#((i mean no offense to people who do like the slime interpretation! i just very much disagree. i'm not looking to argue or anything though)

[abyssembraced]

Kind of a random thing, but I have to say that I do Not like the Slime Creature interpretation of Rouxls. I get why people headcanon that, I do! He's got that thing going on with his mouth that looks like it could be. Melting. Or some shit. But I Do Not Like It dgsgsfsh

If you've happened to see my art of him, you'd know I personally give him a galaxy pattern across his full body! (If you want an example, here's a semi-old doodle page of him)

I guess it doesn't make The Most sense for him to be galaxy themed, given that he's. A playing card, but. Pretty :) dgdgshf

It does sort of fit, though. As the rules card, he's connected to the universe through his ability to change its laws, if only slightly. Thus, he looks as though he is the universe.

The galaxy pattern continues fluidly across his body. Like, his coat and his pants don't have separate patterns or anything. It's all just one big galaxy. It's constantly moving and shifting, too, albeit slowly--you probably wouldn't notice it unless you were actively watching him.

He's... Mystical. As though he doesn't belong in his world (just as his sprite is different from Every Other One in the game with its white outlines). Looking at him is like looking into a portal, and if you reached out to touch him, it would almost be surprising to meet a solid body and not actually grasp the galaxies within.

Because of the whole "galaxy pattern running uninterrupted across his entire body regardless of clothing" thing, I like to think that Rouxls has some sort of reverse chameleon effect on his clothes. No matter what he wears, everything changes colour to match that same galaxy pattern (aside from white, which remains the same). If he were to take off his coat and someone else wore it, it would just be black or something.

[100dad]

The 6 things that crushed dads in the last 50 years.

The 6 things that crushed dads in the last 50 years.

This experiment is over. It is a complete disaster. A failure. Single moms are not the answer to a better society.  Stupid dads are not the answer for a more united America. Locked-up dads are not the answer.  Uninvolved dads are not the answer.

The studies are boring to read but unanimous. When dad is in the home (regardless of the quality of dad) kids perform better in school and achieve higher education than their peers with no dad in the home. Income is higher in a home with a dad in it than in homes without a dad. Poverty rates skyrocket when there is no dad in the home. Dependence on welfare skyrockets when dad is no in the home. Crime rates are crazy high in households that do not have a dad present. Kids raised in a home with dad present have much more opportunity in life.

Teenage pregnancy skyrockets in households without a dad, leading to a continued cycle. Mental health issues are much higher in homes where dad is gone. The odds are ever in your favor when Dad is home. Your odds tank when dad is gone. That is white paper research. Decades of studies. Government-funded. From many many different research organizations.

This is what we have done over the last 50 years to destroy the family unit and take Dads out of the home.

Shift in Workplace

The shift in economics was a real cause. Dads were home and their presence was felt. They were often farmers or local merchants. As the world shifted so did families. Small farms disappeared. Industrial Revolution called for workers to spend long, hard, dangerous days away from the home. Eventually, companies became bigger and bigger with national reach. Local shops shuttered in exchange for big box stores. Sales became a leading career. Dads traveled, they moved, they spent more time away from their families. No more working side by side in the fields. No more being taught how to fix things and make the farm run. No more stopping by dads store and spending time learning the family business. Now dad was either out of town or working for a company where having your family stop by would be frowned upon.

Let’s not forget more and more women going into the workplace. Which often meant more and more influence in raising kids not coming from the parents. Even with Dad gone, to some extent, mom kept his memory alive in the house. “Our” rules were still enforced. Our values. And Mom was gonna tell dad when he did get back home.

Move to Public Education As the world keeps on spinning most people go with it. And public education became and has become a massive influence in American lives. I’m not going to bash public education because education truly is important. There are other options, and our family has avoided the public-school route. Education in small schoolhouses was a much different picture of education than it is today. Today’s kids spend an incredible amount of time inside the school system and much of that time is not productive. Todays students graduate not nearly as educated as they should be. The US ranks very poorly in worldwide education standards despite being the heaviest spender. Regardless of my views here 2 things come from this shift. A massive amount of the day is spend being influenced by people who are not Dad (or Mom). And since teaching is a field dominated by women there are arguments that the shift of so much time without male role models is the reason masculinity has declined and become attacked.

Court Systems

Ask any dad that has had to go through the court system and he will admit the deck is stacked against you. Courts have predetermined that Dad is not important and his value is in check writing. “And if you force our hand then fine---here are some days you can see your kids. Be thankful for the scraps we just tossed you.” – Signed family judges everywhere

Family Courts have crippled Dad's influence in kids' lives. And its politicians that create the laws and incentives Judges follow. Did you know states receive federal dollars based on how much they are having to collect in child support. If you want to know why courts stack against dads and care mostly about child support.......there is some real incentive for states to get the child support number as high as they can.

My other target is Dads here. As much as I am disappointed in the judges. Dad allowed the situation to get to a point where a judge decides what he can and can’t do. I know moms are at fault too. But this is a dad page. Dad’s – Sex can make babies. Stop having sex with crazy women. Marry women you want to spend your lives with. Make sure you guys are on the same page with life- how to manage money, how to raise kids, how many kids, what faith you are and want to raise kids in, how involved in-laws can be in our lives…. these are some of the biggest issues. Some of these divorce stories I hear, ya’ll can do better.

Politician Passing Stupid Laws

I do not like politicians. I think they are all slime balls. Even the ones you like. Especially the ones you do not like. They make incredibly stupid laws. Lets call out these idiots for a bit, not that they will be held responsible or even accept blame.

Child support is collected by states and used as the measuring stick for how much federal money states get. States get more money from the federal government when they collect more child support. Wonder why dads don’t get custody when they should? Wonder why Dads get stuck with a heavy bill and limited contact?

Welfare rules and government incentives finance the breaking up of families because hell the government will pay you for that. Politicians create laws that incentivize the breaking up the family unit especially in low-income and minority families. There has been a real effort to replace the husband and the father with a government handout.

There is a lot of chatter about laws passed that disproportionately took minority fathers out of the home and into jail for relatively minor offenses. I haven’t seen enough to make a judgment, but I would not be surprised at all.

Remember while there is always someone to blame-- we can take power out of the courts and politicians' hands by making good decisions and not ending up reliant on government money or stuck in their courts. When dads step up and become great we make all this way less relevant.

Entertainment Finds Ratings in Crushing Dads

Gone are the true role models of Dads. The Leave It to Beaver type dads are gone. The Dad with high integrity, that did not get caught up in drama, and was always good for dispensing wisdom and seriousness.  Now the leading TV dads are the butt of the joke. While I admit it's often funny. I’m also certain we are a culture easily influenced by entertainment and the stigmas in tv influence generations and how they act. Now they are idiots. Mom is the smart one that really does everything. Dad drinks beer, watched tv, groans about doing any work, loves sports more than his family, and is clueless and clumsy. Luckily, mom is there to do literally everything. No respect, No honor, no integrity. Let’s be honest…. that doesn’t get laughs. Decades of that humor on top of not actually having dads in the home and a dramatic rise in how much we watch tv has reshaped what many men think a dad should act like and be like. It’s a wrong interpretation and families are paying the price. It must be recognized that tv dads are punchlines, not actual real dads that should be modeled after.

Feminism

Before I get torched let's clarify a few things. Women are great. Women are strong. Women are smart. Women are capable. I am not saying otherwise. Feminism was needed for the evolution of the world because there was no voting for women and workplaces shy’d away from women and certainly would not pay them well. And at higher levels of business, they were being turned down opportunities when they were more qualified and talented. It was needed. Some feminists have taken the cause way further. The ones saying women should be single and not get married. Single moms are better than married moms. Career women are better than stay-at-home moms. This is where the rest of the world rejects the cause. Now feminists divide and attack women. It's more that men are evil and toxic. These views attack marriage, child-raising, and healthy families. That’s simply wrong.

You tie all these together and you see how they feed each other. The feminist desire to put all women in the workplace means there’s more burden on school systems to raise kids. The courts and politicians feed the "see men are bad" crowd. Entertainment rears a generation that is not influential and present in their kids lives. The cycle turns and turns spewing out more and more kids born out of wedlock. Not raised in the family unit. More likely to be raised and influenced by underperforming schools and disappointing entertainment options.

Dads – Break the cycle. Avoid this fate. Be a prominent and influential role model. Stay away from the courts and politicians. The more we know and recognize the more we can fight against this rigged system. Just because the deck is stacked against you doesn’t mean you won’t come out on top. Shoulder back, head up high, power forward. You got this.

And to the rest of the world. This is a stupid trend. If you want to make a world a better place with less crime, poverty, less welfare, fewer taxes (because of reduced crime and welfare), better communities, better education….it goes on and on….DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER!!!!!!

Make Dad the center of the family. Make dads the source of wisdom and influence. It solves so many problems in this country!!

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[dungeonecologist]

WILD ARMS 2 - Raline Observatory

The Raline Observatory is a neat set piece, albeit one riddled with issues in English.  It distracts us with side characters, but actually sets up a pretty core feature of the world that will come back much later in conjunction with the Live Reflectors (which are about to become defunct once we finish this quest and unlock our flying ship) The name however is yet another mistransliteration from the Japanese for “Ley Line.”

Ley Lines came from the observations of one Alfred Watkins, an amateur archaeologist/explorer of the 1920s (as was not terribly uncommon at the time) who made note of the arrangement of major historical landmarks in straight lines across the British country side, from which he questioned the meaning, cause, or function.  In the 1960s this work was incorporated along side Chinese fengshui to theorize that a kind of natural flow of energies across the Earth existed, and that spiritually attuned cultures all across history had been drawn to places where such streams of energy intersected, either by divination or by the consequence of ideal circumstances for settlement or ritual structures stemming from said concentrated energies.

Here, it those theories are applied rather literally, and will be revisited more explicitly at a later point in the story.  Not coincidentally, this dungeon is located on a string of volcanic not-quite-islands, volcanoes being a rather on the nose example of a point at which energy has built up and been released from the Earth, literal energy obviously but in many belief systems spiritual energy as well.  Oddly there aren’t actually any apparent Ley Lines on the Filgaia map; the dungeons are all pretty evenly distributed.  The only semblance of patterns* are that various locations that come in 4s are deliberately scattered across 4 quadrants, but that’s less meaningful and more just practical when you don’t want your game’s marathon of dungeons to take place right next to each other.

*(The ones I’ve marked here are the 4 Live Reactors: red, the 4 Diablo Pillars: Blue, and the 4 Ray Points: Green.  Perhaps the only real deliberate design here is that the finale dungeon which is tied by lore to the Raypoints, is located right in between the 4 of them; the intersection if you draw lines between opposite points.  On this note: the Raypoint dungeons may also be a mistransliteration, meant to be “Ley Points.”)

Anyway we get into this neat abandoned lab setting and immediately have a boss thrown at us.

I think I’ve mentioned both the Kobold, and accidentally the Salamandra, now but among those iconic elemental monsters is also the Undine; Generally portrayed as a beautiful humanoid water nymph.  The boss monster, Undines (I don’t know why there’s an “s”, the Japanese even reads ウンディーネ:u-n’-di-ne) is very much not.  Actually, given the circumstances I’d almost assume this was some kind of mistransliteration, but the boss card even says “Elemental Spirit,” so what else could it be other than a water spirit? (although when I looked over the epithet in Japanese the phrase is 素体 精霊獣, so what they translated as “Elemental” actually means something more in line with “base form” as in a chemical element, not an alchemical one.)  Also of note are its moves: Hookey Bust, Intafada, Reject all Fools, and Shocking Guinea.

We’ll start with Shocking Guinea, as it might be the most straight forward; it alludes to Undines being a manufactured monster, and presumably kind of a lab experiment.  It has turned on its creators so perhaps it was inhumanely experimented on until it lashed out?  This move is also perhaps the outlier in the set.  Intafada I can only assume refers here to the literal meaning of “shaking” or a small tremor and not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza in the early 90s...  Ignoring the bizarre language choice for that, the move Hookey Bust is a little confusing but suggests one of two things to me; either being caught playing hooky, or rolling a losing number in a game of dice.  The former fits with the idea of an escaped experiment, but the latter along with Intafada and the general jester look of Undines seems to suggest shaking and rolling dice?  That in some vague sense seems to match with the Reject all Fools, if it means Fool like a court jester.

Okay you know what, I gave the translators too much credit.  The moment I started digging things got all kinds of muddled.  The move Reject All Fools in Japanese is 理解できないモノは拒絶: “[I] reject things [I] don’t understand.”  I take it the translators interpreted 理解できない モノ as “things/people that can not understand” i.e. “Fools,” but it might also be, “things/people that cannot be understood.”  I make the distinction because I think it has to do with ghost stories and belief in the supernatural, although what “supernatural” would really mean in a fantasy setting isn’t super clear...

The move Hookey Bust is 学校の怖い胸像: “Scary Bust of School” as in a scary sculpture found in a school, which I’m pretty certain is a reference to the trope of Japanese middle or high schools having a kind of local hauntings where some kind of ghost turns out to be the anatomical model in the science lab or the nurse’s office.  It ties into the science lab/experiment theme going on all throughout here.  Spooky science lab also explains the “shiver”/”shake”/”tremor” we get from Intafada.

Speaking of terrible translations, the baffling Lilly Pad monster appears here, a bizarre imp with a little sword and cape, and boobs on its head???  The katakana here is I believe meant to be a transliteration of Lilliput, as in Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels.  The actual design doesn’t make much more sense in light of that, as they aren’t especially tiny, but at least the basic idea gets across, as opposed to the entirely nonsensical Lilly Pad.  I’m not sure they add to the theme going on exactly, but the visual aesthetic of a tiny or shrunken person does resonate with some classic mad science lab cliches.  

And we also have the Jelly Blob, which is just a staple of RPGs by this point.  Technically speaking I think the origin is, again, Dungeons and Dragons, with he Gelatinous Cube and Ooze monsters, and in turn any number of variants on the both as well as the off shoot Slime family of monsters.  Again, very in line with the science experiment vibes.

The one thing that presents a tiny hiccup in this is the Pas de Chat; in Japanese simply named Laughing Haunt.  It might be a stretch, but I think it’s just another reference to school hauntings, like the Hookey Bust reference.  It’s the only way I can think to fit this into the overarching themes of the dungeon.  The “English” name, Pas de Chat, is a ballet term referring to a jump in which the legs are brought up toward the opposite knee in quick sequence before landing.  It is French for “Step of the Cat.”

I have no idea why it looks the way it does, but it does display some interesting animations with leaps and twirls that is understandably evocative of dancers.  It also fights with a pair of stiletto daggers.

I kind of neglected to mention, but throughout this whole dungeon we’ve been followed by the wacky comedy relief duo, Liz and Ard. (Toka and Ge in Japanese: You get one guess as to what the word “Tokage” translates to.)  As we reach the end of the dungeon they of course spring on us that they too are after the rare Germatron mineral, and that they are apparently Odessa’s free lance monster engineers.  The two jump us with a second boss fight where the two showcase a host of battle tactics about as wacky as everything else we’ve put up with from them thus far:

Liz, the self-styled lead researcher of the duo can throw concoctions to ail the team, but that also hit himself and his assistant, Ard.  Meanwhile Ard is a tank and a powerhouse, even as the inevitable Poison ailment from Liz’s attacks chips away at his HP.  But to add to it, his strongest attack deals huge recoil damage to himself trading off for yet more offensive power.  If you focus your attacks on Liz and heal as needed, Ard will likely kill himself even before Liz falls.  An appropriate end to the mad science theme of the dungeon all around.  And naturally, we’ll be seeing more of the lizard duo as the game goes on.