits the fan tho. they had this really good existential horror setup (and they clearly knew about it, what with the dramatic camera angles and all) but then they kept pulling it back in a weird way?

in the same dialogue the same character just a few sentences apart says this:

and from then on it's like they couldn't let any characters call the soul devices anything negative without also adding something along the lines of 'but it's their culture'. it's genuinely bizzare. it get's incredibly tiring with just how often everyone says it too. culture has nothing to do with this? the characters are allowed to think the delete-the-memories-of-your-loved-ones-and-use-their-souls-as-a-currency machine is scary without a disclaimer every time? i'm not sure if it was meant to help humanize alexandrians or something but it really wasn't necessary? that kinda infantilizing writing really ddidn't mesh with the subject at hand here and felt a little condescending to the players.

this part really suffers for it beause there's a lot of interesting ideas they introduce and then just push to the side in order to show you how alexandrians live. by the time they're done with that the last few quests just rush by. the last zone gets turned into rubble after a few dialogues, krile gets barely any time to get her quest's resolution, no time for questioning anyone about the shard travel.

sphene is an interesting villain but even with her right at the end they throw another 'well i know you have your own beliefs-'. my brother in hydaelyn she's forced by her programming to kill people for souls to power an unsustainable artificial afterlife. just let that go okay.

so. yeah.

i still had fun with various character moments (i know people hate on wuk lamat but i had no problem with her), the new dungeons and trials are fun, the new areas are honestly gorgeous. it's just kinda disappointing how many times they fumble the writing itself.

*that one post-endwalker update where you go into a garlean bunker because their officer doesnt want their feral robots killed? and you find out they've been taking stuff that was meant for their citizens for themselves and yet it never comes up again? or how the refinery guys who hated garleans who enslaved them clap and smile at the officer who now will totally be better because he was almost killed by the feral robots? the way they wrote everyone in it made me stop playing ffxiv for like half a year. so i kinda expected bullshit and tbh nothing in dawntrail was as bad as that.

[fruitless-vain]

Hey I got a question for you my resident training expert friend. If you don't mind.

New house, next door has 4 very barky and attention seeking dogs. Any time the back door opens, or they see me through the bathroom or bedroom window, they start barking. If I take Isolde out to give her some ball time, they go nuts along the fence.

They are all friendly, but they just do not calm down....ever. I have been outside for 40 minutes just sitting and they do nothing but bark. Their owners occasionally try to call them in, but don't leave the back step so the dogs mostly ignore them.

I am starting to wonder if there is anything I can do on my end. Like would trying to interact with them by the fence calm them down or more likely to make them go more nuts with excitement when they see me?

I know, neighbour's dogs aren't mine to train, but I can't even set foot in my backyard without them going off...and I have to keep my bedroom curtains closed most of the time so they don't go off if they happen to see me through the fence and window.

It's.... frustrating and I'm not sure what to do about it. I was wondering if you had any tips or if I'm just doomed to the cacophony of dogs who do not know how to stop? *I mean I am a little worried for the dogs too because the one keeps jumping near the fence and I am so worried a paw will get snagged in the fence on the way down, or like running behind their shed where there is a lot of crowded stuff. I just don't want these dogs to break their damn legs with excitement you know????

If you’re comfortable enough with it the easiest option would be to talk to the owners, say you’re really interested in dog training and was wondering if you could try to practice on their dog’s to resolve the backyard barking! Most people are quite embarrassed when their dogs behave that way and are more than willing to accept free help provided they aren’t being shamed or blamed for the behaviours they feel bad about. That would definitely set you up to be able to work on this easier, be able to establish a relationship with the dogs and get permission to give them treats/ know if they have any allergies to be able to work on that.

Usually the easiest management from the owner’s side is just to teach a solid come inside cue, where you would be quite far away and be able to call the dog back in for a huge jackpot, gradually working your way closer. That’s usually a pretty quick process that doesn’t resolve the barking but does end it in the moment with a lot less stress happening on both sides.

If not depending on your setup there’s a few things you can do depending on the cause for the barking. It’s going to be a lot of trial and error to determine what is motivating the dog and what’s going to work.

The first step is to find the distance you can be that doesn’t trigger them. Experiment with it just being you out there, just your pup, perhaps just the jingle of a collar, you out of sight but making some sound, visible but no sound, see if you can isolate what triggers the barking on an individual level and if there’s a distance you can be at that doesn’t start the barking. This could mean opening the back door and still being inside the house. The goal being to take the individual triggers at your safe distance and gradually work your way closer.

The challenge is sorting out what motivates them and what they want to achieve with their barking. For most dogs it’s to make people go away, for some it’s just an overstimulated state of mind from excitement. For fear/ yard guarding you’ll stay under their threshold and then walk away to reward the lack of barking or toss a treat/ get the owner to toss a treat depending on the dog.

For excitement you can reward the lack of barking at your under threshold distance with treat tosses, toy tosses, or even with you/your dog getting closer if that’s what they’re really wanting to have happen if you think it won’t trigger the barking to start in that moment. Alternatively if all they want is you/your dog to come play you can slowly close the distance and immediately walk away when the barking starts. This can be frustrating for the dog however and is not the ideal way to train it, but when you’re trying to fix a problem with extreme limitations like this it is something that can be considered. Important to know if you leaving is rewarding or punishing in this scenario though because if you going away is what they actually want then it’ll make the barking worse.

Goal being to reward the quiet and gradually be able to close the distance.

Behaviours can be complicated and there’s far more options than what I’ve listed here but hopefully it’ll give you some ideas!

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Final Four: The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck Review! or The Batman Trial Episode but with Ducks, Sharks, And the Fonz

Hello all you happy people and welcome to the penultimate Ducktales review... for season 3 anyway. I still have most of season 1, all of season 2 (I did cover one but I’ll probably redo it), the tie-in comics, the 87 series, and even then i’ll never really be done with ducks between all the scrooge comics and other duck related shows like Darkwing Duck and Quack Pack. But as far as covering the show as it comes out as i’ve done for the past year, that’s’ts almost done. It’s honestly just starting to hit as I type this: this is the second to last episode. After next week while there’s always fan fiction (And I certainly aim to contribute to that), a possible Darkwing Duck Reboot under frank (though that’s in doubt) where they could show up, and a movie down the road given what we saw with Phienas and Ferb and the show’s popularity it’s still not the same as getting these well animated, well crafted adventures every week with breaks or the ocasional entire week of them. The show won’t go on, and whatever happens with the property next is a mystery no amount of ducks can solve. 

So with all that in mind naturally this episode is a breather episode: It’s not unimportant: like the rest of the season it ties off a lot of loose ends, adds in some stuff we didn’t know we wanted, and in general feels necessary like every episode this season. It’s something I credit the season for immensley: They knew this would probably be it so while they had more stories to tell, they made sure if these were their last, to leave no loose ends. And outside of ones they just never wanted to address in the first place like “What happened to Donald’s parents”, “Why was every trace of Della missing despite Scrooge’s search for her having just ended”, and “What did Della thing of the decades long seperation”, they’ve tied up pretty much all of them except for FOWL and what Beakly was lying about, and I feel both are about to ducktail into one another int he finale. Could be wrong but  I applaud them for tying off almost every loose end and character arc by this episode that isn’t related to FOWL in some way. Not every show can do that: She Ra was a masterpiece but still had a few things like Scorpia and Catra’s broken relationship, Hordak’s reformation and Adora’s Parents just left up in the air due to time constraints, Steven Universe ONLY got to go back and answer a lot of questions because they were lucky enough to get an epilogue mini series, and Star Vs... was not as good as either show by the end and by the finale about 80% of things it’d brought up all had the following answer:

My point is it’s VERY hard, even when you know the end is coming to tie everything up in a neat bow. And I can’t know how good the finale be or how satsifying it will be but given how well this season’s wrapped everything up so far,  i’m betting on immensely. But we can talk about that when it finally comes around next week. For now we have a trial episode to talk about that’s mostly good.. mostly. See why the mostly under the cut as I discuss and recap the episode with full spoilers.  Count it down!

We open in the Mansion, where a bunch of tribble like Fuzzy creatures are running amok. Unsuprisingly, Scrooge bought one for Louie as a pet to teach him responsiblity.. again. And once again he instead turned into a get rich quick scheme, didn’t read the manual and now they have an infestation. 

ONCE AGAIN, Louie is written like he’s barely changed at all in the past three seasons. Anyone whose been following my reviews regularly knows this has been a pet peeve of mine for the entire season. Despite having an ENTIRE arc about Louie growing as a character and learning the human cost of his scheming and to use his angle seeing talent’s wisely, the writers keep writing him as if he learned nothing. I went back to track it and while not as often as it felt I noticed a few things. The first is that it WASN’T like this for the first half of the season. No really. He even learns brand new lessons in The Trickening and Louie’s Eleven. Granted he also exploits his uncle in Louie’s Eleven but that’s mostly played for laughs.. still not a great bit but not a major part of the episode. 

So he was fine for the first act of the season... but then for whatever reason from Let’s Get Dangerous onwards (Again I don’t count the Christmas episode as both of those are meant to slot in anywhere and chronologically take place before this season for the timeline to make any sense), he’s just...

He’s utterly insufferable in his small parts of the first half of Let’s Get Dangerous! as he berates Huey for daring to look a gifthorse int he mouse.. even though everytime he’s seemingly got something for nothing or minimal effort it’s backfired and it’s something that seeemd to stick with “The Richest Duck in the World!”. He’s fine in Impossibin and alright in split sword as while he clearly hadn’t learned lying isn’t the best policy we at least got a good story out of it. He then went right back to obnoxious with New Gods on the Block where he, EPISODES AFTER THE SOLEAGEO FISACO again thinks an easy way out is the right way, and has NO guilt over possibly killing a bunch of people with his gold powers and in fact is disapointed he dosen’t get to keep a living being turned to gold!. He spents all of Fight for Castle McDuck being a huge dick to Huey AGAIN iwth no lesson, and now has yet another family endagering get rich quick scheme he feels no remorse about. 

I will admit when I”m wrong and I DID think it was in way more of the season than I thought. And let’s face it in real life personal issues don’t just go away and you can sometimes slide back, i’ve done it way too many times and i’m not proud of it. We’re only human. But this isn’t real life, this is cartoon ducks. And cartoon duck wise most character development has stuck or if a bad trait’s come back it’s been in a new way. Webby is still trusting, but knows how the world works now and while idolizing scrooge dosen’t think he’s perfect anymore. Huey is no longer a skpetic towards the super natural and hasn’t forced a party on anyone. Dewey hasn’t craved other people’s love or thought he needed to earn his mom’s love again. And that’s just the other kids. They aren’t the same people theyw ere going in, neither is Louie. So it’s grating when an episode acts like h’es exactly the same, let alone almost a fifth of the season.

What makes it even worse though is that he had an ENTIRE STORY ARC dedicated to learning some of these lessons already. With the others if one episode were forgotten i’d let it slide as it happens with tv, i’m used to it. It’s not a great look but it happens. Mistakes happen again we’re all human. But you can’t act like an entire arc of a series didn’t exist. While they ignore Della’s history somehow being hidden for the rest of the show they don’t ignore that Dewey spent a whole season looking for her, as he never hides something like that from his brothers again nor do they, and he’s out of them the biggets mama’s boy. While they did take a while to adress Lena, partly because the episode got pushed back, they didn’t act like season 1 never happened and she was still working for her aunt. Della still isn’t on the moon and Owlson still isn’t working for glomgold. Actions. Have. Consequences. That’s the whole point of this episode, but they act like none of it got through to louie and it makes his arc feel like a giant waste in hindsight. This episode even feels like it was SUPPOSED to be in that arc: Louie is back to his season 2 characterization, Scrooge is actively trying to mentor him again.. it just feels really out of place as our second to last episode in that way and drags it down a bit.

Thankfully after Scrooge bars the door, and possibly leaves everyone to their deaths but he presumably has enough faith in the kids, the twins and Beakley to take care of it, he gets a summons to court.. and gets kidnapped. He and Louie are whisked away to a mystic court presided over by a giant statue of justice holding scales, that judges someone based on Karma. Scrooge’s foes have brought him to court, blaming him for being evil and if he looses he looses EVERYTHING. And their proscutor? 

Sadly not Droopy, maybe next continuity, but searing the same Hannibal-Esque Getup is Doofus Drake to Louie’s horror. As for why he’s like this.. he thought iht was fun. Great gag. 

After the credits we find out why he’s doing this: He’s still pissed about Louie taking half his inheritance and giving it to his family, so he’s going to take LOUIE’S inheritance. It’s.. honestly a great setup: Doofus was already a villian I liked, being a nice weird evil mirror dewey instead of a walking fat joke like last series. So I was glad to both see him pop up one last time to make it a full trilogy of apperances as an angonist and to see him take a step up from his passive roll in the past: in his first two apperances while he was evil and abusive, and still is, his evil was mostly due to his own warped logic, feeling he could put shock collars on and control people and that Louie lying to him was enough to warrant making him into a pinata. He’s still a bad person mind you: kid or not he ensdlaved his parents, tried to enslave louie and goldie and in general REALLY needs some help empathizing with people. But my point is that before he didn’t come after anyone.. so it’s a nice capper to have his final turn as antaognist be him going after our hero.. and at his most dangerous. Before someone would’ve come for Louie eventually in Doofus’ first apperance and Goldie would’ve found a way out or Scrooge, despite grumbling about it, would’ve helped.. if nothing else than to lord having to save her from a 12 year old over her. Here if he wins the family is out on the street and three of their greatest enemies are now infinitely more well funded. 

So while naturally unnerved by his rival Louie offers to defend Scrooge who denies it despite the fact that Louie is REALLY good with words, and Scrooge, while not bad with them, can’t stop shouting and keeps pissing off the baliff, played by my boy Henry Winkler whose done a lot of voice work and also played Fonzie on Happy Days, is currently on the HBO series barry and in general is just a fucking delight. The irony is also not lost on me that he’s not playing a lawyer here despite being one on arrested development. 

We get our first witness: FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Hell. Yes. It’s nice to see him in his full glory one last time, as I don’t know how much he’ll be in the finale. Scrooge blows of the Duke Baloney thing, which is fair given that while Scrooge screwed up there, Glomgold still stole money from him right after and then spent his whole life trying to one up him. But Glomgold has a different tale in mind as he stole something else from him: the limelight. 

It was 1980-something and Glomgold was a bonified celebrity in Duckberg for his hot dogging, grandstanding and treasure hunting loved by all and took Baba Wawa, a nice mix of Barbra Walters and the parody of her on SNL by the late Gilda Radner, to a shark shaped cave to get the gem of the shark god, a ruby tooth at the end of the cave. Naturally Scrooge popped up and easily made his way through and stole the spotlight. As it turns out he wasn’t always well loved and it makes sense: he dismises Baba asking him about how disliked he is, and dosen’t care and even in the current story, or rather season 1 of it, he dismiseed PR entirely in Jaw$. He was rich enough and enough of a job provider he just didn’t see the need for fame or glory, that just came second so it’s logical no one liked him. Fortunes naturally reverse as you’d expect though: Glomgold dashes forward and ends up putting Baba and her camerabird in danger and being Glomgold he irrationally assumes she’s working for Scrooge and leaves her to die. Scrooge however, after getting the rock, goes out of his way to save her because it’s the right thing to do. He can be selfish at times, and as we’ll see monstrously so, but at his core Scrogoe is a good man who will do right when the chips are down. So this leaves Glomgold trapped and Scrogoe getting his good press instead and realizes he likes the attention. 

As the flashback ends Glomgold fills in the gaps, pointing out he was stuck with the sharks for days, but slowly bonded with them learned from them and they became family, helping him with traps, joining him for thanksgiving and even getting a heart taatoo with a shark on it. Awww. Look I didn’t really need to know where Glomgold’s love of sharks came from, nor that he had some weird tarzan origin story with them.. but my life is 100% better knowing all of this so thank you Frank and Matt. Thank you. I’m also entirely convinced the two have had this whole part of his backstory ready to go for three seasons and were waiting to use it, along with the other two bits we’re about to get to. This episode as you can tell is also a vingette episode, but one where the wraparound is way more improtant than usual.. but it works given the setting and allows the stories to be as long as they actually need to be, and it addds some nice stakes instead of just having Scrooge’s villians gripe about him. 

Scrooge protests and the Bailiff puts a clamp on his beak, so he has no choice in the matter when Louie steps up for the defense. Louie also proves that irresponsible he may be.. he’d be a damn good lawyer, as he easily picks things apart, pointing out Glomgold was ALREADY bad by then, Scrooge had no intent to steal the spotlight and Glomgold is currently planting dynamite under his chair, with predictable and hilarious results. So he gets put on the “good” side of the scale. Next witness.

Next up is Ma, and I was delighted that as I’d hoped and theroized this episode wrapped up one little plot point that while not major, was something I was curious about: Ma’s claims Scrooge stole Duckburg from her family.  This was also likely the backbone of the episode at one point as Frank pitched a beagle trial episode at one time, but Disney nixed it. Likely the magic stuff was added both to justify it better and to distract Disney Channel’s higher ups because they constantly underestimate what a child will like. It was for the best though as the beagles are just a bit weaker here: While Character Actress Margo Martindale is a delight and was specifically cast for the role, overall it just feels like they ran out of ways to make the beagles a big threat and releigated them to muscle when needed, to the point they only appeared in one episode besides this one this season as with FOWL about, they didn’t really need villians of the week and what ones they did use like Glomgold and Mark were far more entertaining villains who needed a coda to their stories.They aren’t bad characters, but in a series where their breaking into the bin or mansion wasn’t a story the crew was interested in they served no real purpose. 

So we finally get answers about the whole Deed thing: It was sometime in Ma’s childhood, good look guessing when, and the Beagles owned Duckburg having clearly overwhelmed Fort Duckburg at some point in history between Clinton’s defense of it and now, with Grandpa “Pa” Beagle finally making an apperance. In the comics he was basically what Ma is to both series: the scheming brains behind the beagles who showed up on occasion and it was a good idea to use him as the past version of her. 

Scrooge naturally comes a calling and unsurprisingly Ma was lying: Scrooge offered to buy the place first from Pa, he refused outright, and then when Scrooge showed off the money he was offering, Pa bet the deed for it in an arm wrestling contest. Not only that but as Scrooge finds out as he almost looses, Pa was cheating having a smaller beagle boy operate pull a lever in a device attached to his arm to give pa extra force. Scroooge simply dropped a few coins to distract the guy and claimed victory and the deed. 

Little Ma is left dejected though and Doofus claims he ruined his life, but Louie steps up, at this poitn Scrooge has learned to reign himself ina nd accepted Louie as his defense without saying anything, a nice subtle bit. He probably realized that while irrepsonsible.. Louie has everything to loose her and no reason to slack off and dosen’t even relaly have to lie for his uncle to get him off: he’s simply using his ablitiy to see all the angles to poke holes in their story. 

Case in point, he orders the “tape” to continue and finds Little Ma berating her dad for his failure and forcefully taking control of the family. LIke Glomgold, Scrooge may of cost her something.. but it was something she and her family hadn’t earned and they were still on a bad road. Scrooge just made it worse. 

But suprisingly, its MAGICA, who we’ve established is an uncaring monster, who has a story Scrooge genuinely feels bad about. Like the rest she was not a good person: Long ago she and her brother Poe were extorting a villiage, and lording over it as gods, changing the population into goats, toads and other things. The only diffrence from what Magica would do to the blot and presumiibly others later, is that Poe reigned in her manical tend ices, trying to get her to think things through. The goat transformation was so they’d have milk and at least get something out of it and as to not waste all their slaves. Poe is voiced by Martin Freeman of The Hobbit and Black Panther fame. Great actor, does amazing work here.  So like the others Scrooge changed things, and fought someone with bad intentions for his own self. He talked Magica into fighting him with both amulets by playing into her ego and Poe trying to talk her down, and easily deflected her bolt with the dime to turn her into a crow with her own spell. So far it’s just like the other tales in a nice mirror.. it’s what comes next that makes Scrooge into a  bad guy too. Not as bad as Magica and Poe.. but sitll not good. Poe dives selflessly in front of the coin.. and shockingly while she cared nothing for Lena.. that wasn’t the case for Poe. Magica is truly devastated, desperatly trying to put the amulet back on and begging scrooge for help while he just ignores her and fills up his sack. And while they both deserved it... Scrooge and Louie both recognize he was wrong as the flashback ends with Poe escaping and Magica sitll haven’t having found him to this day. And props to Catharine Tate here a she takes a normally hammy terrible person who was wholly unsympathetic and manages to make her painfully human.  

What makes the act so terrible is not who it happened to, they both desrved it, but Scrooge’s attitude, utterly callous to magica’s pain with not a drop of sympathy. While she deserved it as did Poe.. he’s not doing this to her as some justice for her crimes, or because she did something horrible to him or any valid reason.. he’s doing it because he’d rather get more of her and poes gold than lift one finger to help someone who had , for all his evil, selflessly sacrificed himself for his sister. For all Poe’s evil and tyranny.. there MIGHT of been a good man in them, in both of them.. and Scrooge could’ve cared less. He shut the door on Magica ever becoming a good person, ever getting her brother back to line his own wallet and to satisfy his own ego. See that’s the true mark of a hero: how they treat others, even the worst of them. And in his lowest moment Scrooge could’ve cared less about anyone but himself. 

Scrooge feels bad and Louie does finally get the responsibility thing and this is where things start to go off the rails: he apologizes to Doofus and admits he dosen’t want an enteral rivalry and h’es sorry for any pain he caused. The off the rails part is because Doofus is genuinely not a good person, ahs done very bad things and is trying to bankrupt Louie for the crime of “taking half your fortune after you used it to torment and enslave your own parents’. It just.. dosen’t play as well as they’d like. That said I DO like both Louie deciding to bury the hatchet instead of just avoiding him and Doofus showing some nobiity in accepting it. Maybe he’ll change. 

He goes off into the night, and Scrooge genuinely apologizes and accepts repsonsiblity... and here’s where the plot finishing going off the rails and into someone’s living room: the bailiff AWARDS THEM SCROOGE’S FORTUNE BECAUSE HE ADMITTED SOME CUPLABLITY AND WAS HUMBLE. 

This just.. it makes no sense, it will never not baffle me and it hurts my brain> Yes he admitted some wrong doing and apologized for it.. but it was also THROUGHLY proven the other two weren’t his fault, and he was simply being a good man which should get him some good. Thankfully the conclusion is a bit better, as Louie points out while they made him, he made you so who made who, who made you... okay i’m getting into the AC/DC of things point is these incidents all shaped Scrooge into a better person.  His mistake with Magica. is clearly learned from. He’s stopping a group of bullies in Ma’s story and saving a life without a second thought in the second. He learned to value others, to value family all because THEY showed him what happens when you don’t. By seeing the worst person he could be.. he became the best. So the trial’s thrown out his assets are returned, and their teleported out before magica can hit them with lighting. Lesson learned.. well kinda Louie tells scrooge to do it because he got the pet. 

Final Thoughts for The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck:

Great title aside.. this one is a mess. It’s not a terrible episode: the flashbacks are genuinely engaging, each one helping flesh out the villians and in Ma’s case pulling one last dangling plot thread. Glomgold’s was just entertaining , clevelry using his 80′s origns for an 80′s style news special and giving us the origin to his love of sharks that we didn’t know we needed., Ma’s tied up a loose plot threat with a fun flashback and Magica’s was genuinely heart wrenching and did the tall task of making us feel for someone that terrible. The wraparound.. was a bit weaker. Doofus was the best part, playing an excellent manipulative bastard lawyer, and being a genuine threat and his walking away peacefully was a nice touch, and Louie having to defend scrooge was great and showed him off better than ever. And Louie did get some moments to shine.. it was just wierldy bookened with him acting terribly AGAIN, in a way he should know better than in an episode where he acts fine for most of it and even then he thinks lying to a judge is a good idea! I know he’s 12 but he’s not this stupid and while as I made very clear i’ve seen this shit before, I haven’t seen it flip flop in the same episode. Louie deserves better than this. 

But it’s also in service to a responsiblility aseop that just.. dosen’t work as presented. Yes you should take responsiblity for your past, yes you should learn from your mistakes and own up to them, I have, and yes it’s all too easy to slide back> That’s all fine.. but him apologizing to Ma, whose family was terorrizing a town, and Glomgold, who he did nothing to, and having Louie apologize to Doofus, who while he tried to exploit him still enslaved his own parents and deserved to loose half his fortune AND loosing half his fortune wasn’t even the main thing Louie wanted to do as his main goal was getting BOYD a loving family.. it’s bullshit. Just pure Grade-A bullshit. Why are you booing them their right. It’s a good idea for a moral but it’s executed so overwhelmingly poorly it bogs down what was otherwise an exceptional episode, into just passable.  It’s just mind numbing and saddening to know the next to last episode wasted so much good ideas on a clumsy moral. Thankfully I have hope the finale will be better, and again at least we got some good out of this one. 

Next Time: Endgame Baby! Clan McDuck and their Amazing Friends Vs F.O.W.L. for the fate of adventure itself! One last ride! I can hardly wait!

This week on the blog: Ducks Ducks and more ducks.. and a top 12 list of my faviorite superheroines later today’s for international women’s day. But after that we have more of the Della arc, the last step in the Lena arc before Shadow War next week, and the 87 ducktales pilot treasure of the golden suns!

If you liked this review, share it around, follow for more, and you can comission your own for 5 dolalrs an issue or episode, or kick in some money on my patroen, link on my blog. Even a dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal is 5 dollars away and if we reach it i’ll review both the super ducktales mini series introducing gizmoduck AND a darkwing duck episode a month. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure. 

[kyogre-blue]

Finished the first GAA game. 

I see now why they bundled together the two games, because they really are meant to be played together. I’m going to give my thoughts here, but I’m very aware that a lot of stuff set up in GAA1 is actually going to be followed up on in 2, so all this may end up looking very different at the end. 

While on that subject, the dangling plot threads are really quite... excessive. The killer of the first case, Kazuma’s mission, Iris’s dad, the Chief Justice seemingly knowing what McGilded was doing, whatever is van Zieks’s deal, that one very unique NPC who rented in the same house as Soseki but vanished after one meaningless scene, the Crystal Tower repeat mentions, the Baskerville story, etc, etc... there is A Lot. 

All of this setup without payoff honestly doesn’t do the game any favors. On top of it having a lot of focus on dragging Ryunosuke into law in the first place (two cases are just setup to explain why he’s involved), the whole thing feels like it’s incomplete or at least disjointed. 

It doesn’t help that the final killer is quite bland, while one case is a straight up accident, and another is just a bunch of unfortunate contrivances, and one more is basically theatrical setup for the last case. Basically nothing topped the first case killer’s breakdown, which is not a great thing. 

On the whole, it’s a perfectly fine game though. I wouldn’t say the writing is flawed as such. I often got quite involved in it and would go for a couple hours just playing through. 

The problem is that is often drops in something that I really didn’t like, breaking the pace. These aren’t interlinked problems, and mostly they’re just personal taste, but there’s a lot of them. 

The most widespread but hardest to define one is the... nationality thing. Putting it in the mildest terms possible. 

Nearly every NPC will consistently refer to Ryunosuke as “Japanese,” “Far Eastern,” “Nipponese,” etc. And this happens pretty much every time they address him. Even people who know him pretty well, like Gregson in the last case, will STILL do this. It really gets annoying because it’s so unnecessary. If the game is trying to say something with this, it definitely did not articulate its point. 

And that’s separate from the quite a high number of characters who are just straight up racist against “Empire of Japan.” On the other hand, they also love mentioning how Britain is the pinnacle of xyz, and Iris has a weird line where she’s like “doing X would not be the British way!” On top of the fanboying about “Sholmes” stories, the whole thing is extremely strange. I really can’t parse what is going on here, but it continually got on my nerves. 

Then, I didn’t like two of the main mechanics. Correcting Sherlock Holmes’s Herlock Sholmes’s great deductions never stopped feeling, well, very cringe. And the jury system is just infuriating. Yes!! I love hearing how stupid the general public is! And having to summation them 2+ times per case because for whatever reason, they refuse to hear out even the first cross examination!! Very fun!!

Given what I heard about the endgame for AA4, this is just puzzling, honestly. 

Third, I didn’t like the moral of the story given in case 5, which ran through cases 3 and 4 as well. And that was that Ryunosuke was somehow in the wrong for representing McGilded because McGilded messed around to get himself acquitted. The circumstances are such that blaming Runo is just nuts, and the whole thing is then framed as a trust issue. Like, the tone is WILD. Obviously, some of the people who need legal defense will be guilty! You can’t know if someone is guilty! That’s why there are investigations and trials! Defense attorneys can’t magically sense guilt! Otherwise, we wouldn’t need trials! 

And then resolving the whole thing via Gina, who is a personal friend is....... 

Anyway, it was not the right venue for this kind of moralizing about trust, imo. 

Last, I didn’t particularly love the characters, but their dynamic did start coming together in the last case, so this one became less an issue. 

[cosplayinamerica]

ARTIST ALLEY: Jamie Kaye

EJEN: Tell us how you got started in artist alley, what was your first one and what was that experience like?

JAMIE: The first con I did artist alley was at a con in The Woodlands, TX in 2008. I was 18 and fresh out of high school. I hadn't a single clue about how any of this stuff worked. My setup was pretty hilarious. On the front of my table I had a hand drawn sign made out of poster board that was like a school project.

My merch was a few low quality home made prints because I had a heck of a time trying to figure out printing formats. One of my prints was a Rayman Raving Rabbid if that tells you anything about the time.

Anime conventions were so different back then and a lot more accessible for amateurs to find their way. The standards and expectations weren’t nearly as high.

EJEN: After that first alley, we were you encouraged or discouraged from doing another? I know sometimes  a bad experience might sour going back and how did you learn to manage your table - experience, YouTube videos, all of the above?

JAMIE: Oh I was in no way discouraged! I had a great time and had low expectations. There were next to zero resources and didn’t have more experienced friends back then so it was so much trial and error in terms of getting stuff printed. I tried to pass on my knowledge as much as I could. Nobody knew how to get stuff made through manufacturers either so there weren’t merch trends like there are now. You just mostly had people selling books and stickers. Maybe keychains. 

EJEN: Was there a point that you went “yeah, this could work” and you made the jump to travelling out of state for artist alley?

JAMIE: Denver Comic Con! It was the first out of state convention I tried since it was still somewhat driveable even though it was still a 15 hour drive. I went a couple years in a row and the attendees were super positive and welcoming. The community was great.

EJEN: Did you share a table? How did you decide on DCC?

JAMIE: I didn’t, actually. My friend lived there for a while and recommended it. I mostly went so I could drive and not have to invest in flying. Wanted to keep costs as low as possible. 

EJEN: After all the time you spent in artist alley, what’s the most important factor that an artist must understand to do decently in sales?

JAMIE: Being patient! It’s not likely profits will happen in your first get go and it will take some time to figure out what works best. Start small and don't heavily invest in merch right away. Feel things out.

Don't be afraid to make merch of niche things you like. It may not make a ton of money but that one thing you sincerely like might more deeply connect with a customer. Those are the folks that’ll remember you and come back!

Along the lines of be patient, don’t sweat it when you have a con with bad sales. It happens for so many reasons. It’s not a good idea to fuss over “a bad table location” or “there weren’t enough attendees.” It’s most likely out of your control and will happen.

EJEN: How do you describe your style and how has it changed if any over the years you’ve done art? What were some of your earlier influences?

JAMIE: My style pulls inspiration from animation, manga, and western comics. Expressing energy, emotions, and passion are insanely important to my art.  My earliest influences were video game art. When I was a kid I would get a hold of any strategy guide I could just so I could see the art. I still have my Final Fantasy 9 strategy guide from when I was a child that’s just about torn to shreds from looking at it so much. I would say the strongest early influence on my art is the Ace Attorney series. 

EJEN:  Were your folks supportive of your endevours or were they more urging you to pick a more stable path?

JAMIE: My family was pretty supportive of doing whatever I wanted. My older brother and sister drew, but I was the only one that pursued it seriously.

EJEN: Describe to me a typical day in the Alley!

JAMIE: A day at a con is a thrilling but exhausting adventure where you get to interact with so many people. It’s always exciting to meet people that share the same interests as you and provide them with art of the thing they love. The community of artists is amazing too and feels like family. You can get so caught up in it all that it’s easy to forget to eat until you’re hangry. Don’t forget to eat!

EJEN: Besides doing the Alley, you are also the concept artist for a third person exploration game called Line. Tell us what does that entail!

JAMIE: LINE is a beautiful indie game made by my pal Dave Gibson, myself, and a super awesome crew of friends. It’s a relaxing exploration game about a little girl and her robot. Doing concept art for a game was always a dream of mine, so seeing my art come to life in 3D is pretty crazy. 

EJEN: And on top of all you do, you are a personal trainer/coach as well! Tell us about it!

JAMIE: Physical wellness and training is always something that was important to me and increasingly became at the center of my life. It goes hand in hand so well in art. Art can be so subjective and wild, but working on your body you see numbers improve. You become stronger, faster, feel better, and nobody can take that away including yourself. I love helping people feel that experience and thrill. It’s also insanely important for your mental and physical well being! Soon I will be starting virtual workout courses for artists! I’m super stoked for it.

EJEN: Oh, that’s a great idea! Workout for artists, inspiration for the creative and physical! Can you tell us more?

JAMIE: As an artist, maintaining physical health is as important as ever. These workouts include stretches, cardio, and strength activities targeting artists’ needs. I want to make them fun to do, while targeting specific areas that will help artists. For example, doing a yoga sequence of updog and child pose can do wonders for your back.

EJEN: Thank you for taking time to jot down your thoughts!

https://missjamiekaye.com/

[gold-pavilion]

Red’s Complete Guide to the SDR2 Stage Play

The following is a sort of walkthrough/summary of the SDR2 stage play, mostly focusing on what’s different in this shorter but also highly expressive version of the story than the game, and what extra content is in it. 

It’s mostly aimed to help non japanese speaker friends (or not fully fluent ones) enjoy this amazing play even without english subtitles available; in general terms, just having good memory of the game’s events will allow you to watch and follow it just fine, but anything else you could be missing, this guide will point out for ya! That being said, you can either read this all on its own, or keep at hand to check as you watch. I’m dividing it in parts according to what would be the game’s chapters, so you can easily find your place. Hope it’s useful!!

PROLOGUE / INTRODUCTION

The beginning is quite the same as the game: Nagito waking Hajime up on the beach, memory gaps, no one knows why they’re there when they should’ve just been at their entrance ceremony, etc. The minor differences would be that they’ve already separated and had a look around, thus cutting out the island exploration from the main POV. They’ve all warmed up pretty fast to the place too. The setting of it being a fun class trip is established and everyone’s excited to go to the beach, minus Hajime of course. 

More small changes: as you’ll notice, Hiyoko being unable to tie her own kimono sash, getting help offered by Mahiru and getting attached to her happens at this point (‘cause of the swimsuits they want to put on) instead of in chapter 2, so their relationship gets established this early. Also, Teruteru and Kazuichi are caught trying to sneak in to where the girls are changing, ahem.

As in the game, Hajime’s hesitating a lot about just relaxing like that. We get a cute little new moment where he sees that even “Byakuya”, though claiming it’s to “research the way to leave this island” is prepared to go play at the sea, and with some prodding from the boys overall, he gets convinced to join in and have fun too. All super sweet, before Monokuma hijacks the scene. The killing school trip begins!

The opening and character introduction sequence is absolutely amazing and stunning, but since the intros and the comments Hajime and Nagito exchange as they go from character to character together are pretty much the same as in the game, there’s nothing to note from me. Just how amazingly it was put together! 

After that, along with the basic intro to the killing game, there is an added rule for the students to see: the one/s who earn/s the right to leave the island will be given back the stolen memories of the last 2 school years. So, the amnesia period is immediately established, and Hinata’s own amnesia about his talent is taken as proof that it could be true. Teruteru is openly agitated about the possibility of having that two-year blank, more than anyone else, and while revealing there’s a restaurant waiting for him on land he tries to get reassurance from the others. He’s much more transparent here.

Monokuma gets the group under control with a different method than his monobeasts: he makes lightning shoot at them. Real lightning, no tricks, as Byakuya says. Here, he reveals he can control the weather so that’s what he uses to keep the students intimidated. Different, but easier for stage representation than robots and achieving the same purpose. After all is done and Byakuya has sent everyone to rest for the night, there’s a small added scene of Hajime and Nagito staying behind, and having the following exchange that I thought best to translate directly:

Nagito: “So it turned into this kind of despairing situation…”

Hajime: “Why would that Monokuma guy do something like this?!”

Nagito: “It’s unforgivable, right?! That killing game…! It’s absolutely...!

That’s it… we… we have to join our forces and stand against this despair!”

Hajime: “I’m glad that the first one to call out to me here was you, Komaeda.”

Nagito: “Yeah... me too, I’m glad to have [met] you, Hinata-kun.”

CHAPTER 1

The next day, Byakuya announces the party and the group accepts his proposal without suspicion. The old building is suggested as the place, cleaning duty is required, the straw game comes out and Nagito ends up chosen to do it. So far, no news. But on the party scene, we do have several differences:

From how they explain it, the old building consists of just the dining hall and the great kitchen. With this simplified setup, everyone is closer together, so there’s no messy deposit room, no office to guard, no fire door to take into account and Byakuya isn’t checking anyone for dangerous objects. Also, no guard outside and no Monomi, since she’s been locked up by Monokuma. The scene with Hajime speaking to Byakuya privately is preserved (though it doesn’t take place in the kitchen and he wasn’t dragged off to it, but rather, approached Byakuya himself to raise his suspicion that the party was planned for everyone’s wellbeing) and his mysterious dialogues are the same.

When the blackout occurs, they’re able to find the breaker and turn electricity back on their own. Only when the body is discovered do they get told there’ll be a trial, and how it will work. Investigation time!

When everyone scatters, they’re mostly talking about having things they want to check out or thought were weird, with a very active attitude about it. The times when the sound effect rings and the spotlight is focused on Hajime, is when he’s established a key clue, a class trial bullet, so he’s naming/explaining them out loud. Not much else to note, but isn’t the whole investigation scene SO dynamic and enjoyable? Such brilliant staging!! For the trial too!!

Not much is different in the trial until its very end, in fact it goes faster than in the game with all the complication factors that were skipped, so it reaches Nagito’s breakdown quickly. As I’m sure many people will want to know what the dialogue is in the famous getting-touchy-touchy-on-Hajime scene, I’ll note that it’s Hajime saying “is that your true nature?! Have you been deceiving us all this time?!” to which Nagito replies “that’s… wrong.” Quite sure the writing is the same as in the game, it’s just the acting that carries it differently.

After that, in the end, the way they figure out the culprit is from the existence of a passage to get under the floor that they’ve concluded the killer used: since it’s clearly not in the dining hall, it must exist in the only other room of the building, which is the kitchen, where only Teruteru was. Case closed in a much more brief, yet complete manner.

During the reconstruction of how it happened, the conversation Nagito and Teruteru had in the dining hall is very different from the game. Instead of the monologue focusing on his love for the ultimates and how he wanted to see them display a bigger hope, his words are much more manipulative. He asks Teruteru: “hey, Hanamura-kun… could it be true... we’re missing 2 years worth of memories? 2 years is a long time… if it were true… what then?” and insistently “Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to go back home?”, playing from the worries he was displaying earlier. He is also more straightforward in remarking that Teruteru wasn’t his victim nor acting in everyone’s defense, that he could’ve said something when he realized he had killed Byakuya instead of him, but kept quiet to save himself (a dialogue that, in the game, is said by Monokuma instead). He also claims to love that hope Teruteru had of going home, a hope so strong that Byakuya and everyone else could’ve died for it.

You’ll see that the execution is also very different, as almost all of them will be (personally, I love them even better than in the game). As Teruteru dies, his last words are: “momma… I’m sorry”.

Post trials comes another surprise: the group gets a freebie for their effort, which is a new piece of info. They’re told there is a traitor among them. Of course they suspect Nagito, but then, as they’re confronting him, we get this:

Hajime: It’s your fault! That Hanamura… and Togami...

Nagito: Ah, right, about that… that wasn’t Togami-kun.

Gundham: What are you saying?

Nagito: During the investigation, I found this.

Hajime: Togami’s e-handbook?

The name’s… different.

Ultimate… imposter.

Ibuki: Daaaaang! That Byakuya-chan wasn’t Byakuya-chan, then?!

Nagito: But what an amazing talent! Because, out of all of us, no one even thought it wasn’t Togami-kun! He sure got us! 

But… since he’s dead now, it’s not worth caring about, is it…

Akane: I’ll beat ya up, you bastard!

Hajime: Not worth caring about? 

The fact that he was a wonderful leader, who protected us with all he had, didn’t change.

That he’d tried to protect us till the very end… and not allow the killing game to happen… he was a proud, worthy leader.

Chiaki: Yes… that’s true.

With that very early revelation, the chapter closes.

CHAPTER 2

Shortening matters, through the night Monokuma already gave to everyone a piece of their past: the envelope containing the pictures of the girls in their Hope’s Peak uniforms and of Fuyuhiko’s sister’s body. They all have seen it by morning, but naturally don’t know what it could all be and don’t discuss it. As in the game, Nagito is being kept away, tied up, though here Akane helped as well; she intended to beat him up while she was at it, but Nekomaru stopped her claiming the strength of her muscles wasn’t meant for stuff like that.

It seems Peko is getting a few more added interactions with Fuyuhiko as well, mostly since she can be closer and take more physical actions in this medium. As she tries to stop him from breaking away from the group, she tells him “if we’re together, it’s certain you’ll be safer”, with this same nuance in English where she could mean together with the group, or together with her. Neat stuff.

Moving on: everyone knows Nagito’s situation. Mahiru suggests taking breakfast to him in front of everyone in this version instead of privately to Hinata, to which everyone reacts complimenting her kindness. No one actually goes to give Nagito food tho (ouch), since everyone starts taking off to the beach and to mess around, doing their own things. Also, Sonia’s interest in Gundham is already made noticeable. A fun little addition:

Hajime (to Gundham): Sonia wants to invite you though, so… will you come to the beach too?

Kazuichi: Hinata…

Hajime: What do you say, Tanaka?

Kazuichi: HEY…

Of course, everyone agrees and will be meeting at the beach house in 1 hour. So it’s not a girls-only meeting in this version, but for everyone who didn’t have other plans. Under Hajime’s advice they’ll try to stay together as much as possible to be safer.

The stage skips to what’s happening at the beach house not long after. We proceed to the murder, conveniently obscured, and body discovery.

As for differences in how the case unfolds, during the investigation, it’s Gundham and Sonia who notice the beach house has another exit: the small window set pretty high up. Then, as Komaeda joins in, he takes special interest in checking whether Hajime’s remembered his talent yet or not. He finds it pretty amazing that even without that, he’s out there solving cases, and expresses looking forward to Hajime remembering. He remarks that he’ll always be on the side of hope to clarify his position.

This class trial is also cleanly shortened without sacrificing anything important. As you’ll notice from the proof collected, the whole thing with the fake Sparkling Justice doesn’t happen. After concluding it couldn’t have been Hiyoko and the killer set her up, the point is made that the killer actually used the window to leave, which only one person could’ve possibly done: Peko. So that’s that.

Once again, it’s rather the reconstruction of the incident that changes. Hiyoko and Mahiru are talking about their friendship, how they’ll continue to be friends even after regaining their old memories, or might’ve even been friends before, when Peko knocks Hiyoko unconscious. The discussion continues. 

On the 2nd part of the case reconstruction, Fuyuhiko openly threatens to kill Hiyoko right there to get Mahiru to talk about the pictures and his sister’s death. You’ll notice the image on the screen is the other one, of Sato’s body, but since it was the only picture of a live actor, they used that one as though it were the sister (please be understanding)! Plus, the story about bullying and how they were both killed doesn’t come up, so there’s nothing to be confused over in this version. All we know on the play is that Mahiru took the picture, because Monokuma said so, so Fuyuhiko believes she did the killing too. Mahiru argues that she must’ve taken it as proof. “Us photographers… can tell the meaning of a picture we took ourselves”, she says, but it’s too late.

The debacle of whether Peko is the killer or Fuyuhiko counts as it for using her as tool is, of course, maintained. Enjoy the actors’ amazing representation and another great execution scene!

The rewards for winning the trial this time: 1. The info that the traitor definitely came to the island with them. 2 The traitor belongs to a world-destroying organization called Future Foundation. (Which, in a fun dialogue I believe is new, Nagito calls a pretty hopeful name for something like that.) 3. Those who have talents will be given a present related to their talent. Nagito leaves to check that out, and with Hajime musing “will I be able to… remember my talent?”, the chapter closes.

CHAPTER 3

From here on, the stage play’s scripts starts to differ from the game more and more.

The gift Nagito received for his talent was the gun. Upon finding that it’s loaded with only one bullet, he understands it’s for playing russian roulette, a test for his luck aside from a present. I have to say, I find it insanely cool that he goes for 5 out of 6 shots instead of the 1 shot he did in the game, like holy shit??? But anyway, his reward for the game is the binder with the info on Hope’s Peak and the students.

As for the others, the gift Ibuki got is an electric guitar, Chiaki got a game system, Kazuichi got the communication/camera set that he would make at this point in the game, the one that plays an important role in the 3rd case, and so on; everyone got something related to their talent, except for Hajime. He already suspects it might be that he has no talent, after all, but the others comfort him, doubting that’s the reason.

Enter the despair disease. In this version, Nagito doesn’t get the disease; only Akane and Ibuki do, plus Mikan, who catches it from the start as well unbeknownst to the rest. The set up is like this: Mikan will be caring for the sick at the island’s hospital facility, Hajime volunteers to be there with her, and Kazuichi provides his comm set to link the hospital with the hotel lobby to stay in touch without spreading the illness. 

From his position at the hospital, Hajime sees the transmission which he supposes is taking place at the hotel, so he runs over there. But from the hotel, when checking the comm system, the transmission comes on again so everyone thinks it has to be taking place at the hospital now. On the road from hotel to hospital is where they run into Mikan and Akane. Once at the hospital, the bodies of Ibuki and Hiyoko are there.

This investigation process differs A LOT from the game’s. For starters, everyone is far too discouraged by now from so many of their friends being gone and Kazuichi doesn’t even want to investigate anymore. To top things off, when Nagito arrives...

Hajime: Komaeda… where have you been?!

Kazuichi: Mioda and Saionji died! Do you get it?! Both of them at once!

Nagito: Who kills, who gets killed… I don’t care about that anymore.

Hajime: What did you say?

Akane: You asshole… if you say that, I’ll kill ya!

Sonia: Owari-san!

Nagito: Hey, Hinata-kun… did you remember your talent? Did you get any present from Monokuma?

Hajime: … no…

Nagito: Then, this is true…

Hajime: What does that mean?

Nagito: Hush! A reserve course level guy like you… could you not talk to me like we’re equals?!

Hajime: Reserve course?

Nagito: I got this from Monokuma… documents from within Hope’s Peak. You… have no talent, you were a reserve course student!

After explaining what the reserve course is, leaving Hajime destroyed, Nagito steps away to do his own thing.

With Hajime totally out of commission from shock, it’s the other characters who do the investigating on their own this time, without the protagonist’s lead we’re used to. Pretty painful to witness, honestly, but a very clever, impacting and well-handled modification. Everyone lets him have his time. In fact, when Fuyuhiko asks what’s wrong with Hajime, Gundham replies “Do not ask… it is a trivial matter.” for him, and when Chiaki talks to him, it’s only to ask case-related questions, no personal prodding. They only get to go over the causes of death, how the monitors worked (the hotel one showing a feed of the hospital, the hospital one showing a feed of the hotel) and as soon as Fuyuhiko finds a bit of the pillar-wallpaper-thing, investigation time’s over with no more evidence pieces than that. On to the trial.

Like it would happen in chapter 4 in the game, Nagito’s undermining Hajime in the trial, but no one else minds that he’s from the reserve course. Hence the physical attitude you’ll see him taking throughout. Understandably, though, from how the set up was, Hajime looks very suspicious, so the first part of the trial is on the possibility of him having committed the crime. Once that’s cleared and they’ve got it down that Hiyoko’s body was already there when he woke up, hidden under wallpaper, it’s concluded that the transmission was a trick from the killer, who had to be female and at the hospital at the time: Mikan.

Her breakdown follows pretty much the same script as in the game, as well as how she finally gives herself away by mentioning specifically the camera angle. As for the reconstruction of the case, it shows that Ibuki was already healed at the time, that Mikan used some sort of injection to kill her. As for Hiyoko, all the same, except… well, you’ll see. “I’m sorry for being a disgusting, pervert woman…” is what she says, which kinda... adds a layer of to consider in their behavior to each other.

Just as in the game, Mikan reveals what the despair disease did to her, talks about her past and her old lover before she’s executed. No additions or changes on any of that.

CHAPTER 4

… well, kinda. Chapter 4 of the game pretty much doesn’t happen in the stage play. Instead, we get the scene we can see immediately after the execution:

Angry and at her limit from everything that’s happened, Akane challenges Monokuma, like she would go off on her own to do in the game. With everyone being right there in this version, Nekomaru, Fuyuhiko and Gundham are quick to back her up, while Hajime and Kazuichi keep the more physically frail members of the group safe, and Nagito simply stands aside from everything, commenting how awesome everyone is. Do note that he takes a spear from the Monokuma army for his own purposes.

While the whole Funhouse ordeal doesn’t happen, the main points and the weight of the game’s chapter 4 are preserved, with the self-sacrificing role Nekomaru and Gundham take during the fight. All the information we get from the game chapter has already been given in the previous parts of the play, the tensions and relationships between characters were also already set up, and the victim and culprit roles kept a last-effort, self-sacrifice spirit; it’s true that it’s less morally complex and takes exposition away from Gundham, but everything is still basically covered. Even the message to “not give up on life”. So, with their noble deaths, this chapter closes.

CHAPTER 5

Here the play realigns more faithfully to the game’s order of events.

Now knowing they’re Ultimate Despair, Nagito no longer has sympathy for the group or their dead friends. Since the binder he got has info about everything except the traitor, his aim is to uncover them through his bomb threat now. Here he’s immediately revealing his aspiration to wipe out despair from the island and become the Ultimate Hope, and as Hinata asks him to stop before he kills someone, Nagito tells him: “Hey, Hinata-kun… I believe… in my Ultimate Luck!” Words that will be very important.

Here, Fuyuhiko steps up to establish what to do with the situation: Hajime and Chiaki will be staying behind to go through the documents Nagito gave, while he and everyone else will go search for the bombs. “It’s got nothing to do with talent. I’m doing it because I trust in you… so leave that up to me,” is more or less what he says, like the cool heckin bro he is. Very neat modifications. What Hajime and Chiaki have on their hands, then, is the info about the deaths of the student council, Kamukura Izuru, the most despair-inducing incident in the history of mankind, Junko, the group that constitutes Ultimate Despair… pretty much what we’d be getting during the chapter 6 exploration of virtual Hope’s Peak.

Continuing, Nagito has been spotted going into a building, which would be the factory warehouse, so the group get all back together and chases after. The discovery of his body plays out just as in the game, the case itself has the same elements too, from the stuck door to the fire to the bottles. Enjoy the amazing and chilling staging!

In regards to the investigation, even the group recognizes it was too short this time around and that they have no leads. Chiaki already recognizes that “this might not be a trial to find the culprit”.   

Once again, the trial is more agile and short. Given that everyone was together most of the time and no one went in or out of the warehouse after Nagito, Hajime proposes it was suicide very quickly. A trick pulled to throw them off… and get them all executed? Although most of the others are ready to accept that as the conclusion, Hajime himself is quick to pause things and question it. Because Nagito said that he would expose the traitor, not kill everyone, so that shouldn’t be what he’d try to do. The trial goes on.

Hajime’s effort to understand the reasons behind Nagito’s actions is comes in the form of a truly fantastic change here, a new scene annexed to the case reconstruction. I’ll translate that conversation between the deceased Nagito and him:

Nagito: Hi there, Hinata-kun.

I really didn’t think you from the reserve course, of all people, would be the one to finally reach the truth.

Hajime: It wasn’t just me… it’s because everyone worked together!

Nagito: Hey, did you find the traitor?

Hajime: ...

Nagito: You haven’t found them, then. I’m glad.

Hajime: You, who obsessed over hope... 

Why would you go this far to get us killed?

Nagito: To make despair into a stepping stone for hope. That’s all it is.

If I were able to overcome this despair, then I’d surely become the true hope. The Ultimate Hope!

Hajime: So what… if you die it’s meaningless, isn’t it?

Nagito: Oh, no. [The next line, I’m unable to translate at my level, due to how fast the actor is speaking I can’t make it out properly. There is an “isn’t it natural” there, but that’s all I can catch. Apologies.]

Hajime: I… 

I was happy you’d called out to me at the start… when you were telling me I’d remember my talent someday… I was happy... 

I… with you…!

Nagito: That’s… that’s wrong, Hinata-kun.

You the reserve course student, and me with the Ultimate Hope…! You, as someone without talent, have no reason to be talking with me, do you?

Hajime: Komaeda!!

Nagito: I’m hope… I oppose despair! And hope… moves forward. 

Through this scene, Hajime has realized Nagito’s intention to save the traitor and kill the rest.

Now, quite similarly to how it goes in the game, Chiaki confesses and the nature of Future Foundation as the good guys is revealed through her. Plus, Monokuma delivers the reason Nagito wanted to save someone from that organization, the revelation that everyone else is Ultimate Despair. Why they were taken on the island is established. 

It is with all that already on their plate that Chiaki asks them to execute her. Trusting both Nagito’s talent and Chiaki’s bravery, Hajime makes the call to vote for her as blackened.

Chiaki’s goodbyes are the same as in the game, but damn, does it deliver differently on stage… 

CHAPTER 6

As soon as the execution is over, the graduation for the remaining students begins. It’s very confusing for me to pick apart the fine detail of what’s just like the game and what’s different, since it’s all small things all over the place, so I’ll just be thorough in summing up this whole part.

The survivors are immediately presented with the first choice, which is what appears on their e-handbooks and the stage screen: graduate and leave the game world, or don’t and stay in it. This is the first time anything about the island being a simulation comes up, so the explanations for that are due. Junko’s presence is revealed.

She explains that the group wouldn’t be allowed to graduate until a point where the Future Foundation member was dead. Now, they can. And if they graduate and wake up, their friends who died through the killing game will also go back to life (except Chiaki, of course). Hajime is unsure, so to convince everyone, Junko brings the simulation of the others back, who also pressure Hajime to choose to graduate. But he denies it, because that’s clearly not their friends. How does he know? Because Nagito just said to graduate too, and he’d never share that opinion, he wouldn’t agree in any way with the designs of Junko, who is despair. Therefore, it’s all an illusion!

The truth of that choice is explained: they WOULD all come back to life, but all of them would have Junko’s mind. So uh, yeah, that’s why they act and pose as you’ll see, and MAAAAN how I dig those once again incredible performances!! 

When Monomi appears, it is to reveal the other option: the emergency shutdown command, which will take the survivors out of the program without Junko (and of course without the others). No, Naegi, Kirigiri and Togami do not appear in this version, so she is giving that information on her own and without the 11307 code. But, the Junkofied classmates explain that would also cancel everyone’s progress in the program and return them to how they were before entering it, as Ultimate Despairs.

The two options are summed up: the “hope” option that Nagito is signaling is the emergency shutdown that sacrifices the survivors back to despair but doesn’t let Junko out into the world, and the “despair” option that Imposter is signaling would be the graduation that allows the survivors to wake up with their memories from the program, but also lets Junko out occupying the mind of each of their dead friends. 

On top of that, as everyone is physically restrained to pressure them into the final choice, when Hajime’s trying to talk back to Junko, she reveals he’s the one who brought her to the program to begin with. Since he has no memory of it, she goes ahead and tells him that he’s the legendary Ultimate Hope, Kamukura Izuru. “You are Kamukura Izuru,” she makes everyone chant repeatedly, to get it through his head. So, the shutdown option that reverts everyone to their despaired state, would also make Hajime return to being Izuru. And his current self? The chant is then “disappear”, which gives him the answer to that.

Just as in the game, Hajime is paralyzed. Retreating within his mind, he monologues about how he can no longer choose between hope and despair, themselves or the world, just can’t choose a future. And in much the same conversation, Chiaki hears him out and reminds him that he is himself, that he’s acted undeniably as himself within the simulation and, most importantly, that life isn’t like a game where the 2 options given are all there is; that he can create any other options he wants, create his own path. “You’re not doing it for anyone, but for yourself,” she says, before giving him a hope fragment.

It’s with that mentality, that decision to create his own future, that Hinata returns and convinces the others to do the emergency shutdown. Trusting each other and what should be a new beginning instead of their end, they press both buttons together which begins the process.

The final scene is a perfect replica of the game’s, as far as I can tell. With the digital world falling apart around them, everyone prepares for what may come after, hoping they won’t forget each other and what they went through, a bit scared, but happy to be together and determined to carve out their future. 

With that, the stage play ends. Enjoy the outro!

I hope you’re able to have as much of a great time as I did watching the play. The actors truly awed me with how much life they breathed into their characters, and I strongly recommend watching the play more than once through, ‘cause you can always notice new details, other characters doing their own things in the background when the main spotlight wasn’t on them, characters slipping into poses that are so much like the game sprites, etc. The modifications were also brilliantly done to make things shorter without messing anything up, keeping the plot perfectly together; something admirable and, in my opinion, the work of a very skilled writer. The stage work was just unbelievably amazing to me too. Wanting to show all this, so that other people could appreciate how well done it was, is a large part of why I made this long-ass thing.

Have a cool time reliving the fantastic story that SDR2 was!

[technonish]

High EPC's and Conversions During Testing With a Cold Segment and Limited Organic Traffic

Kboovo's Hybrid Marketing Engine

📷

Not just for beginners, Kboovo powers affiliates of ALL levels with powerful, reliable marketing software, innovative automation & convenient management tools that help to start, build & grow an online income...Even With ZERO Experience!

These sales are 99% from our own efforts testing to a small cold segment and some organic traffic that trickles in. We have yet to push this hard. These sales represent Trial, Monthly and Yearly options.  Three of the refunds repurchased at the yearly option.

The Only TOTAL SOLUTION is Kboovo

📷

First, Kboovo is an extremely affordable all-in-one affiliate solution providing every single software tool, automated infrastructure and ongoing training.  Even experienced affiliates will appreciate one click access to all these powerful tools.

This isn't just a bunch of marketing tools bundled together...

Everything in Kboovo is intelligently interwoven saving important details for use in later steps, it remembers what you do as it intuitively knows your next step making the entire affiliate marketing process easier, faster and as close to fail proof as you can get.

KBOOVO REVIEW WHAT IS IT

Kboovo powers affiliates of ALL levels with powerful, reliable marketing software, innovative automation & convenient management tools that help you to start, build & grow your online income…Even if you have ZERO Experience.

Today, more than 80% of all online businesses and 92 % of all online websites incorporate affiliate marketing. Nearly 20% (2 out of 10) of all purchases made online globally comes from affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing will become  a $10 billion industry by the end of 2021 and has grown 52% annually for the past 5 years. Google searches for the term “Affiliate Marketing” is at an all time record high.

The Problem for Beginners: Finding up to date legit training thats goes beyond just basics, Having to buy multiple costly tools to implement the training, Even with todays tech, beginners still face Infrastructure barriers. NONE of those above provide anything close to a total solution and mostly just leave beginners feeling jaded: Affiliate website builders don’t offer a total solution, Affiliate training courses don’t provide it either, Affiliate courses that have some basic tools are far from complete, Affiliate training forums and membership sites definitely don’t  cut it. Many of these lesser options are outdated, not supported and not a product that the creator ever intended on building upon, supporting or growing. With two out of every ten purchases being made through websites monetized with affiliate links now is the most opportune time ever for you to get involved with affiliate marketing. Not only because of those statistics, but because you’ve also found Kboovo.

You can use Kboovo to effortlessly….

Research & find more potentially profitable keywords to tackle

Find and Instantly add more related top selling products

Add more monetization methods like Google AdSense

Monitor social media signals to maximize traffic and exposure

Create other related websites/domains to help boost the project

Create more landing pages and lead funnels

You can see at a glance how your affiliate sites are performing and do all or any of the above from one single place, without opening multiple tabs or tools and without having to toggle back & forth. You can’t get this kind of efficiency with any other affiliate marketing platform.  Kboovo can take a days worth of your efforts and whittle it down to just a couple hours or less. When you’re this efficient, you don’t have to settle with the income from just one website. Get practically everything you do with affiliate marketing done faster, easier and more conveniently without boundaries. You can now manage all your affiliate projects more efficiently than ever before all from one dashboard. Not only will your productivity increase but your earnings will soar, or you can trade all the time you save for a nice relaxing break. Get more done in way less time with innovative automation that will accelerate your business growth and your income. Get It Now.

KBOOVO REVIEW FEATURES

📷

Beginner to Advanced Perpetual Affiliate Marketing Training

Get the Essential Software Thats a MUST for ALL Affiliate Marketers

SEVEN Different Ways to Easily Monetize Your Affiliate Websites

SEO Training From One of Todays Top Search Engine Specialists

Includes the Ranking POWER of SEnuke COMING SOON!

Discover Funnel Marketing with Included Point & Click Funnel Builder

Affiliate Management Features that Help Your Grow Your Business

Free WordPress Hosting for Your Affiliate Website

All Technical Barriers Eliminated Through Marketing Automation

You Get Full Access Nothing Else to Buy or Upgrade to Make it Work

Nothing for You to Download, Install or Update…Ever!

WHAT KBOOVO REVIEW CAN DO FOR YOU

📷

Affiliate & Digital Marketing Training: First ever software assisted training to take you from beginner to advanced along with SEO training from an industry expert. With Kboovo’s Perpetual Training you will always have the latest strategies and methods.  Your training  will never end for as long as your are a member.

Keyword Research Suite Powered by SEMrush: It gives you an entire suite of powerful keyword & niche research tools built right in. You’re no longer stuck having to buy separate outdated sub par research tools, SEMrush provides you with the most reliable search data available  that is both recent and accurate.

Complete Domain & SiteSetup Automation: No more technical barriers to hold you back. With Kboovo’s innovative marketing automation complicated things like domain registration, DNS setup, installing WordPress are done for you in just a few clicks!

Easily Monetize Any WordPress or WooCommerce Theme in Minutes: Kboovo includes SEVEN methods of monetization with more being added all the time..  Easily monetize WordPress or WooCommerce themes with top selling products from: some of the biggest online retailers and affiliate networks.

Create Your Own Funnels with the Point & Click Funnel Builder: Discover how to create profitable marketing funnels with this easy to use point & click funnel builder. Loaded with a variety of customizable templates.  Integrated with all of the most popular payment options.

KBOOVO REVIEW FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

📷

Is Kboovo a Site Builder? Heck No! Automated site builders don’t work, they all know that. Yes, you can get a cookie cutter site in 60 seconds loaded with duplicate content just like everyone else who owns the same product with probably the EXACT same site you got from pushing a button. This isn’t affiliate marketing. Think about it, if any of those were actually effective (and there’s lots of them). It probably would take the net by storm and everyone would be wealthy…sorry, there are no shortcuts. You can streamline and automate the affiliate process to make it as easy and fast as possible, just like they have done with Kboovo, but it can never be fully automated AND still remain effective. Kboovo is an affiliate & digital marketing platform that does everything marketing BUT that. It doesn’t create websites, but it will automatically setup your website infrastructure, things like your domain, cPanel installation or complete WordPress install, including all plugins. In other words, it sets up your website, but it will still need your personal touch to customize logo, colors etc. The new WordPress editor makes basic customizations pretty simple to do and they provide some basic instruction, so they know that you got this. But If you give it an honest try and still can’t really get it, open a helpdesk ticket and they will see if they can help with any basic customizing issues.

Do I Pay Monthly for Kboovo Membership? Yes, It is a paid monthly membership. You get full access to all the tools, training and resources that it provides for one low monthly cost. They get to keep the software running smoothly for you as well as adding more marketing features, ongoing training and just some really cool exclusive stuff. If you were to individually purchase all the training, software, plugins and management tools that Kboovo offers, you would be looking at an upfront cost of more than $794 and a monthly cost of $400. That upfront cost alone would be more than three years of a Kboovo membership. (yearly plan)

Am I Guaranteed to Make Money with Kboovo? No one can guarantee that and If you see a claim like that, leave the page instantly as you are guarantee to LOSE money. Your success will depend on factors that are beyond their control such as time, how much effort you put in, following the instruction exactly as intended, your niche selection etc. lots of things. You must walk before you can run, so don’t expect to see results overnight, that only happens with paid ads and even then, you need to walk first. Your training is provided by a 20 year Super Affiliate & SEO industry expert, you will be learning the same strategies he uses daily.  Although they don’t guarantee anything, there is no reason why you shouldn’t see some type of results.

If you have followed the training as intended and you are still not seeing ANY results. They will look at what you got going on to see if they can help. They may even tell you to scrap the project and start over, it happens, even with them. But if you are really trying and putting in effort, they will do their best to help you out.

Do I need to Buy My Own Hosting? No not right yet. It provides you with top tier WordPress hosting on LiquidWeb lightning-fast servers.  They have been with LiquidWeb for more than two decades…if they weren’t THAT good, they wouldn’t still be with them. It will host your first affiliate website at no cost, on their servers.  Why only one website you ask?  It’s all ANY aspiring affiliate marketer needs to find out if affiliate marketing is right for them or if have only limited resources till they begin to see results. On the other hand, if you have the resources and you are committed to your goal of becoming a successful affiliate marketer then having your own server from the start is a smart business move.  After all, it will be the backbone of your online business now and into the future…well, besides Kboovo.

📷

Do I Have to Host My Sites with Kboovo? No, it makes self-hosting easy. You can add your own server in just a few clicks to host your affiliate websites on and still have complete Kboovo functionality!

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 27 of 26

Title: How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? (2018)

Author: N. K. Jemisin

Genre/Tags: Short Story Collection, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Dystopia, Magical Realism, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Post-Apocalyptic, Female Protagonist(s), LGBT Protagonist(s).

Rating: 8/10 (Note: This is an average of all the stories -- see below the cut for individual story blurbs/ratings).

Date Began: 9/27/2020

Date Finished: 10/4/2020

I really liked this collection! Jemisin wrote my favorite fanstasy/scifi series ever with The Broken Earth trilogy, and I really enjoyed her recent novel The City We Became. I was in the mindset for shorter fiction so decided to read this collection of short stories. Of these 22 stories, my absolute favorites (9/10 or higher) were:

The City Born Great - 10/10

The Effluent Engine - 9/10

Cloud Dragon Skies - 9/10

The Trojan Girl -10/10

Valedictorian - 9/10

The Evaluators - 10/10

Stone Hunger - 9/10

The Narcomancer - 9/10

Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows - 9/10

Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters - 9/10

A more detailed summary/reaction to each story under the cut. WARNING: IT’S LONG.

1. Those Who Stay and Fight - 8/10  

Describes a utopia called Um-Helat that exists solely because no one is seen as superior or inferior to anyone else. Over time we learn it's a future, or potential future, of America. But America today is pure anathema to it due to rampant structural inequality. In order to achieve its utopian ideal, Um-Helatians have to root out and destroy people corrupted by the past.

This story was apparently written as a tribute/response to the Ursula K. Le Guin story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. I first read this without context, then went and read the Le Guin story. I definitely see the parallels. Both feature a narrator describing a wonderful utopia in the midst of festival, trying to convince the reader of the place's existence, before introducing something dark that is the price of the utopia. In the Le Guin story, the utopia exists at the price of the horrible misery and suffering of one child, and everyone is aware of it. Most live with it, but a few leave for the unknown rather than continue to live there (hence the title). In Jemisin's story, the price is instead the annihilation of those tainted by exposure to the evils of the past. The choice, instead of leaving, is for those tainted yet capable to become protectors of the new world, or die.

The thesis is pretty clear: that only by abandoning horrible ideologies and refusing to give them any ground or quarter can a utopian society truly exist. I will say that rings clear, especially when one considers Naziism and fascism. Not all ideologies deserve the light of day or debate, and even entertaining them as valid allows it to take hold. I liked this story, though it comes off as a social justice essay more than a story in and of itself.

2. The City Born Great - 10/10

This one is told from the perspective of a homeless young black man who feels a strange resonance with New York City. He meets a mysterious figure named Paulo, who tells him the city is about to be born as a full-fledged entity, and the man has been chosen to assist with its birth. However, there’s an eldritch force known simply as The Enemy that seeks to prevent this from happening.

I've read this one before since it's the prologue to The City We Became. And honestly it was one of my favorite parts of that book. New York City is a phenomenal character. I love that the proto-avatar of NYC is a young homeless black man, one of the most denigrated groups out there. Cops being the harbingers of eldritch destruction is... yeah. It was fun to reread this. The ending is a little different, because in the novel, something goes terribly wrong that doesn't happen in this short story. There is also a flash forward where he is, apparently, about to awaken the avatar of Los Angeles. Makes me wonder if that is ultimately the endgame of the series. But otherwise it's the same thing with absolutely phenomenal character voice and creativity regarding cities as living creatures. I'm glad Jemisin expanded this idea into a full series.

3. Red Dirt Witch - 7/10

Takes place before the (1960s) Civil Rights Movement in Pratt City, AL. The main character is Emmaline, a witch with three kids. A creepy figure called The White Lady comes to visit and steal one of her children.

I love the little twist that The White Lady is a faerie. And the different take on rowan/ash/thorn instead being rosemary/sage/sycamore fig. There is a lot of touching bits about the horrible trials and human rights abuses during the Civil Rights marches (which are unfortunately all too relevant still), but ultimately a hopeful glimpse of the future of black people in America, though hard-won.

4. L'Alchimista - 6/10

Stars a Milanese master chef named Franca, who fell from glory for Reasons, who now works as head chef at a run-down inn. She feeds a mysterious stranger, who then challenges her to fix a seemingly impossible recipe.

This one was fun and charming. I thought the food (and magical food) descriptions were very vibrant and interesting, especially the last meal. I can tell this is an earlier story and it's pretty light hearted, but I enjoyed it. It felt like it needed a little more of.. something.  

5. The Effluent Engine - 9/10

In an interesting steampunk take, Haitian spy Jessaline comes to the city of New Orleans to meet one of its foremost scientists. Her goal is to find a viable, unique energy source to strengthen Haiti in a world that wants to see her nation dead.

I really liked this; it's one of the longer stories so there's more time for character development and worldbuilding. And it's gay. I'm not hugely into pure steampunk because a lot of it comes off as very... samey (hyper Eurocentric/Victorian, etc) but I thought this take was fresh.

Like much of Jemisin's work, there is a lot of racial under and overtones; this one specifically goes into the terrible atrocities committed against the Haitians during their Revolution, and the varied social classes of black/Creole people in New Orleans at the time. A lot of this is stuff I was unaware of or knew very little about. I thought it was interesting to bring all of these to the forefront in a steampunk story in addition to the dirigibles, clockwork, action, and subterfuge. Also, everything tries together in a very satisfying way by the end (the rum bottle!), which I love in short fiction.

6. Cloud Dragon Skies - 9/10

Takes place in a post-apoc future where some humans evacuated to space while others stayed behind and took on more indigenous traditions to heal the Earth. The sky has suddenly turned red on Earth, and some representatives from the "sky-people" come to study it and figure out why.

I really enjoyed this little story; fantasy/scifi fusions are my jam, but science fiction specifically told through a fantasy lens is just so cool to me. The cloud dragons were very interesting and imaginative. Also, I love how the opening statement's meaning isn't particularly clear until you read the whole thing.

7. The Trojan Girl - 10/10

This one is about sentient computer programs/viruses that struggle to survive in something called the Amorph, which is basically a more advanced, omnipresent version of the Internet.

Holy fucking shit was this a cool story. Probably the coolest take on cyberpunk I've ever read. The main character Moroe has formed a messed up little family of creatures like him who live and hunt in Amorph's code, but can upload to "the Static" (real life) if needed by hijacking human hosts. The way this is described is so damn creepy and unsettling. I love that while they're anthropomorphized, the characters are mostly feral and compared to a pack of wolves. Soooo much wolf pack imagery. And the ending is so fucking good and imaginative.

This was apparently a proof of concept story that Jemisin decided not to adapt to a longer series, which I'm kind of sad about, but it was REALLY cool nevertheless. The next story is apparently in the same universe and serves as the "conclusion".

8. Valedictorian - 9/10

This one is about a girl who is, well, top of her class in high school, and the stresses that mount as graduation approaches. But while it seems like a familiar setup, there is something decidedly Off about everything, which is revealed gradually over the course of the story.

I originally gave this an 8, but honestly I couldn't stop thinking about it so I boosted it to a 9. It doesn’t become clear how this connects to the previous story until the midpoint. I liked this one because it functions as a nice dystopian science fiction story but also biting social commentary on the modern American education system. I'm not going go say more on it because spoilers. While I personally like the first story more I think this is an interesting followup/conclusion with a more cerebral approach.  

9. The Storyteller's Replacement - 6/10

This one's presented as a traditional "once upon a time" fable told by a storyteller narrator, about a shitty despotic king named Paramenter. Desperate to prove his virility, he eats the heart of a dragon, which is said to be a cure-all for impotence. It's successful, but the six strange daughters that result seem to have plans of their own.

Not really my cup of tea-- it's pretty fucked up. But it's definitely cathartic by the end, which I appreciate, and I do like how creepy the daughters are.

10. The Brides of Heaven - 5/10

Framed as an interrogation in an offworld colony called Illiyin, in which a terrible accident occurred on the way that left all the adult men dead. Dihya, who lost her only son to an alien parasite, is caught trying to sabotage the colony's water supply for reasons unknown.

I like some things in this story. I love the trope of alien biology affecting human biology in unexpected ways. I'm not terribly familiar with Islam but thought it added an interesting faith vs practicality vs tradition element to the science fiction. However I found the sexual body horror REALLY squicky which turned me off the story as a whole.

11. The Evaluators - 10/10

Stylized as a collection of logs and excerpts from a First Contact team of humans visiting and studying a sapient alien species to potentially set up trade relations. There's a focus on one team member named Aihua and her conversations with one of the aliens, but there's miscellaneous important hints/excerpts from the survey that hint Something Creepy Is Going On.

This one was BIZARRE and took me two reads to fully appreciate, but it’s a great work of nontraditional science fiction horror. Just... the epitome of "*nervous laughter* 'what the fuck'". I can't say more without spoiling but dear lord. That whole Jesus bit hits different on a second read. Fucking hell.

12. Walking Awake - 7/10

Takes place in a dystopian society in which parasitic creatures known as Masters keep a small number of humans alive to be flesh suits for them, which they take over and trade around at will. The main character Sadie is a human "caretaker" responsible for propagandizing and raising well-bred human children that eventually become the Masters' hosts. She starts to have disturbing dreams when one takes over the body of a teenage boy she was particularly attached to.

This is apparently a response to Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, which I have never read. It's a full damn novel so I probably won't. Google tells me it's about parasitic aliens, but was obviously also Red Scare paranoia about communist Russia. The argument in the Jemisin story is that the parasites are a result of human folly in an attempt to punish/control people their creators didn't like. This went poorly and resulted in the whole world being taken over.

The story itself is disturbing since the victims are innocent children, but it's ultimately about standing up and taking the first step toward revolution. I felt pretty neutral about the story itself; perhaps I would have liked it more if it was longer and I had more time with the world and protagonist. I wanted to connect to Sadie and her maternal relationship the boy who got killed more. Or maybe it's more impactful if you're familiar with the Heinlein novel and can see the nods/digs.

13. The Elevator Dancer - 7/10

A very short story that takes place in a Christian fundamentalist surveillance state. The protagonist is an unnamed security guard who occasionally sees a woman dancing alone in the elevator and obsesses over her.

I like this one but I'm not sure if I really get it. It's heavily implied the dancer is a hallucination, and the narrator gets "re-educated" but it's all a little ambiguous. I think it's about the struggle to find meaning and inspiration in an oppressive world.  

14. Cuisine des Mémoires - 8/10

This one's about a man named Harold who visits a strange restaurant that claims it can replicate any meal from any point in history. He orders a meal which his ex-wife, whom he still loves very much, fixed for him years ago.

This one was certainly different, but I really like the idea of food-as-memory, especially because that's an actual thing. This story just takes it to an extra level. Honestly this story made me feel things... the longing of memory and missed connections/opportunities. Jemisin did a great job with emotion on this one.

15. Stone Hunger - 9/10

Stars a girl in with the ability to manipulate the earth who's tracking down a man she senses in an unfamiliar city. It's heavily implied the world is in a perpetual post-apocalyptic state. When she's caught damaging the outer wall of the city to break in and injured/imprisoned, she's aided by a mysterious, humanoid statue creature with motives of its own.

I have to say it's really interesting to see an early beta concept of The Broken Earth. Orogeny is a little different (and not named)-- there's some kind of taste component to it? Though that's possibly unique to the main character? While hatred of orogenes exists I don't think it's a structural exploitation allegory at this point. Ykka + proto-Castrima existing this early is pretty funny to me. People also use metal, which is VERY funny if you’ve read the series. But I was thrilled to see stone eaters were Very Much A Thing this early and almost exactly how they appear in the series (a little more sinister I guess. At least the one in this story is. I think he basically gets integrated into the Steel/Gray character in the final version).

Anyway as a huge fan of The Broken Earth it's inspiring to see these early ideas and just how much got changed. It's hard for me to look at this as an independent story without the context of the series. I think I'd like it due to the creative setting and strange concepts, but I appreciate the final changes to narrative style and worldbuilding, which really made the series for me.

16. On The Banks of the River Lex - 8/10

Death explores a decaying, post-human version of New York City. He and various deities/ideas created by humans are all that survives in the future and they struggle to exist in the crumbling infrastructure of the city. But Death gradually observes new and different creatures developing amid the wreckage.

I liked this! Despite a typically bleak premise the story is very optimistic and hopeful for the future of the world post-humanity. I like anthropomorphized concepts/deities/etc in general. I thought the imagery of decay and life was gorgeous. Also octopuses are cool.

17. The Narcomancer - 9/10

Told from the perspective of Cet, a priest known as a Gatherer, who can take the life of someone through their dreams in order to bring them peace. When a village petitions his order to investigate a series of raids conducted by brigands using forbidden magic, Cet joins the party. However, he is troubled by his growing attraction to a strong-willed woman of the village.

This apparently takes place in the Dreamblood universe, which I have not read and know nothing about. However, I really enjoyed this story. It's the longest in the collection so I felt I really got to know the characters. The dream-based religion and fantasy was captivating to learn about. It was also romantic as hell, but not in the typical way you’d expect. I thought the central conflict of a priest struggling between an oath of celibacy and his duty to do the right thing (bring peace to someone who needs it) was fascinating.

18. Henosis - 4/10

A short piece, told anachronistically, about a lauded, award winning author on the way to an award ceremony. He gets kidnapped, but there's Something Else going on.

Honestly I get the sense this one is personal, lol. I will say I like the disturbing play on expectations, but I didn't connect much with it otherwise.  

19. Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows - 9/10

Follows a group of bloggers who have found themselves caught in isolated quantum loops. Their only human contact is through tenuous online conversations with each other. Styled as various chat logs and emails interspersed with the thoughts and perspectives of Helen, a young black woman who before the loop was teaching English in Japan.

This one is real depressing and definitely Social Commentary (TM). The central thesis about loneliness and disconnect at the end made me pretty dang sad. Good stuff in an ouch kind of way and made me think.

20. The You Train - 6/10

Told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator talking (presumably on the phone) to a friend about her struggles adjusting to life in New York City. She regularly mentions seeing train lines that either don't exist or retired a long time ago.

This is the kind of story I'd normally really like. I think trains are interesting and like vaguely supernatural, inexplicable shit. The one-sided phone call is also an interesting narrative device. But I'm not sure I really got this one. It comes off as vaguely horror-y but also optimistic? I couldn't really figure this one out, and it was too short to feel much investment on top of that.

21. Non-Zero Probabilities - 7/10

Luck has gone completely out of whack in New York City. Highly improbable events suddenly become way more likely, both good and bad. This story follows a woman named Adele and coming to grips with the new ways of life this brings.

I liked this one well enough but I don't have a lot to say about it. I liked how the story looks at how people would adapt to a life where probability doesn't mean anything anymore.  

22. Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters - 9/10

A magical realism story about a man named Tookie struggling to survive in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He meets a talking, winged lizard and the two help each other out. But it soon becomes clear there is something sinister lurking in the flooded ruins of the city.

This story was very imaginative and a great cap to the collection. I thought it was an intriguing time period to set a magical realism story in. I love the little details, especially those of omission -- the "lizard" is never called a dragon, for example. I can see echoes of this story in The City We Became, especially the themes of cities as powerful entities, vague eldritch fuckery centered around hatred, and certain people being guardians of the city.  

[morphogenetic]

wanted to ask for the deets on kimi ga shine and witch's heart since i'd seen you bloggin about both of em (been blockin em in case i decide to check em out)

PUTS HANDS ON TABLE. FUCK YES (i'm gonna publish this bc I'm sure other people would wanna know)

okay so both of them are (FREE, SOMEHOW?) 12-20 hour RPGmaker games, w horror elements, but aside from them both having really great original art and some bangin' music, they're not really the same.

also both have like, a decent amount of body horror/gore, but it's very pixel-art-style so if you could deal w the ze series and aitsf, which I'm assuming you specifically + many of my followers can LOL, you'll probably be okay on CWs

kimi ga shine/your turn to die:

-point and click/vn-y/trial-based death game setup; i've seen the trial portion get compared to dr a lot but after playing dr1, it's really just a lot more similar to ace attorney trials w a bit of a twist to them

-the point and click part is puzzle solving and overall feels Very 999/zero escape-y, even though it's not escape the room type of puzzles

-i know i'm comparing it to 999 and ace attorney a lot and the gameplay does share elements with them, so if you like those you'll pretty much guaranteed like yttd, but it really does have its own identity and does a ton of neat things that neither of those two games do

-there are a ton of bad ends, but there are also two branch points in the story where two different things can happen, but the game keeps going afterwards. the first of those points doesn't seem to change a ton, but the second one seems EXTREMELY major and I'm interested in seeing how it continues. and I say "seems" rather than "know," because....

-NOT CURRENTLY COMPLETE - it is Mostly done, but it's planned to be 3 chapters of 2 parts each, and chapter 3 is not quite complete yet. i would still recommend at least starting it now bc it's not really the kind of game where you can forget what happens between parts, but it does happen

witch's heart:

-not really like a vn or point and click at all, minus it being fairly text heavy - its gameplay is more of an exploration-based, sidequest fulfilling thing, with a few battles here and there (you can actually fight enemies outside of battle bc there are just random enemies walking around, but they don't trigger an actual boss fight, which is neat)

-stats are mostly irrelevant though, you can't actually level up and you can't increase stats until you get your first ending anyway

-5 characters and you play as all of them at some point! it's neat as fuck! (well technically there are more than that but. You'll see.)

-vaguely vn-ish bc it does have multiple complementary routes but that's basically it

-i won't lie the sidequest fulfilling thing is a LITTLE bit annoying after you've done it in the first two routes but each one of those segments never took me very long (like 30 min tops), and especially later on said sidequests start being relevant for the side half of the cast

-holy moly good characterization + this game is REALLY good at showing and not telling. like, seriously. there's one character who gets backstory and then her ENTIRE personality starts making retroactive sense it's incredible (also wh said lgbtq rights for real but I'm not being more specific than that)

-also not teeeechnically done bc the creator hasn't finished the specific epilogues/continuations for every single route yet, but that's more just bonus stuff from my understanding, i'm pretty sure the Main Game is 100% complete

-(pretty sure bc I haven't finished the sequel yet. Lol)

-i straight up SOBBED during a section of this game and I am not a game crier. the last game that made me cry was 999 (yes really LMAO) and that was 5 years ago. take that as you will.

~

YEAH SORRY THIS IS LONG I JUST WANT MORE PEOPLE TO PLAY THESE. they're both fairly accessible if you can handle pixel blood/gore and can run rpgmaker,

BECAUSE THEY'RE FREE??? HHHHH

[inoutoftherain]

We did it!

No 24 hours, but fucking crushed HBGs record axolotl-less which was sub 30 and still got WR after 3 hours of 3 people doing nothing but breeding the blue bastards. Total breeds over 5000, median is like 700 or 800.

I had a great experience. The early game plan was so good, the gunpowder farm with Molly and Shoe went so smooth and finished ahead of schedule. Wither skeleton farm had a couple hiccups due to me forgetting to bring two items but we built it right and we built it on time and that's all that matters, thanks to Pocky and to Shoe again for helping to knock that out.

Mobs after that mostly with TJ, hardest part of the run and definitely the longest. I meant to take a break and sleep here and didn't. There were some mistakes made with mob death and lack of organization but mostly I just think all that stuff is a lot. I know TJ got really down that it wasn't fast enough and so am I. I have a lot of thoughts about it, my performance, mistakes and experience, organization and plans and who does what. I don't know. Bottom line is it's a lot.

Server held up great and I could fly the early mobs to the sh from the surrounding area, unfortunately couldn't fly them later on the nether roof due to lag breaking the leads but it was still so much better than last time. Bobby mod was great and TalkingMime loaning the server ahead of HBGs own attempt later this month was really nice, appreciate it.

Everybody got kind of down late in the run after it was obvious 24 hours wasn't happening there was a lot left and not a lot of people to do it. People needed to sleep. It ended up with me, Wonderfulegg and somebody else I think Molly was there at one point? trying to figure out if HDWGH was going to happen or if we had to give up. I was so tired. I was the only person there who ever did HDWGH in their life and I did it in this version once a year ago. I couldn't find the tutorial I used. The setup that somebody started by spawn wasn't going to work for the only version of it that I know. The beacon was in the end, I didn't know where the ingredients for everything were, I thought I did my 1.21 bac run on a different PC and that I wouldn't be able to find the recording. Plus the idea that I can do it correctly with how tired I am is so incredibly dubious. But no like my brain finally unfogs enough to remember it was the same PC and I find the world download and look at that, and I have the setup geometry, it's now possible. So I have to do it. Wonderfulegg gets Zesskyo on who was supposed to have joined the run but had something come up at the last minute. So Zesskyo unlike the rest of us is wide awake and full of energy. And zesskyo does know HDWGH though not in this version. I have the beacon set up by this point. Somebody finds a conduit. I drag over a villager from base. We move the shulker and the dolphin. I spend probably 30 fucking minutes during all of this explaining the whole HDWGH sequence to Zesskyo, who has done it before but not in this version. This 30 minutes has nothing to do with Zesskyo and everything to do with me and my sleep deprived brain, I have no fucking idea what I'm saying or what I've said and I repeat everythign about 40 times because I think I got it out of order or missed something the previous time and I probably did.

I show Zesskyo the raid and trial chamber locations, Wonderfulegg flies around with a riptide trident to locate a monument where the elder guardians aren't dead. Wonderfulegg finds all the potion ingredients and consumables and makes the potions. Zesskyo goes off to do the thing. Zesskyo hits the fucking advancement on the first try.

We're so back! At this point not counting blue axolotl there's like 10 random advancements left. I pick the two that are the most brainless and spend like 20 minutes doing five minutes of tasks because I'm that fucking tired. Its like whatever. Who cares at this point. Jilian's back and I think somebody else is too and they all knock off the rest. So it's just the axolotl now. I try to join them on the breeding but I give up and go to sleep when I realize I'm just staring at the axolotls and not doing anything. So the other three people there who I think are Jillian, Wondefulegg and Zesskyo breed axolotls for three more hours and they get it.

Thank you to TJ and Jillian for letting me be part of this again. Thank you to Molly, Shoe, Pocky, TJ, Wonderfulegg and Zesskyo for being so great to work with. Thank you to Jillian for providing the push to not give up. Thank you to everybody else who took part and got stuff done. You're all fantastic.

We did it!

We're doing it again!

We came pretty close last time and now we're back with a better server thankyouTalkingMime, Bobby mod and more experience. Prayge in chats for wandering traders and many thunders.

I recommend to watch organizers tjthings or assassinjillian for the best stream experience, but most people will also be streaming their POVs I'm pretty sure. Like last time I will be going gunpowder farm into wither farm before moving on to mob advancements and some other things and surely that will go faster without HBG sabotage. (Hi Fulham!)

But seriously give the organizers some support because they're doing a lot of heavy lifting and they deserve it.

[a-ratt]

How do you write your stories. I know it sounds like a broad question, but I have been inspired to write because you make it so fun! The problem is... well I have a lot of problems. For example how to start a chapter and/or outline, making dialogue correctly, how not to make the plot/chapter feel rushed, etc... Do you have links, process, or tutorials on how to write and get started and all that good stuff? Thanks in advance!

Well, my dear anon, I do love talking about writing. So, for starters, I should probably explain that I’m an English-Creative Writing Major in uni, so I’m going all in with my writing. Besides that, though, I usually start with an outline.

Idk how most people write their outlines, but I usually use “Blake Snyder’s Beatsheet”. It’s basically a list of “story beats” that help plan out the plot of whatever story I’m writing. It’s actually a screenwriting strategy I started using to plot out novel writing. Here’s the list:

1.) Opening Image: 2.) Theme Stated: 3.) Set-up: 4.) Catalyst: 5.) Debate: 6.) Break into Two: 7.) B-Story: 8.) Fun and Games: 9.) Midpoint: 10.) Bad Guys Close In: 11.) All Is Lost: 12.) Dark Night of the Soul: 13.) Break into Three: 14.) Finale: 15.) Final Image:

Basically, 1.) through 6.) make up the First Act. 7.) through 13.) make up the second act. 14.) and 15.) are essentially the third act.

So, 1.) through 6.) are all about the setup. The Opening Image is the first impression you’re giving your readers. It’s a tiny snapshot of what they should be expecting. Theme Stated is generally a moment where the story’s theme/message is given to the protagonist in some way/shape/form. The Set-Up is all about world building. This is where you’ve gotta give us the rundown on the protagonist’s “normal world”, what a day in their normal life is like. The Catalyst is where the fun starts. This is Luke Skywalker getting the message from Princess Leia. Where Frodo Baggins is given the One Ring. When Tony Stark gets blown up. And the moment where Ant-Man comes back from the Quantum Realm 5 years after Infinity War. This is essentially the moment where the conflict is started because the protagonist is pushed into the adventure. (Make sure they have a personal stake in it, though.) The Debate is a small moment where the protagonist, or just characters in general, argue about ‘going on this adventure’, about leaving their normal world. The Break Into Two is my favorite moment in Act I. This is when the protagonist chooses (and they usually must choose) to leave their normal world and embark on the adventure. Bilbo Baggins leaves the Shire. Frodo Baggins leaves the Shire. Luke Skywalker joins Ben Kenobi and leaves his homestead. Tony Stark builds his Mk. I Iron Man suit and fights his way to freedom. The Avengers plan how to time travel to collect the Infinity Stones.

7.) to 13.) is the longest act, Act II. This is the introduction of the B-Story to the Break Into Three. It encapsulates the Fun and Games, all the trials and obstacles the protagonist will have to face.

The B-Story is the subplot you want to implement into the story. This can be a lot of things and can be multiple things. Sometimes it’s a romance, or a learning curve, or a friendship. The Fun and Games, like I said above, is the trials and obstacles the protagonist must overcome. Essentially, in screenwriting, it’s everything you want to put in a movie trailer that’ll draw audiences in. In storywriting, I make up this part of the story as everything I want to happen along the way. The small adventures and little moments I can have fun with before I need to head back to the main story/conflict. The Midpoint is where everything changes. It’s either a “False Victory” or “False Defeat”, mirrored by the All Is Lost beat. An example of this is in Avengers: Infinity War, when Thor enters the Battle of Wakanda, but then Thanos breaks free from the Guardians, Iron Man, and Spider-Man’s trap later. There is a ‘peak’, where it seems like “Hell yeah, we’re going to win”, but then they start losing and losing and losing. The next beat is Bad Guys Close In, which is all about the bad guys closing in. Either the enemy literally shows up. fights them, and wins, or the good guys start fighting amongst themselves. All Is Lost follows up as the moment when the heroes lose. They fail. Often, there’s “a Scent of Death”, which can be an actual character death or someone coming close to death. This is Ben Kenobi getting cut down by Darth Vader. Gandalf getting pulled into the abyss by the Balrog. Thanos confessing that he murdered Gamora for the Soul Stone. Black Widow sacrificing herself to get the Soul Stone. Right after this is the Dark Night of the Soul, which is where the heroes are depressed. They’re at the bottom of the pit. They don’t know what to do with themselves. The mood is usually: It’s over, they’re done. No take backs. No do-overs. We. Lost. Everyone’s defeated and they don’t know what to do next. Following is the Break Into Three, where the heroes find their resolve, get back up, and forge ahead to the final confrontation. A few perfect examples of this is when: the Avengers ruminate over Black Widow’s sacrifice, reaffirm their mission, and then reverse the Snap. Luke Skywalker gets inside the X-Wing to go fight the Death Star. And when Peter Parker tells Happy Hogan that’s he’s going to kick Mysterio’s ass. Finally, we reach the Finale, where it all ends. This is the final confrontation. Thanos attacks the New Avengers Facility. The Rebel Alliance attacks the Death Star. And Ladybug and Chat Noir face Stoneheart one last time. The Finale isn’t bogged down by one fight, though, as Avengers: Endgame shows us. You can stretch it out a bit, play with the audience’s emotions. While Nebula and Gamora help Hawkeye, and Ant-Man saves Hulk, Rocket, and Rhodey, the Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor face down Thanos in a 3v1. It’s an epic battle and it feels like the end, but then the rest of the Avengers show up and we get the biggest battle in the entire story. This is the final battle.Then, there’s the Final Image. This mirrors the Opening Image, shows how far we’ve come and how much has changed. At the start, Luke Skywalker was a farmer boy and at the end he’s a galactic hero/terrorist. At the start, Frodo was just a normal guy living in the Shire, but at the end he’s on an epic adventure to save the world. At the beginning, Bilbo Baggins is content with living at home, but in the end he’s prepared to go on an adventure to help his friends take back their home from a dragon. In Miraculous Ladybug, Marinette is an introverted klutz who grows into a confident superhero.

So, yeah, that’s how I plan out my stories. Each beat is an essential component to create the narrative flow. If none of this made sense, here’s a link to a website that might help out: (x)

Of course, a story is more than it’s plot. You mentioned you had issues with dialogue?

Well, my method for writing dialogue is by throwing myself into the character. I act like them. I try to emulate them. For me, dialogue isn’t about making it correct, it’s about making it organic. Dialogue is linked to the characters you write it for. So someone stiff and stoic is probably not going to clip words and spell everything out. Someone lax and playful will probably clip words and phrases, and also throw in slang.

The kind of dialogue I usually write is inspired by Thor: Ragnarok, because the dialogue used is mostly improv, or improvised. In other words, make it up on the go. Have fun with it. If you want to, throw yourself into the character and try to act like them.

In terms of chapters, I don’t think length matters as much as content and flow. You want to make sure it paces well. You want to make sure that you’re not bogging it down with writing that’s unnecessary, like a diverging plot about food while the characters have to worry about going somewhere. Not unless it’s necessary for the plot.

In other words, chapter density is all up to you. What’s necessary and what’s not? Does it feel too short, as in they reader reads it and it feels like the hero punched the villain and it’s over? Or the read it and they felt like there was a full struggle where they fought and clashed and finally won.

Besides that, I don’t have much else to give. In terms of links and tutorials, all that I learned in class or from experience. (Don’t make me talk about the Fanfiction.net days.) But, if you’ve got anymore questions, I’ll be glad to answer.

[illegiblewords]

FOR CONFUSED BYSTANDERS

I know that I have a lot of followers who have been (very patiently) witnessing a stream of pictures, commentary, and general posts related to Final Fantasy XIV. This is going to be my attempt to present the game and its story with context for you guys who have no idea what’s going on.

I’m doing this for two reasons, the first being I LOVE THIS GAME. If I can share the positive experience I’ve had with other people, I’d like to do that. The second reason is, for people who still follow but aren’t necessarily going to play themselves--it might offer enough background info to make posts that go up more entertaining at least. I know I don’t personally mind seeing bloggers, writers, artists, etc. share something I’m unfamiliar with, but it gets more fun when I have some clue what it’s about.

Parts of this post will be just about my own subjective experience, some will be recapping the story, some will be going over different ways I’ve seen people play in case that appeals. So on and so forth. I’m aiming to offer an honest reflection on whatever seems important.

Putting this under a cut because really, this is fucking long. Not as long as it looks because pictures are included but even still. For anyone who reads, I hope you enjoy and if you have questions don’t hesitate to hit me up! :)

BACKGROUND - NON-MMO PLAYER LOVES THIS MMO

I have never played an MMO before this. I’m pretty apathetic about them for the most part. When I play games I like to design things, get good pictures, and kill baddies for stress relief. I'm here to immerse in an exciting world and story, meet characters I can invest in. Stuff in that vein. So far as gaming goes I’m pretty simple.

There are people who put heavy emphasis on the social elements of FFXIV. They’ll play with their friends specifically, either because they’re focused on fighting together or because they want to roleplay or just to hang out. I’m not really in that category.

I entered knowing no one, and while I’ve made some friends through FFXIV I mostly interact with them outside the game itself. This can happen on tumblr, on forums, on the official blog platform, etc. In-game, I encounter other players all the time but it is generally something like “I was running around the city doing stuff and other people were also running around the city doing stuff”. You can approach people. You can message them and do little emotes like waving or hugging or slapping or whatever. You can do these emotes directed at nobody and just see your character go through the animations, which can be fun for taking pictures.

More detailed encounters with other players happen in dungeons, trials, and raids. These are called registered duties. Guildhests and PVP (player versus player) exist too, but I haven’t done them. I’ll elaborate later, but the gist you need to know here is that you are grouped in with a fixed number of additional players and then placed in a setting with a pre-set encounter or encounters to overcome. Some of these are straightforward, some require strategy.

In FFXIV, people usually chat to varying degrees during duties. Most are polite, pleasant, and focused on gameplay. At least where I am, which I’ll also go into later. Occasionally there are people who are jerks in the sense that they are inconsiderate or rude to other players. Also occasionally, people are incompetent. More often though I’ll encounter someone with a great sense of humor or people who have helpful tips to improve.

This is a game where, if you see a player marked as new struggling with low level monsters, a more experienced player might pause to oneshot that monster so the newbie can escape. People are casually nice most of the time.

Since I’d normally be doing single-player anyway, for me this is very refreshing. I get to do all the things I’d be doing in a single-player video game, but I also get light exchanges with other fans in ways that aren’t disruptive. There’s enough meat to the Main Quest Scenario (MSQ) and side quests that I don’t feel bored or lonely at all.

FFXIV does cost money to play and has a subscription. This can be paid in varying increments. I personally think it’s worth it because 1) the developers are adding new content on a pretty regular basis 2) the developers actually care about quality and having happy fans 3) the game keeps getting better over time 4) there is SO MUCH you can do in the game. It is truly expansive beyond anything else I’ve seen. I might not be ready to do a subscription with every game, but for this one absolutely.

This essentially plays like a normal final fantasy game in most respects. You might run around solo by-and-large, but there is an NPC supporting cast. They and the villains get fleshed out very well. Same goes for civilians and other background characters. The biggest difference off the top of my head is the story’s beginning...

OBSTACLES

I’m going to get this out of the way early, but in essence I think there are two main obstacles as a beginner. The first and most notable of these is that the game’s entry point, called “A Realm Reborn”, is less well-written and EXTREMELY LONG.

Seriously. I’ve only gotten one character past this point and it took me a stupid amount of time. Some of the quests at this stage are things like “my dad doesn’t like the stinky chocobo please spray it with perfume so it is less stinky”.  Or “jump through all these stupid hoops so you can fight the exciting boss you’ve been waiting for”.

However, the length at least is slotted to be fixed in the future. I’ll probably announce that when it happens in case that’s the deal changer for anyone.

On writing quality, it starts off mediocre. However, later writing is so strong that it actually manages to make past scenes WAY more interesting. The initial setup also kind of lures you into a false sense of security, at which point shit gets real very fast.

The second obstacle for beginners involves a degree of not knowing what you don’t know. For example, there is an extremely powerful attack that can be used in registered duties called “Limit Break”. Initially I didn’t even know where to find it to put in my move hotbar. Then I didn’t know that using it would take limit break away from other players in the group. Then I didn’t know that the limit breaks of different jobs needed to be used under different circumstances. An example of this would be that spellcaster SHOULD use a limit break attack on freakishly large groups of enemies, but SHOULD NOT use limit break on a lone boss unless there is literally no other damage class (DPS) available to do it. This is because the overall impact of caster limit break is comparatively low, but effects more enemies at the same time. Using limit break inappropriately can frustrate people.

There are other things similar to this, such as when you use Duty Finder (a roulette that sets you up with completely random people interested in the same registered duty) and when you use Party Finder (where you announce what registered duty you want to do with what circumstances, then people volunteer to join), or being aware of which moves are supposed to be used in which order for top efficiency. That said, if you tell people you’re completely new they’ll usually be willing to explain.

If it’s something like “how do I use the glamour plates to switch into designs I made easily” or “how does crafting even work”, youtube is very helpful too! Overall just take initiative and communicate to people your experience level while in groups and things tend to work out.

THE STORY

Disclaimer: Recaps get less detailed over time to avoid spoiling too hard.

SHORT VERSION

You are a god-slayer, or more precisely the slayer of false-gods. False-gods drain the land to make it lifeless and are prone to brainwashing people. You also regularly fight the rough equivalent of angels who believe the world as you know it has gone horribly wrong and are trying to force things back into their natural forms. Excessive death ensues anytime they are successful, so high stakes. Meanwhile, an authoritarian and technologically advanced nation is causing issues on the regular and has to be stopped.

PRELUDE/LEGACY

Final Fantasy XIV had a rocky start with patch section 1.0/the true beginning, which I did not play. While there are videos online of what it was like for those curious, the gist is that five years before the current opening the world was stricken by a terrible calamity. The nation of Eorzea (an allied collection of city states) was at war with the Garlean Empire--otherwise known as Garlemald. During this war, one of Garlemald’s scientists implemented a genocidal strategy against the Eorzeans by dragging the lesser of two moons down upon their heads. This moon was called Dalamud. However, what took this situation from bad to worse was that Dalamud wasn’t actually a moon but a prison.

Thousands of years prior, the technologically advanced nation of Allag had been performing experiments using dragons and entities known as primals. Primals are summoned into being using a combination of aether (life energy, the source of magic), ritual, and the belief of their summoners. One of Allag’s experiments involved murdering a powerful dragon then using the tortured prayers of his lover and his kin to summon a warped, primal imitation of him. This primal was then trapped as a power source and left to fester in rage and insanity.

The dragon’s primal is Bahamut. Dalamud was his cage.

When Dalamud burst open above Eorzea, Bahamut was released in all his apocalyptic glory. A collection of heroes, allied to an organization called the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (dedicated to eliminating primals for the toll they take on the land and its people) stood against Bahamut. A man named Louisoix Levellieur, leader of the Scions, cast a powerful spell by summoning the Twelve Eorzean gods to stop Bahamut. This spell cast the primal, Louisoix, and the heroes five years into the future. It also wiped the heroes, known thereafter as the Warriors of Light, from memory.

Part of what makes 1.0 really cool looking back--when the developers saw how many problems existed in the MMO, they knew they would need to reboot it. There was a date set for that to happen, which would involve taking Final Fantasy XIV offline until an improved version could be released. Players knew the real world reasons behind all this. What they didn’t know was how the hiatus and reboot would be presented within the narrative.

People who were up-to-date in the storyline knew that war had erupted and that the moon was falling. They also knew that a particular time, the game would be taken offline.

This is what they saw.

A REALM REBORN

The average player, and likely anyone reading this, will not have played patch 1.0. For us, Final Fantasy XIV begins five years after Bahamut’s calamity. The world is still recovering and has been irrevocably scarred in the dragon’s wake. Refugees from both that event and Garlemald’s conquered territories pour in even as the empire bides its time for another invasion.

The player is a fledgling adventurer endowed with a gift called The Echo. The Echo is an ability that first, prevents them from being brainwashed (or “Tempered”) by primals. This is important because like I said before, one of the things that gives primals their power is belief. This extends to prayer. If a person is tempered, they will worship and empower the primal responsible until they die. This means most people can’t even approach primals safely, much less fight them. More than one character (including NPCs) possess The Echo, but it remains a rare ability.

Another aspect of this gift is that it allows someone (without any deliberate control) to see into the memories of others, superimposing emotions and perspectives of the event over the witnessing Echo-user. It also translates all direct speech into an understandable form to the Echo-user. There are additional abilities that become unveiled over the course of the story, but these are most important and consistent going in.

The player initially is just one of many such adventurers, a guild of independent mercenaries willing to undertake odd jobs using their skill in combat. After coming into conflict with a mysterious, masked organization, however, it becomes clear that the player has been chosen as champion to Hydaelyn herself.

Because you see, Hydaelyn isn’t just the name of the planet. This is also a sentient mothercrystal claiming the role of protector to all life on Her surface.

The masked organization consists of spirits with varying degrees of immortality. They also have the ability to body snatch. These are called Ascians. Ascians argue that the world was split into fourteen pieces thousands of years ago by Hydaelyn, and that their dark crystal god--Zodiark--is the true will of the star and represents a natural state of being that must be reclaimed. Their way of pursuing this objective requires causing a series of apocalypses or near-apocalypses, always coming with innumerable casualties.

As Hydaelyn’s champion the player joins the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in combating primals, fights against lingering threats from Garlemald, and thwarts Ascian plans to continue rejoining the world through calamities.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

HEAVENSWARD

Shit goes pear shaped in a big way and you have to flee territories held by the Eorzean Alliance--city states including Ul’dah, Limsa Lominsa, and Gridania. Ishgard, now a frozen, mountainous landscape ruled by a religion dedicated to the goddess Halone, takes your character in.

Ishgard has been at war with the draconic nation of Dravania for thousands of years. Dragons are immortal by natural means, but can be slain. Ishgard no longer remembers, by and large, why the war even started except that they have been losing loved ones in horrifying ways for as long as they can remember. They refused to send aid during the struggle against Garlemald specifically because they couldn’t spare forces from their war with Dravania. They have a reputation for being hostile to outsiders, having extreme class divides, and inquisition-style zealotry. Nonetheless, there are good people here and over the course of A Realm Reborn the player manages to befriend some of them.

This arc delves into Ishgard’s war, and involves the player taking part while clearing their name in the Alliance. Toward the end, it is also extremely important to note that the player encounters a group calling themselves “Warriors of Darkness”, who are in-league with the Ascians. It comes to light that they hail from one of the divided worlds, that their world is in terrible danger, and they believe the path to survival comes from confronting you.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

STORMBLOOD

One of the antagonists we encounter forces the Alliance to involve itself in freeing Garlemald’s conquered territories, namely the nations of Ala Mhigo (largely Middle Eastern) and Doma (East Asian). In undertaking this task, the hero comes into repeated conflict with Garlemald’s crown prince, Zenos yae Galvus. Zenos is basically a serial killer with the resources of a prince but no actual investment in being a prince. It’s pretty wild.

A lot of this plot focuses on the consequences of Garlean rule. Over time though, it comes to light that the founder of Garlemald was a high-ranked Ascian and is still very much alive.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

SHADOWBRINGERS

The plot set into motion with the Warriors of Darkness resumes as the player is forced to travel to their home world. Dealing with a setting on the brink of Armageddon, this current arc has a ton to do with examining different perspectives while getting much clearer insight on lore metaphysics. Most notably, we finally learn why the Ascians act the way they do and discover more about the nature of the player character and Hydaelyn.

I’m aware this is vague, but honestly this is my favorite of all the expansions/arcs so far. Seriously it is fucking killer.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

YOUR PROTAGONIST/THE CHARACTER CREATOR

The main character of Final Fantasy XIV is known as the Warrior of Light, regardless of whether you play from the Legacy version of the game or A Realm Reborn. Similar to the Dragon Age games, in Final Fantasy XIV you get to design your own main character and shape their identity to varying degrees through the story. Some people like to imagine their protagonist as existing within a completely different role in the world of Hydaelyn for roleplay purposes (so not a Warrior of Light), but that involves essentially disregarding the main quest scenario narrative provided. It’s fine to do that of course, but I’m going to be explaining things that essentially fit within the canon approach.

There are currently eight playable races for the Warrior of Light. These include hyur (human stand-ins), elezen (elf stand-ins), roegadyns (orc or giant stand-ins), miqo’te (cat people), lalafells (dwarf or gnome stand-ins), au ra (tiefling or draeni stand-ins), viera (female-only bunny people at the moment), and hrothgar (male-only lion people, the beast race).

Each race option has two subraces attached. The most dramatic differences between subraces come up for hyur, where there are Midlanders (shorter and slighter frames) and Highlanders (taller and beefier/curvier). Otherwise it’s more minor differences.

It is common for players to develop their own personal interpretations of who their Warrior of Light character was before the story begins and how that impacts progression. This can be shaped by what race they belong to and what lore is attached to that race according to region. It is also possible to shape things according to which of the Twelve (Eorzea’s pantheon) the Warrior of Light worships. These deities are loosely described and made available for selection at the beginning of the game.

It isn’t unusual for people to pick names in-keeping with lore. A good site to turn to for this is over here, although there are also spots that go into what different names actually translate to. Other people just go with whatever they feel like. I think I saw someone named Cheese Whiz once.

Stat variation is pretty negligible between races, and it’s mainly an aesthetic/tonal choice. Currently there is some pressure on game developers to make Viera and Hrothgar playable for male and female gender options both, and it seems likely that at some point this will happen. Currently there are indications that the release for Viera and Hrothgar was somewhat rushed due to some behind-the-scenes circumstances, so while they are less versatile than other options this is likely to change at some point.

As someone who is a sucker for character customization, I want to mention that while it might be easier to get some of the fantasy races to fit a particular ethnicity--Final Fantasy actually does a great job in terms of visual versatility and has made it possible to hit a wide range of options well. For example, it might be easier to make an East Asian au ra or a French elezen, but you can easily break with that in totally believable ways. You might not have the precision adjustments of Dragon Age: Inquisition or Bloodborne, but the options presented are pretty flexible.

In terms of how the Warrior of Light works through the game, again while there is some wiggle room there are certain aspects to their identity that stay pretty consistent. They get jaded and worn out by the narrative as time goes on, they experience loss, they become increasingly chatty and sarcastic. They have powerful neck muscles from years of communication by nodding. Commonly, the personality of the Warrior of Light is also influenced by the job they choose.

THE JOBS

Something I wish got explained to me early--you only get certain jobs as options starting out, and any others you hear about getting added are only accessible at higher levels. In Final Fantasy XIV, basically when it comes to combat you start with a very basic class, which graduates to a job (better versions of the class) when you fulfill certain requirements.

There are notably three main roles a combat class or job can fall into. These include tanks, healers, and DPS. Tanks are responsible for leading the charge, provoking aggression, directing mobs, and enduring attacks in groups. They don’t deal the most damage but have the highest defense and are generally right in the thick of the action. Healers can deal damage but their main purpose is to keep themselves and everyone around them from dying, especially in groups. At the moment all of the healer jobs use magic. DPS (Damage Per Second) are the jobs that are mainly responsible for taking chunks out of the enemy’s health. Within DPS there are additionally three subcategories, these being Melee DPS (non-magical and close-range), Physical Ranged DPS (non-magical and fighting from a distance), and Magic Ranged DPS (magical and fighting from a distance). There is also a limited job and Crafter/Gatherer classes, but I’ll get to those later.

Some DPS jobs, additionally, focus more on playing support to other party members while others are geared toward boosting their own damage output.

The classes you can choose from in the character creator include:

Gladiator (Tank, Sword and Shield)

Marauder (Tank, Axe)

Lancer (Melee DPS, Lance)

Pugilist (Melee DPS, Fists)

Archer (Physical Ranged DPS, Bow)

Conjurer (Healer, Wand)

Thaumaturge (Magical Ranged DPS, Staff)

Arcanist (Magical Ranged DPS, Tome)

At level 10, if your armory system is unlocked (you need to complete a quest for your starting class NPC mentor to do this) you can approach an NPC in Limsa Lominsa to unlock the Rogue class as well. This is a Melee DPS class and uses twin daggers. If your character starts with Marauder or Arcanist this takes less time.

To graduate each of these early classes into a job, the following requirements need to be met:

Paladin (Sword and Shield): Requires Gladiator level 30, Conjurer level 15.

Warrior (Axe): Requires Marauder level 30, Gladiator level 15.

Dragoon (Lance): Requires Lancer level 30, Marauder level 15.

Monk (Fists): Requires Pugilist level 30, Lancer level 15.

Bard (Bow): Requires Archer level 30, Pugilist level 15.

White Mage (Wand): Requires Conjurer level 30, Arcanist level 15.

Scholar (Tome): Requires Arcanist level 30, Conjurer level 15.

Black Mage (Staff): Requires Thaumaturge level 30, Archer level 15.

Summoner (Tome): Requires Arcanist level 30, Thaumaturge level 15.

Ninja (Daggers): Requires Rogue level 30 and completion of quests Sylph-Management and Cloying Victory.

I’ll describe these in more detail in a bit, but there are waaaay more combat jobs than this. Currently the others are:

Dark Knight (Tank, Greatsword): Requires having purchased the Heavensward expansion and having completed all of the Seventh Astral Era Quests up to Before the Dawn, which is needed to unlock the city of Ishgard. This job starts at level 30.

Gunbreaker (Tank, Gunblade): Requires having purchased the Shadowbringers expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 60. This job starts at level 60.

Astrologian (Healer, Star Globe): Requires having purchased the Heavensward expansion and having completed all of the Seventh Astral Era Quests up to Before the Dawn, which is needed to unlock the city of Ishgard. This job starts at level 30.

Samurai (Melee DPS, Katana): Requires having purchased the Stormblood expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 50. This job starts at level 50.

Machinist (Physical Ranged DPS, Firearm) Requires having purchased the Heavensward expansion and having completed all of the Seventh Astral Era Quests up to Before the Dawn, which is needed to unlock the city of Ishgard. This job starts at level 30.

Dancer (Physical Ranged DPS, Chakrams): Requires having purchased the Shadowbringers expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 60. This job starts at level 60.

Red Mage (Magical Ranged DPS, Rapier): Requires having purchased the Stormblood expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 50. This job starts at level 50.

So total, right now the jobs include 4 Tanks (Paladin, Warrior, Dark Knight, Gunbreaker), 3 Healers (White Mage, Scholar, Astrologian), 4 Melee DPS (Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Samurai), 3 Physical Ranged DPS (Bard, Machinist, Dancer), and 3 Magical Ranged DPS (Black Mage, Summoner, Red Mage). Total is 17 jobs. When I describe these combat based jobs, I’m not going to focus on the actual gameplay aspect because frankly I don’t know how to play all of the jobs. This is gonna be a quick and dirty explanation based on the scientific approach of “idk that’s just my impression”.

Paladin: You are a holy knight and you can heal a little sometimes maybe (???) and you are very good and noble with great defense.

Warrior: You are a beserker who loves to release your inner beast and kill shit in really violent ways and are kind of a badass and do the most damage of the tanks.

Dark Knight: Super super edgy and kind of magical but also straight up crazy, you hate corrupt authority figures and are willing to get your hands dirty and darken your name in order to protect others. One of the most beloved job questlines.

Gunbreaker: You have a sword that is also a gun and you can shoot people with it, soldier style. Basically if you have ever fantasized about having a knifegun this is like that but better.

White Mage: Very pure, focused on nature and communing with elemental beings, all about that land/sea/sky thing with ties to the elements earth, water, and air. One of three magic traditions that got involved in a next level magic fight, this one stemming from the city of Amdapor. Amdapor is full of fungus and poison spores now.

Scholar: Takes a highly intellectual spin on magic with ties to weird geometries and so forth, figured out how to summon fairy familiars from aether. Does a lot with shields and preventing people from taking as much damage in the first place. One of three magic traditions that got involved in a next level magic fight, this one stemming from the city of Nym. Nym is a floating city and is basically hovering in ruins now, with any surviving residents having been transformed into tonberries. Tonberries are little green creatures that like to stab people.

Astrologian: A fortuneteller take on magic that combines tarot cards, astrology, and crystal balls. The idea here is that Astrologians are messing with fate and time in order to heal you, sort of undoing damage. Snazzy dressers, intimidating moveset.

Dragoon: Jumpy people with spears who struggle to live down their legacy of animation lag-related deaths, my understanding is that today’s Dragoons do solid damage and are decent at survival. Their reputation, however, is that if someone is going to die in a fight it’s probably them. They are very broody and like to hang out in high places with capes billowing in the wind. They also wear spiky armor and fight dragons and have the soul of a dragon. People make jokes at their expense a lot but with affection.

Monk: You punch people to death and get gauntlets of varying levels of sharp. You also get to master chakras and go through forms associated with different animals. In a series like Final Fantasy where people carry swords bigger than they are, you’re the job that said lol who needs that and made your body the weapon.

Ninja: Very very sneaky, used to be sort of a state-sanctioned criminal. If anybody is a spy it’s you. You are very fast and can basically turn invisible and sometimes smoke bombs go off. Mudras are used and I don’t understand.

Samurai: Deal a solid amount of damage and are very flashy and cool, probably one of the highest damage outputs for Melee DPS. Very neat and fancy katanas.

Bard: Draws a connection between the strings of a harp and the strings of a bow, is able to both shoot the crap out of enemies, make enemies more vulnerable with some songs, and make allies more powerful with other songs. I think Bards are very pretty and fancy.

Machinist: These are tech nerds who realized that guns are an option. So are flamethrowers. So are robots. This job has a reputation for being ungodly complicated to play but this has apparently been rectified recently.

Dancer: Similar to Bard in that they do a lot to boost allies in a fight, do lower damage as a result but damn do they boost their allies. Also have ridiculously swanky outfits and are super flashy in fights.

Black Mage: The edgy magic users, they are disciples of Eorzea’s death god and all of their magic ties into destruction. If you wanna make the biggest explosions Black Mage is where you go. Magic ties to fire, ice, and electricity but primarily puts focus on the shift between fire and ice. Black Mages also have a reputation for being involved in demon summoning because they were kind of the assholes in that magic war against White Mages and Scholars. Black Magic as a discipline has ancestry in Mhach, which is of course now crawling with demons. Black Mage is the DPS king in the sense that if you want the biggest numbers of damage dealt, this is where you go. They are however tragically slow and squishy so expect the Black Mage to be somewhere between standing right where an attack will land or dodging frantically between spells.

Summoner: Has the ability to summon small familiars in the form of defeated primals, these being namely Ifrit (fire-based), Titan (earth-based), Garuda (air-based), Bahamut, and Phoenix. Apparently their questline is covered in Ascians too. One of two DPS capable of raising fallen allies.

Red Mage: Very fancy, fast-moving swordsmen covered in ruffles. The founders of Red Magic were Black and White Mages who came together in the wake of that magic war mentioned above. They essentially work to balance Black Magic and White Magic alongside physical attacks. They don’t get the numbers of some DPS but are again extremely fast and are also capable of raising allies. Versatile.

The limited job is called Blue Mage, currently being lamented because it’s unable to fight in dungeons or main quest situations to the extent of other jobs. Blue Mage gets abilities by fighting monsters and learning magical abilities from them. They use a cane and are massive dandies who will hopefully get the opportunity to do more in the future.

If you want to actually make in-game money without blood sacrifice, you want to get involved in a Crafter or Gatherer job. These don’t deal with combat but instead let you acquire, develop, and sell in-demand resources to other players.

Gatherer jobs include Fishers, Botanists, and Miners. Crafter jobs include Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Armorers, Goldsmiths, Leatherworkers, Weavers, Alchemists, and Culinarians. I am not good at these and so can’t explain them properly, but some people do play the game exclusively so they can level these jobs. I think that besides getting mad cash, this is probably because Crafters and Gatherers also get to make really fancy houses and get very pretty clothes with their vast amounts of wealth, skill, and resources.

THE SETTING

There are three city states that, at the start of A Realm Reborn, comprise the Eorzean Alliance. Your character becomes a hero to the Eorzean Alliance before any other nation. The three nations are Ul’dah, Gridania, and Limsa Lominsa. Ul’dah is a desert city (someone mentioned it being Byzantine), ruled by a Sultana, and watched over by the dual-aspected god of death and commerce. Gridania is a forest city (to me it looks Western European but unsure?), ruled by a spiritual Elder Seedseer, and is watched over by the nature goddess Nophica--her will embodied in the form of spirits called Elementals. Limsa Lominsa is an ocean city (Greek influenced, although some territories read Caribbean), ruled over by an Admiral, and is watched over by a sea-goddess.

Ul’dah is a major trade center and known for having a solid amount of crime and corruption, harsh wealth divides, huge reverence for the dead, and general canniness. Gridania is super spiritual and has massive reverence for the forest and maintaining both it and the boundaries necessary to co-exist peacefully with Elementals. Limsa Lominsa is literally pirate town and have the most kickass military/naval fleet ever.

Depending on what job you choose in the character creator will effect which of these three cities you start out in. It’s ambiguous where the Warrior of Light comes from so conceivably you could be a native to that city state or a foreigner from somewhere else. It mainly matters in terms of if you’re making a story up for your character or not.

Another city state is Ishgard (technically Eorzean but isolationist), which has parallels to Norse mythology, France, and the Catholic church. It is covered in snow and full of mountains. Ala Mhigo is also a city state, and while like Ul’dah it is also a desert environment this one seems to place higher emphasis on different regions within the Middle East and India. One part looks strongly reminiscent of the Dead Sea, for example. Idyllshire was formerly a territory of the nation Sharlayan, which dedicates itself to the scholar-god. However, Sharlayan up and bailed when Garlemald showed up so that whole city got evacuated.

Those city states are all based on the continent Aldenard. Garlemald comes from a continent called Ilsabard that we haven’t gotten to see yet. It’s supposed to be cold and shitty there. Also worth mentioning, Garleans are on the one hand atheists and on the other hand borderline worship their emperor.

Othard is the Far Eastern continent and represents Asia. The two main city states we’ve seen there are Kugane (Japan) and Doma (China). There are other nations in the surrounding areas that we know about as well but haven’t explored. Both Kugane and Doma worship entities known as kami, omnipresent spirits who appreciate treasure and sometimes play a role in manipulating the fates of mortals. There are also animal spirits who through wisdom and longevity gain power and the ability to change form. These are called auspices. Special shout out to the Azim Steppe of Othard as well for representing Mongolian tribes and a plains environment.

There at least two other continents around but we don’t know a lot about them yet. One is The New World and draws from pre-Columbian North America. The other once housed a nation called Meracydia that opposed the ancient Allagan empire.

Shadowbringers takes place on a world called The First, which is one of the fragmented realities split by Hydaelyn. This world is called Norvrandt. It parallels Hydaelyn in some ways but not others. The desert environment of Ahm Areng geographically resembles the red deserts of the Southwestern US, but the architecture doesn’t match. The Rak’tika Greatwood is an A+ perfect jungle setting and heavily modeled after Mayan civilization. Eulmore kind of reminds me of the idea of pre-French Revolution excesses surrounded by poverty but with almost neon circus aesthetics married in. Il Mheg is rainbow fields and glassy lakes and fae creatures fucking with you 24/7. Very pretty and art nouveau.

The Tempest is full of secrets.

THE COMMUNITY

People focus on different things in this game. It’s huge enough to make that extremely doable.

One group involves the combat-focused players. These are people who just want to take on content labeled Extreme or Savage and beat it as smoothly as possible. Very talented bunch but tend to be short tempered sometimes, also often can’t wrap their heads around people playing any other way.

Glamour hounds are people who are in this for the A E S T H E T I C S. They want their characters to look a very specific way with certain gear in certain colors and god damn it if they have to run savage to achieve their goals they are going to do it. Often also are very into exciting mounts and housing, will frequently do artsy screencaps and share them online.

Lore hounds are people who focus mainly on the main quest scenario, overall storytelling, NPCs, setting, metaphysics, etc. Some of these people just want to analyze and make predictions. Some are independent fan creators. Some are roleplayers.

Worth noting--the most active roleplay communities are on the Crystal server, on the worlds Balmung and Mateus. My understanding is that these worlds are pretty packed and come with their own collection of pluses and minuses. More drama and a high likelihood of being ambushed for erotic RP, but fun community storytelling too. You can absolutely join servers outside your geographic location, by the way.

I’m on Primal server. It’s pretty chill.

Crafters, gatherers, and gamblers as far as I can tell are out to get top tier gil and fabulous prizes. I think some just honestly like the process too tbh and it happens to pay swimmingly. By the by, yes there is an in-game casino.

Last major group off the top of my head is the people who are mainly, specifically there to hang with friends and otherwise socialize with the game as a medium for that.

OKAY BUT I FOLLOW YOU SPECIFICALLY, WHO THE HELL ARE THOSE CHARACTERS YOU KEEP REBLOGGING?

EMET-SELCH

He is an Ascian who showed up fashionably late, would rather be napping than villaining around. Massive troll and also responsible for single-handedly making the fandom care about Ascians after four arcs of apathy. Secret sad boi. I am omitting a bunch because he’s basically a walking spoiler, but someone once described him as having absolutely relentless theater kid energy and I have yet to see it put better than that.

ELIDIBUS

Another Ascian known as the Emissary. Talks more about balance than ZODIARK!!!??!!!?11111!! and sometimes tries to have conversations instead of fistfights. Is not as good at having conversations instead of fistfights as Emet-Selch but is significantly better at it than Lahabrea, who will be described next. Elidibus is notable for spontaneously adopting a child and then passing that child off to the heroes as discreetly as he could.

LAHABREA

The third major Ascian and the first recurring one players meet in A Realm Reborn. Lahabrea seems like he is probably a few screws loose, fucking loves to blow shit up, embarrasses all of the interns who get stuck with him, and spent years in charge of PR before his colleagues realized that was a mistake. Makes very poor life choices. Apparently he used to be a fantastic orator and was praised for his imagination but these talents have since been replaced by ZODIARK!!!??!!!?11111!! and explosions. Has been described as an idiot by Emet-Selch and “unique” by Elidibus, who needed to take a very long pause before saying so.

G’RAHA TIA/THE CRYSTAL EXARCH

Honestly this is only pseudo spoilers, basically everyone figured out who he was well before Shadowbringers got released. Catman is currently doing battle with another character called Haurchefant for the position of #1 fan to the Warrior of Light. Has some wild misadventures with you that involve exploring ancient ruins, excessively long fetch quests, clones, and getting sucked into a demon world. Later runs across time and space to save your life but kind of almost gets you killed in the attempt. Says he is very sorry for this later. Just doing his best.

NERO TOL SCAEVA

A scientist who fights with a massive hammer, formerly worked for Garlemald but finds himself unemployed later. Is better than the engineer Cid, who gives you all your tech. He is also a troll, an egomaniac, and fucking hilarious. It takes a while for the extent of this to be revealed because A Realm Reborn still had some issues.

AYMERIC DE BOREL

Basically in charge of Ishgard, for a while literally but now only mostly. A very reasonable authority figure, runs the the Warrior of Light across several countries when you get injured in battle then chills at your bedside. Thinks you should relax sometimes. Encourages this by taking you to dinner once.

ESTINIEN WYRMBLOOD

Broody Dragoon McAngst of Ishgard, fucking hated dragons for the longest time because they murdered his whole family. Goes on an extended journey with you and in the process reveals he also hates moogles with a burning passion. Chills out a lot later, has demonstrated he is in fact a real bro.

YSAYLE DANGOULAIN/ICEHEART/LADY SHIVA

Delusions of grandeur and good intentions, also chosen by Hydaelyn and possessing The Echo. Figured out she could use her possession of The Echo to literally become a primal without losing her mind or body. Wants peace at any cost and will kill shitloads of people in the name of peace. Morally questionable but an interesting lady. Disagrees strongly with Estinien about moogles.

HAURCHEFANT GREYSTONE

Name sounds like a sneeze, is currently fighting G’raha Tia for the title of #1 fan to the Warrior of Light. Apparently there was an event where he said he wants the Warrior of Light to be his pony, as in he wants to ride you. Has shirtless men doing squats in his office. Saves your ass when shit gets real for Heavensward and then saves your ass again when the Pope’s bodyguard tries to murder you. It does not go well.

ZENOS YAE GALVUS

Absolute serial killer who feels like you complete him and give his life meaning and are his BFF. Probably wants you to fuck him. Also the crown prince of Garlemald and has spent years trying to engineer situations that will produce someone who can actually fight him as an equal. Doesn’t give a fuck about most things but jesus does he go yandere.

FRAY

If you become a Dark Knight, Fray becomes your NPC mentor and basically takes the Warrior of Light on a journey in becoming batshit insane. 10/10 Best teacher hands down.

SOPHIA THE GODDESS

A primal who I love to pieces, basically shows that the only way you can have perfect balance forever is if you are literally dead. We know this because the song that plays during her fight is about her murdering an entire family because they were unstable.

SRI LAKSHMI

Another primal who I love to pieces, just full throttle lotus eater in action where she encourages you to go fuck everything and be happy. Super pretty.

SEPHIROT THE FIEND

One of my top fav primals, pure id and distorted Kabbalah. I have a lot of feelings about him and have analyzed his fight to pieces.

CENRIC ASHER

Lol he just my Warrior of Light. I have a story for him but it is not official or anything.

THE FIVE BILLION OTHERS

Probably other people’s characters! I just really love seeing what people come up with, whether it’s their version of the Warrior of Light or going full-throttle into OC territory. It’s really refreshing to me, seeing how passionate and inventive people get. ^^ There are plenty of other important NPC characters, some I would even consider favorites of mine, but I just don’t post them as much.

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR JESUS CHRIST GET YOURSELF A COOKIE OR SOMETHING. GOD DAMN.

[calliopesquill]

A Year in the Life: Chapter 21

As promised, another chapter!

I've been waiting SO LONG to be able to post this one. I swear I wrote half of it back in July, but I kept figuring out new plot stuff so I had to push it back.

I hope you like it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 21: What’s in a Name?

         “Well, isn’t this a surprise,” Lina drawled. “Look what the alebrije dragged in. What are you doing here?”

         Nell hesitated at the door. Lina was known for her acerbic personality but that delivery was much sharper than her usual repartee. “I thought I’d come by for a visit, but if you’re busy --”

         “Not particularly,” Lina said with a careless shrug, turning another page of the manuscript that she was reading. “Been a few days.”

         “It’s been… a little crazy lately.”

         “Figured now you know you’re not about to become a permanent resident you’d have better things to do than hang out in a dusty old catacomb.”

         “I happen to like dusty old catacombs,” Nell retorted. “And you’re the one who told me to do some ‘living’.”

         Yeah, to give her the excuse to leave if she wanted to. She shouldn’t have been surprised that she did. “So that’s what you’ve been doing, is it? Living it up in the Land of the Dead?”

         “Jeez, what crawled up your ass today? Yeah, it’s been a real damn party. De la Cruz was arrested last week and it’s been a constant stream of lawyers and preliminary hearing insanity and dodging reporters every-damn-where. Which has been oh, so much fun. Oh, and then Dante shows up yesterday and it turns out alebrije can carry things back and forth across the bridge, and he shows up with a letter from Miguel and the whole family about loses their minds -- “

         “Huh. Impressive. I mean I knew that, but how did the kid figure it out?”

         “ -- so you can see how it might have -- “ Nell trailed off. “Wait, what do you mean ‘you knew’?”

         “Five hundred years old, remember?” Lina said with a small smirk. “Not a lot I haven’t seen or at least heard about.”

         “Oh, well, forgive me for stating the obvious, O Great and Knowledgeable One,” Nell said with a sarcastic bow. “So why isn’t this common knowledge?”

         Lina sighed, putting down her book and giving up any pretense that she was still reading. “There’s an order to the universe, Nell. The Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead must remain separate. The other afterlives have no way to cross between worlds, so why should ours have that privilege?”

         She had a point. “Not to mention, not everyone has their own alebrije.”

         “Exactly. And those who do should not treat them like interdimensional mail carriers.”

         “Have people actually done that?”

         Lina nodded. “One of the reasons we don’t let word get out, if at all possible.”

         “We haven’t told anyone,” Nell reassured her quickly, before Lina could ask. “Figured if people didn’t know after this many centuries, there was probably a good reason.”

         Well, there was that at least. The archivist retreated back into the shelves to return the manuscript she had been reading to its proper home. After a moment she spoke again, her voice barely audible even in the silence of the stacks. “I wasn’t sure you’d be coming back here again.”

         “I wasn’t sure you wanted me too.”

         “If i didn’t, you’d know. Trust me.”

         “Well you haven’t throw me off a pyramid yet,” Nell shrugged. “Though really. I should point out that I have both jumped and fallen off the edge of the world, so that threat doesn’t really scare me like it probably should. But I wondered if it wasn’t….. Like, some kind of professional obligation.”

         Lina looked startled. “You actually thought that?”

         “Well… Most of the time, no. But...sometimes…” Nell glanced away, rolling the hem of her dress nervously between her fingers. “Sorry, I know that’s dumb. I was in a not great headspace before, and Victoria called me out on it. So I know it’s dumb. But -- “

         “Damn straight, it’s dumb.” Lina said sharply. “You know, for a smart girl, you can be really stupid sometimes.”

         “Hey,” Nell laughed. “I resemble that remark.”

         “Get this through your head: if I didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t have lasted the first hour. Professional obligation be damned. Claro?”

         “Si, claro.”

         “Now, catch me up. I’ve been reshelving all of the documents that my assistants have misshelved. Tell me what happened with De la Cruz.”

         As Nell filled her in on the events of the hearing, Lina seemed annoyed but not entirely surprised. From what she’d learned from Nell, De la Cruz was a real piece of work. Of course he would attempt something like this. Twist it around so it looked like he was the injured party. And wanting to have Nell submit to a psych evaluation… Well she could understand her friend’s outrage.

         “ -- and after all that he did to Hector, that slime-licking, coal-hearted toolbag has the gall to try this bullshit!” She growled. “I wish Buttons had tossed him off the cliff instead of just into the pyramid.”

         “I think there is a precedent for that,” Lina told her. “I could probably find it in here, somewhere.”

         “Seriously? Damn, what did they do?”

         “Any number of things,” Lina told her with a shrug. “Mostly it was before I got here. Capital punishment was a pretty common thing back then, but what happens when you commit a serious crime after you’re already dead? You can’t die again, and they can’t force the living to forget you.”

         “So they actually did throw people off of the edge of the world.” Nell let out a low whistle. She was half-joking when she said Buttons should have tossed De la Cruz over the edge. Well… maybe a quarter joking. It was shocking to believe that once upon a time that was something people actually did.

         “Yeah.” She’d been lucky to avoid that fate herself. “Be interesting to see how they rule here, especially with you involved. Your case sets a precedent.”

         “Woo, lucky me.” Nell sighed.

         “Be a little complicated for them to rule on too,” Lina continued. “The act of taking the kid across the bridge could be read as attempted murder, never mind tossing him off the edge of the world. You followed of your own volition and ended up stuck here, but that never would have happened if De la Cruz hadn’t snatched the kid to begin with.”

         “That’s what the Rivera’s lawyer said,” she agreed. “I swear this is going to be a war fought on a battleground of technicalities. This whole court thing has barely started and I already wish it was over.” She wished her mother was here, not just for the comfort of having someone familiar around, but it would have been truly satisfying to set her loose on De la Cruz in the courtroom.

         “I think you’ve just described every celebrity court case ever,” Lina said, shaking her head. “Thank Tezcatlipoca that reality tv hasn’t become a big thing down here yet, or that courtroom would be crawling with cameras.”

         “The building is already crawling with reporters. I swear I saw one of them hauling around one of those daguerreotype setups. I’d hope they wouldn’t have the poor taste to actually broadcast a murder trial. Though they could do a pretty sweet version of Dancing With the Stars down here.” Nell was not a big fan of reality tv as a whole, but she was a sucker for a good dance competition show.

         “Dancing -- what?”

         “Tossing a bunch of celebrities into a ballroom dancing competition,” Nell explained. “Some of them turn out to be surprisingly good. Others are as hilariously bad as you would expect them to be.”

         “That sounds… really weird,” Lina laughed. “This is what modern people do for fun? Just watch each other do dumb things?”

         “There’s an entire subcategory of independent media dedicated to it. And like you guys didn’t do weird things for entertainment in your day,” Nell shot back with a laugh. “I realize you’re older than dirt, but entertainment hasn’t changed that much. Half of modern mainstream entertainment still consists of a bunch of men running around, trying to hit a ball into some kind of hoop or hole or net. Personally I’d rather watch a well-written fantasy adventure drama, but sadly those are in short supply.”

         “Aren’t you living a fantasy adventure drama?”

         “Yes, yes I am,” she grinned. “All I need is a sappy romantic subplot and I’m my own new favourite tv show. Oh wait. Do Hector and Imelda count?”

         “Hector and Imelda are the romantic subplot of your fantasy adventure life?”

         Nell shrugged. “We agreed I was living in a fantasy adventure drama. We never said I was the main character. Not for this arc, anyway.”

         “That’s dumb. I mean of all of the people involved in this mess, it’s your story that most closely mirrors the Hero’s Journey archetype. So if you aren’t the main character, who is?” Lina wondered, giving the girl’s head a flick in warning. “Idiot. Now you have me thinking in narrative structure. I’m never going to get these all filed now.”

         “Well if you need some help, I volunteer,” Nell offered. “Even if you just direct me where to go, it will be faster than doing it all yourself.”

         The archivist frowned. “Shouldn’t you be working or something?”

         “I’ve been at the studio for most of the day. If I paint any more my hand might just fall off.”

         Now that she mentioned it, Lina could see a few paint splatters on the girl’s hands and the front of her dress. “You sure?”

         “Sure! And after we’re done, maybe we can hang out for a bit. Drop by the house. We can compare book recommendations with Victoria.”

         Lina looked at her suspiciously. “Is this your way of trying to start a book club or something?”

         “No,” Nell laughed. “But that would be pretty cool. I mean if you already have plans for tonight we could do it another time -- “

         “It’s fine,” Lina said cutting her off. “There’s nothing going on tonight.”

         “Cool!” Nell grinned. “Alright, then! Let’s get started!”

         They finished the filing in record time, righting all of the errors that had been made by the junior archivists, and discovering a few new ones along the way. At Nell’s suggestion, Lina pulled a couple of volumes from the personal collection she kept in her office to show to Victoria.

         As they made their way up the stone steps to the lobby they passed one of Lina’s assistants, a woman of approximate middle-age dressed like she’d just walked off the set of Mad Men. “Lina! Glad I caught you. I finished those requisitions and delivered the volumes to the Transportation Department. Is there anything else on the to-do list for tonight? If not, do you mind if I step out early?”

         “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow,” Lina answered. “You go ahead.”

         “Great!” The woman smiled. “I’m meeting some friends tonight and I wanted to take a few minutes to get ready. You can, ah… join us, if you’d like?”

         “Thanks, but I’m heading out with friends too,” Lina said, unable to help her smirk at the startled expression on her assistant’s face. “See you tomorrow, Tessa.”

         “Ah...right. Ahí nos vidrios.”

         Nell waited until they had reached the top of the stairway to comment. “Geez, you could almost see the question marks floating above her head. It’s like she thinks you live in your office.”

         “I do, sometimes,” Lina admitted. “When it’s busy.” Or when she didn’t want to go home.

         “Yeah, but even introverts go out sometimes,” Nell said, shaking her head as they crossed through the lobby and out into the plaza. Unless… there was another reason she didn’t want to go out. “Does the name ‘Malinalli’ mean anything to you?” Nell asked suddenly.

         A slight stumble beside her was the only indication that she had caught her friend off-guard.

         “I haven’t heard that name in a long time,” Lina answered, her voice deliberately calm as she kept her gaze trained in front of them. “I don’t think there’s a single spirit down here who isn’t familiar with La Malinche.”

         “That’s not what I asked.”

         “They say she was a traitor.”

         “People say a lot of things,” Nell replied evenly. “It doesn’t mean they’re true. I’d like to see what they’d have done in her position.”

         Malinalli had been born the eldest child of the chieftain of Painala. After her father’s death, her mother remarried and Malinalli was sold, first to a family in Xicalango, and then to another family in Tabasco. When the conquistadors took the city, Malinalli was one of a group of twenty women that were presented in tribute. It was her intelligence and her knowledge of languages that saved her, and when the officer that she had been given to returned to Spain, she found herself under the dominion of Cortés himself. She acted as his interpreter, and was instrumental in Cortés’ dealings with the local tribal leaders, brokering agreements between the Spanish and the indigenous tribes that lead to the eventual conquest of the Aztec Empire.

         Her reputation in the modern day was mixed at best. Some saw her as the mother of Mexico. Others still viewed her as the greatest traitor the country had ever known.

         Nell had never agreed with that. “I think she was incredibly brave.”

         Lina shook her head, hands jammed uncomfortably in her pockets. “It wasn’t bravery.” For a moment she remained silent, then after another soft sigh, she spoke again. “How long have you known?”

         “A few days,” Nell shrugged. “I wasn’t totally sure, but I suspected. A female spirit who would still be remembered after five centuries, who speaks multiple languages, worked as a translator, and is on poor terms with her contemporaries. Who else could you be?”

         Lina wasn’t sure whether to applaud or cringe. “So...what now?”

         “What do you mean?”

         “Do your friends know?”

         “I don’t know why they would,” Nell replied. “Unless they worked it out on their own. They haven’t said anything about it.”

         That seemed to surprise her. “You haven’t told them.”

         “Why would I? The only reason I brought it up at all was to let you know that I know. And it’s not something we ever have to talk about again if you don’t want to. But if you ever do want to talk… Well, I’m here.”

         Lina gave her a strange, measuring look. “Why?”

         Nell faltered, rolling the hem of her dress uncertainly between her fingers. “We’re friends, right?” At least...she thought they were. “You were there for me when I needed someone. I just wanted to let you know that if you need someone, I’ll be here for you.”

         “ … thank you,” Lina said softly. It was a strange feeling, knowing that there was someone who knew who she really was. Somehow freeing and terrifying at the same time. On the one hand she didn’t have to worry about getting too comfortable and letting something incriminating slip because Nell already knew who she was. But the more she told Nell about her past, the more Nell could use to bury her. Not that she thought the girl would betray her, but it had happened before. She had been Lina Chavez for over a century. She didn’t want to have to start over again.

         The concourse was much busier at this time of day than it was when Lina usually left. Most of the time she didn’t head out until well after the sun went down, so the foot traffic was at a minimum. Her own home was only about a twenty minute walk away, a cozy Victorian-era apartment in a nearby tower. The Rivera home was somewhat farther away, so they would be taking the trolley. It was not Lina’s preferred mode of transportation. There were too many people, too close together. And there was always some idiot who insisted on trying to bounce the thing at some point during the ride.

         But as they made their way over the bridge towards the station, something large swooped down on them from above, colliding with Nell and sending her and Lina crashing into the railing, snatching the scarf right off Nell’s head.

         Nell let out a curse, taking off running after her misbehaving alebrije. “Damn it, Lady! Come back here!”

         But Lady ignored her completely, soaring on ahead with the scarf trailing almost tauntingly behind her. The crow led her charge on a merry chase through the streets, staying just out of her reach. For blocks Nell was barely able to keep pace with her, dodging and weaving between the skeletal spirits who got in her way. As Lady banked and turned into a large plaza, Nell took her chance, putting on a final burst of speed. She just managed to catch the trailing end of the scarf when her foot caught an uneven cobblestone, sending her sprawling forward to crash into another spirit, knocking them to the ground.

         “Crap! Sorry! I’m sorry.” Nell stammered, pushing herself off of them, cringing at the sight of scattered bones around her.

         “Oye, qué diablos!” They cursed as their body began to reassemble itself. They reached for the arm that had been knocked free, reattaching it before retrieving their head. “ ¡Mira hacia donde vas!”

         “Sorry,” Nell said again, glaring in irritation at Lady, who had swooped down to land on the cobblestones next to her and was innocently preening her feathers. “What the hell, Lady?”

         “Is that your alebrije? You really need to train her better.”

         “I’m kind of new to this alebrije thing. I've only been here a few weeks. She’s usually much better behaved than this, so I don’t know what came over her.” Nell pushed herself to her feet, then offered her hand. “Here, let me help you up. Are you hurt?”

         “I’m fine,” the spirit said, shooting an annoyed glare up at Nell as she adjusted her head with one yellowed hand. “Look, I know it’s tough when you’re new but -- “ She trailed off, looking stunned.

         “No excuse for bad manners,” Nell finished, shooting a pointed look at her alebrije as she took the girl’s free hand and pulled her to her feet. “Isn’t that right, Lady?”

         Lady let out a squawk that sounded suspiciously like laughter, giving a little skip on the stones before nudging her head affectionately against Nell’s knees.

         “Yes, I forgive you,” Nell laughed, pulling the scarf back over her head. “But you have to say 'sorry' to her too.”

         Lady squawked again, turning towards the woman that her charge had bowled over and giving a small head bob.

         Nell shook her head, picking up her alebrije and settling the bird on her shoulder. “Come on, you. Let’s go find Lina. And no more shenanigans, okay?” As Lady made a sound that might have been agreement, Nell turned back to the girl with a sheepish smile. “Sorry again.” And with a brief wave, disappeared into the crowd.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And there it is! We have finally learned the secret of Lina's identity. How many of you guessed it? I know one of you did. And well done!

I'm not sure when I will have the next chapter up but I will do my best to not keep you waiting too long.

Thanks for reading!

[loopy777]

I’ve been meaning to circle back to his, as I finished Rhythms of War a little while ago.

As you said in your later note, Kaladin’s was indeed the best major subplot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a story have a main hero character retire during the war or before the Big Bad is defeated due to PTSD. It proved to be a great opportunity as it doesn’t just deal with the treatment of veterans and mental health; it looks at how someone with PTSD deals with still being in the middle of a war. The occupation of the tower also made for a relatively unique dynamic, with Kaladin just playing from time in a losing battle rather than doing a full liberation storyline. And it includes lots of good character work from Sanderson with the supporting characters, especially Teft, and even Moash was a good thematic contrast.

It’s also interesting how Sanderson has teased the idea of Kaladin having a romance throughout the four books, but even his brief relationships happen mostly off-screen. I wonder if Sanderson will really having Kaladin remain alone by the end of the series, or will eventually find a love interest for him. I’m half-expecting Syl to end up as his big romance, but I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I enjoyed getting to see more of Navani’s POV. I don’t know if Sanderson employed a sensitivity reader for science/engineering matters, but I didn’t cringe at any of that stuff in this book, and that’s really unusual when the author doesn’t list a Phd in their bio. XD

I was surprised at how little Dalinar there was, but I guess that makes sense, as he’s largely finished with his character growth. He’s clearly going to be central to the plot as this phase of the books comes to a close, as he had some clear setup to get through here, but I think his character arc is probably done.

I liked Adolin’s storyline, but it was very poorly paced. The time covered by this book was much shorter than the others, so Adolin disappearing for a whole Act wasn’t too egregious, but it felt silly justifying it with, “He had to take 2 weeks to learn how courts and trials work here,” only to have him use a shortcut that turned the trial into a fairly juvenile debate club. Either there should have been more to what he and Shallen were doing, or it shouldn’t have been stretched.

Speaking of Shallen, I kind of struggled with her storyline here. She almost felt more like a mystery than a character in this book, and the big conflict being from her own stubbornness and denial didn’t endear her to me this time around. I wonder if, like Dalinar, this book was more about setup for her, only in this case for her character arc rather than the overall plot.

What really wowed me with this book, though, was Taravangian‘s minor subplot that explodes into being super-important at the book’s end. I’ve been enjoying the stuff with him for the whole series; the concept for him is interesting and there’s a real dark humor to a lot of his stuff in the previous books. So it was very cool seeing all that pay off in such a big way and SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS turn him into the new big bad over the comparatively boring Odium.

So those are my thoughts. More specific questions are welcome.

by the way, i wanted to ask if you've read Rhytms of War yet?

Almost! I'm currently in the process of rereading the prior books in preparation, since I've only read them once and it's been a while. But I've acquired both Rhythms and Dawnshard, so it's just a matter of time.

As with the superhero movies I'm behind on, I'll reblog this with my general thoughts when I finish it. Or you could send some specific questions that I'll save.