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It's funny too because something she liked could be popular just not popular enough for my grandma to listen to like a good part of my adolescence was putting on 80s music only for my mother to go "This isn't the cool 80s music" and she wanted to switch it to Duran Duran

When I was a teen I told my mom I'd never become an annoying hipster like her that avoids things she liked once they got popular enough but also I haven't seen a single episode of Dungeon Meshi despite spending half of Covid lockdown evangelizing Marcille so maybe it's just in my blood to be petty sometimes

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When I was a teen I told my mom I'd never become an annoying hipster like her that avoids things she liked once they got popular enough but also I haven't seen a single episode of Dungeon Meshi despite spending half of Covid lockdown evangelizing Marcille so maybe it's just in my blood to be petty sometimes

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Apparently the first episode of the Kaiju No 8 anime dropped. Have you seen it yet? And what are your thoughts on it if you have?

I just watched the first 2 episodes

It's... Alright. I enjoyed it, but that's because I already like Kaiju No. 8. I don't think the adaptation really does anything creatively enough to convince anyone who isn't already a fan of the manga or standard shonen of the season.

It's competent, but too safe. I also already made this complaint on this blog, but I don't like the anime designs much. Just look at Kikoru in the manga vs the anime

It feels like the designs lost a lot of their charm during the transition from manga to anime.

That being said it's a decent enough adaptation that I'm going to continue watching. Unlike Dungeon Meshi, I don't see KN8 breaking into the mainstream, so following the anime's probably going to be a more enjoyable experience for me than seeing 5 bad takes about Marcille a week lol

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Is there any power scaling discussion that will inevitably make you feel the need to respond, no matter how irrelevant power scaling is to the actual media in question?

"How did Nero defeat Vergil at the end of DMC5 he's only 1/4th demon he should be much weaker wahh wahh plot armor"

First of all, Nero won because he wanted to win more than Vergil did. Second of all, Vergil's used to fighting an agile clown like Dante and not a brute gorilla like Nero who has no problem with just grabbing him and slamming him into the dirt repeatedly until he cries uncle.

BUT ALSO we know that human blood fuels demons in Devil May Cry. They have to consume it to grow their powers, which is why these guys keep powering all their infernal machinery with blood and why the tree whose fruit is kingmaker of the underworld must feed on human blood.

Before Nero, it looks like Vergil and Dante's strength came from being the sons of Sparda, who was Mundus' strongest soldier and was able to solo all of hell for his lady love.

But honestly I think a lot of their power comes from their nature as hybrids. When Urizen consumes the same fruit that made Mundus king of the underworld, he gets torn a brand new asshole by Dante working with an 8 year old's logic (if Vergil cut himself in two with the Yamato, maybe stabbing myself with Rebellion glues both my sides tighter?) and it actually works.

Not only is Dante's SIN Devil Trigger form written down in Nico's notes as matching (or even surpassing) Sparda's peak, he crushes Urizen both before and after the latter consumes the fruit containing human blood worth millions, completely mystifying the demon king because what the fuck kind of bullshit powerup is that?

Urizen's only able to match Dante's strength once V fuses his human self back into him to recreate Vergil.

I think being a demon-human hybrid basically acts like an infinite human blood battery. It's already inside you and never runs out because your body just makes more blood. The demonic side isn't granting the power, it's granting the abilities; the human side is the gas fueling this killing machine.

The whole time Sparda was turning on his own hell legions for Earth pussy he was unknowingly stumbling into the blueprint for creating unbeatable demonic super soldiers, and had no idea.

Every time Dante defeated the likes of Mundus or Argosax they must have been calling horseshit because there's no way they're getting destroyed by this buffoon just because he's Sparda's son when fighting skills aren't something you inherit like it's hair color, not realizing Dante's powers are fueled by his own blood (and plenty of self-stabbing).

This means that Nero is not inherently weaker than Vergil or Dante by having less demon in him, because it's the hybrid nature itself being their strength.

While Nero's powers aren't as mature as theirs, his demonic strength is enough to grab both Dante and Vergil's SIN devil trigger forms and push them back when they charged at full might, and in fact he's physically strong enough to lift giants like Goliath and ragdoll them around like their name is Bluto and he's just eaten a can of spinach.

Dante even points out at the end that Vergil cut off his own son's arm for more power and the son still kicked his ass anyway. By the end of DMC5 Nero doesn't need the Yamato anymore to do Buster moves, he can shape his own aura into arms to punch and grab things just as effectively, making him completely independent from actually using any devil arms to fight (he only needs human weapons like Lady does). He's strong enough that Dante trusts him with protecting the world by himself while Dante goes to hell, which is a big ask given you know, everything in DMC 1-4.

TL;DR - Nero strong

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The major reason Dante and Vergil's rivalry works better than almost any other take on the trope is because the games are totally self aware about how dumb and immature the whole trope is and they lean way the hell into it. Like yeah, there's real stakes, turmoil and emotional wounds between them that drive their eternal conflict but at the same time it's pretty obvious that the real reason they fight all the time is because they're both just the biggest goddamn children on the planet.

It really is just playground bickering elevated to apocalyptic proportions by sheer virtue of them both being demigods.

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A 28-year-old motorcyclist died in Washington State on Friday afternoon because a dipshit Tesla driver rear-ended him at speed. A Snohomish man, 56, was commuting in his 2022 Tesla Model S when he activated the car’s camera-based advanced driver assist system and according to his statements to police, began looking through his phone. With nobody paying attention to the car’s actions, the Tesla software ignored Jeffrey Nissen on his motorcycle and continued on at speed. The car rear-ended the two-wheeler, Nissen was flung from the bike, and his life ended pinned underneath the electric car, where he was still lodged when police arrived to the scene.

Tesla claims another life.

Reminder that even if you are personally aware of how dangerous Tesla vehicles are and vow to never ride in one, they can still kill you.

My own driving habits have changed around them. I always give Teslas extra space, avoid following them directly, and expect them to stop or swerve suddenly without notice.

Cannot count the times I've pulled up next to a Tesla at freeway speed, noticed the driver playing on their phone. Tap the horn. They look up with surprise.

Please, don't be that guy.

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I remember leading up to Rebirth people expecting for it to end with having to choose between Tifa and Aerith. As if that wouldn’t be the Worst Idea

Something like that would have blown the scope way out of control (as if these games aren't huge enough) and also would have missed the point entirely lol.

Rebirth's changes and surprises work so well because it uses your knowledge and expectations of FF7 against you, not just in what it changes, but in what it keeps the same.

Yuffie is really easy to miss in the original and is recruited in the forests outside Junon, but in Rebirth she's seen in Junon but doesn't join in until after Costa del Sol, making you question if it was possible to have messed something up. Funnily enough, the team also does all it can to push her away (because Barret doesn't want to endanger a teenage girl) and instead she forces herself in.

Cid is also met in Rocket town in the original game, and he's a foul-mouthed chainsmoker, but in Rebirth he's first seen as a hired pilot in Gongaga, and while he's rough, he's not unfriendly (because the gang are customers), and he's yet to really join the party in anti-Shinra activities because you're still missing the part where Rufus refuses to restart the space program and Palmer tries to steal his plane.

Now the thing with Aerith's fate is that her death worked in the original because it was such a surprise. Rebirth can't replicate that anymore, not when Aerith's death is one of the most famous plot twists in all of JRPGs.

Instead, Rebirth tells you that it knows that you know. Events involving party members change majorly, while the ending of Remake states that the very concept of 'fate' has been destroyed. The party gets more time with Aerith and more fleshed out relationships, from Tifa confiding with Aerith about her doubts regarding Cloud's Nibelheim flashback to Barret becoming something of a father figure to her (and Yuffie) with his protective nature and little cute details like lending Aerith his shades in battle. There all these new things that clue you in on a slowly sinking feeling that despite things changing, one dreadful detail is going to stay the same, because this game still feels like FF7.

And it's great because it's not just a meta thing. The cast fights for Aerith like it's possible for her to be saved, because they don't know that she has to die here, only you, the player, know that. Unlike the original, Cloud reaches Sephiroth seemingly just in time. Barret looks Sephiroth dead in the eyes and says "I'm going to kill you." because apparently skewering him with an odachi is fine so long as you don't do it to someone else under his watch. Zack Fair himself abuses a bullshit cosmic loophole to come back from the dead (not exactly but it's a long story) to save her because he promised years ago he'd come back, and when you go as far as having the second most famous dead FF7 character cheat death to save her, to grant the wish of FF7 players since 1997, you would think "Oh shit this can work. This can happen. Aerith's going to make it!"

And then she doesn't.

You can't toy with your audience's emotions that precisely and effectively if you're going to let them choose between Aerith or Tifa lol

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Go, my shitty low-res cropped out soy-jack Marcille. Be free.

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While I'm one of those people that would have preferred a real remake instead of this Secretly Sequel FF7 trilogy, I truly respect that Square spent two whole games changing up FF7 and telling you that anything could happen now, then promptly ignored the single most requested change in all of Final Fantasy for the last 25+ years, looked the players in the eye, and said "Oh this is going to hurt just as much as you remember"

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I'm sorry but the more I think about the Rebirth ending the more I love it actually like. The whole trilogy has been a meta commentary of sorts and, specially, Aerith's death is at the epicenter of it. She both dies and doesn't die exactly because us, as an audience, want both things to happen.

People have been clamoring to be able to save Aerith since 1997, there were fake hidden hacks, AU fictions, retellings, everything. Everyone has been at Squeenix's doorsteps begging them to let us save her. Like, it's at a point where the "Square will let us save Aerith if you pay for the DLC" joke is much more than a decade old.

On the other side, there's this very expressive unwant for any change whatsoever from the source material. It's not a feeling that is exclusive to FF7 either, there's this very clear pushback against any new remake/adaptation that deviates, even slightly, from it's original. People don't want new content, they want the old one they experienced when they were younger, but prettier, they want to both feel the nostalgia and experience everything as if for the first time again.

From that camp, I think the most prominent argument is that FF7 is about loss, right? And they're not wrong. Aerith's death is the crux of the story, it's the very thing that made FF7 as known as it is, there would be no actual weight to what it's trying to tell if the heroine doesn't die in the middle of it, an unexpected, hurtful, avoidable death. What's the point of a narrative about grief if you can just... avoid losing someone? Avoid having it be cruelly taken from you?

And yet, you see, if want someone to die, if you want something to be taken from you, are you really losing it? In the original, part of the impact was that no one could see it coming, it was a straight representation about how death is sudden and takes away opportunity from you. Aerith doesn't go into the sleeping forest willing to make a sacrifice for the greater good, she has barely started her adventure, she makes a promise to go on the highwind, the group is one location away from finding out more about her ancestry and her family.

That's not true for the remake, tho. Everyone knows about her fate, about what is going to happen to her. That's probably the most spoiled moment in video game history. I personally knew about her death before I truly understood what Final Fantasy even was. So now we have an audience that is extremely aware of what, when and how her death is going to happen. That's why the Confluence of Worlds is put at that moment, because it's the single most expected moment in the entire triology, it's the one moment that made the narrative resonate so well.

The impact is impossible to recreate now, even for newer fans of the series. People want a 1:1 retranslation but such a thing would always be a gimmicky shadow of it's original. It's why the focus shifts, now the most emotionally impactful scene is not the killing of her but of her goodbye, in the church after the dream date. "Thank you," Aerith echoes "It's been fun", a callback to her conclusion on Remake where she says "I'm grateful for all the words we shared. All the moments and the memories. You've made me more happy than you know."

So she dies and she doesn't, both at the same time. Effectively in limbo now, narratively explained by lifestream shenaningans. We put her there ourselves, by refusing to move on, refusing to accept her death but also refusing to change, allowing a different outcome. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, at least, Aerith's words sound like the very sincere feelings of the developers, who are grateful for all the love we all have powered into their work all these years.

I just love it so much, I could spend hours talking about it.

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There’s a lot of Scooby Doo stuff on Netflix

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Some guys I like playing Queensblood idk

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I love living in SEA shutters!! I love being burned into molten flesh in my home!!!

Today's heat index read 52 fucking degrees Celsius in parts of the country I love melting into the sidewalk

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In case this is a Type-Moon question, Fate/Samurai Remnant has a small but pretty critical new detail about Kojiro's life

He outlived Musashi, and ended up training her son, teaching him his own secret technique.

Is there a summary of the different details regarding Kojiro's life that got revealed in the different texts?

Is this a Type-Moon question or a history question?

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the future