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The Importance of Renlys Peach

Hello everyone, today i wanted to talk about one of my absolute favourite moments in all of ASOIAF, aka the Renlys Peach incident. To those who don't know when Renly and Stannis Baratheon are parlaying near Storms End Renly offers Stannis a peach and talks about how delicious and juicy it is. Stannis rejects the peach but later in the series, after Renlys death, Stannis brings the peach up in a conversation with Davos and wanders what the meaning of the Peach is. Now this is generally just a very well written moment highlighting Stannis' grief at Renlys death, his desire for just and how he feels rejected by society, but i also think there is more to it than that. First of all, according to George R R Martin Stannis is inspired by the roman Emperor Tiberius as depicted in the television show "I Claudius" .(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYeJMwAhMTY). Tiberius is famous for not wanting to be roman emperor and leaving the city of Rome to live in his own private mansion. Now while Stannis is not a one to one depiction of Tiberius i do believe that he does not want to be king, at least not at the beginning of the books, but that he sees it as his duty as Roberts eldest living heir. According to A Wiki Of Ice And Fire George has stated that the peach is meant to symbolize pleasure (Source: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Renly%27s_peach). While i haven't been able to verify this quote it does seem to be in line with what Renly offers Stannis, mainly Storms End, something Renly knows Stannis has wanted for years. Where this gets interesting is when we combine the ideas that Stannis does not want to be king and that Renly offers him pleasure. This allows us to read the scene very differently as we may now understand that Stannis would find pleasure in not having to be king and thus having that burden lifted of his shoulders. The scene can even be read as Renly offering Stannis the pleasure of not having to be king, whether or not Renly knows this. And it does say something about his character that Stannis chooses his perceived responsibility above his own pleasures.

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Daddy Issues Of The Kraken: An Analysis of Theon and Asha Greyjoy

 Daddy issues a recurring theme in ASOIAF. The most famous examples are probably Jon Snow with his tendency to bond with many male authority figures and Tyrion Lannister with the entirety of his relationship with Tywin. However i think one of the most interesting executions of this theme are Theon and Asha Greyjoy. Specifically i belive that Theon and Ashas relationship to their dad Balon Greyjoy and their respective surrogate father figures acts as a microcosm of their entire characterization, especially in regards to their relationship with Ironborn culture.

I will start by examining Theon as i believe his daddy issues are more obvious than Ashas. Theon has obviously been greatly impacted by growing up with the Starks. While he never seems to think of Eddard Stark as a father he does consider Robb Stark a brother. The tension between his love for his stark family and his desire to be accepted by his Ironborn family is the central element to Theons character. It gets illustrated very well in a short passage in ADWD where Theon is in the crypts of Winterfell. Theon sees a statue of Theon Stark, a king winter known as the hungry wolves who acclaimed fame by fighting the Andals and kicking the Ironborn out of Bear Island. When seeing the statue Theon thinks to himself that Theon Stark is his namesake.This is interesting as him being named after a Stark king and not a Greyjoy symbolically ties him to the Starks, especially considering that Theon Stark was an enemy to the Ironborn. One must also remember that the Ironborn claim to be a completely different race than the peoples of mainland Westeros and take great pride in this difference. As such Theon being named after a main lander also differentiates him from Ironborn culture. There is also the option that Theon is wrong in this belief and that he is actually named after some other historical figure named Theon. If this is the case it shows us that Theon thinks of himself as more of a Stark than a Greyjoy, at least after all of the rejections and torture he had gone through during the series. Earlier in the series when Theon goes to the Iron Islands to meet with his father it is clear from the start that he no longer fits into the culture nor his own family. His father rejects him based on his clothing and he is constantly met with mistrust as people are concerned with the time he spent on the mainland. Whats worse for Theon is the fact that most people seem to expect Asha to follow Balon and not Theon. Asha also ends up tricking and humiliating him, thus showing that she is above him in Ironborn society. This is where his surrogate father Dagmer Cleftjaw becomes interesting. Dagmer is in many ways an archetypical Ironborn, he enjoys reaving, songs about reaving, drinking, and has his characteristic cleft jaw. Dagmer thus acts as a symbol of Ironborn culture to Theon, and unlike his father Dagmer is willing to accept Theon.I believe this is why Theon cares so deeply about Dagmer as he is the only Ironbron who truly accepts him and cares about him, at least from Theons point of view. With this i will now move on to discussing Asha.

Ashas problems with her family and the Ironborn are a lot harder to notice. This is partly due to us first meeting her through Theons POV. As such our first perception of Asha is colored by how Theon sees her. Specifically Theon sees Asha getting much of the acceptance that he desires for himself. Theon is very jealous of Asha and this impacts how we see her. It is only once we starts Ashas POV that this perception of her starts getting torn down. For one Asha is not as happy with her father as Theons chapters would leave you to believe, as she mentions that the she considers Ten Towers her true home, not Pyke. We don’t know why this is, but we see that Asha rejects Balon, despite being his preferred heir. If we contiue with the theory that Balon represents traditional ironborn culture / the old way this would symbolise Asha rejecting those ideals. And we do see this in Ashas POV chapters at the Kingsmoot, she even at one point claims that the old way is dead due to Aegons unification of the seven kingdoms. Asha instead proposes a much more pragmatic world view in which the ironborn should focus on achieving whatever gains they can most realistically achieve. Specifally she proposes that the Ironborn should exit the war and consolidate their gains along the stony shore. If we now look at Ashas father figure Rodrik Harlaw we see that he is a highly atypical member of ironborn culture who also seems very pragmatic. We know he used to hire septons to tend to his books despite not being a follower of the faith of the seven. Meanwhile many people on the Iron Islands outright hate the faith and would never hire a septon. Other than Rodrik, those who are okay with septons are usually worshipers of the faith. We also see his pragmatic nature after the kingsmoot when he gives Asha a way to reverse the kingsmoot and escape her arranged/forced marriage, since Theon would be able to overturn the kingsmoot. The kingsmoot is also interesting as Ashas status as Balons preffered heir is suddenly ignored due to her gender. This shows us that while ironborn culture is willing to accept Asha and give her power when the alternative is an outsider, as a woman she will still always be seen as lesser than the men from her culture. This may be part of the reason why she rejects the Old way, and again it is interesting as Rodrik never rejects her based on her gender, seemingly not caring about it at all. It is worth to note that Asha doesn’t fully agree with Rodrik as she enjoys the idea of going out and seeking glory while seeing Rodrik as a craven since he would rather stay in his tower and read

To summarize, Theons character is centered around the conflict of his love towards, at the very least, Robb Stark and his desire to be accepted by an Ironbron family who constantly rejects him, this is what leads him to making the many bad decisions he does throughout the series. The latter part of this conflict is reflected in his relationship to his two father figures. Balon rejects Theon while Dagmer gives him the acceptance he craves. Meanwhile Asha seems to be accepted by Ironborn society, at least when compared to Theon who is seen as an outsider. However she rejects her father in favour of the more pragmatic Rodrik Harlaw. In the same vein she rejects the old way in favour of a more pragmatic new way of thinking. We also see that Asha is seen as lesser than her uncles due to her gender by many ironborn but not by Rodrik. As thus their relationships with their respective father figures acts as a microcosm of their relationships with ironborn culture.

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Some underrated ASOIAF characters who deserve more attention

As the title says, this post will be about some of my favourite ASOIAF characters who i think deserve more attention.

Aurane Waters:

The first character on this list is Aurane Waters. Now Auranes story isn’t very deep but he is fun, entertaining and cool as hell. So he starts out fighting with Stannis at the battle of blackwater bay, then he ends up joining Cersei on the small council and manages to charm her by looking like Rhaegar, and then he runs off with her newly build navy. Now i do not like Cersei so people who can play her and beat her at her own game instantly have a place in my heart. I should also mention that i love pirates and there is strong evidence that Aurane will become the pirate king known as the Lord of The Waters using the ships he stole from Cersei. This also puts him in an interesting position going forward as he could realistically join any faction in the current conflict and be a big player which is really cool. My last point is this, just look at him, the dude absolutely fucks:

Rodrik Harlaw, aka The Reader: Rodrik is Asha and Theons maternal uncle and he is my favourite ironborn character. In many ways he reminds me of Doran Martell, an fatherly figure to a female pov character who is noted to be more cautious than the people around him and who is looked down upon by many within his culture. I also like his quirk of loving books, even having had septons at his home to help him care for his collection. I also love his relationship with Asha, being a better father figure to her than Balon was ,as well as her biggest supporter (that title might be challenged by Qarl and Tristifer). He also seems to be scheming to protect Asha from her forced marriage by overturning the kingsmoot, as he sends her a book that specifically mentions that a kingsmoot can be nullified if a claimant was not present, in this case that would be Theon. And then there was the time he owned Euron the Incel with just 2 words. Euron was bragging about having sailed to Valyria when Rodrik says: “Have you?” which clearly pisses Euron off. Fucking legend

Brynden Rivers, Aka Bloodraven: Ok so, Bloodraven does get a lot of attention especially from the theorist community who have the saying “when in doubt blame Bloodraven”. But i don’t think enough people give attention to him as a character. The cool thing about Bloodravens character is that he seems to be a product of his enviroment. Bloodraven grew up in kings landing as one of the great bastards of king Aegon The Unworthy. He famously suffered albinism which resulted in him having to wear heavy black clothes all of his life. This would have gone on since his childhood, and we know that this trade made people not trust him. So people have apparently distrusted him since he could walk outside. Imagine what that does to a kid. And then at some point he figures out he is a skinchanger. And that is when he becomes the master of the game of thrones and worlds best spymaster.I love this because a lot of characters justify their distrust of him because of how good of a spy he is, but he became that way because no one trusted him. And lets not forget that he was apparently a really nice military leader. At least enough to where most of his private army, The Ravens Teeth, decided to join him on the wall despite being under no obligation to do so. That show some major respect from his men. And at last he has some really cool Odin symbolism going on with the one eye and the ravens and all that.

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Fantasy and sci-fi authors please for the love of god stop defaulting to always making your main characters humans. I get the point is that since the reader is going to be human having a human main character makes it easier for them to understand the point of the view of said character. But the thing is, as a human reader, i find it infinity easier to relate to non human characters. Also i am just really tired of all these great universes with tons of species all of which should have as varied and unique personalities, perspectives and cultures as humans, but the only POV we get is from some commenting on all of it.

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I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:

IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.

1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.

2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.

3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”

4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”

5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.

TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.

Reblog this to keep other users aware. Suicide isn’t a joke, and neither is someone’s life. If you didn’t know this, someone else may not, either. Pass it on.

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The best thing about Devil May Cry V is that Nero, Dante, V and Vergil feel more like a found family than a biological family, in spite of the fact that they are all biologically related

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Lion El’Johnson Hopes and Wishes

So for those of you who don’t know Games Workshop revealed a bunch of stuff at adepticon earlier today, and one of those things was the long rumored return of Lion El’Johnson in the forty first millenium. Since the return of a loyalist primarch is always a big deal i wanted to talk about some thing i would like to see in the lore when he returns.

First of all, don’t make the Lion warden of Imperium Nihilus. I will admit i am very biased on this topic, i am Blood Angels fan and Dante is one of my favourite characters so i don’t want to see him lose his position. I also just feel like it would be bad for his character. Dante is all about the weight of duty, the only reason he hasn’t let himself die yet is because he is too important in keeping Imperium Nihilus together, and i feel like if GW took that away he would become a lot less interesting. But i also don’t believe it would the most interesting development for The Lion, specifically i want him to be close to Guilliman for the drama.

That is my second wish, please for the love of god GW give us some primarch drama. I don’t think it’s any secret that Guilliman and The Lion were never very close, and i would love to see that tension play out in the current story line. First of all there is the fact that The Lion can be very jealous. The main example is how bitter he was at Horus being warmaster instead of himself, and so just imagine how he would react if Dante, a mere space marine, remained warden of Imperium Nihilus instead of him. And i think this could be spun a few different ways from Guillimans side. Maybe he simply trusts Dante more than The Lion, or perhaps he sees how many enemies he already has within the imperium and decides he needs to keep The Lion close in order to build up  a stronger power base. And then there is the fact that The Lion doesn’t trust Guilliman, even considering killing him during the days of Imperium Secondus. And much to his autocratic nature Guilliman has tried to take up control of the imperium and i feel like The Lion could be a great challenge to that. And then of course there is the debate over the Codex Astartes.

My third wish is that if we get the some drama between the primarchs, then i really don’t want GW to fix it by having The Lion talk to the emperor and then that’s the end of it. While the emperor being more active is interesting and fun, i also don’t want him to fix this conflict. It is a conflict that ultimately stems from the personalities of Guilliman and The Lion clashing, and so it would feel really underwhelming if a third  party fixes it. On the same note, i really hope they don’t resolve the problem by essentially saying “well we disagree, but there are bigger problems so let’s put it aside for now”. Don’t get me wrong i don’t think it would make sense The Lion to openly rebel or anything, and he would probably work with Guilliman, but i think it would be more interesting if they are constantly budding heads and making compromises, barely making things work.

My last wish is this: Please don’t have The Lion fix everything. With the last arks of omen book being about The Lion and with GWs tendency to keep things to the status quo, i am really scared that the series is gonna end with The Lion defeating Vashtorr and everything returning to normal. Not only would it be really disappointing for all of the other characters who have been fighting against Vashtorr if The Lion and The Dark Angels end up fixing everything without any help, i also just want to see Vashtorr change the setting. Ideally he would succeed in ascending to godhood kinda like how the Great Horned Rat did during the end times / AoS. That however feels unlikely, if for no other reason than the fact that having an actual god running around on tabletop is not really a thing in 40k. But if not that then have him keep being a threat. Maybe he keeps trying to destroy Imperium Nihilus with the Arks Of Omen, hell maybe he even releases some new techno horrors on the galaxy. Just don’t go back to him being defeated but planning “something” in the shadows, let the event have some real impact for once.

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Ranking The (Known) Primarchs

I decided to do a ranking of all the primarchs based on how much i enjoy them as characters, i will take their lore and designs into consideration. Please note that my knowledge of the lore is pretty shaky so if i get something wrong or don’t know something i refuse to take responsibility.

18: Ferrus Manus. Ferrus is just a bit boring to me. I feel like the mechanicus pull of the technophile vibe better than him and his legion. His character also just seems like he is pissed all the time. I do like his little friendship with Fulgrim, and i remember seeing him talking about how he thinks his legion has gone too far with the hole “the flesh is weak” thing so he had potential but is definitely hampered by getting killed so early in the heresy. Moreover i feel like Vulkan is a much cooler version of the forge master trope.

17: Angron. Angron only barely edges out Ferrus because i feel a bit bad for him. In Arks Of Omen: Angron it is mentioned that he finally feels peace from the butchers nails after dying, only to get revived by Khorne. The problem is we don’t get any Angron from before the nails. It just makes him seem like an angry brute with no real character from very early on, but at least the glimpses of him without the nails are very well written and very sad.

16: Horus Lupercal. Horus is a massive let down as a character. Don’t get me wrong he does have some cool stuff going on, like him feeling scared the emperor will replace the primarchs. That would be such a cool reason for his fall to chaos. But instead Eerbus did some fucky wucky chaos shit and now the bald man is evil. At least make it so Erebus fed Horus’ fears or some shit like that instead of the “he gets stabbed by a demon sword and Erebus does something whack in his dream”. If he had been a less important primarch this would have been fine but he is the leader of the Horus Heresy, the guy who put the emperor on the golden throne and almost killed him and so i feel like he needs something more interesting than “ he got cursed lol”.

15: Fullgrim. Fullgrim is a bit like Horus in that he has a lot of cool stuff going on, but that isn’t related enough to his fall. He and his legion are obsessed with perfection and are constantly striving towards it. That would be such a cool reason for him to fall. Maybe they start experimenting with combat stims a bit too much, maybe they develop noise marines a very effective way to force conquered worlds into compliance, but they push all these things too far and end up getting into the realm of excess thus falling to the prince of pleasure. But nope, the twink picks up a Slaanesh demon sword and now he’s evil.

14: Robute Guilliman. Guilliman isn’t bad, he is just not special. Every other legion and primarch have something cool and original going on that sets them apart and Guilliman just doesn’t. And i get that’s kinda the point right, the ultramarines are the ultimate vanilla marines meant to invite people into the hobby and thus Guilliman has to be the ultimate vanilla primarch. But here’s the thing about vanilla ice cream, it can genuinely be the best ice cream flavour precisely because it’s simplicity allows you to appreciate the quality of its ingredients and the few flavors it has to their fullest extend, but Guilliman and the ultramarines aren’t simple in a way that lets you appreciate what they have, they are just boring. Maybe if they leaned way heavier into their greco roman inspiration it would work, like the new White Consuls character GW released is perfect for what i want out of them design wise. Otherwise Guillimans big thing is that he is trying to hold the imperium together but also he hates what is has become, which could be said about most other loyal primarchs and as such he kinda just bores me.

13: Jaghatai Khan. The Khan is cool and all but he also needs more development as a character. A lot of people seem to like him for being reasonable and not making hasty decisions but that is not enough to carry him as a character. That being said his status as the “wildcard” amongst the primarchs is genuenly fun and i love the mongolian inspiration i just wish there was more of. I guess that’s the best way to describe the Khan, i like what there is but i want more.

12: Alpharius & Omegon. The twins are fun, i like the part where Alpharius meets Dorn for the first time. But again they lack something. They ooze character but i need to see more of them in the works. I have however seen some of their legions armor and it seems to have scales which is just so cool.

11: Lorgar. I like Lorgar, Lorgar is fine. I think he is a cool representation of humanitys need to find meaning in the universe with his desire for religion. I also find that his relationship to Erebus is an interesting representing the way religious and parental abuse and indoctrination can affect someone (note: i am not an expert on the topic nor have i gone through it myself, this is not about accuracy but about interesting storytelling). The problem is that the story of why he fell is really fucking dumb. Not him falling in general that part makes sense, the dude desperately wants a religion and the emperor doesn’t want to be a god, so it’s either chaos or the eldar gods. The problem is with how the emperor handled the idea of the word bearers worshiping him. The writers tend to flip-flop between showing the emperor as a loving father and a cold and manipulative mastermind. The problem is that neither of those characterizations fit the way he dealt with Lorgar. He went to their home world, burned it to the fucking ground and psychically tortured them. If he was  a loving dad he wouldn’t have done that, and if he was a genius master mind he would have known that would only piss of Lorgar and push him towards chaos. And yes this isn’t about Lorgar, but it is an important part of his character development and it just doesn’t work at all.

10: Konrad Curze. Honestly i did not expect Curze to be this high on the list, but i gotta say he is the first primarch i don’t have any real  problems with. He is tortured by visions of the future so he is really tragic, and i like that he is kinda like an evil batman. He and his legion give me enormous so bad that it’s good 80′ies horror movie vibes which is something i love.Specifically he reminds me of Fright Night if anyone knows that one (banger so bad it’s good movie, i highly recommend it) Sure there are more interesting primarchs imo but Curze hits a lot of good spots.

9: Lion El’Johnson. The Lion is in many ways a cooler Guilliman to me. A genius strategist but with a way more interesting design and flaws. First of all the knight theme looks really cool and maps onto the space marine power armor very well. I also like that he sucks at social stuff. Where Guilliman is just kinda good but not the best at everything (vanilla boy) the Lion has clear strengths and weaknesses. And we get to see these flaws create interesting conflicts with the other primarchs. My favourite example is his rivalry with Russ. Russ is very honour obsessed and the Lion only cares about the most effective way to win, so when they have to take a planet together and Russ has to deal with some wulfen problems The Lion takes what Russ considers his kill and the wolf lord gets pissed. These are two very well established character traits leading to a very believable conflict. And they even become friends later on. That being said as cool as the knight theme is i just have other preferences and the Lion sometimes just acts like a huge asshole so he isn’t quite at the top for me.

8: Leeman Russ. Russ is cool. I have already spoken about how his need for honour lead to conflict with The Lion so i won’t elaborate on that here, but i do like his hyocracy of how much he hates the warp and yet uses warp priests himself because he believes they are something else. I also don’t dislike the supposed use of the word wolf in the space woves unit names nor do i dislike the the very wolf inspired upgrade kits, well except for the tails those just seem a bit too impractical. I think this gives the wolves a more unique feeling than the other legions, it’s not just the same unit with a different color scheme. My main problem is that Leeman and the wolves are in the end a very bad take on the viking trope. They live on Fenris a frozen hellhole despite the fact that most vikings were from the more temperate area of Denmark. I get that Norway and places that look like Norway give off more of a viking feeling because they seem harsh to live in, but that’s the problem if you want to send a lot of people out to raid you have to have a large population and that’s hard to get in a frozen and almost uninhabitable place. Also the vikings did a lot of cool stuff like trade all around the world, even so far as to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) and they settled cities in Ireland and stuff. They were also not as uncivilized as the wolves would have you think. They were general more hygienic than most other people of their time and women had a lot more rights in viking / medieval Scandinavian society than most other places. To borrow a phrase the Space Wolves and Leeman Russ are not space vikings, they are bad viking larpers in space. This isn’t a huge problem and probably only really bothers me and like 3 other history nerds, but still it holds them back for me a bit.

7: Magnus. My favourite rpg class is wizards / spellcasters. Psykers are just space wizards and Magnus is the greatest primarch psyker. He is also a huge nerd which i relate to. I find his desire to impress the emperor / his dad very sympathetic and i think his fall is handled very well. My only 2 problems is that the thousand sons look a bit weird, i feel like there was a better way to implement Egyptian design elements to space marine power armor, and that the horus heresy did him dirty. Specifically the burning of Propero, i like that part of the reason he fell to chaos is because Leeman burned his planet, what i don’t like is that he didn’t even talk to Leeman when asked to and just let him destroy Prospero and now 10k years later he is salty about it. Major bruh moment.

6: Vulkan. We are now getting into the territory where i don’t have any real complaints about any of the primarchs, and it’s just personal preference (even more than the rest of the list). I like how Vulkan is the most humane and kind of the primarchs, and how he still burned a defenseless human child to a crisp. I like this because it highlights how humanity and the Imperium are genuinely fucked up. Vulkan is by far the best person in the Imperium and even he does war crimes. I also like how he and his legion are very self sufficient and value the craft of smiting and making their own weapons. And of course their armour is sometimes designed to look like lizards / salamanders or dragons, which is cool af.

5: Sanguinius. Now some people might say “Sanguinius is too perfect” and too that i say, that’s the point. He represents a golden light of hope within the Imperium and when he died the universe became a darker and more grim place. He taught his legion art and self expression and greatly improved their well being, but he was also the most powerful primarch He perectly represents the tragedy that makes up the Horus Heresy and the 40k setting in general. And all of this puts a huge burden on his poor sons, most of all Dante. The poor guy just wants to rest but is also too much of damned hero to just call it quits and so he keeps fighting for the Imperium. The blood angels could use a bit of a range upgrade soon tho, if we don’t get primaris Dante and an updated Sanguinor i will riot. In general great primarch and glorius hawk boy.

4: Perturabo. The traitor primarch with the most believable fall (besides magnus) imo. It is easy to see how he felt unappreciated, and how his fall could have been prevented if the emperor showed less favoritism. And he still comes across as a villain jut a very sympathetic and believable villain. He also pulls off the heavy industrial look very well. Ooh and he summons demons, force them into machines and use them as weapons, that’s fucking awesome. And then there was that time during the heresy where he beat up Angron, or the time he refused Nurgle, just a lot of badass moments.

3: Mortarion. Look, i am THE Bringer Of Plagues. I love diseases, they are cool to me. And Morty is a giant demon man with moth wings who spreads disease. I also love the skaven and the Death Guard are the closest we currently have to 40k space skaven on the tabletop (at least clans pestilens). I also have a whole ass post about why i like his fall to chaos on my blog you can read if you want so i don’t want to reapeat myself. He also has a scythe, one of the coolest weapons. There is nothing not to love about Mortarion, and i will defend him to the day i die.

2: Rogal Dorn. I recently binged all of TTS, and i gotta say i fell in love with Dorn. Well i already loved him from that interaction he had with Alpharius i mentioned earlier, but TTS made me love him even more. I don’t know how accurate the bit of him taking things very literally is to the actual  canon is, but if he does it just 1% as often i love him. I also relate heavily to that trait since i also tend to take things very literal. Also i like power fists, they look cool to me.

1: Corvus Corax. I have a confession, when i was 14 or so i entered my emo phase and i have never left it, nor will i ever leave it. Ravens are also my favorite bird, tied with peregrine falcons tho. And the The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is my favourite poem, tied with Ozymandias but still. So when you give me an emo / goth looking primarch,  named after the latin name for ravens, who quotes the poem The Raven (Nevermore), it does things to me. I love how the Ravenguard incoorperate raven like features into their amour but i want more. Also i would love it if their geneseed made them more tall and lanky instead of just buff, so they would look more stealthy, but this is a very minor complaint / headcanon. I also fully believe Corvus is the most badass primarch. Spoiler warning for if you haven’t read Shadow of the Past. Corvus enters the warp, becomes a fucked up looking raven shadow demon monster warp entity thing, capable of splitting himself apart into ravens made of shadow that can cut through the power armor of the word bearers, and the proceeds to absolutely dunk on Lorgar who has at this point ascended into demonhood, like he makes Lorgar look a bunch of wet paper. And the line he says as Lorgar runs off and hides behind his portal “ I have your scent now, Lorgar,'. I will find you, Lorgar! I will destroy you and every vessel you have filled with your taint!” . Fucking awesome. On another note i like how we see his past has affected him. Growing up on Lycaeous gave him an intense hatred of slavery, which is yet another reason he hates Lorgar who uses quite a lot of slave labour, makes a lot of sense. My last point is this, i like that he sounds like he is always reciting edgy emo poetry. I hate the fact that the primarchs grew up on different entirely different planets and yet they all talk very similar. Yes they have slight variations to how they speak but nowhere near what would be expected given how different cultures they grew up amongst. The Lion should talk in old  / medieval English, real ye olde times shit. Guilliman should sound like he is goddamn Cicero. Let Ruse use the three letters added to the Scandinavian alphabets (google “Danish and Norwegian alphabet Wikipedia” to see what i mean, they also exist in the Swedish one they just look different). But nope Corvus is the only who speaks in a mildly unique way. Anyway emo bird boy best primarch.

[bringerofplagues]

Space

Have you ever just sat down and looked up at the night sky? Preferably in a rural area far away from the light pollution of the city. And how does that feel? I find that it is a very unique feeling, one that doesn’t have name to it, so i have chosen to name it space. It is a very complicated feeling. Most obviously it is a feeling of wonder, looking up at the stars and their many secrets. But it is also a feeling of scale, you look at the endless world space around you and you feel small, but not in the sense of an existential crisis. It is not a crushing smallness, but rather  a calming one. There is just something relaxing about looking at up at space in a way that i don’t believe i can describe. It was while reflecting on this feeling named space that i came to consider how strange it is that i have never encountered a work of science fiction that comes close to capturing said feeling, in spite of the fact that so much of the genre being set in space. And so i began trying to explain why that is. One reason may be that a lot of sci-fi, even when it is set in space, isn’t about space. It is often about humanity and society, specifically criticizing society or trying to describe a better alternative. As such it can never capture the feeling of space because it is not about space. Another reason is that science fiction a lot of the time has too much science. Or rather,, that it has such a large quantity of science as to kill the feeling of space. Science is fundamentally about demystifying, explaining and understanding things. And like i said part of the space feeling is the wonder and mystery, wonder and mystery that can’t exist if you understand the topic. But there is also another reason why science is the death of space (the feeling). How do you explain space? When you look up at the night sky you see a seemingly random collection of bright dots on a black background. In order to explain that you would need to explain that those dots are stars and planets, and that stars are giant balls of super-heated gas. But even then, that doesn’t really explain space, most of us know this and yet the feeling persists, we still look up at the night sky and wonder. So you have to focus, what kind of stars are there and what makes them different, how do stars work, and what are the names of the stars. And suddenly you aren’t look up at the infinite stars anymore. You are talking about a singular star until it has been explained and then you move on to the next one. Just like how science-fiction often isn’t about space, this process understanding isn’t either, it’s become about stars and planets and dark matter, it has become about the parts that make up space. But it isn’t about space, because space isn’t a series of parts, it is a whole and it can never be broken down into pieces while still remaining space. You can’t have a piece of space. And so if a sci-fi text is set in space, it may not try to explain space, but then it will try to explain hyper-drives and faster than light travel, or it will try to explain a planet through speculative biology and geography and its location in relation to the closest star. And none of this is bad literature, it is in my opinion good. But it also isn’t space. Maybe space is a feeling that can’t be captured, and can’t be truly to described. If the feeling dies when we try to break down space into parts, could the same not be said of what happens when we try to break down the feeling? I didn’t manage to describe the feeling as a whole, i described parts of it and tried to string them together into a specific feeling because like i said it is a feeling that does not have a name. Or at least not one known to me. Yet the description i gave was not perfect. I don’t think this is a feeling that can be described, it can only be felt. So if you are ever up late, maybe you can’t sleep or maybe you are stressed out working late on a project you need to get done, go outside for just 5 minutes and look up at the night sky, look at the stars and the darkness between them, and hopefully then you will know what it is i am trying to describe. Hopefully then you will feel space.

[bringerofplagues]

that “can we pretend airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars” meme but it is Gocharov and Andrey from hit mobster movie Goncharov (1973)

[bringerofplagues]

Hades 2: Information, Speculation and Wishes

So, last night at the game awards we got a trailer for Hades 2 and i have been looking through the trailer several times trying to find every scrap of information in there, and now i am gonna share it with everyone. When i am done with that i will be doing some speculation on what this might mean and then i will talk about some stuff i would love to see.

First of all let’s talk about the new characters. According to the games steam page the player character is Melinoë, and in the mythology she is the daughter of Persephone and Zeus, and she has some connections to Hecate the goddess of witchcraft. We know from the trailer credits that Hecate will be in the game, and we can safely assume that she is the trainer character whom Melinoë refers to as Headmistress. First of all, Melinoë is a witch and it would make sense if her trainer was the goddess of witchcraft. Secondly: Hecate was often described as a three headed goddess, and while it would seem like the Headmistress only has one head, you can see two heads, one on each shoulder, but we don’t know if they are real or decorative at the moment. Then there is Moros, the embodiment of doom, and Nemisis, the goddess of vengeance, both of whoom are children of Nyx and Erebus thus making them siblings of Thanatos and Hypnos from the first game. The first boon we see comes from Apollo, the god of music, the sun and Medicine, but all of the boons we see in the trailer are damage focused and seem to have a sun theme. We also seem to have this games version of Dusa aka Dora, who i assume to be Pandora like how Dusa was Medusa. And of course there is the big bad of the game Chronos/Cronos. Now these are tehcnicly two different figures, Chronos is the god of time, and Cronos is a titan, the god of harvests and the father of Hades, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, Hades and Zeus. Long story short he swallowed his children but then he got killed by Zeus and locked up inside of Tartarus. It would seem that the game has combined the 2, Hades refers to him as a titan, which Chronos wasn't, and he is locked op both of which point to Cronos. But then Hades also calls him “time itself” and we hear clockwork in the background which indicates a time connection, thus drawing upon Chronos. To be fair it is fairly common to combine the 2 into one as they have very similar names and this simplifies things. Now let’s get on to the speculation.

First of all i have an idea of what the story will be. At the very end of the trailer Melinoë says “Wait for me father. I will be there soon.”, and since her father is Zeus this would seem to indicate she is trying to reach Zeus. However we can also see Melinoë tell Hecate that she will “slay the titan yet” so she is gonna try to kill Cronos. This makes me think of  2 possibilities, either Cronos has captured Zeus and Melinoë wants to save her father, or in order to leave the underworld she has to kill Cronos, possibly as a test from Hades. In the trailer Hades sounds worried while talking about Cronos, stating “Time can’t be stopped” which makes me think the first possibility is the most likely. Nemesis does say that she wished to receive “the task” from some one only referred to as she in one of the screenshots from the steam page. This would indicate the task to kill Cronos would have come from Hecate. It also indicates that both Nemesis and Melinoë are being trained by Hecate, and given that she is refereed to as Headmistress i think we can assume some sort of school setting. And for the last bit of speculation, since we have both Moros and Nemesis i think we can probably expect some expansion on the Nyx & Erebus household / family dynamic, at the very least between those two but maybe also some references to Hypnos and Thanatos.

And here are my personal wishes. First of all i really hope we get to see Hestia in this game, she is my favorite Greek deity and i think it would be cool if she was in the game, maybe giving a self-healing based boon-set. Then, since we have Apollo i really hope we get Artemis back, i really like her depiction in the first game and i would love to see how the studio handles her relationship with Apollo. I also hope we get Hypnos and Thanatos back. Hypnos is one of my fave Greek gods, and his dynamic with Thanatos in the first game was really well handled but i just want to see more of it, specifically i would like to see Thanatos not being a complete jerk to his twin brother who really deserves better. There are also some Greek heroes i would like to see. First of all there are two of Apollos former lovers of Apollo, Hyacinth and Daphne (all though in Daphnes case the word lover is really that fitting. Daphne was a nymph who didn’t want Apollos infection and turned into a tree before he could kiss her. Hyacinth was a much more willing lover of Apollo, but sadly got killed by the jealous wind god Zenyth who threw a discus at him and so Apollo turned him into a hyacinth flower. I think these two could function like Patrolcus did in the first game, the dead lovers of Apollo where Patrolcus was the lover of Achilles. Then i would love to see Jason, mainly because i want to beat the shit out of him for how he treated his wife Medea (long story, basically she carried his ass to get him the golden skin and then he decided to dump her for another princess so he could become king but promised he would still keep her as a mistress). Speaking of, given the games witch theme i would be shocked if neither Medea or Circe showed up, since they are both famous witches from Greek mythology. And at last i hope they add Odysseus, i love that clever scoundrel.

[bringerofplagues]

I love that Goncharov (1973) is finally getting the attention it deserves, but as someone who grew up in the early 2000′s i am shocked no one is talking about the ps2 game adaptation. This game was one of the earliest true open world games, and they managed to fill it with more details than many modern games in the genre. It also used a strange but charming combination of third person shooter and dating sim mechanics, to allow you to first hand experience both the violence of the movie, as well as the deep emotional relationships that made it so special. As someone who wasn’t alive to experience the movie when it first came out this game was solely responsible for getting me into the movie and i hope it gets more attention.

[bringerofplagues]

The Bizarre Masterpiece of JoJos Bizarre Adventure Part 4

My goal with this essay will be to illustrate why I found Stardust Crusaders disappointing and how i think Diamond Is Unbreakable managed to fix everything wrong with part 3 and became my favorite JoJo part. I will mention that the only part of the manga that i have read is stone ocean, which means i will not be taking Steel Ball Run and JoJolion into account.

Now in order to understand the problem with Stardust Crusaders we have to understand Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency. Phantom Blood focuses on Jonathan Joestar and his battle with his evil vampire adopted brother Dio Brando. Jonathan's ability to fight Dio and his underlings comes from his mastery of Hamon, a sun energy that is controlled through the breath. Phantom Blood is by far the shortest JoJo part and as such it lacks a lot of character work and interesting fight choreography, and really it should be understand as backstory for the rest of the story. One important part is that Jonathan is capable of using a sword to conduct Hamon, thus introducing the theme that certain materials can be used to contain Hamon and sent it into an opponent. The second part of JoJos is Battle Tendency, following Joseph Joestar, Jonathan's grandchild. During Battle Tendency a group of 4 ancient beings known as the Pillar Men awaken. It is revealed that they were the ones who made the stone mask that turned Dio into a vampire, and that they are weak to the sun and Hamon. It is now up to Joseph and his friend / rival Ceasar to master Hamon and defeat the Pillar Men. While Ceasar starts out being adept at Hamon, Joseph instead focuses on analyzing his opponents moves, almost always being able to predict what they are going to say, and uses trickery to win his battles. Where Jonathan relied heavily on his strength to win battles Josephs specific fighting style allows for much more interesting fights. Every battle ends up feeling unique, Joseph will almost always come up with a new trick to counter his specific opponent and seeing him figure out how to outsmart his opponent is a delight.

JoJos next and third part is the widely popular Stardust Crusaders, following Josephs grandchild Jotaro Kujo, a Japanese high school student. This part introduces stands, which are probably the most famous thing from the entire series. These ghost like figures are representations of a persons fighting spirit and each comes with a series of stats describing its physical fighting ability as well as what is known as a stand ability, an ability which is unique to each stand. Jotaro suddenly gets a stand, and Joseph reveals that Dio is back, all though now refered to as DIO in all caps. It turns out that during the end of Phantom Blood Dio was able to steal Jonathans body and he has now used a mysterious arrow to give himself a stand. But since DIO has Josephs body this action has also given every member of the Joestar bloodline a stand due to the spiritual connection between them. Jotaros mother and Holly, who is the daughter of Joseph, is dying from her stand and so Jotaro must team up with the group that will be known as the stardust crusaders in order to defeat DIO and save Holly. This group consists Muhammad Avdol whose stand Magicians Red can throw fire at people, Jean Pierre Polnareff with the sword wielding stand Silver Chariot, Noriaki Kakoyin who can fire emeralds from his stand Hierophant Green and Josephs whose stand Hermit Purple has little to no combat strength but can be used to show him visions of what he wishes to see using different mediums (mainly destroying cameras). Magicians Purple has also been confirmed by the series’ creator Araki to be a representation of Josephs Hamon. The gang later gets joined by the dog Iggy whose stand the Fool can morph sand into different shapes. The problem with Stardust Crusaders, at least for me, is that all though all of the crusaders have their own interesting abilities they are almost never used and a large majority of fights ends with Jotaro punching someone. Gone are the days where a battle was about finding different and unique ways to defeat your opponent, now it’s just about getting Jotaro into punching range. The reason for this is that Jotaros stand ability is only revealed during the last fight against DIO. DIOs stand The World has the ability to stop time, and only those who can stop time can move while it is stopped. Early on in the fight Jotaro notices how similar The World and Star Platinum are, and it is hinted at that this is when he realizes his stand ability. The fight continues and Jotaro tries to hide his power to stop time from DIO, at one point using magnets to trick DIO into believing that he couldn’t actually stop time and was just using the magnets to trick DIO. While this fight and the twist of Jotaros stand ability are great and worth the set up, they come at the price of all of Jotaros prior fights having to be without the use of a stand ability, thus making it a lot harder to making them feel unique and interesting. And this wouldn’t have been a problem if this part of JoJo had better utilized the other members of the Stardust Crusaders. Noone embodies this problem more clearly than Jospeh. See Joseph has what i consider the best fight in the entire season, when he fights the stand user Nena, whose stand the Empress attaches itself to his arm and threatens to kill him, but because it is attached to him if he tries to hurt it he will hurt himself. This leads Joseph to having to run around the town trying to minimize the damage he does to it’s inhabitants while he figures out how to defeat his enemy. At one point he rolls around in some dust while fighting the Empress, and it is later revealed that he used his stand Hermit Purple on the dust in order to show him the route some coal tar, which would allow him to fossilize the Empress stand, get it off his arm and destroy it. This fight perfectly utilizes Joseph as a character, he runs away which is a technique he used a lot in Battle Tendency and he ultimately wins by tricking his opponent. The sad thing is that this is the only time in Stardust Crusaders we get see Joseph like this, despite there being 2 perfect opportunities for Joseph to do something interesting. The first one is during a fight against a Stand known as the sun. This Stand doesn’t fight opponents directly but instead slowly raises the heat coming from the sun thus killing its enemies from heat exposure. As such the point of this battle is not to defeat the stand but to find the stand user and beat them before the gang dies. It turns out the stand user was hiding behind a mirror, which the gang noticed because part of the dessert was perfectly mirrored. The problem is that Joseph is the only person not to notice. Joseph, a fighter who has time and time again used his ability to notice the smallest of details to predict his opponent, even to the point of knowing what they will say, is the only person who doesn’t notice. This straight up doesn’t feel in line with his character. And then there is the fight against Alessi,which many fans have wanted Joseph to participate in. Alessis stand allows him to age down his opponent, weakening them and their stands to the point of being unable to fight. This fight mainly just includes Alessi trying to hunt down and kill a child Polnareff before getting beaten up by a child Jotaro using Star Platinum. Now i want to state up front that Araki has said that the reason Joseph wasn’t in this fight is because he doesn’t like doing things just because of fan service. While i agree with this sentiment, i do think there is a legitimate good reason for Joseph to be in this fight instead of Polnareff and Jotaro. Remember before he had Hermit Purple, Josephs main weapon was his Hamon, and while it can’t directly hurt someone who is not a vampire or Pillar Man, it can be used to manipulate objects. For example Joseph uses it to make a bottle of cola bubble over so he can launch bottle cap into the face of a racist police officer. There is also the fact that non stand users can’t see stands, which means Joseph would have to find another way to avoid getting attacked by Alessi. We could have had a fight where a young Joseph has to find creative ways to use his Hamon to indirectly harm Alessi, all the while he has to use his ability of prediction to avoid getting killed. Yes, this fight would have been fan servicy, but it would also have been a completely unique fight for the series, the most creative and interesting Hamon user against a stand user. It was a perfect opportunity to break the monotony of Stardust Crusaders, and instead we got another fight where Jotaro wins by punching someone really hard.

So, how does Diamond is Unbreakable fix this? To answer that i am gonna give you a short introduction to this part. Here we follow Josephs young son Josuke, whom he had with a woman during a business trip to Japan and who is a lot younger than Jotaro. Josuke doesn’t know his father and instead grew up with his mother and grandfather in the small town of Morio. Early in his life Josuke got sick because of the Joestar family stand shenanigans that DIO started just like what happened to Holly and he ended up getting saved by a man with a pompadour, which is why he mimics that hairstyle and gets very mad if someone makes fun of it. At the start of the series Josukes granddad gets killed by a stand wielding serial killer named Angelo, partly because Josuke doesn’t bother looking after Angelo after imprisoning him. Feeling guilty for the death of his grandfather, who was a police officer, Josuke swears to take up his mandle as the defender of Morio, and together with his friends he forms the Morio defenders protecting the city from malicious stand users. As it turns out there is another serial killer in town, named Kira, who uses his stand Killer Queen to blow up women and steal their hands which he will then date until they rot. The series has a large focus on the city of Morio, as well as its community of stand users and tracking down Kira. In one of the earliest scenes of the series Josuke is showed trying to help a turtle get to safety, establishing him as kind and caring, a fact which is referenced by his stand. His stand is named Crazy Diamond and while it is physically a lot weaker than Star Platinum it can fix any object after punching it, but if Josuke doesn’t concentrate the object will be fixed wrong. He can also use Crazy Diamond to heal people, but he can’t heal himself and he can’t bring people back from death. And this is the fist improvement from Stardust Crusaders, Josuke is by no means weak but he is no where near as strong as Jotaro and his stand power forces him to think of how he can creatively use it to defeat his opponents. Another great fact about Diamond Is Unbreakable is that a lot of the time after defeating a foe, said foe will join the Morio Defenders. See most enemies in Stardust Crusaders would be permanently “out of action” and only a select few villains would return. But in Diamond Is Unbreakable most villains get to appear again and you get to see them in another fight or two, and everyone gets their fair share of fights. Yes Josuke is the main character and gets the most attention, everyone else still gets a satisfying amount of fights. The stand abilities are also a lot more interesting than in part 3. In part 3 we had stand abilities like “it lets its user control bullets from his gun” or “it kills people with fog”. In DIU we have a stand that takes the form of an electric pylon, its user can’t leave the pylon unless someone else enters it and then they get caught inside of it until someone new enters. Also if you attack the pylon it reflects the damage back at you. But, i didn’t call DIU a masterpiece just because it has fun battles, so i am now gonna start talking about themes and characters.

Like i said, one of the themes of part 4 is community, the Morio defenders all come together to stop Kira and each contributes in their own way, but the one character who does the most in order to track down Kira is Rohan Kishibe. Rohan is a mangaka and he has the stand Heavens Door, allowing him to turn peoples faces into books, and anything he writes in them will happen. See, the defenders fist find out about Kira because Rohan wants to visist an alley haunted by ghosts, and there he meets a girl named Remi who is the ghost of Kiras first victim. Later in that same episode, while visiting her grave, Rohan finds out that not only was he friends with Remi, he was in her home on the night that she died and he only survived because she hid him in a bush. It is after this that Rohan starts looking for Kira. At one point, after having been found by Josuke and Jotaro Kira forces another stand user to swap his face with another mans, before killing the two of them and escaping with his new identity. It is Rohan who manages who finds a kid named Hayato, the son of the man whose face Kira stole. Hayato want’s to stop Kira but can’t since Kira has unlocked a new part of his stand, this allows him to plant a bomb inside Hayato that will explode if he tells anyone about Kira which will kill the person he told before turning time back to a specific point, and only Hayato will be able to remember what happened. Even tho he dies, Rohan does manage to tell Hayato that he is waiting on someone, a fact that will be important when i discuss Hayatos character. Now it is never stated explicitly but i chose to interpret Rohans actions after learning about his past with Remi as stemming from a feeling that now it is personal. See Rohan isn’t exactly a good guy, hell he starts out as a villain, but finding out that Remi was his friend, finding out that something so traumatic happened to him, i think this angers the deeply selfish Rohan which is why he works so hard to find Kira. But this is also part of his character ark, Rohan starts out being very eccentric and while he still is at the end of the series, him joining the hunt for Kira allows him to befriend a lot of people, mainly the highly reliable Koichi Hirose, and when Remi leaves Morio, finally being able to go to the afterlife Rohan is able to admit that he will miss her. It is through the hunt for Kira that Rohan can join the community.

The next character i want to discuss is Hayato along with the theme of denying fate. Hayato is a lonely and sad kid, who realizes that his dad is no longer acting like himself and finds out that his dad has been replaced with a serial killer. Now like previously stated non-stand users can’t see stands so Hayato has no idea what is going on or how Kira does the things he does. Another trait to Kira is his incredible luck, whenever it seems something is about to go wrong for Kira he gets lucky and finds a way out, so to Hayato it seems like Kira is destined to win. And yet he persists, he keeps trying to find a way to beat him and each time the time loop resets, each time he fails he tries again. In the end he manages to use Kiras pride against him. Since Hayato can’t tell others about Kira, he gets him to say his name out loud in a spot where Josuke will hear out, thus leading to the final Confrontation between the two. Since Kiras ability to reverse time only triggers if Hayato is the one to reveal his secret it doesn’t go into effect at this point, and when Josuke begins to ponder whether it was fate or coincidence that led him to find Kira, Hayato proclaims that it was neither, and was instead a gamble. Despite only getting introduced late in the season Hayato is an incredibly important character, it is only through his determination, willingness to go against fate and will to do good that Kira is defeated. Thus Hayato inhabits many of the themes of the season.

Kira is the second to last character i want to discuss, and i want to argue that he is the dark mirror to Josuke and the Morio Defenders. First of all, during the part of the season where the Defenders are looking for Kira the song “Chase” is used as the intro song. The musician MasakoXtreme has made an excellent English cover for this song that i highly recommend you listen to, and it is the version i will be using.The song discusses how the POV characters has lost all they know to some evil force and how they are now finding themselves in a world that seems unknown to them. This character proclaims that they will chase the person who took all of this from them no matter what, and that the monster tenacity will be their doom. The reason i bring this song up is because it can be understood as being both from the perspective of Kira and Josuke. While Josuke has lost a friend to Kiras murders (more on that in the next paragraph) but one of Kiras main traits is his desire to live a normal life without too much attention. This simple life was taken away from Kira when the Morio defenders started investigating and forced him to change his face. Then there is the idea that a persons tenacity will be their doom, as i have stated one of the main themes of the heroes of this story is their determination, they are all very tenacious. And then there is the idea of chasing the monster, this references the cat and mouse game between Kira and the Defenders, both trying to chase down and defeat the other. Kira shares many of the traits that define someone like Josuke. He is willing to keep fighting no matter how bleak the situation is, but since he doesn’t have Josukes kindness and so what he fights for is the ability to continue killing people. Kira is also very conventionally attractive. I bring this up because there is a tendency within character design to use attractiveness to show off a characters morality, the idea being that a their outside reflects their inside. So an ugly character would reflect and ugly an evil personality, while a handsome character would be good and kind. But Kira is attractive which means he takes on a trait typically associated with a hero. This also plays together with his desire to live a simple life without attention, given how many successful serial killers in real life are able to seem like normal people, putting on a mask of someone who is well functioning and often very charming. By being handsome it is easier for Kira to fit in and gain the trust of people around him. And while on this topic it would be a mistake not to bring up the famous “I am Yoshikage Kira” speech, in which Kira describes his daily routine to one of Josukes friends who found the hand Kira was dating at that time. While i won’t present it here, and i do recommend you look it up, all you really need to know is that this speech presents and utterly normal routine with nothing that seems odd or out of place, yet the way Kira and his voice actor deliver it it still manages to feel truly unsettling.

Now it is time for us to finally go into depth with the protagonist of the story: Josuke. First of all i want to expand on my point that Josuke has taken up the mantle of the defender of Morio from his grandfather. See, as i have mentioned Kira kills one of Josukes friends, a child named Shigechi, and this is what motivates Josuke to begin hunting down Kira. The thing is he knew about Kira before Shigechi died, Rohan had already met Remi at this point and told the rest of the Defenders about the serial killer, yet Josuke had done little to nothing to find Kira, he hadn’t even warned his friends that they might be in danger, so Shigechi didn’t know about Kira. Much like how Josukes dad died because Josuke had not taken the job of guarding Angelo seriously, Shigechi died because Josuke had not taken the threat of Kira seriously. This represents a pivotal moment in Josukes character arc. While he does genuinely want to defend his city and the people he cares about, Josuke is still by large the kid he was when his grandfather died, it is only when Shigechi died that Josuke realizes how big a threat Kira is and that when dealing with someone like Kira one can not simply wait around for them to make move, you have to take the situation more seriously than that. Another interesting thing about Josuke is his relationship to the name of the season “Diamond is unbreakable”. Josukes stand is named Crazy Diamond, and as stated a stand represents the fighting spirit of its owner. So if Crazy Diamond is the diamond the title references, that would mean Josukes fighting spirit can not be broken. Again, one of the main characteristics of the heroes of this story is their tenacity and Josuke fully embodies this. Then there is his kindness. When Jotaro finds out how Josukes stand ability he refers to it as “kinder than anything else”. It is this kindness that allows Josuke to form the Morio Defenders who help him protect his city, instead of putting his foes out of action he befriends them and adds them to his team. The sense of community that matters so much to the themes of DIU can only exist because Josuke spares his enemies whenever he can. An example of this in practice is Josuke sparing and agreeing to help the Nejmura brothers and befriending Okuyasu Nejmura. During the final battle Okuyasu willingly sacrifices himself (all though he doesn’t die don’t worry) to aid Josuke, and if he hadn’t done that it is likely that Josuke would have been unable to defeat Kira. While Josuka takes on his grandfathers role as the defender of Morio, it is also not a role he must play alone, and through the connections he makes he crafts a powerful bond, a bond that is as unbreakable as diamond.

[bringerofplagues]

Doomfist: The Tank Who Doesn’t Tank

Heyo, i’ve been back on my bullshit (OW2) lately and have come to realize something i find interesting about the games design....again. Long story short while playing with Doomfist on my team i have come to realize that it usually feels like something is missing from the team. Now i want to say i think the game is at it’s best when everyone plays the hero they enjoy the most and just try to have a fun time, so i don’t want anyone to feel bad about maining Doomfist.

I want to start by making it clear what i believe the role of the Tank is in OW2. The tanks purpose is to protect the squishies on the team and provide utility, this can be done by using shields, soaking damage and drawing aggro among other methods. I think the best example of a tank is Reinhardt. Reins main thing is his shield which allows him to protect his team, but should the shield get broken he can still bodyblock to soak damage. He can also do a good amount of damage but his attacks are slow and can be very melee focused, luckily he has his charge allowing him to rush in when he needs to and his ult which knocks down enemies thus allowing his team to better get in position. 

So how does Doomfist accomplish this? Well he doesn’t. He has no way to shield his allies, he isn’t that good at drawing aggro and he has no utility in his kit. I would say, Doomfist is a tank for people who like to play Tracer, he tends to go away from the team and try to pick off the enemy one by one. Now i think this is what he was meant to do. Go in and either kill the enemies supports and DPS or manage to distract the enemy team for long enough that his team can get ind and do some real damage. The problem is that most of time he doesn’t really accomplish that. A lot of his damage is tied to his movement to the point where his only damage that doesn’t come with movement is his hand canon. This makes it hard to effectively do damage with him given how hard he can be to aim with, his cool downs and the charge time on rocket punch. But tying his damage to his movement also creates a different problem, it makes it harder for him to get back to his team. See i would argue the tank is one of the most important roles in a team fight. While the DPS is important for killing enemies and the support needs to make it easier for the rest of the team to accomplish their goals, none of them can do that while dead and the tank is supposed to help keep them around. But while Doomfist is off trying to deal with one of the enemies DPS the rest of his team now has to try and at the very least hold during a team fight without their tank. Now Doomifst is by no means the only dive-tank in the game and they are an important subclass, but i want to compare him with another dive-tank to show why he doesn’t work. So, lets take a look at Winston. First of all while Winston only has one movement ability in the form of his jump pack which also does damage this isn’t his main way of dealing damage. In reality it is an engage and disengage tool that can do damage if used well. But once he has engaged Winston won’t use it to do damage and is free to use it for movement purposes thus allowing him to quickly get back to his team, whereas Doomfist has to use all of his movement abilities to do damage. Winston also has the benefit that his Tesla canon can much more easily hit multiple enemies than Doomfists hand canon. Thus instead of wasting time hunting down one enemy Winston can take on 3 enemies at the same time. And at last Winston has his barrier projector, allowing him to give his team a shield before jumping behind enemy lines.

I know Doomfist got nerfed between OW1 and OW2, and i want to talk about how his game design effects his balancing. To put it shortly i think Doomfist might be what the MOBA community calls a damage nightmare, aka a hero who’s designed in a way that means they will almost always be either very overpowered or very under powered. See the problem with Doomfist is this, if he is strong the game now has a tank who can easily flank the enemy, with tons of movement and damage. But if he is weak well now you have a tank who has to leave his team in order to do a job a a DPS could do better without their team loosing an important part of the comp. And then there is the problem of how his abilities work. If you give them a short cool down well then he can easily spam them to just kill the enemy team but if their cool downs are long then he can’t get back to his team when he needs to. And this is just looking at Doomfist in a vacuum, but guess what he doesn’t exist in vacuum. Imagine making him just right, his cool downs have exactly the right lenght, his damage is where it needs to be etc. But then you have to take into account stuff like Anas nanoboost, which is inherently gonna be strong on a dive tank. Now while a Nanoboost can be very good on Winston, there is the fact that a lot of his threat potential is locked behind his ult, thus meaning you need to use 2 ults to get really make it work. Or there is Rein, he can charge in, get nanoboosted and then do tons of damage and stay alive, but he is also slow and once he has engaged his one movement ability will be on cool down meaning the enemy team just has to kite him.

Now at this point, if you are like me, you might have come to the conclusion that a lot of these problems could be fixed if you could just use 2 tanks. Doom fist would be able to do the job of one of the DPS heroes while the second tank protected the team. And this is where the problem with Doomfist becomes apparent. He was designed before the addition of role queue which means comps where a lot more free at that time. Also from what i can see when role queue was first added it had 2 tanks per team which was still better for Doomfist. But obviously this isn't the case in OW2 and i think this is the fundamental problem with Doomfists design, he was never designed to be in the game he is in. Now the obvious way to fix that would have been to change him while making OW2 to make him fit in more with the new games systems. But if you change a hero to drastically you risk angering all the people who enjoyed playing them before, and so Doomfist ended up the way he is, a half baked dive-tank.

[bringerofplagues]

A Ranking of All Mainline Pokemon Regions, From Least Favourite to Most Favourite

The title basically says it all, i am going to make a ranking of the pokemon regions from every mainline pokemon game, from least favorite to most favorite, along with a short description of why i feel that way towards a specific region. Short disclaimer this is all personal opinion, i might not like your favorite region and that is ok, also i fully believe in the theory that most peoples favorite region is the one they first played as a child, so there will be a lot personal bias in this post.

Kanto - this is the only region i have never been able to play through fully, unless you count going to Kanto in the Johto games, but that doesn’t feel like it counts to me. It’s not that i haven’t tried playing the kanto games all the way through but they are just so boring that i can never bother with getting past Koga. Kanto also just have the most boring pokemon designs in the entire series imo, a problem that only gets worse given that they were made before pokemon figured out their unified design principles which means a lot of those designs just feel super generic and without any interesting stylisation, ultimately resulting in them not even feeling like pokemon and only being recognized as such because they have been plastered all over the franchise for so long (a phenomenon i have dubbed the Charizard problem). Also team rocket are just not interesting, they have no real motivation or any real characterization at all.

Hoenn - Hoenn is pretty good, but i just don’t care too much about it. There were some good designs and i do really like the island theme and all the surfing, at least on paper. I think the problem is that i just grew up a bit too late, i do remember the Hoenn anime being on tv as a kid, and while i liked it a lot i never grew really attached to it. I really like team aqua and team magma, especially their oras redesigns, and i like the idea of two opposing teams, one in each version of the game. However like i said i like how much water Hoenn has on paper, but i think some of the surf encounters got too repetitive after a while, if they had added a few more it would have made the games a lot more fun. Still by no means a bit region but just not one i feel very attached to.

Galar - So the next four regions are all incredibly close and their ranking might change at any given day. That being said i really wanted to rank Galar higher, it’s such an underrated region but i just can’t. Part of the problem is definitely age, it’s just too new to be nostalgic but not new enough to be exciting, i also didn’t get the dlc’s which seemed to add a lot of charm to the region. I will also say that i belive that gen 6 and onward have the best overall designs in the series and galar is no exception. That is other than the starters, none of them have ever really spoken to me, Cinderace is probably my fave atm. The story was also a bit of a mess. All of the rivals were great and very well written, but chairman Rose sucked. He was willing to endanger an entire city full of people just because Leon wanted to wait one more day to fix a problem that was a thousand or so years away. And then there is team yell, i am a big fan of punk and punk aesthetics but they just didn’t do it for me, all in all they feel like a worse team skull. Still a great and underrated gem of a game. Also the nationaldex was completely unsustainable and it would have to be removed sooner or later, anyone who was mad at that is weird.

Unova - My relationship with Unova is lot like my relationship with Hoenn. I think Unova is at all technical levels a great region, but i just never grew attached to it. It definitely had some good designs (Klingklang and vinalluxe got way to much hate) and some bad ones. People like to talk about how nice it was to see the gym leaders partake in the story, but i don’t feel like any of them where that iconic other than Clay, and i only remember him as a yeehaw cowboy and oil/mining tycoon. The seasons mechanic was cool and i would have loved to see them do more with it. I also didn’t play B2W2 since that was during my “pokemon is for kids” phase so i fully understand that i have missed out on part of the story. Speaking of story but Unova has the worst villain since Giovanni. Now before you get your torches and pitchforks let me just say: i don’t think N is a villain. I could write an entire essay about this opinion but long story short i see N a as good person with a unique ability that led him to have extreme empathy towards pokemon, and i see him as a victim of his abusive and manipulative adopted father who used him for his own greedy goals. I honestly feel like N is one of the best written characters in the entire series. The problem is that with all the attention N got, the actual villain of the game got no real depth. Ghetsis is just like Giovanni, he is evil but has no reason why, he’s just a greedy asshole with no deeper motivation, every other villain than those two have at least something resembling an ideology.

Kalos - I love kalos, kalos was the region that got me back into pokemon, all though i only missed B2W2. Like i said the gen 6 and onward design philosophy is great and there are so many great mons in kalos. The gym leaders also had a lot of personality and mega evolution is the best battle gimmick gamefreak have come up with. The problem is the rivals and the evil teams.The best way i can describe the rivals is that if you squished them all together you would have one full rival, but as is they all just feel empty. Essentially they all have one character trait that completely dominates their character. And then there is team flare, Lysander is obviously evil and doesn’t work as a twist villain, and the grunts and admins look really dumb, especially given their focus on beauty. Kalos will always have a special spot in my heart, but it just has a few too many faults to go any further on the list.

Johto - now here we have the first region bias. I cant actually remember if my first game was soulsilver or platinum, but i don't care i love them both so much. Part of he reason i love modern pokemon design so much is because i love cute designs with rounded edges, which johto has a lot of. And then there are the towns, this is the first region on this list where i really want to talk about them. Other regions had good towns, but none of them so far have come close to the towns of johto. Ecruteak city is so goated. And then there is the new team rocket, who actually have motivation, sure it’s not a lot but it’s way better than what they got back in kanto. And then there is the characters. Silver might just be my favourite rival, and while the gym leaders don’t have the most depth some of them are insanely iconic (cough cough Whitneys miltank), and hell lance even gets some more characterization. All in all just a great region only really being held back by a bad leveling curve.

Alola - Alola is such a good region, and probably has the best story in the entire series. The fact that Lusamine lost her husband to ultra space and then got obsessed with ultra beasts trying to get him back. The fact that you get to se Lillie grow as a character throughout the game. The twist that Gladeon is her brother. And then that scene where Lusamine is finally free from the Nihelego poison and calls Lillie beautiful. It all just works so great. My only problem is that i don’t like Lusamines character in USUM. Instead of her having gone mad she is now trying to save the world but fails and accidentally sets Necrozma free, and i think that hidden scene at the end where she sees Mohn, realizes that’s her husband and lets him go because he seems happy would have worked better in SM since it would have been a more satisfying end to that Lusamines character ark. And then there is team skull, the better team yell, not to mention how sympathetic Guzma is. He was just a kid who couldn’t live up to all the pressure he was under and now he rejects the whole system that put him under that pressure. Sadly z moves were a somewhat boring gimmick leaving the game in the number 3 spot

Paldea - so this might be recency bias, but this region is perfect. Because it is new i won’t spoil anything but the characters are amazing, the pokemon designs are better than ever, and the electric gym leader is my favorite character since looker.

sinnoh - Ah sinnoh, my favorite region. Like i said i can’t remember if Platinum was my first game but god did i fall in love with that game. The designs were great, the gym leaders had so much character, you even got to help Volkner with his depression. And then we have team galactic, Cyrus is such a great boss. In platinum it is hinted that he was emotionally abused as a kid and that is why he despises emotions so much. And then there is the music, gods it is so good, i love that relaxing jazz vibe it has. And of course the towns, i still have their iconic designs burned into my memory and i will keep them their till the day i die.

[bringerofplagues]

An Asexual Persons Reflections on Invisible Queerness

I want to start this essay off with a few disclaimers. First of all: the idea i am going to express isn’t meant to be important or part of some larger discourse, it is simply a reflection on how my certain factors shape my relationship with my own queerness, i share it because i think it is interesting and not because it matters all that much. That being said i am going to express one change i would personally like to see within the LGBTQ+ community, and i will mention one thing at the end of the essay that actually matters. The last disclaimer is this: i am asexual, but i also have other queer identities / labels that i do not feel comfortable with connecting to this blog atm, all you need to know for this essay is that they exist. Oki doki lets get into it.

So, a few weeks ago in one of my uni classes we were learning about the concept of passing, and we were asked to reflect on one way we pass as something we aren’t. It was then that i realized how i pass as a straight / asexual person, despite being asexual. See, unlike a gay or trans person an asexual isn’t visibly queer, or at least not in the same way, you can’t see someone with their partner and know they are ace, and you can’t “clock” someone as ace either. Many queer people also use particular forms of fashion to communicate their queerness to others, but as far as i know the only way ace people do that is through “ace rings” (completely black rings), and even then i feel like that is mostly just ace people who are able to pick up on it. This is why i call asexuality a form of invisible queerness, if i do not tell someone i’m ace they will never know. And i find this notion comforting, unlike my other queer identities i don’t feel like fear associated with my asexuality, i don’t feel scared that some stranger on the street might realize i am ace and do something unpleasant to me, because as i have already shown if i don’t communicate that i am ace in a very direct manner, no one will know. But it also allows me to navigate queer spaces in a different manner than i would otherwise be able to. One problem within the queer community is exclusionists, ie people who want to exclude certain people or identities from the community. Some that i have seen a lot of i recent times are bi and trans exclusionists. Now i am not blind to the fact that there are a lot of ace-phobic people in the LGBTQ+ community, but they don’t scare me the same way. Part of it is my ability to hide my asexuality yes, but another part is that i just don’t feel as strongly about being rejected on the basis of my asexuality. It’s hard to explain, but i guess it’s because like being ace is a core part of who i am. Don’t get me wrong i am proud of being ace, and finding that label has made me understand myself way better, but i just don’t feel like a rejection of my asexuality is a rejection of me the same way a rejection of my other queer identities is. And this allows me to use my asexuality to gain access to queer spaces, without that fear of rejection. If i am rejected for being ace that community wouldn’t want me no matter what, but if they allow me in as an ace person then i can gauge how tolerant they are of my other identities before revealing them.

Now this ability to fly under the radar obviously effects my relationship to my queerness and how i express it. I do enjoy being very visibly queer as long as i am an environment where i feel safe to act that way, but i am also that i am able to be queer in a manner that i just feel inherently safe with, without sacrificing my own queerness.  Another reason for this is also just that i am in general a quiet person, i mostly keep to myself or hang around friends and i don’t enjoy attention. I spend a lot of time alone in my room just working on my hobbies and that is the sort of life that makes me happy. But like i said there is something i would like to see changed within the community, and that is that i don’t feel like this way of being queer is really treated as legitimate. Now before i go any further i want to again strain something: this isn’t a super important thing, it is based on my personal experiences and it isn’t something that i demand be changed, it’s just something i would like to see. Now in order to understand what i mean i want to go back to when i first began discovering that i am queer. As i began entering more queer spaces online i constantly came into certain stereotypes about what it meant to be queer from within these communities. One i remember seeing a lot is the “all queer people like RuPauls drag race” stereotype. In general these stereotypes presented being queer as something where you have to be loud and out there, where you have to be attention seeking and by god you have to go to drag races. And well i just couldn’t relate to that, like i said i am a quiet attention avoidant person, and that's not just when it comes to being queer, i just prefer to go unseen. And i also don’t really like drag races, i don’t think there’s anything wrong with them they just aren’t my cup of tea. And yeah i don’t like RuPauls drag race, from the handful of episodes i have seen the personalities are just too loud for my taste if that makes sense.

Another example is the “queer people i respect meme” (as can be seen with a cute response here https://twitter.com/poyopoppin/status/1210282307476742144) and the following parody / response (that you can see here:https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1588921-counter-signal-memes). Now i like the response meme, i think it generally addresses the bigotry in the first version pretty well. But i also think it creates a false dichotomy between being very visibly queer and being ashamed of your own sexuality. No i do not think this was intentional from whoever created it, i think the idea was to say something along the lines of “straight people act like even mentioning you are queer is the same as making that your entire personality”. But it uses a drawing of a queer person who is very visible in their queerness, and the only things it says about the person who isn’t as visibly queer are about how ashamed they are. And it would be one this what just stuff that happened online, i can always leave the communities where those stereotypes run rampant and just chill on my own. The problem is that they are also very prevalent in real life queer communities. One example is my university, we have a council for queer events, but so far they have only ever arranged drag races. It just feels like there isn’t room for being more quiet and introverted while also being queer and it’s a bit frustrating.

Now here is my last point, and this is the one actually important thing i said i would mention. I want to say that i fully understand why a lot of queer people and communities focus on being loud and being seen, it is because it is a fundamental part of the queer rights movement. One of the oldest and most common ways of discriminating against queer people has been to try to push us out of the public space, to make us unseen and unheard. It’s why people to this day will talk about how they aren’t against queer people but they just don’t wanna see it, it’s why whenever a couple in a cartoon is revealed to be gay someone people will go mad screaming about how sexualised and inappropriate that is, even if said couple never do anything more than just holding hands. It’s why people made it illegal to be queer in public under the disguise of it being obscene, and it is why people are trying to do that again. Simply put there are people who want to take away all abilities to be queer in public, and being loud and being seen are important weapons to prevent that from happening. It’s also why pride is much more than just a celebration, it’s a continuation of the protests that have been carried on for so long, it’s a continuation of queer peoples right to exist in the open. I am saying this because i want to make it clear that i have no issue with queer people being loud and visibly queer, it’s just not how i want to perform my queerness, but i understand that it is important that everyone has the option to do so, and that there are people doing it. And if you live in a place that is actively trying to make it harder for queer people to exist in public, for example for trying to ban certain queer events such as drag races, please fight against those attempts.

[bringerofplagues]

On Dwarves and Anti-Semetism in LOTR

First of all, i want to clarify that i do not think J R R Tolkien is anti-semetic. However if you have seen any analysis of the Dwarves in LOTR you will probably have seen someone reference the quote of Tolkien saying that the dwarves were based on the jewish people, and then pointing out that dwarves are often portrayed as fat and greedy in Tolkiens works, much similar to how anti-semites tend to portray jewish people. Now i am not here to dictate whether anyone can have a problem with the portrayal of the dwarves and their connections to jewish people. However my aim is to highlight why i Tolkien did not intend for his text to be read this way, and why i still think it is okay to be upset with him.

First of all, while it is true that the dwarves in lotr are based to some degree on the jewish people, that is not all they are based on. The dwarves are also based on, well dwarves. Specificly the dwarves of nothern mythology. These dwarves are often portryaed as short stocky metal workers, smiths and briliant artisans, much like the dwarves in LOTR, and every dwarf name in the Hobbit is taken directly from the old sagas. However the most obvious connection to the dwarves of northern mythology is the hobbit and the story of Fafnir. So quick recap, in the hobbit Thorin Oakenshields grandad gets one of the rings of power, this causes him to grow greedy as the rings tend to amplify a persons worst qualities, he amasses a huge pile of gold that attracts the dragon Smaug who wipes out the kingdom of Erebor, and then much later Thorin leads his band to reclaim Erebor but unfortunate succumbs to greed himself before dying in the battle of the five armies and realizing his wrongs. The story of Fafnir is about the greedy dwarf Fafnir who collects a huge amount of treasure before finding a cursed magical ring that turns him into a dragon. Both stories show greedy dwarves with evil magical rings being punished for their greed by the presence of a dragon. While yes some elements are switched around the story of Erebor and the story of Fafnir have very similar structures, too similar to be a coincidence since we know Tolkien loved norse mythology. I believe this where the theme of greed in the dwarves story come from, not from some anti-semetic view of the jewish people but from the myths that inspired the dwarves. What i see as the jewish part of the dwarves in Tolkiens works is that Thorin and his band are a diaspora community, looking for a land to call their own, specifically a lost ancestral land.

But this does not change that Tolkien, whether intentionally or not drew a line connecting judaism with greed. While i think it would be unfair to call him anti-semetic, i do believe it is important to be critical of this sort of behavior, as it is quite common for people to accidentally reinforce negative stereotypes simply because they don’t think critically about the connotations their works may conjure.