#pt. 1 for main goal / overarching structure

[youryesman]

My Veilguard Rewrite Pt. 2

[ Factions and city plotlines ] This one is the most "random complaints" post out of my rewrites, but it was edited at least. tldr where Darkspawn companion, where spirit companion, where tranquil companion...

So first, enough of the random ass choice of Venatori/Antaam teamwork that makes no goddamn sense- You can just have Tevinter have its first successful slave revolt with a sudden wave of elves gaining magical skill. Then have Venatori defectors that leak intelligence to the Qunari which enables them to have a successful invasion of Tevinter. (Much more reasonable instance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” in comparison to just doing it for no fucking reason and having the Venatori and Antaam send each other reassuring “no trust me bro the offshores will get let go next quarter” texts). Qunari, if they're becoming a conquering presence, should do so in Tevinter, save Antiva for more geographically and culturally relevant stories. If Antiva’s thing is the Crows, make it about the Free Marches collective straining under the weight of Starkhaven and Kirkwalls' beef, and refugees from the shitshow in Kirkwall experiencing the lingering consequences of the Red Lyrium gas leak. How about a shit ton of mages unjustly made tranquil in Kirkwall abruptly regain their consciousness with the Veil breaking? Lucanis’ selling point in terms of practicality should 100% be that he is part spirit and can thus traverse the fade more smoothly than the average person, but instead he’s just a normal assassin with a dumb meme that “XD eats candels le so random!!!” strapped to his consciousness. And fine whatever bring back Meredith like you foreshadowed in Absolution, cowards.

Nevarra’s plot just being one crazy ass woman with a stupid Pixar villain ahhh plan was fucking torture to experience when I’m playing a game where death could hypothetically be erased. Make this plot about spiritual personhood, what they think about Nevarra’s practices. Do they find it acceptable? Could it be an example of compromise between mortals and spirits should the veil go back up? What does a darkspawn think of this? What does someone like Cole think of this? Veilguard ask even one interesting question challenge impossible edition.

If Rivain’s thing is going to be Lords of Fortune, I think they should connect it to a sudden rush of dwarves evacuating to the surface (aha! Artbook reference) and the Lyrium trade (one of the most lucrative financial exchanges in Thedas). There can be a very opportunistic group of fortune hunters who risk contact with the Titans hoping to extract huge amounts of lyrium. Expose some religious history with the use of lyrium. Have a faction of dwarves reject the mass use of lyrium when they learn it’s what their people are made from. Have them realize it’s ridiculous they haven’t taken over the world, as they have this extremely powerful substance that only they are immune to, and they’re taking this chance to do it. Idk get creative. Grey Wardens- I think the darkspawn should be uniquely humanized like in Awakening. This would be an excellent opportunity to bring about conscious / speaking darkspawn and a Darkspawn companion which forces Davrin especially to confront his idea of what counts as a person, and what's worth killing for the sake of "saving" the world you know. (If he gets the opportunity that is, the Darkspawn could prove persuasive and Rook might choose to help the efforts of this newly blossoming people, causing this flank of Grey Wardens to fall). Veiljumpers is cool (besides the psuedo-scifi aesthetic) but could they just be a real collective of dalish clans? LOL. Have them be a minority against a larger grouping of dalish clans that believe this is genuinely the coming of their gods that they've anticipated for centuries. I get that the optics of fighting a bunch of indigenous people isn't great but you cracked that can open as soon as you decided "Ohohoho this oppressed peoples' gods were actually slave owners surprise!" so just fucking commit to telling the story meaningfully, and give the player opportunities to have real conversations with the people they encounter about it. Add persuasion checks like there were for mages in DA2, where Bellara, Merrill, or a Dalish Rook could add legitimacy. Pt. 1 for overarching structure and main goal Pt. 3 for rewritten cameos/previous game tie ins Pt. 4 for endings

[littleeyesofpallas]

Revolutionary Girl Utena - Name Games (pt.1/?)

I’ve gone on about a bunch of Bleach characters and how Kubo Tite is a big wordplay nerd who likes to find names that really suit his characters.  It’s fun because his word choices are a little more obtuse or carry certain double meanings than most of his contemporaries working in shounen manga.  But if there’s anyone who’s done a similarly great job with really loading up their character names with implicit, character defining imagery, it’s Kunihiko Ikuhara, creator of Sarazanmai, Yurikuma Arashi, Mawaru Penguindrum, and of course Revolutionary Girl Utena.

So, starting at the top...

[天上]Tenjou [ウテナ]Utena 

 ...is our main character.  Her surname, [天上]Tenjou is written with the kanji for [天]“Sky”/“Heaven” and [上]“Up,” which together just kind of reiterate the point in order to mean [天上] “The Heavens” or to be super literal “Heaven Above.”

The name [ウテナ] Utena is written in Katakana* but is clearly meant to evoke the word [台]Utena, meaning either “Tower,” “Stand”/“Pedestal,” or “Calyx.”  This is important because these all describe a core idea but under different contexts.  A tower and a pedestal both serve the same purpose, to allow a thing to be elevated upward, but on different scales: one elevating a whole person upward above other people or buildings, and the other elevating an object upward to a person’s reach from the floor.  A Calyx is the part of a flower where the stem ends and a flower bud begins, it is again a structure the elevates an object upwards, and like a pedestal does so presentationally.  So, Tenjou Utena’s name means very literally...

“Tower to Heaven”/“That Which Elevates Up to Heaven.” 

*if you’re not familiar, Japanese is one unified spoken language, but it has different written forms.  Kanji are the ideographic characters borrowed from Chinese, and each conveys in and of itself meaning as a word, and often more than one meaning and with distinct pronunciations for each.  But Katakana and Hiragana(collectively just called Kana) are syllabic and phonetic, meaning each character only denotes sound, but not meaning.

I guess I should point out that I’m not going to let this slip into being a full blown Utena series analysis because that’s more than I’m ready to buckle in for right now, and I’m sure you all don’t want to sit down to a whole dissertation.  But I’ll try to cover some of the specific meaning besides literal translations as well...

In this case meaning that Utena’s name referencing a flower calyx is of course a direct play into the whole show’s giant overarching use of the rose as a symbol.  as The Calyx, she is what uplifts and presents The Rose(Bride). 

The reference to “The Heavens” is also closely interrelated to the later story character Akio and a series of interrelated Judeo-Christian themes surrounding him.  There is also the more overt fact that he, being the final boss, resides at the top of the observatory tower; a place he explicitly mentions is the highest place on the school campus.  “The Heavens” as a theme are also represented in the reverse fairytale castle, which is a visual representation of the abstract goal for the duelists.

Also the over all reading of her name as “Tower to Heaven” may also be a direct reference to the Tower of Babel and the moral of that myth; that attempts to reach heaven, and to defy god, are to be met with wrathful punishment in the form of being unable to comprehend other people.  Comprehension in the context of Utena being a matter of interpersonal relationships, rather than language.

[姫宮]Himemiya [アンシー]Anthy

[姫宮] Himemiya does just literally read as “Princess” and moreover the indiviudal kanji are actually just two different words also each meaning “Princess.”  This kind of construction is actually pretty common in Japanese compound words; I think it’s a hold over from adapting the written language from Chinese.  Her name wouldn’t read “Princess Princess” just as “Princess” but with emphasis.

And supposedly the name [アンシー]Anthy is actually derived from the term Anthesis, derived from the Greek [ἄνθος] meaning “Flower,” and the suffix [ησις] indicating an event.  In botany an Anthesis is the period of time when a flower is in bloom; not the season for the flower as a species, but the day-to-day time at which an individual flower is actively open.  So, her name isn’t actually one that would have understood meaning even in Japanese beyond just the “Princess” part, but for what it’s worth her name does basically mean,

“Princess in Bloom“/“In Bloom Princess”

or 

“Princess of the Blossom time”

Ikuhara’s absolute peak sensibilities as far as building a nuanced language of interrelated symbols and icons are unmatched.  He’s a master of revisiting established themes from new angles, giving them genuine depth and complexity, and a master of pacing that actually builds an appropriate learning curve.  Some of his more recent series are a bit too short to really do his style justice, but Utena is a wonderful gradual escalation from a truly unassuming first story arc into a finale that operates almost entirely on the level of metaphor and nearly totally abandons the literal.

next post...

[elizzawrites]

Everything You Need to Know About The Paper World Society Pt.2

I made a post a while back called “Everything You Need to Know About The Paper World Society Pt.1” but it didn’t contain even close to everything you need to know, so here’s the sequel post. I can link the original later or you can find it on my page by searching #the paper world society. This post is going to cover all of the really complex world building so strap in, kiddos.

The Paper World Society

The Paper World Society is the main antagonist of the novel. It is a secret society made up of thousands of members across the globe and dating back to the late 18th century. No one knows exactly where the Society came from, but they have had the same goal since their founding: to restart the world.

In order to fulfill this goal, the Society is intent on either convincing Hikari Matsuda (the Ever Soul, the only person capable of restarting the world) to join them or taking her by force if necessary. While having immense power across the globe, few member are concerned about the Society’s power or influence. Instead they focus on the moral obligation they have to see the Society’s plans through till the end.

Hikari is not the only notable target of the Society. It’s members are generally willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, and that often means kidnapping people who have useful information or psychic abilities, as well as murdering people that get in the way. Blackmailing powerful people is another popular tactic for them.

The Society functions under a hierarchical structure with a single leader at the top (Laini Dawson), surrounded by her most trustworthy-- or most untrustworthy-- lieutenants. Other noteworthy past and present members include Maeve Gulema, Danilo Jimenez, Florence Dally, Allen Mehling, Phoebe and Alex Tomaras, Petra Mehling, Kayden Harris, and Julian Abate.

The group refers to themselves as the Paper World Society because of their overarching goal. They see it as their mission to remove or ‘unwrap’ all of the bad or corrupted parts of the world to see what is underneath.

The Adonis Network

A second secret society formed for the sole purpose of stopping the Paper World Society. It’s founders, Phoebe and Alex Tomaras, were former members of the Paper World Society who left when they became disillusioned by the Society’s violence.

The Network is based almost exclusively in Denver, Colorado and is rather small in size, especially in comparison to the Paper World Society. However, it’s members are extremely loyal and are much more likely to trust each other than the members of the Society.

Notable members include Phoebe Tomaras, Alex Tomaras, Rory Tomaras, Sage Cabrera, Rose Cabrera, Daniel Grey, and Yiu Jian.

Mutated/Blessed Souls

Mutated souls (or blessed souls, depending on who you ask) are people who have had so much damage done to their souls in a past life that they develop psychic abilities.

This seems odd at first, but this world is based on reincarnation, so it can be expected that people change over time. When emotional or spiritual damage while a person is alive, it needs to be repaired before the person can be reincarnated. This happens when the soul picks up on other pieces of energy that kind of just float around in the Between and use that energy to repair themselves. Normally this would just cause minor personality or preference changes, but it can give a soul psychic abilities under the right circumstances.

The Between

This one is probably the most difficult concept to understand. The Between can best be defined as the place souls go when they die or the space between one life and another. However, the Between is pretty all-encompassing and is effectively the entire universe. It is the space that exists between all things like the microscopic space between and even within atoms. It also exists between all times such that all times are occurring in the Between, but time also time does not apply to the Between.

Spiritual energy naturally flows in the Between and can only exit the Between in the form of a soul. That is why the amount of spiritual energy remains constant regardless of how many souls are in the world at a time and also why souls return to the Between when they die.

The Ever Soul

Hikari Matsuda is the current incarnation of the Ever Soul. Think of it like how Aang is the incarnation of the Avatar in the Last Airbender series. However, there are a lot fewer differences with Hikari between one life and the next and she remembers her past lives as one continuous stream of memories from her current life.

The Ever Soul was chosen at the beginning of time by the Stars to remember all of their lifetimes so that they could decide when the world had become too corrupt and needed to be restarted from the beginning. They are so old that not even they know how old they are, and they are the only ones with all of the information needed to restart the world.

The Stars

The Stars are effectively God or whatever you choose to believe in. They are referred to as the Stars because little is known about them and their spiritual energy exists throughout the entire universe.

Some believe that the Stars and the Between are the same, but most people who know about these things believe that the Stars created the Between along with everything else and have since left us to our own accord except for the existence of the Ever Soul, who functions like their watchdog, and the Star Children, who are capable of tapping into spiritual energy outside of the Between, including that of the Stars.

Lmk if you have any questions or want more on The Paper World Society

[tedlyanderson]

A Completely Incomplete History of the Magical Girl Subgenre in Manga and Anime, pt. 1

I’ve been posting a bit recently about a pitch I’m working on called Sunshine Cheer Squad Go!, which can be summed up as “magical girl cheerleaders.” But what do I mean by “magical girl”? In this case, I’m referring to a very specific subgenre of manga and anime, first appearing in the 1960s and which has gone through some significant evolution since then. If you’re even passingly familiar with Japanese pop culture, you’re most likely familiar with the basics of the genre: teenage girls acquire magical superpowers, transform into sparkly princess warriors, and then battle and defeat the forces of evil. (The Japanese term for this subgenre, mahou shoujo, literally translates to “magical girl.”) I’ve always been fascinated by these narratives, and what’s struck me is that it’s a subgenre unique to Japan; that is to say, while it originated from a variety of tropes and concepts from across the world, and there’s been cross-pollination since the very beginning, the subgenre began and flourished in Japan. What’s more, because it’s such a relatively recent creation, we can trace its evolution very precisely. I want to take a look at the origins of the magical girl and describe the changes and permutations she’s gone through. Join me below the break, won’t you?

I’ll start with an attempt at a definition: a “magical girl” series is a series in which the main character(s) are girls, typically teenagers or pre-teens, who have access to magical or otherworldly abilities in what is otherwise a normal, real-world setting, which are used in conjunction with personal strengths and virtues to solve problems and/or achieve their goals, and which they must keep concealed from other people who aren’t in on the secret. Now, that definition is overly broad and probably includes a lot of things which most people wouldn’t call “magical girl”—for example, the only thing that separates this from the superhero genre is that the protagonist is exclusively, rather than occasionally female, and that there is rarely a focus on physical combat—but that’ll do for now.

As I see it, there are three major generations of magical girl series, three phases of the subgenre marked by significant changes in the character archetype and the structure of the basic narrative, but with an underlying set of themes and a continuity of ideas that links them together. Now, you can’t completely divide up any group of media into rigid categories, because there are always going to be outliers and works that defy categorization: creators ahead of their time, deliberate throwbacks, attempts at hybridization, cross-genre works, and so forth. But it is possible to define broad trends and expectations, and that’s what I’ll be writing about. When applicable, I’ll also discuss works which notably depart from these categories for one reason or another, but this is a general overview, not an encyclopedic history.

So let’s start with the first generation of magical girls! There are of course antecedents and early works that have elements of the magical girl—for example, Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi)—but the very first magical girl series as it is usually defined is Little Witch Sally (Mahoutsukai Sally), which began as a short-lived manga series in July of 1966; it was adapted into an anime by Toei Animation and began airing in December of that year. In the series, Sally is the Witch Princess of the Magic Kingdom, who travels to the human world in order to make friends her own age. She keeps her magic powers a secret and acts like a normal human girl in order to fit in.

The creator of the manga, Mitsuteru Yokoyama (who also created Tetsujin 28-go, better known in the United States as Gigantor), said that the major inspiration for the series was the American sitcom Bewitched, about Samantha the witch marrying a mortal man and trying to act like a normal housewife. Now, there’s a debate to be had about whether Bewitched was a patriarchal fantasy about dominating women and preventing them from using their natural talents, or a slyly feminist parable about the degree to which “submissive” wives can manipulate and control their husbands within the domestic sphere, but that’s a whole other essay. What matters here is what differentiates Sally from Bewitched, and to me the difference is clear: Sally, the character, has no responsibilities. She is beholden to nobody; the only rules she has to obey are those she sets herself. Sally is allowed to do anything she likes, because there is nothing at stake and her actions have no serious repercussions. In a word, Samantha from Bewitched is an adult, with adult responsibilities and obligations, but Sally is a child.

[Edited 9/11/17: friend and cartoonist @bakertoons pointed out that, technically, the series Akko’s Secret (Himitsu no Akko-chan) premiered before Sally, and should rightly be considered the first magical girl series! In the series, the young Akko is visited by the Queen of the Mirror Kingdom, who gives her a magic mirror and a spell to transform into whatever she wants. The manga of Akko by Fujio Akatsuka (probably more well-known today for his series Osomatsu-kun) was first published in the manga magazine Ribon in 1962, four years before Sally‘s debut. Sally was the first magical girl anime, debuting in 1966, but Akko was definitely the first magical girl manga. In fact, Akko was made into an anime series in 1969, partly as a replacement for Sally. I have seen references to the effect that Akatsuka was also inspired by Bewitched when creating Akko. I can’t verify this, but it certainly seems plausible.]

Professor Susan J. Napier, in her book Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (later updated and re-released as Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle), describes three extremely general categories of anime and manga, based on the overall emotions they evoke: festival, apocalyptic, and elegiac. This first generation of magical girl series falls squarely in the festival category: our characters have no major duties, little is at stake, their problems are relatively small and easily solvable, and all’s well that ends well. Virtually nothing carries over between episodes of Little Witch Sally; there are no recurring villains or long-running plotlines. Now, to be clear, this isn’t rare for anime of the period, or even most television—Bewitched didn’t have much in the way of long-running continuity, either—but it’s worth pointing out, in light of later developments in the genre.

Sally was followed by other, similar series: Mahoutsukai Chappy in 1972 and Majokko Megu-chan (pictured above) in 1974. I’ll admit to having difficulty finding episodes of these series, so I can’t comment on them as extensively, but from what I’ve read, they follow the same basic trajectory: young girl from a magical world is transported to our world, has low-stakes adventures, learns some lessons about friendship and so forth. Toei also produced other series that I think merit the “magical girl” label—for example, Marvelous Melmo (Fushigi na Melmo), in which a normal girl who loses her mother in a car accident receives a bottle of magic pills from her mother’s ghost, which lets her transform into various forms—but again, my direct knowledge of these series is limited.

The elements that define the first generation of magical girls as distinct from later works will become more clear as I discuss the genre in future posts, but for now, here’s what I see as the crucial points for the first generation. First, these series are largely episodic; while there may be recurring characters and even a series finale, there isn’t an overarching plot which shapes the series as a whole. Each episode stands on its own, and follows a general formula that remains largely the same for the entire series. Second, there is no larger threat, or at least no threat that tangibly menaces the main character. These girls weren’t leaving their magical kingdoms because they were threatened or some dark villain was invading—they needed to learn how the mortal world works, or they had to train their magic powers, or they were just bored! These series did not have active, menacing villains who worked against the heroes, or at least not ones who were in any way competent or legitimately threatening. And lastly, the protagonists do not have secret identities. While they need to keep their magical abilities secret, they don’t have alter egos or alternate personas that they need to hide from their friends. Again, this will be more significant by comparison to later generations of magical girls, but for now, put it like this: Sally was always a witch, whether she used her magic or not, but Usagi Tsukino is only sometimes Sailor Moon.

That’s it for part one of this extremely incomplete history! Join me for future installments, won’t you?